A Princess of Mars

After making her fast, they swarmed the sides and searched the vessel

from stem to stern. I could see them examining the dead sailors,

evidently for signs of life, and presently a party of them appeared

from below dragging a little figure among them. The creature was

considerably less than half as tall as the green Martian warriors, and

from my balcony I could see that it walked erect upon two legs and

surmised that it was some new and strange Martian monstrosity with

which I had not as yet become acquainted.

They removed their prisoner to the ground and then commenced a

systematic rifling of the vessel. This operation required several

hours, during which time a number of the chariots were requisitioned to

transport the loot, which consisted in arms, ammunition, silks, furs,

jewels, strangely carved stone vessels, and a quantity of solid foods

and liquids, including many casks of water, the first I had seen since

my advent upon Mars.

After the last load had been removed the warriors made lines fast to

the craft and towed her far out into the valley in a southwesterly

direction. A few of them then boarded her and were busily engaged in

what appeared, from my distant position, as the emptying of the

contents of various carboys upon the dead bodies of the sailors and

over the decks and works of the vessel.

This operation concluded, they hastily clambered over her sides,

sliding down the guy ropes to the ground. The last warrior to leave

the deck turned and threw something back upon the vessel, waiting an

instant to note the outcome of his act. As a faint spurt of flame rose

from the point where the missile struck he swung over the side and was

quickly upon the ground. Scarcely had he alighted than the guy ropes

were simultaneous released, and the great warship, lightened by the

removal of the loot, soared majestically into the air, her decks and

upper works a mass of roaring flames.

Slowly she drifted to the southeast, rising higher and higher as the

flames ate away her wooden parts and diminished the weight upon her.

Ascending to the roof of the building I watched her for hours, until

finally she was lost in the dim vistas of the distance. The sight was

awe-inspiring in the extreme as one contemplated this mighty floating

funeral pyre, drifting unguided and unmanned through the lonely wastes

of the Martian heavens; a derelict of death and destruction, typifying

the life story of these strange and ferocious creatures into whose

unfriendly hands fate had carried it.

Much depressed, and, to me, unaccountably so, I slowly descended to the

street. The scene I had witnessed seemed to mark the defeat and

annihilation of the forces of a kindred people, rather than the routing

by our green warriors of a horde of similar, though unfriendly,

creatures. I could not fathom the seeming hallucination, nor could I

free myself from it; but somewhere in the innermost recesses of my soul

I felt a strange yearning toward these unknown foemen, and a mighty

hope surged through me that the fleet would return and demand a

reckoning from the green warriors who had so ruthlessly and wantonly

attacked it.