A Princess of Mars Rethroned (3 page)

Late in the
afternoon my horse, which had been standing with dragging rein
before the cave, started slowly down the trail, evidently in search
of food and water, and I was left alone with my mysterious unknown
companion and the dead body of my friend, which lay just within my
range of vision upon the ledge where I had placed it in the early
morning.

From then until
possibly midnight all was silence, the silence of the dead; then,
suddenly, the awful moan of the morning broke upon my startled
ears, and there came again from the black shadows the sound of a
moving thing, and a faint rustling as of dead leaves. The shock to
my already overstrained nervous system was terrible in the extreme,
and with a superhuman effort I strove to break my awful bonds. It
was an effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves; not
muscular, for I could not move even so much as my little finger,
but none the less mighty for all that. And then something gave,
there was a momentary feeling of nausea, a sharp click as of the
snapping of a steel wire, and I stood with my back against the wall
of the cave facing my unknown foe.

And then the
moonlight flooded the cave, and there before me lay my own body as
it had been lying all these hours, with the eyes staring toward the
open ledge and the hands resting limply upon the ground. I looked
first at my lifeless clay there upon the floor of the cave and then
down at myself in utter bewilderment; for there I lay clothed, and
yet here I stood but naked as at the minute of my birth.

The transition
had been so sudden and so unexpected that it left me for a moment
forgetful of aught else than my strange metamorphosis. My first
thought was, is this then death! Have I indeed passed over forever
into that other life! But I could not well believe this, as I could
feel my heart pounding against my ribs from the exertion of my
efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me.
My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out
from every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching
revealed the fact that I was anything other than a
wraith.

Again was I
suddenly recalled to my immediate surroundings by a repetition of
the weird moan from the depths of the cave. Naked and unarmed as I
was, I had no desire to face the unseen thing which menaced
me.

My revolvers were
strapped to my lifeless body which, for some unfathomable reason, I
could not bring myself to touch. My carbine was in its boot,
strapped to my saddle, and as my horse had wandered off I was left
without means of defense. My only alternative seemed to lie in
flight and my decision was crystallized by a recurrence of the
rustling sound from the thing which now seemed, in the darkness of
the cave and to my distorted imagination, to be creeping stealthily
upon me.

Unable longer to
resist the temptation to escape this horrible place I leaped
quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear Arizona
night. The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave acted as an
immediate tonic and I felt new life and new courage coursing
through me. Pausing upon the brink of the ledge I upbraided myself
for what now seemed to me wholly unwarranted apprehension. I
reasoned with myself that I had lain helpless for many hours within
the cave, yet nothing had molested me, and my better judgment, when
permitted the direction of clear and logical reasoning, convinced
me that the noises I had heard must have resulted from purely
natural and harmless causes; probably the conformation of the cave
was such that a slight breeze had caused the sounds I
heard.

I decided to
investigate, but first I lifted my head to fill my lungs with the
pure, invigorating night air of the mountains. As I did so I saw
stretching far below me the beautiful vista of rocky gorge, and
level, cacti-studded flat, wrought by the moonlight into a miracle
of soft splendor and wondrous enchantment.

Few western
wonders are more inspiring than the beauties of an Arizona moonlit
landscape; the silvered mountains in the distance, the strange
lights and shadows upon hog back and arroyo, and the grotesque
details of the stiff, yet beautiful cacti form a picture at once
enchanting and inspiring; as though one were catching for the first
time a glimpse of some dead and forgotten world, so different is it
from the aspect of any other spot upon our earth.

As I stood thus
meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to the heavens
where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the
wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was quickly riveted by a
large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I
felt a spell of overpowering fascination--it was Mars, the god of
war, and for me, the fighting woman, it had always held the power
of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone
night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to
it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of
iron.

My longing was
beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes, stretched out my
arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself drawn with the
suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity of space.
There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness.

CHAPTER
III

MY ADVENT ON
MARS

I opened my eyes
upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not
once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness. I was not
asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told me
as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you
that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did
I.

I found myself
lying prone upon a bed of yellowish, mosslike vegetation which
stretched around me in all directions for interminable miles. I
seemed to be lying in a deep, circular basin, along the outer verge
of which I could distinguish the irregularities of low
hills.

It was midday,
the sun was shining full upon me and the heat of it was rather
intense upon my naked body, yet no greater than would have been
true under similar conditions on an Arizona desert. Here and there
were slight outcroppings of quartz-bearing rock which glistened in
the sunlight; and a little to my left, perhaps a hundred yards,
appeared a low, walled enclosure about four feet in height. No
water, and no other vegetation than the moss was in evidence, and
as I was somewhat thirsty I determined to do a little
exploring.

Springing to my
feet I received my first Martian surprise, for the effort, which on
Earth would have brought me standing upright, carried me into the
Martian air to the height of about three yards. I alighted softly
upon the ground, however, without appreciable shock or jar. Now
commenced a series of evolutions which even then seemed ludicrous
in the extreme. I found that I must learn to walk all over again,
as the muscular exertion which carried me easily and safely upon
Earth played strange antics with me upon Mars.

Instead of
progressing in a sane and dignified manner, my attempts to walk
resulted in a variety of hops which took me clear of the ground a
couple of feet at each step and landed me sprawling upon my face or
back at the end of each second or third hop. My muscles, perfectly
attuned and accustomed to the force of gravity on Earth, played the
mischief with me in attempting for the first time to cope with the
lesser gravitation and lower air pressure on Mars.

I was determined,
however, to explore the low structure which was the only evidence
of habitation in sight, and so I hit upon the unique plan of
reverting to first principles in locomotion, creeping. I did fairly
well at this and in a few moments had reached the low, encircling
wall of the enclosure.

There appeared to
be no doors or windows upon the side nearest me, but as the wall
was but about four feet high I cautiously gained my feet and peered
over the top upon the strangest sight it had ever been given me to
see.

The roof of the
enclosure was of solid glass about four or five inches in
thickness, and beneath this were several hundred large eggs,
perfectly round and snowy white. The eggs were nearly uniform in
size being about two and one-half feet in diameter.

Five or six had
already hatched and the grotesque caricatures which sat blinking in
the sunlight were enough to cause me to doubt my sanity. They
seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long necks and six
legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two arms, with an
intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will either as
arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their
heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that
they could be directed either forward or back and also
independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to
look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the
necessity of turning the head.

The ears, which
were slightly above the eyes and closer together, were small,
cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on these
young specimens. Their noses were but longitudinal slits in the
center of their faces, midway between their mouths and
ears.

There was no hair
on their bodies, which were of a very light yellowish-green color.
In the adults, as I was to learn quite soon, this color deepens to
an olive green and is darker in the female than in the male.
Further, the heads of the adults are not so out of proportion to
their bodies as in the case of the young.

The iris of the
eyes is blood red, as in Albinos, while the pupil is dark. The
eyeball itself is very white, as are the teeth. These latter add a
most ferocious appearance to an otherwise fearsome and terrible
countenance, as the lower tusks curve upward to sharp points which
end about where the eyes of earthly human beings are located. The
whiteness of the teeth is not that of ivory, but of the snowiest
and most gleaming of china. Against the dark background of their
olive skins their tusks stand out in a most striking manner, making
these weapons present a singularly formidable
appearance.

Most of these
details I noted later, for I was given but little time to speculate
on the wonders of my new discovery. I had seen that the eggs were
in the process of hatching, and as I stood watching the hideous
little monsters break from their shells I failed to note the
approach of a score of full-grown Martians from behind
me.

Coming, as they
did, over the soft and soundless moss, which covers practically the
entire surface of Mars with the exception of the frozen areas at
the poles and the scattered cultivated districts, they might have
captured me easily, but their intentions were far more sinister. It
was the rattling of the accouterments of the foremost warrior which
warned me.

On such a little
thing my life hung that I often marvel that I escaped so easily.
Had not the rifle of the leader of the party swung from its
fastenings beside her saddle in such a way as to strike against the
butt of her great metal-shod spear I should have snuffed out
without ever knowing that death was near me. But the little sound
caused me to turn, and there upon me, not ten feet from my breast,
was the point of that huge spear, a spear forty feet long, tipped
with gleaming metal, and held low at the side of a mounted replica
of the little devils I had been watching.

But how puny and
harmless they now looked beside this huge and terrific incarnation
of hate, of vengeance and of death. The woman herself, for such I
may call her, was fully fifteen feet in height and, on Earth, would
have weighed some four hundred pounds. She sat her mount as we sit
a horse, grasping the animal's barrel with her lower limbs, while
the hands of her two right arms held her immense spear low at the
side of her mount; her two left arms were outstretched laterally to
help preserve her balance, the thing she rode having neither bridle
or reins of any description for guidance.

And her mount!
How can earthly words describe it! It towered ten feet at the
shoulder; had four legs on either side; a broad flat tail, larger
at the tip than at the root, and which it held straight out behind
while running; a gaping mouth which split its head from its snout
to its long, massive neck.

Like its
mistress, it was entirely devoid of hair, but was of a dark slate
color and exceeding smooth and glossy. Its belly was white, and its
legs shaded from the slate of its shoulders and hips to a vivid
yellow at the feet. The feet themselves were heavily padded and
nailless, which fact had also contributed to the noiselessness of
their approach, and, in common with a multiplicity of legs, is a
characteristic feature of the fauna of Mars. The highest type of
woman and one other animal, the only mammal existing on Mars, alone
have well-formed nails, and there are absolutely no hoofed animals
in existence there.

Behind this first
charging demon trailed nineteen others, similar in all respects,
but, as I learned later, bearing individual characteristics
peculiar to themselves; precisely as no two of us are identical
although we are all cast in a similar mold. This picture, or rather
materialized nightstallion, which I have described at length, made
but one terrible and swift impression on me as I turned to meet
it.

Unarmed and naked
as I was, the first law of nature manifested itself in the only
possible solution of my immediate problem, and that was to get out
of the vicinity of the point of the charging spear. Consequently I
gave a very earthly and at the same time superhuman leap to reach
the top of the Martian incubator, for such I had determined it must
be.