第12章

The sight of food aroused again a consciousness of her own gnawing hunger and the thirst that parched her throat.She could see both food and water within the enclosure; but would she dare enter even should she find means of ingress? She doubted it, since the very thought of possible contact with these grewsome creatures sent a shudder through her frame.

Then her eyes wandered again out across the valley until presently they picked out what appeared to be a tiny stream winding its way through the center of the farm lands--a strange sight upon Barsoom.Ah, if it were but water! Then might she hope with a real hope, for the fields would give her sustenance which she could gain by night, while by day she hid among the surrounding hills, and sometime, yes, sometime she knew, the searchers would come, for John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, would never cease to search for his daughter until every square haad of the planet had been combed again and again.She knew him and she knew the warriors of Helium and so she knew that could she but manage to escape harm until they came, they would indeed come at last.

She would have to wait until dark before she dare venture into the valley, and in the meantime she thought it well to search out a place of safety nearby where she might be reasonably safe from savage beasts.It was possible that the district was free from carnivora, but one might never be sure in a strange land.As she was about to withdraw be hind the brow of the hill her attention was again attracted to the enclosure below.Two figures had emerged from the tower.Their beautiful bodies seemed identical with those of the headless creatures among which they moved, but the newcomers were not headless.Upon their shoulders were heads that seemed human, yet which the girl intuitively sensed were not human.They were just a trifle too far away for her to see them distinctly in the waning light of the dying day, but she knew that they were too large, they were out of proportion to the perfectly proportioned bodies, and they were oblate in form.She could see that the men wore some manner of harness to which were slung the customary long-sword and short-sword of the Barsoomian warrior, and that about their short necks were massive leather collars cut to fit closely over the shoulders and snugly to the lower part of the head.Their features were scarce discernible, but there was a suggestion of grotesqueness about them that carried to her a feeling of revulsion.

The two carried a long rope to which were fastened, at intervals of about two sofads, what she later guessed were light manacles, for she saw the warriors passing among the poor creatures in the enclosure and about the right wrist of each they fastened one of the manacles.When all had been thus fastened to the rope one of the warriors commenced to pull and tug at the loose end as though attempting to drag the headless company toward the tower, while the other went among them with a long, light whip with which he flicked them upon the naked skin.Slowly, dully, the creatures rose to their feet and between the tugging of the warrior in front and the lashing of him behind the hopeless band was finally herded within the tower.Tara of Helium shuddered as she turned away.What manner of creatures were these?

Suddenly it was night.The Barsoomian day had ended, and then the brief period of twilight that renders the transition from daylight to darkness almost as abrupt as the switching off of an electric light, and Tara of Helium had found no sanctuary.But perhaps there were no beasts to fear, or rather to avoid--Tara of Helium liked not the word fear.She would have been glad, however, had there been a cabin, even a very tiny cabin, upon her small flier; but there was no cabin.The interior of the hull was completely taken up by the buoyancy tanks.Ah, she had it! How stupid of her not to have thought of it before! She could moor the craft to the tree beneath which it rested and let it rise the length of the rope.Lashed to the deck rings she would then be safe from any roaming beast of prey that chanced along.In the morning she could drop to the ground again before the craft was discovered.

As Tara of Helium crept over the brow of the hill down toward the valley, her presence was hidden by the darkness of the night from the sight of any chance observer who might be loitering by a window in the nearby tower.Cluros, the farther moon, was just rising above the horizon to commence his leisurely journey through the heavens.Eight zodes later he would set--a trifle over nineteen and a half Earth hours--and during that time Thuria, his vivacious mate, would have circled the planet twice and be more than half way around on her third trip.She had but just set.It would be more than three and a half hours before she shot above the opposite horizon to hurtle, swift and low, across the face of the dying planet.During this temporary absence of the mad moon Tara of Helium hoped to find both food and water, and gain again the safety of her flier's deck.