As I stood upon the bluff before my cottage on that clearcold night in the early part of March, 1886, the noble Hudsonflowing like the grey and silent spectre of a dead riverbelow me, I felt again the strange, compelling influence ofthe mighty god of war, my beloved Mars, which for ten longand lonesome years I had implored with outstretched armsto carry me back to my lost love.

Not since that other March night in 1866, when I hadstood without that Arizona cave in which my still and lifelessbody lay wrapped in the similitude of earthly death had I feltthe irresistible attraction of the god of my profession.

With arms outstretched toward the red eye of the greatstar I stood praying for a return of that strange power whichtwice had drawn me through the immensity of space, prayingas I had prayed on a thousand nights before during the longten years that I had waited and hoped.

Suddenly a qualm of nausea swept over me, my sensesswam, my knees gave beneath me and I pitched headlongto the ground upon the very verge of the dizzy bluff.

Instantly my brain cleared and there swept back acrossthe threshold of my memory the vivid picture of the horrorsof that ghostly Arizona cave; again, as on that far-gone night,my muscles refused to respond to my will and again, asthough even here upon the banks of the placid Hudson, Icould hear the awful moans and rustling of the fearsomething which had lurked and threatened me from the darkrecesses of the cave, I made the same mighty and superhumaneffort to break the bonds of the strange anaesthesia whichheld me, and again came the sharp click as of the suddenparting of a taut wire, and I stood naked and free besidethe staring, lifeless thing that had so recently pulsed withthe warm, red life-blood of John Carter.

With scarcely a parting glance I turned my eyes again towardMars, lifted my hands toward his lurid rays, and waited.

Nor did I have long to wait; for scarce had I turned ere Ishot with the rapidity of thought into the awful void beforeme. There was the same instant of unthinkable cold and utterdarkness that I had experienced twenty years before, andthen I opened my eyes in another world, beneath the burningrays of a hot sun, which beat through a tiny opening in thedome of the mighty forest in which I lay.

The scene that met my eyes was so un-Martian that myheart sprang to my throat as the sudden fear swept throughme that I had been aimlessly tossed upon some strange planetby a cruel fate.

Why not? What guide had I through the trackless waste ofinterplanetary space? What assurance that I might not aswell be hurtled to some far-distant star of anothersolar system, as to Mars?

I lay upon a close-cropped sward of red grasslike vegetation,and about me stretched a grove of strange and beautiful trees,covered with huge and gorgeous blossoms and filled with brilliant,voiceless birds. I call them birds since they were winged, butmortal eye ne'er rested on such odd, unearthly shapes.

The vegetation was similar to that which covers the lawnsof the red Martians of the great waterways, but the treesand birds were unlike anything that I had ever seen uponMars, and then through the further trees I could see thatmost un-Martian of all sights--an open sea, its blue watersshimmering beneath the brazen sun.

As I rose to investigate further I experienced the sameridiculous catastrophe that had met my first attempt to walkunder Martian conditions. The lesser attraction of this smallerplanet and the reduced air pressure of its greatly rarefiedatmosphere, afforded so little resistance to my earthly musclesthat the ordinary exertion of the mere act of rising sentme several feet into the air and precipitated me upon myface in the soft and brilliant grass of this strange world.

This experience, however, gave me some slightly increasedassurance that, after all, I might indeed be in some, to me,unknown corner of Mars, and this was very possible sinceduring my ten years' residence upon the planet I hadexplored but a comparatively tiny area of its vast expanse.

I arose again, laughing at my forgetfulness, and soon hadmastered once more the art of attuning my earthly sinewsto these changed conditions.

As I walked slowly down the imperceptible slope towardthe sea I could not help but note the park-like appearance ofthe sward and trees. The grass was as close-cropped andcarpet-like as some old English lawn and the trees themselvesshowed evidence of careful pruning to a uniform height ofabout fifteen feet from the ground, so that as one turned hisglance in any direction the forest had the appearance at alittle distance of a vast, high-ceiled chamber.

All these evidences of careful and systematic cultivationconvinced me that I had been fortunate enough to make myentry into Mars on this second occasion through the domainof a civilized people and that when I should find them Iwould be accorded the courtesy and protection that my rankas a Prince of the house of Tardos Mors entitled me to.

The trees of the forest attracted my deep admiration as Iproceeded toward the sea. Their great stems, some of themfully a hundred feet in diameter, attested their prodigiousheight, which I could only guess at, since at no point couldI penetrate their dense foliage above me to more than sixtyor eighty feet.

As far aloft as I could see the stems and branches andtwigs were as smooth and as highly polished as the newest ofAmerican-made pianos. The wood of some of the trees wasas black as ebony, while their nearest neighbours mightperhaps gleam in the subdued light of the forest as clearand white as the finest china, or, again, they were azure,scarlet, yellow, or deepest purple.

And in the same way was the foliage as gay and variegatedas the stems, while the blooms that clustered thick uponthem may not be described in any earthly tongue, and indeedmight challenge the language of the gods.

As I neared the confines of the forest I beheld before meand between the grove and the open sea, a broad expanseof meadow land, and as I was about to emerge from theshadows of the trees a sight met my eyes that banishedall romantic and poetic reflection upon the beauties ofthe strange landscape.

To my left the sea extended as far as the eye could reach,before me only a vague, dim line indicated its further shore,while at my right a mighty river, broad, placid, and majestic,flowed between scarlet banks to empty into the quiet sea before me.

At a little distance up the river rose mighty perpendicular bluffs,from the very base of which the great river seemed to rise.

But it was not these inspiring and magnificent evidences ofNature's grandeur that took my immediate attention from thebeauties of the forest. It was the sight of a score of figuresmoving slowly about the meadow near the bank of the mighty river.

Odd, grotesque shapes they were; unlike anything that I hadever seen upon Mars, and yet, at a distance, most manlikein appearance. The larger specimens appeared to be aboutten or twelve feet in height when they stood erect, andto be proportioned as to torso and lower extremitiesprecisely as is earthly man.

Their arms, however, were very short, and from where I stoodseemed as though fashioned much after the manner of anelephant's trunk, in that they moved in sinuous and snakelikeundulations, as though entirely without bony structure, or ifthere were bones it seemed that they must be vertebral in nature.

As I watched them from behind the stem of a huge tree,one of the creatures moved slowly in my direction, engagedin the occupation that seemed to be the principal business ofeach of them, and which consisted in running their oddlyshaped hands over the surface of the sward, for what purposeI could not determine.

As he approached quite close to me I obtained an excellentview of him, and though I was later to become betteracquainted with his kind, I may say that that single cursoryexamination of this awful travesty on Nature would haveproved quite sufficient to my desires had I been a free agent.The fastest flier of the Heliumetic Navy could not quicklyenough have carried me far from this hideous creature.

Its hairless body was a strange and ghoulish blue, exceptfor a broad band of white which encircled its protruding,single eye: an eye that was all dead white--pupil, iris,and ball.

Its nose was a ragged, inflamed, circular hole in the centreof its blank face; a hole that resembled more closely nothingthat I could think of other than a fresh bullet wound whichhas not yet commenced to bleed.

Below this repulsive orifice the face was quite blank tothe chin, for the thing had no mouth that I could discover.

The head, with the exception of the face, was covered by a tangledmass of jet-black hair some eight or ten inches in length. Eachhair was about the bigness of a large angleworm, and as the thingmoved the muscles of its scalp this awful head-covering seemedto writhe and wriggle and crawl about the fearsome face as thoughindeed each separate hair was endowed with independent life.

The body and the legs were as symmetrically human as Naturecould have fashioned them, and the feet, too, were humanin shape, but of monstrous proportions. From heel to toethey were fully three feet long, and very flat and very broad.

As it came quite close to me I discovered that its strangemovements, running its odd hands over the surface of theturf, were the result of its peculiar method of feeding, whichconsists in cropping off the tender vegetation with itsrazorlike talons and sucking it up from its two mouths, whichlie one in the palm of each hand, through its arm-like throats.

In addition to the features which I have already described,the beast was equipped with a massive tail about six feet inlength, quite round where it joined the body, but tapering toa flat, thin blade toward the end, which trailed at rightangles to the ground.

By far the most remarkable feature of this most remarkablecreature, however, were the two tiny replicas of it, eachabout six inches in length, which dangled, one on either side,from its armpits. They were suspended by a small stem whichseemed to grow from the exact tops of their heads to whereit connected them with the body of the adult.

Whether they were the young, or merely portions of acomposite creature, I did not know.

As I had been scrutinizing this weird monstrosity thebalance of the herd had fed quite close to me and I now sawthat while many had the smaller specimens dangling fromthem, not all were thus equipped, and I further noted thatthe little ones varied in size from what appeared to be buttiny unopened buds an inch in diameter through variousstages of development to the full-fledged and perfectlyformed creature of ten to twelve inches in length.

Feeding with the herd were many of the little fellows notmuch larger than those which remained attached to theirparents, and from the young of that size the herd graded upto the immense adults.

Fearsome-looking as they were, I did not know whether tofear them or not, for they did not seem to be particularlywell equipped for fighting, and I was on the point of steppingfrom my hiding-place and revealing myself to them tonote the effect upon them of the sight of a man when myrash resolve was, fortunately for me, nipped in the bud bya strange shrieking wail, which seemed to come from thedirection of the bluffs at my right.

Naked and unarmed, as I was, my end would have beenboth speedy and horrible at the hands of these cruel creatureshad I had time to put my resolve into execution, but at themoment of the shriek each member of the herd turned in thedirection from which the sound seemed to come, and atthe same instant every particular snake-like hair upon theirheads rose stiffly perpendicular as if each had been a sentientorganism looking or listening for the source or meaning of thewail. And indeed the latter proved to be the truth, for thisstrange growth upon the craniums of the plant men of Barsoomrepresents the thousand ears of these hideous creatures,the last remnant of the strange race which sprang from theoriginal Tree of Life.

Instantly every eye turned toward one member of theherd, a large fellow who evidently was the leader. A strangepurring sound issued from the mouth in the palm of one ofhis hands, and at the same time he started rapidly toward thebluff, followed by the entire herd.

Their speed and method of locomotion were both remarkable,springing as they did in great leaps of twenty or thirtyfeet, much after the manner of a kangaroo.

They were rapidly disappearing when it occurred to meto follow them, and so, hurling caution to the winds, I sprangacross the meadow in their wake with leaps and bounds evenmore prodigious than their own, for the muscles of anathletic Earth man produce remarkable results when pittedagainst the lesser gravity and air pressure of Mars.

Their way led directly towards the apparent source of theriver at the base of the cliffs, and as I neared this point Ifound the meadow dotted with huge boulders that the ravagesof time had evidently dislodged from the towering crags above.

For this reason I came quite close to the cause of thedisturbance before the scene broke upon my horrified gaze.As I topped a great boulder I saw the herd of plant mensurrounding a little group of perhaps five or six green menand women of Barsoom.

That I was indeed upon Mars I now had no doubt, forhere were members of the wild hordes that people the deadsea bottoms and deserted cities of that dying planet.

Here were the great males towering in all the majesty oftheir imposing height; here were the gleaming white tusksprotruding from their massive lower jaws to a point near thecentre of their foreheads, the laterally placed, protrudingeyes with which they could look forward or backward, or toeither side without turning their heads, here the strangeantennae-like ears rising from the tops of their foreheads;and the additional pair of arms extending from midway betweenthe shoulders and the hips.

Even without the glossy green hide and the metal ornamentswhich denoted the tribes to which they belonged, I wouldhave known them on the instant for what they were,for where else in all the universe is their like duplicated?

There were two men and four females in the party andtheir ornaments denoted them as members of differenthordes, a fact which tended to puzzle me infinitely, sincethe various hordes of green men of Barsoom are eternally atdeadly war with one another, and never, except on that singlehistoric instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathereda hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from severalhordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescueDejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches ofThan Kosis, had I seen green Martians of different hordesassociated in other than mortal combat.

But now they stood back to back, facing, in wide-eyed amazement,the very evidently hostile demonstrations of a common enemy.

Both men and women were armed with long-swords anddaggers, but no firearms were in evidence, else it had beenshort shrift for the gruesome plant men of Barsoom.

Presently the leader of the plant men charged the littleparty, and his method of attack was as remarkable as it waseffective, and by its very strangeness was the more potent,since in the science of the green warriors there was nodefence for this singular manner of attack, the like of whichit soon was evident to me they were as unfamiliar with asthey were with the monstrosities which confronted them.

The plant man charged to within a dozen feet of the partyand then, with a bound, rose as though to pass directly abovetheir heads. His powerful tail was raised high to one side, andas he passed close above them he brought it down in one terrificsweep that crushed a green warrior's skull as though it had beenan eggshell.

The balance of the frightful herd was now circling rapidlyand with bewildering speed about the little knot of victims.Their prodigious bounds and the shrill, screeching purr oftheir uncanny mouths were well calculated to confuse andterrorize their prey, so that as two of them leapedsimultaneously from either side, the mighty sweep ofthose awful tails met with no resistance and two moregreen Martians went down to an ignoble death.

There were now but one warrior and two females left,and it seemed that it could be but a matter of secondsere these, also, lay dead upon the scarlet sward.

But as two more of the plant men charged, the warrior,who was now prepared by the experiences of the past fewminutes, swung his mighty long-sword aloft and met thehurtling bulk with a clean cut that clove one of theplant men from chin to groin.

The other, however, dealt a single blow with his cruel tailthat laid both of the females crushed corpses upon the ground.

As the green warrior saw the last of his companions godown and at the same time perceived that the entire herdwas charging him in a body, he rushed boldly to meet them,swinging his long-sword in the terrific manner that I had sooften seen the men of his kind wield it in their ferocious andalmost continual warfare among their own race.

Cutting and hewing to right and left, he laid an open pathstraight through the advancing plant men, and then commenceda mad race for the forest, in the shelter of whichhe evidently hoped that he might find a haven of refuge.

He had turned for that portion of the forest which abuttedon the cliffs, and thus the mad race was taking the entireparty farther and farther from the boulder where I lay concealed.

As I had watched the noble fight which the great warriorhad put up against such enormous odds my heart had swelledin admiration for him, and acting as I am wont to do, moreupon impulse than after mature deliberation, I instantlysprang from my sheltering rock and bounded quickly towardthe bodies of the dead green Martians, a well-defined planof action already formed.

Half a dozen great leaps brought me to the spot, and anotherinstant saw me again in my stride in quick pursuit of thehideous monsters that were rapidly gaining on the fleeingwarrior, but this time I grasped a mighty long-sword in myhand and in my heart was the old blood lust of the fightingman, and a red mist swam before my eyes and I felt my lipsrespond to my heart in the old smile that has ever markedme in the midst of the joy of battle.

Swift as I was I was none too soon, for the green warriorhad been overtaken ere he had made half the distance to theforest, and now he stood with his back to a boulder, whilethe herd, temporarily balked, hissed and screeched about him.

With their single eyes in the centre of their heads and everyeye turned upon their prey, they did not note my soundlessapproach, so that I was upon them with my great long-swordand four of them lay dead ere they knew that I was among them.

For an instant they recoiled before my terrific onslaught,and in that instant the green warrior rose to the occasionand, springing to my side, laid to the right and left of him asI had never seen but one other warrior do, with great circlingstrokes that formed a figure eight about him and that neverstopped until none stood living to oppose him, his keen bladepassing through flesh and bone and metal as though eachhad been alike thin air.

As we bent to the slaughter, far above us rose that shrill,weird cry which I had heard once before, and which hadcalled the herd to the attack upon their victims. Again andagain it rose, but we were too much engaged with the fierceand powerful creatures about us to attempt to search outeven with our eyes the author of the horrid notes.

Great tails lashed in frenzied anger about us, razor-liketalons cut our limbs and bodies, and a green and stickysyrup, such as oozes from a crushed caterpillar, smeared usfrom head to foot, for every cut and thrust of our longswordsbrought spurts of this stuff upon us from the severed arteriesof the plant men, through which it courses in its sluggishviscidity in lieu of blood.

Once I felt the great weight of one of the monsters uponmy back and as keen talons sank into my flesh I experiencedthe frightful sensation of moist lips sucking the lifeblood fromthe wounds to which the claws still clung.

I was very much engaged with a ferocious fellow whowas endeavouring to reach my throat from in front, whiletwo more, one on either side, were lashing viciously at mewith their tails.

The green warrior was much put to it to hold his own,and I felt that the unequal struggle could last but amoment longer when the huge fellow discovered my plight,and tearing himself from those that surrounded him, he rakedthe assailant from my back with a single sweep of his blade,and thus relieved I had little difficulty with the others.

Once together, we stood almost back to back against thegreat boulder, and thus the creatures were prevented fromsoaring above us to deliver their deadly blows, and as wewere easily their match while they remained upon theground, we were making great headway in dispatching whatremained of them when our attention was again attracted bythe shrill wail of the caller above our heads.

This time I glanced up, and far above us upon a littlenatural balcony on the face of the cliff stood a strange figureof a man shrieking out his shrill signal, the while he wavedone hand in the direction of the river's mouth as thoughbeckoning to some one there, and with the other pointed andgesticulated toward us.

A glance in the direction toward which he was lookingwas sufficient to apprise me of his aims and at the same timeto fill me with the dread of dire apprehension, for, streamingin from all directions across the meadow, from out of theforest, and from the far distance of the flat land across theriver, I could see converging upon us a hundred differentlines of wildly leaping creatures such as we were nowengaged with, and with them some strange new monsters whichran with great swiftness, now erect and now upon all fours.

"It will be a great death," I said to my companion. "Look!"

As he shot a quick glance in the direction I indicated he smiled.

"We may at least die fighting and as great warriors should,John Carter," he replied.

We had just finished the last of our immediate antagonistsas he spoke, and I turned in surprised wonderment at thesound of my name.

And there before my astonished eyes I beheld the greatestof the green men of Barsoom; their shrewdest statesman,their mightiest general, my great and good friend,Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark.