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Page 15
"That I am upon Barsoom is all that I can guess, and but for you and
the great white apes I should not even guess that, for the sights
I have seen this day are as unlike the things of my beloved Barsoom
as I knew it ten long years ago as they are unlike the world of my
birth.
"No, Tars Tarkas, I know not where we be."
"Where have you been since you opened the mighty portals of
the atmosphere plant years ago, after the keeper had died and the
engines stopped and all Barsoom was dying, that had not already
died, of asphyxiation? Your body even was never found, though the
men of a whole world sought after it for years, though the Jeddak
of Helium and his granddaughter, your princess, offered such fabulous
rewards that even princes of royal blood joined in the search.
"There was but one conclusion to reach when all efforts to locate
you had failed, and that, that you had taken the long, last pilgrimage
down the mysterious River Iss, to await in the Valley Dor upon the
shores of the Lost Sea of Korus the beautiful Dejah Thoris, your
princess.
"Why you had gone none could guess, for your princess still lived--"
"Thank God," I interrupted him. "I did not dare to ask you, for
I feared I might have been too late to save her--she was very low
when I left her in the royal gardens of Tardos Mors that long-gone
night; so very low that I scarcely hoped even then to reach the
atmosphere plant ere her dear spirit had fled from me for ever.
And she lives yet?"
"She lives, John Carter."
"You have not told me where we are," I reminded him.
"We are where I expected to find you, John Carter--and another.
Many years ago you heard the story of the woman who taught me the
thing that green Martians are reared to hate, the woman who taught
me to love. You know the cruel tortures and the awful death her
love won for her at the hands of the beast, Tal Hajus.
"She, I thought, awaited me by the Lost Sea of Korus.
"You know that it was left for a man from another world, for
yourself, John Carter, to teach this cruel Thark what friendship
is; and you, I thought, also roamed the care-free Valley Dor.
"Thus were the two I most longed for at the end of the long pilgrimage
I must take some day, and so as the time had elapsed which Dejah
Thoris had hoped might bring you once more to her side, for she
has always tried to believe that you had but temporarily returned
to your own planet, I at last gave way to my great yearning and a
month since I started upon the journey, the end of which you have
this day witnessed. Do you understand now where you be, John
Carter?"
"And that was the River Iss, emptying into the Lost Sea of Korus
in the Valley Dor?" I asked.
"This is the valley of love and peace and rest to which every
Barsoomian since time immemorial has longed to pilgrimage at the
end of a life of hate and strife and bloodshed," he replied. "This,
John Carter, is Heaven."
His tone was cold and ironical; its bitterness but reflecting
the terrible disappointment he had suffered. Such a fearful
disillusionment, such a blasting of life-long hopes and aspirations,
such an uprooting of age-old tradition might have excused a vastly
greater demonstration on the part of the Thark.
I laid my hand upon his shoulder.
"I am sorry," I said, nor did there seem aught else to say.
"Think, John Carter, of the countless billions of Barsoomians who
have taken the voluntary pilgrimage down this cruel river since
the beginning of time, only to fall into the ferocious clutches of
the terrible creatures that to-day assailed us.
"There is an ancient legend that once a red man returned from the
banks of the Lost Sea of Korus, returned from the Valley Dor, back
through the mysterious River Iss, and the legend has it that he
narrated a fearful blasphemy of horrid brutes that inhabited a valley
of wondrous loveliness, brutes that pounced upon each Barsoomian
as he terminated his pilgrimage and devoured him upon the banks
of the Lost Sea where he had looked to find love and peace and
happiness; but the ancients killed the blasphemer, as tradition
has ordained that any shall be killed who return from the bosom of
the River of Mystery.
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