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Page 39
I caught a fleeting grin passing across the features of the black
as he heard her words. I did not then understand why he smiled.
Later I was to learn, and she, too, in a most horrible manner.
"If the other thing you have just learned," she continued, "has
led to as erroneous deductions as the first you are little richer
in knowledge than you were before."
"The other," I replied, "is that our dusky friend here does not hail
from the nearer moon--he was like to have died at a few thousand
feet above Barsoom. Had we continued the five thousand miles that
lie between Thuria and the planet he would have been but the frozen
memory of a man."
Phaidor looked at the black in evident astonishment.
"If you are not of Thuria, then where?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned his eyes elsewhere, but did
not reply.
The girl stamped her little foot in a peremptory manner.
"The daughter of Matai Shang is not accustomed to having her queries
remain unanswered," she said. "One of the lesser breed should feel
honoured that a member of the holy race that was born to inherit
life eternal should deign even to notice him."
Again the black smiled that wicked, knowing smile.
"Xodar, Dator of the First Born of Barsoom, is accustomed to give
commands, not to receive them," replied the black pirate. Then,
turning to me, "What are your intentions concerning me?"
"I intend taking you both back to Helium," I said. "No harm will
come to you. You will find the red men of Helium a kindly and
magnanimous race, but if they listen to me there will be no more
voluntary pilgrimages down the river Iss, and the impossible belief
that they have cherished for ages will be shattered into a thousand
pieces."
"Are you of Helium?" he asked.
"I am a Prince of the House of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium," I
replied, "but I am not of Barsoom. I am of another world."
Xodar looked at me intently for a few moments.
"I can well believe that you are not of Barsoom," he said at
length. "None of this world could have bested eight of the First
Born single-handed. But how is it that you wear the golden hair
and the jewelled circlet of a Holy Thern?" He emphasized the word
holy with a touch of irony.
"I had forgotten them," I said. "They are the spoils of conquest,"
and with a sweep of my hand I removed the disguise from my head.
When the black's eyes fell on my close-cropped black hair they
opened in astonishment. Evidently he had looked for the bald pate
of a thern.
"You are indeed of another world," he said, a touch of awe in his
voice. "With the skin of a thern, the black hair of a First Born
and the muscles of a dozen Dators it was no disgrace even for Xodar
to acknowledge your supremacy. A thing he could never do were you
a Barsoomian," he added.
"You are travelling several laps ahead of me, my friend,"
I interrupted. "I glean that your name is Xodar, but whom, pray,
are the First Born, and what a Dator, and why, if you were conquered
by a Barsoomian, could you not acknowledge it?"
"The First Born of Barsoom," he explained, "are the race of black
men of which I am a Dator, or, as the lesser Barsoomians would
say, Prince. My race is the oldest on the planet. We trace our
lineage, unbroken, direct to the Tree of Life which flourished in
the centre of the Valley Dor twenty-three million years ago.
"For countless ages the fruit of this tree underwent the gradual
changes of evolution, passing by degrees from true plant life to
a combination of plant and animal. In the first stages the fruit
of the tree possessed only the power of independent muscular action,
while the stem remained attached to the parent plant; later a brain
developed in the fruit, so that hanging there by their long stems
they thought and moved as individuals.
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