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Page 6
Instantly every eye turned toward one member of the herd, a large
fellow who evidently was the leader. A strange purring sound
issued from the mouth in the palm of one of his hands, and at the
same time he started rapidly toward the bluff, followed by the
entire herd.
Their speed and method of locomotion were both remarkable, springing
as they did in great leaps of twenty or thirty feet, much after
the manner of a kangaroo.
They were rapidly disappearing when it occurred to me to follow
them, and so, hurling caution to the winds, I sprang across the
meadow in their wake with leaps and bounds even more prodigious
than their own, for the muscles of an athletic Earth man produce
remarkable results when pitted against the lesser gravity and air
pressure of Mars.
Their way led directly towards the apparent source of the river at
the base of the cliffs, and as I neared this point I found the meadow
dotted with huge boulders that the ravages of time had evidently
dislodged from the towering crags above.
For this reason I came quite close to the cause of the disturbance
before the scene broke upon my horrified gaze. As I topped a great
boulder I saw the herd of plant men surrounding a little group of
perhaps five or six green men and women of Barsoom.
That I was indeed upon Mars I now had no doubt, for here were members
of the wild hordes that people the dead sea bottoms and deserted
cities of that dying planet.
Here were the great males towering in all the majesty of their
imposing height; here were the gleaming white tusks protruding
from their massive lower jaws to a point near the centre of their
foreheads, the laterally placed, protruding eyes with which they
could look forward or backward, or to either side without turning
their heads, here the strange antennae-like ears rising from the
tops of their foreheads; and the additional pair of arms extending
from midway between the shoulders and the hips.
Even without the glossy green hide and the metal ornaments which
denoted the tribes to which they belonged, I would have 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 and their ornaments
denoted them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended
to puzzle me infinitely, since the various hordes of green men of
Barsoom are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never,
except on that single historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas
of Thark gathered a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from
several hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue
Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches of Than Kosis,
had I seen green Martians of different hordes associated 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 and daggers, but no
firearms were in evidence, else it had been short shrift for the
gruesome plant men of Barsoom.
Presently the leader of the plant men charged the little party, and
his method of attack was as remarkable as it was effective, and by
its very strangeness was the more potent, since in the science of
the green warriors there was no defence for this singular manner
of attack, the like of which it soon was evident to me they were as
unfamiliar with as they were with the monstrosities which confronted
them.
The plant man charged to within a dozen feet of the party and then,
with a bound, rose as though to pass directly above their heads.
His powerful tail was raised high to one side, and as he passed
close above them he brought it down in one terrific sweep that
crushed a green warrior's skull as though it had been an eggshell.
The balance of the frightful herd was now circling rapidly and
with bewildering speed about the little knot of victims. Their
prodigious bounds and the shrill, screeching purr of their uncanny
mouths were well calculated to confuse and terrorize their prey,
so that as two of them leaped simultaneously from either side, the
mighty sweep of those awful tails met with no resistance and two
more green Martians went down to an ignoble death.
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