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Page 21
Turning quickly toward his flier, he was soon rising from the plaza
in pursuit of Thar Ban.
The red warrior whom he had put to flight turned in the entrance
to the palace, and, seeing Carthoris' intent, snatched a rifle from
those that he and his fellows had left leaning against the wall
as they had rushed out with drawn swords to prevent the theft of
their prisoner.
Few red men are good shots, for the sword is their chosen weapon;
so now as the Dusarian drew bead upon the rising flier, and touched
the button upon his rifle's stock, it was more to chance than
proficiency that he owed the partial success of his aim.
The projectile grazed the flier's side, the opaque coating breaking
sufficiently to permit daylight to strike in upon the powder phial
within the bullet's nose. There was a sharp explosion. Carthoris
felt his craft reel drunkenly beneath him, and the engine stopped.
The momentum the air boat had gained carried her on over the city
toward the sea-bottom beyond.
The red warrior in the plaza fired several more shots, none of
which scored. Then a lofty minaret shut the drifting quarry from
his view.
In the distance before him Carthoris could see the green warrior
bearing Thuvia of Ptarth away upon his mighty thoat. The direction
of his flight was toward the north-west of Aaanthor, where lay a
mountainous country little known to red men.
The Heliumite now gave his attention to his injured craft. A close
examination revealed the face that one of the buoyancy tanks had
been punctured, but the engine itself was uninjured.
A splinter from the projectile had damaged one of the control levers
beyond the possibility of repair outside a machine shop; but after
considerable tinkering, Carthoris was able to propel his wounded
flier at low speed, a rate which could not approach the rapid gait
of the thoat, whose eight long, powerful legs carried it over the
ochre vegetation of the dead sea-bottom at terrific speed.
The Prince of Helium chafed and fretted at the slowness of his
pursuit, yet he was thankful that the damage was no worse, for now
he could at least move more rapidly than on foot.
But even this meagre satisfaction was soon to be denied him, for
presently the flier commenced to sag toward the port and by the bow.
The damage to the buoyancy tanks had evidently been more grievous
than he had at first believed.
All the balance of that long day Carthoris crawled erratically through
the still air, the bow of the flier sinking lower and lower, and
the list to port becoming more and more alarming, until at last,
near dark, he was floating almost bowdown, his harness buckled to
a heavy deck ring to keep him from being precipitated to the ground
below.
His forward movement was now confined to a slow drifting with the
gentle breeze that blew out of the south-east, and when this died
down with the setting of the sun, he let the flier sink gently to
the mossy carpet beneath.
Far before him loomed the mountains toward which the green man had
been fleeing when last he had seen him, and with dogged resolution
the son of John Carter, endowed with the indomitable will of his
mighty sire, took up the pursuit on foot.
All that night he forged ahead until, with the dawning of a new
day, he entered the low foothills that guard the approach to the
fastness of the mountains of Torquas.
Rugged, granitic walls towered before him. Nowhere could he discern
an opening through the formidable barrier; yet somewhere into this
inhospitable world of stone the green warrior had borne the woman
of the red man's heart's desire.
Across the yielding moss of the sea-bottom there had been no spoor
to follow, for the soft pads of the thoat but pressed down in his
swift passage the resilient vegetation which sprang up again behind
his fleeting feet, leaving no sign.
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