John Carter of Mars, Volume 1
JOHN CARTER OF MARS, VOLUME ONE
A Princess of Mars
The Gods of Mars
The Warlord of Mars
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
Contents
Cover
Title Page
A PRINCESS OF MARS
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
THE GODS OF MARS
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Footnotes
THE WARLORD OF MARS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
To the Reader of this Work:
In submitting Captain Carter’s strange manuscript to you in book
form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable
personality will be of interest.
My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he
spent at my father’s home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of
the civil war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well
remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called
Uncle Jack.
He seemed always to be laughing; and he entered into the sports
of the children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed
toward those pastimes in which the men and women of his own age
indulged; or he would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old
grandmother with stories of his strange, wild life in all parts of
the world. We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the
ground he trod.
He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two
inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the
carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and
clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were
of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled
with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his
courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the highest
type.
His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and
delight even in that country of magnificent horsemen. I have often
heard my father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he
would only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be
from the back of a horse yet unfoaled.
When the war broke out he left us, nor did I see him again for
some fifteen or sixteen years. When he returned it was without
warning, and I was much surprised to note that he had not aged
apparently a moment, nor had he changed in any other outward way.
He was, when others were with him, the same genial, happy fellow we
had known of old, but when he thought himself alone I have seen him
sit for hours gazing off into space, his face set in a look of
wistful longing and hopeless misery; and at night he would sit thus
looking up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read
his manuscript years afterward.
He told us that he had been prospecting and mining in Arizona
part of the time since the war; and that he had been very
successful was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with
which he was supplied. As to the details of his life during these
years he was very reticent, in fact he would not talk of them at
all.
He remained with us for about a year and then went to New York,
where he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited
him once a year on the occasions of my trips to the New York
market—my father and I owning and operating a string of general
stores throughout Virginia at that time. Captain Carter had a small
but beautiful cottage, situated on a bluff overlooking the river,
and during one of my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed
he was much occupied in writing, I presume now, upon this
manuscript.
He told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he
wished me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a
compartment in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I
would find his will there and some personal instructions which he
had me pledge myself to carry out with absolute fidelity.
After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window
standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the
Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in
appeal. I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never
understood that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious
man.
Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the
first of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him
asking me to come to him at once. I had always been his favorite
among the younger generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply
with his demand.
I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds,
on the morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery man to
drive me out to Captain Carter’s he replied that if I was a friend
of the Captain’s he had some very bad news for me; the Captain had
been found dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the
watchman attached to an adjoining property.
For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out
to his place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of
the body and of his affairs.
I found the watchman who had discovered him, together with the
local police chief and several townspeople, assembled in his little
study. The watchman related the few details connected with the
finding of the body, which he said had been still warm when he came
upon it. It lay, he said, stretched full length in the snow with
the arms outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff,
and when he showed me the spot it flashed upon me that it was the
identical one where I had seen him on those other nights, with his
arms raised in supplication to the skies.
There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of
a local physician the coroner’s jury quickly reached a decision of
death from heart failure. Left alone in the study, I opened the
safe and withdrew the contents of the drawer in which he had told
me I would find my instructions. They were in part peculiar indeed,
but I have followed them to each last detail as faithfully as I was
able.
He directed that I remove his body to Virginia without
embalming, and that he be laid in an open coffin within a tomb
which he previously had had constructed and which, as I later
learned, was well ventilated. The instructions impressed upon me
that I must personally see that this was carried out just as he
directed, even in secrecy if necessary.
His property was left in such a way that I was to receive the
entire income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to
become mine. His further instructions related to this manuscript
which I was to retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for
eleven years; nor was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one
years after his death.
A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is
that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated
spring lock which can be opened only from the inside.
Yours very sincerely,
Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Iam a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a
hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged
as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can
recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear
today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I
cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real
death from which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I
should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but
yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it
is because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so
convinced of my mortality.
And because of this conviction I have determined to write down
the story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death. I
cannot explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words
of an ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events
that befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay
undiscovered in an Arizona cave.
I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this
manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that
the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and
so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and
the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the
simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly
the suggestions which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I
can set down in this chronicle, will aid in an earlier
understanding of the mysteries of our sister planet; mysteries to
you, but no longer mysteries to me.
My name is John Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter
of Virginia. At the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed
of several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain’s
commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed;
the servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the
South. Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood,
fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and
attempt to retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search for gold.
I spent nearly a year prospecting in company with another
Confederate officer, Captain James K. Powell of Richmond. We were
extremely fortunate, for late in the winter of 1865, after many
hardships and privations, we located the most remarkable
gold-bearing quartz vein that our wildest dreams had ever pictured.
Powell, who was a mining engineer by education, stated that we had
uncovered over a million dollars worth of ore in a trifle over
three months.
As our equipment was crude in the extreme we decided that one of
us must return to civilization, purchase the necessary machinery
and return with a sufficient force of men properly to work the
mine.
As Powell was familiar with the country, as well as with the
mechanical requirements of mining we determined that it would be
best for him to make the trip. It was agreed that I was to hold
down our claim against the remote possibility of its being jumped
by some wandering prospector.
On March 3, 1866, Powell and I packed his provisions on two of
our burros, and bidding me good-bye he mounted his horse, and
started down the mountainside toward the valley, across which led
the first stage of his journey.
The morning of Powell’s departure was, like nearly all Arizona
mornings, clear and beautiful; I could see him and his little pack
animals picking their way down the mountainside toward the valley,
and all during the morning I would catch occasional glimpses of
them as they topped a hog back or came out upon a level plateau. My
last sight of Powell was about three in the afternoon as he entered
the shadows of the range on the opposite side of the valley.
Some half hour later I happened to glance casually across the
valley and was much surprised to note three little dots in about
the same place I had last seen my friend and his two pack animals.
I am not given to needless worrying, but the more I tried to
convince myself that all was well with Powell, and that the dots I
had seen on his trail were antelope or wild horses, the less I was
able to assure myself.
Since we had entered the territory we had not seen a hostile
Indian, and we had, therefore, become careless in the extreme, and
were wont to ridicule the stories we had heard of the great numbers
of these vicious marauders that were supposed to haunt the trails,
taking their toll in lives and torture of every white party which
fell into their merciless clutches.
Powell, I knew, was well armed and, further, an experienced
Indian fighter; but I too had lived and fought for years among the
Sioux in the North, and I knew that his chances were small against
a party of cunning trailing Apaches.
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