A few larger

ones there were, but these kept high aloft dropping bombs upon the

temples from their keel batteries.

At length, with a concerted rush, evidently in response to a signal

of command, the pirates in our immediate vicinity dashed recklessly

to the ground in the very midst of the thern soldiery.

Scarcely waiting for their craft to touch, the creatures manning

them leaped among the therns with the fury of demons. Such fighting!

Never had I witnessed its like before. I had thought the green

Martians the most ferocious warriors in the universe, but the awful

abandon with which the black pirates threw themselves upon their

foes transcended everything I ever before had seen.

Beneath the brilliant light of Mars' two glorious moons the whole

scene presented itself in vivid distinctness. The golden-haired,

white-skinned therns battling with desperate courage in hand-to-hand

conflict with their ebony-skinned foemen.

Here a little knot of struggling warriors trampled a bed of gorgeous

pimalia; there the curved sword of a black man found the heart of

a thern and left its dead foeman at the foot of a wondrous statue

carved from a living ruby; yonder a dozen therns pressed a single

pirate back upon a bench of emerald, upon whose iridescent surface

a strangely beautiful Barsoomian design was traced out in inlaid

diamonds.

A little to one side stood Thuvia, the Thark, and I. The tide of

battle had not reached us, but the fighters from time to time swung

close enough that we might distinctly note them.

The black pirates interested me immensely. I had heard vague

rumours, little more than legends they were, during my former life

on Mars; but never had I seen them, nor talked with one who had.

They were popularly supposed to inhabit the lesser moon, from which

they descended upon Barsoom at long intervals. Where they visited

they wrought the most horrible atrocities, and when they left

carried away with them firearms and ammunition, and young girls

as prisoners. These latter, the rumour had it, they sacrificed

to some terrible god in an orgy which ended in the eating of their

victims.

I had an excellent opportunity to examine them, as the strife

occasionally brought now one and now another close to where I stood.

They were large men, possibly six feet and over in height. Their

features were clear cut and handsome in the extreme; their eyes were

well set and large, though a slight narrowness lent them a crafty

appearance; the iris, as well as I could determine by moonlight,

was of extreme blackness, while the eyeball itself was quite white

and clear. The physical structure of their bodies seemed identical

with those of the therns, the red men, and my own. Only in the

colour of their skin did they differ materially from us; that is

of the appearance of polished ebony, and odd as it may seem for

a Southerner to say it, adds to rather than detracts from their

marvellous beauty.

But if their bodies are divine, their hearts, apparently, are quite

the reverse. Never did I witness such a malign lust for blood as

these demons of the outer air evinced in their mad battle with the

therns.

All about us in the garden lay their sinister craft, which the

therns for some reason, then unaccountable to me, made no effort

to injure. Now and again a black warrior would rush from a near by

temple bearing a young woman in his arms. Straight for his flier

he would leap while those of his comrades who fought near by would

rush to cover his escape.

The therns on their side would hasten to rescue the girl, and in

an instant the two would be swallowed in the vortex of a maelstrom

of yelling devils, hacking and hewing at one another, like fiends

incarnate.

But always, it seemed, were the black pirates of Barsoom victorious,

and the girl, brought miraculously unharmed through the conflict,

borne away into the outer darkness upon the deck of a swift flier.

Fighting similar to that which surrounded us could be heard in

both directions as far as sound carried, and Thuvia told me that

the attacks of the black pirates were usually made simultaneously

along the entire ribbon-like domain of the therns, which circles

the Valley Dor on the outer slopes of the Mountains of Otz.

As the fighting receded from our position for a moment, Thuvia

turned toward me with a question.

"Do you understand now, O Prince," she said, "why a million warriors

guard the domains of the Holy Therns by day and by night?"

"The scene you are witnessing now is but a repetition of what I

have seen enacted a score of times during the fifteen years I have

been a prisoner here. From time immemorial the black pirates of

Barsoom have preyed upon the Holy Therns.

"Yet they never carry their expeditions to a point, as one might

readily believe it was in their power to do, where the extermination

of the race of therns is threatened. It is as though they but

utilized the race as playthings, with which they satisfy their

ferocious lust for fighting; and from whom they collect toll in

arms and ammunition and in prisoners."

"Why don't they jump in and destroy these fliers?" I asked. "That

would soon put a stop to the attacks, or at least the blacks would

scarce be so bold. Why, see how perfectly unguarded they leave

their craft, as though they were lying safe in their own hangars

at home."

"The therns do not dare. They tried it once, ages ago, but the

next night and for a whole moon thereafter a thousand great black

battleships circled the Mountains of Otz, pouring tons of projectiles

upon the temples, the gardens, and the courts, until every thern who

was not killed was driven for safety into the subterranean galleries.

"The therns know that they live at all only by the sufferance of

the black men. They were near to extermination that once and they

will not venture risking it again."

As she ceased talking a new element was instilled into the conflict.

It came from a source equally unlooked for by either thern or pirate.

The great banths which we had liberated in the garden had evidently

been awed at first by the sound of the battle, the yelling of the

warriors and the loud report of rifle and bomb.

But now they must have become angered by the continuous noise and

excited by the smell of new blood, for all of a sudden a great form

shot from a clump of low shrubbery into the midst of a struggling

mass of humanity. A horrid scream of bestial rage broke from the

banth as he felt warm flesh beneath his powerful talons.

As though his cry was but a signal to the others, the entire great

pack hurled themselves among the fighters. Panic reigned in an

instant. Thern and black man turned alike against the common enemy,

for the banths showed no partiality toward either.

The awful beasts bore down a hundred men by the mere weight of their

great bodies as they hurled themselves into the thick of the fight.

Leaping and clawing, they mowed down the warriors with their powerful

paws, turning for an instant to rend their victims with frightful

fangs.

The scene was fascinating in its terribleness, but suddenly it came

to me that we were wasting valuable time watching this conflict,

which in itself might prove a means of our escape.

The therns were so engaged with their terrible assailants that now,

if ever, escape should be comparatively easy. I turned to search

for an opening through the contending hordes. If we could but reach

the ramparts we might find that the pirates somewhere had thinned

the guarding forces and left a way open to us to the world without.

As my eyes wandered about the garden, the sight of the hundreds of

air craft lying unguarded around us suggested the simplest avenue

to freedom. Why it had not occurred to me before! I was thoroughly

familiar with the mechanism of every known make of flier on Barsoom.

For nine years I had sailed and fought with the navy of Helium.

I had raced through space on the tiny one-man air scout and I had

commanded the greatest battleship that ever had floated in the thin

air of dying Mars.

To think, with me, is to act. Grasping Thuvia by the arm, I

whispered to Tars Tarkas to follow me. Quickly we glided toward a

small flier which lay furthest from the battling warriors. Another

instant found us huddled on the tiny deck. My hand was on the

starting lever.