"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.

"Then, with the development of perceptions came a comparison of

them; judgments were reached and compared, and thus reason and the

power to reason were born upon Barsoom.

"Ages passed. Many forms of life came and went upon the Tree of

Life, but still all were attached to the parent plant by stems of

varying lengths. At length the fruit tree consisted in tiny plant

men, such as we now see reproduced in such huge dimensions in the

Valley Dor, but still hanging to the limbs and branches of the tree

by the stems which grew from the tops of their heads.

"The buds from which the plant men blossomed resembled large nuts

about a foot in diameter, divided by double partition walls into

four sections. In one section grew the plant man, in another a

sixteen-legged worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape

and in the fourth the primaeval black man of Barsoom.

"When the bud burst the plant man remained dangling at the end of

his stem, but the three other sections fell to the ground, where the

efforts of their imprisoned occupants to escape sent them hopping

about in all directions.

"Thus as time went on, all Barsoom was covered with these imprisoned

creatures. For countless ages they lived their long lives within

their hard shells, hopping and skipping about the broad planet;

falling into rivers, lakes, and seas, to be still further spread

about the surface of the new world.

"Countless billions died before the first black man broke through

his prison walls into the light of day. Prompted by curiosity, he

broke open other shells and the peopling of Barsoom commenced.

"The pure strain of the blood of this first black man has remained

untainted by admixture with other creatures in the race of which

I am a member; but from the sixteen-legged worm, the first ape and

renegade black man has sprung every other form of animal life upon

Barsoom.

"The therns," and he smiled maliciously as he spoke, "are but the

result of ages of evolution from the pure white ape of antiquity.

They are a lower order still. There is but one race of true and

immortal humans on Barsoom. It is the race of black men.

"The Tree of Life is dead, but before it died the plant men learned

to detach themselves from it and roam the face of Barsoom with the

other children of the First Parent.

"Now their bisexuality permits them to reproduce themselves after

the manner of true plants, but otherwise they have progressed

but little in all the ages of their existence. Their actions and

movements are largely matters of instinct and not guided to any great

extent by reason, since the brain of a plant man is but a trifle

larger than the end of your smallest finger. They live upon

vegetation and the blood of animals, and their brain is just large

enough to direct their movements in the direction of food, and to

translate the food sensations which are carried to it from their

eyes and ears. They have no sense of self-preservation and so are

entirely without fear in the face of danger. That is why they are

such terrible antagonists in combat."

I wondered why the black man took such pains to discourse thus at

length to enemies upon the genesis of life Barsoomian. It seemed

a strangely inopportune moment for a proud member of a proud race

to unbend in casual conversation with a captor. Especially in view

of the fact that the black still lay securely bound upon the deck.

It was the faintest straying of his eye beyond me for the barest

fraction of a second that explained his motive for thus dragging

out my interest in his truly absorbing story.

He lay a little forward of where I stood at the levers, and thus

he faced the stern of the vessel as he addressed me. It was at

the end of his description of the plant men that I caught his eye

fixed momentarily upon something behind me.

Nor could I be mistaken in the swift gleam of triumph that brightened

those dark orbs for an instant.

Some time before I had reduced our speed, for we had left the Valley

Dor many miles astern, and I felt comparatively safe.

I turned an apprehensive glance behind me, and the sight that I

saw froze the new-born hope of freedom that had been springing up

within me.

A great battleship, forging silent and unlighted through the dark

night, loomed close astern.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DEPTHS OF OMEAN

Now I realized why the black pirate had kept me engrossed with his

strange tale. For miles he had sensed the approach of succour,

and but for that single tell-tale glance the battleship would have

been directly above us in another moment, and the boarding party

which was doubtless even now swinging in their harness from the

ship's keel, would have swarmed our deck, placing my rising hope

of escape in sudden and total eclipse.

I was too old a hand in aerial warfare to be at a loss now for the

right manoeuvre.