"You will see the Otz Valley

directly. We shall skirt it for a few hundred miles."

"The Otz Valley!" I exclaimed; "but, man, is not there where lie

the domains of the therns from which I but just escaped?"

"Yes," answered Xodar. "You crossed this ice field last night in

the long chase that you led us. The Otz Valley lies in a mighty

depression at the south pole. It is sunk thousands of feet below

the level of the surrounding country, like a great round bowl. A

hundred miles from its northern boundary rise the Otz Mountains

which circle the inner Valley of Dor, in the exact centre of which

lies the Lost Sea of Korus. On the shore of this sea stands the

Golden Temple of Issus in the Land of the First Born. It is there

that we are bound."

As I looked I commenced to realize why it was that in all the ages

only one had escaped from the Valley Dor. My only wonder was that

even the one had been successful. To cross this frozen, wind-swept

waste of bleak ice alone and on foot would be impossible.

"Only by air boat could the journey be made," I finished aloud.

"It was thus that one did escape the therns in bygone times; but

none has ever escaped the First Born," said Xodar, with a touch of

pride in his voice.

We had now reached the southernmost extremity of the great ice

barrier. It ended abruptly in a sheer wall thousands of feet high

at the base of which stretched a level valley, broken here and

there by low rolling hills and little clumps of forest, and with

tiny rivers formed by the melting of the ice barrier at its base.

Once we passed far above what seemed to be a deep canyon-like rift

stretching from the ice wall on the north across the valley as far

as the eye could reach. "That is the bed of the River Iss," said

Xodar. "It runs far beneath the ice field, and below the level of

the Valley Otz, but its canyon is open here."

Presently I descried what I took to be a village, and pointing it

out to Xodar asked him what it might be.

"It is a village of lost souls," he answered, laughing. "This strip

between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered neutral

ground. Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the

Iss, and, scaling the awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in

the valley. Also a slave now and then escapes from the therns and

makes his way hither.

"They do not attempt to recapture such, since there is no escape

from this outer valley, and as a matter of fact they fear the

patrolling cruisers of the First Born too much to venture from

their own domains.

"The poor creatures of this outer valley are not molested by us

since they have nothing that we desire, nor are they numerically

strong enough to give us an interesting fight--so we too leave them

alone.

"There are several villages of them, but they have increased

in numbers but little in many years since they are always warring

among themselves."

Now we swung a little north of west, leaving the valley of lost

souls, and shortly I discerned over our starboard bow what appeared

to be a black mountain rising from the desolate waste of ice. It

was not high and seemed to have a flat top.

Xodar had left us to attend to some duty on the vessel, and Phaidor

and I stood alone beside the rail. The girl had not once spoken

since we had been brought to the deck.

"Is what he has been telling me true?" I asked her.

"In part, yes," she answered. "That about the outer valley

is true, but what he says of the location of the Temple of Issus

in the centre of his country is false. If it is not false--" she

hesitated. "Oh it cannot be true, it cannot be true. For if it

were true then for countless ages have my people gone to torture

and ignominious death at the hands of their cruel enemies, instead

of to the beautiful Life Eternal that we have been taught to believe

Issus holds for us."

"As the lesser Barsoomians of the outer world have been lured by you

to the terrible Valley Dor, so may it be that the therns themselves

have been lured by the First Born to an equally horrid fate," I

suggested. "It would be a stern and awful retribution, Phaidor;

but a just one."

"I cannot believe it," she said.

"We shall see," I answered, and then we fell silent again for we were

rapidly approaching the black mountains, which in some indefinable

way seemed linked with the answer to our problem.

As we neared the dark, truncated cone the vessel's speed was

diminished until we barely moved. Then we topped the crest of the

mountain and below us I saw yawning the mouth of a huge circular

well, the bottom of which was lost in inky blackness.

The diameter of this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet. The

walls were smooth and appeared to be composed of a black, basaltic

rock.

For a moment the vessel hovered motionless directly above the centre

of the gaping void, then slowly she began to settle into the black

chasm. Lower and lower she sank until as darkness enveloped us

her lights were thrown on and in the dim halo of her own radiance

the monster battleship dropped on and on down into what seemed to

me must be the very bowels of Barsoom.

For quite half an hour we descended and then the shaft terminated

abruptly in the dome of a mighty subterranean world. Below us rose

and fell the billows of a buried sea. A phosphorescent radiance

illuminated the scene. Thousands of ships dotted the bosom of the

ocean. Little islands rose here and there to support the strange

and colourless vegetation of this strange world.

Slowly and with majestic grace the battleship dropped until

she rested on the water.