"There is hope yet. Neither of us is dead.

We are great fighters. Why not win to freedom?"

He looked at me in amazement.

"You know not of what you speak," he replied. "Issus is omnipotent.

Issus is omniscient. She hears now the words you speak. She knows

the thoughts you think. It is sacrilege even to dream of breaking

her commands."

"Rot, Xodar," I ejaculated impatiently.

He sprang to his feet in horror.

"The curse of Issus will fall upon you," he cried. "In another

instant you will be smitten down, writhing to your death in horrible

agony."

"Do you believe that, Xodar?" I asked.

"Of course; who would dare doubt?"

"I doubt; yes, and further, I deny," I said. "Why, Xodar, you tell

me that she even knows my thoughts. The red men have all had that

power for ages. And another wonderful power. They can shut their

minds so that none may read their thoughts. I learned the first

secret years ago; the other I never had to learn, since upon all

Barsoom is none who can read what passes in the secret chambers of

my brain.

"Your goddess cannot read my thoughts; nor can she read yours when

you are out of sight, unless you will it. Had she been able to

read mine, I am afraid that her pride would have suffered a rather

severe shock when I turned at her command to 'gaze upon the holy

vision of her radiant face.'"

"What do you mean?" he whispered in an affrighted voice, so low

that I could scarcely hear him.

"I mean that I thought her the most repulsive and vilely hideous

creature my eyes ever had rested upon."

For a moment he eyed me in horror-stricken amazement, and then with

a cry of "Blasphemer" he sprang upon me.

I did not wish to strike him again, nor was it necessary, since he

was unarmed and therefore quite harmless to me.

As he came I grasped his left wrist with my left hand, and, swinging

my right arm about his left shoulder, caught him beneath the chin

with my elbow and bore him backward across my thigh.

There he hung helpless for a moment, glaring up at me in impotent

rage.

"Xodar," I said, "let us be friends. For a year, possibly, we

may be forced to live together in the narrow confines of this tiny

room. I am sorry to have offended you, but I could not dream that

one who had suffered from the cruel injustice of Issus still could

believe her divine.

"I will say a few more words, Xodar, with no intent to wound your

feelings further, but rather that you may give thought to the fact

that while we live we are still more the arbiters of our own fate

than is any god.

"Issus, you see, has not struck me dead, nor is she rescuing her

faithful Xodar from the clutches of the unbeliever who defamed her

fair beauty. No, Xodar, your Issus is a mortal old woman. Once

out of her clutches and she cannot harm you.

"With your knowledge of this strange land, and my knowledge of the

outer world, two such fighting-men as you and I should be able to

win our way to freedom. Even though we died in the attempt, would

not our memories be fairer than as though we remained in servile

fear to be butchered by a cruel and unjust tyrant--call her goddess

or mortal, as you will."

As I finished I raised Xodar to his feet and released him. He did

not renew the attack upon me, nor did he speak. Instead, he walked

toward the bench, and, sinking down upon it, remained lost in deep

thought for hours.

A long time afterward I heard a soft sound at the doorway leading

to one of the other apartments, and, looking up, beheld the red

Martian youth gazing intently at us.

"Kaor," I cried, after the red Martian manner of greeting.

"Kaor," he replied. "What do you here?"

"I await my death, I presume," I replied with a wry smile.

He too smiled, a brave and winning smile.

"I also," he said. "Mine will come soon. I looked upon the radiant

beauty of Issus nearly a year since. It has always been a source

of keen wonder to me that I did not drop dead at the first sight

of that hideous countenance. And her belly! By my first ancestor,

but never was there so grotesque a figure in all the universe.

That they should call such a one Goddess of Life Eternal, Goddess

of Death, Mother of the Nearer Moon, and fifty other equally

impossible titles, is quite beyond me."

"How came you here?" I asked.

"It is very simple. I was flying a one-man air scout far to the

south when the brilliant idea occurred to me that I should like

to search for the Lost Sea of Korus which tradition places near to

the south pole. I must have inherited from my father a wild lust

for adventure, as well as a hollow where my bump of reverence should

be.

"I had reached the area of eternal ice when my port propeller jammed,

and I dropped to the ground to make repairs. Before I knew it the

air was black with fliers, and a hundred of these First Born devils

were leaping to the ground all about me.

"With drawn swords they made for me, but before I went down beneath

them they had tasted of the steel of my father's sword, and I had

given such an account of myself as I know would have pleased my

sire had he lived to witness it."

"Your father is dead?" I asked.

"He died before the shell broke to let me step out into a world

that has been very good to me. But for the sorrow that I had never

the honour to know my father, I have been very happy.