He found me

ready, but I had mistaken his intentions. He made no unfriendly gestures with

his weapon, but seemed to be trying to convince me that he had no intention of

harming me. He was very excited and apparently tremendously annoyed that I could

not understand him, and perplexed, too. He hopped about screaming strange

sentences at me that bore the tones of peremptory commands, rabid invective and

impotent rage. But the fact that he had returned his sword to its scabbard had

greater significance than all his jabbering, and when he ceased to yell at me

and commenced to talk in a sort of pantomime I realized that he was making

overtures of peace if not of friendship, so I lowered my point and bowed. It was

all that I could think of to assure him that I had no immediate intention of

spitting him.

He seemed satisfied and at once turned his attention to the fallen man. He

examined his pulse and listened to his heart, then, nodding his head, he arose

and taking a whistle from one of his pocket pouches sounded a single loud blast.

There emerged immediately from one of the surrounding buildings a score of naked

red-men who came running towards us. None was armed. To these he issued a few

curt orders, whereupon they gathered the fallen one in their arms and bore him

off. Then the old man started towards the building, motioning me to accompany

him. There seemed nothing else for me to do but obey. Wherever I might be upon

Mars, the chances were a million to one that I would be among enemies; and so I

was as well off here as elsewhere and must depend upon my own resourcefulness,

skill and agility to make my way upon the Red Planet.

The old man led me into a small chamber from which opened numerous doors,

through one of which they were just bearing my late antagonist. We followed into

a large, brilliantly lighted chamber wherein there burst upon my astounded

vision the most gruesome scene that I ever had beheld. Rows upon rows of tables

arranged in parallel lines filled the room and with few exceptions each table

bore a similar grisly burden, a partially dismembered or otherwise mutilated

human corpse. Above each table was a shelf bearing containers of various sizes

and shapes, while from the bottom of the shelf depended numerous surgical

instruments, suggesting that my entrance upon Barsoom was to be through a

gigantic medical college.

At a word from the old man, those who bore the Barsoomian I had wounded laid him

upon an empty table and left the apartment. Whereupon my host if so I may call

him, for certainly he was not as yet my captor, motioned me forward. While he

conversed in ordinary tones, he made two incisions in the body of my late

antagonist; one, I imagine, in a large vein and one in an artery, to which he

deftly attached the ends of two tubes, one of which was connected with an empty

glass receptacle and the other with a similar receptacle filled with a

colourless, transparent liquid resembling clear water. The connections made, the

old gentleman pressed a button controlling a small motor, whereupon the victim's

blood was pumped into the empty jar while the contents of the other was forced

into the emptying veins and arteries.

The tones and gestures of the old man as he addressed me during this operation

convinced me that he was explaining in detail the method and purpose of what was

transpiring, but as I understood no word of all he said I was as much in the

dark when he had completed his discourse as I was before he started it, though

what I had seen made it appear reasonable to believe that I was witnessing an

ordinary Barsoomian embalming. Having removed the tubes the old man closed the

openings he had made by covering them with bits of what appeared to be heavy

adhesive tape and then motioned me to follow him. We went from room to room, in

each of which were the same gruesome exhibits. At many of the bodies the old man

paused to make a brief examination or to refer to what appeared to be a record

of the case, that hung upon a hook at the head of each of the tables.

From the last of the chambers we visited upon the first floor my host led me up

an inclined runway to the second floor where there were rooms similar to those

below, but here the tables bore whole rather than mutilated bodies, all of which

were patched in various places with adhesive tape. As we were passing among the

bodies in one of these rooms a Barsoomian girl, whom I took to be a servant or

slave, entered and addressed the old man, whereupon he signed me to follow him

and together we descended another runway to the first floor of another building.

Here, in a large, gorgeously decorated and sumptuously furnished apartment an

elderly red-woman awaited us. She appeared to be quite old and her face was

terribly disfigured as by some injury. Her trappings were magnificent and she

was attended by a score of women and armed warriors, suggesting that she was a

person of some consequence, but the little old man treated her quite brusquely,

as I could see, quite to the horror of her attendants.

Their conversation was lengthy and at the conclusion of it, at the direction of

the woman, one of her male escort advanced and opening a pocket pouch at his

side withdrew a handful of what appeared to me to be Martian coins. A quantity

of these he counted out and handed to the little old man, who then beckoned the

woman to follow him, a gesture which included me. Several of her women and guard

started to accompany us, but these the old man waved back peremptorily;

whereupon there ensued a heated discussion between the woman and one of her

warriors on one side and the old man on the other, which terminated in his

proffering the return of the woman's money with a disgusted air. This seemed to

settle the argument, for she refused the coins, spoke briefly to her people and

accompanied the old man and myself alone.

He led the way to the second floor and to a chamber which I had not previously

visited. It closely resembled the others except that all the bodies therein were

of young women, many of them of great beauty. Following closely at the heels of

the old man the woman inspected the gruesome exhibit with painstaking care.