Edgar Rice Burroughs - Mars Chronicles 10 - Llana of Gathol.pdf - Edgar Rice Burroughs - margozap

Book 2: The Black Pirates of Barsoom

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Book 3: Escape on Mars

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Book 4: Invisible Men of Mars

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through my mind one night that I could not sleep and was sitting

on the lanai watching the white maned chargers of the sea racing

shoreward beneath the floodlight of the Moon. I saw the giant kings

of old Hawaii and their mighty chiefs clothed in feather cape and

helmet. Kamehameha came, the great conqueror, towering above

them all. Down from the Nuuanu Pali he came in great strides,

stepping over cane fields and houses. The hem of his feather cape

caught on the spire of a church, toppling it to the ground. He

stepped on low, soft ground; and when he lifted his foot, the water

of a slough rushed into his footprint, and there was a lake.

I was much interested in the coming of Kamehameha the King,

for I had always admired him; though I had never expected to see

him, he having been dead a matter of a hundred years or so and his

bones buried in a holy, secret place that no man knows. However, I

was not at all surprised to see him. What surprised me was that I

was not surprised. I distinctly recall this reaction. I also recall that I

hoped he would see me and not step on me.

While I was thinking these thoughts, Kamehameha stopped in

front of me and looked down at me. "Well, well!" he said; "asleep on

a beautiful night like this! I am surprised."

I blinked my eyes hard and looked again. There before me stood

indeed a warrior strangely garbed, but it was not King

Kamehameha. Under the moonlight one's eyes sometimes play

strange tricks on one. I blinked mine again, but the warrior did not

vanish. Then I knew!

Leaping to my feet, I extended my hand. "John Carter!" I

exclaimed.

"Let's see," he said; "where was it we met last – the headwaters of

the Little Colorado or Tarzana?"

"The headwaters of the Little Colorado in Arizona, I think," I said.

"That was a long time ago. I never expected to see you again."

"No, I never expected to return."

"Yes," he said, "I know; but they might be afraid of me. After all, I

might be considered something of a ghost by Earth men."

"Not by my children," I assured him. "They know you quite as

well as I. After I am gone, see them occasionally."

He nodded. "Perhaps I shall," he half promised.

"And now," I said, "tell me something of yourself, of Mars, of

Dejah Thoris, of Carthoris and Thuvia and of Tara of Helium. Let

me see! It was Gahan of Gathol that Tara of Helium wed."

"Yes," replied the war lord, "it was Gahan, Jed of the free city of

Gathol. They have a daughter, one whose character and whose

beauty are worthy of her mother and her mother's mother – a

beauty which, like that of those other two, hurled nations at each

other's throats in war. Perhaps you would like to hear the story of

Llana of Gathol."

I said that I would, and this is the story that he told me that

night beneath the coconut palms of Oahu.

and, being human, I have plenty of mistakes upon which to

meditate that I may fortify myself against their recommission.

When I feel that strange urge for solitude coming over me, it is

my usual custom to take a one man flier and range the dead sea

bottoms and the other uninhabited wildernesses of this dying

planet; for there indeed is solitude. There are vast areas on Mars

where no human foot has ever trod, and other vast areas that for

thousands of years have known only the giant green men, the

wandering nomads of the ocher deserts.

Sometimes I am away for weeks on these glorious adventures in

solitude. Because of them, I probably know more of the geography

and topography of Mars than any other living man; for they and my

other adventurous excursions upon the planet have carried me from

the Lost Sea of Korus, in the Valley Dor at the frozen South to Okar,

land of the black bearded Yellow Men of the frozen North, and from

Kaol to Bantoom; and yet there are many parts of Barsoom that I

have not visited, which will not seem so strange when there is taken

into consideration the fact that although the area of Mars is like

more than one fourth that of Earth its land area is almost eight

million square miles greater. That is because Barsoom has no large

bodies of surface water, its largest known ocean being entirely

subterranean. Also, I think you will admit, fifty-six million square

miles is a lot of territory to know thoroughly.

Upon the occasion of which I am about to tell you I flew

northwest from Helium, which lies 30° south of the Equator which I

crossed about sixteen hundred miles east of Exum, the Barsoomian

Greenwich. North and west of me lay a vast, almost unexplored

region; and there I thought to find the absolute solitude for which I

craved.

I had set my directional compass upon Horz, the long deserted

city of ancient Barsoomian culture, and loafed along at seventy-five

miles an hour at an altitude of five hundred to a thousand feet. I

ranged the proud navies and the merchant ships of a dozen rich

and powerful nations where today the fierce banth roams a solitude

whose silence is unbroken except for the roars of the killer and the

screams of the dying.

At night I slept, secure in the knowledge that my directional

compass would hold a true course for Horz and always at the

altitude for which I had set it – a thousand feet, not above sea level

but above the terrain over which the ship was passing. These

amazing little instruments may be set for any point upon Barsoom

and at any altitude. If one is set for a thousand feet, as mine was

upon this occasion, it will not permit the ship to come closer than a

thousand feet to any object, thus eliminating even the danger of

collision; and when the ship reaches its objective the compass will

stop it a thousand feet above. The pilot whose ship is equipped with

one of these directional compasses does not even have to remain

awake; thus I could travel day and night without danger.

It was about noon of the third day that I sighted the towers of

ancient Horz. The oldest part of the city lies upon the edge of a vast

plateau; the newer portions, and they are countless thousands of

years old, are terraced downward into a great gulf, marking the

hopeless pursuit of the receding sea upon the shores of which this

rich and powerful city once stood. The last poor, mean structures of

a dying race have either disappeared or are only mouldering ruins

now; but the splendid structures of her prime remain at the edge of

the plateau, mute but eloquent reminders of her vanished grandeur

– enduring monuments to the white-skinned, fair-haired race which

has vanished forever.

I am always interested in these deserted cities of ancient Mars.

Little is known of their inhabitants, other than what can be

gathered from the stories told by the carvings which ornament the

exteriors of many of their public buildings and the few remaining

murals which have withstood the ravages of time and the vandalism

Edgar Rice Burroughs - Mars Chronicles 10 - Llana of Gathol.pdf

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