Onward1 through the dim wood they passed until the shadows of the quick coming Martian night commenced to close down upon them. Then it was that Carthoris turned to speak to the girl at his side.
They must plan together for the future. It was his idea to pass through the cliffs at once if they could locate the passage, and he was quite positive that they were now close to it; but he wanted her assent2 to the proposition.
As his eyes rested upon her, he was struck by her strangely ethereal appearance. She seemed suddenly to have dissolved into the tenuous3 substance of a dream, and as he continued to gaze upon her, she faded slowly from his sight.
For an instant he was dumbfounded, and then the whole truth flashed suddenly upon him. Jav had caused him to believe that Thuvia was accompanying him through the wood while, as a matter of fact, he had detained the girl for himself!
Carthoris was horrified4. He cursed himself for his stupidity, and yet he knew that the fiendish power which the Lotharian had invoked5 to confuse him might have deceived any.
Scarce had he realized the truth than he had started to retrace6 his steps toward Lothar, but now he moved at a trot7, the Earthly thews that he had inherited from his father carrying him swiftly over the soft carpet of fallen leaves and rank grass.
Thuria's brilliant light flooded the plain before the walled city of Lothar as Carthoris broke from the wood opposite the great gate that had given the fugitives8 egress9 from the city earlier in the day.
At first he saw no indication that there was another than himself anywhere about. The plain was deserted10. No myriad11 bowmen camped now beneath the overhanging verdure of the giant trees. No gory12 heaps of tortured dead defaced the beauty of the scarlet13 sward. All was silence. All was peace.
The Heliumite, scarce pausing at the forest's verge14, pushed on across the plain toward the city, when presently he descried15 a huddled16 form in the grass at his feet.
It was the body of a man, lying prone17. Carthoris turned the figure over upon its back. It was Jav, but torn and mangled18 almost beyond recognition.
The prince bent19 low to note if any spark of life remained, and as he did so the lids raised and dull, suffering eyes looked up into his.
"The Princess of Ptarth!" cried Carthoris. "Where is she? Answer me, man, or I complete the work that another has so well begun."
"Komal," muttered Jav. "He sprang upon me . . . and would have devoured20 me but for the girl. Then they went away together into the wood—the girl and the great banth . . . her fingers twined in his tawny21 mane."
"Which way went they?" asked Carthoris.
"There," replied Jav faintly, "toward the passage through the cliffs."
The Prince of Helium waited to hear no more, but springing to his feet, raced back again into the forest.
It was dawn when he reached the mouth of the dark tunnel that would lead him to the other world beyond this valley of ghostly memories and strange hypnotic influences and menaces.
Within the long, dark passages he met with no accident or obstacle, coming at last into the light of day beyond the mountains, and no great distance from the southern verge of the domains22 of the Torquasians, not more than one hundred and fifty haad at the most.
From the boundary of Torquas to the city of Aaanthor is a distance of some two hundred haads, so that the Heliumite had before him a journey of more than one hundred and fifty Earth miles between him and Aaanthor.
He could at best but hazard a chance guess that toward Aaanthor Thuvia would take her flight. There lay the nearest water, and there might be expected some day a rescuing party from her father's empire; for Carthoris knew Thuvan Dihn well enough to know that he would leave no stone unturned until he had tracked down the truth as to his daughter's abduction, and learned all that there might be to learn of her whereabouts.
He realized, of course, that the trick which had laid suspicion upon him would greatly delay the discovery of the truth, but little did he guess to what vast proportions had the results of the villainy of Astok of Dusar already grown.
Even as he emerged from the mouth of the passage to look across the foothills in the direction of Aaanthor, a Ptarth battle fleet was winging its majestic23 way slowly toward the twin cities of Helium, while from far distant Kaol raced another mighty24 armada to join forces with its ally.
He did not know that in the face of the circumstantial evidence against him even his own people had commenced to entertain suspicions that he might have stolen the Ptarthian princess.
He did not know of the lengths to which the Dusarians had gone to disrupt the friendship and alliance which existed between the three great powers of the eastern hemisphere—Helium, Ptarth and Kaol.
How Dusarian emissaries had found employment in important posts in the foreign offices of the three great nations, and how, through these men, messages from one jeddak to another were altered and garbled25 until the patience and pride of the three rulers and former friends could no longer endure the humiliations and insults contained in these falsified papers—not any of this he knew.
Nor did he know how even to the last John Carter, Warlord of Mars, had refused to permit the jeddak of Helium to declare war against either Ptarth or Kaol, because of his implicit26 belief in his son, and that eventually all would be satisfactorily explained.
And now two great fleets were moving upon Helium, while the Dusarian spies at the court of Tardos Mors saw to it that the twin cities remained in ignorance of their danger.
War had been declared by Thuvan Dihn, but the messenger who had been dispatched with the proclamation had been a Dusarian who had seen to it that no word of warning reached the twin cities of the approach of a hostile fleet.
For several days diplomatic relations had been severed27 between Helium and her two most powerful neighbors, and with the departure of the ministers had come a total cessation of wireless28 communication between the disputants, as is usual upon Barsoom.
But of all this Carthoris was ignorant. All that interested him at present was the finding of Thuvia of Ptarth. Her trail beside that of the huge banth had been well marked to the tunnel, and was once more visible leading southward into the foothills.
As he followed rapidly downward toward the dead sea-bottom, where he knew he must lose the spoor in the resilient ochre vegetation, he was suddenly surprised to see a naked man approaching him from the north-east.
As the fellow drew closer, Carthoris halted to await his coming. He knew that the man was unarmed, and that he was apparently29 a Lotharian, for his skin was white and his hair auburn.
He approached the Heliumite without sign of fear, and when quite close called out the cheery Barsoomian "kaor" of greeting.
"Who are you?" asked Carthoris.
"I am Kar Komak, odwar of the bowmen," replied the other. "A strange thing has happened to me. For ages Tario has been bringing me into existence as he needed the services of the army of his mind. Of all the bowmen it has been Kar Komak who has been oftenest materialized.
"For a long time Tario has been concentrating his mind upon my permanent materialization. It has been an obsession30 with him that some day this thing could be accomplished31 and the future of Lothar assured. He asserted that matter was nonexistent except in the imagination of man—that all was mental, and so he believed that by persisting in his suggestion he could eventually make of me a permanent suggestion in the minds of all creatures.
"Yesterday he succeeded, but at such a time! It must have come all unknown to him, as it came to me without my knowledge, as, with my horde32 of yelling bowmen, I pursued the fleeing Torquasians back to their ochre plains.
"As darkness settled and the time came for us to fade once more into thin air, I suddenly found myself alone upon the edge of the great plain which lies yonder at the foot of the low hills.
"My men were gone back to the nothingness from which they had sprung, but I remained—naked and unarmed.
"At first I could not understand, but at last came a realization33 of what had occurred. Tario's long suggestions had at last prevailed, and Kar Komak had become a reality in the world of men; but my harness and my weapons had faded away with my fellows, leaving me naked and unarmed in a hostile country far from Lothar."
"You wish to return to Lothar?" asked Carthoris.
"No!" replied Kar Komak quickly. "I have no love for Tario. Being a creature of his mind, I know him too well. He is cruel and tyrannical—a master I have no desire to serve. Now that he has succeeded in accomplishing my permanent materialization, he will be unbearable34, and he will go on until he has filled Lothar with his creatures. I wonder if he has succeeded as well with the maid of Lothar."
"I thought there were no women there," said Carthoris.
"In a hidden apartment in the palace of Tario," replied Kar Komak, "the jeddak has maintained the suggestion of a beautiful girl, hoping that some day she would become permanent. I have seen her there. She is wonderful! But for her sake I hope that Tario succeeds not so well with her as he has with me.
"Now, red man, I have told you of myself—what of you?"
Carthoris liked the face and manner of the bowman. There had been no sign of doubt or fear in his expression as he had approached the heavily-armed Heliumite, and he had spoken directly and to the point.
So the Prince of Helium told the bowman of Lothar who he was and what adventure had brought him to this far country.
"Good!" exclaimed the other, when he had done. "Kar Komak will accompany you. Together we shall find the Princess of Ptarth and with you Kar Komak will return to the world of men—such a world as he knew in the long-gone past when the ships of mighty Lothar ploughed angry Throxus, and the roaring surf beat against the barrier of these parched35 and dreary36 hills."
"What mean you?" asked Carthoris. "Had you really a former actual existence?"
"Most assuredly," replied Kar Komak. "In my day I commanded the fleets of Lothar—mightiest of all the fleets that sailed the five salt seas.
"Wherever men lived upon Barsoom there was the name of Kar Komak known and respected. Peaceful were the land races in those distant days—only the seafarers were warriors37; but now has the glory of the past faded, nor did I think until I met you that there remained upon Barsoom a single person of our own mould who lived and loved and fought as did the ancient seafarers of my time.
"Ah, but it will seem good to see men once again—real men! Never had I much respect for the landsmen of my day. They remained in their walled cities wasting their time in play, depending for their protection entirely39 upon the sea race. And the poor creatures who remain, the Tarios and Javs of Lothar, are even worse than their ancient forbears."
Carthoris was a trifle skeptical40 as to the wisdom of permitting the stranger to attach himself to him. There was always the chance that he was but the essence of some hypnotic treachery which Tario or Jav was attempting to exert upon the Heliumite; and yet, so sincere had been the manner and the words of the bowman, so much the fighting man did he seem, but Carthoris could not find it in his heart to doubt him.
The outcome of the matter was that he gave the naked odwar leave to accompany him, and together they set out upon the spoor of Thuvia and Komal.
Down to the ochre sea-bottom the trail led. There it disappeared, as Carthoris had known that it would; but where it entered the plain its direction had been toward Aaanthor and so toward Aaanthor the two turned their faces.
It was a long and tedious journey, fraught41 with many dangers. The bowman could not travel at the pace set by Carthoris, whose muscles carried him with great rapidity over the face of the small planet, the force of gravity of which exerts so much less retarding42 power than that of the Earth. Fifty miles a day is a fair average for a Barsoomian, but the son of John Carter might easily have covered a hundred or more miles had he cared to desert his new-found comrade.
All the way they were in constant danger of discovery by roving bands of Torquasians, and especially was this true before they reached the boundary of Torquas.
Good fortune was with them, however, and although they sighted two detachments of the savage43 green men, they were not themselves seen.
And so they came, upon the morning of the third day, within sight of the glistening44 domes45 of distant Aaanthor. Throughout the journey Carthoris had ever strained his eyes ahead in search of Thuvia and the great banth; but not till now had he seen aught to give him hope.
This morning, far ahead, half-way between themselves and Aaanthor, the men saw two tiny figures moving toward the city. For a moment they watched them intently. Then Carthoris, convinced, leaped forward at a rapid run, Kar Komak following as swiftly as he could.
The Heliumite shouted to attract the girl's attention, and presently he was rewarded by seeing her turn and stand looking toward him. At her side the great banth stood with up-pricked ears, watching the approaching man.
Not yet could Thuvia of Ptarth have recognized Carthoris, though that it was he she must have been convinced, for she waited there for him without sign of fear.
Presently he saw her point toward the northwest, beyond him. Without slackening his pace, he turned his eyes in the direction she indicated.
Racing46 silently over the thick vegetation, not half a mile behind, came a score of fierce green warriors, charging him upon their mighty thoats.
To their right was Kar Komak, naked and unarmed, yet running valiantly47 toward Carthoris and shouting warning as though he, too, had but just discovered the silent, menacing company that moved so swiftly forward with couched spears and ready long-swords.
Carthoris shouted to the Lotharian, warning him back, for he knew that he could but uselessly sacrifice his life by placing himself, all unarmed, in the path of the cruel and relentless48 savages49.
But Kar Komak never hesitated. With shouts of encouragement to his new friend, he hurried onward toward the Prince of Helium. The red man's heart leaped in response to this exhibition of courage and self-sacrifice. He regretted now that he had not thought to give Kar Komak one of his swords; but it was too late to attempt it, for should he wait for the Lotharian to overtake him or return to meet him, the Torquasians would reach Thuvia of Ptarth before he could do so.
Even as it was, it would be nip and tuck as to who came first to her side.
Again he turned his face in her direction, and now, from Aaanthor way, he saw a new force hastening toward them—two medium-sized war craft—and even at the distance they still were from him he discerned the device of Dusar upon their bows.
Now, indeed, seemed little hope for Thuvia of Ptarth. With savage warriors of the hordes50 of Torquas charging toward her from one direction, and no less implacable enemies, in the form of the creatures of Astok, Prince of Dusar, bearing down upon her from another, while only a banth, a red warrior38, and an unarmed bowman were near to defend her, her plight51 was quite hopeless and her cause already lost ere ever it was contested.
As Thuvia saw Carthoris approaching, she felt again that unaccountable sensation of entire relief from responsibility and fear that she had experienced upon a former occasion. Nor could she account for it while her mind still tried to convince her heart that the Prince of Helium had been instrumental in her abduction from her father's court. She only knew that she was glad when he was by her side, and that with him there all things seemed possible—even such impossible things as escape from her present predicament.
Now had he stopped, panting, before her. A brave smile of encouragement lit his face.
"Courage, my princess," he whispered.
To the girl's memory flashed the occasion upon which he had used those same words—in the throne-room of Tario of Lothar as they had commenced to slip down the sinking marble floor toward an unknown fate.
Then she had not chidden him for the use of that familiar salutation, nor did she chide52 him now, though she was promised to another. She wondered at herself—flushing at her own turpitude53; for upon Barsoom it is a shameful54 thing for a woman to listen to those two words from another than her husband or her betrothed55.
Carthoris saw her flush of mortification56, and in an instant regretted his words. There was but a moment before the green warriors would be upon them.
"Forgive me!" said the man in a low voice. "Let my great love be my excuse—that, and the belief that I have but a moment more of life," and with the words he turned to meet the foremost of the green warriors.
The fellow was charging with couched spear, but Carthoris leaped to one side, and as the great thoat and its rider hurtled harmlessly past him he swung his long-sword in a mighty cut that clove57 the green carcass in twain.
At the same moment Kar Komak leaped with bare hands clawing at the leg of another of the huge riders; the balance of the horde raced in to close quarters, dismounting the better to wield58 their favourite long-swords; the Dusarian fliers touched the soft carpet of the ochre-clad sea-bottom, disgorging fifty fighting men from their bowels59; and into the swirling60 sea of cutting, slashing61 swords sprang Komal, the great banth.
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收听单词发音
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1
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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tenuous
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| adj.细薄的，稀薄的，空洞的 | |
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4
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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6
retrace
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| v.折回；追溯，探源 | |
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trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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8
fugitives
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| n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 ) | |
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9
egress
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| n.出去；出口 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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gory
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| adj.流血的；残酷的 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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descried
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| adj.被注意到的，被发现的，被看到的 | |
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16
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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mangled
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| vt.乱砍（mangle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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domains
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| n.范围( domain的名词复数 )；领域；版图；地产 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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garbled
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| adj.（指信息）混乱的，引起误解的v.对（事实）歪曲，对（文章等）断章取义，窜改( garble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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implicit
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| a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的 | |
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severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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skeptical
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| adj.怀疑的，多疑的 | |
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41
fraught
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| adj.充满…的，伴有(危险等)的；忧虑的 | |
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retarding
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| 使减速( retard的现在分词 )； 妨碍； 阻止； 推迟 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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44
glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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45
domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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valiantly
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| adv.勇敢地，英勇地；雄赳赳 | |
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relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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50
hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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51
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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52
chide
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| v.叱责；谴责 | |
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53
turpitude
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| n.可耻；邪恶 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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56
mortification
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| n.耻辱，屈辱 | |
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57
clove
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| n.丁香味 | |
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58
wield
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| vt.行使，运用，支配；挥，使用(武器等) | |
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bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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60
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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slashing
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| adj.尖锐的；苛刻的；鲜明的；乱砍的v.挥砍( slash的现在分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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