"What is it?" I asked of the girl.

For answer she pointed to the sky.

I looked, and there, above us, I saw shadowy bodies flittinghither and thither high over temple, court, and garden.

Almost immediately flashes of light broke from these strangeobjects. There was a roar of musketry, and then answeringflashes and roars from temple and rampart.

"The black pirates of Barsoom, O Prince," said Thuvia.

In great circles the air craft of the marauders swept lowerand lower toward the defending forces of the therns.

Volley after volley they vomited upon the temple guards;volley on volley crashed through the thin air toward thefleeting and illusive fliers.

As the pirates swooped closer toward the ground, thernsoldiery poured from the temples into the gardens and courts.The sight of them in the open brought a score of fliersdarting toward us from all directions.

The therns fired upon them through shields affixed to theirrifles, but on, steadily on, came the grim, black craft. Theywere small fliers for the most part, built for two to three men.A few larger ones there were, but these kept high aloft droppingbombs upon the temples from their keel batteries.

At length, with a concerted rush, evidently in response to asignal of command, the pirates in our immediate vicinitydashed recklessly to the ground in the very midst of thethern soldiery.

Scarcely waiting for their craft to touch, the creaturesmanning them leaped among the therns with the fury ofdemons. Such fighting! Never had I witnessed its like before.I had thought the green Martians the most ferocious warriorsin the universe, but the awful abandon with which the blackpirates threw themselves upon their foes transcended everythingI ever before had seen.

Beneath the brilliant light of Mars' two glorious moons thewhole scene presented itself in vivid distinctness. The golden-haired, white-skinned therns battling with desperate couragein hand-to-hand conflict with their ebony-skinned foemen.

Here a little knot of struggling warriors trampled a bed ofgorgeous pimalia; there the curved sword of a black manfound the heart of a thern and left its dead foeman at thefoot of a wondrous statue carved from a living ruby; yondera dozen therns pressed a single pirate back upon a bench ofemerald, upon whose iridescent surface a strangely beautifulBarsoomian design was traced out in inlaid diamonds.

A little to one side stood Thuvia, the Thark, and I. The tideof battle had not reached us, but the fighters from time totime swung close enough that we might distinctly note them.

The black pirates interested me immensely. I had heardvague rumours, little more than legends they were, duringmy former life on Mars; but never had I seen them, nortalked with one who had.

They were popularly supposed to inhabit the lesser moon,from which they descended upon Barsoom at long intervals.Where they visited they wrought the most horrible atrocities,and when they left carried away with them firearms andammunition, and young girls as prisoners. These latter,the rumour had it, they sacrificed to some terrible godin an orgy which ended in the eating of their victims.

I had an excellent opportunity to examine them, as thestrife occasionally brought now one and now another closeto where I stood. They were large men, possibly six feet andover in height. Their features were clear cut and handsomein the extreme; their eyes were well set and large, though aslight narrowness lent them a crafty appearance; the iris, aswell as I could determine by moonlight, was of extremeblackness, while the eyeball itself was quite white and clear.The physical structure of their bodies seemed identical withthose of the therns, the red men, and my own. Only in thecolour of their skin did they differ materially from us; thatis of the appearance of polished ebony, and odd as itmay seem for a Southerner to say it, adds to rather thandetracts from their marvellous beauty.

But if their bodies are divine, their hearts, apparently,are quite the reverse. Never did I witness such a malign lustfor blood as these demons of the outer air evinced in theirmad battle with the therns.

All about us in the garden lay their sinister craft, whichthe therns for some reason, then unaccountable to me, madeno effort to injure. Now and again a black warrior wouldrush from a near by temple bearing a young woman in his arms.Straight for his flier he would leap while those of hiscomrades who fought near by would rush to cover his escape.

The therns on their side would hasten to rescue the girl,and in an instant the two would be swallowed in the vortexof a maelstrom of yelling devils, hacking and hewing atone another, like fiends incarnate.

But always, it seemed, were the black pirates of Barsoomvictorious, and the girl, brought miraculously unharmedthrough the conflict, borne away into the outer darknessupon the deck of a swift flier.

Fighting similar to that which surrounded us could beheard in both directions as far as sound carried, and Thuviatold me that the attacks of the black pirates were usuallymade simultaneously along the entire ribbon-like domain ofthe therns, which circles the Valley Dor on the outer slopesof the Mountains of Otz.

As the fighting receded from our position for a moment,Thuvia turned toward me with a question.

"Do you understand now, O Prince," she said, "why a millionwarriors guard the domains of the Holy Therns by day and by night?"

"The scene you are witnessing now is but a repetition ofwhat I have seen enacted a score of times during the fifteenyears I have been a prisoner here. From time immemorialthe black pirates of Barsoom have preyed upon the Holy Therns.

"Yet they never carry their expeditions to a point, as onemight readily believe it was in their power to do, where theextermination of the race of therns is threatened. It is asthough they but utilized the race as playthings, with whichthey satisfy their ferocious lust for fighting; and from whomthey collect toll in arms and ammunition and in prisoners."

"Why don't they jump in and destroy these fliers?" I asked."That would soon put a stop to the attacks, or at least theblacks would scarce be so bold. Why, see how perfectlyunguarded they leave their craft, as though they werelying safe in their own hangars at home."

"The therns do not dare. They tried it once, ages ago, butthe next night and for a whole moon thereafter a thousandgreat black battleships circled the Mountains of Otz, pouringtons of projectiles upon the temples, the gardens, and thecourts, until every thern who was not killed was drivenfor safety into the subterranean galleries.

"The therns know that they live at all only by the sufferanceof the black men. They were near to extermination that onceand they will not venture risking it again."

As she ceased talking a new element was instilled into theconflict. It came from a source equally unlooked for byeither thern or pirate. The great banths which we hadliberated in the garden had evidently been awed at firstby the sound of the battle, the yelling of the warriorsand the loud report of rifle and bomb.

But now they must have become angered by the continuousnoise and excited by the smell of new blood, for all ofa sudden a great form shot from a clump of low shrubberyinto the midst of a struggling mass of humanity. A horridscream of bestial rage broke from the banth as he felt warmflesh beneath his powerful talons.

As though his cry was but a signal to the others, theentire great pack hurled themselves among the fighters.Panic reigned in an instant. Thern and black man turned alikeagainst the common enemy, for the banths showed no partialitytoward either.

The awful beasts bore down a hundred men by the mereweight of their great bodies as they hurled themselves intothe thick of the fight. Leaping and clawing, they mowed downthe warriors with their powerful paws, turning for an instantto rend their victims with frightful fangs.

The scene was fascinating in its terribleness, but suddenlyit came to me that we were wasting valuable time watching thisconflict, which in itself might prove a means of our escape.

The therns were so engaged with their terrible assailantsthat now, if ever, escape should be comparatively easy. Iturned to search for an opening through the contendinghordes. If we could but reach the ramparts we might findthat the pirates somewhere had thinned the guarding forcesand left a way open to us to the world without.

As my eyes wandered about the garden, the sight of thehundreds of air craft lying unguarded around us suggested thesimplest avenue to freedom. Why it had not occurred to mebefore! I was thoroughly familiar with the mechanism ofevery known make of flier on Barsoom. For nine years Ihad sailed and fought with the navy of Helium. I had racedthrough space on the tiny one-man air scout and I hadcommanded the greatest battleship that ever had floatedin the thin air of dying Mars.

To think, with me, is to act. Grasping Thuvia by the arm,I whispered to Tars Tarkas to follow me. Quickly we glidedtoward a small flier which lay furthest from the battlingwarriors. Another instant found us huddled on the tinydeck. My hand was on the starting lever. I pressed my thumbupon the button which controls the ray of repulsion, thatsplendid discovery of the Martians which permits them to navigatethe thin atmosphere of their planet in huge ships that dwarf thedreadnoughts of our earthly navies into pitiful significance.

The craft swayed slightly but she did not move. Then anew cry of warning broke upon our ears. Turning, I saw adozen black pirates dashing toward us from the melee. Wehad been discovered. With shrieks of rage the demonssprang for us. With frenzied insistence I continued to pressthe little button which should have sent us racing out intospace, but still the vessel refused to budge. Then it came tome--the reason that she would not rise.

We had stumbled upon a two-man flier. Its ray tankswere charged only with sufficient repulsive energy to lifttwo ordinary men. The Thark's great weight was anchoringus to our doom.

The blacks were nearly upon us. There was not an instantto be lost in hesitation or doubt.

I pressed the button far in and locked it. Then I set thelever at high speed and as the blacks came yelling upon usI slipped from the craft's deck and with drawn long-swordmet the attack.

At the same moment a girl's shriek rang out behind meand an instant later, as the blacks fell upon me. I heardfar above my head, and faintly, in Thuvia's voice: "MyPrince, O my Prince; I would rather remain and die with--"But the rest was lost in the noise of my assailants.

I knew though that my ruse had worked and that temporarilyat least Thuvia and Tars Tarkas were safe, and the means ofescape was theirs.

For a moment it seemed that I could not withstand theweight of numbers that confronted me, but again, as on somany other occasions when I had been called upon to facefearful odds upon this planet of warriors and fierce beasts,I found that my earthly strength so far transcended that ofmy opponents that the odds were not so greatly against meas they appeared.

My seething blade wove a net of death about me. For aninstant the blacks pressed close to reach me with their shorterswords, but presently they gave back, and the esteem in whichthey suddenly had learned to hold my sword arm was writlarge upon each countenance.

I knew though that it was but a question of minutesbefore their greater numbers would wear me down, or getaround my guard. I must go down eventually to certain deathbefore them. I shuddered at the thought of it, dying thus inthis terrible place where no word of my end ever couldreach my Dejah Thoris. Dying at the hands of namelessblack men in the gardens of the cruel therns.

Then my old-time spirit reasserted itself. The fighting bloodof my Virginian sires coursed hot through my veins. Thefierce blood lust and the joy of battle surged over me. Thefighting smile that has brought consternation to a thousandfoemen touched my lips. I put the thought of death out ofmy mind, and fell upon my antagonists with fury that thosewho escaped will remember to their dying day.

That others would press to the support of those who facedme I knew, so even as I fought I kept my wits at work,searching for an avenue of escape.

It came from an unexpected quarter out of the black nightbehind me. I had just disarmed a huge fellow who hadgiven me a desperate struggle, and for a moment the blacksstood back for a breathing spell.

They eyed me with malignant fury, yet withal there wasa touch of respect in their demeanour.

"Thern," said one, "you fight like a Dator. But for yourdetestable yellow hair and your white skin you would be anhonour to the First Born of Barsoom."

"I am no thern," I said, and was about to explain that I wasfrom another world, thinking that by patching a truce withthese fellows and fighting with them against the therns Imight enlist their aid in regaining my liberty. But just at thatmoment a heavy object smote me a resounding whack betweenmy shoulders that nearly felled me to the ground.

As I turned to meet this new enemy an object passed overmy shoulder, striking one of my assailants squarely in theface and knocking him senseless to the sward. At the sameinstant I saw that the thing that had struck us was thetrailing anchor of a rather fair-sized air vessel; possiblya ten man cruiser.

The ship was floating slowly above us, not more than fiftyfeet over our heads. Instantly the one chance for escape thatit offered presented itself to me. The vessel was slowly risingand now the anchor was beyond the blacks who faced meand several feet above their heads.

With a bound that left them gaping in wide-eyed astonishmentI sprang completely over them. A second leap carried me justhigh enough to grasp the now rapidly receding anchor.

But I was successful, and there I hung by one hand, draggingthrough the branches of the higher vegetation of the gardens,while my late foemen shrieked and howled beneath me.

Presently the vessel veered toward the west and thenswung gracefully to the south. In another instant I wascarried beyond the crest of the Golden Cliffs, out over theValley Dor, where, six thousand feet below me, the Lost Seaof Korus lay shimmering in the moonlight.

Carefully I climbed to a sitting posture across the anchor'sarms. I wondered if by chance the vessel might be deserted.I hoped so. Or possibly it might belong to a friendly people,and have wandered by accident almost within the clutchesof the pirates and the therns. The fact that it was retreatingfrom the scene of battle lent colour to this hypothesis.

But I decided to know positively, and at once, so, with thegreatest caution, I commenced to climb slowly up the anchorchain toward the deck above me.

One hand had just reached for the vessel's rail and foundit when a fierce black face was thrust over the side andeyes filled with triumphant hate looked into mine.