Xodar listened in incredulous astonishment to my narrationof the events which had transpired within the arena at therites of Issus. He could scarce conceive, even though he hadalready professed his doubt as to the deity of Issus, that onecould threaten her with sword in hand and not be blasted intoa thousand fragments by the mere fury of her divine wrath.

"It is the final proof," he said, at last. "No more is neededto completely shatter the last remnant of my superstitiousbelief in the divinity of Issus. She is only a wicked old woman,wielding a mighty power for evil through machinations thathave kept her own people and all Barsoom in religiousignorance for ages."

"She is still all-powerful here, however," I replied."So it behooves us to leave at the first moment thatappears at all propitious."

"I hope that you may find a propitious moment," he said,with a laugh, "for it is certain that in all my life I have neverseen one in which a prisoner of the First Born might escape."

"To-night will do as well as any," I replied.

"It will soon be night," said Xodar. "How may I aid in the adventure?"

"Can you swim?" I asked him.

"No slimy silian that haunts the depths of Korus is moreat home in water than is Xodar," he replied.

"Good. The red one in all probability cannot swim," Isaid, "since there is scarce enough water in all their domainsto float the tiniest craft. One of us therefore will have tosupport him through the sea to the craft we select. I had hopedthat we might make the entire distance below the surface,but I fear that the red youth could not thus perform thetrip. Even the bravest of the brave among them are terrorizedat the mere thought of deep water, for it has been ages sincetheir forebears saw a lake, a river or a sea."

"The red one is to accompany us?" asked Xodar.

"Yes."

"It is well. Three swords are better than two. Especiallywhen the third is as mighty as this fellow's. I have seen himbattle in the arena at the rites of Issus many times. Never,until I saw you fight, had I seen one who seemed unconquerableeven in the face of great odds. One might think you twomaster and pupil, or father and son. Come to recall his facethere is a resemblance between you. It is very marked whenyou fight--there is the same grim smile, the same maddeningcontempt for your adversary apparent in every movement of yourbodies and in every changing expression of your faces."

"Be that as it may, Xodar, he is a great fighter. I thinkthat we will make a trio difficult to overcome, and if myfriend Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, were but one of us wecould fight our way from one end of Barsoom to the othereven though the whole world were pitted against us."

"It will be," said Xodar, "when they find from whenceyou have come. That is but one of the superstitions whichIssus has foisted upon a credulous humanity. She worksthrough the Holy Therns who are as ignorant of her real selfas are the Barsoomians of the outer world. Her decrees areborne to the therns written in blood upon a strange parchment. The poor deluded fools think that they are receivingthe revelations of a goddess through some supernaturalagency, since they find these messages upon their guardedaltars to which none could have access without detection.I myself have borne these messages for Issus for many years.There is a long tunnel from the temple of Issus to theprincipal temple of Matai Shang. It was dug ages ago bythe slaves of the First Born in such utter secrecy thatno thern ever guessed its existence.

"The therns for their part have temples dotted about theentire civilized world. Here priests whom the people neversee communicate the doctrine of the Mysterious River Iss,the Valley Dor, and the Lost Sea of Korus to persuade thepoor deluded creatures to take the voluntary pilgrimage thatswells the wealth of the Holy Therns and adds to the numbersof their slaves.

"Thus the therns are used as the principal means for collectingthe wealth and labour that the First Born wrest from them asthey need it. Occasionally the First Born themselves makeraids upon the outer world. It is then that they capturemany females of the royal houses of the red men, and takethe newest in battleships and the trained artisans who buildthem, that they may copy what they cannot create.

"We are a non-productive race, priding ourselves uponour non-productiveness. It is criminal for a First Born tolabour or invent. That is the work of the lower orders, wholive merely that the First Born may enjoy long lives of luxuryand idleness. With us fighting is all that counts; were itnot for that there would be more of the First Born than allthe creatures of Barsoom could support, for in so far as Iknow none of us ever dies a natural death. Our femaleswould live for ever but for the fact that we tire of themand remove them to make place for others. Issus alone of allis protected against death. She has lived for countless ages."

"Would not the other Barsoomians live for ever but for the doctrineof the voluntary pilgrimage which drags them to the bosom of Issat or before their thousandth year?" I asked him.

"I feel now that there is no doubt but that they are preciselythe same species of creature as the First Born, and I hope thatI shall live to fight for them in atonement of the sins I havecommitted against them through the ignorance born of generationsof false teaching."

As he ceased speaking a weird call rang out across the waters of Omean.I had heard it at the same time the previous evening and knew thatit marked the ending of the day, when the men of Omean spread theirsilks upon the deck of battleship and cruiser and fall into thedreamless sleep of Mars.

Our guard entered to inspect us for the last time before thenew day broke upon the world above. His duty was soonperformed and the heavy door of our prison closed behind him--we were alone for the night.

I gave him time to return to his quarters, as Xodar saidhe probably would do, then I sprang to the grated windowand surveyed the nearby waters. At a little distance from theisland, a quarter of a mile perhaps, lay a monster battleship,while between her and the shore were a number of smallercruisers and one-man scouts. Upon the battleship alonewas there a watch. I could see him plainly in the upperworks of the ship, and as I watched I saw him spreadhis sleeping silks upon the tiny platform in which he wasstationed. Soon he threw himself at full length upon hiscouch. The discipline on Omean was lax indeed. But it is notto be wondered at since no enemy guessed the existence uponBarsoom of such a fleet, or even of the First Born, or theSea of Omean. Why indeed should they maintain a watch?

Presently I dropped to the floor again and talked withXodar, describing the various craft I had seen.

"There is one there," he said, "my personal property,built to carry five men, that is the swiftest of the swift.If we can board her we can at least make a memorable runfor liberty," and then he went on to describe to me theequipment of the boat; her engines, and all that wentto make her the flier that she was.

In his explanation I recognized a trick of gearing thatKantos Kan had taught me that time we sailed under falsenames in the navy of Zodanga beneath Sab Than, the Prince.And I knew then that the First Born had stolen it from theships of Helium, for only they are thus geared. And I knewtoo that Xodar spoke the truth when he lauded the speed ofhis little craft, for nothing that cleaves the thin airof Mars can approximate the speed of the ships of Helium.

We decided to wait for an hour at least until all the stragglershad sought their silks. In the meantime I was to fetch the redyouth to our cell so that we would be in readiness to make ourrash break for freedom together.

I sprang to the top of our partition wall and pulled myselfup on to it. There I found a flat surface about a foot inwidth and along this I walked until I came to the cell inwhich I saw the boy sitting upon his bench. He had beenleaning back against the wall looking up at the glowing domeabove Omean, and when he spied me balancing upon thepartition wall above him his eyes opened wide in astonishment. Then a wide grin of appreciative understanding spread acrosshis countenance.

As I stooped to drop to the floor beside him he motionedme to wait, and coming close below me whispered: "Catchmy hand; I can almost leap to the top of that wall myself.I have tried it many times, and each day I come a littlecloser. Some day I should have been able to make it."

I lay upon my belly across the wall and reached my handfar down toward him. With a little run from the centre ofthe cell he sprang up until I grasped his outstretched hand,and thus I pulled him to the wall's top beside me.

"You are the first jumper I ever saw among the red menof Barsoom," I said.

He smiled. "It is not strange. I will tell you why whenwe have more time."

Together we returned to the cell in which Xodar sat;descending to talk with him until the hour had passed.

There we made our plans for the immediate future, bindingourselves by a solemn oath to fight to the death for oneanother against whatsoever enemies should confront us, forwe knew that even should we succeed in escaping the FirstBorn we might still have a whole world against us--thepower of religious superstition is mighty.

It was agreed that I should navigate the craft after wehad reached her, and that if we made the outer world insafety we should attempt to reach Helium without a stop.

"Why Helium?" asked the red youth.

"I am a prince of Helium," I replied.

He gave me a peculiar look, but said nothing further onthe subject. I wondered at the time what the significance ofhis expression might be, but in the press of other matters itsoon left my mind, nor did I have occasion to think of itagain until later.

"Come," I said at length, "now is as good a time as any.Let us go."

Another moment found me at the top of the partition wallagain with the boy beside me. Unbuckling my harness Isnapped it together with a single long strap which I loweredto the waiting Xodar below. He grasped the end and was soonsitting beside us.

"How simple," he laughed.

"The balance should be even simpler," I replied. Then Iraised myself to the top of the outer wall of the prison, justso that I could peer over and locate the passing sentry. For amatter of five minutes I waited and then he came in sight onhis slow and snail-like beat about the structure.

I watched him until he had made the turn at the end ofthe building which carried him out of sight of the side ofthe prison that was to witness our dash for freedom. Themoment his form disappeared I grasped Xodar and drew himto the top of the wall. Placing one end of my harness strapin his hands I lowered him quickly to the ground below.Then the boy grasped the strap and slid down to Xodar's side.

In accordance with our arrangement they did not wait for me,but walked slowly toward the water, a matter of a hundred yards,directly past the guard-house filled with sleeping soldiers.

They had taken scarce a dozen steps when I too droppedto the ground and followed them leisurely toward the shore.As I passed the guard-house the thought of all the goodblades lying there gave me pause, for if ever men were tohave need of swords it was my companions and I on theperilous trip upon which we were about to embark.

I glanced toward Xodar and the youth and saw that theyhad slipped over the edge of the dock into the water. Inaccordance with our plan they were to remain there clingingto the metal rings which studded the concrete-like substanceof the dock at the water's level, with only their mouths andnoses above the surface of the sea, until I should join them.

The lure of the swords within the guard-house was strongupon me, and I hesitated a moment, half inclined to risk theattempt to take the few we needed. That he who hesitatesis lost proved itself a true aphorism in this instance,for another moment saw me creeping stealthily toward thedoor of the guard-house.

Gently I pressed it open a crack; enough to discover adozen blacks stretched upon their silks in profound slumber.At the far side of the room a rack held the swords andfirearms of the men. Warily I pushed the door a trifle widerto admit my body. A hinge gave out a resentful groan.One of the men stirred, and my heart stood still. I cursed myselffor a fool to have thus jeopardized our chances for escape;but there was nothing for it now but to see the adventure through.

With a spring as swift and as noiseless as a tiger's I litbeside the guardsman who had moved. My hands hoveredabout his throat awaiting the moment that his eyes shouldopen. For what seemed an eternity to my overwroughtnerves I remained poised thus. Then the fellow turned againupon his side and resumed the even respiration of deep slumber.

Carefully I picked my way between and over the soldiersuntil I had gained the rack at the far side of the room. HereI turned to survey the sleeping men. All were quiet. Theirregular breathing rose and fell in a soothing rhythm thatseemed to me the sweetest music I ever had heard.

Gingerly I drew a long-sword from the rack. The scraping of thescabbard against its holder as I withdrew it sounded like thefiling of cast iron with a great rasp, and I looked to seethe room immediately filled with alarmed and attacking guardsmen.But none stirred.

The second sword I withdrew noiselessly, but the thirdclanked in its scabbard with a frightful din. I knew that itmust awaken some of the men at least, and was on the pointof forestalling their attack by a rapid charge for the doorway,when again, to my intense surprise, not a black moved.Either they were wondrous heavy sleepers or else the noisesthat I made were really much less than they seemed to me.

I was about to leave the rack when my attention was attractedby the revolvers. I knew that I could not carry more than oneaway with me, for I was already too heavily laden to move quietlywith any degree of safety or speed. As I took one of them from itspin my eye fell for the first time on an open window beside the rack.Ah, here was a splendid means of escape, for it let directly uponthe dock, not twenty feet from the water's edge.

And as I congratulated myself, I heard the door oppositeme open, and there looking me full in the face stood theofficer of the guard. He evidently took in the situation at aglance and appreciated the gravity of it as quickly as I, forour revolvers came up simultaneously and the sounds of thetwo reports were as one as we touched the buttons on thegrips that exploded the cartridges.

I felt the wind of his bullet as it whizzed past my ear,and at the same instant I saw him crumple to the ground.Where I hit him I do not know, nor if I killed him, for scarcehad he started to collapse when I was through the windowat my rear. In another second the waters of Omean closedabove my head, and the three of us were making for the littleflier a hundred yards away.

Xodar was burdened with the boy, and I with the three long-swords.The revolver I had dropped, so that while we were both strongswimmers it seemed to me that we moved at a snail's pacethrough the water. I was swimming entirely beneath the surface,but Xodar was compelled to rise often to let the youth breathe,so it was a wonder that we were not discovered long before we were.

In fact we reached the boat's side and were all aboardbefore the watch upon the battleship, aroused by the shots,detected us. Then an alarm gun bellowed from a ship'sbow, its deep boom reverberating in deafening tones beneaththe rocky dome of Omean.

Instantly the sleeping thousands were awake. The decks ofa thousand monster craft teemed with fighting-men, for analarm on Omean was a thing of rare occurrence.

We cast away before the sound of the first gun had died,and another second saw us rising swiftly from the surfaceof the sea. I lay at full length along the deck with the leversand buttons of control before me. Xodar and the boy werestretched directly behind me, prone also that we might offeras little resistance to the air as possible.

"Rise high," whispered Xodar. "They dare not fire theirheavy guns toward the dome--the fragments of the shellswould drop back among their own craft. If we are highenough our keel plates will protect us from rifle fire."

I did as he bade. Below us we could see the men leapinginto the water by hundreds, and striking out for the smallcruisers and one-man fliers that lay moored about the bigships. The larger craft were getting under way, following usrapidly, but not rising from the water.

"A little to your right," cried Xodar, for there are no pointsof compass upon Omean where every direction is due north.

The pandemonium that had broken out below us was deafening. Rifles cracked, officers shouted orders, men yelled directionsto one another from the water and from the decks of myriad boats,while through all ran the purr of countless propellers cuttingwater and air.

I had not dared pull my speed lever to the highest for fear ofoverrunning the mouth of the shaft that passed from Omean's dometo the world above, but even so we were hitting a clip that I doubthas ever been equalled on the windless sea.

The smaller fliers were commencing to rise toward uswhen Xodar shouted: "The shaft! The shaft! Dead ahead,"and I saw the opening, black and yawning in the glowingdome of this underworld.

A ten-man cruiser was rising directly in front to cut offour escape. It was the only vessel that stood in our way, but atthe rate that it was traveling it would come between us andthe shaft in plenty of time to thwart our plans.

It was rising at an angle of about forty-five degrees deadahead of us, with the evident intention of combing us withgrappling hooks from above as it skimmed low over our deck.

There was but one forlorn hope for us, and I took it.It was useless to try to pass over her, for that wouldhave allowed her to force us against the rocky dome above,and we were already too near that as it was. To have attemptedto dive below her would have put us entirely at her mercy,and precisely where she wanted us. On either side a hundredother menacing craft were hastening toward us. The alternativewas filled with risk--in fact it was all risk, with but aslender chance of success.

As we neared the cruiser I rose as though to pass aboveher, so that she would do just what she did do, rise at asteeper angle to force me still higher. Then as we werealmost upon her I yelled to my companions to hold tight, andthrowing the little vessel into her highest speed I deflectedher bows at the same instant until we were running horizontallyand at terrific velocity straight for the cruiser's keel.

Her commander may have seen my intentions then, but itwas too late. Almost at the instant of impact I turned mybows upward, and then with a shattering jolt we were incollision. What I had hoped for happened. The cruiser,already tilted at a perilous angle, was carried completely overbackward by the impact of my smaller vessel. Her crew felltwisting and screaming through the air to the water far below,while the cruiser, her propellers still madly churning, divedswiftly headforemost after them to the bottom of the Sea of Omean.

The collision crushed our steel bows, and notwithstandingevery effort on our part came near to hurling us from thedeck. As it was we landed in a wildly clutching heap at thevery extremity of the flier, where Xodar and I succeeded ingrasping the hand-rail, but the boy would have plungedoverboard had I not fortunately grasped his ankle as hewas already partially over.

Unguided, our vessel careened wildly in its mad flight,rising ever nearer the rocks above. It took but an instant,however, for me to regain the levers, and with the roof barelyfifty feet above I turned her nose once more into the horizontalplane and headed her again for the black mouth of the shaft.

The collision had retarded our progress and now a hundredswift scouts were close upon us. Xodar had told methat ascending the shaft by virtue of our repulsive rays alonewould give our enemies their best chance to overtake us,since our propellers would be idle and in rising we would beoutclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft areseldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the addedbulk of them tends to reduce a vessel's speed.

As many boats were now quite close to us it was inevitablethat we would be quickly overhauled in the shaft, and capturedor killed in short order.

To me there always seems a way to gain the oppositeside of an obstacle. If one cannot pass over it, or below it,or around it, why then there is but a single alternative left,and that is to pass through it. I could not get around thefact that many of these other boats could rise faster thanours by the fact of their greater buoyancy, but I was nonethe less determined to reach the outer world far in advanceof them or die a death of my own choosing in event of failure.

"Reverse?" screamed Xodar, behind me. "For the love ofyour first ancestor, reverse. We are at the shaft."

"Hold tight!" I screamed in reply. "Grasp the boy andhold tight--we are going straight up the shaft."

The words were scarce out of my mouth as we swept beneaththe pitch-black opening. I threw the bow hard up,dragged the speed lever to its last notch, and clutching astanchion with one hand and the steering-wheel with the otherhung on like grim death and consigned my soul to its author.

I heard a little exclamation of surprise from Xodar, followedby a grim laugh. The boy laughed too and said something whichI could not catch for the whistling of the wind of our awful speed.

I looked above my head, hoping to catch the gleam of stars bywhich I could direct our course and hold the hurtling thingthat bore us true to the centre of the shaft. To havetouched the side at the speed we were making would doubtlesshave resulted in instant death for us all. But not a starshowed above--only utter and impenetrable darkness.

Then I glanced below me, and there I saw a rapidlydiminishing circle of light--the mouth of the opening abovethe phosphorescent radiance of Omean. By this I steered,endeavouring to keep the circle of light below me ever perfect.At best it was but a slender cord that held us from destruction,and I think that I steered that night more by intuition and blindfaith than by skill or reason.

We were not long in the shaft, and possibly the very factof our enormous speed saved us, for evidently we started inthe right direction and so quickly were we out again thatwe had no time to alter our course. Omean lies perhaps twomiles below the surface crust of Mars. Our speed must haveapproximated two hundred miles an hour, for Martian fliers areswift, so that at most we were in the shaft not over forty seconds.

We must have been out of it for some seconds before Irealised that we had accomplished the impossible. Blackdarkness enshrouded all about us. There were neither moonsnor stars. Never before had I seen such a thing upon Mars,and for the moment I was nonplussed. Then the explanationcame to me. It was summer at the south pole. The ice capwas melting and those meteoric phenomena, clouds, unknownupon the greater part of Barsoom, were shutting out the lightof heaven from this portion of the planet.

Fortunate indeed it was for us, nor did it take me long tograsp the opportunity for escape which this happy conditionoffered us. Keeping the boat's nose at a stiff angle I raced herfor the impenetrable curtain which Nature had hung above this dyingworld to shut us out from the sight of our pursuing enemies.

We plunged through the cold camp fog without diminishingour speed, and in a moment emerged into the gloriouslight of the two moons and the million stars. I dropped intoa horizontal course and headed due north. Our enemies werea good half-hour behind us with no conception of our direction. We had performed the miraculous and come through a thousanddangers unscathed--we had escaped from the land of the First Born.No other prisoners in all the ages of Barsoom had done this thing,and now as I looked back upon it it did not seem to have been sodifficult after all.

I said as much to Xodar, over my shoulder.

"It is very wonderful, nevertheless," he replied."No one else could have accomplished it but John Carter."

At the sound of that name the boy jumped to his feet.

"John Carter!" he cried. "John Carter! Why, man, John Carter,Prince of Helium, has been dead for years. I am his son."