Warlord of Mars | Page 9

an instant beyond my sight, I was forced to wait
in the shadows until the other boat had passed from my sight at the far
extremity of the lake.
Then I paddled out upon the brilliant surface in the direction they had
taken.
When, after what seemed an eternity, I reached the shadows at the
upper end of the lake I found that the river issued from a low aperture,
to pass beneath which it was necessary that I compel Woola to lie flat
in the boat, and I, myself, must need bend double before the low roof
cleared my head.
Immediately the roof rose again upon the other side, but no longer was
the way brilliantly lighted. Instead only a feeble glow emanated from
small and scattered patches of phosphorescent rock in wall and roof.
Directly before me the river ran into this smaller chamber through three
separate arched openings.
Thurid and the therns were nowhere to be seen--into which of the dark

holes had they disappeared? There was no means by which I might
know, and so I chose the center opening as being as likely to lead me in
the right direction as another.
Here the way was through utter darkness. The stream was narrow--so
narrow that in the blackness I was constantly bumping first one rock
wall and then another as the river wound hither and thither along its
flinty bed.
Far ahead I presently heard a deep and sullen roar which increased in
volume as I advanced, and then broke upon my ears with all the
intensity of its mad fury as I swung round a sharp curve into a dimly
lighted stretch of water.
Directly before me the river thundered down from above in a mighty
waterfall that filled the narrow gorge from side to side, rising far above
me several hundred feet--as magnificent a spectacle as I ever had seen.
But the roar--the awful, deafening roar of those tumbling waters penned
in the rocky, subterranean vault! Had the fall not entirely blocked my
further passage and shown me that I had followed the wrong course I
believe that I should have fled anyway before the maddening tumult.
Thurid and the therns could not have come this way. By stumbling
upon the wrong course I had lost the trail, and they had gained so much
ahead of me that now I might not be able to find them before it was too
late, if, in fact, I could find them at all.
It had taken several hours to force my way up to the falls against the
strong current, and other hours would be required for the descent,
although the pace would be much swifter.
With a sigh I turned the prow of my craft down stream, and with
mighty strokes hastened with reckless speed through the dark and
tortuous channel until once again I came to the chamber into which
flowed the three branches of the river.
Two unexplored channels still remained from which to choose; nor was

there any means by which I could judge which was the more likely to
lead me to the plotters.
Never in my life, that I can recall, have I suffered such an agony of
indecision. So much depended upon a correct choice; so much
depended upon haste.
The hours that I had already lost might seal the fate of the incomparable
Dejah Thoris were she not already dead--to sacrifice other hours, and
maybe days in a fruitless exploration of another blind lead would
unquestionably prove fatal.
Several times I essayed the right-hand entrance only to turn back as
though warned by some strange intuitive sense that this was not the
way. At last, convinced by the oft-recurring phenomenon, I cast my all
upon the left-hand archway; yet it was with a lingering doubt that I
turned a parting look at the sullen waters which rolled, dark and
forbidding, from beneath the grim, low archway on the right.
And as I looked there came bobbing out upon the current from the
Stygian darkness of the interior the shell of one of the great, succulent
fruits of the sorapus tree.
I could scarce restrain a shout of elation as this silent, insensate
messenger floated past me, on toward the Iss and Korus, for it told me
that journeying Martians were above me on that very stream.
They had eaten of this marvelous fruit which nature concentrates within
the hard shell of the sorapus nut, and having eaten had cast the husk
overboard. It could have come from no others than the party I sought.
Quickly I abandoned all thought of the left-hand passage, and a
moment later had turned into the right. The stream soon widened, and
recurring areas of phosphorescent rock lighted my way.
I made good time,