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CHAPTER XX - THE CHARGE OF COWARDICE
Gahan, watching through the aperture between the hangings, saw the frantic
flight of their pursuers. A grim smile rested upon his lips as he viewed the mad
scramble for safety and saw them throw away their swords and fight with one
another to be first from the chamber of fear, and when they were all gone he
turned back toward Tara, the smile still upon his lips; but the smile died the
instant that he turned, for he saw that Tara had disappeared.
"
Tara!" he called in a loud voice, for he knew that there was no danger that their
pursuers would return; but there was no response, unless it was a faint sound as
of cackling laughter from afar. Hurriedly he searched the passageway behind the
hangings finding several doors, one of which was ajar. Through this he entered
the adjoining chamber which was lighted more brilliantly for the moment by the
soft rays of hurtling Thuria taking her mad way through the heavens. Here he
found the dust upon the floor disturbed, and the imprint of sandals. They had
come this way--Tara and whatever the creature was that had stolen her.
But what could it have been? Gahan, a man of culture and high intelligence, held
few if any superstitions. In common with nearly all races of Barsoom he clung,
more or less inherently, to a certain exalted form of ancestor worship, though it
was rather the memory or legends of the virtues and heroic deeds of his forebears
that he deified rather than themselves. He never expected any tangible evidence
of their existence after death; he did not believe that they had the power either for
good or for evil other than the effect that their example while living might have
had upon following generations; he did not believe therefore in the materialization
of dead spirits. If there was a life hereafter he knew nothing of it, for he knew that
science had demonstrated the existence of some material cause for every
seemingly supernatural phenomenon of ancient religions and superstitions. Yet
he was at a loss to know what power might have removed Tara so suddenly and
mysteriously from his side in a chamber that had not known the presence of man
for five thousand years.
In the darkness he could not see whether there were the imprints of other
sandals than Tara's--only that the dust was disturbed--and when it led him into
gloomy corridors he lost the trail altogether. A perfect labyrinth of passages and
apartments were now revealed to him as he hurried on through the deserted
quarters of O-Mai. Here was an ancient bath--doubtless that of the jeddak
himself, and again he passed through a room in which a meal had been laid upon
a table five thousand years before--the untasted breakfast of O-Mai, perhaps.
There passed before his eyes in the brief moments that he traversed the
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