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her, so that she could scarce take her eyes from them. It was evident from their
groping hands that they were eyeless, and their sluggish movements suggested a
rudimentary nervous system and a correspondingly minute brain. The girl
wondered how they subsisted for she could not, even by the wildest stretch of
imagination, picture these imperfect creatures as intelligent tillers of the soil. Yet
that the soil of the valley was tilled was evident and that these things had food
was equally so. But who tilled the soil? Who kept and fed these unhappy things,
and for what purpose? It was an enigma beyond her powers of deduction.
The sight of food aroused again a consciousness of her own gnawing hunger and
the thirst that parched her throat. She could see both food and water within the
enclosure; but would she dare enter even should she find means of ingress? She
doubted it, since the very thought of possible contact with these grewsome
creatures sent a shudder through her frame.
Then her eyes wandered again out across the valley until presently they picked
out what appeared to be a tiny stream winding its way through the center of the
farm lands--a strange sight upon Barsoom. Ah, if it were but water! Then might
she hope with a real hope, for the fields would give her sustenance which she
could gain by night, while by day she hid among the surrounding hills, and
sometime, yes, sometime she knew, the searchers would come, for John Carter,
Warlord of Barsoom, would never cease to search for his daughter until every
square haad of the planet had been combed again and again. She knew him and
she knew the warriors of Helium and so she knew that could she but manage to
escape harm until they came, they would indeed come at last.
She would have to wait until dark before she dare venture into the valley, and in
the meantime she thought it well to search out a place of safety nearby where she
might be reasonably safe from savage beasts. It was possible that the district was
free from carnivora, but one might never be sure in a strange land. As she was
about to withdraw be hind the brow of the hill her attention was again attracted
to the enclosure below. Two figures had emerged from the tower. Their beautiful
bodies seemed identical with those of the headless creatures among which they
moved, but the newcomers were not headless. Upon their shoulders were heads
that seemed human, yet which the girl intuitively sensed were not human. They
were just a trifle too far away for her to see them distinctly in the waning light of
the dying day, but she knew that they were too large, they were out of proportion
to the perfectly proportioned bodies, and they were oblate in form. She could see
that the men wore some manner of harness to which were slung the customary
long-sword and short-sword of the Barsoomian warrior, and that about their
short necks were massive leather collars cut to fit closely over the shoulders and
snugly to the lower part of the head. Their features were scarce discernible, but
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