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And Gahan, Jed of Gathol--what of him? Plummet-like he fell for a thousand feet
and then the storm seized him in its giant clutch and bore him far aloft again. As
a bit of paper borne upon a gale he was tossed about in mid-air, the sport and
plaything of the wind. Over and over it turned him and upward and downward it
carried him, but after each new sally of the element he was brought nearer to the
ground. The freaks of cyclonic storms are the rule of cyclonic storms, demolish
giant trees, and in the same gust they transport frail infants for miles and deposit
them unharmed in their wake.
And so it was with Gahan of Gathol. Expecting momentarily to be dashed to
destruction he presently found himself deposited gently upon the soft, ochre
moss of a dead sea-bottom, bodily no worse off for his harrowing adventure than
in the possession of a slight swelling upon his forehead where the metal hook had
struck him. Scarcely able to believe that Fate had dealt thus gently with him, the
jed arose slowly, as though more than half convinced that he should discover
crushed and splintered bones that would not support his weight. But he was
intact. He looked about him in a vain effort at orientation. The air was filled with
flying dust and debris. The Sun was obliterated. His vision was confined to a
radius of a few hundred yards of ochre moss and dust-filled air. Five hundred
yards away in any direction there might have arisen the walls of a great city and
he not known it. It was useless to move from where he was until the air cleared,
since he could not know in what direction he was moving, and so he stretched
himself upon the moss and waited, pondering the fate of his warriors and his
ship, but giving little thought to his own precarious situation.
Lashed to his harness were his swords, his pistols, and a dagger, and in his
pocket-pouch a small quantity of the concentrated rations that form a part of the
equipment of the fighting men of Barsoom. These things together with trained
muscles, high courage, and an undaunted spirit sufficed him for whatever
misadventures might lie between him and Gathol, which lay in what direction he
knew not, nor at what distance.
The wind was falling rapidly and with it the dust that obscured the landscape.
That the storm was over he was convinced, but he chafed at the inactivity the low
visibility put upon him, nor did conditions better materially before night fell, so
that he was forced to await the new day at the very spot at which the tempest had
deposited him. Without his sleeping silks and furs he spent a far from
comfortable night, and it was with feelings of unmixed relief that he saw the
sudden dawn burst upon him. The air was now clear and in the light of the new
day he saw an undulating plain stretching in all directions about him, while to
the northwest there were barely discernible the outlines of low hills. Toward the
southeast of Gathol was such a country, and as Gahan surmised the direction
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