A PRINCESS OF MARS

CONTENTS

I On the Arizona Hills
II The Escape of the Dead
III My Advent on Mars
IV A Prisoner
V I Elude My Watch Dog
VI A Fight That Won Friends
VII Child-Raising on Mars
VIII A Fair Captive from the Sky
IX I Learn the Language
X Champion and Chief
XI With Dejah Thoris
XII A Prisoner with Power
XIII Love-Making on Mars
XIV A Duel to the Death
XV Sola Tells Me Her Story
XVI We Plan Escape
XVII A Costly Recapture
XVIII Chained in Warhoon
XIX Battling in the Arena
XX In the Atmosphere Factory
XXI An Air Scout for Zodanga
XXII I Find Dejah
XXIII Lost in the Sky
XXIV Tars Tarkas Finds a Friend
XXV The Looting of Zodanga
XXVI Through Carnage to Joy
XXVII From Joy to Death
XXVIII At the Arizona Cave




ILLUSTRATIONS


With my back against a golden throne,
I fought once again for Dejah Thoris . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

I sought out Dejah Thoris in the throng of departing chariots.

She drew upon the marble floor the first map of the
Barsoomian territory I had ever seen.

The old man sat and talked with me for hours.




CHAPTER I

ON THE ARIZONA HILLS


I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred,
possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other
men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have
always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did
forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living
forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is
no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have
died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as
you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I
believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality.

And because of this conviction I have determined to write down the
story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death. I cannot
explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words of an
ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events that
befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay undiscovered in an
Arizona cave.

I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this manuscript
until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that the average
human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not
purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and
held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths
which some day science will substantiate. Possibly the suggestions
which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I can set down in
this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding of the mysteries
of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no longer mysteries to me.

My name is John Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter of
Virginia. At the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed of
several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain's
commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the
servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the South.
Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood, fighting,
gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and attempt to
retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search for gold.

I spent nearly a year prospecting in company with another Confederate
officer, Captain James K. Powell of Richmond. We were extremely
fortunate, for late in the winter of 1865, after many hardships and
privations, we located the most remarkable gold-bearing quartz vein
that our wildest dreams had ever pictured. Powell, who was a mining
engineer by education, stated that we had uncovered over a million
dollars worth of ore in a trifle over three months.