It was in my legs. I reached down to feel them,but my hand recoiled from what it found, and when I tried to move my
legs I discovered that I was dead from the waist down. Then the moon
came out from behind a cloud and I saw that I lay within a shell hole
and that I was not alone--the dead were all about me.
It was a long time before I found the moral courage and the physical
strength to draw myself up upon one elbow that I might view the havoc
that had been done me.
One look was enough, I sank back in an agony of mental and physical
anguish--my legs had been blown away from midway between the hips and
knees. For some reason I was not bleeding excessively, yet I know that
I had lost a great deal of blood and that I was gradually losing enough
to put me out of my misery in a short time if I were not soon found;
and as I lay there on my back, tortured with pain, I prayed that they
would not come in time, for I shrank more from the thought of going
maimed through life than I shrank from the thought of death.
Then my eyes suddenly focussed upon the bright red eye of Mars and
there surged through me a sudden wave of hope. I stretched out my arms
towards Mars, I did not seem to question or to doubt for an instant as
I prayed to the god of my vocation to reach forth and succour me. I
knew that he would do it, my faith was complete, and yet so great was
the mental effort that I made to throw off the hideous bonds of my
mutilated flesh that I felt a momentary qualm of nausea and then a
sharp click as of the snapping of a steel wire, and suddenly I stood
naked upon two good legs looking down upon the bloody, distorted thing
that had been I. Just for an instant did I stand thus before I turned
my eyes aloft again to my star of destiny and with outstretched arms
stand there in the cold of that French night--waiting.
Suddenly I felt myself drawn with the speed of thought through the
trackless wastes of interplanetary space. There was an instant of
extreme cold and utter darkness, then--But the rest is in the
manuscript that, with the aid of one greater than either of us, I have
found the means to transmit to you with this letter. You and a few
others of the chosen will believe in it--for the rest it matters not
as yet.
The time will come--but why tell you what you already know?
My salutations and my congratulations--the latter on your good fortune
in having been chosen as the medium through which Earthmen shall become
better acquainted with the manners and customs of Barsoom, against the
time that they shall pass through space as easily as John Carter, and
visit the scenes that he has described to them through you, as have I.
Your sincere friend, ULYSSES PAXTON, Late Captain,---th Inf., U.S. Army.
II - The House of the Dead
I must have closed my eyes involuntarily during the transition for when I opened them I was lying flat on my back gazing up into a brilliant, sun-lit sky, while standing a few feet from me and looking down upon me with the most mystified expression was as strange a looking individual as my eyes ever had rested upon.
He appeared to be quite an old man, for he was wrinkled and withered beyond description. His limbs were emaciated; his ribs showed distinctly beneath his shrunken hide; his cranium was large and well developed, which, in conjunction with his wasted limbs and torso, lent him the appearance of top heaviness, as though he had a head beyond all proportion to his body, which was, I am sure, really not the case.
As he stared down upon me through enormous, many-lensed spectacles I found the opportunity to examine him as minutely in return. He was, perhaps, five feet five in height, though doubtless he had been taller in youth, since he was somewhat bent; he was naked except for some rather plain and well-worn leather harness which supported his weapons and pocket pouches, and one great ornament a collar, jewel studded, that he wore around his scraggy neck--such a collar as a dowager empress of pork or real estate might barter her soul for, if she had one. His skin was red, his scant locks grey. As he looked at me his puzzled expression increased in intensity, he grasped his chin between the thumb and fingers of his left hand and slowly raising his right hand he scratched his head most deliberately. Then he spoke to me, but in a language I did not understand.
At his first words I sat up and shook my head. Then I looked about me. I was seated upon a crimson sward within a high-walled enclosure, at least two, and possibly three, sides of which were formed by the outer walls of a structure that in some respects resembled more closely a feudal castle of Europe than any familiar form of architecture that comes to my mind. The facade presented to my view was ornately carved and of most irregular design, the roof line being so broken as to almost suggest a ruin, and yet the whole seemed harmonious and not without beauty. Within the enclosure grew a number of trees and shrubs, all weirdly strange and all, or almost all, profusely flowering. About them wound walks of coloured pebbles among which scintillated what appeared to be rare and beautiful gems, so lovely were the strange, unearthly rays that leaped and played in the sunshine.
The old man spoke again, peremptorily this time, as though repeating a command that had been ignored, but again I shook my head. Then he laid a hand upon one of his two swords, but as he drew the weapon I leaped to my feet, with such remarkable results that I cannot even now say which of us was the more surprised. I must have sailed ten feet into the air and back about twenty feet from where I had been sitting; then I was sure that I was upon Mars (not that I had for one instant doubted it), for the effects of the lesser gravity, the colour of the sward and the skin-hue of the red Martians I had seen described in the manuscripts of John Carter, those marvellous and as yet unappreciated contributions to the scientific literature of a world. There could be no doubt of it, I stood upon the soil of the Red Planet, I had come to the world of my dreams--to Barsoom.
So startled was the old man by my agility that he jumped a bit himself, though doubtless involuntarily, but, however, with certain results. His spectacles tumbled from his nose to the sward, and then it was that I discovered that the pitiful old wretch was practically blind when deprived of these artificial aids to vision,
