CHAPTER XXVIII

A Princess of Mars

by Edgar R. Burroughs

CHAPTER XXVIII, A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar R. Burroughs
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AT THE ARIZONA CAVE


It was dark when I opened my eyes again. Strange, stiff
garments were upon my body; garments that cracked and
powdered away from me as I rose to a sitting posture.

I felt myself over from head to foot and from head to
foot I was clothed, though when I fell unconscious at the
little doorway I had been naked. Before me was a small
patch of moonlit sky which showed through a ragged aperture.

As my hands passed over my body they came in contact
with pockets and in one of these a small parcel of matches
wrapped in oiled paper. One of these matches I struck, and
its dim flame lighted up what appeared to be a huge cave,
toward the back of which I discovered a strange, still figure
huddled over a tiny bench. As I approached it I saw that it
was the dead and mummified remains of a little old woman
with long black hair, and the thing it leaned over was a small
charcoal burner upon which rested a round copper vessel
containing a small quantity of greenish powder.

Behind her, depending from the roof upon rawhide thongs,
and stretching entirely across the cave, was a row of human
skeletons. From the thong which held them stretched another
to the dead hand of the little old woman; as I touched
the cord the skeletons swung to the motion with a noise as
of the rustling of dry leaves.

It was a most grotesque and horrid tableau and I hastened
out into the fresh air; glad to escape from so gruesome a place.

The sight that met my eyes as I stepped out upon a small
ledge which ran before the entrance of the cave filled me
with consternation.

A new heaven and a new landscape met my gaze. The silvered
mountains in the distance, the almost stationary moon
hanging in the sky, the cacti-studded valley below me
were not of Mars. I could scarcely believe my eyes, but the
truth slowly forced itself upon me--I was looking upon Arizona
from the same ledge from which ten years before I had gazed
with longing upon Mars.

Burying my head in my arms I turned, broken, and sorrowful,
down the trail from the cave.

Above me shone the red eye of Mars holding her awful
secret, forty-eight million miles away.

Did the Martian reach the pump room? Did the vitalizing
air reach the people of that distant planet in time to save
them? Was my Dejah Thoris alive, or did her beautiful body
lie cold in death beside the tiny golden incubator in the
sunken garden of the inner courtyard of the palace of Tardos
Mors, the jeddak of Helium?

For ten years I have waited and prayed for an answer to
my questions. For ten years I have waited and prayed to be
taken back to the world of my lost love. I would rather lie
dead beside her there than live on Earth all those millions of
terrible miles from her.

The old mine, which I found untouched, has made me
fabulously wealthy; but what care I for wealth!

As I sit here tonight in my little study overlooking the
Hudson, just twenty years have elapsed since I first opened
my eyes upon Mars.

I can see her shining in the sky through the little window
by my desk, and tonight she seems calling to me again as
she has not called before since that long dead night, and I
think I can see, across that awful abyss of space, a beautiful
black-haired woman standing in the garden of a palace,
and at her side is a little boy who puts his arm around her
as she points into the sky toward the planet Earth, while at
their feet is a huge and hideous creature with a heart of gold.

I believe that they are waiting there for me, and something
tells me that I shall soon know.