Zodanga

told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he wished
me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a compartment
in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I would find his will
there and some personal instructions which he had me pledge myself to
carry out with absolute fidelity.

After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window
standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the
Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal.
I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never understood
that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious man.

Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the first
of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking me to
come to him at once.  I had always been his favorite among the younger
generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with his demand.

I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on the
morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery man to drive me
out to Captain Carter's he replied that if I was a friend of the
Captain's he had some very bad news for me; the Captain had been found
dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the watchman attached
to an adjoining property.

For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to his
place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the body
and of his affairs.

I found the watchman who had discovered him, together with the local
police chief and several townspeople, assembled in his little study.
The watchman related the few details connected with the finding of the
body, which he said had been still warm when he came upon it.  It lay,
he said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms outstretched
above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when he showed me the
spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical one where I had seen
him on those other nights, with his arms raised in supplication to the
skies.

There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a
local physician the coroner's jury quickly reached a decision of death
from heart failure.  Left alone in the study, I opened the safe and
withdrew the contents of the drawer in which he had told me I would
find my instructions.  They were in part peculiar indeed, but I have
followed them to each last detail as faithfully as I was able.

He directed that I remove his body to Virginia without embalming, and
that he be laid in an open coffin within a tomb which he previously had
had constructed and which, as I later learned, was well ventilated.
The instructions impressed upon me that I must personally see that this
was carried out just as he directed, even in secrecy if necessary.

His property was left in such a way that I was to receive the entire
income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to become mine.
His further instructions related to this manuscript which I was to
retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for eleven years; nor was
I to divulge its contents until twenty-one years after his death.

A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is that
the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated spring
lock which can be opened _only from the inside_.

Yours very sincerely,

Edgar Rice Burroughs.




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