aning down, he raised the latch. Then the thoat that he was
riding placed his great shoulder to the skeel-wood planking, pushed
through, and a moment later the man and the two beasts were swinging
silently down the avenue to the edge of the plaza, where Kar Komak
hid.

Here Carthoris found considerable difficulty in subduing the second
thoat, and as Kar Komak had never before ridden one of the beasts,
it seemed a most hopeless job; but at last the bowman managed to
scramble to the sleek back, and again the two beasts fled softly
down the moss-grown avenues toward the open sea-bottom beyond the
city.

All that night and the following day and the second night they
rode toward the north-east. No indication of pursuit developed,
and at dawn of the second day Carthoris saw in the distance the
waving ribbon of great trees that marked one of the long Barsoomian
water-ways.

Immediately they abandoned their thoats and approached the cultivated
district on foot. Carthoris also discarded the metal from his
harness, or such of it as might serve to identify him as a Heliumite,
or of royal blood, for he did not know to what nation belonged this
waterway, and upon Mars it is always well to assume every man and
nation your enemy until you have learned the contrary.

It was mid-forenoon when the two at last entered one of the roads
that cut through the cultivated districts at regular intervals,
joining the arid wastes on either side with the great, white,
central highway that follows through the centre from end to end of
the far-reaching, threadlike farm lands.

The high wall surrounding the fields served as a protection against
surprise by raiding green hordes, as well as keeping the savage
banths and other carnivora from the domestic animals and the human
beings upon the farms.

Carthoris stopped before the first gate he came to, pounding for
admission. The young man who answered his summons greeted the
two hospitably, though he looked with considerable wonder upon the
white skin and auburn hair of the bowman.

After he had listened for a moment to a partial narration of their
escape from the Torquasians, he invited them within, took them to
his house and bade the servants there prepare food for them.

As they waited in the low-ceiled, pleasant living room of the
farmhouse until the meal should be ready, Carthoris drew his host
into conversation that he might learn his nationality, and thus
the nation under whose domi