ized you, as we believed, our own brothers, come
to rescue us from long imprisonment, there was great rejoicing. The news
spread from mouth to mouth, wherever we were in the houses and families
of our masters. We seemed to be powerless to aid you or to communicate
with you in any manner. Yet our hearts went out to you, as in your ships
you hung above the planet, and preparations were secretly made by all the
members of our race for your reception when, as we believed, would occur,
you should effect a landing upon the planet and destroy our enemies."

"But in some manner the fact that we had recognized you, and were
preparing to welcome you, came to the ears of the Martians."

At this point the girl suddenly covered her eyes with her hands,
shuddering and falling back in her seat.

"Oh, you do not know them as I do!" at length she exclaimed. "The
monsters! Their vengeance was too terrible! Instantly the order went forth
that we should all be butchered, and that awful command was executed!"

"How, then, did you escape?" asked the Heidelberg Professor.

Aina seemed unable to speak for a while. Finally mastering her emotion,
she replied:

Her Fortunate Escape.

"One of the chief officers of the Martians wished me to remain alive. He,
with his aides, carried me to one of the military depot of supplies,
where I was found and rescued," and as she said this she turned toward
Colonel Smith with a smile that reflected on his ruddy face and made it
glow like a Chinese lantern.

"By ----!" muttered Colonel Smith, "that was the fellow we blew into
nothing! Blast him, he got off too easy!"

The remainder of Aina's story may be briefly told.

When Colonel Smith and I entered the mysterious building which, as it
now proved, was not a storehouse belonging to a village, as we had
supposed, but one of the military depots of the Martians, the girl,
on catching sight of us, immediately recognized us as belonging to the
strange squadron in the sky. As such she felt that we must be her friends,
and saw in us her only possible hope of escape. For that reason she had
instantly thrown herself under our protection. This accounted for the
singular confidence which she had manifested in us from the beginning.

Her wonderful story had so captivated our imaginations that for a long
time after it was finished we could not recover from the spell. It was
told over and over again from mouth to mouth, and repeated from ship to
ship, everywhe