top and as
the great excavation lay far from the plaza and in an untenanted
portion of the great dead city I had little trouble in reaching the
hills beyond.

CHAPTER XX

IN THE ATMOSPHERE FACTORY

For two days I waited there for Kantos Kan, but as he did not come I
started off on foot in a northwesterly direction toward a point where
he had told me lay the nearest waterway. My only food consisted of
vegetable milk from the plants which gave so bounteously of this
priceless fluid.

Through two long weeks I wandered, stumbling through the nights guided
only by the stars and hiding during the days behind some protruding
rock or among the occasional hills I traversed. Several times I was
attacked by wild beasts; strange, uncouth monstrosities that leaped
upon me in the dark, so that I had ever to grasp my long-sword in my
hand that I might be ready for them. Usually my strange, newly
acquired telepathic power warned me in ample time, but once I was down
with vicious fangs at my jugular and a hairy face pressed close to mine
before I knew that I was even threatened.

What manner of thing was upon me I did not know, but that it was large
and heavy and many-legged I could feel. My hands were at its throat
before the fangs had a chance to bury themselves in my neck, and slowly
I forced the hairy face from me and closed my fingers, vise-like, upon
its windpipe.

Without sound we lay there, the beast exerting every effort to reach me
with those awful fangs, and I straining to maintain my grip and choke
the life from it as I kept it from my throat. Slowly my arms gave to
the unequal struggle, and inch by inch the burning eyes and gleaming
tusks of my antagonist crept toward me, until, as the hairy face
touched mine again, I realized that all was over. And then a living
mass of destruction sprang from the surrounding darkness full upon the
creature that held me pinioned to the ground. The two rolled growling
upon the moss, tearing and rending one another in a frightful manner,
but it was soon over and my preserver stood with lowered head above the
throat of the dead thing which would have killed me.

The nearer moon, hurtling suddenly above the horizon and lighting up
the Barsoomian scene, showed me that my preserver was Woola, but from
whence he had come, or how found me, I was at a loss to know. That I
was glad of his companionship it is needless to say, but my pleasure at
seeing him was tempered by anx