FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94  
95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   >>   >|  
tood alone beside the rail. The girl had not once spoken since we had been brought to the deck. "Is what he has been telling me true?" I asked her. "In part, yes," she answered. "That about the outer valley is true, but what he says of the location of the Temple of Issus in the centre of his country is false. If it is not false--" she hesitated. "Oh it cannot be true, it cannot be true. For if it were true then for countless ages have my people gone to torture and ignominious death at the hands of their cruel enemies, instead of to the beautiful Life Eternal that we have been taught to believe Issus holds for us." "As the lesser Barsoomians of the outer world have been lured by you to the terrible Valley Dor, so may it be that the therns themselves have been lured by the First Born to an equally horrid fate," I suggested. "It would be a stern and awful retribution, Phaidor; but a just one." "I cannot believe it," she said. "We shall see," I answered, and then we fell silent again for we were rapidly approaching the black mountains, which in some indefinable way seemed linked with the answer to our problem. As we neared the dark, truncated cone the vessel's speed was diminished until we barely moved. Then we topped the crest of the mountain and below us I saw yawning the mouth of a huge circular well, the bottom of which was lost in inky blackness. The diameter of this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet. The walls were smooth and appeared to be composed of a black, basaltic rock. For a moment the vessel hovered motionless directly above the centre of the gaping void, then slowly she began to settle into the black chasm. Lower and lower she sank until as darkness enveloped us her lights were thrown on and in the dim halo of her own radiance the monster battleship dropped on and on down into what seemed to me must be the very bowels of Barsoom. For quite half an hour we descended and then the shaft terminated abruptly in the dome of a mighty subterranean world. Below us rose and fell the billows of a buried sea. A phosphorescent radiance illuminated the scene. Thousands of ships dotted the bosom of the ocean. Little islands rose here and there to support the strange and colourless vegetation of this strange world. Slowly and with majestic grace the battleship dropped until she rested on the water. Her great propellers had been drawn and housed during our descent of the shaft and in thei
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94  
95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

strange

 

radiance

 

battleship

 

dropped

 

vessel

 

centre

 

answered

 

slowly

 
spoken
 

settle


enveloped

 

monster

 

darkness

 

lights

 

thrown

 

enormous

 

thousand

 
diameter
 

blackness

 

bottom


hovered
 

motionless

 

directly

 

moment

 

smooth

 

appeared

 

composed

 

basaltic

 

gaping

 

Barsoom


support

 

colourless

 

vegetation

 
Slowly
 

Little

 
islands
 

majestic

 

housed

 

descent

 

propellers


rested

 
dotted
 
descended
 
terminated
 

abruptly

 

bowels

 
circular
 

mighty

 

subterranean

 

phosphorescent