an instant silence reigned in the great amphitheatre, then a wild
shout arose from the cages of the doomed. My long-sword circled
whirring through the air, and a great ape sprawled, headless, at the
feet of the fainting girls.

The other apes turned now upon me, and as I stood facing them a sullen
roar from the audience answered the wild cheers from the cages. From
the tail of my eye I saw a score of guards rushing across the
glistening sand toward me. Then a figure broke from one of the cages
behind them. It was the youth whose personality so fascinated me.

He paused a moment before the cages, with upraised sword.

"Come, men of the outer world!" he shouted. "Let us make our deaths
worth while, and at the back of this unknown warrior turn this day's
Tribute to Issus into an orgy of revenge that will echo through the
ages and cause black skins to blanch at each repetition of the rites of
Issus. Come! The racks without your cages are filled with blades."

Without waiting to note the outcome of his plea, he turned and bounded
toward me. From every cage that harboured red men a thunderous shout
went up in answer to his exhortation. The inner guards went down
beneath howling mobs, and the cages vomited forth their inmates hot
with the lust to kill.

The racks that stood without were stripped of the swords with which the
prisoners were to have been armed to enter their allotted combats, and
a swarm of determined warriors sped to our support.

The great apes, towering in all their fifteen feet of height, had gone
down before my sword while the charging guards were still some distance
away. Close behind them pursued the youth. At my back were the young
girls, and as it was in their service that I fought, I remained
standing there to meet my inevitable death, but with the determination
to give such an account of myself as would long be remembered in the
land of the First Born.

I noted the marvellous speed of the young red man as he raced after the
guards. Never had I seen such speed in any Martian. His leaps and
bounds were little short of those which my earthly muscles had produced
to create such awe and respect on the part of the green Martians into
whose hands I had fallen on that long-gone day that had seen my first
advent upon Mars.

The guards had not reached me when he fell upon them from the rear, and
as they turned, thinking from the fierceness of his onslaught that a
dozen were attacking them,