e
were making would doubtless have resulted in instant death for us all.
But not a star showed above--only utter and impenetrable darkness.

Then I glanced below me, and there I saw a rapidly diminishing circle
of light--the mouth of the opening above the phosphorescent radiance of
Omean. By this I steered, endeavouring to keep the circle of light
below me ever perfect. At best it was but a slender cord that held us
from destruction, and I think that I steered that night more by
intuition and blind faith than by skill or reason.

We were not long in the shaft, and possibly the very fact of our
enormous speed saved us, for evidently we started in the right
direction and so quickly were we out again that we had no time to alter
our course. Omean lies perhaps two miles below the surface crust of
Mars. Our speed must have approximated two hundred miles an hour, for
Martian fliers are swift, so that at most we were in the shaft not over
forty seconds.

We must have been out of it for some seconds before I realised that we
had accomplished the impossible. Black darkness enshrouded all about
us. There were neither moons nor stars. Never before had I seen such
a thing upon Mars, and for the moment I was nonplussed. Then the
explanation came to me. It was summer at the south pole. The ice cap
was melting and those meteoric phenomena, clouds, unknown upon the
greater part of Barsoom, were shutting out the light of heaven from
this portion of the planet.

Fortunate indeed it was for us, nor did it take me long to grasp the
opportunity for escape which this happy condition offered us. Keeping
the boat's nose at a stiff angle I raced her for the impenetrable
curtain which Nature had hung above this dying world to shut us out
from the sight of our pursuing enemies.

We plunged through the cold camp fog without diminishing our speed, and
in a moment emerged into the glorious light of the two moons and the
million stars. I dropped into a horizontal course and headed due
north. Our enemies were a good half-hour behind us with no conception
of our direction. We had performed the miraculous and come through a
thousand dangers unscathed--we had escaped from the land of the First
Born. No other prisoners in all the ages of Barsoom had done this
thing, and now as I looked back upon it it did not seem to have been so
difficult after all.

I said as much to Xodar, over my shoulder.

"It is very wonderful, nevertheless,"