judges.

And then a man sprang to his feet in the audience, and raising his hand
on high, cried: "Justice! Justice! Justice!" It was Kantos Kan, and
as all eyes turned toward him he leaped past the Zodangan soldiery and
sprang upon the platform.

"What manner of justice be this?" he cried to Zat Arras. "The
defendant has not been heard, nor has he had an opportunity to call
others in his behalf. In the name of the people of Helium I demand
fair and impartial treatment for the Prince of Helium."

A great cry arose from the audience then: "Justice! Justice!
Justice!" and Zat Arras dared not deny them.

"Speak, then," he snarled, turning to me; "but blaspheme not against
the things that are sacred upon Barsoom."

"Men of Helium," I cried, turning to the spectators, and speaking over
the heads of my judges, "how can John Carter expect justice from the
men of Zodanga? He cannot nor does he ask it. It is to the men of
Helium that he states his case; nor does he appeal for mercy to any.
It is not in his own cause that he speaks now--it is in thine. In the
cause of your wives and daughters, and of wives and daughters yet
unborn. It is to save them from the unthinkably atrocious indignities
that I have seen heaped upon the fair women of Barsoom in the place men
call the Temple of Issus. It is to save them from the sucking embrace
of the plant men, from the fangs of the great white apes of Dor, from
the cruel lust of the Holy Therns, from all that the cold, dead Iss
carries them to from homes of love and life and happiness.

"Sits there no man here who does not know the history of John Carter.
How he came among you from another world and rose from a prisoner among
the green men, through torture and persecution, to a place high among
the highest of Barsoom. Nor ever did you know John Carter to lie in
his own behalf, or to say aught that might harm the people of Barsoom,
or to speak lightly of the strange religion which he respected without
understanding.

"There be no man here, or elsewhere upon Barsoom to-day who does not
owe his life directly to a single act of mine, in which I sacrificed
myself and the happiness of my Princess that you might live. And so,
men of Helium, I think that I have the right to demand that I be heard,
that I be believed, and that you let me serve you and save you from the
false hereafter of Dor and Issus as I saved you from the real death
that other day.

"It is to you of Helium th