existence. Their actions and movements are
largely matters of instinct and not guided to any great extent by
reason, since the brain of a plant man is but a trifle larger than the
end of your smallest finger. They live upon vegetation and the blood
of animals, and their brain is just large enough to direct their
movements in the direction of food, and to translate the food
sensations which are carried to it from their eyes and ears. They have
no sense of self-preservation and so are entirely without fear in the
face of danger. That is why they are such terrible antagonists in
combat."

I wondered why the black man took such pains to discourse thus at
length to enemies upon the genesis of life Barsoomian. It seemed a
strangely inopportune moment for a proud member of a proud race to
unbend in casual conversation with a captor. Especially in view of the
fact that the black still lay securely bound upon the deck.

It was the faintest straying of his eye beyond me for the barest
fraction of a second that explained his motive for thus dragging out my
interest in his truly absorbing story.

He lay a little forward of where I stood at the levers, and thus he
faced the stern of the vessel as he addressed me. It was at the end of
his description of the plant men that I caught his eye fixed
momentarily upon something behind me.

Nor could I be mistaken in the swift gleam of triumph that brightened
those dark orbs for an instant.

Some time before I had reduced our speed, for we had left the Valley
Dor many miles astern, and I felt comparatively safe.

I turned an apprehensive glance behind me, and the sight that I saw
froze the new-born hope of freedom that had been springing up within me.

A great battleship, forging silent and unlighted through the dark
night, loomed close astern.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DEPTHS OF OMEAN

Now I realized why the black pirate had kept me engrossed with his
strange tale. For miles he had sensed the approach of succour, and but
for that single tell-tale glance the battleship would have been
directly above us in another moment, and the boarding party which was
doubtless even now swinging in their harness from the ship's keel,
would have swarmed our deck, placing my rising hope of escape in sudden
and total eclipse.

I was too old a hand in aerial warfare to be at a loss now for the
right manoeuvre. Simultaneously I reversed the engines and dropped the
little vessel a sheer