The Gods of Mars quotes

At length he yielded, for it seemed the only way in which either of us might be saved from the ever-increasing numbers of our assailants, who were still swarming upon us from all directions across the broad valley.

“It was ever your way, John Carter, to think last of your own life,” he said; “but still more your way to command the lives and actions of others, even to the greatest of Jeddaks who rule upon Barsoom.”

There was a grim smile upon his cruel, hard face, as he, the greatest Jeddak of them all, turned to obey the dictates of a creature of another world—of a man whose stature was less than half his own.

“And that was the River Iss, emptying into the Lost Sea of Korus in the Valley Dor?” I asked.

“This is the valley of love and peace and rest to which every Barsoomian since time immemorial has longed to pilgrimage at the end of a life of hate and strife and bloodshed,” he replied. “This, John Carter, is Heaven.”

His tone was cold and ironical; its bitterness but reflecting the terrible disappointment he had suffered.

But with the tenacity and indomitable courage of his kind he still faced his cruel and relentless foes—the personification of that ancient proverb of his tribe:

“Leave to a Thark his head and one hand and he may yet conquer.”

As he saw me enter, a grim smile touched those grim lips of his, but whether the smile signified relief or merely amusement at the sight of my own bloody and dishevelled condition I do not know.

“One has escaped, centuries ago,” I reminded her, “and what has been done may be done again.”

“It is useless even to try,” she answered hopelessly.

“But try we shall,” I cried, “and you shall go with us, if you wish.”

I turned an inquiring glance toward the Thark.

“To the gates of Issus, or to the bottom of Korus,” spoke the green warrior; “to the snows to the north or to the snows to the south, Tars Tarkas follows where John Carter leads. I have spoken.”

“Come, then,” I cried, “we must make the start, for we could not be further from escape than we now are in the heart of this mountain and within the four walls of this chamber of death.”

During the daylight hours it is always extremely hot; at night it is intensely cold. Nor does the thin atmosphere refract the sun’s rays or diffuse its light as upon Earth. There is no twilight on Mars.

When the great orb of day disappears beneath the horizon the effect is precisely as that of the extinguishing of a single lamp within a chamber.

From brilliant light you are plunged without warning into utter darkness. Then the moons come; the mysterious, magic moons of Mars, hurtling like monster meteors low across the face of the planet.

For nine years I had sailed and fought with the navy of Helium. I had raced through space on the tiny one-man air scout and I had commanded the greatest battleship that ever had floated in the thin air of dying Mars.

To think, with me, is to act.

Grasping Thuvia by the arm, I whispered to Tars Tarkas to follow me. Quickly we glided toward a small flier which lay furthest from the battling warriors. Another instant found us huddled on the tiny deck. My hand was on the starting lever.

She caught the meaning of my words, and the cruelty of her answering smile horrified me.

One is not astonished by cruelty in a hideous face, but when it touches the features of a goddess whose fine-chiselled lineaments might more fittingly portray love and beauty, the contrast is appalling.

“Give me a revolver,” she whispered. “I can use that upon those your sword does not silence in time.”

With a slight shrug of her lovely shoulders she made a gesture with her hands personating the casting of something over the craft’s side.

“I am no murderer,” I said. “I kill in self-defence only.”

She looked at me narrowly. Then she puckered those divine brows of hers, and shook her head. She could not comprehend.

Well, neither had my own Dejah Thoris been able to understand what to her had seemed a foolish and dangerous policy toward enemies.

Upon Barsoom, quarter is neither asked nor given, and each dead man means so much more of the waning resources of this dying planet to be divided amongst those who survive.

But there seemed a subtle difference here between the manner in which this girl contemplated the dispatching of an enemy and the tenderhearted regret of my own princess for the stern necessity which demanded it.

“Unconsciousness comes quickly at this altitude,” she said quietly. “Unless you are inviting death for us all you had best drop, and that quickly.”

There was no fear in her voice. It was as one might say: “You had better carry an umbrella. It is going to rain.”

I dropped the vessel quickly to a lower level. Nor was I a moment too soon. The girl had swooned.

The black, too, was unconscious, while I, myself, retained my senses, I think, only by sheer will.

The one on whom all responsibility rests is apt to endure the most.

We were swinging along low above the foothills of the Otz. It was comparatively warm and there was plenty of air for our starved lungs, so I was not surprised to see the black open his eyes, and a moment later the girl also.

“The flesh of beasts, yes,” I replied, “but not the flesh of man.”

“As man may eat of the flesh of beasts, so may gods eat of the flesh of man. The Holy Therns are the gods of Barsoom.”

I was disgusted and I imagine that I showed it.

Again her eyes dropped to the floor, and a faint colour suffused her cheek. I could not understand her meaning; nor did I for a long time.

Dejah Thoris was wont to say that in some things I was a veritable simpleton, and I guess that she was right.

“I fear that I would ill requite your father’s hospitality,” I answered, “since the first thing that I should do were I a thern would be to set an armed guard at the mouth of the River Iss to escort the poor deluded voyagers back …

“In my gracious generosity I shall at length grant your prayer, and from the high balcony of the Golden Cliffs I shall watch the great white apes tear you asunder.”

She had it all fixed up. The whole lovely programme from start to finish.

It amazed me to think that one so divinely beautiful could at the same time be so fiendishly vindictive.

where ages of narrow fanaticism and self-worship had eradicated all the broader humanitarian instincts that the race might once have possessed.

They were a people drunk with power and success, looking upon the other inhabitants of Mars as we look upon the beasts of the field and the forest.

Why then should they not eat of the flesh of the lower orders whose lives and characters they no more understood than do we the inmost thoughts and sensibilities of the cattle we slaughter for our earthly tables.

“

I will say a few more words, Xodar, with no intent to wound your feelings further, but rather that you may give thought to the fact that while we live we are still more the arbiters of our own fate than is any god.

“Issus, you see, has not struck me dead, nor is she rescuing her faithful Xodar from the clutches of the unbeliever who defamed her fair beauty. No, Xodar, your Issus is a mortal old woman. Once out of her clutches and she cannot harm you.

“Issus, you see, has not struck me dead, nor is she rescuing her faithful Xodar from the clutches of the unbeliever who defamed her fair beauty.

No, Xodar, your Issus is a mortal old woman. Once out of her clutches and she cannot harm you.

“With your knowledge of this strange land, and my knowledge of the outer world, two such fighting-men as you and I should be able to win our way to freedom.

With each black was from one to three slaves, drawn from the domains of the therns and from the outer world. The blacks are all “noble.” There is no peasantry among the First Born.

Even the lowest soldier is a god, and has his slaves to wait upon him.

The First Born do no work. The men fight—that is a sacred privilege and duty; to fight and die for Issus. The women do nothing, absolutely nothing. Slaves wash them, slaves dress them, slaves feed them.

The First Born do no work. The men fight—that is a sacred privilege and duty; to fight and die for Issus.

The women do nothing, absolutely nothing. Slaves wash them, slaves dress them, slaves feed them.

There are some, even, who have slaves that talk for them, and I saw one who sat during the rites with closed eyes while a slave narrated to her the events that were transpiring within the arena.

“Nothing could be better,” he whispered.

“There are secrets within the secrets of Issus of which Issus herself does not dream.”

“I laboured with the other slaves a year since in the remodelling of these subterranean galleries, and at that time we found below these an ancient system of corridors and chambers that had been sealed up for ages.

“Lead back to Shador, my friend,” I whispered. “Xodar, the black, is there. We were to attempt our escape together, so I cannot desert him.”

“No,” said the boy, “one cannot desert a friend. It were better to be recaptured ourselves than that.”

Then he commenced groping his way about the floor of the dark chamber searching for the trap that led to the corridors beneath.

Very quietly I lowered myself from the inky cell above into the inky pit below. So utterly dark was it that we could not see our hands at an inch from our noses.

Never, I think, have I known such complete absence of light as existed in the pits of Issus.

For an instant I hung in mid air. There is a strange sensation connected with an experience of that nature which is quite difficult to describe.

but evidently he decided the message must be genuine, nor indeed was there any good reason to doubt it since it would scarce have seemed credible to him that two slaves would voluntarily have given themselves into custody in any such manner as this.

It was the very boldness of the plan which rendered it successful.

“Were you connected with the rising of the slaves?” asked Torith. “We have just had meagre reports of some such event.”

As many boats were now quite close to us it was inevitable that we would be quickly overhauled in the shaft, and captured or killed in short order.

To me there always seems a way to gain the opposite side of an obstacle. If one cannot pass over it, or below it, or around it, why then there is but a single alternative left, and that is to pass through it.

I could not get around the fact that many of these other boats could rise faster than ours by the fact of their greater buoyancy, but I was none the less determined to reach the outer world far in advance of them or die a …

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.

… about my neck, and for a brief moment as I held my boy close to me the tears welled to my eyes and I was like to have choked after the manner of some maudlin fool—but I do not regret it, nor am I ashamed.

A long life has taught me that a man may seem weak where women and children are concerned and yet be anything but a weakling in the sterner avenues of life.

“Your stature, your manner, the terrible ferocity of your swordsmanship,” said the boy, “are as my mother has described them to me a thousand times—but even with such evidence I could scarce credit the truth of what seemed so improbable to me, however much I …

I could not even guess the size or nature of the weird creatures. That they were of goodly proportions I guessed from the fact that the eyes were on a level with my own.

Why is it that darkness so magnifies our dangers?

By day I would have charged the great banth itself, had I thought it necessary, but hemmed in by the darkness of these silent pits I hesitated before a pair of eyes.

We had spoken scarcely a dozen words since I had felled Tan Gama at the cell door and seen in the torch’s light the expression of utter bewilderment upon the great Thark’s face.

“By this time,” he had said, “I should have learned to wonder at nothing which John Carter accomplishes.”

That was all. He did not need to tell me that he appreciated the friendship which had prompted me to risk my life to rescue him, nor did he need to say that he was glad to see me.

… turned and saw that she had deliberately slipped to the ground in the very path of the cruel demons who pursued us, thinking that by lightening the burden of my mount it might thus be enabled to bear me to the safety of the hills.

Poor child! She should have known John Carter better than that.

Turning my thoat, I urged him after her, hoping to reach her side and bear her on again in our hopeless flight.

“Cease, blasphemer!” cried Zat Arras. “Hope not to save thy cowardly carcass by inventing horrid lies to—” But he got no further.

One does not call John Carter “coward” and “liar” thus lightly, and Zat Arras should have known it.

Before a hand could be raised to stop me, I was at his side and one hand grasped his throat.

They offered us only the most courteous treatment, but were evidently bound by their superstitious belief in the doctrine of Dor and Iss and Korus.

I could not blame them, for I knew how strong a hold a creed, however ridiculous it may be, may gain upon an otherwise intelligent people.

By returning from Dor we had committed a sacrilege; by recounting our adventures there, and stating the facts as they existed we had outraged the religion of their fathers. We were blasphemers—lying heretics.