All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 139: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

WARLORD Before me lay the Lost Sea of Korus, while farther on I caught the shimmering ribbon of Iss, the River of Mystery, where it wound out from beneath the Golden Cliffs to empty into the Lost Sea of Korus, to which for countless ages had been borne the deluded and unhappy Martians of the outer world upon the voluntary pil- erimage to this false heaven. The plant men, with their blood- sucking hands, and the monstrous white apes that make Dor hideous by day, were hidden in their lairs for the night. : There was no longer a Holy Thern upon the balcony in the Golden Cliffs above the Iss to summon them with weird cry to the victims floating down to their maws upon the cold, broad bosom of ancient Iss. The navies of Helium and the First Born had cleared the fortresses and the temples of the therns when they had refused to surrender and accept the new ‘order of things that had swept their false religion from long-suffer- ing Mars, In a few isolated countries they still retained their age-old power: but Matai Shang, their hekkador, Father of Therns, had been driven from his temple. Strenuous had been our en- deavors to capture him; but with a few of the faithful he had escaped, and was in hiding — where we knew not. As I came cautiously to the edge of the low cliff overlooking the Lost Sea of Korus I saw Thurid pushing out upon the bosom of the shimmering water in a small skiff—one of those strangely wrought craft of unthink- able age which the Holy Therns, with their organization of priests and lesser therns. were wont to distribute along the banks of the Iss, that the long journey of their victims might | be facilitated. Drawn up upon the beach below me were a score of similar boats, each with its long pole, at one end of which was a pike, at the other a paddle. Thurid 9S OF MARS. 849 was hugging the shore, and as he passed out of sight round a near-by promontory I shoved one of the boats into the water and, calling Woola into it, pushed out from shore. The pursuit of Thurid carried me along the edge of the sea toward the mouth of the Iss. The farther moon lay close to the horizon, casting a dense shadow beneath the cliffs that fringed the water. Thuria, the nearer moon, had set, nor would it rise again for near four hours, so that I was insured concealing darkness for that length of time at least. On and on went the black warrior. Now he was opposite the mouth of the Iss. \Vithout an instant’s hesitation he turned up the grim river, paddling hard again the strong current. After him came Woola and I, closer now, for the man was too intent upon forcing his craft up the river to have any eyes for what might be transpiring behind him. He hugged the shore, out of the main channel, where the current was less strong. Presently he came to the dark, cav- ernowws portal in the face of the Golden Cliffs, through which the river poured. On into the Stygian darkness beyond he urged his craft. It seemed hopeless to attempt to fol- low him here where I could not see my hand before my face, and I was almost on the point of giving up the pursuit and drifting back to the mouth of the river, there to await his return, when a sudden bend showed a faint lumi- nosity ahead. My quarry was plainly visible again, and in the increasing light from the phosphorescent rock that lay embedded in great patches in the roughly arched roof of the cavern I had no difficulty in following him. It was my first trip upon the bosom of Iss, and the things I saw there will - live forever in my memory. Terrible as they were, they could not have commenced to approximate the horrible conditions which must have obtained before Tars Tarkas, the comicloooks.com