CHAPTER TWELVE
_RETREAT TO DEIMOS_
Still the Bewildering Strains of the music came to our ears, and yet westood there unperceived, though in the full glare of the chandelier.
The girl's face was presented in profile. It was exquisite in beauty,pale, delicate with a certain pleading sadness which stirred us to theheart.
An element of romance and a touch of personal interest such as we hadnot looked for suddenly entered into our adventure.
Colonel Smith's mind still ran back to the perils of the plains.
"She is a prisoner," he said, "and by the Seven Devils of Dona Ana we'llnot leave her here. But where are the hellhounds themselves?"
Our attention had been so absorbed by the sight of the girl that we hadscarcely thought of looking to see if there was any one else in theroom.
Glancing beyond her, I now perceived sitting in richly decorated chairsthree or four gigantic Martians. They were listening to the music as ifcharmed.
The whole story told itself. This girl, if not their slave, was at anyrate under their control, and she was furnishing entertainment for themby her musical skill. The fact that they could find pleasure in music sobeautiful was, perhaps, an indication that they were not really assavage as they seemed.
Yet our hearts went out to the girl, and were turned against them withan uncontrollable hatred.
They were of the same remorseless race with those who had so lately lainwaste our fair earth and who would have completed its destruction hadnot Providence interferred in our behalf.
Singularly enough, although we stood full in the light, they had not yetseen us.
Suddenly the girl, moved by what impulse I know not, turned her face inour direction. Her eyes fell upon us. She paused abruptly in herplaying, and her instrument dropped to the floor. Then she uttered acry, and with extended arms ran toward us.
But when she was near she stopped abruptly, the glad look fading fromher face, and started back with terror-stricken eyes, as if, after all,she had found us not what she expected.
Then for an instant she looked more intently at us, her countenancecleared once more, and, overcome by some strange emotion, her eyesfilled with tears, and, drawing a little nearer, she stretched forth herhands to us appealingly.
Meanwhile the Martians had started to their feet. They looked down uponus in astonishment. We were like pygmies to them; like little gnomeswhich had sprung out of the ground at their feet.
One of the giants seized some kind of a weapon and started forward witha threatening gesture.
The girl sprang to my side and grasped my arm with a cry of fear.
This seemed to throw the Martian into a sudden frenzy, and he raised hisarms to strike.
But the disintegrator was in my hand.
My rage was equal to his.
I felt the concentrated vengeance of the earth quivering through me as Ipressed the button of the disintegrator and, sweeping it rapidly up anddown, saw the gigantic form that confronted me melt into nothingness.
There were three other giants in the room, and they had been on thepoint of following up the attack of their comrade. But when hedisappeared from before their eyes, they paused, staring in amazement atthe place where, but a moment before, he had stood, but where now onlythe metal weapon he had wielded lay on the floor.
At first they started back, and seemed on the point of fleeing; then,with a second glance, perceiving again how small and insignificant wewere, all three together advanced upon us.
The girl sank trembling on her knees.
In the meantime I had readjusted my disintegrator for another discharge,and Colonel Smith stood by me with the light of battle upon his face.
"Sweep the discharge across the three," I exclaimed. "Otherwise therewill be one left and before we can fire again he will crush us."
The whirr of the two instruments sounded simultaneously, and with aquick horizontal motion we swept the lines of force around in such amanner that all three of the Martians were caught by the vibratorystreams and actually cut in two.
Long gaps were opened in the wall of the room behind them, where thedestroying currents had passed, for with wrathful fierceness, we had ranthe vibrations through half a gamut on the index.
The victory was ours. There were no other enemies, that we could see, inthe house.
Yet at any moment others might make their appearance, and what more wedid must be done quickly.
The girl evidently was as much amazed as the Martians had been by theeffects which we had produced. Still she was not terrified, andcontinued to cling to us and glance beseechingly into our faces,expressing in her every look and gesture the fact that she knew we wereof her own race.
But clearly she could not speak our tongue, for the words she utteredwere unintelligible.
Colonel Smith, whose long experience in Indian warfare had made himintensely practical, did not lose his military instincts, even in themidst of events so strange.
"It occurs to me," he said, "that we have got a chance at the enemies'supplies. Suppose we begin foraging right here. Let's see if this girlcan't show us the commissary department."
He immediately began to make signs to the girl to indicate that he washungry.
A look of comprehension flitted over her features, and, seizing ourhands, she led us into an adjoining apartment, and pointed to a numberof metallic boxes.
One of these she opened, taking out of it a kind of cake, which sheplaced between her teeth, breaking off a very small portion and thenhanding it to us, motioning that we should eat, but at the same timeshowing us that we ought to take only a small quantity.
"Thank God! It's compressed food," said Colonel Smith. "I thought theseMartians with their wonderful civilization would be up to that. And it'smighty lucky for us, because, without overburdening ourselves, if we canfind one or two more caches like this we shall be able to reprovisionthe entire fleet. But we must get reinforcements before we can takepossession of the fodder."
Accordingly we hurried out into the night, passed into the roadway, and,taking the girl with us, ran as rapidly as possible to the foot of thetree where we had made our descent. Then we signalled to the electricship to drop down to the level of the ground.
This was quickly done, the girl was taken aboard, and a dozen men, underour guidance, hastened back to the house, where we loaded ourselves withthe compressed provisions and conveyed them to the ship.
On this second trip to the mysterious house we had discovered anotherapartment containing a very large number of the metallic boxes, filledwith compressed food.
"By Jove, it is a storehouse," said Colonel Smith. "We must get moreforce and carry it all off. Gracious, but this is a lucky night. We canreprovision the whole fleet from this room."
"I thought it singular," I said, "that with the exception of the girlwhom we have rescued no women were seen in the house. Evidently thelights over yonder indicate the location of a considerable town, and itis quite probable that this building, without windows, and so stronglyconstructed, is the common storehouse, where the provisions for the townare kept. The fellows we killed must have been the watchmen in charge ofthe storehouse, and they were treating themselves to a little music fromthe slave girl when we happened to come upon them."
With the utmost haste several of the other electrical ships, waitingabove the cloud curtain, were summoned to descend, and, with more than ahundred men, we returned to the building, and this time almost entirelyexhausted its stores, each man carrying as much as he could staggerunder.
Fortunately our proceedings had been conducted without much noise, andthe storehouse being situated at a considerable distance from otherbuildings, none of the Martians, except those who would never tell thestory, had known of our arrival or of our doings on the planet.
"Now, we'll return and surprise Edison with the news," said ColonelSmith.
Our ship was the last to pass up through the clouds, and it was astrange sight to watch the others as one after
another they rose towardthe great dome, entered it, though from below it resembled a solid vaultof grayish-pink marble, and disappeared.
We quickly followed them, and having penetrated the enormous curtain,were considerably surprised on emerging at the other side to find thatthe sun was shining brilliantly upon us. It will be remembered that itwas night on this side of Mars when we went down, but our adventure hadoccupied several hours, and now Mars had so turned upon its axis thatthe portion of its surface over which we were had come around into thesunlight.
We knew that the squadron which we had left besieging the Lake of theSun must also have been carried around in a similar manner, passing intothe night while the side of the planet where we were was emerging intoday.
Our shortest way back would be by traveling westward, because then weshould be moving in a direction opposite to that in which the planetrotated, and the main squadron, sharing that rotation, would becontinually moving in our direction.
But to travel westward was to penetrate once more into the night side ofthe planet.
The prows, if I may so call them, of our ships were accordingly turnedin the direction of the vast shadow which Mars was invisibly projectinginto space behind it, and on entering that shadow the sun disappearedfrom our eyes, and once more the huge hidden globe beneath us became ablack chasm among the stars.
Now that we were in the neighborhood of a globe capable of impartingconsiderable weight to all things under the influence of its attractionthat peculiar condition which I have before described as existing in themidst of space, where there was neither up nor down for us, had ceased.Here where we had weight "up" and "down" had resumed their old meanings."Down" was toward the center of Mars, and "up" was away from thatcenter.
Standing on the deck, and looking overhead as we swiftly ploughed oursmooth way at a great height through the now imperceptible atmosphere ofthe planet, I saw the two moons of Mars meeting in the sky exactly aboveus.
Before our arrival at Mars, there had been considerable discussion amongthe learned men as to the advisability of touching at one of theirmoons, and when the discovery was made that our provisions were nearlyexhausted, it had been suggested that the Martian satellites mightfurnish us with an additional supply.
But it had appeared a sufficient reply to this suggestion that the moonsof Mars are both insignificant bodies, not much larger than the asteroidwe had fallen in with, and that there could not possibly be any form ofvegetation or other edible products upon them.
This view having prevailed, we had ceased to take an interest in thesatellites, further than to regard them as objects of great curiosity onaccount of their motions.
The nearer of these moons, Phobos, is only 3,700 miles from the surfaceof Mars, and we watched it traveling around the planet three times inthe course of every day. The more distant one, Deimos, 12,500 milesaway, required considerably more than one day to make its circuit.
It now happened that the two had come into conjunction, as I have said,just over our heads, and, throwing myself down on my back on the deck ofthe electrical ship, for a long time I watched the race between the twosatellites, until Phobos, rapidly gaining upon the other, had left itsrival far behind.
Suddenly Colonel Smith, who took very little interest in theseastronomical curiosities, touched me, and pointing ahead, said:
"There they are."
I looked, and sure enough there were the signal lights of the principalsquadron, and as we gazed we occasionally saw, darting up from the vastcloud mass beneath, an electric bayonet, fiercely thrust into the sky,which showed that the siege was still actively going on, and that theMartians were jabbing away at their invisible enemies outside thecurtain.
In a short time the two fleets had joined, and Colonel Smith and Iimmediately transferred ourselves to the flagship.
"Well, what have you done?" asked Mr. Edison, while others crowdedaround with eager attention.
"If we have not captured their provision train," said Colonel Smith, "wehave done something just about as good. We have foraged on the country,and have collected a supply that I reckon will last this fleet for atleast a month."
"What's that? What's that?"
"It's just what I say," and Colonel Smith brought out of his pocket oneof the square cakes of compressed food. "Set your teeth in that, and seewhat you think of it, but don't take too much, for its powerful strong."
"I say," he continued, "we have got enough of that stuff to last us allfor a month, but we've done more than that; we have got a surprise foryou that will make you open your eyes. Just wait a minute."
Colonel Smith made a signal to the electrical ship which we had justquitted to draw near. It came alongside, so that one could step from itsdeck onto the flagship. Colonel Smith disappeared for a minute in theinterior of his ship, then re-emerged, leading the girl whom we hadfound upon the planet.
"Take her inside, quick," he said, "for she is not used to this thinair."
In fact, we were at so great an elevation that the rarity of theatmosphere now compelled us all to wear our air-tight suits, and thegirl, not being thus attired, would have fallen unconscious on the deckif we had not instantly removed her to the interior of the car.
There she quickly recovered from the effects of the deprivation of airand looked about her, pale, astonished, but yet apparently without fear.
Every motion of this girl convinced me that she not only recognized usas members of her own race, but that she felt that her only hope lay inour aid. Therefore, strange as we were to her in many respects,nevertheless she did not think that she was in danger while among us.
The circumstances under which we had found her were quickly explained.Her beauty, her strange fate and the impenetrable mystery whichsurrounded her excited universal admiration and wonder.
"How did she get on Mars?" was the question that everybody asked, andthat nobody could answer.
But while all were crowding around and overwhelming the poor girl withtheir staring, suddenly she burst into tears, and then, with armsoutstretched in the same appealing manner which had so stirred oursympathies when we first saw her in the house of the Martians, she brokeforth in a wild recitation, which was half a song and half a wail.
As she went on I noticed that a learned professor of languages from theUniversity of Heidelberg was listening to her with intense attention.Several times he appeared to be on the point of breaking in with anexclamation. I could plainly see that he was becoming more and moreexcited as the words poured from the girl's lips. Occasionally he noddedand muttered, smiling to himself.
Her song finished, the girl sank half-exhausted upon the floor. She waslifted and placed in a reclining position at the side of the car.
Then the Heidelberg professor stepped to the center of the car, in thesight of all, and in a most impressive manner said:
"Gentlemen, our sister.
"I have her tongue recognized! The language that she speaks, the rootsof the great Indo-European, or Aryan stock, contains.
"This girl, gentlemen, to the oldest family of the human race belongs.Her language every tongue that now upon the earth is spoken antedates.Convinced am I that it that great original speech is from which have allthe languages of the civilized world sprung.
"How she here came, so many millions of miles from the earth, a greatmystery is. But it shall be penetrated, and it is from her own lips thatwe shall the truth learn, because not difficult to us shall it be thelanguage that she speaks to acquire since to our own it is akin."
This announcement of the Heidelberg professor stirred us all mostprofoundly. It not only deepened our interest in the beautiful girl whomwe had rescued, but, in a dim way, it gave us reason to hope that weshould yet discover some means of mastering the Martians by dealing thema blow from within.
It had been expected, the reader will remember, that the Martian whom wehad made prisoner on the asteroid, might be of use to us in a similarway, and for that reason great efforts had been made to acquire hislanguage, and co
nsiderable progress had been effected in that direction.
But from the moment of our arrival at Mars itself, and especially afterthe battles began, the prisoner had resumed his savage anduncommunicative disposition, and had seemed continually to be expectingthat we would fall victims to the prowess of his fellow beings, and thathe would be released. How an outlaw, such as he evidently was, who hadbeen caught in the act of robbing the Martian gold mines, could expectto escape punishment on returning to his native planet it was difficultto see. Nevertheless, so strong are the ties of race we could plainlyperceive that all his sympathies were for his own people.
In fact, in consequence of his surly manner, and his attempts to escape,he had been more strictly bound than before and to get him out of theway had been removed from the flagship, which was already overcrowded,and placed in one of the other electric ships, and this ship--as ithappened--was one of those which were lost in the great battle beneaththe clouds. So after all, the Martian had perished, by a vengeful strokelaunched from his native globe.
But Providence had placed in our hands a far better interpreter than hecould ever have been. This girl of our own race would need no urging, orcoercion, on our part in order to induce her to reveal any secrets ofthe Martians that might be useful in our further proceedings.
But one thing was first necessary to be done.
We must learn to talk with her.
But for the discovery of the store of provisions it would have beenimpossible for us to spare the time needed to acquire the language ofthe girl, but now that we had been saved from the danger of starvation,we could prolong the siege for several weeks, employing the interveningtime to the best advantage.
The terrible disaster which we had suffered in the great battle abovethe Lake of the Sun, wherein we had lost nearly a third of our entireforce, had been quite sufficient to convince us that our only hope ofvictory lay in dealing the Martians some paralyzing stroke that at oneblow would deprive them of the power of resistance. A victory that costus the loss of a single ship would be too dearly purchased now.
How to deal that blow, and first of all, how to discover the means ofdealing it, were at present the uppermost problems in our minds.
The only hope for us lay in the girl.
If, as there was every reason to believe, she was familiar with the waysand secrets of the Martians, then she might be able to direct ourefforts in such a manner as to render them effective.
"We can spare two weeks for this," said Mr. Edison. "Can you fellows ofmany tongues learn to talk with the girl in that time?"
"We'll try it," said several.
"It shall we do," cried the Heidelberg professor more confidently.
"Then there is no use of staying here," continued the commander. "If wewithdraw the Martians will think that we have either given up theearth's moon, always keep the same face toward their master. By blanketand let us see their face once more. That will give us a betteropportunity to strike effectively when we are again ready."
"Why not rendezvous at one of the moons?" said an astronomer. "Neitherof the two moons is of much consequence, as far as size goes, but stillit would serve as sort of an anchorage ground, and while there, if wewere careful to keep on the side away from Mars, we should escapedetection."
This suggestion was immediately accepted, and the squadron having beensignalled to assemble quickly bore off in the direction of the moredistant moon of Mars, Deimos. We knew that it was slightly smaller thanPhobos, but its greater distance gave promise that it would better serveour purpose of temporary concealment. The moons of Mars, like theearth's moon, always kept the same face toward their master. By hidingbehind Deimos we should escape the prying eyes of the Martians, evenwhen they employed telescopes, and thus be able to remain comparativelyclose at hand, ready to pounce down upon them again, after we hadobtained, as we now had good hope of doing, information that would makeus masters of the situation.