Dropping lightly after them I
drew them rapidly around the court in the shadows of the buildings,
and thus we returned over the same course I had so recently
followed from the distant boundary of the city.
We finally came upon my thoats in the courtyard where I had left
them, and placing the trappings upon them we hastened through the
building to the avenue beyond. Mounting, Sola upon one beast,
and Dejah Thoris behind me upon the other, we rode from the city
of Thark through the hills to the south.
Instead of circling back around the city to the northwest and toward
the nearest waterway which lay so short a distance from us, we
turned to the northeast and struck out upon the mossy waste across
which, for two hundred dangerous and weary miles, lay another main
artery leading to Helium.
No word was spoken until we had left the city far behind, but I
could hear the quiet sobbing of Dejah Thoris as she clung to me
with her dear head resting against my shoulder.
"If we make it, my chieftain, the debt of Helium will be a mighty
one; greater than she can ever pay you; and should we not make it,"
she continued, "the debt is no less, though Helium will never know,
for you have saved the last of our line from worse than death.
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