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For the safety of our entrance upon Omean we depended largely upon the very boldness of it, believing that it would be some little time before the First Born on guard there would realize that it was an enemy and not their own returning fleet that was entering the vault of the buried sea. And such proved to be the case.
That his respect for me was greater than it should have been for a slave was quite apparent from the fact that during the balance of the return journey he walked or stood always behind me, a drawn short-sword in his hand. The return to the Sea of Omean was uneventful. We dropped down the awful shaft in the same car that had brought us to the surface.
"The fleet must have missed you," he said, "but it will return to Omean, and then that will be a very different matter for John Carter." "I do not know that the fleet has missed me as yet," I said, but of course he did not grasp my meaning, and only looked puzzled. "Many prisoners travel to Issus in your grim craft, Yersted?" I asked. "Very many," he assented.
In fact we reached the boat's side and were all aboard before the watch upon the battleship, aroused by the shots, detected us. Then an alarm gun bellowed from a ship's bow, its deep boom reverberating in deafening tones beneath the rocky dome of Omean. Instantly the sleeping thousands were awake.
The phosphorescent light you now see pervading this great subterranean vault emanates from the rocks that form its dome; it is always thus upon Omean, just as the billows are always as you see them rolling, ever rolling over a windless sea. "At the appointed hour of night upon the world above, the men whose duties hold them here sleep, but the light is ever the same."
Below us we could see the men leaping into the water by hundreds, and striking out for the small cruisers and one-man fliers that lay moored about the big ships. The larger craft were getting under way, following us rapidly, but not rising from the water. "A little to your right," cried Xodar, for there are no points of compass upon Omean where every direction is due north.
I found him in the prison of Shador, on the Sea of Omean, in the land of the First Born." "I know not any of these places, John Carter. Be they upon Barsoom?" "Upon and below, my friend; but wait until we shall have made good our escape, and you shall hear the strangest narrative that ever a Barsoomian of the outer world gave ear to.
Be the First Born gods or mortals, they are a powerful race, and we are as fast in their clutches as though we were already dead. There is no escape." "I have escaped from bad plights in the past, my friend," I replied; "nor while life is in me shall I despair of escaping from the Isle of Shador and the Sea of Omean." "But we cannot escape even from the four walls of our prison," urged Xodar.
Here we debated the wisdom of sinking the craft before leaving her, but finally decided that it would add nothing to our chances for escape. There were plenty of blacks on Omean to thwart us were we apprehended; however many more might come from the temples and gardens of Issus would not in any decrease our chances.
If favourable, he was to repair immediately to Thark and devote his time to the assembling of a great horde of green warriors whom it was our plan to send in transports directly to the Valley Dor and the Temple of Issus, while the fleet entered Omean and destroyed the vessels of the First Born.
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