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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. "It was a close call," she said. "It has taught me two things though," I replied. "What?"
It must now be nearly sundown again. Come, we will go to some nearby window in the cliff and make sure." So saying, she led the way through winding corridors until at a sudden turn we came upon an opening which overlooked the Valley Dor. At our right the sun was setting, a huge red orb, below the western range of Otz. A little below us stood the Holy Thern on watch upon his balcony.
Once we passed far above what seemed to be a deep canyon-like rift stretching from the ice wall on the north across the valley as far as the eye could reach. "That is the bed of the River Iss," said Xodar. "It runs far beneath the ice field, and below the level of the Valley Otz, but its canyon is open here."
I have no stomach to narrate the monotonous events of the tedious days that Woola and I spent ferreting our way across the labyrinth of glass, through the dark and devious ways beyond that led beneath the Valley Dor and Golden Cliffs to emerge at last upon the flank of the Otz Mountains just above the Valley of Lost Souls that pitiful purgatory peopled by the poor unfortunates who dare not continue their abandoned pilgrimage to Dor, or return to the various lands of the outer world from whence they came.
At the upper end we came out into a small chamber, the walls of which were plank except for a single window overlooking the slopes of Otz and the Valley of Lost Souls beyond. Here the fellow tore frantically at what appeared to be but a piece of the blank wall opposite the single window.
If it could open to the red men the fair Valley Dor it would have accomplished much, and in the Land of Lost Souls between the Mountains of Otz and the ice barrier were many broad acres that needed no irrigation to bear rich harvests. Here at the bottom of a dying world was the only naturally productive area upon its surface.
Fighting similar to that which surrounded us could be heard in both directions as far as sound carried, and Thuvia told me that the attacks of the black pirates were usually made simultaneously along the entire ribbon-like domain of the therns, which circles the Valley Dor on the outer slopes of the Mountains of Otz.
They growled a little as they neared the man, but a few sharp words of command put them in their places. "How do you do it?" exclaimed Carthoris. "Your father once asked me that same question in the galleries of the Golden Cliffs within the Otz Mountains, beneath the temples of the therns. I could not answer him, nor can I answer you.
Only at the poles of Mars is there ice or snow upon the planet. No sign of life appeared below us. Evidently we were too far south even for the great fur-bearing animals which the Martians so delight in hunting. Xodar was at my side as I stood looking out over the ship's rail. "What course?" I asked him. "A little west of south," he replied. "You will see the Otz Valley directly.
As we advanced up the river which winds beneath the Golden Cliffs out of the bowels of the Mountains of Otz to mingle its dark waters with the grim and mysterious Iss the faint glow which had appeared before us grew gradually into an all-enveloping radiance.
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