Never in my life, that I can recall, have I suffered such an agony
of indecision. So much depended upon a correct choice; so much
depended upon haste.
The hours that I had already lost might seal the fate of the
incomparable Dejah Thoris were she not already dead--to sacrifice
other hours, and maybe days in a fruitless exploration of another
blind lead would unquestionably prove fatal.
Several times I essayed the right-hand entrance only to turn back
as though warned by some strange intuitive sense that this was not
the way. At last, convinced by the oft-recurring phenomenon, I
cast my all upon the left-hand archway; yet it was with a lingering
doubt that I turned a parting look at the sullen waters which
rolled, dark and forbidding, from beneath the grim, low archway on
the right.
And as I looked there came bobbing out upon the current from the
Stygian darkness of the interior the shell of one of the great,
succulent fruits of the sorapus tree.
I could scarce restrain a shout of elation as this silent, insensate
messenger floated past me, on toward the Iss and Korus, for it told
me that journeying Martians were above me on that very stream.
They had eaten of this marvelous fruit which nature concentrates
within the hard shell of the sorapus nut, and having eaten had
cast the husk overboard. It could have come from no others than
the party I sought.
Quickly I abandoned all thought of the left-hand passage, and a
moment later had turned into the right.
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