Thuvan Dihn saw it, too, and it carried the same message of hope
to us both. Only man could have placed that collar there, and as
no race of Martians of which we knew aught ever had attempted to
domesticate the ferocious apt, he must belong to a people of the
north of whose very existence we were ignorant--possibly to the
fabled yellow men of Barsoom; that once powerful race which was
supposed to be extinct, though sometimes, by theorists, thought
still to exist in the frozen north.
Simultaneously we started upon the trail of the great beast.
Woola was quickly made to understand our desires, so that it was
unnecessary to attempt to keep in sight of the animal whose swift
flight over the rough ground soon put him beyond our vision.
For the better part of two hours the trail paralleled the barrier,
and then suddenly turned toward it through the roughest and seemingly
most impassable country I ever had beheld.
Enormous granite boulders blocked the way on every hand; deep rifts
in the ice threatened to engulf us at the least misstep; and from
the north a slight breeze wafted to our nostrils an unspeakable
stench that almost choked us.
For another two hours we were occupied in traversing a few hundred
yards to the foot of the barrier.
Then, turning about the corner of a wall-like outcropping of granite,
we came upon a smooth area of two or three acres before the base
of the towering pile of ice and rock that had baffled us for days,
and before us beheld the dark and cavernous mouth of a cave.
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