Her
buoyancy tanks leaked badly. Her engine would not start. We were
helpless there in mid air above the arctic ice.
The craft had drifted across the chasm which held the corpses of
Matai Shang, Thurid, and Phaidor, and now hung above a low hill.
Opening the buoyancy escape valves I permitted her to come slowly
to the ground, and as she touched, Dejah Thoris and I stepped from
her deck and, hand in hand, turned back across the frozen waste
toward the city of Kadabra.
Through the tunnel that had led me in pursuit of them we passed,
walking slowly, for we had much to say to each other.
She told me of that last terrible moment months before when the
door of her prison cell within the Temple of the Sun was slowly
closing between us. Of how Phaidor had sprung upon her with
uplifted dagger, and of Thuvia's shriek as she had realized the
foul intention of the thern goddess.
It had been that cry that had rung in my ears all the long, weary
months that I had been left in cruel doubt as to my princess' fate;
for I had not known that Thuvia had wrested the blade from the
daughter of Matai Shang before it had touched either Dejah Thoris
or herself.
She told me, too, of the awful eternity of her imprisonment. Of
the cruel hatred of Phaidor, and the tender love of Thuvia, and
of how even when despair was the darkest those two red girls had
clung to the same hope and belief--that John Carter would find a
way to release them.
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