"I suppose you think he'll last for ever, like so much land'," Del
Mar smiled quietly.
The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, re- volves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world.
Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.
"Aside from seeing you, which is my principal reason for being here, and satisfying myself that I can transport inanimate things from Mars to Earth, and therefore animate things if I so desire, I have no purpose.
"A daughter," he replied, "only a little younger than Carthoris, and, barring one, the fairest thing that ever breathed the thin air of dying Mars. Only Dejah Thoris, her mother, could be more beautiful than Tara of Helium."
Mars Tom, I's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable, but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I's gwyne to LEAVE, dat's SHORE."
"I k'n stan' DEM, Mars Tom, but blame' 'f I couldn' get along widout um, I tell you dat.
I found that I must learn to walk all over again, as the muscular exertion which carried me easily and safely upon Earth played strange antics with me upon
Mars.
Or was he really dead after all, never to return either to his mother Earth or his beloved
Mars?
Meanwhile the bard began to sing the loves of
Mars and Venus, and how they first began their intrigue in the house of Vulcan.
Nothing that the coloured people possess is too good for the son of "old
Mars' Tom," who will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place who knew directly or indirectly of "old
Mars' Tom."
The chiefs disposed their men this way and that before the fight began, drafting them out as easily as goatherds draft their flocks when they have got mixed while feeding; and among them went King Agamemnon, with a head and face like Jove the lord of thunder, a waist like
Mars, and a chest like that of Neptune.
