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-CHAPTER VII CHILD-RAISING ON MARS
After a breakfast, which was an exact replica of the meal of the preceding day
and an index of practically every meal which followed while I was with the green
men of Mars, Sola escorted me to the plaza,
where I found the entire community engaged in watching or helping at the harnessing of
huge mastodonian animals to great three- wheeled chariots.
There were about two hundred and fifty of these vehicles, each drawn by a single
animal, any one of which, from their appearance, might easily have drawn the
entire wagon train when fully loaded.
The chariots themselves were large, commodious, and gorgeously decorated.
In each was seated a female Martian loaded with ornaments of metal, with jewels and
silks and furs, and upon the back of each of the beasts which drew the chariots was
perched a young Martian driver.
Like the animals upon which the warriors were mounted, the heavier draft animals
wore neither bit nor bridle, but were guided entirely by telepathic means.
This power is wonderfully developed in all Martians, and accounts largely for the
simplicity of their language and the relatively few spoken words exchanged even
in long conversations.
It is the universal language of Mars, through the medium of which the higher and
lower animals of this world of paradoxes are able to communicate to a greater or
less extent, depending upon the
intellectual sphere of the species and the development of the individual.
As the cavalcade took up the line of march in single file, Sola dragged me into an
empty chariot and we proceeded with the procession toward the point by which I had
entered the city the day before.
At the head of the caravan rode some two hundred warriors, five abreast, and a like
number brought up the rear, while twenty- five or thirty outriders flanked us on
either side.
Every one but myself--men, women, and children--were heavily armed, and at the
tail of each chariot trotted a Martian hound, my own beast following closely
behind ours; in fact, the faithful creature
never left me voluntarily during the entire ten years I spent on Mars.
Our way led out across the little valley before the city, through the hills, and
down into the dead sea bottom which I had traversed on my journey from the incubator
to the plaza.
The incubator, as it proved, was the terminal point of our journey this day,
and, as the entire cavalcade broke into a mad gallop as soon as we reached the level
expanse of sea bottom, we were soon within sight of our goal.
On reaching it the chariots were parked with military precision on the four sides
of the enclosure, and half a score of warriors, headed by the enormous chieftain,
and including Tars Tarkas and several other
lesser chiefs, dismounted and advanced toward it.
I could see Tars Tarkas explaining something to the principal chieftain, whose
name, by the way, was, as nearly as I can translate it into English, Lorquas Ptomel,
Jed; jed being his title.
I was soon appraised of the subject of their conversation, as, calling to Sola,
Tars Tarkas signed for her to send me to him.
I had by this time mastered the intricacies of walking under Martian conditions, and
quickly responding to his command I advanced to the side of the incubator where
the warriors stood.
As I reached their side a glance showed me that all but a very few eggs had hatched,
the incubator being fairly alive with the hideous little devils.
They ranged in height from three to four feet, and were moving restlessly about the
enclosure as though searching for food. As I came to a halt before him, Tars Tarkas
pointed over the incubator and said, "Sak."
I saw that he wanted me to repeat my performance of yesterday for the
edification of Lorquas Ptomel, and, as I must confess that my prowess gave me no
little satisfaction, I responded quickly,
leaping entirely over the parked chariots on the far side of the incubator.
As I returned, Lorquas Ptomel grunted something at me, and turning to his
warriors gave a few words of command relative to the incubator.
They paid no further attention to me and I was thus permitted to remain close and
watch their operations, which consisted in breaking an opening in the wall of the
incubator large enough to permit of the exit of the young Martians.
On either side of this opening the women and the younger Martians, both male and
female, formed two solid walls leading out through the chariots and quite away into
the plain beyond.
Between these walls the little Martians scampered, wild as deer; being permitted to
run the full length of the aisle, where they were captured one at a time by the
women and older children; the last in the
line capturing the first little one to reach the end of the gauntlet, her opposite
in the line capturing the second, and so on until all the little fellows had left the
enclosure and been appropriated by some youth or female.
As the women caught the young they fell out of line and returned to their respective
chariots, while those who fell into the hands of the young men were later turned
over to some of the women.
I saw that the ceremony, if it could be dignified by such a name, was over, and
seeking out Sola I found her in our chariot with a hideous little creature held tightly
in her arms.
The work of rearing young, green Martians consists solely in teaching them to talk,
and to use the weapons of warfare with which they are loaded down from the very
first year of their lives.
Coming from eggs in which they have lain for five years, the period of incubation,
they step forth into the world perfectly developed except in size.
Entirely unknown to their mothers, who, in turn, would have difficulty in pointing out
the fathers with any degree of accuracy, they are the common children of the
community, and their education devolves
upon the females who chance to capture them as they leave the incubator.
Their foster mothers may not even have had an egg in the incubator, as was the case
with Sola, who had not commenced to lay, until less than a year before she became
the mother of another woman's offspring.
But this counts for little among the green Martians, as parental and filial love is as
unknown to them as it is common among us.
I believe this horrible system which has been carried on for ages is the direct
cause of the loss of all the finer feelings and higher humanitarian instincts among
these poor creatures.
From birth they know no father or mother love, they know not the meaning of the word
home; they are taught that they are only suffered to live until they can demonstrate
by their physique and ferocity that they are fit to live.
Should they prove deformed or defective in any way they are promptly shot; nor do they
see a tear shed for a single one of the many cruel hardships they pass through from
earliest infancy.
I do not mean that the adult Martians are unnecessarily or intentionally cruel to the
young, but theirs is a hard and pitiless struggle for existence upon a dying planet,
the natural resources of which have
dwindled to a point where the support of each additional life means an added tax
upon the community into which it is thrown.
By careful selection they rear only the hardiest specimens of each species, and
with almost supernatural foresight they regulate the birth rate to merely offset
the loss by death.
Each adult Martian female brings forth about thirteen eggs each year, and those
which meet the size, weight, and specific gravity tests are hidden in the recesses of
some subterranean vault where the temperature is too low for incubation.
Every year these eggs are carefully examined by a council of twenty chieftains,
and all but about one hundred of the most perfect are destroyed out of each yearly
supply.
At the end of five years about five hundred almost perfect eggs have been chosen from
the thousands brought forth.
These are then placed in the almost air- tight incubators to be hatched by the sun's
rays after a period of another five years.
The hatching which we had witnessed today was a fairly representative event of its
kind, all but about one per cent of the eggs hatching in two days.
If the remaining eggs ever hatched we knew nothing of the fate of the little Martians.
They were not wanted, as their offspring might inherit and transmit the tendency to
prolonged incubation, and thus upset the system which has maintained for ages and
which permits the adult Martians to figure
the proper time for return to the incubators, almost to an hour.
The incubators are built in remote fastnesses, where there is little or no
likelihood of their being discovered by other tribes.
The result of such a catastrophe would mean no children in the community for another
five years. I was later to witness the results of the
discovery of an alien incubator.
The community of which the green Martians with whom my lot was cast formed a part was
composed of some thirty thousand souls.
They roamed an enormous tract of arid and semi-arid land between forty and eighty
degrees south latitude, and bounded on the east and west by two large fertile tracts.
Their headquarters lay in the southwest corner of this district, near the crossing
of two of the so-called Martian canals.
As the incubator had been placed far north of their own territory in a supposedly
uninhabited and unfrequented area, we had before us a tremendous journey, concerning
which I, of course, knew nothing.
After our return to the dead city I passed several days in comparative idleness.
On the day following our return all the warriors had ridden forth early in the
morning and had not returned until just before darkness fell.
As I later learned, they had been to the subterranean vaults in which the eggs were
kept and had transported them to the incubator, which they had then walled up
for another five years, and which, in all
probability, would not be visited again during that period.
The vaults which hid the eggs until they were ready for the incubator were located
many miles south of the incubator, and would be visited yearly by the council of
twenty chieftains.
Why they did not arrange to build their vaults and incubators nearer home has
always been a mystery to me, and, like many other Martian mysteries, unsolved and
unsolvable by earthly reasoning and customs.
Sola's duties were now doubled, as she was compelled to care for the young Martian as
well as for me, but neither one of us required much attention, and as we were
both about equally advanced in Martian
education, Sola took it upon herself to train us together.
Her prize consisted in a male about four feet tall, very strong and physically
perfect; also, he learned quickly, and we had considerable amusement, at least I did,
over the keen rivalry we displayed.
The Martian language, as I have said, is extremely simple, and in a week I could
make all my wants known and understand nearly everything that was said to me.
Likewise, under Sola's tutelage, I developed my telepathic powers so that I
shortly could sense practically everything that went on around me.
What surprised Sola most in me was that while I could catch telepathic messages
easily from others, and often when they were not intended for me, no one could read
a jot from my mind under any circumstances.
At first this vexed me, but later I was very glad of it, as it gave me an undoubted
advantage over the Martians.
CHAPTER VIII A FAIR CAPTIVE FROM THE SKY
The third day after the incubator ceremony we set forth toward home, but scarcely had
the head of the procession debouched into the open ground before the city than orders
were given for an immediate and hasty return.
As though trained for years in this particular evolution, the green Martians
melted like mist into the spacious doorways of the nearby buildings, until, in less
than three minutes, the entire cavalcade of
chariots, mastodons and mounted warriors was nowhere to be seen.
Sola and I had entered a building upon the front of the city, in fact, the same one in
which I had had my encounter with the apes, and, wishing to see what had caused the
sudden retreat, I mounted to an upper floor
and peered from the window out over the valley and the hills beyond; and there I
saw the cause of their sudden scurrying to cover.
A huge craft, long, low, and gray-painted, swung slowly over the crest of the nearest
hill.
Following it came another, and another, and another, until twenty of them, swinging low
above the ground, sailed slowly and majestically toward us.
Each carried a strange banner swung from stem to stern above the upper works, and
upon the prow of each was painted some odd device that gleamed in the sunlight and
showed plainly even at the distance at which we were from the vessels.
I could see figures crowding the forward decks and upper works of the air craft.
Whether they had discovered us or simply were looking at the deserted city I could
not say, but in any event they received a rude reception, for suddenly and without
warning the green Martian warriors fired a
terrific volley from the windows of the buildings facing the little valley across
which the great ships were so peacefully advancing.
Instantly the scene changed as by magic; the foremost vessel swung broadside toward
us, and bringing her guns into play returned our fire, at the same time moving
parallel to our front for a short distance
and then turning back with the evident intention of completing a great circle
which would bring her up to position once more opposite our firing line; the other
vessels followed in her wake, each one opening upon us as she swung into position.
Our own fire never diminished, and I doubt if twenty-five per cent of our shots went
wild.
It had never been given me to see such deadly accuracy of aim, and it seemed as
though a little figure on one of the craft dropped at the explosion of each bullet,
while the banners and upper works dissolved
in spurts of flame as the irresistible projectiles of our warriors mowed through
them.
The fire from the vessels was most ineffectual, owing, as I afterward learned,
to the unexpected suddenness of the first volley, which caught the ship's crews
entirely unprepared and the sighting
apparatus of the guns unprotected from the deadly aim of our warriors.
It seems that each green warrior has certain objective points for his fire under
relatively identical circumstances of warfare.
For example, a proportion of them, always the best marksmen, direct their fire
entirely upon the wireless finding and sighting apparatus of the big guns of an
attacking naval force; another detail
attends to the smaller guns in the same way; others pick off the gunners; still
others the officers; while certain other quotas concentrate their attention upon the
other members of the crew, upon the upper
works, and upon the steering gear and propellers.
Twenty minutes after the first volley the great fleet swung trailing off in the
direction from which it had first appeared.
Several of the craft were limping perceptibly, and seemed but barely under
the control of their depleted crews. Their fire had ceased entirely and all
their energies seemed focused upon escape.
Our warriors then rushed up to the roofs of the buildings which we occupied and
followed the retreating armada with a continuous fusillade of deadly fire.
One by one, however, the ships managed to dip below the crests of the outlying hills
until only one barely moving craft was in sight.
This had received the brunt of our fire and seemed to be entirely unmanned, as not a
moving figure was visible upon her decks.
Slowly she swung from her course, circling back toward us in an erratic and pitiful
manner.
Instantly the warriors ceased firing, for it was quite apparent that the vessel was
entirely helpless, and, far from being in a position to inflict harm upon us, she could
not even control herself sufficiently to escape.
As she neared the city the warriors rushed out upon the plain to meet her, but it was
evident that she still was too high for them to hope to reach her decks.
From my vantage point in the window I could see the bodies of her crew strewn about,
although I could not make out what manner of creatures they might be.
Not a sign of life was manifest upon her as she drifted slowly with the light breeze in
a southeasterly direction.
She was drifting some fifty feet above the ground, followed by all but some hundred of
the warriors who had been ordered back to the roofs to cover the possibility of a
return of the fleet, or of reinforcements.
It soon became evident that she would strike the face of the buildings about a
mile south of our position, and as I watched the progress of the chase I saw a
number of warriors gallop ahead, dismount
and enter the building she seemed destined to touch.
As the craft neared the building, and just before she struck, the Martian warriors
swarmed upon her from the windows, and with their great spears eased the shock of the
collision, and in a few moments they had
thrown out grappling hooks and the big boat was being hauled to ground by their fellows
below.
After making her fast, they swarmed the sides and searched the vessel from stem to
stern.
I could see them examining the dead sailors, evidently for signs of life, and
presently a party of them appeared from below dragging a little figure among them.
The creature was considerably less than half as tall as the green Martian warriors,
and from my balcony I could see that it walked erect upon two legs and surmised
that it was some new and strange Martian
monstrosity with which I had not as yet become acquainted.
They removed their prisoner to the ground and then commenced a systematic rifling of
the vessel.
This operation required several hours, during which time a number of the chariots
were requisitioned to transport the loot, which consisted in arms, ammunition, silks,
furs, jewels, strangely carved stone
vessels, and a quantity of solid foods and liquids, including many casks of water, the
first I had seen since my advent upon Mars.
After the last load had been removed the warriors made lines fast to the craft and
towed her far out into the valley in a southwesterly direction.
A few of them then boarded her and were busily engaged in what appeared, from my
distant position, as the emptying of the contents of various carboys upon the dead
bodies of the sailors and over the decks and works of the vessel.
This operation concluded, they hastily clambered over her sides, sliding down the
guy ropes to the ground.
The last warrior to leave the deck turned and threw something back upon the vessel,
waiting an instant to note the outcome of his act.
As a faint spurt of flame rose from the point where the missile struck he swung
over the side and was quickly upon the ground.
Scarcely had he alighted than the guy ropes were simultaneous released, and the great
warship, lightened by the removal of the loot, soared majestically into the air, her
decks and upper works a mass of roaring flames.
Slowly she drifted to the southeast, rising higher and higher as the flames ate away
her wooden parts and diminished the weight upon her.
Ascending to the roof of the building I watched her for hours, until finally she
was lost in the dim vistas of the distance.
The sight was awe-inspiring in the extreme as one contemplated this mighty floating
funeral pyre, drifting unguided and unmanned through the lonely wastes of the
Martian heavens; a derelict of death and
destruction, typifying the life story of these strange and ferocious creatures into
whose unfriendly hands fate had carried it. Much depressed, and, to me, unaccountably
so, I slowly descended to the street.
The scene I had witnessed seemed to mark the defeat and annihilation of the forces
of a kindred people, rather than the routing by our green warriors of a horde of
similar, though unfriendly, creatures.
I could not fathom the seeming hallucination, nor could I free myself from
it; but somewhere in the innermost recesses of my soul I felt a strange yearning toward
these unknown foemen, and a mighty hope
surged through me that the fleet would return and demand a reckoning from the
green warriors who had so ruthlessly and wantonly attacked it.
Close at my heel, in his now accustomed place, followed Woola, the hound, and as I
emerged upon the street Sola rushed up to me as though I had been the object of some
search on her part.
The cavalcade was returning to the plaza, the homeward march having been given up for
that day; nor, in fact, was it recommenced for more than a week, owing to the fear of
a return attack by the air craft.
Lorquas Ptomel was too astute an old warrior to be caught upon the open plains
with a caravan of chariots and children, and so we remained at the deserted city
until the danger seemed passed.
As Sola and I entered the plaza a sight met my eyes which filled my whole being with a
great surge of mingled hope, fear, exultation, and depression, and yet most
dominant was a subtle sense of relief and
happiness; for just as we neared the throng of Martians I caught a glimpse of the
prisoner from the battle craft who was being roughly dragged into a nearby
building by a couple of green Martian females.
And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every
detail to the earthly women of my past life.
She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of
the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine.
Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely
chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass
of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure.
Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of
her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely
enhancing effect.
She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed,
save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel
have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.
As her gaze rested on me her eyes opened wide in astonishment, and she made a little
sign with her free hand; a sign which I did not, of course, understand.
Just a moment we gazed upon each other, and then the look of hope and renewed courage
which had glorified her face as she discovered me, faded into one of utter
dejection, mingled with loathing and contempt.
I realized I had not answered her signal, and ignorant as I was of Martian customs,
I intuitively felt that she had made an appeal for succor and protection which my
unfortunate ignorance had prevented me from answering.
And then she was dragged out of my sight into the depths of the deserted edifice.