Эдгар Райс Берроуз (Edgar Rice Burroughs)The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gods of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
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Title: The Gods of Mars
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Illustrator: Frank E. Schoonover
Release Date: July 14, 2009 [EBook #29405]
[Last updated: May 17, 2012]
Language: English
Thanks to Al Haines, based on the
non-illustrated version, at
www.gutenberg.org/etext/64
THE GODS OF MARS
BY
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
AUTHOR OF TARZAN OF THE APES, A PRINCESS OF MARS, Etc.
FRONTISPIECE BY FRANK E. SCHOONOVER
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. Published September, 1918
| CHAPTER | |
| I. | The Plant Men |
| II. | A Forest Battle |
| III. | The Chamber of Mystery |
| IV. | Thuvia |
| V. | Corridors of Peril |
| VI. | The Black Pirates of Barsoom |
| VII. | A Fair Goddess |
| VIII. | The Depths of Omean |
| IX. | Issus, Goddess of Life Eternal |
| X. | The Prison Isle of Shador |
| XI. | When Hell Broke Loose |
| XII. | Doomed to Die |
| XIII. | A Break for Liberty |
| XIV. | The Eyes in the Dark |
| XV. | Flight and Pursuit |
| XVI. | Under Arrest |
| XVII. | The Death Sentence |
| XVIII. | Sola's Story |
| XIX. | Black Despair |
| XX. | The Air Battle |
| XXI. | Through Flood and Flame |
| XXII. | Victory and Defeat |
FOREWORD
Twelve years had passed since I had laid the body of my great-uncle, Captain John Carter, of Virginia, away from the sight of men in that strange mausoleum in the old cemetery at Richmond.
Often had I pondered on the odd instructions he had left me governing the construction of his mighty tomb, and especially those parts which directed that he be laid in an open casket and that the ponderous mechanism which controlled the bolts of the vault's huge door be accessible only from the inside.
Twelve years had passed since I had read the remarkable manuscript of this remarkable man; this man who remembered no childhood and who could not even offer a vague guess as to his age; who was always young and yet who had dandled my grandfather's great-grandfather upon his knee; this man who had spent ten years upon the planet Mars; who had fought for the green men of Barsoom and fought against them; who had fought for and against the red men and who had won the ever beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, for his wife, and for nearly ten years had been a prince of the house of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium.
Twelve years had passed since his body had been found upon the bluff before his cottage overlooking the Hudson, and oft-times during these long years I had wondered if John Carter were really dead, or if he again roamed the dead sea bottoms of that dying planet; if he had returned to Barsoom to find that he had opened the frowning portals of the mighty atmosphere plant in time to save the countless millions who were dying of asphyxiation on that far-gone day that had seen him hurtled ruthlessly through forty-eight million miles of space back to Earth once more. I had wondered if he had found his black-haired Princess and the slender son he had dreamed was with her in the royal gardens of Tardos Mors, awaiting his return.