w me?"

"I am groping," replied Carthoris dryly.

"So the essence must be substance," continued Jav. "Komal is the
essence of the All, as it were. He is maintained by substance.
He eats. He eats the real. To be explicit, he eats the realists.
That is Tario's work.

"He says that inasmuch as we maintain that we alone are real we
should, to be consistent, admit that we alone are proper food for
Komal. Sometimes, as to-day, we find other food for him. He is
very fond of Torquasians."

"And Komal is a man?" asked Carthoris.

"He is All, I told you," replied Jav. "I know not how to explain
him in words that you will understand. He is the beginning and
the end. All life emanates from Komal, since the substance which
feeds the brain with imaginings radiates from the body of Komal.

"Should Komal cease to eat, all life upon Barsoom would cease to be.
He cannot die, but he might cease to eat, and, thus, to radiate."

"And he feeds upon the men and women of your belief?" cried Carthoris.

"Women!" exclaimed Jav. "There are no women in Lothar. The last
of the Lotharian females perished ages since, upon that cruel and
terrible journey across the muddy plains that fringed the half-dried
seas, when the green hordes scourged us across the world to this
our last hiding-place--our impregnable fortress of Lothar.

"Scarce twenty thousand men of all the countless millions of our
race lived to reach Lothar. Among us were no women and no children.
All these had perished by the way.

"As time went on, we, too, were dying and the race fast approaching
extinction, when the Great Truth was revealed to us, that mind is
all. Many more died before we perfected our powers, but at last
we were able to defy death when we fully understood that death was
merely a state of mind.

"Then came the creation of mind-people, or rather the materialization
of imaginings. We first put these to practical use when the
Torquasians discovered our retreat, and fortunate for us it was
that it required ages of search upon their part before they found
the single tiny entrance to the valley of Lothar.

"That day we threw our first bowmen against them. The intention
was purely to frighten them away by the vast numbers of bowmen which
we could muster upon our walls. All Lothar bristled with the bows
and arrows of our ethereal host.

"But the Torquasians did not frighten. They are lower than the
beasts--they know no fear. They rushed upon