hat the damage was no worse, for now
he could at least move more rapidly than on foot.

But even this meagre satisfaction was soon to be denied him, for
presently the flier commenced to sag toward the port and by the bow.
The damage to the buoyancy tanks had evidently been more grievous
than he had at first believed.

All the balance of that long day Carthoris crawled erratically through
the still air, the bow of the flier sinking lower and lower, and
the list to port becoming more and more alarming, until at last,
near dark, he was floating almost bowdown, his harness buckled to
a heavy deck ring to keep him from being precipitated to the ground
below.

His forward movement was now confined to a slow drifting with the
gentle breeze that blew out of the south-east, and when this died
down with the setting of the sun, he let the flier sink gently to
the mossy carpet beneath.

Far before him loomed the mountains toward which the green man had
been fleeing when last he had seen him, and with dogged resolution
the son of John Carter, endowed with the indomitable will of his
mighty sire, took up the pursuit on foot.

All that night he forged ahead until, with the dawning of a new
day, he entered the low foothills that guard the approach to the
fastness of the mountains of Torquas.

Rugged, granitic walls towered before him. Nowhere could he discern
an opening through the formidable barrier; yet somewhere into this
inhospitable world of stone the green warrior had borne the woman
of the red man's heart's desire.

Across the yielding moss of the sea-bottom there had been no spoor
to follow, for the soft pads of the thoat but pressed down in his
swift passage the resilient vegetation which sprang up again behind
his fleeting feet, leaving no sign.

But here in the hills, where loose rock occasionally strewed the
way; where black loam and wild flowers partially replaced the sombre
monotony of the waste places of the lowlands, Carthoris hoped to
find some sign that would lead him in the right direction.

Yet, search as he would, the baffling mystery of the trail seemed
likely to remain for ever unsolved.

It was drawing toward the day's close once more when the keen eyes
of the Heliumite discerned the tawny yellow of a sleek hide moving
among the boulders several hundred yards to his left.

Crouching quickly behind a large rock, Carthoris watched the thing
before him. It was a huge banth, one of those savage Bars