ugh narrowed lids. Was he commencing to suspect? And then
Kulan Tith told of the savage calot that fought beside me, and
after that I saw suspicion in the eyes of Matai Shang--or did I
but imagine it?

At the close of the audience Kulan Tith announced that he would
have me accompany him upon the way to meet his royal guest, and
as I departed with an officer who was to procure proper trappings
and a suitable mount for me, both Matai Shang and Thurid seemed most
sincere in professing their pleasure at having had an opportunity
to know me. It was with a sigh of relief that I quitted the chamber,
convinced that nothing more than a guilty conscience had prompted
my belief that either of my enemies suspected my true identity.

A half-hour later I rode out of the city gate with the column that
accompanied Kulan Tith upon the way to meet his friend and ally.
Though my eyes and ears had been wide open during my audience with
the jeddak and my various passages through the palace, I had seen
or heard nothing of Dejah Thoris or Thuvia of Ptarth. That they
must be somewhere within the great rambling edifice I was positive,
and I should have given much to have found a way to remain behind
during Kulan Tith's absence, that I might search for them.

Toward noon we came in touch with the head of the column we had
set out to meet.

It was a gorgeous train that accompanied the visiting jeddak, and
for miles it stretched along the wide, white road to Kaol. Mounted
troops, their trappings of jewel and metal-incrusted leather
glistening in the sunlight, formed the vanguard of the body, and
then came a thousand gorgeous chariots drawn by huge zitidars.

These low, commodious wagons moved two abreast, and on either side
of them marched solid ranks of mounted warriors, for in the chariots
were the women and children of the royal court. Upon the back
of each monster zitidar rode a Martian youth, and the whole scene
carried me back to my first days upon Barsoom, now twenty-two years
in the past, when I had first beheld the gorgeous spectacle of a
caravan of the green horde of Tharks.

Never before today had I seen zitidars in the service of red men.
These brutes are huge mastodonian animals that tower to an immense
height even beside the giant green men and their giant thoats;
but when compared to the relatively small red man and his breed
of thoats they assume Brobdingnagian proportions that are truly
appalling.

The beasts were