I asked of the girl.

For answer she pointed to the sky.

I looked, and there, above us, I saw shadowy bodies flitting hither and
thither high over temple, court, and garden.

Almost immediately flashes of light broke from these strange objects.
There was a roar of musketry, and then answering flashes and roars from
temple and rampart.

"The black pirates of Barsoom, O Prince," said Thuvia.

In great circles the air craft of the marauders swept lower and lower
toward the defending forces of the therns.

Volley after volley they vomited upon the temple guards; volley on
volley crashed through the thin air toward the fleeting and illusive
fliers.

As the pirates swooped closer toward the ground, thern soldiery poured
from the temples into the gardens and courts. The sight of them in the
open brought a score of fliers darting toward us from all directions.

The therns fired upon them through shields affixed to their rifles, but
on, steadily on, came the grim, black craft. They were small fliers
for the most part, built for two to three men. A few larger ones there
were, but these kept high aloft dropping bombs upon the temples from
their keel batteries.

At length, with a concerted rush, evidently in response to a signal of
command, the pirates in our immediate vicinity dashed recklessly to the
ground in the very midst of the thern soldiery.

Scarcely waiting for their craft to touch, the creatures manning them
leaped among the therns with the fury of demons. Such fighting! Never
had I witnessed its like before. I had thought the green Martians the
most ferocious warriors in the universe, but the awful abandon with
which the black pirates threw themselves upon their foes transcended
everything I ever before had seen.

Beneath the brilliant light of Mars' two glorious moons the whole scene
presented itself in vivid distinctness. The golden-haired,
white-skinned therns battling with desperate courage in hand-to-hand
conflict with their ebony-skinned foemen.

Here a little knot of struggling warriors trampled a bed of gorgeous
pimalia; there the curved sword of a black man found the heart of a
thern and left its dead foeman at the foot of a wondrous statue carved
from a living ruby; yonder a dozen therns pressed a single pirate back
upon a bench of emerald, upon whose iridescent surface a strangely
beautiful Barsoomian design was traced out in inlaid diamonds.

A little to one side stood Thuvia, the Th