the doing of it; but you shall read it
all in the notes I have been making during the last three months that I
have been back upon Earth.'

He patted a swelling portfolio that lay on the table at his elbow.

'I know that you are interested and that you believe, and I know that
the world, too, is interested, though they will not believe for many
years; yes, for many ages, since they cannot understand. Earth men
have not yet progressed to a point where they can comprehend the things
that I have written in those notes.

'Give them what you wish of it, what you think will not harm them, but
do not feel aggrieved if they laugh at you.'

That night I walked down to the cemetery with him. At the door of his
vault he turned and pressed my hand.

'Good-bye, nephew,' he said. 'I may never see you again, for I doubt
that I can ever bring myself to leave my wife and boy while they live,
and the span of life upon Barsoom is often more than a thousand years.'

He entered the vault. The great door swung slowly to. The ponderous
bolts grated into place. The lock clicked. I have never seen Captain
John Carter, of Virginia, since.

But here is the story of his return to Mars on that other occasion, as
I have gleaned it from the great mass of notes which he left for me
upon the table of his room in the hotel at Richmond.

There is much which I have left out; much which I have not dared to
tell; but you will find the story of his second search for Dejah
Thoris, Princess of Helium, even more remarkable than was his first
manuscript which I gave to an unbelieving world a short time since and
through which we followed the fighting Virginian across dead sea
bottoms under the moons of Mars.

E. R. B.

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER I

THE PLANT MEN

As I stood upon the bluff before my cottage on that cle