lf-hour behind us with no conception
of our direction. We had performed the miraculous and come through a
thousand dangers unscathed--we had escaped from the land of the First
Born. No other prisoners in all the ages of Barsoom had done this
thing, and now as I looked back upon it it did not seem to have been so
difficult after all.

I said as much to Xodar, over my shoulder.

"It is very wonderful, nevertheless," he replied. "No one else could
have accomplished it but John Carter."

At the sound of that name the boy jumped to his feet.

"John Carter!" he cried. "John Carter! Why, man, John Carter, Prince
of Helium, has been dead for years. I am his son."

CHAPTER XIV

THE EYES IN THE DARK

My son! I could not believe my ears. Slowly I rose and faced the
handsome youth. Now that I looked at him closely I commenced to see
why his face and personality had attracted me so strongly. There was
much of his mother's incomparable beauty in his clear-cut features, but
it was strongly masculine beauty, and his grey eyes and the expression
of them were mine.

The boy stood facing me, half hope and half uncertainty in his look.

"Tell me of your mother," I said. "Tell me all you can of the years
that I have been robbed by a relentless fate of her dear companionship."

With a cry of pleasure he sprang toward me and threw his arms about my
neck, and for a brief moment as I held my boy close to me the tears
welled to my eyes and I was like to have choked after the manner of
some maudlin fool--but I do not regret it, nor am I ashamed. A long
life has taught me that a man may seem weak where women and children
are concerned and yet be anything but a weakling in the sterner avenues
of life.

"Your stature, your manner, the terrible ferocity of your
swordsmanship," said the boy, "are as my mother has described them to
me a thousand times--but even with such evidence I could scarce credit
the truth of what seemed so improbable to me, however much I desired it
to be true. Do you know what thing it was that convinced me more than
all the others?"

"What, my boy?" I asked.

"Your first words to me--they were of my mother. None else but the man
who loved her as she has told me my father did would have thought first
of her."

"For long years, my son, I can scarce recall a moment that the radiant
vision of your mother's face has not been ever before me. Tell me of
her."

"Those who have known her longe