A Princess of Mars Rethroned Read Free Page B

coward, for cowardice is of a surety its own
punishment.
    To be held
paralyzed, with one's back toward some horrible and unknown danger
from the very sound of which the ferocious Apache warriors turn in
wild stampede, as a flock of sheep would madly flee from a pack of
wolves, seems to me the last word in fearsome predicaments for a
woman who had ever been used to fighting for her life with all the
energy of a powerful physique.
    Several times I
thought I heard faint sounds behind me as of somebody moving
cautiously, but eventually even these ceased, and I was left to the
contemplation of my position without interruption. I could but
vaguely conjecture the cause of my paralysis, and my only hope lay
in that it might pass off as suddenly as it had fallen upon
me.
    Late in the
afternoon my horse, which had been standing with dragging rein
before the cave, started slowly down the trail, evidently in search
of food and water, and I was left alone with my mysterious unknown
companion and the dead body of my friend, which lay just within my
range of vision upon the ledge where I had placed it in the early
morning.
    From then until
possibly midnight all was silence, the silence of the dead; then,
suddenly, the awful moan of the morning broke upon my startled
ears, and there came again from the black shadows the sound of a
moving thing, and a faint rustling as of dead leaves. The shock to
my already overstrained nervous system was terrible in the extreme,
and with a superhuman effort I strove to break my awful bonds. It
was an effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves; not
muscular, for I could not move even so much as my little finger,
but none the less mighty for all that. And then something gave,
there was a momentary feeling of nausea, a sharp click as of the
snapping of a steel wire, and I stood with my back against the wall
of the cave facing my unknown foe.
    And then the
moonlight flooded the cave, and there before me lay my own body as
it had been lying all these hours, with the eyes staring toward the
open ledge and the hands resting limply upon the ground. I looked
first at my lifeless clay there upon the floor of the cave and then
down at myself in utter bewilderment; for there I lay clothed, and
yet here I stood but naked as at the minute of my birth.
    The transition
had been so sudden and so unexpected that it left me for a moment
forgetful of aught else than my strange metamorphosis. My first
thought was, is this then death! Have I indeed passed over forever
into that other life! But I could not well believe this, as I could
feel my heart pounding against my ribs from the exertion of my
efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me.
My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out
from every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching
revealed the fact that I was anything other than a
wraith.
    Again was I
suddenly recalled to my immediate surroundings by a repetition of
the weird moan from the depths of the cave. Naked and unarmed as I
was, I had no desire to face the unseen thing which menaced
me.
    My revolvers were
strapped to my lifeless body which, for some unfathomable reason, I
could not bring myself to touch. My carbine was in its boot,
strapped to my saddle, and as my horse had wandered off I was left
without means of defense. My only alternative seemed to lie in
flight and my decision was crystallized by a recurrence of the
rustling sound from the thing which now seemed, in the darkness of
the cave and to my distorted imagination, to be creeping stealthily
upon me.
    Unable longer to
resist the temptation to escape this horrible place I leaped
quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear Arizona
night. The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave acted as an
immediate tonic and I felt new life and new courage coursing
through me. Pausing upon the brink of the ledge I upbraided myself
for what now seemed to me wholly unwarranted apprehension.