Back by the city of Kadabra lay a great fleet of mighty fliers—the
ships of Helium and Ptarth that I had saved from destruction earlier in
the day; but before ever I could reach them Thurid could easily make
good his escape.
As I ran I saw Matai Shang clambering up the swaying, swinging ladder
toward the deck, while above him leaned the evil face of the First
Born. A trailing rope from the vessel’s stern put new hope in me, for
if I could but reach it before it whipped too high above my head there
was yet a chance to gain the deck by its slender aid.
That there was something radically wrong with the flier was evident
from its lack of buoyancy, and the further fact that though Thurid had
turned twice to the starting lever the boat still hung motionless in
the air, except for a slight drifting with a low breeze from the north.
Now Matai Shang was close to the gunwale. A long, claw-like hand was
reaching up to grasp the metal rail.
Thurid leaned farther down toward his co-conspirator.
Suddenly a raised dagger gleamed in the upflung hand of the black. Down
it drove toward the white face of the Father of Therns. With a loud
shriek of fear the Holy Hekkador grasped frantically at that menacing
arm.
I was almost to the trailing rope by now. The craft was still rising
slowly, the while it drifted from me. Then I stumbled on the icy way,
striking my head upon a rock as I fell sprawling but an arm’s length
from the rope, the end of which was now just leaving the ground.
With the blow upon my head came unconsciousness.
It could not have been more than a few seconds that I lay senseless
there upon the northern ice, while all that was dearest to me drifted
farther from my reach in the clutches of that black fiend, for when I
opened my eyes Thurid and Matai Shang yet battled at the ladder’s top,
and the flier drifted but a hundred yards farther to the south—but the
end of the trailing rope was now a good thirty feet above the ground.
Goaded to madness by the cruel misfortune that had tripped me when
success was almost within my grasp, I tore frantically across the
intervening space, and just beneath the rope’s dangling end I put my
earthly muscles to the supreme test.
With a mighty, catlike bound I sprang upward toward that slender
strand—the only avenue which yet remained that could carry me to my
vanishing love.
A foot above its lowest end my fingers closed. Tightly as I clung I
felt the rope slipping, slipping through my grasp. I tried to raise my
free hand to take a second hold above my first, but the change of
position that resulted caused me to slip more rapidly toward the end of
the rope.
Slowly I felt the tantalizing thing escaping me. In a moment all that I
had gained would be lost—then my fingers reached a knot at the very end
of the rope and slipped no more.
With a prayer of gratitude upon my lips I scrambled upward toward the
boat’s deck. I could not see Thurid and Matai Shang now, but I heard
the sounds of conflict and thus knew that they still fought—the thern
for his life and the black for the increased buoyancy that relief from
the weight of even a single body would give the craft.
Should Matai Shang die before I reached the deck my chances of ever
reaching it would be slender indeed, for the black dator need but cut
the rope above me to be freed from me forever, for the vessel had
drifted across the brink of a chasm into whose yawning depths my body
would drop to be crushed to a shapeless pulp should Thurid reach the
rope now.
At last my hand closed upon the ship’s rail and that very instant a
horrid shriek rang out below me that sent my blood cold and turned my
horrified eyes downward to a shrieking, hurtling, twisting thing that
shot downward into the awful chasm beneath me.
It was Matai Shang, Holy Hekkador, Father of Therns, gone to his last
accounting.
Then my head came above the deck and I saw Thurid, dagger in hand,
leaping toward me. He was opposite the forward end of the cabin, while
I was attempting to clamber aboard near the vessel’s stern. But a few
paces lay between us. No power on earth could raise me to that deck
before the infuriated black would be upon me.
My end had come. I knew it; but had there been a doubt in my mind the
nasty leer of triumph upon that wicked face would have convinced me.
Beyond Thurid I could see my Dejah Thoris, wide-eyed and horrified,
struggling at her bonds. That she should be forced to witness my awful
death made my bitter fate seem doubly cruel.
I ceased my efforts to climb across the gunwale. Instead I took a firm
grasp upon the rail with my left hand and drew my dagger.