Their way led directly towards the apparent source of the river at
the base of the cliffs, and as I neared this point I found the meadow
dotted with huge boulders that the ravages of time had evidently
dislodged from the towering crags above.
For this reason I came quite close to the cause of the disturbance
before the scene broke upon my horrified gaze. As I topped a great
boulder I saw the herd of plant men surrounding a little group of
perhaps five or six green men and women of Barsoom.
That I was indeed upon Mars I now had no doubt, for here were members
of the wild hordes that people the dead sea bottoms and deserted
cities of that dying planet.
Here were the great males towering in all the majesty of their
imposing height; here were the gleaming white tusks protruding
from their massive lower jaws to a point near the centre of their
foreheads, the laterally placed, protruding eyes with which they
could look forward or backward, or to either side without turning
their heads, here the strange antennae-like ears rising from the
tops of their foreheads; and the additional pair of arms extending
from midway between the shoulders and the hips.
Even without the glossy green hide and the metal ornaments which
denoted the tribes to which they belonged, I would have known
them on the instant for what they were, for where else in all the
universe is their like duplicated?
There were two men and four females in the party and their ornaments
denoted them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended
to puzzle me infinitely, since the various hordes of green men of
Barsoom are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never,
except on that single historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas
of Thark gathered a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from
several hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue
Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches of Than Kosis,
had I seen green Martians of different hordes associated in other
than mortal combat.
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