I had thought the green
Martians the most ferocious warriors in the universe, but the awful
abandon with which the black pirates threw themselves upon their
foes transcended everything I ever before had seen.
Beneath the brilliant light of Mars' two glorious moons the whole
scene presented itself in vivid distinctness. The golden-haired,
white-skinned therns battling with desperate courage in hand-to-hand
conflict with their ebony-skinned foemen.
Here a little knot of struggling warriors trampled a bed of gorgeous
pimalia; there the curved sword of a black man found the heart of
a thern and left its dead foeman at the foot of a wondrous statue
carved from a living ruby; yonder a dozen therns pressed a single
pirate back upon a bench of emerald, upon whose iridescent surface
a strangely beautiful Barsoomian design was traced out in inlaid
diamonds.
A little to one side stood Thuvia, the Thark, and I. The tide of
battle had not reached us, but the fighters from time to time swung
close enough that we might distinctly note them.
The black pirates interested me immensely. I had heard vague
rumours, little more than legends they were, during my former life
on Mars; but never had I seen them, nor talked with one who had.
They were popularly supposed to inhabit the lesser moon, from which
they descended upon Barsoom at long intervals. Where they visited
they wrought the most horrible atrocities, and when they left
carried away with them firearms and ammunition, and young girls
as prisoners.
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