"The
defendant has not been heard, nor has he had an opportunity to
call others in his behalf. In the name of the people of Helium I
demand fair and impartial treatment for the Prince of Helium."
A great cry arose from the audience then: "Justice! Justice!
Justice!" and Zat Arras dared not deny them.
"Speak, then," he snarled, turning to me; "but blaspheme not against
the things that are sacred upon Barsoom."
"Men of Helium," I cried, turning to the spectators, and speaking
over the heads of my judges, "how can John Carter expect justice
from the men of Zodanga? He cannot nor does he ask it. It is to
the men of Helium that he states his case; nor does he appeal for
mercy to any. It is not in his own cause that he speaks now--it is
in thine. In the cause of your wives and daughters, and of wives
and daughters yet unborn. It is to save them from the unthinkably
atrocious indignities that I have seen heaped upon the fair women
of Barsoom in the place men call the Temple of Issus. It is to save
them from the sucking embrace of the plant men, from the fangs of
the great white apes of Dor, from the cruel lust of the Holy Therns,
from all that the cold, dead Iss carries them to from homes of love
and life and happiness.
"Sits there no man here who does not know the history of John
Carter. How he came among you from another world and rose from a
prisoner among the green men, through torture and persecution, to
a place high among the highest of Barsoom.
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