"Why, no," insisted Yersted. "It cannot have been upward of three
hundred and seventy or eighty days."
A great light burst upon me. How stupid I had been! I could
scarcely retain an outward exhibition of my great joy. Why had I
forgotten the great difference in the length of Martian and Earthly
years! The ten Earth years I had spent upon Barsoom had encompassed
but five years and ninety-six days of Martian time, whose days
are forty-one minutes longer than ours, and whose years number six
hundred and eighty-seven days.
I am in time! I am in time! The words surged through my brain
again and again, until at last I must have voiced them audibly,
for Yersted shook his head.
"In time to save your Princess?" he asked, and then without waiting
for my reply, "No, John Carter, Issus will not give up her own.
She knows that you are coming, and ere ever a vandal foot is set
within the precincts of the Temple of Issus, if such a calamity
should befall, Dejah Thoris will be put away for ever from the last
faint hope of rescue."
"You mean that she will be killed merely to thwart me?" I asked.
"Not that, other than as a last resort," he replied. "Hast ever
heard of the Temple of the Sun? It is there that they will put
her. It lies far within the inner court of the Temple of Issus,
a little temple that raises a thin spire far above the spires and
minarets of the great temple that surrounds it.
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