Instead of approaching, the fellow merely stood and stared. His eyes were bulging and his jaw was dropped. And then another savage face appeared, and a third and fourth and fifth. They craned their necks over the shoulders of their fellows whom they could not pass upon the narrow ledge. Each face was the picture of awe and fear but I could not see why.
Suddenly a low but distinct moaning sound issued from the recesses of the cave behind me. As it reached the ears of the Indians, they turned and fled in terror, panic-stricken. Their wild cries echoed in the canyon for a short time, and then all was still once more.
The sound did not repeat but it was sufficient for me to speculate on the possible horror, which lurked in the shadows at my back. Several times I thought I heard faint sounds behind me as of somebody moving cautiously, but eventually even these ceased. I could only vaguely conjecture the cause of my paralysis. My only hope was that it might pass off as suddenly as it fell upon me.
Late in the afternoon, my horse started slowly down the trail in search of food and water. I was alone with my mysterious unknown companion and the dead body of my friend.
From then until possibly midnight all was silence, the silence of the dead[10]. Suddenly, I heard the awful moan of the morning. The sound of a moving thing came again from the black shadow. The shock to my already overstrained nervous system[11] was terrible. With a superhuman effort I strove to break my awful bonds. It was an effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves. And then, something gave and I stood with my back against the wall of the cave.
The moonlight flooded the cave and I saw my own body lying on the floor. My eyes were staring toward the open ledge and the hands were resting limply upon the ground. I lay clothed, and yet here I stood naked as at the minute of my birth.
The transition was so sudden and so unexpected that I forgot anything else than my strange metamorphosis. My first thought was, is this death? But I could not believe this because I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs. My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out from every pore of my body. Definitely, I was anything other than a ghost.
Suddenly, the weird moan from the depths of the cave repeated. I was naked and unarmed and I had no desire to face the unseen thing which menaced me. I could no longer resist the temptation to escape this horrible place. I leaped quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear Arizona night.
The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave made me feel new life and new courage coursing through me. The fact, that I lay helpless for many hours within the cave and nothing molested me, convinced me those noises might resulted from purely natural and harmless causes.
I filled my lungs with the pure, invigorating night air of the mountains. As I did so, I saw the beautiful vista of rocky gorge, and level, cacti-studded flat, transformed by the moonlight into a miracle of soft splendor and wondrous enchantment stretching far below me.
I turned my gaze from the landscape to the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene[12]. A large red star close to the distant horizon quickly riveted my attention. It was Mars, the god of war. As a fighting man, I was fascinated by it. I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity of space. There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness.
III. My Advent on Mars
I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here. My inner consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did I.
I found myself lying prone upon a bed of yellowish, mosslike vegetation, which stretched around me in all directions for miles. I seemed to be lying in a deep, circular basin, along the outer verge of which I could distinguish the irregularities of low hills.
It was midday, the sun was shining full upon me and the heat of it was intense. Here and there were slight outcroppings of quartz-bearing rock, which glistened in the sunlight. No water and no other vegetation than the moss was in evidence. I decided to do a little exploring as I was thirsty.
I sprang to my feet and, surprisingly, jumped up in the Martian air to the height of about three yards. I alighted softly upon the ground, however, without appreciable shock or jar. I found that I must learn to walk all over again, as the muscular exertion which carried me easily and safely upon Earth played strange tricks with me upon Mars.
I decided to explore the low structure, which was the only evidence of habitation in sight. I reached the low, encircling wall of the enclosure. There appeared to be no doors or windows upon the side nearest me. But the wall was only about four feet high so I cautiously gained my feet and peered over the top. The things that I saw surprised me.
The roof of the enclosure was of solid glass about four or five inches in thickness. Beneath this, there were several hundred large eggs. They were perfectly round and snowy white, and nearly uniform in size[13] being about two and one-half feet in diameter.
Five or six of them already opened. The grotesque caricatures, which sat blinking in the sunlight, made me doubt my sanity. They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long necks and six legs. Later I learned those were two legs and two arms, with an intermediary pair of limbs, which they could use at will as either arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back. They could look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning the head.
The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together, were small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on these young specimens. Their noses were longitudinal slits in the center of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears.
There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very light yellowish-green color. In the adults, as I learned later, this color deepens to an olive green and is darker in the male than in the female. Further, the heads of the adults are not so out of proportion to their bodies as in the case of the young.
The iris of the eyes is blood red while the pupil is dark. The eyeball itself is very white and so are teeth. The lower tusks curve upward to sharp points which end about where the eyes of earthly human beings are located. Against the dark background of their olive skins their tusks stand out in a most striking manner, making these weapons present an especially formidable appearance.
Most of these details I noted later because I had little time to speculate on the wonders of my new discovery. As I stood watching the hideous little monsters break from their shells, I failed to note full-grown Martians from behind me.
The rattling of the ammunition of the foremost warrior warned me and I turned. And there upon me, not ten feet from my breast[14], was the point of that huge spear.
The man himself, for such I may call him, was fully fifteen feet in height. He sat his mount as we sit a horse, grasping the animal's barrel with his lower limbs, while the hands of his two right arms held his immense spear low at the side of his mount. His mount was ten feet at the shoulder; had four legs on either side; a broad flat tail, larger at the tip than at the root, and which it held straight out behind while running; a gaping mouth which split its head from its snout to its long, massive neck.