第54章 REWARDS(3)

Slowly I felt the tantalizing thing escaping me.In a moment all that I had gained would be lost--then my fingers reached a knot at the very end of the rope and slipped no more.

With a prayer of gratitude upon my lips I scrambled upward toward the boat's deck.I could not see Thurid and Matai Shang now, but I heard the sounds of conflict and thus knew that they still fought--the thern for his life and the black for the increased buoyancy that relief from the weight of even a single body would give the craft.

Should Matai Shang die before I reached the deck my chances of ever reaching it would be slender indeed, for the black dator need but cut the rope above me to be freed from me forever, for the vessel had drifted across the brink of a chasm into whose yawning depths my body would drop to be crushed to a shapeless pulp should Thurid reach the rope now.

At last my hand closed upon the ship's rail and that very instant a horrid shriek rang out below me that sent my blood cold and turned my horrified eyes downward to a shrieking, hurtling, twisting thing that shot downward into the awful chasm beneath me.

It was Matai Shang, Holy Hekkador, Father of Therns, gone to his last accounting.

Then my head came above the deck and I saw Thurid, dagger in hand, leaping toward me.He was opposite the forward end of the cabin, while I was attempting to clamber aboard near the vessel's stern.

But a few paces lay between us.No power on earth could raise me to that deck before the infuriated black would be upon me.

My end had come.I knew it; but had there been a doubt in my mind the nasty leer of triumph upon that wicked face would have convinced me.Beyond Thurid I could see my Dejah Thoris, wide-eyed and horrified, struggling at her bonds.That she should be forced to witness my awful death made my bitter fate seem doubly cruel.

I ceased my efforts to climb across the gunwale.Instead I took a firm grasp upon the rail with my left hand and drew my dagger.

I should at least die as I had lived--fighting.

As Thurid came opposite the cabin's doorway a new element projected itself into the grim tragedy of the air that was being enacted upon the deck of Matai Shang's disabled flier.

It was Phaidor.

With flushed face and disheveled hair, and eyes that betrayed the recent presence of mortal tears--above which this proud goddess had always held herself--she leaped to the deck directly before me.

In her hand was a long, slim dagger.I cast a last look upon my beloved princess, smiling, as men should who are about to die.

Then I turned my face up toward Phaidor--waiting for the blow.

Never have I seen that beautiful face more beautiful than it was at that moment.It seemed incredible that one so lovely could yet harbor within her fair bosom a heart so cruel and relentless, and today there was a new expression in her wondrous eyes that I never before had seen there--an unfamiliar softness, and a look of suffering.

Thurid was beside her now--pushing past to reach me first, and then what happened happened so quickly that it was all over before I could realize the truth of it.

Phaidor's slim hand shot out to close upon the black's dagger wrist.

Her right hand went high with its gleaming blade.

"That for Matai Shang!" she cried, and she buried her blade deep in the dator's breast."That for the wrong you would have done Dejah Thoris!" and again the sharp steel sank into the bloody flesh.

"And that, and that, and that!" she shrieked, "for John Carter, Prince of Helium," and with each word her sharp point pierced the vile heart of the great villain.Then, with a vindictive shove she cast the carcass of the First Born from the deck to fall in awful silence after the body of his victim.

I had been so paralyzed by surprise that I had made no move to reach the deck during the awe-inspiring scene which I had just witnessed, and now I was to be still further amazed by her next act, for Phaidor extended her hand to me and assisted me to the deck, where I stood gazing at her in unconcealed and stupefied wonderment.

A wan smile touched her lips--it was not the cruel and haughty smile of the goddess with which I was familiar."You wonder, John Carter," she said, "what strange thing has wrought this change in me? I will tell you.It is love--love of you,"and when I darkened my brows in disapproval of her words she raised an appealing hand.

"Wait," she said."It is a different love from mine--it is the love of your princess, Dejah Thoris, for you that has taught me what true love may be--what it should be, and how far from real love was my selfish and jealous passion for you.

"Now I am different.Now could I love as Dejah Thoris loves, and so my only happiness can be to know that you and she are once more united, for in her alone can you find true happiness.

"But I am unhappy because of the wickedness that I have wrought.

I have many sins to expiate, and though I be deathless, life is all too short for the atonement.

"But there is another way, and if Phaidor, daughter of the Holy Hekkador of the Holy Therns, has sinned she has this day already made partial reparation, and lest you doubt the sincerity of her protestations and her avowal of a new love that embraces Dejah Thoris also, she will prove her sincerity in the only way that lies open--having saved you for another, Phaidor leaves you to her embraces."With her last word she turned and leaped from the vessel's deck into the abyss below.

With a cry of horror I sprang forward in a vain attempt to save the life that for two years I would so gladly have seen extinguished.I was too late.

With tear-dimmed eyes I turned away that I might not see the awful sight beneath.

A moment later I had struck the bonds from Dejah Thoris, and as her dear arms went about my neck and her perfect lips pressed to mine I forgot the horrors that I had witnessed and the suffering that I had endured in the rapture of my reward.