? ? ? ? I looked up at the Thark, a smile upon my own lips, for here in truth was greater need for a smiling face than a trembling chin.
? ? ? ? "What do you make of it all?" I asked. "Where in the deuce are we?"
? ? ? ? He looked at me in surprise.
? ? ? ? "Where are we?" he repeated. "Do you tell me, John Carter, that you know not where you be?"
? ? ? ? "That I am upon Barsoom is all that I can guess, and but for you and the great white apes I should not even guess that, for the sights I have seen this day are as unlike the things of my beloved Barsoom as I knew it ten long years ago as they are unlike the world of my birth.
? ? ? ? "No, Tars Tarkas, I know not where we be."
? ? ? ? "Where have you been since you opened the mighty portals of the atmosphere plant years ago, after the keeper had died and the engines stopped and all Barsoom was dying, that had not already died, of asphyxiation? Your body even was never found, though the men of a whole world sought after it for years, though the Jeddak of Helium and his granddaughter, your princess, offered such fabulous rewards that even princes of royal blood joined in the search.
? ? ? ? "There was but one conclusion to reach when all efforts to locate you had failed, and that, that you had taken the long, last pilgrimage down the mysterious River Iss, to await in the Valley Dor upon the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus the beautiful Dejah Thoris, your princess.
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