The first attempt she made above the clouds, but it was unsuccessful.  To her surprise she discovered that she could not even turn against the high wind, which rocked and buffeted the frail craft.  Then she dropped swiftly to the dark and wind-swept zone between the hurtling clouds and the gloomy surface of the shadowed ground.  Here she tried again to force the nose of the flier back toward Helium, but the tempest seized the frail thing and hurled it remorselessly about, rolling it over and over and tossing it as it were a cork in a cataract.  At last the girl succeeded in righting the flier, perilously close to the ground.  Never before had she been so close to death, yet she was not terrified.  Her coolness had saved her, that and the strength of the deck lashings that held her.  Traveling with the storm she was safe, but where was it bearing her?  She pictured the apprehension of her father and mother when she failed to appear at the morning meal.  They would find her flier missing and they would guess that somewhere in the path of the storm it lay a wrecked and tangled mass upon her dead body, and then brave men would go out in search of her, risking their lives; and that lives would be lost in the search, she knew, for she realized now that never in her life-time had such a tempest raged upon Barsoom.

She must turn back!  She must reach Helium before her mad lust for thrills had cost the sacrifice of a single courageous life!  She determined that greater safety and likelihood of success lay above the clouds, and once again she rose through the chilling, wind-tossed vapor.  Her speed again was terrific, for the wind seemed to have increased rather than to have lessened.  She sought gradually to check the swift flight of her craft, but though she finally succeeded in reversing her motor the wind but carried her on as it would.  Then it was that Tara of Helium lost her temper.  Had her world not always bowed in acquiescence to her every wish?  What were these elements that they dared to thwart her?  She would demonstrate to them that the daughter of The Warlord was not to be denied!  They would learn that Tara of Helium might not be ruled even by the forces of nature!

And so she drove her motor forward again and then with her firm, white teeth set in grim determination she drove the steering lever far down to port with the intention of forcing the nose of her craft straight into the teeth of the wind, and the wind seized the frail thing and toppled it over upon its back, and twisted and turned it and hurled it over and over; the propellor raced for an instant in an air pocket and then the tempest seized it again and twisted it from its shaft, leaving the girl helpless upon an unmanageable atom that rose and fell, and rolled and tumbled—­the sport of the elements she had defied.  Tara of Helium’s first sensation was one of surprise—­that she had failed to have her own way.  Then she commenced to feel concern—­not for her own safety but for