the anxiety of her parents and the dangers that the inevitable searchers must face.  She reproached herself for the thoughtless selfishness that had jeopardized the peace and safety of others.  She realized her own grave danger, too; but she was still unterrified, as befitted the daughter of Dejah Thoris and John Carter.  She knew that her buoyancy tanks might keep her afloat indefinitely, but she had neither food nor water, and she was being borne toward the least-known area of Barsoom.  Perhaps it would be better to land immediately and await the coming of the searchers, rather than to allow herself to be carried still further from Helium, thus greatly reducing the chances of early discovery; but when she dropped toward the ground she discovered that the violence of the wind rendered an attempt to land tantamount to destruction and she rose again, rapidly.

Carried along a few hundred feet above the ground she was better able to appreciate the Titanic proportions of the storm than when she had flown in the comparative serenity of the zone above the clouds, for now she could distinctly see the effect of the wind upon the surface of Barsoom.  The air was filled with dust and flying bits of vegetation and when the storm carried her across an irrigated area of farm land she saw great trees and stone walls and buildings lifted high in air and scattered broadcast over the devastated country; and then she was carried swiftly on to other sights that forced in upon her consciousness a rapidly growing conviction that after all Tara of Helium was a very small and insignificant and helpless person.  It was quite a shock to her self-pride while it lasted, and toward evening she was ready to believe that it was going to last forever.  There had been no abatement in the ferocity of the tempest, nor was there indication of any.  She could only guess at the distance she had been carried for she could not believe in the correctness of the high figures that had been piled upon the record of her odometer.  They seemed unbelievable and yet, had she known it, they were quite true—­in twelve hours she had flown and been carried by the storm full seven thousand haads.  Just before dark she was carried over one of the deserted cities of ancient Mars.  It was Torquas, but she did not know it.  Had she, she might readily have been forgiven for abandoning the last vestige of hope, for to the people of Helium Torquas seems as remote as do the South Sea Islands to us.  And still the tempest, its fury unabated, bore her on.

All that night she hurtled through the dark beneath the clouds, or rose to race through the moonlit void beneath the glory of Barsoom’s two satellites.  She was cold and hungry and altogether miserable, but her brave little spirit refused to admit that her plight was hopeless even though reason proclaimed the truth.  Her reply to reason, sometime spoken aloud in sudden defiance, recalled the Spartan stubbornness of her sire in the face of certain annihilation:  “I still live!”