below.  Two figures had emerged from the tower.  Their beautiful bodies seemed identical with those of the headless creatures among which they moved, but the newcomers were not headless.  Upon their shoulders were heads that seemed human, yet which the girl intuitively sensed were not human.  They were just a trifle too far away for her to see them distinctly in the waning light of the dying day, but she knew that they were too large, they were out of proportion to the perfectly proportioned bodies, and they were oblate in form.  She could see that the men wore some manner of harness to which were slung the customary long-sword and short-sword of the Barsoomian warrior, and that about their short necks were massive leather collars cut to fit closely over the shoulders and snugly to the lower part of the head.  Their features were scarce discernible, but there was a suggestion of grotesqueness about them that carried to her a feeling of revulsion.

The two carried a long rope to which were fastened, at intervals of about two sofads, what she later guessed were light manacles, for she saw the warriors passing among the poor creatures in the enclosure and about the right wrist of each they fastened one of the manacles.  When all had been thus fastened to the rope one of the warriors commenced to pull and tug at the loose end as though attempting to drag the headless company toward the tower, while the other went among them with a long, light whip with which he flicked them upon the naked skin.  Slowly, dully, the creatures rose to their feet and between the tugging of the warrior in front and the lashing of him behind the hopeless band was finally herded within the tower.  Tara of Helium shuddered as she turned away.  What manner of creatures were these?

Suddenly it was night.  The Barsoomian day had ended, and then the brief period of twilight that renders the transition from daylight to darkness almost as abrupt as the switching off of an electric light, and Tara of Helium had found no sanctuary.  But perhaps there were no beasts to fear, or rather to avoid—­Tara of Helium liked not the word fear.  She would have been glad, however, had there been a cabin, even a very tiny cabin, upon her small flier; but there was no cabin.  The interior of the hull was completely taken up by the buoyancy tanks.  Ah, she had it!  How stupid of her not to have thought of it before!  She could moor the craft to the tree beneath which it rested and let it rise the length of the rope.  Lashed to the deck rings she would then be safe from any roaming beast of prey that chanced along.  In the morning she could drop to the ground again before the craft was discovered.