I had aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus; unquestionably the all-time cosmic record for poor shots.
One does not judge the gazelle by the lions that attack it.
And then again, had I declared myself I should have robbed the woman I love of the wealth and position that her marriage to Clayton will now insure to her. I could not have done that – could I, Paul?
There was no means by which I might know, and so I chose the center opening as being as likely to lead me in the right direction as another. Here.
I at once ordered a secret search within the city, for every Martian noble maintains a secret service of his own.
In Hastor I have paid a good price to see one of these creatures and now I found myself in a position where I should very gladly pay a good deal more not to see one, but from the noise he was making in the shaft beneath me it appeared to me that he was determined that I should have a free show and he a free meal.
The lion was quite close to him now – but a few paces intervened – he crouched, and then, with a deafening roar, he sprang.
It was on the morning of the second day that the first link was forged in what was destined to form a chain of circumstances ending in a life for one then unborn such as has never been paralleled in the history of man.
It is a strange tale and utterly Barsoomian.
From a lofty perch Tarzan viewed the village of thatched huts across the intervening plantation.
To Jane the strange apparition of this god-like man was as wine to sick nerves.
As much as I enjoy a fight, I cannot always indulge myself, and just now I had more weighty matters to occupy my time than spilling the blood of strange warriors.
If I sometimes seem to take too great pride in my fighting ability, it must be remembered that fighting is my vocation.
If your vocation be shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and you can do one or the other better than your fellows, then you are a fool if you are not proud of your ability. And so I am very proud that upon two planets no greater fighter has ever lived than John Carter, Prince of Helium.
Lives there upon any world such another as John Carter, Prince of Helium? Lives there another man who could fight his way back and forth across a warlike planet, facing savage beasts and hordes of savage men, for the love of a woman?
Ah, John, I wish that I might be a man with a man’s philosophy, but I am but a woman, seeing with my heart rather than my head, and all that I can see is too horrible, too unthinkable to put into words.
I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will substantiate.
My longing was beyond the power of opposition;.
It had become evident to Tarzan that without money one must die. D’Arnot had told him not to worry, since he had more than enough for both, but the ape-man was learning many things and one of them was that people looked down upon one who accepted money from another without giving something of equal value in exchange.
Your scabby heart hath revealed its sores to all the world.
To face that savage mountain of onrushing ferocity, to stand unshaken before the hideous fangs that he knew were bared in slavering blood-thirstiness, though he could not see them, required nerves of steel; but of such were the nerves of Carthoris of Helium.