beautiful than Tara of Helium."

For a moment he fingered the chessmen idly. "We have a game on
Mars similar to chess," he said, "very similar. And there is a
race there that plays it grimly with men and naked swords. We
call the game jetan. It is played on a board like yours, except
that there are a hundred squares and we use twenty pieces on
each side. I never see it played without thinking of Tara of
Helium and what befell her among the chessmen of Barsoom.
Would you like to hear her story?"

I said that I would and so he told it to me, and now I shall try
to re-tell it for you as nearly in the words of The Warlord of
Mars as I can recall them, but in the third person. If there be
inconsistencies and errors, let the blame fall not upon John
Carter, but rather upon my faulty memory, where it belongs. It is
a strange tale and utterly Barsoomian.



CHAPTER I

TARA IN A TANTRUM

Tara of Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon
which she had been reclining, stretched her lithe body languidly,
and crossed toward the center of the room, where, above a large
table, a bronze disc depended from the low ceiling. Her carriage
was that of health and physical perfection--the effortless
harmony of faultless coordination. A scarf of silken gossamer