A Princess of Mars Rethroned

A Princess of
Mars Rethroned

by Edna Rice
Burroughs

Smashwords
Edition

Copyright 2010
Edna Rice Burroughs

FOREWORD

To the Reader of
this Work:

In submitting
Captain Carter's strange manuscript to you in book form, I believe
that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will be of
interest.

My first
recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months she spent at my
mother's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the civil
war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well remember the
tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic woman whom I called Aunt
Jack.

She seemed always
to be laughing; and she entered into the sports of the children
with the same hearty good fellowship she displayed toward those
pastimes in which the women and men of her own age indulged; or she
would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old grandfather
with stories of her strange, wild life in all parts of the world.
We all loved her, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground she
trod.

She was a
splendid specimen of womanhood, standing a good two inches over six
feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the
trained fighting woman. Her features were regular and clear cut,
her hair black and closely cropped, while her eyes were of a steel
gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and
initiative. Her manners were perfect, and her courtliness was that
of a typical southern gentlewoman of the highest type.

Her
horsewomanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight
even in that country of magnificent horsewomen. I have often heard
my mother caution her against her wild recklessness, but she would
only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed her would be from
the back of a horse yet unfoaled.

When the war
broke out she left us, nor did I see her again for some fifteen or
sixteen years. When she returned it was without warning, and I was
much surprised to note that she had not aged apparently a moment,
nor had she changed in any other outward way. She was, when others
were with her, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of old,
but when she thought herself alone I have seen her sit for hours
gazing off into space, her face set in a look of wistful longing
and hopeless misery; and at night she would sit thus looking up
into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read her
manuscript years afterward.

She told us that
she had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of the time
since the war; and that she had been very successful was evidenced
by the unlimited amount of money with which she was supplied. As to
the details of her life during these years she was very reticent,
in fact she would not talk of them at all.

She remained with
us for about a year and then went to New York, where she purchased
a little place on the Hudson, where I visited her once a year on
the occasions of my trips to the New York market--my mother and I
owning and operating a string of general stores throughout Virginia
at that time. Captain Carter had a small but beautiful cottage,
situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and during one of my
last visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed she was much
occupied in writing, I presume now, upon this
manuscript.

She told me at
this time that if anything should happen to her she wished me to
take charge of her estate, and she gave me a key to a compartment
in the safe which stood in her study, telling me I would find her
will there and some personal instructions which she had me pledge
myself to carry out with absolute fidelity.

After I had
retired for the night I have seen her from my window standing in
the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the Hudson with
her arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal. I
thought at the time that she was praying, although I never
understood that she was in the strict sense of the term a religious
woman.

Several months
after I had returned home from my last visit, the first of March,
1886, I think, I received a telegram from her asking me to come to
her at once. I had always been her favorite among the younger
generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with her
demand.

I arrived at the
little station, about a mile from her grounds, on the morning of
March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery woman to drive me out to
Captain Carter's she replied that if I was a friend of the
Captain's she had some very bad news for me; the Captain had been
found dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the watchman
attached to an adjoining property.

For some reason
this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to her place as
quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the body and of
her affairs.

I found the
watchman who had discovered her, together with the local police
chief and several townspeople, assembled in her little study. The
watchman related the few details connected with the finding of the
body, which she said had been still warm when she came upon it. It
lay, she said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms
outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when
she showed me the spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical
one where I had seen her on those other nights, with her arms
raised in supplication to the skies.

There were no
marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a local
physician the coroner's jury quickly reached a decision of death
from heart failure. Left alone in the study, I opened the safe and
withdrew the contents of the drawer in which she had told me I
would find my instructions. They were in part peculiar indeed, but
I have followed them to each last detail as faithfully as I was
able.

She directed that
I remove her body to Virginia without embalming, and that she be
laid in an open coffin within a tomb which she previously had had
constructed and which, as I later learned, was well ventilated. The
instructions impressed upon me that I must personally see that this
was carried out just as she directed, even in secrecy if
necessary.

Her property was
left in such a way that I was to receive the entire income for
twenty-five years, when the principal was to become mine. Her
further instructions related to this manuscript which I was to
retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for eleven years; nor
was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one years after her
death.

A strange feature
about the tomb, where her body still lies, is that the massive door
is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated spring lock which can
be opened only from the inside.

Yours very
sincerely,

Edna Rice
Burroughs.

CHAPTER
I

ON THE ARIZONA
HILLS

I am a very old
woman; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly
more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other women,
nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have
always been a woman, a woman of about thirty. I appear today as I
did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on
living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which
there is no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I
who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same
horror of it as you who have never died, and it is because of this
terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced of my
mortality.

And because of
this conviction I have determined to write down the story of the
interesting periods of my life and of my death. I cannot explain
the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words of an ordinary
soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events that befell me
during the ten years that my dead body lay undiscovered in an
Arizona cave.

I have never told
this story, nor shall mortal woman see this manuscript until after
I have passed over for eternity. 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. Possibly the suggestions which
I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I can set down in this
chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding of the mysteries of
our brother planet; mysteries to you, but no longer mysteries to
me.

My name is Joan
Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter of Virginia. At
the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed of several
hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain's commission
in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the servant
of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the South.
Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood,
fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and
attempt to retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search for
gold.

I spent nearly a
year prospecting in company with another Confederate officer,
Captain Jamie K. Powell of Richmond. We were extremely fortunate,
for late in the winter of 1865, after many hardships and
privations, we located the most remarkable gold-bearing quartz vein
that our wildest dreams had ever pictured. Powell, who was a mining
engineer by education, stated that we had uncovered over a million
dollars worth of ore in a trifle over three months.

As our equipment
was crude in the extreme we decided that one of us must return to
civilization, purchase the necessary machinery and return with a
sufficient force of women properly to work the mine.

As Powell was
familiar with the country, as well as with the mechanical
requirements of mining we determined that it would be best for her
to make the trip. It was agreed that I was to hold down our claim
against the remote possibility of its being jumped by some
wandering prospector.

On March 3, 1866,
Powell and I packed her provisions on two of our burros, and
bidding me good-bye she mounted her horse, and started down the
mountainside toward the valley, across which led the first stage of
her journey.

The morning of
Powell's departure was, like nearly all Arizona mornings, clear and
beautiful; I could see her and her little pack animals picking
their way down the mountainside toward the valley, and all during
the morning I would catch occasional glimpses of them as they
topped a hog back or came out upon a level plateau. My last sight
of Powell was about three in the afternoon as she entered the
shadows of the range on the opposite side of the valley.

Some half hour
later I happened to glance casually across the valley and was much
surprised to note three little dots in about the same place I had
last seen my friend and her two pack animals. I am not given to
needless worrying, but the more I tried to convince myself that all
was well with Powell, and that the dots I had seen on her trail
were antelope or wild horses, the less I was able to assure
myself.

Since we had
entered the territory we had not seen a hostile Indian, and we had,
therefore, become careless in the extreme, and were wont to
ridicule the stories we had heard of the great numbers of these
vicious marauders that were supposed to haunt the trails, taking
their toll in lives and torture of every white party which fell
into their merciless clutches.