Though my lungs were pumping like bellows, I venture to say that my heart stood still for several seconds before I topped the crater’s rim.
At the same instant that I expected the last vestige of my hopes to be dashed to pieces irrevocably and forever, I crossed the rim and beheld _The Barsoom_ not twenty feet below me, just over the edge of the abyss, and upon her deck stood West and Jay and Norton.
As I came into view directly above them, West whipped out his revolver and leveled it at me, but the instant that his finger pressed the trigger Norton sprang forward and struck his hand aside.
“My God, sir!” I heard the boy cry, “it is the Captain.” And then they all recognized me, and an instant later I almost collapsed as I fell to the deck of my beloved ship.
My first thought was of Nah-ee-lah, and at my direction _The Barsoom_ rose swiftly and moved to meet her.
“Great Scott!” cried my guest, leaping to his feet and looking out of the stateroom window, “I had no idea that I had kept you up all night. Here we are in Paris already.”
“But the rest of your story,” I cried. “You have not finished it, I know. Last night, as you were watching them celebrating in the Blue Room, you made a remark which led me to believe that some terrible calamity threatened the world.”
“It does,” he said, “and that was what I meant to tell you about, but this story of the third incarnation of which I am conscious was necessary to an understanding of how the great catastrophe overwhelmed the people of the earth.”
“But, did you reach Earth again?” I demanded.
“Yes,” he said, “in the year 2036. I had been ten years within Va- nah, but did not know whether it was ten months or a century until we landed upon Earth.”
He smiled then. “You notice that I still say I. It is sometimes difficult for me to recall which incarnation I am in. Perhaps it will be clearer to you if I say Julian 5th returned to Earth in 2036, and in the same year his son, Julian 6th, was born to his wife, Nah-ee- lah the Moon Maid.”
“But how could he return to Earth in the disabled _Barsoom_?”
“Ah,” he said, “that raises a point that was of great interest to Julian 5th. After he regained _The Barsoom_, naturally one of the first questions he asked was as to the condition of the ship and their intentions, and when he learned that they had, in reality, been intending to pass through the crater toward the Earth he questioned them further and discovered that it was the young ensign, Norton, who had repaired the engine, having been able to do it by information that he had gleaned from Orthis, after winning the latter’s friendship. Thus was explained the intimacy between the two, which Julian 5th had so deplored, but which he now saw that young Norton had encouraged for a patriotic purpose.