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width="320" />It was a long climb up the face of the
building, and one fraught with much danger, but there was no other way,
and so I essayed the task. The fact that Barsoomian architecture is
extremely ornate made the feat much simpler than I had anticipated, since
I found ornamental ledges and projections which fairly formed a perfect
ladder for me all the way to the eaves of the building. Here I met my
first real obstacle. The eaves projected nearly twenty feet from the wall
to which I clung, and though I encircled the great building I could find
no opening through them.
The top floor was alight, and filled
with soldiers engaged in the pastimes of their kind; I could not,
therefore, reach the roof through the building.
There was one
slight, desperate chance, and that I decided I must take—it was for Dejah
Thoris, and no man has lived who would not risk a thousand deaths for such
as she.
Clinging to the wall with my feet and one hand, I
unloosened one of the long leather straps of my trappings at the end of
which dangled a great hook by which air sailors are hung to the sides and
bottoms of their craft for various purposes of repair, and by means of
which landing parties are lowered to the ground from the
battleships.
I swung this hook cautiously to the roof several
times before it finally found lodgment; gently I pulled on it to
strengthen its hold, but whether it would bear the weight of my body I did
not know. It might be barely caught upon the very outer verge of the roof,
so that as my body swung out at the end of the strap it would slip off and
launch me to the pavement a thousand feet below.
An instant I
hesitated, and then, releasing my grasp upon the supporting ornament, I
swung out into space at the end of the strap. Far below me lay the
brilliantly lighted streets, the hard pavements, and death. There was a
little jerk at the top of the supporting eaves, and a nasty slipping,
grating sound which turned me cold with apprehension; then the hook caught
and I was safe.