READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

Tarzan on Mars
XXVIII
THE LOOM OF FATE
JOHN Carter had clung to the malagor in order to have it
break his fall, and now in the depths of the Lake of Darkness
he clung to it because its mighty efforts to regain the surface
were more productive of results than his own might have
been, unaided. The malagors were adept at diving below the
surface of the Toonolian swamp waters after their prey, and so
it was that this present circumstance was not unnatural to it.
As it swam instinctively, fighting for the surface, the almost
naked body of a white man drifted close, and John
Carter grasped it by one arm. When he broke the surface and
gasped for air, this stranger he had rescued did the same,
though he was still not quite aware of his actions. The struggling
malagor gained a rocky shore ledge just before the
rushing waters curved into a descending fall that roared into
the black mouth of the whirlpool.
As the two men fell gasping to the damp, dark ledge, the
Warlord noticed for the first time that his malagor wars sorely
wounded by the phantom arrows of the bowmen. He tried,
mentally, to dissuade the great bird from believing in the
reality of the psychic phenomenon, but in vain. The giant
creature shuddered at the ledge, then fell back into the
current and was swallowed up by the whirlpool.
He examined that ominous, roaring hole in the ground
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