When two days had passed 
with no sign of Kantos Kan, 
I started off on foot 
toward the northwest, 
hoping to find 
the waterway to Helium.
 
 

My only food was 
the milk of the wild plants 
which gave bounteously of this 
priceless vegetable fluid.

For two long weeks I wandered, 
stumbling through the nights 
by starlight and 
hiding among the rocks and hills 
at night's end to rest.
 
 
 

Several times I was attacked 
by wild beasts in the dark, 
so I was ever with sword in hand. 
Usually my strange new 
telepathic receptivity 
warned me in time --

-- but once I was down 
with fangs at my throat 
and a hairy face in mine
before I knew it. 

I had a vicelike grip 
on the huge, 
multi-legged thing's windpipe, 
but I was slowly 
losing the uneven battle.

Then suddenly 
out of the darkness sprang 
another living mass of destruction, 
full upon the thing at my throat! 
It was soon over, 
and my preserver stood panting 
with lowered head 
above my attacker.
 
 

At that moment 
the hurtling moon 
showed me a sight 
I shall never forget --

-- WOOLA!

The old boy 
was just a shadow 
of his former self, 
and how he had found me 
I was at a loss to know, 
but we were overjoyed 
at our new companionship. 
Why he was no longer 
with Dejah Thoris, however, 
filled me with anxiety.
 

Half-starved, 
Woola turned from my caress 
and began to eat. 
I could not bring myself
to touch the uncooked meat,
but when he had finished his meal 
we recommenced our quest
for the waterway.

At daybreak of the fifteenth day 
I was overjoyed 
to sight tall trees in the distance, 
and by noon we had espied 
one of the biggest buildings
I had ever seen.
 
 
 
 

The walls were nigh two hundred feet high, 
and it covered perhaps four square miles. 
There was no life about, 
and it seemed the only portal 
was this tiny door 
where I slumped, exhausted.

I was eyeing a pencil-sized hole in it, 
when suddenly a voice from within 
demanded to know 
who I was and what I wanted.

I pleaded in the name of humanity to open. 
The speaker yielded 
after I explained my plight
and that I was a friend of the red men,
just escaped from Warhoon,
lost and starving.
Then the door recessed
a full fifty feet into the building 
and we were bidden to enter.
 

A second door, 
then a third,
each fifty feet further into the massive wall, 
slid aside, 
the one locking closed 
with great countersunk cylinders of steel 
as the next door opened.
The absolutely unassailable building 
was beginning to feel like a trap.