Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Gods of Mars Edgar Rice Burroughs

As I stood upon the bluff before my cottage on that clear cold night in the earlypart of March, 1886, the noble Hudson flowing like the grey and silent spectre of adead river below me, I felt again the strange, compelling influence of the mightygod of war, my beloved Mars, which for ten long and lonesome years I had imploredwith outstretched arms to carry me back to my lost love. Not since that other March night in 1866, when I had stood without that Arizonacave in which my still and lifeless body lay wrapped in the similitude of earthlydeath had I felt the irresistible attraction of the god of my profession. With arms outstretched toward the red eye of the great star I stood praying fora return of that strange power which twice had drawn me through the immensityof space, praying as I had prayed on a thousand nights before during the long tenyears that I had waited and hoped.