"11 - John Carter of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

Where was Tars Tarkas? The green man should have appeared at the bridge.
At the entrance to the city, Carter stepped into the black shadow of a wall and
waited. No sound broke the stillness of the quiet night. The city was like a
tomb. Deimos and Phobos, the two fast-moving moons of Mars, whirled across the
heavens.
Carter stopped breathing to listen. To his keen ears came the faint sound of
steps Ц strange, shuffing steps dragging closer.
Something was coming along the wall. The earthman tensed, ready to spring away
to his ship. Now he could hear other steps all around him. Inside the ruins
something dragged against the fallen rocks.
Then a great, heavy body dropped on John Carter from the wall above. Hot, fetid
breath burned his neck. Huge, shaggy arms smothered him in their fierce embrace.
The thing hurled him to the rough cobblestones. Huge hands clutched at his
throat. Carter turned his head and saw above him the face of a great, white ape.
Three of the creature's fellows were circling around Carter, striving to tie his
feet with a piece of rope while the other choked him into insensibility with his
four mighty hands.
Carter wriggled his feet under the belly of the ape with whom he was grappling.
One mighty heave sent the creature into the air to fall, groaning and helpless,
to the ground.
Like a cornered banth,* Carter was on his feet, crouched against the wall,
awaiting the attacking trio, with drawn sword.
* A banth is the huge, eight-legged lion of Mars. Ц ED.
They were mighty beasts, fully eight feet tall with long, white hair covering
their great bodies. Each was equipped with four muscular arms that ended in
tremendous hands armed with sharp, hooked claws. They were baring their fangs
and growling viciously as they came toward the earthman.
Carter crouched low; and as the beasts sprang in, his earthly muscles sent him
leaping high into the air over their heads. The earthman's heavy blade, backed
by all the power of his muscles, smacked down upon one ape's head, splitting the
skull wide open.
Carter hit the ground and, turning, was ready when the two apes remaining flew
at him again. There was a hideous, hair-raising shriek as this time the
earthman's sword sank deep into a savage heart.
As the monster sprawled to the ground, the earthman jerked free his sword.
Now the other beast turned and slunk away in fright, his eyes gleaming at Carter
in the darkness as it fled down a long corridor in the adjacent building. The
earthman could have sworn that he heard his own name coming from the ape's
throat and mingling with its sullen growl as it fled away.
The earthman had just seized his sword when he felt a rush of air above his
head. There was a blur of motion as something came down toward him.
Now he felt himself clutched about the waist; then he was jerked fifty feet into
the air. Struggling for breath, Carter clutched at the thing encircling his
body. It was as horny as the skin of an arbok. It had hairs as large as tree
roots bristling from the horny scales.
It was a giant hand!
Three
JOOG, THE GIANT
JOHN CARTER found himself looking into a monstrous face.
From top of shaggy head to bottom of its hairy chin, the head measured fully