Escape from Thark and John Carter’s capture

Escape from Thark and John Carter’s capture follows an attempted flight from Thark that becomes a separation, a desperate stand, and a second captivity. Although John Carter and his companions leave with a route and provisions in mind, the journey goes wrong; when a large force closes in, Carter draws pursuit away from Dejah Thoris and Sola and is captured. Woola’s later return makes the episode not only a reversal in Carter’s freedom, but also a measure of the loyalty binding him to the animals he has treated with kindness.

The escape plan and the danger in Thark

Carter decides to leave Thark that night with Sola and Dejah Thoris. They will take two thoats and provisions sufficient for two days, since the animals cannot be driven too hard over a long distance. The plan depends on reaching a waterway far to the north, one they crossed on their earlier journey. Its distance is part of its advantage: Carter believes the people pursuing them will not expect them to make for so remote a route.

As preparations begin, Carter discovers that the escape has already been compromised. While trying to reach Dejah Thoris’s chamber, he overhears a chieftain ordering four warriors to seize him if he returns. They are to bind him and take him to the vaults beneath the jeddak’s quarters, where Tal Hajus can find him. The speaker says Dejah Thoris is already safe in Tal Hajus’s hands and credits Sarkoja with arranging the scheme. The warning changes the urgency of the escape: Carter is not simply leaving a hostile city; he is returning toward an ambush while Dejah Thoris faces immediate danger.

Rescue, departure, and a costly change of route

Carter reaches the chamber where Tal Hajus is threatening Dejah Thoris. He has an opportunity to use his sword, but checks himself because he remembers Tars Tarkas and the long-held hope that Tars Tarkas might confront Tal Hajus. Instead, Carter strikes Tal Hajus unconscious, takes Dejah Thoris by the hand, and signals Sola to follow. He lowers both women from a rear window with straps and leather from his equipment, then brings them through the city’s shadows to the thoats waiting in the courtyard.

The three ride out of Thark with Sola on one thoat and Dejah Thoris behind Carter on the other. Rather than head northwest for the nearest waterway, they turn northeast toward another artery leading to Helium, two hundred dangerous miles across the mossy waste. The altered direction makes the escape more difficult, but follows the logic of concealment: the route they choose is less likely to be anticipated. Dejah Thoris says that, if they reach safety, Helium’s debt to Carter will be beyond repayment; if they do not, he has still saved the last of her line from a fate worse than death.

The separation and Carter’s capture

The party rides through the night and the following day, resting only briefly. By the second night, the riders and thoats are exhausted. After sleeping for five or six hours, they continue, but see no distant trees, the landmarks that would indicate the great waterways. Carter realizes they are lost. Their direction cannot be settled by the sun, moons, or stars, and their hunger, thirst, and fatigue leave them with little reserve. They set out for low mountains in the hope of finding the missing waterway from a ridge.

Woola finds them in the wasteland, having followed their trail. Carter wakes to the old hound pressed close beside him and understands that Woola has followed to share their fate. The reunion is short-lived as a practical advantage: a thoat soon falters and collapses. Carter initially considers killing the animal rather than leaving it to suffer from hunger and thirst, but Sola believes the night’s coolness and rest may revive it. They remove its trappings and leave it behind, continuing on with one mount. Sola and Carter walk so that Dejah Thoris can ride.

Near the hills, Dejah Thoris spots several hundred mounted warriors descending from a pass. Carter tells her that someone must hold them off and that he can evade them more effectively alone. Dejah Thoris refuses to leave him to die and declares that she will stay with the man she loves. Carter responds by kissing her for the first time, then lifts her back onto the thoat behind Sola and orders Sola to keep her there by force. He sends them away before turning to face the pursuers.

Carter has one hundred rounds in his rifle magazine and another hundred in his belt. He fires from the moss until the first returning warriors are dead or take cover, then continues until his rifle is empty and the larger force is nearly upon him. Once he sees that Dejah Thoris and Sola have disappeared among the hills, he runs in the opposite direction to draw the warriors away from them. His escape attempt ends when his foot catches on a projecting piece of quartz. Surrounded, he draws his sword, but the pursuing warriors overwhelm and capture him.

Captivity and Woola’s continuing loyalty

Carter is brought to the Warhoon camp and, once fit to travel, is strapped to a thoat and escorted to the main column. Near dark he is taken before the jeddak of the Warhoon hordes, Bar Comas. Carter’s capture therefore does not return him to Thark or resolve the danger to his companions; it transfers him into the power of a new group, extending the escape into another captivity.

Woola’s loyalty continues beyond the separation. Later, during Carter’s solitary search for a waterway, a large creature pins him down in the dark. Woola arrives and saves him. In the light of the rising moon Carter recognizes his preserver, but fears Woola’s absence from Dejah Thoris may mean she is dead. The reunion is thus mixed with uncertainty about the woman Carter sent away for her safety. Woola is visibly emaciated and eats the dead creature; Carter, himself nearly as destitute, cannot eat uncooked flesh and has no way to make a fire. After Woola has eaten, Carter resumes his search. The rescue confirms the dog’s attachment to Carter even across the trackless waste, while leaving the outcome for Dejah Thoris and Sola unresolved in this episode.

Loyalty, kindness, and the reversal of escape

Woola’s actions carry a history that distinguishes him from a mere guard or mount. During Carter’s earlier captivity among the green men, the watch dog guarded him constantly and twice saved his life. In one encounter with a great white ape, Woola burst into the room as Carter was about to be attacked, engaging the ape and giving Carter the chance to escape. Carter’s later devotion to Woola follows this record of protective action.

The same ethic shapes Carter’s treatment of thoats. While the warriors commonly subdued resistant animals with blows, Carter chose to win his thoats’ confidence after first establishing that they could not unseat him. Within days, they followed him affectionately and obeyed his commands, a change the Tharks attributed to an unknown power. Carter explained to Tars Tarkas that kindness improved both the animals’ lives and his own effectiveness as a warrior: dependable obedience could matter in battle as well as on the march. The escape tests this belief in a different way. Woola cannot prevent Carter’s capture, but his willingness to follow, share hardship, and later return to save him makes loyalty an active bond rather than a tool of command.

The episode also reverses the expected course of a rescue-and-escape plot. Carter succeeds in rescuing Dejah Thoris from Tal Hajus and gets her and Sola out of Thark, but the expedition fails to reach safety, loses a thoat, and separates him from the women. His decision to draw the pursuing force away offers them a chance to escape at the cost of his own freedom. He is captured, and the narrative moves onward into Warhoon captivity, while Woola’s return supplies a fragile counterpoint: even when the route is lost and the human companions are absent, a relationship formed through care endures.