 Gulliver of Mars by Edwin L. Arnold, CHAPTER VII. It was only at moments like these I had any time to reflect on my circumstances or that giddy chance which had shot me into space in this fashion. And frankly, the opportunities when they did come brought such an extraordinary depressing train of thought I by no means invited them. Even with the time available the occasion was always a rye for such reflection. These dainty triflers made sulking as impossible amongst them as philosophy in a ballroom. When I stalked out like that from the library in fine mood to moralize an apostrophized heaven in a way that would no doubt have looked fine upon these pages, one sprightly damsel just as the gloomy rhetoric was bursting from my lips thrust a flower under my nose who sent brought on a violent attack of sneezing, her companions joining hands and dancing round me while they imitated my agony. Then, when I burst away from them and rushed down a narrower arcade of crumbling mansions, another stopped me in mid-career and, taking the honey stick she was sucking from her lips, put it to mine like a pretty playful child. Another asked me to dance, another to drink pink oblivion with her, and so on. How could one lament among all this irritating cheerfulness? Anne might have helped me, for poor Anne was intelligent for a Martian, but she had disappeared, and the terrible vacuity of life in the planet was forced upon me when I realized that possessing no cognamen, no fixed address, or rating it would be the merest chance if I ever came across her again. Looking for my friendly guide and getting more and more at sea amongst a maze of comely but similar faces, I made chance acquaintance with another of her kind who cheerfully drank my health at the government's expense, and chatted on things Martian. She took me to see a funeral by way of amusement, and I found these people floated their dead off on flower-deck rafts instead of burying them, the send-offs all taking place upon a certain swift-flowing stream, which carried the dead away into the vast region of northern ice, but more exactly wither my informant seemed to have no idea. The Voyager on this occasion was old, and this brought to my mind the curious fact that I had observed few children in the city, and no elders, all except perhaps Hath, being in a state of sleek youthfulness. My new friend explained the peculiarity by declaring Martians ripen with extraordinary rapidity from infancy to the equivalent of about twenty-five years of age with us, and then remained at that period however long they might live, only when they died that their accumulated seasons come upon them. The girl turning pale, and wringing her pretty hands in sympathetic concern when I told her there was a land where decrepitude was not so happily postponed. The Martians, she said, arranged their calendar by the varying colors of the seasons, and loved blue as an antidote to the generally red and rusty character of their soil. Discussing such things as these, we lightly squandered the day away, and I know nothing more to note until the evening was come again. That wonderful purple evening which creeps over the outer worlds at sunset, a seductive darkness gym with ten thousand stars riding so low in the heaven, they seemed scarcely more than massed high. When that hour was come, my friend tipped to it again to my cheek, and then, pointing to the palace and laughingly hoping fate would send me a bride, as soft as catkin and as sweet as honey, slipped away into the darkness. Then I remembered all in a sudden this was the cannubial evening of my sprightly friends. The occasion when, as An had told me, the government constituted itself into a gigantic matrimonial agency. And with the cheerful carelessness of the place, shuffled the matrimonial pack anew, and dealt a fresh hand to all the players. Now I had no wish to avail myself of the sailor's privilege of a bride in every port, but surely this game would be interesting enough to see, even if I were but a disinterested spectator. As a matter of fact, I was something more than that, and had been thinking a good deal of Haru during the day. I do not know whether I actually aspired to her hand, that were a large order. Even if there had been no suspicion in my mind, she was already bespoken some vague way by the invisible half, most abortive of princes. But she was undeniably a lovely girl. The more one thought of her, the more she grew upon the fancy, and then the preference she had shown myself was very gratifying. Yes, I would certainly see this quaint ceremonial, even if I took no leading part in it. The great center hall of the palace was full of a radiant light, bringing up its ruined columns and intruding creepers to the best effect when I entered. The center also was just being served as they would say in another, and alas, a very distant place, and the whole building thronged with folk. Down the center, low tables with room for four hundred people were arranged, but they looked quaint enough since but two hundred were sitting there. All brand new bachelors about to be turned into brand new benedicts, and taking it mighty calmly it seemed. Across the hall-top was a raised table similarly arranged and ornamented, and entering into the spirit of the thing, and little guessing how stern a reality was to come from the evening, I sat down in a vacant place near to the dais, and only a few paces from where the pale, ghost-eyed half was already seated. Almost immediately afterwards music began to buzz all about the hall. Music of the kind the people loved which always seemed to me as though it were exuding from the tables and benches. So disembodied and difficult was it to locate. All the sleepy galants raised their flower-encircled heads at the same time, seizing their wine cups, already filled to the brim, and the door at the bottom of the hall opening. The ladies, preceded by one carrying a mysterious vase covered with a glittering cloth, came in. Now, being somewhat thirsty, I had already drunk half the wine in my beaker, and whether it was that draught, drugged as all Martian wines are, or the sheer loveliness of the maids themselves I cannot say. But as the procession entered, and dividing, circled round under the colonnades of the hall, a sensation of extraordinary felicity came over me. An emotion of divine contentment purged of all grossness. And I stared and stared at the circling loveliness. Gossamer clad flower girdled, tripping by me with vapid delight. Either the wine was budding in my head, or there was little to choose from amongst them, for had any of those ladies sat down at the vacant place beside me, I should certainly have accepted her as a gift from heaven without question or cavill. But one after another they slipped by, modestly taking their places in the shadows until at last came Princess Haru, and at the sight of her my soul was stirred. She came undulating over the white marble, the loveliness of her fairy person dim but scarcely hidden by a robe of softest lawn, in color like rose petals. Her eyes a glitter with excitement and a charming blush upon her face. She came straight up to me, and resting a dainty hand upon my shoulder whispered, Are you come as a spectator only, dear Mr. Jones, or do you join in our custom tonight? I came only as a bystander, lady, but the fascination of the opportunity is deadly. And have you any preferences? This in the softest little voice from somewhere in the nape of my neck. Strangers sometimes say there are fair women in Seth. None till you came, and now, as was said a long time ago, all is drawst that is not Helen. Dearest lady, I ran on, detaining her by the fingertips and gazing up into those shy and star-like eyes. Must I indeed put all the hopes your kindness has roused in me these last few days to shuffle a yonder urn, taking my chances with all these lazy fellows? In that land whereof I was, we would not have had it so. We loaded our dice in these matters. A strong man there might have a willing maid though all heaven were set against him. But give me leave, sweet lady, and I will ruffle with these fellows. Give me a glance, and I will barter my life for your billet when it is drawn. But to stand idly by and see you won by a cold chance. I cannot do it. That lady laughed a little and said, Men make laws, dear Jones, for women to keep. It is the rule, and we must not break it. Then gently tugging at her in prison fingers and gathering up her skirts to go, she added, But it might happen that wit here were better than sword. Then she hesitated, and freeing herself at last slipped from my side. Yet before she was quite gone half turned again and whispered so low that no one but I could hear it. A golden pool and a silver fish, and a line no thicker than a hare. And before I could beg a meaning of her, had passed down the hall and taken a place with the other expectant damsels. A golden pool, I said to myself. A silver fish and a line of hair. What could she mean? Yet that she meant something, and something clearly of importance I could not doubt. A golden pool and a silver fish. I buried my chin in my chest and thought deeply, but without effect while the preparations were made in the fateful urn. Each maid having slipped her name tablet within was brought down to us, covered in a beautiful web of rose colored tissue, and commenced its round, passing slowly from hand to hand as each of those handsome and passive faunaid galants lifted a corner of the web in turn and helped themselves to fate. A golden pool, I muttered, and a silver fish. So absorbed in my own thoughts, I hardly noticed the great cup begin its journey, but when it had gone three or four places the glitter of the lights upon it caught my eye. It was of pure gold, round brimmed, and circled about with a string of the blue convolveless which implies delight to these people. I, and each man, was plunging his hand into the dark and taking in his turn a small notched edged mother of pearl billet from it that flashed soft and silvery as he turned into his hand to read the name engraved in unknown characters thereon. Why, I said it with a start. Slowly this might be the golden pool, and these the little silver fish, but the hair find the line, and again I meditated deeply with all my senses on the watch. Slowly the urn crept round, and as each man took a ticket from it and passed it smiling to the center show behind him, that official read out the name upon it, and the blushing damsel slipped from the crowd above, crossing over to the side of the man with whom chance had thus lightly linked her for the brief marching year, and putting her hand in his they kissed before all the company, and sat down to their places at the table as calmly as country folk might choose partners in a village fair at hay time. But not so with me. Each time a name was called, I started and stared at the drawer in a way which should have filled him with alarm had alarm been possible to the pea-soaked triflers. Then turned a glance to where, amongst the women, my tender little princess was leaning against a pillar, with drooping head, slowly pulling a convolvelous bud to pieces. None drew, though all were thinking of her, as I could tell in my fingertips. Keener and Keener grew the suspense as name after name was told, and each slim white damsel skipped to the place allotted her. And all the time I kept muttering to myself about that golden pool, wondering and wondering until the urn had passed half round the tables and was only some three men up from me, and then an idea flashed across my mind. I dipped my fingers in the scented water basin on the table, drying them carefully on a napkin, and waiting, outwardly as calm as any, yet inwardly wrung by those tremors which beset all male creation in such circumstances. And now at last it was my turn. The great urn, blazing golden through its rosy covering, was in front, and all eyes on me. I clapped a sunburn hand upon its top as though I would take all remaining in it to myself and stared round at that company, only herself I durst not look at. Then with a beating heart I lifted a corner of the web and slipped my hand into the dark inside, muttering to myself as I did so, a golden pool, and a silver fish, and a line no thicker than a hair. I touched in turn twenty perplexing tablets and was no width the wiser, and felt about the sides that came to nothing, groping here and there with a rising despair, until, as my fingers, still damp and fine of touch, went round the sides a second time. Yes, there was something, something in the hollow of the fluting, a thought, a thread, and yet enough. I took it unseen, lifting it with infinite forbearance, and the end was weighted. The other tablets slipped and rattled us from their midst hanging to that one fine virgin hair, up came a pearly billet. I doubted no longer, but snapped the thread and showed the tablet, heard Heru's name, read from and amongst the soft applause of that luxurious company with all the unconcern I could muster. She was there in a moment, lip to lip with me before them all, her eyes more than ever like planets from her native skies, and only the quick heave of her bosom, slowly subsiding like a groundswell after a storm, remaining to tell that even Martian blood could sometimes beat quicker than usual. She sat down in her place by me in the simplest way, and soon everything was as merry as could be. The main meal came on now, and as far as I could see those Martian galants had extremely good appetites, though they drank it first but little, wisely remembering the strength of their wines. As for me, I ate of fishes that never swam and earthly seas, and of strange fowl that never flapped away through thick terrestrial air, ate and drank as happy as a king, and falling each moment more and more in love with the wonderfully beautiful girl at my side who was a real woman of flesh and blood I knew, yet somehow so dainty, so pink and white, so unlike other girls in the smoothness of her outlines, in the subtle grays of each unthinking attitude that again and again I looked at her over the rim of my tankard, half fearing she might dissolve into nothing, being the half fairy which she was. Presently she asked, did that deed of mine, the hair in the urn, offend you, stranger? Offend me, lady, I laughed. Why, had it been the blackest crime that ever came out of perverse imagination, it would have brought its own part in with it. I, least of all in this room, have least cause to be offended. I risked much for you and broke our rules. Why no doubt that was so, but tis the privilege of your kind to have some say in this little matter of giving and taking and marriage. I only marvel that your countrywoman admits so tainly to the quaintest game of chance I ever played at. I, and it is women's nature, no doubt, to keep the laws which others make as you have said yourself. Yet this rule, lady, is one broken with more credit than kept, and if you have offended no one more than me, your penance is easily done. But I have offended someone, she said, laying her hand on mine with gentle nervousness in its touch. One who has the power to hurt, and enough energy to resent. Half, up there at the cross-table, have I offended deeply to-night, for he hoped to have me, and would have compelled any other man to barter me for the made chance assigned to him. But of you, somehow, he is afraid. I have seen him staring at you and changing color as though he knew something no one else knows. Briefly, charming girl, I said, for the wine was beginning to sing in my head and my eyes were blinking stupidly. Briefly, hath, hath thee not, and there's an end of it. I would spit a score of haths, as these figs are spit on this golden skewer before I would relinquish a hair of your head to him or any other man. And as everything about the great hall began to look gauzing unreal through the gathering fumes of my confusion, I smiled on that gracious lady, and began to whisper I know not what to her, and whisper, and doze, and doze. I know not how long afterwards it was, whether a minute or an hour, but when I lifted my head suddenly from the lady's shoulder, all the place was in confusion. Everyone upon their feet, the talk and the drinking ceased, and all eyes turned to the far doorway where the curtains were just dropping again as I looked. While in front of them were standing three men. These newcomers were utterly unlike any others, a frightful vision of ugly strength amidst the lowling loveliness all about. Low of stature, broad of shoulder, hairy, deep-chested, with sharp twinkling eyes, set far back under bushy eyebrows, retreating foreheads, and flat noses and faces tanned to a dusky copper hue by exposure to every kind of weather that racks the extreme Martian climate. They were so opposite to all about me, so quaint and grim amongst those mild, fair-skinned folk, that at first I thought they were but a disordered creation of my fancy. I rubbed my eyes and stared and blinked, but no, they were real men of flesh and blood, and now they had come down with as much stateliness as their bandy legs would admit of, into the full glare of the lights to the center table where half sat. I saw their splendid apparel, the great strings of rudely polished gems hung round their hairy necks and wrist, the cunningly dyed skins of soft-furred animals, green and red and black, wherewith their limbs were swaved, and then I heard someone by me whisper in a frightened tone, the envoys from overseas. Oh, I thought sleeply to myself. So these are the eight men of the Western Woods, are they? Those who long ago vanquished my white-skinned friends and nearly come to claim their tribute. Jo, of what hay they must have made of them? How those peat-skinned girls must have screamed, and how those downy striplings by them felt their dimpled knees not together, as the mad flood of barbarians came pouring over from the forest, and long ago stormed their citadels like a stream of red lava, as deadly, as irresistible, as remorseless. And I lay a sprawl upon my arms on the table, watching them with stupid indifference I thought I could so well afford. Meanwhile Hath was on foot, pale and obsequious like others in the presence of those dread ambassadors, but more collected I thought. With the deepest bow he welcomed them, handing them drink in a golden-state cup. And when they had drunk, I heard the liquor running down their great throats in the frightened hush, like water in a runnel on a wet day. They wiped their fierce lips upon their furry sleeves, and the leader began reciting the tribute for the year. So much corn, so much wine, and very much it was. So many thousand elves of cloth and webbing, and so much hammer gold and senna and lar, precious metals of which I knew nothing as yet. And ever as he went growling through the list in his harsh animal voice, he referenced his memory with a colored stick whereupon a notch was made for every item. The woodman not having come as yet, apparently, to the gentler art of written signs and symbols. Longer and longer that caravan of unearned wealth stretched out before my fancy, but at last it was done, or all but done, and the head envoy, passing the painted stick to the man behind, folded his bare singly arms, upon which the red-fell bristles as it does upon a guerrillas, across his ample chest, and including us all in one general scowl, turned a hath as he said. This for our hap, the wood king, my master, and yours. All this and the most beautiful woman here tonight at your tables. An item, I smiled stupidly to myself, for indeed I was very sleepy and had no nice perception of things, which shows his majesty with the two-pronged name as a jolly fellow after all, and knows wealth is incomplete without the crown and priming of all riches. I wonder how the Martian boys will like this post-grip, and chin on hand, and eyes that would hardly stay open. I watched to see what would happen next. There was a little conversation between the prince and the eight-man. Then I saw half the trader point in my direction and say, since you ask, and will be advised then, mighty sir, there can be no doubt of it. The most beautiful woman here tonight is undoubtedly she who is such yonder by him in blue. A very pretty compliment, I thought, too dull to see what was coming quickly, and handsome of half all things considered. And so I dozed and dozed, and then started and stared. Was I in my senses? Was I mad or dreaming? The drunkenness dropped from me like a mantel, with a single smother cry I came to myself and saw it was all too true. The savage envoy had come down the hall at Hasvindictiv prompting, had lifted my fair girl to her feet, and there, even as I looked, had drawn her, widest death into the red circle of his arm, and with one hand under a chin had raised her sweet face to within an inch of his, and was staring at her with small, ugly eyes. Yes, said the envoy, more interestingly than he had spoken yet, it will do. The tribute is accepted for Arhap, my master, and taking shrinking Haru by the wrist and laying a heavy hand upon her shoulder, he was about to lead her up the hall. I was sober enough then. I was on foot in an instant, and before all the glittering company, before those simpering girls in pale, marching youths, who sat mumbling their fingers to frighten to lift their eyes from their half-finished dinners, I sprang at the envoy. I struck him with my clenched fist on the side of his bullet head, and he let go of Haru, who slipped insensible from his hairy chest like a white cloud slipping down the slopes of a hill at sunrise, and turned on me with a snort of rage. We stared at each other for a minute, and then I felt the wine fumes roaring in my head. I rushed at him and closed. It was like embracing a mountain bull, and he responded with a hug that made my ribs crackle. For a minute we were locked together like that, swinging here and there, and then getting a hand loose. I belabored him so immersively that he put his head down, and that was what I wanted. I got a new hold of him as we staggered and plunged, roaring the while like the wild beast we were, the teeth chattering in the Martian heads as they watched us, and then exerting all my strength, lifted him fairly from his feet and with supreme effort swung him up shoulder high, and with a mighty heave hurled him across the tables, flung that ambassador, whom no Martian dared to look upon, crashing and sprawling through the gold and silver of the feast. Whirled him round with such a splendid sand that bench and trestle, tankards and flagans, chairs and clothes and candelabra, all went down into thundering chaos with him, and the envoy only stayed when his sacred person came to harbor amongst the westerl odds and ends, the soiled linen and dirty platters of our wedding feast. I remember seeing him there on hands and knees, and then the liquor I had had would not be denied. In vain I drew my hands across my drooping eyelids, in vain I tried to master my knees that knocked together. The spell of the love drink that Haru blushing held to my lips was on me. Its soft, overwhelming influence rose like a prismatic fog between me and my enemy. Everything again became hazy and dreamlike, and feebly calling on Haru, my chin dropped on my chest, my limbs relaxed, and I slipped down in drowsy oblivion before my rival. CHAPTER VIII. They must have carried me, still under the influence of wine fumes to my chamber where I slept that night. For when I woke the following morning my surroundings were familiar enough, though a glorious maze of uncertainties rocked to and fro in my mind. Was it a real feast we had shared in overnight, or only a quaint dream? Was Haru real, or only a lovely fancy? And those hairy ruffians of whom a horrible vision danced before my waking eyes, were they fancy too? No, my wrist still ached with the strain of the tussle, the quaint, sad wine-taste was still on my lips. It was all real enough, I decided, starting up in bed. And if it was real, where was the little princess? What had they done with her? Surely they had not given her to the eight men, cowards though they were. They could not have been cowards enough for that. And as I wondered, a keen bright picture of the hapless maid as I saw her last blossom before my mind's eye, the ambassadors on either side holding her wrist, and she shrinking from them in horror while her poor white face turned to me for rescue and desperate pleading. Oh, I must find her at all cost. And leaping from bed, I snatched up those trousers without which the best of heroes is nothing. And hardly I got into them when there came the patter of light feet without, and a martian and a hurry for once. With half a dozen others behind him, swept aside the curtains of my doorway. They peeped and peered all about the room. Then one said, Is Princess Haru with you, sir? No, I answered roughly. Saints alive, man. Do you think I would have you tumbling in here over each other's heels if she were? Then it must have been Haru, he said, speaking in an awed voice to his fellows, whom we saw carried down to the harbor at daybreak by Yonder Woodman, and the pink upon their pretty cheeks faded to nothing at the suggestion. What, I roared, Haru taken from the palace by a handful of men, and none of you infernal rascals, none of you white-livered abortions lifted a hand to save her, cursing you a thousand times, out of my way, you churls. And snatching up coat and hat and sword, I rushed furiously down the long marble stairs just as the short Martian night was getting placed a lavender-colored light of morning. I found my way somehow down the deserted corridors where the air was heavy with aromatic vapors. I flew by curtain niches and chambers where amongst mounds of half-withered flowers the Martian lovers were slowly waking. Down into the banquet hall I sped. And there in the twilight was the litter of the feast still about. Full cups and silver, broken bread and meat, the convulvulous flowers all turning their pallid faces to the rosy daylight, making pools of brightness between the shadows. Amongst the litter, little sapphire-colored finches were feeding, twittering merrily to themselves as they hopped about. And here and there down the long tables lay a sprawl- belated reveler, his enthy oblivion-file before him, his curly head upon his arm, dreaming perhaps of last night's feast, and a neglected bride dozing dispassionate in some distant chamber. But Haru was not there, and little I cared for twittering finches or sign-dansels. With hasty feet I rushed down the hall out into the cool sweet air of the planet morning. There I met one whom I knew, and he told me he had been among the crowd, and had heard the woodman had gone no further than the river-gate. That Haru was with them beyond a doubt. I would not listen to more. Good! I shouted. Get me a horse and just a handful of your sleek kindred, and we will pull the prize from the bearest paw even yet. Finally I said, turning to a knot of marching youths who stood listening a few steps away. Surely some of you will come with me in this pinch. The big bullies are very few. The sea runs behind them. The maid in their clutch is worth fighting for. It needs but one good onset, five minutes gallantry, and she is ours again. Think how fine it will look to bring her back before Iyan's sleepy-fellows have found their weapons. You there, with a blue tunic. You look a proper fellow, and something of a heart should be under such gay wrappings. Will you come with me? But Blue Mantle, biting his thumbs, murmured he had not breakfasted yet and edged away behind his companions. Wherever I looked, eyes dropped and timid hands fidgeted as their owners backed off for my dangerous enthusiasm. There was obviously no help to be had from them, and meantime the precious moments were flying. So with a disdainful glance, I turned on my heels and set off alone as hard as I could go for the harbor. But it was too late. I rushed through the marketplace where all was silent and deserted. I ran on to the wars beyond, and they were empty save for the litter and embers of the fires perhaps men had made during their stay. I dashed out to the landing-place, and there at the height the last boats of the villains were just embarking. Two boatloads of them twenty yards from shore, and still another upon the beach. This latter was careening over as a dusky group of men lifted aboard to a heap of tumbled silts and stuffs in the stern such a sweet piece of insensible merchandise as no man, I, least of all, could mistake. It was Haru herself, and the roads were ladling her on board like so much sandalwood or cotton sheeting. I did not wait for more, but out came my sword, and yielding to a reckless impulse, for which perhaps last night's wine was as much to blame as anything. I sprang down the steps and left the board of the boat just as it was pushed off upon the swift tide. Full of berserk rage, I cut one brawny copper-colored thief down and struck another with my fist between the eyes, so that he went headlong into the water, sinking like lead, and deep into the great target of his neighbor's chest I drove my blade. Had there been a man beside me, had there been but two or three of all those silken triflers, too late come on the terraces above to watch, we might have won. But all alone what could I do? That last red beast turned on my blade, and as he fell dragged me half down with him. I staggered up, and tugging the metal from him turned on the next. At that moment the cause of all the turmoil, roused by the fighting, came to herself, and sitting up on the pile plunder in the boat, stared round for a moment with a childish horror at the barbarians whose pride she was. Then at me, then at the dead man at my feet, whose blood was welling in a red tie from the wound in his breast. As the full meaning of the scene dawned upon her, she started to her feet, looking wonderfully beautiful amongst those dusky forms, and extending her hands to me began to cry in the most piteous way. I sprang forward, and as I did so saw an eight-man clap his hairy paw over her mouth and face. It was like an eclipse of the moon by a red earth-shadow I thought at the moment, and dragged her roughly back. But that was about the last I remembered. As I turned to hit him standing on the slippery thwart, another rogue crept up behind and let drive with the club he had in hand. The cudgel caught me sideways on the head, a glancing shot. I can recall a blaze of light, a strange medley of sounds in my ears, and then, clutching at a pile of stuffs as I fell, a tall bower of spray rising on either hand, and the cool shock of the blue sea as I plunged headlong in. But nothing after that. How long after I know not, but presently a tissue of daylight crept into my eyes and I awoke again. It was better than nothing, perhaps, yet it was a poor awakening. The big sun lay low down, and the day was all but done, so much I guessed as I rocked in that light with an undulating movement. And then my senses returned more fully, recognized with a start of wonder that I was still in the water, floating on a swift current into the unknown on an air-filled pile of silken stuffs which had been pulled down with me from the boat when I got my ganging from yonder rascals mace. It was a wet couch, sodden and chilly, but as the freshening evening wind blew in my face and the darkening water lapped against my forehead I revived more fully. Where had we come to? I turned an aching neck, and all along on both sides seemed to stretch steep, straight coast about a mile or so apart. In the shadow of the setting sun, black as ebony. Between the two, the hampered water ran quickly with, away on the right, some shallow sandy spits and islands covered with dwarf bushes. Chilly inhospitable-looking places they seemed, as I turned my eyes upon them, but he who rides helpless down an evening tide stands out for no great niceties of landing place. Could I have but reached them, they would make at least a drier bed than this of mine. And at that thought, turning over, I found all my muscles stiff as iron. The sinews of my neck and forearms of massive agonies and no more fit to swim me to those reedy swamps, which now as pain and hunger began to tell seemed to wear the aspects of paradise. With a groan I dropped back upon my raft and watched the islands slipping by, while over my feet the southern sky darkened to purple. There was no help there, but glancing round away on the left and a few furlongs from me, I noticed on the surface of the water two converting strands of brightness, an angle the point of which seemed to be coming towards me. Here it came and nearer, right across my road, until I could see a black dot at the point. Ahead presently developed, then as we approached the ears and antlers of a swimming stag. It was a huge beast as it loomed up against the glow, bigger than any mortal stag ever was. The kind of fellow traveler no one would willingly accost. But even if I had wished to get out of its path, I had no power to do so. Closer and closer we came, one of us drifting helplessly, and the other swimming strongly for the islands. When we were about a furlong apart, the great beast seemed to change its course, may have it took the wreckage on which I floated for an outlying shoal, something on which could rest a space in that long swim. Be this as it may, the beast came hurtling down on me lit deep in the waves, a mighty brown head with prick-deers that flicked the water from them now and then. Small bright eyes set far back, and wide palm-aided antlers on a mighty forehead, like the dead branches of a tree. What that Martian mountain elk had hoped for can only be guessed. What he met with was a tangle of floating finery carrying a numb traveler on it, and with a snort of disappointment he turned again. It was a poor chance, but better than nothing, and as I turned I tried to throw a strand of silk I had unwound from the sod mass over his branching tines. Quick as thought, the beast twisted his head aside and tossed his antlers so that the tri was fruitless. But was I to lose my only chance of shore? With all my strength I hurled myself upon him, missed my clutch again by a hair's breadth, and going headlong into the salt furrow his chest was turning up. Happily I kept hold of the web, for the great elk then turned back, passing between me and the ruck of stuff and getting thereby the silk under his chin. And as I came gasping to the top once more, round came that dainty wreckage over his back. And I clutched it, and sooner than it takes to tell, I was towing to the shores perhaps no one has ever towed before. The big beast dragged the ruck like withered weed behind him, bellowing all the time with a voice which made the hill's echo all around. And then, when he got his feet upon the shallows, rose dripping in mountainous, a very cliff of black hide and limb against the night shine, and with a single sweep of his antlers tore the webbing from me, who lay prone and breathless in the mud, and thinking it was his enemy, hurled a limp bundle on the beach. And then, having pounded it with his clove of defeat into formless shreds, bellowed again victoriously and went off into the darkness of the forest. CHAPTER IX I landed, stiff enough as you will guess, but pleased to be on shore again. It was a melancholy neighborhood of low islands, overgrown with rank grass and bushes, salt water encircling them, and inside sandy dunes and hummocks with shallow pools, gleaming ghostly and retreating daylight, while beyond those rose the black bosses of what looked like a forest. Fither I made my way, plunging uncomfortably through shallows and tripping over blackened branches which, lying just below the surface, quivered like snakes as the evening breeze ruffled each surface. Until the ground hardened underfoot, and presently I was standing, hungry and faint, but safe, on dry land again. The forest was so close to the sea one could not advance without entering it, and once within its dark arcades every way looked equally gloomy and hopeless. I struggled through tangles night made more and more impenetrable each minute, until presently I could go no further, and where a dense canopy of trees overhead gave out for a minute on the edge of a swampy hollow, I determined to wait for daylight. Never was there a more wet or weary traveler, or one more desperately lonely than he who wrapped himself up in the miserable insufficiency of his wet rags, and without fire or supper, crept amongst the exposed roots of a tree growing out of a bank, and prepared to hope grimly for morning. Round and round meanwhile was drawn the close screen of night, till a clearing in front was blotted out, and only the treetops, black as rugged hills one behind the other, stood out against the heavy purple of the circlet of sky above. As the evening deepened, the quaintest noises began on every hand, noises so strange and bewildering that as I cowered down with my teeth chattering, and stared hard into the impenetrable, they could be likened to nothing but the crying of all the souls of dead things since the beginning. Never was there such an infernal course as that which played up the Martian stars. Down there in front, where hummic grass was growing, some beast squeaked continuously, till I shouted at him, then he stopped a minute, and began again in an entirely another note. Away on the hills, two rival monsters were calling to each other in tones so hollow they seemed as I listened to penetrate through me and echo out of my heart again. Far overhead, gigantic bats were flitting, the shadow of their wings dimming a dozen universes at once, and crying to each other in shrill tones that rent the air like tearing silk. As I listened to those vampires discussing their infernal loves under the stars, from a branch right overhead broke such a deathly howl from the throat of a wandering forest cat that everything else was hushed for a moment. All about, a myriad insects were making night giddy with their ghostly fires. While underground and from the labyrinths of matted roots came quaint sounds of rustling snakes and forest pigs, and all the lesser things that dig and scratch and growl. Yet I was desperately sleepy. My sword hung heavy as lead at my side. My eyelids drooped, and so at last I dozed uneasily for an hour or two. Then all in a sudden I came wide awake with a shock. The night was quieter now, away in the forest depths strange noises still arose, but close at hand was a strange hush, like the hush of expectation, and listening wonderingly I was aware of slow heavy footsteps coming up from the river. Now two or three steps together, then a pause, then another step or two. And as I vent towards the approaching thing, staring into the darkness, my strained senses were conscious of another approach. Things like could be coming from behind me. On they came, making the very ground quake with their weight, till I judged that both were about on the edge of the clearing. Two vast rat-like shadows, but as big as elephants, and bringing a most intolerable smell of sour slime with them. There on the edge of the amphitheater, each for the first time appeared to become aware of the other's presence. The footsteps stopped dead. I could hear the water dripping from the fur of those giant brutes amongst the shadows, and the deep breathing of the one nearest me, a scanty ten paces off, but not another sound in the stillness. Minute after minute passed, yet neither moved. A half hour grew to a full hour, and that hour lengthened amid the keenest tension till my ears ached with listening, and my eyes were sore restraining into the blackness. At last I began to wonder whether those earth-shaking beasts had not been an evil dream, and was just venturing to stretch out a cramped leg and rally myself upon my cowardice, when, without warning, at my elbow rose the most ear-splitting scream of rage that ever came from a living throat. There was a sweeping rush in the darkness which I could feel but not see, and with a shock the two gladiators met in the midst of the arena. Over and over they went screaming and struggling and slipping and plunging. I could hear them tearing at each other, and the sharp cries of pain, first one, and then the other gave as claw or tooth got home. And all the time, though the ground was quaking under their struggles in the air full of horrible uproar, not a thing was to be seen. I did not even know what manner of beast they were who rocked and rolled and tore at each other's throats, but I heard their teeth snapping, and their fierce breath in the pauses of the struggle, and could but wait in a huddle amongst the roots until it was over. To and fro they went. Now at the far side of the dark clearing, now so close that hot drops of blood from their jaws fell on my face like rain in the darkness. It seemed as though the fight would never end, but presently there was more of worrying in it and less of snapping. It was clear one or the other had had enough, and as I marked this those black shadows came gasping and struggling towards me. There was a sudden sharp cry, a desperate final tussle before which strong trees snapped and bushes were flattened out like grass, not twenty yards away, and then for a minute all was silent. One of them had killed, and as I sat rooted to the spot I was forced to listen while his enemy tore him up and ate him. Many a bank would have I been at, but never an uglier one than that. I sat in the darkness while the unknown thing at my feet ripped the flesh from his half-dead rival and strips, and across the damp night wind came the reek of that abominable feast, the reek of blood and spent entrails. Until I turned my face away in loathing, and was nearly starting to my feet to venture a rush into the forest shadows. But I was spellbound, and remained listening to the heavy munch of bloodstained jaws until presently I was where other and lesser feasters were coming. There was a twinkle of hungry eyes all about the limits of the area, the shine of green points of envious fire that circled round in decreasing orbits as the little foxes and jackals came crowding in. One fellow took me for a rock, so still I sat, putting his hot, soft paws upon my knee for a space, and others past so near me I could all but touch them. The big beast had taken himself off-way this time, and there must have been several hundreds of these newcomers. A merry time they had of it. The whole place was full of the green, hurrying eyes, and amidst the snap of teeth and yapping and quarreling, I could hear the flesh being torn from the red bones in every direction. One wolf-like individual brought a massive hot liver to eat between my feet, but I gave him a kick and sent him away much to his surprise. Gradually, however, the sound of this unholy feast died away, and though you may hardly believe it, I fell off in a dose. It was not sleep, but it served the purpose, and when, in an hour or two, a draft of cool air roused me, I awoke, feeling more in myself again. Slowly morning came, and the black wall of forest around became full of purple interstices as the east brightened. Those glimmers of light between bow and trunk turned to yellow and red. The day shine presently stretched like a canopy from point to point of the treetops on either side of my sleeping place, and I arose. All my limbs were stiff with cold, my veins emptied by hunger and wounds, and for a space I had not even strength to move. But a little rubbing softened my cramped muscles presently, and limping painfully down to the place of combat I surveyed the traces of that midnight fight. I will not dwell upon it. It was ugly and grim. The trampled grass, the giant footmarks, each in ringing its pool of curdled blood. The broken bushes, the grooved mudslides where the unknown brutes had slid in deadly embrace. The hollows, the splintered bowels, their ragged points tufted with skin and hair. All was sickening to me. Yet so hungry was I that when I turned towards the odious remains of the vanquished, a shapeless mass of abomination, my thoughts flew at once to breakfasting. I went down and inspected the victim cautiously, a huge rat-like beast as far as might be judged from the bear uprising ribs, all that was left of him looking like the framework of a schooner yacht. His heart lay amongst the awful, and my knife came out and cut a meal from it, but I could not do it. Three times I assayed the task, hunger and disgust contending for mastery. Three times turned back and loathing. At last I could stand the sight no more, and slamming the knife up again turned on my heels and fairly ran for fresh air in the shore, where the sea was beginning to glimmer in the light a few score yards through the forest stems. There once more out on the open, on a pebbly beach I stripped, spreading my things out to dry on the stones, and laying myself down with the lapping of the waves in my ears, and the first yellow sunshine thawing my limbs, trying to piece together the hurrying events of the last few days. What were my gay Martians doing? Lazy dogs to let me, a stranger, be the only one to draw sword in defense of their own princess. Where was poor Haru, that sweet maiden wife? The thought of her in the hands of the eight men was odious. And yet was I not mad to try to rescue or even to follow her alone? If by any chance I could get off this beast-haunted place and catch up with the ravishers, what had I to look for from them except speedy extinction, and that likely enough by the most painful process they were acquainted with? The other alternative of going back empty-handed was terribly ignominious. I had lectured the amiable young manhood of Seth so soundly on the subject of gallantry, and set them such a good example on two occasions, that it would be bathos to saunder back, hands in pockets, and confess I knew nothing of the lady's fate, and had been daunted by the first night alone in the forest. Besides, how dull it would be in that beautiful, tumble-down old city without Haru, with no expectation day by day of seeing her silk-flight form and hearing the merry tinkle of her fairy laughter as she scoffed at the unknown learning collected by her ancestors in a thousand laborious years. No, I would go for certain. I was young, in love, and angry, and before those qualifications difficulties became light. Meanwhile the first essential was breakfast of some kind. I arose, stretched, put on my half-dried clothes, and mounting on a low humic on the forest edge looked around. The sun was riding up finely into the sky, and the sea to the eastward shone for leagues and leagues and the loveliest azure. Where it rippled on my own beach, and those of the low islands noted overnight, a wonderful fire of blue and red played on the sands as though the broken water were full of living gems. The sky was full of strange gulls with long forked tails, and a lovely little flying lizard with transparent wings of the palest green, like those of a grasshopper, was flitting about picking up insect stragglers. All this was very charming, but what I kept saying to myself was, streaky rashers and hot coffee, rashers and coffee and rolls, and indeed had the gates of paradise themselves opened at that moment, I fear my first look down the celestial streets within would have been for a restaurant. They did not, and I was just turning away disconsolate when my eye caught, ascending from behind the next bluff down the beach, a thin strand of smoke rising into the morning air. It was nothing so much in itself, a thin spiral creeping upwards massed high, then flattening out into a mushroom head, but it meant everything to me. Where there was fire there must be humanity, and where there was humanity, eye to the very outlayers of the universe, there must be breakfast. It was a splendid thought. I rushed down the hillock and went gaily for that blue thread amongst the reeds. It was not two hundred yards away, and soon below me was a tiny bay with bluest water filling a silver beach, and in the midst of it a fire on a hearth dancing round the pot that simmered gloriously. But of an owner there was nothing to be seen. I peered here and there on the shore, but nothing moved, while out to sea the water was shining like molten metal with not a dot upon it. What did it matter? I laughed as, pleased and hungry, I slipped down the bank and strode across the sands. It pleased fate to play bandy with me, and if it sent me supperless to bed, why, here was restitution in the way of breakfast. I took up a morsel of the stuff in the kettle on a handy stick and found it good. Indeed, I knew it at once as a very dainty mess made from the roots of an herb the Martians greatly liked. On had piled my platter with it when we sucked that night in the marketplace of Seth, and the sweet white stuff had melted into my corporeal essence it seemed, without any gross intermediate process of digestion. And here I was again, hungry, sniffing the fragrant breath of a full meal and not a soul in sight. I should have been a fool not to have eaten. So thinking down I sat, taking the pot from its place, and when it was a little cool, plunging my hands into it, and feasting with as good an appetite as ever a man had before. It was gloriously ambrosial, and deeper and deeper I went, with the tall stalk of the smoke in front growing from the hearth stones like some strange new plant, the pleasant sunshine on my back, and never a thought for anything but the task in hand. Deeper and deeper, oblivious of all else, until, to get to the very last drops, I lifted the pipkin up and putting my head back drank in that fashion. It was only when with a sigh of pleasure I lowered it slowly again, that over the rim as it sank there dawned upon me the vision of a Martian standing by an antique canoe on the edge of the water, and regarding me with calm amazement. I was, in fact, so astonished that for a minute the empty pot stood still before my face, and over its edge we stared at each other in mute surprise. Then, with all the dignity that might be, I laid the vessel down between my feet, and waited for the newcomer to speak. She was a girl by her yellow garb, a fisherwoman it seemed, for in the prow of her craft was piled in net upon which the scales of fishes were twinkling. A Martian obviously, but something more robust than most of them, a saver of honest work about her sun-burnt face which my pallid friends away yonder were lacking in. And when we had stared at each other for a few moments in silence, she came forward a step or two, and said without a trace of fear or shyness, Are you a spirit, sir? Why, I answered, about as much, no more or less than most of us. I, she said, I thought you were, for none but spirits live here upon this island. Are you for good or evil? Far better for the breakfast of which I fear I have robbed you, but wandering along the shore and finding this pot boiling with no owner, I ventured to sample it, and it was so good, my appetite got the better of manners. The girl bowed, and standing at a respectful distance, asked if I would like some fish as well. She had some, but not many, and if I would eat, she would cook them for me in a minute. It was not often, she added lightly, she had met one of my kind before. In fact, it was obvious that simple person did actually take me for a being of another world. And was it for me to say she was wrong? So adopting a dignity worthy of my reputation, I nodded gravely to her offer. She fetched from the boat four little fishes of the daintiest kind imaginable. They were each about as big as a hand and pale blue when you looked down upon them. But so clear against the light that every bone and vein in their bodies could be traced. These were wrapped just as they were in a broad green leaf, and then the Martian, taking a pointed stick, made a hollow in the white ashes, laid them in side by side, and drew the hot dust over again. While they cooked, we chatted as though the acquaintance were the most casual thing in the world, and I found that it was indeed an island we were on and not the mainland as I had hoped at first. Seth, she told me, was far away to the eastward, and if the woodmen had gone in by their ships, they would have passed round to the northwest of where we were. I spent an hour or two with that amiable individual, and it is to be hoped, sustained the character of a spiritual visitant with considerable dignity. In one particular, at least, that namely of appetite, I did honor to my supposed source, and as my entertainer would not hear of payment and material kind, all I could do was show her some conjuring tricks, which greatly increased her belief of my supernatural origin, and to teach her some new hitches and knots, using her fishing line as a means of illustration. A demonstration which called from her the natural observation that we must be good sailors up aloft, since we knew so much about cordage, then we parted. She had seen nothing of the woodmen, though she had heard they had been the Seth, and thought, from some niceties of geographical calculation which I could not follow, they would have crossed to the north as just stated of her island. There, she told me, with much surprise at my desire for information, how I might, by following the forest track to the westward coast, make my way to a fishing village where they would give me a canoe and direct me, since such was my extraordinary wish, to the place where, if anywhere, the wild men had touched on their way home. She filled my wallet with dried honey-cakes, and my mouth was sugar-plums from her little store. Then down on her knees went that poor wave of a worn-out civilization, and kissed my hands in humble farewell. And I, blushing to be so saluted, and after all but a sailor, got her by the rosy fingers and lifted her up shoulder high. And getting one hand under her chin, and the other behind her head kissed her twice upon her pretty cheeks. And so, I say, we parted. CHAPTER X of Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin L. Arnold. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by James Christopher Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin L. Arnold. CHAPTER X Often to the forest I went, feeling a boyish elation to be so free nor taking heed nor count of the reckless adventures before me. The Martian weather for the moment was lovely, and the many-colored grass lushed and soft underfoot. Mile after mile I went, heeding the distance lightly, the air was so elastic. Now pressing forward as the main interest of my errand took the upper hand, and remembered to pour her rue like a crushed white flower in the red grip of those cruel ravishers came upon me. And then, pausing the sigh with pleasure, I stand agape, forgetful even of her, and wonder of the unknown loveliness about me. And well might I stare. Everything in that forest was wonderful. There were plants which turned from color to color with the varying hours of the day. While others had a growth so swift, it was dangerous to sit in their neighborhood since the long, succulent tendrils clamoring from the parent's stem would weave you into a helpless tangle while you stared, fascinated upon them. There were plants that climbed and walked, sighing plants who called to the wing of things of the air to them with a noise as light to a girl sobbing, that again and again I stopped in the tangle path to listen. There were green bladder mosses which swam about the surface of the still pools like giant frog broods. There were, on the ridges, warrior trees burning in the vindictiveness of a long-forgotten cause, a blaze of crimson scimitar thorns from root to topmost twig. And down again in the cool hollows were lady bushes making twilight of the green gloom with their cloudy ivory blossoms and filling the shadows with such a heavy scent that head and heart reeled with a fatal pleasure as one pushed aside their branches. Every riverbed was full of mighty reeds, whose stems clattered together when the wind blew like swords on shields. And every now and then a bit of forest was woven together with the ropey stems of giant creepers till no man or beast could have passed save for the past which constant use it kept open through the mazes. All day long I wandered on through those wonderful woodlands, and in fact loitered so much over their infinite marvels that when sundown came all too soon there was still undulating forest everywhere, vistas of fairy glades on every hand, people with incredible things and echoing with sounds that excited the ears as much as other things fascinated the eyes, but no sign of the sea or my fishing village anywhere. It did not matter. A little of the Martian leisureliness was getting into my blood. If not today, why then tomorrow, as An would have said. And with this for comfort I selected a warm sandy hollow under the roots of a big tree, made my brief arrangements for the night, ate some honey cakes, and was soon sleeping blissfully. I woke early next morning after many hours of interrupted dreams, and having nothing to do to the white haze it lifted and made it possible to start again, rested idly a time on my elbow and watched the sunshine filter into the recesses. Very pretty it was to see the thick canopy overhead, by starlight so impenetrable, open its chinks and fissures as the searching sun came upon it. To see the pinhole gaps shine like spangles presently, the space is broadened into lesser suns, and even the thick leafage brightened and shined down upon me with a soft sea green radiance. The sunward sides of the tree stems took a glow, and the dew that ran dripping down their mossy sides trickled blood red to earth. Elsewhere the shadows were still black. And strange things began to move in them, things we in our middle-aged world have never seen the likeness of. Beast half birds, birds half creeping things, and creeping things which it seemed to me pass through the lesser creations down to the basest life that crossed without interruption or division. It was not for me, a sailor, to know much of such things. Yet some I could not fail to notice. On one gray branch overhead, jutting from a tree stem where a patch of velvet moss made in the morning a glint of fairy bed, a wonderful flower unfolded. It was a splendid bud, ivory white, cushioned in leaves and secured to its place by naked white roots that clipped the branch like fingers of a lady's hand. Even as I looked it opened, a pale white star, and hung pensive and inviting on its mossy cushion. From it came such a ravishing odor that even I, at the further end of the great scale of life, felt my pulse quicken and my eyes brighten with cupidity. I was in the very act of climbing the tree, but before I could move hand or foot two things happened, whether you take my word for them or no. Firstly, up through the glade in the underwood, attracted by the odor, came an ugly brown bird with a capacious beak in shining claws. He perched nearby, and peeped and peered until he made out the flower pining on her virgin stem. We're at offy hop to her branch, and there, with a cynical chuckle, strutted to and fro between her and the main stem like an ill-genius guarding a fairy princess. Surely heaven would not allow him to tamper with so chase a bud. My hand reached for a stone to throw at him when happened the second thing. There came a gentle pat upon the woodland floor, and from the tree overhead dropped down another living plant, like the one above, yet not exactly similar. A male, my instincts told me, in full solitary blossom like her above, cinched with leaves and supported by half a score of white roots that worked as I looked, like the limbs of a crab. In a twinkling that party-colored gentleman vegetable near me was off to the stem upon which grew his lady love. Running and scrambling, dragging the finery of his tassled petals behind, it was laughable to watch as eagerness. He got a grip of the tree, and up he went, hand over hand, root over root. I had just time to note others of his species had dropped here and there upon the ground, and were hurrying with frantic haste to the same destination when he reached the fatal branch, and was straddling victoriously down it, blind to all but love and longing. That ill omen bird, who stood above the maiden flower, let him come within a stalk's length, so near that the white splendor of his sleeping lady gleamed with an arm's reach. Then the giant beak was opened, the great claws made a clutch. The gallant's head was yanked from his neck, and as it went tumbling down the maw of the feathered thing his white legs fell spinning through space, and laid knotting themselves in agony upon the ground for a minute or two before they relaxed and became flaccid in the repose of death. Another and another vegetable suitor made for that fatal trist, and as each came up the snap of the brown bird's beak was all their obsequies. At last no more came, and then that nemesis of claws and quill'd walked over to the girl flower, his stomach feathers ruffled with repletion, the green blood of her lovers dripping from his claws, and pulled her golden heart out, tore her white limbs one from the other, and swallowed her piecemeal before my very eyes. Then up in wrath I jumped, and yelled at him till the woods echoed, but too late to stay his sacrilege. By this time the sun was bathing everything in splendor, and turning away from the wonders about me, I set off at best pace along the well trodden path which led without turning to the west coast village where the canoes were. It proved far closer than expected. As a matter of fact the forest in this direction grew right down to the water's edge, the salt-loving trees actually overhanging the waves, one of the pleasantest sights in nature. And thus I came right out on top of the hamlet before there had been an indication of its presence. It occupied two sides of a pretty little bay, the third side being flatland given over to the cultivation of an enormous species of gourd whose characteristic yellow flowers and green succulent leaves were discernible even at this distance. I branched off along the edge of the surf and down a dainty little flowery path, noticing meanwhile how the whole bay was filled by hundreds of empty canoes, while scores of others were drawn up upon the strand and the first thing I chanced upon was a group of people, youthful of course, with the eternal Martian bloom and in the splendid simplicity of almost complete nakedness. My first idea was that they were bathing, and fixing my eyes on the treetops with great propriety I gave a warning cough. At that sound, instead of getting to cover or close, all started and stood staring for a time like a herd of startled cattle. It was highly embarrassing. They were right in the path, a round dozen of them, naked and so little shame that when I edged away and modestly they began to run after me. And the farther they came forward, the more I retired, till we were playing a kind of game of hide and seek round the tree-stems. In the middle of it my heel caught on a root, and down I went very hard and very ignominiously, whereupon those laughing, light-hearted folk rushed in, and with smiles and jest helped me to my feet. Was I the traveler who had come from Seth? Yes. Oh, then that was well. They had heard such a traveler was on the road, and had come a little way down the path as far as might be without fatigue to meet him. Would I eat with them? These amiable strangers asked, pushing their soft, warm fingers into mine and ringing me round with a circle. But firstly might they help me out of my clothes. It was hot, and these things were cumbersome. As to the eating, I was agreeable enough seeing how casual meals had been with me lately, but my clothes, though heaven knows they were getting horribly ragged and travel-stained, I clung to desperately. My new friends shrugged their dimpled shoulders, and arguments being tedious at once squatted round me in the dappled shade of a big tree, and produced their stores of never-failing provisions. After a pleasant little meal taken thus in the open with all the simplicity Martians delight in, we got to talking about those yellow canoes which were bobbing about on the blue waters of the bay. Would you like to see where they are grown? asked an individual basking by my side. Grown, I answered within credulity. Built, you mean. Never in my life did I hear of growing boats. But then, sir, observed the girl, as she sucked the honey out of the stalk of an azure convolveless flower, and threw the remains at a butterfly that sailed across the sunshine. You know so little. You have come from afar, from some barbarous and barren district. Here we undoubtedly grow our boats. And though we know the thither folk and such uncultivated races make their craft by cumbersome methods of flat planks, yet we prefer our own way. For one thing, because it saves trouble. And as she murmured that all sufficient reason, the gentle damsel nodded reflectively. But one of her companions, more lively for the moment, tickled her with a straw until she roused, and then said, Let us take the stranger to the boat-garden now. The current will drift us round the bay, and we can come back when it turns. If we wait we shall have to row in both directions, or even walk. And again, planetary slothfulness carried the day. So down to the beach we strolled and launched one of the golden huge skiffs upon the pretty dancing wavelets just where they ran, lipped with jeweled spray on the shore. And then only had I a chance to scrutinize their material. I padded that one we were upon inside and out. I noted with a seamen's admiration its lightness, elasticity, and supreme sleekness, its marvelous buoyancy and fairy-like lines. And after some minute's consideration, it suddenly flashed upon me that it was all of gourd rind. And as if to supply confirmation, the flat land we were approaching on the opposite side of the bay was covered by the characteristic verdu of these plants with a touch here and there of splendid yellow blossoms, but all of gigantic proportions. I said a Martian damsel lying on the bottom and taking and kissing my hand as she spoke in the simple hearted way of her people. I see you have guessed how we make our boats. Is it the same in your distant country? No, my girl. And what's more, I'm a bit uneasy as to what the fellows on the Carolina will say if they ever hear I went to see in a hollowed-out pumpkin. And with the young lady, well, dressed as you are for a crew. And now I cannot imagine how you get your ship so trim and shapely. There is not a seam or a patch anywhere. It looks as if you had run them into a mold. That's just what we had done, sir. And now you will witness the molds at work, for here we are. And the little skiff was pulled ashore, and the Martians and I jumped on the shelving beach, hauled our boat up high and dry, and right there over us, like great green umbrellas, spread the fronds of the outmost garden of the strangest of all ship-building yards. Briefly, and not to make this part of my story too long, those gilded boys and girls took me ashore, and chattering like finches in the evening, showed how they planted their gourd seed, nourished the gigantic plants as they grew with brackish water and the burnt ashes. Then, when they had flowered, mated the male and female blossoms, glorious funnels of gold and hue big enough for one to live in. And when the young fruit was of the bigness of an ordinary bolster, how they slipped it into a double mold of open reed work something like two halves of a walnut shell. And how, growing day by day in this, it soon took every curve in line they chose to give it, even they hanging keel below. The strengthened bulwarks, and tall prow piece. It was so ingenious, yet simple, and I confess I laughed over my first skiff on the stalk, and fell bantering to the Martians, asking whether it was a good season for natives, whether their connoisseurs were spreading nicely, if they could give me a pinch of barge seed, or a yacht in bud to show my friends at home. But those lazy people took the matter seriously enough. They led me down green alleys arched over with huge melon-like leaves. They led me among innumerable byways, making me peep and peer through the checkered sunlight at ocean-growing craft that had budded twelve months before, already filling their molds to the last inch of space. They told me that when the growing process was sufficiently advanced, they loosened the casing and cutting a hole into the interior of each giant fruit, scooped out all its seed, thereby checking more advance. They said each fruit made two vessels, but the upper half was always best, and used for long saltwater journeys, the lower piece being but for punting or fishing on the lakes. They cut them in half while still green, scraped out the light remaining pulp when dry, and dragged them down with the minimum of trouble. Light as feathers, tenacious as steel plate, and already in the form and fashion of dainty craft from five to twenty feet in length when the process was completed. By the time we had explored the strangest of shipbuilding yards, and I had seen last year's crop on the stalks being polished and fitted with seats and gears, the sun was going down, and the Martian twilight, owing to the comparative steepness of the little planetsides being brief, we strolled back to the village. And there they gave me harbourage for the night, and brosial supper, and a deep draft of the wine of forgetfulness, under the gauzy spell of which the real and unreal melted into vistas of rosy oblivion, and I slept. With the new morning came fresh energy, and a spasm of conscience as I thought of poor Haru, and the shabby sort of rescue where I was to lie about with these pretty triflers while she remained in peril. So I had a bath and a swim, a breakfast, and to my shame be it acknowledged, a sort of farewell merry-go-round dance on the yellow sands, with a dozen young persons, all light-hearted as the morning, beautiful as the flowers that bound their hair, and in the extremity of Statuesca Tyre. Then at last I got them to give me a seagull in canoe, a stock of cakes and fresh water. And with many parting injunctions on how to find the woodman trail, since I would not listen to reason and lie all the rest of my life with them in the sunshine, they pushed me off on my lonely voyage. Over the blue waters they shouted in chorus as I did my pat on to the diamond-crested wavelets, six hours adventurous stranger with the sun behind you, then into the broad river behind the yellow sandbar. But not the black northward river, not the strong black river, above all things, stranger. For that is the river of the dead, by which many go, but none come back. Goodbye. In waving them adieu, I sternly turned my eyes from delights behind and faced the fascination of perils in front. In four hours, for the Martians had forgotten in their calculations that my muscles were so much stronger than theirs, I rose the further shore, and then the question was, where ran that westward river of theirs? It turned out afterwards that, knowing nothing of their tides, I had drifted much too far northward, and consequently the coast that closed up the estuary mouth I should have entered. Not a sign of an opening showed anywhere, and having nothing whatever for guidance, I turned northward, eagerly scanning the endless lines of low cliffs as a day lessened for the promised sandbar or inlet. About dusk my canoe, flying swiftly forward at its own sweet will, brought me into a bite, a bare, desolate-looking country with no vegetation save grass and sedge on the near marches and stony hills rising up beyond, with others beyond them mounting step by step into a long line of ridges and peaks still covered in winter snow. The outlook was anything but cheering. Not a trace of habitation had been seen for a long time, not a single living being in whose neighborhood I could land and ask the way. Nothing living anywhere, but a monstrous kind of sea slug, as big as a dog, batting on the waterside garbage, and gaunt birds like vultures who croaked on the mudflats and half-spread wings of funeral blackness as they gambled here and there. Where was poor Haru? Where pink-shouldered on? Where are those wild men who had taken the princess from us? Lastly, but not least, where was I? All the first stars of the Martian sky were strange to me, and my boat whirling round and round on the current confused what little geography I might otherwise have retained. It was a cheerless look-out, and again and again I cursed my folly for coming on such a fool's errand as I sat, chin in hand, staring at the landscape that grew more and more depressing every mile. To go on looked like destruction, to go back almost impossible without a guide, and while I was still wondering which of the two might be the lesser evil, the stream I was on turned to corner, and in a moment we were upon water which ran with swift, oily smoothness straight for the snow ranges now beginning to loom unpleasantly close ahead. By this time the night was coming on apace, the last of the evil-looking birds had winged its way across the red sunset glare, and though it was clear enough in midriver under the banks, now steep and unclimable, it was already evening. And with the darkness came a wondrous cold breath from off the ice fields, blowing through my lowland wrappings as though they were but tissue. I munched a bit of honey-cake, took a cautious sip of wine, and though I will not own I was frightened, yet no one will deny that the circumstances were discouraging. Standing up in the frail canoe and looking around, at the second glance an object caught my eye, coming up with the stream, and rapidly overtaking me on a strong sluice of water. It was a raft of some sort, and something extraordinarily like a sitting martian on it. Nearer and nearer it came, bobbing to the rise and fall of each wavelet with the last icy sunlight touching in up with reds and golds. Nearer and nearer in the deadly hush of that forsaken region, and then at last so near that it showed quite plainly on the purple water. A raft with someone sitting under a canopy. With a thrill of delight I waved my capillof and shouted, Shippahoy! Hello, messmate! Where are we bound to? But never an answer came from that swiftly passing stranger, so again I hailed. Put up your helm, Mr. Skipper. I have lost my bearings, and the chronometer has run down. But without a pause or sound that strange craft went slipping by. That silence was more than I could stand. It was against all sea courtesies, and the last chance of learning where I was passing away. So angrily the paddle was snatched from the canoe bottom, and roaring out again. Stop, I say, you damned lubber! Stop, or by all the gods I will make you! I plunged the paddle into the water, and shot my little craft slantingly across the stream to intercept the newcomer. A single stroke sent me into midstream. A second brought me within a touch of that strange craft. It was a flat raft undoubtedly, though so disguised by flowers and silk trailers that its shape was difficult to make out. In the center was a chair of ceremony bedecked with greenery and great pale buds, hardly yet withered. Oh, where had I seen such a chair in such a raft before? And the riddle did not remain long unanswered. Upon that seat, as I swept up alongside and laid the sunburn hand upon its edge, was a girl, and another look told me she was dead. Such a sweet pallid Martian made. Her fair head lolling back against the rear of the chair, and gently moving to and fro with the rise and fall of her craft. Her face in the pale light of the evening like carved ivory, and not less passionless and still. Her arms bare, and her poor fingers still closed in her lap upon the beautiful buds that they had put into them. I fairly gassed with amazement at the dreadful sweetness of that solitary lady, and could hardly believe she was really a corpse. But alas there was no doubt of it, and I stared at her, half in admiration and half in fear, noting how the last sunset flush lent a hectic beauty to her face for a moment, and then how fair and ghostly she stood out against the purpling sky, how her light drapery lifted to the icy wind, and how dreadfully strange all the soft-scented flowers and trapping scene, as we sped along side by side into the country of night and snow. Then all of a sudden the true meaning of her being there burst upon me, and with a start and a cry looked around. We were flying swiftly down that river of the dead they had told me of, that has no outlet and no returning. With frantic haste I snatched up a paddle again and tried the paddle against a great black current sweeping us forward. I worked until the perspiration stood in beads on my forehead, and all the time I worked the river, like some black snake hissed and twined, and that pretty lady rode cheerly along at my side. Overhead stars of unearthly brilliancy were coming out in the frosty sky, while on either hand the banks were high and the shadows under them black as ink. In those shadows now and then I noticed, with a horrible indifference other rafts were traveling, and presently, as the stream narrowed, they came out and joined us. Dead Martians, budding boys and girls, older voyagers with their age quickening upon them in the Martian manner, just as some fruit only ripens after it falls. Yellow-girt slaves staring into the night in front. Quite a merry crew all clustered about iron that gentle lady, and more far ahead and more behind. All bobbing and jostling forward as we hurried to the dreadful graveyard in the Martian regions of eternal winter none had ever seen and no one came to. I cried aloud at my desolation of fear, and hid my face in my hands, while the icy cliffs mocked my cry, and the dead maid, tripping alongside, rolled her head over, and stared at me with stony, unseeing eyes. While I am no fine writer, I sat down to tell a plain, unvarnished tale, and I will not let the weird horror of that ride get into my pen. We careened forward, I and those lost Martians, until purting near on midnight, by which time the great light-giving plants were up, and never a chance did fate give me all that time of parting company with them. About midnight we were right into the region of snow and ice, not the actual polar region of the planet as I afterwards guessed, but one of those long outliers which follows the course of the broad waterways almost into the fertile regions, and the cold, though intense, was somewhat modified by the complete stillness of the air. It was just then I began to be aware of a low rumbling sound ahead, increasing steadily until there could be no doubt the journey was nearly over, and we were approaching those great falls An had told me of, over which the dead tumble to perpetual oblivion. There was no opportunity for action, and luckily little time for thought. I remember clapping my hand to my heart as I muttered an imperfect prayer, and laughing a little as I felt in my pocket, between it and that organ, an envelope containing some corn plaster and a packet of unpaid Taylor's bills. Then I pulled out that locket with poor forgotten Polly's photograph, and while I was still kissing it fervently, and the dead girl on my right was jealously nudging like anew with the corner of her raft, we plunged into a narrow gully as black as hell, shot round a sharp corner at a tremendous pace, and the moment afterwards entered a lake in the midst of an unbroken amphitheater of cliffs gleaming in soft light all around. Even to this moment I can recall the blue shine of those terrible ice crags framing the weird picture in on every hand, and the strange effect upon my mind as we passed out of the darkness of the gully down which we had come into the sepulchral radiance of that place. But though it fixed with one instantaneous flash its impressions on my mind forever, there was no time to admire it. As we swept on to the lake's surface, in the glance of light coming over a dip in the ice walls to the left lit up the dead faces and half-withered flowers of my fellow travelers with startling distinctness. I noticed with the new terror at the lower end of the lake towards which we were hurrying the water suddenly disappeared in a cloud of frosty spray, and it was from thence came the low ominous rumble which had sounded up the ravine as we approached. It was the fall and beyond the stream dropped down glassy step after step in wild pools and rapids through which no boat could live for a moment, to a black cavern entrance where it was swallowed up in eternal night. I would not go that way. With a yell such as those solitudes I probably never heard since the planet was fashioned out of the void. I seized the paddle again and struck out furiously from the main current, with the result of postponing the crisis for a time and finding myself bobbing round towards the northern amphitheater where the light fell clearest from the planet overhead. It was like a great ballroom with those constellations for tapers, and a ghastly crowd of Martians were doing coutillions in waltzes all about me on their wrasse as the troubled water, icy cold and clearest glass eddied us here and there in solemn confusion. From the narrow beaches at the cliff foot were hundreds of wrecked voyagers, the wallflowers of that ghastly assembly room, and I went jostling and twirling round the circle as though looking for a likely partner, until my brain spun and my heart was sick. For twenty minutes fate played with me, and then the deadly suck of the stream got me down again close to where the water began to race for the falls. I vowed savagely I would not go over them if it could be helped and struggled furiously. On the left in shadow a narrow beach seemed to lie between the water and the cliff foot. Towards it I fought. At the very first stroke I fell to raft, the occupant thereof came tumbling aboard and nearly swamped me. But now it was a fight for life, so him I seized without ceremony by the clammy neck and leg and threw back into the water. Then another playful Martian butted the behind part of my canoe and set it spinning so that all the stars seemed to be dancing giddily in the sky. With a yell I shoved him off, but only to find his comrades were closing round me in a solid ring as we sucked down to the abyss at ever-increasing speed. Then I fought like a fury, hacking, pushing and paddling shorewards, crying out in my excitement, and spinning and bumping and twisting ever downwards. For every foot I gained they pushed me on a yard, as though determined their fate should be mine also. They crowded round me in a compact circle, their poor flower-girt heads nodding as the swift current curtsy their crafts. They hem me in with desperate persistency as we spun through the ghostly starlight in a swirling mass down to destruction. And in a minute we were so close to the edge of the fall I could see the water break in the ridges as it felt the solid bottom giveaway under it. We were so close that already the foremost rafts ten yards ahead were tipping and their occupants one by one waving their arms about and tumbling from their funeral chairs as they shot into the spray veil and went out of sight under the faint rainbow that was arched over there, the symbol of peace and the only lovely thing in that gruesome region. Another minute and I must have gone with them. It was too late to think of getting out of the tangle then. The water behind was heavy with trailing silks and flowers. We were jammed together almost like one huge float, and in that latter fact lay my one chance. On the left was a low ledge of rocks leading back to the narrow beach already mentioned, and the ledge came out to within a few feet of where the outermost boat on that side would pass it. It was the only chance and a poor one, but already the first rank of my fleet was trembling on the brink, and without stopping the way matters I bounded off my own canoe and onto the raft alongside, which rocked with my weight like a tea-tray. From that I left with such hardy good will as I had never had before onto the second and third. I jumped from the footstool of one Martian to the knee of another, steadying myself by free use of their nodding heads as I passed, and every time I jumped a ship collapsed behind me. As I staggered with my spring into that last and outermost boat, the ledge was still six feet away, half hidden in a smother of foam, and the rim of the great fall just under it. Then I drew all my sailor agility together, and just as the little vessel was going bow up over the edge I let from her, came down blinded with spray on the ledge, rolled over and over, clutch frantically at the frozen soil, and was safe for the moment, but only a few inches from the vortex below. As soon as I picked myself up and got breath, I walked shawwards and found, with great satisfaction, that the ledge joined the shelving beach, and so walked on in the blue obscurity of the cliff shadow back from the falls, and the bare hope that the beach might lead some way into the gully through which we had come and into open country beyond. But after a couple of hundred yards, this hope ended as abruptly as the spit itself in deep water. And there I was, as far as a darkness would allow me to ascertain, as utterly trapped as any mortal could be. I will not dwell on the next few minutes, for no one likes to acknowledge he has been unmanned even for a space. When those minutes were over, calmness and consideration returned, and I was able to look about. All the opposite cliffs, rising sheer from the water, were in light, their cold blue and white surfaces rising far into the black star fields overhead. Looking at them intently from this vantage point, I saw at first without understanding that along them horizontally, tear-above tiers, were rows of objects, like... like, well, good heavens. They were like men and women in all sorts of strange postures and positions. Rubbing my eyes and looking again, I perceived with a start, and a strange creepy feeling down my back, that they were men and women. Hundreds of them, thousands, all in rows as coroments stand upon the seaside cliffs, myriads and myriads now I looked about, in every conceivable pose and attitude, but never a sound, never a movement amongst the vast concourse. Then I turned back to the cliffs behind me. Yes, they were there, too. Dimmer by reason of the shadows, but there for certain. From the snow fields far above, down, down, good heavens, to the very level where I stood. There was one of them not ten yards away, half in and half out of the ice wall. In setting my teeth, I walked over and examined him. There was another further in behind as I peered into the clear blue depth, and another behind that one, and another behind him, just like cherries in a jelly. It was startling and almost incredible, yet so many wonderful things that happened of late, that wonders were losing their sharpness. And I was soon examining the cliff almost as cool as though it were some trivial geological section, some new kind of petrified sea urchin which had caught my attention, and not a whole nation and ice, a huge amphitheater of fossilized humanity which stared down on me. The matter was simple enough when you came to look at it with philosophy. The Martians had sent their dead down here for many thousand years, and as they came they were frozen in, the bands and zones in which they sat indicating perhaps alternating seasons. Then, after nature had been storing them like that for long ages, some upheaval happened, and this clefton lake opened through the heart of the preserve. Probably the river once ran far up there where the starlight was crowning the blue cliffs with a silver diadem of light. Only when this hollow open did it slowly deepen in lower courses, spreading out in a lake, and eventually tumbling down those icy steps lose itself in the dark roots of the hills. It was very simple no doubt, but incredibly weird and wonderful to me, who stood there, the sole living thing in that immense concourse of dead humanity. Look where I would it was the same everywhere. Those endless rows of frozen bodies lying, sitting or standing, appeared at me from every niche in cornice. It almost seemed as a light veered slowly round, as though they smiled and frowned at times, but never a word was there amongst those millions. The silence itself was audible. And save the dull low thunder of the fall, so monotonous the ear became accustomed to and soon disregarded it. There was not a sound anywhere, not a rustle, not a whisper broke the eternal calm of that great care of ancery of the dead. The very rattle of the shingle under my feet, and the jingle of my navy scabbard seemed defensive to the perfect hush. And too well to be frightened, I presently turned away from the dreadful shine of those cliffs, and felt my way along the base of the wall to my own side. There was no means of escape that way, and presently the shingle beach itself gave out as started, where the cliff wall rose straight from the surface of the lake. So I turned back, and finding a grotto on the ice determined to make myself as comfortable as might be until daylight Fortunately, there was a good deal of broken timber thrown up at the high water mark. And with a stack of this at the mouth of little cave, a pleasant fire was soon made by help of a flint pebble in the steel back of my sword. It was a hardy blaze, and lit up all the near cliffs with a ready jumping glow which gave their occupants a marvelous appearance of life. The heat also brought off the dull rhyme upon the side of my recess, leaving it clear as polished glass. And I was a little startled to see, only an inch or so back in the ice and standing as erect as ever he had been in life, the figure of an imposing gray clad man. His arms were folded, his chin dropped upon his chest, his robes of the finest stuff. The very flowers they had decked his head with frozen with immortality, and under them, round his crisp and iron gray hair, a simple band of gold with strange runes and figures engraved upon it. There was something very simple yet stately about him, though his face was hidden. And as I gazed long and intently, the idea got ahold of me that he had been a king over an undegenerate Martian race. And it stood waiting for the dawn, a very, very long time. I wished a little that he had not been quite so near the glassy surface of the ice, down which the warmth was bringing quick muster drops. Had he been back there in the blue depths where the others were sitting and crouching, it would have been much more comfortable. But I was a sailor, and misfortune makes strange companions. So I piled up the fire again, and lying down presently on the dry shingle with my back to him, stared mootily at the blaze till slowly, the fatigue of the day told, my eyelids dropped, and with a many fitful start and turn, at length, I slept. It was an hour before dawn, the fire had burnt low, and I was dreaming of an angry discussion with my tailor in New York as to the sit of my last new trousers, when a faint sound of a moving shingle caught my quick seeming ear. And before I could raise my head or lift a hand, a man's weight was on me. A heavy, strong man who bore me down with irresistible force. I felt the slap of his ice-cold hand upon my throat and his teeth in the back of my neck. In an instant, though but half awake, with a yell of surprise and anger, I grappled with the enemy, and exerting all my strength rolled him over. Over and over we went struggling towards the fire, and when I got him without a foot or so of it I came out on top, and digging my knuckles into his throttle, banged his head upon the stony floor in a reckless rage. Until all of a sudden it seemed to me he was done for. I relaxed my grip, but the other man never moved. I shook him again, like a terrier with a rat. But he never resented it. Had I killed him? How limp and cold he was. And then all of a sudden an uneasy feeling came upon me. I reached out, and throwing a handful of dried stuff upon the embers, the fire danced gaily up into the air. And the blaze showed me I was savagely holding down to the gravel and kneeling on the chest of that long dead king from my grotto wall. It was the man out of the ice without a doubt. There was a very niche he had fallen from under the influence of the fire heat. The very recess, exactly in his shape in every detail. Once he had stood gazing into vacuity all those years. I left go of my hold, and after the flutter of my heart had gone down, apologetically set him up against the wall of the cavern once he had fallen. Then built up the fire, until twirling flames danced to the very roof in the blue light of dawn, and hobgoblin shadows leapt and capered about us. Then once more I sat down on the opposite side of the blaze, resting my chin upon my hands, and stared into the frozen eyes of that grim stranger, who, with his chin upon his knees, stared back at me with irresistible, remorseless steadfastness. He was as fresh as if he had died but yesterday. Yet by his clothing and something in his appearance, which was not that of the Martian of today, I knew he might be many thousand years old. What things he had seen, what wonders he knew. What a story might be put into his mouth if I were a capable writer gifted with time and imagination, instead of a poor outcast ill-paid lieutenant whose literary wit is often taxed hardly to fill even a logbook entry. I stared at him so long and hard, and he hit me through the blinking flames that again I dozed, and dozed, and dozed again until it last when I woke in good earnest, it was daylight. By this time hunger was very aggressive. The fire was not but a circlet of gray ashes. The dead king, still sitting against the cave side, looked very blue and cold. And with an uncomfortable realization of my position, I shook myself together, picked up and pocketed without much thought the queer gold circlet that had dropped from his forehead, and went outside to see what prospect of escape the new day had brought. It was not much. Up river there was not the remotest chance. Not even a Niagara steamer could have forged back against the sluice coming down from the Gulch there. Looking round, the sides of the icy amphitheater, just sliding up now with glorious gold and crimson glimmers of mourning, were as steep as a wall face. Only back towards the falls was there a possibility of getting out of the dreadful trap. So thither I went. After a last look at the poor king, along my narrow beach with all the eagerness begotten of a final chance. Up to the very brink it looked hopeless enough. But looking downwards when that was reached, instead of a sheer drop, the slope seemed to be a wild staircase of rocks and icy ledges, with here and there, a little patch of sand on a cornice. And far below, five hundred feet or so, a good big spread of gravel, an acre or two an extent, close by where the river plunged out of sight into the nethermost cavern mouth. It was so hopeless above it. It could not possibly be worse further down. And there was the ugly black flood running into the hole to trust myself too as a last resource. So slipping and sliding, I began the descent. Had I been a schoolboy with a good breakfast ahead, the incident might have been amusing enough. The traveling was done mostly on the seat of my trousers, which consequently became caked with mud and glacial loam. Some was accomplished on hands and knees, with now and then a bit down a snow slope, in good, honest head over heels fashion. The result was a fine appetite for the next meal when it should please Providence to send it, and an abrupt arrival on the bottom beach about five minutes after leaving the upper circles. I came too behind a cluster of breast high rocks, and before moving took a look round. Judge then of my astonishment and delight at the second glance to perceive about a hundred yards away a brown object, looking like an ape in the half light, meandering slowly up the margin of the water towards me. Every now and then it stopped, stooping down to pick up something or other from the scum along the torrent. And it was the fact that these trifles, whatever they were, were put into a wallet by the vision's side, not into his mouth, which first made me understand with a joyful thrill that it was a man before me, a real, living man in this huge chamber of dead horrors. Then it flashed across my mind in a luminous moment, that where one man could come or go or live, another could do likewise. And never did Cat watch a mouse with more concentrated eagerness than I that quaint, bent shoulder thing hobbling about in the blue morning shadows where all else was silence. Nearer and nearer he came, till so close face and garb were discernible. And then there could be no longer any doubt. It was a woodman, an old man, with grizzled monkey face, stooping gait, and a shaggy fur cloak, utterly unlike the airy garments of my hither folk, who now stood before me. It gave me quite a start to recognize him there, for it showed I was in a new land, and since he was going so cheerfully about his business, whatever it might chance to be, there must be some way out of this accursed pit in which I had fallen. So very cautiously, I edged out, taking advantage of all the cover possible until we were only twenty yards apart. And then, suddenly standing up, and putting on the most affable smile, I called out, Hello, messmate! The effect was electrical, that quaint old fellow spring a yard into the air as though a spring had shot him up. Then coming down, he stood transfixed at his full height, as stiff as a ramrod, staring at me, with incredible wonder. He looked so funny that in spite of hunger and loneliness, I burst out laughing, where at the woodman, suddenly recovering his senses, turned on his heels and set off at his best pace in the opposite direction. This would never do. I wanted him to be my guide, philosopher, and friend. He was my sole visible link with the outside world. So after him I went at top speed, and catching him up in fifty yards along the shingle, laid hold of his nether garments. Where at the old fellow stopping suddenly, I shot clean over his back, coming down on my shoulder in the gravel. But I was much younger than he, and in a minute was in chase again. This time I laid hold of his cloak, and the moment he felt my grip, he slipped the neck thongs and left me with only the mangy garment in my hands. Again we set off, dodging and scampering with all our might upon that frozen bit of beach. The activity of that old fellow was marvelous, but I could not, it would not lose him. I made a rush and grappled him, but he tossed his head round and slipped away once more under my arm, as though he had been brought up by a Chinese wrestler. Then he got on one side of a flat rock, eye the other, and for three or four minutes we walked round that slab in the most insane manner. But by this time we were both pretty well spent, he with age and I with faintness from my long fast, and we came presently to a standstill. After glaring at me for a time, the woodman gasped out as he strangled for breath. Oh, mighty and dreadful spirit! Oh, dweller and primordial ice! Say from which niche of the cliffs has the breath of chance thawed you. Never a niche at all, Mr. Hunter, for Haddock's eyes, I answered as soon as I could speak. I am just a castaway wrecked last night on this beach of yours, and very grateful indeed will I be if you can show me the way to some breakfast first, and afterwards to the outside world. But the old fellow would not believe. Spirits such as you, he said solemnly, need no food, and go whether they will by wish alone. I tell you I am not a spirit, and as hungry as I don't particularly want to be again. Here, look at the back of my trousers, cake three inches deep in mud. If I were a spirit, do you think I would slide about on my coattails like that? Do you think that if I could travel by volition, I would slip down these infernal cliffs on my pant seat as I have just done? Thanks for materialism. Look at this fist. It punched you just now. Surely there was nothing spiritual in that knock. No, said the savage rubbing his head. It was a good, honest wrap, so I must take you at your word. If you are indeed man and hungry, it will be a charity to feed you. If you are a spirit, it will at least be interesting to watch you eat. So sit down, and let's see what I have in my wallet. So cross-legged we squatted opposite each other on the table rock, and feeling like another sinbad the sailor, I watched my new friend fumble in his bag and lay out at his side all sorts of odds and ends of string, fish hooks, chewing gum, material for making a fire, and so on. Until at last he came to a package, done up I noted with delight, and a broad green leaf which has certainly been growing that morning, and unrolling it displayed a lump of dried meat, a few biscuits, much thicker and heavier than the honey case of the hither folk, and something that looked and smelled like strong white cheese. He signed to me to eat, and you may depend upon it I was not slow in accepting the invitation. That tough billtong tasted to me like the tenderest steak that ever came from a grill. The biscuits were ambrosial. The cheese melted in my mouth as butter melts in that of the virtuous. But when the old man finished the quaint picnic, by inviting me to accompany him down to the water side for a drink, I shook my head. I had a great respect for dead queens and kings, I said, but there were too many of them up above to make me thirsty this morning. My respect did not go to making me desire to imbibe them in solution. Afterwards I chanced to ask him what he had been picking up just now along the margin. And after looking at me suspiciously for a minute, he asked, You are not a thief? On being reassured on that point he continued. And you will not attempt to rob me of the harvest for which I venture into this ghost-haunted glen, which you and I alone of living men have seen? No. Whatever they were, I said, I would respect his earnings. Very well then, said the old man. Look here. I come hither to pick up those pretty trifles which yonder lords and ladies have done with. And plunging his hand into another bag, he brought out a perfect fistful of splendid gems and jewels, some set and some unset. They wash from the hands and wrist of those who have lodgings in the crevices of the falls above, he explained. After a time, the beach here will be thick with them. Could I get up once you came down? They might be gathered up by the sackful. Come, there is an eddy still unsearched, and I will show you how they lie. It was very fascinating, and I and that old man set to work amongst the gravels. And I, to be brief, in half an hour found enough glittering stuff to set up a Fifth Avenue jeweler's shop. To tell the truth, now that I had breakfasted, and felt manhood in my veins again, I was eager to be off, and out of the close, deft-hainted atmosphere of that valley. Consequently, I presently stood up and said, Look here, old man, this is fine sport, no doubt, but at present I have a big job on hand, one which will not wait, and I must be going. See, lucking young eyes have favored me. Here is twice as much gold and stones as you have got together. It is all yours without a question, if you will show me the way out of this den, and afterwards put me on to the road to your big city. For thither I am bound, on an errand to your king, Arhap. The sight of my gems, back perhaps with the mention of Arhap's name, appealed to the old fellow, and after a grunter too about losing a tide, just when spoil was so abundant, he accepted the bargain, shouldered his belongings, and led me towards the far corner of the beach. It looked as if we were walking right up against the towering ice wall, but when we were within a yard or two of it, a narrow cleft, only eighteen inches wide, and wonderfully massed by an ice column, showed to the left. And into this we squeezed ourselves, the entrance by which we had come, appearing to close up instantly, we had gone a pace or two. So perfectly did the ice walls match each other. It was the most uncanny thoroughfare conceivable, a sheer sharp crack in the blue ice cliffs, extending from where the sunlight shone in a dazzling golden band, five hundred feet overhead, to where bottom was touching in blue obscurity of the ice foot. It was so narrow we had to travel sideways for the most part. A fact which brought my face close against the clear blue glass walls, and enabled me from time to time to see, far back in those translucent depths, more and more and ever more frozen Martians, waiting in stony silence for their release. But the fact of facts was that slowly the floor of the cleft tended upwards, while the sky strip appeared to come downwards to meet it. A mile perhaps, we growled and squeezed up that wonderful gully. Then, with a feeling of incredible joy, I felt the clear outer air smiting upon me. In my hurry and delight I put my head into the small of the back of the puffing old man, who blocked the way in front and forced him forward. Until at last, before we expected it, the cleft suddenly ended, and he and I tumbled headlong over each other into a glittering frozen snow slope. The sky is your overhead, the sunshine warm as a tepid bath, and a wide prospect of mountain and plain extending all around. So delightful was the sudden change of circumstance that I became quite boyish, and seizing the old man in my exuberance by the hands, dragged him to his feet, and danced him round and round in a circle. While his ancient hair flapped about his head, his skin cloaked away from his shoulders like a pair of dusky wings, and half-eaten cakes, dried flesh, glittering jewels, broken diadems, and golden finger-rings were flung in an arc about us. We capered till fairly out of breath, and then, slapping him on the back shoulder, I asked whose land all this was about us. He replied that it was no one's, all waste from verge to verge. What was my exclamation? All ownerless, and with so much treasure hidden hereabout? Why, I shall annex it to my country, and you and I will peg out original settlers' claims. And still excited by the mountain air, I whipped out my sword, and in default of a star-spangled banner to plan on the newly acquired territory, traced in gigantic letters on the snowcrust, U.S.A. And now, I added, wiping the rhyme off my blade with the laplet of my coat. Let us stop capering about here and get to business. You have promised to put me on the way to your big city. Come on then, said the little man gathering up his pottery. This white hillside leads to nowhere. We must get into the valley first, and then you shall see your road. And write well that quaint barbarian kept his promise.