 CHAPTER XIII. It was half a day's march from those glittering snow fields into the low country, and when that was reached I found myself amongst quite another people. The land was no longer fat and flowery, giving every kind of produce for the asking, but stony for the most part, and where we first came on vegetation, overgrown by furs, with a pine which looked to me like a species which went to make coal-measures in my dear but distant planet. More than this I cannot say, for there are no places in the world like Mess Room and Quarter Deck for forgetting school-earning. Instead of the glorious wealth of party-colored vegetation my eyes have been accustomed to lately. Here they rested on infertile stretches of marshland, intersected by moss-covered gravel shoots, looking as though they had been pushed into the plains in front of extinct glaciers coming down from the region behind us. On the low hills away from the sea, those somber evergreen forests with an undergross of moss and red lichens were more variegated with light foliage, and indeed the pines proved to be but a fringe to the Arctic ice, giving way rapidly to more typical marshland vegetation each mile we marched to the southward. As for the inhabitants, they seemed like my guide, rough uncouth fellows, but honest enough when you came to know them. An introduction, however, was highly desirable. I chanced upon the first native as he was gathering reindeer moss. My companion was some little way behind at the moment, and when the gentle average and he saw the stranger he stared hard for a moment, and then, turning on his heels, with extraordinary swiftness, flung at me a half-pound of hard flint stone. Had his aim been a little more careful, this humble narrative had never appeared on the Broadway bookstalls. As it was, the pebble, missing my head by an inch or two, splintered into a hundred fragments on a rock behind, and while I was debating whether a revengeful rush at the slinger or a strategic advance to the rear were more advisable, my guide called out to his countrymen, Ho! You base prowler in the morass. You eater of unclean vegetation. Do you not see this as a ghost I am conducting? A dweller in the ice-cliffs? A spirit ten thousand years old? Put by your sling lest he wither you with a glance. And very reasonably surprised, the average and he did as he was bid, and cautiously advanced to inspect me. The news soon spread over the countryside that my jewel-hunter was bringing a live spook along with him. No curiosity mixed with an awe to all my advantage characterizing the people we met thereafter. Yet the wonder was not so great as might have been expected. For these people were accustomed to meeting the tags of lost races, and though they stared hard, their interest was chiefly in hearing how, when, and where I had been found. Whether I bid or kicked, or had any other vices, and if I possessed any commercial value. My guide's throat must have ached with repetition of the narrative, but as he made the story redown greatly to his own glory, he put up cheerfully with the hoarseness. In this way, walking and talking alternately, we traveled during daylight through a country which slowly lost its rugged features, and became more and more inhabited, the hearty people living in scattered villages in contradiction to the debased city-loving hither-folk. About nightfall we came to a sea-fisher's hamlet, where, after the old man had explained my exalted nature and venerable antiquity, I was offered shelter for the night. My host was the headman, and I must say his bearing towards the supernatural was most unaffected. If it had been an avenue-hotel, I could not have found more handsome treatment than in that reed-fatched hut. They made me wash and rest, and then they were all a-gog for my history. But that I postponed, contenting myself with telling them that I had lately been in Seth, and had come thence to see them via the Ice Valley, to all of which they listened with the simplicity of children. As I turned on them, and openly marveled that so small a geographical distance as there was between that land and this could make so vast a human difference. The truth, O dweller in blue shadows of primordial ice, is, said the most intelligent of the thither-folk, as we said over fried deer-stake in his hut that evening, we who are men, not parazad, not overstate fairies like those you have been amongst, are newcomers here on this shore. We came but a few generations ago, from where the gold curtains of the sun lie behind the westward pine-trees. And as we came, we drove year by year, those faes, those spent triflers back before us. All this land was theirs once, and more and more towards our old home. You may still see traces of harbors dug in cities built thousands of years ago, when the hither-folk were living men and women, not their shadows. The big water outside stops us for a space, but, he added, laughing gruffly, and taking a draft of strong beer he had been heating by the fire. King Arhap has their pretty noses between his fingers. He takes tribute and girls while he gets ready. They say he is nearly ready this summer, and if he is, it will not be much of an excuse he will need to lick up the last of those triflers, those pretenses of manhood. Then we fell to talking of Arhap, his subjects in town, and I learned the tides had swept me a long way to the northwood of a proper route between the capitals of the two races. That day they carried me into the dead men's ice, as these entertainers of mine called the northern snows. To get back to the place previously aimed at, where the woodman road came out on the seashore, it was necessary to go either by boat or around about way through a maze of channels, as tangled as the grass roots in autumn, or secondly, by a couple of days marching due southward across the base of the great peninsula we were on, and so strike blue water again at the long sought-for harbor. As I lay dozing and dreaming on a pile of strange furs in the corner of the hut that evening, I made up my mind for the land journey to-morrow, having had enough for the moment of nautical Martian adventures. And this point settled, fell again to wondering what made me follow so reckless a quest in the way I was doing, asking myself again and again what was gazelle-eyed Haru to me after all, and why should it matter, even as much as the value of a brass waistcoat button, whether hath Hatter or Arhap? What a fool I was to risk myself day after day in quaint and dangerous adventures, wearing out good government shoe-leather and other men's quarrels. All for a silly slip of royal girlhood, who, by this time, was probably making herself comfortable in forgetting both hath and me in the arms of her rough new lord. And from Haru my mind drifted back dreamily to pour on, and Seth, the city of fallen magnificence, where the spent masters of a strange planet now lived on sufferance, the ghost of their former selves. Where was on? Where the revelers on the morning, so long ago it seemed, when first that infernal rug of mine translated a chance wish into a horrible reality and shut me down here, a stranger and an outcast. Where was the magic rug itself? Where am I staking tomato supper? Who had eaten it? Who was drawing my pay? If I could but find the rug when I got back to Seth, gods, but I would try if it would not return once I had come, and as swiftly, out of all these silly coils and adventuring. So musing, presently the firelight died down, and bulky forms of hide-wrapped woodmen sleeping on the floor slowly disappeared in obscurity, like ranges of mountains disappearing in the darkness of night. All those uncouth forms, and the throb of the sea outside, presently faded upon my senses, and I slept the heavy sleep of one whose wakefulness gives way before an imperious physical demand. All through the long hours of the night, while the waves outside champed upon the gravels, and the woodmen snored and grunted uneasily as they simultaneously dreamt of the day's hunting and digested its proceeds, I slept. And then when dawn began to break, I passed from that heavy stupor into another in lighter realm, wherein fancy again rose superior to bodily fatigue, at events of the last few days passed in procession through my mind. I dreamt I was lunging at a fashionable seaside resort with Polly at my side, and An kept bringing his melons, which grew so monstrous every time a knife was put into them that poor Polly screamed aloud. I dreamt I was afloat on a raft, hotly pursued by my tailor, whose bare and shiny head, may Providence be good to him, was garlanded with roses, while in his fist was a bunch of unpaid bills which he waved aloft, shouting to me to stop. And thus we danced down an ink-black river, until he had shivered me into the vast hall of the Admiralty, where a fearsome secretary, whose golden teeth rattled and dropped from his head with mingled cold and anger, towered above me as he asked why I was absent from my ship without leave. And I was just mumbling out excuses while stooping to pick up his golden dentistry when someone stirring in the hut aroused me. I started up on my elbow and looked around. Where was I? For a minute all was confused and dark. The heavy, mound-like forms of sleeping men, the dim outlines of their hunting gear upon the walls, the pale sea beyond, half seen through the open doorway, just turning livid in the morning light. And then as my eyes grew more accustomed to the obscurity, and my stupid senses returned, I recognized the surroundings. And with a sigh, remembered yesterday's adventures. However, it would never do to mope. So rising silently and picking away through human lumber on the floor, I went out and down to the water's edge. Where shore-going clothes, as we sailors call them, were slipped off, and I plunged into the sea for a swim. It was a welcome dip, for I needed to plunge physically and intellectually, but it came to an abrupt conclusion. The thither-folk apparently had never heard of this form of enjoyment. To them, water stood for drinking or drowning, nothing else, and since one could not drink the sea, to be in it meant even for a ghost to drown. Consequently, when the word went round to the just-rousing villages that he on foot from afar was adrift in the waves, rescue parties were hurriedly organized, a boat launched, and in spite of all my kicking and shouting, which they took to be evidence of my semi-moribund condition, I was speedily hauled out by hairy and powerful hands, pungent herbs burnt under my nose, and my heels held high in the air in order that the water might run out of me. I was only with the greatest difficulty those rough but honest fellows were eventually got to believe me saved. The breakfast I made of grilled deer flesh and a fish not unlike salmon, however, convinced them of my recovery, and afterward we parted very good friends, for there was something in the nature of those rugged barbarians just coming into the dawn of civilization that won my liking far more than the afeet gentleness of others across the water. When the time of parting came, they showed no curiosity as to my errand, but just gave me some food in a fish-skin bag, thrust a heavy stone axe into my hand in case I had to talk to a thief on the road, and pointed out on the southern horizon a forked mountain under which they said, was the harbor and high road to King Arhap's capital. Then they hugged me to their hairy chest in turn, and let me go with a traveler's blessing. There I was again, all alone, none but my thoughts for companions, and nothing but youth to excuse the folly and thus venturing on a reckless quest. However, who can gain say that same youth? The very spice of danger made my steps light and the way pleasant. For a mile or two the track was plain enough, through an undulating country gradually becoming more and more wooded with vegetation, changing rapidly from alpine to subtropical. The air also grew warmer, and when the dividing ridge was crossed and a thick forest entered, the snows and dreadful region of dead man's ice already seemed leagues and leagues away. Probably a warm ocean current played on one side of the peninsula, while a cold one swept the other. But for scientific aspects of the question I cared little in my joy at being anew in a soft climate, amongst beautiful flowers and vivid life again. Mile after mile slipped quickly by as I strode along, whistling Yankee doodle to myself, and reveling in the change. At one place I met a rough-looking Martian woodcutter who wanted to fight until he found I also wanted to. Then he turned very civil and as talkative as a solitary liver often is when his tongue gets started. He particularly desired to know where I came from, and as the case with so many others of his countrymen took a for granted and with very little surprise that I was either a spirit or an inhabitant of another world. With this idea in mind he gave me a curious piece of information, which unfortunately I was never able to follow up. I don't think you can be a spirit, he said critically eyeing my clothes, which were getting ragged and dirty beyond description. They are finer-looking things than you, and I doubt if their toes come through their shoes like yours do. If you are a wanderer from the stars, you are not like that other one we have down Yonder, and he pointed to the southward. What! I asked, pricking my ears in amazement. Another wanderer from the outside world. Does he come from the earth? Using the word on had given me to signify my own planet. No, not from there, from the one that burns blue in the evening between sun and sea. Men say he worked as a stoker or something of the kind when he was at home, and got trifling with a volcano tap, and was lapped in hot mud and blown out here. My brother saw him about a week ago. Now, what you say is downright curious. I thought I had a monopoly of that kind of business in this sphere of yours. I should be tremendously interested to see him. No, you wouldn't, briefly answered the woodman. He is the stupidest fool ever blown from one world to another. More stupid to look at than you are. He is a gaseous, wavy thing. So glum you can't get two words a week out of him, and so unstable that you never know when you are with him and when the breeze has drifted him somewhere else. I could but laugh and insist with all respect to the woodcutter such an individual were worth the knowing however unstable his constitution, at which the man shrugged his shoulders and changed the conversation, as though the subjects were too trivial to be worth much consideration. This individual gave me the pleasure of his company until nearly sundown, and finding I took an interest in things of the forest pointed out more curious plants and trees than I have space to mention. Two of them, however, cling to my memory very tenaciously. One was a very sursy among plants, the horrible charm of which can never be forgotten. We were going down a glade when a most ravishing odor fell upon my nostrils. It was heavenly sweet, yet with all there lurked an incredibly, unexpressibly tempting spice of wickedness in it. The moment he caught that ambrosial imitation in the air, my woodman spit fiercely on the ground, and taking a plug of wool from his pouch stuffed his nostrils up. Then he beckoned me to come away, but the odor was too ravishing. I was bound to sea once it arose, and finding me deaf to all warnings the man reluctantly turned aside down the enticing trail. He pushed about a hundred yards through bushes until we came to a little area full of sunshine where there were neither birds nor butterflies, but a death-like hush upon everything. Indeed the place seemed shunned in spite of the sudden loveliness of that scent which monopolized and mounted to my brain until I was beginning to be drunk with the sheer pleasure of it. And there in the center of the space stood a plant not unlike a tree fern, about six feet high, and crowned by one huge and lovely blossom. It resembled a vast passion-flower of incredible splendor. There were four petals, with points resting on the ground, each six feet long, ivory-white inside, exquisitely patterned with glittering silver veins. From the base of these rose upright a gauzy veil of azure filaments of the same length as the petals, wire-like yet soft as silk, and inside them again rested a chalice of silver holding a tiny pool of lipid golden honey. Indeed it was from that cup the center rose, and my throat grew dry with longing as I looked at it. My eyes strained through the blue tendrils towards that liquid nectar, and my giddy senses felt they must drink or die. I glanced at the woodman with a smile of drunken happiness, then turned tottering legs towards the blossom. A stride up the smooth causeway of white petals, a push through the azure haze, and the wine of the wood enchantress would be mine, molten amber wine, hotter and more golden than the sunshine. The fire of it was in my veins. The recklessness of intoxication was on me. Life was as nothing compared to a sip from that chalice. My lips must taste or my soul would die, and with trembling hand and strained face I began to climb. But the woodman pulled me back. "'Back, stranger,' he cried, "'Those who drink there never live again.' Blessed oblivion, if I had a thousand lives a price were still too cheap, and once more I assay to scramble up. But the man was a big fellow, and with nostrils plugged in eyes averted from the deadly glamour he seized me by the collar and threw me back. Three times I tried, three times he hurled me down, far too faint and absorbed to heed the personal violence. Then standing between us, "'Look,' he said, "'Look and learn.' He had killed a small ape that morning, meaning later on to take its fur for clothing, and this he now unslunged from his shoulder, and hitching the handle of his axe to the loose skin at the back of its neck, cautiously advanced to the witch-plant, and gently hoisted the monkey over the blue palings. The moment its limp, dead feet touched the golden pool, a shutter passed through the plant, and a bird somewhere far back in the forest cried out in horror. Quick as thought, a spasm of life shut up the tendrils, unlike tongues of blue flame they closed round the victim, lapping his miserable body in their embrace. At the same time the petals began to rise, showing as they did so hard, leathery, unlovely outer rinds, and by the time the woodman was back at my side the flower was closed. Closer and closer wound the blue tendrils, tighter and tighter closed the cruel petals with their iron grip, until at last we heard the ape's bones crackling like dry firewood. And next his head burst, his brains came oozing through the crevices, while blood and entrails followed them through every cranny, and the horrible mess with the overflow of the chalice curled down the stem in a hundred streaming reels. Till at last the petals locked with an ugly snap upon their ghastly meal, and I turned away from the sight in dread and loathing. That was Plant Number One. Plant Number Two was of a milder disposition, and won a hearty laugh from my friendly woodman. In fact, being of a childlike nature, his success as a professor of botany quite pleased him, and not content with answering my questions, he set to work to find new vegetable surprises, greatly enjoying my wonder and the sense of importance it gave him. In this way we came, later on in the day, to a spot where herbage was somewhat scantier, the grass coarse and soil shallow. Here I aspired a tree of small size, apparently withered, but still bearing a few parts leased on its uppermost twigs. Now that, quote the professor, is a highly curious tree, and I should like you to make a close acquaintance with it. It grows from a seed in the course of a single spring time, perishes in the summer, but a few specimens stand throughout the winter, provided the situation is sheltered as this one has done. If you will kindly go down and shake its stem, I believe you will learn something interesting. So very willing to humor him, away I went to the tree, which was perfect in every detail, but apparently very dry, clasped it with both hands, and pulling myself together gave it a mighty shake. The result was instantaneous. The whole thing was nothing but a skin of dust, once all fiber and sap had gone, and at my touch it dissolved into a cloud of powder, a huge puff of white dust which descended upon me as though a couple of flower bags had been inverted over my head. And as I staggered out, sneezing and blinking, white as a miller from face to foot, the martian burst into a wild, joyous peel of laughter that made the woods ring again. His merriment was so sincere I had not the heart to be angry, and soon laughed as loud as he did, though for the future I took his botanical essays with a little more caution. CHAPTER XIV That woodman friend of mine proved so engaging, it was difficult to get away, and thus when, dusk upon us, and my object still a long distance off, he asked me to spend the night in his hut, I gladly assented. We soon reached the cabin where the man lived by himself whilst working in the forest. It was a picturesque little place, and a tree overhung lagoon, thatched, waddled, and all about were piles of pleasant scented bark collected for the purpose of tanning hides. And I could not but marvel that such a familiar process should be practiced identically on two sides of the universal ether. But as a matter of fact, the similarity of many details of existence here and there was the most striking of the things I learned whilst in the Red Planet. Within the hut stood a hearth in the center of the floor, whereon a comfortable blaze soon sparked, and upon the walls hung various implements, hides, and a store of dried fruits of various novel kinds. My host, when he had somewhat disdainfully watched me wash in a rill of water close by, suggested supper, and I agreed with heartiest goodwill. Nothing wonderful, oh Mr. Bluecoat, he said, prancing about as he made his hospitable arrangements. No fine mead or scented wine to unlock, one by one, all the doors of paradise, such as I have heard they have in lands beyond the sea, but fair good enough for plain men who eat but to live. So reach me down yonder a bunch of yellow aru fruit, and don't upset that kalabash, for all my funniest stories lurk at the bottom of it. I did as he bid, and soon we were squatting by the fire toasting arus on pointed sticks, the doorway closed with a wattle hurdle, and the black and gold firelight filling the hut with fantastic shadows. When the banana-like fruit was ready, the man fetched from the recess a loaf of bread savored with the dust of dried and pounded fish, put the foreseed kalabash of strong ale to warm, and down we sat to supper with real woodman appetites. Seldom if I enjoyed a meal so much, and when we had finished the fruit and the wheat cake, my guide snatched up the great gourd of ale, and putting it to his lips called out, Here's to you, stranger, here's to your country, here's to your girl if you have one, and death to your enemies. And then he drank deep and long, and passed the stuff to me. Here's to you, bully-host, and the missus, and the children if there are any, and more power to your elbow, the witch gratified him greatly, though he probably had small idea of my meaning. And right merry we were that evening. The host was a jolly good fellow, and his ale, with a pleasant savor of mint in it, was the heartiest drink I ever set lips to. We talked and laughed till the very jackals yapped in sympathy outside. And when he had told a score of wonderful wood stories as pungent of the life in these fairy forests as the aromatic scent of his bark heaps outside, as iridescent with the colors of another world as the rainbow bubbles writing down his starlit rill, I took a turn, and told him of the commonplaces of my world so far away, where at he laughed gloriously again. The greater the commonplace the larger his joy. The humblest story, hardly calculated to impress a grip in between watches on the main deck, was a masterpiece of wit to that gentle savage. And when I took off the tricks and foibles of some of my superiors, heaven forgive me for such treason, he listened with the exquisite open-mouth delight of one who wonders in a brand new world of mirth. We drank and laughed over that strong beer till the little owls outside raised their voice and combined a cord. And then the woodman, shaking the last remnant of his sleepy wits together, and giving a reproachful look at me for finally passing him the gourd empty to the last drop, rose, threw a fur on a pile of dead grass at one side of the hut, and bid me sleep. For his brain was giddy with the wonders of the incredible and ludicrous sphere which I had lately inhabited. Slowly the fire died away. Slowly the quivering gold and black arabescas on the walls merged in a red haze as the sticks dropped into tender. And the great black outline of the hairy monster who had thrown himself down by the embers rose up the walls against that flush, like the outline of a range of hills against a sunset glow. I listened drowsily for a space to his snoring and the laughing answer of the brook outside. And then the ambrosial sleep, which is a gentle attendant of hardship and danger, touched my tired eyeballs and I too slept. My friend was glum the next morning, as they who stay over long at the supper flag in her app to be. He had been at work an hour on his bar keeps when I came out into the open. And it was only by a good deal of diplomacy and some material help in sorting his spagets that he was gotten to a better frame of mind. I could not, however, trust his mood completely. And as I did not want to end so jovial a friendship with a quarrel, I hurried through our breakfast of dry bread with hard-boiled lizard eggs, and then settling my reckoning with one of the brass buttons from my coat, which he immediately threaded with every evidence of extreme gratification on a string of trinkets hanging round his neck, asked him the way to Arhap's capital. Your way is easy, friend, as long as you keep to the straight path and have yonder two hump mountain in front. To the left is the sea, and behind the hill runs the canal and road by which all traffic comes or goes to Arhap. But above all things pass not to the hill's right, for no man goes there. There away the forest are thick as night, and in their perpetual shadows are the ruins of a hither city, a haunted fairy town to which some travelers have been but whence none ever returned alive. By the great joe that sounds promising. I would like to see that town if my errand were not so urgent. But the old fellow shook his shaggy head, and turned a shade yellower. It is no place for decent folk, he growled. I myself once passed within a mile of its outskirts at dusk, and saw the unholy little people's lantern processions starting for the shrine of Queen Yang, who, tradition says, killed herself in a thousand babies with her when we took this land. My word, that was a holocaust. Couldn't I drop in there to lunch? It would make a fine paper for an antiquarian society. Again, the woodman frowned. Do as I bid you, son, you are too young and green to go on ventures by yourself. Keep to the straight road. Run the swamps in the fairy forest, else you will never see our hap. And as I have very urgent and very important business with him, comrade, no doubt your advice is good. I will call on Princess Yang some other day. And now, goodbye. Ruffer but friendlier shelter than you have given me no man could ask for. I am downright sorry to part with you in this lonely land. If we ever meet again. But we never did. The honest old churl clasped me into his hairy bosom three times. I stuffed my wallet with dried fruit and bread, and once more repeating his directions sent me on my lonely way. I confess I sighed while turning into the forest, and turned back more than once at his retreating form. The loneliness of my position, the hopelessness of my venture, welled up in my heart after that good comradeship. And when the hut was out of sight, I went forward down the green grass road, chin on chest, for twenty minutes in the deepest ejection. But thank heaven I was born with a tough spirit, and possess a mind which has learned in many fights to give brave counsel to my spirit, and thus presently I shook myself together, setting my face boldly to the quest and the day's work. It was not so clear a morning as the previous one, and a steamy wind on what it see I should have called the starboard bow as I pressed forward to the distant hill had a curiously subduing effect on my thoughts, and filled the forest glades with a tremulous unreality like to nothing on our earth, and distinctly embarrassing to a stranger in a strange land. Small birds in that quaint atmospheric haze look like condors, butterflies like giant fowl, and the simplest objects of the forest like the imaginations of a distorted dream. Behind that gauzy hallucination a fine white mist came up, and the sun spread out flat and red in the sky, while the pent in heat became almost unendurable. Still I plotted on, growling to myself that in Christian latitudes all the evidences would have been held to betoken a storm before night, whatever they might do here, but for the most part lost to my own gloomy speculations. That was more the pity since, in thinking the walk over now, it seems to me that I pass many marvels, saw many glorious vistas in those nameless forest, many spreads of color, many incidents that could I but remember them more distinctly would supply material for making my fortune as a descriptive traveler. But what would you? I have forgotten, and I am too virtuous to draw on my imagination, as it is sometimes said other travelers have done when picturesque facts were deficient. Yes, I have forgotten all about that day, save that it was sultry hot, that I took off my coat and waistcoat to be cooler, carrying them like a tramp I was across my arm, and thus disheveled past some time in the afternoon in encampment of forest folk, wherefrom almost all the men were gone, and the women shy and surly. In no very social humor myself, I walked round their woodland village, and on the outskirts by a brook, just as I was wishing there were someone to eat my solitary lunch with, chanced upon a fellow busily engaged in hammering stones into weapons upon a flint anvil. He was an ugly-looking individual at best, yet I was hard up for company, and so I put my coat down, and seating myself on a log opposite, proceeded to open my wallet, and take out the frugal stores a woodman had given me that morning. The man was seated upon the ground, holding a stone anvil between his feet. While with his hands he turned and chipped with great skill a spearhead he was making out of flint. It was about the only pastime he had, and his little yellow eyes gleamed with a craftsman's pleasure. His shaggy round shoulders were bent over the task. The chips flew in quick particles, and the wood echoed musically as the artificer watched the thing under his hands take form and fashion. Presently I spoke, and the worker looked up, not too pleased at being thus interrupted, but he was easy of propitiation and over a handful of dried raisins communicative. How, I asked, knowing a craftsman craft is often the nearest thing to his heart. How was it such things as that which he chipped came to be thought of by him and his? We're on the woodman, having spit out the raisin stones and wiped his fingers on his fur, said in substance that the first weapon was fashioned when the earliest ape hurled the first stone in wrath. But chum, I said, taking up his half-finished spear and touching the razor-fine edge with admiring caution, from hurling the crude pebble to fashioning such as this as a long stride. Who first edged and pointed the primitive malice? What man with the soul of a thousand unborn fighters in him notched and sharpened your natural rock? We're upon the chipper grinned, and answered that, when the woodman had found stones that would crack skulls, it came upon them presently that they would crack nuts as well. And cracking nuts between two stones one day a flint shattered, and there on the grass was the golden secret of the edge, the thing that has made man what he is. Yet again, good fellow, I queried, even this happy chance only gives us a weapon, sharp no doubt, and calculated to do a hundred services for any ten the original pebble could have done, but still unhandled, small in force, imperfect. Now tell me, which of your amicable ancestors first put a handle to the fashion flint, and how we thought of it? The workman had done his flake by now, and wrapping it in a bit of skin, put it carefully in his belt before turning to answer my question. Who made the first handle for the first flint, you of many questions? She did, she, the mother, he suddenly cried, patting the earth with his brown hand, and working himself up as he spoke, made it in her heart for us her first born. See, here is such as the first handled weapon that ever came out of darkness, and he snatched from the ground where it had lain hidden underneath his fox-skin cloak, a heavy club. I saw in an instant how it was. The club had been a sapling, and the sapling's roots had grown about it, and circled with a splendid grip a lump of native flint. A woman had pulled the sapling, found the flint, and fashioned the two in a moment of happy inspiration, the one to an axe-head, the other to a handle, as they lay nature-welded. This, I say, this is the first. The first, screamed the old fellow as though I were contradicting him, thumping the ground with his weapon, and working himself up into a fury as its black magic entered his being. This is the first, with this I slew header and gur, and those who plundered my hiding-places in the woods. With this I have killed a score of others, bursting their heads and cracking their bones like dry sticks. With this, with this, but here his rage rendered him in articulate. He stammered and stuttered for a minute, and then as the killing fury settled on him, his yellow teeth shut with a sudden snap, while through them his breath rattled like wind through dead pine branches in December. The sing-you set up on his hands, as his fingers tightened upon the axe-teth like the roots of the same pines from the ground when winter rain has washed the soil from beneath them. His small eyes gleamed like baleful planets. Every hair upon his shaggy back grew stiff and erect. Another minute, and my span were ended. With a leap from where I sat, I flew with that hairy beast, and sinking my fist deep in his throttle, shook him till his eyes blazed with delirious fires. We waltzed across the short greensward, and in and out about the tree trunks, shaking, pulling, and hitting as we went. Till at last I felt the man's vigor dying within him. A little more shaking, a sudden twist, and he was lying on the ground before me, senseless and civil. That is the worst of some orders, I thought to myself, as I gloomily gathered up the scattered fragments of my lunch. They never know when they have said enough. They are too apt to be carried away by their own arguments. That inhospitable village was left behind in full belief the mountain looming in the south could be reached before nightfall, while the road to its left would serve as sure guide to food and shelter for the evening. But as it turned out, the morning's haze developed a strong mist ere the afternoon was half gone, through which it was impossible to see more than 20 yards. My hill loomed gigantic for a time with a tantalizing appearance of being only a mile or two ahead, then wavered, became visionary, and finally disappeared as completely as though the forest mist had drunk it up bodily. There was still the road to guide me, a fairly well-beaten track twining through the glades, but even the best of highways are difficult in fog. And this one was complicated by various side paths, made probably by hunters or bark cutters. And without compass or guide marks, it was necessary to advance with extreme caution or get helplessly mazed. An hour steady tramping brought me nowhere in particular, and stopping for a minute to consider, I picked a few wild fruit, such as my woodcutter friend had eaten from an overhanging bush. And in doing so slipped, the soil haven't become damp, and in falling broke a branch off. The incident was only important from what follows. Picking myself up, perhaps a little shaken by the jolt, I set off again in what seemed the plain road, and being by this time displeased by my surroundings, determined to make a push for civilization before the rapidly gathering darkness settled down. Hands in pockets and collar up, I marched forward at a good round pace for an hour, constantly straining my eyes for a sight of the hill and ears for some indications of living beings in the deathly hush of the shrouded woods. And at the end of that time, feeling sure habitations must now be near, arrived at what looked like a little open space, somehow seeming rather familiar in its vague outlines. Where had I seen such a place before? Sauntering round the margin, a bush with a broken branch suddenly attracted my attention. A broken bush with a long slide in the mud below it, and the stamp of navy boots in the soft turf. I glared at those signs for a moment, then with an exclamation of chagrin recognized them only too well. It was a bush once I had picked the fruit, and the mark of my fall. An hour's hard walking round some accursed woodland track had brought me exactly back to the point I had started from. I was lost. It really seemed to get 20% darker as I made that abominable discovery, and the position dawned in all its uncomfortable intensity. There was nothing for it but to start off again, this time judging my direction only by a light breath of air drifting the mist tangles before it. And therein I made a great mistake. For the breeze had shifted several points from the quarter once it blew in the morning. Knowing nothing of this, I went forward with as much light-heartedness as could be managed, humming a song to myself, and carefully putting aside thoughts of warmth and supper, while the dusk increased and the great forest vegetation seemed to grow rancor and closer at every step. Another disconcerting thing was that the ground slope gradually downwards, not upwards as it should have done, till it seemed the path lay across the flats of a forest-covered plain, which did not conform to my wish of striking a road on the foothills of a mountain. However, I plotted on, drawing some small comfort from the fact that as darkness came the mist rose from the ground and appeared to condense in a ghostly curtain 20 feet overhead, where it hung between me and a clear night sky, presently illuminated by starlight with the strangest effect. Tired, foot sore and dejected, I struggled on a little further. Oh, for a cab, I laughed bitterly to myself. Oh, for even the humble, necessary omnibus of civilization. Oh, for the humblest tuck shop, where a mug of hot coffee and a snack could be had by a homeless wanderer. And as I thought and plotted savagely on, collar up, hands in pockets, through the black tangles of that endless wood, suddenly the sound of wailing children caught my ear. It was the softest, saddest music ever mortal listened to. It was as though scores of babes in pain were dropping to sleep on their mother's breast and all hushing their sorrows with one accord in a common melancholy chorus. I stood spellbound at that elfin wailing, the first sound to break the deathly stillness of the road for an hour or more, and my blood tangled as I listened to it. Nevertheless, here was what I was looking for. Where there were weeping children, there must be habitations and shelter, and splendid thought, supper. Poor little babes, their crying was the deadliest, sweetest thing in sorrows I ever listened to. If it was colic, why I knew a little medicine, and in gratitude for that perspective supper, I had a soul big enough to cure a thousand. And if they were in disgrace and by some quaint Martian fashion had suffered simultaneous punishment for baby offenses, I would plead for them. In fact, I fairly set off at a run towards the sobbing in the black, wet night air ahead and tripping as I ran, looked down and saw on the filtering starlight that the forest grass had given place to an ancient roadway paved with moss-grown flagstones, such as they still used in Sef. Without stopping to think what that might mean, I hurried on, the wailing now right ahead, a tremendous tumult of gentle grief rising and falling on the night air like the sound of a sea after a storm. And so, presently in a minute or two, came upon the ruin archway spanning the lonely road, held together by great masses of black-fingered creepers, gaunt and ghostly in the shadows, an extraordinary and unexpected vision. And as I stopped with a jerk under that forbidding gateway and glared at its tumbled masonry and great portals hanging rotten in their hinges, suddenly the truth flashed upon me. I had taken the forbidden road after all. I was in the ancient ghost-haunted city of Queen Yang. End of Chapter 14. Recording by James Christopher. JX Christopher at yahoo.com. Chapter 15 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. Chapter 15. The dark forest seemed to shut behind as I entered the gateway of the deserted hither town, against which my woodcutter friend had warned me. While inside, the soft mist hung in the starlight like gray drapery hung over endless vistas of ruins. What was I to do? Without all was black and cheerless. Inside, there was at least shelter. Wet and cold, my courage was not about to be put down by the stories of a silly savage. I would go on whatever happened. Besides, the soft sound of crying, now apparently all about, seen compangatable. And I had heard so much of ghost of late, the sharp edge of fear at their presence was wearing off. So in I went, up a broad, decayed street, its flagstones heaved everywhere by the roots of gnarled trees, and finding nothing save ruin tried to rest under a wall. But the night air was chilly and the shelter poor. So out I came again, with the wailing in the shadows so close about now that I stopped and mustering up courage called aloud. Hello, you who weep there in the dark. Are you living or dead? And after a minute from the hollows of the empty hearse around came the sad little responsive echo. Are you living or dead? It was very delusive and unsatisfactory. And I was wondering what to do next when a slant of warmer wind came up behind me under the mist. And immediately little tongues of blue flame blossomed without visible cause in every dark some crevice. Pale flickers of miasmic light rising pallid from every lurking nook and corner in the black desolation, as though a thousand lamps were lit by unseen fingers. And knee-high floated out into the thoroughfare where they oscillated gently in airy grace. And then, forming into procession, began drifting before the tepid air towards the city center. At once I thought of what the woodcutter had seen, but was too wet and sulky by this time to care. The fascination of the place was on me. And dropping into the rear of the march, I went forward with it. By this time the whaling had stopped, though now and then it seemed a dark form moved in the empty doorways on either hand. While the mist, parting into gossimmers before the wind, took marvelously human forms in every alley and lane we passed. Thus I, a sodden giant, led by those elfin torches, paced through the city until we came to an open square with a great lumber of ruins in the center, all marred and spoiled by vegetation. And here the lights wavered and went out by scores in hundreds, just as the petals dropped from spent flowers. While it seemed, though it may have been only wind in the ranked grass, that the air was full of most plaintive size as each little lamp slipped into oblivion. The big pile was a massive fallen masonry, which, from the broken pillars all about, might have been a palace or temple once. I pushed in, but it was as dark as Hades here, so after struggling for a time in a labyrinth of chambers, chose a sandy recess, with some dry herbage by way of bedding in a corner, and there, thankful at least for shelter, my night's wanderings came to an end and I coiled myself down, ate a last handful of dried fruit, and, strange as it may seem, was soon sleeping peacefully. I dreamed that night that a woman, with a face as white as ivory, came and bent over me. She led a babe by either hand, while before her were scores of other ones with lovely faces, but all as pale as the stars themselves, who looked inside, but said nothing, and when they had stared their fill, dropped out one by one, leaving a wonderful blank in the monotony where they had been, but beyond that dream, nothing happened. It was a fine morning when I woke again, and obviously broad day outside, the sunshine coming down through the cracks in the old palace roof, and lying in golden pools on the floor with dazzling effect. Rubbing my eyes and sitting up, it took me some time to get my senses together, and at first an uneasy feeling possessed me that I was somehow dematerialized in an unreal world. But a twinge of cramp in my left arm, and a healthy sneeze, which frightened a score of bats overhead nearly out of their senses, was reassuring on this point, and rubbing away the cramp and staggering to my feet, I looked about it to strange surroundings. It was cavernous chaos on every side, magnificent architecture reduced to the confusion of a debris heap, only the hollow chambers, being here and there preserved by massive columns meeting overhead. Into these the yellow light filtered wherever a rent in a couple or a sidewall admitted it, and alerted by the vision of corridors one beyond the other, I presently set off on a tour of discovery. 20 minutes scrambling brought me to a place where the fallen jams of a fine doorway lay so close together that there was barely room to pass between them. However, seeing light beyond, I squeezed through and found myself in the best preserved chamber of all, a wide roomy hall with a domed roof, a haze of mural paintings on the walls, and a marble floor nearly hidden in a century of fallen dust. I stumbled over something at the threshold, and picking it up, found it was a baby skull, and there were more of them now that my eyes became accustomed to the light. The whole floor was modeled with them, scores and hundreds of bones in these poor little relics of humanity jutting out of the sand everywhere. In the hush of that great dead nursery, the little white trophy seemed inexpressibly pathetic, and I should have turned back reverently from that chamber of forgotten sorrows, but that something caught my eye in the center of it. It was an oblong pile of white stone, very ill-used and chipped, wrist deep in dust, yet when a slant of light came in from above and fell straight upon it, the marble against the black gloom beyond blazed like living pearl. It was dazzling, and shedding my eyes and going tenderly over the poor dead babes. I looked, and there, full in the shine, lay a woman's skeleton, still wrapped in a robe of which little was left, save the hard gold embroidery. Her brown hair, wonderful to say, still lay like lank-dead seaweed about her, and amongst it was a fillet crown of plain iron set with gems such as I never looked upon before. There were not many, but enough to make the proud simplicity of that circlet glisten like a little band of fire, a gleaming halo on her dead forehead infinitely fascinating. At her size were two other little bleached human flowers, and I stood before them for a long time in silent sympathy. Could this be Queen Yang of whom the woodcutter had told me? It must be, who else? And if it were, what strange chance had brought me here, a stranger, yet the first to come since her sorrow from her distant kindred. And if it were, then that fillet belonged of right to Haru, the last representative of her kind. Aught I not to take it to her rather than leave it as a spoil to the first idle thief would pluck enough to deride the mysteries of the haunted city? Long time I thought over it in the faint heavy atmosphere of that hall, and then very gently unwound the hair, lifted the circlet, and scarcely knowing what I did, put it in my shoulder bag. After that I went more cheerfully into the outside sunshine, and setting my clothes to dry on a stone took stock of the situation. The place was perhaps not quite so romantic by day as by night, and the scattered trees matted by creepers with which the whole were overgrown, preventing anything like an extensive view of the ruined city being obtained. But what gave me great satisfaction was to note over these trees to the eastward a two-humped mountain, not more than six or seven miles distant, the very one I had mislaid the day before. Here was reality, and a chance of getting back to civilization. I was as glad as if home were in sight, and not perhaps, the less so because the hill meant villages and food. And you who have doubtless lunch well and lately will please bear in mind I had nothing since breakfast the day before. And though this may look picturesque on paper, in practice it is a painful item in one's program. Well, I gave my damp clothes but a turn or two more in the sun, and then arguing that from the bare ground where the forest ended halfway up the hill, a wide view would be obtained, hurried into my garments and set off thither right gleefully. A turn or two down the blank streets, now prosaic enough, an easy scramble through a gap in the crumbling battlements, and there was the open forest again, with a friendly path well marked by the passage of those wild animals who made the city their lair trending towards my landmark. A light breakfast of soft green nuts plucked on the way, and then the ground began to bend upwards in the woods to thin a little. With infinite ardor, just before midday, I scrambled onto a bare knoll on the very hillside and fell exhausted before the top could be reached. But what were hunger and fatigue to the satisfaction of that moment? There was the sea before me, the clear strong gracious sea, blue leagues of it, furrowed by the white ridges of some distant storm. I could smell the scent of it even here, and my sailor heart rose in pride its companionship of that alien ocean. Lovely and blessed thing, how often have I turned from the shallow trivialities of the land and found consolation in the strength of your stately solitudes. How often have I turned from the tinseled presence of the shore, the infinite pretensions of dry land that made life a sorry hectic sham, and found in the black bosom of the great mother solace and comfort. Dear lovely sea, man, half of every sphere, as far removed in the sequence of your strong emotions from the painted fripperies of the womenland as pole from pole, the grateful blessings of the humblest of your followers on you. The mere sight of saltwater did me good. Heaven knows our separation had not been long, and many an unkind slap has the mother given me in the bygone. Yet the mere sight of her was tonic, the leaf of troubles, a sedative for tired nerves. And I gazed that morning at the inimitable blue, the great unfettered road to everywhere, the ever-varied, the immutable, the thing which was before everything, and shall be last of all, in an ecstasy of affection. There was also another satisfaction at hand. Not a mile away lay a well-defined road, doubtless the one spoken of by the woodcutter, and where the track pointed to the seashore, the low roofs encircling smoke of a thither township showed. There I went hot-footed, and much too hungry to be nice in formality, swung up to the largest building on the waterside key, and demanded breakfast of the man who was lounging by its doorway chewing a honey reed. He looked me up and down without emotion. Then, falling into the common mistake, he said, this is not a hostel for ghosts, sir. We do not board and lodge phantoms here. This is a dry fish shop. Thrice, blessed trade, I answered. Give me some dried fish, good fellow, or, for the matter of that, dried horse or dog, or anything mortal teeth can bite through, and I will show you my taste or altogether mundane. But he shook his head. This is no place for the likes of you, who come, may hap, from the city of Yang, or some other abode of disembodied spirits. You, who come from mischief and pay harbourage with mischance, is it likely you could eat wholesome food? Indeed I could, and plenty of it, seeing I have dined and breakfasted along the hedges with the blackbirds this two days. Look here, I will pay in advance. Will that get me a meal? And whipping out my knife, cut off another of my fast receding coat buttons. The man took it with great interest, as I hoped he would. The yellow metal apparently being a very scarce commodity in his part of the planet. Gold, he asked? Well, I forgot to ask the man who sewed them on for me what they were exactly, but it looks like gold, doesn't it? Yes, he answered, turning it to and fro admiringly in his hand. You are the first ghost I ever knew to pay in advance, and plenty of them go to and fro through here. Such a pretty thing is well worth a meal. If indeed, you can stomach our rough fare. Here, you woman within, he called to the lady whom I presume was his wife. Here is a gentleman from the nether regions who wants some breakfast and is paid in advance. Give him some of your best, for he has paid well. And what, said the female voice from inside, what if I refuse to serve another of these plaguey wanderers you were always foisting upon me? Don't mind her tongue, sir. It is the worst part of her, though she is mighty proud of it. Go in, and she will see you do not come out hungry, and the thither man return calmly to his honey-stick. Come on, you soul with a man's stomach, growled the woman, and too hungry to be particular about the tone of invitation, I strode into the parlour of that strange refreshment place. The woman was the first I had seen of the outer race, and better than might have been expected in appearance. Big, strong, and ruddy, she was a mental shock after the slender slips of girlhood on the far side of the water, half a dozen of whom she could have carried off without effort in her long arms. Yet there was about her the credential of rough health, the dignity of muscle, an upright carriage, an animal grace of movement, and with all, a comely, though strongly featured face, which pleased me at once, and later on, I a great cause to remember her with gratitude. She eyed me suckly for a minute, then her frown gradually softened, and the instinctive love of the woman for the supernatural mastered her other feelings. Is that how you looked in another world, she asked? Yes, exactly, cap to boots. What do you think of the attire, ma'am? Not much, replied the good woman frankly. It could not have been becoming even when new, and you appear as though you had taken a muddy road since then. What did you die of? I will tell you so much as this, madam, that what I am like to die of now is hunger, plain, unvarnished hunger. So in heaven's name, get out what you have and let me fall too, for my last meal was yesterday morning. We're at, with the shruggerish shoulders at the eccentricities of Netherfolk, the woman went to the rear of the house and presently came back with a meal, which showed her husband had done scant justice to the establishment by calling it a dry fish shop. It is true, fish supplied the staple of the repast, as was inevitable in a seaport, but like all Martian fish, it was a most ambrosial kind, with a saber about it of wine and sunshine, such as no fish on our side of space can boast of. Then there were cakes, steaming and hot, vegetables which fitted into the previous course with exquisite nicety, and lastly, a wooden tankard of the invariable thither beer to finish off. Such a meal as a hungry man might consider himself fortunate to meet with any day. The woman watched me eat with much satisfaction, and when I had answered a score of artless questions about my previous state or present condition and prospects, more or less to her satisfaction, she supplied me in turn with some information which was really valuable to me just then. First I learned that our haps men, with the abducted Haru, had passed through this very port two days before, and by this time were probably in the main town, which it appeared, was only about 12 hours rowing up the saltwater estuary outside. Here was news. Haru, the prize and object of my wild adventure, closed at hand and well. It brought a whole new train of thoughts, for the last few days had been so full of the stress of travel, the bare, hard necessity of getting forward, that the object of my quest, illogical as it may seem, had gone into the background before these things. And here again, as I finished the last cake and drank down to the bottom of the ale tankard, the extreme folly of the venture came upon me, the madness of venturing single-handed into the den of the Wood King. What had I to hope for? What chance, however remote, was there of successfully resting that blooming prize from the arms of her captor? Force was out of the question. Stealth was utterly impractical. As for cajolery, apparently the soul remaining means of winning back the princess, why one might as well try the persuasions of a penny-fluid upon a hungry eagle, as seek to rouse our half-sympathies for bereaved half in that way. Surely to go forward would be my own certain destruction, with no advantage, no help to Haru. And if I was ever to turn back or stop the idle quest, here was the place in time. My hither friends were behind the sea. To them I could return before it was too late, and here were the rough but honest thitherfolk, who would doubtless let me live amongst them if that was to be my fate. One or other alternative were better than going to torture and death. You seem to take the fate of that hither girl of yours mightily to heart, stranger, quote my hostess, with a touch of feminine jealousy, as she watched my hesitation. Do you know anything of her? Yes, I answer gloomily. I have seen her once or twice away in Seth. Ah, that reminds me. When they brought her up here from the boats to dry her wet clothes, she cried and called in her grief for just such a one as you, saying he alone who struck down our men at her feast could rescue her. What? Haru in this room but yesterday? How did she look? Was she hurt? How had they treated her? My eagerness gave me away. The woman looked at me through her half-shut eyes of space and then said, Oh, sits the wind in that quarter, so you can love as well as eat. I must say you are well conditioned for a spirit. I got up and walked around the room of space, then feeling very friendless and knowing no woman was ever born who was not interested in another woman's loves. I boldly drew my hostess aside and told her about Haru and that I was in pursuit of her, dwelling on the girl's gentle helplessness, my own harebrained adventure, and frankly asking what sort of sovereign Ahap was, what the customs of his court might be and whether she could suggest any means, temporal or spiritual, by which he might be moved to give back Haru to her kindred. Nor was my confidence misplaced. The woman, as I guessed, was touched somewhere back in her female heart by my melting love-tail, by my anxiety in Haru's peril. Besides, a ghost in search of a fairy lady and such the slender folk of Seth were still considered to be by the race which had supplanted them. This was romance indeed. To be brief, that good woman proved invaluable. She told me firstly that Ahap was believed to be a way at war, weak-ending as was his custom amongst rebellious tribes. And by starting at once up the water, I should very probably get to the town before he did. Secondly, she thought if I kept clear of private brawls, there was little chance of my receiving injury from the people at all events, as they were accustomed to strange visitors and civil enough until they were fired by war. Sickle-cold, sword-hot, was one of their proverbs, meaning thereby that in peaceful times they were lambs, however lion-like they might be in contest. This was reassuring, but as to recovering the lady, that was another matter over which the good woman shook her head. It was ill coming between our happiness tribute, she said. Still, if I wanted to see Haru once again, this was my opportunity. And for the rest, that chance, which often favors the enamored, must be my help. Briefly, though I should probably have gone forward in any case out of sheer obstinacy, had it been to certain destruction, this better aspect of the situation hastened my resolution. I thanked the woman for help, and then the man outside was called in to advise us to the best and speediest way of getting within earshot of his hairy sovereign, the monarch of Thitherland. End of Chapter 15. Recording by James Christopher. JX Christopher at yahoo.com. Chapter 16 of Gulliver of Mars. 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 16. The Martian told me of a merchant boat with 10 rowers which was going up to the capital in a couple of hours. And as the skipper was a friend of his, they would no doubt take me as supercargo, thereby saving me the necessity of passenger fees, which was obviously a consideration with me. It was not altogether a romantic approach to the dungeon of an imprisoned beauty, but it was practical, which is often better, if not so pleasant. So the offer was gladly closed with, and curling myself in a rug of fox skins, for I was tired with much walking, sailors never being good foot-gainers. I slept soundly till they came to tell me it was time to go on board. The vessel was more like a canal bars than anything else, lean and long, with the cargo piled and a ridge down the center as farmers store their winter turnips. The rowers sitting on either side of this plying oars like dessert spoons with long handles. While they chanted a monotonous cadence of monosyllables. Oh ho ho, oh ho ho, how high, how high. And then again, after a pause, how high, how high, oh ho ho, oh ho ho. The witch was infinitely sleep provoking, if not a refrain of high intellectual order. I shut my eyes as we pulled away from the whores of that nameless emporium and picked the passage through a crowd of quaint shipping, wondering where I was and asking myself whether I was mentally rising equally to my extraordinary surroundings, whether I adequately appreciated the immensity of my remove from those other seas on which I had last traveled, tiller ropes in hand, piloting a captain's galley from a wharf. Good heavens, what would my comrades on my ship say if they could see me now steering a load of hairy savages up one of those waterways which are biggest telescopes magnified to butt the thickness of an indication? No, I was not rising equal to the occasion and could not. The human mind is a but limited capacity after all and such freaks of fortune are beyond its conception. I knew where I was, but I knew I should probably never get the chance of telling it and that no one would ever believe me if I did and I resigned myself to the inevitable with sullen acquiescence, smothering the wonder that might have been overwhelming and passing interest of the moment. There is little to record of that voyage. We passed through a fleet of our half warships, empty and an anchor in double lines, serviceable half deck cutters, built of solid timber, not pumpkin rind it was pleasant to notice and then the town dropped away as we proceeded up a stream about as broad as a Hudson at its widest and profusely studded with islands. The water was bitterly salt and joined another sea on the other side of the Martian continent. Yet it had a pronounced flow against us eastward. This tide running for three spring months and being followed I learned as ocean temperatures varied by a flow in the opposite direction throughout the summer. Just at present, the current was so strong eastwards, the moisture beaded upon my rowers tawny hides as they struggled against it and their melancholy song doddled in linked sweetness long drawn out while the swing of their oars grew longer and longer. Truly it was very hot, far hotter than was usual for the season these men declared and possibly this robbed me of my wanted energy a new gentle reader of a description of all the strange things we passed upon that highway. Suffice it to say, we spent a scorching afternoon, the greater part of a stifling night, moored under a mud bank with a grove of trees on top from which gigantic fireflies hung as though the place were illuminated for a garden set and then rowing on again in the comparatively cool hours before dawn turned into a backwater at Cock Crow. The skipper of our cargo boat roused me just as we turned putting under my sleepy nostrils a handful of toasted beans on a leaf and a small cupful of something that was not coffee but smelt as good as that metutinal beverage always does to the tired traveler. Over our prow was an immense arch of foliage and underneath a long arcade of cool black shadows sheltering still water till water and shadow suddenly ended a quarter of a mile down in a patch of brilliant color. It was as peaceful as could be in the first morning light and to me overall there was the inexpressible attraction of the unknown. As our boat slipped silently forward up this leafy lane a thin white feather in her mouth alone breaking the steely surface of the stream the men rested from their work and began as sailors will to put on their sure going clothes the while they chatted in low tones over the profits of the voyage. Overhead flying squirrels were flitting to and fro like bats or shelling fruitware of the husk fell with a pleasant splash about us and on one bank a couple of early mothers were washing their babies whose mother protests were almost the only sound in this morning world. Another silent dip or two of the oars and the color ahead crystallized into a town. If I said it was like an African village on a large scale I should probably give you the best description in the fewest words. From the very water's edge up to the crown of a low hill inland extended a mass of huts in wooden buildings and bowered and partially hidden in the bright green foliage with here and there patches of millet or some such food plant and the flowers that grow everywhere so abundantly in this country. It was all arcadian and peaceful enough at the moment and as we drew near the men were just coming out to the keys along the harbor front the streets filling and the town waking to busy life. A turn to the left through a water gate defended by towers of wood and mud and we were in the city harbor itself. Boats of many kinds moored on every side quaint craft from the gulfs and bays of nowhere full of unheard of merchandise and manned by strange-faced crews every vessel a romance of nameless seas an epitome of an undiscovered world. In every moment the scene grew busier as the breakfast smoke rose and wharf and gangway set to work upon the day's labors. Our boat loaded as it turned out was spoiled from Seth was run to a place of honor at the bottom of the town square and was an object of much curiosity to a small crowd which speedily collected and let the hand with the mooring ropes. The while chatting excitedly with the crew about further tribute and the latest news from overseas. At the same time a swarthy barbarian whose trapping showed him to be some sort of functionary came down to our captain much wagging of heads and counting of not sticks taking place between them. I indeed was apparently the least interesting item of the cargo and this was embarrassing. No hero likes to be neglected it is fatal to his part. I had said my prayers and steeled myself to all sorts of fine endurance on the way up and here when it came to the crisis no one was anxious to play the necessary villain. They just helped me assure civilly enough the captain nodded his head at me muttering something in an indifferent tone to the functionary about a ghost who had wandered overseas and begged to passage up the canal. The group about the key started a little but that was all. Once I remembered seeing a squatting life size heathen idol hoisted from a vessel's hold and deposited on a sugar box on a New York key. Some rybalt passerby put a battered felt hat upon Vishnu's sacred curls and there the poor image sat an alien in an indifferent land a sack across its shoulders a billy cock upon its head and honored it most with a passing stare. I thought of that lonely image as almost as lonely I stood on the thither man's key without the support of friends or heroics wondering what to do next. However, a cheerful disposition is sometimes better than a banking account and not having the one, I cultivated the other sending myself amongst the bales for a time and then, since none seen interested in me wandered off into the town partly to satisfy my curiosity and partly in the vague hope of ascertaining if my princess was really here and if possible, getting sight of her. Meanwhile, it turned hot with a supernatural heavy sort of heat altogether I heard passerbys exclaiming out of the common and after wandering for an hour through gardens and endless streets of thatch-tuts I was glad enough to throw myself down in the shadows of some trees on the outskirts of the great central pile of buildings a whole village in itself of beam-built towers and dwelling place suggesting by its superior size that it might actually be Arhap's palace. Hotter and hotter it grew while a curious secondary sunrise in the west the light of which I never saw before seemed to add to the heat and heavier and heavier my eyelids till I dozed at last and finally slept uncomfortably for a time. Rousing up suddenly, imagined my surprise to see sitting, chin on hands, about a yard away, a slender girlish figure infinitely out of place in that world of rough barbarians. Was it possible? Was I dreaming? No, there was no doubt about it. She was a girl of the hitherfolk slim and pretty but with a wonderfully sad look in her gazelle eyes and scarcely a sign of the indolent happiness of Seth in the pale little face regarding me so fixedly. Good gracious miss, I said, still rubbing my eyes and doubting my senses. Have you dropped from the skies? You are the very last person I expected to see in this barbarian place. And you too, sir. Oh, it is lovely to see one so newly from home and freeseming, not a slave. How did you know I was from Seth? Oh, that was easy enough. And with a little laugh she pointed to a pebble lying between us on which was a piece of battered sweetmeat and a perforated bamboo box. Poor An had given me something just like that in a playful mood. And I had kept it in my pocket for her sake being, as you well have doubtless observed, a sentimental young man. And now I clapped my hand where it should have been but it was gone. Yes, said my new friend, that is yours. I smelt the sweetmeat coming up the hill and crossed the grass until I found you here asleep. Oh, it was lovely. I took it from your pocket and white Seth rose up before my swimming eyes even at the scent of it. I am Sai, well named, for that in Arland meets sadness. Sai, the daughter of Prince Haas' chief sweetmeat maker, so I should know something of such stuff. May I please nibble a little piece? Eat it all, my lass, and welcome. How came you here? But I can guess. Do not answer if you would rather not. I, but I will. It is not every day I can speak to ears so friendly as yours. I am a slave, chosen for my luckless beauty as last year's tribute to Arhap. And now? And now the slave of Arhap's horsekeeper set aside to make room for a fresher face. And do you know whose face that is? Not I, a hapless maid sent into this land of horrors to bear ignomy and stripes, to eat coarse food and do coarse work. The miserable plaything of some brute in semi-human form. With but the one consolation of dying early as we tribute women always die. Poor comrade in exile, I only know her as yet by sympathy. What if I said it was Haru, the princess? The Martian girl sprang to her feet and clasping her hands exclaimed, Haru, the slender, then the end comes, for it is written in our books that the last tribute is paid when the best is paid. I know how splendid if she gave herself a free will to this slavery, to end it once and for all. Was it so? I think, Si, your princess could not have known of that tradition. She did not come willingly. Besides, I income to fetch her back, if it may be, and that spoils the look of sacrifice. You fetch her back from Arhap's arms? My words, sir spirit, you must know some potent charms. Or, what is less likely, my countrymen must have amazingly improved and plucked since I left them. Have you a great army at hand? But I only shook my head, and touching my sword, said that here was the only army coming to rescue Haru. Whereon the lady replied that she thought my valor did me more honor than my discretion. How did I propose to take the princess from her captors? To tell the truth, damsel, that is a matter which will have to be left to your invention, or the kindness of such as you. I am here on a harebrained errant, playing night errant in a way that shocks my common sense. But since the matter has gone so far, I will see it through or die in the attempt. Your bully lords shall either give me Haru, lock, stock, and block, or hang me from a yard arm. But I would rather have the lady. Come, you will help me. And as a beginning, if she is a yonder shanty, get me speech with her. Poor size eyes dilated at the peril of the suggestion, and I saw the sluggish Martian nature at war against her better feelings. But presently the latter conquered. I will try, she said. What matter a few stripes more or less? Pointing to her rosy shoulders where red scars crisscross upon one another, showed how the Martian girls fared in our half's palace when their novelty wore off. I will try to help you, and if they kill me for it, why, that won't matter much. And forthwith in that blazing forenoon under the flickering shadow of the trees, we put our heads together to see what we might do for Heru. It was not much for the moment. Try what we would that afternoon. I could not persuade those who had charged the princess to let me even approach her place of imprisonment. But sigh as a woman was more successful, actually seeing her for a few moments, and managed to whisper in her ear that I had come. The spirit with the gold buttons down his front, afterwards describing to me in flowing Martian imagery, but doubtless not more highly colored than poor Heru's emotion warranted, how delightedly that lady had received the news. Sigh also did me another service, presenting me to the porter's wife, who kept a kind of boarding house at the gates of our half's palace for gentlemen and ladies with grievances. I had heard of why being before, in the presentation of petitions, though I had never indulged myself in the pastime. But the crowd of petitioners here, with petitions as wild and picturesque as their own motley appearances, was surely the strangest that ever gathered round the seat of supreme authority. But sigh whispered in the ear of that good woman, the nature of my errand, with doubtless some blandishment of her own, in my errand being once so much above the vulgar, and so nearly touching the sovereign. I was at once accorded a separate room in the gatehouse, once I could look down a comparative piece on the common herd of suitors, and listen to the buzz of their invective as they practiced speeches, which I calculated it would take our half all the rest of his reign to listen to, without allowing him any time for pronouncing verdicts on them. Here I made myself comfortable, and waited the return of the sovereign as placidly as might be. Meanwhile fate was playing into my feeble hands. I have said it was hot weather. At first this seemed but an outcome of the Martian climate, but as the hours went by the heat developed to an incredible extent. Also that red glare previously noted in the West grew in intensity, till, as the hours slipped by, all the town was staring at it in panting horror. I have seen a prairie on fire, luckily from the far side of a comfortably broad river, and have ridden through a pine forest when every tree for miles was an uplifted torch, and pungent yellow smoke rolled on each quarry-side and gray rivers crested with dancing flame, but that Martian glare was more somber and terrible than either. What is it, I asked a poor sigh, who came out gasping to speak to me by the gatehouse. None of us know, and unless the gods of East Thitherfolk believe in her angry and intend to destroy the world with yonder red sword in the sky, I cannot guess. Perhaps she added, with a sudden flash of inspiration, it comes by your machinations for her ruse help. No. If not by your wish, then, in the name of all you love, such your wish against it. If you know any incantations suitable for the occasion, oh, practice them now at once. For look, even the very grassed is withering. Birds are dropping from trees, fishes horribly bloated, are beginning to float down the streaming rills, and I, with all others, have a nameless dread upon me. Hotter and hotter it grew, until about sunset the red blaze upon the sky slowly opened, and showed us for about half an hour through the opening a lurid flame-colored meteor far out in space beyond. Then the cleft closed again, and through that abominable red curtain came the very breath of Hades. What was really happening, I am not astronomer enough to say. Though on cooler consideration, I have come to the conclusion that our planet, and going out to its summer pastures in the remote or fields of space, had somehow come across a wandering lesser world, and got pretty well singed in passing. This is purely my own opinion, and I have not yet submitted it to the kindly authorities of the Lick Observatory for verification. All I can say for certain is that, in an incredibly short space of time, the face of the country changed from green to sear. Flowers drooped, streams, there were not many in the neighborhood apparently, dried up. Fishes died. A mighty thirst there was nothing to quench settle down upon man and beast. And we all felt that unless Providence listened to the prayer as an implication to which the whole town set to work with frantic zeal to hurl at it, or that a abominable comet in the sky sheared off on another tack with the least possible delay, we should all be reduced to cinders in a very brief space of time. CHAPTER XVII THE EVENING OF THE SECOND DAY HAD ALREADY COME WHEN OUR HAP ARRIVED HOME AFTER WEEKENDING AMONGST THE TRIBE OF REBELLIOUS SUBJECTS, BUT ANY IMPOSING STATE ENTRY WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN INTENDED WAS RENDERED IMPOSSIBLE BY THE HEAT AND THE THREAT OF THAT BALEFUL WORLD IN THE WESTERN SKY. It was a lurid but disordered spectacle which I witnessed from my room in the gatehouse just after nightfall. The returning army had apparently fallen away exhausted on its march through the town. Only some three hundred of the bodyguards struggled up the hill, limp and sweating, behind a group of penguins. In the midst of which rode a horseman whose commanding presence and splendid war harness impressed me, though I could not make out his features. A wild impressionist scene of black outlines, tossing headgear and spears glittering and vanishing in front of the red glare in the sky, but nothing more. Even the dry throats of the suitors in the courtyard hardly mustered a husky cry of welcome as the cavalcade trooped into the enclosure, and then the shadows enfolded them up in silence. And too hot and listless to care much what the morrow brought forth, I threw myself on the bare floor. Nothing and turning in a vain endeavor to sleep until dawn came once more. A thin mist which fell with daybreak drew a veil over the horrible glare in the west for an hour or two, and taking advantage of the slight alleviation of heat, I rose and went into the gardens to enjoy a dip in the pool, making with its surrounding jungle of flowers one of the pleasantest things about the Wood King's Forest Citadel. The very earth seemed scorch and baking underfoot, and the pool was gone. It had run as dry as a lime kiln, nothing remained of the pretty fall which had fed it but a miserable trickle of drops from the cascade above. Down beyond the town shone a gleam of water where the bitter canals steamed and simmered in the first gray of the morning, but up here six months of scorching drought could not have worked more havoc. The very leaves were drooping from the trees, and the luxuriant gross of the day before looked as though a Samoon had played upon them. I staggered back in disgust, and found some show of official activity about the palace. It was the King's custom it appeared, to hear petitions and redress wrongs as soon after his return as possible. But today the ceremony was to be cut short, as His Majesty was going out with all his court to a neighboring mountain to pray away the comet, which by this time was causing dire alarm all through the city. Heaven's own particular blessings on His Prayer is my friend, I said to the man who told me this. Unless His Majesty's Orisons are fruitful, we shall all be cooked like baked potatoes before nightfall. And though I have faced many kinds of death, that is not the one I would choose by preference. Is there any chance of my being heard at the throne? Your peculiar climate tempts me to hurry up with my business and be gone if I may. Not only may you be heard, sir, but you are summoned. The King has heard of you somehow, and sent me to find and bring you into his presence at once. So be it, I said, too hot to care what happened. I have no levy dress with me. I lost my luggage check some time ago. But if you will wait outside, I will be with you in a moment. I will be tidying myself up and giving my hair a comb, as though just off to see Mr. Secretary for the Navy, or on the way to get a senator to push a new patent medicine for me. I rejoin my guide outside, and together we crossed the wide courtyard, entered the great log-built portals of Arhap's house, and immediately afterwards found ourselves in a vast hall dimly lit by rays coming in through the square spaces under the eaves, and crowded on both sides with guards, cordiers, and supplicants. The heat was tremendous. The odor of thither men and the ill-dressed highs which they wore almost overpowering. Yet little I wrecked for either. For there at the top of the room, seated on a dais made of rough-hewn wood, inlet wood gold and covered with splendid furs, was Arhap himself. A fine fellow, swarthy, huge and hairy. At any other time or place, I would have given him due admiration as an admirable example of a savage on the borderland of grace and culture. But now I only glanced in him, and then to wear at aside a girl was crouching, a gem of human loveliness against that dusky setting. It was Haru, my ravished princess, and still clad in her diaphanous hither robes, her face white with anxiety, her eyes bright as stars, the embodiment of helpless, flowery beauty, my heart turned over at the sight of her. Poor girl! When she saw me stride into the hall, she rose swiftly from Arhap's side, clasped her pretty hands, and getting a cry of joy would have rushed towards me. But the king laid a mighty paw upon her, under which she subsided with a shiver as though the touch had blanched all the life within. Good morning, Your Majesty, I said, walking boldly up to the lower step of the dais. Good morning, most singular-looking vagrant from the unknown, answered the monarch. In what way can I be of service to you? I have come about that girl, I said, nodding to where Haru lay blossoming in the hot gloom like some night-flowering bud. I do not know whether Your Majesty is aware how she came here, but it is a highly discredible incident in what is doubtless your otherwise blameless reign. Some rough skullions entrusted with the duty of collecting Your Majesty's customs asked Prince Hath of the Hither people to point out the most attractive young person at his wedding-feast, and the prince indicated that lady there at your side. It was a dirty trick, and all the worse because it was inspired by malice, which is the meanest of all weaknesses. I had the pleasure of knocking down some of Your Majesty's but they stole the girl away while I slept, and briefly I have come to fetch her back. The monarch had followed my speech the longest ever made in my life with fierce blinking eyes, and when it stopped looked at poor shrinking Haru as though for explanation. Then round the circle of his awestruck courtiers, and reading dismay at my boldness in their faces, burst into a guttural laugh. I suppose you have the great and pussiant hither nation behind you in this request, Mr. Spirit. No, I came alone, hoping to find justice here, and if not, then prepare to do all I could to make Your Majesty curse the day your servants maltreated my friends. Tall words, stranger. May I ask what you propose to do if Arhap, in his own palace, amongst his people and soldiers, refuses to discourage a pretty prize at the bidding of one shabby interloper, muddy and friendless? What should I do? Yes, said the king with a haughty frown. What would you do? I do not know what prompted the reply. For a moment I was completely at a loss to say to this very obvious question. And then, all on a sudden, remembering they held me to be some kind of disembodied spirit, by a happy inspiration, fixing my eyes grimly on the king, I answered, What would I do? Why, I would haunt you. It may not seem a great stroke of genius here, but the effect on the Martian was instantaneous. He sat straight up, his hands tightened, his eyes dilated, and then fidgeting uneasily. After a minute he beckoned to an overdressed individual, whom Haru afterwards told me was the court necromancer, and began whispering in his ear. After a minute's consultation he turned again, a rather frightened civility struggling with anger in his face and said, We have no wish, of course, stranger, to offend you or those who have had the honor of your patronage. Perhaps the princess here was a little roughly handled, and I confess, if she were altogether as reluctant as she seems, a lesser maid would have done as well. I could have wooed this one in Seth, where I may shortly come, and our espousals would probably have lent, in the eyes of your friends, quite a cheerful aspect to my arrival. But my ambassadors have had no great schooling and diplomacy. They have brought Princess Haru here. And how can I hand her over to one I know nothing of? How do I know you are a ghost, after all? How do I know you have anything but a rusty sword and much impertence to back your astonishing claim? Oh, let it be just as you like, I said, calmly shelling and eating a nut I had picked up. Only if you do not give the maid back, why then? And I stopped, as though the sequel were too painful to put into words. Again that superstitious monarch of a land thronged with malicious spirits called up as magician, and after they had consulted a moment, turned more cheerfully to me. Here, Mr. From Nowhere, if you really are a spirit and have the power to hurt as you say, you will have the power also to go and come between the living and the dead, between the present and the past. Now I will set you an errand, and give you five minutes to do it in. Five minutes, I exclaimed in a cautious alarm. Five minutes, said the monarch savagely. And if in that time the errand is not done, I shall hold you to be an imposter, an impudent thief from some scoundrel tribe of this world of mine, and will make of you an example which shall keep men's ears tingling for a century or two. Poor Haru dropped in a limp and lovely heap at that dire threat. While I am bound to say I felt somewhat uncomfortable, not unnaturally when all the circumstances are considered, but contented myself with remarking with as much bravado as could be managed. And now to the errand, Arhap, what can I do for your majesty? The king consulted with Thoreau get his elbow, and then nodding and chuckling in expectancy of his triumph addressed to me. Listen, he cried, smiting a huge hairy hand upon his knee. Listen and do or die. My magician tells me it is recorded in his books that once, some five thousand years ago, when this land belonged to the hither people, there lived here a king. It is a pity he died, for he seems to have been a jovial old fellow, but he did die, and according to their custom they floated him down the stream that flows to the regions of eternal ice, where doubtless he is at this present moment, kicked up with ten millions of his subjects. Now just go and find that sovereign for me, O you bold tongue-dweller in other worlds. And if I go, how am I to know your ancient king, as you say, amongst ten million others? That is easy enough, quote R. Hap lightly. You have only to pass to and fro through the ice mountains, opening the mouths of the dead men and women you meet, and when you come to a middle-sized man with a fillet on his head and a jaw mended with gold, that will be whom you look for. Bring me that fillet here within five minutes, and the maid is yours. I started and stared hard in amazement. Was this a dream? Was the royal savage in front of me playing with me? By what incredible chance had he hit upon the very errand I could answer to best, the very trophy I had brought away from the grim valley of ice and death, and had still in my shoulder bag? No, he was not playing. He was staring hard in turn, joying in my apparent confusion, and clearly thinking he had cornered me beyond hope or redemption. Surely your mightiness is not daunted by so simple a task, scowled the sovereign, playing with the hilt of his huge hunting-knife. And all amongst your friends kindred, too. On a hot day like this, it ought to be a pleasant saunter for a spirit such as yourself. Not daunted, I answered coolly, turning on my heels towards the door. Only marveling that your majesty's skull and your necromancers could not between them have devised a harder task. Out into the courtyard I went, with my heart beating finely in spite of my assumed indifference. Got the bag from a peg in my sleeping room, and was back before the vlog-thrown ere four minutes were gone. The old hither king's compliments to your majesty, I said bowing, while a deathly hush fell on all the assembly. And he says, though your ancestors little like to hear his voice while alive, he says he has no objection to giving you some jaw now he is dead. And I threw down on the floor the golden circlet of the frozen king. Arhap's eyes almost started from his head as, with his cordiers, he glared in silent amazement at that shining thing while the great drops of fear and perspiration trickled down his forehead. As for poor Haru, she rose like a spirit behind them, gazed at the jawbone of her mythical ancestor, and then suddenly realizing my errand was done and she apparently free, held out her hands, and with a tremulous cry would have come to me. But Arhap was too quick for her. All the black savage blood swelled into his veins as he swept her away with one great arm, and then with his foot gave the luckless jaw a kick that sent it glittering and spinning through the far doorway out into the sunshine. Sit down, he roared. You brazen wench, who are so eager to leave the king's side for a nameless vagrant's care. And you, sir, turning to me and fairly trembling with rage and dread, I will not gain say you have done the errand set you, but it might this once be chance that got you that cursed token, some one happy turn of luck. I will not yield my prize on one throw of the dice. Another task you must do. Once might be chance, but such chance comes not twice. You swore to give me the maid this time. And why should I keep my word to a half-proof spirit such as you? There are some particularly good reasons why you should, I said. Striking an attitude which I had once seen a musical dramatist take when he was going to blast somebody's future, a stick with a star on top of it in his hand and forty lines of blank verse in his mouth. The king rived, and begged me with a sign to desist. We have no wish to anger you. Do us this other task, and none will doubt that you are a potent spirit, and even I, Arhap, will listen to you. Well then, I answered sulkily, what is it to be this time? After a minute's consultation and speaking slowly as though conscious of how much hung on his words, the king said, Listen, my suceur tells me that somewhere there is a lost city in a forest, and a temple lost in the city, and a tomb lost in the temple, a city of ghosts and gins given over to bad spirits, wherefore all human men shun it by day and night. And on the tomb is she who is once queen there, and by her lies a crown. Quick, on you whom all distances are nothing, and who see by your finer essence into all times and places, away to that city. Joss all the memories of the unclean things that hide in its shadows. Ask which amongst them knows where dead queen Yang still lies in dusty state. Get guides amongst your comrade ghost, find queen Yang, and bring me here in five minutes a bloody circlet from her hair. Then, and then for the first time, I believe the planet was haunted indeed, and I myself unknowingly under some strange and watchful influence. Spirits, demons, oh what but some incomprehensible power, some unseen influence shaping my efforts to its ends, could have moved that hairy barbarian to play a second time into my hands like this. To choose from the endless records of his world the second of the two incidents I had touched in hasty travel through it. I was almost overcome for a minute, then pulling myself together, strode forward fiercely, and speaking so that all could hear me cried, base king, who neither knows the capacities of a spirit nor has learned as yet to dread its anger. See, your commission is executed in a thought, just as your punishment might be. Haru, come here. And when the girl, speechless with amazement, had risen and slipped over to me, I straightened her pretty hair from her forehead. And then, in a way which would make my fortune if I could repeat it at the conjurer's table, whipped poor yang's gemmy crown from my pocket, flashed its baleful splendor in the eyes of the courtiers, and placed it in the tresses of the first royal lady who had worn it since its rifle owner died a hundred years before. A heavy silence fell in the hall as I finished, and nothing was heard for a time save Haru sobbing on my breast, and a thirsty baby somewhere outside calling to its mother for the water that was not to be had. But presently, on those sounds came the fall of anxious feet, and a messenger, entering the doorway, approached the throne, laid himself out flat twice, after which abesience he proceeded to remind the king of the morning ceremonial on a distant hill, to pray away the comet, telling his majesty that all was ready and the procession anxiously awaiting him. Whereupon Arhap, obviously very well content to change the subject, rose, and coming down from the dais gave me his hand. He was a fine fellow, as I have said, strong and bold, and had not behaved badly for an autocrat, so that I gripped his mighty fist with great pleasure. I cannot deny, stranger, he said, that you have done all that has been asked of you, and the maid is fairly yours. Yet before you take away the prize I must have some assurance of what you yourself will do with her. Therefore, for the moment, until this horrible thing in the sky which threatens my people with destruction is gone, let it be truce between us. You, to your lodgings and the princess back, unharmed amongst my women till we meet again. But, no, no, said the king waving his hand. Be content with your advantage. And now to business more important than ten thousand silly wedges. And gathering up his robes over his splendid war gear, the wood king stalked haughtily from the hall. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of Gulliver of Mars 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 18 Hotter and hotter grew that stifling spell, more and more languid man and beast, drier and drier the perching earth. All the water gave out on the morning after I had bearded our half in his den, and our strength went with it. No earthly heat was ever like it, and it drank our vitality up from every pore. Water there was down below in the bitter, streaming gulf, but so noisome that we dared not even bathe there. Here there was none but the faintest trickle. All discipline was at an end. All desire, say, such as was born of thirst. Haru I saw as often as I wished as she lay gasping, with poor sigh at her feet in the woman's veranda. But the heat was so tremendous that I gazed at her with lackluster eyes, staggering to and fro amongst the courtyard shadows. Without nerve to plot her rescue or strength to carry out anything my mind might have conceived. We prayed for rain and respite. Arhap had prayed with a wealth of picturesque ceremonial. We had all prayed and cursed by turns, but still the heavens would not relent, and the rain came not. At last the stifling heat and vapor reached an almost intolerable pitch. The earth reeked with unwholesome humours no common summer could draw from it. The air was sulfurous and heavy. While overhead the sky seemed a tawny dome, from edge to edge of angry clouds parting now and then to let us see the red disc threatening us. Hour after hour slipped by until, when evening was upon us, the clouds drew together, and thunder, with a continuous low rumble, began to rock from sky to sky. Fitful showers of rain, odorous and heavy, but unsatisfying fell, and birds and beasts of the woodlands came slinking into our streets and courtyards. Ever since the sky first darkened our own animals had become strangely familiar. And now here were these wild things of the woods slinking in for companionship. Sag-headed and frightened. To me especially they came, until that last evening, as I staggered dying about the streets or sat staring into the remorseless sky from the steps of Heru's prison house. All sorts of beasts drew softly in and crowded about, whether I sat or moved. All asking for the hope I had not to give them. At another time this might have been embarrassing, then it seemed pure commonplace. It was a sight to see them slink in between the useless showers, which fell like hot tears upon us. Sleek panthers with lowling tongues, russet-red wood-dogs, bears and sloths from the dark arcades of the remote forest. All casting themselves down gasping in the palace shadows. Strange deer who staggered to the garden plots and lay there heaving their lives out. Mighty boars, who came in from the river marshes and silently nozzled a place amongst their enemies to die in. Even the wolves came off the hills, and with bloodshot eyes and tongues at drip foam, flung themselves down in my shadow. All along the tall stockades, apes sat sad and listless, and on the roof ridges storks were dying. Over the branches of the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had six months drought, the toucans and marsh and parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags. And in the courtyard ground, the corn rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores along under the walls. Our common sorrow made us as sociable as though I were Noah, and our haps palace mound another ariot. Hour after hour, I sat amongst all these lesser beasts in the hot darkness, waiting for the end. Every now and then the heavy clouds parted, changing the gloom to suddenly fiery daylight as the great red eye in the west looked upon us through the crevice. And, taking advantage of those gleams, I would reel across to where, under a spout leading from a dried rivulet, I had placed a cup to collect the slow and tepid drops that were all now coming down the reed for her rue. And as I went back each time with that sickly spoonful at the bottom of the vessel, all the dying beast lifted their heads and watched, the thirsty wolves shambling after me, the boars half set up and grunted plaintively. The panthers, too weak to rise, beat the dusty ground with their tails. And from the portico, the blue storks with trailing wings croaked husky greeting. But slower and slower came the dripping water, more and more intolerable the heat. At last I could stand it no longer. What purpose did it serve to lay gasping like this, dying cruelly without a hope of rescue, when a shorter way was at my side? I had not drank for a day and a half. I was past active reveling. My head swam, my reason was clouded. No, I would not stand it any longer. Once more I would take her rue and pour sigh that cup that was but a mockery after all, then fix my sword into the ground and try what next the fates had in store for me. So once again the leather mug was fetched and carried through the prostrate guards to where the Martian girl lay, like a withered flower upon her couch. Once again I moistened those fair lips, while my own tongue was black and swollen in my throat. Then told sigh, who had none all the afternoon, to drink half and leave half for her rue. Pour sigh put her aching lips to the cup and tilted it a little, then passed it to her mistress. And her rue drank it all. And sigh cried a few hot tears behind her hands, for she had taken none, and she knew it was her life. Again picking away through the courtyard, scarce noticing how the beast lifted their heads as I passed, I went instinctively cup in hand to the well, and then hesitated. Was I a coward to leave her rue so? ought I not stay and see it out to the bitter end? Well, I would compound with fate. I would give the malicious gods one more chance. I would put the cup down again, and until seven drops had fallen into it I would wait. That there might be no mistake about it. No sooner was the mug in place under the nozzle where from the moisture-beach collected and fell with infinite slowness than my sword, on which I meant to throw myself, was bared and the hilt forced into a gaping crack in the ground. And solebly contented to leave my fate so, I sat down beside it. I turned grimly to the spout and saw the first drop fall, then another, and another later on. But still no help came. There was a rift in the clouds now, and a glare like that from an open furnace door was upon me. I had noticed when I came to the spring how the comet which was killing us hung poised exactly upon the point of a distant hill. If he had passed his horrible meridian, if he was going from us, if he sunk but a hair's breath before that seventh drop should fall, I could tell it would mean salvation. But the fourth drop fell, and he was as big as ever. The fifth drop fell, and a hot, pleasing nose was thrust into my hand. And looking down, I saw a gray wolf had dragged herself across the court, and was asking with eloquent eyes for help I could not give. The sixth drop gathered and fell. Already the seventh was like a seedling pearl in its place. The dying wolf yanked affectionately at my hand. But I put her by and undid my tunic. Big and bright that drop hung to the spout lip. Another minute, and it would fall. A beautiful drop, I laughed. Peer closely at it, mini-colored, prismatic, fleshing red in pink. A tiny living ruby, hanging by a touch to the green rim above. Enough, enough. The quiver of an eyelash would unhinge it now. An angry with the life I already felt was behind me, and turning into fine expectation to the new to come. I rose, saw the red gleam of my sword jetting like a fiery spear from the cracking soil where I planted it. Then look once more at the drop, and glance for the last time at the sullen red terror on the hill. Were my eyes dazed? My senses reeling? I said a space ago that the meteor stood exactly on the mountaintop, and if it sunk a hair's breadth I should note it. And now, why there was a flaw in its lower margin. A flattening of the great red foot that before had been round and perfect. I turned my smarting eyes away a minute, saw the seventh drop fall with a melodious tingle into the cup, then back again. There was no mistake. The truant fire was a fraction less. It had sunk a fraction behind the hill even since I looked, and thereon all my life ran back into its channels. The whirl danced before me. And, Haru, I shouted hoarsely, reeling back towards the palace. Haru, tis well, the worst has passed. But the little princess was unconscious, and at her feet was poor sigh, quite dead, still reclining with her head in her hands just as I had left her. Then my own senses gave out, and dropping down by them I remembered no more. I must have lain there an hour or two for when consciousness came again it was night. Black, cool, profound night, with an inky sky low down upon the treetops. And out of it such a glorious deluge of range descending swiftly and silently as filled my veins even to listen to. Eagerly I shoveled away to the porch steps. Down them into the swimming courtyard, and ankle deep in the glorious flood, set to work lapping furiously at the first puddle, drinking with gasp of pleasure, gasping and drinking again, feeling my body filling out like the thirsty steaming earth below me. Then, as I still drank insatiably, there came a gleam of lightning out of the gloom of her head. A brilliant yellow blaze. And by it I saw a few yards away a panther drinking at the same pool as myself. His gleaming eyes low down like mine upon the water. And by his side, two apes. The black water running in at their gaping mouths. While out beyond were more pools, more drinking animals. Everything was drinking. I saw their outline forms. The gleam shining on wet skins as though they were cut out in silver against the darkness. Each bee steaming like a volcano as the heaven sent rain smoked from its fevered hide. All drinking for their lives. Heedless of ought else. And then came the thunder. It ran across a cloudy vault as though the very sky were being ripped apart. Rolling in mighty echoes here and there before it died away. As it stopped, the rain also fell less heavily for a minute. And as I laid with my face low down, I heard the low, contented lapping of numberless tongues unceasing, insatiable. Then came the lightning again. Lighting up everything as though it were daytime. The twin black apes were still drinking, but the panther across the puddle had had enough. I saw him lift his grateful head up to the flare. Saw the limp red tongue licking the black nose. The green eyes shining like opals. The water dripping in threads of diamonds from the hairy tag under his chin and every tuft upon his chest. Then darkness again. Two in fro, the green blaze rocked between the thunder crashes. It struck a house a hundred yards away, stripping every shingle from the roof better than a master builder could in a week. It fell a minute after on a tall tree by the courtyard gate. And as the trunk burst into white splinters, I saw every leaf upon the feathery top turn light-sight up against the violent reflection in the sky beyond. And then the whole mess came down to earth with a thud that crushed the courtyard palings into nothing for twenty yards and shook me even across the square. Another time I might have stopped to marvel or to watch as I have often watched with sympathetic pleasure the gods thus at play. But tonight there were other things on hand. When I had drunk, I packed up an earthen crock, filled it, and went to Haru. It was a rough drinking vessel for those dainty lips and an indifferent draft, being as much mud as all else. But its effect was wonderful. At the first touch of that turgid stuff, a shiver of delight passed through the drowsy lady. At the second, she gave a sigh, and her hand tightened on my arm. I fetched another crock full, and by the flickering light rocking to and fro in the sky, took her head upon my shoulder like a prodigal knew coming to riches. Squandering the stuff, giving her to drink and bathing face and neck till presently, to my delight, the princess's eyes opened. Then she sat up, and taking the basin from me, drank his never-lady drink before, and soon was almost herself again. I went back into the portico, there snuffing the deep, strong breath of the fragrant black earth receiving back into its gaping self what the last few days had taken from it, while quick succeeding thoughts of escape and flight passed across my brain. All through the fiery time we had just had, the chance of escaping with a fair booty yonder had been present. Without her, flight would have been easy enough, but that was not worth considering for a moment. With her, it was more difficult. Yet, as I had watched the woodmen, accustomed to cool forest shades, faint under their fiery glare of the world above, to make a dash for liberty seemed each hour more easy. I had seen the men in the streets drop one by one, and the spears fall from the hands of guards about the palisades. I had seen messengers who came to and fro collapse before their errands were accomplished, and the forest women who were Haru's golears, groan and drop across the thresholds of her prison, until at length the way was clear. A babe might have taken what he would from that half-scorched town and asked no man's leave. Yet what did it avail me? Haru was helpless, my own spirit burnt in a nervous frame, and so we stayed. But with rain strength came back to both of us. The guards, lying about like black logs, were only slowly recovering to consciousness. The town still slept, and darkness favored. Before they missed us in the morning light we might be far on the way back to Sef. A dangerous way truly, but we were like to tread a rougher one if we stayed. In fact, directly my strength returned with the cooler air. I made up my mind to the venture and went to Haru, who by this time was much recovered. To her I whispered my plot, and that gentle lady, as was only natural, trembled at its dangers. But I put it to her that no time could be better than the present. The storm was going over. Morning would line the black mantle of the night with a pink dawn of promise. Before anyone stirred we might be far off, shaping a course by our luck in the stars for her kindred, at whose name she sighed. If we stayed, I argued, and the king changed his mind, then death for me, and for Haru the arms of that surly monarch, and all the rest of her life caged in these palisades amongst the uncouth forms about us. The lady gave a frightened little shiver at the picture, but after a moment, laying her head upon my shoulder, answered, Oh, my guardian spirit and helper at adversity, I too have thought of tomorrow, and doubt whether that horror, that great swine who has me, will not invent an excuse for keeping me. Therefore, though the forest roads are dreadful, and Seth very far away, I will come. I give myself into your hands. Do what you will with me. Then the sooner the better, Princess. How soon can you be prepared? She smiled, and stooping picked up her slippers, saying as she did so, I am ready. There were no arrangements to be made. Every instant was of value. So, to be brief, I threw a dark cloak over the damsel's shoulders, for indeed she was clad in little more than her loveliness and the gauzeous filaments of a hither girl's underwear, and hand in hand let her down the log steps, over the splashing ankle-deep courtyard, and into the shadows of the gateway beyond. Down the slope we went along towards the harbor, through a score of deserted lanes where nothing was to be heard but the roar of rain and the lapping of men and beast, drinking the shadows as though they would never stop, and so we came at last unmolested to the wharf. There I hid royal Seth between two piles of merchandise, and went to look for a boat suitable to our needs. There were plenty of small craft moored to rings along the key, and selecting a canoe, it was no time to stand on niceties of propriety, easily managed by a single paddle, I brought it round to the steps, put in a fresh water-pot, and went for the princess. With her safely stowed in the prow, a helpless, sodden little morsel of feminine loveliness, things began to appear more hopeful at an escape down to the blue water, my only idea, for the first time possible. Yet I must needs go and well nice-boil everything, by over-solicitude for my charge. Had we pushed off at once, there could be no doubt my credit as a spirit would have been established for all time in the thither capital, and the belief universally held that Haru had been wafted away by my enchantment to the regions of the unknown. The idea would have gradually grown into a tradition, receiving embellishments and succeeding generations. Until little wood-children at their mother's knees came to listen in awe to the story of Hal, once upon a time, the sun-god loved a beautiful maiden, and drove his fiery chariot across the black-night fields to her prison door, scorching to death all who strove to gainsay him. How she flew into his arms, and drove away before all men's eyes in his red car into the west, and was never seen again. The fore-said sun-god being I, Gulliver Jones, a much underpaid lieutenant in the glorious United States Navy, with a packet of overdue Taylor's bills in my pocket, and nothing lovable about me save a partiality for meddling with other people's affairs. This is how it might have been, but I spoiled a pretty fairy story and changed the whole course of Martian history by going back at that moment and searching for a wrap for my prize. Right on top of the steps was a man with a lantern, and half a glance showed me it was a harbormaster met with on my first landing. Good evening, he said suspiciously. I asked what you were doing on the key at such an hour as this. Doing? Oh, nothing in particular. Just going out for a little fishing. And your companion, the lady, is she too fond of fishing? I swore between my teeth, but could not prevent the fellow walking to the key-edge and casting his light full upon the figure of the girl below. I hate people who interfere with other people's business. Unless I'm very much mistaken, your fishing friend is a hither woman brought here a few days ago as tribute to Arhap. Well, I answered, getting into a nice temper, for I've been very much harassed of late. Put it at that. What would you do if it were so? Call upon my rain-drunk guards, and give you in charge as a thief caught meddling with the king's property. Thanks. But as my interview with Arhap have already begun to grow tedious, we will settle this little matter here between ourselves at once. And without more to do, I closed with him. There was a brief scuffle, and then I got in a blow upon his jaw, which sent the harbormaster flying back head over heels amongst the sugar-bales and potatoes. Without waiting to see how he fared, I ran down the steps, jumped on board, loosened the rope, and pushed out into the river. But my heart was angry and sore, for I knew, as turned out to be the case, that our secret was one no more. In short time, we should have the savage king in pursuit. And now there was nothing for it but a headlong flight with only a small chance of getting away to distant Seth. Luckily the harbormaster lay insensible until he was found at dawn, so that we had a good start. And the moment the canoe passed from the archaic approach to the town, the current swung her head automatically seaward. And a way we went downstream, at a pace once more filling me with hope.