 Chapter 1 of Gulliver of Mars. Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain prosaic lieutenant in the Republican service, have done the incredible things here set out for the love of a woman, for a chimera in female shape, for a pale, vapid ghost of woman loveliness. At times I tell myself I dare not, that you will laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator. And then again I pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I must write it. The pallid splendor of that thing I loved, and won, and lost, is ever before me, and will not be forgotten. The tumult of that struggle into which that vision led me still throbs in my mind. The soft, lisping voices of the planet I ransack for its sake, and the roar of the destruction which follow me back from the quest drowns out all other sounds in my ears. I must in will write. It relieves me. Read and believe as you list. At the moment the story commences, I was thinking of a grilled steak and tomatoes, steak crisp and brown on both sides, and tomatoes red as a setting sun. Much else though I have forgotten, that fact remains as clear as the last sight of a well-remembered shore in the mind of some wave-tossed traveler. And the occasion which produced that prosaic thought was a night well calculated to make one think of supper and fireside, though one might be frugal, and the other lovely. And as I, Gulliver Jones, the poor, foresaid Navy Lieutenant, with the honored stars of our Republic on my collar, and an undeserved snub from those in authority rankling in my heart, picked my way homeward by a shortcut through the dizziness of a New York slum I longed for steak and stout, slippers in a pipe, with all the pathetic keenness of a troubled soul. It was a wild, black kind of night, and the weirdness of it showed up as I passed from light to light, or crossed the mouths of dim alley, leading heaven knows to what infernal dens of mystery and crime, even in this latter-day city of ours. The moon was up as far as the church steeples, large vapory clouds scutted across the sky between us and her, and a strong gusty wind, laden with big raindrops, sneered angrily round corners, and sighed in the parapets like strange voices talking about things not of human interest. It made no difference to me, of course. New York in this year of grace is not the place for the supernatural, be the time never so fit for witch-writing, and the night wind and the chimney-stacks sound never so much like that last gurgling cries of throttled men. No, the world was very matter-of-fact, and particularly so to me, a poor young son with five dollars in my purse by way of fortune, a packet of unpaid bills in my breast-pocket, and round my neck a-lock it with a portrait therein of that dear, buxom-freckled, stub-nosed girl away in a little southern seaport town whom I thought I loved with magnificent affection. Gods! I had not even touched the fringe of that affection. Thus sauntering along moodily, my chin on my chest and too much absorbed in reflection to have any nice appreciation of what was happening about me, I was crossing in front of a dilapidated block of houses, dating back nearly to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I had a vague consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping by me. A thing like a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing could be. In the next instant there was a thud and a bump, a bump again, a half-stifle cry, and then a hurried vision of some black carpeting that flapped and shook as though all the winds of Eveless were in its folds, and then, apparently, disgorged from its innermost recesses, a little man. Before my first start of half-amused surprise was over, I saw him by the flickering lamp-light clutch at space as he tried to steady himself, stumble on the slippery curb, and the next moment go down on the back of his head with the most ugly thud. Now I was not destitute of feeling, though it may have been my lot to see men die in many ways, and I ran over to that motionless form without an idea that anything but an ordinary accident had occurred. There he lay, silent, and, as it turned out afterwards, dead as a doornail, the strangest old fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in shabby, sorrel-colored clothes of an antique cut, with a long-grey beard upon his chin, pent-roof eyebrows, and a whizzing complexion so puckered in tan by exposure to heaven only knew what weathers that it was impossible to guess his nationality. I lifted him out of the puddle of black blood in which he was lying, and his head dropped back over my arm as though it had been fixed to his body with string alone. There was neither heartbeat nor breath in him, and the last flicker of life faded out of that gaunt face even as I watched. It was not altogether a pleasant situation, and the only thing to do appeared to be to get the dead man into proper care, though little good could it do him now, as speedily as possible. So, sending a chance-passer-by into the main street for a cab, I placed him into it as soon as it came by, and there being nobody else to go, got in with him myself, telling the driver at the same time to take us to the nearest hospital. Is this your rug, Captain? asked a bystander just as we were driving off. Not mine, I answered somewhat roughly. You don't suppose I go about at this time of night with turkey carpets under my arm, do you? It belongs to this old chap here who has just dropped out of the skies onto his head. Chucking on top and shut the door. And that rug, the very main spring of the startling things which followed, was thus carelessly thrown onto the carriage, and off we went. Well, to be brief, I handed in that stark old traveler from nowhere at the hospital, and as a matter of curiosity sat in the waiting room while they examined him. In five minutes the house surgeon on duty came in to see me, and with a shake of his head said briefly, Gone, sir. Clean gone. Broke his neck like a pipe stem. Most strange looking man, and none of us could even guess at his age. Not a friend of yours, I suppose. Nothing whatever to do with me, sir. He slipped on the pavement and fell in front of me just now. And as a matter of common charity I brought him in here. Were there any means of identification on him? None whatever, answered the doctor, taking out his notebook and, as a matter of form, writing down my name and address in a few brief particulars. Nothing whatever except this curious looking bead hung round his neck by a blackened thong of leather, and he handed me a thing about as big as a filbert nut with a loop for suspension and apparently of rock crystal, though so begrind and dull its nature was difficult to speak of with certainty. The bead was of no seeming value, and slipped unintentionally into my waistcoat pocket as I chatted for a few minutes more with the doctor. And then, shaking hands, I said goodbye, and went back to the cab which was still waiting outside. It was only on reaching home I noticed the hospital porters had omitted to take the dead man's carpet from the roof of the cab when they carried him in. And, as the cab man did not care about driving back to the hospital with it, and it could not well be left in the street, I somewhat reluctantly carried it indoors with me. Once in the shrine of my own lamp and a cigar in my mouth I had a closer look at that ancient piece of artwork from Heaven, or the other place, only knows what ancient loom. A big, strong rug of faded oriental coloring, it covered half the floor of my sitting room, the substance being of a material more like camel's hair than anything else. And running across, when examined closely, were some dark fibers so long and fine that surely they must have come from the tail of Solomon's favorite black stallion itself. But the strangest thing about the carpet was its pattern. It was threadbare enough to all conscience in places, yet the design still lived in solemn, age-wasted hues. And as I dragged it into my stove-front and spread it out, it seemed to me that it was much like a star-map done by a scribe who had lately recovered from delirium trimmings as anything else. And the center appeared around such as might be taken for the sun, while here and there, in the field as Harold say, were lesser orbs which from their size and position could represent smaller worlds circling about it. Between these orbs were dotted lines and arrowheads of the oldest form, pointing in all directions, while all the intervening spaces were filled up with woven characters halfway in appearance between runes and cryptic Sanskrit. Around the borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle of an alphabet, through which none but a wizard could have forced away in search of meaning. Altogether, I thought, as I kicked it out straight upon my floor, it was a strange and not unhandsome article of furniture. It would do nicely for the mess room on the Carolina, and if any representatives of yonder poro fell turned up tomorrow, why I would give them a couple of dollars for it? Little did I guess how dear it would be at any price. Meanwhile, that stake was late, and now that the temporary excitement of the evening was wearing off, I felt dull again. What a dark sodden world it was that frowned in on me as I moved over to the window and opened it for the benefit of the cool air. And how the wind howled about the rooftops. How lonely I was. What a fool I had been to ask for a long leave and come ashore like this, to curry favor with a set of stubborn dunderheads who cared nothing for me, or Polly, and could not or would not understand how important it was to the best interest of the service, that I should get that promotion which alone would send me back to her in eligible wooer. What a fool I was not to have volunteered for some desperate service instead of wasting time like this. Then at least life would have been interesting. Now it was dull as ditch water, with wretched vistas of stagnant waiting between now and that joyful day when I could claim that dear, rosy cheek girl for my own. What a fool I had been. I wish I wish, I exclaimed, walking round the little room. I wish I were. While these unfinished exclamations were actually passing my lips, I chanced across that infernal mat, and it is no more startling than true. But at my word a quiver of expectation ran through that gaunt web. A rustle of anticipation filled its ancient fabric, and one frayed corner surged up, and as I passed off its surface in my stride, the sentence still unfinished on my lips, wrapped itself around my left leg with extraordinary swiftness, and so effectively that I nearly fell into the arms of my landlady, who opened the door at that moment and came in with a tray, and the steak and tomatoes mentioned more than once already. It was the draft caused by the opening door, of course, that had made the dead man's rug lift so strangely. What else could it have been? I made this apology to the good woman, and when she had set the table and closed the door, took another turn or two about my den, continuing as I did so my angry thoughts. Yes, yes, I said at last, returning to the stove and taking my stand, hands in pockets in front of it. Anything were better than this. Any enterprise, however wild. Any adventure, however desperate. Oh, I wish I were anywhere but here. Anywhere out of this red-taped ridden world of ours. I wish I were in the planet Mars. How can I describe what followed those luckless words? Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered responsibly under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe as though a sudden wind were shaking it. It humped up in the middle so abruptly that I came down sitting with a shock that numbed me for the moment. It threw me on my back and billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea. Quicker than I can write it, it lapped the corner over and rolled me into its folds like a chrysalis and a cocoon. I gave a wild yell and made one frantic struggle, but it was too late. With the leathery strength of a giant and the swiftness of an accomplished cigar-roller covering a core with leaf, it swapped my efforts, straightening my limbs, rolled me over, let me in fold after fold till head and feet and everything were gone, crushed life and breath back into my innermost being, and then, with the last particle of consciousness, I felt myself lifted from the floor, passed once round the room, and finally shoot out point foremost into space through the open window, and go up and up and up with a sound of rending atmospheres that seemed to tear like riven silk in one prolonged shriek under my head, and to close up in thunder a stern until my reeling senses could stand it no longer, and time and space and circumstances all lost their meaning to me. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. How long that wild rush lasted I have no means of judging. It may have been an hour, a day, or many days, for I was throughout in a state of suspended animation, but presently my senses began to return and with them a sensation of lessening speed, a grateful relief to a heavy pressure which had held my life crushed in its grasp without destroying it completely. It was just that sort of sensation, though more keen, which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveler feels when he is aware, without special perception, harbor is reached and a voyage comes to an end. But in my case the slowing down was for a long time comparative, yet the sensations served to revive my scattered senses, and just as I was awakening to a lively sense of amazement, an incredible doubt of my own emotion, and an eager desire to know what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once or twice, undulating lightly up and down like a woodpecker flying from tree to tree, and then grounded, bowled first, rolled over several times, and then steadied again, and coming at last to rest. The next minute the infernal rug opened, quivering along all its borders in its peculiar way, and humping up in the middle shut me five feet into the air like a cat tossed from a schoolboy's blanket. As I turned over I had a dim vision of a clear light like the shine of dawn, and solid ground slipping away below me. Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid looking individual with his back turned stood nearer by. In other words I found he was lecturing all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties of falling bodies. At that moment I only knew he was directly in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus, and tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When we had done, the mass disentangled itself, and I was able to raise my head from the shoulder of someone on whom I had fallen, lifting him, or her, which was it, into a sitting posture alongside of me at the same time, while the others rose about us like wheat stalks after a storm, and edged shyly off as well they might. Such a sleek, slim youth it was who sat up facing me with a flush of gentle surprise on its face, and dapper hands that felt cautiously about his anatomy for injured places. He looked so quaintly rueful, yet with all so good temper that I could not help bursting into laughter in spite of my own amazement. Then he laughed too, a sedate musical chuckle, and said something incomprehensible, pointing at the same time to a cut upon my finger that was bleeding a little. I shook my head, meeting thereby that it was nothing, but the stranger, with graceful solicitude, took my hand, and, after examining the hurt, deliberately tore a strip of cloth from a bright yellow toga-like garment he was wearing, and bound the place up with a woman's tenderness. Meanwhile, as he ministered, there was a little time to look about me. Where was I? It was not the Broadway, it was not Staten Island on a Saturday afternoon. The night was just over, and the sun on the point of rising, yet it was still shadowy all about, the air being marvelously tepid and pleasant to the senses. Quaint soft aromas like the breath of a new world, the fragrance of unknown flowers, and the dewy scent of never-trodden fields drifted to my nostrils, and to my ears came a sound of laughter, scarcely more human than the murmur of the wind in the trees, and a pretty undulating whisper, as though a great concourse of people were talking softly in their sleep. I gazed about, scarcely knowing how much of my senses or surroundings were real, and how much fanciful, until I presently became aware the rosy twilight was broadening in today, and under the increasing shine a strange scene was fashioning itself. At first it was an opal sea I looked on of mist, shot along its upper surface with the rosy gold and pinks of dawn. Then, as that soft translucent lake ebbed, jetting hills came through it, black and crimson, and as they seemed to mount into the air other lower hills showed through the veil, with rounded forest knobs until at last the brightening day dispelled the mist, and as the rosy-colored gauzy fragments went slowly floating away, a wonderfully fair country lay at my feet, with a broad sea glimmering in many arms and bays in the distance beyond. It was all dim and unreal at first, the mountain's shadowy, the ocean unreal. The flowery fields between it and me vacant and shadowy. Yet were they vacant? As my eyes cleared, and the day brightened still more, and I turned my head this way and that, it presently dawned upon me all the meadow coppices and terraces northwards of where I lay, all that blue and spacious ground I had thought to be bare and vacant, were alive with a teeming city of boosts and tents. Now I came to look more closely, there was a whole town upon the slope, built as might be in a night of vows and branches still unwithered. The streets and ways of that city and the shadows thronged with expected people moving in groups and shifting to and fro in lively streams, chatting at the stalls and clustering round the tent doors in soft, gauzy, party-colored crowds in a way both fascinating and perplexing. I stared about me like a child at its first pantomime, dimly understanding all I saw was novel, but more alert to the color and life of the picture than concerned with its exact meaning. And while I stared and turned my finger was bandaged, and my new friend had been lisping away to me without getting anything in turn but a shake of the head. This made him thoughtful, and thereon followed a curious incident which I cannot explain. I doubt whether you will believe it, but what am I to do in that case? You have already accepted the episode of my coming, or you would have shut the covers before arriving at this page of my modest narrative. And this emboldens me. I may strengthen my claim on your credulity by pointing out the extraordinary marvels which science is teaching you, even on our own little world. To quote a single instance, if anyone had declared ten years ago that it would shortly be practicable and easy for two persons to converse from shore to shore across the Atlantic, without any intervening medium, he would have been laughed at as a possibly amusing but certainly extravagant romancer. Yet that picturesque lie of yesterday is amongst the accomplished facts of today. Therefore I am encouraged to ask your indulgence, in the name of your previous errors, for the following and any other instances in which I may appear to trifle with strict veracity. There is no such thing as the impossible in our universe. When my friendly companion found I could not understand him, he looked serious for a minute or two, then shortened his brilliant yellow toga as though he had arrived at some resolve, and knelt down directly in front of me. He next took my face between his hands, and putting his nose within an inch of mine, stared into my eyes with all his might. At first I was inclined to laugh, but before long the most curious sensation took hold of me. They commenced with a trill which passed all up my body, and the next all feelings saved the consciousness of the loud beating of my heart ceased. Then it seemed that the boy's eyes were inside of my head and not outside, while along with them an intangible something pervaded my brain. The sensation at first was like the application of ether to the skin, a cool, numbing emotion. It was followed by a curious tingling feeling, as some dormant cells in my mind entered to the thought transfer, and were filled and fertilized. My other brain cells most distinctly felt the vitalizing of their companions, and for about a minute I experienced extreme nausea and a headache such as comes from over study, though both passed swiftly off. I presume that in the future we shall all obtain knowledge in this way. The professors of a later day will perhaps keep shops for the sale of miscellaneous information, and we shall drop in and be inflated with learning just as the bicyclist gets his tire pumped up, or the motorist is recharged with electricity at so much per unit. Examinations will then become matters of capacity in the real meaning of that word, and we shall be tempted to invest our pocket money by advertisements of, a cheap line in astrology, try our double strength two minute courses of the classics. This is remnant day for trigonometry and metaphysics, and so on. My friend did not get so far as that. With him the process did not take more than a minute, but it was startling in its results and reduced me to an extraordinary state of hypnotic receptability. When it was over, my instructor tapped with a finger on my lips, uttering aloud as he did so the words, no none, no some, no little, no more, again and again, and the strangest part of it is that as he spoke I did know at first a little, then more, and still more, by swift accumulation of his speech and meaning. In fact, when presently he suddenly laid a hand over my eyes, and then let go of my head with a pleasantly put question as to how I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering him in his own tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets up from a hairdresser's chair, with a vague idea of looking round for my head and offering him his fee. My words, sir, I said, enlisting Martian as I pulled down my cuffs and put my cravat straight. That was a quick process. I once heard of a man who learned a language in the moments he gave each day to having his boots blackened, but this beats all. I trust I was a docile pupil. Oh, fairly, sir, answered the soft musical voice of the strange being by me, but your head is thick and your brain tough. I could have taught another in half the time. Curiously enough was my response. Those are almost the very words with which my dear old tutor dismissed me the morning I left college. Never mind, the thing is done. Shall I pay you anything? I do not understand. Any honorarium, then. Some people understand one word and not the other, but the boy only shook his head in answer. Strangely enough, I was not greatly surprised all this time either at the novelty of my whereabouts or at the hypnotic instruction in a new language just received. Perhaps it was because my head still spun too giddily with that flight in the old rug for much thought. Perhaps because I did not yet fully realize the thing that had happened. But anyhow there is the fact, which, like so many others in my narrative, must alas remain unexplained for the moment. The rug, by the way, had completely disappeared, my friend comforting me on the score, however, by saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one whom he knew. We are very tidy people here, stranger, he said, and everything found lying about goes back to the palace storerooms. You will laugh to see the lumber there, for few of us ever take the trouble to reclaim our property. Heaven knows I was in no laughing mood when I saw that enchanted web again. When I had lain and watched the brightening scene for a time, I got up, and having stretched and shaken my clothes into some sort of order, we strolled down the hill enjoying the light-hearted crowds that twined across the plain and through the streets of their city of booths. They were the prettiest, daintiest folk ever eyes looked upon. Well-formed and like to us as could be in the main, but slender and willowy, so dainty and light both the men and the women, so pretty of cheek and hair, so mild of aspect. I felt as I strode amongst them I could have plucked them like flowers and bound them up in bunches with my belt, and yet somehow I liked them from the first minute. Such a happy, careless, light-hearted race, again I say, never was seen before. There was not a strain of thought or care on a single one of those white foreheads that edged round me under their peaked, blossom-like caps. The perpetual smile their faces wore never suffered rebuke anywhere. Their movements were graceful and slow. Their laughter was low and musical. There was an odor of friendly, slothful happiness about them that made me admire whether I would or no. Unfortunately, I was not able to live on laughter as they appeared to be, so presently turning to my acquaintance, who had told me his name was the plain monosyllabic on, and clapping my hand on a shoulder as he stood lost in sleepy reflections said, in a good, hearty way, Hello, friend Yellowjirkin. If a stranger might set himself a thwart of the cheerful current of your meditations, may such a one ask how far tis the nearest wine shop or a booth where a thirsty man may get a mug of ale at a moderate reckoning? That gilded youth staggered under my friendly blow as though the hammer of Thor himself had suddenly lit upon his shoulder, and, roofily rubbing his tender skin, he turned on me mild, handsome eyes, answering after a moment, during which his native mildness struggled with the pain I had unwittingly given him. If your thirst be as empathic as your greeting, friend Heavyfist, it will certainly be a kindly deed to lead you to the drinking place. My shoulder tingles with your good fellowship. He added, keeping two arms length clear of me. Do you wish, he said, merely to cleanse a dusty throat, or for blue or pink oblivion? Why, I answered laughingly, I have come a longest journey since yesterday night, a journey out of count of all reasonable mileage, and I might fairly plead a dusty throat as excuse for a beginning. But as to the other things mentioned, those tinted forgetfulnesses, I do not even know what you mean. Undoubtedly you are a stranger, said the friendly youth eyeing me from top to toe with renewed wonder, and by your unknown garb one from afar. From how far no man can say, not even I, but from very far in truth. Let that stay your curiosity for a time. And now to bench an ale mug, on good fellow, the shortest way. I was never so thirsty as this since our water butts went overboard when I sailed on southern seas as a tramp apprentice, and for three days we had to damp our black tongues with the puddles the night do's left in the lift of our mainsail. Without more words, being a little out of me, I thought, the boy led me through the good humor crowd to where, facing the main road to town, but a little sheltered by a thicket of trees covered with gigantic pink blossoms, stood a drinking place. A cluster of tables set round an open grass plot. Here he brought me a platter of some light inefficient cakes which merely served to make hunger more self-conscious, and some fine aromatic wine contained in a triple-bodied flask, each division containing vintage of a separate hue. We broke our biscuits, sip that mysterious wine, and talked of many things until at last something set us on the subject of astronomy. A study I found my dapper galant had some knowledge, which was not to be wondered at seeing he dwelt under skies each night set thick above his curly head with tawny planets, and glittering constellations sprinkled through space like flowers in May meadows. He knew what worlds went round the sun, larger or lesser, and seeing this I began to question him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind, and you will remember, so far had no certain knowledge of where I was, only a dim, restless suspicion that I had come beyond the kin of all men's knowledge. Therefore, sweeping clear the board with my sleeve, and breaking the wafer cake I was eating, I set down one central piece for the sun, and, see here, I said, good fellow, this morsel shall stand for that sun you have just been welcoming back with quaint ritual. Now stretch your starry knowledge to the utmost, and put down that tankard for a moment. If this be yonder sun, and this lesser crumb be the outermost of one of our revolving system, and this the next within, and this the next, and so on. Now if this be, so tell me which of these fragmentary oars is ours. Which of all these crumbs from the hands of the primordial would be that we stand upon, and I waited with an anxiety a light manner thinly headed to hear his answer. It came at once, laughing as though the question were too trivial, and more to humor my wayward fancy than ought else. That boy circled his rosy thumb about a minute, and brought it down on the planet Mars. I started and stared at him. Then all of a tremble cried, you trifle with me. Choose again. There, see, I will set the symbols and name them to you anew. There now, on your soul, tell me truly which this planet is, the one here at our feet. And again the boy shook his head, wondering at my eagerness, and pointed to Mars, saying gently as he did so the fact was certain as the day above us. Nothing was marvelous but my questioning. Mars, oh dreadful, tremendous, unexpected. With a cry of a fright, and bringing my fist down upon the table till all the cups upon it leapt, I told him he lied. Lied like a simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten as his wit. Smote the table and scowled at him for a spell, then turned away and let my chin fall upon my breast and my hands upon my lap. And yet, and yet it might be so. Everything about me was new and strange. The crisp, thin air I breathed was new. The lukewarm sunshine knew. The sleek, long ivory faces of the people knew. Yesterday, was it yesterday? I was back there, away in a world that pines to know of other worlds. And one fantastic wish of mine, backed by a hideous infernal chance, had swung back the doors of space and shot me, if that boy spoke true, into the outer void where never living man had been before. All my wits about me, all the horrible bathos of my earthly clothing on me, all my terrestrial hungers in my veins. I sprang to my feet and sweat my hands across my eyes. Was that a dream or this? No, no, both were too real. The hum of my faraway city still rang in my ears. A swift vision of the girl I had loved, of the men I had hated, of the things I had hoped for rose before me, still daising my inner eye. And these about me were real people, too. It was real earth, real skies, trees, and rocks. Had the infernal gods indeed heard, I asked myself, the foolish wish that started from my lips in a moment of fierce discontent, and swept me into another sphere, another existence. I looked at the boy as though he could answer that question, but there was nothing in his face but vacuous wonder. I clasped my hands together and beat my breast. It was true. My soul within me said it was true. The boy had not lied. The gins had heard. I was just in the flesh I had. My common human hunger still unsatisfied where never mortal man had hungered before, and scarcely knowing whether I feared or not, whether to laugh or cry. But with all the wonder and terror of that great remove sweeping suddenly upon me I staggered back to my seat, and dropping my arms upon the table, lent my head heavily upon them and strove to choke back the passion which beset me. It was the light touch of the boy on upon my shoulder which roused me. He was bending down, his pretty face full of concernful sympathy. And in a minute said, knowing nothing of my thoughts, of course, it is the wine-stranger, the pink oblivion. It sometimes makes one feel like that until it enough is taken. You stop just short of what you should have had, and the next cup would have been delight. I should have told you. I, I answered, glad he should think so. It was the wine, no doubt. Your quaint drink, sir, tangled up my senses for the moment. But they are clearer now, and I am eager past expression to learn a little more of this strange country I have wandered into. I would rather, said the boy, relapsing again into a state of kindly lethargy, that you learn things as you went, for talking is work, and work we hate. But today we are all new and fresh, and if ever you are to ask questions, now is certainly the time. We are all new and fresh, and if ever you are to ask questions, now is certainly the time. Come with me to the city yonder, and as we go I will answer the things you wish to know. And I went with him, for I was humble and amazed, and in truth at that moment had not a word to say for myself. All the way from the plain where I had awoke to the walls of the city stood booths, drinking places, and gardens divided by labyrinths of canals, and embowered in shrubberies that seemed coming into leaf and flower as we looked, so swift was the process of their growth. These waterways were covered with skiffs being pushed in road in every direction, the cheerful rowers calling to each other through the leafy screens separating one lane from another, till the place was full of their happy chirping. Every booth and wayside halting place was thronged with these delicate and sprightly people, so friendly, so gracious, and with all so purposeless. I began to think we should never reach the town itself, for first my guide would sit down on a green stream bank, his feet a dangle in the clear water, and bandied wit with a passing boat as though there were nothing else in the world to think of. And when I dragged him out of that, whispering in his ear, the town, my dear boy, the town, I am all agape to see it. He would saunter reluctantly to a booth a hundred yards further on and fall to eating strange confections or sipping colored wines with chance acquaintances. Till again I plucked him by the sleeve and said, Seth, good comrade, was it not so you called your city just now? Take me to the gates and I will be grateful to you. Then on again down a flowery lane, aimless and happy, wasting my time in his, with placid civility I was led by that simple guide. Wherever we went the people stared at me, as well they might, as I walked through them overtopping the tallest by a head or more. The drinking cups paused halfway to their mouths, the jest died away upon their lips, and the blinking eyes of the drinkers shone with a momentary sparkle of wonder as their minds reeled down those many tented floods to the realms of oblivion they loved. I heard men whisper to one another, Who is he? Whence does he come? Is he a tribute taker? As I strolled among them. My mind still so thrilled with doubt and wonder that to me they seemed hardly more than painted puppets. The vistas of their lovely glades in the ivory town beyond only the fancy of a dream, and their talk as incontinent as the babble of a stream. Then happily, as I walked along with bent head brooding over the incredible thing that had happened, my companion's shapely legs gave out, and with a sigh of fatigue he suggested we should take a skiff amongst the many lying about upon the margins and sail towards the town. For, said he, the breeze blows thitherward, and is ashamed to use one's limbs when nature will carry us for nothing. But have you a boat of your own hereabouts, I queried, for to tell the truth I came from home myself somewhat poorly provided with means to buy your barter. And if your purse be not heavier than mine, we must still do as poor men do. Oh, said Anne, there is no need to think of that, no one here to hire or hire of. We will just take the first skiff we see that suits us. And what if the owner should come along and find his boat gone? Why, what should he do but take the next one along the bank? And the master of that, the next again. How else could it be? said the Martian, and shrugging my shoulders, for I was in no great mood to argue. We went down to the waterway through a thicket of budding trees underlaid with a carpet of small red flowers filling the air with a scent of honey. And soon found a diminutive craft pulled up on the bank. There were some dainty cloaks and wraps in it which Anne took out and laid under a tree. But first he felt in the pouch of one for a sweetmeat which his fine nostrils, acute as a squirrel's, told him was there. And taking the lump out bit a piece from it, afterwards replacing it in the owner's pocket with the frankest simplicity. Then we pushed off, hoisted the slender mast, set the smallest lug sail that a sailor ever smiled at, and myself at the helm, and that golden youth amid ships, away we drifted under thickets of drooping canes tassled with yellow cactan flowers, up the blue alley of the water into the broader open river beyond with its rapid flow and crowding boats, the white city front now towering clear before us. The air was full of sunshine and merry voices. Birds were singing, trees were budding, only my heart was heavy, my mind confused. Yet why should I be sad, I said to myself presently. Life beat in my pulses, what had I to fear? This world I had tumbled into was new and strange, no doubt, but tomorrow it would be old and familiar. It discredited my manhood to sit brow bent like that, so with an effort I roused myself. Old chap, I said to my companion, as he sat astride of a thwart slowly chewing something sticky and eyeing me out of the corner of his eyes with vapid wonder, tell me something of this land of yours, or something about yourself, which reminds me, I have a question to ask. It is a bit delicate, but you look a sensible sort of fellow and will take no offense. The fact is, I have noticed as we came along half of your population dresses in all the colors of the rainbow. Fancy suitings, our tailors would call it at home. And this half of the senses are undoubtedly men and women. The rub is that the other half, to which you belong, all dress alike in yellow, and I will be fired from the biggest gun on the Carolinas main deck if I can tell what sex you belong to. I took you for a boy in the beginning, and the way you closed with the idea of having a drink with me seemed to show I was dead on the right course. Then, a little later on, I heard you and a friend abusing our sex from an outside point of view in a way which was very disconcerting. This and some other things have set me all abroad again. And as fate seems determined to make us chums for this voyage... Why? Well, frankly, I should be glad to know if you be a boy or a girl. If you are as I am, no more or less, then, for I like you, there is my hand in comradeship. If you are otherwise, as those sleek outlines seem to promise, why, here's my hand again. But man or woman, you must be. Come, which is it? If I had been perplexed before, to watch that boy now was more curious than ever. He drew back from me with a show of wounded dignity, then bit his lip, and sighed, and started, and frowned. Come, I said laughingly, speak. In engender's ambiguity to be so ambiguous of gender. Tis no great matter, yes or no. A plain answer will satisfy us fairly in our friendship. If it is comrade, then comrade let it be. If made, why, I shall not quarrel with that, though it cost me a likely messmate. You mock me. Not I. I never mocked anyone. And does my robe tell you nothing? Nothing so much. A yellow tunic can be coming enough. But nothing about it to hang a deduction on. Come, are you a girl after all? I do not count myself a girl. Why, then, you are the most blooming boy that ever eyes were set upon. And, though Tis was some tinge of regret, yet cheerfully I welcome you into the ranks of manhood. I hate your manhood. Send it after the maidhood. It fits me just as badly. But on, be reasonable. Man or maid, you must be. Must be. Why? Why? Was ever such a question put to a sane mortal before? I stared at that ambiguous thing before me. And then, a little wroth to be played with, growled out something about Martians being all drunk or mad. Tis you yourself are one or other, said that individual, by this time pink with anger. And if you think, because I am what I am, you can safely taunt me, you are wrong. See? I have a sting. And, like a thwarted child, my companion half drew from the folds of the yellow tunic dress, the daintiest, most harmless-looking dagger that was ever seen. Oh, if it comes to that, I answered, touching the navy scabbard still at my hip, and regaining my temper at the sight of hers, why, I have a sting also, and twice as long as yours. But in truth, An, let us not talk of these things. If something in what I have said has offended nice Martian scruples, I am sorry, and will question no more, leaving my wonder for time to settle. No, said the other. It was my fault to be hasty of a fence. I am not so angered, once a year. But in truth, your question moves us yellow robes deeply. Did you not really know that we, who wear the saffron tunic, are slaves, a race apart, despised by all? Slaves? No. How should I know it? I thought you must understand a thing so fundamental, and it was that thought which made your question seem unkind. But, if indeed you have come so far as not to understand even this, then let me tell you once we of this garb were women, priestesses of the immaculate conceptions of humanity, guardians of those great hopes and longings which die so easily, and because we forgot our high station and took to aping another sex the gods deserted, and men despised us, giving us, in the fierceness of their contempt, what we asked for. We are the slave ants of the nest, the work bees of the hive, come, in truth, of those here who still be men and women of a sort. But toilers only, unknown in love, unrecreated in death, those who dangle all children but their own, slaves cursed with the accomplishment of their own ambition. There was no doubt poor Anne believed what she said, for her attitude was one of extreme dejection while she spoke, and to cheer her I laughed. Oh, come, it can't be as bad as that. Surely sometimes some of you went back to womanhood. You yourself do not look so far gone, but what some deed of adnogation, some strong love if you could but conceive it would set you right again. Surely you of the primrose robes can sometimes love. Where at unwittingly I troubled the waters in the placid soul of that outcast margin. I cannot exactly describe how it was, but she bent her head silently for a moment or two, and then, with a sigh, lifting her eyes suddenly to mine, said quietly, yes, sometimes, sometimes, but very seldom, while for an instant across her face there flashed the summer lightning of a new hope, a single transient glance of wistful, timid, and treaty, of wonder and delight that dare not even yet acknowledge itself. Then it was my turn to sit silent, and the pause was so awkward that in a minute to break it I exclaimed, let's drop personality's old chap, I mean, dear Miss On, tell me something about your people, and let us begin properly at the top. Have you got a king, for instance? To this the girl, pulling herself out of the pleasant slower of her listlessness and falling into my vein, answered, both yes and no, Sir Traveler from afar. No, chiefly, and yet perhaps yes. If it were no, then it were so, and if yes, then hath were our king, a mild king I should judge by your uncertainty. In the place where I come from, kings press their individuality somewhat more clearly on their subjects' minds. Is hath here in the city? Does he come to your feast today? On nodded, hath was on the river, he had come to see the sunrise. Even now she thought the laughter and singing down behind the bend might be the king's barge coming up citywards. He will not be late, said my companion, because the marriage feast is set for tomorrow in the palace. I became interested. Kings, palaces, marriage feast? Why here was something substantial to go upon? After all, these gauzy folk might turn out good fellows, jolly comrades to sojourn amongst, and marriage feast reminded me again I was hungry. Who is it, I asked, with more interest in my tone? Who gets married? Is it your ambiguous king himself? Where at On's purple eyes broadened with wonder? Then as though she would not be uncivil, she checked herself and answered with smothered pity for my ignorance. Not only hath himself, but everyone, stranger. They are all married tomorrow. You would not have them married one at a time, would you? This with inexpressible derision. I said with humility, something like that happened in the place I came from, asking her how it chanced the convenience of so many canes to one climax at the same moment. Surely, On, this is a marvel of arrangement, where I dwelt wooings would sometimes be long or sometimes short, and all maids were not complacent by such universal agreement. The girl was clearly perplexed. She stared at me a space and then said, What have wooings longer short to do with weddings? You talk as if you did your wooing first, and then came to marriage. We get married first, and woo afterwards. This is not a bad idea, and I can see it might lend an ease and certainty to the pastime which our method lacks. But if the woman has got first and sued subsequently, who brings you together? Who sees to the essential preliminaries of assortment? On, looking at my shoes as though she speculated on the remoteness of the journey I had come if it were measured by my ignorance, replied, The urn, stranger. The urn does that. What else? How it may be, in that out-fashioned region you have come from, I cannot tell. But here, to so commonplace, I should have thought you must have known it. We put each new year the names of all womankind into an urn, and the men draw for them. Each town, each village by itself, and those they draw are theirs. Is it conceivable your race has other methods? I told her it was so. We picked and chose for ourselves, beseeching the damsels, fighting for them, and holding the son of romance was at its setting just where the Martians held it to rise. Where at on burst out laughing, a clear, ringing laugh that set all the light-hearted folk in the nearest boats laughing in sympathy. But when the grotesqueness of the idea had somewhat worn off, she turned grave and asked me if such a fancy did not lead to spite and the embickerings. Why, it seems to me, she said, shaking her curly head, such a plan might fire cities, desolate plains, and empty palaces. Such things have been. Ah, our way is much better. See, quote that gentle philosopher, here one of our women would say, I am today unwed, as free of thought as yonder bird chasing the catkin down. Tomorrow I shall be married, with a whole summer to make love in, relieved that one bound of all those uncertainties you acknowledge to, with nothing to do but lie about on sunny banks with him whom chance sends me. Come to the goal of love without any travelling to get there. Why, you must acknowledge, this is the perfection of ease. But supposing, I said, chance dealt unkindly to you from your nuptial urn. Supposing the man was not to your liking, or another coveted him, to which unanswered was some shrewdness. In the first case, we should do what we might, being no worse off than those in your land who had played ill-providence to themselves. In the second, no maid would covet him whom fate had given to another. It were too fatiguing, or if such a thing did happen, then one of them would waive his claim, for no man or woman ever born was worth a wrangle, and it has allowed us to barter and change a little. All this was strange enough. I could not but laugh, while on laughed at the lightest invitation, and thus chatting and deriding each other's social arrangements, we floated idly townwards and suddenly came out into the main waterway, perhaps a mile wide and flowing rapidly, as streams will on the threshold of the spring, with brash or waste of distant beaches riding down it, and every now and then, a broken branch or tree stem glancing through waves whose crests of fresh wind lifted and sewed in golden showers in the intervening furrows. The Martians seemed expert upon the water, steering nimbly between these floating dangers when they met them. But for the most part, hugging the shore to stream better suited their fancies, and for a time all went well. On, as we went along, was telling me more of her strange country, pointing out birds or flowers and naming them to me. Now that, she said, pointing to a small grey owl who set reflective on a floating log as we were approaching, that is a bird of omen. Cover your face and look away, for it is not well to watch it. Where I laughed, oh, I answered. So those ancient follies have come as far as this, have they? It is no grey bird or black or white that can frighten folk where I come from. See, I will ruffle his philosophy for him, and, suiting the action to the words, I lifted a pebble that happened to lie at the bottom of the boat, and flung it at that creature with the melancholy eyes. Away went the owl, dipping his wings into the water at every stroke, and as he went, wailing out a ghostly cry, which even amongst sunshine and glitter made one's flesh creep. On shook her head. You should not have done that, she said. Our dead, whom we send down over the falls, come back in the body of yonder little bird. But he has gone now, she added with relief. See, he settles far upstream upon the point of yonder rotten bow. I would not disturb him again if I were you. Whatever more on would have said was lost. For amidst the sound of flutes and singing round the bend of the river below came a crowd of boats decked with flowers and garlands. All clustering round the barge, barely able to move, so thick those lesser skiffs pressed upon it. So close those whereies hung about that the garlanded roars who sat at the oars could scarcely pull. But here is everywhere, it was the same good temper, the same carelessness of order. As like a flowery island in the dancing blue water, the motley fleet came up. I steered our skiff a space out from the bank to get a better view, while Anne clapped her hands together and laughed. It is Heth, he himself, and those of the palace with him. I steer a little near still friend. So between yawn floating rubbish flats, for those with Heth are good to look at. Nothing loath I made out into mid-stream to see that strange prince go by. Little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck. Wents I set to work, with republican interest and royalty, was the head of the Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the center of a bar under a canopy and on a throne which was a mass of flowers, not bunched together as they would have been with us, but so cunningly arranged that they rose from the footstool to the pinnacle in a rhythm of color. A poem in bud and petals, the like of which for harmonious beauty I could not have imagined possible. And in this fairy den was a thin, gaunt young man, dressed in some sort of black stuff so nondescript that it amounted to little more than a shadow. I took it for granted that a substance of bone and muscle was covered by that gloomy suit, but it was the face above that alone riveted my gaze and made me return the stare he gave me as we came up with redoubled interest. It was not an unhandsome face, but ashy gray in color and amongst the insipid countenances of the Martians about him, marvelously thoughtful. I do not know whether those who had killed themselves could ever leave ghosts behind, but if so, this was the very ideal for such a one. At his feet I noticed when I unhooked my eyes from his at last, set a girl in a loose coral-pink gown who was his very antipathy. Princess Haru, for so she was called, was resting one arm upon his knee at our approach, and pulling a blue convulgeless bud to pieces. A charming picture of dainty idleness. Anything so soft, so silken as that little lady was never seen before. Who am I? A poor quarter-deck loafer that I should attempt to describe what poet and painter alike would have failed to realize. I know, of course, your stock descriptives. The melting eye, the coral lip, the peachy cheek, the raven tress. But these were coined for mortal women, and this was not one of them. I will not attempt to describe the glorious tenderness of those eyes she turned upon me presently. The glowing radiance of her skin, the infinite grace of every action, the gentle, soul-searching harmony of her voice. When later on I heard it, you must gather something of these things as I go. Suffice it to say that when I saw her there for the first time in the plenitude of her beauty, I fell desperately, wildly in love with her. Meanwhile, even the most infatuated of mortals cannot stare forever without saying something. The grating of our prow against the garlanded side of the royal bar to rouse me from my reverie, and nodding to An, to imply I would be back presently, past vessel, and with the assurance of a free and independent American voter, approach that individual, holding out my palm, and saying as I did so, shake hands, Mr. President. The prince came forward at my bidding and extended his hand for mine. He bowed slowly and sedately in that peculiar way the Martians have. A ripple of gratified civility passing up his flesh, lower and lower he bowed until his face was over our clasped hands. And then, with simple courtesy, I drew my fingertips. This was somewhat embarrassing. It was not like the procedure followed in courts nearer to Washington than this one, as far as my reading went. And, withdrawing my fingers hastily, I turned to the princess who had risen, and was eyeing her somewhat awkwardly, the while wondering what kind of salutation would be suitable in her case when a startling incident happened. The river, as said, was full of floating rubbish brought down from some faraway uplands by a spring fresh-lit, and then progressed upstream and thus met it all bow on. Some of this stuff was heavy timber, and when a sudden morning cry went up from the leading boats, it did not take my sailor instinct long to guess what was amiss. Those in front shot side to side. Those behind tried to jot back as, bearing straight down on the royal barge, there came a log of black wood twenty feet long, and as thick as the main mast of an old three-decker. Hasse's boat could no more escape from the castle. Garlands and curtains trailing in the water hung so heavy on it. The gilded paddles of the slender rowers were so feeble, they had made but a half term from that great javelin's road when down it came upon them, knocking the first few pretty oarsmen head over heels and crackling through their oars like a bull through dry maize stalks. I sprang forward, and snatching a pole from a half-hearted slave, jammed the end into the head of the log in the ship herself, but not enough. As it flashed by a branch caught upon the trailing tapestry hurling me to the deck and tearing away with it all that finery. Then the great spar, tossing half its dripping length into the air, went plunging downstream with shreds of silk and flowers trailing from it, and white water bubbling in its rear. When I scrambled to my feet all was ludicrous confusion on board. Hath still stood by his throne, an island in a sea of disorder all else was chaos. The rowers and courtiers were kicking and wallowing in the waste of the ship like fish freshly shot out of a trawl net, but the princess was gone. Where was she? I brushed the spray from my eyes and stared overboard. She was not in the bubbling blue water alongside. Then I glanced af to where the log, now fifteen yards away, was splashing through the sunshine, and as I looked a fair arm came up from underneath and white fingers clutched convulsively what man could need more. Down the barge I rushed and dropping only my sword-belt leapt in to her rescue. The gentle Martians were too numb to raise a hand in help, but it was not necessary. I had the tide with me and gained at every stroke. Meanwhile, that accursed tree, with poor Haru's skirts caught on a branch, was drowning her at its leisure, lifting her up as it rose upon the crest a fair, helpless bundle, and then sowsing her in its fall where I could see her glean now and then like pink coral. I redoubled my efforts and got alongside, clutching the rind of that old stump and swimming and scrambling, at last was within reach of the princess. Thereon the log lifted her playfully to my arms, and when I had laid hold came down a crushing weight and forced us far into the clammy bosom of Martians Sea. Again we came up, coughing and choking, eye tugging furiously at that tangled raiment, and the lady, a mere lump of sweetness in my other arm, then down again with that log upon me and all the noises of ebblis in my ears. Up and down we went, over and over, till strength was spin and my ribs seemed breaking. Then, with a last desperate effort, I got a knee against the stem and by sheer strength freed my princess. The spiteful timber made a last ugly thrust at us as it rolled away, and we were free. I turned upon my back, and sure of rescue now took the lady's head upon my chest, and a great white fist in mind the while, and floating waited for help. It came only too quickly. The gallant Martians, when they saw the princess saved, came swiftly down upon us. Over the lapping of the water in my ears I heard their sigh, like cries of admiration and surprise, the rattlespray on the canoe side mingled with a splash of oars. The flitting shadows of their prowls were all about us, and in less time than it takes to right we were hauled aboard, revived, and taken to half-sparge. Again the prince's lips were upon my fingertips. Again the flutes of music struck up, and as I squeezed the water out of my hair and tried to keep my eyes off the outline of Haru, whose loveliness shone through her damp clinging pink robe, as if that robe were but a gauzy fancy. I vaguely heard half-saying wondrous things of my gallantry, and what was more to the purpose asking me to come with him and stay that night at the palace. End of Chapter 3 This recording by James Christopher JX Christopher at Yahoo.com Chapter 4 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. This recording by James Christopher JXChristopher at Yahoo.com Gulliver of Mars by Edwin L. Arnold Chapter 4 They lodged me like a prince in a very country that first night. I was tired. Towards a stiff stage I had come the day before, and they gave me a couch whose ethereal softness seemed to close like the wings of a bird as I plunged at its touch into fathomless slumbers. But the next day it hardly broken when I was awake, and stretching my limbs upon the piled silk of a legless bed upon the floor found myself in a great chamber with a purple tapestry across the entrance and a square arch leading to a flat terrace outside. It was a glorious daybreak, making my heart light within me, the air like new milk, and the colors of the sunrise lay purple and yellow in bars across my room. I yawned and stretched, then rising, wrapped a silk and quilt about me and went out into the flat terrace top, wherefrom all the city could be seen stretched in an ivory and emerald patchwork with open blue water on one side and the Martian plain trending away in a limitable distance upon the other. Directly underneath in a great square at the bottom of Haas Palace steps were gathered a concourse of people, brilliant in many colored dresses. They were sitting or lying about just as they might for all I knew have done throughout the warm night. Without much order, save that where the black streets of inlaid stone marked the carriageway across the square none were stationed. While I wondered at what would bring so many together thus early, there came a sound of flutes. For these people can do nothing without piping like finches in a thicket in May. Halfway over to the harbor, their streamed a line of carts piled high with preventer. Down came the teens attended by their slaves, circling and wheeling into the open place. And as they passed each group those lazy, lowling beggars crowded round and took the dull they were too thriftless to earn themselves. It was strange to see how listless they were about the meal, even though Providence itself put it into their hands. To note how the yellow-girded slaves scutted amongst them, serving out the loaves themselves had grown, harvested, and baked. Slipping from group to group, rousing, exhorting, and ministering to a hapless throng that took their efforts without thought or thanks. I stood there a long time, one foot upon the coping and my chin upon my hand, noting the beauty of the ruined town and wondering how such a feeble race is that which lay about, breakfasting in the lipid sunshine, could have come by a city like this, or kept even the ruins of its walls and buildings from the covetousness of others. Until presently there was a rustle of primrose garments that my friend of the day before stood by me. Are you rested, traveler? She questioned in that pretty voice of hers. Rusted and brogely on. It is well. I will tell the government and it will come up to wash and dress you, afterwards giving you breakfast. For the breakfast, damsel, I shall be grateful. But as for the washing and dressing, I will defend myself to the last gasp sooner than submit to such administration. How strange! Do you never wash in your country? Yes, but it is a matter left largely to our own discretion. So, my dear girl, if you will leave me for a minute or two in quest of that meal you mentioned, I will guarantee to be ready when it comes. Away she slipped with a shrug of her rosy shoulders to return presently, carrying a tray covered with a white cloth, whereon were half a dozen glittering covers once came the most fragrant odors of cooked things. Why, comrade, I said, sitting down and lifting lid by lid for the cold sweet air outside had made me hungry. This is better than was hoped for. I thought from what I saw down yonder I should have to trot behind a tumbrel for my breakfast, and eat it on my heels amongst your sleepy friends below. On replied, the stranger is a prince, we take it, in his own country. And prince is fair not quite like common people, even here. So, I said, my mouth full of strange unknown fish and a cake soft as milk and white as cotton in the pod. Now that makes me feel at home. Would you have it otherwise with us? No. Now that I come to think of it, it is most natural thing should be much alike in all corners of the universe. The splendid simplicity that rules the spheres works much the same way, no doubt, upon one side of the sun as upon the other. Yet somehow, you can hardly wonder at it, yesterday I looked to find your world, when I realized where I had tumbled to, a world of gin and giants, of mad possibilities overrealized, and here I see you dwellers by the utterly remote, little more marvelous than if I had come amongst you on the introduction of a cheap tourist ticket, and round some neglected corner of my own distant world. I hardly follow your meaning, sir. No, of course you cannot. I was forgetting you did not know. There, pass me this stuff on yonder plate that looks like caked mud from an anchor fluke, and smells like breath of paradise, and let me question you. And while I sat and drank with that yellow servitor sitting in front of me, I applied her with questions, just as a baby might who knew the world with a full-blown gift of speech. But, though she was ready and willing enough to answer, and laughed gaily at my quaint ignorance of simple things, yet there was little water in the well. Had they any kind of crafts or science, any cult of stars or figures? But again she shook her head and said, hath might know, hath understood most things, but herself little of either. Armies or navies? And again, the Martian shrugged her shoulders, questioning in turn, what for? What for? I cried, a little angry with her engaging dullness. Why, to keep that which the strong hands got, and to get more for those who come next. Navies to sweep yonder blue seas, and armies to ward what they should bring home, or guard the city walls against all enemies. For, I suppose on, I said, putting down my knife as the cheering thought came on me, I suppose on, you have some enemies? It is not like Providence to give such riches as you possess, such lands, such cities, and not supply the antidote in some one poor enough to covet them. At once the girl's face clouded over, and it was obvious a tender subject had been chanced upon. She waved her hand impatiently as though to change the subject, but I would not be put off. Come, I said, this is better than breakfast. It was the one thing, this unknown enemy of yours, wanting to lever the dull mass of your two peacefulness. What is he like? How strong? How stands the quarrel between you? I was a soldier myself before the sea allured me, and love horses and sword best of all things. You would not jest if you knew our enemy. That is as it may be. I have laughed in the face of many stronger foes than yours is like to prove. But anyhow, give me a chance to judge. Come, who is it that frightens all the blood out of your cheeks by a bare mention, and may not be laughed at even behind these substantial walls? First, then, you know, of course, that long ago this land of ours was harried from the west. Not I. No, said on with a little warmth. If it comes to that, you know nothing. We're at I laughed, and saying the reply was just, vowed I would not interrupt again. And so she went on saying how half, that interminable half, would know it all better than she did. But long ago the land was overrun by a people from beyond the broad blue waters outside. A people huge of person, hairy and savage, uncouth, unlettered, and poor An's voice trembled even to describe them. A people without mercy or compunction, dwellers in woods, eaters of flesh, who burnt, plundered and destroyed all before them. And it toppled over the city along with many others in an ancient foray, the horrors of which still burnt lured in her people's minds. Ever since then, went on the girl, these odious terrors of the Outer Land have been a nightmare to us, making hectic our pleasures, and filling our peace with horrid thoughts of what might be, should they chance to come again. To his fortunate no doubt, lady, I answered, yet it was long ago, and the plunderers are far away. Why not rise and raid them in turn? To live under such a nightmare is miserable. And a poet on my side of the ether has said, he either fears his fate too much, or his desserts are small, who will not put it to the touch, to win or lose at all. It seems to me you must either bustle again, or sit tamely down, and by paying the coward's fee for peace, buy at a heavy price indulgence from the victor. We, said on simply, and with no show of shame, would rather die than fight. And so we take the easier way, though a heavy one it is. Look, she said, drawing me to the broad window went we could get a glimpse of the westward town in the harbor out beyond the walls. Look, see yonder long row of boats with brown sails hanging loose reef from every yard ranged all along the key. Even from here you can make out the thin stream of porter slaves passing to and fro between them, and the granaries like ants on a sunny path. Those are our tax men's ships. They came yesterday from far out across the sea, as punctual as fate, with the first day of spring, and two or three nights hence we trust will go again. And glad shall we be to see them start, although they leave scuppered with our cloth, our corn, and gold. Is that what they take for tribute? That and one girl, the fairest they can find. One, only one, to his moderate all things considered. She is for the thither king Arhap, and though only one as you say, stranger, yet he who loses her is at sometimes to thank her one too many lost. By Jupiter himself it is well said, if I were that man I would stir up heaven until I got her back. Neither man nor beast nor devil should stay me in my quest. As I spoke I thought for a minute Aung's fingers trembled a little as she fixed a flower upon my coat. While there was something like a sigh in her voice as she said, the maids of this country are not accustomed, sir, to be so strongly loved. By this time, breakfast and rehabilitated, I was ready to go forth. The girl swung back the heavy curtain that served in place of door across the entrance of my chamber, and leading away by a corridor and marble steps while I followed, and whether it was the Martian air or the meal I knew not, but thinking mightily well of myself until we came presently into the main palace stairs, which led by stately flights from the upper galleries to the wide square below. As we passed into the full sunshine, and no sunshine is so crisply golden as the Martian, amongst twine flowers and shrubs and gay quaint birds building in its cornices, a sleek youth rose slowly from where he had spread his coat as he went a step, and approaching asked, You are the stranger of yesterday? Yes, I answered. Then I bring a message from Prince Hath, saying it would pleasure him greatly if you would eat the morning meal with him. Why, I answered, it is very civil indeed, but I have breakfasted already. And so has Hath, said the boy gently yawning. You see, I came here early this morning, but knowing you would pass sooner or later, I thought it would save me the trouble if I lay in your arms. You came. Those quaint people who built these palaces were so prodigal of steps, and smiling apologetically he sank back on his couch and began toying with a leaf. Sweet fellow, I said, and you will know how I was getting into their style of conversation. Get back to Hath when you have rested. Give him my most gracious thanks for the intended courtesy. But tell him the invitations should have started a week earlier. Tell him from me, bring this and come tomorrow. Say that meantime I pray him to send any ill news he has for me by you. Is the message too bulky for your slender shoulders? No, said the boy, rousing himself slowly. I will take it, and then he prepared to go. He turned again and said, without a trace of insubility. But indeed, stranger, I wish you would take the message yourself. This is the third flight of stairs I have been up today. Everywhere it was the same friendly indolence. Half the breakfasters were lying on colored shawls in groups about the square. The other half were strolling off, all in one direction I noticed, as slowly as could be towards the open field beyond. No one was active or had anything to do save the yellow folk, who flitted to and fro fostering the others, and doing the city work as though it were their only thought in life. There were no shops in that strange city, for there were no needs. Some boost I saw indeed, and temple-like places. But hollow and used for birds and beasts, things these lazy Martians love. There was no tramp of busy feet, for no one was busy. No clank of swords or armor in those peaceful streets, for no one was war like. No hustle, for no one hurried. No wide-packed asses knotting down the lanes, for there was nothing to fill their packs with. And though a cart sometimes came by with a load of lowling men and maids, or a small horse, for horses they had, paced nearly as lazy as the master he bore, with trapping soad over bits of colored shell and coral. Yet somehow it was all extraordinarily unreal. It was a city full of the ghost of the life which once pulsed through its ways. The streets were peopled, the chatter of voices everywhere, the singing boys and laughing girls wandered, arms linked together, down the ways filled every echo with their merriment. Yet somehow it was all so shallow that again and again I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I indeed awake, or whether it were not a prolonged sleep of which the tomorrow were still to come. What strikes me as strangest of all good, comrade, I observe pleasantly to the tripping presence of my elbow, is that these countrymen of yours who shirk to climb a flight of steps, and have palms as soft as rose petals, these wide ways paved with stones as hard as a user's heart. On Laft. The stones were still in their native quarries had it been left to us to seek them. We are like the conies in the desert, the inheritors of what other hands have done. I, and undone I think as well, for coming along I have noticed axe-chippings upon the walls, smudges of ancient fire and smoke upon the cornices. On Winston little one stared uneasily at the walls, muttering below her breath something about trying to hide with flower garlands of the marks they could not banish, but it was plain the conversation was not pleasing to her. So unpleasant was the talk or sight of woodmen, thither folk as the conversation to the hither people about us here, that the girl was clearly relieved when we were free of the town and out into the open playground of the people. The whole place down there was a gay shifting crowd. The boosts of yesterday, the arcades, the archways were still standing, and during the night unknown hands had re-decked them with flowers, while another day's sunshine had opened the coppice buds so that the whole place was brilliant past expression. And here the hither folk were varying their idleness by a bit. They were standing about in groups or lying ranked like new pluck flowers on the banks, piping to each other through reeds as soft and melodious as running water. They were playing in consequent games and breaking off in the middle of them like children looking for new pleasures. They were idling about the drinking boosts, delicately stupid with quaint thin wines, dealt out to all who asked. The maids were ready to chevy or to be chevy through the blossoming thickets by anyone who chanced upon them. The men slipped their arms around their waist and wandered down the paths, scarce seeming to care even whose waist it was they circled, or into whose ear they whispered the remainder of the love tale they had begun to someone else. And everywhere it was high, and ha, and so, and sea, as these quaint people called to one another, knowing each other as familiarly as ants of a nest, and by the same magic it seemed to me. On, I said presently, when we had wandered an hour or so through the drifting throng, had these good countrymen of yours their names but mono-cevallic. Nothing to designate them but these chirping syllables. Is it not enough? answered my companion. Once indeed, I think we had longer names. But, she added smiling, how much trouble it says to limit each one to a single sound. It is uncivil to one's neighbors to burden their tongues with double duty, when half would do. But have you no patronymics? Nothing to show the child comes of the same source as his father came? We have no fathers. What, no fathers, I said, starting and staring at her? No, nor mothers either. Or at least none we remember. For again, why should we? May have in that strange district you come from, you keep count of these things. But what have we to do with either when their initial duty is done? Look at that painted butterfly swinging on the honey-laden catkin there. What knows she of the mother who shed her life into a flower cup and forgot which flower it was the minute afterwards? We, too, are insects, stranger. And do you mean to say of this great concourse here that every atom is solitary, individual, and can claim no kindred with another save the loose bonds of a general fraternity? A specious idea, horrible, impracticable. We're at on-laugh. Ask the grasshopper if it is impracticable. Ask the little buzzing things of grass and leaves who drift hither and thither upon each breath of wind, finding kinsmen never but comrades everywhere. Ask them if it is horrible. This made me melancholy, and somehow set me thinking of the friends immeasurably distant I had left but yesterday. What were they doing? Did they miss me? I was to a call for my pay this afternoon, and tomorrow was to have run down south to see that freckled lady of mine. What would she think of my absence? What would she think if she knew where I was? Gods, it was too mad, too absurd. I thrust my hands into my pockets in fierce desperation, and there they clutched an old dance program and an out-of-date check for a New York ferryboat. I scowled about on that sunny, helpless people, and laying my hand bitterly upon my heart, felt in the breast pocket beneath a packet of unpaid Boston Taylor's bills and a note from my landlady asking if I would let her aunt do my washing while I was on shore. Oh, what would they all think of me? Would they brand me as a deserter, letting my name presently sink down in shame and mystery in the shadowy realm of the forgotten? Dreadful thoughts. I would think no more. Maybe on had marked my melancholy, for presently she led me to a stall where in fantastic vases wines of sorts I described before were put out for all who came to try them. There was medicine here for every kind of dullness, not the gross cure which earthly one affects, but so nicely proportioned to each specific need that one could regulate one's approach to a hair breadth. Rising through all the gamut of satisfaction, from the staid countenance coming of that flask there, to the wild extravagance of the furthest vase. So my stripling told me, running her fingers down the line of beakers carved with strange figures encased in silver, each in its cluster of little attendant drinking cups, light colored, and waiting round on the white napkins as the shoreboats wait to unload a cargo round the sides of a merchant vessel. And what, I said, after curiously discern, what is that which stands alone there in the humble earthen jar, as though unworthy of the company of the others? Oh, that, said my friend, is the most essential of them all. That is the wine of recovery. Without which all the others were deadly poisons. The witch, lady, looks as if it had a moral attaching to it. It may have, indeed, I think it has, but I have forgotten. Prince Hath would know. Meanwhile, let me give you to drink, stranger. Let me get you something. Well, then, I laughed. Reach me down an antidote to a fate, a specific for an absent mistress, and forgetful friends. What was she like, said Anne, hesitating a little and frowning. Nay, good friend, was my answer. What can that matter to you? Oh, nothing, of course, answered that Martian. And while she took from the table a cup and filled it with fluid I felt in the pouch of my sword-belt to see if by chance I was lying there, but there was none. Only the pips of an orange poor Polly had sucked and laughingly thrown at me. However, it did not matter. The girl handed me the cup and I put my lips to it. The first taste was bitter and acrid, like the liquor of long, steeped wood. At the second taste a shiver of pleasure ran through me, and I opened my eyes and stared hard. The third taste, grossness and heaviness and chagrin, dropped from my heart. All the complexion of Providence altered and the stupid irresistible joy, unreasoning, uncontrollable, took possession of my fiber. I sank upon a mossy bank and, lolling my head, beam idiotically on the lolling Martians all about me. How long I was like that I cannot say. The heavy minutes of sudden contentment slipped by unnoticed, unnumbered, till presently I felt a touch of a wine cup at my lips again. And drinking of another liquor, dullness vanished from my mind. My eyes cleared, my heart throbbed. My body seized upon my limbs. I bounded to my feet, and, seizing An's two hands in mine, swung that damsel round in a giddy dance, capering as never dance or dance before, till spent and weary I sank down again from sheer lack of breath. And only knew thereafter that An was sitting by me saying, Drink, drink, stranger. Drink and forget. And as a third time a cup was pressed to my lips, aches and pleasures, stupendous and joy, life itself, splendid golden vacuity, a hazy episode of unconscious elicium, indefinite and unfathomable. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 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 5 When I woke, feeling as refreshed as though I had been dreaming through a long night, An, seeing me open-eyed, helped me to my feet. And when I had recovered my senses a little, asked if we should go on. I was myself again by this time, so willingly took her hand, and soon came out of the tangle into the open spaces. I must have been under the spell of the Martian wines longer than it seemed, for already it was late in the afternoon. The shadows of trees were lying deep in the motley crowds of people. Out here, as the day waned, they had developed some sort of method in their sports. In front of us was a broad, grassy course marked off with garland and finger post. And in this space, rallies of work folk were taking part in all manner of games under the eyes of great concourses of spectators, doing the Martians' pleasures for them as they did their labors. An led me gently on, leaning on my arm heavier, I thought, than she had done in the morning. And ever anon turning her gazelle-like eyes on me with a look I could not understand. As we saundered forward, I noticed all about lesser circles where the yellow girth ones were drawing delighted laughter from good-tempered crowds by tricks of sleight of hand, and posturing, or tossing gilded cups and balls as though they were catering, as indeed they were, for outgrown children. Others fluted or sang songs in chorus to the slow clapping of hands, while others were doing I knew not what, sitting silent among silent spectators who every now and then burst out laughing in the sea. But on would not let me stop, and so we pushed on through the crowd till we came to the main enclosures where a dozen slaves had run a race for the amusement of those too lazy to race themselves, and were sitting panting on the grass. To give them time to get their breath perhaps, a man stepped out of the crowd dressed in a dark blue tunic, a strange vacuous-looking fellow, and throwing down a sheaf of javelins marched off a dozen paces. You could prick him with a javelin from the heap. Why, I said in amazement, this is the best of fools, no one could miss from such a distance. I, but, replied my guide, he is a gifted one, versed in mystics. I was just going to say a good javelin, shod with iron, was a stronger argument than any mystic I had ever heard of could stand, when out of the crowd stepped to youth and amid the derisive cheers of his friends chose a reed from the bundle. He poised it in his hand a minute to get the middle, then turned on the living target. Whatever else they might be, these Martians were certainly beautiful as of the daytime. Never had I seen such a perfect embodiment of grace and elegance as that boy as he stood there for a moment poised to the throw. The afternoon sunshine warm and strong on his bunched brown hair, a girlish flush of shyness on his handsome face, and the sleek perfection of his limbs, clear cut against the dusky background beyond. And now the javelin was going. Surely the mystic would think better of it at the last moment. The initiate held his ground with tight shut lips and retrospective eyes, and even as I looked the weapon flew upon its errand. There goes the soul of a fool, I exclaimed, and as the words were uttered the spear struck, or seemed to, between the neck and shoulder. But instead of piercing rose high into the air, quivering and flashing, and presently turning over fell back and plunged deep into the turf, while a low murmur of indifferent pleasure went round amongst the onlookers. There at on, yawning gently, looked to me and said, A strong-willed fellow. Isn't he, friend? I hesitated a moment, then asked, Was it Will which turned that shaft? She answered with simplicity. Why, of course. What else? By this time another boy had stepped out, and having chosen a javelin, tested it with hand and foot. Then, retiring a pace or two, rushed up to the throwing-mark and flung it straight and true into the shaft, leapt back, falling quivering at the thrower's feet. Another and another tried unsuccessfully. Until at last, vexed with their futility, I said, I have a somewhat scanty wardrobe that would be all the better for that fellow's summer suiting. By your leave I will venture to throw against him. It is useless, answered on. None but one who knows more magic than he, or is especially befriended by the fates, can touch him through the envelope he has put on. Still, I think I will try. It is hopeless. I would not willingly see you fail, whispered the girl with a sudden show of friendship. And what, I said bending down, would you give me if I succeed? We're at un-laughed a little uneasily, and withdrawing her hand from mine half turned away. So I pushed through the spectators and stepped into the ring. I went straight up to the pile of weapons, and having chosen one went over to the mystic. Good fellow, I cried out ostentatiously, trying the sharpness of the javelin point with my finger. Where are all of those sixteen summer suits of yours lying hid? It matters nothing, said the man as if you were sleeping. Aye, but by the stars it does, for it will vex the quiet repose of your soul tomorrow if your heirs should swear they could not find them. It matters nothing, muttered the well-wrapped visionary. It will matter something if I take you at your word. Come, friend purple-jerken, will you take the council with your legs and run while there is yet time, or stand up to be thrown at? I stand here immovable in the confidence and by thunder I will initiate you into the mysteries of a javelin end and your blood be on your head. The Martians were all craning their necks and hushed eagerness as I turned to the casting-place, and, poisoning the javelin, faced the magician. Would he run at the last moment? I hath hoped so. For a minute I gave him the chance. Then, as he showed no signs of wavering, I drew my hand back, shook the javelin back till it bent like a reed, and hurled it at him. The Martians' heads turned as though all on one pivot and spears sped through the air, expecting no doubt to see it recoil as the others had done. But it took him full in the center of his chest and with a wild wave of arms and flutter of purple rainments sent him backwards, and down and over and over in a shapeless heap of limbs and flying rainmen. While a low murmur of odd surprise rose from the spectators, they crowded round him in a dense ring as An came flitting to me with a startled face. Oh, stranger, she burst out. You hath surely killed him. But more astonished I had broken down his guard than grieved at his injury. No, I said smilingly. A sore chest he may have tomorrow, but dead he is not. For I turned the lance point back as I spun it, and it was the butt end I threw at him. It was, nonetheless, wonderful. I thought you were a common man. A prince may have. Come but from over the hills. But now, something tells me you are more than that. And she lapsed into a thoughtful silence for a time. Neither of us were wishful to go back amongst those who were raising the bruise magician to his legs, but wandered away instead through the deepening twilight towards the city over meadows whose damp, soft fragrance loaded the air with sleepy pleasure. Neither of us sang a word till the dust deepened and the quick night descended. While we came amongst the guarded houses, the thousand lights of an unreal city rising like a jewel bank before us. And there, An said, she would leave me for a time, meeting me again in the palace square later on. To see Princess Haru read the destinies of the year. What? I exclaimed? More magic? I have been brought up a more substantial mental stuff than this. Nevertheless, I would advise you to come to the square, persisted my companion. It affects us all, and who knows, may affect you more than any. Therean poor An was unconsciously wearing the cloak of prophecy herself. And shrugging my shoulders good humorily, I kissed her chin, little realizing, as I let her fingers slip from mine, that I should see her no more. Turning back alone through the city, through ways twinkling with myriad lights as little lamps began to blink out amongst garlands and flower-deck booths on every hand, I walked on, lost in varying thoughts until, fairly tired and hungry, I found myself outside a stall where many Martians stood eating and drinking to their hearts' content. I was known to none of them, and forgetting past experience was looking rather ambiously when there came a touch upon my arm. And are you hungry, sir? asked a bystander. I, I said, hungry, good friend, and with all the zest which an empty purse lends to that condition. Then here is what you need, sir. Even from here the wine smells good, and the fried fruit would make a mouse's eye twinkle. Why do you wait? Why wait? Why, because though a rich man's dinner goes at his mouth, the poor man must often be content to dine through his nose. I tell you I have nothing to get me a meal with. The stranger seemed to speculate on this for a time, and then he said, I cannot fathom your meaning, sir. Buying and selling, gold and money, all these have no meaning to me. Surely the twin blessings of an appetite and food abundant, ready and free before you are enough. What? Free is it? Free like that breakfast served out this morning? Why, of course, said the youth with mild depreciation. Everything here is free. Everything is his who will take it, without exception. What else is the good of a coherent society and a government if it cannot provide you with so rudimentary a thing as a meal? Where at joyfully I undid my belt, and without nicely examining the argument, marched into the booth, and there put Martian hospitality to the test, eating and drinking, but this time with growing wisdom, till I was a new man. And then, paying my leave with a wave of a hand to the yellow-girded one who dispensed the common preventer, I sauntered on again, carrying little or nothing which way the road went, and soon across the current of my meditations a peel of laughter broke, accompanied by the piping of a flute somewhere close at hand. In the next minute, I found myself amid a ring of light-hearted roisterers who were linking hands for a dance to the music a curly-headed fellow was making close by. They made me join them. One rosy-faced damsel at the heather end of the chain drew up to me, and, without a word, slipped her soft baby fingers into my hand. On the other side came another with melting eyes, breathed like a bed of violets, and banked up fun puckering her dainty mouth. What could I do but give her a hand as well? The flute began to gurgle anew, like a drinking spout in springtime, and away we went. Faster and faster each minute, the boys and girls swinging themselves in time to the tune, and capering presently till their tender feet were twinkling over the ground in gay confusion. Faster and faster till, as the infection of the dance spread even to the outside groups, I capered too. My word, if they could have but seen me that night from the deck of the old Carolina, how they would have laughed, swords swinging, coattails flying, faster and faster. Round and round we went, till limbs could stand no more. The gasping pipe blew himself quite out, and the dance ended as abruptly as it commenced. The dancers melting away to join others are casting themselves panting on the turf. Certainly these Martian girls were blessed with an ingratiating simplicity. My new friend in the Violet Scented Breath hung back a little, then, after looking at me demurely for a minute or two, like a child that chooses a new playmate, came softly up, and, standing on tiptoe, kissed me on the cheek. It was not unpleasant, so I turned the other. Whereon, guessing my meaning, without the smallest hesitation, she reached up again and pressed her pretty mouth to my bronze skin a second time. Then, with a little sigh of satisfaction, she ran an arm through mine saying, Comrade, from what country have you come? I never saw one quite like you before. From what country have I come? Again the frown dropped down upon my forehead. Was I dreaming? Was I mad? Where indeed had I come from? I started back over my shoulder and there, as if an answer to my thought, there, where the black tracery of flowering shrubs waved in the soft night wind, over a gap in the crumbling ivory ramparts, the sky was brightening. As I looked into the center of that glow, a planet magnified by the wonderful air came swinging up, pale but splendid, and mapped by soft contours, green, violet, and red. I knew it on the minute. Heaven only knows how, but I knew it. And a desperate thrill of loneliness swept over me. A spasm of comprehension of the horrible void dividing us. Never did yearning babes stretch arms more wistfully to an unattainable mother than I at that moment to my mother earth. All her meanness and prosaigness was forgotten. All her imperfections and shortcomings. It was home, the one tangible thing in the glittering emptiness of the spheres. All my soul went into my eyes, and then I sneezed violently. And turning round, found that sweet damsel whose silky head nestled so friendly on my shoulders was tickling my nose with a feather she had picked up. Womanlike, she had forgotten all about her first question, and now asked another. Will you come to suffer with me, stranger? Tis nearly ready, I think. To be able to say no to such an invitation, lady, is the first thing a young man should learn, I entered lightly. But then, seeing there was nothing save from my friendliness in those hazel eyes, I went on. But that stern rule may admit a variance. Only, as it chances, I had just sucked at the public expense. If instead you would be a sailor's sweetheart for an hour, and take me to the show of yours, this princess's benefit, or whatever it is, I shall be obliged. My previous guide is hauled down over the horizon, and I am clean out of my reckoning in this crowd. By way of reply, the little lady, by my fingertips, and gleefully skipping forward, piloted me through the mazes of the city till we came out to the great square fronting on the palace, which rose beyond it like a white chalk cliff in the dull light. Not a taper showed anywhere around its circumference, but a mysterious kind of radiance like sea phosphorescence beam from the palace porch. All was in such deathlike silence that the nails in my ammunition boots made an unpleasant clanking as they struck into my surprise, the whole square was thronging with Martians, all facing towards the porch, as still-graven images, and as voiceless for once, as though they had indeed been marble. It was strange to see them sitting there in the twilight, waiting for I knew not what, and my friend's voice at my elbow almost startled me as she said in a whisper. The princess knows you are in the crowd and desires you to go up upon the steps near where she will be. Who brought her a message, I asked, for none had spoken to us for an hour or more. No one, said my companion, gently pushing me up an open way towards the palace steps left clear by the sitting Martians. It came direct to her from me this minute. But how, I persisted, nay, said the girl, if we stop to talk like this we shall not be placed before she comes, and thus throw a whole year's knowledge out. So, bottling my speculations, I allowed myself to be led up the first flight of worn white steps to wear, on the terrace between them in the next flight leading directly to the palace portico, was a flat, having a circle about twenty feet across, inlaid upon the marvel with darker colored blocks. Inside that circle, as I sat down close by it in the twilight, showed another circle, and then a final one, in whose inmost middle stood a tall iron tripod, and something atop of it covered by a cloth. All round the outer circles were magic symbols. I started as I recognized the meaning of some of them. Within these again, the inner circle held like the representations of planets, ending, as I have said, in that dished hollow made out by countless dancers' feet, and its solitary tripod. Back again I glanced towards the square where the great concourse, ten thousand of them perhaps, were sitting mute and silent in the deepening shadows. Then back to the magic circles till the silence and expectancy of a strange scene began to possess me. Shadow down below, star-dusted heaven above, and not a figure moving, a long-drawn sigh came up from the lips of the expectant multitude, and I was aware every eye had suddenly turned back to the palace porch, where, as we looked, a figure, wrapped in pale blue robes, appeared and stood for a minute, then stole down the steps with an eagerness in every movement holding a spellbound. I have seen many splendid pageants in many sites, each of which might be the talk of a lifetime, but somehow nothing so engrossing, so thrilling as that ghostly figure in flowing robes stealing across a piazza in starlight in silence, the princess of a broken kingdom, the priestess of a forgotten faith coming to her station to perform a jugglery of which she knew not even the meaning. It was my versatile friend, Haru, and with quick incisive steps her whole frame ambit for a time with the fervor of her mission, she came swiftly down to within a dozen yards of where I stood. Haru indeed, but not the same princess as in the morning, an inspired princess rather, her slim body wrapped in blue and quivering with emotion. Her face a shine would delfeit fire, her hair loose, her feet bare, until at last when, as she stood within the limit of the magic circle, her white hands upon her breast, her eyes flashing like planets themselves in the starshine, she looked so ghostly and unreal I felt for a minute I was dreaming. Then began a strange, weird dance among the imagery of the rings, over which my earth planet was beginning to throw a haze of light. At first it was hardly more than a walk, a slow procession rounded twins circumferences of the centered tripod, but soon it increased to an extraordinary graceful measure, a cadence step without music or sound that riveted my eyes to the dancer. Presently I saw those mystic twinkling feedipers, as the dance became swifter, were performing a measured round amongst the planet's signs, spelling out something I knew not what, with quick, light touch amongst the zodiac figures, dancing out a soundless invocation of some kind as a dumb man like spell a message by touching letters. Quicker and quicker, for minute after minute grew the dance, swifter and swifter the swing of that light blue drapery as the priestess, with eager face and staring eyes swung panting round upon her orbit, and redder and redder over the city tops rose the circumference of the earth. It seemed to me all the silent multitude were breathing heavily as we watched that giddy dance, and whatever they felt, all my own senses seemed to be winding up upon that revolving figure as thread winds on a spindle. When will she stop? I whispered to my friend under my breath. When the earth star rests in the roof niche of a temple it is climbing, she answered back. And then, on the tripod is a globe of water. In it she will see the destiny of the year, and will tell us, the whiter the water stays, the better for us. It never varies from white. But we must not talk. See, she is shopping. And as I look back, the dance was certainly ebbing now with such smoothly decreasing undulations that every heart began to be calmer in response. There was a minute or two of such slow cessation, and then, to say she stopped were too gross a description. Motion rather died away from her, and the princess grounded as smoothly as the ship grounds in fine weather on a sandy bank. There she was at last, crouched beneath the tripod, one corner of the cloth covering it grasped in her hand, and her eyes shining round just poised upon the distant run. Keenly the girl watched it slide into zenith. Then the cloth was snatched from the tripod top. As it fell it uncovered a beautiful and perfect globe of clear white glass, a foot or so in diameter, and obviously filled with the thinnest, most lipid water imaginable. At first it seemed to me, who stood near to the priestess of Mars with that beaming sphere directly between us, and the newly risen world, that its smooth and absolutely devoid of sign or coloring. Then, as the distant planet became stronger in the magnifying Martian air, or my eyes better accustomed to that sudden nucleus of brilliancy, a delicate and infinitely lovely network of colors came upon it. They were like the radiant prisms that sometimes fleshed the surface of a bubble more than ought else for a time. But as I watched that mosaic of yellow and purple creep softly to and fro upon the globe, it seemed they slowly certainly congealed into a settled plan. And then, as I stared and wondered, it burst upon me in a minute that I was looking upon a picture, faithful in every detail of the world I stood on. All its ready forest, its sapphire seas both broad and narrow once, its white peaked mountains, and unnumbered islands being mapped out with startling clearness for a spell upon that beaming orb. Then a strange thing happened. Heru, who had been crouching in a tremulous heat by the tripod, rose happily and passed her hands a few times across the sphere. Color and picture vanished at her touch like breath from a mirror. Again, all was clear and polluted. Now, said my companion, now listen. For Heru reads the destiny. The whiter the globe stays, the better for us. And then I felt her hand tighten on mine with a startled gasp as the words died away upon her lips. Even as the girl spoke, the sphere which had been beaming in the center of the silent square like a mighty hand began to flush with angry red. Redder and redder grew the gleam. A fiery glow which seemed curdling in the interior of the round as though it were filled with flame. Redder and redder, until the princess, staring into it, seemed turned against the jet-black night behind into a form of molten metal. A spasm of terror passed across her as she stared. Her limbs stiffened. Her frightened hands were clutched in front. And she stood cowering under that great crimson nucleus like one bereft of power and life, and lost to every sense but that of agony. Not a syllable came from her lips. Not a movement stirred her body. Only that dumb, stupid stare of horror at the something she saw in the globe. What could I do? I could not sit and see her soul come out at her frightened eyes. And not a Martian moved a finger to her rescue. The red shine gleamed on empty faces, tear above tear, and flung its broad flush over the endless ranks of open-mouth spectators. Then back I looked to her rue, that wholesome little lady for whom, you will remember, I had already more than a passing fancy, and saw with a thrill of emotion that while she still kept her eyes on the flaming globe like one in a horrible dream, her hands were slowly, very slowly, rising in supplication to me. It was not vanity. There was no mistaking the direction of that silent, imploring appeal. Not a man of her countryman moved. Not even black half. There was not a sound in the world at scene but the noisy clatter of my own shoenails on the marble flags. In the great red eye of that unholy globe, the Martians glimmered like a picture multitude under the red cliff of their ruined palace. I glared round at them with contempt for a minute, then sprang forward and snatched the princess up. It was like pulling a flower up by the roots. She was stiff and stark when I lay hold of her. But when I tore her from her, she suddenly gave a piercing shriek and fainted in my arms. Then as I turned upon my heels with her upon my breast, my foot caught upon the clothes still wound about the tripod of the sphere. Overwent that implement of a thousand years of sorcery and out went the red fire. But little I cared, the princess was safe. And up the palace steps, amidst a low, wailing hum of consternation from the recovering Martians, I bore that bundle of limp and senseless loveliness up to the pale of her own porch. And there, laying her down upon a couch, watched her recover presently amongst her women with a varied assortment of emotions tingling in my veins. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 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, JXChristopher at Yahoo.com Gulliver of Mars by Edwin L. Arnold Chapter 6 Beyond the first flutter of surprise, the Martians had shown no interest in the abrupt termination of the year's divinations. They melted away, a trifle more silently perhaps than usual, when I shattered the magic globe. But with their invariable indifference, and having handed the reviving hero over to some women who led her away, apparently already half forgetful of the things that had just happened. I was left alone on the palace steps, not even on beside me. And only the shadow of a passerby now and then to break the solitude. Whereon a great loneliness took hold upon me, and, pacing to and fro along the ancient terrace, heedless and melancholy, thinking of the old world that was so far, and this near world so distant from me and everything making life worth living, thinking as I strove gloomily here and there, how gladly I would exchange these poor puppets and the mockery of a town they dwelt in, for a sight of my comrades in a corner of the poorest wine-shop salon in New York or Frisco, idly speculating why and how I came here as I sauntered down among the glimmering, shelled-lined fragments of the shattered globe, and finding no answer. How could I? It was too fair, I thought, standing there in the open. There was a fatal sweetness in the air, a deadly sufficiency in the beauty of everything around falling on the lax senses like some sleepy draft of pleasure. Not a leaf stirred. The wide purple roof of the sky was torn by the healthy promise of a cloud from rim to rim. The splendid country, teeming with its springtime richness lay in rank perfection everywhere, and just as rank and sleek and passionless were those who owned it. Why, even I, who yesterday was strong began to come under the spell of it. But yesterday the spirit of the old world was strong within me. Yet how much things were now changing? The well-strung muscles loosening, the heart beating a slower measure, the busy mind drowsing off uselessness. Was I too destined to become like these? Was the red stuff in my veins to be watered down to pallid Martian sap? Was ambition and hope to desert me? And idleness itself become laborious? While life ran to seed and gilded uselessness? Little did I guess how unnecessary my fears were, or of the incredible fairytale of adventure into which fate was going to plunge me. Still engrossed the next morning by these thoughts, I decided I would go to Hath. Hath was a man, at least they said so. He might sympathize even though he could not help. And so, dressing finished, I went down towards the innermost palace where for an hour or two had come sounds of unwanted bustle. Asking for the way occasionally from sleepy folk lolling about the corridors, waiting as it seemed for their breakfast to come to them, and embarrassed by the new daylight, I wandered into a curtain doorway which admitted to a long chamber, high-roofed, ample in proportion, made on either side, separated from the main aisle by rows of flowery figures and emblematic scrollwork, meaning I knew not what. Above those pillars ran a gallery with many windows looking out over the ruined city, while at the further end of the chamber stood three broad steps leading to a dais. As I entered, the whole palace was full of bustling girls, their yellow garments like a bed of flowers in the sunlight trickling through the casements, and all intent on the spreading of a feast on long tables ranged up and down the hall. The morning light streamed in on the white cloths. It glittered on the glass and gold they were putting on the trestles, and gave resplendent depths of color to the ribbon bands round the pillars. All were so busy, no one noticed me standing in the twilight by the door, but presently, laying a hand on a worker's shoulder, I asked who they banqueted for, and why such unwanted preparation. It is the marriage feast tonight, stranger, and marvel you did not know it. You, too, are to be wed. I had not heard of it, damsel. A paternal forethought of your government, I suppose. Have you any idea who the lady is? How should I know, she answered laughingly. That is the secret of the urn. Meanwhile we have set you a place at the table-head near Princess Haru, and tonight you dip and have your chance like all of them. May luck send you a rosy bride, and save her from Arhap. I, now I remember, on told me of this before. Arhap is the sovereign of whom you people have a little difference, and shares unbidden in the free distribution of brides tonight. This promises to be interesting. Depend on it, I will come. If you will keep me a place where I can hear the speeches, and not forget me when the turtle soup goes round, I shall be more than grateful. Now to another matter. I want to get a few minutes with your president, Prince Hath. He concentrates the fluid intelligence of this sphere, I am told. Where can I find him? He is drunk in the library, sir. My word, it is very early in the day for that, and a singular conjunction of place and circumstance. Where, said the girl, could he say for be? We can always fetch him if we want him, and sunk in blue oblivion he will not come to harm. A cheerful view, miss, which is worthy of the attention of our reformers. Nevertheless I will go to him. I have no men tell more truth in that state than in any other. The servitor directed me to the library, and after desolate wanderings up crumbling steps and down moldering corridors, sunny and lovely and decay, I came to the immense lumber shed of knowledge they had told me of, a city of dead books, a place of dusty cathedral aisles stored with forgotten learning. At a table, said Hath the purposeless, enthroned in leather and vellum, snoring in divine content amongst all that wasted labor, and nothing I could do was sufficient to shake him into semblance of intelligence. So perforce I turned away till he should have come to himself, and wandering round the splendid litter of a noble library, presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the floor, amongst those lordly tomes in tattered green and golden ivory, my eyelid upon a volume propped up curiously on end, and going to it through the confusion I saw by the dried fruit rind upon the stick supporting it that the grave and reverend tome was set to catch a mouse. It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound as a king might bind his choices treasure, the sweet-scented leather on it was no shade, the golden arabesque upon the covers had long since shed their eyes of inset gems, the jewel clasp locking its learning up from vulgar gaze was bent and open. Yet it was a lordly tome with an odor of sanctity about it, and lifting it with difficulty I noticed on its cover a red stain of mouse's blood. Those who put it to this quaint use of mousetrap had already had some sport, but surely was never a mouse crushed before under so much learning. And while I stood guessing at what book might hold within, Haru the princess came tripping into me, and with the abrupt familiarity of her kind laid a velvet hand upon my wrist conned the title over to herself. What does it say, sweet girl? I asked. The matter is learned by its feel. And that maid, pursing her pretty lips, read the title to me. The Secret of the Gods The Secret of the Gods, I murmured. Was it possible other worlds had struggled hopelessly to come within this canvas can of that great knowledge, while here the same was set to catch a mouse with? I said, silver-footed. Sit down and read me a passage or two. And propping the mighty volume upon a table drew a bench before it and pulled her down beside me. Oh! a horrid, dry old book for certain, cried that lady. Her pink fingertips falling as lightly on the musty leaves as almond petals on March dust. Where shall I begin? It is all equally dull. What was my answer? Tiz no great matter where, but near the beginning. What says the writer of his intention? What sets he out to prove? He says that this is a secret of the first great truth. Descended straight to him. Many have said so much, yet have lied. He says that which is written in his book is through him but not of him. Past criticism and beyond Cavill. Tiz all in ancient and crapped characters going back to the time by learning. But here upon this passage-top where they are at large I make them out to say, only the man who has died many times begins to live. A pregnant passage. Turn another page and try again. I have an inkling of the book already. Tiz poor silly stuff, said the girl. Slipping a hand covertly into my own. Why will you make me read it? I have a book on pomadoms worth twice as much as this. Nevertheless, dip in again, dear lady. What says the next heading? And with a little sigh at the heaviness of her task, Heru read out. Sometimes the gods themselves forget the answers to their own riddles. Lady, I knew it. All this is still preliminary to the great matter of the book. But the mutterings of the priest who draws back the curtains of the shrines, and here after the scribe has left these two yellow pages blank as though to set a space of reverence between himself and what comes next, here speaks the truth. The voice. The facts of all life. But, oh, Jones, she said, turning from the dusty pages and clasping her young milk-warm hands over mine, and leaning towards me until her blushing cheek was near to my shoulder and the incense of her breath upon me. Oh, Gulliver Jones, she said, make me read no more. My soul revolts from the task. The crazy brown letters swim before my eyes. Is there no learning near at hand that would be pleasanter to read than the silly words? What, after all, she said, growing bolder at the sound of her own voice? What, after all, is the musty reticence of God's to the whispered secret of a maid? Jones, splendid stranger for whom all men stand aside and women look over shoulders. Oh, let me be your book, she whispered, slipping on to my knee and winding her arms round my neck till, through the white glimmer of her single vest I could feel her heart beating against mine. Newest and dearest of friends? Put by this dreary learning and look into my eyes. Is there nothing to be spelt out there? And I was constrained to do as she bid me, for she was as fresh as an almond blossom touched by the sun. And looking down into two swimming blue lakes where shyness and passion were contending, books easy enough in truth to be read, I saw she loved me, with the unconventional ardor of her nature. It was a pleasant discovery. If its abruptness was embarrassing, for she was a maid in a thousand, and half ashamed and half laughing I let her escalate me, throwing now and then a rueful look at the secret of the gods. And all that priceless knowledge treated so unworthily. What else could I do? Besides, I loved her myself. And if there was a momentary chagrin at having yonder golden knowledge put off by this lovely interruption, yet I was flesh and blood, and gods could wait. They had to wait long and often before, and when the sweet interpreter was comforted we would have another try. So it happened I took her into my heart and gave her the answer she asked for. For a long time we sat in the dusky grandeur of the royal library. My mind revolving between wonder and admiration of the neglected knowledge all about, and the stirrings of a new love, while her rue herself lapsed again into Martian calm, lay half sleeping on my shoulder. But presently unwinding her arm I put her down. There, sweetheart, I whispered, enough of this for the moment. Tonight I'll have some more. But while we are here amongst all this lordly litter, I can think of nothing else. Again I bid her to turn the pages, noting as she did so how each chapter was headed by the colored configuration of a world. Page by page we turned of crackling parchment. Until by chance at the top of one my eye caught a colored round I could not fail to recognize. Was the splitting button of the blue breast of the immeasurable that yesterday I inhabited. Read here I cried, clapping my finger on the page midway down where there were some signs looking like Egyptian writing. Says this quaint dabbler in all knowledge anything of Isis, anything of Fra, of Aman, of Amantop. And who was Isis? Who Amantop? asked the lady. Nay, read, I answered, and down the page her slender fingers went a wandering till at a spot of knotted signs they stopped. Why, here is something about thy Isis, explained Heru, as though amused at my identity. Here, half way down this chapter of earth history, it says and putting one pink knee across the other to better prop the books she read and the priest of Thebes were gone the sand stood untrampled on the temple steps a thousand years the wild beast sang the song of desolation in the ears of Isis the wild cats littered in the stony lap of Aman I, another thousand years went by and earth was tilled of unseen hands and sewn with yellow rain from Paradise and the thin veil that separates the known from the unknown was rent and men walked to and fro. Go on, I said. Nay, laughed the other. The little mice and their eagerness had been before you. See, all this corner is gnawed away. Read on again, I said, where the page is whole. Those slips of knowledge you have given me make me thirsty for more. There, begin where this blazing reave initialed red and looks so like the carpet spread by the scribe for the feet of a sovereign truth. What says he here? And she, half pouting to be set back once more to that task, half wondering as she gazed on those magic letters, let her eyes run down the page, then began. And it was the beginning. And in the center void presently there came a nucleus of light. And the light brightened in the grey primeval morning and became definite and articulate. And from the midst of that natal splendor behind which was the unknowable, the life came hitherward. From the midst of that nucleus undescribed, undescribable, there issued presently the primeval sigh that breathed the breath of life into all things. And that sigh thrilled through the empty spaces of the illimitable. It breathed the breath of promise over the frozen hills of the outside planets where the night frost had lasted without beginning. And the waters of ten thousand nameless oceans girding nameless planets were stirred trembling into their depth. It crossed the illimitable spaces where the hurting air-lights swore forever through space in the wake of careering world, and all their whistling wings answered to it. It reverberated through the grey waste of vacuity, and crossed the dark oceans of the outside, even to the black shores of eternal night beyond. And hardly had echo of that breath died away in the hollow of the heavens and the empty wombs of a million barren worlds when the light brightened again and drawing in upon itself became indefinite and took form. And there from, at the moment of primitive conception there came, and just then, as she has read so far as that, when all my faculties were aching to know what came next. Whether this were but the idle scribbling of a vacuous fool or something else, there rose of the sound of soft flutes and tinkling bells in the corridors. As cinna shows wandered piping round the palace to call folk to meals. A smell of roast meat and grilling fish as that procession lifted the curtains between the halls and the sweet martian, slapping the covers of the secrets of the gods together, and pushing the stately tome headlong from the table. Dinner, tis worth a hundred thousand planets to the hungry. Nothing I could say would keep her, and scarcely knowing whether to laugh or to be angry at so unseemly an interruption. But both being purposeless I dug my hands into my pockets and somewhat sulkily refusing Heru's invitation to luncheon in the corridor. Navy rations had not fitted my stomach for these constant debauches of food, strolled into the town again in no very pleasant frame of mind. End of Chapter 6