cheerful carelessness of the place, shuffled the matrimonial pack anew,
and dealt a fresh hand to all the players.  Now I had no wish to avail
myself of a sailor's privilege of a bride in every port, but surely
this game would be interesting enough to see, even if I were but a
disinterested spectator.  As a matter of fact I was something more than
that, and had been thinking a good deal of Heru during the day.  I do
not know whether I actually aspired to her hand--that were a large
order, even if there had been no suspicion in my mind she was already
bespoke in some vague way by the invisible Hath, most abortive of
princes.  But she was undeniably a lovely girl; the more one thought of
her the more she grew upon the fancy, and then the preference she had
shown myself was very gratifying.  Yes, I would certainly see this
quaint ceremonial, even if I took no leading part in it.

The great centre hall of the palace was full of a radiant light
bringing up its ruined columns and intruding creepers to the best
effect when I entered.  Dinner also was just being served, as they
would say in another, and alas! very distant place, and the whole
building thronged with folk. Down the centre low tables with room for
four hundred people were ranged, but they looked quaint enough since
but two hundred were sitting there, all brand-new bachelors about to be
turned into brand new Benedicts, and taking it mightily calmly it
seemed.  Across the hall-top was a raised table similarly arranged and
ornamented; and entering into the spirit of the thing, and little
guessing how stern a reality was to come from the evening, I sat down
in a vacant place near to the dais, and only a few paces from where the
pale, ghost-eyed Hath was already seated.

Almost immediately afterwards music began to buzz all about the
hall--music of the kind the people loved which always seemed to me as
though it were exuding from the tables and benches, so disembodied and
difficult it was to locate; all the sleepy gallants raised their
flower-encircled heads at the same time, seizing their wine-cups,
already filled to the brim, and the door at the bottom of the hall
opening, the ladies, preceded by one carrying a mysterious vase covered
with a glittering cloth, came in.

Now, being somewhat thirsty, I had already drunk half the wine in my
beaker, and whether it was that draught, drugged as all Martian wines
are, or the sheer loveliness of the maids themselves, I cannot say, but
as the procession entered, and, dividing, circled round under the
colonnades of the hall, a sensation of extraordinary felicity came over
me--an emotion of divine contentment purged of all grossness--and I
stared and stared at the circling loveliness, gossamer-clad,
flower-girdled, tripping by me with vapid delight.  Either the wine was
budding in my head, or there was little to choose from amongst them,
for had any of those ladies sat down in the vacant place beside me, I
should certainly have accepted her as a gift from heaven, without
question or cavil.  But one after another they slipped by, modestly
taking their places in the shadows until at last came Princess Heru,
and at the sight of her my soul was stirred.

She came undulating over the white marble, the loveliness of her fairy
person dimmed but scarcely hidden by a robe of softest lawn in colour
like rose-petals, her eyes aglitter with excitement and a charming
blush upon her face.

She came straight up to me, and, resting a dainty hand upon my
shoulder, whispered, "Are you come as a spectator only, dear Mr. Jones,
or do you join in our custom tonight?"

"I came only as a bystander, lady, but the fascination of the
opportunity is deadly--"

"And have you any preference?"--this in the softest little voice from
somewhere in the nape of my neck.  "Strangers sometimes say there are
fair women in Seth."

"None--till you came; and now, as was said a long time ago, 'All is
dross that is not Helen.'  Dearest lady," I ran on, detaining her by
the fingertips and gazing up into those shy and star-like eyes, "must I
indeed put all the hopes your kindness has roused in me these last few
days to a shuffle in yonder urn, taking my chance with all these lazy
fellows?  In that land whereof I was, we would not have had it so, we
loaded our dice in these matters, a strong man there might have a
willing maid though all heaven were set against him!  But give me
leave, sweet lady, and I will ruffle with these fellows; give me a
glance and I will barter my life for your billet when it is drawn, but
to stand idly by and see you won by a cold chance, I cannot do it."

That lady laughed a little and said, "Men make laws, dear Jones, for
women to keep.  It is the rule, and we must not break it."  Then,
gently tugging at her imprisoned fingers and gathering up her skirts to
go, she added, "But it might happen that wit here were better than
sword." Then she hesitated, and freeing herself at last slipped from my
side, yet before she was quite gone half turned again and whispered so
low that no one but I could hear it, "A golden pool, and a silver fish,
and a line no thicker than a hair!" and before I could beg a meaning of
her, had passed down the hall and taken a place with the other
expectant damsels.

"A golden pool," I said to myself, "a silver fish, and a line of hair."
What could she mean?  Yet that she meant something, and something
clearly of importance, I could not doubt.  "A golden pool, and a silver
fish--" I buried my chin in my chest and thought deeply but without
effect while the preparations were made and the fateful urn, each maid
having slipped her name tablet within, was brought down to us, covered
in a beautiful web of rose-coloured tissue, and commenced its round,
passing slowly from hand to hand as each of those handsome, impassive,
fawn-eyed gallants lifted a corner of the web in turn and helped
themselves to fate.

"A golden pool," I muttered, "and a silver fish"--so absorbed in my own
thoughts I hardly noticed the great cup begin its journey, but when it
had gone three or four places the glitter of the lights upon it caught
my eye. It was of pure gold, round-brimmed, and circled about with a
string of the blue convolvulus, which implies delight to these people.
Ay! and each man was plunging his hand into the dark and taking in his
turn a small notch-edged mother-of-pearl billet from it that flashed
soft and silvery as he turned it in his hand to read the name engraved
in unknown characters thereon.  "Why," I said, with a start, "surely
THIS might be the golden pool and these the silver fish--but the
hair-fine line?" And again I meditated deeply, with all my senses on
the watch.

Slowly the urn crept round, and as each man took a ticket from it, and
passed it, smiling, to the seneschal behind him, that official read out
the name upon it, and a blushing damsel slipped from the crowd above,
crossing over to the side of the man with whom chance had thus lightly
linked her for the brief Martian year, and putting her hands in his
they kissed before all the company, and sat down to their places at the
table as calmly as country folk might choose partners at a village fair
in hay-time.

But not so with me.  Each time a name was called I started and stared
at the drawer in a way which should have filled him with alarm had
alarm been possible to the peace-soaked triflers, then turned to glance
to where, amongst the women, my tender little princess was leaning
against a pillar, with drooping head, slowly pulling a convolvulus bud
to pieces.  None drew, though all were thinking of her, as I could tell
in my fingertips.  Keener and keener grew the suspense as name after
name was told and each slim white damsel skipped to the place allotted
her. And all the time I kept muttering to myself about that "golden
pool," wondering and wondering until the urn had passed half round the
tables and was only some three men up from me--and then an idea flashed
across my mind.  I dipped my fingers in the scented water-basin on the
table, drying them carefully on a napkin, and waiting, outwardly as
calm as any, yet inwardly wrung by those tremors which beset all male
creation in such circumstances.

And now at last it was my turn.  The great urn, blazing golden, through
its rosy covering, was in front, and all eyes on me.  I clapped a
sunburnt hand upon its top as though I would take all remaining in it
to myself and stared round at that company--only her herself I durst
not look at!  Then, with a beating heart, I lifted a corner of the web
and slipped my hand into the dark inside, muttering to myself as I did
so, "A golden pool, and a silver fish, and a line no thicker than a
hair." I touched in turn twenty perplexing tablets and was no whit the
wiser, and felt about the sides yet came to nothing, groping here and
there with a rising despair, until as my fingers, still damp and fine
of touch, went round the sides a second time, yes! there was something,
something in the hollow of the fluting, a thought, a thread, and yet
enough.  I took it unseen, lifting it with infinite forbearance, and
the end was weighted, the other tablets slipped and rattled as from
their midst, hanging to that one fine virgin hair, up came a pearly
billet.  I doubted no longer, but snapped the thread, and showed the
tablet, heard Heru's name, read from it amongst the soft applause of
that luxurious company with all the unconcern I could muster.

There she was in a moment, lip to lip with me, before them all, her
eyes more than ever like planets from her native skies, and only the
quick heave of her bosom, slowly subsiding like a ground swell after a
storm, remaining to tell that even Martian blood could sometimes beat
quicker than usual!  She sat down in her place by me in the simplest
way, and soon everything was as merry as could be.  The main meal came
on now, and as far as I could see those Martian gallants had extremely
good appetites, though they drank at first but little, wisely
remembering the strength of their wines.  As for me, I ate of fishes
that never swam in earthly seas, and of strange fowl that never flapped
a way through thick terrestrial air, ate and drank as happy as a king,
and falling each moment more and more in love with the wonderfully
beautiful girl at my side who was a real woman of flesh and blood I
knew, yet somehow so dainty, so pink and white, so unlike other girls
in the smoothness of her outlines, in the subtle grace of each
unthinking attitude, that again and again I looked at her over the rim
of my tankard half fearing she might dissolve into nothing, being the
half-fairy which she was.

Presently she asked, "Did that deed of mine, the hair in the urn,
offend you, stranger?"

"Offend me, lady!" I laughed.  "Why, had it been the blackest crime
that ever came out of a perverse imagination it would have brought its
own pardon with it; I, least of all in this room, have least cause to
be offended."

"I risked much for you and broke our rules."

"Why, no doubt that was so, but 'tis the privilege of your kind to have
some say in this little matter of giving and taking in marriage. I only
marvel that your countrywomen submit so tamely to the quaintest game of
chance I ever played at.

"Ay, and it is women's nature no doubt to keep the laws which others
make, as you have said yourself.  Yet this rule, lady, is one broken
with more credit than kept, and if you have offended no one more than
me, your penance is easily done."

"But I have offended some one," she said, laying her hand on mine with
gentle nervousness in its touch, "one who has the power to hurt, and
enough energy to resent.  Hath, up there at the cross-table, have I
offended deeply tonight, for he hoped to have me, and would have
compelled any other man to barter me for the maid chance assigned to
him; but of you, somehow, he is afraid--I have seen him staring at you,
and changing colour as though he knew something no one else knows--"

"Briefly, charming girl," I said, for the wine was beginning to sing in
my head, and my eyes were blinking stupidly--"briefly, Hath hath thee
not, and there's an end of it.  I would spit a score of Haths, as these
figs are spit on this golden skewer, before I would relinquish a hair
of your head to him, or to any man," and as everything about the great
hall began to look gauzy and unreal through the gathering fumes of my
confusion, I smiled on that gracious lady, and began to whisper I know
not what to her, and whisper and doze, and doze--

I know not how long afterwards it was, whether a minute or an hour, but
when I lifted my head suddenly from the lady's shoulder all the place
was in confusion, every one upon their feet, the talk and the drinking
ceased, and all eyes turned to the far doorway where the curtains were
just dropping again as I looked, while in front of them were standing
three men.

These newcomers were utterly unlike any others--a frightful vision of
ugly strength amidst the lolling loveliness all about.  Low of stature,
broad of shoulder, hairy, deep-chested, with sharp, twinkling eyes, set
far back under bushy eyebrows, retreating foreheads, and flat noses in
faces tanned to a dusky copper hue by exposure to every kind of weather
that racks the extreme Martian climate they were so opposite to all
about me, so quaint and grim amongst those mild, fair-skinned folk,
that at first I thought they were but a disordered creation of my fancy.

I rubbed my eyes and stared and blinked, but no! they were real men, of
flesh and blood, and now they had come down with as much stateliness as
their bandy legs would admit of, into the full glare of the lights to
the centre table where Hath sat.  I saw their splendid apparel, the
great strings of rudely polished gems hung round their hairy necks and
wrists, the cunningly dyed skins of soft-furred animals, green and red
and black, wherewith their limbs were swathed, and then I heard some
one by me whisper in a frightened tone, "The envoys from over seas."

"Oh," I thought sleepily to myself, "so these are the ape-men of the
western woods, are they?  Those who long ago vanquished my
white-skinned friends and yearly come to claim their tribute.  Jove,
what hay they must have made of them!  How those peach-skinned girls
must have screamed and the downy striplings by them felt their dimpled
knees knock together, as the mad flood of barbarians came pouring over
from the forest, and long ago stormed their citadels like a stream of
red lava, as deadly, as irresistible, as remorseless!"  And I lay
asprawl upon my arms on the table watching them with the stupid
indifference I thought I could so well afford.

Meanwhile Hath was on foot, pale and obsequious like others in the
presence of those dread ambassadors, but more collected, I thought.
With the deepest bows he welcomed them, handing them drink in a golden
State cup, and when they had drunk (I heard the liquor running down
their great throats, in the frightened hush, like water in a runnel on
a wet day), they wiped their fierce lips upon their furry sleeves, and
the leader began reciting the tribute for the year.  So much corn, so
much wine--and very much it was--so many thousands ells of cloth and
webbing, and so much hammered gold, and sinah and lar, precious metal
of which I knew nothing as yet; and ever as he went growling through
the list in his harsh animal voice, he refreshed his memory with a
coloured stick whereon a notch was made for every item, the woodmen not
having come as yet, apparently, to the gentler art of written signs and
symbols. Longer and longer that caravan of unearned wealth stretched
out before my fancy, but at last it was done, or all but done, and the
head envoy, passing the painted stick to a man behind, folded his bare,
sinewy arms, upon which the red fell bristles as it does upon a
gorilla's, across his ample chest, and, including us all in one general
scowl, turned to Hath as he said--

"All this for Ar-hap, the wood-king, my master and yours; all this, and
the most beautiful woman here tonight at your tables!"

"An item," I smiled stupidly to myself, for indeed I was very sleepy
and had no nice perception of things, "which shows his majesty with the
two-pronged name is a jolly fellow after all, and knows wealth is
incomplete without the crown and priming of all riches.  I wonder how
the Martian boys will like this postscript," and chin on hand, and eyes
that would hardly stay open, I watched to see what would happen next.
There was a little conversation between the prince and the ape-man;
then I saw Hath the traitor point in my direction and say--

"Since you ask and will be advised, then, mighty sir, there can be no
doubt of it, the most beautiful woman here tonight is undoubtedly she
who sits yonder by him in blue."

"A very pretty compliment!" I thought, too dull to see what was coming
quickly, "and handsome of Hath, all things considered."

And so I dozed and dozed, and then started, and stared!  Was I in my
senses?  Was I mad, or dreaming?  The drunkenness dropped from me like
a mantle; with a single, smothered cry I came to myself and saw that it
was all too true.  The savage envoy had come down the hall at Hath's
vindictive prompting, had lifted my fair girl to her feet, and there,
even as I looked, had drawn her, white as death, into the red circle of
his arm, and with one hand under her chin had raised her sweet face to
within an inch of his, and was staring at her with small, ugly eyes.

"Yes," said the enjoy, more interestedly than he had spoken yet, "it
will do; the tribute is accepted--for Ar-hap, my master!"  And taking
shrinking Heru by the wrist, and laying a heavy hand upon her shoulder,
he was about to lead her up the hall.

I was sober enough then.  I was on foot in an instant, and before all
the glittering company, before those simpering girls and pale Martian
youths, who sat mumbling their fingers, too frightened to lift their
eyes from off their half-finished dinners, I sprang at the envoy.  I
struck him with my clenched fist on the side of his bullet head, and he
let go of Heru, who slipped insensible from his hairy chest like a
white cloud slipping down the slopes of a hill at sunrise, and turned
on me with a snort of rage. We stared at each other for a minute, and
then I felt the wine fumes roaring in my head; I rushed at him and
closed.  It was like embracing a mountain bull, and he responded with a
hug that made my ribs crackle. For a minute we were locked together
like that, swinging here and there, and then getting a hand loose, I
belaboured him so unmercifully that he put his head down, and that was
what I wanted.  I got a new hold of him as we staggered and plunged,
roaring the while like the wild beasts we were, the teeth chattering in
the Martian heads as they watched us, and then, exerting all my
strength, lifted him fairly from his feet and with supreme effort swung
him up, shoulder high, and with a mighty heave hurled him across the
tables, flung that ambassador, whom no Martian dared look upon,
crashing and sprawling through the gold and silver of the feast,
whirled him round with such a splendid send that bench and trestle,
tankards and flagons, chairs and cloths and candelabras all went down
into thundering chaos with him, and the envoy only stayed when his
sacred person came to harbour amongst the westral odds and ends, the
soiled linen, and dirty platters of our wedding feast.

I remember seeing him there on hands and knees, and then the liquor I
had had would not be denied.  In vain I drew my hands across my
drooping eyelids, in vain I tried to master my knees that knocked
together. The spell of the love-drink that Heru, blushing, had held to
my lips was on me.  Its soft, overwhelming influence rose like a
prismatic fog between me and my enemy, everything again became hazy and
dreamlike, and feebly calling on Heru, my chin dropped upon my chest,
my limbs relaxed, and I slipped down in drowsy oblivion before my rival.

CHAPTER VIII

They must have carried me, still under the influence of wine fumes, to
the chamber where I slept that night, for when I woke the following
morning my surroundings were familiar enough, though a glorious maze of
uncertainties rocked to and fro in my mind.

Was it a real feast we had shared in overnight, or only a quaint dream?
Was Heru real or only a lovely fancy?  And those hairy ruffians of whom
a horrible vision danced before my waking eyes, were they fancy too?
No, my wrists still ached with the strain of the tussle, the quaint,
sad wine taste was still on my lips--it was all real enough, I decided,
starting up in bed; and if it was real where was the little princess?
What had they done with her?  Surely they had not given her to the
ape-men--cowards though they were they could not have been cowards
enough for that.  And as I wondered a keen, bright picture of the
hapless maid as I saw her last blossomed before my mind's eye, the
ambassadors on either side holding her wrists, and she shrinking from
them in horror while her poor, white face turned to me for rescue in
desperate pleading--oh! I must find her at all costs; and leaping from
bed I snatched up those trousers without which the best of heroes is
nothing, and had hardly got into them when there came the patter of
light feet without and a Martian, in a hurry for once, with half a
dozen others behind him, swept aside the curtains of my doorway.

They peeped and peered all about the room, then one said, "Is Princess
Heru with you, sir?"

"No," I answered roughly.  "Saints alive, man, do you think I would
have you tumbling in here over each other's heels if she were?"

"Then it must indeed have been Heru," he said, speaking in an awed
voice to his fellows, "whom we saw carried down to the harbour at
daybreak by yonder woodmen," and the pink upon their pretty cheeks
faded to nothing at the suggestion.

"What!" I roared, "Heru taken from the palace by a handful of men and
none of you infernal rascals--none of you white-livered abortions
lifted a hand to save her--curse on you a thousand times.  Out of my
way, you churls!"  And snatching up coat and hat and sword I rushed
furiously down the long, marble stairs just as the short Martian night
was giving place to lavender-coloured light of morning.  I found my way
somehow down the deserted corridors where the air was heavy with
aromatic vapours; I flew by curtained niches and chambers where amongst
mounds of half-withered flowers the Martian lovers were slowly waking.
Down into the banquethall I sped, and there in the twilight was the
litter of the feast still about--gold cups and silver, broken bread and
meat, the convolvulus flowers all turning their pallid faces to the
rosy daylight, making pools of brightness between the shadows.  Amongst
the litter little sapphire-coloured finches were feeding, twittering
merrily to themselves as they hopped about, and here and there down the
long tables lay asprawl a belated reveller, his empty oblivion-phial
before him, his curly head upon his arms, dreaming perhaps of last
night's feast and a neglected bride dozing dispassionate in some
distant chamber. But Heru was not there and little I cared for
twittering finches or sighing damsels.  With hasty feet I rushed down
the hall out into the cool, sweet air of the planet morning.

There I met one whom I knew, and he told me he had been among the crowd
and had heard the woodmen had gone no farther than the river gate, that
Heru was with them beyond a doubt.  I would not listen to more. "Good!"
I shouted.  "Get me a horse and just a handful of your sleek kindred
and we will pull the prize from the bear's paw even yet! Surely," I
said, turning to a knot of Martian youths who stood listening a few
steps away, "surely some of you will come with me at this pinch? The
big bullies are very few; the sea runs behind them; the maid in their
clutch is worth fighting for; it needs but one good onset, five
minutes' gallantry, and she is ours again.  Think how fine it will look
to bring her back before yon sleepy fellows have found their weapons.
You, there, with the blue tunic! you look a proper fellow, and
something of a heart should beat under such gay wrappings, will you
come with me?"

But blue-mantle, biting his thumbs, murmured he had not breakfasted yet
and edged away behind his companions.  Wherever I looked eyes dropped
and timid hands fidgeted as their owners backed off from my dangerous
enthusiasm.  There was obviously no help to be had from them, and
meantime the precious moments were flying, so with a disdainful glance
I turned on my heels and set off alone as hard as I could go for the
harbour.

But it was too late.  I rushed through the marketplace where all was
silent and deserted; I ran on to the wharves beyond and they were empty
save for the litter and embers of the fires Ar-hap's men had made
during their stay; I dashed out to the landing-place, and there at the
hythe the last boat-loads of the villains were just embarking, two
boatloads of them twenty yards from shore, and another still upon the
beach. This latter was careening over as a dusky group of men lifted
aboard to a heap of tumbled silks and stuffs in the stern such a sweet
piece of insensible merchandise as no man, I at least of all, could
mistake. It was Heru herself, and the rogues were ladling her on board
like so much sandal-wood or cotton sheeting.  I did not wait for more,
but out came my sword, and yielding to a reckless impulse, for which
perhaps last night's wine was as much to blame as anything, I sprang
down the steps and leapt aboard of the boat just as it was pushed off
upon the swift tide. Full of Bersark rage, I cut one brawny
copper-coloured thief down, and struck another with my fist between the
eyes so that he went headlong into the water, sinking like lead, and
deep into the great target of his neighbour's chest I drove my blade.
Had there been a man beside me, had there been but two or three of all
those silken triflers, too late come on the terraces above to watch, we
might have won.  But all alone what could I do?  That last red beast
turned on my blade, and as he fell dragged me half down with him.  I
staggered up, and tugging the metal from him turned on the next.

At that moment the cause of all the turmoil, roused by the fighting,
came to herself, and sitting up on the piled plunder in the boat stared
round for a moment with a childish horror at the barbarians whose prize
she was, then at me, then at the dead man at my feet whose blood was
welling in a red tide from the wound in his breast.  As the full
meaning of the scene dawned upon her she started to her feet, looking
wonderfully beautiful amongst those dusky forms, and extending her
hands to me began to cry in the most piteous way.  I sprang forward,
and as I did so saw an ape-man clap his hairy paw over her mouth and
face--it was like an eclipse of the moon by a red earth-shadow, I
thought at the moment--and drag her roughly back, but that was about
the last I remembered.  As I turned to hit him standing on the slippery
thwart, another rogue crept up behind and let drive with a club he had
in hand.  The cudgel caught me sideways on the head, a glancing shot.
I can recall a blaze of light, a strange medley of sounds in my ears,
and then, clutching at a pile of stuffs as I fell, a tall bower of
spray rising on either hand, and the cool shock of the blue sea as I
plunged headlong in--but nothing after that!

How long after I know not, but presently a tissue of daylight crept
into my eyes, and I awoke again.  It was better than nothing perhaps,
yet it was a poor awakening.  The big sun lay low down, and the day was
all but done; so much I guessed as I rocked in that light with an
undulating movement, and then as my senses returned more fully,
recognised with a start of wonder that I was still in the water,
floating on a swift current into the unknown on an air-filled pile of
silken stuffs which had been pulled down with me from the boat when I
got my ganging from yonder rascal's mace.  It was a wet couch, sodden
and chilly, but as the freshening evening wind blew on my face and the
darkening water lapped against my forehead I revived more fully.

Where had we come to?  I turned an aching neck, and all along on both
sides seemed to stretch steep, straight coasts about a mile or so
apart, in the shadow of the setting sun black as ebony.  Between the
two the hampered water ran quickly, with, away on the right, some
shallow sandy spits and islands covered with dwarf bushes--chilly,
inhospitable-looking places they seemed as I turned my eyes upon them;
but he who rides helpless down an evening tide stands out for no great
niceties of landing-place; could I but reach them they would make at
least a drier bed than this of mine, and at that thought, turning over,
I found all my muscles as stiff as iron, the sinews of my neck and
forearms a mass of agonies and no more fit to swim me to those reedy
swamps, which now, as pain and hunger began to tell, seemed to wear the
aspects of paradise.

With a groan I dropped back upon my raft and watched the islands
slipping by, while over my feet the southern sky darkened to purple.
There was no help there, but glancing round away on the left and a few
furlongs from me, I noticed on the surface of the water two converging
strands of brightness, an angle the point of which seemed to be coming
towards me.  Nearer it came and nearer, right across my road, until I
could see a black dot at the point, a head presently developed, then as
we approached the ears and antlers of a swimming stag.  It was a huge
beast as it loomed up against the glow, bigger than any mortal stag
ever was--the kind of fellow-traveller no one would willingly accost,
but even if I had wished to get out of its path I had no power to do so.

Closer and closer we came, one of us drifting helplessly, and the other
swimming strongly for the islands.  When we were about a furlong apart
the great beast seemed to change its course, mayhap it took the
wreckage on which I floated for an outlying shoal, something on which
it could rest a space in that long swim.  Be this as it may, the beast
came hurtling down on me lip deep in the waves, a mighty brown head
with pricked ears that flicked the water from them now and then, small
bright eyes set far back, and wide palmated antlers on a mighty
forehead, like the dead branches of a tree.  What that Martian mountain
elk had hoped for can only be guessed, what he met with was a tangle of
floating finery carrying a numbed traveller on it, and with a snort of
disappointment he turned again.

It was a poor chance, but better than nothing, and as he turned I tried
to throw a strand of silk I had unwound from the sodden mass over his
branching tines.  Quick as thought the beast twisted his head aside and
tossed his antlers so that the try was fruitless.  But was I to lose my
only chance of shore?  With all my strength I hurled myself upon him,
missing my clutch again by a hair's-breadth and going headlong into the
salt furrow his chest was turning up.  Happily I kept hold of the web,
for the great elk then turned back, passing between me and the ruck of
stuff and getting thereby the silk under his chin, and as I came
gasping to the top once more round came that dainty wreckage over his
back, and I clutched it, and sooner than it takes to tell I was towing
to the shore as perhaps no one was ever towed before.

The big beast dragged the ruck like withered weed behind him, bellowing
all the time with a voice which made the hills echo all round; and
then, when he got his feet upon the shallows, rose dripping and
mountainous, a very cliff of black hide and limb against the night
shine, and with a single sweep of his antlers tore the webbing from me,
who lay prone and breathless in the mud, and, thinking it was his
enemy, hurled the limp bundle on the beach, and then, having pounded it
with his cloven feet into formless shreds, bellowed again victoriously
and went off into the darkness of the forests.

CHAPTER IX

I landed, stiff enough as you will guess, but pleased to be on shore
again.  It was a melancholy neighbourhood of low islands, overgrown
with rank grass and bushes, salt water encircling them, and inside
sandy dunes and hummocks with shallow pools, gleaming ghostly in the
retreating daylight, while beyond these rose the black bosses of what
looked like a forest.  Thither I made my way, plunging uncomfortably
through shallows, and tripping over blackened branches which, lying
just below the surface, quivered like snakes as the evening breeze
ruffled each surface, until the ground hardened under foot, and
presently I was standing, hungry and faint but safe, on dry land again.

The forest was so close to the sea, one could not advance without
entering it, and once within its dark arcades every way looked equally
gloomy and hopeless.  I struggled through tangles night made more and
more impenetrable each minute, until presently I could go no further,
and where a dense canopy of trees overhead gave out for a minute on the
edge of a swampy hollow, I determined to wait for daylight.

Never was there a more wet or weary traveller, or one more desperately
lonely than he who wrapped himself up in the miserable insufficiency of
his wet rags, and without fire or supper crept amongst the exposed
roots of a tree growing out of a bank, and prepared to hope grimly for
morning.

Round and round meanwhile was drawn the close screen of night, till the
clearing in front was blotted out, and only the tree-tops, black as
rugged hills one behind the other, stood out against the heavy purple
of the circlet of sky above.  As the evening deepened the quaintest
noises began on every hand--noises so strange and bewildering that as I
cowered down with my teeth chattering, and stared hard into the
impenetrable, they could be likened to nothing but the crying of all
the souls of dead things since the beginning.  Never was there such an
infernal chorus as that which played up the Martian stars.  Down there
in front, where hummock grass was growing, some beast squeaked
continuously, till I shouted at him, then he stopped a minute, and
began again in entirely another note. Away on the hills two rival
monsters were calling to each other in tones so hollow they seemed as I
listened to penetrate through me, and echo out of my heart again.  Far
overhead, gigantic bats were flitting, the shadow of their wings
dimming a dozen universes at once, and crying to each other in shrill
tones that rent the air like tearing silk.

As I listened to those vampires discussing their infernal loves under
the stars, from a branch right overhead broke such a deathly howl from
the throat of a wandering forest cat that everything else was hushed
for a moment.  All about a myriad insects were making night giddy with
their ghostly fires, while underground and from the labyrinths of
matted roots came quaint sounds of rustling snakes and forest pigs, and
all the lesser things that dig and scratch and growl.

Yet I was desperately sleepy, my sword hung heavy as lead at my side,
my eyelids drooped, and so at last I dozed uneasily for an hour or two.
Then, all on a sudden, I came wide awake with a shock.  The night was
quieter now; away in the forest depth strange noises still arose, but
close at hand was a strange hush, like the hush of expectation, and,
listening wonderingly, I was aware of slow, heavy footsteps coming up
from the river, now two or three steps together, then a pause, then
another step or two, and as I bent towards the approaching thing,
staring into the darkness, my strained senses were conscious of another
approach, as like as could be, coming from behind me.  On they came,
making the very ground quake with their weight, till I judged that both
were about on the edge of the clearing, two vast rat-like shadows, but
as big as elephants, and bringing a most intolerable smell of sour
slime with them. There, on the edge of the amphitheatre, each for the
first time appeared to become aware of the other's presence--the
footsteps stopped dead. I could hear the water dripping from the fur of
those giant brutes amongst the shadows and the deep breathing of the
one nearest me, a scanty ten paces off, but not another sound in the
stillness.

Minute after minute passed, yet neither moved.  A half-hour grew to a
full hour, and that hour lengthened amid the keenest tension till my
ears ached with listening, and my eyes were sore with straining into
the blackness.  At last I began to wonder whether those earth-shaking
beasts had not been an evil dream, and was just venturing to stretch
out a cramped leg, and rally myself upon my cowardice, when, without
warning, at my elbow rose the most ear-piercing scream of rage that
ever came from a living throat.  There was a sweeping rush in the
darkness which I could feel but not see, and with a shock the two
gladiators met in the midst of the arena.  Over and over they went
screaming and struggling, and slipping and plunging.  I could hear them
tearing at each other, and the sharp cries of pain, first one and then
another gave as claw or tooth got home, and all the time, though the
ground was quaking under their struggles and the air full of horrible
uproar, not a thing was to be seen.  I did not even know what manner of
beasts they were who rocked and rolled and tore at each other's
throats, but I heard their teeth snapping, and their fierce breath in
the pauses of the struggle, and could but wait in a huddle amongst the
roots until it was over. To and fro they went, now at the far side of
the dark clearing, now so close that hot drops of blood from their jaws
fell on my face like rain in the darkness.  It seemed as though the
fight would never end, but presently there was more of worrying in it
and less of snapping; it was clear one or the other had had enough and
as I marked this those black shadows came gasping and struggling
towards me.  There was a sudden sharp cry, a desperate final
tussle--before which strong trees snapped and bushes were flattened out
like grass, not twenty yards away--and then for a minute all was silent.

One of them had killed, and as I sat rooted to the spot I was forced to
listen while his enemy tore him up and ate him.  Many a banquet have I
been at, but never an uglier one than that.  I sat in the darkness
while the unknown thing at my feet ripped the flesh from his half-dead
rival in strips, and across the damp night wind came the reek of that
abominable feast--the reek of blood and spilt entrails--until I turned
away my face in loathing, and was nearly starting to my feet to venture
a rush into the forest shadows.  But I was spellbound, and remained
listening to the heavy munch of blood-stained jaws until presently I
was aware other and lesser feasters were coming.  There was a twinkle
of hungry eyes all about the limits of the area, the shine of green
points of envious fire that circled round in decreasing orbits, as the
little foxes and jackals came crowding in.  One fellow took me for a
rock, so still I sat, putting his hot, soft paws upon my knee for a
space, and others passed me so near I could all but touch them.

The big beast had taken himself off by this time, and there must have
been several hundreds of these newcomers.  A merry time they had of it;
the whole place was full of the green, hurrying eyes, and amidst the
snap of teeth and yapping and quarrelling I could hear the flesh being
torn from the red bones in every direction.  One wolf-like individual
brought a mass of hot liver to eat between my feet, but I gave him a
kick, and sent him away much to his surprise.  Gradually, however, the
sound of this unholy feast died away, and, though you may hardly
believe it, I fell off into a doze.  It was not sleep, but it served
the purpose, and when in an hour or two a draught of cool air roused
me, I awoke, feeling more myself again.

Slowly morning came, and the black wall of forest around became full of
purple interstices as the east brightened.  Those glimmers of light
between bough and trunk turned to yellow and red, the day-shine
presently stretched like a canopy from point to point of the treetops
on either side of my sleeping-place, and I arose.

All my limbs were stiff with cold, my veins emptied by hunger and
wounds, and for a space I had not even strength to move.  But a little
rubbing softened my cramped muscles presently and limping painfully
down to the place of combat, I surveyed the traces of that midnight
fight.  I will not dwell upon it.  It was ugly and grim; the trampled
grass, the giant footmarks, each enringing its pool of curdled blood;
the broken bushes, the grooved mud-slides where the unknown brutes had
slid in deadly embrace; the hollows, the splintered boughs, their
ragged points tufted with skin and hair--all was sickening to me.  Yet
so hungry was I that when I turned towards the odious remnants of the
vanquished--a shapeless mass of abomination--my thoughts flew at once
to breakfasting!  I went down and inspected the victim cautiously--a
huge rat-like beast as far as might be judged from the bare uprising
ribs--all that was left of him looking like the framework of a schooner
yacht.  His heart lay amongst the offal, and my knife came out to cut a
meal from it, but I could not do it.  Three times I essayed the task,
hunger and disgust contending for mastery; three times turned back in
loathing.  At last I could stand the sight no more, and, slamming the
knife up again, turned on my heels, and fairly ran for fresh air and
the shore, where the sea was beginning to glimmer in the light a few
score yards through the forest stems.  There, once more out on the
open, on a pebbly beach, I stripped, spreading my things out to dry on
the stones, and laying myself down with the lapping of the waves in my
ears, and the first yellow sunshine thawing my limbs, tried to piece
together the hurrying events of the last few days.

What were my gay Martians doing?  Lazy dogs to let me, a stranger, be
the only one to draw sword in defence of their own princess!  Where was
poor Heru, that sweet maiden wife?  The thought of her in the hands of
the ape-men was odious.  And yet was I not mad to try to rescue, or
even to follow her alone?  If by any chance I could get off this
beast-haunted place and catch up with the ravishers, what had I to look
for from them except speedy extinction, and that likely enough by the
most painful process they were acquainted with?

The other alternative of going back empty handed was terribly
ignominious. I had lectured the amiable young manhood of Seth so
soundly on the subject of gallantry, and set them such a good example
on two occasions, that it would be bathos to saunter back, hands in
pockets, and confess I knew nothing of the lady's fate and had been
daunted by the first night alone in the forest.  Besides, how dull it
would be in that beautiful, tumble-down old city without Heru, with no
expectation day by day of seeing her sylph-like form and hearing the
merry tinkle of her fairy laughter as she scoffed at the unknown
learning collected by her ancestors in a thousand laborious years.  No!
I would go on for certain.  I was young, in love, and angry, and before
those qualifications difficulties became light.

Meanwhile, the first essential was breakfast of some kind.  I arose,
stretched, put on my half-dried clothes, and mounting a low hummock on
the forest edge looked around.  The sun was riding up finely into the
sky, and the sea to the eastward shone for leagues and leagues in the
loveliest azure.  Where it rippled on my own beach and those of the low
islands noted over night, a wonderful fire of blue and red played on
the sands as though the broken water were full of living gems.  The sky
was full of strange gulls with long, forked tails, and a lovely little
flying lizard with transparent wings of the palest green--like those of
a grasshopper--was flitting about picking up insect stragglers.

All this was very charming, but what I kept saying to myself was
"Streaky rashers and hot coffee: rashers and coffee and rolls," and,
indeed, had the gates of Paradise themselves opened at that moment I
fear my first look down the celestial streets within would have been
for a restaurant. They did not, and I was just turning away
disconsolate when my eye caught, ascending from behind the next bluff
down the beach, a thin strand of smoke rising into the morning air.

It was nothing so much in itself--a thin spiral creeping upwards
mast-high, then flattening out into a mushroom head--but it meant
everything to me.  Where there was fire there must be humanity, and
where there was humanity--ay, to the very outlayers of the
universe--there must be breakfast.  It was a splendid thought; I rushed
down the hillock and went gaily for that blue thread amongst the reeds.
It was not two hundred yards away, and soon below me was a tiny bay
with bluest water frilling a silver beach, and in the midst of it a
fire on a hearth dancing round a pot that simmered gloriously.  But of
an owner there was nothing to be seen.  I peered here and there on the
shore, but nothing moved, while out to sea the water was shining like
molten metal with not a dot upon it!--what did it matter?  I laughed
as, pleased and hungry, I slipped down the bank and strode across the
sands; it pleased Fate to play bandy with me, and if it sent me
supperless to bed, why, here was restitution in the way of breakfast.
I took up a morsel of the stuff in the kettle on a handy stick and
found it good--indeed, I knew it at once as a very dainty mess made
from the roots of a herb the Martians greatly liked; An had piled my
platter with it when we supped that night in the market-place of Seth,
and the sweet white stuff had melted into my corporal essence, it
seemed, without any gross intermediate process of digestion.  And here
I was again, hungry, sniffing the fragrant breath of a full meal and
not a soul in sight--I should have been a fool not to have eaten.  So
thinking, down I sat, taking the pot from its place, and when it was a
little cool plunging my hands into it and feasting with as good an
appetite as ever a man had before.

It was gloriously ambrosial, and deeper and deeper I went, with the
tall stalk of the smoke in front growing from the hearth-stones like
some strange new plant, the pleasant sunshine on my back, and never a
thought for anything but the task in hand.  Deeper and deeper,
oblivious of all else, until to get the very last drops I lifted the
pipkin up and putting back my head drank in that fashion.

It was only when with a sigh of pleasure I lowered it slowly again that
over the rim as it sank there dawned upon me the vision of a Martian
standing by an empty canoe on the edge of the water and regarding me
with calm amazement.  I was, in fact, so astonished that for a minute
the empty pot stood still before my face, and over its edge we stared
at each other in mute surprise, then with all the dignity that might be
I laid the vessel down between my feet and waited for the newcomer to
speak.  She was a girl by her yellow garb, a fisherwoman, it seemed,
for in the prow of her craft was piled a net upon which the scales of
fishes were twinkling--a Martian, obviously, but something more robust
than most of them, a savour of honest work about her sunburnt face
which my pallid friends away yonder were lacking in, and when we had
stared at each other for a few moments in silence she came forward a
step or two and said without a trace of fear or shyness, "Are you a
spirit, sir?

"Why," I answered, "about as much, no more and no less, than most of
us."

"Aye," she said.  "I thought you were, for none but spirits live here
upon this island; are you for good or evil?"

"Far better for the breakfast of which I fear I have robbed you, but
wandering along the shore and finding this pot boiling with no owner, I
ventured to sample it, and it was so good my appetite got the better of
manners."

The girl bowed, and standing at a respectful distance asked if I would
like some fish as well; she had some, but not many, and if I would eat
she would cook them for me in a minute--it was not often, she added
lightly, she had met one of my kind before.  In fact, it was obvious
that simple person did actually take me for a being of another world,
and was it for me to say she was wrong?  So adopting a dignity worthy
of my reputation I nodded gravely to her offer.  She fetched from the
boat four little fishes of the daintiest kind imaginable.  They were
each about as big as a hand and pale blue when you looked down upon
them, but so clear against the light that every bone and vein in their
bodies could be traced.  These were wrapped just as they were in a
broad, green leaf and then the Martian, taking a pointed stick, made a
hollow in the white ashes, laid them in side by side, and drew the hot
dust over again.

While they cooked we chatted as though the acquaintance were the most
casual thing in the world, and I found it was indeed an island we were
on and not the mainland, as I had hoped at first.  Seth, she told me,
was far away to the eastward, and if the woodmen had gone by in their
ships they would have passed round to the north-west of where we were.

I spent an hour or two with that amiable individual, and, it is to be
hoped, sustained the character of a spiritual visitant with
considerable dignity.  In one particular at least, that, namely, of
appetite, I did honour to my supposed source, and as my entertainer
would not hear of payment in material kind, all I could do was to show
her some conjuring tricks, which greatly increased her belief in my
supernatural origin, and to teach her some new hitches and knots, using
her fishing-line as a means of illustration, a demonstration which
called from her the natural observation that we must be good sailors
"up aloft" since we knew so much about cordage, then we parted.

She had seen nothing of the woodmen, though she had heard they had been
to Seth and thought, from some niceties of geographical calculation
which I could not follow, they would have crossed to the north, as just
stated, of her island.  There she told me, with much surprise at my
desire for the information, how I might, by following the forest track
to the westward coast, make my way to a fishing village, where they
would give me a canoe and direct me, since such was my extraordinary
wish, to the place where, if anywhere, the wild men had touched on
their way home.

She filled my wallet with dried honey-cakes and my mouth with sugar
plums from her little store, then down on her knees went that poor waif
of a worn-out civilisation and kissed my hands in humble farewell, and
I, blushing to be so saluted, and after all but a sailor, got her by
the rosy fingers and lifted her up shoulder high, and getting one hand
under her chin and the other behind her head kissed her twice upon her
pretty cheeks; and so, I say, we parted.

CHAPTER X

Off into the forest I went, feeling a boyish elation to be so free nor
taking heed or count of the reckless adventure before me.  The Martian
weather for the moment was lovely and the many-coloured grass lush and
soft under foot.  Mile after mile I went, heeding the distance lightly,
the air was so elastic.  Now pressing forward as the main interest of
my errand took the upper hand, and remembrance of poor Heru like a
crushed white flower in the red grip of those cruel ravishers came upon
me, and then pausing to sigh with pleasure or stand agape--forgetful
even of her--in wonder of the unknown loveliness about me.

And well might I stare!  Everything in that forest was wonderful!
There were plants which turned from colour to colour with the varying
hours of the day.  While others had a growth so swift it was dangerous
to sit in their neighbourhood since the long, succulent tendrils
clambering from the parent stem would weave you into a helpless tangle
while you gazed, fascinated, upon them.  There were plants that climbed
and walked; sighing plants who called the winged things of the air to
them with a noise so like to a girl sobbing that again and again I
stopped in the tangled path to listen.  There were green bladder-mosses
which swam about the surface of the still pools like gigantic
frog-broods.  There were on the ridges warrior trees burning in the
vindictiveness of a long forgotten cause--a blaze of crimson scimitar
thorns from root to topmost twig; and down again in the cool hollows
were lady-bushes making twilight of the green gloom with their cloudy
ivory blossoms and filling the shadows with such a heavy scent that
head and heart reeled with fatal pleasure as one pushed aside their
branches.  Every river-bed was full of mighty reeds, whose stems
clattered together when the wind blew like swords on shields, and every
now and then a bit of forest was woven together with the ropey stems of
giant creepers till no man or beast could have passed save for the
paths which constant use had kept open through the mazes.

All day long I wandered on through those wonderful woodlands, and in
fact loitered so much over their infinite marvels that when sundown
came all too soon there was still undulating forest everywhere, vistas
of fairy glades on every hand, peopled with incredible things and
echoing with sounds that excited the ears as much as other things
fascinated the eyes, but no sign of the sea or my fishing village
anywhere.

It did not matter; a little of the Martian leisureliness was getting
into my blood: "If not today, why then tomorrow," as An would have
said; and with this for comfort I selected a warm, sandy hollow under
the roots of a big tree, made my brief arrangements for the night, ate
some honey cakes, and was soon sleeping blissfully.

I woke early next morning, after many hours of interrupted dreams, and
having nothing to do till the white haze had lifted and made it
possible to start again, rested idly a time on my elbow and watched the
sunshine filter into the recesses.

Very pretty it was to see the thick canopy overhead, by star-light so
impenetrable, open its chinks and fissures as the searching sun came
upon it; to see the pin-hole gaps shine like spangles presently, the
spaces broaden into lesser suns, and even the thick leafage brighten
and shine down on me with a soft sea-green radiance.  The sunward sides
of the tree-stems took a glow, and the dew that ran dripping down their
mossy sides trickled blood-red to earth.  Elsewhere the shadows were
still black, and strange things began to move in them--things we in our
middle-aged world have never seen the likeness of: beasts half birds,
birds half creeping things, and creeping things which it seemed to me
passed through lesser creations down to the basest life that crawls
without interruption or division.

It was not for me, a sailor, to know much of such things, yet some I
could not fail to notice.  On one grey branch overhead, jutting from a
tree-stem where a patch of velvet moss made in the morning glint a
fairy bed, a wonderful flower unfolded.  It was a splendid bud, ivory
white, cushioned in leaves, and secured to its place by naked white
roots that clipped the branch like fingers of a lady's hand.  Even as I
looked it opened, a pale white star, and hung pensive and inviting on
its mossy cushion.  From it came such a ravishing odour that even I, at
the further end of the great scale of life, felt my pulses quicken and
my eyes brighten with cupidity.  I was in the very act of climbing the
tree, but before I could move hand or foot two things happened, whether
you take my word for them or no.

Firstly, up through a glade in the underwood, attracted by the odour,
came an ugly brown bird with a capacious beak and shining claws.  He
perched near by, and peeped and peered until he made out the flower
pining on her virgin stem, whereat off he hopped to her branch and
there, with a cynical chuckle, strutted to and fro between her and the
main stem like an ill genius guarding a fairy princess.

Surely Heaven would not allow him to tamper with so chaste a bud! My
hand reached for a stone to throw at him when happened the second
thing.  There came a gentle pat upon the woodland floor, and from a
tree overhead dropped down another living plant like to the one above
yet not exactly similar, a male, my instincts told me, in full solitary
blossom like her above, cinctured with leaves, and supported by half a
score of thick white roots that worked, as I looked, like the limbs of
a crab.  In a twinkling that parti-coloured gentleman vegetable near me
was off to the stem upon which grew his lady love; running and
scrambling, dragging the finery of his tasselled petals behind, it was
laughable to watch his eagerness.  He got a grip of the tree and up he
went, "hand over hand," root over root.  I had just time to note others
of his species had dropped here and there upon the ground, and were
hurrying with frantic haste to the same destination when he reached the
fatal branch, and was straddling victoriously down it, blind to all but
love and longing.  That ill-omened bird who stood above the
maiden-flower let him come within a stalk's length, so near that the
white splendour of his sleeping lady gleamed within arms' reach, then
the great beak was opened, the great claws made a clutch, the gallant's
head was yanked from his neck, and as it went tumbling down the maw of
the feathered thing his white legs fell spinning through space, and lay
knotting themselves in agony upon the ground for a minute or two before
they relaxed and became flaccid in the repose of death. Another and
another vegetable suitor made for that fatal tryst, and as each came up
the snap of the brown bird's beak was all their obsequies. At last no
more came, and then that Nemesis of claws and quills walked over to the
girl-flower, his stomach feathers ruffled with repletion, the green
blood of her lovers dripping from his claws, and pulled her golden
heart out, tore her white limbs one from the other, and swallowed her
piecemeal before my very eyes!  Then up in wrath I jumped and yelled at
him till the woods echoed, but too late to stay his sacrilege.

By this time the sun was bathing everything in splendour, and turning
away from the wonders about me, I set off at best pace along the
well-trodden path which led without turning to the west coast village
where the canoes were.

It proved far closer than expected.  As a matter of fact the forest in
this direction grew right down to the water's edge; the salt-loving
trees actually overhanging the waves--one of the pleasantest sights in
nature--and thus I came right out on top of the hamlet before there had
been an indication of its presence.  It occupied two sides of a pretty
little bay, the third side being flat land given over to the
cultivation of an enormous species of gourd whose characteristic yellow
flowers and green, succulent leaves were discernible even at this
distance.

I branched off along the edge of the surf and down a dainty little
flowery path, noticing meanwhile how the whole bay was filled by
hundreds of empty canoes, while scores of others were drawn up on the
strand, and then the first thing I chanced upon was a group of
people--youthful, of course, with the eternal Martian bloom--and in the
splendid simplicity of almost complete nakedness.  My first idea was
that they were bathing, and fixing my eyes on the tree-tops with great
propriety, I gave a warning cough. At that sound instead of getting to
cover, or clothes, all started up and stood staring for a time like a
herd of startled cattle.  It was highly embarrassing; they were right
in the path, a round dozen of them, naked and so little ashamed that
when I edged away modestly they began to run after me.  And the farther
they came forward the more I retired, till we were playing a kind of
game of hide-and-seek round the tree-stems. In the middle of it my heel
caught in a root and down I went very hard and very ignominiously,
whereon those laughing, light-hearted folk rushed in, and with smiles
and jests helped me to my feet.

"Was I the traveller who had come from Seth?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then that was well.  They had heard such a traveller was on the
road, and had come a little way down the path, as far as might be
without fatigue, to meet him."

"Would I eat with them?" these amiable strangers asked, pushing their
soft warm fingers into mine and ringing me round with a circle.  "But
firstly might they help me out of my clothes?  It was hot, and these
things were cumbersome."  As to the eating, I was agreeable enough
seeing how casual meals had been with me lately, but my clothes, though
Heaven knows they were getting horribly ragged and travel-stained, I
clung to desperately.

My new friends shrugged their dimpled shoulders and, arguments being
tedious, at once squatted round me in the dappled shade of a big tree
and produced their stores of never failing provisions.  After a
pleasant little meal taken thus in the open and with all the simplicity
Martians delight in, we got to talking about those yellow canoes which
were bobbing about on the blue waters of the bay.

"Would you like to see where they are grown?" asked an individual
basking by my side.

"Grown!" I answered with incredulity.  "Built, you mean.  Never in my
life did I hear of growing boats."

"But then, sir," observed the girl as she sucked the honey out of the
stalk of an azure convolvulus flower and threw the remains at a
butterfly that sailed across the sunshine, "you know so little!  You
have come from afar, from some barbarous and barren district.  Here we
undoubtedly grow our boats, and though we know the Thither folk and
such uncultivated races make their craft by cumbrous methods of flat
planks, yet we prefer our own way, for one thing because it saves
trouble," and as she murmured that all-sufficient reason the gentle
damsel nodded reflectively.

But one of her companions, more lively for the moment, tickled her with
a straw until she roused, and then said, "Let us take the stranger to
the boat garden now.  The current will drift us round the bay, and we
can come back when it turns.  If we wait we shall have to row in both
directions, or even walk," and again planetary slothfulness carried the
day.

So down to the beach we strolled and launched one of the golden-hued
skiffs upon the pretty dancing wavelets just where they ran, lipped
with jewelled spray, on the shore, and then only had I a chance to
scrutinise their material.  I patted that one we were upon inside and
out.  I noted with a seaman's admiration its lightness, elasticity, and
supreme sleekness, its marvellous buoyancy and fairy-like "lines," and
after some minutes' consideration it suddenly flashed across me that it
was all of gourd rind.  And as if to supply confirmation, the flat land
we were approaching on the opposite side of the bay was covered by the
characteristic verdure of these plants with a touch here and there of
splendid yellow blossoms, but all of gigantic proportions.

"Ay," said a Martian damsel lying on the bottom, and taking and kissing
my hand as she spoke, in the simple-hearted way of her people, "I see
you have guessed how we make our boats.  Is it the same in your distant
country?"

"No, my girl, and what's more, I am a bit uneasy as to what the fellows
on the Carolina will say if they ever hear I went to sea in a
hollowed-out pumpkin, and with a young lady--well, dressed as you
are--for crew.  Even now I cannot imagine how you get your ships so
trim and shapely--there is not a seam or a patch anywhere, it looks as
if you had run them into a mould."

"That's just what we have done, sir, and now you will witness the
moulds at work, for here we are," and the little skiff was pulled
ashore and the Martians and I jumped out on the shelving beach, hauled
our boat up high and dry, and there right over us, like great green
umbrellas, spread the fronds of the outmost garden of this strangest of
all ship-building yards. Briefly, and not to make this part of my story
too long, those gilded boys and girls took me ashore, and chattering
like finches in the evening, showed how they planted their gourd seed,
nourished the gigantic plants as they grew with brackish water and the
burnt ashes; then, when they flowered, mated the male and female
blossoms, glorious funnels of golden hue big enough for one to live in;
and when the young fruit was of the bigness of an ordinary bolster, how
they slipped it into a double mould of open reed-work something like
the two halves of a walnut-shell; and how, growing day by day in this,
it soon took every curve and line they chose to give it, even the
hanging keel below, the strengthened bulwarks, and tall prow-piece.  It
was so ingenious, yet simple; and I confess I laughed over my first
skiff "on the stalk," and fell to bantering the Martians, asking
whether it was a good season for navies, whether their Cunarders were
spreading nicely, if they could give me a pinch of barge seed, or a
yacht in bud to show to my friends at home.

But those lazy people took the matter seriously enough.  They led me
down green alleys arched over with huge melon-like leaves; they led me
along innumerable byways, making me peep and peer through the chequered
sunlight at ocean-growing craft, that had budded twelve months before,
already filling their moulds to the last inch of space.  They told me
that when the growing process was sufficiently advanced, they loosened
the casing, and cutting a hole into the interior of each giant fruit,
scooped out all its seed, thereby checking more advance, and throwing
into the rind strength that would otherwise have gone to
reproductiveness. They said each fruit made two vessels, but the upper
half was always best and used for long salt-water journeys, the lower
piece being but for punting or fishing on their lakes.  They cut them
in half while still green, scraped out the light remaining pulp when
dry, and dragged them down with the minimum of trouble, light as
feathers, tenacious as steel plate, and already in the form and fashion
of dainty craft from five to twenty feet in length, when the process
was completed.

By the time we had explored this strangest of ship-building yards, and
I had seen last year's crop on the stocks being polished and fitted
with seats and gear, the sun was going down; and the Martian twilight,
owing to the comparative steepness of the little planet's sides, being
brief, we strolled back to the village, and there they gave me
harbourage for the night, ambrosial supper, and a deep draught of the
wine of Forgetfulness, under the gauzy spell of which the real and
unreal melted into the vistas of rosy oblivion, and I slept.

CHAPTER XI

With the new morning came fresh energy and a spasm of conscience as I
thought of poor Heru and the shabby sort of rescuer I was to lie about
with these pretty triflers while she remained in peril.

So I had a bath and a swim, a breakfast, and, to my shame be it
acknowledged, a sort of farewell merry-go-round dance on the yellow
sands with a dozen young persons all light-hearted as the morning,
beautiful as the flowers that bound their hair, and in the extremity of
statuesque attire.

Then at last I got them to give me a sea-going canoe, a stock of cakes
and fresh water; and with many parting injunctions how to find the
Woodman trail, since I would not listen to reason and lie all the rest
of my life with them in the sunshine, they pushed me off on my lonely
voyage.

"Over the blue waters!" they shouted in chorus as I dipped my paddle
into the diamond-crested wavelets.  "Six hours, adventurous stranger,
with the sun behind you!  Then into the broad river behind the yellow
sand-bar. But not the black northward river!  Not the strong, black
river, above all things, stranger!  For that is the River of the Dead,
by which many go but none come back.  Goodbye!"  And waving them adieu,
I sternly turned my eyes from delights behind and faced the fascination
of perils in front.

In four hours (for the Martians had forgotten in their calculations
that my muscles were something better than theirs) I "rose" the further
shore, and then the question was, Where ran that westward river of
theirs?

It turned out afterwards that, knowing nothing of their tides, I had
drifted much too far to northward, and consequently the coast had
closed up the estuary mouth I should have entered.  Not a sign of an
opening showed anywhere, and having nothing whatever for guidance I
turned northward, eagerly scanning an endless line of low cliffs, as
the day lessened, for the promised sand-bar or inlet.

About dusk my canoe, flying swiftly forward at its own sweet will,
brought me into a bight, a bare, desolate-looking country with no
vegetation save grass and sedge on the near marshes and stony hills
rising up beyond, with others beyond them mounting step by step to a
long line of ridges and peaks still covered in winter snow.

The outlook was anything but cheering.  Not a trace of habitation had
been seen for a long time, not a single living being in whose
neighbourhood I could land and ask the way; nothing living anywhere but
a monstrous kind of sea-slug, as big as a dog, battening on the
waterside garbage, and gaunt birds like vultures who croaked on the
mud-flats, and half-spread wings of funereal blackness as they
gambolled here and there.  Where was poor Heru?  Where pink-shouldered
An?  Where those wild men who had taken the princess from us?  Lastly,
but not least, where was I?

All the first stars of the Martian sky were strange to me, and my boat
whirling round and round on the current confused what little geography
I might otherwise have retained.  It was a cheerless look out, and
again and again I cursed my folly for coming on such a fool's errand as
I sat, chin in hand, staring at a landscape that grew more and more
depressing every mile.  To go on looked like destruction, to go back
was almost impossible without a guide; and while I was still wondering
which of the two might be the lesser evil, the stream I was on turned a
corner, and in a moment we were upon water which ran with swift, oily
smoothness straight for the snow-ranges now beginning to loom
unpleasantly close ahead.

By this time the night was coming on apace, the last of the
evil-looking birds had winged its way across the red sunset glare, and
though it was clear enough in mid-river under the banks, now steep and
unclimbable, it was already evening.

And with the darkness came a wondrous cold breath from off the
ice-fields, blowing through my lowland wrappings as though they were
but tissue. I munched a bit of honey-cake, took a cautious sip of wine,
and though I will not own I was frightened, yet no one will deny that
the circumstances were discouraging.

Standing up in the frail canoe and looking around, at the second glance
an object caught my eye coming with the stream, and rapidly overtaking
me on a strong sluice of water.  It was a raft of some sort, and
something extra-ordinarily like a sitting Martian on it!  Nearer and
nearer it came, bobbing to the rise and fall of each wavelet with the
last icy sunlight touching it up with reds and golds, nearer and nearer
in the deadly hush of that forsaken region, and then at last so near it
showed quite plainly on the purple water, a raft with some one sitting
under a canopy.

With a thrill of delight I waved my cap aloft and shouted--

"Ship-ahoy!  Hullo, messmate, where are we bound to?"

But never an answer came from that swiftly-passing stranger, so again I
hailed--

"Put up your helm, Mr. Skipper; I have lost my bearings, and the
chronometer has run down," but without a pause or sound that strange
craft went slipping by.

That silence was more than I could stand.  It was against all sea
courtesies, and the last chance of learning where I was passing away.
So, angrily the paddle was snatched from the canoe bottom, and roaring
out again--

"Stop, I say, you d---- lubber, stop, or by all the gods I will make
you!"  I plunged the paddle into the water and shot my little craft
slantingly across the stream to intercept the newcomer.  A single
stroke sent me into mid-stream, a second brought me within touch of
that strange craft.  It was a flat raft, undoubtedly, though so
disguised by flowers and silk trailers that its shape was difficult to
make out. In the centre was a chair of ceremony bedecked with greenery
and great pale buds, hardly yet withered--oh, where had I seen such a
chair and such a raft before?

And the riddle did not long remain unanswered.  Upon that seat, as I
swept up alongside and laid a sunburnt hand upon its edge, was a girl,
and another look told me she was dead!

Such a sweet, pallid, Martian maid, her fair head lolling back against
the rear of the chair and gently moving to and fro with the rise and
fall of her craft.  Her face in the pale light of the evening like
carved ivory, and not less passionless and still; her arms bare, and
her poor fingers still closed in her lap upon the beautiful buds they
had put into them. I fairly gasped with amazement at the dreadful
sweetness of that solitary lady, and could hardly believe she was
really a corpse!  But, alas! there was no doubt of it, and I stared at
her, half in admiration and half in fear; noting how the last sunset
flush lent a hectic beauty to her face for a moment, and then how fair
and ghostly she stood out against the purpling sky; how her light
drapery lifted to the icy wind, and how dreadfully strange all those
soft-scented flowers and trappings seemed as we sped along side by side
into the country of night and snow.

Then all of a sudden the true meaning of her being there burst upon me,
and with a start and a cry I looked around.  WE WERE FLYING SWIFTLY
DOWN THAT RIVER OF THE DEAD THEY HAD TOLD ME OF THAT HAS NO OUTLET AND
NO RETURNING!

With frantic haste I snatched up a paddle again and tried to paddle
against the great black current sweeping us forward.  I worked until
the perspiration stood in beads on my forehead, and all the time I
worked the river, like some black snake, hissed and twined, and that
pretty lady rode cheerily along at my side.  Overhead stars of
unearthly brilliancy were coming out in the frosty sky, while on either
hand the banks were high and the shadows under them black as ink.  In
those shadows now and then I noticed with a horrible indifference other
rafts were travelling, and presently, as the stream narrowed, they came
out and joined us, dead Martians, budding boys and girls; older
voyagers with their age quickening upon them in the Martian manner,
just as some fruit only ripens after it falls; yellow-girt slaves
staring into the night in front, quite a merry crew all clustered about
I and that gentle lady, and more far ahead and more behind, all bobbing
and jostling forward as we hurried to the dreadful graveyard in the
Martian regions of eternal winter none had ever seen and no one came
to!  I cried aloud in my desolation and fear and hid my face in my
hands, while the icy cliffs mocked my cry and the dead maid, tripping
alongside, rolled her head over, and stared at me with stony, unseeing
eyes.

Well, I am no fine writer.  I sat down to tell a plain, unvarnished
tale, and I will not let the weird horror of that ride get into my pen.
We careened forward, I and those lost Martians, until pretty near on
midnight, by which time the great light-giving planets were up, and
never a chance did Fate give me all that time of parting company with
them. About midnight we were right into the region of snow and ice, not
the actual polar region of the planet, as I afterwards guessed, but one
of those long outliers which follow the course of the broad waterways
almost into fertile regions, and the cold, though intense, was somewhat
modified by the complete stillness of the air.

It was just then that I began to be aware of a low, rumbling sound
ahead, increasing steadily until there could not be any doubt the
journey was nearly over and we were approaching those great falls An
had told me of, over which the dead tumble to perpetual oblivion.
There was no opportunity for action, and, luckily, little time for
thought. I remember clapping my hand to my heart as I muttered an
imperfect prayer, and laughing a little as I felt in my pocket, between
it and that organ, an envelope containing some corn-plaster and a
packet of unpaid tailors' bills.  Then I pulled out that locket with
poor forgotten Polly's photograph, and while I was still kissing it
fervently, and the dead girl on my right was jealously nudging my canoe
with the corner of her raft, we plunged into a narrow gully as black as
hell, shot round a sharp corner at a tremendous pace, and the moment
afterwards entered a lake in the midst of an unbroken amphitheatre of
cliffs gleaming in soft light all round.

Even to this moment I can recall the blue shine of those terrible ice
crags framing the weird picture in on every hand, and the strange
effect upon my mind as we passed out of the darkness of the gully down
which we had come into the sepulchral radiance of that place.  But
though it fixed with one instantaneous flash its impression on my mind
forever, there was no time to admire it.  As we swept on to the lake's
surface, and a glance of light coming over a dip in the ice walls to
the left lit up the dead faces and half-withered flowers of my
fellow-travellers with startling distinctness, I noticed with a new
terror at the lower end of the lake towards which we were hurrying the
water suddenly disappeared in a cloud of frosty spray, and it was from
thence came the low, ominous rumble which had sounded up the ravine as
we approached.  It was the fall, and beyond the stream dropped down
glassy step after step, in wild pools and rapids, through which no boat
could live for a moment, to a black cavern entrance, where it was
swallowed up in eternal night.

I WOULD not go that way!  With a yell such as those solitudes had
probably never heard since the planet was fashioned out of the void, I
seized the paddle again and struck out furiously from the main current,
with the result of postponing the crisis for a time, and finding myself
bobbing round towards the northern amphitheatre, where the light fell
clearest from planets overhead.  It was like a great ballroom with
those constellations for tapers, and a ghastly crowd of Martians were
doing cotillions and waltzes all about me on their rafts as the
troubled water, icy cold and clear as glass, eddied us here and there
in solemn confusion.  On the narrow beaches at the cliff foot were
hundreds of wrecked voyagers--the wall-flowers of that ghostly
assembly-room--and I went jostling and twirling round the circle as
though looking for a likely partner, until my brain spun and my heart
was sick.

For twenty minutes Fate played with me, and then the deadly suck of the
stream got me down again close to where the water began to race for the
falls.  I vowed savagely I would not go over them if it could be
helped, and struggled furiously.

On the left, in shadow, a narrow beach seemed to lie between the water
and the cliff foot; towards it I fought.  At the very first stroke I
fouled a raft; the occupant thereof came tumbling aboard and nearly
swamped me. But now it was a fight for life, so him I seized without
ceremony by clammy neck and leg and threw back into the water.  Then
another playful Martian butted the behind part of my canoe and set it
spinning, so that all the stars seemed to be dancing giddily in the
sky.  With a yell I shoved him off, but only to find his comrades were
closing round me in a solid ring as we sucked down to the abyss at
ever-increasing speed.

Then I fought like a fury, hacking, pushing, and paddling shorewards,
crying out in my excitement, and spinning and bumping and twisting ever
downwards.  For every foot I gained they pushed me on a yard, as though
determined their fate should be mine also.

They crowded round me in a compact circle, their poor flower-girt heads
nodding as the swift current curtsied their crafts.  They hemmed me in
with desperate persistency as we spun through the ghostly starlight in
a swirling mass down to destruction!  And in a minute we were so close
to the edge of the fall I could see the water break into ridges as it
felt the solid bottom give way under it.  We were so close that already
the foremost rafts, ten yards ahead, were tipping and their occupants
one by one waving their arms about and tumbling from their funeral
chairs as they shot into the spray veil and went out of sight under a
faint rainbow that was arched over there, the symbol of peace and the
only lovely thing in that gruesome region.  Another minute and I must
have gone with them. It was too late to think of getting out of the
tangle then; the water behind was heavy with trailing silks and
flowers.  We were jammed together almost like one huge float and in
that latter fact lay my one chance.

On the left was a low ledge of rocks leading back to the narrow beach
already mentioned, and the ledge came out to within a few feet of where
the outmost boat on that side would pass it.  It was the only chance
and a poor one, but already the first rank of my fleet was trembling on
the brink, and without stopping to weigh matters I bounded off my own
canoe on to the raft alongside, which rocked with my weight like a
tea-tray. From that I leapt, with such hearty good-will as I had never
had before, on to a second and third.  I jumped from the footstool of
one Martian to the knee of another, steadying myself by a free use of
their nodding heads as I passed.  And every time I jumped a ship
collapsed behind me. As I staggered with my spring into the last and
outermost boat the ledge was still six feet away, half hidden in a
smother of foam, and the rim of the great fall just under it.  Then I
drew all my sailor agility together and just as the little vessel was
going bow up over the edge I leapt from her--came down blinded with
spray on the ledge, rolled over and over, clutched frantically at the
frozen soil, and was safe for the moment, but only a few inches from
the vortex below!

As soon as I picked myself up and got breath, I walked shorewards and
found, with great satisfaction, that the ledge joined the shelving
beach, and so walked on in the blue obscurity of the cliff shadow back
from the falls in the bare hope that the beach might lead by some way
into the gully through which we had come and open country beyond.  But
after a couple of hundred yards this hope ended as abruptly as the spit
itself in deep water, and there I was, as far as the darkness would
allow me to ascertain, as utterly trapped as any mortal could be.

I will not dwell on the next few minutes, for no one likes to
acknowledge that he has been unmanned even for a space.  When those
minutes were over calmness and consideration returned, and I was able
to look about.

All the opposite cliffs, rising sheer from the water, were in light,
their cold blue and white surfaces rising far up into the black
starfields overhead.  Looking at them intently from this vantage-point
I saw without at first understanding that along them horizontally, tier
above tier, were rows of objects, like--like--why, good Heavens, they
were like men and women in all sorts of strange postures and positions!
Rubbing my eyes and looking again I perceived with a start and a
strange creepy feeling down my back that they WERE men and
women!--hundreds of them, thousands, all in rows as cormorants stand
upon sea-side cliffs, myriads and myriads now I looked about, in every
conceivable pose and attitude but never a sound, never a movement
amongst the vast concourse.

Then I turned back to the cliffs behind me.  Yes! they ere there too,
dimmer by reason of the shadows, but there for certain, from the
snowfields far above down, down--good Heavens! to the very level where
I stood.  There was one of them not ten yards away half in and half out
of the ice wall, and setting my teeth I walked over and examined him.
And there was another further in behind as I peered into the clear blue
depth, another behind that one, another behind him--just like cherries
in a jelly.

It was startling and almost incredible, yet so many wonderful things
had happened of late that wonders were losing their sharpness, and I
was soon examining the cliff almost as coolly as though it were only
some trivial geological "section," some new kind of petrified
sea-urchins which had caught my attention and not a whole nation in
ice, a huge amphitheatre of fossilised humanity which stared down on me.

The matter was simple enough when you came to look at it with
philosophy. The Martians had sent their dead down here for many
thousand years and as they came they were frozen in, the bands and
zones in which they sat indicating perhaps alternating seasons.  Then
after Nature had been storing them like that for long ages some
upheaval happened, and this cleft and lake opened through the heart of
the preserve.  Probably the river once ran far up there where the
starlight was crowning the blue cliffs with a silver diadem of light,
only when this hollow opened did it slowly deepen a lower course,
spreading out in a lake, and eventually tumbling down those icy steps
lose itself in the dark roots of the hills. It was very simple, no
doubt, but incredibly weird and wonderful to me who stood, the sole
living thing in that immense concourse of dead humanity.

Look where I would it was the same everywhere.  Those endless rows of
frozen bodies lying, sitting, or standing stared at me from every niche
and cornice.  It almost seemed, as the light veered slowly round, as
though they smiled and frowned at times, but never a word was there
amongst those millions; the silence itself was audible, and save the
dull low thunder of the fall, so monotonous the ear became accustomed
to and soon disregarded it, there was not a sound anywhere, not a
rustle, not a whisper broke the eternal calm of that great caravansary
of the dead.

The very rattle of the shingle under my feet and the jingle of my navy
scabbard seemed offensive in the perfect hush, and, too awed to be
frightened, I presently turned away from the dreadful shine of those
cliffs and felt my way along the base of the wall on my own side. There
was no means of escape that way, and presently the shingle beach itself
gave out as stated, where the cliff wall rose straight from the surface
of the lake, so I turned back, and finding a grotto in the ice
determined to make myself as comfortable as might be until daylight
came.

CHAPTER XII

Fortunately there was a good deal of broken timber thrown up at
"high-water" mark, and with a stack of this at the mouth of the little
cave a pleasant fire was soon made by help of a flint pebble and the
steel back of my sword.  It was a hearty blaze and lit up all the near
cliffs with a ruddy jumping glow which gave their occupants a
marvellous appearance of life.  The heat also brought off the dull rime
upon the side of my recess, leaving it clear as polished glass, and I
was a little startled to see, only an inch or so back in the ice and
standing as erect as ever he had been in life, the figure of an
imposing grey clad man. His arms were folded, his chin dropped upon his
chest, his robes of the finest stuff, the very flowers they had decked
his head with frozen with immortality, and under them, round his crisp
and iron-grey hair, a simple band of gold with strange runes and
figures engraved upon it.

There was something very simple yet stately about him, though his face
was hidden and as I gazed long and intently the idea got hold of me
that he had been a king over an undegenerate Martian race, and had
stood waiting for the Dawn a very, very long time.

I wished a little that he had not been quite so near the glassy surface
of the ice down which the warmth was bringing quick moisture drops. Had
he been back there in the blue depths where others were sitting and
crouching it would have been much more comfortable.  But I was a
sailor, and misfortune makes strange companions, so I piled up the fire
again, and lying down presently on the dry shingle with my back to him
stared moodily at the blaze till slowly the fatigues of the day told,
my eyelids dropped and, with many a fitful start and turn, at length I
slept.

It was an hour before dawn, the fire had burnt low and I was dreaming
of an angry discussion with my tailor in New York as to the sit of my
last new trousers when a faint sound of moving shingle caught my quick
seaman ear, and before I could raise my head or lift a hand, a man's
weight was on me--a heavy, strong man who bore me down with
irresistible force. I felt the slap of his ice-cold hand upon my throat
and his teeth in the back of my neck!  In an instant, though but half
awake, with a yell of surprise and anger I grappled with the enemy, and
exerting all my strength rolled him over.  Over and over we went
struggling towards the fire, and when I got him within a foot or so of
it I came out on top, and, digging my knuckles into his throttle,
banged his head upon the stony floor in reckless rage, until all of a
sudden it seemed to me he was done for.  I relaxed my grip, but the
other man never moved. I shook him again, like a terrier with a rat,
but he never resented it. Had I killed him? How limp and cold he was!
And then all of a sudden an uneasy feeling came upon me.  I reached
out, and throwing a handful of dried stuff upon the embers the fire
danced gaily up into the air, and the blaze showed me I was savagely
holding down to the gravel and kneeling on the chest of that long-dead
king from my grotto wall!

It was the man out of the ice without a doubt.  There was the very
niche he had fallen from under the influence of the fire heat, the very
recess, exactly in his shape in every detail, whence he had stood
gazing into vacuity all those years.  I left go my hold, and after the
flutter in my heart had gone down, apologetically set him up against
the wall of the cavern whence he had fallen; then built up the fire
until twirling flames danced to the very roof in the blue light of
dawn, and hobgoblin shadows leapt and capered about us.  Then once more
I sat down on the opposite side of the blaze, resting my chin upon my
hands, and stared into the frozen eyes of that grim stranger, who, with
his chin upon his knees, stared back at me with irresistible,
remorseless steadfastness.

He was as fresh as if he had died but yesterday, yet by his clothing
and something in his appearance, which was not that of the Martian of
to-day, I knew he might be many thousand years old.  What things he had
seen, what wonders he knew!  What a story might be put into his mouth
if I were a capable writer gifted with time and imagination instead of
a poor outcast, ill-paid lieutenant whose literary wit is often taxed
hardly to fill even a log-book entry!  I stared at him so long and
hard, and he at me through the blinking flames, that again I dozed--and
dozed--and dozed again until at last when I woke in good earnest it was
daylight.

By this time hunger was very aggressive.  The fire was naught but a
circlet of grey ashes; the dead king, still sitting against the
cave-side, looked very blue and cold, and with an uncomfortable
realisation of my position I shook myself together, picked up and
pocketed without much thought the queer gold circlet that had dropped
from his forehead, and went outside to see what prospect of escape the
new day had brought.

It was not much.  Upriver there was not the remotest chance.  Not even
a Niagara steamer could have forged back against the sluice coming down
from the gulch there.  Looking round, the sides of the icy
amphitheatre--just lighting up now with glorious gold and crimson
glimmers of morning--were as steep as a wall face; only back towards
the falls was there a possibility of getting out of the dreadful trap,
so thither I went, after a last look at the poor old king, along my
narrow beach with all the eagerness begotten of a final chance.  Up to
the very brink it looked hopeless enough, but, looking downwards when
that was reached, instead of a sheer drop the slope seemed to be a wild
"staircase" of rocks and icy ledges with here and there a little patch
of sand on a cornice, and far below, five hundred feet or so, a good
big spread of gravel an acre or two in extent close by where the river
plunged out of sight into the nethermost cavern mouth.

It was so hopeless up above it, it could not possibly be worse further
down, and there was the ugly black flood running into the hole to trust
myself to as a last resource; so slipping and sliding I began the
descent.

Had I been a schoolboy with a good breakfast ahead the incident might
have been amusing enough.  The travelling was mostly done on the seat
of my trousers, which consequently became caked with mud and glacial
loam. Some was accomplished on hands and knees, with now and then a bit
down a snow slope, in good, honest head-over-heels fashion.  The result
was a fine appetite for the next meal when it should please providence
to send it, and an abrupt arrival on the bottom beach about five
minutes after leaving the upper circles.

I came to behind a cluster of breast-high rocks, and before moving took
a look round.  Judge then of my astonishment and delight at the second
glance to perceive about a hundred yards away a brown object, looking
like an ape in the half light, meandering slowly up the margin of the
water towards me.  Every now and then it stopped, stooping down to pick
up something or other from the scum along the torrent, and it was the
fact that these trifles, whatever they were, were put into a wallet by
the vision's side--not into his mouth--which first made me understand
with a joyful thrill that it was a MAN before me--a real, living man in
this huge chamber of dead horrors!  Then again it flashed across my
mind in a luminous moment that where one man could come, or go, or
live, another could do likewise, and never did cat watch mouse with
more concentrated eagerness than I that quaint, bent-shouldered thing
hobbling about in the blue morning shadows where all else was silence.

Nearer and nearer he came, till so close face and garb were
discernible, and then there could no longer be any doubt, it was a
woodman, an old man, with grizzled monkey-face, stooping gait, and a
shaggy fur cloak, utterly unlike the airy garments of my Hither folk,
who now stood before me. It gave me quite a start to recognise him
there, for it showed I was in a new land, and since he was going so
cheerfully about his business, whatever it might chance to be, there
must be some way out of this accursed pit in which I had fallen.  So
very cautiously I edged out, taking advantage of all the cover possible
until we were only twenty yards apart, and then suddenly standing up,
and putting on the most affable smile, I called out--

"Hullo, mess-mate!"

The effect was electrical.  That quaint old fellow sprang a yard into
air as though a spring had shot him up.  Then, coming down, he stood
transfixed at his full height as stiff as a ramrod, staring at me with
incredible wonder.  He looked so funny that in spite of hunger and
loneliness I burst out laughing, whereat the woodman, suddenly
recovering his senses, turned on his heels and set off at his best pace
in the opposite direction.  This would never do!  I wanted him to be my
guide, philosopher, and friend.  He was my sole visible link with the
outside world, so after him I went at tip-top speed, and catching him
up in fifty yards along the shingle laid hold of his nether garments.
Whereat the old fellow stopping suddenly I shot clean over his back,
coming down on my shoulder in the gravel.

But I was much younger than he, and in a minute was in chase again.
This time I laid hold of his cloak, and the moment he felt my grip he
slipped the neck-thongs and left me with only the mangy garment in my
hands.  Again we set off, dodging and scampering with all our might
upon that frozen bit of beach.  The activity of that old fellow was
marvellous, but I could not and would not lose him.  I made a rush and
grappled him, but he tossed his head round and slipped away once more
under my arm, as though he had been brought up by a Chinese wrestler.
Then he got on one side of a flat rock, I the other, and for three or
four minutes we waltzed round that slab in the most insane manner.

But by this time we were both pretty well spent--he with age and I with
faintness from my long fast, and we came presently to a standstill.

After glaring at me for a time, the woodman gasped out as he struggled
for breath--

"Oh, mighty and dreadful spirit!  Oh, dweller in primordial ice, say
from which niche of the cliffs has the breath of chance thawed you?"

"Never a niche at all, Mr. Hunter-for-Haddocks'-Eyes," I  answered as
soon as I could speak.  "I am just a castaway wrecked last night on
this shore of yours, and very grateful indeed will I be if you can show
me the way to some breakfast first, and afterwards to the outside
world."

But the old fellow would not believe.  "Spirits such as you," he said
sullenly, "need no food, and go whither they will by wish alone."

"I tell you I am not a spirit, and as hungry as I don't particularly
want to be again.  Here, look at the back of my trousers, caked three
inches deep in mud.  If I were a spirit, do you think I would slide
about on my coat-tails like that?  Do you think that if I could travel
by volition I would slip down these infernal cliffs on my pants' seat
as I have just done? And as for materialism--look at this fist; it
punched you just now! Surely there was nothing spiritual in that
knock?''

"No," said the savage, rubbing his head, "it was a good, honest rap, so
I must take you at your word.  If you are indeed man, and hungry, it
will be a charity to feed you; if you are a spirit, it will at least be
interesting to watch you eat; so sit down, and let's see what I have in
my wallet."

So cross-legged we squatted opposite each other on the table rock, and,
feeling like another Sindbad the Sailor, I watched my new friend fumble
in his bag and lay out at his side all sorts of odds and ends of
string, fish-hooks, chewing-gum, material for making a fire, and so on,
until at last he came to a package (done up, I noted with delight, in a
broad, green leaf which had certainly been growing that morning), and
unrolling it, displayed a lump of dried meat, a few biscuits, much
thicker and heavier than the honey-cakes of the Hither folk, and
something that looked and smelt like strong, white cheese.

He signed to me to eat, and you may depend upon it I was not slow in
accepting the invitation.  That tough biltong tasted to me like the
tenderest steak that ever came from a grill; the biscuits were
ambrosial; the cheese melted in my mouth as butter melts in that of the
virtuous; but when the old man finished the quaint picnic by inviting
me to accompany him down to the waterside for a drink, I shook my head.
I had a great respect for dead queens and kings, I said, but there were
too many of them up above to make me thirsty this morning; my respect
did not go to making me desire to imbibe them in solution!

Afterwards I chanced to ask him what he had been picking up just now
along the margin, and after looking at me suspiciously for a minute he
asked--

"You are not a thief?"  On being reassured on that point he continued:
"And you will not attempt to rob me of the harvest for which I venture
into this ghost-haunted glen, which you and I alone of living men have
seen?"

"No."  Whatever they were, I said, I would respect his earnings.

"Very well, then," said the old man, "look here!  I come hither to pick
up those pretty trifles which yonder lords and ladies have done with,"
and plunging his hand into another bag he brought out a perfect fistful
of splendid gems and jewels, some set and some unset.  "They wash from
the hands and wrists of those who have lodgings in the crevices of the
falls above," he explained.  "After a time the beach here will be thick
with them.  Could I get up whence you came down, they might be gathered
by the sackful.  Come!  there is an eddy still unsearched, and I will
show you how they lie."

It was very fascinating, and I and that old man set to work amongst the
gravels, and, to be brief, in half an hour found enough glittering
stuff to set up a Fifth Avenue jeweller's shop.  But to tell the truth,
now that I had breakfasted, and felt manhood in my veins again, I was
eager to be off, and out of the close, death-tainted atmosphere of that
valley. Consequently I presently stood up and said--

"Look here, old man, this is fine sport no doubt, but just at present I
have a big job on hand--one which will not wait, and I must be going.
See, luck and young eyes have favoured me; here is twice as much gold
and stones as you have got together--it is all yours without a question
if you will show me the way out of this den and afterwards put me on
the road to your big city, for thither I am bound with an errand to
your king, Ar-hap."

The sight of my gems, backed, perhaps, with the mention of Ar-hap's
name, appealed to the old fellow; and after a grunt or two about
"losing a tide" just when spoil was so abundant, he accepted the
bargain, shouldered his belongings, and led me towards the far corner
of the beach.

It looked as if we were walking right against the towering ice wall,
but when we were within a yard or two of it a narrow cleft, only
eighteen inches wide, and wonderfully masked by an ice column, showed
to the left, and into this we squeezed ourselves, the entrance by which
we had come appearing to close up instantly we had gone a pace or two,
so perfectly did the ice walls match each other.

It was the most uncanny thoroughfare conceivable--a sheer, sharp crack
in the blue ice cliffs extending from where the sunlight shone in a
dazzling golden band five hundred feet overhead to where bottom was
touched in blue obscurity of the ice-foot.  It was so narrow we had to
travel sideways for the most part, a fact which brought my face close
against the clear blue glass walls, and enabled me from time to time to
see, far back in those translucent depths, more and more and evermore
frozen Martians waiting in stony silence for their release.

But the fact of facts was that slowly the floor of the cleft trended
upwards, whilst the sky strip appeared to come downwards to meet it. A
mile, perhaps, we growled and squeezed up that wonderful gully; then
with a feeling of incredible joy I felt the clear, outer air smiting
upon me.

In my hurry and delight I put my head into the small of the back of the
puffing old man who blocked the way in front and forced him forward,
until at last--before we expected it--the cleft suddenly ended, and he
and I tumbled headlong over each other on to a glittering, frozen
snowslope; the sky azure overhead, the sunshine warm as a tepid bath,
and a wide prospect of mountain and plain extending all around.

So delightful was the sudden change of circumstances that I became
quite boyish, and seizing the old man in my exuberance by the hands,
dragged him to his feet, and danced him round and round in a circle,
while his ancient hair flapped about his head, his skin cloak waved
from his shoulders like a pair of dusky wings and half-eaten cakes,
dried flesh, glittering jewels, broken diadems, and golden finger-rings
were flung in an arc about us.  We capered till fairly out of breath,
and then, slapping him on the back shoulder, I asked whose land all
this was about us.

He replied that it was no one's, all waste from verge to verge.

"What!" was my exclamation.  "All ownerless, and with so much treasure
hidden hereabout!  Why, I shall annex it to my country, and you and I
will peg out original settlers' claims!"  And, still excited by the
mountain air, I whipped out my sword, and in default of a star-spangled
banner to plant on the newly-acquired territory, traced in gigantic
letters on the snow-crust--U.S.A.

"And now," I added, wiping the rime off my blade with the lappet of my
coat, "let us stop capering about here and get to business.  You have
promised to put me on the way to your big city."

"Come on then," said the little man, gathering up his property. "This
white hillside leads to nowhere; we must get into the valley first, and
then you shall see your road."  And right well that quaint barbarian
kept his promise.

CHAPTER XIII

It was half a day's march from those glittering snow-fields into the
low country, and when that was reached I found myself amongst quite
another people.

The land was no longer fat and flowery, giving every kind of produce
for the asking, but stony for the most part, and, where we first came
on vegetation, overgrown by firs, with a pine which looked to me like a
species which went to make the coal measures in my dear but distant
planet.  More than this I cannot say, for there are no places in the
world like mess-room and quarter-deck for forgetting school learning.
Instead of the glorious wealth of parti-coloured vegetation my eyes had
been accustomed to lately, here they rested on infertile stretches of
marshland intersected by moss-covered gravel shoots, looking as though
they had been pushed into the plains in front of extinct glaciers
coming down from the region behind us.  On the low hills away from the
sea those sombre evergreen forests with an undergrowth of moss and red
lichens were more variegated with light foliage, and indeed the pines
proved to be but a fringe to the Arctic ice, giving way rapidly to more
typical Martian vegetation each mile we marched to the southward.

As for the inhabitants, they seemed, like my guide, rough, uncouth
fellows, but honest enough when you came to know them.  An
introduction, however, was highly desirable.  I chanced upon the first
native as he was gathering reindeer-moss.  My companion was some little
way behind at the moment, and when the gentle aborigine saw the
stranger he stared hard for a moment, then, turning on his heels, with
extraordinary swiftness flung at me half a pound of hard flint stone.
Had his aim been a little more careful this humble narrative had never
appeared on the Broadway bookstalls.  As it was, the pebble, missing my
head by an inch or two, splintered into a hundred fragments on a rock
behind, and while I was debating whether a revengeful rush at the
slinger or a strategic advance to the rear were more advisable, my
guide called out to his countryman--

"Ho! you base prowler in the morasses; you eater of unclean vegetation,
do you not see this is a ghost I am conducting, a dweller in the ice
cliffs, a spirit ten thousand years old? Put by your sling lest he
wither you with a glance."  And, very reasonably, surprised, the
aborigine did as he was bid and cautiously advanced to inspect me.

The news soon spread over the countryside that my jewel-hunter was
bringing a live "spook" along with him, considerable curiosity mixed
with an awe all to my advantage characterising the people we met
thereafter. Yet the wonder was not so great as might have been
expected, for these people were accustomed to meeting the tags of lost
races, and though they stared hard, their interest was chiefly in
hearing how, when, and where I had been found, whether I bit or kicked,
or had any other vices, and if I possessed any commercial value.

My guide's throat must have ached with the repetition of the narrative,
but as he made the story redound greatly to his own glory, he put up
cheerfully with the hoarseness.  In this way, walking and talking
alternately, we travelled during daylight through a country which
slowly lost its rugged features and became more and more inhabited, the
hardy people living in scattered villages in contradiction to the
debased city-loving Hither folk.

About nightfall we came to a sea-fishers' hamlet, where, after the old
man had explained my exalted nature and venerable antiquity, I was
offered shelter for the night.

My host was the headman, and I must say his bearing towards the
supernatural was most unaffected.  If it had been an Avenue hotel I
could not have found more handsome treatment than in that reed-thatched
hut. They made me wash and rest, and then were all agog for my history;
but that I postponed, contenting myself with telling them I had been
lately in Seth, and had come thence to see them via the ice valley--to
all of which they listened with the simplicity of children.  Afterwards
I turned on them, and openly marvelled that so small a geographical
distance as there was between that land and this could make so vast a
human difference. "The truth, O dweller in blue shadows of primordial
ice, is," said the most intelligent of the Thither folk as we sat over
fried deer-steak in his hut that evening, "we who are MEN, not
Peri-zad, not overstayed fairies like those you have been amongst, are
newcomers here on this shore.  We came but a few generations ago from
where the gold curtains of the sun lie behind the westward pine-trees,
and as we came we drove, year by year, those fays, those spent
triflers, back before us.  All this land was theirs once, and more and
more towards our old home.  You may still see traces of harbours dug
and cities built thousands of years ago, when the Hither folk were
living men and women--not their shadows. The big water outside stops us
for a space, but," he added, laughing gruffly and taking a draught of a
strong beer he had been heating by the fire, "King Ar-hap has their
pretty noses between his fingers; he takes tribute and girls while he
gets ready--they say he is nearly ready this summer, and if he is, it
will not be much of an excuse he will need to lick up the last of those
triflers, those pretences of manhood."

Then we fell to talking of Ar-hap, his subjects and town, and I learned
the tides had swept me a long way to the northward of the proper route
between the capitals of the two races, that day they carried me into
the Dead-Men's Ice, as these entertainers of mine called the northern
snows. To get back to the place previously aimed at, where the woodmen
road came out on the seashore, it was necessary to go either by boat, a
roundabout way through a maze of channels, "as tangled as the grass
roots in autumn"; or, secondly, by a couple of days' marching due
southward across the base of the great peninsula we were on, and so
strike blue water again at the long-sought-for harbour.

As I lay dozing and dreaming on a pile of strange furs in the corner of
the hut that evening I made up my mind for the land journey tomorrow,
having had enough for the moment of nautical Martian adventures; and
this point settled, fell again to wondering what made me follow so
reckless a quest in the way I was doing; asking myself again and again
what was gazelle-eyed Heru to me after all, and why should it matter
even as much as the value of a brass waist-coat button whether Hath had
her or Ar-hap? What a fool I was to risk myself day by day in quaint
and dangerous adventures, wearing out good Government shoe-leather in
other men's quarrels, all for a silly slip of royal girlhood who, by
this time, was probably making herself comfortable and forgetting both
Hath and me in the arms of her rough new lord.

And from Heru my mind drifted back dreamily to poor An, and Seth, the
city of fallen magnificence, where the spent masters of a strange
planet now lived on sufferance--the ghosts of their former selves.
Where was An, where the revellers on the morning--so long ago it
seemed!--when first that infernal rug of mine translated a chance wish
into a horrible reality and shot me down here, a stranger and an
outcast? Where was the magic rug itself? Where my steak and tomato
supper? Who had eaten it? Who was drawing my pay? If I could but find
the rug when I got back to Seth, gods! but I would try if it would not
return whence I had come, and as swiftly, out of all these silly coils
and adventuring.

So musing, presently the firelight died down, and bulky forms of
hide-wrapped woodmen sleeping on the floor slowly disappeared in
obscurity like ranges of mountains disappearing in the darkness of
night.  All those uncouth forms, and the throb of the sea outside,
presently faded upon my senses, and I slept the heavy sleep of one
whose wakefulness gives way before an imperious physical demand.  All
through the long hours of the night, while the waves outside champed
upon the gravels, and the woodmen snored and grunted uneasily as they
simultaneously dreamt of the day's hunting and digested its proceeds, I
slept; and then when dawn began to break I passed from that heavy
stupor into another and lighter realm, wherein fancy again rose
superior to bodily fatigue, and events of the last few days passed in
procession through my mind.

I dreamt I was lunching at a fashionable seaside resort with Polly at
my side, and An kept bringing us melons, which grew so monstrous every
time a knife was put into them that poor Polly screamed aloud. I dreamt
I was afloat on a raft, hotly pursued by my tailor, whose bare and
shiny head--may Providence be good to him!--was garlanded with roses,
while in his fist was a bunch of unpaid bills, the which he waved
aloft, shouting to me to stop.  And thus we danced down an ink-black
river until he had chiveyed me into the vast hall of the Admiralty,
where a fearsome Secretary, whose golden teeth rattled and dropped from
his head with mingled cold and anger, towered above me as he asked why
I was absent from my ship without leave.  And I was just mumbling out
excuses while stooping to pick up his golden dentistry, when some one
stirring in the hut aroused me.  I started up on my elbow and looked
around.  Where was I? For a minute all was confused and dark.  The
heavy mound-like forms of sleeping men, the dim outlines of their
hunting gear upon the walls, the pale sea beyond, half seen through the
open doorway, just turning livid in the morning light; and then as my
eyes grew more accustomed to the obscurity, and my stupid senses
returned, I recognised the surroundings, and, with a sigh, remembered
yesterday's adventures.

However, it would never do to mope; so, rising silently and picking a
way through human lumber on the floor, I went out and down to the
water's edge, where "shore-going" clothes, as we sailors call them,
were slipped off, and I plunged into the sea for a swim.

It was a welcome dip, for I needed the plunge physically and
intellectually, but it came to an abrupt conclusion.  The Thither folk
apparently had never heard of this form of enjoyment; to them water
stood for drinking or drowning, nothing else, and since one could not
drink the sea, to be in it meant, even for a ghost, to drown.
Consequently, when the word went round the just rousing villages that
"He-on-foot-from-afar" was adrift in the waves, rescue parties were
hurriedly organised, a boat launched, and, in spite of all my kicking
and shouting (which they took to be evidence of my semi-moribund
condition), I was speedily hauled out by hairy and powerful hands,
pungent herbs burnt under my nose, and my heels held high in the air in
order that the water might run out of me. It was only with the greatest
difficulty those rough but honest fellows were eventually got to
believe me saved.

The breakfast I made of grilled deer flesh and a fish not unlike
salmon, however, convinced them of my recovery, and afterward we parted
very good friends; for there was something in the nature of those
rugged barbarians just coming into the dawn of civilisation that won my
liking far more than the effete gentleness of others across the water.

When the time of parting came they showed no curiosity as to my errand,
but just gave me some food in a fish-skin bag, thrust a heavy
stone-headed axe into my hand, "in case I had to talk to a thief on the
road," and pointed out on the southern horizon a forked mountain, under
which, they said, was the harbour and high-road to King Ar-hap's
capital. Then they hugged me to their hairy chests in turn, and let me
go with a traveller's blessing.

There I was again, all alone, none but my thoughts for companions, and
nothing but youth to excuse the folly in thus venturing on a reckless
quest!

However, who can gainsay that same youth? The very spice of danger made
my steps light and the way pleasant.  For a mile or two the track was
plain enough, through an undulating country gradually becoming more and
more wooded with vegetation, changing rapidly from Alpine to
sub-tropical. The air also grew warmer, and when the dividing ridge was
crossed and a thick forest entered, the snows and dreadful region of
Deadmen's Ice already seemed leagues and leagues away.

Probably a warm ocean current played on one side of the peninsula,
while a cold one swept the other, but for scientific aspects of the
question I cared little in my joy at being anew in a soft climate,
amongst beautiful flowers and vivid life again.  Mile after mile
slipped quickly by as I strode along, whistling "Yankee Doodle" to
myself and revelling in the change.  At one place I met a rough-looking
Martian woodcutter, who wanted to fight until he found I also wanted
to, when he turned very civil and as talkative as a solitary liver
often is when his tongue gets started.  He particularly desired to know
where I came from, and, as in the case with so many other of his
countrymen, took it for granted, and with very little surprise, that I
was either a spirit or an inhabitant of another world.  With this idea
in his mind he gave me a curious piece of information, which,
unfortunately, I was never able to follow up.

"I don't think you can be a spirit," he said, critically eyeing my
clothes, which were now getting ragged and dirty beyond description.
"They are finer-looking things than you, and I doubt if their toes come
through their shoes like yours do.  If you are a wanderer from the
stars, you are not like that other one we have down yonder," and he
pointed to the southward.

"What!" I asked, pricking my ears in amazement, "another wanderer from
the outside world!  Does he come from the earth?"--using the word An
had given me to signify my own planet.

"No, not from there; from the one that burns blue in evening between
sun and sea.  Men say he worked as a stoker or something of the kind
when he was at home, and got trifling with a volcano tap, and was
lapped in hot mud, and blown out here.  My brother saw him about a week
ago."

"Now what you say is down right curious.  I thought I had a monopoly of
that kind of business in this sphere of yours.  I should be
tremendously interested to see him."

"No you wouldn't," briefly answered the woodman.  "He is the stupidest
fool ever blown from one world to another--more stupid to look at than
you are.  He is a gaseous, wavey thing, so glum you can't get two words
a week out of him, and so unstable that you never know when you are
with him and when the breeze has drifted him somewhere else."

I could but laugh and insist, with all respect to the woodcutter, such
an individual were worth the knowing however unstable his constitution;
at which the man shrugged his shoulders and changed the conversation,
as though the subject were too trivial to be worth much consideration.

This individual gave me the pleasure of his company until nearly
sundown, and finding I took an interest in things of the forest,
pointed out more curious plants and trees than I have space to mention.
Two of them, however, cling to my memory very tenaciously.  One was a
very Circe amongst plants, the horrible charm of which can never be
forgotten. We were going down a glade when a most ravishing odour fell
upon my nostrils.  It was heavenly sweet yet withal there lurked an
incredibly, unexpressibly tempting spice of wickedness in it.  The
moment he caught that ambrosial invitation in the air my woodman spit
fiercely on the ground, and taking a plug of wool from his pouch
stuffed his nostrils up. Then he beckoned me to come away.  But the
odour was too ravishing, I was bound to see whence it arose, and
finding me deaf to all warnings, the man reluctantly turned aside down
the enticing trail.  We pushed about a hundred yards through bushes
until we came to a little arena full in sunshine where there were
neither birds nor butterflies, but a death-like hush upon everything.
Indeed, the place seemed shunned in spite of the sodden loveliness of
that scent which monopolised and mounted to my brain until I was
beginning to be drunk with the sheer pleasure of it. And there in the
centre of the space stood a plant not unlike a tree fern, about six
feet high, and crowned by one huge and lovely blossom. It resembled a
vast passion-flower of incredible splendour.  There were four petals,
with points resting on the ground, each six feet long, ivory-white
inside, exquisitely patterned with glittering silver veins. From the
base of these rose upright a gauzy veil of azure filaments of the same
length as the petals, wirelike, yet soft as silk, and inside them again
rested a chalice of silver holding a tiny pool of limpid golden honey.
Circe, indeed!  It was from that cup the scent arose, and my throat
grew dry with longing as I looked at it; my eyes strained through the
blue tendrils towards that liquid nectar, and my giddy senses felt they
must drink or die!  I glanced at the woodman with a smile of drunken
happiness, then turned tottering legs towards the blossom. A stride up
the smooth causeway of white petals, a push through the azure haze, and
the wine of the wood enchantress would be mine--molten amber wine,
hotter and more golden than the sunshine; the fire of it was in my
veins, the recklessness of intoxication was on me, life itself as
nothing compared to a sip from that chalice, my lips must taste or my
soul would die, and with trembling hand and strained face I began to
climb.

But the woodman pulled me back.

"Back, stranger!" he cried.  "Those who drink there never live again."

"Blessed oblivion!  If I had a thousand lives the price were still too
cheap," and once more I essayed to scramble up.

But the man was a big fellow, and with nostrils plugged, and eyes
averted from the deadly glamour, he seized me by the collar and threw
me back. Three times I tried, three times he hurled me down, far too
faint and absorbed to heed the personal violence.  Then standing
between us, "Look," he said, "look and learn."

He had killed a small ape that morning, meaning later on to take its
fur for clothing, and this he now unslung from his shoulder, and
hitching the handle of his axe into the loose skin at the back of its
neck, cautiously advanced to the witch plant, and gently hoisted the
monkey over the blue palings.  The moment its limp, dead feet touched
the golden pool a shudder passed through the plant, and a bird
somewhere far back in the forest cried out in horror.  Quick as
thought, a spasm of life shot up the tendrils, and like tongues of blue
flame they closed round the victim, lapping his miserable body in their
embrace.  At the same time the petals began to rise, showing as they
did so hard, leathery, unlovely outer rinds, and by the time the
woodman was back at my side the flower was closed.

Closer and closer wound the blue tendrils; tighter and tighter closed
the cruel petals with their iron grip, until at last we heard the ape's
bones crackling like dry firewood; then next his head burst, his brains
came oozing through the crevices, while blood and entrails followed
them through every cranny, and the horrible mess with the overflow of
the chalice curled down the stem in a hundred steaming rills, till at
last the petals locked with an ugly snap upon their ghastly meal, and I
turned away from the sight in dread and loathing.

That was plant Number One.

Plant Number Two was of milder disposition, and won a hearty laugh for
my friendly woodman.  In fact, being of a childlike nature, his success
as a professor of botany quite pleased him, and not content with
answering my questions, he set to work to find new vegetable surprises,
greatly enjoying my wonder and the sense of importance it gave him.

In this way we came, later on in the day, to a spot where herbage was
somewhat scantier, the grass coarse, and soil shallow.  Here I espied a
tree of small size, apparently withered, but still bearing a few
parched leaves on its uppermost twigs.

"Now that," quoth the professor, "is a highly curious tree, and I
should like you to make a close acquaintance with it.  It grows from a
seed in the course of a single springtime, perishes in the summer; but
a few specimens stand throughout the winter, provided the situation is
sheltered, as this one has done.  If you will kindly go down and shake
its stem I believe you will learn something interesting."

So, very willing to humour him, away I went to the tree, which was
perfect in every detail, but apparently very dry, clasped it with both
hands, and, pulling myself together, gave it a mighty shake.  The
result was instantaneous.  The whole thing was nothing but a skin of
dust, whence all fibre and sap had gone, and at my touch it dissolved
into a cloud of powder, a huge puff of white dust which descended on me
as though a couple of flour-bags had been inverted over my head; and as
I staggered out sneezing and blinking, white as a miller from face to
foot, the Martian burst into a wild, joyous peal of laughter that made
the woods ring again.  His merriment was so sincere I had not the heart
to be angry, and soon laughed as loud as he did; though, for the
future, I took his botanical essays with a little more caution.

CHAPTER XIV

That woodman friend of mine proved so engaging it was difficult to get
away, and thus when, dusk upon us, and my object still a long distance
off, he asked me to spend the night at his hut, I gladly assented.

We soon reached the cabin where the man lived by himself whilst working
in the forest.  It was a picturesque little place on a tree-overhung
lagoon, thatched, wattled, and all about were piles of a
pleasant-scented bark, collected for the purpose of tanning hides, and
I could not but marvel that such a familiar process should be practised
identically on two sides of the universal ether.  But as a matter of
fact the similarity of many details of existence here and there was the
most striking of the things I learned whilst in the red planet.

Within the hut stood a hearth in the centre of the floor, whereon a
comfortable blaze soon sparkled, and upon the walls hung various
implements, hides, and a store of dried fruits of various novel kinds.
My host, when he had somewhat disdainfully watched me wash in a rill of
water close by, suggested supper, and I agreed with heartiest good will.

"Nothing wonderful!  Oh, Mr. Blue-coat!" he said, prancing about as he
made his hospitable arrangements.  "No fine meat or scented wine to
unlock, one by one, all the doors of paradise, such as I have heard
they have in lands beyond the sea; but fare good enough for plain men
who eat but to live.  So! reach me down yonder bunch of yellow aru
fruit, and don't upset that calabash, for all my funniest stories lurk
at the bottom of it."

I did as he bid, and soon we were squatting by the fire toasting arus
on pointed sticks, the doorway closed with a wattle hurdle, and the
black and gold firelight filling the hut with fantastic shadows.  Then
when the banana-like fruit was ready, the man fetched from a recess a
loaf of bread savoured with the dust of dried and pounded fish, put the