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The Project Gutenberg Etext of Gulliver of Mars by Edwin Arnold


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Gulliver of Mars

by Edwin L. Arnold

July, 1996 [Etext #604]


The Project Gutenberg Etext of Gulliver of Mars by Edwin Arnold
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GULLIVER OF MARS

by Edwin L. Arnold


Original Title: Lieut. Gulliver Jones





CHAPTER I


Dare I say it?  Dare I say that I, a plain, prosaic
lieutenant in the republican service have done the incredible
things here set out for the love of a woman--for a chimera
in female shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of woman-loveliness?
At times I tell myself I dare not: that you will laugh, and
cast me aside as a fabricator; and then again I pick up
my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write
it--the pallid splendour of that thing I loved, and won, and
lost is ever before me, and will not be forgotten.  The tumult
of the struggle into which that vision led me still
throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the planet
I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction
which followed me back from the quest drowns all other
sounds in my ears!  I must and will write--it relieves me;
read and believe as you list.

At the moment this story commences I was thinking of grill-
ed steak and tomatoes--steak crisp and brown on both sides,
and tomatoes red as a setting sun!

Much else though I have forgotten, THAT fact remains
as clear as the last sight of a well-remembered shore in the
mind of some wave-tossed traveller.  And the occasion which
produced that prosaic thought was a night well calculated
to make one think of supper and fireside, though the one
might be frugal and the other lonely, and as I, Gulliver
Jones, the poor foresaid Navy lieutenant, with the honoured
stars of our Republic on my collar, and an undeserved
snub from those in authority rankling in my heart, picked
my way homeward by a short cut through the dismalness
of a New York slum I longed for steak and stout, slippers
and a pipe, with all the pathetic keenness of a troubled
soul.

It was a wild, black kind of night, and the weirdness of
it showed up as I passed from light to light or crossed the
mouths of dim alleys leading Heaven knows to what infernal
dens of mystery and crime even in this latter-day city of ours.
The moon was up as far as the church steeples; large
vapoury clouds scudding across the sky between us and her,
and a strong, gusty wind, laden with big raindrops snarled
angrily round corners and sighed in the parapets like strange
voices talking about things not of human interest.

It made no difference to me, of course.  New York in
this year of grace is not the place for the supernatural
be the time never so fit for witch-riding and the night wind
in the chimney-stacks sound never so much like the last
gurgling cries of throttled men.  No! the world was very
matter-of-fact, and particularly so to me, a poor younger
son with five dollars in my purse by way of fortune, a packet
of unpaid bills in my breastpocket, and round my neck a
locket with a portrait therein of that dear buxom, freckled,
stub-nosed girl away in a little southern seaport town
whom I thought I loved with a magnificent affection.  Gods!
I had not even touched the fringe of that affliction.

Thus sauntering along moodily, my chin on my chest and
much too absorbed in reflection to have any nice apprecia-
tion of what was happening about me, I was crossing in
front of a dilapidated block of houses, dating back nearly
to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I had a vague
consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping by me--
a thing like a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing
could be, and the next instant there was a thud and a
bump, a bump again, a half-stifled cry, and then a hurried
vision of some black carpeting that flapped and shook as
though all the winds of Eblis were in its folds, and then
apparently disgorged from its inmost recesses a little man.

Before my first start of half-amused surprise was over I
saw him by the flickering lamp-light clutch at space as
he tried to steady himself, stumble on the slippery curb,
and the next moment go down on the back of his head
with a most ugly thud.

Now I was not destitute of feeling, though it had been
my lot to see men die in many ways, and I ran over to that
motionless form without an idea that anything but an
ordinary accident had occurred.  There he lay, silent and, as
it turned out afterwards, dead as a door-nail, the strangest
old fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in shabby sorrel-
coloured clothes of antique cut, with a long grey beard
upon his chin, pent-roof eyebrows, and a wizened complexion
so puckered and tanned by exposure to Heaven only knew
what weathers that it was impossible to guess his nationality.

I lifted him up out of the puddle of black blood in
which he was lying, and his head dropped back over my
arm as though it had been fixed to his body with string
alone.  There was neither heart-beat nor breath in him, and
the last flicker of life faded out of that gaunt face even as
I watched.  It was not altogether a pleasant situation, and
the only thing to do appeared to be to get the dead man
into proper care (though little good it could do him now!)
as speedily as possible.  So, sending a chance passer-by
into the main street for a cab, I placed him into it as soon
as it came, and there being nobody else to go, got in with
him myself, telling the driver at the same time to take us to
the nearest hospital.

"Is this your rug, captain?" asked a bystander just as
we were driving off.

"Not mine," I answered somewhat roughly.  "You don't
suppose I go about at this time of night with Turkey carpets
under my arm, do you?  It belongs to this old chap here
who has just dropped out of the skies on to his head; chuck
it on top and shut the door!"  And that rug, the very main-
spring of the startling things which followed, was thus care-
lessly thrown on to the carriage, and off we went.

Well, to be brief, I handed in that stark old traveller
from nowhere at the hospital, and as a matter of curiosity
sat in the waiting-room while they examined him.  In five
minutes the house-surgeon on duty came in to see me, and
with a shake of his head said briefly--

"Gone, sir--clean gone!  Broke his neck like a pipe-stem.
Most strange-looking man, and none of us can even guess at
his age.  Not a friend of yours, I suppose?"

"Nothing whatever to do with me, sir.  He slipped on
the pavement and fell in front of me just now, and as a mat-
ter of common charity I brought him in here.  Were there
any means of identification on him?"

"None whatever," answered the doctor, taking out his
notebook and, as a matter of form, writing down my name
and address and a few brief particulars, "nothing what-
ever except this curious-looking bead hung round his neck
by a blackened thong of leather," and he handed me a thing
about as big as a filbert nut with a loop for suspension and
apparently of rock crystal, though so begrimed and dull its
nature was difficult to speak of with certainty.  The bead was
of no seeming value and slipped unintentionally into my
waistcoat pocket as I chatted for a few minutes more with
the doctor, and then, shaking hands, I said goodbye, and
went back to the cab which was still waiting outside.

It was only on reaching home I noticed the hospital
porters had omitted to take the dead man's carpet from the
roof of the cab when they carried him in, and as the cab-
man did not care about driving back to the hospital with it,
and it could not well be left in the street, I somewhat
reluctantly carried it indoors with me.

Once in the shine of my own lamp and a cigar in my
mouth I had a closer look at that ancient piece of art work
from heaven, or the other place, only knows what ancient
loom.

A big, strong rug of faded Oriental colouring, it covered
half the floor of my sitting-room, the substance being of a
material more like camel's hair than anything else, and run-
ning across, when examined closely, were some dark fibres
so long and fine that surely they must have come from the
tail of Solomon's favourite black stallion itself.  But the
strangest thing about that carpet was its pattern.  It was
threadbare enough to all conscience in places, yet the design
still lived in solemn, age-wasted hues, and, as I dragged
it to my stove-front and spread it out, it seemed to me that
it was as much like a star map done by a scribe who had
lately recovered from delirium tremens as anything else.  In
the centre appeared a round such as might be taken for
the sun, while here and there, "in the field," as heralds
say, were lesser orbs which from their size and position
could represent smaller worlds circling about it.  Between
these orbs were dotted lines and arrow-heads of the oldest
form pointing in all directions, while all the intervening
spaces were filled up with woven characters half-way in
appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit.  Round the
borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle
of an alphabet through which none but a wizard could
have forced a way in search of meaning.

Altogether, I thought as I kicked it out straight upon my
floor, it was a strange and not unhandsome article of
furniture--it would do nicely for the mess-room on the
Carolina, and if any representatives of yonder poor old fel-
low turned up tomorrow, why, I would give them a couple
of dollars for it.  Little did I guess how dear it would be at
any price!

Meanwhile that steak was late, and now that the tempor-
ary excitement of the evening was wearing off I fell dull
again.  What a dark, sodden world it was that frowned in on
me as I moved over to the window and opened it for the
benefit of the cool air, and how the wind howled about
the roof tops.  How lonely I was!  What a fool I had been to
ask for long leave and come ashore like this, to curry favour
with a set of stubborn dunderheads who cared nothing
for me--or Polly, and could not or would not understand how
important it was to the best interests of the Service that
I should get that promotion which alone would send me
back to her an eligible wooer!  What a fool I was not to
have volunteered for some desperate service instead of wast-
ing time like this!  Then at least life would have been
interesting; now it was dull as ditch-water, with wretched
vistas of stagnant waiting between now and that joyful
day when I could claim that dear, rosy-checked girl for
my own.  What a fool I had been!

"I wish, I wish," I exclaimed, walking round the little
room, "I wish I were--"

While these unfinished exclamations were actually passing
my lips I chanced to cross that infernal mat, and it is
no more startling than true, but at my word a quiver of
expectation ran through that gaunt web--a rustle of antici-
pation filled its ancient fabric, and one frayed corner surged
up, and as I passed off its surface in my stride, the sentence
still unfinished on my lips, wrapped itself about my left leg
with extraordinary swiftness and so effectively that I nearly
fell into the arms of my landlady, who opened the door
at the moment and came in with a tray and the steak
and tomatoes mentioned more than once already.

It was the draught caused by the opening door, of course,
that had made the dead man's rug lift so strangely--
what else could it have been?  I made this apology to the
good woman, and when she had set the table and closed
the door took another turn or two about my den, con-
tinuing as I did so my angry thoughts.

"Yes, yes," I said at last, returning to the stove and taking
my stand, hands in pockets, in front of it, "anything were
better than this, any enterprise however wild, any adventure
however desperate.  Oh, I wish I were anywhere but here,
anywhere out of this redtape-ridden world of ours!  I WISH
I WERE IN THE PLANET MARS!"

How can I describe what followed those luckless words?
Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered responsively
under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe
as though a sudden wind were shaking it.  It humped up
in the middle so abruptly that I came down sitting with a
shock that numbed me for the moment.  It threw me on
my back and billowed up round me as though I were in
the trough of a stormy sea.  Quicker than I can write it
lapped a corner over and rolled me in its folds like a
chrysalis in a cocoon.  I gave a wild yell and made one frantic
struggle, but it was too late.  With the leathery strength
of a giant and the swiftness of an accomplished cigar-
roller covering a "core" with leaf, it swamped my efforts,
straightened my limbs, rolled me over, lapped me in fold
after fold till head and feet and everything were gone--
crushed life and breath back into my innermost being,
and then, with the last particle of consciousness, I felt myself
lifted from the floor, pass once round the room, and finally
shoot out, point foremost, into space through the open
window, and go up and up and up with a sound of rending
atmospheres that seemed to tear like riven silk in one pro-
longed shriek under my head, and to close up in thunder
astern until my reeling senses could stand it no longer.  and
time and space and circumstances all lost their meaning
to me.




CHAPTER II

How long that wild rush lasted I have no means of judging.
It may have been an hour, a day, or many days, for
I was throughout in a state of suspended animation, but
presently my senses began to return and with them a sensa-
tion of lessening speed, a grateful relief to a heavy pressure
which had held my life crushed in its grasp, without destroy-
ing it completely.  It was just that sort of sensation though
more keen which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller feels when
he is aware, without special perception, harbour is reached
and a voyage comes to an end.  But in my case the slowing
down was for a long time comparative.  Yet the sensation
served to revive my scattered senses, and just as I was
awakening to a lively sense of amazement, an incredible
doubt of my own emotions, and an eager desire to know
what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once
or twice, undulated lightly up and down, like a wood-
pecker flying from tree to tree, and then grounded, bows first,
rolled over several times, then steadied again, and, coming
at last to rest, the next minute the infernal rug opened, quiver-
ing along all its borders in its peculiar way, and humping
up in the middle shot me five feet into the air like a cat
tossed from a schoolboy's blanket.

As I turned over I had a dim vision of a clear light like
the shine of dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me.
Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people,
and a staid-looking individual with his back turned stood
nearer by.  Afterwards I found he was lecturing all those
sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties
of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was directly
in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized,
giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down
the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at
the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer
into the arms of the gaping crowd below.  Over and over we
went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through
the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect
mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms.  When
we had done the mass disentangled itself and I was able to
raise my head from the shoulder of someone on whom I
had fallen, lifting him, or her--which was it?--into a
sitting posture alongside of me at the same time, while
the others rose about us like wheat-stalks after a storm,
and edged shyly off, as well as they might.

Such a sleek, slim youth it was who sat up facing me,
with a flush of gentle surprise on his face, and dapper
hands that felt cautiously about his anatomy for injured
places.  He looked so quaintly rueful yet withal so good-
tempered that I could not help bursting into laughter in
spite of my own amazement.  Then he laughed too, a sedate,
musical chuckle, and said something incomprehensible, point-
ing at the same time to a cut upon my finger that was bleed-
ing a little.  I shook my head, meaning thereby that it was
nothing, but the stranger with graceful solicitude took my
hand, and, after examining the hurt, deliberately tore a
strip of cloth from a bright yellow toga-like garment he
was wearing and bound the place up with a woman's
tenderness.

Meanwhile, as he ministered, there was time to look about
me.  Where was I?  It was not the Broadway; it was not
Staten Island on a Saturday afternoon.  The night was just
over, and the sun on the point of rising.  Yet it was still
shadowy all about, the air being marvellously tepid and
pleasant to the senses.  Quaint, soft aromas like the breath of
a new world--the fragrance of unknown flowers, and the
dewy scent of never-trodden fields drifted to my nostrils;
and to my ears came a sound of laughter scarcely more
human than the murmur of the wind in the trees, and a
pretty undulating whisper as though a great concourse of
people were talking softly in their sleep.  I gazed about
scarcely knowing how much of my senses or surroundings
were real and how much fanciful, until I presently be-
came aware the rosy twilight was broadening into day,
and under the increasing shine a strange scene was fashion-
ing itself.

At first it was an opal sea I looked on of mist, shot along
its upper surface with the rosy gold and pinks of dawn.
Then, as that soft, translucent lake ebbed, jutting hills came
through it, black and crimson, and as they seemed to
mount into the air other lower hills showed through the veil
with rounded forest knobs till at last the brightening day dis-
pelled the mist, and as the rosy-coloured gauzy fragments
went slowly floating away a wonderfully fair country lay at
my feet, with a broad sea glimmering in many arms and bays
in the distance beyond.  It was all dim and unreal at first, the
mountains shadowy, the ocean unreal, the flowery fields be-
tween it and me vacant and shadowy.

Yet were they vacant?  As my eyes cleared and day
brightened still more, and I turned my head this way and
that, it presently dawned upon me all the meadow cop-
pices and terraces northwards of where I lay, all that blue
and spacious ground I had thought to be bare and vacant,
were alive with a teeming city of booths and tents; now
I came to look more closely there was a whole town upon
the slope, built as might be in a night of boughs and
branches still unwithered, the streets and ways of that city in
the shadows thronged with expectant people moving in
groups and shifting to and fro in lively streams--chatting at
the stalls and clustering round the tent doors in soft, gauzy,
parti-coloured crowds in a way both fascinating and  per-
plexing.

I stared about me like a child at its first pantomime,
dimly understanding all I saw was novel, but more allured
to the colour and life of the picture than concerned with its
exact meaning; and while I stared and turned my finger
was bandaged, and my new friend had been lisping away
to me without getting anything in turn but a shake of
the head.  This made him thoughtful, and thereon followed
a curious incident which I cannot explain.  I doubt even
whether you will believe it; but what am I to do in that
case?  You have already accepted the episode of my com-
ing, or you would have shut the covers before arriving at
this page of my modest narrative, and this emboldens me.
I may strengthen my claim on your credulity by pointing
out the extraordinary marvels which science is teaching you
even on our own little world.  To quote a single instance: If
any one had declared ten years ago that it would shortly
be practicable and easy for two persons to converse from
shore to shore across the Atlantic without any intervening
medium, he would have been laughed at as a possibly
amusing but certainly extravagant romancer.  Yet that pic-
turesque lie of yesterday is amongst the accomplished facts
of today!  Therefore I am encouraged to ask your in-
dulgence, in the name of your previous errors, for the
following and any other instances in which I may appear to
trifle with strict veracity.  There is no such thing as the
impossible in our universe!

When my friendly companion found I could not under-
stand him, he looked serious for a minute or two, then
shortened his brilliant yellow toga, as though he had ar-
rived at some resolve, and knelt down directly in front
of me.  He next took my face between his hands, and
putting his nose within an inch of mine, stared into my
eyes with all his might.  At first I was inclined to laugh,
but before long the most curious sensations took hold of me.
They commenced with a thrill which passed all up my body,
and next all feeling save the consciousness of the
loud beating of my heart ceased.  Then it seemed that boy's
eyes were inside my head and not outside, while along
with them an intangible something pervaded my brain.
The sensation at first was like the application of ether to
the skin--a cool, numbing emotion.  It was followed by a
curious tingling feeling, as some dormant cells in my mind
answered to the thought-transfer, and were filled and fertil-
ised!  My other brain-cells most distinctly felt the vitalising
of their companions, and for about a minute I experi-
enced extreme nausea and a headache such as comes
from over-study, though both passed swiftly off.  I presume
that in the future we shall all obtain knowledge in this way.
The Professors of a later day will perhaps keep shops for
the sale of miscellaneous information, and we shall drop in
and be inflated with learning just as the bicyclist gets his tire
pumped up, or the motorist is recharged with electricity at
so much per unit.  Examinations will then become matters of
capacity in the real meaning of that word, and we shall be
tempted to invest our pocket-money by advertisements of
"A cheap line in Astrology," "Try our double-strength, two-
minute course of Classics," "This is remnant day for Trig-
onometry and Metaphysics," and so on.

My friend did not get as far as that.  With him the
process did not take more than a minute, but it was startling
in its results, and reduced me to an extraordinary state of
hypnotic receptibility.  When it was over my instructor
tapped with a finger on my lips, uttering aloud as he did
so the words--

"Know none; know some; know little; know morel" again
and again; and the strangest part of it is that as he spoke I
did know at first a little, then more, and still more, by swift
accumulation, of his speech and meaning.  In fact, when pre-
sently he suddenly laid a hand over my eyes and then let
go of my head with a pleasantly put question as to how
I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering him in his
own tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets from a
hair-dresser's chair, with a vague idea of looking round for
my hat and offering him his fee.

"My word, sir!" I said, in lisping Martian, as I pulled
down my cuffs and put my cravat straight, "that was a
quick process.  I once heard of a man who learnt a language
in the moments he gave each day to having his boots
blacked; but this beats all.  I trust I was a docile pupil?"

"Oh, fairly, sir," answered the soft, musical voice of the
strange being by me; "but your head is thick and your brain
tough.  I could have taught another in half the time."

"Curiously enough," was my response, "those are almost
the very words with which my dear old tutor dismissed
me the morning I left college.  Never mind, the thing is
done.  Shall I pay you anything?"

"I do not understand."

"Any honorarium, then?  Some people understand one
word and not the other."  But the boy only shook his
head in answer.

Strangely enough, I was not greatly surprised all this
time either at the novelty of my whereabouts or at the
hypnotic instruction in a new language just received.  Per-
haps it was because my head still spun too giddily with
that flight in the old rug for much thought; perhaps be-
cause I did not yet fully realise the thing that had happened.
But, anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others
in my narrative, must, alas! remain unexplained for the
moment.  The rug, by the way, had completely disap-
peared, my friend comforting me on this score, however,
by saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one
whom he knew.

"We are very tidy people here, stranger," he said, "and
everything found Lying about goes back to the Palace store-
rooms.  You will laugh to see the lumber there, for few of us
ever take the trouble to reclaim our property."

Heaven knows I was in no laughing mood when I saw
that enchanted web again!

When I had lain and watched the brightening scene for
a time, I got up, and having stretched and shaken my
clothes into some sort of order, we strolled down the hill
and joined the light-hearted crowds that twined across the
plain and through the streets of their city of booths.  They
were the prettiest, daintiest folk ever eyes looked upon,
well-formed and like to us as could be in the main, but
slender and willowy, so dainty and light, both the men and
the women, so pretty of cheek and hair, so mild of aspect,
I felt, as I strode amongst them, I could have plucked them
like flowers and bound them up in bunches with my belt.
And yet somehow I liked them from the first minute; such a
happy, careless, light-hearted race, again I say, never was
seen before.  There was not a stain of thought or care on a
single one of those white foreheads that eddied round me
under their peaked, blossom-like caps, the perpetual smile
their faces wore never suffered rebuke anywhere; their
very movements were graceful and slow, their laughter
was low and musical, there was an odour of friendly,
slothful happiness about them that made me admire whether
I would or no.

Unfortunately I was not able to live on laughter, as they
appeared to be, so presently turning to my acquaintance,
who had told me his name was the plain monosyllabic An,
and clapping my hand on his shoulder as he stood lost in
sleepy reflection, said, in a good, hearty way, "Hullo, friend
Yellow-jerkin!  If a stranger might set himself athwart the
cheerful current of your meditations, may such a one ask
how far 'tis to the nearest wine-shop or a booth where a
thirsty man may get a mug of ale at a moderate reckoning?"

That gilded youth staggered under my friendly blow as
though the hammer of Thor himself had suddenly lit upon his
shoulder, and ruefully rubbing his tender skin, he turned
on me mild, handsome eyes, answering after a moment, dur-
ing which his native mildness struggled with the pain I
had unwittingly given him--

"If your thirst be as emphatic as your greeting, friend
Heavy-fist, it will certainly be a kindly deed to lead you
to the drinking-place.  My shoulder tingles with your good-
fellowship," he added, keeping two arms'-lengths clear of me.
"Do you wish," he said, "merely to cleanse a dusty throat,
or for blue or pink oblivion?"

"Why," I answered laughingly, "I have come a longish
journey since yesterday night--a journey out of count of
all reasonable mileage--and I might fairly plead a dusty
throat as excuse for a beginning; but as to the other things
mentioned, those tinted forgetfulnesses, I do not even know
what you mean."

"Undoubtedly you are a stranger," said the friendly youth,
eyeing me from top to toe with renewed wonder, "and by
your unknown garb one from afar."

"From how far no man can say--not even I--but from
very far, in truth.  Let that stay your curiosity for the time.
And now to bench and ale-mug, on good fellow!--the short-
est way.  I was never so thirsty as this since our water-butts
went overboard when I sailed the southern seas as a tramp
apprentice, and for three days we had to damp our black
tongues with the puddles the night-dews left in the lift
of our mainsail."

Without more words, being a little awed of me, I thought,
the boy led me through the good-humoured crowd to
where, facing the main road to the town, but a little
sheltered by a thicket of trees covered with gigantic pink
blossoms, stood a drinking-place--a cluster of tables set
round an open grass-plot.  Here he brought me a platter of
some light inefficient cakes which merely served to make
hunger more self-conscious, and some fine aromatic wine
contained in a triple-bodied flask, each division containing
vintage of a separate hue.  We broke our biscuits, sipped
that mysterious wine, and talked of many things until at
last something set us on the subject of astronomy, a study
I found my dapper gallant had some knowledge of--
which was not to be wondered at seeing he dwelt under
skies each night set thick above his curly head with tawny
planets, and glittering constellations sprinkled through space
like flowers in May meadows.  He knew what worlds
went round the sun, larger or lesser, and seeing this I be-
gan to question him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind
and, you will remember, so far had no certain knowledge
of where I was, only a dim, restless suspicion that I had
come beyond the ken of all men's knowledge.

Therefore, sweeping clear the board with my sleeve, and
breaking the wafer cake I was eating, I set down one
central piece for the sun, and, "See here!" I said, "good fel-
low!  This morsel shall stand for that sun you have just been
welcoming back with quaint ritual.  Now stretch your starry
knowledge to the utmost, and put down that tankard for
a moment.  If this be yonder sun and this lesser crumb be
the outermost one of our revolving system, and this the
next within, and this the next, and so on; now if this be so
tell me which of these fragmentary orbs is ours--which of
all these crumbs from the hand of the primordial would
be that we stand upon?"  And I waited with an anxiety
a light manner thinly hid, to hear his answer.

It came at once.  Laughing as though the question were
too trivial, and more to humour my wayward fancy than
aught else, that boy circled his rosy thumb about a minute
and brought it down on the planet Mars!

I started and stared at him; then all of a tremble cried,
"You trifle with me!  Choose again--there, see, I will set the
symbols and name them to you anew.  There now, on your
soul tell me truly which this planet is, the one here at our
feet?"  And again the boy shook his head, wondering at my
eagerness, and pointed to Mars, saying gently as he did
so the fact was certain as the day above us, nothing was
marvellous but my questioning.

Mars! oh, dreadful, tremendous, unexpected!  With a cry
of affright, and bringing my fist down on the table till
all the cups upon it leapt, I told him he lied--lied like a
simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten as his wit--
smote the table and scowled at him for a spell, then
turned away and let my chin fall upon my breast and
my hands upon my lap.

And yet, and yet, it might be so!  Everything about
me was new and strange, the crisp, thin air I breathed
was new; the lukewarm sunshine new; the sleek, long, ivory
faces of the people new!  Yesterday--was it yesterday?--I
was back there--away in a world that pines to know of
other worlds, and one fantastic wish of mine, backed by a
hideous, infernal chance, had swung back the doors of
space and shot me--if that boy spoke true--into the outer
void where never living man had been before: all my wits
about me, all the horrible bathos of my earthly clothing
on me, all my terrestrial hungers in my veins!

I sprang to my feet and swept my hands across my eyes.
Was that a dream, or this?  No, no, both were too real.
The hum of my faraway city still rang in my ears: a swift
vision of the girl I had loved; of the men I had hated; of
the things I had hoped for rose before me, still dazing my
inner eye.  And these about me were real people, too; it
was real earth; real skies, trees, and rocks--had the infernal
gods indeed heard, I asked myself, the foolish wish that
started from my lips in a moment of fierce discontent,
and swept me into another sphere, another existence?  I
looked at the boy as though he could answer that question,
but there was nothing in his face but vacuous wonder; I
clapped my hands together and beat my breast; it was true;
my soul within me said it was true; the boy had not lied;
the djins had heard; I was just in the flesh I had; my
common human hungers still unsatisfied where never mortal
man had hungered before; and scarcely knowing whether I
feared or not, whether to laugh or cry, but with all the
wonder and terror of that great remove sweeping suddenly
upon me I staggered back to my seat, and dropping my
arms upon the table, leant my head heavily upon them and
strove to choke back the passion which beset me.




CHAPTER III

It was the light touch of the boy An upon my shoulder
which roused me.  He was bending down, his pretty face
full of concernful sympathy, and in a minute said--know-
ing nothing of my thoughts, of course,

"It is the wine, stranger, the pink oblivion, it sometimes
makes one feel like that until enough is taken; you stopped
just short of what you should have had, and the next cup
would have been delight--I should have told you."

"Ay," I answered, glad he should think so, "it was the
wine, no doubt; your quaint drink, sir, tangled up my
senses for the moment, but they are clearer now, and I
am eager past expression to learn a little more of this
strange country I have wandered into."

"I would rather," said the boy, relapsing again into his
state of kindly lethargy, "that you learnt things as you went,
for talking is work, and work we hate, but today we are
all new and fresh, and if ever you are to ask questions now
is certainly the time.  Come with me to the city yonder, and
as we go I will answer the things you wish to know;" and
I went with him, for I was humble and amazed, and, in
truth, at that moment, had not a word to say for myself.

All the way from the plain where I had awoke to the
walls of the city stood booths, drinking-places, and gardens
divided by labyrinths of canals, and embowered in shrub-
beries that seemed coming into leaf and flower as we looked,
so swift was the process of their growth.  These waterways
were covered with skiffs being pushed and rowed in every
direction; the cheerful rowers calling to each other through
the leafy screens separating one lane from another till the
place was full of their happy chirruping.  Every booth and
way-side halting-place was thronged with these delicate and
sprightly people, so friendly, so gracious, and withal so pur-
poseless.

I began to think we should never reach the town itself,
for first my guide would sit down on a green stream-bank,
his feet a-dangle in the clear water, and bandy wit with a
passing boat as though there were nothing else in the world
to think of.  And when I dragged him out of that, whisper-
ing in his ear, "The town, my dear boy! the town!  I am
all agape to see it," he would saunter reluctantly to a booth
a hundred yards further on and fall to eating strange con-
fections or sipping coloured wines with chance acquaintances,
till again I plucked him by the sleeve and said: "Seth, good
comrade--was it not so you called your city just now?--take
me to the gates, and I will be grateful to you," then on
again down a flowery lane, aimless and happy, wasting my
time and his, with placid civility I was led by that simple
guide.

Wherever we went the people stared at me, as well
they might, as I walked through them overtopping the tallest
by a head or more.  The drinking-cups paused half-way
to their mouths; the jests died away upon their lips; and
the blinking eyes of the drinkers shone with a momentary
sparkle of wonder as their minds reeled down those many-
tinted floods to the realms of oblivion they loved.

I heard men whisper one to another, "Who is he?";
"Whence does he come?"; "Is he a tribute-taker?" as I
strolled amongst them, my mind still so thrilled with doubt
and wonder that to me they seemed hardly more than
painted puppets, the vistas of their lovely glades and the
ivory town beyond only the fancy of a dream, and their
talk as incontinent as the babble of a stream.

Then happily, as I walked along with bent head brood-
ing over the incredible thing that had happened, my com-
panion's shapely legs gave out, and with a sigh of fatigue
he suggested we should take a skiff amongst the many ly-
ing about upon the margins and sail towards the town,
"For," said he, "the breeze blows thitherward, and 'tis a
shame to use one's limbs when Nature will carry us for
nothing!"

"But have you a boat of your own hereabouts?" I queried;
"for to tell the truth I came from home myself somewhat
poorly provided with means to buy or barter, and if your
purse be not heavier than mine we must still do as poor
men do."

"Oh!" said An, "there is no need to think of that, no one
here to hire or hire of; we will just take the first skiff we
see that suits us."

"And what if the owner should come along and find his
boat gone?"

"Why, what should he do but take the next along the
bank, and the master of that the next again--how else
could it be?" said the Martian, and shrugging my shoulders,
for I was in no great mood to argue, we went down to the
waterway, through a thicket of budding trees underlaid with
a carpet of small red flowers filling the air with a scent
of honey, and soon found a diminutive craft pulled up on
the bank.  There were some dainty cloaks and wraps in it
which An took out and laid under a tree.  But first he felt
in the pouch of one for a sweetmeat which his fine nostrils,
acute as a squirrel's, told him was there, and taking the lump
out bit a piece from it, afterwards replacing it in the owner's
pocket with the frankest simplicity.

Then we pushed off, hoisted the slender mast, set the
smallest lug-sail that ever a sailor smiled at, and, myself
at the helm, and that golden youth amidships, away we
drifted under thickets of drooping canes tasselled with yel-
low catkin-flowers, up the blue alley of the water into the
broader open river beyond with its rapid flow and crowd-
ing boats, the white city front now towering clear before us.

The air was full of sunshine and merry voices; birds were
singing, trees were budding; only my heart was heavy, my
mind confused.  Yet why should I be sad, I said to myself
presently?  Life beat in my pulses; what had I to fear?
This world I had tumbled into was new and strange, no
doubt, but tomorrow it would be old and familiar; it dis-
credited my manhood to sit brow-bent like that, so with
an effort I roused myself.

"Old chap!" I said to my companion, as he sat astride
of a thwart slowly chewing something sticky and eyeing
me out of the corner of his eyes with vapid wonder, "tell
me something of this land of yours, or something about
yourself--which reminds me I have a question to ask.  It is
a bit delicate, but you look a sensible sort of fellow, and
will take no offence.  The fact is, I have noticed as we
came along half your population dresses in all the colours
of the rainbow--'fancy suitings' our tailors could call it at
home--and this half of the census are undoubtedly men and
women.  The rub is that the other half, to which you be-
long, all dress alike in YELLOW, and I will be fired from
the biggest gun on the Carolina's main deck if I can tell
what sex you belong to!  I took you for a boy in the begin-
ning, and the way you closed with the idea of having a
drink with me seemed to show I was dead on the right
course.  Then a little later on I heard you and a friend
abusing our sex from an outside point of view in a way
which was very disconcerting.  This, and some other things,
have set me all abroad again, and as fate seems determined
to make us chums for this voyage--why--well, frankly, I
should be glad to know if you be boy or girl?  If you are
as I am, no more nor less then--for I like you--there's my
hand in comradeship.  If you are otherwise, as those sleek
outlines seem to promise--why, here's my hand again!  But
man or woman you must be--come, which is it?"

If I had been perplexed before, to watch that boy now
was more curious than ever.  He drew back from me with
a show of wounded dignity, then bit his lips, and sighed,
and stared, and frowned.  "Come," I said laughingly, "speak!
it engenders ambiguity to be so ambiguous of gender!  'Tis
no great matter, yes or no, a plain answer will set us fairly
in our friendship; if it is comrade, then comrade let it be;
if maid, why, I shall not quarrel with that, though it cost
me a likely messmate."

"You mock me."

"Not I, I never mocked any one."

"And does my robe tell you nothing?"

"Nothing so much; a yellow tunic and becoming enough,
but nothing about it to hang a deduction on.  Come!  Are
you a girl, after all?"

"I do not count myself a girl."

"Why, then, you are the most blooming boy that ever
eyes were set upon; and though 'tis with some tinge of
regret, yet cheerfully I welcome you into the ranks of man-
hood."

"I hate your manhood, send it after the maidhood; it
fits me just as badly."

"But An, be reasonable; man or maid you must be."

"Must be; why?"

"Why?"  Was ever such a question put to a sane mortal
before?  I stared at that ambiguous thing before me, and
then, a little wroth to be played with, growled out some-
thing about Martians being all drunk or mad.

"'Tis you yourself are one or other," said that individual,
by this time pink with anger, "and if you think because
I am what I am you can safely taunt me, you are wrong.
See!  I have a sting," and like a thwarted child my com-
panion half drew from the folds of the yellow tunic-dress
the daintiest, most harmless-looking little dagger that was
ever seen.

"Oh, if it comes to that," I answered, touching the Navy
scabbard still at my hip, and regaining my temper at the
sight of hers, "why, I have a sting also--and twice as long
as yours!  But in truth, An, let us not talk of these things; if
something in what I have said has offended nice Martian
scruples I am sorry, and will question no more, leaving my
wonder for time to settle."

"No," said the other, "it was my fault to be hasty of
offence; I am not so angered once a year.  But in truth
your question moves us yellow robes deeply.  Did you not
really know that we who wear this saffron tunic are slaves,--
a race apart, despised by all."

"'Slaves,' no; how should I know it?"

"I thought you must understand a thing so fundamental,
and it was that thought which made your questions seem
unkind.  But if indeed you have come so far as not to under-
stand even this, then let me tell you once we of this garb
were women--priestesses of the immaculate conceptions of
humanity; guardians of those great hopes and longings
which die so easily.  And because we forgot our high station
and took to aping another sex the gods deserted and men
despised us, giving us, in the fierceness of their contempt,
what we asked for.  We are the slave ants of the nest, the
work-bees of the hive, come, in truth, of those here who
still be men and women of a sort, but toilers only; un-
known in love, unregretted in death--those who dangle all
children but their own--slaves cursed with the accomplish-
ment of their own ambition."

There was no doubt poor An believed what she said,
for her attitude was one of extreme dejection while she
spoke, and to cheer her I laughed.

"Oh! come, it can't be as bad as that.  Surely sometimes
some of you win back to womanhood?  You yourself do not
look so far gone but what some deed of abnegation, some
strong love if you could but conceive it would set you right
again.  Surely you of the primrose robes can sometimes love?"

Whereat unwittingly I troubled the waters in the placid
soul of that outcast Martian!  I cannot exactly describe
how it was, but she bent her head silently for a moment or
two, and then, with a sigh, lifting her eyes suddenly to
mine, said quietly, "Yes, sometimes; sometimes--but very sel-
dom," while for an instant across her face there flashed
the summer lightning of a new hope, a single transient
glance of wistful, timid entreaty; of wonder and delight
that dared not even yet acknowledge itself.

Then it was my turn to sit silent, and the pause was so
awkward that in a minute, to break it, I exclaimed--

"Let's drop personalities, old chap--I mean my dear
Miss An.  Tell me something about your people, and let us
begin properly at the top: have you got a king, for instance?"

To this the girl, pulling herself out of the pleasant slough
of her listlessness, and falling into my vein, answered--

"Both yes and no, sir traveller from afar--no chiefly, and
yet perhaps yes.  If it were no then it were so, and if yes
then Hath were our king."

"A mild king I should judge by your uncertainty.  In the
place where I came from kings press their individualities
somewhat more clearly on their subjects' minds.  Is Hath
here in the city?  Does he come to your feasts today?"

An nodded.  Hath was on the river, he had been to see the
sunrise; even now she thought the laughter and singing
down behind the bend might be the king's barge coming
up citywards.  "He will not be late," said my companion,
"because the marriage-feast is set for tomorrow in the
palace."

I became interested.  Kings, palaces, marriage-feasts--why,
here was something substantial to go upon; after all
these gauzy folk might turn out good fellows, jolly com-
rades to sojourn amongst--and marriage-feasts reminded
me again I was hungry.

"Who is it," I asked, with more interest in my tone,
"who gets married?--is it your ambiguous king himself?"

Whereat An's purple eyes broadened with wonder: then
as though she would not be uncivil she checked herself,
and answered with smothered pity for my ignorance, "Not
only Hath himself, but every one, stranger, they are all
married tomorrow; you would not have them married one
at a time, would you?"--this with inexpressible derision.

I said, with humility, something like that happened in
the place I came from, asking her how it chanced the
convenience of so many came to one climax at the same mo-
ment.  "Surely, An, this is a marvel of arrangement.  Where I
dwelt wooings would sometimes be long or sometimes short,
and all maids were not complacent by such universal agree-
ment."

The girl was clearly perplexed.  She stared at me a
space, then said, "What have wooings long or short to do with
weddings?  You talk as if you did your wooing first and
then came to marriage--we get married first and woo after-
wards!"

"'Tis not a bad idea, and I can see it might lend an
ease and certainty to the pastime which our method lacks.
But if the woman is got first and sued subsequently, who
brings you together?  Who sees to the essential preliminaries
of assortment?"

An, looking at my shoes as though she speculated on
the remoteness of the journey I had come if it were measured
by my ignorance, replied, "The urn, stranger, the urn does
that--what else?  How it may be in that out-fashioned
region you have come from I cannot tell, but here--'tis so
commonplace I should have thought you must have known
it--we put each new year the names of all womenkind into
an urn and the men draw for them, each town, each village
by itself, and those they draw are theirs; is it conceivable
your race has other methods?"

I told her it was so--we picked and chose for ourselves,
beseeching the damsels, fighting for them, and holding the
sun of romance was at its setting just where the Martians held
it to rise.  Whereat An burst out laughing--a clear, ringing
laugh that set all the light-hearted folk in the nearest boats
laughing in sympathy.  But when the grotesqueness of the
idea had somewhat worn off, she turned grave and asked
me if such a fancy did not lead to spite, envy, and bickerings.
"Why, it seems to me," she said, shaking her curly head,
"such a plan might fire cities, desolate plains, and empty
palaces--"

"Such things have been."

"Ah! our way is much the better.  See!" quoth that gentle
philosopher.  "'Here,' one of our women would say, 'am I
to-day, unwed, as free of thought as yonder bird chasing
the catkin down; tomorrow I shall be married, with a whole
summer to make love in, relieved at one bound of all
those uncertainties you acknowledge to, with nothing to
do but lie about on sunny banks with him whom chance
sends me, come to the goal of love without any travelling
to get there.'  Why, you must acknowledge this is the per-
fection of ease."

"But supposing," I said, "chance dealt unkindly to you
from your nuptial urn, supposing the man was not to your
liking, or another coveted him?"  To which An answered,
with some shrewdness--

"In the first case we should do what we might, being
no worse off than those in your land who had played ill
providence to themselves.  In the second, no maid would covet
him whom fate had given to another, it were too fatiguing,
or if such a thing DID happen, then one of them would
waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born was
worth a wrangle, and it is allowed us to barter and change
a little."

All this was strange enough.  I could not but laugh, while
An laughed at the lightest invitation, and thus chatting and
deriding each other's social arrangements we floated idly
townwards and presently came out into the main waterway
perhaps a mile wide and flowing rapidly, as streams will on
the threshold of the spring, with brash or waste of distant
beaches riding down it, and every now and then a broken
branch or tree-stem glancing through waves whose crests a
fresh wind lifted and sowed in golden showers in the inter-
vening furrows.  The Martians seemed expert upon the water,
steering nimbly between these floating dangers when they
met them, but for the most part hugging the shore where a
more placid stream better suited their fancies, and for a
time all went well.

An, as we went along, was telling me more of her strange
country, pointing out birds or flowers and naming them
to me.  "Now that," she said, pointing to a small grey owl
who sat reflective on a floating log we were approaching--
"that is a bird of omen; cover your face and look away,
for it is not well to watch it."

Whereat I laughed.  "Oh!" I answered, "so those ancient
follies have come as far as this, have they?  But it is no bird
grey or black or white that can frighten folk where I come
from; see, I will ruffle his philosophy for him," and suiting the
action to the words I lifted a pebble that happened to lie at
the bottom of the boat and flung it at that creature with
the melancholy eyes.  Away went the owl, dipping his wings
into the water at every stroke, and as he went wailing out
a ghostly cry, which even amongst sunshine and glitter
made one's flesh creep.

An shook her head.  "You should not have done that," she
said; "our dead whom we send down over the falls come back
in the body of yonder little bird.  But he has gone now," she
added, with relief; "see, he settles far up stream upon the
point of yonder rotten bough; I would not disturb him
again if I were you--"

Whatever more An would have said was lost, for amidst
a sound of flutes and singing round the bend of the river
below came a crowd of boats decked with flowers and gar-
lands, all clustering round a barge barely able to move, so
thick those lesser skiffs pressed upon it.  So close those
wherries hung about that the garlanded rowers who sat at
the oars could scarcely pull, but, here as everywhere, it was
the same good temper, the same carelessness of order, as like
a flowery island in the dancing blue water the motley
fleet came up.

I steered our skiff a space out from the bank to get a
better view, while An clapped her hands together and
laughed.  "It is Hath--he himself and those of the palace
with him.  Steer a little nearer still, friend--so! between yon
floating rubbish flats, for those with Hath are good to look
at."

Nothing loth I made out into mid-stream to see that
strange prince go by, little thinking in a few minutes I
should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero.
The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind,
it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck,
whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty,
to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian
society.  He did not make me desire to renounce my demo-
cratic principles.  The royal fellow was sitting in the centre
of the barge under a canopy and on a throne which was a
mass of flowers, not bunched together as they would have
been with us, but so cunningly arranged that they rose from
the footstool to the pinnacle in a rhythm of colour, a poem
in bud and petals the like of which for harmonious beauty
I could not have imagined possible.  And in this fairy den
was a thin, gaunt young man, dressed in some sort of black
stuff so nondescript that it amounted to little more than
a shadow.  I took it for granted that a substance of bone
and muscle was covered by that gloomy suit, but it was
the face above that alone riveted my gaze and made me
return the stare he gave me as we came up with re-
doubled interest.  It was not an unhandsome face, but ashy
grey in colour and amongst the insipid countenances of the
Martians about him marvellously thoughtful.  I do not
know whether those who had killed themselves by learn-
ing ever leave ghosts behind, but if so this was the very
ideal for such a one.  At his feet I noticed, when I un-
hooked my eyes from his at last, sat a girl in a loose coral
pink gown who was his very antipode.  Princess Heru, for
so she was called, was resting one arm upon his knee at
our approach and pulling a blue convolvulus bud to
pieces--a charming picture of dainty idleness.  Anything so
soft, so silken as that little lady was never seen before.  Who
am I, a poor quarter-deck loafer, that I should attempt
to describe what poet and painter alike would have failed
to realise?  I know, of course, your stock descriptives: the
melting eye, the coral lip, the peachy cheek, the raven tress;
but these were coined for mortal woman--and this was not
one of them.  I will not attempt to describe the glorious
tenderness of those eyes she turned upon me presently;
the glowing radiance of her skin; the infinite grace of every
action; the incredible soul-searching harmony of her voice,
when later on I heard it--you must gather something of
these things as I go--suffice it to say that when I saw
her there for the first time in the plenitude of her beauty
I fell desperately, wildly in love with her.

Meanwhile, even the most infatuated of mortals cannot
stare for ever without saying something.  The grating of our
prow against the garlanded side of the royal barge roused me
from my reverie, and nodding to An, to imply I would be
back presently, I lightly jumped on to Hath's vessel, and,
with the assurance of a free and independent American voter,
approached that individual, holding out my palm, and
saying as I did so,

"Shake hands, Mr. President!"

The prince came forward at my bidding and extending
his hand for mine.  He bowed slow and sedately, in that
peculiar way the Martians have, a ripple of gratified civility
passing up his flesh; lower and lower he bowed, until his
face was over our clasped hands, and then, with simple
courtesy, he kissed my finger-tips!  This was somewhat em-
barrassing.  It was not like the procedure followed in Courts
nearer to Washington than this one, as far as my reading
went, and, withdrawing my fingers hastily, I turned to the
princess, who had risen, and was eyeing her somewhat
awkwardly, the while wondering what kind of salutation
would be suitable in her case when a startling incident
happened.  The river, as said, was full of floating rubbish
brought down from some far-away uplands by a spring freshet
while the royal convoy was making slow progress upstream
and thus met it all bow on.  Some of this stuff was heavy
timber, and when a sudden warning cry went up from the
leading boats it did not take my sailor instinct long to guess
what was amiss.  Those in front shot side to side, those be-
hind tried to drop back as, bearing straight down on the
royal barge, there came a log of black wood twenty feet long
and as thick as the mainmast of an old three-decker.

Hath's boat could no more escape than if it had been
planted on a rocky pedestal, garlands and curtains trailing
in the water hung so heavy on it.  The gilded paddles of the
slender rowers were so feeble--they had but made a half-
turn from that great javelin's road when down it came upon
them, knocking the first few pretty oarsmen head over heels
and crackling through their oars like a bull through dry
maize stalks.  I sprang forward, and snatching a pole from a
half-hearted slave, jammed the end into the head of the log
and bore with all my weight upon it, diverting it a little, and
thereby perhaps saving the ship herself, but not enough.  As
it flashed by a branch caught upon the trailing tapestry,
hurling me to the deck, ,and tearing away with it all that
finery.  Then the great spar, tossing half its dripping length
into the air, went plunging downstream with shreds of silk
and flowers trailing from it, and white water bubbling in
its rear.

When I scrambled to my feet all was ludicrous confusion
on board.  Hath still stood by his throne--an island in a sea
of disorder--staring at me; all else was chaos.  The rowers
and courtiers were kicking and wallowing in the "waist" of
the ship like fish newly shot out of a trawl net, but the
princess was gone.  Where was she?  I brushed the spray
from my eyes, and stared overboard.  She was not in the bub-
bling blue water alongside.  Then I glanced aft to where the
log, now fifteen yards away, was splashing through the sun-
shine, and, as I looked, a fair arm came up from underneath
and white fingers clutched convulsively at the sky.  What
man could need more?  Down the barge I rushed, and drop-
ping only my swordbelt, leapt in to her rescue.  The gentle
Martians were too numb to raise a hand in help; but it was
not necessary.  I had the tide with me, and gained at
every stroke.  Meanwhile that accursed tree, with poor
Heru's skirts caught on a branch, was drowning her at its
leisure; lifting her up as it rose upon the crests, a fair,
helpless bundle, and then sousing her in its fall into the
nether water, where I could see her gleam now and again
like pink coral.

I redoubled my efforts and got alongside, clutching the
rind of that old stump, and swimming and scrambling, at last
was within reach of the princess.  Thereon the log lifted her
playfully to my arms, and when I had laid hold came down,
a crushing weight, and forced us far into the clammy
bosom of Martian sea.  Again we came up, coughing and
choking--I tugging furiously at that tangled raiment, and
the lady, a mere lump of sweetness in my other arm--
then down again with that log upon me and all the noises
of Eblis in my ears.  Up and down we went, over and over,
till strength was spent and my ribs seemed breaking; then,
with a last desperate effort, I got a knee against the stem,
and by sheer strength freed my princess--the spiteful timber
made a last ugly thrust at us as it rolled away--and
we were free!

I turned upon my back, and, sure of rescue now, took
the lady's head upon my chest, holding her sweet, white
fists in mine the while, and, floating, waited for help.

It came only too quickly.  The gallant Martians, when
they saw the princess saved, came swiftly down upon us.
Over the lapping of the water in my ears I heard their sigh-
like cries of admiration and surprise, the rattle of spray on
the canoe sides mingled with the splash of oars, the flitting
shadows of their prows were all about us, and in less time
than it takes to write we were hauled aboard, revived, and
taken to Hath's barge.  Again the prince's lips were on my
fingertips; again the flutes and music struck up; and as I
squeezed the water out of my hair, and tried to keep my
eyes off the outline of Heru, whose loveliness shone through
her damp, clinging, pink robe, as if that robe were but a
gauzy fancy, I vaguely heard Hath saying wondrous things
of my gallantry, and, what was more to the purpose, asking
me to come with him and stay that night at the palace.




CHAPTER IV

They lodged me like a prince in a tributary country that
first night.  I was tired.  'Twas a stiff stage I had come the
day before, and they gave me a couch whose ethereal
softness seemed to close like the wings of a bird as I plunged
at its touch into fathomless slumbers.  But the next day had
hardly broken when I was awake, and, stretching my limbs
upon the piled silk of a legless bed upon the floor, found
myself in a great chamber with a purple tapestry across the
entrance, and a square arch leading to a flat terrace outside.

It was a glorious daybreak, making my heart light within
me, the air like new milk, and the colours of the sunrise lay
purple and yellow in bars across my room.  I yawned and
stretched, then rising, wrapped a silken quilt about me and
went out into the flat terrace top, wherefrom all the city
could be seen stretched in an ivory and emerald patchwork,
with open, blue water on one side, and the Martian plain
trending away in illimitable distance upon the other.

Directly underneath in the great square at the bottom of
Hath's palace steps were gathered a concourse of people,
brilliant in many-coloured dresses.  They were sitting or
lying about just as they might for all I knew have done
through the warm night, without much order, save that
where the black streaks of inlaid stone marked a carriage-
way across the square none were stationed.  While I won-
dered what would bring so many together thus early, there
came a sound of flutes--for these people can do nothing
without piping like finches in a thicket in May--and from
the storehouses half-way over to the harbour there streamed
a line of carts piled high with provender.  Down came the
teams attended by their slaves, circling and wheeling into
the open place, and as they passed each group those lazy,
lolling beggars crowded round and took the dole they
were too thriftless to earn themselves.  It was strange to see
how listless they were about the meal, even though Provi-
dence itself put it into their hands; to note how the
yellow-girted slaves scudded amongst them, serving out
the loaves, themselves had grown, harvested, and baked;
slipping from group to group, rousing, exhorting, admin-
istering to a helpless throng that took their efforts without
thought or thanks.

I stood there a long time, one foot upon the coping and
my chin upon my hand, noting the beauty of the ruined
town and wondering how such a feeble race as that which
lay about, breakfasting in the limpid sunshine, could have
come by a city like this, or kept even the ruins of its walls
and buildings from the covetousness of others, until presently
there was a rustle of primrose garments and my friend of
the day before stood by me.

"Are you rested, traveller?" she questioned in that pretty
voice of hers.

"Rested ambrosially, An."

"It is well; I will tell the Government and it will come
up to wash and dress you, afterwards giving you breakfast."

"For the breakfast, damsel, I shall be grateful, but as
for the washing and dressing I will defend myself to the
last gasp sooner than submit to such administration."

"How strange!  Do you never wash in your country?"

"Yes, but it is a matter left largely to our own discretion;
so, my dear girl, if you will leave me for a minute or two
in quest of that meal you have mentioned, I will guarantee
to be ready when it comes."

Away she slipped, with a shrug of her rosy shoulders, to
return presently, carrying a tray covered with a white cloth,
whereon were half a dozen glittering covers whence came
most fragrant odours of cooked things.

"Why, comrade," I said, sitting down and lifting lid by lid,
for the cold, sweet air outside had made me hungry, "this
is better than was hoped for; I thought from what I saw
down yonder I should have to trot behind a tumbril for
my breakfast, and eat it on my heels amongst your sleepy
friends below."

An replied, "The stranger is a prince, we take it, in his
own country, and princes fare not quite like common
people, even here."

"So," I said, my mouth full of a strange, unknown fish,
and a cake soft as milk and white as cotton in the pod.
"Now that makes me feel at home!"

"Would you have had it otherwise with us?"

"No! now I come to think of it, it is most natural things
should be much alike in all the corners of the universe;
the splendid simplicity that rules the spheres, works much
the same, no doubt, upon one side of the sun as upon the
other.  Yet, somehow--you can hardly wonder at it--yes-
terday I looked to find your world, when I realised where
I had tumbled to, a world of djin and giants; of mad
possibilities over realised, and here I see you dwellers by
the utterly remote little more marvellous than if I had
come amongst you on the introduction of a cheap tourist
ticket, and round some neglected corner of my own distant
world!"

"I hardly follow your meaning, sir."

"No, no, of course you cannot.  I was forgetting you did
not know!  There, pass me the stuff on yonder platter that
looks like caked mud from an anchor fluke, and swells like
breath of paradise, and let me question you;" and while I
sat and drank with that yellow servitor sitting in front of
me, I plied her with questions, just as a baby might who
had come into the world with a full-blown gift of speech.
But though she was ready and willing enough to answer,
and laughed gaily at my quaint ignorance of simple things,
yet there was little water in the well.

"Had they any kind of crafts or science; any cult of
stars or figures?"  But again she shook her head, and said,
"Hath might know, Hath understood most things, but her-
self knew little of either."  "Armies or navies?" and again the
Martian shrugged her shoulders, questioning in turn--

"What for?"

"What for!" I cried, a little angry with her engaging
dulness, "Why, to keep that which the strong hand got, and
to get more for those who come next; navies to sweep
yonder blue seas, and armies to ward what they should bring
home, or guard the city walls against all enemies,--for I
suppose, An," I said, putting down my knife as the cheering
thought came on me,--"I suppose, An, you have some en-
emies?  It is not like Providence to give such riches as you
possess, such lands, such cities, and not to supply the anti-
dote in some one poor enough to covet them."

At once the girl's face clouded over, and it was obvious
a tender subject had been chanced upon.  She waved her
hand impatiently as though to change the subject, but
I would not be put off.

"Come," I said, "this is better than breakfast.  It was the
one thing--this unknown enemy of yours--wanting to lever
the dull mass of your too peacefulness.  What is he like?
How strong?  How stands the quarrel between you?  I was
a soldier myself before the sea allured me, and love horse
and sword best of all things."

"You would not jest if you knew our enemy!"

"That is as it may be.  I have laughed in the face of many
a stronger foe than yours is like to prove; but anyhow, give
me a chance to judge.  Come, who is it that frightens all the
blood out of your cheeks by a bare mention and may not
be laughed at even behind these substantial walls?"

"First, then, you know, of course, that long ago this land
of ours was harried from the West."

"Not I."

"No!" said An, with a little warmth.  "If it comes to that,
you know nothing."

Whereat I laughed, and, saying the reply was just, vowed
I would not interrupt again; so she wont on saying how
Hath--that interminable Hath!--would know it all better than
she did, but long ago the land was overrun by a people
from beyond the broad, blue waters outside; a people
huge of person, hairy and savage, uncouth, unlettered,
and poor An's voice trembled even to describe them; a
people without mercy or compunction, dwellers in woods,
eaters of flesh, who burnt, plundered, and destroyed all
before them, and had toppled over this city along with
many others in an ancient foray, the horrors of which,
still burnt lurid in her people's minds.

"Ever since then," went on the girl, "these odious terrors
of the outer land have been a nightmare to us, making
hectic our pleasures, and filling our peace with horrid
thoughts of what might be, should they chance to come
again."

"'Tis unfortunate, no doubt, lady," I answered.  "Yet it
was long ago, and the plunderers are far away.  Why not rise
and raid them in turn?  To live under such a nightmare is
miserable, and a poet on my side of the ether has said--


     "'He either fears his fate too much,

          Or his deserts are small,

     Who will not put it to the touch,

          To win or lose it all.'

It seems to me you must either bustle and fight again, or
sit tamely down, and by paying the coward's fee for peace,
buy at heavy price, indulgence from the victor."

"We," said An simply, and with no show of shame,
"would rather die than fight, and so we take the easier
way, though a heavy one it is.  Look!" she said, drawing me
to the broad window whence we could get a glimpse of the
westward town and the harbour out beyond the walls.
"Look! see yonder long row of boats with brown sails
hanging loose reefed from every yard ranged all along
the quay.  Even from here you can make out the thin
stream of porter slaves passing to and fro between them
and the granaries like ants on a sunny path.  Those are
our tax-men's ships, they came yesterday from far out across
the sea, as punctual as fate with the first day of spring,
and two or three nights hence we trust will go again: and
glad shall we be to see them start, although they leave
scupper deep with our cloth, our corn, and gold."

"Is that what they take for tribute?"

"That and one girl--the fairest they can find."

"One--only one!  'Tis very moderate, all things considered."

"She is for the thither king, Ar-hap, and though only one
as you say, stranger, yet he who loses her is apt sometimes
to think her one too many lost."

"By Jupiter himself it is well said!  If I were that man
I would stir up heaven and hell until I got her back;
neither man, nor beast, nor devil should stay me in my
quest!"  As I spoke I thought for a minute An's fingers trembled
a little as she fixed a flower upon my coat, while there
was something like a sigh in her voice as she said--

"The maids of this country are not accustomed, sir,
to be so strongly loved."

By this time, breakfasted and rehabilitated, I was ready
to go forth.  The girl swung back the heavy curtain that
served in place of door across the entrance of my chamber,
and leading the way by a corridor and marble steps while
I followed, and whether it was the Martian air or the meal
I know not, but thinking mighty well of myself until we
came presently onto the main palace stairs, which led by
stately flights from the upper galleries to the wide square
below.

As we passed into the full sunshine--and no sunshine is
so crisply golden as the Martian--amongst twined flowers
and shrubs and gay, quaint birds building in the cornices,
a sleek youth rose slowly from where he had spread his cloak
as couch upon a step and approaching asked--

"You are the stranger of yesterday?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Then I bring a message from Prince Hath, saying it
would pleasure him greatly if you would eat the morning
meal with him."

"Why," I answered, "it is very civil indeed, but I have
breakfasted already."

"And so has Hath," said the boy, gently yawning.  "You
see I came here early this morning, but knowing you would
pass sooner or later I thought it would save me the trouble
if I lay down till you came--those quaint people who
built these places were so prodigal of steps," and smiling
apologetically he sank back on his couch and began toying
with a leaf.

"Sweet fellow," I said, and you will note how I was
getting into their style of conversation, "get back to Hath
when you have rested, give him my most gracious thanks
for the intended courtesy, but tell him the invitation should
have started a week earlier; tell him from me, you nimble-
footed messenger, that I will post-date his kindness and
come tomorrow; say that meanwhile I pray him to send
any ill news he has for me by you.  Is the message too bulky
for your slender shoulders?"

"No," said the boy, rousing himself slowly, "I will take it,"
and then he prepared to go.  He turned again and said,
without a trace of incivility, "But indeed, stranger, I wish
you would take the message yourself.  This is the third flight
of stairs I have been up today."

Everywhere it was the same friendly indolence.  Half the
breakfasters were lying on coloured shawls in groups
about the square; the other half were strolling off--all in
one direction, I noticed--as slowly as could be towards
the open fields beyond; no one was active or had anything
to do save the yellow folk who flitted to and fro fostering
the others, and doing the city work as though it were
their only thought in life.  There were no shops in that strange
city, for there were no needs; some booths I saw indeed,
and temple-like places, but hollow, and used for birds and
beasts--things these lazy Martians love.  There was no tramp
of busy feet, for no one was busy; no clank of swords or
armour in those peaceful streets, for no one was warlike; no
hustle, for no one hurried; no wide-packed asses nodding
down the lanes, for there was nothing to fill their packs
with, and though a cart sometimes came by with a load
of lolling men and maids, or a small horse, for horses
they had, paced along, itself nearly as lazy as the master
he bore, with trappings sewed over bits of coloured shell
and coral, yet somehow it was all extraordinarily unreal.
It was a city full of the ghosts of the life which once
pulsed through its ways.  The streets were peopled, the
chatter of voices everywhere, the singing boys and laughing
girls wandering, arms linked together, down the ways filled
every echo with their merriment, yet somehow it was all
so shallow that again and again I rubbed my eyes, wonder-
ing if I were indeed awake, or whether it were not a pro-
longed sleep of which the tomorrow were still to come.

"What strikes me as strangest of all, good comrade," I
observed pleasantly to the tripping presence at my elbow,
"is that these countrymen of yours who shirk to climb a
flight of steps, and have palms as soft as rose petals, these
wide ways paved with stones as hard as a usurer's heart."

An laughed.  "The stones were still in their native quar-
ries had it been left to us to seek them; we are like the conies
in the ruins, sir, the inheritors of what other hands have
done."

"Ay, and undone, I think, as well, for coming along I have
noted axe chippings upon the walls, smudges of ancient fire
and smoke upon the cornices."

An winced a little and stared uneasily at the walls, mut-
tering below her breath something about trying to hide
with flower garlands the marks they could not banish, but
it was plain the conversation was not pleasing to her.  So
unpleasant was talk or sight of woodmen (Thither-folk,
as she called them, in contradiction to the Hither people
about us here), that the girl was clearly relieved when
we were free of the town and out into the open play-
ground of the people.  The whole place down there was
a gay, shifting crowd.  The booths of yesterday, the ar-
cades, the archways, were still standing, and during the
night unknown hands had redecked them with flowers,
while another day's sunshine had opened the coppice buds so
that the whole place was brilliant past expression.  And
here the Hither folk were varying their idleness by a
general holiday.  They were standing about in groups, or
lying ranked like new-plucked flowers on the banks, piping
to each other through reeds as soft and melodious as
running water.  They were playing inconsequent games and
breaking off in the middle of them like children looking
for new pleasures.  They were idling about the drinking
booths, delicately stupid with quaint, thin wines, dealt out
to all who asked; the maids were ready to chevy or be
chevied through the blossoming thickets by anyone who
chanced upon them, the men slipped their arms round slen-
der waists and wandered down the paths, scarce seeming
to care even whose waist it was they circled or into whose
ear they whispered the remainder of the love-tale they
had begun to some one else.  And everywhere it was "Hi,"
and "Ha," and "So," and "See," as these quaint people
called to one another, knowing each other as familiarly as
ants of a nest, and by the same magic it seemed to me.

"An," I said presently, when we had wandered an hour
or so through the drifting throng, "have these good country-
men of yours no other names but monosyllabic, nothing to
designate them but these chirruping syllables?"

"Is it not enough?" answered my companion.  "Once in-
deed I think we had longer names, but," she added, smiling,
"how much trouble it saves to limit each one to a single sound.
It is uncivil to one's neighbours to burden their tongues
with double duty when half would do."

"But have you no patronymics--nothing to show the
child comes of the same source as his father came?"

"We have no fathers."

"What! no fathers?" I said, starting and staring at her.

"No, nor mothers either, or at least none that we remem-
ber, for again, why should we?  Mayhap in that strange dis-
trict you come from you keep count of these things, but what
have we to do with either when their initial duty is done.
Look at that painted butterfly swinging on the honey-
laden catkin there.  What knows she of the mother who
shed her life into a flowercup and forgot which flower it was
the minute afterwards.  We, too, are insects, stranger."

"And do you mean to say of this great concourse here,
that every atom is solitary, individual, and can claim no kin-
dred with another save the loose bonds of a general fraterni-
ty--a specious idea, horrible, impracticable!"

Whereat An laughed.  "Ask the grasshoppers if it is im-
practicable; ask the little buzzing things of grass and leaves
who drift hither and thither upon each breath of wind,
finding kinsmen never but comrades everywhere--ask them
if it is horrible."

This made me melancholy, and somehow set me thinking
of the friends immeasurably distant I had left but yesterday.

What were they doing?  Did they miss me?  I was to have
called for my pay this afternoon, and tomorrow was to
have run down South to see that freckled lady of mine.
What would she think of my absence?  What would she
think if she knew where I was?  Gods, it was too mad, too
absurd!  I thrust my hands into my pockets in fierce des-
peration, and there they clutched an old dance programme
and an out-of-date check for a New York ferry-boat.  I
scowled about on that sunny, helpless people, and laying
my hand bitterly upon my heart felt in the breast-pocket
beneath a packet of unpaid Boston tailors' bills and a note
from my landlady asking if I would let her aunt do my
washing while I was on shore.  Oh! what would they all
think of me?  Would they brand me as a deserter, a poltroon,
and a thief, letting my name presently sink down in shame
and mystery in the shadowy realm of the forgotten?  Dread-
ful thoughts!  I would think no more.

Maybe An had marked my melancholy, for presently she
led me to a stall where in fantastic vases wines of sorts I
have described before were put out for all who came to try
them.  There was medicine here for every kind of dulness--not
the gross cure which earthly wine effects, but so nicely
proportioned to each specific need that one could regulate
one's debauch to a hairbreadth, rising through all the
gamut of satisfaction, from the staid contentment coming of
that flask there to the wild extravagances of the further-
most vase.  So my stripling told me, running her finger down
the line of beakers carved with strange figures and cased
in silver, each in its cluster of little attendant drinking-
cups, like-coloured, and waiting round on the white napkins
as the shore boats wait to unload a cargo round the
sides of a merchant vessel.

"And what," I said, after curiously examining each liquor
in turn, "what is that which stands alone there in the
humble earthen jar, as though unworthy of the company of
the others."

"Oh, that," said my friend, "is the most essential of them
all--that is the wine of recovery, without which all the
others were deadly poisons."

"The which, lady, looks as if it had a moral attaching
to it."

"It may have; indeed I think it has, but I have forgotten.
Prince Hath would know!  Meanwhile let me give you to
drink, great stranger, let me get you something."

"Well, then," I laughed, "reach me down an antidote
to fate, a specific for an absent mistress, and forgetful
friends."

"What was she like?" said An, hesitating a little and
frowning.

"Nay, good friend," was my answer, "what can that
matter to you?"

"Oh, nothing, of course," answered that Martian, and while
she took from the table a cup and filled it with fluid I felt
in the pouch of my sword-belt to see if by chance a bit of
money was Iying there, but there was none, only the pips
of an orange poor Polly had sucked and laughingly thrown
at me.

However, it did not matter.  The girl handed me the cup,
and I put my lips to it.  The first taste was bitter and
acrid, like the liquor of long-steeped wood.  At the second
taste a shiver of pleasure ran through me, and I opened my
eyes and stared hard.  The third taste grossness and heavi-
ness and chagrin dropped from my heart; all the com-
plexion of Providence altered in a flash, and a stupid
irresistible joy, unreasoning, uncontrollable took possession
of my fibre.  I sank upon a mossy bank and, lolling my
head, beamed idiotically on the lolling Martians all about
me.  How long I was like that I cannot say.  The heavy
minutes of sodden contentment slipped by unnoticed, un-
umbered, till presently I felt the touch of a wine-cup
at my lips again, and drinking of another liquor dulness
vanished from my mind, my eyes cleared, my heart throbbed;
a fantastic gaiety seized upon my limbs; I bounded to
my feet, and seizing An's two hands in mine, swung that
damsel round in a giddy dance, capering as never dancer
danced before, till spent and weary I sank down again
from sheer lack of breath, and only knew thereafter that
An was sitting by me saying, "Drink! drink stranger, drink
and forget!" and as a third time a cup was pressed to my
lips, aches and pleasures, stupidness and joy, life itself,
seemed
slipping away into a splendid golden vacuity, a hazy epi-
sode of unconscious Elysium, indefinite, and unfathomable.




CHAPTER V

When I woke, feeling as refreshed as though I had been
dreaming through a long night, An, seeing me open-eyed,
helped me to my feet, and when I had recovered my senses
a little, asked if we should go on.  I was myself again by
this time, so willingly took her hand, and soon came out of
the tangle into the open spaces.  I must have been under
the spell of the Martian wines longer than it seemed, for
already it was late in the afternoon, the shadows of trees
were lying deep and far-reaching over the motley crowds
of people.  Out here as the day waned they had developed
some sort of method in their sports.  In front of us was a
broad, grassy course marked off with garlanded finger-posts,
and in this space rallies of workfolk were taking part in all
manner of games under the eyes of a great concourse of
spectators, doing the Martians' pleasures for them as they
did their labours.  An led me gently on, leaning on my arm
heavier, I thought, than she had done in the morning, and
ever and anon turning her gazelle-like eyes upon me with
a look I could not understand.  As we sauntered forward
I noticed all about lesser circles where the yellow-girted
ones were drawing delighted laughter from good-tempered
crowds by tricks of sleight-of-hand, and posturing, or toss-
ing gilded cups and balls as though they were catering,
as indeed they were, for outgrown children.  Others fluted or
sang songs in chorus to the slow clapping of hands, while
others were doing I knew not what, sitting silent amongst si-
lent spectators who every now and then burst out laughing
for no cause that I could see.  But An would not let me
stop, and so we pushed on through the crowd till we
came to the main enclosures where a dozen slaves had run
a race for the amusement of those too lazy to race them-
selves, and were sitting panting on the grass.

To give them time to get their breath, perhaps, a man
stepped out of the crowd dressed in a dark blue tunic, a
strange vacuous-looking fellow, and throwing down a sheaf
of javelins marched off a dozen paces, then, facing round,
called out loudly he would give sixteen suits of "summer
cloth" to any one who could prick him with a javelin
from the heap.

"Why," I said in amazement, "this is the best of fools--
no one could miss from such a distance."

"Ay but," replied my guide, "he is a gifted one, versed
in mystics."

I was just going to say a good javelin, shod with iron,
was a stronger argument than any mystic I had ever heard
of could stand, when out of the crowd stepped a youth, and
amid the derisive cheers of his friends chose a reed from
the bundle.  He poised it in his hand a minute to get the
middle, then turned on the living target.  Whatever else they
might be, these Martians were certainly beautiful as the day-
time.  Never had I seen such a perfect embodiment of grace
and elegance as that boy as he stood there for a moment
poised to the throw; the afternoon sunshine warm and
strong on his bunched brown hair, a girlish flush of shyness
on his handsome face, and the sleek perfection of his limbs,
clear cut against the dusky background beyond.  And now
the javelin was going.  Surely the mystic would think better
of it at the last moment!  No! the initiate held his ground
with tight-shut lips and retrospective eyes, and even as I
looked the weapon flew upon its errand.

"There goes the soul of a fool!" I exclaimed, and as the
words were uttered the spear struck, or seemed to, between
the neck and shoulder, but instead of piercing rose high into
the air, quivering and flashing, and presently turning over,
fell back, and plunged deep into the turf, while a low
murmur of indifferent pleasure went round amongst the
onlookers.

Thereat An, yawning gently, looked to me and said, "A
strong-willed fellow, isn't he, friend?"

I hesitated a minute and then asked, "Was it WILL which
turned that shaft?"

She answered with simplicity, "Why, of course--what
else?"

By this time another boy had stepped out, and having
chosen a javelin, tested it with hand and foot, then re-
tiring a pace or two rushed up to the throwing mark and
flung it straight and true into the bared bosom of the man.
And as though it had struck a wall of brass, the shaft leapt
back falling quivering at the thrower's feet.  Another and
another tried unsuccessfully, until at last, vexed at their
futility, I said, "I have a somewhat scanty wardrobe that
would be all the better for that fellow's summer suiting, by
your leave I will venture a throw against him."

"It is useless," answered An; "none but one who knows
more magic than he, or is especially befriended by the Fates
can touch him through the envelope he has put on."

"Still, I think I will try."

"It is hopeless, I would not willingly see you fail,"
whispered the girl, with a sudden show of friendship.

"And what," I said, bending down, "would you give me
if I succeeded?"  Whereat An laughed a little uneasily, and,
withdrawing her hand from mine, half turned away.  So I
pushed through the spectators and stepped into the ring.
I went straight up to the pile of weapons, and having chosen
one went over to the mystic.  "Good fellow," I cried out os-
tentatiously, trying the sharpness of the javelin-point with
my finger, "where are all of those sixteen summer suits of
yours lying hid?"

"It matters nothing," said the man, as if he were asleep.

"Ay, but by the stars it does, for it will vex the quiet
repose
of your soul tomorrow if your heirs should swear they
could not find them."

"It matters nothing," muttered the will-wrapped visionary.

"It will matter something if I take you at your word.  Come,
friend Purple-jerkin, will you take the council with your
legs and run while there is yet time, or stand up to be
thrown at?"

"I stand here immoveable in the confidence of my initia-
tion."

"Then, by thunder, I will initiate you into the mysteries
of a javelin-end, and your blood be on your head."

The Martians were all craning their necks in hushed
eagerness as I turned to the casting-place, and, poising
the javelin, faced the magician.  Would he run at the last
moment?  I half hoped so; for a minute I gave him the
chance, then, as he showed no sign of wavering, I drew
my hand back, shook the javelin back till it bent like a reed,
and hurled it at him.

The Martians' heads turned as though all on one pivot
as the spear sped through the air, expecting no doubt to
see it recoil as others had done.  But it took him full in the
centre of his chest, and with a wild wave of arms and a
flutter of purple raiment sent him backwards, and down,
and over and over in a shapeless heap of limbs and flying
raiment, while a low murmur of awed surprise rose from
the spectators.  They crowded round him in a dense ring,
as An came flitting to me with a startled face.

"Oh, stranger," she burst out, "you have surely killed
him!" but more astounded I had broken down his guard
than grieved at his injury.

"No," I answered smilingly; "a sore chest he may have
tomorrow, but dead he is not, for I turned the lance-point
back as I spun it, and it was the butt-end I threw at him!"

"It was none the less wonderful; I thought you were a
common man, a prince mayhap, come but from over the
hills, but now something tells me you are more than
that," and she lapsed into thoughtful silence for a time.

Neither of us were wishful to go back amongst those
who were raising the bruised magician to his legs, but wandered
away instead through the deepening twilight towards the
city over meadows whose damp, soft fragrance loaded the
air with sleepy pleasure, neither of us saying a word till
the dusk deepened and the quick night descended, while
we came amongst the gardened houses, the thousand
lights of an unreal city rising like a jewelled bank before
us, and there An said she would leave me for a time, meet-
ing me again in the palace square later on, "To see Princess
Heru read the destinies of the year."

"What!" I exclaimed, "more magic?  I have been brought
up on more substantial mental stuff than this."

"Nevertheless, I would advise you to come to the square,"
persisted my companion.  "It affects us all, and--who knows?
--may affect you more than any."

Therein poor An was unconsciously wearing the cloak
of prophesy herself, and, shrugging my shoulders good-
humouredly, I kissed her chin, little realising, as I let her
fingers slip from mine, that I should see her no more.

Turning back alone, through the city, through ways
twinkling with myriad lights as little lamps began to blink
out amongst garlands and flower-decked booths on every
hand, I walked on, lost in varying thoughts, until, fairly
tired and hungry, I found myself outside a stall where
many Martians stood eating and drinking to their hearts'
content.  I was known to none of them, and, forgetting
past experience, was looking on rather enviously, when there
came a touch upon my arm, and--

"Are you hungry, sir?" asked a bystander.

"Ay," I said, "hungry, good friend, and with all the zest
which an empty purse lends to that condition."

"Then here is what you need, sir, even from here the
wine smells good, and the fried fruit would make a mouse's
eye twinkle.  Why do you wait?"

"Why wait?  Why, because though the rich man's dinner
goes in at his mouth, the poor man must often be content
to dine through his nose.  I tell you I have nothing to
get me a meal with."

The stranger seemed to speculate on this for a time,
and then he said, "I cannot fathom your meaning, sir.
Buying and selling, gold and money, all these have no mean-
ing to me.  Surely the twin blessings of an appetite and
food abundant ready and free before you are enough."

"What! free is it--free like the breakfast served out
this morning?"

"Why, of course," said the youth, with mild depreci-
ation; "everything here is free.  Everything is his who will
take it, without exception.  What else is the good of a co-
herent society and a Government if it cannot provide you
with so rudimentary a thing as a meal?"

Whereat joyfully I undid my belt, and, without nicely
examining the argument, marched into the booth, and there
put Martian hospitality to the test, eating and drinking, but
this time with growing wisdom, till I was a new man, and
then, paying my leaving with a wave of the hand to the
yellow-girted one who dispensed the common provender,
I sauntered on again, caring little or nothing which way
the road went, and soon across the current of my medita-
tions a peal of laughter broke, accompanied by the piping
of a flute somewhere close at hand, and the next minute
I found myself amid a ring of light-hearted roisterers who
were linking hands for a dance to the music a curly-
headed fellow was making close by.

They made me join them!  One rosey-faced damsel at
the hither end of the chain drew up to me, and, without
a word, slipped her soft, baby fingers into my hand; on
the other side another came with melting eyes, breath like
a bed of violets, and banked-up fun puckering her dainty
mouth.  What could I do but give her a hand as well?  The
flute began to gurgle anew, like a drinking spout in spring-
time, and away we went, faster and faster each minute,
the boys and girls swinging themselves in time to the tune,
and capering presently till their tender feet were twinkling
over the ground in gay confusion.  Faster and faster till, as
the infection of the dance spread even to the outside groups,
I capered too.  My word! if they could have seen me
that night from the deck of the old Carolina, how they
would have laughed--sword swinging, coat-tails flying--
faster and faster, round and round we went, till limbs
could stand no more; the gasping piper blew himself quite
out, and the dance ended as abruptly as it commenced, the
dancers melting away to join others or casting themselves
panting on the turf.

Certainly these Martian girls were blessed with an in-
gratiating simplicity.  My new friend of the violet-scented
breath hung back a little, then after looking at me de-
murely for a minute or two, like a child that chooses a
new playmate, came softly up, and, standing on tiptoe, kissed
me on the cheek.  It was not unpleasant, so I turned the
other, whereon, guessing my meaning, without the smallest
hesitation, she reached up again, and pressed her pretty
mouth to my bronzed skin a second time.  Then, with a
little sigh of satisfaction, she ran an arm through mine,
saying, "Comrade, from what country have you come?
I never saw one quite like you before."

"From what country had I come?"  Again the frown
dropped down upon my forehead.  Was I dreaming--was
I mad?  Where indeed had I come from?  I stared back
over my shoulder, and there, as if in answer to my thought--
there, where the black tracery of flowering shrubs waved
in the soft night wind, over a gap in the crumbling ivory
ramparts, the sky was brightening.  As I looked into the
centre of that glow, a planet, magnified by the wonderful
air, came swinging up, pale but splendid, and mapped by
soft colours--green, violet, and red.  I knew it on the min-
ute, Heaven only knows how, but I knew it, and a des-
perate thrill of loneliness swept over me, a spasm of com-
prehension of the horrible void dividing us.  Never did yearn-
ing babe stretch arms more wistfully to an unattainable
mother than I at that moment to my mother earth.  All
her meanness and prosaicness was forgotten, all her im-
perfections and shortcomings; it was home, the one tangible
thing in the glittering emptiness of the spheres.  All my
soul went into my eyes, and then I sneezed violently, and
turning round, found that sweet damsel whose silky head
nestled so friendly on my shoulder was tickling my nose
with a feather she had picked up.

Womanlike, she had forgotten all about her first question,
and now asked another, "Will you come to supper with me,
stranger?  'Tis nearly ready, I think."

"To be able to say no to such an invitation, lady, is
the first thing a young man should learn," I answered lightly;
but then, seeing there was nothing save the most innocent
friendliness in those hazel eyes, I went on, "but that stern
rule may admit of variance.  Only, as it chances, I have
just supped at the public expense.  If, instead, you would
be a sailor's sweetheart for an hour, and take me to this
show of yours--your princess's benefit, or whatever it is--
I shall be obliged; my previous guide is hull down over
the horizon, and I am clean out of my reckoning in this
crowd."

By way of reply, the little lady, light as an elf, took me
by the fingertips, and, gleefully skipping forward, piloted
me through the mazes of her city until we came out into
the great square fronting on the palace, which rose beyond
it like a white chalk cliff in the dull light.  Not a taper
showed anywhere round its circumference, but a mysterious
kind of radiance like sea phosphorescence beamed from
the palace porch.  All was in such deathlike silence that
the nails in my "ammunition" boots made an unpleasant
clanking as they struck on the marble pavement; yet, by
the uncertain starlight, I saw, to my surprise, the whole
square was thronged with Martians, all facing towards
the porch, as still, graven images, and as voiceless, for
once, as though they had indeed been marble.  It was strange
to see them sitting there in the twilight, waiting for I
knew not what, and my friend's voice at my elbow almost
startled me as she said, in a whisper, "The princess knows
you are in the crowd, and desires you to go up upon
the steps near where she will be."

"Who brought her message?" I asked, gazing vaguely
round, for none had spoken to us for an hour or more.

"No one," said my companion, gently pushing me up
an open way towards the palace steps left clear by the
sitting Martians.  "It came direct from her to me this minute."

"But how?" I persisted.

"Nay," said the girl, "if we stop to talk like this we shall
not be placed before she comes, and thus throw a whole
year's knowledge out."

So, bottling my speculations, I allowed myself to be
led up the first flight of worn, white steps to where, on
the terrace between them and the next flight leading
directly to the palace portico, was a flat, having a circle
about twenty feet across, inlaid upon the marble with darker
coloured blocks.  Inside that circle, as I sat down close by
it in the twilight, showed another circle, and then a final
one in whose inmost middle stood a tall iron tripod and
something atop of it covered by a cloth.  And all round the
outer circle were magic symbols--I started as I recognised
the meaning of some of them--within these again the inner
circle held what looked like the representations of planets,
ending, as I have said, in that dished hollow made by
countless dancers' feet, and its solitary tripod.  Back again,
I glanced towards the square where the great concourse--
ten thousand of them, perhaps--were sitting mute and
silent in the deepening shadows, then back to the magic
circles, till the silence and expectancy of a strange scene
began to possess me.

Shadow down below, star-dusted heaven above, and not
a figure moving; when suddenly something like a long-
drawn sigh came from the lips of the expectant multitude,
and I was aware every eye had suddenly turned back
to the palace porch, where, as we looked, a figure, wrapped
in pale blue robes, appeared and stood for a minute, then
stole down the steps with an eagerness in every movement
holding us spellbound.  I have seen many splendid pageants
and many sights, each of which might be the talk of a life-
time, but somehow nothing ever so engrossing, so thrilling,
as that ghostly figure in flowing robes stealing across the
piazza in starlight and silence--the princess of a broken
kingdom, the priestess of a forgotten faith coming to her
station to perform a jugglery of which she knew not even
the meaning.  It was my versatile friend Heru, and with
quick, incisive steps, her whole frame ambent for the time
with the fervour of her mission, she came swiftly down
to within a dozen yards of where I stood.  Heru, indeed,
but not the same princess as in the morning; an inspired
priestess rather, her slim body wrapped in blue and quiver-
ing with emotion, her face ashine with Delphic fire, her hair
loose, her feet bare, until at last when, as she stood within
the limit of the magic circle, her white hands upon her
breast, her eyes flashing like planets themselves in the star-
shine she looked so ghostly and unreal I felt for a minute
I was dreaming.

Then began a strange, weird dance amongst the im-
agery of the rings, over which my earth planet was begin-
ning to throw a haze of light.  At first it was hardly more
than a walk, a slow procession round the twin circumfer-
ences of the centred tripod.  But soon it increased to an
extraordinary graceful measure, a cadenced step without
music or sound that riveted my eyes to the dancer.  Pres-
ently I saw those mystic, twinkling feet of hers--as the
dance became swifter--were performing a measured round
amongst the planet signs--spelling out something, I knew
not what, with quick, light touch amongst the zodiac figures,
dancing out a soundless invocation of some kind as a dumb
man might spell a message by touching letters.  Quicker
and quicker, for minute after minute, grew the dance,
swifter and swifter the swing of the light blue drapery as
the priestess, with eager face and staring eyes, swung pant-
ing round upon her orbit, and redder and redder over the city
tops rose the circumference of the earth.  It seemed
to me all the silent multitude were breathing heavily as
we watched that giddy dance, and whatever THEY felt,
all my own senses seemed to be winding up upon that re-
volving figure as thread winds on a spindle.

"When will she stop?" I whispered to my friend under
my breath.

"When the earth-star rests in the roof-niche of the temple
it is climbing," she answered back.

"And then?"

"On the tripod is a globe of water.  In it she will see the
destiny of the year, and will tell us.  The whiter the water
stays, the better for us; it never varies from white.  But we
must not talk; see! she is stopping."

And as I looked back, the dance was certainly ebbing
now with such smoothly decreasing undulations, that every
heart began to beat calmer in response.  There was a minute
or two of such slow cessation, and then to say she stopped
were too gross a description.  Motion rather died away
from her, and the priestess grounded as smoothly as a ship
grounds in fine weather on a sandy bank.  There she was
at last, crouched behind the tripod, one corner of the
cloth covering it grasped in her hand, and her eyes fixed on
the shining round just poised upon the distant run.

Keenly the girl watched it slide into zenith, then the
cloth was snatched from the tripod-top.  As it fell it un-
covered a beautiful and perfect globe of clear white glass,
a foot or so in diameter, and obviously filled with the thin-
nest, most limpid water imaginable.  At first it seemed to me,
who stood near to the priestess of Mars, with that beaming
sphere directly between us, and the newly risen world, that
its smooth and flawless face was absolutely devoid of sign
or colouring.  Then, as the distant planet became stronger in
the magnifying Martian air, or my eyes better accustomed
to that sudden nucleus of brilliancy, a delicate and in-
finitely lovely network of colours came upon it.  They were
like the radiant prisms that sometimes flush the surface of
a bubble more than aught else for a time.  But as I watched
that mosaic of yellow and purple creep softly to and fro
upon the globe it seemed they slowly took form and
meaning.  Another minute or two and they had certainly con-
gealed into a settled plan, and then, as I stared and
wondered, it burst upon me in a minute that I was looking
upon a picture, faithful in every detail, of the world I stood
on; all its ruddy forests, its sapphire sea, both broad and
narrow ones, its white peaked mountains, and unnumbered
islands being mapped out with startling clearness for a
spell upon that beaming orb.

Then a strange thing happened.  Heru, who had been
crouching in a tremulous heap by the tripod, rose stealthily
and passed her hands a few times across the sphere.  Colour
and picture vanished at her touch like breath from a mirror.
Again all was clear and pellucid.

"Now," said my companion, "now listen!  For Heru reads
the destiny; the whiter the globe stays the better for us--"
and then I felt her hand tighten on mine with a startled grasp
as the words died away upon her lips.

Even as the girl spoke, the sphere, which had been beam-
ing in the centre of the silent square like a mighty white
jewel, began to flush with angry red.  Redder and redder
grew the gleam--a fiery glow which seemed curdling in
the interior of the round as though it were filled with flame;
redder and redder, until the princess, staring into it, seemed
turned against the jet-black night behind, into a form of
molten metal.  A spasm of terror passed across her as she
stared; her limbs stiffened; her frightened hands were clutched
in front, and she stood cowering under that great crimson
nucleus like one bereft of power and life, and lost to every
sense but that of agony.  Not a syllable came from her lips,
not a movement stirred her body, only that dumb, stupid
stare of horror, at the something she saw in the globe.
What could I do?  I could not sit and see her soul come
out at her frightened eyes, and not a Martian moved a finger
to her rescue; the red shine gleamed on empty faces, tier
above tier, and flung its broad flush over the endless
rank of open-mouthed spectators, then back I looked to
Heru--that winsome little lady for whom, you will re-
member, I had already more than a passing fancy--and
saw with a thrill of emotion that while she still kept her
eyes on the flaming globe like one in a horrible dream her
hands were slowly, very slowly, rising in supplication to
ME! It was not vanity.  There was no mistaking the direction
of that silent, imploring appeal.

Not a man of her countrymen moved, not even black
Hath!  There was not a sound in the world, it seemed,
but the noisy clatter of my own shoenails on the marble
flags.  In the great red eye of that unholy globe the Martians
glimmered like a picture multitude under the red cliff of
their ruined palace.  I glared round at them with contempt
for a minute, then sprang forward and snatched the prin-
cess up.  It was like pulling a flower up by the roots.  She
was stiff and stark when I lay hold of her, but when I tore
her from the magic ground she suddenly gave a piercing
shriek, and fainted in my arms.

Then as I turned upon my heels with her upon my breast
my foot caught upon the cloths still wound about the tripod
of the sphere.  Over went that implement of a thousand
years of sorcery, and out went the red fire.  But little I
cared--the princess was safe!  And up the palace steps,
amidst a low, wailing hum of consternation from the re-
covering Martians, I bore that bundle of limp and senseless
loveliness up into the pale shine of her own porch, and
there, laying her down upon a couch, watched her recover
presently amongst her women with a varied assortment of
emotions tingling in my veins.




CHAPTER VI

Beyond the first flutter of surprise, the Martians had
shown no interest in the abrupt termination of the year's
divinations.  They melted away, a trifle more silently per-
haps than usual, when I shattered the magic globe, but
with their invariable indifference, and having handed the
reviving Heru over to some women who led her away,
apparently already half forgetful of the things that had
just happened, I was left alone on the palace steps, not
even An beside me, and only the shadow of a passerby
now and then to break the solitude.  Whereon a great lone-
liness took hold upon me, and, pacing to and fro along
the ancient terrace with bent head and folded arms, I
bewailed my fate.  To and fro I walked, heedless and
melancholy, thinking of the old world, that was so far and
this near world so distant from me in everything making
life worth living, thinking, as I strode gloomily here and
there, how gladly I would exchange these poor puppets and
the mockery of a town they dwelt in, for a sight of my com-
rades and a corner in the poorest wine-shop salon in New
York or 'Frisco; idly speculating why, and how, I came
here, as I sauntered down amongst the glistening, shell-like
fragments of the shattered globe, and finding no answer.
How could I?  It was too fair, I thought, standing there in
the open; there was a fatal sweetness in the air, a deadly
sufficiency in the beauty of everything around falling on
the lax senses like some sleepy draught of pleasure.  Not a
leaf stirred, the wide purple roof of the sky was unbroken
by the healthy promise of a cloud from rim to rim, the
splendid country, teeming with its spring-time richness, lay
in rank perfection everywhere; and just as rank and sleek
and passionless were those who owned it.

Why, even I, who yesterday was strong, began to come
under the spell of it.  But yesterday the spirit of the old
world was still strong within me, yet how much things
were now changing.  The well-strung muscles loosening,
the heart beating a slower measure, the busy mind drowsing
off to listlessness.  Was I, too, destined to become like these?
Was the red stuff in my veins to be watered down to
pallid Martian sap?  Was ambition and hope to desert me,
and idleness itself become laborious, while life ran to seed
in gilded uselessness?  Little did I guess how unnecessary my
fears were, or of the incredible fairy tale of adventure into
which fate was going to plunge me.

Still engrossed the next morning by these thoughts, I
decided I would go to Hath.  Hath was a man--at least they
said so--he might sympathise even though he could not
help, and so, dressing finished, I went down towards the
innermost palace whence for an hour or two had come
sounds of unwonted bustle.  Asking for the way occasion-
ally from sleepy folk lolling about the corridors, waiting
as it seemed for their breakfasts to come to them, and
embarrassed by the new daylight, I wandered to and fro
in the labyrinths of that stony ant-heap until I chanced
upon a curtained doorway which admitted to a long cham-
ber, high-roofed, ample in proportions, with colonnades on
either side separated from the main aisle by rows of
flowery figures and emblematic scroll-work, meaning I knew
not what.  Above those pillars ran a gallery with many
windows looking out over the ruined city.  While at the
further end of the chamber stood three broad steps leading
to a dais.  As I entered, the whole place was full of bustling
girls, their yellow garments like a bed of flowers in the
sunlight trickling through the casements, and all intent on
the spreading of a feast on long tables ranged up and
down the hall.  The morning light streamed in on the white
cloths.  It glittered on the glass and the gold they were
putting on the trestles, and gave resplendent depths of
colour to the ribbon bands round the pillars.  All were so
busy no one noticed me standing in the twilight by the
door, but presently, laying a hand on a worker's shoulder,
I asked who they banqueted for, and why such unwonted
preparation?

"It is the marriage-feast tonight, stranger, and a marvel
you did not know it.  You, too, are to be wed."

"I had not heard of it, damsel; a paternal forethought
of your Government, I suppose?  Have you any idea who
the lady is?"

"How should I know?" she answered laughingly.  "That
is the secret of the urn.  Meanwhile, we have set you a
place at the table-head near Princess Heru, and tonight
you dip and have your chance like all of them; may luck
send you a rosy bride, and save her from Ar-hap."

"Ay, now I remember; An told me of this before; Ar-hap
is the sovereign with whom your people have a little
difference, and shares unbidden in the free distribution of
brides to-night.  This promises to be interesting; depend on it
I will come; if you will keep me a place where I can hear
the speeches, and not forget me when the turtle soup goes
round, I shall be more than grateful.  Now to another matter.
I want to get a few minutes with your President, Prince
Hath.  He concentrates the fluid intelligence of this sphere,
I am told.  Where can I find him?"

"He is drunk, in the library, sir!"

"My word!  It is early in the day for that, and a singular
conjunction of place and circumstance."

"Where," said the girl, "could he safer be?  We can
always fetch him if we want him, and sunk in blue ob-
livion he will not come to harm."

"A cheerful view, Miss, which is worthy of the attention
of our reformers.  Nevertheless, I will go to him.  I have
known men tell more truth in that state than in any other."

The servitor directed me to the library, and after deso-
late wanderings up crumbling steps and down mouldering
corridors, sunny and lovely in decay, I came to the im-
mense lumber-shed of knowledge they had told me of, a city
of dead books, a place of dusty cathedral aisles stored with
forgotten learning.  At a table sat Hath the purposeless,
enthroned in leather and vellum, snoring in divine content
amongst all that wasted labour, and nothing I could do
was sufficient to shake him into semblance of intelligence.  So
perforce I turned away till he should have come to him-
self, and wandering round the splendid litter of a noble
library, presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the
floor, amongst those lordly tomes in tattered green and
gold, and ivory, my eye lit upon a volume propped up
curiously on end, and going to it through the confusion I
saw by the dried fruit rind upon the sticks supporting it,
that the grave and reverend tome was set to catch a mouse!
It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound
as a king might bind his choicest treasure, the sweet-
scented leather on it was no doubt frayed; the golden
arabesques upon the covers had long since shed their eyes
of inset gems, the jewelled clasp locking its learning up from
vulgar gaze was bent and open.  Yet it was a lordly tome
with an odour of sanctity about it, and lifting it with diffi-
culty, I noticed on its cover a red stain of mouse's blood.
Those who put it to this quaint use of mouse-trap had
already had some sport, but surely never was a mouse
crushed before under so much learning.  And while I stood
guessing at what the book might hold within, Heru, the
princess, came tripping in to me, and with the abrupt famili-
arity of her kind, laid a velvet hand upon my wrist, conned
the title over to herself.

"What does it say, sweet girl?" I asked.  "The matter is
learned, by its feel," and that maid, pursing up her pretty
lips, read the title to me--"The Secret of the Gods."

"The Secret of the Gods," I murmured.  "Was it pos-
sible other worlds had struggled hopelessly to come within
the barest ken of that great knowledge, while here the same
was set to catch a mouse with?"

I said, "Silver-footed, sit down and read me a passage
or two," and propping the mighty volume upon a table
drew a bench before it and pulled her down beside me.

"Oh! a horrid, dry old book for certain," cried that lady,
her pink fingertips falling as lightly on the musty leaves
as almond petals on March dust.  "Where shall I begin?  It
is all equally dull."

"Dip in," was my answer.  " 'Tis no great matter where,
but near the beginning.  What says the writer of his intention?
What sets he out to prove?"

"He says that is the Secret of the First Great Truth,
descended straight to him--"

"Many have said so much, yet have lied."

"He says that which is written in his book is through
him but not of him, past criticism and beyond cavil.  'Tis all
in ancient and crabbed characters going back to the threshold
of my learning, but here upon this passage-top where they
are writ large I make them out to say, 'ONLY THE MAN
WHO HAS DIED MANY TIMES BEGINS TO LIVE.'"

"A pregnant passage!  Turn another page, and try again;
I have an inkling of the book already."

"'Tis poor, silly stuff," said the girl, slipping a hand
covertly into my own.  "Why will you make me read it?
I have a book on pomatums worth twice as much as this."

"Nevertheless, dip in again, dear lady.  What says the
next heading?"  And with a little sigh at the heaviness of her
task, Heru read out: "SOMETIMES THE GODS THEM-
SELVES FORGET THE ANSWERS TO THEIR OWN
RIDDLES."

"Lady, I knew it!

"All this is still preliminary to the great matter of the
book,
but the mutterings of the priest who draws back the cur-
tains of the shrine--and here, after the scribe has left
these two yellow pages blank as though to set a space of
reverence between himself and what comes next--here
speaks the truth, the voice, the fact of all life."  But "Oh!
Jones," she said, turning from the dusty pages and clasping
her young, milk-warm hands over mine and leaning towards
me until her blushing cheek was near to my shoulder and
the incense of her breath upon me.  "Oh!  Gulliver Jones,"
she said.  "Make me read no more; my soul revolts from
the task, the crazy brown letters swim before my eyes.  Is
there no learning near at hand that would be pleasanter
reading than this silly book of yours?  What, after all," she
said, growing bolder at the sound of her own voice, "what,
after all, is the musty reticence of gods to the whispered
secret of a maid?  Jones, splendid stranger for whom all
men stand aside and women look over shoulders, oh, let
me be your book!" she whispered, slipping on to my knee
and winding her arms round my neck till, through the white
glimmer of her single vest, I could feel her heart beating
against mine.  "Newest and dearest of friends, put by this
dreary learning and look in my eyes; is there nothing to be
spelt out there?"

And I was constrained to do as she bid me, for she was
as fresh as an almond blossom touched by the sun, and
looking down into two swimming blue lakes where shyness
and passion were contending--books easy enough, in truth,
to be read, I saw that she loved me, with the unconventional
ardour of her nature.

It was a pleasant discovery, if its abruptness was em-
barrassing, for she was a maid in a thousand; and half
ashamed and half laughing I let her escalade me, throwing
now and then a rueful look at the Secret of the Gods,
and all that priceless knowledge treated so unworthily.

What else could I do?  Besides, I loved her myself!  And
if there was a momentary chagrin at having yonder golden
knowledge put off by this lovely interruption, yet I was
flesh and blood, the gods could wait--they had to wait
long and often before, and when this sweet interpreter was
comforted we would have another try.  So it happened I took
her into my heart and gave her the answer she asked for.

For a long time we sat in the dusky grandeur of the
royal library, my mind revolving between wonder and ad-
miration of the neglected knowledge all about, and the stir-
rings of a new love, while Heru herself, lapsed again into
Martian calm, lay half sleeping on my shoulder, but pre-
sently, unwinding her arms, I put her down.

"There, sweetheart," I whispered, "enough of this for the
moment; tonight, perhaps, some more, but while we are here
amongst all this lordly litter, I can think of nothing else."
Again I bid her turn the pages, noting as she did so how
each chapter was headed by the coloured configuration of
a world.  Page by page we turned of crackling parchment,
until by chance, at the top of one, my eye caught a coloured
round I could not fail to recognise--'twas the spinning but-
ton on the blue breast of the immeasurable that yesterday
I inhabited.  "Read here," I cried, clapping my finger
upon the page midway down, where there were some signs
looking like Egyptian writing.  "Says this quaint dabbler in
all knowledge anything of Isis, anything of Phra, of Am-
mon, of Ammon Top?"

"And who was Isis? who Ammon Top?" asked the lady.

"Nay, read," I answered, and down the page her slender
fingers went awandering till at a spot of knotted signs
they stopped.  "Why, here is something about thy Isis," ex-
claimed Heru, as though amused at my perspicuity.  "Here,
halfway down this chapter of earth-history, it says," and
putting one pink knee across the other to better prop
the book she read:

"And the priests of Thebes were gone; the sand stood un-
trampled on the temple steps a thousand years; the wild bees
sang the song of desolation in the ears of Isis; the wild
cats littered in the stony lap of Ammon; ay, another thou-
sand years went by, and earth was tilled of unseen hands
and sown with yellow grain from Paradise, and the thin
veil that separates the known from the unknown was rent,
and men walked to and fro."

"Go on," I said.

"Nay," laughed the other, "the little mice in their eager-
ness have been before you--see, all this corner is gnawed
away."

"Read on again," I said, "where the page is whole; those
sips of knowledge you have given make me thirsty for more.
There, begin where this blazonry of initialed red and gold
looks so like the carpet spread by the scribe for the feet of
a sovereign truth--what says he here?"  And she, half
pouting to be set back once more to that task, half won-
dering as she gazed on those magic letters, let her eyes
run down the page, then began:

"And it was the Beginning, and in the centre void pres-
ently there came a nucleus of light: and the light brightened
in the grey primeval morning and became definite and
articulate.  And from the midst of that natal splendour, behind
which was the Unknowable, the life came hitherward; from
the midst of that nucleus undescribed, undescribable, there
issued presently the primeval sigh that breathed the breath
of life into all things.  And that sigh thrilled through the
empty spaces of the illimitable: it breathed the breath of
promise over the frozen hills of the outside planets where
the night-frost had lasted without beginning: and the waters
of ten thousand nameless oceans, girding nameless planets,
were stirred, trembling into their depth.  It crossed the il-
limitable spaces where the herding aerolites swirl forever
through space in the wake of careering world, and all their
whistling wings answered to it.  It reverberated through the
grey wastes of vacuity, and crossed the dark oceans of the
Outside, even to the black shores of the eternal night beyond.

"And hardly had echo of that breath died away in the
hollow of the heavens and the empty wombs of a million
barren worlds, when the light brightened again, and draw-
ing in upon itself became definite and took form, and
therefrom, at the moment of primitive conception, there
came--"

And just then, as she had read so far as that, when all
my faculties were aching to know what came next--
whether this were but the idle scribbling of a vacuous fool,
or something else--there rose the sound of soft flutes and
tinkling bells in the corridors, as seneschals wandered pip-
ing round the palace to call folk to meals, a smell of roast
meat and grilling fish as that procession lifted the curtains
between the halls, and--

"Dinner!" shouted my sweet Martian, slapping the cov-
ers of The Secret of the Gods together and pushing the
stately tome headlong from the table.  "Dinner!  'Tis worth
a hundred thousand planets to the hungry!"

Nothing I could say would keep her, and, scarcely know-
ing whether to laugh or to be angry at so unseemly an
interruption, but both being purposeless I dug my hands into
my pockets, and somewhat sulkily refusing Heru's invita-
tion to luncheon in the corridor (Navy rations had not
fitted my stomach for these constant debauches of gos-
samer food), strolled into the town again in no very pleasant
frame of mind.




CHAPTER VII

It was only at moments like these I had any time to reflect
on my circumstances or that giddy chance which had shot
me into space in this fashion, and, frankly, the opportunities,
when they did come, brought such an extraordinary de-
pressing train of thought, I by no means invited them.
Even with the time available the occasion was always awry
for such reflection.  These dainty triflers made sulking as
impossible amongst them as philosophy in a ballroom.  When
I stalked out like that from the library in fine mood to
moralise and apostrophise heaven in a way that would no
doubt have looked fine upon these pages, one sprightly dam-
sel, just as the gloomy rhetoric was bursting from my lips,
thrust a flower under my nose whose scent brought on a
violent attack of sneezing, her companions joining hands
and dancing round me while they imitated my agony.  Then,
when I burst away from them and rushed down a nar-
row arcade of crumbling mansions, another stopped me in
mid-career, and taking the honey-stick she was sucking from
her lips, put it to mine, like a pretty, playful child.  An-
other asked me to dance, another to drink pink oblivion
with her, and so on.  How could one lament amongst all
this irritating cheerfulness?

An might have helped me, for poor An was intelligent for
a Martian, but she had disappeared, and the terrible vacu-
ity of life in the planet was forced upon me when I realised
that possessing no cognomen, no fixed address, or rating, it
would be the merest chance if I ever came across her again.

Looking for my friendly guide and getting more and
more at sea amongst a maze of comely but similar faces,
I made chance acquaintance with another of her kind who
cheerfully drank my health at the Government's expense, and
chatted on things Martian.  She took me to see a funeral
by way of amusement, and I found these people floated their
dead off on flower-decked rafts instead of burying them,
the send-offs all taking place upon a certain swift-flowing
stream, which carried the dead away into the vast region of
northern ice, but more exactly whither my informant
seemed to have no idea.  The voyager on this occasion was
old, and this brought to my mind the curious fact that I
had observed few children in the city, and no elders, all,
except perhaps Hath, being in a state of sleek youthfulness.
My new friend explained the peculiarity by declaring Mar-
tians ripened with extraordinary rapidity from infancy to
the equivalent of about twenty-five years of age, with us,
and then remained at that period however long they might
live; Only when they died did their accumulated seasons
come upon them; the girl turning pale, and wringing her pret-
ty hands in sympathetic concern when I told her there was a
land where decrepitude was not so happily postponed.  The
Martians, she said, arranged their calendar by the varying
colours of the seasons, and loved blue as an antidote to the
generally red and rusty character of their soil.

Discussing such things as these we lightly squandered
the day away, and I know of nothing more to note until
the evening was come again: that wonderful purple evening
which creeps over the outer worlds at sunset, a seductive
darkness gemmed with ten thousand stars riding so low in
the heaven they seem scarcely more than mast high.  When
that hour was come my friend tiptoed again to my cheek,
and then, pointing to the palace and laughingly hoping fate
would send me a bride "as soft as catkin and as sweet as
honey," slipped away into the darkness.

Then I remembered all on a sudden this was the con-
nubial evening of my sprightly friends--the occasion when,
as An had told me, the Government constituted itself into
a gigantic matrimonial agency, and, with the cheerful care-
lessness 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 gross-
ness--and I stared and stared at the circling loveliness, gos-
samer-clad, flower-girdled, tripping by me with vapid de-
light.  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 ab-
sorbed 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 con-
volvulus 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 some-
thing, something in the hollow of the fluting, a thought, a
thread, and yet enough.  I took it unseen, lifting it with in-
finite 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 be-
ginning 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 fright-
ful vision of ugly strength amidst the lolling loveliness all
about.  Low of stature, broad of shoulder, hairy, deep-chest-
ed, with sharp, twinkling eyes, set far back under bushy
eyebrows, retreating foreheads, and flat noses in faces tan-
ned 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 pour-
ing over from the forest, and long ago stormed their cit-
adels 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 growl-
ing 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 drunk-
enness 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 moun-
tain 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 am-
bassadors on either side holding her wrists, and she shrink-
ing 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, speak-
ing 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 cur-
tained 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 com-
panions.  Wherever I looked eyes dropped and timid hands
fidgeted as their owners backed off from my dangerous en-
thusiasm.  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 her-
self, 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 child-
ish 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 cud-
gel 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 noth-
ing after that!

How long after I know not, but presently a tissue of day-
light 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 dark-
ening 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 glanc-
ing 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 head-
long 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 be-
hind 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 dark-
ness 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 min-
ute, 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 contin-
uously, 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 mat-
ted 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 expecta-
tion, 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 dark-
ness, 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 ap-
peared to become aware of the other's presence--the foot-
steps 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 shad-
ows 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 en-
trails--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 cur-
dled 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 thou-
ghts flew at once to breakfasting!  I went down and in-
spected 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 con-
fess 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 col-
lected 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 mount-
ing 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 grass-
hopper--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 human-
ity--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 great-
ly 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, with-
out 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 plea-
sant sunshine on my back, and never a thought for any-
thing 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 amaze-
ment.  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 dig-
nity 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 ro-
bust 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 adopt-
ing 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 neighbour-
hood 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 blos-
soms 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.  Else-
where 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 won-
derful 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 sol-
itary 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 scram-
bling, 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 hurry-
ing 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 gal-
lant'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 them-
selves in agony upon the ground for a minute or two before
they relaxed and became flaccid in the repose of death.  An-
other 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 cumber-
some."  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 de-
light 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 be-
cause 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 cur-
rent 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 sud-
denly flashed across me that it was all of gourd rind.  And
as if to supply confirmation, the flat land we were ap-
proaching 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 can-
not 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 reproductive-
ness.  They said each fruit made two vessels, but the upper
half was always best and used for long salt-water jour-
neys, 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, ten-
acious 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 in-
junctions 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 con-
sequently the coast had closed up the estuary mouth I
should have entered.  Not a sign of an opening showed any-
where, 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 gam-
bolled 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 con-
fused 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 de-
pressing 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 un-
pleasantly 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 wrap-
pings 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 cir-
cumstances 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 inter-
cept 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 passion-
less 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 for-
ward.  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 bril-
liancy 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 re-
gions 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, un-
varnished 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, rum-
bling 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 op-
portunity for action, and, luckily, little time for thought.  I
remember clapping my hand to my heart as I muttered an im-
perfect 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 photo-
graph, 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 dis-
tinctness, 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 swal-
lowed 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 post-
poning 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 ball-
room 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 con-
fusion.  On the narrow beaches at the cliff foot were hundreds
of wrecked voyagers--the wall-flowers of that ghostly as-
sembly-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 sav-
agely 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 con-
sideration 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 geo-
logical "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 up-
heaval 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 be-
came 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 occu-
pants 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 in-
tently 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 to-
wards 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 travel-
ling 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 as-
tonishment 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 con-
centrated 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 pri-
mordial 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, chew-
ing-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 pick-
ing 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 an-
other 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 jewel-
ler'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 men-
tion of Ar-hap's name, appealed to the old fellow; and af-
ter a grunt or two about "losing a tide" just when spoil was
so abundant, he accepted the bargain, shouldered his be-
longings, and led me towards the far corner of the beach.

It looked as if we were walking right against the tower-
ing 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 ob-
scurity 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 exub-
erance 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 learn-
ing.  Instead of the glorious wealth of parti-coloured vege-
tation 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 un-
clean vegetation, do you not see this is a ghost I am con-
ducting, 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, con-
siderable curiosity mixed with an awe all to my advantage
characterising the people we met thereafter.  Yet the won-
der 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 ven-
erable 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 mar-
velled 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 mo-
ment 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 suffer-
ance--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 ac-
customed 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 hur-
riedly 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 un-
der 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 some-
thing 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 divid-
ing 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 sci-
entific 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, "an-
other 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 am-
ber 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 some-
where 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, un-
lovely 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 upper-
most 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 through-
out 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 to-
gether, 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 sneez-
ing 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 es-
says 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, pranc-
ing 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 be-
yond 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 foresaid calabash of strong ale to warm, and down
we sat to supper with real woodman appetites.  Seldom have
I enjoyed a meal so much, and when we had finished the
fruit and the wheat cake my guide snatched up the great
gourd of ale, and putting it to his lips called out:

"Here's to you, stranger; here's to your country; here's to
your girl, if you have one, and death to your enemies!"  Then
he drank deep and long, and, passed the stuff to me.

"Here's to you, bully host, and the missus, and the
children, if there are any, and more power to your el-
bow!"--the which gratified him greatly, though probably he
had small idea of my meaning.

And right merry we were that evening.  The host was a
jolly good fellow, and his ale, with a pleasant savour of
mint in it, was the heartiest drink I ever set lips to.  We
talked and laughed till the very jackals yapped in sympathy
outside.  And when he had told a score of wonderful wood
stories as pungent of the life of these fairy forests as the
aromatic scent of his bark-heaps outside, as iridescent with
the colours of another world as the rainbow bubbles rid-
ing down his starlit rill, I took a turn, and told him of the
commonplaces of my world so far away, whereat he laughed
gloriously again.  The greater the commonplace the larger
his joy.  The humblest story, hardly calculated to impress a
griffin between watches on the main-deck, was a masterpiece
of wit to that gentle savage; and when I "took off" the
tricks and foibles of some of my superiors--Heaven forgive
me for such treason!--he listened with the exquisite open-
mouthed delight of one who wanders in a brand-new
world of mirth.

We drank and laughed over that strong beer till the little
owls outside raised their voice in combined accord, and
then the woodman, shaking the last remnant of his sleepy wits
together, and giving a reproachful look at me for finally
passing him the gourd empty to the last drop, rose, threw a
fur on a pile of dead grass at one side of the hut, and bid
me sleep, "for his brain was giddy with the wonders of the
incredible and ludicrous sphere which I had lately in-
habited."

Slowly the fire died away; slowly the quivering gold and
black arabesques on the walls merged in a red haze as the
sticks dropped into tinder, and the great black outline of
the hairy monster who had thrown himself down by the
embers rose up the walls against that flush like the outline
of a range of hills against a sunset glow.  I listened drowsily
for a space to his snoring and the laughing answer of the
brook outside, and then that ambrosial sleep which is the
gentle attendant of hardship and danger touched my tired
eyelids, and I, too, slept.

My friend was glum the next morning, as they who stay
over-long at the supper flagon are apt to be.  He had been
at work an hour on his bark-heaps when I came out into the
open, and it was only by a good deal of diplomacy and
some material help in sorting his faggots that he was got into
a better frame of mind.  I could not, however, trust his
mood completely, and as I did not want to end so jovial
a friendship with a quarrel, I hurried through our breakfast
of dry bread, with hard-boiled lizard eggs, and then settling
my reckoning with one of the brass buttons from my coat,
which he immediately threaded, with every evidence of ex-
treme gratification, on a string of trinkets hanging round his
neck, asked him the way to Ar-hap's capital.

"Your way is easy, friend, as long as you keep to the
straight path and have yonder two-humped mountain in
front.  To the left is the sea, and behind the hill runs the canal
and road by which all traffic comes or goes to Ar-hap.
But above all things pass not to the hills right, for no man
goes there; there away the forests are thick as night, and
in their perpetual shadows are the ruins of a Hither city,
a haunted fairy town to which some travellers have been,
but whence none ever returned alive."

"By the great Jove, that sounds promising!  I would like
to see that town if my errand were not so urgent."

But the old fellow shook his shaggy head and turned a
shade yellower.  "It is no place for decent folk," he growled.
"I myself once passed within a mile of its outskirts at dusk,
and saw the unholy little people's lanterned processions
starting for the shrine of Queen Yang, who, tradition says,
killed herself and a thousand babies with her when we
took this land."

"My word, that was a holocaust!  Couldn't I drop in
there to lunch? It would make a fine paper for an anti-
quarian society."

Again the woodman frowned.  "Do as I bid you, son.
You are too young and green to go on ventures by yourself.
Keep to the straight road: shun the swamps and the fairy
forest, else will you never see Ar-hap."

"And as I have very urgent and very important business
with him, comrade, no doubt your advice is good.  I will call
on Princess Yang some other day.  And now goodbye!
Rougher but friendlier shelter than you have given me no
man could ask for.  I am downright sorry to part with you
in this lonely land.  If ever we meet again--" but we never
did!  The honest old churl clasped me into his hairy bosom
three times, stuffed my wallet with dry fruit and bread,
and once more repeating his directions, sent me on my
lonely way.

I confess I sighed while turning into the forest, and looked
back more than once at his retreating form.  The loneliness
of my position, the hopelessness of my venture, welled up
in my heart after that good comradeship, and when the hut
was out of sight I went forward down the green grass road,
chin on chest, for twenty minutes in the deepest dejection.
But, thank Heaven, I was born with a tough spirit, and
possess a mind which has learned in many fights to give
brave counsel to my spirit, and thus presently I shook myself
together, setting my face boldly to the quest and the
day's work.

It was not so clear a morning as the previous one, and a
steamy wind on what at sea I should have called the
starboard bow, as I pressed forward to the distant hill,
had a curiously subduing effect on my thoughts, and filled
the forest glades with a tremulous unreality like to nothing
on our earth, and distinctly embarrassing to a stranger in a
strange land.  Small birds in that quaint atmospheric haze
looked like condors, butterflies like giant fowl, and the sim-
plest objects of the forest like the imaginations of a disordered
dream.  Behind that gauzy hallucination a fine white mist
came up, and the sun spread out flat and red in the sky,
while the pent-in heat became almost unendurable.

Still I plodded on, growling to myself that in Christian
latitudes all the evidences would have been held to be-
token a storm before night, whatever they might do here,
but for the most part lost in my own gloomy speculations.
That was the more pity since, in thinking the walk over now,
it seems to me that I passed many marvels, saw many
glorious vistas in those nameless forests, many spreads of
colour, many incidents that, could I but remember them
more distinctly, would supply material for making my fortune
as a descriptive traveller.  But what would you? I have
forgotten, and am too virtuous to draw on my imagination,
as it is sometimes said other travellers have done when
picturesque facts were deficient.  Yes, I have forgotten all
about that day, save that it was sultry hot, that I took off
my coat and waistcoat to be cooler, carrying them, like
the tramp I was, across my arm, and thus dishevelled
passed some time in the afternoon an encampment of forest
folk, wherefrom almost all the men were gone, and the
women shy and surly.

In no very social humour myself, I walked round their
woodland village, and on the outskirts, by a brook, just as
I was wishing there were some one to eat my solitary lunch
with, chanced upon a fellow busily engaged in hammering
stones into weapons upon a flint anvil.

He was an ugly-looking individual at best, yet I was
hard up for company, so I put my coat down, and, seating
myself on a log opposite, proceeded to open my wallet,
and take out the frugal stores the woodman had given me
that morning.

The man was seated upon the ground holding a stone
anvil between his feet, while with his hands he turned
and chipped with great skill a spear-head he was making out
of flint.  It was about the only pastime he had, and his little
yellow eyes gleamed with a craftsman's pleasure, his shaggy
round shoulders were bent over the task, the chips flew
in quick particles, and the wood echoed musically as the arti-
ficer watched the thing under his hands take form and
fashion.  Presently I spoke, and the worker looked up, not
too pleased at being thus interrupted.  But he was easy of
propitiation, and over a handful of dried raisins communi-
cative.

How, I asked, knowing a craftsman's craft is often nearest
to his heart, how was it such things as that he chipped
came to be thought of by him and his? Whereon the
woodman, having spit out the raisin-stones and wiped his
fingers on his fur, said in substance that the first weapon
was fashioned when the earliest ape hurled the first stone
in wrath.

"But, chum," I said, taking up his half-finished spear
and touching the razor-fine edge with admiring caution,
"from hurling the crude pebble to fashioning such as this is
a long stride.  Who first edged and pointed the primitive
malice? What man with the soul of a thousand unborn
fighters in him notched and sharpened your natural rock?"

Whereon the chipper grinned, and answered that, when
the woodmen had found stones that would crack skulls, it
came upon them presently that they would crack nuts as
well.  And cracking nuts between two stones one day a flint
shattered, and there on the grass was the golden secret of
the edge--the thing that has made man what he is.

"Yet again, good fellow," I queried, "even this happy
chance only gives us a weapon, sharp, no doubt, and cal-
culated to do a hundred services for any ten the original
pebble could have done, but still unhandled, small in force,
imperfect--now tell me, which of your amiable ancestors
first put a handle to the fashioned flint, and how he thought
of it?"

The workman had done his flake by now, and wrapping it
in a bit of skin, put it carefully in his belt before turning
to answer my question.

  "Who made the first handle for the first flint, you of the
many questions? She did--she, the Mother," he suddenly
cried, patting the earth with his brown hand, and working
himself up as he spoke, "made it in her heart for us her
first-born.  See, here is such as the first handled weapon that
ever came out of darkness," and he snatched from the
ground, where it had lain hidden under his fox-skin cloak,
a heavy club.  I saw in an instant how it was.  The club
had been a sapling, and the sapling's roots had grown about
and circled with a splendid grip a lump of native flint.
A woodman had pulled the sapling, found the flint, and
fashioned the two in a moment of happy inspiration, the
one to an axe-head and the other to a handle, as they lay
Nature-welded!

"This, I say, is the first--the first!" screamed the old
fellow
as though I were contradicting him, thumping the ground
with his weapon, and working himself up to a fury as its
black magic entered his being.  "This is the first: with this
I slew Hetter and Gur, and those who plundered my hiding-
places in the woods; with this I have killed a score of others,
bursting their heads, and cracking their bones like dry sticks.
With this--with this--" but here his rage rendered him in-
articulate; he stammered and stuttered for a minute, and
then as the killing fury settled on him his yellow teeth shut
with a sudden snap, while through them his breath rattled
like wind through dead pine branches in December, the
sinews sat up on his hands as his fingers tightened upon the
axe-heft like the roots of the same pines from the ground
when winter rain has washed the soil from beneath them;
his small eyes gleamed like baleful planets; every hair upon
his shaggy back grew stiff and erect--another minute and
my span were ended.

With a leap from where I sat I flew at that hairy beast,
and sinking my fists deep in his throttle, shook him till his eyes
blazed with delirious fires.  We waltzed across the short green-
sward, and in and about the tree-trunks, shaking, pulling,
and hitting as we went, till at last I felt the man's vigour dy-
ing within him; a little more shaking, a sudden twist, and
he was lying on the ground before me, senseless and civil!
That is the worst of some orators, I thought to myself, as
I gloomily gathered up the scattered fragments of my lunch;
they never know when they have said enough, and are too
apt to be carried away by their own arguments.

That inhospitable village was left behind in full belief
the mountain looming in the south could be reached before
nightfall, while the road to its left would serve as a sure guide
to food and shelter for the evening.  But, as it turned out, the
morning's haze developed a strong mist ere the afternoon
was half gone, through which it was impossible to see
more than twenty yards.  My hill loomed gigantic for a time
with a tantalising appearance of being only a mile or two
ahead, then wavered, became visionary, and finally disap-
peared as completely as though the forest mist had drunk it
up bodily.

There was still the road to guide me, a fairly well-
beaten track twining through the glades; but even the best of
highways are difficult in fog, and this one was compli-
cated by various side paths, made probably by hunters or
bark-cutters, and without compass or guide marks it was
necessary to advance with extreme caution, or get helplessly
mazed.

An hour's steady tramping brought me nowhere in particu-
lar, and stopping for a minute to consider, I picked a few
wild fruit, such as my wood-cutter friend had eaten, from
an overhanging bush, and in so doing slipped, the soil having
now become damp, and in falling broke a branch off.  The
incident was only important from what follows.  Picking
myself up, perhaps a little shaken by the jolt, I set off again
upon what seemed the plain road, and being by this time
displeased by my surroundings, determined to make a push
for "civilization" before the rapidly gathering darkness set-
tled down.

Hands in pockets and collar up, I marched forward at a
good round pace for an hour, constantly straining eyes for
a sight of the hill and ears for some indications of living
beings in the deathly hush of the shrouded woods, and at
the end of that time, feeling sure habitations must now be
near, arrived at what looked like a little open space, some-
how seeming rather familiar in its vague outlines.

Where had I seen such a place before? Sauntering
round the margin, a bush with a broken branch sud-
denly attracted my attention--a broken bush with a long
slide in the mud below it, and the stamp of Navy boots in
the soft turf!  I glared at those signs for a moment, then
with an exclamation of chagrin recognised them only too
well--it was the bush whence I had picked the fruit, and
the mark of my fall.  An hour's hard walking round some
accursed woodland track had brought me exactly back to
the point I had started from--I was lost!

It really seemed to get twenty per cent darker as I made
that abominable discovery, and the position dawned in all its
uncomfortable intensity.  There was nothing for it but to start
off again, this time judging my direction only by a light
breath of air drifting the mist tangles before it; and therein
I made a great mistake, for the breeze had shifted several
points from the quarter whence it blew in the morning.

Knowing nothing of this, I went forward with as much
lightheartedness as could be managed, humming a song
to myself, and carefully putting aside thoughts of warmth
and supper, while the dusk increased and the great forest
vegetation seemed to grow ranker and closer at every step

Another disconcerting thing was that the ground sloped
gradually downwards, not upwards as it should have done, till
it seemed the path lay across the flats of a forest-covered
plain, which did not conform to my wish of striking a road
on the foot-hills of the mountain.  However, I plodded on,
drawing some small comfort from the fact that as darkness
came the mist rose from the ground and appeared to con-
dense in a ghostly curtain twenty feet overhead, where it
hung between me and a clear night sky, presently illum-
ined by starlight with the strangest effect.

Tired, footsore, and dejected, I struggled on a little
further.  Oh for a cab, I laughed bitterly to myself.  Oh for
even the humble necessary omnibus of civilisation.  Oh for
the humblest tuck-shop where a mug of hot coffee and a
snack could be had by a homeless wanderer; and as I
thought and plodded savagely on, collar up, hands in
pockets, through the black tangles of that endless wood,
suddenly the sound of wailing children caught my ear!

It was the softest, saddest music ever mortal listened to.  It
was as though scores of babes in pain were dropping to
sleep on their mothers' breasts, and all hushing their sor-
rows with one accord in a common melancholy chorus.  I
stood spell-bound at that elfin wailing, the first sound to break
the deathly stillness of the road for an hour or more, and
my blood tingled as I listened to it.  Nevertheless, here
was what I was looking for; where there were weeping
children there must be habitations, and shelter, and--splendid
thought!--supper.  Poor little babes! their crying was the
deadliest, sweetest thing in sorrows I ever listened to.  If it
was cholic--why, I knew a little of medicine, and in
gratitude for that prospective supper, I had a soul big
enough to cure a thousand; and if they were in disgrace,
and by some quaint Martian fashion had suffered simul-
taneous punishment for baby offences, I would plead for
them.

In fact, I fairly set off at the run towards the sobbing,
in the black, wet, night air ahead, and, tripping as I ran,
looked down and saw in the filtering starlight that the forest
grass had given place to an ancient roadway, paved with
moss-grown flag-stones, such as they still used in Seth.

Without stopping to think what that might mean I hur-
ried on, the wailing now right ahead, a tremulous tumult
of gentle grief rising and falling on the night air like the
sound of a sea after a storm; and so, presently, in a minute
or two, came upon a ruined archway spanning the lonely
road, held together by great masses of black-fingered creep-
ers, gaunt and ghostly in the shadows, an extraordinary and
unexpected vision; and as I stopped with a jerk under
that forbidding gateway and glared at its tumbled masonry
and great portals hanging rotten at their hinges, suddenly
the truth flashed upon me.  I had taken the forbidden
road after all.  I was in the ancient, ghost-haunted city of
Queen Yang!




CHAPTER XV

The dark forest seemed to shut behind as I entered the
gateway of the deserted Hither town, against which my
wood-cutter friend had warned me, while inside the soft
mist hung in the starlight like grey drapery over endless
vistas of ruins.  What was I to do? Without all was black
and cheerless, inside there was at least shelter.  Wet and
cold, my courage was not to be put down by the stories of a
silly savage; I would go on whatever happened.  Besides,
the soft sound of crying, now apparently all about, seemed
companionable, and I had heard so much of ghosts of late, the
sharp edge of fear at their presence was wearing off.

So in I went: up a broad, decayed street, its flagstones
heaved everywhere by the roots of gnarled trees, and
finding nothing save ruin, tried to rest under a wall.  But
the night air was chilly and the shelter poor, so out I came
again, with the wailing in the shadows so close about now that
I stopped, and mustering up courage called aloud:

"Hullo, you who weep there in the dark, are you living
or dead?"  And after a minute from the hollows of the empty
hearths around came the sad little responsive echo:

"Are you living or dead?"  It was very delusive and un-
satisfactory, and I was wondering what to do next when a
slant of warmer wind came up behind me under the mist,
and immediately little tongues of blue flame blossomed with-
out visible cause in every darksome crevice; pale flickers
of miasmic light rising pallid from every lurking nook and
corner in the black desolation as though a thousand lamps
were lit by unseen fingers, and, knee high, floated out
into the thoroughfare where they oscillated gently in airy
grace, and then, forming into procession, began drifting be-
fore the tepid air towards the city centre.  At once I thought of
what the woodcutter had seen, but was too wet and sulky
by this time to care.  The fascination of the place was on
me, and dropping into rear of the march, I went forward
with it.  By this time the wailing had stopped, though now
and then it seemed a dark form moved in the empty door-
ways on either hand, while the mist, parting into gossamers
before the wind, took marvellously human forms in every
alley and lane we passed.

Thus I, a sodden giant, led by those elfin torches, paced
through the city until we came to an open square with a
great lumber of ruins in the centre all marred and spoiled
by vegetation; and here the lights wavered, and went out
by scores and hundreds, just as the petals drop from spent
flowers, while it seemed, though it may have been only wind
in the rank grass, that the air was full of most plaintive
sighs as each little lamp slipped into oblivion.

The big pile was a mass of fallen masonry, which, from
the broken pillars all about, might have been a palace or
temple once.  I pushed in, but it was as dark as Hades here,
so, after struggling for a time in a labyrinth of chambers,
chose a sandy recess, with some dry herbage by way of
bedding in a corner, and there, thankful at least for shel-
ter, my night's wanderings came to an end and I coiled
myself down, ate a last handful of dry fruit, and, strange
as it may seem, was soon sleeping peacefully.

I dreamed that night that a woman, with a face as white
as ivory, came and bent over me.  She led a babe by either
hand, while behind her were scores of other ones, with
lovely faces, but all as pale as the stars themselves, who
looked and sighed, but said nothing, and when they had
stared their fill, dropped out one by one, leaving a wonderful
blank in the monotony where they had been; but beyond
that dream nothing happened.

It was a fine morning when I woke again, and ob-
viously broad day outside, the sunshine coming down
through cracks in the old palace roof, and lying in golden
pools on the floor with dazzling effect.

Rubbing my eyes and sitting up, it took me some time
to get my senses together, and at first an uneasy feeling
possessed me that I was somehow dematerialised and in
an unreal world.  But a twinge of cramp in my left arm,
and a healthy sneeze, which frightened a score of bats
overhead nearly out of their senses, was reassuring on this
point, and rubbing away the cramp and staggering to my
feet, I looked about at the strange surroundings.  It was
cavernous chaos on every side: magnificent architecture
reduced to the confusion of a debris-heap, only the hollow
chambers being here and there preserved by massive columns
meeting overhead.  Into these the yellow light filtered wher-
ever a rent in a cupola or side-wall admitted it, and allured
by the vision of corridors one beyond the other, I presently
set off on a tour of discovery.

Twenty minutes' scrambling brought me to a place where
the fallen jambs of a fine doorway lay so close together that
there was barely room to pass between them.  However,
seeing light beyond, I squeezed through, and I found my-
self in the best-preserved chamber of all--a wide, roomy
hall with a domed roof, a haze of mural paintings on the
walls, and a marble floor nearly hidden in a century of
fallen dust.  I stumbled over something at the threshold,
and picking it up, found it was a baby's skull!  And there
were more of them now that my eyes became accustomed
to the light.  The whole floor was mottled with them--scores
and hundreds of bones and those poor little relics of
humanity jutting out of the sand everywhere.  In the hush
of that great dead nursery the little white trophies seemed
inexpressibly pathetic, and I should have turned back
reverently from that chamber of forgotten sorrows but
that something caught my eye in the centre of it.

It was an oblong pile of white stone, very ill-used and
chipped, wrist-deep in dust, yet when a slant of light came
in from above and fell straight upon it, the marble against
the black gloom beyond blazed like living pearl.  It was
dazzling; and shading my eyes and going tenderly over
through the poor dead babes, I looked, and there, full in the
shine, lay a woman's skeleton, still wrapped in a robe of
which little was left save the hard gold embroidery.  Her
brown hair, wonderful to say, still lay like lank, dead sea-
weed about her, and amongst it was a fillet crown of plain
iron set with gems such as eye never looked upon before.
There were not many, but enough to make the proud sim-
plicity of that circlet glisten like a little band of fire--a
gleaming halo on her dead forehead infinitely fascinating.  At
her sides were two other little bleached human flowers, and
I stood before them for a long time in silent sympathy.

Could this be Queen Yang, of whom the woodcutter had
told me? It must be--who else? And if it were, what strange
chance had brought me here--a stranger, yet the first to
come, since her sorrow, from her distant kindred? And if it
were, then that fillet belonged of right to Heru, the last rep-
resentative of her kind.  Ought I not to take it to her rather
than leave it as spoil to the first idle thief with pluck enough
to deride the mysteries of the haunted city? Long time I
thought over it in the faint, heavy atmosphere of that hall,
and then very gently unwound the hair, lifted the circlet,
and, scarcely knowing what I did, put it in my shoulder-bag.

After that I went more cheerfully into the outside sun-
shine, and setting my clothes to dry on a stone, took stock
of the situation.  The place was, perhaps, not quite so romantic
by day as by night, and the scattered trees, matted by
creepers, with which the whole were overgrown, prevented
anything like an extensive view of the ruined city being ob-
tained.  But what gave me great satisfaction was to note
over these trees to the eastward a two-humped mountain,
not more than six or seven miles distant--the very one I
had mislaid the day before.  Here was reality and a chance
of getting back to civilisation.  I was as glad as if home
were in sight, and not, perhaps, the less so because the hill
meant villages and food; and you who have doubtless lunched
well and lately will please bear in mind I had had nothing
since breakfast the day before; and though this may look
picturesque on paper, in practice it is a painful item in
one's programme.

Well, I gave my damp clothes but a turn or two more in
the sun, and then, arguing that from the bare ground where
the forest ended half-way up the hill, a wide view would be
obtained, hurried into my garments and set off thither
right gleefully.  A turn or two down the blank streets, now
prosaic enough, an easy scramble through a gap in the
crumbling battlements, and there was the open forest again,
with a friendly path well marked by the passage of those
wild animals who made the city their lair trending towards
my landmark.

A light breakfast of soft green nuts, plucked on the way,
and then the ground began to bend upwards and the
woods to thin a little.  With infinite ardour, just before mid-
day, I scrambled on to a bare knoll on the very hillside,
and fell exhausted before the top could be reached.

But what were hunger or fatigue to the satisfaction of
that moment? There was the sea before me, the clear, strong,
gracious sea, blue leagues of it, furrowed by the white
ridges of some distant storm.  I could smell the scent of it even
here, and my sailor heart rose in pride at the companion-
ship of that alien ocean.  Lovely and blessed thing! how
often have I turned from the shallow trivialities of the land
and found consolation in the strength of your stately soli-
tudes!  How often have I turned from the tinselled presence
of the shore, the infinite pretensions of dry land that make
life a sorry, hectic sham, and found in the black bosom of the
Great Mother solace and comfort!  Dear, lovely sea, man-
half of every sphere, as far removed in the sequence of
your strong emotions from the painted fripperies of the
woman-land as pole from pole--the grateful blessing of the
humblest of your followers on you!

The mere sight of salt water did me good.  Heaven knows
our separation had not been long, and many an unkind
slap has the Mother given me in the bygone; yet the mere
sight of her was tonic, a lethe of troubles, a sedative
for tired nerves; and I gazed that morning at the illimitable
blue, the great, unfettered road to everywhere, the ever-
varied, the immutable, the thing which was before every-
thing and shall be last of all, in an ecstasy of affection.

There was also other satisfaction at hand.  Not a mile
away lay a well-defined road--doubtless the one spoken
of by the wood-cutter--and where the track pointed to the
seashore the low roofs and circling smoke of a Thither town-
ship showed.

There I went hot-footed, and, much too hungry to be
nice in formality, swung up to the largest building on the
waterside quay and demanded breakfast of the man who
was lounging by its doorway chewing a honey reed.  He
looked me up and down without emotion, then, falling into
the common mistake, said,

"This is not a hostel for ghosts, sir.  We do not board and
lodge phantoms here; this is a dry fish shop."

"Thrice blessed trade!" I answered.  "Give me some dried
fish, good fellow, or, for the matter of that, dried horse or
dog, or anything mortal teeth can bite through, and I will
show you my tastes are altogether mundane."

But he shook his head.  "This is no place for the likes of
you, who come, mayhap, from the city of Yang or some
other abode of disembodied spirits--you, who come for
mischief and pay harbourage with mischance--is it likely
you could eat wholesome food?"

"Indeed I could, and plenty of it, seeing I have dined
and breakfasted along the hedges with the blackbirds this
two days.  Look here, I will pay in advance.  Will that get me
a meal?" and, whipping out my knife, cut off another of
my fast-receding coat buttons.

The man took it with great interest, as I hoped he
would, the yellow metal being apparently a very scarce
commodity in his part of the planet.

"Gold?" he asked.

"Well--ahem!  I forgot to ask the man who sewed them
on for me what they were exactly, but it looks like gold,
doesn't it?"

"Yes," he answered, turning it to and fro admiringly in his
hand, "you are the first ghost I ever knew to pay in ad-
vance, and plenty of them go to and fro through here.  Such
a pretty thing is well worth a meal--if, indeed, you can
stomach our rough fare.  Here, you woman within," he
called to the lady whom I presume was his wife, "here is
a gentleman from the nether regions who wants some break-
fast and has paid in advance.  Give him some of your best,
for he has paid well."

"And what," said a female voice from inside, "what if I
refused to serve another of these plaguy wanderers you are
always foisting upon me?"

"Don't mind her tongue, sir.  It's the worst part of her,
though she is mighty proud of it.  Go in and she will see you
do not come out hungry," and the Thither man returned
calmly to his honey stick.

"Come on, you Soul-with-a-man's-stomach," growled the
woman, and too hungry to be particular about the tone
of invitation, I strode into the parlour of that strange
refreshment place.  The woman was the first I had seen of the
outer race, and better than might have been expected in
appearance.  Big, strong, and ruddy, she was a mental shock
after the slender slips of girlhood on the far side of the
water, half a dozen of whom she could have carried off
without effort in her long arms.  Yet there was about her
the credential of rough health, the dignity of muscle, an
upright carriage, an animal grace of movement, and withal
a comely though strongly featured face, which pleased me
at once, and later on I had great cause to remember her
with gratitude.  She eyed me sulkily for a minute, then her
frown gradually softened, and the instinctive love of the
woman for the supernatural mastered her other feelings.

"Is that how you looked in another world?" she asked.

"Yes, exactly, cap to boots.  What do you think of the
attire, ma'am?"

"Not much," replied the good woman frankly.  "It could
not have been becoming even when new, and you appear
as though you had taken a muddy road since then.  What
did you die of?"

"I will tell you so much as this, madam--that what I
am like to die of now is hunger, plain, unvarnished hunger,
so, in Heaven's name, get out what you have and let me
fall-to, for my last meal was yesterday morning."

Whereat, with a shrug of her shoulders at the eccentric-
ities of nether folk, the woman went to the rear of the house,
and presently came back with a meal which showed her
husband had done scant justice to the establishment by
calling it a dry fish shop.  It is true, fish supplied the
staple of the repast, as was inevitable in a seaport, but,
like all Martian fish, it was of ambrosial kind, with a savour
about it of wine and sunshine such as no fish on our side
of space can boast of.  Then there were cakes, steaming
and hot, vegetables which fitted into the previous course with
exquisite nicety, and, lastly, a wooden tankard of the in-
variable Thither beer to finish off.  Such a meal as a hungry
man might consider himself fortunate to meet with any day.

The woman watched me eat with much satisfaction, and
when I had answered a score of artless questions about
my previous state, or present condition and prospects, more
or less to her satisfaction, she supplied me in turn with some
information which was really valuable to me just then.

First I learned that Ar-hap's men, with the abducted Heru,
had passed through this very port two days before, and
by this time were probably in the main town, which, it
appeared, was only about twelve hours' rowing up the salt-
water estuary outside.  Here was news!  Heru, the prize and
object of my wild adventure, close at hand and well.  It
brought a whole new train of thoughts, for the last few
days had been so full of the stress of travel, the bare, hard
necessity of getting forward, that the object of my quest,
illogical as it may seem, had gone into the background
before these things.  And here again, as I finished the last
cake and drank down to the bottom of the ale tankard, the
extreme folly of the venture came upon me, the madness
of venturing single-handed into the den of the Wood King.
What had I to hope for? What chance, however remote,
was there of successfully wresting that blooming prize from
the arms of her captor? Force was out of the question;
stealth was utterly impractical; as for cajolery, apparently
the sole remaining means of winning back the Princess--why,
one might as well try the persuasion of a penny flute upon
a hungry eagle as seek to rouse Ar-hap's sympathies for
bereaved Hath in that way.  Surely to go forward would
mean my own certain destruction, with no advantage, no
help to Heru; and if I was ever to turn back or stop in
the idle quest, here was the place and time.  My Hither
friends were behind the sea; to them I could return before
it was too late, and here were the rough but honest Thither
folk, who would doubtless let me live amongst them if
that was to be my fate.  One or other alternative were
better than going to torture and death.

"You seem to take the fate of that Hither girl of yours
mightily to heart, stranger," quoth my hostess, with a touch
of feminine jealousy, as she watched my hesitation.  "Do you
know anything of her?"

"Yes," I answered gloomily.  "I have seen her once or
twice away in Seth."

"Ah, that reminds me!  When they brought her up here
from the boats to dry her wet clothes, she cried and called
in her grief for just such a one as you, saying he alone
who struck down our men at her feast could rescue her--"

"What!  Heru here in this room but yesterday!  How did
she look? Was she hurt? How had they treated her?"

My eagerness gave me away.  The woman looked at me
through her half-shut eyes a space, and then said, "Oh! sits
the wind in THAT quarter? So you can love as well as eat.
I must say you are well-conditioned for a spirit."

I got up and walked about the room a space, then, feeling
very friendless, and knowing no woman was ever born who
was not interested in another woman's loves, I boldly drew
my hostess aside and told her about Heru, and that I was in
pursuit of her, dwelling on the girl's gentle helplessness, my
own hare-brained adventure, and frankly asking what sort
of a sovereign Ar-hap was, what the customs of his court
might be, and whether she could suggest any means, tem-
poral or spiritual, by which he might be moved to give
back Heru to her kindred.

Nor was my confidence misplaced.  The woman, as I
guessed, was touched somewhere back in her female heart
by my melting love-tale, by my anxiety and Heru's peril.
Besides, a ghost in search of a fairy lady--and such the
slender folk of Seth were still considered to be by the race
which had supplanted them--this was romance indeed.
To be brief, that good woman proved invaluable.

She told me, firstly, that Ar-hap was believed to be
away at war, "weekending" as was his custom, amongst
rebellious tribes, and by starting at once up the water,
I should very probably get to the town before he did.  Sec-
ondly, she thought if I kept clear of private brawls there
was little chance of my receiving injury, from the people at
all events, as they were accustomed to strange visitors, and
civil enough until they were fired by war.  "Sickle cold,
sword hot," was one of their proverbs, meaning thereby
that in peaceful times they were lambs, however lionlike
they might be in contest.

This was reassuring, but as to recovering the lady, that was
another matter over which the good woman shook her head.
It was ill coming between Ar-hap and his tribute, she said;
still, if I wanted to see Heru once again, this was my op-
portunity, and, for the rest, that chance, which often favours
the enamoured, must be my help.

Briefly, though I should probably have gone forward
in any case out of sheer obstinacy, had it been to certain
destruction, this better aspect of the situation hastened my
resolution.  I thanked the woman for help, and then the man
outside was called in to advise as to the best and speediest
way of getting within earshot of his hairy sovereignty, the
monarch of Thitherland.




CHAPTER XVI

The Martian told me of a merchant boat with ten rowers
which was going up to the capital in a couple of hours, and
as the skipper was a friend of his they would no doubt take
me as supercargo, thereby saving the necessity of passenger
fees, which was obviously a consideration with me.  It was
not altogether a romantic approach to the dungeon of an
imprisoned beauty, but it was practical, which is often
better if not so pleasant.  So the offer was gladly closed
with, and curling myself in a rug of foxskins, for I was
tired with much walking, sailors never being good foot-
gangers, I slept soundly fill they came to tell me it was
time to go on board.

The vessel was more like a canal barge than anything
else, lean and long, with the cargo piled in a ridge down
the centre as farmers store their winter turnips, the rowers
sitting on either side of this plying oars like dessert-spoons
with long handles, while they chanted a monotonous cadence
of monosyllables:


     Oh, ho, oh,

     Oh, ho, oh,

          How high, how high.

and then again after a pause--


          How high, how high

     Oh, ho, oh,

     Oh, ho, oh.

the which was infinitely sleep-provoking if not a refrain of
a high intellectual order.

I shut my eyes as we pulled away from the wharfs of
that nameless emporium and picked a passage through a
crowd of quaint shipping, wondering where I was, and
asking myself whether I was mentally rising equal to my
extraordinary surroundings, whether I adequately appreci-
ated the immensity of my remove from those other seas on
which I had last travelled, tiller-ropes in hand, piloting a
captain's galley from a wharf.  Good heavens, what would
my comrades on my ship say if they could see me now steer-
ing a load of hairy savages up one of those waterways
which our biggest telescopes magnify but to the thickness
of an indication?  No, I was not rising equal to the oc-
casion, and could not.  The human mind is of but limited
capacity after all, and such freaks of fortune are beyond
its conception.  I knew I was where I was, but I knew I
should probably never get the chance of telling of it, and
that no one would ever believe me if I did, and I re-
signed myself to the inevitable with sullen acquiescence,
smothering the wonder that might have been overwhelming
in passing interests of the moment.

There is little to record of that voyage.  We passed through
a fleet of Ar-hap's warships, empty and at anchor in double
line, serviceable half-decked cutters, built of solid timber,
not pumpkin rind it was pleasant to notice, and then the
town dropped away as we proceeded up a stream about
as broad as the Hudson at its widest, and profusely studded
with islands.  This water was bitterly salt and joined an-
other sea on the other side of the Martian continent.  Yet
it had a pronounced flow against us eastward, this tide
running for three spring months and being followed, I
learned, as ocean temperatures varied, by a flow in the
opposite direction throughout the summer.

Just at present the current was so strong eastwards, the
moisture beaded upon my rowers' tawny hides as they strug-
gled against it, and their melancholy song dawdled in
"linked sweetness long drawn out," while the swing of their
oars grew longer and longer.  Truly it was very hot, far hotter
than was usual for the season, these men declared, and pos-
sibly this robbed me of my wonted energy, and you, gentle
reader, of a description of all the strange things we passed
upon that highway.

Suffice it to say we spent a scorching afternoon, the
greater part of a stifling night moored under a mud-bank
with a grove of trees on top from which gigantic fire-flies
hung as though the place were illuminated for a garden fete,
and then, rowing on again in the comparatively cool hours
before dawn, turned into a backwater at cock-crow.

The skipper of our cargo boat roused me just as we
turned, putting under my sleepy nostrils a handful of
toasted beans on a leaf, and a small cup full of something
that was not coffee, but smelt as good as that matutinal
beverage always does to the tired traveller.

Over our prow was an immense arch of foliage, and under-
neath a long arcade of cool black shadows, sheltering still
water, till water and shadow suddenly ended a quarter of
a mile down in a patch of brilliant colour.  It was as peaceful
as could be in the first morning light, and to me over all
there was the inexpressible attraction of the unknown.

As our boat slipped silently forward up this leafy lane,
a thin white "feather" in her mouth alone breaking the steely
surface of the stream, the men rested from their work and
began, as sailors will, to put on their shore-going clothes,
the while they chatted in low tones over the profits of the
voyage.  Overhead flying squirrels were flitting to and fro like
bats, or shelling fruit whereof the husks fell with a pleasant
splash about us, and on one bank a couple of early mothers
were washing their babies, whose smothered protests were
almost the only sound in this morning world.

Another silent dip or two of the oars and the colour
ahead crystallised into a town.  If I said it was like an
African village on a large scale, I should probably give
you the best description in the fewest words.  From the very
water's edge up to the crown of a low hill inland, extended
a mass of huts and wooden buildings, embowered and partly
hidden in bright green foliage, with here and there patches
of millet, or some such food plant, and the flowers that grow
everywhere so abundantly in this country.  It was all Arcadian
and peaceful enough at the moment, and as we drew near
the men were just coming out to the quays along the har-
bour front, the streets filling and the town waking to busy life.

A turn to the left through a watergate defended by towers
of wood and mud, and we were in the city harbour itself;
boats of many kinds moored on every side; quaint craft from
the gulfs and bays of Nowhere, full of unheard-of merch-
andise, and manned by strange-faced crews, every vessel
a romance of nameless seas, an epitome of an undiscovered
world, and every moment the scene grew busier as the
breakfast smoke arose, and wharf and gangway set to work
upon the day's labours.

Our boat--loaded, as it turned out, with spoil from Seth--
was run to a place of honour at the bottom of the town
square, and was an object of much curiosity to a small crowd
which speedily collected and lent a hand with the mooring
ropes, the while chatting excitedly with the crew about
further tribute and the latest news from overseas.  At the
same time a swarthy barbarian, whose trappings showed him
to be some sort of functionary, came down to our "captain,"
much wagging of heads and counting of notched sticks
taking place between them.

I, indeed, was apparently the least interesting item of the
cargo, and this was embarrassing.  No hero likes to be ne-
glected, it is fatal to his part.  I had said my prayers and
steeled myself to all sorts of fine endurance on the way up,
and here, when it came to the crisis, no one was anxious
to play the necessary villain.  They just helped me ashore
civilly enough, the captain nodded his head at me, mutter-
ing something in an indifferent tone to the functionary about a
ghost who had wandered overseas and begged a passage
up the canal; the group about the quay stared a little, but
that was all.

Once I remember seeing a squatting, life-size heathen
idol hoisted from a vessel's hold and deposited on a sugar-box
on a New York quay.  Some ribald passer-by put a battered
felt hat upon Vishnu's sacred curls, and there the poor
image sat, an alien in an indifferent land, a sack across its
shoulders, a "billycock" upon its head, and honoured at most
with a passing stare.  I thought of that lonely image as al-
most as lonely I stood on the Thither men's quay, without
the support of friends or heroics, wondering what to do next.

However, a cheerful disposition is sometimes better than
a banking account, and not having the one I cultivated
the other, sunning myself amongst the bales for a time, and
then, since none seemed interested in me, wandered off into
the town, partly to satisfy my curiosity, and partly in
the vague hope of ascertaining if my princess was really
here, and, if possible, getting sight of her.

Meanwhile it turned hot with a supernatural, heavy sort
of heat altogether, I overheard passersby exclaiming, out
of the common, and after wandering for an hour through
gardens and endless streets of thatched huts, I was glad
enough to throw myself down in the shadow of some trees
on the outskirts of the great central pile of buildings, a
whole village in itself of beam-built towers and dwelling-
place, suggesting by its superior size that it might actually
be Ar-hap's palace.

Hotter and hotter it grew, while a curious secondary
sunrise in the west, the like of which I never saw before
seemed to add to the heat, and heavier and heavier my eye-
lids, till I dozed at last, and finally slept uncomfortably for
a time.

Rousing up suddenly, imagine my surprise to see sitting,
chin on knees, about a yard away, a slender girlish figure,
infinitely out of place in that world of rough barbarians.
Was it possible?  Was I dreaming?  No, there was no doubt
about it, she was a girl of the Hither folk, slim and pretty,
but with a wonderfully sad look in her gazelle eyes, and
scarcely a sign of the indolent happiness of Seth in the pale
little face regarding me so fixedly.

"Good gracious, miss," I said, still rubbing my eyes and
doubting my senses, "have you dropped from the skies?  You
are the very last person I expected to see in this barbarian
place."

"And you too, sir.  Oh, it is lovely to see one so newly
from home, and free-seeming--not a slave."

"How did you know I was from Seth?"

"Oh, that was easy enough," and with a little laugh she
pointed to a pebble lying between us, on which was a piece
of battered sweetmeat in a perforated bamboo box.  Poor An
had given me something just like that in a playful mood,
and I had kept it in my pocket for her sake, being, as you
will have doubtless observed, a sentimental young man, and
now I clapped my hand where it should have been, but it
was gone.

"Yes," said my new friend, "that is yours.  I smelt the
sweetmeat coming up the hill, and crossed the grass until I
found you here asleep.  Oh, it was lovely!  I took it from your
pocket, and white Seth rose up before my swimming eyes,
even at the scent of it.  I am Si, well named, for that in our
land means sadness, Si, the daughter of Prince Hath's chief
sweetmeat-maker, so I should know something of such
stuff.  May I, please, nibble a little piece?"

"Eat it all, my lass, and welcome.  How came you here?
But I can guess.  Do not answer if you would rather not."

"Ay, but I will.  It is not every day I can speak to ears so
friendly as yours.  I am a slave, chosen for my luckless
beauty as last year's tribute to Ar-hap."

"And now?"

"And now the slave of Ar-hap's horse-keeper, set aside
to make room for a fresher face."

"And do you know whose face that is?"

"Not I, a hapless maid sent into this land of horrors, to
bear ignominy and stripes, to eat coarse food and do coarse
work, the miserable plaything of some brute in semi-human
form, with but the one consolation of dying early as we
tribute-women always die.  Poor comrade in exile, I only
know her as yet by sympathy."

"What if I said it was Heru, the princess?"

The Martian girl sprang to her feet, and clasping her
hands exclaimed,

"Heru, the Slender!  Then the end comes, for it is written
in our books that the last tribute is paid when the best is
paid.  Oh, how splendid if she gave herself of free will to this
slavery to end it once for all.  Was it so?"

"I think, Si, your princess could not have known of that
tradition; she did not come willingly.  Besides, I am come to
fetch her back, if it may be, and that spoils the look of
sacrifice."

"You to fetch her back, and from Ar-hap's arms?  My
word, Sir Spirit, you must know some potent charms; or,
what is less likely, my countrymen must have amazingly
improved in pluck since I left them.  Have you a great army
at hand?"

But I only shook my head, and, touching my sword,
said that here was the only army coming to rescue Heru.
Whereon the lady replied that she thought my valour did
me more honour than my discretion.  How did I propose
to take the princess from her captors?

"To tell the truth, damsel, that is a matter which will
have to be left to your invention, or the kindness of such
as you.  I am here on a hare-brained errand, playing knight-
errant in a way that shocks my common sense.  But since
the matter has gone so far I will see it through, or die in
the attempt.  Your bully lord shall either give me Heru,
stock, lock, and block, or hang me from a yard-arm.  But I
would rather have the lady.  Come, you will help me; and,
as a beginning, if she is in yonder shanty get me speech
with her."

Poor Si's eyes dilated at the peril of the suggestion, and
I saw the sluggish Martian nature at war against her better
feelings.  But presently the latter conquered.  "I will try," she
said.  "What matter a few stripes more or less?" pointing to
her rosy shoulders where red scars crisscross upon one an-
other showed how the Martian girls fared in Ar-hap's palace
when their novelty wore off.  "I will try to help you; and if
they kill me for it--why, that will not matter much."  And
forthwith in that blazing forenoon under the flickering shadow
of the trees we put our heads together to see what we
might do for Heru.

It was not much for the moment.  Try what we would
that afternoon, I could not persuade those who had charge
of the princess to let me even approach her place of im-
prisonment, but Si, as a woman, was more successful, actually
seeing her for a few moments, and managed to whisper in
her ear that I had come, the Spirit-with-the-gold-buttons-
down-his front, afterwards describing to me in flowing Mar-
tian imagery--but doubtless not more highly coloured than
poor Heru's emotion warranted--how delightedly that lady
had received the news.

Si also did me another service, presenting me to the
porter's wife, who kept a kind of boarding-house at the
gates of Ar-hap's palace for gentlemen and ladies with
grievances.  I had heard of lobbying before, and the pre-
sentation of petitions, though I had never indulged myself
in the pastime; but the crowd of petitioners here, with
petitions as wild and picturesque as their own motley ap-
pearances, was surely the strangest that ever gathered round
a seat of supreme authority.

Si whispered in the ear of that good woman the nature
of my errand, with doubtless some blandishment of her
own; and my errand being one so much above the vulgar
and so nearly touching the sovereign, I was at once ac-
corded a separate room in the gate-house, whence I could
look down in comparative peace on the common herd of
suitors, and listen to the buzz of their invective as they
practised speeches which I calculated it would take Ar-hap
all the rest of his reign to listen to, without allowing him
any time for pronouncing verdicts on them.

Here I made myself comfortable, and awaited the return
of the sovereign as placidly as might be.  Meanwhile fate
was playing into my feeble hands.

I have said it was hot weather.  At first this seemed but
an outcome of the Martian climate, but as the hours went
by the heat developed to an incredible extent.  Also that red
glare previously noted in the west grew in intensity, till, as
the hours slipped by, all the town was staring at it in panting
horror.  I have seen a prairie on fire, luckily from the far side
of a comfortably broad river, and have ridden through a pine-
forest when every tree for miles was an uplifted torch, and
pungent yellow smoke rolled down each corrie side in grey
rivers crested with dancing flame.  But that Martian glare was
more sombre and terrible than either.

"What is it?" I asked of poor Si, who came out gasping
to speak to me by the gate-house.

"None of us know, and unless the gods these Thither
folk believe in are angry, and intend to destroy the world
with yonder red sword in the sky, I cannot guess.  Perhaps,"
she added, with a sudden flash of inspiration, "it comes by
your machinations for Heru's help."

"No!"

"If not by your wish, then, in the name of all you love, set
your wish against it.  If you know any incantations suitable
for the occasion, oh, practise them now at once, for look, even
the very grass is withering; birds are dropping from trees;
fishes, horribly bloated, are beginning to float down the
steaming rills; and I, with all others, have a nameless dread
upon me."

Hotter and hotter it grew, until about sunset the red
blaze upon the sky slowly opened, and showed us for about
half an hour, through the opening a lurid, flame-coloured
meteor far out in space beyond; then the cleft closed
again, and through that abominable red curtain came the
very breath of Hades.

What was really happening I am not astronomer enough
to say, though on cooler consideration I have come to the
conclusion that our planet, in going out to its summer
pastures in the remoter fields of space, had somehow come
across a wandering lesser world and got pretty well singed
in passing.  This is purely my own opinion, and I have not
yet submitted it to the kindly authorities of the Lick Obser-
vatory for verification.  All I can say for certain is that in an
incredibly short space of time the face of the country
changed from green to sear, flowers drooped; streams (there
were not many in the neighbourhood apparently) dried up;
fishes died; a mighty thirst there was nothing to quench set-
tled down on man and beast, and we all felt that unless
Providence listened to the prayers and imprecations which
the whole town set to work with frantic zeal to hurl at it, or
that abominable comet in the sky sheered off on another
tack with the least possible delay, we should all be re-
duced to cinders in a very brief space of time.




CHAPTER XVII

The evening of the second day had already come, when
Ar-hap arrived home after weekending amongst a tribe
of rebellious subjects.  But any imposing State entry which
might have been intended was rendered impossible by the
heat and the threat of that baleful world in the western sky.

It was a lurid but disordered spectacle which I wit-
nessed from my room in the gate-house just after nightfall.
The returning army had apparently fallen away exhausted
on its march through the town; only some three hundred
of the bodyguard straggled up the hill, limp and sweating,
behind a group of pennons, in the midst of which rode a
horseman whose commanding presence and splendid war
harness impressed me, though I could not make out his
features; a wild, impressionist scene of black outlines, tossing
headgear, and spears glittering and vanishing in front of
the red glare in the sky, but nothing more.  Even the dry
throats of the suitors in the courtyard hardly mustered a
husky cry of welcome as the cavalcade trooped into the
enclosure, and then the shadows enfolded them up in
silence, and, too hot and listless to care much what the
morrow brought forth, I threw myself on the bare floor,
tossing and turning in a vain endeavour to sleep until
dawn came once more.

A thin mist which fell with daybreak drew a veil over
the horrible glare in the west for an hour or two, and
taking advantage of the slight alleviation of heat, I rose
and went into the gardens to enjoy a dip in a pool, making,
with its surrounding jungle of flowers, one of the pleasantest
things about the wood-king's forest citadel.  The very earth
seemed scorched and baking underfoot--and the pool was
gone!  It had run as dry as a limekiln; nothing remained of
the pretty fall which had fed it but a miserable trickle of
drops from the cascade above.  Down beyond the town shone
a gleam of water where the bitter canal steamed and sim-
mered in the first grey of the morning, but up here six months
of scorching drought could not have worked more havoc.  The
very leaves were dropping from the trees, and the luxuriant
growths of the day before looked as though a simoon had
played upon them.

I staggered back in disgust, and found some show of
official activity about the palace.  It was the king's custom, it
appeared, to hear petitions and redress wrongs as soon after
his return as possible, but today the ceremony was to be
cut short as his majesty was going out with all his court to
a neighbouring mountain to "pray away the comet," which
by this time was causing dire alarm all through the city.

"Heaven's own particular blessing on his prayers, my
friend," I said to the man who told me this.  "Unless his
majesty's orisons are fruitful, we shall all be cooked like baked
potatoes before nightfall, and though I have faced many
kinds of death, that is not the one I would choose by
preference.  Is there a chance of myself being heard at the
throne?  Your peculiar climate tempts me to hurry up with
my business and begone if I may."

"Not only may you be heard, sir, but you are sum-
moned.  The king has heard of you somehow, and sent me
to find and bring you into his presence at once."

"So be it," I said, too hot to care what happened.  "I
have no levee dress with me.  I lost my luggage check some
time ago, but if you will wait outside I will be with you
in a moment."

Hastily tidying myself up, and giving my hair a comb,
as though just off to see Mr. Secretary for the Navy, or on
the way to get a senator to push a new patent medicine
for me, I rejoined my guide outside, and together we
crossed the wide courtyard, entered the great log-built
portals of Ar-hap's house, and immediately afterwards found
ourselves in a vast hall dimly lit by rays coming in through
square spaces under the eaves, and crowded on both sides
with guards, courtiers, and supplicants.  The heat was tre-
mendous, the odour of Thither men and the ill-dressed
hides they wore almost overpowering.  Yet little I recked
for either, for there at the top of the room, seated on a dais
made of rough-hewn wood inlet with gold and covered
with splendid furs, was Ar-hap himself.

A fine fellow, swarthy, huge, and hairy, at any other
time or place I could have given him due admiration as an
admirable example of the savage on the borderland of grace
and culture, but now I only glanced at him, and then to
where at his side a girl was crouching, a gem of human
loveliness against that dusky setting.  It was Heru, my
ravished princess, and, still clad in her diaphanous Hither
robes, her face white with anxiety, her eyes bright as stars,
the embodiment of helpless, flowery beauty, my heart
turned over at sight of her.

Poor girl!  When she saw me stride into the hall she rose
swiftly from Ar-hap's side, clasped her pretty hands, and
giving a cry of joy would have rushed towards me, but
the king laid a mighty paw upon her, under which she
subsided with a shiver as though the touch had blanched
all the life within.

"Good morning, your majesty," I said, walking boldly up
to the lower step of the dais.

"Good morning, most singular-looking vagrant from the
Unknown," answered the monarch.  "In what way can I
be of service to you?''

"I have come about that girl," I said, nodding to where
Heru lay blossoming in the hot gloom like some night-
flowering bud.  "I do not know whether your majesty is
aware how she came here, but it is a highly discreditable
incident in what is doubtless your otherwise blameless
reign.  Some rough scullions intrusted with the duty of col-
lecting your majesty's customs asked Prince Hath of the
Hither people to point out the most attractive young person
at his wedding feast, and the prince indicated that lady
there at your side.  It was a dirty trick, and all the worse
because it was inspired by malice, which is the meanest of
all weaknesses.  I had the pleasure of knocking down some
of your majesty's representatives, but they stole the girl
away while I slept, and, briefly, I have come to fetch her
back."

The monarch had followed my speech, the longest ever
made in my life, with fierce, blinking eyes, and when it
stopped looked at poor shrinking Heru as though for ex-
planation, then round the circle of his awestruck courtiers,
and reading dismay at my boldness in their faces, burst
into a guttural laugh.

"I suppose you have the great and puissant Hither nation
behind you in this request, Mr. Spirit?"

"No, I came alone, hoping to find justice here, and, if
not, then prepared to do all I could to make your majesty
curse the day your servants maltreated my friends."

"Tall words, stranger!  May I ask what you propose to
do if Ar-hap, in his own palace, amongst his people and
soldiers, refuses to disgorge a pretty prize at the bidding of
one shabby interloper--muddy and friendless?"

"What should I do?"

"Yes," said the king, with a haughty frown.  "What would
you do?"

I do not know what prompted the reply.  For a moment
I was completely at a loss what to say to this very obvious
question, and then all on a sudden, remembering they held
me to be some kind of disembodied spirit, by a happy
inspiration, fixing my eyes grimly on the king, I answered,

"What would I do?  Why, I WOULD HAUNT YOU!"

It may not seem a great stroke of genius here, but the
effect on the Martian was instantaneous.  He sat straight up,
his hands tightened, his eyes dilated, and then fidgeting un-
easily, after a minute he beckoned to an over-dressed in-
dividual, whom Heru afterwards told me was the Court
necromancer, and began whispering in his ear.

After a minute's consultation he turned again, a rather
frightened civility struggling in his face with anger, and
said, "We have no wish, of course, stranger, to offend you
or those who had the honour of your patronage.  Perhaps
the princess here was a little roughly handled, and, I con-
fess, if she were altogether as reluctant as she seems, a
lesser maid would have done as well.  I could have wooed
this one in Seth, where I may shortly come, and our
espousals would possibly have lent, in the eyes of your
friends, quite a cheerful aspect to my arrival.  But my am-
bassadors have had no great schooling in diplomacy; they
have brought Princess Heru here, and how can I hand her
over to one I know nothing of?  How do I know you are a
ghost, after all?  How do I know you have anything but
a rusty sword and much impertinence to back your as-
tounding claim?"

"Oh, let it be just as you like," I said, calmly shelling
and eating a nut I had picked up.  "Only if you do not
give the maid back, why, then--" And I stopped as though
the sequel were too painful to put into words.

Again that superstitious monarch of a land thronged with
malicious spirits called up his magician, and, after they
had consulted a moment, turned more cheerfully to me.

"Look here, Mister-from-Nowhere, if you are really a
spirit, and have the power to hurt as you say, you will have
the power also to go and come between the living and the
dead, between the present and the past.  Now I will set you
an errand, and give you five minutes to do it in."

"Five minutes!" I exclaimed in incautious alarm.

"Five minutes," said the monarch savagely.  "And if in
that time the errand is not done, I shall hold you to be an
impostor, an impudent thief from some scoundrel tribe of
this world of mine, and will make of you an example which
shall keep men's ears tingling for a century or two."

Poor Heru dropped in a limp and lovely heap at that
dire threat, while I am bound to say I felt somewhat
uncomfortable, not unnaturally when all the circumstances are
considered, but contented myself with remarking, with as
much bravado as could be managed,

"And now to the errand, Ar-hap.  What can I do for
your majesty?"

The king consulted with the rogue at his elbow, and
then nodding and chuckling in expectancy of his triumph,
addressed me.

"Listen," he cried, smiting a huge hairy hand upon his
knee, "listen, and do or die.  My magician tells me it is record-
ed in his books that once, some five thousand years ago, when
this land belonged to the Hither people, there lived here a
king.  It is a pity he died, for he seems to have been a jovial
old fellow; but he did die, and, according to their custom,
they floated him down the stream that flows to the
regions of eternal ice, where doubtless he is at this present
moment, caked up with ten million of his subjects.  Now just
go and find that sovereign for me, oh you bold-tongued
dweller in other worlds!"

"And if I go how am I to know your ancient king, as
you say, amongst ten million others?"

"That is easy enough," quoth Ar-hap lightly.  "You have
only to pass to and fro through the ice mountains, opening the
mouths of the dead men and women you meet, and when
you come to a middle-sized man with a fillet on his head
and a jaw mended with gold, that will be he whom you
look for.  Bring me that fillet here within five minutes
and the maid is yours."

I started, and stared hard in amazement.  Was this a
dream?  Was the royal savage in front playing with me?  By
what incredible chance had he hit upon the very errand I
could answer to best, the very trophy I had brought
away from the grim valley of ice and death, and had still in
my shoulder-bag?  No, he was not playing; he was staring
hard in turn, joying in my apparent confusion, and clearly
thinking he had cornered me beyond hope of redemption.

"Surely your mightiness is not daunted by so simple a
task," scowled the sovereign, playing with the hilt of his
huge hunting-knife, "and all amongst your friends' kindred
too.  On a hot day like this it ought to be a pleasant saunter
for a spirit such as yourself."

"Not daunted," I answered coldly, turning on my heels
towards the door, "only marvelling that your majesty's skull
and your necromancer's could not between them have de-
vised a harder task."

Out into the courtyard I went, with my heart beating
finely in spite of my assumed indifference; got the bag from
a peg in my sleeping-room, and was back before the log
throne ere four minutes were gone.

"The old Hither king's compliments to your majesty," I
said, bowing, while a deathly hush fell on all the assembly,
"and he says though your ancestors little liked to hear his
voice while alive, he says he has no objection to giving you
some jaw now he is dead," and I threw down on the floor
the golden circlet of the frozen king.

Ar-hap's eyes almost started from his head as, with his
courtiers, he glared in silent amazement at that shining
thing while the great drops of fear and perspiration trickled
down his forehead.  As for poor Heru, she rose like a spirit
behind them, gazed at the jaw-bone of her mythical an-
cestor, and then suddenly realising my errand was done and
she apparently free, held out her hands, and, with a
tremulous cry, would have come to me.

But Ar-hap was too quick for her.  All the black savage
blood swelled into his veins as he swept her away with one
great arm, and then with his foot gave the luckless jaw a
kick that sent it glittering and spinning through the far
doorway out into the sunshine.

"Sit down," he roared, "you brazen wench, who are so
eager to leave a king's side for a nameless vagrant's care!
And you, sir," turning to me, and fairly trembling with rage
and dread, "I will not gainsay that you have done the errand
set you, but it might this once be chance that got you
that cursed token, some one happy turn of luck.  I will not
yield my prize on one throw of the dice.  Another task you
must do.  Once might be chance, but such chance comes
not twice."

"You swore to give me the maid this time."

"And why should I keep my word to a half-proved spirit
such as you?"

"There are some particularly good reasons why you
should," I said, striking an attitude which I had once seen
a music-hall dramatist take when he was going to blast
somebody's future--a stick with a star on top of it in his
hand and forty lines of blank verse in his mouth.

The king writhed, and begged me with a sign to desist.

"We have no wish to anger you.  Do us this other task
and none will doubt that you are a potent spirit, and even
I, Ar-hap, will listen to you."

"Well, then," I answered sulkily, "what is it to be this
time?"

After a minute's consultation, and speaking slowly as
though conscious of how much hung on his words, the king
said,

"Listen!  My soothsayer tells me that somewhere there is a
city lost in a forest, and a temple lost in the city, and a
tomb lost in the temple; a city of ghosts and djins given over
to bad spirits, wherefore all human men shun it by day and
night.  And on the tomb is she who was once queen there,
and by her lies her crown.  Quick! oh you to whom all dis-
tances are nothing, and who see, by your finer essence, into
all times and places.  Away to that city!  Jostle the memories
of the unclean things that hide in its shadows; ask which
amongst them knows where dead Queen Yang still lies in
dusty state.  Get guides amongst your comrade ghosts.  Find
Queen Yang, and bring me here in five minutes the bloody
circlet from her hair."

Then, and then for the first time, I believed the planet
was haunted indeed, and I myself unknowingly under some
strange and watchful influence.  Spirits, demons!  Oh! what but
some incomprehensible power, some unseen influence shap-
ing my efforts to its ends, could have moved that hairy
barbarian to play a second time into my hands like this,
to choose from the endless records of his world the second
of the two incidents I had touched in hasty travel through it?
I was almost overcome for a minute; then, pulling myself
together, strode forward fiercely, and, speaking so that all
could hear me, cried, "Base king, who neither knows the
capacities of a spirit nor has learned as yet to dread its
anger, see! your commission is executed in a thought, just
as your punishment might be.  Heru, come here."  And when
the girl, speechless with amazement, had risen and slipped
over to me, I straightened her pretty hair from her fore-
head, and then, in a way which would make my fortune if
I could repeat it at a conjuror's table, whipped poor Yang's
gemmy crown from my pocket, flashed its baleful splendour
in the eyes of the courtiers, and placed it on the tresses of
the first royal lady who had worn it since its rightful owner
died a hundred years before.

A heavy silence fell on the hall as I finished, and nothing
was heard for a time save Heru sobbing on my breast
and a thirsty baby somewhere outside calling to its mother
for the water that was not to be had.  But presently on those
sounds came the fall of anxious feet, and a messenger,
entering the doorway, approached the throne, laid him-
self out flat twice, after which obeisance he proceeded to
remind the king of the morning's ceremonial on a distant hill
to "pray away the comet," telling his majesty that all was
ready and the procession anxiously awaiting him.

Whereon Ar-hap, obviously very well content to change
the subject, rose, and, coming down from the dais, gave me
his hand.  He was a fine fellow, as I have said, strong
and bold, and had not behaved badly for an autocrat, so
that I gripped his mighty fist with great pleasure.

"I cannot deny, stranger," he said, "that you have done
all that has been asked of you, and the maid is fairly yours.
Yet before you take away the prize I must have some as-
surance of what you yourself will do with her.  Therefore, for
the moment, until this horrible thing in the sky which
threatens my people with destruction has gone, let it be truce
between us--you to your lodgings, and the princess back,
unharmed, amongst my women till we meet again."

"But--"

"No, no," said the king, waving his hand.  "Be content
with your advantage.  And now to business more important
than ten thousand silly wenches," and gathering up his robes
over his splendid war-gear the wood king stalked haughtily
from the hall.




CHAPTER XVIII

Hotter and hotter grew that stifling spell, more and more
languid man and beast, drier and drier the parching earth.

All the water gave out on the morning after I had
bearded Ar-hap in his den, and our strength went with it.
No earthly heat was ever like it, and it drank our vitality
up from every pore.  Water there was down below in the
bitter, streaming gulf, but so noisome that we dared not
even bathe there; here there was none but the faintest trickle.
All discipline was at an end; all desire save such as was
born of thirst.  Heru I saw as often as I wished as she lay
gasping, with poor Si at her feet, in the women's verandah;
but the heat was so tremendous that I gazed at her with
lack-lustre eyes, staggering to and fro amongst the court-
yard shadows, without nerve to plot her rescue or strength
to carry out anything my mind might have conceived.

We prayed for rain and respite.  Ar-hap had prayed
with a wealth of picturesque ceremonial.  We had all prayed
and cursed by turns, but still the heavens would not relent,
and the rain came not.

At last the stifling heat and vapour reached an almost
intolerable pitch.  The earth reeked with unwholesome hum-
ours no common summer could draw from it, the air was
sulphurous and heavy, while overhead the sky seemed a
tawny dome, from edge to edge of angry clouds, parting
now and then to let us see the red disc threatening us.

Hour after hour slipped by until, when evening was upon
us, the clouds drew together, and thunder, with a continu-
ous low rumble, began to rock from sky to sky.  Fitful showers
of rain, odorous and heavy, but unsatisfying, fell, and birds
and beasts of the woodlands came slinking in to our streets
and courtyards.  Ever since the sky first darkened our own
animals had become strangely familiar, and now here were
these wild things of the woods slinking in for companion-
ship, sagheaded and frightened.  To me especially they came,
until that last evening as I staggered dying about the streets
or sat staring into the remorseless sky from the steps of
Heru's prison house, all sorts of beasts drew softly in and
crowded about, whether I sat or moved, all asking for the
hope I had not to give them.

At another time this might have been embarrassing; then
it seemed pure commonplace.  It was a sight to see them
slink in between the useless showers, which fell like hot tears
upon us--sleek panthers with lolling tongues; russet-red wood
dogs; bears and sloths from the dark arcades of the remote
forests, all casting themselves down gasping in the palace
shadows; strange deer, who staggered to the garden plots
and lay there heaving their lives out; mighty boars, who
came from the river marshes and silently nozzled a place
amongst their enemies to die in!  Even the wolves came off
the hills, and, with bloodshot eyes and tongues that dripped
foam, flung themselves down in my shadow.

All along the tall stockades apes sat sad and listless, and
on the roof-ridges storks were dying.  Over the branches of
the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had
a six months' drought, the toucans and Martian parrots
hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the
courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels
in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores along
under the walls.

Our common sorrow made us as sociable as though I
were Noah, and Ar-hap's palace mound another Ararat.
Hour after hour I sat amongst all these lesser beasts in
the hot darkness, waiting for the end.  Every now and then
the heavy clouds parted, changing the gloom to sudden fiery
daylight as the great red eye in the west looked upon us
through the crevice, and, taking advantage of those gleams,
I would reel across to where, under a spout leading from
a dried rivulet, I had placed a cup to collect the slow and
tepid drops that were all now coming down the reed for
Heru.  And as I went back each time with that sickly
spoonful at the bottom of the vessel all the dying beasts
lifted their heads and watched--the thirsty wolves shamb-
ling after me; the boars half sat up and grunted plaintively;
the panthers, too weak to rise, beat the dusty ground with
their tails; and from the portico the blue storks, with
trailing wings, croaked husky greeting.

But slower and slower came the dripping water, more
and more intolerable the heat.  At last I could stand it no
longer.  What purpose did it serve to lay gasping like this,
dying cruelly without a hope of rescue, when a shorter way
was at my side?  I had not drank for a day and a half.  I was
past active reviling; my head swam; my reason was clouded.
No!  I would not stand it any longer.  Once more I would
take Heru and poor Si the cup that was but a mockery
after all, then fix my sword into the ground and try what
next the Fates had in store for me.

So once again the leathern mug was fetched and carried
through the prostrate guards to where the Martian girl lay,
like a withered flower, upon her couch.  Once again I
moistened those fair lips, while my own tongue was black
and swollen in my throat, then told Si, who had had none all
the afternoon, to drink half and leave half for Heru.  Poor Si
put her aching lips to the cup and tilted it a little, then
passed it to her mistress.  And Heru drank it all, and Si cried
a few hot tears behind her hands, FOR SHE HAD TAKEN NONE,
and she knew it was her life!

Again picking a way through the courtyard, scarce notic-
ing how the beasts lifted their heads as I passed, I went
instinctively, cup in hand, to the well, and then hesitated.
Was I a coward to leave Heru so?  Ought I not to stay
and see it out to the bitter end?  Well, I would compound
with Fate.  I would give the malicious gods one more chance.
I would put the cup down again, and until seven drops
had fallen into it I would wait.  That there might be no mistake
about it, no sooner was the mug in place under the nozzle
wherefrom the moisture beads collected and fell with infinite
slowness, than my sword, on which I meant to throw my-
self, was bared and the hilt forced into a gaping crack
in the ground, and sullenly contented to leave my fate so, I
sat down beside it.

I turned grimly to the spout and saw the first drop fall,
then another, and another later on, but still no help came.
There was a long rift in the clouds now, and a glare like
that from an open furnace door was upon me.  I had
noticed when I came to the spring how the comet which
was killing us hung poised exactly upon the point of a dis-
tant hill.  If he had passed his horrible meridian, if he was
going from us, if he sunk but a hair's breadth before that
seventh drop should fall, I could tell it would mean salvation.

But the fourth drop fell, and he was big as ever.  The fifth
drop fell, and a hot, pleasing nose was thrust into my hand,
and looking down I saw a grey wolf had dragged herself
across the court and was asking with eloquent eyes for the
help I could not give.  The sixth drop gathered, and fell;
already the seventh was like a seedling pearl in its place.
The dying wolf yanked affectionately at my hand, but I put
her by and undid my tunic.  Big and bright that drop hung
to the spout lip; another minute and it would fall.  A beauti-
ful drop, I laughed, peering closely at it, many-coloured,
prismatic, flushing red and pink, a tiny living ruby, hanging
by a touch to the green rim above; enough! enough!  The
quiver of an eyelash would unhinge it now; and angry
with the life I already felt was behind me, and turning
in defiant expectation to the new to come, I rose, saw the
red gleam of my sword jutting like a fiery spear from the
cracking soil where I had planted it, then looked once more
at the drop and glanced for the last time at the sullen
red terror on the hill.

Were my eyes dazed, my senses reeling?  I said a space
ago that the meteor stood exactly on the mountain-top and
if it sunk a hair's breadth I should note it; and now, why,
there WAS a flaw in its lower margin, a flattening of the
great red foot that before had been round and perfect.  I turned
my smarting eyes away a minute,--saw the seventh drop fall
with a melodious tingle into the cup, then back again,--
there was no mistake--the truant fire was a fraction less,
it had shrunk a fraction behind the hill even since I looked,
and thereon all my life ran back into its channels, the
world danced before me, and "Heru!" I shouted hoarsely,
reeling back towards the palace, "Heru, 'tis well; the
worst is past!"

But the little princess was unconscious, and at her feet
was poor Si, quite dead, still reclining with her head in her
hands just as I had left her.  Then my own senses gave out,
and dropping down by them I remembered no more.

I must have lain there an hour or two, for when con-
sciousness came again it was night--black, cool, profound
night, with an inky sky low down upon the tree-tops, and
out of it such a glorious deluge of rain descending swiftly
and silently as filled my veins even to listen to.  Eagerly I
shuffled away to the porch steps, down them into the
swimming courtyard, and ankle-deep in the glorious flood,
set to work lapping furiously at the first puddle, drinking
with gasps of pleasure, gasping and drinking again, feeling
my body filling out like the thirsty steaming earth below
me.  Then, as I still drank insatiably, there came a gleam
of lightning out of the gloom overhead, a brilliant yellow
blaze, and by it I saw a few yards away a panther drinking
at the same pool as myself, his gleaming eyes low down
like mine upon the water, and by his side two apes, the
black water running in at their gaping mouths, while out
beyond were more pools, more drinking animals.  Everything
was drinking.  I saw their outlined forms, the gleam shining
on wet skins as though they were cut out in silver against
the darkness, each beast steaming like a volcano as the
Heaven-sent rain smoked from his fevered hide, all drinking
for their lives, heedless of aught else--and then came the
thunder.

It ran across the cloudy vault as though the very sky
were being ripped apart, rolling in mighty echoes here and
there before it died away.  As it stopped, the rain also fell
less heavily for a minute, and as I lay with my face low
down I heard the low, contented lapping of numberless
tongues unceasing, insatiable.  Then came the lightning again,
lighting up everything as though it were daytime.  The twin
black apes were still drinking, but the panther across the
puddle had had enough; I saw him lift his grateful head
up to the flare; saw the limp red tongue licking the black nose,
the green eyes shining like opals, the water dripping in
threads of diamonds from the hairy tag under his chin and
every tuft upon his chest--then darkness again.

To and fro the green blaze rocked between the thunder
crashes.  It struck a house a hundred yards away, stripping
every shingle from the roof better than a master builder
could in a week.  It fell a minute after on a tall tree by
the courtyard gate, and as the trunk burst into white splin-
ters I saw every leaf upon the feathery top turn light side
up against the violet reflection in the sky beyond, and
then the whole mass came down to earth with a thud that
crushed the courtyard palings into nothing for twenty yards
and shook me even across the square.

Another time I might have stopped to marvel or to watch,
as I have often watched with sympathetic pleasure, the gods
thus at play; but tonight there were other things on hand.
When I had drunk, I picked up an earthen crock, filled it,
and went to Heru.  It was a rough drinking-vessel for those
dainty lips, and an indifferent draught, being as much mud
as aught else, but its effect was wonderful.  At the first touch
of that turgid stuff a shiver of delight passed through the
drowsy lady.  At the second she gave a sigh, and her hand
tightened on my arm.  I fetched another crockful, and by
the flickering light rocking to and fro in the sky, took her
head upon my shoulder, like a prodigal new come into
riches, squandering the stuff, giving her to drink and bathing
face and neck till presently, to my delight, the princess's eyes
opened.  Then she sat up, and taking the basin from me
drank as never lady drank before, and soon was almost her-
self again.

I went out into the portico, there snuffing the deep,
strong breath of the fragrant black earth receiving back
into its gaping self what the last few days had taken from it,
while quick succeeding thoughts of escape and flight passed
across my brain.  All through the fiery time we had just had
the chance of escaping with the fair booty yonder had been
present.  Without her, flight would have been easy enough,
but that was not worth considering for a moment.  With
her it was more difficult, yet, as I had watched the wood-
men, accustomed to cool forest shades, faint under the fiery
glare of the world above, to make a dash for liberty seemed
each hour more easy.  I had seen the men in the streets drop
one by one, and the spears fall from the hands of guards
about the pallisades; I had seen messengers who came
to and fro collapse before their errands were accomplished,
and the forest women, who were Heru's gaolers, groan and
drop across the thresholds of her prison, until at length
the way was clear--a babe might have taken what he would
from that half-scorched town and asked no man's leave.
Yet what did it avail me?  Heru was helpless, my own spirit
burnt in a nerveless frame, and so we stayed.

But with rain strength came back to both of us.  The
guards, lying about like black logs, were only slowly re-
turning to consciousness; the town still slept, and darkness
favoured; before they missed us in the morning light we
might be far on the way back to Seth--a dangerous way
truly, but we were like to tread a rougher one if we stayed.
In fact, directly my strength returned with the cooler air,
I made up my mind to the venture and went to Heru, who
by this time was much recovered.  To her I whispered my
plot, and that gentle lady, as was only natural, trembled at
its dangers.  But I put it to her that no time could be better
than the present: the storm was going over; morning would
"line the black mantle of the night with a pink dawn of
promise"; before any one stirred we might be far off, shaping
a course by our luck and the stars for her kindred, at
whose name she sighed.  If we stayed, I argued, and the
king changed his mind, then death for me, and for Heru
the arms of that surly monarch, and all the rest of her life
caged in these pallisades amongst the uncouth forms about us.

The lady gave a frightened little shiver at the picture, but
after a moment, laying her head upon my shoulder, an-
swered, "Oh, my guardian spirit and helper in adversity,
I too have thought of tomorrow, and doubt whether that
horror, that great swine who has me, will not invent an excuse
for keeping me.  Therefore, though the forest roads are dread-
ful, and Seth very far away, I will come; I give myself
into your hands.  Do what you will with me."

"Then the sooner the better, princess.  How soon can
you be prepared?"

She smiled, and stooping picked up her slippers, saying
as she did so, "I am ready!"

There were no arrangements to be made.  Every instant
was of value.  So, to be brief, I threw a dark cloak over the
damsel's shoulders, for indeed she was clad in little more
than her loveliness and the gauziest filaments of a Hither
girl's underwear, and hand in hand led her down the log
steps, over the splashing, ankle-deep courtyard, and into the
shadows of the gateway beyond.

Down the slope we went; along towards the harbour,
through a score of deserted lanes where nothing was to be
heard but the roar of rain and the lapping of men and
beasts, drinking in the shadows as though they never would
stop, and so we came at last unmolested to the wharf.  There I
hid royal Seth between two piles of merchandise, and went
to look for a boat suitable to our needs.  There were plenty of
small craft moored to rings along the quay, and selecting
a canoe--it was no time to stand on niceties of property--
easily managed by a single paddle, I brought it round to
the steps, put in a fresh water-pot, and went for the princess.

With her safely stowed in the prow, a helpless, sodden
little morsel of feminine loveliness, things began to appear
more hopeful and an escape down to blue water, my only
idea, for the first time possible.  Yet I must needs go and
well nigh spoil everything by over-solicitude for my charge.

Had we pushed off at once there can be no doubt my
credit as a spirit would have been established for all time
in the Thither capital, and the belief universally held that
Heru had been wafted away by my enchantment to the
regions of the unknown.  The idea would have gradually grown
into a tradition, receiving embellishments in succeeding gen-
erations, until little wood children at their mother's knees
came to listen in awe to the story of how, once upon a time,
the Sun-god loved a beautiful maiden, and drove his fiery
chariot across the black night-fields to her prison door, scorch-
ing to death all who strove to gainsay him.  How she flew
into his arms and drove away before all men's eyes, in
his red car, into the west, and was never seen again--the
foresaid Sun-god being I, Gulliver Jones, a much under-
paid lieutenant in the glorious United States navy, with a
packet of overdue tailors' bills in my pocket, and nothing
lovable about me save a partiality for meddling with
other people's affairs.

This is how it might have been, but I spoiled a pretty
fairy story and changed the whole course of Martian
history by going back at that moment in search of a wrap
for my prize.  Right on top of the steps was a man with a
lantern, and half a glance showed me it was the harbour
master met with on my first landing.

"Good evening," he said suspiciously.  "May I ask what
you are doing on the quay at such an hour as this?"

"Doing?  Oh, nothing in particular, just going out for a
little fishing."

"And your companion the lady--is she too fond of
fishing?"

I swore between my teeth, but could not prevent the fel-
low walking to the quay edge and casting his light full upon
the figure of the girl below.  I hate people who interfere
with other people's business!

"Unless I am very much mistaken your fishing friend is
the Hither woman brought here a few days ago as tribute
to Ar-hap."

"Well," I answered, getting into a nice temper, for I had
been very much harrassed of late, "put it at that.  What would
you do if it were so?"

"Call up my rain-drunk guards, and give you in charge
as a thief caught meddling with the king's property."

"Thanks, but as my interviews with Ar-hap have al-
ready begun to grow tedious, we will settle this little matter
here between ourselves at once."  And without more to-do I
closed with him.  There was a brief scuffle and then I got
in a blow upon his jaw which sent the harbour master flying
back head over heels amongst the sugar bales and potatoes.

Without waiting to see how he fared I ran down the
steps, jumped on board, loosened the rope, and pushed out
into the river.  But my heart was angry and sore, for I
knew, as turned out to be the case, that our secret was one
no more; in a short time we should have the savage king
in pursuit, and now there was nothing for it but headlong
flight with only a small chance of getting away to distant
Seth.

Luckily the harbour master lay insensible until he was
found at dawn, so that we had a good start, and the
moment the canoe passed from the arcade-like approach to
the town the current swung her head automatically seaward,
and away we went down stream at a pace once more filling
me with hope.




CHAPTER XIX

All went well and we fled down the bitter stream of
the Martian gulf at a pace leaving me little to do but
guide our course just clear of snags and promontories on the
port shore.  Just before dawn, however, with a thin mist on
the water and flocks of a flamingo-like bird croaking as they
flew southward overhead, we were nearly captured again.

Drifting silently down on a rocky island, I was having a
drink at the water-pitcher at the moment, while Heru, her
hair beaded with prismatic moisture and looking more ethereal
than ever, sat in the bows timorously inhaling the breath of
freedom, when all on a sudden voices invisible in the mist,
came round a corner.  It was one of Ar-hap's war-canoes
toiling up-stream.  Heru and I ducked down into the haze
like dab-chicks and held our breath.

Straight on towards us came the toiling ship, the dip of
oars resonant in the hollow fog and a ripple babbling on
her cutwater plainly discernible.


          "Oh, oh!

           Hoo, hoo!

           How high, how high!"

sounded the sleepy song of the rowers till they were loom-
ing right abreast and we could smell their damp hides in
the morning air.  Then they stopped suddenly and some one
asked,

"Is there not something like a boat away on the right?"

"It is nothing," said another, "but the lees of last night's
beer curdling in your stupid brain."

"But I saw it move."

"That must have been in dreams."

"What is all that talking about?" growled a sleepy voice
of authority from the stern.

"Bow man, sir, says he can see a boat."

"And what does it matter if he can?  Are we to delay
every time that lazy ruffian spying a shadow makes it an
excuse to stop to yawn and scratch?  Go on, you plankful
of lubbers, or I'll give you something worth thinking about!"
And joyfully, oh, so joyfully, we heard the sullen dip of
oars commence again.

Nothing more happened after that till the sun at length
shone on the little harbour town at the estuary mouth, making
the masts of fishing craft clustering there like a golden reed-
bed against the cool, clean blue of the sea beyond.

Right glad we were to see it, and keeping now in shadow
of the banks, made all haste while light was faint and mist
hung about to reach the town, finally pushing through the
boats and gaining a safe hiding-place without hostile notice
before it was clear daylight.

Covering Heru up and knowing well all our chances of
escape lay in expedition, I went at once, in pursuance of a
plan made during the night, to the good dame at what, for
lack of a better name, must still continue to be called the
fish-shop, and finding her alone, frankly told her the salient
points of my story.  When she learned I had "robbed the
lion of his prey" and taken his new wife singlehanded
from the dreaded Ar-hap her astonishment was unbounded.
Nothing would do but she must look upon the princess, so
back we went to the hiding-place, and when Heru knew
that on this woman depended our lives she stepped ashore,
taking the rugged Martian hand in her dainty fingers and
begging her help so sweetly that my own heart was moved,
and, thrusting hands in pocket, I went aside, leaving those
two to settle it in their own female way.

And when I looked back in five minutes, royal Seth had
her arms round the woman's neck, kissing the homely
cheeks with more than imperial fervour, so I knew all was
well thus far, and stopped expectorating at the little fishes
in the water below and went over to them.  It was time!  We
had hardly spoken together a minute when a couple of
war-canoes filled with men appeared round the nearest
promontory, coming down the swift water with arrow-like
rapidity.

"Quick!" said the fishwife, "or we are all lost.  Into your
canoe and paddle up this creek.  It runs out to the sea
behind the town, and at the bar is my man's fishing-boat
amongst many others.  Lie hidden there till he comes if you
value your lives."  So in we got, and while that good Samaritan
went back to her house we cautiously paddled through a
deserted backwater to where it presently turned through
low sandbanks to the gulf.  There were the boats, and we
hid the canoe and lay down amongst them till, soon after,
a man, easily recognised as the husband of our friend,
came sauntering down from the village.

At first he was sullen, not unreasonably alarmed at the
danger into which his good woman was running him.  But
when he set eyes on Heru he softened immediately.  Prob-
ably that thick-bodied fellow had never seen so much
female loveliness in so small a bulk in all his life, and, being
a man, he surrendered at discretion.

"In with you, then," he growled, "since I must needs risk
my neck for a pair of runaways who better deserve to be
hung than I do.  In with you both into this fishing-cobble of
mine, and I will cover you with nets while I go for a mast
and sail, and mind you lie as still as logs.  The town is already
full of soldiers looking for you, and it will be short shrift for
us all if you are seen."

Well aware of the fact and now in the hands of destiny,
the princess and I lay down as bidden in the prow, and the
man covered us lightly over with one of those fine meshed
seines used by these people to catch the little fish I had
breakfasted on more than once.

Materially I could have enjoyed the half-hour which fol-
lowed, since such rest after exertion was welcome, the sun
warm, the lapping of sea on shingle infinitely soothing, and,
above all, Heru was in my arms!  How sweet and childlike
she was!  I could feel her little heart beating through her
scanty clothing, while every now and then she turned her
gazelle eyes to mine with a trust and admiration infinitely
alluring.  Yes! as far as that went I could have lain there with
that slip of maiden royalty for ever, but the fascination of
the moment was marred by the thought of our danger.
What was to prevent these new friends giving us away?
They knew we had no money to recompense them for the
risk they were running.  They were poor, and a splendid
reward, wealth itself to them, would doubtless be theirs if
they betrayed us even by a look.  Yet somehow I trusted
them as I have trusted the poor before with the happiest
results, and telling myself this and comforting Heru, I lis-
tened and waited.

Minute by minute went by.  It seemed an age since the
fisherman had gone, but presently the sound of voices inter-
rupted the sea's murmur.  Cautiously stealing a glance
through a chink imagine my feelings on perceiving half a
dozen of Ar-hap's soldiers coming down the beach straight
towards us!  Then my heart was bitter within me, and I
tasted of defeat, even with Heru in my arms.  Luckily even
in that moment of agony I kept still, and another peep
showed the men were now wandering about rather aimlessly.
Perhaps after all they did not know of our nearness?  Then
they took to horseplay, as idle soldiers will even in Mars,
pelting each other with bits of wood and dead fish, and
thereon I breathed again.

Nearer they came and nearer, my heart beating fast as
they strolled amongst the boats until they were actually
"larking" round the one next to ours.  A minute or two of this,
and another footstep crunched on the pebbles, a quick,
nervous one, which my instinct told me was that of our
returning friend.

"Hullo old sprat-catcher!  Going for a sail?" called out a
soldier, and I knew that the group were all round our boat,
Heru trembling so violently in my breast that I thought she
would make the vessel shake.

"Yes," said the man gruffly.

"Let's go with him," cried several voices.  "Here, old dried
haddock, will you take us if we help haul your nets for you?"

"No, I won't.  Your ugly faces would frighten all the fish
out of the sea."

"And yours, you old chunk of dried mahogany, is meant
to attract them no doubt."

"Let's tie him to a post and go fishing in his boat
ourselves,"
some one suggested.  Meanwhile two of them began rocking
the cobble violently from side to side.  This was awful, and
every moment I expected the net and the sail which our
friend had thrown down unceremoniously upon us would
roll off.

"Oh, stop that," said the Martian, who was no doubt
quite as well aware of the danger as we were.  "The tide's
full, the shoals are in the bay--stop your nonsense, and
help me launch like good fellows."

"Well, take two of us, then.  We will sit on this heap of
nets as quiet as mice, and stand you a drink when we get
back."

"No, not one of you," quoth the plucky fellow, "and here's
my staff in my hand, and if you don't leave my gear alone
I will crack some of your ugly heads."

"That's a pity," I thought to myself, "for if they take to
fighting it will be six to one--long odds against our
chances."  There was indeed a scuffle, and then a yell of
pain, as though a soldier had been hit across the knuckles;
but in a minute the best disposed called out, "Oh, cease
your fun, boys, and let the fellow get off if he wants to.
You know the fleet will be down directly, and Ar-hap has
promised something worth having to the man who can find
that lost bit of crackling of his.  It's my opinion she's in the
town, and I for one would rather look for her than go
haddock fishing any day."

"Right you are, mates," said our friend with visible relief.
"And, what's more, if you help me launch this boat and
then go to my missus and tell her what you've done, she'll
understand, and give you the biggest pumpkinful of beer
in the place.  Ah, she will understand, and bless your soft
hearts and heads while you drink it--she's a cute one is
my missus."

"And aren't you afraid to leave her with us?"

"Not I, my daisy, unless it were that a sight of your
pretty face might give her hysterics.  Now lend a hand,
your accursed chatter has already cost me half an hour
of the best fishing time."

"In with you, old buck!" shouted the soldiers; I felt the
fisherman step in, as a matter of fact he stepped in on to
my toes; a dozen hands were on the gunwales: six soldier
yells resounded, it seemed, in my very ears: there was the
grit and rush of pebbles under the keel: a sudden lurch
up of the bows, which brought the fairy lady's honey-
scented lips to mine, and then the gentle lapping of deep blue
waters underneath us!

There is little more to be said of that voyage.  We
pulled until out of sight of the town, then hoisted sail, and,
with a fair wind, held upon one tack until we made an island
where there was a small colony of Hither folk.

Here our friend turned back.  I gave him another gold
button from my coat, and the princess a kiss upon either
cheek, which he seemed to like even more than the button.
It was small payment, but the best we had.  Doubtless he got
safely home, and I can but hope that Providence somehow or
other paid him and his wife for a good deed bravely done.

Those islanders in turn lent us another boat, with a guide,
who had business in the Hither capital, and on the evening
of the second day, the direct route being very short in com-
parison, we were under the crumbling marble walls of Seth.




CHAPTER XX

It was like turning into a hothouse from a keen winter
walk, our arrival at the beautiful but nerveless city after
my life amongst the woodmen.

As for the people, they were delighted to have their
princess back, but with the delight of children, fawning
about her, singing, clapping hands, yet asking no questions
as to where she had been, showing no appreciation of our
adventures--a serious offence in my eyes--and, perhaps most
important of all, no understanding of what I may call the
political bearings of Heru's restoration, and how far their
arch enemies beyond the sea might be inclined to attempt
her recovery.

They were just delighted to have the princess back, and
that was the end of it.  Theirs was the joy of a vast nursery
let loose.  Flower processions were organised, garlands woven
by the mile, a general order issued that the nation might
stay up for an hour after bedtime, and in the vortex of
that gentle rejoicing Heru was taken from me, and I saw
her no more, till there happened the wildest scene of all
you have shared with me so patiently.

Overlooked, unthanked, I turned sulky, and when this
mood, one I can never maintain for long, wore off, I threw
myself into the dissipation about me with angry zeal.  I am
frankly ashamed of the confession, but I was "a sailor
ashore," and can only claim the indulgences proper to the
situation.  I laughed, danced, drank, through the night; I
drank deep of a dozen rosy ways to forgetfulness, till my
mind was a great confusion, full of flitting pictures of love-
liness, till life itself was an illusive pantomime, and my will
but thistle-down on the folly of the moment.  I drank with
those gentle roisterers all through their starlit night, and if
we stopped when morning came it was more from weariness
than virtue.  Then the yellow-robed slaves gave us the wine
of recovery--alas! my faithful An was not amongst them--
and all through the day we lay about in sodden happiness.

Towards nightfall I was myself again, not unfortunately
with the headache well earned, but sufficiently remorseful
to be in a vein to make good resolutions for the future.

In this mood I mingled with a happy crowd, all purpose-
less and cheerful as usual, but before long began to feel
the influence of one of those drifts, a universal turning in one
direction, as seaweed turns when the tide changes, so char-
acteristic of Martian society.  It was dusk, a lovely soft
velvet dusk, but not dark yet, and I said to a yellow-robed
fairy at my side:

"Whither away, comrade?  It is not eight bells yet.  Surely
we are not going to be put to bed so early as this?"

"No," said that smiling individual, "it is the princess.
We are going to listen to Princess Heru in the palace
square.  She reads the globe on the terrace again tonight,
to see if omens are propitious for her marriage.  She MUST
marry, and you know the ceremony has been unavoidably
postponed so far."

"Unavoidably postponed?"  Yes, Heaven wotted I was
aware of the fact.  And was Heru going to marry black
Hath in such a hurry?  And after all I had done for her?
It was scarcely decent, and I tried to rouse myself to rage
over it, but somehow the seductive Martian contentment with
any fate was getting into my veins.  I was not yet altogether
sunk in their slothful acceptance of the inevitable, but there
was not the slightest doubt the hot red blood in me was turn-
ing to vapid stuff such as did duty for the article in their
veins.  I mustered up a half-hearted frown at this unwelcome
intelligence, turning with it on my face towards the slave
girl; but she had slipped away into the throng, so the
frown evaporated, and shrugging my shoulders I said to
myself, "What does it matter?  There are twenty others
will do as well for me.  If not one, why then obviously an-
other, 'tis the only rational way to think, and at all events
there is the magic globe.  That may tell us something."  And
slipping my arm round the waist of the first disengaged
girl--we were not then, mind you, in Atlantic City--I kissed
her dimpling cheek unreproached, and gaily followed in
the drift of humanity, trending with a low hum of pleasure
towards the great white terraces under the palace porch.

How well I knew them!  It was just such an evening Heru
had consulted Fate in the same place once before; how much
had happened since then!  But there was little time or in-
clination to think of those things now.  The whole phantom
city's population had drifted to one common centre.  The
crumbling seaward ramparts were all deserted; no soldier
watch was kept to note if angry woodmen came from over
seas; a soft wind blew in from off the brine, but told no tales;
the streets were empty, and, when as we waited far away
in the southern sky the earth planet presently got up, by its
light Heru, herself again, came tripping down the steps to
read her fate.

They had placed another magic globe under a shroud on
a tripod for her.  It stood within the charmed circle upon
the terrace, and I was close by, although the princess
did not see me.

Again that weird, fantastic dance commenced, the princess
working herself up from the drowsiest undulations to a hur-
ricane of emotion.  Then she stopped close by the orb, and
seized the corner of the web covering it.  We saw the globe
begin to beam with veiled magnificence at her touch.

Not an eye wavered, not a thought wandered from her
in all that silent multitude.  It was a moment of the keenest
suspense, and just when it was at its height there came a
strange sound of hurrying feet behind the outermost
crowd, a murmur such as a great pack of wolves might
make rushing through snow, while a soft long wail went up
from the darkness.

Whether Heru understood it or not I cannot say, but
she hesitated a moment, then swept the cloth from the orb
of her fate.

And as its ghostly, self-emitting light beamed up in the
darkness with weird brilliancy, there by it, in gold and furs
and war panoply, huge, fierce, and lowering, stood--AR-HAP
HIMSELF!

Ay, and behind him, towering over the crouching Mar-
tians, blocking every outlet and street, were scores and
hundreds of his men.  Never was surprise so utter, ambush
more complete.  Even I was transfixed with astonishment,
staring with open-mouthed horror at the splendid figure of the
barbarian king as he stood aglitter in the ruddy light,
scowling defiance at the throng around him.  So silently had
he come on his errand of vengeance it was difficult to be-
lieve he was a reality, and not some clever piece of stageplay,
some vision conjured up by Martian necromancy.

But he was good reality.  In a minute comedy turned to
tragedy.  Ar-hap gave a sign with his hand, whereon all his
men set up a terrible warcry, the like of which Seth had not
heard for very long, and as far as I could make out in the
half light began hacking and hewing my luckless friends with
all their might.  Meanwhile the king made at Heru, feeling sure
of her this time, and doubtless intending to make her taste
his vengeance to the dregs; and seeing her handled like
that, and hearing her plaintive cries, wrath took the place
of stupid surprise in me.  I was on my feet in a second,
across the intervening space, and with all my force gave
the king a blow upon the jaw which sent even him staggering
backwards.  Before I could close again, so swift was the
sequence of events in those flying minutes, a wild mob of
people, victims and executioners in one disordered throng,
was between us.  How the king fared I know not, nor
stopped to ask, but half dragging, half carrying Heru through
the shrieking mob, got her up the palace steps and in at
the great doors, which a couple of yellow-clad slaves, more
frightened of the barbarians than thoughtful of the crowd
without, promptly clapped to, and shot the bolts.  Thus we
were safe for a moment, and putting the princess on a
couch, I ran up a short flight of stairs and looked out of a
front window to see if there were a chance of succouring those
in the palace square.  But it was all hopeless chaos with
the town already beginning to burn and not a show of fight
anywhere which I could join.

I glared out on that infernal tumult for a moment
or two in an agony of impotent rage, then turned towards
the harbour and saw in the shine of the burning town below
the ancient battlements and towers of Seth begin to gleam out,
like a splendid frost work of living metal clear-cut against
the smooth, black night behind, and never a show of resistance
there either.  Ay, and by this time Ar-hap's men were battering
in our gates with a big beam, and somehow, I do not
know how it happened, the palace itself away on the right,
where the dry-as-dust library lay, was also beginning to burn.

It was hopeless outside, and nothing to be done but to save
Heru, so down I went, and, with the slaves, carried her
away from the hall through a vestibule or two, and into
an anteroom, where some yellow-girt individuals were al-
ready engaged in the suggestive work of tying up pal-
ace plate in bundles, amongst other things, alas! the great
gold love-bowl from which--oh! so long ago--I had drawn
Heru's marriage billet.  These individuals told me in tremulous
accents they had got a boat on a secret waterway behind
the palace whence flight to the main river and so, far away
inland, to another smaller but more peaceful city of their
race would be quite practical; and joyfully hearing this news,
I handed over to them the princess while I went to look
for Hath.

And the search was not long.  Dashing into the banquet-hall,
still littered with the remains of a feast, and looking down
its deserted vistas, there at the farther end, on his throne,
clad in the sombre garments he affected, chin on hand,
sedate in royal melancholy, listening unmoved to the sack of
his town outside, sat the prince himself.  Strange, gloomy man,
the great dead intelligence of his race shining in his face as
weird and out of place as a lonely sea beacon fading to
nothing before the glow of sunrise, never had he appeared so
mysterious as at that moment.  Even in the heat of excitement
I stared at him in amazement, wishing in a hasty thought
the confusion of the past few weeks had given me opportun-
ity to penetrate the recesses of his mind, and therefrom retell
you things better worth listening to than all the incident of
my adventures.  But now there was no time to think, scarce
time to act.

"Hath!" I cried, rushing over to him, "wake up, your
majesty.  The Thither men are outside, killing and burning!"

"I know it."

"And the palace is on fire.  You can smell the reek even
here."

"Yes."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Nothing."

"My word, that is a fine proposition for a prince!  If you
care nothing for town or palace perhaps you will bestir
yourself for Princess Heru."

A faint glimmer of interest rose upon the alabaster calm
of his face at that name, but it faded instantly, and he
said quietly,

"The slaves will save her.  She will live.  I looked into the
book of her fate yesterday.  She will escape, and forget,
and sit at another marriage feast, and be a mother, and give
the people yet one more prince to keep the faint glimmer
of our ancestry alive.  I am content."

"But, d--- it, man, I am not!  I take a deal more in-
terest in the young lady than you seem to, and have scoured
half this precious planet of yours on her account, and will
be hanged if I sit idly twiddling my thumbs while her
pretty skin is in danger."  But Hath was lost in contempla-
tion of his shoe-strings.

"Come, sir," I said, shaking his majesty by the shoulder,
"don't be down on your luck.  There has been some rivalry
between us, but never mind about that just now.  The prin-
cess wants you.  I am going to save both her and you, you
must come with her."

"No."

"But you SHALL come."

"No!"

By this time the palace was blazing like a bonfire and
the uproar outside was terrible.  What was I to do?  As I
hesitated the arras at the further end of the hall was swept
aside, a disordered mob of slaves bearing bundles and drag-
ging Heru with them rushing down to the door near us.
As Heru was carried swiftly by she stretched her milk-white
arms towards the prince and turned her face, lovely as a
convolvulus flower even in its pallor, upon him.

It was a heart-moving appeal from a woman with the
heart of a child, and Hath rose to his feet while for a mo-
ment there shone a look of responsible manhood in his eyes.
But it faded quickly; he bowed slowly as though he had
received an address of condolence on the condition of his
empire, and the next moment the frightened slaves, stumbling
under their burdens, had swept poor Heru through the
doorway.

I glanced savagely round at the curling smoke overhead,
the red tendrils of fire climbing up a distant wall, and
there on a table by us was a half-finished flask of the lovely
tinted wine of forgetfulness.  If Hath would not come sober
perhaps he might come drunk.

"Here," I cried, "drink to tomorrow, your majesty, a sov-
ereign toast in all ages, and better luck next time with these
hairy gentlemen battering at your majesty's doors," and
splashing out a goblet full of the stuff I handed it to him.

He took it and looked rather lovingly into the limpid
pool, then deliberately poured it on the step in front of
him, and throwing the cup away said pleasantly,

"Not tonight, good comrade; tonight I drink a deeper
draught of oblivion than that,--and here come my cup-
bearers."

Even while he spoke the palace gates had given way;
there was a horrible medley of shrieks and cries, a quick
sound of running feet; then again the arras lifted and in
poured a horde of Ar-hap's men-at-arms.  The moment they
caught sight of us about a dozen of them, armed with
bows, drew the thick hide strings to their ears and down the
hall came a ravening flight of shafts.  One went through
my cap, two stuck quivering in the throne, and one, winged
with owl feather, caught black Hath full in the bosom.

He had stood out boldly at the first coming of that onset,
arms crossed on breast, chin up, and looking more of a
gentleman than I had ever seen him look before; and
now, stricken, he smiled gravely, then without flinching,
and still eyeing his enemies with gentle calm, his knees un-
locked, his frame trembled, then down he went headlong,
his red blood running forth in rivulets amongst the wine
of oblivion he had just poured out.

There was no time for sentiment.  I shrugged my shoulders,
and turning on my heels, with the woodmen close after
me, sprang through the near doorway.  Where was Heru?  I
flew down the corridor by which it seemed she had re-
treated, and then, hesitating a moment where it divided in
two, took the left one.  This to my chagrin presently began
to trend upwards, whereas I knew Heru was making for
the river down below.

But it was impossible to go back, and whenever I stopped
in those deserted passages I could hear the wolflike patter of
men's feet upon my trail.  On again into the stony laby-
rinths of the old palace, ever upwards, in spite of my desire
to go down, until at last, the pursuers off the track for a
moment, I came to a north window in the palace wall,
and, hot and breathless, stayed to look out.

All was peace here; the sky a lovely lavender, a promise
of coming morning in it, and a gold-spangled curtain of
stars out yonder on the horizon.  Not a soul moved.  Below
appeared a sheer drop of a hundred feet into a moat wind-
ing through thickets of heavy-scented convolvulus flowers to
the waterways beyond.  And as I looked a skiff with half
a dozen rowers came swiftly out of the darkness of the wall
and passed like a shadow amongst the thickets.  In the
prow was all Hath's wedding plate, and in the stern, a faint
vision of unconscious loveliness, lay Heru!

Before I could lift a finger or call out, even if I had had
a mind to do so, the shadow had gone round a bend, and
a shout within the palace told me I was sighted again.

On once more, hotly pursued, until the last corridor ended
in two doors leading into a half-lit gallery with open win-
dows at the further end.  There was a wilderness of lumber
down the sides of the great garret, and now I come to think
of it more calmly I imagine it was Hath's Lost Property Office,
the vast receptacle where his slaves deposited everything
lazy Martians forgot or left about in their daily life.  At that
moment it only represented a last refuge, and into it I dashed,
swung the doors to and fastened them just as the foremost
of Ar-hap's men hurled themselves upon the barrier from
outside.

There I was like a rat in a trap, and like a rat I made up
my mind to fight savagely to the end, without for a mo-
ment deceiving myself as to what that end must be.  Even
up there the horrible roar of destruction was plainly audible
as the barbarians sacked and burned the ancient town,
and I was glad from the bottom of my heart my poor little
princess was safely out of it.  Nor did I bear her or hers the
least resentment for making off while there was yet time
and leaving me to my fate--anything else would have been
contrary to Martian nature.  Doubtless she would get away,
as Hath had said, and elsewhere drop a few pearly tears
and then over her sugar-candy and lotus-eating forget with
happy completeness--most blessed gift!  And meanwhile
the foresaid barbarians were battering on my doors, while over
their heads choking smoke was pouring in in ever-increas-
ing volumes.

In burst the first panel, then another, and I could see
through the gaps a medley of tossing weapons and wild
faces without.  Short shrift for me if they came through, so
in the obstinacy of desperation I set to work to pile old
furniture and dry goods against the barricade.  And as they
yelled and hammered outside I screamed back defiance
from within, sweating, tugging, and hauling with the
strength of ten men, piling up the old Martian lumber against
the opening till, so fierce was the attack outside, little was
left of the original doorway and nothing between me and
the beseigers but a rampart of broken woodwork half seen in
a smother of smoke and flames.

Still they came on, thrusting spears and javelins through
every crevice and my strength began to go.  I threw two
tables into a gap, and brained a besieger with a sweet-
meat-seller's block and smothered another, and overturned a
great chest against my barricade; but what was the purpose
of it all?  They were fifty to one and my rampart quaked
before them.  The smoke was stifling, and the pains of dis-
solution in my heart.  They burst in and clambered up the
rampart like black ants.  I looked round for still one more
thing to hurl into the breach.  My eyes lit on a roll of carpet:
I seized it by one corner meaning to drag it to the door-
way, and it came undone at a touch.

That strange, that incredible pattern!  Where in all the
vicissitudes of a chequered career had I seen such a one
before?  I stared at it in amazement under the very spears of
the woodmen in the red glare of Hath's burning palace.  Then all
on a sudden it burst upon me that IT WAS THE ACCURSED RUG,
the very one which in response to a careless wish had swept
me out of my own dear world, and forced me to take as wild
a journey into space as ever fell to a man's lot since the
universe was made!

And in another second it occurred to me that if it had
brought me hither it might take me hence.  It was but a
chance, yet worth trying when all other chances were against
me.  As Ar-hap's men came shouting over the barricade I threw
myself down upon that incredible carpet and cried from
the bottom of my heart,

"I wish--I wish I were in New York!"

Yes!

A moment of thrilling suspense and then the corners lifted
as though a strong breeze were playing upon them.  An-
other moment and they had curled over like an incoming
surge.  One swift glance I got at the smoke and flames, the
glittering spears and angry faces, and then fold upon fold, a
stifling, all-enveloping embrace, a lift, a sense of super-
human speed--and then forgetfulness.

When I came to, as reporters say, I was aware the rug
had ejected me on solid ground and disappeared, forever.
Where was I!  It was cool, damp, and muddy.  There were
some iron railings close at hand and a street lamp overhead.
These things showed clearly to me, sitting on a doorstep
under that light, head in hand, amazed and giddy--so
amazed that when slowly the recognition came of the in-
credible fact my wish was gratified and I was home again,
the stupendous incident scarcely appealed to my tingling sen-
ses more than one of the many others I had lately undergone.

Very slowly I rose to my feet, and as like a discreditable
reveller as could be, climbed the steps.  The front door was
open, and entering the oh, so familiar hall a sound of voices
in my sitting-room on the right caught my ear.

"Oh no, Mrs. Brown," said one, which I recognised at
once as my Polly's, "he is dead for certain, and my heart
is breaking.  He would never, never have left me so long
without writing if he had been alive," and then came a great
sound of sobbing.

"Bless your kind heart, miss," said the voice of my land-
lady in reply, "but you don't know as much about young
gentlemen as I do.  It is not likely, if he has gone off on the
razzle-dazzle, as I am sure he has, he is going to write every
post and tell you about it.  Now you go off to your ma
at the hotel like a dear, and forget all about him till he
comes back--that's MY advice."

"I cannot, I cannot, Mrs. Brown.  I cannot rest by day
or sleep by night for thinking of him; for wondering why
he went away so suddenly, and for hungering for news
of him.  Oh, I am miserable.  Gully!  Gully!  Come to me," and
then there were sounds of troubled footsteps pacing to and
fro and of a woman's grief.

That was more than I could stand.  I flung the door open,
and, dirty, dishevelled, with unsteady steps, advanced
into the room.

"Ahem!" coughed Mrs. Brown, "just as I expected!"

But I had no eyes for her.  "Polly!  Polly!" I cried, and
that dear girl, after a startled scream and a glance to make
sure it was indeed the recovered prodigal, rushed over
and threw all her weight of dear, warm, comfortable woman-
hood into my arms, and the moment after burst into a pas-
sion of happy tears down my collar.

"Humph!" quoth the landlady, "that is not what BROWN
gets when he forgets his self.  No, not by any means."

But she was a good old soul at heart, and, seeing how
matters stood, with a parting glance of scorn in my direction
and a toss of her head, went out of the room, and closed
the door behind her.

Need I tell in detail what followed?  Polly behaved like
an angel, and when in answer to her gentle reproaches I
told her the outlines of my marvellous story she almost be-
lieved me!  Over there on the writing-desk lay a whole row
of the unopened letters she had showered upon me during
my absence, and amongst them an official one.  We went
and opened it together, and it was an intimation of my
promotion, a much better "step" than I had ever dared to
hope for.

Holding that missive in my hand a thought suddenly oc-
curred to me.

"Polly dear, this letter makes me able to maintain you as
you ought to be maintained, and there is still a fortnight
of vacation for me.  Polly, will you marry me tomorrow?"

"No, certainly not, sir."

"Then will you marry me on Monday?"

"Do you truly, truly want me to?"

"Truly, truly."

"Then, yes," and the dear girl again came blushing into
my arms.

While we were thus the door opened, and in came her
parents who were staying at a neighbouring hotel while in-
quiries were made as to my mysterious absence.  Not un-
naturally my appearance went a long way to confirm suspi-
cions such as Mrs. Brown had confessed to, and, after
they had given me cold salutations, Polly's mother, fixing
gold glasses on the bridge of her nose and eyeing me
haughtily therefrom, observed,

"And now that you ARE safely at home again, Lieuten-
ant Gulliver Jones, I think I will take my daughter away
with me.  Tomorrow her father will ascertain the true state
of her feelings after this unpleasant experience, and sub-
sequently he will no doubt communicate with you on the
subject."  This very icily.

But I was too happy to be lightly put down.

"My dear madam," I replied, "I am happy to be able to
save her father that trouble.  I have already communicated
with this young lady as to the state of her feelings, and as
an outcome I am delighted to be able to tell you we are
to be married on Monday."

"Oh yes, Mother, it is true, and if you do not want to
make me the most miserable of girls again you will not be
unkind to us."

In brief, that sweet champion spoke so prettily and
smoothed things so cleverly that I was "forgiven," and later
on in the evening allowed to escort Polly back to her hotel.

"And oh!" she said, in her charmingly enthusiastic way
when we were saying goodnight, "you shall write a book about
that extraordinary story you told me just now.  Only you must
promise me one thing."

"What is it?"

"To leave out all about Heru--I don't like that part at all."
This with the prettiest little pout.

"But, Polly dear, see how important she was to the nar-
rative.  I cannot quite do that."

"Then you will say as little as you can about her?"

"No more than the story compels me to."

"And you are quite sure you like me much the best, and
will not go after her again?"

"Quite sure."

The compact was sealed in the most approved fashion;
and here, indulgent reader, is the artless narrative that re-
sulted--an incident so incredible in this prosaic latter-day
world that I dare not ask you to believe, and must humbly
content myself with hoping that if I fail to convince yet I
may at least claim the consolation of having amused you.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Gulliver of Mars by Edwin Arnold