The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin L. Arnold

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Title: Gulliver of Mars

Author: Edwin L. Arnold

Posting Date: August 16, 2008 [EBook #604]
Release Date: July, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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 grilled steak and
tomatoes--steak crisp and brown on both sides, and tomatoes red as a
setting sun!

Much else though I have forgotten, THAT fact remains as clear as the
last sight of a well-remembered shore in the mind of some wave-tossed
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