es they seemed as I turned my eyes upon them;
but he who rides helpless down an evening tide stands out for no great
niceties of landing-place; could I but reach them they would make at
least a drier bed than this of mine, and at that thought, turning over,
I found all my muscles as stiff as iron, the sinews of my neck and
forearms a mass of agonies and no more fit to swim me to those reedy
swamps, which now, as pain and hunger began to tell, seemed to wear the
aspects of paradise.

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

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

It was a poor chance, but better than nothing, and as he turned I tried
to throw a strand of silk I had unwound from the sodden mass over his
branching tines. Quick as thought the beast twisted his head aside and
tossed his antlers so that the try was fruitless. But was I to lose my
only chance of shore? With all my strength I hurled myself upon him,
missing my clutch again by a hair's-breadth and