black northward river! Not the strong, black
river, above all things, stranger! For that is the River of the Dead,
by which many go but none come back. Goodbye!" And waving them adieu,
I sternly turned my eyes from delights behind and faced the fascination
of perils in front.

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

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

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

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

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