water suddenly disappeared in a cloud of frosty spray, and it was from
thence came the low, ominous rumble which had sounded up the ravine as
we approached. It was the fall, and beyond the stream dropped down
glassy step after step, in wild pools and rapids, through which no boat
could live for a moment, to a black cavern entrance, where it was
swallowed up in eternal night.

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

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

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

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

They crowded round me in a c