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 intently 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 towards 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