w steering a load of hairy savages up one of those
waterways which our biggest telescopes magnify but to the thickness of
an indication? No, I was not rising equal to the occasion, and could
not. The human mind is of but limited capacity after all, and such
freaks of fortune are beyond its conception. I knew I was where I was,
but I knew I should probably never get the chance of telling of it, and
that no one would ever believe me if I did, and I resigned myself to
the inevitable with sullen acquiescence, smothering the wonder that
might have been overwhelming in passing interests of the moment.

There is little to record of that voyage. We passed through a fleet of
Ar-hap's warships, empty and at anchor in double line, serviceable
half-decked cutters, built of solid timber, not pumpkin rind it was
pleasant to notice, and then the town dropped away as we proceeded up a
stream about as broad as the Hudson at its widest, and profusely
studded with islands. This water was bitterly salt and joined another
sea on the other side of the Martian continent. Yet it had a
pronounced flow against us eastward, this tide running for three spring
months and being followed, I learned, as ocean temperatures varied, by
a flow in the opposite direction throughout the summer.

Just at present the current was so strong eastwards, the moisture
beaded upon my rowers' tawny hides as they struggled against it, and
their melancholy song dawdled in "linked sweetness long drawn out,"
while the swing of their oars grew longer and longer. Truly it was
very hot, far hotter than was usual for the season, these men declared,
and possibly this robbed me of my wonted energy, and you, gentle
reader, of a description of all the strange things we passed upon that
highway.

Suffice it to say we spent a scorching afternoon, the greater part of a
stifling night moored under a mud-bank with a grove of trees on top
from which gigantic fire-flies hung as though the place were
illuminated for a garden fete, and then, rowing on again in the
comparatively cool hours before dawn, turned into a backwater at
cock-crow.

The skipper of our cargo boat roused me just as we turned, putting
under my sleepy nostrils a handful of toasted beans on a leaf, and a
small cup full of something that was not coffee, but smelt as good as
that matutinal beverage always does to the tired traveller.

Over our prow was an immense arch of foliage, and underneath a long
arcade o