The Martian told me of a merchant boat with ten rowers which wasgoing up to the capital in a couple of hours, and as the skipper was a friendof his they would no doubt take me as supercargo, thereby saving thenecessity of passenger fees, which was obviously a consideration with me.
It was not altogether a romantic approach to the dungeon of an imprisonedbeauty, but it was practical, which is often better if not so pleasant. Sothe offer was gladly closed with, and curling myself in a rug of foxskins,for I was tired with much walking, sailors never being good foot- gangers,I slept soundly fill they came to tell me it was time to go on board.
The vessel was more like a canal barge than anything else, lean andlong, with the cargo piled in a ridge down the centre as farmers store theirwinter turnips, the rowers sitting on either side of this plying oars likedessert-spoons with long handles, while they chanted a monotonouscadence of monosyllables:
Oh, ho, oh,Oh, ho, oh,How high, how high.
and then again after a pause-How high, how highOh, ho, oh,Oh, ho, oh.
the which was infinitely sleep-provoking if not a refrain of a highintellectual order.
I shut my eyes as we pulled away from the wharfs of that namelessemporium and picked a passage through a crowd of quaint shipping,wondering where I was, and asking myself whether I was mentally risingequal to my extraordinary surroundings, whether I adequately appreciated the immensity of my remove from those other seas on which I hadlast travelled, tiller-ropes in hand, piloting a captain's galley from a wharf.
Good heavens, what would my comrades on my ship say if they could seeme now steer- ing a load of hairy savages up one of those waterwayswhich our biggest telescopes magnify but to the thickness of an indication?
No, I was not rising equal to the oc- casion, and could not. The humanmind is of but limited capacity after all, and such freaks of fortune arebeyond its conception. I knew I was where I was, but I knew I shouldprobably never get the chance of telling of it, and that no one would everbelieve me if I did, and I re- signed myself to the inevitable with sullenacquiescence, smothering the wonder that might have been overwhelmingin passing interests of the moment.
There is little to record of that voyage. We passed through a fleet ofAr-hap's warships, empty and at anchor in double line, serviceable half-decked cutters, built of solid timber, not pumpkin rind it was pleasant tonotice, and then the town dropped away as we proceeded up a streamabout as broad as the Hudson at its widest, and profusely studded withislands. This water was bitterly salt and joined an- other sea on the otherside of the Martian continent. Yet it had a pronounced flow against useastward, this tide running for three spring months and being followed, Ilearned, as ocean temperatures varied, by a flow in the opposite directionthroughout the summer.
Just at present the current was so strong eastwards, the moisturebeaded upon my rowers' tawny hides as they strug- gled against it, andtheir melancholy song dawdled in "linked sweetness long drawn out,"while the swing of their oars grew longer and longer. Truly it was veryhot, 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 adescription of all the strange things we passed upon that highway.
Suffice it to say we spent a scorching afternoon, the greater part of astifling night moored under a mud-bank with a grove of trees on top fromwhich gigantic fire-flies hung as though the place were illuminated for agarden fete, and then, rowing on again in the comparatively cool hoursbefore dawn, turned into a backwater at cock-crow.
The skipper of our cargo boat roused me just as we turned, puttingunder my sleepy nostrils a handful of toasted beans on a leaf, and a smallcup full of something that was not coffee, but smelt as good as thatmatutinal beverage always does to the tired traveller.
Over our prow was an immense arch of foliage, and under- neath a long arcade of cool black shadows, sheltering still water, till water andshadow suddenly ended a quarter of a mile down in a patch of brilliantcolour. It was as peaceful as could be in the first morning light, and tome over all there was the inexpressible attraction of the unknown.
As our boat slipped silently forward up this leafy lane, a thin white"feather" in her mouth alone breaking the steely surface of the stream, themen rested from their work and began, as sailors will, to put on theirshore-going clothes, the while they chatted in low tones over the profits ofthe voyage. Overhead flying squirrels were flitting to and fro like bats,or shelling fruit whereof the husks fell with a pleasant splash about us, andon one bank a couple of early mothers were washing their babies, whosesmothered protests were almost the only sound in this morning world.
Another silent dip or two of the oars and the colour ahead crystallisedinto a town. If I said it was like an African village on a large scale, Ishould probably give you the best description in the fewest words. Fromthe very water's edge up to the crown of a low hill inland, extended a massof huts and wooden buildings, embowered and partly hidden in brightgreen foliage, with here and there patches of millet, or some such foodplant, and the flowers that grow everywhere so abundantly in this country.
It was all Arcadian and peaceful enough at the moment, and as we drewnear the men were just coming out to the quays along the har- bour front,the streets filling and the town waking to busy life.
A turn to the left through a watergate defended by towers of wood andmud, and we were in the city harbour itself; boats of many kinds mooredon every side; quaint craft from the gulfs and bays of Nowhere, full ofunheard-of merch- andise, and manned by strange-faced crews, everyvessel a romance of nameless seas, an epitome of an undiscovered world,and every moment the scene grew busier as the breakfast smoke arose, andwharf and gangway set to work upon the day's labours.
Our boat--loaded, as it turned out, with spoil from Seth-- was run to aplace of honour at the bottom of the town square, and was an object ofmuch curiosity to a small crowd which speedily collected and lent a handwith the mooring ropes, the while chatting excitedly with the crew aboutfurther tribute and the latest news from overseas. At the same time a swarthy barbarian, whose trappings showed him to be some sort offunctionary, came down to our "captain," much wagging of heads andcounting of notched sticks taking place between them.
I, indeed, was apparently the least interesting item of the cargo, andthis was embarrassing. No hero likes to be ne- glected, it is fatal to hispart. I had said my prayers and steeled myself to all sorts of fineendurance on the way up, and here, when it came to the crisis, no one wasanxious to play the necessary villain. They just helped me ashore civillyenough, the captain nodded his head at me, mutter- ing something in anindifferent tone to the functionary about a ghost who had wanderedoverseas and begged a passage up the canal; the group about the quaystared a little, but that was all.
Once I remember seeing a squatting, life-size heathen idol hoistedfrom a vessel's hold and deposited on a sugar-box on a New York quay.
Some ribald passer-by put a battered felt hat upon Vishnu's sacred curls,and there the poor image sat, an alien in an indifferent land, a sack acrossits shoulders, a "billycock" upon its head, and honoured at most with apassing stare. I thought of that lonely image as al- most as lonely I stoodon the Thither men's quay, without the support of friends or heroics,wondering what to do next.
However, a cheerful disposition is sometimes better than a bankingaccount, and not having the one I cultivated the other, sunning myselfamongst the bales for a time, and then, since none seemed interested in me,wandered off into the town, partly to satisfy my curiosity, and partly in thevague hope of ascertaining if my princess was really here, and, if possible,getting sight of her.
Meanwhile it turned hot with a supernatural, heavy sort of heataltogether, I overheard passersby exclaiming, out of the common, and afterwandering for an hour through gardens and endless streets of thatched huts,I was glad enough to throw myself down in the shadow of some trees onthe outskirts of the great central pile of buildings, a whole village in itselfof beam-built towers and dwelling- place, suggesting by its superior sizethat it might actually be Ar-hap's palace.
Hotter and hotter it grew, while a curious secondary sunrise in the west, the like of which I never saw before seemed to add to the heat, and heavierand heavier my eye- lids, till I dozed at last, and finally sleptuncomfortably for a time.
Rousing up suddenly, imagine my s............