Gulliver of Mars
by Edwin L. Arnold


Original Title: Lieut. Gulliver Jones



CHAPTER I


Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain, prosaic lieutenant in the
republican service have done the incredible things here set out for the
love of a woman--for a chimera in female shape; for a pale, vapid ghost
of woman-loveliness? At times I tell myself I dare not: that you will
laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator; and then again I pick up my
pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write it--the pallid
splendour of that thing I loved, and won, and lost is ever before me,
and will not be forgotten. The tumult of the struggle into which that
vision led me still throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the
planet I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction which
followed me back from the quest drowns all other sounds in my ears!
I must and will write--it relieves me; read and believe as you list.

At the moment this story commences I was thinking of grilled steak and
tomatoes--steak crisp and brown on both sides, and tomatoes red as a
setting sun!

Much else though I have forgotten, THAT fact remains as clear as the
last sight of a well-remembered shore in the mind of some wave-tossed