restitution in the way of breakfast. I took up a morsel of the stuff
in the kettle on a handy stick and found it good--indeed, I knew it at
once as a very dainty mess made from the roots of a herb the Martians
greatly liked; An had piled my platter with it when we supped that night
in the market-place of Seth, and the sweet white stuff had melted into
my corporal essence, it seemed, without any gross intermediate process
of digestion. And here I was again, hungry, sniffing the fragrant breath
of a full meal and not a soul in sight--I should have been a fool not
to have eaten. So thinking, down I sat, taking the pot from its place,
and when it was a little cool plunging my hands into it and feasting
with as good an appetite as ever a man had before.

It was gloriously ambrosial, and deeper and deeper I went, with the
tall stalk of the smoke in front growing from the hearth-stones like
some strange new plant, the pleasant sunshine on my back, and never a
thought for anything but the task in hand. Deeper and deeper, oblivious
of all else, until to get the very last drops I lifted the pipkin up
and putting back my head drank in that fashion.

It was only when with a sigh of pleasure I lowered it slowly again that
over the rim as it sank there dawned upon me the vision of a Martian
standing by an empty canoe on the edge of the water and regarding me
with calm amazement. I was, in fact, so astonished that for a minute
the empty pot stood still before my face, and over its edge we stared
at each other in mute surprise, then with all the dignity that might
be I laid the vessel down between my feet and waited for the newcomer
to speak. She was a girl by her yellow garb, a fisherwoman, it seemed,
for in the prow of her craft was piled a net upon which the scales of
fishes were twinkling--a Martian, obviously, but something more robust
than most of them, a savour of honest work about her sunburnt face which