"Why, what should he do but take the next along the bank, and the master
of that the next again--how else could it be?" said the Martian, and
shrugging my shoulders, for I was in no great mood to argue, we went
down to the waterway, through a thicket of budding trees underlaid with
a carpet of small red flowers filling the air with a scent of honey, and
soon found a diminutive craft pulled up on the bank. There were some
dainty cloaks and wraps in it which An took out and laid under a tree.
But first he felt in the pouch of one for a sweetmeat which his fine
nostrils, acute as a squirrel's, told him was there, and taking the lump
out bit a piece from it, afterwards replacing it in the owner's pocket
with the frankest simplicity.

Then we pushed off, hoisted the slender mast, set the smallest lug-sail
that ever a sailor smiled at, and, myself at the helm, and that golden
youth amidships, away we drifted under thickets of drooping canes
tasselled with yellow catkin-flowers, up the blue alley of the water into
the broader open river beyond with its rapid flow and crowding boats,
the white city front now towering clear before us.

The air was full of sunshine and merry voices; birds were singing,
trees were budding; only my heart was heavy, my mind confused. Yet why
should I be sad, I said to myself presently? Life beat in my pulses;
what had I to fear? This world I had tumbled into was new and strange,
no doubt, but tomorrow it would be old and familiar; it discredited my
manhood to sit brow-bent like that, so with an effort I roused myself.

"Old chap!" I said to my companion, as he sat astride of a thwart
slowly chewing something sticky and eyeing me out of the corner of
his eyes with vapid wonder, "tell me something of this land of yours,