I steered our skiff a space out from the bank to get a better view,
while An clapped her hands together and laughed. "It is Hath--he
himself and those of the palace with him. Steer a little nearer still,
friend--so! between yon floating rubbish flats, for those with Hath are
good to look at."

Nothing loth I made out into mid-stream to see that strange prince go by,
little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him,
a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage
of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck,
whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at
the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make
me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was
sitting in the centre of the barge under a canopy and on a throne which
was a mass of flowers, not bunched together as they would have been
with us, but so cunningly arranged that they rose from the footstool
to the pinnacle in a rhythm of colour, a poem in bud and petals the
like of which for harmonious beauty I could not have imagined possible.
And in this fairy den was a thin, gaunt young man, dressed in some sort of
black stuff so nondescript that it amounted to little more than a shadow.
I took it for granted that a substance of bone and muscle was covered by
that gloomy suit, but it was the face above that alone riveted my gaze
and made me return the stare he gave me as we came up with redoubled
interest. It was not an unhandsome face, but ashy grey in colour and
amongst the insipid countenances of the Martians about him marvellously
thoughtful. I do not know whether those who had killed themselves by
learning ever leave ghosts behind, but if so this was the very ideal for
such a one. At his feet I noticed, when I unhooked my eyes from his at
last, sat a girl in a loose coral pink gown who was his very antipode.
Princess Heru, for so she was called, was resting one arm upon his knee