Nor did I have long to wait; for scarce had I turned ere I shot
with the rapidity of thought into the awful void before me. There
was the same instant of unthinkable cold and utter darkness that I
had experienced twenty years before, and then I opened my eyes in
another world, beneath the burning rays of a hot sun, which beat
through a tiny opening in the dome of the mighty forest in which
I lay.

The scene that met my eyes was so un-Martian that my heart sprang
to my throat as the sudden fear swept through me that I had been
aimlessly tossed upon some strange planet by a cruel fate.

Why not? What guide had I through the trackless waste of
interplanetary space? What assurance that I might not as well be
hurtled to some far-distant star of another solar system, as to
Mars?

I lay upon a close-cropped sward of red grasslike vegetation, and
about me stretched a grove of strange and beautiful trees, covered
with huge and gorgeous blossoms and filled with brilliant, voiceless
birds. I call them birds since they were winged, but mortal eye
ne'er rested on such odd, unearthly shapes.

The vegetation was similar to that which covers the lawns of the
red Martians of the great waterways, but the trees and birds were
unlike anything that I had ever seen upon Mars, and then through
the further trees I could see that most un-Martian of all sights--an
open sea, its blue waters shimmering beneath the brazen sun.