"Oh, I happened to fall near this ship, fortunately, and they picked me
up, and then, at my request, they set out to search for you and Mona."

"Well," said I, "you found me, and I am very thankful for it, but Mona I
fear you will never see."

"What was the last you saw of her?" he asked.

I had great difficulty in keeping myself from laughing in the doctor's
face at his odd fancy, but the thought came to me with some force that I
must not let his mental condition become known to the men of Mars around
us; and so, instead of replying to his question, I turned to Thorwald and
asked him if he could tell us how the moon had landed us so easily on
their planet.

In answer he gave it as his opinion that as the moon came rushing toward
them so swiftly it compressed the air in its path to such a degree that it
acted as a cushion, preventing a collision and sending the moon bounding
back over the path by which it had come. Probably at the moment when it
was nearest the surface, we had fallen off into the ocean. The rebound, he
supposed, was not sufficient to carry it beyond the attraction of the
planet, and so it poised itself and began to make a revolution around Mars
in its old-fashioned way.

Thorwald told us we had taken the best possible time to visit them, for
Mars had not been so near the earth before in a great while.

Our new acquaintances were from nine to ten feet tall and proportionately
large every other way, so that they appeared quite monstrous to us. But
they were agile and even graceful in their movements, while in manner they