Immediately after breakfast the next morning my host invited me to the
gate of his garden, where stood one of the carriages I had seen before
in the distance, but never had an opportunity of examining. It rested
on three wheels, the two hind ones by far larger than that in front,
which merely served to sustain the equilibrium of the body and to
steer. The material was the silver-like metal of which most Martial
vessels and furniture are formed, every spar, pole, and cross-piece
being a hollow cylinder; a construction which, with the extreme
lightness of the metal itself, made the carriage far lighter than any
I had seen on Earth. The body consisted of a seat with sides, back,
and footboard, wide enough to accommodate two persons with ease. It
was attached by strong elastic fastenings to a frame consisting of
four light poles rising from the framework in which the axles turned;
completely dispensing with the trouble of springs, while affording a
more complete protection from anything like jolting. The steering gear
consisted of a helm attached to the front wheel and coming up within
easy reach of the driver's hand. The electric motive power and
machinery were concealed in a box beneath the seat, which was indeed
but the top of this most important and largest portion of the
carriage. The poles sustained a light framework supporting a canopy,
which could be drawn over the top and around three sides of the
carriage, leaving only the front open. This canopy, in the present
instance, consisted of a sort of very fine silken material, thickly
embroidered within and without with feathers of various colours and
sizes, combined in patterns of exquisite beauty. My host requested me
to mount the carriage with him, and drove for some distance, teaching
me how to steer, and how, by pressing a spring, to stop or slacken the
motion of the vehicle, also how to direct it over rough ground and up
or down the steepest slope on which it was available. When we
returned, the Regent's carriage was standing by the gate, and two
others were waiting at a little distance in the rear. The Regent, with
a companion, was already seated, and as soon as we reached the gate,
Eveena appeared. She was enveloped from head to foot in a cloak of
something like swans-down covering her whole figure, loose, like the
ordinary outer garments of both sexes, and gathered in at the waist by
a narrow zone of silver, with a sort of clasp of some bright green
jewel; and a veil of white satin-looking material covered the whole
head and face, and fell half-way to the waist. Her gloved right hand
was hidden by the sleeve of her cloak; that of the left arm was turned
back, and the hand which she gave me as I handed her to the seat on my
left was bare—a usage both of convenience and courtesy. At Esmo's
request, the Regent, who led the way, started at a moderate pace, not
exceeding some ten miles an hour. I observed that on the roofs of all
the houses along the road the inhabitants had gathered to watch us;
and as my companion was so completely veiled, I did not baulk their
curiosity by drawing the canopy. I presently noticed that the girl
held something concealed in her right sleeve, and ventured to ask her
what she had there.
"Pardon me," she said; "if we had been less hurried, I meant to have
asked your permission to bring my pet _esvè_ with me." Drawing back
her sleeve, she showed a bird about the size of a carrier-pigeon, but
with an even larger and stronger beak, white body, and wings and tail,
like some of the plumage of the head and neck, tinted with gold and
green. Around its neck was a little string of silver, and suspended
from this a small tablet with a pencil or style. Since by her look and
manner she seemed to expect an answer, I said—
"I am very glad you have given me the opportunity of making
acquaintance with another of those curiously tame and manageable
animals which your people seem to train to such wonderful intelligence
and obedience. We have birds on Earth which will carry a letter from a
strange place to their home, but only homewards."
"These," she answered, "will go wherever they are directed, if they
have been there before and know the name of the place; and if this
bird had been let loose after we had left, he would have found me, if
not hidden by trees or other shelter, anywhere within a score of
miles."
"And have your people," I asked, "many more such wonderfully
intelligent and useful creatures tamed to your service, besides the
ambau, the tyree, and these letter-carriers?"
"Oh yes!" she answered. "Nearly all our domestic animals will do
anything they are told which lies within their power. You have seen
the tyree marching in a line across a field to pick up every single
worm or insect, or egg of such, within the whole space over which they
move, and I think you saw the ambau gathering fruit. It is not very
usual to employ the latter for this purpose, except in the trees. Have
you not seen a big creature—I should call it a bird, but a bird that
cannot fly, and is covered with coarse hair instead of feathers? It is
about as tall as myself, but with a neck half as long as its body, and
a very sharp powerful beak; and four of these _carvee_ would clear a
field the size of our garden (some 160 acres) of weeds in a couple of
days. We can send them, moreover, with orders to fetch a certain
number of any particular fruit or plant, and they scarcely ever forget
or blunder. Some of them, of course, are cleverer than others. The
cleverest will remember the name of every plant in the garden, and
will, perhaps, bring four or even six different kinds at a time; but
generally we show them a leaf of the plant we want, or point out to
them the bed where it is to be found, and do not trouble their memory
with more than two different orders at a time. The Unicorns, as you
call them, come regularly to be milked at sunset, and, if told
beforehand, will come an hour earlier or later to any place pointed
out to them. There were many beasts of burden before the electric
carriages were invented, so intelligent that I have heard the rider
never troubled himself to guide them except when he changed his
purpose, or came to a road they had not traversed before. He would
simply tell them where to go, and they would carry him safely. The
only creature now kept for this purpose is the largest of our birds
(the _caldecta_), about six feet long from head to tail, and with
wings measuring thrice as much from tip to tip. They will sail through
the air and carry their rider up to places otherwise inaccessible. But
they are little used except by the hunters, partly because the danger
is thought too great, partly because they cannot rise more than about
4000 feet from the sea-level with a rider, and within that height
there are few places worth reaching that cannot be reached more
safely. People used to harness them to balloons till we found means to
drive these by electricity—the last great invention in the way of
locomotion, which I think was completed within my grandfather's
memory."
"And," I asked, "have you no animals employed in actually cultivating
the soil?"
"No," she replied, "except the weeding birds of whom I have told you.
When we have a piece of ground too small for our electric ploughs, we
sometimes set them to break it up, and they certainly reduce the soil
to a powder much finer than that produced by the machine."
"I should like to see those machines at work."
"Well," answered Eveena, "I have no doubt we shall pass more than one
of them on our way."
As she said this we reached the great road I had crossed on my
arrival, and turning up this for a short distance, sufficient,
however, to let me perceive that it led to the seaport town of which I
have spoken, we came to a break in the central footpath, just wide
enough to allow us to pass. Looking back on this occasion, I observed
that we were followed by the two other carriages I have mentioned, but
at some distance. We then proceeded up the mountain by a narrow road I
had not seen in descending it. On either side of this lay fields of
the kind already described, one of which was in course of cultivation,
and here I saw the ploughs of which my companion had spoken. Evidently
constructed on the same principle as the carriages, but of much
greater size, and with heavier and broader wheels, they tore up and
broke to pieces a breadth of soil of some two yards, working to a
depth of some eighteen inches, with a dozen sharp powerful triangular
shares, and proceeding at a rate of about fifty yards per minute.
Eveena explained that these fields were generally from 200 to 600
yards square. The machine having traversed the whole field in one
direction, then recommenced its work, ploughing at right angles to the
former, and carrying behind it a sort of harrow, consisting of hooks
supported by light, hollow, metallic poles fixed at a certain angle to
the bar forming the rearward extremity of the plough, by which the
surface was levelled and the soil beaten into small fragments; broken
up, in fact, as I had seen, not less completely than ordinary garden
soil in England or Flanders. When it reached the end of its course,
the plough had to be turned; and this duty required the employment of
two men, one at each end of the field, who, however, had no other or
more difficult labour than that of turning the machine at the
completion of each set of furrows. In another field, already doubly
ploughed, a sowing machine was at work. The large seeds were placed
singly by means of an instrument resembling a magnified ovipositor,
such as that possessed by many insects, which at regulated intervals
made a hole in the ground and deposited a seed therein. Eveena
explained that where the seed and plant were small, a continuous
stream was poured into a small furrow made by a different instrument
attached to the same machine, while another arm, placed a little to
the rear, covered in the furrow and smoothed the surface. In reply to
another question of mine—"There are," she said, "some score of
different wool or hair bearing animals, which are shorn twice in the
year, immediately after the rains, and furnish the fibre which is
woven into most of the materials we use for dress and other household
purposes. These creatures adapt themselves to the shearing machines
with wonderful equanimity and willingness, so that they are seldom or
never injured."
"Not even," I asked, "by inexperienced or clumsy hands?"
"Hands," she said, "have nothing to do with the matter. They have only
to send the animal into the machine, and, indeed, each goes in of his
own accord as he sees his fellow come out."
"And have you no vegetable fibres," I said, "that are used for
weaving?"
"Oh yes," she answered, "several. The outer dress I wear indoors is
made of a fibre found inside the rind of the fruit of the algyro tree,
and the stalks of three or four different kinds of plants afford
materials almost equally soft and fine."
"And your cloak," I asked, "is not that made of the skin of some
animal?"
"Yes," she replied, "and the most curious creature I have heard of. It
is found only in the northern and southern Arctic land-belts, to which
indeed nearly all wild animals, except the few small ones that are
encouraged because they prey upon large and noxious insects, are now
confined. It is about as large as the Unicorns, and has, like them,
four limbs; but otherwise it more resembles a bird. It has a bird's
long slight neck, but a very small and not very bird-like head, with a
long horny snout, furnished with teeth, something between a beak and a
mouth. Its hind limbs are those of a bird, except that they have more
flesh upon the lowest joints and are covered with this soft down. Its
front limbs, my father says, seem as if nature had hesitated between
wings and arms. They have attached to them several long, sharp,
featherless quills starting from a shrivelled membrane, which make
them very powerful and formidable weapons, so that no animal likes to
attack it; while the foot has four fingers or claws with, which it
clasps fish or small dragons, especially those electric dragons of
which you have seen a tame and very much enlarged specimen, and so
holds them that they cannot find a chance of delivering their electric
shock. But for the _Thernee_ these dragons, winged as they are, would
make those lands hardly habitable either for man, or other beasts. All
our furs are obtained from those countries, and the creatures from
which they are derived are carefully preserved for that purpose, it
being forbidden to kill more than a certain number of each every year,
which makes these skins by far the costliest articles we use."
By this time we had reached the utmost point to which the carriages
could take us, about a furlong from the platform on which I had rested
during my descent. Seeing that the Regent and his companion had
dismounted, I stopped and sprang down from my carriage, holding out my
hand to assist Eveena's descent, an attention which I thought seemed
to surprise her. Up to the platform the path was easy enough; after
that it became steep even for me, and certainly a troublesome and
difficult ascent for a lady dressed as I have described, and hardly
stronger than a child of the same height and size on earth. Still my
companion did not seem to expect, and certainly did not invite
assistance. That she found no little difficulty in the walk was
evident from her turning back both sleeves and releasing her bird,
which hovered closely round her. Very soon her embarrassments and
stumbles threatened such actual danger as overcame my fear of
committing what, for aught I knew, might be an intrusion. Catching her
as she fell, and raising her by the left hand, I held it fast in my
own right, begging to be permitted to assist her for the rest of the
journey. Her manner and the tone of her voice made it evident that
such an attention, if unusual, was not offensive; but I observed that
those who were following us looked at us with some little surprise,
and spoke together in words which I could not catch, but the tone of
which was not exactly pleasant or complimentary. The Regent, a few
steps in advance of us, turned back from time to time to ask me some
trivial question. At last we reached the summit, and here I released
my companion's hand and stepped forward a pace or two to point out to
the Regent the external structure of the Astronaut. I was near enough,
of course, to be heard by Eveena, and endeavoured to address my
explanations as much to her as to the authority to whom I was required
to render an account. But from the moment that we had actually joined
him she withdrew from all part and all apparent interest in the
conversation. When our companions moved forward to reach the entrance,
which I had indicated, I again offered my hand, saying, "I am afraid
you will find some little difficulty in getting into the vessel by the
window by which I got out."
The Regent, however, had brought with him several light metal poles,
which I had not observed while carried by his companion, but which
being put together formed a convenient ladder of adequate length. He
desired me to ascend first and cut the riband by means of which the
window had been sealed; the law being so strict that even he would not
violate the symbol of private ownership which protected my vessel.
Having done this and opened the window, I sprang down, and he,
followed by his companion, ascended the ladder, and resting himself
upon the broad inner ledge of the window—which afforded a convenient
seat, since the crystal was but half the thickness of the wall—first
took a long look all round the interior, and then leaped down,
followed by his attendant. Eveena drew back, but was at last persuaded
to mount the ladder with my assistance, and rest on the sill till I
followed her and lifted her down inside. The Regent had by this time
reached the machinery, and was examining it very curiously, with
greater apparent appreciation of its purpose than I should have
expected. When we joined them, I found little difficulty in explaining
the purpose and working of most parts of the apparatus. The nature and
generation of the apergic power I took care not to explain. The
existence of such a repulsive force was the point on which the Regent
professed incredulity; as it was, of course, the critical fact on
which my whole narrative turned—on which its truth or falsehood
depended. I resolved ere the close of the inspection to give him clear
practical evidence on this score. In the meantime, listening without
answer to his expressions of doubt, I followed him round the interior,
explaining to him and to Eveena the use and structure of the
thermometer, barycrite, and other instruments. My fair companion
seemed to follow my explanation almost as easily as the officials. Our
followers, who had now entered the vessel, kept within hearing of my
remarks; but, evidently aware that they were there on sufferance,
asked no questions, and made their comments in a tone too low to allow
me to understand their purport. The impression made on the Regent by
the instruments, so far as I could gather from his brief remarks and
the expression of his face, was one of contemptuous surprise rather
than the interest excited by the motive machinery. Most of them were
evidently, in his opinion, clumsy contrivances for obtaining results
which the scientific knowledge and inventive genius of his countrymen
had long ago secured more completely and more easily. But he was
puzzled by the combination of such imperfect knowledge or
semi-barbaric ignorance with the possession of a secret of such
immense importance as the repulsive current, not yet known nor, as I
gathered, even conceived by the inhabitants of this planet. When he
had completed his inspection, he requested permission to remove some
of the objects I had left there; notably many of the dead plants, and
several books of drawings, mathematical, mechanical, and ornamental,
which I had left, and which had not been brought away by my host's son
when he visited the vessel. These I begged him to present to the
Camptâ, adding to them a few smaller curiosities, after which I drew
him back towards the machinery. He summoned his attendant, and bade
him take away to the carriages the articles I had given him, calling
upon the intruders to assist.
I was thus left with him and with Eveena alone in the building; and
with a partly serious, partly mischievous desire to prove to him the
substantial reality of objects so closely related to my own disputed
existence, and to demonstrate the truth of my story, I loosened one of
the conductors, connected it with the machinery, and, directing it
against him, sent through it a very slight apergic current. I was not
quite prepared for the result. His Highness was instantly knocked head
over heels to a considerable distance. Turning to interrupt the
current before going to his assistance, I was startled to perceive
that an accident of graver moment, in my estimation at least, than the
discomfiture of this exalted official, had resulted from my
experiment. I had not noticed that a conductive wire was accidentally
in contact with the apergion, while its end hung down towards the
floor Of this I suppose Eveena had carelessly taken hold, and a part
of the current passing through it had lessened the shock to the Regent
at the expense of one which, though it could not possibly have injured
her, had from its suddenness so shaken her nerves as to throw her into
a momentary swoon. She was recovering almost at soon as I reached her;
and by the time her fellow-sufferer had picked himself up in great
disgust and astonishment, was partly aware what had happened. She was,
however; much more anxious to excuse herself, in the manner of a
frightened child, for meddling with the machinery than to hear my
apologies for the accident. Noting her agitation, and seeing that she
was still trembling all over, I was more anxious to get her into the
open air, and out of reach of the apparatus she seemed to regard with
considerable alarm, than to offer any due apology to the exalted
personage to whom I had afforded much stronger evidence, if not of my
own substantiality, yet of the real existence of a repulsive energy,
than I had seriously intended. With a few hurried words to him, I
raised Eveena to the window, and lifted her to the ground outside. I
felt, however, that I could not leave the Regent to find his own way
out, the more so that I hardly saw how he could reach the window from
the inside without my assistance. I excused myself, therefore, and
seating her on a rock close to the ladder, promised to return at once.
This, however, I found impossible. By the time the injured officer had
recovered the physical shock to his nerves and the moral effect of the
disrespect to his person, his anxiety to verify what he had heard
entirely occupied his mind; and he requested further experiments, not
upon himself, which occupied some half-hour. He listened and spoke, I
must admit, with temper; but his air of displeasure was evident
enough, and I was aware that I had not entitled myself to his good
word, whether or not he would permit his resentment to colour his
account of facts. He was compelled, however, to request my help in
reaching the window, which I gave with all possible deference.
But, to my alarm, when we reached the foot of the ladder, Eveena was
nowhere to be seen. Calling her and receiving no reply, calling again
and hearing what sounded like her voice, but in a faint tone and
coming I knew not whither, I ran round the platform to seek her. I
could see nothing of her; but at one point, just where the projecting
edge of the platform overhung the precipice below, I recognised her
bird fluttering its wings and screaming as if in pain or terror. The
Regent was calling me in a somewhat imperious tone, but of course
received neither answer nor attention. Reaching the spot, I looked
over the edge and with some trouble discovered what had happened. Not
merely below but underneath the overhanging edge was a shelf about
four feet long and some ten inches in breadth, covered with a flower
equally remarkable in form and colour, the former being that of a
hollow cylindrical bell, about two inches in diameter; the latter a
bluish lilac, the nearest approach to azure I have seen in Mars—the
whole ground one sheet of flowers. On this, holding in a
half-insensible state to the outward-sloping rock above her, Eveena
clung, her veil and head-dress fallen, her face expressing utter
bewilderment as well as terror. I saw, though at the moment I hardly
understood, how she had reached this point. A very narrow path, some
hundred feet in length, sloped down from the table-rock of the summit
to the shelf on which she stood, with an outer hedge of shrubs and the
summits of small trees, which concealed, and in some sort guarded, the
precipice below, so that even a timid girl might pursue the path
without fear. But this path ended several feet from the commencement
of the shelf. Across the gap had lain a fallen tree, with boughs
affording such a screen and railing on the outward side as might at
once conceal the gulf below, and afford assistance in crossing the
chasm. But in crossing this tree Eveena's footsteps had displaced it,
and it had so given way as not only to be unavailable, but a serious
obstacle to my passage. Had I had time to go round, I might have been
able to leap the chasm; I certainly could not return that way with a
burden even so light as that of my precious charge. The only chance
was to lift her by main force directly to where I stood; and the
outward projection of the rock at this point rendered this peculiarly
difficult, as I had nothing to cling or hold by. The Regent had by
this time reached me, and discerned what had occurred.
"Hold me fast," I said, "or sit upon me if you like, to hold me with
your weight whilst I lean over." The man stood astounded, not by the
danger of another but by the demand on himself; and evidently without
the slightest intention of complying.
"You are mad!" he said. "Your chance is ten times greater to lose your
own life than to save hers."
"Lose my life!" I cried. "Could I dare return alive without her? Throw
your whole weight on me, I say, as I lean over, and waste no more
time!"
"What!" he rejoined. "You are twice as heavy as I, and if you are
pulled over I shall probably go over too. Why am I to endanger myself
to save a girl from the consequences of her folly?"
"If you do not," I swore, "I will fling you where the carcass of which
you are so careful shall be crushed out of the very form of the
manhood you disgrace."
Even this threat failed to move him. Meantime the bird, fluttering on
my shoulder, suggested a last chance; and snatching the tablet round
its neck, I wrote two words thereon, and calling to it, "Home!" the
intelligent creature flew off at fullest speed.
"Now," I said, "if you do not help me I will kill you here and now. If
you pretend to help and fail me, that bird carries to Esmo my request
to hold you answerable for our lives."
I invoked, in utter desperation, the awe with which, as his hints and
my experience implied, Esmo was regarded by his neighbours; and
slender as seemed this support, it did not fail me. The Regent's
countenance fell, and I saw that I might depend at least on his
passive compliance. Clasping his arm with my left hand, I said, "Pull
back with all your might. If I go over, you _shall_ go over too." Then
pulling him down with me, and stretching myself over the precipice so
far that but for this additional support I must have fallen, I reached
Eveena, whose closed eyes and relaxing limbs indicated that another
moment's delay might be fatal.
"Give me your hand," I cried in despair, seeing how tightly she still
grasped the tough fibrous shoots growing in the crevices of the rock,
whereof she had taken hold. "Give me your hand, and let go!"
To give me her hand was beyond the power of her will; to let go
without giving me hold would have been fatal. Beaching over to the
uttermost, I contrived to lay a firm grasp upon her wrist. But this
would not do. I could hardly drag her up by one arm, especially if she
would not relax her grasp. I must release the Regent and depend upon
his obedience, or forfeit the chance of saving her, as in a few more
moments she would certainly swoon and fall.
"Throw yourself upon me, and sit firm, if you value your life," I
cried, and I relaxed my hold on his arm, stretching both hands to
grasp Eveena. I felt the man's weight on my body, and with both arms
extended to the uttermost hanging over the edge, I caught firm bold of
the girl's shoulders. Even now, with any girl of her age on earth, and
for aught I know with many Martial damsels, the case would have been
hopeless. My whole strength was required to raise her; I had none to
spare to force her loose from her hold. Fortunately my rough and tight
clasp seemed to rouse her. Her eyes half opened, and semi-consciousness
appeared to have returned.
"Let go!" I cried in that sharp tone of imperious anger which—with
some tempers at least—is the natural expression of the outward
impulse produced by supreme and agonizing terror. Obedience is the
hereditary lesson taught to her sex by the effects of equality in
Mars. Eveena had been personally trained in a principle long discarded
by Terrestrial women; and not half aware what she did, but yielding
instinctively to the habit of compliance with imperative command
spoken in a masculine voice, she opened her hands just as I had lost
all hope. With one desperate effort I swung her fairly on to the
platform, and, seeing her safe there, fell back myself scarcely more
sensible than she was.
The whole of this terrible scene, which it has taken so long to
relate, did not occupy more than a minute in action. I know not
whether my readers can understand the full difficulty and danger of
the situation. I know that no words of mine can convey the impression
graven into my own memory, never to be effaced or weakened while
consciousness remains. The strongest man on Earth could not have done
what I did; could not, lying half over the precipice, have swung a
girl of eighteen right out from underneath him, and to his own level.
But Eveena was of slighter, smaller frame than a healthy French girl
of twelve, while I retained the full strength of a man adapted to the
work of a world where every weight is twice as heavy as on Mars. What
I had practically to do was to lift not seven or eight stone of
European girlhood, not even the six Eveena might possibly have weighed
on Earth, but half that weight. And yet the position was such that all
the strength I had acquired through ten years of constant practice in
the field and in the chase, all the power of a frame in healthful
maturity, and of muscles whose force seemed doubled by the tension of
the nerves, hardly availed. When I recovered my own senses, and had
contrived to restore Eveena's, my unwilling assistant had disappeared.
It was an hour before Eveena seemed in a condition to be removed, and
perhaps I was not very urgent to hurry her away. I had done no more
than any man, the lowest and meanest on Earth, must have done under
the circumstances. I can scarcely enter into the feelings of the
fellow-man who, in my position, could have recognised a choice but
between saving and perishing with the helpless creature entrusted to
his charge. But hereditary disbelief in any power above the physical
forces of Nature, in any law higher than that of man's own making, has
rendered human nature in Mars something utterly different from,
perhaps, hardly intelligible to, the human nature of a planet forty
million miles nearer the Sun. Though brought up in an affectionate
home, Eveena shared the ideas of the world in which she was born; and
so far accepted its standards of opinion and action as natural if not
right, that the risk I had run, the effort I had made to save her,
seemed to her scarcely less extraordinary than it had appeared to the
Zamptâ. She rated its devotion and generosity as highly as he
appreciated its extravagance and folly; and if he counted me a madman,
she was disposed to elevate me into a hero or a demi-god. The tones
and looks of a maiden in such a temper, however perfect her maidenly
reserve, would, I fancy, be very agreeable to men older than I was,
either in constitution or even in experience. I doubt whether any man
under fifty would have been more anxious than myself to cut short our
period of repose, broken as it was, when I refused to listen to her
tearful penitence and self-reproach, by occasional words and looks of
gratitude and admiration. I did, however, remember that it was
expedient to refasten the window, and re-attach the seals, before
departing. At the end of the hour's rest I allowed my charge and
myself, I had recovered more or less completely the nervous force
which had been for a while utterly exhausted, less by the effort than
by the terror that preceded it. I was neither surprised, nor perhaps
as much grieved as I should have been, to find that Eveena could
hardly walk; and felt to the full the value of those novel conditions
which enabled me to carry her the more easily in my arms, though much
oppressed even by so slight an effort in that thin air, to the place
where we had left our carriage—no inconsiderable distance by the path
we had to pursue. Before starting on our return I had, in despite of
her most earnest entreaties, managed to recover her head-dress and
veil, at a risk which, under other circumstances, I might not have
cared to encounter. But had she been seen without it on our return,
the comments of the whole neighbourhood would have been such as might
have disturbed even her father's cool indifference. We reached her
home in safety, and with little notice, having, of course, drawn the
canopy around us as completely as possible. I was pleased to find that
only her younger sister, to whose care I at once committed her, was
there at present, the elders not having yet returned. I took care to
detach from the bird's neck the tablet which had served its purpose so
well. The creature had found his way home within half-an-hour after I
dismissed him, and had frightened Zevle [Stella] not a little; though
the message, which a fatal result would have made sufficiently
intelligible to Esmo, utterly escaped her comprehension.