Off into the forest I went, feeling a boyish elation to be so free nor
taking heed or count of the reckless adventure before me. The Martian
weather for the moment was lovely and the many-coloured grass lush and
soft under foot. Mile after mile I went, heeding the distance lightly,
the air was so elastic. Now pressing forward as the main interest of
my errand took the upper hand, and remembrance of poor Heru like a
crushed white flower in the red grip of those cruel ravishers came upon
me, and then pausing to sigh with pleasure or stand agape--forgetful
even of her--in wonder of the unknown loveliness about me.
And well might I stare! Everything in that forest was wonderful!
There were plants which turned from colour to colour with the varying
hours of the day. While others had a growth so swift it was dangerous
to sit in their neighbourhood since the long, succulent tendrils
clambering from the parent stem would weave you into a helpless tangle
while you gazed, fascinated, upon them. There were plants that climbed
and walked; sighing plants who called the winged things of the air to
them with a noise so like to a girl sobbing that again and again I
stopped in the tangled path to listen. There were green bladder-mosses
which swam about the surface of the still pools like gigantic
frog-broods. There were on the ridges warrior trees burning in the
vindictiveness of a long forgotten cause--a blaze of crimson scimitar
thorns from root to topmost twig; and down again in the cool hollows
were lady-bushes making twilight of the green gloom with their cloudy
ivory blossoms and filling the shadows with such a heavy scent that
head and heart reeled with fatal pleasure as one pushed aside their
branches. Every river-bed was full of mighty reeds, whose stems
clattered together when the wind blew like swords on shields, and every
now and then a bit of forest was woven together with the ropey stems of
giant creepers till no man or beast could have passed save for the
paths which constant use had kept open through the mazes.
All day long I wandered on through those wonderful woodlands, and in
fact loitered so much over their infinite marvels that when sundown
came all too soon there was still undulating forest everywhere, vistas
of fairy glades on every hand, peopled with incredible things and
echoing with sounds that excited the ears as much as other things
fascinated the eyes, but no sign of the sea or my fishing village
anywhere.
It did not matter; a little of the Martian leisureliness was getting
into my blood: "If not today, why then tomorrow," as An would have
said; and with this for comfort I selected a warm, sandy hollow under
the roots of a big tree, made my brief arrangements for the night, ate
some honey cakes, and was soon sleeping blissfully.
I woke early next morning, after many hours of interrupted dreams, and
having nothing to do till the white haze had lifted and made it
possible to start again, rested idly a time on my elbow and watched the
sunshine filter into the recesses.
Very pretty it was to see the thick canopy overhead, by star-light so
impenetrable, open its chinks and fissures as the searching sun came
upon it; to see the pin-hole gaps shine like spangles presently, the
spaces broaden into lesser suns, and even the thick leafage brighten
and shine down on me with a soft sea-green radiance. The sunward sides
of the tree-stems took a glow, and the dew that ran dripping down their
mossy sides trickled blood-red to earth. Elsewhere the shadows were
still black, and strange things began to move in them--things we in our
middle-aged world have never seen the likeness of: beasts half birds,
birds half creeping things, and creeping things which it seemed to me
passed through lesser creations down to the basest life that crawls
without interruption or division.
It was not for me, a sailor, to know much of such things, yet some I
could not fail to notice. On one grey branch overhead, jutting from a
tree-stem where a patch of velvet moss made in the morning glint a
fairy bed, a wonderful flower unfolded. It was a splendid bud, ivory
white, cushioned in leaves, and secured to its place by naked white
roots that clipped the branch like fingers of a lady's hand. Even as I
looked it opened, a pale white star, and hung pensive and inviting on
its mossy cushion. From it came such a ravishing odour that even I, at
the further end of the great scale of life, felt my pulses quicken and
my eyes brighten with cupidity. I was in the very act of climbing the
tree, but before I could move hand or foot two things happened, whether
you take my word for them or no.
Firstly, up through a glade in the underwood, attracted by the odour,
came an ugly brown bird with a capacious beak and shining claws. He
perched near by, and peeped and peered until he made out the flower
pining on her virgin stem, whereat off he hopped to her branch and
there, with a cynical chuckle, strutted to and fro between her and the
main stem like an ill genius guarding a fairy princess.
Surely Heaven would not allow him to tamper with so chaste a bud! My
hand reached for a stone to throw at him when happened the second
thing. There came a gentle pat upon the woodland floor, and from a
tree overhead dropped down another living plant like to the one above
yet not exactly similar, a male, my instincts told me, in full solitary
blossom like her above, cinctured with leaves, and supported by half a
score of thick white roots that worked, as I looked, like the limbs of
a crab. In a twinkling that parti-coloured gentleman vegetable near me
was off to the stem upon which grew his lady love; running and
scrambling, dragging the finery of his tasselled petals behind, it was
laughable to watch his eagerness. He got a grip of the tree and up he
went, "hand over hand," root over root. I had just time to note others
of his species had dropped here and there upon the ground, and were
hurrying with frantic haste to the same destination when he reached the
fatal branch, and was straddling victoriously down it, blind to all but
love and longing. That ill-omened bird who stood above the
maiden-flower let him come within a stalk's length, so near that the
white splendour of his sleeping lady gleamed within arms' reach, then
the great beak was opened, the great claws made a clutch, the gallant's
head was yanked from his neck, and as it went tumbling down the maw of
the feathered thing his white legs fell spinning through space, and lay
knotting themselves in agony upon the ground for a minute or two before
they relaxed and became flaccid in the repose of death. Another and
another vegetable suitor made for that fatal tryst, and as each came up
the snap of the brown bird's beak was all their obsequies. At last no
more came, and then that Nemesis of claws and quills walked over to the
girl-flower, his stomach feathers ruffled with repletion, the green
blood of her lovers dripping from his claws, and pulled her golden
heart out, tore her white limbs one from the other, and swallowed her
piecemeal before my very eyes! Then up in wrath I jumped and yelled at
him till the woods echoed, but too late to stay his sacrilege.
By this time the sun was bathing everything in splendour, and turning
away from the wonders about me, I set off at best pace along the
well-trodden path which led without turning to the west coast village
where the canoes were.
It proved far closer than expected. As a matter of fact the forest in
this direction grew right down to the water's edge; the salt-loving
trees actually overhanging the waves--one of the pleasantest sights in
nature--and thus I came right out on top of the hamlet before there had
been an indication of its presence. It occupied two sides of a pretty
little bay, the third side being flat land given over to the
cultivation of an enormous species of gourd whose characteristic yellow
flowers and green, succulent leaves were discernible even at this
distance.
I branched off along the edge of the surf and down a dainty little
flowery path, noticing meanwhile how the whole bay was filled by
hundreds of empty canoes, while scores of others were drawn up on the
strand, and then the first thing I chanced upon was a group of
people--youthful, of course, with the eternal Martian bloom--and in the
splendid simplicity of almost complete nakedness. My first idea was
that they were bathing, and fixing my eyes on the tree-tops with great
propriety, I gave a warning cough. At that sound instead of getting to
cover, or clothes, all started up and stood staring for a time like a
herd of startled cattle. It was highly embarrassing; they were right
in the path, a round dozen of them, naked and so little ashamed that
when I edged away modestly they began to run after me. And the farther
they came forward the more I retired, till we were playing a kind of
game of hide-and-seek round the tree-stems. In the middle of it my heel
caught in a root and down I went very hard and very ignominiously,
whereon those laughing, light-hearted folk rushed in, and with smiles
and jests helped me to my feet.
"Was I the traveller who had come from Seth?"
"Yes."
"Oh, then that was well. They had heard such a traveller was on the
road, and had come a little way down the path, as far as might be
without fatigue, to meet him."
"Would I eat with them?" these amiable strangers asked, pushing their
soft warm fingers into mine and ringing me round with a circle. "But
firstly might they help me out of my clothes? It was hot, and these
things were cumbersome." As to the eating, I was agreeable enough
seeing how casual meals had been with me lately, but my clothes, though
Heaven knows they were getting horribly ragged and travel-stained, I
clung to desperately.
My new friends shrugged their dimpled shoulders and, arguments being
tedious, at once squatted round me in the dappled shade of a big tree
and produced their stores of never failing provisions. After a
pleasant little meal taken thus in the open and with all the simplicity
Martians delight in, we got to talking about those yellow canoes which
were bobbing about on the blue waters of the bay.
"Would you like to see where they are grown?" asked an individual
basking by my side.
"Grown!" I answered with incredulity. "Built, you mean. Never in my
life did I hear of growing boats."
"But then, sir," observed the girl as she sucked the honey out of the
stalk of an azure convolvulus flower and threw the remains at a
butterfly that sailed across the sunshine, "you know so little! You
have come from afar, from some barbarous and barren district. Here we
undoubtedly grow our boats, and though we know the Thither folk and
such uncultivated races make their craft by cumbrous methods of flat
planks, yet we prefer our own way, for one thing because it saves
trouble," and as she murmured that all-sufficient reason the gentle
damsel nodded reflectively.
But one of her companions, more lively for the moment, tickled her with
a straw until she roused, and then said, "Let us take the stranger to
the boat garden now. The current will drift us round the bay, and we
can come back when it turns. If we wait we shall have to row in both
directions, or even walk," and again planetary slothfulness carried the
day.
So down to the beach we strolled and launched one of the golden-hued
skiffs upon the pretty dancing wavelets just where they ran, lipped
with jewelled spray, on the shore, and then only had I a chance to
scrutinise their material. I patted that one we were upon inside and
out. I noted with a seaman's admiration its lightness, elasticity, and
supreme sleekness, its marvellous buoyancy and fairy-like "lines," and
after some minutes' consideration it suddenly flashed across me that it
was all of gourd rind. And as if to supply confirmation, the flat land
we were approaching on the opposite side of the bay was covered by the
characteristic verdure of these plants with a touch here and there of
splendid yellow blossoms, but all of gigantic proportions.
"Ay," said a Martian damsel lying on the bottom, and taking and kissing
my hand as she spoke, in the simple-hearted way of her people, "I see
you have guessed how we make our boats. Is it the same in your distant
country?"
"No, my girl, and what's more, I am a bit uneasy as to what the fellows
on the Carolina will say if they ever hear I went to sea in a
hollowed-out pumpkin, and with a young lady--well, dressed as you
are--for crew. Even now I cannot imagine how you get your ships so
trim and shapely--there is not a seam or a patch anywhere, it looks as
if you had run them into a mould."
"That's just what we have done, sir, and now you will witness the
moulds at work, for here we are," and the little skiff was pulled
ashore and the Martians and I jumped out on the shelving beach, hauled
our boat up high and dry, and there right over us, like great green
umbrellas, spread the fronds of the outmost garden of this strangest of
all ship-building yards. Briefly, and not to make this part of my story
too long, those gilded boys and girls took me ashore, and chattering
like finches in the evening, showed how they planted their gourd seed,
nourished the gigantic plants as they grew with brackish water and the
burnt ashes; then, when they flowered, mated the male and female
blossoms, glorious funnels of golden hue big enough for one to live in;
and when the young fruit was of the bigness of an ordinary bolster, how
they slipped it into a double mould of open reed-work something like
the two halves of a walnut-shell; and how, growing day by day in this,
it soon took every curve and line they chose to give it, even the
hanging keel below, the strengthened bulwarks, and tall prow-piece. It
was so ingenious, yet simple; and I confess I laughed over my first
skiff "on the stalk," and fell to bantering the Martians, asking
whether it was a good season for navies, whether their Cunarders were
spreading nicely, if they could give me a pinch of barge seed, or a
yacht in bud to show to my friends at home.
But those lazy people took the matter seriously enough. They led me
down green alleys arched over with huge melon-like leaves; they led me
along innumerable byways, making me peep and peer through the chequered
sunlight at ocean-growing craft, that had budded twelve months before,
already filling their moulds to the last inch of space. They told me
that when the growing process was sufficiently advanced, they loosened
the casing, and cutting a hole into the interior of each giant fruit,
scooped out all its seed, thereby checking more advance, and throwing
into the rind strength that would otherwise have gone to
reproductiveness. They said each fruit made two vessels, but the upper
half was always best and used for long salt-water journeys, the lower
piece being but for punting or fishing on their lakes. They cut them
in half while still green, scraped out the light remaining pulp when
dry, and dragged them down with the minimum of trouble, light as
feathers, tenacious as steel plate, and already in the form and fashion
of dainty craft from five to twenty feet in length, when the process
was completed.
By the time we had explored this strangest of ship-building yards, and
I had seen last year's crop on the stocks being polished and fitted
with seats and gear, the sun was going down; and the Martian twilight,
owing to the comparative steepness of the little planet's sides, being
brief, we strolled back to the village, and there they gave me
harbourage for the night, ambrosial supper, and a deep draught of the
wine of Forgetfulness, under the gauzy spell of which the real and
unreal melted into the vistas of rosy oblivion, and I slept.