ing 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.

CHAPTER XI

With the new morning came fresh energy and a spasm of conscience as I
thought of poor Heru and the shabby sort of rescuer I was to lie about
with these pretty triflers while she remained in peril.

So I had a bath and a swim, a breakfast, and, to my shame be it
acknowledged, a sort of farewell merry-go-round dance on the yellow
sands with a dozen young persons all light-hearted as the morning,
beautiful as the flowers that bound their hair, and in the extremity of
statuesque attire.

Then at last I got them to give me a sea-going canoe, a stock of cakes
and fresh water; and with many parting injunctions how to find the
Woodman trail, since I would not listen to reason and lie all the rest
of my life with them in the sunshine, they pushed me off on my lonely
voyage.

"Over the blue waters!" they shouted in chorus as I dipped my paddle
into the diamond-crested wavelets. "Six hours, adventurous stranger,
with the sun behind you! Then into the broad river behind the yellow
sand-bar. But not the