rnt hand upon its edge, was a girl,
and another look told me she was dead!

Such a sweet, pallid, Martian maid, her fair head lolling back against
the rear of the chair and gently moving to and fro with the rise and
fall of her craft. Her face in the pale light of the evening like
carved ivory, and not less passionless and still; her arms bare, and
her poor fingers still closed in her lap upon the beautiful buds they
had put into them. I fairly gasped with amazement at the dreadful
sweetness of that solitary lady, and could hardly believe she was
really a corpse! But, alas! there was no doubt of it, and I stared at
her, half in admiration and half in fear; noting how the last sunset
flush lent a hectic beauty to her face for a moment, and then how fair
and ghostly she stood out against the purpling sky; how her light
drapery lifted to the icy wind, and how dreadfully strange all those
soft-scented flowers and trappings seemed as we sped along side by side
into the country of night and snow.

Then all of a sudden the true meaning of her being there burst upon me,
and with a start and a cry I looked around. WE WERE FLYING SWIFTLY
DOWN THAT RIVER OF THE DEAD THEY HAD TOLD ME OF THAT HAS NO OUTLET AND
NO RETURNING!

With frantic haste I snatched up a paddle again and tried to paddle
against the great black current sweeping us forward. I worked until
the perspiration stood in beads on my forehead, and all the time I
worked the river, like some black snake, hissed and twined, and that
pretty lady rode cheerily along at my side. Overhead stars of
unearthly brilliancy were coming out in the frosty sky, while on either
hand the banks were high and the shadows under them black as ink. In
those shadows now and then I noticed with a horrible indifference other
rafts were travelling, and presently, as the stream narrowed, they came
out and joined us, dead Martians, budding boys and girls; older
voyagers with their age quickening upon them in the Martian manner,
just as some fruit only ripens after it falls; yellow-girt slaves
staring into the night in front, quite a merry crew all clustered about
I and that gentle lady, and more far ahead and more behind, all bobbing
and jostling forward as we hurried to the dreadful graveyard in the
Martian regions of eternal winter none had ever seen and no one came
to! I cried aloud in my desolation and fear and hid my face in my
hands, while the icy cliffs mocked my cry and the dead ma