"the breeze blows thitherward, and 'tis a shame
to use one's limbs when Nature will carry us for nothing!"

"But have you a boat of your own hereabouts?" I queried; "for to tell
the truth I came from home myself somewhat poorly provided with means
to buy or barter, and if your purse be not heavier than mine we must
still do as poor men do."

"Oh!" said An, "there is no need to think of that, no one here to hire
or hire of; we will just take the first skiff we see that suits us."

"And what if the owner should come along and find his boat gone?"

"Why, what should he do but take the next along the bank, and the
master of that the next again--how else could it be?" said the Martian,
and shrugging my shoulders, for I was in no great mood to argue, we
went down to the waterway, through a thicket of budding trees underlaid
with a carpet of small red flowers filling the air with a scent of
honey, and soon found a diminutive craft pulled up on the bank. There
were some dainty cloaks and wraps in it which An took out and laid
under a tree. But first he felt in the pouch of one for a sweetmeat
which his fine nostrils, acute as a squirrel's, told him was there, and
taking the lump out bit a piece from it, afterwards replacing it in the
owner's pocket with the frankest simplicity.

Then we pushed off, hoisted the slender mast, set the smallest lug-sail
that ever a sailor smiled at, and, myself at the helm, and that golden
youth amidships, away we drifted under thickets of drooping canes
tasselled with yellow catkin-flowers, up the blue alley of the water
into the broader open river beyond with its rapid flow and crowding
boats, the white city front now towering clear before us.

The air was full of sunshine and merry voices; birds were singing,
trees were budding; only my heart was heavy, my mind confused. Yet why
should I be sad, I said to myself presently? Life beat in my pulses;
what had I to fear? This world I had tumbled into was new and strange,
no doubt, but tomorrow it would be old and familiar; it discredited my
manhood to sit brow-bent like that, so with an effort I roused myself.

"Old chap!" I said to my companion, as he sat astride of a thwart
slowly chewing something sticky and eyeing me out of the corner of his
eyes with vapid wonder, "tell me something of this land of yours, or
something about yourself--which reminds me I have a question to ask. It
is a bit delicate, but you look a sensible sort of fello