t understand, and force is
its only argument against a superior intelligence."

Thereupon I immediately began a thorough overhauling of all the arms and
ammunition, while the doctor prepared to test the air. There was a tone
of confident exultation in his voice when he spoke again.

"This redness of the air will not trouble us a whit. Look! you can see
no tinge of red between here and that huge wall yonder, nor anywhere
along the ground as far as you can see. It is so slight a colouring that
it is only noticeable in vast reaches of atmosphere, like the blue
colour in our own air. See here, where a small cloud obscures the sky
there is no ruddy tinge. There is no more colouring-matter in this than
there is indigo in our own air. The amount of it is so infinitely small
that it will never trouble us. Now, if it only contains oxygen enough,
we are sure of life in it."

"Yes, if they will leave us alive to breathe it," I added, counting out
seventeen cartridges for each rifle.

"The air outside shows a pressure of only eleven, while we have eighteen
inside," he said. "I will bring in the discharging cylinder full of the
outer air, and by keeping it upside down the lighter air will remain in
it. Then, if a candle flame will burn steadily in it, the oxygen we need
is there."

Suiting the action to the word, he carefully drew in the inverted
cylinder, and cautiously brought a lighted candle into it. To our great
delight the flame burned for a moment with a brighter, stronger light
than it did in the air of the compartment.

"Hurrah!" cried the doctor, as happily as if he had just earned the
right to live. "It seems to have more oxygen than our own air, which
will make up for the lesser density."

Then he put the lighted candle in the cylinder, and quickly discharged
it outside upon the ground where we could see it. The flame had almost
twice the brilliancy that it had had inside.

"Our scientists who have sneered at the possibility of life on Mars,
because of its rare atmosphere, have overlooked the simplicity of the
problem. They delight in propounding posers for Omnipotence. If a
Creator dilutes oxygen with three parts of nitrogen on one planet where
conditions make a dense atmosphere, why should He not dilute oxygen with
an equal part of nitrogen on a planet where the air is rare? Air is not
a chemical compound, but a simple mixture. When a stronger, more
life-giving atmosphere is needed, let there be less of the di