y by the hunters
employed in collecting the furs and skins furnished exclusively by
these lands. The shores of the gulf were lofty, rocky, and
uninteresting. It was difficult to see any object on shore from the
deck of the vessel, and I assented, therefore, without demur, after
the first hour of the voyage, to his proposal that the lights,
answering to our hatches, should be closed, and that the vessel should
pursue her course below the surface. This was the more desirable that,
though winds and storms are, as I have said, rare, these long and
narrow seas with their lofty shores are exposed to rough currents,
atmospheric and marine, which render a voyage on the surface no more
agreeable than a passage in average weather across the Bay of Biscay.
After descending I was occupied for some time in studying, with
Ergimo's assistance, the arrangement of the machinery, and the simple
process by which electric force is generated in quantities adequate to
any effort at a marvellously small expenditure of material. In this
form the Martialists assert that they obtain without waste all the
potential energy stored in ... [About half a score lines, or two pages
of an ordinary octavo volume like this, are here illegible.] She
(Eveena?) was somewhat pale, but rose quickly, and greeted me with a
smile of unaffected cheerfulness, and was evidently surprised as well
as pleased that I was content to remain alone with her, our
conversation turning chiefly on the lessons of last night. Our time
passed quickly till, about the middle of the day, we were startled by
a shock which, as I thought, must be due to our having run aground or
struck against a rock. But when I passed into the engine-room, Ergimo
explained that the pilot was nowise in fault. We had encountered one
of those inconveniences, hardly to be called perils, which are
peculiar to the waters of Mars. Though animals hostile or dangerous to
man have been almost extirpated upon the land, creatures of a type
long since supposed to be extinct on Earth still haunt the depths of
the Martial seas; and one of these--a real sea-serpent of above a
hundred feet in length and perhaps eight feet in circumference--had
attacked our vessel, entangling the steering screw in his folds and
trying to crush it, checking, at the same time, by his tremendous
force the motion of the vessel.

"We shall soon get rid of him, though," said Ergimo, as I followed him
to the stern, to watch with great interest