CHAPTER V.

“It was afternoon when Chapman and I, fully equipped and provisioned, moved off from the long granite pier at the Registeries, after an affectionate parting from my guide and friend, who returned sorrowfully to resume his watch for his son, whose coming to Mars seemed to him so assured.

“How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed!  Down the crowded canal we slowly moved, amidst the calling crews, the pleasant cheers, and beckonings of sightseers; and back of us rose on its hills the City of Light, that, as we passed still further away, and watched it in the fading sunset, began to glow, and finally, to shine like some titanic opal in the velvet shadows of the night.

“These numerous arms of the canal some miles from the City coalesce and merge into the enormous trunk canal that passes on to Scandor through hills and mountains and the plain country, excavated by the wonderful Toto powder.  This trunk canal is doubled; upon one member, the boats pass outward to Scandor, and on the other the boats return.  Branches pass north and south at centers of population, and of some of these which pass actually into the frozen depths of the polar countries, I may tell you later.

“As we slowly progressed into the undulating plain country, with its villages and farm lands, diversified by woods, and sometimes solitary projections of rock, as the stars stole urgently into the sky, as the phosphori lamps began their soft illumination of the decks, and while murmurs of songs from merrymakers on the land came to us in snatches bewitchingly, though incongruously mingled with the delicious odors of the Napi grass, I turned to Chapman, and felt that now, throughout the hours of the genial night, I would pour out unchecked the flood of inquiry that had risen again and again to my lips in this strange new life.

“‘Chapman,’ I began, ’you must feel that I have a great deal to ask you.  This new life, with its surprises and the strange incidents of the two or three days I have already lived here have suggested so many questions, can we not now talk about these marvels?’

“‘Certainly,’ replied Chapman, as he lifted a glass of delicate pearl pink, filled with the pungent and keenly stimulating Ridinda, to his lips.  ’Put on your thinking cap, and perforate me with all the puzzles you can think of.  I am a trifle rattled myself in this new ranch—­have not been here long—­but I tell you, Dodd, Mars is first class.  It suits me.  Never enjoyed living so much, never found it so much a matter of course, and as to livelihood, when I think of those freezing nights on the earth in Rutherford’s cheesebox shooting at the moon with wet plates, I can tell you this sort of thing isn’t a long call from all I ever hoped to find in Heaven.  Open your batteries.  To-morrow will be full of sight-seeing, and I guess you will forget all you want to know to-day in trying to remember what you will see then.’  He took another sip of the snapping liquid, drew his chair closer to my own, and while a sort of musical echo lingered in the air, I began: