Part 8 (1/2)
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 a.s.sured.
”How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed! Down the crowded ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sed still further away, and watched it in the fading sunset, began to glow, and finally, to s.h.i.+ne like some t.i.tanic opal in the velvet shadows of the night.
”These numerous arms of the ca.n.a.l some miles from the City coalesce and merge into the enormous trunk ca.n.a.l that pa.s.ses on to Scandor through hills and mountains and the plain country, excavated by the wonderful Toto powder. This trunk ca.n.a.l is doubled; upon one member, the boats pa.s.s outward to Scandor, and on the other the boats return. Branches pa.s.s north and south at centers of population, and of some of these which pa.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes bewitchingly, though incongruously mingled with the delicious odors of the Napi gra.s.s, 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 gla.s.s 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 cla.s.s. 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:
”'Chapman, where on Mars are we? I seem to feel neither heat nor cold. I see these flowers, the palms in the Garden of the Fountains, day pa.s.ses into night, and there is no very apparent change of temperature, so far as feeling goes. What are we made of? Is this new body we carry insensible to heat or cold? I feel indeed my pulse beat. I am conscious of warmth in the sun, and of coolness in the shade. I feel the wind blow on my cheeks, but all these sensations are so much less keen than on the earth, and yet again I realize that sensations are in some ways as vivid as on the earth. The pleasure of my ears and eyes is wonderfully deep and exhaustive, the sense of taste rapid and delightful. I am happy, supremely happy, and affection, even the hidden fires of love, burn in my veins as on the earth.' Chapman looked at me with that bright smile he wore on earth, and his gestures of expostulation were amusing. 'Wait, Dodd, don't talk so fast. You remember I had a slow way on the earth. I have no reason to think it will prove any less pleasant to stay slow on Mars. One thing at a time. My own sense of position is not so secure that I can tell exactly all you want to know, and there are a good many things that the heavyweights up here don't pretend yet to explain. Now, where are we? Well, the City of Light is about 40 degrees south of the Martian equator, not so far from what on earth would be the position of Christ Church, where you ”shuffled off the mortal coil.” Don't frown.
Mars is a serene, sweet place, but I am not yet so intimidated by the lofty life here as to drop my jokes. Some Martians strike me as a trifle heavy in style, just a suggestion of a kind of sublimated Bostonese about them, don't you know. Curious! However, the ordinary Martian is gamy, good company, full of happiness, with a considerable fancy for jokes, absurdly addicted to music, and as credulous as a child. Somehow, Dodd, a good deal of my earthly nature has stuck to me, and I revel in a dual life. I have my Martian side, but I can't, and this life can't, knock the old foibles of the world you left, out of me yet. I may get the proper sort of exultation in time, but just now I've imported considerable human horse sense.'
”He looked at me whimsically; I walked away, and watched the receding city.
”The motion of our white boat was so smoothly rapid, that soon, and almost unnoticed we had threaded all the many lanes, windings, and locks that led to the broad ca.n.a.ls some twenty miles from the city. We had pa.s.sed laden barges, flat and storied boats carrying excursions or freight, and trains of smaller craft crowded with fruit brought in from distant farms for the great population of the City of Light. The scene a.s.sumed a fairy-like unreality as night settled down, and the boats swarming with light, or else carrying a few red lanterns, pa.s.sed us while their occupants or owners chanted the lonely lullaby of the Martians, which begins: 'Ana cal tantil to ti.'
”It was yet to me all a wonderful dream, from which each moment I dreaded awakening. It was all so beautiful!
”I sat again with Chapman under the canopy, talking of the earth.
Strange Mystery! Here we were with our earth memories yet vivid, recalling incidents of life in New York City, and summoning amid all the appealing charm of this strange new life, the little, sordid variances and trials, vexations and minor sufferings that had marred his own life on earth. We turned to these things, not because they were grateful or pleasing to remember, but because it seemed to _establish_ us, or rather me, to give me ident.i.ty, and build up the growing certainty that I had come from the earth, and was re-embodied in this new sphere of active feeling and experience.
”I told him of you, of the death of your mother, of our flight to New Zealand, our experiments, the Dodans, and then turning to him, as we saw the Martian moon rise in ruddy fullness far away over the hill of _Tiniti_, I said, searchingly: 'Chapman, you remember Martha? How beautiful and good she was! I have kept one long, sad, and still deathless hope in my repining heart. I shall see her again! It must be!
I have felt so certain of this that no argument, no appeal to reason, can drive away the keen sense of its realization. Have you seen her on Mars amongst the thousands you have met, and is there on this entrancing orb any other place than the Hill of the Phosphori, for the disembodied of other worlds to enter this new world?
”Chapman smiled. 'Yes,' he answered, 'I remember your wife very well. I could pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet in the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion, and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; it may yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accounts told me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at different points; many indeed have been received near Scandor, and on one or two occasions the prehistoric peoples, the little strong men of the mountains and the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious practices, not to say superst.i.tion. But look, how fair the night has become.'
”The landscape about us was wonderfully illuminated by the two satellites, Deimos and Phobos, which, as you well know, were made known to astronomers on the earth by Prof. Asaph Hall in 1877. What a marvellous spectacle they presented, moving almost sensibly at their differing rates of revolution through a sky sown with stellar lights.
The combined lights of these singular bodies surpa.s.sed the light of our terrestrial moon, by reason of their closeness to the surface of Mars, while the more rapid motion of the inner satellite causes the most weird and beautiful changes of effect in the nocturnal glory they both lend to the Martian life.
”We were sailing in a broad river-like ca.n.a.l, perhaps one mile or more wide. On all sides the undulating ground, covered with cultivation, varied with thick patches of trees, with here and there s.h.i.+ning lights from villages and isolated homes, carried the eye onward to a rising hill country, beyond which, again, silhouetted against the s.h.i.+ning sky where Phobos began to rise mountain tops were just discernible.
”Deimos, the outer moon, was already s.h.i.+ning, and its pale, sick light imparted a peculiar blueness impossible to describe upon all surfaces it touched. Here was the phenomenon we witnessed with increasing pleasure.
Phobos was emerging from a cloud and its yellow rays possessing a greater illuminating power, mingled suddenly with the blue and spectral beams of Deimos and the land thus visited by the complimentary flood of light from these twin luminaries seemed suddenly dipped in silver. A beautiful white light, most unreal, as you mortals might say, fell on tree and water, cliff, hill, and villages. The effect was not unlike that instant in photography when a developing plate shows the outlines of its objects in dazzling silver before the half tints are added, and the image fades away into indistinguishable shadow.
”It was a print in silver, and while we gazed in mute astonishment the sharp shadows changed their position as Phobos, racing through the zenith, changed the inclination of its incident beams. The effect was indescribable. I walked the deck in an agitation of wonder and delight.
Chapman, to whom the novelties of this Martian life were still wonderful, followed me, and was the first to speak.
”'Dodd, you know that the strangest thing about this whole place is your body. It's body all right enough, but I can't quite understand what sort of a body it is. It hurts in a way, and is pleased in a way, but it seems a better made affair in texture and parts than anything we possessed on earth. Exertion is so easy.'
”'Well, Chapman,' I answered, while my eyes rested on the water, through which an approaching barge rose like a vessel of frosted or burnished white metal, 'we were taught on the earth that, with gravitation reduced one-half, the same weight on Mars would seem only half as heavy as on the earth, and that the effort which there carried us eight feet would here send us sixteen.'
”'It is true,' returned Chapman, 'but that doesn't explain everything.