Gulliver of Mars
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Edwin L. Arnold >> Gulliver of Mars
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16 GULLIVER OF MARS
by Edwin L. Arnold
Original Title: Lieut. Gulliver Jones
CHAPTER I
Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain, prosaic
lieutenant in the republican service have done the incredible
things here set out for the love of a woman--for a chimera
in female shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of woman-loveliness?
At times I tell myself I dare not: that you will laugh, and
cast me aside as a fabricator; and then again I pick up
my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write
it--the pallid splendour of that thing I loved, and won, and
lost is ever before me, and will not be forgotten. The tumult
of the struggle into which that vision led me still
throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the planet
I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction
which followed me back from the quest drowns all other
sounds in my ears! I must and will write--it relieves me;
read and believe as you list.
At the moment this story commences I was thinking of grill-
ed steak and tomatoes--steak crisp and brown on both sides,
and tomatoes red as a setting sun!
Much else though I have forgotten, THAT fact remains
as clear as the last sight of a well-remembered shore in the
mind of some wave-tossed traveller. And the occasion which
produced that prosaic thought was a night well calculated
to make one think of supper and fireside, though the one
might be frugal and the other lonely, and as I, Gulliver
Jones, the poor foresaid Navy lieutenant, with the honoured
stars of our Republic on my collar, and an undeserved
snub from those in authority rankling in my heart, picked
my way homeward by a short cut through the dismalness
of a New York slum I longed for steak and stout, slippers
and a pipe, with all the pathetic keenness of a troubled
soul.
It was a wild, black kind of night, and the weirdness of
it showed up as I passed from light to light or crossed the
mouths of dim alleys leading Heaven knows to what infernal
dens of mystery and crime even in this latter-day city of ours.
The moon was up as far as the church steeples; large
vapoury clouds scudding across the sky between us and her,
and a strong, gusty wind, laden with big raindrops snarled
angrily round corners and sighed in the parapets like strange
voices talking about things not of human interest.
It made no difference to me, of course. New York in
this year of grace is not the place for the supernatural
be the time never so fit for witch-riding and the night wind
in the chimney-stacks sound never so much like the last
gurgling cries of throttled men. No! the world was very
matter-of-fact, and particularly so to me, a poor younger
son with five dollars in my purse by way of fortune, a packet
of unpaid bills in my breastpocket, and round my neck a
locket with a portrait therein of that dear buxom, freckled,
stub-nosed girl away in a little southern seaport town
whom I thought I loved with a magnificent affection. Gods!
I had not even touched the fringe of that affliction.
Thus sauntering along moodily, my chin on my chest and
much too absorbed in reflection to have any nice apprecia-
tion of what was happening about me, I was crossing in
front of a dilapidated block of houses, dating back nearly
to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I had a vague
consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping by me--
a thing like a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing
could be, and the next instant there was a thud and a
bump, a bump again, a half-stifled cry, and then a hurried
vision of some black carpeting that flapped and shook as
though all the winds of Eblis were in its folds, and then
apparently disgorged from its inmost recesses a little man.
Before my first start of half-amused surprise was over I
saw him by the flickering lamp-light clutch at space as
he tried to steady himself, stumble on the slippery curb,
and the next moment go down on the back of his head
with a most ugly thud.
Now I was not destitute of feeling, though it had been
my lot to see men die in many ways, and I ran over to that
motionless form without an idea that anything but an
ordinary accident had occurred. There he lay, silent and, as
it turned out afterwards, dead as a door-nail, the strangest
old fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in shabby sorrel-
coloured clothes of antique cut, with a long grey beard
upon his chin, pent-roof eyebrows, and a wizened complexion
so puckered and tanned by exposure to Heaven only knew
what weathers that it was impossible to guess his nationality.
I lifted him up out of the puddle of black blood in
which he was lying, and his head dropped back over my
arm as though it had been fixed to his body with string
alone. There was neither heart-beat nor breath in him, and
the last flicker of life faded out of that gaunt face even as
I watched. It was not altogether a pleasant situation, and
the only thing to do appeared to be to get the dead man
into proper care (though little good it could do him now!)
as speedily as possible. So, sending a chance passer-by
into the main street for a cab, I placed him into it as soon
as it came, and there being nobody else to go, got in with
him myself, telling the driver at the same time to take us to
the nearest hospital.
"Is this your rug, captain?" asked a bystander just as
we were driving off.
"Not mine," I answered somewhat roughly. "You don't
suppose I go about at this time of night with Turkey carpets
under my arm, do you? It belongs to this old chap here
who has just dropped out of the skies on to his head; chuck
it on top and shut the door!" And that rug, the very main-
spring of the startling things which followed, was thus care-
lessly thrown on to the carriage, and off we went.
Well, to be brief, I handed in that stark old traveller
from nowhere at the hospital, and as a matter of curiosity
sat in the waiting-room while they examined him. In five
minutes the house-surgeon on duty came in to see me, and
with a shake of his head said briefly--
"Gone, sir--clean gone! Broke his neck like a pipe-stem.
Most strange-looking man, and none of us can even guess at
his age. Not a friend of yours, I suppose?"
"Nothing whatever to do with me, sir. He slipped on
the pavement and fell in front of me just now, and as a mat-
ter of common charity I brought him in here. Were there
any means of identification on him?"
"None whatever," answered the doctor, taking out his
notebook and, as a matter of form, writing down my name
and address and a few brief particulars, "nothing what-
ever except this curious-looking bead hung round his neck
by a blackened thong of leather," and he handed me a thing
about as big as a filbert nut with a loop for suspension and
apparently of rock crystal, though so begrimed and dull its
nature was difficult to speak of with certainty. The bead was
of no seeming value and slipped unintentionally into my
waistcoat pocket as I chatted for a few minutes more with
the doctor, and then, shaking hands, I said goodbye, and
went back to the cab which was still waiting outside.
It was only on reaching home I noticed the hospital
porters had omitted to take the dead man's carpet from the
roof of the cab when they carried him in, and as the cab-
man did not care about driving back to the hospital with it,
and it could not well be left in the street, I somewhat
reluctantly carried it indoors with me.
Once in the shine of my own lamp and a cigar in my
mouth I had a closer look at that ancient piece of art work
from heaven, or the other place, only knows what ancient
loom.
A big, strong rug of faded Oriental colouring, it covered
half the floor of my sitting-room, the substance being of a
material more like camel's hair than anything else, and run-
ning across, when examined closely, were some dark fibres
so long and fine that surely they must have come from the
tail of Solomon's favourite black stallion itself. But the
strangest thing about that carpet was its pattern. It was
threadbare enough to all conscience in places, yet the design
still lived in solemn, age-wasted hues, and, as I dragged
it to my stove-front and spread it out, it seemed to me that
it was as much like a star map done by a scribe who had
lately recovered from delirium tremens as anything else. In
the centre appeared a round such as might be taken for
the sun, while here and there, "in the field," as heralds
say, were lesser orbs which from their size and position
could represent smaller worlds circling about it. Between
these orbs were dotted lines and arrow-heads of the oldest
form pointing in all directions, while all the intervening
spaces were filled up with woven characters half-way in
appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit. Round the
borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle
of an alphabet through which none but a wizard could
have forced a way in search of meaning.
Altogether, I thought as I kicked it out straight upon my
floor, it was a strange and not unhandsome article of
furniture--it would do nicely for the mess-room on the
Carolina, and if any representatives of yonder poor old fel-
low turned up tomorrow, why, I would give them a couple
of dollars for it. Little did I guess how dear it would be at
any price!
Meanwhile that steak was late, and now that the tempor-
ary excitement of the evening was wearing off I fell dull
again. What a dark, sodden world it was that frowned in on
me as I moved over to the window and opened it for the
benefit of the cool air, and how the wind howled about
the roof tops. How lonely I was! What a fool I had been to
ask for long leave and come ashore like this, to curry favour
with a set of stubborn dunderheads who cared nothing
for me--or Polly, and could not or would not understand how
important it was to the best interests of the Service that
I should get that promotion which alone would send me
back to her an eligible wooer! What a fool I was not to
have volunteered for some desperate service instead of wast-
ing time like this! Then at least life would have been
interesting; now it was dull as ditch-water, with wretched
vistas of stagnant waiting between now and that joyful
day when I could claim that dear, rosy-checked girl for
my own. What a fool I had been!
"I wish, I wish," I exclaimed, walking round the little
room, "I wish I were--"
While these unfinished exclamations were actually passing
my lips I chanced to cross that infernal mat, and it is
no more startling than true, but at my word a quiver of
expectation ran through that gaunt web--a rustle of antici-
pation filled its ancient fabric, and one frayed corner surged
up, and as I passed off its surface in my stride, the sentence
still unfinished on my lips, wrapped itself about my left leg
with extraordinary swiftness and so effectively that I nearly
fell into the arms of my landlady, who opened the door
at the moment and came in with a tray and the steak
and tomatoes mentioned more than once already.
It was the draught caused by the opening door, of course,
that had made the dead man's rug lift so strangely--
what else could it have been? I made this apology to the
good woman, and when she had set the table and closed
the door took another turn or two about my den, con-
tinuing as I did so my angry thoughts.
"Yes, yes," I said at last, returning to the stove and taking
my stand, hands in pockets, in front of it, "anything were
better than this, any enterprise however wild, any adventure
however desperate. Oh, I wish I were anywhere but here,
anywhere out of this redtape-ridden world of ours! I WISH
I WERE IN THE PLANET MARS!"
How can I describe what followed those luckless words?
Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered responsively
under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe
as though a sudden wind were shaking it. It humped up
in the middle so abruptly that I came down sitting with a
shock that numbed me for the moment. It threw me on
my back and billowed up round me as though I were in
the trough of a stormy sea. Quicker than I can write it
lapped a corner over and rolled me in its folds like a
chrysalis in a cocoon. I gave a wild yell and made one frantic
struggle, but it was too late. With the leathery strength
of a giant and the swiftness of an accomplished cigar-
roller covering a "core" with leaf, it swamped my efforts,
straightened my limbs, rolled me over, lapped me in fold
after fold till head and feet and everything were gone--
crushed life and breath back into my innermost being,
and then, with the last particle of consciousness, I felt myself
lifted from the floor, pass once round the room, and finally
shoot out, point foremost, into space through the open
window, and go up and up and up with a sound of rending
atmospheres that seemed to tear like riven silk in one pro-
longed shriek under my head, and to close up in thunder
astern until my reeling senses could stand it no longer. and
time and space and circumstances all lost their meaning
to me.
CHAPTER II
How long that wild rush lasted I have no means of judging.
It may have been an hour, a day, or many days, for
I was throughout in a state of suspended animation, but
presently my senses began to return and with them a sensa-
tion of lessening speed, a grateful relief to a heavy pressure
which had held my life crushed in its grasp, without destroy-
ing it completely. It was just that sort of sensation though
more keen which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller feels when
he is aware, without special perception, harbour is reached
and a voyage comes to an end. But in my case the slowing
down was for a long time comparative. Yet the sensation
served to revive my scattered senses, and just as I was
awakening to a lively sense of amazement, an incredible
doubt of my own emotions, and an eager desire to know
what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once
or twice, undulated lightly up and down, like a wood-
pecker flying from tree to tree, and then grounded, bows first,
rolled over several times, then steadied again, and, coming
at last to rest, the next minute the infernal rug opened, quiver-
ing along all its borders in its peculiar way, and humping
up in the middle shot me five feet into the air like a cat
tossed from a schoolboy's blanket.
As I turned over I had a dim vision of a clear light like
the shine of dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me.
Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people,
and a staid-looking individual with his back turned stood
nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing all those
sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties
of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was directly
in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized,
giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down
the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at
the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer
into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we
went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through
the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect
mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When
we had done the mass disentangled itself and I was able to
raise my head from the shoulder of someone on whom I
had fallen, lifting him, or her--which was it?--into a
sitting posture alongside of me at the same time, while
the others rose about us like wheat-stalks after a storm,
and edged shyly off, as well as they might.
Such a sleek, slim youth it was who sat up facing me,
with a flush of gentle surprise on his face, and dapper
hands that felt cautiously about his anatomy for injured
places. He looked so quaintly rueful yet withal so good-
tempered that I could not help bursting into laughter in
spite of my own amazement. Then he laughed too, a sedate,
musical chuckle, and said something incomprehensible, point-
ing at the same time to a cut upon my finger that was bleed-
ing a little. I shook my head, meaning thereby that it was
nothing, but the stranger with graceful solicitude took my
hand, and, after examining the hurt, deliberately tore a
strip of cloth from a bright yellow toga-like garment he
was wearing and bound the place up with a woman's
tenderness.
Meanwhile, as he ministered, there was time to look about
me. Where was I? It was not the Broadway; it was not
Staten Island on a Saturday afternoon. The night was just
over, and the sun on the point of rising. Yet it was still
shadowy all about, the air being marvellously tepid and
pleasant to the senses. Quaint, soft aromas like the breath of
a new world--the fragrance of unknown flowers, and the
dewy scent of never-trodden fields drifted to my nostrils;
and to my ears came a sound of laughter scarcely more
human than the murmur of the wind in the trees, and a
pretty undulating whisper as though a great concourse of
people were talking softly in their sleep. I gazed about
scarcely knowing how much of my senses or surroundings
were real and how much fanciful, until I presently be-
came aware the rosy twilight was broadening into day,
and under the increasing shine a strange scene was fashion-
ing itself.
At first it was an opal sea I looked on of mist, shot along
its upper surface with the rosy gold and pinks of dawn.
Then, as that soft, translucent lake ebbed, jutting hills came
through it, black and crimson, and as they seemed to
mount into the air other lower hills showed through the veil
with rounded forest knobs till at last the brightening day dis-
pelled the mist, and as the rosy-coloured gauzy fragments
went slowly floating away a wonderfully fair country lay at
my feet, with a broad sea glimmering in many arms and bays
in the distance beyond. It was all dim and unreal at first, the
mountains shadowy, the ocean unreal, the flowery fields be-
tween it and me vacant and shadowy.
Yet were they vacant? As my eyes cleared and day
brightened still more, and I turned my head this way and
that, it presently dawned upon me all the meadow cop-
pices and terraces northwards of where I lay, all that blue
and spacious ground I had thought to be bare and vacant,
were alive with a teeming city of booths and tents; now
I came to look more closely there was a whole town upon
the slope, built as might be in a night of boughs and
branches still unwithered, the streets and ways of that city in
the shadows thronged with expectant people moving in
groups and shifting to and fro in lively streams--chatting at
the stalls and clustering round the tent doors in soft, gauzy,
parti-coloured crowds in a way both fascinating and per-
plexing.
I stared about me like a child at its first pantomime,
dimly understanding all I saw was novel, but more allured
to the colour and life of the picture than concerned with its
exact meaning; and while I stared and turned my finger
was bandaged, and my new friend had been lisping away
to me without getting anything in turn but a shake of
the head. This made him thoughtful, and thereon followed
a curious incident which I cannot explain. I doubt even
whether you will believe it; but what am I to do in that
case? You have already accepted the episode of my com-
ing, or you would have shut the covers before arriving at
this page of my modest narrative, and this emboldens me.
I may strengthen my claim on your credulity by pointing
out the extraordinary marvels which science is teaching you
even on our own little world. To quote a single instance: If
any one had declared ten years ago that it would shortly
be practicable and easy for two persons to converse from
shore to shore across the Atlantic without any intervening
medium, he would have been laughed at as a possibly
amusing but certainly extravagant romancer. Yet that pic-
turesque lie of yesterday is amongst the accomplished facts
of today! Therefore I am encouraged to ask your in-
dulgence, in the name of your previous errors, for the
following and any other instances in which I may appear to
trifle with strict veracity. There is no such thing as the
impossible in our universe!
When my friendly companion found I could not under-
stand him, he looked serious for a minute or two, then
shortened his brilliant yellow toga, as though he had ar-
rived at some resolve, and knelt down directly in front
of me. He next took my face between his hands, and
putting his nose within an inch of mine, stared into my
eyes with all his might. At first I was inclined to laugh,
but before long the most curious sensations took hold of me.
They commenced with a thrill which passed all up my body,
and next all feeling save the consciousness of the
loud beating of my heart ceased. Then it seemed that boy's
eyes were inside my head and not outside, while along
with them an intangible something pervaded my brain.
The sensation at first was like the application of ether to
the skin--a cool, numbing emotion. It was followed by a
curious tingling feeling, as some dormant cells in my mind
answered to the thought-transfer, and were filled and fertil-
ised! My other brain-cells most distinctly felt the vitalising
of their companions, and for about a minute I experi-
enced extreme nausea and a headache such as comes
from over-study, though both passed swiftly off. I presume
that in the future we shall all obtain knowledge in this way.
The Professors of a later day will perhaps keep shops for
the sale of miscellaneous information, and we shall drop in
and be inflated with learning just as the bicyclist gets his tire
pumped up, or the motorist is recharged with electricity at
so much per unit. Examinations will then become matters of
capacity in the real meaning of that word, and we shall be
tempted to invest our pocket-money by advertisements of
"A cheap line in Astrology," "Try our double-strength, two-
minute course of Classics," "This is remnant day for Trig-
onometry and Metaphysics," and so on.
My friend did not get as far as that. With him the
process did not take more than a minute, but it was startling
in its results, and reduced me to an extraordinary state of
hypnotic receptibility. When it was over my instructor
tapped with a finger on my lips, uttering aloud as he did
so the words--
"Know none; know some; know little; know morel" again
and again; and the strangest part of it is that as he spoke I
did know at first a little, then more, and still more, by swift
accumulation, of his speech and meaning. In fact, when pre-
sently he suddenly laid a hand over my eyes and then let
go of my head with a pleasantly put question as to how
I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering him in his
own tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets from a
hair-dresser's chair, with a vague idea of looking round for
my hat and offering him his fee.
"My word, sir!" I said, in lisping Martian, as I pulled
down my cuffs and put my cravat straight, "that was a
quick process. I once heard of a man who learnt a language
in the moments he gave each day to having his boots
blacked; but this beats all. I trust I was a docile pupil?"
"Oh, fairly, sir," answered the soft, musical voice of the
strange being by me; "but your head is thick and your brain
tough. I could have taught another in half the time."
"Curiously enough," was my response, "those are almost
the very words with which my dear old tutor dismissed
me the morning I left college. Never mind, the thing is
done. Shall I pay you anything?"
"I do not understand."
"Any honorarium, then? Some people understand one
word and not the other." But the boy only shook his
head in answer.
Strangely enough, I was not greatly surprised all this
time either at the novelty of my whereabouts or at the
hypnotic instruction in a new language just received. Per-
haps it was because my head still spun too giddily with
that flight in the old rug for much thought; perhaps be-
cause I did not yet fully realise the thing that had happened.
But, anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others
in my narrative, must, alas! remain unexplained for the
moment. The rug, by the way, had completely disap-
peared, my friend comforting me on this score, however,
by saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one
whom he knew.
"We are very tidy people here, stranger," he said, "and
everything found Lying about goes back to the Palace store-
rooms. You will laugh to see the lumber there, for few of us
ever take the trouble to reclaim our property."
Heaven knows I was in no laughing mood when I saw
that enchanted web again!
When I had lain and watched the brightening scene for
a time, I got up, and having stretched and shaken my
clothes into some sort of order, we strolled down the hill
and joined the light-hearted crowds that twined across the
plain and through the streets of their city of booths. They
were the prettiest, daintiest folk ever eyes looked upon,
well-formed and like to us as could be in the main, but
slender and willowy, so dainty and light, both the men and
the women, so pretty of cheek and hair, so mild of aspect,
I felt, as I strode amongst them, I could have plucked them
like flowers and bound them up in bunches with my belt.
And yet somehow I liked them from the first minute; such a
happy, careless, light-hearted race, again I say, never was
seen before. There was not a stain of thought or care on a
single one of those white foreheads that eddied round me
under their peaked, blossom-like caps, the perpetual smile
their faces wore never suffered rebuke anywhere; their
very movements were graceful and slow, their laughter
was low and musical, there was an odour of friendly,
slothful happiness about them that made me admire whether
I would or no.
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