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