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-