Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis [25]
The creature suddenly turned and began walking away. A disappointment like despair smote Ransom.
"Come back," he shouted in English. The thing turned, spread out its arms and spoke again in its unintelligible language; then it resumed its progress. It had not gone more than twenty yards away when Ransom saw it stoop down and pick something up. It returned. In its hand (he was already thinking of its webbed fore-paw as a hand) it was carrying what appeared to be a shell - the shell of some oyster-like creature, but rounder and more deeply domed. It dipped the shell in the lake and raised it full of water. Then it held the shell to its own middle and seemed to be pouring something into the water. Ransom thought with disgust that it was urinating in the shell. Then he realized that the protuberances on the creature's belly were not genital organs nor organs at all; it was wearing a kind of girdle hung with various pouch-like objects, and it was adding a few drops of liquid from one of these to the water in the shell. This done it raised the shell to its black lips and drank - not throwing back its head like a man but bowing it and sucking like a horse. When it had finished it raffled the shell and once again added a few drops from the receptacle - it seemed to be some kind of skin bottle - at its waist. Supporting the shell in its two arms, it extended them towards Ransom. The intention was unmistakable. Hesitantly, almost shyly, he advanced and took the cup. His fingertips touched the webbed membrance of the creature's paws and an indescribable thrill of mingled attraction and repulsion ran through him; then he drank. Whatever had been added to the water was plainly alcoholic; he had never enjoyed a drink so much.
"Thank you," he said in English. "Thank you very much."
The creature struck itself on the chest and made a noise. Ransom did not at first realize what it meant. Then he saw that it was trying to teach him its name - presumably the name of the species.
"Hross," it said, "hross," and flapped itself.
"Hross," repeated Ransom, and pointed at it; then "Man," and struck his own chest.
"Hma - hma - hman," imitated the hross. It picked up a handful of earth, where earth appeared between weed and water at the bank of the lake.
"Handra," it said. Ransom repeated the word. Then an idea occurred to him.
"Malacandra?" he said in an inquiring voice. The hross rolled its eyes and waved its arms, obviously in an effort to indicate the whole landscape. Ransom was getting on well. Handra was earth the element; Malacandra the 'earth' or planet as a whole. Soon he would find out what Malac meant. In the meantime 'H disappears after C' he noted, and made his first step in Malacandrian phonetics. The hross was now trying to teach him the meaning of handramit. He recognized the root handra- again (and noted 'They have suffixes as well as prefixes'), but this time he could make nothing of the hross's gestures, and remained ignorant what a handramit might be. He took the initiative by opening his mouth, pointing to it and going through the pantomime of eating. The Malacandrian word for food or eat which he got in return proved to contain consonants unreproducible by a human mouth, and Ransom, continuing the pantomime, tried to explain that his interest was practical as well as philological. The hross understood him, though he took some time to understand from its gestures that it was inviting him to follow it. In the end, he did so.
It took him only as far as where it had got the shell, and here, to his not very reasonable astonishment, Ransom found that a kind of boat was moored. Man-like, when he saw the artefact he felt more certain of the hross's rationality. He even valued the creature the more because the boat, allowing for the