• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 301 0

one of these marvelous boats to float you, there is a sense of desolation in your grandeur which induces an unexpected humility and makes it very comforting to have near you the woman you loved long ago, even if you have decided that you no longer love her. As the days went on and we were held together in this close neighborliness, I became more and mere conscious of something in Eva that soothed me and sustained my cheerfulness. She was so quiet, so resigned, so friendly that I began to like her companionship exceedingly. In some way also which it is hard to define, I could understand her, and she could understand me better than the new woman Electra and the Mars missionary Zorlin. We all, however, seemed to be placed in a new relation, which was much more satisfactory than the relations of people in the old, noisy, restless nineteenth century. There was no effort among us to keep up conversation, or, as the ancient phrase put it, to “entertain” one another. Each of us occupied and amused himself or herself independently. When conversation became natural or useful we conversed, but there was no occasion for the two women to be silly or vain in order to attract the attention of the two men, Zorlin and myself; and, on the other hand, he and I did not feel called upon to put ourselves into an artificial mood in order to suit some fantastic requirement on their part as to what we ought to do for the purpose of pleasing them.

For the first time in my experience I enjoyed the pleasure of a quiet, healthy, unforced intercourse with other beings of my own kind, and with a guest from Mars who was so nearly like us.

Just as we came over Cape Hatteras we saw, by the aid of a strong field-glass, that Graemantle and Hammerfleet were following in our track; and almost at the same moment a threatening cyclone rose from the south, over the Gulf Stream. Our navigator avoided the cyclone with great skill. As everyone knows, storms of this kind, born of the wild union of cold air currents with tropic heat and moisture rising from the Gulf Stream, pass inward to the United States and follow a long parabolic curve through that country, darting out seaward again at some far north-eastward point. We turned our rudder and flew east over the sea, so as to keep clear of the edge of the enormous tempest as it whirled in over the land.

It was a magnificent and impressive sight, and so absorbed were we in gazing at it, that only at the moment when we were escaping the tail of the cyclone did we observe that Hammerfleet’s airship had sailed into the main body of it, was spun round like a top in the swirl of mist and wind, and then was broken and thrown down, a wreck, to the ocean below.

Although I was rather exultant over his disaster, I made a prayer for him, for I did not think that he could come out from the ruin alive, and certainly did not wish him any evil, either in this life or beyond it.

It turned out that he did escape whole; but we did not know of this until long afterwards.

At Cuba we stopped to renew our batteries, take in provisions, and rest. We found the island peaceful, happy, and prosperous under a limited Republican Government, and free from all nightmares of tyranny, either white or black. From there — believing that we were now quit of Hammerfleet, and having decided to convert our journey for a while into a tour of observation — we darted over sea and land down to the Amazon country. We were received at Para by a branch of the Darwinian Society, and, on their extensive plantations, were attended by apes whom they had developed to an extraordinary degree. These apes had arrived at a fair imitative proficiency in human language, were skilful in agriculture, under proper direction, and made very good servants for the rougher and simpler kind of housework, or for carrying baggage and the like.

One of the most interesting things in the Amazon region was the fact that large tracts of country had been sterilized by saturation with petroleum. This prevented excessive vegetable growth, and enabled the inhabitants, with the aid of