These alterations lasted but
a short time. Soon Chapman passed into stupor, and then death
supervened, and the strange and seldom known circumstance of death among
the supernaturals in Mars was realized.
"Alca kept the body of Chapman, which would be sent back to the City of
Light, and cremated in the Temple of Glorification--which I have not
seen. He intended to accompany it. He sent me on to Scandor. I had now
learned enough of the Martian language to speak, imperfectly. That
mental facility, which is the amazing and most wonderful thing in Mars,
was perhaps more slowly roused in me. But daily I became known, and more
alert and inflamed with thought and the eager intuition of the Martians.
"We started from the great Quarry of Sinsi, and I was alone with the
Martians on the porcelain boat, now made by this tragic fate the
ambassador from the City of Light to the Council in Scandor.
"The sterile, sinister and yet marvellous region of lava beds, dikes and
conic craters suddenly was passed, and the canal moved into the huge
forest lands of the Ribi wood.
"This is a beautiful land. Mountain ranges rising from four to six
thousand feet cross it, holding broad valleys and plains, or elevated
plateaus between them; lakes and rivers pass through it, and villages
and towns with a mixed population of the supernaturals and the
prehistorics are frequent. The canals cross the great region in many
directions. The trunk line I followed was carried up and down by systems
of locks of astounding magnitude and perfection.
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