Gulliver of Mars - Edwin Lester Linden Arnold (great novels of all time txt) 📗

It was the light touch of the boy An upon my shoulder which roused me. He was bending down, his pretty face full of concernful sympathy, and in a minute said—knowing nothing of my thoughts, of course,

“It is the wine, stranger, the pink oblivion, it sometimes makes one feel like that until enough is taken; you stopped just short of what you should have had, and the next cup would have been delight—I should have told you.”

“Ay,” I answered, glad he should think so, “it was the wine, no doubt; your quaint drink, sir, tangled up my senses for the moment, but they are clearer now, and I am eager past expression to learn a little more of this strange country I have wandered into.”

“I would rather,” said the boy, relapsing again into his state of kindly lethargy, “that you learnt things as you went, for talking is work, and work we hate, but today we are all new and fresh, and if ever you are to ask questions now is certainly the time. Come with me to the city yonder, and as we go I will answer the things you wish to know;” and I went with him, for I was humble and amazed, and, in truth, at that moment, had not a word to say for myself.

All the way from the plain where I had awoke to the walls of the city stood booths, drinking-places, and gardens divided by labyrinths of canals, and embowered in shrubberies that seemed coming into leaf and flower as we looked, so swift was the process of their growth. These waterways were covered with skiffs being pushed and rowed in every direction; the cheerful rowers calling to each other through the leafy screens separating one lane from another till the place was full of their happy chirruping. Every booth and way-side halting-place was thronged with these delicate and sprightly people, so friendly, so gracious, and withal so purposeless.

I began to think we should never reach the town itself, for first my guide would sit down on a green stream-bank, his feet a-dangle in the clear water, and bandy wit with a passing boat as though there were nothing else in the world to think of. And when I dragged him out of that, whispering in his ear, “The town, my dear boy! the town! I am all agape to see it,” he would saunter reluctantly to a booth a hundred yards further on and fall to eating strange confections or sipping coloured wines with chance acquaintances, till again I plucked him by the sleeve and said: “Seth, good comrade—was it not so you called your city just now?—take me to the gates, and I will be grateful to you,” then on again down a flowery lane, aimless and happy, wasting my time and his, with placid civility I was led by that simple guide.

Wherever we went the people stared at me, as well they might, as I walked through them overtopping the tallest by a head or more. The drinking-cups paused halfway to their mouths; the jests died away upon their lips; and the blinking eyes of the drinkers shone with a momentary sparkle of wonder as their minds reeled down those many-tinted floods to the realms of oblivion they loved.

I heard men whisper one to another, “Who is he?”; “Whence does he come?”; “Is he a tribute-taker?” as I strolled amongst them, my mind still so thrilled with doubt and wonder that to me they seemed hardly more than painted puppets, the vistas of their lovely glades and the ivory town beyond only the fancy of a dream, and their talk as incontinent as the babble of a stream.

Then happily, as I walked along with bent head brooding over the incredible thing that had happened, my companion’s shapely legs gave out, and with a sigh of fatigue he suggested we should take a skiff amongst the many lying about upon the margins and sail towards the town, “For,” said he, “the breeze blows thitherward, and ‘tis a shame to use one’s limbs when Nature will carry us for nothing!”

“But have you a boat of your own hereabouts?” I queried; “for to tell the truth I came from home myself somewhat poorly provided with means to buy or barter, and if your purse be not heavier than mine we must still do as poor men do.”

“Oh!” said An, “there is no need to think of that, no one here to hire or hire of; we will just take the first skiff we see that suits us.”

“And what if the owner should come along and find his boat gone?”

“Why, what should he do but take the next along the bank, and the master of that the next again—how else could it be?” said the Martian, and shrugging my shoulders, for I was in no great mood to argue, we went down to the waterway, through a thicket of budding trees underlaid with a carpet of small red flowers filling the air with a scent of honey, and soon found a diminutive craft pulled up on the bank. There were some dainty cloaks and wraps in it which An took out and laid under a tree. But first he felt in the pouch of one for a sweetmeat which his fine nostrils, acute as a squirrel’s, told him was there, and taking the lump out bit a piece from it, afterwards replacing it in the owner’s pocket with the frankest simplicity.

Then we pushed off, hoisted the slender mast, set the smallest lug-sail that ever a sailor smiled at, and, myself at the helm, and that golden youth amidships, away we drifted under thickets of drooping canes tasselled with yellow catkin-flowers, up the blue alley of the water into the broader open river beyond with its rapid flow and crowding boats, the white city front now towering clear before us.

The air was full of sunshine and merry voices; birds were singing, trees were budding; only my heart was heavy, my mind confused. Yet why should I be sad, I said to myself presently? Life beat in my pulses; what had I to fear? This world I had tumbled into was new and strange, no doubt, but tomorrow it would be old and familiar; it discredited my manhood to sit brow-bent like that, so with an effort I roused myself.

“Old chap!” I said to my companion, as he sat astride of a thwart slowly chewing something sticky and eyeing me out of the corner of his eyes with vapid wonder, “tell me something of this land of yours, or something about yourself—which reminds me I have a question to ask. It is a bit delicate, but you look a sensible sort of fellow, and will take no offence. The fact is, I have noticed as we came along half your population dresses in all the colours of the rainbow—‘fancy suitings’ our tailors could call it at home—and this half of the census are undoubtedly men and women. The rub is that the other half, to which you belong, all dress alike in YELLOW, and I will be fired from the biggest gun on the Carolina’s main deck if I can tell what sex you belong to! I took you for a boy in the beginning, and the way you closed with the idea of having a drink with me seemed to show I was dead on the right course. Then a little later on I heard you and a friend abusing our sex from an outside point of view in a way which was very disconcerting. This, and some other things, have set me all abroad again, and as fate seems determined to make us chums for this voyage—why—well, frankly, I should be glad to know if you be boy or girl? If you are as I am, no more nor less then—for I like you—there’s my hand in comradeship. If you are otherwise, as those sleek outlines seem to promise—why, here’s my hand again! But man or woman you must be—come, which is it?”

If I had been perplexed before, to watch that boy now was more curious than ever. He drew back from me with a show of wounded dignity, then bit his lips, and sighed, and stared, and frowned. “Come,” I said laughingly, “speak! it engenders ambiguity to be so ambiguous of gender! ‘Tis no great matter, yes or no, a plain answer will set us fairly in our friendship; if it is comrade, then comrade let it be; if maid, why, I shall not quarrel with that, though it cost me a likely messmate.”

“You mock me.”

“Not I, I never mocked any one.”

“And does my robe tell you nothing?”

“Nothing so much; a yellow tunic and becoming enough, but nothing about it to hang a deduction on. Come! Are you a girl, after all?”

“I do not count myself a girl.”

“Why, then, you are the most blooming boy that ever eyes were set upon; and though ‘tis with some tinge of regret, yet cheerfully I welcome you into the ranks of manhood.”

“I hate your manhood, send it after the maidhood; it fits me just as badly.”

“But An, be reasonable; man or maid you must be.”

“Must be; why?”

“Why?” Was ever such a question put to a sane mortal before? I stared at that ambiguous thing before me, and then, a little wroth to be played with, growled out something about Martians being all drunk or mad.

“‘Tis you yourself are one or other,” said that individual, by this time pink