But those lazy people took the matter seriously enough. They led me
down green alleys arched over with huge melon-like leaves; they led me
along innumerable byways, making me peep and peer through the chequered
sunlight at ocean-growing craft, that had budded twelve months before,
already filling their moulds to the last inch of space. They told me
that when the growing process was sufficiently advanced, they loosened
the casing, and cutting a hole into the interior of each giant fruit,
scooped out all its seed, thereby checking more advance, and throwing
into the rind strength that would otherwise have gone to reproductiveness.
They said each fruit made two vessels, but the upper half was always best
and used for long salt-water journeys, the lower piece being but for
punting or fishing on their lakes. They cut them in half while still
green, scraped out the light remaining pulp when dry, and dragged them
down with the minimum of trouble, light as feathers, tenacious as steel
plate, and already in the form and fashion of dainty craft from five to
twenty feet in length, when the process was completed.

By the time we had explored this strangest of ship-building yards, and
I had seen last year's crop on the stocks being polished and fitted with
seats and gear, the sun was going down; and the Martian twilight, owing
to the comparative steepness of the little planet's sides, being brief,
we strolled back to the village, and there they gave me harbourage for the
night, ambrosial supper, and a deep draught of the wine of Forgetfulness,
under the gauzy spell of which the real and unreal melted into the vistas
of rosy oblivion, and I slept.




CHAPTER XI