With the new morning came fresh energy and a spasm of conscience as I
thought of poor Heru and the shabby sort of rescuer I was to lie about
with these pretty triflers while she remained in peril.

So I had a bath and a swim, a breakfast, and, to my shame be it
acknowledged, a sort of farewell merry-go-round dance on the yellow
sands with a dozen young persons all light-hearted as the morning,
beautiful as the flowers that bound their hair, and in the extremity of
statuesque attire.

Then at last I got them to give me a sea-going canoe, a stock of cakes and
fresh water; and with many parting injunctions how to find the Woodman
trail, since I would not listen to reason and lie all the rest of my
life with them in the sunshine, they pushed me off on my lonely voyage.

"Over the blue waters!" they shouted in chorus as I dipped my paddle into
the diamond-crested wavelets. "Six hours, adventurous stranger, with the
sun behind you! Then into the broad river behind the yellow sand-bar.
But not the black northward river! Not the strong, black river, above
all things, stranger! For that is the River of the Dead, by which many
go but none come back. Goodbye!" And waving them adieu, I sternly turned
my eyes from delights behind and faced the fascination of perils in front.

In four hours (for the Martians had forgotten in their calculations that
my muscles were something better than theirs) I "rose" the further shore,
and then the question was, Where ran that westward river of theirs?

It turned out afterwards that, knowing nothing of their tides, I had
drifted much too far to northward, and consequently the coast had closed