craft went slipping by.

That silence was more than I could stand. It was against all sea
courtesies, and the last chance of learning where I was passing away.
So, angrily the paddle was snatched from the canoe bottom, and roaring
out again--

"Stop, I say, you d----- lubber, stop, or by all the gods I will
make you!" I plunged the paddle into the water and shot my little
craft slantingly across the stream to intercept the newcomer. A single
stroke sent me into mid-stream, a second brought me within touch of that
strange craft. It was a flat raft, undoubtedly, though so disguised
by flowers and silk trailers that its shape was difficult to make out.
In the centre was a chair of ceremony bedecked with greenery and great
pale buds, hardly yet withered--oh, where had I seen such a chair and
such a raft before?

And the riddle did not long remain unanswered. Upon that seat, as I
swept up alongside and laid a sunburnt hand upon its edge, was a girl,
and another look told me she was dead!

Such a sweet, pallid, Martian maid, her fair head lolling back against the
rear of the chair and gently moving to and fro with the rise and fall of
her craft. Her face in the pale light of the evening like carved ivory,
and not less passionless and still; her arms bare, and her poor fingers
still closed in her lap upon the beautiful buds they had put into them.
I fairly gasped with amazement at the dreadful sweetness of that
solitary lady, and could hardly believe she was really a corpse! But,
alas! there was no doubt of it, and I stared at her, half in admiration
and half in fear; noting how the last sunset flush lent a hectic beauty