fixed with one instantaneous flash its impression on my mind forever,
there was no time to admire it. As we swept on to the lake's surface,
and a glance of light coming over a dip in the ice walls to the left lit
up the dead faces and half-withered flowers of my fellow-travellers with
startling distinctness, I noticed with a new terror at the lower end of
the lake towards which we were hurrying the water suddenly disappeared
in a cloud of frosty spray, and it was from thence came the low, ominous
rumble which had sounded up the ravine as we approached. It was the
fall, and beyond the stream dropped down glassy step after step, in
wild pools and rapids, through which no boat could live for a moment,
to a black cavern entrance, where it was swallowed up in eternal night.

I WOULD not go that way! With a yell such as those solitudes had
probably never heard since the planet was fashioned out of the void, I
seized the paddle again and struck out furiously from the main current,
with the result of postponing the crisis for a time, and finding myself
bobbing round towards the northern amphitheatre, where the light fell
clearest from planets overhead. It was like a great ballroom with
those constellations for tapers, and a ghastly crowd of Martians were
doing cotillions and waltzes all about me on their rafts as the troubled
water, icy cold and clear as glass, eddied us here and there in solemn
confusion. On the narrow beaches at the cliff foot were hundreds of
wrecked voyagers--the wall-flowers of that ghostly assembly-room--and
I went jostling and twirling round the circle as though looking for a
likely partner, until my brain spun and my heart was sick.

For twenty minutes Fate played with me, and then the deadly suck of the
stream got me down again close to where the water began to race for
the falls. I vowed savagely I would not go over them if it could be
helped, and struggled furiously.