XXXV.

DOWN THE RIVER OF COMING DARK.

We were not pursued, or, if we were, we saw nothing of our pursuers. When the storm had all cleared away, we saw here and there people along the shore, but they did not offer to interfere with our flight. On the contrary, they seemed rather interested, and even pleased at our rate of speed. We believed that with the wedding ceremony of the Princess and Ferratoni the better nature of the race once more got the upper hand, and that they were satisfied to know that we were getting out of the country as rapidly as our skill and muscular development would permit.

Some mental communication to this effect must have passed between the court of the Lily Princess and that of her brother, the Prince of the Purple Fields, for when some twenty hours later (we had wound our watches now) we reached his palace, we found the Prince and his court assembled at the outer entrance, and our own beautiful propeller boat

waiting in readiness for the immediate continuance of our journey.

Noticing the assembly as we came on we had some doubts as to their intentions, but we did not hesitate, and we found the Prince and those about him gentle and kindly as before. Their willingness that we should continue our journey, however, was quite apparent, and as our boat contained all our belongings and had been fully provisioned by the Prince's household, there was no excuse for delay.

Indeed, we were as eager to get out of their halcyon vale as they were to have us, and we did not remain longer in it than it took for us to climb from one boat into the other and touch the button that started the propeller. The battery had not failed, and aided by the tide we were off with a speed that seemed to us like that of a torpedo boat. We turned then and waved our hands and called good-byes to the gentle Prince and those of his pleasant palace.

And so adieu to the land of my fancy-my isle of lost argosies and forgotten songs. One among us had found there the ideal he sought-life's perfect chord. For the others-the lives we had lived and the lives of those who had lived before us, had not fitted us for that Port of Dreams.

When or by

We would return to our own. what means we did not know-the way ahead seemed long and weary-but come what might, we

had resolved to reach once more those who waited beyond the cold desolation between, and with them to go back to the only life we knew, in a world of growth and change.

WE made time, now. We were not creeping upstream, delayed by slow-moving barges. We were going with the tide and all handicaps had been removed. In less than thirty hours, including all stops, we had covered the distance that it had taken us days to ascend, and camped once more in the violet fields above the rapids. I had taken an observation at this point, and by taking another now I was able from the position of the sun and a reference to my charts to establish the date and, approximately, the hour. My calculation showed that it was November the Ninth. Seven weeks had elapsed since our departure from the Billowcrest. It seemed as many ages.

The purple flowers that had welcomed us to the enchanted land were withered, but their leaves remained, and in every direction showed as a level carpet of green. Reaching the rapids we once more removed our boat from the water. The snow on the hillside was gone, but we trundled our craft down over the bare rock and shale without serious

difficulty, and launched it again in the swift current below. Neither was there any snow on the barren lands ahead as far as we could see, and it was not until some hours later that it began to show along the banks.

The ice, too, seemed entirely gone from the river, but as the snow deepened along the shores we knew we must ere long reach the point where the current plunged beneath the eternal barrier into that darksome passage by which so many of the Antarctic dead had found their way to the Land of the Silent Cold.

The walls of ice and snow on either side of us deepened rapidly. Soon we were sweeping through a chill canyon down whose glittering sides dashed crystal streams from the melting snow above. Here and there appeared places by which it seemed possible to ascend to the snow level, but no one as yet spoke of halting. It would mean the deserting of our boat, which three of us could hardly attempt to push up the homeward incline, and the bundling upon our backs of such supplies and comforts as we could carry, to toil with them across the drifted wastes that lay between us and the Billowcrest. And at the end of that journey—if we ever reached the end-lay the huge perpendicular wall down which we must still find our way. In fact, neither our prospect nor our surroundings were conducive