The Project Gutenberg eBook of Peril of the Blue World

Therefore, I, Shapplo with the Long Proboscis, interpreter to the First
Expedition, have been commissioned by the crew of the Earth Rocket to
tell the full and unexpurgated story of our adventures on Earth, and
the reasons for our contention that the planet must forever remain
closed to Martian colonization.

I will pass over the details of the interplanetary voyage, which
consists chiefly of scientific data and figures not calculated to
interest the average reader. Suffice it to say that the Earth Rocket,
with the twenty-three members of its crew alive and intact, came safely
to rest on the crest of a gently-swelling hill in the midst of an
island in the northern hemisphere of Earth. This island is located by
our astronomers as 1-2-2-(1) North, but is called by its inhabitants,
Engelond or Britannia.

We landed in the southern portion of this island, on a hilltop as
before stated; and, after conditioning our lungs and wearing gravity
belts against Earth's dense atmosphere and correspondingly strong
gravity, we threw open the exit ports and trooped out, led by our
captain, Tutwa with the Crooked Ears, our second in command, Ikleek
from Gnoxwid, and myself; also, immediately behind us, came our
zoologist, Zesmo Who Fell in the Canal when an Infant.

The first thing noticed by all of us, but particularly by Zesmo Who
Fell in the Canal, was the riparian-appearing profusion of Earthly
life which at once displayed itself. Plants of every size and shape,
invariably green in color but bearing blossoms of all shades, covered
the hillside, and all of the rolling landscape that was visible
from our point of vantage. Among the leaves and flowers fluttered
bright-colored objects which we soon perceived, with great surprise, to
be living creatures.

"What a planet!" exclaimed the captain philosophically. "Even the lower
animals can fly; what then may we expect of the higher creatures, the
intelligent races?"

"You'll notice, however," said Zesmo, who had in the meantime succeeded
in capturing one of these aerial dancers, "that they fly entirely

  P 1/11 next