Having discovered that at least one of these creatures could speak at least one word of the Amtorian language with which I was familiar, I sought to delve farther in the hope that I might ascertain the purpose for which they had captured us.

"Why have you seized us?" I inquired of the brute that had spoken that single word.

He looked at me in surprise, and those near enough to have overheard my question commenced to laugh and repeat it. Their laugh is far from light, airy, or reassuring. They bare their teeth in a grimace and emit a sound that is for all the world like the retching of mal de mer, and there is no laughter in their eyes. It took quite a stretch of my imagination to identify this as laughter.

"Albargan not know?" asked the jong. Albargan is, literally, no-hair-man, or without-hair-man, otherwise, hairless man.

"I do not know," I replied. "We were not harming you. We were searching for the sea coast where our people are."

"Albargan find out soon," and then he laughed again.

I tried to think of some way to bribe him into letting us go; but inasmuch as he had thrown away as useless the only things of value that we possessed, it seemed rather hopeless.

"Tell me what you want most," I suggested, "and perhaps I can get it for you if you will take us to the coast."

"We have what we want," he replied, and that answer made them all laugh.

I was walking close to Duare now, and she looked up at me with a hopeless expression. "I am afraid we are in for it," she said.

"It is all my fault. If I had had brains enough to find the ocean this would never have happened."

"Don't blame yourself. No one could have done more to protect and save me than you have. Please do not think that I do not appreciate it."

That was a lot for Duare to say, and it was like a ray of sunshine in the gloom of my despondency. That is a simile entirely earthly, for there is no sunshine upon Venus. The relative proximity of the sun lights up the inner cloud envelope brilliantly, but it is a diffused light that casts no well defined shadows nor produces contrasting highlights. There is an all pervading glow from above that blends with the perpetual light emanations from the soil, and the resultant scene is that of a soft and beautiful 

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