'Ah, there are strange tales afloat about that glass-house and the deadly plant it shelters,' the elder man declared. 'I have never seen it myself, but I have heard quite enough concerning it.'
The talk went on, and an hour or two slipped by; and then, just as the sun drew near the horizon, Malto, looking down, suddenly ventured an opinion that the wind below had subsided.
To test the point, they swept downwards, passed through several strata of dense cloud, and found, sure enough, that the guess had been correct. Below the cloud all was now almost as calm as above. There was scarcely breeze enough to carry them along.
They finally descended, just before sunset, in a gloomy, forbidding valley of rocks, where there were no signs of Martian inhabitants to be seen in any direction. They found, however, a small stream—a fact which surprised Malto—and this enabled them to quench their thirst. But how to obtain the wherewithal to satisfy their hunger was another and more hopeless matter.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ATTACKED IN THE DARK.
Presently Malto uttered an exclamation of surprise. He walked a short distance up the little watercourse and examined carefully some bushes growing on its banks. They seemed to excite both interest and pleasure.
'I know those plants,' he explained to his companions. 'They will provide us with a very fair and toothsome supper, and they also tell me a story. You wished to know where we had drifted to, and I can now tell you almost exactly.
'This is not the Great Desert—fortunately, we have not travelled far enough to reach that—but a tract lying upon its borders. We are in a region situated between the desert and the country of Iraynia, which,' he added slowly, and with some sadness in his tone, 'is my native land.'
'Oh!' said Alondra; 'so you are a native of Iraynia! I have heard a good deal about that country, though I have never been there. Was there not some great fuss or trouble there some years ago, before my father'——