“Well, N’York was never like dis,” said Jim, dissatisfiedly. “I likes to see plenty of folks aroun’, and here ain’t nobody ’cept you an’ me an’ de guy what you give de hidin’ to: Say, boss, you polish him off great! Ef you’d landed on his jaw, he’d be takin’ de count yet! Me, I was rootin’ fur yer all de time!”
Jack nodded appreciatively, and then cast a glance over the landscape.
It was level and interminable: the horizon as distant as if from the top of a mountain: the arc of the ring passed out of sight beneath it on either hand. There were tracts of forest, the windings of a mighty river, expanding here and there into gleaming lakes: in another direction a chain of mountains sparkling as if formed of crystal. Flowers grew everywhere, and the color on all sides was almost as bright as if objects emitted rather than reflected light. But no sign of human life was visible: this planet, many times the size of our earth seemed to be unchanged from its primeval state.
“Robinson Crusoe thought he was lonely on his desert island,” muttered Jack. “What would he have said to a desert world! Eight hundred million miles from home, and not so much as a red Indian in sight! And my darling girl abandoned in such a place! Can it be possible that scoundrel really met her? Surely Mary Faust would have guarded her as she did me! I must find the trail at once!”
Jim had been regarding him attentively. “Where did yer get de glad rags, boss?” he inquired. “Seems like yer was togged out in fire!”
Jack cast a glance over himself, and emitted a grunt of astonishment. His whole body except for his hands, and presumably his face was attired in little flickering flames, forming a complete suit or tunic and leggings, of becoming hues of green and brown. The flames, not more than half an inch in length, evidently proceeded from his flesh, though with no unpleasant effects—quite the contrary. Nor was this all. The herbage on which he stood was similarly on fire; the holes of the trees were alive with inner flames, and their leaves were individual tongues of colored fire. The very rocks that pushed up from the ground sparkled with an interior glow: and yet, in this universal conflagration, nothing was consumed, but only rendered brighter and more beautiful. Jim alone stood there unchanged, in what looked to be the identical suit of threadbare jacket and breeches he had worn in New York.
“Of course, Jim,” said Jack after some thought, “we should expect things to be different on a different planet. We know that physical life is a sort of combustion, and here we can see it as well as know it—that’s all. This is the way Saturnians dress, I suppose. But I wish we could see a few of them!”
“We’d best be humpin’ oursel’s, den,” Jim suggested. “What’s de course?”
“Suppose we try going west?”
This good young-American resolution was however delayed by the difficulty that there was no apparent way of determining which direction west was. The sun—where was the sun—too remote to be of avail; one could not say even whether it were day or night. Saturn, with its rings, lighted itself!