Mars (Planet) -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space travelers -- Fiction
The girl looked on, partly astonished, partly amused, and partly
comprehending. Sometimes she smiled, and then the beauty of her face
became most captivating. Occasionally she burst into a cherry laugh when
the professor was executing some of his extraordinary gyrations before
her.
It was a marvelous exhibition of what the human intellect, when all its
powers are concentrated upon a single object, is capable of achieving.
It seemed to me, as I looked at the performance, that if all the races
of men, who had been stricken asunder at the foot of the Tower of Babel
by the miracle which made the tongues of each to speak a language
unknown to the others, could be brought together again at the foot of
the same tower, with all the advantages which thousands of years of
education had in the meantime imparted to them, they would be able,
without any miracle, to make themselves mutually understood.
And it was evident that an understanding was actually growing between
the girl and the professor. Their minds were plainly meeting, and when
both had become focused upon the same point, it was perfectly certain
that the object of the experiment would be attained.
Whenever the professor got from the girl an intelligent reply to his
pantomimic inquiries, or whenever he believed that he got such a reply,
it was immediately jotted down in the ever open note book which he
carried in his hand.
And then he would turn to us standing by, and with one hand on his
heart, and the other sweeping grandly through the air, would make a
profound bow and say:
"The young lady and I great progress make already. I have her words
comprehended. We shall wondrous mysteries solve. Jawohl! Wunderlich!
Make yourselves gentlemen easy. Of the human race the ancestral stem
have I here discovered."
Once I glanced over a page of his notebook and there I read this:
"Mars--Zahmor
"Copper--Hayez
"Sword--Anz
"I jump--Altesna
"I slay--Amoutha
"I cut off a head--Ksutaskofa
"I sleep--Zlcha
"I love--Levza"
When I saw this last entry I looked suspiciously at the professor.
Was he trying to make love without our knowing it to the beautiful
captive from Mars?
If so, I felt certain that he would get himself into difficulty. She had
made a deep impression upon every man in the flagship, and I knew that
there was more than one of the younger men who would promptly have
called him to account if they had suspected him of trying to learn from
those beautiful lips the words, "I love."
I pictured to myself the state of mind of Colonel Alonzo Jefferson Smith
if, in my place, he had glanced over the notebook and read what I had
read.
And then I thought of another handsome young fellow in the
flagship--Sydney Phillips--who, if mere actions and looks could make him
so, had become exceedingly devoted to this long lost and happily
recovered daughter of Eve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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