"You to fetch her back, and from Ar-hap's arms? My word, Sir Spirit, you must know some potent charms; or, what is less likely, my countrymen must have amazingly improved in pluck since I left them. Have you a great army at hand?" But I only shook my head, and, touching my sword, said that here was the only army coming to rescue Heru. Whereon the lady replied that she thought my valour did me more honour than my discretion. How did I propose to take the princess from her captors? "To tell the truth, damsel, that is a matter which will have to be left to your invention, or the kindness of such as you. I am here on a hare-brained errand, playing knight-errant in a way that shocks my common sense. But since the matter has gone so far I will see it through, or die in the attempt. Your bully lord shall either give me Heru, stock, lock, and block, or hang me from a yard-arm. But I would rather have the lady. Come, you will help me; and, as a beginning, if she is in yonder shanty get me speech with her." Poor Si's eyes dilated at the peril of the suggestion, and I saw the sluggish Martian nature at war against her better feelings. But presently the latter conquered. "I will try," she said. "What matter a few stripes more or less?" pointing to her rosy shoulders where red scars crisscross upon one another showed how the Martian girls fared in Ar-hap's palace when their novelty wore off. "I will try to help you; and if they kill me for it--why, that will not matter much." And forthwith in that blazing forenoon under the flickering shadow of the trees we put our heads together to see what we might do for Heru. It was not much for the moment. Try what we would that afternoon, I could not persuade those who had charge of the princess to let me even approach her place of imprisonment, but Si, as a woman, was more successful, actually seeing her for a few moments, and managed to whisper in her ear that I had come, the Spirit-with-the-gold-buttons-down-his front, afterwards describing to me in flowing Martian imagery--but doubtless not more highly coloured than poor Heru's emotion warranted--how delightedly that lady had received the news. Si also did me another service, presenting me to the porter's wife, who kept a kind of boarding-house at the gates of Ar-hap's palace for gentlemen and ladies with grievances. I had heard of lobbying before, and the presentation of petitions, though I had never indulged myself in the pastime; but the crowd of petitioners here, with petitions as wild and picturesque as their own motley appearances, was surely the strangest that ever gathered round a seat of supreme authority.