On cushions in the barge we reclined while our _slaans_ poled us along the streets. Tarrano was feeding sweets to Elza as though they were gay young lovers. Poor little Elza! She was frightened. Her face was a trifle pale, her lips set. But she, too, knew that we were wholly in Tarrano's power, and she made the best of the situation. Sometimes she would laugh gayly; but I could not miss the note of fear in it. The progress of our barge was slow. Boats clustered around us, their occupants pelting us with flowers. A deluge spray of perfume was turned on us--a heavy, exotic scent, almost cloying. It lay redolent on our garments for hours. Presently Tarrano gave us masks. And long robes for Maida and Elza to cover the gay holiday dresses they were wearing. At the edge of the city a canal had been dug through the hillside. We passed slowly through it, under archways of dangling colored lights, around a sharp bend and came upon the Water Festival. And--with impending tragedy for the moment forgotten--I gazed for this first time at such a scene of pleasure and beauty as I had never even imagined. CHAPTER XXI _Love, Music--and a Warning_ The Water Festival! As our barge rounded a bend in the canal, under the archways of dangling colored lights, the festival spread before us. Involuntarily I stood up to gaze. The canal opened into an artificial lake--a broad circular sheet of water some 800 _helans_[17] in diameter. Sloping hillsides enclosed the lake--hillsides which I saw were terraced with huge banks of seats in tiers one above the other. [Footnote 17: About 4,000 feet.] The seats were crowded with people. White ribbons of roads gave access from the neighboring countryside for land-surface vehicles, and there were stages for the accommodation of air-craft. The rural populace, and people from the nearby smaller cities, had gathered to view this national spectacle--a million or more of them probably, with their individual electrical telescopes for direct distant vision, and small pocket mirrors for that which otherwise would be hidden. A million people at least, seated here on these gigantic spreading tiers. The lake itself was thus the stage as it were, of a tremendous arena. Tiny artificial islands dotted the lake--a hundred of them. Islands, some no more than a few feet broad; some larger, and in the center of the lake, one quite large. All the islands were covered with luxuriant vegetation. The tiny ones were no more than shadowed nooks of leaves and flowers. Between the islands, crooked lanes of the placid water wended their way in and out, broadening into occasional lagoons. Bridges crossed the lanes; archways of lights spanned them at intervals.