"Then he did a thing which makes me shudder to recount! He picked up a bar of metal half as long as my tentacle and began belaboring the machines from which I had pulled him a few weeks before! Quickly I stopped him, but something, perhaps the memory of how he had quieted the chugging machines, told me that this being could be trusted, and that he knew what he was doing. I--I took an awful chance. I squirm inside when I think of what might have happened if my trust in this Gamtlian had been misplaced. I gave him back the bar and allowed him to continue! "He stopped banging before he broke anything, and then he did a peculiar thing. He turned the outer edge of the round machines in there," Peetn indicated the valve-house, "so that the whole top moved around itself. Then the miracle happened." "Yes, go on," twittered the other one excitedly. "What did he do?" Peetn paused for a moment to gather weight, and then proceeded solemnly. "He opened the little machine from which I draw my drinking water, and a stream shot forth as thick as my tentacle and spattered all about the room!" He allowed himself to exaggerate. "An unbelievable quantity of water poured out in the short space of time that I watched it." The newcomers seemed slightly disappointed at the tale Peetn told, expecting to hear about gigantic super-Martian operations by the stranger from Gamtl, the Martian spirit-world. "Why that's just about what happened down at the colony, about the water, I mean," said one of them. "All of a sudden a flood came gushing out of the supply pipe and overflowed the pool and spreading out over the surrounding desert. A funny thing, too, was the way that the _merrl_ plants grew where the water had spread. When we left, our colony had a full fifteen days' stock, and all of it was gathered within a five-minute walk of the caves!" Peetn had a faraway look in his usually inexpressive, yellow eyes. A quiver was noticeable in his whistle as he replied. "Can this be the fulfilment of the old legend of Gamtl?" he asked. "Already we owe this alien much; our lives have been made easier to live. Who knows, with the awful burden of food-gathering and water-conserving lifted from our colony, we may be able to gain back some of the lost glory of our ancestors; may again be able to build water-stations and flash-guns! Yes, my friends, the day that stranger staggered into this water-station was the first day of the rebirth of Mars!" * * * * *