It was not very long--for the approach came swiftly--before I was able to guess that it consisted of a long column of creatures similar to her whom I had first met. They stretched for half a furlong in mid-air, advancing at a rapid trot, and as they came nearer I recalled their mode of conversing, and tried to adjust my mind, to get, if possible, into sympathy with them. After a time I succeeded,--at least in hearing their minds, though they did not respond. I suppose that this was because they were all thinking as one, for normally I found it impossible to establish conversation in this way, except by mutual willingness. I found that these creatures, who had no use for articulate speech, and to whom sound was an outrage, possessed at once a finer music and a higher poetry than our clumsier arts had even reached out to imagine. For they made the music in their minds, or recited it, if it had been composed earlier, and its notes, that rose and fell, were the very thoughts that inspired it. It was now a marching chant, and a war-song of a kind, as I heard it,-- “We have offered our lives on the palm of one hand, (Is it Wrong that hath willed? Is it God Who hath planned?) To be taken and lost at our Leaders’ command. We who are but God’s thought----” So far I followed it, and then the unison broke, for they perceived me, and doubted. Nothing more of their thoughts could I learn till they had reached the spot where I sat, and were filing past it. I saw that they were in all respects similar to the one with whom I had been first acquainted, except that the fur of each was trimmed or patterned in a distinctive manner, until, when the first score had passed, there came a group of five who had no such marks upon them, but were in that, and in all other respects, like the one I first met. Of these, one detached herself from the group and came toward me, while the others passed onward. I had learnt enough of their conversing to make my mind at once blank and receptive to receive her question. I say “her,” not because these creatures showed any divergencies of form to indicate a bi-sexual species, but because the slim bodies gave me an impression of femininity, which makes “it” an inadequate pronoun. She asked,--“You bring a message? We have received it already, but I should like to hear it from you.” I replied, “It is this, ‘_I could do nothing. She is in the fifth killing-pen on the left. There is no watch on the higher side, and it can be climbed with little peril. The weapons are not guarded, but the pens are. Bring all you can, except those who pass the fish forward. You must leave my body till the return, for the fault was mine._’” She replied, her mind an open curiosity concerning me as she did so, “You have remembered well. And she tells me that you saved her body, for which we are grateful.” I answered, “I thought I left her dead in the tunnel. Has she come here before me?”