A True Story (1.10-1.13)

For seven days and seven nights we sailed the air, and on the eighth day we saw a great country in it, resembling an island, bright and round and shining with a great light. Running in there and anchoring, we went ashore, and on investigating found that the land was inhabited and cultivated. By day nothing was in sight from the place, but as night came on we began to see many other islands hard by, some larger, some smaller, and they were like fire in colour. We also saw another country below, with cities in it and rivers and seas and forests and mountains, This we inferred to be our own world.

We determined to go still further inland, but we met what they call the Vulture Dragoons, and were arrested. These are men riding on large

“And if I succeed,” said he, “in the war which I am now making on the people of the sun, you shall lead the happiest of lives with me.” We asked whothe enemy were, and what the quarrel was about. “Phaethon,’ said he, “the king of the inhabitants of the sun—for it is inhabited, [*]

That night we stopped there as his guests, but at daybreak we arose and took our posts, for the scouts signalled that the enemy was near. The number of our army was a hundred thousand, apart from the porters, the engineers, the infantry and the foreign allies; of this total, eighty thousand were Vulture Dragoons and twenty thousand Grassplumeriders, The Grassplume is also a very large bird, which instead-of plumage is all shaggy with grass and has wings very like lettuce-leaves. Next to these the Millet-shooters and the Garlic-fighters were posted. Endymion also had allies who came from the Great Bear—thirty thousand Flea-archers and fifty thousand Volplaneurs. The Flea-archers ride on great fleas,