Out Of The Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

it. The warmth from the water was oppressive; he removed his cap and jerkin,
and by so doing surprised the hross very much.
    He rose cautiously to a standing position and surveyed the Malacandrian prospect which had opened
on every side. Before and behind them lay the glittering lake, here studded with islands, and
there smiling uninterruptedly at the pale blue sky; the sun, he noticed, was almost immediately
overhead - they were in the Malacandrian tropics. At each end the lake vanished into more
complicated groupings of land and water, softly, featherily embossed in the purple giant weed.
But this marshy land or chain of archipelagoes, as he now beheld it, was bordered on each side
with jagged walls of the pale green mountains, which he could still hardly call mountains, so
tall they were, so gaunt, sharp, narrow and seemingly unbalanced. On the starboard they were
not more than a mile away and seemed divided from the water only by a narrow strip of forest;
to the left they were far more distant, though still impressive - perhaps seven miles from the
boat. They ran on each side of the watered country as far as he could see, both onwards and behind
them; he was sailing, in fact, on the flooded floor of a majestic canyon nearly ten miles wide
and of unknown length. Behind and sometimes above the mountain peaks he could make out in many
places great billowy piles of the rose-red substance which he had yesterday mistaken for cloud.
The mountains, in fact, seemed to have no fall of ground behind them; they were rather the
serrated bastion of immeasurable tablelands, higher in many places than themselves, which made
the Malacandrian horizon left and right as far as eye could reach. Only straight ahead and straight
astern was the planet cut with the vast gorge, which now appeared to him only as a rut or crack
in the tableland.
    He wondered what the cloud-like red masses were and endeavoured to ask by signs. The question
was, however, too particular for sign-language. The hross, with a wealth of gesticulation -
its arms or fore-limbs were more flexible than his and in quick motion almost whip-like -
made it clear that it supposed him to be asking about the high ground in general. It named
this harandra. The low, watered country, the gorge or canyon, appeared to be handramit. Ransom
grasped the implications, handra earth, harandra high earth, mountain, handramit, low earth,
valley. Highland and lowland, in fact. The peculiar importance of the distinction in Malacandrian
geography he learned later.
    By this time the hross had attained the end of its careful navigation. They were a couple of
miles from land when it suddenly ceased paddling and sat tense with its paddle poised in the
air; at the same moment the boat quivered and shot forward as if from a catapult. They had
apparently availed themselves of some current. In a few seconds they were racing forward at
some fifteen miles an hour and rising and falling on the strange, sharp, perpendicular waves
of Malacandra with a jerky motion quite unlike that of the choppiest sea that Ransom had ever
met on Earth. It reminded him of disastrous experiences on a trotting horse in the army; and
it was intensely disagreeable. He gripped the gunwale with his left hand and mopped his brow
with his right the damp warmth from the water had become very troublesome. He wondered if the
Malacandrian food, and still more the Malacandrian drink, were really digestible by a human
stomach. Thank heaven he was a good sailor! At least a fairly good sailor. At least -
Hastily he leaned over the side. Heat from blue water smote up to his face; in the depth he
thought he saw eels playing: long, silver eels. The worst happened not once but many times.
In his misery he remembered vividly the shame of being sick at a children's party ... long
ago in the star where he was born. He felt a similar shame now. It was not thus that the
first representative of hummity would choose