Produced by Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon, Joshua Hutchinson
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
"Well, what do you think of it, Mark?" asked Jack Darrow, as he laidaside a portion of a newspaper, covered with strange printedcharacters. "Great; isn't it?"
"You don't mean to tell me that you believe that preposterous story, doyou, Jack?" And Mark Sampson looked across the table at his companionin some astonishment.
"Oh, I don't know; it may be true," went on Jack, again picking up thepaper and gazing thoughtfully at it. "I wish it was."
"But think of it!" exclaimed Mark. "Why, if such a thing exists, and ifwe, or some one else, should attempt to bring all those precious stonesto this earth, it would revolutionize the diamond industry of theworld. It can't be true!"
"Well, here It is, in plain print. You can read it for yourself, as youknow the Martian language as well as I do. It states that a large fieldof 'Reonaris' was discovered on the moon near Mare Tranquilitatis (orTranquil Ocean, I suppose that could be translated), and that the menof Mars brought back some of the Reonaris with them. Here, read it, ifyou don't believe me."
"Oh, I believe you, all right—that is, I think you have translatedthat article as well as you can. But suppose you have made some error?We didn't have much time to study the language of Mars while we werethere, and we might make some mistake in the words. That article mightbe an account of a dog-fight on the red planet, instead of an accountof a trip to the moon and the discovery of a field of Reonaris; eh,Jack?"
"Of course, I'm likely to have made an error, for it isn't easy totranslate this stuff." And Jack gazed intently at the strangely printedpage, which was covered with characters not unlike Greek. "I may bewrong," went on the lad, "but you must remember that I translated someother articles in this paper, and Professor Henderson also translatedthem substantially as I did, and Professor Roumann agreed with him.There is Reonaris on the moon, and I wish we could go there and getsome."
"But maybe after you got the Reonaris it would turn out to be onlycommon crystals," objected Mark.
"No!" exclaimed Jack. "Reonaris is what the Martians call it in theirlanguage, and that means diamonds. I'm sure of it!"
"Well, I don't agree with you," declared the other lad.
"Don't be cranky and contrary," begged Jack.
"I'm not; but what's the use o