It was a huge beast as it loomed up against the glow, bigger than any mortal stag ever was--the kind of fellow-traveller no one would willingly accost, but even if I had wished to get out of its path I had no power to do so.
Closer and closer we came, one of us drifting helplessly, and the other swimming strongly for the islands.

When we were about a furlong apart the great beast seemed to change its course, mayhap it took the wreckage on which I floated for an outlying shoal, something on which it could rest a space in that long swim.

Be this as it may, the beast came hurtling down on me lip deep in the waves, a mighty brown head with pricked ears that flicked the water from them now and then, small bright eyes set far back, and wide palmated antlers on a mighty forehead, like the dead branches of a tree.

What that Martian mountain elk had hoped for can only be guessed, what he met with was a tangle of floating finery carrying a numbed traveller on it, and with a snort of disappointment he turned again.
It was a poor chance, but better than nothing, and as he turned I tried to throw a strand of silk I had unwound from the sodden mass over his branching tines.

Quick as thought the beast twisted his head aside and tossed his antlers so that the try was fruitless.