i/-^ 
 
 GLENN 
 
 NEGIEV 
 
 ARTHUR COWELL, 
 
 70, WESTBY STREET, 
 LYTHA^A 
 
DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FRIENDS OF 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Glena Negley 
 
THE FIRST MEN IN 
 THE MOON 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 in 2010 witii funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/firstmeninmooOOwell 
 
" I was progressing in great leaps and bounds 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
The First Men 
 in the Moon 
 
 By 
 
 H. G. Wells 
 
 Author of "Tales of Space and Time," 
 
 " Love and Mr. Lewisham," 
 
 and " Anticipations " 
 
 "Three thousand stadia from the earth to the 
 moon. . , . Marvel not, my comrade, if I appear 
 talking to you on super-terrestrial and aerial topics. 
 The long and the short of the matter is that I am 
 running over the order of a Journey I have lately 
 made." — Lucian's Icaromenippus 
 
 London 
 George Newnes, Limited 
 
 Southampton Street, Strand* 
 1901 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XL 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR AT LYMPNE 
 
 THE B'IRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 
 
 INSIDE THE SPHERE 
 
 THE JOURNEY TO THE MOON 
 
 THE LANDING ON THE MOON 
 
 SUNRISE ON THE MOON 
 
 A LUNAR MORNING 
 
 PROSPECTING BEGINS 
 
 LOST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 THE MOONCALF PASTURES 
 
 THE SELENITE's FACE . 
 
 MR. CAVOR MAKES SOME SUGGESTIONS 
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE 
 
 THE GIDDY BRIDGE 
 
 POINTS OF VIEW .... 
 
 THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE OF THE 
 BUTCHERS ..... 
 
 XVIII. IN THE SUNLIGHT 
 
 MOON 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 28 
 
 4T 
 
 54 
 61 
 
 70 
 77 
 85 
 92 
 107 
 
 132 
 
 140 
 
 152 
 161 
 178 
 
 191 
 207 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 XIX. MR. BEDFORD ALONE .... 
 
 XX. MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 
 
 XXI. MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 
 
 XXII. THE ASTONISHING COMMUNICATION OF MR 
 JULIUS WENDIGEE .... 
 
 XXIII. AN ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES FIRST 
 
 RECEIVED FROM MR. CAVOR 
 
 XXIV, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SELENITES 
 
 XXV. THE GRAND LUNAR .... 
 
 XXVI. THE LAST MESSAGE CAVOR SENT TO THE 
 EARTH 
 
 PAGE 
 
 221 
 238 
 
 249 
 
 271 
 
 277 
 289 
 316 
 
 340 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "i was progressing in great leaps and 
 Bounds" . . . . . 
 
 . Frontispiece 
 
 " He GESTICULATED WITH HIS HaNDS AND 
 
 Arms" ...... To face page 6 
 
 "I LOOKED BACK AT HIS RECEDING FiGURE " 
 
 "I SAT ACROSS THE EDGE OF THE MANHOLE 
 AND LOOKED DOWN INTO THE BLACK IN- 
 TERIOR" ..... 
 
 "We watched intensely" 
 
 "I realised my Leap had been too Violent" 
 
 "Insects," murmured Cavor, "Insects" 
 
 "There the Thing was, looking at Us" 
 
 "Bedford," he whispered, "there's a sort 
 of Light in front of Us " . 
 
 " The nearer I struggled, the more awfully 
 remote it seemed .... 
 
 "They carried Him into Darkness" . 
 
 The Grand Lunar .... 
 
 II 
 
 54 
 87 
 
 lOI 
 
 130 
 137 
 
 177 
 
 236 
 
 292 
 322 
 
THE FIRST MEN IN 
 THE MOON 
 
 MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR AT LYMPNE 
 
 As I sit down to write here amidst the 
 shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of 
 southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain 
 quality of astonishment that my participation 
 in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor 
 was, after all, the outcome of the purest acci- 
 dent. It might have been any one. I fell 
 into these things at a time when I thought 
 myself removed from the slightest possibility 
 of disturbing experiences. I had gone to 
 Lympne because I had imagined it the most 
 uneventful place in the world. " Here, at any 
 rate," said I, " I shall find peace and a chance 
 to work ! " 
 ' And this book is the sequel. So utterly at 
 
 A 
 
2 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 variance is Destiny with all the little plans of 
 men. 
 
 I may perhaps mention here that very re- 
 cently I had come an ugly cropper in certain 
 business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded 
 by all the circumstances of wealth, there is 
 a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can 
 admit, even, that to a certain extent my dis- 
 asters were conceivably of my own making. It 
 may be there are directions in which I have 
 some capacity, but the conduct of business 
 operations is not among these. But in those 
 days I was young, and my youth among other 
 objectionable forms took that of a pride in my 
 capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, 
 but the things that have happened to me have 
 rubbed something of the youth from my mind. 
 Whether they have brought any wisdom to 
 light below it is a more doubtful matter. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to go into the details 
 of the speculations that landed me at Lympne, 
 in Kent. Nowadays even about business trans- 
 actions there is a strong spice of adventure. 
 I took risks. In these things there is invari- 
 ably a certain amount of give and take, and it 
 fell to me finally to do the giving. Reluctantly 
 enough. Even when I had got out of every- 
 thing, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 3 
 
 malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming 
 sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have 
 only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to 
 me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to 
 write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my 
 living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, 
 and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a 
 vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook 
 me. In addition to my belief in my powers as 
 a business man, I had always in those days had 
 an idea that I was equal to writing a very good 
 play. It is not, I believe, a very uncommon 
 persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man 
 can do outside legitimate business transactions 
 that has such opulent possibilities, and very 
 probably that biased my opinion. I had, in- 
 deed, got into the habit of regarding this un- 
 written drama as a convenient little reserve 
 put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had 
 come and I set to work. 
 
 I soon discovered that writing a play was a 
 longer business than I had supposed ; at first 
 I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to 
 have a pied-a-terre while it was in hand that I 
 came to Lympne. I reckoned myself lucky in 
 getting that little bungalow. I got it on a 
 three years' agreement. I put in a few sticks 
 of furniture, and while the play was in hand 
 
4 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 I did my own cooking. My cooking would 
 have shocked Mrs. Bond. And yet, you know, 
 it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan 
 for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying- 
 pan for sausages and bacon — such was the 
 simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot 
 always be magnificent, but simplicity is always 
 a possible alternative. For the rest I laid in 
 an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and 
 a trustful baker came each day. It was not, 
 perhaps, in the style of Sybaris, but I have 
 had worse times. I was a little sorry for the 
 baker, who was a very decent man indeed, but 
 even for him I hoped. 
 
 Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place 
 is Lympne. It is in the clay part of Kent, and 
 my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea 
 cliff and stared across the flats of Romney 
 Marsh at the sea. In very wet weather the 
 place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard 
 that at times the postman used to traverse the 
 more succulent portions of his route with boards 
 upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but 
 I can quite imagine it. Outside the doors of 
 the few cottages and houses that make up the 
 present village big birch besoms are stuck, to 
 wipe off the worst of the clay, which will give 
 some idea of the texture of the district. I 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 5 
 
 doubt if the place would be there at all, if it 
 were not a fading memory of things gone for 
 ever. It was the big port of England in 
 Roman times, Portus Lemanus, and now the 
 sea is four miles away. All down the steep 
 hill are boulders and masses of Roman brick- 
 work, and from it old Watling Street, still 
 paved in places, starts like an arrow to the 
 north. I used to stand on the hill and think 
 of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives 
 and officials, the women and traders, the specu- 
 lators like myself, all the swarm and tumult 
 that came clanking in and out of the harbour. 
 And now just a few lumps of rubble on a 
 grassy slope, and a sheep or two — and me ! 
 And where the port had been were the levels 
 of the marsh, sweeping round in a broad curve 
 to distant Dungeness, and dotted here and 
 there with tree clumps and the church towers 
 of old mediaeval towns that are following 
 Lemanus now towards extinction. 
 
 That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one 
 of the finest views I have ever seen. I sup- 
 pose Dungeness was fifteen miles away ; it 
 lay like a raft on the sea, and further westward 
 were the hills by Hastings under the setting 
 sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, 
 sometimes they were faded and low, and often 
 
6 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 the drift of the weather took them clean out of 
 sight. And all the nearer parts of the marsh 
 were laced and lit by ditches and canals. 
 
 The window at which I worked looked over 
 the skyline of this crest, and it was from this 
 window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It 
 was just as I was struggling with my scenario, 
 holding down my mind to the sheer hard work 
 of it, and naturally enough he arrested my 
 attention. 
 
 The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tran- 
 quillity of green and yellow, and against that 
 he came out black — the oddest little figure. 
 
 He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged 
 little man, with a jerky quality in his motions ; 
 he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary 
 mind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling 
 knickerbockers and stockings. Why he did 
 so I do not know, for he never cycled and he 
 never played cricket. It was a fortuitous 
 concurrence of garments, arising I know not 
 how. He gesticulated with his hands and 
 arms, and jerked his head about and buzzed. 
 He buzzed like something electric. You 
 never heard such buzzing. And ever and 
 again he cleared his throat with a most extra- 
 ordinary noise. 
 
 There had been rain, and that spasmodic 
 
if ^ 
 
 " He gesticulated with his hands and arms " 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 7 
 
 walk of his was enhanced by the extreme 
 sHpperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he 
 came against the sun he stopped, pulled out 
 a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort of 
 convulsive gesture he turned and retreated 
 with every manifestation of haste, no longer 
 gesticulating, but going with ample strides 
 that showed the relatively large size of his 
 feet — they were, I remember, grotesquely ex- 
 aggerated in size by adhesive clay — to the 
 best possible advantage. 
 
 This occurred on the first day of my sojourn, 
 when my play- writing energy was at its height, 
 and I regarded the incident simply as an 
 annoying distraction — the waste of five minutes. 
 I returned to my scenario. But when next 
 evening the apparition was repeated with re- 
 markable precision, and again the next even- 
 ing, and indeed every evening when rain was 
 not falling, concentration upon the scenario 
 became a considerable effort. "Confound the 
 man," said I, "one would think he was learn- 
 ing to be a marionette ! " and for several 
 evenings I cursed him pretty heartily. 
 
 Then my annoyance gave way to amaze- 
 ment and curiosity. Why on earth should 
 a man do this thino-? On the fourteenth 
 evening I could stand it no longer, and so 
 
8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 soon as he appeared I opened the French 
 window, crossed the verandah, and directed 
 myself to the point where he invariably 
 stopped. 
 
 He had his watch out as I came up to him. 
 He had a chubby, rubicund face with reddish 
 brown eyes — previously I had seen him only 
 against the light. "One moment, sir," said I 
 as he turned. 
 
 He stared. "One moment," he said, "cer- 
 tainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for 
 longer, and it is not asking too much — your 
 moment is up — would it trouble you to ac- 
 company me ? " 
 
 "Not in the least," said I, placing myself 
 beside him. 
 
 "My habits are regular. My time for inter- 
 course — limited." 
 
 " This, I presume, is your time for exer- 
 
 -i ji 
 cise : 
 
 " It is. I come here to enjoy the sunset." 
 
 "You don't." 
 
 "Sir?" 
 
 " You never look at it." 
 
 " Never look at it ?" 
 
 " No. I've watched you thirteen nights, 
 and not once have you looked at the sunset 
 — not once." 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 9 
 
 He knitted his brows like one who en- 
 counters a problem. 
 
 "Well, I enjoy the sunlight — the atmos- 
 phere — I go along this path, through that 
 gate" — he jerked his head over his shoulder 
 — "and round " 
 
 " You don't. You never have been. It's 
 all nonsense. There isn't a way. To-night, 
 for instance " 
 
 "Oh! to-night! Let me see. Ah! I just 
 glanced at my watch, saw that I had already 
 been out just three minutes over the precise 
 half-hour, decided there was not time to go 
 round, turned " 
 
 "You always do." 
 
 He looked at me — reflected. " Perhaps I 
 do, now I come to think of it. But what 
 was it you wanted to speak to me about ? " 
 
 "Why, this!" 
 
 "This?" 
 
 "Yes. Why do you do it? Every night 
 you come making a noise " 
 
 " Making a noise ? " 
 
 " Like this " — I imitated his buzzing noise. 
 
 He looked at me, and it was evident the 
 buzzing- awakened distaste. '* Do I do ^/la^f" 
 he asked. 
 
 " Every blessed evening." 
 
lo THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " I had no idea." 
 
 He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. 
 "Can it be," he said, "that I have formed a 
 Habit.?" 
 
 " Well, it looks like it. Doesn't it ? " 
 
 He pulled down his lower lip between finger 
 and thumb. He regarded a puddle at his 
 feet. 
 
 " My mind is much occupied," he said. 
 *'And you want to know zu/iy ! Well, sir, I 
 can assure you that not only do I not know 
 why I do these things, but I did not even 
 know I did them. Come to think, it is just 
 as you say ; I never /lave been beyond that 
 field . . . And these things annoy you .'* " 
 
 For some reason I was beginning to relent 
 towards him. " Not annoy," I said. " But — • 
 imagine yourself writing a play ! " 
 
 " I couldn't." 
 
 "Well, anything that needs concentration." 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, " of course," and meditated. 
 His expression became so eloquent of distress, 
 that I relented still more. After all, there is a 
 touch of aesfression in demandingr of a man 
 you don't know why he hums on a public 
 footpath. 
 
 " You see," he said weakly, " it's a habit." 
 
 "Oh, I recognise that." 
 
I looked back at his receding figure 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR, CAVOR ii 
 
 " I must stop it." 
 
 " But not if it puts you out. After all, I 
 had no business — it's something of a liberty." 
 
 "Not at all, sir," he said, "not at all. I 
 am greatly indebted to you. I should guard 
 myself against these things. In future I will. 
 Could I trouble you — once again? That 
 noise .'' 
 
 "Something like this," I said. "Zuzzoo, 
 zuzzoo. But really, you know " 
 
 " I am greatly obliged to you. In fact, I 
 know I am getting absurdly absent-minded. 
 You are quite justified, sir — perfectly justified. 
 Indeed, I am indebted to you. The thing 
 shall end. And now, sir, I have already 
 brought you further than I should have 
 done." 
 
 " I do hope my impertinence " 
 
 " Not at all, sir, not at all." 
 
 We regarded each other for a moment. I 
 raised my hat and wished him a good evening. 
 He responded convulsively, and so we went 
 our ways. 
 
 At the stile I looked back at his receding 
 figure. His bearing had changed remarkably, 
 he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with 
 his former gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me 
 in some absurd way as pathetic. I watched 
 
12 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily 
 I had kept to my own business, I returned to 
 my bungalow and my play. 
 
 The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor 
 the next. But he was very much in my mind, 
 and It had occurred to me that as a sentimental 
 comic character he might serve a useful pur- 
 pose In the development of my plot. The 
 third day he called upon me. 
 
 For a time I was puzzled to think what had 
 brought him. He made indifferent conversa- 
 tion in the most formal way, then abruptly he 
 came to business. He wanted to buy me out 
 of my bungalow. 
 
 " You see," he said, " I don't blame you in 
 the least, but you've destroyed a habit, and it 
 disorganises my day. I've walked past here 
 for years — years. No doubt I've hummed 
 . . . You've made all that impossible ! " 
 
 I suggested he might try some other direc- 
 tion. 
 
 " No. There is no other direction. This 
 is the only one. I've inquired. And now — 
 every afternoon at four — I come to a dead 
 wall." 
 
 " But, my dear sir, if the thing is so im- 
 portant to you " 
 
 "It's vital. You see, I'm — I'm an investi- 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR i^ 
 
 gator — I am engaged in a scientific research. 
 I live — " he paused and seemed to think. 
 "Just over there," he said, and pointed 
 suddenly dangerously near my eye. " The 
 house with white chimneys you see just over 
 the trees. And my circumstances are ab- 
 normal — abnormal. I am on the point of 
 completing one of the most important demon- 
 strations — I can assure you one of ^/ze most 
 important demonstrations that have ever been 
 made. It requires constant thought, constant 
 mental ease and activity. And the afternoon 
 was my brightest time ! — effervescing with 
 new ideas — new points of view." 
 
 ** But why not come by still ? " 
 
 "It would be all different. I should be 
 self-conscious. I should think of you at your 
 play — watching me irritated — instead of think- 
 ing of my work. No ! I must have the 
 bungalow." 
 
 I meditated. Naturally, I wanted to think 
 the matter over thoroughly before anything 
 decisive was said. I was generally ready 
 enough for business in those days, and selling 
 always attracted me ; but in the first place it 
 was not my bungalow, and even if I sold 
 it to him at a good price I might get incon- 
 venienced in the delivery of goods if the 
 
14 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 current owner got wind of the transaction, 
 and in the second I was, well — undischarged. 
 It was clearly a business that required delicate 
 handling. Moreover, the possibility of his 
 being in pursuit of some valuable invention 
 also interested me. It occurred to me that I 
 would like to know more of this research, not 
 with any dishonest intention, but simply with 
 an idea that to know what it was would be a 
 relief from play-writing. I threw out feelers. 
 
 He was quite willing to supply information. 
 Indeed, once he was fairly under way the con- 
 versation became a monologue. He talked 
 like a man long pent up, who has had it over 
 with himself again and again. He talked for 
 nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a 
 pretty stiff bit of listening. But through it all 
 there was the undertone of satisfaction one feels 
 when one is neglecting work one has set one- 
 self. During that first interview I gathered 
 very little of the drift of his work. Half his 
 words were technicalities entirely strange to 
 me, and he illustrated one or two points with 
 what he was pleased to call elementary mathe- 
 matics, computing on an envelope with a 
 copying-ink pencil, in a manner that made it 
 hard even to seem to understand. " Yes," I 
 said ; " yes. Go on ! " Nevertheless I made 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 15 
 
 out enough to convince me that he was no 
 mere crank playing at discoveries. In spite 
 of his crank-like appearance there was a force 
 about him that made that impossible. What- 
 ever it was, it was a thing with mechanical 
 possibilities. He told me of a work-shed he 
 had, and of three assistants — originally jobbing 
 carpenters — whom he had trained. Now, from 
 the work-shed to the patent office is clearly 
 only one step. He invited me to see those 
 things. I accepted readily, and took care, by 
 a remark or so, to underline that. The pro- 
 posed transfer of the bungalow remained very 
 conveniently in suspense. 
 
 At last he rose to depart, with an apology 
 for the length of his call. Talking over his 
 work was, he said, a pleasure enjoyed only too 
 rarely. It was not often he found such an 
 intelligent listener as myself, he mingled very 
 little with professional scientific men. 
 
 *' So much pettiness," he explained ; " so 
 much intrigue ! And really, when one has an 
 idea — a novel, fertilising idea — I don't want 
 to be uncharitable, but " 
 
 I am a man who believes in impulses. I 
 made what was perhaps a rash proposition. 
 But you must remember that I had been alone, 
 play-writing in Lympne, for fourteen days, 
 
1 6 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 and my compunction for his ruined walk still 
 hung about me. " Why not," said I, " make 
 this your new habit? In the place of the one 
 I spoilt ? At least, until we can settle about 
 the bungalow. What you want is to turn over 
 your work in your mind. That you have 
 always done during your afternoon walk. Un- 
 fortunately that's over — you can't get things 
 back as they were. But why not come and 
 talk about your work to me ; use me as a sort 
 of wall against which you may throw your 
 thoughts and catch them again ? It's certain 
 I don't know enough to steal your ideas myself 
 — and I know no scientific men " 
 
 I stopped. He was considering. Evidently 
 the thing attracted him. " But I'm afraid I 
 should bore you," he said. 
 
 " You think I'm too dull ? " 
 
 " Oh no ; but technicalities " 
 
 " Anyhow, you've interested me immensely 
 this afternoon." 
 
 " Of course it would be a great help to me. 
 Nothing clears up one's ideas so much as 
 explaining them. Hitherto " 
 
 " My dear sir, say no more." 
 
 " But really can you spare the time ? " 
 
 " There is no rest like change of occupation," 
 I said, with profound conviction. 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 17 
 
 The affair was over. On my verandah steps 
 he turned. "I am already greatly indebted 
 to you," he said. 
 
 I made an interrogative noise. 
 
 "You have completely cured me of that 
 ridiculous habit of humming," he explained. 
 
 I think I said I was glad to be of any 
 service to him, and he turned away. 
 
 Immediately the train of thought that our 
 conversation had suggested must have resumed 
 its sway. His arms began to wave in their 
 former fashion. The faint echo of " zuzzoo " 
 came back to me on the breeze. . . . 
 
 Well, after all, that was not my affair. . . . 
 
 He came the next day, and again the next 
 day after that, and delivered two lectures on 
 physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked 
 with an air of being extremely lucid about the 
 "ether," and "tubes of force," and "gravita- 
 tional potential," and things like that, and I sat 
 in my other folding-chair and said, " Yes," 
 " Go on," " I follow you," to keep him going. 
 It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do 
 not think he ever suspected how much I did 
 not understand him. There were moments 
 when I doubted whether I was well employed, 
 but at any rate I was resting from that con- 
 founded play. Now and then things gleamed 
 
 B 
 
iS THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 on me clearly for a space, only to vanish just 
 when I thought I had hold of them. Some- 
 times my attention failed altogether, and I 
 would give it up and sit and stare at him, 
 wondering whether, after all, it would not be 
 better to use him as a central figure in a good 
 farce and let all this other stuff slide. And 
 then, perhaps, I would catch on again for a bit. 
 At the earliest opportunity I went to see 
 his house. It was large and carelessly fur- 
 nished ; there were no servants other than 
 his three assistants, and his dietary and pri- 
 vate life were characterised by a philosophical 
 simplicity. He was a water-drinker, a vege- 
 tarian, and all those logical disciplinary things. 
 But the sight of his equipment settled many 
 doubts. It looked like business from cellar 
 to attic — an amazing little place to find in 
 an out-of-the-way village. The ground-floor 
 rooms contained benches and apparatus, the 
 bakehouse and scullery boiler had developed 
 into respectable furnaces, dynamos occupied 
 the cellar, and there was a gasometer in the 
 garden. He showed it to me with all the 
 confiding zest of a man who has been living 
 too much alone. His seclusion was overflow- 
 ing now in an excess of confidence, and I had 
 the good luck to be the recipient. 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 19 
 
 The three assistants were creditable speci- 
 mens of the class of *' handy-men " from which 
 they came. Conscientious if unintelligent, 
 strong, civil, and willing. One, Spargus, who 
 did the cooking and all the metal work, had 
 been a sailor ; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner ; 
 and the third was an ex-jobbing gardener, and 
 now general assistant. They were the merest 
 labourers. All the intelligent work was done 
 by Cavor. Theirs was the darkest ignorance 
 compared even with my muddled impression. 
 
 And now, as to the nature of these inquiries. 
 Here, unhappily, comes a grave difficulty. I 
 am no scientific expert, and if I were to 
 attempt to set forth in the highly scientific 
 language of Mr. Cavor the aim to which his 
 experiments tended, I am afraid I should 
 confuse not only the reader but myself, and 
 almost certainly I should make some blunder 
 that would bring upon me the mockery of 
 every up-to-date student of mathematical 
 physics in the country. The best thing I 
 can do therefore is, I think, to give my im- 
 pressions in my own inexact language, without 
 any attempt to wear a garment of knowledge 
 to which I have no claim. 
 
 The object of Mr. Cavor's search was a 
 substance that should be " opaque " — he used 
 
20 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 some other word I have forgotten, but 
 " opaque " conveys the idea — to " all forms 
 of radiant energy." ** Radiant energy," he 
 made me understand, was anything like light 
 or heat, or those Rontgen Rays there was so 
 much talk about a year or so ago, or the 
 electric waves of Marconi, or gravitation. All 
 these things, he said, radiate out from centres, 
 and act on bodies at a distance, whence comes 
 the term " radiant energy." Now almost all 
 substances are opaque to some form or other 
 of radiant energy. Glass, for example, is 
 transparent to light, but much less so to heat, 
 so that it is useful as a fire-screen ; and alum 
 is transparent to light, but blocks heat com- 
 pletely. A solution of iodine in carbon 
 bisulphide, on the other hand, completely 
 blocks light, but is quite transparent to heat. 
 It will hide a fire from you, but permit all 
 its warmth to reach you. Metals are not 
 only opaque to light and heat, but also to 
 electrical energy, which passes through both 
 iodine solution and glass almost as though they 
 were not interposed. And so on. 
 
 Now all known substances are "transparent" 
 to gravitation. You can use screens of various 
 sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electrical 
 influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 2i 
 
 from anything ; you can screen things by sheets 
 of metal from Marconi's rays, but nothing will 
 cut off the gravitational attraction of the sun or 
 the gravitational attraction of the earth. Yet 
 why there should be nothing is hard to say. 
 Cavor did not see why such a substance should 
 not exist, and certainly I could not tell him. 
 I had never thought of such a possibility 
 before. He showed me by calculations on 
 paper, which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or Pro- 
 fessor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson, or 
 any of those great scientific people might have 
 understood, but which simply reduced me to a 
 hopeless muddle, that not only was such a sub- 
 stance possible, but that it must satisfy certain 
 conditions. It was an amazing piece of reason- 
 ing. Much as it amazed and exercised me at 
 the time, it would be impossible to reproduce 
 it here. *' Yes," I said to it all, " yes ; go on ! " 
 Suffice it for this story that he believed he 
 might be able to manufacture this possible 
 substance opaque to gravitation out of a com- 
 plicated alloy of metals and something new — a 
 new element, I fancy — called, I believe, helium, 
 which was sent to him from London in sealed 
 stone jars. Doubt has been thrown upon this 
 detail, but I am almost certain it was helium 
 he had sent him in sealed stone jars. It was 
 
22 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 certainly something very gaseous and thin. If 
 only I had taken notes. . . . 
 
 But then, how was I to foresee the necessity 
 of taking notes ? 
 
 Any one with the merest germ of an ima- 
 gination will understand the extraordinary 
 possibilities of such a substance, and will 
 sympathise a little with the emotion I felt as 
 this understanding emerged from the haze of 
 abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed 
 himself Comic relief in a play indeed ! It 
 was some time before I would believe that I 
 had interpreted him aright, and I was very 
 careful not to ask questions that would have 
 enabled him to gauge the profundity of mis- 
 understanding into which he dropped his daily 
 exposition. But no one reading the story of 
 it here will sympathise fully, because from my 
 barren narrative it will be impossible to gather 
 the strength of my conviction that this astonish- 
 ing substance was positively going to be made. 
 
 I do not recall that I gave my play an 
 hour's consecutive work at any time after my 
 visit to his house. My imagination had other 
 things to do. There seemed no limit to the 
 possibilities of the stuff; whichever way I tried 
 I came on miracles and revolutions. For 
 example, if one wanted to lift a weight, how- 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 23 
 
 ever enormous, one had only to get a sheet of 
 this substance beneath it, and one might lift it 
 with a straw. My first natural impulse was to 
 apply this principle to guns and ironclads, and 
 all the material and methods of war, and from 
 that to shipping, locomotion, building, every 
 conceivable form of human industry. The 
 chance that had brought me into the very birth- 
 chamber of this new time — it was an epoch, 
 no less — was one of those chances that come 
 once in a thousand years. The thing unrolled, it 
 expanded and expanded. Among other things 
 I saw in it my redemption as a business man. 
 I saw a parent company, and daughter com- 
 panies, applications to right of us, applications 
 to left, rings and trusts, privileges and con- 
 cessions spreading and spreading, until one 
 vast, stupendous Cavorite company ran and 
 ruled the world. 
 
 And I was in it ! 
 
 I took my line straight away. I knew I was 
 staking everything, but I jumped there and then. 
 
 " We're on absolutely the biggest thing that 
 has ever been invented," I said, and put the 
 accent on " we." "If you want to keep me 
 out of this, you'll have to do it with a gun. 
 I'm coming down to be your fourth labourer 
 to-morrow." 
 
24 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but 
 not a bit suspicious or hostile. Rather, he was 
 self-depreciatory. 
 
 He looked at me doubtfully. " But do you 
 really think — ?" he said. "And your play! 
 How about that play ? " 
 
 "It's vanished!" I cried. "My dear sir, 
 don't you see what you've got ? Don't you 
 see what you're going to do ? " 
 
 That was merely a rhetorical turn, but 
 positively, he didn't. At first I could not be- 
 lieve it. He had not had the beginning of the 
 inkling of an idea. This astonishing little 
 man had been working on purely theoretical 
 grounds the whole time ! When he said it 
 was " the most important " research the world 
 had ever seen, he simply meant it squared up 
 so many theories, settled so much that was in 
 doubt ; he had troubled no more about the 
 application of the stuff he was ! going to turn 
 out than if he had been a machine that makes 
 guns. This was a possible substance, and he 
 was going to make it! V/a totU, as the 
 Frenchman says. 
 
 Beyond that, he was childish! If he made 
 it, it would go down to posterity as Cavorite or 
 Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S., 
 and his portrait given away as a scientific 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 25 
 
 worthy with Nature, and things like that. 
 And that was all he saw! He would have 
 dropped this bombshell into the world as 
 though he had discovered a new species of 
 gnat, if it had not happened that I had come 
 along. And there it would have lain and 
 fizzled, like one or two other litde things 
 these scientific people have lit and dropped 
 about us. 
 
 When I realised this, it was I did the 
 talking, and Cavor who said "Go on!" I 
 jumped up. I paced the room, gesticulating 
 like a boy of twenty. I tried to make him 
 understand his duties and responsibilities in the 
 matter — our duties and responsibilities in the 
 matter. I assured him we might make wealth 
 enough to work any sort of social revolution 
 we fancied, we might own and order the whole 
 world. I told him of companies and patents, 
 and the case for secret processes. All these 
 things seemed to take him much as his mathe- 
 matics had taken me. A look of perplexity 
 came into his ruddy litde face. He stammered 
 something about indifference to wealth, but I 
 brushed all that aside. He had got to be rich, 
 and it was no good his stammering. I gave 
 him to understand the sort of man I was, and 
 that I had had very considerable business 
 
26 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 experience. I did not tell him I was an undis- 
 charged bankrupt at the time, because that 
 was temporary, but I think I reconciled my 
 evident poverty with my financial claims. And 
 quite insensibly, in the way such projects 
 grow, the understanding of a Cavorite mono- 
 poly grew up between us. He was to make 
 the stuff, and I was to make the boom. 
 
 I stuck like a leech to the "we" — "you" 
 and " I " didn't exist for me. 
 
 His idea was, that the profits I spoke of 
 might go to endow research, but that, of course, 
 was a matter we had to settle later. " That's 
 all right," I shouted, "that's all right." The 
 great point, as I insisted, was to get the thing 
 done. 
 
 " Here is a substance," I cried, " no home, 
 no factory, no fortress, no ship can dare to 
 be without — more universally applicable even 
 than a patent medicine ! There isn't a solitary 
 aspect of it, not one of its ten thousand possible 
 uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond 
 the dreams of avarice ! " 
 
 " No ! " he said. " I begin to see. It's ex- 
 traordinary how one gets new points of view 
 by talking over things ! " 
 
 " And as it happens you have just talked to 
 the right man ! " 
 
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR 27 
 
 " I suppose no one," he said, " is absolutely 
 averse to enormous wealth. Of course there is 
 one thing " 
 
 He paused. I stood still. 
 
 •' It is just possible, you know, that we may 
 not be able to make it after all ! It may be 
 one of those things that are a theoretical pos- 
 sibility, but a practical absurdity. Or when we 
 make it, there may be some litde hitch ! " 
 
 " We'll tackle the hitch when it comes," 
 said I. 
 
II 
 
 THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 
 
 But Cavor's fears were groundless, so far as 
 the actual making was concerned. On the 
 14th of October 1899 this incredible substance 
 was made ! 
 
 Oddly enough, it was made at last by acci- 
 dent, when Mr. Cavor least expected it. He 
 had fused together a number of metals and 
 certain other things — I wish I knew the par- 
 ticulars now ! — and he intended to leave the 
 mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. 
 Unless he had miscalculated, the last stage in 
 the combination would occur when the stuff 
 sank to a temperature of 60° Fahr. But it 
 chanced that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had 
 arisen about the furnace tending. Gibbs, who 
 had previously seen to this, had suddenly at- 
 tempted to shift it to the man who had been a 
 gardener, on the score that coal was soil, being 
 dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within 
 
 the province of a joiner ; the man who had 
 
 28 
 
THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 29 
 
 been a jobbing gardener alleged, however, that 
 coal was a metallic or ore-like substance, let 
 alone that he was cook. But Spargus insisted 
 on Gibbs doing the coaling, seeing that he was 
 a joiner and that coal is notoriously fossil wood. 
 Consequently Gibbs ceased to replenish the 
 furnace, and no one else did so, and Cavor was 
 too much immersed in certain interesting prob- 
 lems concerning a Cavorite flying machine 
 (neglecting the resistance of the air and one or 
 two other points) to perceive that anything was 
 wrong. And the premature birth of his invention 
 took place just as he was coming across the field 
 to my bungalow for our afternoon talk and tea. 
 
 I remember the occasion with extreme vivid- 
 ness. The water was boiling, and everything 
 was prepared, and the sound of his "zuzzoo" 
 had brought me out upon the verandah. His 
 active litde figure was black against the au- 
 tumnal sunset, and to the right the chimneys of 
 his house just rose above a gloriously tinted 
 group of trees. Remoter rose the Wealden 
 Hills, faint and blue, while to the left the hazy 
 marsh spread out spacious and serene. And 
 then ! 
 
 The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing 
 into a string of bricks as they rose, and the 
 roof and a miscellany of furniture followed. 
 
30 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Then overtaking them came a huge white 
 flame. The trees about the building swayed 
 and whirled and tore themselves to pieces, 
 that sprang towards the flare. My ears were 
 smitten with a clap of thunder that left me 
 deaf on one side for life, and all about me 
 windows smashed, unheeded. 
 
 I took three steps from the verandah towards 
 Cavor's house, and even as I did so came the 
 wind. 
 
 Instantly my coat tails were over my head, 
 and I was progressing in great leaps and bounds, 
 and quite against my will, towards him. In the 
 same moment the discoverer was seized, whirled 
 about, and flew through the screaming air. I 
 saw one of my chimney pots hit the ground 
 within six yards of me, leap a score of feet, and 
 so hurry in great strides towards the focus of 
 the disturbance. Cavor, kicking and flapping, 
 came down again, rolled over and over on the 
 ground for a space, struggled up and was lifted 
 and borne forward at an enormous velocity, 
 vanishing at last among the labouring, lashing 
 trees that writhed about his house. 
 
 A mass of smoke and ashes, and a square of 
 bluish shining substance rushed up towards the 
 zenith. A large fragment of fencing came sail- 
 ing past me, dropped edgeways, hit the ground 
 
THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 31 
 
 and fell flat, and then the worst was over. The 
 aerial commotion fell swiftly until it was a mere 
 strong gale, and I became once more aware that 
 I had breath and feet. By leaning back against 
 the wind I managed to stop, and could collect 
 such wits as still remained to me. 
 
 In that instant the whole face of the world 
 had changed. The tranquil sunset had van- 
 ished, the sky was dark with scurrying clouds, 
 everything was flattened and swaying with the 
 gale. I glanced back to see if my bungalow 
 was still in a general way standing, then stag- 
 gered forward towards the trees amongst which 
 Cavor had vanished, and through whose tall 
 and leaf-denuded branches shone the flames of 
 his burning house. 
 
 I entered the copse, dashing from one tree 
 to another and clinging to them, and for a 
 space I sought him in vain. Then amidst a 
 heap of smashed branches and fencing that 
 had banked itself against a portion of his 
 garden wall I perceived something stir. I 
 made a run for this, but before I reached it 
 a brown object separated itself, rose on two 
 muddy legs and protruded two drooping, bleed- 
 ing hands. Some tattered ends of garment 
 fluttered out from its middle portion and 
 streamed before the wind. 
 
32 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 For a moment I did not recognise this earthy 
 lump, and then I saw that it was Cavor, caked 
 in the mud in which he had rolled. He leant 
 forward against the wind, rubbing the dirt from 
 his eyes and mouth. 
 
 He extended a muddy lump of hand, and 
 staggered a pace towards me. His face worked 
 with emotion, little lumps of mud kept falling 
 from it. He looked as damaged and pitiful 
 as any living creature I have ever seen, and 
 his remark therefore amazed me exceeding. 
 *' Gratulate me," he gasped ; " gratulate me ! " 
 
 "Congratulate you!" said I. "Good 
 heavens ! What for .'* " 
 
 " I've done it." 
 
 " You Aave. What on earth caused that 
 explosion ? " 
 
 A gust of wind blew his words away. I 
 understood him to say that it wasn't an explo- 
 sion at all. The wind hurled me into colli- 
 sion with him, and we stood clinging to one 
 another. 
 
 " Try and get back to my bungalow," I 
 bawled in his ear. He did not hear me, 
 and shouted something about "three martyrs 
 — science," and also something about " not 
 much ofood." At the time he laboured under 
 the impression that his three attendants had 
 
THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 33 
 
 perished in the whirlwind. Happily this was 
 incorrect. Directly he had left for my bunga- 
 low they had gone off to the public-house in 
 Lympne to discuss the question of the furnaces 
 over some trivial refreshment. 
 
 I repeated my suggestion of getting back to 
 my bungalow, and this time he understood. 
 We clung arm-in-arm and started, and man- 
 aged at last to reach the shelter of as much 
 roof as was left to me. For a space we sat in 
 arm-chairs and panted. All the windows were 
 broken, and the lighter articles of furniture 
 were in great disorder, but no irrevocable 
 damage was done. Happily the kitchen door 
 had stood the pressure upon it, so that all my 
 crockery and cooking materials had survived. 
 The oil stove was still burning, and I put on 
 the water to boil again for tea. And that pre- 
 pared, I could turn on Cavor for his explanation. 
 
 " Quite correct," he insisted ; "quite correct. 
 I've done it, and it's all right." 
 
 "But," I protested. "All right! Why, 
 there can't be a rick standing, or a fence or 
 a thatched roof undamaged for twenty miles 
 round. . . ." 
 
 " It's all right — really. I didn't, of course, 
 foresee this little upset. My mind was pre- 
 occupied with another problem, and I'm apt 
 
 c 
 
34 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 to disregard these practical side issues. But 
 it's all right " 
 
 " My dear sir," I cried, "don't you see you've 
 done thousands of pounds' worth of damage?" 
 
 " There, I throw myself on your discretion. 
 I'm not a practical man, of course, but don't 
 you think they will regard it as a cyclone .•* " 
 
 " But the explosion " 
 
 "It was not an explosion. It's perfectly 
 simple. Only, as I say, I'm apt to overlook 
 these little things. It's that zuzzoo business 
 on a larger scale. Inadvertently I made this 
 substance of mine, this Cavorite, in a thin, 
 wide sheet. ..." 
 
 He paused. " You are quite clear that the 
 stuff is opaque to gravitation, that it cuts off 
 things from gravitating towards each other ? " 
 
 " Yes," said I. " Yes." 
 
 " Well, so soon as it reached a temperature 
 of 60° Fahr. and the process of its manufac- 
 ture was complete, the air above it, the portions 
 of roof and ceiling and floor above it ceased to 
 have weight. I suppose you know — everybody 
 knows nowadays — that, as a usual thing, the 
 air Aas weight, that it presses on everything 
 at the surface of the earth, presses in all direc- 
 tions, with a pressure of fourteen and a half 
 pounds to the square inch ? " 
 
THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 35 
 " I know that," said I. '« Go on." 
 " I know that too," he remarked. " Only 
 this shows you how useless knowledge is un- 
 less you apply it. You see, over our Cavorite 
 this ceased to be the case, the air there ceased 
 to exert any pressure, and the air round it and 
 not over the Cavorite was exerting a pressure 
 of fourteen pounds and a half to the square 
 inch upon this suddenly weightless air. Ah I 
 you begin to see! The air all about the 
 Cavorite crushed in upon the air above it with 
 irresistible force. The air above the Cavorite 
 was forced upward violently, the air that rushed 
 in to replace it immediately lost weight, ceased 
 to exert any pressure, followed suit, blew the 
 ceiling through and the roof off. . . . 
 
 "You perceive," he said, "it formed a sort 
 of atmospheric fountain, a kind of chimney in 
 the atmosphere. And if the Cavorite itself 
 hadnt been loose and so got sucked up the 
 chimney, does it occur to you what would have 
 happened ? " 
 
 I thought. -I suppose," I said, ''the air 
 would be rushing up and up over that infernal 
 piece of stuff now." 
 
 "Precisely," he said. "A huge foun- 
 tain^ " 
 
 "Spouting into space! Good heavens! 
 
36 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Why, it would have squirted all the atmosphere 
 of the earth away! It would have robbed the 
 world of air! It would have been the death of 
 all mankind I That little lump of stuff! " 
 
 *' Not exactly into space," said Cavor, "but 
 as bad — practically. It would have whipped 
 the air off the world as one peels a banana, 
 and flung it thousands of miles. It would 
 have dropped back again, of course — but on 
 an asphyxiated world ! From our point of 
 view very little better than if it never came 
 back ! " 
 
 I stared. As yet I was too amazed to 
 realise how all my expectations had been 
 upset. "What do you mean to do now.'*" I 
 asked. 
 
 "In the first place, if I may borrow a garden 
 trowel I will remove some of this earth with 
 which I am encased, and then if I may avail 
 myself of your domestic conveniences I will 
 have a bath. This done, we will converse 
 more at leisure. It will be wise, I think" — 
 he laid a muddy hand on my arm — " if nothing 
 were said of this affair beyond ourselves. I 
 know I have caused' great damage — probably 
 even dwelling-houses may be ruined here and 
 there upon the country-side. But on the 
 other hand, I cannot possibly pay for the 
 
THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 37 
 
 damage I have done, and if the real cause 
 of this is published, it will lead only to heart- 
 burning and the obstruction of my work. One 
 cannot foresee everythmg, you know, and I 
 cannot consent for one moment to add the 
 burthen of practical considerations to my 
 theorising. Later on, when you have come 
 in with your practical mind, and Cavorite is 
 floated — floated is the word, isn't it? — and it 
 has realised all you anticipate for it, we may 
 set matters right with these persons. But not 
 now — not now. If no other explanation is 
 offered, people, in the present unsatisfactory 
 state of meteorological science, will ascribe all 
 this to a cyclone ; there might be a public sub- 
 scription, and as my house has collapsed and 
 been burnt, I should in that case receive a 
 considerable share in the compensation, which 
 would be extremely helpful to the prosecution 
 of our researches. But if it is known that / 
 caused this, there will be no public subscrip- 
 tion, and everybody will be put out. Practi- 
 cally I should never get a chance of working 
 in peace again. My three assistants may or 
 may not have perished. That is a detail. 
 If they have, it is no great loss ; they were 
 more zealous than able, and this premature 
 event must be largely due to their joint 
 
38 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 neglect of the furnace. If they have not 
 perished, I doubt if they have the intelligence 
 to explain the affair. They will accept the 
 cyclone story. And if, during the temporary 
 unfitness of my house for occupation, I may 
 lodcje in one of the untenanted rooms of this 
 bungalow of yours " 
 
 He paused and regarded me. 
 
 A man of such possibilities, I reflected, is no 
 ordinary guest to entertain. 
 
 ** Perhaps," said I, rising to my feet, " we 
 had better begin by looking for a trowel," 
 and I led the way to the scattered vestiges of 
 the oreenhouse. 
 
 And while he was having his bath I con- 
 sidered the entire question alone. It was 
 clear there were drawbacks to Mr. Cavor's 
 society I had not foreseen. The absent- 
 mindedness that had just escaped depopulating 
 the terrestrial globe, might at any moment 
 result in some other grave inconvenience. On 
 the other hand I was young, my affairs were 
 in a mess, and I was in just the mood for 
 reckless adventure — with a chance of some- 
 thing good at the end of it. I had quite 
 settled in my mind that I was to have half at 
 least in that aspect of the affair. Fortunately 
 I held my bungalow, as I have already ex- 
 
THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 39 
 
 plained, on a three-year agreement, without 
 being responsible for repairs ; and my furniture, 
 such as there was of it, had been hastily pur- 
 chased, was unpaid for, insured, and altogether 
 devoid of associations. In the end I decided 
 to keep on with him, and see the business 
 through. 
 
 Certainly the aspect of things had changed 
 very greatly. I no longer doubted at all the 
 enormous possibilities of the substance, but 
 I began to have doubts about the gun-carriage 
 and the patent boots. 
 
 We set to work at once to reconstruct his 
 laboratory and proceed with our experiments. 
 Cavor talked more on my level than he had 
 ever done before, when it came to the question 
 of how we should make the stuff next. 
 
 " Of course we must make it again," he 
 said, with a sort of glee I had not expected in 
 him, ** of course we must make it again. We 
 have caught a Tartar, perhaps, but we have 
 left the theoretical behind us for good and all. 
 If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little 
 planet of ours, we will. But — there 7nus^ be 
 risks! There must be. In experimental work 
 there always are. And here, as a practical 
 man, you must come in. For my own part 
 it seems to me we might make it edgeways. 
 
40 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 perhaps, and very thin. Yet I don't know. I 
 have a certain dim perception of another 
 method. I can hardly explain it yet. But 
 curiously enough it came into my mind, while 
 I was rolling over and over in the mud before 
 the wind, and very doubtful how the whole 
 adventure was to end, as being absolutely the 
 thing I ought to have done." 
 
 Even with my aid we found some little 
 difficulty, and meanwhile we kept at work 
 restoring the laboratory. There was plenty 
 to do before it was absolutely necessary to 
 decide upon the precise form and method of 
 our second attempt. Our only hitch was the 
 strike of the three labourers, who objected to 
 my activity as a foreman. But that matter 
 we compromised after two days' delay. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 
 
 I REMEMBER the occasion very distinctly when 
 Cavor told me of his idea of the sphere. He 
 had had intimations of it before, but at the 
 time it seemed to come to him in a rush. We 
 were returning to the bungalow for tea, and 
 on the way he fell humming. Suddenly he 
 shouted, " That's ft ! That finishes it ! A 
 sort of roller blind ! " 
 
 " Finishes what ? " I asked. 
 
 " Space — anywhere ! The moon ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Mean ? Why — it must be a sphere ! 
 That's what I mean ! " 
 
 I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let 
 him talk in his own fashion. I hadn't the 
 ghost of an idea then of his drift. But after 
 he had taken tea he made it clear to me. 
 
 " It's like this," he said. " Last time I ran 
 this stuff that cuts things off from gravitation 
 into a flat tank with an overlap that held it 
 
42 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 down. And direcdy it had cooled and the 
 manufacture was completed all that uproar 
 happened, nothing above it weighed anything, 
 the air went squirting up, the house squirted 
 up, and if the stuff itself hadn't squirted up 
 too, I don't know what would have happened ! 
 But suppose the substance is loose, and quite 
 free to go up ? " 
 
 " It will go up at once ! " 
 
 *' Exactly. With no more disturbance than 
 firing a big gun." 
 
 *' But what good will that do.-^" 
 
 " I'm going up with it!" 
 
 I put down my teacup and stared at him. 
 
 "Imagine a sphere," he explained, "large 
 enough to hold two people and their luggage. 
 It will be made of steel lined with thick glass ; 
 it will contain a proper store of solidified air, 
 concentrated food, water-distilling apparatus, 
 and so forth. And enamelled, as it were, on 
 the outer steel " 
 
 " Cavorite ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But how will you get inside ? " 
 
 " There was a similar problem about a 
 dumpling." 
 
 ** Yes, I know. But how ? " 
 
 " That's perfectly easy. An air-tight man- 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 43 
 
 hole is all that is needed. That, of course, 
 will have to be a little complicated ; there 
 will have to be a valve, so that things may be 
 thrown out, if necessary, without much loss 
 of air." 
 
 " Like Jules Verne's thing in ' A Trip to the 
 Moon ' ? " 
 
 But Cavor was not a reader of fiction. 
 
 *' I begin to see," I said slowly. " And you 
 could get in and screw yourself up while the 
 Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it 
 would become impervious to gravitation, and 
 off you would fly " 
 
 ** At a tangent." 
 
 " You would go off in a straight line — " I 
 stopped abruptly. "What is to prevent the 
 thing travelling in a straight line into space 
 for ever ? " I asked. " You're not safe to 
 get anywhere, and if you do — how will you 
 get back ? " 
 
 "I've just thought of that," said Cavor. 
 "That's what I meant when I said the thing 
 is finished. The inner glass sphere can be 
 air-tight and, except for the manhole, con- 
 tinuous, and the steel sphere can be made in 
 sections, each section capable of rolling up 
 after the fashion of a roller blind. These 
 can easily be worked by springs, and released 
 
44 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 and checked by electricity conveyed by plati- 
 num wires fused through the glass. All that 
 is merely a question of detail. So you see, 
 that except for the thickness of the blind 
 rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere 
 will consist of windows or blinds, whichever 
 you like to call them. Well, when all these 
 windows or blinds are shut, no light, no heat, 
 no gravitation, no radiant energy of any sort 
 will get at the inside of the sphere, it will fly 
 on through space in a straight line, as you say. 
 But open a window, imagine one of the win- 
 dows open ! Then at once any heavy body 
 that chances to be in that direction will attract 
 us 
 
 I sat taking it in. 
 
 " You see ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh, I see." 
 
 *' Practically we shall be able to tack about 
 in space just as we wish. Get attracted by 
 this and that." 
 
 " Oh yes. Thafs clear enough. Only " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I don't quite see what we shall do it for ! 
 It's really only jumping off the world and back 
 again." 
 
 "Surely! For example, one might go to 
 the moon." 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 45 
 
 *' And when one got there ! What would 
 you find ? " 
 
 "We should see — Oh! consider the new 
 knowledge." 
 
 " Is there air there?" 
 
 " There may be." 
 
 " It's a fine idea," I said, " but it strikes me 
 as a large order all the same. The moon ! I'd 
 much rather try some smaller things first." 
 
 " They're out of the question, because of 
 the air difficulty." 
 
 " Why not apply that idea of spring blinds 
 — Cavorite blinds in strong steel cases — to 
 lifting weights ? " 
 
 ** It wouldn't work," he insisted. " After all, 
 to go into outer space is not so much worse, if 
 at all, than a polar expedition. Men go on 
 polar expeditions." 
 
 " Not business men. And besides, they get 
 paid for polar expeditions. And if anything 
 goes wrong there are relief parties. But this 
 — it's just firing ourselves off the world for 
 nothing." 
 
 " Call it prospecting." 
 
 "You'll have to call it that. . . . One 
 might make a book of it perhaps," I said. 
 
 " I have no doubt there will be minerals," 
 said Cavor. 
 
46 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 *' For example ? " 
 
 *' Oh ! sulphur, ores, gold perhaps, possibly- 
 new elements." 
 
 "Cost of carriage," I said. "You know 
 you're nol a practical man. The moon's a 
 quarter of a million miles away." 
 
 "It seems to me it wouldn't cost much 
 to cart any weight anywhere if you packed 
 it in a Cavorite case." 
 
 I had not thought of that. " Delivered 
 free on head of purchaser, eh ? " 
 
 "It isn't as though we were confined to the 
 moon." 
 
 " You mean } " 
 
 " There's Mars — clear atmosphere, novel 
 surroundings, exhilarating sense of lightness. 
 It might be pleasant to go there." 
 
 "Is there air on Mars ? " 
 
 " Oh yes ! " 
 
 •' Seems as though you might run it as a 
 sanatorium. By the way, how far is Mars ? " 
 
 " Two hundred million miles at present," 
 said Cavor airily; "and you go close by the 
 sun." 
 
 My imagination was picking itself up again. 
 " After all," I said, " there's something in 
 these things. There's travel " 
 
 An extraordinary possibility came rushing 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 47 
 
 into my mind. Suddenly I saw, as in a vision, 
 the whole solar system threaded with Cavorite 
 liners and spheres de luxe. " Rights of pre- 
 emption," came floating into my head — planet- 
 ary rights of pre-emption. I recalled the old 
 Spanish monopoly in American gold. It 
 wasn't as though it was just this planet or 
 that — it was all of them. I stared at Cavor's 
 rubicund face, and suddenly my imagination 
 was leaping and dancing. I stood up, I 
 walked up and down ; my tongue was un- 
 loosened. 
 
 " I'm beginning to take it in," I said ; "I'm 
 beginning to take it in." The transition from 
 doubt to enthusiasm seemed to take scarcely 
 any time at all. " But this is tremendous ! " 
 I cried. " This is Imperial ! I haven't been 
 dreaming of this sort of thing." 
 
 Once the chill of my opposition was removed, 
 his own pent-up excitement had play. He too 
 got up and paced. He too gesticulated and 
 shouted. We behaved like men inspired. We 
 were men inspired. 
 
 " We'll settle all that ! " he said in answer 
 to some incidental difficulty that had pulled me 
 up. " We'll soon settle all that ! We'll start 
 the drawings for mouldings this very night." 
 
 " We'll start them now," I responded, and 
 
48 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 we hurried off to the laboratory to begin upon 
 this work forthwith. 
 
 I was like a child in Wonderland all that 
 night. The dawn found us both still at work 
 — we kept our electric light going heedless 
 of the day. I remember now exactly how 
 those drawings looked. I shaded and tinted, 
 while Cavor drew — smudged and haste-marked 
 they were in every line, but wonderfully correct. 
 We got out the orders for the steel blinds and 
 frames we needed from that night's work, and 
 the glass sphere was designed within a week. 
 We gave up our afternoon conversations and 
 our old routine altogether. We worked, and 
 we slept and ate when we could work no 
 longer for hunger and fatigue. Our enthusiasm 
 infected even our three men, though they had 
 no idea what the sphere was for. Through 
 those days the man Gibbs gave up walking, 
 and went everywhere, even across the room, 
 at a sort of fussy run. 
 
 And it grew — the sphere. December 
 passed, January — I spent a day with a broom 
 sweeping a path through the snow from 
 bungalow to laboratory — February, March. 
 By the end of March the completion was in 
 sight. In January had come a team of horses, 
 a huge packing-case ; we had our thick glass 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 49 
 
 sphere now ready, and in position under the 
 crane we had rigged to sHng it into the steel 
 shell. All the bars and blinds of the steel 
 shell — it was not really a spherical shell, but 
 polyhedral, with a roller blind to each facet 
 — had arrived by February, and the lower 
 half was bolted together. The Cavorite was 
 half made by March, the metallic paste had 
 gone through two of the stages in its manu- 
 facture, and we had plastered quite half of it 
 on to the steel bars and blinds. It was 
 astonishing how closely we kept to the lines 
 of Cavor's first inspiration in working out 
 the scheme. When the bolting together of 
 the sphere was finished, he proposed to remove 
 the rough roof of the temporary laboratory in 
 which the work was done, and build a fur- 
 nace about it. So the last stage of Cavorite 
 making, in which the paste is heated to a 
 dull red glow in a stream of helium, would 
 be accomplished when it was already on the 
 sphere. 
 
 And then we had to discuss and decide 
 what provisions we were to take — compressed 
 foods, concentrated essences, steel cylinders 
 containing reserve oxygen, an arrangement 
 for removing carbonic acid and waste from 
 the air and restoring oxygen by means of 
 
 D 
 
50 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 sodium peroxide, water condensers, and so 
 forth. I remember the little heap they made 
 in the corner — tins, and rolls, and boxes — con- 
 vincingly matter-of-fact. 
 
 It was a strenuous time, with little chance 
 of thinking. But one day, when we were 
 drawing near the end, an odd mood came 
 over me. I had been bricking up the furnace 
 all the morning, and I sat down by these 
 possessions dead beat. Everything seemed 
 dull and incredible. 
 
 " But look here, Cavor," I said. " After 
 all! What's it all for?" 
 
 He smiled. " The thing now is to go." 
 
 "The moon," I reflected. "But what do 
 you expect? I thought the moon was a 
 dead world." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " What do you expect ? " 
 
 *' We're going to see." 
 
 ''Are we?" I said, and stared before me. 
 
 " You are tired," he remarked. " You'd 
 better take a walk this afternoon." 
 
 ** No," I said obstinately ; " I'm going to 
 finish this brickwork." 
 
 And I did, and insured myself a night of 
 insomnia. 
 
 I don't think I have ever had such a night. 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 51 
 
 I had some bad times before my business col- 
 lapse, but the very worst of those was sweet 
 slumber compared to this infinity of aching 
 wakefulness. I was suddenly in the most enor- 
 mous funk at the thing we were going to do. 
 
 I do not remember before that night think- 
 ing at all of the risks we were running. Now 
 they came like that array of spectres that once 
 beleaguered Prague, and camped around me. 
 The strangeness of what we were about to 
 do, the unearthliness of it, overwhelmed me. 
 I was like a man awakened out of pleasant 
 dreams to the most horrible surroundings. 
 I lay, eyes wide open, and the sphere seemed 
 to get more flimsy and feeble, and Cavor more 
 unreal and fantastic, and the whole enterprise 
 madder and madder every moment. 
 
 I got out of bed and wandered about. I 
 sat at the window and stared at the immensity 
 of space. Between the stars was the void, 
 the unfathomable darkness ! I tried to re- 
 call the fragmentary knowledge of astronomy I 
 had gained in my irregular reading, but it was 
 all too vague to furnish any idea of the things 
 we might expect. At last I got back to bed 
 and snatched some moments of sleep — moments 
 of nightmare rather — in which I fell and fell and 
 fell for evermore into the abyss of the sky. 
 
52 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told 
 him shortly, "I'm not coming with you in 
 the sphere." 
 
 I met all his protests with a sullen per- 
 sistence. *' The thing's too mad," I said, 
 " and I won't come. The thing's too mad." 
 
 I would not go with him to the laboratory. 
 I fretted about my bungalow for a time, and 
 then took hat and stick and set off alone, I 
 knew not whither. It chanced to be a glorious 
 morning : a warm wind and deep blue sky, 
 the first green of spring abroad, and multi- 
 tudes of birds singing. I lunched on beef 
 and beer in a little public-house near Elham, 
 and startled the landlord by remarking apropos 
 of the weather, " A man who leaves the world 
 when days of this sort are about is a fool ! " 
 
 "That's what I says when I heerd on it!" 
 said the landlord, and I found that for one 
 poor soul at least this world had proved ex- 
 cessive, and there had been a throat-cutting. 
 I went on with a new twist to my thoughts. 
 
 In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in 
 a sunny place, and went my way refreshed. 
 
 I came to a comfortable-looking inn near 
 Canterbury. It was bright with creepers, and 
 the landlady was a clean old woman and took 
 my eye. I found I had just enough money 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 53 
 
 to pay for my lodging with her. I decided 
 to stop the night there. She was a talka- 
 tive body, and among many other particulars 
 I learnt she had never been to London. 
 "Canterbury's as far as ever I been," she 
 said. " I'm not one of your gad-about sort." 
 
 " How would you like a trip to the moon ? " 
 I cried. 
 
 ** I never did hold with them ballooneys," 
 she said, evidently under the impression that 
 this was a common excursion enough. " I 
 wouldn't go up in one — not for ever so." 
 
 This struck me as being funny. After I 
 had supped I sat on a bench by the door of 
 the inn and gossiped with two labourers about 
 brick-making, and motor cars, and the cricket 
 of last year. And in the sky a faint new 
 crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, 
 sank westward over the sun. 
 
 The next day I returned to Cavor. " I am 
 coming," I said. " I've been a little out of 
 order, that's all." 
 
 That was the only time I felt any serious 
 doubt of our enterprise. Nerves purely ! 
 After that I worked a little more carefully, 
 and took a trudge for an hour every day. 
 And at last, save for the heating in the fur- 
 nace, our labours were at an end. 
 
IV 
 
 INSIDE THE SPHERE 
 
 '* Go on," said Cavor, as I sat across the edge 
 of the manhole and looked down into the 
 black interior of the sphere. We two were 
 alone. It was evening, the sun had set, and 
 the stillness of the twilight was upon every- 
 thing. 
 
 I drew my other leg inside and slid down 
 the smooth glass to the bottom of the sphere, 
 then turned to take the cans of food and 
 other impedimenta from Cavor. The interior 
 was warm, the thermometer stood at eighty, 
 and as we should lose little or none of this 
 by radiation, we were dressed in shoes and 
 thin flannels. We had, however, a bundle 
 of thick woollen clothing and several thick 
 blankets to guard against mischance. By 
 Cavor's direction I placed the packages, the 
 cylinders of oxygen, and so forth, loosely about 
 my feet, and soon we had everything in. He 
 walked about the roofless shed for a time 
 
 54 
 
I sat across the edge of the manhole and looked down into the 
 black interior " 
 
INSIDE THE SPHERE 55 
 
 seeking anything we had overlooked, and 
 then crawled in after me. I noted something 
 in his hand. 
 
 " What have you got there ? " I asked. 
 
 " Haven't you brought anything to read ? " 
 
 '♦ Good Lord ! No." 
 
 " I forgot to tell you. There are uncer- 
 tainties — The voyage may last — We 
 may be weeks ! " 
 
 " But " 
 
 ** We shall be floating in this sphere with 
 absolutely no occupation." 
 
 *' I wish I'd known " 
 
 He peered out of the manhole. " Look !" 
 he said. " There's something there ! " 
 
 "Is there time ? " 
 
 " We shall be an hour." 
 
 I looked out. It was an old number of Tt^- 
 Bits that one of the men must have brought. 
 Further away in the corner I saw a torn 
 Lloyds News. I scrambled back into the 
 sphere with these things. " What have you 
 got?" I said. 
 
 I took the book from his hand and read, 
 " The Works of William Shakespeare." 
 
 He coloured slighdy. " My education has 
 been so purely scientific — " he said apolo- 
 getically. 
 
56 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " Never read him ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " He knew a little you know — in an irre- 
 gular sort of way." 
 
 " Precisely what I am told," said Cavor. 
 
 I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of 
 the manhole, and then he pressed a stud to 
 close the corresponding blind in the outer case. 
 The little oblong of twilight vanished. We 
 were in darkness. 
 
 For a time neither of us spoke. Although 
 our case would not be impervious to sound, 
 everything was very still. I perceived there 
 was nothing to grip when the shock of our 
 start should come, and I realised that I should 
 be uncomfortable for want of a chair. 
 
 " Why have we no chairs .•* " I asked. 
 
 "I've settled all that," said Cavor. "We 
 shan't need them." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 "You will see," he said, in the tone of a 
 man who refuses to talk. 
 
 I became silent. Suddenly it had come to 
 me clear and vivid that I was a fool to be 
 inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, 
 is it too late to withdraw ? The world outside 
 the sphere, I knew, would be cold and inhospit- 
 able enough to me — for weeks I had been 
 
INSIDE THE SPHERE 57 
 
 living on subsidies from Cavor — but after all, 
 would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as in- 
 hospitable as empty space ? If it had not been 
 for the appearance of cowardice, I believe that 
 even then I should have made him let me out. 
 But I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, 
 and grew fretful and angry, and the time passed. 
 
 There came a little jerk, a noise like cham- 
 pagne being uncorked in another room, and a 
 faint whistling sound. For just one instant I 
 had a sense of enormous tension, a transient 
 conviction that my feet were pressing down- 
 ward with a force of countless tons. It lasted 
 for an infinitesimal time. 
 
 But it stirred me to action. "Cavor!" I 
 said into the darkness, " my nerve's in rags. 
 ... I don't think " 
 
 I stopped. He made no answer. 
 
 " Confound it ! " I cried ; " I'm a fool ! What 
 business have I here? I'm not coming, Cavor. 
 The thing's too risky. I'm getting out." 
 
 " You can't," he said. 
 
 " Can't ! We'll soon see about that ! " 
 
 He made no answer for ten seconds. "It's 
 too late for us to quarrel now, Bedford," he 
 said. " That little jerk was the start. Already 
 we are flying as swiftly as a bullet up into the 
 gulf of space." 
 
58 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 "I — " I said, and then it didn't seem to 
 matter what happened. For a time I was, as 
 it were, stunned ; I had nothing to say. It 
 was just as if I had never heard of this idea 
 of leaving the world before. Then I per- 
 ceived an unaccountable change in my bodily 
 sensations. It was a feeling of lightness, of 
 unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sen- 
 sation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, 
 and a thumping of blood-vessels at the ears. 
 Neither of these feelings diminished as time 
 went on, but at last I got so used to them that 
 I experienced no inconvenience. 
 
 I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came 
 into being. 
 
 I saw Cavor's face, as white as I felt my 
 own to be. We regarded one another in 
 silence. The transparent blackness of the 
 glass behind him made him seem as though 
 he floated in a void. 
 
 '• Well, we're committed," I said at last. 
 
 "Yes," he said, ''we're committed." 
 
 " Don't move," he exclaimed, at some 
 suggestion of a gesture. " Let your muscles 
 keep quite lax — as if you were in bed. We 
 are in a little universe of our own. Look at 
 those things ! " 
 
 He pointed to the loose cases and bundles 
 
INSIDE THE SPHERE 59 
 
 that had been lying on the blankets in the 
 bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see 
 that they were floating now nearly a foot from 
 the spherical wall. Then I saw from his 
 shadow that Cavor was no longer leaning 
 against the glass. I thrust out my hand 
 behind me, and found that I too was sus- 
 pended in space, clear of the glass. 
 
 I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear 
 came upon me. It was like being held and 
 lifted by something — you know not what. The 
 mere touch of my hand against the glass moved 
 me rapidly. I understood what had happened, 
 but that did not prevent my being afraid. We 
 were cut off from all exterior gravitation, only 
 the attraction of objects within our sphere had 
 effsct. Consequently everything that was not 
 fixed to the glass was falling — slowly because 
 of the slightness of our masses — towards the 
 centre of gravity of our little world, which 
 seemed to be somewhere about the middle of 
 the sphere, but rather nearer to myself than 
 Cavor, on account of my greater weight. 
 
 *'We must turn round," said Cavor, "and 
 float back to back, with the things between 
 us. 
 
 It was the strangest sensation conceivable, 
 floating thus loosely in space, at first indeed 
 
6o THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 horribly strange, and when the horror passed/ 
 not disagreeable at all, exceeding restful ; 
 indeed, the nearest thing in earthly experience 
 to it that I know is lying on a very thick, soft 
 feather bed. But the quality of utter detach- 
 ment and independence ! I had not reckoned 
 on things like this. I had expected a violent 
 jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. In- 
 stead I felt — as if I were disembodied. It was 
 not like the beginning of a journey ; it was like 
 the beginning of a dream. 
 
V 
 
 THE JOURNEY TO THE MOON 
 
 Presently Cavor extinguished the light. He 
 said we had not overmuch energy stored, and 
 that what we had we must economise for read- 
 ing. For a time, whether it was long or short 
 I do not know, there was nothing but blank 
 darkness. 
 
 A question floated up out of the void. 
 "How are we pointing?" I said. "What is 
 our direction ? " 
 
 " We are flying away from the earth at a 
 tangent, and as the moon is near her third 
 quarter we are going somewhere towards her. 
 I will open a blind " 
 
 Came a click, and then a window in the 
 outer case yawned open. The sky outside 
 was as black as the darkness within the sphere, 
 but the shape of the open window was marked 
 by an infinite number of stars. 
 
 Those who have only seen the starry sky 
 from the earth cannot imagine its appearance 
 
62 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 when the vague half-luminous veil of our air has 
 been withdrawn. The stars we see on earth are 
 the mere scattered survivors that penetrate our 
 misty atmosphere. But now at last I could 
 realise the meaning of the hosts of heaven ! 
 
 Stranger things we were presently to see, 
 but that airless, star-dusted sky ! Of all things, 
 I think that will be one of the last I shall forget. 
 
 The little window vanished with a click, 
 another beside it snapped open and instantly 
 closed, and then a third, and for a moment I 
 had to close my eyes because of the blinding 
 splendour of the waning moon. 
 
 For a space I had to stare at Cavor and the 
 white-lit things about me to season my eyes to 
 light again, before I could turn them towards 
 that pallid glare. 
 
 Four windows were open in order that the 
 gravitation of the moon might act upon all 
 the substances in our sphere. I found I was 
 no longer floating freely in space, but that my 
 feet were resting on the glass in the direction 
 of the moon. The blankets and cases of pro- 
 visions were also creeping slowly down the 
 glass, and presently came to rest so as to block 
 out a portion of the view. It seemed to me, of 
 course, that I looked "down" when I looked 
 at the moon. On earth "down" means earth- 
 
THE yOURNEY TO THE MOON 63 
 
 ward, the way things fall, and " up " the reverse 
 direction. Now the pull of gravitation was 
 towards the moon, and for all I knew to the 
 contrary our earth was overhead. And, of 
 course, when all the Cavorite blinds were 
 closed, " down " was towards the centre of our 
 sphere, and "up" towards its outer wall. 
 
 It was curiously unlike earthly experience, 
 too, to have the light coming up to one. On 
 earth light falls from above, or comes slant- 
 ing down sideways, but here it came from be- 
 neath our feet, and to see our shadows we 
 had to look up. 
 
 At first it gave me a sort of vertigo to 
 stand only on thick glass and look down upon 
 the moon through hundreds of thousands of 
 miles of vacant space ; but this sickness passed 
 very speedily. And then — the splendour of the 
 sight ! 
 
 The reader may imagine it best if he will 
 lie on the ground some warm summer's night 
 and look between his upraised feet at the 
 moon, but for some reason, probably because 
 the absence of air made it so much more 
 luminous, the moon seemed already consider- 
 ably larger than it does from earth. The 
 minutest details of its surface were acutely 
 clear. And since we did not see it through 
 
64 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 air, its outline was bright and sharp, there was 
 no glow or halo about it, and the star-dust 
 that covered the sky came right to its very- 
 margin, and marked the outline of its un- 
 illuminated part. And as I stood and stared 
 at the moon between my feet, that perception 
 of the impossible that had been with me off 
 and on ever since our start, returned again 
 with tenfold conviction. 
 
 "Cavor," I said, "this takes me queerly. 
 Those companies we were going to run, and 
 all that about minerals ? " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I don't see 'em here." 
 
 " No," said Cavor ; " but you'll get over all 
 that." 
 
 " I suppose I'm made to turn right side up 
 again. Still, ^his — For a moment I could 
 half believe there never was a world." 
 
 ** That copy oi Lloyds News might help you." 
 
 I stared at the paper for a moment, then 
 held it above the level of my face, and found 
 I could read it quite easily. I struck a column 
 of mean little advertisements. " A gentleman 
 of private means is willing to lend money," I 
 read. I knew that gentleman. Then some- 
 body eccentric wanted to sell a Cutaway bicycle, 
 "quite new and cost ;^i5," for five pounds; 
 
THE JOURNEY TO THE MOON 65 
 
 and a lady in distress wished to dispose of some 
 fish knives and forks, "a wedding present," at 
 a great sacrifice. No doubt some simple soul 
 was sagely examining these knives and forks, 
 and another triumphantly riding off on that 
 bicycle, and a third trustfully consulting that 
 benevolent gentleman of means even as I read. 
 I laughed, and let the paper drift from my hand. 
 
 " Are we visible from the earth ? " I asked 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " I knew some one who was rather interested 
 in astronomy. It occurred to me that it would 
 be rather odd if— my friend— chanced to be 
 looking through some telescope." 
 
 " It would need the most powerful telescope 
 on earth even now to see us as the minutest 
 speck. " 
 
 For a time I stared in silence at the moon. 
 
 "It's a world," I said; "one feels that 
 mfinitely more than one ever did on earth. 
 People perhaps " 
 
 "People!" he exclaimed. '' JVo ! Banish 
 all that ! Think yourself a sort of ultra-arctic 
 voyager exploring the desolate places of space. 
 Look at it ! " 
 
 He waved his hand at the shining whiteness 
 below. -It's dead — dead! Vast extinct 
 volcanoes, lava wildernesses, tumbled wastes 
 
66 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 of snow, or frozen carbonic acid, or frozen air, 
 and everywhere landslip seams and cracks and 
 gulfs. Nothing happens. Men have watched 
 this planet systematically with telescopes for 
 over two hundred years. How much change 
 do you think they have seen ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 " They have traced two indisputable land- 
 slips, a doubtful crack, and one slight periodic 
 change of colour, and that's all.". 
 
 " I didn't know they'd traced even that." 
 
 '* Oh yes. But as for people ! " 
 
 " By the way," I asked, '* how small a thing 
 will the biggest telescopes show upon the 
 moon ? " 
 
 '* One could see a fair-sized church. One 
 could certainly see any towns or buildings, or 
 anything like the handiwork of men. There 
 might perhaps be insects, something in the 
 way of ants, for example, so that they could 
 hide in deep burrows from the lunar night, or 
 some new sort of creatures having no earthly 
 parallel. That is the most probable thing, if 
 we are to find life there at all. Think of the 
 difference in conditions ! Life must fit itself 
 to a day as long as fourteen earthly days, a 
 cloudless sun-blaze of fourteen days, and then 
 a night of equal length, growing ever colder 
 
THE JOURNEY TO THE MOON 67 
 
 and colder under these cold, sharp stars. In 
 that night there must be cold, the ultimate 
 cold, absolute zero, 273° C. below the earthly- 
 freezing point. Whatever life there is must 
 hibernate through ^/la^^ and rise again each 
 day." 
 
 He mused. ** One can imagine something 
 worm-like," he said, " taking its air solid as 
 an earth-worm swallows earth, or thick-skinned 
 monsters " 
 
 " By-the-bye," I said, " why didn't we bring 
 a gun ? " 
 
 He did not answer that question. •* No," 
 he concluded, " we just have to go. We shall 
 see when we get there." 
 
 I remembered something. " Of course, 
 there's my minerals, anyhow," I said ; ** what- 
 ever the conditions may be." 
 
 Presently he told me he wished to alter our 
 course a little by letting the earth tug at us for 
 a moment. He was going to open one earth- 
 ward blind for thirty seconds. He warned me 
 that it would make my head swim, and advised 
 me to extend my hands against the glass to 
 break my fall. I did as he directed, and thrust 
 my feet against the bales of food cases and air 
 cylinders to prevent their falling upon me. 
 Then with a click the window flew open. I fell 
 
68 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 clumsily upon hands and face, and saw for a 
 moment between my black extended fingers 
 our mother earth — a planet in a downward sky. 
 
 We were still very near — Cavor told me the 
 distance was perhaps eight hundred miles — and 
 the huge terrestrial disk filled all heaven. But 
 already it was plain to see that the world was a 
 globe. The land below us was in twilight and 
 vague, but westward the vast grey stretches of 
 the Atlantic shone like molten silver under the 
 receding day. I think I recognised the cloud- 
 dimmed coast-lines of France and Spain and 
 the south of England, and then, with a click, 
 the shutter closed again, and I found myself in 
 a state of extraordinary confusion sliding slowly 
 over the smooth glass. 
 
 When at last things settled themselves in my 
 mind again, it seemed quite beyond question 
 that the moon was " down " and under my feet, 
 and that the earth was somewhere away on the 
 level of the horizon — the earth that had been 
 *' down " to me and my kindred since the 
 beginning of things. 
 
 So slight were the exertions required of us, 
 so easy did the practical annihilation of our 
 weight make all we had to do, that the necessity 
 for taking refreshment did not occur to us for 
 nearly six hours (by Cavor's chronometer) after 
 
THE JOURNEY TO THE MOON 69 
 
 our start. I was amazed at that lapse of time. 
 Even then I was satisfied with very little. 
 Cavor examined the apparatus for absorbing 
 carbonic acid and water, and pronounced it to 
 be in satisfactory order, our consumption of 
 oxygen having been extraordinarily slight. And 
 our talk being exhausted for the time, and 
 there being nothing further for us to do, we 
 gave way to a curious drowsiness that had 
 come upon us, and spreading our blankets on 
 the bottom of the sphere in such a manner as 
 to shut out most of the moonlight, wished each 
 other good-night, and almost immediately fell 
 asleep. 
 
 And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and 
 reading a little, and at times eating, although 
 without any keenness of appetite,^ but for the 
 most part in a sort of quiescence that was 
 neither waking nor slumber, we fell through a 
 space of time that had neither night nor day in 
 it, silently, softly, and swiftly down towards the 
 moon. 
 
 ^ It is a curious thing, that while we were in the sphere we 
 felt not the slightest desire for food, nor did we feel the want 
 of it when we abstained. At first we forced our appetites, but 
 afterwards we fasted completely. Altogether we did not con- 
 sume one-hundredth part of the compressed provisions we had 
 brought with us. The amount of carbonic acid we breathed 
 was also unnaturally low, but why this was so I am quite unable 
 to explain. 
 
VI 
 
 THE LANDING ON THE MOON 
 
 I REMEMBER how One day Cavor suddenly 
 opened six of our shutters and blinded me so 
 that I cried aloud at him. The whole area was 
 moon, a stupendous scimitar of white dawn with 
 its edge hacked out by notches of darkness, the 
 crescent shore of an ebbing tide of darkness, out 
 of which peaks and pinnacles came climbing into 
 the blaze of the sun. I take it the reader has 
 seen pictures or photographs of the moon, so 
 that I need not describe the broader features of 
 that landscape, those spacious ringlike ranges 
 vaster than any terrestrial mountains, their sum- 
 mits shining in the day, their shadows harsh 
 and deep, the grey disordered plains, the ridges, 
 hills, and craterlets, all passing at last from a 
 blazing illumination into a common mystery of 
 black. Athwart this world we were flying 
 scarcely a hundred miles above its crests and 
 pinnacles. And now we could see, what no eye 
 on earth will ever see, that under the blaze of 
 
THE LANDING ON THE MOON 71 
 
 the day the harsh outlines of the rocks and 
 ravines of the plains and, crater floor grew grey 
 and indistinct under a thickening haze, that the 
 white of their lit surfaces broke into lumps and 
 patches, and broke again and shrank and 
 vanished, and that here and there strange tints 
 of brown and olive grew and spread. 
 
 But little time we had for watching then. 
 For now we had come to the real danger of our 
 journey. We had to drop ever closer to the 
 moon as we spun about it, to slacken our pace 
 and watch our chance, until at last we could 
 dare to drop upon its surface. 
 
 For Cavor that was a time of intense exer- 
 tion ; for me it was an anxious inactivity. I 
 seemed perpetually to be getting out of his way. 
 He leapt about the sphere from, point to point 
 with an agility that would have been impossible 
 on earth. He was perpetually opening and 
 closing the Cavorite windows, making calcula- 
 tions, consulting his chronometer by means of 
 the glow lamp during those last eventful hours. 
 For a long time we had all our windows closed 
 and hung silently in darkness, hurling through 
 space. 
 
 Then he was feeling for the shutter studs, 
 and suddenly four windows were open. I 
 staggered and covered my eyes, drenched and 
 
72 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 scorched and blinded by the unaccustomed 
 splendour of the sun beneath my feet. Then 
 again the shutters snapped, leaving my brain 
 spinning in a darkness that pressed against the 
 eyes. And after that I floated in another vast, 
 black silence. 
 
 Then Cavor switched on the electric light, 
 and told me he proposed to bind all our luggage 
 together with the blankets about it, against the 
 concussion of our descent. We did this with 
 our windows closed, because in that way our 
 goods arranged themselves naturally at the 
 centre of the sphere. That too was a strange 
 business ; we two men floating loose in that 
 spherical space, and packing and pulling ropes. 
 Imagine it if you can ! No up nor down, and 
 every effort resulting in unexpected movements. 
 Now I would be pressed against the glass with 
 the full force of Cavor's thrust, now I would be 
 kicking helplessly in a void. Now the star of 
 the electric light would be overhead, now under 
 foot. Now Cavor's feet would float up before 
 my eyes, and now we would be crossways to 
 each other. But at last our goods were safely 
 bound together in a big soft bale, all except two 
 blankets with head holes that we were to wrap 
 about ourselves. 
 
 Then for a flash Cavor opened a window 
 
THE LANDING ON THE MOON 73 
 
 moonward, and we saw that we were dropping 
 towards a huge central crater with a number of 
 minor craters grouped in a sort of cross about 
 it. And then again Cavor flung our little sphere 
 open to the scorching, blinding sun. I think 
 he was using the sun's attraction as a brake. 
 *' Cover yourself with a blanket," he cried, 
 thrusting himself from me, and for a moment I 
 did not understand. 
 
 Then I hauled the blanket from beneath my 
 feet and got it about me and over my head and 
 eyes. Abruptly he closed the shutters again, 
 snapped one open again and closed it, then 
 suddenly began snapping them all open, each 
 safely into its steel roller. There came a jar, 
 and then we were rolling over and over, bump- 
 ing against the glass and against the big bale 
 of our luggage, and clutching at each other, and 
 outside some white substance splashed as if we 
 were rolling down a slope of snow. . . . 
 
 Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over. . . . 
 
 Came a thud, and I was half buried under 
 the bale of our possessions, and for a space 
 everything was still. Then I could hear Cavor 
 puffing and grunting, and the snapping of a 
 shutter in its sash. I made an effort, thrust 
 back our blanket-wrapped luggage, and emerged 
 from beneath it. Our open windows were 
 
74 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 just visible as a deeper black set with 
 stars. 
 
 We were still alive, and we were lying in the 
 darkness of the shadow of the wall of the great 
 crater into which we had fallen. 
 
 We sat getting our breath again, and feeling 
 the bruises on our limbs. I don't think either 
 of us had had a very clear expectation of such 
 rough handling as we had received. I struggled 
 painfully to my feet. "And now," said I, "to 
 look at the landscape of the moon ! But — ! 
 It's tremendously dark, Cavor ! " 
 
 The glass was dewy, and as I spoke I wiped 
 at it with my blanket. " We're half-an-hour or 
 so beyond the day," he said. " We must wait." 
 
 It was impossible to distinguish anything. 
 We might have been in a sphere of steel for 
 all that we could see. My rubbing with the 
 blanket simply smeared the glass, and as fast 
 as I wiped it, it became opaque again with 
 freshly condensed moisture mixed with an in- 
 creasing quantity of blanket hairs. Of course 
 I ought not to have used the blanket. In my 
 efforts to clear the glass I slipped upon the 
 damp surface, and hurt my shin against one of 
 the oxygen cylinders that protruded from our 
 bale. 
 
 The thing was exasperating — it was absurd. 
 
THE LANDING ON THE MOON 75 
 
 Here we were just arrived upon the moon, 
 amidst we knew not what wonders, and all 
 we could see was the grey and streaming 
 wall of the bubble in which we had come. 
 
 " Confound it ! " I said, " but at this rate 
 we might have stopped at home ; " and I 
 squatted on the bale and shivered, and drew 
 my blanket closer about me. 
 
 Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles 
 and fronds of frost. " Can you reach the 
 electric heater," said Cavor. " Yes — that 
 black knob. Or we shall freeze." 
 
 I did not wait to be told twice. "And 
 now," said I, "what are we to do?" 
 
 " Wait," he said. 
 
 "Wait?" 
 
 "Of course. We shall have to wait unti?! 
 our air gets warm again, and then this glass 
 will clear. We can't do anything till then. 
 It's night here yet ; we must wait for the day to 
 overtake us. Meanwhile, don't you feel hungry ? 
 
 For a space I did not answer him, but sat 
 fretting. I turned reluctantly from the smeared 
 puzzle of the glass and stared at his face. 
 " Yes," I said, " I am hungry. I feel some- 
 how enormously disappointed. I had ex- 
 pected — I don't know what I had expected, 
 but not this." 
 
76 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging 
 my blanket about me sat down on the bale 
 again and began my first meal on the moon. 
 I don't think I finished it — I forget. Presently, 
 first in patches, then running rapidly together 
 into wider spaces, came the clearing of the 
 glass, came the drawing of the misty veil that 
 hid the moon world from our eyes. 
 
 We peered out upon the landscape of the 
 moon. 
 
VII 
 
 SUNRISE ON THE MOON 
 
 As we saw it first it was the wildest and most 
 desolate of scenes. We were in an enormous 
 amphitheatre, a vast circular plain, the floor 
 of the giant crater. Its cliff-like walls closed 
 us in on every side. From the westward the 
 light of the unseen sun fell upon them, reach- 
 ing to the very foot of the cliff, and showed 
 a disordered escarpment of drab and greyish 
 rock, lined here and there with banks and 
 crevices of snow. This was perhaps a dozen 
 miles away, but at first no intervening atmos- 
 phere diminished in the slightest the minutely 
 detailed brilliancy with which these things 
 glared at us. They stood out clear and 
 dazzling against a background of starry black- 
 ness that seemed to our earthly eyes rather 
 a gloriously spangled velvet curtain than the 
 spaciousness of the sky. 
 
 The eastward cliff was at first merely a 
 starless selvedge to the starry dome. No 
 
78 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 rosy flush, no creeping pallor, announced the 
 commencing day. Only the Corona, the 
 Zodiacal light, a huge cone-shaped, luminous 
 haze, pointing up towards the splendour of 
 the morning star, warned us of the imminent 
 nearness of the sun. 
 
 Whatever light was about us was reflected 
 by the westward cliffs. It showed a huge 
 undulating plain, cold and grey, a grey that 
 deepened eastward into the absolute raven 
 darkness of the cliff shadow. Innumerable 
 rounded grey summits, ghostly hummocks, 
 billows of snowy substance, stretching crest 
 beyond crest into the remote obscurity, gave 
 us our first inkling of the distance of the crater 
 wall. These hummocks looked like snow. 
 At the time I thought they were snow. But 
 they were not — they were mounds and masses 
 of frozen air ! 
 
 So it was at first, and then, sudden, swift, 
 and amazing, came the lunar day. 
 
 The sunlight had crept down the cliff, it 
 touched the drifted masses at its base and 
 incontinently came striding with seven-leagued 
 boots towards us. The distant cliff" seemed to 
 shift and quiver, and at the touch of the dawn 
 a reek of grey vapour poured upward from 
 the crater floor, whirls and puffs and drifting 
 
SUNRISE ON THE MOON 79 
 
 wraiths of grey, thicker and broader and 
 denser, until at last the whole westward plain 
 was steaming like a wet handkerchief held 
 before the fire, and the westward cliffs were 
 no more than a refracted glare beyond. 
 
 "It is air," said Cavor. "It must be air — 
 or it would not rise like this — at the mere 
 touch of a sunbeam. And at this pace. ..." 
 
 He peered upwards. " Look ! " he said. 
 
 "What.?" I asked. 
 
 " In the sky. Already. On the blackness 
 — a little touch of blue. See! The stars 
 seem larger. And the little ones and all 
 those dim nebulosities we saw in empty space 
 — they are hidden ! " 
 
 Swiftly, steadily the day approached us. 
 Grey summit after grey summit was overtaken 
 by the blaze, and turned to a smoking white 
 intensity. At last there was nothing to the 
 west of us but a bank of surging fog, the 
 tumultuous advance and ascent of cloudy haze. 
 The distant cliff had receded further and further, 
 had loomed and changed through the whirl, and 
 foundered and vanished at last in its confusion. 
 
 Nearer came that steaming advance, nearer 
 and nearer, coming as fast as the shadow of 
 a cloud before the south-west wind. About 
 us rose a thin anticipatory haze. 
 
8o THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Cavor gripped my arm. 
 
 " What ? " I said. 
 
 *' Look ! The sunrise ! The sun ! " 
 
 He turned me about and pointed to the brow 
 of the eastward cliff, looming above the haze 
 about us, scarce lighter than the darkness of 
 the sky. But now its line was marked by 
 strange reddish shapes, tongues of vermilion 
 flame that writhed and danced. I fancied it 
 must be spirals of vapour that had caught the 
 light and made this crest of fiery tongues 
 against the sky, but indeed it was the solar 
 prominences I saw, a crown of fire about the 
 sun that is forever hidden from earthly eyes by 
 our atmospheric veil. 
 
 And then — the sun ! 
 
 Steadily, inevitably came a brilliant line, 
 came a thin edge of intolerable effulgence that 
 took a circular shape, became a bow, became a 
 blazing sceptre, and hurled a shaft of heat at 
 us as though it was a spear. 
 
 It seemed verily to stab my eyes ! I cried 
 aloud and turned about blinded, groping for 
 my blanket beneath the bale. 
 
 And with that incandescence came a sound, 
 the first sound that had reached us from with- 
 out since we left the earth, a hissing and rust- 
 ling, the stormy trailing of the aerial garment 
 
SUNRISE ON THE MOON 81 
 
 of the advancing day. And with the coming 
 of the sound and the light the sphere lurched, 
 and blinded and dazzled we staggered help- 
 lessly against each other. It lurched again, 
 and the hissing grew louder. I had shut my 
 eyes perforce, I was making clumsy efforts to 
 cover my head with my blanket, and this 
 second lurch sent me helplessly off my feet. 
 I fell against the bale, and opening my eyes 
 had a momentary glimpse of the air just out- 
 side our glass. It was running — it was boiling 
 — like snow into which a white-hot rod is thrust. 
 What had been solid air had suddenly at the 
 touch of the sun become a paste, a mud, a 
 slushy liquefaction, that hissed and bubbled 
 into gas. 
 
 There came a still more violent whirl of the 
 sphere, and we had clutched one another. In 
 another moment we were spun about again. 
 Round we went and over, and then I was on 
 all fours. The lunar dawn had hold of us. It 
 meant to show us little men what the moon 
 could do with us. 
 
 I caught a second glimpse of things without, 
 puffs of vapour, half-liquid slush, excavated, 
 sliding, falling, sliding. We dropped into 
 darkness. I went down with Cavor's knees 
 in my chest. Then he seemed to fly away 
 
 F 
 
82 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 from me, and for a moment I lay with all the 
 breath out of my body staring upward. A 
 toppling crag of the melting stuff had splashed 
 over us, buried us, and now it thinned and 
 boiled off us. I saw the bubbles dancing on 
 the glass above. I heard Cavor exclaiming 
 feebly. 
 
 Then some huge landslip in the thawing air 
 had caught us, and spluttering expostulation, 
 we began to roll down a slope, rolling faster 
 and faster, leaping crevasses and rebounding 
 from banks, faster and faster, westward into 
 the white-hot boiling tumult of the lunar day. 
 
 Clutching at one another we spun about, 
 pitched this way and that, our bale of pack- 
 ages leaping at us, pounding at us. We col- 
 lided, we gripped, we were torn asunder — our 
 heads met, and the whole universe burst into 
 fiery darts and stars ! On the earth we should 
 have smashed one another a dozen times, but 
 on the moon, luckily for us, our weight was 
 only one-sixth of what it is terrestrially, and we 
 fell very mercifully. I recall a sensation of 
 utter sickness, a feeling as if my brain were 
 upside down within my skull, and then 
 
 Something was at work upon my face, some 
 thin feelers worried my ears. Then I dis- 
 
SUNRISE ON THE MOON 83 
 
 covered the brilliance of the landscape around 
 was mitigated by blue spectacles. Cavor bent 
 over me, and I saw his face upside down, his 
 eyes also protected by tinted goggles. His 
 breath came irregularly, and his lip was bleed- 
 ing from a bruise. " Better ? " he said, wiping 
 the blood with the back of his hand. 
 
 Everything seemed swaying for a space, but 
 that was simply my giddiness. I perceived 
 that he had closed some of the shutters in the 
 outer sphere to save me from the direct blaze 
 of the sun. I was aware that everything about 
 ■ us was very brilliant. 
 
 " Lord ! " I gasped. " But this ! " 
 
 I craned my neck to see. I perceived there 
 was a blinding glare outside, an utter change 
 from the gloomy darkness of our first impres- 
 sions. " Have I been insensible long ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " I don't know — the chronometer is broken. 
 Some little time. ... My dear chap ! I have 
 been afraid. . . ." 
 
 I lay for a space taking this in. I saw his 
 face still bore evidences of emotion. For a 
 while I said nothing. I passed an inquisitive 
 hand over my contusions, and surveyed his face 
 for similar damages. The back of my right 
 hand had suffered most, and was skinless and 
 
84 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 raw. My forehead was bruised and had bled. 
 He handed me a little measure with some of 
 the restorative — I forget the name of it — he 
 had brought with us. After a time I felt a 
 little better. I began to stretch my limbs 
 carefully. Soon I could talk. 
 
 " It wouldn't have done," I said, as though 
 there had been no interval. 
 
 *' No ! it wouldntr 
 
 He thought, his hands hanging over his 
 knees. He peered through the glass and 
 then stared at me. " Good Lord ! " he said. 
 ''Nor 
 
 ** What has happened '^. " I asked after a 
 pause. " Have we jumped to the tropics ? " 
 
 " It was as I expected. This air has eva- 
 porated — if it is air. At any rate, it has 
 evaporated and the surface of the moon is 
 showing. We are lying on a bank of earthy 
 rock. Here and there bare soil is exposed. 
 A queer sort of soil ! " 
 
 It occurred to him that it was unnecessary 
 to explain. He assisted me into a sitting 
 position, and I could see with my own eyes. 
 
VIII 
 
 A LUNAR MORNING 
 
 The harsh emphasis, the pitiless black and 
 white of the scenery had altogether disappeared. 
 The glare of the sun had taken upon itself a 
 faint tinge of amber ; the shadows upon the 
 cliff of the crater wall were deeply purple. To 
 the eastward a dark bank of fog still crouched 
 and sheltered from the sunrise, but to the west- 
 ward the sky was blue and clear. I began to 
 realise the length of my insensibility. 
 
 We were no longer in a void. An atmos- 
 phere had arisen about us. The outline of 
 things had gained in character, had grown 
 acute and varied ; save for a shadowed space 
 of white substance here and there, white sub- 
 stance that was no longer air but snow, the 
 arctic appearance had gone altogether. Every- 
 where broad rusty brown spaces of bare and 
 tumbled earth spread to the blaze of the sun. 
 Here and there at the edge of the snowdrifts 
 were transient little pools and eddies of water, 
 
 8s 
 
86 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 the only things stirring in that expanse of 
 barrenness. The sunlight inundated the upper 
 two blinds of our sphere and turned our 
 climate to high summer, but our feet were still 
 in shadow, and the sphere was lying upon a 
 drift of snow. 
 
 And scattered here and there upon the slope, 
 and emphasised by little white threads of un- 
 thawed snow upon their shady sides, were 
 shapes like sticks, dry twisted sticks of the 
 same rusty hue as the rock upon which they 
 lay. That caught one's thoughts sharply. 
 Sticks ! On a lifeless world ? Then as my 
 eye grew more accustomed to the texture of 
 their substance, I perceived that almost all this 
 surface had a fibrous texture, like the carpet 
 of brown needles one finds beneath the shade 
 of pine trees. 
 
 " Cavor ! " I said. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "It may be a dead world now — but 
 once " 
 
 Something arrested my attention. I had 
 discovered among these needles a number of 
 little round objects. And it seemed to me that 
 one of these had moved. 
 
 "Cavor," I whispered. 
 
 "What.?" 
 
" We watched intensely " 
 
A LUNAR MORNING 87 
 
 But I did not answer at once. I stared in- 
 credulous. For an instant I could not believe 
 my eyes. I gave an inarticulate cry. I gripped 
 his arm. I pointed. " Look ! " I cried, finding 
 my tongue. " There ! Yes ! And there ! " 
 
 His eyes followed my pointing finger. "Eh?" 
 he said. 
 
 How can I describe the thing I saw ? It is 
 so petty a thing to state, and yet it seemed so 
 wonderful, so pregnant with emotion. I have 
 said that amidst the stick-like litter were these 
 rounded bodies, these little oval bodies that 
 might have passed as very small pebbles. And 
 now first one and then another had stirred, had 
 rolled over and cracked, and down the crack of 
 each of them showed a minute line of yellowish 
 green, thrusting outward to meet the hot en- 
 couragement of the newly-risen sun. For a 
 moment that was all, and then there stirred 
 and burst a third ! 
 
 " It is a seed," said Cavor. And then I 
 heard him whisper very softly, ''Life!" 
 
 "Life!" And immediately it poured upon 
 us that our vast journey had not been made 
 in vain, that we had come to no arid waste 
 of minerals, but to a world that lived and 
 moved ! We watched intensely. I remember 
 I kept rubbing the glass before me with 
 
88 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 my sleeve, jealous of the faintest suspicion of 
 mist. 
 
 The picture was clear and vivid only in the 
 middle of the field. All about that centre the 
 dead fibres and seeds were mao^nified and dis- 
 torted by the curvature of the glass. But we 
 could see enough ! One after another all down 
 the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown 
 bodies burst and gaped apart, like seed-pods, 
 like the husks of fruits ; opened eager mouths 
 that drank in the heat and light pouring in a 
 cascade from the newly-risen sun. 
 
 Every moment more of these seed coats 
 ruptured, and even as they did so the swelling 
 pioneers overflowed their rent-distended seed- 
 cases, and passed into the second stage of 
 growth. With a steady assurance, a swift de- 
 liberation, these amazing seeds thrust a rootlet 
 downward to the earth and a queer little bundle- 
 like bud into the air. In a little while the 
 whole slope was dotted with minute plantlets 
 standing at attention in the blaze of the sun. 
 
 They did not stand for long. The bundle- 
 like buds swelled and strained and opened with 
 a jerk, thrusting out a coronet of little sharp 
 tips, spreading a whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish 
 leaves, that lengthened rapidly, lengthened 
 visibly even as we watched. The movement 
 
A LUNAR MORNING 89 
 
 was slower than any animal's, swifter than any 
 plant's I have ever seen before. How can I 
 suggest it to you — the way that growth went 
 on? The leaf tips grew so that they moved 
 onward even while we looked at them. The 
 brown seed-case shrivelled and was absorbed 
 with an equal rapidity. Have you ever on 
 a cold day taken a thermometer into your 
 warm hand and watched the little thread of 
 mercury creep up the tube ? These moon 
 plants grew like that. 
 
 In a few minutes, as it seemed, the buds of 
 the more forward of these plants had lengthened 
 into a stem and were even putting forth a 
 second whorl of leaves, and all the slope that 
 had seemed so recently a lifeless stretch of 
 litter was now dark with the stunted olive- 
 green herbage of bristling spikes that swayed 
 with the vigour of their growing. 
 
 I turned about, and behold ! along the upper 
 edge of a rock to the eastward a similar fringe 
 in a scarcely less forward condition swayed 
 and bent, dark against the blinding glare of 
 the sun. And beyond this fringe was the 
 silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily 
 like a cactus, and swelling visibly, swelling like 
 a bladder that fills with air. 
 
 Then to the westward also I discovered that 
 
90 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 another such distended form was rising over 
 the scrub. But here the light fell upon its 
 sleek sides, and I could see that its colour was a 
 vivid orange hue. It rose as one watched it ; if 
 one looked away from it for a minute and then 
 back, its outline had changed ; it thrust out 
 blunt congested branches until in a little time 
 it rose a coralline shape of many feet in height. 
 Compared with such a growth the terrestrial 
 puff-ball, which will sometimes swell a foot in 
 diameter in a single night, would be a hopeless 
 laggard. But then the puff-ball grows against 
 a gravitational pull six times that of the moon. 
 Beyond, out of gullies and flats that had been 
 hidden from us, but not from the quickening 
 sun, over reefs and banks of shining rock, a 
 bristling beard of spiky and fleshy vegetation 
 was straining into view, hurrying tumultuously 
 to take advantage of the brief day in which it 
 must flower and fruit and seed again and die. 
 It was like a miracle, that growth. So, one 
 must imagine, the trees and plants arose at 
 the Creation and covered the desolation of the 
 new-made earth. 
 
 Imagine it ! Imagine that dawn ! The re- 
 surrection of the frozen air, the stirring and 
 quickening of the soil, and then this silent 
 uprising of vegetation, this unearthly ascent of 
 
A LUNAR MORNING 91 
 
 fleshiness and spikes. Conceive it all lit by a 
 blaze that would make the intensest sunlight of 
 earth seem watery and weak. And still around 
 this stirring jungle, wherever there was shadow, 
 lingered banks of bluish snow. And to have the 
 picture of our impression complete, you must 
 bear in mind that we saw it all through a thick 
 bent glass, distorting it as things are distorted 
 by a lens, acute only in the centre of the picture, 
 and very bright there, and towards the edges 
 magnified and unreal. 
 
IX 
 
 PROSPECTING BEGINS 
 
 We ceased to gaze. We turned to each other, 
 the same thought, the same question in our 
 eyes. For these plants to grow, there must be 
 some air, however attenuated, air that we also 
 should be able to breathe. 
 
 " The manhole ? " I said. 
 
 " Yes ! " said Cavor, ** if it is air we see 1 " 
 
 " In a little while," I said, "these plants will 
 be as high as we are. Suppose — suppose after 
 all — Is it certain ? How do you know that 
 stuff is air? It may be nitrogen — it may be 
 carbonic acid even ! " 
 
 " That is easy," he said, and set about proving 
 it. He produced a big piece of crumpled paper 
 from the bale, lit it, and thrust it hastily through 
 the manhole valve. I bent forward and peered 
 down through the thick glass for its appearance 
 outside, that little flame on whose evidence de- 
 pended so much ! 
 
 I saw the paper drop out and lie lightly upon 
 
PROSPECTING BEGINS 93 
 
 the snow. The pink flame of its burning 
 vanished. For an instant it seemed to be 
 extinguished. And then I saw a little blue 
 tongue upon the edge of it that trembled, and 
 crept, and spread ! 
 
 Quiedy the whole sheet, save where it lay in 
 immediate contact with the snow, charred and 
 shrivelled and sent up a quivering thread of 
 smoke. There was no doubt left to me ; the 
 atmosphere of the moon was either pure oxygen 
 or air, and capable therefore — unless its tenuity 
 was excessive — of supporting our alien life. 
 We might emerge — and live ! 
 
 I sat down with my legs on either side of 
 the manhole and prepared to unscrew it, but 
 Cavor stopped me. " There is first a litde 
 precaution," he said. He pointed out that 
 although it was certainly an oxygenated atmos- 
 phere outside, it might still be so rarified as to 
 cause us grave injury. He reminded me of 
 mountain sickness, and of the bleeding that 
 often afflicts aeronauts who have ascended too 
 swiftly, and he spent some time in the prepara- 
 tion of a sickly-tasting drink which he insisted 
 on my sharing. It made me feel a litde numb, 
 but otherwise had no effect on me. Then he 
 permitted me to beg^in unscrewino-. 
 
 Presently the glass stopper of the manhole 
 
94 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 was so far undone that the denser air within 
 our sphere began to escape along the thread 
 of the screw, singing as a kettle sings before it 
 boils. Thereupon he made me desist. It 
 speedily became evident that the pressure out- 
 side was very much less than it was within. 
 How much less it was we had no means of 
 telling. 
 
 I sat grasping the stopper with both hands, 
 ready to close it again if, in spite of our intense 
 hope, the lunar atmosphere should after all 
 prove too rarified for us, and Cavor sat with 
 a cylinder of compressed oxygen at hand to 
 restore our pressure. We looked at one 
 another in silence, and then at the fantastic 
 vegetation that swayed and grew visibly and 
 noiselessly without. And ever that shrill 
 piping continued. 
 
 My blood-vessels began to throb in my ears, 
 and the sound of Cavor's movements diminished. 
 I noted how still everything had become, be- 
 cause of the thinning of the air. 
 
 As our air sizzled out from the screw the 
 moisture of it condensed in little puffs. 
 
 Presently I experienced a peculiar shortness 
 of breath, that lasted indeed during the whole 
 of the time of our exposure to the moon's 
 exterior atmosphere, and a rather unpleasant 
 
PROSPECTING BEGINS 95 
 
 sensation about the ears and finger-nails and 
 the back of the throat grew upon my attention 
 and presently passed off again. 
 
 But then came vertigo and nausea that 
 abruptly changed the quality of my courao-e I 
 gave the lid of the manhole half a turn and 
 made a hasty explanation to Cavor; but now 
 he was the more sanguine. He answered me 
 in a voice that seemed extraordinarily small 
 and remote, because of the thinness of the air 
 that carried the sound. He recommended a 
 nip of brandy, and set me the example, and 
 presently I felt better. I turned the manhole 
 stopper back again. The throbbing in my ears 
 grew louder, and then I remarked that the 
 piping note of the outrush had ceased. For a 
 time I could not be sure that it had ceased 
 
 1' Z^l \ I '""'"^ ^^''°' ^" ^^^ S^""'^ «f ^ voice. 
 Well.?" said I. 
 
 " Shall we go on ? " 
 
 I thought. " Is this all .? " 
 
 "If you can stand it." 
 
 By way of answer I went on unscrewing I 
 ifted the circular operculum from its place and 
 laid ,t carefully on the bale. A flake or so of 
 snow whirled and vanished as that thin and 
 unfamiliar air took possession of our sphere I 
 knelt, and then seated myself at the edge of the 
 
96 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 manhole, peering over it. Beneath, within a 
 yard of my face, lay the untrodden snow of the 
 moon. 
 
 There came a little pause. Our eyes met. 
 
 " It doesn't distress your lungs too much ? " 
 said Cavor. 
 
 *' No," I said. " I can stand this." 
 
 He stretched out his hand for his blanket, 
 thrust his head through its central hole and 
 wrapped it about him. He sat down on the 
 edge of the manhole, he let his feet drop until 
 they were within six inches of the lunar ground. 
 He hesitated for a moment, then thrust himself 
 forward, dropped these intervening inches, and 
 stood upon the untrodden soil of the moon. 
 
 As he stepped forward he was refracted 
 grotesquely by the edge of the glass. He 
 stood for a moment looking this way and that. 
 Then he drew himself together and leapt. 
 
 The glass distorted ever^'thing, but it seemed 
 to me even then to be an extremely big leap. 
 He had at one bound become remote. He 
 seemed twenty or thirty feet off. He was 
 standing high upon a rocky mass and gesticu- 
 lating back to me. Perhaps he was shouting 
 — but the sound did not reach me. But how 
 the deuce had he done this ? I felt like a man 
 who has just seen a new conjuring trick. 
 
PROSPECTING BEGINS 97 
 
 In a puzzled state of mind I too dropped 
 through the manhole. I stood up. Just in 
 front of me the snowdrift had fallen away and 
 made a sort of ditch, I made a step and 
 jumped. 
 
 I found myself flying through the air, saw 
 the rock on which he stood coming to meet 
 me, clutched it and clung in a state of infinite 
 amazement. 
 
 I gasped a painful laugh. I was tremen- 
 dously confused. Cavor bent down and shouted 
 in piping tones for me to be careful. 
 
 I had forgotten that on the moon, with only 
 an eighth part of the earth's mass and a quarter 
 of its diameter, my weight was barely a sixth 
 what it was on earth. But now that fact in- 
 sisted on being remembered. 
 
 "We are out of Mother Earth's leading- 
 strings now," he said. 
 
 With a guarded effort I raised myself to the 
 top, and moving as cautiously as a rheumatic 
 patient, stood up beside him under the blaze 
 of the sun. The sphere lay behind us on its 
 dwindling snowdrift thirty feet away. 
 
 As far as the eye could see over the enor- 
 mous disorder of rocks that formed the crater 
 floor, the same bristling scrub that surrounded 
 us was starting into life, diversified here and 
 
98 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 there by bulging masses of a cactus form, and 
 scarlet and purple lichens that grew so fast they 
 seemed to crawl over the rocks. The whole 
 area of the crater seemed to me then to be one 
 similar wilderness up to the very foot of the 
 surrounding cliff. 
 
 This cliff was apparently bare of vegetation 
 save at its base, and with buttresses and ter- 
 races and platforms that did not very greatly 
 attract our attention at the time. It was many 
 miles away from us in every direction, we 
 seemed to be almost at the centre of the crater, 
 and we saw it through a certain haziness that 
 drove before the wind. For there was even a 
 wind now in the thin air, a swift yet weak wind 
 that chilled exceedingly but exerted little pres- 
 sure. It was blowing round the crater, as it 
 seemed, to the hot illuminated side from the 
 foggy darkness under the sunward wall. It 
 was difficult to look into this eastward fog ; we 
 had to peer with half-closed eyes beneath the 
 shade of our hands, because of the fierce in- 
 tensity of the motionless sun. 
 
 *' It seems to be deserted," said Cavor, "ab- 
 solutely desolate." 
 
 I looked about me again. I retained even 
 then a clinging hope of some quasi-human evi- 
 dence, some pinnacle of building, some house 
 
PROSPECTING BEGINS 99 
 
 or engine, but everywhere one looked spread 
 the tumbled rocks in peaks and crests, and the 
 darting scrub and those bulging cacti that 
 swelled and swelled, a flat negation as it 
 seemed of all such hope. 
 
 "It looks as though these plants had it to 
 themselves," I said. " I see no trace of any- 
 other creature." 
 
 ** No insects — no birds — no ! Not a trace, 
 not a scrap nor particle of animal life. If there 
 was — what would they do in the night .-* . . . 
 No ; there's just these plants alone." 
 
 I shaded my eyes with my hand. " It's like 
 the landscape of a dream. These things are 
 less like earthly land plants than the things 
 one imagines among the rocks at the bottom 
 of the sea. Look at that yonder ! One might 
 imagine it a lizard changed into a plant. And 
 the glare ! " 
 
 "This is only the fresh morning," said 
 Cavor. 
 
 He sighed and looked about him. " This is 
 no world for men," he said. "And yet in a 
 way — it appeals." 
 
 He became silent for a time, then commenced 
 his meditative humming. 
 
 I started at a gentle touch, and found a thin 
 sheet of livid lichen lapping over my shoe. I 
 
loo THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 kicked at it and it fell to powder, and each 
 speck began to grow. 
 
 I heard Cavor exclaim sharply, and per- 
 ceived that one of the fixed bayonets of the 
 scrub had pricked him. 
 
 He hesitated, his eyes sought among the 
 rocks about us. A sudden blaze of pink had 
 crept up a ragged pillar of crag. It was a most 
 extraordinary pink, a livid magenta. 
 
 " Look ! " said I, turning, and behold Cavor 
 had vanished ! 
 
 For an instant I stood transfixed. Then I 
 made a hasty step to look over the verge of 
 the rock. But in my surprise at his disap- 
 pearance I forgot once more that we were on 
 the moon. The thrust of my foot that I made 
 in striding would have carried me a yard on 
 earth ; on the moon it carried me six — a good 
 five yards over the edge. For the moment 
 the thing had something of the effect of those 
 nightmares when one falls and falls. For while 
 one falls sixteen feet in the first second of a fall 
 on earth, on the moon one falls two, and with 
 only a sixth of one's weight. I fell, or rather 
 I jumped down, about ten yards I suppose. It 
 seemed to take quite a long time, five or six 
 seconds, I should think. I floated through the 
 air and fell like a feather, knee-deep in a snow- 
 
" I realised my leap had been too violent ' 
 
PROSPECTING BEGINS loi 
 
 drift in the bottom of a gully of blue-grey, 
 white-veined rock. < 
 
 I looked about me. " Cavor ! " I cried ; but 
 no Cavor was visible. 
 
 " Cavor ! " I cried louder, and the rocks 
 echoed me, 
 
 I turned fiercely to the rocks and clambered 
 to the summit of them. *' Cavor ! " I cried. 
 My voice sounded like the voice of a lost lamb. 
 
 The sphere, too, was not in sight, and for a 
 moment a horrible feeling of desolation pinched 
 my heart. 
 
 Then I saw him. He was laughing and 
 gesticulating to attract my attention. He was 
 on a bare patch of rock twenty or thirty yards 
 away. I could not hear his voice, but "jump" 
 said his gestures. I hesitated, the distance 
 seemed enormous. Yet I reflected that surely 
 I must be able to clear a greater distance than 
 Cavor. 
 
 I made a step back, gathered myself to- 
 gether, and leapt with all my might. I seemed 
 to shoot right up in the air as though I should 
 never come down. . . . 
 
 It was horrible and delightful, and as wild 
 as a nightmare, to go flying off in this fashion. 
 I realised my leap had been altogether too 
 violent. I flew clean over Cavor's head and 
 
102 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 beheld a spiky confusion in a gully spreading 
 to meet my fall. I gave a yelp of alarm. I 
 put out my hands and straightened my legs. 
 
 I hit a huge fungoid bulk that burst all about 
 me, scattering a mass of orange spores in every 
 direction, and covering me with orange powder. 
 I rolled over spluttering, and came to rest con- 
 vulsed with breathless laughter. 
 
 I became aware of Cavor's little round face 
 peering over a bristling hedge. He shouted 
 some faded inquiry. " Eh ? " I tried to shout, 
 but could not do so for want of breath. He 
 made his way towards me, coming gingerly 
 among the bushes. 
 
 " We've got to be careful," he said. " This 
 moon has no discipline. She'll let us smash 
 ourselves." 
 
 He helped me to my feet. "You exerted 
 yourself too much," he said, dabbing at the 
 yellow stuff with his hand to remove it from 
 my garments. 
 
 I stood passive and panting, allowing him to 
 beat off the jelly from my knees and elbows 
 and lecture me upon my misfortunes. "We 
 don't quite allow for the gravitation. Our 
 muscles are scarcely educated yet. We must 
 practise a little, when you have got your 
 breath." 
 
PROSPECTING BEGINS 103 
 
 I pulled two or three little thorns out of my 
 hand, and sat for a time on a boulder of rock. 
 My muscles were quivering, and I had that 
 feeling of personal disillusionment that comes 
 at the first fall to the learner of cycling on 
 earth. 
 
 It suddenly occurred to Cavor that the cold 
 air in the gully, after the brightness of the sun, 
 might give me a fever. So we clambered back 
 into the sunlight. We found that beyond a 
 few abrasions I had received no serious injuries 
 from my tumble, and at Cavor's suggestion we 
 were presently looking round for some safe 
 and easy landing-place for my next leap. We 
 chose a rocky slab some ten yards off, sepa- 
 rated from us by a little thicket of olive-green 
 spikes. 
 
 "Imagine it there!" said Cavor, who was 
 assuming the airs of a trainer, and he pointed 
 to a spot about four feet from my toes. This 
 leap I managed without difficulty, and I must 
 confess I found a certain satisfaction in Cavor's 
 falling short by a foot or so and tasting the 
 spikes of the scrub. " One has to be careful, 
 you see," he said, pulling out his thorns, and 
 with that he ceased to be my Mentor, and 
 became my fellow learner in the art of lunar 
 locomotion. 
 
104 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 We chose a still easier jump and did it 
 without difficulty, and then leapt back again, 
 and to and fro several times, accustoming our 
 muscles to the new standard. I could never 
 have believed had I not experienced it, how 
 rapid that adaptation would be. In a very- 
 little time indeed, certainly after fewer than 
 thirty leaps, we could judge the effort neces- 
 sary for a distance with almost terrestrial 
 assurance. 
 
 And all this time the lunar plants were 
 growing around us, higher and denser and 
 more entangled, every moment thicker and 
 taller, spiked plants, green cactus masses, 
 fungi, fleshy and lichenous things, strangest 
 radiate and sinuous shapes. But we were so 
 intent upon our leaping, that for a time we 
 gave no heed to their unfaltering expansion. 
 
 An extraordinary elation had taken pos- 
 session of us. Partly, I think, it was our 
 sense of release from the confinement of the 
 sphere. Mainly, however, the thin sweetness 
 of the air, which I am certain contained a 
 much larger proportion of oxygen than our 
 terrestrial atmosphere. In spite of the strange 
 quality of all about us, I felt as adventurous 
 and experimental as a cockney would do placed 
 for the first time among mountains ; and I do 
 
PROSPECTING BEGINS 105 
 
 not think it occurred to either of us, face to 
 face though we were with the Unknown, to be 
 very greatly afraid. 
 
 We were bitten by a spirit of enterprise. 
 We selected a lichenous kopje perhaps fifteen 
 yards away, and landed neatly on its summit 
 one after the other. " Good ! " we cried to 
 each other; "good!" and Cavor made three 
 steps and went off to a tempting slope of snow 
 a good twenty yards and more beyond. I 
 stood for a moment struck by the grotesque 
 effect of his soaring figure — his dirty cricket 
 cap, and spiky hair, his little round body, his 
 arms and his knickerbockered legs tucked up 
 tightly — against the weird spaciousness of the 
 lunar scene. A gust of laughter seized me, 
 and then I stepped off to follow. Plump ! I 
 dropped beside him. 
 
 We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt 
 three or four times more, and sat down at last 
 in a lichenous hollow. Our lungs were painful. 
 We sat holding our sides and recovering our 
 breath, looking appreciation at one another. 
 Cavor panted something about "amazing sen- 
 sations." And then came a thought into my 
 head. For the moment it did not seem a par- 
 ticularly appalling thought, simply a natural 
 question arising out of the situation. 
 
io6 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 '* By the way," I said, " where exactly is the 
 sphere ? " 
 
 Cavor looked at me. " Eh ? " 
 
 The full meaning of what we were saying 
 struck me sharply. 
 
 " Cavor ! " I cried, laying a hand on his arm, 
 " where is the sphere ? " 
 
X 
 
 LOST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 His face caught something of my dismay. 
 He stood up and stared about him at the 
 scrub that fenced us in and rose about us, 
 straining upward in a passion of growth. He 
 put a dubious hand to his lips. He spoke 
 with a sudden lack of assurance. " I think," 
 he said slowly, "we left it . . . somewhere 
 . . . about there!' 
 
 He pointed a hesitating finger that wavered 
 in an arc. 
 
 '* I'm not sure." His look of consternation 
 deepened. ** Anyhow," he said, with his eyes 
 on me, " it can't be far." 
 
 We had both stood up. We made unmean- 
 ing ejaculations, our eyes sought in the twining, 
 thickening jungle round about us. 
 
 All about us on the sunlit slopes frothed and 
 swayed the darting shrubs, the swelling cactus, 
 the creeping lichens, and wherever the shade 
 remained the snowdrifts lingered. North, 
 
io8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 south, east, and west spread an identical 
 monotony of unfamiliar forms. And some- 
 where, buried already among this tangled 
 confusion, was our sphere, our home, our 
 only provision, our only hope of escape from 
 this fantastic wilderness of ephemeral growths 
 into which we had come. 
 
 " I think, after all," he said, pointing sud- 
 denly, " it might be over there." 
 
 ** No," I said. " We have turned in a curve. 
 See! here is the mark of my heels. It's clear 
 the thing must be more to the eastward, much 
 more. No ! — the sphere must be over there." 
 
 " I think,'' said Cavor, " I kept the sun upon 
 my right all the time." 
 
 "Every leap, it seems to me,'' I said, "my 
 shadow flew before me." 
 
 We stared into one another's eyes. The 
 area of the crater had become enormously vast 
 to our imaginations, the growing thickets 
 already impenetrably dense. 
 
 "Good heavens! What fools we have 
 been ! " 
 
 " It's evident that we must find it again," 
 said Cavor, "and that soon. The sun grows 
 stronger. We should be fainting with the 
 heat already if it wasn't so dry. And . . . 
 I'm hungry." 
 
LOST MEN IN THE MOON 109 
 
 I stared at him. I had not suspected this 
 aspect of the matter before. But it came to 
 me at once — a positive craving. " Yes," I 
 said with emphasis. " I am hungry too." 
 
 He stood up with a look of active resolution. 
 "Certainly we must find the sphere." 
 
 As calmly as possible we surveyed the in- 
 terminable reefs and thickets that formed the 
 floor of the crater, each of us weighing in 
 silence the chances of our finding the sphere 
 before we were overtaken by heat and hunger. 
 
 " It can't be fifty yards from here," said 
 Cavor, with indecisive gestures. " The only 
 thing is to beat round about until we come 
 upon it." 
 
 ** That is all we can do," I said, without any 
 alacrity to begin our hunt. " I wish this con- 
 founded spike bush did not grow so fast ! " 
 
 " That's just it," said Cavor. " But it was 
 lying on a bank of snow." 
 
 I stared about me in the vain hope of recog- 
 nising some knoll or shrub that had been near 
 the sphere. But everywhere was a confusing 
 sameness, everywhere the aspiring bushes, the 
 distending fungi, the dwindling snow banks, 
 steadily and inevitably changed. The sun 
 scorched and stung, the faintness of an un- 
 accountable hunger mingled with our infinite 
 
no THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 perplexity. And even as we stood there, con- 
 fused and lost amidst unprecedented things, 
 we became aware for the first time of a sound 
 upon the moon other than the stir of the grow- 
 ing plants, the faint sighing of the wind, or 
 those that we ourselves had made. 
 
 Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . 
 
 It came from beneath our feet, a sound in 
 the earth. We seemed to hear it with our feet 
 as much as with our ears. Its dull resonance 
 was muffled by distance, thick with the quality 
 of intervening substance. No sound that I 
 can imagine could have astonished us more, 
 or have changed more completely the quality 
 of things about us. For this sound, rich, slow, 
 and deliberate, seemed to us as though it could 
 be nothing but the striking of some gigantic 
 buried clock. 
 
 Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . 
 
 Sound suggestive of still cloisters, of sleep- 
 less nights in crowded cities, of vigils and 
 the awaited hour, of all that is orderly and 
 methodical in life, booming out pregnant and 
 mysterious in this fantastic desert ! To the 
 eye everything was unchanged : the desolation 
 of bushes and cacti waving silently in the wind, 
 stretched unbroken to the distant cliffs, the 
 still dark sky was empty overhead, and the hot 
 
LOST MEN IN THE MOON m 
 
 sun hung and burned. And through it all, 
 a warning, a threat, throbbed this enigma of 
 sound. 
 
 Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . 
 
 We questioned one another in faint and 
 faded voices. "A clock?" 
 
 " Like a clock ! " 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " What can it be ? " 
 
 " Count," was Cavor's belated suggestion, 
 and at that word the striking ceased. 
 
 The silence, the rhythmic disappointment 
 of the silence, came as a fresh shock. For a 
 moment one could doubt whether one had ever 
 heard a sound. Or whether it might not still 
 be going on. Had I indeed heard a sound ? 
 
 I felt the pressure of Cavor's hand upon my 
 arm. He spoke in an undertone, as though 
 he feared to wake some sleeping thing. " Let 
 us keep together," he whispered, "and look 
 for the sphere. We must get back to the 
 sphere. This is beyond our understanding." 
 
 " Which way shall we go ? " 
 
 He hesitated. An intense persuasion of 
 presences, of unseen things about us and near 
 us, dominated our minds. What could they 
 be? Where could they be? Was this arid 
 desolation, alternately frozen and scorched, 
 
112 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 cnly the outer rind and mask of some sub- 
 terranean world ? And if so, what sort of 
 world ? What sort of inhabitants might it not 
 presently disgorge upon us ? 
 
 And then, stabbing the aching stillness as 
 vivid and sudden as an unexpected thunder- 
 clap, came a clang and rattle as though great 
 gates of metal had suddenly been flung apart. 
 
 It arrested our steps. We stood gaping 
 helplessly. Then Cavor stole towards me. 
 
 " I do not understand !" he whispered close 
 to my face. He waved his hand vaguely sky- 
 ward, the vague suggestion of still vaguer 
 thoughts. 
 • "A hiding-place! If anything came ..." 
 
 I looked about us. I nodded my head in 
 assent to him. 
 
 We started off, moving stealthily with the 
 most exaggerated precautions against noise. 
 We went towards a thicket of scrub. A 
 clangour like hammers flung about a boiler 
 hastened our steps. "We must crawl," 
 whispered Cavor. 
 
 The lower leaves of the bayonet plants, 
 already overshadowed by the newer ones 
 sbove, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so 
 that we could thrust our way in among the 
 thickening stems without serious injury. A 
 
LOST MEN IN THE MOON 113 
 
 stab in the face or arm we did not heed. At 
 the heart of the thicket I stopped, and stared 
 panting into Cavor's face. 
 
 " Subterranean," he whispered. " Below." 
 
 " They may come out." 
 
 " We must find the sphere ! " 
 
 "Yes," I said; "but how?" 
 
 " Crawl till we come to it." 
 
 "But if we don't.?" 
 
 " Keep hidden. See what they are like." 
 
 "We will keep together," said I. 
 
 He thought. " Which way shall we go ? " 
 
 "We must take our chance." 
 
 We peered this way and that. Then very 
 circumspectly, we began to crawl through the 
 lower jungle, making, so far as we could judge, 
 a circuit, halting now at every waving fungus, 
 at every sound, intent only on the sphere from 
 which we had so foolishly emerged. Ever and 
 again from out of the earth beneath us came 
 concussions, beatings, strange, inexplicable, me- 
 chanical sounds ; and once, and then again, 
 we thought we heard something, a faint rattle 
 and tumult, borne to us through the air. But 
 fearful as we were we dared essay no vantage- 
 point to survey the crater. For long we saw 
 nothing of the beings whose sounds were so 
 abundant and insistent. But for the faintness 
 of our hunger and the drying of our throats 
 
 H 
 
114 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 that crawling would have had the quality of a 
 very vivid dream. It was so absolutely unreal. 
 The only element with any touch of reality 
 was these sounds. 
 
 Figure it to yourself! About us the dream- 
 like jungle, with the silent bayonet leaves 
 darting overhead, and the silent, vivid, sun- 
 splashed lichens under our hands and knees, 
 waving with the vigour of their growth as a 
 carpet waves when the wind gets beneath it. 
 Ever and again one of the bladder fungi, bulg- 
 ing and distending under the sun, loomed upon 
 us. Ever and again some novel shape in vivid 
 colour obtruded. The very cells that built up 
 these plants were as large as my thumb, like 
 beads of coloured glass. And all these things 
 were saturated in the unmitigated glare of the 
 sun, were seen against a sky that was bluish black 
 and spangled still, in spite of the sunlight, with 
 a few surviving stars. Strange ! the very forms 
 and texture of the stones were strange. It was 
 all strange, the feeling of one's body was un- 
 precedented, every other movement ended in 
 a surprise. The breath sucked thin in one's 
 throat, the blood flowed through one's ears in a 
 throbbing tide — thud, thud, thud, thud. . . . 
 
 And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, 
 hammering, the clanging and throb of machinery, 
 and presently — the bellowing of great beasts ! 
 
XI 
 
 THE MOONCALF PASTURES 
 
 So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in 
 that wild-growing moon jungle, crawled in 
 terror before the sounds that had come upon 
 us. We crawled, as it seemed, a long time 
 before we saw either Selenite or mooncalf, 
 though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous 
 noises of these latter continually drawing nearer 
 to us. We crawled through stony ravines, over 
 snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin 
 bladders at our thrust, emitting a watery humour, 
 over a perfect pavement of things like puff- 
 balls, and beneath interminable thickets of scrub. 
 And ever more hopelessly our eyes sought for 
 our abandoned sphere. The noise of the moon- 
 calves would at times be a vast flat calf-like 
 sound, at times it rose to an amazed and 
 wrathy bellowing, and again it would become 
 a clogged bestial sound, as though these un- 
 seen creatures had sought to eat and bellow at 
 the same time. 
 
 »«s 
 
ii6 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Our first view was but an inadequate tran- 
 sitory glimpse, yet none the less disturbing 
 because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawl- 
 ing in front at the time, and he first was aware 
 of their proximity. He stopped dead, arresting 
 me with a single gesture. 
 
 A crackling and smashing of the scrub ap- 
 peared to be advancing directly upon us, and 
 then, as we squatted close and endeavoured to 
 judge of the nearness and direction of this 
 noise, there came a terrific bellow behind us, 
 so close and vehement that the tops of the 
 bayonet scrub bent before it, and one felt the 
 breath of it hot and moist. And, turning 
 about, we saw indistinctly through a crowd of 
 swaying stems the mooncalf s shining sides, and 
 the long line of its back loomed out against 
 the sky. 
 
 Of course it is hard for me now to say how 
 much I saw at that time, because my impres- 
 sions were corrected by subsequent observation. 
 First of all impressions was its enormous size ; 
 the girth of its body was some fourscore feet, its 
 length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose 
 and fell with its laboured breathing. I per- 
 ceived that its gigantic, flabby body lay along 
 the ground, and that its skin was of a cor- 
 rugated white, dappling into blackness along 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 117 
 
 the backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. 
 I think also that we saw then the profile at 
 least of the almost brainless head, with its fat- 
 encumbered neck, its slobbering omnivorous 
 mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. 
 (For the mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in 
 the presence of the sun.) We had a glimpse 
 of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat 
 and bellow again ; we had a breath from the pit, 
 and then the monster heeled over like a ship, 
 dragged forward along the ground, creasing all 
 its leathery skin, rolled again, and so wallowed 
 past us, smashing a path amidst the scrub, and 
 was speedily hidden from our eyes by the dense 
 interlacings beyond. Another appeared more 
 distantly, and then another, and then, as 
 though he was guiding these animated lumps 
 of provender to their pasture, a Selenite came 
 momentarily into ken. My grip upon Cavor's 
 foot became convulsive at the sight of him, and 
 we remained motionless and peering long after 
 he had passed out of our range. 
 
 By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed 
 a trivial being, a mere ant, scarcely five feet 
 high. He was wearing garments of some 
 leathery substance, so that no portion of his 
 actual body appeared, but of this, of course, we 
 were entirely ignorant. He presented himself, 
 
iiS THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 therefore, as a compact, bristling creature, hav- 
 ing much of the quality of a complicated insect, 
 with whip-like tentacles and a clanging arm 
 projecting from his shining cylindrical body 
 case. The form of his head was hidden by 
 his enormous many-spiked helmet — we dis- 
 covered afterwards that he used the spikes for 
 prodding refractory mooncalves — and a pair of 
 goggles of darkened glass, set very much at 
 the side, gave a bird-like quality to the metallic 
 apparatus that covered his face. His arms 
 did not project beyond his body case, and he 
 carried himself upon short legs that, wrapped 
 though they were in warm coverings, seemed 
 to our terrestrial eyes inordinately flimsy. 
 They had very short thighs, very long shanks, 
 and little feet. 
 
 In spite of his heavy-looking clothing, he 
 was progressing with what would be, from the 
 terrestrial point of view, very considerable 
 strides, and his clanging arm was busy. The 
 quality of his motion during the instant of his 
 passing suggested haste and a certain anger, 
 and soon after we had lost sight of him we 
 heard the bellow of a mooncalf change abruptly 
 into a short, sharp squeal, followed by the 
 scuffle of its acceleration. And gradually 
 that bellowing receded, and then came to 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 119 
 
 an end, as if the pastures sought had been 
 attained. 
 
 We listened. For a space the moon world 
 was still. But it was some time before we 
 resumed our crawling search for the vanished 
 sphere. 
 
 When next we saw mooncalves they were 
 some little distance away from us in a place of 
 tumbled rocks. The less vertical surfaces of 
 the rocks were thick with a speckled green 
 plant growing in dense mossy clumps, upon 
 which these creatures were browsing. We 
 stopped at the edge of the reeds amidst which 
 we were crawling at the sight of them, peering 
 out at them and looking round for a second 
 glimpse of a Selenite. They lay against their 
 food like stupendous slugs, huge, greasy hulls, 
 eating greedily and noisily, with a sort of sob- 
 bing avidity. They seemed monsters of mere 
 fatness, clumsy and overwhelmed to a degree 
 that would make a Smithfield ox seem a 
 model of agility. Their busy, writhing, chew- 
 ing mouths, and eyes closed, together with the 
 appetising sound of their munching, made up 
 an effect of animal enjoyment that was sin- 
 gularly stimulating to our empty frames. 
 
 " Hogs ! " said Cavor with unusual passion. 
 *' Disgusting hogs ! " and after one glare of 
 
I20 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 angry envy crawled off through the bushes 
 to our right. I stayed long enough to see 
 that the speckled plant was quite hopeless 
 for human nourishment, then crawled after 
 him, nibbling a quill of it between my teeth. 
 
 Presently we were arrested again by the 
 proximity of a Selenite, and this time we were 
 able to observe him more exactly. Now we 
 could see that the Selenite covering was indeed 
 clothing, and not a sort of crustacean integu- 
 ment. He was quite similar in his costume to 
 the former one we had glimpsed, except that 
 ends of something like wadding were protrud- 
 ing from his neck, and he stood on a promon- 
 tory of rock and moved his head this way and 
 that, as though he was surveying the crater. 
 We lay quite still, fearing to attract his atten- 
 tion if we moved, and after a time he turned 
 about and disappeared. 
 
 We came upon another drove of mooncalves 
 bellowing up a ravine, and then we passed over 
 a place of sounds, sounds of beating machinery, 
 as if some huge hall of industry came near the 
 surface there. And while these sounds were 
 still about us we came to the edge of a great 
 open space, perhaps two hundred yards in 
 diameter, and perfectly level. Save for a few 
 lichens that advanced from its margin this space 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 121 
 
 was bare, and presented a powdery surface 
 of a dusty yellow colour. We were afraid to 
 strike out across this space, but as it presented 
 less obstruction to our crawling than the 
 scrub, we went down upon it and began very 
 circumspectly to skirt its edge. 
 
 For a little while the noises from below 
 ceased, and everything, save for the faint stir 
 of the growing vegetation, was very still. 
 Then abruptly there began an uproar, louder, 
 more vehement, and nearer than any we had 
 so far heard. Of a certainty it came from 
 below. Instinctively we crouched as flat as 
 we could, ready for a prompt plunge into the 
 thicket beside us. Each knock and throb 
 seemed to vibrate through our bodies. Louder 
 grew this throbbing and beating, and that 
 irregular vibration increased until the whole 
 moon world seemed to be jerking and pulsing. 
 
 ** Cover," whispered Cavor, and I turned 
 towards the bushes. 
 
 At that instant came a thud like the thud 
 of a gun, and then a thing happened — it still 
 haunts me in my dreams. I had turned my 
 head to look at Cavor's face, and thrust out 
 my hand in front of me as I did so. And my 
 hand met nothing ! Plunged suddenly into a 
 bottomless hole ! 
 
122 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 My chest hit something hard, and I found 
 myself with my chin on the edge of an un- 
 fathomable abyss that had suddenly opened 
 beneath me, my hand extended stiffly into the 
 void. The whole of that flat circular area was 
 no more than a gigantic lid, that was now 
 sliding sideways from off the pit it had covered 
 into a slot prepared for it. 
 
 Had it not been for Cavor I think I should 
 have remained rigid, hanging over this margin 
 and staring into the enormous gulf below, 
 until at last the edges of the slot scraped me 
 off and hurled me into its depths. But Cavor 
 had not received the shock that had paralysed 
 me. He had been a little distance from the 
 edge when the lid had first opened, and per- 
 ceiving the peril that held me helpless, gripped 
 my legs and pulled me backward. I came into 
 a sitting position, crawled away from the edge 
 for a space on all fours, then staggered up and 
 ran after him across the thundering, quivering 
 sheet of metal. It seemed to be swinging 
 open with a steadily accelerated velocity, and 
 the bushes in front of me shifted sideways as 
 I ran. 
 
 I was none too soon. Cavor's back vanished 
 amidst the bristling thicket, and as I scrambled 
 up after him, the monstrous valve came into 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 123 
 
 its position with a clang. For a long time we 
 lay panting, not daring to approach the pit. 
 
 But at last very cautiously and bit by bit we 
 crept into a position from which we could peer 
 down. The bushes about us creaked and 
 waved with the force of a breeze that was 
 blowing dov/n the shaft. We could see nothing 
 at first except smooth vertical walls descending 
 at last into an inpenetrable black. And then 
 very gradually we became aware of a number 
 of very faint and little lights going to and fro. 
 
 For a time that stupendous gulf of mystery 
 held us so that we forgot even our sphere. In 
 time, as we grew more accustomed to the dark- 
 ness, we could make out very small, dim, 
 elusive shapes moving about among those 
 needle-point illuminations. We peered amazed 
 and incredulous, understanding so little that 
 we could find no words to say. We could 
 distinguish nothing that would give us a clue 
 to the meaning of the faint shapes we saw. 
 
 "What can it be?" I asked; *'what can 
 it be?" 
 
 ** The engineering ! . . . They must live in 
 these caverns during the night, and come out 
 during the day." 
 
 "Cavor!" I said. "Can they be — ^M^ — it 
 was something like — men ? " 
 
124 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " T/ia^ was not a man." 
 
 " We dare risk nothing ! " 
 
 *' We dare do nothing until we find the 
 sphere ! " 
 
 " We can do nothing until we find the 
 sphere." 
 
 He assented with a groan and stirred himself 
 to move. He stared about him for a space, 
 sighed, and indicated a direction. We struck 
 out through the jungle. For a time we crawled 
 resolutely, then with diminishing vigour. Pre- 
 sently among great shapes of flabby purple 
 there came a noise of trampling and cries 
 about us. We lay close, and for a long time 
 the sounds went to and fro and very near. 
 But this time we saw nothing. I tried to 
 whisper to Cavor that I could hardly go with- 
 out food much longer, but my mouth had 
 become too dry for whispering. 
 
 " Cavor," I said, " I must have food." 
 
 He turned a face full of dismay towards me. 
 " It's a case for holding out," he said. 
 
 " But I imist'' I said, " and look at my lips ! " 
 
 " I've been thirsty some time." 
 
 " If only some of that snow had remained ! " 
 
 " It's clean gone ! We're driving from 
 arctic to tropical at the rate of a degree a 
 minute . . ." 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 125 
 
 I gnawed my hand. 
 
 " The sphere ! " he said. " There is nothing 
 for it but the sphere." 
 
 We roused ourselves to another spurt of 
 crawHng. My mind ran entirely on edible 
 things, on the hissing profundity of summer 
 drinks, more particularly I craved for beer. 
 I was haunted by the memory of a sixteen 
 gallon cask that had swaggered in my Lympne 
 cellar. I thought of the adjacent larder, and 
 especially of steak and kidney pie — tender 
 steak and plenty of kidney, and rich, thick 
 gravy between. Ever and again I was seized 
 with fits of hungry yawning. We came to 
 flat places overgrown with fleshy red things, 
 monstrous coralline growths ; as we pushed 
 against them they snapped and broke. I 
 noted the quality of the broken surfaces. The 
 confounded stuff certainly looked of a biteable 
 texture. Then it seemed to me that it smelt 
 rather well. 
 
 I picked up a fragment and sniffed at it. 
 
 " Cavor," I said in a hoarse undertone. 
 
 He glanced at me with his face screwed up. 
 "Don't," he said. I put down the fragment, 
 and we crawled on through this tempting 
 fleshiness for a space. 
 
 "Cavor," I asked, "why no^f" 
 
126 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 *' Poison," I heard him say, but he did not 
 look round. 
 
 We crawled some way before I decided. 
 
 " I'll chance it," said I. 
 
 He made a belated gesture to prevent me. 
 I stuffed my mouth full. He crouched watching 
 my face, his own twisted into tlT,e oddest ex- 
 pression. " It's good," I said. 
 
 " O Lord ! " he cried. 
 
 He watched me munch, his face wrinkled 
 between desire and disapproval, then suddenly 
 succumbed to appetite, and began to tear off 
 huge mouthfuls. For a time we did nothing 
 but eat. 
 
 The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mush- 
 room, only it was much laxer in texture, and, as 
 one swallowed it, it warmed the throat. At first 
 we experienced a mere mechanical satisfaction 
 in eating ; then our blood began to run warmer, 
 and we tingled at the lips and fingers, and then 
 new and slightly irrelevant ideas came bubbling 
 up in our minds. 
 
 " It's good," said I. " Infernally good ! 
 What a home for our surplus population ! Our 
 poor surplus population," and I broke off an- 
 other large portion. 
 
 It filled me with a curiously benevolent satis- 
 faction that there was such good food in the 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 127 
 
 moon. The depression of my hunger gave 
 way to an irrational exhilaration. The dread 
 and discomfort in which I had been living 
 vanished entirely. I perceived the moon no 
 longer as a planet from which I most earnestly 
 desired the means of escape, but as a possible 
 refuge for human destitution. I think I forgot 
 the Selenites, the mooncalves, the lid, and the 
 noises completely so soon as I had eaten that 
 fungus. 
 
 Cavor replied to my third repetition of my 
 ** surplus population " remark with similar words 
 of approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put 
 this down to the stimulating effect of food after 
 a long fast. " Ess'lent discov'ry yours, Cavor," 
 said I. " Send on'y to the 'tato." 
 
 *' Whajer mean ? " asked Cavor. " 'Scovery 
 of the moon — send on'y to the 'tato ? " 
 
 I looked at him, shocked at his suddenly 
 hoarse voice, and by the badness of his articu- 
 lation. It occurred to me in a flash that he 
 was intoxicated, possibly by the fungus. It 
 also occurred to me that he erred in imagining 
 that he had discovered the moon ; he had not 
 discovered it, he had only reached it. I tried 
 to lay my hand on his arm and explain this 
 to him, but the issue was too subtle for his 
 bram. It was also unexpectedly difficult to 
 
128 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 express. After a momentary attempt to un- 
 derstand me — I remember wondering if the 
 fungus had made my eyes as fishy as his — he 
 set off upon some observations on his own 
 account. 
 
 "We are," he announced with a solemn 
 hiccup, "the creashurs o' what we eat and 
 drink." 
 
 He repeated this, and as I was now in one 
 of my subtle moods, I determined to dispute it. 
 Possibly I wandered a little from the point. 
 But Cavor certainly did not attend at all pro- 
 perly. He stood up as well as he could, putting 
 a hand on my head to steady himself, which was 
 disrespectful, and stood staring about him, quite 
 devoid now of any fear of the moon beings. 
 
 I tried to point out that this was dangerous 
 for some reason that was not perfectly clear to 
 me, but the word "dangerous" had somehow 
 got mixed with " indiscreet," and came out 
 rather more like "injurious*' than either; and 
 after an attempt to disentangle them, I resumed 
 my argument, addressing myself principally to 
 the unfamiliar but attentive coralline growths 
 on either side. I felt that it was necessary to 
 clear up this confusion between the moon and 
 a potato at once — I wandered into a long paren- 
 thesis on the importance of precision of de- 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 129 
 
 finition in argument. I did my best to ignore 
 the fact that my bodily sensations were no 
 longer agreeable. 
 
 - In some way that I have now forgotten, my 
 mind was led back to projects of colonisation. 
 "We must annex this moon," I said. "There 
 must be no shilly-shally. This is part of the 
 White Man's Burthen. Cavor — we are — Aic 
 — Satap — mean Satraps! N empire Csesar 
 never dreamt. B'in all the newspapers. Ca- 
 vorecia. Bedfordecia. Bedfordecia — hie — 
 Limited. Mean — unlimited ! Practically." 
 
 Certainly I was intoxicated. 
 
 I embarked upon an argument to show the 
 infinite benefits our arrival would confer on the 
 moon. I involved myself in a rather difficult 
 proof that the arrival of Columbus was, on the 
 whole, beneficial to America. I found I had 
 forgotten the line of argument I had intended 
 to pursue, and continued to repeat " Simlar to 
 C'lumbus," to fill up time. 
 
 From that point my memory of the action of 
 that abominable fungus becomes confused. I 
 remember vaguely that we declared our inten- 
 tion of standing no nonsense from any con- 
 founded insects, that we decided it ill became 
 men to hide shamefully upon a mere satellite, 
 that we equipped ourselves with huge armfuls 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 of the fungus — whether for missile purposes or 
 not I do not know — and, heedless of the stabs 
 of the bayonet scrub, we started forth into the 
 sunshine. 
 
 Almost immediately we must have come upon 
 the Selenites. There were six of them, and 
 they were marching in single file over a rocky 
 place, making the most remarkable piping and 
 whining sounds. They all seemed to become 
 aware of us at once, all instantly became silent 
 and motionless, like animals, with their faces 
 turned towards us. 
 
 For a moment I was sobered. 
 
 " Insects," murmured Cavor, " insects ! And 
 they think I'm going to crawl about on my 
 stomach — on my vertebrated stomach ! 
 
 " Stomach," he repeated slowly, as though 
 he chewed the indignity. i' 
 
 Then suddenly, with a shout of fury, he made 
 three vast strides and leapt towards them. He 
 leapt badly ; he made a series of somersaults in 
 the air, whirled right over them, and vanished 
 with an enormous splash amidst the cactus 
 bladders. What the Selenites made of this 
 amazing, and to my mind undignified irruption 
 from another planet, I have no means of guess- 
 ing. I seem to remember the sight of their 
 backs as they ran in all directions, but I am 
 
if' '^ 
 
 
 Insects," murmured Cavor, "insects' 
 
THE MOONCALF PASTURES 131 
 
 not sure. All these last incidents before obli- 
 vion came are vague and faint in my mind. I 
 know I made a step to follow Cavor, and tripped 
 and fell headlong among the rocks. I was, I 
 am certain, suddenly and vehemently ill. I 
 seem to remember a violent struggle, and being 
 gripped by metallic clasps. . . . 
 
 My next clear recollection is that we were 
 prisoners at we knew not what depth beneath 
 the moon's surface ; we were in darkness amidst 
 strange distracting noises ; our bodies were 
 covered with scratches and bruises, and our 
 heads racked with pain. 
 
XII 
 
 THE SELENITe's FACE 
 
 I FOUND myself sitting crouched together in a 
 tumultuous darkness. For a lonor time I could 
 not understand where I was, nor how I had come 
 to this perplexity. I thought of the cupboard 
 into which I had been thrust at times when I 
 was a child, and then of a very dark and noisy 
 bedroom in which I had slept during an illness. 
 But these sounds about me were not the noises 
 I had known, and there was a thin flavour in 
 the air like the wind of a stable. Then I sup- 
 posed we must still be at work upon the sphere, 
 and that somehow I had got into the cellar of 
 Cavor's house. I remembered we had finished 
 the sphere, and fancied I must still be in it 
 and travelling through space. 
 
 " Cavor," I said, " cannot we have some 
 light ? " 
 
 There came no answer. 
 
 "Cavor!" I insisted. 
 
 I was answered by a groan. " My head ! " 
 I heard him say ; " my head ! " 
 
THE SELENITE'S FACE 133 
 
 I attempted to press my hands to my brow, 
 which ached, and discovered they were tied 
 together. This startled me very much. I 
 brought them up to my mouth and felt the 
 cold smoothness of metal. They were chained 
 together. I tried to separate my legs, and 
 made out they were similarly fastened, and 
 also that I was fastened to the ground by a 
 much thicker chain about the middle of my 
 body. 
 
 I was more frightened than I had yet been 
 by anything in all our strange experiences. 
 For a time I tugged silently at my bonds. 
 "Cavor!" I cried out sharply. "Why am I 
 tied ? Why have you tied me hand and foot } " 
 
 " I haven't tied you," he answered. " It's 
 the Selenites." 
 
 The Selenites ! My mind hung on that for 
 a space. Then my memories came back to 
 me : the snowy desolation, the thawing of the 
 air, the growth of the plants, our strange 
 hopping and crawling among the rocks and 
 vegetation of the crater. All the distress of 
 our frantic search for the sphere returned to 
 me. . . . Finally the opening of the great lid 
 that covered the pit ! 
 
 Then as I strained to trace our later move- 
 ments down to our present plight, the pain in 
 
134 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 my head became intolerable. I came to an 
 insurmountable barrier, an obstinate blank. 
 
 " Cavor ! " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Where are we ? " 
 
 " How should I know ? " 
 
 "Are we dead?" 
 
 " What nonsense ! " 
 
 " They've got us, then ! " 
 
 He made no answer but a grunt. The 
 lingering traces of the poison seemed to make 
 him oddly irritable. 
 
 " What do you mean to do ? " 
 
 " How should I know what to do ? " 
 
 "Oh, very well!" said I, and became 
 silent. Presently I was roused from a stupor. 
 "O Lord!" I cried; "I wish you'd stop 
 that buzzing ! " 
 
 We lapsed into silence again, listening to 
 the dull confusion of noises like the muffled 
 sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. 
 I could make nothing of it, my mind pur- 
 sued first one rhythm and then another, and 
 questioned it in vain. But after a long time 
 I became aware of a new and sharper element, 
 not mingling with the rest but standing out, as 
 it were, against that cloudy background of 
 sound. It was a series of relatively very little 
 
THE SELENITE'S FACE 135 
 
 definite sounds, tappings and rubbings, like 
 a loose spray of ivy against a window or a 
 bird moving about upon a box. We listened 
 and peered about us, but the darkness was a 
 velvet pall. There followed a noise like the 
 subtle movement of the wards of a well-oiled 
 lock. And then there appeared before me, 
 hanging as it seemed in an immensity of black, 
 a thin bright line. 
 
 " Look ! " whispered Cavor very softly. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 We stared. 
 
 The thin bright line became a band, and 
 broader and paler. It took upon itself the 
 quality of a bluish light falling upon a white- 
 washed wall. It ceased to be parallel-sided ; 
 it developed a deep indentation on one side. 
 I turned to remark this to Cavor, and was 
 amazed to see his ear in a brilliant illumination 
 — all the rest of him in shadow. I twisted 
 my head round as well as my bonds would 
 permit. " Cavor," I said, " it's behind ! " 
 
 His ear vanished — gave place to an eye ! 
 
 Suddenly the crack that had been admitting 
 the light broadened out, and revealed itself as 
 the space of an opening door. Beyond was 
 a sapphire vista, and in the doorway stood 
 
136 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 a grotesque outline silhouetted against the 
 glare. 
 
 We both made convulsive efforts to turn, 
 and failing, sat staring over our shoulders at 
 this. My first impression was of some clumsy- 
 quadruped with lowered head. Then I per- 
 ceived it was the slender pinched body and 
 short and extremely attenuated bandy legs of 
 a Selenite, with his head depressed between his 
 shoulders. He was without the helmet and 
 body covering they wear upon the exterior. 
 
 He was a blank, black figure to us, but in- 
 stinctively our imaginations supplied features 
 to his very human outline. I, at least, took it 
 instantly that he was somewhat hunchbacked, 
 with a hic:h forehead and long- features. 
 
 He came forward three steps and paused for 
 a time. His movements seemed absolutely 
 noiseless. Then he came forward again. He 
 walked like a bird, his feet fell one in front of 
 the other. He stepped out of the ray of light 
 that came through the doorway, and it seemed 
 as though he vanished altogether in the shadow. 
 
 For a moment my eyes sought him in the 
 wrong place, and then I perceived^ him standing 
 facing us both in the full light. Only the 
 human features I had attributed to him were 
 not there at all ! 
 
" Tliete the ihing was, looking at us 
 
THE SELENITE'S FACE 137 
 
 Of course I ought to have expected that, 
 only I didn't. It came to me as an absolute, 
 for a moment an overwhelming, shock. It 
 seemed as though it wasn't a face, as though 
 it must needs be a mask, a horror, a deformity, 
 that would presently be disavowed or explained. 
 There was no nose, and the thing had dull 
 bulging eyes at the side — in the silhouette I 
 had supposed they were ears. There were no 
 ears. ... I have tried to draw one of these 
 heads, but I cannot. There was a mouth, 
 downwardly curved, like a human mouth in a 
 face that stares ferociously. . . . 
 
 The neck on which the head was poised was 
 jointed in three places, almost like the short 
 joints in the leg of a c^ab. The joints of the 
 limbs I could not see, because of the puttee- 
 like straps in which they were swathed, and 
 which formed the only clothing the being wore. 
 
 There the thing was, looking at us ! 
 
 At the time my mind was taken up by the 
 mad impossibility of the creature. I suppose 
 he also was amazed, and with more reason, 
 perhaps, for amazement than we. Only, con- 
 found him ! he did not show it. We did at 
 least know what had brought about this meet- 
 ing of incompatible creatures. But conceive 
 how it would seem to decent Londoners, for 
 
138 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 example, to come upon a couple of living 
 things, as big as men and absolutely unlike 
 any other earthly animals, careering about 
 among the sheep in Hyde Park! It must 
 have taken him like that. 
 
 Figure us ! We were bound hand and foot, 
 fagged and filthy ; our beards two inches long, 
 our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you 
 must imagine in his knickerbockers (torn in 
 several places by the bayonet scrub), his Jaeger 
 shirt and old cricket cap, his wiry hair wildly 
 disordered, a tail to every quarter of the 
 heavens. In that blue light his face did not 
 look red but very dark, his lips and the drying 
 blood upon my hands seemed black. If pos- 
 sible I was in a worse plight than he, on 
 account of the yellow fungus into which I had 
 jumped. Our jackets were unbuttoned, and 
 our shoes had been taken off and lay at our 
 feet. And we were sitting with our backs to 
 this queer bluish light, peering at such a 
 monster as Durer might have invented. 
 
 Cavor broke the silence ; started to speak", 
 went hoarse, and cleared his throat. Outside 
 began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf 
 were m trouble. It ended in a shriek, and 
 everything was still again. 
 
 Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered 
 
THE SELENITE'S FACE 139 
 
 into the shadow, stood for a moment retro- 
 spective at the door, and then closed it 
 on us ; and once more we were in that mur- 
 murous mystery of darkness into which we 
 had awakened. 
 
XIII 
 
 MR. CAVOR MAKES SOME SUGGESTIONS 
 
 For a time neither of us spoke. To focus 
 together all the things we had brought upon 
 ourselves, seemed beyond my mental powers. 
 
 *• They've got us," I said at last. 
 
 " It was that fundus." 
 
 ** Well — if I hadn't taken it we should have 
 fainted and starved." 
 
 " We might have found the sphere." 
 
 I lost my temper at his persistence, and 
 swore to myself. For a time we hated one 
 another in silence. I drummed with my 
 fingers on the floor between my knees, and 
 gritted the links of my fetters together. Pre- 
 sently I was forced to talk again. 
 
 " What do you make of it, anyhow ? " I asked 
 humbly. 
 
 " They are reasonable creatures — they can 
 make things and do things — Those lights 
 we saw . . ." 
 
 He stopped. It was clear he could make 
 nothing of it. 
 
MR. CAVOR MAKES SUGGESTIONS 141 
 
 When he spoke again it was to confess, 
 " After all, they are more human than we had 
 a right to expect. I suppose " 
 
 He stopped irritatingly. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " I suppose, anyhow — on any planet where 
 there is an intelligent animal — it will carry its 
 brain case upward, and have hands, and walk 
 erect ..." 
 
 Presently he broke away in another direction. 
 
 "We are some way in," he said. "I mean 
 — perhaps a couple of thousand feet or more." 
 
 "Why.^" 
 
 " It's cooler. And our voices are so much 
 louder. That faded quality — it has altogether 
 gone. And the feeling in one's ears and 
 throat." 
 
 I had not noted that, but I did now. 
 
 "The air is denser. We must be some 
 depth — a mile even, we may be — inside the 
 moon." 
 
 "We never thought of a world inside the 
 moon." 
 
 "No." 
 
 " How could we?" 
 
 " We might have done. Only — One gets 
 into habits of mind." 
 
 He thought for a time. 
 
142 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " NoWy" he said, "it seems such an obvious 
 thing. 
 
 " Of course ! The moon must be enormously 
 cavernous, with an atmosphere within, and at 
 the centre of its caverns a sea. 
 
 " One knew that the moon had a lower specific 
 gravity than the earth, one knew that it had Httle 
 air or water outside, one knew, too, that it was 
 sister planet to the earth, and that it was un- 
 accountable that it should be different in com- 
 position. The inference that it was hollowed 
 out was as clear as day. And yet one never 
 saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course " 
 
 His voice had the interest now of a man who 
 has discovered a pretty sequence of reasoning. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " Kepler with his sub-volvani 
 was right after all." 
 
 *' I wish you had taken the trouble to find 
 that out before we came," I said. 
 
 He answered nothing, buzzing to himself 
 softly as he pursued his thoughts. My temper 
 was going. "What do you think has become 
 of the sphere, anyhow ? " I asked. 
 
 " Lost," he said, like a man who answers an 
 uninteresting question. 
 
 " Among those plants ? " 
 
 " Unless they find it." 
 
 "And then.?" 
 
MR. CAVOR MAKES SUGGESTIONS 143 
 " How can I tell ? " 
 
 "Cavor," I said, with a sort of hysterical 
 bitterness, "things look bright for my Com- 
 pany. . . ." 
 
 He made no answer. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " I exclaimed. " Just think of 
 all the trouble we took to get into this pickle ! 
 What did we come for ? What are we after ? 
 What was the moon to us or we to the moon ? 
 We wanted too much, we tried too much. We 
 ought to have started the little things first. It 
 was you proposed the moon ! Those Cavorite 
 spring blinds! I am certain we could have 
 worked them for terrestrial purposes. Certain ! 
 Did you really understand what I proposed } 
 
 A steel cylinder " 
 
 "Rubbish!" said Cavor. 
 We ceased to converse. 
 
 For a time Cavor kept up a broken mono- 
 logue without much help from me. 
 
 "If they find it," he began, "if they find it 
 . . . what will they do with it ? Well, that's a 
 question. It may be that's ^/le question. They 
 won't understand it, anyhow. If they under- 
 stood that sort of thing they would have come 
 long since to the earth. Would they ? Why 
 shouldn't they? But they would have sent 
 something— They couldn't keep their hands 
 
144 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 off such a possibility. No ! But they will 
 examine it. Clearly they are intelligent and 
 inquisitive. They will examine it — get inside 
 it — trifle with the studs. Off! . . . That 
 would mean the moon for us for all the rest 
 of our lives. Strange creatures, strange know- 
 ledge ..." 
 
 " As for strange knowledge — " said I, and 
 language failed me. 
 
 "Look here, Bedford," said Cavor, "you 
 came on this expedition of your own free will." 
 
 " You said to me, ' Call it prospecting.' " 
 
 " There's always risks in prospecting." 
 
 " Especially when you do it unarmed and 
 without thinking out every possibility." 
 
 " I was so taken up with the sphere. The 
 thing rushed on us, and carried us away." 
 
 " Rushed on me, you mean." 
 
 " Rushed on me just as much. How was / 
 to know when I set to work on molecular 
 physics that the business would bring me here 
 — of all places ? " 
 
 " It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the 
 very Devil. The mediaeval priests and perse- 
 cutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. 
 You tamper with it — and it offers you gifts. 
 And directly you take them it knocks you to 
 pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions 
 
MR. CAVOR MAKES SUGGESTIONS 145 
 
 and new weapons — now it upsets your religion, 
 now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls 
 you off to desolation and misery ! " 
 
 " Anyhow, it's no use your quarrelling with 
 me now. These creatures— these Selenites, or 
 whatever we choose to call them — have got us 
 tied hand and foot. Whatever temper you 
 choose to go through with it in, you will 
 have to go through with it. . . . We have 
 experiences before us that will need all our 
 coolness." 
 
 He paused as if he required my assent. But 
 I sat sulking. "Confound your science!" I 
 said. 
 
 •* The problem is communication. Gestures, 
 I fear, will be different. Pointing, for example. 
 No creatures but men and monkeys point." 
 
 That was too obviously wrong for me. 
 '•Pretty nearly every animal," I cried, ''points 
 with its eyes or nose." 
 
 Cavor meditated over that. "Yes," he said 
 at last, "and we don't. There's such differ- 
 ences—such differences ! 
 
 "One might ... But how can I tell.? 
 There is speech. The sounds they make, a 
 sort of fluting and piping. I don't see how we 
 are to imitate that. Is it their speech, that 
 sort of thing ? They may have different senses, 
 
 K 
 
146 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 different means of communication. Of course 
 they are minds and we are minds ; there must 
 be something in common. Who knows how far 
 we may not get to an understanding ? " 
 
 " The things are outside us," I said. 
 ** They're more different from us than the 
 strangest animals on earth. They are a dif- 
 ferent clay. What is the good of talking like 
 this?" 
 
 Cavor thought. " I don't see that. Where 
 there are minds they will have something 
 similar — even though they have been evolved 
 on different planets. Of course if it was a 
 question of instincts, if we or they are no more 
 than animals " 
 
 " Well, are they ? They're much more like 
 ants on their hind legs than human beings, and 
 who ever got to any sort of understanding with 
 ants?" 
 
 " But these machines and clothing! No, I 
 don't hold with you, Bedford. The difference 
 is wide " 
 
 " It's insurmountable." 
 
 *' The resemblance must bridge it. I re- 
 member reading once a paper by the late 
 Professor Galton on the possibility of commu- 
 nication between the planets. Unhappily, at 
 that time it did not seem probable that that 
 
MR. CAVOR MAKES SUGGESTIONS 147 
 
 would be of any material benefit to me, and I 
 fear I did not give it the attention I should 
 have done — in view of this state of affairs. 
 Yet . . . Now, let me see ! 
 
 " His idea was to begin with those broad 
 truths that must underlie all conceivable mental 
 existences and establish a basis on those. The 
 great principles of geometry, to begin with. 
 He proposed to take some leading proposition 
 of Euclid's, and show by construction that its 
 truth was known to us, to demonstrate, for 
 example, that the angles at the base of an 
 isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the 
 equal sides be produced the angles on the 
 other side of the base are equal also, or that 
 the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled 
 triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on 
 the two other sides. By demonstrating our 
 knowledge of these things we should demon- 
 strate our possession of a reasonable intelli- 
 gence. . . . Now, suppose I ... I might draw 
 the geometrical figure with a wet finger, or 
 even trace it in the air . . ." 
 
 He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. 
 For a time his wild hope of communication, of 
 interpretation, with these weird beings held me. 
 Then that angry despair that was a part of my 
 exhaustion and physical misery resumed its 
 
148 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vivid- 
 ness the extraordinary folly of everything I had 
 ever done. "Ass!" I said; "oh, ass, unutter- 
 able ass ... I seem to exist only to go about 
 doing preposterous things. . . . Why did we 
 ever leave the thing? . . . Hopping about 
 looking for patents and concessions in the 
 craters of the moon ! ... If only we had had 
 the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick 
 to show where we had left the sphere ! " 
 
 I subsided, fuming. 
 
 "It is clear," meditated Cavor, "they are 
 intelligent. One can hypotheticate certain 
 things. As they have not killed us at once, 
 they must have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at 
 any rate of restraint. Possibly of intercourse. 
 They may meet us. And this apartment and 
 the glimpses we had of its guardian. These 
 fetters ! A high degree of intelligence . . ." 
 
 " I wish to heaven," cried I, " I'd thought 
 even twice ! Plunge after plunge. First one 
 fluky start and then another. It was my con- 
 fidence in you ! W/iy didn't I stick to my 
 play.-^ That was what I was equal to. That 
 was my world and the life I was made for. I 
 could have finished that play. I'm certain . . . 
 it was a good play. I had the scenario as good 
 as done. Then . . . Conceive it ! leaping to 
 
MR. CAVOR MAKES SUGGESTIONS 149 
 
 the moon! Practically — I've thrown my life 
 away ! That old woman in the inn near Can- 
 terbury had better sense." 
 
 I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. 
 The darkness had given place to that bluish 
 light again. The door was opening, and seve- 
 ral noiseless Selenites were coming into the 
 chamber. I became quite still, staring at their 
 grotesque faces. 
 
 Then suddenly my;^ sense of disagreeable 
 strangeness changed to interest. I perceived 
 that the foremost and second carried bowls. 
 One elemental need at least our minds could 
 understand in common. They were bowls of 
 some metal that, like our fetters, looked dark 
 in that bluish light; and each contained a 
 number of whitish fragments. All the cloudy 
 pain and misery that oppressed me rushed 
 together and took the shape of hunger. I eyed 
 these bowls wolfishly, and, though it returned 
 to me in dreams, at that time it seemed a small 
 matter that at the end of the arms that lowered 
 one towards me were not hands, but a sort of 
 flap and thumb, like the end of an elephant's 
 trunk. 
 
 The stuff in the bowl was loose in texture, 
 and whitish brown in colour — rather like lumps 
 of some cold souffle, and it smelt faindy like 
 
ISO THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 mushrooms. From a partially divided carcass 
 of a mooncalf that we presently saw, I am in- 
 clined to believe it must have been mooncalf 
 flesh. 
 
 My hands were so tightly chained that I 
 could barely contrive to reach the bowl ; but 
 when they saw the effort I made, two of them 
 dexterously released one of the turns about 
 my wrist. Their tentacle hands were soft and 
 cold to my skin. I immediately seized a 
 mouthful of the food. It had the same laxness 
 in texture that all organic structures seem to 
 have upon the moon ; it tasted rather like a 
 gauffre or a damp meringue, but in no way 
 was it disagreeable. I took two other mouth- 
 fuls. "I wanted — foo' ! " said 'I, tearing off a 
 still larger piece. . . . 
 
 For a time we ate with an utter absence of 
 self-consciousness. We ate and presently drank 
 like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before 
 nor since have I been hungry to the ravenous 
 pitch, and save that I have had this very ex- 
 perience I could never have believed that, a 
 quarter of a million of miles out of our proper 
 world, in utter perplexity of soul, surrounded, 
 watched, touched by beings more grotesque 
 and inhuman than the worst creations of a 
 nightmare, it would be possible for me to eat 
 
MR. CAVOR MAKES SUGGESTIONS 151 
 
 in utter forgetfulness of all these things. They 
 stood about us watching us, and ever and again 
 making a slight elusive twittering that stood 
 them, I suppose, in the stead of speech. I did 
 not even shiver at their touch. And when the 
 first zeal of my feeding was over, I could note 
 that Cavor, too, had been eating with the same 
 shameless abandon. 
 
XIV 
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE 
 
 When at last we had made an end of eating, 
 the Selenites Hnked our hands closely together 
 again, and then untwisted the chains about our 
 feet and rebound them, so as to give us a 
 limited freedom of movement. Then they 
 unfastened the chains about our waists. To 
 do all this they had to handle us freely, and 
 ever and again one of their queer heads came 
 down close to my face, or a soft tentacle- 
 hand touched my head or neck. I don't re- 
 member that I was afraid then or repelled by 
 their proximity. I think that our incurable 
 anthropomorphism made us imagine there were 
 human heads inside their masks. The skin, 
 like everything else, looked bluish, but that 
 was on account of the light ; and it was hard 
 and shiny, quite in the beetle-wing fashion, 
 not soft, or moist, or hairy, as a vertebrated 
 animal's would be. Along the crest of the 
 head was a low ridge of whitish spines run- 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE 153 
 
 ning from back to front, and a much larger 
 
 ridge curved on either side over the eyes. 
 
 The Selenite who untied me used his mouth 
 
 to help his hands. 
 
 " They seem to be releasing us," said Cavor. 
 
 *' Remember we are on the moon ! Make no 
 
 sudden movements ! " 
 
 " Are you going to try that geometry ? " 
 
 ** If I get a chance. But, of course, they 
 
 may make an advance first." 
 
 We remained passive, and the Selenites, 
 havmg finished their arrangements, stood back 
 from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I 
 say seemed to be, because as their eyes were 
 at the side and not in front, one had the same 
 difficulty in determining the direction in which 
 they were looking as one has in the case of a 
 hen or a fish. They conversed with one an- 
 other in their reedy tones, that seemed to me 
 impossible to imitate or define. The door 
 behind us opened wider, and, glancing over 
 my shoulder, I saw a vague large space be- 
 yond, in which quite a little crowd of Selen- 
 ites were standing. They seemed a curiously 
 miscellaneous rabble. 
 
 " Do they want us to imitate those sounds ? " 
 I asked Cavor. 
 
 " I don't think so," he said. 
 
154 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 "It seems to me that they are trying to 
 make us understand something." 
 
 " I can't make anything of their gestures. 
 Do you notice this one, who is worrying with 
 his head like a man with an uncomfortable 
 collar ? " 
 
 " Let us shake our heads at him." 
 
 We did that, and finding it ineffectual, at- 
 tempted an imitation of the Selenites' move- 
 ments. That seemed to interest them. At 
 any rate they all set up the same movement. 
 But as that seemed to lead to nothing, we 
 desisted at last and so did they, and fell into a 
 piping argument among themselves. Then one 
 of them, shorter and very much thicker than 
 the others, and with a particularly wide mouth, 
 squatted down suddenly beside Cavor, and put 
 his hands and feet in the same posture as 
 Cavor's were bound, and then by a dexterous 
 movement stood up. 
 
 " Cavor," I shouted, " they want us to 
 get up ! " 
 
 He stared open-mouthed. "That's it!" 
 he said. 
 
 And with much heaving and grunting, be- 
 cause our hands were tied together, we contrived 
 to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made 
 way for our elephantine heavings, and seemed 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE 155 
 
 to twitter more volubly. As soon as we were 
 on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and 
 patted each of our faces with his tentacles, 
 and walked towards the open doorway. That 
 also was plain enough, and we followed him. 
 We saw that four of the Selenites standing in 
 the doorway were much taller than the others, 
 and clothed in the same manner as those we 
 had seen in the crater, namely, with spiked 
 round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and 
 that each of the four carried a goad with spike 
 and guard made of that same dull - looking 
 metal as the bowls. These four closed about 
 us, one on either side of each of us, as we 
 emerged from our chamber into the cavern 
 from which the light had come. 
 
 We did not get our impression of that cavern 
 all at once. Our attention was taken up by 
 the movements and attitudes of the Selenites 
 immediately about us, and by the necessity of 
 controlling our motion, lest we should startle 
 and alarm them and ourselves by some ex- 
 cessive stride. In front of us was the short, 
 thick-set being who had solved the problem 
 of asking us to get up, moving with gestures 
 that seemed, almost all of them, intelligible 
 to us, inviting us to follow him. His spout- 
 like face turned from one of us to the other 
 
156 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 with a quickness that was clearly interrogative. 
 For a time, I say, we were taken up with these 
 things. 
 
 But at last the great place that formed a 
 background to our movements asserted itself. 
 It became apparent that the source of much, 
 at least, of the tumult of sounds which had 
 filled our ears ever since we had recovered 
 from the stupefaction of the fungus was a vast 
 mass of machinery in active movement, whose 
 flying and whirling parts were visible indis- 
 tinctly over the heads and between the bodies 
 of the Selenites who walked about us. And 
 not only did the web of sounds that filled the 
 air proceed from this mechanism, but also 
 the peculiar blue light that irradiated the whole 
 place. We had taken it as a natural thing that 
 a subterranean cavern should be artificially lit, 
 and even now, though the fact was patent to 
 my eyes, I did not really grasp its import until 
 presently the darkness came. The meaning 
 and structure of this huge apparatus we saw 
 I cannot explain, because we neither of us 
 learnt what it was for or how it worked. One 
 after another, big shafts of metal flung out 
 and up from its centre, their heads travelling 
 in what seemed to me to be a parabolic path ; 
 each dropped a sort of dangling arm as it rose 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE 157 
 
 towards the apex of its flight and plunged 
 down into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down 
 before it. About it moved the shapes of 
 tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely- 
 different from the beings about us. As each 
 of the three dangling arms of the machine 
 plunged down, there was a clank and then 
 a roaring, and out of the top of the vertical 
 cylinder came pouring this incandescent sub- 
 stance that lit the place, and ran over as milk 
 runs over a boiling pot, and dripped luminously 
 into a tank of light below. It was a cold blue 
 light, a sort of phosphorescent glow but in- 
 finitely brighter, and from the tanks into which 
 it fell it ran in conduits athwart the cavern. 
 
 Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping 
 arms of this unintelligible apparatus, and the 
 light substance hissed and poured. At first 
 the thing seemed only reasonably large and 
 near to us, and then I saw how exceedingly 
 little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I 
 realised the full immensity of cavern and 
 machine. I looked from this tremendous 
 affair to the faces of the Selenites with a new 
 respect. I stopped, and Cavor stopped, and 
 stared at this thunderous engine. 
 
 " But this is stupendous ! " I said. " What 
 can it be for ? " 
 
iS8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Cavor's blue-lit face was full of an intelli- 
 gent respect. ** I can't dream ! Surely these 
 beings — Men could not make a thing like 
 that ! Look at those arms, are they on 
 connecting rods ? " 
 
 The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces 
 unheeded. He came back and stood between 
 us and the great machine. I avoided seeing 
 him, because I guessed somehow that his idea 
 was to beckon us onward. He walked away 
 in the direction he wished us to go, and turned 
 and came back, and flicked our faces to attract 
 our attention. 
 
 Cavor and I looked at one another. 
 
 " Cannot we show him we are interested in 
 the machine."*" I said. 
 
 "Yes," said Cavor. "We'll try that." He 
 turned to our guide and smiled, and pointed to 
 the machine, and pointed again, and then to 
 his head, and then to the machine. By some 
 defect of reasoning he seemed to imagine that 
 broken English might help these gestures. 
 "Me look 'im," he said, "me think 'im very 
 much. Yes." 
 
 His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites 
 in their desire for our progress for a moment. 
 They faced one another, their queer heads 
 moved, the twittering voices came quick and 
 
EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE 159 
 
 liquid. Then one of them, a lean, tall creature, 
 with a sort of mantle added to the puttee in 
 which the others were dressed, twisted his 
 elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor's waist, 
 and pulled him gently to follow our guide, who 
 again went on ahead. 
 
 Cavor resisted. " We may just as well begin 
 explaining ourselves now. They may think we 
 are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf per- 
 haps ! It is most important that we should 
 show an intelligent interest from the outset." 
 
 He began to shake his head violently. " No, 
 no," he said, ** me not come on one minute. 
 Me look at 'im." 
 
 *' Isn't there some geometrical point you 
 might bring in apropos of that affair ? " I sug- 
 gested, as the Selenites conferred again. 
 
 "Possibly a parabolic — " he began. 
 
 He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or 
 more! 
 
 One of the four armed moon-men had pricked 
 him with a goad ! 
 
 I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a 
 swift threatening gesture, and he started back. 
 This and Cavor's sudden shout and leap clearly 
 astonished all the Selenites. They receded 
 hastily, facing us. For one of those moments 
 that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry 
 
i6o THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 protest, with a scattered semicircle of these in- 
 human beings about us. 
 
 "He pricked me ! " said Cavor, with a catch- 
 ing of the voice. 
 
 ** I saw him," I answered. 
 
 "Confound it!" I said to the Selenites ; 
 " we're not going to stand that ! What on 
 earth do you take us for?" 
 
 I glanced quickly right and left. Far away 
 across the blue wilderness of cavern I saw a 
 number of other Selenites running towards us ; 
 broad and slender they were, and one with a 
 larger head than the others. The cavern spread 
 wide and low, and receded in every direction 
 into darkness. Its roof, I remember, seemed 
 to bulge down as if with the weight of the vast 
 thickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was 
 no way out of it — no way out of it. Above, 
 below, in every direction, was the unknown, 
 and these inhuman creatures, with goads and 
 gestures, confronting us, and we two unsup- 
 ported men! 
 
XV 
 
 THE GIDDY BRIDGE 
 
 Just for a moment that hostile pause endured 
 I suppose that both we and the Selenites did 
 some_ very rapid thinking. My clearest im- 
 pression was that there was nothing to put my 
 back against, and that we were bound to be 
 surrounded and killed. The overwhelming 
 folly of our presence there loomed over me 
 in black, enormous reproach. Why had I 
 ever launched myself on this mad, inhuman 
 expedition ? 
 
 Cavor came to my side and laid his hand 
 on my arm. His pale and terrified face was 
 ghastly m the blue light. 
 
 ;'We can't do anything," he said. "It's a 
 mistake. They don't understand. We must 
 go. As they want us to go." 
 
 I looked down at him, and then at the fresh 
 belenites who were coming to help their fel- 
 lows. « If I had my hands free " 
 
 " It's no use/' he panted. 
 
1 62 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 "No." 
 
 " We'll go." 
 
 And he turned about and led the way in the 
 direction that had been indicated for us. 
 
 I followed, trying to look as subdued as pos- 
 sible, and feeling at the chains about my wrists. 
 My blood was boiling. I noted nothing more 
 of that cavern, though it seemed to take a long 
 time before we had marched across it, or if I 
 noted anything I forgot it as I saw it. My 
 thoughts were concentrated, I think, upon my 
 chains and the Selenites, and particularly upon 
 the helmeted ones with the goads. At first 
 they marched parallel with us, and at a respect- 
 ful distance, but presently they were overtaken 
 by three others, and then they drew nearer, 
 until they were within arm's length again. I 
 winced like a beaten horse as they came near 
 to us. The shorter, thicker Selenite marched 
 at first on our right flank, but presently came 
 in front of us again. 
 
 How well the picture of that grouping has 
 bitten into my brain ; the back of Cavor's 
 downcast head just in front of me, and the 
 dejected droop of his shoulders, and our guide's 
 gaping visage, perpetually jerking about him, 
 and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, 
 yet open-mouthed — a blue monochrome. And, 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 163 
 
 after all, I do remember one other thing besides 
 the purely personal affair, which is, that a sort 
 of gutter came presently across the floor of the 
 cavern, and then ran along by the side of the 
 path of rock we followed. And it was full of 
 that same bright blue luminous stuff that flowed 
 out of the great machine. I walked close be- 
 side it, and I can testify it radiated not a par- 
 ticle of heat. It was brightly shining, and yet 
 it was neither warmer nor colder than anything 
 else in the cavern. 
 
 Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under 
 the thumping levers of another vast machine, 
 and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which 
 we could even hear the pad, pad of our shoeless 
 feet, and which, save for the trickling thread of 
 blue to the right of us, was quite unlit. The 
 shadows made gigantic travesties of our shapes 
 and those of the Selenites on the irregular wall 
 and roof of the tunnel. Ever and again crystals 
 in the walls of the tunnel scintillated like gems, 
 ever and again the tunnel expanded into a 
 stalactitic cavern, or gave off branches that 
 vanished into darkness. 
 
 We seemed to be marching down that tunnel 
 for a long time. " Trickle, trickle," went the 
 flowing light very softly, and our footfalls and 
 their echoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. 
 
i64 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 My mind settled down to the question of my 
 chains. If I were to slip off one turn so, and 
 then to twist it so . . . 
 
 If I tried to do it very gradually, would they 
 see I was slipping my wrist out of the looser 
 turn ? If they did, what would they do ? 
 
 " Bedford," said Cavor, '* it goes down. It 
 keeps on going down." 
 
 His remark roused me from my sullen pre- 
 occupation. 
 
 *' If they wanted to kill us,*' he said, dropping 
 back to come level with me, " there is no reason 
 why they should not have done it." 
 
 "No," I admitted, "that's true." 
 
 " They don't understand us," he said, "they 
 think we are merely strange animals, some 
 wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It 
 will be only when they have observed us 
 better that they will begin to think we have 
 minds " 
 
 " When you trace those geometrical prob- 
 lems," said I. 
 
 "It may be that." 
 
 We tramped on for a space. 
 
 "You see," said Cavor, "these may be 
 Selenites of a lower class." 
 
 " The infernal fools ! " said I viciously, 
 glancing at their exasperating faces. 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 165 
 
 "If we endure what they do to us " 
 
 "We've got to endure it," said I. 
 
 " There may be others less stupid. This 
 is the mere outer fringe of their world. It 
 must go down and down, cavern, passage, 
 tunnel, down at last to the sea — hundreds of 
 miles below," 
 
 His words made me think of the mile or so 
 of rock and tunnel that might be over our heads 
 already. It was like a weight dropping on my 
 shoulders. "Away from the sun and air," I 
 said. " Even a mine half a mile deep is stuffy." 
 
 "This is not, anyhow. It's probable — 
 Ventilation! The air would blow from the 
 dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all 
 the carbonic acid would well out there and 
 feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for example, 
 there is quite a breeze. And what a world it 
 must be. The earnest we have in that shaft, 
 and those machines " 
 
 "And the goad," I said. "Don't forget the 
 goad ! " 
 
 He walked a little in front of me for a time. 
 
 " Even that goad — " he said. 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I was angry at the time. But — It was 
 perhaps necessary we should get on. They 
 have different skins, and probably different 
 
i66 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 nerves. They may not understand our objec- 
 tion — Just as a being from Mars might not 
 like our earthly habit of nudging " 
 
 " They'd better be careful how they nudge 
 
 >» 
 me. 
 
 " And about that geometry. After all, their 
 way is a way of understanding, too. They 
 bes^in with the elements of life and not of 
 thought. Food. Compulsion. Pain. They 
 strike at fundamentals." 
 
 " There's no doubt about that^' I said. 
 
 He went on to talk of the enormous and 
 wonderful world into which we were being 
 taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that 
 even now he was not absolutely in despair at 
 the prospect of going ever deeper into this 
 inhuman planet - burrow. His mind ran on 
 machines and invention, to the exclusion of a 
 thousand dark things that beset me. It wasn't 
 that he intended to make any use of these 
 things, he simply wanted to know them. 
 
 "After all," he said, *'this is a tremendous 
 occasion. It is the meeting of two worlds! 
 What are we going to see? Think of what 
 is below us here." 
 
 " We shan't see much if the light isn't 
 better," I remarked. 
 
 " This is only the outer crust. Down 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 167 
 
 below — On this scale — There will be every- 
 thing. Do you notice how different they seem 
 one from another ? The story we shall take 
 back ! " 
 
 " Some rare sort of animal," I said, " might 
 comfort himself in that way while they were 
 bringing him to the Zoo. ... It doesn't follow 
 that we are going to be shown all these things." 
 
 " When they find we have reasonable minds," 
 said Cavor, '• they will want to learn about the 
 earth. Even if they have no generous emo- 
 tions, they will teach in order to learn. . . . 
 And the things they must know ! The unanti- 
 cipated things ! " 
 
 He went on to speculate on the possibility 
 of their knowing things he had never hoped 
 to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with 
 a raw wound from that goad already in his 
 skin ! Much that he said I forget, for my 
 attention was drawn to the fact that the tunnel 
 along which we had been marching was open- 
 ing out wider and wider. We seemed, from 
 the feeling of the air, to be going out into a 
 huge space. But how big the space might 
 really be we could not tell, because it was unlit. 
 Our little stream of light ran in a dwind- 
 ling thread and vanished far ahead. Presently 
 the rocky walls had vanished altogether on 
 
1 68 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 either hand. There was nothing to be seen 
 but the path in front of us and the trickling, 
 hurrying rivulet of blue phosphorescence. The 
 figures of Cavor and the guiding Selenite 
 marched before me, the sides of their legs and 
 heads that were towards the rivulet were clear 
 and bright blue, their darkened sides, now that 
 the reflection of the tunnel wall no longer lit 
 them, merged indistinguishably in the darkness 
 beyond. 
 
 And soon I perceived that we were approach- 
 ing a declivity of some sort, because the little 
 blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight. 
 
 In another moment, as it seemed, we had 
 reached the edge. The shining stream gave 
 one meander of hesitation and then rushed 
 over. It fell to a depth at which the sound 
 of its descent was absolutely lost to us. Far 
 below was a bluish glow, a sort of blue mist — 
 at an infinite distance below. And the dark- 
 ness the stream dropped out of became ut- 
 terly void and black, save that a thing like a 
 plank projected from the edge of the cliff and 
 stretched out and faded and vanished alto- 
 gether. There was a warm air blowing up out 
 of the gulf. 
 
 For a moment I and Cavor stood as near 
 the edge as we dared, peering into a blue- 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 169 
 
 tinged profundity. And then our guide was 
 pulling at my arm. 
 
 Then he left me, and walked to the end of 
 that plank and stepped upon it, looking back. 
 Then when he perceived we watched him, he 
 turned about and went on along it, walking 
 as surely as though he was on firm earth. For 
 a moment his form was distinct, then he be- 
 came a blue blur, and then vanished into the 
 obscurity. I became aware of some vague 
 shape looming darkly out of the black. 
 
 There was a pause. " Surely — ! " said 
 Cavor. 
 
 One of the other Selenites walked a few 
 paces out upon the plank, and turned and 
 looked back at us unconcernedly. The others 
 stood ready to follow after us. Our guide's 
 expectant figure reappeared. He was return- 
 ing to see why we had not advanced. 
 
 " What is that beyond there ? " I asked. 
 
 " I can't see." 
 
 '• We can't cross this at any price," said I. 
 
 " I could not go three steps on it," said 
 Cavor, " even with my hands free." 
 
 We looked at each other's drawn faces in 
 blank consternation. 
 
 "They can't know what it is to be giddy!" 
 said Cavor. 
 
I70 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " It's quite impossible for us to walk that 
 plank." 
 
 " I don't believe they see as we do. I've 
 been watching them. I wonder if they know 
 this is simply blackness for us. How can 
 we make them understand ? " 
 
 " Anyhow, we must make them understand." 
 
 I think we said these things with a vague 
 half hope the Selenites might somehow under- 
 stand. I knew quite clearly that all that was 
 needed was an explanation. Then as. I saw 
 their faces, I realised that an explanation was 
 impossible. Just here it was that our re- 
 semblances were not going to bridge our 
 differences. Well, I wasn't going to walk 
 the plank, anyhow. I slipped my wrist very 
 quickly out of the coil of chain that was loose, 
 and then began to twist my wrists in opposite 
 directions. I was standing nearest to the 
 bridge, and as I did this two of the Selen- 
 ites laid hold of me, and pulled me gently 
 towards it. 
 
 I shook my head violently. " No go," I 
 said, " no use. You don't understand." 
 
 Another Selenite added his compulsion. I 
 was forced to step forward. 
 
 •* I've got an idea," said Cavor ; but I knew 
 his ideas. 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 171 
 
 " Look here ! " I exclaimed to the Selenites. 
 " Steady on ! It's all very well for you " 
 
 I sprang round upon my heel. I burst out 
 into curses. For one of the armed Selenites 
 had stabbed me behind with his goad. 
 
 I wrenched my wrists free from the little 
 tentacles that held them. I turned on the 
 goad-bearer. " Confound you ! " I cried, "I've 
 warned you of that. What on earth do you 
 think I'm made of, to stick that into me.'* If 
 you touch me again ! " 
 
 By way of answer he pricked me forthwith. 
 
 I heard Cavor's voice in alarm and entreaty. 
 Even then I think he wanted to compromise 
 with these creatures. " I say, Bedford," he 
 cried, " I know a way ! " But the sting of that 
 second stab seemed to set free some pent-up 
 reserve of energy in my being. Instantly the 
 link of the wrist-chain snapped, and with it 
 snapped all considerations that had held us 
 unresisting in the hands of these moon crea- 
 tures. For that second, at least, I was mad 
 with fear and anger. I took no thought of 
 consequences. I hit straight out at the face 
 of the thing with the goad. The chain was 
 twisted round my fist. . . . 
 
 There came another of these beastly sur- 
 prises of which the moon world Is full. 
 
172 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 My mailed hand seemed to go clean through 
 him. He smashed like — like some softish sort 
 of sweet with liquid in it! He broke right 
 in! He squelched and splashed. It was like 
 hitting a damp toadstool. The flimsy body 
 went spinning a dozen yards, and fell with 
 a flabby impact. I was astonished. I was 
 incredulous that any living thing could be so 
 flimsy. For an instant I could have believed 
 the whole thing a dream. 
 
 Then it had become real and imminent again. 
 Neither Cavor nor the other Selenites seemed 
 to have done anything from the time when I 
 had turned about to the time when the dead 
 Selenite hit the ground. Every one stood 
 back from us two, every one alert. That 
 arrest seemed to last at least a second after 
 the Selenite was down. Every one must have 
 been taking the thing in. I seem to remember 
 myself standing with my arm half retracted, 
 trying also to take it in. *' What next ? " 
 clamoured my brain ; " what next ? " Then 
 in a moment every one was moving ! 
 
 I perceived we must get our chains loose, 
 and that before we could do this these Selen- 
 ites had to be beaten off. I faced towards the 
 group of the three goad - bearers. Instantly 
 one threw his goad at me. It swished over 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 173 
 
 my head, and I suppose went flying into the 
 abyss behind. 
 
 I leaped right at him with all my might as 
 the goad flew over me. He turned to run 
 as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, 
 came down right upon him, and slipped upon 
 his smashed body and fell. He seemed to 
 wriggle under my foot. 
 
 I came into a sitting position, and on every 
 hand the blue backs of the Selenites were 
 receding into the darkness. I bent a link by 
 main force and untwisted the chain that had 
 hampered me about the ankles, and sprang to 
 my feet, with the chain in my hand. Another 
 goad, flung javelin-wise, whistled by me, and 
 I made a rush towards the darkness out of 
 which it had come. Then I turned back 
 towards Cavor, who was still standing in the 
 light of the rivulet near the gulf convulsively 
 busy with his wrists, and at the same time 
 jabbering nonsense about his idea. 
 
 " Come on ! " I cried. 
 
 *• My hands ! " he answered. 
 
 Then, realising that I dared not run back to 
 him, because my ill-calculated steps might carry 
 me over the edge, he came shuffling towards 
 me, with his hands held out before him. 
 
 I gripped his chains at once to unfasten them. 
 
174 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " Where are they ? " he panted. 
 
 " Run away. They'll come back. They're 
 throwing things ! Which way shall we go?" 
 
 " By the light. To that tunnel. Eh ? " 
 
 " Yes," said I, and his hands were free. 
 
 I dropped on my knees and fell to work on 
 his ankle bonds. Whack came something — 
 I know not what — and splashed the livid 
 streamlet into drops about us. Far away on 
 our right a piping and whistling began. 
 
 I whipped the chain off his feet, and put 
 it in his hand. "Hit with that!" I said, and 
 without waiting for an answer, set off in big 
 bounds along the path by which we had come. 
 I had a nasty sort of feeling that these things 
 could jump out of the darkness on to my back. 
 I heard the impact of his leaps come following 
 after me. 
 
 We ran in vast strides. But that running, 
 you must understand, was an altogether dif- 
 ferent thing from any running on earth. On 
 earth one leaps and almost instantly hits the 
 ground again, but on the moon, because of 
 its weaker pull, one shot through the air for 
 several seconds before one came to earth. In 
 spite of our violent hurry this gave an effect 
 of long pauses, pauses in which one might 
 have counted seven or eight. " Step," and one 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 175 
 
 soared off! All sorts of questions ran through 
 my mind : " Where are the Selenites ? What 
 will they do ? Shall we ever get to that tunnel ? 
 Is Cavor far behind ? Are they likely to cut 
 him off?" Then whack, stride, and off again 
 for another step. 
 
 I saw a Selenite running in front of me, his 
 legs going exactly as a man's would go on 
 earth, saw him glance over his shoulder, and 
 heard him shriek as he ran aside out of my 
 way into the darkness. He was, I think, our 
 guide, but I am not sure. Then in another 
 vast stride the walls of rock had come into 
 view on either hand, and in two more strides 
 I was in the tunnel, and tempering my pace 
 to its low roof. I went on to a bend, then 
 stopped and turned back, and plug, plug, plug, 
 Cavor came into view, splashing into the stream 
 of blue light at every stride, and grew larger 
 and blundered into me. We stood clutching 
 each other. For a moment, at least, we had 
 shaken off our captors and were alone. 
 
 We were both very much out of breath. 
 We spoke in panting, broken sentences. 
 " You've spoilt it all ! " panted Cavor. 
 ••Nonsense," I cried. "It was that or 
 death ! " 
 
 '• What are we to do ? " 
 
176 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " Hide. " 
 
 " How can we ? " 
 
 *' It's dark enough." 
 
 " But where ? " 
 
 *' Up one of these side caverns." 
 
 '* And then ? " 
 
 " Think." 
 
 ** Right — come on." 
 
 We strode on, and presently came to a 
 radiating dark cavern. Cavor was in front. 
 He hesitated, and chose a black mouth that 
 seemed to promise good hiding. He went 
 towards it and turned. 
 
 " It's dark," he said. 
 
 "Your legs and feet will light us. You're 
 wet with that luminous stuff." 
 
 - But " 
 
 A tumult of sounds, and in particular a 
 sound like a clanging gong, advancing up the 
 main tunnel, became audible. It was horribly 
 suggestive of a tumultuous pursuit. We made 
 a bolt for the unlit side cavern forthwith. As 
 we ran along it our way was lit by the irradia- 
 tion of Cavor's legs. " It's lucky," I panted, 
 *' they took off our boots, or we should fill this 
 place with clatter." On we rushed, taking as 
 small steps as we could to avoid striking the 
 roof of the cavern. After a time we seemed 
 
.ii^' inW! 
 
 \9^ 
 
 Bedford," he whispered, " tliere's a sort of hght iu front of Ub " 
 
THE GIDDY BRIDGE 177 
 
 to be gaining on the uproar. It became 
 muffled, it dwindled, it died away. 
 
 I stopped and looked back, and I heard 
 the pad, pad of Cavor's feet receding. Then 
 he stopped also. " Bedford," he whispered ; 
 "there's a sort of light in front of us." 
 
 I looked, and at first could see nothing. 
 Then I perceived his head and shoulders 
 dimly outlined against a fainter darkness. I 
 saw, also, that this mitigation of the darkness 
 was not blue, as all the other light within the 
 moon had been, but a pallid grey, a very vague, 
 faint white, the daylight colour. Cavor noted 
 this difference as soon or sooner than I did, 
 and I think, too, that it filled him with much 
 the same wild hope. 
 
 *' Bedford," he whispered, and his voice 
 trembled. " That light — it is possible " 
 
 He did not dare to say the thing he hoped. 
 Then came a pause. Suddenly I knew by the 
 sound of his feet that he was striding towards 
 that pallor. I followed him with a beating 
 heart. 
 
 M 
 
XVI 
 
 POINTS OF VIEW 
 
 The light grew stronger as we advanced. In 
 a little time it was nearly as strong as the 
 phosphorescence on Cavor's legs. Our tunnel 
 was expanding into a cavern, and this new 
 light was at the farther end of it. I per- 
 ceived something that set my hopes leaping 
 and bounding. 
 
 " Cavor," I said, " it comes from above ! I 
 am certain it comes from above ! " 
 
 He made no answer, but hurried on. 
 
 Indisputably it was a grey light, a silvery 
 light. 
 
 In another moment we were beneath it. It 
 filtered down through a chink in the walls of 
 the cavern, and as I stared up, drip, came a 
 drop of water upon my face. I started and 
 stood aside — drip, fell another drop quite 
 audibly on the rocky floor. 
 
 " Cavor," I said, " if one of us lifts the other, 
 
 he can reach that crack ! " 
 
 X78 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 179 
 
 " I'll lift you," he said, and incontinently 
 hoisted me as though I was a baby. 
 
 I thrust an arm into the crack, and just at 
 my finger tips found a little ledge by which I 
 could hold. I could see the white light was 
 very much brighter now. I pulled myself up 
 by two fingers with scarcely an effort, though 
 on earth I weigh twelve stone, reached to a 
 still higher corner of rock, and so got my 
 feet on the narrow ledge. I stood up and 
 searched up the rocks with my fingers ; the 
 cleft broadened out upwardly. "It's climb- 
 able," I said to Cavor. " Can you jump up 
 to my hand if I hold it down to you ? " 
 
 I wedged myself between the sides of the 
 cleft, rested knee and foot on the ledge, and 
 extended a hand. I could not see Cavor, but 
 I could hear the rustle of his movements as he 
 crouched to spring. Then whack and he was 
 hanging to my arm — and no heavier than a 
 kitten ! I lugged him up until he had a hand 
 on my ledge, and could release me. 
 
 " Confound it ! " I said, " any one could be a 
 mountaineer on the moon ; " and so set myself 
 in earnest to the climbing. For a few minutes 
 I clambered steadily, and then I looked up again. 
 The cleft opened out steadily, and the light 
 was brighter. Only 
 
i8o THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 It was not daylight after all ! 
 
 In another moment I could see what It was, 
 and at the sight I could have beaten my head 
 against the rocks with disappointment. For I 
 beheld simply an irregularly sloping open space, 
 and all over its slanting floor stood a forest of 
 little club-shaped fungi, each shining gloriously 
 with that pinkish silvery light. For a moment 
 I stared at their soft radiance, then sprang for- 
 ward and upward among them. I plucked up 
 half-a-dozen and flung them against the rocks, 
 and then sat down, laughing bitterly, as Cavor's 
 ruddy face came into view. 
 
 *' It's phosphorescence again ! " I said. ** No 
 need to hurry. Sit down and make yourself 
 at home." And as he spluttered over our 
 disappointment, I began to lob more of these 
 growths into the cleft. 
 
 " I thought it was daylight," he said. 
 
 " Daylight ! " cried I. " Daybreak, sunset, 
 clouds, and windy skies ! Shall we ever see 
 such things again ? " =• 
 
 As I spoke, a little picture of our world 
 seemed to rise before me, bright and little and 
 clear, like the background of some old Italian 
 picture. " The sky that changes, and the sea 
 that changes, and the hills and the green trees 
 and the towns and cities shining in the sun. 
 
POINTS OF VIEW i8i 
 
 Think of a wet roof at sunset, Cavor ! Think 
 of the windows of a westward house ! " 
 
 He made no answer. 
 
 " Here we are burrowing in this beastly 
 world that isn't a world, with its inky ocean 
 hidden in some abominable blackness below, 
 and outside that torrid day and that death 
 stillness of night. And all those things that 
 are chasing us now, beastly men of leather — 
 insect men, that come out of a nightmare ! 
 After all, they're right! What business have 
 we here smashing them and disturbing their 
 world ? For all we know the whole planet is 
 up and after us already. In a minute we may 
 hear them whimpering, and their gongs going. 
 What are we to do ? Where are we to go ? 
 Here we are as comfortable as snakes from 
 Jamrach's loose in a Surbiton villa ! " 
 
 "It was your fault," said Cavor. 
 
 " My fault ! " I shouted. " Good Lord ! " 
 
 " I had an idea ! " 
 
 " Curse your ideas ! " 
 
 " If we had refused to budge " 
 
 " Under these goads ? " 
 
 ** Yes. They would have carried us ! " 
 
 " Over that bridge ? " 
 
 " Yes. They must have carried us from 
 outside." 
 
1 82 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 "I'd rather be carried by a fly across a 
 ceiling." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " 
 
 I resumed my destruction of the fungi. 
 Then suddenly I saw something that struck me 
 even then. 
 
 " Cavor," I said, ** these chains are of gold ! " 
 
 He was thinking intently, with his hands 
 gripping his cheeks. He turned his head 
 slowly and stared at me, and when I had re- 
 peated my words, at the twisted chain about 
 his right hand. "So they are," he said, "so 
 they are." His face lost its transitory interest 
 even as he looked. He hesitated for a moment, 
 then went on with his interrupted meditation. 
 I sat for a space puzzling over the fact that I 
 had only just observed this, until I considered 
 the blue light in which we had been, and which 
 had taken all the colour out of the metal. And 
 from that discovery I also started upon a train 
 of thought that carried me wide and far. I 
 forgot that I had just been asking what busi- 
 ness we had in the moon. Gold 
 
 It was Cavor who spoke first. "It seems 
 to me that there are two courses open to 
 us." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Either we can attempt to make our way — 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 183 
 
 fight our way if necessary— out to the exterior 
 again, and then hunt for our sphere until 
 we find it, or the cold of the night comes to 
 
 kill us, or else " 
 
 He paused. " Yes ? " I said, though I knew 
 what was coming. 
 
 " We might attempt once more to establish 
 some sort of understanding with the minds of 
 the people in the moon." 
 
 " So far as I'm concerned — it's the first " 
 " I doubt." 
 " I don't." 
 
 " You see," said Cavor, " I do not think we 
 can judge the Selenites by what we have seen 
 of them. Their central world, their civilised 
 world will be far below in the profounder 
 caverns about their sea. This region of the 
 crust in which we are is an outlying district, a 
 pastoral region. At any rate, that is my inter- 
 pretation. These Selenites we have seen may 
 be only the equivalent of cowboys and engine 
 tenders. Their use of goads-— in all proba- 
 bility mooncalf goads— the lack of imagination 
 they show in expecting us to be able to do just 
 what they can do, their indisputable brutality, 
 all seem to point to something of that sort. 
 
 But if we endured " 
 
 " Neither of us could endure a six-inch 
 
i84 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 plank across the bottomless pit for very 
 long." 
 
 ** No," said Cavor ; "but then " 
 
 " I won'^," I said. 
 
 He discovered a new line of possibilities. 
 " Well, suppose we got ourselves into some 
 corner, where we could defend ourselves 
 against these hinds and labourers. If, for 
 example, we could hold out for a week or so, 
 it is probable that the news of our appearance 
 would filter down to the more intelligent and 
 populous parts " 
 
 *' If they exist." 
 
 *' They must exist, or whence came those 
 tremendous machines ? " 
 
 " That's possible, but it's the worst of the 
 two chances." 
 
 " We might write up inscriptions on walls — " 
 
 *' How do we know their eyes would see the 
 sort of marks we made ? " 
 
 *' If we cut them " 
 
 ** That's possible, of course." 
 
 I took up a new thread of thought. ** After 
 all," I said, " I suppose you don't think these 
 Selenites so infinitely wiser than men." 
 
 "They must know a lot more — or at least a 
 lot of different things." 
 
 " Yes, but — " I hesitated. 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 185 
 
 " I think you'll quite admit, Cavor, that you're 
 rather an exceptional man." 
 "How?" 
 
 " Well, you— you're a rather lonely man- 
 have been, that is. You haven't married." 
 
 •' Never wanted to. But why ? " 
 
 " And you never grew richer than you hap- 
 pened to be ? " 
 
 " Never wanted that either." 
 
 " You've just rooted after knowledge ? " 
 
 " Well, a certain curiosity is natural " 
 
 " You think so. That's just it. You think 
 every other mind wants to ^now. I remember 
 once, when I asked you why you conducted all 
 these researches, you said you wanted your 
 F.R.S., and to have, the stuff called Cavorite, 
 and things like that. You know perfectly well 
 you didn't do it for that ; but at the time my 
 question took you by surprise, and you felt you 
 ought to have something to look like a motive. 
 Really you conducted researches because you 
 ^ad to. It's your twist." 
 
 " Perhaps it is " 
 
 " It isn't one man in a million has that twist. 
 Most men want— well, various things, but very 
 few want knowledge for its own sake, /don't, 
 I know perfectly well. Now, these Selenites 
 seem to be a driving, busy sort of being, but 
 
1 86 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 how do you know that even the most intelli- 
 ofent will take an interest in us or our world ? 
 I don't believe they'll even know we have a 
 world. They never come out at night — they'd 
 freeze if they did. They've probably never 
 seen any heavenly body at all except the blazing 
 sun. How are they to know there zs another 
 world ? What does it matter to them if they 
 do ? Well, even if they kave had a glimpse of 
 a few stars, or even of the earth crescent, what 
 of that ? Why should people living inside a 
 planet trouble to observe that sort of thing ? 
 Men wouldn't have done it except for the 
 seasons and sailing ; why should the moon 
 people ? . . . 
 
 " Well, suppose there are a few philosophers 
 like yourself. They are just the very Selenites 
 who'll never hear of our existence. Suppose a 
 Selenite had dropped on the earth when you 
 were at Lympne, you'd have been the last man 
 in the world to hear he had come. You never 
 read a newspaper ! You see the chances against 
 you. Well, it's for these chances we're sitting 
 here doing nothing while precious time is flying. 
 I tell you we've got into a fix. We've come 
 unarmed, we've lost our sphere, we've got no 
 food, we've shown ourselves to the Selenites, 
 and made them think we're strange, strong, 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 187 
 
 dangerous animals ; and unless these Selenites 
 are perfect fools, they'll set about now and 
 hunt us till they find us, and when they find 
 us they'll try and take us if they can, and kill us 
 if they can't, and that's the end of the matter. 
 If they take us, they'll probably kill us, through 
 some misunderstanding. After we're done for, 
 they may discuss us perhaps, but we shan't get 
 much fun out of that." 
 
 '• Go on." 
 
 " On the other hand, here's gold knocking 
 about like cast iron at home. If only we can 
 get some of it back, if only we can find our 
 sphere again before they do, and get back, 
 then " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " We might put the thing on a sounder 
 footing. Come back in a bigger sphere with 
 guns." 
 
 ** Good Lord ! " cried Cavor, as though that 
 was horrible. 
 
 I shied another luminous fungus down the 
 cleft. 
 
 " Look here, Cavor," I said, " I've half the 
 voting power anyhow in this affair, and this is 
 a case for a practical man. I'm a practical 
 man, and you are not. I'm not going to trust 
 to Selenites and geometrical diagrams again, if 
 
1 88 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 I can help it. . . . That's all. Get back. Drop 
 all this secrecy — or most of it. And come 
 again." 
 
 He reflected. "When I came to the moon," 
 he said, " I ought to have come alone." 
 
 " The question before the meeting," I said, 
 ** is how to get back to the sphere." 
 
 For a time we nursed our knees in silence. 
 Then he seemed to decide for my reasons. 
 
 " I think," he said, " one can get data. It is 
 clear that while the sun is on this side of the 
 moon the air will be blowing through this 
 planet sponge from the dark side hither. On 
 this side, at any rate, the air will be expand- 
 ing and flowing out of the moon caverns into 
 the craters. . . . Very well, there's a draught 
 here." 
 
 " So there is." 
 
 " And that means that this is not a dead end ; 
 somewhere behind us this cleft goes on and up. 
 The draught is blowing up, and that is the way 
 we have to go. If we try and get up any sort 
 of chimney or gully there is, we shall not only 
 get out of these passages where they are hunt- 
 ing for us " 
 
 " But suppose the gully is too narrow ? " 
 
 ** We'll come down again." 
 
 " Ssh ! " I said suddenly ; " what's that ? " 
 
POINTS OF VIEW 189 
 
 We listened. At first it was an indistinct 
 murmur, and then one picked out the clang of 
 a gong. " They must think we are moon- 
 calves," said I, "to be frightened at that." 
 
 " They're coming along that passage," said 
 Cavor. 
 
 " They must be." 
 
 "They'll not think of the cleft. They'll go 
 past." 
 
 I listened again for a space. " This time," 
 I whispered, "they're likely to have some sort 
 of weapon." 
 
 Then suddenly I sprang to my feet. *' Good 
 heavens, Cavor!" I cried. "But they wz7/! 
 They'll see the fungi I have been pitching 
 down. They'll ! " 
 
 I didn't finish my sentence. I turned about 
 and made a leap over the fungus tops towards 
 the upper end of the cavity. I saw that the 
 space turned upward and became a draughty 
 cleft again, ascending to impenetrable dark- 
 ness. I was about to clamber up into this, and 
 then with a happy inspiration turned back. 
 
 " What are you doing ? " asked Cavor. 
 
 " Go on ! " said I, and went back and got two 
 of the shining fungi, and putting one into the 
 breast pocket of my flannel jacket, so that it 
 stuck out to light our climbing, went back with 
 
igo THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 the other for Cavor. The noise of the Selenites 
 was now so loud that it seemed they must be 
 already beneath the cleft. But it might be they 
 would have difficulty in clambering into it, or 
 might hesitate to ascend it against our possible 
 resistance. At any rate, we had now the com- 
 forting knowledge of the enormous muscular 
 superiority our birth in another planet gave 
 us. In another minute I was clambering with 
 gigantic vigour after Cavor's blue-lit heels. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE OF THE MOON BUTCHERS 
 
 I DO not know how far we clambered before 
 we came to the grating. It may be we as- 
 cended only a few hundred feet, but at the 
 time it seemed to me we might have hauled 
 and jammed and hopped and wedged ourselves 
 through a mile or more of vertical ascent. 
 Whenever I recall that time, there comes into 
 my head the heavy clank of our golden chains 
 that followed every movement. Very soon 
 my knuckles and knees were raw, and I had 
 a bruise on one cheek. After a time the first 
 violence of our efforts diminished, and our 
 movements became more deliberate and less 
 painful. The noise of the pursuing Selenites 
 had died away altogether. It seemed almost 
 as though they had not traced us up the crack 
 after all, in spite of the tell-tale heap of broken 
 fungi that must have lain beneath it. At times 
 the cleft narrowed so much that we could scarce 
 squeeze up it ; at others it expanded into great 
 
192 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 drusy cavities, studded with prickly crystals, 
 or thickly beset with dull, shining fungoid 
 pimples. Sometimes it twisted spirally, and 
 at other times slanted down nearly to the 
 horizontal direction. Ever and again there 
 was the intermittent drip and trickle of water 
 by us. Once or twice it seemed to us that 
 small living things had rustled out of our 
 reach, but what they were we never saw. 
 They may have been venomous beasts for all 
 I know, but they did us no harm, and we were 
 now tuned to a pitch when a weird creeping 
 thing more or less mattered little. And at 
 last, far above, came the familiar bluish light 
 again, and then we saw that it filtered through 
 a grating that barred our way. 
 
 We whispered as we pointed this out to one 
 another, and became more and more cautious 
 in our ascent. Presently we were close under 
 the grating, and by pressing my face against 
 its bars I could see a limited portion of the 
 cavern beyond. It was clearly a large space, 
 and lit no doubt by some rivulet of the same 
 blue light that we had seen flow from the 
 beating machinery. An intermittent trickle 
 of water dropped ever and again between the 
 bars near my face. 
 
 My first endeavour was naturally to see 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 193 
 
 what might be upon the floor of the cavern, 
 but our grating lay in a depression whose rim 
 hid all this from our eyes. Our foiled atten- 
 tion then fell back upon the suggestion of 
 the various sounds we heard, and presently 
 my eye caught a number of faint shadows that 
 played across the dim roof far overhead. 
 
 Indisputably there were several Selenites, 
 perhaps a considerable number, in this space, 
 for we could hear the noises of their inter- 
 course, and faint sounds that I identified as 
 their footfalls. There was also a succession 
 of regularly repeated sounds — chid, chid, chid 
 — which began and ceased, suggestive of a 
 knife or spade hacking at some soft substance. 
 Then came a clank as if of chains, a whistle 
 and a rumble as of a truck running over a 
 hollowed place, and then again that chid, chid, 
 chid resumed. The shadows told of shapes 
 that moved quickly and rhythmically, in agree- 
 ment with that regular sound, and rested when 
 it ceased. 
 
 We put our heads close together, and began 
 to discuss these things in noiseless whispers. 
 
 " They are occupied," I said, " they are 
 occupied in some way." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " They're not seeking us, or thinking of us." 
 
 N 
 
194 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " Perhaps they have not heard of us." 
 
 " Those others are hunting about below. 
 If suddenly we appeared here " 
 
 We looked at one another. 
 
 " There might be a chance to parley," said 
 Cavor. 
 
 " No," I said. " Not as we are." 
 
 For a space we remained, each occupied by 
 his own thoughts. 
 
 Chid, chid, chid went the chopping, and the 
 shadows moved to and fro. 
 
 I looked at the grating. " It's flimsy," I 
 said. "We might bend two of the bars and 
 crawl through." 
 
 We wasted a little time in vague discussion. 
 Then I took one of the bars in both hands, 
 and got my feet up against the rock until they 
 were almost on a level with my head, and so 
 thrust against the bar. It bent so suddenly 
 that I almost slipped. I clambered about and 
 bent the adjacent bar in the opposite direction, 
 and then took the luminous fungus from my 
 pocket and dropped it down the fissure. 
 
 ** Don't do anything hastily," whispered 
 Cavor, as I twisted myself up through the 
 opening I had enlarged. I had a glimpse of 
 busy figures as I came through the grating, 
 and immediately bent down, so that the rim 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 195 
 
 of the depression in which the grating lay hid 
 me from their eyes, and so lay flat, signalling 
 advice to Cavor as he also prepared to come 
 through. Presently we were side by side in 
 the depression, peering over the edge at the 
 cavern and its occupants. 
 
 It was a much larger cavern than we had 
 supposed from our first glimpse of it, and we 
 looked up from the lowest portion of its sloping 
 floor. It widened out as it receded from us, 
 and its roof came down and hid the remoter 
 portion altogether. And lying in a line along 
 its length, vanishing at last far away in that 
 tremendous perspective, were a number of 
 huge shapes, huge pallid hulls, upon which 
 the Selenites were busy. At first they seemed 
 big white cylinders of vague import. Then 
 I noted the heads upon them lying towards 
 us, eyeless and skinless like the heads of sheep 
 at a butcher's, and perceived they were the 
 carcasses of mooncalves being cut up, much 
 as the crew of a whaler might cut up a moored 
 whale. They were cutting off the flesh in 
 strips, and on some of the farther trunks the 
 white ribs were showing. It was the sound 
 of their hatchets that made that chid, chid. 
 Some way away a thing like a trolley cable, 
 drawn and loaded with chunks of lax meat. 
 
196 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 was running up the slope of the cavern floor. 
 This enormous long avenue of hulls that were 
 destined to be food, gave us a sense of the 
 vast populousness of the moon world second 
 only to the effect of our first glimpse down 
 the shaft. 
 
 It seemed to me at first that the Selenites 
 must be standing on trestle-supported planks,^ 
 and then I saw that the planks and supports 
 and their hatchets were really of the same 
 leaden hue as my fetters had seemed before 
 white light came to bear on them. A number 
 of very thick-looking crowbars lay about the 
 floor, and had apparently assisted to turn the 
 dead mooncalf over on its side. They were 
 perhaps six feet long, with shaped handles, 
 very tempting-looking weapons. The whole 
 place was lit by three transverse streams of 
 the blue fluid. 
 
 We lay for a long time noting all these 
 thines in silence. "Well ? " said Cavor at last. 
 
 I crouched lower and turned to him. I had 
 corrte upon a brilliant idea. " Unless they 
 
 * I do not remember seeing any wooden things on the moon ; 
 doors, tables, everything corresponding to our terrestrial joinery 
 was made of metal, and I believe for the most part of gold, 
 which as a metal would, of course, naturally recommend itself — 
 other things being equal — on account of the ease in working it, 
 and its toughness and durability. 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 197 
 
 lowered those bodies by a crane," I said, "we 
 must be nearer the surface than I thought" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 ** The mooncalf doesn't hop, and it hasn't 
 got wings." 
 
 He peered over the edge of the hollow again, 
 "I wonder now . . ." he began. "After all, 
 we have never gone far from the surface " 
 
 I stopped him by a grip on his arm. I had 
 heard a noise from the cleft below us ! 
 
 We twisted ourselves about, and lay as still 
 as death, with every sense alert. In a little 
 while I did not doubt that something was 
 quietly ascending the cleft. Very slowly and 
 quite noiselessly I assured myself of a good 
 grip on my chain, and waited for that some- 
 thing to appear. 
 
 " Just look at those chaps with the hatchets 
 again," I said. 
 
 " They're all right," said Cavor. 
 
 I took a sort of provisional aim at the gap in 
 the grating. I could hear now quite distinctly 
 the soft twittering of the ascending Selenites, 
 the dab of their hands against the rock, and 
 the falling of dust from their grips as they 
 clambered. 
 
 Then I could see that there was something 
 moving dimly in the blackness below the 
 
198 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 grating, but what it might be I could not dis- 
 tinguish. The whole thing seemed to hang 
 fire just for a moment — then smash ! I had 
 sprung to my feet, struck savagely at some- 
 thing that had flashed out at me. It was the 
 keen point of a spear. I have thought since 
 that its length in the narrowness of the cleft 
 must have prevented its being sloped to reach 
 me. Anyhow, it shot out from the grating like 
 the tongue of a snake, and missed and flew 
 back and flashed again. But the second time 
 I snatched and caught it, and wrenched it 
 away, but not before another had darted in- 
 effectually at me. 
 
 I shouted with triumph as I felt the hold of 
 the Selenite resist my pull for a moment and 
 give, and then I was jabbing down through the 
 bars, amidst squeals from the darkness, and 
 Cavor had snapped off the other spear, and 
 was leaping and flourishing it beside me, 
 and making inefficient jabs. Clang, clang, 
 came up through the grating, and then an axe 
 hurtled through the air and whacked against 
 the rocks beyond, to remind me of the fleshers 
 at the carcasses up the cavern. 
 
 I turned, and they were all coming towards 
 us in open order waving their axes. They 
 were short, thick, little beggars, with long 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 199 
 
 arms, strikingly different from the ones we 
 had seen before. If they had not heard of us 
 before, they must have reaHsed the situation 
 with incredible swiftness. I stared at them 
 for a moment, spear in hand. " Guard that 
 grating, Cavor," I cried, howled to intimi- 
 date them, and rushed to meet them. Two 
 of them missed with their hatchets, and the 
 rest fled incontinently. Then the two also 
 were sprinting away up the cavern, with hands 
 clenched and heads down. I never saw men 
 run like them ! 
 
 I knew the spear I had was no good for me. 
 It was thin and flimsy, only effectual for a 
 thrust, and too long for a quick recover. So 
 I only chased the Selenites as far as the first 
 carcass, and stopped there and picked up one 
 of the crowbars that were lying about. It felt 
 confortingly heavy, and equal to smashing any 
 number of Selenites. I threw away my spear, 
 and picked up a second crowbar for the other 
 hand. I felt five times better than I had with 
 the spear. I shook the two threateningly at 
 the Selenites, who had come to a halt in a little 
 crowd far away up the cavern, and then turned 
 about to look at Cavor. 
 
 He was leaping from side to side of the 
 grating, making threatening jabs with his 
 
200 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 broken spear. That was all right. It would 
 keep the Selenites down — for a time at any 
 rate. I looked up the cavern again. What 
 on earth were we going to do now ? 
 
 We were cornered in a sort of way already. 
 But these butchers up the cavern had been 
 surprised, they were probably scared, and they 
 had no special weapons, only those little 
 hatchets of theirs. And that way lay escape. 
 Their sturdy little forms — ever so much shorter 
 and thicker than the mooncalf herds — were 
 scattered up the slope in a way that was elo- 
 quent of indecision. I had the moral advan- 
 tage of a mad bull in a street. But for all 
 that, there seemed a tremendous crowd of 
 them. Very probably there was. Those 
 Selenites down the cleft had certainly some 
 infernally long spears. It might be they had 
 other surprises for us. . . . But, confound it ! 
 if we charged up the cave we should let them 
 up behind us, and if we didn't, those little 
 brutes up the cave would probably get rein- 
 forced. Heaven alone knew what tremendous 
 engines of warfare — guns, bombs, terrestrial 
 torpedoes — this unknown world below our feet, 
 this vaster world of which we had only pricked 
 the outer cuticle, might not presently send up 
 to our destruction. It became clear the only 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 201 
 
 thing to do was to charge ! It became clearer 
 as the legs of a number of fresh Selenites ap- 
 peared running down the cavern towards us. 
 
 " Bedford ! " cried Cavor, and behold ! he 
 was half-way between me and the grating. 
 
 "Go back!" I cried. "What are you 
 doing " 
 
 " They've got — it's like a gun ! " 
 
 And struggling in the grating between those 
 defensive spears appeared the head and shoul- 
 ders of a singularly lean and angular Selenite, 
 bearing some complicated apparatus. 
 
 I realised Cavor's utter incapacity for the 
 fight we had in hand. For a moment I hesi- 
 tated. Then I rushed past him whirling my 
 crowbars, and shouting to confound the aim of 
 the Selenite. He was aiming in the queer- 
 est way with the thing against his stomach. 
 **Chu2z!" The thing wasn't a gun; it went 
 off like a cross-bow more, and dropped me in 
 the middle of a leap. 
 
 I didn't fall down, I simply came down a 
 little shorter than I should have done if I 
 hadn't been hit, and from the feel of my 
 shoulder the thing might have tapped me and 
 glanced off. Then my left hand hit against 
 the shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of 
 spear sticking half through my shoulder. The 
 
202 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 moment after I got home with the crowbar 
 in my right hand, and hit the Selenite fair 
 and square. He collapsed — he crushed and 
 crumpled — his head smashed like an egg. 
 
 I dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of 
 my shoulder, and began to jab it down the 
 grating into the darkness. At each jab came 
 a shriek and twitter. Finally I hurled the 
 spear down upon them with all my strength, 
 leapt up, picked up the crowbar again, and 
 started for the multitude up the cavern. 
 
 *' Bedford ! " cried Cavor. " Bedford ! " as I 
 flew past him. 
 
 I seem to remember his footsteps coming 
 on behind me. 
 
 Step, leap . . . whack, step, leap. . . . 
 Each leap seemed to last ages. With each, 
 the cave opened out and the number of 
 Selenites visible increased. At first they 
 seemed all running about like ants in a dis- 
 turbed ant-hill, one or two waving hatchets 
 and coming to meet me, more running away, 
 some bolting sideways into the avenue of 
 carcasses, then presently others came in sight 
 carrying spears, and then others. I saw a 
 most extraordinary thing, all hands and feet, 
 bolting for cover. The cavern grew darker 
 farther up. Flick ! something flew over my 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 203 
 
 head. Flick ! As I soared in mid-stride I saw 
 a spear hit and quiver in one of the carcasses 
 to my left. Then, as I came down, one hit 
 the ground before me, and I heard the remote 
 chuzz ! with which their things were fired. 
 Flick, flick ! for a moment it was a shower. 
 They were volleying ! 
 
 I stopped dead. 
 
 I don't think I thought clearly then. I seem 
 to remember a kind of stereotyped phrase run- 
 ning through my mind: "Zone of fire, seek 
 cover ! " I know I made a dash for the ^ace 
 between two of the carcasses, and stood there 
 panting and feeling very wicked. 
 
 I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment 
 it seemed as if he had vanished from the world. 
 Then he came out of the darkness between 
 the row of the carcasses and the rocky wall 
 of the cavern. I saw his little face, dark and 
 blue, and shining with perspiration and emotion. 
 
 He was saying something, but what it was 
 I did not heed. I had realised that we might 
 work from mooncalf to mooncalf up the cave 
 until we were near enough to charge home. 
 It was charge or nothing. "Come on!" I 
 said, and led the way. 
 
 " Bedford ! " he cried unavailingly. 
 
 My mind was busy as we went up that 
 
204 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 narrow alley between the dead bodies and 
 the wall of the cavern. The rocks curved 
 about — they could not enfilade us. Though 
 in that narrow space we could not leap, yet 
 with our earth-born strength we were still able 
 to go very much faster than the Selenites. 
 I reckoned we should presently come right 
 among them. Once we were on them, they 
 would be nearly as formidable as black beetles. 
 Only ! — there would first of all be a volley. 
 I thought of a stratagem. I whipped off my 
 flannel jacket as I ran. 
 
 " Bedford ! " panted Cavor behind me. 
 
 I glanced back. " What ? " said I. 
 
 He was pointing upward over the carcasses. 
 *' White light ! " he said. " White light again ! " 
 
 I looked, and it was even so, a faint white 
 ghost of twilight in the remoter cavern roof. 
 That seemed to give me double strength. 
 
 " Keep close," I said. A flat, long Selenite 
 dashed out of the darkness, and squealed and 
 fled. I halted, and stopped Cavor with my 
 hand. I hung my jacket over my crowbar, 
 ducked round the next carcass, dropped jacket 
 and crowbar, showed myself, and darted back. 
 
 *' Chuzz — flick," just one arrow came. We 
 were close on the Selenites, and they were 
 standing in a crowd, broad, short, and tall 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 205 
 
 together, with a little battery of their shooting 
 implements pointing down the cave. Three 
 or four other arrows followed the first, and 
 then their fire ceased. 
 
 I stuck out my head, and escaped by a 
 hair's-breadth. This time I drew a dozen 
 shots or more, and heard the Selenites shout- 
 ing and twittering as if with excitement as they 
 shot. I picked up jacket and crowbar again. 
 
 ''Now ! " said I, and thrust out the jacket. 
 
 " Chuzz-zz-zz-zz ! Chuzz ! In an instant my 
 jacket had grown a thick beard of arrows, and 
 they were quivering all over the carcass behind 
 us. Instantly I slipped the crowbar out of the 
 jacket, dropped the jacket — for all I know to 
 the contrary it is lying up there in the moon 
 now — and rushed out upon them. 
 
 For a minute perhaps it was massacre. I 
 was too fierce to discriminate, and the Selenites 
 were probably too scared to fight. At any 
 rate they made no sort of fight against me. I 
 saw scarlet, as the saying is. I remember I 
 seemed to be wading among those leathery, 
 thin things as a man wades through tall grass, 
 mowing and hitting, first right, then left ; smash, 
 smash. Little drops of moisture flew about. 
 I trod on things that crushed and piped and 
 went slippery. The crowd seemed to open 
 and close and flow like water. They seemed 
 
2o6 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 to have no combined plan whatever. There 
 were spears flew about me, I was grazed over 
 the ear by one. I was stabbed once in the 
 arm and once in the cheek, but I only found 
 that out afterwards, when the blood had had 
 time to run and cool and feel wet. 
 
 What Cavor did I do not know. For a 
 space it seemed that this fighting had lasted 
 for an age, and must needs go on for ever. 
 Then suddenly it was all over, and there was 
 nothing to be seen but the backs of heads 
 bobbing up and down as their owners ran in 
 all directions ... I seemed altogether un- 
 hurt. I ran forward some paces, shouting, 
 then turned about. I was amazed. 
 
 I had come right through them in vast flying 
 strides, they were all behind me, and running 
 hither and thither to hide. 
 
 I felt an enormous astonishment at the 
 evaporation of the great fight into which I had 
 hurled myself, and not a little of exultation. 
 It did not seem to me that I had discovered 
 the Selenites were unexpectedly flimsy, but 
 that I was unexpectedly strong. I laughed 
 stupidly. This fantastic moon ! 
 
 I glanced for a moment at the smashed and 
 writhing bodies that were scattered over the 
 cavern floor, with a vague idea of further 
 violence, then hurried on after Cavor. 
 
XVIII 
 
 IN THE SUNLIGHT 
 
 Presently we saw that the cavern before us 
 
 opened on a hazy void. In another moment 
 
 we had emerged upon a sort of slanting gallery, 
 
 that projected into a vast circular space, a huge 
 
 cylindrical pit running vertically up and down. 
 
 Round this pit the slanting gallery ran without 
 
 any parapet or protection for a turn and a half, 
 
 and then plunged high above into the rock 
 
 again. Somehow it reminded me then of one 
 
 of those spiral turns of the railway through the 
 
 Saint Gothard. It was all tremendously huge. 
 
 I can scarcely hope to convey to you the Titanic 
 
 proportion of all that place, the Titanic effect 
 
 of it. Our eyes followed up the vast declivity 
 
 of the pit wall, and overhead and far above 
 
 we beheld a round opening set witji faint stars, 
 
 and half of the lip about it well-nigh blinding 
 
 with the white light of the sun. At that we 
 
 cried aloud simultaneously. 
 
 " Come on ! " I said, leading the way. 
 207 
 
2o8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " But there ? " said Cavor, and very carefully 
 stepped nearer the edge of the gallery. I 
 followed his example, and craned forward and 
 looked down, but I was dazzled by that gleam 
 of light above, and I could see only a bottomless 
 darkness with spectral patches of crimson and 
 purple floating therein. Yet if I could not see, 
 I could hear. Out of this darkness came a 
 sound, a sound like the angry hum one can hear 
 if one puts one's ear outside a hive of bees, a 
 sound out of that enormous hollow, it may be, 
 four miles beneath our feet. . . . 
 
 For a moment I listened, then tightened my 
 grip on my crowbar, and led the way up the 
 gallery. 
 
 ** This must be the shaft we looked down 
 upon," said Cavor. " Under that lid." 
 
 *' And below there, is where we saw the 
 lights." 
 
 "The lights!" said he. "Yes — the lights 
 of the world that now we shall never see." 
 
 *' We'll come back," I said, for now we had 
 escaped so much I was rashly sanguine that 
 we should recover the sphere. 
 
 His answer I did not catch. 
 
 "Eh.?" I asked. 
 
 " It doesn't matter," he answered, and we 
 hurried on in silence. 
 
IN THE SUNLIGHT 209 
 
 I suppose that slanting lateral way was four 
 or five miles long, allowing for its curvature, 
 and it ascended at a slope that would have 
 made it almost impossibly steep on earth, but 
 which one strode up easily under lunar con- 
 ditions. We saw only two Selenites during 
 all that portion of our flight, and directly they 
 became aware of us they ran headlong. It 
 was clear that the knowledge of our strength 
 and violence had reached them. Our way to 
 the exterior was unexpectedly plain. The 
 spiral gallery straightened into a steeply ascen- 
 dent tunnel, its floor bearing abundant traces 
 of the mooncalves, and so straight and short 
 In proportion to its vast arch, that no part of 
 it was absolutely dark. Almost immediately 
 it began to lighten, and then far off and high 
 up, and quite blindingly brilliant, appeared 
 its opening on the exterior, a slope of Alpine 
 steepness surmounted by a crest of bayonet 
 shrub, tall and broken down now, and dry and 
 dead, in spiky silhouette against the sun. 
 
 And It is strange that we men, to whom this 
 very vegetation had seemed so weird and 
 horrible a little time ago, should now behold 
 it with the emotion a home-coming exile might 
 feel at sight of his native land. We welcomed 
 even the rareness of the air that made us pant 
 
 
 
2IO THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 as we ran, and which rendered speaking no 
 longer the easy thing that it had been, but 
 an effort to make oneself heard. Larger grew 
 the sunlit circle above us, and larger, and all 
 the nearer tunnel sank into a rim of indis- 
 tinguishable black. We saw the dead bayonet 
 shrub no longer with any touch of green in 
 it, but brown and dry and thick, and the shadow 
 of its upper branches high out of sight made 
 a densely interlaced pattern upon the tumbled 
 rocks. And at the immediate mouth of the 
 tunnel was a wide trampled space where the 
 mooncalves had come and gone. 
 
 We came out upon this space at last into 
 a light and heat that hit and pressed upon 
 us. We traversed the exposed area pain- 
 fully, and clambered up a slope among the 
 scrub stems, and sat down at last panting in 
 a high place beneath the shadow of a mass 
 of twisted -lava. Even in the shade the rock 
 felt hot. 
 
 The air was intensely hot, and we were in 
 great physical discomfort, but for all that we 
 were no longer in a nightmare. We seemed 
 to have come to our own province again, 
 beneath the stars. All the fear and stress 
 of our flight through the dim passages and 
 fissures below had fallen from us. That last 
 
IN THE SUNLIGHT 211 
 
 fight had filled us with an enormous confidence 
 in ourselves so far as the Selenites were con- 
 cerned. We looked back almost incredulously 
 at the black opening from which we had just 
 emerged. Down there it was, in a blue glow 
 that now in our memories seemed the next 
 thing to absolute darkness, we had met with 
 things like mad mockeries of men, helmet- 
 headed creatures, and had walked in fear be- 
 fore them, and had submitted to them until we 
 could submit no longer. And, behold, they had 
 smashed like wax and scattered like chaff, and 
 fled and vanished like the creatures of a dream ! 
 
 I rubbed my eyes, doubting whether we had 
 not slept and dreamt these things by reason 
 of the fungus we had eaten, and suddenly dis- 
 covered the blood upon my face, and then that 
 my shirt was sticking painfully to my shoulder 
 and arm. 
 
 " Confound it ! " I said, gauging my injuries 
 with an investigatory hand, and suddenly that 
 distant tunnel mouth became, as it were, a 
 watching eye. 
 
 "Cavor!" I said; "what are they going to 
 do now ? And what are we going to do ? " 
 
 He shook his head, with his eyes fixed upon 
 the tunnel. "How can one tell what they 
 will do,?" 
 
212 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " It depends on what they think of us, and 
 I don't see how we can begin to guess that. 
 And it depends upon what they have in re- 
 serve. It's as you say, Cavor, we have 
 touched the merest outside of this world. 
 They may have all sorts of things inside here. 
 Even with those shooting things they might 
 make it bad for us. . . . 
 
 *' Yet after all," I said, " even if we don I find 
 the sphere at once, there is a chance for us. 
 We might hold out. Even through the night. 
 We might go down there again and make a 
 fight for it." 
 
 I stared about me with speculative eyes. 
 The character of the scenery had altered alto- 
 gether by reason of the enormous growth and 
 subsequent drying of the scrub. The crest 
 on which we sat was high, and commanded a 
 wide prospect of the crater landscape, and we 
 saw it now all sere and dry in the late autumn 
 of the lunar afternoon. Rising one behind the 
 other were long slopes and fields of trampled 
 brown where the mooncalves had pastured, 
 and far away in the full blaze of the sun a 
 drove of them basked slumberously, scattered 
 shapes, each with a blot of shadow against it 
 like sheep on the side of a down. But never a 
 sign of a Selenite was to be seen. Whether 
 
IN THE SUNLIGHT 213 
 
 they had fled on our emergence from the 
 interior passages, or whether they were accus- 
 tomed to retire after driving out the moon- 
 calves, I cannot guess. At the time I beUeved 
 the former was the case. 
 
 ** If we were to set fire to all this stuff," I 
 said, "we might find the sphere among the 
 ashes." 
 
 Cavor did not seem to hear me. He was 
 peering under his hand at the stars, that still, 
 in spite of the intense sunlight, were abundantly 
 visible in the sky. " How long do you think we 
 have been here ?" he asked at last. 
 
 " Been where?" 
 
 •* On the moon." 
 
 ** Two earthly days, perhaps." 
 
 " More nearly ten. Do you know, the sun 
 is past its zenith, and sinking in the west. In 
 four days' time or less it will be night." 
 
 *' But — we've only eaten once ! " 
 
 *' I know that. And — But there are the 
 stars ! " 
 
 '* But why should time seem different because 
 we are on a smaller planet ? " 
 
 *• I don't know. There it is ! " 
 
 " How does one tell time ? " 
 
 " Hunger — fatigue — all those things are 
 different. Everything is different — every- 
 
214 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 thing. To me it seems that since first we 
 came out of the sphere has been only a ques- 
 tion of hours — long hours — at most." 
 
 "Ten days," I said; "that leaves — " I 
 looked up at the sun for a moment, and then 
 saw that it was half-way from the zenith to the 
 western edge of things. " Four days ! . . . 
 Cavor, we mustn't sit here and dream. How 
 do you think we may begin ? " 
 
 I stood up. *' We must get a fixed point 
 we can recognise — we might hoist a flag, or a 
 handkerchief, or something — and quarter the 
 ground, and work round that." 
 
 He stood up beside me. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "there is nothing for it but 
 to hunt the sphere. Nothing. We may find 
 it — certainly we may find it. And if not " 
 
 " We must keep on looking." 
 
 He looked this way and that, glanced up at 
 the sky and down at the tunnel, and aston- 
 ished me by a sudden gesture of impatience. 
 " Oh ! but we have done foolishly ! To have 
 come to this pass ! Think how it might have 
 been, and the things we might have done ! '* 
 
 " We may do something yet." 
 
 " Never the thing we might have done. 
 Here below our feet is a world. Think of 
 what that world must be! Think of that 
 
IN THE SUNLIQHT 215 
 
 machine we saw, and the hd and the shaft I 
 They were just remote outlying things, and 
 those creatures we have seen and fought with 
 no more than ignorant peasants, dwellers in 
 the outskirts, yokels and labourers half akin 
 to brutes. Down below! Caverns beneath 
 caverns, tunnels, structures, ways. ... It 
 must open out, and be greater and wider and 
 more populous as one descends. Assuredly. 
 Right down at last to the central sea that 
 washes round the core of the moon. Think 
 of its inky waters under the spare lights — if, 
 indeed, their eyes nee^i lights ! Think of the 
 cascading tributaries pouring down their chan- 
 nels to feed it ! Think of the tides upon its 
 surface, and the rush and swirl of its ebb and 
 flow! Perhaps they have ships that go upon 
 it, perhaps down there are mighty cities and 
 swarming ways, and wisdom and order passing 
 the wit of man. And we may die here upon 
 it, and never see the masters who mus^ be — 
 ruling over these things ! We may freeze and 
 die here, and the air will freeze and thaw upon 
 us, and then — ! Then they will come upon us, 
 come on our stiff and silent bodies, and find the 
 sphere we cannot find, and they will under- 
 stand at last too late all the thought and effort 
 that ended here in vain ! " 
 
2i6 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 His voice for all that speech sounded like 
 the voice of some one heard in a telephone, 
 weak and far away. 
 
 " But the darkness," I said. 
 
 •' One might get over that." 
 
 "How.?" 
 
 *' I don't know. How am I to know? One 
 might carry a torch, one might have a lamp — 
 The others — might understand." 
 
 He stood for a moment with his hands held 
 down and a rueful face, staring out over the 
 waste that defied him. Then with a gesture 
 of renunciation he turned towards me with 
 proposals for the systematic hunting of the 
 sphere. 
 
 " We can return," I said. 
 
 He looked about him. " First of all we 
 shall have to get to earth." 
 
 " We could bring back lamps to carry and 
 climbing irons, and a hundred necessary 
 thino-s." 
 
 *' Yes," he said. 
 
 " We can take back an earnest of success 
 in this gold." 
 
 He looked at my golden crowbars, and said 
 nothing for a space. He stood with his hands 
 clasped behind his back, staring across the 
 crater. At last he sighed and spoke. "It 
 
IN THE SUNLIGHT 217 
 
 was / found the way here, but to find a way 
 isn't always to be master of a way. If I take 
 my secret back to earth, what will happen ? I 
 do not see how I can keep my secret for a 
 year, for even a part of a year. Sooner or 
 later it must come out, even if other men 
 rediscover it. And then. . . . Governments 
 and powers will struggle to get hither, they 
 will fight against one another, and against 
 these moon people ; it will only spread warfare 
 and multiply the occasions of war. In a little 
 while, in a very little while, if I tell my secret, 
 this planet to its 'deepest galleries will be 
 strewn with human dead. Other thing's are 
 doubtful, but that is certain. . . . It is not as 
 though man had any use for the moon. What 
 good would the moon be to men ? Even of 
 their own planet what have they made but a 
 battle-ground and theatre of infinite folly ? 
 Small as his world is, and short as his time, 
 he has still in his little life down there far more 
 than he can do. No ! Science has toiled too 
 long forging weapons for fools to use. It is 
 time she held her hand. Let him find it out 
 for himself again — in a thousand years' time." 
 
 " There are methods of secrecy," I said. 
 
 He looked up at me and smiled. " After 
 all," he said, " why should one worry ? There 
 
2i8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 is little chance of our finding the sphere, and 
 down below things are brewing. It's simply 
 the human habit of hoping till we die that 
 makes us think of return. Our troubles are 
 only beginning. We have shown these moon 
 folk violence, we have given them a taste of 
 our quality, and our chances are about as good 
 as a tiger's that has got loose and killed a man 
 in Hyde Park. The news of us must be 
 running down from gallery to gallery, down 
 towards the central parts. ... No sane 
 beings will ever let us take that sphere back 
 to earth after so much as they have seen 
 of us." 
 
 " We aren't improving our chances," said I, 
 *' by sitting here." 
 
 We stood up side by side. 
 
 "After all," he said, "we must separate. 
 We must stick up a handkerchief on these tall 
 spikes here and fasten it firmly, and from this 
 as a centre we must work over the crater. 
 You must go westward, moving out in semi- 
 circles to and fro towards the setting sun. You 
 must move first with your shadow on your right 
 until it is at right angles with the direction of 
 your handkerchief, and then with your shadow 
 on your left. And I will do the same to the 
 east. We will look into every gully, examine 
 
IN THE SUNLIGHT 219 
 
 every skerry of rocks ; we will do all we can to 
 find my sphere. If we see Selenites we will 
 hide from them as well as we can. For drink 
 we must take snow, and if we feel the need of 
 food, we must kill a mooncalf if we can, and eat 
 such flesh as it has — raw — and so each will go 
 his own way." 
 
 " And if one of us comes upon the sphere ? " 
 
 " He must come back to the white handker- 
 chief, and stand by it and signal to the other." 
 
 " And if neither ? " 
 
 Cavor glanced up at the sun. ** We go on 
 seeking until the night and cold overtake us." 
 
 " Suppose the Selenites have found the 
 sphere and hidden it ? " 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Or if presently they come hunting us ? " 
 
 He made no answer. 
 
 "You had better take a club," I said. 
 
 He shook his head, and stared away from 
 me across the waste. 
 
 But for a moment he did not start. He 
 looked round at me shyly, hesitated. '' Au 
 revoir^' he said. 
 
 I felt an odd stab of emotion. A sense of 
 how we had galled each other, and particularly 
 how I must have galled him, came to me. 
 ''Confound it," thought I, "we might have 
 
220 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 done better ! " I was on the point of asking 
 him to shake hands — for that, somehow, was 
 how I felt just then — when he put his feet 
 together and leapt away from me towards the 
 north. He seemed to drift through the air as 
 a dead leaf would do, fell lightly, and leapt 
 again. I stood for a moment watching him, 
 then faced westward reluctantly, pulled myself 
 together, and with something of the feeling of 
 a man who leaps into icy water, selected a 
 leaping point, and plunged forward to explore 
 my solitary half of the moon world. I dropped 
 rather clumsily among rocks, stood up and 
 looked about me, clambered on to a rocky 
 slab, and leapt again. . . . 
 
 When presently I looked for Cavor he was 
 hidden from my eyes, but the handkerchief 
 showed out bravely on its headland, white in 
 the blaze of the sun. 
 
 I determined not to lose sight of that hand- 
 kerchief whatever might betide. 
 
XIX 
 
 MR. BEDFORD ALONE 
 
 In a little while it seemed to me as though I 
 had always been alone on the moon. I hunted 
 for a time with a certain intentness, but the 
 heat was still very great, and the thinness of 
 the air felt like a hoop about one's chest. I 
 came presently into a hollow basin bristling 
 with tall, brown, dry fronds about its edge, and 
 I sat down under these to rest and cool. I 
 intended to rest for only a little while. I put 
 down my clubs beside me, and sat resting my 
 chin on my hands. I saw with a sort of colour- 
 less interest that the rocks of the basin, where 
 here and there the crackling dry lichens had 
 shrunk away to show them, were all veined 
 and splattered with gold, that here and there 
 bosses of rounded and wrinkled gold projected 
 from among the litter. What did that matter 
 now ? A sort of languor had possession of my 
 limbs and mind, I did not believe for a moment 
 that we should ever find the sphere in that vast 
 
2 22 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 desiccated wilderness. I seemed to lack a 
 motive for effort until the Selenites should 
 come. Then I supposed I should exert my- 
 self, obeying that unreasonable imperative that 
 urges a man before all things to preserve and 
 defend his life, albeit he may preserve it only to 
 die more painfully in a little while. 
 Why had we come to the moon .'* 
 The thing presented itself to me as a per- 
 plexing problem. What is this spirit in man 
 that urges him for ever to depart from happi- 
 ness and security, to toil, to place himself in 
 danger, to risk even a reasonable certainty of 
 death? It dawned upon me up there in the 
 moon as a thing I ought always to have known, 
 that man is not made simply to go about being 
 safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. 
 Almost any man, if you put the thing to him, 
 not in words, but in the shape of opportunities, 
 will show that he knows as much. Against his 
 interest, against his happiness, he is constantly 
 being driven to do unreasonable things. Some 
 force not himself impels him, and go he must. 
 But why ? Why ? Sitting there in the midst 
 of that useless moon gold, amidst the things 
 of another world, I took count of all my life. 
 Assuming I was to die a castaway upon the 
 moon, I failed altogether to see what purpose 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 223 
 
 I had served. I got no light on that point, but 
 at any rate it was clearer to me than it had ever 
 been in my life before that I was not serving 
 my own purpose, that all my life I had in truth 
 never served the purposes of my private life. 
 Whose purposes, what purposes, was I serving } 
 ... I ceased to speculate on why we had come 
 to the moon, and took a wider sweep. Why 
 had I come to the earth ? Why had I a private 
 life at all ? ... I lost myself at last in bottom- 
 less speculations. . . . 
 
 My thoughts became vague and cloudy, no 
 longer leading in definite directions. I had 
 not felt heavy or weary — I cannot imagine 
 one doing so upon the moon — but I suppose 
 I was greatly fatigued. At any rate I slept. 
 
 Slumbering there rested me gready, I think, 
 and the sun was setting and the violence of the 
 heat abating, through all the time I slumbered. 
 When at last I was roused from my slumbers 
 by a remote clamour, I felt active and capable 
 again. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my 
 arms. I rose to my feet — I was a little stiff — 
 and at once prepared to resume my search. 
 I shouldered my golden clubs, one on each 
 shoulder, and went on out of the ravine of 
 the gold-veined rocks. 
 
 The sun was certainly lower, much lower 
 
3 24 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 than it had been ; the air was very much cooler. 
 I perceived I must have slept some time. It 
 seemed to me that a faint touch of misty blue- 
 ness hung about the western cliff. I leapt to 
 a little boss of rock and surveyed the crater. 
 I could see no signs of mooncalves or Selenites, 
 nor could I see Cavor, but I could see my 
 handkerchief afar off, spread out on its thicket 
 of thorns. I looked about me, and then leapt 
 forward to the next convenient view-point. 
 
 I beat my way round in a semicircle, and 
 back aofain in a still remoter crescent. It was 
 very fatiguing and hopeless. The air was 
 really very much cooler, and it seemed to me 
 that the shadow under the westward cliff was 
 growing broad. Ever and again I stopped 
 and reconnoitred, but there was no sign of 
 Cavor, no sign of Selenites ; and it seemed 
 to me the mooncalves must have been driven 
 into the interior again — I could see none of 
 them. I became more and more desirous of 
 seeing Cavor. The winged outline of the sun 
 had sunk now, until it was scarcely the distance 
 of its diameter from the rim of the sky. I 
 was oppressed by the idea that the Selenites 
 would presently close their lids and valves, 
 and -shut us out under the inexorable onrush 
 of the lunar night. It seemed to me high 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 225 
 
 time that he abandoned his search, and that 
 we took counsel together. I feh how urgent 
 it was that we should decide soon upon our 
 course. We had failed to find the sphere, 
 we no longer had time to seek it, and once 
 these valves were closed with us outside, we 
 were lost men. The great night of space 
 would descend upon us — that blackness of the 
 void which is the only absolute death. All 
 my being shrank from that approach. We 
 must get into the moon again, though we were 
 slain in doing it. I was haunted by a vision 
 of our freezing to death, of our hammering 
 with our last strength on the valve of the 
 great pit. 
 
 I took no thought any more of the sphere. 
 I thought only of finding Cavor again. I was 
 half inclined to go back into the moon without 
 him, rather than seek him until it was too late. 
 I was already half-way back towards our hand- 
 kerchief, when suddenly — 
 
 I saw the sphere ! 
 
 I did not find it so much as it found me. 
 It was lying much further to the westward 
 than I had gone, and the sloping rays of the 
 sinking sun reflected from its glass had sud- 
 denly proclaimed its presence in a dazzling 
 beam. For an instant I thought this was 
 
 p 
 
226 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 some new device of the Selenites against us, 
 and then I understood. 
 
 I threw up my arms, shouted a ghostly 
 shout, and set off in vast leaps towards it. I 
 missed one of my leaps and dropped into a 
 deep ravine and twisted my ankle, and after 
 that I stumbled at almost every leap. I was 
 in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling 
 violently, and quite breathless long before I 
 got to it. Three times at least I had to stop 
 with my hands resting on my side, and spite 
 of the thin dryness of the air, the perspiration 
 was wet upon my face. 
 
 I thought of nothing but the sphere until 
 I reached it, I forgot even my trouble of 
 Cavor's whereabouts. My last leap flung me 
 with my hands hard against its glass ; then I 
 lay against it panting, and trying vainly to 
 shout, '• Cavor ! here is the sphere ! " When 
 I had recovered a little I peered through the 
 thick glass, and the things inside seemed 
 tumbled. I stooped to peer closer. Then I 
 attempted to get in. I had to hoist it over 
 a little to get my head through the manhole. 
 The screw stopper was inside, and I could see 
 now that nothing had been touched, nothing 
 had suffered. It lay there as we had left it 
 when we had dropped out amidst the snow. 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 227 
 
 For a time I was wholly occupied in making 
 and remaking this inventory. I found I was 
 trembling violently. It was good to see that 
 familiar dark interior again ! I cannot tell you 
 how good. Presently I crept inside and sat 
 down among the things. I looked through 
 the glass at the moon world and shivered. 
 I placed my gold clubs upon the bale, and 
 sought out and took a little food ; not so much 
 because I wanted it, but because it was there. 
 Then it occurred to me that it was time to go 
 out and signal for Cavor. But I did not go 
 out and signal for Cavor forthwith. Something 
 held me to the sphere. 
 
 After all, everything was coming right. 
 There would be still time for us to get more 
 of the magic stone that gives one mastery 
 over men. Away there, close handy, was 
 gold for the picking up ; and the sphere would 
 travel as well half full of gold as though it were 
 empty. We could go back now, masters of 
 ourselves and our world, and then — 
 
 I roused myself at last, and with an effort 
 got myself out of the sphere. I shivered as 
 I emerged, for the evening air was growing 
 very cold. I stood in the hollow staring about 
 me. I scrutinised the bushes round me very 
 carefully before I leapt to the rocky shelf hard 
 
228 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 by, and took once more what had been my 
 first leap in the moon. But now I made it 
 with no effort whatever. 
 
 The growth and decay of the vegetation 
 had gone on apace, and the whole aspect of 
 the rocks had changed, but still it was possible 
 to make out the slope on which the seeds had 
 germinated, and the rocky mass from which 
 we had taken our first view of the crater. But 
 the spiky shrub on the slope stood brown and 
 sere now, and thirty feet high, and cast long 
 shadows that stretched out of sight, and the 
 little seeds that clustered in its upper branches 
 were brown and ripe. Its work was done, 
 and it was brittle and ready to fall and crumple 
 under the freezing air, so soon as the night- 
 fall came. And the huge cacti, that had swollen 
 as we watched them, had long since burst and 
 scattered their spores to the four quarters of 
 the moon. Amazinof little corner in the uni- 
 verse — the landing-place of men ! 
 
 Some day, thought I, I will have an inscrip- 
 tion standing there right in the midst of the 
 hollow. It came to me, if only this teeming 
 world within knew of the full import of the 
 moment, how furious its tumult would become ! 
 
 But as yet it could scarcely be dreaming 
 of the significance of our coming. For if it 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 229 
 
 did, the crater would surely be an uproar 
 of pursuit, instead of as still as death ! I 
 looked about for some place from which I 
 might signal to Cavor, and saw that same 
 patch of rock to which he had leapt from my 
 present standpoint, still bare and barren in the 
 sun. For a moment I hesitated at going so 
 far from the sphere. Then with a pang of 
 shame at that hesitation, I leapt. . . . 
 
 From this vantage point I surveyed the 
 crater again. Far away at the top of the 
 enormous shadow I cast was the little white 
 handkerchief fluttering on the bushes. It was 
 very little and very far, and Cavor was not 
 in sight. It seemed to me that by this time 
 he ought to be looking for me. That was the 
 agreement. But he was nowhere to be seen. 
 
 I stood waiting and watching, hands shad- 
 ing my eyes, expecting every moment to dis- 
 tinguish him. Very probably I stood there 
 for quite a long time. I tried to shout, 
 and was reminded of the thinness of the air. 
 I made an undecided step back towards the 
 sphere. But a lurking dread of the Selenites 
 made me hesitate to signal my whereabouts 
 by hoisting one of our sleeping-blankets on 
 to the adjacent scrub. I searched the crater 
 again. 
 
230 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 It had an effect of emptiness that chilled 
 me. And it was still ! Any sound from the 
 Selenites in the world beneath, even had 
 died away. It was as still as death. Save 
 for the faint stir of the shrub about me in 
 the little breeze that was rising, there was 
 no sound nor shadow of a sound. And the 
 breeze blew chill. 
 
 Confound Cavor ! 
 
 I took a deep breath. I put my hands to 
 the sides of my mouth. "Cavor!" I bawled, 
 and the sound was like some manikin shouting 
 far away. 
 
 I looked at the handkerchief, I looked be- 
 hind me at the broadening shadow of the west- 
 ward cliff, I looked under my hand at the sun. 
 It seemed to me that almost visibly it was 
 creeping down the sky. 
 
 I felt I must act instantly if I was to save 
 Cavor. I whipped off my vest and flung it 
 as a mark on the sere bayonets of the shrubs 
 behind me, and then set off in a straight line 
 towards the handkerchief. Perhaps it was a 
 couple of miles away — a matter of a few hun- 
 dred leaps and strides. I have already told 
 how one seemed to hang through those lunar 
 leaps. In each suspense I sought Cavor, and 
 marvelled why he should be hidden. In each 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 231 
 
 leap I could feel the sun setting behind me. 
 Each time I touched the ground I was tempted 
 to go back. 
 
 A last leap and I was in the depression 
 below our handkerchief, a stride, and I stood on 
 our former vantage point within arm's reach 
 of it, I stood up straight and scanned the 
 world about me, between its lengthening bars 
 of shadow. Far away, down a long declivity, 
 was the opening of the tunnel up which we 
 had fled, and my shadow reached towards it, 
 stretched towards it, and touched it, like a 
 finger of the night. 
 
 Not a sign of Cavor, not a sound in all the 
 stillness, only that the stir and waving of the 
 scrub and of the shadows increased. And 
 
 suddenly and violently I shivered. " Cav " 
 
 I began, and realised once more the useless- 
 ness of the human voice in that thin air. 
 Silence. The silence of death. 
 Then it was my eye caught something — 
 a little thing, lying perhaps fifty yards away 
 down the slope, amidst a litter of bent and 
 broken branches. What was it.? I knew, 
 and yet for some reason I would not know. 
 I went nearer to it. It was the little cricket- 
 cap Cavor had worn. I did not touch it, I 
 stood looking at it. 
 
232 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 I saw then that the scattered branches about 
 it had been forcibly smashed and trampled. 
 I hesitated, stepped forward and picked it up. 
 
 I stood with Caver's cap in my hand, staring 
 at the trampled reeds and thorns about me. 
 On some of them were little smears of some- 
 thing dark, something that I dared not touch. 
 A dozen yards away, perhaps, the rising breeze 
 dragged something into view, something small 
 and vividly white. 
 
 It was a little piece of paper crumpled tightly, 
 as though it had been clutched tightly. I 
 picked it up, and on it were smears of red. 
 My eye caught faint pencil marks. I smoothed 
 it out, and saw uneven and broken writing end- 
 ing at last in a crooked streak upon the paper. 
 
 I set myself to decipher this. 
 
 ** I haVe been injured about the knee, I 
 think my kneecap is hurt, and I cannot run 
 or crawl," it began — pretty distinctly written. 
 
 Then less legibly: "They have been chas- 
 ing me for some time, and it is only a question 
 of" — the word " time " seemed to have been 
 written here and erased in favour of something 
 illegible — " before they get me. They are 
 beating all about me." 
 
 Then the writing became convulsive. " I 
 can hear them," I guessed the tracing meant, 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 233 
 
 and then it was quite unreadable for a space. 
 Then came a little string of words that were 
 quite distinct : " a different sort of Selenite 
 altogether, who appears to be directing the — " 
 The writing became a mere hasty confusion 
 again. 
 
 " They have larger brain cases — much larger, 
 and slenderer bodies, and very short legs. They 
 make gentle noises, and move with organised 
 deliberation ... 
 
 •* And though I am wounded and helpless 
 here, their appearance still gives me hope — " 
 That was like Cavor. " They have not shot 
 at me or attempted . . . injury. I intend " 
 
 Then came the sudden streak of the pencil 
 across the paper, and on the back and edges 
 —blood ! 
 
 And as I stood there stupid and perplexed, 
 with this dumbfounding relic in my hand, some- 
 thing very soft and light and chill touched 
 my hand for a moment and ceased to be, and 
 then a thing, a little white speck, drifted athwart 
 a shadow. It was a tiny snowflake, the first 
 snowflake, the herald of the night. 
 
 I looked up with a start, and the sky had 
 darkened now almost to blackness, and was thick 
 with a gathering multitude of coldly watchful 
 stars. I looked eastward, and the light of that 
 
234 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 shrivelled world was touched with a sombre 
 bronze ; westward, and the sun, robbed now by 
 a thickening white mist of half its heat and 
 splendour, was touching the crater rim, was 
 sinking out of sight, and all the shrubs and 
 jagged and tumbled rocks stood out against 
 it in a bristling disorder of black shapes. Into 
 the great lake of darkness westward, a vast 
 wreath of mist was sinking. A cold wind set 
 all the crater shivering. Suddenly, for a 
 moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and 
 all the world about me grey and dim. 
 
 And then it was I heard, not loud and pene- 
 trating as at first, but faint and dim like a 
 dying voice, that tolling, that same tolling 
 that had welcomed the coming of the day : 
 Boom ! . . . Boom ! . . . Boom ! . . . 
 
 It echoed about the crater, it seemed to 
 throb with the throbbing of the greater stars, 
 the blood-red crescent of the sun's disk sank 
 as it tolled out : Boom ! . . . Boom ! . . . 
 Boom ! 
 
 What had happened to Cavor ? All through 
 that tolling I stood there stupidly, and at last 
 the tolling ceased. 
 
 And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel 
 down below there, shut like an eye and vanished 
 out of sight. 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 235 
 
 Then indeed was I alone. 
 
 Over me, around me, closing in on me, em- 
 bracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal ; that 
 which was before the beginning, and that which 
 triumphs over the end ; that enormous void in 
 which all light and life and being is but the 
 thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, 
 the cold, the stillness, the silence — the infinite 
 and final Night of space. 
 
 The sense of solitude and desolation became 
 the sense of an overwhelming presence that 
 stooped towards me, that almost touched me. 
 
 **No," I cried. ''No/ Not yet! not yet! 
 Wait ! Wait ! Oh wait ! " My voice went up 
 to a shriek. I flung the crumpled paper from 
 me, scrambled back to the crest to take my 
 bearings, and then, with all the will that was 
 in me, leapt out towards the mark I had left, 
 dim and distant now in the very margin of the 
 shadow. 
 
 Leap, leap, leap, and each leap was seven ages. 
 
 Before me the pale serpent-girdled section 
 of the sun sank and sank, and the advancing 
 shadow swept to seize the sphere before I could 
 reach it. I was two miles away, a hundred 
 leaps or more, and the air about me was thin- 
 ning out as it thins under an air-pump, and the 
 cold was gripping at my joints. But had I 
 
236 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 died, I should have died leaping. Once, and 
 then again my foot slipped on the gathering 
 inow as I leapt and shortened my leap ; once I 
 fell short into bushes that crashed and smashed 
 into dusty chips and nothingness, and once I 
 stumbled as I dropped, and rolled head over 
 heels into a gully, and rose bruised and bleeding 
 and confused as to my direction. 
 
 But such incidents w^ere as nothing to the 
 intervals, those awful pauses when one drifted 
 through the air towards that pouring tide of 
 night. My breathing made a piping noise, 
 and it was as though knives were whirling in 
 my lungs. My heart seemed to beat against 
 the top of my brain. " Shall I reach it .'* 
 
 Heaven ! shall I reach it ? " 
 My whole being became anguish. 
 
 " Lie down ! " screamed my pain and despair ; 
 " lie down !" 
 
 The nearer I struggled, the more awfully 
 remote it seemed. I was numb, I stumbled, 
 
 1 bruised and cut myself and did not bleed. 
 
 It was in sight. 
 
 I fell on all fours, and my lungs whooped. 
 
 I crawled. The frost gathered on my lips, 
 icicles hung from my moustache, I was white 
 with the freezing atmosphere. 
 
 I was a dozen yards from it. My eyes had 
 
The nearer I strusrs^led, the more awfully remote it seemed ' 
 
MR. BEDFORD ALONE 237 
 
 become dim. " Lie down ! " screamed despair ; 
 "lie down!" 
 
 I touched it, and halted. " Too late ! " 
 screamed despair ; "lie down ! " 
 
 I fought stiffly with it. I was on the man- 
 hole lip, a stupefied, half-dead being. The 
 snow was all about me. I pulled myself in. 
 There lurked within a little warmer air. 
 
 The snowflakes — the airflakes — danced in 
 about me, as I tried with chilling hands to 
 thrust the valve in and spun it tight and hard. 
 I sobbed. ** I will," I chattered in my teeth. 
 And then, with fingers that quivered and felt 
 brittle, I turned to the shutter studs. 
 
 As I fumbled with the switches — for I had 
 never controlled them before — I could see 
 dimly through the steaming glass the blazing 
 red streamers of the sinking sun, dancing and 
 flickering through the snowstorm, and the 
 black forms of the scrub thickening and bend- 
 ing and breaking beneath the accumulating 
 snow. Thicker whirled the snow and thicker, 
 black against the light. What if even now the 
 switches overcame me ? 
 
 Then something clicked under my hands, and 
 in an instant that last vision of the moon world 
 was hidden from my eyes. I was in the silence 
 and darkness of the inter-planetary sphere. 
 
XX 
 
 MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 
 
 It was almost as though I had been killed. 
 Indeed, I could imagine a man suddenly and 
 violently killed would feel very much as I did. 
 One moment, a passion of agonising existence 
 and fear; the next, darkness and stillness, 
 neither light nor life nor sun, moon nor stars, 
 the blank infinite. Although the thing was 
 done by my own act, although I had already 
 tasted this very effect in Cavor's company, I 
 felt astonished, dumbfounded, and overwhelmed. 
 I seemed to be borne upward into an enor- 
 mous darkness. My fingers floated off the 
 studs, I hung as if I were annihilated, and at 
 last very softly and gently I came against the 
 bale and the golden chain, and the crowbars 
 that had drifted to the middle of the sphere. 
 
 I do not know how long that drifting took. 
 In the sphere of course, even more than on the 
 moon, one's earthly time sense was ineffectual. 
 
 At the touch of the bale it was as if I had 
 
 338 
 
MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 239 
 
 awakened from a dreamless sleep. I imme- 
 diately perceived that if I wanted to keep 
 awake and alive I must get a light or open a 
 window, so as to get a grip of something with 
 my eyes. And besides I was cold. I kicked 
 off from the bale, therefore, clawed on to the 
 thin cords within the glass, crawled along until 
 I got to the manhole rim, and so got my bear- 
 ings for the light and blind studs, took a shove 
 off, and flying once round the bale, and getting 
 a scare from something big and flimsy that 
 was drifting loose, I got my hand on the cord 
 quite close to the studs, and reached them. I 
 lit the little lamp first of all to see what it was 
 I had collided with, and discovered that old 
 copy of Lloyd's News had slipped its moor- 
 ings, and was adrift in the void. That brought 
 me out of the infinite to my own proper dimen- 
 sions again. It made me laugh and pant for a 
 time, and suggested the idea of a little oxygen 
 from one of the cylinders. After that I lit the 
 heater until I felt warm, and then I took food. 
 Then I set to work in a very gingerly fashion 
 on the Cavorite blinds, to see if I could guess 
 by any means how the sphere was travelling. 
 
 The first blind I opened I shut at once, and 
 hung for a time flattened and blinded by the 
 sunlight that had hit me. After thinking a 
 
240 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 little I started upon the windows at right angles 
 to this one, and got the huge crescent moon 
 and the little crescent earth behind it, the 
 second time. I was amazed to find how far I 
 was from the moon. I had reckoned that not 
 only should I have little or none of the " kick- 
 off" that the earth's atmosphere had given us 
 at our start, but that the tangential "fly off" of 
 the moon's spin would be at least twenty-eight 
 times less than the earth's. I had expected to 
 discover myself hanging over our crater, and 
 on the edge of the night, but all that was now- 
 only a part of the outline of the white crescent 
 that filled the sky. And Cavor ? 
 
 He was already infinitesimal. 
 
 I tried to imagine what could have happened 
 to him. But at that time I could think of 
 nothing but death. I seemed to see him, bent 
 and smashed at the foot of some interminably 
 high cascade of blue. And all about him the 
 stupid insects stared. . . . 
 
 Under the inspiring touch of the drifting 
 newspaper I became practical again for a while. 
 It was quite clear to me that what I had to do 
 was to get back to earth, but as far as I could 
 see I was drifting away from it. Whatever 
 had happened to Cavor, even if he was still 
 alive, which seemed to me incredible after that 
 
MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 241 
 
 blood-stained scrap, I was powerless to help him. 
 There he was, living or dead behind the mantle 
 of that rayless night, and there he must remain 
 at least until I could summon our fellow-men to 
 his assistance. Should I do that ? Something 
 of the sort I had in my mind ; to come back to 
 earth if it were possible, and then as maturer 
 consideration might determine, either to show 
 and explain the sphere to a few discreet per- 
 sons, and act with them, or else to keep my 
 secret, sell my gold, obtain weapons, provisions, 
 and an assistant, and return with these advan- 
 tages to deal on equal terms with the flimsy 
 people of the moon, to rescue Cavor, if that 
 were still possible, and at any rate to procure 
 a sufficient supply of gold to place my subse- 
 quent proceedings on a firmer basis. But that 
 was hoping far, I had first to get back. 
 
 I set myself to decide just exactly how the 
 return to earth could be contrived. As I strug- 
 gled with that problem I ceased to worry about 
 what I should do when I got there. At last 
 my only care was to get back. 
 
 I puzzled out at last that my best chance 
 would be to drop back towards the moon as 
 near as I dared in order to gather velocity, 
 then to shut my windows and fly behind it, 
 and when I was past to open my earthward 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 windows, and so get off at a good pace home- 
 ward. But whether I should ever reach the 
 earth by that device, or whether I might not 
 simply find myself spinning about it in some 
 hyperbolic or parabolic curve or other, I could 
 not tell. Later I had a happy inspiration, and 
 by opening certain windows to the moon, 
 which had appeared in the sky in front of the 
 earth, I turned my course aside so as to head 
 off the earth, which it had become evident to 
 me I must pass behind without some such 
 expedient. I did a very great deal of compli- 
 cated thinking over these problems — for I am 
 no mathematician — and in the end I am cer- 
 tain it was much more my good luck than my 
 reasoning that enabled me to hit the earth. 
 Had I known then, as I know now, the mathe- 
 matical chances there were against me, I doubt 
 if I should have troubled even to touch the 
 studs to make any attempt. And having 
 puzzled out what I considered to be the thing 
 to do, I opened all my moonward windows, 
 and squatted down — the effort lifted me for a 
 time some feet or so into the air, and I hung 
 there in the oddest way — and waited for the 
 crescent to get bigger and bigger until I felt I 
 was near enough for safety. Then I would 
 shut the windows, fly past the moon with the 
 
MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 243 
 
 velocity I had got from it — if I did not smash 
 upon it — and so go on towards the earth. 
 
 And that is what I did. 
 
 At last I felt my moonward start was suffi- 
 cient. I shut out the sight of the moon from 
 my eyes, and in a state of mind that was, I 
 now recall, incredibly free from anxiety or any 
 distressful quality, I sat down to begin a vigil 
 in that little speck of matter in infinite space 
 that would last until I should strike the earth. 
 The heater had made the sphere tolerably 
 warm, the air had been refreshed by the 
 oxygen, and except for that faint congestion 
 of the head that was always with me while I 
 was away from earth, I felt entire physical 
 comfort. I had extinguished the light again, 
 lest it should fail me in the end ; I was in 
 darkness, save for the earthshine and the 
 glitter of the stars below me. Everything was 
 so absolutely silent and still that I might in- 
 deed have been the only being in the universe, 
 and yet, strangely enough, I had no more feel- 
 ing of loneliness or fear than if I had been 
 lying in bed on earth. Now, this seems all the 
 stranger to me, since during my last hours in 
 that crater of the moon, the sense of my utter 
 loneliness had been an agony. . . . 
 
 Incredible as it will seem, this interval of 
 
244 T^HE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 time that I spent in space has no sort of pro- 
 portion to any other interval of time in my life. 
 Sometimes it seemed as though I sat through 
 immeasurable eternities like some god upon a 
 lotus leaf, and again as though there was a 
 momentary pause as I leapt from moon to 
 earth. In truth, it was altogether some weeks 
 of earthly time. But I had done with care and 
 anxiety, hunger or fear, for that space. I floated, 
 thinking with a strange breadth and freedom of 
 all that we had undergone, and of all my life 
 and motives, and the secret issues of my being. 
 I seemed to myself to have grown greater 
 and greater, to have lost all sense of move- 
 ment ; to be floating amidst the stars, and 
 always the sense of earth's littleness and the 
 infinite littleness of my life upon it, was im- 
 plicit in my thoughts. 
 
 I can't profess to explain the things that 
 happened in my mind. No doubt they could 
 all be traced directly or indirectly to the curious 
 physical conditions under which I was living. 
 I set them down here just for what they are 
 worth, and without any comment. The most 
 prominent quality of it was a pervading doubt 
 of my own identity. I became, if I may so 
 express it, dissociate from Bedford ; I looked 
 down on Bedford as a trivial, incidental thing 
 
MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 245 
 with which I chanced to be connected. I saw 
 Bedford in many relations— as an ass or as a 
 poor beast, where I had hitherto been inch'ned 
 to regard him with a quiet pride as a very 
 spirited or rather forcible person. I saw him 
 not only as an ass, but as the son of many 
 generations of asses. I reviewed his school- 
 days and his early manhood, and his first 
 encounter with love, very much as one might 
 review the proceedings of an ant in the sand. 
 . . . Something of that period of lucidity I 
 regret still hangs about me, and I doubt if I 
 shall ever recover the full-bodied self-satisfac- 
 tion of my early days. But at the time the 
 thing was not in the least painful, because I 
 had that extraordinary persuasion that, as a 
 matter of fact, I was no more Bedford than I 
 was any one else, but only a mind floating in 
 the still serenity of space. Why should I be 
 disturbed about this Bedford's shortcomings.? 
 I was not responsible for him or them. 
 
 For a time I struggled against this really 
 very grotesque delusion. I tried to summon 
 the memory of vivid moments, of tender or 
 intense emotions to my assistance ; I felt that 
 if I could recall one genuine twinge of feeling 
 the growing severance would be stopped. But 
 I could not do it. I saw Bedford rushing down 
 
246 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Chancery Lane, hat on the back of his head, 
 coat tails flying out, en route for his public 
 examination. I saw him dodging and bump- 
 ing against, and even saluting, other similar 
 little creatures in that swarming gutter! of 
 people. Me? I saw Bedford that same 
 evening in the sitting-room of a certain lady, 
 and his hat was on the table beside him, and 
 it wanted brushing badly, and he was in tears. 
 Me."* I saw him with that lady in various 
 attitudes and emotions — I never felt so de- 
 tached before. ... I saw him hurrying off to 
 Lympne to write a play, and accosting Cavor, 
 and in his shirt sleeves working at the sphere, 
 and walking out to Canterbury because he was 
 afraid to come ! Me ? I did not believe it. 
 
 I still reasoned that all this was hallucination 
 due to my solitude, and the fact that I had lost 
 all weight and sense of resistance. I endea- 
 voured to recover that sense by banging myself 
 about the sphere, by pinching my hands and 
 clasping them together. Among other things 
 I lit the light, captured that torn copy of Lloyd' Sy 
 and read those convincingly realistic advertise- 
 ments again about the Cutaway bicycle, and the 
 gentleman of private means, and the lady in 
 distress who was selling those " forks and 
 spoons." There was no doubt they existed 
 
MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 247 
 
 surely enough, and, said I, " This is your 
 world, and you are Bedford, and you are 
 going back to live among things like that for 
 all the rest of your life." But the doubts within 
 me could still argue : " It is not you that is 
 reading, it is Bedford, but you are not Bed- 
 ford, you know. That's just where the mistake 
 comes in." 
 
 *' Confound it ! " I cried ; '* and if I am not 
 Bedford, what am I .-^ " 
 
 But in that direction no light was forthcom- 
 ing, though the strangest fancies came drifting 
 into my brain, queer remote suspicions, like 
 shadows seen from far away. . . . Do you 
 know, I had a sort of idea that really I was 
 something quite outside not only the world, 
 but all worlds, and out of space and time, and 
 that this poor Bedford was just a peephole 
 through which I looked at life ? . . . 
 
 Bedford ! However I disavowed him, there 
 I was most certainly bound up with him, and I 
 knew that wherever or whatever I might be, I 
 must needs feel the stress of his desires, and 
 sympathise with all his joys and sorrows until 
 his life should end. And with the dying of 
 Bedford — what then ? . . . 
 
 Enough of this remarkable phase of my 
 experiences ! I tell it here simply to show 
 
248 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 how one's isolation and departure from this 
 planet touched not only the functions and 
 feeling of every organ of the body, but in- 
 deed also the very fabric of the mind, with 
 strange and unanticipated disturbances. All 
 through the major portion of that vast space 
 journey I hung thinking of such immaterial 
 things as these, hung dissociated and apathetic, 
 a cloudy megalo-maniac, as it were, amidst the 
 stars and planets in the void of space ; and not 
 only the world to which I was returning, but 
 the blue-lit caverns of the Selenites, their helmet 
 faces, their gigantic and wonderful machines, 
 and the fate of Cavor, dragged helpless into 
 that world, seemed infinitely minute and alto- 
 gether trivial things to me. 
 
 Until at last I began to feel the pull of the 
 earth upon my being, drawing me back again 
 to the life that is real for men. And then, in- 
 deed, it grew clearer and clearer to me that 
 I was quite certainly Bedford after all, and 
 returning after amazing adventures to this 
 world of ours, and with a life that I was very 
 likely to lose in this return. I set myself to 
 puzzle out the conditions under which I must 
 fall to earth. 
 
XXI 
 
 MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 
 
 My line of flight was about parallel with the 
 surface as I came into the upper air. The 
 temperature of the sphere began to rise forth- 
 with. I knew it behoved me to drop at once. 
 Far below me, in a darkling twilight, stretched 
 a great expanse of sea. I opened every win- 
 dow I could, and fell — out of sunshine into 
 evening, and out of evening into night. Vaster 
 grew the earth and vaster, swallowing up the 
 stars, and the silvery translucent starlit veil of 
 cloud it wore spread out to catch me. At last 
 the world seemed no longer a sphere but flat, 
 and then concave. It was no longer a planet in 
 the sky, but the world of Man. I shut all but an 
 inch or so of earthward window, and dropped 
 with a slackening velocity. The broadening 
 water, now so near that I could see the dark 
 glitter of the waves, rushed up to meet me. 
 The sphere became very hot. I snapped the 
 last strip of window, and sat scowling and biting 
 
 my knuckles, waiting for the impact. . . . 
 
 249 
 
250 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 The sphere hit the water with a huge 
 splash : it must have sent it fathoms high. 
 At the splash I flung the Cavorite shutters 
 open. Down I went, but slower and slower, 
 and then I felt the sphere pressing against 
 my feet, and so drove up again as a bubble 
 drives. And at the last I was floating and 
 rocking upon the surface of the sea, and my 
 journey in space was at an end. 
 
 The night was dark and overcast. Two 
 yellow pin-points far away showed the passing 
 of a ship, and nearer was a red glare that 
 came and went. Had not the electricity of 
 my glow-lamp exhausted itself, I could have 
 got picked up that night. In spite of the in- 
 ordinate fatigue I was beginning to feel, I was 
 excited now, and for a time hopeful, in a 
 feverish, impatient way, that so my travelling 
 might end. 
 
 But at last I ceased to move about, and sat, 
 wrists on knees, staring at' a distant red light. 
 It swayed up and down, rocking, rocking. My 
 excitement passed. I realised I had yet to 
 spend another night at least in the sphere. I 
 perceived myself infinitely heavy and fatigued. 
 And so I fell asleep. 
 
 A change in my rhythmic motion awakened 
 me. I peered through the refracting glass. 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 251 
 
 and saw that I had come aground upon a huge 
 shallow of sand. Far away I seemed to see 
 houses and trees, and seaward a curved, vague 
 distortion of a ship hung between sea and sky. 
 
 I stood up and staggered. My one desire 
 was to emerge. The manhole was upward, and 
 I wrestled with the screw. Slowly I opened 
 the manhole. At last the air was singing in 
 again as once it had sung out. But this time 
 I did not wait until the pressure was adjusted. 
 In another moment I had the weight of the 
 window on my hands, and I was open, wide 
 open, to the old familiar sky of earth. 
 
 The air hit me on the chest so that I gasped. 
 I dropped the glass screw. I cried out, put 
 my hands to my chest, and sat down. For 
 a time I was in pain. Then I took deep 
 breaths. At last I could rise and move about 
 again. 
 
 I tried to thrust my head through the man- 
 hole, and the sphere rolled over. It was as 
 though something had lugged my head down 
 directly it emerged. I ducked back sharply, 
 or I should have been pinned face under water. 
 After some wriggling and shoving I managed 
 to crawl out upon sand, over which the retreat- 
 ing waves still came and went. 
 
 I did not attempt to stand up. It seemed 
 
252 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 to me that my body must be suddenly changed 
 to lead. Mother Earth had her grip on me 
 now — no Cavorite intervening. I sat down 
 heedless of the water that came over my feet. 
 
 It was dawn, a grey dawn, rather overcast, 
 but showing here and there a long patch of 
 greenish grey. Some way out a ship was 
 lying at anchor, a pale silhouette of a ship with 
 one yellow light. The water came rippling in 
 in long shallow waves. Away to the right 
 curved the land, a shingle bank with little 
 hovels, and at last a lighthouse, a sailing mark 
 and a point. Inland stretched a space of level 
 sand, broken here and there by pools of water, 
 and ending a mile away perhaps in a low shore 
 of scrub. To the north-east some isolated 
 watering-place was visible, a row of gaunt 
 lodging-houses, the tallest things that I could 
 see on earth, dull dabs against the brightening 
 sky. What strange men can have reared these 
 vertical piles in such an amplitude of space I 
 do not know. There they are, like pieces of 
 Brighton lost in the waste. 
 
 For a long time I sat there, yawning and 
 rubbing my face. At last I struggled to rise. 
 It made me feel that I was lifting a weight. 
 I stood up. 
 
 I stared at the distant houses. For the first 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 253 
 
 time since our starvation in the crater I thought 
 of earthly food. " Bacon," I whispered, "eggs. 
 Good toast and good coffee. . . . And how 
 the devil am I going to get all this stuff to 
 Lympne ? " I wondered where I was. It was 
 an east shore anyhow, and I had seen Europe 
 before I dropped. 
 
 I heard footsteps scrunching in the sand, 
 and a little round-faced, friendly-looking man 
 in flannels, with a bathing towel wrapped about 
 his shoulders, and his bathing dress over his 
 arm, appeared up the beach. I knew instantly 
 that I must be in England. He was staring 
 almost intently at the sphere and me. He ad- 
 vanced staring. I daresay I looked a ferocious 
 savage enough — dirty, unkempt, to an inde- 
 scribable degree ; but it did not occur to me at 
 the time. He stopped at a distance of twenty 
 yards. " Hul-lo, my man ! " he said doubtfully. 
 
 " Hullo yourself! " said I. 
 
 He advanced, reassured by that. " What on 
 earth is that thing ? " he asked. 
 
 " Can you tell me where I am ? " I asked. 
 
 "That's Littlestone," he said, pointing to 
 the houses ; '' and that's Dungeness ! Have 
 you just landed ? What's that thing you've 
 got ? Some sort of machine ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
254 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 "Have you floated ashore? Have you 
 been wrecked or something? What is it?" 
 
 I meditated swiftly. I made an estimate of 
 the little man's appearance as he drew nearer. 
 "By Jove!" he said, "you've had a time of 
 it ! I thought you — Well — Where were 
 you cast away? Is that thing a sort of float- 
 ing thing for saving life ? " 
 
 I decided to take that line for the present. 
 I made a few vague affirmatives. " I want 
 help," I said hoarsely. *' I want to get some 
 stuff up the beach — stuff I can't very well leave 
 about." I became aware of three other plea- 
 sant-looking young men with towels, blazers, 
 and straw hats, coming down the sands towards 
 me. Evidently the early bathing section of 
 this Littlestone! 
 
 "Help!" said the young man; "rather!" 
 He became vaguely active. " What particu- 
 larly do you want done ? " He turned round 
 and gesticulated. The three young men ac- 
 celerated their pace. In a minute they were 
 about me, plying me with questions I was 
 indisposed to answer. " I'll tell all that later," 
 I said. " I'm dead beat. I'm a rag." 
 
 " Come up to the hotel," said the foremost 
 little man. " We'll look after that thing 
 there." 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 255 
 
 I hesitated. " I can t," I said. " In that 
 sphere there's two big bars of gold." 
 
 They looked incredulously at one another, 
 then at me with a new inquiry. I went to the 
 sphere, stooped, crept in, and presently they 
 had the Selenites' crowbars and the broken 
 chain before them. If I had not been so 
 horribly fagged I could have laughed at 
 them. It was like kittens round a beetle. 
 They didn't know what to do with the stuff. 
 The fat little man stooped and lifted the end of 
 one of the bars, and then dropped it with a 
 grunt. Then they all did. 
 
 "It's lead, or gold ! " said one. 
 
 "Oh, \i's gold!" said another. 
 
 "Gold, right enough," said the third. 
 
 Then they all stared at me, and then they 
 all stared at the ship lying at anchor. 
 
 " I say ! " cried the little man. " But where 
 did you get that ? " 
 
 I was too tired to keep up a lie. " I got it 
 in the moon." 
 
 I saw them stare at one another. 
 
 "Look here!" said I, "I'm not going to 
 argue now. Help me carry these lumps of gold 
 up to the hotel — I guess, with rests, two of you 
 can manage one, and I'll trail this chain thing — 
 and I'll tell you more when I've had some food." 
 
256 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " And how about that thing ? " 
 
 " It won't hurt there," I said. " Anyhow — 
 confound it! — it must stop there now. If the 
 tide comes up, it will float all right." 
 
 And in a state of enormous wonderment, 
 these young men most obediently hoisted my 
 treasures on their shoulders, and with limbs 
 that felt like lead I headed a sort of procession 
 towards that distant frao^ment of " sea-front." 
 Half-way there we were reinforced by two awe- 
 stricken little girls with spades, and later a lean 
 little boy, with a penetrating sniff, appeared. 
 He was, I remember, wheeling a bicycle, and 
 he accompanied us at a distance of about a 
 hundred yards on our right flank, and then, I 
 suppose, gave us up as uninteresting, mounted 
 his bicycle, and rode off over the level sands 
 in the direction of the sphere. 
 
 I glanced back after him. 
 
 '* He won't touch it," said the stout young 
 man reassuringly, and I was only too willing 
 to be reassured. 
 
 At first something of the grey of the morn- 
 ing was in my mind, but presently the sun 
 disenofaofed itself from the level clouds of the 
 horizon and lit the world, and turned the leaden 
 sea to glittering waters. My spirits rose. A 
 sense of the vast importance of the things I 
 
MR, BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 257 
 
 had done and had yet to do came with the 
 sunlight into my mind. I laughed aloud as 
 the foremost man staggered under my gold. 
 When indeed I took my place in the world, 
 how amazed the world would be ! 
 
 If it had not been for my inordinate fatigue, 
 the landlord of the Littlestone hotel would have 
 been amusing, as he hesitated between my 
 gold and my respectable company on the one 
 hand, and my filthy appearance on the other. 
 But at last I found myself in a terrestrial bath- 
 room once more with warm water to wash 
 myself with, and a change of raiment, prepos- 
 terously small indeed, but anyhow clean, that 
 the genial little man had lent me. He lent 
 me a razor too, but I could not screw up 
 my resolution to attack even the outposts of 
 the bristling beard that covered my face. 
 
 I sat down to an English breakfast and ate 
 with a sort of languid appetite — an appetite 
 many weeks old, and very decrepit — and stirred 
 myself to answer the questions of the four 
 young men. And I told them the truth. 
 
 "Well," said I, "as you press me — I got it 
 In the moon." 
 
 " The moon.'*" 
 
 " Yes, the moon in the sky." 
 
 " But how do you mean ? " 
 
2S8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " What I say, confound it ! " 
 
 "That you have just come from the 
 moon ? " 
 
 "Exactly! through space — in that ball," 
 And I took a delicious mouthful of egg. I 
 made a private note that when I went back 
 to the moon I would take a box of eggs. 
 
 I could see clearly that they did not believe 
 one word of what I told them, but evidently 
 they considered me the most respectable liar 
 they had ever met. They glanced at one 
 another, and then concentrated the fire of their 
 eyes on me. I fancy they expected a clue to 
 me in the way I helped myself to salt. They 
 seemed to find something significant in my 
 peppering my egg. These strangely shaped 
 masses of gold they had staggered under held 
 their minds. There the lumps lay in front of 
 me, each worth thousands of pounds, and as 
 impossible for any one to steal as a house or a 
 piece of land. As I looked at their curious 
 faces over my coffee-cup, I realised something 
 of the enormous wilderness of explanations 
 into which I should have to wander to render 
 myself comprehensible again. 
 
 "You don't really mean — " began the 
 youngest young man, in the tone of one who 
 speaks to an obstinate child. 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 259 
 
 "Just pass me that toast-rack," I said, and 
 shut him up completely. 
 
 " But look here, I say," began one of the 
 others. "We're not going to believe that, 
 you know." 
 
 "Ah, well," said I, and shrugged my 
 shoulders. 
 
 " He doesn't want to tell us," said the 
 youngest young man in a stage aside ; and 
 then, with an appearance of great sang-froid, 
 "You don't mind if I take a cigarette?" 
 
 I waved him a cordial assent, and proceeded 
 with my breakfast. Two of the others went 
 and looked out of the farther window and 
 talked inaudibly. I was struck by a thought. 
 "The tide," I said, "is running out.'*" 
 
 There was a pause, a doubt who should 
 answer me. " It's near the ebb," said the 
 'fat little man. 
 
 "Well, anyhow," I said, "it won't float far." 
 
 I decapitated my third ^g'g^ and began a 
 little speech. " Look here," I said. " Please 
 don't imagine I'm surly or telling you uncivil 
 lies, or anything of that sort. I'm forced 
 almost, to be a little short and mysterious. 
 I can quite understand this is as queer as 
 it can be, and that your imaginations must 
 be going it. I can assure you, you're in at 
 
26o THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 a memorable time. But I can't make it clear 
 to you now — it's impossible. I give you my 
 word of honour I've come from the moon, and 
 that's all I can tell you. . . . All the same I'm 
 tremendously obliged to you, you know, tre- 
 mendously. I hope that my manner hasn't in 
 any way given you offence." 
 
 " Oh, not in the least ! " said the youngest 
 young man affably. *' We can quite under- 
 stand," and staring hard at me all the time, 
 he heeled his chair back until it very nearly 
 upset, and recovered with some exertion. 
 " Not a bit of it," said the fat young man. 
 "Don't you imagine thatV and they all got 
 up and dispersed, and walked about and lit 
 cigarettes, and generally tried to show they 
 were perfectly amiable and disengaged, and 
 entirely free from the slightest curiosity about 
 me and the sphere. "I'm going to keep 
 an eye on that ship out there all the same," I 
 heard one of them remarking in an undertone. 
 If only they could have forced themselves to 
 it, they would, I believe, even have gone out 
 and left me. I went on with my third ^^g. 
 
 "The weather," the fat little man remarked 
 presently, "has been immense, has it not? 
 I don't know when we have had such a 
 summer. ..." 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 261 
 
 Phoo — whizz ! Like a tremendous rocket ! 
 
 And somewhere a window was broken. . . . 
 
 " What's that ? " said I. 
 
 "It isn't — ?" cried the little man, and 
 rushed to the corner window. 
 
 All the others rushed to the window like- 
 wise. I sat staring at them. 
 
 Suddenly I leapt up, knocked over my third 
 egg, and rushed for the window also. I had 
 just thought of something. " Nothing to be 
 seen there," cried the little man, rushing for 
 the door. 
 
 ** It's that boy ! " I cried, bawling in hoarse 
 fury ; " it's that accursed boy ! " and turning 
 about I pushed the waiter aside — he was just 
 bringing me some more toast — and rushed 
 violently out of the room and down and out 
 upon the queer little esplanade in front of the 
 hotel. 
 
 The sea, which had been smooth, was rough 
 now with hurrying cat's-paws, and all about 
 where the sphere had been was tumbled water 
 like the wake of a ship. Above, a little puff 
 of cloud whirled like dispersing smoke, and the 
 three or four people on the beach were staring 
 up with interrogative faces towards the point 
 of that unexpected report. And that was all ! 
 Boots and waiter and the four young men in 
 
262 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 blazers came rushing out behind me. Shouts 
 came from windows and doors, and all sorts 
 of worrying people came into eight — agape. 
 
 For a time I stood there, too overwhelmed 
 by this new development to think of the people. 
 
 At first I was too stunned to see the thing 
 as any definite disaster — I was just stunned, 
 as a man is by some accidental violent blow. 
 It is only afterwards he begins to appreciate 
 his specific injury. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " 
 
 I felt as though somebody was pouring funk 
 out of a can down the back of my neck. My 
 legs became feeble. I had got the first intima- 
 tion of what the disaster meant for me. There 
 was that confounded boy — sky high ! I was 
 utterly "left." There was the gold in the 
 coffee-room — my only possession on earth. 
 How would it all work out? The general effect 
 was of a gigantic unmanageable confusion. 
 
 " I say," said the voice of the little man 
 behind. *' I say, you know." 
 
 I wheeled about, and there were twenty or 
 thirty people, a sort of irregular investment 
 of people, all bombarding me with dumb in- 
 terrogation, with infinite doubt and suspicion. 
 I felt the compulsion of their eyes intolerably. 
 I groaned aloud. 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 263 
 
 "I carHtl'' I shouted. " I tell you I can't! 
 I'm not equal to it ! You must puzzle and — 
 and be damned to you ! " 
 
 I gesticulated convulsively. He receded a 
 step as though I had threatened him. I made 
 a bolt through them into the hotel. I charged 
 back into the coffee-room, rang the bell furi- 
 ously. I gripped the waiter as he entered. 
 " D'ye hear ? " I shouted. '* Get help and carry 
 these bars up to my room right away." 
 
 He failed to understand me, and I shouted 
 and raved at him. A scared-looking little old 
 man in a green apron appeared, and further 
 two of the young men in flannels. I made a 
 dash at them and commandeered their ser- 
 vices. As soon as the gold was in my room 
 I felt free to quarrel. " Now get out," I 
 shouted; "all of you get out if you don't 
 want to see a man go mad before your eyes ! " 
 And I helped the waiter by the shoulder as 
 he hesitated in the doorway. And then, as 
 soon as I had the door locked on them all, 
 I tore off the little man's clothes again, shied 
 them right and left, and got into bed forthwith. 
 And there I lay swearing and panting and 
 cooling for a very long time. 
 
 At last I was calm enough to get out of bed 
 and ring up the round-eyed waiter for a flannel 
 
264 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 nightshirt, a soda and whisky, and some good 
 cigars. And these things being procured me, 
 after an exasperating delay that drove me 
 several times to the bell, I locked the door 
 again and proceeded very deliberately to look 
 the entire situation in the face. 
 
 The net result of the great experiment pre- 
 sented itself as an absolute failure. It was a 
 rout, and I was the sole survivor. It was an 
 absolute collapse, and this was the final dis- 
 aster. There was nothing for it but to save 
 myself, and as much as I could in the way 
 of prospects from our ddbdcle. At one fatal 
 crowning blow all my vague resolutions of 
 return and recovery had vanished. My in- 
 tention of going back to the moon, of getting 
 a sphereful of gold, and afterwards of having 
 a fragment of Cavorite analysed and so reco- 
 vering the great secret — perhaps, finally, even 
 of recovering Cavor's body — all these ideas 
 vanished altogether. 
 
 I was the sole survivor, and that was all. 
 
 I think that going to bed was one of the 
 luckiest ideas I have ever had in an emer- 
 gency. I really believe I should either have 
 got loose-headed or done some fatal, indiscreet 
 thing. But there, locked in and secure from 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 265 
 
 all interruption, I could think out the position 
 in all its bearings and make my arrangements 
 at leisure. 
 
 Of course it was quite clear to me what had 
 happened to the boy. He had crawled into 
 the sphere, meddled with the studs, shut the 
 Cavorite windows, and gone up. It was highly 
 improbable he had screwed in the manhole 
 stopper, and, even if he had, the chances were 
 a thousand to one against his getting back. It 
 was fairly evident that he would gravitate with 
 my bales to somewhere near the middle of the 
 sphere and remain there, and so cease to be a 
 legitimate terrestrial interest, however remark- 
 able he mio-ht seem to the inhabitants of some 
 remote quarter of space. I very speedily con- 
 vinced myself on that point. And as for any 
 responsibility I might have in the matter, the 
 more I reflected upon that, the clearer it be- 
 came that if only I kept quiet about things, I 
 need not trouble myself about that. If I was 
 faced by sorrowing parents demanding their 
 lost boy, I had merely to demand my lost 
 sphere— or ask them what they meant. At first 
 I had had a vision of weeping parents and 
 guardians, and all sorts of complications ; but 
 now I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth 
 shut, and nothing in that way could arise. 
 
266 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and 
 thought, the more evident became the wisdom 
 of impenetrability. 
 
 It is within the right of every British citizen, 
 provided he does not commit damage nor, in- 
 decorum, to appear suddenly wherever he 
 pleases, and as ragged and filthy as he pleases, 
 and with whatever amount of virgin gold he 
 sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has 
 any right at all to hinder and detain him in 
 this procedure. I formulated that at last to 
 myself, and repeated it over as a sort of private 
 Magna Charta of my liberty. 
 
 Once I had put that issue on one side, I 
 could take up and consider in an equable 
 manner certain considerations I had scarcely 
 dared to think of before, namely, those arising 
 out of the circumstances of my bankruptcy. 
 But now, looking at this matter calmly and at 
 leisure, I could see that if only I suppressed 
 my identity by a temporary assumption of 
 some less well-known name, and if I retained 
 the two months' beard that had grown upon 
 me, the risks of any annoyance from the spite- 
 ful creditor to whom I have already alluded 
 became very small indeed. From that to a 
 definite course of rational worldly action was 
 plain sailing. It was all amazingly petty, no 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 267 
 
 doubt, but what was there remaining for me 
 to do? 
 
 Whatever I did I was resolved that I would 
 keep myself level and right side up. 
 
 I ordered up writing materials, and addressed 
 a letter to the New Romney Bank — the nearest, 
 the waiter informed me — telling the manager I 
 wished to open an account with him, and re- 
 questing him to send two trustworthy persons 
 properly authenticated in a cab with a good 
 horse to fetch some hundredweight of gold 
 with which I happened to be encumbered. I 
 signed the letter ** Blake," which seemed to me 
 to be a thoroughly respectable sort of name. 
 This done, I got a Folkestone Blue Book, 
 picked out an outfitter, and asked him to send 
 a cutter to measure me for a drab tweed suit, 
 ordering at the same time a valise, dressing 
 bag, brown boots, shirts, hats (to fit), and so 
 forth ; and from a watchmaker I also ordered a 
 watch. And these letters being despatched, I 
 had up as good a lunch as the hotel could give, 
 and then lay smoking a cigar, as calm and 
 ordinary as possible, until in accordance with 
 my instructions two duly authenticated clerks 
 came from the bank and weighed and took 
 away my gold. After which I pulled the 
 clothes over my ears in order to drown any 
 
268 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 knocking, and went very comfortably to 
 sleep. 
 
 I went to sleep. No doubt it was a prosaic 
 thing for the first man back from the moon to 
 do, and I can imagine that the young and 
 imaginative reader will find my behaviour dis- 
 appointing. But I was horribly fatigued and 
 bothered, and, confound it ! what else was 
 there to do ? There certainly was not the 
 remotest chance of my being believed, if I had 
 told my story then, and it would certainly have 
 subjected me to intolerable annoyances. I 
 went to sleep. When at last I woke up again 
 I was ready to face the world, as I have always 
 been accustomed to face it since I came to 
 years of discretion. And so I got away to 
 Italy, and there it is I am writing this story. 
 If the world will not have it as fact, then the 
 world may take it as fiction. It is no concern 
 of mine. 
 
 And now that the account is finished, I am 
 amazed to think how completely this adven- 
 ture is gone and done with. Everybody be- 
 lieves that Cavor was a not very brilliant 
 scientific experimenter who blew up his house 
 and himself at Lympne, and they explain the 
 bang that followed my arrival at Littlestone by 
 a reference to the experiments with explosives 
 
MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 269 
 
 that are going on continually at the govern- 
 ment establishment of Lydd, two miles away. 
 I must confess that hitherto I have not ac- 
 knowledged my share in the disappearance 
 of Master Tommy Simmons, which was that 
 little boy's name. That, perhaps, may prove a 
 difficult item of corroboration to explain away. 
 They account for my appearance in rags with 
 two bars of indisputable gold upon the Little- 
 stone beach in various ingenious ways — it 
 doesn't worry me what they think of me. 
 They say I have strung all these things to- 
 gether to avoid being questioned too closely 
 as to the source of my wealth. I would like 
 to see the man who could invent a story that 
 would hold together like this one. Well, they 
 must take it as fiction — there it is. 
 
 I have told my story — and now I suppose I 
 have to take up the worries of this terrestrial 
 life again. Even if one has been to the moon, 
 one has still to earn a living. So I am work- 
 ing here at Amalfi, on the scenario of that play 
 I sketched before Cavor came walking into my 
 world, and I am trying to piece my life together 
 as it was before ever I saw him. I must confess 
 that I find it hard to keep my mind on the play 
 when the moonshine comes into my room. It 
 is full moon here, and last night I was out on 
 
2 70 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 the pergola for hours, staring away at that 
 shining blankness that hides so much. Ima- 
 gine it ! tables and chairs, and trestles and 
 bars of gold ! Confound it ! — if only one could 
 hit on that Cavorite again ! But a thing like 
 that doesn't come twice in a life. Here I am, 
 a little better off than I was at Lympne, and 
 that is all. And Cavor has committed suicide 
 in a more elaborate way than any human being 
 ever did before. So the story closes as finally 
 and completely as a dream. It fits in so little 
 with all the other things of life, so much of it 
 is so utterly remote from all human experience, 
 the leaping, the eating, the breathing, and these 
 weightless times, that indeed there are moments 
 when, in spite of my moon gold, I do more 
 than half believe myself that the whole thing 
 was a dream. . . . 
 
XXII 
 
 THE ASTONISHING COMMUNICATION OF MR. 
 JULIUS WENDIGEE 
 
 When I had finished my account of my return 
 to the earth at Littlestone I wrote, " The End," 
 made a flourish, and threw my pen aside, fully 
 believing that the whole story of the First Men 
 in the Moon was done. Not only had I done 
 this, but I had placed my manuscript in the 
 hands of a literary agent, had permitted it to be 
 sold, had seen the greater portion of it appear 
 in the Strand Magazine, and was setting to 
 work again upon the scenario of the play I had 
 commenced at Lympne before I realised that 
 the end was not yet. And then, following me 
 from Amalfi to Algiers, there reached me (it is 
 now about six months ago) one of the most 
 astounding communications I have ever been 
 fated to receive. Briefly, it informed me that 
 Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who 
 has been experimenting with certain apparatus 
 akin to the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in 
 
272 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 America, in the hope of discovering some 
 method of communication with Mars, was re- 
 ceiving day by day a curiously fragmentary 
 message in English, which was indisputably 
 emanating from Mr. Cavor in the moon. 
 
 At first I thought the thing was an elaborate 
 practical joke by some one who had seen the 
 manuscript of my narrative. I answered Mr. 
 Wendigee jestingly, but he replied in a manner 
 that put such suspicion altogether aside, and in 
 a state of inconceivable excitement I hurried 
 from Algiers to the little observatory upon the 
 St. Gothard in which he was working. In 
 the presence of his record and his appliances — 
 and above all of the messages from Cavor 
 that were coming to hand — my lingering doubts 
 vanished. I decided at once to accept a pro- 
 posal he made me to remain with him, assisting 
 him to take down the record from day to day, 
 and endeavouring with him to send a message 
 back to the moon. Cavor, we learnt, was not 
 only alive but free, in the midst of an almost 
 inconceivable community of these ant -like 
 beings, these ant-men, in the blue darkness 
 of the lunar caves. He was lamed, it seemed, 
 but otherwise in quite good health — in better 
 health, he distinctly said, than he usually en- 
 joyed on earth. He had had a fever, but it 
 
THE ASTONISHING COMMUNICATION 273 
 
 had left no bad effects. But curiously enough 
 he seemed to be labouring under a conviction 
 that I was either dead in the moon crater or 
 lost in the deep of space. 
 
 His message began to be received by Mr. 
 Wendigee when that gentleman was engaged 
 in quite a different investigation. The reader 
 will no doubt recall the little excitement that 
 began the century, arising out of an announce- 
 ment by Mr. Nikola Tesla, the American 
 electrical celebrity, that he had received a 
 message from Mars. His announcement re- 
 newed attention to a fact that had long been 
 familiar to scientific people, namely : that from 
 some unknown source in space, waves of elec- 
 tro-magnetic disturbance, entirely similar to 
 those used by Signer Marconi for his wireless 
 telegraphy, are constantly reaching the earth. 
 Besides Mr. Tesla quite a number of other 
 observers have been engaged in perfecting 
 apparatus for receiving and recording these 
 vibrations, though few would go so far as to 
 consider them actual messages from some extra- 
 terrestrial sender. Among that few, however, 
 we must certainly count Mr. Wendigee. Ever 
 since 1898 he had devoted himself almost en- 
 tirely to this subject, and being a man of ample 
 means he had erected an observatory on the 
 
 S 
 
2 74 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 flanks of Monte Rosa, in a position singularly- 
 adapted in every way for such observations. 
 
 My scientific attainments, I must admit, are 
 not great, but so far as they enable me to 
 judge, Mr. Wendigee's contrivances for de- 
 tecting and recording any disturbances in the 
 electro-magnetic conditions of space are singu- 
 larly original and ingenious. And by a happy 
 combination of circumstances they were set up 
 and in operation about two months before 
 Cavor made his first attempt to call up the 
 earth. Consequently we have fragments of 
 his communication even from the beginning. 
 Unhappily, they are only fragments, and the 
 most momentous of all the things that he had 
 to tell humanity — the instructions, that is, for 
 the making of Cavorite, if, indeed, he ever 
 transmitted them — have throbbed themselves 
 away unrecorded into space. We never suc- 
 ceeded in getting a response back to Cavor. 
 He was unable to tell, therefore, what we had 
 received or what we had missed ; nor, indeed, 
 did he certainly know that any one on earth 
 was really aware of his efforts to reach us. 
 And the persistence he displayed in sending 
 eighteen long descriptions of lunar affairs — as 
 they would be if we had them complete — shows 
 how much his mind must have turned back 
 
THE ASTONISHING COMMUNICATION 275 
 
 towards his native planet since he left it two 
 years ago. 
 
 You can imagine how amazed Mr. Wendigee 
 must have been when he discovered his record 
 of electro-magnetic disturbances interlaced by 
 Cavor's straightforward English. Mr. Wendi- 
 gee knew nothing of our wild journey moon- 
 ward, and suddenly — this English out of the 
 void! 
 
 It is well the reader should understand the 
 conditions under which it would seem these 
 messages were sent. Somewhere within the 
 moon Cavor certainly had access for a time to 
 a considerable amount of electrical apparatus, 
 and it would seem he rigged up — perhaps 
 furtively — a transmitting arrangement of the 
 Marconi type. This he was able to operate 
 at irregular intervals : sometimes for only half- 
 an-hour or so, sometimes for three or four 
 hours at a stretch. At these times he trans- 
 mitted his earthward message, regardless of 
 the fact that the relative position of the moon 
 and points upon the earth's surface is con- 
 stantly altering. As a consequence of this and 
 of the necessary imperfections of our recording 
 instruments his communication comes and goes 
 in our records in an extremely fitful manner ; it 
 becomes blurred ; it " fades out " in a mys- 
 
276 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 terlous and altogether exasperating way. And 
 added to this is the fact that he was not an 
 expert operator ; he had partly forgotten, or 
 never completely mastered, the code in general 
 use, and as he became fatigued he dropped 
 words and misspelt in a curious manner. 
 
 Altogether we have probably lost quite half 
 of the communications he made, and much we 
 have is damaged, broken, and partly effaced. 
 In the abstract that follows the reader must be 
 prepared therefore for a considerable amount 
 of break, hiatus, and change of topic. Mr. 
 Wendig'ee and I are collaboratinof in a com- 
 plete and annotated edition of the Cavor 
 record, which we hope to publish, together 
 with a detailed account of the instruments 
 employed, beginning with the first volume in 
 January next. That will be the full and scien- 
 tific report, of which this is only the popular 
 first transcript. But here we give at least 
 sufficient to complete the story I have told, 
 and to give the broad outlines of the state of 
 that other world so near, so akin, and yet so 
 dissimilar to our own. 
 
XXIII 
 
 AN ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES FIRST 
 RECEIVED FROM MR. CAVOR 
 
 The two earlier messages of Mr. Cavor may 
 very well be reserved for that larger volume. 
 They simply tell, with greater brevity and with 
 a difference in several details that is interesting, 
 but not of any vital importance, the bare facts 
 of the making of the sphere and our departure 
 from the world. Throughout, Cavor speaks of 
 me as a man who is dead, but with a curious 
 change of temper as he approaches our landing 
 on the moon. " Poor Bedford," he says of me, 
 and "this poor young man"; and he blames 
 himself for inducing a young man, "by no 
 means well equipped for such adventures," to 
 leave a planet "on which he was indisputably 
 fitted to succeed " on so precarious a mission. 
 I think he underrates the part my energy and 
 practical capacity played in bringing about the 
 realisation of his theoretical sphere. "We 
 arrived," he says, with no more account of our 
 
 277 
 
278 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 passage through space than if we had made a 
 journey of common occurrence in a railway train. 
 
 And then he becomes increasingly unfair to 
 me. Unfair, indeed, to an extent I should not 
 have expected in a man trained in the search 
 for truth. Looking back over my previously 
 written account of these things, I must insist 
 that I have been altogether juster to Cavor 
 than he has been to me. I have extenu- 
 ated little and suppressed nothing. But his 
 account is : — 
 
 "It speedily became apparent that the entire 
 strangeness of our circumstances and surround- 
 ings — great loss of weight, attenuated but 
 highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggera- 
 tion of the results of muscular effort, rapid 
 development of weird plants from obscure 
 spores, lurid sky — was exciting my companion 
 unduly. On the moon his character seemed 
 to deteriorate. He became impulsive, rash, 
 and quarrelsome. In a little while his folly 
 in devouring some gigantic vesicles and his 
 consequent intoxication led to our capture 
 by the Selenites — before we had had the 
 slightest opportunity of properly observing 
 their ways. . , ." 
 
 (He says, you observe, nothing of his own 
 concession to these same " vesicles.") 
 
ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES 279 
 
 And he goes on from that point to say that 
 "We came to a difficult passage with them, 
 and Bedford mistaking certain gestures of 
 theirs" — pretty gestures they were! — "gave 
 way to a panic violence. He ran amuck, 
 killed three, and perforce I had to flee with 
 him after the outrage. Subsequently we 
 fought with a number who endeavoured to 
 bar our way, and slew seven or eight more. 
 It says much for the tolerance of these beings 
 that on my recapture I was not instantly slain. 
 We made our way to the exterior and sepa- 
 rated in the crater of our arrival, to increase 
 our chances of recovering our sphere. But 
 presently I came upon a body of Selenites, led 
 by two who were curiously different, even in 
 form, from any of those we had seen hitherto, 
 with larger heads and smaller bodies, and 
 much more elaborately wrapped about. And 
 after evading them for some time I fell into 
 a crevasse, cut my head rather badly and 
 displaced my patella, and, finding crawling 
 very painful, decided to surrender — if they 
 would still permit me to do so. This they 
 did, and, perceiving my helpless condition, 
 carried me with them again into the moon. 
 And of Bedford I have heard or seen nothing 
 more, nor, so far as I can gather, has any 
 
28o THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Selenite. Either the night overtook him in 
 the crater, or else, which is more probable, 
 he found the sphere, and, desiring to steal a 
 march upon me, made off with it — only, I fear, 
 to find it uncontrollable, and to meet a more 
 lingering fate in outer space." 
 
 And with that Cavor dismisses me and^ goes 
 on to more interesting topics. I dislike the 
 idea of seeming to use my position as his editor 
 to deflect his story in my own interest, but 
 I am obliged to protest here against the turn 
 he gives these occurrences. He says nothing 
 about that gasping message on the blood- 
 stained paper in which he told, or attempted 
 to tell, a very different story. The dignified 
 self-surrender is an altogether new view of the 
 affair that has come to him, I must insist, since 
 he began to feel secure among the lunar people ; 
 and as for the " stealing a march " conception, 
 I am quite willing to let the reader decide be- 
 tween us on what he has before him. I know 
 I am not a model man — I have made no 
 pretence to be. But am I t/ia^ f 
 
 However, that is the sum of my wrongs. 
 From this point I can edit Cavor with an 
 untroubled mind, for he mentions me no 
 more. 
 
 It would seem the Selenites who had come 
 
ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES 281 
 
 upon him carried him to some point in the 
 interior down "a great shaft" by means of 
 what he describes as "a sort of balloon." We 
 gather from the rather confused passage in 
 which he describes this, and from a number of 
 chance allusions and hints in other and subse- 
 quent messages, that this " great shaft " is one 
 of an enormous system of artificial shafts that 
 run, each from what is called a lunar " crater," 
 downwards for very nearly a hundred miles 
 towards the central portion of our satellite. 
 These shafts communicate by transverse tun- 
 nels, they throw out abysmal caverns and 
 expand into great globular places ; the whole 
 of the moon's substance for a hundred miles 
 inward, indeed, is a mere sponge of rock. 
 "Partly," says Cavor, "this sponginess is 
 natural, but very largely it is due to the enor- 
 mous industry of the Selenites in the past. 
 The enormous circular mounds of the exca- 
 vated rock and earth it is that form these great 
 circles about the tunnels known to earthly 
 astronomers (misled by a false analogy) as 
 volcanoes." 
 
 It was down this shaft they took him, in 
 this "sort of balloon" he speaks of, at first 
 into an inky blackness and then into a re- 
 gion of continually increasing phosphorescence. 
 
282 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Cavor's despatches show him to be curiously 
 regardless of detail for a scientific man, but 
 we gather that this light was due to the 
 streams and cascades of water — "no doubt 
 containing some phosphorescent organism " 
 — that flowed ever more abundantly down- 
 ward towards the Central Sea. And as he 
 descended, he says, "The Selenites also be- 
 came luminous." And at last far below him 
 he saw, as it were, a lake of heatless fire, the 
 waters of the Central Sea, glowing and eddy- 
 ing in strange perturbation, "like luminous 
 blue milk that is just on the boil." 
 
 " This Lunar Sea," says Cavor, in a later 
 passage, " is not a stagnant ocean ; a solar tide 
 sends it in a perpetual flow around the lunar 
 axis, and strange storms and boilings and rush- 
 ings of its waters occur, and at times cold winds 
 and thunderings that ascend out of it into the 
 busy ways of the great ant-hill above. It is 
 only when the water is in motion that it gives 
 out lisfht ; in its rare seasons of calm it is black. 
 Commonly, when one sees it, its waters rise and 
 fall in an oily swell, and flakes and big rafts of 
 shining, bubbly foam drift with the sluggish, 
 faintly glowing current. The Selenites navigate 
 its cavernous straits and lagoons in little shallow 
 boats of a canoe-like shape ; and even before 
 
ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES 283 
 
 my journey to the galleries about the Grand 
 Lunar, who is Master of the Moon, I was per- 
 mitted to make a brief excursion on its waters. 
 
 "The caverns and passages are naturally very 
 tortuous. A large proportion of these ways are 
 known only to expert pilots among the fisher- 
 men, and not infrequently Selenites are lost for 
 ever in their labyrinths. In their remoter re- 
 cesses, I am told, strange creatures lurk, some 
 of them terrible and dangerous creatures that 
 all the science of the moon has been unable to 
 exterminate. There is particularly the Rapha, 
 an inextricable mass of clutching tentacles 'that 
 one hacks to pieces only to multiply ; and the 
 Tzee, a darting creature that is never seen, so 
 subtly and suddenly does it slay. ..." 
 
 He gives us a gleam of description. 
 
 " I was reminded on this excursion of what I 
 have read of the Mammoth Caves ; if only I had 
 had a yellow flambeau instead of the pervading 
 blue light, and a solid-looking boatman with an 
 oar instead of a scuttle-faced Selenite working 
 an engine at the back of the canoe, I could have 
 imagined I had suddenly got back to earth. 
 The rocks about us were very various, some- 
 times black, sometimes pale blue and veined, 
 and once they flashed and glittered as though 
 we had come into a mine of sapphires. And 
 
284 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 below one saw the ghostly phosphorescent 
 fishes flash and vanish in the hardly less phos- 
 phorescent deep. Then, presently, a long ultra- 
 marine vista down the turgid stream of one of 
 the channels of traffic, and a landing-stage, 
 and then, perhaps, a glimpse up the enormous 
 crowded shaft of one of the vertical ways. 
 
 "In one great place heavy with glistening 
 stalactites a number of boats were fishing. We 
 went alongside one of these and watched the 
 long-armed fishing Selenites winding in a net. 
 They were little, hunchbacked insects, with very 
 strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled 
 face-masks. As they pulled at it that net 
 seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon 
 in the moon ; it was loaded with weights — no 
 doubt of gold — and it took a long time to draw, 
 for in those waters the larger and more edible 
 fish lurk deep. The fish in the net came up 
 like a blue moonrise — a blaze of darting, tossing 
 blue. 
 
 " Among their catch was a many-tentaculate, 
 evil-eyed black thing, ferociously active, whose 
 appearance they greeted with shrieks and twit- 
 ters, and which with quick, nervous movements 
 they hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. 
 All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and 
 writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when 
 
ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES 285 
 
 fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again 
 of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous 
 and active out of the unknown sea. It was the 
 most active and malignant thing of all the living 
 creatures I have yet seen in this world inside 
 the moon. . . . 
 
 *' The surface of this sea must be very nearly 
 two hundred miles (if not more) below the level 
 of the moon's exterior ; all the cities of the moon 
 lie, I learnt, immediately above this Central Sea, 
 in such cavernous spaces and artificial galleries 
 as I have described, and they communicate with 
 the exterior by enormous vertical shafts which 
 open invariably in what are called by earthly 
 astronomers the ' craters ' of the moon. The 
 lid covering one such aperture I had already 
 seen during the wanderings that had preceded 
 my capture. 
 
 " Upon the condition of the less central 
 portion of the moon I have not yet arrived 
 at very precise knowledge. There is an enor- 
 mous system of caverns in which the moon- 
 calves shelter during the night ; and there are 
 abattoirs and the like — in one of these it was 
 that I and Bedford fought with the Selenite 
 butchers — and I have since seen balloons laden 
 with meat descending out of the upper dark. 
 
286 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 I have as yet scarcely learnt as much of these 
 things as a Zulu in London would learn about 
 the British corn supplies in the same time. It 
 is clear, however, that these vertical shafts and 
 the vegetation of the surface must play an 
 essential role in ventilating and keeping fresh 
 the atmosphere of the moon. At one time, 
 and particularly on my first emergence from 
 my prison, there was certainly a cold wind 
 blowing down the shaft, and later there was 
 a kind of sirocco upward that corresponded 
 with my fever. For' at the end of about three 
 weeks I fell ill of an indefinable sort of fever, 
 and in spite of sleep and the quinine tabloids 
 that very fortunately I had brought in my 
 pocket, I remained ill and fretting miserably, 
 almost to the time when I was taken into the 
 presence of the Grand Lunar, who is Master of 
 the Moon. 
 
 ** I will not dilate on the wretchedness of 
 my condition," he remarks, "during those days 
 of ill-health." And he goes on with great 
 amplitude with details I omit here. " My 
 temperature," he concludes, "kept abnormally 
 high for a long time, and I lost all desire 
 for food. I had stagnant waking intervals, 
 and sleep tormented by dreams, and at one 
 phase I was, I remember, so weak as to be 
 
ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES 287 
 
 earth-sick and almost hysterical. I longed 
 almost intolerably for colour to break the 
 everlasting blue. . . ." 
 
 He reverts again presently to the topic of 
 this sponge caught lunar atmosphere. I am 
 told by astronomers and physicists that all he 
 tells is in absolute accordance with what was 
 already known of the moon's condition. Had 
 earthly astronomers had the courage and 
 imagination to push home a bold induction, 
 says Mr. Wendigee, they might have foretold 
 almost everything that Cavor has to say of 
 the general structure of the moon. They 
 know now pretty certainly that moon and 
 earth are not so much satellite and primary 
 as smaller and greater sisters, made out of 
 one mass, and consequently made of the 
 same material. And since the density of the 
 moon is only three-fifths that of the earth, 
 there can be nothing for it but that she is 
 hollowed out by a great system of caverns. 
 There was no necessity, said Sir Jabez Flap, 
 F.R.S., that most entertaining exponent of 
 the facetious side of the stars, that we should 
 ever have gone to the moon to find out such 
 easy inferences, and points the pun with an 
 allusion to Gruyere, but he certainly might 
 have announced his knowledge of the hollow- 
 
288 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 ness of the moon before. And If the moon 
 is hollow, then the apparent absence of air 
 and water is, of course, quite easily explained. 
 The sea lies within at the bottom of the 
 caverns, and the air travels through the great 
 sponge of galleries, in accordance with simple 
 physical laws. The caverns of the moon, on 
 the whole, are very windy places. As the 
 sunlight comes round the moon the air in 
 the outer galleries on that side is heated, its 
 pressure increases, some flows out on the 
 exterior and mingles with the evaporating air 
 of the craters (where the plants remove its 
 carbonic acid), while the greater portion flows 
 round through the galleries to replace the 
 shrinking air of the cooling side that the sun- 
 light has left. There is, therefore, a constant 
 eastward breeze in the air of the outer galleries, 
 and an up-flow during the lunar day up the 
 shafts, complicated, of course, very greatly by 
 the varying shape of the galleries, and the in- 
 genious contrivances of the Selenite mind. . . . 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SELENITES 
 
 The messages of Cavor from the sixth up to 
 the sixteenth are for the most part so much 
 broken, and they abound so in repetitions, that 
 they scarcely form a consecutive narrative. 
 They will be given in full, of course, in the 
 scientific report, but here it will be far more 
 convenient to continue simply to abstract and 
 quote as in the former chapter. We have 
 subjected every word to a keen critical scrutiny, 
 and my own brief memories and impressions 
 of lunar things have been of inestimable help 
 in interpreting what would otherwise have been 
 impenetrably dark. And, naturally, as living 
 beings our interest centres far more upon the 
 strange community of lunar insects in which he 
 was living, it would seem, as an honoured guest 
 than upon the mere physical condition oi their 
 world. 
 
 I have already made it clear, I think, that 
 
 the Selenites I saw resembled man in main- 
 
 289 ^ 
 
290 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 taining the erect attitude, and in having four 
 limbs, and I have compared the general ap- 
 pearance of their heads and the jointing of 
 their limbs to that of insects. I have men- 
 tioned, too, the peculiar consequence of the 
 smaller gravitation of the moon on their fragile 
 slightness. Cavor confirms me upon all these 
 points. He calls them "animals," though of 
 course they fall under no division of the classi- 
 fication of earthly creatures, and he points out 
 "the insect type of anatomy had, fortunately 
 for men, never exceeded a relatively very small 
 size on earth." The largest terrestrial insects, 
 living or extinct, do not, as a matter of fact, 
 measure 6 in. in length ; ** but here, against 
 the lesser gravitation of the moon, a creature 
 certainly as much an insect as vertebrate seems 
 to have been able to attain to human and 
 ultrahuman dimensions." 
 
 He does not mention the ant, but through- 
 out his allusions the ant is continually being 
 brought before my mind, in its sleepless 
 activity, in its intelligence and social organisa- 
 tion, in its structure, and more particularly 
 in the fact that it displays, in addition to the 
 two forms, the male and the female form, that 
 almost all other animals possess, a number of 
 other sexless creatures, workers, soldiers, and 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 291 
 
 the like, differing from one another in struc- 
 ture, character, power, and use, and yet all 
 members of the same species. For these 
 Selenites, also, have a great variety of forms. 
 Of course they are not only colossally greater 
 in size than ants, but also, in Cavor's opinion 
 at least, in intelligence, morality, and social 
 wisdom are they colossally greater than men. 
 And instead of the four or five different 
 forms of ant that are found, there are almost 
 innumerably different forms of Selenite. I 
 have endeavoured to indicate the very con- 
 siderable difference observable in such Selen- 
 ites of the outer crust as I happened to 
 encounter ; the differences in size and propor- 
 tions were certainly as wide as the differences 
 between the most widely separated races of 
 men. But such differences as I saw fade abso- 
 lutely to nothing in comparison with the huge 
 distinctions of which Cavor tells. It would 
 seem the exterior Selenites I saw were, indeed, 
 mostly engaged in kindred occupations — moon- 
 calf herds, butchers, fleshers, and the like. 
 But within the moon, practically unsuspected 
 by me, there are, it seems, a number of other 
 sorts of Selenite, differing in size, differing in 
 the relative size of part to part, differing in 
 power and appearance, and yet not different 
 
292 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 species of creatures, but only different forms 
 of one species, and retaining through all their 
 variations a certain common likeness that 
 marks their specific unity. ' The moon is, 
 indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of 
 there being only four or five sorts of ant, 
 there are many hundred different sorts of 
 Selenite, and almost every gradation between 
 one sort and another. 
 
 It would seem the discovery came upon 
 Cavor very speedily. I infer rather than learn 
 from his narrative that he was captured by the 
 mooncalf herds under the direction of those 
 other Selenites who "have larger brain cases 
 (heads ?) and very much shorter legs." Find- 
 ing he would not walk even under the goad, 
 they carried him into darkness, crossed a 
 narrow, plank-like bridge that may have been 
 the identical bridge I had refused, and put 
 him down in something that must have seemed 
 at first to be some sort of lift. This was the 
 balloon — it had certainly been absolutely in- 
 visible to us in the darkness — and what had 
 seemed to me a mere plank-walking into the 
 void was really, no doubt, the passage of the 
 gangway. In this he descended towards con- 
 stantly more luminous caverns of the moon. 
 At first they descended in silence — save for 
 
" They carried him into darkness ' 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 293 
 
 the twitterings of the Selenites — and then into 
 a stir of windy movement. In a Httle while 
 the profound blackness had made his eyes so 
 sensitive that he began to see more and more 
 of the things about him, and at last the vague 
 took shape. 
 
 "Conceive an enormous cylindrical space," 
 says Cavor in his seventh message, "a quarter 
 of a mile across, perhaps ; very dimly lit at 
 first and then brighter, with big platforms twist- 
 ing down its sides in a spiral that vanishes at 
 last below in a blue profundity ; and lit even 
 more brightly — one could not tell how or why. 
 Think of the well of the very largest spiral 
 staircase or lift-shaft that you have ever looked 
 down, and magnify that by a hundred. Ima- 
 gine it at twilight seen through blue glass. 
 Imagine yourself looking down that ; only 
 imagine also that you feel extraordinarily light, 
 and have got rid of any giddy feeling you 
 might have on earth, and you will have the 
 first conditions of my impression. Round this 
 enormous shaft imagine a broad gallery run- 
 ning in a much steeper spiral than would be 
 credible on earth, and forming a steep road 
 protected from the gulf only by a little parapet 
 that vanishes at last in perspective a couple of 
 miles below. 
 
294 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " Looking up, I saw the very fellow of the 
 downward vision ; it had, of course, the effect 
 of looking into a very steep cone. A wind 
 was blowing down the shaft, and far above 
 I fancy I heard, growing fainter and fainter, 
 the bellowing of the mooncalves that were 
 being driven down again from their even- 
 ing pasturage on the exterior. And up and 
 down the spiral galleries were scattered nume- 
 rous moon people, pallid, faintly self-luminous 
 beings, regarding our appearance or busied 
 on unknown errands. 
 
 ** Either I fancied it or a flake of snow 
 came drifting down on the icy breeze. And 
 then, falling like a snowflake, a little figure, 
 a little man-insect clinging to a parachute, 
 drove down very swiftly towards the central 
 places of the moon. 
 
 "The big-headed Selenite sitting beside 
 me, seeing me move my head with the ges- 
 ture of one who saw, pointed with his trunk- 
 like * hand 'and indicated a sort of jetty coming 
 into sight very far below : a little landing- 
 stage, as it were, hanging into the void. As 
 it swept up towards us our pace diminished 
 very rapidly, and in a few moments, as it 
 seemed, we were abreast of it and at rest. A 
 mooring-rope was flung and grasped, and I 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 295 
 
 found myself pulled down to a level with a 
 great crowd of Selenites, who jostled to 
 see me. 
 
 " It was an incredible crowd. Suddenly and 
 violently there was forced upon my attention 
 the vast amount of difference there is amongst 
 these beings of the moon. 
 
 " Indeed, there seemed not two alike in all 
 that jostling multitude. They differed in 
 shape, they differed in size, they rang all the 
 horrible changes on the theme of Selenite form! 
 Some bulged and overhung, some ran about 
 among the feet of their fellows. All of them 
 had a grotesque and disquieting suggestion 
 of an insect that has somehow contrived to 
 mock humanity ; but all seemed to present 
 an incredible exaggeration of some particular 
 feature : one had a vast right fore-limb, an 
 enormous antennal arm, as it were ; one 
 seemed all leg, poised, as it were, on stilts ; 
 another protruded the edge of his face mask 
 into a nose-like organ that made him start- 
 lingly human until one saw his expressionless 
 gaping mouth. The strange and (except for 
 the want of mandibles and palps) most insect- 
 like head of the mooncalf-minders underwent, 
 indeed, the most incredible transformations : 
 here it was broad and low, here high and 
 
296 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 narrow ; here its leathery brow was drawn 
 out into horns and strange features ; here it 
 was whiskered and divided, and there with a 
 grotesquely human profile. One distortion was 
 particularly conspicuous. There were several 
 brain cases distended like bladders to a huge 
 size, with the face mask reduced to quite small 
 proportions. There were several amazing 
 forms, with heads reduced to microscopic pro- 
 portions and blobby bodies ; and fantastic, 
 flimsy things that' existed, it would seem, only 
 as a basis for vast, trumpet-like protrusions 
 of the lower part of the mask. And oddest of 
 all, as it seemed to me for the moment, two 
 or three of these weird inhabitants of a sub- 
 terranean world, a world sheltered by innumer- 
 able miles of rock from sun or rain, carried 
 umbrellas in their tentaculate hands ! — real ter- 
 restrial-looking umbrellas ! And then I thought 
 of the parachutist I had watched descend. 
 
 " These moon people behaved exactly as a 
 human crowd might have done in similar cir- 
 cumstances : they jostled and thrust one an- 
 other, they shoved one another aside, they even 
 clambered upon one another to get a glimpse 
 of me. Every moment they increased in num- 
 bers, and pressed more urgently upon the discs 
 of my ushers" — Cavor does not explain what 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 297 
 
 he means by this — " every moment fresh shapes 
 emerged from the shadows and forced them- 
 selves upon my astounded attention. And 
 presently I was signed and helped into a sort 
 of litter, and lifted up on the shoulders of 
 strong-armed bearers, and so borne through 
 the twilight over this seething multitude to- 
 wards the apartments that were provided for 
 me in the moon. All about me were eyes, 
 faces, masks, a leathery noise like the rustling 
 of beetle wings, and a great bleating and 
 cricket-like twittering of Selenite voices. . . ." 
 
 We ofather he was taken to a " hexaofonal 
 apartment," and there for a space he was con- 
 fined. Afterwards he was given a much more 
 considerable liberty ; indeed, almost as much 
 freedom as one has in a civilised town on 
 earth. And it would appear that the mys- 
 terious being who is the ruler and master of 
 the moon appointed two Selenites "with large 
 heads " to guard and study him, and to estab- 
 lish whatever mental communications were pos- 
 sible with him. And, amazing and incredible 
 as it may seem, these two creatures, these 
 fantastic men-insects, these beings of another 
 world, were presently communicating with 
 Cavor by means of terrestrial speech. 
 
298 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Cavor speaks of them as Phi-oo and Tsi-puff. 
 PhI-00, he says, was about 5 ft. high ; he had 
 small, slender legs about 18 in. long, and slight 
 feet of the common lunar pattern. On these 
 balanced a little body, throbbing with the 
 pulsations of his heart. He had long, soft, 
 many-jointed arms ending in a tentacled grip, 
 and his neck was many-jointed in the usual 
 way, but exceptionally short and thick. His 
 head, says Cavor — apparently alluding to some 
 previous description that has gone astray in 
 space — ** is of the common lunar type, but 
 strangely modified. The mouth has the usual 
 expressionless gape, but it is unusually small 
 and pointing downward, and the mask is re- 
 duced to the size of a large flat nose-flap. On 
 either side are the little eyes. 
 
 ** The rest of the head is distended into a 
 huge globe, and the chitinous leathery cuticle 
 of the mooncalf herds thins out to a mere 
 membrane, through which the pulsating brain 
 movements are distinctly visible. He is n 
 creature, indeed, with a tremendously hyper- 
 trophied brain, and with the rest of his organism 
 both relatively and absolutely dwarfed." 
 
 In another passage Cavor compares the 
 back view of him to Atlas supporting the 
 world. Tsi-puff, it seems, was a very similar 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 299 
 
 insect, but his "face" was drawn out to a 
 considerable length, and the brain hypertrophy 
 being in different regions, his head was not 
 round but pear-shaped, with the stalk down- 
 ward. There were also litter-carriers, lop-sided 
 beings with enormous shoulders, very spidery 
 ushers, and a squat foot attendant in Cavor's 
 retinue. 
 
 The manner in which Phi-00 and Tsi-puff 
 attacked the problem of speech was fairly ob- 
 vious. They came into this " hexagonal cell " 
 in which Cavor was confined, and began imitat- 
 ing every sound he made, beginning with a 
 cough. He seems to have grasped their in- 
 tention with great quickness, and to have 
 begun repeating words to them and pointing 
 to indicate the application. The procedure 
 was probably always the same. Phi-00 would 
 attend to Cavor for a space, then point also 
 and say the word he had heard. 
 
 The first word he mastered was "man," and 
 the second "Mooney" — which Cavor on the 
 spur of the moment seems to have used instead 
 of " Selenite " for the moon race. As soon as 
 Phi-00 was assured of the meaning of a word 
 he repeated it to Tsi-puff, who remembered 
 it infallibly. They mastered over one hundred 
 English nouns at their first session. 
 
300 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Subsequently it seems they brought an artist 
 with them to assist the work of explanation 
 with sketches and diagrams — Cavor's drawings 
 being rather crude. He was, says Cavor, "a 
 being with an active arm and an arresting 
 eye," and he seemed to draw with incredible 
 swiftness. 
 
 The eleventh message is undoubtedly only a 
 fragment of a longer communication.^ After 
 some broken sentences, the record of which is 
 unintelligible, it goes on : — 
 
 " But it will interest only linguists, and delay 
 me too long, to give the details of the series of 
 intent parleys of which these were the begin- 
 ning, and, indeed, I very much doubt if I could 
 give in anything like the proper order all the 
 twistings and turnings that we made in our 
 pursuit of mutual comprehension. Verbs were 
 soon plain sailing — at least, such active verbs as 
 I could express by drawings ; some adjectives 
 were easy, but when it came to abstract nouns, 
 to prepositions, and the sort of hackneyed 
 figures of speech by means of which so much 
 is expressed on earth, it was like diving in 
 cork-jackets. Indeed, these difficulties were 
 insurmountable until to the sixth lesson came 
 a fourth assistant, a being with a huge, football- 
 shaped head, whose /or^e was clearly the pursuit 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 301 
 
 of intricate analogy. He entered in a preoccu- 
 pied manner, stumbling against a stool, and the 
 difficulties that arose had to be presented to 
 him with a certain amount of clamour and 
 hitting and pricking before they reached his 
 apprehension. But once he was involved his 
 penetration was amazing. Whenever there 
 came a need of thinking beyond Phi-oo's by 
 no means limited scope, this prolate-headed 
 person was in request, but he invariably told 
 the conclusion to Tsi-puff, in order that it 
 might be remembered ; Tsi-puff was ever the 
 arsenal for facts. And so we advanced again. 
 
 "It seemed long and yet brief — a matter of 
 days before I was positively talking with these 
 insects of the moon. Of course, at first it was 
 an intercourse infinitely tedious and exasper- 
 ating, but imperceptibly it has grown to com- 
 prehension. And my patience has grown to 
 meet its limitations. Phi-00 it is who does all 
 the talking. He does it with a vast amount of 
 meditative provisional ' M'm — M'm,' and he 
 has caught up one or two phrases, * If I may 
 say,' ' If you understand,' and beads all his 
 speech with them. 
 
 "Thus he would discourse. Imagine him 
 explaining his artist. 
 
 ** * M'm — M'm — he — if I may say — draw. 
 
302 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 Eat little — drink little — draw. Love draw. No 
 other thing. Hate all who not draw like him. 
 Angry. Hate all who draw like him better. 
 Hate most people. Hate all who not think all 
 world for to draw. Angry. M'm. All things 
 mean nothing to him — only draw. He like 
 you ... if you understand. ... New thing 
 to draw. Ugly — striking. Eh .-* 
 
 ** ' He' — turning to Tsi-puff — 'love remember 
 words. Remember wonderful more than any. 
 Think no, draw no — remember. Say ' — here 
 he referred to his gifted assistant for a word 
 — ' histories — all things. He hear once — say 
 ever.' 
 
 "It is more wonderful to me than I dreamt 
 that anything ever could be again, to hear, in 
 this perpetual obscurity, these extraordinary 
 creatures — for even familiarity fails to weaken 
 the inhuman effect of their appearance— con- 
 tinually piping a nearer approach to cohe- 
 rent earthly speech, — asking questions, giving 
 answers. I feel that I am casting back to 
 the fable-hearing period of childhood again, 
 when the ant and the grasshopper talked to- 
 gether and the bee judged between them. . . ." 
 
 And while these linguistic exercises were 
 going on Cavor seems to have experienced a con- 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 303 
 
 siderable relaxation of his confinement. *' The 
 first dread and distrust our unfortunate conflict 
 aroused is being," he said, "continually effaced 
 by the deliberate rationality of all I do." . . . 
 " I am now able to come and go as I please, or 
 I am restricted only for my own good. So it is 
 I have been able to get at this apparatus, and, 
 assisted by a happy find among the material 
 that is littered in this enormous store-cave, I 
 have contrived to despatch these messages. So 
 far not the slightest attempt has been made to 
 interfere with me in this, though I have made 
 it quite clear to Phi-00 that I am signalling to 
 the earth. 
 
 "'You talk to other?' he asked, watching 
 me. 
 
 "'Others,' said I. 
 
 " ' Others,' he said. ' Oh yes. Men } ' 
 
 •' And I went on transmitting." 
 
 Cavor was continually making corrections in 
 his previous accounts of the Selenites as fresh 
 facts flowed in upon him to modify his conclu- 
 sions, and accordingly one gives the quotations 
 that follow with a certain amount of reservation. 
 They are quoted from the ninth, thirteenth, and 
 sixteenth messages, and, altogether vague and 
 fragmentary as they are, they probably give as 
 
304 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 complete a picture of the^ social life of this 
 strange community as mankind can now hope 
 to have for many generations. 
 
 " In the moon," says Cavor, "every citizen 
 knows his place. He is born to that place, and 
 the elaborate discipline of training and educa- 
 tion and surgery he undergoes fits him at last 
 so completely to it that he has neither ideas 
 nor organs for any purpose beyond it. ' Why 
 should he ? ' Phi-oo would ask. If, for example, 
 a Selenite is destined to be a mathematician, 
 his teachers and trainers set out at once to 
 that end. They check any incipient disposi- 
 tion to other pursuits, they encourage his 
 mathematical bias with a perfect psychological 
 skill. His brain grows, or at least the mathe- 
 matical faculties of , his brain grow, and the rest 
 of him only so much as is necessary to sustain 
 this essential part of him. At last, save for 
 rest and food, his one delight lies in the exer- 
 cise and display of his faculty, his one interest 
 in its application, his sole society with other 
 specialists in his own line. His brain grows 
 continually larger, at least so far as the por- 
 tions engaging in mathematics are concerned ; 
 they bulge ever larger and seem to suck all life 
 and vigour from the rest of his frame. His 
 limbs shrivel, his heart and digestive organs 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 305 
 diminish, his insect face is hidden under its 
 bulging contours. His voice becomes a mere 
 stridulation for the stating of formula ; he seems 
 deaf to all but properly enunciated problems. 
 The faculty of laughter, save for the sudden 
 discovery of some paradox, is lost to him ; his 
 deepest emotion is the evolution of a novel com- 
 putation. And so he attains his end. 
 
 "Or, again, a Selenite appointed to be a 
 minder of mooncalves is from his earliest years 
 induced to think and live mooncalf, to find his 
 pleasure in mooncalf lore, his exercise in their 
 tending and pursuit. He is trained to become 
 wiry and active, his eye is indurated to the 
 tight wrappings, the angular contours that con- 
 stitute a 'smart mooncalfishness.' He takes at 
 last no interest in the deeper part of the moon ; 
 he regards all Selenites not equally versed in 
 mooncalves with indifference, derision, or hos- 
 tility. ^ His thoughts are of mooncalf pastures, 
 and his dialect an accomplished mooncalf tech- 
 nique. So also he loves his work, and dis- 
 charges in perfect happiness the duty that 
 justifies his being. And so it is with all sorts 
 and conditions of Selenites— each is a perfect 
 unit in a world machine. ... 
 
 *' These beings with big heads, on whom the 
 intellectual labours fall, form a sort of aris- 
 
 U 
 
3o6 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 tocracy in this strange society, and at the head 
 of them, quintessential of the moon, is that 
 marvellous gigantic ganglion the Grand Lunar, 
 into whose presence I am finally to come. The 
 unlimited development of the minds of the 
 intellectual class is rendered possible by the 
 absence of any bony skull in the lunar anatomy, 
 that strange box of bone that clamps about the 
 developing brain of man, imperiously insisting 
 * thus far and no farther ' to all his possibilities. 
 They fall into three main classes differing 
 greatly in influence and respect. There are 
 the administrators, of whom Phi-oo is one, 
 Selenites of considerable initiative and ver- 
 satility, responsible each for a certain cubic 
 content of the moon's bulk ; the experts like 
 the football-headed thinker, who are trained to 
 perform certain special operations ; and the 
 eruditCj who are the repositories of all know- 
 ledge. To this latter class belongs Tsi-puff, 
 the first lunar professor of terrestrial languages. 
 With regard to these latter, it is a curious little 
 thing to note that the unlimited growth of the 
 lunar brain has rendered unnecessary the in- 
 vention of all those mechanical aids to brain 
 work which have distinguished the career of 
 ^ man. There are no books, no records of any 
 (f sort, no libraries or inscriptions. All knowledge 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 307 
 
 is stored in distended brains much as the honey- 
 ants of Texas store honey in their distended 
 abdomens. The lunar Somerset House and 
 the lunar British Museum Library are collec- 
 tions of living brains. . . . 
 
 ** The less specialised administrators, I note, 
 do for the most part take a very lively interest 
 in me whenever they encounter me. They 
 will come out of the way and stare at me and 
 ask questions to which Phi-00 will reply. I 
 see them going hither and thither with a retinue 
 of bearers, attendants, shouters, parachute- 
 carriers, and so forth — queer groups to see. 
 The experts for the most part ignore me 
 completely, even as they ignore each other, 
 or notice me only to begin a clamorous exhi- 
 bition of their distinctive skill. The erudite 
 for the most part are rapt in an impervious 
 and apoplectic complacency, from which only 
 a denial of their erudition can rouse them. 
 Usually they are led about by little watchers 
 and attendants, and often there are small and 
 active-looking creatures, small females usually, 
 that I am inclined to think are a sort of wife 
 to them ; but some of the profounder scholars 
 are altogether too great for locomotion, and 
 are carried from place to place in a sort of 
 sedan tub, wabbling jellies of knowledge that 
 
3o8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 enlist my respectful astonishment. I have just 
 passed one in coming to this place where I am 
 permitted to amuse myself with these electrical 
 toys, a vast, shaven, shaky head, bald and 
 thin-skinned, carried on his grotesque stretcher. 
 In front and behind came his bearers, and curi- 
 ous, almost trumpet-faced, news disseminators 
 shrieked his fame. 
 
 " I have already mentioned the retinues that 
 accompany most of the intellectuals : ushers, 
 bearers, valets, extraneous tentacles and mus- 
 cles, as it were, to replace the abortive physical 
 powers of these hypertrophied minds. Porters 
 almost invariably accompany them. There are 
 also extremely swift messengers with spider- 
 like legs, and ' hands ' for grasping parachutes, 
 and attendants with vocal organs that could 
 well-nigh wake the dead. Apart from their 
 controlling intelligence these subordinates are 
 as inert and helpless as umbrellas in a stand. 
 They exist only in relation to the orders 
 they have to obey, the duties they have to 
 perform. 
 
 "The bulk of these insects, however, who 
 go to and fro upon the spiral ways, who fill the 
 ascending balloons and drop past me clinging 
 to flimsy parachutes, are, I gather, of the oper- 
 ative class. * Machine hands,' indeed, some of 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 309 
 
 these are 111 actual nature — it is no figure of 
 speech, the single tentacle of the mooncalf herd 
 is profoundly modified for clawing, lifting, 
 guiding, the rest of them no more than neces- 
 sary subordinate appendages to these important 
 parts. Some, who I suppose deal with bell- 
 striking mechanisms, have enormously de- 
 veloped auditory organs ; some whose work 
 lies in delicate chemical operations project 
 a vast olfactory organ ; others again have flat 
 feet for treadles with anchylosed joints ; and 
 others — who I have been told are glass-blowers 
 — seem mere lung-bellows. But every one of 
 these common Selenites I have seen at work is 
 exquisitely adapted to the social need it meets. 
 Fine work is done by fined-down workers, 
 amazingly dwarfed and neat. Some I could 
 hold on the palm of my hand. There is even 
 a sort of turnspit Selenite, very common, whose 
 duty and only delight it is to supply the motive 
 power for various small appliances. And to 
 rule over these things and order any errincr 
 tendency there might be in some aberrant 
 natures are the most muscular beings I have 
 seen in the moon, a sort of lunar police, who 
 must have been trained from their earliest years 
 to give a perfect respect and obedience to the 
 swollen heads. 
 
3IO THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " The making of these various sorts of 
 operative must be a very curious and interest- 
 ing process. I am still very much in the dark 
 about it, but quite recently I came upon a 
 number of young Selenites confined in jars 
 from which only the fore-limbs protruded, who 
 were being compressed to become machine- 
 minders of a special sort. The extended 
 ' hand ' in this highly developed system of 
 technical education is stimulated by irritants 
 and nourished by injection, while the rest of 
 the body is starved. Phi-oo, unless I mis- 
 understood him, explained that in the earlier 
 stages these queer little creatures are apt to 
 display signs of suffering in their various 
 cramped situations, but they easily become 
 indurated to their lot ; and he took me on to 
 where a number of flexible-limbed messengers 
 were being drawn out and broken in. It is 
 quite unreasonable, I know, but such glimpses of 
 the educational methods of these beings affect 
 me disagreeably. I hope, however, that may 
 pass off, and I may be able to see more of this 
 aspect of their wonderful social order. That 
 wretched-looking hand-tentacle sticking out of 
 its jar seemed to have a sort of limp appeal for 
 lost possibilities ; it haunts me still, although, 
 cf course, it is really in the end a far more 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 311 
 
 humane proceeding than our earthly method of 
 leaving children to grow into human beings, 
 and then making machines of them. 
 
 " Quite recently, too — I think it was on the 
 eleventh or twelfth visit I made to this appa- 
 ratus — I had a curious light upon the lives of 
 these operatives. I was being guided through 
 a short cut hither, instead of going down the 
 spiral and by the quays of the Central Sea. 
 From the devious windings of a long, dark 
 gallery we emerged into a vast, low cavern, 
 pervaded by an earthy smell, and, as things 
 go in this darkness, rather brightly lit. The 
 light came from a tumultuous growth of livid 
 fungoid shapes — some indeed singularly like 
 our terrestrial mushrooms, but standing as 
 high or higher than a man. 
 
 " ' Mooneys eat these ? " said I to Phi-oo. 
 
 "•Yes, food.' 
 
 " ' Goodness me ! ' I cried ; ' what's that ? ' 
 
 " My eye had just caught the figure of an 
 exceptionally big and ungainly Selenite lying 
 motionless among the stems, face downward. 
 We stopped. 
 
 " ' Dead ? ' I asked. (For as yet I have 
 seen no dead in the moon, and I have 
 grown curious.) 
 
 "'JVo!' exclaimed Phi-oo. 'Him — worker 
 
312 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 — no work to do. Get little drink then — make 
 sleep — till we him want. What good him 
 wake, eh ? No want him walking about.' 
 
 " ' There's another ! ' cried I. 
 
 "And indeed all that huge extent of mush- 
 room ground was, I found, peppered with 
 these prostrate figures sleeping under an 
 opiate until the moon had need of them. 
 There were scores of them of all sorts, and 
 we were able to turn over some of them, and 
 examine them more precisely than I had been 
 able to do previously. They breathed noisily 
 at my doing so, but did not wake. One I 
 remember very distinctly : he left a strong 
 impression, I think, because some trick of the 
 light and of his attitude was strongly sugges- 
 tive of a drawn-up human figure. His fore- 
 limbs were long, delicate tentacles — he was 
 some kind of refined manipulator — and the 
 pose of his slumber suggested a submissive 
 suffering. No doubt it was quite a mistake 
 for me to interpret his expression in that way, 
 but I did. And as Phi-oo rolled him over 
 into the darkness amongf the livid fleshiness 
 again I felt a distinctly unpleasant sensation, 
 although as he rolled the insect in him was 
 confessed. 
 
 " It simply illustrates the unthinking way 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 313 
 
 in which one acquires habits of feeling. 
 To drug the worker one does not want and 
 toss him aside is surely far better than to 
 expel him from his factory to wander starving 
 in the streets. In every complicated social 
 community there is necessarily a certain inter- 
 mittency of employment for all specialised 
 labour, and in this way the trouble of an 'un- 
 employed' problem is altogether anticipated. 
 And yet, so unreasonable are even scien- 
 tifically trained minds, I still do not like the 
 memory of those prostrate forms amidst those 
 quiet, luminous arcades of fleshy 'growth, and 
 I avoid that short cut in spite of the incon- 
 veniences of the longer, more noisy, and more 
 crowded alternative. 
 
 "My alternative route takes me round by 
 a huge, shadowy cavern, very crowded and 
 clamorous, and here it is I see peering out of 
 the hexagonal openings of a sort of honeycomb 
 wall, or parading a large open space behind, or 
 selecting the toys and amulets made to please 
 them by the dainty-tentacled jewellers who 
 work in kennels below, the mothers of the 
 moon-world— the queen bees, as it were, of the 
 hive. They are noble-looking beings, fantas- 
 tically and sometimes quite beautifully adorned, 
 
314 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 with a proud carnage, and, save for their mouths, 
 almost microscopic heads. 
 
 " Of the condition of the moon sexes, marry- 
 ing and giving in marriage, and of birth and so 
 forth among the Selenites, I have as yet been 
 able to learn very little. With the steady pro- 
 gress of Phi-oo in English, however, my igno- 
 rance will no doubt as steadily disappear. I 
 am of opinion that, as with the ants and bees, 
 there is a large majority of the members in this 
 community of the neuter sex. Of course on 
 earth in our cities there are now many who 
 never live that life of parentage which is the 
 natural life of man. Here, as with the ants, 
 this thing has become a normal condition of 
 the race, and the whole of such replacement as 
 is necessary falls upon this special and by no 
 means numerous class of matrons, the mothers 
 of the moon-world, large and stately beings 
 beautifully fitted to bear the larval Selenite. 
 Unless I misunderstand an explanation of 
 Phi-oo's, they are absolutely incapable of cher- 
 ishing the young they bring into the moon ; 
 periods of foolish indulgence alternate with 
 moods of aggressive violence, and as soon as 
 possible the little creatures, who are quite soft 
 and flabby and pale coloured, are transferred to 
 the charge of celibate females, women ' workers ' 
 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELENITES 315 
 
 as it were, who in some cases possess brains of 
 almost masculine dimensions." 
 
 Just at this point, unhappily, this message 
 broke off. Fragmentary and tantalising as 
 the matter constituting this chapter is, it does 
 nevertheless give a vague, broad impression 
 of an altosrether strange and wonderful world 
 — a world with which our own may have to 
 reckon we know not how speedily. This inter- 
 mittent trickle of messages, this whispering of 
 a record needle in the stilliness of the moun- 
 tain slopes, is the first warning of such a change 
 in human conditions as mankind has scarcely 
 imagined heretofore. In that satellite of ours 
 there are new elements, new appliances, new 
 traditions, an overwhelming avalanche of new 
 ideas, a strange race with whom we must in- 
 evitably struggle for mastery — gold as common 
 as iron or wood. . . . 
 
XXV 
 
 THE GRAND LUNAR 
 
 The penultimate message describes, with occa- 
 sionally even elaborate detail, the encounter 
 between Cavor and the Grand Lunar, who is 
 the ruler or master of the moon. Cavor 
 seems to have sent most of it without inter- 
 ference, but to have been interrupted in the 
 concluding portion. The second came after 
 an interval of a week. 
 
 The first message begins : " At last I am 
 able to resume this — " it then becomes 
 illegible for a space, and after a time re- 
 sumes in mid-sentence. 
 
 The missing words of the following sentence 
 are probably "the crowd." There follows 
 quite clearly: "grew ever denser as we drew 
 near the palace of the Grand Lunar — if I may 
 call a series of excavations a palace. Every- 
 where faces stared at me — blank, chitinous 
 gapes and masks, eyes peering over tremen- 
 dous olfactory developments, eyes beneath 
 
 316 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 317 
 
 monstrous forehead plates; an undergrowth 
 of smaller creatures dodged and yelped, and 
 helmet faces poised on sinuous, long-jointed 
 necks appeared craning over shoulders and 
 beneath armpits. Keeping a welcome space 
 about me marched a cordon of stolid, scuttle- 
 headed guards, who had joined us on our 
 leaving the boat in which we had come along 
 the channels of the Central Sea. The quick- 
 eyed artist with the little brain joined us 
 also, and a thick bunch of lean porter-insects 
 swayed and struggled under the multitude of 
 conveniences that were considered essential 
 to my state. I was carried in a litter during the 
 final stage of our journey. This litter was made 
 of some very ductile metal that looked dark 
 to me, meshed and woven, and with bars of 
 paler metal, and about me as I advanced 
 there grouped itself a long and complicated 
 procession. 
 
 "In front, after the manner of heralds, 
 marched four trumpet-faced creatures making 
 a devastating bray; and then came squat, 
 resolute-moving ushers before and behind,' 
 and on either hand a galaxy of learned heads,' 
 a sort of animated encyclopaedia, who were, 
 Phi-00 explained, to stand about the Grand 
 Lunar for purposes of reference. (Not a 
 
3i8 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 thing in lunar science, not a point of view 
 or method of thinking, that these wonderful 
 beings did not carry in their heads !) Fol- 
 lowed guards and porters, and then Phi-oo's 
 shivering brain borne also on a litter. Then 
 came Tsi-puff in a slightly less important 
 litter ; then myself on a litter of greater ele- 
 gance than any other, and surrounded by my 
 food and drink attendants. More trumpeters 
 came next, splitting the ear with vehement 
 outcries, and then several big brains, special 
 correspondents one might well call them, or 
 historiographers, charged with the task of 
 observing and remembering every detail of 
 this epoch-making interview. A company of 
 attendants, bearing and dragging banners and 
 masses of scented fungus and curious symbols, 
 vanished in the darkness behind. The way 
 was lined by ushers and officers in capari- 
 sons that gleamed like steel, and beyond 
 their line, so far as my eyes could pierce the 
 gloom, the heads of that enormous crowd ex- 
 tended. 
 
 " I will own that I am still by no means 
 indurated to the peculiar effect of the Selenite 
 appearance, and to find myself, as it were, adrift 
 on this broad sea of excited entomology was 
 by no means agreeable. Just for a space I had 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 3,9 
 
 something very like what I should imagine 
 people mean when they speak of the 'horrors.' 
 It had come to me before in these lunar 
 caverns, when on occasion I have found my- 
 self weaponless and with an undefended back, 
 amidst a crowd of these Selenites, but never 
 quite so vividly. It is, of course, as absolutely 
 irrational a feeling as one could well have, 
 and I hope gradually to subdue it. But just 
 for a moment, as I swept forward into the 
 welter of the vast crowd, it was only by grip- 
 ping my litter tightly and summoning all my 
 will-power that I succeeded in avoiding an 
 outcry or some such manifestation. It lasted 
 perhaps three minutes ; then I had myself in 
 hand again. 
 
 "We ascended the spiral of a vertical way 
 for some time and then passed through a series 
 of huge halls, dome-roofed and elaborately de- 
 corated. The approach to the Grand Lunar 
 was certainly contrived to give one a vivid 
 impression of his greatness. Each cavern one 
 entered seemed greater and more boldly arched 
 than its predecessor. This effect of progressive 
 size was enhanced by a thin haze of faintly 
 phosphorescent blue incense that thickened as 
 one advanced, and robbed even the nearer 
 figures of clearness. I seemed to advance 
 
320 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 continually to something larger, dimmer, and 
 less material. 
 
 " I must confess that all this multitude made 
 me feel extremely shabby and unworthy. I was 
 unshaven and unkempt ; I had brought no 
 razor ; I had a coarse beard over my mouth. 
 On earth I have always been inclined to despise 
 any attention to my person beyond a proper 
 care for cleanliness ; but under the exceptional 
 circumstances in which I found myself, repre- 
 senting, as I did, my planet and my kind, and 
 depending very largely upon the attractiveness 
 of my appearance for a proper reception, I 
 could have given much for something a little 
 more artistic and dignified than the husks I 
 wore. I had been so serene in the belief that 
 the moon was uninhabited as to overlook such 
 precautions altogether. As it was I was dressed 
 in a flannel jacket, knickerbockers, and golfing 
 stockings, stained with every sort of dirt the 
 moon offered ; slippers (of which the left heel 
 was wanting), and a blanket, through a hole 
 in which I thrust my head. (These clothes, 
 indeed, I still wear.) Sharp bristles are any- 
 thing but an improvement to my cast of 
 features, and there was an unmended tear at 
 the knee of my knickerbockers that showed 
 conspicuously as I squatted in my litter ; my 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 321 
 
 right stocking, too, persisted in getting about 
 my ankle. I am fully alive to the injustice my 
 appearance did humanity, and if by any ex- 
 pedient I could have improvised something a 
 little out of the way and imposing I would have 
 done so. But I could hit upon nothing. I 
 did what I could with my blanket — folding it 
 somewhat after the fashion of a toga, and for 
 the rest I sat as upright as the swaying of my 
 litter permitted. 
 
 " Imagine the largest hall you have ever been 
 in, imperfectly lit with blue light and obscured 
 by a grey-blue fog, surging with metallic or 
 livid-grey creatures of such a mad diversity as 
 I have hinted. Imagine this hall to end in 
 an open archway beyond which is a still larger 
 hall, and beyond this yet another and still larger 
 one, and so on. At the end of the vista, dimly 
 seen, a flight of steps, like the steps of Ara 
 Cceli at Rome, ascend out of sight. Higher 
 and higher these steps appear to go as one 
 draws nearer their base. But at last I came 
 under a huge archway and beheld the summit 
 of these steps, and upon it the Grand Lunar 
 exalted on his throne. 
 
 " He was seated in what was relatively a 
 blaze of incandescent blue. This, and the 
 darkness about him, gave him an effect of 
 
322 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 floating in a blue-black void. He seemed a 
 small, self-luminous cloud at first, brooding on 
 his sombre throne ; his brain case must have 
 measured many yards in diameter. For some 
 reason that I cannot fathom a number of blue 
 search-lights radiated from behind the throne 
 on which he sat, and immediately encircling 
 him was a halo. About him, and little and 
 indistinct in this glow, a number of body- 
 servants sustained and supported him, and 
 overshadowed and standing in a huge semi- 
 circle beneath him were his intellectual sub- 
 ordinates, his remembrancers and computators 
 and searchers and servants, and all the dis- 
 tinofuished insects of the court of the moon. 
 Still lower stood ushers and messengers, and 
 then all down the countless steps of the 
 throne were guards, and at the base, enormous, 
 various, indistinct, vanishing at last into an 
 absolute black, a vast swaying multitude of 
 the minor dignitaries of the moon. Their 
 feet made a perpetual scraping whisper on 
 the rocky floor, their limbs moved with a 
 rustling murmur. 
 
 " As I entered the penultimate hall the music 
 rose and expanded into an imperial magni- 
 ficence of sound, and the shrieks of the news- 
 bearers died away. . . . 
 
The Grand Lunar 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 323 
 
 •' I entered the last and greatest hall. . . . 
 
 " My procession opened out like a fan. My 
 ushers and guards went right and left, and the 
 three litters bearing myself and Phi-00 and Tsi- 
 puff marched across a shiny darkness of floor 
 to the foot of the giant stairs. Then began 
 a vast throbbing hum, that mingled with the 
 music. The two Selenites dismounted, but I 
 was bidden remain seated — I imagine as a 
 special honour. The music ceased, but not 
 that humming, and by a simultaneous move- 
 ment of ten thousand respectful heads my atten- 
 tion was directed to the enhaloed supreme 
 intelligence that hovered above me. 
 
 " At first as I peered into the radiating glow 
 this quintessential brain looked very much like 
 an opaque, featureless bladder with dim, undu- 
 lating ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly 
 within. Then beneath its enormity and just 
 above the edge of the throne one saw with a 
 start minute elfin eyes peering out of the glow. 
 No face, but eyes, as if they peered through 
 holes. At first I could see no more than these 
 two staring little eyes, and then below I dis- 
 tinguished the little dwarfed body and its in- 
 sect-jointed limbs shrivelled and white. The 
 eyes stared down at me with a strange intensity, 
 and the lower part of the swollen globe was 
 
324 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 wrinkled. Ineffectual-looking little hand-ten- 
 tacles steadied this shape on the throne. . . . 
 
 "It was great. It was pitiful. One forgot 
 the hall and the crowd. 
 
 " I ascended the staircase by jerks. It 
 seemed to me that this darkly glowing brain 
 case above us spread over me, and took more 
 and more of the whole effect into itself as I 
 drew nearer. The tiers of attendants and 
 helpers grouped about their master seemed to 
 dwindle and fade into the night. I saw that 
 shadowy attendants were busy spraying that 
 great brain with a cooling spray, and pat- 
 ting and sustaining it. For my own part, 
 I sat gripping my swaying litter and staring 
 at the Grand Lunar, unable to turn my gaze 
 aside. And at last, as I reached a little land- 
 ing that was separated only by ten steps or so 
 from the supreme seat, the woven splendour 
 of the music reached a climax and ceased, and 
 I was left naked, as it were, in that vastness, 
 beneath the still scrutiny of the Grand Lunar's 
 eyes. 
 
 "He was scrutinising the first man he had 
 ever seen. . . . 
 
 " My eyes dropped at last from his greatness 
 to the faint figures in the blue mist about him, 
 and then down the steps to the massed Selenites, 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 325 
 
 still and expectant in their thousands, packed on 
 the floor below. Once again an unreasonable 
 horror reached out towards me. . . . And 
 passed. 
 
 "After the pause came the salutation. I 
 was assisted from my litter, and stood awk- 
 wardly while a number of curious and no doubt 
 deeply symbolical gestures were vicariously per- 
 formed for me by two slender officials. The 
 encyclopaedic galaxy of the learned that had 
 accompanied me to the entrance of the last hall 
 appeared two steps above me and left and right 
 of me, in readiness for the Grand Lunar's need, 
 and Phi-oo's pale brain placed itself about 
 half-way up to the throne in such a position 
 as to communicate easily between us without 
 turning his back on either the Grand Lunar or 
 myself. Tsi-puff took up a position behind 
 him. Dexterous ushers sidled sideways to- 
 wards me, keeping a full face to the Presence. 
 I seated myself Turkish fashion, and Phi-00 
 and Tsi-puff also knelt down above me. There 
 came a pause. The eyes of the nearer court 
 went from me to the Grand Lunar and came 
 back to me, and a hissing and piping of expec- 
 tation passed across the hidden multitudes below 
 and ceased. 
 
 " That humming ceased. 
 
326 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 " For the first and last time in my experience 
 the moon was silent. 
 
 " I became aware of a faint wheezy noise. 
 The Grand Lunar was addressing me. It was 
 like the rubbing of a finger upon a pane of 
 glass. 
 
 " I watched him attentively for a time, and 
 then glanced at the alert Phi-oo. I felt amidst 
 these slender beings ridiculously thick and fleshy 
 and solid ; my head all jaw and black hair. 
 My eyes went back to the Grand Lunar. He 
 had ceased ; his attendants were busy, and his 
 shining superficies was glistening and running 
 with cooling spray. 
 
 " Phi-oo meditated through an interval. He 
 consulted Tsi-puff Then he began piping his 
 recognisable English — at first a little nervously, 
 so that he was not very clear. 
 
 " ' M'm — the Grand Lunar — wishes to say — 
 wishes to say — he gathers you are — m'm — men 
 — that you are a man from the planet earth. 
 He wishes to say that he welcomes you — 
 welcomes you — and wishes to learn — learn, if 
 I may use the word — the state of your world, 
 and the reason why you came to this.' 
 
 "He paused. I was about to reply when he 
 resumed. He proceeded to remarks of which 
 the drift was not very clear, though I am in- 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 327 
 
 clined to think they were intended to be com- 
 plimentary. He told me that the earth was to 
 the moon what the sun is to the earth, and that 
 the Selenites desired very greatly to learn about 
 the earth and men. He then told me, no doubt 
 in compliment also, the relative magnitude and 
 diameter of earth and moon, and the perpetual 
 wonder and speculation with which the Selenites 
 had regarded our planet. I meditated with 
 downcast eyes, and decided to reply that men 
 too had wondered what might He in the moon, 
 and had judged it dead, little recking of such 
 magnificence as I had seen that day. The 
 Grand Lunar, in token of recognition, caused 
 his long blue rays to rotate in a very con- 
 fusing manner, and all about the great hall ran 
 the pipings and whisperings and rustlings of 
 the report of what I had said. He then pro- 
 ceeded to put to Phi-00 a number of inquiries 
 which were easier to answer. 
 
 "He understood, he explained, that we 
 lived on the surface of the earth, that our air 
 and sea were outside the globe ; the latter 
 part, indeed, he already knew from his astro- 
 nomical specialists. He was very anxious to 
 have more detailed information of what he 
 called this extraordinary state of affairs, for 
 from the solidity of the earth there had always 
 
328 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 been a disposition to regard it as uninhabit- 
 able. He endeavoured first to ascertain the 
 extremes of temperature to which we earth 
 beings were exposed, and he was deeply inte- 
 rested by my descriptive treatment of clouds 
 and rain. His imagination was assisted by 
 the fact that the lunar atmosphere in the outer 
 galleries of the night side is not infrequently 
 very foggy. He seemed inclined to marvel 
 that we did not find the sunlight too intense 
 for our eyes, and was interested in my attempt 
 to explain that the sky was tempered to a 
 bluish colour through the refraction of the air, 
 though I doubt if he clearly understood that. 
 I explained how the iris of the human eyes 
 can contract the pupil and save the delicate 
 internal structure from the excess of sunlight, 
 and was allowed to approach within a few feet 
 of the Presence in order that this structure 
 might be seen. This led to a comparison of 
 the lunar and terrestrial eyes. The former is 
 not only excessively sensitive to such light as 
 men can see, but it can also see heat, and 
 every difference in temperature within the 
 moon renders objects visible to it. 
 
 "The iris was quite a new organ to the 
 Grand Lunar. For a time he amused himself 
 by flashing his rays into my face and watching 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 329 
 
 my pupils contract. As a consequence, I was 
 dazzled and blinded for some little time. . . . 
 
 *' But in spite of that discomfort I found 
 something reassuring by insensible degrees in 
 the rationality of this business of question and 
 answer. I could shut my eyes, think of my 
 answer, and almost forget that the Grand 
 Lunar has no face. ... 
 
 " When I had descended again to my proper 
 place the Grand Lunar asked how we sheltered 
 ourselves from heat and storms, and I ex- 
 pounded to him the arts of building and fur- 
 nishing. Here we wandered into misunder- 
 standings and cross-purposes, due largely, I 
 must admit, to the looseness of my expres- 
 sions. For a long time I had great difficulty 
 in making him understand the nature of a 
 house. To him and his attendant Selenites it 
 seemed, no doubt, the most whimsical thing in 
 the world that men should build houses when 
 they might descend into excavations, and an 
 additional complication was introduced by the 
 attempt I made to explain that men had 
 originally begun their homes in caves, and 
 that they were now taking their railways and 
 many establishments beneath the surface. 
 Here I think a desire for intellectual com- 
 pleteness betrayed me. There was also a 
 
330 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 considerable tangle due to an equally unwise 
 attempt on my part to explain about mines. 
 Dismissing this topic at last in an incomplete 
 state, the Grand Lunar inquired what we did 
 with the interior of our globe. 
 
 " A tide of twittering and piping swept into 
 the remotest corners of that great assembly 
 when it was at last made clear that we men 
 know absolutely nothing of the contents of the 
 world upon which the immemorial generations 
 of our ancestors had been evolved. Three 
 times had I to repeat that of all the 4000 miles 
 of substance between the earth and its centre 
 men knew only to the depth of a mile, and 
 that very vaguely. I understood the Grand 
 Lunar to ask why had I come to the moon 
 seeing we had scarcely touched our own planet 
 yet, but he did not trouble me at that time to 
 proceed to an explanation, being too anxious 
 to pursue the details of this mad inversion of 
 all his ideas. 
 
 " He reverted to the question of weather, 
 and I tried to describe the perpetually chang- 
 ing sky, and snow, and frost, and hurricanes. 
 'But when the night comes,' he asked, 'is it 
 not cold ? ' 
 
 " I told him it was colder than by day. 
 
 " ' And does not your atmosphere freeze ? ' 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 331 
 
 " I told him not ; that it was never cold 
 enough for that, because our nights were so 
 short. 
 
 *' ' Not even liquefy ? ' 
 
 " I was about to say 'No,' but then it oc- 
 curred to me that one part at least of our 
 atmosphere, the water vapour of it, does some- 
 times liquefy and form dew, and sometimes 
 freeze and form frost — a process perfectly 
 analogous to the freezing of all the external 
 atmosphere of the moon during its longer 
 night. I made myself clear on this point, and 
 from that the Grand Lunar went on to speak 
 with me of sleep. For the need of sleep that 
 comes so regularly every twenty-four hours to 
 all things is part also of our earthly inherit- 
 ance. On the moon they rest only at rare 
 intervals, and after exceptional exertions. 
 Then I tried to describe to him the soft splen- 
 dours of a summer night, and from that I 
 passed to a description of those animals that 
 prowl by night and sleep by day. I told 
 him of lions and tigers, and here it seemed 
 as though we had come to a deadlock. For, 
 save in their waters, there are no creatures 
 in the moon not absolutely domestic and sub- 
 ject to his will, and so it has been for im- 
 memorial years. They have monstrous water 
 
332 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 creatures, but no evil beasts, and the idea of 
 anything strong and large existing ' outside * 
 in the night is very difficult for them. . . . 
 
 [The record is here too broken to transcribe 
 for the space of perhaps twenty words or more.] 
 
 " He talked with his attendants, as I sup- 
 pose, upon the strange superficiality and un- 
 reasonableness of (man), who lives on the mere 
 surface of a world, a creature of waves and 
 winds, and all the chances of space, who can- 
 not even unite to overcome the beasts that 
 prey upon his kind, and yet who dares to 
 invade another planet. During this aside I 
 sat thinking, and then at his desire I told him 
 of the different sorts of men. He searched me 
 with questions. ' And for all sorts of work 
 you have the same sort of men. But who 
 thinks ? Who governs ? ' 
 
 " I gave him an outline of the democratic 
 method. 
 
 " When I had done he ordered cooling 
 sprays upon his brow, and then requested me 
 to repeat my explanation, conceiving some- 
 thing had miscarried. 
 
 "'Do they not do different things, then?' 
 said Phi-oo. 
 
 " Some I admitted were thinkers and some 
 officials ; some hunted, some were mechanics. 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 333 
 
 some artists, some toilers. ' But aU rule,' I 
 said. 
 
 " * And have they not different shapes to fit 
 them to their different duties ? ' 
 
 " ' None that you can see,' I said, ' except, 
 perhaps, for clothes. Their minds perhaps 
 differ a little/ I reflected. 
 
 " * Their minds must differ a great deal,' 
 said the Grand Lunar, ' or they would all want 
 to do the same things.' 
 
 "In order to bring myself into a closer har- 
 mony with his preconceptions I said that his 
 surmise was right. * It was all hidden in the 
 brain,' I said ; ' but the difference was there. 
 Perhaps if one could see the minds and souls 
 of men they would be as varied and unequal 
 as the Selenites. There were great men and 
 small men, men who could reach out far and 
 wide, and men who could go swiftly ; noisy, 
 trumpet-minded men, and men who could re- 
 member without thinking. . . . [The record 
 is indistinct for three words.] 
 
 " He interrupted me to recall me to my 
 previous statement. ' But you said all men 
 rule?' he pressed. 
 
 " ' To a certain extent,' I said, and made, 
 I fear, a denser fog with my explanation. 
 
 "He reached out to a salient fact. ' Do 
 
334 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 you mean,' he asked, ' that there is no Grand 
 Earthly?' 
 
 " I thought of several people, but assured 
 him finally there was none. I, explained that 
 such autocrats and emperors as we had tried 
 upon earth had usually ended in drink, or vice, 
 or violence, and that the large and influential 
 section of the people of the earth to which I 
 belonged, the Anglo-Saxons, did not mean to 
 try that sort of thing again. At which the 
 Grand Lunar was even more amazed. 
 
 " ' But how do you keep even such wisdom 
 as you have ? ' he asked ; and I explained to 
 him the way we helped our limited [a word 
 omitted here, probably " brains "] with libraries 
 of books. I explained to him how our science 
 was growing by the united labours of innumer- 
 able little men, and on that he made no com- 
 ment save that it was evident we had mastered 
 much in spite of our social savagery, or we 
 could not have come to the moon. Yet the 
 contrast was very marked. With knowledge 
 the Selenites grew and changed ; mankind 
 stored their knowledge about them and re- 
 mained brutes — equipped. He said this . . . 
 [Here there is a short piece of the record 
 indistinct.] 
 
 "He then caused me to describe how we 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 335 
 
 went about this earth of ours, and I described 
 to him our railways and ships. For a time 
 he could not understand that we had had the 
 use of steam only one hundred years, but when 
 he did he was clearly amazed. (I may mention 
 as a singular thing that the Selenites use years 
 to count by, just as we do on earth, though 
 I can make nothing of their numeral system. 
 That, however, does not matter, because Phi-oo 
 understands ours.) From that I went on to tell 
 him that mankind had dwelt in cities only for 
 nine or ten thousand years, and that we were 
 still not united in one brotherhood, but under 
 many different forms of government. This 
 astonished the Grand Lunar very much, when 
 it was made clear to him. At first he thought 
 we referred merely to administrative areas. 
 
 " ' Our States and Empires are still the rawest 
 sketches of what order will some day be,' I 
 said, and so I came to tell him. . . . [At this 
 point a length of record that probably repre- 
 sents thirty or forty words is totally illegible.] 
 
 " The Grand Lunar was greatly impressed 
 by the folly of men in clinging to the incon- 
 venience of diverse tongues. ' They want 
 to communicate, and yet not to communicate,' 
 he said, and then for a long time he questioned 
 me closely concerning war. 
 
336 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 "He was at first perplexed and incredulous. 
 * You mean to say,' he asked, seeking confirma- 
 tion, ' that you run about over the surface of 
 your world — this world, whose riches you have 
 scarcely begun to scrape — killing one another 
 for beasts to eat ? ' 
 
 " I told him that was perfectly correct. 
 
 " He asked for particulars to assist his 
 imagination. ' But do not ships and your 
 poor little cities get injured ? ' he asked, and 
 I found the waste of property and conveniences 
 seemed to impress him almost as much as the 
 killing. * Tell me more,' said the Cirand Lunar ; 
 ' make me see pictures. I cannot conceive 
 these things.' 
 
 "And so, for a space, though something loth, 
 I told him the story of earthly War. 
 
 " I told him of the first orders and cere- 
 monies of war, of warnings and ultimatums, 
 and the marshalling and marching of troops. 
 I gave him an idea of manoeuvres and positions 
 and battle joined. I told him of sieges and 
 assaults, of starvation and hardship in trenches, 
 and of sentinels freezing in the snow. I told 
 him of routs and surprises, and desperate last 
 stands and faint hopes, and the pitiless pursuit 
 of fugitives and the dead upon the field. I 
 told, too, of the past, of invasions and mas- 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 337 
 
 sacres, of the Huns and Tartars, and the wars 
 of Mahomet and the Caliphs, and of the Cru- 
 sades. And as I went on, and Phi-oo trans- 
 lated, the Selenltes cooed and murmured in 
 a steadily intensified emotion. 
 
 *' I told them an ironclad could fire a shot 
 of a ton twelve miles, and go through 20 ft. 
 of iron — and how we could steer torpedoes 
 under water. I went on to describe a Maxim 
 gun in action, and what I could imagine of the 
 Battle of Colenso. The Grand Lunar was so 
 incredulous that he interrupted the translation of 
 what I had said in order to have my verification 
 of my account. They particularly doubted my 
 description of the men cheering and rejoicing 
 as they went into (? battle). 
 
 *' * But surely they do not like it ! ' translated 
 Phi-oo. 
 
 " I assured them men of my race considered 
 battle the most glorious experience of life, at 
 which the whole assembly was stricken with 
 amazement. 
 
 "'But what good is this war?' asked the 
 Grand Lunar, sticking to his theme. 
 
 "'Oh! as {ov good!' said I ; ' it thins the 
 population ! ' 
 
 " ' But why should there be a need — ? ' . . . 
 
 "There came a pause, the cooling sprays 
 
338 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 impinged upon his brow, and then he spoke 
 
 again." 
 
 At this point a series of undulations that have been 
 apparent as a perplexing complication as far back as Cavor's 
 description of the silence that fell before the first speaking 
 of the Grand Lunar become confusingly predominant in 
 the record. These undulations are evidently the result 
 of radiations proceeding from a lunar source, and their 
 persistent approximation to the alternating signals of Cavor 
 is curiously suggestive of some operator deliberately seeking 
 to mix them in with his message and render it illegible. 
 At first they are small and regular, so that with a little care 
 and the loss of very few words we have been able to dis- 
 entangle Cavor's message ; then they become broad and 
 larger, then suddenly they are irregular, with an irregularity 
 that gives the effect at last of some one scribbling through 
 a line of writing. For a long time nothing can be made of 
 this madly zigzagging trace ; then quite abruptly the inter- 
 ruption ceases, leaves a few words clear, and then resumes 
 and continues for all the rest of the message, completely 
 obliterating whatever Cavor was attempting to transmit. 
 Why, if this is indeed a deliberate intervention, the Selenites 
 should have preferred to let Cavor go on transmitting his 
 message in happy ignorance of their obliteration of its 
 record, when it was clearly quite in their power and much 
 more easy and convenient for them to stop his proceedings 
 at any time, is a problem to which I can contribute nothing. 
 The thing seems to have happened so, and that is all I can 
 say. This last rag of his description of the Grand Lunar 
 begins in mid-sentence : — 
 
 ** interrogated me very closely upon my 
 secret. I was able in a little while to get to 
 an understanding with them, and at last to 
 
THE GRAND LUNAR 339 
 
 elucidate what has been a puzzle to me ever 
 since I realised the vastness of their science, 
 namely, how it is they themselves have never 
 discovered * Cavorite.' I find they know of It 
 as a theoretical substance, but they have always 
 regarded it as a practical impossibility, because 
 for some reason there is no helium In the moon, 
 and helium " 
 
 Across the last letters of helium slashes the resumption 
 of that obliterating trace. Note that word "secret," for 
 on that, and that alone, I base my interpretation of the 
 message that follows, the last message, as both Mr. Wen- 
 digee and myself now believe it to be, that he is ever 
 likely to send us. 
 
XXVI 
 
 THE LAST MESSAGE CAVOR SENT TO THE EARTH 
 
 In this unsatisfactory manner the penultimate 
 message of Cavor dies out. One seems to see 
 him away there in the blue obscurity amidst his 
 apparatus intently signalling us to the last, all 
 unaware of the curtain of confusion that drops 
 between us ; all unaware, too, of the final dangers 
 that even then must have been creeping upon 
 him. His disastrous want of vulgar common 
 sense had utterly betrayed him. He had talked 
 of war, he had talked of all the strength and 
 irrational violence of men, of their insatiable 
 aggressions, their tireless futility of conflict. 
 He had filled the whole moon world with this 
 impression of our race, and then I think it is 
 plain that he made the most fatal admission 
 that upon himself alone hung the possibility 
 — at least for a long time — of any further men 
 reaching the moon. The line the cold, inhuman 
 reason of the moon would take seems plain 
 enough to me, and a suspicion of it, and then 
 
THE LAST MESSAGE CAVOR SENT 341 
 
 perhaps some sudden sharp realisation of it, 
 must have come to him. One imagines him 
 going about the moon with the remorse of this 
 fatal indiscretion growing in his mind. Dur- 
 ing a certain time I am inclined to guess the 
 Grand Lunar was deliberating the new situa- 
 tion, and for all that time Cavor may have 
 gone as free as ever he had gone. But 
 obstacles of some sort prevented his getting 
 to his electro-magnetic apparatus again after 
 that message I have just given. For some 
 days we received nothing. Perhaps he was 
 having fresh audiences, and trying to evade 
 his previous admissions. Who can hope to 
 guess ? 
 
 And then suddenly, like a cry in the night, 
 like a cry that is followed by a stillness, came 
 the last message. It is the briefest fragment, 
 the broken beginnings of two sentences. 
 
 The first was : "I was mad to let the Grand 
 Lunar know " 
 
 There was an interval of perhaps a minute. 
 One imagines some interruption from without. 
 A departure from the instrument — a dreadful 
 hesitation among the looming masses of appa- 
 ratus in that dim, blue-lit cavern — a sudden 
 rush back to it, full of a resolve that came 
 too late. Then, as if it were hastily trans- 
 
342 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON 
 
 mitted, came : " Cavorite made as follows : 
 take " 
 
 There followed one word, a quite unmeaning 
 word as it stands : " uless." 
 
 And that is all. 
 
 It may be he made a hasty attempt to spell 
 "useless" when his fate was close upon him. 
 Whatever it was that was happening about that 
 apparatus we cannot tell. Whatever it was we 
 shall never, I know, receive another message 
 from the moon. For my own part a vivid 
 dream has come to my help, and I see, almost 
 as plainly as though I had seen it in actual 
 fact, a blue -lit shadowy dishevelled Cavor 
 struggling in the grip of these insect Selenites, 
 struggling ever more desperately and hope- 
 lessly as they press upon him, shouting, ex- 
 postulating, perhaps even at last fighting, and 
 being forced backward step by step out of all 
 speech or sign of his fellows, for evermore into 
 the Unknown — into the dark, into that silence 
 that has no end. . . . 
 
 GEORGE NBWNSS, LIMITED, LONDON. 
 
iJ-J* 3«fc 
 
 A- ^'' 
 
--^i^iv 
 
 GLENN NEGLEY 
 

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