Lost on the Moon, Roy Rockwood [best reads of all time .txt] 📗

CHAPTER XXVI

SEEKING FOOD

 

“Well, if this isn’t the limit!” burst out Jack, when he had stood and

contemplated the silent city for several moments, which also his

companions did. “After all our wanderings and troubles, when we do find

a place, it isn’t any good to us. I don’t suppose there is a square

meal in the whole town! Isn’t it wonderful, though—every person turned

to stone!”

 

“Wonderful!” gasped old Andy. “I never saw anything like it in all my

life! What do you reckon did it, boys?”

 

“The same thing that turned the man in the hut, and the one Washington

thought was a ghost, into stone,” answered Mark. “There was a rain of

some lime-water, or a liquid charged with similar chemicals, and the

people were turned to rocks.”

 

It was uncanny, and for a moment they hesitated on the edge of the

city, which lay in a sort of cup-like valley, surrounded on all sides

by towering peaks of the moon mountains. The bridge over which they had

come afforded the only entrance to the city, and in times of war

(provided the inhabitants of the moon ever fought) the passage must

have been well guarded.

 

It was evidently a time of peace when the calamity that turned the

inhabitants to stone came upon them, for only one soldier was in the

guard hut—doubtless being there merely to give an alarm, or possibly

to keep out undesirable strangers.

 

“Well, are we going to stand here all day?” asked Jack of his

companions, when they had contemplated the silent city for five minutes

longer.

 

“I say, let’s go down there and see what we can find. I’m getting

hungry.”

 

“There’ll be nothing there to eat,” declared Mark. “If there ever was

anything, it’s now stone. Think of a loaf of bread like a brick, and a

chunk of meat like some great rock!”

 

“Let’s go down, anyhow,” added Andy, and they advanced.

 

As they got down into the streets, the weird effect came over them more

strongly. It was as if they had suddenly entered some large town, and

at their advent every living person had been turned into an image.

 

“Wonderful, wonderful!” murmured Jack.

 

“I’ve read of the uncovering of the ancient buried cities, and how they

found women in the kitchen baking bread, and men at their work, but

this goes ahead of that, for here the people are not dust—they are

statues!”

 

“It certainly is wonderful,” agreed Mark. “I only wish the two

professors could see this. They could write several books about it.

This proves that the moon was once inhabited, though it is dead now.

The projectile should have come to this part of the moon.”

 

“Maybe they’ll bring it here, when we get back and tell them what we’ve

seen,” suggested Jack.

 

“Yes, if we ever do get back,” went on his chum, with a return of his

gloomy thoughts.

 

The strangeness of the scenes all about them can scarcely be imagined.

Think of looking at a city street teeming with life, men and women

hurrying here and there, dogs running about, children at their play,

and then suddenly seeing that same street become as dead as some

mountain, with the people represented as stones on that same mountain,

and you can get some idea of what our friends looked upon.

 

Here was a woman, looking in a store window, probably at some bargains,

though even the very window and store itself was now stone, and the

woman was like a block of marble. Near her was a little child, also

turned to stone, and there were a number of men, standing together on a

street corner as if they had been talking politics when the calamity

overtook them.

 

There were shops where the workers had been turned to stone at their

benches, there were houses at the windows of which stone faces peered

out, and there were parks on the benches of which sat men, women and

children, stiff and solid—creatures of stone! Truly it was a city of

the dead!

 

The wanderers walked about, seeing new wonders on every side. They

spoke in whispers at times, as though at the sound of a loud voice the

silent ones would awaken and resume the occupations or pleasures they

had left off centuries ago.

 

Another strange part of it was that the people were not so very

different from those of the earth. They were exactly the same in size

and feature, but their clothing, as nearly as could be told from the

stone garments, seemed of a bygone fashion, such as was in vogue

hundreds of years ago. There were no horses observed, though there were

stone dogs and cats, and the shops given over to the sale of food

contained in the windows what seemed to be chunks of meat, loaves of

bread, and pies and cakes, though now they were only pieces of rock.

 

“It’s just as if one of our cities and the people in it should be

suddenly petrified,” said Mark. “It’s almost like the earth up here;

only they don’t seem to have gotten to trolley cars yet.”

 

“Maybe they would if the moon hadn’t cooled off when it did, and killed

them all,” suggested Jack. “But, I say, let’s get down to something

more practical than theorizing.”

 

“What, for instance?” asked Mark.

 

“Looking for something to eat,” went on Jack. “I’m nearly starved, and

I have only half a sandwich left. I want to eat it, yet, if I do, I

don’t know where I’m going to get more. And as for water, I’d give a

handful of diamonds, if I had them, for half a glass of even warm

water.”

 

“Yes, we do need food and water badly,” said Andy.

 

“Then let’s look for it,” suggested Jack. “If we can find food in any

of these houses or shops, I don’t believe the people will care if we

take it.”

 

“Find food here?” cried Mark. “Why, you must be crazy! All the food is

turned to stone, and what isn’t would be spoiled! Why, no one has been

alive here for thousands and thousands of years!”

 

“That’s nothing,” asserted Jack. “Don’t you remember reading how, in

the arctic regions, they have found the bodies of prehistoric elephants

and mastodons encased in blocks of ice, where they have been for

centuries. The meat is perfectly preserved because of the cold. And

what of the grains of wheat they find in the coffins of Egyptian

mummies? Some of that is three thousand years old, yet it grows when

they plant it, and they can make bread of it.

 

“Now, maybe we can find some wheat or something to eat in some of these

houses. If there’s meat, it will be perfectly preserved, for the

temperature is below freezing.”

 

“That may be,” admitted Mark, convinced, in spite of himself, “but it’s

turned to stone, I tell you.”

 

“The outside part may be,” said Jack, “but if we can crack off the

outside layer of stone we may find some good meat inside. I’m going to

look, anyhow.”

 

“That’s not a bad idea!” cried Andy with enthusiasm. “Think of having a

loaf of bread and some beefsteak thousands of years old. I suppose they

had beefsteak here,” he added cautiously.

 

“Some kind of meat, anyhow,” agreed Jack. “Well, let’s look for a place

that was once a restaurant or hotel, and we’ll see what luck we have.

Come on.”

 

They walked along the silent streets, with their silent occupants, and

finally Jack found what he was seeking. It was an eating place, to

judge by the appearance, and at tables inside were seated stone men and

women.

 

“Back to the kitchen!” cried Jack with enthusiasm. “There’s where we’ll

find food, if there is any!”

 

“It’ll be all stone,” declared Mark, but he and Andy followed Jack.

 

They came to the place where was what appeared to be a stove. It was

more like a brick oven, however, than a modern range, though in dishes

that were now stone something was being cooked when the catastrophe

occurred.

 

“There’s meat, I’ll wager!” cried Jack, pointing to several objects on

a table. They looked like chunks of beef, but when Mark struck them

with the end of his life-torch they gave forth a sound as if a rock had

been tapped.

 

“What did I tell you?” Mark asked, “Nothing but rocks. And the bread is

also a stone,” he added bitterly.

 

“You’re right,” admitted Jack, with a sigh. “And I’m getting hungrier

than ever.” They all were. For days they had been without sufficient

food, and now, when it was almost within their reach, they were denied

it by this curious trick of nature. With pale and wan faces they gazed

at each other, wetting their parched lips, for they had some time since

taken the last of their scant supply of water, and they were very

thirsty.

 

“I guess it’s all up with us,” murmured Mark. “We’ll soon be like these

poor people here—blocks of stone.”

 

“If we only could change this meat back into it’s original shape,”

spoke Jack musingly, smiting his fist against a block of beef.

 

Suddenly Andy uttered a cry.

 

“I have it!” he fairly shouted.

 

“What?” asked Jack.

 

“I have a plan to get meat out of this hunk of stone!”

 

The two boys gazed at the old hunter as though they thought he had lost

his reason, but, chuckling gleefully, Andy took from his pouch several

cartridges, and proceeded to remove the wads, and pour the powder from

the paper shells out on the stone table.

 

“I’ll have some meat for us,” he muttered. “We shan’t starve now!”