The First Men in the Moon, H. Wells [latest books to read .TXT] 📗

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.

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 necessary 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 possession 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 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 sensations.’ And then came a thought into my head. For the moment it did not seem a particularly appalling thought, simply a natural question arising out of the situation.

‘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 fìnger 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 unmeaning 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, south, east, and west spread an identical monotony of unfamiliar forms. And somewhere, 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 suddenly, ‘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.’

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 interminable 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 confounded 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 recognising 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 unaccountable hunger mingled with our infinite perplexity. And even as we stood there, confused