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The First Men in the Moon Chapter 7 - Sunrise on the Moon. · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter seven of the First Men in the Moon. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville,
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  Speaker 1: South Carolina. The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter seven, Sunrise on the Moon. As we saw at first,
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  Speaker 1: it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes. We
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  Speaker 1: were in an enormous amphitheater, a vast circular plane. The
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  Speaker 1: floor of the giant crater, Its cliff like walls closed
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  Speaker 1: us in on every side. From the westward. The light
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  Speaker 1: of the unseen sun fell upon them, reaching to the
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  Speaker 1: very foot of the cliff, and showed a disordered escarpment
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  Speaker 1: of drab and grayish rock, lined here and there with
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  Speaker 1: banks and crevices of snow. This was perhaps a dozen
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  Speaker 1: miles away, but at first no intervening atmosphere diminished in
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  Speaker 1: the slightest the minutely detailed brilliancy with which these things
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  Speaker 1: glared at us. They stood out, clear and dazzling against
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  Speaker 1: the background of starry blackness that seemed to our earthly
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  Speaker 1: eyes rather a gloriously spangled velvet curtain than the spaciousness
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  Speaker 1: of the sky. The eastward cliff was at first merely
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  Speaker 1: a starless salvage to the starry dome. No rosy flush,
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  Speaker 1: no creeping pallor announced the commencing day. Only the corona,
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  Speaker 1: the zodiacal light, a huge cone shaped luminous haze pointing
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  Speaker 1: up towards the splendor of the morning star, warned us
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  Speaker 1: of the imminent nearness of the sun. Whatever light was
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  Speaker 1: about us was reflected by the westward cliffs. It showed
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  Speaker 1: a huge, undulating plain, cold and gray, a gray that
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  Speaker 1: deepened eastward into the absolute raven darkness of the cliff's shadow.
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  Speaker 1: Innumerable round mounted gray summits, ghostly hummocks, billows of snowy substance,
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  Speaker 1: stretching crest beyond crest into the remote obscurity, gave us
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  Speaker 1: our first inkling of the distance of the crater wall.
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  Speaker 1: These hummocks looked like snow. At the time, I thought
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  Speaker 1: they were snow, but they were not. They were mounds
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  Speaker 1: and masses of frozen air. So it was at first
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  Speaker 1: and then sudden, swift and amazing came the lunar day.
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  Speaker 1: The sunlight had crept down the cliff it touched the
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  Speaker 1: drifted masses at its base, and incontinently came striding with
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  Speaker 1: seven league boots towards us. The distant cliffs seemed to
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  Speaker 1: shift and quiver, and at the touch of the dawn,
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  Speaker 1: a reek of gray vapor poured upward from the crater floor,
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  Speaker 1: whirls and puffs and drifting wraiths of gray, thicker and
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  Speaker 1: broader and denser, until at last the whole westward plain
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  Speaker 1: was steaming like a way handkerchief held before the fire,
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  Speaker 1: and the westward cliffs were no more than refracted glare.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond it is air, said Cavor. It must be air,
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  Speaker 1: or it would not rise like this at the mere
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  Speaker 1: touch of a sunbeam. And at this pace he peered upwards. Look,
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  Speaker 1: he said what I asked. In the sky already on
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  Speaker 1: the blackness, a little touch of blue. See the stars
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  Speaker 1: seem larger, and the little ones, and all those dim
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  Speaker 1: nebulosities we saw in empty space, they are hidden swiftly, steadily.
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  Speaker 1: The day approached us Gray's Summit. After Gray's Summit was
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  Speaker 1: overtaken by the blaze and turned to a smoking white intensity,
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  Speaker 1: at last there was nothing to the west of us
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  Speaker 1: but a bank of surging fog, the tumultuous advance and
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  Speaker 1: ascent of cloudy haze. The distant cliff had receded farther
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  Speaker 1: and farther, had loomed and changed through the world, and
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  Speaker 1: foundered and vanished at last in its confusion. Nearer came
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  Speaker 1: that steaming advance, nearer and nearer, coming as fast as
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  Speaker 1: the shadow of a cloud. Before the southwest wind. About
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  Speaker 1: us rose a thin, anticipatory haze. Kavor gripped my arm.
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  Speaker 1: What I said, look the sunrise the sun. He turned
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  Speaker 1: me about and pointed to the brow of the eastward
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  Speaker 1: cliff looming above the haze about us, scarce lighter than
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  Speaker 1: the darkness of the sky. But now its line was
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  Speaker 1: marked by strange reddish shapes, tongues of vermilion flame that
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  Speaker 1: writhed and danced. I fancied it must be spirals of
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  Speaker 1: vapor that had caught the light and made this crest
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  Speaker 1: of fiery tongues against the sky. But indeed it was
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  Speaker 1: the solar prominences. I saw a crown of fire about
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  Speaker 1: the sun that is forever hidden from earthly eyes by
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  Speaker 1: our atmospheric veil. And then the sun steadily, inevitably came
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  Speaker 1: a brilliant line, came a thin edge of intolerable effulgence
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  Speaker 1: that took a circular shape, became a bow, became a
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  Speaker 1: blazing scepter, and hurled a shaft of heat at us,
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  Speaker 1: as though it was a spear. It seemed verily to
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  Speaker 1: stab my eyes. I cried aloud and turned about, blinded,
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  Speaker 1: groping for my blanket beneath the bail. And with that
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  Speaker 1: incandescence came a sound, the first sound that had reached
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  Speaker 1: us from without since we left the earth, a hissing
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  Speaker 1: and rustling, the stormy trailing of the aerial garment of
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  Speaker 1: the advancing day. And with the coming of the sound
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  Speaker 1: and the light, the sphere lurched and blinded and dazzled.
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  Speaker 1: We staggered helplessly against each other. It lurched again, and
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  Speaker 1: the hissing grew louder. I had shut my eyes per force,
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  Speaker 1: was making clumsy efforts to cover my head with my blanket,
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  Speaker 1: and this second lurch sent me helplessly off my feet.
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  Speaker 1: I fell against the bail, and opening my eyes, had
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  Speaker 1: a momentary glimpse of the air just outside our glass.
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  Speaker 1: It was running. It was boiling, like snow into which
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  Speaker 1: a white hot rod is thrust. What had been solid
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  Speaker 1: air had suddenly, at the touch of the sun, become
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  Speaker 1: a paste, a mud, a slushy liquefaction that hissed and
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  Speaker 1: bubbled into gas. There came a still more violent whirl
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  Speaker 1: of the sphere, and we had clutched one another. In
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  Speaker 1: another moment we were spun about again. Round we went
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  Speaker 1: and over, and then I was on all fours. The
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  Speaker 1: lunar dawn had hold of us. It meant to show us,
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  Speaker 1: little men, what the moon could do with us. I
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  Speaker 1: caught a second glimpse of things without puffs of vapor,
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  Speaker 1: half liquid slush, excavated, sliding, falling slagh. We dropped into darkness.
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  Speaker 1: I went down with Cavor's knees in my chest. Then
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  Speaker 1: he seemed to fly away from me, and for a
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  Speaker 1: moment I lay with all the breath out of my body,
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  Speaker 1: staring upward. A toppling crag of the melting stuff had
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  Speaker 1: splashed over us, buried us, and now it thinned and
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  Speaker 1: boiled off us. I saw the bubbles dancing on the
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  Speaker 1: glass above. I heard Cavor exclaiming feebly. Then some huge
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  Speaker 1: landslip in the thawing air had caught us, and spluttering expostulation.
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  Speaker 1: We began to roll down a slope, rolling faster and faster,
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  Speaker 1: leaping crevasses and rebounding from banks, faster and faster westward
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  Speaker 1: into the white, hot, boiling tumult of the lunar day.
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  Speaker 1: Clutching at one another, we spun about, pitched this way
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  Speaker 1: and that, our bale of packages leaping at us, pounding
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  Speaker 1: at us. We collided, We gripped, We were torn asunder.
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  Speaker 1: Our heads met, and the whole universe burst into fiery
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  Speaker 1: darts and stars. On the Earth, we should have smashed
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  Speaker 1: one another a dozen times. But on the moon, luckily
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  Speaker 1: for us, our weight was only one sixth of what
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  Speaker 1: it is terrestrially, and we fell very mercifully. I recall
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  Speaker 1: a sensation of utter sickness, a feeling as if my
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  Speaker 1: brain were upside down inside my skull. And then something
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  Speaker 1: was at work upon my face, Some thin feelers worried
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  Speaker 1: my ears. Then I discovered the brilliance of the landscape
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  Speaker 1: around was mitigated by blue spectacles. Kavor bent over me,
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  Speaker 1: and I saw his face upside down, his eyes also
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  Speaker 1: protected by tinted goggles. His breath came irregularly, and his
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  Speaker 1: lip was bleeding from a bruise, better, he said, wiping
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  Speaker 1: the blood with the back of his hand. Everything seemed
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  Speaker 1: swaying for a space, but that was simply my giddiness.
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  Speaker 1: I perceived that he had closed some of the shutters
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  Speaker 1: in the outer sphere to save me from the direct
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  Speaker 1: blaze of the sun. I was aware that everything about
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  Speaker 1: us was very brilliant, Lord, I gasped, but this I
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  Speaker 1: craned my neck to see. I perceived there was a
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  Speaker 1: blinding glare outside, an utter change from the gloomy darkness
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  Speaker 1: of our first impressions. Have I been insensible long? I asked,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. The chronometer is broken some little time,
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  Speaker 1: my dear Chap, I have been afraid. I lay for
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  Speaker 1: a space. Taking this in, I saw his face still
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  Speaker 1: bore evidences of emotion. For a while, I said nothing.
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  Speaker 1: I passed an inquisitive hand over my contusions and surveyed
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  Speaker 1: his face for similar damages. The back of my right
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  Speaker 1: hand had suffered most and was ginless and raw. My
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  Speaker 1: forehead was bruised and it bled. He handed me a
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  Speaker 1: little measure with some of the restorative I forget the
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  Speaker 1: name of it he had brought with us. After a time,
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  Speaker 1: I felt a little better. I began to stretch my
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  Speaker 1: limbs carefully. Soon I could talk. It wouldn't have done,
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  Speaker 1: I said, as though there had been no interval. No,
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  Speaker 1: it wouldn't, he thought, his hands hanging over his knees.
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  Speaker 1: He peered through the glass and then stared at me.
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  Speaker 1: Good Lord, he said, No, What has happened? I asked,
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  Speaker 1: after a pause. Have we jumped to the tropics? It
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  Speaker 1: was as I expected. This air has evaporated. If it
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  Speaker 1: is air at any rate, it has evaporated, And the
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  Speaker 1: surface of the moon is showing. We are lying on
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  Speaker 1: a bank of earthy rock. Here and there bare soil
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  Speaker 1: is exposed, a queer sort of soil. It occurred to
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  Speaker 1: him that it was unnecessary to explain. He assisted me
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  Speaker 1: into a sitting position, and I could see with my
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  Speaker 1: own eyes. End of chapter