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The First Men in the Moon Chapter 23 - An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Cavor · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty three of The First Men in the Moon.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. This recording is by Mark Smith
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  Speaker 1: of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The First Man in the Moon
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  Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Chapter twenty three an abstract of
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  Speaker 1: the six messages first received from mister Cavour. The two
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  Speaker 1: earlier messages of mister Cavour may very well be reserved
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  Speaker 1: for that larger volume. They simply tell, with greater brevity,
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  Speaker 1: and with a difference in several details that is interesting,
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  Speaker 1: but not of any vital importance, the bare facts of
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  Speaker 1: the making of the sphere in our departure from the world.
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  Speaker 1: Throughout Cavor speaks of me as a man who is dead,
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  Speaker 1: but with a curious change of temper as he approaches
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  Speaker 1: our landing on the Moon, Poor Bedford, he says of
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  Speaker 1: me and this poor young man, and he blames himself
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  Speaker 1: for inducing a young man, by no means, while equipped
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  Speaker 1: for such adventures, to leave a planet on which he
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  Speaker 1: was indisputably fitted to succeed on so precarious a mission.
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  Speaker 1: I think he underrates the part my energy and practical
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  Speaker 1: capacity played in bringing about the realization of his theoretical sphere.
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  Speaker 1: We arrived, he says, with no more account of our
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  Speaker 1: passage through space than if we had made a journey
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  Speaker 1: of common occurrence in a railway train. And then he
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  Speaker 1: becomes increasingly unfair to me. Unfair, indeed to an extent
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  Speaker 1: I should not have expected in a man trained in
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  Speaker 1: the search for truth. Looking back over my previously written
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  Speaker 1: account of these things, I must insist that I have
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  Speaker 1: been altogether juster to Cavore than he has been to me.
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  Speaker 1: I've extenuated little and suppressed nothing, but his account is
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  Speaker 1: it speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our
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  Speaker 1: circumstances and surroundings, great loss of weight, attenuated but highly
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  Speaker 1: oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular effort,
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  Speaker 1: rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores. Lurid Sky
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  Speaker 1: was exciting my companion unduly. On the Moon, his character
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  Speaker 1: seemed to deteriorate. He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome In
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  Speaker 1: a little while, his folly in devouring some gigantic vesicles,
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  Speaker 1: and his consequent intoxication led to our capture by the
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  Speaker 1: Selenites before we had had the slightest opportunity of properly
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  Speaker 1: observing their ways. He says, you observe nothing of his
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  Speaker 1: own in session to these same vesicles. And it goes
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  Speaker 1: on from that point to say that we came to
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  Speaker 1: a difficult passage with them, and bed for mistaking certain
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  Speaker 1: gestures of theirs, pretty gestures they were, gave way to
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  Speaker 1: a panic violence. He ran amok, killed three, and perforce
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  Speaker 1: I had to flee with him after the outrage. Subsequently
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  Speaker 1: we fought with a number who endeavored to bar our way,
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  Speaker 1: and slew seven or eight more. It says much for
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  Speaker 1: the tolerance of these beings that on my recapture I
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  Speaker 1: was not instantly slain. We made our way to the
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  Speaker 1: exterior and separated in the crater of our arrival to
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  Speaker 1: increase our chances of recovering our sphere. But presently I
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  Speaker 1: came upon a body of Selenites, led by two who
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  Speaker 1: were curiously different even in form, from any of these
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  Speaker 1: we had seen hitherto, with larger heads and bodies, and
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  Speaker 1: much more elaborately wrapped about, and after evading them for
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  Speaker 1: some time, I fell into a crevasse, cut my head
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  Speaker 1: rather badly and displaced my patella, and, finding crawling very painful,
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  Speaker 1: decided to surrender if they would still permit me to
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  Speaker 1: do so. This they did, and, perceiving my helpless condition,
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  Speaker 1: carried me with them again into the moon and of Bedford.
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  Speaker 1: I have heard or seen nothing more, no, nor so
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  Speaker 1: far as I can gather any celennight, either the night
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  Speaker 1: overtook him in the crater, or else, which is more probable.
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  Speaker 1: He found the sphere, and, desiring to steal a march
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  Speaker 1: upon me, made off with it. Only I fear to
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  Speaker 1: find it uncontrollable and to meet a more lingering fade
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  Speaker 1: in outer space. And with that Kavor dismisses me and
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  Speaker 1: goes on more interesting topics. I dislike the idea of
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  Speaker 1: seeming to use my position as his editor to deflect
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  Speaker 1: his story in my own interest, but I am obliged
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  Speaker 1: to protest here against the turn he gives these occurrences.
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  Speaker 1: He said nothing about that gasping message on the blood
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  Speaker 1: stained paper, in which he told or attempted to tell
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  Speaker 1: a very different story. The dignified self surrender is an
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  Speaker 1: altogether new view of the affair that has come to him.
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  Speaker 1: I must insist, since he began to feel secure among
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  Speaker 1: the lunar people. And as for the stealing a march conception,
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  Speaker 1: I am quite willing to let the reader decide between
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  Speaker 1: us on what he has before him. I know I
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  Speaker 1: am not a model man, I have made no pretense
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  Speaker 1: to be. But am I that? However, that is the
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  Speaker 1: sum of my wrongs. From this point I can edit
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  Speaker 1: Cavor with an untroubled mind, for he mentions me no more.
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  Speaker 1: It would seem the Selenites who had come upon him
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  Speaker 1: carried him to some point in the interior, down a
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  Speaker 1: great shaft by means of what he describes as a
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  Speaker 1: sort of balloon. We gather from the rather confused passage
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  Speaker 1: in which he describes this, and from a number of
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  Speaker 1: chance illusions and hints and other and subsequent messages, that
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  Speaker 1: this great shaft is one of an enormous system of
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  Speaker 1: artificial shafts that run each from what is called a
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  Speaker 1: lunar crater downwards for very nearly one hundred miles towards
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  Speaker 1: the central portion of our satellite. These shafts communicate by
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  Speaker 1: transverse tunnels. They throw out abysmal caverns and expand into
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  Speaker 1: great globular places. The whole of the Moon's substance, for
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  Speaker 1: one hundred miles inward, indeed, is a mere sponge of rock. Partly,
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  Speaker 1: says Cavor, this sponginess is natural, but very large. It
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  Speaker 1: is due to the enormous industry of the Selenites in
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  Speaker 1: the past, the enormous circular mounds of the excavated rock
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  Speaker 1: and earth. It is that formed those great circles about
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  Speaker 1: the tunnels known to earthly astronomers, misled by a false
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  Speaker 1: analogy as volcanoes. It was down this shaft they took
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  Speaker 1: him in this sort of balloon he speaks of, at
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  Speaker 1: first into an inky blackness, and then into a region
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  Speaker 1: of continually increasing phosphorescence. Cavor's dispatches show him to be
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  Speaker 1: curiously regardless of detail for a scientific man. But we
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  Speaker 1: gather that this light was due to the streams and
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  Speaker 1: cascades of water, no doubt containing some phosphorescent organism that
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  Speaker 1: flowed ever more abundantly downward towards the central Sea. And
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  Speaker 1: as he descended, he says, the Selenites also became luminous,
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  Speaker 1: and at last, far below him, he saw, as it were,
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  Speaker 1: a lake of heatless fire, the waters of the central
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  Speaker 1: Sea glowing and eddying, and strange perturbation like luminous blue
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  Speaker 1: milk that is just on the boil. This lunar sea,
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  Speaker 1: says Cavore in a later passage, is not a stagnant ocean.
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  Speaker 1: A solar tide sends it in a perpetual flow around
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  Speaker 1: the lunar axis, and strange storms and boilings and rushings
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  Speaker 1: of its waters occur, and at times cold winds and
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  Speaker 1: thunderings that ascend out of it into the busy ways
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  Speaker 1: of the great nd Hill above. It is only when
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  Speaker 1: the water is in motion that it gives out light.
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  Speaker 1: In its rare seasons of calm, it is black commonly
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  Speaker 1: when one sees it. Its waters rise and fall in
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  Speaker 1: an oily swell, and flakes and big rafts of shining,
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  Speaker 1: bubbly foam drift with the sluggish, faintly glowing current. The
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  Speaker 1: Selenites navigate its cavernous straits and lagoons in little shallow
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  Speaker 1: boats of a canoe like shape. And even before my
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  Speaker 1: journey to the galleries about the Grand Lunar who is
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  Speaker 1: master of the Moon, I was permitted to make a
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  Speaker 1: brief excursion on its waters. The caverns and passages are
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  Speaker 1: naturally very tortuous. A large proportion of these ways are
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  Speaker 1: known only to expert pilots among the fishermen, and not
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  Speaker 1: infrequently Selenites are lost forever in their labyrinths. In their
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  Speaker 1: remoter recesses, I am told strange creatures lurk, some of
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  Speaker 1: them terrible and dangerous creatures that all the science of
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  Speaker 1: the Moon has been unable to exterminate. There is particularly
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  Speaker 1: the rapha, an inextricable mass of clutching tentacles that one
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  Speaker 1: hacks to pieces only to multiply, And the sea, a
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  Speaker 1: darting creature that is never seen so subtly and suddenly
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  Speaker 1: does it slay. He gives us a gleam of description.
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  Speaker 1: I was reminded on this excursion of what I have
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  Speaker 1: read of the Mammoth caves. If only I had had
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  Speaker 1: a yellow flambeaux instead of the pervading blue light, and
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  Speaker 1: a solid looking boatman with an oar instead of a
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  Speaker 1: scuttle faced Stelenite working an engine at the back of
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  Speaker 1: the canoe, I could have imagined I had suddenly got
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  Speaker 1: back to Earth. The rocks about us were very various,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes black, sometimes pale, blue and veined, and once they
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  Speaker 1: flashed and glittered, as though we had come into a
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  Speaker 1: mine of sapphires. And below one saw the ghostly phosphorescent
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  Speaker 1: fishes flash and vanish in the hardly less phosphorescent deep.
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  Speaker 1: Then presently a long ultramarine vista down the turgid stream
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  Speaker 1: of one of the channels of traffic and a landing stage,
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  Speaker 1: and then perhaps a glimpse up the enormous, crowded shaft
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  Speaker 1: of one of the vertical ways. In one great place,
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  Speaker 1: heavy with glistening stalactites, a number of boats were fishing.
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  Speaker 1: We went alongside one of these and watched the long
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  Speaker 1: armed selenites winding in a net. They were little hunchbacked
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  Speaker 1: insects with very strong arms, short bandy legs, and crinkled
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  Speaker 1: face masks. As they pulled at it. That net seemed
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  Speaker 1: the heaviest thing I had come upon in the moon.
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  Speaker 1: It was loaded with weights, no doubt of gold, and
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  Speaker 1: it took a long time to draw, for in those
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  Speaker 1: waters the larger and more edible fish lurked deep. The
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  Speaker 1: fish in the net came up like a blue moonrise,
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  Speaker 1: a blaze of darting tossing blue. Among their catch was
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  Speaker 1: a many tenticulate, evil eyed, black thing, ferociously active, whose
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  Speaker 1: appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which, with
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  Speaker 1: quick nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of
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  Speaker 1: little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and
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  Speaker 1: writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold
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  Speaker 1: of me, I dreamt again and again of that bitter,
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  Speaker 1: furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the
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  Speaker 1: unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant thing
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  Speaker 1: of all the living creatures I have yet seen in
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  Speaker 1: this world. Inside the Moon, the surface of the sea
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  Speaker 1: must be very nearly two hundred miles, if not more,
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  Speaker 1: below the level of the Moon's exterior. All the cities
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  Speaker 1: of the Moon lie I learnt immediately above the central sea,
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  Speaker 1: in such cavernous spaces and artificial galleries as I have described,
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  Speaker 1: and they communicate with the exterior by enormous vertical shafts
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  Speaker 1: which open invariably in what are called by earthly astronomers
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  Speaker 1: the craters of the Moon. The lid covering one such
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  Speaker 1: aperture I had already seen during the wanderings that had
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  Speaker 1: preceded by capture upon the condition of the less central
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  Speaker 1: portion of the moon. I have not yet arrived at
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  Speaker 1: very precise knowledge. There is an enormous system of caverns
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  Speaker 1: in which the moon calf sheltered during the night, and
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  Speaker 1: there are abatoirs and the like. In one of these
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  Speaker 1: it was that I in Bedford fought with the Selenite butchers,
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  Speaker 1: and I have since seen balloons laden with meat descending
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  Speaker 1: out of the upper dark. I have as yet scarcely
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  Speaker 1: learned as much of these things as a zulu in
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  Speaker 1: London would learn about the British corn supplies in the
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  Speaker 1: same time. It is clear, however, that these vertical shafts
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  Speaker 1: and the vegetation of the surface must play an essential
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  Speaker 1: role in ventilating and keeping fresh the atmosphere of the Moon.
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  Speaker 1: At one time, and particularly on my first emergence from
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  Speaker 1: my prison, there was certainly a cold wind blowing down
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  Speaker 1: the shaft, and later there was a kind of sirocco
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  Speaker 1: upward that corresponded with my fever. For at the end
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  Speaker 1: of about three weeks I fell ill of an indefinable
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  Speaker 1: sort of fever, and in spite of sleep in the
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  Speaker 1: quinine tabloids that very fortunately I had brought in my pocket.
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  Speaker 1: I remained ill and fretting miserably, almost to the time
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  Speaker 1: when I was taken into the presence of the Grand Lunar,
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  Speaker 1: who is master of the Moon. I will not dilate
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  Speaker 1: on the wretchedness of my condition, he remarks, during those
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  Speaker 1: days of ill health, and he goes on with great
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  Speaker 1: amplitude with details. I obmit here. My temperature, he concludes,
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  Speaker 1: kept a normally high for a long time, and I
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  Speaker 1: lost all desire for food. I had stagnant waking intervals,
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  Speaker 1: and sleep tormented by dreams. And at one phase I was,
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  Speaker 1: I remember, so weak as to be earthsick and almost hysterical.
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  Speaker 1: I longed, almost intolerably for color to break the everlasting blue.
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  Speaker 1: He reverts again presently to the topic of this sponge
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  Speaker 1: caught lunar atmosphere. I am told by astronomers and physicists
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  Speaker 1: that all he tells is an absolute accordance with which
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  Speaker 1: was already known of the Moon's condition. Had earthly astronomers
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  Speaker 1: had the courage and imagination to push home of bold induction,
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  Speaker 1: says mister Wendajy, they might have foretold almost everything that
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  Speaker 1: Cavor has to say of the general structure of the Moon.
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  Speaker 1: They know now pretty certainly that Moon and Earth are
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  Speaker 1: not so much satellite and primary as smaller and greater
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  Speaker 1: asliss made out of one mass, and consequently made of
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  Speaker 1: the same material. And since the density of the Moon
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  Speaker 1: is only three fists that of the Earth, there can
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  Speaker 1: be nothing for it but that she is hollowed out
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  Speaker 1: by a great system of caverns. There was no necessity,
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  Speaker 1: said mister Jabez Flapp fr S, that most entertaining exponent
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  Speaker 1: of the factious side of the stars, that we should
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  Speaker 1: ever have gone to the Moon to find out such
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  Speaker 1: easy inferences, and points the pun with an allusion to Greere.
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  Speaker 1: But he certainly might have announced his knowledge of the
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  Speaker 1: hollowness of the Moon before. And if the Moon is hollow,
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  Speaker 1: then the apparent absence of air and water is of
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  Speaker 1: course quite easily explained. The sea lies within at the
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  Speaker 1: bottom of the caverns, and the air travels through the
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  Speaker 1: great sponge of galleries in accordance with simple physical laws.
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  Speaker 1: The caverns of the Moon on the whole are very
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  Speaker 1: windy places. As the sunlight comes round the Moon, the
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  Speaker 1: air in the outer galleries on that side is heated.
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  Speaker 1: Its pressure increases. Some flows out on the exterior and
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  Speaker 1: mingles with the evaporating air of the craters where the
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  Speaker 1: plants remove its carbonic acid, while the greater portion flows
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  Speaker 1: round through the galleries to replace the shrinking air of
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  Speaker 1: the cooling side that the sunlight has left. There is
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  Speaker 1: therefore a constant eastward breeze in the air of the
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  Speaker 1: outer galleries, and an upflow during the lunar day up
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  Speaker 1: the shafts, complicated of course, very greatly by the varying
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  Speaker 1: shape of the galleries and the ingenious contrivances of the
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  Speaker 1: Selenite mind. End of Chapter