Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The First Men in the Moon Chapter 10 - Lost Men in the Moon

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The First Men in the Moon Chapter 10 - Lost Men in the Moon · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter ten 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 ten, lost Men in the Moon. His face caught
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  Speaker 1: something of my dismay. He stood up and stared about him,
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  Speaker 1: at the scrub that fenced us in, and rose about us,
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  Speaker 1: straining upward in a passion of growth. He put a
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  Speaker 1: dubious hand to his lips. He spoke with a sudden
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  Speaker 1: lack of assurance. I think he said, slowly, we left
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  Speaker 1: it somewhere about there. He pointed a hesitating finger that
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  Speaker 1: wavered in an ark. I'm not sure. His look of
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  Speaker 1: consternation deepened, anyhow, he said, with his eyes on me,
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  Speaker 1: it can't be far. We had both stood up. We
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  Speaker 1: made unmeaning ejaculations. Our eyes sought in the twining, thickening
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  Speaker 1: jungle rounded about us. All about us on the sunlit
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  Speaker 1: slopes frothed and swayed, the darting shrubs, the swelling cactus,
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  Speaker 1: the creeping lichens, and wherever the shade remained. The snow
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  Speaker 1: drifts lingered north, south, east, and west, spread an identical
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  Speaker 1: monotony of unfamiliar forms, and somewhere buried already among this
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  Speaker 1: tangled confusion was our sphere, our home, our only provision,
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  Speaker 1: our only hope of escape from this fantastic wilderness of
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  Speaker 1: ephemeral growths into which we had come. I think, after all,
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  Speaker 1: he said, pointing suddenly, it might be over there. No,
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  Speaker 1: I said, we have turned in a curve. See here
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  Speaker 1: is the mark of my heels. It's clear the thing
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  Speaker 1: must be more to the eastward, much more. No, the
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  Speaker 1: sphere must be over there, I think, said Kavore. I
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  Speaker 1: kept the sun upon my right all the time. Every leap,
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  Speaker 1: it seems to me, I said, my shadow flew before me.
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  Speaker 1: We stared into one another's eyes. The area of the
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  Speaker 1: crater had become enormously vast to our imaginations, the growing
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  Speaker 1: thickets already impenetrably dense. Good heavens, what fools we have been.
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  Speaker 1: It's evident that we must find it again, said Kavoor,
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  Speaker 1: and that soon the sun grows stronger. We should be
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  Speaker 1: fainting with the heat already. If it wasn't so dry,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm hungry, I stared at him. I had not
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  Speaker 1: suspected this aspect of the matter before, but it came
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  Speaker 1: to me at once a positive craving Yes, I said
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  Speaker 1: with emphasis, I am hungry too. He stood up with
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  Speaker 1: a look of active resolution. Certainly, we must find the
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  Speaker 1: sphere as calmly as possible. We surveyed the interminable reefs
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  Speaker 1: and thickets that formed the floor of the crater, each
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  Speaker 1: of us weighing in silence the chances of our finding
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  Speaker 1: the sphere before we were overtaken by heat and hunger.
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  Speaker 1: It can't be fifty yards from here, said Kvor with
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  Speaker 1: indecisive gestures. The only thing is to beat round about
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  Speaker 1: until we come upon it. That is all we can do,
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  Speaker 1: I said, without any alacrity, to begin our hunt. I
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  Speaker 1: wish this confounded spike bush did not grow so fast,
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  Speaker 1: that's just it, said Kovoor. But it was lying on
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  Speaker 1: a bank of snow. I stared about me in the
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  Speaker 1: vain hope of recognizing some knoll or shrub that had
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  Speaker 1: been near the sphere. But everywhere was a confusing sameness everywhere,
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  Speaker 1: the aspiring bushes, the distending fungi, the dwindling snowbags steadily
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  Speaker 1: and inevitably changed, the sun scorched and stung, the faintness
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  Speaker 1: of an unaccountable hunger mingled with our infinite perplexity. And
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  Speaker 1: even as we stood there, confused and lost amidst unprecedented things,
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  Speaker 1: we became aware for the first time of a sound
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  Speaker 1: upon the moon, other than the air of the growing plants,
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  Speaker 1: the faint sighing of the wind, or those that we
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  Speaker 1: ourselves had made. Boom boom, boom. It came from beneath
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  Speaker 1: our feet, a sound in the earth. We seemed to
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  Speaker 1: hear it with our feet as much as with our ears.
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  Speaker 1: Its dull resonance was muffled by distance, thick with the
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  Speaker 1: quality of intervening substance. No sound that I can imagine,
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  Speaker 1: could have astonished us more or have changed more completely
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  Speaker 1: the quality of things about us. For this sound, rich,
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  Speaker 1: slow and deliberate, seemed to us as though it could
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  Speaker 1: be nothing but the striking of some gigantic buried clock.
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  Speaker 1: Boom boom boom, sounds suggestive of still cloisters, of sleepless
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  Speaker 1: nights in crowded cities, of vigils, and the awaited hour
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  Speaker 1: of all that is orderly and methodical, in life, booming out,
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  Speaker 1: pregnant and mysterious. In this fantastic desert. To the eye,
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  Speaker 1: everything was unchanged. The desolation of bushes and cacti waving
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  Speaker 1: silently in the wind, stretched unbroken to the distant cliffs.
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  Speaker 1: The still dark sky was empty overhead, and the hot
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  Speaker 1: sun hung and burned. And through it all a warning
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  Speaker 1: of threat throbbed. This enigma of sound. Boom, boom, boom.
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  Speaker 1: We questioned one another in faint and faded voices. A
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  Speaker 1: clock like a clock, what is it? What can it be? Count?
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  Speaker 1: Was Cavor's belated suggestion, and at that word the striking ceased.
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  Speaker 1: The silence. The rhythmic disappointment of the silence came as
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  Speaker 1: a fresh shock. For a moment, one could doubt whether
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  Speaker 1: one had ever heard a sound, or whether it might
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  Speaker 1: still not be going on. Had I indeed heard a sound,
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  Speaker 1: I felt the pressure of Kvoor's hand upon my arm.
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  Speaker 1: He spoke in an undertone, as though he feared to
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  Speaker 1: wake some sleeping thing. Let us keep together, he whispered,
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  Speaker 1: and look for the sphere. We must get back to
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  Speaker 1: the sphere. This is beyond our understanding. Which way shall
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  Speaker 1: we go? He hesitated, an intense persuasion of presences of
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  Speaker 1: unseen things about us and near us dominated our minds.
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  Speaker 1: What could they be? Where could they be? Was this
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  Speaker 1: arid desolation alternately frozen and scorched only the outer rind
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  Speaker 1: and mask of some subterranean world? And if so, what
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  Speaker 1: sort of world, what sort of inhabitants might it not
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  Speaker 1: presently disgorge upon us? And then stabbing the aching stillness
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  Speaker 1: as vivid and sudden as an unexpected thunderclap came a
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  Speaker 1: clang and rattle, as though great gates of metal had
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  Speaker 1: suddenly been flung apart. It arrested our steps. We stood
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  Speaker 1: gaping helplessly. Then Cavor stole towards me. I do not understand,
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  Speaker 1: he whispered, close to my face. He waved his hand
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  Speaker 1: vaguely skyward, the vague suggestion of still vaguer thoughts, a
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  Speaker 1: hiding place if anything came. I looked about us. I
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  Speaker 1: nodded my head in assent to him. We started off,
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  Speaker 1: moving stealthily, with the most exaggerated precautions against noise. We
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  Speaker 1: went towards a thicket of scrub. A clangor like hammers
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  Speaker 1: flung about a boiler, hastened our steps we must crawl,
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  Speaker 1: whispered Kavor. The lower leaves of the bayonet plants, already
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  Speaker 1: overshadowed by the newer ones above, were beginning to wilt
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  Speaker 1: and shrivel, so that we could thrust our way in
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  Speaker 1: among the thickening stems without serious injury, a stab in
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  Speaker 1: the face or arm. We did not heed. At the
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  Speaker 1: heart of the thicket, I stopped and stared, panting into
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  Speaker 1: Kavoor's face. Subterranean, he whispered, blow they make come out.
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  Speaker 1: We must find the sphere, yes, I said, But how
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  Speaker 1: crawl till we come to it. But if we don't
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  Speaker 1: keep hidden, see what they are like? We will keep together,
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  Speaker 1: said I. He thought, which way shall we go? We
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  Speaker 1: must take our chance. We peered this way and that. Then,
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  Speaker 1: very circumspectlly, we began to crawl through the lower jungle,
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  Speaker 1: making so far as we could judge, a circuit, halding
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  Speaker 1: now at every waving, fungus, at every sound, intent only
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  Speaker 1: on the sphere from which we had so foolishly emerged.
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  Speaker 1: Ever and again, from out of the earth beneath us
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  Speaker 1: came concussions, beatings, strange, inexplicable mechanical sounds, and once and
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  Speaker 1: then again we thought we heard something, a faint rattle
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  Speaker 1: and tumult borne to us through the air. But fearful
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  Speaker 1: as we were, we dare to say no vantage point
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  Speaker 1: to survey the crater. For long we saw nothing of
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  Speaker 1: the beings whose sounds were so abundant and insistent. But
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  Speaker 1: for the faintness of our hunger and the drying of
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  Speaker 1: our throats, that crawling would have been the only quality
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  Speaker 1: of a very vivid dream. It was so absolutely unreal.
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  Speaker 1: The only element with any touch of reality was those sounds.
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  Speaker 1: Picture it to yourself, about us, the dreamlike jungle, with
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  Speaker 1: the silent bayonet leaves darting overhead, and the silent, vivid
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  Speaker 1: sun splashed lichens under our hands and knees, waving with
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  Speaker 1: the vigor of their growth, as a carpet waves when
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  Speaker 1: the wind gets beneath it. Ever and again, one of
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  Speaker 1: the bladder fungi, bulging and distending under the sun, loomed
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  Speaker 1: upon us. Ever and again, some novel shape and vivid
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  Speaker 1: color obtruded the very cells that build up. These plants
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  Speaker 1: were as large as my thumb, like beads of colored glass.
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  Speaker 1: And all these things were saturated, and the unmitigated glare
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  Speaker 1: of the sun were seen against a sky that was
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  Speaker 1: bluish black and spangled still in spite of the sunlight,
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  Speaker 1: with a few surviving stars. Strange. The very forms and
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  Speaker 1: textures of the stones were strange. It was all strange.
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  Speaker 1: The feeling of one's body was unprecedented. Every other movement
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  Speaker 1: ended in a surprise. The breath suck thin in one's throat,
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  Speaker 1: the blood flowed through one's ears in a throbbing tide, thud, thud,
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  Speaker 1: thud thud, And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, hammering,
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  Speaker 1: the clanging and throb of machinery, and presently the bellowing
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  Speaker 1: of great beasts. End of chapter