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The First Men in the Moon Chapter 22 - The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty two 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 recordings 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 twenty two. The astonishing communication of mister Julius Wendegee.
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  Speaker 1: When I had finished my account of my return to
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  Speaker 1: the Earth at Littlestone, I wrote the end made of
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  Speaker 1: flourish and through my pen aside, fully believing that the
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  Speaker 1: whole story of the First Men in the Moon was done.
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  Speaker 1: Not only had I done this, but I had placed
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  Speaker 1: my manuscript in the hands of a literary agent, had
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  Speaker 1: permitted it to be sold, had seen the greater portion
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  Speaker 1: of it appear in the Strand magazine, and was setting
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  Speaker 1: to work again upon the scenario of the play I
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  Speaker 1: had commenced at Lympney before I realized that the end
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  Speaker 1: was not yet, and then following me from Amalfi to Algiers,
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  Speaker 1: there reached me. It is now, about six months ago
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  Speaker 1: one of the most astounded communications I have ever been
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  Speaker 1: fated to receive. Briefly, it informed me that mister Julius Wendegee,
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  Speaker 1: a Dutch electrician who has been experimenting with certain apparatus
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  Speaker 1: akin to the apparatus used by mister Tesla in America,
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  Speaker 1: in the hope of discovering some method of communication with Mars,
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  Speaker 1: was receiving day by day a curiously fragmentary message in
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  Speaker 1: English which was indisputably emanating from mister Cavore in the moon.
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  Speaker 1: At first I thought the thing was an elaborate, practical
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  Speaker 1: joke by one who had seen the manuscript of my narrative,
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  Speaker 1: I answered mister Wendege jestingly, but he replied in a
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  Speaker 1: manner that put such suspicion altogether aside. And in a
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  Speaker 1: state of inconceivable excitement, I hurried from Algiers to the
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  Speaker 1: little observatory upon the monter Rosa in which he was working.
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  Speaker 1: In the presence of his record and his appliances, and
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  Speaker 1: above all of the messages from Cavore that were coming
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  Speaker 1: to hand, my lingering doubts vanished. I decided at once
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  Speaker 1: to accept a proposal he made to me, to remain
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  Speaker 1: with him, assisting him to take down the record from
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  Speaker 1: day to day, and endeavoring with him to send a
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  Speaker 1: message back to the Moon. Cavore we learnt was not
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  Speaker 1: only alive, but free in the midst of an almost
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  Speaker 1: inconceivable community of these ant like beings, these ant men,
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  Speaker 1: in the blue darkness of the lunar caves. He was lamed,
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  Speaker 1: it seemed, but otherwise in quite good health. In better health,
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  Speaker 1: he distinctly said, than he usually enjoyed on Earth. He
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  Speaker 1: had had a fever, but had left no bad effects.
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  Speaker 1: But curiously enough, he seemed to be laboring under a
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  Speaker 1: conviction that I was either dead in the moon crater
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  Speaker 1: or lost in the deepest space. His message began to
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  Speaker 1: be received by mister Wendy Gee, when that gentleman was
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  Speaker 1: engaged in quite a different investigation. The reader will no
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  Speaker 1: doubt recall the little excitement that began the century, arising
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  Speaker 1: out of an announcement by mister Nicola Tesla, the American
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  Speaker 1: electrical celebrity, that he had received a message from Mars.
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  Speaker 1: His announcement renewed attention to the fact that had long
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  Speaker 1: been familiar to scientific people, namely that from some unknown
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  Speaker 1: source in space, waves of electromagnetic disturbance entirely similar to
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  Speaker 1: those used by signor Marconi for his wireless telegraphy are
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  Speaker 1: constantly reaching the Earth. Besides Tesla, quite a number of
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  Speaker 1: other observers have been engaged in perfecting apparatus for receiving
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  Speaker 1: and recording these vibrations, though few would go so far
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  Speaker 1: to consider them actual messages from some extraterrestrial sender. Among
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  Speaker 1: that few, however, we must certainly count mister Wendigee. Ever
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  Speaker 1: since eighteen ninety eight he had devoted himself almost entirely
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  Speaker 1: to the subject, and being a man of ample means,
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  Speaker 1: he had erected an observatory on the flanks of Monte Rosa,
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  Speaker 1: in a position singularly adapted in every way for such observations.
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  Speaker 1: My scientific attainments, i must admit, are not great, but
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  Speaker 1: so far as they enable me to judge, mister Wendigee's
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  Speaker 1: contrivances for detecting and recording any disturbances in the electromagnetic
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  Speaker 1: conditions of space are single regularly original and ingenious, and
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  Speaker 1: by a happy combination of circumstances. They were set up
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  Speaker 1: and in operation about two months before Cavour made his
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  Speaker 1: first attempt to call up the Earth. Consequently, we have
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  Speaker 1: fragments of his communication even from the beginning unhappily, they
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  Speaker 1: are only fragments, and the most momentous of all the
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  Speaker 1: things that he had to tell humanity, the instructions, that is,
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  Speaker 1: for the making of Cavaite, if indeed he ever transmitted them,
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  Speaker 1: have throbbed themselves away, unrecorded, into space. We never succeeded
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  Speaker 1: in getting a response back to Cavour. He was unable
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  Speaker 1: to tell therefore what we had received or what we
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  Speaker 1: had missed, Nor indeed did he certainly know that anyone
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  Speaker 1: on Earth was really aware of his efforts to reach us.
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  Speaker 1: And the persistence he displayed in sending eighteen long descriptions
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  Speaker 1: of lunar affairs as they would be if we had
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  Speaker 1: them complete, shows how much his mind must have turned
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  Speaker 1: back towards his native planet since he left it two
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  Speaker 1: years ago. You can imagine how amazed mister Wendigee must
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  Speaker 1: have been when he discovered his record of electromagnetic disturbances
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  Speaker 1: interlaced by Cavor's straightforward English. Mister Wendajee knew nothing of
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  Speaker 1: our wild journey moonward, and suddenly this English out of
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  Speaker 1: the void. It is well the reader should understand the
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  Speaker 1: conditions under which it would seem these messages were sent
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  Speaker 1: somewhere within the moon. Cavor certainly had access for a
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  Speaker 1: time to a considerable amount of electrical apparatus, and it
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  Speaker 1: would seem he rigged up, perhaps furtively, a transmitting arrangement
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  Speaker 1: of the Marconi type. This he was able to operate
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  Speaker 1: at irregular intervals, sometimes for only half an hour or so,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes for three or four hours at a stretch. At
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  Speaker 1: these times he transmitted his earthward message regardless of the
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  Speaker 1: fact that the relative position of the Moon and points
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  Speaker 1: upon the Earth's surface is constantly altering. As a consequence
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  Speaker 1: of this, and of the necessary imperfections of our recording instruments,
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  Speaker 1: his communication comes and goes in our records in an
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  Speaker 1: extremely fitful manner. It becomes blurred, it fades out in
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  Speaker 1: a mysterious and altogether exasperating way. And added to this
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  Speaker 1: as the fact that he was not an expert operator,
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  Speaker 1: he had partly forgotten or never completely mastered the code
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  Speaker 1: in general use, and as he became fatigued, he dropped
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  Speaker 1: words and misspelt in a curious manner. Altogether, we have
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  Speaker 1: probably lost quite half of the communications he made, and
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  Speaker 1: much we have is damaged, broken, and partly effaced. In
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  Speaker 1: the abstract that follows. The reader must be prepared therefore
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  Speaker 1: for a considerable amount of break, hiatus and change of topic.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Wendage and I are collaborating in a complete and
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  Speaker 1: annotated edition of the Cavore Record, which we hope to
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  Speaker 1: publish together with a detailed account of the instruments employed,
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  Speaker 1: beginning with the first volume in January next. That will
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  Speaker 1: be the full and scientific report, of which this is
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  Speaker 1: only the popular transcript. But here we give at least
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  Speaker 1: sufficient to complete the story I have told, and to
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  Speaker 1: give the broad outlines of the state of that other world,
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  Speaker 1: so near, so again, and yet so dissimilar to our own.
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  Speaker 1: End of chapter