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The First Men in the Moon Chapter 8 - A Lunar Morning. · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight 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 Man in the Moon by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight. A lunar morning, the harsh emphasis, the pitiless
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  Speaker 1: black and white of scenery had altogether disappeared. The glare
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  Speaker 1: of the sun had taken upon itself a faint tinge
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  Speaker 1: of amber. The shadows upon the cliff of the crater
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  Speaker 1: wall were deeply purple. To the eastward, a dark bank
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  Speaker 1: of fog still crouched and sheltered from the sunrise. But
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  Speaker 1: to the westward the sky was blue and clear. I
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  Speaker 1: began to realize the length of my insensibility. We were
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  Speaker 1: no longer in a void. An atmosphere had arisen about us.
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  Speaker 1: The outline of things had gained in character, had grown
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  Speaker 1: acute and varied, save for a shadowed space of white
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  Speaker 1: substance here and there, white substance that was no longer
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  Speaker 1: air but snow. The Arctic appearance had gone altogether everywhere, broad, rusty, brown,
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  Speaker 1: spaces of bare and tumbled earth spread to the blaze
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  Speaker 1: of the sun. Here and there at the edge of
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  Speaker 1: the snow drifts were transient little pools and eddies of water,
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  Speaker 1: the only things stirring in that expanse of barrenness. The
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  Speaker 1: sunlight inundated the upper tube blinds of our sphere and
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  Speaker 1: turned our climate to high summer. But our feet were
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  Speaker 1: still in shadow, and the sphere was lying upon a
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  Speaker 1: drift of snow, and scattered here and there upon the slope,
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  Speaker 1: and emphasized by little white threads of unthawed snow. Upon
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  Speaker 1: their shady sides were shapes like sticks, dry twisted sticks
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  Speaker 1: of the same rusty hue as the rock upon which
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  Speaker 1: they lay. That caught one's thoughts, sharply sticks on a
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  Speaker 1: lifeless world. Then, as my eye grew more accustomed to
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  Speaker 1: the texture of their substance, I perceived that almost all
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  Speaker 1: this surface had a fibrous texture, like the carpet of
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  Speaker 1: brown needles one finds beneath the shade of pine trees. Cavore,
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  Speaker 1: I said, yes, it may be a dead world now.
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  Speaker 1: But once something arrested my attention, I had discovered among
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  Speaker 1: these needles a number of little round objects. And it
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  Speaker 1: seemed to me that one of these had moved Cavore.
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  Speaker 1: I whispered, what, But I did not answer it. Once
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  Speaker 1: I stared incredulous. For an instant I could not believe
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  Speaker 1: my eyes. I gave an inarticulate cry. I gripped his arm.
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  Speaker 1: I pointed, look, I cried, finding my tongue. There yet, yes,
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  Speaker 1: and there his eyes followed my pointing finger. Eh, he said,
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  Speaker 1: how can I describe the thing I saw? It is
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  Speaker 1: so petty a thing to state, and yet it seems
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  Speaker 1: so wonderful, so pregnant with emotion. I have said that
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  Speaker 1: amidst the stick like litter, were these rounded bodies, these
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  Speaker 1: little oval bodies that might have passed as very small pebbles.
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  Speaker 1: And now first one and then another had stirred, had
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  Speaker 1: rolled over and cracked, and down the crack of each
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  Speaker 1: of them showed a minute line of yellowish green, thrusting
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  Speaker 1: outward to meet the hot encouragement of the newly risen sun.
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  Speaker 1: For a moment that was all, and then there stirred
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  Speaker 1: and burst a third. It is a seed, said Kivor,
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  Speaker 1: And then I heard him whisper, very softly, life, life,
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  Speaker 1: and immediate it poured upon us that our vast journey
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  Speaker 1: had not been made in vain, that we had come
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  Speaker 1: to no arid waste of minerals, but to a world
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  Speaker 1: that lived and moved. We watched intensely. I remember, I
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  Speaker 1: kept rubbing the glass before me with my sleeve, jealous
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  Speaker 1: of the faintest suspicion of mist. The picture was clear
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  Speaker 1: and vivid only in the middle of the field. All
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  Speaker 1: about that center, the dead fibers and seeds were magnified
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  Speaker 1: and distorted by the curvature of the glass, but we
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  Speaker 1: could see enough. One after another, all down the sunlit slope,
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  Speaker 1: these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped apart, like
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  Speaker 1: seed pods, like the husk of fruits, open eager mouths
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  Speaker 1: that dranken the heat and light pouring in a cascade
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  Speaker 1: from the newly risen sun. Every moment more of these
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  Speaker 1: seed coats ruptured, and even as they did so, the
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  Speaker 1: swelling pioneers overflowed their rent distended seed cases, and passed
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  Speaker 1: into the second stage of growth. With a steady assurance,
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  Speaker 1: a swift deliberation, these amazing seeds thrust the rootlet downward
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  Speaker 1: to the earth, and a queer little bundle like bud
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  Speaker 1: into the air. In a little while, the whole slope
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  Speaker 1: was dotted with minute plantlets standing at attention in the
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  Speaker 1: blaze of the sun. They did not stand for long.
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  Speaker 1: The bundle like buds swelled and strained, and opened with
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  Speaker 1: a jerk, thrusting out a coronet of little sharp tips,
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  Speaker 1: spreading a whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish leaves that lengthened rapidly,
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  Speaker 1: lengthened visibly even as we watched. The movement was slower
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  Speaker 1: than any animals, swifter than any plants I have ever
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  Speaker 1: seen before. How can I suggest it to you the
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  Speaker 1: way that growth went on. The leaf tips grew so
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  Speaker 1: that they moved onward even while we looked at them.
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  Speaker 1: The brown sea case shriveled and was absorbed with an
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  Speaker 1: equal rapidity. Have you ever, on a cold day, taken
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  Speaker 1: a thermometer into your warm hand and watched the little
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  Speaker 1: thread of mercury creep up the tube? These moon plants
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  Speaker 1: grew like that in a few minutes, as it seemed,
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  Speaker 1: the buds of the more forward of these plants had
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  Speaker 1: lengthened into a stem and were even putting forth a
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  Speaker 1: second whorl of leaves and all the slope that had
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  Speaker 1: seemed so recently a lifeless stretch of litter, was now dark,
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  Speaker 1: with the stunted, olive green herbage of bristling spikes that
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  Speaker 1: swayed with the vigor of their growing. I turned about
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  Speaker 1: and behold along the upper edge of a rock. To
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  Speaker 1: the eastward, a similar fringe, in a scarcely less forward condition,
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  Speaker 1: swayed and bent, dark against the blinding glare of the sun.
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  Speaker 1: And beyond this fringe was the silhouette of a plant mass,
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  Speaker 1: branching clumsily like a cactus and swelling visibly, swelling like
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  Speaker 1: a bladder that fills with air. Then to the westward,
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  Speaker 1: also I discovered that another such distended form was rising
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  Speaker 1: over the scrub. But here the light fell upon its
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  Speaker 1: sleek sides, and I could see that its color was
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  Speaker 1: a vivid orange hue. It rose as one watched it.
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  Speaker 1: If one looked away from it for a minute and
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  Speaker 1: then back, its outline had changed. It thrust out blunt,
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  Speaker 1: congested branches, until in a little time it rose a
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  Speaker 1: coralline shape of many feet in height. Compared with such
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  Speaker 1: a growth, the terrestrial puffball, which will sometimes swell a
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  Speaker 1: foot in diameter in a single night would be a
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  Speaker 1: hopeless leggard. But then the puffball grows against the gravitational
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  Speaker 1: pull six times that of the moon beyond, out of
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  Speaker 1: gullies and flats that had been hidden from us, but
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  Speaker 1: not from the quickening sun. Over reefs and banks of
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  Speaker 1: shining rock, a bristling beard of spiky and fleshy vegetation
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  Speaker 1: was straining into view, hurrying tumultuously to take advantage of
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  Speaker 1: the brief day in which it was flower and fruit
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  Speaker 1: and seed again and die. It was like a miracle
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  Speaker 1: that growth. So one must imagine the trees and plants
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  Speaker 1: arose at the creation and covered the desolation of the
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  Speaker 1: new made earth. Imagine it. Imagine that dawn, the resurrection
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  Speaker 1: of the frozen air, the stirring and quickening of the soil,
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  Speaker 1: and then this silent uprising of vegetation, this unearthly ascent
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  Speaker 1: of fleshiness and spikes. Conceive it all lit by a
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  Speaker 1: blaze that would make the intensest sunlight of Earth seem
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  Speaker 1: watery and weak and still around the stirring jungle, wherever
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  Speaker 1: there was shadow, lingered banks of bluish snow. And to
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  Speaker 1: have the picture of our impression complete, you must bear
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  Speaker 1: in mind that we saw it all through a thick
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  Speaker 1: bent glass, distorting it as things are distorted by a
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  Speaker 1: lens acute only in the center of the picture, and
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  Speaker 1: very bright there, and towards the edges, magnified and unreal.
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  Speaker 1: End of chapter