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The First Men in the Moon Chapter 26 - The Last Message Cavor Sent to the Earth · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty six, the final chapter of The First Men
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  Speaker 1: in the Moon. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. This recording is
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  Speaker 1: by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The First Men
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  Speaker 1: in the Moon by H. G. Wells, Chapter twenty six,
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  Speaker 1: the last message Cavour sent to the Earth on this
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  Speaker 1: unsatisfactory manner, the penultimate message of Cavour dies out. One
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  Speaker 1: seems to see him away there in the blue obscurity,
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  Speaker 1: amidst his apparatus, intently signaling us to the last, all
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  Speaker 1: unaware of the curtain of confusion that drops between us,
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  Speaker 1: All unaware too, of the final dangers that even then
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  Speaker 1: must have been creeping upon him. His disastrous want of
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  Speaker 1: vul vulgar common sense had utterly betrayed him. He had
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  Speaker 1: talked of war, He had talked of all the strength
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  Speaker 1: and irrational violence of men, of their insatiable aggressions, their
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  Speaker 1: tireless futility of conflict. He had filled the whole moon
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  Speaker 1: world with this impression of our race. And then I
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  Speaker 1: think it is plain that he made the most fatal
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  Speaker 1: admission that upon himself alone, hung the possibility, at least
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  Speaker 1: for a long time, of any further men reaching the moon.
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  Speaker 1: The line the cold inhuman reason of the moon would
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  Speaker 1: take seems plain enough to me, and a suspicion of it,
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  Speaker 1: And then perhaps some sudden sharp realization of it must
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  Speaker 1: have come to him. One imagines him about the moon
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  Speaker 1: with the remorse of this fatal indiscretion growing in his mind.
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  Speaker 1: During a certain time, I am inclined to guess the
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  Speaker 1: Grand Lunar was deliberating the new situation. And for all
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  Speaker 1: that time Cavor may have gone as free as ever
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  Speaker 1: he had gone. But obstacles of some sort prevented his
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  Speaker 1: getting to his electromagnetic apparatus again. After that message I
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  Speaker 1: have just given, for some days we received nothing. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: he was having fresh audiences and trying to evade his
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  Speaker 1: previous admissions. Who can hope to guess? And then suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: like a cry in the night, like a cry that
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  Speaker 1: is followed by a stillness, came the last message. It
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  Speaker 1: is the briefest fragment, the broken beginnings of two sentences.
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  Speaker 1: The first was I was mad to let the Grand
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  Speaker 1: Lunar know. There was an interval of perhaps a minute
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  Speaker 1: one imagines some interruption from without, a departure from the instrument,
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  Speaker 1: a dreadful hesitation among the looming masses of apparatus in
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  Speaker 1: that dim, blue lit cavern, a sudden rush back to it,
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  Speaker 1: full of a resolve that came to late. Then as
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  Speaker 1: if it were hastily transmitted, came Cavarite made his follows take.
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  Speaker 1: There followed one word, a quite unmeaning word as it
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  Speaker 1: stands U L E S S. And that is all
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  Speaker 1: it may be. He made a hasty attempt to spell
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  Speaker 1: useless when his fate was close upon him. Whatever it
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  Speaker 1: was that was happening about that apparatus, we cannot tell.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever it was, we shall never, I know, receive another
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  Speaker 1: message from the moon. For my own part, A vivid
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  Speaker 1: dream has come to my help, and I see almost
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  Speaker 1: as plainly as though I had seen it in actual fact,
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  Speaker 1: a blue lit, shadowy, disheveled cavour struggling in the grip
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  Speaker 1: of these insect selenites, struggling ever more desperately and hopelessly
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  Speaker 1: as they press upon him, shouting, expostulating, perhaps even at
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  Speaker 1: last fighting, and being forced backwards, step by step, out
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  Speaker 1: of all speech or sign of his fellows. For evermore
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  Speaker 1: into the unknown, into the dark, into that silence that
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  Speaker 1: has no end. End of chapter, end of book. Thank
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  Speaker 1: you for listening.