Altogether probably lost quite half communications , and much is damaged, broken, and partly effaced abstract that follows the reader prepared therefore for considerable amount of break, hiatus, and change of topic Mr Wendigee and I are collaborating in complete and annotated edition Cavor record, which , together with detailed account instruments employed, beginning first volume in January next the full and scientific report, only the popular transcript But here sufficient to complete the story told, and the broad outlines state other world so near, so akin, and yet so dissimilar to our own

Chapter 23

An Abstract Six Messages First Received from Mr Cavor

THE two earlier messages of Mr Cavor may be reserved larger volume They simply tell, with greater brevity and with difference in several details interesting, but not of any vital importance, the bare facts making sphere departure world Throughout, Cavor speaks of me as man dead, but with curious change of temper as he approaches our landing moon "Poor Bedford," of me, and "this poor young man "; and he blames himself for inducing young man, "by no means well equipped for such adventures," to leave planet " indisputably fitted to succeed" on so precarious mission he underrates the part my energy and practical capacity played in bringing realisation theoretical sphere "We arrived," , with no more account passage through space than had made journey of common occurrence in railway train

And then he becomes increasingly unfair Unfair, indeed, to an extent I have expected in man trained search for truth Looking back over my previously written account things, insist that altogether juster to Cavor than he extenuated little and suppressed nothing But his account is:

"It speedily became apparent entire strangeness circumstances and surroundings - great loss of weight, attenuated but highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration results of muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid sky - was exciting my companion unduly moon his character seemed to deteriorate He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome In little while his folly in devouring some gigantic vesicles consequent intoxication led to our capture Selenites - before we had had the slightest opportunity of properly observing their ways . . "

( , you observe, nothing own concession same "vesicles ")

And he goes on point that "We came to difficult passage , and Bedford mistaking certain gestures of theirs" - pretty gestures they were ! - "gave way to panic violence He ran amuck, killed three, and perforce I had to flee outrage Subsequently we fought with number who endeavoured to bar our way, and slew seven or eight more It says much tolerance beings that on my recapture not instantly slain our way exterior and separated crater arrival, to increase our chances of recovering our sphere But presently upon body of Selenites, led by two who were curiously different, even in form, from any we had seen hitherto, with larger heads and smaller bodies, and much more elaborately wrapped about And after evading them for I fell into crevasse, cut my head rather badly, and displaced my patella, and, finding crawling very painful, decided to surrender - still permit me This , and, perceiving my helpless condition, carried me again moon And of Bedford heard or seen nothing more, nor, as gather, any Selenite Either the night overtook him crater, or else, more probable, the sphere, and, desiring to steal march upon me, made off with it - only, , it uncontrollable, and to meet more lingering fate in outer space "

And Cavor dismisses me and goes on to more interesting topics I dislike the idea of seeming to use my position as his editor to deflect his story in my own interest, but obliged to protest here against the turn these occurrences nothing gasping message blood-stained paper , or attempted , very different story The dignified self-surrender is an altogether new view affair that to him, insist, since he began secure lunar people; and as "stealing march" conception, quite willing to let the reader decide on what he has before him not model man - no pretence But am I that ?

However, sum wrongs point edit Cavor with an untroubled mind, for he mentions me no more

It would seem the Selenites who had come upon him carried him to some point interior down "a great shaft" of what he describes as "a sort of balloon " We gather rather confused passage he describes this, and from number of chance allusions and hints in other and subsequent messages, "great shaft" is one of an enormous system of artificial shafts that run, each from called lunar "crater," downwards for very nearly hundred miles towards the central portion satellite These shafts communicate by transverse tunnels, they throw out abysmal caverns and expand into great globular places; the whole moon's substance for hundred miles inward, indeed, is mere sponge of rock "Partly," says Cavor, "this sponginess is natural, but very largely due enormous industry Selenites The enormous circular mounds excavated rock and earth it form these great circles tunnels known to earthly astronomers (misled by false analogy) as volcanoes "

down this shaft they took him, "sort of balloon" he speaks of, at first into an inky blackness and then into region of continually increasing phosphorescence Cavor's despatches show him curiously regardless of detail for scientific man, but we gather light was due streams and cascades of water - " containing some phosphorescent organism" - that flowed ever more abundantly downward towards the Central Sea And as he descended, , "The Selenites also became luminous " And at last far below him , as it were, lake of heatless fire, the waters Central Sea, glowing and eddying in strange perturbation, "like luminous blue milk just boil "

"This Lunar Sea," says Cavor, in later passage " stagnant ocean; solar tide sends it in perpetual flow around the lunar axis, and strange storms and boilings and rushings waters occur, and at times cold winds and thunderings that ascend out of it busy ways great ant-hill above only water is in motion gives out light; in its rare seasons of calm black Commonly, when one sees it, its waters rise and fall in an oily swell, and flakes and big rafts of shining, bubbly foam drift sluggish, faintly glowing current The Selenites navigate its cavernous straits and lagoons in little shallow boats of canoe-like shape; and even before my journey galleries Grand Lunar, Master Moon, permitted brief excursion on its waters

"The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous large proportion ways are known only to expert pilots fishermen, and not infrequently Selenites are lost for ever in their labyrinths In their remoter recesses, told, strange creatures lurk, terrible and dangerous creatures that all the science moon unable to exterminate particularly the Rapha, an inextricable mass of clutching tentacles that one hacks to pieces only to multiply; Tzee, darting creature never seen, so subtly and suddenly does it slay . "

us gleam of description

" reminded excursion of what read Mammoth Caves; if only I had had yellow flambeau instead pervading blue light, and solid-looking boatman with an oar instead of scuttle-faced Selenite working an engine back canoe, imagined I had suddenly got back to earth The rocks about us were very various, sometimes black, sometimes pale blue and veined, and once they flashed and glittered we had come into mine of sapphires And below one saw the ghostly phosphorescent fishes flash and vanish hardly less phosphorescent deep Then, presently, long ultra-marine vista down the turgid stream of channels of traffic, and landing stage, and then, perhaps, glimpse up the enormous crowded shaft of vertical ways