"Cavor," I said, "these chains are of gold!" Then suddenly I saw something that struck me even then. "I'd rather be carried by a fly across a ceiling." What are we to do? Where are we to go? Here we are as comfortable as snakes from Jamrach's loose in a Surbiton villa!" In a minute we may hear them whimpering, and their gongs going. And all these things that are chasing us now, beastly men of leather-insect men, that come out of a nightmare! After all, they're right! What business have we here smashing them and disturbing their world! For all we know the whole planet is up and after us already. "Here we are burrowing in this beastly world that isn't a world, with its inky ocean hidden in some abominable blackness below, and outside that torrid day and that death stillness of night.
#Hg wells first man on the moon windows#
Think of a wet roof at sunset, Cavor! Think of the windows of a westward house!" He made no answer. "The sky that changes, and the sea that changes, and the hills and the green trees and the towns and cities shining in the sun. "Daybreak, sunset, clouds, and windy skies! Shall we ever see such things again?"Īs I spoke, a little picture of our world seemed to rise before me, bright and little and clear, like the background of some old Italian picture. Sit down and make yourself at home." And as he spluttered over our disappointment, I began to lob more of these growths into the cleft. I plucked up half a dozen and flung them against the rocks, and then sat down, laughing bitterly, as Cavor's ruddy face came into view. For a moment I stared at their soft radiance, then sprang forward and upward among them. For I beheld simply an irregularly sloping open space, and all over its slanting floor stood a forest of little club-shaped fungi, each shining gloriously with that pinkish silvery light. In another moment I could see what it was, and at the sight I could have beaten my head against the rocks with disappointment. The cleft opened out steadily, and the light was brighter. For a few minutes I clambered steadily, and then I looked up again. "Confound it!" I said, "any one could be a mountaineer on the moon " and so set myself in earnest to the climbing. Then whack and he was hanging to my arm-and no heavier than a kitten! I lugged him up until he had a hand on my ledge, and could release me. I could not see Cavor, but I could hear the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring. I wedged myself between the sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on the ledge, and extended a hand. "Can you jump up to my hand if I hold it down to you?"
I stood up and searched up the rocks with my fingers the cleft broadened out upwardly. I pulled myself up by two fingers with scarcely an effort, though on earth I weigh twelve stone, reached to a still higher corner of rock, and so got my feet on the narrow ledge.
I could see the white light was very much brighter now. I thrust an arm into the crack, and just at my finger tips found a little ledge by which I could hold. "I'll lift you," he said, and incontinently hoisted me as though I was a baby. "Cavor," I said, "if one of us lifts the other, he can reach that crack!" I started and stood aside-drip, fell another drop quite audibly on the rocky floor. It filtered down through a chink in the walls of the cavern, and as I stared up, drip, came a drop of water upon my face. Indisputably it was a gray light, a silvery light. "Cavor," I said, "it comes from above! I am certain it comes from above!" I perceived something that set my hopes leaping and bounding. Our tunnel was expanding into a cavern, and this new light was at the farther end of it. In a little time it was nearly as strong as the phosphorescence on Cavor's legs. Previous Chapter Next Chapter Chapter 16: Points of View
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane.The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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