I do not know how far we clambered before we came to the grating. It
may be we ascended only a few hundred feet, but at the time it seemed
to me we might have hauled and jammed and hopped and wedged ourselves
through a mile or more of vertical ascent. Whenever I recall that time,
there comes into my head the heavy clank of our golden chains that
followed every movement. Very soon my knuckles and knees were raw, and
I had a bruise on one cheek. After a time the first violence of our
efforts diminished, and our movements became more deliberate and less
painful. The noise of the pursuing Selenites had died away altogether.
It seemed almost as though they had not traced us up the crack after
all, in spite of the tell-tale heap of broken fungi that must have
lain beneath it. At times the cleft narrowed so much that we could
scarce squeeze up it; at others it expanded into great drusy cavities,
studded with prickly crystals, or thickly beset with dull, shining
fungoid pimples. Sometimes it twisted spirally, and at other times
slanted down nearly to the horizontal direction. Ever and again there
was the intermittent drip and trickle of water by us. Once or twice it
seemed to us that small living things had rustled out of our reach, but
what they were we never saw. They may have been venomous beasts for all
I know, but they did us no harm, and we were now tuned to a pitch when
a weird creeping thing more or less mattered little. And at last, far
above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it
filtered through a grating that barred our way.
We whispered as we pointed this out to one another, and became more and
more cautious in our ascent. Presently we were close under the grating,
and by pressing my face against its bars I could see a limited portion
of the cavern beyond. It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt
by some rivulet of the same blue light that we had seen flow from the
beating machinery. An intermittent trickle of water dropped ever and
again between the bars near my face.
My first endeavour was naturally to see what might be upon the floor
of the cavern, but our grating lay in a depression whose rim hid all
this from our eyes. Our foiled attention then fell back upon the
suggestion of the various sounds we heard, and presently my eye caught
a number of faint shadows that played across the dim roof far overhead.
Indisputably there were several Selenites, perhaps a considerable
number, in this space, for we could hear the noises of their
intercourse, and faint sounds that I identified as their footfalls.
There was also a succession of regularly repeated sounds--chid, chid,
chid--which began and ceased, suggestive of a knife or spade hacking at
some soft substance. Then came a clank as if of chains, a whistle and a
rumble as of a truck running over a hollowed place, and then again that
chid, chid, chid resumed. The shadows told of shapes that moved quickly
and rhythmically, in agreement with that regular sound, and rested when
it ceased.
We put our heads close together, and began to discuss these things in
noiseless whispers.
“They are occupied,” I said, “they are occupied in some way.”
“Yes.”
“They’re not seeking us, or thinking of us.”
“Perhaps they have not heard of us.”
“Those others are hunting about below. If suddenly we appeared here----”
We looked at one another.
“There might be a chance to parley,” said Cavor.
“No,” I said. “Not as we are.”
For a space we remained, each occupied by his own thoughts.
Chid, chid, chid went the chopping, and the shadows moved to and fro.
I looked at the grating. “It’s flimsy,” I said. “We might bend two of
the bars and crawl through.”
We wasted a little time in vague discussion. Then I took one of the
bars in both hands, and got my feet up against the rock until they
were almost on a level with my head, and so thrust against the bar.
It bent so suddenly that I almost slipped. I clambered about and bent
the adjacent bar in the opposite direction, and then took the luminous
fungus from my pocket and dropped it down the fissure.
“Don’t do anything hastily,” whispered Cavor, as I twisted myself up
through the opening I had enlarged. I had a glimpse of busy figures as
I came through the grating, and immediately bent down, so that the rim
of the depression in which the grating lay hid me from their eyes, and
so lay flat, signalling advice to Cavor as he also prepared to come
through. Presently we were side by side in the depression, peering over
the edge at the cavern and its occupants.
It was a much larger cavern than we had supposed from our first glimpse
of it, and we looked up from the lowest portion of its sloping floor.
It widened out as it receded from us, and its roof came down and hid
the remoter portion altogether. And lying in a line along its length,
vanishing at last far away in that tremendous perspective, were a
number of huge shapes, huge pallid hulls, upon which the Selenites were
busy. At first they seemed big white cylinders of vague import. Then
I noted the heads upon them lying towards us, eyeless and skinless
like the heads of sheep at a butcher’s, and perceived they were the
carcasses of mooncalves being cut up, much as the crew of a whaler
might cut up a moored whale. They were cutting off the flesh in strips,
and on some of the farther trunks the white ribs were showing. It was
the sound of their hatchets that made that chid, chid. Some way away a
thing like a trolley cable, drawn and loaded with chunks of lax meat,
was running up the slope of the cavern floor. This enormous long avenue
of hulls that were destined to be food, gave us a sense of the vast
populousness of the moon world second only to the effect of our first
glimpse down the shaft.
It seemed to me at first that the Selenites must be standing on
trestle-supported planks,[2] and then I saw that the planks and
supports and their hatchets were really of the same leaden hue as my
fetters had seemed before white light came to bear on them. A number
of very thick-looking crowbars lay about the floor, and had apparently
assisted to turn the dead mooncalf over on its side. They were perhaps
six feet long, with shaped handles, very tempting-looking weapons. The
whole place was lit by three transverse streams of the blue fluid.
We lay for a long time noting all these things in silence. “Well?” said
Cavor at last.
I crouched lower and turned to him. I had come upon a brilliant idea.
“Unless they lowered those bodies by a crane,” I said, “we must be
nearer the surface than I thought.”
“Why?”
“The mooncalf doesn’t hop, and it hasn’t got wings.”
He peered over the edge of the hollow again. “I wonder now ...” he
began. “After all, we have never gone far from the surface----”
I stopped him by a grip on his arm. I had heard a noise from the cleft
below us!
We twisted ourselves about, and lay as still as death, with every sense
alert. In a little while I did not doubt that something was quietly
ascending the cleft. Very slowly and quite noiselessly I assured myself
of a good grip on my chain, and waited for that something to appear.
“Just look at those chaps with the hatchets again,” I said.
“They’re all right,” said Cavor.
I took a sort of provisional aim at the gap in the grating. I could
hear now quite distinctly the soft twittering of the ascending
Selenites, the dab of their hands against the rock, and the falling of
dust from their grips as they clambered.
Then I could see that there was something moving dimly in the blackness
below the grating, but what it might be I could not distinguish. The
whole thing seemed to hang fire just for a moment--then smash! I had
sprung to my feet, struck savagely at something that had flashed out
at me. It was the keen point of a spear. I have thought since that its
length in the narrowness of the cleft must have prevented its being
sloped to reach me. Anyhow, it shot out from the grating like the
tongue of a snake, and missed and flew back and flashed again. But the
second time I snatched and caught it, and wrenched it away, but not
before another had darted ineffectually at me.
I shouted with triumph as I felt the hold of the Selenite resist my
pull for a moment and give, and then I was jabbing down through the
bars, amidst squeals from the darkness, and Cavor had snapped off the
other spear, and was leaping and flourishing it beside me, and making
inefficient jabs. Clang, clang, came up through the grating, and then
an axe hurtled through the air and whacked against the rocks beyond, to
remind me of the fleshers at the carcasses up the cavern.
I turned, and they were all coming towards us in open order waving
their axes. They were short, thick, little beggars, with long arms,
strikingly different from the ones we had seen before. If they had
not heard of us before, they must have realised the situation with
incredible swiftness. I stared at them for a moment, spear in hand.
“Guard that grating, Cavor,” I cried, howled to intimidate them, and
rushed to meet them. Two of them missed with their hatchets, and the
rest fled incontinently. Then the two also were sprinting away up the
cavern, with hands clenched and heads down. I never saw men run like
them!
I knew the spear I had was no good for me. It was thin and flimsy,
only effectual for a thrust, and too long for a quick recover. So I
only chased the Selenites as far as the first carcass, and stopped
there and picked up one of the crowbars that were lying about. It felt
comfortingly heavy, and equal to smashing any number of Selenites.
I threw away my spear, and picked up a second crowbar for the other
hand. I felt five times better than I had with the spear. I shook the
two threateningly at the Selenites, who had come to a halt in a little
crowd far away up the cavern, and then turned about to look at Cavor.
He was leaping from side to side of the grating, making threatening
jabs with his broken spear. That was all right. It would keep the
Selenites down--for a time at any rate. I looked up the cavern again.
What on earth were we going to do now?
We were cornered in a sort of way already. But these butchers up the
cavern had been surprised, they were probably scared, and they had no
special weapons, only those little hatchets of theirs. And that way lay
escape. Their sturdy little forms--ever so much shorter and thicker
than the mooncalf herds--were scattered up the slope in a way that was
eloquent of indecision. I had the moral advantage of a mad bull in a
street. But for all that, there seemed a tremendous crowd of them.
Very probably there was. Those Selenites down the cleft had certainly
some infernally long spears. It might be they had other surprises for
us.... But, confound it! if we charged up the cave we should let them
up behind us, and if we didn’t, those little brutes up the cave would
probably get reinforced. Heaven alone knew what tremendous engines of
warfare--guns, bombs, terrestrial torpedoes--this unknown world below
our feet, this vaster world of which we had only pricked the outer
cuticle, might not presently send up to our destruction. It became
clear the only thing to do was to charge! It became clearer as the
legs of a number of fresh Selenites appeared running down the cavern
towards us.
“Bedford!” cried Cavor, and behold! he was half-way between me and the
grating.
“Go back!” I cried. “What are you doing----”
“They’ve got--it’s like a gun!”
And struggling in the grating between those defensive spears appeared
the head and shoulders of a singularly lean and angular Selenite,
bearing some complicated apparatus.
I realised Cavor’s utter incapacity for the fight we had in hand. For
a moment I hesitated. Then I rushed past him whirling my crowbars, and
shouting to confound the aim of the Selenite. He was aiming in the
queerest way with the thing against his stomach. “_Chuzz!_” The thing
wasn’t a gun; it went off like a cross-bow more, and dropped me in the
middle of a leap.
I didn’t fall down, I simply came down a little shorter than I should
have done if I hadn’t been hit, and from the feel of my shoulder the
thing might have tapped me and glanced off. Then my left hand hit
against the shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking
half through my shoulder. The moment after I got home with the
crowbar in my right hand, and hit the Selenite fair and square. He
collapsed--he crushed and crumpled--his head smashed like an egg.
I dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of my shoulder, and began to
jab it down the grating into the darkness. At each jab came a shriek
and twitter. Finally I hurled the spear down upon them with all my
strength, leapt up, picked up the crowbar again, and started for the
multitude up the cavern.
“Bedford!” cried Cavor. “Bedford!” as I flew past him.