“_He_ won’t touch it,” said the stout young man reassuringly, and I was
only too willing to be reassured.
At first something of the grey of the morning was in my mind, but
presently the sun disengaged itself from the level clouds of the
horizon and lit the world, and turned the leaden sea to glittering
waters. My spirits rose. A sense of the vast importance of the things
I had done and had yet to do came with the sunlight into my mind. I
laughed aloud as the foremost man staggered under my gold. When indeed
I took my place in the world, how amazed the world would be!
If it had not been for my inordinate fatigue, the landlord of the
Littlestone hotel would have been amusing, as he hesitated between
my gold and my respectable company on the one hand, and my filthy
appearance on the other. But at last I found myself in a terrestrial
bathroom once more with warm water to wash myself with, and a change of
raiment, preposterously small indeed, but anyhow clean, that the genial
little man had lent me. He lent me a razor too, but I could not screw
up my resolution to attack even the outposts of the bristling beard
that covered my face.
I sat down to an English breakfast and ate with a sort of languid
appetite--an appetite many weeks old, and very decrepit--and stirred
myself to answer the questions of the four young men. And I told them
the truth.
“Well,” said I, “as you press me--I got it in the moon.”
“The moon?”
“Yes, the moon in the sky.”
“But how do you mean?”
“What I say, confound it!”
“That you have just come from the moon?”
“Exactly! through space--in that ball.” And I took a delicious mouthful
of egg. I made a private note that when I went back to the moon I would
take a box of eggs.
I could see clearly that they did not believe one word of what I told
them, but evidently they considered me the most respectable liar they
had ever met. They glanced at one another, and then concentrated the
fire of their eyes on me. I fancy they expected a clue to me in the
way I helped myself to salt. They seemed to find something significant
in my peppering my egg. These strangely shaped masses of gold they
had staggered under held their minds. There the lumps lay in front of
me, each worth thousands of pounds, and as impossible for any one to
steal as a house or a piece of land. As I looked at their curious faces
over my coffee-cup, I realised something of the enormous wilderness
of explanations into which I should have to wander to render myself
comprehensible again.
“You don’t _really_ mean--” began the youngest young man, in the tone
of one who speaks to an obstinate child.
“Just pass me that toast-rack,” I said, and shut him up completely.
“But look here, I say,” began one of the others. “We’re not going to
believe that, you know.”
“Ah, well,” said I, and shrugged my shoulders.
“He doesn’t want to tell us,” said the youngest young man in a stage
aside; and then, with an appearance of great _sang-froid_, “You don’t
mind if I take a cigarette?”
I waved him a cordial assent, and proceeded with my breakfast. Two
of the others went and looked out of the farther window and talked
inaudibly. I was struck by a thought. “The tide,” I said, “is running
out?”
There was a pause, a doubt who should answer me. “It’s near the ebb,”
said the fat little man.
“Well, anyhow,” I said, “it won’t float far.”
I decapitated my third egg, and began a little speech. “Look here,”
I said. “Please don’t imagine I’m surly or telling you uncivil lies,
or anything of that sort. I’m forced almost, to be a little short and
mysterious. I can quite understand this is as queer as it can be, and
that your imaginations must be going it. I can assure you, you’re
in at a memorable time. But I can’t make it clear to you now--it’s
impossible. I give you my word of honour I’ve come from the moon, and
that’s all I can tell you.... All the same I’m tremendously obliged to
you, you know, tremendously. I hope that my manner hasn’t in any way
given you offence.”
“Oh, not in the least!” said the youngest young man affably. “We can
quite understand,” and staring hard at me all the time, he heeled
his chair back until it very nearly upset, and recovered with some
exertion. “Not a bit of it,” said the fat young man. “Don’t you imagine
_that_!” and they all got up and dispersed, and walked about and lit
cigarettes, and generally tried to show they were perfectly amiable and
disengaged, and entirely free from the slightest curiosity about me
and the sphere. “I’m going to keep an eye on that ship out there all
the same,” I heard one of them remarking in an undertone. If only they
could have forced themselves to it, they would, I believe, even have
gone out and left me. I went on with my third egg.
“The weather,” the fat little man remarked presently, “has been
immense, has it not? I don’t know _when_ we have had such a summer....”
Phoo--whizz! Like a tremendous rocket!
And somewhere a window was broken....
“What’s that?” said I.
“It isn’t--?” cried the little man, and rushed to the corner window.
All the others rushed to the window likewise. I sat staring at them.
Suddenly I leapt up, knocked over my third egg, and rushed for the
window also. I had just thought of something. “Nothing to be seen
there,” cried the little man, rushing for the door.
“It’s that boy!” I cried, bawling in hoarse fury; “it’s that accursed
boy!” and turning about I pushed the waiter aside--he was just bringing
me some more toast--and rushed violently out of the room and down and
out upon the queer little esplanade in front of the hotel.
The sea, which had been smooth, was rough now with hurrying cat’s-paws,
and all about where the sphere had been was tumbled water like the
wake of a ship. Above, a little puff of cloud whirled like dispersing
smoke, and the three or four people on the beach were staring up with
interrogative faces towards the point of that unexpected report. And
that was all! Boots and waiter and the four young men in blazers came
rushing out behind me. Shouts came from windows and doors, and all
sorts of worrying people came into sight--agape.
For a time I stood there, too overwhelmed by this new development to
think of the people.
At first I was too stunned to see the thing as any definite disaster--I
was just stunned, as a man is by some accidental violent blow. It is
only afterwards he begins to appreciate his specific injury.
“Good Lord!”
I felt as though somebody was pouring funk out of a can down the back
of my neck. My legs became feeble. I had got the first intimation of
what the disaster meant for me. There was that confounded boy--sky
high! I was utterly “left.” There was the gold in the coffee-room--my
only possession on earth. How would it all work out? The general effect
was of a gigantic unmanageable confusion.
“I say,” said the voice of the little man behind. “I _say_, you know.”
I wheeled about, and there were twenty or thirty people, a sort
of irregular investment of people, all bombarding me with dumb
interrogation, with infinite doubt and suspicion. I felt the compulsion
of their eyes intolerably. I groaned aloud.
“I _can’t_!” I shouted. “I tell you I can’t! I’m not equal to it! You
must puzzle and--and be damned to you!”
I gesticulated convulsively. He receded a step as though I had
threatened him. I made a bolt through them into the hotel. I charged
back into the coffee-room, rang the bell furiously. I gripped the
waiter as he entered. “D’ye hear?” I shouted. “Get help and carry these
bars up to my room right away.”
He failed to understand me, and I shouted and raved at him. A
scared-looking little old man in a green apron appeared, and
further two of the young men in flannels. I made a dash at them and
commandeered their services. As soon as the gold was in my room I felt
free to quarrel. “Now get out,” I shouted; “all of you get out if you
don’t want to see a man go mad before your eyes!” And I helped the
waiter by the shoulder as he hesitated in the doorway. And then, as
soon as I had the door locked on them all, I tore off the little man’s
clothes again, shied them right and left, and got into bed forthwith.
And there I lay swearing and panting and cooling for a very long time.
At last I was calm enough to get out of bed and ring up the round-eyed
waiter for a flannel nightshirt, a soda and whisky, and some good
cigars. And these things being procured me, after an exasperating delay
that drove me several times to the bell, I locked the door again and
proceeded very deliberately to look the entire situation in the face.
The net result of the great experiment presented itself as an absolute
failure. It was a rout, and I was the sole survivor. It was an
absolute collapse, and this was the final disaster. There was nothing
for it but to save myself, and as much as I could in the way of
prospects from our _débâcle_. At one fatal crowning blow all my vague
resolutions of return and recovery had vanished. My intention of going
back to the moon, of getting a sphereful of gold, and afterwards of
having a fragment of Cavorite analysed and so recovering the great
secret--perhaps, finally, even of recovering Cavor’s body--all these
ideas vanished altogether.