“The sphere!” he said. “There is nothing for it but the sphere.”
We roused ourselves to another spurt of crawling. My mind ran entirely
on edible things, on the hissing profundity of summer drinks, more
particularly I craved for beer. I was haunted by the memory of a
sixteen gallon cask that had swaggered in my Lympne cellar. I thought
of the adjacent larder, and especially of steak and kidney pie—tender
steak and plenty of kidney, and rich, thick gravy between. Ever and
again I was seized with fits of hungry yawning. We came to flat places
overgrown with fleshy red things, monstrous coralline growths; as we
pushed against them they snapped and broke. I noted the quality of the
broken surfaces. The confounded stuff certainly looked of a biteable
texture. Then it seemed to me that it smelt rather well.