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wind of a stable. Then I supposed we must still be at work upon the

sphere, and that somehow I had got into the cellar of Cavor's house. I

remembered we had finished the sphere, and fancied I must still be in it

and travelling through space.



"Cavor," I said, "cannot we have some light?"



There came no answer.



"Cavor!" I insisted.



I was answered by a groan. "My head!" I heard him say; "my head!"



I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered they

were tied together. This startled me very much. I brought them up to my

mouth and felt the cold smoothness of metal. They were chained together. I

tried to separate my legs and made out they were similarly fastened, and

also that I was fastened to the ground by a much thicker chain about the

middle of my body.



I was more frightened than I had yet been by anything in all our strange

experiences. For a time I tugged silently at my bonds. "Cavor!" I cried

out sharply. "Why am I tied? Why have you tied me hand and foot?"



"I haven't tied you," he answered. "It's the Selenites."



The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories came

back to me: the snowy desolation, the thawing of the air, the growth of

the plants, our strange hopping and crawling among the rocks and

vegetation of the crater. All the distress of our frantic search for the

sphere returned to me.... Finally the opening of the great lid that

covered the pit!



Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our present

plight, the pain in my head became intolerable. I came to an

insurmountable barrier, an obstinate blank.



"Cavor!"



"Yes?"



"Where are we?"



"How should I know?"



"Are we dead?"



"What nonsense!"



"They've got us, then!"



He made no answer but a grunt. The lingering traces of the poison seemed

to make him oddly irritable.



"What do you mean to do?"



"How should I know what to do?"



"Oh, very well!" said I, and became silent. Presently, I was roused from

a stupor. "O Lord!" I cried; "I wish you'd stop that buzzing!"



We lapsed into silence again, listening to the dull confusion of noises

like the muffled sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. I

could make nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm and then

another, and questioned it in vain. But after a long time I became aware

of a new and sharper element, not mingling with the rest but standing out,

as it were, against that cloudy background of sound. It was a series of

relatively very little definite sounds, tappings and rubbings, like a

loose spray of ivy against a window or a bird moving about upon a box. We

listened and peered about us, but the darkness was a velvet pall. There

followed a noise like the subtle movement of the wards of a well-oiled

lock. And then there appeared before me, hanging as it seemed in an

immensity of black, a thin bright line.



"Look!" whispered Cavor very softly.



"What is it?"



"I don't know."



We stared.



The thin bright line became a band, and broader and paler. It took upon

itself the quality of a bluish light falling upon a white-washed wall. It

ceased to be parallel-sided; it developed a deep indentation on one side.

I turned to remark this to Cavor, and was amazed to see his ear in a

brilliant illumination--all the rest of him in shadow. I twisted my head

round as well as my bonds would permit. "Cavor," I said, "it's behind!"



His ear vanished--gave place to an eye!



Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out, and

revealed itself as the space of an opening door. Beyond was a sapphire

vista, and in the doorway stood a grotesque outline silhouetted against

the glare.



We both made convulsive efforts to turn, and failing, sat staring over our

shoulders at this. My first impression was of some clumsy quadruped with

lowered head. Then I perceived it was the slender pinched body and short

and extremely attenuated bandy legs of a Selenite, with his head depressed

between his shoulders. He was without the helmet and body covering they

wear upon the exterior.



He was a blank, black figure to us, but instinctively our imaginations

supplied features to his very human outline. I, at least, took it

instantly that he was somewhat hunchbacked, with a high forehead and long

features.



He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements seemed

absolutely noiseless. Then he came forward again. He walked like a bird,

his feet fell one in front of the other. He stepped out of the ray of

light that came through the doorway, and it seemed as though he vanished

altogether in the shadow.



For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I perceived

him standing facing us both in the full light. Only the human features I

had attributed to him were not there at all!



Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn't. It came to me as

an absolute, for a moment an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though it

wasn't a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a horror, a deformity,

that would presently be disavowed or explained. There was no nose, and the

thing had dull bulging eyes at the side--in the silhouette I had supposed

they were ears. There were no ears.... I have tried to draw one of these

heads, but I cannot. There was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a human

mouth in a face that stares ferociously....



The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almost

like the short joints in the leg of a crab. The joints of the limbs I

could not see, because of the puttee-like straps in which they were

swathed, and which formed the only clothing the being wore.



There the thing was, looking at us!



At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the creature.

I suppose he also was amazed, and with more reason, perhaps, for amazement

than we. Only, confound him! he did not show it. We did at least know what

had brought about this meeting of incompatible creatures. But conceive how

it would seem to decent Londoners, for example, to come upon a couple of

living things, as big as men and absolutely unlike any other earthly

animals, careering about among the sheep in Hyde Park! It must have taken

him like that.



Figure us! We were bound hand and foot, fagged and filthy; our beards two

inches long, our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you must imagine in his

knickerbockers (torn in several places by the bayonet scrub) his Jaegar

shirt and old cricket cap, his wiry hair wildly disordered, a tail to

every quarter of the heavens. In that blue light his face did not look red

but very dark, his lips and the drying blood upon my hands seemed black.

If possible I was in a worse plight than he, on account of the yellow

fungus into which I had jumped. Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoes

had been taken off and lay at our feet. And we were sitting with our backs

to this queer bluish light, peering at such a monster as Durer might have

invented.



Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared his

throat. Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were in

trouble. It ended in a shriek, and everything was still again.



Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood for

a moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us; and once

more we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness into which we had

awakened.