Lost on the Moon by Roy Rockwood (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📖

CHAPTER XXII

A BREAKDOWN

 

At first they were inclined to regard the announcement of Washington

lightly, but the too evident fright of the colored man showed that

there was some basis for his fear.

 

“Tell us just what you saw, and where it was,” said Mr. Henderson. “Was

the man alive, Washington?”

 

“No, sah. How could a ghost be alive? Dey is all dead ones, ghosts am!”

 

“There are no such things as ghosts,” said Mr. Henderson sternly.

 

“Den how could I see one?” demanded the cook triumphantly, as if there

was no further argument.

 

“Well, tell us about it,” suggested Jack.

 

“It were jest dis way,” began Washington earnestly, and with occasional

glances over his shoulder, “I were walkin’ along, sort ob lookin’ fer

dem sparklin’ diamonds, an’ I didn’t see none, when all on a suddint I

looked down in a hole, and dere I seen HIM!” and he brought out the

word with a jerk.

 

“Saw what—who?” asked Mr. Roumann.

 

“De ghost—de dead man. He were lyin’ all curled up, laik he were

asleep, an’ when I seed him, I didn’t stop t’ call him t’ dinner, yo’

can make up yo’ minds t’ dat all.”

 

“Can you show us the place?” inquired Jack.

 

“Yais, sah, massa Jack, dat’s what I kin. I’ll point it out from dish

yeah winder, but I ain’t g’wine dar ag’in; no, sah, ‘scuse me!”

 

“Well, show us then,” suggested Mark. “I wonder what it can be?” he

went on.

 

“Maybe one of the people who came from Mars after the diamonds, who was

forgotten and left here, and who died,” said Jack.

 

“It’s possible,” murmured Mr. Henderson. “However, we’ll go take a

look. Get on your fur coats, boys, and take the life-torches. Will you

come, Andy?”

 

“Sure. It’s got to be more than a ghost to scare me,” said the hunter.

 

They emerged from the projectile and walked in the direction Washington

had pointed, holding their gas torches near their heads and talking of

what they might see.

 

“This will be evidence in favor of my diamond theory,” declared Jack.

“It shows that the Martians were here.”

 

“Wait and see what it is,” suggested his chum.

 

They walked along a short distance farther, and then Mark spoke.

 

“That ought to be the place over there,” he said, pointing to a

depression between two tall pinnacles of black rock.

 

Jack sprang forward, and a moment later uttered a cry of astonishment.

 

“Here it is!” he called. “A dead man!”

 

“A dead man?” echoed Professor Henderson.

 

“A petrified man,” added Jack, in awestruck tones. “He’s turned to

stone.”

 

A few seconds later they were all grouped around the strange object—it

was a man no longer, but had once been one. It was a petrified human

being, a full-grown man, to judge by the size, and it was a solid image

in stone, even the garments with which he had been clothed being turned

to rock.

 

For a moment no one spoke, and they gazed in silence at what was an

evidence of former life on the moon. The man was huddled up, with the

knees drawn toward the stomach and the arms bent around the body, as if

the man had died in agony. The features were scarcely distinguishable.

 

“That man was never an inhabitant of Mars,” spoke Professor Henderson,

in a low voice. “He is much too large, and he has none of the

characteristics of the Martians.”

 

“I agree with you,” came from Mr. Roumann.

 

“Then who is he?” asked Jack.

 

“I think,” said the aged scientist, “that we are now gazing on all that

was once mortal of one of the inhabitants of the moon.”

 

“An inhabitant of the moon?” gasped Mark.

 

“Yes; why not?” went on Mr. Henderson. “I believe the moon was once a

planet like our earth—perhaps even a part of it, and I think that it

was inhabited. In time it cooled so that life could no longer be

supported, or, at least, this side of the moon presents that

indication. The people were killed—frozen to death, and by reason of

the chemical action of the gases, or perhaps from the moon being

covered with water in which was a large percentage of lime, they were

turned to stone. That is what happened to this poor man.”

 

“Such a thing is possible,” admitted Professor Roumann gravely.

 

And, indeed, it is, as the writer can testify, for in the Metropolitan

Museum in New York there are the remains of an ancient South American

miner, whose body has been turned into solid copper. The corpse, of

which the features are partly distinguishable, was found four hundred

feet down in an old copper mine, where the dripping from hidden

springs, the waters of which were rich in copper sulphate, had

converted the man’s body into a block of metal, retaining its natural

shape. The body is drawn up in agony, and there is every indication

that the man was killed by a cave-in of the mine. Some of his tools

were found near him.

 

They remained gazing at the weird sight of the petrified man for some

time.

 

“Then the moon was once inhabited?” asked Jack at length.

 

“I believe so—yes,” answered Professor Henderson.

 

“Then where are the other people?” asked Mark. “There must be more than

one left. Why was this man off here alone?”

 

“We don’t know,” responded the German scientist. “Perhaps he was off

alone in the mountains when death overtook him, or perhaps all his

companions were buried under an upheaval of rock. We can only

theorize.”

 

“It will be something else to put in the book I am to write,” said Mr.

Henderson. “But, now that we have evidence of former life on the moon,

we must investigate further. We will make an attempt to go to the other

side of the country, and to that end I suggest that we set our

projectile in motion and travel a bit. There is little more to see

here.”

 

This plan met with general approval, and, after some photographs had

been taken of the petrified man, and the professors had made notes, and

set down data regarding him, and had tried to guess how long he had

been dead, they went back to the Annihilator.

 

“Well, did yo’ all see him?” asked Washington.

 

“We sure did,” answered Jack. “You weren’t mistaken that time.”

 

They got ready to move the projectile, but decided to remain over night

where they were. “Over night” being the way they spoke of it, though,

as I have said, there was perpetual daylight for fourteen days at a

time on the moon.

 

Professors Roumann and Henderson made a few more observations for

scientific purposes. They found traces of some vegetation, but it was

of little value for food, even to the lower forms of animal life, they

decided. There was also a little moisture; noticed at certain hours of

the day. But, in the main, the place where they had landed was most

desolate.

 

“I hope we get to a better place soon,” said Jack, just before they

sealed themselves up in the projectile to travel to a new spot.

 

As distance was comparatively small on the moon, for her diameter is

only a little over two thousand miles and the circumference only about

six thousand six hundred miles, the Annihilator could not be speeded

up. If it went too fast, it would soon be off the moon and into space

again.

 

Accordingly the Cardite motor was geared to