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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The First Men in the Moon, by H. G. Wells

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Title: The First Men in the Moon

Author: H. G. Wells

Release Date: July 5, 2016 [EBook #52501]

Language: English


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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON

“I was progressing in great leaps and bounds” Frontispiece.

Title page
The First Men
in the Moon

By

H. G. Wells

Author of “Tales of Space and Time,”
“Love and Mr. Lewisham,”
and “Anticipations”

“Three thousand stadia from the earth to the moon.... Marvel not, my comrade, if I appear talking to you on super-terrestrial and aerial topics. The long and the short of the matter is that I am running over the order of a Journey I have lately made.”—Lucian’s Icaromenippus

London

George Newnes, Limited

Southampton Street, Strand

1901

CONTENTS
PAGE I. MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR AT LYMPNE 1 II. THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE 28 III. THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE 41 IV. INSIDE THE SPHERE 54 V. THE JOURNEY TO THE MOON 61 VI. THE LANDING ON THE MOON 70 VII. SUNRISE ON THE MOON 77 VIII. A LUNAR MORNING 85 IX. PROSPECTING BEGINS 92 X. LOST MEN IN THE MOON 107 XI. THE MOONCALF PASTURES 115 XII. THE SELENITE’S FACE 132 XIII. MR. CAVOR MAKES SOME SUGGESTIONS 140 XIV. EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE 152 XV. THE GIDDY BRIDGE 161 XVI. POINTS OF VIEW 178 XVII. THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE OF THE MOON BUTCHERS 191 XVIII. IN THE SUNLIGHT 207 XIX. MR. BEDFORD ALONE 221 XX. MR. BEDFORD IN INFINITE SPACE 238 XXI. MR. BEDFORD AT LITTLESTONE 249 XXII. THE ASTONISHING COMMUNICATION OF MR. JULIUS WENDIGEE 271 XXIII. AN ABSTRACT OF THE SIX MESSAGES FIRST RECEIVED FROM MR. CAVOR 277 XXIV. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SELENITES 289 XXV. THE GRAND LUNAR 316 XXVI. THE LAST MESSAGE CAVOR SENT TO THE EARTH 340

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“I was progressing in great Leaps and Bounds” Frontispiece “He gesticulated with his Hands and Arms” To face page 6 “I looked back at his receding Figure” ”” 11 “I sat across the Edge of the Manhole and looked down into the Black Interior” ”” 54 “We watched intensely” ”” 87 “I realised my Leap had been too Violent” ”” 101 “Insects,” murmured Cavor, “Insects” ”” 130 “There the Thing was, looking at Us” ”” 137 “Bedford,” he whispered, “there’s a sort of Light in front of Us” ”” 177 “The nearer I struggled, the more awfully remote it seemed” ”” 236 “They carried Him into Darkness” ”” 292 The Grand Lunar ”” 322

THE FIRST MEN IN
THE MOON

I
MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR AT LYMPNE

As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the world. “Here, at any rate,” said I, “I shall find peace and a chance to work!”

And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is Destiny with all the little plans of men.

I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they have brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.

It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving. Reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed, got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come and I set to work.

I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a pied-à-terre while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years’ agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs. Bond. And yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon—such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each day. It was not, perhaps, in the style of Sybaris, but I have had worse times. I was a little sorry for the baker, who was a very decent man indeed, but even for him I hoped.

Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very wet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his route with boards upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but I can quite imagine it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and houses that make up the present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the worst of the clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if the place would be there at all, if it were not a fading memory of things gone for ever. It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus Lemanus, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives and officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two—and me! And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round in a broad curve to distant Dungeness, and dotted here and there with tree clumps and the church towers of old mediæval towns that are following Lemanus now towards extinction.

That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I have ever seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a raft on the sea, and further westward were the hills by Hastings under the setting sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and lit by ditches and canals.

The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and it was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheer hard work of it, and naturally enough he arrested my attention.

The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and against that he came out black—the oddest little figure.

He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was a fortuitous concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his hands and arms, and jerked his head about and buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You

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