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one or two waving hatchets and coming to meet me, more running away, some bolting sideways into the
avenue of carcasses, then presently others came in sight carrying spears, and then others. I saw a most
extraordinary thing, all hands and feet, bolting for cover. The cavern grew darker farther up.
Flick! something flew over my head. Flick! As I soared in mid-stride I saw a spear hit and quiver in one of the
carcasses to my left. Then, as I came down, one hit the ground before me, and I heard the remote chuzz! with
which their things were fired. Flick, flick! for a moment it was a shower. They were volleying!
I stopped dead.
I don't think I thought clearly then. I seem to remember a kind of stereotyped phrase running through my
Chapter 17 76
mind: "Zone of fire, seek cover!" I know I made a dash for the space between two of the carcasses, and stood
there panting and feeling very wicked.
I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment it seemed as if he had vanished from the world. Then he came out
of the darkness between the row of the carcasses and the rocky wall of the cavern. I saw his little face, dark
and blue, and shining with perspiration and emotion.
He was saying something, but what it was I did not heed. I had realised that we might work from mooncalf to
mooncalf up the cave until we were near enough to charge home. It was charge or nothing. "Come on!" I said,
and led the way.
"Bedford!" he cried unavailingly.
My mind was busy as we went up that narrow alley between the dead bodies and the wall of the cavern. The
rocks curved about--they could not enfilade us. Though in that narrow space we could not leap, yet with our
earth-born strength we were still able to go very much faster than the Selenites. I reckoned we should
presently come right among them. Once we were on them, they would be nearly as formidable as black
beetles. Only there would first of all be a volley. I thought of a stratagem. I whipped off my flannel jacket as I
ran.
"Bedford!" panted Cavor behind me.
I glanced back. "What?" said I.
He was pointing upward over the carcasses. "White light!" he said. "White light again!"
I looked, and it was even so; a faint white ghost of light in the remoter cavern roof. That seemed to give me
double strength.
"Keep close," I said. A flat, long Selenite dashed out of the darkness, and squealed and fled. I halted, and
stopped Cavor with my hand. I hung my jacket over my crowbar, ducked round the next carcass, dropped
jacket and crowbar, showed myself, and darted back.
"Chuzz-flick," just one arrow came. We were close on the Selenites, and they were standing in a crowd,
broad, short, and tall together, with a little battery of their shooting implements pointing down the cave. Three
or four other arrows followed the first, then their fire ceased.
I stuck out my head, and escaped by a hair's-breadth. This time I drew a dozen shots or more, and heard the
Selenites shouting and twittering as if with excitement as they shot. I picked up jacket and crowbar again.
"Now!" said I, and thrust out the jacket.
"Chuzz-zz-zz-zz! Chuzz!" In an instant my jacket had grown a thick beard of arrows, and they were quivering
all over the carcass behind us. Instantly I slipped the crowbar out of the jacket, dropped the jacket--for all I
know to the contrary it is lying up there in the moon now--and rushed out upon them.
For a minute perhaps it was massacre. I was too fierce to discriminate, and the Selenites were probably too
scared to fight. At any rate they made no sort of fight against me. I saw scarlet, as the saying is. I remember I
seemed to be wading among those leathery, thin things as a man wades through tall grass, mowing and hitting,
first right, then left; smash. Little drops of moisture flew about. I trod on things that crushed and piped and
went slippery. The crowd seemed to open and close and flow like water. They seemed to have no combined
plan whatever. There were spears flew about me, I was grazed over the ear by one. I was stabbed once in the
Chapter 17 77
arm and once in the cheek, but I only found that out afterwards, when the blood had had time to run and cool
and feel wet.
What Cavor did I do not know. For a space it seemed that this fighting had lasted for an age, and must needs
go on for ever. Then suddenly it was all over, and there was nothing to be seen but the backs of heads bobbing
up and down as their owners ran in all directions.... I seemed altogether unhurt. I ran forward some paces,
shouting, then turned about. I was amazed.
I had come right through them in vast flying strides, they were all behind me, and running hither and thither to
hide.
I felt an enormous astonishment at the evaporation of the great fight into which I had hurled myself, and not a
little exultation. It did not seem to me that I had discovered the Selenites were unexpectedly flimsy, but that I
was unexpectedly strong. I laughed stupidly. This fantastic moon!
I glanced for a moment at the smashed and writhing bodies that were scattered over the cavern floor, with a
vague idea of further violence, then hurried on after Cavor.
Chapter 18 78
Chapter 18
In the Sunlight
Presently we saw that the cavern before us opened upon a hazy void. In another moment we had emerged
upon a sort of slanting gallery, that projected into a vast circular space, a huge cylindrical pit running
vertically up and down. Round this pit the slanting gallery ran without any parapet or protection for a turn and
a half, and then plunged high above into the rock again. Somehow it reminded me then one of those spiral
turns of the railway through the Saint Gothard. It was all tremendously huge. I can scarcely hope to convey to
you the Titanic proportion of all that place, the Titanic effect of it. Our eyes followed up the vast declivity of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]