The First Men in the Moon by H. Wells (smart ebook reader TXT) 📗

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.

I picked up a fragment and sniffed at it.

‘Cavor,’ I said in a hoarse undertone.

He glanced at me with his face screwed up. ‘Don’t,’ he said. I put down the fragment, and we crawled on through this tempting fleshiness for a space.

‘Cavor,’ I asked, ‘why not?’

‘Poison,’ I heard him say, but he did not look round.

We crawled some way before I decided.

‘I’ll chance it,’ said I.

He made a belated gesture to prevent me. I stuffed my mouth full. He crouched watching my face, his own twisted into the oddest expression. ‘It’s good,’ I said.

‘O Lord!’ he cried.

He watched me munch, his face wrinkled between desire and disapproval, then suddenly succumbed to appetite, and began to tear off huge mouthfuls. For a time we did nothing but eat.

The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mushroom, only it was much laxer in texture, and, as one swallowed it, it warmed the throat. At first we experienced a mere mechanical satisfaction in eating; then our blood began to run warmer, and we tingled at the lips and fingers, and then new and slightly irrelevant ideas came bubbling up in our minds.

‘It’s good,’ said I. ‘Infernally good! What a home for our surplus population!* Our poor surplus population,’ and I broke off another large portion.

It filled me with a curiously benevolent satisfaction that there was such good food in the moon. The depression of my hunger gave way to an irrational exhilaration. The dread and discomfort in which I had been living vanished entirely. I perceived the moon no longer as a planet from which I most earnestly desired the means of escape, but as a possible refuge for human destitution. I think I forgot the Selenites, the mooncalves, the lid, and the noises completely so soon as I had eaten that fungus.

Cavor replied to my third repetition of my ‘surplus population’ remark with similar words of approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put this down to the stimulating effect of food after a long fast. ‘Ess’lent discov’ry yours, Cavor,’ said I. ‘Se’nd on’y to the ’tato.’*

‘Whajer mean?’ asked Cavor. ‘’Scovery of the moon — se’nd on’y to the ’tato?’

I looked at him, shocked at his suddenly hoarse voice, and by the badness of his articulation. It occurred to me in a flash that he was intoxicated, possibly by the fungus. It also occurred to me that he erred in imagining that he had discovered the moon; he had not discovered it, he had only reached it. I tried to lay my hand on his arm and explain this to him, but the issue was too subtle for his brain. It was also unexpectedly difficult to express. After a momentary attempt to understand me — I remember wondering if the fungus had made my eyes as fishy as his — he set off upon some observations on his own account.

‘We are,’ he announced with a solemn hiccup, ‘the creashurs o’ what we eat and drink.’

He repeated this, and as I was now in one of my subtle moods, I determined to dispute it. Possibly I wandered a little from the point. But Cavor certainly did not attend at all properly. He stood up as well as he could, putting a hand on my head to steady himself, which was disrespectful, and stood staring about him, quite devoid now of any fear of the moon beings.

I tried to point out that this was dangerous for some reason that was not perfectly clear to me, but the word ‘dangerous’ had somehow got mixed with ‘indiscreet,’ and came out rather more like ‘injurious’ than either; and after an attempt to disentangle them, I resumed my argument, addressing myself principally to the unfamiliar but attentive coralline growths on either side. I felt that it was necessary to clear up this confusion between the moon and a potato at once — I wandered into a long parenthesis on the importance of precision of definition in argument. I did my best to ignore the fact that my bodily sensations were no longer agreeable.

In some way that I have now forgotten, my mind was led back to projects of colonisation. ‘We must annex this moon,’ I said. ‘There must be no shilly-shally. This is part of the White Man’s Burthen.* Cavor — we are — hic — Satap — mean Satraps!* Nempire Cæsar never dreamt. B’in all the newspapers. Cavorecia. Bedfordecia.* Bedfordecia — hic — Limited. Mean — unlimited! Practically.’

Certainly I was intoxicated.

I embarked upon an argument to show the infinite benefits our arrival would confer on the moon. I involved myself in a rather difficult proof that the arrival of Columbus was, on the whole, beneficial to America. I found I had forgotten the line of argument I had intended to pursue, and continued to repeat ‘Simlar to C’lumbus,’ to fill up time.

From that point my memory of the action of that abominable fungus becomes confused. I remember vaguely that we declared our intention of standing no nonsense from any confounded insects, that we decided it ill became men to hide shamefully upon a mere satellite, that we equipped ourselves with huge armfuls of the fungus — whether for missile purposes or not I do not know — and, heedless of the stabs of the bayonet scrub, we started forth into the sunshine.

Almost immediately we must have come upon the Selenites.* There were six of them, and they were marching in single file over a rocky place, making the most remarkable piping and whining