The result was that we agreed to try the first; and spent a goodly time doing what we might by way of sealing the Cometes after such fashion as was available to us, prior to attempting flight. The lesser leaks I was assur’d we have solv’d, yet I was unsure how severe the main rupture might be. Yet there was no knowing but in trying, so I took charge of the Propulse itself, and touched its grooves to the best of my abilities.
We launched upward in lively manner, but at once it became clear that the Cometes could not support itself with integrity; and though we lurch’d high yet the Vessel made a great rattling and trembling; and as I attempt’d to swerve, as birds do in flight, to position myself in the direction of Home, when with a mighty conniption shake the breach opened wider and the boddy of Kindermann flew from its place and was sucked hard away, to fall a Luciferian trajectory towards the black sands below. But this was disaster; and occasion’d a great typhoon in the cabbin, and all in a flutter with all objects within; and several other breaches open’d again. I reached the spigot to stop all our ayr evanishing away, but this only caus’d us to choak and gasp; and I knew death was close upon us. I attempted to bring the Cometes gently to the ground again, but my hand was heavy and I landed with a mighty crack against (as I later knew) a Crater ridge. Providence caus’d a spur of rock to thrust up through the breach, and a great swarm of dust flew about, clogging throat and eyes. Cano and I clustered around the spigot, and I parcell’d out littel gouts of ayr that we breath’d in greedily enough. The dust was settled by being drawn out through the cracks our hull. But, stirring ourselves, we block’d these as well as we could, and cramm’d much cargo around the rock. So it was we found ourselves in a worse situation than before.
What transpir’d with Cano
Cano, I am sorry to say, wept a great deal, and it was at this point I understood he had carried about his person a bronze bottle of gin, from which he had too often refresh’d himself. I am almost ashamed to relate this man’s behaviour in this skirmish; but as I think he deserves to be exposed, I shall divulge it in the manner I observ’d it. He, deciding that he would not die in that place, smote me cruelly about the head with a spanner, and as I was daz’d, neither relinquishing my senses wholly nor yet alert enough to counter his intent, I saw him put himself into the indiarubber suit. For we both knew that the suit was nothing without ayr, and the only supply of this latter was the one balon that remain’d to us. By the time he had fitted himself into the suit I was rouz’d somewhat from my half-stupor, but not in time to stop him stepping out through the door. And then I could do no other than watch from the porthole-window as Cano made his way about. He went to the exterior of the spigot, where the pipe fed ayr thro’, and his intent was not less than to disattach it to supply his own suit, thereby extinguishing my life. But, in brief, he achiev’d not this bad plan, and tho’ he expir’d on the black and purple sands, there. For as Don Frederico had said, the suit puff’d up like a pig’s bladder until it was so rigid with cold that he could move not arms nor legs. He danc’d and leapt like a water-boatman, his limbs straight out, but then he tripped over a broad, black rock, shap’d like an umbrella buried in the sand, and fell. The ayr inside his suit was soon breath’d up, and tho’ he twitched and struggl’d, yet could he not regain his footing. Shortly he mov’d no more, and so he pass’d from our mortall realm. I said a prayer for his Spirit, and reflect’d on how he might have acquitted himself had not drink possess’d his soul. Then I pray’d some more, for guidance, in that desolate place.
There was nothing but a choaking death to be expected of staying in that location, but I could see littel hope of egress. And though the indiarubber-suit had serv’d Cano but ill, yet I considerd how it might be possible to move, in howsoever waddling a fashion. But the suit was outside, and there was but one.
For two days (or so far as I could calculate the time, in that place, where the sun shrank only very slowly to the horizon) I made no attempt to remove myself; for I reason’d (howsoever ill my reason seems in hindsight) that it could be the Cristal House was not altogether destroy’d, and that they might come about the sky in their own vessel to search for me. But it was delusive. And then I saw that the sun, if slow, was setting, and soon the night would come when my ayr would freeze and I finally die. Thinking of my Commission, and my duty, I could not think to leave the Propulse there; but though I made laborious way towards unfixing it, it was too heavy and well-set for one man to move. And at last I resolv’d: to die in the attempt at escape rather than die a passive death inside the Cometes.
The cold was growing apace; but the difficulties served to fix them more firmly in my resolution. In short, I swaddl’d myself about with such woollens and cloaths as we were supply’d with: leather gloves with woollen ones above (the which I may thank for the fact that I did not altogether lose my fingers), and silk handshoes for the feet; and for my head, about which I was in truth most concern’d, I fashion’d a sack of leather, and ty’d it about with a cord. The greatest inconvenience of this was that I could not see; but I spent long enough committing the scene without to my memory. Finally there was nothing but a short prayer and my hard-bearting heart, and I stepped from the ruin’d vessel.
The 1st thing that occur’d, which both surpriz’d and alarm’d me, was that the ayr inside my hood all fled away, and the fabric of the leather cleav’d close about my face. I had taken a dozen great breaths before my exit, but this plac’d me moments from an asphixiant death. The 2nd was my notice of the great cold, severer even than the Arctic chill I knew in my Ocean Voyage under the command of Sir William Camell in 1711. I made to feel my way, blind, about the exterior of the Vessel; but my hands and fingers were so benumbd and in such sudden pain, that I could barely feel. Worse were my feet, for the silk kept back the ayr not at all, and the surgeon who later cut away my toes declar’d me lucky not to have lost the feet themselves. And the chill ran up and down my whole boddy, such that my heart shrank to a chesnut inside my ribs. I had found it cold before, inside the Cometes, but now began to feel the extreamity of it. Still backward was no direction, and I stumbl’d round until by God’s Grace I laid my frost-chew’d hand upon the pipe of the ayr-balon, and tugging it free slipped the end in under my hood. Tho’ my lips slept with cold, and my mouth was all benumb’d, yet I managed to suck some ayr in my lungs, and rested for only a moment. But the sensation was deserting my limbs, and so (recalling the direction in which Cano lay) I stepped over to him. My foot found him, not I; and only the strange lightness of the Lunar world enabl’d me to haul his body back with my Left hand, holding the pipe with my Right. Without Providence I could not have regain’d the interior of the Cometes; and even then I could not close the double-door behind me without severing the ayr-pipe; so it was a poor clumsy & sightless fumbling that got Cano out of that suit and got me into it. How I managed it (to be truthful) I can hardly remember; save only that God’s Grace did not desert me, even in that place.