Ambulation through the Selenic lands
It was hardly warmer in the indiarubber suit than it had been before, and where warmth return’d to my hands and feet it was attended with stabbing pains and great discomfort. When I attach’d the hose to the valve in the suit neck it straightaway puff’d up and I could not move, or wriggle my way free. So I was compell’d to unconnect the hose and permit the ayr to hiss away, and only reconnect it after I had got outside. In all this I retayn’d the leather hood about my face, incapable in shear confusion to strip it away; but at last my wits return’d to the degree where I could think of this, and I discover’d that the arms of my suit were so Stiff that I could, internally, withdraw my own arms from them; and so slid the mask away.
Now, at least, I could see; and the sight was a desolate one. It is impossible that any thing living could subsist in so rigid and ayrless a climate; and that the Patiens can do so speaks to their monstrous strangeness. To stand still was to freeze, so I bestirr’d myself to motion, tho’ it hurt every bone in me to do so. The only ambulation possible in the suit, so stiff with ayr, was to waddle like a Penguin, to swivel left side and right side as I progressed. It was slow and cumbrous, but I nonetheless made my way up a long low slope of dark gray, and at the last I reach’d the eminence; and no Mountain Climber ever felt a greater joy than I at this petty achievement.
I look’d back and saw the smashed Cometes below me, marvelling that I had surviv’d for any time within it, so small and fractured-up it looked; and then I turn’d before me. The Earth, our World, stood in the black sky, of a proportion larger than the Moon stands in ours (which the greater dimensions of our world necessitates); but it was strange, and melancholy to look upward and consider that every fellow soul of my acquaintance was confin’d within that glaucous circle. Below me lay a great and dismal plain, black and grey as a coalface, but I had reason to hope it led to the Tranquil Sea; and there being no other shift for me, but to proceed thither and either treat with the Patien, or else pilfer from them the necessities to prolong my existence.
It would be needless to give the reader an account of the many difficulties I met with in making my slow way over the Tranquil Sea, dragging behind me a great balon of air, twenty times my hight, and sluggish and hard to move even in that lighten’d world. I was forc’d thrice to detour around obstacles in my way, and took some alarm, at the many patches in which obsidian flints or granite shards littered the way. But by God’s Grace I avoided hurt, and finally climbed another very dusty ridge, and look’d back to see the cicatrice tracks of my passage.
On the far side of this I saw various blocks, pale blue, silver-metallick and black; and saw that they had been scatter’d here by the Patien. Why they are so careless with their devices I know not, but of course I was laid under the most absolute necessity of behaving myself with the utmost circumspection and precaution. In the distance (which distances are strangely foreshorten’d in that place, either on account of the lack of ayr, or the strangeness of the weightless humour of the world) I saw larger blocks, and bethought them dwellings. With tedious progress, as I grew more and more tired, I struggl’d thereto. The glass porthole in my helmet kept fogging with my own breath, and I was oblig’d often to withdraw my hand inside the suit and smear it clear; and in truth it was hard to see very much through that space.
I passed 2 of the Patien creatures on the way, but they pay’d me no mind, scuttling away on their own mysterious business; and caring neither for the cold or the arylessness of that place, but going bare-fac’d and with their long limbs moving fast as a spider shifts its tentacles. At last I came to a block the size of good London Town House, and look’d about it for entrance, but found none. I was near dead with exhaustion and cold and gravely tempt’d to the sin of Despair; I thought to cut my suit and so end it, but had no knife. So I struck the wall of this block with my head, thinking (or perhaps not, for my thoughts were not so regular as that) to crack the glass in my porthole and so make an end; for the cold alone was more than I could bear. But again Providence spar’d me, even from my own wickedness, and a group of Patien came about me.
This may be the time to supply some description of those strange beings, although the memory of this encounter is so haz’d in my recollection that I might be recounting a dream, as much as passing on scientifick information. As many have noted they most resemble gigantick Spiders in overall appearance. They stand to the hight of a man, but their boddies are like unto a bullseal in length and breadth, and suspended horizontal in the air by their legs, of which most have six, tho’ some have eight and others are reported with ten (I have not myself seen these latter). Their faces, such as they have them, are monstrous ugly, more like to bats’ faces than anything else; and as I afterwards discover’d they smell very nauseously. Some are black with white lines, and some a blue-grey like the breast of a pigeon, which is to say curiously streak’d with all sorts of colours; still others have more ferocious manner, and scuttle fast in a manner like to alarm the bravest of men. Others appear more ruminative, altho’ it is hard to decipher how they think. To be sure what World it was in which their native habitation is found must be very different to ours.
I do not recall how I was transport’d inside, or (in truth) whether the interior in which I found myself was the same structure against which I had knock’d with my head. It was a hall, square, amounting to twenty yards of each wall; and white as milk. They stripped me from the indiarubber suit, and would have remov’d my inner cloathing, save only that I howl’d with pain when they attempted to peel the silk from my feet, in very agony at the hurt there, that they scurry’d away. This howling dislodg’d my voice, for my throat was (a surgeon afterward confirm’d) sore bruis’d by the cold and extreamity, and I could not speak. Several of the Patien attempt’d to speak to me, but in a language with which I was perfectly unacquaint’d. It sound’d gutterall, as the language of China, or Jappan. I was very cold, and shiver’d hard, and for a time individual Patiens would step alongside me and imitate my trembling, jerking and shaking upon their great spider-legs, perhaps only to mock me, or (as I now incline) to understand why I made such strange gestures in the first place. Afterwards the ayr warm’d, either because the Patien realiz’d my distress and its cause, or for unrelated reasons.
I was not fed, and grew hungry; tho’ I was brought water. They made no medical intervention upon me, and perhaps such work was beyond their knowledge. I know not how long pass’d when one came to me that did speak English, and tho’ its accent was strange and it pepper’d its speech with words from other languages, yet I understood some of it.
It ask’d of me how I came to be walking alone upon the Lunar plane, and I could only reply with a manner of hoarse scraping in my ruin’d throat. I made such motions as I could, of holding one hand as a page and moving the other as a pen, that it seem’d to understand. A littel later it produc’d a sheet of paper so tight-wove that it felt like cloath; and a stick that work’d as a pencil might, save only that it discharge’d ink. My writing was slow and the letters ill-form’d, for my hands were hurt by the ordeal I had endur’d, but I wrote as I could