The First Men in the Moon

fragmentary knowledge of astronomy I had gained in my irregular reading, but it was all too vague to furnish any idea of the things we might expect. At last I got back to bed and snatched some moments of sleep—moments of nightmare rather—in which I fell and fell and fell for evermore into the abyss of the sky. I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told him shortly, “I’m not coming with you in the sphere.” I met all his protests with a sullen persistence. “The thing’s too mad,” I said, “and I won’t come. The thing’s too mad.” I would not go with him to the laboratory. I fretted about my bungalow for a time, and then took hat and stick and set out alone, I knew not whither. It chanced to be a glorious morning: a warm wind and deep blue sky, the first green of spring abroad, and multitudes of birds singing. I lunched on beef and beer in a little public-house near Elham, and startled the landlord by remarking apropos of the weather, “A man who leaves the world when days of this sort are about is a fool!” “That’s what I says when I heerd on it!” said the landlord, and I found that for one poor soul at least this world had proved excessive, and there had been a throat-cutting. I went on with a new twist to my thoughts. In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in a sunny place, and went on my way refreshed. I came to a comfortable-looking inn near Canterbury. It was bright with creepers, and the landlady was a clean old woman and took my eye. I found I had just enough money to pay for my lodging with her. I decided to stop the night there. She was a talkative body, and among many other particulars I learnt she had never been to London. “Canterbury’s as far as ever I been,” she said. “I’m not one of your gad-about sort.” “How would you like a trip to the moon?” I cried. “I never did hold with them ballooneys,” she said evidently under the impression that this was a common excursion enough. “I wouldn’t go up in one—not for ever so.” This struck me as being funny. After I had supped I sat on a bench by the door of the inn and gossiped with two labourers about brickmaking, and motor cars, and the cricket of last year. And in the sky a faint new crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the sun. The next day I returned to Cavor. “I am coming,” I said. “I’ve been a little out of order, that’s all.” That was the only time I felt any serious doubt our enterprise. Nerves purely! After that I worked a little more carefully, and took a trudge for an hour every day. And at last, save for the heating in the furnace, our labours were at an end.