THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
hear outside a hive of bees, a sound out of that enormous hollow, it may be, for miles beneath our feet. . . .
For a moment I listened, then tightened my grip on my crowbar and led the way up the gallery.
"This must be the shaft we looked down upon," said Cavor. "Under that lid."
"And below there is where we saw the lights."
"The lights!" said he. "Yes—the lights of the world that now we shall never see."
"We'll come back," I said, for now we had escaped so much I was rashly sanguine that we should recover the sphere.
His answer I did not catch.
"Eh?" I asked.
"Ιt doesn't matter," he answered, and we hurried on in silence.
I suppose that slanting lateral way was four or five miles long, allowing for its curvature, and it ascended at a slope that would have made it almost impossibly steep on earth, but which we strode up easily. We saw only two Selenites during all that portion of our flight, and as soon as they became aware of us they ran headlong. It was clear that the knowledge of our strength and violence had reached them. Our way to the exterior was unexpectedly plain. The spiral gallery straightened into a steeply ascendent tunnel, its floor bearing abundant traces of the mooncalves, and so straight and short in proportion to its vast arch that no part of it was absolutely dark. Almost immediately it began to lighten, and then far off and high up, and quite blindly bril-
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