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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON

thing. To me it seems that since first we came out of the sphere has been only a question of hours—long hours—at most."

"Ten days," I said; "that leaves—" I looked up at the sun for a moment, and then saw that it was halfway from the zenith to the western edge of things. "Four days! . . . Cavor, we mustn't sit here and dream. How do you think we may begin?"

I stood up. "We must get a fixed point we can recognise—we might hoist a flag, or a handkerchief, or something—and quarter the ground, and work round that."

He stood up beside me.

"Yes," he said, "there is nothing for it but to hunt the sphere. Nothing. We may find it—certainly we may find it. And if not———"

"We must keep on looking."

He look this way and that, glanced up at the sky and down at the tunnel, and astonished me by a sudden gesture of impatience. "Oh! but we have done foolishly! To have come to this pass! Think how it might have been, and the things we might have done!"

"We might do something yet."

"Never the thing we might have done. Here below our feet is a world. Think of what that world must be! Think of that