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Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoes had been taken off and lay at our feet. And we were sitting with our backs to this queer bluish light, peering at such a monster as Durer might have invented. Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared his throat. Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were in trouble.
I crouched over and turned to him. I had come upon a brilliant idea. "Unless they lowered those bodies by a crane," I said, "we must be nearer the surface than I thought." "Why?" "The mooncalf doesn't hop, and it hasn't got wings." He peered over the edge of the hollow again. "I wonder now " he began. "After all, we have never gone far from the surface " I stopped him by a grip on his arm.
'Machine hands, indeed, some of these are in actual nature it is not figure of speech, the single tentacle of the mooncalf herd is profoundly modified for clawing, lifting, guiding, the rest of them no more than necessary subordinate appendages to these important mechanisms, have enormously developed auditory organs; some whose work lies in delicate chemical operations project a vast olfactory organ; others again have flat feet for treadles with anchylosed joints; and others who I have been told are glassblowers seem mere lung-bellows.
We will, if thou wilt take the third bed, which was prepared for Harrison; but he is gone out, like a mooncalf, to look for the valley of Armageddon in the Park of Woodstock." "General Harrison has returned with me but now," said Everard. "Nay but, as I shall live, he comes not into our apartment," said Desborough, overhearing his answer.
Furiously he caught my wrist. "Ah, you red-headed little devil, you'll pay for this! I ain't pretty, oh, no! I ain't a handsome mooncalf like the Honorable; I ain't got a title, nor girly pink cheeks, nor fine gentleman ways. No walks with the likes o' me, no tatey-tates in the woods oh, no! Well, it's goin' to be another story now, girlie.
So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moon jungle, crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. We crawled, as it seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite or mooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these latter continually drawing nearer to us.
"And short of men," the other continued, quite himself again. "What does your garrison consist of? one holy padre, one half an old sailor, Monsieur Mooncalf, and Little Chap."
The quality of his motion during the instant of his passing suggested haste and a certain anger, and soon after we had lost sight of him we heard the bellow of a mooncalf change abruptly into a short, sharp squeal followed by the scuffle of its acceleration. And gradually that bellowing receded, and then came to an end, as if the pastures sought had been attained. We listened.
Their sturdy little forms ever so much shorter and thicker than the mooncalf herds were scattered up the slope in a way that was eloquent of indecision. I had the moral advantage of a mad bull in a street. But for all that, there seemed a tremendous crowd of them. Very probably there was. Those Selenites down the cleft had certainly some infernally long spears.
Sand was masculine, energetic, restless, and by nature for which she was surely not thoroughly to blame a voluptuary. Chopin, while not the whining mooncalf some have painted him, was never of truly virile character. He was a man whose genius was as limited in scope as a diamond's lustre, even while it had the brilliance, the firmness, and the solitariness of that jewel.
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