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The air was really very much cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the westward cliff was growing broad. Ever and again I stopped and reconnoitred, but there was no sign of Cavor, no sign of Selenites; and it seemed to me the mooncalves must have been driven into the interior again I could see none of them. I became more and more desirous of seeing Cavor.
Humour thy fancy, if thou must, but choose some other title." A tinker shrieked out a suggestion "Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!" The title 'took, at once, every throat responded, and a roaring shout went up, of "Long live Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!" followed by hootings, cat-calls, and peals of laughter. "Hale him forth, and crown him!" "Robe him!" "Sceptre him!"
"Upon the condition of the less central portion of the moon I have not yet arrived at very precise knowledge. There is an enormous system of caverns in which the mooncalves shelter during the night; and there are abattoirs and the like in one of these it was that I and Bedford fought with the Selenite butchers and I have since seen balloons laden with meat descending out of the upper dark.
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.
The "Daemonologie." Statute of James against witchcraft. 106. The origin of the incubus and succubus. 107. Mooncalves. 108. Division of opinion amongst Reformers regarding devils. Giordano Bruno. Bullinger's opinion about Sadducees and Epicures. 109. Emancipation a gradual process. Exorcism in Edward VI.'s Prayer-book. 110. The author hopes he has been reverent in his treatment of the subject.
I think I forgot the Selenites, the mooncalves, the lid, and the noises completely so soon as I had eaten that fungus. Cavor replied to my third repetition of my "surplus population" remark with similar words of approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put this down to the stimulating effect of food after a long fast. "Ess'lent discov'ry yours, Cavor," said I. "Se'nd on'y to the 'tato."
Rising one behind the other were long slopes and fields of trampled brown where the mooncalves had pastured, and far away in the full blaze of the sun a drove of them basked slumberously, scattered shapes, each with a blot of shadow against it like sheep on the side of a down. But never a sign of a Selenite was to be seen.
For a space the moon world was still. But it was some time before we resumed our crawling search for the vanished sphere. When next we saw mooncalves they were some little distance away from us in a place of tumbled rocks. The less vertical surfaces of the rocks were thick with a speckled green plant growing in dense mossy clumps, upon which these creatures were browsing.
And at the immediate mouth of the tunnel was a wide trampled space where the mooncalves had come and gone. We came out upon this space at last into a light and heat that hit and pressed upon us. We traversed the exposed area painfully, and clambered up a slope among the scrub stems, and sat down at last panting in a high place beneath the shadow of a mass of twisted lava.
Then I noted the heads upon them lying towards us, eyeless and skinless like the heads of sheep at a butcher's, and perceived they were the carcasses of mooncalves being cut up, much as the crew of a whaler might cut up a moored whale. They were cutting off the flesh in strips, and on some of the farther trunks the white ribs were showing.
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