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. We crawled through stony ravines,
over snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin bladders at our thrust, emitting a
watery humour, over a perfect pavement of things like puff-balls, and beneath
interminable thickets of scrub. And ever more helplessly our eyes sought for our
abandoned sphere. The noise of the mooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like
sound, at times it rose to an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again it would become a
clogged bestial sound, as though these unseen creatures had sought to eat and bellow at
the same time.
Our first view was but an inadequate transitory glimpse, yet none the less disturbing
because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawling in front at the time, and he first was
aware of their proximity. He stopped dead, arresting me with a single gesture.
A crackling and smashing of the scrub appeared to be advancing directly upon us, and
then, as we squatted close and endeavoured to judge of the nearness and direction of this
noise, there came a terrific bellow behind us, so close and vehement that the tops of the
bayonet scrub bent before it, and one felt the breath of it hot and moist. And, turning
about, we saw indistinctly through a crowd of swaying stems the mooncalf's shining
sides, and the long line of its back loomed out against the sky.
Of course it is hard for me now to say how much I saw at that time, because my
impressions were corrected by subsequent observation. First of all impressions was its
enormous size; the girth of its body was some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two
hundred. Its sides rose and fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic,
flabby body lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white, dappling
into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. I think also that we
saw then the profile at least of the almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its
slobbering omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the mooncalf
invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had a glimpse of a vast red pit as
it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again; we had a breath from the pit, and then the
monster heeled over like a ship, dragged forward along the ground, creasing all its
leathery skin, rolled again, and so wallowed past us, smashing a path amidst the scrub,
and was speedily hidden from our eyes by the dense interlacings beyond. Another
appeared more distantly, and then another, and then, as though he was guiding these
animated lumps of provender to their pasture, a Selenite came momentarily into ken. My
grip upon Cavor's foot became convulsive at the sight of him, and we remained
motionless and peering long after he had passed out of our range.
By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant, scarcely five feet
high. He was, wearing garments of some leathery substance, so that no portion of his
