I FOUND myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness. For a long time I
could not understand where I was, nor how I had come to this perplexity. I thought of the
cupboard into which I had been thrust at times when I was a child, and then of a very
dark and noisy bedroom in which I had slept during an illness. But these sounds about me
were not the noises I had known, and there was a thin flavour in the air like the wind of a
stable. Then I supposed we must still be at work upon the sphere, and that somehow I had
got into the cellar of Cavor's house. I remembered we had finished the sphere, and
fancied I must still be in it and travelling through space.
"Cavor," I said, "cannot we have some light?"
I was answered by a groan. "My head!" I heard him say; "my head!"
I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered they were tied
together. This startled me very much. I brought them up to my mouth and felt the cold
smoothness of metal. They were chained together. I tried to separate my legs and made
out they were similarly fastened, and also that I was fastened to the ground by a much
thicker chain about the middle of my body.
I was more frightened that I had yet been by anything in all our strange experiences. For a
time I tugged silently at my bonds. " Cavor! " I cried out sharply. "Why am I tied? Why
have you tied me hand and foot? "
"I haven't tied you," he answered. "It's the Selenites."
The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories came back to me:
the snowy desolation, the thawing of the air, the growth of" the plants, our strange
hopping and crawling among the rocks and vegetation of the crater. All the distress of our
frantic search for the sphere returned to me. ... Finally the opening of the great lid that
covered the pit!
Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our present plight, the pain in my
head became intolerable. I came to an insurmountable barrier, an obstinate blank.
