Chapter 17 - The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers


I DO not know how far we clambered before we came to the grating. It may
be we ascended only a few hundred feet, but at the time it seemed to me we
might have hauled and jammed and hopped and wedged ourselves through a
mile or more of vertical ascent. Whenever I recall that time,,there comes
into my head the heavy clank of our golden chains that followed every
movement. Very soon my knuckles and knees were raw, and I had a bruise on
one cheek. After a time the first violence of our efforts diminished, and
our movements became more deliberate and less painful. The noise of the
pursuing Selenites had died away altogether. It seemed almost as though
they had not traced us up the crack after all, in spite of the tell-tale
heap of broken fungi that must have lain beneath it. At times the cleft
narrowed so much that we could scarce squeeze up it; at others it expanded
into great drusy cavities, studded with prickly crystals or thickly beset
with dull, shining fungoid pimples. Sometimes it twisted spirally, and at
other times slanted down nearly to the horizontal direction. Ever and
again there was the intermittent drip and trickle of water by us. Once or
twice it seemed to us that small living things had rustled out of our
reach, but what they were we never saw. They may have been venomous beasts
for all I know, but they did us no harm, and we were now tuned to a pitch
when a weird creeping thing more or less mattered little. And at last, far
above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it
filtered through a grating that barred our way.

We whispered as we pointed this out to one another, and became more and
more cautious in our ascent. Presently we were close under the grating,
and by pressing my face against its bars I could see a limited portion of
the cavern beyond. It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt by some
rivulet of the same blue light that we had seen flow from the beating
machinery. An intermittent trickle of water dropped ever and again between
the bars near my face.

My first endeavour was naturally to see what might be upon the floor of
the cavern, but our grating lay in a depression whose rim hid all this
from our eyes. Our foiled attention then fell back upon the suggestion of
the various sounds we heard, and presently my eye caught a number of faint
shadows that played across the dim roof far overhead.

Indisputably there were several Selenites, perhaps a considerable number,
in this space, for we could hear the noises of their intercourse, and
faint sounds that I identified as their footfalls. There was also a
succession of regularly repeated sounds - chid, chid, chid - which began
and ceased, suggestive of a knife or spade hacking at some soft substance.
Then came a clank as if of chains, a whistle and a rumble as of a truck
running over a hollowed place, and then again that chid, chid, chid
resumed. The shadows told of shapes that moved quickly and rhythmically,
in agreement with that regular sound, and rested when it ceased.

We put our heads close together, and began to discuss these things in
noiseless whispers.

"They are occupied," I said, "they are occupied in some way."

"Yes."

"They're not seeking us, or thinking of us."

"Perhaps they have not heard of us."

"Those others are hunting about below. If suddenly we appeared here - "

We looked at one another.

"There might be a chance to parley," said Cavor.

"No," I said. "Not as we are."

For a space we remained, each occupied by his own thoughts.

Chid, chid, chid went the chopping, and the shadows moved to and fro.

I looked at the grating. "It's flimsy," I said. "We might bend two of the
bars and crawl through."

We wasted a little time in vague discussion. Then I took one of the bars
in both hands, and got my feet up against the rock until they were almost
on a level with my head, and so thrust against the bar. It bent so
suddenly that I almost slipped. I clambered about and bent the adjacent
bar in the opposite direction, and then took the luminous fungus from my
pocket and dropped it down the fissure.

"Don't do anything hastily," whispered Cavor, as I twisted myself up
through the opening I had enlarged. I had a glimpse of busy figures as I
came through the grating, and immediately bent down, so that the rim of
the depression in which the grating lay hid me from their eyes, and so lay
flat, signalling advice to Cavor as he also prepared to come through.
Presently we were side by side in the depression, peering over the edge at
the cavern and its occupants.

It was a much larger cavern than we had supposed from our first glimpse of
it, and we looked up from the lowest portion of its sloping floor. It
widened out as it receded from us, and its roof came down and hid the
remoter portion altogether. And lying in a line along its length,
vanishing at last far away in that tremendous perspective, were a number
of huge shapes, huge pallid hulls, upon which the Selenites were busy. At
first they seemed big white cylinders of vague import. 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. It was the sound of their hatchets
that made that chid, chid. Some way away a thing like a trolley cable,
drawn and loaded with chunks of lax meat, was running up the slope of the
cavern floor. This enormous long avenue of hulls that were destined to be
food, gave us a sense of the vast populousness of the moon world second
only to the effect of our first glimpse down the shaft.

It seemed to me at first that the Selenites must be standing on
trestle-supported planks, and then I saw that the planks and supports and
their hatchets were really of the same leaden hue as my fetters had seemed
- before white light came to bear on them. A number of very thick-looking
crowbars lay about the floor, and had apparently assisted to turn the dead
mooncalf over on its side. They were perhaps six feet long, with shaped
handles, very tempting-looking weapons. The whole place was lit by three
transverse streams of the blue fluid.

[I do not remember seeing any wooden things on the moon; doors tables,
everything corresponding to our terrestrial joinery was made of metal, and
I believe for the most part of gold, which as a metal would, of course,
naturally recommend itself - other things being equal - on account of the
ease in working it, and its toughness and durability.]

We lay for a long time noting all these things in silence. "Well?" said
Cavor at last.

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. I had heard a noise from the cleft
below us!

We twisted ourselves about, and lay as still as death, with every sense
alert. In a little while I did not doubt that something was quietly
ascending the cleft. Very slowly and quite noiselessly I assured myself
of a good grip on my chain, and waited for that something to appear.

"Just look at those chaps with the hatchets again," I said.

"They're all right," said Cavor.

I took a sort of provisional aim at the gap in the grating. I could hear
now quite distinctly the soft twittering of the ascending Selenites, the
dab of their hands against the rock, and the falling of dust from their
grips as they clambered.

Then I could see that there was something moving dimly in the blackness
below the grating, but what it might be I could not distinguish. The whole
thing I seemed to hang fire just for a moment - then smash! I had sprung
to my feet, struck savagely at something that had flashed out at me. It
was the keen point of a spear. I have thought since that its length in the
narrowness of the cleft must have prevented its being sloped to reach me.
Anyhow, it shot out from the grating like the tongue of a snake, and
missed and flew back and flashed again. But the second time I snatched and
caught it, and wrenched it away, but not before another had darted
ineffectually at me.

I shouted with triumph as I felt the hold of the Selenite resist my pull
for a moment and give, and then I was jabbing down through the bars,
amidst squeals from the darkness, and Cavor had snapped off the other
spear, and was leaping and flourishing it beside me, and making
inefficient jabs. Clang, clang, came up through the grating, and then an
axe hurtled through the air and whacked against the rocks beyond, to
remind me of the fleshers at the carcasses up the cavern.

I turned, and they were all coming towards us in open order waving their
axes. They were short, thick, little beggars, with long arms, strikingly
different from the ones we had seen before. If they had not heard of us
before, they must have realised the situation with incredible swiftness. I
stared at them for a moment, spear in hand. "Guard that grating, Cavor," I
cried, howled to intimidate them, and rushed to meet them. Two of them
missed with their hatchets, and the rest fled incontinently. Then the two
also were sprinting away up the cavern, with hands clenched and heads
down. I never saw men run like them!

I knew the spear I had was no good for me. It was thin and flimsy, only
effectual for a thrust, and too long for a quick recover. So I only chased
the Selenites as far as the first carcass, and stopped there and picked up
one of the crowbars that were lying about. It felt comfortingly heavy, and
equal to smashing any number of Selenites. I threw away my spear, and
picked up a second crowbar for the other hand. I felt five times better
than I had with the spear. I shook the two threateningly at the Selenites,
who had come to a halt in a little crowd far away up the cavern, and then
turned about to look at Cavor.

He was leaping from side to side of the grating, making threatening jabs
with his broken spear. That was all right. It would keep the Selenites
down - for a time at any rate. I looked up the cavern again. What on earth
were we going to do now?

We were cornered in a sort of way already. But these butchers up the
cavern had been surprised, they were probably scared, and they had no
special weapons, only those little hatchets of theirs. And that way lay
escape. 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. It might be they had other surprises for us....
But, confound it! if we charged up the cave we should let them up behind
us, and if we didn't those little brutes up the cave would probably get
reinforced. Heaven alone knew what tremendous engines of warfare - guns,
bombs, terrestrial torpedoes - this unknown world below our feet, this
vaster world of which we had only pricked the outer cuticle, might not
presently send up to our destruction. It became clear the only thing to do
was to charge! It became clearer as the legs of a number of fresh
Selenites appeared running down the cavern towards us.

"Bedford! " cried Cavor, and behold! he was halfway between me and the
grating.

"Go back!" I cried. "What are you doing -"

"They've got - it's like a gun!"

And struggling in the grating between those defensive spears appeared the
head and shoulders of a singularly lean and angular Selenite, bearing some
complicated apparatus.

I realised Cavor's utter incapacity for the fight we had in hand. For a
moment I hesitated. Then I rushed past him whirling my crowbars, and
shouting to confound the aim of the Selenite. He was aiming in the
queerest way with the thing against his stomach. "Chuzz!" The thing
wasn't a gun; it went off like cross-bow more, and dropped me in the
middle of a leap.

I didn't fall down, I simply came down a little shorter than I should have
done if I hadn't been hit, and from the feel of my shoulder the thing
might have tapped me and glanced off. Then my left hand hit again the
shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking half through my
shoulder. The moment after I got home with the crowbar in my right hand,
and hit the Selenite fair and square. He collapsed - he crushed and
crumpled - his head smashed like an egg.

I dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of my shoulder, and began to jab
it down the grating into the darkness. At each jab came a shriek and
twitter. Finally I hurled the spear down upon them with all my strength,
leapt up, picked up the crowbar again, and started for the multitude up
the cavern.

"Bedford!" cried Cavor. "Bedford!" as I flew past him.

I seem to remember his footsteps coming on behind me.

Step, leap... whack, step, leap.... Each leap seemed to last ages. With
each, the cave opened out and the number of Selenites visible increased.
At first they seemed all running about like ants in a disturbed ant-hill,
one or two waving hatchets and coming to meet me, more running away, some
bolting sideways into the avenue of carcasses, then presently others came
in sight carrying spears, and then others. I saw a most extraordinary
thing, all hands and feet, bolting for cover. The cavern grew darker
farther up.

Flick! something flew over my head. Flick! As I soared in mid-stride I saw
a spear hit and quiver in one of the carcasses to my left. Then, as I came
down, one hit the ground before me, and I heard the remote chuzz! with
which their things were fired. Flick, flick! for a moment it was a
shower. They were volleying!

I stopped dead.

I don't think I thought clearly then. I seem to remember a kind of
stereotyped phrase running through my mind: "Zone of fire, seek cover!" I
know I made a dash for the space between two ~ the carcasses, and stood
there panting and feeling very wicked.

I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment it seemed as if he had vanished
from the world. Then he came out of the darkness between the row of the
carcasses and the rocky wall of the cavern. I saw his little face, dark
and blue, and shining with perspiration and emotion.

He was saying something, but what it was I did not heed. I had realised
that we might work from mooncalf to mooncalf up the cave until we were
near enough to charge home. It was charge or nothing. "Come on! " I said,
and led the way.

"Bedford! " he cried unavailingly.

My mind was busy as we went up that narrow alley between the dead bodies
and the wall of the cavern. The rocks curved about - they could not
enfilade us. Though in that narrow space we could not leap, yet with our
earth-born strength we were still able to go very much faster than the
Selenites. I reckoned we should presently come right among them. Once we
were on them, they would be nearly as formidable as black beetles. Only -
there would first of all be a volley. I thought of a stratagem. I whipped
off my flannel jacket as I ran.

"Bedford!" panted Cavor behind me.

I glanced back. "What?" said I.

He was pointing upward over the carcasses. "White light!" he said. "White
light again!"

I looked, and it was even so, a faint white ghost of light in the remoter
cavern roof. That seemed to give me double strength.

"Keep close," I said. A flat, long Selenite dashed out of the darkness,
and squealed and fled. I halted, and stopped Cavor with my hand. I hung my
jacket over my crowbar, ducked round the next carcass, dropped jacket and
crowbar, showed myself, and darted back.

"Chuzz-flick," just one arrow came. We were close on the Selenites, and
they were standing in a crowd, broad, short, and tall together, with a
little battery of their shooting implements pointing down the cave. Three
or four other arrows followed the first, then their fire ceased.

I stuck out my head, and escaped by a hair's-breadth. This time I drew a
dozen shots or more, and heard the Selenites shouting and twittering as if
with excitement as they shot. I picked up jacket and crowbar again.

"Now! " said I, and thrust out the jacket.

"Chuzz-zz-zz-zz! Chuzz!" In an instant my jacket had grown a thick beard
of arrows, and they were quivering all over the carcass behind us.
Instantly I slipped the crowbar out of the jacket, dropped the jacket -
for all I know to the contrary it is lying up there in the moon now - and
rushed out upon them.

For a minute perhaps it was massacre. I was too fierce to discriminate,
and the Selenites were probably too scared to fight. At any rate they made
no sort of fight against me. I saw scarlet, as the saying is. I remember I
seemed to be wading among those leathery, thin things as a man wades
through tall grass, mowing and hitting, first right, then left; smash.
Little drops of moisture flew about. I trod on things that crushed and
piped and went slippery. The crowd seemed to open and close and flow like
water. They seemed to have no combined plan whatever. There were spears
flew about me, I was grazed over the ear by one. I was stabbed once in the
arm and once in the cheek, but I only found that out afterwards, when the
blood had had time to run and cool and feel wet.

What Cavor did I do not know. For a space it seemed that this fighting had
lasted for an age, and must needs go on for ever. Then suddenly it was all
over, and there was nothing to be seen but the backs of heads bobbing up
and down as their owners ran in all directions.... I seemed altogether
unhurt. I ran forward some paces, shouting, then turned about. I was
amazed.

I had come right through them in vast flying strides, they were all behind
me, and running hither and thither to hide.

I felt an enormous astonishment at the evaporation of the great fight into
which I had hurled myself, and not a little exultation. It did not seem to
me that I had discovered the Selenites were unexpectedly flimsy, but that
I was unexpectedly strong. I laughed stupidly. This fantastic moon!

I glanced for a moment at the smashed and writhing bodies that were
scattered over the cavern floor, with a vague idea of further violence,
then hurried on after Cavor.