The First Men in the Moon (Rediscovered Books). H. G. Wells

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      "I was progressing in great leaps and bounds"

      The First Men in the Moon

      by H. G. Wells

      With illustrations by Claude Allin Shepperson

      © Rediscovered Books 2015

      All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

      Rediscovered Books

      PO Box 632

      Floyd, VA 24091

      ISBN 13: 978-1-63384-941-9

      First Rediscovered Edition

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      "Three thousand stadia from the earth to the moon…Marvel not, my comrade, if I appear talking to you on super-terrestrial and aerial topics. The long and the short of the matter is that I am running over the order of a Journey I have lately made."

      —Lucian's Icaromenippus

      Table of Contents

       Chapter I: Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne

       Chapter II: The First Making of Cavorite

       Chapter III: The Building of the Sphere

       Chapter IV: Inside the Sphere

       Chapter V: The Journey to the Moon

       Chapter VI: The Landing on the Moon

       Chapter VII: Sunrise on the Moon

       Chapter VIII: A Lunar Morning

       Chapter IX: Prospecting Begins

       Chapter X: Lost Men in the Moon

       Chapter XI: The Mooncalf Pastures

       Chapter XII: The Selenite's Face

       Chapter XIII: Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions

       Chapter XIV: Experiments in Intercourse

       Chapter XV: The Giddy Bridge

       Chapter XVI: Points of View

       Chapter XVII: The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers

       Chapter XVIII: In the Sunlight

       Chapter XIX: Mr. Bedford Alone

       Chapter XX: Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space

       Chapter XXI: Mr. Bedford at Littlestone

       Chapter XXII: The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee

       Chapter XXIII: An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Cavor

       Chapter XXIV: The Natural History of the Selenites

       Chapter XXV: The Grand Lunar

       Chapter XXVI: The Last Message Cavor Sent to the Earth

      Chapter I

       Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne

      As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the world. “Here, at any rate,” said I, “I shall find peace and a chance to work!”

      And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they have brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.

      It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed, got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come, and I set to work.

      I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a pied-a-terre while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years’ agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs. Bond. And yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon—such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each day. It was not, perhaps, in the style of Sybaris, but I have had worse times. I was a little sorry for the baker, who was a very decent man indeed, but even for him I hoped.

      Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very wet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his route with boards upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but I can quite imagine it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and houses that make up the present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the worst of the clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if the place would be there at all, if it were not a fading memory of things gone for ever. It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives and officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two—and I. And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round in a broad curve to distant