[* Footnote:  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 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.