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.