I beat my round in a semicircle, and back again in a still remoter crescent.  It was very fatiguing and hopeless.  The air was really very much cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the westward cliff was growing broad.  Ever and again I stopped and reconnoitred, but there was no sign of Cavor, no sign of Selenites; and it seemed to me the mooncalves must have been driven into the interior again—­I could see none of them.  I became more and more desirous of seeing Cavor.  The winged outline of the sun had sunk now, until it was scarcely the distance of its diameter from the rim of the sky.  I was oppressed by the idea that the Selenites would presently close their lids and valves, and shut us out under the inexorable onrush of the lunar night.  It seemed to me high time that he abandoned his search, and that we took counsel together.  I felt how urgent it was that we should decide soon upon our course.  We had failed to find the sphere, we no longer had time to seek it, and once these valves were closed with us outside, we were lost men.  The great night of space would descend upon us—­that blackness of the void which is the only absolute death.  All my being shrank from that approach.  We must get into the moon again, though we were slain in doing it.  I was haunted by a vision of our freezing to death, of our hammering with our last strength on the valve of the great pit.

I took no thought any more of the sphere.  I thought only of finding Cavor again.  I was half inclined to go back into the moon without him, rather than seek him until it was too late.  I was already half-way back towards our handkerchief, when suddenly—­

I saw the sphere!

I did not find it so much as it found me.  It was lying much farther to the westward than I had gone, and the sloping rays of the sinking sun reflected from its glass had suddenly proclaimed its presence in a dazzling beam.  For an instant I thought this was some new device of the Selenites against us, and then I understood.

I threw up my arms, shouted a ghostly shout, and set off in vast leaps towards it.  I missed one of my leaps and dropped into a deep ravine and twisted my ankle, and after that I stumbled at almost every leap.  I was in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quite breathless long before I got to it.  Three times at least I had to stop with my hands resting on my side and in spite of the thin dryness of the air, the perspiration was wet upon my face.

I thought of nothing but the sphere until I reached it, I forgot even my trouble of Cavor’s whereabouts.  My last leap flung me with my hands hard against its glass; then I lay against it panting, and trying vainly to shout, “Cavor! here is the sphere!” When I had recovered a little I peered through the thick glass, and the things inside seemed tumbled.  I stooped to peer closer.  Then I attempted to get in.  I had to hoist it over a little to get my head through the manhole.  The screw stopper