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chapter I.

Some of our relatives on the other side of the globe will be astonished
to learn that the way to the Moon has been discovered by an unfortunate
member of the literati of Australia.

The greatest thinkers of the day have scouted the idea as nothing but
moonshine, when spoken to about the practicability of the discovery.
But it must be borne in mind that the same laws of Nature which guide
and rule the Mother Country are somewhat erratic here at the Antipodes,
inasmuch as we are all upside down—standing on our heads, in fact.
Therefore we are prepared for marvels. In a land where there are
animals who stand on their tails, and fight with all four feet at once;
where the young leap out of and into their parents’ stomachs at
will—there being a strange bag in that quarter for the purpose of
humouring the antics of the juveniles, just like the hole in the bow of
a timber ship; where there are creatures that appear neither flesh nor
fowl—who swim in ponds like a duck, have a duck’s bill, who lay eggs,
yet have feet and hair like a beast; in a land where the leaves on the
trees grow edgeways to the sun, and the trees themselves shoot
downwards, surely it is no great wonder that we have found a passage to
the great luminary of night, and had the pleasure of shaking hands and
likewise supping with the disobedient man who gathered sticks on
Sunday.

The scientific world will never feel half the surprise anent our new
discovery as that which fell upon the old shepherd when he found
himself surrounded and made a prisoner. He had left his sheep in charge
of the only companion he had in these regions—viz., his dog. Within a
sheltered nook on one of the fairest and most luxuriant slopes of the
mysterious Blue Mountains, Patch, the half-bred dingo, held watch and
ward over his charge while his master wandered down the rugged side of
the cliff in search of gold. Here the sun was almost hid behind the
broad awning of gigantic trees, whose immense trunks, gnarled and hoary
with age, stood like mammoth sentinels to guard the dim glen below. The
lonely herdsman had often descended to that spot before unmolested, but
now from every mound and hollow there peered the grotesque faces of the
Mountain Sprites, watching his every movement, until with a sudden rush
they pounced upon him and held him fast. For a time he struggled
manfully to free himself. It was quite useless. The genii of the Blue
Mountains are a powerful people, not to be trifled with, as the
shepherd soon discovered. He was lifted bodily up, and borne along so
swiftly that he nearly lost his senses. The route of his captors lay in
a downward direction—never upward. And it appeared as if the dusky
ravines which they traversed led right away from the upper world into
the region of eternal night.

“Dear friends, good people, where are you taking me?” cried the poor
fellow in an affrighted tone.

“Bis, bus, silence, mortal!” replied an ancient gnome authoritatively.
“Your destination is not on the Earth, but the Moon.”

“Good gracious!” ejaculated the poor shepherd, with starting eyeballs.

“Bus, peace,” rejoined the brownie in a whisper. “The voice of man hath
never disturbed these solitudes since the creation.”

“Gentlemen, pray let me go!”

“Art thou not going, thou dissatisfied mortal? Be silent.”

“It is all up with me,” groaned the unfortunate captive.

“Nay, verily, it will be all down with thee,” answered the sprite.
“Behold!”

As the fairy spoke they emerged into a dismal spot, in the midst of
which gaped a wide, black pit; at the mouth of the chasm the shepherd
beheld the forms of two beings in shape like the fabled vampires, who
clapped their tremendous wings in ecstasy at sight of him.

“Who is this?” they cried.

And the fairies answered, “A visitor for Moonland.”

“No, no, I’m not going to the Moon,” replied the trembling shepherd.

The horrid vampires laughed in exultation at his misery, and the sound
shook the walls of the solid cliffs around. “Hear me, Dusk, and thou,
Lunar,” said the gnome, addressing the winged monsters. “This fellow
hath had the impudence to invade our sacred precincts, and attempted to
release some of our dreaded foes, the ‘Gold Nuggets’ whom we have made
prisoners. What shall we do with the rascal?”

“Send him to the Moon,” they cried with one voice.

“Mercy, gentlemen, mercy.”

“Fiddlesticks! To Moonland with him,” answered the sprite. “There is
lots of room for him to fossick there. Eh, Lunar?”

Over that terrible void, near where they held him, our hero observed a
strange object floating with a gentle, oscillating motion, as a feather
floats in space. In appearance, it was like a gigantic umbrella
inverted, with a hole cut in the centre. To the ends of the ribs cords
of gossamer were fastened which stretched upward to a car in the shape
of a star, the points expanded like huge wings. The nature of this
material, or by what process this curious vehicle had been
manufactured, the unfortunate shepherd had neither power nor leisure at
that moment to examine, for the ancient fay had no sooner spoken than
Dusk and his companion seized hold of him, like a pair of vultures, and
flew upward with him in the car of the parachute.

“Good-bye, Lunar, let me know when you arrive,” cried some of the
fairies.

“Slide a message down a moonbeam,” responded others.

“Or a rainbow, or the tail of a comet.” And while the mountain sprites
stood and jeered, the quaint machine suddenly shot down the empty space
with the velocity of a cannon-ball.

Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself
falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air?
Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can
have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him
for a moment. Yet it was only for a moment. Strange to say, he did not
lose his presence of mind, and his fear left him as suddenly as it had
fallen upon him. From a bewildering chaos of thought in the captive’s
mind curiosity became paramount to all else. Amid the murky blackness
around and about there was very little to examine, but the shepherd
thrust his head through the gossamer network of the machine and gazed
below. Far, far away in the profound depths beneath them, he saw a vast
disc of soft light which threw its rays upward, and enabled him to
discern that the abyss through which they were descending appeared like
a hollow cone, the neck of which began in the mountain, and like an
eddying circle in the water, gradually became wider and wider as they
advanced.

The progress of the parachute was so swift that they rapidly emerged
into the focus of the light—the wide mouth of the cone receding to a
faint, dark circle on the pale horizon in the space of a few seconds.
It was astounding how wondrous soft and beautiful the shimmering glow
of light in this new region burst upon the mortal’s vision. He had
witnessed many lovely changes from the lofty peaks of the New South
Wales Alps, but Dame Nature had never presented herself to his eyes in
such a garb before. Not the glaring, hot, dazzling rays of the summer
sun here, but rather a gentle, subdued, dreamy refulgence, without the
ghost of a shadow or shade of variation upon anything.

Above, below, one universal, pale, liquid glimmer, devoid of vapour.
Distant mountains, peaked and gabled like an iceberg, appeared to view,
and hills and valleys, with deep ruts and chasms, forming an
amphitheatre of vast dimensions, became more clear to the sight every
moment. Everything seemed mixed up and confounded by the uniformity of
colour. Rocks, valleys, and streams presented a weird and wonderful
aspect under new conditions where, like Hoffmann’s shadowless man,
every object was lighted up on all sides, equally, in the absence of a
central point. Scorched and charred and burnt, there was not a sign of
a tree or a shrub on the face of the whole landscape. Scoriæ and dross
and pumice-stone—nothing else, save the waters that lay bathed in
luminous silvery grey.

From the vast panorama our hero turned his eyes upon his companions,
the vampires. They had cast the netting of the car aside.

“Prepare thyself, mortal,” cried Lunar in a terrible voice.

“Prepare myself, for what?”

“For a header into the sea yonder beneath us,” answered the vampire
coolly.

“Good heavens! Gentlemen, you really don’t think I can dive from this
great height! I shall be dashed to mincemeat,” responded the shepherd,
in a tone of consternation.

The monsters only laughed at him, and repeated their command.

“Descend a little lower, good Lunar. Do, gentle Dusk,” he pleaded.

“We can’t. This is Moonland. Not enough gravity here,” they replied.

“Moonland! Mercy on me! And shall I have to leave my old bones in the
Moon?” cried he in despair.

“Plenty of ’em here—loads. Valleys full, as you’ll find. Come, jump!”

“I won’t!” cried the shepherd in a savage tone. Whereupon the monsters
caught him with their claws, and threw him headlong from the car.

The fall was frightful to contemplate, and I’m afraid it will be
necessary to allow the poor fellow seven days to recover his
equilibrium.

chapter II.

If the unhappy mortal had been capable of thinking at the moment he was
hurled from the car by the vampires, it is more than probable that his
mind would have presented the picture of a terrible and instantaneous
death. Strange to relate, instead of the rushing, headlong plunge
downward, to be anticipated under the conditions, our hero found
himself gently floating in space with the buoyancy of one of the
feathered tribe. The dread and fear of death were lost, or rather
swallowed up in a nameless terror, at the unnatural position in which
he was placed. Yet there was no mystery in it. According to a
well-known law, the weight of bodies diminishes as they descend from
the outside of the Earth. It is at the surface of the globe where
weight is most sensibly felt, and it is just possible that, had we
accompanied the shepherd through the thick crust of the terrestrial
sphere, we should have soon discovered, as he did, that beyond, at the
other side, there is little or no gravity at all. Hence his peculiar
position. Indeed, it was most fortunate that the old man chanced to
have several nuggets of gold in his pockets at the time, otherwise, I’m
afraid he would have been suspended in mid-air like Mohammed’s coffin.
As it happened, gold turned the scale, even in Moonland, and enabled
the adventurous mortal to descend in a horizontal rather than a
vertical course to the shores of the Moon.

Within his vision below lay a vast expanse of water; the rugged coast
bordered with majestic hills, torn by earthquakes, and blasted and
ravaged by volcanic fires. The waves broke on this shore with a dull,
hollow noise against the cliffs. Some of these, dividing the coast with
their sharp spurs, formed capes and promontories, fantastic in form and
worn by the ceaseless action of the surf. It was like a continuous
cosmical phenomenon, filling a basin of sufficient extent to contain an
inland sea, and walled by enormous mountains with the irregular shores
of Earth, but desert, and fearfully wild.

If the eyes of the shepherd were able to range afar over this sea, it
was because the shadowless light brought to view every detail of it.
The expanse above him was a sky of huge plains of cloud, pale yellow in
colour, and drifting with rapidity athwart the firmament, where
appeared dark circles, rings and cones, in lieu of stars. Everything
that he could liken to aught on this globe seemed changed by some
potent power into opposite extremes. Downward, slowly but surely,
without the faculty to change his course either to the right or to the
left, the mortal at length plunged into the water. He was a capital
swimmer, and had no fear of being drowned. Imagine his dismay, however,
when he found himself sinking to the bottom like a crowbar, in spite of
his vigorous efforts to keep afloat. In vain he struck out and
struggled desperately to rise to the surface by use of legs and arms.
Vain and useless. Down he went, plumbing the depths below, until he
touched the bottom; then, to his surprise, he rebounded back again like
a cork, but only to go down again as speedily as before.

The poor fellow had been pertinaciously holding his breath, as is
customary when bathing in terrestrial streams; and therefore when he
could no longer resist the unconquerable will of nature to draw breath,
judge of the consternation which laid hold of him, when, instead of the
choking gasp of suffocation anticipated, he found little difficulty in
respiration! In fact, that vast sheet was not water at all, such as he
knew it, but a subtle fluid, half way between a liquid and a gas,
which, though heavier than air, was yet so much lighter than water that
it was impossible for him to float in it.

These discoveries come to him in quick succession, and created within
his mind the most unspeakable astonishment. By degrees, and after many
attempts, he found that he could walk along the bed of this strange sea
with comparative ease. Accordingly he straightway reached the shore and
sat down on the cliffs to rest. Wonder upon wonder had crowded so fast
and thick upon the bewildered mind of our traveller that his thoughts
were in a whirl. Yet another surprise was in store for him, for as he
extended his vision over the landscape he beheld a gigantic creature
approaching with prodigious bounds and flying leaps. In his utter
amazement he believed one of the rugged hills had been suddenly endowed
with life, and was hurrying on to crush him. Never before had the eyes
of breathing mortal rested on such a mammoth of human outline. No, nor
upon anything with such power of movement. He was not certain whether
the monster was leaping or flying, but he was quite positive as to its
extraordinary swiftness.

In his terror the shepherd fled—when lo! he found that he too was
endowed with this singular force of locomotion. It is surprising how
fear lends a man wings. The terrestrial one didn’t need anything of the
kind, though. Incredible the springs and leaps he made over the high
peaks, across chasms and cliffs, and along the steep mountain-sides;
wonderful the feeling which changed from dread to exuberant delight and
ecstasy, and again to terror, as the mighty voice of the pursuer came
upon his ears like a peal of thunder.

“Halt! Stop! Who art thou?”

Had he been then and there endowed with wings, the old shepherd felt
that he could not escape from the owner of that voice. All he could do
was to cast himself flat on his face and await his doom in silence.

“Shall Greencheese utter his command twice? Who art thou?” repeated the
mammoth.

“Mercy, your Highness. I am only old Bob, the shepherd of the Blue
Mountains, New South Wales.”

“Old Bob! Blue Mountains! Ha! Fuddle-fum. Well?”

“Some fairies got hold of me t’other day, and bundles me down here, on
a sort of humberellar, your Worship; that’s all I knows about it,”
cried the mortal in a despairing tone.

“Fairies! Mum! I know the rogues,” responded the creature quickly.
“Many a summer’s night I have watched their freaks and gambols among
secluded nooks and dells hidden away from mortal ken. Many a long hour
we have held converse together, in the silent ravines and woods, when
all the human mites of the Australian world were locked in sleep. Go
on!”

“I knows noffin’ more, sir, only that I shouldn’t like to leave my old
body here!” cried Bob.

“Ha! Buncham! Fi-pho—fiddle-faddlem! Thou shalt live.”

“Thanks, your Highness.” And the shepherd lifted his eyes and gazed
upon his companion. The Colossus at Rhodes, towering high above the
lofty gables of the aged city, was but a pigmy in comparison. Ancient,
hoary Sphinx of the Egyptians, standing for countless years on the
shores of Father Nile, would have seemed a thing of yesterday beside
it. Nay, that primitive marvel, the figure of wood discovered in Joppa,
aged five thousand years, could reckon itself an infant in proximity to
this lunarian.

Save the round, full, Chinese-like face, with its accompanying
tremendous mouth, and the faint outline of the human form, there was
nothing further to assist description of the creature except that he
was high and bulky beyond conception, and quite as transparent as a
lighted lantern. The face wasn’t at all unpleasant. It beamed with such
a broad, friendly, yet withal humorous, expression as it gazed down
upon Bob, that the mortal found courage to address it.

“Please, who be you, sir?”

“Me? I’m the Man in the Moon, of course,” replied the creature,
smiling.

“Eh! Why, dash my old jumper, if I didn’t think as I’d seen your
countenance before!” answered the old herdsman with animation. “I can
tell yer, as ye comes out pretty strong sometimes on them ’ere
mountains t’other side of Sydney. Why, I’ve yarded many a thousand
sheep, and you’ve been a-looking at me all the while, eh?”

The Man in the Moon nodded.

“Ah, and I’ll bet you knows my old dog, Patch?”

Another nod in the affirmative.

“Brayvo! old boy. Why, we’re old chums. Shake hands.”

“We never shake hands in the Moon, Bob; but I’ll embrace you,” cried
the lunarian, smiling; and suiting the action to the word, he suddenly
enveloped the mortal in such a broad beam of refulgence that the old
fellow appeared as if cased in polished armour.

In accordance with the etiquette of Moonland, it would be rude to
disturb their tête-à-tête before next Saturday.

chapter III.

“The presumptuous beings on earth have the impudence to tell their
children that the Moon is made of green cheese,” quoth the mammoth.

“Indeed, sir, but that is very true,” answered Bob. “When I was a boy I
believed it was only a big cheese, and I can safely say that when I’ve
seen it in the water, up at Bathurst, where we lived, I’ve been silly
enough to wade into the water arter it, thinking to take it home and
have my supper off it.”

“Ah, it’s rare fun to watch the moon-rakers try to grasp my shadow,
Bob.”

“I believe you, sir. Lord, how you must laugh in your sleeve at ’em!
Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the
shepherd reflectively.

The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of
the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale
reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he
fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the
watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and
poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. I watch the
murderer crawling with stealthy feet towards his victim, and I note the
robber lying in wait to plunder; I haunt the gloom where guilt and
misery lie huddled together in rags. Wickedness in high places cannot
escape me. Over the deep sleep of toiling millions my beams hold watch
and ward, kissing the rosy lips of innocence, where yet lingers the
soft breath of prayer. Hovering o’er the sighing maiden and the
restless miser, weaving fancies which fill the poet’s brain with
unutterable poesy, and with such shapes as live only in dreams of age
and infancy, and vanish with the light of morn. Cuddlephum!
Bobberish—Baa-lamb! Bo!”

“Just so,” said Bob, opening wide his eyes at the strange words. “I
begs to say that French wasn’t taught at the school I went to.
Howsoever, I’m quite willing to dine with you, if that’s what you mean.
I’m beginning to feel pereshious hungry, I can tell yer.”

“Hungry! Base mortal, there is no such word known here,” echoed the
monster.

“Good heavens! No eating!” cried Bob, aghast.

“None.”

“Scissors! I’m afraid visitors from Australia won’t overrun Moonland,
if that’s the case.”

“Peace! Follow me, and thou shalt taste nectar, which shall banish the
cravings of thy vulgar race.”

The Man in the Moon bounded away over the pumice-stone crags like a
gigantic kangaroo, followed by Bob. Chaos and desolation were
everywhere visible around them. Sad indeed and supremely melancholy
looked the place. Mountains riven asunder; vast ravines and valleys
choked with bleached bones of monsters unknown to men; immense plains,
scattered thickly with the fossil remnants of ages; mingled dust and
huge mounds of bony fragments of animal and reptile, which a thousand
Cuviers could never have reconstructed. Up the rugged zigzags with
tremendous leaps, echoless, shadowless, and across the dust, silent to
their footfall, went the lunarian and the mortal.

“This is a dreary place, sir,” muttered the latter, almost breathless
in his haste.

“Peace, or perchance the forms of these dead monsters will rise to
rebuke thee!” answered his companion solemnly. “Here, where thou art
standing, these enormous animals of the first period lived and roved at
will. The human mind cannot conceive their colossal proportions, for
they were extinct many ages before the advent of man.”

The shepherd followed his conductor in silence, wondering if it were
possible that these mighty dead could take shape again and swallow him
at one snap. Jonah had been bolted by a whale, but the skeletons of
these creatures appeared large enough to engulf a hundred whales a day,
and twice that number of Jonahs into the bargain.

Bob was almost ready to sink down amid the Golgotha when the Man in the
Moon halted before a very high mountain. Making a sign to his companion
to follow, he quickly disappeared from view. At first it seemed as if
the mammoth had vanished within the mountain, but the mortal saw an
opening at the base which he entered. What a study for a geologist! In
the dim ages of the past, when the satellite of our Earth seethed and
boiled as a vast crater, the solid intestines of this cone, yielding to
some great power below it, had been riven in twain, leaving an
unmeasurable grotto of winding galleries. Toiling along in the wake of
the lunarian, the captive trod on a broad aisle, on each side of which
rose a series of arches succeeding each other, like the noble arcades
of some Gothic cathedral. Obelisk-like massive pillars stood out from
the rent wall like mighty sentinels guarding the wreck. Had our hero
been a mineralogist, armed with his hammer, his steel pointer, his
magnetic needles, and his blow pipe, what a fund of information he
might have gleaned here to place before the spectacles of professors
and philosophers! Nay, had he but possessed the faintest idea of the
science of building, what patterns, what studies around and above him,
for every form of the art to hereafter confound architects of the
nineteenth century!

Poor Bob was neither a mineralogist nor an architect, so he passed by
these things without a second glance, and entered a vaulted chamber,
upon whose round, jagged dome rested the whole weight of the mountain;
the dented projections and the sharp points on wall and roof spun into
an endless network of lines and seams, luminous as all things here
seemed to be, and changing colour from silver-grey to deep crimson.

Wonder had lost its functions for Bob the shepherd, otherwise he would
have stood aghast at the strange forms moving to and fro within this
chamber; round in shape, and taller than giants of long ago, with arms
and legs evidently telescoped at the joints, so that they could
lengthen or shorten them at will, and each shedding their quota of
refulgence to illuminate the scene. Monster glow-worms, gigantic
fire-flies, with the trickery of monkeys, and the strength of bears,
seized the shrinking man, and rose with him to the dome, which opened
instantly and engulfed them. Amidst a circle of light, which changed
quicker than the sparkles of a diamond, the poor shepherd found he was
being borne upward and hemmed in by a ring of these natives of the
Moon—upward and yet upward, without will to pause or stop, the mad
whirlwind of light ever changing, red, blue, grey, yellow, white,
azure, and the legion gathering in increased numbers every moment round
him until the climax came, and the crater, that had been silent for
countless ages, once more opened its ponderous jaws, casting him forth
as a rocket, where—amidst fiery rings and bars, and blazing stars of
light—he fell down, down, down into darkness and oblivion!

“I say, mate, how far is it to the Blue Mountains Inn?”

Old Bob, the shepherd, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the questioner.
He was a stout, thick-set fellow, with a heavy swag on his back, and a
black billy-can in his hand.

The man had to repeat his query ere the herdsman found speech.

“Why, surely, you’re not the Man in the Moon, eh?” asked Bob, with a
wild stare.

The swagman stepped backward a pace or two, and regarded our hero with
more attention.

“Man in the Moon!” he repeated. “Why, the old fellow’s gone off his
head.”

“Where’s the others with the long legs and arms?” and the shepherd
shuddered.

“He’s cranky, sure enough,” muttered the traveller audibly. “The coves
as you were asking arter are all gone,” he said aloud. “You get up on
your pins, or they’ll be back again Here’s a bob; come now, hook it, or
they’ll have you,” saying which the swagman went on his way.

Our hero raised himself into a sitting posture. Before him lay the
verdant slopes and ridges of the mountain, bathed in sunlight. Yonder
his sheep fed peacefully, watched by the faithful Patch. Then the old
man raised his vision higher than the earth and thanked Heaven that he
was still safe and sound on terra firma.