Moonland

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.