phosphorescent deep. Then, presently, a long ultra-marine vista down the
turgid stream of one of the channels of traffic, and a landing stage, and
then, perhaps, a glimpse up the enormous crowded shaft of one of the
vertical ways.

"In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats
were fishing. We went alongside one of these and watched the long-armed
Selenites winding in a net. They were little, hunchbacked insects, with
very strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled face-masks. As they
pulled at it that net seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon in the
moon; it was loaded with weights--no doubt of gold--and it took a long
time to draw, for in those waters the larger and more edible fish lurk
deep. The fish in the net came up like a blue moonrise--a blaze of
darting, tossing blue.

"Among their catch was a many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing,
ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and
twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by
means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and
writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I
dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous
and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant
thing of all the living creatures I have yet seen in this world inside the
moon....

"The surface of this sea must be very nearly two hundred miles (if not
more) below the level of the moon's exterior; all the cities of the moon
lie, I learnt, immediately above this Central Sea, in such cavernous
spaces and artificial galleries as I have described, and they communicate
with the exterior by enormous vertical shafts which open invariably in
what are called by earthly astronomers the 'craters' of the moon. The lid
covering one such aperture I had already seen during the wanderings that
had preceded my capture.

"Upon the condition of the less central portion of the moon I have not yet
arrived at very precise knowledge. There is an enormous system of caverns
in which the mooncalves shelter during the night; and there are abattoirs
and the like--in one of these it was that I and Bedford fought with the
Selenite butchers--and I have since seen balloons laden with meat
descending out of the upper dark. I have as yet scarcely learnt as much of
these things as a Zulu in London would learn about the British corn
supplies in the sa