ere may be inhabitants of sorts such as we shouldn't
care to meet."

He took her hand, and to Murgatroyd's great relief they went back to the
vessel.

Redgrave then raised the _Astronef_ a couple of hundred feet and, by
directing the repulsive force against the mountain walls, developed just
sufficient energy to keep them moving at about twelve miles an hour.

They began to cross the plain with their searchlights flashing out in
all directions. They had scarcely gone a mile before the head-light fell
upon a moving form half walking, half crawling among some stunted
brown-leaved bushes by the side of a broad, stagnant stream.

"Look!" said Zaidie, clasping his arm, "is that a gorilla, or--no, it
_can't_ be a man."

The light was turned full upon the object. If it had been covered with
hair it might have passed for some strange type of the ape tribe, but
its skin was smooth and of a livid grey. Its lower limbs were evidently
more powerful than its upper; its chest was enormously developed, but
the stomach was small. The head was big and round and smooth. As they
came nearer they saw that in place of fingernails it had long white
feelers which it kept extended and constantly waving about as it groped
its way towards the water. As the intense light flashed full on it, it
turned its head towards them. It had a nose and a mouth--the nose, long
and thick, with huge mobile nostrils; the mouth forming an angle
something like a fish's lips. Teeth there seemed none. At either side of
the upper part of the nose there were two little sunken holes--in which
this thing's ancestors of countless thousands of years ago had once had
eyes.

As she looked upon this awful parody of what had once perhaps been a
human face, Zaidie covered hers with her hands and uttered a little moan
of horror.

"Horrible, isn't it?" said Redgrave. "I suppose that's what the last
remnants of the Lunarians have come to. Evidently once men and women,
something like ourselves. I daresay the ancestors of that thing have
lived here in coldness and darkness for hundreds of generations. It
shows how tremendously tenacious Nature is of life.

"Ages ago, no doubt, that brute's ancestors lived up yonder when there
were seas and rivers, fields and forests, just as we have them on earth,
among men and women who could see and breathe and enjoy everything in
life and had built up civilisations like ours!

"Look, it's going to fish or something. Now we shall see w