CHAPTER 18

Mr. Bedford at Littlestone

My line of flight was about parallel with the surface of the earth as I came into the upper air. The temperature of the sphere began to rise immediately. Far below, in the twilight, stretched a great expanse of sea. I opened every blind I could, and fell—out of sunshine into evening, and out of evening into night. Vaster grew the earth and vaster. At last the world seemed no longer a sphere but flat. It was no longer a planet in the sky, but the world of Man. I shut all but an inch or so of earthward blind, and dropped with a decreasing speed. The water, now so near that I could see the dark glitter of the waves, rushed up to meet me. The sphere became very hot. I shut the last strip of blind, and sat waiting to hit the surface.

The sphere hit the water with a huge splash. I flung the Cavorite shutters open. Down I went but slower and slower, and then I felt the sphere pressing against my feet, and so it floated up again. At last I was floating and rocking upon the surface of the sea, and my journey in space was at an end.

The night was dark and cloudy. Two yellow distant lights showed the passing of a ship, and nearer was a red glare that came and went. Had not the electricity of my lamp been consumed, I could have signalled, and got picked up that night. I realized I had yet to spend another night at least in the sphere. I felt infinitely heavy and fatigued. And so I fell asleep.

When I awoke I peered through the glass, and saw that I had landed upon a sandbank. Far away I seemed to see houses and trees.

I stood up and staggered. My one desire was to emerge. I opened the manhole; the air came singing in again as it had sung out. It hit me on the chest so that I gasped. I cried out, put my hands to my chest, and sat down. For a time I was in pain. Then I took deep breaths. At last I could rise and move about again. I twisted myself through the manhole and crawled out upon the sand, over which the waves came and went.

It was dawn, a grey cloudy dawn. Some way out a ship was lying at anchor. To the north-east a lonely bathing-beach could be seen, with a row of tall, narrow lodging-houses.

For a long time I sat there, yawning and rubbing my face. At last I struggled to rise. It made me feel that I was lifting a weight. I stood up.

I stared at the distant houses. For the first time since our starvation in the crater I thought of earthly food. "Bacon," I whispered, "eggs; good toast and good coffee ... And how on earth am I going to get all this stuff to Lympne?" I wondered where I was. It was an east shore anyhow, and I had seen Europe before I dropped.

I heard footsteps in the sand, and a little round-faced, friendly-looking man, with a bathing towel wrapped about his shoulders, and his bathing-costume over his arm, appeared up the beach. I knew instantly that I must be in England. He was staring intently at the sphere and me, He advanced staring. I dare say I looked like a savage—dirty and with untidy hair; but it did not occur to me at the time. He stopped at a distance of twenty yards. "Hul-lo, my man!" he said doubtfully.

"Hullo!" said I.

"What on earth is that thing?" he asked, advancing.

"Can you tell me where I am?" I asked.

"That's Littlestone," he said, pointing to the houses; "have you just landed? What's that thing you've got? Some sort of machine?"

"Yes."

"Have you floated ashore? Have you been wrecked or something? Is that thing a sort of floating thing for saving life?"

I decided to take that line for the present. I answered vaguely: "Yes, something of the sort. And now I want help. I want to get some stuff up the beach—stuff I can't very well leave about." I became aware of three other pleasant-looking young men with towels, blazers and straw hats, coming down the sands towards me.

"Help!" said the little man; "rather! What particularly do you want done?" He turned round and signalled to the three young men. They hastened their pace. In a minute they were about me, asking me all sorts of questions. "I'll tell all that later," I said. "I'm tired out."

"Come up to the hotel," said the little man. "We'll look after that thing there."

I hesitated. "I can't," I said. "In that sphere there are two big bars of gold."

They looked incredulously at one another, then at me with a new wonder. I went to the sphere, crept in, and presently they had the Selenites' crowbars and the broken chain before them. The fat little man stopped and lifted the end of one of the bars, and then dropped it with a grunt. Then they all did.

"It's lead, or gold!" said one.

"Oh, it's gold!" said the other.

"Gold, right enough," said the third.

"I say!" cried the little man. "But where did you get that?"

I was too tired to keep up a lie. "I got it in the moon."

I saw them stare at one another. "Look here!" said I, "I'm not going to argue now. Help me carry these lumps of gold up to the hotel, and I'll tell you more when I've had some food."

"And how about that thing?"

"It won't hurt there," I said. "Anyhow it must stop there now. If the tide comes up it will float all right."

Full of wonder, the young men obediently lifted my treasures on their shoulders, and with limbs that felt like lead I headed a sort of procession towards the sea-front. Half-way there we were joined by two awe-stricken little girls with spades, and later a lean little boy appeared. He was, I remember, wheeling a bicycle, and he accompanied us for a short distance, and then mounted his bicycle, and rode off over the level sands in the direction of the sphere.

I glanced back after him.

"He won't touch it," said the stout young man reassuringly.

The sun emerged from behind the clouds and lit the world, and turned the leaden sea to glittering waters. My spirits rose. A sense of the vast importance of the things I had done came with the sunlight into my mind. When indeed I took my place in the world, how amazed the world would be!

At last we came to the hotel, and I found myself in a bathroom once more, with warm water to wash myself in, and a change of clean clothes which the fat little man had lent me.

I sat down to an English breakfast, and ate with a sort of lazy appetite—an appetite many weeks old—and stirred myself to answer the questions of the four young men. And I told them the truth.

"Well," said I, "as you press me—I got it in the moon."

"The moon?"

"Yes, the moon in the sky."

"But how do you mean?"

"What I say, confound it!"

"That you have just come from the moon?"

"Exactly! Through space—in that ball." And I took a delicious mouthful of egg. I made a private note that when I went back to the moon I would take a box of eggs.

I could see clearly that they did not believe one word of what I told them; evidently they considered me the biggest liar they had ever met. They glanced at one another, and then concentrated the fire of their eyes on me. These strangely shaped masses of gold they had staggered under held their minds.

"You don't really mean—" began the youngest of them, in the tone of one who speaks to an obstinate child.

"Just pass me that toast-rack," I said, and shut him up completely.

"But look here, I say," began one of the others. "We're not going to believe that, you know."

"Ah, well," said I, and shrugged my shoulders. I proceeded with my breakfast.

Suddenly we heard a loud report, as if a rocket had been fired. And somewhere a window was broken.

"What's that?" said I, and we all rushed to the window. The sphere had gone.

"It's that boy!" I cried, in a rage; "it's that accursed boy!" and I rushed violently out of the room and down to the sea-front.

The three or four people on the beach were staring with faces full of wonder and amazement towards the point of that unexpected report. And that was all! The waiter and the four young men came rushing out behind me. Shouts came from windows and doors.

For a time I stood there, too stunned to realize what had happened. Then my legs became feeble. I had got the first idea of what the disaster meant for me. There was that accursed boy—sky high!

"I say," said the little man behind. "I say, you know."

I turned about, and there were twenty or thirty people, all regarding me with suspicion.

"I can't explain to you," I shouted. "I tell you I can't!"

I dashed through them into the hotel, rushed to the coffee-room, rang the bell furiously. I gripped the waiter as he entered. "Do you hear?" I shouted. "Get help and carry these bars up to my room right away." But he failed to understand me.

A scared-looking little old man appeared, and further two of the young men. I rushed at them and compelled them to help me to carry the gold. As soon as it was in my room I felt free to quarrel. "Now get out," I shouted; "all of you get out if you don't want to see a man go mad before your eyes!" As soon as I had the door locked on them all, I tore off the little man's clothes, which were too tight for me, and got into bed. And there I lay swearing and panting for a very long time.

At last I was calm enough to get out of bed and ring up the waiter for a night-shirt, a whisky-and-soda, and some good cigars. And these things having been brought, I locked the door again and proceeded to look the entire situation in the face.

The final result of the great experiment was an absolute failure. At one fatal blow all my vague intentions of returning to the moon, and getting more gold, and possibly Cavor's body, had vanished. I was the only survivor from the disaster, and that was all.

It was quite clear to me what had happened to the boy. He had crawled into the sphere, meddled with the studs, shut the Cavorite blinds, and gone up. The chances were a thousand to one against his getting back. And as for any responsibility I might have in the matter, the more I reflected upon that, the clearer it became to me that I need not trouble myself about it. If I was faced by sorrowing parents demanding their lost boy, I had merely to demand my lost sphere—or ask them what they meant.

Once I had settled that point, I could consider the question of my debts. I could see now that if only I assumed another name and retained my beard, the risks of any annoyance from my creditors became very small indeed.

I wrote a letter to the nearest bank, telling the manager that I wished to open an account with him, and requesting him to send two trustworthy persons in a carriage to take away my gold. I signed the letter "Blake". This done I wrote another letter to an outfitter, ordering some new clothes and a suit-case. I ordered as good a lunch as the hotel could give, and then lay smoking calmly until the two clerks came from the bank and weighed and took away my gold. After which I pulled the bed-clothes over my ears to drown any knocking, and went very comfortably to sleep.

When at last I woke up, I was ready to face the world. And so I got away to Italy, and there it is I am writing this story. If the world will not have it as a fact, then the world may take it as fiction. It is no concern of mine.

Everybody believes that Cavor was a not very brilliant scientific experimenter who blew up his house and himself at Lympne, and they explain the bang that followed my arrival at Littlestone as being due to some experiments with explosives that were being made near by. They say I have invented the story about the moon gold to avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my wealth.

I have told my story—and now, I suppose, I have to take up the worries of this earthly life again. Even if one has been to the moon, one has still to earn a living. So I am working here at Amalfi, on that play I sketched before Cavor came into my world. I must confess I find it hard to keep my mind on the play when the moonlight comes into my room. Imagine it! Tables and chairs and bars of gold! If only one could hit on that Cavorite again! But a thing like that doesn't come twice in a lifetime. Here I am, a little better off than I was at Lympne, and that is all. And Cavor has committed suicide in a more wonderful way than any human being ever did before. So the story closes as finally and completely as a dream. Indeed there are moments when, in spite of my moon gold, I almost believe that the whole thing was a dream ...