The Lowest Heaven (13 page)

I discuss’d with Cano what options lay before us; they being, 1, that we attempt flight, and the Navigation by means of the Propulse, with the hope that the
Cometes
could be caulk’d or otherwise made tight sufficient to the journey (except that it was many days flight, and that it was most uncertain whether moving the wreck might not reveal greater damage to the
Fabrick
of the whole); or, 2, one or other of us strike out wearing the indiarubber suit in the hope of finding succour; or, 3, we abided where we were in the hope of rescue. As for this latter, it was surely a forlorn hope that any so much as knew of our predicament, and we might wait until the breathable was used up and so drown in dead air. My thoughts inclin’d to the second option, but from whom might we expect help, in this distant place, the Cristal House being destroy’d? Naught but the Patiens themselves. At this juncture
Cano
very gravely made a proposal to me, that tho’ he was a traitor, yet might
Kindermann
have had some merit in his suspicions of these beasts, and he declar’d himself disinclined to encounter them, calling them Very Devils and other such appellations. As for Kindermann, we both agreed, tho’ his treachery was wicked, he had been sufficiently recompens’d for it with ignominious death.

The result was that we agreed to try the first; and spent a goodly time doing what we might by way of sealing the
Cometes
after such fashion as was available to us, prior to attempting flight. The lesser leaks I was assur’d we have solv’d, yet I was unsure how severe the main rupture might be. Yet there was no knowing but in trying, so I took charge of the Propulse itself, and touched its grooves to the best of my abilities.

We launched upward in lively manner, but at once it became clear that the
Cometes
could not support itself with integrity; and though we lurch’d high yet the Vessel made a great rattling and trembling; and as I attempt’d to swerve, as birds do in flight, to position myself in the direction of Home, when with a mighty conniption shake the breach opened wider and the boddy of Kindermann flew from its place and was sucked hard away, to fall a Luciferian trajectory towards the black sands below. But this was disaster; and occasion’d a great typhoon in the cabbin, and all in a flutter with all objects within; and several other breaches open’d again. I reached the spigot to stop all our ayr evanishing away, but this only caus’d us to choak and gasp; and I knew death was close upon us. I attempted to bring the
Cometes
gently to the ground again, but my hand was heavy and I landed with a mighty crack against (as I later knew) a Crater ridge. Providence caus’d a spur of rock to thrust up through the breach, and a great swarm of dust flew about, clogging throat and eyes. Cano and I clustered around the spigot, and I parcell’d out littel gouts of ayr that we breath’d in greedily enough. The dust was settled by being drawn out through the cracks our hull. But, stirring ourselves, we block’d these as well as we could, and cramm’d much cargo around the rock. So it was we found ourselves in a worse situation than before.

What transpir’d with Cano

Cano, I am sorry to say, wept a great deal, and it was at this point I understood he had carried about his person a bronze bottle of gin, from which he had too often refresh’d himself. I am almost ashamed to relate this man’s behaviour in this skirmish; but as I think he deserves to be exposed, I shall divulge it in the manner I observ’d it. He, deciding that he would not die in that place, smote me cruelly about the head with a spanner, and as I was daz’d, neither relinquishing my senses wholly nor yet alert enough to counter his intent, I saw him put himself into the indiarubber suit. For we both knew that the suit was nothing without ayr, and the only supply of this latter was the one balon that remain’d to us. By the time he had fitted himself into the suit I was rouz’d somewhat from my half-stupor, but not in time to stop him stepping out through the door. And then I could do no other than watch from the porthole-window as Cano made his way about. He went to the exterior of the spigot, where the pipe fed ayr thro’, and his intent was not less than to disattach it to supply his own suit, thereby extinguishing my life. But, in brief, he achiev’d not this bad plan, and tho’ he expir’d on the black and purple sands, there. For as Don Frederico had said, the suit puff’d up like a pig’s bladder until it was so rigid with cold that he could move not arms nor legs. He danc’d and leapt like a water-boatman, his limbs straight out, but then he tripped over a broad, black rock, shap’d like an umbrella buried in the sand, and fell. The ayr inside his suit was soon breath’d up, and tho’ he twitched and struggl’d, yet could he not regain his footing. Shortly he mov’d no more, and so he pass’d from our mortall realm. I said a prayer for his Spirit, and reflect’d on how he might have acquitted himself had not drink possess’d his soul. Then I pray’d some more, for guidance, in that desolate place.

There was nothing but a choaking death to be expected of staying in that location, but I could see littel hope of egress. And though the indiarubber-suit had serv’d Cano but ill, yet I considerd how it might be possible to move, in howsoever waddling a fashion. But the suit was outside, and there was but one.

For two days (or so far as I could calculate the time, in that place, where the sun shrank only very slowly to the horizon) I made no attempt to remove myself; for I reason’d (howsoever ill my reason seems in hindsight) that it could be the Cristal House was not altogether destroy’d, and that they might come about the sky in their own vessel to search for me. But it was delusive. And then I saw that the sun, if slow, was setting, and soon the night would come when my ayr would freeze and I finally die. Thinking of my Commission, and my duty, I could not think to leave the Propulse there; but though I made laborious way towards unfixing it, it was too heavy and well-set for one man to move. And at last I resolv’d: to die in the attempt at escape rather than die a passive death inside the
Cometes.

The cold was growing apace; but the difficulties served to fix them more firmly in my resolution. In short, I swaddl’d myself about with such woollens and cloaths as we were supply’d with: leather gloves with woollen ones above (the which I may thank for the fact that I did not altogether lose my fingers), and silk handshoes for the feet; and for my head, about which I was in truth most concern’d, I fashion’d a sack of leather, and ty’d it about with a cord. The greatest inconvenience of this was that I could not see; but I spent long enough committing the scene without to my memory. Finally there was nothing but a short prayer and my hard-bearting heart, and I stepped from the ruin’d vessel.

The 1st thing that occur’d, which both surpriz’d and alarm’d me, was that the ayr inside my hood all fled away, and the fabric of the leather cleav’d close about my face. I had taken a dozen great breaths before my exit, but this plac’d me moments from an asphixiant death. The 2nd was my notice of the great cold, severer even than the Arctic chill I knew in my Ocean Voyage under the command of Sir
William Camell
in 1711. I made to feel my way, blind, about the exterior of the Vessel; but my hands and fingers were so benumbd and in such sudden pain, that I could barely feel. Worse were my feet, for the silk kept back the ayr not at all, and the surgeon who later cut away my toes declar’d me lucky not to have lost the feet themselves. And the chill ran up and down my whole boddy, such that my heart shrank to a chesnut inside my ribs. I had found it cold before, inside the
Cometes,
but now began to feel the extreamity of it. Still backward was no direction, and I stumbl’d round until by God’s Grace I laid my frost-chew’d hand upon the pipe of the ayr-balon, and tugging it free slipped the end in under my hood. Tho’ my lips slept with cold, and my mouth was all benumb’d, yet I managed to suck some ayr in my lungs, and rested for only a moment. But the sensation was deserting my limbs, and so (recalling the direction in which Cano lay) I stepped over to him. My foot found him, not I; and only the strange lightness of the Lunar world enabl’d me to haul his body back with my
Left
hand, holding the pipe with my
Right.
Without Providence I could not have regain’d the interior of the Cometes; and even then I could not close the double-door behind me without severing the ayr-pipe; so it was a poor clumsy & sightless fumbling that got Cano out of that suit and got me into it. How I managed it (to be truthful) I can hardly remember; save only that God’s Grace did not desert me, even in that place.

Ambulation through the Selenic lands

It was hardly warmer in the indiarubber suit than it had been before, and where warmth return’d to my hands and feet it was attended with stabbing pains and great discomfort. When I attach’d the hose to the valve in the suit neck it straightaway puff’d up and I could not move, or wriggle my way free. So I was compell’d to unconnect the hose and permit the ayr to hiss away, and only reconnect it after I had got outside. In all this I retayn’d the leather hood about my face, incapable in shear confusion to strip it away; but at last my wits return’d to the degree where I could think of this, and I discover’d that the arms of my suit were so Stiff that I could, internally, withdraw my own arms from them; and so slid the mask away.

Now, at least, I could see; and the sight was a desolate one. It is impossible that any thing living could subsist in so rigid and ayrless a climate; and that the Patiens can do so speaks to their monstrous strangeness. To stand still was to freeze, so I bestirr’d myself to motion, tho’ it hurt every bone in me to do so. The only ambulation possible in the suit, so stiff with ayr, was to waddle like a Penguin, to swivel left side and right side as I progressed. It was slow and cumbrous, but I nonetheless made my way up a long low slope of dark gray, and at the last I reach’d the eminence; and no
Mountain Climber
ever felt a greater joy than I at this petty achievement.

I look’d back and saw the smashed
Cometes
below me, marvelling that I had surviv’d for any time within it, so small and fractured-up it looked; and then I turn’d before me. The Earth, our World, stood in the black sky, of a proportion larger than the Moon stands in ours (which the greater dimensions of our world necessitates); but it was strange, and melancholy to look upward and consider that every fellow soul of my acquaintance was confin’d within that glaucous circle. Below me lay a great and dismal plain, black and grey as a coalface, but I had reason to hope it led to the Tranquil Sea; and there being no other shift for me, but to proceed thither and either treat with the Patien, or else pilfer from them the necessities to prolong my existence.

It would be needless to give the reader an account of the many difficulties I met with in making my slow way over the Tranquil Sea, dragging behind me a great balon of air, twenty times my hight, and sluggish and hard to move even in that lighten’d world. I was forc’d thrice to detour around obstacles in my way, and took some alarm, at the many patches in which obsidian flints or granite shards littered the way. But by God’s Grace I avoided hurt, and finally climbed another very dusty ridge, and look’d back to see the cicatrice tracks of my passage.

On the far side of this I saw various blocks, pale blue, silver-metallick and black; and saw that they had been scatter’d here by the Patien. Why they are so careless with their devices I know not, but of course I was laid under the most absolute necessity of behaving myself with the utmost circumspection and precaution. In the distance (which distances are strangely foreshorten’d in that place, either on account of the lack of ayr, or the strangeness of the weightless humour of the world) I saw larger blocks, and bethought them dwellings. With tedious progress, as I grew more and more tired, I struggl’d thereto. The glass porthole in my helmet kept fogging with my own breath, and I was oblig’d often to withdraw my hand inside the suit and smear it clear; and in truth it was hard to see very much through that space.

I passed 2 of the Patien creatures on the way, but they pay’d me no mind, scuttling away on their own mysterious business; and caring neither for the cold or the arylessness of that place, but going bare-fac’d and with their long limbs moving fast as a spider shifts its tentacles. At last I came to a block the size of good London Town House, and look’d about it for entrance, but found none. I was near dead with exhaustion and cold and gravely tempt’d to the sin of
Despair;
I thought to cut my suit and so end it, but had no knife. So I struck the wall of this block with my head, thinking (or perhaps not, for my thoughts were not so regular as that) to crack the glass in my porthole and so make an end; for the cold alone was more than I could bear. But again Providence spar’d me, even from my own wickedness, and a group of Patien came about me.

This may be the time to supply some description of those strange beings, although the memory of this encounter is so haz’d in my recollection that I might be recounting a dream, as much as passing on scientifick information. As many have noted they most resemble gigantick
Spiders
in overall appearance. They stand to the hight of a man, but their boddies are like unto a bullseal in length and breadth, and suspended horizontal in the air by their legs, of which most have six, tho’ some have eight and others are reported with ten (I have not myself seen these latter). Their faces, such as they have them, are monstrous ugly, more like to bats’ faces than anything else; and as I afterwards discover’d they smell very nauseously. Some are black with white lines, and some a blue-grey like the breast of a pigeon, which is to say curiously streak’d with all sorts of colours; still others have more ferocious manner, and scuttle fast in a manner like to alarm the bravest of men. Others appear more ruminative, altho’ it is hard to decipher how they think. To be sure what World it was in which their native habitation is found must be very different to ours.

I do not recall how I was transport’d inside, or (in truth) whether the interior in which I found myself was the same structure against which I had knock’d with my head. It was a hall, square, amounting to twenty yards of each wall; and white as milk. They stripped me from the indiarubber suit, and would have remov’d my inner cloathing, save only that I howl’d with pain when they attempted to
peel
the silk from my feet, in very agony at the hurt there, that they scurry’d away. This howling dislodg’d my voice, for my throat was (a surgeon afterward confirm’d) sore bruis’d by the cold and extreamity, and I could not speak. Several of the Patien attempt’d to speak to me, but in a language with which I was perfectly unacquaint’d. It sound’d gutterall, as the language of China, or Jappan. I was very cold, and shiver’d hard, and for a time individual Patiens would step alongside me and imitate my trembling, jerking and shaking upon their great spider-legs, perhaps only to mock me, or (as I now incline) to understand why I made such strange gestures in the first place. Afterwards the ayr warm’d, either because the Patien realiz’d my distress and its cause, or for unrelated reasons.