Part 7

That night was, I think, the most disturbed one that we spent in the whole course of our stay on the Moon. Not one of us slept soundly or continuously. For one thing, our growth had proceeded at an alarming and prodigious rate; and what bedding we had (we slept in that mild climate with the blankets under us instead of over us) had become absurdly short and insufficient for our new figures. Knees and elbows spilled over the sides and got dreadfully sore on the hard earth. But besides that discomfort, we were again conscious throughout the whole night of mysterious noises and presences. Every one of us seemed to be uneasy in his mind. I remember waking up one time and hearing the Doctor, Chee-Chee and Polynesia all talking in their sleep at the same time.

Hollow-eyed and unrested we finally, at daybreak, crawled out of our various roosts and turned silently to the business of getting breakfast. That veteran campaigner Polynesia was the first to pull herself together. She came back from examining the ground about the camp with a very serious look on her old face.

“Well,” said she, “if there’s any one in the Moon who _hasn’t_ been messing round our bunks while we slept I’d like to know who it is.”

“Why?” asked the Doctor. “Anything unusual?”

“Come and see,” said the parrot and led the way out into the clearing that surrounded our bunks and baggage.

Well, we were accustomed to finding tracks around our home, but this which Polynesia showed us was certainly something quite out of the ordinary. For a belt of a hundred yards or more about our headquarters the earth and sand and mud was a mass of foot-prints. Strange insect tracks, the marks of enormous birds, and—most evident of all—numberless prints of that gigantic human foot which we had seen before.

“Tut, tut!” said the Doctor peevishly. “They don’t do us any harm anyway. What does it matter if they come and look at us in our sleep? I’m not greatly interested, Polynesia. Let us take breakfast. A few extra tracks don’t make much difference.”

We sat down and started the meal.

But John Dolittle’s prophecy that the Animal Kingdom would not delay much longer in getting in touch with us was surprisingly and suddenly fulfilled. I had a piece of yam smeared with honey half-way to my mouth when I became conscious of an enormous shadow soaring over me. I looked up and there was the giant moth who had brought us from Puddleby! I could hardly believe my eyes. With a graceful sweep of his gigantic wings he settled down beside me—a battleship beside a mouse—as though such exact and accurate landings were no more than a part of the ordinary day’s work.

We had no time to remark on the moth’s arrival before two or three more of the same kind suddenly swept up from nowhere, fanned the dust all over us with their giant wings and settled down beside their brother.

Next, various birds appeared. Some species among these we had already seen in the vines. But there were many we had not: enormous storks, geese, swans and several others. Half of them seemed little bigger than their own kind on the Earth. But others were unbelievably large and were colored and shaped somewhat differently—though you could nearly always tell to what family they belonged.

Again more than one of us opened his mouth to say something and then closed it as some new and stranger arrival made its appearance and joined the gathering. The bees were the next. I remembered then seeing different kinds on the Earth, though I had never made a study of them. Here they all came trooping, magnified into great terrible-looking monsters out of a dream: the big black bumble bee, the little yellow bumble bee, the common honey bee, the bright green, fast-flying, slender bee. And with them came all their cousins and relatives, though there never seemed to be more than two or three specimens of each kind.

I could see that poor Chee-Chee was simply scared out of his wits. And little wonder! Insects of this size gathering silently about one were surely enough to appall the stoutest heart. Yet to me they were not entirely terrible. Perhaps I was merely taking my cue from the Doctor who was clearly more interested than alarmed. But besides that, the manner of the creatures did not appear unfriendly. Serious and orderly they seemed to be gathering according to a set plan; and I felt sure that very soon something was going to happen which would explain it all.

And sure enough, a few moments later, when the ground about our camp was literally one solid mass of giant insects and birds, we heard a tread. Usually a football in the open air makes little or no sound at all—though it must not be forgotten that we had found that sound of any kind traveled much more readily on the Moon than on the Earth. But this was something quite peculiar. Actually it shook the ground under us in a way that might have meant an earthquake. Yet somehow one _knew_ it was a tread.

Chee-Chee ran to the Doctor and hid under his coat. Polynesia never moved, just sat there on her tree-branch, looking rather peeved and impatient but evidently interested. I followed the direction of her gaze with my own eyes for I knew that her instinct was always a good guide. I found that she was watching the woods that surrounded the clearing where we had established our camp. Her beady little eyes were fixed immovably on a V-shaped cleft in the horizon of trees away to my left.

It is curious how in those important moments I always seemed to keep an eye on old Polynesia. I don’t mean to say that I did not follow the Doctor and stand ready to take his orders. But whenever anything unusual or puzzling like this came up, especially a case where animals were concerned, it was my impulse to keep an eye on the old parrot to see how she was taking it.

Now I saw her cocking her head on one side—in a quite characteristic pose—looking upward towards the cleft in the forest wall. She was muttering something beneath her breath (probably in Swedish, her favorite swearing language) but I could not make out more than a low peevish murmur. Presently, watching with her, I thought I saw the trees sway. Then something large and round seemed to come in view above them in the cleft.

It was now growing dusk. It had taken, we suddenly realized, a whole day for the creatures to gather; and in our absorbed interest we had not missed our meals. One could not be certain of his vision. I noticed the Doctor suddenly half rise, spilling poor old Chee-Chee out upon the ground. The big round thing above the tree-tops grew bigger and higher; it swayed gently as it came forward and with it the forest swayed also, as grass moves when a cat stalks through it.

Any minute I was expecting the Doctor to say something. The creature approaching, whatever—whoever—it was, must clearly be so monstrous that everything we had met with on the Moon so far would dwindle into insignificance in comparison.

And still old Polynesia sat motionless on her limb muttering and spluttering like a fire-cracker on a damp night.

Very soon we could hear other sounds from the oncoming creature besides his earth-shaking footfall. Giant trees snapped and crackled beneath his tread like twigs under a mortal’s foot. I confess that an ominous terror clutched at my heart too now. I could sympathize with poor Chee-Chee’s timidity. Oddly enough though at this, the most terrifying moment in all our experience on the Moon, the monkey did not try to conceal himself. He was standing beside the Doctor fascinatedly watching the great shadow towering above the trees.

Onward, nearer, came the lumbering figure. Soon there was no mistaking its shape. It had cleared the woods now. The gathered insects and waiting birds were making way for it. Suddenly we realized that it was towering over us, quite near, its long arms hanging at its sides. _It was human._

We had seen the Moon Man at last!

“Well, for pity’s sake!” squawked Polynesia, breaking the awed silence. “You may be a frightfully important person here. But my goodness! It has taken you an awfully long time to come and call on us!”

Serious as the occasion was in all conscience, Polynesia’s remarks, continued in an uninterrupted stream of annoyed criticism, finally gave me the giggles. And after I once got started I couldn’t have kept a straight face if I had been promised a fortune.

The dusk had now settled down over the strange assembly. Starlight glowed weirdly in the eyes of the moths and birds that stood about us, like a lamp’s flame reflected in the eyes of a cat. As I made another effort to stifle my silly titters I saw John Dolittle, the size of his figure looking perfectly absurd in comparison with the Moon Man’s, rise to meet the giant who had come to visit us.

“I am glad to meet you—at last,” said he in dignified well-bred English. A curious grunt of incomprehension was all that met his civility.

Then seeing that the Moon Man evidently did not follow his language, John Dolittle set to work to find some tongue that would be understandable to him. I suppose there never was, and probably never will be, any one who had the command of languages that the Doctor had. One by one he ran through most of the earthly human tongues that are used to-day or have been preserved from the past. None of them had the slightest effect upon the Moon Man. Turning to animal languages however, the Doctor met with slightly better results. A word here and there seemed to be understood.

But it was when John Dolittle fell back on the languages of the Insect and Vegetable Kingdoms that the Moon Man at last began to wake up and show interest. With fixed gaze Chee-Chee, Polynesia and I watched the two figures as they wrestled with the problems of common speech. Minute after minute went by, hour after hour. Finally the Doctor made a signal to me behind his back and I knew that now he was really ready. I picked up my notebook and pencil from the ground.

As I laid back a page in preparation for dictation there came a strange cry from Chee-Chee.

“Look!—_The right wrist!_—Look!”

We peered through the twilight. . . . Yes, there _was_ something around the giant’s wrist, but so tight that it was almost buried in the flesh. The Doctor touched it gently. But before he could say anything Chee-Chee’s voice broke out again, his words cutting the stillness in a curious, hoarse, sharp whisper.

“_The blue stone beads!_—Don’t you see them? . . . They don’t fit him any more since he’s grown a giant. But he’s Otho Bludge the artist. That’s the bracelet he got from Pippiteepa the grandmother of the Fairies!—It is he, Doctor, Otho Bludge, who was blown off the Earth in the _Days Before There Was a Moon_!”

THE TWENTIETH CHAPTER The Doctor and the Giant

“All right, Chee-Chee, all right,” said the Doctor hurriedly. “Wait now. We’ll see what we can find out. Don’t get excited.”

In spite of the Doctor’s reassuring words I could see that he himself was by this time quite a little agitated. And for that no one could blame him. After weeks in this weird world where naught but extraordinary things came up day after day we had been constantly wondering when we’d see the strange Human whose traces and influence were everywhere so evident. Now at last he had appeared.

I gazed up at the gigantic figure rearing away into the skies above our heads. With one of his feet he could easily have crushed the lot of us like so many cockroaches. Yet he, with the rest of the gathering, seemed not unfriendly to us, if a bit puzzled by our size. As for John Dolittle, he may have been a little upset by Chee-Chee’s announcement, but he certainly wasn’t scared. He at once set to work to get into touch with this strange creature who had called on us. And, as was usual with his experiments of this kind, the other side seemed more than willing to help.

The giant wore very little clothes. A garment somewhat similar to our own, made from the flexible bark and leaves we had discovered in the forest, covered his middle from the arm-pits down to the lower thighs. His hair was long and shaggy, falling almost to his shoulders. The Doctor measured up to a line somewhere near his ankle-bone. Apparently realizing that it was difficult for John Dolittle to talk with him at that range, the giant made a movement with his hand and at once the insects nearest to us rose and crawled away. In the space thus cleared the man-monster sat down to converse with his visitors from the Earth.

It was curious that after this I too no longer feared the enormous creature who looked like something from a fairy tale or a nightmare. Stretching down a tremendous hand, he lifted the Doctor, as though he had been a doll, and set him upon his bare knee. From this height—at least thirty feet above my head—John Dolittle clambered still further up the giant’s frame till he stood upon his shoulder.

Here he apparently had much greater success in making himself understood than he had had lower down. By standing on tip-toe he could just reach the Moon Man’s ear. Presently descending to the knee again, he began calling to me.

“Stubbins—I say, Stubbins! Have you got a notebook handy?”

“Yes, Doctor. In my pocket. Do you want me to take dictation?”

“Please,” he shouted back—for all the world like a foreman yelling orders from a high building. “Get this down. I have hardly established communication yet, but I want you to book some preliminary notes. Are you ready?”

As a matter of fact the Doctor in his enthusiasm had misjudged how easy he’d find it to converse with the Moon Man. For a good hour I stood waiting with my pencil poised and no words for dictation were handed down. Finally the Doctor called to me that he would have to delay matters a little till he got in close touch with our giant visitor.

“Humph!” grunted Polynesia. “I don’t see why he bothers. I never saw such an unattractive enormous brute.—Doesn’t look as though he had the wits of a caterpillar anyway. And to think that it was this great lump of unintelligent mutton that has kept the Doctor—John Dolittle, M.D.—and the rest of us, hanging about till it suited him to call on us!—After sending for us, mind you! That’s the part that rattles me!”

“Oh, but goodness!” muttered Chee-Chee peering up at the towering figure in the dusk. “Think—_think_ how old he is! That man was living when the Moon separated from the Earth—thousands, maybe millions, of years ago! Golly, what an age!”

“Yes: he’s old enough to know better,” snapped the parrot—“better manners anyway. Just because he’s fat and overgrown is no reason why he should treat his guests with such outrageous rudeness.”

“Oh, but come now, Polynesia,” I said, “we must not forget that this is a human being who has been separated from his own kind for centuries and centuries. And even such civilization as he knew on the Earth, way back in those Stone Age days, was not, I imagine, anything to boast of. Pretty crude, I’ll bet it was, the world then. The wonder is, to my way of thinking, that he has any mind at all—with no other humans to mingle with through all that countless time. I’m not surprised that John Dolittle finds it difficult to talk with him.”

“Oh, well now, Tommy Stubbins,” said she, “that may sound all very scientific and high-falutin’. But just the same there’s no denying that this overgrown booby was the one who got us up here. And the least he could have done was to see that we were properly received and cared for—instead of letting us fish for ourselves with no one to guide us or to put us on to the ropes. Very poor hospitality, I call it.”

“You seem to forget, Polynesia,” I said mildly, “that in spite of our small size, we may have seemed—as the Doctor said—quite as fearful to him and his world as he and his have been to us—even if he did arrange to get us here. Did you notice that he limped?”

“I did,” said she, tossing her head. “He dragged his left foot after him with an odd gait. Pshaw! I’ll bet that’s what he got the Doctor up here for—rheumatism or a splinter in his toe. Still, what I _don’t_ understand is how he heard of John Dolittle, famous though he is, with no communication between his world and ours.”

It was very interesting to me to watch the Doctor trying to talk with the Moon Man. I could not make the wildest guess at what sort of language it could be that they would finally hit upon. After all that time of separation from his fellows, how much could this strange creature remember of a mother tongue?

As a matter of fact, I did not find out that evening at all. The Doctor kept at his experiments, in his usual way, entirely forgetful of time or anything else. After I had watched for a while Chee-Chee’s head nodding sleepily I finally dozed off myself.

When I awoke it was daylight. The Doctor was still engaged with the giant in his struggles to understand and be understood. However, I could see at once that he was encouraged. I shouted up to him that it was breakfast time. He heard, nodded back to me and then apparently asked the giant to join us at our meal. I was surprised and delighted to see with what ease he managed to convey this idea to our big friend. For the Moon Man at once sat him down upon the ground near our tarpaulin which served as a table-cloth and gazed critically over the foodstuffs laid out. We offered him some of our famous yellow yam. At this he shook his head vigorously. Then with signs and grunts he proceeded to explain something to John Dolittle.

“He tells me, Stubbins,” said the Doctor presently, “that the yellow yam is the principal cause of rapid growth. Everything in this world, it seems, tends towards size; but this particular food is the worst. He advises us to drop it—unless we want to grow as big as he is. He has been trying to get back to our size, apparently, for ever so long.”

“Try him with some of the melon, Doctor,” said Chee-Chee.

This, when offered to the Moon Man, was accepted gladly; and for a little we all munched in silence.

“How are you getting on with his language, Doctor?” I asked presently.

“Oh, so so,” he grumbled. “It’s odd—awfully strange. At first I supposed it would be something like most human languages, a variation of vocal sounds. And I tried for hours to get in touch with him along those lines. But it was only a few vague far-off memories that I could bring out. I was, of course, particularly interested to link up a connection with some earthly language. Finally I went on to the languages of the insects and the plants and found that he spoke all dialects, in both, perfectly. On the whole I am awfully pleased with my experiments. Even if I cannot link him up with some of our own dead languages, at least his superior knowledge of the insect and vegetable tongues will be of great value to me.”

“Has he said anything so far about why he got you up here?” asked Polynesia.

“Not as yet,” said the Doctor. “But we’ve only just begun, you know. All in good time, Polynesia, all in good time.”

THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER How Otho Bludge Came to the Moon

The Doctor’s warning to the parrot that perhaps we were just as terrifying to the Moon Man (in spite of his size) as he and his world were to us, proved to be quite true. After breakfast was over and I got out the usual notebook for dictation it soon appeared that this giant, the dread President of the Council, was the mildest creature living. He let us crawl all over him and seemed quite pleased that we took so much interest in him. This did not appear to surprise the Doctor, who from the start had regarded him as a friend. But to Chee-Chee and myself, who had thought that he might gobble us up at any moment, it was, to say the least, a great relief.

I will not set down here in detail that first talk between the Moon Man and the Doctor. It was very long and went into a great many matters of languages and natural history that might not be of great interest to the general reader. But here and there in my report of that conversation I may dictate it word for word, where such a course may seem necessary to give a clear picture of the ideas exchanged. For it was certainly an interview of great importance.

The Doctor began by questioning the giant on the history that Chee-Chee had told us as it had been handed down to him by his grandmother. Here the Moon Man’s memory seemed very vague; but when prompted with details from the Monkeys’ History, he occasionally responded and more than once agreed with the Doctor’s statements or corrected them with a good deal of certainty and firmness.

I think I ought perhaps to say something here about the Moon Man’s face. In the pale daylight of a lunar dawn it looked clever and intelligent enough, but not nearly so old as one would have expected. It is indeed hard to describe that face. It wasn’t brutish and yet it had in it something quite foreign to the average human countenance as seen on the Earth. I imagine that his being separated from human kind for so long may have accounted for this. Beyond question it was an animal-like countenance and yet it was entirely free from anything like ferocity. If one could imagine a kindly animal who had used all his faculties in the furtherance of helpful and charitable ends one would have the nearest possible idea of the face of the Moon Man, as I saw it clearly for the first time when he took breakfast with us that morning.

In the strange tongues of insects and plants John Dolittle fired off question after question at our giant guest. Yes, he admitted, he probably was Otho Bludge, the pre-historic artist. This bracelet?—Yes, he wore it because some one. . . . And then his memory failed him. . . . What some one? . . . Well anyway he remembered that it had first been worn by a woman before he had it. What matter, after all? It was long ago, terribly long. Was there anything else that we would like to know?

There was a question I myself wanted to ask. The night before, in my wanderings with Chee-Chee over the giant’s huge body, I had discovered a disc or plate hanging to his belt. In the dusk then I had not been able to make out what it was. But this morning I got a better view of it: the most exquisite picture of a girl kneeling with a bow and arrow in her hands, carved upon a plate of reindeer horn. I asked the Doctor did he not want to question the Moon Man about it. We all guessed, of course, from Chee-Chee’s story, what it was. But I thought it might prompt the giant’s memory to things out of the past that would be of value to the Doctor. I even whispered to John Dolittle that the giant might be persuaded to give it to us or barter it for something. Even I knew enough about museum relics to realize its tremendous value.

The Doctor indeed did speak of it to him. The giant raised it from his belt, where it hung by a slender thong of bark and gazed at it a while. A spark of recollection lit up his eyes for a moment. Then, with a pathetic fumbling sort of gesture, he pressed it to his heart a moment while that odd fuddled look came over his countenance once more. The Doctor and I, I think, both felt we had been rather tactless and did not touch upon the subject again.

I have often been since—though I certainly was not at the time—amused at the way the Doctor took charge of the situation and raced all over this enormous creature as though he were some new kind of specimen to be labeled and docketed for a natural history museum. Yet he did it in such a way as not to give the slightest offense.