strange perturbation, "like luminous blue milk that is just on the boil."

"This Lunar Sea," says Cavor, in a later passage "is not a stagnant ocean;

a solar tide sends it in a perpetual flow around the lunar axis, and

strange storms and boilings and rushings of its waters occur, and at times

cold winds and thunderings that ascend out of it into the busy ways of the

great ant-hill above. It is only when the water is in motion that it

gives out light; in its rare seasons of calm it is black. Commonly, when

one sees it, its waters rise and fall in an oily swell, and flakes and big

rafts of shining, bubbly foam drift with the sluggish, faintly glowing

current. The Selenites navigate its cavernous straits and lagoons in

little shallow boats of a canoe-like shape; and even before my journey to

the galleries about the Grand Lunar, who is Master of the Moon, I was

permitted to make a brief excursion on its waters.

The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous. A large proportion

of these ways are known only to expert pilots among the fishermen, and not

infrequently Selenites are lost for ever in their labyrinths. In their

remoter recesses, I am told, strange creatures lurk, some of them terrible

and dangerous creatures that all the science of the moon has been unable

to exterminate. There is particularly the Rapha, an inextricable mass of

clutching tentacles that one hacks to pieces only to multiply; and the

Tzee, a darting creature that is never seen, so subtly and suddenly does

it slay..."

He gives us a gleam of description.

255

The First Men In The Moon