"I was reminded on this excursion of what I have read of the Mammoth

Caves; if only I had had a yellow flambeau instead of the pervading blue

light, and a solid-looking boatman with an oar instead of a scuttle-faced

Selenite working an engine at the back of the canoe, I could have imagined

I had suddenly got back to earth. The rocks about us were very various,

sometimes black, sometimes pale blue and veined, and once they flashed and

glittered as though we had come into a mine of sapphires. And below one

saw the ghostly phosphorescent fishes flash and vanish in the hardly less

phosphorescent deep. Then, presently, a long ultra-marine vista down the

turgid stream of one of the channels of traffic, and a landing stage, and

then, perhaps, a glimpse up the enormous crowded shaft of one of the

vertical ways.

"In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats

were fishing. We went alongside one of these and watched the long-armed

Selenites winding in a net. They were little, hunchbacked insects, with

very strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled face-masks. As they

pulled at it that net seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon in the

moon; it was loaded with weights--no doubt of gold--and it took a long

time to draw, for in those waters the larger and more edible fish lurk

deep. The fish in the net came up like a blue moonrise--a blaze of

darting, tossing blue.

Among their catch was a many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing,

ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and

The First Men In The Moon