“I won’t!” cried the shepherd in a savage tone. Whereupon the monsters caught him with their claws, and threw him headlong from the car.
The fall was frightful to contemplate, and I’m afraid it will be necessary to allow the poor fellow seven days to recover his equilibrium. [[206]]
CHAPTER II.
If the unhappy mortal had been capable of thinking at the moment he was hurled from the car by the vampires, it is more than probable that his mind would have presented the picture of a terrible and instantaneous death. Strange to relate, instead of the rushing, headlong plunge downward, to be anticipated under the conditions, our hero found himself gently floating in space with the buoyancy of one of the feathered tribe. The dread and fear of death were lost, or rather swallowed up in a nameless terror, at the unnatural position in which he was placed. Yet there was no mystery in it. According to a well-known law, the weight of bodies diminishes as they descend from the outside of the Earth. It is at the surface of the globe where weight is most sensibly felt, and it is just possible that, had we accompanied the shepherd through the thick crust of the terrestrial sphere, we should have soon discovered, as he did, that beyond, at the other side, there is little or no gravity at all. Hence his peculiar position. Indeed, it was most fortunate that the old man chanced to have several nuggets of gold in his pockets at the time, otherwise, I’m afraid he would have been suspended in mid-air like Mohammed’s [[207]]coffin. As it happened, gold turned the scale, even in Moonland, and enabled the adventurous mortal to descend in a horizontal rather than a vertical course to the shores of the Moon.
Within his vision below lay a vast expanse of water; the rugged coast bordered with majestic hills, torn by earthquakes, and blasted and ravaged by volcanic fires. The waves broke on this shore with a dull, hollow noise against the cliffs. Some of these, dividing the coast with their sharp spurs, formed capes and promontories, fantastic in form and worn by the ceaseless action of the surf. It was like a continuous cosmical phenomenon, filling a basin of sufficient extent to contain an inland sea, and walled by enormous mountains with the irregular shores of Earth, but desert, and fearfully wild.
If the eyes of the shepherd were able to range afar over this sea, it was because the shadowless light brought to view every detail of it. The expanse above him was a sky of huge plains of cloud, pale yellow in colour, and drifting with rapidity athwart the firmament, where appeared dark circles, rings and cones, in lieu of stars. Everything that he could liken to aught on this globe seemed changed by some potent power into opposite extremes. Downward, slowly but surely, [[208]]without the faculty to change his course either to the right or to the left, the mortal at length plunged into the water. He was a capital swimmer, and had no fear of being drowned. Imagine his dismay, however, when he found himself sinking to the bottom like a crowbar, in spite of his vigorous efforts to keep afloat. In vain he struck out and struggled desperately to rise to the surface by use of legs and arms. Vain and useless. Down he went, plumbing the depths below, until he touched the bottom; then, to his surprise, he rebounded back again like a cork, but only to go down again as speedily as before.
The poor fellow had been pertinaciously holding his breath, as is customary when bathing in terrestrial streams; and therefore when he could no longer resist the unconquerable will of nature to draw breath, judge of the consternation which laid hold of him, when, instead of the choking gasp of suffocation anticipated, he found little difficulty in respiration! In fact, that vast sheet was not water at all, such as he knew it, but a subtle fluid, half way between a liquid and a gas, which, though heavier than air, was yet so much lighter than water that it was impossible for him to float in it.
These discoveries come to him in quick succession, and created within his mind the most unspeakable [[209]]astonishment. By degrees, and after many attempts, he found that he could walk along the bed of this strange sea with comparative ease. Accordingly he straightway reached the shore and sat down on the cliffs to rest. Wonder upon wonder had crowded so fast and thick upon the bewildered mind of our traveller that his thoughts were in a whirl. Yet another surprise was in store for him, for as he extended his vision over the landscape he beheld a gigantic creature approaching with prodigious bounds and flying leaps. In his utter amazement he believed one of the rugged hills had been suddenly endowed with life, and was hurrying on to crush him. Never before had the eyes of breathing mortal rested on such a mammoth of human outline. No, nor upon anything with such power of movement. He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying, but he was quite positive as to its extraordinary swiftness.
