Again I was thankful that I had company on that expedition. It was certainly a most curious and extraordinary experience. None of us spoke very much but when we did it seemed that all of us had been thinking the same things.
The woods grew more and more mysterious, and more and more alive, as we went onward towards the other side of the Moon, the side that earthly Man had never seen before. For one thing, the strange music seemed to increase; and for another, there was more movement in the limbs of the trees. Great branches that looked like arms, bunches of small twigs that could have been hands, swung and moved and clawed the air in the most uncanny fashion. And always that steady wind went on blowing, even, regular and smooth.
All of the forest was not gloomy however. Much of it was unbelievably beautiful. Acres of woods there were which presented nothing but a gigantic sea of many-colored blossoms, colors that seemed like something out of a dream, indescribable, yet clear in one’s memory as a definite picture of something seen.
The Doctor as we went forward spoke very little; when he did it was almost always on the same subject: “the absence of decay,” as he put it.
“I am utterly puzzled, Stubbins,” said he, in one of his longer outbursts when we were resting. “Why, there is hardly any leaf-mould at all!”
“What difference would that make, Doctor?” I asked.
“Well, that’s what the trees live on, mostly, in our world,” said he. “The forest growth, I mean—the soil that is formed by dying trees and rotting leaves—that is the nourishment that brings forth the seedlings which finally grow into new trees. But here! Well, of course there is some soil—and some shedding of leaves. But I’ve hardly seen a dead tree since I’ve been in these woods. One would almost think that there were some—er—balance. Some arrangement of—er—well—I can’t explain it. . . . It beats me entirely.”
I did not, at the time, completely understand what he meant. And yet it did seem as though every one of these giant plants that rose about us led a life of peaceful growth, undisturbed by rot, by blight or by disease.
“There was more movement in the limbs of the trees”