They had come upon a petrified city of the moon!
CHAPTER XXVI
SEEKING FOOD
"Well, if this isn't the limit!" burst out Jack, when he had stood and contemplated the silent city for several moments, which also his companions did. "After all our wanderings and troubles, when we do find a place, it isn't any good to us. I don't suppose there is a square meal in the whole town! Isn't it wonderful, though—every person turned to stone!"
"Wonderful!" gasped old Andy. "I never saw anything like it in all my life! What do you reckon did it, boys?"
"The same thing that turned the man in the hut, and the one Washington thought was a ghost, into stone," answered Mark. "There was a rain of some lime-water, or a liquid charged with similar chemicals, and the people were turned to rocks."
It was uncanny, and for a moment they hesitated on the edge of the city, which lay in a sort of cup-like valley, surrounded on all sides by towering peaks of the moon mountains. The bridge over which they had come afforded the only entrance to the city, and in times of war (provided the inhabitants of the moon ever fought) the passage must have been well guarded.
It was evidently a time of peace when the calamity that turned the inhabitants to stone came upon them, for only one soldier was in the guard hut—doubtless being there merely to give an alarm, or possibly to keep out undesirable strangers.
"Well, are we going to stand here all day?" asked Jack of his companions, when they had contemplated the silent city for five minutes longer.
"I say, let's go down there and see what we can find. I'm getting hungry."