For a space I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I turned reluctantly
from the smeared puzzle of the glass and stared at his face. "Yes,"
I said, "I am hungry. I feel somehow enormously disappointed. I had
expected--I don't know what I had expected, but not this."

I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging my blanket about me sat down on
the bale again and began my first meal on the moon. I don't think I
finished it--I forget. Presently, first in patches, then running rapidly
together into wider spaces, came the clearing of the glass, came the
drawing of the misty veil that hid the moon world from our eyes.

We peered out upon the landscape of the moon.





Chapter 7




Sunrise on the Moon

As we saw it first it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes. We were
in an enormous amphitheatre, a vast circular plain, the floor of the giant
crater. Its cliff-like walls closed us in on every side. From the westward
the light of the unseen sun fell upon them, reaching to the very foot of
the cliff, and showed a disordered escarpment of drab and grayish rock,