here. They must be horribly crowded, I thought. No.
They had three acres of surface, and there were but
thirty-seven of them. Not so much crowded as people are
in Roxbury, not nearly so much as in Boston; and,
besides, these people are living underground, and have
the whole of their surface for their exercise.

I watched their every movement as they approached the
edge and as they left it. Often they passed beyond it,
so that I could see them no more. Often they sheltered
themselves from that tropical sun beneath the trees.
Think of living on a world where from the vertical heat
of the hottest noon of the equator to the twilight of the
poles is a walk of only fifty paces! What atmosphere
they had, to temper and diffuse those rays, I could not
then conjecture.

I knew that at half-past ten they would pass into the
inevitable eclipse which struck them every night at this
period of their orbit, and must, I thought, be a luxury
to them, as recalling old memories of night when they
were on this world. As they approached the line of
shadow, some fifteen minutes before it was due, I counted
on the edge thirty-seven specks arranged evidently in
order; and, at one moment, as by one signal, all thirty-
seven jumped into the air,--high jumps. Again they did
it, and again. Then a low jump; then a high one. I
caught the idea in a moment. They were telegraphing to
our world, in the hope of an observer. Long leaps and
short leaps,--the long and short of Morse's Telegraph