MOTHLAND.

[Contents]MOTHLAND.[Contents]CHAPTER I.Take your places. Turn down the lights. We are going to open our magic lantern once more. Ho Presto! Here we are in Victoria.Picture to yourself a plainly furnished room in a farmhouse on the banks of the Murray River. Besides the ordinary tables, chairs, pictures, and other things you will observe a clock on the mantel-shelf over the fireplace. Now this clock is going to form the pivot upon which our story turns.The door of this apartment was gently opened, and two children—a boy and a girl—entered. They had just stolen away unknown to the nurse, and had come here to amuse themselves. There was, however, very little in that room to amuse them. Neither hoop nor ball nor doll was here; but there was the clock ticking away like a cricket who had lost its mother. They say that curiosity[185]is much stronger in the female, be it child or adult, than in the male portion of humanity, so the little girl drew a chair to the fireplace, and on the top of it she placed a stool, and then both the children mounted and stood face to face with the clock.They examined the polished wooden case, and the marble base, the figures and the painted scroll work which adorned its face, then the minute-hand which they could see moving, and listened to the “Tick, tick, tick,” which seemed to come from some voice within it. “Tick-tick,” cried the clock, and still as the little boy looked and listened it went on without stopping, “Tick, tick, tick.”“What can it be?” said the little girl. “Where can the noise come from, Teddy?”“Oh!” answered Teddy, “it comes from the wee fellow inside there; can’t you see him moving his arm about, eh, Lily?”Lily looked and discovered a door. “It comes from here,” she said. “I should like to open it and let the old man out.”“No, no,” cried Teddy, “we must not. Papa would be angry. Come away back again to nurse.” But Lily poked about with her fingers, unknowingly touched a spring, and the door flew open.There they saw a wonderful sight. There were[186]wheels moving round and round, and the inside shone like gold, and there was a long piece of steel hanging down like a tail, which moved from side to side, and the timepiece said louder than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”Lily put in her finger and touched the golden inside, and still the clock ticked on. Then she touched the pendulum, and though the clock paused for a moment as if to take breath, it went on again fresher than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”But at last she happened to poke her finger between the spokes of the little wheel, and the timepiece stopped. Lily thought it would tick again in a minute, but she was disappointed. She touched the pendulum, she touched the wheel, she touched every part; yet all to no purpose. And then the boy, Teddy, tried his hand in vain. The clock wouldn’t say “Tick, tick” any more.What was to be done?They were very much frightened. They closed the clock door as quickly as possible, got down from the chair, put the things all tidy, and left the room.Nothing more occurred till breakfast-time next morning, when the father called out suddenly, “Why, the clock has stopped!” and when he examined it he found the mainspring was broken.[187]“Somebody has been playing with the clock. Did you touch it, Teddy?”“No, I never,” answered the boy.“Was it you, Lily?”Now, Lily was not in the habit of being untruthful; but she was frightened and replied, “No.”“One of you must have done it yesterday. Jane saw you coming out of the room,” continued the father.By dint of questioning, Lily and Teddy at length acknowledged they had been in the room, and then the boy said Lily had touched the timepiece, and then the girl said so had Teddy; but which of them it was that had really broken the spring their father could not discover.“Very well, my children,” he said. “If you will not tell me who broke the clock, you will be punished some day.” And the father spoke truly.In that part of the Murray district where Lily and Teddy lived there dwelt a small native race of people called “Moths.” This diminutive tribe lived alone by themselves in a grand shaded valley by the river-bank. They used to be seen very often by the settlers and bushmen riding home late on moonlight nights. Indeed, many travellers had stated they had seen them dancing on the[188]green, making merry, courting, laughing, etc., while others vouched to having spoken to the creatures. Be that as it may, the Moths were there in the valley by the river, and had been there long before Teddy and Lily’s grandfather first took up the splendid selection adjacent.The wee people had taken an interest in the fortunes of the different families round about for many years, always patronising and favouring good boys and girls, and always punishing the bad ones in some form or other.Just below the bush paddock where the valley dips down to the water could be seen a circle of emerald green, on which the Moths assembled every night when the moon shone. It was not often crossed by the feet of mortals; but any one passing that way by daylight might observe small round rings here and there, much greener than the grass around. These were Moth circles.Here the Moths sat in little circles on raised benches made of grass blades, whilst others danced before them in the middle of the ring to music played on flutes made from the backbones of locusts.On the night after the clock had been broken the Moths met to hold a great council. The whole race assembled on this occasion. There[189]was the King wearing a golden crown of flowers, and the Queen decked with diamonds of dew, and all the Princes and Princesses in robes of mingled green and blue. When the council were assembled the monarch spoke thus:“People of Mothland, you all know what an interest we take in the family near our valley, and especially in little Lily and Teddy. Now I grieve to tell you these children have been very naughty. Indeed, one of them has told a deliberate falsehood, a sin we hate and abhor beyond all things. The boy is not so guilty as his sister; it was not he, certainly, who spoilt the clock, but still he went up on the chair and looked at it; and he ought to have told this like a brave boy, instead of holding his tongue like a coward. But Lily has told a decided lie, and she must be punished. What shall we do to her?”“Carry her away from her home, and put Scarlet Mantle in her place,” said the Queen of the Moths.“It shall be done,” replied the King.That night when Lily was sleeping soundly in her soft, pleasant bed, the King of the Moths, accompanied by some of the strongest men in his tribe, carried her away into the valley of Mothland, and they substituted Scarlet Mantle in her stead.Jane, the nurse, took her accustomed peep into[190]the child’s bedroom, ere retiring for the night, and was somewhat astonished to observe that her charge appeared thinner and smaller and sharper than usual.“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” cried the girl, so, kissing thesupposedchild, she went her way, and left the Moth snugly coiled in little Lily’s bed.[Contents]CHAPTER II.The morning following the night on which the Moths took Lily away dawned brightly. The farmer and his wife fancied somehow that their little girl looked rather pale and thin; the mother thought poor Lily was ill; the father thought she was sorry for saying she didn’t break the clock. But the Moths are very clever people, and of course had contrived to make Scarlet Mantle look as like Lily as possible. So she took up the child’s place in the house, and ate bread and butter, pudding, lollies, wore the girl’s new clothes, and was much happier than she had ever been in Mothland. One or two little things Scarlet Mantle could not entirely forget; still, on the whole, she managed to conduct herself as a civilised human child should.But where was Lily? She was away in the[191]dells with the Moths, and very unhappy. Firstly, she was very tired; secondly, she was hungry; and thirdly, she was made ridiculous. These things were most tantalising, and she was ready to cry her eyes out. No wonder she was tired, because instead of going to bed at seven o’clock, and sleeping soundly every night, she had to go out on the circles and dance till the moon set. She was cold, too, for in place of her warm frocks she had nothing in the world but Scarlet Mantle’s old clothes, made of rose-leaves and gossamer. She might well be hungry also, for the Moths gave her nothing but dew and locusts for food. Still there was one thing more dreadful than all these put together. For some reason or other Lily’s tongue had begun to grow very long.Yes, it was not painful, but exceedingly ugly, as you may imagine. Little by little it increased and grew longer, until she was obliged to tie it round her neck to keep it out of her way, and the Moths were always laughing about it, which made our little girl very melancholy.The Queen of the Moths was a very motherly person, and Lily soon made friends with her.“Your Majesty,” she said one day, “I am very miserable. Indeed, I think I shall die if I am kept here much longer.”[192]“What is amiss, my child?” inquired the Queen.“Why am I detained here?” replied Lily. “And why have I so little to eat and drink?”“My dear child, you know the reason,” answered the Queen. “You told a wicked falsehood, and you are paying the penalty for it now.”“Ah! your Majesty, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could only get rid of my long tongue,” pleaded Lily. “Dear Queen, please can’t you rid me of my ugly tongue?”“No, child, I cannot, but you can rid yourself of it.”“How? Oh, please tell me.”The Queen of the Moths sighed.“There is only one way,” she answered. “Your tongue is disfigured, because it hath offended. If you wish to get rid of it, you must acknowledge your fault and confess the lie you told.”Poor Lily! Like many other children of a larger growth, she was stubborn, and did not like this plan of getting rid of her trouble. Anything rather than saying: “I broke the clock.”So the child went on among the Moths, suffering cold and hunger, midnight dancing, and the big tongue.But little Lily loved her father and mother, and did not like to be away from them for ever. She[193]began to steal away from the valley, and go to her own home. Often she stood looking in at the window, and saw her father and mother and Teddy sitting with Scarlet Mantle; and the tears would start to her eyes, and run down her cheeks, and she would cry out in her grief, “Oh! I do so wish I was sitting on my own stool again.”One night she was standing by the window particularly unhappy, and in a very penitent mood. Had she but the opportunity, she determined to confess her fault. There sat her father in the full flare of the lamp, thinking he had Lily by his side. There was Teddy with his toys, and while the little outcast was gazing, Jane, the nurse, entered with the tea-tray; cups and saucers began to rattle, and her brother and Scarlet Mantle gathered round the table. Oh, to be shut out from all this comfort, and the smiles and caresses of her parents! At length, something led her father to rise from his seat and look out into the darkness beyond. He opened the window and stepped out upon the verandah. In a moment a tiny hand was thrust into his own, and a timid, hesitating voice was heard to say,—“I—I am—so—sorry. I—broke—the clock.”“You! Who are you?” cried the father in astonishment.[194]“I’m Lily, father,” she cried out, with a great sob.“Lily! Why, Lily is in the dining-room with mamma.”“No;I amLily, your own naughty little girl, and—I broke the clock. There!” she sobbed aloud. “The Moths took me away because I told you a falsehood, and they only gave me old faded rose-leaves to wear, and the legs of locusts to eat, and made me drink dew out of the cups of the flowers; and see what a great, long, ugly tongue they have given me for telling that story.”The trilling voice sounded very remorseful, and the little hand clung nervously to the father, who immediately led the little one into the dining-room.The first thing on which the eyes of the man rested was the vacant seat of Scarlet Mantle.“Hallo! Where’s the other one?” he cried.“The other one?” repeated his wife. “What other one, dear?”“The—the child, Lily,” replied the astonished pater.The good woman laughed, and answered, “There she is, at your side,”“Nonsense; this little lady says she has just come from Mothland, and that she is our Lily whom the Moths stole because she told a falsehood[195]over the breaking of the clock. Surely there aren’t two Lilys?” and the farmer looked beneath the sofa, under the table, and even up the chimney; but Scarlet Mantle, the moment she saw Lily enter the room, vanished through the window, and of course was not to be found.“Well, this is a queer go, wife.”“Most extraordinary,” responded the mother, gazing with a doubtful look upon the real Lily, who stood quietly looking from one to the other.“Oh, this is Sis,” exclaimed Teddy. “There’s the bump on the nose which I made with my ball last week. You’re Lily, who smashed the clock, aren’t you?” he asked, looking up in her face.“Indeed, Teddy dear, I’m your little sister, and it was I who broke the clock, and the Moths took me away, and gave me this big, frightful tongue, because I said I didn’t. You see here——”And she put up her hand to her mouth, but lo! the ugly member had vanished. How glad she felt that it was gone! The mere effort to do right had brought its own reward. And as she repeated again, more earnestly, “I broke the clock, and I want you to forgive me,” her father saw she was really his own little girl, and giving her a hearty kiss of forgiveness, seated her in her own accustomed[196]place at table, and they were very happy once more.That night Lily slept soundly in her own room, in her own cosy bed, and she thought it much better than dancing till she was tired round the Moth circles by the river-bank.And so thought the Scarlet Mantle![197][Contents]MOONLAND.[Contents]CHAPTER I.Some of our relatives on the other side of the globe will be astonished to learn that the way to the Moon has been discovered by an unfortunate member of theliteratiof Australia.The greatest thinkers of the day have scouted the idea as nothing but moonshine, when spoken to about the practicability of the discovery. But it must be borne in mind that the same laws of Nature which guide and rule the Mother Country are somewhat erratic here at the Antipodes, inasmuch as we are allupside down—standing on our heads, in fact. Therefore we are prepared for marvels. In a land where there are animals who stand on theirtails, and fight with all four feet at once; where the young leap out of and into their parents’ stomachs at will—there being a strange bag in that quarter for the purpose of humouring the antics of the juveniles, just like the hole in the[198]bow of a timber ship; where there are creatures that appear neither flesh nor fowl—who swim in ponds like a duck, have a duck’s bill, who lay eggs, yet have feet and hair like a beast; in a land where the leaves on the trees grow edgeways to the sun, and the trees themselves shoot downwards, surely it is no great wonder that we have found a passage to the great luminary of night, and had the pleasure of shaking hands and likewise supping with the disobedient man who gathered sticks on Sunday.“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”The scientific world will never feel half the surprise anent our new discovery as that which fell upon the old shepherd when he found himself surrounded and made a prisoner. He had left his sheep in charge of the only companion he had in these regions—viz., his dog. Within a sheltered nook on one of the fairest and most luxuriant slopes of the mysterious Blue Mountains, Patch, the half-bred dingo, held watch and ward over his charge while his master wandered down the rugged side of the cliff in search of gold. Here the sun was almost hid behind the broad awning of gigantic trees, whose immense trunks, gnarled and hoary with age, stood like mammoth sentinels to guard the dim glen below. The lonely herdsman had often descended to that spot before unmolested,[199]but now from every mound and hollow there peered the grotesque faces of the Mountain Sprites, watching his every movement, until with a sudden rush they pounced upon him and held him fast. For a time he struggled manfully to free himself. It was quite useless. The genii of the Blue Mountains are a powerful people, not to be trifled with, as the shepherd soon discovered.[200]He was lifted bodily up, and borne along so swiftly that he nearly lost his senses. The route of his captors lay in a downward direction—neverupward. And it appeared as if the dusky ravines which they traversed led right away from the upper world into the region of eternal night.“Dear friends, good people, where are you taking me?” cried the poor fellow in an affrighted tone.“Bis, bus, silence, mortal!” replied an ancient gnome authoritatively. “Your destination is not on the Earth, but the Moon.”“Good gracious!” ejaculated the poor shepherd, with starting eyeballs.“Bus, peace,” rejoined the brownie in a whisper. “The voice of man hath never disturbed these solitudes since the creation.”“Gentlemen, pray let me go!”“Art thou not going, thou dissatisfied mortal? Be silent.”“It is all up with me,” groaned the unfortunate captive.“Nay, verily, it will be all down with thee,” answered the sprite. “Behold!”As the fairy spoke they emerged into a dismal spot, in the midst of which gaped a wide, black pit; at the mouth of the chasm the shepherd[201]beheld the forms of two beings in shape like the fabled vampires, who clapped their tremendous wings in ecstasy at sight of him.“Who is this?” they cried.And the fairies answered, “A visitor for Moonland.”“No, no, I’m not going to the Moon,” replied the trembling shepherd.The horrid vampires laughed in exultation at his misery, and the sound shook the walls of the solid cliffs around. “Hear me, Dusk, and thou, Lunar,” said the gnome, addressing the winged monsters. “This fellow hath had the impudence to invade our sacred precincts, and attempted to release some of our dreaded foes, the ‘Gold Nuggets’ whom we have made prisoners. What shall we do with the rascal?”“Send him to the Moon,” they cried with one voice.“Mercy, gentlemen, mercy.”“Fiddlesticks! To Moonland with him,” answered the sprite. “There is lots of room for him to fossick there. Eh, Lunar?”Over that terrible void, near where they held him, our hero observed a strange object floating with a gentle, oscillating motion, as a feather floats in space. In appearance, it was like a gigantic[202]umbrella inverted, with a hole cut in the centre. To the ends of the ribs cords of gossamer were fastened which stretched upward to a car in the shape of a star, the points expanded like huge wings. The nature of this material, or by what process this curious vehicle had been manufactured, the unfortunate shepherd had neither power nor leisure at that moment to examine, for the ancient fay had no sooner spoken than Dusk and his companion seized hold of him, like a pair of vultures, and flew upward with him in the car of the parachute.“Good-bye, Lunar, let me know when you arrive,” cried some of the fairies.“Slide a message down a moonbeam,” responded others.“Or a rainbow, or the tail of a comet.” And while the mountain sprites stood and jeered, the quaint machine suddenly shot down the empty space with the velocity of a cannon-ball.Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air? Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him for a moment. Yet it was only for a moment. Strange[203]to say, he did not lose his presence of mind, and his fear left him as suddenly as it had fallen upon him. From a bewildering chaos of thought in the captive’s mindcuriositybecame paramount to all else. Amid the murky blackness around and about there was very little to examine, but the shepherd thrust his head through the gossamer network of the machine and gazed below. Far, far away in the profound depths beneath them, he saw a vast disc of soft light which threw its rays upward, and enabled him to discern that the abyss through which they were descending appeared like a hollow cone, the neck of which began in the mountain, and like an eddying circle in the water, gradually became wider and wider as they advanced.The progress of the parachute was so swift that they rapidly emerged into the focus of the light—the wide mouth of the cone receding to a faint, dark circle on the pale horizon in the space of a few seconds. It was astounding how wondrous soft and beautiful the shimmering glow of light in this new region burst upon the mortal’s vision. He had witnessed many lovely changes from the lofty peaks of the New South Wales Alps, but Dame Nature had never presented herself to his eyes in such a garb before. Not the glaring, hot,[204]dazzling rays of the summer sun here, but rather a gentle, subdued, dreamy refulgence, without the ghost of a shadow or shade of variation upon anything.Above, below, one universal, pale, liquid glimmer, devoid of vapour. Distant mountains, peaked and gabled like an iceberg, appeared to view, and hills and valleys, with deep ruts and chasms, forming an amphitheatre of vast dimensions, became more clear to the sight every moment. Everything seemed mixed up and confounded by the uniformity of colour. Rocks, valleys, and streams presented a weird and wonderful aspect under new conditions where, like Hoffmann’s shadowless man, every object was lighted up on all sides, equally, in the absence of a central point. Scorched and charred and burnt, there was not a sign of a tree or a shrub on the face of the whole landscape. Scoriæ and dross and pumice-stone—nothing else, save the waters that lay bathed in luminous silvery grey.From the vast panorama our hero turned his eyes upon his companions, the vampires. They had cast the netting of the car aside.“Prepare thyself, mortal,” cried Lunar in a terrible voice.“Prepare myself, for what?”[205]“For a header into the sea yonder beneath us,” answered the vampire coolly.“Good heavens! Gentlemen, you really don’t think I can dive from this great height! I shall be dashed to mincemeat,” responded the shepherd, in a tone of consternation.The monsters only laughed at him, and repeated their command.“Descend a little lower, good Lunar. Do, gentle Dusk,” he pleaded.“We can’t. This is Moonland. Not enoughgravityhere,” they replied.“Moonland! Mercy on me! And shall I have to leave my old bones in the Moon?” cried he in despair.“Plenty of ’em here—loads. Valleys full, as you’ll find. Come, jump!”“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][Contents]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 theother 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.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”Australian Fairy Tales][Page 209.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”In his terror the shepherd fled—when lo! he found thathe toowas endowed with this singular force of locomotion. It is surprising how fear lends a man wings. The terrestrial one didn’t need anything of the kind, though. Incredible the springs and leaps he made over the high peaks, across chasms and cliffs, and along the[210]steep mountain-sides; wonderful the feeling which changed from dread to exuberant delight and ecstasy, and again to terror, as the mighty voice of the pursuer came upon his ears like a peal of thunder.“Halt! Stop! Who art thou?”Had he been then and there endowed with wings, the old shepherd felt that he could not escape from the owner of that voice. All he could do was to cast himself flat on his face and await his doom in silence.“Shall Greencheese utter his command twice? Who art thou?” repeated the mammoth.“Mercy, your Highness. I am only old Bob, the shepherd of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales.”“Old Bob! Blue Mountains! Ha! Fuddle-fum. Well?”“Some fairies got hold of me t’other day, and bundles me down here, on a sort of humberellar, your Worship; that’s all I knows about it,” cried the mortal in a despairing tone.“Fairies! Mum! I know the rogues,” responded the creature quickly. “Many a summer’s night I have watched their freaks and gambols among secluded nooks and dells hidden away from mortal ken. Many a long hour we have held converse together, in the silent ravines and woods, when[211]all the human mites of the Australian world were locked in sleep. Go on!”“I knowsnoffin’more, sir, only that I shouldn’t like to leave my old bodyhere!” cried Bob.“Ha! Buncham! Fi-pho—fiddle-faddlem! Thou shalt live.”“Thanks, your Highness.” And the shepherd lifted his eyes and gazed upon his companion. The Colossus at Rhodes, towering high above the lofty gables of the aged city, was but a pigmy in comparison. Ancient, hoary Sphinx of the Egyptians, standing for countless years on the shores of Father Nile, would have seemed a thing of yesterday beside it. Nay, that primitive marvel, the figure of wood discovered in Joppa, aged five thousand years, could reckon itself an infant in proximity to this lunarian.Save the round, full, Chinese-like face, with its accompanying tremendous mouth, and the faint outline of the human form, there was nothing further to assist description of the creature except that he was high and bulky beyond conception, and quite as transparent as a lighted lantern. The face wasn’t at all unpleasant. It beamed with such a broad, friendly, yet withal humorous, expression as it gazed down upon Bob, that the mortal found courage to address it.[212]“Please, who be you, sir?”“Me? I’m theMan in the Moon, of course,” replied the creature, smiling.“Eh! Why, dash my old jumper, if I didn’t think as I’d seen your countenance before!” answered the old herdsman with animation. “I can tell yer, as ye comes out pretty strong sometimes on them ’ere mountains t’other side of Sydney. Why, I’ve yarded many a thousand sheep, and you’ve been a-looking at me all the while, eh?”The Man in the Moon nodded.“Ah, and I’ll bet you knows my old dog, Patch?”Another nod in the affirmative.“Brayvo! old boy. Why, we’re old chums. Shake hands.”“We never shake hands in the Moon, Bob; but I’ll embrace you,” cried the lunarian, smiling; and suiting the action to the word, he suddenly enveloped the mortal in such a broad beam of refulgence that the old fellow appeared as if cased in polished armour.In accordance with the etiquette of Moonland, it would be rude to disturb theirtête-à-têtebefore next Saturday.[213][Contents]CHAPTER III.“The presumptuous beings on earth have the impudence to tell their children that the Moon is made ofgreen cheese,” quoth the mammoth.“Indeed, sir, but that is very true,” answered Bob. “When I was a boy I believed it was only a big cheese, and I can safely say that when I’ve seen it in the water, up at Bathurst, where we lived, I’ve been silly enough to wade into the water arter it, thinking to take it home and have my supper off it.”“Ah, it’s rare fun to watch the moon-rakers try to grasp my shadow, Bob.”“I believe you, sir. Lord, how you must laugh in your sleeve at ’em! Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the shepherd reflectively.The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. I watch the murderer[214]crawling with stealthy feet towards his victim, and I note the robber lying in wait to plunder; I haunt the gloom where guilt and misery lie huddled together in rags. Wickedness in high places cannot escape me. Over the deep sleep of toiling millions my beams hold watch and ward, kissing the rosy lips of innocence, where yet lingers the soft breath of prayer. Hovering o’er the sighing maiden and the restless miser, weaving fancies which fill the poet’s brain with unutterable poesy, and with such shapes as live only in dreams of age and infancy, and vanish with the light of morn. Cuddlephum! Bobberish—Baa-lamb! Bo!”“Just so,” said Bob, opening wide his eyes at the strange words. “I begs to say that French wasn’t taught at the school I went to. Howsoever, I’m quite willing to dine with you, if that’s what you mean. I’m beginning to feel pereshious hungry, I can tell yer.”“Hungry! Base mortal, there is no such word known here,” echoed the monster.“Good heavens! No eating!” cried Bob, aghast.“None.”“Scissors! I’m afraid visitors from Australia won’t overrun Moonland, if that’s the case.”“Peace! Follow me, and thou shalt taste nectar,[215]which shall banish the cravings of thy vulgar race.”The Man in the Moon bounded away over the pumice-stone crags like a gigantic kangaroo, followed by Bob. Chaos and desolation were everywhere visible around them. Sad indeed and supremely melancholy looked the place. Mountains riven asunder; vast ravines and valleys choked with bleached bones of monsters unknown to men; immense plains, scattered thickly with the fossil remnants of ages; mingled dust and huge mounds of bony fragments of animal and reptile, which a thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed. Up the rugged zigzags with tremendous leaps, echoless, shadowless, and across the dust, silent to their footfall, went the lunarian and the mortal.“This is a dreary place, sir,” muttered the latter, almost breathless in his haste.“Peace, or perchance the forms of these dead monsters will rise to rebuke thee!” answered his companion solemnly. “Here, where thou art standing, these enormous animals of the first period lived and roved at will. The human mind cannot conceive their colossal proportions, for they were extinct many ages before the advent of man.”[216]The shepherd followed his conductor in silence, wondering if it were possible that these mighty dead could take shape again and swallow him at one snap. Jonah had been bolted by a whale, but the skeletons of these creatures appeared large enough to engulf a hundred whales a day, and twice that number of Jonahs into the bargain.Bob was almost ready to sink down amid the Golgotha when the Man in the Moon halted before a very high mountain. Making a sign to his companion to follow, he quickly disappeared from view. At first it seemed as if the mammoth had vanished within the mountain, but the mortal saw an opening at the base which he entered. What a study for a geologist! In the dim ages of the past, when the satellite of our Earth seethed and boiled as a vast crater, the solid intestines of this cone, yielding to some great power below it, had been riven in twain, leaving an unmeasurable grotto of winding galleries. Toiling along in the wake of the lunarian, the captive trod on a broad aisle, on each side of which rose a series of arches succeeding each other, like the noble arcades of some Gothic cathedral. Obelisk-like massive pillars stood out from the rent wall like mighty sentinels guarding the wreck. Had our hero been a mineralogist, armed with his hammer, his steel[217]pointer, his magnetic needles, and his blow pipe, what a fund of information he might have gleaned here to place before the spectacles of professors and philosophers! Nay, had he but possessed the faintest idea of the science of building, what patterns, what studies around and above him, for every form of the art to hereafter confound architects of the nineteenth century!Poor Bob was neither a mineralogist nor an architect, so he passed by these things without a second glance, and entered a vaulted chamber, upon whose round, jagged dome rested the whole weight of the mountain; the dented projections and the sharp points on wall and roof spun into an endless network of lines and seams, luminous as all things here seemed to be, and changing colour from silver-grey to deep crimson.Wonder had lost its functions for Bob the shepherd, otherwise he would have stood aghast at the strange forms moving to and fro within this chamber; round in shape, and taller than giants of long ago, with arms and legs evidently telescoped at the joints, so that they could lengthen or shorten them at will, and each shedding their quota of refulgence to illuminate the scene. Monster glow-worms, gigantic fire-flies, with the trickery of monkeys, and the strength[218]of bears, seized the shrinking man, and rose with him to the dome, which opened instantly and engulfed them. Amidst a circle of light, which changed quicker than the sparkles of a diamond, the poor shepherd found he was being borne upward and hemmed in by a ring of these natives of the Moon—upward and yet upward, without will to pause or stop, the mad whirlwind of light ever changing, red, blue, grey, yellow, white, azure, and the legion gathering in increased numbers every moment round him until the climax came, and the crater, that had been silent for countless ages, once more opened its ponderous jaws, casting him forth as a rocket, where—amidst fiery rings and bars, and blazing stars of light—he fell down, down, down into darkness and oblivion!*   *   *“I say, mate, how far is it to the Blue Mountains Inn?”Old Bob, the shepherd, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the questioner. He was a stout, thick-set fellow, with a heavy swag on his back, and a black billy-can in his hand.The man had to repeat his query ere the herdsman found speech.[219]“Why, surely,you’renot the Man in the Moon, eh?” asked Bob, with a wild stare.The swagman stepped backward a pace or two, and regarded our hero with more attention.“Man in the Moon!” he repeated. “Why, the old fellow’s gone off his head.”“‘WHY, SURELY, YOU’RE NOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’”“ ‘WHY, SURELY,YOU’RENOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’ ”“Where’s the others with the long legs and arms?” and the shepherd shuddered.“He’s cranky, sure enough,” muttered the traveller audibly. “The coves as you were asking arter are all gone,” he said aloud. “You get up on your pins, or they’ll be back again[220]Here’s a bob; come now, hook it, or they’ll have you,” saying which the swagman went on his way.Our hero raised himself into a sitting posture. Before him lay the verdant slopes and ridges of the mountain, bathed in sunlight. Yonder his sheep fed peacefully, watched by the faithful Patch. Then the old man raised his vision higher than the earth and thanked Heaven that he was still safe and sound onterra firma.[221][Contents]“SAILOR.”That great painter of animals, Sir Edwin Landseer, never sketched a nobler specimen of the canine race than the big, black, curly Newfoundland dog, Sailor, the hero of our story. He was a fine, faithful dog, and almost as large as a young foal, and every bit as frisky and as harmless, save when teased by naughty boys. If you tried ever so hard you couldn’t hide anything from Sailor. You might fasten him in a room and then attempt to conceal a ball, or a piece of wood, in the garden or the stables, but the moment you set him free Sailor would hunt the object out and return with it in his mouth. Besides being sagacious, the faithful brute could dive and swim like a fish; that is why he received such a suitable name.Captain Hauser, of the barqueSouth Australian, had brought him from India when but a puppy, but now the worthy captain had settled down ashore with his two boys at Anchordale on the[222]River Murray, and the dog had become almost one of the family circle.On a very hot afternoon, and when the New Year was scarcely a score of days old, Bertie Hauser and his cousin, Tom Blake, took it into their heads to have a row down the river. Anchordale was a pleasant cottage situated on the bank of the Murray, with a tiny skiff fastened to a stout post at the end of the orchard.Bertie was only eight years of age, and Tom one year older; but the boat being so small and light they managed to get afloat and paddled away in high glee down the river. The dog, Sailor, was the only one who had seen them depart, and he, with wagging tail and out-hanging tongue, had begged, as only dumb animals can, to accompany them on their trip; but Tom Blake said the boat would be swamped with such a cargo, and so the lads had departed without him. Now, although Sailor was dumb, he wasn’t blind. Neither was the poor brute wanting in instinct. Many a day he had acted as a substitute for a pony for little Bertie, and had even suffered the child to put a string into his mouth for a bridle, and had trotted or cantered and walked up and down the lawn according to the whim of his infantile rider. Indeed, Sailor was a kind old dog,[223]and probably thought it his duty to guard the person of his young master, on land or on the water.Perhaps this instinct prompted the Newfoundland to crawl cat-like through the dense scrub on the bank of the river and keep the skiff in view. Be that as it may, the dog never lost sight of them for a moment. He saw Tom Blake guide the boat into a wide part of the stream, and where the banks were very high and almost as steep as the gable of a house.“Oh, Bertie, here’s the place for a bathe. Are you game?” asked Tom, rocking the boat.Bertie assented. They found a little cove, where they landed, and made fast the skiff; then ascending the high bank they began to prepare for the water. Both boys had been taught to swim—as all boys should be—but Bertie and his cousin had been warned not to bathe down the river, because there were places teeming with snags and dangerous undercurrents. Tom and his companion had forgotten all about the caution. The water at this spot appears very dark and still and cool, with the shadows of the overhanging trees upon it, and the drooping branches of the willows laving to and fro on its bosom with a dreamy sound.[224]“What a frightful jump!” cried Bertie, approaching the brink timidly, and looking over at the river beneath. “It’s a high leap, Tom; hadn’t we better go a little farther down?”“Not at all,” responds Tom, swinging his arms about above his head. “I like a good header; you stand there and watch me dive.”Bertie stands aside and watches him. Tom retires several paces, starts forward with a short, quick run, and springs headforemost from the cliff into the river. For a moment the waters bubble and widen out in circling eddies over the broad expanse. Bertie Hauser stands looking down trying to trace the white, shapely form of his cousin cleaving through the dark stream, expecting to see him rise to the surface twenty yards away from where he plunged in. But many seconds go by, and Tom Blake rises not, and poor Bertie, in an agony of suspense, calls to him to “come up at once, or he will be drownded,” as if the treacherous element would part its substance and carry his weak voice below, to its holes and caves, where his companion is struggling for his little life.“Tom, Tom, dear cousin Tom,” cries the child on the bank, as the truth begins to dawn upon him that Tom is drowning. “Oh! what shall I do to help him? What shall I do?” When lo! old[225]Sailor comes bounding towards him with a joyous bark. The boy clutches his favourite by the ears and draws him forward to the brink of the river, where, pointing down to the water, he urges on the dog with voice and gesture. “Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old fellow, go on—bring him out.”Sailor needs no second bidding. Before Bertie has the words out of his mouth, the dog comprehends the whole business, and leaps into the water and disappears. How anxiously the child watches for his re-appearance! At a spot half way up the stream, he observes the water begin to whirl and eddy and bubble upward, as being disturbed by a great commotion beneath; and here Sailor rises to the surface, and blows the water from his snout, like a whale; but the dog is alone. There is no sign of poor Tom Blake. Little Bertie becomes sick and faint with terror, but the boy does not lose his presence of mind. He has every confidence in the Newfoundland’s strength and courage.“Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old boy, bring him out.”Downward plunges the gallant dog again, while his young master, naked as he is, rushes down to the skiff, jumps in, and pushes into midstream, running athwart the dog, as he rises once more.[226]This time Sailor has something in his mouth, but the boat knocking against him causes him to let go. Yet he dives after it, and appears again in a moment with the drowning boy. Sailor has clutched him firmly by the hair of the head, and the dog’s great red eyes are all aflame as he buoys up the insensible child and paddles the water with ponderous strokes and lands him safe upon the bank.What avail little Bertie’s terms of endearment and the affectionate appeals he makes to his still, silent cousin? Tom Blake is deaf. And although Bertie may make a hundred promises of bats and guns and ponies poor Tom cannot hear him.It is fortunate that two men with swags upon their backs are passing at the time, who carry the unfortunate youth into the sunlight, and rub his body vigorously with their hands until the vitality that was almost extinct begins to revive again within him.When Tom had partly recovered and could speak, he told his uncle, the captain, that when he dived he struck his head against a snag, which rendered him insensible, and no doubt in that state he was being carried away by the current when the dog found him.And poor Tom was grateful for the service, for[227]when he was quite well he bought the Newfoundland a grand collar, and had the following inscription engraven on it:—“Sailor,“RescuedTom Anson Blakefrom drowning on the 18th January, 187-, at Anchordale, River Murray.”[228]

[Contents]MOTHLAND.[Contents]CHAPTER I.Take your places. Turn down the lights. We are going to open our magic lantern once more. Ho Presto! Here we are in Victoria.Picture to yourself a plainly furnished room in a farmhouse on the banks of the Murray River. Besides the ordinary tables, chairs, pictures, and other things you will observe a clock on the mantel-shelf over the fireplace. Now this clock is going to form the pivot upon which our story turns.The door of this apartment was gently opened, and two children—a boy and a girl—entered. They had just stolen away unknown to the nurse, and had come here to amuse themselves. There was, however, very little in that room to amuse them. Neither hoop nor ball nor doll was here; but there was the clock ticking away like a cricket who had lost its mother. They say that curiosity[185]is much stronger in the female, be it child or adult, than in the male portion of humanity, so the little girl drew a chair to the fireplace, and on the top of it she placed a stool, and then both the children mounted and stood face to face with the clock.They examined the polished wooden case, and the marble base, the figures and the painted scroll work which adorned its face, then the minute-hand which they could see moving, and listened to the “Tick, tick, tick,” which seemed to come from some voice within it. “Tick-tick,” cried the clock, and still as the little boy looked and listened it went on without stopping, “Tick, tick, tick.”“What can it be?” said the little girl. “Where can the noise come from, Teddy?”“Oh!” answered Teddy, “it comes from the wee fellow inside there; can’t you see him moving his arm about, eh, Lily?”Lily looked and discovered a door. “It comes from here,” she said. “I should like to open it and let the old man out.”“No, no,” cried Teddy, “we must not. Papa would be angry. Come away back again to nurse.” But Lily poked about with her fingers, unknowingly touched a spring, and the door flew open.There they saw a wonderful sight. There were[186]wheels moving round and round, and the inside shone like gold, and there was a long piece of steel hanging down like a tail, which moved from side to side, and the timepiece said louder than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”Lily put in her finger and touched the golden inside, and still the clock ticked on. Then she touched the pendulum, and though the clock paused for a moment as if to take breath, it went on again fresher than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”But at last she happened to poke her finger between the spokes of the little wheel, and the timepiece stopped. Lily thought it would tick again in a minute, but she was disappointed. She touched the pendulum, she touched the wheel, she touched every part; yet all to no purpose. And then the boy, Teddy, tried his hand in vain. The clock wouldn’t say “Tick, tick” any more.What was to be done?They were very much frightened. They closed the clock door as quickly as possible, got down from the chair, put the things all tidy, and left the room.Nothing more occurred till breakfast-time next morning, when the father called out suddenly, “Why, the clock has stopped!” and when he examined it he found the mainspring was broken.[187]“Somebody has been playing with the clock. Did you touch it, Teddy?”“No, I never,” answered the boy.“Was it you, Lily?”Now, Lily was not in the habit of being untruthful; but she was frightened and replied, “No.”“One of you must have done it yesterday. Jane saw you coming out of the room,” continued the father.By dint of questioning, Lily and Teddy at length acknowledged they had been in the room, and then the boy said Lily had touched the timepiece, and then the girl said so had Teddy; but which of them it was that had really broken the spring their father could not discover.“Very well, my children,” he said. “If you will not tell me who broke the clock, you will be punished some day.” And the father spoke truly.In that part of the Murray district where Lily and Teddy lived there dwelt a small native race of people called “Moths.” This diminutive tribe lived alone by themselves in a grand shaded valley by the river-bank. They used to be seen very often by the settlers and bushmen riding home late on moonlight nights. Indeed, many travellers had stated they had seen them dancing on the[188]green, making merry, courting, laughing, etc., while others vouched to having spoken to the creatures. Be that as it may, the Moths were there in the valley by the river, and had been there long before Teddy and Lily’s grandfather first took up the splendid selection adjacent.The wee people had taken an interest in the fortunes of the different families round about for many years, always patronising and favouring good boys and girls, and always punishing the bad ones in some form or other.Just below the bush paddock where the valley dips down to the water could be seen a circle of emerald green, on which the Moths assembled every night when the moon shone. It was not often crossed by the feet of mortals; but any one passing that way by daylight might observe small round rings here and there, much greener than the grass around. These were Moth circles.Here the Moths sat in little circles on raised benches made of grass blades, whilst others danced before them in the middle of the ring to music played on flutes made from the backbones of locusts.On the night after the clock had been broken the Moths met to hold a great council. The whole race assembled on this occasion. There[189]was the King wearing a golden crown of flowers, and the Queen decked with diamonds of dew, and all the Princes and Princesses in robes of mingled green and blue. When the council were assembled the monarch spoke thus:“People of Mothland, you all know what an interest we take in the family near our valley, and especially in little Lily and Teddy. Now I grieve to tell you these children have been very naughty. Indeed, one of them has told a deliberate falsehood, a sin we hate and abhor beyond all things. The boy is not so guilty as his sister; it was not he, certainly, who spoilt the clock, but still he went up on the chair and looked at it; and he ought to have told this like a brave boy, instead of holding his tongue like a coward. But Lily has told a decided lie, and she must be punished. What shall we do to her?”“Carry her away from her home, and put Scarlet Mantle in her place,” said the Queen of the Moths.“It shall be done,” replied the King.That night when Lily was sleeping soundly in her soft, pleasant bed, the King of the Moths, accompanied by some of the strongest men in his tribe, carried her away into the valley of Mothland, and they substituted Scarlet Mantle in her stead.Jane, the nurse, took her accustomed peep into[190]the child’s bedroom, ere retiring for the night, and was somewhat astonished to observe that her charge appeared thinner and smaller and sharper than usual.“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” cried the girl, so, kissing thesupposedchild, she went her way, and left the Moth snugly coiled in little Lily’s bed.[Contents]CHAPTER II.The morning following the night on which the Moths took Lily away dawned brightly. The farmer and his wife fancied somehow that their little girl looked rather pale and thin; the mother thought poor Lily was ill; the father thought she was sorry for saying she didn’t break the clock. But the Moths are very clever people, and of course had contrived to make Scarlet Mantle look as like Lily as possible. So she took up the child’s place in the house, and ate bread and butter, pudding, lollies, wore the girl’s new clothes, and was much happier than she had ever been in Mothland. One or two little things Scarlet Mantle could not entirely forget; still, on the whole, she managed to conduct herself as a civilised human child should.But where was Lily? She was away in the[191]dells with the Moths, and very unhappy. Firstly, she was very tired; secondly, she was hungry; and thirdly, she was made ridiculous. These things were most tantalising, and she was ready to cry her eyes out. No wonder she was tired, because instead of going to bed at seven o’clock, and sleeping soundly every night, she had to go out on the circles and dance till the moon set. She was cold, too, for in place of her warm frocks she had nothing in the world but Scarlet Mantle’s old clothes, made of rose-leaves and gossamer. She might well be hungry also, for the Moths gave her nothing but dew and locusts for food. Still there was one thing more dreadful than all these put together. For some reason or other Lily’s tongue had begun to grow very long.Yes, it was not painful, but exceedingly ugly, as you may imagine. Little by little it increased and grew longer, until she was obliged to tie it round her neck to keep it out of her way, and the Moths were always laughing about it, which made our little girl very melancholy.The Queen of the Moths was a very motherly person, and Lily soon made friends with her.“Your Majesty,” she said one day, “I am very miserable. Indeed, I think I shall die if I am kept here much longer.”[192]“What is amiss, my child?” inquired the Queen.“Why am I detained here?” replied Lily. “And why have I so little to eat and drink?”“My dear child, you know the reason,” answered the Queen. “You told a wicked falsehood, and you are paying the penalty for it now.”“Ah! your Majesty, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could only get rid of my long tongue,” pleaded Lily. “Dear Queen, please can’t you rid me of my ugly tongue?”“No, child, I cannot, but you can rid yourself of it.”“How? Oh, please tell me.”The Queen of the Moths sighed.“There is only one way,” she answered. “Your tongue is disfigured, because it hath offended. If you wish to get rid of it, you must acknowledge your fault and confess the lie you told.”Poor Lily! Like many other children of a larger growth, she was stubborn, and did not like this plan of getting rid of her trouble. Anything rather than saying: “I broke the clock.”So the child went on among the Moths, suffering cold and hunger, midnight dancing, and the big tongue.But little Lily loved her father and mother, and did not like to be away from them for ever. She[193]began to steal away from the valley, and go to her own home. Often she stood looking in at the window, and saw her father and mother and Teddy sitting with Scarlet Mantle; and the tears would start to her eyes, and run down her cheeks, and she would cry out in her grief, “Oh! I do so wish I was sitting on my own stool again.”One night she was standing by the window particularly unhappy, and in a very penitent mood. Had she but the opportunity, she determined to confess her fault. There sat her father in the full flare of the lamp, thinking he had Lily by his side. There was Teddy with his toys, and while the little outcast was gazing, Jane, the nurse, entered with the tea-tray; cups and saucers began to rattle, and her brother and Scarlet Mantle gathered round the table. Oh, to be shut out from all this comfort, and the smiles and caresses of her parents! At length, something led her father to rise from his seat and look out into the darkness beyond. He opened the window and stepped out upon the verandah. In a moment a tiny hand was thrust into his own, and a timid, hesitating voice was heard to say,—“I—I am—so—sorry. I—broke—the clock.”“You! Who are you?” cried the father in astonishment.[194]“I’m Lily, father,” she cried out, with a great sob.“Lily! Why, Lily is in the dining-room with mamma.”“No;I amLily, your own naughty little girl, and—I broke the clock. There!” she sobbed aloud. “The Moths took me away because I told you a falsehood, and they only gave me old faded rose-leaves to wear, and the legs of locusts to eat, and made me drink dew out of the cups of the flowers; and see what a great, long, ugly tongue they have given me for telling that story.”The trilling voice sounded very remorseful, and the little hand clung nervously to the father, who immediately led the little one into the dining-room.The first thing on which the eyes of the man rested was the vacant seat of Scarlet Mantle.“Hallo! Where’s the other one?” he cried.“The other one?” repeated his wife. “What other one, dear?”“The—the child, Lily,” replied the astonished pater.The good woman laughed, and answered, “There she is, at your side,”“Nonsense; this little lady says she has just come from Mothland, and that she is our Lily whom the Moths stole because she told a falsehood[195]over the breaking of the clock. Surely there aren’t two Lilys?” and the farmer looked beneath the sofa, under the table, and even up the chimney; but Scarlet Mantle, the moment she saw Lily enter the room, vanished through the window, and of course was not to be found.“Well, this is a queer go, wife.”“Most extraordinary,” responded the mother, gazing with a doubtful look upon the real Lily, who stood quietly looking from one to the other.“Oh, this is Sis,” exclaimed Teddy. “There’s the bump on the nose which I made with my ball last week. You’re Lily, who smashed the clock, aren’t you?” he asked, looking up in her face.“Indeed, Teddy dear, I’m your little sister, and it was I who broke the clock, and the Moths took me away, and gave me this big, frightful tongue, because I said I didn’t. You see here——”And she put up her hand to her mouth, but lo! the ugly member had vanished. How glad she felt that it was gone! The mere effort to do right had brought its own reward. And as she repeated again, more earnestly, “I broke the clock, and I want you to forgive me,” her father saw she was really his own little girl, and giving her a hearty kiss of forgiveness, seated her in her own accustomed[196]place at table, and they were very happy once more.That night Lily slept soundly in her own room, in her own cosy bed, and she thought it much better than dancing till she was tired round the Moth circles by the river-bank.And so thought the Scarlet Mantle![197]

MOTHLAND.

[Contents]CHAPTER I.Take your places. Turn down the lights. We are going to open our magic lantern once more. Ho Presto! Here we are in Victoria.Picture to yourself a plainly furnished room in a farmhouse on the banks of the Murray River. Besides the ordinary tables, chairs, pictures, and other things you will observe a clock on the mantel-shelf over the fireplace. Now this clock is going to form the pivot upon which our story turns.The door of this apartment was gently opened, and two children—a boy and a girl—entered. They had just stolen away unknown to the nurse, and had come here to amuse themselves. There was, however, very little in that room to amuse them. Neither hoop nor ball nor doll was here; but there was the clock ticking away like a cricket who had lost its mother. They say that curiosity[185]is much stronger in the female, be it child or adult, than in the male portion of humanity, so the little girl drew a chair to the fireplace, and on the top of it she placed a stool, and then both the children mounted and stood face to face with the clock.They examined the polished wooden case, and the marble base, the figures and the painted scroll work which adorned its face, then the minute-hand which they could see moving, and listened to the “Tick, tick, tick,” which seemed to come from some voice within it. “Tick-tick,” cried the clock, and still as the little boy looked and listened it went on without stopping, “Tick, tick, tick.”“What can it be?” said the little girl. “Where can the noise come from, Teddy?”“Oh!” answered Teddy, “it comes from the wee fellow inside there; can’t you see him moving his arm about, eh, Lily?”Lily looked and discovered a door. “It comes from here,” she said. “I should like to open it and let the old man out.”“No, no,” cried Teddy, “we must not. Papa would be angry. Come away back again to nurse.” But Lily poked about with her fingers, unknowingly touched a spring, and the door flew open.There they saw a wonderful sight. There were[186]wheels moving round and round, and the inside shone like gold, and there was a long piece of steel hanging down like a tail, which moved from side to side, and the timepiece said louder than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”Lily put in her finger and touched the golden inside, and still the clock ticked on. Then she touched the pendulum, and though the clock paused for a moment as if to take breath, it went on again fresher than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”But at last she happened to poke her finger between the spokes of the little wheel, and the timepiece stopped. Lily thought it would tick again in a minute, but she was disappointed. She touched the pendulum, she touched the wheel, she touched every part; yet all to no purpose. And then the boy, Teddy, tried his hand in vain. The clock wouldn’t say “Tick, tick” any more.What was to be done?They were very much frightened. They closed the clock door as quickly as possible, got down from the chair, put the things all tidy, and left the room.Nothing more occurred till breakfast-time next morning, when the father called out suddenly, “Why, the clock has stopped!” and when he examined it he found the mainspring was broken.[187]“Somebody has been playing with the clock. Did you touch it, Teddy?”“No, I never,” answered the boy.“Was it you, Lily?”Now, Lily was not in the habit of being untruthful; but she was frightened and replied, “No.”“One of you must have done it yesterday. Jane saw you coming out of the room,” continued the father.By dint of questioning, Lily and Teddy at length acknowledged they had been in the room, and then the boy said Lily had touched the timepiece, and then the girl said so had Teddy; but which of them it was that had really broken the spring their father could not discover.“Very well, my children,” he said. “If you will not tell me who broke the clock, you will be punished some day.” And the father spoke truly.In that part of the Murray district where Lily and Teddy lived there dwelt a small native race of people called “Moths.” This diminutive tribe lived alone by themselves in a grand shaded valley by the river-bank. They used to be seen very often by the settlers and bushmen riding home late on moonlight nights. Indeed, many travellers had stated they had seen them dancing on the[188]green, making merry, courting, laughing, etc., while others vouched to having spoken to the creatures. Be that as it may, the Moths were there in the valley by the river, and had been there long before Teddy and Lily’s grandfather first took up the splendid selection adjacent.The wee people had taken an interest in the fortunes of the different families round about for many years, always patronising and favouring good boys and girls, and always punishing the bad ones in some form or other.Just below the bush paddock where the valley dips down to the water could be seen a circle of emerald green, on which the Moths assembled every night when the moon shone. It was not often crossed by the feet of mortals; but any one passing that way by daylight might observe small round rings here and there, much greener than the grass around. These were Moth circles.Here the Moths sat in little circles on raised benches made of grass blades, whilst others danced before them in the middle of the ring to music played on flutes made from the backbones of locusts.On the night after the clock had been broken the Moths met to hold a great council. The whole race assembled on this occasion. There[189]was the King wearing a golden crown of flowers, and the Queen decked with diamonds of dew, and all the Princes and Princesses in robes of mingled green and blue. When the council were assembled the monarch spoke thus:“People of Mothland, you all know what an interest we take in the family near our valley, and especially in little Lily and Teddy. Now I grieve to tell you these children have been very naughty. Indeed, one of them has told a deliberate falsehood, a sin we hate and abhor beyond all things. The boy is not so guilty as his sister; it was not he, certainly, who spoilt the clock, but still he went up on the chair and looked at it; and he ought to have told this like a brave boy, instead of holding his tongue like a coward. But Lily has told a decided lie, and she must be punished. What shall we do to her?”“Carry her away from her home, and put Scarlet Mantle in her place,” said the Queen of the Moths.“It shall be done,” replied the King.That night when Lily was sleeping soundly in her soft, pleasant bed, the King of the Moths, accompanied by some of the strongest men in his tribe, carried her away into the valley of Mothland, and they substituted Scarlet Mantle in her stead.Jane, the nurse, took her accustomed peep into[190]the child’s bedroom, ere retiring for the night, and was somewhat astonished to observe that her charge appeared thinner and smaller and sharper than usual.“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” cried the girl, so, kissing thesupposedchild, she went her way, and left the Moth snugly coiled in little Lily’s bed.[Contents]CHAPTER II.The morning following the night on which the Moths took Lily away dawned brightly. The farmer and his wife fancied somehow that their little girl looked rather pale and thin; the mother thought poor Lily was ill; the father thought she was sorry for saying she didn’t break the clock. But the Moths are very clever people, and of course had contrived to make Scarlet Mantle look as like Lily as possible. So she took up the child’s place in the house, and ate bread and butter, pudding, lollies, wore the girl’s new clothes, and was much happier than she had ever been in Mothland. One or two little things Scarlet Mantle could not entirely forget; still, on the whole, she managed to conduct herself as a civilised human child should.But where was Lily? She was away in the[191]dells with the Moths, and very unhappy. Firstly, she was very tired; secondly, she was hungry; and thirdly, she was made ridiculous. These things were most tantalising, and she was ready to cry her eyes out. No wonder she was tired, because instead of going to bed at seven o’clock, and sleeping soundly every night, she had to go out on the circles and dance till the moon set. She was cold, too, for in place of her warm frocks she had nothing in the world but Scarlet Mantle’s old clothes, made of rose-leaves and gossamer. She might well be hungry also, for the Moths gave her nothing but dew and locusts for food. Still there was one thing more dreadful than all these put together. For some reason or other Lily’s tongue had begun to grow very long.Yes, it was not painful, but exceedingly ugly, as you may imagine. Little by little it increased and grew longer, until she was obliged to tie it round her neck to keep it out of her way, and the Moths were always laughing about it, which made our little girl very melancholy.The Queen of the Moths was a very motherly person, and Lily soon made friends with her.“Your Majesty,” she said one day, “I am very miserable. Indeed, I think I shall die if I am kept here much longer.”[192]“What is amiss, my child?” inquired the Queen.“Why am I detained here?” replied Lily. “And why have I so little to eat and drink?”“My dear child, you know the reason,” answered the Queen. “You told a wicked falsehood, and you are paying the penalty for it now.”“Ah! your Majesty, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could only get rid of my long tongue,” pleaded Lily. “Dear Queen, please can’t you rid me of my ugly tongue?”“No, child, I cannot, but you can rid yourself of it.”“How? Oh, please tell me.”The Queen of the Moths sighed.“There is only one way,” she answered. “Your tongue is disfigured, because it hath offended. If you wish to get rid of it, you must acknowledge your fault and confess the lie you told.”Poor Lily! Like many other children of a larger growth, she was stubborn, and did not like this plan of getting rid of her trouble. Anything rather than saying: “I broke the clock.”So the child went on among the Moths, suffering cold and hunger, midnight dancing, and the big tongue.But little Lily loved her father and mother, and did not like to be away from them for ever. She[193]began to steal away from the valley, and go to her own home. Often she stood looking in at the window, and saw her father and mother and Teddy sitting with Scarlet Mantle; and the tears would start to her eyes, and run down her cheeks, and she would cry out in her grief, “Oh! I do so wish I was sitting on my own stool again.”One night she was standing by the window particularly unhappy, and in a very penitent mood. Had she but the opportunity, she determined to confess her fault. There sat her father in the full flare of the lamp, thinking he had Lily by his side. There was Teddy with his toys, and while the little outcast was gazing, Jane, the nurse, entered with the tea-tray; cups and saucers began to rattle, and her brother and Scarlet Mantle gathered round the table. Oh, to be shut out from all this comfort, and the smiles and caresses of her parents! At length, something led her father to rise from his seat and look out into the darkness beyond. He opened the window and stepped out upon the verandah. In a moment a tiny hand was thrust into his own, and a timid, hesitating voice was heard to say,—“I—I am—so—sorry. I—broke—the clock.”“You! Who are you?” cried the father in astonishment.[194]“I’m Lily, father,” she cried out, with a great sob.“Lily! Why, Lily is in the dining-room with mamma.”“No;I amLily, your own naughty little girl, and—I broke the clock. There!” she sobbed aloud. “The Moths took me away because I told you a falsehood, and they only gave me old faded rose-leaves to wear, and the legs of locusts to eat, and made me drink dew out of the cups of the flowers; and see what a great, long, ugly tongue they have given me for telling that story.”The trilling voice sounded very remorseful, and the little hand clung nervously to the father, who immediately led the little one into the dining-room.The first thing on which the eyes of the man rested was the vacant seat of Scarlet Mantle.“Hallo! Where’s the other one?” he cried.“The other one?” repeated his wife. “What other one, dear?”“The—the child, Lily,” replied the astonished pater.The good woman laughed, and answered, “There she is, at your side,”“Nonsense; this little lady says she has just come from Mothland, and that she is our Lily whom the Moths stole because she told a falsehood[195]over the breaking of the clock. Surely there aren’t two Lilys?” and the farmer looked beneath the sofa, under the table, and even up the chimney; but Scarlet Mantle, the moment she saw Lily enter the room, vanished through the window, and of course was not to be found.“Well, this is a queer go, wife.”“Most extraordinary,” responded the mother, gazing with a doubtful look upon the real Lily, who stood quietly looking from one to the other.“Oh, this is Sis,” exclaimed Teddy. “There’s the bump on the nose which I made with my ball last week. You’re Lily, who smashed the clock, aren’t you?” he asked, looking up in her face.“Indeed, Teddy dear, I’m your little sister, and it was I who broke the clock, and the Moths took me away, and gave me this big, frightful tongue, because I said I didn’t. You see here——”And she put up her hand to her mouth, but lo! the ugly member had vanished. How glad she felt that it was gone! The mere effort to do right had brought its own reward. And as she repeated again, more earnestly, “I broke the clock, and I want you to forgive me,” her father saw she was really his own little girl, and giving her a hearty kiss of forgiveness, seated her in her own accustomed[196]place at table, and they were very happy once more.That night Lily slept soundly in her own room, in her own cosy bed, and she thought it much better than dancing till she was tired round the Moth circles by the river-bank.And so thought the Scarlet Mantle![197]

[Contents]CHAPTER I.Take your places. Turn down the lights. We are going to open our magic lantern once more. Ho Presto! Here we are in Victoria.Picture to yourself a plainly furnished room in a farmhouse on the banks of the Murray River. Besides the ordinary tables, chairs, pictures, and other things you will observe a clock on the mantel-shelf over the fireplace. Now this clock is going to form the pivot upon which our story turns.The door of this apartment was gently opened, and two children—a boy and a girl—entered. They had just stolen away unknown to the nurse, and had come here to amuse themselves. There was, however, very little in that room to amuse them. Neither hoop nor ball nor doll was here; but there was the clock ticking away like a cricket who had lost its mother. They say that curiosity[185]is much stronger in the female, be it child or adult, than in the male portion of humanity, so the little girl drew a chair to the fireplace, and on the top of it she placed a stool, and then both the children mounted and stood face to face with the clock.They examined the polished wooden case, and the marble base, the figures and the painted scroll work which adorned its face, then the minute-hand which they could see moving, and listened to the “Tick, tick, tick,” which seemed to come from some voice within it. “Tick-tick,” cried the clock, and still as the little boy looked and listened it went on without stopping, “Tick, tick, tick.”“What can it be?” said the little girl. “Where can the noise come from, Teddy?”“Oh!” answered Teddy, “it comes from the wee fellow inside there; can’t you see him moving his arm about, eh, Lily?”Lily looked and discovered a door. “It comes from here,” she said. “I should like to open it and let the old man out.”“No, no,” cried Teddy, “we must not. Papa would be angry. Come away back again to nurse.” But Lily poked about with her fingers, unknowingly touched a spring, and the door flew open.There they saw a wonderful sight. There were[186]wheels moving round and round, and the inside shone like gold, and there was a long piece of steel hanging down like a tail, which moved from side to side, and the timepiece said louder than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”Lily put in her finger and touched the golden inside, and still the clock ticked on. Then she touched the pendulum, and though the clock paused for a moment as if to take breath, it went on again fresher than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”But at last she happened to poke her finger between the spokes of the little wheel, and the timepiece stopped. Lily thought it would tick again in a minute, but she was disappointed. She touched the pendulum, she touched the wheel, she touched every part; yet all to no purpose. And then the boy, Teddy, tried his hand in vain. The clock wouldn’t say “Tick, tick” any more.What was to be done?They were very much frightened. They closed the clock door as quickly as possible, got down from the chair, put the things all tidy, and left the room.Nothing more occurred till breakfast-time next morning, when the father called out suddenly, “Why, the clock has stopped!” and when he examined it he found the mainspring was broken.[187]“Somebody has been playing with the clock. Did you touch it, Teddy?”“No, I never,” answered the boy.“Was it you, Lily?”Now, Lily was not in the habit of being untruthful; but she was frightened and replied, “No.”“One of you must have done it yesterday. Jane saw you coming out of the room,” continued the father.By dint of questioning, Lily and Teddy at length acknowledged they had been in the room, and then the boy said Lily had touched the timepiece, and then the girl said so had Teddy; but which of them it was that had really broken the spring their father could not discover.“Very well, my children,” he said. “If you will not tell me who broke the clock, you will be punished some day.” And the father spoke truly.In that part of the Murray district where Lily and Teddy lived there dwelt a small native race of people called “Moths.” This diminutive tribe lived alone by themselves in a grand shaded valley by the river-bank. They used to be seen very often by the settlers and bushmen riding home late on moonlight nights. Indeed, many travellers had stated they had seen them dancing on the[188]green, making merry, courting, laughing, etc., while others vouched to having spoken to the creatures. Be that as it may, the Moths were there in the valley by the river, and had been there long before Teddy and Lily’s grandfather first took up the splendid selection adjacent.The wee people had taken an interest in the fortunes of the different families round about for many years, always patronising and favouring good boys and girls, and always punishing the bad ones in some form or other.Just below the bush paddock where the valley dips down to the water could be seen a circle of emerald green, on which the Moths assembled every night when the moon shone. It was not often crossed by the feet of mortals; but any one passing that way by daylight might observe small round rings here and there, much greener than the grass around. These were Moth circles.Here the Moths sat in little circles on raised benches made of grass blades, whilst others danced before them in the middle of the ring to music played on flutes made from the backbones of locusts.On the night after the clock had been broken the Moths met to hold a great council. The whole race assembled on this occasion. There[189]was the King wearing a golden crown of flowers, and the Queen decked with diamonds of dew, and all the Princes and Princesses in robes of mingled green and blue. When the council were assembled the monarch spoke thus:“People of Mothland, you all know what an interest we take in the family near our valley, and especially in little Lily and Teddy. Now I grieve to tell you these children have been very naughty. Indeed, one of them has told a deliberate falsehood, a sin we hate and abhor beyond all things. The boy is not so guilty as his sister; it was not he, certainly, who spoilt the clock, but still he went up on the chair and looked at it; and he ought to have told this like a brave boy, instead of holding his tongue like a coward. But Lily has told a decided lie, and she must be punished. What shall we do to her?”“Carry her away from her home, and put Scarlet Mantle in her place,” said the Queen of the Moths.“It shall be done,” replied the King.That night when Lily was sleeping soundly in her soft, pleasant bed, the King of the Moths, accompanied by some of the strongest men in his tribe, carried her away into the valley of Mothland, and they substituted Scarlet Mantle in her stead.Jane, the nurse, took her accustomed peep into[190]the child’s bedroom, ere retiring for the night, and was somewhat astonished to observe that her charge appeared thinner and smaller and sharper than usual.“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” cried the girl, so, kissing thesupposedchild, she went her way, and left the Moth snugly coiled in little Lily’s bed.

CHAPTER I.

Take your places. Turn down the lights. We are going to open our magic lantern once more. Ho Presto! Here we are in Victoria.Picture to yourself a plainly furnished room in a farmhouse on the banks of the Murray River. Besides the ordinary tables, chairs, pictures, and other things you will observe a clock on the mantel-shelf over the fireplace. Now this clock is going to form the pivot upon which our story turns.The door of this apartment was gently opened, and two children—a boy and a girl—entered. They had just stolen away unknown to the nurse, and had come here to amuse themselves. There was, however, very little in that room to amuse them. Neither hoop nor ball nor doll was here; but there was the clock ticking away like a cricket who had lost its mother. They say that curiosity[185]is much stronger in the female, be it child or adult, than in the male portion of humanity, so the little girl drew a chair to the fireplace, and on the top of it she placed a stool, and then both the children mounted and stood face to face with the clock.They examined the polished wooden case, and the marble base, the figures and the painted scroll work which adorned its face, then the minute-hand which they could see moving, and listened to the “Tick, tick, tick,” which seemed to come from some voice within it. “Tick-tick,” cried the clock, and still as the little boy looked and listened it went on without stopping, “Tick, tick, tick.”“What can it be?” said the little girl. “Where can the noise come from, Teddy?”“Oh!” answered Teddy, “it comes from the wee fellow inside there; can’t you see him moving his arm about, eh, Lily?”Lily looked and discovered a door. “It comes from here,” she said. “I should like to open it and let the old man out.”“No, no,” cried Teddy, “we must not. Papa would be angry. Come away back again to nurse.” But Lily poked about with her fingers, unknowingly touched a spring, and the door flew open.There they saw a wonderful sight. There were[186]wheels moving round and round, and the inside shone like gold, and there was a long piece of steel hanging down like a tail, which moved from side to side, and the timepiece said louder than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”Lily put in her finger and touched the golden inside, and still the clock ticked on. Then she touched the pendulum, and though the clock paused for a moment as if to take breath, it went on again fresher than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”But at last she happened to poke her finger between the spokes of the little wheel, and the timepiece stopped. Lily thought it would tick again in a minute, but she was disappointed. She touched the pendulum, she touched the wheel, she touched every part; yet all to no purpose. And then the boy, Teddy, tried his hand in vain. The clock wouldn’t say “Tick, tick” any more.What was to be done?They were very much frightened. They closed the clock door as quickly as possible, got down from the chair, put the things all tidy, and left the room.Nothing more occurred till breakfast-time next morning, when the father called out suddenly, “Why, the clock has stopped!” and when he examined it he found the mainspring was broken.[187]“Somebody has been playing with the clock. Did you touch it, Teddy?”“No, I never,” answered the boy.“Was it you, Lily?”Now, Lily was not in the habit of being untruthful; but she was frightened and replied, “No.”“One of you must have done it yesterday. Jane saw you coming out of the room,” continued the father.By dint of questioning, Lily and Teddy at length acknowledged they had been in the room, and then the boy said Lily had touched the timepiece, and then the girl said so had Teddy; but which of them it was that had really broken the spring their father could not discover.“Very well, my children,” he said. “If you will not tell me who broke the clock, you will be punished some day.” And the father spoke truly.In that part of the Murray district where Lily and Teddy lived there dwelt a small native race of people called “Moths.” This diminutive tribe lived alone by themselves in a grand shaded valley by the river-bank. They used to be seen very often by the settlers and bushmen riding home late on moonlight nights. Indeed, many travellers had stated they had seen them dancing on the[188]green, making merry, courting, laughing, etc., while others vouched to having spoken to the creatures. Be that as it may, the Moths were there in the valley by the river, and had been there long before Teddy and Lily’s grandfather first took up the splendid selection adjacent.The wee people had taken an interest in the fortunes of the different families round about for many years, always patronising and favouring good boys and girls, and always punishing the bad ones in some form or other.Just below the bush paddock where the valley dips down to the water could be seen a circle of emerald green, on which the Moths assembled every night when the moon shone. It was not often crossed by the feet of mortals; but any one passing that way by daylight might observe small round rings here and there, much greener than the grass around. These were Moth circles.Here the Moths sat in little circles on raised benches made of grass blades, whilst others danced before them in the middle of the ring to music played on flutes made from the backbones of locusts.On the night after the clock had been broken the Moths met to hold a great council. The whole race assembled on this occasion. There[189]was the King wearing a golden crown of flowers, and the Queen decked with diamonds of dew, and all the Princes and Princesses in robes of mingled green and blue. When the council were assembled the monarch spoke thus:“People of Mothland, you all know what an interest we take in the family near our valley, and especially in little Lily and Teddy. Now I grieve to tell you these children have been very naughty. Indeed, one of them has told a deliberate falsehood, a sin we hate and abhor beyond all things. The boy is not so guilty as his sister; it was not he, certainly, who spoilt the clock, but still he went up on the chair and looked at it; and he ought to have told this like a brave boy, instead of holding his tongue like a coward. But Lily has told a decided lie, and she must be punished. What shall we do to her?”“Carry her away from her home, and put Scarlet Mantle in her place,” said the Queen of the Moths.“It shall be done,” replied the King.That night when Lily was sleeping soundly in her soft, pleasant bed, the King of the Moths, accompanied by some of the strongest men in his tribe, carried her away into the valley of Mothland, and they substituted Scarlet Mantle in her stead.Jane, the nurse, took her accustomed peep into[190]the child’s bedroom, ere retiring for the night, and was somewhat astonished to observe that her charge appeared thinner and smaller and sharper than usual.“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” cried the girl, so, kissing thesupposedchild, she went her way, and left the Moth snugly coiled in little Lily’s bed.

Take your places. Turn down the lights. We are going to open our magic lantern once more. Ho Presto! Here we are in Victoria.

Picture to yourself a plainly furnished room in a farmhouse on the banks of the Murray River. Besides the ordinary tables, chairs, pictures, and other things you will observe a clock on the mantel-shelf over the fireplace. Now this clock is going to form the pivot upon which our story turns.

The door of this apartment was gently opened, and two children—a boy and a girl—entered. They had just stolen away unknown to the nurse, and had come here to amuse themselves. There was, however, very little in that room to amuse them. Neither hoop nor ball nor doll was here; but there was the clock ticking away like a cricket who had lost its mother. They say that curiosity[185]is much stronger in the female, be it child or adult, than in the male portion of humanity, so the little girl drew a chair to the fireplace, and on the top of it she placed a stool, and then both the children mounted and stood face to face with the clock.

They examined the polished wooden case, and the marble base, the figures and the painted scroll work which adorned its face, then the minute-hand which they could see moving, and listened to the “Tick, tick, tick,” which seemed to come from some voice within it. “Tick-tick,” cried the clock, and still as the little boy looked and listened it went on without stopping, “Tick, tick, tick.”

“What can it be?” said the little girl. “Where can the noise come from, Teddy?”

“Oh!” answered Teddy, “it comes from the wee fellow inside there; can’t you see him moving his arm about, eh, Lily?”

Lily looked and discovered a door. “It comes from here,” she said. “I should like to open it and let the old man out.”

“No, no,” cried Teddy, “we must not. Papa would be angry. Come away back again to nurse.” But Lily poked about with her fingers, unknowingly touched a spring, and the door flew open.

There they saw a wonderful sight. There were[186]wheels moving round and round, and the inside shone like gold, and there was a long piece of steel hanging down like a tail, which moved from side to side, and the timepiece said louder than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”

Lily put in her finger and touched the golden inside, and still the clock ticked on. Then she touched the pendulum, and though the clock paused for a moment as if to take breath, it went on again fresher than ever, “Tick, tick, tick.”

But at last she happened to poke her finger between the spokes of the little wheel, and the timepiece stopped. Lily thought it would tick again in a minute, but she was disappointed. She touched the pendulum, she touched the wheel, she touched every part; yet all to no purpose. And then the boy, Teddy, tried his hand in vain. The clock wouldn’t say “Tick, tick” any more.

What was to be done?

They were very much frightened. They closed the clock door as quickly as possible, got down from the chair, put the things all tidy, and left the room.

Nothing more occurred till breakfast-time next morning, when the father called out suddenly, “Why, the clock has stopped!” and when he examined it he found the mainspring was broken.[187]

“Somebody has been playing with the clock. Did you touch it, Teddy?”

“No, I never,” answered the boy.

“Was it you, Lily?”

Now, Lily was not in the habit of being untruthful; but she was frightened and replied, “No.”

“One of you must have done it yesterday. Jane saw you coming out of the room,” continued the father.

By dint of questioning, Lily and Teddy at length acknowledged they had been in the room, and then the boy said Lily had touched the timepiece, and then the girl said so had Teddy; but which of them it was that had really broken the spring their father could not discover.

“Very well, my children,” he said. “If you will not tell me who broke the clock, you will be punished some day.” And the father spoke truly.

In that part of the Murray district where Lily and Teddy lived there dwelt a small native race of people called “Moths.” This diminutive tribe lived alone by themselves in a grand shaded valley by the river-bank. They used to be seen very often by the settlers and bushmen riding home late on moonlight nights. Indeed, many travellers had stated they had seen them dancing on the[188]green, making merry, courting, laughing, etc., while others vouched to having spoken to the creatures. Be that as it may, the Moths were there in the valley by the river, and had been there long before Teddy and Lily’s grandfather first took up the splendid selection adjacent.

The wee people had taken an interest in the fortunes of the different families round about for many years, always patronising and favouring good boys and girls, and always punishing the bad ones in some form or other.

Just below the bush paddock where the valley dips down to the water could be seen a circle of emerald green, on which the Moths assembled every night when the moon shone. It was not often crossed by the feet of mortals; but any one passing that way by daylight might observe small round rings here and there, much greener than the grass around. These were Moth circles.

Here the Moths sat in little circles on raised benches made of grass blades, whilst others danced before them in the middle of the ring to music played on flutes made from the backbones of locusts.

On the night after the clock had been broken the Moths met to hold a great council. The whole race assembled on this occasion. There[189]was the King wearing a golden crown of flowers, and the Queen decked with diamonds of dew, and all the Princes and Princesses in robes of mingled green and blue. When the council were assembled the monarch spoke thus:

“People of Mothland, you all know what an interest we take in the family near our valley, and especially in little Lily and Teddy. Now I grieve to tell you these children have been very naughty. Indeed, one of them has told a deliberate falsehood, a sin we hate and abhor beyond all things. The boy is not so guilty as his sister; it was not he, certainly, who spoilt the clock, but still he went up on the chair and looked at it; and he ought to have told this like a brave boy, instead of holding his tongue like a coward. But Lily has told a decided lie, and she must be punished. What shall we do to her?”

“Carry her away from her home, and put Scarlet Mantle in her place,” said the Queen of the Moths.

“It shall be done,” replied the King.

That night when Lily was sleeping soundly in her soft, pleasant bed, the King of the Moths, accompanied by some of the strongest men in his tribe, carried her away into the valley of Mothland, and they substituted Scarlet Mantle in her stead.

Jane, the nurse, took her accustomed peep into[190]the child’s bedroom, ere retiring for the night, and was somewhat astonished to observe that her charge appeared thinner and smaller and sharper than usual.

“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” cried the girl, so, kissing thesupposedchild, she went her way, and left the Moth snugly coiled in little Lily’s bed.

[Contents]CHAPTER II.The morning following the night on which the Moths took Lily away dawned brightly. The farmer and his wife fancied somehow that their little girl looked rather pale and thin; the mother thought poor Lily was ill; the father thought she was sorry for saying she didn’t break the clock. But the Moths are very clever people, and of course had contrived to make Scarlet Mantle look as like Lily as possible. So she took up the child’s place in the house, and ate bread and butter, pudding, lollies, wore the girl’s new clothes, and was much happier than she had ever been in Mothland. One or two little things Scarlet Mantle could not entirely forget; still, on the whole, she managed to conduct herself as a civilised human child should.But where was Lily? She was away in the[191]dells with the Moths, and very unhappy. Firstly, she was very tired; secondly, she was hungry; and thirdly, she was made ridiculous. These things were most tantalising, and she was ready to cry her eyes out. No wonder she was tired, because instead of going to bed at seven o’clock, and sleeping soundly every night, she had to go out on the circles and dance till the moon set. She was cold, too, for in place of her warm frocks she had nothing in the world but Scarlet Mantle’s old clothes, made of rose-leaves and gossamer. She might well be hungry also, for the Moths gave her nothing but dew and locusts for food. Still there was one thing more dreadful than all these put together. For some reason or other Lily’s tongue had begun to grow very long.Yes, it was not painful, but exceedingly ugly, as you may imagine. Little by little it increased and grew longer, until she was obliged to tie it round her neck to keep it out of her way, and the Moths were always laughing about it, which made our little girl very melancholy.The Queen of the Moths was a very motherly person, and Lily soon made friends with her.“Your Majesty,” she said one day, “I am very miserable. Indeed, I think I shall die if I am kept here much longer.”[192]“What is amiss, my child?” inquired the Queen.“Why am I detained here?” replied Lily. “And why have I so little to eat and drink?”“My dear child, you know the reason,” answered the Queen. “You told a wicked falsehood, and you are paying the penalty for it now.”“Ah! your Majesty, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could only get rid of my long tongue,” pleaded Lily. “Dear Queen, please can’t you rid me of my ugly tongue?”“No, child, I cannot, but you can rid yourself of it.”“How? Oh, please tell me.”The Queen of the Moths sighed.“There is only one way,” she answered. “Your tongue is disfigured, because it hath offended. If you wish to get rid of it, you must acknowledge your fault and confess the lie you told.”Poor Lily! Like many other children of a larger growth, she was stubborn, and did not like this plan of getting rid of her trouble. Anything rather than saying: “I broke the clock.”So the child went on among the Moths, suffering cold and hunger, midnight dancing, and the big tongue.But little Lily loved her father and mother, and did not like to be away from them for ever. She[193]began to steal away from the valley, and go to her own home. Often she stood looking in at the window, and saw her father and mother and Teddy sitting with Scarlet Mantle; and the tears would start to her eyes, and run down her cheeks, and she would cry out in her grief, “Oh! I do so wish I was sitting on my own stool again.”One night she was standing by the window particularly unhappy, and in a very penitent mood. Had she but the opportunity, she determined to confess her fault. There sat her father in the full flare of the lamp, thinking he had Lily by his side. There was Teddy with his toys, and while the little outcast was gazing, Jane, the nurse, entered with the tea-tray; cups and saucers began to rattle, and her brother and Scarlet Mantle gathered round the table. Oh, to be shut out from all this comfort, and the smiles and caresses of her parents! At length, something led her father to rise from his seat and look out into the darkness beyond. He opened the window and stepped out upon the verandah. In a moment a tiny hand was thrust into his own, and a timid, hesitating voice was heard to say,—“I—I am—so—sorry. I—broke—the clock.”“You! Who are you?” cried the father in astonishment.[194]“I’m Lily, father,” she cried out, with a great sob.“Lily! Why, Lily is in the dining-room with mamma.”“No;I amLily, your own naughty little girl, and—I broke the clock. There!” she sobbed aloud. “The Moths took me away because I told you a falsehood, and they only gave me old faded rose-leaves to wear, and the legs of locusts to eat, and made me drink dew out of the cups of the flowers; and see what a great, long, ugly tongue they have given me for telling that story.”The trilling voice sounded very remorseful, and the little hand clung nervously to the father, who immediately led the little one into the dining-room.The first thing on which the eyes of the man rested was the vacant seat of Scarlet Mantle.“Hallo! Where’s the other one?” he cried.“The other one?” repeated his wife. “What other one, dear?”“The—the child, Lily,” replied the astonished pater.The good woman laughed, and answered, “There she is, at your side,”“Nonsense; this little lady says she has just come from Mothland, and that she is our Lily whom the Moths stole because she told a falsehood[195]over the breaking of the clock. Surely there aren’t two Lilys?” and the farmer looked beneath the sofa, under the table, and even up the chimney; but Scarlet Mantle, the moment she saw Lily enter the room, vanished through the window, and of course was not to be found.“Well, this is a queer go, wife.”“Most extraordinary,” responded the mother, gazing with a doubtful look upon the real Lily, who stood quietly looking from one to the other.“Oh, this is Sis,” exclaimed Teddy. “There’s the bump on the nose which I made with my ball last week. You’re Lily, who smashed the clock, aren’t you?” he asked, looking up in her face.“Indeed, Teddy dear, I’m your little sister, and it was I who broke the clock, and the Moths took me away, and gave me this big, frightful tongue, because I said I didn’t. You see here——”And she put up her hand to her mouth, but lo! the ugly member had vanished. How glad she felt that it was gone! The mere effort to do right had brought its own reward. And as she repeated again, more earnestly, “I broke the clock, and I want you to forgive me,” her father saw she was really his own little girl, and giving her a hearty kiss of forgiveness, seated her in her own accustomed[196]place at table, and they were very happy once more.That night Lily slept soundly in her own room, in her own cosy bed, and she thought it much better than dancing till she was tired round the Moth circles by the river-bank.And so thought the Scarlet Mantle![197]

CHAPTER II.

The morning following the night on which the Moths took Lily away dawned brightly. The farmer and his wife fancied somehow that their little girl looked rather pale and thin; the mother thought poor Lily was ill; the father thought she was sorry for saying she didn’t break the clock. But the Moths are very clever people, and of course had contrived to make Scarlet Mantle look as like Lily as possible. So she took up the child’s place in the house, and ate bread and butter, pudding, lollies, wore the girl’s new clothes, and was much happier than she had ever been in Mothland. One or two little things Scarlet Mantle could not entirely forget; still, on the whole, she managed to conduct herself as a civilised human child should.But where was Lily? She was away in the[191]dells with the Moths, and very unhappy. Firstly, she was very tired; secondly, she was hungry; and thirdly, she was made ridiculous. These things were most tantalising, and she was ready to cry her eyes out. No wonder she was tired, because instead of going to bed at seven o’clock, and sleeping soundly every night, she had to go out on the circles and dance till the moon set. She was cold, too, for in place of her warm frocks she had nothing in the world but Scarlet Mantle’s old clothes, made of rose-leaves and gossamer. She might well be hungry also, for the Moths gave her nothing but dew and locusts for food. Still there was one thing more dreadful than all these put together. For some reason or other Lily’s tongue had begun to grow very long.Yes, it was not painful, but exceedingly ugly, as you may imagine. Little by little it increased and grew longer, until she was obliged to tie it round her neck to keep it out of her way, and the Moths were always laughing about it, which made our little girl very melancholy.The Queen of the Moths was a very motherly person, and Lily soon made friends with her.“Your Majesty,” she said one day, “I am very miserable. Indeed, I think I shall die if I am kept here much longer.”[192]“What is amiss, my child?” inquired the Queen.“Why am I detained here?” replied Lily. “And why have I so little to eat and drink?”“My dear child, you know the reason,” answered the Queen. “You told a wicked falsehood, and you are paying the penalty for it now.”“Ah! your Majesty, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could only get rid of my long tongue,” pleaded Lily. “Dear Queen, please can’t you rid me of my ugly tongue?”“No, child, I cannot, but you can rid yourself of it.”“How? Oh, please tell me.”The Queen of the Moths sighed.“There is only one way,” she answered. “Your tongue is disfigured, because it hath offended. If you wish to get rid of it, you must acknowledge your fault and confess the lie you told.”Poor Lily! Like many other children of a larger growth, she was stubborn, and did not like this plan of getting rid of her trouble. Anything rather than saying: “I broke the clock.”So the child went on among the Moths, suffering cold and hunger, midnight dancing, and the big tongue.But little Lily loved her father and mother, and did not like to be away from them for ever. She[193]began to steal away from the valley, and go to her own home. Often she stood looking in at the window, and saw her father and mother and Teddy sitting with Scarlet Mantle; and the tears would start to her eyes, and run down her cheeks, and she would cry out in her grief, “Oh! I do so wish I was sitting on my own stool again.”One night she was standing by the window particularly unhappy, and in a very penitent mood. Had she but the opportunity, she determined to confess her fault. There sat her father in the full flare of the lamp, thinking he had Lily by his side. There was Teddy with his toys, and while the little outcast was gazing, Jane, the nurse, entered with the tea-tray; cups and saucers began to rattle, and her brother and Scarlet Mantle gathered round the table. Oh, to be shut out from all this comfort, and the smiles and caresses of her parents! At length, something led her father to rise from his seat and look out into the darkness beyond. He opened the window and stepped out upon the verandah. In a moment a tiny hand was thrust into his own, and a timid, hesitating voice was heard to say,—“I—I am—so—sorry. I—broke—the clock.”“You! Who are you?” cried the father in astonishment.[194]“I’m Lily, father,” she cried out, with a great sob.“Lily! Why, Lily is in the dining-room with mamma.”“No;I amLily, your own naughty little girl, and—I broke the clock. There!” she sobbed aloud. “The Moths took me away because I told you a falsehood, and they only gave me old faded rose-leaves to wear, and the legs of locusts to eat, and made me drink dew out of the cups of the flowers; and see what a great, long, ugly tongue they have given me for telling that story.”The trilling voice sounded very remorseful, and the little hand clung nervously to the father, who immediately led the little one into the dining-room.The first thing on which the eyes of the man rested was the vacant seat of Scarlet Mantle.“Hallo! Where’s the other one?” he cried.“The other one?” repeated his wife. “What other one, dear?”“The—the child, Lily,” replied the astonished pater.The good woman laughed, and answered, “There she is, at your side,”“Nonsense; this little lady says she has just come from Mothland, and that she is our Lily whom the Moths stole because she told a falsehood[195]over the breaking of the clock. Surely there aren’t two Lilys?” and the farmer looked beneath the sofa, under the table, and even up the chimney; but Scarlet Mantle, the moment she saw Lily enter the room, vanished through the window, and of course was not to be found.“Well, this is a queer go, wife.”“Most extraordinary,” responded the mother, gazing with a doubtful look upon the real Lily, who stood quietly looking from one to the other.“Oh, this is Sis,” exclaimed Teddy. “There’s the bump on the nose which I made with my ball last week. You’re Lily, who smashed the clock, aren’t you?” he asked, looking up in her face.“Indeed, Teddy dear, I’m your little sister, and it was I who broke the clock, and the Moths took me away, and gave me this big, frightful tongue, because I said I didn’t. You see here——”And she put up her hand to her mouth, but lo! the ugly member had vanished. How glad she felt that it was gone! The mere effort to do right had brought its own reward. And as she repeated again, more earnestly, “I broke the clock, and I want you to forgive me,” her father saw she was really his own little girl, and giving her a hearty kiss of forgiveness, seated her in her own accustomed[196]place at table, and they were very happy once more.That night Lily slept soundly in her own room, in her own cosy bed, and she thought it much better than dancing till she was tired round the Moth circles by the river-bank.And so thought the Scarlet Mantle![197]

The morning following the night on which the Moths took Lily away dawned brightly. The farmer and his wife fancied somehow that their little girl looked rather pale and thin; the mother thought poor Lily was ill; the father thought she was sorry for saying she didn’t break the clock. But the Moths are very clever people, and of course had contrived to make Scarlet Mantle look as like Lily as possible. So she took up the child’s place in the house, and ate bread and butter, pudding, lollies, wore the girl’s new clothes, and was much happier than she had ever been in Mothland. One or two little things Scarlet Mantle could not entirely forget; still, on the whole, she managed to conduct herself as a civilised human child should.

But where was Lily? She was away in the[191]dells with the Moths, and very unhappy. Firstly, she was very tired; secondly, she was hungry; and thirdly, she was made ridiculous. These things were most tantalising, and she was ready to cry her eyes out. No wonder she was tired, because instead of going to bed at seven o’clock, and sleeping soundly every night, she had to go out on the circles and dance till the moon set. She was cold, too, for in place of her warm frocks she had nothing in the world but Scarlet Mantle’s old clothes, made of rose-leaves and gossamer. She might well be hungry also, for the Moths gave her nothing but dew and locusts for food. Still there was one thing more dreadful than all these put together. For some reason or other Lily’s tongue had begun to grow very long.

Yes, it was not painful, but exceedingly ugly, as you may imagine. Little by little it increased and grew longer, until she was obliged to tie it round her neck to keep it out of her way, and the Moths were always laughing about it, which made our little girl very melancholy.

The Queen of the Moths was a very motherly person, and Lily soon made friends with her.

“Your Majesty,” she said one day, “I am very miserable. Indeed, I think I shall die if I am kept here much longer.”[192]

“What is amiss, my child?” inquired the Queen.

“Why am I detained here?” replied Lily. “And why have I so little to eat and drink?”

“My dear child, you know the reason,” answered the Queen. “You told a wicked falsehood, and you are paying the penalty for it now.”

“Ah! your Majesty, it wouldn’t be so bad if I could only get rid of my long tongue,” pleaded Lily. “Dear Queen, please can’t you rid me of my ugly tongue?”

“No, child, I cannot, but you can rid yourself of it.”

“How? Oh, please tell me.”

The Queen of the Moths sighed.

“There is only one way,” she answered. “Your tongue is disfigured, because it hath offended. If you wish to get rid of it, you must acknowledge your fault and confess the lie you told.”

Poor Lily! Like many other children of a larger growth, she was stubborn, and did not like this plan of getting rid of her trouble. Anything rather than saying: “I broke the clock.”

So the child went on among the Moths, suffering cold and hunger, midnight dancing, and the big tongue.

But little Lily loved her father and mother, and did not like to be away from them for ever. She[193]began to steal away from the valley, and go to her own home. Often she stood looking in at the window, and saw her father and mother and Teddy sitting with Scarlet Mantle; and the tears would start to her eyes, and run down her cheeks, and she would cry out in her grief, “Oh! I do so wish I was sitting on my own stool again.”

One night she was standing by the window particularly unhappy, and in a very penitent mood. Had she but the opportunity, she determined to confess her fault. There sat her father in the full flare of the lamp, thinking he had Lily by his side. There was Teddy with his toys, and while the little outcast was gazing, Jane, the nurse, entered with the tea-tray; cups and saucers began to rattle, and her brother and Scarlet Mantle gathered round the table. Oh, to be shut out from all this comfort, and the smiles and caresses of her parents! At length, something led her father to rise from his seat and look out into the darkness beyond. He opened the window and stepped out upon the verandah. In a moment a tiny hand was thrust into his own, and a timid, hesitating voice was heard to say,—

“I—I am—so—sorry. I—broke—the clock.”

“You! Who are you?” cried the father in astonishment.[194]

“I’m Lily, father,” she cried out, with a great sob.

“Lily! Why, Lily is in the dining-room with mamma.”

“No;I amLily, your own naughty little girl, and—I broke the clock. There!” she sobbed aloud. “The Moths took me away because I told you a falsehood, and they only gave me old faded rose-leaves to wear, and the legs of locusts to eat, and made me drink dew out of the cups of the flowers; and see what a great, long, ugly tongue they have given me for telling that story.”

The trilling voice sounded very remorseful, and the little hand clung nervously to the father, who immediately led the little one into the dining-room.

The first thing on which the eyes of the man rested was the vacant seat of Scarlet Mantle.

“Hallo! Where’s the other one?” he cried.

“The other one?” repeated his wife. “What other one, dear?”

“The—the child, Lily,” replied the astonished pater.

The good woman laughed, and answered, “There she is, at your side,”

“Nonsense; this little lady says she has just come from Mothland, and that she is our Lily whom the Moths stole because she told a falsehood[195]over the breaking of the clock. Surely there aren’t two Lilys?” and the farmer looked beneath the sofa, under the table, and even up the chimney; but Scarlet Mantle, the moment she saw Lily enter the room, vanished through the window, and of course was not to be found.

“Well, this is a queer go, wife.”

“Most extraordinary,” responded the mother, gazing with a doubtful look upon the real Lily, who stood quietly looking from one to the other.

“Oh, this is Sis,” exclaimed Teddy. “There’s the bump on the nose which I made with my ball last week. You’re Lily, who smashed the clock, aren’t you?” he asked, looking up in her face.

“Indeed, Teddy dear, I’m your little sister, and it was I who broke the clock, and the Moths took me away, and gave me this big, frightful tongue, because I said I didn’t. You see here——”

And she put up her hand to her mouth, but lo! the ugly member had vanished. How glad she felt that it was gone! The mere effort to do right had brought its own reward. And as she repeated again, more earnestly, “I broke the clock, and I want you to forgive me,” her father saw she was really his own little girl, and giving her a hearty kiss of forgiveness, seated her in her own accustomed[196]place at table, and they were very happy once more.

That night Lily slept soundly in her own room, in her own cosy bed, and she thought it much better than dancing till she was tired round the Moth circles by the river-bank.

And so thought the Scarlet Mantle![197]

[Contents]MOONLAND.[Contents]CHAPTER I.Some of our relatives on the other side of the globe will be astonished to learn that the way to the Moon has been discovered by an unfortunate member of theliteratiof Australia.The greatest thinkers of the day have scouted the idea as nothing but moonshine, when spoken to about the practicability of the discovery. But it must be borne in mind that the same laws of Nature which guide and rule the Mother Country are somewhat erratic here at the Antipodes, inasmuch as we are allupside down—standing on our heads, in fact. Therefore we are prepared for marvels. In a land where there are animals who stand on theirtails, and fight with all four feet at once; where the young leap out of and into their parents’ stomachs at will—there being a strange bag in that quarter for the purpose of humouring the antics of the juveniles, just like the hole in the[198]bow of a timber ship; where there are creatures that appear neither flesh nor fowl—who swim in ponds like a duck, have a duck’s bill, who lay eggs, yet have feet and hair like a beast; in a land where the leaves on the trees grow edgeways to the sun, and the trees themselves shoot downwards, surely it is no great wonder that we have found a passage to the great luminary of night, and had the pleasure of shaking hands and likewise supping with the disobedient man who gathered sticks on Sunday.“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”The scientific world will never feel half the surprise anent our new discovery as that which fell upon the old shepherd when he found himself surrounded and made a prisoner. He had left his sheep in charge of the only companion he had in these regions—viz., his dog. Within a sheltered nook on one of the fairest and most luxuriant slopes of the mysterious Blue Mountains, Patch, the half-bred dingo, held watch and ward over his charge while his master wandered down the rugged side of the cliff in search of gold. Here the sun was almost hid behind the broad awning of gigantic trees, whose immense trunks, gnarled and hoary with age, stood like mammoth sentinels to guard the dim glen below. The lonely herdsman had often descended to that spot before unmolested,[199]but now from every mound and hollow there peered the grotesque faces of the Mountain Sprites, watching his every movement, until with a sudden rush they pounced upon him and held him fast. For a time he struggled manfully to free himself. It was quite useless. The genii of the Blue Mountains are a powerful people, not to be trifled with, as the shepherd soon discovered.[200]He was lifted bodily up, and borne along so swiftly that he nearly lost his senses. The route of his captors lay in a downward direction—neverupward. And it appeared as if the dusky ravines which they traversed led right away from the upper world into the region of eternal night.“Dear friends, good people, where are you taking me?” cried the poor fellow in an affrighted tone.“Bis, bus, silence, mortal!” replied an ancient gnome authoritatively. “Your destination is not on the Earth, but the Moon.”“Good gracious!” ejaculated the poor shepherd, with starting eyeballs.“Bus, peace,” rejoined the brownie in a whisper. “The voice of man hath never disturbed these solitudes since the creation.”“Gentlemen, pray let me go!”“Art thou not going, thou dissatisfied mortal? Be silent.”“It is all up with me,” groaned the unfortunate captive.“Nay, verily, it will be all down with thee,” answered the sprite. “Behold!”As the fairy spoke they emerged into a dismal spot, in the midst of which gaped a wide, black pit; at the mouth of the chasm the shepherd[201]beheld the forms of two beings in shape like the fabled vampires, who clapped their tremendous wings in ecstasy at sight of him.“Who is this?” they cried.And the fairies answered, “A visitor for Moonland.”“No, no, I’m not going to the Moon,” replied the trembling shepherd.The horrid vampires laughed in exultation at his misery, and the sound shook the walls of the solid cliffs around. “Hear me, Dusk, and thou, Lunar,” said the gnome, addressing the winged monsters. “This fellow hath had the impudence to invade our sacred precincts, and attempted to release some of our dreaded foes, the ‘Gold Nuggets’ whom we have made prisoners. What shall we do with the rascal?”“Send him to the Moon,” they cried with one voice.“Mercy, gentlemen, mercy.”“Fiddlesticks! To Moonland with him,” answered the sprite. “There is lots of room for him to fossick there. Eh, Lunar?”Over that terrible void, near where they held him, our hero observed a strange object floating with a gentle, oscillating motion, as a feather floats in space. In appearance, it was like a gigantic[202]umbrella inverted, with a hole cut in the centre. To the ends of the ribs cords of gossamer were fastened which stretched upward to a car in the shape of a star, the points expanded like huge wings. The nature of this material, or by what process this curious vehicle had been manufactured, the unfortunate shepherd had neither power nor leisure at that moment to examine, for the ancient fay had no sooner spoken than Dusk and his companion seized hold of him, like a pair of vultures, and flew upward with him in the car of the parachute.“Good-bye, Lunar, let me know when you arrive,” cried some of the fairies.“Slide a message down a moonbeam,” responded others.“Or a rainbow, or the tail of a comet.” And while the mountain sprites stood and jeered, the quaint machine suddenly shot down the empty space with the velocity of a cannon-ball.Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air? Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him for a moment. Yet it was only for a moment. Strange[203]to say, he did not lose his presence of mind, and his fear left him as suddenly as it had fallen upon him. From a bewildering chaos of thought in the captive’s mindcuriositybecame paramount to all else. Amid the murky blackness around and about there was very little to examine, but the shepherd thrust his head through the gossamer network of the machine and gazed below. Far, far away in the profound depths beneath them, he saw a vast disc of soft light which threw its rays upward, and enabled him to discern that the abyss through which they were descending appeared like a hollow cone, the neck of which began in the mountain, and like an eddying circle in the water, gradually became wider and wider as they advanced.The progress of the parachute was so swift that they rapidly emerged into the focus of the light—the wide mouth of the cone receding to a faint, dark circle on the pale horizon in the space of a few seconds. It was astounding how wondrous soft and beautiful the shimmering glow of light in this new region burst upon the mortal’s vision. He had witnessed many lovely changes from the lofty peaks of the New South Wales Alps, but Dame Nature had never presented herself to his eyes in such a garb before. Not the glaring, hot,[204]dazzling rays of the summer sun here, but rather a gentle, subdued, dreamy refulgence, without the ghost of a shadow or shade of variation upon anything.Above, below, one universal, pale, liquid glimmer, devoid of vapour. Distant mountains, peaked and gabled like an iceberg, appeared to view, and hills and valleys, with deep ruts and chasms, forming an amphitheatre of vast dimensions, became more clear to the sight every moment. Everything seemed mixed up and confounded by the uniformity of colour. Rocks, valleys, and streams presented a weird and wonderful aspect under new conditions where, like Hoffmann’s shadowless man, every object was lighted up on all sides, equally, in the absence of a central point. Scorched and charred and burnt, there was not a sign of a tree or a shrub on the face of the whole landscape. Scoriæ and dross and pumice-stone—nothing else, save the waters that lay bathed in luminous silvery grey.From the vast panorama our hero turned his eyes upon his companions, the vampires. They had cast the netting of the car aside.“Prepare thyself, mortal,” cried Lunar in a terrible voice.“Prepare myself, for what?”[205]“For a header into the sea yonder beneath us,” answered the vampire coolly.“Good heavens! Gentlemen, you really don’t think I can dive from this great height! I shall be dashed to mincemeat,” responded the shepherd, in a tone of consternation.The monsters only laughed at him, and repeated their command.“Descend a little lower, good Lunar. Do, gentle Dusk,” he pleaded.“We can’t. This is Moonland. Not enoughgravityhere,” they replied.“Moonland! Mercy on me! And shall I have to leave my old bones in the Moon?” cried he in despair.“Plenty of ’em here—loads. Valleys full, as you’ll find. Come, jump!”“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][Contents]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 theother 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.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”Australian Fairy Tales][Page 209.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”In his terror the shepherd fled—when lo! he found thathe toowas endowed with this singular force of locomotion. It is surprising how fear lends a man wings. The terrestrial one didn’t need anything of the kind, though. Incredible the springs and leaps he made over the high peaks, across chasms and cliffs, and along the[210]steep mountain-sides; wonderful the feeling which changed from dread to exuberant delight and ecstasy, and again to terror, as the mighty voice of the pursuer came upon his ears like a peal of thunder.“Halt! Stop! Who art thou?”Had he been then and there endowed with wings, the old shepherd felt that he could not escape from the owner of that voice. All he could do was to cast himself flat on his face and await his doom in silence.“Shall Greencheese utter his command twice? Who art thou?” repeated the mammoth.“Mercy, your Highness. I am only old Bob, the shepherd of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales.”“Old Bob! Blue Mountains! Ha! Fuddle-fum. Well?”“Some fairies got hold of me t’other day, and bundles me down here, on a sort of humberellar, your Worship; that’s all I knows about it,” cried the mortal in a despairing tone.“Fairies! Mum! I know the rogues,” responded the creature quickly. “Many a summer’s night I have watched their freaks and gambols among secluded nooks and dells hidden away from mortal ken. Many a long hour we have held converse together, in the silent ravines and woods, when[211]all the human mites of the Australian world were locked in sleep. Go on!”“I knowsnoffin’more, sir, only that I shouldn’t like to leave my old bodyhere!” cried Bob.“Ha! Buncham! Fi-pho—fiddle-faddlem! Thou shalt live.”“Thanks, your Highness.” And the shepherd lifted his eyes and gazed upon his companion. The Colossus at Rhodes, towering high above the lofty gables of the aged city, was but a pigmy in comparison. Ancient, hoary Sphinx of the Egyptians, standing for countless years on the shores of Father Nile, would have seemed a thing of yesterday beside it. Nay, that primitive marvel, the figure of wood discovered in Joppa, aged five thousand years, could reckon itself an infant in proximity to this lunarian.Save the round, full, Chinese-like face, with its accompanying tremendous mouth, and the faint outline of the human form, there was nothing further to assist description of the creature except that he was high and bulky beyond conception, and quite as transparent as a lighted lantern. The face wasn’t at all unpleasant. It beamed with such a broad, friendly, yet withal humorous, expression as it gazed down upon Bob, that the mortal found courage to address it.[212]“Please, who be you, sir?”“Me? I’m theMan in the Moon, of course,” replied the creature, smiling.“Eh! Why, dash my old jumper, if I didn’t think as I’d seen your countenance before!” answered the old herdsman with animation. “I can tell yer, as ye comes out pretty strong sometimes on them ’ere mountains t’other side of Sydney. Why, I’ve yarded many a thousand sheep, and you’ve been a-looking at me all the while, eh?”The Man in the Moon nodded.“Ah, and I’ll bet you knows my old dog, Patch?”Another nod in the affirmative.“Brayvo! old boy. Why, we’re old chums. Shake hands.”“We never shake hands in the Moon, Bob; but I’ll embrace you,” cried the lunarian, smiling; and suiting the action to the word, he suddenly enveloped the mortal in such a broad beam of refulgence that the old fellow appeared as if cased in polished armour.In accordance with the etiquette of Moonland, it would be rude to disturb theirtête-à-têtebefore next Saturday.[213][Contents]CHAPTER III.“The presumptuous beings on earth have the impudence to tell their children that the Moon is made ofgreen cheese,” quoth the mammoth.“Indeed, sir, but that is very true,” answered Bob. “When I was a boy I believed it was only a big cheese, and I can safely say that when I’ve seen it in the water, up at Bathurst, where we lived, I’ve been silly enough to wade into the water arter it, thinking to take it home and have my supper off it.”“Ah, it’s rare fun to watch the moon-rakers try to grasp my shadow, Bob.”“I believe you, sir. Lord, how you must laugh in your sleeve at ’em! Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the shepherd reflectively.The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. I watch the murderer[214]crawling with stealthy feet towards his victim, and I note the robber lying in wait to plunder; I haunt the gloom where guilt and misery lie huddled together in rags. Wickedness in high places cannot escape me. Over the deep sleep of toiling millions my beams hold watch and ward, kissing the rosy lips of innocence, where yet lingers the soft breath of prayer. Hovering o’er the sighing maiden and the restless miser, weaving fancies which fill the poet’s brain with unutterable poesy, and with such shapes as live only in dreams of age and infancy, and vanish with the light of morn. Cuddlephum! Bobberish—Baa-lamb! Bo!”“Just so,” said Bob, opening wide his eyes at the strange words. “I begs to say that French wasn’t taught at the school I went to. Howsoever, I’m quite willing to dine with you, if that’s what you mean. I’m beginning to feel pereshious hungry, I can tell yer.”“Hungry! Base mortal, there is no such word known here,” echoed the monster.“Good heavens! No eating!” cried Bob, aghast.“None.”“Scissors! I’m afraid visitors from Australia won’t overrun Moonland, if that’s the case.”“Peace! Follow me, and thou shalt taste nectar,[215]which shall banish the cravings of thy vulgar race.”The Man in the Moon bounded away over the pumice-stone crags like a gigantic kangaroo, followed by Bob. Chaos and desolation were everywhere visible around them. Sad indeed and supremely melancholy looked the place. Mountains riven asunder; vast ravines and valleys choked with bleached bones of monsters unknown to men; immense plains, scattered thickly with the fossil remnants of ages; mingled dust and huge mounds of bony fragments of animal and reptile, which a thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed. Up the rugged zigzags with tremendous leaps, echoless, shadowless, and across the dust, silent to their footfall, went the lunarian and the mortal.“This is a dreary place, sir,” muttered the latter, almost breathless in his haste.“Peace, or perchance the forms of these dead monsters will rise to rebuke thee!” answered his companion solemnly. “Here, where thou art standing, these enormous animals of the first period lived and roved at will. The human mind cannot conceive their colossal proportions, for they were extinct many ages before the advent of man.”[216]The shepherd followed his conductor in silence, wondering if it were possible that these mighty dead could take shape again and swallow him at one snap. Jonah had been bolted by a whale, but the skeletons of these creatures appeared large enough to engulf a hundred whales a day, and twice that number of Jonahs into the bargain.Bob was almost ready to sink down amid the Golgotha when the Man in the Moon halted before a very high mountain. Making a sign to his companion to follow, he quickly disappeared from view. At first it seemed as if the mammoth had vanished within the mountain, but the mortal saw an opening at the base which he entered. What a study for a geologist! In the dim ages of the past, when the satellite of our Earth seethed and boiled as a vast crater, the solid intestines of this cone, yielding to some great power below it, had been riven in twain, leaving an unmeasurable grotto of winding galleries. Toiling along in the wake of the lunarian, the captive trod on a broad aisle, on each side of which rose a series of arches succeeding each other, like the noble arcades of some Gothic cathedral. Obelisk-like massive pillars stood out from the rent wall like mighty sentinels guarding the wreck. Had our hero been a mineralogist, armed with his hammer, his steel[217]pointer, his magnetic needles, and his blow pipe, what a fund of information he might have gleaned here to place before the spectacles of professors and philosophers! Nay, had he but possessed the faintest idea of the science of building, what patterns, what studies around and above him, for every form of the art to hereafter confound architects of the nineteenth century!Poor Bob was neither a mineralogist nor an architect, so he passed by these things without a second glance, and entered a vaulted chamber, upon whose round, jagged dome rested the whole weight of the mountain; the dented projections and the sharp points on wall and roof spun into an endless network of lines and seams, luminous as all things here seemed to be, and changing colour from silver-grey to deep crimson.Wonder had lost its functions for Bob the shepherd, otherwise he would have stood aghast at the strange forms moving to and fro within this chamber; round in shape, and taller than giants of long ago, with arms and legs evidently telescoped at the joints, so that they could lengthen or shorten them at will, and each shedding their quota of refulgence to illuminate the scene. Monster glow-worms, gigantic fire-flies, with the trickery of monkeys, and the strength[218]of bears, seized the shrinking man, and rose with him to the dome, which opened instantly and engulfed them. Amidst a circle of light, which changed quicker than the sparkles of a diamond, the poor shepherd found he was being borne upward and hemmed in by a ring of these natives of the Moon—upward and yet upward, without will to pause or stop, the mad whirlwind of light ever changing, red, blue, grey, yellow, white, azure, and the legion gathering in increased numbers every moment round him until the climax came, and the crater, that had been silent for countless ages, once more opened its ponderous jaws, casting him forth as a rocket, where—amidst fiery rings and bars, and blazing stars of light—he fell down, down, down into darkness and oblivion!*   *   *“I say, mate, how far is it to the Blue Mountains Inn?”Old Bob, the shepherd, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the questioner. He was a stout, thick-set fellow, with a heavy swag on his back, and a black billy-can in his hand.The man had to repeat his query ere the herdsman found speech.[219]“Why, surely,you’renot the Man in the Moon, eh?” asked Bob, with a wild stare.The swagman stepped backward a pace or two, and regarded our hero with more attention.“Man in the Moon!” he repeated. “Why, the old fellow’s gone off his head.”“‘WHY, SURELY, YOU’RE NOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’”“ ‘WHY, SURELY,YOU’RENOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’ ”“Where’s the others with the long legs and arms?” and the shepherd shuddered.“He’s cranky, sure enough,” muttered the traveller audibly. “The coves as you were asking arter are all gone,” he said aloud. “You get up on your pins, or they’ll be back again[220]Here’s a bob; come now, hook it, or they’ll have you,” saying which the swagman went on his way.Our hero raised himself into a sitting posture. Before him lay the verdant slopes and ridges of the mountain, bathed in sunlight. Yonder his sheep fed peacefully, watched by the faithful Patch. Then the old man raised his vision higher than the earth and thanked Heaven that he was still safe and sound onterra firma.[221]

MOONLAND.

[Contents]CHAPTER I.Some of our relatives on the other side of the globe will be astonished to learn that the way to the Moon has been discovered by an unfortunate member of theliteratiof Australia.The greatest thinkers of the day have scouted the idea as nothing but moonshine, when spoken to about the practicability of the discovery. But it must be borne in mind that the same laws of Nature which guide and rule the Mother Country are somewhat erratic here at the Antipodes, inasmuch as we are allupside down—standing on our heads, in fact. Therefore we are prepared for marvels. In a land where there are animals who stand on theirtails, and fight with all four feet at once; where the young leap out of and into their parents’ stomachs at will—there being a strange bag in that quarter for the purpose of humouring the antics of the juveniles, just like the hole in the[198]bow of a timber ship; where there are creatures that appear neither flesh nor fowl—who swim in ponds like a duck, have a duck’s bill, who lay eggs, yet have feet and hair like a beast; in a land where the leaves on the trees grow edgeways to the sun, and the trees themselves shoot downwards, surely it is no great wonder that we have found a passage to the great luminary of night, and had the pleasure of shaking hands and likewise supping with the disobedient man who gathered sticks on Sunday.“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”The scientific world will never feel half the surprise anent our new discovery as that which fell upon the old shepherd when he found himself surrounded and made a prisoner. He had left his sheep in charge of the only companion he had in these regions—viz., his dog. Within a sheltered nook on one of the fairest and most luxuriant slopes of the mysterious Blue Mountains, Patch, the half-bred dingo, held watch and ward over his charge while his master wandered down the rugged side of the cliff in search of gold. Here the sun was almost hid behind the broad awning of gigantic trees, whose immense trunks, gnarled and hoary with age, stood like mammoth sentinels to guard the dim glen below. The lonely herdsman had often descended to that spot before unmolested,[199]but now from every mound and hollow there peered the grotesque faces of the Mountain Sprites, watching his every movement, until with a sudden rush they pounced upon him and held him fast. For a time he struggled manfully to free himself. It was quite useless. The genii of the Blue Mountains are a powerful people, not to be trifled with, as the shepherd soon discovered.[200]He was lifted bodily up, and borne along so swiftly that he nearly lost his senses. The route of his captors lay in a downward direction—neverupward. And it appeared as if the dusky ravines which they traversed led right away from the upper world into the region of eternal night.“Dear friends, good people, where are you taking me?” cried the poor fellow in an affrighted tone.“Bis, bus, silence, mortal!” replied an ancient gnome authoritatively. “Your destination is not on the Earth, but the Moon.”“Good gracious!” ejaculated the poor shepherd, with starting eyeballs.“Bus, peace,” rejoined the brownie in a whisper. “The voice of man hath never disturbed these solitudes since the creation.”“Gentlemen, pray let me go!”“Art thou not going, thou dissatisfied mortal? Be silent.”“It is all up with me,” groaned the unfortunate captive.“Nay, verily, it will be all down with thee,” answered the sprite. “Behold!”As the fairy spoke they emerged into a dismal spot, in the midst of which gaped a wide, black pit; at the mouth of the chasm the shepherd[201]beheld the forms of two beings in shape like the fabled vampires, who clapped their tremendous wings in ecstasy at sight of him.“Who is this?” they cried.And the fairies answered, “A visitor for Moonland.”“No, no, I’m not going to the Moon,” replied the trembling shepherd.The horrid vampires laughed in exultation at his misery, and the sound shook the walls of the solid cliffs around. “Hear me, Dusk, and thou, Lunar,” said the gnome, addressing the winged monsters. “This fellow hath had the impudence to invade our sacred precincts, and attempted to release some of our dreaded foes, the ‘Gold Nuggets’ whom we have made prisoners. What shall we do with the rascal?”“Send him to the Moon,” they cried with one voice.“Mercy, gentlemen, mercy.”“Fiddlesticks! To Moonland with him,” answered the sprite. “There is lots of room for him to fossick there. Eh, Lunar?”Over that terrible void, near where they held him, our hero observed a strange object floating with a gentle, oscillating motion, as a feather floats in space. In appearance, it was like a gigantic[202]umbrella inverted, with a hole cut in the centre. To the ends of the ribs cords of gossamer were fastened which stretched upward to a car in the shape of a star, the points expanded like huge wings. The nature of this material, or by what process this curious vehicle had been manufactured, the unfortunate shepherd had neither power nor leisure at that moment to examine, for the ancient fay had no sooner spoken than Dusk and his companion seized hold of him, like a pair of vultures, and flew upward with him in the car of the parachute.“Good-bye, Lunar, let me know when you arrive,” cried some of the fairies.“Slide a message down a moonbeam,” responded others.“Or a rainbow, or the tail of a comet.” And while the mountain sprites stood and jeered, the quaint machine suddenly shot down the empty space with the velocity of a cannon-ball.Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air? Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him for a moment. Yet it was only for a moment. Strange[203]to say, he did not lose his presence of mind, and his fear left him as suddenly as it had fallen upon him. From a bewildering chaos of thought in the captive’s mindcuriositybecame paramount to all else. Amid the murky blackness around and about there was very little to examine, but the shepherd thrust his head through the gossamer network of the machine and gazed below. Far, far away in the profound depths beneath them, he saw a vast disc of soft light which threw its rays upward, and enabled him to discern that the abyss through which they were descending appeared like a hollow cone, the neck of which began in the mountain, and like an eddying circle in the water, gradually became wider and wider as they advanced.The progress of the parachute was so swift that they rapidly emerged into the focus of the light—the wide mouth of the cone receding to a faint, dark circle on the pale horizon in the space of a few seconds. It was astounding how wondrous soft and beautiful the shimmering glow of light in this new region burst upon the mortal’s vision. He had witnessed many lovely changes from the lofty peaks of the New South Wales Alps, but Dame Nature had never presented herself to his eyes in such a garb before. Not the glaring, hot,[204]dazzling rays of the summer sun here, but rather a gentle, subdued, dreamy refulgence, without the ghost of a shadow or shade of variation upon anything.Above, below, one universal, pale, liquid glimmer, devoid of vapour. Distant mountains, peaked and gabled like an iceberg, appeared to view, and hills and valleys, with deep ruts and chasms, forming an amphitheatre of vast dimensions, became more clear to the sight every moment. Everything seemed mixed up and confounded by the uniformity of colour. Rocks, valleys, and streams presented a weird and wonderful aspect under new conditions where, like Hoffmann’s shadowless man, every object was lighted up on all sides, equally, in the absence of a central point. Scorched and charred and burnt, there was not a sign of a tree or a shrub on the face of the whole landscape. Scoriæ and dross and pumice-stone—nothing else, save the waters that lay bathed in luminous silvery grey.From the vast panorama our hero turned his eyes upon his companions, the vampires. They had cast the netting of the car aside.“Prepare thyself, mortal,” cried Lunar in a terrible voice.“Prepare myself, for what?”[205]“For a header into the sea yonder beneath us,” answered the vampire coolly.“Good heavens! Gentlemen, you really don’t think I can dive from this great height! I shall be dashed to mincemeat,” responded the shepherd, in a tone of consternation.The monsters only laughed at him, and repeated their command.“Descend a little lower, good Lunar. Do, gentle Dusk,” he pleaded.“We can’t. This is Moonland. Not enoughgravityhere,” they replied.“Moonland! Mercy on me! And shall I have to leave my old bones in the Moon?” cried he in despair.“Plenty of ’em here—loads. Valleys full, as you’ll find. Come, jump!”“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][Contents]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 theother 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.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”Australian Fairy Tales][Page 209.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”In his terror the shepherd fled—when lo! he found thathe toowas endowed with this singular force of locomotion. It is surprising how fear lends a man wings. The terrestrial one didn’t need anything of the kind, though. Incredible the springs and leaps he made over the high peaks, across chasms and cliffs, and along the[210]steep mountain-sides; wonderful the feeling which changed from dread to exuberant delight and ecstasy, and again to terror, as the mighty voice of the pursuer came upon his ears like a peal of thunder.“Halt! Stop! Who art thou?”Had he been then and there endowed with wings, the old shepherd felt that he could not escape from the owner of that voice. All he could do was to cast himself flat on his face and await his doom in silence.“Shall Greencheese utter his command twice? Who art thou?” repeated the mammoth.“Mercy, your Highness. I am only old Bob, the shepherd of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales.”“Old Bob! Blue Mountains! Ha! Fuddle-fum. Well?”“Some fairies got hold of me t’other day, and bundles me down here, on a sort of humberellar, your Worship; that’s all I knows about it,” cried the mortal in a despairing tone.“Fairies! Mum! I know the rogues,” responded the creature quickly. “Many a summer’s night I have watched their freaks and gambols among secluded nooks and dells hidden away from mortal ken. Many a long hour we have held converse together, in the silent ravines and woods, when[211]all the human mites of the Australian world were locked in sleep. Go on!”“I knowsnoffin’more, sir, only that I shouldn’t like to leave my old bodyhere!” cried Bob.“Ha! Buncham! Fi-pho—fiddle-faddlem! Thou shalt live.”“Thanks, your Highness.” And the shepherd lifted his eyes and gazed upon his companion. The Colossus at Rhodes, towering high above the lofty gables of the aged city, was but a pigmy in comparison. Ancient, hoary Sphinx of the Egyptians, standing for countless years on the shores of Father Nile, would have seemed a thing of yesterday beside it. Nay, that primitive marvel, the figure of wood discovered in Joppa, aged five thousand years, could reckon itself an infant in proximity to this lunarian.Save the round, full, Chinese-like face, with its accompanying tremendous mouth, and the faint outline of the human form, there was nothing further to assist description of the creature except that he was high and bulky beyond conception, and quite as transparent as a lighted lantern. The face wasn’t at all unpleasant. It beamed with such a broad, friendly, yet withal humorous, expression as it gazed down upon Bob, that the mortal found courage to address it.[212]“Please, who be you, sir?”“Me? I’m theMan in the Moon, of course,” replied the creature, smiling.“Eh! Why, dash my old jumper, if I didn’t think as I’d seen your countenance before!” answered the old herdsman with animation. “I can tell yer, as ye comes out pretty strong sometimes on them ’ere mountains t’other side of Sydney. Why, I’ve yarded many a thousand sheep, and you’ve been a-looking at me all the while, eh?”The Man in the Moon nodded.“Ah, and I’ll bet you knows my old dog, Patch?”Another nod in the affirmative.“Brayvo! old boy. Why, we’re old chums. Shake hands.”“We never shake hands in the Moon, Bob; but I’ll embrace you,” cried the lunarian, smiling; and suiting the action to the word, he suddenly enveloped the mortal in such a broad beam of refulgence that the old fellow appeared as if cased in polished armour.In accordance with the etiquette of Moonland, it would be rude to disturb theirtête-à-têtebefore next Saturday.[213][Contents]CHAPTER III.“The presumptuous beings on earth have the impudence to tell their children that the Moon is made ofgreen cheese,” quoth the mammoth.“Indeed, sir, but that is very true,” answered Bob. “When I was a boy I believed it was only a big cheese, and I can safely say that when I’ve seen it in the water, up at Bathurst, where we lived, I’ve been silly enough to wade into the water arter it, thinking to take it home and have my supper off it.”“Ah, it’s rare fun to watch the moon-rakers try to grasp my shadow, Bob.”“I believe you, sir. Lord, how you must laugh in your sleeve at ’em! Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the shepherd reflectively.The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. I watch the murderer[214]crawling with stealthy feet towards his victim, and I note the robber lying in wait to plunder; I haunt the gloom where guilt and misery lie huddled together in rags. Wickedness in high places cannot escape me. Over the deep sleep of toiling millions my beams hold watch and ward, kissing the rosy lips of innocence, where yet lingers the soft breath of prayer. Hovering o’er the sighing maiden and the restless miser, weaving fancies which fill the poet’s brain with unutterable poesy, and with such shapes as live only in dreams of age and infancy, and vanish with the light of morn. Cuddlephum! Bobberish—Baa-lamb! Bo!”“Just so,” said Bob, opening wide his eyes at the strange words. “I begs to say that French wasn’t taught at the school I went to. Howsoever, I’m quite willing to dine with you, if that’s what you mean. I’m beginning to feel pereshious hungry, I can tell yer.”“Hungry! Base mortal, there is no such word known here,” echoed the monster.“Good heavens! No eating!” cried Bob, aghast.“None.”“Scissors! I’m afraid visitors from Australia won’t overrun Moonland, if that’s the case.”“Peace! Follow me, and thou shalt taste nectar,[215]which shall banish the cravings of thy vulgar race.”The Man in the Moon bounded away over the pumice-stone crags like a gigantic kangaroo, followed by Bob. Chaos and desolation were everywhere visible around them. Sad indeed and supremely melancholy looked the place. Mountains riven asunder; vast ravines and valleys choked with bleached bones of monsters unknown to men; immense plains, scattered thickly with the fossil remnants of ages; mingled dust and huge mounds of bony fragments of animal and reptile, which a thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed. Up the rugged zigzags with tremendous leaps, echoless, shadowless, and across the dust, silent to their footfall, went the lunarian and the mortal.“This is a dreary place, sir,” muttered the latter, almost breathless in his haste.“Peace, or perchance the forms of these dead monsters will rise to rebuke thee!” answered his companion solemnly. “Here, where thou art standing, these enormous animals of the first period lived and roved at will. The human mind cannot conceive their colossal proportions, for they were extinct many ages before the advent of man.”[216]The shepherd followed his conductor in silence, wondering if it were possible that these mighty dead could take shape again and swallow him at one snap. Jonah had been bolted by a whale, but the skeletons of these creatures appeared large enough to engulf a hundred whales a day, and twice that number of Jonahs into the bargain.Bob was almost ready to sink down amid the Golgotha when the Man in the Moon halted before a very high mountain. Making a sign to his companion to follow, he quickly disappeared from view. At first it seemed as if the mammoth had vanished within the mountain, but the mortal saw an opening at the base which he entered. What a study for a geologist! In the dim ages of the past, when the satellite of our Earth seethed and boiled as a vast crater, the solid intestines of this cone, yielding to some great power below it, had been riven in twain, leaving an unmeasurable grotto of winding galleries. Toiling along in the wake of the lunarian, the captive trod on a broad aisle, on each side of which rose a series of arches succeeding each other, like the noble arcades of some Gothic cathedral. Obelisk-like massive pillars stood out from the rent wall like mighty sentinels guarding the wreck. Had our hero been a mineralogist, armed with his hammer, his steel[217]pointer, his magnetic needles, and his blow pipe, what a fund of information he might have gleaned here to place before the spectacles of professors and philosophers! Nay, had he but possessed the faintest idea of the science of building, what patterns, what studies around and above him, for every form of the art to hereafter confound architects of the nineteenth century!Poor Bob was neither a mineralogist nor an architect, so he passed by these things without a second glance, and entered a vaulted chamber, upon whose round, jagged dome rested the whole weight of the mountain; the dented projections and the sharp points on wall and roof spun into an endless network of lines and seams, luminous as all things here seemed to be, and changing colour from silver-grey to deep crimson.Wonder had lost its functions for Bob the shepherd, otherwise he would have stood aghast at the strange forms moving to and fro within this chamber; round in shape, and taller than giants of long ago, with arms and legs evidently telescoped at the joints, so that they could lengthen or shorten them at will, and each shedding their quota of refulgence to illuminate the scene. Monster glow-worms, gigantic fire-flies, with the trickery of monkeys, and the strength[218]of bears, seized the shrinking man, and rose with him to the dome, which opened instantly and engulfed them. Amidst a circle of light, which changed quicker than the sparkles of a diamond, the poor shepherd found he was being borne upward and hemmed in by a ring of these natives of the Moon—upward and yet upward, without will to pause or stop, the mad whirlwind of light ever changing, red, blue, grey, yellow, white, azure, and the legion gathering in increased numbers every moment round him until the climax came, and the crater, that had been silent for countless ages, once more opened its ponderous jaws, casting him forth as a rocket, where—amidst fiery rings and bars, and blazing stars of light—he fell down, down, down into darkness and oblivion!*   *   *“I say, mate, how far is it to the Blue Mountains Inn?”Old Bob, the shepherd, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the questioner. He was a stout, thick-set fellow, with a heavy swag on his back, and a black billy-can in his hand.The man had to repeat his query ere the herdsman found speech.[219]“Why, surely,you’renot the Man in the Moon, eh?” asked Bob, with a wild stare.The swagman stepped backward a pace or two, and regarded our hero with more attention.“Man in the Moon!” he repeated. “Why, the old fellow’s gone off his head.”“‘WHY, SURELY, YOU’RE NOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’”“ ‘WHY, SURELY,YOU’RENOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’ ”“Where’s the others with the long legs and arms?” and the shepherd shuddered.“He’s cranky, sure enough,” muttered the traveller audibly. “The coves as you were asking arter are all gone,” he said aloud. “You get up on your pins, or they’ll be back again[220]Here’s a bob; come now, hook it, or they’ll have you,” saying which the swagman went on his way.Our hero raised himself into a sitting posture. Before him lay the verdant slopes and ridges of the mountain, bathed in sunlight. Yonder his sheep fed peacefully, watched by the faithful Patch. Then the old man raised his vision higher than the earth and thanked Heaven that he was still safe and sound onterra firma.[221]

[Contents]CHAPTER I.Some of our relatives on the other side of the globe will be astonished to learn that the way to the Moon has been discovered by an unfortunate member of theliteratiof Australia.The greatest thinkers of the day have scouted the idea as nothing but moonshine, when spoken to about the practicability of the discovery. But it must be borne in mind that the same laws of Nature which guide and rule the Mother Country are somewhat erratic here at the Antipodes, inasmuch as we are allupside down—standing on our heads, in fact. Therefore we are prepared for marvels. In a land where there are animals who stand on theirtails, and fight with all four feet at once; where the young leap out of and into their parents’ stomachs at will—there being a strange bag in that quarter for the purpose of humouring the antics of the juveniles, just like the hole in the[198]bow of a timber ship; where there are creatures that appear neither flesh nor fowl—who swim in ponds like a duck, have a duck’s bill, who lay eggs, yet have feet and hair like a beast; in a land where the leaves on the trees grow edgeways to the sun, and the trees themselves shoot downwards, surely it is no great wonder that we have found a passage to the great luminary of night, and had the pleasure of shaking hands and likewise supping with the disobedient man who gathered sticks on Sunday.“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”The scientific world will never feel half the surprise anent our new discovery as that which fell upon the old shepherd when he found himself surrounded and made a prisoner. He had left his sheep in charge of the only companion he had in these regions—viz., his dog. Within a sheltered nook on one of the fairest and most luxuriant slopes of the mysterious Blue Mountains, Patch, the half-bred dingo, held watch and ward over his charge while his master wandered down the rugged side of the cliff in search of gold. Here the sun was almost hid behind the broad awning of gigantic trees, whose immense trunks, gnarled and hoary with age, stood like mammoth sentinels to guard the dim glen below. The lonely herdsman had often descended to that spot before unmolested,[199]but now from every mound and hollow there peered the grotesque faces of the Mountain Sprites, watching his every movement, until with a sudden rush they pounced upon him and held him fast. For a time he struggled manfully to free himself. It was quite useless. The genii of the Blue Mountains are a powerful people, not to be trifled with, as the shepherd soon discovered.[200]He was lifted bodily up, and borne along so swiftly that he nearly lost his senses. The route of his captors lay in a downward direction—neverupward. And it appeared as if the dusky ravines which they traversed led right away from the upper world into the region of eternal night.“Dear friends, good people, where are you taking me?” cried the poor fellow in an affrighted tone.“Bis, bus, silence, mortal!” replied an ancient gnome authoritatively. “Your destination is not on the Earth, but the Moon.”“Good gracious!” ejaculated the poor shepherd, with starting eyeballs.“Bus, peace,” rejoined the brownie in a whisper. “The voice of man hath never disturbed these solitudes since the creation.”“Gentlemen, pray let me go!”“Art thou not going, thou dissatisfied mortal? Be silent.”“It is all up with me,” groaned the unfortunate captive.“Nay, verily, it will be all down with thee,” answered the sprite. “Behold!”As the fairy spoke they emerged into a dismal spot, in the midst of which gaped a wide, black pit; at the mouth of the chasm the shepherd[201]beheld the forms of two beings in shape like the fabled vampires, who clapped their tremendous wings in ecstasy at sight of him.“Who is this?” they cried.And the fairies answered, “A visitor for Moonland.”“No, no, I’m not going to the Moon,” replied the trembling shepherd.The horrid vampires laughed in exultation at his misery, and the sound shook the walls of the solid cliffs around. “Hear me, Dusk, and thou, Lunar,” said the gnome, addressing the winged monsters. “This fellow hath had the impudence to invade our sacred precincts, and attempted to release some of our dreaded foes, the ‘Gold Nuggets’ whom we have made prisoners. What shall we do with the rascal?”“Send him to the Moon,” they cried with one voice.“Mercy, gentlemen, mercy.”“Fiddlesticks! To Moonland with him,” answered the sprite. “There is lots of room for him to fossick there. Eh, Lunar?”Over that terrible void, near where they held him, our hero observed a strange object floating with a gentle, oscillating motion, as a feather floats in space. In appearance, it was like a gigantic[202]umbrella inverted, with a hole cut in the centre. To the ends of the ribs cords of gossamer were fastened which stretched upward to a car in the shape of a star, the points expanded like huge wings. The nature of this material, or by what process this curious vehicle had been manufactured, the unfortunate shepherd had neither power nor leisure at that moment to examine, for the ancient fay had no sooner spoken than Dusk and his companion seized hold of him, like a pair of vultures, and flew upward with him in the car of the parachute.“Good-bye, Lunar, let me know when you arrive,” cried some of the fairies.“Slide a message down a moonbeam,” responded others.“Or a rainbow, or the tail of a comet.” And while the mountain sprites stood and jeered, the quaint machine suddenly shot down the empty space with the velocity of a cannon-ball.Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air? Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him for a moment. Yet it was only for a moment. Strange[203]to say, he did not lose his presence of mind, and his fear left him as suddenly as it had fallen upon him. From a bewildering chaos of thought in the captive’s mindcuriositybecame paramount to all else. Amid the murky blackness around and about there was very little to examine, but the shepherd thrust his head through the gossamer network of the machine and gazed below. Far, far away in the profound depths beneath them, he saw a vast disc of soft light which threw its rays upward, and enabled him to discern that the abyss through which they were descending appeared like a hollow cone, the neck of which began in the mountain, and like an eddying circle in the water, gradually became wider and wider as they advanced.The progress of the parachute was so swift that they rapidly emerged into the focus of the light—the wide mouth of the cone receding to a faint, dark circle on the pale horizon in the space of a few seconds. It was astounding how wondrous soft and beautiful the shimmering glow of light in this new region burst upon the mortal’s vision. He had witnessed many lovely changes from the lofty peaks of the New South Wales Alps, but Dame Nature had never presented herself to his eyes in such a garb before. Not the glaring, hot,[204]dazzling rays of the summer sun here, but rather a gentle, subdued, dreamy refulgence, without the ghost of a shadow or shade of variation upon anything.Above, below, one universal, pale, liquid glimmer, devoid of vapour. Distant mountains, peaked and gabled like an iceberg, appeared to view, and hills and valleys, with deep ruts and chasms, forming an amphitheatre of vast dimensions, became more clear to the sight every moment. Everything seemed mixed up and confounded by the uniformity of colour. Rocks, valleys, and streams presented a weird and wonderful aspect under new conditions where, like Hoffmann’s shadowless man, every object was lighted up on all sides, equally, in the absence of a central point. Scorched and charred and burnt, there was not a sign of a tree or a shrub on the face of the whole landscape. Scoriæ and dross and pumice-stone—nothing else, save the waters that lay bathed in luminous silvery grey.From the vast panorama our hero turned his eyes upon his companions, the vampires. They had cast the netting of the car aside.“Prepare thyself, mortal,” cried Lunar in a terrible voice.“Prepare myself, for what?”[205]“For a header into the sea yonder beneath us,” answered the vampire coolly.“Good heavens! Gentlemen, you really don’t think I can dive from this great height! I shall be dashed to mincemeat,” responded the shepherd, in a tone of consternation.The monsters only laughed at him, and repeated their command.“Descend a little lower, good Lunar. Do, gentle Dusk,” he pleaded.“We can’t. This is Moonland. Not enoughgravityhere,” they replied.“Moonland! Mercy on me! And shall I have to leave my old bones in the Moon?” cried he in despair.“Plenty of ’em here—loads. Valleys full, as you’ll find. Come, jump!”“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 I.

Some of our relatives on the other side of the globe will be astonished to learn that the way to the Moon has been discovered by an unfortunate member of theliteratiof Australia.The greatest thinkers of the day have scouted the idea as nothing but moonshine, when spoken to about the practicability of the discovery. But it must be borne in mind that the same laws of Nature which guide and rule the Mother Country are somewhat erratic here at the Antipodes, inasmuch as we are allupside down—standing on our heads, in fact. Therefore we are prepared for marvels. In a land where there are animals who stand on theirtails, and fight with all four feet at once; where the young leap out of and into their parents’ stomachs at will—there being a strange bag in that quarter for the purpose of humouring the antics of the juveniles, just like the hole in the[198]bow of a timber ship; where there are creatures that appear neither flesh nor fowl—who swim in ponds like a duck, have a duck’s bill, who lay eggs, yet have feet and hair like a beast; in a land where the leaves on the trees grow edgeways to the sun, and the trees themselves shoot downwards, surely it is no great wonder that we have found a passage to the great luminary of night, and had the pleasure of shaking hands and likewise supping with the disobedient man who gathered sticks on Sunday.“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”The scientific world will never feel half the surprise anent our new discovery as that which fell upon the old shepherd when he found himself surrounded and made a prisoner. He had left his sheep in charge of the only companion he had in these regions—viz., his dog. Within a sheltered nook on one of the fairest and most luxuriant slopes of the mysterious Blue Mountains, Patch, the half-bred dingo, held watch and ward over his charge while his master wandered down the rugged side of the cliff in search of gold. Here the sun was almost hid behind the broad awning of gigantic trees, whose immense trunks, gnarled and hoary with age, stood like mammoth sentinels to guard the dim glen below. The lonely herdsman had often descended to that spot before unmolested,[199]but now from every mound and hollow there peered the grotesque faces of the Mountain Sprites, watching his every movement, until with a sudden rush they pounced upon him and held him fast. For a time he struggled manfully to free himself. It was quite useless. The genii of the Blue Mountains are a powerful people, not to be trifled with, as the shepherd soon discovered.[200]He was lifted bodily up, and borne along so swiftly that he nearly lost his senses. The route of his captors lay in a downward direction—neverupward. And it appeared as if the dusky ravines which they traversed led right away from the upper world into the region of eternal night.“Dear friends, good people, where are you taking me?” cried the poor fellow in an affrighted tone.“Bis, bus, silence, mortal!” replied an ancient gnome authoritatively. “Your destination is not on the Earth, but the Moon.”“Good gracious!” ejaculated the poor shepherd, with starting eyeballs.“Bus, peace,” rejoined the brownie in a whisper. “The voice of man hath never disturbed these solitudes since the creation.”“Gentlemen, pray let me go!”“Art thou not going, thou dissatisfied mortal? Be silent.”“It is all up with me,” groaned the unfortunate captive.“Nay, verily, it will be all down with thee,” answered the sprite. “Behold!”As the fairy spoke they emerged into a dismal spot, in the midst of which gaped a wide, black pit; at the mouth of the chasm the shepherd[201]beheld the forms of two beings in shape like the fabled vampires, who clapped their tremendous wings in ecstasy at sight of him.“Who is this?” they cried.And the fairies answered, “A visitor for Moonland.”“No, no, I’m not going to the Moon,” replied the trembling shepherd.The horrid vampires laughed in exultation at his misery, and the sound shook the walls of the solid cliffs around. “Hear me, Dusk, and thou, Lunar,” said the gnome, addressing the winged monsters. “This fellow hath had the impudence to invade our sacred precincts, and attempted to release some of our dreaded foes, the ‘Gold Nuggets’ whom we have made prisoners. What shall we do with the rascal?”“Send him to the Moon,” they cried with one voice.“Mercy, gentlemen, mercy.”“Fiddlesticks! To Moonland with him,” answered the sprite. “There is lots of room for him to fossick there. Eh, Lunar?”Over that terrible void, near where they held him, our hero observed a strange object floating with a gentle, oscillating motion, as a feather floats in space. In appearance, it was like a gigantic[202]umbrella inverted, with a hole cut in the centre. To the ends of the ribs cords of gossamer were fastened which stretched upward to a car in the shape of a star, the points expanded like huge wings. The nature of this material, or by what process this curious vehicle had been manufactured, the unfortunate shepherd had neither power nor leisure at that moment to examine, for the ancient fay had no sooner spoken than Dusk and his companion seized hold of him, like a pair of vultures, and flew upward with him in the car of the parachute.“Good-bye, Lunar, let me know when you arrive,” cried some of the fairies.“Slide a message down a moonbeam,” responded others.“Or a rainbow, or the tail of a comet.” And while the mountain sprites stood and jeered, the quaint machine suddenly shot down the empty space with the velocity of a cannon-ball.Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air? Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him for a moment. Yet it was only for a moment. Strange[203]to say, he did not lose his presence of mind, and his fear left him as suddenly as it had fallen upon him. From a bewildering chaos of thought in the captive’s mindcuriositybecame paramount to all else. Amid the murky blackness around and about there was very little to examine, but the shepherd thrust his head through the gossamer network of the machine and gazed below. Far, far away in the profound depths beneath them, he saw a vast disc of soft light which threw its rays upward, and enabled him to discern that the abyss through which they were descending appeared like a hollow cone, the neck of which began in the mountain, and like an eddying circle in the water, gradually became wider and wider as they advanced.The progress of the parachute was so swift that they rapidly emerged into the focus of the light—the wide mouth of the cone receding to a faint, dark circle on the pale horizon in the space of a few seconds. It was astounding how wondrous soft and beautiful the shimmering glow of light in this new region burst upon the mortal’s vision. He had witnessed many lovely changes from the lofty peaks of the New South Wales Alps, but Dame Nature had never presented herself to his eyes in such a garb before. Not the glaring, hot,[204]dazzling rays of the summer sun here, but rather a gentle, subdued, dreamy refulgence, without the ghost of a shadow or shade of variation upon anything.Above, below, one universal, pale, liquid glimmer, devoid of vapour. Distant mountains, peaked and gabled like an iceberg, appeared to view, and hills and valleys, with deep ruts and chasms, forming an amphitheatre of vast dimensions, became more clear to the sight every moment. Everything seemed mixed up and confounded by the uniformity of colour. Rocks, valleys, and streams presented a weird and wonderful aspect under new conditions where, like Hoffmann’s shadowless man, every object was lighted up on all sides, equally, in the absence of a central point. Scorched and charred and burnt, there was not a sign of a tree or a shrub on the face of the whole landscape. Scoriæ and dross and pumice-stone—nothing else, save the waters that lay bathed in luminous silvery grey.From the vast panorama our hero turned his eyes upon his companions, the vampires. They had cast the netting of the car aside.“Prepare thyself, mortal,” cried Lunar in a terrible voice.“Prepare myself, for what?”[205]“For a header into the sea yonder beneath us,” answered the vampire coolly.“Good heavens! Gentlemen, you really don’t think I can dive from this great height! I shall be dashed to mincemeat,” responded the shepherd, in a tone of consternation.The monsters only laughed at him, and repeated their command.“Descend a little lower, good Lunar. Do, gentle Dusk,” he pleaded.“We can’t. This is Moonland. Not enoughgravityhere,” they replied.“Moonland! Mercy on me! And shall I have to leave my old bones in the Moon?” cried he in despair.“Plenty of ’em here—loads. Valleys full, as you’ll find. Come, jump!”“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]

Some of our relatives on the other side of the globe will be astonished to learn that the way to the Moon has been discovered by an unfortunate member of theliteratiof Australia.

The greatest thinkers of the day have scouted the idea as nothing but moonshine, when spoken to about the practicability of the discovery. But it must be borne in mind that the same laws of Nature which guide and rule the Mother Country are somewhat erratic here at the Antipodes, inasmuch as we are allupside down—standing on our heads, in fact. Therefore we are prepared for marvels. In a land where there are animals who stand on theirtails, and fight with all four feet at once; where the young leap out of and into their parents’ stomachs at will—there being a strange bag in that quarter for the purpose of humouring the antics of the juveniles, just like the hole in the[198]bow of a timber ship; where there are creatures that appear neither flesh nor fowl—who swim in ponds like a duck, have a duck’s bill, who lay eggs, yet have feet and hair like a beast; in a land where the leaves on the trees grow edgeways to the sun, and the trees themselves shoot downwards, surely it is no great wonder that we have found a passage to the great luminary of night, and had the pleasure of shaking hands and likewise supping with the disobedient man who gathered sticks on Sunday.

“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”

“HE WAS BORNE ALONG SO SWIFTLY THAT HE NEARLY LOST HIS SENSES.”

The scientific world will never feel half the surprise anent our new discovery as that which fell upon the old shepherd when he found himself surrounded and made a prisoner. He had left his sheep in charge of the only companion he had in these regions—viz., his dog. Within a sheltered nook on one of the fairest and most luxuriant slopes of the mysterious Blue Mountains, Patch, the half-bred dingo, held watch and ward over his charge while his master wandered down the rugged side of the cliff in search of gold. Here the sun was almost hid behind the broad awning of gigantic trees, whose immense trunks, gnarled and hoary with age, stood like mammoth sentinels to guard the dim glen below. The lonely herdsman had often descended to that spot before unmolested,[199]but now from every mound and hollow there peered the grotesque faces of the Mountain Sprites, watching his every movement, until with a sudden rush they pounced upon him and held him fast. For a time he struggled manfully to free himself. It was quite useless. The genii of the Blue Mountains are a powerful people, not to be trifled with, as the shepherd soon discovered.[200]He was lifted bodily up, and borne along so swiftly that he nearly lost his senses. The route of his captors lay in a downward direction—neverupward. And it appeared as if the dusky ravines which they traversed led right away from the upper world into the region of eternal night.

“Dear friends, good people, where are you taking me?” cried the poor fellow in an affrighted tone.

“Bis, bus, silence, mortal!” replied an ancient gnome authoritatively. “Your destination is not on the Earth, but the Moon.”

“Good gracious!” ejaculated the poor shepherd, with starting eyeballs.

“Bus, peace,” rejoined the brownie in a whisper. “The voice of man hath never disturbed these solitudes since the creation.”

“Gentlemen, pray let me go!”

“Art thou not going, thou dissatisfied mortal? Be silent.”

“It is all up with me,” groaned the unfortunate captive.

“Nay, verily, it will be all down with thee,” answered the sprite. “Behold!”

As the fairy spoke they emerged into a dismal spot, in the midst of which gaped a wide, black pit; at the mouth of the chasm the shepherd[201]beheld the forms of two beings in shape like the fabled vampires, who clapped their tremendous wings in ecstasy at sight of him.

“Who is this?” they cried.

And the fairies answered, “A visitor for Moonland.”

“No, no, I’m not going to the Moon,” replied the trembling shepherd.

The horrid vampires laughed in exultation at his misery, and the sound shook the walls of the solid cliffs around. “Hear me, Dusk, and thou, Lunar,” said the gnome, addressing the winged monsters. “This fellow hath had the impudence to invade our sacred precincts, and attempted to release some of our dreaded foes, the ‘Gold Nuggets’ whom we have made prisoners. What shall we do with the rascal?”

“Send him to the Moon,” they cried with one voice.

“Mercy, gentlemen, mercy.”

“Fiddlesticks! To Moonland with him,” answered the sprite. “There is lots of room for him to fossick there. Eh, Lunar?”

Over that terrible void, near where they held him, our hero observed a strange object floating with a gentle, oscillating motion, as a feather floats in space. In appearance, it was like a gigantic[202]umbrella inverted, with a hole cut in the centre. To the ends of the ribs cords of gossamer were fastened which stretched upward to a car in the shape of a star, the points expanded like huge wings. The nature of this material, or by what process this curious vehicle had been manufactured, the unfortunate shepherd had neither power nor leisure at that moment to examine, for the ancient fay had no sooner spoken than Dusk and his companion seized hold of him, like a pair of vultures, and flew upward with him in the car of the parachute.

“Good-bye, Lunar, let me know when you arrive,” cried some of the fairies.

“Slide a message down a moonbeam,” responded others.

“Or a rainbow, or the tail of a comet.” And while the mountain sprites stood and jeered, the quaint machine suddenly shot down the empty space with the velocity of a cannon-ball.

Who shall describe the sensation of the poor mortal, as he felt himself falling—falling down—down, a blind mass, through the darkened air? Those who have fallen, or have leaped even from a moderate height, can have no conception of the frenzied terror that took possession of him for a moment. Yet it was only for a moment. Strange[203]to say, he did not lose his presence of mind, and his fear left him as suddenly as it had fallen upon him. From a bewildering chaos of thought in the captive’s mindcuriositybecame paramount to all else. Amid the murky blackness around and about there was very little to examine, but the shepherd thrust his head through the gossamer network of the machine and gazed below. Far, far away in the profound depths beneath them, he saw a vast disc of soft light which threw its rays upward, and enabled him to discern that the abyss through which they were descending appeared like a hollow cone, the neck of which began in the mountain, and like an eddying circle in the water, gradually became wider and wider as they advanced.

The progress of the parachute was so swift that they rapidly emerged into the focus of the light—the wide mouth of the cone receding to a faint, dark circle on the pale horizon in the space of a few seconds. It was astounding how wondrous soft and beautiful the shimmering glow of light in this new region burst upon the mortal’s vision. He had witnessed many lovely changes from the lofty peaks of the New South Wales Alps, but Dame Nature had never presented herself to his eyes in such a garb before. Not the glaring, hot,[204]dazzling rays of the summer sun here, but rather a gentle, subdued, dreamy refulgence, without the ghost of a shadow or shade of variation upon anything.

Above, below, one universal, pale, liquid glimmer, devoid of vapour. Distant mountains, peaked and gabled like an iceberg, appeared to view, and hills and valleys, with deep ruts and chasms, forming an amphitheatre of vast dimensions, became more clear to the sight every moment. Everything seemed mixed up and confounded by the uniformity of colour. Rocks, valleys, and streams presented a weird and wonderful aspect under new conditions where, like Hoffmann’s shadowless man, every object was lighted up on all sides, equally, in the absence of a central point. Scorched and charred and burnt, there was not a sign of a tree or a shrub on the face of the whole landscape. Scoriæ and dross and pumice-stone—nothing else, save the waters that lay bathed in luminous silvery grey.

From the vast panorama our hero turned his eyes upon his companions, the vampires. They had cast the netting of the car aside.

“Prepare thyself, mortal,” cried Lunar in a terrible voice.

“Prepare myself, for what?”[205]

“For a header into the sea yonder beneath us,” answered the vampire coolly.

“Good heavens! Gentlemen, you really don’t think I can dive from this great height! I shall be dashed to mincemeat,” responded the shepherd, in a tone of consternation.

The monsters only laughed at him, and repeated their command.

“Descend a little lower, good Lunar. Do, gentle Dusk,” he pleaded.

“We can’t. This is Moonland. Not enoughgravityhere,” they replied.

“Moonland! Mercy on me! And shall I have to leave my old bones in the Moon?” cried he in despair.

“Plenty of ’em here—loads. Valleys full, as you’ll find. Come, jump!”

“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]

[Contents]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 theother 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.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”Australian Fairy Tales][Page 209.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”In his terror the shepherd fled—when lo! he found thathe toowas endowed with this singular force of locomotion. It is surprising how fear lends a man wings. The terrestrial one didn’t need anything of the kind, though. Incredible the springs and leaps he made over the high peaks, across chasms and cliffs, and along the[210]steep mountain-sides; wonderful the feeling which changed from dread to exuberant delight and ecstasy, and again to terror, as the mighty voice of the pursuer came upon his ears like a peal of thunder.“Halt! Stop! Who art thou?”Had he been then and there endowed with wings, the old shepherd felt that he could not escape from the owner of that voice. All he could do was to cast himself flat on his face and await his doom in silence.“Shall Greencheese utter his command twice? Who art thou?” repeated the mammoth.“Mercy, your Highness. I am only old Bob, the shepherd of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales.”“Old Bob! Blue Mountains! Ha! Fuddle-fum. Well?”“Some fairies got hold of me t’other day, and bundles me down here, on a sort of humberellar, your Worship; that’s all I knows about it,” cried the mortal in a despairing tone.“Fairies! Mum! I know the rogues,” responded the creature quickly. “Many a summer’s night I have watched their freaks and gambols among secluded nooks and dells hidden away from mortal ken. Many a long hour we have held converse together, in the silent ravines and woods, when[211]all the human mites of the Australian world were locked in sleep. Go on!”“I knowsnoffin’more, sir, only that I shouldn’t like to leave my old bodyhere!” cried Bob.“Ha! Buncham! Fi-pho—fiddle-faddlem! Thou shalt live.”“Thanks, your Highness.” And the shepherd lifted his eyes and gazed upon his companion. The Colossus at Rhodes, towering high above the lofty gables of the aged city, was but a pigmy in comparison. Ancient, hoary Sphinx of the Egyptians, standing for countless years on the shores of Father Nile, would have seemed a thing of yesterday beside it. Nay, that primitive marvel, the figure of wood discovered in Joppa, aged five thousand years, could reckon itself an infant in proximity to this lunarian.Save the round, full, Chinese-like face, with its accompanying tremendous mouth, and the faint outline of the human form, there was nothing further to assist description of the creature except that he was high and bulky beyond conception, and quite as transparent as a lighted lantern. The face wasn’t at all unpleasant. It beamed with such a broad, friendly, yet withal humorous, expression as it gazed down upon Bob, that the mortal found courage to address it.[212]“Please, who be you, sir?”“Me? I’m theMan in the Moon, of course,” replied the creature, smiling.“Eh! Why, dash my old jumper, if I didn’t think as I’d seen your countenance before!” answered the old herdsman with animation. “I can tell yer, as ye comes out pretty strong sometimes on them ’ere mountains t’other side of Sydney. Why, I’ve yarded many a thousand sheep, and you’ve been a-looking at me all the while, eh?”The Man in the Moon nodded.“Ah, and I’ll bet you knows my old dog, Patch?”Another nod in the affirmative.“Brayvo! old boy. Why, we’re old chums. Shake hands.”“We never shake hands in the Moon, Bob; but I’ll embrace you,” cried the lunarian, smiling; and suiting the action to the word, he suddenly enveloped the mortal in such a broad beam of refulgence that the old fellow appeared as if cased in polished armour.In accordance with the etiquette of Moonland, it would be rude to disturb theirtête-à-têtebefore next Saturday.[213]

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 theother 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.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”Australian Fairy Tales][Page 209.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”In his terror the shepherd fled—when lo! he found thathe toowas endowed with this singular force of locomotion. It is surprising how fear lends a man wings. The terrestrial one didn’t need anything of the kind, though. Incredible the springs and leaps he made over the high peaks, across chasms and cliffs, and along the[210]steep mountain-sides; wonderful the feeling which changed from dread to exuberant delight and ecstasy, and again to terror, as the mighty voice of the pursuer came upon his ears like a peal of thunder.“Halt! Stop! Who art thou?”Had he been then and there endowed with wings, the old shepherd felt that he could not escape from the owner of that voice. All he could do was to cast himself flat on his face and await his doom in silence.“Shall Greencheese utter his command twice? Who art thou?” repeated the mammoth.“Mercy, your Highness. I am only old Bob, the shepherd of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales.”“Old Bob! Blue Mountains! Ha! Fuddle-fum. Well?”“Some fairies got hold of me t’other day, and bundles me down here, on a sort of humberellar, your Worship; that’s all I knows about it,” cried the mortal in a despairing tone.“Fairies! Mum! I know the rogues,” responded the creature quickly. “Many a summer’s night I have watched their freaks and gambols among secluded nooks and dells hidden away from mortal ken. Many a long hour we have held converse together, in the silent ravines and woods, when[211]all the human mites of the Australian world were locked in sleep. Go on!”“I knowsnoffin’more, sir, only that I shouldn’t like to leave my old bodyhere!” cried Bob.“Ha! Buncham! Fi-pho—fiddle-faddlem! Thou shalt live.”“Thanks, your Highness.” And the shepherd lifted his eyes and gazed upon his companion. The Colossus at Rhodes, towering high above the lofty gables of the aged city, was but a pigmy in comparison. Ancient, hoary Sphinx of the Egyptians, standing for countless years on the shores of Father Nile, would have seemed a thing of yesterday beside it. Nay, that primitive marvel, the figure of wood discovered in Joppa, aged five thousand years, could reckon itself an infant in proximity to this lunarian.Save the round, full, Chinese-like face, with its accompanying tremendous mouth, and the faint outline of the human form, there was nothing further to assist description of the creature except that he was high and bulky beyond conception, and quite as transparent as a lighted lantern. The face wasn’t at all unpleasant. It beamed with such a broad, friendly, yet withal humorous, expression as it gazed down upon Bob, that the mortal found courage to address it.[212]“Please, who be you, sir?”“Me? I’m theMan in the Moon, of course,” replied the creature, smiling.“Eh! Why, dash my old jumper, if I didn’t think as I’d seen your countenance before!” answered the old herdsman with animation. “I can tell yer, as ye comes out pretty strong sometimes on them ’ere mountains t’other side of Sydney. Why, I’ve yarded many a thousand sheep, and you’ve been a-looking at me all the while, eh?”The Man in the Moon nodded.“Ah, and I’ll bet you knows my old dog, Patch?”Another nod in the affirmative.“Brayvo! old boy. Why, we’re old chums. Shake hands.”“We never shake hands in the Moon, Bob; but I’ll embrace you,” cried the lunarian, smiling; and suiting the action to the word, he suddenly enveloped the mortal in such a broad beam of refulgence that the old fellow appeared as if cased in polished armour.In accordance with the etiquette of Moonland, it would be rude to disturb theirtête-à-têtebefore next Saturday.[213]

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 theother 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.

“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”Australian Fairy Tales][Page 209.“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”

Australian Fairy Tales][Page 209.

“He was not certain whether the monster was leaping or flying.”

In his terror the shepherd fled—when lo! he found thathe toowas endowed with this singular force of locomotion. It is surprising how fear lends a man wings. The terrestrial one didn’t need anything of the kind, though. Incredible the springs and leaps he made over the high peaks, across chasms and cliffs, and along the[210]steep mountain-sides; wonderful the feeling which changed from dread to exuberant delight and ecstasy, and again to terror, as the mighty voice of the pursuer came upon his ears like a peal of thunder.

“Halt! Stop! Who art thou?”

Had he been then and there endowed with wings, the old shepherd felt that he could not escape from the owner of that voice. All he could do was to cast himself flat on his face and await his doom in silence.

“Shall Greencheese utter his command twice? Who art thou?” repeated the mammoth.

“Mercy, your Highness. I am only old Bob, the shepherd of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales.”

“Old Bob! Blue Mountains! Ha! Fuddle-fum. Well?”

“Some fairies got hold of me t’other day, and bundles me down here, on a sort of humberellar, your Worship; that’s all I knows about it,” cried the mortal in a despairing tone.

“Fairies! Mum! I know the rogues,” responded the creature quickly. “Many a summer’s night I have watched their freaks and gambols among secluded nooks and dells hidden away from mortal ken. Many a long hour we have held converse together, in the silent ravines and woods, when[211]all the human mites of the Australian world were locked in sleep. Go on!”

“I knowsnoffin’more, sir, only that I shouldn’t like to leave my old bodyhere!” cried Bob.

“Ha! Buncham! Fi-pho—fiddle-faddlem! Thou shalt live.”

“Thanks, your Highness.” And the shepherd lifted his eyes and gazed upon his companion. The Colossus at Rhodes, towering high above the lofty gables of the aged city, was but a pigmy in comparison. Ancient, hoary Sphinx of the Egyptians, standing for countless years on the shores of Father Nile, would have seemed a thing of yesterday beside it. Nay, that primitive marvel, the figure of wood discovered in Joppa, aged five thousand years, could reckon itself an infant in proximity to this lunarian.

Save the round, full, Chinese-like face, with its accompanying tremendous mouth, and the faint outline of the human form, there was nothing further to assist description of the creature except that he was high and bulky beyond conception, and quite as transparent as a lighted lantern. The face wasn’t at all unpleasant. It beamed with such a broad, friendly, yet withal humorous, expression as it gazed down upon Bob, that the mortal found courage to address it.[212]

“Please, who be you, sir?”

“Me? I’m theMan in the Moon, of course,” replied the creature, smiling.

“Eh! Why, dash my old jumper, if I didn’t think as I’d seen your countenance before!” answered the old herdsman with animation. “I can tell yer, as ye comes out pretty strong sometimes on them ’ere mountains t’other side of Sydney. Why, I’ve yarded many a thousand sheep, and you’ve been a-looking at me all the while, eh?”

The Man in the Moon nodded.

“Ah, and I’ll bet you knows my old dog, Patch?”

Another nod in the affirmative.

“Brayvo! old boy. Why, we’re old chums. Shake hands.”

“We never shake hands in the Moon, Bob; but I’ll embrace you,” cried the lunarian, smiling; and suiting the action to the word, he suddenly enveloped the mortal in such a broad beam of refulgence that the old fellow appeared as if cased in polished armour.

In accordance with the etiquette of Moonland, it would be rude to disturb theirtête-à-têtebefore next Saturday.[213]

[Contents]CHAPTER III.“The presumptuous beings on earth have the impudence to tell their children that the Moon is made ofgreen cheese,” quoth the mammoth.“Indeed, sir, but that is very true,” answered Bob. “When I was a boy I believed it was only a big cheese, and I can safely say that when I’ve seen it in the water, up at Bathurst, where we lived, I’ve been silly enough to wade into the water arter it, thinking to take it home and have my supper off it.”“Ah, it’s rare fun to watch the moon-rakers try to grasp my shadow, Bob.”“I believe you, sir. Lord, how you must laugh in your sleeve at ’em! Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the shepherd reflectively.The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. I watch the murderer[214]crawling with stealthy feet towards his victim, and I note the robber lying in wait to plunder; I haunt the gloom where guilt and misery lie huddled together in rags. Wickedness in high places cannot escape me. Over the deep sleep of toiling millions my beams hold watch and ward, kissing the rosy lips of innocence, where yet lingers the soft breath of prayer. Hovering o’er the sighing maiden and the restless miser, weaving fancies which fill the poet’s brain with unutterable poesy, and with such shapes as live only in dreams of age and infancy, and vanish with the light of morn. Cuddlephum! Bobberish—Baa-lamb! Bo!”“Just so,” said Bob, opening wide his eyes at the strange words. “I begs to say that French wasn’t taught at the school I went to. Howsoever, I’m quite willing to dine with you, if that’s what you mean. I’m beginning to feel pereshious hungry, I can tell yer.”“Hungry! Base mortal, there is no such word known here,” echoed the monster.“Good heavens! No eating!” cried Bob, aghast.“None.”“Scissors! I’m afraid visitors from Australia won’t overrun Moonland, if that’s the case.”“Peace! Follow me, and thou shalt taste nectar,[215]which shall banish the cravings of thy vulgar race.”The Man in the Moon bounded away over the pumice-stone crags like a gigantic kangaroo, followed by Bob. Chaos and desolation were everywhere visible around them. Sad indeed and supremely melancholy looked the place. Mountains riven asunder; vast ravines and valleys choked with bleached bones of monsters unknown to men; immense plains, scattered thickly with the fossil remnants of ages; mingled dust and huge mounds of bony fragments of animal and reptile, which a thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed. Up the rugged zigzags with tremendous leaps, echoless, shadowless, and across the dust, silent to their footfall, went the lunarian and the mortal.“This is a dreary place, sir,” muttered the latter, almost breathless in his haste.“Peace, or perchance the forms of these dead monsters will rise to rebuke thee!” answered his companion solemnly. “Here, where thou art standing, these enormous animals of the first period lived and roved at will. The human mind cannot conceive their colossal proportions, for they were extinct many ages before the advent of man.”[216]The shepherd followed his conductor in silence, wondering if it were possible that these mighty dead could take shape again and swallow him at one snap. Jonah had been bolted by a whale, but the skeletons of these creatures appeared large enough to engulf a hundred whales a day, and twice that number of Jonahs into the bargain.Bob was almost ready to sink down amid the Golgotha when the Man in the Moon halted before a very high mountain. Making a sign to his companion to follow, he quickly disappeared from view. At first it seemed as if the mammoth had vanished within the mountain, but the mortal saw an opening at the base which he entered. What a study for a geologist! In the dim ages of the past, when the satellite of our Earth seethed and boiled as a vast crater, the solid intestines of this cone, yielding to some great power below it, had been riven in twain, leaving an unmeasurable grotto of winding galleries. Toiling along in the wake of the lunarian, the captive trod on a broad aisle, on each side of which rose a series of arches succeeding each other, like the noble arcades of some Gothic cathedral. Obelisk-like massive pillars stood out from the rent wall like mighty sentinels guarding the wreck. Had our hero been a mineralogist, armed with his hammer, his steel[217]pointer, his magnetic needles, and his blow pipe, what a fund of information he might have gleaned here to place before the spectacles of professors and philosophers! Nay, had he but possessed the faintest idea of the science of building, what patterns, what studies around and above him, for every form of the art to hereafter confound architects of the nineteenth century!Poor Bob was neither a mineralogist nor an architect, so he passed by these things without a second glance, and entered a vaulted chamber, upon whose round, jagged dome rested the whole weight of the mountain; the dented projections and the sharp points on wall and roof spun into an endless network of lines and seams, luminous as all things here seemed to be, and changing colour from silver-grey to deep crimson.Wonder had lost its functions for Bob the shepherd, otherwise he would have stood aghast at the strange forms moving to and fro within this chamber; round in shape, and taller than giants of long ago, with arms and legs evidently telescoped at the joints, so that they could lengthen or shorten them at will, and each shedding their quota of refulgence to illuminate the scene. Monster glow-worms, gigantic fire-flies, with the trickery of monkeys, and the strength[218]of bears, seized the shrinking man, and rose with him to the dome, which opened instantly and engulfed them. Amidst a circle of light, which changed quicker than the sparkles of a diamond, the poor shepherd found he was being borne upward and hemmed in by a ring of these natives of the Moon—upward and yet upward, without will to pause or stop, the mad whirlwind of light ever changing, red, blue, grey, yellow, white, azure, and the legion gathering in increased numbers every moment round him until the climax came, and the crater, that had been silent for countless ages, once more opened its ponderous jaws, casting him forth as a rocket, where—amidst fiery rings and bars, and blazing stars of light—he fell down, down, down into darkness and oblivion!*   *   *“I say, mate, how far is it to the Blue Mountains Inn?”Old Bob, the shepherd, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the questioner. He was a stout, thick-set fellow, with a heavy swag on his back, and a black billy-can in his hand.The man had to repeat his query ere the herdsman found speech.[219]“Why, surely,you’renot the Man in the Moon, eh?” asked Bob, with a wild stare.The swagman stepped backward a pace or two, and regarded our hero with more attention.“Man in the Moon!” he repeated. “Why, the old fellow’s gone off his head.”“‘WHY, SURELY, YOU’RE NOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’”“ ‘WHY, SURELY,YOU’RENOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’ ”“Where’s the others with the long legs and arms?” and the shepherd shuddered.“He’s cranky, sure enough,” muttered the traveller audibly. “The coves as you were asking arter are all gone,” he said aloud. “You get up on your pins, or they’ll be back again[220]Here’s a bob; come now, hook it, or they’ll have you,” saying which the swagman went on his way.Our hero raised himself into a sitting posture. Before him lay the verdant slopes and ridges of the mountain, bathed in sunlight. Yonder his sheep fed peacefully, watched by the faithful Patch. Then the old man raised his vision higher than the earth and thanked Heaven that he was still safe and sound onterra firma.[221]

CHAPTER III.

“The presumptuous beings on earth have the impudence to tell their children that the Moon is made ofgreen cheese,” quoth the mammoth.“Indeed, sir, but that is very true,” answered Bob. “When I was a boy I believed it was only a big cheese, and I can safely say that when I’ve seen it in the water, up at Bathurst, where we lived, I’ve been silly enough to wade into the water arter it, thinking to take it home and have my supper off it.”“Ah, it’s rare fun to watch the moon-rakers try to grasp my shadow, Bob.”“I believe you, sir. Lord, how you must laugh in your sleeve at ’em! Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the shepherd reflectively.The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. I watch the murderer[214]crawling with stealthy feet towards his victim, and I note the robber lying in wait to plunder; I haunt the gloom where guilt and misery lie huddled together in rags. Wickedness in high places cannot escape me. Over the deep sleep of toiling millions my beams hold watch and ward, kissing the rosy lips of innocence, where yet lingers the soft breath of prayer. Hovering o’er the sighing maiden and the restless miser, weaving fancies which fill the poet’s brain with unutterable poesy, and with such shapes as live only in dreams of age and infancy, and vanish with the light of morn. Cuddlephum! Bobberish—Baa-lamb! Bo!”“Just so,” said Bob, opening wide his eyes at the strange words. “I begs to say that French wasn’t taught at the school I went to. Howsoever, I’m quite willing to dine with you, if that’s what you mean. I’m beginning to feel pereshious hungry, I can tell yer.”“Hungry! Base mortal, there is no such word known here,” echoed the monster.“Good heavens! No eating!” cried Bob, aghast.“None.”“Scissors! I’m afraid visitors from Australia won’t overrun Moonland, if that’s the case.”“Peace! Follow me, and thou shalt taste nectar,[215]which shall banish the cravings of thy vulgar race.”The Man in the Moon bounded away over the pumice-stone crags like a gigantic kangaroo, followed by Bob. Chaos and desolation were everywhere visible around them. Sad indeed and supremely melancholy looked the place. Mountains riven asunder; vast ravines and valleys choked with bleached bones of monsters unknown to men; immense plains, scattered thickly with the fossil remnants of ages; mingled dust and huge mounds of bony fragments of animal and reptile, which a thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed. Up the rugged zigzags with tremendous leaps, echoless, shadowless, and across the dust, silent to their footfall, went the lunarian and the mortal.“This is a dreary place, sir,” muttered the latter, almost breathless in his haste.“Peace, or perchance the forms of these dead monsters will rise to rebuke thee!” answered his companion solemnly. “Here, where thou art standing, these enormous animals of the first period lived and roved at will. The human mind cannot conceive their colossal proportions, for they were extinct many ages before the advent of man.”[216]The shepherd followed his conductor in silence, wondering if it were possible that these mighty dead could take shape again and swallow him at one snap. Jonah had been bolted by a whale, but the skeletons of these creatures appeared large enough to engulf a hundred whales a day, and twice that number of Jonahs into the bargain.Bob was almost ready to sink down amid the Golgotha when the Man in the Moon halted before a very high mountain. Making a sign to his companion to follow, he quickly disappeared from view. At first it seemed as if the mammoth had vanished within the mountain, but the mortal saw an opening at the base which he entered. What a study for a geologist! In the dim ages of the past, when the satellite of our Earth seethed and boiled as a vast crater, the solid intestines of this cone, yielding to some great power below it, had been riven in twain, leaving an unmeasurable grotto of winding galleries. Toiling along in the wake of the lunarian, the captive trod on a broad aisle, on each side of which rose a series of arches succeeding each other, like the noble arcades of some Gothic cathedral. Obelisk-like massive pillars stood out from the rent wall like mighty sentinels guarding the wreck. Had our hero been a mineralogist, armed with his hammer, his steel[217]pointer, his magnetic needles, and his blow pipe, what a fund of information he might have gleaned here to place before the spectacles of professors and philosophers! Nay, had he but possessed the faintest idea of the science of building, what patterns, what studies around and above him, for every form of the art to hereafter confound architects of the nineteenth century!Poor Bob was neither a mineralogist nor an architect, so he passed by these things without a second glance, and entered a vaulted chamber, upon whose round, jagged dome rested the whole weight of the mountain; the dented projections and the sharp points on wall and roof spun into an endless network of lines and seams, luminous as all things here seemed to be, and changing colour from silver-grey to deep crimson.Wonder had lost its functions for Bob the shepherd, otherwise he would have stood aghast at the strange forms moving to and fro within this chamber; round in shape, and taller than giants of long ago, with arms and legs evidently telescoped at the joints, so that they could lengthen or shorten them at will, and each shedding their quota of refulgence to illuminate the scene. Monster glow-worms, gigantic fire-flies, with the trickery of monkeys, and the strength[218]of bears, seized the shrinking man, and rose with him to the dome, which opened instantly and engulfed them. Amidst a circle of light, which changed quicker than the sparkles of a diamond, the poor shepherd found he was being borne upward and hemmed in by a ring of these natives of the Moon—upward and yet upward, without will to pause or stop, the mad whirlwind of light ever changing, red, blue, grey, yellow, white, azure, and the legion gathering in increased numbers every moment round him until the climax came, and the crater, that had been silent for countless ages, once more opened its ponderous jaws, casting him forth as a rocket, where—amidst fiery rings and bars, and blazing stars of light—he fell down, down, down into darkness and oblivion!*   *   *“I say, mate, how far is it to the Blue Mountains Inn?”Old Bob, the shepherd, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the questioner. He was a stout, thick-set fellow, with a heavy swag on his back, and a black billy-can in his hand.The man had to repeat his query ere the herdsman found speech.[219]“Why, surely,you’renot the Man in the Moon, eh?” asked Bob, with a wild stare.The swagman stepped backward a pace or two, and regarded our hero with more attention.“Man in the Moon!” he repeated. “Why, the old fellow’s gone off his head.”“‘WHY, SURELY, YOU’RE NOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’”“ ‘WHY, SURELY,YOU’RENOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’ ”“Where’s the others with the long legs and arms?” and the shepherd shuddered.“He’s cranky, sure enough,” muttered the traveller audibly. “The coves as you were asking arter are all gone,” he said aloud. “You get up on your pins, or they’ll be back again[220]Here’s a bob; come now, hook it, or they’ll have you,” saying which the swagman went on his way.Our hero raised himself into a sitting posture. Before him lay the verdant slopes and ridges of the mountain, bathed in sunlight. Yonder his sheep fed peacefully, watched by the faithful Patch. Then the old man raised his vision higher than the earth and thanked Heaven that he was still safe and sound onterra firma.[221]

“The presumptuous beings on earth have the impudence to tell their children that the Moon is made ofgreen cheese,” quoth the mammoth.

“Indeed, sir, but that is very true,” answered Bob. “When I was a boy I believed it was only a big cheese, and I can safely say that when I’ve seen it in the water, up at Bathurst, where we lived, I’ve been silly enough to wade into the water arter it, thinking to take it home and have my supper off it.”

“Ah, it’s rare fun to watch the moon-rakers try to grasp my shadow, Bob.”

“I believe you, sir. Lord, how you must laugh in your sleeve at ’em! Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the shepherd reflectively.

The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. I watch the murderer[214]crawling with stealthy feet towards his victim, and I note the robber lying in wait to plunder; I haunt the gloom where guilt and misery lie huddled together in rags. Wickedness in high places cannot escape me. Over the deep sleep of toiling millions my beams hold watch and ward, kissing the rosy lips of innocence, where yet lingers the soft breath of prayer. Hovering o’er the sighing maiden and the restless miser, weaving fancies which fill the poet’s brain with unutterable poesy, and with such shapes as live only in dreams of age and infancy, and vanish with the light of morn. Cuddlephum! Bobberish—Baa-lamb! Bo!”

“Just so,” said Bob, opening wide his eyes at the strange words. “I begs to say that French wasn’t taught at the school I went to. Howsoever, I’m quite willing to dine with you, if that’s what you mean. I’m beginning to feel pereshious hungry, I can tell yer.”

“Hungry! Base mortal, there is no such word known here,” echoed the monster.

“Good heavens! No eating!” cried Bob, aghast.

“None.”

“Scissors! I’m afraid visitors from Australia won’t overrun Moonland, if that’s the case.”

“Peace! Follow me, and thou shalt taste nectar,[215]which shall banish the cravings of thy vulgar race.”

The Man in the Moon bounded away over the pumice-stone crags like a gigantic kangaroo, followed by Bob. Chaos and desolation were everywhere visible around them. Sad indeed and supremely melancholy looked the place. Mountains riven asunder; vast ravines and valleys choked with bleached bones of monsters unknown to men; immense plains, scattered thickly with the fossil remnants of ages; mingled dust and huge mounds of bony fragments of animal and reptile, which a thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed. Up the rugged zigzags with tremendous leaps, echoless, shadowless, and across the dust, silent to their footfall, went the lunarian and the mortal.

“This is a dreary place, sir,” muttered the latter, almost breathless in his haste.

“Peace, or perchance the forms of these dead monsters will rise to rebuke thee!” answered his companion solemnly. “Here, where thou art standing, these enormous animals of the first period lived and roved at will. The human mind cannot conceive their colossal proportions, for they were extinct many ages before the advent of man.”[216]

The shepherd followed his conductor in silence, wondering if it were possible that these mighty dead could take shape again and swallow him at one snap. Jonah had been bolted by a whale, but the skeletons of these creatures appeared large enough to engulf a hundred whales a day, and twice that number of Jonahs into the bargain.

Bob was almost ready to sink down amid the Golgotha when the Man in the Moon halted before a very high mountain. Making a sign to his companion to follow, he quickly disappeared from view. At first it seemed as if the mammoth had vanished within the mountain, but the mortal saw an opening at the base which he entered. What a study for a geologist! In the dim ages of the past, when the satellite of our Earth seethed and boiled as a vast crater, the solid intestines of this cone, yielding to some great power below it, had been riven in twain, leaving an unmeasurable grotto of winding galleries. Toiling along in the wake of the lunarian, the captive trod on a broad aisle, on each side of which rose a series of arches succeeding each other, like the noble arcades of some Gothic cathedral. Obelisk-like massive pillars stood out from the rent wall like mighty sentinels guarding the wreck. Had our hero been a mineralogist, armed with his hammer, his steel[217]pointer, his magnetic needles, and his blow pipe, what a fund of information he might have gleaned here to place before the spectacles of professors and philosophers! Nay, had he but possessed the faintest idea of the science of building, what patterns, what studies around and above him, for every form of the art to hereafter confound architects of the nineteenth century!

Poor Bob was neither a mineralogist nor an architect, so he passed by these things without a second glance, and entered a vaulted chamber, upon whose round, jagged dome rested the whole weight of the mountain; the dented projections and the sharp points on wall and roof spun into an endless network of lines and seams, luminous as all things here seemed to be, and changing colour from silver-grey to deep crimson.

Wonder had lost its functions for Bob the shepherd, otherwise he would have stood aghast at the strange forms moving to and fro within this chamber; round in shape, and taller than giants of long ago, with arms and legs evidently telescoped at the joints, so that they could lengthen or shorten them at will, and each shedding their quota of refulgence to illuminate the scene. Monster glow-worms, gigantic fire-flies, with the trickery of monkeys, and the strength[218]of bears, seized the shrinking man, and rose with him to the dome, which opened instantly and engulfed them. Amidst a circle of light, which changed quicker than the sparkles of a diamond, the poor shepherd found he was being borne upward and hemmed in by a ring of these natives of the Moon—upward and yet upward, without will to pause or stop, the mad whirlwind of light ever changing, red, blue, grey, yellow, white, azure, and the legion gathering in increased numbers every moment round him until the climax came, and the crater, that had been silent for countless ages, once more opened its ponderous jaws, casting him forth as a rocket, where—amidst fiery rings and bars, and blazing stars of light—he fell down, down, down into darkness and oblivion!

*   *   *

“I say, mate, how far is it to the Blue Mountains Inn?”

Old Bob, the shepherd, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the questioner. He was a stout, thick-set fellow, with a heavy swag on his back, and a black billy-can in his hand.

The man had to repeat his query ere the herdsman found speech.[219]

“Why, surely,you’renot the Man in the Moon, eh?” asked Bob, with a wild stare.

The swagman stepped backward a pace or two, and regarded our hero with more attention.

“Man in the Moon!” he repeated. “Why, the old fellow’s gone off his head.”

“‘WHY, SURELY, YOU’RE NOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’”“ ‘WHY, SURELY,YOU’RENOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’ ”

“ ‘WHY, SURELY,YOU’RENOT THE MAN IN THE MOON?’ ”

“Where’s the others with the long legs and arms?” and the shepherd shuddered.

“He’s cranky, sure enough,” muttered the traveller audibly. “The coves as you were asking arter are all gone,” he said aloud. “You get up on your pins, or they’ll be back again[220]Here’s a bob; come now, hook it, or they’ll have you,” saying which the swagman went on his way.

Our hero raised himself into a sitting posture. Before him lay the verdant slopes and ridges of the mountain, bathed in sunlight. Yonder his sheep fed peacefully, watched by the faithful Patch. Then the old man raised his vision higher than the earth and thanked Heaven that he was still safe and sound onterra firma.[221]

[Contents]“SAILOR.”That great painter of animals, Sir Edwin Landseer, never sketched a nobler specimen of the canine race than the big, black, curly Newfoundland dog, Sailor, the hero of our story. He was a fine, faithful dog, and almost as large as a young foal, and every bit as frisky and as harmless, save when teased by naughty boys. If you tried ever so hard you couldn’t hide anything from Sailor. You might fasten him in a room and then attempt to conceal a ball, or a piece of wood, in the garden or the stables, but the moment you set him free Sailor would hunt the object out and return with it in his mouth. Besides being sagacious, the faithful brute could dive and swim like a fish; that is why he received such a suitable name.Captain Hauser, of the barqueSouth Australian, had brought him from India when but a puppy, but now the worthy captain had settled down ashore with his two boys at Anchordale on the[222]River Murray, and the dog had become almost one of the family circle.On a very hot afternoon, and when the New Year was scarcely a score of days old, Bertie Hauser and his cousin, Tom Blake, took it into their heads to have a row down the river. Anchordale was a pleasant cottage situated on the bank of the Murray, with a tiny skiff fastened to a stout post at the end of the orchard.Bertie was only eight years of age, and Tom one year older; but the boat being so small and light they managed to get afloat and paddled away in high glee down the river. The dog, Sailor, was the only one who had seen them depart, and he, with wagging tail and out-hanging tongue, had begged, as only dumb animals can, to accompany them on their trip; but Tom Blake said the boat would be swamped with such a cargo, and so the lads had departed without him. Now, although Sailor was dumb, he wasn’t blind. Neither was the poor brute wanting in instinct. Many a day he had acted as a substitute for a pony for little Bertie, and had even suffered the child to put a string into his mouth for a bridle, and had trotted or cantered and walked up and down the lawn according to the whim of his infantile rider. Indeed, Sailor was a kind old dog,[223]and probably thought it his duty to guard the person of his young master, on land or on the water.Perhaps this instinct prompted the Newfoundland to crawl cat-like through the dense scrub on the bank of the river and keep the skiff in view. Be that as it may, the dog never lost sight of them for a moment. He saw Tom Blake guide the boat into a wide part of the stream, and where the banks were very high and almost as steep as the gable of a house.“Oh, Bertie, here’s the place for a bathe. Are you game?” asked Tom, rocking the boat.Bertie assented. They found a little cove, where they landed, and made fast the skiff; then ascending the high bank they began to prepare for the water. Both boys had been taught to swim—as all boys should be—but Bertie and his cousin had been warned not to bathe down the river, because there were places teeming with snags and dangerous undercurrents. Tom and his companion had forgotten all about the caution. The water at this spot appears very dark and still and cool, with the shadows of the overhanging trees upon it, and the drooping branches of the willows laving to and fro on its bosom with a dreamy sound.[224]“What a frightful jump!” cried Bertie, approaching the brink timidly, and looking over at the river beneath. “It’s a high leap, Tom; hadn’t we better go a little farther down?”“Not at all,” responds Tom, swinging his arms about above his head. “I like a good header; you stand there and watch me dive.”Bertie stands aside and watches him. Tom retires several paces, starts forward with a short, quick run, and springs headforemost from the cliff into the river. For a moment the waters bubble and widen out in circling eddies over the broad expanse. Bertie Hauser stands looking down trying to trace the white, shapely form of his cousin cleaving through the dark stream, expecting to see him rise to the surface twenty yards away from where he plunged in. But many seconds go by, and Tom Blake rises not, and poor Bertie, in an agony of suspense, calls to him to “come up at once, or he will be drownded,” as if the treacherous element would part its substance and carry his weak voice below, to its holes and caves, where his companion is struggling for his little life.“Tom, Tom, dear cousin Tom,” cries the child on the bank, as the truth begins to dawn upon him that Tom is drowning. “Oh! what shall I do to help him? What shall I do?” When lo! old[225]Sailor comes bounding towards him with a joyous bark. The boy clutches his favourite by the ears and draws him forward to the brink of the river, where, pointing down to the water, he urges on the dog with voice and gesture. “Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old fellow, go on—bring him out.”Sailor needs no second bidding. Before Bertie has the words out of his mouth, the dog comprehends the whole business, and leaps into the water and disappears. How anxiously the child watches for his re-appearance! At a spot half way up the stream, he observes the water begin to whirl and eddy and bubble upward, as being disturbed by a great commotion beneath; and here Sailor rises to the surface, and blows the water from his snout, like a whale; but the dog is alone. There is no sign of poor Tom Blake. Little Bertie becomes sick and faint with terror, but the boy does not lose his presence of mind. He has every confidence in the Newfoundland’s strength and courage.“Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old boy, bring him out.”Downward plunges the gallant dog again, while his young master, naked as he is, rushes down to the skiff, jumps in, and pushes into midstream, running athwart the dog, as he rises once more.[226]This time Sailor has something in his mouth, but the boat knocking against him causes him to let go. Yet he dives after it, and appears again in a moment with the drowning boy. Sailor has clutched him firmly by the hair of the head, and the dog’s great red eyes are all aflame as he buoys up the insensible child and paddles the water with ponderous strokes and lands him safe upon the bank.What avail little Bertie’s terms of endearment and the affectionate appeals he makes to his still, silent cousin? Tom Blake is deaf. And although Bertie may make a hundred promises of bats and guns and ponies poor Tom cannot hear him.It is fortunate that two men with swags upon their backs are passing at the time, who carry the unfortunate youth into the sunlight, and rub his body vigorously with their hands until the vitality that was almost extinct begins to revive again within him.When Tom had partly recovered and could speak, he told his uncle, the captain, that when he dived he struck his head against a snag, which rendered him insensible, and no doubt in that state he was being carried away by the current when the dog found him.And poor Tom was grateful for the service, for[227]when he was quite well he bought the Newfoundland a grand collar, and had the following inscription engraven on it:—“Sailor,“RescuedTom Anson Blakefrom drowning on the 18th January, 187-, at Anchordale, River Murray.”[228]

“SAILOR.”

That great painter of animals, Sir Edwin Landseer, never sketched a nobler specimen of the canine race than the big, black, curly Newfoundland dog, Sailor, the hero of our story. He was a fine, faithful dog, and almost as large as a young foal, and every bit as frisky and as harmless, save when teased by naughty boys. If you tried ever so hard you couldn’t hide anything from Sailor. You might fasten him in a room and then attempt to conceal a ball, or a piece of wood, in the garden or the stables, but the moment you set him free Sailor would hunt the object out and return with it in his mouth. Besides being sagacious, the faithful brute could dive and swim like a fish; that is why he received such a suitable name.Captain Hauser, of the barqueSouth Australian, had brought him from India when but a puppy, but now the worthy captain had settled down ashore with his two boys at Anchordale on the[222]River Murray, and the dog had become almost one of the family circle.On a very hot afternoon, and when the New Year was scarcely a score of days old, Bertie Hauser and his cousin, Tom Blake, took it into their heads to have a row down the river. Anchordale was a pleasant cottage situated on the bank of the Murray, with a tiny skiff fastened to a stout post at the end of the orchard.Bertie was only eight years of age, and Tom one year older; but the boat being so small and light they managed to get afloat and paddled away in high glee down the river. The dog, Sailor, was the only one who had seen them depart, and he, with wagging tail and out-hanging tongue, had begged, as only dumb animals can, to accompany them on their trip; but Tom Blake said the boat would be swamped with such a cargo, and so the lads had departed without him. Now, although Sailor was dumb, he wasn’t blind. Neither was the poor brute wanting in instinct. Many a day he had acted as a substitute for a pony for little Bertie, and had even suffered the child to put a string into his mouth for a bridle, and had trotted or cantered and walked up and down the lawn according to the whim of his infantile rider. Indeed, Sailor was a kind old dog,[223]and probably thought it his duty to guard the person of his young master, on land or on the water.Perhaps this instinct prompted the Newfoundland to crawl cat-like through the dense scrub on the bank of the river and keep the skiff in view. Be that as it may, the dog never lost sight of them for a moment. He saw Tom Blake guide the boat into a wide part of the stream, and where the banks were very high and almost as steep as the gable of a house.“Oh, Bertie, here’s the place for a bathe. Are you game?” asked Tom, rocking the boat.Bertie assented. They found a little cove, where they landed, and made fast the skiff; then ascending the high bank they began to prepare for the water. Both boys had been taught to swim—as all boys should be—but Bertie and his cousin had been warned not to bathe down the river, because there were places teeming with snags and dangerous undercurrents. Tom and his companion had forgotten all about the caution. The water at this spot appears very dark and still and cool, with the shadows of the overhanging trees upon it, and the drooping branches of the willows laving to and fro on its bosom with a dreamy sound.[224]“What a frightful jump!” cried Bertie, approaching the brink timidly, and looking over at the river beneath. “It’s a high leap, Tom; hadn’t we better go a little farther down?”“Not at all,” responds Tom, swinging his arms about above his head. “I like a good header; you stand there and watch me dive.”Bertie stands aside and watches him. Tom retires several paces, starts forward with a short, quick run, and springs headforemost from the cliff into the river. For a moment the waters bubble and widen out in circling eddies over the broad expanse. Bertie Hauser stands looking down trying to trace the white, shapely form of his cousin cleaving through the dark stream, expecting to see him rise to the surface twenty yards away from where he plunged in. But many seconds go by, and Tom Blake rises not, and poor Bertie, in an agony of suspense, calls to him to “come up at once, or he will be drownded,” as if the treacherous element would part its substance and carry his weak voice below, to its holes and caves, where his companion is struggling for his little life.“Tom, Tom, dear cousin Tom,” cries the child on the bank, as the truth begins to dawn upon him that Tom is drowning. “Oh! what shall I do to help him? What shall I do?” When lo! old[225]Sailor comes bounding towards him with a joyous bark. The boy clutches his favourite by the ears and draws him forward to the brink of the river, where, pointing down to the water, he urges on the dog with voice and gesture. “Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old fellow, go on—bring him out.”Sailor needs no second bidding. Before Bertie has the words out of his mouth, the dog comprehends the whole business, and leaps into the water and disappears. How anxiously the child watches for his re-appearance! At a spot half way up the stream, he observes the water begin to whirl and eddy and bubble upward, as being disturbed by a great commotion beneath; and here Sailor rises to the surface, and blows the water from his snout, like a whale; but the dog is alone. There is no sign of poor Tom Blake. Little Bertie becomes sick and faint with terror, but the boy does not lose his presence of mind. He has every confidence in the Newfoundland’s strength and courage.“Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old boy, bring him out.”Downward plunges the gallant dog again, while his young master, naked as he is, rushes down to the skiff, jumps in, and pushes into midstream, running athwart the dog, as he rises once more.[226]This time Sailor has something in his mouth, but the boat knocking against him causes him to let go. Yet he dives after it, and appears again in a moment with the drowning boy. Sailor has clutched him firmly by the hair of the head, and the dog’s great red eyes are all aflame as he buoys up the insensible child and paddles the water with ponderous strokes and lands him safe upon the bank.What avail little Bertie’s terms of endearment and the affectionate appeals he makes to his still, silent cousin? Tom Blake is deaf. And although Bertie may make a hundred promises of bats and guns and ponies poor Tom cannot hear him.It is fortunate that two men with swags upon their backs are passing at the time, who carry the unfortunate youth into the sunlight, and rub his body vigorously with their hands until the vitality that was almost extinct begins to revive again within him.When Tom had partly recovered and could speak, he told his uncle, the captain, that when he dived he struck his head against a snag, which rendered him insensible, and no doubt in that state he was being carried away by the current when the dog found him.And poor Tom was grateful for the service, for[227]when he was quite well he bought the Newfoundland a grand collar, and had the following inscription engraven on it:—“Sailor,“RescuedTom Anson Blakefrom drowning on the 18th January, 187-, at Anchordale, River Murray.”[228]

That great painter of animals, Sir Edwin Landseer, never sketched a nobler specimen of the canine race than the big, black, curly Newfoundland dog, Sailor, the hero of our story. He was a fine, faithful dog, and almost as large as a young foal, and every bit as frisky and as harmless, save when teased by naughty boys. If you tried ever so hard you couldn’t hide anything from Sailor. You might fasten him in a room and then attempt to conceal a ball, or a piece of wood, in the garden or the stables, but the moment you set him free Sailor would hunt the object out and return with it in his mouth. Besides being sagacious, the faithful brute could dive and swim like a fish; that is why he received such a suitable name.

Captain Hauser, of the barqueSouth Australian, had brought him from India when but a puppy, but now the worthy captain had settled down ashore with his two boys at Anchordale on the[222]River Murray, and the dog had become almost one of the family circle.

On a very hot afternoon, and when the New Year was scarcely a score of days old, Bertie Hauser and his cousin, Tom Blake, took it into their heads to have a row down the river. Anchordale was a pleasant cottage situated on the bank of the Murray, with a tiny skiff fastened to a stout post at the end of the orchard.

Bertie was only eight years of age, and Tom one year older; but the boat being so small and light they managed to get afloat and paddled away in high glee down the river. The dog, Sailor, was the only one who had seen them depart, and he, with wagging tail and out-hanging tongue, had begged, as only dumb animals can, to accompany them on their trip; but Tom Blake said the boat would be swamped with such a cargo, and so the lads had departed without him. Now, although Sailor was dumb, he wasn’t blind. Neither was the poor brute wanting in instinct. Many a day he had acted as a substitute for a pony for little Bertie, and had even suffered the child to put a string into his mouth for a bridle, and had trotted or cantered and walked up and down the lawn according to the whim of his infantile rider. Indeed, Sailor was a kind old dog,[223]and probably thought it his duty to guard the person of his young master, on land or on the water.

Perhaps this instinct prompted the Newfoundland to crawl cat-like through the dense scrub on the bank of the river and keep the skiff in view. Be that as it may, the dog never lost sight of them for a moment. He saw Tom Blake guide the boat into a wide part of the stream, and where the banks were very high and almost as steep as the gable of a house.

“Oh, Bertie, here’s the place for a bathe. Are you game?” asked Tom, rocking the boat.

Bertie assented. They found a little cove, where they landed, and made fast the skiff; then ascending the high bank they began to prepare for the water. Both boys had been taught to swim—as all boys should be—but Bertie and his cousin had been warned not to bathe down the river, because there were places teeming with snags and dangerous undercurrents. Tom and his companion had forgotten all about the caution. The water at this spot appears very dark and still and cool, with the shadows of the overhanging trees upon it, and the drooping branches of the willows laving to and fro on its bosom with a dreamy sound.[224]

“What a frightful jump!” cried Bertie, approaching the brink timidly, and looking over at the river beneath. “It’s a high leap, Tom; hadn’t we better go a little farther down?”

“Not at all,” responds Tom, swinging his arms about above his head. “I like a good header; you stand there and watch me dive.”

Bertie stands aside and watches him. Tom retires several paces, starts forward with a short, quick run, and springs headforemost from the cliff into the river. For a moment the waters bubble and widen out in circling eddies over the broad expanse. Bertie Hauser stands looking down trying to trace the white, shapely form of his cousin cleaving through the dark stream, expecting to see him rise to the surface twenty yards away from where he plunged in. But many seconds go by, and Tom Blake rises not, and poor Bertie, in an agony of suspense, calls to him to “come up at once, or he will be drownded,” as if the treacherous element would part its substance and carry his weak voice below, to its holes and caves, where his companion is struggling for his little life.

“Tom, Tom, dear cousin Tom,” cries the child on the bank, as the truth begins to dawn upon him that Tom is drowning. “Oh! what shall I do to help him? What shall I do?” When lo! old[225]Sailor comes bounding towards him with a joyous bark. The boy clutches his favourite by the ears and draws him forward to the brink of the river, where, pointing down to the water, he urges on the dog with voice and gesture. “Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old fellow, go on—bring him out.”

Sailor needs no second bidding. Before Bertie has the words out of his mouth, the dog comprehends the whole business, and leaps into the water and disappears. How anxiously the child watches for his re-appearance! At a spot half way up the stream, he observes the water begin to whirl and eddy and bubble upward, as being disturbed by a great commotion beneath; and here Sailor rises to the surface, and blows the water from his snout, like a whale; but the dog is alone. There is no sign of poor Tom Blake. Little Bertie becomes sick and faint with terror, but the boy does not lose his presence of mind. He has every confidence in the Newfoundland’s strength and courage.

“Ho, Sailor, fetch him out, old boy, bring him out.”

Downward plunges the gallant dog again, while his young master, naked as he is, rushes down to the skiff, jumps in, and pushes into midstream, running athwart the dog, as he rises once more.[226]This time Sailor has something in his mouth, but the boat knocking against him causes him to let go. Yet he dives after it, and appears again in a moment with the drowning boy. Sailor has clutched him firmly by the hair of the head, and the dog’s great red eyes are all aflame as he buoys up the insensible child and paddles the water with ponderous strokes and lands him safe upon the bank.

What avail little Bertie’s terms of endearment and the affectionate appeals he makes to his still, silent cousin? Tom Blake is deaf. And although Bertie may make a hundred promises of bats and guns and ponies poor Tom cannot hear him.

It is fortunate that two men with swags upon their backs are passing at the time, who carry the unfortunate youth into the sunlight, and rub his body vigorously with their hands until the vitality that was almost extinct begins to revive again within him.

When Tom had partly recovered and could speak, he told his uncle, the captain, that when he dived he struck his head against a snag, which rendered him insensible, and no doubt in that state he was being carried away by the current when the dog found him.

And poor Tom was grateful for the service, for[227]when he was quite well he bought the Newfoundland a grand collar, and had the following inscription engraven on it:—

“Sailor,“RescuedTom Anson Blakefrom drowning on the 18th January, 187-, at Anchordale, River Murray.”

“Sailor,

“RescuedTom Anson Blakefrom drowning on the 18th January, 187-, at Anchordale, River Murray.”

[228]

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