ently they were overtaken by
three others, and then they drew nearer, until they were within arms
length again. I winced like a beaten horse as they came near to us. The
shorter, thicker Selenite marched at first on our right flank, but
presently came in front of us again.

How well the picture of that grouping has bitten into my brain; the back
of Cavor's downcast head just in front of me, and the dejected droop of
his shoulders, and our guide's gaping visage, perpetually jerking about
him, and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, yet open-mouthed--a
blue monochrome. And after all, I do remember one other thing besides the
purely personal affair, which is, that a sort of gutter came presently
across the floor of the cavern, and then ran along by the side of the path
of rock we followed. And it was full of that same bright blue luminous
stuff that flowed out of the great machine. I walked close beside it, and
I can testify it radiated not a particle of heat. It was brightly shining,
and yet it was neither warmer nor colder than anything else in the cavern.

Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under the thumping levers of another
vast machine, and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which we could even
hear the pad, pad, of our shoeless feet, and which, save for the trickling
thread of blue to the right of us, was quite unlit. The shadows made
gigantic travesties of our shapes and those of the Selenites on the
irregular wall and roof of the tunnel. Ever and again crystals in the
walls of the tunnel scintillated like gems, ever and again the tunnel
expanded into a stalactitic cavern, or gave off branches that vanished
into darkness.

We seemed to be marching down that tunnel for a long time. "Trickle,
trickle," went the flowing light very softly, and our footfalls and their
echoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. My mind settled down to the
question of my chains. If I were to slip off one turn _so_, and then to
twist it _so_ ...

If I tried to do it very gradually, would they see I was slipping my wrist
out of the looser turn? If they did, what would they do?

"Bedford," said Cavor, "it goes down. It keeps on going down."

His remark roused me from my sullen pre-occupation.

"If they wanted to kill us," he said, dropping back to come level with me,
"there is no reason why they should not have done it."

"No," I admitted, "that's true."

"They don't understand us," he said, "they think we are merely stran