t down, laughing bitterly, as Cavor's
ruddy face came into view.

"It's phosphorescence again!" I said. "No need to hurry. Sit down and make
yourself at home." And as he spluttered over our disappointment, I began
to lob more of these growths into the cleft.

"I thought it was daylight," he said.

"Daylight!" cried I. "Daybreak, sunset, clouds, and windy skies! Shall we
ever see such things again?"

As I spoke, a little picture of our world seemed to rise before me, bright
and little and clear, like the background of some old Italian picture.
"The sky that changes, and the sea that changes, and the hills and the
green trees and the towns and cities shining in the sun. Think of a wet
roof at sunset, Cavor! Think of the windows of a westward house!" He made
no answer.

"Here we are burrowing in this beastly world that isn't a world, with its
inky ocean hidden in some abominable blackness below, and outside that
torrid day and that death stillness of night. And all these things that
are chasing us now, beastly men of leather--insect men, that come out of
a nightmare! After all, they're right! What business have we here smashing
them and disturbing their world! For all we know the whole planet is up
and after us already. In a minute we may hear them whimpering, and their
gongs going. What are we to do? Where are we to go? Here we are as
comfortable as snakes from Jamrach's loose in a Surbiton villa!"

"It was your fault," said Cavor.

"My fault!" I shouted. "Good Lord!"

"I had an idea!"

"Curse your ideas!"

"If we had refused to budge--"

"Under those goads?"

"Yes. They would have carried us!"

"Over that bridge?"

"Yes. They must have carried us from outside."

"I'd rather be carried by a fly across a ceiling."

"Good Heavens!"

I resumed my destruction of the fungi. Then suddenly I saw something that
struck me even then. "Cavor," I said, "these chains are of gold!"

He was thinking intently, with his hands gripping his cheeks. He turned
his head slowly and stared at me, and when I had repeated my words, at the
twisted chain about his right hand. "So they are," he said, "so they
are." His face lost its transitory interest even as he looked. He
hesitated for a moment, then went on with his interrupted meditation. I
sat for a space puzzling over the fact that I had only just observed this,
until I considered the blue light in which we had been, and which had
taken all the colour out of the metal. A