Part 3
“I can’t help that,” said Chee-Chee. “It’s a dug-out canoe just the same. Crawl down with me here underneath it, Doctor, and I’ll show you the marks of tools and fire. It has been turned upside down.”
With the monkey guiding him, the Doctor scrabbled down below the queer object; and when he came forth there was a puzzled look on his face.
“Well, they _might_ be the marks of tools, Chee-Chee,” he was saying. “But then again they might not. The traces of fire are more clear. But that could be accidental. If the tree burned down it could very easily—”
“The natives in my part of Africa,” Chee-Chee interrupted, “always used fire to eat out the insides of their dug-out canoes. They built little fires all along the tree, to hollow out the trunk so that they could sit in it. The tools they used were very simple, just stone scoops to chop out the charred wood with. I am sure this is a canoe, Doctor. But it hasn’t been used in a long time. See how the bow has been shaped up into a point.”
“I know,” said the Doctor. “But the Asparagus Tree has a natural point at one end anyhow.”
“And, Chee-Chee,” put in Polynesia, “who in the name of goodness could ever handle such a craft? Why, look, the thing is as long as a battleship!”
Then followed a half-hour’s discussion, between the Doctor and Polynesia on the one side and Chee-Chee on the other, as to whether the find we had made was, or was not, a canoe. For me, I had no opinion. To my eyes the object looked like an immensely long log, hollowed somewhat on the one side, but whether by accident or design I could not tell.
In any case it was certainly too heavy and cumbersome for us to use. And presently I edged into the argument with the suggestion that we go on further and find materials for a raft or boat we _could_ handle.
The Doctor seemed rather glad of this excuse to end a fruitless controversy, and soon we moved on in search of something which would enable us to explore the waters of the lake. A march of a mile further along the shore brought us to the woods that were not so heavy. Here the immense asparagus forests gave way to a growth of smaller girth; and the Doctor’s hatchet soon felled enough poles for us to make a raft from. We laced them together with thongs of bark and found them sufficiently buoyant when launched to carry us and our small supply of baggage with ease. Where the water was shallow we used a long pole to punt with; and when we wished to explore greater depths we employed sweeps, or oars, which we fashioned roughly with the hatchet.
From the first moment we were afloat the Doctor kept me busy taking notes for him. In the equipment he had brought with him there was a fine-meshed landing net: and with it he searched along the shores for signs of life in this moon lake, the first of its kind we had met with.
“It is very important, Stubbins,” said he, “to find out what fish we have here. In evolution the fish life is a very important matter.”
“What is _evolution_?” asked Chee-Chee.
[Illustration: “_We used a long pole to punt with_”]
I started out to explain it to him but was soon called upon by the Doctor to make more notes—for which I was not sorry, as the task turned out to be a long and heavy one. Polynesia however took it up where I left off and made short work of it.
“Evolution, Chee-Chee,” said she, “is the story of how Tommy got rid of the tail you are carrying—because he didn’t need it any more—and the story of how you grew it and kept it because you _did_ need it. . . . _Evolution!_ Poof!—Professors’ talk. A long word for a simple matter.”
It turned out that our examination of the lake was neither exciting nor profitable. We brought up all sorts of water-flies, many larvæ of perfectly tremendous size, but we found as yet no fishes. The plant life—water plant I mean—was abundant.
“I think,” said the Doctor, after we had poled ourselves around the lake for several hours, “that there can be no doubt now that the Vegetable Kingdom here is much more important than the Animal Kingdom. And what there is of the Animal Kingdom seems to be mostly insect. However, we will camp on the shore of this pleasant lake and perhaps we shall see more later.”
So we brought our raft to anchor at about the place from which he had started out and pitched camp on a stretch of clean yellow sand.
I shall never forget that night. It was uncanny. None of us slept well. All through the hours of darkness we heard things moving around us. Enormous things. Yet never did we see them or find out what they were. The four of us were nevertheless certain we were being watched. Even Polynesia was disturbed. There seemed no doubt that there was plenty of animal life in the Moon, but it did not as yet want to show itself to us. The newness of our surroundings alone was disturbing enough, without this very uncomfortable feeling that something had made the moon folks distrustful of us.
THE SEVENTH CHAPTER Tracks of a Giant
Another thing which added to our sleeplessness that night was the continuance of the mysterious music. But then so many strange things contributed to our general mystification and vague feeling of anxiety that it is hard to remember and distinguish them all.
The next morning after breakfasting on what remained of our fruits we packed up and started off for further exploration. While the last of the packing had been in progress Chee-Chee and Polynesia had gone ahead to do a little advanced scouting for us. They formed an admirable team for such work. Polynesia would fly above the forest and get long-distance impressions from the air of what lay ahead while Chee-Chee would examine the more lowly levels of the route to be followed, from the trees and the ground.
The Doctor and I were just helping one another on with our packs when Chee-Chee came rushing back to us in great excitement. His teeth were chattering so he could hardly speak.
“What do you think, Doctor!” he stammered. “We’ve found tracks back there. Tracks of a man! But so enormous! You’ve no idea. Come quick and I’ll show you.”
The Doctor looked up sharply at the scared and excited monkey, pausing a moment as though about to question him. Then he seemed to change his mind and turned once more to the business of taking up the baggage. With loads hoisted we gave a last glance around the camping ground to see if anything had been forgotten or left.
[Illustration: “_‘What do you think, Doctor?’ he stammered_”]
Our route did not lie directly across the lake, which mostly sprawled away to the right of our line of march. But we had to make our way partly around the lower end of it. Wondering what new chapter lay ahead of us, we fell in behind Chee-Chee and in silence started off along the shore.
After about half an hour’s march we came to the mouth of a river which ran into the upper end of the lake. Along the margin of this we followed Chee-Chee for what seemed like another mile or so. Soon the shores of the stream widened out and the woods fell back quite a distance from the water’s edge. The nature of the ground was still clean firm sand. Presently we saw Polynesia’s tiny figure ahead, waiting for us.
When we drew up with her we saw that she was standing by an enormous foot-print. There was no doubt about its being a man’s, clear in every detail. It was the most gigantic thing I have ever seen, a barefoot track fully four yards in length. There wasn’t only one, either. Down the shore the trail went on for a considerable distance; and the span that the prints lay apart gave one some idea of the enormous stride of the giant who had left this trail behind him.
Questioning and alarmed, Chee-Chee and Polynesia gazed silently up at the Doctor for an explanation.
“Humph!” he muttered after a while. “So Man is here, too. My goodness, what a monster! Let us follow the trail.”
Chee-Chee was undoubtedly scared of such a plan. It was clearly both his and Polynesia’s idea that the further we got away from the maker of those tracks the better. I could see terror and fright in the eyes of both of them. But neither made any objection; and in silence we plodded along, following in the path of this strange human who must, it would seem, be something out of a fairy tale.
But alas! It was not more than a mile further on that the foot-prints turned into the woods where, on the mosses and leaves beneath the trees, no traces had been left at all. Then we turned about and followed the river quite a distance to see if the creature had come back out on the sands again. But never a sign could we see. Chee-Chee spent a good deal of time too at the Doctor’s request trying to find his path through the forest by any signs, such as broken limbs or marks in the earth which he might have left behind. But not another trace could we find. Deciding that he had merely come down to the stream to get a drink, we gave up the pursuit and turned back to the line of our original march.
[Illustration: “_An enormous foot-print_”]
Again I was thankful that I had company on that expedition. It was certainly a most curious and extraordinary experience. None of us spoke very much but when we did it seemed that all of us had been thinking the same things.
The woods grew more and more mysterious, and more and more _alive_, as we went onward towards the other side of the Moon, the side that earthly Man had never seen before. For one thing, the strange music seemed to increase; and for another, there was more movement in the limbs of the trees. Great branches that looked like arms, bunches of small twigs that could have been hands, swung and moved and clawed the air in the most uncanny fashion. And always that steady wind went on blowing, even, regular and smooth.
All of the forest was not gloomy however. Much of it was unbelievably beautiful. Acres of woods there were which presented nothing but a gigantic sea of many-colored blossoms, colors that seemed like something out of a dream, indescribable, yet clear in one’s memory as a definite picture of something seen.
The Doctor as we went forward spoke very little; when he did it was almost always on the same subject: “the absence of decay,” as he put it.
“I am utterly puzzled, Stubbins,” said he, in one of his longer outbursts when we were resting. “Why, there is hardly any leaf-mould at all!”
“What difference would that make, Doctor?” I asked.
“Well, that’s what the trees live on, mostly, in our world,” said he. “The forest growth, I mean—the soil that is formed by dying trees and rotting leaves—that is the nourishment that brings forth the seedlings which finally grow into new trees. But here! Well, of course there is _some_ soil—and some shedding of leaves. But I’ve hardly seen a dead tree since I’ve been in these woods. One would almost think that there were some—er—balance. Some _arrangement_ of—er—well—I can’t explain it. . . . It beats me entirely.”
I did not, at the time, completely understand what he meant. And yet it did seem as though every one of these giant plants that rose about us led a life of peaceful growth, undisturbed by rot, by blight or by disease.
[Illustration: “_There was more movement in the limbs of the trees_”]
Suddenly in our march we found ourselves at the end of the wooded section. Hills and mountains again spread before us. They were not the same as those we had first seen, however. These had vegetation, of a kind, on them. Low shrubs and heath plants clothed this rolling land with a dense growth—often very difficult to get through.
But still no sign of decay—little or no leaf-mould. The Doctor now decided that perhaps part of the reason for this was the seasons—or rather the lack of seasons. He said that we would probably find that here there was no regular winter or summer. It was an entirely new problem, so far as the struggle for existence was concerned, such as we knew in our world.
THE EIGHTH CHAPTER The Singing Trees
Into this new heath and hill country we traveled for miles. And presently we arrived upon a rather curious thing. It was a sort of basin high up and enclosed by hills or knolls. The strange part of it was that here there were not only more tracks of the Giant Man, just as we had seen lower down, but there were also unmistakable signs of _fire_. In an enormous hollow ashes lay among the sands. The Doctor was very interested in those ashes. He took some and added chemicals to them and tested them in many ways. He confessed himself at last entirely puzzled by their nature. But he said he nevertheless felt quite sure we had stumbled on the scene of the smoke signaling we had seen from Puddleby. Curiously long ago, it seemed, that time when Too-Too, the owl, had insisted he saw smoke burst from the side of the Moon. That was when the giant moth lay helpless in our garden. And yet—how long was it? Only a few days!
“It was from here, Stubbins,” said the Doctor, “that the signals we saw from the Earth were given out, I feel certain. This place, as you see, is miles and miles across. But what was used to make an explosion as large as the one we saw from my house I have no idea.”
“But it was smoke we saw,” said I, “not a flash.”
“That’s just it,” he said. “Some curious material must have been used that we have as yet no knowledge of. I thought that by testing the ashes I could discover what it was. But I can’t. However we may yet find out.”
[Illustration: “_It was a sort of basin_”]
For two reasons the Doctor was anxious for the present not to get too far from the forest section. (We did not know then, you see, that there were other wooded areas beside this through which we had just come.) One reason was that we had to keep in touch with our food supply which consisted of the fruits and vegetables of the jungle. The other was that John Dolittle was absorbed now in the study of this Vegetable Kingdom which he felt sure had many surprises in store for the student naturalist.
After a while we began to get over the feeling of uncanny creepiness, which at the beginning had made us so uncomfortable. We decided that our fears were mostly caused by the fact that these woods and plants were so different from our own. There was no unfriendliness in these forests after all, we assured ourselves—except that we _were_ being watched. That we knew—and that we were beginning to get used to.
As soon as the Doctor had decided that we would set up our new headquarters on the edge of the forest, and we had our camp properly established, we began making excursions in all directions through the jungle. And from then on I was again kept very busy taking notes of the Doctor’s experiments and studies.
One of the first discoveries we made in our study of the Moon’s Vegetable Kingdom was that there was practically no warfare going on between it and the Animal Kingdom. In the world we had left we had been accustomed to see the horses and other creatures eating up the grass in great quantities and many further examples of the struggle that continually goes on between the two. Here, on the other hand, the animals (or, more strictly speaking, the insects, for there seemed as yet hardly any traces of other animal species) and the vegetable life seemed for the most part to help one another rather than to fight and destroy. Indeed we found the whole system of Life on the Moon a singularly peaceful business. I will speak of this again later on.
We spent three whole days in the investigation of the strange music we had heard. You will remember that the Doctor, with his skill on the flute, was naturally fond of music; and this curious thing we had met with interested him a great deal. After several expeditions we found patches of the jungle where we were able to see and hear the tree music working at its best.
There was no doubt about it at all: The trees were making the sounds and they were doing it _deliberately_. In the way that an Æolian harp works when set in the wind at the right angle, the trees moved their branches to meet the wind so that certain notes would be given out. The evening that the Doctor made this discovery of what he called the _Singing Trees_, he told me to mark down in the diary of the expedition as a Red Letter Date. I shall never forget it. We had been following the sound for hours, the Doctor carrying a tuning-fork in his hand, ringing it every once in a while to make sure of the notes we heard around us. Suddenly we came upon a little clearing about which great giants of the forest stood in a circle. It was for all the world like an orchestra. Spellbound, we stood and gazed up at them, as first one and then another would turn a branch to the steady blowing wind and a note would boom out upon the night, clear and sweet. Then a group, three or four trees around the glade, would swing a limb and a chord would strike the air, and go murmuring through the jungle. Fantastic and crazy as it sounds, no one could have any doubt who heard and watched that these trees were actually making sounds, which they _wanted to make_, with the aid of the wind.
Of course, as the Doctor remarked, unless the wind had always blown steadily and evenly such a thing would have been impossible. John Dolittle himself was most anxious to find out on what scale of music they were working. To me, I must confess, it sounded just mildly pleasant. There _was_ a time: I could hear that. And some whole phrases repeated once in a while, but not often. For the most part the melody was wild, sad and strange. But even to my uneducated ear it was beyond all question a quite clear effort at orchestration; there were certainly treble voices and bass voices and the combination was sweet and agreeable.
[Illustration: “_Spellbound we gazed up at them_”]
I was excited enough myself, but the Doctor was worked up to a pitch of interest such as I have seldom seen in him.
“Why, Stubbins,” said he, “do you realize what this means?—It’s terrific. If these trees can sing, a choir understands one another and all that, _they must have a language_.—They can talk! A language in the Vegetable Kingdom! We must get after it. Who knows? I may yet learn it myself. Stubbins, this is a great day!”
[Illustration: “_For quite a long while he sat watching certain shrubs_”]
And so, as usual on such occasions, the good man’s enthusiasm just carried him away bodily. For days, often without food, often without sleep, he pursued this new study. And at his heels I trotted with my note book always ready—though, to be sure, he put in far more work than I did because frequently when we got home he would go on wrestling for hours over the notes or new apparatus he was building, by which he hoped to learn the language of the trees.
You will remember that even before we left the Earth John Dolittle had mentioned the possibility of the moon-bells having some means of communicating with one another. That they could move, within the limits of their fixed position, had been fully established. To that we had grown so used and accustomed that we no longer thought anything of it. The Doctor had in fact wondered if this might possibly be a means of conversation in itself—the movement of limbs and twigs and leaves, something like a flag signal code. And for quite a long while he sat watching certain trees and shrubs to see if they used this method for talking between themselves.
THE NINTH CHAPTER The Study of Plant Languages
About this time there was one person whom both the Doctor and I were continually reminded of, and continually wishing for, and that was Long Arrow, the Indian naturalist whom we had met in Spidermonkey Island. To be sure, he had never admitted to the Doctor that he had had speech with plant life. But his knowledge of botany and the natural history of the Vegetable Kingdom was of such a curious kind we felt that here he would have been of great help to us. Long Arrow, the son of Golden Arrow, never booked a scientific note in his life. How would he—when he was unable to write? Just the same he could tell you why a certain colored bee visited a certain colored flower; why _that_ moth chose _that_ shrub to lay its eggs in; why this particular grub attacked the roots of this kind of water plant.
Often of an evening the Doctor and I would speak of him, wondering where he was and what he was doing. When we sailed away from Spidermonkey Island he was left behind. But that would not mean he stayed there. A natural-born tramp who rejoiced in defying the elements and the so-called laws of Nature, he could be looked for anywhere in the two American continents.
And again, the Doctor would often refer to my parents. He evidently had a very guilty feeling about them—despite the fact that it was no fault of his that I had stowed away aboard the moth that brought us here. A million and one things filled his mind these days, of course; but whenever there was a let-down, a gap, in the stream of his scientific enquiry, he would come back to the subject.
“Stubbins,” he’d say, “you shouldn’t have come. . . . Yes, yes, I know, you did it for me. But Jacob, your father—and your mother too—they must be fretting themselves sick about your disappearance. And I am responsible. . . . Well, we can’t do anything about that now, I suppose. Let’s get on with the work.”
And then he’d plunge ahead into some new subject and the matter would be dropped—till it bothered him again.
Throughout all our investigations of the Moon’s Vegetable Kingdom we could not get away from the idea that the animal life was still, for some unknown reason, steering clear of us. By night, when we were settling down to sleep, we’d often get the impression that huge moths, butterflies or beetles were flying or crawling near us.