Part IV Chapter 8 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
THE TREE
I must here speak again of this question of light. At no time, as I have said, was it very powerful. And one of its effects was to soften the colours in a very peculiar way. As we descended we found that the Moon had a whole range of colours of its own which we had never seen on the Earth. I cannot describe them because the human eye, being trained only to the colours of the Earth, would have nothing to compare them with and no way of imagining them. The best I can do is to say that the landscape, as we slowly descended upon it, looked like some evening landscape done in pastels—with a tremendous variety of soft new tones which became more and more visible the closer we got.
I think there can be no question that the Doctor and I were both more or less right in our argument about which side of the Moon we landed on. In other words, we landed between the two. I know that looking backward as we came down I saw that both the Earth and the Sun were visible. The Earth pale and dim in the heavens—as one sees the Moon often by daylight—and the Sun brighter but by no means as glaring as it appears when seen from the Earth.
We were still at a great height from the surface. But already the roundness was beginning to fade out of the eye's grasp and details were taking on greater importance. The Doctor, after again asking the moth to make the descent as slowly as he could, so that we should have a chance to grow gradually accustomed to the new air, had his telescope out and was very busy pointing to this crater and that mountain and the other plateau as features which were already known to us from the astronomers' moon maps.
From a certain height it was easy to see the night-and-day line, on our side of which the Moon's surface was only dimly lit by the Earth's pale light, and on the other more brilliantly illuminated by the rays of the Sun.
Of course I suppose anyone trying to land on the Moon by mechanical means could quite easily have lost his senses and life itself in the attempt. But with a living airship which could accommodate itself to one's needs we had a tremendous advantage. For example, as we dropped lower and found the air more difficult to deal with, the Doctor again grasped the antennæ communication-cord and asked the moth to hover a few hours while we got accustomed to it. The great insect immediately responded to this demand and hung motionless in mid-air while we prepared ourselves for the final descent.
Captain Dolittle then called the roll of his crew and found that we were all at least alive and kicking—also terribly hungry. Sandwiches and drinks had been put aboard before we left. But these were long since used up. I have never felt so hungry in my life.
Over that last lap of the descent we took a long time. With the communication-cord constantly in his hand, the Doctor approached the Moon at his own pace. The night-and-day line moved of course very rapidly. Moreover, how much of that was confused with our own movement (we did not descend in a straight line by any means) it is hard to say. This accounts largely for the difference of opinion between John Dolittle and myself as to which side of the surface we actually landed on. Close up, the details of all the moon maps no longer meant much, because those details which we had seen through telescopes as mere fractions of an inch were now become mountains and continents.
I suppose the greatest anxiety in the minds of all of us was water. Would we find it on the Moon? Moon creatures might exist without it: but we must perish if it was not there.
Lower and lower in circles slowly we sank. At first prospects looked very blue. The landscape, or moonscape, immediately beneath us was all, it seemed, volcanoes, old craters and new craters—mile upon mile.
But towards that night-and-day line which showed round the globe we turned hopeful eyes.
I have seen the Doctor enthusiastic many times—when for example he discovered something new in any of his unnumbered branches of natural history research. But I never remember his getting so excited as he did when watching that ever-moving day-and-night line on our slow descent, he suddenly grabbed me by the shoulder. Forgetting for the moment how the moon atmosphere carried sound, he nearly deafened me with with—
"Stubbins, look!—A tree! You see that, way over there at the foot of the mountain? I'll swear it's a tree. And if it is, we're all right. It means water, Stubbins, Water! And we can manage to exist here.—Water and Life!"
The End