The Argosy, Vol. XXIV, No. 3 — page 153: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A MONTH IN ‘THE MOON. 937 you must remember, Kaddour, that your wrongs are not ours, and that we cannot feel quite as you do about these wretches !’’ The dwarf acknowledged the justice of this remark, and pr omised to restrain himself; but this was only a change of tactics on his part, and he asked that at least he might be allowed to take charge of the prisoners. ‘“Vou don’t know them,’’ he said. ‘‘ They will play you some trick yet. They are scoundrels in every sense of the word, and must not be lost sight of for an instant.’’ ‘Virgil will look after them,’’ replied Norbert. ‘‘ You would be a bad jailer, Kaddour. If you want to prove your friendship to me, as you say and as I believe, never mention them again.”’ : CHAPTER XXXV.—A FRAGMENT FROM GERTRUDE’S JOURNAL, ‘‘ Wr have now spent six times twenty four hours on the moon; I could just as well believe it to have been six months if M. Mauny said so. One does not know what to expect about anything in this strange world! A day of a hundred and forty four hours, with no apparent reason why it should come to an end even then, gives a-new meaning to the word zzterminable / ‘Oh, night, what would we not give to greet thee again as of old! How little do our endless szestas here resemble the regular sleep that we enjoyed on the earth! But I suppose we must expect some drawbacks in such a glo- rious enterprise as this ! i ‘‘T shall go on with my journal. I began it for my dear father, and it is the only thing now that seems to bring me a little nearer to him. Poor father! What, I wonder, is he doing? Why is he not with us, instead of being shut up in Khartoum? He must find it almost as hot as this, and perhaps matters are worse there! Poor father! When shall we meet again? I will at least write down my selenic experiences day by day for him to read, if we ever have the happiness of being together again. ‘“My uncle calls this life here a selenic existence! The word only means lunar; but it sounds better. Anyhow, this existence is both monotonous and strange. I am obliged to bite my finger at times to make sure that I am not in a dream. Every morning when I wake, after some hours of sleep in the artificial night of my room, it takes five minutes and Fatima’s solemn assertion to convince me that I amreallyon the moon. But, alas! [am obliged to acknowledge it at last, and then I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Tt is like being on board a large vessel, except that one cannot go and take a turn on the bridge, for the few steps we are able to take on the esplan- ade, thanks to those miserable boxes of oxygen, are not worth mentioning. The first time I went out I thought it rather amusing to breathe in jerks, just as one drinks, and to get over the ground by leaps like a grasshopper. But in the long run it is tiring. A breath of sea air would be much nicer, especially if I had dear papa’s arm ! ‘‘Mr. Mauny is the only one among us who enjoys being out. He went off again this morning—or rather, I should say, after breakfast—on a new ComicloookS.c