“Bedford,” he whispered, and his voice trembled.  “That light—­it is possible—­”

He did not dare to say the thing he hoped.  Then came a pause.  Suddenly I knew by the sound of his feet that he was striding towards that pallor.  I followed him with a beating heart.

Chapter 16

Points of View

The light grew stronger as we advanced.  In a little time it was nearly as strong as the phosphorescence on Cavor’s legs.  Our tunnel was expanding into a cavern, and this new light was at the farther end of it.  I perceived something that set my hopes leaping and bounding.

“Cavor,” I said, “it comes from above!  I am certain it comes from above!”

He made no answer, but hurried on.

Indisputably it was a gray light, a silvery light.

In another moment we were beneath it.  It filtered down through a chink in the walls of the cavern, and as I stared up, drip, came a drop of water upon my face.  I started and stood aside—­drip, fell another drop quite audibly on the rocky floor.

“Cavor,” I said, “if one of us lifts the other, he can reach that crack!”

“I’ll lift you,” he said, and incontinently hoisted me as though I was a baby.

I thrust an arm into the crack, and just at my finger tips found a little ledge by which I could hold.  I could see the white light was very much brighter now.  I pulled myself up by two fingers with scarcely an effort, though on earth I weigh twelve stone, reached to a still higher corner of rock, and so got my feet on the narrow ledge.  I stood up and searched up the rocks with my fingers; the cleft broadened out upwardly.  “It’s climbable,” I said to Cavor.  “Can you jump up to my hand if I hold it down to you?”

I wedged myself between the sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on the ledge, and extended a hand.  I could not see Cavor, but I could hear the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring.  Then whack and he was hanging to my arm—­and no heavier than a kitten!  I lugged him up until he had a hand on my ledge, and could release me.

“Confound it!” I said, “any one could be a mountaineer on the moon;” and so set myself in earnest to the climbing.  For a few minutes I clambered steadily, and then I looked up again.  The cleft opened out steadily, and the light was brighter.  Only—­

It was not daylight after all.

In another moment I could see what it was, and at the sight I could have beaten my head against the rocks with disappointment.  For I beheld simply an irregularly sloping open space, and all over its slanting floor stood a forest of little club-shaped fungi, each shining gloriously with that pinkish silvery light.  For a moment I stared at their soft radiance, then sprang forward and upward among them.  I plucked up half a dozen and flung them against the rocks, and then sat down, laughing bitterly, as Cavor’s ruddy face came into view.