I ordered up writing materials, and addressed a letter to the New Romney Bank—­the nearest, the waiter informed me—­telling the manager I wished to open an account with him, and requesting him to send two trustworthy persons properly authenticated in a cab with a good horse to fetch some hundredweight of gold with which I happened to be encumbered.  I signed the letter “Blake,” which seemed to me to be a thoroughly respectable sort of name.  This done, I got a Folkstone Blue Book, picked out an outfitter, and asked him to send a cutter to measure me for a dark tweed suit, ordering at the same time a valise, dressing bag, brown boots, shirts, hat (to fit), and so forth; and from a watchmaker I also ordered a watch.  And these letters being despatched, I had up as good a lunch as the hotel could give, and then lay smoking a cigar, as calm and ordinary as possible, until in accordance with my instructions two duly authenticated clerks came from the bank and weighed and took away my gold.  After which I pulled the clothes over my ears in order to drown any knocking, and went very comfortably to sleep.

I went to sleep.  No doubt it was a prosaic thing for the first man back from the moon to do, and I can imagine that the young and imaginative reader will find my behaviour disappointing.  But I was horribly fatigued and bothered, and, confound it! what else was there to do?  There certainly was not the remotest chance of my being believed, if I had told my story then, and it would certainly have subjected me to intolerable annoyances.  I went to sleep.  When at last I woke up again I was ready to face the world as I have always been accustomed to face it since I came to years of discretion.  And so I got away to Italy, and there it is I am writing this story.  If the world will not have it as fact, then the world may take it as fiction.  It is no concern of mine.

And now that the account is finished, I am amazed to think how completely this adventure is gone and done with.  Everybody believes that Cavor was a not very brilliant scientific experimenter who blew up his house and himself at Lympne, and they explain the bang that followed my arrival at Littlestone by a reference to the experiments with explosives that are going on continually at the government establishment of Lydd, two miles away.  I must confess that hitherto I have not acknowledged my share in the disappearance of Master Tommy Simmons, which was that little boy’s name.  That, perhaps, may prove a difficult item of corroboration to explain away.  They account for my appearance in rags with two bars of indisputable gold upon the Littlestone beach in various ingenious ways—­it doesn’t worry me what they think of me.  They say I have strung all these things together to avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my wealth.  I would like to see the man who could invent a story that would hold together like this one.  Well, they must take it as fiction—­there it is.