Onward, nearer, came the lumbering figure. Soon there was no mistaking its shape. It had cleared the woods now. The gathered insects and waiting birds were making way for it. Suddenly we realized that it was towering over us, quite near, its long arms hanging at its sides. It was human.

We had seen the Moon Man at last!

“Well, for pity’s sake!” squawked Polynesia, breaking the awed silence. “You may be a frightfully important person here. But my goodness! It has taken you an awfully long time to come and call on us!”

Serious as the occasion was in all conscience, Polynesia’s remarks, continued in an uninterrupted stream of annoyed criticism, finally gave me the giggles. And after I once got started I couldn’t have kept a straight face if I had been promised a fortune.

The dusk had now settled down over the strange assembly. Starlight glowed weirdly in the eyes of the moths and birds that stood about us, like a lamp’s flame reflected in the eyes of a cat. As I made another effort to stifle my silly titters I saw John Dolittle, the size of his figure looking perfectly absurd in comparison with the Moon Man’s, rise to meet the giant who had come to visit us.

“I am glad to meet you—at last,” said he in dignified well-bred English. A curious grunt of incomprehension was all that met his civility.

Then seeing that the Moon Man evidently did not follow his language, John Dolittle set to work to find some tongue that would be understandable to him. I suppose there never was, and probably never will be, any one who had the command of languages that the Doctor had. One by one he ran through most of the earthly human tongues that are used to-day or have been preserved from the past. None of them had the slightest effect upon the Moon Man. Turning to animal languages however, the Doctor met with slightly better results. A word here and there seemed to be understood.

But it was when John Dolittle fell back on the languages of the Insect and Vegetable Kingdoms that the Moon Man at last began to wake up and show interest. With fixed gaze Chee-Chee, Polynesia and I watched the two figures as they wrestled with the problems of common speech. Minute after minute went by, hour after hour. Finally the Doctor made a signal to me behind his back and I knew that now he was really ready. I picked up my notebook and pencil from the ground.

As I laid back a page in preparation for dictation there came a strange cry from Chee-Chee.

“Look!—The right wrist!—Look!”

We peered through the twilight. . . . Yes, there was something around the giant’s wrist, but so tight that it was almost buried in the flesh. The Doctor touched it gently. But before he could say anything Chee-Chee’s voice broke out again, his words cutting the stillness in a curious, hoarse, sharp whisper.

“The blue stone beads!—Don’t you see them? . . . They don’t fit him any more since he’s grown a giant. But he’s Otho Bludge the artist. That’s the bracelet he got from Pippiteepa the grandmother of the Fairies!—It is he, Doctor, Otho Bludge, who was blown off the Earth in the Days Before There Was a Moon!”

“All right, Chee-Chee, all right,” said the Doctor hurriedly. “Wait now. We’ll see what we can find out. Don’t get excited.”

In spite of the Doctor’s reassuring words I could see that he himself was by this time quite a little agitated. And for that no one could blame him. After weeks in this weird world where naught but extraordinary things came up day after day we had been constantly wondering when we’d see the strange Human whose traces and influence were everywhere so evident. Now at last he had appeared.

I gazed up at the gigantic figure rearing away into the skies above our heads. With one of his feet he could easily have crushed the lot of us like so many cockroaches. Yet he, with the rest of the gathering, seemed not unfriendly to us, if a bit puzzled by our size. As for John Dolittle, he may have been a little upset by Chee-Chee’s announcement, but he certainly wasn’t scared. He at once set to work to get into touch with this strange creature who had called on us. And, as was usual with his experiments of this kind, the other side seemed more than willing to help.

The giant wore very little clothes. A garment somewhat similar to our own, made from the flexible bark and leaves we had discovered in the forest, covered his middle from the arm-pits down to the lower thighs. His hair was long and shaggy, falling almost to his shoulders. The Doctor measured up to a line somewhere near his ankle-bone. Apparently realizing that it was difficult for John Dolittle to talk with him at that range, the giant made a movement with his hand and at once the insects nearest to us rose and crawled away. In the space thus cleared the man-monster sat down to converse with his visitors from the Earth.

It was curious that after this I too no longer feared the enormous creature who looked like something from a fairy tale or a nightmare. Stretching down a tremendous hand, he lifted the Doctor, as though he had been a doll, and set him upon his bare knee. From this height—at least thirty feet above my head—John Dolittle clambered still further up the giant’s frame till he stood upon his shoulder.

Here he apparently had much greater success in making himself understood than he had had lower down. By standing on tip-toe he could just reach the Moon Man’s ear. Presently descending to the knee again, he began calling to me.

“Stubbins—I say, Stubbins! Have you got a notebook handy?”

“Yes, Doctor. In my pocket. Do you want me to take dictation?”

“Please,” he shouted back—for all the world like a foreman yelling orders from a high building. “Get this down. I have hardly established communication yet, but I want you to book some preliminary notes. Are you ready?”

As a matter of fact the Doctor in his enthusiasm had misjudged how easy he’d find it to converse with the Moon Man. For a good hour I stood waiting with my pencil poised and no words for dictation were handed down. Finally the Doctor called to me that he would have to delay matters a little till he got in close touch with our giant visitor.

“Humph!” grunted Polynesia. “I don’t see why he bothers. I never saw such an unattractive enormous brute.—Doesn’t look as though he had the wits of a caterpillar anyway. And to think that it was this great lump of unintelligent mutton that has kept the Doctor—John Dolittle, M.D.—and the rest of us, hanging about till it suited him to call on us!—After sending for us, mind you! That’s the part that rattles me!”

“Oh, but goodness!” muttered Chee-Chee peering up at the towering figure in the dusk. “Think—think how old he is! That man was living when the Moon separated from the Earth—thousands, maybe millions, of years ago! Golly, what an age!”

“Yes: he’s old enough to know better,” snapped the parrot—“better manners anyway. Just because he’s fat and overgrown is no reason why he should treat his guests with such outrageous rudeness.”

“Oh, but come now, Polynesia,” I said, “we must not forget that this is a human being who has been separated from his own kind for centuries and centuries. And even such civilization as he knew on the Earth, way back in those Stone Age days, was not, I imagine, anything to boast of. Pretty crude, I’ll bet it was, the world then. The wonder is, to my way of thinking, that he has any mind at all—with no other humans to mingle with through all that countless time. I’m not surprised that John Dolittle finds it difficult to talk with him.”

“Oh, well now, Tommy Stubbins,” said she, “that may sound all very scientific and high-falutin’. But just the same there’s no denying that this overgrown booby was the one who got us up here. And the least he could have done was to see that we were properly received and cared for—instead of letting us fish for ourselves with no one to guide us or to put us on to the ropes. Very poor hospitality, I call it.”

“You seem to forget, Polynesia,” I said mildly, “that in spite of our small size, we may have seemed—as the Doctor said—quite as fearful to him and his world as he and his have been to us—even if he did arrange to get us here. Did you notice that he limped?”

“I did,” said she, tossing her head. “He dragged his left foot after him with an odd gait. Pshaw! I’ll bet that’s what he got the Doctor up here for—rheumatism or a splinter in his toe. Still, what I don’t understand is how he heard of John Dolittle, famous though he is, with no communication between his world and ours.”

It was very interesting to me to watch the Doctor trying to talk with the Moon Man. I could not make the wildest guess at what sort of language it could be that they would finally hit upon. After all that time of separation from his fellows, how much could this strange creature remember of a mother tongue?

As a matter of fact, I did not find out that evening at all. The Doctor kept at his experiments, in his usual way, entirely forgetful of time or anything else. After I had watched for a while Chee-Chee’s head nodding sleepily I finally dozed off myself.

When I awoke it was daylight. The Doctor was still engaged with the giant in his struggles to understand and be understood. However, I could see at once that he was encouraged. I shouted up to him that it was breakfast time. He heard, nodded back to me and then apparently asked the giant to join us at our meal. I was surprised and delighted to see with what ease he managed to convey this idea to our big friend. For the Moon Man at once sat him down upon the ground near our tarpaulin which served as a table-cloth and gazed critically over the foodstuffs laid out. We offered him some of our famous yellow yam. At this he shook his head vigorously. Then with signs and grunts he proceeded to explain something to John Dolittle.

“He tells me, Stubbins,” said the Doctor presently, “that the yellow yam is the principal cause of rapid growth. Everything in this world, it seems, tends towards size; but this particular food is the worst. He advises us to drop it—unless we want to grow as big as he is. He has been trying to get back to our size, apparently, for ever so long.”

“Try him with some of the melon, Doctor,” said Chee-Chee.

This, when offered to the Moon Man, was accepted gladly; and for a little we all munched in silence.

“How are you getting on with his language, Doctor?” I asked presently.

“Oh, so so,” he grumbled. “It’s odd—awfully strange. At first I supposed it would be something like most human languages, a variation of vocal sounds. And I tried for hours to get in touch with him along those lines. But it was only a few vague far-off memories that I could bring out. I was, of course, particularly interested to link up a connection with some earthly language. Finally I went on to the languages of the insects and the plants and found that he spoke all dialects, in both, perfectly. On the whole I am awfully pleased with my experiments. Even if I cannot link him up with some of our own dead languages, at least his superior knowledge of the insect and vegetable tongues will be of great value to me.”

“Has he said anything so far about why he got you up here?” asked Polynesia.

“Not as yet,” said the Doctor. “But we’ve only just begun, you know. All in good time, Polynesia, all in good time.”

The Doctor’s warning to the parrot that perhaps we were just as terrifying to the Moon Man (in spite of his size) as he and his world were to us, proved to be quite true. After breakfast was over and I got out the usual notebook for dictation it soon appeared that this giant, the dread President of the Council, was the mildest creature living. He let us crawl all over him and seemed quite pleased that we took so much interest in him. This did not appear to surprise the Doctor, who from the start had regarded him as a friend. But to Chee-Chee and myself, who had thought that he might gobble us up at any moment, it was, to say the least, a great relief.

I will not set down here in detail that first talk between the Moon Man and the Doctor. It was very long and went into a great many matters of languages and natural history that might not be of great interest to the general reader. But here and there in my report of that conversation I may dictate it word for word, where such a course may seem necessary to give a clear picture of the ideas exchanged. For it was certainly an interview of great importance.

The Doctor began by questioning the giant on the history that Chee-Chee had told us as it had been handed down to him by his grandmother. Here the Moon Man’s memory seemed very vague; but when prompted with details from the Monkeys’ History, he occasionally responded and more than once agreed with the Doctor’s statements or corrected them with a good deal of certainty and firmness.

I think I ought perhaps to say something here about the Moon Man’s face. In the pale daylight of a lunar dawn it looked clever and intelligent enough, but not nearly so old as one would have expected. It is indeed hard to describe that face. It wasn’t brutish and yet it had in it something quite foreign to the average human countenance as seen on the Earth. I imagine that his being separated from human kind for so long may have accounted for this. Beyond question it was an animal-like countenance and yet it was entirely free from anything like ferocity. If one could imagine a kindly animal who had used all his faculties in the furtherance of helpful and charitable ends one would have the nearest possible idea of the face of the Moon Man, as I saw it clearly for the first time when he took breakfast with us that morning.

In the strange tongues of insects and plants John Dolittle fired off question after question at our giant guest. Yes, he admitted, he probably was Otho Bludge, the pre-historic artist. This bracelet?—Yes, he wore it because some one. . . . And then his memory failed him. . . . What some one? . . . Well anyway he remembered that it had first been worn by a woman before he had it. What matter, after all? It was long ago, terribly long. Was there anything else that we would like to know?

There was a question I myself wanted to ask. The night before, in my wanderings with Chee-Chee over the giant’s huge body, I had discovered a disc or plate hanging to his belt. In the dusk then I had not been able to make out what it was. But this morning I got a better view of it: the most exquisite picture of a girl kneeling with a bow and arrow in her hands, carved upon a plate of reindeer horn. I asked the Doctor did he not want to question the Moon Man about it. We all guessed, of course, from Chee-Chee’s story, what it was. But I thought it might prompt the giant’s memory to things out of the past that would be of value to the Doctor. I even whispered to John Dolittle that the giant might be persuaded to give it to us or barter it for something. Even I knew enough about museum relics to realize its tremendous value.

The Doctor indeed did speak of it to him. The giant raised it from his belt, where it hung by a slender thong of bark and gazed at it a while. A spark of recollection lit up his eyes for a moment. Then, with a pathetic fumbling sort of gesture, he pressed it to his heart a moment while that odd fuddled look came over his countenance once more. The Doctor and I, I think, both felt we had been rather tactless and did not touch upon the subject again.

I have often been since—though I certainly was not at the time—amused at the way the Doctor took charge of the situation and raced all over this enormous creature as though he were some new kind of specimen to be labeled and docketed for a natural history museum. Yet he did it in such a way as not to give the slightest offense.

“Yes. Very good,” said he. “We have now established you as Otho Bludge, the Stone Age artist, who was blown off the Earth when the Moon set herself up in the sky. But how about this Council? I understand you are President of it and can control its workings. Is that so?”

The great giant swung his enormous head round and regarded for a moment the pigmy figure of the Doctor standing, just then, on his forearm.

“The Council?” said he dreamily. “Oh, ah, yes, to be sure, the Council. . . . Well, we had to establish that, you know. At one time it was nothing but war—war, war all the time. We saw that if we did not arrange a balance we would have an awful mess. Too many seeds. Plants spread like everything. Birds laid too many eggs. Bees swarmed too often. Terrible!—You’ve seen that down there on the Earth, I imagine, have you not?”

“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said the Doctor. “Go on, please.”

“Well, there isn’t much more to that. We just made sure, by means of the Council, that there should be no more warfare.”

“Humph!” the Doctor grunted. “But tell me: how is it you yourself have lived so long? No one knows how many years ago it is that the Moon broke away from the Earth. And your age, compared with the life of Man in our world, must be something staggering.”

“Well, of course,” said the Moon Man, “just how I got here is something that I have never been able to explain completely, even to myself. But why bother? Here I am. What recollections I have of that time are awfully hazy. Let me see: when I came to myself I could hardly breathe. I remember that. The air—everything—was so different. But I was determined to survive. That, I think, is what must have saved me. I was determined to survive. This piece of land, I recollect, when it stopped swirling was pretty barren. But it had the remnants of trees and plants which it had brought with it from the Earth. I lived on roots and all manner of stuff to begin with. Many a time I thought that I would have to perish. But I didn’t—because I was determined to survive. And in the end I did. After a while plants began to grow; insects, which had come with the plants, flourished. Birds the same way—they, like me, were determined to survive. A new world was formed. Years after I realized that I was the one to steer and guide its destiny since I had—at that time anyway—more intelligence than the other forms of life. I saw what this fighting of kind against kind must lead to. So I formed the Council. Since then—oh, dear, how long ago!—vegetable and animal species have come to—Well, you see it here. . . . That’s all. It’s quite simple.”

“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor hurriedly. “I quite understand that—the necessities that led you to establish the Council.—And an exceedingly fine thing it is, in my opinion. We will come back to that later. In the meantime I am greatly puzzled as to how you came to hear of me—with no communication between your world and ours. Your moth came to Puddleby and asked me to accompany him back here. It was you who sent him, I presume?”

“Well, it was I and the Council who sent him,” the Moon Man corrected. “As for the ways in which your reputation reached us, communication is, as you say, very rare between the two worlds. But it does occur once in a long while. Some disturbance takes place in your globe that throws particles so high that they get beyond the influence of earth gravity and come under the influence of our gravity. Then they are drawn to the Moon and stay here. I remember, many centuries ago, a great whirlwind or some other form of rumpus in your world occurred which tossed shrubs and stones to such a height that they lost touch with the Earth altogether and finally landed here. And a great nuisance they were too. The shrubs seeded and spread like wildfire before we realized they had arrived and we had a terrible time getting them under control.”

“That is most interesting,” said the Doctor, glancing in my direction, as he translated, to make sure I got the notes down in my book. “But please tell me of the occasion by which you first learned of me and decided you wanted me up here.”

“That,” said the Moon Man, “came about through something which was, I imagine, a volcanic eruption. From what I can make out, one of your big mountains down there suddenly blew its head off, after remaining quiet and peaceful for many years. It was an enormous and terribly powerful explosion and tons of earth and trees and stuff were fired off into space. Some of this material that started away in the direction of the Moon finally came within the influence of our attraction and was drawn to us. And, as you doubtless know, when earth or plants are shot away some animal life nearly always goes with it. In this case a bird, a kingfisher, in fact, who was building her nest in the banks of a mountain lake, was carried off. Several pieces of the earth landed on the Moon. Some, striking land, were smashed to dust and any animal life they carried—mostly insect of course—was destroyed. But the piece on which the kingfisher traveled fell into one of our lakes.”

It was an astounding story and yet I believe it true. For how else could the Doctor’s fame have reached the Moon? Of course any but a water bird would have been drowned because apparently the mass plunged down fifty feet below the surface, but the kingfisher at once came up and flew off for the shore. It was a marvel that she was alive. I imagine her trip through the dead belt had been made at such tremendous speed that she managed to escape suffocation without the artificial breathing devices which we had been compelled to use.

The bird the Moon Man had spoken of (it seems she had since been elected to the Council) was presently brought forward and introduced to the Doctor. She gave us some valuable information about her trip to the Moon and how she had since adapted herself to new conditions.

She admitted it was she who had told the Moon Folk about John Dolittle and his wonderful skill in treating sicknesses, of his great reputation among the birds, beasts and fishes of the Earth.

It was through this introduction also that we learned that the gathering about us was nothing less than a full assembly of the Council itself—with the exception, of course, of the Vegetable Kingdom, who could not come. That community was however represented by different creatures from the Insect and Bird Worlds who were there to see to it that its interests were properly looked after.

This was evidently a big day for the Moon People. After our interview with the kingfisher we could see that arguments were going on between different groups and parties all over the place. At times it looked like a political meeting of the rowdiest kind. These discussions the Doctor finally put down quite firmly by demanding of the Moon Man in a loud voice the reason for his being summoned here.

“After all,” said he when some measure of quiet had been restored, “you must realize that I am a very busy man. I appreciate it as a great honor that I have been asked to come here. But I have duties and obligations to perform on the Earth which I have left. I presume that you asked me here for some special purpose. Won’t you please let me know what it is?”

A silent pause spread over the chattering assembly. I glanced round the queer audience of birds and bugs who squatted, listening. The Doctor, quite apart from his demand for attention had evidently touched upon a ticklish subject. Even the Moon Man himself seemed somewhat ill at ease.

“Well,” he said at last, “the truth is we were sorely in need of a good physician. I myself have been plagued by a bad pain in the foot. And then many of the bigger insects—the grasshoppers especially—have been in very poor health now for some time. From what the kingfisher told me, I felt you were the only one who could help us—that you—er—perhaps wouldn’t mind if we got you up here where your skill was so sorely needed. Tell me now: you were not put out by the confidence we placed in you? We had no one in our own world who could help us. Therefore we agreed, in a special meeting of the Council, to send down and try to get you.”

The Doctor made no reply.

“You must realize,” the Moon Man went on, his voice dropping to a still more apologetic tone, “that this moth we sent took his life in his hand. We cast lots among the larger birds, moths, butterflies and other insects. It had to be one of our larger kinds. It was a long trip, requiring enormous staying power. . . .”

The Moon Man spread out his giant hands in protest—a gesture very suggestive of the other world from which he originally came. The Doctor hastened to reassure him.

“Why, of course, of course,” said he. “I—we—were most glad to come. In spite of the fact that I am always terribly busy down there, this was something so new and promising in natural history I laid every interest aside in my eagerness to get here. With the moth you sent the difficulty of language did not permit me to make the preparations I would have liked. But pray do not think that I have regretted coming. I would not have missed this experience for worlds. It is true I could have wished that you had seen your way to getting in touch with us sooner. But there—I imagine you too have your difficulties. I suppose you must be kept pretty busy.”

“Busy?” said the Moon Man blankly. “Oh, no. I’m not busy. Life is very quiet and pleasant here.—Sometimes too quiet, we think. A session with the Council every now and then and a general inspection of the globe every so often: that is all I have to bother with. The reason I didn’t come and see you sooner, to be quite honest, was because I was a bit scared. It was something so new, having human folks visit you from another world. There was no telling what you might turn out to be—what you might do. For another thing, I expected you to be alone. For weeks past I have had the birds and insects—and the plants too—send me reports of your movements and character. You see, I had relied solely on the statements of a kingfisher. No matter how kind and helpful you had been to the creatures of your own world, it did not follow that you would be the same way inclined towards the Moon Folk. I am sorry if I did not appear properly hospitable. But you must make allowances. It—it was all so—so new.”

“Oh, quite, quite,” said the Doctor, again most anxious to make his host feel at ease. “Say no more, please, of that. I understand perfectly. There are a few points, however, on which I would like to have some light thrown. For one thing, we thought we saw smoke on the Moon, from Puddleby, shortly after your moth arrived. Can you tell us anything about that?”

“Why, of course,” said the Moon Man quickly. “I did that. We were quite worried about the moth. As I told you, we felt kind of guilty about the risky job we had given him. It was Jamaro who finally drew the marked card in the lottery.”

“Jamaro!” muttered the Doctor, slightly bewildered—“Lottery?—I—er—”

“The lottery to decide who should go,” the Moon Man explained. “I told you: we drew lots. Jamaro Bumblelily was the moth who drew the ticket which gave the task to him.”

“Oh, I see,” said the Doctor—“Jamaro. Yes, yes. You give your insects names in this land. Very natural and proper of course, where they are so large and take such an important part in the life and government of the community. You can no doubt tell all these insects one from another, even when they belong to the same species?”

“Certainly,” said the Moon Man. “We have, I suppose, several hundreds of thousands of bees in the Moon. But I know each one by his first name, as well as his swarm, or family name. Anyhow, to continue: it was then Jamaro Bumblelily who drew the ticket that gave him the job of going to the Earth after you. He was very sportsmanlike and never grumbled a bit. But we were naturally anxious. It is true that creatures had come, at rare intervals, from the Earth to our world. But so far none had gone from us to the Earth. We had only the vaguest idea of what your world would be like—from the descriptions of the kingfisher. And even in getting those we had been greatly handicapped by language. It had only been after days and weeks of work that we had been able to understand one another in the roughest way. So we had arranged with Jamaro Bumblelily that as soon as he landed he was to try and find some way to signal us to let us know he was all right. And we were to signal back to him. It seems he made a bad landing and lay helpless in your garden for some days. For a long while we waited in great anxiety. We feared he must have perished in his heroic exploit. Then we thought that maybe if we signaled to him he would be encouraged and know that we were still expecting his return. So we set off the smoke smudge.”

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “I saw it, even if Jamaro didn’t. But tell me: how did you manage to raise such an enormous smudge? It must have been as big as a mountain.”

“True,” said the Moon Man. “For twenty days before Jamaro’s departure I and most of the larger birds and insects had gathered the Jing-jing bark from the forest.”

“Gathered the what?” asked the Doctor.

“The Jing-jing bark,” the Moon Man repeated. “It is a highly explosive bark from a certain tree we have here.”

“But how did you light it?” asked the Doctor.

“By friction,” said the Moon Man—“drilling a hard-wood stick into a soft-wood log. We had tons and tons of the bark piled in a barren rocky valley where it would be safe from firing the bush or jungle. We are always terrified of bush-fires here—our world is not large, you know. I set the pile off with a live ember which I carried on a slate. Then I sprang back behind a rock bluff to defend my eyes. The explosion was terrific and the smoke kept us all coughing for days before it finally cleared away.”

We were frequently reminded during this long conversation (it lasted over a full day and a half) that the strange crowd about us was the great Council itself. Questions every now and then were hurled at the Moon Man from the dimness of the rear. He was continually turning his head as messages and enquiries were carried across to him from mouth to mouth. Sometimes without consulting the Doctor further he would answer them himself in queer sounds and signs. It was quite evident that the Council was determined to keep in touch with any negotiations that were going on.

As for John Dolittle, there was so much that he wanted to find out it looked—in spite of his hurry to get back to the Earth—as though his queries would never end—which, in a first meeting between two worlds, is not after all to be wondered at.

“Can you remember,” he asked, “when you first felt the Moon steadying herself, how you got accustomed to the new conditions? We had on our arrival a perfectly terrible time, you know. Different air, different gravity, different hearing and the rest. Tell me: how did you manage?”

Frowning, the Moon Man passed his gigantic hand across his brow.

“Really—it’s so long ago,” he muttered. “As I told you, I nearly died, many times. Getting enough food to stay alive on kept me busy the first few months. Then when I was sure that that problem was solved I began to watch. Soon I saw that the birds and insects were faced with the same difficulties as I was. I searched the Moon globe from end to end. There were no others of my own kind here. I was the only man. I needed company badly. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll study the Insect and Bird Kingdoms.’ The birds adapted themselves much quicker than I did to the new conditions. I soon found that they, being in the same boat as myself, were only too glad to cooperate with me in anything that would contribute to our common good. Of course I was careful to kill nothing. For one thing I had no desire to; and for another I realized that if, on such a little globe, I started to make enemies I could not last long. From the beginning I had done my best to live and let live. With no other human to talk with I can’t tell you how terribly, desperately lonely I felt. Then I decided I’d try to learn the language of the birds. Clearly they had a language. No one could listen to their warblings and not see that. For years I worked at it—often terribly discouraged at my poor progress. Finally—don’t ask me when—I got to the point where I could whistle short conversations with them. Then came the insects—the birds helped me in that too. Then the plant languages. The bees started me. They knew all the dialects. And . . . well . . .”

“Go on,” said the Doctor. The tone of his voice was calm and quiet, but I could see that he was deeply, intensely interested.

“Oh, dear me,” sighed the Moon Man, almost petulantly, “my memory, you know, for dates as far back as that, is awfully poor. To-day it seems as though I had talked Heron and Geranium all my life. But just when it was, actually, that I reached the point where I could converse freely with the insects and plants, I couldn’t give you the vaguest idea. I do know that it took me far, far longer to get in touch with the vegetable forms of life than it did with either the insects or the birds. I am afraid that our keeping count of time throughout has been pretty sketchy—certainly in our earlier history anyway. But then you must remember we were occupied with a great number of far more serious tasks. Recently—the last thousand years or so—we have been making an effort to keep a history and we can show you, I think, a pretty good record of most of the more important events within that time. The trouble is that nearly all of the dates you want are earlier than that.”

“Well, never mind,” said the Doctor. “We are getting on very well under the circumstances. I would like very much to see that record you speak of and will ask you to show it to me, if you will be so good, later.”

He then entered into a long examination of the Moon Man (carefully avoiding all dates, periods and references to time) on a whole host of subjects. The majority of them were concerned with insect and plant evolution and he kept a strict eye on me to see that all questions and replies were jotted down in the notebook. Gracious! What an unending list it seemed to my tired mind! How had the Moon Man first realized that the plants were anxious to talk and cooperate with him? What had led him to believe that the bees were in communication with the flowers they fed on? Which fruits and vegetables had he found were good for human food and how had he discovered their nutritious qualities without poisoning himself? etc., etc., etc. It went on for hours. I got most of it down, with very few mistakes, I think. But I know I was more than half asleep during the last hours of the interview.

The only trouble with most of it was this same old bug-bear of time. After all these ages of living without human company the poor giant’s mind had got to the point where it simply didn’t use time. Even in this record of the last thousand years, which he had proudly told us was properly dated, we found, when he showed it to us, an error of a century more or less meant very little.

This history had been carved in pictures and signs on the face of a wide flat rock. The workmanship of Otho the pre-historic artist showed up here to great advantage. While the carvings were not by any means to be compared with his masterpiece of the kneeling girl, they nevertheless had a dash and beauty of design that would arrest the attention of almost any one.

Nevertheless despite the errors of time, both in his recollections and his graven history, we got down the best booking that we could in the circumstances. And with all its slips and gaps it was a most thrilling and exciting document. It was the story of a new world’s evolution; of how a man, suddenly transported into space with nothing but what his two hands held at the moment of the catastrophe, had made himself the kindly monarch of a kingdom—a kingdom more wondrous than the wildest imaginings of the mortals he had left behind. For he was indeed a king, even if he called himself no more than the President of the Council. And what hardships and terrible difficulties he had overcome in doing it, only we could realize—we, who had come here with advantages and aids which he had never known.

Finally a lull did come in this long, long conversation between the Doctor and the Moon Man. And while I lay back and stretched my right hand, cramped from constant writing, Polynesia gave vent to a great deal which she had evidently had on her mind for some time.

“Well,” she grunted, lifting her eyebrows, “what did I tell you, Tommy? Rheumatism! That’s what the Doctor has come all this way for—rheumatism! I wouldn’t mind it so much in the case of the Moon Man himself. Because he certainly is a man in a hundred. But grasshoppers! Think of it—Think of bringing John Dolittle, M.D., billions of miles” (Polynesia’s ideas on geographical measurement were a bit sketchy) “just to wait on a bunch of grasshoppers! I—”

But the remainder of her indignant speech got mixed up with some of her favorite Swedish swear words and the result was something that no one could make head or tail of.

Very soon this pause in the conversation between the Doctor and the Moon Man was filled up by a great deal of talking among the Council. Every member of that important parliament apparently wanted to know exactly what had been said and decided on and what new measures—if any—were to be put in force. We could see that the poor President was being kept very busy.

At length the Doctor turned once more to the giant and said:

“Well now, when would it be convenient for you and the insect patients to be examined? I shall be most happy to do everything possible for you all, but you must realize that I would like to get back to the Earth as soon as I conveniently can.”

Before answering the Moon Man proceeded to consult his Council behind him. And, to judge from the length of the discussions that followed, he was meeting with quite a little criticism in whatever plans he was proposing. But finally he managed to quiet them; and addressing John Dolittle once more, he said:

“Thank you. If it will not inconvenience you, we will come to-morrow and have you minister to us. You have been very kind to come at all. I hope we will not seem too large an undertaking for you. At least, since you have approved of our system and government here, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are assisting us in a time of great need.”

“Why, of course, of course,” said the Doctor at once. “I shall be only too glad. That is what I am for, after all. I am a doctor, you know, a physician—even if I have become a naturalist in my later years. At what hour will you be ready for me?”

“At dawn,” said the Moon Man. Even in these modern days ideas of time on the Moon seemed strangely simple. “We will wait on you at sunrise. Till then, pleasant dreams and good rest!”

Even the garrulous Polynesia was too tired to talk much more that night. For all of us it had been a long and steady session, that interview, tense with excitement. The Moon Man and his Council had barely departed before every one of us was dozing off without a change of clothes or a bite to eat. I am sure that nothing on Earth—or Moon—could have disturbed our slumbers.

The daylight was just beginning to show when we were awakened. I am not certain who was the first to arouse himself (probably John Dolittle) but I do know that I was the first to get up.

What a strange sight! In the dim light hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gigantic insects, all invalids, stood about our camp staring at the tiny human physician who had come so far to cure their ailments. Some of these creatures we had not so far seen and never even suspected their presence on the Moon: caterpillars as long as a village street with gout in a dozen feet; immense beetles suffering from an affliction of the eyes; grasshoppers as tall as a three-storey house with crude bandages on their gawky joints; enormous birds with a wing held painfully in an odd position. The Doctor’s home had become once more a clinic; and all the halt and lame of Moon Society had gathered at his door.

The great man, when I finally roused him, swallowed two or three gulps of melon, washed them down with a draft of honey and water, took off his coat and set to work.