and the confinement of the cavern, magnified and concentrated the sound until it was awful. The fellow in the center, that Edmund had aimed at, was hurled to the ground as if shot from a catapult. The others fell as flat as he, and all lay groveling, the big eyes filming and swaying wildly, but no longer in unison.
The charm was broken, and, as we saw our enemies prostrate, our courage and nerve returned.
"I thought so," said Edmund coolly. "It's the sound that they can't stand. I'm sorry I killed that fellow, for the report alone would have been sufficient. This atmosphere acts like a microphone. You have heard the voices of these creatures, which are hardly louder than whispers. Their ears are evidently not made for sounds of any magnitude. I shouldn't wonder if I had burst every ear-drum in the lot."
"After all," he continued, after a moment's thought, "it is perhaps as well that I took one life. Probably it would have had to come eventually, and now we have them thoroughly cowed. If they had ever reached us, they would have torn us asunder in a moment with those muscular arms."
The Food of the Natives and Their Cooking
As he spoke, Edmund boldly approached the groveling row, and pushed with his foot the huge, white, furry body of the one he had shot. The bullet had gone through his head. At Edmund's approach the creatures sank even lower on the rocky floor, and those nearest to him turned up their moon eyes, with an expression of submissive terror and supplication that was grotesque, though unmistakable. He motioned us to approach, and, imitating him, we began to pat and soothe the shrinking bodies until, understanding that we would not harm them, they gradually acquired some confidence in us. In short, after a while a relation like that of masters with the most submissive slaves was established.
In the meantime the crowd in the cavern increased; others of the creatures, attracted perhaps by the noise, coming in continually through side passages. Those who had been present at our arrival explained the situation to the newcomers, as we could see, and it was evident that our prestige was thoroughly established.
As we became better acquainted with these creatures we found that they were not as savage as they looked. Their heads, and the larger part of their faces, were covered with black hair, but on their bodies was a white silky fur. Why the difference of color existed I could never imagine. The reason for the great size of their eyes appeared evident. It was the prevailing darkness of the side of the planet on which they dwelt. With those eyes they could see in the gloom like cats. They were surprisingly intelligent, too, in their way. Their construction of the hundreds of steps leading down into the caverns, and their employment of a kind of coal for heat and light, showed that. But this was not all.
We found that, in some of the caverns, which were connected with one another by winding passages, they cultivated their food, which consisted entirely of vegetables of various sorts, all unlike any that I had ever met with on the earth, Water dripped from the roofs of these caverns, but there was no light except that derived from the burning coal, yet the vegetation, though almost colorless, seemed to thrive astonishingly.
A Necessary Killing
They had many ways of cooking their food, and although there yet remained a good supply of stores in the car, Edmund thought it advisable for us to accustom ourselves to the diet of the inhabitants. We found it decidedly agreeable, and without ill effects of any kind.
The only brute animals, of any size, that we could discover in the caverns were some dog-like creatures, about as large as terriers, but very furry.
The burial-ground of the community we discovered when they came to dispose of the fellow that Edmund had shot. It was a large, lone cavern, situated at a long distance from the one which we had first entered. We thought we saw indications of some kind of religious ceremony when they put their slain comrade in the ground; and then, for the first time, we recognized the women. We were astonished by the evidence of a monogamous relation among the sexes, which was furnished by the fact that one of these women manifested by her sorrow a special grief, which we thought could only be accounted for upon the supposition that she was the wife of the dead person.
She held two or three little ones by the hands, and we were fairly moved to tears by the spectacle, Edmund being particularly affected.
"I almost wish I had never come here," he said bitterly; "since the first thing I have done is to kill an inoffensive intelligent creature."
"Not so inoffensive, either," put in Jack. "If you hadn't killed him, where should we be now?"
"But it wasn't necessary,” Edmund insisted. "The noise alone would have sufficed."
"Don't borrow trouble," said Jack sympathetically. "You did the best you knew, and Heaven knows what we should have done without you."
But I noticed that Edmund was afterwards very gentle with the poor creatures, who seemed to bear us no ill-will, feeling, probably, that we were superior beings, who could do as we liked.
I have spoken of them as a community, and I may say here that we afterward discovered that all this part of Venus was sprinkled over with similar communities, somewhat resembling separate tribes. Each tribe occupied a group of caverns by itself, and there seemed to be but little intercourse among them. They seldom went out of the caverns, except to perform a very remarkable ceremony, which led us into a danger that put streaks of silver on my head, where no gray hair was due for many years yet. But of that later.
The most surprising discovery that we made in the cavern was a big smithy! It was really nothing else. Edmund had foretold us that we should find something of that kind. He based his prophecy on the fact that there were rude tools and utensils of metal in the caverns. He examined the metal, and pronounced it iron.
"All the planets are largely composed of iron," he said. "These people here, primitive as they seem in many ways, have found out how to smelt and
