and shape.
Baffled by this, he turned his attention to the nearer shore beyond the shallows. The purple mass
looked for a moment like a plump of organ-pipes, then like a stack of rolls of cloth set up on
end, then like a forest of gigantic umbrellas blown inside out. It was in faint motion. Suddenly
his eyes mastered the object. The purple stuff was vegetation: more precisely it was vegetables,
vegetables about twice the height of English elms, but apparently soft and flimsy. The stalks -
one could hardly call them trunks - rose smooth and round, and surprisingly thin, for about
forty feet: above that, the huge plants opened into a sheaf-like development, not of branches but
of leaves, leaves large as lifeboats but nearly transparent. The whole thing corresponded roughly
to his idea of a submarine forest: the plants, at once so large and so frail, seemed to need water
to support them, and he wondered that they could hang in the air. Lower down, between the stems,
he saw the vivid purple twilight, mottled with paler sunshine, which made up the internal scenery
of the wood.
'Time for lunch,' said Devine suddenly. Ransom straightened his back; in spite of the thinness
and coldness of the air, his forehead was moist. They had been working hard and he was short of
breath. Weston appeared from the door of the hut and muttered something about finishing first'.
Devine, however, overruled him. A tin of beef and some biscuits were produced, and the men sat
down on the various boxes which were still plentifully littered between the spaceship and the
hut. Some whiskey again at Devine's suggestion and against Weston's advice was poured into the
tin cups and mixed with water: the latter, Ransom noticed, was drawn from their own water tins
and not from the blue lakes.
As often happens, the cessation of bodily activity drew Ransom's attention to the excitement
under which he had been labouring ever since their landing. Eating seemed almost out of the
question. Mindful, however, of a possible dash for liberty, he forced himself to eat very much
more than usual, and appetite returned as he ate. He devoured all that he could lay hands on
either of food or drink: and the taste of that first meal was ever after associated in his
mind with the first unearthly strangeness (never fully recaptured) of the bright, still;
sparkling unintelligible landscape - with needling shapes of pale green, thousands of feet
high, with sheets of dazzling blue soda-water, and acres of rose-red soapsuds. He was a
little afraid that his companions might notice, and suspect his new achievements as a
trencherman; but their attention was otherwise engaged. Their eyes never ceased roving the
landscape; they spoke abstractedly and often changed position, and were ever looking over
their shoulders. Ransom was just finishing his protracted meal when he saw Devine stiffen
like a dog, and lay his hand in silence on Weston's shoulder. Both nodded. They rose. Ransom,
gulping down the last of his whiskey, rose too. He found himself between his two captors.
Both revolvers were out. They were edging him to the shore of the narrow water, and they were
looking and pointing across it.
At first he could not see clearly what they were pointing at. There seemed to be some paler
and slenderer plants than he had noticed before among the purple ones; he hardly attended to
them, for his eyes were busy searching the ground - so obsessed was he with the reptile fears
and insect fears of modern imagining. It was the reflections of the new white objects in the
water that sent his eyes back to them: long, streaky, white reflections motionless in the
running water - four or five, no, to be precise, six of them. He looked up. Six, white things
were standing there. Spindly and flimsy things, twice or three times the height of a man. His
first idea was that they were images of men, the work of savage artists; he had seen things
like them in books of
Baffled by this, he turned his attention to the nearer shore beyond the shallows. The purple mass
looked for a moment like a plump of organ-pipes, then like a stack of rolls of cloth set up on
end, then like a forest of gigantic umbrellas blown inside out. It was in faint motion. Suddenly
his eyes mastered the object. The purple stuff was vegetation: more precisely it was vegetables,
vegetables about twice the height of English elms, but apparently soft and flimsy. The stalks -
one could hardly call them trunks - rose smooth and round, and surprisingly thin, for about
forty feet: above that, the huge plants opened into a sheaf-like development, not of branches but
of leaves, leaves large as lifeboats but nearly transparent. The whole thing corresponded roughly
to his idea of a submarine forest: the plants, at once so large and so frail, seemed to need water
to support them, and he wondered that they could hang in the air. Lower down, between the stems,
he saw the vivid purple twilight, mottled with paler sunshine, which made up the internal scenery
of the wood.
'Time for lunch,' said Devine suddenly. Ransom straightened his back; in spite of the thinness
and coldness of the air, his forehead was moist. They had been working hard and he was short of
breath. Weston appeared from the door of the hut and muttered something about finishing first'.
Devine, however, overruled him. A tin of beef and some biscuits were produced, and the men sat
down on the various boxes which were still plentifully littered between the spaceship and the
hut. Some whiskey again at Devine's suggestion and against Weston's advice was poured into the
tin cups and mixed with water: the latter, Ransom noticed, was drawn from their own water tins
and not from the blue lakes.
As often happens, the cessation of bodily activity drew Ransom's attention to the excitement
under which he had been labouring ever since their landing. Eating seemed almost out of the
question. Mindful, however, of a possible dash for liberty, he forced himself to eat very much
more than usual, and appetite returned as he ate. He devoured all that he could lay hands on
either of food or drink: and the taste of that first meal was ever after associated in his
mind with the first unearthly strangeness (never fully recaptured) of the bright, still;
sparkling unintelligible landscape - with needling shapes of pale green, thousands of feet
high, with sheets of dazzling blue soda-water, and acres of rose-red soapsuds. He was a
little afraid that his companions might notice, and suspect his new achievements as a
trencherman; but their attention was otherwise engaged. Their eyes never ceased roving the
landscape; they spoke abstractedly and often changed position, and were ever looking over
their shoulders. Ransom was just finishing his protracted meal when he saw Devine stiffen
like a dog, and lay his hand in silence on Weston's shoulder. Both nodded. They rose. Ransom,
gulping down the last of his whiskey, rose too. He found himself between his two captors.
Both revolvers were out. They were edging him to the shore of the narrow water, and they were
looking and pointing across it.
At first he could not see clearly what they were pointing at. There seemed to be some paler
and slenderer plants than he had noticed before among the purple ones; he hardly attended to
them, for his eyes were busy searching the ground - so obsessed was he with the reptile fears
and insect fears of modern imagining. It was the reflections of the new white objects in the
water that sent his eyes back to them: long, streaky, white reflections motionless in the
running water - four or five, no, to be precise, six of them. He looked up. Six, white things
were standing there. Spindly and flimsy things, twice or three times the height of a man. His
first idea was that they were images of men, the work of savage artists; he had seen things
like them in books of
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