It therefore remained to put a finger on the emblems of worship and to extract, from the special character of those emblems, indications as to the nature of the benevolent manifestations of the divine power in favor of the inhabitants of our satellite.
Each of us was keenly preoccupied by that.
This time, there were only serious words between us, worthy in every way of the infinite research to which our hopes rose up in concert. Is there any need here to explain under what influence we were necessarily obliged to bring up and assemble the notions already collected on that capital point? In trying to lift one of the corners of the veil of that vast sanctuary where created beings drew closer to the source from which all intelligence emanates, and which, from planet to planet, and doubtless even beyond our vortex, observes the universal alliance of superior races in the bosom of contemplation and prayer, with God their sovereign legislator, how could we have avoided the accusation of mingling a little enthusiasm with the austerity of scientific language?
A remark by Dr. Grant, after having initially received from all my friends—and, I must admit, from me—an ironic welcome, in that it seemed to us to belong to exclusively to terrestrial bias, as well as to the superstition of numbers and the Cabala, penetrated us gradually with a religious emotion as soon as Mr. Drummond had insisted, by developing forcefully a certain quantity of analogous remarks.
According to the young lieutenant, the ternary number was reproduced with a singular constancy in a host of occasions, and apparently deliberately multiplied in taking on several forms alternately, incessantly, like a element of action or order, and with regard to a series of facts linked together by relations until then neglected or noted very indifferently in the course of our general observations. The lieutenant hastened to clarify what was obscure and apparently hazardous is that assertion, by reminding us of instances that seemed immediately to be revealed everywhere; and that first remark was on enveloped by a mass of dazzling proofs, and, so to speak, a body of doctrine.
In fact, in the depths of thousands of extinct craters that were perceptible from the summits of the plateaux of the mountains that furrowed the visible portion of the lunar disk in all directions, the prodigious cordon of fortresses and observatories that we have already identified, offered lacunae at intervals Those fortresses and observatories gave way to arenas, whose circular walls were bizarrely pierced by triangular niches hollowed in the rock, in the manner of inverted cones, as we had previously noted for the windows of the edifices of the Selenian capital, and placed in three vertical stages, like the stalls of an infinite circus. In the center of the arena rose four blocks or pyramids, similarly triangular, and one of those four pyramids dominated the others, in such a fashion that their equilibrium offered the mass of a powerful triangle.
It did not take us long to conjecture that those habitually deserted arenas, which, on the basis of an excessively superficial examination, had appeared to us to be rudimentary constructions or ruins—for we had only considered them in relation to the general system of the Selenians’ defense against the hostilities of the savage Vespertilios—might well be religious stations for the usage of countless bands we had seen, at various times and in various circumstances, heading processionally through our telescopic field of vision to disappear at its edge.
The result of our observation of the pace and organization of these processional bands took the supposition a step further. A constant regularity in the progress of the flying squadrons; the order that the Selenians observed in their groups, advancing three abreast and three deep; the whole series of the groups, which general ensemble formed a triangle, since their flanks, after a rapid development, were suddenly cut off in the vicinity of the rear-guard by a straight line; such an affectation reproduced point for point in the number, form and movement, as if decisively, had to be the expression of a thought, the translation of a ritual or the accomplishment of a law.
The field enlarged before the hypothesis. After the examination of all our particular remarks, their concordance proved to us in an irrefutable manner that, during the 350 hours that form, very nearly, the duration of the Selenian day, those phenomena of great processions had been revealed to us exactly three times, while the sun’s rays were in contact with the central point of the hemisphere of which the satellite offers us the eternal aspect. That particularity was therefore offered, if one can make use in this circumstance of sublunar terminology, first in the morning, then at midday and finally in the evening—which is to say, as soon as solar light reached, illuminated in full or deserted the central point of the Moon. Subject to verification by subsequent observation, that accord in our annotations, that simultaneity on a point that had initially seemed to us to have to little value, appeared to us at that moment to be singularly remarkable.
The same number triumphed everywhere. It remained for us to consult, laboriously, the other analogies of that genre, and, as it were, to catch the religion of the Selenians in the act, in flagrante delicto, before risking a conclusion that each of us feared to launch recklessly.
Sir William Cobett resolved to stay with us until the opportunity was offered to us to carry the spirit of investigation and analysis into the profound examination of that interesting problem. There was, from that moment on, something unusual in the solemn form in which we proceeded with our astronomical operations. Science was rising up this time to the heights of religion; no more beautiful enigma had ever disturbed the human mind.
It was 23 December, at eleven o’clock in the evening, the hour calculated on the basis of previous observations for devoting ourselves to that examination, that the axis of the telescope was directed toward the fringe of the lunar fortresses, maneuvering the instrument in such a way as to scan the entire chain of mountains and to choose very scrupulously the point at which our investigations ought to commence. The sun’s light was rendering the heavenly body full. The lunar day was at its mid-point. The movement of the telescope, initially a rapid and simple scan, was soon slowed down and determined by the double calculation of the velocity of our globe and its satellite, in order not to lose any of the details of the singular spectacle that realized our conjectures.
We saw an immense arena populated by Selenians, all with wings extended, standing in the niches of the rock faces that formed the walls of the crater. Just as we had remarked during the details previously given on the occasion of the nuptial election of the nobles of the Lunarian race, prodigious vegetal transplantations must have taken place on the perimeter of the ring around that point of rendezvous. The animated colors of that transplantation formed a striking contrast with the dead and somber hues of the vast arena, where, visibly, those masses of verdure could not have grown. The undulation of the branches was feeble; it attested to the calm of the air during the hours when the Sun fully illuminates the apparent disk of the Moon; and, unless the verdure of those unusual arbors was spreading some freshness in the surroundings—a supposition that nothing justifies—it was initially impossible for us to agree among ourselves as to the goal and the positive utility of that luxury of verdure.
The evaluation of the number of Selenians could not be fixed at less than ten thousand. The bottom of the vast basin that they were overlooking from the height of their niches, reminding us of the symmetry of the statues of saints that garnish the perimeter of the naves in Catholic cathedrals, presented a dense and compact mass of Vespertilios lying face down and motionless, whom one might have thought struck by death but for the extreme regularity of their disposition. That disposition, in order to be so correct, had to be voluntary and simultaneous. In fact, the heads of the Vespertilios were uniformly turned in the direction of the pyramids; their feet were touching the heads of other slaves, and so on, over a distance of more than three hundred toises. The ground seemed literally paved with them, like an infinite mosaic; their number appeared to us to be four times as considerable as that of the Selenians; one manifestation more in favor of the celestial justice that submits
strength and number to intelligence, in the same way that it opens the rich sanctuary of infinity, populated by the vortices of the universe, to the humble gazes of the imperceptible scientists of our world.
The immobility of the two races, the free race and the domestic race, appeared to us to be general in spite of the variation of attitudes. There was no individual of the beaver race there, which seemed never to emerge from the depths of its valleys or the vicinity of lakes. Perhaps beavers would perish on the mountain plateaux; perhaps, too, they would be unable to climb the steep slopes.
We were beginning to believe that the worship of the first two races might well offer, save for nuances between them, some analogy with the ecstatic contemplations of Indian dervishes. That induction came to mind above all because of one Selenian who was standing alone, like a stylite, perched on the extreme tip of the central pyramid; when suddenly, the latter seemed suddenly to attain more developed proportions—doubtless by rising up in definite flight and hovering in space, and all the Vespertilios leapt to their feet. We presumed that it must have been in accordance with a resounding signal, for the movement was nervous and simultaneous among the forty thousand Vespertilios; their wings quivered and folded up again. They were arranged in circles, disposed in concentric rings. The narrowest of those rings was at a distance of four feet from the pyramid, and the last against the walls of the arena to which the Selenians were as if attached.
That movement was followed by another. The Vespertilios separated themselves into groups of three; abruptly, the left side turned toward the center of the triangle; for nearly twenty minutes, with a kind of furious competition, they flagellated one another reciprocally and relentlessly, the first striking the second, the second striking the third and the third striking the first, while the Selenians quit their niches and flew above the host of slaves, making a processional tour of the arena. That soon formed the most extraordinary variegation of movements and colors, like the radiation of the spokes of a dazzlingly white wheel against a black background. One might have thought it the bars of a cage rotating on a pivot. That spontaneous mortification of slaves who were striking one another under the gaze of their masters, and whom the masters were not imitating, appeared to us to be the symbolic expression of a religious faith in the hierarchy of the ranks and the destinies of each of the races, on the Selenian globe as for any other world.
Throughout the time that the circulation lasted, we suspended any further conjecture. Finally, and probably in response to the repetition of the same signal that must regulate everything, the Selenians resumed their places, the Vespertilio triangles were reformulated into lines and those lines into circles; the solitary of the pyramid appeared to be getting sensibly closer to his shadow, which was vacillating to our eyes all around him on the walls of his pedestal. Abruptly, he refolded his wings, and the civilized Vespertilios fell face down in the arena again.
A thought seized us then, in combining the simultaneity of the various movements, which was that the civilized Vespertilios were worshiping their masters like beings of an infinitely superior nature, and that religion, among the Selenians, was restricted to the calculation of political subjection, in which the dominators, denuded of beliefs, positioned themselves as gods above the rabble.
That thought, which afflicted us, did not endure; for, supposing that the individuals of the domestic race revered the Selenians for their real superiority, that veneration must only be, at the most, the well-understood admission of a relative preeminence, and could not go as far as idolatry for perishable beings that the Vespertilios of the barbaric countries of the Moon dared to attack even in their fortresses, put to death and probably devour.
The analogy of terrestrial events sufficed to refute our first suspicion. The Americans ceased to tremble religiously at the sight of Cortes and Pizarro as soon as they perceived that the Spaniards did not form an indivisible whole with their horses, and that the frightful monsters who disposed of thunderbolts were mortal like them. We returned to the idea of a certain unity in the religion, but with political modifications between the races.
It was then that Sir William Cobett, whose indefatigable attention did not neglect any of the details of the vast ensemble represented in our field of vision, pointed out to us groups of Selenian females in the thickets of verdure on the rim of the crater, in isolated groups of three, around a kind of dais or palanquin of foliage in which a bird was perched. That bird might be an object of sacrifice. It became interesting to determine its species. By virtue of its almost white color and one very curious particularity—the bird only supported itself on one leg—we thought we recognized in it the Founingo, or green wood-pigeon of Madagascar, a variety of pigeon singularly stronger than the one to which ornithologists apply that nomenclature in Europe, and even at the Cape of Good Hope.
The unipedal pigeon was not attached; it was fluttering hither and yon freely, which set aside any idea of sacrifice. Sir William Cobett also pointed out to us that the Selenian on the pyramid was also carrying one of those pigeons in his arms, against his breast.
At that moment, the Selenian, turning round, appeared to offer that bird to general adoration. The festivals of Venus and Adonis on the island of Cyprus, the Egyptians’ worship of animals and the Judaic oblations in the Temple of Solomon came to mind, with a host of increasingly bold, perhaps audacious, suppositions, which the frequent repetition of the ternary number seemed to constrain us to deduce as a sequence of rigorous consequences; but we hesitated, and the conclusion remained suspended on our lips.
Finally, the Vespertilios of the great circle broke away rapidly from all points of the arena, like enemy cavaliers charging one another in a battle, or swarms of insects colliding; they were followed almost immediately in that surge by the Vespertilios of the second circle, and the other circles followed, exchanging blow for blow, until the last. In the blink of an eye, with the prodigious strength that is decidedly the prerogative of that inferior race, they had stripped the margin of the crater of the vegetation covering it, which we had reason to believe to be foreign to that elevated region.
As soon as the position of the branches ceased to be aligned with the telescopic axis, we were able to appreciate their form and grandeur; their length could not have been less than twenty feet; their very compact foliage was composed of densely packed leaves, like those of the laurel, but much larger and of a pearly gray whose reflection sparkled in the sunlight like polished steel. Then a cortege was organized; the Vespertilios hastened to form a double line and incline their branches toward one another in the form of a vault.
That movement was executed with a regularity that appeared to us to be marvelous, for the last to arrive of the slave race rapidly ran to the head of the column to extend the avenue infinitely, and the line of shadow into which the Selenians of both sexes precipitated themselves. It was necessary to calculate the movement of the telescope to follow that procession in its journey over the plains, lakes and mountains, which rolled before our eyes like the movement of a cylinder, in a direction contrary to the course of the caravan.
The Selenians always seemed to be on the point of overflowing the avenue in which they were enclosed, and yet, by virtue of an infinite relay, as soon as a void was established at the rear extremity of the avenue, the Vespertilios posted momentarily at the tail of the column transported themselves to the head of the cortege with a hasty acceleration.
Some of the unfortunates, exhausted by that violent exercise, or chastised by their chiefs by means of a kind of lasso whose usage we had noticed during combat and hunting, plunged through the air and were broken against the rocks, without the accident interrupting the pace of the general progress. For us that was a specimen of the severity that reigns in discipline with regard to the slaves, and the disdain that those slaves had between themselves for members of their own race, since the Vespertilios’ chiefs were Vespertilios themselves.
That will not astonish people who are acquainted, even superficially,
with the regime of our colonies, and who have seen negroes laboring under the discipline of men of the same color.
But let us return to the cortege, of which, after all, the Vespertilios only formed the border. Harnessed, in a sense, to the dais of foliage that bore the bird, the young Selenian females came first, two in front and the third behind the dais. We counted three thousand of them. The Selenian of the pyramid came after them; he raised the pigeon above his head, and he crowd of Selenians followed him in parallel lines.
That was no longer in conformity with our previous observations of the triangular formation of all the formalities of the ceremony, and for the moment, we were obliged to tell ourselves—which was subsequently confirmed—that the return journey after religious solemnities was not subject to the same rules of order and movement as the departure. Nevertheless, in the partial organization of groups, and in the ensemble of the cortege, it was still easy to observe a hierarchy of ranks and functions among the Selenians, and in all things, the supremacy of the priestly hierarchy over the purely civil hierarchies—manifest testimony of a legislation that drew its principal authority from the promulgation of a spiritual and religious code.
But whence came that promulgation? Did it come from the Selenians or the Eternal?
That was not for us to answer. Perhaps we have assembled enough striking indications and irrefutable evidence to enable Christian minds to share the conviction that took possession of us; but that conviction, solemn as it is for the first witnesses of so many marvels, for us, who now owe ourselves the felicitation of thinking that revelation has not limited the benefit of its mercy to our planet alone; for us, in sum, who do not pronounce without a respectful tremor the names of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, who in the series of revelations, have seen each of those three persons announced in turn or seconded by the other two, by the law dictated in Sinai, by the sacrifice of Calvary and the tongues of fire of Pentecost, that conviction surpasses the narrow bounds of Science. It will remain in the sanctuary of our intimate persuasion; it will brave the fanatical insults of incredulity. Those flagellations, those numbers and those symbols speak clearly enough for us.
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