Хью Лофтинг: Doctor Dolittle in the Moon

The woods grew more and more mysterious, and more and more alive , as we went onward towards the other side of the Moon, the side that earthly Man had never seen before. For one thing, the strange music seemed to increase; and for another, there was more movement in the limbs of the trees. Great branches that looked like arms, bunches of small twigs that could have been hands, swung and moved and clawed the air in the most uncanny fashion. And always that steady wind went on blowing, even, regular and smooth.

"There was more movement in the limbs of the trees"

All of the forest was not gloomy, however. Much of it was unbelievably beautiful. Acres of woods there were which presented nothing but a gigantic sea of many–coloured blossoms, colours that seemed like something out of a dream, indescribable, yet clear in one's memory as a definite picture of something seen.

The Doctor as we went forward spoke very little; when he did it was almost always on the same subject: "the absence of decay," as he put it.

"I am utterly puzzled, Stubbins," said he, in one of his longer outbursts when we were resting. "Why, there is hardly any leaf–mould at all!"

"What difference would that make, Doctor?" I asked.

"Well, that's what the trees live on, mostly, in our world," said he. "The forest growth, I mean—the soil that is formed by dying trees and rotting leaves—that is the nourishment that brings forth the seedlings which finally grow into new trees. But here! Well, of course there is some soil—and some shedding of leaves. But I've hardly seen a dead tree since I've been in these woods. One would almost think that there were some—er—balance. Some arrangement of—er—well—I can't explain it…. It beats me entirely."

I did not, at the time, completely understand what he meant. And yet it did seem as though every one of these giant plants that rose about us led a life of peaceful growth, undisturbed by rot, by blight or by disease.

Suddenly in our march we found ourselves at the end of the wooded section. Hills and mountains again spread before us. They were not the same as those we had first seen, however. These had vegetation, of a kind, on them. Low shrubs and heath plants clothed this rolling land with a dense growth—often very difficult to get through.

But still no sign of decay—little or no leaf–mould. The Doctor now decided that perhaps part of the reason for this was the seasons—or rather the lack of seasons. He said that we would probably find that here there was no regular winter or summer. It was an entirely new problem, so far as the struggle for existence was concerned, such as we knew in our world.

Into this new heath and hill country we travelled for miles. And presently we arrived upon a rather curious thing. It was a sort of basin high up and enclosed by hills or knolls. The strange part of it was that here there were not only more tracks of the Giant Man, just as we had seen lower down, but there were also unmistakable signs of fire . In an enormous hollow ashes lay among the sands. The Doctor was very interested in those ashes. He took some and added chemicals to them and tested them in many ways. He confessed himself at last entirely puzzled by their nature. But he said he nevertheless felt quite sure we had stumbled on the scene of the smoke signalling we had seen from Puddleby. Curiously long ago, it seemed, that time when Too–Too, the owl, had insisted he saw smoke burst from the side of the Moon. That was when the giant moth lay helpless in our garden. And yet—how long was it? Only a few days!

"It was a sort of basin"

"It was from here, Stubbins," said the Doctor, "that the signals we saw from the Earth were given out, I feel certain. This place, as you see, is miles and miles across. But what was used to make an explosion as large as the one we saw from my house I have no idea."

"But it was smoke we saw," said I, "not a flash."

"That's just it," he said. "Some curious material must have been used that we have as yet no knowledge of. I thought that by testing the ashes I could discover what it was. But I can't. However, we may yet find out."

For two reasons the Doctor was anxious for the present not to get too far from the forest section. (We did not know then, you see, that there were other wooded areas beside this through which we had just come.) One reason was that we had to keep in touch with our food supply which consisted of the fruits and vegetables of the jungle. The other was that John Dolittle was absorbed now in the study of this Vegetable Kingdom which he felt sure had many surprises in store for the student naturalist.

After a while we began to get over the feeling of uncanny creepiness, which at the beginning had made us so uncomfortable. We decided that our fears were mostly caused by the fact that these woods and plants were so different from our own. There was no unfriendliness in these forests after all, we assured ourselves—except that we were being watched. That we knew—and that we were beginning to get used to.

As soon as the Doctor had decided that we would set up our new headquarters on the edge of the forest, and we had our camp properly established, we began making excursions in all directions through the jungle. And from then on I was again kept very busy taking notes of the Doctor's experiments and studies.

One of the first discoveries we made in our study of the Moon's Vegetable Kingdom was that there was practically no warfare going on between it and the Animal Kingdom. In the world we had left we had been accustomed to see the horses and other creatures eating up the grass in great quantities and many further examples of the struggle that continually goes on between the two. Here, on the other hand, the animals (or, more strictly speaking, the insects, for there seemed as yet hardly any traces of other animal species) and the vegetable life seemed for the most part to help one another rather than to fight and destroy. Indeed we found the whole system of Life on the Moon a singularly peaceful business. I will speak of this again later on.

We spent three whole days in the investigation of the strange music we had heard. You will remember that the Doctor, with his skill on the flute, was naturally fond of music; and this curious thing we had met with interested him a great deal. After several expeditions we found patches of the jungle where we were able to see and hear the tree music working at its best.

There was no doubt about it at all: The trees were making the sounds and they were doing it deliberately. In the way that an Æolian harp works when set in the wind at the right angle, the trees moved their branches to meet the wind so that certain notes would be given out. The evening that the Doctor made this discovery of what he called the Singing Trees he told me to mark down in the diary of the expedition as a Red Letter Date. I shall never forget it. We had been following the sound for hours, the Doctor carrying a tuning–fork in his hand, ringing it every once in a while to make sure of the notes we heard around us. Suddenly we came upon a little clearing about which great giants of the forest stood in a circle. It was for all the world like an orchestra. Spellbound, we stood and gazed up at them, as first one and then another would turn a branch to the steady blowing wind and a note would boom out upon the night, clear and sweet. Then a group, three or four trees around the glade, would swing a limb and a chord would strike the air, and go murmuring through the jungle. Fantastic and crazy as it sounds, no one could have any doubt who heard and watched that these trees were actually making sounds, which they wanted to make , with the aid of the wind.