The head was big and round and smooth. As they
came nearer they saw that in place of fingernails it had long white
feelers which it kept extended and constantly waving about as it groped
its way towards the water. As the intense light flashed full on it, it
turned its head towards them. It had a nose and a mouth--the nose, long
and thick, with huge mobile nostrils; the mouth forming an angle
something like a fish's lips. Teeth there seemed none. At either side of
the upper part of the nose there were two little sunken holes--in which
this thing's ancestors of countless thousands of years ago had once had
eyes.
As she looked upon this awful parody of what had once perhaps been a
human face, Zaidie covered hers with her hands and uttered a little moan
of horror.
"Horrible, isn't it?" said Redgrave. "I suppose that's what the last
remnants of the Lunarians have come to. Evidently once men and women,
something like ourselves. I daresay the ancestors of that thing have
lived here in coldness and darkness for hundreds of generations. It
shows how tremendously tenacious Nature is of life.
"Ages ago, no doubt, that brute's ancestors lived up yonder when there
were seas and rivers, fields and forests, just as we have them on earth,
among men and women who could see and breathe and enjoy everything in
life and had built up civilisations like ours!
"Look, it's going to fish or something.
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