He found himself suddenly upon a wide river, the stream moving slowly and sluggishly between the banks, where the grass and weeds stood straight and as tall as a man's head. Overhead as a cloudless sky, in which the sun shone as hot as a flame of fire. There was a boat coming down the river with a queer crooked sail, spread in hopes of catching a breeze, though there was no wind blowing. Three men were rowing the boat, and the oars dipped and flashed in the sunlight.
It was all very strange to David, and yet it was all singularly familiar to him. He could not think why it should be so familiar until he remembered that he had heard Ned Strong, the sailorman, tell his father about this very place, which he had seen in his travels, and all that had happened there. Then David knew it was a place called Africa.
Dear, dear; how hot the sun shone! David wished he had brought his hat. When you looked out across the tall grass, the level stretch seemed to tremble. and quiver in the heat. It was all grass, grass as far as the eye could see.
The boat came nearer and nearer, just as Ned Strong had said. Then it was very close, and David could see everything in it, just as though he were looking over the side of a ship as Ned Strong had done. In the boat, beside those who were rowing, were a great lot of black people--men and women--each without a single stitch of clothes upon his or her body. All the poor black people were fastened together with great, long ropes, and each wore a collar of wood, to which the rope was fastened.
David remembered that Ned Strong had said that these were slaves, and he felt almost more sorry for them than he had felt in all his life before. The poor slaves sat there staring straight before them. They looked scared and starved and thin, and their ribs were like barrel hoops, just as Ned Strong had said, their bodies hollow, and their arms and necks like skin and bones. But there they sat patiently without moving, and the flies crawled over them, and they did not have the spirit to brush them away. There was one young woman who sat with her baby lying upon her knees. She sat the most quietly and patiently of all, for she was dead, though nobody knew it. By and by, a man dressed in a loose robe, and with a fez on his head, came down the long board that ran the length of the boat. When he came to the woman he stopped and looked at her, and saw that she was dead, though the baby was still alive. Then he called to some of his men, who came and loosened the rope about her, for it was of no use to keep the woman any longer, and so they threw her overboard. David was crying.
The baby still lay in the boat, and then the man with the loose robe and the fez picked it up, and threw it also into the water after the mother, for it too was of no use. David screamed aloud.
Then, lo and behold! everything was gone like a flash. What David saw now was the bottom of the river, and all around was nothing but water. There were great beds of long water grass twisting and moving slowly as the slow river water drifted past. Overhead David could see the round bottom of the boat as it moved slowly away, the oars still dipping and making round golden rings on the smooth surface of the river overhead. It was very cool and pleasant down there at the bottom of the river, under the water, and the black woman and the black baby lay not far from one another, each in a bed of soft green water grass.
Then somebody came walking along through he beds of long, cool water grasses. It was the Moon-Angel. He came to where the black woman lay, and he took her by the hand. Then she arose and stood looking about her. The Moon-Angel picked up the baby and laid it in her arms. "Come," said he, "we must be going."
The negro mother, with her baby in her arms, followed the Moon-Angel as he led them up out of the water into a garden, where there were children playing. They stopped playing as the Moon-Angel led the black woman with the baby through the garden. David looked about him; it was a very wonderful garden. There were flowers everywhere, and there was a meadow in the distance, and a row of trees along by a river, and far away beyond that, a great city, sparkling white in the sunlight against the still blue sky. Then David understood that the children belonged to the city, and that their teacher had brought them out into the garden to play.
(He did not then know that it was one of the gardens behind the moon.)
The children joined David, and followed along after the black woman and her baby and the Moon-Angel, and their teachers did not forbid them. The black woman looked around at the children and laughed, and they also laughed.
"Where are you going'?" called David to the black woman. "Where is the Moon-Angel going to take you'?"
The woman answered him, but even though he was a moon-calf, David could not understand what she said, for she spoke in no words that fitted to any speech except the speech of a very few.
By and by David found that the children were no longer following the Moon-Angel and the woman with her baby. Then he heard somebody calling him. He looked around; it was the Man-in-the-moon. "Stop!" called the Man-in-the-moon. "Come back! You must go no further."
"Why not?" said David.
"Because you've got to the end of nowhere," said the Man-in-the-moon, "and no one can go further than that unless the Moon-Angel takes him."
"But I 'd like to see where she goes," said David. Then the Man-in-the-moon ran forward and caught him by the coat and pulled him back. As he did so, there suddenly came a flash of great light that shone all around and dazzled David's eyes. In the blinding light, David could see nothing at all, and he stood there quite still, trembling and frightened. Then he heard something like the sound of thunder in the distance. But it was not that; it was the sound of thousands and thousands of voices, singing in a multitudinous cadence, that was like the rushing of many waters, and like the vast hum of far-away music, and like the distant pealing of thunder. The Moon-Angel and the woman and the baby were gone, and there was nothing but the light and the sound.
Ah! yes, little child. For there is as much joy and gladness over one poor black woman who enters into that place as there is over the whitest empress who ever walked the earth of Christendom.
Suddenly something was closed, and David found himself inside the moon-house. The Man-in-the-moon had drawn the curtain over the window,--that was all.
"But where did the woman and the baby go?" asked David.
"That," said the Man-in-the-moon, "you will have to ask the Moon-Angel himself sometime when you meet him. But tell me, did you like what you saw?"
"It was very beautiful," said David. "But Ned Strong did not tell my father about all that I have seen. He only told about those poor slaves, and how the woman and the little baby were thrown into the water."
The Man-in-the-moon laughed. "Aye, aye," said he, "that was because he saw the outside of things. If Ned Strong could only come here to the moon-house, and look out of the second story window, as you have done, he would not have bothered himself about the outside, which is no more to the inside of things than the shell of the egg is to the meat."
"But," said David, "why did there have to be such an outside? Why did the poor black woman have to be ill-treated, and starve and die, and why did the poor little black baby have to be thrown alive into the water? The other part was beautiful, but that was dreadful and sad."
The Man-in-the-moon laughed again. "Because," said he, "everything that has an inside must have an outside as well, for there can be no inside unless there is an outside. And this is true, little child: the more sad the outside, the more beautiful almost always is the inside. But, come, you must go to work now. You have spent enough time looking out of the window. To-morrow night you shall see something else, but now it is time to go to work."
Then the Man-in-the-moon led David up to the third story of the moon-house, where there was nothing above him except the hollow, empty sky. The first thing David saw was a great basket full of stars of all sorts and sizes and kinds. Some shone white, and some blue, and some rosy red. The light shone from them so that all about was a mist of brightness.
David stared with all his eyes, as well he might, for there are few indeed who get into the third story of the moon-house and see what David saw--that great basket full of bright stars.
Beside the basket was a bundle of lamb's-wool. "There is your work," said the Man-in-the-moon. "It is to polish the stars with lamb's-wool, so that they may shine brightly when the moon wanes and the sky is dark once more."
David sat down on the wooden bench and took up a big blue star. He blew his breath upon it and rubbed it with the lamb's-wool, and as he rubbed it it grew brighter and brighter, and pulsed and glowed and throbbed with light as though it were alive. David did not know how beautiful a star could be until he held it in his own hand and rubbed it with lamb's-wool.
I dare say that you will hardly believe that this is the truth. I dare say there are some wise folk, each of whom wears two pairs of spectacles upon his nose, who will tell you that it is all nonsense. Well, well, maybe it is all nonsense, but sometimes there is more solid truth in a little nonsense than in a whole peck of potatoes. All that you have to do is to look up into the sky when the moon is full, and there you will see for yourself that there are scarcely any stars to be seen, and those few so dull and dim that they hardly twinkle at all. That is because somebody in the moon is polishing the others with lamb's-wool to make them bright for the time when the sky is dark again.
There are some few stars that even those in the moon do not polish. Those are given to the sun children to burnish in the sun-oven.
This is not all nonsense.