THE TWELFTH CHAPTER The Vanity Lilies Of course on a globe larger than that of the Moon we could never have done as well as we did. When you come to think of it, one man, a boy, a monkey and a parrot, as a staff for the exploration of a whole world, makes the expedition sound, to say the least, absurd. We did not realize, any of us, when we started out from our first landing that we were going to make a circular trip of the Moon’s globe. It just worked out that way. To begin with, we were expecting every hour that some part of the Animal Kingdom would come forward into the open. But it didn’t. And still we went on. Then this language of the trees and flowers came up and got the Doctor going on one of his fever-heat investigations. That carried us still further. We always took great care when departing from one district for an excursion of any length to leave landmarks behind us, camps or dumps, so that we could find our way back to food and shelter if we should get caught in a tight place. In this sort of feeling our way forward Polynesia was most helpful. The Doctor used to let her off regularly now to fly ahead of us and bring back reports. That gave us some sort of idea of what we should prepare for. Then in addition to that, the Doctor had brought with him several small pocket surveying instruments with which he marked on his chart roughly the points at which we changed course to any considerable extent. [Illustration: “_We always took care to leave landmarks behind us_”] In the earlier stages of our trip we had felt we must keep in touch with the first fruit section we had met with, in order to have a supply of vegetables and fruits to rely on for food. But we soon discovered from Polynesia’s scouting reports, that other wooded sections lay ahead of us. To these we sent Chee-Chee, the expert, to investigate. And when he returned and told us that they contained even a better diet than those further back, we had no hesitation in leaving our old haunts and venturing still further into the mysteries of the Moon’s Further Side. The Doctor’s progress with the language of the trees and plants seemed to improve with our penetration into the interior. Many times we stopped and pitched camp for four or five days, while he set up some new apparatus and struggled with fresh problems in plant language. It seemed to grow easier and easier for him all the time. Certainly the plant life became more elaborate and lively. By this we were all grown more accustomed to strange things in the Vegetable Kingdom. And even to my unscientific eyes it was quite evident that here the flowers and bushes were communicating with one another with great freedom and in many different ways.