It was uncanny, and for a moment they hesitated on the edge of the city, which lay in a sort of cup-like valley, surrounded on all sides by towering peaks of the moon mountains. The bridge over which they had come afforded the only entrance to the city, and in times of war (provided the inhabitants of the moon ever fought) the passage must have been well guarded. It was evidently a time of peace when the calamity that turned the inhabitants to stone came upon them, for only one soldier was in the guard hut--doubtless being there merely to give an alarm, or possibly to keep out undesirable strangers. "Well, are we going to stand here all day?" asked Jack of his companions, when they had contemplated the silent city for five minutes longer. "I say, let's go down there and see what we can find. I'm getting hungry." "There'll be nothing there to eat," declared Mark. "If there ever was anything, it's now stone. Think of a loaf of bread like a brick, and a chunk of meat like some great rock!" "Let's go down, anyhow," added Andy, and they advanced. As they got down into the streets, the weird effect came over them more strongly. It was as if they had suddenly entered some large town, and at their advent every living person had been turned into an image. "Wonderful, wonderful!" murmured Jack. "I've read of the uncovering of the ancient buried cities, and how they found women in the kitchen baking bread, and men at their work, but this goes ahead of that, for here the people are not dust--they are statues!" "It certainly is wonderful," agreed Mark. "I only wish the two professors could see this. They could write several books about it. This proves that the moon was once inhabited, though it is dead now. The projectile should have come to this part of the moon." "Maybe they'll bring it here, when we get back and tell them what we've seen," suggested Jack. "Yes, if we ever do get back," went on his chum, with a return of his gloomy thoughts. The strangeness of the scenes all about them can scarcely be imagined. Think of looking at a city street teeming with life, men and women hurrying here and there, dogs running about, children at their play, and then suddenly seeing that same street become as dead as some mountain, with the people represented as stones on that same mountain, and you can get some idea of what our friends looked upon. Here was a woman, looking in a store window, probably at some bargains, though even the very window and store itself was now stone, and the woman was like a block of marble. Near her was a little child, also turned to stone, and there were a number of men, standing together on a street corner as if they had been talking politics when the calamity overtook them.