master of his fate by j. maclaren cobban 1890 contents. chapter i. julius courtney ii. a mysterious case iii. "m. dolaro" iv. the man of the crowd v. the remarkable case of lady mary fane vi. at the bedside of the doctor vii. contains a love interlude viii. strange scenes in curzon street ix. an apparition and a confession to z. mennell, esq. my dear mennell, it has been my fortune to see something of the practice of the art of healing under widely different conditions, and i know none who better represents the most humane and most exacting of all professions than yourself. the good doctor of this story--the born surgeon and healer, the ever young and alert, the self-forgetful, the faithful friend, gifted with "that exquisite charity which can forgive all things"--is studied from you. it is one of the greatest pleasures of my life to inscribe your name on this dedicatory page, and to subscribe myself, your sincere friend and grateful patient, j. maclaren cobban. london, november 1889. chapter i. julius courtney. the hyacinth club has the reputation of selecting its members from among the freshest and most active spirits in literature, science, and art. that is in a sense true, but activity in one or another of those fields is not a condition of membership; for, just as the listening boswell was the necessary complement of the talking johnson, so in the hyacinth club there is an indispensable contingent of passive members who find their liveliest satisfaction in hearing and looking on, rather than in speaking and doing. something of the home principle of male and female is necessary for the completeness even of a club. the hyacinth club-house looks upon piccadilly and the green park. the favourite place of concourse of its members is the magnificent smoking-room on the first floor, the bow-windows of which command a view up and down the fashionable thoroughfare, and over the trees and the undulating sward of the park to the gates of buckingham palace. on a monday afternoon in the beginning of may, the bow-windows were open, and several men sat in leather lounges (while one leaned against a window-sash), luxuriously smoking, and noting the warm, palpitating life of the world without. a storm which had been silently and doubtfully glooming and gathering the night before had burst and poured in the morning, and it was such a spring afternoon as thrills the heart with new life and suffuses the soul with expectation--such an afternoon as makes all women appear beautiful and all men handsome. the south-west wind blew soft and balmy, and all nature rejoiced as the bride in the presence of the bridegroom. the trees in the park were full of sap, and their lusty buds were eagerly opening to the air and the light. the robin sang with a note almost as rich and sensuous as that of the thrush; and the shrill and restless sparrows chirped and chattered about the houses and among the horses' feet, and were as full of the joy of life as the men and women who thronged the pavements or reclined in their carriages in the sumptuous ease of wealth and beauty. of the men who languidly gazed upon the gay and splendid scene from the windows of the club, none seemed so interested as the man who leaned against the window-frame. he appeared more than interested--absorbed, indeed--in the world without, and he looked bright and handsome enough, and charged enough with buoyant health, to be the ideal bridegroom of nature in her springtide. he was a dark man, tall and well built, with clear brown eyes. his black hair (which was not cropped short, as is the fashion) had a lustrous softness, and at the same time an elastic bushiness, which nothing but the finest-tempered health can give; and his complexion, though tanned by exposure, had yet much of the smoothness of youth, save where the razor had passed upon his beard. thus seen, a little way off, he appeared a young man in his rosy twenties; on closer view and acquaintance, however, that superficial impression was contradicted by the set expression of his mouth and the calm observation and understanding of his eye, which spoke of ripe experience rather than of green hope. he bore a very good english name--courtney; and he was believed to be rich. there was no member of whom the hyacinth club was prouder than of him: though he had done nothing, it was commonly believed he could do anything he chose. no other was listened to with such attention, and there was nothing on which he could not throw a fresh and fascinating light. he was a constant spring of surprise and interest. while others were striving after income and reputation, he calmly and modestly, without obtrusion or upbraiding, held on his own way, with unsurpassable curiosity, to the discovery of all which life might have to reveal. it was this, perhaps, as much as the charm of his manner and conversation, that made him so universal a favourite; for how could envy or malice touch a man who competed at no point with his fellows? his immediate neighbours, as he thus stood by the window, were a pair of journalists, several scientific men, and an artist. "have you seen any of the picture-shows, julius?" asked the painter, kew. courtney slowly abstracted his gaze from without, and turned on his shoulder with the lazy, languid grace of a cat. "no," said he, in a half-absent tone; "i have just come up, and i've not thought of looking into picture-galleries yet." "been in the country?" asked kew. "yes, i've been in the country," said courtney, still as if his attention was elsewhere. "it must be looking lovely," said kew. "it is--exquisite!" said courtney, waking up at length to a full glow of interest. "that's why i don't want to go and stare at pictures. in the spring, to see the fresh, virginal, delicious green of a bush against an old dry brick wall, gives a keener pleasure than the best picture that ever was painted." "i thought," said kew, "you had a taste for art; i thought you enjoyed it." "so i do, my dear fellow, but not now,--not at this particular present. when i feel the warm sun on my back and breathe the soft air, i want no more; they are more than art can give--they are nature, and, of course, it goes without saying that art can never compete with nature in creating human pleasure. i mean no disparagement of your work, kew, or any artist's work; but i can't endure art except in winter, when everything (almost) must be artificial to be endurable. a winter may come in one's life--i wonder if it will?--when one would rather look at the picture of a woman than at the woman herself. meantime i no more need pictures than i need fires; i warm both hands and heart at the fire of life." "ah!" said kew, with a wistful lack of comprehension. "that's why i believe," said courtney, with a sudden turn of reflection, "there is in warm countries no art of our small domestic kind." "just so," said kew; while dingley dell, the art critic, made a note of courtney's words. "look here!" exclaimed dr. embro, an old scientific man of scottish extraction, who, in impatience with such transcendental talk, had taken up 'the st. james's gazette.' "what do you make of this queer case at the hôtel-dieu in paris? i see it's taken from 'the daily telegraph;'" and he began to read it. "oh," said kew, "we all read that this morning." "dr. embro," said courtney, again looking idly out of window, "is like a french journal: full of the news of the day before yesterday." "have you read it yourself, julius?" asked embro, amid the laughter of his neighbours. "no," said julius carelessly; "and if it's a hospital case i don't want to read it." "what!" said embro, with heavy irony. "you say that? you, a pupil of the great dubois and the greater charbon! but here comes a greater than charbon--the celebrated dr. lefevre himself. come now, lefevre, you tell us what you think of this paris hospital case." "presently, embro," said lefevre, who had just perceived his friend courtney. "ha, julius!" said he, crossing to him and taking his hand; "you're looking uncommonly well." "yes," said julius, "i am well." "and where have you been all this while?" asked the doctor. "oh," said julius, turning his gaze again out of window, "i have been rambling everywhere, between dan and beersheba." "and all is vanity, eh?" said the doctor. "well," said julius, looking at him, "that depends--that very much depends. but can there be any question of vanity or vexation in this sweet, glorious sunshine?" and he stretched out his hands as if he burgeoned forth to welcome it. "perhaps not," said lefevre. "come and sit down and let us talk." they were retiring from the window when embro's voice again sounded at lefevre's elbow--"come now, lefevre; what's the meaning of that paris case?" "what paris case?" embro answered by handing him the paper. he took it, and read as follows:- "about a month ago a strange case of complete mental collapse was received into the hôtel-dieu. a fresh healthy girl, of the working class, about twenty years of age, and comfortably dressed, presented herself at a police-station near the odéon and asked for shelter. as she did not appear to be in full possession of her mental faculties, she was sent to the hôtel-dieu, where she remained in a semi-comatose condition. her memory did not go farther back than the hour of her application at the police-station. she was entirely ignorant of her previous history, and had even forgotten her name. the minds of the medical staff of the hôtel-dieu were very much exercised with her condition; but it was not till about a week ago that they succeeded in restoring to any extent her mental consciousness and her memory. she then remembered the events immediately preceding her application to the police. it had come on to rain, she said, and she was hurrying along to escape from it, when a gentleman in a cloak came to her side and politely offered to give her the shelter of his umbrella. she accepted; the gentleman seemed old and ill. he asked her to take his arm. she did so, and very soon she felt as if her strength had gone from her; a cold shiver crept over her; she trembled and tottered; but with all that she did not find her sensations disagreeable exactly or alarming; so little so, indeed, that she never thought of letting go the gentleman's arm. her head buzzed, and a kind of darkness came over her. then all seemed to clear, and she found herself alone near the police-station, remembering nothing. being asked to further describe the gentleman, she said he was tall and dark, with a pleasant voice and wonderful eyes, that made you feel you must do whatever he wished. the police have made inquiries, but after such a lapse of time it is not surprising that no trace of him can be found." "well?" asked embro, when lefevre had raised his eyes from the paper. "what do you think of it?" "curious," said lefevre. "i can't say more, since i know nothing of it but this. have you read it, julius?" "no," said julius; "i hate what people call news; and when i take up a paper, it's only to look at the weather forecasts." lefevre handed him the paper, which he took with an unconcealed look of repulsion. "if it's some case of disease," said he, "it will make me ill." "oh no," said lefevre; "it's not painful, but it's curious;" and so julius set himself to read it. "but come," said embro, posing the question with his forefinger; "do you believe that story, lefevre?" "though it's french, and from the 'telegraph,'" said lefevre, "i see no reason to disbelieve it." "come," said embro, "come--you're shirking the question." "i confess," said lefevre, "i've no desire to discuss it. you think me prejudiced in favour of anything of the kind; perhaps i think you prejudiced against it: where, then, is the good of discussion?" "well, now," said the unabashed embro, "i'll tell you what i think. here's a story"--julius at that instant handed back the paper to him--"of a healthy young woman mesmerised, hypnotised, or somnambulised, or whatever you like to call it, in the public street, by some man that casually comes up to her, and her brain so affected that her memory goes! i say it's inconceivable!--impossible!" and he slapped the paper down on the table. the others looked on with grim satisfaction at the prospect of an argument between the two representatives of rival schools; and it was noteworthy that, as they looked, they turned a referring glance on courtney, as if it were a foregone conclusion that he must be the final arbiter. he, however, sat abstracted, with his eyes on the floor, and with one hand propping his chin and the other drumming on the arm of his chair. "i'm not a scientific man," said the journalist who was not an art critic, "and i am not prejudiced either way about this story; but it seems to me, embro, that you view the thing through a very ordinary fallacy, and make a double mistake. you confound the relatively inconceivable with the absolutely impossible: this story is relatively inconceivable to you, and therefore you say it is absolutely impossible." "is there such a thing as an absolute impossibility?" murmured julius, who still sat with his chin in his hand, looking as if he considered the "thing" from a long way off as one of a multitude of other things. "i do not believe there is," said the journalist; "but--" "don't let us lose ourselves in metaphysics," broke in embro. then, turning to courtney, whose direct intelligent gaze seemed to disconcert him, he said, "now, julius, you've seen, i daresay, a good many things we have not seen,--have you ever seen or known a case like this we're talking about?" "i can't say i have," said julius. "there you are!" quoth embro, in triumph. "but," continued julius, "i don't therefore nail that case down as false." "do you mean to say," exclaimed embro, "that you have lived all your years, and studied science at the salpétrière,--or what they call science there,--and studied and seen god knows what else besides, and you can't pronounce an opinion from all you know on a case of this sort?" "oh yes," said julius, quietly, "i can pronounce an opinion; but what's the use of that? i think that case is true, but i don't know that it is; and therefore i can't argue about it, for argument should come from knowledge, and i have none. i have a few opinions, and i am always ready to receive impressions; but, besides some schoolboy facts that are common property, the only thing i know--i am certain of--is, as some man says, '_life's a dream worth dreaming_.'" "you're too high-falutin for me, julius," said embro, shaking his head. "but my opinion, founded on my knowledge, is that this story is a hallucination of the young woman's noddle!" "and how much, embro," laughed julius, rising to leave the circle, "is the argument advanced by your ticketing the case with that long word?" "to say 'hallucination,'" quoth lefevre, "is a convenient way of giving inquiry the slip." "my dear embro," said julius,--and he spoke with an emphasis, and looked down on embro with a bright vivacity of eye, which forewarned the circle of one of his eloquent flashes: a smile of expectant enjoyment passed round,--"hallucination is the dust-heap and limbo of the meanly-equipped man of science to-day, just as witchcraft was a few hundred years ago. the poor creature of science long ago, when he came upon any pathological or psychological manifestation he did not understand, used to say, '_witchcraft_! away with it to the limbo!' to-day he says, '_hallucination_! away with it to the dust-heap!' it is a pity," said he, with a laugh, "you ever took to science, embro." "and why, may i ask?" said embro. "oh, you'd have been great as an orthodox theologian of the kirk; the cocksureness of theology would have suited you like your own coat. you are not at home in science, for you have no imagination." it was characteristic of the peculiar regard in which julius was held that whatever he said or did appeared natural and pleasant,--like the innocent actions and the simple, truthful speech of a child. not even embro was offended with these last words of his: the others laughed; embro smiled, though with a certain sourness. "pooh, julius!" said he; "what are you talking about? science is the examination of facts, and what has imagination to do with that? reason, sir, is what you want!" "my dear embro," said julius, "there are several kinds of facts. there are, for instance, big facts and little facts,--clean facts and dirty facts. imagination raises you and gives you a high and comprehensive view of them all; your mere reason keeps you down in some noisome corner, like the man with the muck-rake." "hear, hear!" cried the journalist and the artist heartily. "you're wrong, julius," said embro,--"quite wrong. keep your imagination for painting and poetry. in science it just leads you the devil's own dance, and fills you with delusions." julius paused, and bent on him his peculiar look, which made a man feel he was being seen through and through. "i am surprised, embro," said he, "that one can live all your years and not find that the illusions of life are its best part. if you leave me the illusions, i'll give you all the realities. but how can we stay babbling and quibbling here all this delicious afternoon? i must go out and see green things and beasts. come with me, lefevre, to the zoological gardens; it will do you good." "i tell you what," said lefevre, looking at the clock as they moved away; "my mother and sister will call for me with the carriage in less than half an hour: come with us for a drive." "oh yes," said julius; "that's a good idea." "and i," said lefevre, "must have a cup of tea in the meantime. come and sit down, and tell me where you have been." but when they had sat down, julius was little inclined to divagate into an account of his travels. his glance swept round and noted everything; he remarked on a soft effect of a shaft of sunshine that lit up the small conservatory, and burnished the green of a certain plant; he perceived a fine black persian cat, the latest pet of the club, and exclaimed, "what a beautiful, superb creature!" he called it, and it came, daintily sniffed at his leg, and leaped on his lap, where he stroked and fondled it. and all the while he continued to discuss illusion, while lefevre poured and drank tea (tea, which julius would not share: tea, he said, did not agree with him). "it bothers me," he said, "to imagine how a man like embro gets any satisfaction out of life, for ever mumbling the bare dry bones of science. such a life as his might as well be passed in the receiver of an air-pump." "still the old julius!" said the doctor, with a smile. "still dreaming and wandering, interested in everything, but having nothing to do!" "nothing to do, my dear fellow?" said julius. "i've all the world to enjoy!" and he buried his cheek in the soft fur of the cat. "a purpose in life, however," said lefevre, "gives an extraordinary zest to all enjoyment." "to live," said julius, "is surely the purpose of life. any smaller, any more obvious purpose, will spoil life, just as it spoils art." "i believe, my boy, you are wrong in both," said lefevre. "art without a purpose goes off into all sorts of madness and extravagance, and so does life." "you really think so?" said julius, his attention fixed for an instant, and looking as if he had set up the point and regarded it at a distance. "yes; perhaps it does." but the next moment his attention seemed given to the cat; he fondled it, and talked to it soothingly. "i am sure of it," said lefevre. "just listen to me, julius. you have wonderful intelligence and penetration in everything. you are fond of science; science needs men like you more than the dull plodders that usually take to it. when you were in charbon's class you were his favourite and his best pupil,--don't i remember?--and if you liked you could be the greatest physician of the age." "it is treason to yourself to say such a thing." "your fame would soon eclipse mine." "fame! fame!" exclaimed julius, for an instant showing irritation. "i would not give a penny-piece for fame if all the magicians of the east came crying it down the streets! why should i seek fame? what good would it do me if i had it?" "well, well," said lefevre; "let fame alone: you might be as unknown as you like, and do a world of good in practice among the poor." julius looked at him, and set the cat down. "my dear lefevre," said he, "i did not think you could urge such common twaddle! you know well enough,--nobody knows better,--first of all, that there are already more men waiting to do that kind of thing than can find occupation: why should i go down among them and try to take their work? and you know, in the next place, that medical philanthropy, like all other philanthropy, is so overdone that the race is fast deteriorating; we strive with so much success to keep the sickly and the diseased alive, that perfect health is scarcely known. life without health can be nothing but a weariness: why should it be reckoned a praiseworthy thing to keep it going at any price? if life became a burden to me, i should lay it down." "but," said lefevre, earnestly, "your life surely is not your own to do with it what you like!" "in the name of truth, lefevre," answered julius, "if my life is not my own, what is? i get its elements from others, but i fashion it myself, just as much as the sculptor shapes his statue, or the poet turns his poem. you don't deny to the sculptor the right to smash his statue if it does not please him, nor to the poet the right to burn his manuscript;--why should you deny me the right to dispose of my life? i know--i know," said he, seeing lefevre open his mouth and raise his hand for another observation, "that your opinion is the common one, but that is the only sanction it has; it has the sanction neither of true morality nor of true religion! but here is the waiter to tell you the carriage is come. i'm glad. let us get out into the air and the sunshine." the carriage was the doctor's own; his mother, although the widow of a court physician, was too poor to maintain much equipage, but she made what use she pleased of her son's possessions. when lady lefevre saw julius at the carriage-door, she broke into smiles and cries of welcome. "where have you been this long, long while, julius?" said she. "this is julius courtney, nora. you remember nora, julius, when she was a little girl in frocks?" "she now wears remarkable gowns," chimed in the doctor. "which," said julius, "i have no doubt are becoming." "my brother," said nora, with a sunny smile, "is jealous; because, being a doctor, he must wear only dowdy clothes of dingy colours." "we have finished at school and college, and been presented at court," laughed lady lefevre. "and," broke in the brother, "we have had cards engraved with our full name, _leonora_." "with all this," said lady lefevre, "i hope you won't be afraid of us." "i see no reason," said julius. "for, if i may say so, i like everything in nature, and it seems to me nature has had more to do with the finishing you speak of than the schoolmistress or the college professor." "there he is already," laughed lady lefevre, "with his equivocal compliments. i shouldn't wonder if he says that, my dear, because you have not yet had more than a word to say for yourself." by that time lefevre and julius were seated, and the carriage was rolling along towards the park. julius sat immediately opposite lady lefevre, but he included both her and nora in his talk and his bright glances. the doctor sat agreeably suffused with delight and wonder. no one, as has been seen, had a higher opinion of courtney's rare powers, or had had more various evidence of them, than lefevre, but even he had never known his friend so brilliant. he was instinct with life and eloquence. his face shone as with an inner light, and his talk was bright, searching, and ironical. the amazing thing, however, was that julius had as stimulating and intoxicating an influence on nora as, it was clear, nora had on him. his sister had not appeared to lefevre hitherto more than a beautiful, healthy, shy girl of tolerable intelligence; now she showed that she had brilliance and wit, and, moreover, that she understood julius as one native of a strange realm understands another. when they entered the park, they were the observed of all. and, indeed, leonora lefevre was a vision to excite the worship of those least inclined to idolatry of nature. she was of the noblest type of english beauty, and she seemed as calmly unconscious of its excellence and rarity as one of the grand greek women of the parthenon. she had, however, a sensuous fulness and bloom, a queenly carriage of head and neck, a clearness of feature, and a liquid kindness of eye that suggested a deep potentiality of passion. they drove round the row, and round again, and they talked and laughed their fill of wisdom and frivolity and folly. to be foolish wisely and gracefully is a rare attainment. when they had almost completed their third round, julius (who had finished a marvellous story of a fairy princess and a cat) said, "i can see you are fond of beasts, miss lefevre. i should like to take you to the zoological gardens and show you my favourites there. may we go now, lady lefevre?" "by all means," said lady lefevre, "let us go. what do you say, john?" "oh, wherever you like, mother," answered her son. arrived in the gardens, julius took possession of his companions, and exerted all his arts to charm and fascinate. he led the ladies from cage to cage, from enclosure to enclosure, showed himself as familiar with the characters and habits of their wild denizens as a farmer is with those of his stock, and they responded to his strange calls, to his gentleness and fearlessness, with an alert understanding and confidence beautiful to see. his favourites were certain creatures of the deer species, which crowded to their fences to sniff his clothes, and to lick his hands, which he abandoned to their caresses with manifest satisfaction. his example encouraged the queenly nora and her sprightly mother to feed the beautiful creatures with bread and buns, and to feel the suffusion of pleasure derived from the contact of their soft lips with the palm of the hand. after that they were scarcely astonished when, without bravado, but clearly with simple confidence and enjoyment, julius put his hand within the bars of the lion's cage and scratched the ears of a lioness, murmuring the while in a strange tongue such fond sounds as only those use who are on the best terms with animals. the great brute rose to his touch, closing its eyes, and bearing up its head like a cat. then came an incident that deeply impressed the lefevres. julius went to a cage in which, he said, there was a recent arrival--a leopard from the "land of the setting sun," the romantic land of the moors. the creature crouched sulking in the back of the cage. julius tapped on the bars, and entreated her in the language of her native land, "ya, dudu! ya, lellatsi!" she bounded to him with a "_wir-r-r_" of delight, leaned and rubbed herself against the bars, and gave herself up to be stroked and fondled. when he left her, she cried after him piteously, and wistfully watched him out of sight. "do you know the beautiful creature?" asked lady lefevre. "yes," answered julius quietly; "i brought her over some months ago." lefevre had explained to his mother that julius had always been on friendly or fond terms with animals, but never till now had he seen the remarkable understanding he clearly maintained with them. "look!" said lady lefevre to her son as they turned to leave the gardens. "he seems to have fascinated nora as much as the beasts." nora stood a little aloof, regarding julius in an ecstasy of admiration. when she found her mother was looking at her, her eyes sank, and as it were a veil of blushes fell over her. mother and son walked on first, and julius followed with nora. "he is a most charming and extraordinary man," said the mother. "he is," said the son, "and amazingly intelligent." "he seems to know everything, and to have been everywhere,--to have been a kind of rolling stone. if anything should come of this, i suppose he can afford to marry. you ought to know about him." "i believe i know as much as any one." "he has no profession?" queried the lady. "he has no profession; but i suppose he could afford it," said lefevre musingly. "you don't like the idea," said his mother. "not much. i scarce know why. but i somehow think of him as not having enough sense of the responsibility of life." "i suppose his people are of the right sort?" "i suppose they are; though i don't know if he has any people," said he, with a laugh. "he is the kind of man who does not need parents or relations." "still, hadn't you better try to find out what he may have in that line?" "yes," said lefevre; "perhaps i had." chapter ii. a mysterious case. the two friends returned, as they had arranged, to the hyacinth club for dinner. courtney's coruscating brilliancy sank into almost total darkness when they parted from lady and miss lefevre, and when they sat down to table he was preoccupied and silent, yet in no proper sense downcast or dull. lefevre noted, while they ate, that there was clear speculation in his eye, that he was not vaguely dreaming, but with alert intelligence examining some question, or facing some contingency; and it was natural he should think that the question or contingency must concern nora as much as julius. yet he made no overture of understanding, for he knew that courtney seldom offered confidence or desired sympathy; not that he was churlish or reserved, but simply that he was usually sufficient unto himself, both for counsel and for consolation. lefevre was therefore surprised when he was suddenly asked a question, which was without context in his own thought. "have you ever found something happen or appear," said julius, "that completely upsets your point of view, and tumbles down your scheme of life, like a stick thrust between your legs when you are running?" "i have known," said lefevre, "a new fact arise and upset a whole scientific theory. that's often a good thing," he added, with a pointed glance; "for it compels a reconstruction of the theory on a wider and sounder basis." "yes," murmured julius; "that may be. but i should think it does not often happen that the new fact swallows up all the details that supported your theory,--as aaron's rod, turned into a serpent, swallowed up the serpent-rods of the magicians of egypt,--so that there is no longer any theory, but only one great, glorious fact. i do admire," he exclaimed, swerving suddenly, "the imagination of those old greeks, with their beautiful, half-divine personifications of the spirits of air and earth and sea! but their imagination never conceived a goddess that embodied them all!" "i have often thought, julius," said lefevre, "that you must be some such embodiment yourself; for you are not quite human, you know." the doctor said that with a clear recollection of his mother's request. he hoped that his friend would take the cue, and tell him something of his family. julius, however, said nothing but "indeed." lefevre then tried to tempt him into confession by talking about his own father and mother, and by relating how the french name "lefevre" came to be domiciled in england; but julius ignored the temptation, and dismissed the question in an eloquent flourish. "what does a man want with a family and a name? they only tie him to the earth, as gulliver was tied by the people of lilliput. we have life and health,--_if_ we have them,--and it is only veiled prurience to inquire whence we got them. a man can't help having a father and a mother, i suppose; but he need not be always reminding himself of the fact: no other creature on earth does. for myself, i wish i were like that extraordinary person, melchizedek, without father and without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life." in a little while the friends parted. lefevre said he had work to do, but he did not anticipate such work as he had to turn to that night. though the doctor was a bachelor, he had a professional residence apart from his mother and sister. they lived in a small house in curzon street; he dwelt in savile row. savile row was a place of consequence long before regent street was thought of, but now they are few who know of its existence. fashion ignores it. it is tenanted by small clubs, learned societies, and doctors. it slumbers in genteel decorum, with its back to the garish modern thoroughfare. it is always quiet, but by nine o'clock of a dark evening it is deserted. when dr lefevre, therefore, stepped out of his hired hansom, and prepared to put his latch-key in his own door, he was arrested by a hoarse-voiced hawker of evening news bursting in upon the repose of the row with a continuous roar of "special--mystery--paper--railway--special--brighton--paper--victoria --special!" it was with some effort, and only when the man was close at hand, that he interpreted the sounds into these words. "paper, sir," said the man; and he bought it and went in. he entered his dining-room, and read the following paragraph;- "a mysterious case. "a report has reached us that a young man, about two or four and twenty years of age, whose name is at present unknown, was found yesterday (sunday) to all appearance dead in a first-class carriage of the 5 p.m. train from brighton to victoria. the discovery was only made at grosvenor road station, where tickets are taken before entering victoria. at victoria the body was searched for purposes of identification, and there was found upon him a card with the following remarkable inscription:--'_i am not dead. take me to the st. james's hospital._' to st. james's hospital accordingly the young man was conveyed. it seems probable he is in a condition of trance--not for the first time--since he was provided with the card, and knew the hospital with which is associated in all men's minds the name of dr lefevre, who is so famous for his skill in the treatment of nervous disorders." in matters of plain duty dr lefevre had got into the excellent habit of acting first and thinking afterwards. he at once rang the bell, and ordered the responsible serving-man who appeared to call a cab. the man went to the door and sounded his shrill whistle, grateful to the ears of several loitering cabbies. there was a mad race of growlers and hansoms for the open door. dr lefevre got into the first hansom that drew up, and drove off to the hospital. by that time he had told himself that the young man must be a former patient of his (though he did not remember any such), and that he ought to see him at once, although it is not for the visiting physician of a hospital to appear, except between fixed hours of certain days. he made nothing of the mystery which the newspaper wished, after the manner of its kind, to cast about the case, and thought of other things, while he smoked cigarettes, till he reached the hospital. the house-physician was somewhat surprised by his appearance. "i have just read that paragraph," said lefevre, handing him the paper. "oh yes, sir," said the house-physician. "the man was brought in last night. dr dowling" [the resident assistant-physician] "saw him, and thought it a case of ordinary trance, that could easily wait till you came, as usual, to-morrow." "ah, well," said lefevre, "let me see him." seen thus, the physician appeared a different person from the cheerful, modest man of the hyacinth club. he had now put on the responsibility of men's health and the enthusiasm of his profession. he seemed to swell in proportions and dignity, though his eye still beamed with a calm and kindly light. the young man led the way down the echoing flagged passage, and up the flight of stone stairs. as they went they encountered many silent female figures, clean and white, going up or down (it was the time of changing nurses), so that a fanciful stranger might well have thought of the stairway reaching from earth to heaven, on which the angels of god were seen ascending and descending. a stranger, too, would have noted the peculiar odours that hung about the stairs and passages, as if the ghosts of medicines escaped from the chemist's bottles were hovering in the air. opening first an outer and then an inner door, lefevre and his companion entered a large and lofty ward. the room was dark, save for the light of the fire and of a shaded lamp, by which, within a screen, the night-nurse sat conning her list of night-duties. the evening was just beginning out of doors,--shop-fronts were flaring, taverns were becoming noisy, and brilliantly-lit theatres and music-halls were settling down to business,--but here night and darkness had set in more than an hour before. indeed, in these beds of languishing, which stretched away down either side of the ward, night was hardly to be distinguished from day, save for the sunlight and the occasional excitement of the doctor's visit; and many there were who cried to themselves in the morning, "would god it were evening!" and in the evening, "would god it were morning!" but there was yet this other difference, that disease and doctor, fear and hope, gossip and grumbling, newspaper and bible and tract, were all forgotten in the night, for some time at least, and nature's kind restorer, sleep, went softly round among the beds and soothed the weary spirits into peace. lefevre and the house-physician passed silently up the ward between the rows of silent blue-quilted beds, while the nurse came silently to meet them with her lamp. lefevre turned aside a moment to look at a man whose breathing was laboured and stertorous. the shaded light was turned upon him: an opiate had been given him to induce sleep; it had performed its function, but, as if resenting its bondage, it was impishly twitching the man's muscles and catching him by the throat, so that he choked and started. dr lefevre raised the man's eyelid to look at his eye: the upturned eye stared out upon him, but the man slept on. he put his hand on the man's forehead (he had a beautiful hand--the hand of a born surgeon and healer--fine but firm, the expression of nervous force), and with thumb and finger stroked first his temples and then his neck. the spasmodic twitching ceased, and his breath came easy and regular. the house-doctor and the nurse looked at each other in admiration of this subtle skill, while lefevre turned away and passed on. "where is the man?" said he. "number thirteen," answered the house-doctor, leading the way. the lamp was set on the locker beside the bed of thirteen, screens were placed round to create a seclusion amid the living, breathing silence of the ward, and lefevre proceeded to examine the unconscious patient who had so strangely put himself in his hands. he was young and well-favoured, and, it was evident from the firmness of his flesh, well-fed. lefevre considered his features a moment, shook his head, and murmured, "no; i don't think i've seen him before." he turned to the nurse and inquired concerning the young man's clothes: they were evidently those of a gentleman, she said,--of one, at least, who had plenty of money. he turned again to the young man. he raised the left arm to feel the heart, but, contrary to his experience in such cases, the arm did not remain as he bent it, nor did the eyes open in obedience to the summons of the disturbed nerves. the breathing was scarcely perceptible, and the beating of the heart was faint. "a strange case," said lefevre in a low voice to his young comrade--"the strangest i've seen. he does not look a subject for this kind of thing, and yet he is in the extreme stage of hypnotism. you see." and the doctor, by sundry tests and applications, showed the peculiar exhausted and contractive condition of the muscles. "it is very curious." "perhaps," said the other, "he has been--" and he hesitated. "been what?" asked lefevre, turning on him his keen look. "enjoying himself." "having a debauch, you mean? no; i think not. there would then have probably been some reflex action of the nerves. this is not that kind of exhaustion; and it is more than mere trance or catalepsy; it seems the extremest suspensory condition,--and that in a young man of such apparent health is very remarkable. it will take a long time for him to recover in the ordinary way with food and sleep," he continued, rather to himself than to his subordinates. "he needs rousing,--a strong stimulant." "shall i get some brandy, sir?" asked the nurse. "brandy? no. that's not the stimulant he needs." he was silent for a little, moving the young man's limbs, and touching certain muscles which his exact anatomical knowledge taught him to lay his finger on with unerring accuracy. the effect was startling and grotesque. as a galvanic current applied to the proper nerves and muscles of a dead body will produce expressions and actions resembling those of life, so the touch of lefevre's finger made the unconscious young man scowl or smile or clench his fist according to the muscles impressed. "the brain," said lefevre, "seems quite sound,--perfectly passive, you see, but active in its passivity. you can leave us, nurse," said he; then, turning to the house-physician, he continued: "i am convinced this is such a peculiar case as i have often imagined, but have never seen. this nervous-muscular suspension is complicated with some exhaustive influence. i want your assistance, and i ask for it like this, because it is necessary for my purpose that you should give it freely, and without reserve; i am going to try the electrode." this was a simple machine contrived by lefevre, on the model of the electric cylinder of du bois-reymond, and worked on the theory that the electricity stored in the human body can be driven out by the human will along a prepared channel into another human body. "i understand," said the assistant promptly. he apprehended his chief's meaning more fully than the reader can; for he was deeply interested and fairly skilled in that strange annex of modern medical science which his chief called psycho-dynamics, and which old-fashioned practitioners decline to recognise. "get me the machine and the insulating sheet," said lefevre. while his assistant was gone on his errand, lefevre with his right hand gently stroked along the main lines of nerve and muscle in the upper part of his patient's body; and it was strange to note how the features and limbs lost a certain constriction and rigidity which it was manifest they had had only by their disappearance. when the house-physician returned, the sheet (a preparation of spun-glass invented by lefevre) was drawn under the patient, and the machine, with its vessels of chemical mixture and its conducting wires, was placed close to the bed. the handles attached to the wires were put into the patient's hands. "now," said lefevre, "this is a trying experiment. give me your hand--your left; you know how to do; yes, the other hand on the machine, with the fingers touching the chemicals. when you feel strength--virtue, so to say--going out of you, don't be alarmed: let it go; use no effort of the will to keep it back, or we shall probably fail." "i understand," repeated the assistant. then, holding his hand,--closely, but not so as to constrain the muscles,--lefevre put his own left on the machine according to the direction he had given his assistant,--with his fingers, that is, dipping into the chemicals from plates in the bottom of which the wires conducted to the patient's hands. a shiver ran through the frame of both lefevre and his companion, a convulsive shudder passed upon the unconscious body, and--a strange cry rang out upon the silence of the ward, and lefevre withdrew his hands. he and the house-physician looked at each other pale and shaken. the nurse came running at the cry. lefevre looked out beyond the screen to reassure her, and saw in the dim red reflection of the firelight a sight which struck him gruesomely, used though he was to hospital sights; all about the ward pale scared figures were sitting up in bed, like corpses suddenly raised from the dead. he bent over his patient, who presently opened his eyes and stared at him. "get some brandy and milk," said lefevre to his companion. "who? where am i?" murmured the patient in a faint voice. "i am dr lefevre, and this is st. james's hospital." "doctor?--hospital?--oh, i'm dreaming!" murmured the patient. "we'll talk about that when you have taken some of this," said lefevre, as the house-physician reappeared with the nurse, bearing the brandy and milk. lefevre presently told him how he had been found in the train, and taken for dead till the card--"this card," said he, taking it from the top of the locker--was discovered on him. the young man listened in open amazement, and looked at the card. "i know nothing of this!" said he. "i never saw the card before! i never heard your name or the hospital's till a minute ago." "your case was strange before," said lefevre; "this makes it stranger. who journeyed with you?" "a man,--a nice, strange, oldish fellow in a fur coat." and the young man wished to enter upon a narrative, when the doctor interrupted him. "you're not well enough to talk much now. tell me to-morrow all about it." the doctor returned home, his imagination occupied with the vision of a train rushing at express speed over the metals, and of a compartment in the train in which a young man reclined under the spell of an old man. the young man's face he saw clearly, but the old man's evaded him like a dream, and yet he felt he ought to know one who knew the peculiar repute of the st. james's hospital. next day the young man told his story, which was in effect as follows: he was a subaltern in a dragoon regiment stationed in brighton. on sunday afternoon he had set out for london on several days' leave. he had taken a seat in a smoking-carriage, and was preparing to make himself comfortable with a novel and a cigar, when an elderly gentleman, who looked like a foreigner, came in as the train was about to move. he particularly observed the man from the first, because, though it was a pleasant spring day, he looked pinched and shrunken with cold in his great fur overcoat, and because he had remarked him standing on the platform and scrutinizing the passengers hurrying into the train. the gentleman sat down in the seat opposite the young officer, and drew his fur wrap close about him. the young officer could not keep his eyes off him, and he noted that his features seemed worn thin and arid, as by passage through terrific peril,--as if he had been travelling for many days without sleep and without food, straining forward to a goal of safety, sick both in stomach and heart,--as if he had been rushing, like the maniac of the gospel, through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. his hair, which should have been black, looked lustreless and bleached, and his skin seemed as if his blood had lost all colour and generosity, as if nothing but serum flowed in his veins. his eyes alone did not look bloodless; they were weary and extravasated, as from anxious watching. the young officer's compassion went out to the stranger; for he thought he must be a conspirator, fleeing probably from the infamous tyranny of russian rule. but presently he spoke in such good english that the idea of his being a russian faded away. "excuse the liberty i take," said he, with a singularly winning smile; "but let me advise you not to smoke that cigar. i have a peculiarly sensitive nose for tobacco, and my nose informs me that your cigar, though good as cigars go, is not fit for you to smoke." the young officer was surprised that he was rather charmed than offended by this impertinence. "let me offer you one of these instead," said the strange gentleman; "we call them--i won't trouble you with the spanish name--but in english it means 'joys of spain.'" the officer took and thanked him for a "joy of spain," and found the flavour and aroma so excellent that, to use his own phrase, he could have eaten it. he asked the stranger what in particular was his objection to the other cigar. "this objection," said he, "which is common to all ill-prepared tobaccos, that it lowers the vital force. you don't feel that yet, because you are young and healthy, and gifted with a superabundance of fine vitality; but you may by smoking one bad cigar bring the time a day nearer when you must feel it. and even now it would take a little off the keen edge of the appetite for pleasure. how little," said he, "do we understand how to keep ourselves in condition for the complete enjoyment of life! you, i suppose, are about to take your pleasure in town, and instead of judiciously tickling and stimulating your nerves for the complete fulfilment of the pleasures you contemplate, you begin--you were beginning, i mean, with your own cigar--to dull and stupefy them. don't you see how foolish that is?" the young officer admitted that it was very foolish and very true; and they talked on thus, the elder exercising a charm over the younger such as he had never known before in the society of any man. in a quarter of an hour the young man felt as if he had known and trusted and loved his neighbour all his life; he felt, he confessed, so strongly attracted that he could have hugged him. he told him about his family, and showed him the innermost secrets of his heart; and all the while he smoked the delicious "joy of spain," and felt more and more enthralled and fascinated by the stranger's eyes, which, as he talked, lightened and glowed more and more as their glance played caressingly about him. he was beginning to wonder at that, when with some emphatic phrase the stranger laid his fingers on his knee, upon which a thrill shot through him as if a woman had touched him. he looked in the stranger's face, and the wonderful eyes seemed to search to the root of his being, and to draw the soul out of him. he had a flying thought--"can it be a woman, after all, in this strange shape?" and he knew no more ... till he woke in the hospital bed. that was the patient's story. "just look over your property here," said the doctor. "have you lost anything?" the young man turned over his watch and the contents of his purse, and answered that he had lost nothing. "strange--strange!" said lefevre--"very strange! and the card--of course the stranger must have put it in your pocket." "which would seem to imply," said the young man, "that _he_ knows something of the hospital." "well," said lefevre, "we must see what can be done to clear the mystery up." "some of those newspaper-men have been here," said the house-physician, when they had left the ward, "and they will be sure to call again before the day is out. shall i tell them anything of this?" "certainly," said lefevre. "publicity may help us to discover this amazing stranger." "do you quite believe the story?" asked the house-physician. "i don't disbelieve it." "but what did the stranger do to put him in that condition, which seems something more than hypnotism?" "ah," said lefevre, "i don't yet understand it; but there are forces in nature which few can comprehend, and which only one here and there can control and use." chapter iii. "m. dolaro." next day men talked, newspaper in hand, at the breakfast-table, in the early trains, omnibuses, and tramcars, of the singular railway outrage. it was clear its purpose was not robbery. what, then, did it mean? some--probably most--declared it was very plain what it meant; while others,--the few,--after much argument, confessed themselves quite mystified. the police, too, were not idle. they made inquiries and took notes here and there. they discovered that the five o'clock train made but two pauses on its journey to london--at croydon and at clapham junction. at neither of those places could a man in a fur coat be heard of as having descended from the train; and yet it was manifest that he did not arrive at grosvenor road, where tickets were taken. after persistent and wider inquiries, however, at clapham junction (which was the most likely point of departure), a cabman was found who remembered having taken up a fare--a gentleman in a fur coat--about the hour indicated. he particularly remarked the gentleman, because he looked odd and foreign and half tipsy (that was how he seemed to him), because he was wrapped up "enough for father christmas," and because he asked to be driven such a long way--to a well-known hotel near the crystal palace, where "foreign gents" were fond of staying. being asked what in particular had made him think the gentleman a foreigner, cabby could not exactly say; he believed, however, it was his coat and his eyes. of his face he saw little or nothing, it was so muffled up; yet his tongue was english enough. inquiry was then pushed on to the hotel named by the cabman. a gentleman in a fur coat had certainly arrived there the evening before, but no one had seen anything of him after his arrival. he had taken dinner in his private sitting-room, and had then paid his bill, because, he said, he must be gone early in the morning. about half an hour after dinner, when a waiter cleared the things away, he had gone to his room, and next morning he had left the hotel soon after dawn. boots, half asleep, had seen him walk away, bag in hand, wrapped in his greatcoat,--walk away, it would seem, and dissolve into the mist of the morning, for from that point no further trace could be got of him. no such figure as his had been seen on any of the roads leading from the hotel, either by the early milkman, or by the belated coffee-stall keeper, or night cabman. being asked what name the gentleman had given at the hotel, the book-keeper showed her record, with the equivocal name of "m. dolaro." the name might be italian or spanish,--or english or american for that matter,--and the initial "m" might be french or anything in the world. in the meantime dr lefevre had been pondering the details of the affair, and noting the aspects of his patient's condition; but the more he noted and pondered, the more contorted and inexplicable did the mystery become. his understanding boggled at its very first notes. it was almost unheard of that a young man of his patient's strong and healthy constitution and temper should be hypnotised or mesmerised at all, much less hypnotised to the verge of dissolution; and it was unprecedented that even a weak, hysterical subject should, after being unhypnotised, remain so long in prostrate exhaustion. then, suppose these circumstances of the case were ordinary, there arose this question, which refused to be solved: since it was ridiculous to suppose that the hypnotisation was a wanton experiment, and since it had not been for the sake of robbery, what had been its object? the interest of the case was emphasised and enlarged by an article in 'the daily telegraph,' in which was called to mind the singular story in its paris correspondence a day or two before, of the young woman in the hôtel-dieu, which lefevre had forgotten. the writer remarked on the points of similarity which the case in the brighton train bore to that of the paris pavement; insisted on the probable identity of the man in the fur coat with the man in the cloak; and appealed to dr lefevre to explain the mystery, and to the police to find the man "who has alarmed the civilised world by a new form of outrage." lefevre was piqued by that article, and he went to see his patient day after day, in the constant hope of finding a solution of the puzzle that perplexed him. the direction in which he looked for light will be best suggested by remarking what were his peculiar theory and practice. lefevre was not a materialistic physician; indeed, in the opinion of many of his brethren, he erred on the other side, and was too much inclined to mysticism. it may at least be said that he had an open mind, and a modest estimate of the discoveries of modern medical science. he had perceived while still a young man (he was now about forty) that all medical practice--as distinct from surgical--is inexact and empirical, that, like english common law, it is based merely on custom, and a narrow range of experience; and he had therefore argued that a wider experience and research, especially among decaying nations, might lead to the discovery of a guiding principle in pathology. that conviction had taken him as medical officer to egypt and india, where, amid the relics of civilisations half as old as time, he found traditions of a great scientific practice; and thence it had brought him back to study such foreign medical writers as du bois-reymond, nobili, matteucci, and müller, and to observe the method of the famous physicians of the salpétrière. like the great charbon, he made nervous and hysterical disorders his specialty, in the treatment of which he was much given to the use of electricity. he had very pronounced "views," though he seldom troubled his brethren with them; for he was not of those who can hold a belief firmly only if it is also held by others. more than a week had passed without discovery or promise of light, when one afternoon he went to the hospital resolved to compass some explanation. he walked at once, on entering the ward, to the bedside of his puzzling patient, who still lay limp as a dish-clout and drowsy as a sloth. he tested--as he had done almost daily--his nervous and respiratory powers with the exact instruments adapted for the purpose, and then, still unenlightened, he questioned him closely about his sensations. the young officer answered him with tolerable intelligence. "i feel," he ended with saying, "as if all my energy had evaporated,--and i used to have no end,--just as a spirit evaporates if it is left open to the air." the saying struck lefevre mightily. "energy" stood then to lefevre as an almost convertible term for "electricity," and his successful experiments with electricity had opened up to him a vast field of conjecture, into which, on the smallest inflaming hint, he was wont to make an excursion. such a hint was the saying of the young officer now, and, as he walked away, he found himself, as it were, knocking at the door of a great discovery. but the door did not open on that summons, and he resolved straightway to discuss the subject with julius courtney, who, though an amateur, had about as complete a knowledge of it as himself, and who could bring to bear, he believed, a finer intelligence. he first sought julius at the hyacinth club, where he frequently spent the afternoon. failing to find him there, he inquired for him at his chambers in the albany. hearing nothing of him there, and the ardour of his quest having cooled a little, he stepped out across the way to his own home in savile row. there he found a note from his mother, with a touch of mystery in its wording. she said she wanted very much to have a serious conversation with him; she had been expecting for days to see him, and she begged him to go that evening to dinner if he could. "julius," said she, "will be here, and one or two others." the mention of julius as a visitor at his mother's house reminded him of his promise to that lady to find out how the young man was connected: engrossed as he had been with his strange case, he had almost forgotten the promise, and he had done nothing to fulfil it but tap ineffectually for admission to his friend's confidence. he therefore considered with some anxiety what he should do, for lady lefevre could on occasion be exacting and severe with her son. he concluded nothing could be done before dinner, but he went prepared to be questioned and perhaps rated. he was pleased to find that his mother seemed to have forgotten his promise as much as he had, and to see her in the best of spirits with a tableful of company. "oh, you have come," said she, presenting her cheek to her son; "i thought that after all you might be detained by that mysterious case you have at the hospital. here's dr. rippon--and julius too--dying to hear all about it;" but she gave no hint of the serious conversation which she said in her note she desired. "not i, lady lefevre," julius protested. "i don't like medical revelations; they make me feel as if i were sitting at the confessional of mankind." noting by the way that julius and his sister seemed much taken up with each other, and that julius, while as fascinating as ever, and as ready and apt and intelligent of speech, seemed somewhat more chastened in manner and less effervescent in health,--like a fire of coal that has spent its gas and settled into a steady glow of heat,--he turned to dr rippon, a tall, thin old gentleman of over seventy, but who yet had a keen tongue, and a shrewd, critical eye. he had been an intimate friend of the elder lefevre, and the son greeted him with respect and affection. "who is the gentleman?" said dr rippon, aside, when their greeting was over. "it does an old man's heart good to see and hear him," and the old doctor straightened himself. "but he'll get old too; that's the sad thing, from my point of view, that such beauty of person and swift intelligence of mind _must_ grow old and withered, and slow and dull. what did you say his name is, john?" "his name is courtney--julius courtney," said lefevre. "courtney," mused the old man, stroking his eyebrow; "i once knew a man of that name, or, rather, who took that name. i wonder if this friend of yours is of the same family; he is not unlike the man i knew." "oh," said lefevre, immediately interested, "he may be of the same family, but i don't know anything of his relations. who was the man, may i ask, that you knew?" "well," said the old gentleman, settling down to a story, which lefevre was sure would be full of interest and contemporary allusion, for the old physician had in his time seen many men and many things--"it is a romantic story in its way." he was on the point of beginning it when dinner was announced. "i should like to hear the story when we return to the drawing-room," said lefevre. over dinner, lefevre was beset with inquiries about his mysterious case:--was the young man better? had he been very ill? was he handsome? what had the foreign-looking stranger done to him? and for what purpose had he done it? these questions were mostly ignorant and thoughtless, and lefevre either parried them or answered them with great reserve. when the ladies retired from table, however, more particular and curious queries were pressed upon him as to the real character of the outrage upon the young man. he replied that he had not yet discovered, though he believed he was getting "warm." "is it fair," said julius, "to ask you in what direction you are looking for an explanation or revelation?" "oh, quite fair," said lefevre, welcoming the question. "to put it in a word, i look to _electricity_,--animal electricity. i have been for some time working round, and i hope gradually getting nearer, a scientific secret of enormous--of transcendent value. can you conceive, julius, of a universal principle in nature being got so under control as to form a universal basis of cure?" "can i conceive?" said julius. "and is that electricity too?" "i hope to find it is." "oh, how slow!" exclaimed julius,--"oh, how slow you professional scientific men become! you begin to run on tram-lines, and you can't get off them! why fix yourself to call this principle you're seeking for 'electricity'? it will probably restrict your inquiry, and hamper you in several ways. i would declare to every scientific man, 'unless you become as a little child or a poet, you will discover no great truth!' setting aside your bias towards what you call 'electricity,' you are really hoping to discover something that was discovered or divined thousands of years ago! some have called it 'od'--an 'imponderable fluid'--as you know; you and others wish to call it 'electricity.' i prefer to call it 'the spirit of life,'--a name simple, dignified, and expressive!" "it has the disadvantage of being poetic," said dr rippon, with grave irony; "and doctors don't like poetry mixed up with their science." "it _is_ poetic," admitted julius, regarding the old doctor with interest, "and therefore it is intelligible. the spirit of life is electric and elective, and it is 'imponderable:' it can neither be weighed nor measured! it flows and thrills in the nerves of men and women, animals and plants, throughout the whole of nature! it connects the whole round of the cosmos by one glowing, teasing, agonising principle of being, and makes us and beasts and trees and flowers all kindred!" "that is all very beautiful and fresh," said lefevre, "but--" "but," interrupted julius, "it is not a new truth: the poet divined it ages ago! buddha, thousands of years ago, perceived it, and taught that 'all life is linked and kin;' so did the egyptians and the greeks, when they worshipped the principle of life everywhere; and so did our own barbaric ancestors, when the woods--the wonderful, mystic woods!--were their temples. life--the spirit of life!--is always beautiful; always to be desired and worshipped!" "yes," said old dr rippon, who had listened to this astonishing rhapsody with evident interest, with sympathetic and intelligent eye; "but a time will come even to you, when death will appear more beautiful and friendly and desirable than life." courtney was silent, and looked for a second or two deadly sick. he cast a searching eye on dr rippon. "that's the one thought," said he, "that makes me sometimes feel as if i were already under the horror of the shade. it's not that i am afraid of dying--of merely ceasing to live; it is that life may cease to be delightful and friendly, and become an intolerable, decaying burden." he filled a glass with burgundy, and set himself attentively to drink it, lingering on the bouquet and the flavour. lefevre beheld him with surprise, for he had never before seen julius take wine: he was wont to say that converse with good company was intoxicating enough for him. "why, julius," said lefevre, "that's a new experience you are trying,--is it not?" julius looked embarrassed an instant, and then replied, "i have begun it very recently. i did not think it wise to postpone the experience till it might become an absolute necessity." old dr rippon watched him empty the glass with a musing eye. "'i sought in mine heart,'" said he, gravely quoting, "'to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom.'" "true," said julius, considering him closely. "but, for completeness' sake, you ought to quote also, 'whatsoever mine eyes desired i kept not from them; i withheld not my heart from any joy.'" lefevre looked from the one to the other in some darkness of perplexity. "you appear, john," said the old doctor, with a smile, "not to know one of the oldest and greatest of books: you will find it included in your bible. mr courtney clearly knows it. i should not be surprised to hear he had adopted its philosophy of 'wisdom and madness and folly.'" "surely you cannot say," remarked julius, "that the writer of that book had what is called a 'philosophy.' he was moved by an irresistible impulse, of which he gives you the explanation when he uses that magnificent sentence about having 'the world set in his heart.'" "yes," said the old doctor, in a subdued, backward voice, regarding julius with the contemplative eyes of memory. "you will, i hope, forgive me when i say that you remind me very much of a gentleman who took the name of courtney. i knew him years ago: was he a relation of yours, i wonder?" "possibly," said julius, seeming scarcely interested; "though the name of courtney, i believe, is not very uncommon." then, turning to lefevre, he said, "i hope you don't think i wish to make light of your grand idea. i only mean that you must widen your view, if you would work it out to success." with that lefevre became more curious to hear dr rippon's story. so when they went to the drawing-room he got the old gentleman into a secluded corner, and reminded him of his promise. "yes," said the doctor, "it is a romantic story. about forty years ago,--yes, about forty: it was immediately after the fall of louis philippe,--i went with my friend lord rokeby to madrid. he went as ambassador, and i as his physician. there was then at the spanish court a very handsome hidalgo, don hernando--i forget all his names, but his surname was de sandoval. he was of the bluest blood in spain, and a marquis, but poor as a church mouse. he had a great reputation for gallant adventures and for mysterious scientific studies. on the last ground i sought and cultivated his acquaintance. but he was a proud, reserved person, and i could never quite make out what his studies were, except that he read a great deal, and believed firmly in the arabic philosophers and alchemists of the middle ages; and he would sometimes talk with the same sort of rhapsodical mysticism as this young man delights you with. we did not have much opportunity for developing an intimacy in any case; for he fell in love with the daughter of our chief secretary of legation, a bright, lovely english girl, and that ended disastrously for his position in madrid. he made his proposals to her father, and had them refused; chiefly, i believe, on account of his loose reputation. the girl, too, was the heiress of an uncle's property on this curious condition, it appeared,--that whoever should marry her should take the uncle's name of _courtney_. don hernando and the young lady disappeared; they were married, and he took the name of courtney, and was forbidden to return to madrid. he and his wife settled in paris, where i used to meet them frequently; then they travelled, i believe, and i lost sight of them. i returned to paris on a visit some few years ago, and i asked an old friend about the courtneys; he believed they were both dead, though he could give me no certain news about them." "supposing," said lefevre, "that this julius were their son, do you know of any reason why he should be reserved about his parentage?" "no," said the old man, "no;--unless it be that hernando was not episcopal in his affections; but i should think the young man is scarcely puritan enough to be ashamed of that." lefevre and the old man both looked round for julius. they caught sight of him and leonora lefevre standing one on either side of a window, with their eyes fixed upon each other. "the young lady," said the old doctor, "seems much taken up with him." "yes," said lefevre; "and she's my sister." "ah," said the old doctor; "i fear my remark was rather unreserved." "it is true," said lefevre. he left dr rippon, to seek his mother. he found her excited and warm, and without a word to spare for him. "you wanted," said he, "some serious talk with me, mother?" "oh yes," said she; "but i can't talk seriously now: i can scarcely talk at all. but do you see how nora and julius are taken up with each other? i never before saw such a pair of moonstruck mortals! i believe i have heard of the moon having a magnetic influence on people: do you think it has? but he is a charming man!"--glancing towards julius--"i'm more than half in love with him myself. now i must go. come quietly one afternoon, and then we can talk." her son abstained from recounting, as he had proposed to himself, what he had heard from dr rippon: he would reserve it for the quiet afternoon. he took his leave almost immediately, bearing with him a deep impression--like a strongly bitten etching wrought on his memory--of his last glimpse of the drawing-room: nora and julius set talking across a small table, and the tall, pale, gaunt figure of dr rippon approaching and stooping between them. it seemed a sinister reminder of the words the old doctor had addressed to julius,--"_a time will come when death will appear more beautiful and friendly and desirable than life!_" chapter iv. the man of the crowd. in a few days dr lefevre found a quiet afternoon, and went and told his mother the story of the spanish marquis which he had got from dr rippon. she hailed the story with delight. courtney was a fascinating figure to her before: it needed but that to clothe him with a complete romantic heroism; for, of course, she did not doubt that he was the son of the spanish grandee. she wished to put it to him at once whether he was not, but she was dissuaded by her son from mentioning the matter yet to either julius or her daughter. "if he wishes," said lefevre, "to keep it secret for some reason, it would be an impertinence to speak about it. we shall, however, have a perfect right to ask him about himself if his attentions to nora go on." soon afterwards (it was really a fortnight; but in a busy life day melts into day with amazing rapidity), lefevre was surprised at dinner, and somewhat irritated, by a letter from his mother. she wrote that they had seen nothing of julius courtney for three or four days,--which was singular, since for the past three or four weeks he had been a daily visitor; latterly he had begun to look fagged and ill, and it was possible he was confined to his room,--though, after all, that was scarcely likely, for he had not answered a note of inquiry which she had sent. she begged her son to call at his chambers, the more so as nora was pining in julius's absence to a degree which made her mother very anxious. with professional suspicion lefevre told himself that if julius, with his magnificent health, was fallen ill, it must be for some outrageous reason. but even if he was ill, he need not be unmannerly: he might have let his friends who had been in the habit of seeing him daily know what had come to him. was it possible, the doctor thought, that he was repenting of having given nora and her mother so much cause to take his assiduous attentions seriously? he resolved to see julius at once, if he were at his chambers. he left his wine unfinished (to the delight of his grave and silent man in black), hastily took his hat from its peg in the hall, and passed out into the street, while his man held the door open. in two minutes he had passed the northern gateway of the albany, which, as most people know, is just at the southern end of savile row. courtney's door was speedily opened in response to his peremptory summons. "is your master at home, jenkins?" asked lefevre of the well-dressed serving-man, who looked distinguished enough to be master himself. "no, doctor," answered jenkins; "he is not." "gone out," said lefevre, "to the club or to dinner, i suppose?" "no, doctor," repeated jenkins; "he is not. he went away four days ago." "went away!" exclaimed lefevre. "he do sometimes go away by himself, sir. he is so fond of the country, and he likes to be by himself. it is the only thing that do him good." "becomes solitary, does he?" said lefevre. "yes; intelligent, impulsive persons like him, that live at high pressure, often have black moods." that was not quite what he meant, but it was enough for jenkins. "yes, sir," said jenkins; "he do sometimes have 'em black. he don't seem to take no pride in himself, as he do usual--don't seem to care somehow if he look a gentleman or a common man." "but your master, jenkins," said lefevre, "can never look a common man." "no, sir," said jenkins; "he cannot, whatever he do." "he is gone into the country, then?" asked lefevre. "yes, sir; i packed his small port-mantew for him four days ago." "and where is he gone? he told you, i suppose?" "no, sir; he do not usual tell me when he is like that." it did not seem possible to learn anything from jenkins, in spite of the apparent intimacy of his conversation, so lefevre left him, and returned to his own house. he had sat but a little while in his laboratory (where he had been occupying his small intervals of leisure lately in electrical studies and experiments) when, as chance would have it, the last post brought him a note from dr rippon. its purport was curious. "_i think_," the letter ran, "_you were sufficiently interested in the story i told you some week or two ago about one hernando courtney, not to be bored by a note on the same subject. last night i accompanied my daughter and son-in-law to the lyceum theatre. on coming out we had to walk down wellington street into the strand to find our carriage, and in the surging crowd about there i am almost sure i saw the hernando courtney whom i believed to be dead_. aut courtney aut diabolus. _i have never heard satisfactory evidence of his death, and i should very much like to know if he is really still alive and in london. it has occurred to me that, considering the intimacy of yourself and your family with the gentleman who was made known to me at your mother's house by the name of courtney, you may have heard by now the rights of the case. if you have any news, i shall be glad to share it with you."_ considering this in association with the absence of julius, lefevre found his wits becoming involved in a puzzle. he could not settle to work, so he put on overcoat and hat, and sallied out again. he had no fixed purpose: he only felt the necessity of motion to resolve himself back into his normal calm. the air was keen from the east. may, which had opened with such wanton warmth and seductiveness, turned a cold shoulder on the world as she took herself off. it was long since he had indulged in an evening walk in the lamp-lit streets, so he stepped out eastward against the shrewd wind. insensibly his attention forsook the busy and anxious present, and slipped back to the days of golden and romantic youth, when the crowded nocturnal streets were full of the mystery of life. he recalled the sensations of those days--the sharp doubts of self, the frequent strong desires to drink deep of all that life had to offer, and the painful recoils from temptation, which he felt would ruin, if yielded to, his hope of himself, and his ambition of filling a worthy place among men. thus musing, he walked on, taking, without noting it, the most frequented turnings, and soon he found himself in the strand. it was that middle time of evening, after the theatres and restaurants have sucked in their crowds, when the frequenters of the streets have some reserve in their vivacity, before reckless roisterers have begun to taste the lees of pleasure, and to shout and jostle on the pavements. he was walking on the side of the way next the river, when, near the adelphi, he became aware of a man before him, wearing a slouch-hat and a greatcoat--a man who appeared to choose the densest part of the throng, to prefer to be rubbed against and hustled rather than not. there was something about the man which held lefevre's attention and roused his curiosity--something in the swing of his gait and the set of his shoulders. the man, too, seemed urged on by a singular haste, which permitted him to be the slowest and easiest of passengers in the thick of the crowd, but carried him swiftly over the less frequented parts of the pavement. the doctor began to wonder if he was a pickpocket, and to look about for the watchful eye of a policeman. he kept close behind him past the door of the strand theatre, when the throng became slacker, and the man turned quickly about and returned the way he had come. then lefevre had a glimpse of his face,--the merest passing glimpse, but it made him pause and ask himself where he had seen it before. a dark, foreign-looking man, with a haggard appeal in his eye: he tried to find the place of such a figure in his memory, but for the time he tried in vain. before the doctor recovered himself the man was well past, and disappearing in the throng. he hurried after, determined to overtake him, and to make a full and satisfying perusal of his face and figure. he found that difficult, however, because of the man's singular style of progression. to maintain an even pace for himself, moreover, lefevre had to walk very much in the roadway, the dangers of which, from passing cabs and omnibuses, forbade his fixing his attention on the man alone. yet he was more and more piqued to look him in the face; for the longer he followed him the more he was struck with the oddity of his conduct. he had already noted how he hurried over the empty spaces of pavement and lingered sinuously in the thronged parts; he now remarked further that those who came into immediate contact with him (and they were mostly young people who were to be met with at that season of the night) glanced sharply at him, as if they had experienced some suspicious sensation, and seemed inclined to remonstrate, till they looked in his face. lefevre could not arrive at a clear front view till, by charing cross station, the man turned on the kerb to look after a handsome youth who crossed before him, and passed over the road. then the doctor saw the face in the light of a street-lamp, and the sight sent the blood in a gush from his heart. it was a dark hairless face, terribly blanched and emaciated, as if by years of darkness and prison, with the impress of age and death, but yet with a wistful light in the eyes, and a firm sensuousness about the mouth that betrayed a considerable interest in life. he turned his eyes away an instant, to bring memory and association to bear. when he looked again the man was moving away. at once recognition rushed upon him like a wave of light. the terribly worn, ghastly features resolved themselves into a kind of death-mask of julius! the wave recoiled and smote him again. who could the man be, therefore, who was so like julius, and yet was not julius?--who could he be but julius's father,--that hernando courtney whom dr rippon believed he had seen the evening before? here was a coil to unravel! julius's father--the spanish marquis that was--supposed to be dead, but yet wandering in singular fashion about the london streets, clearly not desiring, much less courting, opportunities of being recognised; julius not caring to speak of his father, apparently ignoring his continued existence, and yet apparently knowing enough of his movements to avoid him when he came to london by suddenly removing "into the country" without leaving his address. what was the meaning of so much mystery? crime? debt? political intrigue? or, what? the mysterious hernando went on his way, by the southern sweep of trafalgar square and cockspur street, to the haymarket, and lefevre followed with attention and curiosity bent on him, but yet with so little thought of playing spy that, if hernando had gone any other way or had returned along the strand, he would probably have let him go. and as they went on, the doctor could not but note, as before, how the object of his curiosity lingered wherever there was a press of people, whether on the pavement or on a refuge at a crossing, and hurried on wherever the pavement was sparsely peopled or whenever the persons encountered were at all advanced in years. indeed, the farther he followed the more was his attention compelled to remark that hernando sharply avoided contact with the weakly, the old, and the decrepit, and wonder why the young people of either sex whom he brushed against should turn as if the touch of him waked suspicion and a something hostile. thus they traversed the haymarket, the criterion pavement, and, flitting across to the quadrant, the more popular side of regent street, among pushing groups, weary stragglers, and steady pedestrians. lefevre had a mind to turn aside and go home when he was opposite vigo street, but he was drawn on by the hope of observing something that might give him a clue to the courtney mystery. when oxford circus was reached, however, hernando jumped into a cab and drove rapidly off, and lefevre returned to his own fireside. he sat for some time over a cigar and a grog, walking in imagination round and round the mystery, which steadfastly refused to dissolve or to be set aside. his own honour, and perhaps the peace of his mother and sister, were involved in it. he was resolved to ask julius for an explanation as soon as he could come to speech with him; but yet, in spite of that assurance which he gave himself, he returned to the mystery again and again, and beset and bewildered himself with questions: why was julius estranged from his father? what was the secret of the old man's life which had left such an awful impress on his face? and why was he nightly haunting the busiest pavements of london, in the crowd, but not of it, urged on as by some desire or agony? he went to bed, but not to sleep. in the quiet and the darkness his imagination ranged without constraint over the whole field of his questionings. he went back upon dr rippon's story of the spanish marquis, and fixed on the mention of his occult studies. he saw him, in fancy, without wife or son, cut off from the position and activities in his native country which his proper rank would have given him, sequester himself from society altogether, and give himself up to the study of those arabian sages and alchemists in whom he had delighted when he was a young man. he saw him shun the daylight, and sleep its hours away, and then by night abandon himself like another cagliostro to strange experiments with alembic and crucible, breathing acrid and poisonous vapours, seeking to extort from nature her yet undiscovered secrets,--the philosophers stone, and the elixir of life. he saw him turn for a little from his strange and deadly experiments, and venture forth to show his blanched and worn face among the throngs of men; but even there he still pursued his anxious quest of life in the midst of death. he saw him wander up and down, in and out, among the evening crowd, delighting in contact with such of his fellow-creatures as had health and youth, and seeking, seeking--he knew not what. from this phantasmagoria he dozed off into the dark plains of sleep; but even there the terribly blanched and emaciated face was with him, bending wistful worn eyes upon him and melting him to pity. and still again the vision of the streets would arise about the face, and the sleeper would be aware of the man to whom the face belonged walking quickly and sinuously, seeking and enjoying contact with the throng, and strangely causing many to resent his touch as if they had been pricked or stung, and yet urged onward in some further quest,--an anxious quest it sometimes resolved itself into for julius, who ever evaded him. thus his brain laboured through the dead hours of the night, viewing and reviewing these scenes and figures, to extract a meaning from them; but he was no nearer the heart of the mystery when the morning broke and he was waked by the shrill chatter of the sparrows. the day, however, brought an event which shed a lurid light upon the courtney difficulty, and revealed a vital connection between facts which lefevre had not guessed were related. chapter v. the remarkable case of lady mary fane. it was the kind of day that is called seasonable. if the sun had been obscured, the air would have been felt to be wintry; but the sunshine was full and warm, and so the world rejoiced, and declared it was a perfectly lovely may day,--just as a man who is charmed with the smiles and beauty of a woman, thinks her complete though she may have a heart of ice. lefevre, as he went his hospital round that afternoon, found his patients revelling in the sunlight like flies. he himself was in excellent spirits, and he said a cheery or facetious word here and there as he passed, which gave infinite delight to the thin and bloodless atomies under his care; for a joke from so serious and awful a being as the doctor is to a desponding patient better than all the drugs of the pharmacopoeia: it is as exquisite and sustaining as a divine text of promise to a religious enthusiast. dr lefevre was thus passing round his female ward, with a train of attentive students at his heels, when the door was swung open and two attendants entered, bearing a stretcher between them, and accompanied by the house-physician and a policeman. "what is this?" asked lefevre, with a touch of severity; for it was irregular to intrude a fresh case into a ward while the physician was going his round. "i thought, sir," said the house-physician, "you would like to see her at once: it seems to me a case similar to that of the man found in the brighton train." "where was this lady found?" asked lefevre of the policeman. he used the word "lady" advisedly, for though the dress was that of a hospital nurse or probationer, the unconscious face was that of an educated gentlewoman. "why, bless my soul!" he cried, upon more particular scrutiny of her features--"it seems to me i know her! surely i do! where did you say she was found?" the policeman explained that he was on his beat outside st james's park, when a park-keeper called him in and showed him, in one of the shady walks, the lady set on a bench as if she had fainted. the keeper said he had taken particular notice of her, because he saw from her dress and her veil she was a hospital lady. when he first set eyes on her, an old gentleman was sitting talking to her--a strange, dark, foreign-looking gentleman, in a soft hat and a big inverness cape. "good heavens!" exclaimed the doctor. "the very man! that's the meaning of it. and i did not guess!" his assistant and the policeman gazed at him in surprise; but he recovered himself and asked, with a serious and determined knitting of the brows, if the policeman had seen the old gentleman. the policeman replied he had not; the gentleman was nowhere to be seen when he was called in. the keeper saw him only once; when he returned that way again, in about a quarter of an hour, he found the lady alone and apparently asleep. she had a very handsome umbrella by her side, and therefore he kept within eye-shot of her on this side and on that, lest some park-loafer should seize so good a chance of thieving. he thus passed her two or three times. the last time, he remarked that she had slipped a little to one side, and that her umbrella had fallen to the ground. he went to pick it up, and it struck him as he bent that she looked strangely quiet and pale. he spoke to her; she made no reply. he touched her--he even in his fear ventured to shake her--but she made no sign; and he ran to call the policeman. they then brought her straight to the hospital, because they could see she was a hospital lady of some sort. "it must--it must be the same!" said lefevre. "i thought, when i first heard of it below," said the house-physician, "that it must be the same man as was the cause of the other case, in the brighton train." "no doubt it is the same. but i was thinking of it in another--a far more serious sense!" then turning to the waiting policeman, he said, "of course, you must report this to your inspector?" "yes, sir," said the policeman. "give him my compliments, then, and say i shall see him presently." yet, he thought, how could he speak to the official, with all that he suspected, all that he feared, in his heart? with his attention on the _qui vive_ with his experiences and speculations of the night, he was seized, as we have seen, by the conclusion that the "strange, dark, foreign-looking gentleman" of the park-keeper's story was the same whose steps he had followed the evening before, without guessing that the man was perambulating the pavement and passing among the crowd in search, doubtless, of a fresh victim for occult experiment or outrage! that conclusion once determined, shock after shock smote upon his sense. what if the mysterious person were really proved to be julius's father? what if he had entered upon a course of experiment or outrage (he passed in rapid review the mysteries of the paris pavement and the brighton train, and this of the park)--outrage yet unnamable because unknown, but which would amaze and confound society, and bring signal punishment upon the offender? and what--what if julius knew all that, and therefore sought to keep his parentage hidden? "she is ready, doctor," said the sister of the ward at his elbow, adding with a touch of excitement in her manner as he turned to her, "do you know who she is? look at this card; we noticed the name first on her linen." dr lefevre looked at the card and read, "lady mary fane, carlton gardens, s.w." "i suspected as much," said he. "lord rivercourt's daughter. it's a bad business. she has been learning at st thomas's the duties of nurse and dresser, which accounts for her being in that uniform." he went to the bed on which his new patient had been laid, and very soon satisfied himself that her case was similar to that of the young officer, though graver much than it. he wrote a telegram to lord rivercourt, sent the house-physician for his electrical apparatus, and returned to the bedside. he looked at his patient. he had not remarked her hitherto more than other women of his acquaintance, though he had sometimes sat at her father's table; but now he was moved by a beauty which was enhanced by helplessness--a beauty stamped with a calm disregard of itself--the manifest expression of a noble and loving soul, which had lived above the plane of doubt and fear and gusty passion. her wealth of lustrous black hair lay abroad upon her pillow, and made an admirable setting for her finely-modelled head and neck. as he looked at this excellent presentment, and thought of the intelligence and activity which had been wont to animate it, resentment rose in him against the man who, for whatever end, had subdued the noble woman to that condition, and a deep impatience penetrated him that he had not discovered--had even scarcely guessed--the purpose or the method of the subjugation! it was, however, not speculation but action that was needed then. the apparatus described in the case of the young officer was ready, and the house-physician was waiting to give his assistance. the stimulation of will and electricity was applied to resuscitate the patient--but with the smallest success: there was only a faint flutter, a passing slight rigidity of the muscles, and all seemed again as it had been. the exhausting nature of the operation or experiment forbade its immediate repetition. disappointment pervaded the doctor's being, though it did not appear in the doctor's manner. "we'll try again in half an hour," said he to his assistant, and turned away to complete his round of the ward. at the end of the half-hour, lefevre and the house-physician were again by lady mary's bedside. again, with fine but firm touch, lefevre stroked nerves and muscles to stimulate them into normal action; again he and his assistant put out their electrical force through the electrode; and again the result was nothing but a passing galvanic quiver. the doctor, though he maintained his professional calm, was smitten with alarm,--as a man is who, walking through darkness and danger to the rescue of a friend, finds himself stopped by an unscalable wall. while he sought fresh means of help, his patient might pass beyond his reach. he did not think she would--he hoped she would not; but her condition, so obstinately resistant to his restoratives, was so peculiar, that he could not in the least determine the issue. imagination and speculation were excited, and he asked himself whether, after all, the explanation of his failure might not be of the simplest--a difference of sex! the secrets of nature, so far as he had discovered, were of such amazing simplicity, that it would not surprise him now to find that the electrical force of a man varied vitally from that of a woman. he explained this suspicion to his assistant. "i think," said he, "we must make another attempt, for her condition may become the more serious the longer it is left. we'll set the sister and the nurse to try this time, and we'll turn her bed north and south, in the line of the earth's magnetism." but just then the lady's father, the old lord rivercourt, appeared in response to the doctor's telegram, and the experiment with the women had to wait. the old lord was naturally filled with wonder and anxiety when he saw his apparently lifeless daughter. he was amazed that she should have been overcome by such influence as, he understood, the old gentleman must wield. she had always, he said, enjoyed the finest health, and was as little inclined to hysteria as woman well could be. lefevre told the father that this was something other than hystero-hypnotism, which, while it reassured him as to his daughter's former health, made him the more anxious regarding her present condition. "it is very extraordinary," said the old lord; "but whatever it is,--and you say it is like the young man's case that we have all read about,--whatever it is,"--and he laid his hand emphatically on the doctor's arm,--"she could not be in more capable hands than yours." that assurance, though soothing to the doctor's self-esteem, added gravely to his sense of responsibility. while they were yet speaking, lefevre was further troubled by the announcement that a detective-inspector desired to speak with him! should he tell the inspector all that he had seen the night before, and all that he suspected now, or should he hold his peace? his duty as a citizen, as a doctor, and as, in a sense, the protector of his patient, seemed to demand the one course, while his consideration for julius and for his own family suggested the other. surely, never was a simple, upright doctor involved in a more bewildering _imbroglio_! the detective-inspector entered, and opened an interview which proved less embarrassing than lefevre had anticipated. the detective had already made up his mind about the case and his course regarding it. he put no curious questions; he merely inquired concerning the identity and the condition of the lady. when he heard who she was, and when he caught the import of an aside from lord rivercourt that it would be worth any one's while to discover the mysterious offender, professional zeal sparkled in his eye. "i think i know my man," said he; and the doctor looked the lively interest he felt. "i am right, i believe, dr lefevre, in setting this down to the author of that other case you had,--that from the brighton train?" lefevre thought he was right in that. "'m. dolaro:' that was the name. i had charge of the case, and was baffled. i shan't miss him this time. i shall get on his tracks at once; he can't have left the park in broad daylight, a singular man like him, without being noticed." "it rather puzzles me," said the doctor, "what crime you will charge him with." "it is an outrage," said lord rivercourt; "and if it is not criminal, it seems about time it were made so." "oh, we'll class it, my lord," said the detective; "never fear." the detective departed; but lord rivercourt seemed not inclined to stir. "you will excuse me," said lefevre; "but i must perform a very delicate operation." "to be sure," said the old lord; "and you want me to go. how stupid of me! i kept waiting for my daughter to wake up; but i see that, of course, you have to rouse her. it did not occur to me what that machine meant. something magneto-electric--eh? forgive one question, lefevre. i can see you look anxious: is mary's condition very serious?--most serious? i can bear to be told the complete truth." the doctor was touched by the old gentleman's emotion. he took his hand. "it is serious," said he--"most serious, for this reason, that i cannot account for her obstinate lethargy; but i think there is no immediate danger. if necessity arises, i shall send for you again." "to the house," said lord rivercourt. "i shall be sitting out a debate on our eternal irish question." lefevre was left seriously discomposed, but at once he sent for the house-physician, summoned the sister and the nurse, and set about his third attempt to revive his patient. he got the bed turned north and south. he carefully explained to the two women what was demanded of them, and applied them to their task; but, whatever the cause, the failure was completer than before: there was not even a tremor of muscle in the unconscious lady, and the doctor was suffused with alarm and humiliation. failure!--failure!--failure! such a concatenation had never happened to him before! but failure only nerves the brave and capable man to a supreme effort for success. still self-contained, and apparently unmoved, the doctor gave directions for some liquid nourishment to be artificially administered to his patient, said he would return after dinner, and went his way. the society of friends or acquaintances was distasteful to him then; the thought even of seeing his own familiar dining-room and his familiar man in black, whose silent obsequiousness he felt would be a reproach, was disagreeable. all his thought, all his attention, all his faculties were drawn tight to this acute point--he must succeed; he must accomplish the task he had set himself: life at that hour was worth living only for that purpose. but how was success to be compelled? he walked for a while about the streets, and then he went into a restaurant and ordered a modest dinner. he broke and crumbled his bread with both hands, his mind still intent on that one engrossing, acute point. while thus he sat he heard a voice, as in a dream, say, "the very doctor you read about. that's the second curious case he's got in a month or so.... oh yes--very clever; he treats them, i understand, in the same sort of way as the famous dr charbon of paris would.... i should say so; quite as good, if not better than charbon. i'd rather have an english doctor any day than a french.... his name's in the paper--_lefevre_." then the doctor woke to the fact that he was being talked about. he perceived his admirers were sitting at a table a little behind him, and he judged from what had been said that his fresh case was already being made "copy" of in the evening papers. the flattering comparison of himself with dr charbon had an oddly stimulating effect upon him, notwithstanding that it had been uttered by he knew not whom,--a mere _vox et præterea nihil_. he disclaimed to himself the truth of the comparison, but all the same he was encouraged to bend his attention with his utmost force to the solution of his difficult problem--what to do to rouse his patient? he sat thus, amid the bustle and buzz of the restaurant, the coming and going of waiters, completely abstracted, assailing his difficulty with questions on this side and on that,--when suddenly out of the mists that obscured it there rose upon his mental vision an idea, which appealed to him as a solution of the whole, and, more than that, as a secret that would revolutionise all the treatment of nervous weakness and derangement. how came the idea? how do ideas ever come? as inspirations, we say, or as revelations; and truly they come upon us with such amazing and inspiriting freshness, that they may well be called either the one or the other. but no great idea had ever yet an epiphany but from the ferment of more familiar small ideas,--just as the glorious aphrodite was born of the ferment and pother of the waves of the sea. lefevre's new idea clothed itself in the form of a comparative question--_why should there not be transfusion of nervous force, ether, or electricity, just as there is transfusion of blood?_ he pushed his dinner away (he could scarcely have told what he had been eating and drinking), called for his bill, and returned with all speed to the hospital. he entered his female ward just as evening prayers were finished, before the lights were turned out and night began for the patients. he summoned his trusted assistant, the house-physician, again. "i am about to attempt," said he, "an altogether new operation: the patient has remained just as i left her, i suppose?" "just the same." "nervous force, whether it be electricity or not, is manifestly a fluid of some sort: why should it not be transfused as the other vital fluid is?" "indeed, sir, when you put it so," said the house-physician, suddenly steeled and brightened into interest, "i should say, 'why not?' the only reason against it is what can be assigned against all new things--it has not, so far as i know, been done." "exactly. i am going to try. i think, in case we need a current, so to say, to draw it along, that we shall use the apparatus too; we shall therefore need the women." "you mean, of course," said the young man, "you will cut a main nerve." "i shall use this nerve," said lefevre, indicating the main nerve in the wrist,--upon which the young man, in his ready enthusiasm, began to bare his arm. "my dear fellow," said lefevre, "do you consider what you are so promptly offering? do you know that my experiment, if successful, might leave you a paralytic, or an imbecile, or even--a corpse?" "i'll take the risk, sir," said the young man. "i can't permit it, my boy," said lefevre, laying his hand on his arm, and giving him a look of kindness. "nobody must run this risk but me. i don't mean, however, to cut the nerve." "what then, sir?" "well," said lefevre, "this nervous force, or nervous ether, is clearly a very volatile, and at the same time a very searching fluid. it can easily pass through the skin from a nerve in one person to a nerve in another. there is no difficulty about that; the difficulty is to set up a rapid enough vibration to whirl the current through!" he said that in meditative fashion: he was clearly at the moment repeating the working out of the problem. "i see," said the young man, looking thoughtful. "now, you are a musician, are you not?" "i play a little," said the young man, with a bewildered look. "you play the violin?" "yes." "and, of course, you have it in your rooms. would you be so good as to bring me the bow of your violin, and borrow for me anywhere a tuning-fork of as high a note as possible?" the young man looked at dr lefevre in puzzled inquiry; but the doctor was considering the electrical apparatus before him, and the young man set off on his errands. when he returned with the fiddle-bow and the tuning-fork, he saw lefevre had placed the machine ready, with fresh chemicals in the vessels. "do you perceive my purpose?" asked lefevre. he placed one handle of the apparatus in the unconscious patient's right hand, while he himself took hold of her left arm with his right hand, so that the inner side of his wrist was in contact with the inner side of hers; and then, to complete the circle of connection, he took in his left hand the other handle of the apparatus. "you don't understand?" "i do not," answered the young man. "we want a very rapid vibration--much more rapid than usual," said the doctor. "i can apply no more rapid vibration at present than that which the note of that tuning-fork will produce. i want you to sound the tuning-fork with the fiddle-bow, and then apply the fork to this wire." "oh," said the young man, "i understand!" "now," said lefevre, "you'd better call the sister to set the electricity going." the sister came and took her place as before described--with her hands, that is, on the cylinder of the electrode, her fingers dipping over into the vessels of chemicals. she opened her eyes and smiled at sight of the fiddle-bow and tuning-fork. "i am trying a new thing, sister," said lefevre, with a touch of severity. "i do not need you, i do not wish you, to exert yourself this time; i only wish you to keep that position, and to be calm. maintain your composure, and attend.... now!" said he, addressing the young man. the fiddle-bow was drawn across the tuning-fork, and the fork applied with its thrilling note to the conducting wire which lefevre held. the wire hummed its vibration, and electricity tingled wildly through lefevre's nerves... there was an anxious, breathless pause for some seconds, and fear of failure began to contract the doctor's heart. "take your hands away, sister," said he. then, turning to his assistant, "apply that to the other wire," said he; and dropping his own wire, he put his hand over the cylinder, with his fingers dipping into the vessel from which the other wire sprang. when the wire hummed under the tuning-fork and the vibration thrilled again, instantly he felt as if an inert obstruction had been removed. the vibratory influence whirled wildly through him, there was a pause of a second or two (which seemed to him many minutes in duration), and then suddenly a kind of rigor passed upon the form and features of his patient, as if each individual nerve and muscle were being threaded with quick wire, a sharp rush of breath filled her chest, and she opened her eyes and closed them again. "that will do," said lefevre in a whisper, and, releasing his hands, he sank back in a chair. "it's a success," said he, turning his eyes with a thin smile on the house-physician, and then closing them in a deadly exhaustion. chapter vi. at the bedside of the doctor. for the first time since he had come into the world dr lefevre was that night attended by another doctor. the resident assistant-physician took him home to savile row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. then he left him in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that there was no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution; that he was only exhausted--though exhausted very much; and that all he needed was rest, sleep, nourishment,--sleep above all. lefevre slept the night through like a child, and awoke refreshed, though still very weak. he was bewildered with his condition for a moment or two, till he recalled the moving and exhausting experiences of the day before, and then he was suffused with a glow of elation,--elation which was not all satisfaction in the successful performance of a new experiment, nor in a good deed well done. his friend came to see him early, to anticipate the risk of his rising. he insisted that he should keep his bed, for that day at least, if not for a second and a third day. he reported that the patient was doing well; that she had asked with particularity, and had been informed with equal particularity, concerning the method of her recovery, upon which she was much bemused, and asked to see her physician. "it is a pity she was told," said lefevre; "it is not usual to tell a patient such a thing, and i meant it to be kept secret, at least till it was better established." but for all his protest he was again suffused with that new sense of inward joy. alone, and lying idle in bed, it was but natural--it was almost inevitable--that the doctor's thoughts should begin to run upon the strange events and suspicions of the past two days; and their current setting strongly in one channel, made him long to be resolved whether or no the man of the crowd, the author of yesterday's outrage, the "m. dolaro" of whom the detective had gone in search, and who, if captured, would be certainly overwhelmed with contumely, if not with punishment,--whether or not that strange creature was julius's father, or any relation at all of julius. he was not clear how he could well put the matter to julius, since he so evidently shrank from discourse upon it, yet he thought some kind of certainty might be arrived at from an interview with him. on the chance of his having returned to his chambers, he called for pen and paper and wrote a note, asking him to look in, as he would be resting all day. "try to come," he urged; "i have something important to speak about." this he sent by the trusty hand of his man in black; and by mid-day julius was announced. he came in confident, and bright as sunshine (lefevre thought he had never seen him looking more serene); but suddenly the sunshine was beclouded, and julius ceased to be himself, and became a restless, timorous kind of creature, like a bird put in a cage under the eye of his captor. "what?" he cried when he entered, with an eloquent gesture. "lazying in bed on such a day as this? what does this mean?" but when he observed the pallor and weakness of lefevre's appearance, he paused abruptly, refrained from the hand stretched out to greet him, and exclaimed in a tone of something like terror, "good heavens! are you ill?" a paleness, a shudder, and a dizziness passed upon him as if he sickened. "may i," he said, "open the window?" "certainly, julius," said lefevre, in surprise and alarm. "do you feel ill?" "no--no," said julius from the window, where he stood letting the air play upon his face, and speaking as if he had to put considerable restraint upon himself. "i--i am unfortunately, miserably constituted: i cannot help it. i cannot bear the sight of illness, or lowness of health even. it appals me; it--it horrifies me with a quite instinctive horror; it deadens me." lefevre, whose abundant sympathy and vitality went out instinctively to succour and bless the weak and the ill, was inexpressibly shocked and offended by this confession of what to his sense appeared selfish cowardice and inhumanity. he had again and again heard it said, and he had with pleasure assented to the opinion, that julius was a rare, finely-strung being, with such pure and glowing health that he shrank from contact with, or from the sight of, pain or ill-health, and even from their discussion; but now that the singularity of julius's organization impinged upon his own experience, now that he saw julius shrink from himself, he was shocked and offended. julius, on his part, was pitiably moved. he kept away from the bed; he fidgeted to and fro, looking at this thing and that, without a sparkle of interest in his eye, yet all with his own peculiar grace. "you wanted to speak to me," he said. "do you mind saying what you have to say and letting me go?" "i reckoned upon your staying to lunch," said lefevre. "i can't!--i can't!... very sorry, my dear lefevre, but i really can't! forgive what seems my rudeness. it distresses me that at such a time as this my sensations are so acute. but i cannot help it!--i cannot!" "you have been in the country,--have you not?" said lefevre, beginning with a resolve to get at something. "i have just come back," said julius. "my man told me you had called." "yes. my mother wrote in a state of great anxiety about you, and asked me to go and look at you. she said that she and my sister had seen a good deal of you lately; that you began to look unwell, and then ceased to appear, and she was afraid you might be ill." this was put forth as an invitation to julius to expound not only his own situation, but also his relations with lady and miss lefevre, but julius took no heed of it. he merely said, "no; i was not ill. i only wanted a little change to refresh me,"--and walked back to the window to lave himself in the air. "well," continued lefevre, "since i called to see you, i have had an adventure or two. you never look at a newspaper except for the weather, and so it is probable you do not know that i had brought to me yesterday afternoon another strange case like that of the young officer a month ago,--a similar case, but worse." "worse?" exclaimed julius, dropping into the chair by the window, and glancing, as a less preoccupied observer than the doctor would have remarked, with a wistful desire at the door. "much worse--though, i believe, from the same hand," said lefevre. "a lady this time,--titularly and really a lady,--lady mary fane, the daughter of lord rivercourt." "oh, good heavens!" exclaimed julius, and there were manifest so keen a note of apprehension in his voice and so deep a shade of apprehension on his face, that lefevre could not but note them and confirm himself in his suspicion of the intimate bond of connection between him and the author of the outrage. he pitied julius's distress, and hurried through the rest of his revelation, careless of the result he had sought. "it may prove," said he, "a far more serious affair than the other. lord rivercourt is not the man to sit quietly under an outrage like that." julius astonished him by demanding, "what is the outrage? has the lady given an account of it? what does she accuse the man of?" "she has not spoken yet,--to me, at least," said lefevre; "and i don't know what the outrage can be called, but i am sure lord rivercourt--and he is a man of immense influence--will move heaven and earth to give it a legal name, and to get it punishment. there is a detective on the man's track now." "oh!" said julius. "well, it will be time enough to discuss the punishment when the man is caught. now, if that is all your news," he added hurriedly, "i think--" he took up his hat, and was as if going to the door. "it is not quite all," said the doctor, and julius went back to the window, with his hat in his hand. "i wonder," he broke out, "if we shall ever be simple enough and intelligent enough to perceive that real wickedness--the breaking of any of the laws of nature, i mean (or, if you prefer to say so, the laws of god)--is best punished by being left to itself? outraged nature exacts a severe retribution! but you were going to say--?" "the night before last," continued lefevre, determined to be brief and succinct, "i was walking in the strand, and i could not help observing a man who fulfilled completely the description given of the author of this case and my former one." "well?" "that is not all. when i caught sight of his face i was completely amazed; for--i must tell you--it looked for all the world like you grown old, or, as i said to myself at the time, like a death-mask of you." "you--you saw that?" exclaimed julius, leaning against the window with a sudden look of terror which lefevre was ashamed to have seen: it was like catching a glimpse of julius's poor naked soul. "and you thought--?" continued julius. "you shall hear. dr rippon--you remember the old doctor?--had a sight of a man in the strand the night before, who, he believes, was his old friend courtney that he thought dead, and who, i believe, was the man i saw." lefevre stopped. there was a pause, in which julius put his head out of the window, as if he had a mind to be gone that way. then he turned with a marked control upon himself. "really, lefevre," said he, "this is the queerest stuff i've heard for a long time! this is hallucination with a vengeance! i don't like to apply such a tomfool word to anything, but observe how all this has come about. an excellent old gentleman, who has been dining out or something, has a glimpse at night, on a crowded pavement, of a man who looks like a friend of his youth. very well. the excellent old gentleman tells you of that, and it impresses you. _you_ walk on the same pavement the next evening--i won't emphasise the fact of its being after dinner, though i daresay it was--" "it was." "--_you_ have a glimpse of a man who looks--well, something like me; and you instantly conclude, 'ah! the courtney person--the friend of dr rippon's youth!--and, surely, some relative of my friend julius!' next day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you saw, _argal_, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one! is your conclusion clear upon the evidence? is it inevitable? is it necessary? is it not forced?" "well," began lefevre. "it is bad detective business," broke in julius, "though it may be good friendship. you have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you wished to give me warning of it. but--_que diable vas-tu faire dans cette galère?_ you are the best friend in the world, and whenever i am in trouble--and who knows? who knows? 'man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward'--i may ask of you both your friendship and your skill. one thing i ask of you here: don't speak of me as you see me now, thus miserably moved, to any one! now i must go. good-bye." and before lefevre could find another word, julius had opened the door and was gone. "if it moves him like that," said the doctor to himself, through his bewilderment, "there must be something worse in it--god forgive me for thinking so!--than i have ever imagined." chapter vii. contains a love interlude. next day lefevre learned that the police had been again baffled in their part of the inquiry. the detective had contrived to trace his man--though not till the morning after the event--to the st pancras hotel, where he had dined in private, and gone to bed early, and whence he had departed on foot before any one was astir, to catch, it was surmised, the first train. but wherever he had gone, it was just as in the former case: from the time the hotel door had closed on his cloaked figure, all trace of him was lost. nor could lady mary fane add anything of moment to what lefevre already knew or guessed. her account of her adventure (which she gave him in her father's house, whither she had been removed on the third day) was as follows: she was returning home from st thomas's hospital, dressed according to her habit when she went there; she had crossed westminster bridge, and was proceeding straight into st james's park, when she became aware of a man walking in the same direction as herself, and at the same pace. she casually noted that he looked like a distinguished foreigner, and that he had about him an indefinable suggestion of death clinging with an eager, haggard hope to life,--a suggestion which melted the heart of the beholder, as if it were the mute appeal of a drowning sailor. she was stirred to pity; and when he suddenly appeared to reel from weakness, she stepped out to him on an overwhelming impulse, laid a steadying hand on his arm, and asked what ailed him. he turned on her a pair of wonderful dark eyes, which were animal-like in their simple, direct appeal, and their moist softness. he begged her to lead him aside into a path by which few would pass: he disliked being stared at. thinking only of him as a creature in sickness and distress, she obeyed without a thought for herself. she helped him to sit down upon a bench, and sat down by him and felt his pulse. he looked at her with an open, kindly eye, with a simple-seeming gratitude, which held her strangely (though she only perceived that clearly on looking back). he said to her suddenly,-"there was a deep, mystical truth in the teaching of the church to its children--that they should prefer in their moments of human weakness to pray to the virgin-mother; for woman is always man's best friend." she looked in his face, wondering at him, still with her finger on his pulse, when she felt an unconsciousness come over her, not unlike "the thick, sweet mystery of chloroform;" and she knew no more till she opened her eyes in the hospital bed. "revived by you," she said to lefevre. he inquired further, as to her sensations before unconsciousness, and she replied in these striking words: "i felt as if i were strung upon a complicated system of threads, and as if they tingled and tingled, and grew tighter to numbness." that answer, he saw, was kindred to the description given by the young officer of his condition. it was clear that in both cases the nerves had been seriously played upon; but for what purpose? what was the secret of the stranger's endeavour? what did he seek?--and what find? to these questions no satisfactory answer would come for the asking, so that in his impatience he was tempted to break through the severe self-restraint of science, and let unfettered fancy find an answer. but, most of all, he longed to see close to him the man whom the police sought for in and out, to judge for himself what might be the method and the purpose of his strange outrages. he scarcely desired his capture, for he thought of the possible results to julius, and yet--day after day passed, and still the man was unfound, and very soon a change came over lefevre's life, which lifted it so far above the plane of his daily professional experience, that all speculation about the mysterious "m. dolaro," and his probable relation to julius, fell for a time into the dim background. the doctor had been calling daily in carlton terrace to see his patient, when, on a certain memorable day, he intimated to her father that she was so completely recovered that there was no need of his calling on her professionally again. the old lord, looking a little flustered, asked him if he could spare a few minutes' conversation, and led him into his study. "my dear lefevre," said he, "i am at a loss how to make you any adequate return for what you have done for my daughter. money can't do it; no, nor my friendship either, though you are so kind as to say so. but i have an idea, which i think it best to set before you frankly. you are a bachelor: it is not good to be a bachelor," he went on, laying his hand affectionately on the doctor's arm, and flushing--old man of the world though he was--flushing to the eyes. "what--what do you think of my daughter? i mean, not as a doctor, but as a man?" lefevre was not in his first youth, and he had had his admirations for women in his time, as all healthy men must have, but yet he was made as deliriously dizzy as if he were a boy by his guess at what lord rivercourt meant. "why," he stammered, "i think her the most beautiful, intelligent, and--and attractive woman i know." "yes," said her father, "i believe she is pretty well in all these ways. but--and you see i frankly expose my whole position to you--what would you think of her for a wife?" "frankly, then," said lefevre, "i find i have admired her from the beginning of this, but i had no notion of letting my admiration go farther, because i conceived that she was quite beyond my hopes." "my dear fellow," said lord rivercourt, "you have relieved me and delighted me immensely. i know no man that i would like so well for a son-in-law. and after all, it is only fitting that the life you have saved with such risk to yourself--oh, i know all about it--should be devoted to making yours happy. and--and i understand from her mother that mary is quite of the same opinion herself. now, will you go and speak to her at once, or will you wait till another day? you will have to decide that," said he, with a smile, "not only as lover, but as doctor." lefevre hesitated for but an instant; for what true, manly lover would have decided to withdraw till another day when the door to his mistress was held open to him? "i'll see her now," he said. lord rivercourt led the doctor back to his daughter, and left him with her. there were some moments of chilling doubt and cold uncertainty, and then came a rush of warm feeling at the bidding of a shy glance from lady mary. he bent over her and murmured he scarcely knew what, but he heard clearly and with a divine ecstasy a softly-whispered "_yes!_" which thrilled in his heart for days and months afterwards, and then he turned to him her face, her beautiful face illumined with love, and kissed it: between two who had been drawn together as they had, what words were needed, or what could poor words convey? about an hour later he walked to savile row to dress and return for dinner. he walked, because he felt surcharged with life. he desired peace and goodwill among men; he pitied with all his soul the weary and the broken whom he met, and wondered with regret that men should get irremediably involved in the toils of their own misdeeds; he was profuse with coppers, and even small silver, to the wretched waifs of society who swept the crossings he had to take on his triumphant way; he would even have bestowed forgiveness on his greatest enemy if he had met him then;--for the divine joy of love was singing in his heart and raising him to the serene and glorious empyrean of heroes and gods. oh matchless magic of the human heart, which confounds all the hypotheses of science, and flouts all its explanations! it was that evening when he and lady mary sat in sweet converse that she said to him these words, which he hung for ever after about his heart-"surely, never before did a man win a wife as you have won me! you made me well by putting your own life into me; so what could i do but give you the life that was already your own!" thus day followed day on golden wings: lefevre in the morning occupied with the patients that thronged his consulting-room; in the afternoon dispensing healing, and, where healing was impossible, cheerfulness and courage, in his hospital wards; and in the evening finding inspiration and strength in the company of lady mary--for her love was to him better than wine. all who went to him in those days found him changed, and in a sense glorified. he had always been considerate and kind; but the weakness, the folly, and the wickedness of poor human nature, which were often laid bare to his searching scrutiny, had frequently plunged him into a welter of despondency and shame, out of which he would cry, "alas for god's image! alas for the temple of the holy ghost!" but in those days it seemed as if disease and death appeared to him mere trivial accidents of life, with the result that no "case," however bad, was sent away empty of hope. chapter viii. strange scenes in curzon street. it happened, however, that just when all the bays and creeks of dr lefevre's attention were occupied, as by a springtide, with the excellent, the divine fortune that had come to him,--when he seemed thus most completely divorced from anxious speculation about julius courtney and "m. dolaro," his attention was suddenly and in unexpected fashion hurried again to the mystery. the doctor had not seen julius since the day he had received him in his bedroom--it must be admitted he had not sought to see him--but he had heard now and then from his mother, in casual notes and postscripts, that courtney continued to call in curzon street. on a certain evening lady lefevre gave a dinner and a reception, designed to introduce lady mary to the lefevre circle. julius was not at dinner (at which only members of the two families sat down), but he was expected to appear later. it is probable, under the circumstances, that lefevre would not have remarked the absence of julius from the dinner-table, had it not been for nora. he was painfully struck with her appearance and demeanour. she seemed to have lost much of her beautiful vigour and bloom of health, like a flower that has been for some time cut from its stem; and she, who had been wont to be ready and gay of speech, was now completely silent, yet without constraint, and as if wrapt in a dream. "what has come over nora?" asked lefevre of his mother when they had gone to the drawing-room. "ah," said lady lefevre, "you have noticed something, have you? do you find her very changed, then?" "very much changed." "it's this attachment of hers to julius. i want to have a talk with you about it presently. she seems scarcely to live when he is not with her. she sits like that always when he is gone, and appears only to dream and wait,--wait with her life as if suspended till he comes back." "has it, indeed, got so far as that?" said her son with concern. "i had better have a word or two with julius about it." just then mr courtney was announced, and there were introductions on this side and on that. he turned to be introduced to lady mary, and for the time lefevre forgot his sister, so engrossed was he with the altered aspect of his friend. he looked worn and weary, like a student when the dawn finds him still at his books. lady lefevre expressed that in her question-"why, julius, have you taken to hard work? you're not looking well, and we have not seen you for days." a flush rose to tinge his cheek, but it sank as soon as it appeared. "i have been out of sorts," said he; "that is all. and you have not seen me because i have bought a yacht and have been trying it on the river." "a yacht!" exclaimed lefevre. "i did not know you cared for the water." "_you_ know me," laughed julius in his own manner, "and not know that i care for everything!" so saying, he laid his hand on lefevre's arm. the act was not remarkable, but its result was, for lefevre felt it as if it were a blow, and stood astonished at it. during this interchange of words lefevre (with lady mary) had been moving with julius, as he drew off across the room to greet nora, and the doctor could not help observing how the attention of all the company was bent on his friend. before his entrance all had been chatting or laughing easily with their neighbours; now they seemed as constrained and belittled as is a crowd of courtiers when a royal personage appears in their midst. in truth, julius at all times had a grace, an ease, and a distinction of manner not unworthy of a prince; but on this occasion he had an added something, an indefinable attraction which strangely held the attention. lefevre, therefore, was scarcely surprised (though, perhaps, a trifle disappointed, considering that he was a lover) to note that lady mary was regarding julius with a silent, wide-eyed fascination. they convoyed julius to nora, and then withdrew, leaving them together. there were several fresh arrivals and new introductions to lady mary. these, lefevre observed, she went through half-absently, still turning her eyes on julius in the intervals with open and intense interest. "well," said lefevre at length, smiling in spite of a twinge of jealousy, "what do you think, now you have seen him, of the fascinating julius?" she gave him no answering smile, but replied as if she painfully withdrew herself from abstraction,--"i--i don't know. he is very interesting and very strange. i--i can't make him out. i don't know." then lefevre turned his eyes on julius, and became aware of something strained in the relations of his sister and his friend. he could not forbear to look, and as he continued looking he instinctively felt that a passionate scene was being silently enacted between them. they sat markedly apart. nora's bosom heaved with suppressed emotion, and her look, when raised to julius, plied him with appeal or reproach--lefevre could not determine which. the doctor's interest almost drew him over to them, when lady lefevre appeared and said to julius-"do go to the piano, julius, and wake us up." nora put out her hand with a gesture which plainly meant, "don't!... don't leave me!" but julius rose, and as he turned (the doctor noted) he bent an inscrutable look of pain on nora. he sat down at the piano and struck a wild, sad chord. instantly it became as if the people in the room were the instrument upon which he played,--as if the throbbing human hearts around him were directly connected by invisible strings with the ivory keys that pulsed beneath his fingers. what was the music he played no one knew, no one cared, no one inquired: each individual person was held and played upon, and was allowed no pause for reflection or criticism. the music carried all away as on the flood of time, showing them, on one hand, sunshine and beauty and joy, and all the pride of life; and on the other, darkness and cruelty, despair, and defiance, and death. it might have been, on the one hand, the music with which orpheus tamed the beasts; and on the other, that which æschylus arranged to accompany the last act of his tragedy of "prometheus bound." there was, however, no clear distinction between the joyous airs and the sombre: all were wrought and mingled into an exciting and bewildering atmosphere of melody, which thrilled the heart and maddened the brain. but as the music continued, its joyous strains died out; the instrument cried aloud in horror and pain, as if the vulture of prometheus were tearing at its vitals; darkness seemed to descend upon the room--a darkness alive with the sighs and groans, the disillusions and tears, of lost souls. the men sat transfixed with agony and dread, the women were caught in the wild clutches of hysteria, and courtney himself was as if possessed with a frenzy: his features were rigid, his eyes dilated, and his hair rose and clung in wavy locks, so that he seemed a very gorgon's head. the only person apparently unmoved was old dr rippon, whose pale, gaunt form rose in the background, sinister and calm as death! the situation was at its height, when a black cat (a pet of miss lefevre's) suddenly leaped on the top of the piano with a canary in its mouth, and in the presence of them all, laid its captive before julius courtney. the music ceased with a dissonant crash. with a cry julius rose and laid his hand on the cat's neck: to the general amazement the cat lay down limp and senseless, and the little golden bird fluttered away. then the sobs of the women, hitherto controlled, broke out, and the murmurs of the men. "o julius! julius! what have you done?" cried nora, sweeping up to him in an ecstasy of emotion. he caught her in his arms, when with a strange cry--a strained kind of laugh with a hysterical catch in it--she sank fainting on his breast. with a sharp exclamation of pain and fear he bore her swiftly from the room (he was near the door) and into a little conservatory that opened upon the staircase, casting his eyes upon lefevre as he went, and saying, "come! come quick!" lefevre then woke to the fact that he had been fixedly regarding this last strange scene, while lady mary clung trembling to his arm. he hurried out after julius, followed by lady mary and his mother. "take her!" cried julius, standing away from nora, and looking white and terror-stricken. "restore her! oh, i must not!--i dare not touch her!" with nimble accustomed fingers lady mary undid nora's dress, while the doctor applied the remedies usual in hysterical fainting. nora opened her eyes and fixed them upon julius. "o julius, julius!" she cried. "do not leave me! come near me! oh!... i think i am going to die!" "my love! my life! my soul!" said julius, stretching out his hands to her, but approaching no nearer. "i cannot--i must not touch you! no, no! i dare not!" "o julius!" said she. "are you afraid of me? how can i harm you?" "nora, my life! i am afraid of myself! you would not harm me, but i would harm you! ah, i know it now only too well!" then, as she closed her eyes again, she said, "i had better die!" "no, you must not die!" he exclaimed. "your time is not yet! yes, you will live!--live! but i must be cut off--though not for ever--from the sweetest and dearest, the noblest and purest of all god's creatures!" in the meantime lefevre had been examining his sister with closer scrutiny. he raised her eyelid and looked at her eye; he pricked her on the arm and wrist; and then he turned to julius. "julius," said he, "what does this mean?" "it means," answered julius, covering his face with his hands, "that i am of all living things the most accurst!" then with a cry of horror and anguish he fled from the room and down the stairs. lady lefevre followed him in a flutter of fear. presently she returned, and said, in answer to a look from her son, "he snatched his hat and coat, and was gone before i came up with him." without a word lefevre set himself to recover his sister, and in half an hour she was well enough to walk with lady mary's assistance to bed. the guests, meanwhile, had departed, all but two or three intimates; and in less than an hour dr lefevre was returning home in the fane carriage. lord rivercourt and he talked of the strange events of the evening, while lady mary leaned back and half-absently listened. they were proceeding thus along piccadilly, when she suddenly caught the doctor's arm and exclaimed-"oh! look! the very man i met in the park! i am sure of it! i can never forget the face!" lefevre, alert on the instant, looked to recognise hernando courtney, the man of the crowd: he saw only the back of a person in a loose cape and a slouch hat turning in at the gateway of the albany courtyard. in flashes of reflection these questions arose: who could he be but hernando courtney?--and where could he be going but to julius's chambers? julius, therefore (whose own conduct had been that night so extraordinary), must be familiar with his whole mysterious course, and consequently with the peril he was in. before lefevre could out of his perplexity snatch a resolution, lord rivercourt had pulled the cord to stop the coachman. the coachman, however, having received orders to drive home, was driving at a goodly pace, and it was only on a second summons through the cord that he slackened speed, and obeyed his master's direction to "draw up by the kerb." "i'll get out," said lefevre, "and look after him. you'd better get mary home; she's not very strong yet, and she has been upset to-night." he put himself thus forward for another reason besides,--on the impulse of his friendship for julius, without considering whether in the event of an arrest and an exposure, he could do anything to shield julius from shame and pain. he got out, saying his adieus, and the carriage drove on. he found himself well past the albany. he hurried back, nerved by the desire to encounter julius's visitor, and at the same time by the hope that he would not. in his heart was a turmoil of feeling, to the surface of which continued to rise pity for julius. the events of the evening had forced him to the conclusion that julius possessed the same singular, magnetic, baleful influence on men and women as his putative father hernando; but julius's burst of agony, when nora lay overcome, had declared to him that till then he had scarcely been aware of the destructive side of his power. all resentment, therefore, all sense of offence and suspicion which had lately begun to arise in his mind, was swallowed up in pity for his afflicted friend. his chief desire, now that he seemed reduced to the level of suffering humanity, was to give him help and counsel. thus he entered the albany, and passed the porter. the lamps in the flagged passage were little better than luminous shadows in the darkness, and the hollow silence re-echoed the sound of his hurried steps. no one was to be seen or heard in front of him. he came to the letter which marked julius's abode. he looked into the gloomy doorway, and resolved he would see and speak to julius in any case. he passed into the gloom and knocked at julius's door. after a pause the door was opened by jenkins. lefevre could not well make out the expression of the serving-man's face, but he was satisfied that his voice was shaken as by a recent shock. "i wish to see mr courtney," said lefevre, in the half hope that jenkins would say, "which mr courtney?" "not at home, sir," said jenkins in his flurried voice, and prepared to shut the door. "not at home, jenkins? you don't mean that!" "oh, it's you, dr lefevre, sir. mr courtney is not at home, but perhaps he will see you, sir! i hope he will; for he don't seem to me at all well." "but if he is engaged, jenkins--?" "oh, sir, you know what 'not-at-home' means," answered jenkins. "it means anything or nothing. will you step into the drawing-room, sir, while i inquire? mr courtney is in his study." "thank you, jenkins," said the doctor; "i'll wait where i am." jenkins returned with deep concern on his face. "mr courtney's compliments, sir," said he, "and he is very sorry he cannot see you to-night. it is a pity, sir," he added, in a burst of confidence, "for he don't seem well. he's a-settin' there with the lamp turned down, and his face in his hands." "is he alone, then?" asked the doctor. "oh yes, sir," answered jenkins, in manifest surprise. "has nobody been to see him since he came in?" "no, sir, nobody," said jenkins, in wider surprise than before. it appeared to lefevre that his friend must be sitting alone with the terrible discovery he had that night made of himself. his heart, therefore, urged him to go in and take him by the hand, and give what help and comfort he could. "i think," said he to jenkins, "i'll try and have a word with him." "yes, sir," said jenkins, and led the way to the study. he tapped at the door, and then turned the handle; but the door remained closed. "who is there?" asked a weary voice within, which scarce sounded like the voice of julius. "i--lefevre," said the doctor, putting jenkins aside. "may not i come in? i want a friendly word with you." "forgive me, lefevre," said the voice, "that i do not let you in. i am very busy at present." "you are alone," said lefevre, "are you not?" "alone," said julius; "yes, all alone!" there was a melting note of sadness in the words which went to the doctor's heart. "my dear julius," said he, "i think i know what's troubling you. don't you think a talk with me might help you?" "you are very good, lefevre." (that was an unusual form of speech to come from julius.) "i shall come to your house in a few minutes, if you will allow me." "do," answered lefevre, for the moment completely satisfied. "do!" and he turned away. but when jenkins had closed the outer door upon him, doubts arose. ought he not to have insisted on seeing whether julius was in truth alone in the study? and why could they not have had their talk there as well as in savile row? these doubts, however, he thrust down with the promise to himself that, if julius did not come to him within half an hour, he would return to him. yet he had not gone many steps before an unworthy suspicion shot up and arrested him: suppose julius had got rid of him to have the opportunity of sending a mysterious companion away unseen? but jenkins had said he had let no one in, and it was shameful to suspect both master and man of lying. yet lady mary fane had distinctly recognised the man who passed into the albany courtyard: had he merely passed through on his unceasing pursuit of something unknown? or were father and son somehow aware of each other? between this and that his mind became a jumble of the wildest conjectures. he imagined many things, but never conceived that which soon showed itself to be the fact. chapter ix. an apparition and a confession. he let himself in with his latch-key, went into his dining-room, and sat down dressed as he was to wait. he listened through minute after minute for the expected step. the window was open (for the midsummer night was warm), and all the sounds of belated and revelling london floated vaguely in the air. twelve o'clock boomed softly from westminster, and made the heavy atmosphere drowsily vibrate with the volume of the strokes. the reverberation of the last had scarcely died away when a light, measured footfall made him sit up. it came nearer and nearer, and then, after a moment's hesitation, sounded on his own doorstep. with that there came the tap of a cane on the window. with thought and expectation resolutely suspended, lefevre swung out of the room and to the hall-door. he opened it, and stood and gazed. the light of the hall-lamp fell upon a figure, the sight of which sent the blood in a gush to his heart, and pierced him with horror. he expected julius, and he looked on the man whom he had followed on the crowded pavements some weeks before,--the man whom the police had long sought for ineffectually! "won't you let me in, lefevre?" said the man. the doctor stood speechless, with his eyes fixed: the face and dress of the person before him were those of hernando courtney, but the voice was the voice of julius, though it sounded strange and distant, and bore an accent as of death. lefevre was involved in a wild turmoil and horror of surmise, too appalling to be exactly stated to himself; for he shrank with all his energy from the conclusion to which he was being forced. he turned, however, upon the request for admission, and led the way into the dining-room, letting his visitor close the door and follow. "lefevre," said the strange voice, "i have come to show myself to you, because i know you are a true-hearted friend, and because i think you have that exquisite charity that can forgive all things." "_show myself!_" ... as lefevre listened to the strange voice and looked at the strange person, the suspicion came upon him--what if he were but regarding an illusion? he had read in some of his mystical and magical writers, that men gifted with certain powers could project to a distance eidola or phantasms of varying likeness to themselves: might not this be such a mocking phantasm of julius? he drew his hand across his eyes, and looked again: the figure still sat there. he put out his hand to test its substantiality, and the voice cried in a keen pitch of terror-"don't touch me!--for your own sake!... why, lefevre, do you look so amazed and overcome? is not my wretched secret written in my face?" "and you are really julius courtney?" asked lefevre, at length finding utterance, with measured emphasis, and in a voice which he hardly recognised as his own. "i am julius courtney--" he paused, for lefevre had put his head in his hands, shaken with a silent paroxysm of grief. it wrung the doctor's heart, as if in the person that sat opposite him, all that was noblest and most gracious in humanity were disgraced and overthrown. "yes," continued the voice, "i am julius; there is no other courtney that i know of, and soon there will be none at all." the doctor listened, but he could not endure to look again. "i am dying--i have been dying for a dozen years, and for a dozen years i have resisted and overcome death; now i surrender. i have come to my period. i shall never enter your house again. i have only come now to confess myself, and to ask a last favour of you--a last token of friendship." "i will freely do what i can for you, julius," said the doctor, still without looking at him, "though i am too overcome, too bewildered, yet to say much to you." "thank you. you will hear my story and understand. it contains a secret which i, like a blind fool, have only used for myself, but which you will apply for the wide benefit of mankind. the request i have to make of you is small, but it may seem extraordinary,--be my companion for twelve hours. i cannot talk to you here, enclosed and oppressed with streets of houses. come with me for a few hours on the water; i have a fancy to see the sun rise for the last time over the sea. i have my yacht ready near london bridge, and a boat waiting at the steps by cleopatra's needle; a cab will soon take us there. will you come?" lefevre did not look up. the voice of julius sounded like an appeal from the very abode of death. then he glanced in spite of himself in his face, and was moved and melted to unreserved compassion by the strained weariness of his expression--the open, luminous wistfulness of his eyes. "yes; i'll go," said he. "but can't i do something for you first? let me consider your case." "there's nothing now to be done for me, lefevre," said julius, shaking his head. "you will perceive that when you have heard me out." the doctor went to find his man and tell him that he was going out for the night to attend on an urgent case. when he returned he stood a moment touched with misgiving. he thought of lady mary--he thought of his mother and sister. ought he not to leave some hint behind him of the strange adventure upon which he was about to embark, and which might end he knew not how or where? julius was observing him, and seemed to divine his doubt. "you need have no hesitation," said he. "i ask you only for twelve hours. you can easily get back here by noon to-morrow. there is a south-west wind blowing, with every prospect of settled weather. i am quite certain about it." fortified with that assurance, lefevre put on a thicker overcoat and an old soft hat, turned out the lights in the dining-room and in the hall, closed the door with a slam, and stood with the new, the strange julius in the street, fairly embarked upon his adventure. it was only with an effort that he could realise he was in the company of one who had been a familiar friend. they walked towards regent street without speaking. at the corner of savile row they came upon a policeman, and lefevre had a sudden thrill of fear lest his companion should, at length, be recognised and arrested. courtney himself, however, appeared in no wise disturbed. in regent street he hailed a passing four-wheeler. "wouldn't a hansom be quicker?" said lefevre. "it is better on your account," said julius, "that we should sit apart." when they entered the cab, courtney ensconced himself in the remote corner of the other seat from lefevre; and thus without another word they drove to the embankment. at the foot of the steps by cleopatra's needle, they found a waterman and a boat in waiting. they entered the boat, lefevre going forward while julius sat down at the tiller. the waterman pulled out. the tide was ebbing, and they slipped swiftly down the dark river, with broken reflections of lamps and lanterns on either bank streaming deep into the water like molten gold as they passed, and with tall buildings and chimney-shafts showing black against the calm night sky. lefevre found it necessary at intervals to assure himself that he was not drifting in a dream, or that the ghastly, burning-eyed figure, wrapped in a dark cloak in the stern, was not a strange visitor from the nether world. soon after they had shot through london bridge they were alongside a yacht almost in mid-stream. it was clear that all had been prearranged for julius's arrival; for as soon as they were on board, the yacht (loosed from her upper mooring by the waterman who had brought them down the river) began to stand away. "we had better go forward," said courtney. "are you warm enough?" the doctor answered that he was. courtney gave an order to one of the men, who went below and returned with a fur-lined coat which his master put on. that little incident gave a curious shock to lefevre: it made him think of the mysterious stranger who had sat down opposite the young officer in the brighton train, and it showed him that he had not been completely satisfied that his friend julius and the person he had been wont to think of as hernando courtney were one and the same. they went forward to be free of the sail and its tackling. courtney, wrapped in his extra, his fur-lined coat, pointing to a low folding-chair for lefevre, threw himself on a heap of cordage. he looked around and above him, at the rippling, flashing water and the black hulls of ships, and at the serene, starlit heavens stretching over all. "how wonderful!--how beautiful it all is!" he exclaimed. "all, all!--even the dullest and deadest-seeming things are vibrating, palpitating with the very madness of life! he set the world in my heart, and oh, how i loved!--how i loved the world!" "it is a wonderful world," said lefevre, trying to speak cheerfully; "and you will take delight in it again when this abnormal fit of depression is over." "never, lefevre!--never, never!" said courtney in strenuous tones. "i regret it deeply, bitterly, madly,--but yet i know that i have about done with it!" "julius," said lefevre, "i have been so amazed and bewildered, that i have found little to say: i can scarcely believe that you are in very deed the julius i have known for years. but now let me remind you i am your friend--" "thank you, lefevre." "--and i am ready to help you to the uttermost in this crisis, which i but dimly understand. tell me about yourself, and let me see what i can do." "you can do nothing," said julius, sadly shaking his head. "understand me; i am not going to state a case for diagnosis. put that idea aside; i merely wish to confess myself to my friend." "but surely," said lefevre, "i may be your physician as well as your friend. as long as you have life there is hope of life." "no, no, no, lefevre! there is a depth of life--life on the lees--that is worse than death! if i could retrace my steps to the beginning of this, taking my knowledge with me, then--! but no, i must go my appointed way, and face what is beyond.... but let me tell you my story. "you have heard something of my parentage from dr rippon, i believe. my father was spanish, and my mother was english. i think i was born without that sense of responsibility to a traditional or conventional standard which is called conscience, and that sense of obligation to consider others as important as myself, which, i believe, they call altruism. i do not know whether the lack of these senses had been manifest in my mother's family, but i am sure it had been in my father's. for generations it had been a law unto itself; none of its members had known any duty but the fulfilment of his desires; and i believe even that kind of outward conscience called honour had scarcely existed for some of them. i had from my earliest recollection the nature of these ancestors: they, though dead, desired, acted, lived in me,--with something of a difference, due to i know not what. let me try to state the fact as it appears to me looking back: i was for myself the one consciousness, the one person in the world, all else--trees, beasts, men and women, and what not--being the medium in which, and on which, i lived. i conceived of nothing around me but as existing to please, to amuse, to delight me, and if anything showed itself contrary to these ends, i simply avoided it. what i wished to do i did; what i wished to have i had;--and nothing else. i do not suppose that in these points i was different from most other children of wealthy parents. where i differed, i believe, was in having a peculiarly sensitive, and at the same time admirably healthy, constitution of body, which induced a remarkable development of desire and gratification. i can hardly make you understand, i am sure i cannot make you feel--i myself cannot feel, i can only remember--what a bright natural creature i was when i was young." "don't i remember well," said lefevre, "what you were like when i first met you in paris?" "ah," said julius, "the change had begun then,--the change that has brought me to this. i contemplate myself as i was before that with bitter envy and regret. i was as a being sprung fresh from the womb of primitive nature. i delighted in nature as a child delights in its mother, and i throve on my delight as a child thrives. i refused to go to school--and indeed little pressure was put upon me--to be drilled in the paces and hypocrisy of civilised mankind. i ran wild about the country; i became proficient in all bodily exercises; i fenced and wrestled and boxed; i leaped and swam; i rowed for days alone in a skiff; i associated with simple peasants, and with all kinds of animals; i delighted in air and water, and grass and trees: to me they were as much alive as beasts are. oh, what an exquisite, abounding, unclouded pleasure life was! when i was hungry i ate; when i was thirsty i drank; when i was tired i slept; and when i woke i stretched myself like a giant refreshed. it was a pure joy to me in those days to close my fingers into a fist and see the beauty and firmness of my muscles. when solemn, civilised people spoke to me of duty and work, i listened like an idiot. i had nothing in my consciousness to help me to understand them. i knew no more of duty than crusoe on his island; and as for work, i had no ambition,--why, then, should i work? i read, of course; but i read because i liked it, not because i had tasks set me. i read everything that came in my way; and very soon all literature and science--all good poetry and romance, and all genuine science--came to mean for me a fine, orderly expression of nature and life. and religion, too, i felt as the ecstasy of nature. so i fed and flourished on the milk of life and the bread of life. "but a time came when i longed to live deeper, and to get at the pith and marrow of life. i was over twenty when it was revealed to me in a noonday splendour and warmth of light, that the human is unspeakably the highest and most enthralling expression of life in all nature. that discovery happened to me when i was in morocco with my father, who died there--no matter how--among those whom he liked to believe were his own people: my mother had died long before. i had considerable wealth at my command, and i began to live at the height of all my faculties; i lived in every nerve, and at every pore. "and then i began to perceive a reverse to the bounteous beauty and the overflowing life of nature,--a threatening quality, a devouring faculty in her by which she fed the joyous abundance of her life. i saw that all activity, all the pleasant palpitation and titillation in the life of nature and of man, merely means that one living thing is feeding upon or is feeding another. i began to perceive that all the interest of life centres in this alter-devouring principle. i discovered, moreover, this strange point,--that the joy of life is in direct proportion to the rapidity with which we lose or surrender life." "yes," said lefevre, "the giving of pleasure is always more exquisite and satisfactory than the getting it." "i lost life," continued julius, without noting lefevre's remark,--"i lost life,--vital force, nervous ether, electricity, whatever you choose to call it,--at an enormous rate, but i as quickly replenished my loss. i had revelled for some time in this deeper life of give and take before i discovered that this faculty of recuperation also was curiously and wonderfully active in me. whenever i fell into a state of weakness, well-nigh empty of life, i withdrew myself from company, and dwelt for a little while with the simplest forms of nature." "but," asked lefevre, "how did you get into such a low condition?" "how? _i lived!_" said he with fervour. "_yes; i lived:_ that was how! i had always delighted in animals, but then i began to find that when i caressed them they were not merely tamed, as they had been wont, but completely subdued; and i felt rapid and full accessions of life from contact with them. if i lay upon a bank of rich grass or wild flowers, i had to a slight extent the same revivifying sensation. the fable of antæus was fulfilled in me. the constant recurrence and vigour of this recuperation not only filled me with pride, but also set me thinking. i turned to medical science to find the secret of it. i entered myself as a student in paris: it was then i met you. i read deeply, too, in the books of the mediæval alchemists and sages of spain, which my father had left me. it came upon me in a clear flood of evidence that nature and man are one and indivisible, being animated by one identical energy or spirit of life, however various may be the material forms; and that all things, all creatures, according to the activity of their life, have the power of communicating, of giving or taking, this invisible force of life. it furthermore became clear to me that, though the force resides in all parts of a body, floating in every corpuscle of blood, yet its proper channels of circulation and communication are the nerves, so that as soon as a nerve in any one shape of life touches a nerve in any other, there is an instant tendency to establish in them a common level of the force of life. if i or you touch a man or woman with a finger, or clasp their hand, or embrace them more completely, the tendency is at once set up, and the force seeks to flow, and, according to certain conditions, does flow, from one to another, evermore seeking to find a common level,--always, that is, in the direction of the greater need, or the greater capacity. i saw then that not only had i a greater storage capacity, so to say, than most men, but also, therefore, when exhaustion came, i had a more insistent need for replenishment, and a more violent shrinking at all times from any weak or unhealthy person who might even by chance contact make a demand on my store of life." "and is that your secret?" asked lefevre. "i have arrived in a different way at something like the same discovery." "i know you have," said julius. "but my peculiar secret is not that, though it is connected with it. i am growing very tired," said he, abruptly. "i must be quick, lefevre," he continued in a hurried, weak voice of appeal; "grant me one little last favour to enable me to finish." "anything i can do i will, julius," said lefevre, suddenly roused out of the half-drowsiness which the soft night induced. he was held between alarm and fascination by the look which julius bent on him. "i am ashamed to ask, but you are full of life," said julius: "i am at the shallowest ebb. just for one minute help me. of your free-will submit yourself to me for but a moment. will you do me that service?" "yes," said lefevre, after an instant's hesitation; "certainly i will." julius half rose from his reclining position; he turned on lefevre his wonderful eyes, which in the mysterious twilight that suffused the midsummer night burned with a surprising brilliance. lefevre felt himself seized and held in their influence. "give me your hand," said julius. the doctor gave his hand, his eyes being still held by those of julius, and instantly, as it seemed to him, he plunged, as a man dives into the sea, into a gulf of unconsciousness, from which he presently emerged with something like a gasp and with a tremulous sensation about his heart. what had happened to him he did not know; but he felt slacker of fibre, as if virtue had gone out of him, while julius, when he spoke, seemed refreshed as by a draught of wine. "how are you?" asked julius. "for heaven's sake don't let me think that at the last i have troubled much the current of your life! will you have something to eat and drink? there's wine and food below." "thank you; no," said lefevre. "i am well enough, only a little drowsy." "i am stronger," said julius, "but it will not last; so let me finish my story." then he continued. "having explained to myself, in the way i have told you, the ease of my unwitting replenishment of force whenever i was brought low, i set myself to improve on my discovery. i saw before me a prospect of enjoyment of all the delights of life, deeper and more constant than most men ever know,--if i could only ensure to myself with absolute certainty a still more complete and rapid reinvigoration as often soever as i sank into exhaustion. i was quite sure that no energy of life is finer or fuller than the human at its best." "good god!" exclaimed lefevre, turning away with an involuntary shudder. "for heaven's sake!" cried julius, "don't shrink from me now, or you will tempt me to be less frank than i have been. i wish to make full confession. i know, i see now, i have been cruelly, brutally selfish--as selfish as nature herself!--none knows that better than i. but remember, in extenuation, what i have told you of my origin and my growth. and i had not the suspicion of a thought of injuring any one. fool! fool! egregious fool that i was! i who understood most things so clearly did not guess that no creature, no being in the universe--god, or man, or beast--can indulge in arrogant, full, magnificent enjoyment without gathering and living in himself, squandering through himself, the lives of others, to their eternal loss and his own final ruin! but, as i said, i did not think, and it was not evident until recently, that i injured any one. i had for a long time been aware that i had an unusual mesmeric or magnetic influence--call it what you will--over others. i cultivated that power in eye and hand, so that i was soon able to take any person at unawares whom i considered fit for my purpose, and subdue him or her completely to myself. then after one or two failures i hit upon a method, which i perfected at length into entire simplicity, by which i was able to tap the nervous system and draw into myself as much as ever i needed of the abounding force of life, without leaving any sign which even the most skilful doctor could detect." "julius, you sicken me!" exclaimed lefevre. "i am a doctor, but you sicken me!" "i explain myself so in detail," said julius, "_because_ you are a doctor. but let me finish. i lived that life of complete wedlock with nature for i dare not think how many years." "and you did not get weary of it?" asked lefevre. "weary of it? no! i returned to it always, after a pause of a few days for the reinvigoration i needed,--i returned to it with all the freshness of youth, with the advantage which, of course, mere youth can never have,--an amazingly rich experience. i revelled in the full lap of life. i passed through many lands, civilised and barbaric; but it was my especial delight to strike down to that simple, passionate, essential nature which lies beneath the thickest lacquer of refinements in our civilised societies. oh, what a life it was!--what a life! "but a change came: it must have been growing on me for some time without my knowledge. i commonly removed from society when i felt exhaustion coming on me; but on one occasion it chanced that i stayed on in the pleasant company i was in (i was then in vienna). i did not exactly feel ill; i felt merely weary and languid, and thought that presently i would go to bed. gradually i began to observe that the looks of my companions were bent strangely on me, and that the expression of their countenances more and more developed surprise and alarm. 'what is the matter with you all?' i demanded; when they instantly cried, 'what is the matter with _you?_ have you been poisoned?' i rose and went and looked in a mirror; i saw, with ghastly horror, what i was like, and i knew then that i was _doomed_. i fled from that company for ever. i saw that, when the alien life on which i flourished was gone out of me, i was a worn old man--that the fire of life which usually burned in my body, making me look bright and young, was now none of it my own; a few hot ashes only were mine, which death sat cowering by! i could not but sit and gaze at the reflection of the seared ghastliness of that face, which was mine and yet not mine, and feel well-nigh sick unto death. after a while, however, i plucked up heart. i considered that it was impossible this change had come all at once; i must have looked like that--or almost like that--once or twice or oftener before, and yet life and reinvigoration had gone on as they had been wont. i wrapped myself well up, and went out. i found a fit subject. i replenished my life as theretofore; my youthful, fresh appearance returned, and my confidence with it. i refused to look again upon my own, my worn face, from that time until tonight. "but alarm again seized me about a year ago, when i chanced by calculation to note that my periods of abounding life were gradually getting shorter,--that i needed reinvigoration at more frequent intervals;--not that i did not take as much from my subjects as formerly--on the contrary, i seemed to take more--but that i lost more rapidly what i took, as if my body were becoming little better than a fine sieve. the last stage of all was this that you are familiar with, when my subjects began to be so utterly exhausted as to attract public notice. yet that is not what has given me pause, and made me resolve to bring the whole weary, selfish business to an end. could i not have gone elsewhere--anywhere, the wide world over--and lived my life? but i was kept, i was tethered here, to this london by a feeling i had never known before. call it by the common fool's name of love; call it what you will. i was fascinated by your sister nora, even as others had been fascinated by me, even as i had been in my youth by the bountiful, gracious beauty of nature." "i have wanted to ask you," said lefevre, "for an explanation of your conduct towards nora. why did you--with your awful life--life which, as you say, was not your own, and your extraordinary secret--why did you remain near her, and entangle her with your fascinations? what did you desire?--what did you hope for?" "i scarcely know for what i hoped. but let me speak of her; for she has traversed and completely eclipsed my former vision of nature. i have told you what my point of view was,--alone in the midst of nature. i was for myself the only consciousness in the world, and all the world besides was merely a variety of material and impression, to be observed and known, to be interested in and delighted with. i was thus lonely, lonely as a despot, when nora, your sister, appeared to me, and instantly i became aware there was another consciousness in the world as great as, or greater than, my own,--another person than myself, a person of supreme beauty and intelligence and faculty. she became to me all that nature had been, and more. she expressed for me all that i had sought to find diffused through nature, and at the same time she stood forth to me as an equal of my own kind, with as great a capacity for life. at first i had a vision of our living and reigning together, so to say, though the word may seem to you absurd; but i soon discovered that there was a gulf fixed between us,--the gulf of the life i had lived; she stood pure where i had stood a dozen years ago. so, gradually, she subverted my whole scheme of life; more and more, without knowing it, she made me see and judge myself with her eyes, till i felt altogether abased before her. but that which finally stripped the veil from me, and showed me myself as the hateful incarnation of relentlessly devouring self, was my influence upon her, which culminated in the event of last night. can you conceive how i was smitten and pierced with horror by the discovery that rose on me like a nightmare, that even on her sweet, pure, sumptuous life, i had unwittingly begun to prey? for that discovery flung wide the door of the future and showed me what i would become. "beautiful, calm, divine nora! if i could but have continued near her without touching her, to delight in the thought and the sight of her, as one delights in the wind and the sunshine! but it could not be. i could only appear fit company for her if i refreshed and strengthened myself as i had been wont; but my new disgust of myself, and pity for my victims, made me shudder at the thought. what then? here i am, and the time has come (as that old doctor said it would) when death appears more beautiful and friendly and desirable than life. forgive me, lefevre--forgive me on nora's part,--and forgive me in the name of human nature." lefevre could not reply for the moment. he sat convulsed with heartrending sobs. he put out his hand to julius. "no, no!" exclaimed julius, "i must not take your hand. you know i must not." "take my hand," cried lefevre. "i know what it means. take my life! leave me but enough to recover. i give it you freely, for i wish you to live. you shall not die. by heaven! you shall not die. o julius, julius! why did you not tell me this long ago? science has resource enough to deliver you from your mistake." "lefevre," said julius,--and his eyes sparkled with tears and his weakening voice was choked,--"your friendship moves me deeply--to the soul. but science can do nothing for me: science has not yet sufficient knowledge of the principle on which i lived. would you have me, then, live on,--passing to and fro among mankind merely as a blight, taking the energy of life, even from whomsoever i would not? no, i must die! death is best!" "i will not let you die," said lefevre, rising to take a pace or two on the deck. "you shall come home with me. i shall feed your life--there are dozens besides myself who will be glad to assist--till you are healed of the devouring demon you have raised within you." "no, no, no, my dear friend!" cried julius. "i have steadily sinned against the most vital law of life." "julius," said lefevre, standing over him, "my friendship, my love for you may blind me to the enormity of your sin, but i can find it in me to say, in the name of humanity, 'i forgive you all! now, rise up and live anew! your intelligence, your soul is too rare and admirable to be snuffed out like a guttering candle!'" "lefevre," said julius, "you are a perfect friend! but your knowledge of this secret force of nature, which we have both studied, is not so great as mine. let me tell you, then, that this mystical saying, which i once scoffed at, is the profoundest truth:- "'who loveth life shall lose it all; who seeketh life shall surely fall!' "there is no remedy for me but death, which (who knows?) may be the mother of new life!" "it would have been better for you," said lefevre, sitting down again with his head in his hands, "better--if you had never seen nora." "nay, nay," cried julius, sitting up, animate with a fresh impulse of life. "better for her, dear, beautiful soul, but not for me! i have truly lived only since i saw her, and i have the joy of feeling that i have beheld and known nature's sole and perfect chrysolite. but i must be quick, my friend; the dawn will soon be upon us. there is but one other thing for me to speak of--my method of taking to myself the force of life. it is my secret; it is perfectly adapted for professional use, and i wish to give it to you, because you are wise enough in mind, and great enough of soul, to use it for the benefit of mankind." "i will not hear you, julius!" exclaimed lefevre. "i am neither wise nor great. your perfect secret would be too much for me. i might be tempted to keep it for my own use. come home with me, and apply it well yourself." julius was silent for a space, murmuring only, "i have no time for argument." then his face assumed the white sickness of death, and his dark eyes seemed to grow larger and to burn with a concentrated fire. "lefevre!" he panted in amazement, "do you know that you are refusing such a medical and spiritual secret as the world has not known for thousands of years? a secret that would enable you--_you_--to work cures more wonderful than any that are told of the greatest eastern thaumaturge?" "i have discovered a method," answered the doctor,--"an imperfect, clumsy method--for myself, of transmitting nervous force or ether for curative purposes. that, for the present, must be enough for me. i cannot hear your secret, julius." "lefevre, i beg of you," pleaded julius, "take it from me. i have promised myself, as a last satisfaction, that the secret i have guarded--it is not altogether mine: it is an old oriental secret--that now i would hand it over to you for the good of mankind, that at the last i might say to myself, 'i have, after all, opened my hand liberally to my fellow-men!' for pity's sake, lefevre, don't deny me that small final satisfaction!" "julius," said lefevre, firmly, "if your method is so perfect--as i believe it must be from what i have seen--i dare not lay on myself the responsibility of possessing its secret." "would not my example keep you from using it selfishly?" "does the experience of another," demanded the doctor, "however untoward it may be, ever keep a man from making his own? i dare not--i dare not trust myself to hold your perfect secret." "then share it with others," responded julius, promptly; "and i daresay it is not so perfect, but that it could be made more perfect still." "i'll have nothing to do with it, julius; you must keep and use it yourself." "then," cried julius, throwing himself on his bed of cordage, "then there will be, indeed, an end of me!" there was no sound for a time, but the soft rush of the sea at the bows of the yacht. they had left the thames water some distance behind, and were then in that part of the estuary where it is just possible in mid-channel to descry either coast. the glorious rose of dawn was just beginning to flame in the eastern sky. lefevre looked about him, and strove to shake off the sensation, which would cling to him, that he was involved in a strange dream. there lay julius or hernando courtney before him; or at least the figure of a man with his face hid in his hands. what more could be said or done? in the meantime light was swiftly rushing up the sky and waking all things to life. a flock of seagulls came from the depth of the night and wheeled about the yacht, their shrill screams strangely softened in the morning air. at the sound of them julius roused himself, and raised himself on his elbow to watch their beautiful evolutions. as he watched, one and another swooped gracefully to the water, and hanging there an instant, rose with a fish and flew away. julius flung himself again on his face. "o god!" he cried. "is it not horrible? even on such a beautiful day as this death wakes as early as life! devouring death is ushered in by the dawn, hand in hand with generous life! awful, devilish nature! that makes all creatures full of beauty and delight, and then condemns them to live upon each other! nature is the sphinx: she appears soft and gentle and more lovely than heart can bear, but if you look closer, you see she is a creature with claws and teeth that rend and devour! i thought, fool that i was! that i had found the secret to solve her riddle! but it was an empty hope, a vain imagination.... yet, i have lived! yes, i have lived!" he rose and stood erect, facing the dawn, with his back to lefevre. he stood thus for some time, with one foot on the low bulwark of the vessel, till the sun leaped above the horizon and flamed with blinding brilliance across the sea. "ah!" he murmured. "the superb, the glorious sun! unwearied lord of creation! generous giver of all light and life! and yet, who knows what worlds he may not have drawn into his flaming self, and consumed during the æons of his existence? it is ever and everywhere the same: death in company with life! and swift, strong death is better than slow, weak life!... almost the splendour and inspiration of his rising tempt me to stay! great nourisher and renewer of life's heat!" he put off his fur coat, and let it fall on the deck, and stood for a while as if wrapt in ecstasy. then, before lefevre could conceive his intention, his feet were together on the bulwark, and with a flash and a plunge he was gone! amazement held the doctor's energies congealed, though but for an instant or two. then he threw off hat and coat, and stood alert and resolute to dive to julius's rescue when he rose, while those who manned the yacht prepared to cast a buoy and line. not a ripple or flash of water passed unheeded; the flood of sunshine rose fuller and fuller over the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed to them as if the universe were only a swirling, greedy ocean;--but no sign appeared of his night's companion: his life was quenched in the depths of the restless waters, as a flaming meteor is quenched in night. at length lefevre ordered the yacht to stand away to the shore, his heart torn with grief and self-upbraiding. he had called courtney his friend, and yet until that last he had never won his inner confidence; and now he knew that his friend--he of the gentle heart, the peerless intelligence, and the wildly erring life--was dead in the hour of self-redemption. when he had landed, however, given to the proper authorities such information as was necessary, and set off by train on his return to town, the agitation of his grief began to assuage; and when next day, upon the publication in the papers of the news of courtney's death by drowning, a solicitor called in savile row with a will which he had drawn up two days before, and by which all julius courtney's property was left to dr lefevre, to dispose of as he thought best, "for scientific and humane ends," the doctor admitted to his reason that a death that could thus calmly be prepared was not lightly to be questioned. "he must have known best," he said to himself, as he bowed over his hands--"he must have known best when to put off the poisoned garment of life he had woven for himself." the world of h.g. wells by van wyck brooks new york mitchell kennerley mcmxv _to_ _max lippitt larkin_ contents introduction i. the first phase ii. towards socialism iii. socialism "true and false" iv. the philosophy of the new republican v. human nature vi. a personal chapter vii. the spirit of wells introduction a natural pause appears to have come in the career of mr. h.g. wells. after so many years of travelling up and down through time and space, familiarizing himself with all the various parts of the solar system and presenting himself imaginatively at all the various geological epochs, from the stone age to the end of the world, he has for good and all domesticated himself in his own planet and point of time. this gradual process of slowing down, so to speak, had been evident from the moment of his first appearance. the most obvious fact about his romances of science, considered as a series, is that each one more nearly approached the epoch in which we live, and the realities of this epoch. from the year a.d. 802, 701, witnessed in his first romance by the time traveller, we found ourselves at last in the presence of a decade only so remote as that of the war which has now befallen europe. a similar tendency in his novels has been equally marked. the possibilities of science and socialism have received a diminishing attention relatively beside the possibilities of human reaction to science and socialism. it is individual men and women, and the motives and personalities of individual men and women, which now concern him. still retaining the entire planet as the playground of his ideas, still upholding science and socialism as his essential heroes, he has been driven by experience to approach these things through human nature as it is. in a recent essay he has told us not to expect any more dramatic novelties: for the present at any rate our business must be to make science and socialism feel at home. whether or not this may stand as a general diagnosis of our epoch, it is a remarkable confession with regard to his own place in it. for it signifies nothing less than that he has reached the limit of his own circle of ideas and finished his own pioneering, and that his work for the future will be to relate the discoveries of his youth with human experience. he is no longer a "new voice"; his work belongs, for good or ill, to history and literature, and he presents himself from this time forward as a humanist. in this new posture wells does not stand alone. he is typical of an entire generation of englishmen that knows not oxford, a generation which has been busy with all manner of significant movements and discoveries, too busy indeed to relate them to the common reason of humankind. during these years the word "academic" has been outlawed; naturally so, for the academic mind is to the creative mind what the digestive system is to the human body: a period of energetic exercise must precede its operation. but in order that ideas may be incorporated in society they must submit themselves at the right moment to those digestive processes by which they are liquefied and transmitted through the veins to all the various members of the common organism. during the last twenty years modern thought has been dominated to an extraordinary degree by men who have been educated solely through the movements in which they have taken part: seldom has there been so universal and so hectic an empiricism. but this is the way the earth moves. like an inchworm it doubles itself up at intervals and then gradually stretches itself straight again. the whole nineteenth century, according to taine, was occupied in working out two or three ideas concocted in germany during the napoleonic era. history is a succession of gothic invasions and academic subversions. it marks the end of one of those eras which perpetually overlap one another in various groups of men and cycles of thought that our own visigoths have capitulated. as the pressure of their own immediate points of view relaxes and they cease to identify their own progress with the progress of men in general, they become perhaps less striking but certainly more useful. intensely preoccupied with contemporary ideas and inventions, brilliantly gifted and full of life, these leaders of thought were more innocent of literature and history than a fresh-man. both wells and bernard shaw have confessed that throughout their most active intellectual careers they believed instinctively that progress was mainly a matter of chronology. to discover the future wells considered it necessary merely to set his imagination at work on chicago and multiply it by a thousand; while the famous remark of shaw that he was "better than shakespeare" sprang from his assumption that, living three centuries later, he naturally stood (as a dwarf, in his own phrase) upon shakespeare's shoulders. this naïveté placed them at the mercy of literature, as they soon discovered. everyone knows the change that came over bernard shaw's cosmos when for the first time, a few years ago, he read two or three pre-darwinian philosophers: one could almost have heard a pin drop when he stopped talking about being better than shakespeare. a similar experience, exhibited in his books, has befallen wells, and there is no doubt that reading has contributed to the progressive modesty of his point of view. each monument of historic experience that he has absorbed has left its mark on him. rabelais, machiavelli, plato, incorporated at regular intervals in his own work, have certainly contributed to make him less agile and less dramatic. let us take advantage of these post-prandial moments to survey some of the remarkable ideas which have been added to the general stock during this period. after the fashion of cato, bernard shaw and h.g. wells have come late to the study of greek. bernard shaw read plato at fifty, and in his latest book wells has insisted that in the great state everyone will study greek. nothing could signify more plainly that these outriders of the modern mind have come to a halt and wish to connect themselves with tradition, with history, with literature, with religion, with the grand current of human experience. having been for so long experimenting with new and untried forces, sharply separated from what is received and understood, they should be related to the familiar landmarks and connected with the main stream of english thought and literature. grotesque and violent as it may at first appear, i believe that in the future wells will be thought of as having played toward his own epoch a part very similar to that played by matthew arnold. i say this with full recognition of their remoteness in personal quality, recognizing also the difference in their direct objects of attack, in the precise causes they uphold. one thinks of these two vivid personalities--wells--how shall one picture him?--and matthew arnold, that superb middle-class gentleman with his great face and deprecating hands--and the comparison is instantly ludicrous. in reality the entire trend of arnold's social criticism was anti-individualistic and in a straight line with socialism. seen retrospectively the main work of wells has not been to promote any intellectual or economic doctrine, but to alter the english frame of mind. the function of each of these men has been to bring home to the english mind a range of ideas not traditional in it. indeed this comparison holds (the shock once over) not merely with regard to their general function, but in their specific attitude toward most of the branches of thought and action they have concerned themselves with. wells on education, on criticism, on politics and the nostrums of liberalism, wells even on religion continues the propaganda of arnold. everywhere in these so superficially dissimilar writings is exhibited the same fine dissatisfaction, the same faith in ideas and standards, the same dislike of heated bungling, plunging, wilfulness, and confusion; even the same predominant contempt for most things that are, the same careful vagueness of ideal. it was arnold who passed his life in trying to make england believe in and act upon ideas instead of "muddling through," who never wearied of holding up the superiority of everything french and everything german to everything english, who adopted into his own language that phrase about "seeing things as in themselves they really are." read his chapter on _our liberal practitioners_ and you will find the precise attitude of wells toward the premature inadequate doing of things rather than the continued research, experiment, and discipline which lead to right fulfilments. who urged the ventilation of life, affairs, conduct in the light of world experience? who preached the gospel of reasonableness, mutual understanding, and more light? who spurred england to cultivate the virtue of intellectual curiosity? who believed with a paradoxical passion in coolness and detachment? in each of these things what arnold was to his generation wells remarkably has been to ours. differing in their view of the substance of religion, their conception of the church as a great common receptacle for the growing experience of the race is precisely the same, fragmentation, segregation, sectarianism being to both of them in this matter the greatest of evils. the love of curiosity, centrality, ventilation, detachment, common understanding, coolness and reasonableness and a realistic vision, the dislike of confusion, bungling, wilfulness, incompetence, hot-headedness, complacency, sectarianism--these are quite fundamental traits, and arnold and wells share them in a remarkable degree. it is quite true that arnold lived in a universe which only with some reluctance confessed to three dimensions, while that of wells trembles with the coming of a fourth. but in any case it is worth while to release a phenomenon like wells from the medium of purely contemporary influences, and for this purpose it is convenient to see a socialist in the light of a man who knew nothing of socialism, to see that socialism is itself a natural outgrowth of those "best things that have been thought and said in the world." it is important to realize that the train of thought and the circle of ideas of this man are connected with a well-recognized branch of intellectual tradition. and even socialism is benefitted by having friends at court. chapter i the first phase "i am, by a sort of predestination, a socialist," wells wrote once. and everything one can say of him serves merely to explain, justify, qualify, illuminate and refine that statement. first of all it implies a certain disposition and certain habits of mind, habits of mind which are all to be found in the first phase of his work, in those marvellous tales of time and space that won him his original sensational fame. it is this disposition behind them, this quality they have as of an inevitable attitude toward life and the world, which distinguishes them at once from those other superficially similar tales of jules verne. the marvels of jules verne are just marvels, delightful, irresponsible plunderings from a helpless universe. to the grown-up mind they have a little of that pathetic futility one associates with a millionaire's picture-gallery, where all sorts of things have been brought together, without any exercise of inevitable personal choice, because they are expensive. i don't know that the tales of wells are better tales, but they have that ulterior synthetic quality that belongs to all real expressions of personality. wells was never merely inventive; his invention was the first stage of an imaginative growth. now the quality that pervades all these early writings is what may be called a sense of the infinite plasticity of things. he conceived a machine that could travel through time, a man who found a way to become invisible, a drug that made men float like balloons, another drug that enabled men to live a thousand hours in one, a crystal egg through which one could watch the life in mars, a man who could stop the sun like joshua, a food that turned men into giants, a biologist who discovered a method of carving animals into men, an angel who visited a rural vicar, a mermaid who came to earth in search of a soul, a homicidal orchid, a gigantic bird hatched from a prehistoric egg, a man who passed outside space. in short, the universe appeared to him like that magic shop of which he also wrote, where the most astonishing things may happen, if you are the right sort of boy. if all this implies anything it implies that things in general are not fixed and static, but that they are, on the contrary, infinitely plastic, malleable, capable of responding to any purpose, any design you may set working among them. the universe, it seems to assume, may be and quite possibly is proceeding after some logical method of its own, but so far as man is concerned this method appears to be one of chance. obviously, man can do the most surprising things in it, can take as it were all sorts of liberties with it. the universe, in short, is like a vacant field which may or may not belong to some absent landlord who has designs of his own upon it; but until this absent landlord appears and claims his field, all the children in the neighborhood can build huts in it and play games upon it and, in a word, for all practical purposes, consider it their own. this idea of the relation between free will and determinism is the underlying assumption of wells, as he explains it in _first and last things_: take life at the level of common sensations and common experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral responsibility. but make only the least penetrating of scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable consequences, a rigid succession of cause and effect. and elsewhere he says: on the scientific plane one is a fatalist.... but does the whole universe of fact, the external world about me, the mysterious internal world from which my motives rise, form one rigid and fated system as determinists teach? i incline to that belief.... from me as a person this theory of predestination has no practical value.... i hesitate, i choose just as though the thing was unknowable. for me and my conduct there is that much wide practical margin of freedom. i am free and freely and responsibly making the future--so far as i am concerned. in a word, for all the purposes that affect man's need the universe is infinitely plastic and amenable to his will. like every clean-cut philosophical conception, this clears the ground for practical conduct and a certain sort of direct action. there was a time, no doubt, when he shared the old utopian folly of expecting a sudden and unanimous change of human will. when the universe appears as unconventional as it used to appear to wells, there can surely be no reason to think it impossible, after a comet has collided with the world, for the human race to become suddenly utopian. generally speaking, comets do not collide with the world, and in the same way men are slow to change. but certainly if wells ever thought of humanity as merely a multiplication of one pattern, certainly if he has long since abandoned the idea of our all turning over a new leaf one fine morning, he has never lost his faith in free will as regards the individual. he has always believed in the personal doctrine of summarily "making an end to things" as distinguished from the old-fashioned doctrine of "making the best of things"; and there is nothing more modern about him than his aversion to the good old english theory of "muddling through." mr. polly is a good example of his view of personal direct action, the getting rid, quickly and decisively, of a situation that has only sentiment to save it from complete demoralization. "when a man has once broken through the wall of every-day circumstances," he remarks at the moment of the polly _débâcle_, "he has made a discovery. if the world does not please you, _you can change it_. determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether." mr. polly sets fire to his shop, takes to the road and repairs his digestion. desertion of duty and the quick repudiation of entanglements make him healthy and sensible and give him a sense of purpose in things. and i know of nothing in all wells that is described with more relish than that beltane festival which occurs toward the end of _in the days of the comet_. the world's great age has begun anew, and the enlightened men of the new time revive the may day of old in order to burn the useless trappings of the past. they heap old carpets on the fire, ill-designed furniture, bad music and cheap pictures, stuffed birds, obsolete school-books, dog-eared penny fiction, sham shoes, and all the corrugated iron in the world; every tangible thing that is useless, false, disorderly, accidental, obsolete, and tawdry to celebrate the beginning of things that are clean, beautiful, and worthy. sceptical, hesitant, and personal as wells has become, that indicates a strong primitive mental trait. philosophy does not spring out of the brain; we hate the hateful things of our own experience, just as we think the things we desire. and though there are nine and sixty ways of being a socialist, they all unite in a certain sense of the plasticity and malleability of things human, a certain faith in the possibility of asserting order in the midst of disorder and intelligently cleaning house. inherent in this trait is another--detachment. you only become aware of confusion when you stand free of it, when you cease to be a part of it. and of all writers who have so immediately felt life i doubt if there has been one so detached as wells. the mental detachment of his early tales is a detachment half scientific, half artistic; scientific as of one who sees things experimentally in their material, molecular aspect, artistic as of one conscious of moulding will and placed amid plastic material. thus, for example, he sees human beings quite stripped of their distinctively human qualities; he sees men anatomically, as in that passage where the invisible man, killed with a spade, becomes visible again as a corpse: everyone saw, faint and transparent as though it were made of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp and prone. it grew clouded and opaque even as they stared.... and so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change continued. first came the little white nerves, a hazy gray stretch of a limb, then the glossy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first a faint fogginess, then growing rapidly dense and opaque. similar is a passage in _a story of the days to come_, where he describes an ordinary breakfast of our own day: "the rude masses of bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they could be made palatable, the still recognizable fragments of recently killed animals, hideously charred and hacked." that surely is quite as a man from another planet, or a chemist after a long day's work in the laboratory, would view our familiar human things. and one recalls another sentence from _kipps_ where this detachment links itself with a deeper social insight and hints at the part it had come to play in wells's later mind: "i see through the darkness," he says, toward the end of the book, "the souls of my kippses as they are, _as little pink strips of quivering, living stuff_, as things like the bodies of little ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children--children who feel pain, who are naughty and muddled and suffer, and do not understand why." and just as he sees men and human things chemically and anatomically, so he sees the world astronomically. he has that double quality (like his own mr. bessel) of being bodily very active in life and at the same time watching it from a great distance. in his latest book he has figured a god looking on from the clouds; and there is nothing in his novels more stimulating and more uncanny than a certain faculty of telescoping his view suddenly from the very little to the very large, expanding and contracting his vision of things at will. you find the germ of this faculty in his early tales. looking down as though from a balloon he sees the world as a planet, as a relatively small planet. in doing so he maintains at first a purely scientific set of values; he is not led, as he has since been led, and as leopardi was led by the same imaginative experience, to adopt poetical values and to feel acutely the littleness and the powerlessness of man. his values remain scientific, and the absurdity he feels is the absurdity an astronomer must feel, that in so small a space men can vaunt themselves and squabble with one another. race prejudice, for example, necessarily appears to him as foolish as it would appear to ordinary eyes among insects that happen to be swarming on a fallen apple. once you get it into your mind that the world is a ball in space, you find a peculiar silliness in misunderstandings on that ball. this reflection has led to many views of life; in wells it led to a sense of the need of human solidarity. and solidarity implies order. the sense of order is one of those instincts exhibited everywhere in the writings of wells that serve as preliminaries to his social philosophy. there is a passage in _kipps_ where he pictures the satisfactions of shopkeeping to an elect soul: "there is, of course, nothing on earth," he says, "and i doubt at times if there is a joy in heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes, or again, an array of neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. think of your cottons, your drawer of colored silks," etc. de foe knew a similar satisfaction and has pictured it in _robinson crusoe_. de foe was himself a shopkeeper, just as wells has been in one of his incarnations; and he knew that good shopkeeping is the microcosm of all good political economy. the satisfaction of a thoroughly competent man who is thrown on a desert island, and sets to work to establish upon it a political economy for one, is a satisfaction by itself. that certainly is a primitive relish, and it is one of the first gestures of wells's sociology. now the sense of solidarity, the sense of order, implies the subordination of details, the discipline of constituent units. only in his later works did wells begin to consider the problems of the individual life; in his novels he has considered them almost exclusively, but always in relation to the constructive purpose of society and as what may be called human reservations from it. the telescope has been adjusted to a close range, and the wider relationships are neither so emphasized nor so easily discerned. nevertheless it is still the world that matters to wells--the world, the race, the future; not the individual human being. and if, relatively, he has become more interested in the individual and less in the world, that is because he is convinced that the problems of the world can best be approached through the study of individuals. his philosophy has grown less abstract in harmony with his own experience; but the first sketch of his view of human nature and its function is to be found crudely outlined in the scientific romances. how does it figure there? the human beings who flit through these early tales are all inconspicuous little men, whose private existence is of no account, and who exist to discover, invent, perform all sorts of wonderful experiments which almost invariably result in their summary and quite unimportant destruction. they are merely, in the most complete sense, experiments in the collective purpose, and their creator has toward them just the attitude of an anatomist toward the animals upon which he is experimenting; not indifferent to their suffering as suffering, but ignoring it in the spirit of scientific detachment necessary to subordinate means to an end. "i wanted--it was the only thing i wanted--to find out the limit of plasticity in a living form," says dr. moreau in his confession; "and the study has made me as remorseless as nature." invariably these experiments in human possibility, placed in a world where charity is not so strong as fear, die quite horribly. dr. moreau is destroyed by the beasts he is attempting to vivisect into the semblance of men, the invisible man is battered to death with a spade, the visiting angel burns to death in attempting to carry out his celestial errand, the man who travels to the moon cannot get back alive. does not all this foreshadow the burden of the later novels, that the individual who plans and wills for the race is destroyed and broken by the jealousy, prejudice and inertia in men and the blind immemorial forces of nature surging through himself? these are the forces that are figured, in the early tales, by that horrible hostile universe of nature, and the little intrepid men moving about in the midst of it. and the mind of wells is always prepared for the consequences of what it engenders. the inevitable result of creating an imaginary world of malignant vegetables and worse than antediluvian monsters is that the imaginary men you also create shall suffer through them. you reverse the order of evolution and return men to conditions where life is cheap. an imagination which has accustomed itself to running loose among planets and falling stars, which has lived habitually in a universe where worlds battle with one another, is prepared to stomach a little needless bloodshed. the inflexible pursuit of an end implies the sacrifice of means, and if your experiment happens to be an invisible man you will produce the invisibility even though it kills the man. widen the range and this proposition logically transmutes itself into a second: if your experiment happens to be an orderly society you will produce order at the expense of everything that represents disorder. and from the point of view of a collective purpose, ends, motives and affections that are private and have no collective significance represent disorder. now the whole purpose of wells's later work has been to illuminate and refine this proposition. he has flatly distinguished between two sorts of human nature, the constructive, experimental sort which lives essentially for the race, and the acquiescent, ineffectual sort which lives essentially for itself or the established fact; and he gives to his experimental men and women an almost unlimited charter to make ducks and drakes of the ineffectual. think of the long list of dead and wounded in his novels--mr. pope, mr. stanley, mr. magnet, mr. manning, margaret, marion--and you realize how much of a certain cruelty, a certain ruthlessness is in the very nature of his philosophy of experimental direct action. another primitive relish exhibited in these early tales is the delight of constructing things. the time machine, for example, is the work of a mind that immoderately enjoys inventing, erecting, and putting things together; and there is not much difference between constructing an imaginary machine and constructing an imaginary society. if wells's early utopian speculations are ingenious impossibilities, are they any more or less so than his mechanical speculations? one doesn't begin life with an overwhelming recognition of the obstacles one may encounter--one doesn't fret too much about the possible, the feasible, or even the logical. it was enough for wells that he had built his time machine, though the logic by which the time traveller explains his process is a logic that gives me, at least, a sense of helpless, blinking discomfort--partly, i confess, because to this day i don't believe there is anything the matter with it. in any case it is the sheer delight of construction that fascinates him, and everything that is associated with construction fascinates him. he is in love with steel; he speaks with a kind of ecstasy somewhere of "light and clean and shimmering shapes of silvered steel"; steel and iron have for him the transcendental charm that harebells and primroses had for wordsworth. a world like that in _the sleeper awakes_--a world of gigantic machines, air fleets, and the "swimming shadows and enormous shapes" of an engineer's nightmare--is only by afterthought, one feels, the speculation of a sociologist. it expresses the primitive relish of a constructive instinct. it expresses also a sheer curiosity about the future. in a chapter of his book on america wells has traced the development of what he calls his prophetic habit of mind as a passage through four stages: the millennial stage of an evangelical childhood when an imminent battle of armageddon was a natural thing to be looked for; the stage of ultimate biological possibilities; the stage of prediction by the rule-of-three; and a final stage of cautious anticipation based upon the study of existing facts--a gradual passage from the region of religious or scientific possibilities to the region of human probabilities. "there is no being but becoming" was the first of his mental discoveries; and finding years later that heraclitus had said the same thing, he came to regard the pre-aristotelian metaphysics as the right point of departure for modern thought. consider this passage: i am curiously not interested in things and curiously interested in the consequences of things.... i have come to be, i am afraid, even a little insensitive to fine immediate things through this anticipatory habit.... this habit of mind confronts and perplexes my sense of things that simply _are_, with my brooding preoccupation with how they will shape presently, what they will lead to, what seed they will sow and how they will wear. at times, i can assure the reader, this quality approaches other-worldliness in its constant reference to an all-important hereafter. there are times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally transitory series of consequences, that the enhanced sense of instability becomes restlessness and distress; but on the other hand nothing that exists, nothing whatever, remains altogether vulgar or dull and dead or hopeless in its light.... but the interest is shifted. the pomp and splendor of established order, the braying triumphs, ceremonies, consummations,--one sees these glittering shows for what they are--through their threadbare grandeur shine the little significant things that will make the future. and the burden of his lecture _the discovery of the future_ is that an inductive knowledge of the future is not only very largely possible, but is considerably more important for us than the study of the past. even in the sciences, he says, the test of their validity is their power to produce confident forecasts. astronomy is based on the forecast of stellar movements, medical science exists largely for diagnosis. it is this thought which determines the nature of his own sociology. there is usually something inept in speaking of a man, and especially an artist, as interchangeable with any ism. socialism, in the common sense of the word, is a classification of men. individual socialists are as a rule something more than socialists; often they are socialists by necessity, or imagination, or sentiment, or expediency--their socialism is not inherent, not the frame of their whole being. in the degree that socialism is a classification, or a school of thought, or an economic theory, the individual socialist will, in practice, make mental reservations from it. now my whole aim in this chapter has been to suggest that if socialism had not existed wells would have invented it. it is not something which at a given moment or even after a long process of imaginative conversion or conviction came into his life. it is, in his own formulation of it, the projection of his whole nature, the expression of his will, the very content of his art. with one or two exceptions--works deliberately devoted to propaganda or exposition--even his purely sociological writings are subjective writings, personal and artistic in motive; socialism figures in them just as catholicism figures in the masses of mozart, or the brotherhood of man in the poems of whitman, not as a cause but as a satisfying conception of truth. and just as, if one were to study the psychology of mozart or whitman, one would find habits of mind that inevitably produced the individual catholicism of the one and the individual fraternalism of the other; so behind the socialism of wells are certain habits of mind, certain primitive likes, relishes, instincts, preferences: a faith in free will, a sense of order and the subordination of details to design, a personal detachment, a pleasure in construction, a curiosity about the future. these are innate qualities, which inevitably produced their own animating purpose. chapter ii towards socialism of all the battered, blurred, ambiguous coins of speech there is none so battered, blurred, and ambiguous as the word socialism. it mothers a dozen creeds at war with one another. and the common enemy looks on, fortified with the socratic irony of the "plain man," who believes he has at last a full excuse for not understanding these devious doings. therefore i take refuge in saying that h.g. wells is an artist, neither more nor less, that socialism is to him at bottom an artistic idea, and that if it had not existed in the world he would have invented it. this clears me at once of the accusing frowns of any possible marxian reader, and it also states a truth at the outset. for if the orthodox maintain that socialism is not an affair of choices, may i not retort that here actually is a mind that chooses to make it so? here is an extraordinary kind of utopian who has all the equipment of the orthodox and yet remains detached from orthodoxy. orthodoxy is always jealous of its tabernacles and will not see itself dramatically; it has no concern with artistic presentations. but i protest there ought to be no quarrel here. if a socialism fundamentally artistic is an offence to the orthodox, let them accept it, without resentment, as a little harmless fun--all art being that. having said so much i return to my own difficulty, for it is very hard to focus h.g. wells. he has passed through many stages and has not yet attained the olympian repose. artist as he is, he has been hotly entangled in practical affairs. there are signs in his early books that he once shared what richard jeffries called the "dynamite disposition,"--even now he knows, in imagination alone, the joy of black destruction. he has also been, and ceased to be, a fabian. but it is plain that he has passed for good and all beyond the emotional plane of propaganda. he has abandoned working-theories and the deceptions of the intellect which make the man of action. he has become at once more practical and more mystical than a party programme permits one to be. here is a world where things are being done--a world of which capital and labor are but one interpretation. how far can these things and the men who do them be swept into the service of the race? that is the practical issue in his mind, and the mystical issue lies in the intensity and quality of the way in which he feels it. to see him clearly one has to remember that he is not a synthetic thinker but a sceptical artist, whose writings are subjective even when they seem to be the opposite, whose personality is constantly growing, expanding, changing, correcting itself ("one can lie awake at night and hear him grow," as chesterton says), and who believes moreover that truth is not an absolute thing but a consensus of conflicting individual experiences, a "common reason" to be wrought out by constant free discussion and the comparison and interchange of personal discoveries and ideas. he is not a sociologist, but, so to say, an artist of society; one of those thinkers who are disturbed by the absence of right composition in human things, by incompetent draughtsmanship and the misuse of colors, who see the various races of men as pigments capable of harmonious blending and the planet itself as a potential work of art which has been daubed and distorted by ill-trained apprentices. in wells this planetary imagination forms a permanent and consistent mood, but it has the consistency of a mood and not the consistency of a system of ideas. and though he springs from socialism and leads to socialism, he can only be called a socialist in the fashion--to adopt a violently disparate comparison--that st. francis can be called a christian. that is to say, no vivid, fluctuating human being, no man of genius can ever be embodied in an institution. he thinks and feels it afresh; his luminous, contradictory, shifting, evanescent impulses may, on the whole, ally him with this or that aggregate social view, but they will not let him be subdued to it. as a living, expanding organism he will constantly urge the fixed idea to the limit of fluidity. so it is with wells. there are times when he seems as whimsical as the wind and as impossible to photograph as a chameleon. just here i should like to give what may be taken as his own view of capital and labor socialism in relation to the constructive socialism he himself has at heart. i am putting together certain brief passages from _the passionate friends_: i have come to believe now that labor problems are problems only by the way. they have played their part in a greater scheme.... with my innate passionate desire to find the whole world purposeful, i cannot but believe that.... strangest of saviours, there rises over the conflicts of men the glittering angular promise of the machine. there is no longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. we do not need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are no longer essential to a civilization. man has ridden on his brother man out of the need of servitude. he struggles through to a new phase, a phase of release, a phase when leisure and an unexampled freedom are possible to every human being.... human thought has begun to free itself from individual entanglements and dramatic necessities and accidental standards. it becomes a collective mind, a collective will towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or kingdoms or peoples, a mind and will to which we all contribute and which none of us may command nor compromise by our private errors. it ceases to be aristocratic; it detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us all. we are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find ourselves in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and jealousies and conflicts, helping and serving in the making of a new world-city, a new greater state above our legal states, in which all human life becomes a splendid enterprise, free and beautiful.... i have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of human society. ours are not economic but psychological difficulties.... these last two sentences really tell the whole story. to pass from economics to psychology is to pass from man to men, from society as a direct object of attack to the individuals who compose it. and this marks the evolution of wells the romancer and wells the expositor of socialist doctrine into wells the novelist. it is the problems of human interaction that occupy him now. but informing these problems, reaching behind and embracing them, is a general view of the world which has only become more intimate, more personal, and more concrete with time. when, in _new worlds for old_, wells set himself to explain socialism as he conceived it, he assumed as his first principle a certain good will in men, an operating will steadily working in life toward betterment. in other words, he supplemented the ordinary socialist idea of economic determinism, which may or may not inevitably bring about order on the industrial plane, with a constructive purpose, which, in his view, can alone bring about the salvation of the race. but this good will is not a fatality; it exists only by virtue of remaining a conscious effort. in his experiments in time and space wells had accustomed himself to seeing that the immense possibilities of what might be, so far as the universe is concerned, predetermined things, were, so far as man is concerned, matters of chance. to human society at least, if not to our planet, the most unpropitious things are possible in the future; and there is no reason to suppose that the destiny of the universe, which at every turn cuts athwart the destiny of every species contained in it, should, left to itself, work favorably to man. this notion is in itself quite outside socialism and does not necessarily lead into socialism. it was huxley who said that the world and the universe, society and nature, are demonstrably at cross purposes, and that man has to pit his microcosm against the macrocosm. huxley, in his famous lecture on _ethics and evolution,_ went on from this to a kind of informal and unavowed socialism, figuring society as a well-tended garden preserved by man's careful art from the ravages and invasions of that hostile world of chance, with its gigantic weeds and blind impulsions, which everywhere lies waiting round about it. our work, he implied, must be in every way to minimize for ourselves the elements of chance, to become aware of our species in a collective sense, battling with nature and moulding our own future. i do not suppose that wells consciously adopted this idea from huxley. in itself that would be of little consequence, except so far as it shows the continuity of thought and the development of socialism out of science. but wells was for several years a pupil of huxley, and it is reasonably plain that the mood in which he wrote his scientific romances was strongly impregnated by huxley's influence. the sinister, incalculable, capricious, destructive forces outside man are symbolized, as i have said, by those colliding comets, invading martians, and monstrous creatures among which the earlier wells moved and had his being; just as the sinister, incalculable, capricious forces within man which urge him to destruction form so great a part of his later novels. most of his heroes (typified in _the new machiavelli_) come to grief through the blind irrational impulsions within themselves. and he is equally haunted by what he has called the "possible collapse of civilization." i do not know how much this is due to an evangelical childhood, in which time, death, and judgment are always imminent; how much to an overbalancing study of science at the expense of the humanities; how much to an overdeveloped sense of the hazard that life is; and how much to plain facts. but there it is: it has always been a fixed conviction with wells that man personal and man social is dancing on a volcano. therefore he has come to socialism not by the ordinary course but by a route obscure and lonely. the sense of possible catastrophe and collapse, the folly of leaving things to chance, the infinite waste and peril of committing our affairs to nature rather than to art--these are some of the negative reasons that have made it impossible for him to fall in with the non-socialist ideal in human affairs, that "broadening down from precedent to precedent" which he calls "muddling through": a doctrine that is wholly compatible with a world of haphazard motives, accidental fortunes, accidental management, a democratic individualism that places power in irresponsible hands and suppresses talents that society cannot afford to lose, a governmental system that concerns itself with legal and financial arrangements, experts with no sense of a common purpose, patriotisms that thrive on international bad feelings, and that competitive principle which succeeds in the degree in which it ignores the general welfare--a chaos of private aims, private virtues, private motives, without any collective human design at all. in the light of these opposed ideas of society as a thing of chance and as a thing of design, let me run over two or three of the tales of wells. first of all there is the special _laissez faire_ of pure economic determinism. _the time machine_ pictures a possible result of the marxian process which has led to an irrevocable division of classes. the rich, who were, in the old time, in comparison with the poor, disciplined and united, have long since reached a point where work and fear are for them things of the past. they occupy the surface of the earth, and idleness and futility have made them light-headed, puny, helpless creatures, stirring about and amusing themselves in the sunlight. the poor, meanwhile, driven underground where they burrow and tend machinery and provide, have lost all human semblance and become white, horrible ghoul-like creatures that see in the dark; at night they swarm out of their holes and feed upon the creatures of the upper air. the one class has lost all power to defend itself and the other all pity to spare, and gradually, year after year, mankind comes to its end. then there is the ordinary _laissez faire_ of capitalism, a result of which is pictured in _the sleeper awakes_. the sleeper, one recalls, awakens four generations hence to find himself the master-capitalist, owner of half the world, and the world is one where capital and labor have irrevocably destroyed the possibility of a constructive human scheme. but the responsibility for that future is very ingeniously placed upon us of the present time; for graham's ownership of the world is the outcome of one of those irresponsible whims that in our day characterize the whole individualistic view of property. his cousin, having no family to inherit his possessions, has left the whole in trust for the sleeper, half in jest, expecting him never to waken; and in time the trustees of this vested fund have become the irresponsible bureaucrats of the world. "we were making the future," says the awakened sleeper, looking out upon this monstrous outcome of whim and _laissez faire_; "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making." consider also _the empire of the ants_, in which wells has figured a possible reconquest of man by nature, owing to the greater collective discipline of at least one non-human species. he imagines a species of poisonous ants with only a little greater faculty of organized co-operative intelligence than ordinary ants, which have terrorized and finally routed several villages of unintelligent and unorganized brazilian natives far up the amazon. the brazilian government sends against them an outworn inefficient gunboat, with an incompetent captain and a muddle-headed crew; and when they arrive the ants fall upon the only man sent ashore and sting him to death. the captain repeats over and over, "but what can we _do_?" and at last with tremendous decision he fires a gun at them and retires. the story ends with a report that the ants are swarming all over the interior of brazil and that nobody knows how to prevent them from occupying the whole of south america. and then there is _the history of mr. polly._ i ignore for the moment the individual aspect of his case, for mr. polly is not merely an individual--he is an emblem of the whole, he is society _in concreto_. we find him at the opening of the book sitting on a stile, suffering from indigestion and consequently depressed in spirits. it is two o'clock of a sunday afternoon, and he has just finished his mid-day meal. he has eaten cold potatoes, cold pork, rashdall's mixed pickles--three gherkins, two onions, a small cauliflower head and several capers; cold suet pudding, treacle and pale cheese, three slices of grey bread, and a jug of beer. he hates himself, he hates his wife, he hates existence. but mr. polly's interior, the things that have gone into it and the emotions that rise out of it, are only typical of an entire life that has, to quote macaulay's eulogy of the british constitution, thought nothing of symmetry and much of convenience. each of the novels of wells, in one aspect at least, presents the accidental nature of our world in some one typical case. _love and mr. lewisham_ shows how in the case of one of those young students who have, as things are, no chance at all, but who are the natural builders of a better world, the constructive possibility is crushed by the primary will to live. at eighteen mr. lewisham is an assistant master at one of those incompetent private-enterprise schools which for wells (as also for matthew arnold) epitomize our haphazard civilization. he has a "future"--the schema which he pins to his bedroom wall promises unimaginable achievements. he marries, and you feel that he should marry and that he has married the right person. but then with interests divided he has to find money and in doing so he fails in his examinations. at last it becomes a choice between his career and his children, between the present and the future, and the children and the future win. society loses just in the degree that lewisham himself loses, for he was fitted to be a builder; and society has first, in the face of all his efforts, imperfectly equipped him and then consistently refused to take advantage of his talents. just as lewisham is a potential builder of society who is defeated, so kipps is a specimen of the raw material, the muddled inferior material with which society has to deal and refuses to deal. kipps, like mr. polly, is from the beginning a victim of accident, spawned on the world, miseducated, apprenticed at fourteen to a drapery bazaar. he grows up ignorant, confused, irresponsible; and then suddenly, as accidentally as he was born, has £26,000 and responsibility thrust upon him. the fortune of kipps lifts him at once out of the obscure negligible world of the populace and makes him a figure to be reckoned with. therein lies the comedy of the book. he tries to make himself what in his own view a man of means ought to be; naturally he sees money not as a force but as a thing to be spent, and he finds that even from this point of view he has no freedom of will, and that his lack of training inevitably places him in the hands of equally irresponsible persons who want his money. he wishes to build a house, designed after his own vaguely apprehended needs and desires, and somehow under the wand of the architect a house with eleven bedrooms springs from the ground, a house plainly far beyond his own or ann's power of management, and the prospect of disrespectful servants, terrifying callers, and a horde of scheming lawyers, tradesfolk and satellites. and the life of kipps under prosperity is summed up in the following dialogue: "wonder what i shall do this afternoon," said kipps, with his hands deep in his pockets. he pondered and lit a cigarette. "go for a walk, i s'pose," said ann. "i _been_ for a walk this morning." "s'pose i must go for another," he added after an interval. may one suggest how the significance of such a story as this varies according to the point of view? in the ordinary literature of comedy, kipps would be merely a parvenu whose want of dignity and ignorance of the right use of money are laughable--or, if the novelist were a humanitarian, pitiful. to the socialist, on the other hand, every incident of his life, every gesture of his mind, is a unique indictment of things as they are. he stands for the whole waste of human stuff in a world which has not learned how to economize itself, whose every detail is accidental in a general chaotic absence of social design. in this aspect _tono-bungay_ is the most powerful work of wells. just as his romances of the future had exhibited the possible effects of accidental heedless social conduct in the past, so his novels exhibit the motives that produce this heedlessness to consequences. thus the world in which the sleeper awakes, a world irrevocably ruled by the bureaucratic trustees of an irresponsible private fortune, is just a conceivable consequence of such a career as uncle ponderevo's, had not catastrophe overwhelmed him and enabled wells to point a much more pregnant moral. _tono-bungay_ is a great epic of irresponsible capitalism from the socialist point of view. uncle ponderevo is a born commercial meteor, and when he first enters the book, a small druggist in a dead country town, he exhibits the temperament of a napoleon of finance spoiling for conquest. he wants to wake up wimblehurst, invent something, do something, shove something. he indicated london as remotely over the top of the dispensing counter, and then as a scene of great activity by a whirl of the hand and a wink and a meaning smile at me. "what sort of things do they do?" i asked. "rush about," he said. "do things! somethin' glorious. there's cover gambling. ever heard of that, george?" he drew the air in through his teeth. "you put down a hundred, say, and buy ten thousand pounds' worth. see? that's a cover of one per cent. things go up one, you sell, realize cent per cent; down, whiff, it's gone! try again! cent per cent, george, every day. men are made or done for in an hour. and the shoutin'!... well, that's one way, george. then another way--there's corners!" "they're rather big things, aren't they?" i ventured. "oh, if you go in for wheat and steel--yes. but suppose you tackled a little thing, george. just some leetle thing that only needed a few thousands. drugs, for example. shoved all you had into it--staked your liver on it, so to speak. take a drug--take ipecac, for example. take a lot of ipecac. take all there is! see? there you are! there aren't unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha--can't be!--and it's a thing people _must_ have. then quinine again! you watch your chance, wait for a tropical war breaking out, let's say, and collar all the quinine. where _are_ they? must have quinine, you know--eh? ... "lord! there's no end of things--no end of _little_ things. dill-water--all the suff'ring babes yowling for it. eucalyptus again--cascara--witch hazel--menthol--all the toothache things. then there's antiseptics, and curare, cocaine.... "rather a nuisance to the doctors," i reflected. "they got to look out for themselves. by jove, yes. they'll do you if they can, and you do them. like brigands. that makes it romantic. that's the romance of commerce, george." he passed into a rapt dream, from which escaped such fragments as: "fifty per cent, advance, sir; security--to-morrow." the idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever be permitted to do in reality. it was the sort of nonsense one would talk to make ewart laugh and set him going on to still odder possibilities. i thought it was part of my uncle's way of talking. but i've learnt differently since. the whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will probably be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. you buy up land upon which people will presently want to build houses, you secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, and so on, and so on. of course the naïve intelligence of a boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human inadequacy. he begins life with the disposition to believe in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realize how casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is a power as irresistible as a head master's to check mischievous, foolish enterprises of every sort. i will confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, i had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do that would pretty certainly go to gaol. now i know that any one who could really bring it off would be much more likely to go to the house of lords! and such or nearly such is this career. tono-bungay, that swindling patent medicine without value or meaning, is the insubstantial hippogriff upon which uncle ponderevo soars upward on the wind of advertisement. in a society whose basis is unlimited individual rights, he is able to disorganize the industrial world and to work out his absurd, inept, extravagant destiny, scattering ruin right and left. but the spirit of good will, the disinterested constructive spirit of socialism which is the underlying assumption of wells, appears here as in all his later books. out of the wreckage the constructive purpose emerges, in the person of george ponderevo. it shapes itself as a steel destroyer, the work of an engineer's brain, a destroyer which england has refused and which plunges down the thames to the open sea, the symbol of man's intentions, without illusions and without the hope of personal gain, the disinterested spirit of science and truth. chapter iii socialism true and false in the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth of statesmanship. it has been the chronic mistake of statecraft and all organizing spirits to attempt immediately to scheme and arrange and achieve. priests, schools of thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out the whole--or, at any rate, completely think out definite parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution, training, pruning, secretive education, and all the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. the man who wrote that is not what is called a whole-hearted man as regards any form of group-action. he does not "fit in." he is at bottom a sceptic, and a sceptic is one who reduces every question to the question of human nature. so that the socialism of wells is necessarily at variance with all the recognized group-forms of socialism, administrative, philanthropic, and revolutionary. i must briefly indicate in each case what is the quality of this divergence. as regards the first, he has a complete distrust of what hilaire belloc has called the "servile state;" and what he distrusts he virulently dislikes. in his view, administrative socialism, as it appears in sidney webb and the fabian society, and in the tendency of contemporary liberalism, has led to an excessive conservatism toward the existing machinery of government, it has depended altogether too much on organization without popular support, and as a result has tended to throw the whole force of the socialist movement into a bureaucratic regime of small-minded experts. the activity of the fabians especially, he says, has set great numbers of socialists working in the old governmental machinery without realizing that the machinery should have been reconstructed first. the whole tendency of this method, as it is exhibited in the works of the english liberal party of to-day, is toward a socialization of the poor without a corresponding socialization of the rich; toward a more and more marked chasm between the regimented workers and the free employers. and it throws the control of affairs into the hands of a mass of highly specialized officials, technical minds, mutually-unenlightened experts. in an age when the progress of society depends upon breaking down professional barriers, when the genuine scientist, for instance, is a man who passes beyond his own science and sees the inter-relationships of all knowledge, the mind which has been trained in one habitual routine is the most dangerous type of mind to place in authority. on the one hand, society depends upon the coöperation of all sorts of specialists, their free discussion, and comparison of methods, results, and aims; on the other experts in office are apt to grow narrow, impatient, and contemptuous, seeing nothing beyond their immediate work,--and this particularly when they have been trained for administration without any wide experience of the world. therefore upon experts as such, in distinction from constructive and coöperating specialists, wells, with all the force of his belief in the ventilating of knowledge and the humanizing of affairs, wages an unceasing war. _the first men in the moon_ satirizes, after the fashion of swift, a world where the expert view of life, not only in administration but in all work, prevails. each inhabitant of the moon has a single rigidly defined function, to which everything else in his nature is accommodated. thus certain types of machine-menders are compressed in jars, while others are dwarfed to fit them for fine work, "a really more humane proceeding", as mr. cavor observes, "than our method of leaving children to grow into human beings and then making machines of them." and in _the great state_ he returns to his attack on government by experts: "whatever else may be worked out in the subtler answers our later time prepares, nothing can be clearer than that the necessary machinery of government must be elaborately organized to prevent the development of a managing caste in permanent conspiracy, tacit or expressed, against the normal man." and he adds: "the great state will, i feel convinced, regard changes in occupation as a proper circumstance in the life of every citizen; it will value a certain amateurishness in its service, and prefer it to the trite omniscience of the stale official." one of the many and increasing indications, one might suggest, of the remarkable tendency in wells to find good in the old humanistic tory, as distinguished from the modern bureaucratic liberal, view of life. but lest i be tempted to carry this latter suggestion too far just at this point, i pass on to his equally virulent dislike of philanthropic socialism and the busy superior person in affairs; especially the type of political woman so dear to mrs. humphry ward's heart. if the expert bureaucratic point of view represents the action of socialist thought on the liberal progressive mind, so also the philanthropic superior point of view represents the action of socialist thought on the conservative mind. it is arrogant, aggressive, and condescending. it implies the raising of one's inferiors, and what weak mortal should assume that she (for this happens to be a mainly feminine affliction) is the standard according to which other mortals ought to be raised? two of these energetic ladies have been pictured with a bitter vividness by wells in altiora bailey and aunt plessington, the former summing up the fabian-expert view, the latter summing up the superior-philanthropic view. altiora has "p.b.p."--_pro bono publico_--engraved inside her wedding ring. all the misery of the world she marshals invincibly in statistics. she sees everything as existing in types and classes; she pushes her cause with a hard, scheming, and wholly self-centred eagerness, managing political dinners, indefatigably compiling blue-books, dreaming of a world nailed as tightly and firmly under the rule of experts as a carpet is nailed with brass tacks. on the other hand aunt plessington is the incarnation of a "movement" somewhat vague in purpose but always aggressively beneficial to the helpless ones of the earth. "her voice was the true governing-class voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made everything she said clear and important, so that if she said it was a fine morning it was like leaded print in the _times_." her mission is principally to interfere with the habits and tastes of the working-class, making it impossible for them to buy tobacco and beer or "the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which do not sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach)." she is, in short, one of those odious managing people who know nothing of and care nothing for human nature, who concern themselves wholly with the effects without penetrating to the causes of misery, who see mankind as irrevocably divided into a governing and a governed class, and whose idea of government is to make the governed as uncomfortably efficient as possible and as lacking in free will. she is exactly one of those arrogant sterile souls, in love with methods rather than men, who have made the servile state an imminent and horrid possibility and have turned so many misinformed human beings (including tolstoy) against socialism altogether. if wells dislikes administrative and philanthropic socialism because they are not sufficiently human, he has an equal aversion to what is called orthodox, that is to say, revolutionary socialism; and in this he includes all socialism that is fundamentally economic. "i have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of human society," says stratton in _the passionate friends_, in words we are justified in taking as the opinion of wells himself. "ours are not economic but psychological difficulties." that statement is full of meaning. it expresses, not a fact but a personal conviction--the personal conviction with which the psychological constructive socialism of wells begins. but before i pass on to this i must make one comment that persists in my mind. nothing is more remarkable than the unanimity with which during the last few years the advanced world has put all its eggs in the basket of pragmatism, the basket that has been so alluringly garnished by bergson's _creative evolution_, in this movement of thought wells has inevitably become one of the leaders, and his practical desertion of the socialist cause is one of the main symptoms of it. the creative energies of men, where society as a whole is concerned, are, in this philosophy, conceived as bursting through the husks and institutions of the world, not consciously destroying them but shedding them incidentally and passing on. now as regards sociology there is an obvious fatalism in that; for the burden of proof lies once more on a personal basis, on a personal basis qualified by the capacity of the person. it is true that this creative and constructive tendency, like the total tendency of modern life, is in the direction of socialism, it is true that a thousand elements in modern life which could never be engaged in the class-war are led by it into line with socialism. yet there capitalism is! only the black-browed marxian steadily contemplates the fact that year by year the rich compound their riches and the poor their poverty, while those that have no chance of creative outlets plant dynamite. i do not mean that wells is "wrong" in abandoning the economic for the psychological approach,--that is plainly the inevitable course for him. i wish simply to mark a distinction. the gospel of wells is an entirely personal one; it frankly concerns itself with the inner realities of the human mind, and in that lies its great importance. but let us discriminate. like every purely personal doctrine it contains, in relation to the facts and causes of society, a certain quietism. it withdraws the mind from corporate action and lays emphasis on corporate thought. but it recognizes no corporate enemy. to be an opponent of capitalism as such, is, in this philosophy, as quaint and crude and crusty as to be an anti-suffragist or a believer in politics (for it has become the fashion to believe with fervor in the franchise and scarcely to believe at all in what the franchise stands for). there is then a certain danger in the creative pragmatism of this particular time. if it actually does penetrate to the head men of the world, if it is able to generate what i suppose may be called a "moral equivalent" of duty--and there is almost a probability that it will--the hazard is won. if it does not--and many keen thinkers and men of action are obdurate--then we shall simply have the _fait accompli_ with compound interest. what if it should turn out in the end, after the best brains of socialism had all withdrawn from the economic programme of socialism, that capitalism grows all the greener in the sunlight of their tacit consent? there is congress, there is parliament, and there they propose to remain. suppose they are not converted from the top? is it altogether wise to stop persecuting them from the bottom? so much before i pass on. this comment does not qualify the teaching of wells. it merely supplements it from the economic side, and the supplement seems to me an important one. of a piece with his whole point of view is that he calls the right sociological method not a scientific but an artistic method: it consists of the making and comparing of utopias. this idea he sets forth in his paper _the so-called science of sociology_. "what is called the scientific method," he says, "the method of observation, of theory about these observations, experiments in verification of that theory and confirmation or modification, really 'comes off' in the sciences in which the individuality of the units can be pretty completely ignored." the method that is all-important in the primary physical sciences where the individuality of atoms and molecules may conveniently be ignored for the sake of practical truth, becomes in his view proportionately untrue as the sciences in their gradation approach the human world. "we cannot," he says in _first and last things_, "put humanity into a museum and dry it for examination; our one still living specimen is all history, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. there is no satisfactory means of dividing it and nothing in the real world with which to compare it. we have only the remotest idea of its 'life-cycle' and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny." and in the paper i have just mentioned he speaks of the social idea as a thing "struggling to exist and realize itself in a world of egotisms, animals, and brute matter.... now i submit it is not only a legitimate form of approach, but altogether the most promising and hopeful form of approach, to endeavor to disentangle and express one's personal version of that idea, and to measure realities from the standpoint of that realization. i think, in fact, that the creation of utopias--and their exhaustive criticism--is the proper and distinctive method of sociology." this notion of sociology as properly artistic in method and diagnostic in aim indicates his main divergence from the methods and aims of comte and spencer. and so one turns to his own illustration of this belief, _a modern utopia_. it is a beautiful utopia, beautifully seen and beautifully thought; and it has in it some of that flavor of airy unrestraint one finds in _news from nowhere_. morris, of course, carries us into a world where right discipline has long since produced right will, so wholly and instinctively socialized that men can afford to be as free as anarchists would have the unsocialized men of our own time, a world such as goethe had in mind when he said: "there is in man a force, a spring of goodness which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle it could for a moment suddenly be active in all men, the earth would at once be free from evil." well, that is the miracle which has in some way just taken place before the curtain goes up on most utopias; and i think that wells has never been more skilful than in keeping this miracle quietly in his bag of tricks and devising meanwhile a plausible transition between us and that better world. it all happens in a moment and we are there. by an amazing legerdemain of logic he leaps the gap and presents us with a planet which at every point tallies with our own. it is a planet which does not contain a state but is a state, the flexible result of a free social gesture. _mankind in the making_ should be taken as introductory to _a modern utopia_. it is the sketch of a method towards attaining such a world state. it is a kind of treatise on education based on the assumption that "our success or failure with the unending stream of babies is the measure of our civilization." it opens with a complete repudiation of "scientific" breeding, as a scheme which ignores the uniqueness of individual cases and the heterogeneous nature of human ideals. "we are," says wells, "not a bit clear what points to breed for, and what points to breed out;" while the interplay of strong and varied personalities we desire is contradictory to any uniform notions of beauty, capacity, and sanity, which thus cannot be bred for, so to speak, in the abstract. but in _a modern utopia_ he outlines certain conditions limiting parentage, holding it necessary that in order to be a parent a man must be above a certain minimum of capacity and income, failing which he is indebted to the state for the keep of his children. motherhood is endowed and becomes in this way a normal and remunerative career, which renders the mother capable of giving her time to the care and education of her children, as millions are not in a wage-earning civilization, and makes both her and her children independent of the ups and downs of her husband. his very detailed suggestions about the education of young children (illustrated also in _the food of the gods_) are at once a reminiscence of rabelais and an anticipation of madame montessori. he insists upon uniform pronunciation (a very important matter in england, where diversity of language is one of the bulwarks of a rigid class-system), the universality and constant revision of text-books, the systematic reorganization of public library and bookselling methods, with a view to making the race think as a whole. he urges the necessity of rescuing literature from the accidents of the book-market by endowing critical reviews, chairs for the discussion of contemporary thought, and qualified thinkers and writers regardless of their special bias or principles. to strike a mean between the british abuse of government by hereditary privilege and the american abuse of government by electoral machines he ingeniously proposes the election of officials by the jury method, twenty or thirty men being set aside by lot to determine the proper holders of office. and he is convinced of the importance in a democracy of abundant honors, privileges, even titles, and abundant opportunities for fruitful leisure. i have already spoken of his belief that the right sociological method is the creation and comparison of individual utopias. thus his own free-hand sketch of a better world is, in fact, a criticism of all previous works of the kind. as distinguished from them the modern utopia, he says, has to present not a finally perfect stage but a hopefully ascending one; it has to present men not as uniform types but as conflicting individualities with a common bond; and moreover it has to occupy, not some remote island or province "over the range" but a whole planet. the utopia of wells is a world which differs from the present world in one fundamental respect only--it has one initial advantage: that every individual in it has been _started right_, in the degree in which the collective knowledge of the world has rendered that possible. but there is no need for me to say anything more about these books. they are the free and suggestive motions of a mind inexhaustibly fertile and given to many devices. anyone who has read wells at all is aware of his ingenuity, his equal capacity for large schemes and minute details, his truly japanese belief in radical changes, once they are seen to be necessary and possible. and indeed the details of social arrangement follow naturally and profusely enough, once you get the frame of mind that wishes them. wells in his utopia presupposes the frame of mind. in short, he puts education first; he believes that the essential problems of the present are not economic but psychological. and here where the constructive theory of wells begins, let me quote a passage from _the new machiavelli_ that gives the gist of it: the line of human improvements and the expansion of human life lies in the direction of education and finer initiatives. if humanity cannot develop an education far beyond anything that is now provided, if it cannot collectively invent devices and solve problems on a much richer, broader scale than it does at the present time, it cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or any more general happiness than it now enjoys. we must believe, therefore, that it can develop such a training and education, or we must abandon secular constructive hope. and here my initial difficulty as against crude democracy comes in. if humanity at large is capable of that high education and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must its better and more vigorous types be so capable. and if those who have power and scope and freedom to respond to imaginative appeals cannot be won to the idea of collective self-development, then the whole of humanity cannot be won to that. from that one passes to what has become my general conception in politics, the conception of the constructive imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful people, enterprising people, influential people, amidst whom power is diffused to-day, to produce that self-conscious, highly selective, open-minded, devoted, aristocratic culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in the development of human affairs. i see human progress, not as the spontaneous product of crowds of low minds swayed by elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions and motives, modified and redirected by literature and art. this permeation of the head men of the world, this creation of a natural collective-minded aristocracy appears now to be the permanent hope of wells. it is the stuff of all his novels, it is the centre of his ethical system; and his _utopia_ is made possible by the existence in it of just such a flexible leading caste--the so-called samurai. but before coming to the inner implications of this, to the individual and personal realities and difficulties of this, i must follow the development of the idea in wells himself. at various times, in various works, he has presented it from a dozen different angles: as something that is certain to come, as something he greatly desires to come, as something that will not come at all except through prodigious effort, as something that will come through a general catastrophe, as something that will come through isolated individual endeavor, and the like. that is to say he has presented his idea through all the various literary mediums of exposition, fable, prophecy, psychological analysis, and ethical appeal. it appears in a crude form in his first avowedly sociological work, _anticipations_. he there attempts to show that the chaos of society is of itself beginning to generate a constructive class, into whose hands it must ultimately fall. the advance of mechanism, he predicts, will produce four clearly defined classes: an immense shareholding class with all the potentialities of great property and a complete lack of function with regard to that property; a non-producing class of middle-men dependent on these, and composed of agents, managers, lawyers, clerks, brokers, speculators, typists, and organizers; the expropriated class of propertyless and functionless poor, whose present livelihood is dependent on the fact that machinery is not yet so cheap as their labor. and amid this generally disorganized mass a fourth element will define itself. this in rudiment is the element of mechanics and engineers, whose work makes it necessary for them to understand the machines they are making and to be continually on the lookout for new methods. these men, he holds, will inevitably develop a common character based on a self-wrought scientific education and view of life. about them as a nucleus all the other skilled and constructive minds--doctors, teachers, investigators, writers, and the like--will tend to group themselves; and as the other classes in their very nature will tend to social disintegration, these will inevitably grow more and more conscious of a purpose, a reason, a function in common, and will disentangle themselves from the aimless and functionless masses about them. democracy, as we know it, will meanwhile pass away. for democratic government unavoidably reduces itself to government by party machines and party machines depend for their existence on alarms, quarrelsome patriotisms, and international exasperations whose almost inevitable outcome is war. whether war follows or not, the power of society is bound to fall into the hands of the scientifically trained, constructive middle class, because this class is the only indispensable element in it. without war this must occur just as soon as the spending and purchasing power of the shareholding class becomes dependent for its existence on the class which alone can save society from destruction. with war it will occur with even greater rapidity: for in the warfare of the future that nation is bound to win which has most effectively realized socialist ideals, in which the government can command, with least interference from private control, its roads, its food, its clothing, its material, its resources, which has most efficiently organized itself as a whole; and the class that modern warfare will bring to the front is the class that knows how to handle machinery and how to direct it. but just as this class will be the most efficient in war, so will it be the most careful to prevent war: it will in fact confirm the ultimate tendency toward a world state at peace with itself, through the agency, not of any of the governments that we know to-day but of an informal coöperative organization which is altogether outside the governmental systems of society, and which may in time assimilate the greater part of the population of the world. such is the argument of this book, and except for the inevitability of it--the belief that all this _must_ come to pass--wells has not since abandoned it in any essential way. the new aristocracy that figures there, the advance-guard of a better civilization, is precisely the ethical ideal which is embodied in the chief characters of his novels. thus too the samurai of _a modern utopia_ are figured as having arisen at first informally as the constructive minds disentangling themselves from the social chaos. gradually becoming aware through research, discussion and coöperation of a common purpose, they have at last assumed a militant form and supplanted the political organizations of the world. the general intention of all this finds utterance in the most poetic of all the fables of wells, _the food of the gods_. the food itself, invented by two undistinguished-looking scientists, becomes current in the world through the very haphazardness of a society which will not control discoveries detrimental to it and which consequently has no means of coping with a discovery capable of superseding it. "heracleophorbia" has thus the same initial advantage as tono-bungay or any other shabby patent medicine. it has an additional advantage; for while patent medicines have the sanction of private enterprise and are controlled by secret patents for the gain of their inventors, the food of the gods, like every discovery of honorable scientists, is given freely to the world. thus the food and the gigantic race of supermen who spring from it and bring with them a nobler order of things are themselves generated by the very chaos they promise to supplant. just in proportion as the inventors are frank and open men, having no secret gainful purpose, the food spreads far and wide. it is stolen, spilled, scattered; and wherever it falls every living thing grows gigantic. immense wasps drone like motor-cars over the meadows, chickens grow as large as emus, and here and there a baby fed upon it and unable thereafter to accept any less robust diet grows gradually to rabelaisian proportions. caddles, a type of all the growing giants, comes to his forty-foot maturity in a remote village where, as the mellow vicar observes, "things change, but humanity--_aere perennius_." there he is taught by the little folk to submit himself to all his governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters and to order himself lowly and reverently to all his betters. they put him to work in the chalk-pits, where he learns to manage a whole quarry single-handed and makes of himself a rudimentary engineer, and then he breaks loose and tramps to london. he finds himself in the crowded new kent road, and they tell him he is obstructing the traffic: "but where is it going?" he says; "where does it come from? what does it mean?" around him play the electric signs advertising yanker's yellow pills and tupper's tonic wine for vigor, conveying to his troubled mind the significance of a world of chaos and accident, perverted instinct, and slavery to base suggestion. is it necessary to say that society becomes alarmed at last? is it necessary to add that wells opens fire upon it with his whole battery of satire? plainly men and giants cannot live in the same world; the little men find their little ways, their sacred customs of order, home, and religion threatened by a strange new thing. the children of the food meanwhile have grown beyond the conventions and proportions of common life; they have experienced a kind of humanity to which all men can attain and from which there can be no retrogression to the lesser scheme. in the end, having found one another, they assemble in their embankment, the world against them. they sit amid their vast machinery, titanic shapes in the darkness broken by searchlights and the flames of their forges. an ambassador from the old order brings them the terms upon which they may go free. they must separate themselves from the world and give up the food. they refuse: "suppose we give up this thing that stirs within us," says the giant leaguer.... "what then? will this little world of theirs be as it was before? they may fight against greatness in us who are the children of men, but can they conquer?... for greatness is abroad, and not only in us, not only in the food, but in the purpose of all things! it is in the nature of all things, it is part of time and space. to grow and still to grow, from first to last, that is being, that is the law of life." chapter iv the philosophy of the new republican it is obvious that the socialism of wells, touching as it does at every point the fabric of society, remains at bottom a personal and mystical conception of life. his typical socialist, or constructive man, or samurai, or new republican, or what you will, is as distinctly a poetic projection from life as nietzsche's superman, or carlyle's hero, or the superior man of confucius. like them, it implies a rule of conduct and a special religious attitude. nietzsche's superman is a convenient figure by which for the moment to throw into relief the point i have in mind. plainly a conception of this kind should never be intellectualized and defined. it is a living whole, as a human being is a living whole, and the only way to grasp it is to place oneself at the precise angle of the poet who conceived it. but the fixed intellect of man is not often capable of rising to the height of such an argument, nor do the run of critics and interpreters rise to such a height themselves. in the case of nietzsche, particularly, they have confounded the confusion, urging precise definitions and at the same time disagreeing among themselves as to which definitions may be held valid. but indeed the superman does not "mean" this or that: it can merely be approached from different points of view with different degrees of sympathy. and so it is with the new republican of wells. i have mentioned the superman because wells himself has reached a conception of aristocracy similar in certain respects to that of nietzsche but in others wholly antagonistic. in _the food of the gods_ he certainly exhibits a sympathy with nietzsche on the poetical and ideal side; for his giants are not simply grand-children of rabelais, they practise of necessity a morality at variance with that of the little men among whom they grow. when caddies comes to london he does not, and cannot, expect the little men to feed him; not intending evil and seeing merely that he must live, he sweeps the contents of a baker's shop into his mouth with just the unconcerned innocence of laws and prohibitions that a child would feel before a blackberry bush. the very existence of a larger, freer race implies a larger and freer morality, and the giants and the little folk alike see that the same world cannot for long contain them both. but perhaps one can mark the distinction by saying that, unlike the superman, they are not masters but servants of the cosmic process. they themselves are not the goal toward which the whole creation tends. humanity is not a setting for their splendor, but something that wins through them its own significance. in fact it fully proves how profound is the socialistic instinct in wells, that though in english wise and almost in the manner of carlyle he has come to believe in the great ones of this world, he has never lost the invincible socialist conviction that a great man is only a figure of speech. in _the discovery of the future_ he says: "i must confess that i believe that if by some juggling with space and time julius cæsar, napoleon, edward iv, william the conqueror, lord rosebery, and robert burns had all been changed at birth, it would not have produced any serious dislocation of the course of destiny. i believe that these great men of ours are no more than images and symbols and instruments taken, as it were, haphazard by the incessant and consistent forces behind them." the individual who stands on his achievement, the "lord of creation," is to him at best a little misinformed, at the worst blustering, dishonest, presuming, absurd. by an original instinct the wells hero is an inconspicuous little person, fastidiously untheatrical, who cuts no figure personally and who, to adopt a phrase from one of his later books, "escapes from individuality in science and service." he abhors "personages." for the personage is one who, in some degree, stands on his achievement, and to wells man, both in his love and his work, is experimental: he is an experiment toward an impersonal synthesis, the well-being of the species. it is true that this idea of man as an experiment does not conflict with a very full development of personality. it consists in that; but personality to wells is attained purely through love and work, and thus it comes to an end the moment it becomes static, the moment one accepts the laurel wreath, the moment one verges on self-consequence. the first published utterance of wells was, i think, a paper in _the fortnightly review_ for july, 1891, called _the rediscovery of the unique_. it was one of the earliest of those attacks on the logical approach to life, so characteristic of contemporary thought: it stamped him from the outset a pragmatist. the burden of his argument was that since the investigations of darwin it is no longer possible to ignore the uniqueness of every individual thing in the universe and that "we only arrive at the idea of similar beings by an unconscious or deliberate disregard of an infinity of small differences"--that, in brief, the method of classification which is the soul of logic is untrue to the facts of life. "human reason," he wrote, "in the light of what is being advanced, appears as a convenient organic process based on a fundamental happy misconception.... the _reason d'être_ of a man's mind is to avoid danger and get food--so the naturalists tell us. his reasoning powers are about as much a truth-seeking tool as the snout of a pig, and he may as well try to get to the bottom of things by them as a mole might by burrowing." i quote thus his rudely graphic early statement of the case, because he has not since substantially modified it and because it shows that he already related it to human realities: and indeed in the same paper he pointed out the relation that such an idea must bear to ordinary conduct: beings are unique, circumstances are unique, and therefore we cannot think of regulating our conduct by wholesale dicta. a strict regard for truth compels us to add that principles are wholesale dicta: they are substitutes of more than doubtful value for an individual study of cases. this conception of human reason as an altogether inadequate organ for getting at the truth of things he later expanded in his oxford lecture, _scepticism of the instrument;_ and, still further expanded, it forms the first or metaphysical book of his _first and last things_. it is unnecessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of this primary point in a generation familiar with james and bergson. it is an assumption of the purely personal, experimental nature of truth which has had a sufficient sanction of experience greatly to modify contemporary practice in ethics and sociology. and it should be noted that wells evolved it in his own study of physical science (a study serious enough to result in text-books of biology, zoology, and physiography) and that he presents it, in accordance with his own postulates, not as truth for everybody, but as his own personal contribution to the sum of experience. the study of science led him to see the limitations of the scientific attitude, outside the primary physical sciences which for practical purposes can afford to ignore individualities, in matters that approach the world of human motives and affairs. i do not propose to discuss this question of logic. it is quite plain at least, as wells observes, in the spirit of professor james, that "all the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression." and therefore he is justified in proceeding as follows: i make my beliefs as i want them. i do not attempt to go to fact for them. i make them thus and not thus exactly as an artist makes a picture so and not so.... that does not mean that i make them wantonly and regardless of fact.... the artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field of visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative and great poverty of test, that is all, but of no wantonness; the conditions of tightness are none the less imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. i adopt certain beliefs because i feel the need of them, because i feel an often quite unanalyzable tightness in them, because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses me. and this is the way in which he presents the gist of his beliefs: i see myself in life as part of a great physical being that strains and i believe grows toward beauty, and of a great mental being that strains and i believe grows towards knowledge and power. in this persuasion that i am a gatherer of experience, a mere tentacle that arranged thought beside thought for this being of the species, this being that grows beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion i find the ruling idea of which i stand in need, the ruling idea that reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives. in it i find both concentration of myself and escape from myself, in a word, i find _salvation_. and again later: the race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are the incidents. this is not any sort of poetical statement: it is a statement of fact. in so far as we are individuals, so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of chance. in so far as we realize ourselves as experiments of the species for the species, just in so far do we escape from the accidental and the chaotic. we are episodes in an experience greater than ourselves.... now none of this, if you read me aright, makes for the suppression of one's individual difference, but it does make for its correlation. we have to get everything we can out of ourselves for this very reason that we do not stand alone; we signify as parts of a universal and immortal development. our separate selves are our charges, the talents of which much has to be made. it is because we are episodical in the great synthesis of life that we have to make the utmost of our individual lives and traits and possibilities. naturally then, just as he holds by the existing state as a rudimentary collective organ in public affairs, so also, in theory, he holds by the existing church. his church of the future bears to the existing church just the relation which the ultimate state of socialism bears to the existing state. "the theory of a religion," says wells, "may propose the attainment of nirvana or the propitiation of an irascible deity or a dozen other things as its end and aim. the practical fact is that it draws together great multitudes of diverse individualized people in a common solemnity and self-subordination, however vague, and is so far like the state, and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and fundamental than the state, a synthetic power. and in particular the idea of the catholic church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is in many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any existing state." all of which i take to be very much the position of erasmus face to face with luther and of matthew arnold face to face on the one hand with nonconformity and on the other with darwinism: that the church is a social fact greater in importance than any dogmatic system it contains. to wells any sort of voluntary self-isolation, any secession from anything really synthetic in society, is a form of "sin." and like many catholics he justifies a certain machiavelism in squaring one's personal doubts with the collective end. thus he holds that test oaths and declarations of formal belief are of the same nature as the oath of allegiance a republican takes to the king, petty barriers that cannot weigh against the good that springs from placing oneself _en rapport_ with the collective religious consciousness; at least in the case of national churches, which profess to represent the whole spiritual life of a nation and which cannot therefore be regarded as exclusive to any affirmative religious man. the individual, he says, must examine his special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility of coöperation; as far as possible he must repress his private tendency toward social fragmentation, hold fast to the idea of the church as essentially a larger fact than any specific religious beliefs, and work within it for the recognition of this fact. i have mentioned catholic reasoning; wells appears to be in general agreement with newman as to the subordination of private intellectual scruples to the greater unity of faith. but indeed i doubt if it is fair to take him too much at his word in specific matters of this kind. _first and last things_ has that slightly official quality which goes with all confessions of faith out loud. if his intention has led him to square himself with lines of thought and conduct where, to speak the truth, he is an alien, his intention remains, and that is plain and fine. the synthetic motive gains its very force through the close-knitting of keenly-developed, proud, and valiant individualities. in wells the synthetic motive and the individual motive qualify and buttress one another; and he is quite as much opposed to the over-predominance of the synthetic motive where the personal motive is deficient as he is to the self-indulgence of the purely personal life. thus the assembly in _a modern utopia_ is required to contain a certain number of men outside the samurai class, because, as they explain, "there is a certain sort of wisdom that comes of sin and laxness, which is necessary to the perfect ruling of life," and their canon contains a prayer "to save the world from unfermented men." so also in _first and last things_ wells remarks: "if i were a father confessor i should begin my catalogue of sins by asking, 'are you a man of regular life?' and i would charge my penitent to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity; to fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners." plainly his collective purpose is nothing unless it consists of will, will even to wilfulness, even to perversity. and this leads one back to that early assertion of his that since beings and circumstances are unique, we must get rid of the idea that conduct should be regulated by general principles. similarly, at the outset of _mankind in the making_ he says it is necessary "to reject and set aside all abstract, refined, and intellectualized ideas as starting propositions, such ideas as right, liberty, happiness, duty, or beauty, and to hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a tissue and succession of births." goodness and beauty, he says, cannot be considered apart from good and beautiful things and one's personal notions of the good and beautiful have to be determined by one's personal belief about the meaning of life. thus, to take an illustration from his novels, one of the most odious traits of such a father as ann veronica's or mr. pope in _marriage_ is that they wish to regulate their daughters, not by a study of what is and must be good in their eyes, but by a general sweeping view of what good daughters ought to be. now since his own idea of the purpose of life is the development of the collective consciousness of the race, his idea of the good is that which contributes to this synthesis, and the good life is that which, as he says, "most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and renders it available for the race, that contributes most effectively to the collective growth." and as a corollary to this, sin is essentially "the service of secret and personal ends." the conflict in one way or another between this good and this evil forms the substance of each of the main group of his novels. aside from the novels of shop-life, each of his principal men begins life with a passionate and disinterested ambition to gather and prepare experience and render it available for the race; each one falls from this ambition to the service of secret and personal ends. lewisham, capes, ponderevo, remington, trafford are, each in his own way, human approximations, with all the discount of actual life, of the ethical standard of wells himself as it is generalized in the new republicans and the samurai. they illustrate how fully the socialism of wells is summed up in a conception of character. but before turning to the actual men and women who form the substance of his novels, i must add something about those wraith-like beings, the samurai of _a modern utopia,_ which fully embody his ideal. the name samurai, to begin with, is not a random choice, for it is plain that the japanese temper is akin to that of wells. the career of the japanese as a nation during the last fifty years perfectly illustrates his frequent contention that in modern warfare success falls to the nation that has most completely realized the socialistic, as distinguished from the individualistic, notion of society. "behind her military capacity is the disciplined experience of a thousand years," says lafcadio hearn, who proceeds to show at what cost, in everything we are apt to regard as human, this disciplined power has been achieved--the cost of individual privacy in rights, property, and conduct. but aside from social ideals and achievements one instinctively feels that wells likes japanese human nature. in one of his early essays, long since out of print, he remarks: i like my art unadorned; thought and skill and the other strange quality that is added thereto to make things beautiful--and nothing more. a farthing's worth of paint and paper, and behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in japan. and if it should fall into the fire--well, it has gone like yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow there will be another. he contrasts this with the ordinary english view of art and property, mahogany furniture and "handsome" possessions: the pretence that they were the accessories to human life was too transparent. _we_ were the accessories; we minded them for a little while, and then we passed away. they wore us out and cast us aside. we were the changing scenery; they were the actors who played on through the piece. _there is no being but becoming_ is the special dictum of wells, a dictum which does not consort with mahogany sideboards, but is tangibly expressed in japanese architecture. and if wells naturally likes japanese art, its economy, delicacy, ephemerality, its catlike nicety, its paucity of color, its emphasis of design, its "starkness," it is plain also that many qualities of the japanese character must also appeal irresistibly to him: the light hold they have on all those things into which one settles down, from stolid leather arm-chairs to comfortable private fortunes; their lack of self-consequence, their alertness, their athletic freedom from everything that encumbers, their remoteness from port-wine and _embonpoint._ these things exist in wells's notion of right human nature. thus the samurai. they are delegates of the species, experimenting and searching for new directions; they instinctively view themselves as explorers for the race, as disinterested agents. and their own self-development on this disinterested basis is not only the purpose of their own lives, but also the method by which the life impulse discovers and records itself and pushes on to ever wider and richer manifestations. the socialism of wells is merely a building out from this conception. he is persuaded that this kind of experimental exercise is not simply a happy indulgence for the few fortunately placed, but that it is actually virtue and the only virtue. and this notion of personal virtue--personal in quality, social in effect--once conceded, it follows that the moulding of life must proceed with reference to this. chapter v human nature there is always a certain disadvantage in approaching human nature through a theory or in the light of an ideal. if i am doing that, it is my own fault and by no means the fault of wells. he has himself abandoned socialism, in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has too much of the _à priori_ about it; he has abandoned economics because it deals with man as a mass-mind; he has come to rest in human nature itself and he has made his theories subject to human nature. "all fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story," says thoreau. most readers of the novels of wells, i suppose, have no notion that a theory of life runs through them and unites them. and they are right. the force of a work of art does not reside in its "inner meanings." an admirable work of art will always no doubt possess "inner meanings" in plenty and the unhappy mind of man will always rout them out. but to separate the intellectual structure of anything from the thing itself is just like any other kind of vivisection: you expose the brain and you kill the dog. a work of art is a moving living whole that speaks to the moving living whole which is oneself. we are insensibly modified by reading as by other experience. we come to feel differently, see differently, act differently. without doubt wells has altered the air we breathe and has made a conscious fact in many minds the excellence that resides in certain types of men and modes of living and the odiousness that resides in others. socialism, like everything else which changes the world, comes as a thief in the night. still, it is plain that wells himself began with doctrine foremost; richness of experience has led him only after many years to get the horse before the cart. from the first he was aware of a point of view--it was the point of view, writ large, of his own self-made career, growing gradually more and more coherent. throughout his romances, down to the very end, his chief interest was theoretical rather than human. only this can account for the violent wrenching of life and character in them to suit the requirements of a predetermined idea. the food of the gods, for example, is so far the essential fact of the book that bears its name that the characters in this book are merely employed to give the food a recognizable human setting. throughout his romances, indeed, men exist for inventions, not inventions for men. yet the "human interest," as it is called, was there from the outset, side by side with this main theoretic interest in the scientific and socialistic possibilities of life. the series of novels began almost as early as the series of romances. two "streams of tendency" run side by side throughout the earlier writings of wells--streams of tendency which meet fully for the first time in _tono-bungay_, and have formed a single main current in the novels subsequent to that. on the one hand was the stream of constructive theory, not yet brought into contact with human nature, on the other the stream of "human interest," not yet brought into contact with constructive theory. mr. hoopdriver, of _the wheels of chance,_ and kipps, are typical of this earlier fiction, specimens of muddled humanity as such, one might say, quite unmitigated by the train of thought, the possibility of doing something _with_ muddled humanity, which was growing more and more urgent in the romances. in _tono-bungay_, as i have said, one sees the union of these two trains of interest, muddled humanity being represented in uncle ponderevo, constructive theory in george ponderevo. and in all the subsequent novels this fusion continues. the background in each case is the static world of muddle from which wells is always pushing off into the open sea of possibilities, the foreground being occupied by a series of men and women who represent this dynamic forward movement. and the philosophy of wells has finally come to port in human nature. "few modern socialists," he says somewhere, "present their faith as a complete panacea, and most are now setting to work in earnest upon those long-shirked preliminary problems of human interaction through which the vital problem of a collective head and brain can alone be approached." and elsewhere he says: "our real perplexities are altogether psychological. there are no valid arguments against a great-spirited socialism but this, that people will not. indolence, greed, meanness of spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all jealousy, jealousy from pride and vanity, jealousy for what we esteem our possessions, jealousy for those upon whom we have set the heavy fetters of our love, a jealousy of criticism and association, these are the real obstacles to those brave large reconstructions, those profitable abnegations and brotherly feats of generosity that will yet turn human life--of which our individual fives are but the momentary parts--into a glad, beautiful and triumphant coöperation all round this sunlit world." inevitably then he sees the world as divided roughly into two worlds, and human nature as of two general kinds. there is the static world, the normal, ordinary world which is on the whole satisfied with itself, together with the great mass of men who compose and sanction it; and there is the ever-advancing better world, pushing through this outworn husk in the minds and wills of creative humanity. in one of his essays he has figured this opposition as between what he calls the normal social life and the great state. and in one of those _dégagé_ touch-and-go sketches in which he so often sums up the history of humankind, he has presented the normal social life as a "common atmosphere of cows, hens, dung, toil, ploughing, economy, and domestic intimacy," an immemorial state of being which implies on the part of men and women a perpetual acquiescence--a satisfied or hopeless consent--to the end of time. but as against this normal conception of life he points out that modern circumstances have developed in men, through machinery, the division of labor, etc., a "surplus life" which does not fit into the normal scheme at all, and that humanity has returned "from a closely tethered to a migratory existence." and he observes: "the history of the immediate future will, i am convinced, be very largely the history of the conflict of the needs of this new population with the institutions, the boundaries, the laws, prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions established during the home-keeping, localized era of mankind's career." two conceptions of life, two general types of character, two ethical standards are here set in opposition, and this opposition is maintained throughout the novels of wells. thus on the title-page of _the new machiavelli_ appears the following quotation from professor james: "it suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and tough-minded people ... do both exist." in _a modern utopia_ this division appears typically in the two men from our world who play off against one another, the botanist and the narrator of the story. the "tender-mindedness" of the botanist is exhibited in the fact that he cares nothing for a better world if it is to deprive him of the muddled, inferior and sentimental attachments of his accustomed life, and prefers them to the austerer, braver prospect that is offered him. "tough-mindedness," on the other hand, is above all the state of living, not in one's attachments, habits, possessions, not in the rut of least resistance, but in the sense of one's constructive and coöperative relationship to the whole sum of things, in being "a conscious part of that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe." and indeed the constant theme of the novels of wells might be described as tough-mindedness with lapses. for the heroes of wells do lapse: they pay that tribute to "human nature" and the overwhelming anti-social forces in the world and in man himself. they fall, as a rule, from "virtue" to the service of secret and personal ends. _cherchez la femme_. mr. lewisham, insufficiently prepared and made to feel that society does not want him, has to give up his disinterested ambitions in science and scramble for money to support a wife whom instinct has urged him, however imprudently, to marry. george ponderevo gives up science and is forced into abetting his uncle's patent medicine enterprise for the same reason. for the same reason, too, capes takes to commercial play-writing to support ann veronica; and to stand behind the extravagance of marjorie, trafford, having discovered in his researches an immensely valuable method of making artificial india-rubber which he is going to make public for the use of society, is persuaded to compromise his honor as a scientist and monopolize his discovery for private gain. in _tono-bungay_ the enterprise is a swindling patent medicine, which many business men would refuse to have anything to do with; but in _marriage_ the proposition belongs to what is called "legitimate business," and it may be well to quote a passage to show the subtlety and, at the same time, from this point of view, the very substantial nature of temptation and sin: solomonson had consulted trafford about this matter at vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to complete and publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, first a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of behren's claim and then a lucid exposition of just what had to be done and what could be done to make an india-rubber absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. the business man could not believe his ears. "my dear chap, positively--you mustn't!" solomonson had screamed.... "don't you see all you are throwing away?" "i suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," said trafford.... "when men dropped that idea of concealing knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist, and all that is worth having in modern life, all that makes it better and safer and more hopeful than the ancient life began." "my dear fellow," said solomonson, "i know, i know. but to give away the synthesis of rubber! to just shove it out of the window into the street!"... everything that had made trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to such strategic reservations. the servant of science has as such no concern with personal consequences; his business is the steady relentless clarification of knowledge. the human affairs he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no concern of his; once these things weigh with him, become primary, he has lost his honor as a scientific man. "but you _must_ think of consequences," solomonson had cried during those intermittent talks at vevey. "here you are, shying this cheap synthetic rubber of yours into the world--for it's bound to be cheap! anyone can see that--like a bomb into a market-place. what's the good of saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ business is just to make bombs and drop them out of the window? you smash up things just the same. why! you'll ruin hundreds and thousands of people, people living on rubber shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable workers in rubber works...." "i believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said solomonson, leaning back in his chair at last.... "so soon, that is, as we deal in quantity. tenpence! we can lower the price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. in the end--there won't be any more plantations. have to grow tea." there we have eve and the apple brought up to date, sin being the choice of a private and individual good at the expense of the general good. the honor of a doctor or a scientist consists in not concealing and monopolizing discoveries. but why should the line be drawn at doctors and scientists? there is the crux of socialist ethics. by this type of compromise the actual new republicans fall short of their utopian selves, the samurai. but compromise is well within the philosophy of wells. "the individual case," he says in _first and last things_, "is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing collective intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable, and that the constructive spirit in men now seeks to supersede. we have to live in a provisional state while we dream of and work for a better one." and elsewhere: "all socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers far ahead of the main advance. the organized state that should own and administer their possessions for the general good has not arrived to take them over; and in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory agents according to their lights and make things ready for its coming." but if the new republican is justified in compromising himself for the means of subsistence, how much more in the matter of love! "all for love, and the world well lost" might be written over several of wells's novels. but, in reality, is the world lost at all under these conditions? on the contrary, it is gained, and the more unconsciously the better, in babies. love belongs to the future and the species with more finality than the greatest constructive work of the present, and the heroines of wells are inordinately fond of babies. when schopenhauer analyzed the metaphysics of love he showed that natural selection is a quite inevitable thing seeking its own. in wells love is equally irresistible and direct. whenever it appears in his books it makes itself unmistakably known, and, having done so, it cuts its way straight to its consummation, through every obstacle of sentiment, affection, custom, and conventionality. it is as ruthless as the last judgment, and like the last judgment it occurs only once. why then does it appear promiscuous? the answer to this question refers one back to the underlying contention of wells that there are two kinds of human beings and two corresponding ethics, and that in the end the new republican who has become aware of himself cannot consort with the normal social breed. but in actual life this standard becomes entangled with many complexities. just as, in a world of commercial competition, it is the lot of most of those who try to give themselves whole-heartedly to disinterested work that they place themselves at such a disadvantage as ultimately to have to make a choice between work and love, so the pressure of society and the quality of human nature itself create entanglements of every kind. it is the nature of life that one grows only gradually to the secure sense of a personal aim, and that meanwhile day by day one has given hostages to fortune. to wake up and find oneself suddenly the master of a purpose is without doubt, in the majority of cases, to find oneself mortgaged beyond hope to the existing fact. the writer who sets out to make his way temporarily and as a stepping-stone by journalism finds himself in middle age with ample means to write what he wishes to write only to find also that he has become for good and all--a journalist! and so it is with lovers. only in the degree to which free will remains a perpetual and present faith can "love and fine thinking" remain themselves; free of their attachments, free of their obligations, and mortgages, and discounts. that is the quality of a decent marriage, and the end of a marriage that is not decent. it is no business of mine to justify the sexual ethics of wells. but there is a difference between a fact and an intention, and what i have just said serves to explain the intention. consider, in the light of it, a few of his characters, both in and out of marriage. ann veronica from the first frankly owns that she is not in love with manning, but every kind of social hypnotism is brought into motion to work on her ignorance of life and to confuse her sense of free-will. george ponderevo simply outgrows marion; but you cannot expect him not to grow, and who is responsible for the limited, furtive, second-hand world in which marion has lived and which has irrevocably moulded her? margaret's world, too, is a second-hand world, though on a socially higher plane: she lives in a pale dream of philanthropy and italian art, shocked beyond any mutual understanding by everything that really belongs in the first-hand world of her husband. these characters meet and pass one another like moving scales; they never stand on quite the same plane. and then the inevitable always occurs. for, just as the children of the food cannot consort with the little folk they promise to supersede, so it appears to be a fixed part of the programme of wells that new republicans can only love other new republicans with success. he implies this indeed in _a modern utopia_: "a man under the rule who loves a woman who does not follow it, must either leave the samurai to marry her, or induce her to accept what is called the woman's rule, which, while it exempts her from the severer qualifications and disciplines, brings her regimen into a working harmony with his." "suppose she breaks the rule afterwards?" "he must leave either her or the order." "there is matter for a novel or so in that." "there has been matter for hundreds." wells has written six himself. _love and mr. lewisham, ann veronica, tono-bungay, the new machiavelli, marriage, the passionate friends_, are all variations on this theme. in one of these alone life's double motive succeeds in establishing itself, and it is for this reason that _marriage_, to my thinking the weakest of his novels from an artistic point of view, is the most important concrete presentation of the philosophy of wells. it is an inferior book, but it gives one the sense of a problem solved. by passing through a necessary yet feasible discipline, trafford and marjorie bridge over the gap between haphazard human nature and the better nature of socialism, and become samurai in fact. these entanglements of the actual world would be an overwhelming obstacle to a socialism less vigorous than that of wells. but obstacles give edge to things, and for a man who loves order no one could have pictured disorder with more relish than he. only a pure theorist could regret the artistic zest with which he portrays our muddled world. running amuck was a constant theme in his early writings; his comets ran amuck, and so did mr. bessel, and there is no more relished wanton scene than that of the invisible man running amuck through the surrey villages. intentionally or not, this relish in disorder reinforces the prime fact about his view of order. he abhors the kind of order which is often ignorantly confounded with the socialist aim, the order which classifies and standardizes. he desires a collective consciousness only through the exercise of a universally unimpeded free will, and he would rather have no collectiveness at all than one that implies the sacrifice of this free will. he wishes to work only on the most genuine human stuff. this was the basis of his break with the fabian society; it is the basis of his dislike of bureaucratic methods which deprive people of beer when they want beer. it defines his notion of the true method of socialism as first of all an education of the human will toward voluntary right discipline. his appeal, then, is a personal one. he has proved this indeed by his repudiation of all attempts to embody in practice his proposed order of voluntary nobility, the samurai. certain groups of young people actually organized themselves upon the rule that he had outlined, and it was this that led him to see how entirely his ideal had been personal and artistic rather than practical. anyone at all familiar with religious history and psychology will see how inevitably any such group would tend to emphasize the rule and the organization rather than the socially constructive spirit for which the whole was framed, and how the organization would itself separate from the collective life of the world and become a new sect among the many sects. it was the same instinct that led emerson, transcendental communist as he was, to look askance at brook farm. it has been the want of an equal tact in eminent religious minds that has made society a warfare of sect and opinion. when one tries to focus the nature of his appeal one recalls a passage in one of his books where he sums up the ordinary mind of the world and the function which all socialism bears to this mind: it is like a very distended human mind; it is without a clear aim; it does not know except in the very vaguest terms what it wants to do; it has impulses, it has fancies; it begins and forgets. in addition, it is afflicted with a division within itself that is strictly analogous to that strange mental disorder which is known to psychologists as multiple personality. it has no clear conception of the whole of itself, it goes about forgetting its proper name and address. part of it thinks of itself as one great thing, as, let us say, germany; another thinks of itself as catholicism, another as the white race, or judæa. at times one might deem the whole confusion not so much a mind as incurable dementia--a chaos of mental elements, haunted by invincible and mutually incoherent fixed ideas.... in its essence the socialistic movement amounts to this: it is an attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull itself together, to develop and establish a governing idea of itself. it is the development of the collective self-consciousness of humanity. certainly the road to this can only be through a common understanding. the willing and unwilling servitudes of men, the institutions of society that place love and work in opposition to one another, the shibboleths of party, the aggressive jingoisms of separate peoples, the immemorial conspiracy by which men have upheld the existing fact, these things do spring from the want of imagination, the want of energetic faith, the want of mutual understanding. to this inner and personal problem wells has applied himself. can life be ventilated, can the mass of men be awakened to a sense of those laws of social gravitation and the transmutation of energy by which life is proved a myriad-minded organism, can the ever-growing sum of human experience and discovery clear up the dark places within society and within man? among those who have set themselves to the secular solution of these questions--and i am aware of the limits of any secular solution--there are few as effective as wells. consider him in relation to a single concrete issue, the issue of militarism: expenditure upon preparation for war falls, roughly, into two classes: there is expenditure upon things that have a diminishing value, things that grow old-fashioned and wear out, such as fortifications, ships, guns, and ammunition, and expenditure upon things that have a permanent and even growing value, such as organized technical research, military and naval experiment, and the education and increase of a highly trained class of war experts. and in _the common sense of warfare_ he urges a lavish expenditure on "education and training, upon laboratories and experimental stations, upon chemical and physical research and all that makes knowledge and leading." separate the principle involved here from the issue it is involved in, get the intention clear of the fact, and you find that he is saying just the better sort of things that matthew arnold said. militarism granted, are you going to do military things or are you going to make military things a stepping-stone toward the clarification of thought, the training of men, the development of race-imagination? militarism has been to a large extent the impetus that has made the germans and the japanese the trained, synthetic peoples they are. and these very qualities are themselves in the end hostile to militarism. militarism considered in this sense is precisely what the general strike is in the idea of m. georges sorel: a myth, a thing that never comes to pass, but which trains the general will by presenting it with a concrete image toward which the will readily directs itself. kipling, in the eyes of the new machiavelli, at least made the nation aware of what comes. all along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, all along o' doing things rather more or less. there is in this no defence of militarism. granting the facts of society, there is a way that accepts and secures them as they are and another way of turning them into the service of the future, and a people that has trained itself with reference to a particular issue has virtually trained itself for all issues. but no one, i think, has measured the difficulties of real progress more keenly than wells has come to measure them. the further he has penetrated into human nature the more alive he has become to these difficulties. _the new machiavelli_ is a modern _rasselas_ that has no happy valley in the end, and remington passes from party to party, penetrating inward from ideas to the better stuff of mankind, hoping to embody his "white passion of statecraft," and in the end demonstrating to himself the futility of all groups and parties alike. and as with parties, so with men. consider that scene in _the passionate friends_ where stratton tries to explain in writing to his father what he has been experiencing and why he must go away. he writes page after page without expressing himself and at last, certain that he and his father cannot come into touch, sends off a perfunctory note and receives a perfunctory reply. "there are times," he adds, "when the inexpressiveness of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to me we are all asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still cows who stand munching slowly in a field.... why couldn't we and why didn't we talk together!" that is the burden of his latest novel. by this touchstone he has come to measure the possibility of that openness of mind, that mutual understanding, that ventilation of life and thought through which alone the great state can exist. chapter vi a personal chapter i doubt if there are many living men of note who, a generation after they are dead, will be so fully and easily "explained" as h.g. wells. he is a most personal and transparent writer, he is the effect of conditions and forces which have existed for scarcely more than two generations. but for these very reasons it is very difficult to see him in perspective, and to explain him would be to explain the age in which we live. let me at least give certain facts and reflections about his life written by wells himself, a few years ago, in the introduction to a russian translation of his writings: i was born[1] in that queer indefinite class that we call in england the middle class. i am not a bit aristocratic; i do not know any of my ancestors beyond my grandparents, and about them i do not know very much, because i am the youngest son of my father and mother and their parents were all dead before i was born. my mother was the daughter of an innkeeper at a place called midhurst, who supplied post-horses to the coaches before the railways came; my father was the son of the head gardener of lord de lisle at penshurst castle, in kent. they had various changes of fortune and position; for most of his life my father kept a little shop in a suburb of london, and eked out his resources by playing a game called cricket, which is not only a pastime, but a show which people will pay to see, and which, therefore, affords a living to professional players. his shop was unsuccessful, and my mother, who had been a lady's maid, became, when i was twelve years old, housekeeper in a large country house. i too was destined to be a shopkeeper. i left school at thirteen for that purpose. i was apprenticed first to a chemist, and, that proving unsatisfactory, to a draper. but after a year or so it became evident to me that the facilities that were and still are increasing in england offered me better chances in life than a shop and comparative illiteracy could do; and so i struggled for and got various grants and scholarships that enabled me to study and take a degree in science and some mediocre honors in the new and now great and growing university of london.... after i had graduated i taught biology for two or three years, and then became a journalist.... i began first to write literary articles, criticisms, and so forth, and presently short imaginative stories in which i made use of the teeming suggestions of modern science.... so much for the facts. the reflections are not less illuminating: the literary life is one of the modern forms of adventure. success with a book--even such a commercially modest success as mine has been--means in the english-speaking world not merely a moderate financial independence, but the utmost freedom of movement and intercourse. a poor man is lifted out of his narrow circumstances into familiar and unrestrained intercourse with a great variety of people. he sees the world; if his work excites interest, he meets philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the great, and he may make such use of them as he can. he finds himself no longer reading in books and papers, but hearing and touching at first hand the big questions that sway men, the initiatives that shape human affairs.... to be a literary artist is to want to render one's impressions of the things about one. life has interested me enormously and filled me with ideas and associations i want to present again. i have liked life and like it more and more. the days in the shop and the servants' hall, the straitened struggles of my early manhood, have stored me with vivid memories that illuminate and help me to appreciate all the wider vistas of my later social experiences. i have friends and intimates now at almost every social level, from that of a peer to that of a pauper, and i find my sympathies and curiosities stretching like a thin spider's web from top to bottom of the social tangle. i count that wide social range one of the most fortunate accidents of my life, and another is that i am of a diffident and ineffectual presence, unpunctual, fitful, and easily bored by other than literary effort; so that i am not tempted to cut a figure in the world and abandon that work of observing and writing which is my proper business in it. this candid and exact statement enables us to see just how far, in matters of fact, experience and belief, the autobiographical motive has entered his writings. it would be possible to show how inevitably such an ideal as that of the new republican samurai arose from such a life; how much that conscious and deliberate insistence on personal efficiency and orderly ways, that repudiation of mental confusion, sluggishness, and sentiment may figure as a kind of stepping-stone from the world of kipps and polly to the world of remington and trafford; how a self-wrought scientific education would form the basis of an ideal of aristocracy rising from it; and how the motto "there is no being but becoming" would express its own constant desertion of levels achieved, its own pressing upward to levels equally transient. just as the "democratic person" of whitman raises his own fervent, chaotic, and standardless experience into an ideal, so also the ideal of wells is nothing else than the projection of his own experimental opportunism. it is impossible in discussing wells to ignore this social ascent; for in england a man passes from one stratum to another only by virtue of a certain lack of substantiality, a power to disencumber himself, to shed customs and affections and all the densenesses and coagulations which mark each grade in that closely defined social hierarchy. the world of shopkeeping in england is a world girt about with immemorial subjections; it is, one might say, a moss-covered world; and to shake oneself loose from it is to become a rolling stone, a drifting and unsettled, a detached and acutely personal, individual. it is to pass from a certain confined social maturity, a confused mellowness, into a world wholly adventurous and critical, into a freedom which achieves itself at the expense of solidity and warmth. in wells, for instance, the sense of the soil is wholly supplanted by the sense of machinery. his evolution has been the reverse of the usual evolution from what bacon called the _lumen siccum_ to the _lumen humidum_, from the dry light to the light that is drenched in customs and affections. instead of growing mellower, he has grown more and more fluid and electric, in direct ratio to the growing width of his social horizon. to prove this one has only to consider his novels. there was a time when he had in common with dickens and de foe the quality they have in common with one another--the quality of homeliness. he drew the little world he knew well, the limited and lovable world of small folk. mr. hoopdriver, delia the chambermaid, kipps and ann pornick--a score of these helpless, grown-up little children he pictured with a radiant affection, tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. it is more in the nature of his later thought to see poverty as a wasteful rather than a cruel thing, even though he may not have approached the harsh realism of bernard shaw's observation: "i have never had any feeling about the english working classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible people." certainly he has not experienced any other world in quite this way. "i count that wide social range one of the most fortunate accidents in my life," he says. accidental one feels it to be, as of a man inhabiting the great world by virtue of sheer talent, whose nature has not in any sense settled there. his philosophy and his socialism are outgrowths of his own experience; they erect into reasons and theories the nature of a life which is not at home, and which easily unburdens itself of all that seems insensate because it is unfamiliar. to be a socialist at all is to have accustomed oneself, through necessity or imagination, to a certain detachment from a great many of the familiar, lovable, encumbering, delightful stupidities of the world. and wells has travelled up and down through time and space too much to have any great regard for the present. "i have come to be, i am afraid," he says, in _the future in america,_ "even a little insensitive to fine immediate things through this anticipatory habit.... there are times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally transitory series of consequences----." his hold upon the present is so far from inevitable that _the new machiavelli_ and _marriage_, realistic as they are, are represented as being written some years hence, our own time already appearing retrospectively in them. as little as faust has he been tempted to call out upon the passing moment. his main characters drift through this period of time, substantial themselves but with a background of substantialities, in a way that recalls paolo and francesca looming out of the phantom cloud-procession of the _inferno_. into this larger world, in short, he has carried with him only himself and his own story. we live in two worlds--the primary world of vivid personal realities and the secondary world of our human background. it is the secondary world that anchors us in time and space; the primary world we carry with us as part of ourselves. in wells there is no secondary world, no human background, no sense of abiding relations. it is his philosophy of life and the quality of his men and women to be experimental in a plastic scheme. his range is very small: the same figures reappear constantly. there is the wells hero,--lewisham, capes, ponderevo, remington, trafford, stratton; there is the wells heroine, ann veronica, isabel, marjorie, lady mary; there is the ineffectual woman with whom the wells hero becomes entangled, capes's first wife, marion, margaret; there is the ineffectual man with whom the wells heroine becomes entangled, magnet, manning. to strike the lowest common denominator in this tangle is inevitably to arrive once more, one feels, in the region of personal experience. although it cannot be said that his minor characters are lacking in reality, they are certainly intellectual portraits, and outside the limits of subjective experience. the principal men and women of wells move through a world seen, but hardly a world felt. this want of social background makes his characters as detached from the familiar earth as chessmen are detached from a chessboard. they never seem to be, like most men and women either in life or fiction, like the kipps and polly of his own earlier fiction, vegetable growths. heredity, fatality, the soil are not mainly operating forces with them. they are creatures of intelligence and free will, freely and intelligently making and moulding themselves and their circumstances. human nature in wells is very largely a sheer thing, a thing that begins with itself, answers for itself, lives at first hand. that is the personal quality of the man himself, and it follows that the quality is wholly convincing only where what i have called his primary world is concerned: the rest of the world he builds up by intelligent observation and the literary talent of creating human stuff out of whole cloth. in this he is well served by his antipathies. his belief in personal self-determinism is so strong that he instinctively sees the vegetative nature of the ordinary life as a kind of moral slough, a state of being detestably without initiative, faith, energy, will. and consequently the normal social life against which he is always tilting is a life seen by him with all the vividness of an intense personal and philosophical animosity. consider, for example, the portraits of mr. pope and mr. stanley, survivals in a sense of the old sir roger de coverley type, with all the sweetness gone out of it and only the odious qualities left, the domineering, vain, proprietary qualities. they exist mainly as symbols of everything that enlightened and right-minded daughters will not put up with; they come as near to being the foils of right destiny as wells will ever allow; they sum up everything that stands in the way of man's free will. they are mercilessly dealt with, and they are memorable figures. without this antipathy, and outside his own primary world, he pretty generally fails. one recalls, for example, old mrs. trafford in _marriage,_ evidently intended to be his ideal of the enlightened woman grown old. she is a pale, dimly perfect, automatically wise old lady carved out of wood. trafford himself, one feels, is a chip of the same block. trafford obviously is not wells himself, as ponderevo and remington are wells: he is the utopian counterpart of these persons, at least in the matter that concerns wells most, the matter of sex. one could show that, aside from the six or eight chief characters who in their various ways express the nature and experience of wells himself, he succeeds in his portraiture only where no demand is made on his sympathies. the same absence of social background which throws into relief his primary world of characters throws into relief also the primary facts of human nature. trafford and marjorie, the most conventionally placed of his characters, pull up stakes, leave their children, and go to labrador. his other men and women are even more independent of the social network. consequently they are independent of that chain of relationships--friendship, affection, minor obligations--which mitigate, subdue, soften the primary motives of most people. they are almost startlingly physical. their instincts are as sure as those of cavemen, and their conduct as direct. they are as clear about the essential matter of love as ever schopenhauer was, or adam and eve, and they stand out as sharply against the embarrassments and secrecies of the usual world as a volcanic rock stands out against a tropical landscape. in this without doubt they exhibit the fact that socialism does and will actually alter human nature, and that in the instinctive socialist human nature is already altered. for socialism inflexibly militates against those more sentimental aspects of love, love of country as such, the paternal and feudal principles, love of property, and the like, which belong properly to the intelligence, all those functions where love, in a majority of cases, goes wrong, blunders, stultifies growth, confuses the public design of the world. as a result it throws love into relief, emphasizes the nature of sex and the _raison d'être_ of reproduction; makes it, to use a favorite word of wells, stark. i pause at this word. it is one of those talismanic words one finds perpetually cropping up in the writings of men who have a marked point of view, words that express deep and abiding preferences and often set the key of an entire philosophy. "i like bare things," says george ponderevo, in _tono-bungay;_ "stripped things, plain, austere, and continent things, fine lines and cold colors." that is the gesture of an artistic mind which repudiates, with an impatient sharpness, all the entanglements of the ordinary world. it is oriental, it is japanese, it is anything you like; but if it is english also it marks an entirely new regime. without question it is english, and american as well. thousands of people share that preference, and were economic socialism to go by the board we should still have to reckon with the progress of socialistic human nature. it detaches itself each day a little more from property, locality, and the hope of reward; it ceases to be necessitarian, it becomes voluntary; it relegates drudgery to mechanical devices; it releases the individual to a sense of his own coöperative and contributory place in the scheme of a more orderly future. relatively speaking, the tendency of our kind is all away from luxury, sloth, complacency, confusion, ignorance, filth, heat, proprietorship, and all in the direction of light, austerity, agility, intelligence, coolness, athletic energy, understanding, cleanliness, order, "bare things, fine lines, and cold colors." that is evident, and it is equally evident that the personal character and career of wells are emblematic of this entire tendency. he has unravelled himself by science, talent, and vigor out of "lower middle class" victorianism. is it strange that he has adopted as a kind of sacred image that light, free, and charming product of our decade, the aeroplane, sprung as it is out of the wreckage, out of the secret beginnings, the confused muscularities, the effort and smoke of the most chaotic of all centuries, like a blade of exquisitely tempered and chased steel which justifies everything that was most laborious and unsightly in the forge? but considered as a sacred image the aeroplane has its limitations. so also, considered as an exponent of fife, has wells. philosophy and religion, as he presents them, are simply what he chooses to think and feel, what he has been led by his own experience to think and feel. his main experience has been the experience of disentangling himself, and therefore life, reflected from within himself, is to him a thing also which disentangles itself and grows ever more free, simple, and lucid. in the mind of wells this process, has taken on an altogether mystical, transcendental significance, a religious aspect. possible as that is to himself personally, how far can it be taken as an argument to the human soul? how does it qualify him as a teacher, a public voice, a thinker for the mass of men? how does the conception of life purely as a process relate itself to human experience? applied to history, it seems to fail. wells is devoid of historical imagination. in his portrait of margaret in _the new machiavelli_ he has properly, though somewhat harshly, repudiated what ordinarily passes for culture. but had he himself possessed the reality of what seems to him simply "living at second hand," he would never have been led to refer to leonardo, michael angelo, and dürer as "pathetically reaching out, as it were, with empty desirous hands toward the unborn possibilities of the engineer." that is a very interesting and a very extraordinary statement, and it is quite true that each of these men would have rejoiced in the engineering possibilities of our time. but how much of the soul of michael angelo, for example, was involved in engineering? how far can his hands be said to have been "empty" for the want of scope in engineering? the power and the function of michael angelo can rightly be seen, not in relation to any sort of social or mechanical process, but in relation to things that are permanent in human nature, in relation to just those matters included in the admonition of wells to "reject all such ideas as right, liberty, happiness, duty, and beauty and hold fast to the assertion of the fundamental nature of life as a tissue and succession of births." again, consider a somewhat similar reference to marcus aurelius, of which the gist is that the author of the _meditations_ was, actually in consequence of his own character, the father of one of the worst rulers the world has known. the implication here is that the study of self-perfection in the father was complementary to, if not responsible for, the social impotence and blindness of the son. instead of dedicating himself to the static ideal of personal character, the assumption seems to be, marcus aurelius ought to have lived exclusively in his function as ruler and father. he studied himself, not as a ruler but as a man, and the social process had its revenge on his line. to wells, in a word, the static elements of character and the study of perfection are not to be distinguished from vicious self-consequence. consider also a recent passage in which he has given a general impression of literature: it seems to me more and more as i live longer that most poetry and most literature and particularly the literature of the past is discordant with the vastness and variety, the reserves and resources and recuperations of life as we live it to-day. it is the expression of life under cruder and more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who loved and hated more naively, aged sooner, and died younger than we do. solitary persons and single events dominated them as they do not dominate us. to appreciate this meditation one has to remember the character and career which led to the writing of it. but so far as we others are concerned, how far can the assumption it rests upon be considered valid, the assumption of a process that sweeps men on and leads human nature, as it were, progressively to shed itself? dr. johnson, for example, was a man the conditions of whose life were crude and rigid in the extreme, a man singularly dominated by solitary persons and single events, but is his conversation discordant with the variety, the "reserves, resources, and recuperations of life as we live it to-day"? i can well understand this feeling. to pass directly from the thin, tentative, exhilarating, expansive air of our own time into the presence of that funny, stuffy, cocksure, pompous old man is to receive a preposterous shock. but having come to laugh, one stops with a very different sensation. the depths of personality and wisdom that exist there take on a disconcerting significance in relation to contemporary pragmatism. the mass of men veer about; far-separated epochs have their elective affinities, and if anything about the future is plain it is that this, that, and the other generation will find in dr. johnson a strangely premature contemporary. wells has himself admitted this principle. to plutarch, rabelais, machiavelli he has paid his tribute. hear what george ponderevo has to say about plutarch in his recollections of bladesover house: i found langhorne's _plutarch_ too, i remember, on those shelves. it seems queer to me now to think that i acquired pride and self-respect, the idea of a state and the germ of public spirit, in such a furtive fashion; queer, too, that it should rest with an old greek, dead these eighteen hundred years, to teach me that. considering what part the notion of a state plays in his range of ideas, that is a remarkable confession. but why stop with statecraft? the human mind could not, in all epochs, have established permanent ideals of statecraft without permanent ideals of a more strictly personal kind. the truth is that wells, for all that he has passed outside the economics of socialism, is really bounded by the circle of ideas which produced them. the typical marxian, the concentrated marxian, will tell you that life is summed up in the theory of value, and that the only true thing is economic determinism. measuring all thought by that criterion, he finds dante and shakespeare unintelligible and offensive gibberish, and will scent the trail of the capitalist in grimm's fairy tales. that is the crude form in which exclusive socialism presents itself. to say that "the fundamental nature of life is a tissue and succession of births" is merely a refinement of this. it is true, just as the economic determinism of marx on the whole is true. but the world is full of a number of things; or rather it is the business of a reasonable mind to see it in a number of ways at once. because there is a will to live and a will to power, because things grow and continue to grow, that does not explain love, or pain, or friendship, or music, or poetry, or indeed life. life is a tangle, a tangle which every socialist must feel to be disentangling itself; but it is also a riddle, and on that point socialism has nothing to say at all. it is in presenting life wholly as a tangle and not at all as a riddle that the philosophy and religion of wells appear so inadequate. could wells write a poem? one asks oneself, and the question is full of meaning. there is nothing to suggest that at any moment of his life he has felt this impulse, which has been the normal thing in english authors. "modern poetry, with an exception or so," he remarks somewhere, and for all his writings reveal of him he might have said poetry as a whole, "does not signify at all." it is the same with regard to music, art, external nature. he is not wanting in the plastic sense: his writings are filled with picturesque groupings, figures cut in outline against a sunset, masses of machinery in the glare of the forge, things that suggest the etcher's eye. but they are curiously impersonal. consider, for example, his description of worms cathedral: it rises over this green and flowery peace, a towering, lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in the evening glow under a press of canvas. you cannot doubt that he has felt a beauty in this, but the beauty he feels is essentially the beauty of a piece of engineering; he is as untouched by the strictly personal artistic and religious qualities of this building, not to mention its connection with human history, as if he had seen it through a telescope from another planet. it is not the changeless riddle and partial solution of life for which this building stands that stir in wells the sense of beauty and meaning: it is the mechanism, the process--his emotions gather about the physical result which appears to justify these. _à chacun son infini_. there will always be some to whom the significance of things, the meaning of any given present will seem to evaporate in this conception of mankind as "permanently in transition." reading those passages where wells has expressed the meaning life has for him, i feel much as i should feel with regard to music if i heard a mass of mozart played at the rate of sixty beats a second, or, with regard to painting, if a procession of rembrandts were moved rapidly across my field of vision. the music as a whole is a tissue and succession of sounds, the pictures as a whole are a tissue and succession of colors. but that is not music, that is not art. nor is a tissue and succession of births life. but indeed nothing is easier than to reduce wells to an absurdity. if he implies anything at all he implies a "transvaluation of all values." it remains to consider him from this point of view. [footnote 1: september 21, 1866.] chapter vii the spirit of wells in order to understand wells at all one must grasp the fact that he belongs to a type of mind which has long existed in european literature but which is comparatively new in the english-speaking world, the type of mind of the so-called "intellectual." he is an "intellectual" rather than an artist; that is to say, he naturally grasps and interprets life in the light of ideas rather than in the light of experience. to pass from a definition to an example, let me compare wells in this respect with the greatest and most typical figure of the opposite camp in contemporary english fiction; i mean joseph conrad. this comparison is all the more apt because just as much as wells conrad typifies the spirit of "unrest" (a word he has almost made his own, so often does he use it) which is the note of our age. both of these novelists have endeavored to express the spirit of unrest; both have suggested a way of making it contributory to the attainment of an ideal. but how different is their method, how different is their ideal! and roughly the difference is this: that to conrad the spirit of unrest is a personal mood, a thing, as people used to say, between man and his maker; whereas to wells the spirit of unrest is not a mood but a rationally explicable frame of mind, a sense of restricted function, an issue to be fought out not between man and nature but between man and society. in other words, where conrad's point of view is moral, wells's point of view is social; and whereas in conrad the spirit of unrest can only be appeased by holding fast to certain simple instinctive moral principles, integrity, honor, loyalty, etc., contributing in this way to the ideal of personal character, the spirit of unrest in wells is to be appeased by working through the established fact, by altering the environment in which man lives, contributing in this way to the ideal of a great society of which personal character is at once the essence and the product. in the end, of course, both these views of life come to the same thing, for you cannot have a great society which is not composed of greatly living individuals, or vice versa. but practically there is a world of difference between them, according as any given mind emphasizes the one or the other. this difference, i say, is the difference between life approached through experience and life approached through ideas. and when we penetrate behind these points of view we find that they are determined very largely by the characters and modes of living of the men who hold them. that explains the vital importance in literary criticism of knowing something about the man one is discussing, as distinguished from the work of his brain pure and simple. there is a reason why the intellectualist point of view occurs as a rule in men who have habitually lived the delocalized, detached, and comparatively depersonalized life of cities, while men of the soil, of the sea, of the elements, men, so to speak, of intensive experience, novelists like conrad or tolstoy or hardy, are fundamentally non-intellectual, pessimistic, and moral. and this explains the natural opposition between conrad and wells. aside from the original bent of his mind, the intensive quality of conrad's experience--an experience of ships and the minute, simple, personal, tragic life of ships, set off against the impersonal, appalling sea and an always indifferent universe, a life remote from change, in which the relations of things are in a peculiar sense abiding and in which only one problem exists, the problem of character, imminent nature being kept at bay only through the loyalty, integrity and grit of men--the intensive quality of this experience, i say, acting upon an artistic mind, would naturally tend to produce not only a bitterly profound wisdom, but an equally profound contempt for the play of ideas, so irresponsible in comparison, and for a view of the world based upon ideas the real cost of which has never been counted in the face of hunger, icy winds, storm and shipwreck, and the abysmal forces of nature. men who go down to the sea in ships have a right to say for themselves (tempering the credulity of those who have remained at home) that the intellectualist view of life is altogether too easy and too glib. it is they who throw into relief the deep, obscure conviction of the "plain man"--commonly the good man--that to endeavor to make life conform with ideas is in some way to deprive the world of just those elements which create character and to strike at an ideal forged through immemorial suffering and effort. merely to dismiss as dumb folly an all but universal contention of this kind (no doubt in the back of people's minds when they say that socialism, for instance, is "against human nature") is to beg the whole question of intellectualism itself. for, if it could be conclusively shown that any view of life not incidentally but by its nature emasculated life and destroyed the roots of character, then of course, no matter how rationally self-evident it might be and how much confusion and suffering it might avert, it would never even justify its own reason for being--it would never _succeed,_ the best part of human nature would oppose it to the end of time and the intelligence itself would be discredited. and indeed to the man of experience rather than the man of ideas, just because of his rich humanity, just because he never passes out of the personal range, belong the ideal things, morality, philosophy, art. like charity, these things "begin at home"; and whenever (as in pragmatism, when pragmatism ceases to be a method and claims to be an interpretation of life) they are approached not from the side of experience but from the side of ideas they cease to have any real substance. morality has no substance when it springs from the mind instead of the conscience, art when it appeals to the mind instead of the perceptions; and as to philosophy, what is any scheme of things that springs out of the head of a man who is not himself wise? it is a certain condemnation of bergson, for example, that he would never pass muster in a group of old fishermen smoking their pipes on the end of a pier. not that they would be expected in any case to know what he was talking about, but that his fibre so plainly is the fibre not of a wise but of a clever man and that in everything, as emerson said, you must have a source higher than your tap. that is why, as it seems to me, wells ought not to be considered from any of these absolute standpoints. he has put before us not so much a well-wrought body of artistic work, or a moral programme, or an explanation of life--words quite out of place in connection with him--as a certain new spirit, filled with all sorts of puzzled intimations of a new beauty and even a new religion to be generated out of a new order of things that is only glimpsed at present. and the point i should like to make about this spirit is that it is entirely irrelevant to the values of life as we know them, but that it may in the end prove to have contributed to an altogether fresh basis for human values. to illustrate what i mean by this irrelevance as regards present values and this possibility as regards future values let me turn to that long brilliant passage in _the new machiavelli_ where remington goes from club to club, passing in review the spiritual possibilities of each political party, and finds nothing but a desolation of triviality, pomposity, confusion, and "utterly damned old men." consider the contempt and hopelessness that fill his mind. one has to forget entirely the ordinary man's view of politics, sincerely held as it is; one has to think of politics as a means of straightening out and re-engendering a whole world of confused anguish before one can see any justification for this righteous wit and savage indignation against the dulness of leaders. considered by the current values of life in which politics are regarded as an effect of man's incompetence rather than as a cause of his virtue, treated intensively, as a novelist of experience rather than of ideas would have treated them, in what a different light each of these "utterly damned old men" would appear, each one a tiny epic of tragic and comic efforts, disappointments, misconceptions, providing one in the end with how much of an excuse for blame, ridicule or contempt! everything indeed depends upon where a given mind chooses to lay emphasis. in this scene wells has judged everything by his ideal of a great society, just as conrad, faced with the same material, would have judged everything by his ideal of personal character. conrad would have used those men to give us an understanding of life as it is, whereas wells has used them simply to throw into relief his idea of what life ought to be. conrad would have created a work of art, illustrated a moral programme, and interpreted life. wells, admittedly a clever caricaturist, only rises above the level of a clever caricaturist according as we accept the validity of his ideal and share the spirit in which he writes. like many children of light, wells is not wise in his own generation. but perhaps another generation will justify him. if wells had lingered in these deep realities of his own time he would have been a greater artist. and indeed so marked has been his own development away from the world of ideas and toward the world of experience that were he to begin afresh it is likely that he would resemble the type of novelist of which i have taken conrad as an example far more than his former self. of socialism he has abandoned all the theories and most of the schemes and retained only the frame of mind. he has taken year by year a more intensive view of life, he has grown too conscious of the inertia that impedes ideas and the overwhelming immediacies of the actual world to be called glib and easy any more. "how little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, preposterously unable to find the will to realize even the most timid of its dreams!" he says in one of his latest novels, and if he has kept alive his faith in ideas, who will deny that he has begun to count the cost of it? from this side, i think, it is no longer possible for anyone to assail him, so frankly has he given hostages to "actuality." it is from the other side, his own side, and especially in the light of his own ideal, that an answer is required for the slackness which has come upon him and which is very marked in his recent novels. is it possible to ignore the fact that since he wrote _the new machiavelli_ the work of wells has lived on its capital and lost the passionate curiosity and personal conviction that made him the force he was in our epoch? always unwilling to check his talent and publish only the results of his genuine mental progress, he has become, in spite of splendid moments, too much of the common professional novelist, dealing with levels and phases of life where he obviously does not belong, astray from his own natural point of intense contact with things. i want to avoid the usual habit of critics who think it their business to put authors in their places, but is it not a fact that wells understands the kippses and pollys far better than the lords and ladies of england and that he was at his best in elaborating a bridge--a wonderful visionary bridge--between the little world of dumb routine and the great world of spacious initiatives? carlyle with his great man theory, forged out of his own travail and weakness, in the end fell on his knees before the illusion of lordship. fifteen years ago one might have predicted the same future for the samurai of wells, not because the samurai are themselves equivocal but because wells is an englishman. there so plainly to the english mind the great gentlemen are, the men who can and the men who never do! towards this circe of the english imagination wells has travelled with a fatal consistency, and the result to be foreseen was first of all fatuity and in the end extinction. after he had written _the new machiavelli_ wells had reached a point where his ideas, in order to be saved, had to be rescued from himself. to believe that life can be straightened out by the intelligence is necessarily to have "travelled light," in a measure; too much experience is the end of that frame of mind. in _tono-bungay_ and _the new machiavelli_ ideas and experience met in a certain invisible point --that is the marvel which has made these books unique and, i suppose, permanent; the greatest possible faith in ideas was united with the greatest possible grasp of everything that impedes them. one had therefore a sense of tragic struggle, in which the whole life of our time was caught up and fiercely wrestled with; one had the feeling that here was the greatest moment in the life of a writer suddenly become great. but with these books some secret virtue seems to have passed out of wells. since then his ideas have been hardly more than a perfunctory repetition and his experience more and more remote and unreal; and looking back one seems to discover something highly symbolic in the tragical conquest of ideas by passion with which _the new machiavelli_ concludes. but indeed wells was always a man whose ideas were greater than himself. "i stumble and flounder," says george ponderevo, "but i know that over all these merry immediate things, there are other things that are great and serene, very high, beautiful things--the reality. i haven't got it, but it's there nevertheless. i'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with unimaginable goddesses." and just for this reason the spirit which in his great days possessed him is independent of any fate that may befall wells himself and his art. more than this, by frankly and fully testing his ideas in a life-and-death struggle with reality he has, even at the cost of his own shipwreck, removed from the cause of ideas the greatest reproach which has always been brought against it. revolutionists, doctrinaires, idealogues have notoriously failed to test the validity of their ideas even in the face of their own private passions and confusions; they have rarely considered for a moment that their own lives totally unfit them for supposing that men are naturally good and that to make reason prevail is one of the simplest operations in the world. wells, on the other hand, has consistently shown that theory divorced from practice is a mode of charlatanism, that "love and fine thinking" must go together, and that precisely because of man's individual incapacity to live, as things are, with equal honesty the life of ideas and the life of experience, the cause he has at heart must be taken out of the hands of the individual and made to form a common impersonal will and purpose in the mind of the race as a whole. * * * * * intellectualism, in fact, the view that life can be determined by ideas (and of this socialism is the essence) if it can be justified at all has to be justified in the face of all current human values. it is based on an assumption, a grand and generous assumption, i maintain, and one that has to take what is called a sporting chance with all the odds against it. this assumption is, that on the whole human nature can be trusted to take care of itself while the surplus energy of life, commonly absorbed in the struggle against incapacity, sloth, perversity, and disorder ("original sin," to sum it all up), is released for the organization of a better scheme for mankind; and further, that this better scheme, acting on a race naturally capable of a richer and fuller life, will have the effect on men as a whole that re-environing has on any cramped, ill-nourished, unventilated organism, and that art, religion, morals (all that makes up the substance and meaning of life) instead of being checked and blighted in the process will in the end, strong enough to bear transplantation, be re-engendered on a finer and freer basis. this, in a word, is the contention of the intellectual, a splendid gambler's chance, on which the future rests, and to which people have committed themselves more than they know. it is a bridge thrown out across the void, resting at one end on the good intentions of mankind and relying at the other upon mankind's fulfilling those good intentions. it is based like every great enterprise of the modern world upon credit, and its only security is the fact that men thus far and on the whole have measured up to each enlargement of their freedom and responsibility. to feel the force of this one has to think of the world as a world. just here has been the office of socialism, to show that society is a colossal machine of which we are all parts and that men in the most exact sense are members one of another. in the intellectualist scheme of things that mathematical proof has to come first; it has to take root and bury itself and become the second nature of humankind before the new world of instinct can spring out of it and come to blossom. that has been the office of socialism, and just so far as that proof has been established socialism has played its part. now the point i want to make about wells is that in him one sees already in an almost precocious form the second stage of this process. in him this new world of intelligence is already exuberant with instinct; the social machine has become a personality; that cold abstraction the world has become in his hands a throbbing, breathing, living thing, as alive, awake, aware of itself, as engaging, adventurous, free, critical, well-primed, continent, and all-of-a-piece as a strong man running a race. people never felt nature as a personality before wordsworth showed them that it was, or a locomotive before kipling wrote _mcandrew's hymn_; and it seems to me that wells has done for the social organism very much what wordsworth did for nature, discovering in a thing previously felt to be inanimate a matter for art and a basis for religious emotion. but if the world is a personality it is a very stupid, sluggish, unawakened personality, differing from nature in this respect, that we ourselves compose the whole of it and have it in our hands to do what we will with it. it has always been out of joint, a great slipshod leviathan, at sixes and sevens, invertebrate and fungus-brained. just so is the average man, sunk in routine, oppressed with microscopic tasks that give birth one to another, his stomach at war with his head, his legs unwilling to exercise him, resentful of his own capacity not to be dull. but certain happier moments bring him an exuberant quickened life in which routine tasks fall nimbly from his fingers and he is aware of a wide, humorous, generous, enlightened vision of things; he pulls himself together, his parts reinforce one another, his mind wakens, his heart opens, his fancy stirs, he is all generosity and happiness, capable of anything that is disinterested, fine, and becoming to a free man. it is in these moments that individual men have done all the things which make up the real history of this planet. if individual men are capable of this amazing experience, then why not the world? that is the spirited question wells has propounded in a hundred different forms, in his earlier, more theoretical, and more optimistic writings suggesting that society as a whole should turn over a new leaf, and even picturing it as doing so, in his later work, more experienced and less hopeful but with a compensating fervor, picturing the attempt of delegated individuals to act on society's behalf. i do not wish at this point to become pious and solemn in tone; that would be inept in connection with wells. but i do wish to make it plain that if he is devoid of those grander traits which spring from the sense of being "tenon'd and mortised" upon something beyond change, if his strength lies wholly in his intelligence, the intelligence itself in wells is an amazing organ, a troubled and rapturous organ, an organ as visionary and sensitive as the soul of a christian saint. that is why i have said that in him the new world, governed by the intelligence, is already exuberant with instinct; and anyone who doubts that he has lavished a very genuine religious instinct upon the social process itself and in the dream of a society free, magnanimous and seemly, should turn to the passage where he describes machiavelli, after the heat and pettiness of the day, retiring into his chamber alone, putting on his dress of ceremony and sitting down before his table in the presence of that magnificent thought. the mass of men have acted more consistently than they know on the principle that the whole world is nothing in comparison with one soul, for their politics and economic science, solemn as they appear, are as frivolous and secondary as if they actually did believe fervently that heaven is their true home and the world a bad business of little account. in all that concerns private virtue and the private life, in religion, poetry, their lawyer, their doctor, their broker, they exact the last degree of excellence and efficiency, but they trust to the blind enterprise of individual men to push mankind chaotically forward little by little. we are in fact so wonderfully made that if our grocer tells us in the morning that he has no fresh eggs he throws us into a deeper despondency than six readings of the _inferno_ could ever do. and that explains why so few people can extend themselves imaginatively into the greater circles that surround them, why, on the social plane, we never think of demanding wisdom from politicians, why we never dream of remembering that they should belong to the august family of plutarch, why it is not the profound views of wise men and the brilliant discoveries of science that fill the newspapers, but the incredibly banal remarks of this president and that prime minister, why presidents and prime ministers in a society that lives from hand to mouth are so much more important than poets and prophets, and why statesmanship has gathered about itself a literature so incomparably trivial and dull. socialists, indeed, just because they alone are serious about the world, are apt to be the least mundane in spirit; they are, as wells has himself said, "other-worldly" about the world itself. but indeed i should make a mistake were i to over-stress the solemnities that underlie the spirit of wells. in tone he is more profane than sacred, that is to say he is a realist. he wants a world thrillingly alive, curious, exercised, magnanimous, with all its dim corners lighted up, shaken out of its dulness and complacency, keen, elastic, tempered like a fine blade--the counterpart on a grand scale of what he most admires in the individual. "stephen," says lady mary in _the passionate friends_, "promise me. whatever you become, you promise and swear here and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never to be respectable and modest and dull and a little fat, like--like everybody." and in _first and last things_ he gives the other side of the medal: much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to taste life. i am not happy until i have done and felt things. i want to get as near as i can to the thrill of a dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. and not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do i want to understand. i want to know something of the jolly wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its wash. i want to get the fine quintessence of that. it stands to reason that a spirit of this kind does not consort with any pre-arranged pocket ground-plan, so to speak, of the world as it should be. of this, to be sure, he is often accused, and he has given us a humorous version of his utopia as it may appear to certain of his contemporaries: mr. g.k. chesterton mocks valiantly and passionately, i know, against an oppressive and obstinately recurrent anticipation of himself in socialist hands, hair clipped, meals of a strictly hygienic description at regular hours, a fine for laughing, not that he would want to laugh, and austere exercises in several of the more metallic virtues daily. mr. max beerbohm's conception is rather in the nature of a nightmare, a hopeless, horrid, frozen flight from the pursuit of mr. sidney webb and myself, both of us short, inelegant men, but for all that terribly resolute, indefatigable, incessant to capture him, to drag him off to a mechanical utopia, and then to take his thumb-mark and his name, number him distinctly in indelible ink, and let him loose (under inspection) in a world of great round lakes of blue lime-water and vistas of white sanitary tiling. that is a not unjust parody of wells's utopia as it would be if he had remained in the circle of his fabian friends. being what he is, it bears much the same relation to his idea as that world of harps and crowns and milk and honey bore in the mediæval imagination to the idea of heaven. you have to mingle these notions with your experience of human hearts to realize the inadequacy of symbols. wells, i suspect, has a fondness for white sanitary tiling, just as plenty of good christians have found in milk and honey a foretaste of unthinkable felicity; but when it comes to the actual architecture and domestic arrangements of paradise they are both quite willing to take on trust the accommodating good will of god and man. somehow or other, by the time we have got there, we shall not find it monotonous--to this, at least, one's faith, whatever it may be, ought to be equal. i have given too few quotations in this book, and now i have left it to a point where if i give any at all it must be to illustrate less the art of wells as a thing by itself than a train of thought. he is at his best in brief scenes, where all his gifts of humor, satire, characterization and phrase come to a head (think, for example, of aunt plessington's speech, the funeral of mr. polly's father, the pages dealing with cousin nicodemus frapp's house-hold, and the somewhat prolonged episode of the "reet staffordshire" cousins in _the new machiavelli_); and indeed, so insistent is his point of view that in every one of these episodes one finds in opposition the irrepressible new world of wells and the stagnant world out of which it springs. one of the best of these scenes, luckily, is brief and connected enough to be quoted as a whole. it is a picture of the tea-hour in the servants' hall at bladesover house. i sat among these people on a high, hard, early gregorian chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. it was hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be thrust in among their dignities. tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and i sat it out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the same. "sugar, mrs. mackridge?" my mother used to ask. "sugar, mrs. latude-fernay?" the word sugar would stir the mind of mrs. mackridge. "they say," she would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least half her sentences began "they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. many of the best people do not take it at all." "not with their tea, ma'am," said rabbits, intelligently. "not with anaything," said mrs. mackridge, with an air of crushing repartee, and drank. "what won't they say next?" said miss fison. "they do say such things!" said mrs. booch. "they say," said mrs. mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors are not recomm-an-ding it now." my mother: "no, ma'am?" mrs. mackridge: "no, ma'am." then, to the table at large: "poor sir roderick, before he died, consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. i have sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end." this ended the first skirmish. a certain gloom of manner and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of sir roderick. "george," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!" then, perhaps, mrs. booch would produce a favorite piece from her repertoire. "the evenings are drawing out nicely," she would say, or if the season was decadent, "how the evenings draw in!" it was an invaluable remark to her; i do not know how she would have got along without it. my mother, who sat with her back to the window, would always consider it due to mrs. booch to turn about and regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, whichever phase it might be. a brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. there is, i think, a special sort of connection between wells and america; and there are times when it seems to me that were the spirit of america suddenly to become critical of itself it would resemble nothing in the world so much as the spirit of wells magnified by many diameters. his instincts are all as it were instincts of the intelligence; his mind, like the american mind, is a disinherited mind, not connected with tradition, thinking and acting _de novo_ because there is nothing to prevent it from doing so. perfectly american is his alertness, his versatility, adaptability, his thorough-going pragmatism, perfectly american are the disconcerting questions that he asks ("is the navy _bright_?"). perfectly american is his view of the traditional english ideal of human nature--that strange compound of good intentions, homely affection, stubborn strength, insensibility to ideas, irrational self-sacrifice, domestic despotism, a strong sense of property in things and people, stupidity, sweetness and confusion of mind--an ideal through which it has been one of his never-failing delights to send electric shocks. and indeed the type of character he has presented in his heroes, in remington, trafford and ponderevo, is a type to be found perhaps more plentifully than elsewhere in american research bureaus, hospitals and laboratories. he thinks and feels critically so many of the things america lives and does unconsciously. perhaps in this distinction lies the immediate value of his criticism for us. for in his mind americans can see themselves reflected in the light of what they chiefly need, that synthetic motive without which a secular and industrial race is as devoid of animating morality as a swarm of flies. this want, most obvious on the political and economic plane, is indeed fundamental. wells has grasped it from many different angles but never with more point than in his essay _the american population_. consider this passage, where he takes as a text one of arthur brisbane's editorials in the "new york journal": it is the voice of the american tradition strained to the utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. the rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalizations, a public which has carried the conception of freedom to its logical extreme of entire individual detachment. these telltale columns deal all with personality and the drama of personal life. they witness to no interest but the interest in intense individual experiences. the engagements, the love affairs, the scandals of conspicuous people are given in pitiless detail in articles adorned with vigorous portraits and sensational pictorial comments. even the eavesdroppers who write this stuff strike the personal note, and their heavily muscular portraits frown beside the initial letter. murders and crimes are worked up to the keenest pitch of realization, and any new indelicacy in fashionable costume, any new medical device or cure, any new dance or athleticism, any new breach in the moral code, any novelty in sea-bathing or the woman's seat on horse-back, or the like, is given copious and moving illustration, stirring headlines, and eloquent reprobation. there is a colored supplement of knock-about fun, written chiefly in the quaint dialect of the new york slums. it is a language from which "th" has vanished, and it presents a world in which the kicking by a mule of an endless succession of victims is an inexhaustible joy to young and old. "dat ole maud!" there is a smaller bale dealing with sport. in the advertisement columns one finds nothing of books, nothing of art; but great choice of bust developers, hair restorers, nervous tonics, clothing sales, self-contained flats, and business opportunities.... individuality has, in fact, got home to itself, and, as people say, taken off its frills.... the "new york american" represents a clientèle to be counted by the hundred thousand, manifestly with no other solicitudes, just burning to live and living to burn. now that is a very fair picture, not merely of popular america but of the whole contemporary phase of popular civilization, uprooted from the state of instinct, intensive experience and the immemorial immediacies of duty and the soil. to the artist and the moralist it is a cause of hopeless pessimism, as any civilization must be which has lost touch with all its values and been rationalized to the point of anarchy. for this there is only one salvation. if civilization has lost the faculty of commanding itself and pulling itself together in its individual aspect, it must pull itself together collectively. that essentially is the fighting chance of intellectualism, the hope that, inasmuch as the world has already lost touch with experience and committed itself to a regime of ideas, by organizing this regime of ideas and by mechanizing so far as possible the material aspect of things, the values of life can be re-engendered on a fresh basis. from this follows the oft-repeated phrase of wells that the chief want of the american people is a "sense of the state." for the peril and the hope of american life (granting that, as things are, society must be brought into some kind of coherence before morality, art and religion can once more attain any real meaning) lies in the fact that while at present americans are aware of themselves only as isolated individuals they are unconsciously engaged in works of an almost appalling significance for the future of society. a trust is a work of this kind, and whether it is to be a gigantic good or a gigantic evil depends wholly upon whether its controlling minds are more conscious of their individual or their social function. the mechanism of society in america is already developed to a very high point; what is wanting, and without this everything is wanting, is an understanding of the right function of this mechanism. so much does it all depend upon whether the financial mind can subdue itself to the greater mind of the race. if the future is anywhere going to follow the lines that wells has suggested for it--and being an opportunist his aims are always in touch with agreeable probabilities--it will most likely be in america. he has lately given his idea of what the state should aim to be--"planned as an electric traction system is planned, without reference to pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines"; an idea remarkably of a piece with the american imagination and one which the american imagination is perfectly capable of translating into fact. american, too, are the methods in which wells has come to believe for bringing the great state into existence. his conviction is that socialism will come through an enlightened individualism, outside the recognized governmental institutions, and that the ostensible states will be superseded virtually by informal centres of gravity quite independent of them. america alone at present justifies this speculation. for the centre of gravity in american affairs has always been extra-governmental, and consistently in america where wealth gathers there also the institutions of socialism spring into being. the rudiments of the socialist state, falsely based as they are but always tending to subvert this false basis, are certainly to be found, if anywhere, in the rockefeller institute, the carnegie and russell sage foundations, the endowed universities and bureaus of research, and in the type of men they breed. consider the following passage from _the passionate friends_ and the character of the american, gidding, which is indicated in it: to gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all science, all knowledge, all philosophical and political ideas, round about the habitable globe. his mind began producing concrete projects as a firework being lit produces sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the most colossal of printing and publishing projects, as a man might work out the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. it was so entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to go on from the proposition that understanding was the primary need of humanity to the systematic organization of free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual stimulation. he set about it as a company of pharmacists might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. "say, stratton," he said, after a conversation that had seemed to me half fantasy, "let's _do_ it." it is perfectly possible in fact that socialism will come into being first of all under the form of cecil rhodes's dream, as a secret order of millionaires "promoting" not their own aims but society itself. that is one of the possibilities at least that lie in what wells has called the "gigantic childishness" of the american mind. index _america, the future in_ america, wells and _american population, the_ _ann veronica_ _anticipations_ arnold, matthew bacon beerbohm, max belloc, hilaire bergson, henri brisbane, arthur brook farm carlyle catholic church, the cato chesterton, g.k. chicago _comet, in the days of the_ _common sense of warfare, the_ comte confucius conrad, joseph _creative evolution_ dante darwin de foe dickens _discovery of the future, the_ dürer emerson _empire of the ants, the_ erasmus _ethics and evolution_ fabian society _first and last things_ _first men in the moon, the_ _food of the gods, the_ _fortnightly review, the_ francis, st. goethe _great state, the_ grimm's fairy tales hardy, thomas hearn, lafcadio heraclitus hero, the _history of mr. polly, the_ huxley _inferno, the_ _invisible man, the_ _island of dr. moreau, the_ james, william japanese, the jeffries, richard johnson, dr. kipling, rudyard _kipps_ leonardo da vinci leopardi _love and mr. lewisham_ luther macaulay machiavelli _mankind in the making_ marcus aurelius _marriage_ michael angelo _modern utopia, a_ montessori, madame morris, william _mcandrew's hymn_ _new machiavelli, the_ newman, cardinal new republican, the _news from nowhere_ _new worlds for old_ nietzsche _our liberal practitioners_ _passionate friends, the_ plato plutarch rabelais _rasselas_ _rediscovery of the unique, the_ rhodes, cecil _robinson crusoe_ samurai, the _scepticism of the instrument,_ schopenhauer _servile state, the_ shakespeare shaw, bernard _sleeper awakes, the_ _so-called science of sociology, the_ sorel, georges spencer, herbert _story of the days to come, a_ superman, the superior man, the swift taine, h.a. thoreau _time machine, the_ tolstoy _tono-bungay_ verne, jules ward, mrs. humphry webb, sidney _wheels of chance, the_ whitman, walt wordsworth worms cathedral this etext was created by judith boss, omaha, nebraska. the equipment: an ibm-compatible 486/50, a hewlett-packard scanjet iic flatbed scanner, and calera recognition systems' m/600 series professional ocr software and risc accelerator board donated by calera recognition systems. the door in the wall and other stories by h. g. wells contents the door in the wall 5 the star 27 a dream of armageddon 43 the cone 75 a moonlight fable 91 the diamond maker 99 the lord of the dynamos 111 the country of the blind 125 the door in the wall and other stories the door in the wall i one confidential evening, not three months ago, lionel wallace told me this story of the door in the wall. and at the time i thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true story. he told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that i could not do otherwise than believe in him. but in the morning, in my own flat, i woke to a different atmosphere, and as i lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from every-day realities, i saw it all as frankly incredible. "he was mystifying!" i said, and then: "how well he did it!. . . . . it isn't quite the thing i should have expected him, of all people, to do well." afterwards, as i sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, i found myself trying to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in his impossible reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest, present, convey--i hardly know which word to use--experiences it was otherwise impossible to tell. well, i don't resort to that explanation now. i have got over my intervening doubts. i believe now, as i believed at the moment of telling, that wallace did to the very best of his ability strip the truth of his secret for me. but whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was the possessor of an inestimable privilege, or the victim of a fantastic dream, i cannot pretend to guess. even the facts of his death, which ended my doubts forever, throw no light on that. that much the reader must judge for himself. i forget now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. he was, i think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability i had made in relation to a great public movement in which he had disappointed me. but he plunged suddenly. "i have" he said, "a preoccupation--" "i know," he went on, after a pause that he devoted to the study of his cigar ash, "i have been negligent. the fact is--it isn't a case of ghosts or apparitions--but--it's an odd thing to tell of, redmond--i am haunted. i am haunted by something--that rather takes the light out of things, that fills me with longings . . . . ." he paused, checked by that english shyness that so often overcomes us when we would speak of moving or grave or beautiful things. "you were at saint athelstan's all through," he said, and for a moment that seemed to me quite irrelevant. "well"--and he paused. then very haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him. now that i have the clue to it, the thing seems written visibly in his face. i have a photograph in which that look of detachment has been caught and intensified. it reminds me of what a woman once said of him--a woman who had loved him greatly. "suddenly," she said, "the interest goes out of him. he forgets you. he doesn't care a rap for you--under his very nose . . . . ." yet the interest was not always out of him, and when he was holding his attention to a thing wallace could contrive to be an extremely successful man. his career, indeed, is set with successes. he left me behind him long ago; he soared up over my head, and cut a figure in the world that i couldn't cut--anyhow. he was still a year short of forty, and they say now that he would have been in office and very probably in the new cabinet if he had lived. at school he always beat me without effort--as it were by nature. we were at school together at saint athelstan's college in west kensington for almost all our school time. he came into the school as my co-equal, but he left far above me, in a blaze of scholarships and brilliant performance. yet i think i made a fair average running. and it was at school i heard first of the door in the wall--that i was to hear of a second time only a month before his death. to him at least the door in the wall was a real door leading through a real wall to immortal realities. of that i am now quite assured. and it came into his life early, when he was a little fellow between five and six. i remember how, as he sat making his confession to me with a slow gravity, he reasoned and reckoned the date of it. "there was," he said, "a crimson virginia creeper in it--all one bright uniform crimson in a clear amber sunshine against a white wall. that came into the impression somehow, though i don't clearly remember how, and there were horse-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside the green door. they were blotched yellow and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so that they must have been new fallen. i take it that means october. i look out for horse-chestnut leaves every year, and i ought to know. "if i'm right in that, i was about five years and four months old." he was, he said, rather a precocious little boy--he learned to talk at an abnormally early age, and he was so sane and "old-fashioned," as people say, that he was permitted an amount of initiative that most children scarcely attain by seven or eight. his mother died when he was born, and he was under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess. his father was a stern, preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little attention, and expected great things of him. for all his brightness he found life a little grey and dull i think. and one day he wandered. he could not recall the particular neglect that enabled him to get away, nor the course he took among the west kensington roads. all that had faded among the incurable blurs of memory. but the white wall and the green door stood out quite distinctly. as his memory of that remote childish experience ran, he did at the very first sight of that door experience a peculiar emotion, an attraction, a desire to get to the door and open it and walk in. and at the same time he had the clearest conviction that either it was unwise or it was wrong of him--he could not tell which--to yield to this attraction. he insisted upon it as a curious thing that he knew from the very beginning--unless memory has played him the queerest trick--that the door was unfastened, and that he could go in as he chose. i seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and repelled. and it was very clear in his mind, too, though why it should be so was never explained, that his father would be very angry if he went through that door. wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with the utmost particularity. he went right past the door, and then, with his hands in his pockets, and making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled right along beyond the end of the wall. there he recalls a number of mean, dirty shops, and particularly that of a plumber and decorator, with a dusty disorder of earthenware pipes, sheet lead ball taps, pattern books of wall paper, and tins of enamel. he stood pretending to examine these things, and coveting, passionately desiring the green door. then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. he made a run for it, lest hesitation should grip him again, he went plump with outstretched hand through the green door and let it slam behind him. and so, in a trice, he came into the garden that has haunted all his life. it was very difficult for wallace to give me his full sense of that garden into which he came. there was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one a sense of lightness and good happening and well being; there was something in the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect and subtly luminous. in the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely glad--as only in rare moments and when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this world. and everything was beautiful there . . . . . wallace mused before he went on telling me. "you see," he said, with the doubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, "there were two great panthers there . . . yes, spotted panthers. and i was not afraid. there was a long wide path with marble-edged flower borders on either side, and these two huge velvety beasts were playing there with a ball. one looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed. it came right up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the small hand i held out and purred. it was, i tell you, an enchanted garden. i know. and the size? oh! it stretched far and wide, this way and that. i believe there were hills far away. heaven knows where west kensington had suddenly got to. and somehow it was just like coming home. "you know, in the very moment the door swung to behind me, i forgot the road with its fallen chestnut leaves, its cabs and tradesmen's carts, i forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience of home, i forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot all the intimate realities of this life. i became in a moment a very glad and wonder-happy little boy--in another world. it was a world with a different quality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light, with a faint clear gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of its sky. and before me ran this long wide path, invitingly, with weedless beds on either side, rich with untended flowers, and these two great panthers. i put my little hands fearlessly on their soft fur, and caressed their round ears and the sensitive corners under their ears, and played with them, and it was as though they welcomed me home. there was a keen sense of home-coming in my mind, and when presently a tall, fair girl appeared in the pathway and came to meet me, smiling, and said 'well?' to me, and lifted me, and kissed me, and put me down, and led me by the hand, there was no amazement, but only an impression of delightful rightness, of being reminded of happy things that had in some strange way been overlooked. there were broad steps, i remember, that came into view between spikes of delphinium, and up these we went to a great avenue between very old and shady dark trees. all down this avenue, you know, between the red chapped stems, were marble seats of honour and statuary, and very tame and friendly white doves . . . . . "and along this avenue my girl-friend led me, looking down--i recall the pleasant lines, the finely-modelled chin of her sweet kind face--asking me questions in a soft, agreeable voice, and telling me things, pleasant things i know, though what they were i was never able to recall . . . and presently a little capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of ruddy brown and kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, looking up at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder. so we went on our way in great happiness . . . ." he paused. "go on," i said. "i remember little things. we passed an old man musing among laurels, i remember, and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a broad shaded colonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart's desire. and there were many things and many people, some that still seem to stand out clearly and some that are a little vague, but all these people were beautiful and kind. in some way--i don't know how--it was conveyed to me that they all were kind to me, glad to have me there, and filling me with gladness by their gestures, by the touch of their hands, by the welcome and love in their eyes. yes--" he mused for awhile. "playmates i found there. that was very much to me, because i was a lonely little boy. they played delightful games in a grass-covered court where there was a sun-dial set about with flowers. and as one played one loved . . . . "but--it's odd--there's a gap in my memory. i don't remember the games we played. i never remembered. afterwards, as a child, i spent long hours trying, even with tears, to recall the form of that happiness. i wanted to play it all over again--in my nursery--by myself. no! all i remember is the happiness and two dear playfellows who were most with me . . . . then presently came a sombre dark woman, with a grave, pale face and dreamy eyes, a sombre woman wearing a soft long robe of pale purple, who carried a book and beckoned and took me aside with her into a gallery above a hall--though my playmates were loth to have me go, and ceased their game and stood watching as i was carried away. 'come back to us!' they cried. 'come back to us soon!' i looked up at her face, but she heeded them not at all. her face was very gentle and grave. she took me to a seat in the gallery, and i stood beside her, ready to look at her book as she opened it upon her knee. the pages fell open. she pointed, and i looked, marvelling, for in the living pages of that book i saw myself; it was a story about myself, and in it were all the things that had happened to me since ever i was born . . . . "it was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not pictures, you understand, but realities." wallace paused gravely--looked at me doubtfully. "go on," i said. "i understand." "they were realities--yes, they must have been; people moved and things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom i had near forgotten; then my father, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery, all the familiar things of home. then the front door and the busy streets, with traffic to and fro: i looked and marvelled, and looked half doubtfully again into the woman's face and turned the pages over, skipping this and that, to see more of this book, and more, and so at last i came to myself hovering and hesitating outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the conflict and the fear. "'and next?' i cried, and would have turned on, but the cool hand of the grave woman delayed me. "'next?' i insisted, and struggled gently with her hand, pulling up her fingers with all my childish strength, and as she yielded and the page came over she bent down upon me like a shadow and kissed my brow. "but the page did not show the enchanted garden, nor the panthers, nor the girl who had led me by the hand, nor the playfellows who had been so loth to let me go. it showed a long grey street in west kensington, on that chill hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit, and i was there, a wretched little figure, weeping aloud, for all that i could do to restrain myself, and i was weeping because i could not return to my dear play-fellows who had called after me, 'come back to us! come back to us soon!' i was there. this was no page in a book, but harsh reality; that enchanted place and the restraining hand of the grave mother at whose knee i stood had gone--whither have they gone?" he halted again, and remained for a time, staring into the fire. "oh! the wretchedness of that return!" he murmured. "well?" i said after a minute or so. "poor little wretch i was--brought back to this grey world again! as i realised the fulness of what had happened to me, i gave way to quite ungovernable grief. and the shame and humiliation of that public weeping and my disgraceful homecoming remain with me still. i see again the benevolent-looking old gentleman in gold spectacles who stopped and spoke to me--prodding me first with his umbrella. 'poor little chap,' said he; 'and are you lost then?'--and me a london boy of five and more! and he must needs bring in a kindly young policeman and make a crowd of me, and so march me home. sobbing, conspicuous and frightened, i came from the enchanted garden to the steps of my father's house. "that is as well as i can remember my vision of that garden--the garden that haunts me still. of course, i can convey nothing of that indescribable quality of translucent unreality, that difference from the common things of experience that hung about it all; but that--that is what happened. if it was a dream, i am sure it was a day-time and altogether extraordinary dream . . . . . . h'm!--naturally there followed a terrible questioning, by my aunt, my father, the nurse, the governess--everyone . . . . . . "i tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first thrashing for telling lies. when afterwards i tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again for my wicked persistence. then, as i said, everyone was forbidden to listen to me, to hear a word about it. even my fairy tale books were taken away from me for a time--because i was 'too imaginative.' eh? yes, they did that! my father belonged to the old school . . . . . and my story was driven back upon myself. i whispered it to my pillow--my pillow that was often damp and salt to my whispering lips with childish tears. and i added always to my official and less fervent prayers this one heartfelt request: 'please god i may dream of the garden. oh! take me back to my garden! take me back to my garden!' "i dreamt often of the garden. i may have added to it, i may have changed it; i do not know . . . . . all this you understand is an attempt to reconstruct from fragmentary memories a very early experience. between that and the other consecutive memories of my boyhood there is a gulf. a time came when it seemed impossible i should ever speak of that wonder glimpse again." i asked an obvious question. "no," he said. "i don't remember that i ever attempted to find my way back to the garden in those early years. this seems odd to me now, but i think that very probably a closer watch was kept on my movements after this misadventure to prevent my going astray. no, it wasn't until you knew me that i tried for the garden again. and i believe there was a period--incredible as it seems now--when i forgot the garden altogether--when i was about eight or nine it may have been. do you remember me as a kid at saint athelstan's?" "rather!" "i didn't show any signs did i in those days of having a secret dream?" ii he looked up with a sudden smile. "did you ever play north-west passage with me? . . . . . no, of course you didn't come my way!" "it was the sort of game," he went on, "that every imaginative child plays all day. the idea was the discovery of a north-west passage to school. the way to school was plain enough; the game consisted in finding some way that wasn't plain, starting off ten minutes early in some almost hopeless direction, and working one's way round through unaccustomed streets to my goal. and one day i got entangled among some rather low-class streets on the other side of campden hill, and i began to think that for once the game would be against me and that i should get to school late. i tried rather desperately a street that seemed a _cul de sac_, and found a passage at the end. i hurried through that with renewed hope. 'i shall do it yet,' i said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops that were inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my long white wall and the green door that led to the enchanted garden! "the thing whacked upon me suddenly. then, after all, that garden, that wonderful garden, wasn't a dream!" . . . . he paused. "i suppose my second experience with the green door marks the world of difference there is between the busy life of a schoolboy and the infinite leisure of a child. anyhow, this second time i didn't for a moment think of going in straight away. you see . . . for one thing my mind was full of the idea of getting to school in time--set on not breaking my record for punctuality. i must surely have felt _some_ little desire at least to try the door--yes, i must have felt that . . . . . but i seem to remember the attraction of the door mainly as another obstacle to my overmastering determination to get to school. i was immediately interested by this discovery i had made, of course--i went on with my mind full of it--but i went on. it didn't check me. i ran past tugging out my watch, found i had ten minutes still to spare, and then i was going downhill into familiar surroundings. i got to school, breathless, it is true, and wet with perspiration, but in time. i can remember hanging up my coat and hat . . . went right by it and left it behind me. odd, eh?" he looked at me thoughtfully. "of course, i didn't know then that it wouldn't always be there. school boys have limited imaginations. i suppose i thought it was an awfully jolly thing to have it there, to know my way back to it, but there was the school tugging at me. i expect i was a good deal distraught and inattentive that morning, recalling what i could of the beautiful strange people i should presently see again. oddly enough i had no doubt in my mind that they would be glad to see me . . . yes, i must have thought of the garden that morning just as a jolly sort of place to which one might resort in the interludes of a strenuous scholastic career. "i didn't go that day at all. the next day was a half holiday, and that may have weighed with me. perhaps, too, my state of inattention brought down impositions upon me and docked the margin of time necessary for the detour. i don't know. what i do know is that in the meantime the enchanted garden was so much upon my mind that i could not keep it to myself. "i told--what was his name?--a ferrety-looking youngster we used to call squiff." "young hopkins," said i. "hopkins it was. i did not like telling him, i had a feeling that in some way it was against the rules to tell him, but i did. he was walking part of the way home with me; he was talkative, and if we had not talked about the enchanted garden we should have talked of something else, and it was intolerable to me to think about any other subject. so i blabbed. "well, he told my secret. the next day in the play interval i found myself surrounded by half a dozen bigger boys, half teasing and wholly curious to hear more of the enchanted garden. there was that big fawcett--you remember him?--and carnaby and morley reynolds. you weren't there by any chance? no, i think i should have remembered if you were . . . . . "a boy is a creature of odd feelings. i was, i really believe, in spite of my secret self-disgust, a little flattered to have the attention of these big fellows. i remember particularly a moment of pleasure caused by the praise of crawshaw--you remember crawshaw major, the son of crawshaw the composer?--who said it was the best lie he had ever heard. but at the same time there was a really painful undertow of shame at telling what i felt was indeed a sacred secret. that beast fawcett made a joke about the girl in green--." wallace's voice sank with the keen memory of that shame. "i pretended not to hear," he said. "well, then carnaby suddenly called me a young liar and disputed with me when i said the thing was true. i said i knew where to find the green door, could lead them all there in ten minutes. carnaby became outrageously virtuous, and said i'd have to--and bear out my words or suffer. did you ever have carnaby twist your arm? then perhaps you'll understand how it went with me. i swore my story was true. there was nobody in the school then to save a chap from carnaby though crawshaw put in a word or so. carnaby had got his game. i grew excited and red-eared, and a little frightened, i behaved altogether like a silly little chap, and the outcome of it all was that instead of starting alone for my enchanted garden, i led the way presently--cheeks flushed, ears hot, eyes smarting, and my soul one burning misery and shame--for a party of six mocking, curious and threatening school-fellows. "we never found the white wall and the green door . . ." "you mean?--" "i mean i couldn't find it. i would have found it if i could. "and afterwards when i could go alone i couldn't find it. i never found it. i seem now to have been always looking for it through my school-boy days, but i've never come upon it again." "did the fellows--make it disagreeable?" "beastly . . . . . carnaby held a council over me for wanton lying. i remember how i sneaked home and upstairs to hide the marks of my blubbering. but when i cried myself to sleep at last it wasn't for carnaby, but for the garden, for the beautiful afternoon i had hoped for, for the sweet friendly women and the waiting playfellows and the game i had hoped to learn again, that beautiful forgotten game . . . . . "i believed firmly that if i had not told-. . . . . i had bad times after that--crying at night and wool-gathering by day. for two terms i slackened and had bad reports. do you remember? of course you would! it was _you_--your beating me in mathematics that brought me back to the grind again." iii for a time my friend stared silently into the red heart of the fire. then he said: "i never saw it again until i was seventeen. "it leapt upon me for the third time--as i was driving to paddington on my way to oxford and a scholarship. i had just one momentary glimpse. i was leaning over the apron of my hansom smoking a cigarette, and no doubt thinking myself no end of a man of the world, and suddenly there was the door, the wall, the dear sense of unforgettable and still attainable things. "we clattered by--i too taken by surprise to stop my cab until we were well past and round a corner. then i had a queer moment, a double and divergent movement of my will: i tapped the little door in the roof of the cab, and brought my arm down to pull out my watch. 'yes, sir!' said the cabman, smartly. 'er--well--it's nothing,' i cried. '_my_ mistake! we haven't much time! go on!' and he went on . . . "i got my scholarship. and the night after i was told of that i sat over my fire in my little upper room, my study, in my father's house, with his praise--his rare praise--and his sound counsels ringing in my ears, and i smoked my favourite pipe--the formidable bulldog of adolescence--and thought of that door in the long white wall. 'if i had stopped,' i thought, 'i should have missed my scholarship, i should have missed oxford--muddled all the fine career before me! i begin to see things better!' i fell musing deeply, but i did not doubt then this career of mine was a thing that merited sacrifice. "those dear friends and that clear atmosphere seemed very sweet to me, very fine, but remote. my grip was fixing now upon the world. i saw another door opening--the door of my career." he stared again into the fire. its red lights picked out a stubborn strength in his face for just one flickering moment, and then it vanished again. "well", he said and sighed, "i have served that career. i have done--much work, much hard work. but i have dreamt of the enchanted garden a thousand dreams, and seen its door, or at least glimpsed its door, four times since then. yes--four times. for a while this world was so bright and interesting, seemed so full of meaning and opportunity that the half-effaced charm of the garden was by comparison gentle and remote. who wants to pat panthers on the way to dinner with pretty women and distinguished men? i came down to london from oxford, a man of bold promise that i have done something to redeem. something--and yet there have been disappointments . . . . . "twice i have been in love--i will not dwell on that--but once, as i went to someone who, i know, doubted whether i dared to come, i took a short cut at a venture through an unfrequented road near earl's court, and so happened on a white wall and a familiar green door. 'odd!' said i to myself, 'but i thought this place was on campden hill. it's the place i never could find somehow--like counting stonehenge--the place of that queer day dream of mine.' and i went by it intent upon my purpose. it had no appeal to me that afternoon. "i had just a moment's impulse to try the door, three steps aside were needed at the most--though i was sure enough in my heart that it would open to me--and then i thought that doing so might delay me on the way to that appointment in which i thought my honour was involved. afterwards i was sorry for my punctuality--i might at least have peeped in i thought, and waved a hand to those panthers, but i knew enough by this time not to seek again belatedly that which is not found by seeking. yes, that time made me very sorry . . . . . "years of hard work after that and never a sight of the door. it's only recently it has come back to me. with it there has come a sense as though some thin tarnish had spread itself over my world. i began to think of it as a sorrowful and bitter thing that i should never see that door again. perhaps i was suffering a little from overwork--perhaps it was what i've heard spoken of as the feeling of forty. i don't know. but certainly the keen brightness that makes effort easy has gone out of things recently, and that just at a time with all these new political developments--when i ought to be working. odd, isn't it? but i do begin to find life toilsome, its rewards, as i come near them, cheap. i began a little while ago to want the garden quite badly. yes--and i've seen it three times." "the garden?" "no--the door! and i haven't gone in!" he leaned over the table to me, with an enormous sorrow in his voice as he spoke. "thrice i have had my chance--_thrice!_ if ever that door offers itself to me again, i swore, i will go in out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. i will go and never return. this time i will stay . . . . . i swore it and when the time came--_i didn't go_. "three times in one year have i passed that door and failed to enter. three times in the last year. "the first time was on the night of the snatch division on the tenants' redemption bill, on which the government was saved by a majority of three. you remember? no one on our side--perhaps very few on the opposite side--expected the end that night. then the debate collapsed like eggshells. i and hotchkiss were dining with his cousin at brentford, we were both unpaired, and we were called up by telephone, and set off at once in his cousin's motor. we got in barely in time, and on the way we passed my wall and door--livid in the moonlight, blotched with hot yellow as the glare of our lamps lit it, but unmistakable. 'my god!' cried i. 'what?' said hotchkiss. 'nothing!' i answered, and the moment passed. "'i've made a great sacrifice,' i told the whip as i got in. 'they all have,' he said, and hurried by. "i do not see how i could have done otherwise then. and the next occasion was as i rushed to my father's bedside to bid that stern old man farewell. then, too, the claims of life were imperative. but the third time was different; it happened a week ago. it fills me with hot remorse to recall it. i was with gurker and ralphs--it's no secret now you know that i've had my talk with gurker. we had been dining at frobisher's, and the talk had become intimate between us. the question of my place in the reconstructed ministry lay always just over the boundary of the discussion. yes--yes. that's all settled. it needn't be talked about yet, but there's no reason to keep a secret from you . . . . . yes--thanks! thanks! but let me tell you my story. "then, on that night things were very much in the air. my position was a very delicate one. i was keenly anxious to get some definite word from gurker, but was hampered by ralphs' presence. i was using the best power of my brain to keep that light and careless talk not too obviously directed to the point that concerns me. i had to. ralphs' behaviour since has more than justified my caution . . . . . ralphs, i knew, would leave us beyond the kensington high street, and then i could surprise gurker by a sudden frankness. one has sometimes to resort to these little devices. . . . . and then it was that in the margin of my field of vision i became aware once more of the white wall, the green door before us down the road. "we passed it talking. i passed it. i can still see the shadow of gurker's marked profile, his opera hat tilted forward over his prominent nose, the many folds of his neck wrap going before my shadow and ralphs' as we sauntered past. "i passed within twenty inches of the door. 'if i say good-night to them, and go in,' i asked myself, 'what will happen?' and i was all a-tingle for that word with gurker. "i could not answer that question in the tangle of my other problems. 'they will think me mad,' i thought. 'and suppose i vanish now!--amazing disappearance of a prominent politician!' that weighed with me. a thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me in that crisis." then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and, speaking slowly; "here i am!" he said. "here i am!" he repeated, "and my chance has gone from me. three times in one year the door has been offered me--the door that goes into peace, into delight, into a beauty beyond dreaming, a kindness no man on earth can know. and i have rejected it, redmond, and it has gone--" "how do you know?" "i know. i know. i am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks that held me so strongly when my moments came. you say, i have success--this vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. i have it." he had a walnut in his big hand. "if that was my success," he said, and crushed it, and held it out for me to see. "let me tell you something, redmond. this loss is destroying me. for two months, for ten weeks nearly now, i have done no work at all, except the most necessary and urgent duties. my soul is full of inappeasable regrets. at nights--when it is less likely i shall be recognised--i go out. i wander. yes. i wonder what people would think of that if they knew. a cabinet minister, the responsible head of that most vital of all departments, wandering alone--grieving--sometimes near audibly lamenting--for a door, for a garden!" iv i can see now his rather pallid face, and the unfamiliar sombre fire that had come into his eyes. i see him very vividly to-night. i sit recalling his words, his tones, and last evening's _westminster gazette_ still lies on my sofa, containing the notice of his death. at lunch to-day the club was busy with him and the strange riddle of his fate. they found his body very early yesterday morning in a deep excavation near east kensington station. it is one of two shafts that have been made in connection with an extension of the railway southward. it is protected from the intrusion of the public by a hoarding upon the high road, in which a small doorway has been cut for the convenience of some of the workmen who live in that direction. the doorway was left unfastened through a misunderstanding between two gangers, and through it he made his way . . . . . my mind is darkened with questions and riddles. it would seem he walked all the way from the house that night--he has frequently walked home during the past session--and so it is i figure his dark form coming along the late and empty streets, wrapped up, intent. and then did the pale electric lights near the station cheat the rough planking into a semblance of white? did that fatal unfastened door awaken some memory? was there, after all, ever any green door in the wall at all? i do not know. i have told his story as he told it to me. there are times when i believe that wallace was no more than the victim of the coincidence between a rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and a careless trap, but that indeed is not my profoundest belief. you may think me superstitious if you will, and foolish; but, indeed, i am more than half convinced that he had in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something--i know not what--that in the guise of wall and door offered him an outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether more beautiful world. at any rate, you will say, it betrayed him in the end. but did it betray him? there you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men of vision and the imagination. we see our world fair and common, the hoarding and the pit. by our daylight standard he walked out of security into darkness, danger and death. but did he see like that? the star it was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in december. such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of the solar system. the sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. beyond the orbit of neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. that is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained. and, saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space, until early in the twentieth century this strange wanderer appeared. a vast mass of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. by the second day it was clearly visible to any decent instrument, as a speck with a barely sensible diameter, in the constellation leo near regulus. in a little while an opera glass could attain it. on the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the heavens. "a planetary collision," one london paper headed the news, and proclaimed duchaine's opinion that this strange new planet would probably collide with neptune. the leader writers enlarged upon the topic; so that in most of the capitals of the world, on january 3rd, there was an expectation, however vague of some imminent phenomenon in the sky; and as the night followed the sunset round the globe, thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to see--the old familiar stars just as they had always been. until it was dawn in london and pollux setting and the stars overhead grown pale. the winter's dawn it was, a sickly filtering accumulation of daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows to show where people were astir. but the yawning policeman saw the thing, the busy crowds in the markets stopped agape, workmen going to their work betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news-carts, dissipation going home jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats, and in the country, labourers trudging afield, poachers slinking home, all over the dusky quickening country it could be seen--and out at sea by seamen watching for the day--a great white star, come suddenly into the westward sky! brighter it was than any star in our skies; brighter than the evening star at its brightest. it still glowed out white and large, no mere twinkling spot of light, but a small round clear shining disc, an hour after the day had come. and where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs in the heavens. sturdy boers, dusky hottentots, gold coast negroes, frenchmen, spaniards, portuguese, stood in the warmth of the sunrise watching the setting of this strange new star. and in a hundred observatories there had been suppressed excitement, rising almost to shouting pitch, as the two remote bodies had rushed together; and a hurrying to and fro, to gather photographic apparatus and spectroscope, and this appliance and that, to record this novel astonishing sight, the destruction of a world. for it was a world, a sister planet of our earth, far greater than our earth indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. neptune it was, had been struck, fairly and squarely, by the strange planet from outer space and the heat of the concussion had incontinently turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence. round the world that day, two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great white star, fading only as it sank westward and the sun mounted above it. everywhere men marvelled at it, but of all those who saw it none could have marvelled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a pigmy moon and climb zenithward and hang overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night. and when next it rose over europe everywhere were crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the great new star. it rose with a white glow in front of it, like the glare of a white fire, and those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried out at the sight of it. "it is larger," they cried. "it is brighter!" and, indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the west was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star. "it is brighter!" cried the people clustering in the streets. but in the dim observatories the watchers held their breath and peered at one another. "_it is nearer_," they said. "_nearer!_" and voice after voice repeated, "it is nearer," and the clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires, and in a thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the type. "it is nearer." men writing in offices, struck with a strange realisation, flung down their pens, men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words, "it is nearer." it hurried along wakening streets, it was shouted down the frost-stilled ways of quiet villages; men who had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in yellow-lit doorways shouting the news to the passersby. "it is nearer." pretty women, flushed and glittering, heard the news told jestingly between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest they did not feel. "nearer! indeed. how curious! how very, very clever people must be to find out things like that!" lonely tramps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to comfort themselves--looking skyward. "it has need to be nearer, for the night's as cold as charity. don't seem much warmth from it if it _is_ nearer, all the same." "what is a new star to me?" cried the weeping woman kneeling beside her dead. the schoolboy, rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for himself--with the great white star shining broad and bright through the frost-flowers of his window. "centrifugal, centripetal," he said, with his chin on his fist. "stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal force, what then? centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun! and this--! "do _we_ come in the way? i wonder--" the light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again. and it was now so bright that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself, hanging huge in the sunset. in a south african city a great man had married, and the streets were alight to welcome his return with his bride. "even the skies have illuminated," said the flatterer. under capricorn, two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits, for love of one another, crouched together in a cane brake where the fire-flies hovered. "that is our star," they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliance of its light. the master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers from him. his calculations were already finished. in a small white phial there still remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active for four long nights. each day, serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his students, and then had come back at once to this momentous calculation. his face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from his drugged activity. for some time he seemed lost in thought. then he went to the window, and the blind went up with a click. half way up the sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys and steeples of the city, hung the star. he looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. "you may kill me," he said after a silence. "but i can hold you--and all the universe for that matter--in the grip of this little brain. i would not change. even now." he looked at the little phial. "there will be no need of sleep again," he said. the next day at noon--punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture theatre, put his hat on the end of the table as his habit was, and carefully selected a large piece of chalk. it was a joke among his students that he could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. he came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. "circumstances have arisen--circumstances beyond my control," he said and paused, "which will debar me from completing the course i had designed. it would seem, gentlemen, if i may put the thing clearly and briefly, that--man has lived in vain." the students glanced at one another. had they heard aright? mad? raised eyebrows and grinning lips there were, but one or two faces remained intent upon his calm grey-fringed face. "it will be interesting," he was saying, "to devote this morning to an exposition, so far as i can make it clear to you, of the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. let us assume--" he turned towards the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that was usual to him. "what was that about 'lived in vain?'" whispered one student to another. "listen," said the other, nodding towards the lecturer. and presently they began to understand. that night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion had carried it some way across leo towards virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save only jupiter near the zenith, capella, aldebaran, sirius and the pointers of the bear. it was very white and beautiful. in many parts of the world that night a pallid halo encircled it about. it was perceptibly larger; in the clear refractive sky of the tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter the size of the moon. the frost was still on the ground in england, but the world was as brightly lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. one could see to read quite ordinary print by that cold clear light, and in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan. and everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout christendom a sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the country side like the belling of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew to a clangour in the cities. it was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no more, but to gather in their churches and pray. and overhead, growing larger and brighter as the earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose the dazzling star. and the streets and houses were alight in all the cities, the shipyards glared, and whatever roads led to high country were lit and crowded all night long. and in all the seas about the civilised lands, ships with throbbing engines, and ships with bellying sails, crowded with men and living creatures, were standing out to ocean and the north. for already the warning of the master mathematician had been telegraphed all over the world, and translated into a hundred tongues. the new planet and neptune, locked in a fiery embrace, were whirling headlong, ever faster and faster towards the sun. already every second this blazing mass flew a hundred miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased. as it flew now, indeed, it must pass a hundred million of miles wide of the earth and scarcely affect it. but near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed, spun the mighty planet jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid round the sun. every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger. and the result of that attraction? inevitably jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would "describe a curved path" and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our earth. "earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to i know not what limit"--so prophesied the master mathematician. and overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and cold and livid, blazed the star of the coming doom. to many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that it was visibly approaching. and that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all central europe and france and england softened towards a thaw. but you must not imagine because i have spoken of people praying through the night and people going aboard ships and people fleeing toward mountainous country that the whole world was already in a terror because of the star. as a matter of fact, use and wont still ruled the world, and save for the talk of idle moments and the splendour of the night, nine human beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations. in all the cities the shops, save one here and there, opened and closed at their proper hours, the doctor and the undertaker plied their trades, the workers gathered in the factories, soldiers drilled, scholars studied, lovers sought one another, thieves lurked and fled, politicians planned their schemes. the presses of the newspapers roared through the night, and many a priest of this church and that would not open his holy building to further what he considered a foolish panic. the newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000--for then, too, people had anticipated the end. the star was no star--mere gas--a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. there was no precedent for such a thing. common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. that night, at seven-fifteen by greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to jupiter. then the world would see the turn things would take. the master mathematician's grim warnings were treated by many as so much mere elaborate self-advertisement. common sense at last, a little heated by argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed. so, too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about their nightly business, and save for a howling dog here and there, the beast world left the star unheeded. and yet, when at last the watchers in the european states saw the star rise, an hour later it is true, but no larger than it had been the night before, there were still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician--to take the danger as if it had passed. but hereafter the laughter ceased. the star grew--it grew with a terrible steadiness hour after hour, a little larger each hour, a little nearer the midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had turned night into a second day. had it come straight to the earth instead of in a curved path, had it lost no velocity to jupiter, it must have leapt the intervening gulf in a day, but as it was it took five days altogether to come by our planet. the next night it had become a third the size of the moon before it set to english eyes, and the thaw was assured. it rose over america near the size of the moon, but blinding white to look at, and _hot_; and a breath of hot wind blew now with its rising and gathering strength, and in virginia, and brazil, and down the st. lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek of thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail unprecedented. in manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. and upon all the mountains of the earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon--in their upper reaches--with swirling trees and the bodies of beasts and men. they rose steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their banks at last, behind the flying population of their valleys. and along the coast of argentina and up the south atlantic the tides were higher than had ever been in the memory of man, and the storms drove the waters in many cases scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. and so great grew the heat during the night that the rising of the sun was like the coming of a shadow. the earthquakes began and grew until all down america from the arctic circle to cape horn, hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening, and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. the whole side of cotopaxi slipped out in one vast convulsion, and a tumult of lava poured out so high and broad and swift and liquid that in one day it reached the sea. so the star, with the wan moon in its wake, marched across the pacific, trailed the thunderstorms like the hem of a robe, and the growing tidal wave that toiled behind it, frothing and eager, poured over island and island and swept them clear of men. until that wave came at last--in a blinding light and with the breath of a furnace, swift and terrible it came--a wall of water, fifty feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long coasts of asia, and swept inland across the plains of china. for a space the star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood. and thus it was with millions of men that night--a flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall swift and white behind. and then death. china was lit glowing white, but over japan and java and all the islands of eastern asia the great star was a ball of dull red fire because of the steam and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming. above was the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods, and the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. soon the immemorial snows of thibet and the himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten million deepening converging channels upon the plains of burmah and hindostan. the tangled summits of the indian jungles were aflame in a thousand places, and below the hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected the blood-red tongues of fire. and in a rudderless confusion a multitude of men and women fled down the broad river-ways to that one last hope of men--the open sea. larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a terrible swiftness now. the tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly, speckled with storm-tossed ships. and then came a wonder. it seemed to those who in europe watched for the rising of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. in a thousand open spaces of down and upland the people who had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain. hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not. once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had counted lost to them forever. in england it was hot and clear overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually, but in the tropics, sirius and capella and aldebaran showed through a veil of steam. and when at last the great star rose near ten hours late, the sun rose close upon it, and in the centre of its white heart was a disc of black. over asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung over india, its light had been veiled. all the plain of india from the mouth of the indus to the mouths of the ganges was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people. every minaret was a clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as heat and terror overcame them. the whole land seemed a-wailing and suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out of the cooling air. men looking up, near blinded, at the star, saw that a black disc was creeping across the light. it was the moon, coming between the star and the earth. and even as men cried to god at this respite, out of the east with a strange inexplicable swiftness sprang the sun. and then star, sun and moon rushed together across the heavens. so it was that presently, to the european watchers, star and sun rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then slower, and at last came to rest, star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. the moon no longer eclipsed the star but was lost to sight in the brilliance of the sky. and though those who were still alive regarded it for the most part with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender, there were still men who could perceive the meaning of these signs. star and earth had been at their nearest, had swung about one another, and the star had passed. already it was receding, swifter and swifter, in the last stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun. and then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky, the thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world; all over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of mud. everywhere the waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted ruins, and the earth littered like a storm-worn beach with all that had floated, and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its children. for days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way, and piling huge dykes and scooping out titanic gullies over the country side. those were the days of darkness that followed the star and the heat. all through them, and for many weeks and months, the earthquakes continued. but the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden fields. such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports. and as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new. but of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over iceland and greenland and the shores of baffin's bay, so that the sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe their eyes, this story does not tell. nor of the movement of mankind now that the earth was hotter, northward and southward towards the poles of the earth. it concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the star. the martian astronomers--for there are astronomers on mars, although they are very different beings from men--were naturally profoundly interested by these things. they saw them from their own standpoint of course. "considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sun," one wrote, "it is astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. all the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white discoloration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole." which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles. a dream of armageddon the man with the white face entered the carriage at rugby. he moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform i noted how ill he seemed. he dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. then he glanced again in my direction. i feigned to read. i feared i had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment i was surprised to find him speaking. "i beg your pardon?" said i. "that book," he repeated, pointing a lean finger, "is about dreams." "obviously," i answered, for it was fortnum roscoe's dream states, and the title was on the cover. he hung silent for a space as if he sought words. "yes," he said at last, "but they tell you nothing." i did not catch his meaning for a second. "they don't know," he added. i looked a little more attentively at his face. "there are dreams," he said, "and dreams." that sort of proposition i never dispute. "i suppose--" he hesitated. "do you ever dream? i mean vividly." "i dream very little," i answered. "i doubt if i have three vivid dreams in a year." "ah!" he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts. "your dreams don't mix with your memories?" he asked abruptly. "you don't find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did it not?" "hardly ever. except just for a momentary hesitation now and then. i suppose few people do." "does he say--?" he indicated the book. "says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity of impression and the like to account for its not happening as a rule. i suppose you know something of these theories--" "very little--except that they are wrong." his emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time. i prepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate his next remark. he leant forward almost as though he would touch me. "isn't there something called consecutive dreaming--that goes on night after night?" "i believe there is. there are cases given in most books on mental trouble." "mental trouble! yes. i daresay there are. it's the right place for them. but what i mean--" he looked at his bony knuckles. "is that sort of thing always dreaming? is it dreaming? or is it something else? mightn't it be something else?" i should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face. i remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained--perhaps you know that look. "i'm not just arguing about a matter of opinion," he said. "the thing's killing me." "dreams?" "if you call them dreams. night after night. vivid!--so vivid . . . . this--" (he indicated the landscape that went streaming by the window) "seems unreal in comparison! i can scarcely remember who i am, what business i am on . . . ." he paused. "even now--" "the dream is always the same--do you mean?" i asked. "it's over." "you mean?" "i died." "died?" "smashed and killed, and now, so much of me as that dream was, is dead. dead forever. i dreamt i was another man, you know, living in a different part of the world and in a different time. i dreamt that night after night. night after night i woke into that other life. fresh scenes and fresh happenings--until i came upon the last--" "when you died?" "when i died." "and since then--" "no," he said. "thank god! that was the end of the dream . . ." it was clear i was in for this dream. and after all, i had an hour before me, the light was fading fast, and fortnum roscoe has a dreary way with him. "living in a different time," i said: "do you mean in some different age?" "yes." "past?" "no, to come--to come." "the year three thousand, for example?" "i don't know what year it was. i did when i was asleep, when i was dreaming, that is, but not now--not now that i am awake. there's a lot of things i have forgotten since i woke out of these dreams, though i knew them at the time when i was--i suppose it was dreaming. they called the year differently from our way of calling the year . . . what did they call it?" he put his hand to his forehead. "no," said he, "i forget." he sat smiling weakly. for a moment i feared he did not mean to tell me his dream. as a rule i hate people who tell their dreams, but this struck me differently. i proffered assistance even. "it began--" i suggested. "it was vivid from the first. i seemed to wake up in it suddenly. and it's curious that in these dreams i am speaking of i never remembered this life i am living now. it seemed as if the dream life was enough while it lasted. perhaps--but i will tell you how i find myself when i do my best to recall it all. i don't remember anything clearly until i found myself sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. i had been dozing, and suddenly i woke up--fresh and vivid--not a bit dreamlike--because the girl had stopped fanning me." "the girl?" "yes, the girl. you must not interrupt or you will put me out." he stopped abruptly. "you won't think i'm mad?" he said. "no," i answered. "you've been dreaming. tell me your dream." "i woke up, i say, because the girl had stopped fanning me. i was not surprised to find myself there or anything of that sort, you understand. i did not feel i had fallen into it suddenly. i simply took it up at that point. whatever memory i had of this life, this nineteenth-century life, faded as i woke, vanished like a dream. i knew all about myself, knew that my name was no longer cooper but hedon, and all about my position in the world. i've forgotten a lot since i woke--there's a want of connection--but it was all quite clear and matter of fact then." he hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his face forward and looking up to me appealingly. "this seems bosh to you?" "no, no!" i cried. "go on. tell me what this loggia was like!" "it was not really a loggia--i don't know what to call it. it faced south. it was small. it was all in shadow except the semicircle above the balcony that showed the sky and sea and the corner where the girl stood. i was on a couch--it was a metal couch with light striped cushions--and the girl was leaning over the balcony with her back to me. the light of the sunrise fell on her ear and cheek. her pretty white neck and the little curls that nestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, and all the grace of her body was in the cool blue shadow. she was dressed--how can i describe it? it was easy and flowing. and altogether there she stood, so that it came to me how beautiful and desirable she was, as though i had never seen her before. and when at last i sighed and raised myself upon my arm she turned her face to me--" he stopped. "i have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. i have had mother, sisters, friends, wife and daughters--all their faces, the play of their faces, i know. but the face of this girl--it is much more real to me. i can bring it back into memory so that i see it again--i could draw it or paint it. and after all--" he stopped--but i said nothing. "the face of a dream--the face of a dream. she was beautiful. not that beauty which is terrible, cold, and worshipful, like the beauty of a saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but a sort of radiation, sweet lips that softened into smiles, and grave gray eyes. and she moved gracefully, she seemed to have part with all pleasant and gracious things--" he stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. then he looked up at me and went on, making no further attempt to disguise his absolute belief in the reality of his story. "you see, i had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all i had ever worked for or desired for her sake. i had been a master man away there in the north, with influence and property and a great reputation, but none of it had seemed worth having beside her. i had come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures with her, and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a remnant at least of my life. while i had been in love with her before i knew that she had any care for me, before i had imagined that she would dare--that we should dare, all my life had seemed vain and hollow, dust and ashes. it was dust and ashes. night after night and through the long days i had longed and desired--my soul had beaten against the thing forbidden! "but it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things. it's emotion, it's a tint, a light that comes and goes. only while it's there, everything changes, everything. the thing is i came away and left them in their crisis to do what they could." "left whom?" i asked, puzzled. "the people up in the north there. you see--in this dream, anyhow--i had been a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in, to group themselves about. millions of men who had never seen me were ready to do things and risk things because of their confidence in me. i had been playing that game for years, that big laborious game, that vague, monstrous political game amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech and agitation. it was a vast weltering world, and at last i had a sort of leadership against the gang--you know it was called the gang--a sort of compromise of scoundrelly projects and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupidities and catch-words--the gang that kept the world noisy and blind year by year, and all the while that it was drifting, drifting towards infinite disaster. but i can't expect you to understand the shades and complications of the year--the year something or other ahead. i had it all--down to the smallest details--in my dream. i suppose i had been dreaming of it before i awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new development i had imagined still hung about me as i rubbed my eyes. it was some grubby affair that made me thank god for the sunlight. i sat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman and rejoicing--rejoicing that i had come away out of all that tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. after all, i thought, this is life--love and beauty, desire and delight, are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, gigantic ends? and i blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leader when i might have given my days to love. but then, thought i, if i had not spent my early days sternly and austerely, i might have wasted myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the thought all my being went out in love and tenderness to my dear mistress, my dear lady, who had come at last and compelled me--compelled me by her invincible charm for me--to lay that life aside. "'you are worth it,' i said, speaking without intending her to hear; 'you are worth it, my dearest one; worth pride and praise and all things. love! to have you is worth them all together." and at the murmur of my voice she turned about. "'come and see,' she cried--i can hear her now--'come and see the sunrise upon monte solaro.' "i remember how i sprang to my feet and joined her at the balcony. she put a white hand upon my shoulder and pointed towards great masses of limestone, flushing, as it were, into life. i looked. but first i noted the sunlight on her face caressing the lines of her cheeks and neck. how can i describe to you the scene we had before us? we were at capri--" "i have been there," i said. "i have clambered up monte solaro and drunk vero capri--muddy stuff like cider--at the summit." "ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tell me--you will know if this is indeed capri. for in this life i have never been there. let me describe it. we were in a little room, one of a vast multitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny, hollowed out of the limestone of a sort of cape, very high above the sea. the whole island, you know, was one enormous hotel, complex beyond explaining, and on the other side there were miles of floating hotels, and huge floating stages to which the flying machines came. they called it a pleasure city. of course, there was none of that in your time--rather, i should say, is none of that now. of course. now!--yes. "well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the cape, so that one could see east and west. eastward was a great cliff--a thousand feet high perhaps--coldly gray except for one bright edge of gold, and beyond it the isle of the sirens, and a falling coast that faded and passed into the hot sunrise. and when one turned to the west, distinct and near was a little bay, a little beach still in shadow. and out of that shadow rose solaro straight and tall, flushed and golden crested, like a beauty throned, and the white moon was floating behind her in the sky. and before us from east to west stretched the many-tinted sea all dotted with little sailing boats. "to the eastward, of course, these little boats were gray and very minute and clear, but to the westward they were little boats of gold--shining gold--almost like little flames. and just below us was a rock with an arch worn through it. the blue sea-water broke to green and foam all round the rock, and a galley came gliding out of the arch." "i know that rock." i said. "i was nearly drowned there. it is called the faraglioni." "i faraglioni? yes, she called it that," answered the man with the white face. "there was some story--but that--" he put his hand to his forehead again. "no," he said, "i forget that story." "well, that is the first thing i remember, the first dream i had, that little shaded room and the beautiful air and sky and that dear lady of mine, with her shining arms and her graceful robe, and how we sat and talked in half whispers to one another. we talked in whispers not because there was any one to hear, but because there was still such a freshness of mind between us that our thoughts were a little frightened, i think, to find themselves at last in words. and so they went softly. "presently we were hungry and we went from our apartment, going by a strange passage with a moving floor, until we came to the great breakfast room--there was a fountain and music. a pleasant and joyful place it was, with its sunlight and splashing, and the murmur of plucked strings. and we sat and ate and smiled at one another, and i would not heed a man who was watching me from a table near by. "and afterwards we went on to the dancing-hall. but i cannot describe that hall. the place was enormous--larger than any building you have ever seen--and in one place there was the old gate of capri, caught into the wall of a gallery high overhead. light girders, stems and threads of gold, burst from the pillars like fountains, streamed like an aurora across the roof and interlaced, like--like conjuring tricks. all about the great circle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strange dragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights. the place was inundated with artificial light that shamed the newborn day. and as we went through the throng the people turned about and looked at us, for all through the world my name and face were known, and how i had suddenly thrown up pride and struggle to come to this place. and they looked also at the lady beside me, though half the story of how at last she had come to me was unknown or mistold. and few of the men who were there, i know, but judged me a happy man, in spite of all the shame and dishonour that had come upon my name. "the air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of the rhythm of beautiful motions. thousands of beautiful people swarmed about the hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad recesses; they were dressed in splendid colours and crowned with flowers; thousands danced about the great circle beneath the white images of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of youths and maidens came and went. we two danced, not the dreary monotonies of your days--of this time, i mean--but dances that were beautiful, intoxicating. and even now i can see my lady dancing--dancing joyously. she danced, you know, with a serious face; she danced with a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me and caressing me--smiling and caressing with her eyes. "the music was different," he murmured. "it went--i cannot describe it; but it was infinitely richer and more varied than any music that has ever come to me awake. "and then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came to speak to me. he was a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad for that place, and already i had marked his face watching me in the breakfasting hall, and afterwards as we went along the passage i had avoided his eye. but now, as we sat in a little alcove, smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to and fro across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to me so that i was forced to listen. and he asked that he might speak to me for a little time apart. "'no,' i said. 'i have no secrets from this lady. what do you want to tell me?' "he said it was a trivial matter, or at least a dry matter, for a lady to hear. "'perhaps for me to hear,' said i. "he glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal to her. then he asked me suddenly if i had heard of a great and avenging declaration that evesham had made? now, evesham had always before been the man next to myself in the leadership of that great party in the north. he was a forcible, hard, and tactless man, and only i had been able to control and soften him. it was on his account even more than my own, i think, that the others had been so dismayed at my retreat. so this question about what he had done reawakened my old interest in the life i had put aside just for a moment. "'i have taken no heed of any news for many days,' i said. 'what has evesham been saying?' "and with that the man began, nothing loth, and i must confess even i was struck by evesham's reckless folly in the wild and threatening words he had used. and this messenger they had sent to me not only told me of evesham's speech, but went on to ask counsel and to point out what need they had of me. while he talked, my lady sat a little forward and watched his face and mine. "my old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves. i could even see myself suddenly returning to the north, and all the dramatic effect of it. all that this man said witnessed to the disorder of the party indeed, but not to its damage. i should go back stronger than i had come. and then i thought of my lady. you see--how can i tell you? there were certain peculiarities of our relationship--as things are i need not tell you about that--which would render her presence with me impossible. i should have had to leave her; indeed, i should have had to renounce her clearly and openly, if i was to do all that i could do in the north. and the man knew that, even as he talked to her and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to duty were--first, separation, then abandonment. at the touch of that thought my dream of a return was shattered. i turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence was gaining ground with me. "'what have i to do with these things now?' i said. 'i have done with them. do you think i am coquetting with your people in coming here?' "'no,' he said. 'but--' "'why cannot you leave me alone. i have done with these things. i have ceased to be anything but a private man.' "'yes,' he answered. 'but have you thought?--this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions--' "i stood up. "'no,' i cried. 'i won't hear you. i took count of all those things, i weighed them--and i have come away.' "he seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. he looked from me to where the lady sat regarding us. "'war,' he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then turned slowly from me and walked away. "i stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal had set going. "i heard my lady's voice. "'dear,' she said; 'but if they had need of you--' "she did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there. i turned to her sweet face, and the balance of my mood swayed and reeled. "'they want me only to do the thing they dare not do themselves,' i said. 'if they distrust evesham they must settle with him themselves.' "she looked at me doubtfully. "'but war--' she said. "i saw a doubt on her face that i had seen before, a doubt of herself and me, the first shadow of the discovery that, seen strongly and completely, must drive us apart for ever. "now, i was an older mind than hers, and i could sway her to this belief or that. "'my dear one,' i said, 'you must not trouble over these things. there will be no war. certainly there will be no war. the age of wars is past. trust me to know the justice of this case. they have no right upon me, dearest, and no one has a right upon me. i have been free to choose my life, and i have chosen this.' "'but war--,' she said. "i sat down beside her. i put an arm behind her and took her hand in mine. i set myself to drive that doubt away--i set myself to fill her mind with pleasant things again. i lied to her, and in lying to her i lied also to myself. and she was only too ready to believe me, only too ready to forget. "very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening to our bathing-place in the grotta del bovo marino, where it was our custom to bathe every day. we swam and splashed one another, and in that buoyant water i seemed to become something lighter and stronger than a man. and at last we came out dripping and rejoicing and raced among the rocks. and then i put on a dry bathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun, and presently i nodded, resting my head against her knee, and she put her hand upon my hair and stroked it softly and i dozed. and behold! as it were with the snapping of the string of a violin, i was awakening, and i was in my own bed in liverpool, in the life of to-day. "only for a time i could not believe that all these vivid moments had been no more than the substance of a dream. "in truth, i could not believe it a dream for all the sobering reality of things about me. i bathed and dressed as it were by habit, and as i shaved i argued why i of all men should leave the woman i loved to go back to fantastic politics in the hard and strenuous north. even if evesham did force the world back to war, what was that to me? i was a man with the heart of a man, and why should i feel the responsibility of a deity for the way the world might go? "you know that is not quite the way i think about affairs, about my real affairs. i am a solicitor, you know, with a point of view. "the vision was so real, you must understand, so utterly unlike a dream that i kept perpetually recalling little irrelevant details; even the ornament of the book-cover that lay on my wife's sewing-machine in the breakfast-room recalled with the utmost vividness the gilt line that ran about the seat in the alcove where i had talked with the messenger from my deserted party. have you ever heard of a dream that had a quality like that?" "like--?" "so that afterwards you remembered little details you had forgotten." i thought. i had never noticed the point before, but he was right. "never," i said. "that is what you never seem to do with dreams." "no," he answered. "but that is just what i did. i am a solicitor, you must understand, in liverpool, and i could not help wondering what the clients and business people i found myself talking to in my office would think if i told them suddenly i was in love with a girl who would be born a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried about the politics of my great-great-great-grandchildren. i was chiefly busy that day negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease. it was a private builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in every possible way. i had an interview with him, and he showed a certain want of temper that sent me to bed still irritated. that night i had no dream. nor did i dream the next night, at least, to remember. "something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. i began to feel sure it was a dream. and then it came again. "when the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was very different. i think it certain that four days had also elapsed in the dream. many things had happened in the north, and the shadow of them was back again between us, and this time it was not so easily dispelled. i began i know with moody musings. why, in spite of all, should i go back, go back for all the rest of my days to toil and stress, insults and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds of millions of common people, whom i did not love, whom too often i could do no other than despise, from the stress and anguish of war and infinite misrule? and after all i might fail. they all sought their own narrow ends, and why should not i--why should not i also live as a man? and out of such thoughts her voice summoned me, and i lifted my eyes. "i found myself awake and walking. we had come out above the pleasure city, we were near the summit of monte solaro and looking towards the bay. it was the late afternoon and very clear. far away to the left ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky, and naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us was vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and the ruins of torre dell' annunziata and castellammare glittering and near." i interrupted suddenly: "you have been to capri, of course?" "only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. all across the bay beyond sorrento were the floating palaces of the pleasure city moored and chained. and northward were the broad floating stages that received the aeroplanes. aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, each bringing its thousands of pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to capri and its delights. all these things, i say, stretched below. "but we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual sight that evening had to show. five war aeroplanes that had long slumbered useless in the distant arsenals of the rhinemouth were manoeuvring now in the eastward sky. evesham had astonished the world by producing them and others, and sending them to circle here and there. it was the threat material in the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. he was one of those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heaven to create disasters. his energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! but he had no imagination, no invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith in his stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through. i remember how we stood upon the headland watching the squadron circling far away, and how i weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly the way things must go. and then even it was not too late. i might have gone back, i think, and saved the world. the people of the north would follow me, i knew, granted only that in one thing i respected their moral standards. the east and south would trust me as they would trust no other northern man. and i knew i had only to put it to her and she would have let me go . . . . not because she did not love me! "only i did not want to go; my will was all the other way about. i had so newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: i was still so fresh a renegade from duty that the daylight clearness of what i ought to do had no power at all to touch my will. my will was to live, to gather pleasures and make my dear lady happy. but though this sense of vast neglected duties had no power to draw me, it could make me silent and preoccupied, it robbed the days i had spent of half their brightness and roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the night. and as i stood and watched evesham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro--those birds of infinite ill omen--she stood beside me watching me, perceiving the trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly--her eyes questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. her face was gray because the sunset was fading out of the sky. it was no fault of hers that she held me. she had asked me to go from her, and again in the night time and with tears she had asked me to go. "at last it was the sense of her that roused me from my mood. i turned upon her suddenly and challenged her to race down the mountain slopes. 'no,' she said, as if i had jarred with her gravity, but i was resolved to end that gravity, and make her run--no one can be very gray and sad who is out of breath--and when she stumbled i ran with my hand beneath her arm. we ran down past a couple of men, who turned back staring in astonishment at my behaviour--they must have recognised my face. and half way down the slope came a tumult in the air, clang-clank, clang-clank, and we stopped, and presently over the hill-crest those war things came flying one behind the other." the man seemed hesitating on the verge of a description. "what were they like?" i asked. "they had never fought," he said. "they were just like our ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. no one knew what they might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared to speculate. they were great driving things shaped like spear-heads without a shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft." "steel?" "not steel." "aluminum?" "no, no, nothing of that sort. an alloy that was very common--as common as brass, for example. it was called--let me see--" he squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "i am forgetting everything," he said. "and they carried guns?" "little guns, firing high explosive shells. they fired the guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the beak. that was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. no one could tell exactly what was going to happen. and meanwhile i suppose it was very fine to go whirling through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy. i guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what the real thing would be like. and these flying war machines, you know, were only one sort of the endless war contrivances that had been invented and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace. there were all sorts of these things that people were routing out and furbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had never been tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. you know the silly way of these ingenious sort of men who make these things; they turn 'em out as beavers build dams, and with no more sense of the rivers they're going to divert and the lands they're going to flood! "as we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again, in the twilight, i foresaw it all: i saw how clearly and inevitably things were driving for war in evesham's silly, violent hands, and i had some inkling of what war was bound to be under these new conditions. and even then, though i knew it was drawing near the limit of my opportunity, i could find no will to go back." he sighed. "that was my last chance. "we didn't go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so we walked out upon the high terrace, to and fro, and--she counselled me to go back. "'my dearest,' she said, and her sweet face looked up to me, 'this is death. this life you lead is death. go back to them, go back to your duty--' "she began to weep, saying, between her sobs, and clinging to my arm as she said it, 'go back--go back.' "then suddenly she fell mute, and, glancing down at her face, i read in an instant the thing she had thought to do. it was one of those moments when one sees. "'no!' i said. "'no?' she asked, in surprise and i think a little fearful at the answer to her thought. "'nothing,' i said, 'shall send me back. nothing! i have chosen. love, i have chosen, and the world must go. whatever happens i will live this life--i will live for you! it--nothing shall turn me aside; nothing, my dear one. even if you died--even if you died--' "'yes?' she murmured, softly. "'then--i also would die.' "and before she could speak again i began to talk, talking eloquently--as i could do in that life--talking to exalt love, to make the life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing i was deserting something hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thing to set aside. i bent all my mind to throw that glamour upon it, seeking not only to convert her but myself to that. we talked, and she clung to me, torn too between all that she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. and at last i did make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of the world only a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we two poor foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in that splendid delusion, drunken rather with that glorious delusion, under the still stars. "and so my moment passed. "it was my last chance. even as we went to and fro there, the leaders of the south and east were gathering their resolve, and the hot answer that shattered evesham's bluffing for ever, took shape and waited. and, all over asia, and the ocean, and the south, the air and the wires were throbbing with their warnings to prepare--prepare. "no one living, you know, knew what war was; no one could imagine, with all these new inventions, what horror war might bring. i believe most people still believed it would be a matter of bright uniforms and shouting charges and triumphs and flags and bands--in a time when half the world drew its food supply from regions ten thousand miles away--" the man with the white face paused. i glanced at him, and his face was intent on the floor of the carriage. a little railway station, a string of loaded trucks, a signal-box, and the back of a cottage, shot by the carriage window, and a bridge passed with a clap of noise, echoing the tumult of the train. "after that," he said, "i dreamt often. for three weeks of nights that dream was my life. and the worst of it was there were nights when i could not dream, when i lay tossing on a bed in this accursed life; and there--somewhere lost to me--things were happening--momentous, terrible things . . . i lived at nights--my days, my waking days, this life i am living now, became a faded, far-away dream, a drab setting, the cover of the book." he thought. "i could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the dream, but as to what i did in the daytime--no. i could not tell--i do not remember. my memory--my memory has gone. the business of life slips from me--" he leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. for a long time he said nothing. "and then?" said i. "the war burst like a hurricane." he stared before him at unspeakable things. "and then?" i urged again. "one touch of unreality," he said, in the low tone of a man who speaks to himself, "and they would have been nightmares. but they were not nightmares--they were not nightmares. no!" he was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that there was a danger of losing the rest of the story. but he went on talking again in the same tone of questioning self-communion. "what was there to do but flight? i had not thought the war would touch capri--i had seemed to see capri as being out of it all, as the contrast to it all; but two nights after the whole place was shouting and bawling, every woman almost and every other man wore a badge--evesham's badge--and there was no music but a jangling war-song over and over again, and everywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. the whole island was awhirl with rumours; it was said, again and again, that fighting had begun. i had not expected this. i had seen so little of the life of pleasure that i had failed to reckon with this violence of the amateurs. and as for me, i was out of it. i was like the man who might have prevented the firing of a magazine. the time had gone. i was no one; the vainest stripling with a badge counted for more than i. the crowd jostled us and bawled in our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at my lady because no badge was on her, and we two went back to our own place again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and i aquiver with rage. so furious was i, i could have quarrelled with her if i could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes. "all my magnificence had gone from me. i walked up and down our rock cell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the southward that flared and passed and came again. "'we must get out of this place,' i said over and over. 'i have made my choice, and i will have no hand in these troubles. i will have nothing of this war. we have taken our lives out of all these things. this is no refuge for us. let us go.' "and the next day we were already in flight from the war that covered the world. "and all the rest was flight--all the rest was flight." he mused darkly. "how much was there of it?" he made no answer. "how many days?" his face was white and drawn and his hands were clenched. he took no heed of my curiosity. i tried to draw him back to his story with questions. "where did you go?" i said. "when?" "when you left capri." "south-west," he said, and glanced at me for a second. "we went in a boat." "but i should have thought an aeroplane?" "they had been seized." i questioned him no more. presently i thought he was beginning again. he broke out in an argumentative monotone: "but why should it be? if, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress is life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? if there is no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreams of quiet places are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? surely it was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; it was love had isolated us. love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty, more glorious than all else in life, in the very shape and colour of life, and summoned me away. i had silenced all the voices, i had answered all the questions--i had come to her. and suddenly there was nothing but war and death!" i had an inspiration. "after all," i said, "it could have been only a dream." "a dream!" he cried, flaming upon me, "a dream--when, even now--" for the first time he became animated. a faint flush crept into his cheek. he raised his open hand and clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. he spoke, looking away from me, and for all the rest of the time he looked away. "we are but phantoms!" he said, "and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights--so be it! but one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream-stuff, but eternal and enduring. it is the centre of my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. i loved her, that woman of a dream. and she and i are dead together! "a dream! how can it be a dream, when it drenched a living life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that i have lived for and cared for, worthless and unmeaning? "until that very moment when she was killed i believed we had still a chance of getting away," he said. "all through the night and morning that we sailed across the sea from capri to salerno, we talked of escape. we were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of the world. we were uplifted, as though our quest was a holy thing, as though love for another was a mission . . . . "even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock capri--already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and hiding-places that were to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in the puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the gray; but, indeed, i made a text of that and talked. there, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carving of gray, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. and out under the archway that is built over the piccola marina other boats were coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the mainland, another little string of boats came into view, driving before the wind towards the south-west. in a little while a multitude had come out, the remoter just little specks of ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff. "'it is love and reason,' i said, 'fleeing from all this madness of war.' "and though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying across the southern sky we did not heed it. there it was--a line of little dots in the sky--and then more, dotting the south-eastern horizon, and then still more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks. now they were all thin little strokes of blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of light. they came, rising and falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks or such-like birds, moving with a marvellous uniformity, and ever as they drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. the southward wind flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud athwart the sun. and then suddenly they swept round to the eastward and streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and clearer again until they vanished from the sky. and after that we noted to the northward and very high evesham's fighting machines hanging high over naples like an evening swarm of gnats. "it seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of birds. "even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east seemed to us to signify nothing . . . "each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still seeking that refuge where we might live and love. fatigue had come upon us, pain and many distresses. for though we were dusty and stained by our toilsome tramping, and half starved and with the horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of the peasants--for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the peninsula--with these things haunting our minds it still resulted only in a deepening resolution to escape. oh, but she was brave and patient! she who had never faced hardship and exposure had courage for herself and me. we went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. always we went on foot. at first there were other fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. some escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. many of the men were impressed. but we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to bribe a passage north, and i feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds. we had landed at salerno, and we had been turned back from cava, and we had tried to cross towards taranto by a pass over mount alburno, but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among the marshes by paestum, where those great temples stand alone. i had some vague idea that by paestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take once more to sea. and there it was the battle overtook us. "a sort of soul-blindness had me. plainly i could see that we were being hemmed in; that the great net of that giant warfare had us in its toils. many times we had seen the levies that had come down from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in the distance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition and preparing the mounting of the guns. once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spies--at any rate a shot had gone shuddering over us. several times we had hidden in woods from hovering aeroplanes. "but all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain . . . we were in an open place near those great temples at paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. how i can see it! my lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, and i was standing up watching to see if i could tell the distance of the firing that came and went. they were still, you know, fighting far from each other, with those terrible new weapons that had never before been used: guns that would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do--what they would do no man could foretell. "i knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together. i knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and rest! "though all these things were in my mind, they were in the background. they seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. chiefly, i was thinking of my lady. an aching distress filled me. for the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. behind me i could hear her sobbing, but i would not turn round to her because i knew she had need of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. it was well, i thought, that she would weep and rest and then we would toil on again, for i had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. even now i can see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek. "'if we had parted,' she said, 'if i had let you go.' "'no,' said i.' even now, i do not repent. i will not repent; i made my choice, and i will hold on to the end.' "and then-"overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us i heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown. they chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks and passed . . . ." he put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips. "at the flash i had turned about . . . "you know--she stood up-"she stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me--as though she wanted to reach me-"and she had been shot through the heart." he stopped and stared at me. i felt all that foolish incapacity an englishman feels on such occasions. i met his eyes for a moment, and then stared out of the window. for a long space we kept silence. when at last i looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded, and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles. he bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it. "i carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my arms--as though it mattered. i don't know why. they seemed a sort of sanctuary, you know, they had lasted so long, i suppose. "she must have died almost instantly. only--i talked to her all the way." silence again. "i have seen those temples," i said abruptly, and indeed he had brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me. "it was the brown one, the big brown one. i sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms . . . silent after the first babble was over. and after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed . . . it was tremendously still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still--in spite of the thudding and banging that went all about the sky. "i seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and that the battle went away to the west. one aeroplane was struck, and overset and fell. i remember that--though it didn't interest me in the least. it didn't seem to signify. it was like a wounded gull, you know--flapping for a time in the water. i could see it down the aisle of the temple--a black thing in the bright blue water. "three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased. each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. that was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by--made just a fresh bright surface. "as the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater. "the curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who makes a trivial conversation, "is that i didn't _think_--at all. i sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort of lethargy--stagnant. "and i don't remember waking up. i don't remember dressing that day. i know i found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in front of me, and how i was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that in reality i was sitting, stunned, in that paestum temple with a dead woman in my arms. i read my letters like a machine. i have forgotten what they were about." he stopped, and there was a long silence. suddenly i perceived that we were running down the incline from chalk farm to euston. i started at this passing of time. i turned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of "now or never." "and did you dream again?" "yes." he seemed to force himself to finish. his voice was very low. "once more, and as it were only for a few instants. i seemed to have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones beside me. a gaunt body. not her, you know. so soon--it was not her . . . . "i may have heard voices. i do not know. only i knew clearly that men were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage. "i stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. they were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them. "and further away i saw others and then more at another point in the wall. it was a long lax line of men in open order. "presently the man i had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards the temple. he scrambled down with them and led them. he came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped. "at first i had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when i had seen they meant to come to the temple i was moved to forbid them. i shouted to the officer. "'you must not come here,' i cried, '_i_ am here. i am here with my dead.' "he stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown tongue. "i repeated what i had said. "he shouted again, and i folded my arms and stood still. presently he spoke to his men and came forward. he carried a drawn sword. "i signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. i told him again very patiently and clearly: 'you must not come here. these are old temples and i am here with my dead.' "presently he was so close i could see his face clearly. it was a narrow face, with dull gray eyes, and a black moustache. he had a scar on his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. he kept shouting unintelligible things, questions, perhaps, at me. "i know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not occur to me. as i tried to explain to him, he interrupted me in imperious tones, bidding me, i suppose, stand aside. "he made to go past me, and i caught hold of him. "i saw his face change at my grip. "'you fool,' i cried. 'don't you know? she is dead!' "he started back. he looked at me with cruel eyes. i saw a sort of exultant resolve leap into them--delight. then, suddenly, with a scowl, he swept his sword back--_so_--and thrust." he stopped abruptly. i became aware of a change in the rhythm of the train. the brakes lifted their voices and the carriage jarred and jerked. this present world insisted upon itself, became clamourous. i saw through the steamy window huge electric fights glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages passing by, and then a signal-box hoisting its constellation of green and red into the murky london twilight, marched after them. i looked again at his drawn features. "he ran me through the heart. it was with a sort of astonishment--no fear, no pain--but just amazement, that i felt it pierce me, felt the sword drive home into my body. it didn't hurt, you know. it didn't hurt at all." the yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing first rapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping with a jerk. dim shapes of men passed to and fro without. "euston!" cried a voice. "do you mean--?" "there was no pain, no sting or smart. amazement and then darkness sweeping over everything. the hot, brutal face before me, the face of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. it swept out of existence--" "euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "euston!" the carriage door opened admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood regarding us. the sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the london cobble-stones, came to my ears. a truckload of lighted lamps blazed along the platform. "a darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things." "any luggage, sir?" said the porter. "and that was the end?" i asked. he seemed to hesitate. then, almost inaudibly, he answered, "_no_." "you mean?" "i couldn't get to her. she was there on the other side of the temple-and then--" "yes," i insisted. "yes?" "nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! my god! great birds that fought and tore." the cone the night was hot and overcast, the sky red, rimmed with the lingering sunset of mid-summer. they sat at the open window, trying to fancy the air was fresher there. the trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening. farther were the three lights of the railway signal against the lowering sky. the man and woman spoke to one another in low tones. "he does not suspect?" said the man, a little nervously. "not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritated her. "he thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. he has no imagination, no poetry." "none of these men of iron have," he said sententiously. "they have no hearts." "_he_ has not," she said. she turned her discontented face towards the window. the distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of the tender. as the train passed, there was a glare of light above the cutting and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim grey of the embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train, smoke, and sound in one abrupt gulp. "this country was all fresh and beautiful once," he said; "and now--it is gehenna. down that way--nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching fire and dust into the face of heaven . . . . . but what does it matter? an end comes, an end to all this cruelty . . . . . _to-morrow_." he spoke the last word in a whisper. "_to-morrow_," she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staring out of the window. "dear!" he said, putting his hand on hers. she turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another's. hers softened to his gaze. "my dear one!" she said, and then: "it seems so strange--that you should have come into my life like this--to open--" she paused. "to open?" he said. "all this wonderful world--" she hesitated, and spoke still more softly--"this world of _love_ to me." then suddenly the door clicked and closed. they turned their heads, and he started violently back. in the shadow of the room stood a great shadowy figure--silent. they saw the face dimly in the half-light, with unexpressive dark patches under the penthouse brows. every muscle in raut's body suddenly became tense. when could the door have opened? what had he heard? had he heard all? what had he seen? a tumult of questions. the new-comer's voice came at last, after a pause that seemed interminable. "well?" he said. "i was afraid i had missed you, horrocks," said the man at the window, gripping the window-ledge with his hand. his voice was unsteady. the clumsy figure of horrocks came forward out of the shadow. he made no answer to raut's remark. for a moment he stood above them. the woman's heart was cold within her. "i told mr. raut it was just possible you might come back," she said, in a voice that never quivered. horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the chair by her little work-table. his big hands were clenched; one saw now the fire of his eyes under the shadow of his brows. he was trying to get his breath. his eyes went from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had trusted, and then back to the woman. by this time and for the moment all three half understood one another. yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things that choked them. it was the husband's voice that broke the silence at last. "you wanted to see me?" he said to raut. raut started as he spoke. "i came to see you," he said, resolved to lie to the last. "yes," said horrocks. "you promised," said raut, "to show me some fine effects of moonlight and smoke." "i promised to show you some fine effects of moonlight and smoke," repeated horrocks in a colourless voice. "and i thought i might catch you to-night before you went down to the works," proceeded raut, "and come with you." there was another pause. did the man mean to take the thing coolly? did he after all know? how long had he been in the room? yet even at the moment when they heard the door, their attitudes. . . . horrocks glanced at the profile of the woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. then he glanced at raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly. "of course," he said, "i promised to show you the works under their proper dramatic conditions. it's odd how i could have forgotten." "if i am troubling you--" began raut. horrocks started again. a new light had suddenly come into the sultry gloom of his eyes. "not in the least," he said. "have you been telling mr. raut of all these contrasts of flame and shadow you think so splendid?" said the woman, turning now to her husband for the first time, her confidence creeping back again, her voice just one half-note too high. "that dreadful theory of yours that machinery is beautiful, and everything else in the world ugly. i thought he would not spare you, mr. raut. it's his great theory, his one discovery in art." "i am slow to make discoveries," said horrocks grimly, damping her suddenly. "but what i discover . . . . ." he stopped. "well?" she said. "nothing;" and suddenly he rose to his feet. "i promised to show you the works," he said to raut, and put his big, clumsy hand on his friend's shoulder. "and you are ready to go?" "quite," said raut, and stood up also. there was another pause. each of them peered through the indistinctness of the dusk at the other two. horrocks' hand still rested on raut's shoulder. raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial after all. but mrs. horrocks knew her husband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in her mind took a vague shape of physical evil. "very well", said horrocks, and, dropping his hand, turned towards the door. "my hat?" raut looked round in the half-light. "that's my work-basket," said mrs. horrocks, with a gust of hysterical laughter. their hands came together on the back of the chair. "here it is!" he said. she had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but she could not frame a word. "don't go!" and "beware of him!" struggled in her mind, and the swift moment passed. "got it?" said horrocks, standing with the door half open. raut stepped towards him. "better say good-bye to mrs. horrocks," said the ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before. raut started and turned. "good-evening, mrs. horrocks," he said, and their hands touched. horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in him towards men. raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at her, her husband followed. she stood motionless while raut's light footfall and her husband's heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passage together. the front door slammed heavily. she went to the window, moving slowly, and stood watching--leaning forward. the two men appeared for a moment at the gateway in the road, passed under the street lamp, and were hidden by the black masses of the shrubbery. the lamp-light fell for a moment on their faces, showing only unmeaning pale patches, telling nothing of what she still feared, and doubted, and craved vainly to know. then she sank down into a crouching attitude in the big arm-chair, her eyes wide open and staring out at the red lights from the furnaces that flickered in the sky. an hour after she was still there, her attitude scarcely changed. the oppressive stillness of the evening weighed heavily upon raut. they went side by side down the road in silence, and in silence turned into the cinder-made by-way that presently opened out the prospect of the valley. a blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valley with mystery. beyond were hanley and etruria, grey and dark masses, outlined thinly by the rare golden dots of the street lamps, and here and there a gaslit window, or the yellow glare of some late-working factory or crowded public-house. out of the masses, clear and slender against the evening sky, rose a multitude of tall chimneys, many of them reeking, a few smokeless during a season of "play." here and there a pallid patch and ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the position of a pot-bank, or a wheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky, marked some colliery where they raise the iridescent coal of the place. nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway, and half invisible trains shunted--a steady puffing and rumbling, with every run a ringing concussion and a rhythmic series of impacts, and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steam across the further view. and to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the jeddah company blast furnaces, the central edifices of the big ironworks of which horrocks was the manager. they stood heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and the steam hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither and thither. even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and black dust came boiling upwards towards the sky. "certainly you get some fine effects of colour with your furnaces," said raut, breaking a silence that had become apprehensive. horrocks grunted. he stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning down at the dim steaming railway and the busy ironworks beyond, frowning as if he were thinking out some knotty problem. raut glanced at him and away again. "at present your moonlight effect is hardly ripe," he continued, looking upward. "the moon is still smothered by the vestiges of daylight." horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who has suddenly awakened. "vestiges of daylight? . . . . of course, of course." he too looked up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky. "come along," he said suddenly, and, gripping raut's arm in his hand, made a move towards the path that dropped from them to the railway. raut hung back. their eyes met and saw a thousand things in a moment that their eyes came near to say. horrocks' hand tightened and then relaxed. he let go, and before raut was aware of it, they were arm in arm, and walking, one unwillingly enough, down the path. "you see the fine effect of the railway signals towards burslem," said horrocks, suddenly breaking into loquacity, striding fast, and tightening the grip of his elbow the while. "little green lights and red and white lights, all against the haze. you have an eye for effect, raut. it's a fine effect. and look at those furnaces of mine, how they rise upon us as we come down the hill. that to the right is my pet--seventy feet of him. i packed him myself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five long years. i've a particular fancy for _him_. that line of red there--a lovely bit of warm orange you'd call it, raut--that's the puddlers' furnaces, and there, in the hot light, three black figures--did you see the white splash of the steam-hammer then?--that's the rolling mills. come along! clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across the floor! sheet tin, raut,--amazing stuff. glass mirrors are not in it when that stuff comes from the mill. and, squelch!--there goes the hammer again. come along!" he had to stop talking to catch at his breath. his arm twisted into raut's with benumbing tightness. he had come striding down the black path towards the railway as though he was possessed. raut had not spoken a word, had simply hung back against horrocks' pull with all his strength. "i say," he said now, laughing nervously, but with an undernote of snarl in his voice, "why on earth are you nipping my arm off, horrocks, and dragging me along like this?" at length horrocks released him. his manner changed again. "nipping your arm off?" he said. "sorry. but it's you taught me the trick of walking in that friendly way." "you haven't learnt the refinements of it yet then," said raut, laughing artificially again. "by jove! i'm black and blue." horrocks offered no apology. they stood now near the bottom of the hill, close to the fence that bordered the railway. the ironworks had grown larger and spread out with their approach. they looked up to the blast furnaces now instead of down; the further view of etruria and hanley had dropped out of sight with their descent. before them, by the stile rose a notice-board, bearing still dimly visible, the words, "beware of the trains," half hidden by splashes of coaly mud. "fine effects," said horrocks, waving his arm. "here comes a train. the puffs of smoke, the orange glare, the round eye of light in front of it, the melodious rattle. fine effects! but these furnaces of mine used to be finer, before we shoved cones in their throats, and saved the gas." "how?" said raut. "cones?" "cones, my man, cones. i'll show you one nearer. the flames used to flare out of the open throats, great--what is it?--pillars of cloud by day, red and black smoke, and pillars of fire by night. now we run it off in pipes, and burn it to heat the blast, and the top is shut by a cone. you'll be interested in that cone." "but every now and then," said raut, "you get a burst of fire and smoke up there." "the cone's not fixed, it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced by an equipoise. you shall see it nearer. else, of course, there'd be no way of getting fuel into the thing. every now and then the cone dips, and out comes the flare." "i see," said raut. he looked over his shoulder. "the moon gets brighter," he said. "come along," said horrocks abruptly, gripping his shoulder again, and moving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. and then came one of those swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that they leave one doubtful and reeling. halfway across, horrocks' hand suddenly clenched upon him like a vice, and swung him backward and through a half-turn, so that he looked up the line. and there a chain of lamp-lit carriage-windows telescoped swiftly as it came towards them, and the red and yellow lights of an engine grew larger and larger, rushing down upon them. as he grasped what this meant, he turned his face to horrocks, and pushed with all his strength against the arm that held him back between the rails. the struggle did not last a moment. just as certain as it was that horrocks held him there, so certain was it that he had been violently lugged out of danger. "out of the way," said horrocks, with a gasp, as the train came rattling by, and they stood panting by the gate into the ironworks. "i did not see it coming," said raut, still, even in spite of his own apprehensions, trying to keep up an appearance of ordinary intercourse. horrocks answered with a grunt. "the cone," he said, and then, as one who recovers himself, "i thought you did not hear." "i didn't," said raut. "i wouldn't have had you run over then for the world," said horrocks. "for a moment i lost my nerve," said raut. horrocks stood for half a minute, then turned abruptly towards the ironworks again. "see how fine these great mounds of mine, these clinker-heaps, look in the night! that truck yonder, up above there! up it goes, and out-tilts the slag. see the palpitating red stuff go sliding down the slope. as we get nearer, the heap rises up and cuts the blast furnaces. see the quiver up above the big one. not that way! this way, between the heaps. that goes to the puddling furnaces, but i want to show you the canal first." he came and took raut by the elbow, and so they went along side by side. raut answered horrocks vaguely. what, he asked himself, had really happened on the line? was he deluding himself with his own fancies, or had horrocks actually held him back in the way of the train? had he just been within an ace of being murdered? suppose this slouching, scowling monster _did_ know anything? for a minute or two then raut was really afraid for his life, but the mood passed as he reasoned with himself. after all, horrocks might have heard nothing. at any rate, he had pulled him out of the way in time. his odd manner might be due to the mere vague jealousy he had shown once before. he was talking now of the ash-heaps and the canal. "eigh?" said horrocks. "what?" said raut. "rather! the haze in the moonlight. fine!" "our canal," said horrocks, stopping suddenly. "our canal by moonlight and firelight is an immense effect. you've never seen it? fancy that! you've spent too many of your evenings philandering up in newcastle there. i tell you, for real florid effects--but you shall see. boiling water . . ." as they came out of the labyrinth of clinker-heaps and mounds of coal and ore, the noises of the rolling-mill sprang upon them suddenly, loud, near, and distinct. three shadowy workmen went by and touched their caps to horrocks. their faces were vague in the darkness. raut felt a futile impulse to address them, and before he could frame his words, they passed into the shadows. horrocks pointed to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the furnaces. the hot water that cooled the tuyeres came into it, some fifty yards up--a tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up from the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply about them, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black and red eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim. the shining black tower of the larger blast-furnace rose overhead out of the mist, and its tumultuous riot filled their ears. raut kept away from the edge of the water, and watched horrocks. "here it is red," said horrocks, "blood-red vapour as red and hot as sin; but yonder there, where the moonlight falls on it, and it drives across the clinker-heaps, it is as white as death." raut turned his head for a moment, and then came back hastily to his watch on horrocks. "come along to the rolling-mills," said horrocks. the threatening hold was not so evident that time, and raut felt a little reassured. but all the same, what on earth did horrocks mean about "white as death" and "red as sin?" coincidence, perhaps? they went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while, and then through the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant din the deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black, half-naked titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between the wheels. "come on," said horrocks in raut's ear, and they went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyeres, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. it left one eye blinded for a while. then, with green and blue patches dancing across the dark, they went to the lift by which the trucks of ore and fuel and lime were raised to the top of the big cylinder. and out upon the narrow rail that overhung the furnace, raut's doubts came upon him again. was it wise to be here? if horrocks did know--everything! do what he would, he could not resist a violent trembling. right under foot was a sheer depth of seventy feet. it was a dangerous place. they pushed by a truck of fuel to get to the railing that crowned the place. the reek of the furnace, a sulphurous vapor streaked with pungent bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of hanley quiver. the moon was riding out now from among a drift of clouds, halfway up the sky above the undulating wooded outlines of newcastle. the steaming canal ran away from below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze of the flat fields towards burslem. "that's the cone i've been telling you of," shouted horrocks; "and, below that, sixty feet of fire and molten metal, with the air of the blast frothing through it like gas in soda-water." raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared down at the cone. the heat was intense. the boiling of the iron and the tumult of the blast made a thunderous accompaniment to horrocks' voice. but the thing had to be gone through now. perhaps, after all . . . "in the middle," bawled horrocks, "temperature near a thousand degrees. if _you_ were dropped into it . . . . flash into flame like a pinch of gunpowder in a candle. put your hand out and feel the heat of his breath. why, even up here i've seen the rain-water boiling off the trucks. and that cone there. it's a damned sight too hot for roasting cakes. the top side of it's three hundred degrees." "three hundred degrees!" said raut. "three hundred centigrade, mind!" said horrocks. "it will boil the blood out of you in no time." "eigh?" said raut, and turned. "boil the blood out of you in . . . no, you don't!" "let me go!" screamed raut. "let go my arm!" with one hand he clutched at the hand-rail, then with both. for a moment the two men stood swaying. then suddenly, with a violent jerk, horrocks had twisted him from his hold. he clutched at horrocks and missed, his foot went back into empty air; in mid-air he twisted himself, and then cheek and shoulder and knee struck the hot cone together. he clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thing sank an infinitesimal amount as he struck it. a circle of glowing red appeared about him, and a tongue of flame, released from the chaos within, flickered up towards him. an intense pain assailed him at the knees, and he could smell the singeing of his hands. he raised himself to his feet, and tried to climb up the chain, and then something struck his head. black and shining with the moonlight, the throat of the furnace rose about him. horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel on the rail. the gesticulating figure was bright and white in the moonlight, and shouting, "fizzle, you fool! fizzle, you hunter of women! you hot-blooded hound! boil! boil! boil!" suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and flung it deliberately, lump after lump, at raut. "horrocks!" cried raut. "horrocks!" he clung crying to the chain, pulling himself up from the burning of the cone. each missile horrocks flung hit him. his clothes charred and glowed, and as he struggled the cone dropped, and a rush of hot suffocating gas whooped out and burned round him in a swift breath of flame. his human likeness departed from him. when the momentary red had passed, horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing in agony--a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a sobbing intermittent shriek. abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. a deadly sickness came upon him. the heavy odour of burning flesh came drifting up to his nostrils. his sanity returned to him. "god have mercy upon me!" he cried. "o god! what have i done?" he knew the thing below him, save that it still moved and felt, was already a dead man--that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling in his veins. an intense realisation of that agony came to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. for a moment he stood irresolute, and then, turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the struggling thing that had once been a man. the mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the cone. with the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. as it passed, he saw the cone clear again. then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to the rail with both hands. his lips moved, but no words came to them. down below was the sound of voices and running steps. the clangour of rolling in the shed ceased abruptly. a moonlight fable there was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes. it was green and gold and woven so that i cannot describe how delicate and fine it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that tied up under his chin. and the buttons in their newness shone like stars. he was proud and pleased by his suit beyond measure, and stood before the long looking-glass when first he put it on, so astonished and delighted with it that he could hardly turn himself away. he wanted to wear it everywhere and show it to all sorts of people. he thought over all the places he had ever visited and all the scenes he had ever heard described, and tried to imagine what the feel of it would be if he were to go now to those scenes and places wearing his shining suit, and he wanted to go out forthwith into the long grass and the hot sunshine of the meadow wearing it. just to wear it! but his mother told him, "no." she told him he must take great care of his suit, for never would he have another nearly so fine; he must save it and save it and only wear it on rare and great occasions. it was his wedding suit, she said. and she took his buttons and twisted them up with tissue paper for fear their bright newness should be tarnished, and she tacked little guards over the cuffs and elbows and wherever the suit was most likely to come to harm. he hated and resisted these things, but what could he do? and at last her warnings and persuasions had effect and he consented to take off his beautiful suit and fold it into its proper creases and put it away. it was almost as though he gave it up again. but he was always thinking of wearing it and of the supreme occasion when some day it might be worn without the guards, without the tissue paper on the buttons, utterly and delightfully, never caring, beautiful beyond measure. one night when he was dreaming of it, after his habit, he dreamed he took the tissue paper from one of the buttons and found its brightness a little faded, and that distressed him mightily in his dream. he polished the poor faded button and polished it, and if anything it grew duller. he woke up and lay awake thinking of the brightness a little dulled and wondering how he would feel if perhaps when the great occasion (whatever it might be) should arrive, one button should chance to be ever so little short of its first glittering freshness, and for days and days that thought remained with him, distressingly. and when next his mother let him wear his suit, he was tempted and nearly gave way to the temptation just to fumble off one little bit of tissue paper and see if indeed the buttons were keeping as bright as ever. he went trimly along on his way to church full of this wild desire. for you must know his mother did, with repeated and careful warnings, let him wear his suit at times, on sundays, for example, to and fro from church, when there was no threatening of rain, no dust nor anything to injure it, with its buttons covered and its protections tacked upon it and a sunshade in his hand to shadow it if there seemed too strong a sunlight for its colours. and always, after such occasions, he brushed it over and folded it exquisitely as she had taught him, and put it away again. now all these restrictions his mother set to the wearing of his suit he obeyed, always he obeyed them, until one strange night he woke up and saw the moonlight shining outside his window. it seemed to him the moonlight was not common moonlight, nor the night a common night, and for a while he lay quite drowsily with this odd persuasion in his mind. thought joined on to thought like things that whisper warmly in the shadows. then he sat up in his little bed suddenly, very alert, with his heart beating very fast and a quiver in his body from top to toe. he had made up his mind. he knew now that he was going to wear his suit as it should be worn. he had no doubt in the matter. he was afraid, terribly afraid, but glad, glad. he got out of his bed and stood a moment by the window looking at the moonshine-flooded garden and trembling at the thing he meant to do. the air was full of a minute clamor of crickets and murmurings, of the infinitesimal shouting of little living things. he went very gently across the creaking boards, for fear that he might wake the sleeping house, to the big dark clothes-press wherein his beautiful suit lay folded, and he took it out garment by garment and softly and very eagerly tore off its tissue-paper covering and its tacked protections, until there it was, perfect and delightful as he had seen it when first his mother had given it to him--a long time it seemed ago. not a button had tarnished, not a thread had faded on this dear suit of his; he was glad enough for weeping as in a noiseless hurry he put it on. and then back he went, soft and quick, to the window and looked out upon the garden and stood there for a minute, shining in the moonlight, with his buttons twinkling like stars, before he got out on the sill and, making as little of a rustling as he could, clambered down to the garden path below. he stood before his mother's house, and it was white and nearly as plain as by day, with every window-blind but his own shut like an eye that sleeps. the trees cast still shadows like intricate black lace upon the wall. the garden in the moonlight was very different from the garden by day; moonshine was tangled in the hedges and stretched in phantom cobwebs from spray to spray. every flower was gleaming white or crimson black, and the air was aquiver with the thridding of small crickets and nightingales singing unseen in the depths of the trees. there was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious shadows; and all the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with iridescent jewels of dew. the night was warmer than any night had ever been, the heavens by some miracle at once vaster and nearer, and spite of the great ivory-tinted moon that ruled the world, the sky was full of stars. the little man did not shout nor sing for all his infinite gladness. he stood for a time like one awe-stricken, and then, with a queer small cry and holding out his arms, he ran out as if he would embrace at once the whole warm round immensity of the world. he did not follow the neat set paths that cut the garden squarely, but thrust across the beds and through the wet, tall, scented herbs, through the night stock and the nicotine and the clusters of phantom white mallow flowers and through the thickets of southern-wood and lavender, and knee-deep across a wide space of mignonette. he came to the great hedge and he thrust his way through it, and though the thorns of the brambles scored him deeply and tore threads from his wonderful suit, and though burs and goosegrass and havers caught and clung to him, he did not care. he did not care, for he knew it was all part of the wearing for which he had longed. "i am glad i put on my suit," he said; "i am glad i wore my suit." beyond the hedge he came to the duck-pond, or at least to what was the duck-pond by day. but by night it was a great bowl of silver moonshine all noisy with singing frogs, of wonderful silver moonshine twisted and clotted with strange patternings, and the little man ran down into its waters between the thin black rushes, knee-deep and waist-deep and to his shoulders, smiting the water to black and shining wavelets with either hand, swaying and shivering wavelets, amid which the stars were netted in the tangled reflections of the brooding trees upon the bank. he waded until he swam, and so he crossed the pond and came out upon the other side, trailing, as it seemed to him, not duckweed, but very silver in long, clinging, dripping masses. and up he went through the transfigured tangles of the willow-herb and the uncut seeding grass of the farther bank. and so he came glad and breathless into the highroad. "i am glad," he said, "beyond measure, that i had clothes that fitted this occasion." the highroad ran straight as an arrow flies, straight into the deep blue pit of sky beneath the moon, a white and shining road between the singing nightingales, and along it he went, running now and leaping, and now walking and rejoicing, in the clothes his mother had made for him with tireless, loving hands. the road was deep in dust, but that for him was only soft whiteness, and as he went a great dim moth came fluttering round his wet and shimmering and hastening figure. at first he did not heed the moth, and then he waved his hands at it and made a sort of dance with it as it circled round his head. "soft moth!" he cried, "dear moth! and wonderful night, wonderful night of the world! do you think my clothes are beautiful, dear moth? as beautiful as your scales and all this silver vesture of the earth and sky?" and the moth circled closer and closer until at last its velvet wings just brushed his lips . . . . . and next morning they found him dead with his neck broken in the bottom of the stone pit, with his beautiful clothes a little bloody and foul and stained with the duckweed from the pond. but his face was a face of such happiness that, had you seen it, you would have understood indeed how that he had died happy, never knowing the cool and streaming silver for the duckweed in the pond. the diamond maker some business had detained me in chancery lane nine in the evening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, i was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. so much of the sky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night, and i determined to make my way down to the embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head by watching the variegated lights upon the river. beyond comparison the night is the best time for this place; a merciful darkness hides the dirt of the waters, and the lights of this transitional age, red glaring orange, gas-yellow, and electric white, are set in shadowy outlines of every possible shade between grey and deep purple. through the arches of waterloo bridge a hundred points of light mark the sweep of the embankment, and above its parapet rise the towers of westminster, warm grey against the starlight. the black river goes by with only a rare ripple breaking its silence, and disturbing the reflections of the lights that swim upon its surface. "a warm night," said a voice at my side. i turned my head, and saw the profile of a man who was leaning over the parapet beside me. it was a refined face, not unhandsome, though pinched and pale enough, and the coat collar turned up and pinned round the throat marked his status in life as sharply as a uniform. i felt i was committed to the price of a bed and breakfast if i answered him. i looked at him curiously. would he have anything to tell me worth the money, or was he the common incapable--incapable even of telling his own story? there was a quality of intelligence in his forehead and eyes, and a certain tremulousness in his nether lip that decided me. "very warm," said i; "but not too warm for us here." "no," he said, still looking across the water, "it is pleasant enough here . . . . just now." "it is good," he continued after a pause, "to find anything so restful as this in london. after one has been fretting about business all day, about getting on, meeting obligations, and parrying dangers, i do not know what one would do if it were not for such pacific corners." he spoke with long pauses between the sentences. "you must know a little of the irksome labour of the world, or you would not be here. but i doubt if you can be so brain-weary and footsore as i am . . . . bah! sometimes i doubt if the game is worth the candle. i feel inclined to throw the whole thing over--name, wealth and position--and take to some modest trade. but i know if i abandoned my ambition--hardly as she uses me--i should have nothing but remorse left for the rest of my days." he became silent. i looked at him in astonishment. if ever i saw a man hopelessly hard-up it was the man in front of me. he was ragged and he was dirty, unshaven and unkempt; he looked as though he had been left in a dust-bin for a week. and he was talking to _me_ of the irksome worries of a large business. i almost laughed outright. either he was mad or playing a sorry jest on his own poverty. "if high aims and high positions," said i, "have their drawbacks of hard work and anxiety, they have their compensations. influence, the power of doing good, of assisting those weaker and poorer than ourselves; and there is even a certain gratification in display . . . . . " my banter under the circumstances was in very vile taste. i spoke on the spur of the contrast of his appearance and speech. i was sorry even while i was speaking. he turned a haggard but very composed face upon me. said he: "i forgot myself. of course you would not understand." he measured me for a moment. "no doubt it is very absurd. you will not believe me even when i tell you, so that it is fairly safe to tell you. and it will be a comfort to tell someone. i really have a big business in hand, a very big business. but there are troubles just now. the fact is . . . . i make diamonds." "i suppose," said i, "you are out of work just at present?" "i am sick of being disbelieved," he said impatiently, and suddenly unbuttoning his wretched coat he pulled out a little canvas bag that was hanging by a cord round his neck. from this he produced a brown pebble. "i wonder if you know enough to know what that is?" he handed it to me. now, a year or so ago, i had occupied my leisure in taking a london science degree, so that i have a smattering of physics and mineralogy. the thing was not unlike an uncut diamond of the darker sort, though far too large, being almost as big as the top of my thumb. i took it, and saw it had the form of a regular octahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious of minerals. i took out my penknife and tried to scratch it--vainly. leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, i tried the thing on my watch-glass, and scored a white line across that with the greatest ease. i looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. "it certainly is rather like a diamond. but, if so, it is a behemoth of diamonds. where did you get it?" "i tell you i made it," he said. "give it back to me." he replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket. "i will sell it you for one hundred pounds," he suddenly whispered eagerly. with that my suspicions returned. the thing might, after all, be merely a lump of that almost equally hard substance, corundum, with an accidental resemblance in shape to the diamond. or if it was a diamond, how came he by it, and why should he offer it at a hundred pounds? we looked into one another's eyes. he seemed eager, but honestly eager. at that moment i believed it was a diamond he was trying to sell. yet i am a poor man, a hundred pounds would leave a visible gap in my fortunes and no sane man would buy a diamond by gaslight from a ragged tramp on his personal warranty only. still, a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many thousands of pounds. then, thought i, such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned in every book on gems, and again i called to mind the stories of contraband and light-fingered kaffirs at the cape. i put the question of purchase on one side. "how did you get it?" said i. "i made it." i had heard something of moissan, but i knew his artificial diamonds were very small. i shook my head. "you seem to know something of this kind of thing. i will tell you a little about myself. perhaps then you may think better of the purchase." he turned round with his back to the river, and put his hands in his pockets. he sighed. "i know you will not believe me." "diamonds," he began--and as he spoke his voice lost its faint flavour of the tramp and assumed something of the easy tone of an educated man--are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in a suitable flux and under a suitable pressure; the carbon crystallises out, not as black-lead or charcoal-powder, but as small diamonds. so much has been known to chemists for years, but no one yet had hit upon exactly the right flux in which to melt up the carbon, or exactly the right pressure for the best results. consequently the diamonds made by chemists are small and dark, and worthless as jewels. now i, you know, have given up my life to this problem--given my life to it. "i began to work at the conditions of diamond making when i was seventeen, and now i am thirty-two. it seemed to me that it might take all the thought and energies of a man for ten years, or twenty years, but, even if it did, the game was still worth the candle. suppose one to have at last just hit the right trick before the secret got out and diamonds became as common as coal, one might realize millions. millions!" he paused and looked for my sympathy. his eyes shone hungrily. "to think," said he, "that i am on the verge of it all, and here! "i had," he proceeded, "about a thousand pounds when i was twenty-one, and this, i thought, eked out by a little teaching, would keep my researches going. a year or two was spent in study, at berlin chiefly, and then i continued on my own account. the trouble was the secrecy. you see, if once i had let out what i was doing, other men might have been spurred on by my belief in the practicability of the idea; and i do not pretend to be such a genius as to have been sure of coming in first, in the case of a race for the discovery. and you see it was important that if i really meant to make a pile, people should not know it was an artificial process and capable of turning out diamonds by the ton. so i had to work all alone. at first i had a little laboratory, but as my resources began to run out i had to conduct my experiments in a wretched unfurnished room in kentish town, where i slept at last on a straw mattress on the floor among all my apparatus. the money simply flowed away. i grudged myself everything except scientific appliances. i tried to keep things going by a little teaching, but i am not a very good teacher, and i have no university degree, nor very much education except in chemistry, and i found i had to give a lot of time and labour for precious little money. but i got nearer and nearer the thing. three years ago i settled the problem of the composition of the flux, and got near the pressure by putting this flux of mine and a certain carbon composition into a closed-up gun-barrel, filling up with water, sealing tightly, and heating." he paused. "rather risky," said i. "yes. it burst, and smashed all my windows and a lot of my apparatus; but i got a kind of diamond powder nevertheless. following out the problem of getting a big pressure upon the molten mixture from which the things were to crystallise, i hit upon some researches of daubree's at the paris _laboratorie des poudres et salpetres_. he exploded dynamite in a tightly screwed steel cylinder, too strong to burst, and i found he could crush rocks into a muck not unlike the south african bed in which diamonds are found. it was a tremendous strain on my resources, but i got a steel cylinder made for my purpose after his pattern. i put in all my stuff and my explosives, built up a fire in my furnace, put the whole concern in, and--went out for a walk." i could not help laughing at his matter-of-fact manner. "did you not think it would blow up the house? were there other people in the place?" "it was in the interest of science," he said, ultimately. "there was a costermonger family on the floor below, a begging-letter writer in the room behind mine, and two flower-women were upstairs. perhaps it was a bit thoughtless. but possibly some of them were out. "when i came back the thing was just where i left it, among the white-hot coals. the explosive hadn't burst the case. and then i had a problem to face. you know time is an important element in crystallisation. if you hurry the process the crystals are small--it is only by prolonged standing that they grow to any size. i resolved to let this apparatus cool for two years, letting the temperature go down slowly during the time. and i was now quite out of money; and with a big fire and the rent of my room, as well as my hunger to satisfy, i had scarcely a penny in the world. "i can hardly tell you all the shifts i was put to while i was making the diamonds. i have sold newspapers, held horses, opened cab-doors. for many weeks i addressed envelopes. i had a place as assistant to a man who owned a barrow, and used to call down one side of the road while he called down the other. "once for a week i had absolutely nothing to do, and i begged. what a week that was! one day the fire was going out and i had eaten nothing all day, and a little chap taking his girl out, gave me sixpence--to show off. thank heaven for vanity! how the fish-shops smelt! but i went and spent it all on coals, and had the furnace bright red again, and then--well, hunger makes a fool of a man. "at last, three weeks ago, i let the fire out. i took my cylinder and unscrewed it while it was still so hot that it punished my hands, and i scraped out the crumbling lava-like mass with a chisel, and hammered it into a powder upon an iron plate. and i found three big diamonds and five small ones. as i sat on the floor hammering, my door opened, and my neighbour, the begging-letter writer came in. he was drunk--as he usually is. "'nerchist,' said he. 'you're drunk,' said i. ''structive scoundrel,' said he. 'go to your father,' said i, meaning the father of lies. 'never you mind,' said he, and gave me a cunning wink, and hiccuped, and leaning up against the door, with his other eye against the door-post, began to babble of how he had been prying in my room, and how he had gone to the police that morning, and how they had taken down everything he had to say--''siffiwas a ge'm,' said he. then i suddenly realised i was in a hole. either i should have to tell these police my little secret, and get the whole thing blown upon, or be lagged as an anarchist. so i went up to my neighbour and took him by the collar, and rolled him about a bit, and then i gathered up my diamonds and cleared out. the evening newspapers called my den the kentish town bomb factory. and now i cannot part with the things for love or money. "if i go in to respectable jewellers they ask me to wait, and go and whisper to a clerk to fetch a policeman, and then i say i cannot wait. and i found out a receiver of stolen goods, and he simply stuck to the one i gave him and told me to prosecute if i wanted it back. i am going about now with several hundred thousand pounds-worth of diamonds round my neck, and without either food or shelter. you are the first person i have taken into my confidence. but i like your face and i am hard-driven." he looked into my eyes. "it would be madness," said i, "for me to buy a diamond under the circumstances. besides, i do not carry hundreds of pounds about in my pocket. yet i more than half believe your story. i will, if you like, do this: come to my office to-morrow . . . ." "you think i am a thief!" said he keenly. "you will tell the police. i am not coming into a trap." "somehow i am assured you are no thief. here is my card. take that, anyhow. you need not come to any appointment. come when you will." he took the card, and an earnest of my good-will. "think better of it and come," said i. he shook his head doubtfully. "i will pay back your half-crown with interest some day--such interest as will amaze you," said he. "anyhow, you will keep the secret? . . . . don't follow me." he crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under the archway leading into essex street, and i let him go. and that was the last i ever saw of him. afterwards i had two letters from him asking me to send bank-notes--not cheques--to certain addresses. i weighed the matter over and took what i conceived to be the wisest course. once he called upon me when i was out. my urchin described him as a very thin, dirty, and ragged man, with a dreadful cough. he left no message. that was the finish of him so far as my story goes. i wonder sometimes what has become of him. was he an ingenious monomaniac, or a fraudulent dealer in pebbles, or has he really made diamonds as he asserted? the latter is just sufficiently credible to make me think at times that i have missed the most brilliant opportunity of my life. he may of course be dead, and his diamonds carelessly thrown aside--one, i repeat, was almost as big as my thumb. or he may be still wandering about trying to sell the things. it is just possible he may yet emerge upon society, and, passing athwart my heavens in the serene altitude sacred to the wealthy and the well-advertised, reproach me silently for my want of enterprise. i sometimes think i might at least have risked five pounds. the lord of the dynamos the chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled at camberwell, and kept the electric railway going, came out of yorkshire, and his name was james holroyd. he was a practical electrician, but fond of whisky, a heavy red-haired brute with irregular teeth. he doubted the existence of the deity, but accepted carnot's cycle, and he had read shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry. his helper came out of the mysterious east, and his name was azuma-zi. but holroyd called him pooh-bah. holroyd liked a nigger because he would stand kicking--a habit with holroyd--and did not pry into the machinery and try to learn the ways of it. certain odd possibilities of the negro mind brought into abrupt contact with the crown of our civilisation holroyd never fully realised, though just at the end he got some inkling of them. to define azuma-zi was beyond ethnology. he was, perhaps, more negroid than anything else, though his hair was curly rather than frizzy, and his nose had a bridge. moreover, his skin was brown rather than black, and the whites of his eyes were yellow. his broad cheekbones and narrow chin gave his face something of the viperine v. his head, too, was broad behind, and low and narrow at the forehead, as if his brain had been twisted round in the reverse way to a european's. he was short of stature and still shorter of english. in conversation he made numerous odd noises of no known marketable value, and his infrequent words were carved and wrought into heraldic grotesqueness. holroyd tried to elucidate his religious beliefs, and--especially after whisky--lectured to him against superstition and missionaries. azuma-zi, however, shirked the discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it. azuma-zi had come, clad in white but insufficient raiment, out of the stokehole of the _lord clive_, from the straits settlements, and beyond, into london. he had heard even in his youth of the greatness and riches of london, where all the women are white and fair, and even the beggars in the streets are white, and he arrived, with newly earned gold coins in his pocket, to worship at the shrine of civilisation. the day of his landing was a dismal one; the sky was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle filtered down to the greasy streets, but he plunged boldly into the delights of shadwell, and was presently cast up, shattered in health, civilised in costume, penniless and, except in matters of the direst necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil for james holroyd and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at camberwell. and to james holroyd bullying was a labour of love. there were three dynamos with their engines at camberwell. the two that had been there since the beginning were small machines; the larger one was new. the smaller machines made a reasonable noise; their straps hummed over the drums, every now and then the brushes buzzed and fizzled, and the air churned steadily, whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. one was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating. but the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. the place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. this last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but azuma-zi accounted it unto the monster for mightiness and pride. if it were possible we would have the noises of that shed always about the reader as he reads, we would tell all our story to such an accompaniment. it was a steady stream of din, from which the ear picked out first one thread and then another; there was the intermittent snorting, panting, and seething of the steam engines, the suck and thud of their pistons, the dull beat on the air as the spokes of the great driving-wheels came round, a note the leather straps made as they ran tighter and looser, and a fretful tumult from the dynamos; and over all, sometimes inaudible, as the ear tired of it, and then creeping back upon the senses again, was this trombone note of the big machine. the floor never felt steady and quiet beneath one's feet, but quivered and jarred. it was a confusing, unsteady place, and enough to send anyone's thoughts jerking into odd zigzags. and for three months, while the big strike of the engineers was in progress, holroyd, who was a blackleg, and azuma-zi, who was a mere black, were never out of the stir and eddy of it, but slept and fed in the little wooden shanty between the shed and the gates. holroyd delivered a theological lecture on the text of his big machine soon after azuma-zi came. he had to shout to be heard in the din. "look at that," said holroyd; "where's your 'eathen idol to match 'im?" and azuma-zi looked. for a moment holroyd was inaudible, and then azuma-zi heard: "kill a hundred men. twelve per cent. on the ordinary shares," said holroyd, "and that's something like a gord!" holroyd was proud of his big dynamo, and expatiated upon its size and power to azuma-zi until heaven knows what odd currents of thought that and the incessant whirling and shindy set up within the curly black cranium. he would explain in the most graphic manner the dozen or so ways in which a man might be killed by it, and once he gave azuma-zi a shock as a sample of its quality. after that, in the breathing-times of his labour--it was heavy labour, being not only his own, but most of holroyd's--azuma-zi would sit and watch the big machine. now and then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which holroyd would swear, but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing. the band ran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one watched was the complacent thud of the piston. so it lived all day in this big airy shed, with him and holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew--mere captive devils of the british solomon--had been, but a machine enthroned. those two smaller dynamos, azuma-zi by force of contrast despised; the large one he privately christened the lord of the dynamos. they were fretful and irregular, but the big dynamo was steady. how great it was! how serene and easy in its working! greater and calmer even than the buddhas he had seen at rangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! the great black coils spun, spun, spun, the rings ran round under the brushes, and the deep note of its coil steadied the whole. it affected azuma-zi queerly. azuma-zi was not fond of labour. he would sit about and watch the lord of the dynamos while holroyd went away to persuade the yard porter to get whisky, although his proper place was not in the dynamo shed but behind the engines, and, moreover, if holroyd caught him skulking he got hit for it with a rod of stout copper wire. he would go and stand close to the colossus and look up at the great leather band running overhead. there was a black patch on the band that came round, and it pleased him somehow among all the clatter to watch this return again and again. odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it. scientific people tell us that savages give souls to rocks and trees--and a machine is a thousand times more alive than a rock or a tree. and azuma-zi was practically a savage still; the veneer of civilisation lay no deeper than his slop suit, his bruises, and the coal grime on his face and hands. his father before him had worshipped a meteoric stone, kindred blood it may be had splashed the broad wheels of juggernaut. he took every opportunity holroyd gave him of touching and handling the great dynamo that was fascinating him. he polished and cleaned it until the metal parts were blinding in the sun. he felt a mysterious sense of service in doing this. he would go up to it and touch its spinning coils gently. the gods he had worshipped were all far away. the people in london hid their gods. at last his dim feelings grew more distinct, and took shape in thoughts and at last in acts. when he came into the roaring shed one morning he salaamed to the lord of the dynamos, and then when holroyd was away, he went and whispered to the thundering machine that he was its servant, and prayed it to have pity on him and save him from holroyd. as he did so a rare gleam of light came in through the open archway of the throbbing machine-shed, and the lord of the dynamos, as he whirled and roared, was radiant with pale gold. then azuma-zi knew that his service was acceptable to his lord. after that he did not feel so lonely as he had done, and he had indeed been very much alone in london. and even when his work time was over, which was rare, he loitered about the shed. then, the next time holroyd maltreated him, azuma-zi went presently to the lord of the dynamos and whispered, "thou seest, o my lord!" and the angry whir of the machinery seemed to answer him. thereafter it appeared to him that whenever holroyd came into the shed a different note came into the sounds of the dynamo. "my lord bides his time," said azuma-zi to himself. "the iniquity of the fool is not yet ripe." and he waited and watched for the day of reckoning. one day there was evidence of short circuiting, and holroyd, making an unwary examination--it was in the afternoon--got a rather severe shock. azuma-zi from behind the engine saw him jump off and curse at the peccant coil. "he is warned," said azuma-zi to himself. "surely my lord is very patient." holroyd had at first initiated his "nigger" into such elementary conceptions of the dynamo's working as would enable him to take temporary charge of the shed in his absence. but when he noticed the manner in which azuma-zi hung about the monster he became suspicious. he dimly perceived his assistant was "up to something," and connecting him with the anointing of the coils with oil that had rotted the varnish in one place, he issued an edict, shouted above the confusion of the machinery, "don't 'ee go nigh that big dynamo any more, pooh-bah, or a'll take thy skin off!" besides, if it pleased azuma-zi to be near the big machine, it was plain sense and decency to keep him away from it. azuma-zi obeyed at the time, but later he was caught bowing before the lord of the dynamos. at which holroyd twisted his arm and kicked him as he turned to go away. as azuma-zi presently stood behind the engine and glared at the back of the hated holroyd, the noises of the machinery took a new rhythm, and sounded like four words in his native tongue. it is hard to say exactly what madness is. i fancy azuma-zi was mad. the incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his little store of knowledge and his big store of superstitious fancy, at last, into something akin to frenzy. at any rate, when the idea of making holroyd a sacrifice to the dynamo fetich was thus suggested to him, it filled him with a strange tumult of exultant emotion. that night the two men and their black shadows were alone in the shed together. the shed was lit with one big arc light that winked and flickered purple. the shadows lay black behind the dynamos, the ball governors of the engines whirled from light to darkness, and their pistons beat loud and steady. the world outside seen through the open end of the shed seemed incredibly dim and remote. it seemed absolutely silent, too, since the riot of the machinery drowned every external sound. far away was the black fence of the yard with grey shadowy houses behind, and above was the deep blue sky and the pale little stars. azuma-zi suddenly walked across the centre of the shed above which the leather bands were running, and went into the shadow by the big dynamo. holroyd heard a click, and the spin of the armature changed. "what are you dewin' with that switch?" he bawled in surprise. "han't i told you--" then he saw the set expression of azuma-zi's eyes as the asiatic came out of the shadow towards him. in another moment the two men were grappling fiercely in front of the great dynamo. "you coffee-headed fool!" gasped holroyd, with a brown hand at his throat. "keep off those contact rings." in another moment he was tripped and reeling back upon the lord of the dynamos. he instinctively loosened his grip upon his antagonist to save himself from the machine. the messenger, sent in furious haste from the station to find out what had happened in the dynamo shed, met azuma-zi at the porter's lodge by the gate. azuma-zi tried to explain something, but the messenger could make nothing of the black's incoherent english, and hurried on to the shed. the machines were all noisily at work, and nothing seemed to be disarranged. there was, however, a queer smell of singed hair. then he saw an odd-looking crumpled mass clinging to the front of the big dynamo, and, approaching, recognised the distorted remains of holroyd. the man stared and hesitated a moment. then he saw the face, and shut his eyes convulsively. he turned on his heel before he opened them, so that he should not see holroyd again, and went out of the shed to get advice and help. when azuma-zi saw holroyd die in the grip of the great dynamo he had been a little scared about the consequences of his act. yet he felt strangely elated, and knew that the favour of the lord dynamo was upon him. his plan was already settled when he met the man coming from the station, and the scientific manager who speedily arrived on the scene jumped at the obvious conclusion of suicide. this expert scarcely noticed azuma-zi, except to ask a few questions. did he see holroyd kill himself? azuma-zi explained that he had been out of sight at the engine furnace until he heard a difference in the noise from the dynamo. it was not a difficult examination, being untinctured by suspicion. the distorted remains of holroyd, which the electrician removed from the machine, were hastily covered by the porter with a coffee-stained tablecloth. somebody, by a happy inspiration, fetched a medical man. the expert was chiefly anxious to get the machine at work again, for seven or eight trains had stopped midway in the stuffy tunnels of the electric railway. azuma-zi, answering or misunderstanding the questions of the people who had by authority or impudence come into the shed, was presently sent back to the stoke-hole by the scientific manager. of course a crowd collected outside the gates of the yard--a crowd, for no known reason, always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a sudden death in london; two or three reporters percolated somehow into the engine-shed, and one even got to azuma-zi; but the scientific expert cleared them out again, being himself an amateur journalist. presently the body was carried away, and public interest departed with it. azuma-zi remained very quietly at his furnace, seeing over and over again in the coals a figure that wriggled violently and became still. an hour after the murder, to anyone coming into the shed it would have looked exactly as if nothing had ever happened there. peeping presently from his engine-room the black saw the lord dynamo spin and whirl beside his little brothers, and the driving wheels were beating round, and the steam in the pistons went thud, thud, exactly as it had been earlier in the evening. after all, from the mechanical point of view, it had been a most insignificant incident--the mere temporary deflection of a current. but now the slender form and slender shadow of the scientific manager replaced the sturdy outline of holroyd travelling up and down the lane of light upon the vibrating floor under the straps between the engines and the dynamos. "have i not served my lord?" said azuma-zi inaudibly, from his shadow, and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear. as he looked at the big whirling mechanism the strange fascination of it that had been a little in abeyance since holroyd's death, resumed its sway. never had azuma-zi seen a man killed so swiftly and pitilessly. the big humming machine had slain its victim without wavering for a second from its steady beating. it was indeed a mighty god. the unconscious scientific manager stood with his back to him, scribbling on a piece of paper. his shadow lay at the foot of the monster. "was the lord dynamo still hungry? his servant was ready." azuma-zi made a stealthy step forward; then stopped. the scientific manager suddenly stopped writing, and walked down the shed to the endmost of the dynamos, and began to examine the brushes. azuma-zi hesitated, and then slipped across noiselessly into shadow by the switch. there he waited. presently the manager's footsteps could be heard returning. he stopped in his old position, unconscious of the stoker crouching ten feet away from him. then the big dynamo suddenly fizzled, and in another moment azuma-zi had sprung out of the darkness upon him. first, the scientific manager was gripped round the body and swung towards the big dynamo, then, kicking with his knee and forcing his antagonist's head down with his hands, he loosened the grip on his waist and swung round away from the machine. then the black grasped him again, putting a curly head against his chest, and they swayed and panted as it seemed for an age or so. then the scientific manager was impelled to catch a black ear in his teeth and bite furiously. the black yelled hideously. they rolled over on the floor, and the black, who had apparently slipped from the vice of the teeth or parted with some ear--the scientific manager wondered which at the time--tried to throttle him. the scientific manager was making some ineffectual attempts to claw something with his hands and to kick, when the welcome sound of quick footsteps sounded on the floor. the next moment azuma-zi had left him and darted towards the big dynamo. there was a splutter amid the roar. the officer of the company who had entered, stood staring as azuma-zi caught the naked terminals in his hands, gave one horrible convulsion, and then hung motionless from the machine, his face violently distorted. "i'm jolly glad you came in when you did," said the scientific manager, still sitting on the floor. he looked at the still quivering figure. "it's not a nice death to die, apparently--but it is quick." the official was still staring at the body. he was a man of slow apprehension. there was a pause. the scientific manager got up on his feet rather awkwardly. he ran his fingers along his collar thoughtfully, and moved his head to and fro several times. "poor holroyd! i see now." then almost mechanically he went towards the switch in the shadow and turned the current into the railway circuit again. as he did so the singed body loosened its grip upon the machine and fell forward on its face. the core of the dynamo roared out loud and clear, and the armature beat the air. so ended prematurely the worship of the dynamo deity, perhaps the most short-lived of all religions. yet withal it could at least boast a martyrdom and a human sacrifice. the country of the blind three hundred miles and more from chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of ecuador's andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from all the world of men, the country of the blind. long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows, and thither indeed men came, a family or so of peruvian half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil spanish ruler. then came the stupendous outbreak of mindobamba, when it was night in quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at yaguachi and all the fish floating dying even as far as guayaquil; everywhere along the pacific slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the old arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off the country of the blind for ever from the exploring feet of men. but one of these early settlers had chanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world had so terribly shaken itself, and he perforce had to forget his wife and his child and all the friends and possessions he had left up there, and start life over again in the lower world. he started it again but ill, blindness overtook him, and he died of punishment in the mines; but the story he told begot a legend that lingers along the length of the cordilleras of the andes to this day. he told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness, into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama, beside a vast bale of gear, when he was a child. the valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man could desire--sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high. far overhead, on three sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice; but the glacier stream came not to them, but flowed away by the farther slopes, and only now and then huge ice masses fell on the valley side. in this valley it neither rained nor snowed, but the abundant springs gave a rich green pasture, that irrigation would spread over all the valley space. the settlers did well indeed there. their beasts did well and multiplied, and but one thing marred their happiness. yet it was enough to mar it greatly. a strange disease had come upon them and had made all the children born to them there--and, indeed, several older children also--blind. it was to seek some charm or antidote against this plague of blindness that he had with fatigue and danger and difficulty returned down the gorge. in those days, in such cases, men did not think of germs and infections, but of sins, and it seemed to him that the reason of this affliction must he in the negligence of these priestless immigrants to set up a shrine so soon as they entered the valley. he wanted a shrine--a handsome, cheap, effectual shrine--to be erected in the valley; he wanted relics and such-like potent things of faith, blessed objects and mysterious medals and prayers. in his wallet he had a bar of native silver for which he would not account; he insisted there was none in the valley with something of the insistence of an inexpert liar. they had all clubbed their money and ornaments together, having little need for such treasure up there, he said, to buy them holy help against their ill. i figure this dim-eyed young mountaineer, sunburnt, gaunt, and anxious, hat brim clutched feverishly, a man all unused to the ways of the lower world, telling this story to some keen-eyed, attentive priest before the great convulsion; i can picture him presently seeking to return with pious and infallible remedies against that trouble, and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastness where the gorge had once come out. but the rest of his story of mischances is lost to me, save that i know of his evil death after several years. poor stray from that remoteness! the stream that had once made the gorge now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave, and the legend his poor, ill-told story set going developed into the legend of a race of blind men somewhere "over there" one may still hear to-day. and amidst the little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the disease ran its course. the old became groping, the young saw but dimly, and the children that were born to them never saw at all. but life was very easy in that snow-rimmed basin, lost to all the world, with neither thorns nor briers, with no evil insects nor any beasts save the gentle breed of llamas they had lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the shrunken rivers in the gorges up which they had come. the seeing had become purblind so gradually that they scarcely noticed their loss. they guided the sightless youngsters hither and thither until they knew the whole valley marvellously, and when at last sight died out among them the race lived on. they had even time to adapt themselves to the blind control of fire, which they made carefully in stoves of stone. they were a simple strain of people at the first, unlettered, only slightly touched with the spanish civilisation, but with something of a tradition of the arts of old peru and of its lost philosophy. generation followed generation. they forgot many things; they devised many things. their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythical in colour and uncertain. in all things save sight they were strong and able, and presently chance sent one who had an original mind and who could talk and persuade among them, and then afterwards another. these two passed, leaving their effects, and the little community grew in numbers and in understanding, and met and settled social and economic problems that arose. generation followed generation. generation followed generation. there came a time when a child was born who was fifteen generations from that ancestor who went out of the valley with a bar of silver to seek god's aid, and who never returned. thereabout it chanced that a man came into this community from the outer world. and this is the story of that man. he was a mountaineer from the country near quito, a man who had been down to the sea and had seen the world, a reader of books in an original way, an acute and enterprising man, and he was taken on by a party of englishmen who had come out to ecuador to climb mountains, to replace one of their three swiss guides who had fallen ill. he climbed here and he climbed there, and then came the attempt on parascotopetl, the matterhorn of the andes, in which he was lost to the outer world. the story of that accident has been written a dozen times. pointer's narrative is the best. he tells how the little party worked their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatest precipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a little shelf of rock, and, with a touch of real dramatic power, how presently they found nunez had gone from them. they shouted, and there was no reply; shouted and whistled, and for the rest of that night they slept no more. as the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall. it seems impossible he could have uttered a sound. he had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche. his track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. far, far below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising out of a narrow, shut-in valley--the lost country of the blind. but they did not know it was the lost country of the blind, nor distinguish it in any way from any other narrow streak of upland valley. unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon, and pointer was called away to the war before he could make another attack. to this day parascotopetl lifts an unconquered crest, and pointer's shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows. and the man who fell survived. at the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came down in the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow-slope even steeper than the one above. down this he was whirled, stunned and insensible, but without a bone broken in his body; and then at last came to gentler slopes, and at last rolled out and lay still, buried amidst a softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and saved him. he came to himself with a dim fancy that he was ill in bed; then realized his position with a mountaineer's intelligence and worked himself loose and, after a rest or so, out until he saw the stars. he rested flat upon his chest for a space, wondering where he was and what had happened to him. he explored his limbs, and discovered that several of his buttons were gone and his coat turned over his head. his knife had gone from his pocket and his hat was lost, though he had tied it under his chin. he recalled that he had been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of the shelter wall. his ice-axe had disappeared. he decided he must have fallen, and looked up to see, exaggerated by the ghastly light of the rising moon, the tremendous flight he had taken. for a while he lay, gazing blankly at the vast, pale cliff towering above, rising moment by moment out of a subsiding tide of darkness. its phantasmal, mysterious beauty held him for a space, and then he was seized with a paroxysm of sobbing laughter . . . . after a great interval of time he became aware that he was near the lower edge of the snow. below, down what was now a moon-lit and practicable slope, he saw the dark and broken appearance of rock-strewn turf he struggled to his feet, aching in every joint and limb, got down painfully from the heaped loose snow about him, went downward until he was on the turf, and there dropped rather than lay beside a boulder, drank deep from the flask in his inner pocket, and instantly fell asleep . . . . he was awakened by the singing of birds in the trees far below. he sat up and perceived he was on a little alp at the foot of a vast precipice that sloped only a little in the gully down which he and his snow had come. over against him another wall of rock reared itself against the sky. the gorge between these precipices ran east and west and was full of the morning sunlight, which lit to the westward the mass of fallen mountain that closed the descending gorge. below him it seemed there was a precipice equally steep, but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of chimney-cleft dripping with snow-water, down which a desperate man might venture. he found it easier than it seemed, and came at last to another desolate alp, and then after a rock climb of no particular difficulty, to a steep slope of trees. he took his bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it opened out above upon green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quite distinctly a cluster of stone huts of unfamiliar fashion. at times his progress was like clambering along the face of a wall, and after a time the rising sun ceased to strike along the gorge, the voices of the singing birds died away, and the air grew cold and dark about him. but the distant valley with its houses was all the brighter for that. he came presently to talus, and among the rocks he noted--for he was an observant man--an unfamiliar fern that seemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands. he picked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk, and found it helpful. about midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and the sunlight. he was stiff and weary; he sat down in the shadow of a rock, filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down, and remained for a time, resting before he went on to the houses. they were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the whole aspect of that valley became, as he regarded it, queerer and more unfamiliar. the greater part of its surface was lush green meadow, starred with many beautiful flowers, irrigated with extraordinary care, and bearing evidence of systematic cropping piece by piece. high up and ringing the valley about was a wall, and what appeared to be a circumferential water channel, from which the little trickles of water that fed the meadow plants came, and on the higher slopes above this flocks of llamas cropped the scanty herbage. sheds, apparently shelters or feeding-places for the llamas, stood against the boundary wall here and there. the irrigation streams ran together into a main channel down the centre of the valley, and this was enclosed on either side by a wall breast high. this gave a singularly urban quality to this secluded place, a quality that was greatly enhanced by the fact that a number of paths paved with black and white stones, and each with a curious little kerb at the side, ran hither and thither in an orderly manner. the houses of the central village were quite unlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew; they stood in a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness, here and there their parti-coloured facade was pierced by a door, and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. they were parti-coloured with extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sort of plaster that was sometimes grey, sometimes drab, sometimes slate-coloured or dark brown; and it was the sight of this wild plastering first brought the word "blind" into the thoughts of the explorer. "the good man who did that," he thought, "must have been as blind as a bat." he descended a steep place, and so came to the wall and channel that ran about the valley, near where the latter spouted out its surplus contents into the deeps of the gorge in a thin and wavering thread of cascade. he could now see a number of men and women resting on piled heaps of grass, as if taking a siesta, in the remoter part of the meadow, and nearer the village a number of recumbent children, and then nearer at hand three men carrying pails on yokes along a little path that ran from the encircling wall towards the houses. these latter were clad in garments of llama cloth and boots and belts of leather, and they wore caps of cloth with back and ear flaps. they followed one another in single file, walking slowly and yawning as they walked, like men who have been up all night. there was something so reassuringly prosperous and respectable in their bearing that after a moment's hesitation nunez stood forward as conspicuously as possible upon his rock, and gave vent to a mighty shout that echoed round the valley. the three men stopped, and moved their heads as though they were looking about them. they turned their faces this way and that, and nunez gesticulated with freedom. but they did not appear to see him for all his gestures, and after a time, directing themselves towards the mountains far away to the right, they shouted as if in answer. nunez bawled again, and then once more, and as he gestured ineffectually the word "blind" came up to the top of his thoughts. "the fools must be blind," he said. when at last, after much shouting and wrath, nunez crossed the stream by a little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, and approached them, he was sure that they were blind. he was sure that this was the country of the blind of which the legends told. conviction had sprung upon him, and a sense of great and rather enviable adventure. the three stood side by side, not looking at him, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by his unfamiliar steps. they stood close together like men a little afraid, and he could see their eyelids closed and sunken, as though the very balls beneath had shrunk away. there was an expression near awe on their faces. "a man," one said, in hardly recognisable spanish. "a man it is--a man or a spirit--coming down from the rocks." but nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon life. all the old stories of the lost valley and the country of the blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain:-"in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." "in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." and very civilly he gave them greeting. he talked to them and used his eyes. "where does he come from, brother pedro?" asked one. "down out of the rocks." "over the mountains i come," said nunez, "out of the country beyond there--where men can see. from near bogota--where there are a hundred thousands of people, and where the city passes out of sight." "sight?" muttered pedro. "sight?" "he comes," said the second blind man, "out of the rocks." the cloth of their coats, nunez saw was curious fashioned, each with a different sort of stitching. they startled him by a simultaneous movement towards him, each with a hand outstretched. he stepped back from the advance of these spread fingers. "come hither," said the third blind man, following his motion and clutching him neatly. and they held nunez and felt him over, saying no word further until they had done so. "carefully," he cried, with a finger in his eye, and found they thought that organ, with its fluttering lids, a queer thing in him. they went over it again. "a strange creature, correa," said the one called pedro. "feel the coarseness of his hair. like a llama's hair." "rough he is as the rocks that begot him," said correa, investigating nunez's unshaven chin with a soft and slightly moist hand. "perhaps he will grow finer." nunez struggled a little under their examination, but they gripped him firm. "carefully," he said again. "he speaks," said the third man. "certainly he is a man." "ugh!" said pedro, at the roughness of his coat. "and you have come into the world?" asked pedro. "_out_ of the world. over mountains and glaciers; right over above there, half-way to the sun. out of the great, big world that goes down, twelve days' journey to the sea." they scarcely seemed to heed him. "our fathers have told us men may be made by the forces of nature," said correa. "it is the warmth of things, and moisture, and rottenness--rottenness." "let us lead him to the elders," said pedro. "shout first," said correa, "lest the children be afraid. this is a marvellous occasion." so they shouted, and pedro went first and took nunez by the hand to lead him to the houses. he drew his hand away. "i can see," he said. "see?" said correa. "yes; see," said nunez, turning towards him, and stumbled against pedro's pail. "his senses are still imperfect," said the third blind man. "he stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. lead him by the hand." "as you will," said nunez, and was led along laughing. it seemed they knew nothing of sight. well, all in good time he would teach them. he heard people shouting, and saw a number of figures gathering together in the middle roadway of the village. he found it tax his nerve and patience more than he had anticipated, that first encounter with the population of the country of the blind. the place seemed larger as he drew near to it, and the smeared plasterings queerer, and a crowd of children and men and women (the women and girls he was pleased to note had, some of them, quite sweet faces, for all that their eyes were shut and sunken) came about him, holding on to him, touching him with soft, sensitive hands, smelling at him, and listening at every word he spoke. some of the maidens and children, however, kept aloof as if afraid, and indeed his voice seemed coarse and rude beside their softer notes. they mobbed him. his three guides kept close to him with an effect of proprietorship, and said again and again, "a wild man out of the rocks." "bogota," he said. "bogota. over the mountain crests." "a wild man--using wild words," said pedro. "did you hear that-"_bogota?_ his mind has hardly formed yet. he has only the beginnings of speech." a little boy nipped his hand. "bogota!" he said mockingly. "aye! a city to your village. i come from the great world--where men have eyes and see." "his name's bogota," they said. "he stumbled," said correa--"stumbled twice as we came hither." "bring him in to the elders." and they thrust him suddenly through a doorway into a room as black as pitch, save at the end there faintly glowed a fire. the crowd closed in behind him and shut out all but the faintest glimmer of day, and before he could arrest himself he had fallen headlong over the feet of a seated man. his arm, outflung, struck the face of someone else as he went down; he felt the soft impact of features and heard a cry of anger, and for a moment he struggled against a number of hands that clutched him. it was a one-sided fight. an inkling of the situation came to him and he lay quiet. "i fell down," he said; "i couldn't see in this pitchy darkness." there was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried to understand his words. then the voice of correa said: "he is but newly formed. he stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean nothing with his speech." others also said things about him that he heard or understood imperfectly. "may i sit up?" he asked, in a pause. "i will not struggle against you again." they consulted and let him rise. the voice of an older man began to question him, and nunez found himself trying to explain the great world out of which he had fallen, and the sky and mountains and such-like marvels, to these elders who sat in darkness in the country of the blind. and they would believe and understand nothing whatever that he told them, a thing quite outside his expectation. they would not even understand many of his words. for fourteen generations these people had been blind and cut off from all the seeing world; the names for all the things of sight had faded and changed; the story of the outer world was faded and changed to a child's story; and they had ceased to concern themselves with anything beyond the rocky slopes above their circling wall. blind men of genius had arisen among them and questioned the shreds of belief and tradition they had brought with them from their seeing days, and had dismissed all these things as idle fancies and replaced them with new and saner explanations. much of their imagination had shrivelled with their eyes, and they had made for themselves new imaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and finger-tips. slowly nunez realised this: that his expectation of wonder and reverence at his origin and his gifts was not to be borne out; and after his poor attempt to explain sight to them had been set aside as the confused version of a new-made being describing the marvels of his incoherent sensations, he subsided, a little dashed, into listening to their instruction. and the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and religion, how that the world (meaning their valley) had been first an empty hollow in the rocks, and then had come first inanimate things without the gift of touch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense, and then men, and at last angels, whom one could hear singing and making fluttering sounds, but whom no one could touch at all, which puzzled nunez greatly until he thought of the birds. he went on to tell nunez how this time had been divided into the warm and the cold, which are the blind equivalents of day and night, and how it was good to sleep in the warm and work during the cold, so that now, but for his advent, the whole town of the blind would have been asleep. he said nunez must have been specially created to learn and serve the wisdom they had acquired, and that for all his mental incoherency and stumbling behaviour he must have courage and do his best to learn, and at that all the people in the door-way murmured encouragingly. he said the night--for the blind call their day night--was now far gone, and it behooved everyone to go back to sleep. he asked nunez if he knew how to sleep, and nunez said he did, but that before sleep he wanted food. they brought him food, llama's milk in a bowl and rough salted bread, and led him into a lonely place to eat out of their hearing, and afterwards to slumber until the chill of the mountain evening roused them to begin their day again. but nunez slumbered not at all. instead, he sat up in the place where they had left him, resting his limbs and turning the unanticipated circumstances of his arrival over and over in his mind. every now and then he laughed, sometimes with amusement and sometimes with indignation. "unformed mind!" he said. "got no senses yet! they little know they've been insulting their heaven-sent king and master . . . . . "i see i must bring them to reason. "let me think. "let me think." he was still thinking when the sun set. nunez had an eye for all beautiful things, and it seemed to him that the glow upon the snow-fields and glaciers that rose about the valley on every side was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. his eyes went from that inaccessible glory to the village and irrigated fields, fast sinking into the twilight, and suddenly a wave of emotion took him, and he thanked god from the bottom of his heart that the power of sight had been given him. he heard a voice calling to him from out of the village. "yaho there, bogota! come hither!" at that he stood up, smiling. he would show these people once and for all what sight would do for a man. they would seek him, but not find him. "you move not, bogota," said the voice. he laughed noiselessly and made two stealthy steps aside from the path. "trample not on the grass, bogota; that is not allowed." nunez had scarcely heard the sound he made himself. he stopped, amazed. the owner of the voice came running up the piebald path towards him. he stepped back into the pathway. "here i am," he said. "why did you not come when i called you?" said the blind man. "must you be led like a child? cannot you hear the path as you walk?" nunez laughed. "i can see it," he said. "there is no such word as _see_," said the blind man, after a pause. "cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet." nunez followed, a little annoyed. "my time will come," he said. "you'll learn," the blind man answered. "there is much to learn in the world." "has no one told you, 'in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king?'" "what is blind?" asked the blind man, carelessly, over his shoulder. four days passed and the fifth found the king of the blind still incognito, as a clumsy and useless stranger among his subjects. it was, he found, much more difficult to proclaim himself than he had supposed, and in the meantime, while he meditated his _coup d'etat_, he did what he was told and learnt the manners and customs of the country of the blind. he found working and going about at night a particularly irksome thing, and he decided that that should be the first thing he would change. they led a simple, laborious life, these people, with all the elements of virtue and happiness as these things can be understood by men. they toiled, but not oppressively; they had food and clothing sufficient for their needs; they had days and seasons of rest; they made much of music and singing, and there was love among them and little children. it was marvellous with what confidence and precision they went about their ordered world. everything, you see, had been made to fit their needs; each of the radiating paths of the valley area had a constant angle to the others, and was distinguished by a special notch upon its kerbing; all obstacles and irregularities of path or meadow had long since been cleared away; all their methods and procedure arose naturally from their special needs. their senses had become marvellously acute; they could hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away--could hear the very beating of his heart. intonation had long replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as garden work can be. their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dog can, and they went about the tending of llamas, who lived among the rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter, with ease and confidence. it was only when at last nunez sought to assert himself that he found how easy and confident their movements could be. he rebelled only after he had tried persuasion. he tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight. "look you here, you people," he said. "there are things you do not understand in me." once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat with faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, and he did his best to tell them what it was to see. among his hearers was a girl, with eyelids less red and sunken than the others, so that one could almost fancy she was hiding eyes, whom especially he hoped to persuade. he spoke of the beauties of sight, of watching the mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. they told him there were indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of the rocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world; thence sprang a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dew and the avalanches fell; and when he maintained stoutly the world had neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said his thoughts were wicked. so far as he could describe sky and clouds and stars to them it seemed to them a hideous void, a terrible blankness in the place of the smooth roof to things in which they believed--it was an article of faith with them that the cavern roof was exquisitely smooth to the touch. he saw that in some manner he shocked them, and gave up that aspect of the matter altogether, and tried to show them the practical value of sight. one morning he saw pedro in the path called seventeen and coming towards the central houses, but still too far off for hearing or scent, and he told them as much. "in a little while," he prophesied, "pedro will be here." an old man remarked that pedro had no business on path seventeen, and then, as if in confirmation, that individual as he drew near turned and went transversely into path ten, and so back with nimble paces towards the outer wall. they mocked nunez when pedro did not arrive, and afterwards, when he asked pedro questions to clear his character, pedro denied and outfaced him, and was afterwards hostile to him. then he induced them to let him go a long way up the sloping meadows towards the wall with one complaisant individual, and to him he promised to describe all that happened among the houses. he noted certain goings and comings, but the things that really seemed to signify to these people happened inside of or behind the windowless houses--the only things they took note of to test him by--and of those he could see or tell nothing; and it was after the failure of this attempt, and the ridicule they could not repress, that he resorted to force. he thought of seizing a spade and suddenly smiting one or two of them to earth, and so in fair combat showing the advantage of eyes. he went so far with that resolution as to seize his spade, and then he discovered a new thing about himself, and that was that it was impossible for him to hit a blind man in cold blood. he hesitated, and found them all aware that he had snatched up the spade. they stood all alert, with their heads on one side, and bent ears towards him for what he would do next. "put that spade down," said one, and he felt a sort of helpless horror. he came near obedience. then he had thrust one backwards against a house wall, and fled past him and out of the village. he went athwart one of their meadows, leaving a track of trampled grass behind his feet, and presently sat down by the side of one of their ways. he felt something of the buoyancy that comes to all men in the beginning of a fight, but more perplexity. he began to realise that you cannot even fight happily with creatures who stand upon a different mental basis to yourself. far away he saw a number of men carrying spades and sticks come out of the street of houses and advance in a spreading line along the several paths towards him. they advanced slowly, speaking frequently to one another, and ever and again the whole cordon would halt and sniff the air and listen. the first time they did this nunez laughed. but afterwards he did not laugh. one struck his trail in the meadow grass and came stooping and feeling his way along it. for five minutes he watched the slow extension of the cordon, and then his vague disposition to do something forthwith became frantic. he stood up, went a pace or so towards the circumferential wall, turned, and went back a little way. there they all stood in a crescent, still and listening. he also stood still, gripping his spade very tightly in both hands. should he charge them? the pulse in his ears ran into the rhythm of "in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." should he charge them? he looked back at the high and unclimbable wall behind--unclimbable because of its smooth plastering, but withal pierced with many little doors and at the approaching line of seekers. behind these others were now coming out of the street of houses. should he charge them? "bogota!" called one. "bogota! where are you?" he gripped his spade still tighter and advanced down the meadows towards the place of habitations, and directly he moved they converged upon him. "i'll hit them if they touch me," he swore; "by heaven, i will. i'll hit." he called aloud, "look here, i'm going to do what i like in this valley! do you hear? i'm going to do what i like and go where i like." they were moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet moving rapidly. it was like playing blind man's buff with everyone blindfolded except one. "get hold of him!" cried one. he found himself in the arc of a loose curve of pursuers. he felt suddenly he must be active and resolute. "you don't understand," he cried, in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. "you are blind and i can see. leave me alone!" "bogota! put down that spade and come off the grass!" the last order, grotesque in its urban familiarity, produced a gust of anger. "i'll hurt you," he said, sobbing with emotion. "by heaven, i'll hurt you! leave me alone!" he began to run--not knowing clearly where to run. he ran from the nearest blind man, because it was a horror to hit him. he stopped, and then made a dash to escape from their closing ranks. he made for where a gap was wide, and the men on either side, with a quick perception of the approach of his paces, rushed in on one another. he sprang forward, and then saw he must be caught, and _swish!_ the spade had struck. he felt the soft thud of hand and arm, and the man was down with a yell of pain, and he was through. through! and then he was close to the street of houses again, and blind men, whirling spades and stakes, were running with a reasoned swiftness hither and thither. he heard steps behind him just in time, and found a tall man rushing forward and swiping at the sound of him. he lost his nerve, hurled his spade a yard wide of this antagonist, and whirled about and fled, fairly yelling as he dodged another. he was panic-stricken. he ran furiously to and fro, dodging when there was no need to dodge, and, in his anxiety to see on every side of him at once, stumbling. for a moment he was down and they heard his fall. far away in the circumferential wall a little doorway looked like heaven, and he set off in a wild rush for it. he did not even look round at his pursuers until it was gained, and he had stumbled across the bridge, clambered a little way among the rocks, to the surprise and dismay of a young llama, who went leaping out of sight, and lay down sobbing for breath. and so his _coup d'etat_ came to an end. he stayed outside the wall of the valley of the blind for two nights and days without food or shelter, and meditated upon the unexpected. during these meditations he repeated very frequently and always with a profounder note of derision the exploded proverb: "in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." he thought chiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these people, and it grew clear that for him no practicable way was possible. he had no weapons, and now it would be hard to get one. the canker of civilisation had got to him even in bogota, and he could not find it in himself to go down and assassinate a blind man. of course, if he did that, he might then dictate terms on the threat of assassinating them all. but--sooner or later he must sleep! . . . . he tried also to find food among the pine trees, to be comfortable under pine boughs while the frost fell at night, and--with less confidence--to catch a llama by artifice in order to try to kill it--perhaps by hammering it with a stone--and so finally, perhaps, to eat some of it. but the llamas had a doubt of him and regarded him with distrustful brown eyes and spat when he drew near. fear came on him the second day and fits of shivering. finally he crawled down to the wall of the country of the blind and tried to make his terms. he crawled along by the stream, shouting, until two blind men came out to the gate and talked to him. "i was mad," he said. "but i was only newly made." they said that was better. he told them he was wiser now, and repented of all he had done. then he wept without intention, for he was very weak and ill now, and they took that as a favourable sign. they asked him if he still thought he could "_see_." "no," he said. "that was folly. the word means nothing. less than nothing!" they asked him what was overhead. "about ten times ten the height of a man there is a roof above the world--of rock--and very, very smooth. so smooth--so beautifully smooth . ." he burst again into hysterical tears. "before you ask me any more, give me some food or i shall die!" he expected dire punishments, but these blind people were capable of toleration. they regarded his rebellion as but one more proof of his general idiocy and inferiority, and after they had whipped him they appointed him to do the simplest and heaviest work they had for anyone to do, and he, seeing no other way of living, did submissively what he was told. he was ill for some days and they nursed him kindly. that refined his submission. but they insisted on his lying in the dark, and that was a great misery. and blind philosophers came and talked to him of the wicked levity of his mind, and reproved him so impressively for his doubts about the lid of rock that covered their cosmic _casserole_ that he almost doubted whether indeed he was not the victim of hallucination in not seeing it overhead. so nunez became a citizen of the country of the blind, and these people ceased to be a generalised people and became individualities to him, and familiar to him, while the world beyond the mountains became more and more remote and unreal. there was yacob, his master, a kindly man when not annoyed; there was pedro, yacob's nephew; and there was medina-sarote, who was the youngest daughter of yacob. she was little esteemed in the world of the blind, because she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying, glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty, but nunez thought her beautiful at first, and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation. her closed eyelids were not sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but lay as though they might open again at any moment; and she had long eyelashes, which were considered a grave disfigurement. and her voice was weak and did not satisfy the acute hearing of the valley swains. so that she had no lover. there came a time when nunez thought that, could he win her, he would be resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of his days. he watched her; he sought opportunities of doing her little services and presently he found that she observed him. once at a rest-day gathering they sat side by side in the dim starlight, and the music was sweet. his hand came upon hers and he dared to clasp it. then very tenderly she returned his pressure. and one day, as they were at their meal in the darkness, he felt her hand very softly seeking him, and as it chanced the fire leapt then, and he saw the tenderness of her face. he sought to speak to her. he went to her one day when she was sitting in the summer moonlight spinning. the light made her a thing of silver and mystery. he sat down at her feet and told her he loved her, and told her how beautiful she seemed to him. he had a lover's voice, he spoke with a tender reverence that came near to awe, and she had never before been touched by adoration. she made him no definite answer, but it was clear his words pleased her. after that he talked to her whenever he could take an opportunity. the valley became the world for him, and the world beyond the mountains where men lived by day seemed no more than a fairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. very tentatively and timidly he spoke to her of sight. sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence. she did not believe, she could only half understand, but she was mysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she completely understood. his love lost its awe and took courage. presently he was for demanding her of yacob and the elders in marriage, but she became fearful and delayed. and it was one of her elder sisters who first told yacob that medina-sarote and nunez were in love. there was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of nunez and medina-sarote; not so much because they valued her as because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissible level of a man. her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing could not be. the young men were all angry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to revile and strike nunez. he struck back. then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after that fight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against him. but they still found his marriage impossible. old yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and was grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder. "you see, my dear, he's an idiot. he has delusions; he can't do anything right." "i know," wept medina-sarote. "but he's better than he was. he's getting better. and he's strong, dear father, and kind--stronger and kinder than any other man in the world. and he loves me--and, father, i love him." old yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable, and, besides--what made it more distressing--he liked nunez for many things. so he went and sat in the windowless council-chamber with the other elders and watched the trend of the talk, and said, at the proper time, "he's better than he was. very likely, some day, we shall find him as sane as ourselves." then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, had an idea. he was a great doctor among these people, their medicine-man, and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of curing nunez of his peculiarities appealed to him. one day when yacob was present he returned to the topic of nunez. "i have examined nunez," he said, "and the case is clearer to me. i think very probably he might be cured." "this is what i have always hoped," said old yacob. "his brain is affected," said the blind doctor. the elders murmured assent. "now, _what_ affects it?" "ah!" said old yacob. "_this_," said the doctor, answering his own question. "those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of nunez, in such a way as to affect his brain. they are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction." "yes?" said old yacob. "yes?" "and i think i may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation--namely, to remove these irritant bodies." "and then he will be sane?" "then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen." "thank heaven for science!" said old yacob, and went forth at once to tell nunez of his happy hopes. but nunez's manner of receiving the good news struck him as being cold and disappointing. "one might think," he said, "from the tone you take that you did not care for my daughter." it was medina-sarote who persuaded nunez to face the blind surgeons. "_you_ do not want me," he said, "to lose my gift of sight?" she shook her head. "my world is sight." her head drooped lower. "there are the beautiful things, the beautiful little things--the flowers, the lichens amidst the rocks, the light and softness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting dawn of clouds, the sunsets and the stars. and there is _you_. for you alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face, your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together. . . . . it is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to you, that these idiots seek. instead, i must touch you, hear you, and never see you again. i must come under that roof of rock and stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your imaginations stoop . . . _no_; _you_ would not have me do that?" a disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. he stopped and left the thing a question. "i wish," she said, "sometimes--" she paused. "yes?" he said, a little apprehensively. "i wish sometimes--you would not talk like that." "like what?" "i know it's pretty--it's your imagination. i love it, but _now_--" he felt cold. "_now?_" he said, faintly. she sat quite still. "you mean--you think--i should be better, better perhaps--" he was realising things very swiftly. he felt anger perhaps, anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of understanding--a sympathy near akin to pity. "_dear_," he said, and he could see by her whiteness how tensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say. he put his arms about her, he kissed her ear, and they sat for a time in silence. "if i were to consent to this?" he said at last, in a voice that was very gentle. she flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. "oh, if you would," she sobbed, "if only you would!" for a week before the operation that was to raise him from his servitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen nunez knew nothing of sleep, and all through the warm, sunlit hours, while the others slumbered happily, he sat brooding or wandered aimlessly, trying to bring his mind to bear on his dilemma. he had given his answer, he had given his consent, and still he was not sure. and at last work-time was over, the sun rose in splendour over the golden crests, and his last day of vision began for him. he had a few minutes with medina-sarote before she went apart to sleep. "to-morrow," he said, "i shall see no more." "dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all her strength. "they will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are going through this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for _me_ . . . . dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, i will repay you. my dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice, i will repay." he was drenched in pity for himself and her. he held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers and looked on her sweet face for the last time. "good-bye!" he whispered to that dear sight, "good-bye!" and then in silence he turned away from her. she could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping. he walked away. he had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden armour, marching down the steeps . . . . it seemed to him that before this splendour he and this blind world in the valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pit of sin. he did not turn aside as he had meant to do, but went on and passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the rocks, and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow. he saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared over them to the things beyond he was now to resign for ever! he thought of that great free world that he was parted from, the world that was his own, and he had a vision of those further slopes, distance beyond distance, with bogota, a place of multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a luminous mystery by night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and white houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. he thought how for a day or so one might come down through passes drawing ever nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. he thought of the river journey, day by day, from great bogota to the still vaster world beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places, the rushing river day by day, until its banks receded, and the big steamers came splashing by and one had reached the sea--the limitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of islands, and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyings round and about that greater world. and there, unpent by mountains, one saw the sky--the sky, not such a disc as one saw it here, but an arch of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in which the circling stars were floating . . . . his eyes began to scrutinise the great curtain of the mountains with a keener inquiry. for example; if one went so, up that gully and to that chimney there, then one might come out high among those stunted pines that ran round in a sort of shelf and rose still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge. and then? that talus might be managed. thence perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to the precipice that came below the snow; and if that chimney failed, then another farther to the east might serve his purpose better. and then? then one would be out upon the amber-lit snow there, and half-way up to the crest of those beautiful desolations. and suppose one had good fortune! he glanced back at the village, then turned right round and regarded it with folded arms. he thought of medina-sarote, and she had become small and remote. he turned again towards the mountain wall down which the day had come to him. then very circumspectly he began his climb. when sunset came he was not longer climbing, but he was far and high. his clothes were torn, his limbs were bloodstained, he was bruised in many places, but he lay as if he were at his ease, and there was a smile on his face. from where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile below. already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire. the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire, and the little things in the rocks near at hand were drenched with light and beauty, a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, a flash of small crystal here and there, a minute, minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. there were deep, mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was the illimitable vastness of the sky. but he heeded these things no longer, but lay quite still there, smiling as if he were content now merely to have escaped from the valley of the blind, in which he had thought to be king. and the glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and still he lay there, under the cold, clear stars. the stolen bacillus and other incidents by h.g. wells author of "the time machine" methuen & co. 36 essex street, strand london 1895 _colonial library_ to h.b. marriott watson most of the stories in this collection appeared originally in the _pall mall budget_, two were published in the _pall mall gazette_, and one in _st james's gazette_. i desire to make the usual acknowledgments. the third story in the book was, i find, reprinted by the _observatory_, and the "lord of the dynamos" by the melbourne _leader_. h.g. wells. contents i. the stolen bacillus ii. the flowering of the strange orchid iii. in the avu observatory iv. the triumphs of a taxidermist v. a deal in ostriches vi. through a window vii. the temptation of harringay viii. the flying man ix. the diamond maker x. aepyornis island xi. the remarkable case of davidson's eyes xii. the lord of the dynamos xiii. the hammerpond park burglary xiv. a moth--_genus novo_ xv. the treasure in the forest the stolen bacillus "this again," said the bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, "is a preparation of the celebrated bacillus of cholera--the cholera germ." the pale-faced man peered down the microscope. he was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. "i see very little," he said. "touch this screw," said the bacteriologist; "perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. eyes vary so much. just the fraction of a turn this way or that." "ah! now i see," said the visitor. "not so very much to see after all. little streaks and shreds of pink. and yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! wonderful!" he stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in his hand towards the window. "scarcely visible," he said, scrutinising the preparation. he hesitated. "are these--alive? are they dangerous now?" "those have been stained and killed," said the bacteriologist. "i wish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe." "i suppose," the pale man said with a slight smile, "that you scarcely care to have such things about you in the living--in the active state?" "on the contrary, we are obliged to," said the bacteriologist. "here, for instance--" he walked across the room and took up one of several sealed tubes. "here is the living thing. this is a cultivation of the actual living disease bacteria." he hesitated, "bottled cholera, so to speak." a slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the pale man. "it's a deadly thing to have in your possession," he said, devouring the little tube with his eyes. the bacteriologist watched the morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. this man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. the lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the bacteriologist chiefly associated. it was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic, to take the most effective aspect of the matter. he held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. "yes, here is the pestilence imprisoned. only break such a little tube as this into a supply of drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that one must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste--say to them, 'go forth, increase and multiply, and replenish the cisterns,' and death--mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity--would be released upon this city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims. here he would take the husband from the wife, here the child from its mother, here the statesman from his duty, and here the toiler from his trouble. he would follow the water-mains, creeping along streets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they did not boil their drinking-water, creeping into the wells of the mineral-water makers, getting washed into salad, and lying dormant in ices. he would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-troughs, and by unwary children in the public fountains. he would soak into the soil, to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. once start him at the water supply, and before we could ring him in, and catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis." he stopped abruptly. he had been told rhetoric was his weakness. "but he is quite safe here, you know--quite safe." the pale-faced man nodded. his eyes shone. he cleared his throat. "these anarchist--rascals," said he, "are fools, blind fools--to use bombs when this kind of thing is attainable. i think--" a gentle rap, a mere light touch of the finger-nails was heard at the door. the bacteriologist opened it. "just a minute, dear," whispered his wife. when he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at his watch. "i had no idea i had wasted an hour of your time," he said. "twelve minutes to four. i ought to have left here by half-past three. but your things were really too interesting. no, positively i cannot stop a moment longer. i have an engagement at four." he passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and the bacteriologist accompanied him to the door, and then returned thoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. he was musing on the ethnology of his visitor. certainly the man was not a teutonic type nor a common latin one. "a morbid product, anyhow, i am afraid," said the bacteriologist to himself. "how he gloated on those cultivations of disease-germs!" a disturbing thought struck him. he turned to the bench by the vapour-bath, and then very quickly to his writing-table. then he felt hastily in his pockets, and then rushed to the door. "i may have put it down on the hall table," he said. "minnie!" he shouted hoarsely in the hall. "yes, dear," came a remote voice. "had i anything in my hand when i spoke to you, dear, just now?" pause. "nothing, dear, because i remember--" "blue ruin!" cried the bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the front door and down the steps of his house to the street. minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. down the street a slender man was getting into a cab. the bacteriologist, hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running and gesticulating wildly towards this group. one slipper came off, but he did not wait for it. "he has gone _mad_!" said minnie; "it's that horrid science of his"; and, opening the window, would have called after him. the slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder. he pointed hastily to the bacteriologist, said something to the cabman, the apron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered, and in a moment cab, and bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner. minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. then she drew her head back into the room again. she was dumbfounded. "of course he is eccentric," she meditated. "but running about london--in the height of the season, too--in his socks!" a happy thought struck her. she hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon the doorstep, and hailed a cab that opportunely crawled by. "drive me up the road and round havelock crescent, and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat." "velveteen coat, ma'am, and no 'at. very good, ma'am." and the cabman whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to this address every day in his life. some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that collects round the cabmen's shelter at haverstock hill were startled by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse, driven furiously. they were silent as it went by, and then as it receded--"that's 'arry 'icks. wot's _he_ got?" said the stout gentleman known as old tootles. "he's a-using his whip, he is, _to_ rights," said the ostler boy. "hullo!" said poor old tommy byles; "here's another bloomin' loonatic. blowed if there aint." "it's old george," said old tootles, "and he's drivin' a loonatic, _as_ you say. aint he a-clawin' out of the keb? wonder if he's after 'arry 'icks?" the group round the cabmen's shelter became animated. chorus: "go it, george!" "it's a race." "you'll ketch 'em!" "whip up!" "she's a goer, she is!" said the ostler boy. "strike me giddy!" cried old tootles. "here! _i'm_ a-goin' to begin in a minute. here's another comin'. if all the kebs in hampstead aint gone mad this morning!" "it's a fieldmale this time," said the ostler boy. "she's a followin' _him_," said old tootles. "usually the other way about." "what's she got in her 'and?" "looks like a 'igh 'at." "what a bloomin' lark it is! three to one on old george," said the ostler boy. "nexst!" minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. she did not like it but she felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down haverstock hill and camden town high street with her eyes ever intent on the animated back view of old george, who was driving her vagrant husband so incomprehensibly away from her. the man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms tightly folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. his mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation. chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. but his exultation far exceeded his fear. no anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. ravachol, vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled into insignificance beside him. he had only to make sure of the water supply, and break the little tube into a reservoir. how brilliantly he had planned it, forged the letter of introduction and got into the laboratory, and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity! the world should hear of him at last. all those people who had sneered at him, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company undesirable, should consider him at last. death, death, death! they had always treated him as a man of no importance. all the world had been in a conspiracy to keep him under. he would teach them yet what it is to isolate a man. what was this familiar street? great saint andrew's street, of course! how fared the chase? he craned out of the cab. the bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. that was bad. he would be caught and stopped yet. he felt in his pocket for money, and found half-a-sovereign. this he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab into the man's face. "more," he shouted, "if only we get away." the money was snatched out of his hand. "right you are," said the cabman, and the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the glistening side of the horse. the cab swayed, and the anarchist, half-standing under the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance. he felt the brittle thing crack, and the broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. he fell back into the seat with a curse, and stared dismally at the two or three drops of moisture on the apron. he shuddered. "well! i suppose i shall be the first. _phew_! anyhow, i shall be a martyr. that's something. but it is a filthy death, nevertheless. i wonder if it hurts as much as they say." presently a thought occurred to him--he groped between his feet. a little drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that to make sure. it was better to make sure. at any rate, he would not fail. then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the bacteriologist. in wellington street he told the cabman to stop, and got out. he slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. it was rapid stuff this cholera poison. he waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast awaiting the arrival of the bacteriologist. there was something tragic in his pose. the sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity. he greeted his pursuer with a defiant laugh. "vive l'anarchie! you are too late, my friend. i have drunk it. the cholera is abroad!" the bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his spectacles. "you have drunk it! an anarchist! i see now." he was about to say something more, and then checked himself. a smile hung in the corner of his mouth. he opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at which the anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towards waterloo bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many people as possible. the bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance of minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and overcoat. "very good of you to bring my things," he said, and remained lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the anarchist. "you had better get in," he said, still staring. minnie felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. "put on my shoes? certainly dear," said he, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure, now small in the distance, from his eyes. then suddenly something grotesque struck him, and he laughed. then he remarked, "it is really very serious, though." "you see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an anarchist. no--don't faint, or i cannot possibly tell you the rest. and i wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an anarchist, and took up a cultivation of that new species of bacterium i was telling you of, that infest, and i think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys; and like a fool, i said it was asiatic cholera. and he ran away with it to poison the water of london, and he certainly might have made things look blue for this civilised city. and now he has swallowed it. of course, i cannot say what will happen, but you know it turned that kitten blue, and the three puppies--in patches, and the sparrow--bright blue. but the bother is, i shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more. "put on my coat on this hot day! why? because we might meet mrs jabber. my dear, mrs jabber is not a draught. but why should i wear a coat on a hot day because of mrs--. oh! _very_ well." the flowering of the strange orchid the buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. you have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good-luck, as your taste may incline. the plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps--for the thing has happened again and again--there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. for the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? "johnsmithia"! there have been worse names. it was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made winter-wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales--that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. he was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. he might have collected stamps or coins, or translated horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. but, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse. "i have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to happen to me to-day." he spoke--as he moved and thought--slowly. "oh, don't say _that_!" said his housekeeper--who was also his remote cousin. for "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her. "you misunderstand me. i mean nothing unpleasant ... though what i do mean i scarcely know. "to-day," he continued, after a pause, "peters' are going to sell a batch of plants from the andamans and the indies. i shall go up and see what they have. it may be i shall buy something good, unawares. that may be it." he passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee. "are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day?" asked his cousin as she filled his cup. "yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast. "nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. "i wonder why? things enough happen to other people. there is harvey. only the other week; on monday he picked up sixpence, on wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on friday his cousin came home from australia, and on saturday he broke his ankle. what a whirl of excitement!--compared to me." "i think i would rather be without so much excitement," said his housekeeper. "it can't be good for you." "i suppose it's troublesome. still ... you see, nothing ever happens to me. when i was a little boy i never had accidents. i never fell in love as i grew up. never married.... i wonder how it feels to have something happen to you, something really remarkable. "that orchid-collector was only thirty-six--twenty years younger than myself--when he died. and he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. he killed a malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. and in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. it must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know--except, perhaps, the leeches." "i am sure it was not good for him," said the lady, with conviction. "perhaps not." and then wedderburn looked at his watch. "twenty-three minutes past eight. i am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. i think i shall wear my alpaca jacket--it is quite warm enough--and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. i suppose--" he glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face. "i think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to london," she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "there's all between here and the station coming back." when he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. he had made a purchase. it was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so. "there are vandas," he said, "and a dendrobe and some palaeonophis." he surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. they were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. it was his custom to live all his visits to london over again in the evening for her and his own entertainment. "i knew something would happen to-day. and i have bought all these. some of them--some of them--i feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be remarkable. i don't know how it is, but i feel just as sure as if someone had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable. "that one"--he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome--"was not identified. it may be a palaeonophis--or it may not. it may be a new species, or even a new genus. and it was the last that poor batten ever collected." "i don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "it's such an ugly shape." "to me it scarcely seems to have a shape." "i don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper. "it shall be put away in a pot to-morrow." "it looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead." wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "it is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. but you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance. it may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. how busy i shall be to-morrow! i must see to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow i shall set to work." "they found poor batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp--i forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very orchids crushed up under his body. he had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and i suppose he fainted. these mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. it may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain." "i think none the better of it for that." "men must work though women may weep," said wedderburn with profound gravity. "fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine--if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine--and no one round you but horrible natives! they say the andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches--and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the necessary training. and just for people in england to have orchids!" "i don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing," said wedderburn. "anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had let it wither. and it makes these things more interesting." "it makes them disgusting. i should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them. and just think, there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing! i never thought of that before. there! i declare i cannot eat another mouthful of dinner." "i will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window-seat. i can see them just as well there." the next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. he considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time. in the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange. several of the vandas and the dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. he was delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once, directly he made the discovery. "that is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are aã«rial rootlets." "they look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said his housekeeper. "i don't like them." "why not?" "i don't know. they look like fingers trying to get at you. i can't help my likes and dislikes." "i don't know for certain, but i don't _think_ there are any orchids i know that have aã«rial rootlets quite like that. it may be my fancy, of course. you see they are a little flattened at the ends." "i don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. "i know it's very silly of me--and i'm very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much. but i can't help thinking of that corpse." "but it may not be that particular plant. that was merely a guess of mine." his housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "anyhow i don't like it," she said. wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. but that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt inclined. "there are such queer things about orchids," he said one day; "such possibilities of surprises. you know, darwin studied their fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid-flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant. well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. some of the cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never be found with seed." "but how do they form new plants?" "by runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. that is easily explained. the puzzle is, what are the flowers for? "very likely," he added, "_my_ orchid may be something extraordinary in that way. if so i shall study it. i have often thought of making researches as darwin did. but hitherto i have not found the time, or something else has happened to prevent it. the leaves are beginning to unfold now. i do wish you would come and see them!" but she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache. she had seen the plant once again, and the aã«rial rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. so that she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. they were of the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base. he knew of no other leaves quite like them. the plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. and he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant. and at last the great thing happened. directly he entered the little glass house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great _palaeonophis lowii_ hid the corner where his new darling stood. there was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse. directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. and, behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. he stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration. the flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. he could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one. and the insufferable scent! how hot the place was! the blossoms swam before his eyes. he would see if the temperature was right. he made a step towards the thermometer. suddenly everything appeared unsteady. the bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. * * * * * at half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom. but wedderburn did not come in for his tea. "he is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten minutes. "his watch must have stopped. i will go and call him." she went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name. there was no reply. she noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume. then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes. for a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless. he was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. the tentacle-like aã«rial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands. she did not understand. then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood. with an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. she snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red. then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel. how they clung to him! she tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. she felt she was fainting, knew she must not. she left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. she caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the green-house. then she re-entered. she tugged now with renewed strength at wedderburn's motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. it still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. in a frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air. then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror. he was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches. the odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. for a moment he thought impossible things. "bring some water!" she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. when, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping with excitement, and with wedderburn's head upon her knee, wiping the blood from his face. "what's the matter?" said wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing them again at once. "go and tell annie to come out here to me, and then go for doctor haddon at once," she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and added, seeing he hesitated, "i will tell you all about it when you come back." presently wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, "you fainted in the hothouse." "and the orchid?" "i will see to that," she said. wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury. they gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. his housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to dr haddon. "come to the orchid-house and see," she said. the cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled. most of the torn aã«rial rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. the stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. the doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the aã«rial rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated. the next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent. the door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all the array of wedderburn's orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. but wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure. in the avu observatory the observatory at avu, in borneo, stands on the spur of the mountain. to the north rises the old crater, black at night against the unfathomable blue of the sky. from the little circular building, with its mushroom dome, the slopes plunge steeply downward into the black mysteries of the tropical forest beneath. the little house in which the observer and his assistant live is about fifty yards from the observatory, and beyond this are the huts of their native attendants. thaddy, the chief observer, was down with a slight fever. his assistant, woodhouse, paused for a moment in silent contemplation of the tropical night before commencing his solitary vigil. the night was very still. now and then voices and laughter came from the native huts, or the cry of some strange animal was heard from the midst of the mystery of the forest. nocturnal insects appeared in ghostly fashion out of the darkness, and fluttered round his light. he thought, perhaps, of all the possibilities of discovery that still lay in the black tangle beneath him; for to the naturalist the virgin forests of borneo are still a wonderland full of strange questions and half-suspected discoveries. woodhouse carried a small lantern in his hand, and its yellow glow contrasted vividly with the infinite series of tints between lavender-blue and black in which the landscape was painted. his hands and face were smeared with ointment against the attacks of the mosquitoes. even in these days of celestial photography, work done in a purely temporary erection, and with only the most primitive appliances in addition to the telescope, still involves a very large amount of cramped and motionless watching. he sighed as he thought of the physical fatigues before him, stretched himself, and entered the observatory. the reader is probably familiar with the structure of an ordinary astronomical observatory. the building is usually cylindrical in shape, with a very light hemispherical roof capable of being turned round from the interior. the telescope is supported upon a stone pillar in the centre, and a clockwork arrangement compensates for the earth's rotation, and allows a star once found to be continuously observed. besides this, there is a compact tracery of wheels and screws about its point of support, by which the astronomer adjusts it. there is, of course, a slit in the movable roof which follows the eye of the telescope in its survey of the heavens. the observer sits or lies on a sloping wooden arrangement, which he can wheel to any part of the observatory as the position of the telescope may require. within it is advisable to have things as dark as possible, in order to enhance the brilliance of the stars observed. the lantern flared as woodhouse entered his circular den, and the general darkness fled into black shadows behind the big machine, from which it presently seemed to creep back over the whole place again as the light waned. the slit was a profound transparent blue, in which six stars shone with tropical brilliance, and their light lay, a pallid gleam, along the black tube of the instrument. woodhouse shifted the roof, and then proceeding to the telescope, turned first one wheel and then another, the great cylinder slowly swinging into a new position. then he glanced through the finder, the little companion telescope, moved the roof a little more, made some further adjustments, and set the clockwork in motion. he took off his jacket, for the night was very hot, and pushed into position the uncomfortable seat to which he was condemned for the next four hours. then with a sigh he resigned himself to his watch upon the mysteries of space. there was no sound now in the observatory, and the lantern waned steadily. outside there was the occasional cry of some animal in alarm or pain, or calling to its mate, and the intermittent sounds of the malay and dyak servants. presently one of the men began a queer chanting song, in which the others joined at intervals. after this it would seem that they turned in for the night, for no further sound came from their direction, and the whispering stillness became more and more profound. the clockwork ticked steadily. the shrill hum of a mosquito explored the place and grew shriller in indignation at woodhouse's ointment. then the lantern went out and all the observatory was black. woodhouse shifted his position presently, when the slow movement of the telescope had carried it beyond the limits of his comfort. he was watching a little group of stars in the milky way, in one of which his chief had seen or fancied a remarkable colour variability. it was not a part of the regular work for which the establishment existed, and for that reason perhaps woodhouse was deeply interested. he must have forgotten things terrestrial. all his attention was concentrated upon the great blue circle of the telescope field--a circle powdered, so it seemed, with an innumerable multitude of stars, and all luminous against the blackness of its setting. as he watched he seemed to himself to become incorporeal, as if he too were floating in the ether of space. infinitely remote was the faint red spot he was observing. suddenly the stars were blotted out. a flash of blackness passed, and they were visible again. "queer," said woodhouse. "must have been a bird." the thing happened again, and immediately after the great tube shivered as though it had been struck. then the dome of the observatory resounded with a series of thundering blows. the stars seemed to sweep aside as the telescope--which had been undamped--swung round and away from the slit in the roof. "great scott!" cried woodhouse. "what's this?" some huge vague black shape, with a flapping something like a wing, seemed to be struggling in the aperture of the roof. in another moment the slit was clear again, and the luminous haze of the milky way shone warm and bright. the interior of the roof was perfectly black, and only a scraping sound marked the whereabouts of the unknown creature. woodhouse had scrambled from the seat to his feet. he was trembling violently and in a perspiration with the suddenness of the occurrence. was the thing, whatever it was, inside or out? it was big, whatever else it might be. something shot across the skylight, and the telescope swayed. he started violently and put his arm up. it was in the observatory, then, with him. it was clinging to the roof, apparently. what the devil was it? could it see him? he stood for perhaps a minute in a state of stupefaction. the beast, whatever it was, clawed at the interior of the dome, and then something flapped almost into his face, and he saw the momentary gleam of starlight on a skin like oiled leather. his water-bottle was knocked off his little table with a smash. the sense of some strange bird-creature hovering a few yards from his face in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to woodhouse. as his thought returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large bat. at any risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from his pocket, he tried to strike it on the telescope seat. there was a smoking streak of phosphorescent light, the match flared for a moment, and he saw a vast wing sweeping towards him, a gleam of grey-brown fur, and then he was struck in the face and the match knocked out of his hand. the blow was aimed at his temple, and a claw tore sideways down to his cheek. he reeled and fell, and he heard the extinguished lantern smash. another blow followed as he fell. he was partly stunned, he felt his own warm blood stream out upon his face. instinctively he felt his eyes had been struck at, and, turning over on his face to protect them, tried to crawl under the protection of the telescope. he was struck again upon the back, and he heard his jacket rip, and then the thing hit the roof of the observatory. he edged as far as he could between the wooden seat and the eyepiece of the instrument, and turned his body round so that it was chiefly his feet that were exposed. with these he could at least kick. he was still in a mystified state. the strange beast banged about in the darkness, and presently clung to the telescope, making it sway and the gear rattle. once it flapped near him, and he kicked out madly and felt a soft body with his feet. he was horribly scared now. it must be a big thing to swing the telescope like that. he saw for a moment the outline of a head black against the starlight, with sharply-pointed upstanding ears and a crest between them. it seemed to him to be as big as a mastiff's. then he began to bawl out as loudly as he could for help. at that the thing came down upon him again. as it did so his hand touched something beside him on the floor. he kicked out, and the next moment his ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. he yelled again, and tried to free his leg by kicking with the other. then he realised he had the broken water-bottle at his hand, and, snatching it, he struggled into a sitting posture, and feeling in the darkness towards his foot, gripped a velvety ear, like the ear of a big cat. he had seized the water-bottle by its neck and brought it down with a shivering crash upon the head of the strange beast. he repeated the blow, and then stabbed and jobbed with the jagged end of it, in the darkness, where he judged the face might be. the small teeth relaxed their hold, and at once woodhouse pulled his leg free and kicked hard. he felt the sickening feel of fur and bone giving under his boot. there was a tearing bite at his arm, and he struck over it at the face, as he judged, and hit damp fur. there was a pause; then he heard the sound of claws and the dragging of a heavy body away from him over the observatory floor. then there was silence, broken only by his own sobbing breathing, and a sound like licking. everything was black except the parallelogram of the blue skylight with the luminous dust of stars, against which the end of the telescope now appeared in silhouette. he waited, as it seemed, an interminable time. was the thing coming on again? he felt in his trouser-pocket for some matches, and found one remaining. he tried to strike this, but the floor was wet, and it spat and went out. he cursed. he could not see where the door was situated. in his struggle he had quite lost his bearings. the strange beast, disturbed by the splutter of the match, began to move again. "time!" called woodhouse, with a sudden gleam of mirth, but the thing was not coming at him again. he must have hurt it, he thought, with the broken bottle. he felt a dull pain in his ankle. probably he was bleeding there. he wondered if it would support him if he tried to stand up. the night outside was very still. there was no sound of any one moving. the sleepy fools had not heard those wings battering upon the dome, nor his shouts. it was no good wasting strength in shouting. the monster flapped its wings and startled him into a defensive attitude. he hit his elbow against the seat, and it fell over with a crash. he cursed this, and then he cursed the darkness. suddenly the oblong patch of starlight seemed to sway to and fro. was he going to faint? it would never do to faint. he clenched his fists and set his teeth to hold himself together. where had the door got to? it occurred to him he could get his bearings by the stars visible through the skylight. the patch of stars he saw was in sagittarius and south-eastward; the door was north--or was it north by west? he tried to think. if he could get the door open he might retreat. it might be the thing was wounded. the suspense was beastly. "look here!" he said, "if you don't come on, i shall come at you." then the thing began clambering up the side of the observatory, and he saw its black outline gradually blot out the skylight. was it in retreat? he forgot about the door, and watched as the dome shifted and creaked. somehow he did not feel very frightened or excited now. he felt a curious sinking sensation inside him. the sharply-defined patch of light, with the black form moving across it, seemed to be growing smaller and smaller. that was curious. he began to feel very thirsty, and yet he did not feel inclined to get anything to drink. he seemed to be sliding down a long funnel. he felt a burning sensation in his throat, and then he perceived it was broad daylight, and that one of the dyak servants was looking at him with a curious expression. then there was the top of thaddy's face upside down. funny fellow, thaddy, to go about like that! then he grasped the situation better, and perceived that his head was on thaddy's knee, and thaddy was giving him brandy. and then he saw the eyepiece of the telescope with a lot of red smears on it. he began to remember. "you've made this observatory in a pretty mess," said thaddy. the dyak boy was beating up an egg in brandy. woodhouse took this and sat up. he felt a sharp twinge of pain. his ankle was tied up, so were his arm and the side of his face. the smashed glass, red-stained, lay about the floor, the telescope seat was overturned, and by the opposite wall was a dark pool. the door was open, and he saw the grey summit of the mountain against a brilliant background of blue sky. "pah!" said woodhouse. "who's been killing calves here? take me out of it." then he remembered the thing, and the fight he had had with it. "what _was_ it?" he said to thaddy--"the thing i fought with?" "_you_ know that best," said thaddy. "but, anyhow, don't worry yourself now about it. have some more to drink." thaddy, however, was curious enough, and it was a hard struggle between duty and inclination to keep woodhouse quiet until he was decently put away in bed, and had slept upon the copious dose of meat-extract thaddy considered advisable. they then talked it over together. "it was," said woodhouse, "more like a big bat than anything else in the world. it had sharp, short ears, and soft fur, and its wings were leathery. its teeth were little, but devilish sharp, and its jaw could not have been very strong or else it would have bitten through my ankle." "it has pretty nearly," said thaddy. "it seemed to me to hit out with its claws pretty freely. that is about as much as i know about the beast. our conversation was intimate, so to speak, and yet not confidential." "the dyak chaps talk about a big colugo, a klang-utang--whatever that may be. it does not often attack man, but i suppose you made it nervous. they say there is a big colugo and a little colugo, and a something else that sounds like gobble. they all fly about at night. for my own part i know there are flying foxes and flying lemurs about here, but they are none of them very big beasts." "there are more things in heaven and earth," said woodhouse--and thaddy groaned at the quotation--"and more particularly in the forests of borneo, than are dreamt of in our philosophies. on the whole, if the borneo fauna is going to disgorge any more of its novelties upon me, i should prefer that it did so when i was not occupied in the observatory at night and alone." the triumphs of a taxidermist here are some of the secrets of taxidermy. they were told me by the taxidermist in a mood of elation. he told me them in the time between the first glass of whisky and the fourth, when a man is no longer cautious and yet not drunk. we sat in his den together; his library it was, his sitting and his eating-room--separated by a bead curtain, so far as the sense of sight went, from the noisome den where he plied his trade. he sat on a deck chair, and when he was not tapping refractory bits of coal with them, he kept his feet--on which he wore, after the manner of sandals, the holy relics of a pair of carpet slippers--out of the way upon the mantel-piece, among the glass eyes. and his trousers, by-the-by--though they have nothing to do with his triumphs--were a most horrible yellow plaid, such as they made when our fathers wore side-whiskers and there were crinolines in the land. further, his hair was black, his face rosy, and his eye a fiery brown; and his coat was chiefly of grease upon a basis of velveteen. and his pipe had a bowl of china showing the graces, and his spectacles were always askew, the left eye glaring nakedly at you, small and penetrating; the right, seen through a glass darkly, magnified and mild. thus his discourse ran: "there never was a man who could stuff like me, bellows, never. i have stuffed elephants and i have stuffed moths, and the things have looked all the livelier and better for it. and i have stuffed human beings--chiefly amateur ornithologists. but i stuffed a nigger once. "no, there is no law against it. i made him with all his fingers out and used him as a hat-rack, but that fool homersby got up a quarrel with him late one night and spoilt him. that was before your time. it is hard to get skins, or i would have another. "unpleasant? i don't see it. seems to me taxidermy is a promising third course to burial or cremation. you could keep all your dear ones by you. bric-ã -brac of that sort stuck about the house would be as good as most company, and much less expensive. you might have them fitted up with clockwork to do things. "of course they would have to be varnished, but they need not shine more than lots of people do naturally. old manningtree's bald head.... anyhow, you could talk to them without interruption. even aunts. there is a great future before taxidermy, depend upon it. there is fossils again...." he suddenly became silent. "no, i don't think i ought to tell you that." he sucked at his pipe thoughtfully. "thanks, yes. not too much water. "of course, what i tell you now will go no further. you know i have made some dodos and a great auk? no! evidently you are an amateur at taxidermy. my dear fellow, half the great auks in the world are about as genuine as the handkerchief of saint veronica, as the holy coat of treves. we make 'em of grebes' feathers and the like. and the great auk's eggs too!" "good heavens!" "yes, we make them out of fine porcelain. i tell you it is worth while. they fetch--one fetched â£300 only the other day. that one was really genuine, i believe, but of course one is never certain. it is very fine work, and afterwards you have to get them dusty, for no one who owns one of these precious eggs has ever the temerity to clean the thing. that's the beauty of the business. even if they suspect an egg they do not like to examine it too closely. it's such brittle capital at the best. "you did not know that taxidermy rose to heights like that. my boy, it has risen higher. i have rivalled the hands of nature herself. one of the _genuine_ great auks"--his voice fell to a whisper--one of the _genuine_ great auks _was made by me_." "no. you must study ornithology, and find out which it is yourself. and what is more, i have been approached by a syndicate of dealers to stock one of the unexplored skerries to the north of iceland with specimens. i may--some day. but i have another little thing in hand just now. ever heard of the dinornis? "it is one of those big birds recently extinct in new zealand. 'moa' is its common name, so called because extinct: there is no moa now. see? well, they have got bones of it, and from some of the marshes even feathers and dried bits of skin. now, i am going to--well, there is no need to make any bones about it--going to _forge_ a complete stuffed moa. i know a chap out there who will pretend to make the find in a kind of antiseptic swamp, and say he stuffed it at once, as it threatened to fall to pieces. the feathers are peculiar, but i have got a simply lovely way of dodging up singed bits of ostrich plume. yes, that is the new smell you noticed. they can only discover the fraud with a microscope, and they will hardly care to pull a nice specimen to bits for that. "in this way, you see, i give my little push in the advancement of science. "but all this is merely imitating nature. i have done more than that in my time. i have--beaten her." he took his feet down from the mantel-board, and leant over confidentially towards me. "i have _created_ birds," he said in a low voice. "_new_ birds. improvements. like no birds that was ever seen before." he resumed his attitude during an impressive silence. "enrich the universe; _rath_-er. some of the birds i made were new kinds of humming birds, and very beautiful little things, but some of them were simply rum. the rummest, i think, was the _anomalopteryx jejuna. jejunus-a-um_--empty--so called because there was really nothing in it; a thoroughly empty bird--except for stuffing. old javvers has the thing now, and i suppose he is almost as proud of it as i am. it is a masterpiece, bellows. it has all the silly clumsiness of your pelican, all the solemn want of dignity of your parrot, all the gaunt ungainliness of a flamingo, with all the extravagant chromatic conflict of a mandarin duck. _such_ a bird. i made it out of the skeletons of a stork and a toucan and a job lot of feathers. taxidermy of that kind is just pure joy, bellows, to a real artist in the art. "how did i come to make it? simple enough, as all great inventions are. one of those young genii who write us science notes in the papers got hold of a german pamphlet about the birds of new zealand, and translated some of it by means of a dictionary and his mother-wit--he must have been one of a very large family with a small mother--and he got mixed between the living apteryx and the extinct anomalopteryx; talked about a bird five feet high, living in the jungles of the north island, rare, shy, specimens difficult to obtain, and so on. javvers, who even for a collector, is a miraculously ignorant man, read these paragraphs, and swore he would have the thing at any price. raided the dealers with enquiries. it shows what a man can do by persistence--will-power. here was a bird-collector swearing he would have a specimen of a bird that did not exist, that never had existed, and which for very shame of its own profane ungainliness, probably would not exist now if it could help itself. and he got it. _he got it_." "have some more whisky, bellows?" said the taxidermist, rousing himself from a transient contemplation of the mysteries of will-power and the collecting turn of mind. and, replenished, he proceeded to tell me of how he concocted a most attractive mermaid, and how an itinerant preacher, who could not get an audience because of it, smashed it because it was idolatry, or worse, at burslem wakes. but as the conversation of all the parties to this transaction, creator, would-be preserver, and destroyer, was uniformly unfit for publication, this cheerful incident must still remain unprinted. the reader unacquainted with the dark ways of the collector may perhaps be inclined to doubt my taxidermist, but so far as great auks' eggs, and the bogus stuffed birds are concerned, i find that he has the confirmation of distinguished ornithological writers. and the note about the new zealand bird certainly appeared in a morning paper of unblemished reputation, for the taxidermist keeps a copy and has shown it to me. a deal in ostriches "talking of the prices of birds, i've seen an ostrich that cost three hundred pounds," said the taxidermist, recalling his youth of travel. "three hundred pounds!" he looked at me over his spectacles. "i've seen another that was refused at four." "no," he said, "it wasn't any fancy points. they was just plain ostriches. a little off colour, too--owing to dietary. and there wasn't any particular restriction of the demand either. you'd have thought five ostriches would have ruled cheap on an east indiaman. but the point was, one of 'em had swallowed a diamond. "the chap it got it off was sir mohini padishah, a tremendous swell, a piccadilly swell you might say up to the neck of him, and then an ugly black head and a whopping turban, with this diamond in it. the blessed bird pecked suddenly and had it, and when the chap made a fuss it realised it had done wrong, i suppose, and went and mixed itself with the others to preserve its _incog_. it all happened in a minute. i was among the first to arrive, and there was this heathen going over his gods, and two sailors and the man who had charge of the birds laughing fit to split. it was a rummy way of losing a jewel, come to think of it. the man in charge hadn't been about just at the moment, so that he didn't know which bird it was. clean lost, you see. i didn't feel half sorry, to tell you the truth. the beggar had been swaggering over his blessed diamond ever since he came aboard. "a thing like that goes from stem to stern of a ship in no time. every one was talking about it. padishah went below to hide his feelings. at dinner--he pigged at a table by himself, him and two other hindoos--the captain kind of jeered at him about it, and he got very excited. he turned round and talked into my ear. he would not buy the birds; he would have his diamond. he demanded his rights as a british subject. his diamond must be found. he was firm upon that. he would appeal to the house of lords. the man in charge of the birds was one of those wooden-headed chaps you can't get a new idea into anyhow. he refused any proposal to interfere with the birds by way of medicine. his instructions were to feed them so-and-so and treat them so-and-so, and it was as much as his place was worth not to feed them so-and-so and treat them so-and-so. padishah had wanted a stomach-pump--though you can't do that to a bird, you know. this padishah was full of bad law, like most of these blessed bengalis, and talked of having a lien on the birds, and so forth. but an old boy, who said his son was a london barrister, argued that what a bird swallowed became _ipso facto_ part of the bird, and that padishah's only remedy lay in an action for damages, and even then it might be possible to show contributory negligence. he hadn't any right of way about an ostrich that didn't belong to him. that upset padishah extremely, the more so as most of us expressed an opinion that that was the reasonable view. there wasn't any lawyer aboard to settle the matter, so we all talked pretty free. at last, after aden, it appears that he came round to the general opinion, and went privately to the man in charge and made an offer for all five ostriches. "the next morning there was a fine shindy at breakfast. the man hadn't any authority to deal with the birds, and nothing on earth would induce him to sell; but it seems he told padishah that a eurasian named potter had already made him an offer, and on that padishah denounced potter before us all. but i think the most of us thought it rather smart of potter, and i know that when potter said that he'd wired at aden to london to buy the birds, and would have an answer at suez, i cursed pretty richly at a lost opportunity. "at suez, padishah gave way to tears--actual wet tears--when potter became the owner of the birds, and offered him two hundred and fifty right off for the five, being more than two hundred per cent. on what potter had given. potter said he'd be hanged if he parted with a feather of them--that he meant to kill them off one by one and find the diamond; but afterwards, thinking it over, he relented a little. he was a gambling hound, was this potter, a little queer at cards, and this kind of prize-packet business must have suited him down to the ground. anyhow, he offered, for a lark, to sell the birds separately to separate people by auction at a starting price of â£80 for a bird. but one of them, he said, he meant to keep for luck. "you must understand this diamond was a valuable one--a little jew chap, a diamond merchant, who was with us, had put it at three or four thousand when padishah had shown it to him--and this idea of an ostrich gamble caught on. now it happened that i'd been having a few talks on general subjects with the man who looked after these ostriches, and quite incidentally he'd said one of the birds was ailing, and he fancied it had indigestion. it had one feather in its tail almost all white, by which i knew it, and so when, next day, the auction started with it, i capped padishah's eighty-five by ninety. i fancy i was a bit too sure and eager with my bid, and some of the others spotted the fact that i was in the know. and padishah went for that particular bird like an irresponsible lunatic. at last the jew diamond merchant got it for â£175, and padishah said â£180 just after the hammer came down--so potter declared. at any rate the jew merchant secured it, and there and then he got a gun and shot it. potter made a hades of a fuss because he said it would injure the sale of the other three, and padishah, of course, behaved like an idiot; but all of us were very much excited. i can tell you i was precious glad when that dissection was over, and no diamond had turned up--precious glad. i'd gone to one-forty on that particular bird myself. "the little jew was like most jews--he didn't make any great fuss over bad luck; but potter declined to go on with the auction until it was understood that the goods could not be delivered until the sale was over. the little jew wanted to argue that the case was exceptional, and as the discussion ran pretty even, the thing was postponed until the next morning. we had a lively dinner-table that evening, i can tell you, but in the end potter got his way, since it would stand to reason he would be safer if he stuck to all the birds, and that we owed him some consideration for his sportsmanlike behaviour. and the old gentleman whose son was a lawyer said he'd been thinking the thing over and that it was very doubtful if, when a bird had been opened and the diamond recovered, it ought not to be handed back to the proper owner. i remember i suggested it came under the laws of treasure-trove--which was really the truth of the matter. there was a hot argument, and we settled it was certainly foolish to kill the bird on board the ship. then the old gentleman, going at large through his legal talk, tried to make out the sale was a lottery and illegal, and appealed to the captain; but potter said he sold the birds _as_ ostriches. he didn't want to sell any diamonds, he said, and didn't offer that as an inducement. the three birds he put up, to the best of his knowledge and belief, did _not_ contain a diamond. it was in the one he kept--so he hoped. "prices ruled high next day all the same. the fact that now there were four chances instead of five of course caused a rise. the blessed birds averaged 227, and, oddly enough, this padishah didn't secure one of 'em--not one. he made too much shindy, and when he ought to have been bidding he was talking about liens, and, besides, potter was a bit down on him. one fell to a quiet little officer chap, another to the little jew, and the third was syndicated by the engineers. and then potter seemed suddenly sorry for having sold them, and said he'd flung away a clear thousand pounds, and that very likely he'd draw a blank and that he always had been a fool, but when i went and had a bit of a talk to him, with the idea of getting him to hedge on his last chance, i found he'd already sold the bird he'd reserved to a political chap that was on board, a chap who'd been studying indian morals and social questions in his vacation. that last was the three hundred pounds bird. well, they landed three of the blessed creatures at brindisi--though the old gentleman said it was a breach of the customs regulations--and potter and padishah landed too. the hindoo seemed half mad as he saw his blessed diamond going this way and that, so to speak. he kept on saying he'd get an injunction--he had injunction on the brain--and giving his name and address to the chaps who'd bought the birds, so that they'd know where to send the diamond. none of them wanted his name and address, and none of them would give their own. it was a fine row i can tell you--on the platform. they all went off by different trains. i came on to southampton, and there i saw the last of the birds, as i came ashore; it was the one the engineers bought, and it was standing up near the bridge, in a kind of crate, and looking as leggy and silly a setting for a valuable diamond as ever you saw--if it _was_ a setting for a valuable diamond. "_how did it end_? oh! like that. well--perhaps. yes, there's one more thing that may throw light on it. a week or so after landing i was down regent-street doing a bit of shopping, and who should i see arm-in-arm and having a purple time of it but padishah and potter. if you come to think of it-"yes. _i've_ thought that. only, you see, there's no doubt the diamond was real. and padishah was an eminent hindoo. i've seen his name in the papers--often. but whether the bird swallowed the diamond certainly is another matter, as you say." through a window after his legs were set, they carried bailey into the study and put him on a couch before the open window. there he lay, a live--even a feverish man down to the loins, and below that a double-barrelled mummy swathed in white wrappings. he tried to read, even tried to write a little, but most of the time he looked out of the window. he had thought the window cheerful to begin with, but now he thanked god for it many times a day. within, the room was dim and grey, and in the reflected light the wear of the furniture showed plainly. his medicine and drink stood on the little table, with such litter as the bare branches of a bunch of grapes or the ashes of a cigar upon a green plate, or a day old evening paper. the view outside was flooded with light, and across the corner of it came the head of the acacia, and at the foot the top of the balcony-railing of hammered iron. in the foreground was the weltering silver of the river, never quiet and yet never tiresome. beyond was the reedy bank, a broad stretch of meadow land, and then a dark line of trees ending in a group of poplars at the distant bend of the river, and, upstanding behind them, a square church tower. up and down the river, all day long, things were passing. now a string of barges drifting down to london, piled with lime or barrels of beer; then a steam-launch, disengaging heavy masses of black smoke, and disturbing the whole width of the river with long rolling waves; then an impetuous electric launch, and then a boatload of pleasure-seekers, a solitary sculler, or a four from some rowing club. perhaps the river was quietest of a morning or late at night. one moonlight night some people drifted down singing, and with a zither playing--it sounded very pleasantly across the water. in a few days bailey began to recognise some of the craft; in a week he knew the intimate history of half-a-dozen. the launch _luzon_, from fitzgibbon's, two miles up, would go fretting by, sometimes three or four times a day, conspicuous with its colouring of indian-red and yellow, and its two oriental attendants; and one day, to bailey's vast amusement, the house-boat _purple emperor_ came to a stop outside, and breakfasted in the most shameless domesticity. then one afternoon, the captain of a slow-moving barge began a quarrel with his wife as they came into sight from the left, and had carried it to personal violence before he vanished behind the window-frame to the right. bailey regarded all this as an entertainment got up to while away his illness, and applauded all the more moving incidents. mrs green, coming in at rare intervals with his meals, would catch him clapping his hands or softly crying, "encore!" but the river players had other engagements, and his encore went unheeded. "i should never have thought i could take such an interest in things that did not concern me," said bailey to wilderspin, who used to come in in his nervous, friendly way and try to comfort the sufferer by being talked to. "i thought this idle capacity was distinctive of little children and old maids. but it's just circumstances. i simply can't work, and things have to drift; it's no good to fret and struggle. and so i lie here and am as amused as a baby with a rattle, at this river and its affairs. "sometimes, of course, it gets a bit dull, but not often. "i would give anything, wilderspin, for a swamp--just one swamp--once. heads swimming and a steam launch to the rescue, and a chap or so hauled out with a boat-hook.... there goes fitzgibbon's launch! they have a new boat-hook, i see, and the little blackie is still in the dumps. i don't think he's very well, wilderspin. he's been like that for two or three days, squatting sulky-fashion and meditating over the churning of the water. unwholesome for him to be always staring at the frothy water running away from the stern." they watched the little steamer fuss across the patch of sunlit river, suffer momentary occultation from the acacia, and glide out of sight behind the dark window-frame. "i'm getting a wonderful eye for details," said bailey: "i spotted that new boat-hook at once. the other nigger is a funny little chap. he never used to swagger with the old boat-hook like that." "malays, aren't they?" said wilderspin. "don't know," said bailey. "i thought one called all that sort of manner lascar." then he began to tell wilderspin what he knew of the private affairs of the houseboat, _purple emperor_. "funny," he said, "how these people come from all points of the compass--from oxford and windsor, from asia and africa--and gather and pass opposite the window just to entertain me. one man floated out of the infinite the day before yesterday, caught one perfect crab opposite, lost and recovered a scull, and passed on again. probably he will never come into my life again. so far as i am concerned, he has lived and had his little troubles, perhaps thirty--perhaps forty--years on the earth, merely to make an ass of himself for three minutes in front of my window. wonderful thing, wilderspin, if you come to think of it." "yes," said wilderspin; "_isn't_ it?" a day or two after this bailey had a brilliant morning. indeed, towards the end of the affair, it became almost as exciting as any window show very well could be. we will, however, begin at the beginning. bailey was all alone in the house, for his housekeeper had gone into the town three miles away to pay bills, and the servant had her holiday. the morning began dull. a canoe went up about half-past nine, and later a boat-load of camping men came down. but this was mere margin. things became cheerful about ten o'clock. it began with something white fluttering in the remote distance where the three poplars marked the river bend. "pocket-handkerchief," said bailey, when he saw it "no. too big! flag perhaps." however, it was not a flag, for it jumped about. "man in whites running fast, and this way," said bailey. "that's luck! but his whites are precious loose!" then a singular thing happened. there was a minute pink gleam among the dark trees in the distance, and a little puff of pale grey that began to drift and vanish eastward. the man in white jumped and continued running. presently the report of the shot arrived. "what the devil!" said bailey. "looks as if someone was shooting at him." he sat up stiffly and stared hard. the white figure was coming along the pathway through the corn. "it's one of those niggers from the fitzgibbon's," said bailey; "or may i be hanged! i wonder why he keeps sawing with his arm." then three other figures became indistinctly visible against the dark background of the trees. abruptly on the opposite bank a man walked into the picture. he was black-bearded, dressed in flannels, had a red belt, and a vast grey felt hat. he walked, leaning very much forward and with his hands swinging before him. behind him one could see the grass swept by the towing-rope of the boat he was dragging. he was steadfastly regarding the white figure that was hurrying through the corn. suddenly he stopped. then, with a peculiar gesture, bailey could see that he began pulling in the tow-rope hand over hand. over the water could be heard the voices of the people in the still invisible boat. "what are you after, hagshot?" said someone. the individual with the red belt shouted something that was inaudible, and went on lugging in the rope, looking over his shoulder at the advancing white figure as he did so. he came down the bank, and the rope bent a lane among the reeds and lashed the water between his pulls. then just the bows of the boat came into view, with the towing-mast and a tall, fair-haired man standing up and trying to see over the bank. the boat bumped unexpectedly among the reeds, and the tall, fair-haired man disappeared suddenly, having apparently fallen back into the invisible part of the boat. there was a curse and some indistinct laughter. hagshot did not laugh, but hastily clambered into the boat and pushed off. abruptly the boat passed out of bailey's sight. but it was still audible. the melody of voices suggested that its occupants were busy telling each other what to do. the running figure was drawing near the bank. bailey could now see clearly that it was one of fitzgibbon's orientals, and began to realise what the sinuous thing the man carried in his hand might be. three other men followed one another through the corn, and the foremost carried what was probably the gun. they were perhaps two hundred yards or more behind the malay. "it's a man hunt, by all that's holy!" said bailey. the malay stopped for a moment and surveyed the bank to the right. then he left the path, and, breaking through the corn, vanished in that direction. the three pursuers followed suit, and their heads and gesticulating arms above the corn, after a brief interval, also went out of bailey's field of vision. bailey so far forgot himself as to swear. "just as things were getting lively!" he said. something like a woman's shriek came through the air. then shouts, a howl, a dull whack upon the balcony outside that made bailey jump, and then the report of a gun. "this is precious hard on an invalid," said bailey. but more was to happen yet in his picture. in fact, a great deal more. the malay appeared again, running now along the bank up stream. his stride had more swing and less pace in it than before. he was threatening someone ahead with the ugly krees he carried. the blade, bailey noticed, was dull--it did not shine as steel should. then came the tall, fair man, brandishing a boat-hook, and after him three other men in boating costume, running clumsily with oars. the man with the grey hat and red belt was not with them. after an interval the three men with the gun reappeared, still in the corn, but now near the river bank. they emerged upon the towing-path, and hurried after the others. the opposite bank was left blank and desolate again. the sick-room was disgraced by more profanity. "i would give my life to see the end of this," said bailey. there were indistinct shouts up stream. once they seemed to be coming nearer, but they disappointed him. bailey sat and grumbled. he was still grumbling when his eye caught something black and round among the waves. "hullo!" he said. he looked narrowly and saw two triangular black bodies frothing every now and then about a yard in front of this. he was still doubtful when the little band of pursuers came into sight again, and began to point to this floating object. they were talking eagerly. then the man with the gun took aim. "he's swimming the river, by george!" said bailey. the malay looked round, saw the gun, and went under. he came up so close to bailey's bank of the river that one of the bars of the balcony hid him for a moment. as he emerged the man with the gun fired. the malay kept steadily onward--bailey could see the wet hair on his forehead now and the krees between his teeth--and was presently hidden by the balcony. this seemed to bailey an unendurable wrong. the man was lost to him for ever now, so he thought. why couldn't the brute have got himself decently caught on the opposite bank, or shot in the water? "it's worse than edwin drood," said bailey. over the river, too, things had become an absolute blank. all seven men had gone down stream again, probably to get the boat and follow across. bailey listened and waited. there was silence. "surely it's not over like this," said bailey. five minutes passed--ten minutes. then a tug with two barges went up stream. the attitudes of the men upon these were the attitudes of those who see nothing remarkable in earth, water, or sky. clearly the whole affair had passed out of sight of the river. probably the hunt had gone into the beech woods behind the house. "confound it!" said bailey. "to be continued again, and no chance this time of the sequel. but this is hard on a sick man." he heard a step on the staircase behind him and looking round saw the door open. mrs green came in and sat down, panting. she still had her bonnet on, her purse in her hand, and her little brown basket upon her arm. "oh, there!" she said, and left bailey to imagine the rest. "have a little whisky and water, mrs green, and tell me about it," said bailey. sipping a little, the lady began to recover her powers of explanation. one of those black creatures at the fitzgibbon's had gone mad, and was running about with a big knife, stabbing people. he had killed a groom, and stabbed the under-butler, and almost cut the arm off a boating gentleman. "running amuck with a krees," said bailey. "i thought that was it." and he was hiding in the wood when she came through it from the town. "what! did he run after you?" asked bailey, with a certain touch of glee in his voice. "no, that was the horrible part of it," mrs green explained. she had been right through the woods and had _never known he was there_. it was only when she met young mr fitzgibbon carrying his gun in the shrubbery that she heard anything about it. apparently, what upset mrs green was the lost opportunity for emotion. she was determined, however, to make the most of what was left her. "to think he was there all the time!" she said, over and over again. bailey endured this patiently enough for perhaps ten minutes. at last he thought it advisable to assert himself. "it's twenty past one, mrs green," he said. "don't you think it time you got me something to eat?" this brought mrs green suddenly to her knees. "oh lord, sir!" she said. "oh! don't go making me go out of this room, sir, till i know he's caught. he might have got into the house, sir. he might be creeping, creeping, with that knife of his, along the passage this very--" she broke off suddenly and glared over him at the window. her lower jaw dropped. bailey turned his head sharply. for the space of half a second things seemed just as they were. there was the tree, the balcony, the shining river, the distant church tower. then he noticed that the acacia was displaced about a foot to the right, and that it was quivering, and the leaves were rustling. the tree was shaken violently, and a heavy panting was audible. in another moment a hairy brown hand had appeared and clutched the balcony railings, and in another the face of the malay was peering through these at the man on the couch. his expression was an unpleasant grin, by reason of the krees he held between his teeth, and he was bleeding from an ugly wound in his cheek. his hair wet to drying stuck out like horns from his head. his body was bare save for the wet trousers that clung to him. bailey's first impulse was to spring from the couch, but his legs reminded him that this was impossible. by means of the balcony and tree the man slowly raised himself until he was visible to mrs green. with a choking cry she made for the door and fumbled with the handle. bailey thought swiftly and clutched a medicine bottle in either hand. one he flung, and it smashed against the acacia. silently and deliberately, and keeping his bright eyes fixed on bailey, the malay clambered into the balcony. bailey, still clutching his second bottle, but with a sickening, sinking feeling about his heart, watched first one leg come over the railing and then the other. it was bailey's impression that the malay took about an hour to get his second leg over the rail. the period that elapsed before the sitting position was changed to a standing one seemed enormous--days, weeks, possibly a year or so. yet bailey had no clear impression of anything going on in his mind during that vast period, except a vague wonder at his inability to throw the second medicine bottle. suddenly the malay glanced over his shoulder. there was the crack of a rifle. he flung up his arms and came down upon the couch. mrs green began a dismal shriek that seemed likely to last until doomsday. bailey stared at the brown body with its shoulder blade driven in, that writhed painfully across his legs and rapidly staining and soaking the spotless bandages. then he looked at the long krees, with the reddish streaks upon its blade, that lay an inch beyond the trembling brown fingers upon the floor. then at mrs green, who had backed hard against the door and was staring at the body and shrieking in gusty outbursts as if she would wake the dead. and then the body was shaken by one last convulsive effort. the malay gripped the krees, tried to raise himself with his left hand, and collapsed. then he raised his head, stared for a moment at mrs green, and twisting his face round looked at bailey. with a gasping groan the dying man succeeded in clutching the bed clothes with his disabled hand, and by a violent effort, which hurt bailey's legs exceedingly, writhed sideways towards what must be his last victim. then something seemed released in bailey's mind and he brought down the second bottle with all his strength on to the malay's face. the krees fell heavily upon the floor. "easy with those legs," said bailey, as young fitzgibbon and one of the boating party lifted the body off him. young fitzgibbon was very white in the face. "i didn't mean to kill him," he said. "it's just as well," said bailey. the temptation of harringay it is quite impossible to say whether this thing really happened. it depends entirely on the word of r.m. harringay, who is an artist. following his version of the affair, the narrative deposes that harringay went into his studio about ten o'clock to see what he could make of the head that he had been working at the day before. the head in question was that of an italian organ-grinder, and harringay thought--but was not quite sure--that the title would be the "vigil." so far he is frank, and his narrative bears the stamp of truth. he had seen the man expectant for pennies, and with a promptness that suggested genius, had had him in at once. "kneel. look up at that bracket," said harringay. "as if you expected pennies." "don't _grin_!" said harringay. "i don't want to paint your gums. look as though you were unhappy." now, after a night's rest, the picture proved decidedly unsatisfactory. "it's good work," said harringay. "that little bit in the neck ... but." he walked about the studio and looked at the thing from this point and from that. then he said a wicked word. in the original the word is given. "painting," he says he said. "just a painting of an organ-grinder--a mere portrait. if it was a live organ-grinder i wouldn't mind. but somehow i never make things alive. i wonder if my imagination is wrong." this, too, has a truthful air. his imagination _is_ wrong. "that creative touch! to take canvas and pigment and make a man--as adam was made of red ochre! but this thing! if you met it walking about the streets you would know it was only a studio production. the little boys would tell it to 'garnome and git frimed.' some little touch ... well--it won't do as it is." he went to the blinds and began to pull them down. they were made of blue holland with the rollers at the bottom of the window, so that you pull them down to get more light. he gathered his palette, brushes, and mahl stick from his table. then he turned to the picture and put a speck of brown in the corner of the mouth; and shifted his attention thence to the pupil of the eye. then he decided that the chin was a trifle too impassive for a vigil. presently he put down his impedimenta, and lighting a pipe surveyed the progress of his work. "i'm hanged if the thing isn't sneering at me," said harringay, and he still believes it sneered. the animation of the figure had certainly increased, but scarcely in the direction he wished. there was no mistake about the sneer. "vigil of the unbeliever," said harringay. "rather subtle and clever that! but the left eyebrow isn't cynical enough." he went and dabbed at the eyebrow, and added a little to the lobe of the ear to suggest materialism. further consideration ensued. "vigil's off, i'm afraid," said harringay. "why not mephistopheles? but that's a bit _too_ common. 'a friend of the doge,'--not so seedy. the armour won't do, though. too camelot. how about a scarlet robe and call him 'one of the sacred college'? humour in that, and an appreciation of middle italian history." "there's always benvenuto cellini," said harringay; "with a clever suggestion of a gold cup in one corner. but that would scarcely suit the complexion." he describes himself as babbling in this way in order to keep down an unaccountably unpleasant sensation of fear. the thing was certainly acquiring anything but a pleasing expression. yet it was as certainly becoming far more of a living thing than it had been--if a sinister one--far more alive than anything he had ever painted before. "call it 'portrait of a gentleman,'" said harringay;--"a certain gentleman." "won't do," said harringay, still keeping up his courage. "kind of thing they call bad taste. that sneer will have to come out. that gone, and a little more fire in the eye--never noticed how warm his eye was before--and he might do for--? what price passionate pilgrim? but that devilish face won't do--_this_ side of the channel. "some little inaccuracy does it," he said; "eyebrows probably too oblique,"--therewith pulling the blind lower to get a better light, and resuming palette and brushes. the face on the canvas seemed animated by a spirit of its own. where the expression of diablerie came in he found impossible to discover. experiment was necessary. the eyebrows--it could scarcely be the eyebrows? but he altered them. no, that was no better; in fact, if anything, a trifle more satanic. the corner of the mouth? pah! more than ever a leer--and now, retouched, it was ominously grim. the eye, then? catastrophe! he had filled his brush with vermilion instead of brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown! the eye seemed now to have rolled in its socket, and was glaring at him an eye of fire. in a flash of passion, possibly with something of the courage of panic, he struck the brush full of bright red athwart the picture; and then a very curious thing, a very strange thing indeed, occurred--if it _did_ occur. _the diabolified italian before him shut both his eyes, pursed his mouth, and wiped the colour off his face with his hand_. then the _red eye_ opened again, with a sound like the opening of lips, and the face smiled. "that was rather hasty of you," said the picture. harringay states that, now that the worst had happened, his self-possession returned. he had a saving persuasion that devils were reasonable creatures. "why do you keep moving about then," he said, "making faces and all that--sneering and squinting, while i am painting you?" "i don't," said the picture. "you _do_," said harringay. "it's yourself," said the picture. "it's _not_ myself," said harringay. "it _is_ yourself," said the picture. "no! don't go hitting me with paint again, because it's true. you have been trying to fluke an expression on my face all the morning. really, you haven't an idea what your picture ought to look like." "i have," said harringay. "you have _not_," said the picture: "you _never_ have with your pictures. you always start with the vaguest presentiment of what you are going to do; it is to be something beautiful--you are sure of that--and devout, perhaps, or tragic; but beyond that it is all experiment and chance. my dear fellow! you don't think you can paint a picture like that?" now it must be remembered that for what follows we have only harringay's word. "i shall paint a picture exactly as i like," said harringay, calmly. this seemed to disconcert the picture a little. "you can't paint a picture without an inspiration," it remarked. "but i _had_ an inspiration--for this." "inspiration!" sneered the sardonic figure; "a fancy that came from your seeing an organ-grinder looking up at a window! vigil! ha, ha! you just started painting on the chance of something coming--that's what you did. and when i saw you at it i came. i want a talk with you!" "art, with you," said the picture,--"it's a poor business. you potter. i don't know how it is, but you don't seem able to throw your soul into it. you know too much. it hampers you. in the midst of your enthusiasms you ask yourself whether something like this has not been done before. and ..." "look here," said harringay, who had expected something better than criticism from the devil. "are you going to talk studio to me?" he filled his number twelve hoghair with red paint. "the true artist," said the picture, "is always an ignorant man. an artist who theorises about his work is no longer artist but critic. wagner ... i say!--what's that red paint for?" "i'm going to paint you out," said harringay. "i don't want to hear all that tommy rot. if you think just because i'm an artist by trade i'm going to talk studio to you, you make a precious mistake." "one minute," said the picture, evidently alarmed. "i want to make you an offer--a genuine offer. it's right what i'm saying. you lack inspirations. well. no doubt you've heard of the cathedral of cologne, and the devil's bridge, and--" "rubbish," said harringay. "do you think i want to go to perdition simply for the pleasure of painting a good picture, and getting it slated. take that." his blood was up. his danger only nerved him to action, so he says. so he planted a dab of vermilion in his creature's mouth. the italian spluttered and tried to wipe it off--evidently horribly surprised. and then--according to harringay--there began a very remarkable struggle, harringay splashing away with the red paint, and the picture wriggling about and wiping it off as fast as he put it on. "_two_ masterpieces," said the demon. "two indubitable masterpieces for a chelsea artist's soul. it's a bargain?" harringay replied with the paint brush. for a few minutes nothing could be heard but the brush going and the spluttering and ejaculations of the italian. a lot of the strokes he caught on his arm and hand, though harringay got over his guard often enough. presently the paint on the palette gave out and the two antagonists stood breathless, regarding each other. the picture was so smeared with red that it looked as if it had been rolling about a slaughterhouse, and it was painfully out of breath and very uncomfortable with the wet paint trickling down its neck. still, the first round was in its favour on the whole. "think," it said, sticking pluckily to its point, "two supreme masterpieces--in different styles. each equivalent to the cathedral..." "_i_ know," said harringay, and rushed out of the studio and along the passage towards his wife's boudoir. in another minute he was back with a large tin of enamel--hedge sparrow's egg tint, it was, and a brush. at the sight of that the artistic devil with the red eye began to scream. "_three_ masterpieces--culminating masterpieces." harringay delivered cut two across the demon, and followed with a thrust in the eye. there was an indistinct rumbling. "_four_ masterpieces," and a spitting sound. but harringay had the upper hand now and meant to keep it. with rapid, bold strokes he continued to paint over the writhing canvas, until at last it was a uniform field of shining hedge sparrow tint. once the mouth reappeared and got as far as "five master--" before he filled it with enamel; and near the end the red eye opened and glared at him indignantly. but at last nothing remained save a gleaming panel of drying enamel. for a little while a faint stirring beneath the surface puckered it slightly here and there, but presently even that died away and the thing was perfectly still. then harringay--according to harringay's account--lit his pipe and sat down and stared at the enamelled canvas, and tried to make out clearly what had happened. then he walked round behind it, to see if the back of it was at all remarkable. then it was he began to regret he had not photographed the devil before he painted him out. this is harringay's story--not mine. he supports it by a small canvas (24 by 20) enamelled a pale green, and by violent asseverations. it is also true that he never has produced a masterpiece, and in the opinion of his intimate friends probably never will. the flying man the ethnologist looked at the _bhimraj_ feather thoughtfully. "they seemed loth to part with it," he said. "it is sacred to the chiefs," said the lieutenant; "just as yellow silk, you know, is sacred to the chinese emperor." the ethnologist did not answer. he hesitated. then opening the topic abruptly, "what on earth is this cock-and-bull story they have of a flying man?" the lieutenant smiled faintly. "what did they tell you?" "i see," said the ethnologist, "that you know of your fame." the lieutenant rolled himself a cigarette. "i don't mind hearing about it once more. how does it stand at present?" "it's so confoundedly childish," said the ethnologist, becoming irritated. "how did you play it off upon them?" the lieutenant made no answer, but lounged back in his folding-chair, still smiling. "here am i, come four hundred miles out of my way to get what is left of the folk-lore of these people, before they are utterly demoralised by missionaries and the military, and all i find are a lot of impossible legends about a sandy-haired scrub of an infantry lieutenant. how he is invulnerable--how he can jump over elephants--how he can fly. that's the toughest nut. one old gentleman described your wings, said they had black plumage and were not quite as long as a mule. said he often saw you by moonlight hovering over the crests out towards the shendu country.--confound it, man!" the lieutenant laughed cheerfully. "go on," he said. "go on." the ethnologist did. at last he wearied. "to trade so," he said, "on these unsophisticated children of the mountains. how could you bring yourself to do it, man?" "i'm sorry," said the lieutenant, "but truly the thing was forced upon me. i can assure you i was driven to it. and at the time i had not the faintest idea of how the chin imagination would take it. or curiosity. i can only plead it was an indiscretion and not malice that made me replace the folk-lore by a new legend. but as you seem aggrieved, i will try and explain the business to you. "it was in the time of the last lushai expedition but one, and walters thought these people you have been visiting were friendly. so, with an airy confidence in my capacity for taking care of myself, he sent me up the gorge--fourteen miles of it--with three of the derbyshire men and half a dozen sepoys, two mules, and his blessing, to see what popular feeling was like at that village you visited. a force of ten--not counting the mules--fourteen miles, and during a war! you saw the road?" "_road_!" said the ethnologist. "it's better now than it was. when we went up we had to wade in the river for a mile where the valley narrows, with a smart stream frothing round our knees and the stones as slippery as ice. there it was i dropped my rifle. afterwards the sappers blasted the cliff with dynamite and made the convenient way you came by. then below, where those very high cliffs come, we had to keep on dodging across the river--i should say we crossed it a dozen times in a couple of miles. "we got in sight of the place early the next morning. you know how it lies, on a spur halfway between the big hills, and as we began to appreciate how wickedly quiet the village lay under the sunlight, we came to a stop to consider. "at that they fired a lump of filed brass idol at us, just by way of a welcome. it came twanging down the slope to the right of us where the boulders are, missed my shoulder by an inch or so, and plugged the mule that carried all the provisions and utensils. i never heard such a death-rattle before or since. and at that we became aware of a number of gentlemen carrying matchlocks, and dressed in things like plaid dusters, dodging about along the neck between the village and the crest to the east. "'right about face,' i said. 'not too close together.' "and with that encouragement my expedition of ten men came round and set off at a smart trot down the valley again hitherward. we did not wait to save anything our dead had carried, but we kept the second mule with us--he carried my tent and some other rubbish--out of a feeling of friendship. "so ended the battle--ingloriously. glancing back, i saw the valley dotted with the victors, shouting and firing at us. but no one was hit. these chins and their guns are very little good except at a sitting shot. they will sit and finick over a boulder for hours taking aim, and when they fire running it is chiefly for stage effect. hooker, one of the derbyshire men, fancied himself rather with the rifle, and stopped behind for half a minute to try his luck as we turned the bend. but he got nothing. "i'm not a xenophon to spin much of a yarn about my retreating army. we had to pull the enemy up twice in the next two miles when he became a bit pressing, by exchanging shots with him, but it was a fairly monotonous affair--hard breathing chiefly--until we got near the place where the hills run in towards the river and pinch the valley into a gorge. and there we very luckily caught a glimpse of half a dozen round black heads coming slanting-ways over the hill to the left of us--the east that is--and almost parallel with us. "at that i called a halt. 'look here,' says i to hooker and the other englishmen; 'what are we to do now?' and i pointed to the heads. "'headed orf, or i'm a nigger,' said one of the men. "'we shall be,' said another. 'you know the chin way, george?' "'they can pot every one of us at fifty yards,' says hooker, 'in the place where the river is narrow. it's just suicide to go on down.' "i looked at the hill to the right of us. it grew steeper lower down the valley, but it still seemed climbable. and all the chins we had seen hitherto had been on the other side of the stream. "'it's that or stopping,' says one of the sepoys. "so we started slanting up the hill. there was something faintly suggestive of a road running obliquely up the face of it, and that we followed. some chins presently came into view up the valley, and i heard some shots. then i saw one of the sepoys was sitting down about thirty yards below us. he had simply sat down without a word, apparently not wishing to give trouble. at that i called a halt again; i told hooker to try another shot, and went back and found the man was hit in the leg. i took him up, carried him along to put him on the mule--already pretty well laden with the tent and other things which we had no time to take off. when i got up to the rest with him, hooker had his empty martini in his hand, and was grinning and pointing to a motionless black spot up the valley. all the rest of the chins were behind boulders or back round the bend. 'five hundred yards,' says hooker, 'if an inch. and i'll swear i hit him in the head.' "i told him to go and do it again, and with that we went on again. "now the hillside kept getting steeper as we pushed on, and the road we were following more and more of a shelf. at last it was mere cliff above and below us. 'it's the best road i have seen yet in chin lushai land,' said i to encourage the men, though i had a fear of what was coming. "and in a few minutes the way bent round a corner of the cliff. then, finis! the ledge came to an end. "as soon as he grasped the position one of the derbyshire men fell a-swearing at the trap we had fallen into. the sepoys halted quietly. hooker grunted and reloaded, and went back to the bend. "then two of the sepoy chaps helped their comrade down and began to unload the mule. "now, when i came to look about me, i began to think we had not been so very unfortunate after all. we were on a shelf perhaps ten yards across it at widest. above it the cliff projected so that we could not be shot down upon, and below was an almost sheer precipice of perhaps two or three hundred feet. lying down we were invisible to anyone across the ravine. the only approach was along the ledge, and on that one man was as good as a host. we were in a natural stronghold, with only one disadvantage, our sole provision against hunger and thirst was one live mule. still we were at most eight or nine miles from the main expedition, and no doubt, after a day or so, they would send up after us if we did not return. "after a day or so ..." the lieutenant paused. "ever been thirsty, graham?" "not that kind," said the ethnologist. "h'm. we had the whole of that day, the night, and the next day of it, and only a trifle of dew we wrung out of our clothes and the tent. and below us was the river going giggle, giggle, round a rock in mid stream. i never knew such a barrenness of incident, or such a quantity of sensation. the sun might have had joshua's command still upon it for all the motion one could see; and it blazed like a near furnace. towards the evening of the first day one of the derbyshire men said something--nobody heard what--and went off round the bend of the cliff. we heard shots, and when hooker looked round the corner he was gone. and in the morning the sepoy whose leg was shot was in delirium, and jumped or fell over the cliff. then we took the mule and shot it, and that must needs go over the cliff too in its last struggles, leaving eight of us. "we could see the body of the sepoy down below, with the head in the water. he was lying face downwards, and so far as i could make out was scarcely smashed at all. badly as the chins might covet his head, they had the sense to leave it alone until the darkness came. "at first we talked of all the chances there were of the main body hearing the firing, and reckoned whether they would begin to miss us, and all that kind of thing, but we dried up as the evening came on. the sepoys played games with bits of stone among themselves, and afterwards told stories. the night was rather chilly. the second day nobody spoke. our lips were black and our throats afire, and we lay about on the ledge and glared at one another. perhaps it's as well we kept our thoughts to ourselves. one of the british soldiers began writing some blasphemous rot on the rock with a bit of pipeclay, about his last dying will, until i stopped it. as i looked over the edge down into the valley and saw the river rippling i was nearly tempted to go after the sepoy. it seemed a pleasant and desirable thing to go rushing down through the air with something to drink--or no more thirst at any rate--at the bottom. i remembered in time, though, that i was the officer in command, and my duty to set a good example, and that kept me from any such foolishness. "yet, thinking of that, put an idea into my head. i got up and looked at the tent and tent ropes, and wondered why i had not thought of it before. then i came and peered over the cliff again. this time the height seemed greater and the pose of the sepoy rather more painful. but it was that or nothing. and to cut it short, i parachuted. "i got a big circle of canvas out of the tent, about three times the size of that table-cover, and plugged the hole in the centre, and i tied eight ropes round it to meet in the middle and make a parachute. the other chaps lay about and watched me as though they thought it was a new kind of delirium. then i explained my notion to the two british soldiers and how i meant to do it, and as soon as the short dusk had darkened into night, i risked it. they held the thing high up, and i took a run the whole length of the ledge. the thing filled with air like a sail, but at the edge i will confess i funked and pulled up. "as soon as i stopped i was ashamed of myself--as well i might be in front of privates--and went back and started again. off i jumped this time--with a kind of sob, i remember--clean into the air, with the big white sail bellying out above me. "i must have thought at a frightful pace. it seemed a long time before i was sure that the thing meant to keep steady. at first it heeled sideways. then i noticed the face of the rock which seemed to be streaming up past me, and me motionless. then i looked down and saw in the darkness the river and the dead sepoy rushing up towards me. but in the indistinct light i also saw three chins, seemingly aghast at the sight of me, and that the sepoy was decapitated. at that i wanted to go back again. "then my boot was in the mouth of one, and in a moment he and i were in a heap with the canvas fluttering down on the top of us. i fancy i dashed out his brains with my foot. i expected nothing more than to be brained myself by the other two, but the poor heathen had never heard of baldwin, and incontinently bolted. "i struggled out of the tangle of dead chin and canvas, and looked round. about ten paces off lay the head of the sepoy staring in the moonlight. then i saw the water and went and drank. there wasn't a sound in the world but the footsteps of the departing chins, a faint shout from above, and the gluck of the water. so soon as i had drunk my full i started off down the river. "that about ends the explanation of the flying man story. i never met a soul the whole eight miles of the way. i got to walters' camp by ten o'clock, and a born idiot of a sentinel had the cheek to fire at me as i came trotting out of the darkness. so soon as i had hammered my story into winter's thick skull, about fifty men started up the valley to clear the chins out and get our men down. but for my own part i had too good a thirst to provoke it by going with them. "you have heard what kind of a yarn the chins made of it. wings as long as a mule, eh?--and black feathers! the gay lieutenant bird! well, well." the lieutenant meditated cheerfully for a moment. then he added, "you would scarcely credit it, but when they got to the ridge at last, they found two more of the sepoys had jumped over." "the rest were all right?" asked the ethnologist. "yes," said the lieutenant; "the rest were all right, barring a certain thirst, you know." and at the memory he helped himself to soda and whisky again. the diamond maker some business had detained me in chancery lane until nine in the evening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, i was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. so much of the sky as the high cliffs of that narrow caã±on of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night, and i determined to make my way down to the embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head by watching the variegated lights upon the river. beyond comparison the night is the best time for this place; a merciful darkness hides the dirt of the waters, and the lights of this transition age, red, glaring orange, gas-yellow, and electric white, are set in shadowy outlines of every possible shade between grey and deep purple. through the arches of waterloo bridge a hundred points of light mark the sweep of the embankment, and above its parapet rise the towers of westminster, warm grey against the starlight. the black river goes by with only a rare ripple breaking its silence, and disturbing the reflections of the lights that swim upon its surface. "a warm night," said a voice at my side. i turned my head, and saw the profile of a man who was leaning over the parapet beside me. it was a refined face, not unhandsome, though pinched and pale enough, and the coat collar turned up and pinned round the throat marked his status in life as sharply as a uniform. i felt i was committed to the price of a bed and breakfast if i answered him. i looked at him curiously. would he have anything to tell me worth the money, or was he the common incapable--incapable even of telling his own story? there was a quality of intelligence in his forehead and eyes, and a certain tremulousness in his nether lip that decided me. "very warm," said i; "but not too warm for us here." "no," he said, still looking across the water, "it is pleasant enough here ... just now." "it is good," he continued after a pause, "to find anything so restful as this in london. after one has been fretting about business all day, about getting on, meeting obligations, and parrying dangers, i do not know what one would do if it were not for such pacific corners." he spoke with long pauses between the sentences. "you must know a little of the irksome labour of the world, or you would not be here. but i doubt if you can be so brain-weary and footsore as i am ... bah! sometimes i doubt if the game is worth the candle. i feel inclined to throw the whole thing over--name, wealth, and position--and take to some modest trade. but i know if i abandoned my ambition--hardly as she uses me--i should have nothing but remorse left for the rest of my days." he became silent. i looked at him in astonishment. if ever i saw a man hopelessly hard-up it was the man in front of me. he was ragged and he was dirty, unshaven and unkempt; he looked as though he had been left in a dust-bin for a week. and he was talking to _me_ of the irksome worries of a large business. i almost laughed outright. either he was mad or playing a sorry jest on his own poverty. "if high aims and high positions," said i, "have their drawbacks of hard work and anxiety, they have their compensations. influence, the power of doing good, of assisting those weaker and poorer than ourselves; and there is even a certain gratification in display...." my banter under the circumstances was in very vile taste. i spoke on the spur of the contrast of his appearance and speech. i was sorry even while i was speaking. he turned a haggard but very composed face upon me. said he: "i forget myself. of course you would not understand." he measured me for a moment. "no doubt it is very absurd. you will not believe me even when i tell you, so that it is fairly safe to tell you. and it will be a comfort to tell someone. i really have a big business in hand, a very big business. but there are troubles just now. the fact is ... i make diamonds." "i suppose," said i, "you are out of work just at present?" "i am sick of being disbelieved," he said impatiently, and suddenly unbuttoning his wretched coat he pulled out a little canvas bag that was hanging by a cord round his neck. from this he produced a brown pebble. "i wonder if you know enough to know what that is?" he handed it to me. now, a year or so ago, i had occupied my leisure in taking a london science degree, so that i have a smattering of physics and mineralogy. the thing was not unlike an uncut diamond of the darker sort, though far too large, being almost as big as the top of my thumb. i took it, and saw it had the form of a regular octahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious of minerals. i took out my penknife and tried to scratch it--vainly. leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, i tried the thing on my watch-glass, and scored a white line across that with the greatest ease. i looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. "it certainly is rather like a diamond. but, if so, it is a behemoth of diamonds. where did you get it?" "i tell you i made it," he said. "give it back to me." he replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket. "i will sell it you for one hundred pounds," he suddenly whispered eagerly. with that my suspicions returned. the thing might, after all, be merely a lump of that almost equally hard substance, corundum, with an accidental resemblance in shape to the diamond. or if it was a diamond, how came he by it, and why should he offer it at a hundred pounds? we looked into one another's eyes. he seemed eager, but honestly eager. at that moment i believed it was a diamond he was trying to sell. yet i am a poor man, a hundred pounds would leave a visible gap in my fortunes and no sane man would buy a diamond by gaslight from a ragged tramp on his personal warranty only. still, a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many thousands of pounds. then, thought i, such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned in every book on gems, and again i called to mind the stories of contraband and light-fingered kaffirs at the cape. i put the question of purchase on one side. "how did you get it?" said i. "i made it." i had heard something of moissan, but i knew his artificial diamonds were very small. i shook my head. "you seem to know something of this kind of thing. i will tell you a little about myself. perhaps then you may think better of the purchase." he turned round with his back to the river, and put his hands in his pockets. he sighed. "i know you will not believe me." "diamonds," he began--and as he spoke his voice lost its faint flavour of the tramp and assumed something of the easy tone of an educated man--"are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in a suitable flux and under a suitable pressure; the carbon crystallises out, not as black-lead or charcoal-powder, but as small diamonds. so much has been known to chemists for years, but no one yet has hit upon exactly the right flux in which to melt up the carbon, or exactly the right pressure for the best results. consequently the diamonds made by chemists are small and dark, and worthless as jewels. now i, you know, have given up my life to this problem--given my life to it. "i began to work at the conditions of diamond making when i was seventeen, and now i am thirty-two. it seemed to me that it might take all the thought and energies of a man for ten years, or twenty years, but, even if it did, the game was still worth the candle. suppose one to have at last just hit the right trick, before the secret got out and diamonds became as common as coal, one might realise millions. millions!" he paused and looked for my sympathy. his eyes shone hungrily. "to think," said he, "that i am on the verge of it all, and here! "i had," he proceeded, "about a thousand pounds when i was twenty-one, and this, i thought, eked out by a little teaching, would keep my researches going. a year or two was spent in study, at berlin chiefly, and then i continued on my own account. the trouble was the secrecy. you see, if once i had let out what i was doing, other men might have been spurred on by my belief in the practicability of the idea; and i do not pretend to be such a genius as to have been sure of coming in first, in the case of a race for the discovery. and you see it was important that if i really meant to make a pile, people should not know it was an artificial process and capable of turning out diamonds by the ton. so i had to work all alone. at first i had a little laboratory, but as my resources began to run out i had to conduct my experiments in a wretched unfurnished room in kentish town, where i slept at last on a straw mattress on the floor among all my apparatus. the money simply flowed away. i grudged myself everything except scientific appliances. i tried to keep things going by a little teaching, but i am not a very good teacher, and i have no university degree, nor very much education except in chemistry, and i found i had to give a lot of time and labour for precious little money. but i got nearer and nearer the thing. three years ago i settled the problem of the composition of the flux, and got near the pressure by putting this flux of mine and a certain carbon composition into a closed-up gun-barrel, filling up with water, sealing tightly, and heating." he paused. "rather risky," said i. "yes. it burst, and smashed all my windows and a lot of my apparatus; but i got a kind of diamond powder nevertheless. following out the problem of getting a big pressure upon the molten mixture from which the things were to crystallise, i hit upon some researches of daubrã©e's at the paris _laboratorie des poudres et salpãªtres_. he exploded dynamite in a tightly screwed steel cylinder, too strong to burst, and i found he could crush rocks into a muck not unlike the south african bed in which diamonds are found. it was a tremendous strain on my resources, but i got a steel cylinder made for my purpose after his pattern. i put in all my stuff and my explosives, built up a fire in my furnace, put the whole concern in, and--went out for a walk." i could not help laughing at his matter-of-fact manner. "did you not think it would blow up the house? were there other people in the place?" "it was in the interest of science," he said, ultimately. "there was a costermonger family on the floor below, a begging-letter writer in the room behind mine, and two flower-women were upstairs. perhaps it was a bit thoughtless. but possibly some of them were out. "when i came back the thing was just where i left it, among the white-hot coals. the explosive hadn't burst the case. and then i had a problem to face. you know time is an important element in crystallisation. if you hurry the process the crystals are small--it is only by prolonged standing that they grow to any size. i resolved to let this apparatus cool for two years, letting the temperature go down slowly during that time. and i was now quite out of money; and with a big fire and the rent of my room, as well as my hunger to satisfy, i had scarcely a penny in the world. "i can hardly tell you all the shifts i was put to while i was making the diamonds. i have sold newspapers, held horses, opened cab-doors. for many weeks i addressed envelopes. i had a place as assistant to a man who owned a barrow, and used to call down one side of the road while he called down the other. once for a week i had absolutely nothing to do, and i begged. what a week that was! one day the fire was going out and i had eaten nothing all day, and a little chap taking his girl out, gave me sixpence--to show-off. thank heaven for vanity! how the fish-shops smelt! but i went and spent it all on coals, and had the furnace bright red again, and then--well, hunger makes a fool of a man. "at last, three weeks ago, i let the fire out. i took my cylinder and unscrewed it while it was still so hot that it punished my hands, and i scraped out the crumbling lava-like mass with a chisel, and hammered it into a powder upon an iron plate. and i found three big diamonds and five small ones. as i sat on the floor hammering, my door opened, and my neighbour, the begging-letter writer, came in. he was drunk--as he usually is. ''nerchist,' said he. 'you're drunk,' said i. ''structive scoundrel,' said he. 'go to your father,' said i, meaning the father of lies. 'never you mind,' said he, and gave me a cunning wink, and hiccuped, and leaning up against the door, with his other eye against the door-post, began to babble of how he had been prying in my room, and how he had gone to the police that morning, and how they had taken down everything he had to say--''siffiwas a ge'm,' said he. then i suddenly realised i was in a hole. either i should have to tell these police my little secret, and get the whole thing blown upon, or be lagged as an anarchist. so i went up to my neighbour and took him by the collar, and rolled him about a bit, and then i gathered up my diamonds and cleared out. the evening newspapers called my den the kentish-town bomb factory. and now i cannot part with the things for love or money. "if i go in to respectable jewellers they ask me to wait, and go and whisper to a clerk to fetch a policeman, and then i say i cannot wait. and i found out a receiver of stolen goods, and he simply stuck to the one i gave him and told me to prosecute if i wanted it back. i am going about now with several hundred thousand pounds-worth of diamonds round my neck, and without either food or shelter. you are the first person i have taken into my confidence. but i like your face and i am hard-driven." he looked into my eyes. "it would be madness," said i, "for me to buy a diamond under the circumstances. besides, i do not carry hundreds of pounds about in my pocket. yet i more than half believe your story. i will, if you like, do this: come to my office to-morrow...." "you think i am a thief!" said he keenly. "you will tell the police. i am not coming into a trap." "somehow i am assured you are no thief. here is my card. take that, anyhow. you need not come to any appointment. come when you will." he took the card, and an earnest of my good-will. "think better of it and come," said i. he shook his head doubtfully. "i will pay back your half-crown with interest some day--such interest as will amaze you," said he. "anyhow, you will keep the secret?... don't follow me." he crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under the archway leading into essex street, and i let him go. and that was the last i ever saw of him. afterwards i had two letters from him asking me to send bank-notes--not cheques--to certain addresses. i weighed the matter over, and took what i conceived to be the wisest course. once he called upon me when i was out. my urchin described him as a very thin, dirty, and ragged man, with a dreadful cough. he left no message. that was the finish of him so far as my story goes. i wonder sometimes what has become of him. was he an ingenious monomaniac, or a fraudulent dealer in pebbles, or has he really made diamonds as he asserted? the latter is just sufficiently credible to make me think at times that i have missed the most brilliant opportunity of my life. he may of course be dead, and his diamonds carelessly thrown aside--one, i repeat, was almost as big as my thumb. or he may be still wandering about trying to sell the things. it is just possible he may yet emerge upon society, and, passing athwart my heavens in the serene altitude sacred to the wealthy and the well-advertised, reproach me silently for my want of enterprise. i sometimes think i might at least have risked five pounds. aepyornis island the man with the scarred face leant over the table and looked at my bundle. "orchids?" he asked. "a few," i said. "cypripediums," he said. "chiefly," said i. "anything new? i thought not. _i_ did these islands twenty-five--twenty-seven years ago. if you find anything new here--well it's brand new. i didn't leave much." "i'm not a collector," said i. "i was young then," he went on. "lord! how i used to fly round." he seemed to take my measure. "i was in the east indies two years, and in brazil seven. then i went to madagascar." "i know a few explorers by name," i said, anticipating a yarn. "whom did you collect for?" "dawsons. i wonder if you've heard the name of butcher ever?" "butcher--butcher?" the name seemed vaguely present in my memory; then i recalled _butcher_ v. _dawson_. "why!" said i, "you are the man who sued them for four years' salary--got cast away on a desert island ..." "your servant," said the man with the scar, bowing. "funny case, wasn't it? here was me, making a little fortune on that island, doing nothing for it neither, and them quite unable to give me notice. it often used to amuse me thinking over it while i was there. i did calculations of it--big--all over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring." "how did it happen?" said i. "i don't rightly remember the case." "well.... you've heard of the aepyornis?" "rather. andrews was telling me of a new species he was working on only a month or so ago. just before i sailed. they've got a thigh bone, it seems, nearly a yard long. monster the thing must have been!" "i believe you," said the man with the scar. "it _was_ a monster. sinbad's roc was just a legend of 'em. but when did they find these bones?" "three or four years ago--'91, i fancy. why?" "why? because _i_ found 'em--lord!--it's nearly twenty years ago. if dawsons hadn't been silly about that salary they might have made a perfect ring in 'em.... _i_ couldn't help the infernal boat going adrift." he paused, "i suppose it's the same place. a kind of swamp about ninety miles north of antananarivo. do you happen to know? you have to go to it along the coast by boats. you don't happen to remember, perhaps?" "i don't. i fancy andrews said something about a swamp." "it must be the same. it's on the east coast. and somehow there's something in the water that keeps things from decaying. like creosote it smells. it reminded me of trinidad. did they get any more eggs? some of the eggs i found were a foot-and-a-half long. the swamp goes circling round, you know, and cuts off this bit. it's mostly salt, too. well.... what a time i had of it! i found the things quite by accident. we went for eggs, me and two native chaps, in one of those rum canoes all tied together, and found the bones at the same time. we had a tent and provisions for four days, and we pitched on one of the firmer places. to think of it brings that odd tarry smell back even now. it's funny work. you go probing into the mud with iron rods, you know. usually the egg gets smashed. i wonder how long it is since these aepyornises really lived. the missionaries say the natives have legends about when they were alive, but i never heard any such stories myself.[a] but certainly those eggs we got were as fresh as if they had been new laid. fresh! carrying them down to the boat one of my nigger chaps dropped one on a rock and it smashed. how i lammed into the beggar! but sweet it was, as if it was new laid, not even smelly, and its mother dead these four hundred years, perhaps. said a centipede had bit him. however, i'm getting off the straight with the story. it had taken us all day to dig into the slush and get these eggs out unbroken, and we were all covered with beastly black mud, and naturally i was cross. so far as i knew they were the only eggs that have ever been got out not even cracked. i went afterwards to see the ones they have at the natural history museum in london; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. mine were perfect, and i meant to blow them when i got back. naturally i was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours' work just on account of a centipede. i hit him about rather." [footnote a: no european is known to have seen a live aepyornis, with the doubtful exception of macandrew, who visited madagascar in 1745.--h.g.w.] the man with the scar took out a clay pipe. i placed my pouch before him. he filled up absent-mindedly. "how about the others? did you get those home? i don't remember--" "that's the queer part of the story. i had three others. perfectly fresh eggs. well, we put 'em in the boat, and then i went up to the tent to make some coffee, leaving my two heathens down by the beach--the one fooling about with his sting and the other helping him. it never occurred to me that the beggars would take advantage of the peculiar position i was in to pick a quarrel. but i suppose the centipede poison and the kicking i had given him had upset the one--he was always a cantankerous sort--and he persuaded the other. "i remember i was sitting and smoking and boiling up the water over a spirit-lamp business i used to take on these expeditions. incidentally i was admiring the swamp under the sunset. all black and blood-red it was, in streaks--a beautiful sight. and up beyond the land rose grey and hazy to the hills, and the sky behind them red, like a furnace mouth. and fifty yards behind the back of me was these blessed heathen--quite regardless of the tranquil air of things--plotting to cut off with the boat and leave me all alone with three days' provisions and a canvas tent, and nothing to drink whatsoever, beyond a little keg of water. i heard a kind of yelp behind me, and there they were in this canoe affair--it wasn't properly a boat--and, perhaps, twenty yards from land. i realised what was up in a moment. my gun was in the tent, and, besides, i had no bullets--only duck shot. they knew that. but i had a little revolver in my pocket, and i pulled that out as i ran down to the beach. "'come back!' says i, flourishing it. "they jabbered something at me, and the man that broke the egg jeered. i aimed at the other--because he was unwounded and had the paddle, and i missed. they laughed. however, i wasn't beat. i knew i had to keep cool, and i tried him again and made him jump with the whang of it. he didn't laugh that time. the third time i got his head, and over he went, and the paddle with him. it was a precious lucky shot for a revolver. i reckon it was fifty yards. he went right under. i don't know if he was shot, or simply stunned and drowned. then i began to shout to the other chap to come back, but he huddled up in the canoe and refused to answer. so i fired out my revolver at him and never got near him. "i felt a precious fool, i can tell you. there i was on this rotten, black beach, flat swamp all behind me, and the flat sea, cold after the sunset, and just this black canoe drifting steadily out to sea. i tell you i damned dawsons and jamrachs and museums and all the rest of it just to rights. i bawled to this nigger to come back, until my voice went up into a scream. "there was nothing for it but to swim after him and take my luck with the sharks. so i opened my clasp-knife and put it in my mouth, and took off my clothes and waded in. as soon as i was in the water i lost sight of the canoe, but i aimed, as i judged, to head it off. i hoped the man in it was too bad to navigate it, and that it would keep on drifting in the same direction. presently it came up over the horizon again to the south-westward about. the afterglow of sunset was well over now and the dim of night creeping up. the stars were coming through the blue. i swum like a champion, though my legs and arms were soon aching. "however, i came up to him by the time the stars were fairly out. as it got darker i began to see all manner of glowing things in the water--phosphorescence, you know. at times it made me giddy. i hardly knew which was stars and which was phosphorescence, and whether i was swimming on my head or my heels. the canoe was as black as sin, and the ripple under the bows like liquid fire. i was naturally chary of clambering up into it. i was anxious to see what he was up to first. he seemed to be lying cuddled up in a lump in the bows, and the stern was all out of water. the thing kept turning round slowly as it drifted--kind of waltzing, don't you know. i went to the stern, and pulled it down, expecting him to wake up. then i began to clamber in with my knife in my hand, and ready for a rush. but he never stirred. so there i sat in the stern of the little canoe, drifting away over the calm phosphorescent sea, and with all the host of the stars above me, waiting for something to happen. "after a long time i called him by name, but he never answered. i was too tired to take any risks by going along to him. so we sat there. i fancy i dozed once or twice. when the dawn came i saw he was as dead as a doornail and all puffed up and purple. my three eggs and the bones were lying in the middle of the canoe, and the keg of water and some coffee and biscuits wrapped in a cape _argus_ by his feet, and a tin of methylated spirit underneath him. there was no paddle, nor, in fact, anything except the spirit-tin that one could use as one, so i settled to drift until i was picked up. i held an inquest on him, brought in a verdict against some snake, scorpion, or centipede unknown, and sent him overboard. "after that i had a drink of water and a few biscuits, and took a look round. i suppose a man low down as i was don't see very far; leastways, madagascar was clean out of sight, and any trace of land at all. i saw a sail going south-westward--looked like a schooner, but her hull never came up. presently the sun got high in the sky and began to beat down upon me. lord! it pretty near made my brains boil. i tried dipping my head in the sea, but after a while my eye fell on the cape _argus_, and i lay down flat in the canoe and spread this over me. wonderful things these newspapers! i never read one through thoroughly before, but it's odd what you get up to when you're alone, as i was. i suppose i read that blessed old cape _argus_ twenty times. the pitch in the canoe simply reeked with the heat and rose up into big blisters. "i drifted ten days," said the man with the scar. "it's a little thing in the telling, isn't it? every day was like the last. except in the morning and the evening i never kept a look-out even--the blaze was so infernal. i didn't see a sail after the first three days, and those i saw took no notice of me. about the sixth night a ship went by scarcely half a mile away from me, with all its lights ablaze and its ports open, looking like a big firefly. there was music aboard. i stood up and shouted and screamed at it. the second day i broached one of the aepyornis eggs, scraped the shell away at the end bit by bit, and tried it, and i was glad to find it was good enough to eat. a bit flavoury--not bad, i mean--but with something of the taste of a duck's egg. there was a kind of circular patch, about six inches across, on one side of the yolk, and with streaks of blood and a white mark like a ladder in it that i thought queer, but i did not understand what this meant at the time, and i wasn't inclined to be particular. the egg lasted me three days, with biscuits and a drink of water. i chewed coffee berries too--invigorating stuff. the second egg i opened about the eighth day, and it scared me." the man with the scar paused. "yes," he said, "developing." "i dare say you find it hard to believe. _i_ did, with the thing before me. there the egg had been, sunk in that cold black mud, perhaps three hundred years. but there was no mistaking it. there was the--what is it?--embryo, with its big head and curved back, and its heart beating under its throat, and the yolk shrivelled up and great membranes spreading inside of the shell and all over the yolk. here was i hatching out the eggs of the biggest of all extinct birds, in a little canoe in the midst of the indian ocean. if old dawson had known that! it was worth four years' salary. what do _you_ think? "however, i had to eat that precious thing up, every bit of it, before i sighted the reef, and some of the mouthfuls were beastly unpleasant. i left the third one alone. i held it up to the light, but the shell was too thick for me to get any notion of what might be happening inside; and though i fancied i heard blood pulsing, it might have been the rustle in my own ears, like what you listen to in a seashell. "then came the atoll. came out of the sunrise, as it were, suddenly, close up to me. i drifted straight towards it until i was about half a mile from shore, not more, and then the current took a turn, and i had to paddle as hard as i could with my hands and bits of the aepyornis shell to make the place. however, i got there. it was just a common atoll about four miles round, with a few trees growing and a spring in one place, and the lagoon full of parrot-fish. i took the egg ashore and put it in a good place well above the tide lines and in the sun, to give it all the chance i could, and pulled the canoe up safe, and loafed about prospecting. it's rum how dull an atoll is. as soon as i had found a spring all the interest seemed to vanish. when i was a kid i thought nothing could be finer or more adventurous than the robinson crusoe business, but that place was as monotonous as a book of sermons. i went round finding eatable things and generally thinking; but i tell you i was bored to death before the first day was out. it shows my luck--the very day i landed the weather changed. a thunderstorm went by to the north and flicked its wing over the island, and in the night there came a drencher and a howling wind slap over us. it wouldn't have taken much, you know, to upset that canoe. "i was sleeping under the canoe, and the egg was luckily among the sand higher up the beach, and the first thing i remember was a sound like a hundred pebbles hitting the boat at once, and a rush of water over my body. i'd been dreaming of antananarivo, and i sat up and holloaed to intoshi to ask her what the devil was up, and clawed out at the chair where the matches used to be. then i remembered where i was. there were phosphorescent waves rolling up as if they meant to eat me, and all the rest of the night as black as pitch. the air was simply yelling. the clouds seemed down on your head almost, and the rain fell as if heaven was sinking and they were baling out the waters above the firmament. one great roller came writhing at me, like a fiery serpent, and i bolted. then i thought of the canoe, and ran down to it as the water went hissing back again; but the thing had gone. i wondered about the egg then, and felt my way to it. it was all right and well out of reach of the maddest waves, so i sat down beside it and cuddled it for company. lord! what a night that was! "the storm was over before the morning. there wasn't a rag of cloud left in the sky when the dawn came, and all along the beach there were bits of plank scattered--which was the disarticulated skeleton, so to speak, of my canoe. however, that gave me something to do, for, taking advantage of two of the trees being together, i rigged up a kind of storm-shelter with these vestiges. and that day the egg hatched. "hatched, sir, when my head was pillowed on it and i was asleep. i heard a whack and felt a jar and sat up, and there was the end of the egg pecked out and a rum little brown head looking out at me. 'lord!' i said, 'you're welcome'; and with a little difficulty he came out. "he was a nice friendly little chap, at first, about the size of a small hen--very much like most other young birds, only bigger. his plumage was a dirty brown to begin with, with a sort of grey scab that fell off it very soon, and scarcely feathers--a kind of downy hair. i can hardly express how pleased i was to see him. i tell you, robinson crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. but here was interesting company. he looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once, as though being hatched three hundred years too late was just nothing. 'glad to see you, man friday!' says i, for i had naturally settled he was to be called man friday if ever he was hatched, as soon as ever i found the egg in the canoe had developed. i was a bit anxious about his feed, so i gave him a lump of raw parrot-fish at once. he took it, and opened his beak for more. i was glad of that, for, under the circumstances, if he'd been at all fanciful, i should have had to eat him after all. you'd be surprised what an interesting bird that aepyornis chick was. he followed me about from the very beginning. he used to stand by me and watch while i fished in the lagoon, and go shares in anything i caught. and he was sensible, too. there were nasty green warty things, like pickled gherkins, used to lie about on the beach, and he tried one of these and it upset him. he never even looked at any of them again. "and he grew. you could almost see him grow. and as i was never much of a society man his quiet, friendly ways suited me to a t. for nearly two years we were as happy as we could be on that island. i had no business worries, for i knew my salary was mounting up at dawsons'. we would see a sail now and then, but nothing ever came near us. i amused myself, too, by decorating the island with designs worked in sea-urchins and fancy shells of various kinds. i put aepyornis island all round the place very nearly, in big letters, like what you see done with coloured stones at railway stations in the old country, and mathematical calculations and drawings of various sorts. and i used to lie watching the blessed bird stalking round and growing, growing; and think how i could make a living out of him by showing him about if i ever got taken off. after his first moult he began to get handsome, with a crest and a blue wattle, and a lot of green feathers at the behind of him. and then i used to puzzle whether dawsons had any right to claim him or not. stormy weather and in the rainy season we lay snug under the shelter i had made out of the old canoe, and i used to tell him lies about my friends at home. and after a storm we would go round the island together to see if there was any drift. it was a kind of idyll, you might say. if only i had had some tobacco it would have been simply just like heaven. "it was about the end of the second year our little paradise went wrong. friday was then about fourteen feet high to the bill of him, with a big, broad head like the end of a pickaxe, and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims, set together like a man's--not out of sight of each other like a hen's. his plumage was fine--none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich--more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go. and then it was he began to cock his comb at me and give himself airs, and show signs of a nasty temper.... "at last came a time when my fishing had been rather unlucky, and he began to hang about me in a queer, meditative way. i thought he might have been eating sea-cucumbers or something, but it was really just discontent on his part. i was hungry too, and when at last i landed a fish i wanted it for myself. tempers were short that morning on both sides. he pecked at it and grabbed it, and i gave him a whack on the head to make him leave go. and at that he went for me. lord!... "he gave me this in the face." the man indicated his scar. "then he kicked me. it was like a cart-horse. i got up, and seeing he hadn't finished, i started off full tilt with my arms doubled up over my face. but he ran on those gawky legs of his faster than a racehorse, and kept landing out at me with sledge hammer kicks, and bringing his pickaxe down on the back of my head. i made for the lagoon, and went in up to my neck. he stopped at the water, for he hated getting his feet wet, and began to make a shindy, something like a peacock's, only hoarser. he started strutting up and down the beach. i'll admit i felt small to see this blessed fossil lording it there. and my head and face were all bleeding, and--well, my body just one jelly of bruises. "i decided to swim across the lagoon and leave him alone for a bit, until the affair blew over. i shinned up the tallest palm-tree, and sat there thinking of it all. i don't suppose i ever felt so hurt by anything before or since. it was the brutal ingratitude of the creature. i'd been more than a brother to him. i'd hatched him, educated him. a great gawky, out-of-date bird! and me a human being--heir of the ages and all that. "i thought after a time he'd begin to see things in that light himself, and feel a little sorry for his behaviour. i thought if i was to catch some nice little bits of fish, perhaps, and go to him presently in a casual kind of way, and offer them to him, he might do the sensible thing. it took me some time to learn how unforgiving and cantankerous an extinct bird can be. malice! "i won't tell you all the little devices i tried to get that bird round again. i simply can't. it makes my cheek burn with shame even now to think of the snubs and buffets i had from this infernal curiosity. i tried violence. i chucked lumps of coral at him from a safe distance, but he only swallowed them. i shied my open knife at him and almost lost it, though it was too big for him to swallow. i tried starving him out and struck fishing, but he took to picking along the beach at low water after worms, and rubbed along on that. half my time i spent up to my neck in the lagoon, and the rest up the palm-trees. one of them was scarcely high enough, and when he caught me up it he had a regular bank holiday with the calves of my legs. it got unbearable. i don't know if you have ever tried sleeping up a palm-tree. it gave me the most horrible nightmares. think of the shame of it, too! here was this extinct animal mooning about my island like a sulky duke, and me not allowed to rest the sole of my foot on the place. i used to cry with weariness and vexation. i told him straight that i didn't mean to be chased about a desert island by any damned anachronisms. i told him to go and peck a navigator of his own age. but he only snapped his beak at me. great ugly bird--all legs and neck! "i shouldn't like to say how long that went on altogether. i'd have killed him sooner if i'd known how. however, i hit on a way of settling him at last. it is a south american dodge. i joined all my fishing-lines together with stems of seaweed and things and made a stoutish string, perhaps twelve yards in length or more, and i fastened two lumps of coral rock to the ends of this. it took me some time to do, because every now and then i had to go into the lagoon or up a tree as the fancy took me. this i whirled rapidly round my head, and then let it go at him. the first time i missed, but the next time the string caught his legs beautifully, and wrapped round them again and again. over he went. i threw it standing waist-deep in the lagoon, and as soon as he went down i was out of the water and sawing at his neck with my knife ... "i don't like to think of that even now. i felt like a murderer while i did it, though my anger was hot against him. when i stood over him and saw him bleeding on the white sand, and his beautiful great legs and neck writhing in his last agony ... pah! "with that tragedy loneliness came upon me like a curse. good lord! you can't imagine how i missed that bird. i sat by his corpse and sorrowed over him, and shivered as i looked round the desolate, silent reef. i thought of what a jolly little bird he had been when he was hatched, and of a thousand pleasant tricks he had played before he went wrong. i thought if i'd only wounded him i might have nursed him round into a better understanding. if i'd had any means of digging into the coral rock i'd have buried him. i felt exactly as if he was human. as it was, i couldn't think of eating him, so i put him in the lagoon, and the little fishes picked him clean. i didn't even save the feathers. then one day a chap cruising about in a yacht had a fancy to see if my atoll still existed. "he didn't come a moment too soon, for i was about sick enough of the desolation of it, and only hesitating whether i should walk out into the sea and finish up the business that way, or fall back on the green things.... "i sold the bones to a man named winslow--a dealer near the british museum, and he says he sold them to old havers. it seems havers didn't understand they were extra large, and it was only after his death they attracted attention. they called 'em aepyornis--what was it?" "_aepyornis vastus_," said i. "it's funny, the very thing was mentioned to me by a friend of mine. when they found an aepyornis, with a thigh a yard long, they thought they had reached the top of the scale, and called him _aepyornis maximus_. then someone turned up another thighbone four feet six or more, and that they called _aepyornis titan_. then your _vastus_ was found after old havers died, in his collection, and then a _vastissimus_ turned up." "winslow was telling me as much," said the man with the scar. "if they get any more aepyornises, he reckons some scientific swell will go and burst a bloodvessel. but it was a queer thing to happen to a man; wasn't it--altogether?" the remarkable case of davidson's eyes the transitory mental aberration of sidney davidson, remarkable enough in itself, is still more remarkable if wade's explanation is to be credited. it sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spending an intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, or being watched in our most secret operations by unsuspected eyes. it happened that i was the immediate witness of davidson's seizure, and so it falls naturally to me to put the story upon paper. when i say that i was the immediate witness of his seizure, i mean that i was the first on the scene. the thing happened at the harlow technical college, just beyond the highgate archway. he was alone in the larger laboratory when the thing happened. i was in a smaller room, where the balances are, writing up some notes. the thunderstorm had completely upset my work, of course. it was just after one of the louder peals that i thought i heard some glass smash in the other room. i stopped writing, and turned round to listen. for a moment i heard nothing; the hail was playing the devil's tattoo on the corrugated zinc of the roof. then came another sound, a smash--no doubt of it this time. something heavy had been knocked off the bench. i jumped up at once and went and opened the door leading into the big laboratory. i was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of the room, with a dazzled look on his face. my first impression was that he was drunk. he did not notice me. he was clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of his face. he put out his hand, slowly, rather hesitatingly, and then clutched nothing. "what's come to it?" he said. he held up his hands to his face, fingers spread out. "great scot!" he said. the thing happened three or four years ago, when everyone swore by that personage. then he began raising his feet clumsily, as though he had expected to find them glued to the floor. "davidson!" cried i. "what's the matter with you?" he turned round in my direction and looked about for me. he looked over me and at me and on either side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me. "waves," he said; "and a remarkably neat schooner. i'd swear that was bellows' voice. _hullo_!" he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice. i thought he was up to some foolery. then i saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers. "what's up, man?" said i. "you've smashed the electrometer!" "bellows again!" said he. "friends left, if my hands are gone. something about electrometers. which way _are_ you, bellows?" he suddenly came staggering towards me. "the damned stuff cuts like butter," he said. he walked straight into the bench and recoiled. "none so buttery that!" he said, and stood swaying. i felt scared. "davidson," said i, "what on earth's come over you?" he looked round him in every direction. "i could swear that was bellows. why don't you show yourself like a man, bellows?" it occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind. i walked round the table and laid my hand upon his arm. i never saw a man more startled in my life. he jumped away from me, and came round into an attitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted with terror. "good god!" he cried. "what was that?" "it's i--bellows. confound it, davidson!" he jumped when i answered him and stared--how can i express it?--right through me. he began talking, not to me, but to himself. "here in broad daylight on a clear beach. not a place to hide in." he looked about him wildly. "here! i'm _off_." he suddenly turned and ran headlong into the big electro-magnet--so violently that, as we found afterwards, he bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly. at that he stepped back a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, "what, in heaven's name, has come over me?" he stood, blanched with terror and trembling violently, with his right arm clutching his left, where that had collided with the magnet. by that time i was excited and fairly scared. "davidson," said i, "don't be afraid." he was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before. i repeated my words in as clear and firm a tone as i could assume. "bellows," he said, "is that you?" "can't you see it's me?" he laughed. "i can't even see it's myself. where the devil are we?" "here," said i, "in the laboratory." "the laboratory!" he answered, in a puzzled tone, and put his hand to his forehead. "i _was_ in the laboratory--till that flash came, but i'm hanged if i'm there now. what ship is that?" "there's no ship," said i. "do be sensible, old chap." "no ship!" he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith. "i suppose," said he, slowly, "we're both dead. but the rummy part is i feel just as though i still had a body. don't get used to it all at once, i suppose. the old shop was struck by lightning, i suppose. jolly quick thing, bellows--eigh?" "don't talk nonsense. you're very much alive. you are in the laboratory, blundering about. you've just smashed a new electrometer. i don't envy you when boyce arrives." he stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates. "i must be deaf," said he. "they've fired a gun, for there goes the puff of smoke, and i never heard a sound." i put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed. "we seem to have a sort of invisible bodies," said he. "by jove! there's a boat coming round the headland. it's very much like the old life after all--in a different climate." i shook his arm. "davidson," i cried, "wake up!" ii. it was just then that boyce came in. so soon as he spoke davidson exclaimed: "old boyce! dead too! what a lark!" i hastened to explain that davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. boyce was interested at once. we both did all we could to rouse the fellow out of his extraordinary state. he answered our questions, and asked us some of his own, but his attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about a beach and a ship. he kept interpolating observations concerning some boat and the davits and sails filling with the wind. it made one feel queer, in the dusky laboratory, to hear him saying such things. he was blind and helpless. we had to walk him down the passage, one at each elbow, to boyce's private room, and while boyce talked to him there, and humoured him about this ship idea, i went along the corridor and asked old wade to come and look at him. the voice of our dean sobered him a little, but not very much. he asked where his hands were, and why he had to walk about up to his waist in the ground. wade thought over him a long time--you know how he knits his brows--and then made him feel the couch, guiding his hands to it. "that's a couch," said wade. "the couch in the private room of professor boyce. horsehair stuffing." davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently that he could feel it all right, but he couldn't see it. "what _do_ you see?" asked wade. davidson said he could see nothing but a lot of sand and broken-up shells. wade gave him some other things to feel, telling him what they were, and watching him keenly. "the ship is almost hull down," said davidson, presently, _apropos_ of nothing. "never mind the ship," said wade. "listen to me, davidson. do you know what hallucination means?" "rather," said davidson. "well, everything you see is hallucinatory." "bishop berkeley," said davidson. "don't mistake me," said wade. "you are alive and in this room of boyce's. but something has happened to your eyes. you cannot see; you can feel and hear, but not see. do you follow me?" "it seems to me that i see too much." davidson rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. "well?" he said. "that's all. don't let it perplex you. bellows, here, and i will take you home in a cab." "wait a bit." davidson thought. "help me to sit down," said he, presently; "and now--i'm sorry to trouble you--but will you tell me all that over again?" wade repeated it very patiently. davidson shut his eyes, and pressed his hands upon his forehead. "yes," said he. "it's quite right. now my eyes are shut i know you're right. that's you, bellows, sitting by me on the couch. i'm in england again. and we're in the dark." then he opened his eyes, "and there," said he, "is the sun just rising, and the yards of the ship, and a tumbled sea, and a couple of birds flying. i never saw anything so real. and i'm sitting up to my neck in a bank of sand." he bent forward and covered his face with his hands. then he opened his eyes again. "dark sea and sunrise! and yet i'm sitting on a sofa in old boyce's room! ... god help me!" iii. that was the beginning. for three weeks this strange affection of davidson's eyes continued unabated. it was far worse than being blind. he was absolutely helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatched bird, and led about and undressed. if he attempted to move he fell over things or stuck himself against walls or doors. after a day or so he got used to hearing our voices without seeing us, and willingly admitted he was at home, and that wade was right in what he told him. my sister, to whom he was engaged, insisted on coming to see him, and would sit for hours every day while he talked about this beach of his. holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely. he explained that when we left the college and drove home--he lived in hampstead village--it appeared to him as if we drove right through a sandhill--it was perfectly black until he emerged again--and through rocks and trees and solid obstacles, and when he was taken to his own room it made him giddy and almost frantic with the fear of falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty feet above the rocks of his imaginary island. he kept saying he should smash all the eggs. the end was that he had to be taken down into his father's consulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there. he described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole, with very little vegetation, except some peaty stuff, and a lot of bare rock. there were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white and disagreeable to see. the sea was often rough, and once there was a thunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes. once or twice seals pulled up on the beach, but only on the first two or three days. he said it was very funny the way in which the penguins used to waddle right through him, and how he seemed to lie among them without disturbing them. i remember one odd thing, and that was when he wanted very badly to smoke. we put a pipe in his hands--he almost poked his eye out with it--and lit it. but he couldn't taste anything. i've since found it's the same with me--i don't know if it's the usual case--that i cannot enjoy tobacco at all unless i can see the smoke. but the queerest part of his vision came when wade sent him out in a bath-chair to get fresh air. the davidsons hired a chair, and got that deaf and obstinate dependent of theirs, widgery, to attend to it. widgery's ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. my sister, who had been to the dogs' home, met them in camden town, towards king's cross, widgery trotting along complacently, and davidson evidently most distressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract widgery's attention. he positively wept when my sister spoke to him. "oh, get me out of this horrible darkness!" he said, feeling for her hand. "i must get out of it, or i shall die." he was quite incapable of explaining what was the matter, but my sister decided he must go home, and presently, as they went up hill towards hampstead, the horror seemed to drop from him. he said it was good to see the stars again, though it was then about noon and a blazing day. "it seemed," he told me afterwards, "as if i was being carried irresistibly towards the water. i was not very much alarmed at first. of course it was night there--a lovely night." "of course?" i asked, for that struck me as odd. "of course," said he. "it's always night there when it is day here.... well, we went right into the water, which was calm and shining under the moonlight--just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and flatter as i came down into it. the surface glistened just like a skin--it might have been empty space underneath for all i could tell to the contrary. very slowly, for i rode slanting into it, the water crept up to my eyes. then i went under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes. the moon gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintly glowing, came darting round me--and things that seemed made of luminous glass, and i passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oily lustre. and so i drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by one, and the moon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became a luminous purple-red. it was all very faint and mysterious, and everything seemed to quiver. and all the while i could hear the wheels of the bath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man in the distance selling the special _pall mall_. "i kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. it became inky black about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness, and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. the snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit lamps; but, after a time, there were no more weeds. the fishes came staring and gaping towards me, and into me and through me. i never imagined such fishes before. they had lines of fire along the sides of them as though they had been outlined with a luminous pencil. and there was a ghastly thing swimming backwards with a lot of twining arms. and then i saw, coming very slowly towards me through the gloom, a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something that drifted. i drove on straight towards it, and presently i saw in the midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. then it was i began to try to attract widgery's attention. a horror came upon me. ugh! i should have driven right into those half-eaten--things. if your sister had not come! they had great holes in them, bellows, and ... never mind. but it was ghastly!" iv. for three weeks davidson remained in this singular state, seeing what at the time we imagined was an altogether phantasmal world, and stone blind to the world around him. then, one tuesday, when i called i met old davidson in the passage. "he can see his thumb!" the old gentleman said, in a perfect transport. he was struggling into his overcoat. "he can see his thumb, bellows!" he said, with the tears in his eyes. "the lad will be all right yet." i rushed in to davidson. he was holding up a little book before his face, and looking at it and laughing in a weak kind of way. "it's amazing," said he. "there's a kind of patch come there." he pointed with his finger. "i'm on the rocks as usual, and the penguins are staggering and flapping about as usual, and there's been a whale showing every now and then, but it's got too dark now to make him out. but put something _there_, and i see it--i do see it. it's very dim and broken in places, but i see it all the same, like a faint spectre of itself. i found it out this morning while they were dressing me. it's like a hole in this infernal phantom world. just put your hand by mine. no--not there. ah! yes! i see it. the base of your thumb and a bit of cuff! it looks like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of the darkling sky. just by it there's a group of stars like a cross coming out." from that time davidson began to mend. his account of the change, like his account of the vision, was oddly convincing. over patches of his field of vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew transparent, as it were, and through these translucent gaps he began to see dimly the real world about him. the patches grew in size and number, ran together and spread until only here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes. he was able to get up and steer himself about, feed himself once more, read, smoke, and behave like an ordinary citizen again. at first it was very confusing to him to have these two pictures overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern, but in a little while he began to distinguish the real from the illusory. at first he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed only too anxious to complete his cure by taking exercise and tonics. but as that odd island of his began to fade away from him, he became queerly interested in it. he wanted particularly to go down into the deep sea again, and would spend half his time wandering about the low lying parts of london, trying to find the water-logged wreck he had seen drifting. the glare of real daylight very soon impressed him so vividly as to blot out everything of his shadowy world, but of a night time, in a darkened room, he could still see the white-splashed rocks of the island, and the clumsy penguins staggering to and fro. but even these grew fainter and fainter, and, at last, soon after he married my sister, he saw them for the last time. v. and now to tell of the queerest thing of all. about two years after his cure i dined with the davidsons, and after dinner a man named atkins called in. he is a lieutenant in the royal navy, and a pleasant, talkative man. he was on friendly terms with my brother-in-law, and was soon on friendly terms with me. it came out that he was engaged to davidson's cousin, and incidentally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of _fiancã©e_. "and, by-the-by," said he, "here's the old _fulmar_." davidson looked at it casually. then suddenly his face lit up. "good heavens!" said he. "i could almost swear--" "what?" said atkins. "that i had seen that ship before." "don't see how you can have. she hasn't been out of the south seas for six years, and before then--" "but," began davidson, and then, "yes--that's the ship i dreamt of, i'm sure that's the ship i dreamt of. she was standing off an island that swarmed with penguins, and she fired a gun." "good lord!" said atkins, who had now heard the particulars of the seizure. "how the deuce could you dream that?" and then, bit by bit, it came out that on the very day davidson was seized, h.m.s. _fulmar_ had actually been off a little rock to the south of antipodes island. a boat had landed overnight to get penguins' eggs, had been delayed, and a thunderstorm drifting up, the boat's crew had waited until the morning before rejoining the ship. atkins had been one of them, and he corroborated, word for word, the descriptions davidson had given of the island and the boat. there is not the slightest doubt in any of our minds that davidson has really seen the place. in some unaccountable way, while he moved hither and thither in london, his sight moved hither and thither in a manner that corresponded, about this distant island. _how_ is absolutely a mystery. that completes the remarkable story of davidson's eyes. it's perhaps the best authenticated case in existence of a real vision at a distance. explanation there is none forthcoming, except what professor wade has thrown out. but his explanation invokes the fourth dimension, and a dissertation on theoretical kinds of space. to talk of there being "a kink in space" seems mere nonsense to me; it may be because i am no mathematician. when i said that nothing would alter the fact that the place is eight thousand miles away, he answered that two points might be a yard away on a sheet of paper and yet be brought together by bending the paper round. the reader may grasp his argument, but i certainly do not. his idea seems to be that davidson, stooping between the poles of the big electro-magnet, had some extraordinary twist given to his retinal elements through the sudden change in the field of force due to the lightning. he thinks, as a consequence of this, that it may be possible to live visually in one part of the world, while one lives bodily in another. he has even made some experiments in support of his views; but, so far, he has simply succeeded in blinding a few dogs. i believe that is the net result of his work, though i have not seen him for some weeks. latterly i have been so busy with my work in connection with the saint pancras installation that i have had little opportunity of calling to see him. but the whole of his theory seems fantastic to me. the facts concerning davidson stand on an altogether different footing, and i can testify personally to the accuracy of every detail i have given. the lord of the dynamos the chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled at camberwell, and kept the electric railway going, came out of yorkshire, and his name was james holroyd. he was a practical electrician, but fond of whisky, a heavy, red-haired brute with irregular teeth. he doubted the existence of the deity, but accepted carnot's cycle, and he had read shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry. his helper came out of the mysterious east, and his name was azuma-zi. but holroyd called him pooh-bah. holroyd liked a nigger help because he would stand kicking--a habit with holroyd--and did not pry into the machinery and try to learn the ways of it. certain odd possibilities of the negro mind brought into abrupt contact with the crown of our civilisation holroyd never fully realised, though just at the end he got some inkling of them. to define azuma-zi was beyond ethnology. he was, perhaps, more negroid than anything else, though his hair was curly rather than frizzy, and his nose had a bridge. moreover, his skin was brown rather than black, and the whites of his eyes were yellow. his broad cheek-bones and narrow chin gave his face something of the viperine v. his head, too, was broad behind, and low and narrow at the forehead, as if his brain had been twisted round in the reverse way to a european's. he was short of stature and still shorter of english. in conversation he made numerous odd noises of no known marketable value, and his infrequent words were carved and wrought into heraldic grotesqueness. holroyd tried to elucidate his religious beliefs, and--especially after whiskey--lectured to him against superstition and missionaries. azuma-zi, however, shirked the discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it. azuma-zi had come, clad in white but insufficient raiment, out of the stoke-hole of the _lord clive_, from the straits settlements, and beyond, into london. he had heard even in his youth of the greatness and riches of london, where all the women are white and fair, and even the beggars in the streets are white, and he had arrived, with newly-earned gold coins in his pocket, to worship at the shrine of civilisation. the day of his landing was a dismal one; the sky was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle filtered down to the greasy streets, but he plunged boldly into the delights of shadwell, and was presently cast up, shattered in health, civilised in costume, penniless, and, except in matters of the direst necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil for james holroyd and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at camberwell. and to james holroyd bullying was a labour of love. there were three dynamos with their engines at camberwell. the two that have been there since the beginning are small machines; the larger one was new. the smaller machines made a reasonable noise; their straps hummed over the drums, every now and then the brushes buzzed and fizzled, and the air churned steadily, whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. one was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating. but the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. the place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. this last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but azuma-zi accounted it unto the monster for mightiness and pride. if it were possible we would have the noises of that shed always about the reader as he reads, we would tell all our story to such an accompaniment. it was a steady stream of din, from which the ear picked out first one thread and then another; there was the intermittent snorting, panting, and seething of the steam engines, the suck and thud of their pistons, the dull beat on the air as the spokes of the great driving-wheels came round, a note the leather straps made as they ran tighter and looser, and a fretful tumult from the dynamos; and over all, sometimes inaudible, as the ear tired of it, and then creeping back upon the senses again, was this trombone note of the big machine. the floor never felt steady and quiet beneath one's feet, but quivered and jarred. it was a confusing, unsteady place, and enough to send anyone's thoughts jerking into odd zigzags. and for three months, while the big strike of the engineers was in progress, holroyd, who was a blackleg, and azuma-zi, who was a mere black, were never out of the stir and eddy of it, but slept and fed in the little wooden shanty between the shed and the gates. holroyd delivered a theological lecture on the text of his big machine soon after azuma-zi came. he had to shout to be heard in the din. "look at that," said holroyd; "where's your 'eathen idol to match 'im?" and azuma-zi looked. for a moment holroyd was inaudible, and then azuma-zi heard: "kill a hundred men. twelve per cent, on the ordinary shares," said holroyd, "and that's something like a gord!" holroyd was proud of his big dynamo, and expatiated upon its size and power to azuma-zi until heaven knows what odd currents of thought that and the incessant whirling and shindy set up within the curly black cranium. he would explain in the most graphic manner the dozen or so ways in which a man might be killed by it, and once he gave azuma-zi a shock as a sample of its quality. after that, in the breathing-times of his labour--it was heavy labour, being not only his own, but most of holroyd's--azuma-zi would sit and watch the big machine. now and then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which holroyd would swear, but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing. the band ran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one watched was the complacent thud of the piston. so it lived all day in this big airy shed, with him and holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew--mere captive devils of the british solomon--had been, but a machine enthroned. those two smaller dynamos, azuma-zi by force of contrast despised; the large one he privately christened the lord of the dynamos. they were fretful and irregular, but the big dynamo was steady. how great it was! how serene and easy in its working! greater and calmer even than the buddahs he had seen at rangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! the great black coils spun, spun, spun, the rings ran round under the brushes, and the deep note of its coil steadied the whole. it affected azuma-zi queerly. azuma-zi was not fond of labour. he would sit about and watch the lord of the dynamos while holroyd went away to persuade the yard porter to get whiskey, although his proper place was not in the dynamo shed but behind the engines, and, moreover, if holroyd caught him skulking he got hit for it with a rod of stout copper wire. he would go and stand close to the colossus and look up at the great leather band running overhead. there was a black patch on the band that came round, and it pleased him somehow among all the clatter to watch this return again and again. odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it. scientific people tell us that savages give souls to rocks and trees--and a machine is a thousand times more alive than a rock or a tree. and azuma-zi was practically a savage still; the veneer of civilisation lay no deeper than his slop suit, his bruises, and the coal grime on his face and hands. his father before him had worshipped a meteoric stone, kindred blood it may be had splashed the broad wheels of juggernaut. he took every opportunity holroyd gave him of touching and handling the great dynamo that was fascinating him. he polished and cleaned it until the metal parts were blinding in the sun. he felt a mysterious sense of service in doing this. he would go up to it and touch its spinning coils gently. the gods he had worshipped were all far away. the people in london hid their gods. at last his dim feelings grew more distinct, and took shape in thoughts and at last in acts. when he came into the roaring shed one morning he salaamed to the lord of the dynamos, and then, when holroyd was away, he went and whispered to the thundering machine that he was its servant, and prayed it to have pity on him and save him from holroyd. as he did so a rare gleam of light came in through the open archway of the throbbing machine-shed, and the lord of the dynamos, as he whirled and roared, was radiant with pale gold. then azuma-zi knew that his service was acceptable to his lord. after that he did not feel so lonely as he had done, and he had indeed been very much alone in london. and even when his work time was over, which was rare, he loitered about the shed. then, the next time holroyd maltreated him, azuma-zi went presently to the lord of the dynamos and whispered, "thou seest, o my lord!" and the angry whirr of the machinery seemed to answer him. thereafter it appeared to him that whenever holroyd came into the shed a different note came into the sounds of the dynamo. "my lord bides his time," said azuma-zi to himself. "the iniquity of the fool is not yet ripe." and he waited and watched for the day of reckoning. one day there was evidence of short circuiting, and holroyd, making an unwary examination--it was in the afternoon--got a rather severe shock. azuma-zi from behind the engine saw him jump off and curse at the peccant coil. "he is warned," said azuma-zi to himself. "surely my lord is very patient." holroyd had at first initiated his "nigger" into such elementary conceptions of the dynamo's working as would enable him to take temporary charge of the shed in his absence. but when he noticed the manner in which azuma-zi hung about the monster he became suspicious. he dimly perceived his assistant was "up to something," and connecting him with the anointing of the coils with oil that had rotted the varnish in one place, he issued an edict, shouted above the confusion of the machinery, "don't 'ee go nigh that big dynamo any more, pooh-bah, or a'll take thy skin off!" besides, if it pleased azuma-zi to be near the big machine, it was plain sense and decency to keep him away from it. azuma-zi obeyed at the time, but later he was caught bowing before the lord of the dynamos. at which holroyd twisted his arm and kicked him as he turned to go away. as azuma-zi presently stood behind the engine and glared at the back of the hated holroyd, the noises of the machinery took a new rhythm, and sounded like four words in his native tongue. it is hard to say exactly what madness is. i fancy azuma-zi was mad. the incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his little store of knowledge and big store of superstitious fancy, at last, into something akin to frenzy. at any rate, when the idea of making holroyd a sacrifice to the dynamo fetich was thus suggested to him, it filled him with a strange tumult of exultant emotion. that night the two men and their black shadows were alone in the shed together. the shed was lit with one big arc light that winked and flickered purple. the shadows lay black behind the dynamos, the ball governors of the engines whirled from light to darkness, and their pistons beat loud and steady. the world outside seen through the open end of the shed seemed incredibly dim and remote. it seemed absolutely silent, too, since the riot of the machinery drowned every external sound. far away was the black fence of the yard with grey shadowy houses behind, and above was the deep blue sky and the pale little stars. azuma-zi suddenly walked across the centre of the shed above which the leather bands were running, and went into the shadow by the big dynamo. holroyd heard a click, and the spin of the armature changed. "what are you dewin' with that switch?" he bawled in surprise. "han't i told you--" then he saw the set expression of azuma-zi's eyes as the asiatic came out of the shadow towards him. in another moment the two men were grappling fiercely in front of the great dynamo. "you coffee-headed fool!" gasped holroyd, with a brown hand at his throat. "keep off those contact rings." in another moment he was tripped and reeling back upon the lord of the dynamos. he instinctively loosened his grip upon his antagonist to save himself from the machine. the messenger, sent in furious haste from the station to find out what had happened in the dynamo shed, met azuma-zi at the porter's lodge by the gate. azuma-zi tried to explain something, but the messenger could make nothing of the black's incoherent english, and hurried on to the shed. the machines were all noisily at work, and nothing seemed to be disarranged. there was, however, a queer smell of singed hair. then he saw an odd-looking crumpled mass clinging to the front of the big dynamo, and, approaching, recognised the distorted remains of holroyd. the man stared and hesitated a moment. then he saw the face, and shut his eyes convulsively. he turned on his heel before he opened them, so that he should not see holroyd again, and went out of the shed to get advice and help. when azuma-zi saw holroyd die in the grip of the great dynamo he had been a little scared about the consequences of his act. yet he felt strangely elated, and knew that the favour of the lord dynamo was upon him. his plan was already settled when he met the man coming from the station, and the scientific manager who speedily arrived on the scene jumped at the obvious conclusion of suicide. this expert scarcely noticed azuma-zi, except to ask a few questions. did he see holroyd kill himself? azuma-zi explained he had been out of sight at the engine furnace until he heard a difference in the noise from the dynamo. it was not a difficult examination, being untinctured by suspicion. the distorted remains of holroyd, which the electrician removed from the machine, were hastily covered by the porter with a coffee-stained tablecloth. somebody, by a happy inspiration, fetched a medical man. the expert was chiefly anxious to get the machine at work again, for seven or eight trains had stopped midway in the stuffy tunnels of the electric railway. azuma-zi, answering or misunderstanding the questions of the people who had by authority or impudence come into the shed, was presently sent back to the stoke-hole by the scientific manager. of course a crowd collected outside the gates of the yard--a crowd, for no known reason, always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a sudden death in london--two or three reporters percolated somehow into the engine-shed, and one even got to azuma-zi; but the scientific expert cleared them out again, being himself an amateur journalist. presently the body was carried away, and public interest departed with it. azuma-zi remained very quietly at his furnace, seeing over and over again in the coals a figure that wriggled violently and became still. an hour after the murder, to anyone coming into the shed it would have looked exactly as if nothing remarkable had ever happened there. peeping presently from his engine-room the black saw the lord dynamo spin and whirl beside his little brothers, and the driving wheels were beating round, and the steam in the pistons went thud, thud, exactly as it had been earlier in the evening. after all, from the mechanical point of view, it had been a most insignificant incident--the mere temporary deflection of a current. but now the slender form and slender shadow of the scientific manager replaced the sturdy outline of holroyd travelling up and down the lane of light upon the vibrating floor under the straps between the engines and the dynamos. "have i not served my lord?" said azuma-zi inaudibly, from his shadow, and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear. as he looked at the big whirling mechanism the strange fascination of it that had been a little in abeyance since holroyd's death resumed its sway. never had azuma-zi seen a man killed so swiftly and pitilessly. the big humming machine had slain its victim without wavering for a second from its steady beating. it was indeed a mighty god. the unconscious scientific manager stood with his back to him, scribbling on a piece of paper. his shadow lay at the foot of the monster. "was the lord dynamo still hungry? his servant was ready." azuma-zi made a stealthy step forward; then stopped. the scientific manager suddenly stopped writing, and walked down the shed to the endmost of the dynamos, and began to examine the brushes. azuma-zi hesitated, and then slipped across noiselessly into the shadow by the switch. there he waited. presently the manager's footsteps could be heard returning. he stopped in his old position, unconscious of the stoker crouching ten feet away from him. then the big dynamo suddenly fizzled, and in another moment azuma-zi had sprung out of the darkness upon him. first, the scientific manager was gripped round the body and swung towards the big dynamo, then, kicking with his knee and forcing his antagonist's head down with his hands, he loosened the grip on his waist and swung round away from the machine. then the black grasped him again, putting a curly head against his chest, and they swayed and panted as it seemed for an age or so. then the scientific manager was impelled to catch a black ear in his teeth and bite furiously. the black yelled hideously. they rolled over on the floor, and the black, who had apparently slipped from the vice of the teeth or parted with some ear--the scientific manager wondered which at the time--tried to throttle him. the scientific manager was making some ineffectual efforts to claw something with his hands and to kick, when the welcome sound of quick footsteps sounded on the floor. the next moment azuma-zi had left him and darted towards the big dynamo. there was a splutter amid the roar. the officer of the company who had entered, stood staring as azuma-zi caught the naked terminals in his hands, gave one horrible convulsion, and then hung motionless from the machine, his face violently distorted. "i'm jolly glad you came in when you did," said the scientific manager, still sitting on the floor. he looked at the still quivering figure. "it is not a nice death to die, apparently--but it is quick." the official was still staring at the body. he was a man of slow apprehension. there was a pause. the scientific manager got up on his feet rather awkwardly. he ran his fingers along his collar thoughtfully, and moved his head to and fro several times. "poor holroyd! i see now." then almost mechanically he went towards the switch in the shadow and turned the current into the railway circuit again. as he did so the singed body loosened its grip upon the machine and fell forward on its face. the core of the dynamo roared out loud and clear, and the armature beat the air. so ended prematurely the worship of the dynamo deity, perhaps the most short-lived of all religions. yet withal it could at least boast a martyrdom and a human sacrifice. the hammerpond park burglary it is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a trade, or an art. for a trade, the technique is scarcely rigid enough, and its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary element that qualifies its triumphs. on the whole it seems to be most justly ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated, and of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner. it was this informality of burglary that led to the regrettable extinction of two promising beginners at hammerpond park. the stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and other personal _bric-ã -brac_ belonging to the newly married lady aveling. lady aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only daughter of mrs montague pangs, the well-known hostess. her marriage to lord aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to be spent at hammerpond. the announcement of these valuable prizes created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which mr teddy watkins was the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied by a duly qualified assistant, he should visit the village of hammerpond in his professional capacity. being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, mr watkins determined to make this visit _incog_., and after due consideration of the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the rã´le of a landscape artist and the unassuming surname of smith. he preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at hammerpond. now the village of hammerpond is perhaps one of the prettiest little corners in sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church with its tall spire nestling under the down is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call "bits." so that mr watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paint-box, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in sections (after the pattern of the late lamented master charles peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half-a-dozen other brethren of the brush. it rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable amount of aesthetic conversation for which he was very imperfectly prepared. "have you exhibited very much?" said young porson in the bar-parlour of the "coach and horses," where mr watkins was skilfully accumulating local information on the night of his arrival. "very little," said mr watkins, "just a snack here and there." "academy?" "in course. _and_ the crystal palace." "did they hang you well?" said porson. "don't rot," said mr watkins; "i don't like it." "i mean did they put you in a good place?" "whadyer mean?" said mr watkins suspiciously. "one 'ud think you were trying to make out i'd been put away." porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist; he did not know what being "put away" meant, but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. as the question of hanging seemed a sore point with mr watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a little. "do you do figure-work at all?" "no, never had a head for figures," said mr watkins, "my miss--mrs smith, i mean, does all that." "she paints too!" said porson. "that's rather jolly." "very," said mr watkins, though he really did not think so, and, feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added, "i came down here to paint hammerpond house by moonlight." "really!" said porson. "that's rather a novel idea." "yes," said mr watkins, "i thought it rather a good notion when it occurred to me. i expect to begin to-morrow night." "what! you don't mean to paint in the open, by night?" "i do, though." "but how will you see your canvas?" "have a bloomin' cop's--" began mr watkins, rising too quickly to the question, and then realising this, bawled to miss durgan for another glass of beer. "i'm goin' to have a thing called a dark lantern," he said to porson. "but it's about new moon now," objected porson. "there won't be any moon." "there'll be the house," said watkins, "at any rate. i'm goin', you see, to paint the house first and the moon afterwards." "oh!" said porson, too staggered to continue the conversation. "they doo say," said old durgan, the landlord, who had maintained a respectful silence during the technical conversation, "as there's no less than three p'licemen from 'azelworth on dewty every night in the house--'count of this lady aveling 'n her jewellery. one'm won fower-and-six last night, off second footman--tossin'." towards sunset next day mr watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant pathway through the beech-woods to hammerpond park, and pitched his apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. here he was observed by mr raphael sant, who was returning across the park from a study of the chalk-pits. his curiosity having been fired by porson's account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing nocturnal art. mr watkins was apparently unaware of his approach. a friendly conversation with lady hammerpond's butler had just terminated, and that individual, surrounded by the three pet dogs which it was his duty to take for an airing after dinner had been served, was receding in the distance. mr watkins was mixing colour with an air of great industry. sant, approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the colour in question was as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine. having cultivated an extreme sensibility to colour from his earliest years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first glimpse of this brew. mr watkins turned round. he looked annoyed. "what on earth are you going to do with that _beastly_ green?" said sant. mr watkins realised that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. he looked at sant and hesitated. "pardon my rudeness," said sant; "but really, that green is altogether too amazing. it came as a shock. what _do_ you mean to do with it?" mr watkins was collecting his resources. nothing could save the situation but decision. "if you come here interrupting my work," he said, "i'm a-goin' to paint your face with it." sant retired, for he was a humourist and a peaceful man. going down the hill he met porson and wainwright. "either that man is a genius or he is a dangerous lunatic," said he. "just go up and look at his green." and he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and the shedding of much green paint. but to porson and wainwright mr watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. it was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself. but subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people "hanging about" to pick up such tricks of the masters as they could, which immediately relieved him of their company. twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared. the rooks amid the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into slumbrous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its architecture and became a dark grey outline, and then the windows of the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow. had anyone approached the easel in the park it would have been found deserted. one brief uncivil word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. mr watkins was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined him from the carriage-drive. mr watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations. "that's the dressing-room," he said to his assistant, "and, as soon as the maid takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we'll call in. my! how nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all its windows and lights! swopme, jim, i almost wish i _was_ a painter-chap. have you fixed that there wire across the path from the laundry?" he cautiously approached the house until he stood below the dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. he was much too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. jim was reconnoitring the smoking-room. suddenly, close beside mr watkins in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. someone had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. he heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond. mr watkins, like all true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. he was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. in another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was in the open park. two thuds on the turf followed his own leap. it was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. mr watkins was a loosely-built man and in good training, and he gained hand-over-hand upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. neither spoke, but, as mr watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. the other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of surprise. "it's not jim," thought mr watkins, and simultaneously the stranger flung himself, as it were, at watkin's knees, and they were forthwith grappling on the ground together. "lend a hand, bill," cried the stranger as the third man came up. and bill did--two hands in fact, and some accentuated feet. the fourth man, presumably jim, had apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. at any rate, he did not join the trio. mr watkins' memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is extremely vague. he has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman answering to the name of bill, to the ground by the hair. he was also kicked in a great number of different places, apparently by a vast multitude of people. then the gentleman who was not bill got his knee below mr watkins' diaphragm, and tried to curl him up upon it. when his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf, and eight or ten men--the night was dark, and he was rather too confused to count--standing round him, apparently waiting for him to recover. he mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had not his internal sensations disinclined him for speech. he noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a flask of brandy was put in his hands. this touched him a little--it was such unexpected kindness. "he's a-comin' round," said a voice which he fancied he recognised as belonging to the hammerpond second footman. "we've got 'em, sir, both of 'em," said the hammerpond butler, the man who had handed him the flask. "thanks to _you_." no one answered this remark. yet he failed to see how it applied to him. "he's fair dazed," said a strange voice; "the villains half-murdered him." mr teddy watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better grasp of the situation. he perceived that two of the black figures round him stood side-by-side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. two! in a flash he rose to his position. he emptied the little flask and staggered--obsequious hands assisting him--to his feet. there was a sympathetic murmur. "shake hands, sir, shake hands," said one of the figures near him. "permit me to introduce myself. i am very greatly indebted to you. it was the jewels of my wife, lady aveling, which attracted these scoundrels to the house." "very glad to make your lordship's acquaintance," said teddy watkins. "i presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped down on them?" "that's exactly how it happened," said mr watkins. "you should have waited till they got in at the window," said lord aveling; "they would get it hotter if they had actually committed the burglary. and it was lucky for you two of the policemen were out by the gates, and followed up the three of you. i doubt if you could have secured the two of them--though it was confoundedly plucky of you, all the same." "yes, i ought to have thought of all that," said mr watkins; "but one can't think of everythink." "certainly not," said lord aveling. "i am afraid they have mauled you a little," he added. the party was now moving towards the house. "you walk rather lame. may i offer you my arm?" and instead of entering hammerpond house by the dressing-room window, mr watkins entered it--slightly intoxicated, and inclined now to cheerfulness again--on the arm of a real live peer, and by the front door. "this," thought mr watkins, "is burgling in style!" the "scoundrels," seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere local amateurs unknown to mr watkins, and they were taken down into the pantry and there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with loaded guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed of their removal to hazelhurst police-station. mr watkins was made much of in the saloon. they devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of a return to the village that night. lady aveling was sure he was brilliantly original, and said her idea of turner was just such another rough, half-inebriated, deep-eyed, brave, and clever man. some one brought up a remarkable little folding-ladder that had been picked up in the shrubbery, and showed him how it was put together. they also described how wires had been found in the shrubbery, evidently placed there to trip-up unwary pursuers. it was lucky he had escaped these snares. and they showed him the jewels. mr watkins had the sense not to talk too much, and in any conversational difficulty fell back on his internal pains. at last he was seized with stiffness in the back, and yawning. everyone suddenly awoke to the fact that it was a shame to keep him talking after his affray, so he retired early to his room, the little red room next to lord aveling's suite. the dawn found a deserted easel bearing a canvas with a green inscription, in the hammerpond park, and it found hammerpond house in commotion. but if the dawn found mr teddy watkins and the aveling diamonds, it did not communicate the information to the police. a moth--genus novo probably you have heard of hapley--not w.t. hapley, the son, but the celebrated hapley, the hapley of _periplaneta hapliia_, hapley the entomologist. if so you know at least of the great feud between hapley and professor pawkins. though certain of its consequences may be new to you. for those who have not, a word or two of explanation is necessary, which the idle reader may go over with a glancing eye, if his indolence so incline him. it is amazing how very widely diffused is the ignorance of such really important matters as this hapley-pawkins feud. those epoch-making controversies, again, that have convulsed the geological society, are, i verily believe, almost entirely unknown outside the fellowship of that body. i have heard men of fair general education even refer to the great scenes at these meetings as vestry-meeting squabbles. yet the great hate of the english and scotch geologists has lasted now half a century, and has "left deep and abundant marks upon the body of the science." and this hapley-pawkins business, though perhaps a more personal affair, stirred passions as profound, if not profounder. your common man has no conception of the zeal that animates a scientific investigator, the fury of contradiction you can arouse in him. it is the _odium theologicum_ in a new form. there are men, for instance, who would gladly burn professor ray lankester at smithfield for his treatment of the mollusca in the encyclopaedia. that fantastic extension of the cephalopods to cover the pteropods ... but i wander from hapley and pawkins. it began years and years ago, with a revision of the microlepidoptera (whatever these may be) by pawkins, in which he extinguished a new species created by hapley. hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied by a stinging impeachment of the entire classification of pawkins[a]. pawkins, in his "rejoinder[b]," suggested that hapley's microscope was as defective as his powers of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"--hapley was not a professor at that time. hapley, in his retort[c], spoke of "blundering collectors," and described, as if inadvertently, pawkins' revision as a "miracle of ineptitude." it was war to the knife. however, it would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these two great men quarrelled, and how the split between them widened until from the microlepidoptera they were at war upon every open question in entomology. there were memorable occasions. at times the royal entomological society meetings resembled nothing so much as the chamber of deputies. on the whole, i fancy pawkins was nearer the truth than hapley. but hapley was skilful with his rhetoric, had a turn for ridicule rare in a scientific man, was endowed with vast energy, and had a fine sense of injury in the matter of the extinguished species; while pawkins was a man of dull presence, prosy of speech, in shape not unlike a water-barrel, over-conscientious with testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments. so the young men gathered round hapley and applauded him. it was a long struggle, vicious from the beginning, and growing at last to pitiless antagonism. the successive turns of fortune, now an advantage to one side and now to another--now hapley tormented by some success of pawkins, and now pawkins outshone by hapley, belong rather to the history of entomology than to this story. [footnote a: "remarks on a recent revision of microlepidoptera." _quart. journ. entomological soc_. 1863.] [footnote b: "rejoinder to certain remarks," &c. _ibid_. 1864.] [footnote c: "further remarks," &c. _ibid_.] but in 1891 pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the death's head moth. what the mesoblast of the death's head moth may be, does not matter a rap in this story. but the work was far below his usual standard, and gave hapley an opening he had coveted for years. he must have worked night and day to make the most of his advantage. in an elaborate critique he rent pawkins to tatters--one can fancy the man's disordered black hair, and his queer dark eyes flashing as he went for his antagonist--and pawkins made a reply, halting, ineffectual, with painful gaps of silence, and yet malignant. there was no mistaking his will to wound hapley, nor his incapacity to do it. but few of those who heard him--i was absent from that meeting--realised how ill the man was. hapley had got his opponent down, and meant to finish him. he followed with a simply brutal attack upon pawkins, in the form of a paper upon the development of moths in general, a paper showing evidence of a most extraordinary amount of mental labour, and yet couched in a violently controversial tone. violent as it was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified. it must have covered pawkins with shame and confusion of face. it left no loophole; it was murderous in argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an awful thing for the declining years of a man's career. the world of entomologists waited breathlessly for the rejoinder from pawkins. he would try one, for pawkins had always been game. but when it came it surprised them. for the rejoinder of pawkins was to catch the influenza, to proceed to pneumonia, and to die. it was perhaps as effectual a reply as he could make under the circumstances, and largely turned the current of feeling against hapley. the very people who had most gleefully cheered on those gladiators became serious at the consequence. there could be no reasonable doubt the fret of the defeat had contributed to the death of pawkins. there was a limit even to scientific controversy, said serious people. another crushing attack was already in the press and appeared on the day before the funeral. i don't think hapley exerted himself to stop it. people remembered how hapley had hounded down his rival, and forgot that rival's defects. scathing satire reads ill over fresh mould. the thing provoked comment in the daily papers. this it was that made me think that you had probably heard of hapley and this controversy. but, as i have already remarked, scientific workers live very much in a world of their own; half the people, i dare say, who go along piccadilly to the academy every year, could not tell you where the learned societies abide. many even think that research is a kind of happy-family cage in which all kinds of men lie down together in peace. in his private thoughts hapley could not forgive pawkins for dying. in the first place, it was a mean dodge to escape the absolute pulverisation hapley had in hand for him, and in the second, it left hapley's mind with a queer gap in it. for twenty years he had worked hard, sometimes far into the night, and seven days a week, with microscope, scalpel, collecting-net, and pen, and almost entirely with reference to pawkins. the european reputation he had won had come as an incident in that great antipathy. he had gradually worked up to a climax in this last controversy. it had killed pawkins, but it had also thrown hapley out of gear, so to speak, and his doctor advised him to give up work for a time, and rest. so hapley went down into a quiet village in kent, and thought day and night of pawkins, and good things it was now impossible to say about him. at last hapley began to realise in what direction the pre-occupation tended. he determined to make a fight for it, and started by trying to read novels. but he could not get his mind off pawkins, white in the face, and making his last speech--every sentence a beautiful opening for hapley. he turned to fiction--and found it had no grip on him. he read the "island nights' entertainments" until his "sense of causation" was shocked beyond endurance by the bottle imp. then he went to kipling, and found he "proved nothing," besides being irreverent and vulgar. these scientific people have their limitations. then unhappily, he tried besant's "inner house," and the opening chapter set his mind upon learned societies and pawkins at once. so hapley turned to chess, and found it a little more soothing. he soon mastered the moves and the chief gambits and commoner closing positions, and began to beat the vicar. but then the cylindrical contours of the opposite king began to resemble pawkins standing up and gasping ineffectually against check-mate, and hapley decided to give up chess. perhaps the study of some new branch of science would after all be better diversion. the best rest is change of occupation. hapley determined to plunge at diatoms, and had one of his smaller microscopes and halibut's monograph sent down from london. he thought that perhaps if he could get up a vigorous quarrel with halibut, he might be able to begin life afresh and forget pawkins. and very soon he was hard at work, in his habitual strenuous fashion, at these microscopic denizens of the way-side pool. it was on the third day of the diatoms that hapley became aware of a novel addition to the local fauna. he was working late at the microscope, and the only light in the room was the brilliant little lamp with the special form of green shade. like all experienced microscopists, he kept both eyes open. it is the only way to avoid excessive fatigue. one eye was over the instrument, and bright and distinct before that was the circular field of the microscope, across which a brown diatom was slowly moving. with the other eye hapley saw, as it were, without seeing[a]. he was only dimly conscious of the brass side of the instrument, the illuminated part of the table-cloth, a sheet of note-paper, the foot of the lamp, and the darkened room beyond. [footnote a: the reader unaccustomed to microscopes may easily understand this by rolling a newspaper in the form of a tube and looking through it at a book, keeping the other eye open.] suddenly his attention drifted from one eye to the other. the table-cloth was of the material called tapestry by shopmen, and rather brightly coloured. the pattern was in gold, with a small amount of crimson and pale blue upon a greyish ground. at one point the pattern seemed displaced, and there was a vibrating movement of the colours at this point. hapley suddenly moved his head back and looked with both eyes. his mouth fell open with astonishment. it was a large moth or butterfly; its wings spread in butterfly fashion! it was strange it should be in the room at all, for the windows were closed. strange that it should not have attracted his attention when fluttering to its present position. strange that it should match the table-cloth. stranger far that to him, hapley, the great entomologist, it was altogether unknown. there was no delusion. it was crawling slowly towards the foot of the lamp. "_genus novo_, by heavens! and in england!" said hapley, staring. then he suddenly thought of pawkins. nothing would have maddened pawkins more.... and pawkins was dead! something about the head and body of the insect became singularly suggestive of pawkins, just as the chess king had been. "confound pawkins!" said hapley. "but i must catch this." and, looking round him for some means of capturing the moth, he rose slowly out of his chair. suddenly the insect rose, struck the edge of the lampshade--hapley heard the "ping"--and vanished into the shadow. in a moment hapley had whipped off the shade, so that the whole room was illuminated. the thing had disappeared, but soon his practised eye detected it upon the wall paper near the door. he went towards it, poising the lamp-shade for capture. before he was within striking distance, however, it had risen and was fluttering round the room. after the fashion of its kind, it flew with sudden starts and turns, seeming to vanish here and reappear there. once hapley struck, and missed; then again. the third time he hit his microscope. the instrument swayed, struck and overturned the lamp, and fell noisily upon the floor. the lamp turned over on the table and, very luckily, went out. hapley was left in the dark. with a start he felt the strange moth blunder into his face. it was maddening. he had no lights. if he opened the door of the room the thing would get away. in the darkness he saw pawkins quite distinctly laughing at him. pawkins had ever an oily laugh. he swore furiously and stamped his foot on the floor. there was a timid rapping at the door. then it opened, perhaps a foot, and very slowly. the alarmed face of the landlady appeared behind a pink candle flame; she wore a night-cap over her grey hair and had some purple garment over her shoulders. "what _was_ that fearful smash?" she said. "has anything--" the strange moth appeared fluttering about the chink of the door. "shut that door!" said hapley, and suddenly rushed at her. the door slammed hastily. hapley was left alone in the dark. then in the pause he heard his landlady scuttle upstairs, lock her door and drag something heavy across the room and put against it. it became evident to hapley that his conduct and appearance had been strange and alarming. confound the moth! and pawkins! however, it was a pity to lose the moth now. he felt his way into the hall and found the matches, after sending his hat down upon the floor with a noise like a drum. with the lighted candle he returned to the sitting-room. no moth was to be seen. yet once for a moment it seemed that the thing was fluttering round his head. hapley very suddenly decided to give up the moth and go to bed. but he was excited. all night long his sleep was broken by dreams of the moth, pawkins, and his landlady. twice in the night he turned out and soused his head in cold water. one thing was very clear to him. his landlady could not possibly understand about the strange moth, especially as he had failed to catch it. no one but an entomologist would understand quite how he felt. she was probably frightened at his behaviour, and yet he failed to see how he could explain it. he decided to say nothing further about the events of last night. after breakfast he saw her in her garden, and decided to go out to talk to her to reassure her. he talked to her about beans and potatoes, bees, caterpillars, and the price of fruit. she replied in her usual manner, but she looked at him a little suspiciously, and kept walking as he walked, so that there was always a bed of flowers, or a row of beans, or something of the sort, between them. after a while he began to feel singularly irritated at this, and to conceal his vexation went indoors and presently went out for a walk. the moth, or butterfly, trailing an odd flavour of pawkins with it, kept coming into that walk, though he did his best to keep his mind off it. once he saw it quite distinctly, with its wings flattened out, upon the old stone wall that runs along the west edge of the park, but going up to it he found it was only two lumps of grey and yellow lichen. "this," said hapley, "is the reverse of mimicry. instead of a butterfly looking like a stone, here is a stone looking like a butterfly!" once something hovered and fluttered round his head, but by an effort of will he drove that impression out of his mind again. in the afternoon hapley called upon the vicar, and argued with him upon theological questions. they sat in the little arbour covered with briar, and smoked as they wrangled. "look at that moth!" said hapley, suddenly, pointing to the edge of the wooden table. "where?" said the vicar. "you don't see a moth on the edge of the table there?" said hapley. "certainly not," said the vicar. hapley was thunderstruck. he gasped. the vicar was staring at him. clearly the man saw nothing. "the eye of faith is no better than the eye of science," said hapley, awkwardly. "i don't see your point," said the vicar, thinking it was part of the argument. that night hapley found the moth crawling over his counterpane. he sat on the edge of the bed in his shirt-sleeves and reasoned with himself. was it pure hallucination? he knew he was slipping, and he battled for his sanity with the same silent energy he had formerly displayed against pawkins. so persistent is mental habit, that he felt as if it were still a struggle with pawkins. he was well versed in psychology. he knew that such visual illusions do come as a result of mental strain. but the point was, he did not only _see_ the moth, he had heard it when it touched the edge of the lampshade, and afterwards when it hit against the wall, and he had felt it strike his face in the dark. he looked at it. it was not at all dreamlike, but perfectly clear and solid-looking in the candle-light. he saw the hairy body, and the short feathery antennae, the jointed legs, even a place where the down was rubbed from the wing. he suddenly felt angry with himself for being afraid of a little insect. his landlady had got the servant to sleep with her that night, because she was afraid to be alone. in addition she had locked the door, and put the chest of drawers against it. they listened and talked in whispers after they had gone to bed, but nothing occurred to alarm them. about eleven they had ventured to put the candle out, and had both dozed off to sleep. they woke up with a start, and sat up in bed, listening in the darkness. then they heard slippered feet going to and fro in hapley's room. a chair was overturned, and there was a violent dab at the wall. then a china mantel ornament smashed upon the fender. suddenly the door of the room opened, and they heard him upon the landing. they clung to one another, listening. he seemed to be dancing upon the staircase. now he would go down three or four steps quickly, then up again, then hurry down into the hall. they heard the umbrella stand go over, and the fanlight break. then the bolt shot and the chain rattled. he was opening the door. they hurried to the window. it was a dim grey night; an almost unbroken sheet of watery cloud was sweeping across the moon, and the hedge and trees in front of the house were black against the pale roadway. they saw hapley, looking like a ghost in his shirt and white trousers, running to and fro in the road, and beating the air. now he would stop, now he would dart very rapidly at something invisible, now he would move upon it with stealthy strides. at last he went out of sight up the road towards the down. then, while they argued who should go down and lock the door, he returned. he was walking very fast, and he came straight into the house, closed the door carefully, and went quietly up to his bedroom. then everything was silent. "mrs colville," said hapley, calling down the staircase next morning. "i hope i did not alarm you last night." "you may well ask that!" said mrs colville. "the fact is, i am a sleep-walker, and the last two nights i have been without my sleeping mixture. there is nothing to be alarmed about, really. i am sorry i made such an ass of myself. i will go over the down to shoreham, and get some stuff to make me sleep soundly. i ought to have done that yesterday." but half-way over the down, by the chalk pits, the moth came upon hapley again. he went on, trying to keep his mind upon chess problems, but it was no good. the thing fluttered into his face, and he struck at it with his hat in self-defence. then rage, the old rage--the rage he had so often felt against pawkins--came upon him again. he went on, leaping and striking at the eddying insect. suddenly he trod on nothing, and fell headlong. there was a gap in his sensations, and hapley found himself sitting on the heap of flints in front of the opening of the chalkpits, with a leg twisted back under him. the strange moth was still fluttering round his head. he struck at it with his hand, and turning his head saw two men approaching him. one was the village doctor. it occurred to hapley that this was lucky. then it came into his mind, with extraordinary vividness, that no one would ever be able to see the strange moth except himself, and that it behoved him to keep silent about it. late that night, however, after his broken leg was set, he was feverish and forgot his self-restraint. he was lying flat on his bed, and he began to run his eyes round the room to see if the moth was still about. he tried not to do this, but it was no good. he soon caught sight of the thing resting close to his hand, by the night-light, on the green table-cloth. the wings quivered. with a sudden wave of anger he smote at it with his fist, and the nurse woke up with a shriek. he had missed it. "that moth!" he said; and then, "it was fancy. nothing!" all the time he could see quite clearly the insect going round the cornice and darting across the room, and he could also see that the nurse saw nothing of it and looked at him strangely. he must keep himself in hand. he knew he was a lost man if he did not keep himself in hand. but as the night waned the fever grew upon him, and the very dread he had of seeing the moth made him see it. about five, just as the dawn was grey, he tried to get out of bed and catch it, though his leg was afire with pain. the nurse had to struggle with him. on account of this, they tied him down to the bed. at this the moth grew bolder, and once he felt it settle in his hair. then, because he struck out violently with his arms, they tied these also. at this the moth came and crawled over his face, and hapley wept, swore, screamed, prayed for them to take it off him, unavailingly. the doctor was a blockhead, a half-qualified general practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science. he simply said there was no moth. had he possessed the wit, he might still, perhaps, have saved hapley from his fate by entering into his delusion and covering his face with gauze, as he prayed might be done. but, as i say, the doctor was a blockhead, and until the leg was healed hapley was kept tied to his bed, and with the imaginary moth crawling over him. it never left him while he was awake and it grew to a monster in his dreams. while he was awake he longed for sleep, and from sleep he awoke screaming. so now hapley is spending the remainder of his days in a padded room, worried by a moth that no one else can see. the asylum doctor calls it hallucination; but hapley, when he is in his easier mood, and can talk, says it is the ghost of pawkins, and consequently a unique specimen and well worth the trouble of catching. the treasure in the forest the canoe was now approaching the land. the bay opened out, and a gap in the white surf of the reef marked where the little river ran out to the sea; the thicker and deeper green of the virgin forest showed its course down the distant hill slope. the forest here came close to the beach. far beyond, dim and almost cloudlike in texture, rose the mountains, like suddenly frozen waves. the sea was still save for an almost imperceptible swell. the sky blazed. the man with the carved paddle stopped. "it should be somewhere here," he said. he shipped the paddle and held his arms out straight before him. the other man had been in the fore part of the canoe, closely scrutinising the land. he had a sheet of yellow paper on his knee. "come and look at this, evans," he said. both men spoke in low tones, and their lips were hard and dry. the man called evans came swaying along the canoe until he could look over his companion's shoulder. the paper had the appearance of a rough map. by much folding it was creased and worn to the pitch of separation, and the second man held the discoloured fragments together where they had parted. on it one could dimly make out, in almost obliterated pencil, the outline of the bay. "here," said evans, "is the reef and here is the gap." he ran his thumb-nail over the chart. "this curved and twisting line is the river--i could do with a drink now!--and this star is the place." "you see this dotted line," said the man with the map; "it is a straight line, and runs from the opening of the reef to a clump of palm-trees. the star comes just where it cuts the river. we must mark the place as we go into the lagoon." "it's queer," said evans, after a pause, "what these little marks down here are for. it looks like the plan of a house or something; but what all these little dashes, pointing this way and that, may mean i can't get a notion. and what's the writing?" "chinese," said the man with the map. "of course! _he_ was a chinee," said evans. "they all were," said the man with the map. they both sat for some minutes staring at the land, while the canoe drifted slowly. then evans looked towards the paddle. "your turn with the paddle now, hooker," said he. and his companion quietly folded up his map, put it in his pocket, passed evans carefully, and began to paddle. his movements were languid, like those of a man whose strength was nearly exhausted. evans sat with his eyes half closed, watching the frothy breakwater of the coral creep nearer and nearer. the sky was like a furnace now, for the sun was near the zenith. though they were so near the treasure he did not feel the exaltation he had anticipated. the intense excitement of the struggle for the plan, and the long night voyage from the mainland in the unprovisioned canoe had, to use his own expression, "taken it out of him." he tried to arouse himself by directing his mind to the ingots the chinamen had spoken of, but it would not rest there; it came back headlong to the thought of sweet water rippling in the river, and to the almost unendurable dryness of his lips and throat. the rhythmic wash of the sea upon the reef was becoming audible now, and it had a pleasant sound in his ears; the water washed along the side of the canoe, and the paddle dripped between each stroke. presently he began to doze. he was still dimly conscious of the island, but a queer dream texture interwove with his sensations. once again it was the night when he and hooker had hit upon the chinamen's secret; he saw the moonlit trees, the little fire burning, and the black figures of the three chinamen--silvered on one side by moonlight, and on the other glowing from the firelight--and heard them talking together in pigeon-english--for they came from different provinces. hooker had caught the drift of their talk first, and had motioned to him to listen. fragments of the conversation were inaudible and fragments incomprehensible. a spanish galleon from the philippines hopelessly aground, and its treasure buried against the day of return, lay in the background of the story; a shipwrecked crew thinned by disease, a quarrel or so, and the needs of discipline, and at last taking to their boats never to be heard of again. then chang-hi, only a year since, wandering ashore, had happened upon the ingots hidden for two hundred years, had deserted his junk, and reburied them with infinite toil, single-handed but very safe. he laid great stress on the safety--it was a secret of his. now he wanted help to return and exhume them. presently the little map fluttered and the voices sank. a fine story for two stranded british wastrels to hear! evans' dream shifted to the moment when he had chang-hi's pigtail in his hand. the life of a chinaman is scarcely sacred like a european's. the cunning little face of chang-hi, first keen and furious like a startled snake, and then fearful, treacherous and pitiful, became overwhelmingly prominent in the dream. at the end chang-hi had grinned, a most incomprehensible and startling grin. abruptly things became very unpleasant, as they will do at times in dreams. chang-hi gibbered and threatened him. he saw in his dream heaps and heaps of gold, and chang-hi intervening and struggling to hold him back from it. he took chang-hi by the pigtail--how big the yellow brute was, and how he struggled and grinned! he kept growing bigger, too. then the bright heaps of gold turned to a roaring furnace, and a vast devil, surprisingly like chang-hi, but with a huge black tail, began to feed him with coals. they burnt his mouth horribly. another devil was shouting his name: "evans, evans, you sleepy fool!"--or was it hooker? he woke up. they were in the mouth of the lagoon. "there are the three palm-trees. it must be in a line with that clump of bushes," said his companion. "mark that. if we go to those bushes and then strike into the bush in a straight line from here, we shall come to it when we come to the stream." they could see now where the mouth of the stream opened out. at the sight of it evans revived. "hurry up, man," he said, "or by heaven i shall have to drink sea water!" he gnawed his hand and stared at the gleam of silver among the rocks and green tangle. presently he turned almost fiercely upon hooker. "give _me_ the paddle," he said. so they reached the river mouth. a little way up hooker took some water in the hollow of his hand, tasted it, and spat it out. a little further he tried again. "this will do," he said, and they began drinking eagerly. "curse this!" said evans, suddenly. "it's too slow." and, leaning dangerously over the fore part of the canoe, he began to suck up the water with his lips. presently they made an end of drinking, and, running the canoe into a little creek, were about to land among the thick growth that overhung the water. "we shall have to scramble through this to the beach to find our bushes and get the line to the place," said evans. "we had better paddle round," said hooker. so they pushed out again into the river and paddled back down it to the sea, and along the shore to the place where the clump of bushes grew. here they landed, pulled the light canoe far up the beach, and then went up towards the edge of the jungle until they could see the opening of the reef and the bushes in a straight line. evans had taken a native implement out of the canoe. it was l-shaped, and the transverse piece was armed with polished stone. hooker carried the paddle. "it is straight now in this direction," said he; "we must push through this till we strike the stream. then we must prospect." they pushed through a close tangle of reeds, broad fronds, and young trees, and at first it was toilsome going, but very speedily the trees became larger and the ground beneath them opened out. the blaze of the sunlight was replaced by insensible degrees by cool shadow. the trees became at last vast pillars that rose up to a canopy of greenery far overhead. dim white flowers hung from their stems, and ropy creepers swung from tree to tree. the shadow deepened. on the ground, blotched fungi and a red-brown incrustation became frequent. evans shivered. "it seems almost cold here after the blaze outside." "i hope we are keeping to the straight," said hooker. presently they saw, far ahead, a gap in the sombre darkness where white shafts of hot sunlight smote into the forest. there also was brilliant green undergrowth, and coloured flowers. then they heard the rush of water. "here is the river. we should be close to it now," said hooker. the vegetation was thick by the river bank. great plants, as yet unnamed, grew among the roots of the big trees, and spread rosettes of huge green fans towards the strip of sky. many flowers and a creeper with shiny foliage clung to the exposed stems. on the water of the broad, quiet pool which the treasure seekers now overlooked there floated big oval leaves and a waxen, pinkish-white flower not unlike a water-lily. further, as the river bent away from them, the water suddenly frothed and became noisy in a rapid. "well?" said evans. "we have swerved a little from the straight," said hooker. "that was to be expected." he turned and looked into the dim cool shadows of the silent forest behind them. "if we beat a little way up and down the stream we should come to something." "you said--" began evans. "_he_ said there was a heap of stones," said hooker. the two men looked at each other for a moment. "let us try a little down-stream first," said evans. they advanced slowly, looking curiously about them. suddenly evans stopped. "what the devil's that?" he said. hooker followed his finger. "something blue," he said. it had come into view as they topped a gentle swell of the ground. then he began to distinguish what it was. he advanced suddenly with hasty steps, until the body that belonged to the limp hand and arm had become visible. his grip tightened on the implement he carried. the thing was the figure of a chinaman lying on his face. the _abandon_ of the pose was unmistakable. the two men drew closer together, and stood staring silently at this ominous dead body. it lay in a clear space among the trees. near by was a spade after the chinese pattern, and further off lay a scattered heap of stones, close to a freshly dug hole. "somebody has been here before," said hooker, clearing his throat. then suddenly evans began to swear and rave, and stamp upon the ground. hooker turned white but said nothing. he advanced towards the prostrate body. he saw the neck was puffed and purple, and the hands and ankles swollen. "pah!" he said, and suddenly turned away and went towards the excavation. he gave a cry of surprise. he shouted to evans, who was following him slowly. "you fool! it's all right it's here still." then he turned again and looked at the dead chinaman, and then again at the hole. evans hurried to the hole. already half exposed by the ill-fated wretch beside them lay a number of dull yellow bars. he bent down in the hole, and, clearing off the soil with his bare hands, hastily pulled one of the heavy masses out. as he did so a little thorn pricked his hand. he pulled the delicate spike out with his fingers and lifted the ingot. "only gold or lead could weigh like this," he said exultantly. hooker was still looking at the dead chinaman. he was puzzled. "he stole a march on his friends," he said at last. "he came here alone, and some poisonous snake has killed him ... i wonder how he found the place." evans stood with the ingot in his hands. what did a dead chinaman signify? "we shall have to take this stuff to the mainland piecemeal, and bury it there for a while. how shall we get it to the canoe?" he took his jacket off and spread it on the ground, and flung two or three ingots into it. presently he found that another little thorn had punctured his skin. "this is as much as we can carry," said he. then suddenly, with a queer rush of irritation, "what are you staring at?" hooker turned to him. "i can't stand ... him." he nodded towards the corpse. "it's so like--" "rubbish!" said evans. "all chinamen are alike." hooker looked into his face. "i'm going to bury _that_, anyhow, before i lend a hand with this stuff." "don't be a fool, hooker," said evans. "let that mass of corruption bide." hooker hesitated, and then his eye went carefully over the brown soil about them. "it scares me somehow," he said. "the thing is," said evans, "what to do with these ingots. shall we re-bury them over here, or take them across the strait in the canoe?" hooker thought. his puzzled gaze wandered among the tall tree-trunks, and up into the remote sunlit greenery overhead. he shivered again as his eye rested upon the blue figure of the chinaman. he stared searchingly among the grey depths between the trees. "what's come to you, hooker?" said evans. "have you lost your wits?" "let's get the gold out of this place, anyhow," said hooker. he took the ends of the collar of the coat in his hands, and evans took the opposite corners, and they lifted the mass. "which way?" said evans. "to the canoe?" "it's queer," said evans, when they had advanced only a few steps, "but my arms ache still with that paddling." "curse it!" he said. "but they ache! i must rest." they let the coat down. evans' face was white, and little drops of sweat stood out upon his forehead. "it's stuffy, somehow, in this forest." then with an abrupt transition to unreasonable anger: "what is the good of waiting here all the day? lend a hand, i say! you have done nothing but moon since we saw the dead chinaman." hooker was looking steadfastly at his companion's face. he helped raise the coat bearing the ingots, and they went forward perhaps a hundred yards in silence. evans began to breathe heavily. "can't you speak?" he said. "what's the matter with you?" said hooker. evans stumbled, and then with a sudden curse flung the coat from him. he stood for a moment staring at hooker, and then with a groan clutched at his own throat. "don't come near me," he said, and went and leant against a tree. then in a steadier voice, "i'll be better in a minute." presently his grip upon the trunk loosened, and he slipped slowly down the stem of the tree until he was a crumpled heap at its foot. his hands were clenched convulsively. his face became distorted with pain. hooker approached him. "don't touch me! don't touch me!" said evans in a stifled voice. "put the gold back on the coat." "can't i do anything for you?" said hooker. "put the gold back on the coat." as hooker handled the ingots he felt a little prick on the ball of his thumb. he looked at his hand and saw a slender thorn, perhaps two inches in length. evans gave an inarticulate cry and rolled over. hooker's jaw dropped. he stared at the thorn for a moment with dilated eyes. then he looked at evans, who was now crumpled together on the ground, his back bending and straitening spasmodically. then he looked through the pillars of the trees and net-work of creeper stems, to where in the dim grey shadow the blue-clad body of the chinaman was still indistinctly visible. he thought of the little dashes in the corner of the plan, and in a moment he understood. "god help me!" he said. for the thorns were similar to those the dyaks poison and use in their blowing-tubes. he understood now what chang-hi's assurance of the safety of his treasure meant. he understood that grin now. "evans!" he cried. but evans was silent and motionless now, save for a horrible spasmodic twitching of his limbs. a profound silence brooded over the forest. then hooker began to suck furiously at the little pink spot on the ball of his thumb--sucking for dear life. presently he felt a strange aching pain in his arms and shoulders, and his fingers seemed difficult to bend. then he knew that sucking was no good. abruptly he stopped, and sitting down by the pile of ingots, and resting his chin upon his hands and his elbows upon his knees, stared at the distorted but still stirring body of his companion. chang-hi's grin came in his mind again. the dull pain spread towards his throat and grew slowly in intensity. far above him a faint breeze stirred the greenery, and the white petals of some unknown flower came floating down through the gloom. printed by turnbull and spears, edinburgh a list of new books and announcements of methuen and company publishers: london 36 essex street w.c. contents forthcoming books poetry english classics history biography general literature theology leaders of religion works by s. baring gould fiction books for boys and girls the peacock library university extension series social questions of to-day classical translations september 1895. messrs. methuen's announcements poetry and belles lettres rudyard kipling ballads. by rudyard kipling. _crown 8vo. buckram_. 6_s._ also 200 copies on hand-made paper. 21s. also 35 copies on japanese vellum. 42s. the exceptional success of 'barrack-room ballads,' with which this volume will be uniform, justifies the hope that the new book too will obtain a wide popularity. w.e. henley english lyrics. selected and edited by w.e. henley. _crown 8vo. buckram_. 6_s_. also 30 copies on hand-made paper _demy 8vo_. 21_s._ few announcements will be more welcome to lovers of english verse than the one that mr. henley is bringing together into one book the finest lyrics in our language. the book will be produced with the same care that made 'lyra heroica' delightful to the hand and eye. andrew lang the poems of robert burns. edited, with introduction, etc., by andrew lang. with portraits. _crown 8vo_. 6_s._ also 75 copies on hand-made paper. _demy 8vo_. 21s. this edition will contain a carefully collated text and notes on the text, a critical and biographical introduction, introductory notes to the poems, and a glossary. robert louis stevenson vailima letters. by robert louis stevenson. with an etched portrait by william strang, and other illustrations. _crown 8vo. buckram. 7s. 6d_. also 125 copies on hand-made paper. _demy 8vo. 25s._ a series of long journal letters written from samoa to mr. sidney colvin during the last five years. they form an autobiography of mr. stevenson during this period, giving a full account of his daily life and literary work and ambitions. mr. colvin has written a prologue and epilogue, and has added numerous notes. english classics edited by w.e. henley. the books, which are designed and printed by messrs. constable, are issued in two editions--(1) a small edition, on the finest japanese vellum, limited in most cases to 25 copies, demy 8vo, 21s. a volume nett; (2) the popular edition on laid paper, crown 8vo, buckram, 3s. 6d. a volume. new volumes. the lives of donne, wotton, hooker, herbert, and sanderson. by izaak walton. with an introduction by vernon blackburn, and a portrait. the lives of the english poets. by samuel johnson, ll.d. with an introduction by john hepburn millar, and a portrait. 3 _vols_. w.m. dixon a primer of tennyson. by w.m. dixon, m.a., professor of english literature at mason college. _cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d._ this book consists of (1) a succinct but complete biography of lord tennyson; (2) an account of the volumes published by him in chronological order, dealing with the more important poems separately; (3) a concise criticism of tennyson in his various aspects as lyrist, dramatist, and representative poet of his day; (4) a bibliography. such a complete book on such a subject, and at such a moderate price, should find a host of readers. fiction marie corelli the sorrows of satan. by marie corelli, author of 'barabbas,' 'a romance of two worlds,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s_. anthony hope the chronicles of count antonio. by anthony hope, author of 'the prisoner of zenda,' 'the god in the car,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s._ a romance of mediaeval italy. gilbert parker an adventurer of the north. by gilbert parker, author of 'pierre and his people,' 'the translation of a savage,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s_. this book consists of more tales of the far north, and contains the last adventures of 'pretty pierre.' mr. parker's first volume of canadian stories was published about three years ago, and was received with unanimous praise. emily lawless hurrish. by the honble. emily lawless, author of 'maelcho,' 'grania,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s._ a reissue of miss lawless' most popular novel. s. baring gould noemi. by s. baring gould, author of 'mehalah,' 'in the roar of the sea,' etc. illustrated by r. caton woodville. _crown 8vo. 6s._ a romance of old france. mrs. clifford a flash of summer. by mrs.w.k. clifford, author of 'aunt anne.' _crown 8vo. 6s_. j. maclaren cobban the king of andaman. by j. maclaren cobban, author of 'the red sultan,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s._ g. manville fenn an electric spark. by g. manville fenn, author of 'the vicar's wife,' 'a double knot,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s_. c. phillips woolley the queensberry cup. a tale of adventure. by clive phillips woolley, author of 'snap,' part author of 'big game shooting.' illustrated. _crown 8vo. 6s_. this is a story of amateur pugilism and chivalrous adventure, written by an author whose books on sport are well known. h.g. wells the stolen bacillus, and other stories. by h.g. wells, author of 'the time machine.' _crown 8vo. 6s_. mary gaunt the moving finger: chapters from the romance of australian life. by mary gaunt, author of 'dave's sweetheart.' _crown 8vo._. 3s. 6d_. angus evan abbott the gods give my donkey wings. by angus evan abbott. _crown 8vo. 3s. 6d_. illustrated books s. baring gould old english fairy tales collected and edited by s. baring gould. with numerous illustrations by f.d. bedford. _crown 8vo, 6s_. this volume consists of some of the old english stories which have been lost to sight, and they are fully illustrated by mr. bedford. a book of nursery songs and rhymes. edited by s. baring gould, and illustrated by the students of the birmingham art school. _crown 8vo. 6s_. a collection of old nursery songs and rhymes, including a number which are little known. the book contains some charming illustrations, borders, etc., by the birmingham students under the superintendence of mr. gaskin, and mr. baring gould has added numerous notes. this book and the next have been printed in a special heavy type by messrs. constable. h.c. beeching a book of christmas verse. edited by h.c. beeching, m.a., and illustrated by walter crane. _crown 8vo. 5s_. a collection of the best verse inspired by the birth of christ from the middle ages to the present day. mr. walter crane has designed several illustrations, and the cover. a distinction of the book is the large number of poems it contains by modern authors, a few of which are here printed for the first time. john keble the christian year. by john keble. with an introduction and notes by w. lock, m.a., sub-warden of keble college, author of 'the life of john keble.' illustrated by r. anning bell. _fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d._ a new edition of a famous book, illustrated and printed in black and red, uniform with the 'imitation of christ.' theology and philosophy e.c. gibson the xxxix. articles of the church of england. edited with an introduction by e.c. gibson, m.a., principal of wells theological college. _in two volumes. demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. each. vol. i_. this is the first volume of a treatise on the xxxix. articles, and contains the introduction and articles i.-xviii. r.l. ottley the doctrine of the incarnation. by r.l. ottley, m.a., late fellow of magdalen college, oxon. principal of pusey house. _in two volumes. demy 8vo._ this is the first volume of a book intended to be an aid in the study of the doctrine of the incarnation. it deals with the leading points in the history of the doctrine, its content, and its relation to other truths of christian faith. f.s. granger the worship of the romans. by f.s. granger, m.a., litt.d., professor of philosophy at university college, nottingham. _crown 8vo. 6s._ the author has attempted to delineate that group of beliefs which stood in close connection with the roman religion, and among the subjects treated are dreams, nature worship, roman magic, divination, holy places, victims, etc. thus the book is, apart from its immediate subject, a contribution to folk-lore and comparative psychology. l.t. hobhouse the theory of knowledge. by l.t. hobhouse, fellow and tutor of corpus college, oxford. _demy 8vo. 21s._ 'the theory of knowledge' deals with some of the fundamental problems of metaphysics and logic, by treating them in connection with one another. part i. begins with the elementary conditions of knowledge such as sensation and memory, and passes on to judgment. part ii. deals with inference in general, and induction in particular. part iii. deals with the structural conceptions of knowledge, such as matter, substance, and personality. the main purpose of the book is constructive, but it is also critical, and various objections are considered and met. w.h. fairbrother the philosophy of t.h. green. by w.h. fairbrother, m.a., lecturer at lincoln college, oxford. _crown 8vo. 5s._ this volume is expository, not critical, and is intended for senior students at the universities, and others, as a statement of green's teaching and an introduction to the study of idealist philosophy. f.w. bussell the school of plato: its origin and revival under the roman empire. by f.w. bussell, m.a., fellow and tutor of brasenose college, oxford. _in two volumes. demy 8vo. vol. i._ in these volumes the author has attempted to reach the central doctrines of ancient philosophy, or the place of man in created things, and his relation to the outer world of nature or society, and to the divine being. the first volume comprises a survey of the entire period of a thousand years, and examines the cardinal notions of the hellenic, hellenistic, and roman ages from this particular point of view. in succeeding divisions the works of latin and greek writers under the empire will be more closely studied, and detailed essays will discuss their various systems, e.g. cicero, manilius, lucretius, seneca, aristides, appuleius, and the new platonists of alexandria and athens. c.j. shebbeare the greek theory of the state and the nonconformist conscience: a socialistic defence of some ancient institutions. by charles john shebbeare, b.a., christ church, oxford. _crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._ history and biography edward gibbon the decline and fall of the roman empire. by edward gibbon. a new edition, edited with notes, appendices, and maps by j.b. bury, m.a., fellow of trinity college, dublin. _in seven volumes. crown 8vo. 6s. each. vol i._ the time seems to have arrived for a new edition of gibbon's great work--furnished with such notes and appendices as may bring it up to the standard of recent historical research. edited by a scholar who has made this period his special study, and issued in a convenient form and at a moderate price, this edition should fill an obvious void. the volumes will be issued at intervals of a few months. e.l.s. horsburgh the campaign of waterloo. by e.l.s. horsburgh, b.a. _with plans. crown 8vo. 5s._ this is a full account of the final struggle of napoleon, and contains a careful study from a strategical point of view of the movements of the french and allied armies. flinders petrie egyptian decorative art. by w.m. flinders petrie, d.c.l. _with 120 illustrations. crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._ a book which deals with a subject which has never yet been seriously treated. egyptian tales. translated from the papyri, and edited with notes by w.m. flinders petrie, ll.d., d.c.l. illustrated by tristram ellis. _part ii. crown 8vo. 3s. 6d_. w.h. hutton the life of sir thomas more. by w.h. hutton, m.a., author of 'william laud.' _with portraits. crown 8vo. 5s._ this book contains the result of some research and a considerable amount of information not contained in other lives. it also contains six portraits after holbein of more and his relations. r.f. horton john howe. by r.f. horton, d.d., author of 'the bible and inspiration,' etc. _with a portrait. crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. [leaders of religion_. f. m'cunn the life of john knox. by f. m'cunn. with a portrait. _crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. [leaders of religion_. general literature w.b. worsfold south africa: its history and its future. by w. basil worsfold, m.a. _with a map. crown 8vo. 6s_. this volume contains a short history of south africa, and a full account of its present position; and of its extraordinary capacities. j.s. shedlock the pianoforte sonata: its origin and development. by j.s. shedlock. _crown 8vo. 5s._ this is a practical and not unduly technical account of the sonata treated historically. it contains several novel features, and an account of various works little known to the english public. f.w. theobald insect life. by f.w. theobald, m.a. _illustrated. crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. [univ. extension series_. r.f. bowmaker the housing of the working classes. by f. bowmaker. _crown 8vo. 2s.6d. [social questions series_. w. cunningham modern civilisation in some of its economic aspects. by w. cunningham, ll.d., fellow of trinity college, cambridge. _crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. [social questions series_. m. kaufmann. socialism and modern thought. by m. kaufmann, _crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. [social questions series_. classical translations _new volumes_ _crown 8vo. finely printed and bound in blue buckram._ sophocles--electra and ajax. translated by e.d.a. morshead, m.a., late scholar of new college, oxford; assistant master at winchester. _2s. 6d_. cicero--de natura deorum. translated by f. brooks, m.a. _3s. 6d_. educational a.m.m. stedman steps to greek. by a.m.m. stedman, m.a. _18mo. 1s. 6d_. a very easy introduction to greek, with greek-english and english-greek exercises. f.d. swift demosthenes against conon and callicles. edited, with notes, appendices, and vocabulary, by f. darwin swift, m.a., formerly scholar of queen's college, oxford; assistant master at denstone college. _fcap, 8vo. 2s._ a list of messrs. methuen's publications poetry rudyard kipling. barrack-room ballads; and other verses. by rudyard kipling. _eighth edition. crown 8vo. 6s_. a special presentation edition, bound in white buckram, with extra gilt ornament. _7s. 6d_. 'mr. kipling's verse is strong, vivid, full of character ... unmistakable genius rings in every line.'--_times_. 'the disreputable lingo of cockayne is henceforth justified before the world; for a man of genius has taken it in hand, and has shown, beyond all cavilling, that in its way it also is a medium for literature. you are grateful, and you say to yourself, half in envy and half in admiration: "here is a _book_; here, or one is a dutchman, is one of the books of the year." '_--national observer_. '"barrack-room ballads" contains some of the best work that mr. kipling has ever done, which is saying a good deal. "fuzzy-wuzzy," "gunga din," and "tommy," are, in our opinion, altogether superior to anything of the kind that english literature has hitherto produced.'--_athenaeum_. 'the ballads teem with imagination, they palpitate with emotion. we read them with laughter and tears; the metres throb in our pulses, the cunningly ordered words tingle with life; and if this be not poetry, what is?'--_pall mall gazette_. henley. lyra heroic a: an anthology selected from the best english verse of the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. by william ernest henley. _crown 8vo. buckram, gilt top. 6s_. mr. henley has brought to the task of selection an instinct alike for poetry and for chivalry which seems to us quite wonderfully, and even unerringly, right.'--_guardian_. "q" the golden pomp: a procession of english lyrics from surrey to shirley, arranged by a.t. quiller couch. _crown 8vo. buckram. 6s_. also 40 copies on hand-made paper. _demy 8vo. â£1, 1s_. net. also 15 copies on japanese paper. _demy 8vo. â£2, 2s_. net 'a delightful volume: a really golden "pomp."'--spectator. 'of the many anthologies of 'old rhyme' recently made, mr. couch's seems the richest in its materials, and the most artistic in its arrangement. mr. couch's notes are admirable; and messrs. methuen are to be congratulated on the format of the sumptuous volume.'--_realm_. "q." green bays: verses and parodies. by "q.," author of 'dead man's rock,' etc. _second edition. fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d._ 'the verses display a rare and versatile gift of parody, great command of metre, and a very pretty turn of humour.'--_times_. h.o. beeching. lyra sacra: an anthology of sacred verse. edited by h.c. beeching, m.a. _crown 8vo. buckram, gilt-top. 6s._ 'an anthology of high excellence.'--_athenaeum_. 'a charming selection, which maintains a lofty standard of excellence.'--_times_. yeats. an anthology of irish verse. edited by w.b. yeats. _crown 8vo. 3s. 6d_. 'an attractive and catholic selection.'--_times_. 'it is edited by the most original and most accomplished of modern irish poets, and against his editing but a single objection can be brought, namely, that it excludes from the collection his own delicate lyrics.'--_saturday review_. mackay. a song of the sea: my lady of dreams, and other poems. by eric mackay, author of 'the love letters of a violinist.' _second edition. fcap. 8vo, gilt top, 5s._ 'everywhere mr. mackay displays himself the master of a style marked by all the characteristics of the best rhetoric. he has a keen sense of rhythm and of general balance; his verse is excellently sonorous, and would lend itself admirably to elocutionary art.... its main merit is its "long resounding march and energy divine." mr. mackay is full of enthusiasm, and for the right things. his new book is as healthful as it is eloquent.'--_globe_. 'throughout the book the poetic workmanship is fine.'--_scotsman_. jane barlow. the battle of the frogs and mice, translated by jane barlow, author of 'irish idylls,' and pictured by f.d. bedford. _small 4to. 6s. net_. ibsen. brand. a drama by henrik ibsen. translated by william wilson. _crown 8vo. second edition. 3s. 6d._ 'the greatest world-poem of the nineteenth century next to "faust." "brand" will have an astonishing interest for englishmen. it is in the same set with "agamemnon," with "lear," with the literature that we now instinctively regard as high and holy.'--_daily chronicle_. "a.g." verses to order. by "a.g." _cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d net_. a small volume of verse by a writer whose initials are well known to oxford men. 'a capital specimen of light academic poetry. these verses are very bright and engaging, easy and sufficiently witty.--_st. james's gazette_. hosken. verses by the way. by j.d. hosken. _crown 8vo. 5s._ gale. cricket songs. by norman gale. _crown 8vo. linen. 2s. 6d_. also a limited edition on hand-made paper. _demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net._ 'as healthy as they are spirited, and ought to have a great success.'--_times._ 'simple, manly, and humorous. every cricketer should buy the book.'--_westminster gazette._ 'cricket has never known such a singer.'--_cricket_. langbridge. ballads of the brave: poems of chivalry, enterprise, courage, and constancy, from the earliest times to the present day. edited, with notes, by rev. f. langbridge. _crown 8vo. buckram 3s. 6d_. school edition, _2s. 6d._ 'a very happy conception happily carried out. these "ballads of the brave" are intended to suit the real tastes of boys, and will suit the taste of the great majority.--_spectator_. 'the book is full of splendid things.'--_world_. english classics edited by w.e. henley. messrs. methuen are publishing, under this title, a series of the masterpieces of the english tongue, which, while well within the reach of the average buyer, shall be at once an ornament to the shelf of him that owns, and a delight to the eye of him that reads. the series, of which mr. william ernest henley is the general editor, will confine itself to no single period or department of literature. poetry, fiction, drama, biography, autobiography, letters, essays--in all these fields is the material of many goodly volumes. the books, which are designed and printed by messrs. constable, are issued in two editions--(1) a small edition, on the finest japanese vellum, demy 8vo, 21_s_. a volume net; (2) the popular edition on laid paper, crown 8vo, buckram, 3_s. 6d_. a volume. the life and opinions of tristram shandy. by lawrence sterne. with an introduction by charles whibley, and a portrait. 2_vols. 7s_. 60 copies on japanese paper. 42_s. net_. 'very dainty volumes are these; the paper, type and light green binding are all very agreeable to the eye. "simplex munditiis" is the phrase that might be applied to them. so far as we know, sterne's famous work has never appeared in a guise more attractive to the connoisseur than this.'--_globe._ 'the book is excellently printed by messrs. constable on good paper, and being divided into two volumes, is light and handy without lacking the dignity of a classic.'--_manchester guardian_. 'this new edition of a great classic might make an honourable appearance in any library in the world. printed by constable on laid paper, bound in most artistic and restful-looking fig-green buckram, with a frontispiece portrait and an introduction by mr. charles whibley, the book might well be issued at three times its present price.'--_irish independent._ 'cheap and comely; a very agreeable edition.'--_saturday review._ 'a real acquisition to the library.'--_birmingham post._ the comedies of william congreve. with an introduction by g.s. street, and a portrait. _2 vols. 7s._ 25 copies on japanese paper. _42s. net._ 'the comedies are reprinted in a good text and on a page delightful to look upon. the pieces are rich reading.'--_scotsman._ 'so long as literature thrives, congreve must be read with growing zest, in virtue of qualities which were always rare, and which were never rarer than at this moment. all that is best and most representative of congreve's genius is included in this latest edition, wherein for the first time the chaotic punctuation of its forerunners is reduced to order--a necessary, thankless task on which mr. street has manifestly spent much pains. of his introduction it remains to say that it is an excellent appreciation, notable for catholicity, discretion, and finesse: an admirable piece of work.'--_pall mall gazette._ 'two volumes of marvellous cheapness.'--_dublin herald._ the adventures of hajji baba of ispahan. by james morier. with an introduction by e.g. browne, m.a. and a portrait. _2 vols. 7s._ 25 copies on japanese paper. _21s. net._ history flinders petrie. a history of egypt, from the earliest times to the hyksos. by w.m. flinders petrie, d.c.l., professor of egyptology at university college. _fully illustrated. second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'an important contribution to scientific study.'--_scotsman._ 'a history written in the spirit of scientific precision so worthily represented by dr. petrie and his school cannot but promote sound and accurate study, and supply a vacant place in the english literature of egyptology.'--_times._ flinders petrie. egyptian tales. edited by w.m. flinders petrie. illustrated by tristram ellis. _crown 8vo._ in two volumes. _3s. 6d. each._ 'a valuable addition to the literature of comparative folk-lore. the drawings are really illustrations in the literal sense of the word.'--_globe._ 'it has a scientific value to the student of history and archaeology.'--_scotsman._ 'invaluable as a picture of life in palestine and egypt.'--_daily news._ clark. the colleges of oxford: their history and their traditions. by members of the university. edited by a. clark, m.a., fellow and tutor of lincoln college. _8vo. 12s. 6d._ 'a delightful book, learned and lively.'--_academy_. 'a work which will certainly be appealed to for many years as the standard book on the colleges of oxford.'--_athenaeum_. perrens. the history of florence from the time of the medicis to the fall of the republic. by f.t. perrens. translated by hannah lynch. _in three volumes. vol. i. 8vo. 12s. 6d._ 'this is a standard book by an honest and intelligent historian, who has deserved well of all who are interested in italian history.'--_manchester guardian_. george. battles of english history. by h.b. george, m.a., fellow of new college, oxford. _with numerous plans. second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'mr. george has undertaken a very useful task--that of making military affairs intelligible and instructive to non-military readers--and has executed it with laudable intelligence and industry, and with a large measure of success.'--_times_. 'this book is almost a revelation; and we heartily congratulate the author on his work and on the prospect of the reward he has well deserved for so much conscientious and sustained labour.'--_daily chronicle_. browning. guelphs and ghibellines: a short history of mediaeval italy, a.d. 1250-1409. by oscar browning, fellow and tutor of king's college, cambridge. _second edition. crown 8vo. 5s._ 'a very able book.'--_westminster gazette_. 'a vivid picture of mediaeval italy.'--_standard_. browning. the age of the condottieri: a short story of italy from 1409 to 1530. by oscar browning, m.a., fellow of king's college, cambridge. _crown 8vo. 5s._ this book is a continuation of mr. browning's 'guelphs and ghibellines,' and the two works form a complete account of italian history from 1250 to 1530. 'mr. browning is to be congratulated on the production of a work of immense labour and learning.'--_westminster gazette_. o'grady. the story of ireland. by standish o'grady, author of 'finn and his companions.' _cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d._ 'novel and very fascinating history. wonderfully alluring.'--_cork examiner_. 'most delightful, most stimulating. its racy humour, its original imaginings, make it one of the freshest, breeziest volumes.'--_methodist times_. 'a survey at once graphic, acute, and quaintly written.'--_times_. maiden. english records. a companion to the history of england. by h.e. malden, m.a. _crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._ a book which concentrates information upon dates, genealogy, officials, constitutional documents, etc., which is usually found scattered in different volumes. biography collingwood. the life of john ruskin. by w.g. collingwood, m.a., editor of mr. ruskin's poems. with numerous portraits, and 13 drawings by mr. ruskin. _2 vols. 8vo. 32s. second edition_. 'no more magnificent volumes have been published for a long time....'--_times_. 'it is long since we have had a biography with such delights of substance and of form. such a book is a pleasure for the day, and a joy for ever.'--_daily chronicle_. 'a noble monument of a noble subject. one of the most beautiful books about one of the noblest lives of our century.'--_glasgow herald_. waldstein. john ruskin: a study. by charles waldstein, m.a., fellow of king's college, cambridge. with a photogravure portrait after professor herkomer. _post 8vo. 5s._ also 25 copies on japanese paper. _demy 8vo. 21s. net_. 'a thoughtful, impartial, well-written criticism of ruskin's teaching, intended to separate what the author regards as valuable and permanent from what is transient and erroneous in the great master's writing.'--_daily chronicle_. kaufmann. charles kingsley. by m. kaufmann, m.a. _--crown 8vo. buckram. 5s._ a biography of kingsley, especially dealing with his achievements in social reform. 'the author has certainly gone about his work with conscientiousness and industry.'--_sheffield daily telegraph_. robbins. the early life of william ewart gladstone. by a.f. robbins. _with portraits. crown 8vo. 6s_. 'considerable labour and much skill of presentation have not been unworthily expended on this interesting work.'--_times_. 'not only one of the most meritorious, but one of the most interesting, biographical works that have appeared on the subject of the ex-premier.... it furnishes a picture from many points original and striking; it makes additions of value to the evidence on which we are entitled to estimate a great public character; and it gives the reader's judgment exactly that degree of guidance which is the function of a calm, restrained, and judicious historian.'--_birmingham daily post_. clark russell. the life of admiral lord collingwood. by w. clark russell, author of 'the wreck of the grosvenor.' with illustrations by f. brangwyn. _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a really good book.'--_saturday review_. 'a most excellent and wholesome book, which we should like to see in the hands of every boy in the country.'--_st. james's gazette_. southey. english seamen (howard, clifford, hawkins, drake, cavendish). by robert southey. edited, with an introduction, by david hannay. _crown 8vo. 6s._ this is a reprint of some excellent biographies of elizabethan seamen, written by southey and never republished. they are practically unknown, and they deserve, and will probably obtain, a wide popularity. general literature gladstone. the speeches and public addresses of the rt. hon.w.e. gladstone, m.p. with notes and introductions. edited by a.w. hutton, m.a. (librarian of the gladstone library), and h.j. cohen, m.a. with portraits. _8vo. vols. ix. and x. 12s. 6d. each._ henley and whibley. a book of english prose. collected by w.e. henley and charles whibley. _cr. 8vo. 6s._ also 40 copies on dutch paper. _21s. net._ also 15 copies on japanese paper. _42s. net._ 'a unique volume of extracts--an art gallery of early prose.'--_birmingham post._ 'an admirable companion to mr. henley's "lyra heroica."'--_saturday review._ 'quite delightful. the choice made has been excellent, and the volume has been most admirably printed by messrs. constable. a greater treat for those not well acquainted with pre-restoration prose could not be imagined.'--_athenaeum_. wells. oxford and oxford life. by members of the university. edited by j. wells, m.a., fellow and tutor of wadham college. _crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._ this work contains an account of life at oxford--intellectual, social, and religious--a careful estimate of necessary expenses, a review of recent changes, a statement of the present position of the university, and chapters on women's education, aids to study, and university extension. 'we congratulate mr. wells on the production of a readable and intelligent account of oxford as it is at the present time, written by persons who are possessed of a close acquaintance with the system and life of the university.'--_athenaeum_. ouida. views and opinions. by ouida. _crown 8vo. 6s._ 'her views are always well marked and forcibly expressed, so that even when you most strongly differ from the writer you can always recognise and acknowledge her ability.'--_globe._ 'ouida is outspoken, and the reader of this book will not have a dull moment. the book is full of variety, and sparkles with entertaining matter.'--_speaker._ bowden. the example of buddha: being quotations from buddhist literature for each day in the year. compiled by e.m. bowden. with preface by sir edwin arnold. _third edition. 16mo. 2s. 6d._ bushill. profit sharing and the labour question. by t.w. bushill, a profit sharing employer. with an introduction by sedley taylor, author of 'profit sharing between capital and labour.' _crown 8vo. 2s. 6d_. malden. the english citizen: his rights and duties. by h.e. malden, m.a. _crown 8vo. 1s. 6d_. a simple account of the privileges and duties of the english citizen. john beever. practical fly-fishing, founded on nature, by john beever, late of the thwaite house, coniston. a new edition, with a memoir of the author by w.g. collingwood, m.a. _crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._ a little book on fly-fishing by an old friend of mr. ruskin. science freudenreich. dairy bacteriology. a short manual for the use of students in dairy schools, cheesemakers, and farmers. by dr. ed. von freudenreich. translated from the german by j.r. ainsworth davis, b.a. (camb.), f.c.p., professor of biology and geology at university college, aberystwyth. _crown 8vo. 2s. 6d_. chalmers mitchell. outlines of biology. by p. chalmers mitchell, m.a., f.z.s. _fully illustrated. crown 8vo. 6s_. a text-book designed to cover the new schedule issued by the royal college of physicians and surgeons. massee. a monograph of the myxogastres. by george massee. with 12 coloured plates. _royal 8vo. 18s. net._ 'a work much in advance of any book in the language treating of this group of organisms. it is indispensable to every student of the myxogastres. the coloured plates deserve high praise for their accuracy and execution.'--_nature_. theology driver. sermons on subjects connected with the old testament. by s.r. driver, d.d., canon of christ church, regius professor of hebrew in the university of oxford. _crown 8vo. 6s_. a welcome companion to the author's famous 'introduction.' no man can read these discourses without feeling that dr. driver is fully alive to the deeper teaching of the old testament.'--_guardian_. cheyne. founders of old testament criticism: biographical, descriptive, and critical studies. by t.k. cheyne, d.d., oriel professor of the interpretation of holy scripture at oxford. _large crown 8vo. 7s. 6d._ this important book is a historical sketch of o.t. criticism in the form of biographical studies from the days of eichhorn to those of driver and robertson smith. it is the only book of its kind in english. 'a very learned and instructive work.'--_times._ prior. cambridge sermons. edited by h.c. prior, m.a., fellow and tutor of pembroke college. _crown 8vo. 6s._ a volume of sermons preached before the university of cambridge by various preachers, including the archbishop of canterbury and bishop westcott. 'a representative collection. bishop westcott's is a noble sermon.'--_guardian._ 'full of thoughtfulness and dignity.--_record._ beeching. sermons to schoolboys. by h.c. beeching, m.a., rector of yattendon, berks. with a preface by canon scott holland. _crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._ seven sermons preached before the boys of bradfield college. layard. religion in boyhood. notes on the religious training of boys. with a preface by j.r. illingworth. by e.b. layard, m.a., _18mo. 1s._ devotional books. _with full-page illustrations_. the imitation of christ. by thomas a kempis. with an introduction by archdeacon farrar. illustrated by c.m. gere, and printed in black and red. _fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d._ 'we must draw attention to the antique style, quaintness, and typographical excellence of the work, its red-letter "initials" and black letter type, and old-fashioned paragraphic arrangement of pages. the antique paper, uncut edges, and illustrations are in accord with the other features of this unique little work.'--_newsagent_. 'amongst all the innumerable english editions of the "imitation," there can have been few which were prettier than this one, printed in strong and handsome type by messrs. constable, with all the glory of red initials, and the comfort of buckram binding.'--_glasgow herald_. the christian year. by john keble. with an introduction and notes by w. lock, m.a., sub-warden of keble college, author of 'the life of john keble.' illustrated by r. anning bell. _fcap. 8vo. 5s._ _[october._ leaders of religion edited by h.c. beeching, m.a. _with portraits, crown 8vo._ a series of short biographies of the most prominent leaders of religious life and thought of all ages and countries. the following are ready-cardinal newman. by r.h. hutton. john wesley. by j.h. overton, m.a. bishop wilberforce. by g.w. daniel, m.a. cardinal manning. by a.w. hutton, m.a. charles simeon. by h.c.g. moule, m.a. john keble. by walter lock, m.a. thomas chalmers. by mrs. oliphant. lancelot andrewes. by r.l. ottley, m.a. augustine of canterbury. by e.l. cutts, d.d. william laud. by w.h. hutton, m.a. other volumes will be announced in due course. works by s. baring gould old country life. with sixty-seven illustrations by w. parkinson, f.d. bedford, and f. masey. _large crown 8vo, cloth super extra, top edge gilt, 10s. 6d. fifth and cheaper edition. 6s._ '"old country life," as healthy wholesome reading, full of breezy life and movement, full of quaint stories vigorously told, will not be excelled by any book to be published throughout the year. sound, hearty, and english to the core.'--_world_. historic oddities and strange events. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a collection of exciting and entertaining chapters. the whole volume is delightful reading.'--_times_. freaks of fanaticism. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'mr. baring gould has a keen eye for colour and effect, and the subjects he has chosen give ample scope to his descriptive and analytic faculties. a perfectly fascinating book.'--_scottish leader_. a garland of country song: english folk songs with their traditional melodies. collected and arranged by s. baring gould and h. fleetwood sheppard. _demy 4to. 6s._ songs of the west: traditional ballads and songs of the west of england, with their traditional melodies. collected by s. baring gould, m.a., and h. fleetwood sheppard, m.a. arranged for voice and piano. in 4 parts (containing 25 songs each), _parts i., ii., iii., 3s. each. part iv., 5s. in one vol., french morocco, 15s._ 'a rich collection of humour, pathos, grace, and poetic fancy.'--_saturday review_. a book of fairy tales retold by s. baring gould. with numerous illustrations and initial letters by arthur j. gaskin. _crown 8vo. buckram. 6s._ 'mr. baring gould has done a good deed, and is deserving of gratitude, in re-writing in honest, simple style the old stories that delighted the childhood of "our fathers and grandfathers." we do not think he has omitted any of our favourite stories, the stories that are commonly regarded as merely "old fashioned." as to the form of the book, and the printing, which is by messrs. constable, it were difficult to commend overmuch.'--_saturday review_. yorkshire oddities and strange events _fourth edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ strange survivals and superstitions. with illustrations. by s. baring gould. _crown 8vo. second edition. 6s._ we have read mr. baring gould's book from beginning to end. it is full of quaint and various information, and there is not a dull page in it.'--_notes and queries_. the tragedy of the caesars: the emperors of the julian and claudian lines. with numerous illustrations from busts, gems, cameos, etc. by s. baring gould, author of 'mehalah,' etc. _third edition. royal 8vo. 15s._ 'a most splendid and fascinating book on a subject of undying interest. the great feature of the book is the use the author has made of the existing portraits of the caesars, and the admirable critical subtlety he has exhibited in dealing with this line of research. it is brilliantly written, and the illustrations are supplied on a scale of profuse magnificence.'--_daily chronicle_. 'the volumes will in no sense disappoint the general reader. indeed, in their way, there is nothing in any sense so good in english.... mr. baring gould has presented his narrative in such a way as not to make one dull page.'--_athenaeum_. the deserts of southern france. by s. baring gould. with numerous illustrations by f.d. bedford, s. hutton, etc. _2 vols. demy 8vo. 32s._ this book is the first serious attempt to describe the great barren tableland that extends to the south of limousin in the department of aveyron, lot, etc., a country of dolomite cliffs, and caã±ons, and subterranean rivers. the region is full of prehistoric and historic interest, relics of cave-dwellers, of mediaeval robbers, and of the english domination and the hundred years' war. 'his two richly-illustrated volumes are full of matter of interest to the geologist, the archaeologist, and the student of history and manners.'--_scotsman_. 'it deals with its subject in a manner which rarely fails to arrest attention.'--_times_. fiction six shilling novels marie corelli. barabbas: a dream of the world's tragedy. by marie corelli, author of 'a romance of two worlds,' 'vendetta,' etc. _seventeenth edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'the tender reverence of the treatment and the imaginative beauty of the writing have reconciled us to the daring of the conception, and the conviction is forced on us that even so exalted a subject cannot be made too familiar to us, provided it be presented in the true spirit of christian faith. the amplifications of the scripture narrative are often conceived with high poetic insight, and this "dream of the world's tragedy" is, despite some trifling incongruities, a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase of the supreme climax of the inspired narrative.'--_dublin review_. anthony hope. the god in the car. by anthony hope, author of 'a change of air,' etc. _sixth edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'ruston is drawn with extraordinary skill, and maggie dennison with many subtle strokes. the minor characters are clear cut. in short the book is a brilliant one. "the god in the car" is one of the most remarkable works in a year that has given us the handiwork of nearly all our best living novelists.'--_standard_. 'a very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible within our limit; brilliant, but not superficial; well considered, but not elaborated; constructed with the proverbial art that conceals, but yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers to whom fine literary method is a keen pleasure; true without cynicism, subtle without affectation, humorous without strain, witty without offence, inevitably sad, with an unmorose simplicity.'--_the world_. anthony hope. a change of air. by anthony hope, author of 'the prisoner of zenda,' etc. _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a graceful, vivacious comedy, true to human nature. the characters are traced with a masterly hand.'--_times_. anthony hope. a man of mark. by anthony hope, author of 'the prisoner of zenda,' 'the god in the car,' etc. _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a bright, entertaining, unusually able book, quite worthy of its brilliant author.'--_queen_. 'of all mr. hope's books, "a man of mark" is the one which best compares with "the prisoner of zenda." the two romances are unmistakably the work of the same writer, and he possesses a style of narrative peculiarly seductive, piquant, comprehensive, and--his own.'--_national observer_. conan doyle. round the red lamp. by a. conan doyle, author of 'the white company,' 'the adventures of sherlock holmes,' etc. _fourth edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'the book is, indeed, composed of leaves from life, and is far and away the best view that has been vouchsafed us behind the scenes of the consulting-room. it is very superior to "the diary of a late physician."'--_illustrated london news_. 'dr. doyle wields a cunning pen, as all the world now knows. his deft touch is seen to perfection in these short sketches--these "facts and fancies of medical life," as he calls them. every page reveals the literary artist, the keen observer, the trained delineator of human nature, its weal and its woe.'--_freeman's journal_. 'these tales are skilful, attractive, and eminently suited to give relief to the mind of a reader in quest of distraction.'--_athenaeum_. stanley weyman. under the red robe. by stanley weyman, author of 'a gentleman of france.' with twelve illustrations by r. caton woodville. _seventh edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ a cheaper edition of a book which won instant popularity. no unfavourable review occurred, and most critics spoke in terms of enthusiastic admiration. the 'westminster gazette' called it '_a book of which we have read every word for the sheer pleasure of reading, and which we put down with a pang that we cannot forget it all and start again_.' the 'daily chronicle' said that '_every one who reads books at all must read this thrilling romance, from the first page of which to the last the breathless reader is haled along_.' it also called the book '_an inspiration of manliness and courage_.' the 'globe' called it '_a delightful tale of chivalry and adventure, vivid and dramatic, with a wholesome modesty and reverence for the highest_.' emily lawless. maelcho: a sixteenth century romance. by the hon. emily lawless, author of 'grania,' 'hurrish,' etc. _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a striking and delightful book. a task something akin to scott's may lie before miss lawless. if she carries forward this series of historical pictures with the same brilliancy and truth she has already shown, and with the increasing self-control one may expect from the genuine artist, she may do more for her country than many a politician. throughout this fascinating book, miss lawless has produced something which is not strictly history and is not strictly fiction, but nevertheless possesses both imaginative value and historical insight in a high degree.'--_times_. 'a really great book.'--_spectator_. 'there is no keener pleasure in life than the recognition of genius. good work is commoner than it used to be, but the best is as rare as ever. all the more gladly, therefore, do we welcome in "maelcho" a piece of work of the first order, which we do not hesitate to describe as one of the most remarkable literary achievements of this generation. miss lawless is possessed of the very essence of historical genius.'--_manchester guardian_. e.f. benson. dodo: a detail of the day. by e.f. benson. _crown 8vo. sixteenth edition, 6s._ a story of society which attracted by its brilliance universal attention. the best critics were cordial in their praise. the 'guardian' spoke of 'dodo' as '_unusually clever and interesting_'; the 'spectator' called it '_a delightfully witty sketch of society_;' the 'speaker' said the dialogue was '_a perpetual feast of epigram and paradox_'; the 'athenaeum' spoke of the author as '_a writer of quite exceptional ability_'; the 'academy' praised his '_amazing cleverness_;' the 'world' said the book was '_brilliantly written_'; and half-a-dozen papers declared there was '_not a dull page in the book_.' e.f. benson. the rubicon. by e.f. benson, author of 'dodo.' _fourth edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ of mr. benson's second novel the 'birmingham post' says it is '_well written, stimulating, unconventional, and, in a word, characteristic_'; the 'national observer congratulates mr. benson upon '_an exceptional achievement_,' and calls the book '_a notable advance on his previous work_.' m.m. dowie. gallia. by mã�nie muriel dowie, author of 'a girl in the carpathians.' _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'the style is generally admirable, the dialogue not seldom brilliant, the situations surprising in their freshness and originality, while the subsidiary as well as the principal characters live and move, and the story itself is readable from title-page to colophon.'--_saturday review_. 'a very notable book; a very sympathetically, at times delightfully written book.'--_daily graphic_. _mr. baring gould's novels_ 'to say that a book is by the author of "mehalah" is to imply that it contains a story cast on strong lines, containing dramatic possibilities, vivid and sympathetic descriptions of nature, and a wealth of ingenious imagery.'--_speaker_. 'that whatever mr. baring gould writes is well worth reading, is a conclusion that may be very generally accepted. his views of life are fresh and vigorous, his language pointed and characteristic, the incidents of which he makes use are striking and original, his characters are life-like, and though somewhat exceptional people, are drawn and coloured with artistic force. add to this that his descriptions of scenes and scenery are painted with the loving eyes and skilled hands of a master of his art, that he is always fresh and never dull, and under such conditions it is no wonder that readers have gained confidence both in his power of amusing and satisfying them, and that year by year his popularity widens.'--_court circular_. baring gould. urith: a story of dartmoor. by s. baring gould. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'the author is at his best.'--_times_. 'he has nearly reached the high water-mark of "mehalah."'--_national observer_. baring gould. in the roar of the sea: a tale of the cornish coast. by s. baring gould. _fifth edition. 6s._ baring gould. mrs. curgenven of curgenven. by s. baring gould. _fourth edition. 6s._ a story of devon life. the 'graphic' speaks of it as '_a novel of vigorous humour and sustained power_'; the 'sussex daily news' says that '_the swing of the narrative is splendid_'; and the 'speaker' mentions its '_bright imaginative power_.' baring gould. cheap jack zita. by s. baring gould. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ a romance of the ely fen district in 1815, which the 'westminster gazette' calls '_a powerful drama of human passion_'; and the 'national observer' '_a story worthy the author_.' baring gould. the queen of love. by s. baring gould. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ the 'glasgow herald' says that '_the scenery is admirable, and the dramatic incidents are most striking_.' the 'westminster gazette' calls the book '_strong, interesting, and clever_.' 'punch' says that '_you cannot put it down until you have finished it_.' 'the sussex daily news' says that it '_can be heartily recommended to all who care for cleanly, energetic, and interesting fiction_.' baring gould. kitty alone. by s. baring gould, author of 'mehalah,' 'cheap jack zita,' etc. _fourth edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a strong and original story, teeming with graphic description, stirring incident, and, above all, with vivid and enthralling human interest.'--_daily telegraph_. 'brisk, clever, keen, healthy, humorous, and interesting.'--_national observer_. 'full of quaint and delightful studies of character.'--_bristol mercury_. mrs. oliphant. sir robert's fortune. by mrs. oliphant. _crown 8vo. 6s._ 'full of her own peculiar charm of style and simple, subtle character-painting comes her new gift, the delightful story before us. the scene mostly lies in the moors, and at the touch of the authoress a scotch moor becomes a living thing, strong, tender, beautiful, and changeful. the book will take rank among the best of mrs. oliphant's good stories.'--_pall mall gazette_. w.e. norris. matthew austin. by w.e. norris, author of 'mademoiselle de mersac,' etc. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ '"matthew austin" may safely be pronounced one of the most intellectually satisfactory and morally bracing novels of the current year.'--_daily telegraph_. 'mr. w.e. norris is always happy in his delineation of everyday experiences, but rarely has he been brighter or breezier than in "matthew austin." the pictures are in mr. norris's pleasantest vein, while running through the entire story is a felicity of style and wholesomeness of tone which one is accustomed to find in the novels of this favourite author.'--_scotsman_. w.e. norris. his grace. by w.e. norris, author of 'mademoiselle de mersac.' _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'mr. norris has drawn a really fine character in the duke of hurstbourne, at once unconventional and very true to the conventionalities of life, weak and strong in a breath, capable of inane follies and heroic decisions, yet not so definitely portrayed as to relieve a reader of the necessity of study on his own behalf.'--_athenaeum_. w.e. norris. the despotic lady and others. by w.e. norris, author of 'mademoiselle de mersac.' _crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a delightfully humorous tale of a converted and rehabilitated rope-dancer.'--_glasgow herald_. 'the ingenuity of the idea, the skill with which it is worked out, and the sustained humour of its situations, make it after its own manner a veritable little masterpiece.'--_westminster gazette_. 'a budget of good fiction of which no one will tire.'--_scotsman_. 'an extremely entertaining volume--the sprightliest of holiday companions.'--_daily telegraph_. gilbert parker. mrs. falchion. by gilbert parker, author of 'pierre and his people.' _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ mr. parker's second book has received a warm welcome. the 'athenaeum' called it '_a splendid study of character_'; the 'pall mall gazette' spoke of the writing as '_but little behind anything that has been done by any writer of our time_'; the 'st. james's' called it '_a very striking and admirable novel_'; and the 'westminster gazette' applied to it the epithet of '_distinguished_.' gilbert parker. pierre and his people. by gilbert parker. _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'stories happily conceived and finely executed. there is strength and genius in mr. parker's style.'--_daily telegraph_. gilbert parker. the translation of a savage. by gilbert parker, author of 'pierre and his people,' 'mrs. falchion,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s._ 'the plot is original and one difficult to work out; but mr. parker has done it with great skill and delicacy. the reader who is not interested in this original, fresh, and well-told tale must be a dull person indeed.'--_daily chronicle_. 'a strong and successful piece of workmanship. the portrait of lali, strong, dignified, and pure, is exceptionally well drawn.'--_manchester guardian_. 'a very pretty and interesting story, and mr. parker tells it with much skill. the story is one to be read.'--_st. james's gazette_. gilbert parker. the trail of the sword. by gilbert parker, author of 'pierre and his people,' etc. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'everybody with a soul for romance will thoroughly enjoy "the trail of the sword."'--_st. james's gazette_. 'a rousing and dramatic tale. a book like this, in which swords flash, great surprises are undertaken, and daring deeds done, in which men and women live and love in the old straightforward passionate way, is a joy inexpressible to the reviewer, brain-weary of the domestic tragedies and psychological puzzles of everyday fiction; and we cannot but believe that to the reader it will bring refreshment as welcome and as keen.'--_daily chronicle_. gilbert parker. when valmond came to pontiac; the story of a lost napoleon. by gilbert parker. _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'here we find romance--real, breathing, living romance, but it runs flush with our own times, level with our own feelings. not here can we complain of lack of inevitableness or homogeneity. the character of valmond is drawn unerringly; his career, brief as it is, is placed before us as convincingly as history itself. the book must be read, we may say re-read, for any one thoroughly to appreciate mr. parker's delicate touch and innate sympathy with humanity.'--_pall mall gazette_. arthur morrison. tales of mean streets. by arthur morrison. _third edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'told with consummate art and extraordinary detail. he tells a plain, unvarnished tale, and the very truth of it makes for beauty. in the true humanity of the book lies its justification, the permanence of its interest, and its indubitable triumph.'--_athenaeum_. 'a great book. the author's method is amazingly effective, and produces a thrilling sense of reality. the writer lays upon us a master hand. the book is simply appalling and irresistible in its interest. it is humorous also; without humour it would not make the mark it is certain to make.'--_world_. julian corbett. a business in great waters. by julian corbett, author of 'for god and gold,' 'kophetus xiiith.,' etc. _crown 8vo. 6s._ 'there is plenty of incident and movement in this romance. it is interesting as a novel framed in an historical setting, and it is all the more worthy of attention from the lover of romance as being absolutely free from the morbid, the frivolous, and the ultra-sexual.'--_athenaeum_. 'a stirring tale of naval adventure during the great french war. the book is full of picturesque and attractive characters.'--_glasgow herald_. robert barr. in the midst of alarms. by robert barr, author of 'from whose bourne,' etc. _second edition. crown 8vo. 6s._ 'a book which has abundantly satisfied us by its capital humour.'--_daily chronicle_. 'mr. barr has achieved a triumph whereof he has every reason to be proud.'--_pall mall gazette_. 'there is a quaint thought or a good joke on nearly every page. the studies of character are carefully finished, and linger in the memory.'--_black and white_. 'distinguished for kindly feeling, genuine humour, and really graphic portraiture.'--_sussex daily news_. 'a delightful romance, with experiences strange and exciting. the dialogue is always bright and witty; the scenes are depicted briefly and effectively; and there is no incident from first to last that one would wish to have omitted.'--_scotsman_. mrs. pinsent. children of this world. by ellen f. pinsent, author of 'jenny's case.' _crown 8vo. 6s._ 'there is much clever writing in this book. the story is told in a workmanlike manner, and the characters conduct themselves like average human beings.'--_daily news_. 'full of interest, and, with a large measure of present excellence, gives ample promise of splendid work.'--_birmingham gazette_. 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the wrong paradise a cheap nigger the romance of the first radical a duchess's secret the house of strange stories in castle perilous the great gladstone myth my friend the beach-comber dedication. dear rider haggard, i have asked you to let me put your name here, that i might have the opportunity of saying how much pleasure i owe to your romances. they make one a boy again while one is reading them; and the student of "the witch's head" and of "king solomon's mines" is as young, in heart, as when he hunted long ago with chingachgook and uncas. you, who know the noble barbarian in his african retreats, appear to retain more than most men of his fresh natural imagination. we are all savages under our white skins; but you alone recall to us the delights and terrors of the world's nonage. we are hunters again, trappers, adventurers bold, while we study you, and the blithe barbarian wakens even in the weary person of letters. he forgets proof-sheets and papers, and the "young lion" seeks his food from god, in the fearless ancient way, with bow or rifle. of all modern heroes of romance, the dearest to me is your faithful zulu, and i own i cried when he bade farewell to his english master, in "the witch's head." in the following tales the natural man takes a hand, but he is seen through civilized spectacles, not, as in your delightful books, with the eyes of the sympathetic sportsman. if why-why and mr. gowles amuse you a little, let this be my diomedean exchange of bronze for gold--of the new phaeacia for kukuana land, or for that haunted city of kor, in which your fair ayesha dwells undying, as yet unknown to the future lovers of she. very sincerely yours, a. lang. cromer, august 29, 1886. preface. the writer of these apologues hopes that the rev. mr. gowles will not be regarded as his idea of a typical missionary. the countrymen of codrington and callaway, of patteson and livingstone, know better what missionaries may be, and often are. but the wrong sort as well as the right sort exists everywhere, and mr. gowles is not a very gross caricature of the ignorant teacher of heathendom. i am convinced that he would have seen nothing but a set of darkened savages in the ancient greeks. the religious eccentricities of the hellenes are not exaggerated in "the end of phaeacia;" nay, mr. gowles might have seen odder things in attica than he discovered, or chose to record, in boothland. to avoid the charge of plagiarism, perhaps it should be mentioned that "the romance of the first radical" was written long before i read tanner's "narrative of a captivity among the indians." tanner, like whywhy, had trouble with the chief medicine-man of his community. if my dear kinsman and companion of old days, j. j. a., reads "my friend the beach-comber," he will recognize many of his own yarns, but the portrait of the narrator is wholly fanciful. "in castle perilous" and "a cheap nigger" are reprinted from the cornhill magazine; "my friend the beach-comber," from longman's; "the great gladstone myth," from macmillan's; "in the wrong paradise," from the fortnightly review; "a duchess's secret," from the overland mail; "the romance of the first radical," from fraser's magazine; and "the end of phaeacia," from time, by the courteous permission of the editors and proprietors of those periodicals. the end of phaeacia i. introductory. {1} the rev. thomas gowles, well known in colonial circles where the truth is valued, as "the boanerges of the pacific," departed this life at hackney wick, on the 6th of march, 1885. the laodiceans in our midst have ventured to affirm that the world at large has been a more restful place since mr. gowles was taken from his corner of the vineyard. the boanerges of the pacific was, indeed, one of those rarely-gifted souls, souls like a luther or a knox, who can tolerate no contradiction, and will palter with no compromise, where the truth is concerned. papists, puseyites, presbyterians, and pagans alike, found in mr. gowles an opponent whose convictions were firm as a rock, and whose method of proclaiming the truth was as the sound of a trumpet. examples of his singular courage and daring in the work of the ministry abound in the following narrative. born and brought up in the bungletonian communion, himself collaterally connected, by a sister's marriage, with jedediah bungleton, the revered founder of the very particular people, gowles was inaccessible to the scepticism of the age. his youth, it is true, had been stormy, like that of many a brand afterwards promoted to being a vessel. his worldly education was of the most elementary and indeed eleemosynary description, consequently he despised secular learning, and science "falsely so called." it is recorded of him that he had almost a distaste for those difficult chapters of the epistles in which st. paul mentions by name his greek friends and converts. in a controversy with an oxford scholar, conducted in the open air, under the martyrs' memorial in that centre of careless professors, gowles had spoken of "nicodemus," "eubulus," and "stephanas." his unmannerly antagonist jeering at these slips of pronunciation, gowles uttered his celebrated and crushing retort, "did paul know greek?" the young man, his opponent, went away, silenced if not convinced. such a man was the rev. thomas gowles in his home ministry. circumstances called him to that wider field of usefulness, the pacific, in which so many millions of our dusky brethren either worship owls, butterflies, sharks, and lizards, or are led away captive by the seductive pomps of the scarlet woman, or lapse languidly into the lap of a bloated and erastian establishment, ignorant of the truth as possessed by our community. against all these forms of soul-destroying error the rev. thomas gowles thundered nobly, "passing," as an admirer said, "like an evangelical cyclone, from the new hebrides to the aleutian islands." it was during one of his missionary voyages, in a labour vessel, the blackbird, that the following singular events occurred, events which mr. gowles faithfully recorded, as will be seen, in his missionary narrative. we omit, as of purely secular interest, the description of the storm which wrecked the blackbird, the account of the destruction of the steamer with all hands (not, let us try to hope, with all souls) on board, and everything that transpired till mr. gowles found himself alone, the sole survivor, and bestriding the mast in the midst of a tempestuous sea. what follows is from the record kept on pieces of skin, shards of pottery, plates of metal, papyrus leaves, and other strange substitutes for paper, used by mr. gowles during his captivity. ii. narrative of mr. gowles. {6} "i must now, though in sore straits for writing materials, and having entirely lost count of time, post up my diary, or rather commence my narrative. so far as i can learn from the jargon of the strange and lost people among whom providence has cast me, this is, in their speech, the last of the month, thargeelyun, as near as i can imitate the sound in english. being in doubt as to the true time, i am resolved to regard tomorrow, and every seventh day in succession, as the sabbath. the very natives, i have observed with great interest, keep one day at fixed intervals sacred to the sun-god, whom they call apollon, perhaps the same word as apollyon. on this day they do no manner of work, but _that_ is hardly an exception to their usual habits. a less industrious people (slaves and all) i never met, even in the pacific. as to being more than common idle on one day out of seven, whether they have been taught so much of what is _essential_ by some earlier missionary, or whether they may be the corrupted descendants of the lost tribes (whom they do not, however, at all resemble outwardly, being, i must admit, of prepossessing appearance), i can only conjecture. this apollon of theirs, in his graven images (of which there are many), carries a bow and arrows, _fiery darts of the wicked_, another point in common between him and apollyon, in the pilgrim's progress. may i, like christian, turn aside and quench his artillery! to return to my narrative. when i recovered consciousness, after the sinking of the blackbird, i found myself alone, clinging to the mast. now was i tossed on the crest of the wave, now the waters opened beneath me, and i sank down in the valleys of the sea. cold, numbed, and all but lifeless, i had given up hope of earthly existence, and was nearly insensible, when i began to revive beneath the rays of the sun. the sea, though still moved by a swell, was now much smoother, and, but for a strange vision, i might have believed that i was recovering my strength. i must, however, have been delirious or dreaming, for it appeared to me that a foreign female, of prepossessing exterior, though somewhat indelicately dressed, arose out of the waters close by my side, as lightly as if she had been a sea-gull on the wing. about her head there was wreathed a kind of muslin scarf, which she unwound and offered to me, indicating that i was to tie it about my waist, and it would preserve me from harm. so weak and exhausted was i that, without thinking, i did her bidding, and then lost sight of the female. presently, as it seemed (but i was so drowsy that the time may have been longer than i fancied), i caught sight of land from the crest of a wave. steep blue cliffs arose far away out of a white cloud of surf, and, though a strong swimmer, i had little hope of reaching the shore in safety. fortunately, or rather, i should say, providentially, the current and tide-rip carried me to the mouth of a river, and, with a great effort, i got into the shoal-water, and finally staggered out on shore. there was a wood hard by, and thither i dragged myself. the sun was in mid heavens and very warm, and i managed to dry my clothes. i am always most particular to wear the dress of my calling, observing that it has a peculiar and gratifying effect on the minds of the natives. i soon dried my tall hat, which, during the storm, i had attached to my button-hole by a string, and, though it was a good deal battered, i was not without hopes of partially restoring its gloss and air of british respectability. as will be seen, this precaution was, curiously enough, the human means of preserving my life. my hat, my black clothes, my white neck-tie, and the hymn-book i carry would, i was convinced, secure for me a favourable reception among the natives (if of the gentle brown polynesian type), whom i expected to find on the island. exhausted by my sufferings, i now fell asleep, but was soon wakened by loud cries of anguish uttered at no great distance. i started to my feet, and beheld an extraordinary spectacle, which at once assured me that i had fallen among natives of the worst and lowest type. the dark places of the earth are, indeed, full of horrid cruelty. the first cries which had roused me must have been comparatively distant, though piercing, and even now they reached me confused in the notes of a melancholy chant or hymn. but the shrieks grew more shrill, and i thought i could distinguish the screams of a woman in pain or dread from the groans drawn with more difficulty from a man. i leaped up, and, climbing a high part of the river bank, i beheld, within a couple of hundred yards, an extraordinary procession coming from the inner country towards the mouth of the stream. at first i had only a confused view of bright stuffs--white, blue, and red--and the shining of metal objects, in the midst of a crowd partly concealed by the dust they raised on their way. very much to my surprise i found that they were advancing along a wide road, paved in a peculiar manner, for i had never seen anything of this kind among the heathen tribes of the pacific. their dresses, too, though for the most part mere wraps, as it were, of coloured stuff, thrown round them, pinned with brooches, and often clinging in a very improper way to the figure, did not remind me of the costume (what there is of it) of samoans, fijians, or other natives among whom i have been privileged to labour. but these observations give a more minute impression of what i saw than, for the moment, i had time to take in. the foremost part of the procession consisted of boys, many of them almost naked. their hands were full of branches, wreathed in a curious manner with strips of white or coloured wools. they were all singing, and were led by a woman carrying in her arms a mis-shapen wooden idol, not much unlike those which are too frequent spectacles all over the pacific. behind the boys i could now distinctly behold a man and woman of the polynesian type, naked to the waist, and staggering with bent backs beneath showers of blows. the people behind them, who were almost as light in colour as ourselves, were cruelly flogging them with cutting branches of trees. round the necks of the unfortunate victims--criminals i presumed--were hung chains of white and black figs, and in their hands they held certain herbs, figs, and cheese, for what purpose i was, and remain, unable to conjecture. whenever their cries were still for a moment, the woman who carried the idol turned round, and lifted it in her arms with words which i was unable to understand, urging on the tormentors to ply their switches with more severity. naturally i was alarmed by the strangeness and ferocity of the natives, so i concealed myself hastily in some brushwood behind a large tree. much to my horror i found that the screams, groans, and singing only drew nearer and nearer. the procession then passed me so close that i could see blood on the backs of the victims, and on their faces an awful dread and apprehension. finally, the crowd reached the mouth of the river, at the very place where i had escaped from the sea. by aid of a small pocket-glass i could make out that the men were piling great faggots of green wood, which i had noticed that some of them carried, on a spot beneath the wash of high tide. when the pile had reached a considerable height, the two victims were placed in the middle. then, by some means, which i was too far off to detect, fire was produced, and applied to the wild wood in which the unhappy man and woman were enveloped. soon, fortunately, a thick turbid smoke, in which but little flame appeared, swept all over the beach. i endeavoured to stop my ears, and turned my head away that i might neither see nor hear more of this spectacle, which i now perceived to be a human sacrifice more cruel than is customary even among the fijians. when i next ventured to look up, the last trails of smoke were vanishing away across the sea; the sun gazed down on the bright, many-coloured throng, who were now singing another of their hymns, while some of the number were gathering up ashes (human ashes!) from a blackened spot on the sand, and were throwing them into the salt water. the wind tossed back a soft grey dust in their faces, mixed with the surf and spray. it was dark before the crowd swept by me again, now chanting in what appeared to be a mirthful manner, and with faces so smiling and happy that i could scarcely believe they had just taken part in such abominable cruelty. on the other hand, a weight seemed to have been removed from their consciences. so deceitful are the wiles of satan, who deludes the heathen most in their very religion! tired and almost starved as i was, these reflections forced themselves upon me, even while i was pondering on the dreadful position in which i found myself. way of escape from the island (obviously a very large one) there was none. but, if i remained all night in the wood, i must almost perish of cold and hunger. i had therefore no choice but to approach the barbarous people, though, from my acquaintance with natives, i knew well that they were likely either to kill and eat me, or to worship me as a god. either event was too dreadful to bear reflection. i was certain, however, that, owing to the dress of my sacred calling, i could not be mistaken for a mere beach-comber or labour-hunter, and i considered that i might easily destroy the impression (natural among savages on first seeing a european) that i was a god. i therefore followed the throng from a distance, taking advantage for concealment of turns in the way, and of trees and underwood beside the road. some four miles' walking, for which i was very unfit, brought us across a neck of land, and from high ground in the middle i again beheld the sea. very much to my surprise the cape on which i looked down, safe in the rear of the descending multitude, was occupied by a kind of city. the houses were not the mere huts of south sea islanders, but, though built for the most part of carved and painted wood, had white stone foundations, and were of considerable height. on a rock in the centre of the bay were some stone edifices which i took to be temples or public buildings. the crowd gradually broke up, turning into their own dwellings on the shore, where, by the way, some large masted vessels were drawn up in little docks. but, while the general public, if i may say so, slowly withdrew, the woman with the idol in her arms, accompanied by some elderly men of serious aspect, climbed the road up to the central public buildings. moved by some impulse which i could hardly explain, i stealthily followed them, and at last found myself on a rocky platform, a kind of public square, open on one side to the sea, and shut in on either hand, and at the back, by large houses with smooth round pillars, and decorated with odd coloured carvings. there was in the open centre of the square an object which i recognized as an altar, with a fire burning on it. some men came out of the chief building, dragging a sheep, with chains of flowers round its neck. another man threw something on the fire, which burned with a curious smell. at once i recognized the savour of incense, against which (as employed illegally by the puseyites) i had often firmly protested in old days at home. the spirit of a soldier of the truth entered into me; weary as i was, i rushed from the dusky corner where i had been hidden in the twilight, ran to the altar, and held up my hand with my hymn-book as i began to repeat an address that had often silenced the papistic mummers in england. before i had uttered half a dozen words, the men who were dragging the sheep flew at me, and tried to seize me, while one of them offered a strange-looking knife at my throat. i thought my last hour had come, and the old adam awakening in me, i delivered such a blow with my right on the eye of the man with the knife, that he reeled and fell heavily against the altar. then assuming an attitude of self-defence (such as was, alas! too familiar to me in my unregenerate days), i awaited my assailants. they were coming on in a body when the veil of the large edifice in front was lifted, and a flash of light streamed out on the dusky square, as an old man dressed in red hurried to the scene of struggle. he wore a long white beard, had green leaves twisted in his hair, and carried in his hand a gilded staff curiously wreathed with wool. when they saw him approaching, my assailants fell back, each of them kissing his own hand and bowing slightly in the direction of the temple, as i rightly supposed it to be. the old man, who was followed by attendants carrying torches burning, was now close to us, and on beholding me, he exhibited unusual emotions. my appearance, no doubt, was at that moment peculiar, and little creditable, as i have since thought, to a minister, however humble. my hat was thrust on the back of my head, my coat was torn, my shirt open, my neck-tie twisted round under my ear, and my whole attitude was not one generally associated with the peaceful delivery of the message. still, i had never conceived that any spectacle, however strange and unbecoming, could have produced such an effect on the native mind, especially in a person who was manifestly a chief, or high-priest of some heathen god. seeing him pause, and turn pale, i dropped my hands, and rearranged my dress as best i might. the old tohunga, as my new zealand flock used to call their priest, now lifted his eyes to heaven with an air of devotion, and remained for some moments like one absorbed in prayer or meditation. he then rapidly uttered some words, which, of course, i could not understand, whereon his attendants approached me gently, with signs of respect and friendship. not to appear lacking in courtesy, or inferior in politeness to savages, i turned and raised my hat, which seemed still more to alarm the old priest. he spoke to one of his attendants, who instantly ran across the square, and entered the courtyard of a large house, surrounded by a garden, of which the tall trees looked over the wall, and wooden palisade. the old man then withdrew into the temple, and i distinctly saw him scatter, with the leafy bough of a tree, some water round him as he entered, from a vessel beside the door. this convinced me that some of the emissaries of the scarlet woman had already been busy among the benighted people, a conjecture, however, which proved to be erroneous. i was now left standing by the altar, the attendants observing me with respect which i feared might at any moment take the blasphemous form of worship. nor could i see how i was to check their adoration, and turn it into the proper channel, if, as happened to captain cook, and has frequently occurred since, these darkened idolaters mistook me for one of their own deities. i might spurn them, indeed; but when nicholson adopted that course, and beat the fakirs who worshipped him during the indian mutiny, his conduct, as i have read, only redoubled their enthusiasm. however, as events proved, they never at any time were inclined to substitute me for their heathen divinities; very far from it indeed, though their peculiar conduct was calculated to foster in my breast this melancholy delusion. i had not been left long to my own thoughts when i marked lights wandering in the garden or courtyard whither the messenger had been sent by the old priest. presently there came forth from the court a man of remarkable stature, and with an air of seriousness and responsibility. in his hand he carried a short staff, or baton, with gold knobs, and he wore a thin golden circlet in his hair. as he drew near, the veil of the temple was again lifted, and the aged priest came forward, bearing in his arms a singular casket of wood, ornamented with alternate bands of gold and ivory, carved with outlandish figures. the torch-bearers crowded about us in the darkness, and it was a strange spectacle to behold the smoky, fiery light shining on the men's faces and the rich coloured dresses, or lighting up the white idol of apollon, which stood among the laurel trees at the entrance of the temple. iii. the prophecy. the priest and the man with the gold circlet, whom i took to be a chief, now met, and, fixing their eyes on me, held a conversation of which, naturally, i understood nothing. i maintained an unmoved demeanour, and, by way of showing my indifference, and also of impressing the natives with the superiority of our civilization, i took out and wound up my watch, which, i was glad to find, had not been utterly ruined by the salt water. meanwhile the priest was fumbling in his casket, whence he produced a bundle of very ragged and smoky old bits of parchment and scraps of potsherds. these he placed in the hands of his attendants, who received them kneeling. from the very bottom of the casket he extracted some thin plates of a greyish metal, lead, i believe, all mouldy, stained, and ragged. over these he pored and puzzled for some time, trying, as i guessed, to make out something inscribed on this curious substitute for writing-paper. i had now recovered my presence of mind, and, thinking at once to astonish and propitiate, i drew from my pocket, wiped, and presented to him my spectacles, indicating, by example, the manner of their employment. no sooner did he behold these common articles of every-day use, than the priest's knees began to knock together, and his old hands trembled so that he could scarcely fix the spectacles on his nose. when he had managed this it was plain that he found much less difficulty with his documents. he now turned them rapidly over, and presently discovered one thin sheet of lead, from which he began to read, or rather chant, in a slow measured tone, every now and then pausing and pointing to me, to my hat, and to the spectacles which he himself wore at the moment. the chief listened to him gravely, and with an expression of melancholy that grew deeper and sadder till the end. it was a strange scene. i afterwards heard the matter of the prophecy, as it proved to be, which was thus delivered. i have written it down in the language of the natives, spelling it as best i might, and i give the translation which i made when i became more or less acquainted with their very difficult dialect. {23a} it will be seen that the prophecy, whatever its origin, was strangely fulfilled. perhaps the gods of this people were not mere idols, but evil spirits, permitted, for some wise purpose, to delude their unhappy worshippers. {23b} this, doubtless, they might best do by occasionally telling the truth, as in my instance. but this theory--namely, that the gods of the heathen are perhaps evil and wandering spirits--is, for reasons which will afterwards appear, very painful to me, personally reminding me that i may have sinned as few have done since the days of the early christians. but i trust this will not be made a reproach to me in our connection, especially as i have been the humble instrument of so blessed a change in the land of the heathen, there being no more of them left. but, to return to the prophecy, it is given roughly here in english. it ran thus:--"but when a man, having a chimney pot on his head, and four eyes, appears, and when a sail-less ship also comes, sailing without wind and breathing smoke, then will destruction fall upon the scherian island." perhaps, from this and other expressions to be offered in a later chapter, the learned will be able to determine whether the speech is of the polynesian or the papuan family, or whether, as i sometimes suspect, it is of neither, but of a character quite isolated and peculiar. the effect produced on the mind of the chief by the prophecy amazed me, as he looked, for a native, quite a superior and intelligent person. none of them, however, as i found, escaped the influence of their baneful superstitions. approaching me, he closely examined myself, my dress, and the spectacles which the old priest now held in his hands. the two men then had a hurried discussion, and i have afterwards seen reason to suppose that the chief was pointing out the absence of certain important elements in the fulfilment of the prophecy. here was i, doubtless, "a man bearing a chimney on his head" (for in this light they regarded my hat), and having "four eyes," that is, including my spectacles, a convenience with which they had hitherto been unacquainted. it was undeniable that a prophecy written by a person not accustomed to the resources of civilization, could not more accurately have described me and my appearance. but the "ship without sails" was still lacking to the completion of what had been foretold, as the chief seemed to indicate by waving his hand towards the sea. for the present, therefore, they might hope that the worst would not come to the worst. probably this conclusion brought a ray of hope into the melancholy face of the chief, and the old priest himself left off trembling. they even smiled, and, in their conversation, which assumed a lighter tone, i caught and recorded in pencil on my shirt-cuff, for future explanation, words which sounded like aiskistos aneer, farmakos, catharma, and thargeelyah. {25} finally the aged priest hobbled back into his temple, and the chief, beckoning me to follow, passed within the courtyard of his house. iv. at the chief's house. the chief leading the way, i followed through the open entrance of the courtyard. the yard was very spacious, and under the dark shade of the trees i could see a light here and there in the windows of small huts along the walls, where, as i found later, the slaves and the young men of the family slept. in the middle of the space there was another altar, i am sorry to say; indeed, there were altars everywhere. i never heard of a people so religious, in their own darkened way, as these islanders. at the further end of the court was a really large and even stately house, with no windows but a clerestory, indicated by the line of light from within, flickering between the top of the wall and the beginning of the high-pitched roof. light was also streaming through the wide doorway, from which came the sound of many voices. the house was obviously full of people, and, just before we reached the deep verandah, a roofed space open to the air in front, they began to come out, some of them singing. they had flowers in their hair, and torches in their hands. the chief, giving me a sign to be silent, drew me apart within the shadow of a plane tree, and we waited there till the crowd dispersed, and went, i presume, to their own houses. there were no women among them, and the men carried no spears nor other weapons. when the court was empty, we walked up the broad stone steps and stood within the doorway. i was certainly much surprised at what i saw. there was a rude magnificence about this house such as i had never expected to find in the south sea islands. nay, though i am not unacquainted with the abodes of opulence at home, and have been a favoured guest of some of our merchant princes (including messrs. bunton, the eminent haberdashers, whose light is so generously bestowed on our connection), i admit that i had never looked on a more spacious reception-room, furnished, of course, in a somewhat savage manner, but, obviously, regardless of expense. the very threshold between the court and the reception-room, to which you descended by steps, was made of some dark metal, inlaid curiously with figures of beasts and birds, also in metal (gold, as i afterwards learned), of various shades of colour and brightness. at first i had some difficulty in making out the details of the vast apartment which lay beyond. i was almost dizzy with hunger and fatigue, and my view was further obscured by a fragrant blue smoke, which rose in soft clouds from an open fireplace in the middle of the room. singular to say, there was no chimney, merely a hole in the lofty roof, through which most of the smoke escaped. the ceiling itself, which was supported by carved rafters, was in places quite black with the vapour of many years. the smoke, however, was thin, and as the fuel on the fire, and on the braziers, was of dry cedar and sandal-wood, the perfume, though heavy, was not unpleasant. the room was partly illuminated by the fire itself, partly by braziers full of blazing branches of trees; but, what was most remarkable, there were rows of metal images of young men (naked, i am sorry to say), with burning torches in their hands, ranged all along the side walls. a good deal of taste, in one sense, had been expended in making these images, and money had clearly been no object. i might have been somewhat dazzled by the general effect, had i not reflected that, in my own country, gas is within reach of the poorest purse, while the electric light itself may be enjoyed by the very beggar in the street. here, on the contrary, the dripping of the wax from the torches, the black smoke on the roof, the noisy crackling of the sandal-wood in the braziers, all combined to prove that these natives, though ingenious enough in their way, were far indeed below the level of modern civilization. the abominable ceremony of the afternoon would have proved as much, and now the absence of true _comfort_, even in the dwelling of a chief, made me think once more of the hardships of a missionary's career. but i must endeavour to complete the picture of domestic life in the island, which i now witnessed for the first time, and which will never be seen again by europeans. the walls themselves were of some dark but glittering metal, on which designs in lighter metal were inlaid. there were views of the chief going to the chase, his bow in his hand; of the chief sacrificing to idols; of men and young women engaged in the souldestroying practice of promiscuous dancing; there were wild beasts, lions among others; rivers, with fish in them; mountains, trees, the sun and moon, and stars, all not by any means ill designed, for the work of natives. the pictures, indeed, reminded me a good deal of the ugly assyrian curiosities in the british museum, as i have seen them when conducting the children of the bungletonian band of hope through the rooms devoted to the remains of bible peoples, such as the egyptians, hittites, and others. red or blue curtains, strangely embroidered, hung over the doors, and trophies of swords, shields, and spears, not of steel, but of some darker metal, were fixed on the tall pillars that helped to prop the roof. at the top of the wall, just beneath the open unglazed spaces, which admitted light and air in the daytime, and wind and rain in bad weather, was a kind of frieze, or coping, of some deep blue material. {30} all along the sides of the hall ran carved seats, covered with pretty light embroidered cloths, not very different from modern oriental fabrics. the carpets and rugs were precisely like those of india and persia, and i supposed that they must have been obtained through commerce. but i afterwards learned that they were, beyond doubt, of native manufacture. at the further end of the room was a kind of platform, or dais, on which tables were set with fruit and wine. but much more curious than the furniture of the hall was the group of women sitting by the fire in the centre. there sat in two rows some twenty girls, all busily weaving, and throwing the shuttle from hand to hand, laughing and chattering in low voices. in the midst of them, on a high chair of cedar-wood, decorated with ivory, and with an ivory footstool, sat a person whom, in a civilized country, one must have looked on with respect as a lady of high rank. she, like her husband the chief, had a golden circlet twisted in her hair, which was still brown and copious, and she wore an appearance of command. at her feet, on a stool, reclined a girl who was, i must confess, of singular beauty. doto had long fair hair, a feature most unusual among these natives. she had blue eyes, and an appearance of singular innocence and frankness. she was, at the moment, embroidering a piece of work intended, as i afterwards learned with deep pain, for the covering of one of their idols, to whose service the benighted young woman was devoted. often in after days, i saw doto stooping above her embroidery and deftly interweaving the green and golden threads into the patterns of beasts and flowers. often my heart went out to this poor child of pagan tribe, and i even pleased myself with the hope that some day, a reclaimed and enlightened character, she might employ her skill in embroidering slippers and braces for a humble vessel. i seemed to see her, a helpmate meet for me, holding mothers' meetings, playing hymn-tunes on the lyre, or the double pipes, the native instruments, and, above all, winning the islanders from their cruel and abominable custom of exposing their infant children on the mountains. how differently have all things been arranged. but i am wandering from my story. when we reached the group by the fireside, who had at first been unaware of our entrance, the chief's wife gave a slight start, alarmed doubtless by my appearance. she could never have seen, nor even dreamed of, such a spectacle as i must have presented, haggard, ragged, faint with hunger, and worn with fatigue as i was. the chief motioned to me that i should kneel at his wife's feet, and kiss her hand, but i merely bowed, not considering this a fit moment to protest otherwise against such sacrilegious mummeries. but the woman--her name i learned later was ocyale--did not take my attitude in bad part. the startled expression of her face changed to a look of pity, and, with a movement of her hand, she directed doto to bring a large golden cup from the table at the upper end of the room. into this cup she ladled some dark liquid from a bowl which was placed on a small threelegged stand, or dumb waiter, close to her side. next she spilt a little of the wine on the polished floor, with an appearance of gravity which i did not understand. it appears that this spilling of wine is a drink offering to their idols. she then offered me the cup, which i was about to taste, when i perceived that the liquor was indubitably _alcoholic_! a total abstainer, i had, i am thankful to say, strength enough to resist the temptation thus adroitly thrust upon me. setting down the cup, i pointed to the badge of blue ribbon, which, though damp and colourless, remained faithful to my button-hole. i also made signs i was hungry, and would be glad of something to eat. my gestures, as far as the blue ribbon went, must have been thrown away, of course, but any one could understand that i was fainting from hunger. the mistress of the house called to one of the spinning girls, who rose and went within the door opening from the platform at the upper end of the room. she presently returned with an old woman, a housekeeper, as we would say, and obviously a faithful and familiar servant. after some conversation, of which i was probably the topic, the old woman hobbled off, laughing. she soon came back, bringing, to my extreme delight, a basket with cakes and goat cheese, and some cold pork in a dish. i ought, perhaps, to say here that, in spite of the luxury of their appointments, and their extraordinary habit of "eating and drinking all day to the going down of the sun" (as one of their own poets says), these islanders are by no means good cooks. i have tasted of more savoury meats, dressed in coverings of leaves on hot stones, in maori pahs, or in new caledonian villages, than among the comparatively civilized natives of the country where i now found myself. among the common people, especially, there was no notion of hanging or keeping meat. often have i seen a man kill a hog on the floor of his house, cut it up, toast it, as one may say, at the fire, and then offer the grilled and frequently underdone flesh to his guests. invariably the guests are obliged to witness the slaughter of the animal which is to supply their dinner. this slaughter is performed as a kind of sacrifice; the legs of the beast are the portions of the gods, and are laid, with bits of fat, upon the altars. then chops, or rather kabobs, of meat are hacked off, spitted, and grilled or roasted at the fire. consequently all the meat tasted in this island is actually "meat offered to idols." when i made this discovery the shock was very great, and i feared i was repeating a sin denounced from the earliest ages. but what was i to do? not the meat only, but the vegetables, the fruit, the grain, the very fish (which the natives never eat except under stress of great hunger), were sacred to one or other of their innumerable idols. i must eat, or starve myself to death--a form of suicide. i therefore made up my mind to eat without scruple, remembering that the gods of the nations are nothing at all, but the fancies of vain dreamers, and the invention of greedy and self-seeking priests. these scruples were of later growth, after i had learned that their meals were invariably preceded by a sacrifice, partly to provide the food, partly as grace before meat. on the present occasion i made an excellent supper, though put to a good deal of inconvenience by the want of forks, which were entirely unknown on the island. finding that i would not taste the alcoholic liquor, which the natives always mixed with a large proportion of water, doto rose, went out, and returned with a great bowl of ivy-wood, curiously carved, and full of milk. in this permitted beverage, as my spirits were rising, i drank the young lady's health, indicating my gratitude as well as i could. she bowed gracefully, and returned to her task of embroidery. meanwhile her father and mother were deep in conversation, and paid no attention to me, obviously understanding that my chief need was food. i could not but see that the face of the chief's wife was overclouded, probably with anxiety caused by the prophecy of which i was, or was taken for, the subject. when my hunger was satisfied, i fell, it seems, into a kind of doze, from which i was wakened by the noise of people rising, moving, and pushing back chairs. i collected my senses, and perceived that the room was almost dark, most of the inmates had gone, and the chief was lighting a torch at one of the braziers. this torch he placed in my hand, indicating, as i understood, that i was to put myself under the guidance of two of the young women who had been spinning. at this i was somewhat perplexed, but followed where they went before me, each of them holding a burning torch. the light flared and the smoke drifted among the corridors, till we came within sound of running water. in a lofty green chamber was a large bath of polished marble, carved with shapes of men armed with pitchforks, and employed in spearing fish. the bath was full of clear water, of somewhat higher than tepid heat, and the stream, welling up in one part, flowed out in another, not splashing or spilling. the young women now brought flasks of oil, large sponges, such as are common in these seas, and such articles of dress as are worn by the men among the natives. but, to my astonishment, the girls showed no intention of going away, and it soon became evident _that they meant to assist me in my toilet_! i had some difficulty in getting them to understand the indecorum of their conduct, or rather (for i doubt if they understood it after all) in prevailing on them to leave me. i afterwards learned that this custom, shocking as it appears to europeans, is regarded as entirely right and usual even by the better class of islanders; nor, to do them justice, have i ever heard any imputations on the morality of their women. except among the shepherds and shepherdesses in the rural districts, whose conduct was very regardless, a high standard of modesty prevailed among the female natives. in this, i need not say, they were a notable exception among polynesian races. left to my own devices by the retreat of the young women, i revelled in the pleasures of the bath, and then the question arose, how was i to be clothed? i had, of course, but one shirt with me, and that somewhat frayed and worn. my boots, too, were almost useless from their prolonged immersion in salt water. yet i could not bring myself to adopt the peculiar dress of the natives, though the young persons had left in the bath-room changes of raiment such as are worn by the men of rank. these garments were simple, and not uncomfortable, but, as they showed the legs from the knees downwards, like kilts, i felt that they would be unbecoming to one in my position. almost the chief distinction between civilized man and the savage, is the wearing of trousers. when a missionary in tongo, and prime minister of king haui ha there, i made the absence of breeches in the males an offence punishable by imprisonment. could i, on my very first appearance among the islanders to-morrow, fly, as it were, in the face of my own rules, and prove false to my well-known and often expressed convictions? i felt that such backsliding was impossible. on mature consideration, therefore, i made the following arrangement. the garments of the natives, when they condescended to wear any, were but two in number. first, there was a long linen or woollen shirt or smock, without sleeves, which fell from the neck to some distance below the knees. this shirt i put on. a belt is generally worn, into which the folds of the smock can be drawn up or "kilted," when the wearer wishes to have his limbs free for active exercise. the other garment is simply a large square piece of stuff, silken or woollen as it happens in accordance with the weather, and the rank of the wearer. in this a man swathes himself, somewhat as a highlander does in his plaid, pinning it over the shoulder and leaving the arms free. when one is accustomed to it, this kind of dress is not uncomfortable, and many of the younger braves carried it with a good deal of grace, showing some fancy and originality in the dispositions of the folds. though attired in this barbarous guise, i did not, of course, dispense with my trousers, which, being black, contrasted somewhat oddly with my primrose-coloured ki ton, as they call the smock, and the dark violet clamis, or plaid. when the natives do not go bareheaded, they usually wear a kind of light, soft wideawake, but this. i discarded in favour of my hat, which had already produced so remarkable an effect on their superstitious minds. now i was dressed, as fittingly as possible in the circumstances, but i felt that my chief need was a bed to lie down upon. i did not wish to sleep in the bath-room, so, taking my torch from the stand in which i had placed it, i sallied forth into the corridors, attired as i have described, and carrying my coat under my arm. a distant light, and the noise of females giggling, which increased most indecorously as i drew near, attracted my attention. walking in the direction of the sounds, i soon discovered the two young women to whose charge i had been committed by the chief. they appeared to be in high spirits, and, seizing my arms before i could offer any resistance, they dragged me at a great pace down the passage and out into the verandah. here the air was very fragrant and balmy, and a kind of comfortable "shakedown" of mattresses, covered with coloured blankets, had been laid for me in a corner. i lay down as soon as the sound of the young women's merriment died out in the distance, and after the extraordinary events of the night, i was soon sleeping as soundly as if i had been in my father's house at hackney wick. v. a stranger arrives. when i wakened next morning, wonderfully refreshed by sleep and the purity of the air, i had some difficulty in remembering where i was and how i came there in such a peculiar costume. but the voices of the servants in the house, and the general stir of people going to and fro, convinced me that i had better be up and ready to put my sickle into this harvest of heathen darkness. little did i think how soon the heathen darkness would be trying to put the sickle into me! i made my way with little difficulty, being guided by the sound of the running water, to the bath-room, and thence into the gardens. these were large and remarkably well arranged in beds and plots of flowers and fruit-trees. i particularly admired a fountain in the middle, which watered the garden, and supplied both the chief's house and the town. returning by way of the hall, i met the chief, who, saluting me gravely, motioned me to one of many small tables on which was set a bowl of milk, some cakes, and some roasted kid's flesh. after i had done justice to this breakfast, he directed me to follow him, and, walking before me with his gold-knobbed staff in his hand, passed out of the shady court into the public square. here we found a number of aged men seated on unpleasantly smooth and cold polished stones in a curious circle of masonry. they were surrounded by a crowd of younger men, shouting, laughing, and behaving with all the thoughtless levity and merriment of a polynesian mob. they became silent as the chief approached, and the old men rose from their places till he had taken a kind of rude throne in the circle. for my part, i was obliged to stand alone in their midst, and it seemed that they were debating about myself and my future treatment. first the old priest, whom i had seen on the night before, got up, and, as i fancied, his harangue was very unfavourable to me. he pointed at the inevitable flower-crowned altar which, of course, was in the centre of the market-place, and from the way he shook a sickle he held in his hand i believe that he was proposing to sacrifice me on the spot. in the midst of his oration two vultures, black with white breasts, flew high over our heads, chasing a dove, which they caught and killed right above the market-place, so that the feathers fell down on the altar. the islanders, as i afterwards discovered, are full of childish superstitions about the flight of birds, from which they derive omens as to future events. the old priest manifestly attempted to make political capital against me out of the interesting occurrence in natural history which we had just observed. he hurried to the altar, caught up a handful of the bleeding feathers, and, with sickle in hand, was rushing towards me, when he tripped over the head of a bullock that had lately been sacrificed, and fell flat on his face, while the sickle flew far out of his hand. on this the young men, who were very frivolous, like most of the islanders, laughed aloud, and even the elders smiled. the chief now rose with his staff in his grasp, and, pointing first to me and then to the sky, was, i imagined, propounding a different interpretation of the omen from that advanced by the old priest. meantime the latter, with a sulky expression of indifference, sat nursing his knees, which had been a good deal damaged by his unseemly sprawl on the ground. when the chief sat down, a very quiet, absent-minded old gentleman arose. elatreus was his name, as i learned later; his family had a curious history, and he himself afterwards came to an unhappy and terrible end, as will be shown in a subsequent part of my narrative. i felt quite at home, as if i had been at some vestry-meeting, or some committee in the old country, when elatreus got up. he was stout, very bald, and had a way of thrusting his arm behind him, and of humming and hawing, which vividly brought back to mind the oratory of my native land. he had also, plainly enough, the trick of forgetting what he intended to say, and of running off after new ideas, a trick very uncommon among these natives, who are born public speakers. i flattered myself that this orator was in favour of leniency towards me, but nobody was paying much attention to him, when a shout was heard from the bottom of the hill on which the square is built. everybody turned round, the elders jumped up with some alacrity for the sake of a better view on the polished stones where they had been sitting, and so much was the business before the meeting forgotten in the new excitement, that i might have run away unnoticed, had there been anywhere to run to. but flight was out of the question, unless i could get a boat and some provisions, and i had neither. i was pleased, however, to see that i was so lightly and laxly guarded. the cause of the disturbance was soon apparent. a number of brown, halfnaked, sturdy sailors, with red caps, not unlike fezzes, on their heads, appeared, bawling and making for the centre of the square. they were apparently carrying or dragging some person with them, some person who offered a good deal of resistance. among the foreign and unintelligible cries and howls which rang through the market-place, my heart leaped up, in natural though unsanctified pleasure, as i heard the too well-known but unexpected accents of british profanity. "where the (somewhere) are you blooming sons of beach-combers dragging a bri'sh shailor? shtand off, you ragged set of whitewashed christy minstrels, you! where's the bri'sh conshul's? take me, you longshore sons of sharks, to the bri'sh conshul's! if there's one white man among you let him stand out and hit a chap his own weight." "hullo!" suddenly cried the speaker, whom i had recognized as william bludger, one of the most depraved and regardless of the whole wicked crew of the blackbird,--"hullo, if here isn't old captain hymn-book!"--a foolish nickname the sailors had given me. he was obviously more than half-drunk, and carried in his hand a black rum-bottle, probably (from all i knew of him) not nearly full. his shirt and trousers were torn and dripping; apparently he had been washed ashore, like myself, after the storm, and had been found and brought into the town by some of the fishing population. what a blow to all my hopes was the wholly unlooked-for arrival of this tipsy, irreclaimable seaman, this unawakened bill bludger! i had framed an ideal of what my own behaviour, in my trying circumstances, ought to be. often had i read how these islanders possess a tradition that a wonderful white man, a being all sweetness and lucidity, landed in their midst, taught them the knowledge of the arts, converted them to peace and good manners, and at last mysteriously departed, promising that he would return again. i had hopes--such things have happened--that the islanders might take me for this wonderful white man of their traditions, come back according to his promise. if this delusion should occur, i would not at once undeceive them, but take advantage of the situation, and so bring them all into the bungletonian fold. i knew there was no time to waste. lutheran, french, or church of england schemers, in schooners, might even now be approaching the island, with their erroneous and deplorable tenets. again, i had reckoned, if my hopes proved false, on attaining, not without dignity, the crown of the proto-martyr of my connection. beyond occasional confinement in police cells, consequent on the strategic manoeuvres of the salvation army, none of us had ever known what it was to suffer in the cause. if i were to be the first to testify with my blood, on this unknown soil, at least i could meet my doom with dignity. in any case, i should be remembered, i had reckoned, in the island traditions, either as an isolated and mysterious benefactor, the child of an otherwise unknown race, or as a solitary martyr from afar. all these vain hopes of spiritual pride were now blown to the wind by bill bludger's unexpected appearance and characteristic conduct. no delusions about a divine white stranger from afar could survive the appearance and behaviour of so compromising an acquaintance as william. he was one white stranger too many. there he was, still struggling, shouting, swearing, smelling of rum, and making frantic attempts to reach me and shake hands with me. "let bygones be bygones, captain hymn-book, your reverence," he screamed; "here's your jolly good health and song," and he put his horrible black bottle to his unchastened lips. "here we are, captain, two englishmen agin a lot o' blooming kanekas; let's clear out their whole blessed town, and steer for sydney." but, perceiving that i did not intend to recognize or carouse with him, william bludger now changed his tone; "yah, you lily-livered bible-reader," he exclaimed, "what are you going about in _that_ toggery for: copying mr. toole in paw claudian? _you_ call yourself a missionary? jove, you're more like a blooming play hactor in a penny gaff! easy, then, my hearties," he added, seeing that the fishermen were approaching him again, with ropes in their hands. "avast! stow your handcuffs." in spite of his oaths and struggles, the inebriated mariner was firmly bound, hand and foot, and placed in the centre of the assembly. i only wished that the natives had also gagged him, for his language, though, of course, unintelligible to them, was profane, and highly painful to me. before returning to business, the chiefs carefully inspected the black bottle, of which they had dispossessed william bludger. a golden vase was produced--they had always plenty of _them_ handy--and the dark fluid was poured into this princely receptacle, diffusing a strong odour of rum. each chief carefully tasted the stuff, and i was pained, on gathering, from the expression of their countenances, that they obviously relished the "fire-water" which has been the ruin of so many peoples in these beautiful but benighted seas. however, there was not enough left to go round, and it was manifestly unlikely that william bludger had succeeded in conveying larger supplies from the wreck. the meeting now assumed its former air of earnestness, and it was not hard to see that the arrival of my unhappy and degraded fellow-countryman had introduced a new element into the debate. man after man spoke, and finally the chief rose, as i had little doubt, to sum up the discussion. he pointed to myself, and to william bludger alternately, and the words which i had already noted, thargeelyah, and farmakoi, frequently recurred in his speech. his ideas seemed to meet with general approval; even the old priest laid aside his sickle, and beat applause with his hands. he next rose, and, taking two garlands of beautiful flowers from the horns of the altar, placed one wreath on the head of the drunken sailor, who had fallen asleep by this time. he then drew near me, and i had little doubt that he meant to make me also wear a garland, like some woman of rank and fashion at a giddy secular entertainment. whatever his motive might be i was determined to wear nothing of the kind. but here some attendants grappled and held me, my hat was lifted from my brows, and the circlet of blossoms was carefully entwined all round my hat. the headcovering was then replaced, the whole assembly, forming a circle, danced around me and the unconscious bludger, and, finally, the old priest, turning his face alternately to me and to the sun, intoned a hymn, the audience joining in at intervals. my worst fears were, apparently, being realized. in spite of the compromising appearance and conduct of bludger, it seemed beyond doubt that we were both regarded as, in some degree, divine and sacred. resistance on my part was, it will be seen, impossible. i could not escape from the hands of my tormentors, and i was so wholly ignorant, at that time, of their tongue, that i knew not how to disclaim the honours thus blasphemously thrust upon me. i did my best, shouting, in english, "i am no thargeelyah. i am no farmakos" supposing those words to be the native terms for one or other of their gods. on this the whole assembly, even the gravest, burst out laughing, each man poking his neighbour in the ribs, and uttering what i took to be jests at my expense. their behaviour in this juncture, and frequently afterwards, when i attempted to make them tell me the meaning of the unknown words, and of catharma (another expression the chief had used), greatly perplexed me. i had afterwards too good reason to estimate their dreadful lack of the ordinary feelings of humanity at its true value. however, nothing but laughter (most unfitting the occasion) could be got out of the assembled natives. they now began to return to their homes, and bludger, crowned with flowers that became him but ill, was carried off, not, as it seemed to me, without even a reverential demeanour on the part of his escort. those who surrounded me, a kind of body-guard of six young men, had entirely recovered their composure, and behaved to me with a deference that was astonishing, but reassuring. from this time, i ought to say, though permitted to go where i would, and allowed to observe even their most secret rites, enjoying opportunities such as will never fall to another european, i was never, but once, entirely alone. my worshippers, as they might almost be called, so humble was their demeanour, still kept watchful eyes upon me, as if i were a being so precious that they were jealous of my every movement. it was now made plain to me, by signs, that i must wait for some little space before being conveyed to my appointed residence. vi. a backslider. a warning. we had not remained long by ourselves in the square, when the most extraordinary procession which i had ever beheld began to climb into the open space from the town beneath. i do not know if i have made it sufficiently clear that the square, on the crest of the isolated hill above the sea, was occupied only by public buildings, such as the temple, the house of the chief, and a large edifice used as a kind of town hall, so to speak. the natives in general lived in much smaller houses, many of them little better than huts, and divided by extremely narrow and filthy streets, on the slopes, and along the shores of the bay. it was from these houses and from all the country round that the procession, with persons who fell into its ranks as they came, was now making its way. almost all the parties concerned were young, boys and girls, or very young men and women, and though their dress was much scantier and less decent than what our ideas of delicacy require, it must be admitted that the general aspect of the procession was far from unpleasing. the clothes and wraps which the men and women wore were of various gay colours, and were, in most cases, embroidered quite skilfully with representations of flowers, fruits, wild beasts, and individuals of grotesque appearance. every one was crowned with either flowers or feathers. but, most remarkable of all, there was scarcely a person in this large gathering who did not bring or lead some wild bird or beast. the girls carried young wild doves, young rooks, or the nestlings of such small fowls as sparrows and finches. it was a pretty sight to see these poor uninstructed young women, flushed with the exertion of climbing, and merry, flocking into the square, each with her pet (as i supposed, but the tender mercies of the heathen are cruel) half hidden in the folds of her gown. of the young men, some carried hawks, some chained eagles, some young vultures. many were struggling, too, with wild stags and wild goats, which they compelled with the utmost difficulty to march in the ranks of the procession. a number of young persons merely bore in their hands such fruits as were in season, obviously fine specimens, of which they had reason to be proud. others, again, were carrying little young bears, all woolly, comfortablelooking creatures, while the parent bears, adult bears at any rate, were brought along, chained, in the rear. my guards, or adorers, or whatever the young men who looked after me really were, led me forward, and made signs to me that i was to bring up the rear of the procession--behind the bears, which made no attempt (as in the case of the prophet) to take the part of a minister of the bungletonian connection. what a position for one who would fain have been opening the eyes of this darkened people to better things! but, till i had acquired some knowledge of their language, i felt my only chance was to acquiesce in everything not positively sinful. the entrance of a menagerie and horticultural exhibition into the town--for thus i explained to myself what was going on before my eyes--could not be severely censured by the harshest critic, and i prepared to show my affability by joining in an innocent diversion and popular entertainment. soon i found that, after all, i was not to be absolutely last in the advance of this miscellaneous exhibition, nor were the intentions of the people so harmless as i had imagined. this was no affair of cottage window gardens, and a distribution of prizes. the crowd which had collected in front of the chief's house opened suddenly, and, in the throng of people, i detected a movement of excitement and alarm. next i saw the horns of animals mixed with the heads and shoulders of the multitude, and then an extraordinary spectacle burst, at full speed, upon my gaze. four great wild stags, plunging, rearing, and kicking, rushed by, dragging a small vehicle of unusual shape, in which stood, to my horror, the chief's beautiful daughter, doto. the vehicle passed me like a flash of horns, in spite of the attempts of four resolute men, who clung at the stags' heads to restrain the impetuosity of these coursers. the car, i should explain--though i can hardly expect to be believed--was not unlike the floor of a hansom cab, from which the seat, the roof, the driver's perch, and everything else should have been removed, except the basis, the wheels, and the splashboard, the part on which we generally find the advertisements of messrs. mappin and webb. on this floor, then, doto stood erect, holding the reins; her yellow hair had become unbound, and was floating like a flag behind her, and her beautiful face, far from displaying any alarm, was flushed with pleasure and pride. she was dressed in splendid and glittering attire, over which was fastened--so strange were the manners of these islanders--the newly-stripped skin of a great black bear. thus dragged by the wild deer, doto passed like a flash through the midst of the men and women, her stags being maddened to fresh excitement by the sight and smell of the bears, and other wild animals. but, eager as were the brutes that dragged the precarious carriage, they were somewhat tamed by the great steepness of the ascent, up which they bounded, to the heights at the back of the town. up this path, often narrow and excessively dangerous, we all took our way, and finally, after passing through various perilous defiles and skirting many cliffs, we arrived at a level space in front of an ancient temple of one of their heathen gods. it was built like the others in the settlement below, but the white stone had become brown and yellow with time and weather, and the colours, chiefly red and blue, with which the graven images, in contempt of the second commandment, were painted, had faded, and grown very dim. on the broad platform in front of this home of evil spirits had been piled a great mound of turf, sloping very gradually and smoothly, like the terrace of a well-kept lawn, to the summit, which itself was, perhaps, a hundred feet in circumference. on this was erected a kind of breastwork of trunks of trees, each tree some fifteen feet in length, and in the centre of the circular breastwork was an altar, as usual, under which blazed a fire of great fierceness. from the temple came a very aged woman, dressed in bear skins, who carried a torch. this torch she lit at the blaze under the altar, and a number of the young men, lighting their torches at hers, set fire to the outer breastwork, in which certain open spaces or entrances had been purposely left. no sooner had the trees begun to catch fire, which they did slowly, being of green wood, than the multitude outside, with the most horrible and piercing outcries, began to drive the animals which they had brought with them into the midst of the flames. the spectacle was one of the most terrible i ever beheld, even among this cruel and outlandish people, whose abominable inventions contrasted so strangely with the mildness of their demeanour where their religion was not concerned. it was pitiful to see the young birds, many of them not yet able to fly, flutter into the flames and the stifling smoke, and then fall, scorched, and twittering miserably. the young lambs and other domesticated animals were forced in without much resistance, but the great difficulty was to urge the wolves, antelopes, and other wild creatures, into the blaze. the cries of the multitude, who bounded about like maniacs, armed with clubs and torches, rose madly over the strange unusual screams and howls uttered by the wild beasts in their pain and terror. ever and anon some animal would burst through the crowd, perhaps half burned, and with its fur on fire, and would be pursued to a certain distance, after which it was allowed to escape by the sacrificers. as i was watching, with all my hopes enlisted on its side, the efforts of an antelope to escape, i heard a roar which was horrible even in that babel of abominable sights and sounds. a great black bear, its pelt one sheet of flame, its whole appearance (if i may be permitted to say so) like that of a fiend from the pit, forced its way through the throng, and, bounding madly to the spot where doto's car stood at a little distance, rose erect on its hind feet, and fixed its claws in the flank of one of the stags, the off-leader. instantly the team of stags, escaping from the hands of the strong men who stood at their heads, plunged violently down the narrow and dangerous path which led to the city. i shouted to doto to leap out, but she did not hear or did not understand me. with a fixed look of horror on her white face, she dropped the useless reins, and the vehicle passed out of sight round a corner of the cliff. i had but a moment in which to reflect on what might be done to rescue her. in that moment i providentially spied a double-edged axe which lay beside me on the grass, having fallen from the hands of one of the natives. snatching up this weapon, i rushed to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. it was almost a sheer precipice, broken only by narrow shelves and clefts, on some of which grass grew, while on others a slight mountain-ash or a young birch just managed to find foothold. far, far beneath, hundreds of feet below, i could trace the windings of the path up which we had climbed. instantly my plan was conceived. i would descend the cliff, risking my life, of course, but that was now of small value in this hopelessly heathen land, and endeavour to save the benighted doto from the destruction to which she was hastening. her car must pass along that portion of the path which lay, like a ribbon, in the depth below me, unless, as seemed too probable, it chanced to be upset before reaching the spot. to pursue it from behind was manifestly hopeless. these thoughts flashed through my brain more rapidly than even the flight of the maddened red deer; and scarcely less swiftly, i began scrambling down the face of the cliff. it was really a series of almost hopeless leaps to which i was committed, and the axe, to which i clung, rather impeded than aided me as i let myself drop from one rocky shelf to another, catching at the boughs and roots of trees to break my fall. at last i reached the last ledge before the sheer wall of rock, which hung above the path. as i let myself down, feeling with my feet for any shelf or crack in the wall, i heard the blare of the stags, and the rattle of the wheels. half intentionally, half against my will, i left my hold of a tree-root, and slid, bumping and scratching myself terribly, down the slippery and slatey face of the rocky wall, till i fell in a mass on the narrow road. in a moment i was on my feet, the axe i had thrown in front of me, and i grasped it instinctively as i rose. it was not too soon. the deer were almost on me. stepping to the side of the way, where a rock gave some shelter, i dealt a blow at the nearest stag, under which he reeled and fell to the ground, his companion stumbling over him. in the mad group of rearing beasts i smote right and left at the harness, which gave way beneath my strokes, and the unhurt stags sped down the glen, and then rushed into separate corries of the hills. the car was upset, and doto lay pale and bleeding among the hoofs of the stricken deer. i dragged her out of the danger to the side of the path. i felt her pulse, which still fluttered. i brought her, in my hat, water from the stream; and, finally, had the pleasure of seeing her return to life before the first of her friends came, wailing and lamenting, and tearing their hair, down the path. when they found the girl unwounded, though still weak and faint, their joy knew no bounds, though i too plainly perceived that they were returning thanks to the heathen goddess whose priestess doto was. as for me, they once more crowned me in the most elaborate, and, i think, unbecoming manner, with purple pandanus flowers. then, having laid doto on a litter, they returned in procession to the town, where the girl was taken into the chiefs house. as we parted, she held out her hand to me, but instantly withdrew it with a deep sigh. i closely watched her. she was weeping. i had noticed before that all the natives, as much as possible, avoided personal contact with me. this fact, coupled with the reverence which they displayed towards me, confirmed my impression that they regarded me as something supernatural, not of this world, and divine. to remove this belief was most certainly my duty, but how was it to be done? alas! i must now admit that i yielded to a subtle temptation, and was led into conduct unworthy of a vessel. sad to say, as i search the rewards of my own heart, i am compelled to confess that my real desire was not so much to undeceive the people--for in their bewildering myriads of foolish beliefs one more or less was of small importance--as to recommend myself to doto. this young woman, though not a member of our connection, and wholly ignorant of saving truths, had begun to find favour in my eyes, and i hoped to lead her to the altar; altars, for that matter, being plentiful enough in this darkened land. i should have remembered the words once spoken by a very gracious young woman, the daughter of a pious farmer. "mother," said she, "i have made up my mind never to let loose my affections upon any man as is not pious, and in good circumstances." doto was, for an islander, in good circumstances, but who, ah! who, could call her pious? i endeavoured, it is true, to convert her, but, ah! did i go to work in the right way? did i draw, in awful colours, the certain consequences of ignorance of the truth? did i endeavour to strike a salutary terror into her heathen heart? no; such would have been a proper course of conduct, but such was not mine! i weakly adopted the opposite plan--that used by the jesuits in their dealings with the chinese and other darkened peoples. i attempted, meanly attempted (but, as may be guessed, with but limited success), to give an orthodox nonconformist character to the observances of doto's religion. for example, instead of thundering, as was my duty, at her worldly diversions of promiscuous dancing, and ball play, i took a part in these secular pursuits, fondly persuading myself that my presence discouraged levity, and was a check upon unseemly mirth. thus, among the young native men and maidens, in the windings of the mazy dance, might have been seen disporting himself, a person of stalwart form, whose attire still somewhat faintly indicated his european origin and sacred functions. a hymn-book in my hand instead of a rattle (used by the natives), i capered gaily through their midst. often and often i led the music, instructing my festive flock in english hymns, which, however, i adapted to gay and artless melodies, such as "there's some one in de house wid dinah!" or "old joe kicking up behind and afore!" this kind of entertainment was entirely new to the natives, who heartily preferred it to their own dull music, resembling what are called, i believe, "gregorians," by a bloated and erastian establishment. so far, then, i may perchance trust that my efforts were not altogether vain, and the seed thus sown may, in one or two cases, have fallen on ground not absolutely stony. but, alas! i have little room for hope. i pursued my career of unblushing "economy"--as the jesuits say, meaning, alas! economy of plain truth speaking--and of heathen dissipation. few were the dances in which i did not take a part, sinking so low as occasionally to oblige with a hornpipe. my blue ribbon had long ago worn out, and with it my strict views on temperance. i acquired a liking for the strange drink of the islanders--a thick wine and water, sometimes mixed with cheese and honey. in fact, i was sliding back--like the unfortunate fanti missionary, john greedy, m.a., whose case, as reported by precious mr. grant allen, so painfully moved serious circles--i was sliding back to the level of the savagery around me. may these confessions be accepted in the same spirit as they are offered; may it partly palliate my guilt that i had apparently no chance of escape from the island, and no hope beyond that of converting the natives and marrying doto. i trusted to do it, not (as of old) by open and fearless denunciation, but by slowly winning hearts, in a secular and sportive capacity, before gaining souls. even so have i seen young priests of the prelatical establishment aim at popularity by playing cricket with liberal coal-miners of sectarian persuasions. they told me they were "in the mission field," and one observed that his favourite post in the field was third man. i know not what he meant. but to return to the island. my career of soul-destroying "amusement" (ah, how hollow!) was not uninterrupted by warnings. every now and again the mask was raised, and i saw clearly the unspeakable horrors of heathen existence. for example, in an earlier part of this narrative, i have mentioned an old heathen called elatreus, a good-natured, dull, absent-minded man, who reminded me of a respectable british citizen. how awful was _his_ end, how trebly awful when i reflect how nearly i--but let me not anticipate. elatreus was the head, and eldest surviving member of a family which had a singular history. i never could make out what the story was, but, in consequence of some ancient crime, the chief of the family was never allowed to enter the town hall. the penalty, if he infringed the law, was terrible. now it chanced one day that i was wandering down the street, my hands full of rare flowers which i had gathered for doto, and with four young doves in my hat. it was spring, and at that season the young persons of the island expected to receive such gifts from their admirers. i was also followed by eleven little fawns, which i had tamed for her, and four young whelps of the bear. at the same time, in the lightness of my foolish heart, i was singing a native song, all about one lityerses, to the tune of "barbara allen." at this moment, i observed, coming out of a side street, old elatreus. he was doddering along, his hands behind his back, and his nose in the air, followed by a small but increasing crowd of the natives, who crept stealthily behind at a considerable distance. i paused to watch what was happening. elatreus entered the main street, and lounged along till he came opposite the town hall, on which some repairs were being made. the door stood wide open. he gazed at it, in a vacant but interested way, and went up the steps, where he stood staring in an absent-minded, vacant kind of fashion. i could see that the crowd watching him from the corner of the side street was vastly excited. elatreus now passed his hand across his brow, seemed vastly puzzled, and yawned. then he slowly entered the town hall. with a wild yell of savage triumph the mob rushed in after him, and in a few moments came forth again, with elatreus bound and manacled. some one sped away, and brought the old priest, who carried the sickle. he appeared full of joy, and lustily intoned--for they have this popish custom of intoning--an unintelligible hymn. by this time elatreus had been wreathed and crowned with flowers, and the rude multitude for this purpose seized the interesting orchids which i had gathered for my doto. they then dragged the old man, pitifully lamenting, to the largest altar in the centre of the square. need i say what followed? the scene was too awful. with a horrible expression of joy the priest laid the poor wretch on the great stone altar, and with his keen sickle--but it is too horrible! . . . this was the penalty for a harmless act, forbidden by a senseless law, which elatreus--a most respectable man for an idolater--had broken in mere innocent absence of mind. alas! among such a people, how could i ever hope, alone and unaided, to effect any truly regenerating work? yet i was not wholly discouraged; indeed, my _infatuation_ for doto made me overlook much profligate behaviour that i do not care to mention in a tract which may fall into the hands of the young. one other example of the native barbarity, however, i must narrate. a respected couple in the vicinity had long been childless. at length their wishes were crowned with success, and a little baby girl was born to them. but the priest, who had curious ideas of his own, insisted on consulting, as to this child, a certain witch, a woman who dwelt apart in a cave where there was a sulphurous hot-water spring, surrounded by laurel bushes, regarded as sacred by the benighted islanders. this spring, or the fumes that arose from it, was supposed to confer on the dweller in the cave the gift of prophecy. she was the servant of apollon, and was credited with possessing a spirit of divination. the woman, after undergoing, or simulating, an epileptic attack, declared, in rhythmical language, that the babe must not be allowed to live. she averred that it would "bring destruction on scheria," the native name for the island, which i have styled boothland, in honour of the salvation army. this was enough for the priests, who did not actually slay the infant, but exposed it on the side of a mountain, where the beasts and birds were likely to have their way with it. now it chanced that i had climbed the hill-top that day to watch for a sail, for i never quite lost hope of being taken away by some british or continental vessel. my attendants, for a wonder, were all absent at some feast--carneia, i think they called it--of their heathen gods. the time was early summer; it only wanted a fortnight of the date, as far as i could reckon, at which i had first been cast on the island, a year before. as i descended the hillside, pleased, i must own, by the warm blight sunlight, the colour of the sea, and the smell of the aromatic herbs,--pleased, and half forgetful of the horrid heathenism that surrounded me, i heard a low wail as of an infant. i searched about, in surprise, and came on a beautiful baby, in rich swaddling bands, with a gold signet ring tied round its neck. such an occurrence was not very unusual, as the natives, like most savages, were in the habit of keeping down the surplus population, by thus exposing their little ones. the history of the island was full of legends of exposed children, picked up by the charitable (there was, oddly enough, no prohibition against this), and afterwards recognized and welcomed by their families. as any englishman would have done, i lifted the dear little thing in my arms, and, a happy thought occurring to me, carried it off as a present to doto, who doted on babies, as all girls do. the gift proved to be the most welcome that i had ever offered, though doto, as usual, would not accept it from my hands, but made me lay it down beside the hearth, which they regarded as a sacred place. even if an enemy reached the hearth of his foe, he would, thenceforth, be quite safe in his house. doto then picked up the child, warmed and caressed it, sent for milk for its entertainment, and was full of pleasure in her new pet. she was a dear good girl, doto, in spite of her heathen training. {74} strangely enough, as i thought at the time, she burst out weeping when i took my leave of her, and seemed almost as if she had some secret to impart to me. this, at least, showed an interest in me, and i walked to my home with high presumptuous thoughts. as i passed a certain group of rocks, in a lonely uncultivated district, while the grey of evening was falling, i heard a low whistle. the place had a bad reputation, being thought to be haunted. perhaps i had unconsciously imbibed some of the superstitions of the natives, for i started in alarm. then i heard an unmistakably british voice cry, in a suppressed tone, "hi!" the underwood rustled, and i beheld, to my astonishment, the form, the crawling and abject form, of william bludger! since the day of his landing we had never once met, william having been sent off to a distant part of the island. "hi!" he said again, and when i exclaimed, naturally, "hullo!" he put his finger on his lips, and beckoned to me to join him. this i did, and found that he was lurking in a cavern under the group of grey weatherworn stones. when i entered the cave, bludger fell a-trembling so violently that he could not speak. he seemed in the utmost alarm, his face quite ashen with terror. "what is the matter, william bludger?" i asked; "have you had a call, or why do you thrust yourself on me?" "have _you_ sich a thing as a chaw about ye?" he asked in tremulous accents. "i'm _that_ done; never a drop has passed my lips for three days, strike me dead; and i'd give anything for a chaw o' tobacco. a sup of drink you have _not_ got, capt'n hymn-book, axing your pardon for the liberty?" "william," i said, "even in this benighted island, you set a pitiful example. you have been drinking, sir; you are reaping what you have sown; and only temperance, strict, undeviating total abstinence rather, can restore your health." "so help me!" cried the wretched man, "except a drop of pramneian {76} i took, the morning i cut and run,--and that was three days ago,--nothing stronger than castor-oil berries have crossed my lips. it ain't that, sir; it ain't the drink. it's--it's the thargeelyah. next week, sir, they are going to roast us--you and me--flog us first, and roast us after. oh lord! oh lord!" vii. flight. "flog us first, and roast us afterwards." i repeated mechanically the words of william bludger. "why, you must be mad; they are more likely to fall down and worship us,--_me_ at any rate." "no, capt'n," replied william; "that's your mistake. they say we're both catharmata; that's what they call us; and you're no better than me." "and what are catharmata?" i inquired, remembering that this word, or something like it, had been constantly used by the natives in my hearing. "well, capt'n, it means, first and foremost, just the off-scourings of creation, the very dust and sweepings of the shop," answered bludger, who had somehow regained his confidence. to have a fellow-sufferer, and to see the pallor which, doubtless, overspread my features, was a source of comfort to this hardened man. at the same time i confess that, if william bludger alone had been destined to suffer, i could have contemplated the decree with christian resignation. "i speak the beggars' patter pretty well now," bludger went on; "and i see catharmata means more than just mere dirt. it means two unlucky devils." "william?" i exclaimed. "it means, saving your presence, two poor coves, as has no luck, like you and me, and that can be got rid of once a year, at an entertainment they call the thargeelyah, i dunno why, a kind o' friendly lead. they choose fellows as either behaves ill, or has no friends to make a fuss about them, and they gives them three dozen, or more, and takes them down to the beach, and burns them alive over a slow fire. and then they toss the ashes out to sea, and think all the bad luck goes away with the tide. oh, i never was in such a hole as this!" bludger's words made me shudder. i had never forgotten the hideous sacrifice, doubtless the thargeelyah, as they called it, that greeted me when i was first cast ashore on the island. to think that i had only been saved that i might figure as a victim of some of their heathen gods! oh, now the thought came back to me with a bitter repentance, that if i had only converted all the islanders, they would never have dreamed of sacrificing me in honour of a mere idol! why had i been so lukewarm, why had i backslidden, why had i endeavoured to make myself agreeable by joining in promiscuous dances, when i should have been thundering against pagan idolatry, holy water, idols, sacrifices and the whole abominable system of life on the island? true, i might have goaded them into slaying me; i might have suffered as a martyr; but, at the least, i would have deserved the martyr's crown. and now i was to perish at the stake, without even the precious consolation of being a real martyr, and was to be flogged into the bargain. i gave a hollow groan as these reflections passed through my mind, and this appeared to afford william bludger some consolation. "you don't seem to like it yourself, capt'n; what's your advice? we're both in the same boat; leastways i wish we _were_ in a boat; anyhow we're both in the same hole." there was no denying this, and it was high time to mature some plan of escape. already i must have been missed by my attendants, my gaolers rather, who would have returned from their festival, and would be looking for me everywhere. i bitterly turned over in my mind the facts of our situation; "ours," for, as a just punishment of my remissness, i was in the same quandary as a drunken, dissipated sailor before the mast. if william had but possessed a sweet and tuneful voice (often a gift found in the most depraved natures), and if i had been able to borrow a harmonium on wheels, i would not, even now, have despaired of converting the whole island in the course of the week. as remarkable feats have been performed, with equal alacrity, by precious messrs. moody and sankey, and i am informed that expeditious conversions are by no means infrequent among politicians. but it was vain to think of this resource, as william had no voice, and knew no hymns, while i had no means of access to a perambulating harmonium. "i'll tell you what it is, sir," said bludger; "i have a notion." "name it, william," i replied, my heart and manner softened by community in suffering and terror. "well, if i were you, sir, i would not go home to-night at all; i'd stop where you are. the beggars won't find you, let them hunt as they like; they daren't come near this place, bless you, it's an 'arnt;" by which he meant that it was haunted. "well," said i, "but how should we be any better off to-morrow morning?" "that's just it, sir," said bludger. "we'll be up with the first stroke of dawn, nip down to the harbour, get on board a boat, and be off before any of them are stirring." "but, even if we manage to secure a boat," i said, "what about provisions, and where are we to sail for?" "oh, never mind that," said bill; "we can't be worse off than we are, and i'll slip out to-night, and lay in some prog in the town. also some grog, if i can lay my hands on it," he added, with an unholy smile. "no, william," i murmured; "no grog; our lives depend on our sobriety." "always a-preaching, the old tub-thumper," i heard william say to himself; but he made no further reference to the subject. it was now quite dark, and we lay whispering, in the damp hollow under the great stone. our plan was to crawl away at the first blush of dawn, when men generally sleep most soundly; that william should enter one of the unguarded houses (for these people never stole, and did not know the meaning of the word "thief"), that he should help himself to provisions, and that meanwhile i should have a boat ready to start in the harbour. this larcenous but inevitable programme we carried out, after waiting through dreadful hours of cold and shivering anxiety. every cry of a night bird from the marsh or the wood sent my heart into my mouth. i felt inconceivably mean and remorseful, my vanity having received a dreadful shock from the discovery that, far from being a god, i was to be a kind of burnt-offering. at last the east grew faintly grey, and we started, not keeping together, but bludger marching cautiously in my rear, at a considerable distance. we only met one person, a dissipated young man, who, i greatly fear, had been paying his court to a shepherdess in the hills. when he shouted a challenge, i replied, erastes eimi, which means, i am sorry to say, "i am a lover," and implied that i, also, had been engaged in low intrigue. "farewell, with good fortune," he replied, and went on his way, singing some catch about amaryllis, who, i presume, was the object of his unhallowed attentions. we slipped into the silent town, unwalled and unguarded as it was, for as one of their own poets had said, "we dwell by the wash of the waves, far off from toilsome men, and with us are no folk conversant." they were a race that knew war only by a vague tradition, that they had dwelt, at some former age, in an island, perhaps new zealand, where they were subject to constant annoyance from giants,--a likely story. thence they had migrated to their present home, where only one white man had ever been cast away--one odysseus, so their traditions declared--before our arrival. him, however, they had treated hospitably, very unlike their contemplated behaviour to bludger and me. i am obliged to make this historical digression that the reader may understand how it happened, under providence, that we were not detected in passing through the town, and how bludger successfully accomplished what, i fear, was by no means his first burglary. we parted at the chief's house, bill to secure provisions, and i to unmoor a boat, and bring her round to a lonely bay on the coast, where my companion was to join me. i accomplished my task without the slightest difficulty, selected a light craft,--they did not use canoes, but rowed boats like coracles,--and was lying at anchor, moored with a heavy stone, in the bay. the dawn was now breaking in the most beautiful colours--gold, purple, crimson, and green--across the sea. all nature was still, save for the first pipe of awakening birds. there was a delicate fragrance in the air, which was at once soft and keen, and, as i watched the red sunlight on the high cliffs, and on the smooth trunks of the palm trees, i felt, strange to say, a kind of reluctance to leave the island. the people, apart from their cruel and abominable religion, were the gentlest and most peaceful i have ever known. they were beautiful to look upon, so finely made and shapely that i have never seen their like. their language was exquisitely sweet and melodious, and though, except hymns, i do not care for poetry, yet i must admit that some of their compositions in verse were extremely pleasing, though they were ignorant of the art of rhyme. all about them was beautifully made, and they were ignorant of poverty. i never saw a beggar on the island; and christians, unhappily, do not share their goods with each other, and with the poor, so freely as did these benighted heathens. often have i laboured to make them understand what our pauper question means, but they could not comprehend me. "how can a man lack home, and food, and fire?" they would say; "do people not love each other in your country?" i explained that we love each other _as christians_, but this did not seem to enlighten their benighted minds. on the other hand, it is true that they settle their population question by strangling or exposing the majority of their infant daughters. rocked on the smooth green swell of the sea, beneath the white rocks, i was brooding over these and many other matters, when i heard sudden and violent movements in the deep vegetation on the hillside. the laurel groves were stirred, and bill bludger, with a basket in his hand, bounded down the slope, and swam for dear life to the boat. "they're after me," he cried; and at that moment an arrow quivered in the side of the boat. i helped william on board as well as i might, under a shower of arrows from the hill-top, most of which, owing to the distance, were ill directed and fell short, or went wide. into the boat, at last, i got him, and thrusting an oar in his direction, i said, "pull for your life," and began rowing. to my horror, the boat made no way, but kept spinning round. a glance in the bow showed me what was the matter: _william bludger was hopelessly intoxicated_! he had got at the jars of wine in the chief's cellar,--thalamos, they call it,--and had not taken the precaution of mixing the liquor with water, as the natives invariably do when they drink. the excitement of running had sent the alcoholic fumes direct to his brain, and now he lay, a useless and embarrassing cargo, in the bows. meanwhile, the shouts of the natives rang nearer and louder, and i knew that boats would soon be launched for our capture. i thought of throwing bludger overboard, and sculling, but determined not to stain what might be my last moments with an act of selfishness. i therefore pulled hard for the open sea, but to no avail. on every side boats crowded round me, and i should probably have been shot, or speared, but for the old priest, who, erect in the bows of the largest vessel, kept yelling that we were to be taken alive. alas! i well knew the secret of his cruel mercies. he meant to reserve us for the sacrifice. viii. saved! why should i linger over the sufferings of the miserable week that followed our capture? hauled back to my former home, i was again made the object of the mocking reverence of my captors. ah, how often, in my reckless youth, have my serious aunts warned me that i "would be a goat at the last"! too true, too true; now i was to be a scapegoat, to be driven forth, as these ignorant and strangely perverted people believed, with the sins of the community on my head, those sins which would, according to their _miserable superstition_, be expiated by the death, and consumed away by the burning, of myself and william bludger! the week went by, as all weeks must, and at length came the solemn day which they call thargeelyah, the day more sacred than any other to their idol, apollon. long before sunrise the natives were astir; indeed, i do not think they went to bed at all, but spent the night in hideous orgies. i know that, tossing sleepless through the weary hours, i heard the voices of young men and women singing on the hillsides, and among the myrtle groves which are holy to the most disreputable of their deities, a female, named aphrodighty. harps were twanging too, and i heard the refrain of one of the native songs, "to-night they love who never loved before; to-night let him who loves love all the more." the words have unconsciously arranged themselves, even in english, as poetry; those who know thomas gowles best, best know how unlikely it is that he would willingly dabble in the worldly art of verse-fashioning. think of my reflections with a painful, shameful, and, above all, _undeserved_ death before me, while all the fragrant air was ringing with lascivious merriment. my impression is that, as all the sins of the year were, in their opinion, to be got rid of next day, and tossed into the sea with the ashes of bludger and myself, the natives had made up their minds--an eligible opportunity now presenting itself--to be _as wicked as they knew how_. alas! though i have not dwelt on this painful aspect of their character, they "knew how" only too well. the sun rose at last, and flooded the island, when i perceived that, from every side, crowds of revellers were pressing together to the place where i lay in fetters. they had a wild, dissipated air, flowers were wreathed and twisted in their wet and dewy locks, which floated on the morning wind. many of the young men were merely dressed--if "dressed" it could be called--in the skins of leopards, panthers, bears, goats, and deer, tossed over their shoulders. in their hands they all held wet, dripping branches of fragrant trees, many of them tipped with pine cones, and wreathed with tendrils of the vine. others carried switches, of which i divined the use only too clearly, and the women were waving over their heads tame serpents, which writhed and wriggled hideously. it was an awful spectacle! i was dragged forth by these revellers; many of them were intoxicated, and, in a moment--i blush even now to think of it--i was stripped naked! nothing was left to me but my hat and spectacles, which, for some religious reason i presume, i was, fortunately, allowed to retain. then i was driven with blows, which hurt a great deal, into the market-place, and up to the great altar, where william bludger, also naked, was lying more dead than alive. "william," i said solemnly, "what cheer?" he did not answer me. even in that supreme moment it was not difficult to discern that william had been looking on the wine when it was red, and had not confined himself to mere ocular observation. i tried to make him remember he was an englishman, that the honour of our country was in our hands, and that we should die with the courage and dignity befitting our race. these were strange consolations and exhortations for _me_ to offer in such an extremity, but, now it had come to the last pass, it is curious what mere worldly thoughts hurried through my mind. my words were wasted: the natives seized william and forced him to his feet. then, while a hymn was sung, they put chains of black and white figs round our necks, and thrust into our hands pieces of cheese, figs, and certain peculiar herbs. this formed part of what may well be called the "ritual" of this cruel race. may ritualists heed my words, and turn from the errors of their ways! too well i knew all that now awaited us. all that i had seen and shuddered at, on the day of my landing on the island, was now practised on self and partner. we had to tread the long paved way to the distant cove at the river's mouth; we had to endure the lashes from the switches of wild fig. the priestess, carrying the wooden idol, walked hard by us, and cried out, whenever the blows fell fewer or lighter, that the idol was waxing too heavy for her to bear. then they redoubled their cruelties. it was a wonderfully lovely day. in the blue heaven there was not a cloud. we had reached the river's mouth, and were fast approaching the stakes that had already been fixed in the sands for our execution; nay, the piles of green wood were already being heaped up by the young men. there was, there could be, no hope, and, weary and wounded, i almost welcomed the prospect of death, however cruel. suddenly the blows ceased to shower on me, and i heard a cry from the lips of the old priest, and, turning about, i saw that the eyes of all the assembled multitude were fixed on a point on the horizon. looking automatically in the direction towards which they were gazing, i beheld--oh joy, oh wonder!--i beheld a long trail of cloud floating level with the sea! it was the smoke of a steamer! "too late, too late," i thought, and bitterly reflected that, had the vessel appeared but an hour earlier, the attention of my cruel captors might have been diverted to such a spectacle as they had never seen before. but it was _not_ too late. perched on a little hillock, and straining his gaze to the south, the old priest was speaking loudly and excitedly. the crowd deserted us, and gathered about him. i threw myself on the sand, weary, hopeless, parched with thirst, and racked with pain. bludger was already lying in a crumpled mass at my feet. i think he had fainted. i retained consciousness, but that was all. the fierceness of the sun beat upon me, the sky and sea and shore swam before me in a mist. presently i heard the voice of the priest, raised in the cadences which he favoured when he was reading texts out of their sacred books, if books they could be called. i looked at him with a faint curiosity, and perceived that he held in his hands the wooden casket, adorned with strangely carved bands of gold and ivory, which i had seen on the night of my arrival on the island. from this he had selected the old grey scraps of metal, scratched, as i was well aware, with what they conceived to be ancient prophecies. i was now sufficiently acquainted with the language to understand the verses which he was chanting, and which i had already heard, without comprehending them. they ran thus in english: "but when a man, having a chimney pot on his head, and four eyes, appears in scheria, and when a ship without sails also comes, sailing without wind, and breathing smoke, then shall destruction fall on the island." he had not ended when it was plain, even to those ignorant people, that the prophecy was about to be fulfilled. from the long, narrow, black line of the steamer, which had approached us with astonishing speed, "sailing without wind, and breathing smoke," there burst six flashes of fire, followed by a peal like thunder, and six tall fountains, as the natives fancied, of sea-water rose and fell in the bay, where the shells had lighted. it was plain that the commander of the vessel, finding himself in unknown seas, and hard by an unvisited country, was determined to strike terror and command respect by this salute. the noise of the broadside had scarcely died away, when the natives fled, disappeared like magic, leaving many of their garments behind them. they were making for their town, which was concealed from the view of the rapidly nearing steamer. from her mast i could now see, flaunting the slight breeze, the dear old union jack, and the banner of the salvation navy! {95} my resolution was taken in a moment. bludger had now recovered consciousness, and was picking up heart. i thrust into his hands one of the branches with which we had been flogged, fastened to it a cloak of one of the natives, bade him keep waving it from a rocky promontory, and, rushing down to the sea, i leaped in, and swam with all my strength towards the vessel. weak as i was, my new hopes gave me strength, and presently, from the crest of a wave, i saw that the people of the steamer were lowering a boat, and rowing towards me. in a few minutes they had reached me, my countrymen's hands were in mine. they dragged me on board; they pulled back to their vessel; and i stood, entirely undressed, on the deck of a british ship! so long had i lived among people heedless of modesty that i was rushing, with open arms, towards the officer on the quarter-deck, who was dressed as a bishop, when i heard a scream of horror. i turned round in time to see the bishop's wife fleeing precipitately to the cabin, and driving her children and governess in front of her. then all the horror of the situation flooded my heart and brain, and i fell fainting on the quarter-deck. when i recovered my consciousness, i found myself plainly but comfortably dressed in the ordinary costume, except the hat, which lay beside me, of a dean in the church of england. my wounds had been carefully attended to, william bludger had been taken on board, and i was surrounded by the kind faces of my benefactors, including the bishop's consort. my apologies for my somewhat sudden and unceremonious intrusion were cut short by the arrival of tea and a slight collation suitable for an invalid. in an hour i was walking the quarter-deck with the bishop in command of the william wilberforce, armed steam yacht, of north shields, fitted out for the purposes of the salvation navy. from the worthy prelate in command of the william wilberforce, i learned much concerning his own past career and the nature of his enterprise, as i directed the navigation of the vessel through the shoals and reefs which lay about the harbour of the island. the bishop (a purely brevet title) would refresh his memory, now and then, from a penny biography of himself with which he was provided, and the following, in brief, is a record of his life and adventures:-thomas sloggins (that was his name), from his earliest infancy, had been possessed with a passion for _doing good to others_, a passion, alas! but too rarely reciprocated. i pass over many affecting details of his adventures as a ministering child: how he endeavoured to win his father from tobacco by breaking his favourite pipes; how he strove to wean his elder brother from cruel field-sports, by stuffing the joints of his fishing-rod with gravel; with many other touching incidents. being almost entirely uneducated, young sloggins, when he reached man's estate, conceived that he would most benefit his fellow-creatures by combining the professions of the pulpit and the press--by preaching on sundays and at odd times, while he acted as outdoor reporter to the rowdy puritan on every lawful day. being a man of great earnestness and enterprise, he soon rose in the ranks of the salvation navy; and at one time commanded an evangelical barge on the benighted canals of our country. finally, he made england almost too hot to hold him, by the original forms of his benevolence, while, at the same time, he acquired the utmost esteem and confidence of many wealthy philanthropists and excellent, if impulsive, ladies. these good people provided him with that well-equipped and armed steam yacht, the william wilberforce, which he manned with a crew of converted characters (they certainly looked as if they must have needed a great deal of converting), and he had now for months been cruising in the south pacific. a local cyclone had driven the william wilberforce out of her reckoning, and hence the appearance of that vessel in the very nick of time to achieve my rescue. when the bishop had finished his story, i briefly recapitulated to him my own adventures, and we agreed that the conversion of the island must be our earliest task. to begin with, we steered into the harbour, where a vast multitude of the natives were assembled in arms, and awaited our approach with a threatening demeanour. our landing was opposed, but a few well-directed volleys from a gardiner gun (which did not jam) caused the hostile force to disperse, and we landed in great state. marching on the chief's house, we were received with an abject submission that i had scarcely expected. the people were absolutely cowed, more by the fulfilment of the prophecy, i think, than even by the execution done by our gardiner machine gun. at the bishop's request, i delivered a harangue in the native tongue, declaring that we only required the british flag to be hoisted on the palace, and the immediate disendowment of the heathen church as in those parts established. i was listened to in uneasy silence; but my demand for lodgings in the palace was acceded to; and, in a few hours, the bishop, with his wife and children, were sumptuously housed under the roof of the chief. the ladies of the chief's family showed great curiosity in watching and endeavouring to converse with our friends. i was amused to see how soon the light-hearted islanders appeared to forget their troubles and apprehensions. doto, in particular, became quite devoted to the prelate's elder daughter (the youngest of the bishop's family was suffering from measles), and would never be out of her company. thus all seemed to fare merrily; presents were brought to us--flowers, fruit, the feathers of rare birds, and ornaments of native gold were literally showered upon the ladies of the party. the chief promised to call a meeting of his counsellors on the morrow, and all seemed going on well, when, alas! measles broke out in the palace. the infant whom i had presented to doto--the infant whom i had found on the mountain side--was the first sufferer. then doto caught the disease herself, then her mother, then the chief. in vain we attempted to nurse and tend them; in vain we expended the contents of the ship's medicine chest on the invalids. the malady having, as it were, an entirely new field to work upon, raged like the most awful pestilence. through all ranks of the people it spread like wild-fire; many died, none could be induced to take the most ordinary precautions. the natives became, as it were, mad under the torments of fever and the burning heat of the unaccustomed malady; they rushed about, quite unclad, for the sake of the deceptive coolness, and hundreds of them cast themselves into the sea and into the river. it was my sad lot to see my dear doto die--the first of the sufferers in the palace to succumb to the disease. meanwhile, the bishop and myself being entirely absorbed in attendance on the sick, the crew of the william wilberforce, i deeply regret to say, escaped from all restraint, and forgot what was due to themselves and their profession. they revelled with the most abandoned of the natives, and disease and drink ravaged the once peaceful island. every sign of government and order vanished. the old priest built a huge pile of firewood, and laying himself there with the images of the gods, set fire to the whole, and perished with his own false religion. after this event, the island ceased to be a safe residence for ourselves. among the mountains, as i learned, where the pestilence had not yet penetrated, the shepherds and the wilder tribes were gathering in arms. one night we stole on board the william wilberforce, leaving the city desolate, filled with the smoke of funeral pyres, and the wailing of men and women. there was a dreadful sultry stillness in the air, and all day long wild beasts had been dashing madly into the sea, and the sky had been obscured by flights of birds. on all the crests of the circle of surrounding hills we saw, in the growing darkness, the beacons and camp fires of the insurgents from the interior. just before the dawn the william wilberforce was attacked by the whole mass of the natives in boats and rafts. but we had not been unprepared for this movement, nor were the resources of science unequal to the occasion. we had surrounded the william wilberforce with a belt, or cordon, of torpedoes, and as each of the assaulting boats touched the boom, a terrible explosion shook the water into fountains of foam, and the waves were strewn with scalded, wounded, and mutilated men. meanwhile, we bombarded the city and the harbour, and the night passed amid the most awful sounds and sights--fire, smoke, yells of anger and pain, cries of the native leaders encouraging their men, and shouts from our own people, who had to repel the boarders, when the boom was at last forced, with pikes and cutlasses. just before the dawn a strange thing happened. a great glowing coal, as it seemed, fell with a hissing crash on the deck of the william wilberforce, and others dropped, with a strange sound and a dreadful odour of burning, in the water all around us. had the natives discovered some mode of retaliating on our use of firearms? i looked in the direction of their burning city, and beheld, on the sharp peak of the highest mountain (now visible in the grey morning light), an object like a gigantic pine-tree of fire. the blazing trunk rose, slim and straight, from the mountain crest, and, at a vast height, developed a wilderness of burning branches. fearful hollow sounds came from the hill, its sides were seamed with racing cataracts of living lava, of coursing and leaping flames, which rolled down with incredible swiftness and speed towards the doomed city. then the waters of the harbour were smitten and shaken, and the william wilberforce rocked and heaved as in the most appalling storm, though all the winds were silent, while a mighty wave swept far inland towards the streams of fire. there was no room for doubt; a volcanic eruption was occurring, and a submarine earthquake, as not uncommonly happens, had also taken place. our only hope was in immediate flight. presently steam was got up, and we steamed away into the light of the glowing east, leaving behind us only a burning island, and a fire like an ugly dawn flaring in the western sky. when we returned in the evening, boothland--as i may now indeed call it, for scheria has ceased to be--was one black smoking cinder. hardly a tree or a recognizable rock remained to show that this had once been a peaceful home of men. the oracle, or prophecy of the old priest, had been horribly, though, of course, quite accidentally, fulfilled. * * * * * little remains to be told. on my return home, i chanced to visit the british museum, and there, much to my surprise, observed an old piece of stone, chipped with the characters, or letters, in use among the natives of scheria. "why," said i, reading the words aloud, "these are the characters which the natives employed on my island." "these?" said the worthy official who accompanied me. "why, these are the most archaic greek letters which have yet been discovered: inscriptions from beneath the lava beds of santorin." "i can't help that," i said. "the polynesians used them too; and you see i can read them easily, though i don't know greek." i then told him the whole story of my connection with the island, and of the unfortunate results of the contact between these poor people and our superior modern civilization. i have rarely seen a man more affected by any recital than was the head of the classical department of the museum by my artless narrative. when i described the sacrifice i saw on landing in the island, he exclaimed, "great heavens! the attic thargelia." he grew more and more excited as i went on, and producing a greek book, "pausanias," he showed me that the sacrifice of wild beasts was practised sixteen hundred years ago in honour of artemis elaphria. the killing of old elatreus for entering the town hall reminded him of a custom in achaea pthiotis. when i had finished my tale, he burst out into violent and libellous language. "you have destroyed," he said, "with your miserable modern measles and gardiner guns, the last remaining city of the ancient greeks. the winds cast you on the shore of phaeacia, the island sung by homer; and, in your brutal ignorance, you never knew it. you have ruined a happy, harmless, and peaceful people, and deprived archaeology of an opportunity that can never, never return!" i do not know about archaeology, but as for "harmless and peaceful people," i leave it to my readers to say whether the islanders were anything of the sort. i learn that the government has just refused to give the museum a grant of five thousand pounds to be employed in what are called "excavations in ancient phaeacia," diggings, that is, in boothland. with so many darkened people still ignorant of our enlightened civilization, i think the grant would be a shameful waste of public money. {106} * * * * * we publish the original text of the prophecy repeatedly alluded to by mr. gowles. the learned say that no equivalent occurs for the line about his "four eyes," and it is insinuated, in a literary journal of eminence, that mr. gowles pilfered the notion from good's glass eye, in a secular romance, called king solomon's mines, which mr. gowles, we are sure, never heard of in his life.--ed. the prophecy. [the prophecy in greek not reproduced] in the wrong paradise an occidental apologue. in the drawing-room, or, as it is more correctly called, the "dormitory," of my club, i had been reading a volume named "sur l'humanite posthume," by m. d'assier, a french follower of comte. the mixture of positivism and ghost-stories highly diverted me. moved by the sagacity and pertinence of m. d'assier's arguments for a limited and fortuitous immortality, i fell into such an uncontrollable fit of laughter as caused, i could see, first annoyance and then anxiety in those members of my club whom my explosion of mirth had awakened. as i still chuckled and screamed, it appeared to me that the noise i made gradually grew fainter and more distant, seeming to resound in some vast empty space, even more funereal and melancholy than the dormitory of my club, the "tepidarium." it has happened to most people to laugh themselves awake out of a dream, and every one who has done so must remember the ghastly, hollow, and maniacal sound of his own mirth. it rings horribly in a quiet room where there has been, as the veddahs of ceylon say is the case in the world at large, "nothing to laugh at." dean swift once came to himself, after a dream, laughing thus hideously at the following conceit: "i told apronia to be very careful especially about the legs." well, the explosions of my laughter crackled in a yet more weird and lunatic fashion about my own ears as i slowly became aware that i had died of an excessive sense of the ludicrous, and that the space in which i was so inappropriately giggling was, indeed, the fore-court of the house of hades. as i grew more absolutely convinced of this truth, and began dimly to discern a strange world visible in a sallow light, like that of the london streets when a black fog hangs just over the houses, my hysterical chuckling gradually died away. amusement at the poor follies of mortals was succeeded by an awful and anxious curiosity as to the state of immortality and the life after death. already it was certain that "the manes are somewhat," and that annihilation is the dream of people sceptical through lack of imagination. the scene around me now resolved itself into a high grey upland country, bleak and wild, like the waste pastoral places of liddesdale. as i stood expectant, i observed a figure coming towards me at some distance. the figure bore in its hand a gun, and, as i am short-sighted, i at first conceived that he was the gamekeeper. "this affair," i tried to say to myself, "is only a dream after all; i shall wake and forget my nightmare." but still the man drew nearer, and i began to perceive my error. gamekeepers do not usually paint their faces red and green, neither do they wear scalp-locks, a tuft of eagle's feathers, moccasins, and buffalohide cloaks, embroidered with representations of war and the chase. this was the accoutrement of the stranger who now approached me, and whose copper-coloured complexion indicated that he was a member of the red indian, or, as the late mr. morgan called it the "ganowanian" race. the stranger's attire was old and clouted; the barrel of his flint-lock musket was rusted, and the stock was actually overgrown with small funguses. it was a peculiarity of this man that everything he carried was more or less broken and outworn. the barrel of his piece was riven, his tomahawk was a mere shard of rusted steel, on many of his accoutrements the vapour of fire had passed. he approached me with a stately bearing, and, after saluting me in the fashion of his people, gave me to know that he welcomed me to the land of spirits, and that he was deputed to carry me to the paradise of the ojibbeways. "but, sir," i cried in painful confusion, "there is here some great mistake. i am no ojibbeway, but an agnostic; the after-life of spirits is only (as one of our great teachers says) 'an hypothesis based on contradictory probabilities;' and i really must decline to accompany you to a place of which the existence is uncertain, and which, if it does anywhere exist, would be uncongenial in the extreme to a person of my habits." to this remonstrance my ojibbeway virgil answered, in effect, that in the enormous passenger traffic between the earth and the next worlds mistakes must and frequently do occur. quisque suos patimur manes, as the roman says, is the rule, but there are many exceptions. many a man finds himself in the paradise of a religion not his own, and suffers from the consequences. this was, in brief, the explanation of my guide, who could only console me by observing that if i felt ill at ease in the ojibbeway paradise, i might, perhaps, be more fortunate in that of some other creed. "as for your agnostics," said he, "their main occupation in their own next world is to read the poetry of george eliot and the philosophical works of mr. j. s. mill." on hearing this, i was much consoled for having missed the entrance to my proper sphere, and i prepared to follow my guide with cheerful alacrity, into the paradise of the ojibbeways. our track lay, at first, along the "path of souls," and the still, grey air was only disturbed by a faint rustling and twittering of spirits on the march. we seemed to have journeyed but a short time, when a red light shone on the left hand of the way. as we drew nearer, this light appeared to proceed from a prodigious strawberry, a perfect mountain of a strawberry. its cool and shining sides seemed very attractive to a thirsty soul. a red man, dressed strangely in the feathers of a raven, stood hard by, and loudly invited all passers-by to partake of this refreshment. i was about to excavate a portion of the monstrous strawberry (being partial to that fruit), when my guide held my hand and whispered in a low voice that they who accepted the invitation of the man that guarded the strawberry were lost. he added that, into whatever paradise i might stray, i must beware of tasting any of the food of the departed. all who yield to the temptation must inevitably remain where they have put the food of the dead to their lips. "you," said my guide, with a slight sneer, "seem rather particular about your future home, and you must be especially careful to make no error." thus admonished, i followed my guide to the river which runs between our world and the paradise of the ojibbeways. a large stump of a tree lies half across the stream, the other half must be crossed by the agility of the wayfarer. little children do but badly here, and "an ojibbeway woman," said my guide, "can never be consoled when her child dies before it is fairly expert in jumping. such young children they cannot expect to meet again in paradise." i made no reply, but was reminded of some good and unhappy women i had known on earth, who were inconsolable because their babes had died before being sprinkled with water by a priest. these babes they, like the ojibbeway matrons, "could not expect to meet again in paradise." to a grown-up spirit the jump across the mystic river presented no difficulty, and i found myself instantly among the wigwams of the ojibbeway heaven. it was a remarkably large village, and as far as the eye could see huts and tents were erected along the river. the sound of magic songs and of drums filled all the air, and in the fields the spirits were playing lacrosse. all the people of the village had deserted their homes and were enjoying themselves at the game. outside one hut, however, a perplexed and forlorn phantom was sitting, and to my surprise i saw that he was dressed in european clothes. as we drew nearer i observed that he wore the black garb and white neck-tie of a minister in some religious denomination, and on coming to still closer quarters i recognized an old acquaintance, the rev. peter mcsnadden. now peter had been a "jined member" of that mysterious "u. p. kirk" which, according to the author of "lothair," was founded by the jesuits for the greater confusion of scotch theology. peter, i knew, had been active as a missionary among the red men in canada; but i had neither heard of his death nor could conceive how his shade had found its way into a paradise so inappropriate as that in which i encountered him. though never very fond of peter, my heart warmed to him, as the heart sometimes does to an acquaintance unexpectedly met in a strange land. coming cautiously behind him, i slapped peter on the shoulder, whereon he leaped up with a wild unearthly yell, his countenance displaying lively tokens of terror. when he recognized me he first murmured, "i thought it was these murdering apaches again;" and it was long before i could soothe him, or get him to explain his fears, and the circumstance of his appearance in so strange a final home. "sir," said peter, "it's just some terrible mistake. for twenty years was i preaching to these poor painted bodies anent heaven and hell, and trying to win them from their fearsome notions about a place where they would play at the ba' on the sabbath, and the like shameful heathen diversions. many a time did i round it to them about a far, far other place- "where congregations ne'er break up, and sermons never end!" and now, lo and behold, here i am in their heathenish gehenna, where the sabbath-day is just clean neglected; indeed, i have lost count myself, and do not know one day from the other. oh, man, it's just rideec'lous. a body--i mean a soul--does not know where to turn." here peter, whose accent i cannot attempt to reproduce (he was a paisley man), burst into honest tears. though i could not but agree with peter that his situation was "just rideec'lous," i consoled him as well as i might, saying that a man should make the best of every position, and that "where there was life there was hope," a sentiment of which i instantly perceived the futility in this particular instance. "ye do not know the worst," the rev. mr. mcsnadden went on. "i am here to make them sport, like samson among the philistines. their paradise would be no paradise to them if they had not a pale-face, as they say, to scalp and tomahawk. and i am that pale-face. before you can say 'scalping-knife' these awful apaches may be on me, taking my scalp and other leeberties with my person. it grows again, my scalp does, immediately; but that's only that they may take it some other day." the full horror of mr. mcsnadden's situation now dawned upon me, but at the same time i could not but perceive that, without the presence of some pale-face to torture--peter or another--paradise would, indeed, be no paradise to a red indian. in the same way tertullian (or some other early father) has remarked that the pleasures of the blessed will be much enhanced by what they observe of the torments of the wicked. as i was reflecting thus two wild yells burst upon my hearing. one came from a band of apache spirits who had stolen into the ojibbeway village; the other scream was uttered by my unfortunate friend. i confess that i fled with what speed i might, nor did i pause till the groans of the miserable peter faded in the distance. he was, indeed, a man in the wrong paradise. in my anxiety to avoid sharing the fate of peter at the hands of the apaches, i had run out of sight and sound of the ojibbeway village. when i paused i found myself alone, on a wide sandy tract, at the extremity of which was an endless thicket of dark poplar-trees, a grove dear to persephone. here and there in the dank sand, half buried by the fallen generations of yellow poplar-leaves, were pits dug, a cubit every way, and there were many ruinous altars of ancient stones. on some were engraved figures of a divine pair, a king and queen seated on a throne, while men and women approached them with cakes in their hands or with the sacrifice of a cock. while i was admiring these strange sights, i beheld as it were a moving light among the deeps of the poplar thicket, and presently saw coming towards me a young man clad in white raiment and of a radiant aspect. in his hand he bore a golden wand whereon were wings of gold. the first down of manhood was on his lip; he was in that season of life when youth is most gracious. then i knew him to be no other than hermes of the golden rod, the guide of the souls of men outworn. he took my hand with a word of welcome, and led me through the gloom of the poplar trees. like thomas the rhymer, on his way to fairyland- "we saw neither sun nor moon, but we heard the roaring of the sea." this eternal "swowing of a flode" was the sound made by the circling stream of oceanus, as he turns on his bed, washing the base of the white rock, and the sands of the region of dreams. so we fleeted onwards till we came to marvellous lofty gates of black adamant, that rose before us like the steep side of a hill. on the left side of the gates we beheld a fountain flowing from beneath the roots of a white cypress-tree, and to this fountain my guide forbade me to draw near. "there is another yonder," he said, pointing to the right hand, "a stream of still water that issues from the lake of memory, and there are guards who keep that stream from the lips of the profane. go to them and speak thus: 'i am the child of earth and of the starry sky, yet heavenly is my lineage, and this yourselves know right well. but i am perishing with thirst, so give me speedily of that still water which floweth forth of the mere of memory.' and they will give thee to drink of that spring divine, and then shalt thou dwell with the heroes and the blessed." so i did as he said, and went before the guardians of the water. now they were veiled, and their voices, when they answered me, seemed to come from far away. "thou comest to the pure, from the pure," they said, "and thou art a suppliant of holy persephone. happy and most blessed art thou, advance to the reward of the crown desirable, and be no longer mortal, but divine." then a darkness fell upon me, and lifted again like mist on the hills, and we found ourselves in the most beautiful place that can be conceived, a meadow of that short grass which grows on some shores beside the sea. there were large spaces of fine and solid turf, but, where the little streams flowed from the delicate-tinted distant mountains, there were narrow valleys full of all the flowers of a southern spring. here grew narcissus and hyacinths, violets and creeping thyme, and crocus and the crimson rose, as they blossomed on the day when the milk-white bull carried off europa. beyond the level land beside the sea, between these coasts and the far-off hills, was a steep lonely rock, on which were set the shining temples of the grecian faith. the blue seas that begirt the coasts were narrow, and ran like rivers between many islands not less fair than the country to which we were come, while other isles, each with its crest of clear-cut hills, lay westward, far away, and receding into the place of the sunset. then i recognized the fortunate islands spoken of by pindar, and the paradise of the greeks. "round these the ocean breezes blow and golden flowers are glowing, some from the land on trees of splendour, and some the water feedeth, with wreaths whereof they entwine their hands." {124} and, as pindar says again, "for them shineth below the strength of the sun, while in our world it is night, and the space of crimson-flowered meadows before their city is full of the shade of frankincense-trees and of fruits of gold. and some in horses and in bodily feats, and some in dice, and some in harp-playing have delight, and among them thriveth all fair flowering bliss; and fragrance ever streameth through the lovely land as they mingle incense of every kind upon the altars of the gods." in this beautiful country i took great delight, now watching the young men leaping and running (and they were marvellously good over a short distance of ground), now sitting in a chariot whereto were harnessed steeds swifter than the wind, like those that, homer says, "the gods gave, glorious gifts, to peleus." and the people, young and old, received me kindly, welcoming me in their greek speech, which was like the sound of music. and because i had ever been a lover of them and of their tongue, my ears were opened to understand them, though they spoke not greek as we read it. now when i had beheld many of the marvels of the fortunate islands, and had sat at meat with those kind hosts (though i only made semblance to eat of what they placed before me), and had seen the face of rhadamanthus of the golden hair, who is the lord of that country, my friends told me that there was come among them one of my own nation who seemed most sad and sorrowful, and they could make him no mirth. then they carried me to a house in a grove, and all around it a fair garden, and a well in the midst. now stooping over the well, that he might have sight of his own face, was a most wretched man. he was pale and very meagre; he had black rings under his eyes, and his hair was long, limp, and greasy, falling over his shoulders. he was clad somewhat after the manner of the old greeks, but his raiment was wofully ill-made and ill-girt upon him, nor did he ever seem at his ease. as soon as i beheld his sallow face i knew him for one i had seen and mocked at in the world of the living. he was a certain figgins, and he had been honestly apprenticed to a photographer; but, being a weak and vain young fellow, he had picked up modern notions about art, the nude, plasticity, and the like, in the photographer's workroom, whereby he became a weariness to the photographer and to them that sat unto him. being dismissed from his honest employment, this chitterling must needs become a model to some painters that were near as ignorant as himself. they talked to him about the greeks, about the antique, about paganism, about the renaissance, till they made him as much the child of folly as themselves. and they painted him as antinous, as eros, as sleep, and i know not what, but whatever name they called him he was always the same lank-haired, dowdy, effeminate, pasty-faced photographer's young man. then he must needs take to writing poems all about greece, and the free ways of the old greeks, and lais, and phryne, and therein he made "aeolus" rhyme to "control us." for of greek this fellow knew not a word, and any greek that met him had called him a [greek text], and bidden him begone to the crows for a cursed fellow, and one that made false quantities in every greek name he uttered. but his little poems were much liked by young men of his own sort, and by some of the young women. now death had come to figgins, and here he was in the fortunate islands, the very paradise of those greeks about whom he had always been prating while he was alive. and yet he was not happy. a little lyre lay beside him in the grass, and now and again he twanged on it dolorously, and he tried to weave himself garlands from the flowers that grew around him; but he knew not the art, and ever and anon he felt for his button-hole, wherein to stick a lily or the like. but he had no button-hole. then he would look at himself in the well, and yawn and wish himself back in his friends' studios in london. i almost pitied the wretch, and, going up to him, i asked him how he did. he said he had never been more wretched. "why," i asked, "was your mouth not always full of the 'greek spirit,' and did you not mock the christians and their religion? and, as to their heaven, did you not say that it was a tedious place, full of pious old ladies and philistines? and are you not got to the paradise of the greeks? what, then, ails you with your lot?" "sir," said he, "to be plain with you, i do not understand a word these fellows about me say, and i feel as i did the first time i went to paris, before i knew enough french to read the master's poems. {128} again, every one here is mirthful and gay, and there is no man with a divinely passionate potentiality of pain. when i first came here they were always asking me to run with them or jump against them, and one fellow insisted i should box with him, and hurt me very much. my potentiality of pain is considerable. or they would have me drive with them in these dangerous open chariots,--me, that never rode in a hansom cab without feeling nervous. and after dinner they sing songs of which i do not catch the meaning of one syllable, and the music is like nothing i ever heard in my life. and they are all abominably active and healthy. and such of their poets as i admired--in bohn's cribs, of course--the poets of the anthology, are not here at all, and the poets who are here are tremendous proud toffs" (here figgins relapsed into his natural style as it was before he became a neopagan poet), "and won't say a word to a cove. and i'm sick of the greeks, and the fortunate islands are a blooming fraud, and oh, for paradise, give me pentonville." with these words, perhaps the only unaffected expression of genuine sentiment poor figgins had ever uttered, he relapsed into a gloomy silence. i advised him to cultivate the society of the authors whose selected works are in the greek delectus, and to try to make friends with xenophon, whose greek is about as easy as that of any ancient. but i fear that figgins, like the rev. peter mcsnadden, is really suffering a kind of punishment in the disguise of a reward, and all through having accidentally found his way into what he foolishly thought would be the right paradise for him. now i might have stayed long in the fortunate islands, yet, beautiful as they were, i ever felt like odysseus in the island of fair circe. the country was lovely and the land desirable, but the christian souls were not there without whom heaven itself were no paradise to me. and it chanced that as we sat at the feast a maiden came to me with a pomegranate on a plate of silver, and said, "sir, thou hast now been here for the course of a whole moon, yet hast neither eaten nor drunk of what is set before thee. now it is commanded that thou must taste if it were but a seed of this pomegranate, or depart from among us." then, making such excuses as i might, i was constrained to refuse to eat, for no soul can leave a paradise wherein it has tasted food. and as i spoke the walls of the fair hall wherein we sat, which were painted with the effigies of them that fell at thermopylae and in arcadion, wavered and grew dim, and darkness came upon me. the first of my senses which returned to me was that of smell, and i seemed almost drowned in the spicy perfumes of araby. then my eyes became aware of a green soft fluttering, as of the leaves of a great forest, but quickly i perceived that the fluttering was caused by the green scarfs of a countless multitude of women. they were "fine women" in the popular sense of the term, and were of the school of beauty admired by the faithful of islam, and known to mr. bailey, in "martin chuzzlewit," as "crumby." these fond attendant nymphs carried me into gardens twain, in each two gushing springs, in each fruit, and palms, and pomegranates. there were the blessed reclining, precisely as the prophet has declared, "on beds the linings whereof are brocade, and the fruit of the two gardens within reach to cull." there also were the "maids of modest glances," previously indifferent to the wooing "of man or ginn." "bright and large-eyed maids kept in their tents, reclining on green cushions and beautiful carpets. about the golden couches went eternal youths with goblets and ewers, and a cup of flowing wine. no headache shall they feel therefrom," says the compassionate prophet, "nor shall their wits be dimmed." and all that land is misty and fragrant with the perfume of the softest latakia, and the gardens are musical with the bubbling of countless narghiles; and i must say that to the christian soul which enters that paradise the whole place has, certainly, a rather curious air, as of a highly transcendental cremorne. there could be no doubt, however, that the faithful were enjoying themselves amazingly--"right lucky fellows," as we read in the new translation of the koran. yet even here all was not peace and pleasantness, for i heard my name called by a small voice, in a tone of patient subdued querulousness. looking hastily round, i with some difficulty recognized, in a green turban and silk gown to match, my old college tutor and professor of arabic. poor old jones had been the best and the most shy of university men. as there was never any undergraduate in his time (it is different now) who wished to learn arabic, his place had been a sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to "drawing" pupils who were too late for college chapel. the sight of a lady of his acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to drive him into a shop or up a lane, and he had not survived the creation of the first batch of married fellows. how he had got into this thoroughly wrong paradise was a mystery which he made no attempt to explain. "a nice place this, eh?" he said to me. "nice gardens; remind me of magdalene a good deal. it seems, however, to be decidedly rather gay just now; don't you think so? commemoration week, perhaps. a great many young ladies up, certainly; a good deal of cup drunk in the gardens too. i always did prefer to go down in commemoration week, myself; never was a dancing man. there is a great deal of dancing here, but the young ladies dance alone, rather like what is called the ballet, i believe, at the opera. i must say the young persons are a little forward; a little embarrassing it is to be alone here, especially as i have forgotten a good deal of my arabic. don't you think, my dear fellow, you and i could manage to give them the slip? run away from them, eh?" he uttered a timid little chuckle, and at that moment an innumerable host of houris began a ballet d'action illustrative of a series of events in the career of the prophet. it was obvious that my poor uncomplaining old friend was really very miserable. the "thornless loto trees" were all thorny to him, and the "tal'h trees with piles of fruit, the outspread shade, and water outpoured" could not comfort him in his really very natural shyness. a happy thought occurred to me. in early and credulous youth i had studied the works of cornelius agrippa and petrus de abano. their lessons, which had not hitherto been of much practical service, recurred to my mind. stooping down, i drew a circle round myself and my old friend in the fragrant white blossoms which were strewn so thick that they quite hid the grass. this circle i fortified by the usual signs employed, as benvenuto cellini tells us, in the conjuration of evil spirits. i then proceeded to utter one of the common forms of exorcism. instantly the myriad houris assumed the forms of irritated demons; the smoke from the uncounted narghiles burned thick and black; the cries of the frustrated ginns, who were no better than they should be, rang wildly in our ears; the palm-trees shook beneath a mighty wind; the distant summits of the minarets rocked and wavered, and, with a tremendous crash, the paradise of the faithful disappeared. * * * * * as i rang the bell, and requested the club-waiter to carry away the smoking fragments of the moderator-lamp which i had accidentally knocked over in awaking from my nightmare, i reflected on the vanity of men and the unsubstantial character of the future homes that their fancy has fashioned. the ideal heavens of modern poets and novelists, and of ancient priests, come no nearer than the drugged dreams of the angekok and the biraark of greenland and queensland to that rest and peace whereof it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive. to the wrong man each of our pictured heavens would be a hell, and even to the appropriate devotee each would become a tedious purgatory. a cheap nigger. i. "have you seen the clayville dime?" moore chucked me a very shabby little sheet of printed matter. it fluttered feebly in the warm air, and finally dropped on my recumbent frame. i was lolling in a hammock in the shade of the verandah. i did not feel much inclined for study, but i picked up the clayville dime and lazily glanced at that periodical, while moore relapsed into the pages of ixtlilxochitl. he was a literary character for a planter, had been educated at oxford (where i made his acquaintance), and had inherited from his father, with a large collection of indian and mexican curiosities, a taste for the ancient history of the new world. sometimes i glanced at the newspaper; sometimes i looked out at the pleasant southern garden, where the fountain flashed and fell among weeping willows, and laurels, orange-trees, and myrtles. "hullo!" i cried suddenly, disturbing moore's aztec researches, "here is a queer affair in the usually quiet town of clayville. listen to this;" and i read aloud the following "par," as i believe paragraphs are styled in newspaper offices:- "'instinct and accident.--as colonel randolph was driving through our town yesterday and was passing captain jones's sample-room, where the colonel lately shot moses widlake in the street, the horses took alarm and started violently downhill. the colonel kept his seat till rounding the corner by the clayville bank, when his wheels came into collision with that edifice, and our gallant townsman was violently shot out. he is now lying in a very precarious condition. this may relieve tom widlake of the duty of shooting the colonel in revenge for his father. it is commonly believed that colonel randolph's horses were maddened by the smell of the blood which has dried up where old widlake was shot. much sympathy is felt for the colonel. neither of the horses was injured.'" "clayville appears to be a lively kind of place," i said. "do you often have shootings down here?" "we do," said moore, rather gravely; "it is one of our institutions with which i could dispense." "and do you 'carry iron,' as the greeks used to say, or 'go heeled,' as your citizens express it?" "no, i don't; neither pistol nor knife. if any one shoots me, he shoots an unarmed man. the local bullies know it, and they have some scruple about shooting in that case. besides, they know i am an awkward customer at close quarters." moore relapsed into his mexican historian, and i into the newspaper. "here is a chance of seeing one of your institutions at last," i said. i had found an advertisement concerning a lot of negroes to be sold that very day by public auction in clayville. all this, of course, was "before the war." "well, i suppose you ought to see it," said moore, rather reluctantly. he was gradually emancipating his own servants, as i knew, and was even suspected of being a director of "the underground railroad" to canada. "peter," he cried, "will you be good enough to saddle three horses and bring them round?" peter, a "darkey boy" who had been hanging about in the garden, grinned and went off. he was a queer fellow, peter, a plantation humourist, well taught in all the then unpublished lore of "uncle remus." peter had a way of his own, too, with animals, and often aided moore in collecting objects of natural history. "did you get me those hornets, peter?" said moore, when the black returned with the horses. "got 'em safe, massa, in a little box," replied peter, who then mounted and followed at a respectful distance as our squire. without many more words we rode into the forest which lay between clayville and moore's plantation. through the pine barrens ran the road, and on each side of the way was luxuriance of flowering creepers. the sweet faint scent of the white jessamine and the homely fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air, and the wild white roses were in perfect blossom. here and there an aloe reminded me that we were not at home, and dwarf palms and bayonet palmettoes, with the small pointed leaf of the "live oak," combined to make the scenery look foreign and unfamiliar. there was a soft haze in the air, and the sun's beams only painted, as it were, the capitals of the tall pillar-like pines, while the road was canopied and shaded by the skeins of grey moss that hung thickly on all the boughs. the trees grew thinner as the road approached the town. dusty were the ways, and sultry the air, when we rode into clayville and were making for "the noisy middle market-place." clayville was but a small border town, though it could then boast the presence of a squadron of cavalry, sent there to watch the "border ruffians." the square was neither large nor crowded, but the spectacle was strange and interesting to me. men who had horses or carts to dispose of were driving or riding about, noisily proclaiming the excellence of their wares. but buyers were more concerned, like myself, with the slave-market. in the open air, in the middle of the place, a long table was set. the crowd gathered round this, and presented types of various sorts of citizens. the common "mean white" was spitting and staring--a man fallen so low that he had no nigger to wallop, and was thus even more abject, because he had no natural place and functions in local society, than the slaves themselves. the local drunkard was uttering sagacities to which no mortal attended. two or three speculators were bidding on commission, and there were a few planters, some of them mounted, and a mixed multitude of tradesmen, loafers, bar-keepers, newspaper reporters, and idlers in general. at either end of the long table sat an auctioneer, who behaved with the traditional facetiousness of the profession. as the "lots" came on for sale they mounted the platform, generally in family parties. a party would fetch from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, according to its numbers and "condition." the spectacle was painful and monstrous. most of the "lots" bore the examination of their points with a kind of placid dignity, and only showed some little interest when the biddings grew keen and flattered their pride. the sale was almost over, and we were just about to leave, when a howl of derision from the mob made us look round. what _i_ saw was the apparition of an extremely aged and debilitated black man standing on the table. what moore saw to interest him i could not guess, but he grew pale and uttered an oath of surprise under his breath, though he rarely swore. then he turned his horse's head again towards the auctioneer. that merry tradesman was extolling the merits of nearly his last lot. "a very remarkable specimen, gentlemen! admirers of the antique cannot dispense with this curious nigger--very old and quite imperfect. like so many of the treasures of greek art which have reached us, he has had the misfortune to lose his nose and several of his fingers. how much offered for this exceptional lot--unmarried and without encumbrances of any kind? he is dumb too, and may be trusted with any secret." "take him off!" howled some one in the crowd. "order his funeral!" "chuck him into the next lot." "what, gentlemen, _no_ bids for this very eligible nigger? with a few more rags he would make a most adequate scarecrow." while this disgusting banter was going on i observed a planter ride up to one of the brokers and whisper for some time in his ear. the planter was a bad but unmistakable likeness of my friend moore, worked over, so to speak, with a loaded brush and heavily glazed with old bourbon whisky. after giving his orders to the agent he retired to the outskirts of the crowd, and began flicking his long dusty boots with a serviceable cowhide whip. "well, gentlemen, we must really adopt the friendly suggestion of judge lee and chuck this nigger into the next lot." so the auctioneer was saying, when the broker to whom i have referred cried out, "ten dollars." "_this_ is more like business," cried the auctioneer. "ten dollars offered! what amateur says more than ten dollars for this lot? his extreme age and historical reminiscences alone, if he could communicate them, would make him invaluable to the student." to my intense amazement moore shouted from horseback, "twenty dollars." "what, _you_ want a cheap nigger to get your hand in, do you, you blankblanked abolitionist?" cried a man who stood near. he was a big, dirtylooking bully, at least half drunk, and attending (not unnecessarily) to his toilet with the point of a long, heavy knife. before the words were out of his mouth moore had leaped from his horse and delivered such a right-handed blow as that wherewith the wandering beggar-man smote irus of old in the courtyard of odysseus, laertes' son. "on his neck, beneath the ear, he smote him, and crushed in the bones; and the red blood gushed up through his mouth, and he gnashed his teeth together as he kicked the ground." moore stooped, picked up the bowieknife, and sent it glittering high through the air. "take him away," he said, and two rough fellows, laughing, carried the bully to the edge of the fountain that played in the corner of the square. he was still lying crumpled up there when we rode out of clayville. the bidding, of course, had stopped, owing to the unaffected interest which the public took in this more dramatic interlude. the broker, it is true, had bid twenty-five dollars, and was wrangling with the auctioneer. "you have my bid, mr. brinton, sir, and there is no other offer. knock down the lot to me." "you wait your time, mr. isaacs," said the auctioneer. "no man can do two things at once and do them well. when squire moore has settled with dick bligh he will desert the paths of military adventure for the calmer and more lucrative track of commercial enterprise." the auctioneer's command of long words was considerable, and was obviously of use to him in his daily avocations. when he had rounded his period, moore was in the saddle again, and nodded silently to the auctioneer. "squire moore bids thirty dollars. thirty dollars for this once despised but now appreciated fellow-creature," rattled on the auctioneer. the agent nodded again. "forty dollars bid," said the auctioneer. "fifty," cried moore. the broker nodded. "sixty." the agent nodded again. the bidding ran rapidly up to three hundred and fifty dollars. the crowd were growing excited, and had been joined by every child in the town, by every draggled and sunburnt woman, and the drinking-bar had disgorged every loafer who felt sober enough to stay the distance to the centre of the square. my own first feelings of curiosity had subsided. i knew how strong and burning was moore's hatred of oppression, and felt convinced that he merely wished at any sacrifice of money to secure for this old negro some peaceful days and a quiet deathbed. the crowd doubtless took the same obvious view of the case as i did, and was now eagerly urging on the two competitors. "never say die, isaacs." "stick to it, squire; the nigger's well worth the dollars." so they howled, and now the biddings were mounting towards one thousand dollars, when the sulky planter rode up to the neighbourhood of the table--much to the inconvenience of the "gallery"--and whispered to his agent. the conference lasted some minutes, and at the end of it the agent capped moore's last offer, one thousand dollars, with a bid of one thousand two hundred. "fifteen hundred," said moore, amidst applause. "look here, mr. knock-'em-down," cried mr. isaacs: "it's hot and thirsty work sitting, nodding here; i likes my ease on a warm day; so just you reckon that i see the squire, and go a hundred dollars more as long as i hold up my pencil." he stuck a long gnawed pencil erect between his finger and thumb, and stared impertinently at moore. the squire nodded, and the bidding went on in this silent fashion till the bids had actually run up to three thousand four hundred dollars. all this while the poor negro, whose limbs no longer supported him, crouched in a heap on the table, turning his haggard eye alternately on moore and on the erect and motionless pencil of the broker. the crowd had become silent with excitement. unable to stand the heat and agitation, moore's unfriendly brother had crossed the square in search of a "short drink." moore nodded once more. "three thousand six hundred dollars bid," cried the auctioneer, and looked at isaacs. with a wild howl isaacs dashed his pencil in the air, tossed up his hands, and thrust them deep down between his coat collar and his body, uttering all the while yells of pain. "don't you bid, mr. isaacs?" asked the auctioneer, without receiving any answer except semitic appeals to holy abraham, blended with aryan profanity. "come," said moore very severely, "his pencil is down, and he has withdrawn his bid. there is no other bidder; knock the lot down to me." "no more offers?" said the auctioneer slowly, looking all round the square. there were certainly no offers from mr. isaacs, who now was bounding like the gad-stung io to the furthest end of the place. "this fine buck-negro, warranted absolutely unsound of wind and limb, going, going, a shameful sacrifice, for a poor three thousand six hundred dollars. going, going--gone!" the hammer fell with a sharp, decisive sound. a fearful volley of oaths rattled after the noise, like thunder rolling away in the distance. moore's brother had returned from achieving a "short drink" just in time to see his coveted lot knocked down to his rival. we left the spot, with the negro in the care of peter, as quickly as might be. "i wonder," said moore, as we reached the inn and ordered a trap to carry our valuable bargain home in--"i wonder what on earth made isaacs run off like a maniac." "massa," whispered peter, "yesterday i jes' caught yer brer hornet a-loafin' around in the wood. 'come wi' me,' says i, 'and bottled him in this yer pasteboard box,'" showing one which had held turkish tobacco. "when i saw that hebrew jew wouldn't stir his pencil, i jes' crept up softly and dropped brer hornet down his neck. then he jes' rose and went. spec's he and brer hornet had business of their own." "peter," said moore, "you are a good boy, but you will come to a bad end." ii. as we rode slowly homeward, behind the trap which conveyed the dear-bought slave, moore was extremely moody and disinclined for conversation. "is your purchase not rather an expensive one?" i ventured to ask, to which moore replied shortly-"no; think he is perhaps the cheapest nigger that was ever bought." to put any more questions would have been impertinent, and i possessed my curiosity in silence till we reached the plantation. here moore's conduct became decidedly eccentric. he had the black man conveyed at once into a cool, dark, strong room with a heavy iron door, where the new acquisition was locked up in company with a sufficient meal. moore and i dined hastily, and then he summoned all his negroes together into the court of the house. "look here, boys," he cried: "all these trees"--and he pointed to several clumps "must come down immediately, and all the shrubs on the lawn and in the garden. fall to at once, those of you that have axes, and let the rest take hoes and knives and make a clean sweep of the shrubs." the idea of wholesale destruction seemed not disagreeable to the slaves, who went at their work with eagerness, though it made my heart ache to see the fine old oaks beginning to fall and to watch the green garden becoming a desert. moore first busied himself with directing the women, who, under his orders, piled up mattresses and bags of cotton against the parapets of the verandahs. the house stood on the summit of a gradually sloping height, and before the moon began to set (for we worked without intermission through the evening and far into the night) there was nothing but a bare slope of grass all round the place, while smoke and flame went up from the piles of fallen timber. the plantation, in fact, was ready to stand a short siege. moore now produced a number of rifles, which he put, with ammunition, into the hands of some of the more stalwart negroes. these he sent to their cabins, which lay at a distance of about a furlong and a half on various sides of the house. the men had orders to fire on any advancing enemy, and then to fall back at once on the main building, which was now barricaded and fortified. one lad was told to lurk in a thicket below the slope of the hill and invisible from the house. "if wild bill's men come on, and you give them the slip, cry thrice like the 'bob white,'" said moore; "if they take you, cry once. if you get off, run straight to clayville, and give this note to the officer commanding the cavalry." the hour was now about one in the morning; by three the dawn would begin. in spite of his fatigues, moore had no idea of snatching an hour's rest. he called up peter (who had been sleeping, coiled up like a black cat, in the smoking-room), and bade him take a bath and hot water into the room where gumbo, the newly purchased black, had all this time been left to his own reflections. "soap him and lather him well, peter," said moore; "wash him white, if you can, and let me know when he's fit to come near." peter withdrew with his stereotyped grin to make his preparations. presently, through the open door of the smoking-room, we heard the sounds of energetic splashings, mingled with the inarticulate groans of the miserable gumbo. moore could not sit still, but kept pacing the room, smoking fiercely. presently peter came to the door-"nigger's clean now, massa." "bring me a razor, then," said moore, "and leave me alone with him." * * * * * when moore had retired, with the razor, into the chamber where his purchase lay, i had time to reflect on the singularity of the situation. in every room loaded rifles were ready; all the windows were cunningly barricaded, and had sufficient loopholes. the peaceful planter's house had become a castle; a dreadful quiet had succeeded to the hubbub of preparation, and my host, yesterday so pleasant, was now locked up alone with a dumb negro and a razor! i had long ago given up the hypothesis that gumbo had been purchased out of pure philanthropy. the disappointment of baffled cruelty in moore's brother would not alone account for the necessity of such defensive preparations as had just been made. clearly gumbo was not a mere fancy article, but a negro of real value, whose person it was desirable to obtain possession of at any risk or cost. the ghastly idea occurred to me (suggested, i fancy, by moore's demand for a razor) that gumbo, at some period of his career, must have swallowed a priceless diamond. this gem must still be concealed about his person, and moore must have determined by foul means, as no fair means were available, to become its owner. when this fancy struck me i began to feel that it was my duty to interfere. i could not sit by within call (had poor gumbo been capable of calling) and allow my friend to commit such a deed of cruelty. as i thus parleyed with myself, the heavy iron door of the store-room opened, and moore came out, with the razor (bloodless, thank heaven!) in his hand. anxiety had given place to a more joyous excitement. "well?" i said interrogatively. "well, all's well. that man has, as i felt sure, the secret of the pyramid." i now became quite certain that moore, in spite of all his apparent method, had gone out of his mind. it seemed best to humour him, especially as so many loaded rifles were lying about. "he has seen the myst'ry hid under egypt's pyramid," i quoted; "but, my dear fellow, as the negro is dumb, i don't see how you are to get the secret out of him." "i did not say he _knew_ it," answered moore crossly; "i said he _had_ it. as to egypt, i don't know what you are talking about--" at this moment we heard the crack of rifles, and in the instant of silence which followed came the note of the "bob white." once it shrilled, and we listened eagerly; then the notes came twice rapidly, and a sound of voices rose up from the negro outposts, who had been driven in and were making fast the one door of the house that had been left open. from the negroes we learned that our assailants (bill hicock's band of border ruffians, "specially engaged for this occasion") had picketed their horses behind the dip of the hill and were advancing on foot. moore hurried to the roof to reconnoitre. the dawn was stealing on, and the smoke from the still smouldering trees, which we had felled and burned, rose through the twilight air. "moore, you hound," cried a voice through the smoke of the furthest pile, "we have come for your new nigger. will you give him up or will you fight?" moore's only reply was a bullet fired in the direction whence the voice was heard. his shot was answered by a perfect volley from men who could just be discerned creeping through the grass about four hundred yards out. the bullets rattled harmlessly against wooden walls and iron shutters, or came with a thud against the mattress fortifications of the verandah. the firing was all directed against the front of the house. "i see their game," said moore. "the front attack is only a feint. when they think we are all busy here, another detachment will try to rush the place from the back and to set fire to the building. we'll 'give them their kail through the reek.'" moore's dispositions were quickly made. he left me with some ten of the blacks to keep up as heavy a fire as possible from the roof against the advancing skirmishers. he posted himself, with six fellows on whom he could depend, in a room of one of the wings which commanded the back entrance. as many men, with plenty of ready-loaded rifles, were told off to a room in the opposite wing. both parties were thus in a position to rake the entrance with a cross fire. moore gave orders that not a trigger should be pulled till the still invisible assailants had arrived on his side, between the two projecting wings. "then fire into them, and let every one choose his man." on the roof our business was simple enough. we lay behind bags of cotton, firing as rapidly and making as much show of force as possible, while women kept loading for us. our position was extremely strong, as we were quite invisible to men crouching or running hurriedly far below. our practice was not particularly good; still three or four of the skirmishers had ceased to advance, and this naturally discouraged the others, who were aware, of course, that their movement was only a feint. the siege had now lasted about half an hour, and i had begun to fancy that moore's theory of the attack was a mistake, and that he had credited the enemy with more generalship than they possessed, when a perfect storm of fire broke out beneath us, from the rooms where moore and his company were posted. dangerous as it was to cease for a moment from watching the enemy, i stole across the roof, and, looking down between two of the cotton bags which filled the open spaces of the balustrades, i saw the narrow ground between the two wings simply strewn with dead or wounded men. the cross fire still poured from the windows, though here and there a marksman tried to pick off the fugitives. rapidly did i cross the roof to my post. to my horror the skirmishers had advanced, as if at the signal of the firing, and were now running up at full speed and close to the walls of the house. at that moment the door opened, and moore, heading a number of negroes, picked off the leading ruffian and rushed out into the open. the other assailants fired hurriedly and without aim, then--daunted by the attack so suddenly carried into their midst, and by the appearance of one or two of their own beaten comrades--the enemy turned and fairly bolted. we did not pursue. far away down the road we heard the clatter of hoofs, and thin and clear came the thrice-repeated cry of the "bob white." "dick's coming back with the soldiers," said moore; "and now i think we may look after the wounded." * * * * * i did not see much of moore that day. the fact is that i slept a good deal, and moore was mysteriously engaged with gumbo. night came, and very much needed quiet and sleep came with it. then we passed an indolent day, and i presumed that adventures were over, and that on the subject of "the secret of the pyramid" moore had recovered his sanity. i was just taking my bedroom candle when moore said, "don't go to bed yet. you will come with me, won't you, and see out the adventure of the cheap nigger?" "you don't mean to say the story is to be continued?" i asked. "continued? why the fun is only beginning," moore answered. "the night is cloudy, and will just suit us. come down to the branch." the "branch," as moore called it, was a strong stream that separated, as i knew, his lands from his brother's. we walked down slowly, and reached the broad boat which was dragged over by a chain when any one wanted to cross. at the "scow," as the ferry-boat was called, peter joined us; he ferried us deftly over the deep and rapid water, and then led on, as rapidly as if it had been daylight, along a path through the pines. "how often i came here when i was a boy," said moore; "but now i might lose myself in the wood, for this is my brother's land, and i have forgotten the way." as i knew that mr. bob moore was confined to his room by an accident, through which an ounce of lead had been lodged in a portion of his frame, i had no fear of being arrested for trespass. presently the negro stopped in front of a cliff. "here is the 'sachem's cave,'" said moore. "you'll help us to explore the cave, won't you?" i did not think the occasion an opportune one for exploring caves, but to have withdrawn would have demanded a "moral courage," as people commonly say when they mean cowardice, which i did not possess. we stepped within a narrow crevice of the great cliff. moore lit a lantern and went in advance; the negro followed with a flaring torch. suddenly an idea occurred to me, which i felt bound to communicate to moore. "my dear fellow," i said in a whisper, "is this quite sportsmanlike? you know you are after some treasure, real or imaginary, and, i put it to you as a candid friend, is not this just a little bit like poaching? your brother's land, you know." "what i am looking for is in my own land," said moore. "the river is the march. come on." we went on, now advancing among fairy halls, glistering with stalactites or paved with silver sand, and finally pushing our way through a concealed crevice down dank and narrow passages in the rock. the darkness increased; the pavement plashed beneath our feet, and the drip, drip of water was incessant. "we are under the river-bed," said moore, "in a kind of natural thames tunnel." we made what speed we might through this combination of the valley of the shadow with the slough of despond, and soon were on firmer ground again beneath moore's own territory. probably no other white men had ever crawled through the hidden passage and gained the further penetralia of the cave, which now again began to narrow. finally we reached four tall pillars, of about ten feet in height, closely surrounded by the walls of rock. as we approached these pillars, that were dimly discerned by the torchlight, our feet made a faint metallic jingling sound among heaps of ashes which strewed the floor. moore and i went up to the pillars and tried them with our knives. they were of wood, all soaked and green with the eternal damp. "peter," said moore, "go in with the lantern and try if you can find anything there." peter had none of the superstitions of his race, or he would never have been our companion. "all right, massa; me look for brer spook." so saying, peter walked into a kind of roofed over-room, open only at the front, and examined the floor with his lantern, stamping occasionally to detect any hollowness in the ground. "nothing here, massa, but this dead fellow's leg-bone and little bits of broken jugs," and the dauntless peter came out with his ghastly trophy. moore seemed not to lose heart. "perhaps," he said, "there is something on the roof. peter, give me a back." peter stooped down beside one of the wooden pillars and firmly grasped his own legs above the knee. moore climbed on the improvised ladder, and was just able to seize the edge of the roof, as it seemed to be, with his hands. "now steady, peter," he exclaimed, and with a spring he drew himself up till his head was above the level of the roof. then he uttered a cry, and, leaping from peter's back retreated to the level where we stood in some confusion. "good god!" he said, "what a sight!" "what on earth is the matter?" i asked. "look for yourself, if you choose," said moore, who was somewhat shaken, and at the same time irritated and ashamed. grasping the lantern, i managed to get on to peter's shoulders, and by a considerable gymnastic effort to raise my head to the level of the ledge, and at the same time to cast the light up and within. the spectacle was sufficiently awful. i was looking along a platform, on which ten skeletons were disposed at full length, with the skulls still covered with long hair, and the fleshless limbs glimmering white and stretching back into the darkness. on the right hand, and crouching between a skeleton and the wall of the chamber (what we had taken for a roof was the floor of a room raised on pillars), i saw the form of a man. he was dressed in gay colours, and, as he sat with his legs drawn up, his arms rested on his knees. on the first beholding of a dreadful thing, our instinct forces us to rush against it, as if to bring the horror to the test of touch. this instinct wakened in me. for a moment i felt dazed, and then i continued to stare involuntarily at the watcher of the dead. he had not stirred. my eyes became accustomed to the dim and flickering light which the lantern cast in that dark place. "hold on, peter," i cried, and leaped down to the floor of the cave. "it's all right, moore," i said. "don't you remember the picture in old lafitau's 'moeurs des sauvages americains'? we are in a burying-place of the cherouines, and the seated man is only the kywash, 'which is an image of woode keeping the deade.'" "ass that i am!" cried moore. "i knew the cave led us from the sachem's cave to the sachem's mound, and i forgot for a moment how the fellows disposed of their dead. we must search the platform. peter, make a ladder again." moore mounted nimbly enough this time. i followed him. the kywash had no more terrors for us, and we penetrated beyond the fleshless dead into the further extremity of the sepulchre. here we lifted and removed vast piles of deerskin bags, and of mats, filled as they were with "the dreadful dust that once was man." as we reached the bottom of the first pile something glittered yellow and bright beneath the lantern. moore stooped and tried to lift what looked like an enormous plate. he was unable to raise the object, still weighed down as it was with the ghastly remnants of the dead. with feverish haste we cleared away the debris, and at last lifted and brought to light a huge and massive disk of gold, divided into rays which spread from the centre, each division being adorned with strange figures in relief--figures of animals, plants, and what looked like rude hieroglyphs. this was only the firstfruits of the treasure. a silver disk, still larger, and decorated in the same manner, was next uncovered, and last, in a hollow dug in the flooring of the sepulchre, we came on a great number of objects in gold and silver, which somewhat reminded us of indian idols. these were thickly crusted with precious stones, and were accompanied by many of the sacred emeralds and opals of old american religion. there were also some extraordinary manuscripts, if the term may be applied to picture writing on prepared deerskins that were now decaying. we paid little attention to cloaks of the famous feather-work, now a lost art, of which one or two examples are found in european museums. the gold, and silver, and precious stones, as may be imagined, overcame for the moment any ethnological curiosity. * * * * * dawn was growing into day before we reached the mouth of the cave again, and after a series of journeys brought all our spoil to the light of the upper air. it was quickly enough bestowed in bags and baskets. then, aided by three of moore's stoutest hands, whom we found waiting for us in the pine wood, we carried the whole treasure back, and lodged it in the strong room which had been the retreat of gumbo. iii. the conclusion of my story shall be very short. what was the connection between gumbo and the spoils of the sachem's mound, and how did the treasures of the aztec temple of the sun come to be concealed in the burial place of the red man? all this moore explained to me the day after we secured the treasures. "my father," said moore, "was, as you know, a great antiquarian, and a great collector of mexican and native relics. he had given almost as much time as brasseur de bourbourg to mexican hieroglyphics, and naturally had made nothing out of them. his chief desire was to discover the secret of the pyramid--not the pyramids of egypt, as you fancied, but the pyramid of the sun, tonatiuh, at teohuacan. to the problem connected with this mysterious structure, infinitely older than the empire of montezuma, which cortes destroyed, he fancied he had a clue in this scroll." moore handed me a prepared sheet of birch bark, like those which the red men use for their rude picture writings. it was very old, but the painted characters were still brilliant, and even a tyro could see that they were not indian, but of the ancient mexican description. in the upper left-hand corner was painted a pyramidal structure, above which the sun beamed. eight men, over whose heads the moon was drawn, were issuing from the pyramid; the two foremost bore in their hands effigies of the sun and moon; each of the others seemed to carry smaller objects with a certain religious awe. then came a singular chart, which one might conjecture represented the wanderings of these men, bearing the sacred things of their gods. in the lowest corner of the scroll they were being received by human beings dressed unlike themselves, with head coverings of feathers and carrying bows in their hands. "this scroll," moore went on, "my father bought from one of the last of the red men who lingered on here, a prey to debt and whisky. my father always associated the drawings with the treasures of teohuacan, which, according to him, must have been withdrawn from the pyramid, and conveyed secretly to the north, the direction from which the old toltec pyramid builders originally came. in the north they would find no civilized people like themselves, he said, but only the indians. probably, however, the indians would receive with respect the bearers of mysterious images and rites, and my father concluded that the sacred treasures of the sun might still be concealed among some wandering tribe of red men. he had come to this conclusion for some time, when i and my brother returned from school, hastily summoned back, to find him extremely ill. he had suffered from a paralytic stroke, and he scarcely recognized us. but we made out, partly from his broken and wandering words, partly from old tom (peter's father, now dead), that my father's illness had followed on a violent fit of passion. he had picked up, it seems, from some indians a scroll which he considered of the utmost value, and which he placed in a shelf of the library. now, old gumbo was a house-servant at that time, and, dumb as he was, and stupid as he was, my father had treated him with peculiar kindness. unluckily gumbo yielded to the favourite illusion of all servants, white and black, male and female, that anything they find in the library may be used to light a fire with. one chilly day gumbo lighted the fire with the newly purchased indian birch scroll. my father, when he heard of this performance, lost all self-command. in his ordinary temper the most humane of men, he simply raged at gumbo. he would teach him, he said, to destroy his papers. and it appeared, from what we could piece together (for old tom was very reticent and my father very incoherent), that he actually branded or tattooed a copy of what gumbo had burnt on the nigger's body!" "but," i interrupted, "your father knew all the scroll had to tell him, else he could not have copied it on gumbo. so why was he in such a rage?" "you," said moore, with some indignation, "are not a collector, and you can't understand a collector's feelings. my father knew the contents of the scroll, but what of that? the scroll was the first edition, the real original, and gumbo had destroyed it. job would have lost his temper if job had been a collector. let me go on. my brother and i both conjectured that the scroll had some connection with the famous riches of the sun and the secret of the pyramid of teohuacan. probably, we thought, it had contained a chart (now transferred to gumbo's frame) of the hiding-place of the treasure. however, in the confusion caused by my father's illness, death, and burial, gumbo escaped, and, being an unusually stupid nigger, he escaped due south-west. here he seems to have fallen into the hands of some slave-holding indians, who used him even worse than any white owners would have done, and left him the mere fragment you saw. he filtered back here through the exchange of commerce, 'the higgling of the market,' and as soon as i recognized him at the sale i made up my mind to purchase him. so did my brother; but, thanks to peter and his hornets, i became gumbo's owner. on examining him, after he was well washed on the night of the attack, i found this chart, as you may call it, branded on gumbo's back." here moore made a rapid tracing on a sheet of paper. "i concluded that the letters s m (introduced by my father, of course, as the indian scroll must have been 'before letters') referred to the sachem's mound, which is in my land; that the sun above referred to the treasures of the sun, that s c stood for the sachem's cave, and that the cave led, under the river, within the mound. we might have opened the mound by digging on our own land, but it would have been a long job, and must have attracted curiosity and brought us into trouble. so, you see, the chart gumbo destroyed was imprinted by my father on his black back, and though he _knew_ nothing of the secret he distinctly _had_ it." "yes," said i, "but why did you ask for a razor when you were left alone with gumbo?" "why," said moore, "i knew gumbo was marked somewhere and somehow, but the place and manner i didn't know. and my father might have remembered the dodge of histiaeus in herodotus: he might have shaved gumbo's head, tattooed the chart on that, and then allowed the natural covering to hide the secret 'on the place where the wool ought to grow.'" the romance of the first radical. a prehistoric apologue. "titius. le premier qui supprime un abus, comme on dit, est toujours victime du service qu'il rend. un homme du peuple. c'est de sa faute! pourquoi se mele t'il de ce qui ne le regarde pas."--le pretre de nemi. the devil, according to dr. johnson and other authorities, was the first whig. history tells us less about the first radical--the first man who rebelled against the despotism of unintelligible customs, who asserted the rights of the individual against the claims of the tribal conscience, and who was eager to see society organized, off-hand, on what he thought a rational method. in the absence of history, we must fall back on that branch of hypothetics which is known as prehistoric science. we must reconstruct the romance of the first radical from the hints supplied by geology, and by the study of radicals at large, and of contemporary savages among whom no radical reformer has yet appeared. in the following little apologue no trait of manners is invented. the characters of our romance lived shortly after the close of the last glacial epoch in europe, when the ice had partly withdrawn from the face of the world, and when land and sea had almost assumed their modern proportions. at this period europe was inhabited by scattered bands of human creatures, who roamed about its surface much as the black fellows used to roam over the australian continent. the various groups derived their names from various animals and other natural objects, such as the sun, the cabbage, serpents, sardines, crabs, leopards, bears, and hyaenas. it is important for our purpose to remember that all the children took their family name from the mother's side. if she were of the hyaena clan, the children were hyaenas. if the mother were tattooed with the badge of the serpent, the children were serpents, and so on. no two persons of the same family name and crest might marry, on pain of death. the man of the bear family who dwelt by the mediterranean might not ally himself with a woman of the bear clan whose home was on the shores of the baltic, and who was in no way related to him by consanguinity. these details are dry, but absolutely necessary to the comprehension of the first radical's stormy and melancholy career. we must also remember that, among the tribes, there was no fixed or monarchical government. the little democratic groups were much influenced by the medicine-men or wizards, who combined the functions of the modern clergy and of the medical profession. the old men, too, had some power; the braves, or warriors, constituted a turbulent oligarchy; the noisy outcries of the old women corresponded to the utterances of an intelligent daily press. but the real ruler was a body of strange and despotic customs, the nature of which will become apparent as we follow the fortunes of the first radical. the youth of why-why. why-why, as our hero was commonly called in the tribe, was born, long before romulus built his wall, in a cave which may still be observed in the neighbourhood of mentone. on the warm shores of the mediterranean, protected from winds by a wall of rock, the group of which why-why was the offspring had attained conditions of comparative comfort. the remains of their dinners, many feet deep, still constitute the flooring of the cave, and the tourist, as he pokes the soil with the point of his umbrella, turns up bits of bone, shreds of chipped flint, and other interesting relics. in the big cave lived several little families, all named by the names of their mothers. these ladies had been knocked on the head and dragged home, according to the marriage customs of the period, from places as distant as the modern marseilles and genoa. whywhy, with his little brothers and sisters, were named serpents, were taught to believe that the serpent was the first ancestor of their race, and that they must never injure any creeping thing. when they were still very young, the figure of the serpent was tattooed over their legs and breasts, so that every member of primitive society who met them had the advantage of knowing their crest and highly respectable family name. the birth of why-why was a season of discomfort and privation. the hill tribe which lived on the summit of the hill now known as the tete du chien had long been aware that an addition to the population of the cave was expected. they had therefore prepared, according to the invariable etiquette of these early times, to come down on the cave people, maltreat the ladies, steal all the property they could lay hands on, and break whatever proved too heavy to carry. good manners, of course, forbade the cave people to resist this visit, but etiquette permitted (and in new caledonia still permits) the group to bury and hide its portable possessions. canoes had been brought into the little creek beneath the cave, to convey the women and children into a safe retreat, and the men were just beginning to hide the spears, bone daggers, flint fish-hooks, mats, shell razors, nets, and so forth, when why-why gave an early proof of his precocity by entering the world some time before his arrival was expected. instantly all was confusion. the infant, his mother and the other noncombatants of the tribe, were bundled into canoes and paddled, through a tempestuous sea, to the site of the modern bordighiera. the men who were not with the canoes fled into the depths of the gorge saint louis, which now severs france from italy. the hill tribe came down at the double, and in a twinkling had "made hay" (to borrow a modern agricultural expression) of all the personal property of the cave dwellers. they tore the nets (the use of which they did not understand), they broke the shell razors, they pouched the opulent store of flint arrowheads and bone daggers, and they tortured to death the pigs, which the cave people had just begun to try to domesticate. after performing these rites, which were perfectly legal--indeed, it would have been gross rudeness to neglect them--the hill people withdrew to their wind-swept home on the tete du chien. philosophers who believe in the force of early impressions will be tempted to maintain that why-why's invincible hatred of established institutions may be traced to these hours of discomfort in which his life began. the very earliest years of why-why, unlike those of mr. john stuart mill, whom in many respects he resembled, were not distinguished by proofs of extraordinary intelligence. he rather promptly, however, showed signs of a sceptical character. like other sharp children, why-why was always asking metaphysical conundrums. who made men? who made the sun? why has the cave-bear such a hoarse voice? why don't lobsters grow on trees?--he would incessantly demand. in answer to these and similar questions, the mother of why-why would tell him stories out of the simple mythology of the tribe. there was quite a store of traditional replies to inquisitive children, replies sanctioned by antiquity and by the authority of the medicine-men, and in this lore why-why's mother was deeply versed. thus, for example, why-why would ask his mother who made men. she would reply that long ago pund-jel, the first man, made two images of human beings in clay, and stuck on curly bark for hair. he then danced a corroboree round them, and sang a song. they rose up, and appeared as full-grown men. to this statement, hallowed by immemorial belief, whywhy only answered by asking who made pund-jel. his mother said that pundjel came out of a plot of reeds and rushes. why-why was silent, but thought in his heart that the whole theory was "bosh-bosh," to use the early reduplicative language of these remote times. nor could he conceal his doubts about the deluge and the frog who once drowned all the world. here is the story of the frog:--"once, long ago, there was a big frog. he drank himself full of water. he could not get rid of the water. once he saw a sand-eel dancing on his tail by the sea-shore. it made him laugh so that he burst, and all the water ran out. there was a great flood, and every one was drowned except two or three men and women, who got on an island. past came the pelican, in a canoe; he took off the men, but wanting to marry the woman, kept her to the last. she wrapped up a log in a 'possum rug to deceive the pelican, and swam to shore and escaped. the pelican was very angry; he began to paint himself white, to show that he was on the war trail, when past came another pelican, did not like his looks, and killed him with his beak. that is why pelicans are partly black and white, if you want to know, my little dear," said the mother of why-why. many stories like this were told in the cave, but they found no credit with why-why. when he was but ten years old, his inquiring spirit showed itself in the following remarkable manner. he had always been informed that a serpent was the mother of his race, and that he must treat serpents with the greatest reverence. to kill one was sacrilege. in spite of this, he stole out unobserved and crushed a viper which had stung his little brother. he noticed that no harm ensued, and this encouraged him to commit a still more daring act. none but the old men and the warriors were allowed to eat oysters. it was universally held that if a woman or a child touched an oyster, the earth would open and swallow the culprit. not daunted by this prevalent belief, why-why one day devoured no less than four dozen oysters, opening the shells with a flint spear-head, which he had secreted in his waist-band. the earth did not open and swallow him as he had swallowed the oysters, and from that moment he became suspicious of all the ideas and customs imposed by the old men and wizards. two or three touching incidents in domestic life, which occurred when whywhy was about twelve years old, confirmed him in the dissidence of his dissent, for the first radical was the first dissenter. the etiquette of the age (which survives among the yorubas and other tribes) made it criminal for a woman to see her husband, or even to mention his name. when, therefore, the probable father of why-why became weary of supporting his family, he did not need to leave the cave and tramp abroad. he merely ceased to bring in tree-frogs, grubs, roots, and the other supplies which why-why's mother was accustomed to find concealed under a large stone in the neighbourhood of the cave. the poor pious woman, who had always religiously abstained from seeing her lord's face, and from knowing his name, was now reduced to destitution. there was no one to grub up pig-nuts for her, nor to extract insects of an edible sort from beneath the bark of trees. as she could not identify her invisible husband, she was unable to denounce him to the wizards, who would, for a consideration, have frightened him out of his life or into the performance of his duty. thus, even with the aid of why-why, existence became too laborious for her strength, and she gradually pined away. as she lay in a half-fainting and almost dying state, why-why rushed out to find the most celebrated local medicine-man. in half an hour the chief medicine-man appeared, dressed in the skin of a wolf, tagged about with bones, skulls, dead lizards, and other ornaments of his official attire. you may see a picture very like him in mr. catlin's book about the mandans. armed with a drum and a rattle, he leaped into the presence of the sick woman, uttering unearthly yells. his benevolent action and "bedside manner" were in accordance with the medical science of the time. he merely meant to frighten away the evil spirit which (according to the received hypothesis) was destroying the mother of why-why. what he succeeded in doing was to make why-why's mother give a faint scream, after which her jaw fell, and her eyes grew fixed and staring. the grief of why-why was profound. reckless of consequences, he declared, with impious publicity, that the law which forbade a wife to see her own husband, and the medical science which frightened poor women to death were cruel and ridiculous. as why-why (though a promising child) was still under age, little notice was taken of remarks which were attributed to the petulance of youth. but when he went further, and transgressed the law which then forbade a brother to speak to his own sister, on pain of death, the general indignation was no longer repressed. in vain did why-why plead that if he neglected his sister no one else would comfort her. his life was spared, but the unfortunate little girl's bones were dug up by a german savant last year, in a condition which makes it only too certain that cannibalism was practised by the early natives of the mediterranean coast. these incidents then, namely, the neglect of his unknown father, the death of his mother, and the execution of his sister, confirmed why-why in the belief that radical social reforms were desirable. the coming of age of why-why was celebrated in the manner usual among primitive people. the ceremonies were not of a character to increase his pleasure in life, nor his respect for constituted authority. when he was fourteen years of age, he was pinned, during his sleep, by four adult braves, who knocked out his front teeth, shaved his head with sharp chips of quartzite, cut off the first joint of his little finger, and daubed his whole body over with clay. they then turned him loose, imposing on him his name of why-why; and when his shaven hair began to show through the clay daubing, the women of the tribe washed him, and painted him black and white. the indignation of why-why may readily be conceived. why, he kept asking, should you shave a fellow's head, knock out his teeth, cut off his little finger, daub him with clay, and paint him like a pelican, because he is fourteen years old? to these radical questions, the braves (who had all lost their own front teeth) replied, that this was the custom of their fathers. they tried to console him, moreover, by pointing out that now he might eat oysters, and catch himself a bride from some hostile tribe, or give his sister in exchange for a wife. this was little comfort to why-why. he had eaten oysters already without supernatural punishment, and his sister, as we have seen, had suffered the extreme penalty of the law. nor could our hero persuade himself that to club and carry off a hostile girl in the dark was the best way to win a loving wife. he remained single, and became a great eater of oysters. the manhood of why-why. as time went on our hero developed into one of the most admired braves of his community. no one was more successful in battle, and it became almost a proverb that when why-why went on the war-path there was certain to be meat enough and to spare, even for the women. why-why, though a radical, was so far from perfect that he invariably complied with the usages of his time when they seemed rational and useful. if a little tattooing on the arm would have saved men from a horrible disease, he would have had all the tribe tattooed. he was no bigot. he kept his word, and paid his debts, for no one was ever very "advanced" all at once. it was only when the ceremonious or superstitious ideas of his age and race appeared to him senseless and mischievous that he rebelled, or at least hinted his doubts and misgivings. this course of conduct made him feared and hated both by the medicine-men, or clerical wizards, and by the old women of the tribe. they naturally tried to take their revenge upon him in the usual way. a charge of heresy, of course, could not well be made, for in the infancy of our race there were neither courts of arches nor general assemblies. but it was always possible to accuse why-why of malevolent witchcraft. the medicine-men had not long to wait for an opportunity. an old woman died, as old women will, and every one was asking "who sent the evil spirit that destroyed poor old dada?" in why-why's time no other explanation of natural death by disease or age was entertained. the old woman's grave was dug, and all the wizards intently watched for the first worm or insect that should crawl out of the mould. the head-wizard soon detected a beetle, making, as he alleged, in the direction where why-why stood observing the proceedings. the wizard at once denounced our hero as the cause of the old woman's death. to have blenched for a moment would have been ruin. but why-why merely lifted his hand, and in a moment a spear flew from it which pinned his denouncer ignominiously to a pine-tree. the funeral of the old woman was promptly converted into a free fight, in which there was more noise than bloodshed. after this event the medicine-men left why-why to his own courses, and waited for a chance of turning public opinion against the sceptic. the conduct of why-why was certainly calculated to outrage all conservative feeling. when on the war-path or in the excitement of the chase he had even been known to address a tribesman by his name, as "old cow," or "flying cloud," or what not, instead of adopting the orthodox nomenclature of the classificatory system, and saying, "third cousin by the mother's side, thrice removed, will you lend me an arrow?" or whatever it might be. on "tabu-days," once a week, when the rest of the people in the cave were all silent, sedentary, and miserable (from some superstitious feeling which we can no longer understand), why-why would walk about whistling, or would chip his flints or set his nets. he ought to have been punished with death, but no one cared to interfere with him. instead of dancing at the great "corroborees," or religious ballets of his people, he would "sit out" with a girl whose sad, romantic history became fatally interwoven with his own. in vain the medicine-men assured him that pund-jel, the great spirit, was angry. why-why was indifferent to the thunder which was believed to be the voice of pund-jel. his behaviour at the funeral of a celebrated brave actually caused what we would call a reformation in burial ceremonies. it was usual to lay the corpses of the famous dead in a cave, where certain of the tribesmen were sent to watch for forty days and nights the decaying body. this ghastly task was made more severe by the difficulty of obtaining food. everything that the watchers were allowed to eat was cooked outside the cave with complicated ceremonies. if any part of the ritual was omitted, if a drop or a morsel were spilled, the whole rite had to be done over again from the beginning. this was not all. the chief medicine-man took a small portion of the meat in a long spoon, and entered the sepulchral cavern. in the dim light he approached one of the watchers of the dead, danced before him, uttered a mysterious formula of words, and made a shot at the hungry man's mouth with a long spoon. if the shot was straight, if the spoon did not touch the lips or nose or mouth, the watcher made ready to receive a fresh spoonful. but if the attempt failed, if the spoon did not go straight to the mark, the mourners were obliged to wait till all the cooking ceremonies were performed afresh, when the feeding began again. now, why-why was a mourner whom the chief medicine-man was anxious to "spite," as children say, and at the end of three days' watching our hero had not received a morsel of food. the spoon had invariably chanced to miss him. on the fourth night why-why entertained his fellow-watchers with a harangue on the imbecility of the whole proceeding. he walked out of the cave, kicked the chief medicine-man into a ravine, seized the pot full of meat, brought it back with him, and made a hearty meal. the other mourners, half dead with fear, expected to see the corpse they were "waking" arise, "girn," and take some horrible revenge. nothing of the sort occurred, and the burials of the cave dwellers gradually came to be managed in a less irksome way. the loves of verva and why-why. no man, however intrepid, can offend with impunity the most sacred laws of society. why-why proved no exception to this rule. his decline and fall date, we may almost say, from the hour when he bought a fair-haired, blue-eyed female child from a member of a tribe that had wandered out of the far north. the tribe were about to cook poor little verva because her mother was dead, and she seemed a bouche inutile. for the price of a pair of shell fish-hooks, a bone dagger, and a bundle of grass-string whywhy (who had a tender heart) ransomed the child. in the cave she lived an unhappy life, as the other children maltreated and tortured her in the manner peculiar to pitiless infancy. such protection as a man can give to a child the unlucky little girl received from why-why. the cave people, like most savages, made it a rule never to punish their children. why-why got into many quarrels because he would occasionally box the ears of the mischievous imps who tormented poor verva, the fair-haired and blue-eyed captive from the north. there grew up a kind of friendship between why-why and the child. she would follow him with dog-like fidelity and with a stealthy tread when he hunted the red deer in the forests of the alpine maritimes. she wove for him a belt of shells, strung on stout fibres of grass. in this belt why-why would attend the tribal corroborees, where, as has been said, he was inclined to "sit out" with verva and watch, rather than join in the grotesque dance performed as worship to the bear. as verva grew older and ceased to be persecuted by the children, she became beautiful in the unadorned manner of that early time. her friendship with why-why began to embarrass the girl, and our hero himself felt a quite unusual shyness when he encountered the captive girl among the pines on the hillside. both these untutored hearts were strangely stirred, and neither why-why nor verva could imagine wherefore they turned pale or blushed when they met, or even when either heard the other's voice. if why-why had not distrusted and indeed detested the chief medicine-man, he would have sought that worthy's professional advice. but he kept his symptoms to himself, and verva also pined in secret. these artless persons were in love without knowing it. it is not surprising that they did not understand the nature of their complaint, for probably before why-why no one had ever been in love. courtship had consisted in knocking a casual girl on the head in the dark, and the only marriage ceremony had been that of capture. affection on the side of the bride was out of the question, for, as we have remarked, she was never allowed so much as to see her husband's face. probably the institution of falling in love has been evolved in, and has spread from, various early centres of human existence. among the primitive ligurian races, however, why-why and verva must be held the inventors, and, alas! the protomartyrs of the passion. love, like murder, "will out," and events revealed to why-why and verva the true nature of their sentiments. it was a considerable exploit of why-why's that brought him and the northern captive to understand each other. the brother of why-why had died after partaking too freely of a member of a hostile tribe. the cave people, of course, expected why-why to avenge his kinsman. the brother, they said, must have been destroyed by a boilya or vampire, and, as somebody must have sent that vampire against the lad, somebody must be speared for it. such are primitive ideas of medicine and justice. an ordinary brave would have skulked about the dwellings of some neighbouring human groups till he got a chance of knocking over a child or an old woman, after which justice and honour would have been satisfied. but why-why declared that, if he must spear somebody, he would spear a man of importance. the forms of a challenge were therefore notched on a piece of stick, which was solemnly carried by heralds to the most renowned brave of a community settled in the neighbourhood of the modern san remo. this hero might have very reasonably asked, "why should i spear why-why because his brother over-ate himself?" the laws of honour, however (which even at this period had long been established), forbade a gentleman when challenged to discuss the reasonableness of the proceeding. the champions met on a sandy plain beside a little river near the modern ventimiglia. an amphitheatre of rock surrounded them, and, far beyond, the valley was crowned by the ancient snow of an alpine peak. the tribes of either party gathered in the rocky amphitheatre, and breathlessly watched the issue of the battle. each warrior was equipped with a shield, a sheaf of spears, and a heavy, pointed club. at thirty paces distance they began throwing, and the spectators enjoyed a beautiful exposition of warlike skill. both men threw with extreme force and deadly aim; while each defended himself cleverly with his shield. the spears were exhausted, and but one had pierced the thigh of why-why, while his opponent had two sticking in his neck and left arm. then, like two meeting thunder-clouds, the champions dashed at each other with their clubs. the sand was whirled up around them as they spun in the wild dance of battle, and the clubs rattled incessantly on the heads and shields. twice why-why was down, but he rose with wonderful agility, and never dropped his shield. a third time he stooped beneath a tremendous whack, but when all seemed over, grasped a handful of sand, and flung it right in his enemy's eyes. the warrior reeled, blinded and confused, when why-why gave point with the club in his antagonist's throat; the blood leaped out, and both fell senseless on the plain. * * * * * when the slow mist cleared from before the eyes of why-why he found himself (he was doubtless the first hero of the many heroes who have occupied this romantic position) stretched on a grassy bed, and watched by the blue eyes of verva. where were the sand, the stream, the hostile warrior, the crowds of friends and foes? it was verva's part to explain. the champion of the other tribe had never breathed after he received the club-thrust, and the chief medicine-man had declared that why-why was also dead. he had suggested that both champions should be burned in the desolate spot where they lay, that their boilyas, or ghosts, might not harm the tribes. the lookers-on had gone to their several and distant caves to fetch fire for the ceremony (they possessed no means of striking a light), and verva, unnoticed, had lingered beside why-why, and laid his bleeding head in her lap. why-why had uttered a groan, and the brave girl dragged him from the field into a safe retreat among the woods not far from the stream. why-why had been principally beaten about the head, and his injuries, therefore, were slight. after watching the return of the tribesmen, and hearing the chief medicine-man explain that why-why's body had been carried away by "the bad black-fellow with a tail who lives under the earth," why-why enjoyed the pleasure of seeing his kinsmen and his foes leave the place to its natural silence. then he found words, and poured forth his heart to verva. they must never be sundered--they must be man and wife! the girl leaned her golden head on why-why's dark shoulder, and sniffed at him, for kissing was an institution not yet evolved. she wept. she had a dreadful thing to tell him,--that she could never be his. "look at this mark," she said, exposing the inner side of her arm. why-why looked, shuddered, and turned pale. on verva's arm he recognized, almost defaced, the same tattooed badge that wound its sinuous spirals across his own broad chest and round his manly legs. _it was the mark of the serpent_! both were serpents; both, unknown to why-why, though not to verva, bore the same name, the same badge, and, if why-why had been a religious man, both would have worshipped the same reptile. marriage between them then was a thing accursed; man punished it by death. why-why bent his head and thought. he remembered all his youth--the murder of his sister for no crime; the killing of the serpent, and how no evil came of it; the eating of the oysters, and how the earth had not opened and swallowed him. his mind was made up. it was absolutely certain that his tribe and verva's kin had never been within a thousand miles of each other. in a few impassioned words he explained to verva his faith, his simple creed that a thing was not necessarily wrong because the medicine-men said so, and the tribe believed them. the girl's own character was all trustfulness, and why-why was the person she trusted. "oh, why-why, dear," she said blushing (for she had never before ventured to break the tribal rule which forbade calling any one by his name), "oh, why-why, you are _always_ right!" and o'er the hills, and far away beyond their utmost purple rim, beyond the night, across the day, through all the world she followed him. la mort why-why. two years had passed like a dream in the pleasant valley which, in far later ages, the romans called vallis aurea, and which we call vallauris. here, at a distance of some thirty miles from the cave and the tribe, dwelt in fancied concealment why-why and verva. the clear stream was warbling at their feet, in the bright blue weather of spring; the scent of the may blossoms was poured abroad, and, lying in the hollow of whywhy's shield, a pretty little baby with why-why's dark eyes and verva's golden locks was crowing to his mother. why-why sat beside her, and was busily making the first european pipkin with the clay which he had found near vallauris. all was peace. * * * * * there was a low whizzing sound, something seemed to rush past why-why, and with a scream verva fell on her face. a spear had pierced her breast. with a yell like that of a wounded lion, why-why threw himself on the bleeding body of his bride. for many moments he heard no sound but her long, loud and unconscious breathing. he did not mark the yells of his tribesmen, nor feel the spears that rained down on himself, nor see the hideous face of the chief medicine-man peering at his own. verva ceased to breathe. there was a convulsion, and her limbs were still. then why-why rose. in his right hand was his famous club, "the watcher of the fords;" in his left his shield. these had never lain far from his hand since he fled with verva. he knew that the end had come, as he had so often dreamt of it; he knew that he was trapped and taken by his offended tribesmen. his first blow shattered the head of the chief medicine-man. then he flung himself, all bleeding from the spears, among the press of savages who started from every lentisk bush and tuft of tall flowering heath. they gave back when four of their chief braves had fallen, and why-why lacked strength and will to pursue them. he turned and drew verva's body beneath the rocky wall, and then he faced his enemies. he threw down shield and club and raised his hands. a light seemed to shine about his face, and his first word had a strange tone that caught the ear and chilled the heart of all who heard him. "listen," he said, "for these are the last words of whywhy. he came like the water, and like the wind he goes, he knew not whence, and he knows not whither. he does not curse you, for you are that which you are. but the day will come" (and here why-why's voice grew louder and his eyes burned), "the day will come when you will no longer be the slave of things like that dead dog," and here he pointed to the shapeless face of the slain medicine-man. "the day will come, when a man shall speak unto his sister in loving kindness, and none shall do him wrong. the day will come when a woman shall unpunished see the face and name the name of her husband. as the summers go by you will not bow down to the hyaenas, and the bears, and worship the adder and the viper. you will not cut and bruise the bodies of your young men, or cruelly strike and seize away women in the darkness. yes, and the time will be when a man may love a woman of the same family name as himself"--but here the outraged religion of the tribesmen could endure no longer to listen to these wild and blasphemous words. a shower of spears flew out, and whywhy fell across the body of verva. his own was "like a marsh full of reeds," said the poet of the tribe, in a song which described these events, "so thick the spears stood in it." * * * * * when he was dead, the tribe knew what they had lost in why-why. they bore his body, with that of verva, to the cave; there they laid the lovers--why-why crowned with a crown of sea-shells, and with a piece of a rare magical substance (iron) at his side. {208} then the tribesmen withdrew from that now holy ground, and built them houses, and forswore the follies of the medicine-men, as why-why had prophesied. many thousands of years later the cave was opened when the railway to genoa was constructed, and the bones of why-why, with the crown, and the fragment of iron, were found where they had been laid by his repentant kinsmen. he had bravely asserted the rights of the individual conscience against the dictates of society; he had lived, and loved, and died, not in vain. last april i plucked a rose beside his cave, and laid it with another that had blossomed at the door of the last house which covered the homeless head of shelley. the prophecies of why-why have been partially fulfilled. brothers, if they happen to be on speaking terms, may certainly speak to their sisters, though we are still, alas, forbidden to marry the sisters of our deceased wives. wives _may_ see their husbands, though in society, they rarely avail themselves of the privilege. young ladies are still forbidden to call young men at large by their christian names; but this tribal law, and survival of the classificatory system, is rapidly losing its force. burials in the savage manner to which why-why objected, will soon, doubtless, be permitted to conscientious nonconformists in the graveyards of the church of england. the teeth of boys are still knocked out at public and private schools, but the ceremony is neither formal nor universal. our advance in liberty is due to an army of forgotten radical martyrs of whom we know less than we do of mr. bradlaugh. a duchess's secret. when i was poor, and honest, and a novelist, i little thought that i should ever be rich, and something not very unlike a duke; and, as to honesty, but an indifferent character. i have had greatness thrust on me. i am, like simpcox in the dramatis personae of "henry iv.," "an impostor;" and yet i scarcely know how i could have escaped this deplorable (though lucrative) position. "love is a great master," says the "mort d'arthur," and i perhaps may claim sympathy and pity as a victim of love. the following unaffected lines (in which only names and dates are disguised) contain all the apology i can offer to a censorious world. two or three years ago i was dependent on literature for my daily bread. i was a regular man-of-all-work. having the advantage of knowing a clerk in the foreign office who went into society (he had been my pupil at the university), i picked up a good deal of scandalous gossip, which i published in the pimlico postboy, a journal of fashion. i was also engaged as sporting prophet to the tipster, and was not less successful than my contemporaries as a vaticinator of future events. at the same time i was contributing a novel (anonymously) to the fleet street magazine, a very respectable publication, though perhaps a little dull. the editor had expressly requested me to make things rather more lively, and i therefore gave my imagination free play in the construction of my plot. i introduced a beautiful girl, daughter of a preacher in the shaker community. her hand was sought in marriage by a sporting baronet, who had seen her as he pursued the chase through the pathless glens of the new forest. this baronet she married after suffering things intolerable from the opposition of the shakers. here i had a good deal of padding about shakers and their ways; and, near the end of the sixth chapter my heroine became the wife of sir william buckley. but the baronet proved a perfect william rufus for variegated and versatile blackguardism. lady buckley's life was made impossible by his abominable conduct. at this juncture my heroine chanced to be obliged to lunch at a railway refreshment-room. my last chapter had described the poor lady lunching lonely in the bleak and gritty waiting room of swilby junction, lonely except for the company of her little boy. i showed how she fell into a strange and morbid vein of reflection suggested by the qualities of the local sherry. if she was to live, her lord and master, sir w. buckley, must die! and i described how a fiendish temptation was whispered to her by the glass of local sherry. "william's constitution, strong as it is," she murmured inwardly, "could never stand a dozen of that sherry. suppose he chanced to partake of it--accidentally--rather late in the evening." amidst these reflections i allowed the december instalment of "the baronet's wife" to come to a conclusion in the fleet street magazine. obviously crime was in the wind. it is my habit to read the "agony column" (as it is flippantly called), the second column in the outer sheet of the times. who knows but he may there see something to his advantage; and, besides, the mysterious advertisements may suggest ideas for plots. one day i took up the "agony column," as usual, at my club, and, to my surprise, read the following advertisement:-"f. s. m.--sherry wine. wreck of the "jingo."--wretched boy: stay your unhallowed hand! would you expose an erring mother's secret? author will please communicate with messrs. mantlepiece and co., solicitors, upton-on-the-wold." as soon as i saw this advertisement, as soon as my eyes fell on "sherry wine" and "author," i felt that here was something for me. "f. s. m." puzzled me at first, but i read it fleet street magazine, by a flash of inspiration. "wretched boy" seemed familiar and unappropriate--i was twenty-nine--but what of that? of course i communicated with messrs. mantlepiece, saying that i had reason for supposing that i was the "author" alluded to in the advertisement. as to the words, "wreck of the jingo" they entirely beat me, but i hoped that some light would be thrown on their meaning by the respectable firm of solicitors. it did occur to me that if any one had reasons for communicating with me, it would have been better and safer to address a letter to me, under cover, to the editor of the fleet street magazine. but the public have curious ideas on these matters. two days after i wrote to messrs. mantlepiece i received a very guarded reply, in which i was informed that their client wished to make my acquaintance, and that a carriage would await me, if i presented myself at upton-on-the-wold station, by the train arriving at 5.45 on friday. well, i thought to myself, i may as well do a "week-ending," as some people call it, with my anonymous friend as anywhere else. at the same time i knew that the "carriage" might be hired by enemies to convey me to the pauper lunatic asylum or to west ham, the place where people disappear mysteriously. i might be the victim of a rival's jealousy (and many men, novelists of most horrible imaginings, envied my talents and success), or a nihilist plot might have drawn me into its machinery. but i was young, and i thought i would see the thing out. my journey was unadventurous, if you except a row with a german, who refused to let me open the window. but this has nothing to do with my narrative, and is not a false scent to make a guileless reader keep his eye on the teuton. some novelists permit themselves these artifices, which i think untradesmanlike and unworthy. when i arrived at upton, the station-master made a charge at my carriage, and asked me if i was "the gentleman for the towers?" the whole affair was so mysterious that i thought it better to answer in the affirmative. my luggage (a gladstone bag) was borne by four stately and liveried menials to a roomy and magnificent carriage, in which everything, from the ducal crown on the silver foot-warmers to the four splendid bays, breathed of opulence, directed and animated by culture. i dismissed all thoughts of the pauper lunatic asylum and the nihilists, and was whirled through miles of park and up an avenue lighted by electricity. we reached the baronial gateway of the towers, a vast gothic pile in the later manner of inigo jones, and a seneschal stood at the foot of a magnificent staircase to receive me. i had never seen a seneschal before, but i recognized him by the peeled white wand he carried, by his great silver chain, and his black velvet coat and knee-breeches. "your lordship's room," says the seneschal (obviously an old and confidential family servant), "is your old one--the tapestried chamber. her grace is waiting anxiously for you." then two menials marched, with my gladstone bag, to the apartment thus indicated. for me, i felt in a dream, or like a man caught up into the fairyland of the "arabian nights." "her grace" was all very well--the aristocracy always admired my fictitious creations; but "your lordship!" why your lordship? then the chilling idea occurred to me that i had _not_ been "the gentleman for the towers;" that i was in the position of the hero of "happy thoughts" when he went to the duke's by mistake for the humble home of the plyte frazers. but i was young. "her grace" could not eat me, and i determined, as i said before, to see it out. i dressed very deliberately, and that process over, was led by the worthy seneschal into a singular octagonal boudoir, hung with soft dark blue arras. the only person in the room was a gaunt, middle-aged lady, in deep mourning. though i knew no more of the british aristocracy than mr. w. d. howells, of new york, i recognized her for the duchess by her nose, which resembled those worn by the duchesses of mr. du maurier. as soon as we were alone, she rose, drew me to her bosom, much to my horror, looked at me long and earnestly, and at last exclaimed, "how changed you are, percy!" (my name is thomas--thomas cobson.) before i could reply, she was pouring out reproaches on me for having concealed my existence, and revealed in my novel what she spoke of as "the secret." when she grew, not calm, but fatigued, i ventured to ask why she had conferred on me the honour of her invitation, and how i had been unfortunate enough to allude to affairs of which i had certainly no knowledge. her reply was given with stately dignity. "you need not pretend," she said, "to have forgotten what i told you in this very room, before you left england for an african tour in the jingo. i then revealed to you the secret of my life, the secret of the duke's death. your horror when you heard how that most unhappy man compelled me to free myself from his tyranny, by a method which his habits rendered only too easy--in short, by a dose of cheap sherry, was deep and natural. oh, percy, you did not kiss your mother before starting on your ill-omened voyage. as soon as i heard of the wreck of the jingo, and that you were the only passenger drowned, i recognized an artifice, un vieux truc, by which you hoped to escape from a mother of whom you were ashamed. you had only pretended to be the victim of ocean's rage! people who are drowned in novels always _do_ reappear: and, percy, your mother is an old novel-reader! my agents have ever since been on your track, but it was reserved for _me_ to discover the last of the birkenheads in the anonymous author of the 'baronet's wife.' that romance, in which you have had the baseness to use your knowledge of a mother's guilt as a motif in your twopenny plot, unveiled to me the secret of your hidden existence. you must stop the story, or alter the following numbers; you must give up your discreditable mode of life. heavens, that a birkenhead should be a literary character! and you must resume your place in my house and in society." here the duchess of stalybridge paused; she had quite recovered that repose of manner and icy hauteur which, i understand, is the heritage of the house of birkenhead. for my part, i had almost lost the modest confidence which is, i believe, hereditary in the family of cobson. it was a scene to make the boldest stand aghast. here was an unknown lady of the highest rank confessing a dreadful crime to a total stranger, and recognizing in that stranger her son, and the heir to an enormous property and a title as old--as old as british dukedoms, however old they may be. ouida would have said "heir to a title older than a thousand centuries," but i doubt if the english duke is so ancient as that, or a direct descendant of the dukes of edom mentioned in holy writ. i began pouring out an incoherent flood of evidence to show that i was only thomas cobson, and had never been any one else, but at that moment a gong sounded, and a young lady entered the room. she also was dressed in mourning, and the duchess introduced her to me as my cousin, miss birkenhead. "gwyneth was a child, percy," said my august hostess, "when you went to africa." i shook hands with my cousin with as much composure as i could assume, for, to tell the truth, i was not only moved by my recent adventures, but i had on the spot fallen hopelessly in love with my new relative. it was le coup de foudre of a french writer on the affections--m. stendhal. miss birkenhead had won my heart from the first moment of our meeting. why should i attempt to describe a psychological experience as rare as instantaneous conversion, or more so? miss birkenhead was tall and dark, with a proud pale face, and eyes which unmistakably indicated the possession of a fine sense of humour. proud pale people seldom look when they first meet a total stranger--still more a long-lost cousin--as if they had some difficulty in refraining from mirth. miss birkenhead's face was as fixed and almost as pure as marble, but i read sympathy and amusement and kindness in her eyes. presently the door opened again, and an elderly man in the dress of a priest came in. to him i was presented-"your old governor, percy." for a moment my unhappy middle-class association made me suppose that the elderly ecclesiastic was my "old guv'nor,"--my father, the late duke. but an instant's reflection proved to me that her grace meant "tutor" by governor. i am ashamed to say that i now entered into the spirit of the scene, shook the holy man warmly by the hand, and quoted a convenient passage from horace. he appeared to fall into the trap, and began to speak of old recollections of my boyhood. stately liveried menials now, greatly to my surprise, brought in tea. i was just declining tea (for i expected dinner in a few minutes), when a voice (a sweet low voice) whispered-"take some!" i took some, providentially, as it turned out. again, i was declining tea-cake, when i could have sworn i heard the same voice (so low that it seemed like the admonition of a passing spirit) say-"take some!" i took some, for i was exceedingly hungry; and then the conversation lapsed, began again vaguely, and lapsed again. we all know that wretched quarter of an hour, or half hour, which unpunctual guests make us pass in famine and fatigue while they keep dinner waiting. upon my word, we waited till half-past eleven before dinner was announced. but for the tea, i must have perished; for, like the butler in sir george dasent's novel, "i likes my meals regular." the duchess had obviously forgotten all about dinner. there was a spinning-wheel in the room, and she sat and span like an elderly fate. when dinner was announced at last, i began to fear it would never end. the menu covered _both sides_ of the card. the duchess ate little, and "hardly anything was drunk." at last the ladies left us, about one in the morning. i saw my chance, and began judiciously to "draw" the chaplain. it appeared that the duchess did not always dine at half-past eleven. the feast was a movable one, from eight o'clock onwards. the duchess and the establishment had got into these habits during the old duke's time. a very strange man the old duke; rarely got up till eight in the evening, often prolonged breakfast till next day. "but i need not tell _you_ all this, percy, my old pupil," said the chaplain; and he winked as a clergyman ought not to wink. "my dear sir," cried i, encouraged by this performance, "for heaven's sake tell me what all this means? in this so-called nineteenth century, in our boasted age of progress, what _does_ the duchess mean by her invitation to me, and by her conduct at large? indeed, why is _she_ at large?" the chaplain drew closer to me. "did ye ever hear of a duchess in a madhouse?" said he; and i owned that i never had met with such an incident in my reading (unless there is one in webster's plays, somewhere). "well, then, who is to make a beginning?" asked the priest. "the duchess has not a relation in the world but miss birkenhead, the only daughter of a son of the last duke but one. the late duke was a dreadful man, and he turned the poor duchess's head with the life he led her. the drowning of her only son in the jingo finished the business. she has got that story about"--(here he touched the decanter of sherry: i nodded)--"she has got that story into her head, and she believes her son is alive; otherwise she is as sane and unimaginative as--as--as mr. chaplin," said he, with a flash of inspiration. "happily you are an honest man, or you seem like one, and won't take advantage of her delusion." this was all i could get out of the chaplain; indeed, there was no more to be got. i went to bed, but not to sleep. next day, and many other days, i spent wrestling in argument with the duchess. i brought her my certificate of baptism, my testamurs in smalls and greats, an old passport, a bill of poole's, anything i could think of to prove my identity. she was obdurate, and only said--"if you are not percy, how do you know my secret?" i had in the meantime to alter the intended course of my novel--"the baronet's wife." the baronet was made to become a reformed character. but in all those days at the lonely towers, and in the intervals of arguing with the poor duchess, i could not but meet gwyneth birkenhead. we met, not as cousins, for miss birkenhead had only too clearly appreciated the situation from the moment she first met me. the old seneschal, too, was in the secret; i don't know what the rest of the menials thought. they were accustomed to the duchess. but if gwyneth and i did not meet as cousins, we met as light-hearted young people, in a queer situation, and in a strange, dismal old house. _we_ could not in the selfsame mansion dwell without some stir of heart, some malady; we could not sit at meals but feel how well it soothed each to be the other by. indeed _i_ could not sit at meals without being gratefully reminded of gwyneth's advice about "taking some" on the night of my first arrival at the towers. these queer happy times ended. one day a party of archaeologists came to visit the towers. they were members of a "society for badgering the proprietors of old houses," and they had been lunching at upton-on-the-wold. after luncheon they invaded the towers, personally conducted by mr. bulkin, a very learned historian. bulkin had nearly plucked me in modern history, and when i heard his voice afar off i arose and fled swiftly. unluckily the duchess chanced, by an unprecedented accident, to be in the library, a room which the family never used, and which was, therefore, exhibited to curious strangers. into this library bulkin precipitated himself, followed by his admirers, and began to lecture on the family portraits. beginning with the crusaders (painted by lorenzo credi) he soon got down to modern times. he took no notice of the duchess, whom he believed to be a housekeeper; but, posting himself between the unfortunate lady and the door, gave a full account of the career of the late duke. this was more than the duchess (who knew all about the subject of the lecture) could stand; but mr. bulkin, referring her to his own appendices, finished his address, and offered the duchess half-a-crown as he led his troop to other victories. from this accident the duchess never recovered. her spirits, at no time high, sank to zero, and she soon passed peacefully away. she left a will in which her personal property (about 40,000 pounds a year) was bequeathed to gwyneth, "as my beloved son, percy, has enough for his needs," the revenues of the dukedom of stalybridge being about 300,000 pounds per annum before the agricultural depression. she might well have thought i needed no more. of course i put in no claim for these estates, messuages, farms, mines, and so forth, nor for my hereditary ducal pension of 15,000 pounds. but gwyneth and i are not uncomfortably provided for, and i no longer contribute paragraphs of gossip to the pimlico postboy, nor yet do i vaticinate in the columns of the tipster. perhaps i ought to have fled from the towers the morning after my arrival. and i declare that i would have fled but for gwyneth and "love, that is a great master." the house of strange stories. the house of strange stories, as i prefer to call it (though it is not known by that name in the county), seems the very place for a ghost. yet, though so many peoples have dwelt upon its site and in its chambers, though the ancient elizabethan oak, and all the queer tables and chairs that a dozen generations have bequeathed, might well be tenanted by ancestral spirits, and disturbed by rappings, it is a curious fact that there is _not_ a ghost in the house of strange stories. on my earliest visit to this mansion, i was disturbed, i own, by a not unpleasing expectancy. there _must_, one argued, be a shadowy lady in green in the bedroom, or, just as one was falling asleep, the spectre of a jesuit would creep out of the priest's hole, where he was starved to death in the "spacious times of great elizabeth," and would search for a morsel of bread. the priest was usually starved out, sentinels being placed in all the rooms and passages, till at last hunger and want of air would drive the wretched man to give himself up, for the sake of change of wretchedness. then perhaps he was hanged, or he "died in our hands," as one of elizabeth's officers euphemistically put it, when the jesuit was tortured to death in the tower. no "house of seven gables" across the atlantic can have quite such memories as these, yet, oddly enough, i do not know of more than one ghost of a jesuit in all england. _he_ appeared to a learned doctor in a library, and the learned doctor described the phantom, not long ago, in the athenaeum. "does the priest of your 'priest-hole' walk?" i asked the squire one winter evening in the house of strange stories. darkness had come to the rescue of the pheasants about four in the afternoon, and all of us, men and women, were sitting at afternoon tea in the firelit study, drowsily watching the flicker of the flame on the black panelling. the characters will introduce themselves, as they take part in the conversation. "no," said the squire, "even the priest does not walk. somehow very few of the jesuits have left ghosts in country houses. they are just the customers you would expect to 'walk,' but they don't." there is, to be sure, one priestly ghost-story, which you may or may not know, and i tell it here, though i don't believe it, just as i heard it from the bishop of dunchester himself. according to this most affable and distinguished prelate, now no more, he once arrived in a large country house shortly before dinner-time; he was led to his chamber, he dressed, and went downstairs. not knowing the plan of the house, he found his way into the library, a chamber lined with the books of many studious generations. here the learned bishop remained for a few minutes, when the gong sounded for dinner, and a domestic, entering the apartment showed the prelate the way to the drawing-room, where the other guests were now assembled. the bishop, when the company appeared complete, and was beginning to manoeuvre towards the dining-room, addressed his host (whom we shall call lord birkenhead), and observed that the ecclesiastic had not yet appeared. "what ecclesiastic?" asked his lordship. "the priest," replied the bishop, "whom i met in the library." upon this lord birkenhead's countenance changed somewhat, and, with a casual remark, he put the question by. after dinner, when the ladies had left the men to their wine, lord birkenhead showed some curiosity as to "the ecclesiastic," and learned that he had seemed somewhat shy and stiff, yet had the air of a man just about to enter into conversation. "at that moment," said the bishop, "i was summoned to the drawing-room, and did not at first notice that my friend the priest had not followed me. he had an interesting and careworn face," added the bishop. "you have certainly seen the family ghost," said lord birkenhead; "he only haunts the library, where, as you may imagine, his retirement is but seldom disturbed." and, indeed, the habits of the great, in england, are not studious, as a rule. "then i must return, lord birkenhead, to your library," said the bishop, "and that without delay, for this appears to be a matter in which the services of one of the higher clergy, however unworthy, may prove of incalculable benefit." "if i could only hope," answered lord birkenhead (who was a catholic) with a deep sigh, "that his reverence would recognize anglican orders!" the bishop was now, as may be fancied, on his mettle, and without further parley, retired to the library. the rest of the men awaited his return, and beguiled the moments of expectation with princely havannas. in about half an hour the bishop reappeared, and a close observer might have detected a shade of paleness on his apostolic features, yet his face was radiant like that of a good man who has performed a good action. being implored to relieve the anxiety of the company, the worthy prelate spoke as follows: "on entering the library, which was illuminated by a single lamp, i found myself alone. i drew a chair to the fire, and, taking up a volume of m. renan's which chanced to be lying on the table, i composed myself to detect the sophistries of this brilliant but unprincipled writer. thus, by an effort of will, i distracted myself from that state of 'expectant attention' to which modern science attributes such phantoms and spectral appearances as can neither be explained away by a morbid condition of the liver, nor as caused by the common rat (mus rattus). i should observe by the way," said the learned bishop, interrupting his own narrative, "that scepticism will in vain attempt to account, by the latter cause, namely rats, for the spectres, lemures, simulacra, and haunted houses of the ancient greeks and romans. with these supernatural phenomena, as they prevailed in athens and rome, we are well acquainted, not only from the mostellaria of plautus, but from the numerous ghost-stories of pliny, plutarch, the philopseudes of lucian, and similar sources. but it will at once be perceived, and admitted even by candid men of science, that these spiritual phenomena of the classical period cannot plausibly, nor even possibly, be attributed to the agency of rats, when we recall the fact that the rat was an animal unknown to the ancients. as the learned m. selys longch observes in his etudes de micromammalogie (paris, 1839, p. 59), 'the origin of the rat is obscure, the one thing certain is that the vermin was unknown to the ancients, and that it arrived in europe, introduced, perhaps, by the crusaders, after the middle ages.' i think," added the prelate, looking round, not without satisfaction, "that i have completely disposed of the rat hypothesis, as far, at least, as the ghosts of classical tradition are concerned." "your reasoning, bishop," replied lord birkenhead, "is worthy of your reputation; but pray pardon the curiosity which entreats you to return from the simulacra of the past to the ghost of the present." "i had not long been occupied with m. renan," said the bishop, thus adjured, "when i became aware of the presence of another person in the room. i think my eyes had strayed from the volume, as i turned a page, to the table, on which i perceived the brown strong hand of a young man. looking up, i beheld my friend the priest, who was indeed a man of some twenty-seven years of age, with a frank and open, though somewhat careworn, aspect. i at once rose, and asked if i could be of service to him in anything, and i trust i did not betray any wounding suspicion that he was other than a man of flesh and blood. "'you can, indeed, my lord, relieve me of a great burden,' said the young man, and it was apparent enough that he _did_ acknowledge the validity of anglican orders. 'will you kindly take from the shelf that volume of cicero "de officiis," he said, pointing to a copy of an elzevir variorum edition,--not the small duodecimo elzevir,--'remove the paper you will find there, and burn it in the fire on the hearth.' "'certainly i will do as you say, but will you reward me by explaining the reason of your request?' "'in me,' said the appearance, 'you behold francis wilton, priest. i was born in 1657, and, after adventures and an education with which i need not trouble you, found myself here as chaplain to the family of the lord birkenhead of the period. it chanced one day that i heard in confession, from the lips of lady birkenhead, a tale so strange, moving, and, but for the sacred circumstances of the revelation, so incredible, that my soul had no rest for thinking thereon. at last, neglecting my vow, and fearful that i might become forgetful of any portion of so marvellous a narrative, i took up my pen and committed the confession to the security of manuscript. litera scripta manet. scarcely had i finished my unholy task when the sound of a distant horn told me that the hunt (to which pleasure i was passionately given) approached the demesne. i thrust the written confession into that volume of cicero, hurried to the stable, saddled my horse with my own hands, and rode in the direction whence i heard the music of the hounds. on my way a locked gate barred my progress. i put rupert at it, he took off badly, fell, and my spirit passed away in the fall. but not to the place of repose did my sinful spirit wing its flight. i found myself here in the library, where, naturally, scarcely any one ever comes except the maids. when i would implore them to destroy the unholy document that binds me to earth, they merely scream; nor have i found any scion of the house, nor any guest, except your lordship, of more intrepid resolution or more charitable mood. and now, i trust, you will release me.' "i rose (for i had seated myself during his narrative), my heart was stirred with pity; i took down the cicero, and lit on a sheet of yellow paper covered with faded manuscript, which, of course, i did not read. i turned to the hearth, tossed on the fire the sere old paper, which blazed at once, and then, hearing the words pax vobiscum, i looked round. but i was alone. after a few minutes, devoted to private ejaculations, i returned to the dining-room; and that is all my story. your maids need no longer dread the ghost of the library. he is released." "will any one take any more wine?" asked lord birkenhead, in tones of deep emotion. "no? then suppose we join the ladies." "well," said one of the ladies, the girton girl, when the squire had finished the prelate's narrative, "_i_ don't call that much of a story. what was lady birkenhead's confession about? that's what one really wants to know." "the bishop could not possibly have read the paper," said the bachelor of arts, one of the guests; "not as a gentleman, nor a bishop." "i wish _i_ had had the chance," said the girton girl. "perhaps the confession was in latin," said the bachelor of arts. the girton girl disdained to reply to this unworthy sneer. "i have often observed," she said in a reflective voice, "that the most authentic and best attested bogies don't come to very much. they appear in a desultory manner, without any context, so to speak, and, like other difficulties, require a context to clear up their meaning." these efforts of the girton girl to apply the methods of philology to spectres, were received in silence. the women did not understand them, though they had a strong personal opinion about their learned author. "the only ghost _i_ ever came across, or, rather, came within measurable distance of, never appeared at all so far as one knew." "miss lebas has a story," said the squire, "won't she tell us her story?" the ladies murmured, "do, please." "it really cannot be called a ghost-story," remarked miss lebas, "it was only an uncomfortable kind of coincidence, and i never think of it without a shudder. but i know there is not any reason at all why it should make any of _you_ shudder; so don't be disappointed. "it was the long vacation before last," said the girton girl, "and i went on a reading-party to bantry bay, with wyndham and toole of somerville, and clare of lady margaret's. leighton coached us." "dear me! with all these young men, my dear?" asked the maiden aunt. "they were all women of my year, except miss leighton of newnham, who was our coach," answered the girton girl composedly. "dear me! i beg your pardon for interrupting you," said the maiden aunt. "well, term-time was drawing near, and bantry bay was getting pretty cold, when i received an invitation from lady garryowen to stay with them at dundellan on my way south. they were two very dear, old, hospitable irish ladies, the last of their race, lady garryowen and her sister, miss patty. they were _so_ hospitable that, though i did not know it, dundellan was quite full when i reached it, overflowing with young people. the house has nothing very remarkable about it: a grey, plain building, with remains of the chateau about it, and a high park wall. in the garden wall there is a small round tower, just like those in the precinct wall at st. andrews. the ground floor is not used. on the first floor there is a furnished chamber with a deep round niche, almost a separate room, like that in queen mary's apartments in holy rood. the first floor has long been fitted up as a bedroom and dressing-room, but it had not been occupied, and a curious old spinning-wheel in the corner (which has nothing to do with my story, if you can call it a story), must have been unused since '98, at least. i reached dublin late--our train should have arrived at half-past six--it was ten before we toiled into the station. the dundellan carriage was waiting for me, and, after an hour's drive, i reached the house. the dear old ladies had sat up for me, and i went to bed as soon as possible, in a very comfortable room. i fell asleep at once, and did not waken till broad daylight, between seven and eight, when, as my eyes wandered about, i saw, by the pictures on the wall, and the names on the books beside my bed, that miss patty must have given up her own room to me. i was quite sorry and, as i dressed, determined to get her to let me change into any den rather than accept this sacrifice. i went downstairs, and found breakfast ready, but neither lady garryowen nor miss patty. looking out of the window into the garden, i heard, for the only time in my life, the wild irish _keen_ over the dead, and saw the old nurse wailing and wringing her hands and hurrying to the house. as soon as she entered she told me, with a burst of grief, and in language i shall not try to imitate, that miss patty was dead. "when i arrived the house was so full that there was literally no room for me. but 'dundellan was never beaten yet,' the old ladies had said. there was still the room in the tower. but this room had such an evil reputation for being 'haunted' that the servants could hardly be got to go near it, at least after dark, and the dear old ladies never dreamed of sending any of their guests to pass a bad night in a place with a bad name. miss patty, who had the courage of a bayard, did not think twice. she went herself to sleep in the haunted tower, and left her room to me. and when the old nurse went to call her in the morning, she could not waken miss patty. she was dead. heart-disease, they called it. of course," added the girton girl, "as i said, it was only a coincidence. but the irish servants could not be persuaded that miss patty had not seen whatever the thing was that they believed to be in the garden tower. i don't know what it was. you see the context was dreadfully vague, a mere fragment." there was a little silence after the girton girl's story. "i never heard before in my life," said the maiden aunt, at last, "of any host or hostess who took the haunted room themselves, when the house happened to be full. they always send the stranger within their gates to it, and then pretend to be vastly surprised when he does not have a good night. i had several bad nights myself once. in ireland too." "tell us all about it, judy," said her brother, the squire. "no," murmured the maiden aunt. "you would only laugh at me. there was no ghost. i didn't hear anything. i didn't see anything. i didn't even _smell_ anything, as they do in that horrid book, 'the haunted hotel.'" "then why had you such bad nights?" "oh, i _felt_" said the maiden aunt, with a little shudder. "what did _you feel_, aunt judy?" "i _know_ you will laugh," said the maiden aunt, abruptly entering on her nervous narrative. "i felt all the time _as if somebody was looking through the window_. now, you know, there _couldn't_ be anybody. it was in an irish country house where i had just arrived, and my room was on the second floor. the window was old-fashioned and narrow, with a deep recess. as soon as i went to bed, my dears, i _felt_ that some one was looking through the window, and meant to come in. i got up, and bolted the window, though i knew it was impossible for anybody to climb up there, and i drew the curtains, but i could not fall asleep. if ever i began to dose, i would waken with a start, and turn and look in the direction of the window. i did not sleep all night, and next night, though i was dreadfully tired, it was just the same thing. so i had to take my hostess into my confidence, though it was extremely disagreeable, my dears, to seem so foolish. i only told her that i thought the air, or something, must disagree with me, for i could not sleep. then, as some one was leaving the house that day, she implored me to try another room, where i slept beautifully, and afterwards had a very pleasant visit. but, the day i went away, my hostess asked me if i had been kept awake by anything in particular, for instance, by a feeling that some one was trying to come in at the window. well, i admitted that i _had_ a nervous feeling of that sort, and she said that she was very sorry, and that every one who lay in the room had exactly the same sensation. she supposed they must all have heard the history of the room, in childhood, and forgotten that they had heard it, and then been consciously reminded of it by reflex action. it seems, my dears, that that is the new scientific way of explaining all these things, presentiments and dreams and wraiths, and all that sort of thing. we have seen them before, and remember them without being aware of it. so i said i'd never heard the history of the room; but she said i _must_ have, and so must all the people who felt as if some one was coming in by the window. and i said that it was rather a curious thing they should _all_ forget they knew it, and _all_ be reminded of it without being aware of it, and that, if she did not mind, i'd like to be reminded of it again. so she said that these objections had all been replied to (just as clergymen always say in sermons), and then she told me the history of the room. it only came to this, that, three generations before, the family butler (whom every one had always thought a most steady, respectable man), dressed himself up like a ghost, or like his notion of a ghost, and got a ladder, and came in by the window to steal the diamonds of the lady of the house, and he frightened her to death, poor woman! that was all. but, ever since, people who sleep in the room don't sleep, so to speak, and keep thinking that some one is coming in by the casement. that's all; and i told you it was not an interesting story, but perhaps you will find more interest in the scientific explanation of all these things." the story of the maiden aunt, so far as it recounted her own experience, did not contain anything to which the judicial faculties of the mind refused assent. probably the bachelor of arts felt that something a good deal more unusual was wanted, for he instantly started, without being asked, on the following narrative:-"i also was staying," said the bachelor of arts, "at the home of my friends, the aristocracy in scotland. the name of the house, and the precise rank in the peerage of my illustrious host, it is not necessary for me to give. all, however, who know those more than feudal and baronial halls, are aware that the front of the castle looks forth on a somewhat narrow drive, bordered by black and funereal pines. on the night of my arrival at the castle, although i went late to bed, i did not feel at all sleepy. something, perhaps, in the mountain air, or in the vicissitudes of baccarat, may have banished slumber. i had been in luck, and a pile of sovereigns and notes lay, in agreeable confusion, on my dressing-table. my feverish blood declined to be tranquillized, and at last i drew up the blind, threw open the latticed window, and looked out on the drive and the pine-wood. the faint and silvery blue of dawn was just wakening in the sky, and a setting moon hung, with a peculiarly ominous and wasted appearance, above the crests of the forest. but conceive my astonishment when i beheld, on the drive, and right under my window, a large and well-appointed hearse, with two white horses, with plumes complete, and attended by mutes, whose black staffs were tipped with silver that glittered pallid in the dawn. i exhausted my ingenuity in conjectures as to the presence of this remarkable vehicle with the white horses, so unusual, though, when one thinks of it, so appropriate to the chariot of death. could some belated visitor have arrived in a hearse, like the lady in miss ferrier's novel? could one of the domestics have expired, and was it the intention of my host to have the body thus honourably removed without casting a gloom over his guests? wild as these hypotheses appeared, i could think of nothing better, and was just about to leave the window, and retire to bed, when the driver of the strange carriage, who had hitherto sat motionless, turned, and looked me full in the face. never shall i forget the appearance of this man, whose sallow countenance, close-shaven dark chin, and small, black moustache, combined with i know not what of martial in his air, struck into me a certain indefinable alarm. no sooner had he caught my eye, than he gathered up his reins, just raised his whip, and started the mortuary vehicle at a walk down the road. i followed it with my eyes till a bend in the avenue hid it from my sight. so wrapt up was my spirit in the exercise of the single sense of vision that it was not till the hearse became lost to view that i noticed the entire absence of sound which accompanied its departure. neither had the bridles and trappings of the white horses jingled as the animals shook their heads, nor had the wheels of the hearse crashed upon the gravel of the avenue. i was compelled by all these circumstances to believe that what i had looked upon was not of this world, and, with a beating heart, i sought refuge in sleep. "next morning, feeling far from refreshed, i arrived among the latest at a breakfast which was a desultory and movable feast. almost all the men had gone forth to hill, forest, or river, in pursuit of the furred, finned, or feathered denizens of the wilds--" "you speak," interrupted the schoolboy, "like a printed book! i like to hear you speak like that. drive on, old man! drive on your hearse!" the bachelor of arts "drove on," without noticing this interruption. "i tried to 'lead up' to the hearse," he said, "in conversation with the young ladies of the castle. i endeavoured to assume the languid and preoccupied air of the guest who, in ghost-stories, has had a bad night with the family spectre. i drew the conversation to the topic of apparitions, and even to warnings of death. i knew that every family worthy of the name has its omen: the oxenhams a white bird, another house a brass band, whose airy music is poured forth by invisible performers, and so on. of course i expected some one to cry, 'oh, _we've_ got a hearse with white horses,' for that is the kind of heirloom an ancient house regards with complacent pride. but nobody offered any remarks on the local omen, and even when i drew near the topic of _hearses_, one of the girls, my cousin, merely quoted, 'speak not like a death's-head, good doll' (my name is adolphus), and asked me to play at lawn-tennis. in the evening, in the smoking-room, it was no better, nobody had ever heard of an omen in this particular castle. nay, when i told my story, for it came to that at last, they only laughed at me, and said i must have dreamed it. of course i expected to be wakened in the night by some awful apparition, but nothing disturbed me. i never slept better, and hearses were the last things i thought of during the remainder of my visit. months passed, and i had almost forgotten the vision, or dream, for i began to feel apprehensive that, after all, it _was_ a dream. so costly and elaborate an apparition as a hearse with white horses and plumes complete, could never have been got up, regardless of expense, for one occasion only, and to frighten one undergraduate, yet it was certain that the hearse was not 'the old family coach.' my entertainers had undeniably never heard of it in their lives before. even tradition at the castle said nothing of a spectral hearse, though the house was credited with a white lady deprived of her hands, and a luminous boy. here the bachelor of arts paused, and a shower of chaff began. "is that really all?" asked the girton girl. "why, this is the third ghost-story to-night without any ghost in it!" "i don't remember saying that it _was_ a ghost-story," replied the bachelor of arts; "but i thought a little anecdote of a mere 'warning' might not be unwelcome." "but where does the warning come in?" asked the schoolboy. "that's just what i was arriving at," replied the narrator, "when i was interrupted with as little ceremony as if i had been mr. gladstone in the middle of a most important speech. i was going to say that, in the easter vacation after my visit to the castle, i went over to paris with a friend, a fellow of my college. we drove to the hotel d'alsace (i believe there is no hotel of that name; if there is, i beg the spirited proprietor's pardon, and assure him that nothing personal is intended). we marched upstairs with our bags and baggage, and jolly high stairs they were. when we had removed the soil of travel from our persons, my friend called out to me, 'i say, jones, why shouldn't we go down by the lift.' {256} 'all right,' said i, and my friend walked to the door of the mechanical apparatus, opened it, and got in. i followed him, when the porter whose business it is to 'personally conduct' the inmates of the hotel, entered also, and was closing the door. "his eyes met mine, and i knew him in a moment. i had seen him once before. his sallow face, black, closely shaven chin, furtive glance, and military bearing, were the face and the glance and bearing of the driver of that awful hearse! "in a moment--more swiftly than i can tell you--i pushed past the man, threw open the door, and just managed, by a violent effort, to drag my friend on to the landing. then the lift rose with a sudden impulse, fell again, and rushed, with frightful velocity, to the basement of the hotel, whence we heard an appalling crash, followed by groans. we rushed downstairs, and the horrible spectacle of destruction that met our eyes i shall never forget. the unhappy porter was expiring in agony; but the warning had saved my life and my friend's." "_i was that friend_," said i--the collector of these anecdotes; "and so far i can testify to the truth of jones's story." at this moment, however, the gong for dressing sounded, and we went to our several apartments, after this emotional specimen of "evenings at home." in castle perilous. "what we suffer from most," said the spectre, when i had partly recovered from my fright, "is a kind of aphasia." the spectre was sitting on the armchair beside my bed in the haunted room of castle perilous. "i don't know," said i, as distinctly as the chattering of my teeth would permit, "that i quite follow you. would you mind--excuse me--handing me that flask which lies on the table near you. . . . thanks." the spectre, without stirring, so arranged the a priori sensuous schemata of time and space {261} that the silver flask, which had been well out of my reach, was in my hand. i poured half the contents into a cup and offered it to him. "no spirits," he said curtly. i swallowed eagerly the heady liquor, and felt a little more like myself. "you were complaining," i remarked, "of something like aphasia?" "i was," he replied. "you know what aphasia is in the human subject? a paralysis of certain nervous centres, which prevents the patient, though perfectly sane, from getting at the words which he intends to use, and forces others upon him. he may wish to observe that it is a fine morning, and may discover that his idea has taken the form of an observation about the roman calendar under the emperor justinian. that is aphasia, and we suffer from what, i presume, is a spiritual modification of that disorder." "yet to-night," i responded, "you are speaking like a printed book." "to-night," said the spectre, acknowledging the compliment with a bow, "the conditions are peculiarly favourable." "not to _me_," i thought, with a sigh. "and i am able to manifest myself with unusual clearness." "then you are not always in such form as i am privileged to find you in?" i inquired. "by no means," replied the spectre. "sometimes i cannot appear worth a cent. often i am invisible to the naked eye, and even quite indiscernible by any of the senses. sometimes i can only rap on the table, or send a cold wind over a visitor's face, or at most pull off his bedclothes (like the spirit which appeared to caligula, and is mentioned by suetonius) and utter hollow groans." "that's exactly what you _did_," i said, "when you wakened me. i thought i should have died." "i can't say how distressed i am," answered the spectre. "it is just an instance of what i was trying to explain. we don't know how we are going to manifest ourselves." "don't apologize," i replied, "for a constitutional peculiarity. to what do you attribute your success to night?" "partly to your extremely receptive condition, partly to the whisky you took in the smoking-room, but chiefly to the magnetic environment." "then you do not suffer at all from aphasia just now?" "not a touch of it at this moment, thank you; but, as a rule, we all _do_ suffer horribly. this accounts for everything that you embodied spirits find remarkable and enigmatic in our conduct. we _mean_ something, straight enough; but our failure is in expression. just think how often you go wrong yourselves, though _your_ spirits have a brain to play on, like the musician with a piano. now _we_ have to do as well as we can without any such mechanical advantage as a brain of cellular tissue"--here he suddenly took the form of a white lady with a black sack over her head, and disappeared in the wainscot. "excuse me," he said a moment afterwards, quite in his ordinary voice, "i had a touch of it, i fancy. i lost the thread of my argument, and am dimly conscious of having expressed myself in some unusual and more or less incoherent fashion. i hope it was nothing at all vulgar or distressing?" "nothing out of the way in haunted houses, i assure you," i replied, "merely a white lady with a black sack over her head." "oh, _that_ was it," he answered with a sigh; "i often am afflicted in that way. don't mind me if i turn into a luminous boy, or a very old man in chains, or a lady in a green gown and high-heeled shoes, or a headless horseman, or a mauth hound, or anything of that sort. they are all quite imperfect expressions of our nature,--symptoms, in short, of the malady i mentioned." "then the appalling manifestations to which you allude are not the apparitions of the essential ghost? it is not in those forms that he appears among his friends?" "certainly not," said the spectre; "and it would be very promotive of good feeling between men and disembodied spirits if this were more generally known. i myself--" here he was interrupted by an attack of spirit rappings. a brisk series of sharp faint taps, of a kind i never heard before, resounded from all the furniture of the room. {265} while the disturbance continued, the spectre drummed nervously with his fingers on his knee. the sounds ended as suddenly as they had begun, and he expressed his regrets. "it is a thing i am subject to," he remarked; "nervous, i believe, but, to persons unaccustomed to it, alarming." "it _is_ rather alarming," i admitted. "a mere fit of sneezing," he went on; "but you are now able to judge, from the events of to-night, how extremely hard it is for us, with the best intentions, to communicate coherently with the embodied world. why, there is the puddifant ghost--in lord puddifant's family, you know: _he_ has been trying for generations to inform his descendants that the drainage of the castle is execrable. yet he can never come nearer what he means than taking the form of a shadowy hearse-and-four, and driving round and round castle puddifant at midnight. and old lady wadham's ghost, what a sufferer that woman is! she merely desires to remark that the family diamonds, lost many years ago, were never really taken abroad by the valet and sold. he only had time to conceal them in a secret drawer behind the dining-room chimney-piece. now she can get no nearer expressing herself than producing a spirited imitation of the music of the bagpipes, which wails up and down the house, and frightens the present sir robert wadham and his people nearly out of their wits. and that's the way with almost all of us: there is literally no connection (as a rule) between our expressions and the things we intend to express. you know how the psychical society make quite a study of rappings, and try to interpret them by the alphabet? well, these, as i told you, are merely a nervous symptom; annoying, no doubt, but not dangerous. the only spectres, almost, that manage to hint what they really mean are banshees." "_they_ intend to herald an approaching death?" i asked. "they do, and abominably bad taste i call it, unless a man has neglected to insure his life, and _then_ i doubt if a person of honour could make use of information from--from that quarter. banshees are chiefly the spectres of attached and anxious old family nurses, women of the lower orders, and completely destitute of tact. i call a banshee rather a curse than a boon and a blessing to men. like most old family servants, they are apt to be presuming." it occurred to me that the complacent spectre himself was not an unmixed delight to the inhabitants of castle perilous, or at least to their guests, for they never lay in the green chamber themselves. "can nothing be done," i asked sympathetically, "to alleviate the disorders which you say are so common and distressing?" "the old system of spiritual physic," replied the spectre, "is obsolete, and the holy-water cure, in particular, has almost ceased to number any advocates, except the rev. dr f. g. lee, whose books," said this candid apparition, "appear to me to indicate superstitious credulity. no, i don't know that any new discoveries have been made in this branch of therapeutics. in the last generation they tried to bolt me with a bishop: like putting a ferret into a rabbit-warren, you know. nothing came of _that_, and lately the psychical society attempted to ascertain my weight by an ingenious mechanism. but they prescribed nothing, and made me feel so nervous that i was rapping at large, and knocking furniture about for months. the fact is that nobody understands the complaint, nor can detect the cause that makes the ghost of a man who was perfectly rational in life behave like an uneducated buffoon afterwards. the real reason, as i have tried to explain to you, is a solution of continuity between subjective thought and will on the side of the spectre, and objective expression of them--confound it--" here he vanished, and the sound of heavy feet was heard promenading the room, and balls of incandescent light floated about irresolutely, accompanied by the appearance of a bearded man in armour. the door (which i had locked and bolted before going to bed) kept opening and shutting rapidly, so as to cause a draught, and my dog fled under the bed with a long low howl. "i do hope," remarked the spectre, presently reappearing, "that these interruptions (only fresh illustrations of our malady) have not frightened your dog into a fit. i have known very valuable and attached dogs expire of mere unreasoning terror on similar unfortunate occasions." "i'm sure i don't wonder at it," i replied; "but i believe bingo is still alive; in fact, i hear him scratching himself." "would you like to examine him?" asked the spectre. "oh, thanks, i am sure he is all right," i answered (for nothing in the world would have induced me to get out of bed while he was in the room). "do you object to a cigarette?" "not at all, not at all; but lady perilous, i assure you, is a very old fashioned chatelaine. however, if _you_ choose to risk it--" i found my cigarette-case in my hand, opened it, and selected one of its contents, which i placed between my lips. as i was looking round for a match-box, the spectre courteously put his forefinger to the end of the cigarette, which lighted at once. "perhaps you wonder," he remarked, "why i remain at castle perilous, the very one of all my places which i never could bear while i was alive--as you call it?" "i had a delicacy about asking," i answered. "well," he continued, "i am the family genius." "i might have guessed _that_," i said. he bowed and went on. "it is hereditary in our house, and i hold the position of genius till i am relieved. for example, when the family want to dig up the buried treasure under the old bridge, i thunder and lighten and cause such a storm that they desist." "why on earth do you do _that_?" i asked. "it seems hardly worth while to have a genius at all." "in the interests of the family morality. the money would soon go on the turf, and on dice, drink, etc., if they excavated it; and then i work the curse, and bring off the prophecies, and so forth." "what prophecies?" "oh, the rigmarole the old family seer came out with before they burned him for an unpalatable prediction at the time of the '15. he was very much vexed about it, of course, and he just prophesied any nonsense of a disagreeable nature that came into his head. you know what these crofter fellows are--ungrateful, vindictive rascals. he had been in receipt of outdoor relief for years. well, he prophesied stuff like this: 'when the owl and the eagle meet on the same blasted rowan tree, then a lassie in a white hood from the east shall make the burn of cross-cleugh run full red,' and drivel of that insane kind. well, you can't think what trouble that particular prophecy gave me. it had to be fulfilled, of course, for the family credit, and i brought it off as near as, i flatter myself, it could be done." "lady perilous was telling me about it last night," i said, with a shudder. "it was a horrible affair," "yes, no doubt, no doubt; a cruel business! but how i am to manage some of them i'm sure _i_ don't know. there's one of them in rhyme. let me see, how does it go? "'when mackenzie lies in the perilous ha', the wild red cock on the roof shall craw, and the lady shall flee ere the day shall daw, and the land shall girn in the deed man's thraw.' "the 'crowing of the wild red cock' means that the castle shall be burned down, of course (i'm beginning to know his style by this time), and the lady is to elope, and the laird--that's lord perilous--is to expire in the 'deed man's thraw': that is the name the old people give the secret room. and all this is to happen when a mackenzie, a member of a clan with which we are at feud, sleeps in the haunted chamber--where we are just now. by the way, what is _your_ name?" i don't know what made me reply, "allan mackenzie." it was true, but it was not politic. "by jove!" said the spectre, eagerly. "here's a chance! i don't suppose a mackenzie has slept here for those hundred years. and now, how is it to be done? setting fire to the castle is simple"--here i remembered how he had lighted my cigarette--"but who on earth is to elope with lady perilous? she's fifty if she's a day, and evangelical a tout casser! oh no; the thing is out of the question. it really must be put off for another generation or two. there is no hurry." i felt a good deal relieved. he was clearly a being of extraordinary powers, and might, for anything i knew, have made _me_ run away with lady perilous. and then, when the pangs of remorse began to tell on her ladyship, never a very lively woman at the best of times--however, the spectre seemed to have thought better of it. "don't you think it is rather hard on a family," i asked, "to have a family genius, and prophecies, and a curse, and--" "and everything handsome about them," he interrupted me by exclaiming; "and you call yourself a mackenzie of megasky! what has become of family pride? why, you yourselves have gruagach of the red hand in the hall, and he, i can tell you, is a very different sort of spectre from _me_. pre-christian, you know--one of the oldest ghosts in ross-shire. but as to 'hard on a family,' why, noblesse oblige." "considering that you are the family genius, you don't seem to have brought them much luck," i put in, for the house of perilous is neither rich in gold nor very distinguished in history. "yes, but just think what they would have been without a family genius, if they are what they are with one! besides, the prophecies are really responsible," he added, with the air of one who says, "i have a partner--mr. jorkins." "do you mind telling me one thing?" i asked eagerly. "what is the mystery of the secret chamber--i mean the room whither the heir is taken when he comes of age, and he never smiles again, nor touches a card except at baccarat?" "never smiles _again_!" said the spectre. "doesn't he? are you quite certain that he ever smiled _before_?" this was a new way of looking at the question, and rather disconcerted me. "i did not know the master of perilous before he came of age," said i; "but i have been here for a week, and watched him and lord perilous, and i never observed a smile wander over their lips. and yet little tompkins" (he was the chief social buffoon of the hour) "has been in great force, and i may say that i myself have occasionally provoked a grin from the good-natured." "that's just it," said the spectre. "the perilouses have no sense of humour--never had. i am entirely destitute of it myself. even in scotland, even _here_, this family failing has been remarked--been the subject, i may say, of unfavourable comment. the perilous of the period lost his head because he did not see the point of a conundrum of macbeth's. we felt, some time in the fifteenth century, that this peculiarity needed to be honourably accounted for, and the family developed that story of the secret chamber, and the horror in the house. there is nothing in the chamber whatever,--neither a family idiot aged three hundred years, nor a skeleton, nor the devil, nor a wizard, nor missing title-deeds. the affair is a mere formality to account creditably for the fact that we never see anything to laugh at--never see the joke. some people can't see ghosts, you know" (lucky people! thought i), "and some can't see jokes." "this is very disappointing," i said. "i can't help it," said the spectre; "the truth often is. did you ever hear the explanation of the haunted house in berkeley square?" "yes," said i. "the bell was heard to ring thrice with terrific vehemence, and on rushing to the fatal scene they found him beautiful in death." "fudge!" replied the spectre. "the lease and furniture were left to an old lady, who was not to underlet the house nor sell the things. she had a house of her own in albemarle street which she preferred, and so the house in berkeley square was never let till the lease expired. that's the whole affair. the house was empty, and political economists could conceive no reason for the waste of rent except that it was haunted. the rest was all miss broughton's imagination, in 'tales for christmas eve.'" he had evidently got on his hobby, and was beginning to be rather tedious. the contempt which a genuine old family ghost has for mere parvenus and impostors is not to be expressed in mere words apparently, for mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, and other disastrous omens, now began to display themselves profusely in the haunted chamber. accustomed as i had become to regard all these appearances as mere automatic symptoms, i confess that i heard with pleasure the crow of a distant cock. "you have enabled me to pass a most instructive evening, most agreeable, too, i am sure," i remarked to the spectre, "but you will pardon me for observing that the first cock has gone. don't let me make you too late for any appointment you may have about this time--anywhere." "oh, you still believe in that old superstition about cock-crow, do you?" he sneered. "'i thought you had been too well educated. 'it faded on the crowing of the cock,' did it, indeed, and that in denmark too,--almost within the arctic circle! why, in those high latitudes, and in summer, a ghost would not have an hour to himself on these principles. don't you remember the cock lord dufferin took north with him, which crowed at sunrise, and ended by crowing without intermission and going mad, when the sun did not set at all? you must observe that any rule of that sort about cock-crow would lead to shocking irregularities, and to an earlyclosing movement for spectres in summer, which would be ruinous to business--simply ruinous--and, in these days of competition, intolerable." this was awful, for i could see no way of getting rid of him. he might stay to breakfast, or anything. "by the way," he asked, "who does the cock at the lyceum just now? it is a small but very exacting part--'act i. scene i. cock crows.'" "i believe mr. irving has engaged a real fowl, to crow at the right moment behind the scenes," i said. "he is always very particular about these details. quite right too. 'the cock, by kind permission of the aylesbury dairy company,' is on the bills. they have no cock at the francais; mounet sully would not hear of it." i knew nothing about it, but if this detestable spectre was going to launch out concerning art and the drama there would be no sleep for me. "then the glow-worm," he said--"have they a real glow-worm for the ghost's 'business' (act i. scene 5) when he says?- "'fare thee well at once, the glow-worm shows the matin to be near, and 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.' did it ever strike you how inconsistent that is? clearly the ghost appeared in winter; don't you remember how they keep complaining of the weather? "'for this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold,' and "'the air bites shrewdly: it is very cold.'" "horatio blows on his hands to warm them, at the francais," i interrupted. "quite right; good business," said he; "and yet they go on about the glowworms in the neighbourhood! most incongruous. how does furnivall take it? an interpolation by middleton?" i don't like to be rude, but i admit that i hate being bothered about shakespeare, and i yawned. "good night," he said snappishly, and was gone. presently i heard him again, just as i was dropping into a doze. "you won't think, in the morning, that this was all a dream, will you? can i do anything to impress it on your memory? suppose i shrivel your left wrist with a touch of my hand? or shall i leave 'a sable score of fingers four' burned on the table? something of that sort is usually done." "oh, _pray_ don't take the trouble," i said. "i'm sure lady perilous would not like to have the table injured, and she might not altogether believe my explanation. as for myself, i'll be content with your word for it that you were really here. can i bury your bones for you, or anything? very well, as you _must_ be off, good night!" "no, thanks," he replied. "by the way, i've had an idea about my apparitions in disguise. perhaps it is my 'unconscious self' that does them. you have read about the 'unconscious self' in the spectator?" then he really went. a nun in grey, who moaned and wrung her hands, remained in the room for a short time, but was obviously quite automatic. i slept till the hot water was brought in the morning. the great gladstone myth. {283} in the post-christian myths of the teutonic race settled in england, no figure appears more frequently and more mysteriously than that of gladstone or mista gladstone. to unravel the true germinal conception of gladstone, and to assign to all the later accretions of myth their provenance and epoch, are the problems attempted in this chapter. it is almost needless (when we consider the perversity of men and the lasting nature of prejudice) to remark that some still see in gladstone a shadowy historical figure. just as our glorious mythical bismarck has been falsely interpreted as the shadowy traditional arminius (the arminius of tacitus, not of leo adolescens), projected on the mists of the brocken, so gladstone has been recognized as a human hero of the fourth dynasty. in this capacity he has been identified with gordon (probably the north wind), with spurgeon, {284} whom i have elsewhere shown to be a river god, and with livingstone. in the last case the identity of the suffix "stone," and the resemblance of the ideas of "joy" and of "vitality," lend some air of speciousness to a fundamental error. livingstone is ohne zweifel, a mythical form of the midnight sun, now fabled to wander in the "dark continent," as bishop of natal, the land of the sun's birthplace, now alluded to as lost in the cloud-land of comparative mythology. of all these cobwebs spun by the spiders of sciolism, the euhemeristic or spencerian view--that gladstone is an historical personage--has attracted most attention. unluckily for its advocates, the whole contemporary documents of the victorian dynasty have perished. when an over-educated and over-rated populace, headed by two mythical figures, wat tyler and one jo, {285a} rose in fury against the school boards and the department, they left nothing but tattered fragments of the literature of the time. consequently we are forced to reconstruct the gladstonian myth by the comparative method--that is, by comparing the relics of old ritual treatises, hymns, imprecations, and similar religious texts, with works of art, altars, and statues, and with popular traditions and folklore. the results, again, are examined in the light of the vedas, the egyptian monuments, and generally of everything that, to the unscientific eye, seems most turbidly obscure in itself, and most hopelessly remote from the subject in hand. the aid of philology will not be rejected because longus, or longinus, has {285b} meanly argued that her services must be accepted with cautious diffidence. on the contrary, philology is the only real key to the labyrinths of post-christian myth. the philological analysis of the name of gladstone is attempted, with very various results, by roth, kuhn, schwartz, and other contemporary descendants of the old scholars. roth finds in "glad" the scotch word "gled," a hawk or falcon. he then adduces the examples of the hawk-indra, from the rig veda, and of the hawk-headed osiris, both of them indubitably personifications of the sun. on the other hand, kuhn, with schwartz, fixes his attention on the suffix "stone," and quotes, from a fragment attributed to shakespeare, "the all-dreaded thunder-stone." schwartz and kuhn conclude, in harmony with their general system, that gladstone is really and primarily the thunderbolt, and secondarily the spirit of the tempest. they quote an isolated line from an early lay about the "pilot who weathered the storm," which they apply to gladstone in his human or political aspect, when the storm-spirit had been anthropomorphised, and was regarded as an ancestral politician. but such scanty folklore as we possess assures us that the storm, on the other hand, weathered gladstone; and that the poem quoted refers to quite another person, also named william, and probably identical with william tell--that is, with the sun, which of course brings us back to roth's view of the hawk, or solar gladstone, though this argument in his own favour has been neglected by the learned mythologist. he might also, if he cared, adduce the solar stone of delphi, fabled to have been swallowed by cronus. kuhn, indeed, lends an involuntary assent to this conclusion (ueber entwick. der myth.) when he asserts that the stone swallowed by cronus was the setting sun. thus we have only to combine our information to see how correct is the view of roth, and how much to be preferred to that of schwartz and kuhn. gladstone, philologically considered, is the "hawkstone," combining with the attributes of the hawk-indra and hawk-osiris those of the delphian sun-stone, which we also find in the egyptian ritual for the dead. {287} the ludicrous theory that gladstone is a territorial surname, derived from some place ("gledstane" falkenstein), can only be broached by men ignorant of even the grammar of science; dabblers who mark with a pencil the pages of travellers and missionaries. we conclude, then, that gladstone is, primarily, the hawk-sun, or sun-hawk. from philology we turn to the examination of literary fragments, which will necessarily establish our already secured position (that gladstone is the sun), or so much the worse for the fragments. these have reached us in the shape of burned and torn scraps of paper, covered with printed texts, which resolve themselves into hymns, and imprecations or curses. it appears to have been the custom of the worshippers of gladstone to salute his rising, at each dawn, with printed outcries of adoration and delight, resembling in character the osirian hymns. these are sometimes couched in rhythmical language, as when we read- "[gla] dstone, the pillar of the people's hopes,"-to be compared with a very old text, referring obscurely to "the people's william," and "a popular bill," doubtless one and the same thing, as has often been remarked. among the epithets of gladstone which occur in the hymns, we find "versatile," "accomplished," "philanthropic," "patriotic," "statesmanlike," "subtle," "eloquent," "illustrious," "persuasive," "brilliant," "clear," "unambiguous," "resolute." all of those are obviously intelligible only when applied to the sun. at the same time we note a fragmentary curse of the greatest importance, in which gladstone is declared to be the beloved object of "the divine figure from the north," or "the great white czar." this puzzled the learned, till a fragment of a mythological disquisition was recently unearthed. in this text it was stated, on the authority of brinton, that "the great white hare" worshipped by the red indians was really, when correctly understood, the dawn. it is needless to observe (when one is addressing students) that "great white hare" (in algonkin, manibozho) becomes great white czar in victorian english. thus the divine figure from the north, or white czar, with whom gladstone is mythically associated, turns out to be the great white hare, or dawn hero, of the algonkins. the sun (gladstone) may naturally and reasonably be spoken of in mythical language as the "friend of the dawn." this proverbial expression came to be misunderstood, and we hear of a liberal statesman, gladstone, and of his affection for a russian despot. the case is analogous to apollo's fabled love for daphne = dahana, the dawn. while fragments of laudatory hymns are common enough, it must not be forgotten that dirges or curses (dirae) are also discovered in the excavations. these dirae were put forth both morning and evening, and it is interesting to note that the imprecations vented at sunset ("evening papers," in the old mythical language) are even more severe and unsparing than those uttered ("morning papers") at dawn. how are the imprecations to be explained? the explanation is not difficult, nothing _is_ difficult--to a comparative mythologist. gladstone is the sun, the enemy of darkness. but darkness has her worshippers as well as light. set, no less than osiris, was adored in the hymns of egypt, perhaps by kings of an invading semitic tribe. now there can be no doubt that the enemies of gladstone, the rishis, or hymnwriters who execrated him, were regarded by his worshippers as a darkened class, foes of enlightenment. they are spoken of as "the stupid party," as "obscurantist," and so forth, with the usual amenity of theological controversy. it would be painful, and is unnecessary, to quote from the curses, whether matins or vespers, of the children of night. their language is terribly severe, and, doubtless, was regarded as blasphemy by the sun-worshippers. gladstone is said to have "no conscience," "no sense of honour," to be so fugitive and evasive in character, that one might almost think the moon, rather than the sun, was the topic under discussion. but, as roth points out, this is easily explained when we remember the vicissitudes of english weather, and the infrequent appearances of the sun in that climate. by the curses, uttered as they were in the morning, when night has yielded to the star of day, and at evening, when day is, in turn, vanquished by night, our theory of the sun gladstone is confirmed beyond reach of cavil; indeed, the solar theory is no longer a theory, but a generally recognized fact. evidence, which is bound to be confirmatory, reaches us from an altar and from works of art. the one altar of gladstone is by some explained as the pedestal of his statue, while the anthropological sciolists regard it simply as a milestone! in speaking to archaeologists it is hardly necessary even to touch on this preposterous fallacy, sufficiently confuted by the monument itself. on the road into western england, between the old sites of bristol and london, excavations recently laid bare the very interesting monument figured here. [sketch of monument: image1.jpg] though some letters or hieroglyphs are defaced, there can be no doubt that the inscription is correctly read g. o. m. the explanation which i have proposed (zeitschrift fur ang. ant) is universally accepted by scholars. i read gladstonio optimo maximo, "to gladstone, best and greatest," a form of adoration, or adulation, which survived in england (like municipal institutions, the game laws, and trial by jury) from the date of the roman occupation. it is a plausible conjecture that gladstone stepped into the shoes of jupiter optimus maximus. hence we may regard him (like osiris) as the sum of the monotheistic conception in england. this interpretation is so manifest, that, could science sneer, we might laugh at the hazardous conjectures of smatterers. they, as usual, are greatly divided among themselves. the spencerian or euhemeristic school,--if that can be called a school "where blind and naked ignorance delivers brawling judgments all day long on all things, unashamed,"-protests that the monument is a pedestal of a lost image of gladstone. the inscription (g. o. m.) is read "grand old man," and it is actually hinted that this was the petit nom, or endearing title, of a real historical politician. weak as we may think such reasonings, we must regard them as, at least, less unscholarly than the hypothesis that the inscription should be read "90 m." meaning "ninety miles from london." it is true that the site whence the monument was excavated is at a distance of ninety miles from the ruins of london, but that is a mere coincidence, on which it were childish to insist. scholars know at what rate such accidents should be estimated, and value at its proper price one clear interpretation like g. o. m.= gladstonio optimo maximo. it is, of course, no argument against this view that the authors of the dirae regard gladstone as a _maleficent_ being. how could they do otherwise? they were the scribes of the opposed religion. diodorus tells us about an ethiopian sect which detested the sun. a parallel, as usual, is found in egypt, where set, or typhon, is commonly regarded as a maleficent spirit, the enemy of osiris, the midnight sun. none the less it is certain that under some dynasties set himself was adored--the deity of one creed is the satan of its opponents. a curious coincidence seems to show (as bergaigne thinks) that indra, the chief indo-aryan deity, was occasionally confounded with vrittra, who is usually his antagonist. the myths of egypt, as reported by plutarch, say that set, or typhon, forced his way out of his mother's side, thereby showing his natural malevolence even in the moment of his birth. the myths of the extinct algonkins of the american continent repeat absolutely the same tale about malsumis, the brother and foe of their divine hero, glooskap. now the rig veda (iv. 18, 1-3) attributes this act to indra, and we may infer that indra had been the typhon, or set, or glooskap, of some aryan kindred, before he became the chief and beneficent god of the kusika stock of indo-aryans. the evil myth clung to the good god. by a similar process we may readily account for the imprecations, and for the many profane and blasphemous legends, in which gladstone is represented as oblique, mysterious, and equivocal. (compare apollo loxias.) the same class of ideas occurs in the myths about gladstone "in opposition" (as the old mythical language runs), that is, about the too ardent sun of summer. when "in opposition" he is said to have found himself in a condition "of more freedom and less responsibility," and to "have made it hot for his enemies," expressions transparently mythical. if more evidence were wanted, it would be found in the myth which represents gladstone as the opponent of huxley. as every philologist knows, huxley, by grimm's law, is huskley, the hero of a "husk myth" (as ralston styles it), a brilliant being enveloped in a husk, probably the night or the thunder-cloud. the dispute between gladstone and huskley as to what occurred at the creation is a repetition of the same dispute between wainamoinen and joukahainen, in the kalewala of the finns. released from his husk, the opponent becomes beaconsfield = the field of light, or radiant sky. in works of art, gladstone is represented as armed with an axe. this, of course, is probably a survival from the effigies of zeus labrandeus, den man auf munsen mit der streitaxt erblickt (preller, i. 112). we hear of axes being offered to gladstone by his worshippers. nor was the old custom of clothing the image of the god (as in the sixth book of the "iliad") neglected. we read that the people of a scotch manufacturing town, galashiels, presented the midlothian gladstone (a local hero), with "trouserings," which the hero graciously accepted. indeed he was remarkably unlike death, as described by aeschylus, "of all gods, death only recks not of gifts." gladstone, on the other hand, was the centre of a lavish system of sacrifice--loaves of bread, axes, velocipedes, books, in vast and overwhelming numbers, were all dedicated at his shrine. hence some have identified him with irving, also a deity propitiated (as we read in josephus hatton) by votive offerings. in a later chapter i show that irving is really one of the asvins of vedic mythology, "the great twin brethren," or, in mythic language, "the corsican brothers" (compare myriantheus on the asvins). his inseparable companion is wilson-barrett. among animals the cow is sacred to gladstone; and, in works of art, gems and vases (or "jam-pots"), he is represented with the cow at his feet, like the mouse of horus, of apollo smintheus, and of the japanese god of plenty (see an ivory in the henley collection). how are we to explain the companionship of the cow? at other times the sun-hero sits between the horns of the cow-goddess dilemma, worshipped at westminster. (compare brugsch, "religion und mythologie der alten aegypter," p. 168, "die darstellungen zeigen uns den sonnengott zwischen den hornern der kuh sitzend.") the idea of le page renouf, and of pierret and de rouge, is that the cow is a symbol of some gladstonian attribute, perhaps "squeezability," a quality attributed to the hero by certain irish minstrels. i regard it as more probable that the cow is (as in the veda) the rain-cloud, released from prison by gladstone, as by indra. at the same time the cow, in the veda, stands for heaven, earth, dawn, night, cloud, rivers, thunder, sacrifice, prayer, and soma. we thus have a wide field to choose from, nor is our selection of very much importance, as any, or all, of these interpretations will be welcomed by sanskrit scholars. the followers of mclennan have long ago been purged out of the land by the edict of oxford against this sect of mythological heretics. _they_ would doubtless have maintained that the cow was gladstone's totem, or family crest, and that, like other totemists, he was forbidden to eat beef. it is curious that on some old and worn coins we detect a half-obliterated male figure lurking behind the cow. the inscription may be read "jo," or "io," and appears to indicate io, the cow-maiden of greek myth (see the "prometheus" of aeschylus). another proof of the mythical character of gladstone is the number of his birthplaces. many cities claimed the honour of being his cradle, exactly as in the cases of apollo and irving. their claims were allowed by the deity. (compare callimachus, hymn to apollo.) in addressing scholars it is needless to refute the euhemeristic hypothesis, worthy of the abbe banier, that the cow is a real cow, offered by a real historical gladstone, or by his companion, jo, to the ignorant populace of the rural districts. we have already shown that jo is a mythological name. the tendency to identify gladstone with the cow (as the dawn with the sun) is a natural and edifying tendency, but the position must not be accepted without further inquiry. the sun-god, in egyptian myth, is a bull, but there is a difference, which we must not overlook, between a bull and a cow. caution, prudence, a tranquil balancing of all available evidence, and an absence of preconceived opinions,--these are the guiding stars of comparative mythology. my friend the beach-comber. "been in some near things in the islands?" said my friend the beach-comber; "i fancy i _have_." the beach-comber then produced a piece of luggage like a small gladstone bag, which he habitually carried, and thence he extracted a cigar about the size of the butt of a light trout-rod. he took a vesuvian out of a curious brown hollowed nut-shell, mounted in gold (the beach-comber, like mycenae in homer, was polychrysos, rich in gold in all his equipments), and occupied himself with the task of setting fire to his weed. the process was a long one, and reminded me of the arts by which the beachcomber's native friends fire the root of a tree before they attack it with their stone tomahawks. however, there was no use in trying to hurry the ancient mariner. he was bound to talk while his cigar lasted, thereby providing his hearer with plenty of what is called "copy" in the profession of letters. the beach-comber was a big man, loose (in physique only of course), broad, and black-bearded, his face about the colour of a gun-stock. we called him by the nickname he bore {304} (he bore it very good-naturedly), because he had spent the years of his youth among the countless little islands of the south seas, especially among those which lie at "the back of beyond," that is, on the far side of the broad shoulder of queensland. in these regions the white man takes his life and whatever native property he can annex in his hand, caring no more for the aborigines' protection society than for the kyrle company for diffusing stamped-leather hangings and moorish lustre plates among the poor of the east-end. the common beach-comber is usually an outcast from that civilization of which, in the islands, he is the only pioneer. sometimes he deals in rum, sometimes in land, most frequently in "blackbirds"--that is, in coolies, as it is now usual to call slaves. not, of course, that all coolies are slaves. my friend the beach-comber treated his dusky labourers with distinguished consideration, fed them well, housed them well, taught them the game of cricket, and dismissed them, when the term of their engagement was up, to their island homes. he was, in fact, a planter, with a taste for observing wild life in out-of-theway places. "yes, i have been in some near things," he went on, when the trunk of his cigar was fairly ignited. "do you see these two front teeth?" the beach-comber opened wide a cavernous mouth. the late mr. macadam, who invented the system of making roads called by his name, allowed no stone to be laid on the way which the stone-breaker could not put in his mouth. the beach-comber could almost have inserted a milestone. i did not see "these two front teeth," because, like the spanish fleet, they were not in sight. but i understood my friend to be drawing my attention to their absence. "i see the place where they have been," i answered. "well, _that_ was a near go," said the beach-comber. "i was running for my life before a pack of screeching naked beggars in the admiralty islands. i had emptied my revolver, and my cartridges, government ones, were all in a parcel--a confounded government parcel--fastened with a strong brass wire. where's the good of giving you cartridges, which you need in a hurry if you need them at all, in a case you can't open without a special instrument? well, as i ran, and the spears whizzed round me, i tore at the wire with my teeth. it gave at last, or my head would now be decorating a stake outside the chief's pah. but my teeth gave when the brass cord gave, and i'll never lift a heavy table with them again." "but you got out the cartridges?" "oh yes. i shot two of the beggars, and 'purwailed on them to stop,' and then i came within sight of the boats, and thompson shouted, and the others bolted. what a voice that fellow had! it reminded me of that greek chap i read about at school; he went and faced the trojans with nothing in his hand, and they hooked it when they only heard him roar. poor thompson! "and the beach-comber drank, in silence, to the illustrious dead. "who shot him?" "a scientific kind of poop, a botanizing shaloot that was travelling around with a tin box on his back, collecting beetles and bird-skins. poor thompson! this was how it happened. he was the strongest fellow i ever saw; he could tear a whole pack of cards across with his hands. that man was all muscle. he and i had paddled this botanizing creature across to an island where some marooned fellow had built a hut, and we kept a little whisky in a bunk, and used the place sometimes for shooting or fishing. it was latish one night, the botanist had not come home, i fell asleep, and left thompson with the whisky. i was awakened by hearing a shot, and there lay thompson, stone-dead, a bullet in his forehead, and the naturalist with a smoking revolver in his hand, and trembling like an aspen leaf. it seems he had lost his way, and by the time he got home, thompson was mad drunk, and came for him with his fists. if once he hit you, just in play, it was death, and the stranger knew that. thompson had him in a corner, and i am bound to say that shooting was his only chance. poor old thompson!" "and what was done to the other man?" "done! why there was no one to do anything, unless i had shot him, or marooned him. no law runs in these parts. thompson was the best partner i ever had; he was with me in that lark with the tabooed pig." "what lark?" "oh, i've often spun you the yarn." "never!" "well, it was like this. thompson and i, and some other chaps, started in a boat, with provisions, just prospecting about the islands. so we went in and out among the straits--horrid places, clear water full of sharks, and nothing but mangroves on every side. one of these sounds is just like another. once i was coming home in a coasting steamer, and got them to set me down on a point that i believed was within half-a-mile of my place. well, i was landed, and i began walking homewards, when i found i was on the wrong track, miles and miles of mangrove swamp, cut up with a dozen straits of salt water, lay between me and the station. the first stretch of water i came to, gad! i didn't like it. i kept prospecting for sharks very close before i swam it, with my clothes on my head. i was in awful luck all the way, though,--not one of them had a snap at me." "but about the taboo pig? revenons a nos cochons!" "i'm coming to that. well, we landed at an island we had never been on before, where there was a village of coast natives. a crowd of beehiveshaped huts, you know, the wall about three feet high, and all the rest roof, wattle, and clay, and moss, built as neat as a bird's-nest outside, not very sweet inside. so we landed and got out the grub, and marched up to the village. not a soul to be seen; not a black in the place. their gear was all cleaned out too; there wasn't a net, nor a spear, nor a mat, nor a bowl (they're great beggars for making pipkins), not a blessed fetich stone even, in the whole place. you never saw anything so forsaken. but just in the middle of the row of huts, you might call it a street if you liked, there lay, as happy as if he was by the fireside among the children in galway, a great big fat beast of a hog. well, we couldn't make out what had become of the people. thought we had frightened them away, only then they'd have taken the hog. suddenly, out of some corner, comes a black fellow making signs of peace. he held up his hands to show he had no weapon in them, and then he held up his feet ditto." "why on earth did he hold up his feet?" "to show he wasn't trailing a spear between his toes; that is a common dodge of theirs. we made signs to him to come up, and up he came, speaking a kind of pigeon english. it seems he was an interpreter by trade, paying a visit to his native village; so we tried to get out of him what it was all about. just what we might have expected. a kid had been born in the village that day." "what had the birth of a kid got to do with it?" "it's like this, don't you know. every tribe is divided into coast natives and bush natives. one set lives by the sea, and is comparatively what you might call civilized. the other set, their cousins, live in the bush, and are a good deal more savage. now, when anything out of the way, especially anything of a fortunate kind, happens in one division of the tribe, the other division pops down on them, loots everything it can lay hands on, maltreats the women, breaks what's too heavy to carry, and generally plays the very mischief. the birth of a child is _always_ celebrated in that way." "and don't the others resist?" "resist! no! it would be the height of rudeness. do _you_ resist when people leave cards at your house, 'with kind inquiries'? it's just like that; a way they have of showing a friendly interest." "but what can be the origin of such an extraordinary custom?" "_i_ don't know. guess it has a kind of civilizing effect, as you'll see. resources of civilization get handed on to the bush tribes, but that can't be what it was started for. however, recently the tribes have begun to run cunning, and they hide themselves and all their goods when they have reason to expect a friendly visit. this was what they had done the day we landed. but, while we were jawing with the interpreter, we heard a yell to make your hair stand on end. the bush tribe came down on the village all in their war paint,--white clay; an arrangement, as you say, in black and white. down they came, rushed into every hut, rushed out again, found nothing, and an awful rage they were in. they said this kind of behaviour was most ungentlemanly; why, where was decent feeling? where was neighbourliness? while they were howling, they spotted the hog, and made for him in a minute; here was luncheon, anyhow,--pork chops. so they soon had a fire, set a light to one of the houses in fact, and heaped up stones; that's how they cook. they cut you up in bits, wrap them in leaves--" "en papillotte?" "just that, and broil you on the hot stones. they cook everything that way." "are they cannibals?" "oh yes, in war-time. or criminals they'll eat. i've often heard the queer yell a native will give, quite a peculiar cry, when he is carrying a present of cold prisoner of war from one chief to another. he cries out like that, to show what his errand is, at the border of the village property." "before entering the mark?" i said, for i had been reading sir henry maine. "the pah, the beggars about me call it," said the beach-comber; "perhaps some niggers you've been reading about call it the mark. i don't know. but to be done with this pig. the fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them 'hands off.' 'that's a taboo pig,' says he. 'a black fellow that died six months ago that pig belonged to. when he was dying, and leaving his property to his friends, he was very sorry to part with the pig, so he made him taboo; nobody can touch him. to eat him is death.' "of course this explained why that pig had been left when all the other live stock and portable property was cleared out. nobody would touch a taboo pig, and that pig, i tell you, was tabooed an inch thick. the man he belonged to had been a tohunga, and still 'walked,' in the shape of a lizard. well, the interpreter, acting most fairly, i must say, explained all this to the bush tribe, and we went down to the boat and lunched. presently a smell of roast pork came drifting down on the wind. they had been hungry and mad after their march, and they were cooking the taboo pig. the interpreter grew as white as a kaneka can; he knew something would happen. "presently the bush fellows came down to the boat, licking their lips. there hadn't been much more than enough to go round, and they accepted some of our grub, and took to it kindly. "'let's offer them some rum,' says thompson; he never cruised without plenty aboard. 'no, no,' says i; 'tea, give them tea.' but thompson had a keg of rum out, and a tin can, and served round some pretty stiff grog. now, would you believe it, these poor devils had never tasted spirits before? most backward race they were. but they took to the stuff, and got pretty merry, till one of them tried to move back to the village. he staggered up and down, and tumbled against rocks, and finally he lay flat and held on tight. the others, most of them, were no better as soon as they tried to move. a rare fright they were in! they began praying and mumbling; praying, of all things, to the soul of the taboo pig! they thought they were being punished for the awful sin they had committed in eating him. the interpreter improved the occasion. he told them their faults pretty roundly. hadn't he warned them? didn't they know the pig was taboo? did any good ever come of breaking a taboo? the soberer fellows sneaked off into the bush, the others lay and snoozed till the coast tribe came out of hiding, and gave it to them pretty warm with throwing sticks and the flat side of waddies. i guess the belief in taboo won't die out of that bush tribe in a hurry." "it was like the companions of odysseus devouring the oxen of the sun," i said. "very likely," replied the beach-comber. "never heard of the parties. they're superstitious beggars, these kanekas. you've heard of buying a thing 'for a song'? well, i got my station for a whistle. they believe that spirits twitter and whistle, and you'll hardly get them to go out at night, even with a boiled potato in their hands, which they think good against ghosts, for fear of hearing the bogies. so i just went whistling, 'bonny dundee' at nights all round the location i fancied, and after a week of that, not a nigger would go near it. they made it over to me, gratis, with an address on my courage and fortitude. i gave them some blankets in; and that's how real property used to change hands in the pacific." footnotes: {1} from wandering sheep, the bungletonian missionary record. {6} 1884. date unknown. month probably june. {23a} the original text of this prophecy is printed at the close of mr. gowles's narrative. {23b} it has been suggested to me that some travelled priest or conjurer of this strange race may have met europeans, seen hats, spectacles, steamers, and so forth, and may have written the prophecy as a warning of the dangers of our civilization. in that case the forgery was very cunningly managed, as the document had every appearance of great age, and the alarm of the priest was too natural to have been feigned. {25} how terribly these words were afterwards to be interpreted, the reader will learn in due time. {30} i afterwards found it was blue smalt. {74} i have never been able to understand mr. gowles's infatuation for this stuck-up creature, who, i am sure, gave herself airs enough, as any one may see.--mrs. gowles. {76} this was the name of a native vintage. {95} mr. gowles was an ardent liberal, but at the time when he wrote, the union jack had not been denounced by his great leader. we have no doubt that, at a word from mr. gladstone, he would have sung, home rule, hibernia!--ed. wandering sheep. {106} from wandering sheep. {124} from mr. e. myers's "pindar." {128} poor figgins always called m. baudelaire "the master." {208} his photograph, thus arrayed, may be purchased at mentone. {256} "lift" is english for "elevator," or "elevator" is american for "lift." {261} this article was originally written for "mind," but the author changed his. the reference is to kant's philosophy. {265} a similar phenomenon is mentioned in mr. howell's learned treatise, "an undiscovered country." {283} a chapter from prof. boscher's "post-christian mythology." berlin and new york, a.d. 3886. {284} both these names are undoubtedly greek neuter substantives. {285a} lieblein speaks ("egyptian religion," 1884, leipzig,) of "the mythical name jo." already had continental savants dismissed the belief in a historical jo, a leader of the demos. {285b} there seems to be some mistake here. {287} "le pierre sorti du soleil se retrouve au livre des souffles." lefebure, "osiris," p. 204. brugsch, "shai-n. sinsin," i. 9. {304} "beach-comber" is the local term for the european adventurers and long-shore loafers who infest the pacific archipelagoes. there is a wellknown tale of an english castaway on one of the isles, who was worshipped as a deity by the ignorant people. at length he made his escape, by swimming, and was taken aboard a british vessel, whose captain accosted him roughly. the mariner turned aside and dashed away a tear: "i've been a god for months, and you call me a (something alliterative) beach-comber!" he exclaimed, and refused to be comforted. fifteen hundred miles an hour _edited by_ charles dixon. _illustrated by captain arthur layard, late r.e._ _london_ bliss, sands and foster craven street, strand, w.c. 1895 [illustration: "our voyage begins at last."] contents chapter i. we prepare for our journey chapter ii. we leave earth in the "sirius" chapter iii. our voyage beyond the clouds chapter iv. awful moments chapter v. the glories of the heavens chapter vi. we near mars chapter vii. our arrival and safe descent chapter viii. a strange world chapter ix. the morrow--and what came of it chapter x. captivity chapter xi. love and jealousy chapter xii. condemned to die chapter xiii. the crag remagaloth chapter xiv. across the desert chados chapter xv. rivals meet again chapter xvi. volinè chapter xvii. at the temple on the hill verosi chapter xviii. the fight for volinè chapter xix. wedded chapter xx. the last words from yonder list of illustrations "our voyage begins at last" _frontispiece_ "alone in space" "its huge scaly carcase" "volinè" "... the 'sirius' ... boldly outlined against the sky" "scores of strange beasts hurried out from under them" introduction the narrative contained in the papers which are given to the world in this book, is of so marvellous a character as to have made me long hesitate before venturing on their publication. even now i do so in the full expectation of scorn and unbelief. i owe it to the world to state exactly how these papers came into my hands. that done, i must leave it to their own appearance of truth to command belief. the year before last, i was travelling through northern africa on a scientific expedition. it was early in the month of may that i reached the northern confines of the great desert, amongst the feathery palm-groves in the delicious oasis of biskra. i had started one day, with the first streak of dawn, upon a short expedition into the desert. my two arab followers were anxious to cover as much distance as possible before the heat of the sun became oppressive. it was about ten o'clock before we halted for breakfast, and the oasis of biskra looked but a black spot on the northern horizon. the heavens up to now were an intensely brilliant blue, but a dark cloud far away over the distant desert could be seen rapidly increasing in size. gradually the whole vault of sky assumed a coppery aspect, and the sun shone paler and paler each moment. the heat and oppressiveness were almost unbearable; not a breath of air relieved the suffocating atmosphere. the sun finally disappeared behind the curtain of lowering cloud, and a darkness began to creep over the earth. the arabs prepared for the storm which they knew from experience was brewing. the dreaded sandstorm was approaching. it came on the wings of the southern gale with terrific speed, and suddenly the air became almost as dark as midnight, full of fine blinding sand. we could not see twenty paces ahead; and now the sluggish atmosphere was stirred with the rushing and shrieking of a mighty wind. as i gazed for one brief moment upwards during a lull in the storm, my eyes were almost blinded by a brilliant light, brighter than the flame from an incandescent lamp, and a thousand times as large, which seemed to shoot from out of space. at the same awful moment the very dome of heaven seemed cracked asunder by a loud report, different from anything i had ever heard before. it was a solid and metallic sound, louder and sharper than the report of tons of exploding nitro-glycerine. the earth shook and trembled to its utmost foundations, and the rocks seemed to recoil at the frightful explosion. the arabs were struck dumb and motionless with horror, and i, for several moments, was as one stone-blind. with the report a huge body seemed to have struck the rocks a short distance from us, but it was impossible to tell what it was until the fury of the storm was somewhat spent. the worst was now over; and the sand, the thunder, and the darkness vanished almost as suddenly as they came. but we did not venture forth until the welcome, glorious sun shone down again upon the wet rocks; and then the arabs engaged in fervent prayer to allah for our miraculous deliverance from a terrible fate. almost the first object that my eyes rested upon, as soon as we left our retreat under the rocks, was a large round mass of dark-looking substance, a hundred yards away. in amazement i walked towards the spot where it lay hissing and steaming on the bare, wet rocks, surrounded by a thick coating of hailstones, which the hot sun was rapidly melting. it was a meteorolite of unusual dimensions, measuring exactly three feet nine inches in height, and was shaped like a huge gourd. a large crack extended completely down one side, about an inch across in its widest part. i cautioned the arabs to preserve the strictest secrecy, and made them swear by the prophet's beard that they would reveal to no man what they had seen, and then we returned to biskra. it was my intention to obtain a few suitable tools and requisites, and then return to the meteorolite at once to investigate. it would evidently take some hours to cool; besides, if we did not get back, search parties would be scouring the desert in quest of us, and they might by chance discover this wonderful "stone." i felt already that this stone belonged to me. my interest in it was all-absorbing. early the next morning, with three arabs, i went off, armed with wedges, a heavy hammer, some drills, a quantity of gunpowder, and fuse. we found the stone just as we left it on the previous day, and evidently still unvisited by man. i first of all tried to force open the crack with the wedges, but the substance was exceedingly tough, the appliances at my command very crude, and i made no progress. then i set my followers to work to bore two holes into the "stone," and fill them with gunpowder. this plan worked admirably--the drill cutting its way through the soft spongy mass with great quickness, and i was soon ready to fire my fuse, and retire behind the rocks to wait events. it was an anxious moment for me. we had not to wait long for the reports, which sounded like a couple of rifle cracks, and then we ran forward to examine our prize. alas! it was shattered into fragments, some of them blown to a distance of many yards. the charges were too strong. i was profoundly disappointed, and set the arabs to work to gather up the largest pieces and load our camels with them. i was sitting dejectedly enough upon the sand, more interested in the action of a pair of vultures than in the doings of my men, when achmed, one of my arabs, made his appearance, holding in his arms a very curious-looking fragment of the meteorolite. it looked like a rusty piece of iron ore, oblong in shape, and had evidently undergone great pressure. examination told me that this substance was iron, and its disproportionate lightness, together with a blow from the hammer, revealed the fact that it was not solid! it looked for all the world like a large conical shot. i set off alone on my camel to the oasis, all impatient to get home and examine my prize. i could neither eat nor sleep until i had finished my task. locking myself in my room, i began my investigation with a singular presentiment that i was on the eve of some important discovery. nor were my feelings unjustified by events. with the aid of a hammer and chisel, after some considerable trouble and labour, i broke open this singular-looking mass of battered rusty iron, and its strange contents rolled out on to the table! of what were they composed? nothing but a long and carefully-folded pile of papers--so tightly packed that they might have been under hydraulic pressure; but their appearance filled me with the intensest surprise and most utter amazement! here and there the edges were burnt and charred, but otherwise they were in a singularly good state of preservation, and the writing upon them was almost as legible as when it was penned. the paper had evidently been made on earth, for it bore the watermark of a well-known london firm. the most singular part of all this strange occurrence, however, remains now to be told. most of these manuscripts were written in a good, bold, upright hand, and they were addressed and dated from "the city of edos, planet of mars, or gathma. december the 9th, 1878." was i awake or dreaming? many times did i read those three lines, walking about the room meantime to convince myself that all was reality! this strange letter from an unknown world must have been ten years in the air! these manuscripts were evidently of a scientific as well as of a popular character; and as a scientific man myself, i felt already that a bond of sympathy existed between my unknown correspondent far away out yonder beyond the sky, and myself! a voice from another world; a message from the vast unseen--how i longed to read these papers, to examine them, to revel in their secrets, and to enjoy them! what a hidden world of wonder, of adventure, of exploration, lay before me if the documents were genuine! i sat up the entire night, eagerly reading through these strange papers. africa had now, for the present, lost its charm. i set off back again to europe with all despatch, bent on investigating the whole matter. fortunately, my efforts were crowned with a most gratifying triumph. doctor hermann, f.r.s., f.r.a.s., f.r.g.s., the author of a considerable portion of these manuscripts, i discovered had been an eccentric and little-known individual, living a very secluded life on a small estate near the yorkshire fells, a wild lonely spot, far from cities. that he was a member of the royal, the astronomical, and the geographical societies, i easily satisfied myself. he had been absolutely devoted to science--for this all the other enjoyments and obligations of life were discarded; he lived but for one object, the study and investigation of nature's choicest secrets. this was the all-absorbing faith of his life. from information supplied in these manuscripts, i learned the exact place of his strange abode, and was able to visit it, and to make many enquiries in the immediate neighbourhood concerning him. he was described to me as a tall, spare man, with a benevolent-looking face, past the prime of life, with grey beard and moustache, clear grey eyes, and close-cropped hair. in nature, gentle and tender as a woman, but brave as a lion, and with a reputation for firmness and great strength of will. i was also told that he had a very big telescope erected in his barn, and some of the old folks living in the fells always insisted that the doctor and the devil were on quite too intimate terms. he had no friends in the neighbourhood. one old serving-woman used to look after the house, but she had been dead some years, and had not been on speaking terms with any of the good people living near. his man-of-all-work, sandy campbell, generally accompanied his master in all his wanderings. sandy was almost as much of a character as his master--a close, reticent scot, who could never be got to talk, even when under the influence of whisky, a liquor he appeared to have been particularly fond of. the doctor had few visitors. john temple, a bradford cotton lord, had been often seen in his company; and a young engineer from leeds, called harry graham, had been also known in the neighbourhood as a frequent guest of the doctor's. singularly enough, these names were the ones given in the manuscripts, and therefore help to confirm their truth. i also learnt that, some fourteen years ago, doctor hermann and his man suddenly disappeared from the neighbourhood, and it was said they had gone abroad on a scientific expedition, the house having been denuded of its furniture and left standing empty. from that day to this, no one had occupied the premises. pursuing my investigations further, i found that at precisely the same time john temple, the bradford millionaire, left this country, presumably on a voyage round the world; and enquiries at the great firm of manufacturing engineers in leeds also revealed the fact that this harry graham, their cleverest manager, left their employment to go abroad at the same date. not one of these persons has been heard of since. the mystery of all these persons disappearing at the same time, and never being heard of again by mortal man, is now cleared away! i hold the secret, which was flashed to me on the wings of the storm, from boundless space, upon the sands of the sahara. the following weird and startling story will satisfactorily explain the cause and purpose of these individuals' departure, minutely describe their wonderful and thrilling experiences, and publish to the world the reason why the lonely house on the yorkshire fells remains tenantless, and is rapidly falling into ruins; and the rich estates of john temple, cotton lord and millionaire, are still amongst the unclaimed treasures in the jealous keeping of the high court of chancery! the following is in the doctor's bold and characteristic handwriting. _extract from dr. hermann's instructions to the finder of the mss._ "should these manuscripts chance to fall into the hands of any civilised man, it is my earnest wish, though of german extraction myself, that they should be published--if published at all--in the english tongue. truth shall prevail, and our return to earth shall scatter, like thistle-down before the autumn winds, the scepticism which i mistake not will encircle them, as soon as man may read them. it is my cherished hope to return to my mother world, and to tell in person of that glorious life and those sublime wonders of a new world. adieu!" this brief extract must suffice as introduction. the next chapter will begin at once with the story proper, omitting the uninteresting preliminary portion of the manuscripts. _fifteen hundred miles an hour_ chapter i. we prepare for our journey. "i tell you, temple, that the thing can be done! from experiments which i have carefully made, and from information which i have laboriously collected during the best part of a lifetime devoted to scientific research, i am in a position confidently to state that my project is removed for ever from the realm of possibility, and is now within measurable distance of becoming an accomplished fact. my plans may seem complicated to you, but to me they are simple in the extreme. you, my dear fellow, are better able to deal with intricate financial questions, discounts, stocks, and bank rates, rather than the delicate experiments of science. believe me, i have here in this book every item of my scheme carefully worked out, every design outlined to its simplest detail--all i want is the necessary capital for its accomplishment. my young friend, harry graham, here--let me introduce him to you, temple--whose interest in astronomy i have long been fostering, is willing and ready to superintend the mechanical portion of my undertaking. our models have turned out satisfactory in every way--all we want now is money. that, friend temple, you half-promised years ago. may i count upon your assistance still?" "my dear doctor, you may. if fifty thousand pounds, aye, or even a hundred thousand, will help you, i am willing to speculate to that amount; and, what is more, the novelty of your undertaking has so captivated me that i am anxious to form one of your party. who knows, if your efforts are crowned with success, what grand financial harvests may be reaped!" "then, graham, there is nothing now to prevent us beginning to work in real earnest. there is much for us to do; and i am sure we shall deem it an honour to have the financier of our undertaking in our company. try another cigar, friends, and let sandy bring us one more bottle of port, and then i will endeavour to give you a brief outline of my plans." "as you know," continued the doctor, "i have long been an ardent supporter of the theory of the plurality of worlds. i am a firm believer in the principle of universal law; and the theory that these other worlds are the abode of living organisms is to me an almost demonstrable fact. when i first began the study of this interesting question i soon came to the conclusion that the only planet with which i dared hope to obtain any success must be one whose conditions were as nearly like those of our own world as possible. so far as i know, only one orb in the entire planetary system can with any degree of fairness be compared with earth. that planet is mars. in short, the beautiful planet mars is precisely similar in nearly every physical aspect to the earth--it is, in fact, only a smaller edition of our own world. "but i am afraid i weary you, temple, with all this scientific detail. i will not trouble you with more, but come to the practical side of my plans." "doctor, your remarks interest me exceedingly. pray, say all you think desirable." "well, then, temple, the first difficulty i had to contend with was that of bridging the mighty distance between our earth and this planet. my second task was the enormous journey itself, and the means of obtaining air and sustenance during the progress. both of these, after many experiments and many failures, have been overcome. "first, as to my means of conveyance. i have here a design for an air carriage, propelled by electricity, capable of being steered in any direction, and of attaining the stupendous speed of fifteen hundred miles per hour. it can be made large enough to afford all necessary accommodation for at least six persons, and its attendant apparatus is capable of administering to their every requirement. here is a model of the machine. you will perceive that the material of which it is composed is no metal in common use, nor is its composition, and the method of its manufacture, known to any mortal man but myself. it is remarkable for its extreme lightness, toughness, and power of withstanding heat. wrought-iron melts at something like 4,500 degrees fahrenheit; my metal will stand a fiery ordeal three times as great. this is of the utmost importance, for our high rate of speed would soon generate sufficient heat to melt any but the most enduring substance. here, again, is the exact model of another apparatus for making and storing electricity sufficient for at least two years, working at high pressure. and herein perhaps is the greatest of my discoveries. the one grand problem which electricians have to solve before this force can be of any great advantage to mankind is the method of generating it direct, without the aid of any other motive power. i have solved that problem; and have succeeded by the aid of this curious apparatus in producing electricity direct, not from coal, but from petroleum. by this wonderful invention i am able to carry enough fuel for our journey, compressed into a space that is practicable for all requirements, and the alarming waste of energy that now troubles the electrical engineer is saved. the labour of the world will now be revolutionised when i choose to make my discovery known; for the reign of steam, glorious and wonderful as it has been, will then be over. i can carry in my hand enough fuel to drive the biggest steamer that ploughs the ocean, once round the world. "but to return. this little attachment tells the exact rate of speed the carriage is travelling. you will also perceive that my motors are on the principle of the paddle-wheel and the screw-propeller combined. the interior of my carriage is formed of a series of chambers one above the other. there is a laboratory, sleeping and living chambers, engine and apparatus room, and ample space for stores in the basement. the door is situated near the top, and just above it i have placed, as you see, a small balcony, for observations. my port-holes will be glazed with glass of exceptional quality, made by myself, and every apartment is lighted with electricity. the carriage is conical in form, that shape being best adapted to a high rate of speed. "my next consideration was the supply of air. i think we shall find that the whole planetary system is pervaded with an atmosphere so rare, in some parts of remotest space, as to remain undetected by any instrument yet known to science, but still of sufficient density to offer resistance and lend support to our carriage and its propellers. my condensers are so formed that they will readily convert this ether into air suited to man's requirements. "i had now but one more task to overcome--food and water. as regards food, i have here a little cake of animal and vegetable substances which have undergone a certain chemical process, by means of which i have been able to compress enough food to support a human being for three days into a space not quite two cubic inches in extent. in this other tablet i have dealt with wheaten flour in a similar satisfactory manner. tea, sugar, and other luxuries i can reduce to the smallest proportions by a process of condensation and hydraulic pressure. so that i can stow away in the store-room of my carriage enough food to last six persons for nearly three years--a more than ample supply, as i intend shortly to demonstrate. "it has taken me nearly ten years to solve the problem of my water supply. i have here a small electrical apparatus, by means of which i hope to be able to distil water from ether. should my experiment fail, i have invented a small lozenge of soda and other chemicals, which will allay thirst. i must also say that i have allowed sufficient space for scientific instruments, a stock of methylated spirits, a selection of books, firearms, and ammunition: nor have i omitted clothes, cigars, tobacco, a few bottles of wine to be used on state occasions, and a fair quantity of brandy and whiskey, so that you, temple, shall not be without your grog. a medicine chest, camera, and india-rubber boat are also included in my list of necessaries. i calculate that my air-carriage will be about forty feet in height, and nine feet in width. what i have disclosed is but a portion of my grand scheme, the one great work of my life, from which i hope to obtain the most brilliant scientific results. "the planet mars will reach his perihelion, or nearest distance to our earth, in october, 1877. he is then in an unusually favourable position, and affords us a chance of visiting him, which will not occur again in a lifetime. now, i calculate that our rate of speed will be fifteen hundred miles per hour, so that the thirty-four millions of miles we have to traverse will be accomplished in about two and a-half years' time. we must leave earth, therefore, not later than the first day of may, 1875. our stay, of course, will depend on circumstances, which no mortal man can foresee. we may, indeed, reach our destination in much less time than i have anticipated. "i ought here to mention," continued the doctor, "that my devoted servant, sandy, has already expressed his desire and willingness to accompany me on this long journey. "now, temple, and you too, graham, i wish you to weigh carefully the _pros_ and _cons_ of this dangerous enterprize. we are about to embark into the solemn, boundless realms of space--to dash boldly away from the earth, which fosters us, into mysterious regions of which we have none but the scantiest knowledge. on the other hand," continued the doctor, "there is grandeur in the thought of being able to leave this world of ours for a season, and to visit those orbs which shine so clearly in the midnight sky. if you, of your own free will, are ready and willing cheerfully to cast in your lot with mine, i shall be happy in your company." there was dead silence for several moments after the doctor had finished speaking, during which the little timepiece on the mantel struck the hour of midnight with almost painful clearness, when graham was the first to speak. "doctor, you know that, through all the experiments we have conducted together, my one aim has been, provided they were successful, to accompany you." temple spoke next. "the ties, my dear doctor, that bind me to earth and to life are small. wifeless, childless, relationless, what have i to look forward to? i freely place at your disposal the sum i have already named, and at the same time pledge myself to make your--shall i say our--journey a success." "i thank you, friends, for your kindness, and your proffered assistance, and accept the offer of your company with unqualified pleasure. it is now november. all our preparations must be made during the next six months, that is by the end of april. we must leave earth no later than that date. i also suggest that all our preparations are made as secretly as possible. let the carriage be made in sections and parts; let all be brought here, bit by bit. my big barn will suit us for a workshop. idle curiosity must not be excited. and, as a personal favour, i request that no hint of this journey be given to any mortal man." doctor hermann then filled up his glass, all present following his example, and together we toasted each other, and drank in wild if silent enthusiasm to the success of our awful voyage through space. chapter ii. we leave earth in the "sirius." "at last, graham, all is in readiness for our departure. i think it was wise, however, that before finally leaving earth we tested the capabilities of our carriage." (this trial trip nearly cost the doctor his secret. a party of farm-labourers stoutly swore that they had seen a big house floating over whernside, as they came home in the dusk; but they were only laughed at by their neighbours, and accused of being in liquor.) "we now feel a greater amount of satisfaction and confidence in our undertaking, and the several little details we had overlooked will be decided improvements." "then you are prepared to start on saturday, doctor?" "well, if temple can manage it, yes. it rests with him now, and we must not be too hard or exacting on our generous friend and patron." "ah! sandy, a telegram from temple, i suppose," says the doctor, tearing open the orange-coloured envelope, and hastily reading the brief message. "yes, graham, all is well. temple wires me that he will be here on saturday to lunch. that means he is ready. we shall start at midnight." the remaining days of our stay on earth were spent by graham in overhauling the various machinery and apparatus he had taken such pains in making and fitting, and by the doctor in anxious consultation of several leading works on astronomy and mathematics, and in careful revision of every little detail of his gigantic scheme. at last the eventful morning came, the first day of may, 1875. glorious indeed was the weather on that memorable day, when, for the first time in the history of mankind, five living creatures were about to leave this planet on a journey to a far-distant orb. now behold this dauntless little party, as they stand in the doctor's garden, watching their last earthly sunset. the white-haired doctor is the central figure of the group. as the sun sinks solemnly behind the pennine peaks, lingering a few moments on the gloomy crowns of whernside, the doctor points to the clear southern sky, and says: "well, friends, our stay on earth is now very short. in little over four hours' time we must be gone. yonder is our destination; the star that sheds such brilliant lustre--brightest, to us, of all heavenly orbs to-night--is our bourne. you see it, temple? from this night, for two years and a-half, it is to be our only guiding light, ever increasing in size and mysterious splendour." as the evening gloom crept up the valleys, the scene became more and more solemn and impressive, and a strange sense of awe seemed to come over even the bravest heart amongst us. we felt too grave to converse, and the doctor's remarks were received in silence. at last the oppressive silence was broken by the doctor exclaiming: "we had better now go in and dine, after which we must see about getting away. have you finished, sandy?" "yes, doctor; everything is neat and tidy." "well, after dinner, we shall be round to inspect your arrangements for our comfort." dinner passed over in comparative silence. each one of the diners now fully realised the solemnity of his position, and none seemed to have any desire to make their thoughts known to their companions. as soon as the meal was over, the ceremony of christening the carriage was performed by sandy cracking a bottle of wine against the side, and as the ruddy liquid streamed to the ground, the doctor pronounced the few words that gave to the machine its name of _sirius_. "now, my friends, the all-eventful moment has come," he continued, leading the way to a rope-ladder which was hanging down the dark side of the _sirius_, from the doorway high overhead. "let us bid adieu to the earth that bore and fostered us; it may be that our feet touch its surface for the last time." the night was gloriously fine; not a cloud to hide the spangled sky. sandy and his dog were already inside the _sirius_; and the light-hearted scot could be heard singing snatches of north-country ballads as he hurried to and fro. sandy was, evidently, little troubled at the thoughts of earth. this confidence was inspired by the calm courage of his master. graham mounted next, and was soon busy with the machinery, oiling and wiping with greatest care the shining rods and wheels and cranks, which he loved almost as deeply as a father loves his children. john temple then ascended, a little paler perhaps than usual, but calm and self-possessed as was his wont. doctor hermann, after carefully walking round the huge machine to see that all was clear, gave one last look towards the old house, and then to the hills he knew and loved so well, before mounting the swaying ladder, which was pulled up after him by sandy. all now were waiting for the final signal, which was to fall from the doctor's lips. he stood calmly and heroically with the little lever grasped in his right hand, his watch held in his left. one minute to midnight! slowly the minute finger crept round the tiny dial, and the last few seconds of our stay on earth were slipping away. "once more, my friends, i ask you if you still adhere to your intention of accompanying me. there is yet time to draw back." "we are ready and willing, and most anxious to proceed," was the answer from all. "then our voyage begins at last," said the doctor, pressing back the shining lever. "may health and good fortune attend us on our journey, and success crown its termination." as the doctor spoke, the huge machine mounted upwards from its staging, lightly and buoyantly as a bird, into the midnight sky. all were exceedingly surprised at the extreme steadiness of the carriage, for it floated upwards and onwards without any disagreeable motion whatever. in fact, it was difficult to believe that the carriage was moving at all. as soon as we got fairly under way the doctor suggested that we should go out on the balcony and take a last look at many old familiar landmarks, and bid a long farewell to yorkshire. we were travelling very slowly, about sixty miles per hour, and nearly four miles above the earth. we soon crossed the fair vale of york, slumbering peacefully in the gloom, the lights of towns and railways being distinctly visible far below us. we passed over grimy sheffield, with its gleaming furnaces belching fire and smoke into the night--its glowing coke-ovens looking like small volcanoes. "i intend to travel comparatively slowly from the immediate neighbourhood of earth," remarked the doctor, "so that we may enjoy the wonderful sight of that planet's physical features as viewed from space. ere morning dawns we shall be sufficiently distant to get a bird's-eye view of the greater part of europe; by afternoon, if all goes well, our vision will be extended to the entire eastern hemisphere." the _sirius_ was now heading rapidly away from earth; under graham's superintendence, the motors were hourly increasing their speed. like a sheet of molten silver, the german ocean shimmered in the moonlight. it was bitterly cold, and the entire party of travellers were soon glad to return to the warm interior of the _sirius_, where sandy had made everything ready for our comfort. it was now agreed that each should take his turn at keeping watch and guard generally for two hours, whilst the others slept. graham undertook the first two hours of this duty; and the doctor, too excited to sleep, remained up with him discussing the novelty of their position. as for sandy, he appeared able to sleep under any circumstances; and temple was too methodical in his habits to remain up after the first sensations of departure had worn away. "it seems like a dream to me, graham, that we are really off at last," began the doctor. "i have looked forward to this time for many long and weary years." "ah, doctor, i cannot describe how i feel to-night. i am more than gratified to see one who has done so much for me, reaping the harvest he has sown so patiently." the heavens were now clouded, and rain began to fall heavily, which necessitated closing the port-holes and door, and setting the air-condensers to work. it was the doctor's intention to travel as long as possible with these open, so that we could obtain enough air from the atmosphere as long as it continued sufficiently dense for our requirements, and thus save the condensing apparatus as much wear and tear as possible. we soon passed through the rain clouds, and then the view from above them was entrancingly grand. far as the eye could reach, below and round us, stretched one vast silvery expanse of cloud, lit up with brilliant moonbeams, and so solid in appearance that we felt a strange yearning desire to descend and wander about the fleecy wastes. dawn was now fast spreading over the heavens. all through that night of excitement the doctor and graham watched together, but sandy and temple were up with the first streak of light. the earth was still enshrouded in shadow. but our speed had now to be increased, and by the time the eastern hemisphere was bathed in sunshine we were travelling a thousand miles per hour, shooting upwards to the zenith, but drifting meantime nearly south, towards the equator. hour after hour increased the glorious aspect of the earth below, which had the appearance of a shallow basin, the horizon all round us seeming almost level with the _sirius_. the earth's concave, instead of convex appearance, was a puzzle to all but the doctor, who lucidly explained the phenomenon to us. by mid-day our instruments declared our height above the earth to be close upon eight thousand miles! stupendous as this altitude may seem, none of our party experienced the slightest degree of discomfort, so long as the condensers were kept at work; but a few moments' pause in their movement produced alarming symptoms, especially in graham, whose bulky frame (he stood six feet eight, and was well made in proportion, a giant among men) seemed to require a larger amount of air than any of the rest of us. as we rapidly shot upwards, at a speed fifteen times greater than the fastest express train, the earth was constantly changing in appearance. all small objects were entirely lost to view; only the continents, largest islands, oceans, and seas being visible. the land and sea changed colour rapidly, until the former merged from dark brown to nearly black, and the water from deepest blue to yellow of such dazzling brightness as to be most trying to the eyes. we could distinctly see the noble range of snow-capped himalayas, glittering beautifully in a dark setting, but the cape of good hope was lost in a dense bank of cloud. as nearly as we could determine, we were now above the persian gulf; the entire coast-line of the eastern hemisphere could be followed at a glance. due north and south the polar regions glowed in dazzling whiteness, like two brilliant crescents on the horizon. the season of the year was too early to make satisfactory observations of the northern polar regions; for even had land extended to that pole, we should have been unable to detect it, as it would, of course, have been still lying deep in snow. the south polar region was much more favourable to our examination, and, beyond the border of eternal ice and snow, a dark mass could be detected in the district of the pole itself, which is probably land, but at the immense distance from which we viewed it, it was impossible quite satisfactorily to determine. although we were such a vast distance from the earth, she seemed to be quite close, though on a much-reduced scale, and no words can describe the awful grandeur of her appearance. towards evening we had the novel experience of seeing an appalling thunderstorm many thousands of miles below us, over the wide expanse of the indian ocean. we had now for hours been depending upon the air from our condensers. in fact we did not find breathable atmosphere for more than five hundred miles above the surface of the earth. as the doctor had predicted, the ether in these remote regions was quite dense enough to be transformed into air suited to the requirements of man. the doctor's delight at all these wonderful scenes was unbounded. his enthusiasm was almost painful in its intensity. "glorious! glorious!" was his oft-repeated exclamation, as he made rapid notes of the ever-changing phenomena around us. he was too excited to eat; too full of his many experiments to rest; too eager to gather this unparalleled scientific harvest, to sleep! gradually the sun seemed to sink into the waste of waters behind the western rim of earth, throwing a lurid glare across the sea, which now looked like liquid gold, and then turned to deepest purple as the last rays shot upwards into immeasurable space. faster and faster we sped; the motors at last working to their utmost limits, the dial registering our speed at precisely fifteen hundred miles per hour. none of us yet experienced the slightest inconvenience, either from the immense altitude we had reached, or the terrible velocity with which we were travelling upwards. by midnight, the doctor calculated our distance from the earth to be 25,874 miles. addressing temple and graham, he said: "i think, my friends, that we ought to congratulate ourselves on the exceedingly promising state of our enterprise. in the first place, our carriage is progressing as favourably as we could wish; everything is in the smoothest working order; our air is of the purest; we have food in abundance; water in plenty; light and warmth, as much as we desire. twenty-four hours ago we were on the yorkshire fells; we are now well on our way to that new world we are all so eagerly looking forward to reach. when we left earth, the planet mars was glimmering low over the southern horizon; it is now in our zenith. we are fast approaching that region where all earthly influence will be past, and where the power of her gravitation will cease. we inaugurate our voyage with every prospect of success." "i candidly confess, doctor, that all my unpleasant feelings of danger have passed away. i have every confidence in the good _sirius_ and her talented inventor," remarked temple. "the same here, mr. temple," said graham; "i feel perfectly convinced that--accidents barred, of course--we shall reach our destination in triumph." as might naturally be expected in the clear rarefied atmosphere through which we were travelling, the various heavenly bodies shone much more brilliantly than ever they appear from earth; and the vast, unfathomable vault of space was intensified in colour--very different from the blue of an earthly night-sky, and entirely free from cloud. the moon was perceptibly larger than she appears when viewed from earth; but the other orbs only differed in the intensity and brilliancy of their light. "mr. graham! doctor! doctor! the engine is going wrong!" sandy was heard shouting. "be calm, sandy," said the doctor, as he and his two friends hurriedly descended into the engine-room. it was manifest that something had gone wrong with the machinery, and the anxiety of all was plainly visible as the doctor and graham hastened to make an examination. "thank heaven, the motors are safe," said graham. "it is only the pin out of the rod of one of the condensing pistons," calmly remarked the doctor; and graham soon put all to rights again. some time elapsed before the excitable sandy could be pacified. he fully expected we were going to be dashed to pieces on the distant earth. the doctor took this opportunity of pointing out to us how necessary it was to keep a constant watch on our apparatus; for the least mishap might speedily lead to a calamity so appalling as to send a thrill of horror to the stoutest heart amongst us at the mere thought of it. chapter iii. our voyage beyond the clouds. long before morning dawned over earth, on the second day of our voyage through space, we had reached such an enormous altitude, that even the outlines of the continents could not be traced with any degree of clearness. the large masses of land were sharply defined from the oceans, but all trace of peninsulas, isthmuses, and islands was lost. the polar crescents of gleaming snow stood clearly out in bold relief, but the waters of the earth were becoming very grey in appearance. by 9 a.m. on the 3rd of may, we were close upon forty thousand miles above the earth. our life in the _sirius_ was very methodical, and a brief description of one day's routine will be sufficient for the purposes of this narrative. every two hours of night the watch was relieved, the person left in charge being responsible for the safe working of the various apparatus. at 7 a.m. sandy prepared breakfast; at 1 p.m. we had dinner; at 5 p.m., tea; at 9 p.m., supper. the intervals between meals were passed by the doctor almost exclusively in scientific observations, writing his journals, and carefully inspecting the machinery and instruments. to graham was allotted the task of keeping all in order, and compiling a record of the distance travelled each day. temple assisted the doctor in many of his labours. he was likewise busy upon a work on finance--a great scheme for liquidating the national debts of europe, which had been a favourite hobby of his for years. he also helped to write much of the present journal. sandy's time was fully taken up in various domestic arrangements, and in looking after his dog. we usually went to bed at 11 p.m., but if anything exceptional occurred we stayed up later, and sometimes we were too excited to go to rest at all. the doctor insisted on each one of the party taking a certain amount of exercise daily, and also swallowing a small dose of a drug of his own discovery. for the first week our voyage was somewhat uneventful. each day we continued to dash with stupendous speed towards the zenith. the earth, now, was greatly and rapidly changing in appearance. our nights were remarkably short, and the period of sunlight became longer and longer in duration. we were soon to pass beyond the influence of the earth's shadow, and to enter a region of perpetual day. on the tenth day of our departure from earth, when we were quite 360,000 miles above its surface, the moon completed her sideral revolution, and we saw the outer surface of the satellite for the first time in the history of mankind. unfortunately, we were too far away to make a very minute examination, but the scene vividly depicted through the doctor's largest telescope was one never likely to be forgotten. we were gazing upon a new world; the eyes of mortal man had never rested on that portion of the moon's surface now before us; and, oh, how different did it appear from that pale orb we are all of us so accustomed to see lighting the darkness of earth! perhaps it is well that her gleaming yellow surface remains unchanged, in aspect, to all mortal eyes. her surface, to the dwellers upon earth, has become a symbol of peace, eloquent of deathly calm. our nights now became shorter and shorter--with great rapidity, until, at the end of the third week of our departure from earth, when we had accomplished a distance of 800,000 miles, we reached those remote regions of space where the mighty shadow, cast by our planet, tapers down to a point, and the sun in all his glory reigns eternally supreme. our sensations were almost beyond description when the _sirius_ was at last fairly launched into the vast, boundless void of silent space. so long as we felt the influence of earth, and journeyed on our way under the shelter of her mighty shadow, the bonds that held us to our mother world were still unbroken. then, things at least seemed earthly. now, every earth-tie was severed; surrounded by a solemn, limitless sea of space, unconceivable, unfathomable, filled with brilliant and eternal light, such as no man had beheld before, every one of us was filled with awe; and even the ever-cool and dauntless doctor himself was well-nigh overwhelmed with the majestic splendour of the scene around us. we felt as if we had now ceased to be human; that we no longer belonged to earth, but were outcasts, with no home or bond of human fellowship away from our floating carriage; doomed to live for ever, and to spend eternity in crossing this radiant ether sea! the silence was profound. the calmest stillness of earth is as the tempest-roar in comparison with the awe-inspiring quietness of here! the very beating of our pulses rang clearly out on space; the ticking of our watches became even painful in its loud intensity. our hearts and our courage began to fail us. only the doctor, with his nerves of steel, refrained from uttering words of regret for thus rashly leaving earth for the sake of prying into the very laboratory of the universe! supernatural influences seemed to surround us. we started as men; we seemed to be fast evolving into new beings, governed by no human impulses--controlled by no human forces. still the _sirius_ sped on. upwards the good air-ship flashed with terrible velocity, bearing us whither--ah, whither? when we became more familiar with the vastness around us, the feelings of dread passed gradually away. the view from the windows was impressively grand. the sun shone with a brilliancy unknown on earth, even in the tropics, but the heat was by no means oppressive. far as the eye could reach, all was brilliant yellow light, endless, profound! we now derived the greatest benefit from the spectacles, prepared on the same principle as the helioscope, which doctor hermann had provided for our use, the brilliancy of the light being most painful and trying to the eyes. time, now, was one endless day of brightest sunshine, so that our only means of judging the hours of day, and what we still called night for the sake of convenience, was by the aid of our chronometers. soon after we reached these remote regions of eternal light, we began to experience considerable difficulty in breathing. at times this became so bad, that all of us lapsed into a state of semi-stupor. this caused us the gravest anxiety and alarm, and as we sped onwards the trouble increased. clearly something was going wrong. the terrible thought that air was absolutely about to fail us, in spite of all the doctor's careful experiments and calculations, filled us with thoughts too horrible to express. the condensers worked admirably, but driven at their utmost capacity, they still failed to furnish sufficient breathable atmosphere. singularly enough, poor rover felt this diminishing supply of air far more than his human companions, and for hours scarcely moved or breathed. the doctor was puzzled, graham was perplexed, temple and sandy very much depressed--the latter especially so. after many careful experiments and a thorough examination of the _sirius_, we at last found the cause in a loosened window. the remedying of this necessitated one of us going out on to the balcony and climbing the corniced sides. graham volunteered the hazardous duty. the doctor, with his usual forethought, and showing how well he had planned-out his gigantic scheme to the very smallest detail, and how carefully he had provided for all the contingencies human intelligence could foresee, had brought with him a modified diver's helmet, with the air-tubes attached, and a small cock-tap was fastened in the side of the _sirius_, through which air-pipes could be passed. this apparatus we adjusted on graham's head, and round his body hung a coil of fine manilla rope. our speed was now considerably reduced. while the doctor assisted him to mount the ladder which led to the door, and opened and closed it as he went through on to the balcony, temple and sandy worked the pumps which supplied him with air. this door had to be closed very quickly, to prevent our own air escaping. we eventually heard him at work on the defective window, and the great improvement in the air of our chambers was sufficient evidence that he had succeeded in his task. still, he did not return; for quite ten minutes we were in the greatest suspense as to his movements. the air-pipes had been drawn out nearly to their fullest extent, which was a singular circumstance, and one that seemed to bode no good, as half their length was amply sufficient for graham's needs. our concern rapidly grew into absolute alarm for the safety of our companion, until at last we had the signal that he was waiting to be admitted. it was a welcome relief to us all, and sandy could not refrain from uttering cheer after cheer of welcome, forgetting his work of pumping until sternly called to his duty by the doctor. as soon as the door was opened, poor graham fell into the doctor's arms, and for several hours he lay unconscious, in spite of all our remedies and careful treatment. something had happened, and for an explanation of the mystery we had to wait until our friend regained consciousness, and was able to relate his thrilling story. this he must tell in his own words. "notwithstanding the still high rate of speed at which we were travelling, i experienced no inconvenience upon getting to the balcony," began graham, drinking off a small glass of strong brandy which temple insisted on his taking, "nor did i have any trouble in climbing up the ring ladder to the defective window. the damage was trifling in itself, and easily repaired; but i noticed, as i went up, what looked to be a long crack in the side of the _sirius_, and determined to lower myself down and examine it. i fastened the rope to one of the rings, and lowered a part of it sufficiently long to reach the supposed crack: the end of the rope hung loosely down into space from the ring above. i cautiously began to descend, hand under hand, down the smooth, gleaming side of the _sirius_. the distance seemed longer than i had calculated, and i could not see very well out of the glasses, for my breath dimmed them. i went cautiously lower and lower, when to my utter horror the bight of the rope gave way, and i slipped down many yards, to find myself hanging by the hands alone in space, below the _sirius_. [illustration: "alone in space."] "for one brief, awful moment every drop of blood in my body seemed frozen, when i realised the fact that i was swinging by the hands above the unfathomable gulf of space! thanks to a nerve which has never yet failed me, my presence of mind did not forsake me. i tried to forget what was below, and to concentrate all my thoughts on what was above. above was safety; below, the most horrible death a human being could suffer. i shudder now to think of it. i knew it was no use to call for assistance, you had it not in your power to relieve me. not one of you could have lived out there without a proper supply of air. my only chance rested on trying to get back again--a wild and almost hopeless fight for life. the ring which held the rope had broken loose, and was hanging at the end. that saved me. it prevented the rope slipping from my grasp as i fell; and by pulling myself up a little way, i got my feet in the ring, and relieved the terrible strain upon my arms. big beads of perspiration streamed down my forehead, and the stifling atmosphere in the helmet added to my woes, as i realised all the horrors of my awful position. then, all the time, i was tormented with the possibility of the air-pipes breaking, and then--ah, then, to meet eternity, and fall downwards--where?" "graham, your experiences must have been unutterably terrible," remarked temple. "the mental torture of such a terrible situation must have seemed beyond human endurance. try a little more brandy, and finish your story later on, when you feel stronger," said the doctor. "no, thanks, doctor; i begin to feel myself again, and would like to relate all while the facts are still fresh in my memory." "with a desperation," continued graham, "only born of a wild desire for life, i commenced my struggle upwards. swinging from side to side, and twisting round and round above that gleaming yellow gulf, whose depths no mortal could sound, i slowly climbed, hand over hand, for a little way, and then stopped to rest. i soon, alas! realised the fact that going down was much easier than coming up, and every moment i felt my arms losing strength. oh! how horribly smooth and remorseless did the shining sides of the _sirius_ seem! not a projection of any kind to assist me. several times i was almost giving up in despair, and ending my frightful misery by dropping quietly into the yawning void below, but the natural love for life implanted in every animate creature held me back, whilst hope whispered encouragement in my ears. i could hear your voices; the sound of my pulse as it throbbed on in its agony was startlingly distinct. i heard sandy call out the hour--i had only been five minutes in my dreadful position, after all, yet it seemed ages and ages. suddenly an idea struck me, and that was if i could manage to hold on by one hand, with the other i might pass the end of the rope under my foot and form a loop. "this i succeeded in doing, and was thus able to rest my arms a little, at intervals, as i slowly struggled upwards. how heavy the helmet seemed to be getting! i felt slowly drifting into unconsciousness, and death. in what seemed to me an eternity, i at last reached the other end of the rope, which i had left hanging loose. by a great effort i got this end through the ring and secured it, thus making a loop in which i was able to stand for a few moments and rest. i cannot tell you how deliciously sweet those few seconds were; they seemed like a respite from the very jaws of death. i actually examined the supposed crack which had been the cause of all my misfortune, and found that it was not a flaw, but a mere scratch in the outer coating of the _sirius_. after this all was comparatively easy. i soon got on to the balcony, untied the rope, and gave the signal at the door. then all was blank; my senses left me. i suppose the mental strain had been too much, and that the overstrung nerves had collapsed at last. i remembered nothing more until i found myself under your care, and was surprised to learn that for three hours i had lain unconscious." "we all congratulate you on your wonderful escape, graham," said temple. "a bottle of our best port shall be uncorked. it will put new life into you, man." "and, graham," remarked the doctor, "you will perceive that your perilous undertaking has brought about good results. the air we are now breathing is all right again. we have lost but little time, for the moment we knew you were safe the motors were started again at full pressure." "the leakage," rejoined graham, addressing the doctor, "was absurdly trivial, yet it makes one shudder to think what would be the case did our air escape in any larger quantity." "it only shows how scrupulously careful we must be, and neglect no precautions for our safety," said temple. "the perils of our position must keep each one of us alert. unforeseen terrors may surround us; at any moment we may encounter unknown perils; we may be rushing into the midst of forces that will require all our fortitude to contend against them. we are in the midst of danger, and have to grapple with any difficulty that may present itself, without having the benefit of any human experience to guide us. but we shall pull through; we shall pull through, my friends; and think of our glorious reward!" remarked doctor hermann, working himself up into an enthusiastic state of excitement as he spoke. "what are the results of your observations and calculations to-day, doctor?" said graham. "i reckon we are now one million two hundred and fifty thousand miles from home!" "you were asking me, graham, about the results i arrived at to-day," continued the doctor. "briefly, they may be summarised thus. i find that we are now entirely beyond the attractive forces of the planet, earth. we are now, as it were, in a neutral position; not yet close enough to mars to come within the influence of his attraction." four hours after the doctor had thus spoken, that is to say at twenty minutes past two in the afternoon, the transit of earth commenced. he had timed the occurrence to a second. slowly the sphere of earth crept into view, and crossed gradually towards the centre of the sun, and finally passed beyond the disc into space again. no words of human tongue can adequately express the sensations we experienced as we watched the planet earth, now nothing but a small, dark ball in appearance, travel across the fiery background of the sun. to know that that mere speck was a universe peopled with millions of living creatures--to know that that tiny black disc, so far out yonder, was in reality a vast and mighty world, floating in space, yet so small in comparison to other orbs around us, impressed upon our minds the grand sublimity of nature's works. for many weeks after the events recorded in this chapter, the _sirius_ sped on without a single notable occurrence to relieve the monotony of the journey. our first christmas day was observed with all customary honours, sandy providing us with a royal feast; and the evening was given up to conviviality and amusement. the doctor and temple played chess; sandy, with his short pipe and unlimited whiskey, now and then sang us a north-country ballad; rover lay quietly at his master's feet; graham smoked huge cabanas, told stories, fired off jokes, and sang many a yorkshire ditty. all of us felt the magic spell of christmas-tide, and the observance of the festal day filled our hearts with renewed hope, and served to increase and strengthen the bond of brotherly unity in our little party. we were now 8,820,000 miles from earth, or, reducing this vast number to more comprehensive language, we had accomplished slightly more than a quarter of our journey. we still continued to find ether sufficiently dense to be converted into a breathable atmosphere, and into water--everything promised well for the ultimate success of our daring enterprise. alas! for all human hopes and human anticipations; we little dreamed of what the future was about to bring! chapter iv. awful moments. day after day, week after week, and month after month sped the _sirius_ on its journey, like a meteor across the gulf of space. we had now been eighteen months away from earth, and our distance from that planet we computed to be quite nineteen millions of miles. the earth was remarkably small in appearance, and the moon could only be detected through a glass. on the other hand, mars had risen in elevation, and sensibly increased in brilliancy and apparent size. other heavenly bodies had also changed considerably in their aspect. some had got much larger, others smaller, many had disappeared entirely from our vision, whilst several new orbs had been discovered. the doctor was able to make many observations of the little-known asteroids which travel round the sun between the orbits of mars and jupiter. scores of new ones were seen. for a long time doctor hermann had been worried by the course which the _sirius_ was taking. in spite of the fact that we were apparently steadily travelling onwards across the vast belt of space between earth and mars, certain of his calculations appeared to demonstrate that we were being drawn rapidly towards the sun! the quantity of water we condensed from the atmosphere now became very small, and eventually failed altogether, so that we had to depend upon our scanty store and the lozenges. after an unusually long and tedious day, the doctor gloomily threw aside his papers and his instruments, exclaiming to graham in almost pathetic tones, "it is as i have long expected; the sun is too much for us!" "but, doctor, you may have erred in your calculations. do you really think it wise to take such a pessimistic view of our situation?" answered graham, with a hopefulness that he was far from actually feeling. "if temple can spare us a moment, ask him to join us, and i will endeavour to explain our actual position, and the prospects we have before us." "a horrible one! a most horrible one!" the doctor muttered under his breath, as graham walked thoughtfully away. temple and graham joined the doctor almost immediately. "now, doctor, what have you got to tell us this time? what new discovery have you made? nothing unpleasant, i sincerely hope," said temple, in his usual cheery way. "my dear friends," began the doctor, "i am afraid i have bad news to communicate--very bad news. but let us look the situation squarely in the face, and discuss it calmly and philosophically, as becomes intelligent men." "many weeks ago," continued the doctor, "i explained to graham and yourself that our centre of gravity had changed from the earth to the sun; instead of earth glimmering at our feet, nineteen millions of miles below us, we have the fiery sun, as both of you cannot have failed to observe. this i must hasten to explain, is cause for no surprise; it is just what i expected would be the case until we came within the attractive forces of mars. but my instruments have demonstrated that our motors are now absolutely of no use. they are working just as usual, but our speed increases rather than diminishes, and from this i infer we are influenced by some vast attractive force. that centre of attraction to which we seem hurrying can only be the sun! no further words of mine are needed to render more clear the horrible doom which awaits us." as he finished speaking, the doctor rested his head on his hand, the usual attitude he assumed when engaged in deep thought. "but, doctor, before we take all this for granted, at least let us satisfy ourselves more completely that things are really so bad," said graham. "no use, graham, no use; i have studied these matters too long and too carefully needlessly to alarm you," answered the doctor. "well, doctor," said graham, "at least allow me to stop our motors. then what you say cannot possibly be refuted." "i think graham is right, doctor," remarked temple. "it seems to me a very practical suggestion." "you may do so if you like, but it is trouble thrown away," the doctor answered. graham was already hastening from the laboratory down the steps to the engine-room, followed by his two friends, and a moment afterwards the machinery ceased to work; the bright cranks and wheels and rods were still; the motors ceased to revolve. at last this beautiful monument of engineering skill, which had kept incessantly at work for upwards of eighteen months, was stopped, and breathlessly the three men awaited the result. doctor hermann, cool and collected even in such awful moments, walked slowly back to the laboratory to consult his instruments. graham and temple followed, too excited to speak. "well, doctor," said temple at last, after he had patiently waited his investigation, "what are your conclusions?" with marvellous coolness, as though answering the merest commonplace remark, doctor hermann replied: "it is as i said before; the _sirius_ is falling with ever-increasing speed into the sun! we are lost! "our doom, even if our speed goes on increasing, cannot overtake us for several years," continued the doctor, "but i doubt if our supplies could hold out for such a period." "doctor," broke in temple excitedly, "that is poor comfort; you ask us too much endurance. i, for one, will not, cannot, go on in such misery, only to be overwhelmed at last. two alternatives are left to us. we can either go on in a lingering agony of suspense, and meet our doom by starvation, or by fire; or, we can end our woes swiftly and effectually with these"--and as he spoke he pointed to the four nickel-plated revolvers hanging loaded against the wall. "we can but die like men!" "i must confess, if all hope is really gone, that i incline to mr. temple's view of the situation, and would prefer a sharp and practically painless death to, it may be, years of horrible suspense, crowned with the ten thousand times more awful fate of being hurled into yonder furnace at last," said graham. "temple, and you, too, graham," answered the doctor, "you surprise me by such a shallow mode of reasoning. listen to me. both of you are free agents to act as you may think fit; but before you rashly take your lives, at least wait a little longer. we are in the midst of strange surroundings, and still stranger possibilities. there is nothing to warrant you in taking such extreme measures." "my sentiments, doctor, must, i suppose, be attributed to my weakness," answered temple. "you may taunt me as you will," said graham, "but i believe there are rare occasions in life when self-murder can be no crime--nay, is even justified." "then all i can say is that your ethics are not mine, that your theology is not half the comfort or support to you in your extremity that my philosophy is to me in mine," remarked the doctor. "once more," said the doctor, "let me bid you wait. let the motors be started again, graham, at full pressure. some unforeseen occurrence may yet work our salvation." as time went on, graham and temple became more resigned to their fate; and, in answer to the doctor's urgent entreaties, gave him their promise to think no more of suicide, at least until matters became more desperate. the doctor never abandoned hope. calmly he bore up under all difficulties, plodding along with his instruments and his calculations; writing up his journals, and making voluminous notes, though every word he penned was probably never destined to be read by any other mortal but himself. during the twentieth month of our absence from earth, vast clouds of meteorolites passed within a few miles of us; and at one time the whole range of our vision was filled with these brilliant objects, just like a snowstorm of sparkling fire. many small ones struck the _sirius_, others exploded close by with sharp reports. we were too much alarmed and too disconsolate thoroughly to enjoy the glorious sight, the effects being beautiful in the extreme, and we were thankful when we passed beyond this shower of fire. onwards, onwards and onwards we sped, falling with awful velocity through space. so fast did we travel that our indicators failed to record the rate of speed, but still the sun did not appear any closer. this was our one assuring hope. the doctor was assiduous in his observations, but could not arrive at any definite conclusion. a week before our second christmas in the _sirius_, after a careful scrutiny through his largest telescope, he joyfully announced that mars was greatly increasing in apparent size, and that he had actually detected the presence of two satellites revolving round the planet! here was welcome news, indeed! if this were true, then, after all, we had nothing to fear from the sun. after some further investigation we were thoroughly convinced of our safety. no words can tell our feelings of thankfulness. we felt as though we had been snatched from the very jaws of death. "i can only explain our apparent fall towards the sun," said the doctor, "by the extreme rarity of the ether around us. this was not sufficient to float us, nor to afford resistance to our motors: hence we fell into space, instead of being propelled through it. i made the very natural error of supposing that some attractive force was at work, other than that exerted by the planet mars. once more our prospect is unclouded. the worst part of the journey is over; we may expect at any time now to find our centre of gravity fixed on mars, at last--then success may almost be counted upon as a certainty." our second christmas in the _sirius_ was spent as happily as the first. the past year had been an exciting and eventful one for us; full of dangers, full of trials; and three of our party felt that we had overcome them, thanks in a great measure to doctor hermann's skill and indomitable courage. almost daily we found the ether around us becoming more dense, and the speed of the _sirius_ sensibly decreased. our water supply once more became plentiful, the condensers now working admirably. we kept new year's day as a great holiday--a red-letter day in our experience, each of us feeling that we ought to inaugurate such an eventful year in not only our own history, but that of mankind, in a manner suited to its vast importance. as the clocks on earth were striking midnight on the 31st of december, 1876, and new year's greetings were being exchanged in all parts of the world we had left, four human beings, millions of miles away in space, were doing likewise. earth shone steadily, like a pale beautiful star, below us. during the first few moments of that glad new year, we drank with mild and boisterous enthusiasm to the planet mars, to the men on earth, and to our own success. owing to the increased rate of speed at which we had been travelling, our distance from the earth had increased much more than we had suspected. the doctor computed our distance from earth to be now 28,000,000 miles! if all went well, we should arrive at mars in about six months' time. we all of us had long felt weary of our close confinement. owing to the strict rules of hygiene that the doctor enforced, not one of the party had suffered from disease. still, it was a great joy to know that we should soon be released from the _sirius_, and the wonders of a new world were a rich reward in store. mars, now, was a most beautiful object in the heavens. long and often did we peer at it through our telescopes in wondering astonishment, as it shone in brilliant ruddy glory, still millions of miles away. the doctor was enchanted with his discovery of the satellites of mars. by the end of january, 1877, we had crossed those regions of rarefied ether, which were little more than an absolute vacuum; and the _sirius_ was once again propelled by its motive forces alone. we now thought it advisable slightly to check our engines, and our speed was reduced to about twelve hundred miles per hour. another interesting phenomenon was the change in our centre of gravity, which was now the planet of mars. this last great discovery set all our doubts at rest. between five and six millions of miles had still to be traversed, many perils had still to be undergone, many difficulties remained to be overcome--but mars, bright, glorious, ruddy mars, was conquered at last! chapter v. the glories of the heavens. for a month after the last events were chronicled the _sirius_ pursued its way steadily towards mars, without a single exceptional incident. on the second of february, however, when we were about four and a quarter millions of miles from our destination, we were dreadfully alarmed by a series of majestic natural phenomena. on the evening of the day just mentioned, or, rather, what would have been evening could we have distinguished night from day, the sun, for the first time since we left the shadow of earth, began to shine less brightly. as the hours went by he became more and more indistinct, just as he appears through a fog on earth, and finally his fiery rays were hidden behind vast banks of cloud. the blazing light now became a depressing gloom, just as before a thunderstorm. our dog evidently felt ill at ease, and whined and trembled as with great fear. rapidly the gloom increased. darker and darker grew the fathomless void which we were crossing, until we were surrounded by one vast blackness, such as no dweller on earth could ever conceive. the _sirius_ was lighted with incandescent lamps, but these only served to make the awful darkness more profound. this terror-inspiring gloom seemed to enter our very souls; we could not only see it, we could absolutely feel it. the sun seemed as though he had finally burnt himself out, and disappeared for ever from the spangled firmament, leaving all within the focus of his once-glorious rays in unutterable chaotic blackness. it was as though we had penetrated into the very womb of the universe, where no light could ever be! "i think this is absolutely the most dreadful of our many weird experiences," said temple to the doctor. "it is sublimely grand," answered the doctor, "and only shows how infinitely little man knows of the forces of nature away from his own planet." "doctor, there is something wrong with our compasses. the needles are revolving with great velocity. i trust the presence of all this electricity round us will not injure any"-before graham could finish, the whole firmament seemed lit up with a dazzling purple light, and a moment afterwards we were struck dumb with horror at the awful sound which followed it. for a moment the _sirius_ seemed about to fall to pieces; every bolt and plate in her vibrated, and we gave ourselves up for lost. the frightful explosion was like nothing heard on earth: ten thousand thunder-claps in one would be but a feeble imitation of that terrible discharge, which was gone in a moment without a single echo to mark its departure! far in the distance we could hear mighty cracking sounds coming nearer and nearer, and then dying away in space. clap after clap of this awful thunder shook the very vault of heaven in their awful intensity; and flash after flash of brilliant light lit up the vast void across which we were travelling. how the _sirius_ escaped utter annihilation amidst all this mighty display was a mystery to us all. it oscillated tremendously, as though at the mercy of conflicting currents, and reeled like a ship in a heavy gale. what appeared to be glowing meteors rushed by us with a deafening roar, or exploded with a terrible crash. vast expanses of space were filled with brilliant light, sometimes like glowing mountains and cave-grottoes of fire. vast sheets of blue and yellow flame rolled up with a crackling noise like huge scrolls of parchment, or curled and twisted into the most grotesque shapes. purple, yellow, and blue tongues of flame shot across the darkness, sometimes silently as the sheet-lightning of earth, but more often followed by loud and sharp reports. great quantities of fine magnetic dust accumulated on the balcony of the _sirius_, and once a large globe of purple fire dropped on the roof, and bounded away again into space. as the electrical discharges gradually became less violent, the whole vault of space above us was lit up with one vast aurora, whose enchanting glories were utterly beyond description. every colour of the rainbow, every combination of colour that man could conceive, was there, all blended into one gorgeous flare of tinted light. temple, graham, and sandy, though no cowards, were at last compelled to turn their amazed and wonder-stricken faces from this appalling scene; but doctor hermann, with blanched cheeks, watched the wonderful phenomena, cool and intrepid among all the fiery strife, controlling his emotions with what must have been an almost superhuman effort of will. throughout this period of unparalleled darkness our air was very bad, and the condensers working at their utmost pressure could scarcely keep up a sufficient supply of breathable atmosphere. most of our electrical apparatus was thrown out of order. we were able to generate little electricity during this wonderful phenomenon, and had it not been for the store of this force we always had by us, our engines would have been stopped. we failed absolutely to obtain water from the ether, so long as we were surrounded by these meteoric clouds. the view of the heavens through our telescope was now exceedingly beautiful. during the first week of march, a stupendous comet made its appearance between the _sirius_ and earth, and such was its exceeding brilliancy that for days it was visible to the naked eye. another uneventful month passed away, the only occurrence of interest being the apparently rapidly increasing size of mars. on the 7th of april our distance from earth was 32,000,000 miles, which consequently left us about 2,000,000 more miles to travel. even in the brilliant sunlight mars was visible without the aid of a glass, and presented a singularly beautiful and ruddy aspect. we were, as yet, too far away to distinguish much of its physical features, but we saw enough to excite our curiosity and interest to the very utmost. every available moment of our waking hours was spent in discussing the physical conditions of mars, and in making our plans for the time when we should land upon its surface. daily we were more and more convinced of the similarity between the physical conditions of the earth and mars, the most important fact of all being the undoubted presence of an atmosphere of considerable density. the satellites of mars were now becoming very bright and conspicuous. the _sirius_ continued its rapid flight through space with uninterrupted speed. our time was mostly spent in astronomical observation, and in discussing the beauties of the firmament as revealed by our telescopes. we never seemed to tire of witnessing the glories of the heavens. an interesting fact which we could not fail to observe was the apparently much smaller size of the sun's disc, and a sensible decrease both in the amount of his light and the warmth of his rays. life in the _sirius_ went uniformly on. it seemed ages since we were on earth, or had communion with our fellow-men. every day, graham carefully recorded the distance we had travelled, and made his report to the doctor. our machinery still worked with beautiful precision, and required but little scrutiny or attention. "well, doctor," said temple, one day after work was over, "suppose you give us an idea of our distance from mars, and our probable date of arrival?" "what is our distance for the past twenty-four hours, graham?" asked the doctor. "twenty-eight thousand eight hundred miles," he answered. "then we are still travelling at our reduced speed of twelve hundred miles per hour," rejoined the doctor. "well, our last computation of the earth's distance was made on the 7th of april. it is now the 17th of may. one rate of speed has been maintained throughout this interval, so that we are now 33,123,200 miles from earth, and just 876,800 miles from the planet mars. that distance we shall cover in a little over thirty days. if all goes well, we shall reach mars on the 18th of june." "your remarks fill me with the strangest sensations," answered temple. "whatever may come to pass," said the doctor, "let me impress upon you the importance of keeping cool, and as free from excitement as possible. our next thirty days will be the strangest that mortal man has ever yet experienced!" chapter vi. we near mars. as the _sirius_ sped on its journey from day to day, the apparent size of mars rapidly increased. we began to feel appalled at our nearness to this new world, now gleaming in brilliant splendour below, instead of above us. our sensations cannot be expressed. on the 2nd of june we were again alarmed at losing sight of the sun for a short time, and expected another meteoric visitation. we began now anxiously to discuss the possibilities of finding living creatures on this planet. it would indeed be a disappointment almost beyond human endurance, to find mars a dead desolate world, after all! but we took heart at its singularly beautiful appearance, and its similarity in many respects to the world we had left. we began to notice a considerable difference in the density of the atmosphere. nearer and nearer we came, awe-struck and dumbfounded at our own temerity. hour by hour, and day by day, we watched this glorious world become larger and larger to our view. still no sign of life could be traced. cold and still, and calm as the grave, this new world appeared to us. the _sirius_ absolutely seemed to creep along, although the good machine was bearing us onward at a speed so enormous, that the fastest express train of earth was a snail's pace by comparison. amid the terrible excitement, and the frightful tension of our nerves which it entailed, the days sped by almost unnoticed, uncounted. but the doctor, ever cool and collected, through all this trying period, kept a careful record of the distance travelled day by day. as we approached yet nearer to this magnificent planet, we were able to note most carefully the general distribution of land and water upon its mighty surface. daily, nay hourly now, our hopes of finding the planet mars a peopled world increased. it was three weeks from the time that the doctor had last dwelt upon the distance we had travelled, and the size of mars was becoming appallingly stupendous. on the evening of the 7th of june, we were all seated in the chamber above the engine-room, admiring the glorious splendours of the sunset on this heavenly orb, watching the last rays of the martial day expire, as we had so often done before. we were too absorbed in the beauties of the scene before us to speak; each was too overcome by the solemn grandeur of our surroundings, and our strange position, to converse with his fellow-man; until the darkness reached us at last, and broke the magic spell of our silence. temple was the first to speak. "well, doctor, things are rapidly approaching a crisis now. what are your latest views on our position?" "briefly these, temple. at the rate of speed we are still travelling, in one week from to-day we shall reach our destination on that strange world yonder. roughly speaking, but little more than two hundred thousand miles remain to be crossed, and, as far as i can determine at present, we shall complete the last few thousands of miles under the cover of darkness. this is well for us: it will enable us to descend unnoticed and unseen by any intelligent, and perhaps hostile, beings that may possibly dwell upon the surface of this planet. on the other hand, the darkness may conceal perils we should have been able to avoid, had we descended in daylight. of the two evils, i strongly counsel us to choose the former; that is, to drop quietly down at night and await the dawn in concealment. our future movements must be controlled entirely by events." the following six days were passed without anything unusual occurring. at dawn on the seventh, we were only about 28,000 miles away from mars, and his vast size inspired our hearts with increasing awe. our last day in the _sirius_, if all went well, had now arrived. at five o'clock p.m., the planet began to assume a slightly concave appearance; at six, this became even more pronounced; whilst an hour later still, when we were only about six thousand miles above its surface, the horizon seemed almost level with the _sirius_. mars now looked like a huge deep saucer, into which we were rapidly falling. at eight in the evening, as near as we in our terrible state of excitement could judge, for not one of us referred to our watches, all doubts respecting the presence of life on mars were expelled; and to our indescribable joy we noted dark belts of vegetation, in which the glittering mountains and active volcanoes were set. each minute the scene below us became more grandly beautiful. at a thousand miles above mars we found we could dispense with our condensers, and actually sustain life with the atmosphere admitted into the _sirius_. this was encouraging, more so than ever we had even dared to hope; mars already was beginning to supply every requirement of the children of the earth! we now deemed it advisable to reduce our speed somewhat. at a quarter to twelve we could not have been much more than a hundred miles above this new world. we now climbed out on to the balcony, and peering down into the dark depths, it was apparent to us all that the _sirius_ was over dry land, although a large sheet of water was visible in the distance, shimmering in the moonlight. in a few minutes more the good air-ship was hovering a thousand feet above the martial planet, and we began making the few final preparations for our descent upon its surface. chapter vii. our arrival and safe descent. as the _sirius_ gradually descended the last few hundred feet, sandy was busy getting out the rope ladder; graham confined his attention to the motors and steering apparatus; whilst on the balcony temple and the doctor kept a close watch, the latter on the alert for every possible contingency, and from time to time calling out instructions to graham for his guidance. we all of us remarked the greater buoyancy of the _sirius_ in the lower martial atmosphere than was the case in that of the earth, and our descent was slow and easy in the extreme. in fact, so buoyant had the _sirius_ become, that we had great fears of ever reaching ground at all without assistance from below. but eventually the good _sirius_ settled down through a dense growth of vegetation of some kind, snapping tall tapering stems like straws, crashing through giant reeds like so many grass stalks, and then sinking for a couple of feet into the soft slimy soil of what was evidently a dismal swampy jungle. here, at last, the _sirius_ came to rest amidst a forest of mighty stems, whose branches met overhead and formed a gloomy bower above and around it. we now armed ourselves with our revolvers and hunting-knives before attempting to pass down the ladder, one end of which was already lying on the ground. each one felt that to doctor hermann the honour justly belonged of being the first to set foot on this new world; and, accordingly, he led the way down the steps into the gloom, carrying a powerful electric hand-lamp, followed by temple and graham; sandy, with poor old rover in his arms, bringing up the rear. the air soon began to have a most remarkable and exhilarating effect upon us all. each one felt a buoyancy of spirits, a sense of lightness, and an increase of physical strength never known before; these effects we rightly attributed to the specific gravity of mars, which is so much less than that of earth. they were intensely exciting moments for us as, one by one, we climbed down the time-and-travel-worn sides of the _sirius_, fighting our way through the vegetation which clustered around us, until the bottom rung of the ladder was reached, and we felt the ground of a new world beneath our feet. but the country where we had chanced to descend was sullen and uninviting; even the light from the martial moons, shining so fairly, high up in the dark blue sky, failed to penetrate the dismal shadows of this swampy wilderness; whilst the lurid reflection in the heavens from a distant crater only intensified the horrible scene of gloom. but amid the shadows and the vapours of this reeking marsh we could see sufficient with our lamp to tell us that we were surrounded by vegetation totally different from anything we had left behind us on earth. the reeds were stupendous, with fluted and flattened stems, eighteen inches in width, rising straight as arrows from the stagnant water, their crowns lost to view in the night haze, and mingling together far above the roof of the _sirius_. the malarious vapours rising from the stagnant water and the rotting vegetation were deadly in their subtleness, and in spite of our ever-increasing excitement and curiosity, doctor hermann insisted for our health's sake that we should return to the _sirius_. a night amidst such poisonous gases might have stricken each one of us down with a fatal fever. it was well that we did so, for before morning dawned the dangers of our position were manifested in various startling ways. soon, huge banks of black clouds spread across the sky like shrouds, and drops of rain began to patter on the windows. "my friends," said doctor hermann, "the best advice i can give is that we stay inside the _sirius_ until dawn. sandy had better prepare us some food; we have not eaten for the past eight hours, and it is of the greatest importance that we take every care of ourselves, for we may have our strength and endurance put to the severest tests in the near future. besides, this marsh is full of pestilence; we cannot be too careful: and, further, from the closeness of the atmosphere and the look of the heavens, i predict a storm within the next hour or so." "you are quite right, doctor," rejoined temple; whilst sandy, as became the dutiful servant he was, began to act on the doctor's wishes, and very soon had spread before us a right royal repast, which bore ample testimony not only to his culinary skill, but to the still ample resources of our larder. a bottle of our best wine was uncorked in honour of the occasion, and we sat down well-prepared to do justice to what temple called our "triumphal feast." convivial and merry was our meal, notwithstanding the dismal surroundings; and so gay and light-hearted did we feel that even the reeking swamp was toasted, for, after all, in spite of its gloom and its pestilential breath, it was the first ground to echo our foot-falls on this new world. "one more bottle of wine, my comrades," said temple, as soon as our meal was over, "and let sandy have a double allowance of whisky to-night. we must inaugurate the termination of our journey in a right festive way." "what a triumph for science, for electricity in particular, we have won!" said doctor hermann. "here's to our continued success, and to the people of mars, if such there be----" but before the doctor could complete his toast the whole apartment was filled with a lurid flash of bluish light, and before we could recover from our surprise the vault of heaven was shaken by an appalling peal of thunder. "the storm is on us, doctor," exclaimed graham, "and to all appearance it is far too close to be pleasant." a few moments after, another and a brighter flash of lightning lit up the gloomy swamp, and almost simultaneously the thunder bellowed out in a quick succession of cracking reports, dying away in rumblings and growlings which were tossed from echo to echo in the wilderness. then down came the rain in a drowning deluge, roaring on the foliage, and churning the surface of the sleeping lake into a torrent of bubbling, boiling foam. towards the end of the storm we had another surprise, which filled us with the direst alarm. an exclamation from temple brought us all to the window of the _sirius_ which overlooked the lake. with blanched face, and eyes fixed intently upon the water, he pointed to the seething pool. "tell me if i am mad or dreaming," he shouted in his terror. [illustration: its huge, scaly carcass.] truly, indeed, his alarm was not without cause, for there, coming slowly from the water on to the shore, and in the direction of the _sirius_, was the first representative we had seen of animal life in mars. how shall we attempt to describe this hideous amphibious monster, as it appeared lit up by the almost incessant flashes of lightning? only its enormous head and forequarters were yet visible--a huge scaly carcase, mapped out with phosphorescent light, a square-looking head with pointed snout, and with two monstrous eyes attached to stalk-like shafts about a foot in length, which in the brief intervals of darkness shone like balls of fire. raising its head on its long pliant neck, it sniffed the air as if in anger, and then began to crawl out of the pool, yard after yard of its repulsive body emerging, its head nearly reaching the _sirius_ before its tapering fish-like tail was drawn from the water. we could hear the grinding, crunching sound of its scaly body as it was slowly drawn along the swampy ground, and so near had it come to us that we could see a coarse, bushy mane hanging round its lower neck in dripping folds. the hideous reptile, for such we must call it, passed on without noticing the _sirius_, although we felt its rough, scaly body rub against the sides; and as its hideous, mighty coils disappeared into the gloomy swamp, leaving a luminous, slimy track behind them we could detect huge protuberances like warts along its back, here and there varied with spiky fins, which were from time to time half-raised, as though the horrible creature were about to engage in combat. "doctor," said temple, in his alarm, "if this is a fair sample of the creatures we have come to live amongst, i really think it time we began to think about getting back again. i don't like the idea of such neighbours at all. besides, we may yet meet with monsters more terrible still, and what is of greater importance to us, we may not escape their notice so easily next time. we should require an army to protect us from such creatures as this." "gently, gently, temple; you are not a naturalist, and cannot be expected to feel my enthusiasm." no less than nine of these terrible monsters came from the lake during the hour that we watched, and all took the same beaten track into the swamps that the first had followed, and we saw them no more. temple could scarcely conceal a shudder, as he looked at the now placid water. "ah!" he exclaimed, "who would have dreamed that such creatures were lying beneath its surface?" certainly the doctor alarmed us, when we heard him coolly bidding sandy to seek and slaughter these loathsome creatures. "sandy," said he, "you must get me one of those serpents to morrow. it will be most interesting to dissect so magnificent a type of the reptilia. i may not have another such opportunity." "na, na, doctor, i could na do it--i could na do it, mon," he replied deprecatingly. "doctor, i am afraid, if you press your request, we shall have sandy wanting to give us all a week's notice," said graham, assuming an air of mock gravity as he spoke. "i dinna want to do anything o' the kind, mr. graham." "all right, sandy my boy, i'll make a bargain with you," answered graham, laughing. "if i kill the beastie, will you help to cut him up?" "na, na, mr. graham, it is na a joking matter. i will ha' nothing to do with it; for as sure as you do, bad luck'll be followin' us. we'd best not meddle wi' the likes o' them." "well, sandy," said the doctor, "you must have had sufficient experience of me, by this time, to know that i never ask a man to do anything i am afraid to do myself. i spoke thoughtlessly, and will do the killing myself." by the time these reptiles had passed out of sight, the storm had well-nigh subsided. sleep was beyond us, the sight of these reptiles alone was enough to keep us awake for a week. we longed, oh, how we longed for the dawn! but more surprises were in store for us, ere that eventful night had passed away. the awful storm seemed to have stirred into activity the wild beasts of this lonesome marsh, and many curious cries resounded from its depths. now a muffled yell, or a chorus of loud bellowings would be heard, as if some gigantic creatures were fighting each other to the death. then more musical calls would break the oppressive stillness--here, there, and everywhere from the thickets they came, but the animals that produced them were invisible in the gloom. our curiosity was excited to the utmost limits of human endurance. it must have been about an hour before the dawn when we were terrified, beyond all description, by a crash against one of the windows of the _sirius_, followed by a moan as of pain, so appalling, so unearthly, that our very blood seemed to curdle with horror. even doctor hermann himself was visibly disconcerted. perhaps it was owing to the highly wrought state of our nerves, but all of us, for the moment, were too terror-stricken to move. in the doctor's case the alarm was only momentary, and with intrepid courage he rushed to the broken window, firing a couple of shots from his revolver at some dread shape struggling to enter the apartment. the doctor was a poor hand with such a weapon; both bullets missed their mark; and before a third shot could be fired, the frightful creature had vanished. moan after moan was heard; now near, then far away in the distance, sounding more like the voices of tortured souls, than of any material being. in a few moments, another of these mysterious creatures appeared, and this time we watched it approach with rapt astonishment, as it floated through the air in the full focus of the rays from our electric lamps. no creature of earth possesses such means of locomotion. it looked like a huge dark ball, perhaps six feet in diameter; and as it came towards us, we noticed that it was revolving with enormous rapidity, forcing its way through the air, evidently on the same principle as a screw-propeller in the water. graham had by this time regained his self-possession, and, with his rifle in hand, as this monster approached, he said: "doctor, shall i fire?" "yes, graham, by all means; but be absolutely sure of your aim before doing so." almost before the doctor had finished speaking, the crack of graham's rifle rang out; but the animal continued its course, and came with a crash against the _sirius_. the shot had told, nevertheless, and we heard its body fall through the reeds, and drop with a heavy thud on the spongy ground. "well done, mr. graham! a splendid shot! he's doon! he's doon!" sang out sandy at the top of his voice, evidently both pleased and comforted beyond measure, to see that these strange beings we had come amongst were not proof against earthly powder and ball. chapter viii. a strange world. in the grey dawn of morning the weather began to clear; white fogs hung low over the densest parts of the swamp, but near the _sirius_ the mist lifted, and the leaden-looking sky was visible. we now climbed out on to the balcony, and though nearly surrounded with the giant reeds, we had a fairly good view of the range of snow-capped mountains which extended beyond the lake. with the break of day the tumultuous carnival of the wild beasts inhabiting the marsh came to an end, and their cries gradually ceased. buried as we were, among the dense, marshy forest, we could not be absolutely certain, but so far as we could judge, the country seemed more open beyond the lake. we had evidently descended just on the outskirts of the swamp, which was apparently connected with the lake, and formed part of a vast plain extending to the mountains. the lowest of these we computed to be about twelve miles away. as we were thus doing our best to make out a little of the country round us, the distant mountain-tops became illumined with the rays of the rising sun. the snow upon their highest summits gleamed like burnished silver in the light, and as the morning broke, the clouds reflected a rosy radiance of rare beauty. the dawn on mars was very similar to the dawn on earth; and as we watched the sunlight leap from peak to peak, and the heavens change from one glorious hue to another, we could have fancied ourselves watching some of the many magnificent sunrises we had seen in the alps, or on the lofty himalayas. it really appeared as though all the animal life of mars was nocturnal; for, with the break of day, not a trace of a living creature could be seen or heard--all was silent as the grave. the wind had dropped, and not even the feathery crowns of the giant reeds moved; everything was still. our future movements were of such importance, that even dr. hermann restrained his eager curiosity to examine the strange beast graham had shot, and which was lying dead somewhere outside the _sirius_, and suggested that, as soon as we had breakfasted, we should consult together as to what was best to be done. the meal was quickly over, none of us having much inclination to eat after the excitement of the previous night. "it is now time that we began seriously to discuss our future movements," remarked the doctor, rising from the table, and leading the way to the laboratory, whither we usually retired as soon as our meals were over. "there is much for us to consider and decide." the sun was now well up in the heavens; the sky was blue and cloudless as on earth; whilst two of the martial moons could be seen pale and lustreless above us. their rays were appreciably less powerful and brilliant. while the doctor and temple made notes and prepared for departure, graham went down on to mars, to search for his game; but he sought in vain. it had disappeared entirely. a few splashes of blood were to be seen on the sides of the _sirius_, and a small pool of the same marked the spot where it had fallen. some kind of creature, hunting in the swamp for prey, had carried it off, and we saw it no more. graham's disappointment was only excelled by the doctor's; but they consoled themselves by the thought that they would soon obtain other specimens as curious and as interesting. we were all of us eager to get away from the swamp, and as soon as graham returned, the doctor gave the order to start. but the motors sped round to no purpose--the _sirius_ was held fast in the treacherous mud as in a vice, and the force of suction was so great that we found it would be impossible to move until we had dug out that portion which was buried in the slimy ground. we were, however, too eager to see something of our new world to stay and do this, and we ultimately agreed to set out and explore the country round about on foot. we armed ourselves with rifles, knives, revolvers, and plenty of ammunition, whilst sandy carried sufficient food for our needs during the day. how can we describe our sensations, as one by one we climbed down from the _sirius_, and, headed by the doctor, trooped off in indian file towards the shore of the adjacent lake; stumbling, struggling, and wading through the swampy forest, full of expectancy, and not without a certain amount of dread as to what might befall us in this strange world? our dog bounded and barked with wildest delight on regaining his freedom; and so noisy did he become that we had to tie him up, and sandy led him. any disinterested spectator would have thought us a queer party; and truly we looked so, for somehow we felt as strangers in a strange land, and out of place with all that surrounded us. nothing inspired this feeling to so great an extent as the effect which the much lower specific gravity of mars than earth had upon us. we felt too small for our new home; and such was the result of this that we were able to perform feats of jumping and leaping that would have made the athletic champions of earth turn green with envy. even staid and elderly doctor hermann thought nothing of taking a leap of ten or twelve feet; and our heavy, clumsy collie dog, rover, seemed transformed into a greyhound, so active and light of foot was he. we felt in much better spirits than we had done for years, younger, stronger, more daring, and courageous. it did not take us long to reach the lake, but the prospect disappointed us. round the shores, as far as we could see, the forest of reeds extended; but beyond the lake, far away to the westward, the country was more elevated and promising. it was vain to attempt to get round the shore through such a swampy wilderness, and, baffled, we had to retrace our footsteps. before leaving the lake, however, we ascertained that the water was fresh, and of excellent quality. "we will not be 'done,' graham, after all," remarked the doctor. "we will go back to the _sirius_ and get out our india-rubber boat. she will carry the four of us comfortably enough." "a capital idea, doctor; i quite forgot our boat," exclaimed temple. we returned at once to the _sirius_ and got out the boat, which we all helped to carry through the reeds to the water. some little time was spent in putting the various parts together, but when all was finished our little craft looked splendid, and delighted us with her buoyancy and stability. as soon as all was ready we embarked upon this unknown lake, sandy and graham rowing, temple steering, and the doctor keeping a sharp look-out generally. our dog curled himself up under a seat in the stern, and went to sleep. it was some time before we got out far enough to see much of the surrounding country, and when we did so the prospect was by no means an encouraging one. a vast forest of reeds, intermingled with large trees, whose smooth, spindle-shaped trunks we had already examined with astonishment, extended for miles and miles round the margin of the water. all seemed desolate; not a living creature could be heard or seen. a light breeze now began to ruffle the surface of the lake, and this we took advantage of by hoisting our slender mast, and also a small lug sail, which carried us along famously without the fatigue of rowing. by the doctor's advice, temple steered nearly due west, towards the mountains, and as we sailed along the country assumed a more inviting appearance. the dense fringe of reeds gradually became broken, and drier ground was marked by small hills and tall trees, of graceful outline and dense red foliage, which gleamed very brilliantly as the sun shone full upon them. objects on the opposite shore became more and more distinct, and we were able to detect a great variety of trees and shrubs clothing the sides of the valleys, which extended gently upwards from the lake into the heart of the distant mountains. we sailed steadily along, the doctor picking up a large red leaf which was floating on the water as we passed by. it was about eighteen inches long from point to stem, and the same in width, perfectly diagonal in shape. its tissues appeared much the same as those composing the leaves of earthly trees. once the enormous flat head of some water-monster peeped above the surface, and sank again. nothing further of interest occurred until we reached the shore, although sandy declared that he saw a large bird flying along, but as none of the rest observed it we concluded that he was probably mistaken. the bed on this side of the lake was much deeper than on the other, and the bottom was rocky. the water was remarkably clear, and we could see many beautiful plants of strange shapes, the like of which we had never seen before, waving to and fro in the crystal depths. some were like long lengths of blue-green ribbon; others were cup-shaped, poised on tapering stems; whilst others, yet again, were composed of long slender twigs with no foliage, but a bright scarlet ball, about as big as a pigeon's egg, on the extremity of each. a very beautiful little plant, with a light red, scaly leaf, covered most of the rocks on shore, and many of the pebbles which strewed the beach were exceptionally fine and brilliant; some shone like emeralds, and were almost as clear as that gem. here the doctor was in his glory, indeed! he fell down on his knees upon the shore as soon as his feet touched dry ground, and absolutely revelled in the beautiful pebbles, as a miser would in his gold, taking them up by handfuls, and dropping them one by one through his fingers. "temple," he shouted in his enthusiasm, "temple, these stones are not of earth; they are new; fairer far than earthly riches; more beautiful, more precious than all the gems of earth combined; for not all of them could purchase one of these!" the shore where we landed was for some distance inland rough. beyond the belt of shrubs were groves and forests, extending far up the mountain slopes, and the trees which composed them were truly magnificent. many were evidently nondeciduous. the foliage of nearly all was dark red; but here and there a smaller tree, with blue leaves and green flowers, stood out in bold relief from the rest. many of them were loaded with giant-fruit products, hundreds of pounds in weight, and emerald-green in colour, shaped something like gourds. they were extremely acrid to the taste; but a pink berry, about the size of a walnut, on a vine-like plant, was sweet and deliciously flavoured. it would take up far too much of the space allotted by us for this narrative to attempt to describe a tithe of the wonderful and curious types of vegetation we found in this fair land of promise, where everything we looked at was new to our eyes, absolutely new; and our exclamations of surprise and admiration were almost incessant. we felt as dwellers in a country village must feel upon seeing the wonders of a great metropolis for the first time. but the day was passing on, and at noon we returned to the shore, and rigging up a shelter from the sun with our sail, we made a fire of some driftwood on the beach, and prepared our meal. sandy had loaded himself with fruit and berries of various kinds, which he proceeded to distribute by way of dessert; but the doctor advised us not to eat them until their properties were better known to us. it was hard to resist such tempting, luscious fare when we were hot and parched, yet we left them untouched, wisely or unwisely, and quenched our thirst at the lake. whilst enjoying our after-dinner smoke, and discussing the events of the morning, we were startled by a singularly rich and beautiful song, as of a sweet flute, which issued from a bush clothed in bloom just behind us. "a bird, i do declare!" excitedly exclaimed the doctor. "and one of exceptionally sweet song, too," answered temple, both rising to their feet as they spoke. but nothing could be seen; and for several minutes the delicious music was hushed. "doctor, it is na bird at a'; it is a butterfly! see, there he is!" shouted sandy, pointing, as he ran, to a small bush twenty paces ahead. "goodness gracious!" exclaimed the doctor, in astonishment, "i believe sandy is right!" and right he was, for certain; for this singing insect fluttered lazily along, to a bush much nearer to us; and, poising on one of the topmost blooms, again warbled as sweetly as before. "truly, indeed," said the doctor, in amazement, "we have reached a world of anomalies! to all intents and purposes that is a butterfly, yet its structure must be entirely different from any insect on earth, or known to man." others now appeared. their wings were of various colours and shapes, denoting, probably, several species; but one with light turquoise-blue pinions was by far the commonest. soon after we saw the insects, a flock of white birds, about the size of a thrush, appeared, flying quickly along the side of the lake in a very swallowlike manner. one of them graham was fortunate enough to shoot; and we were surprised beyond measure to find that it was without legs, and pouched, like the marsupalia, or kangaroos of earth. in the pouch were several pinkish eggs; and we inferred that this creature hatched them as it carried them about the air, requiring no nest for the purpose. it was clothed in plumage more like scales than feathers, the filaments being similar to fine shreds of horn. many other species of these curious legless birds, and singing insects, were seen by us as we strolled along the shore. just, however, as we were about to embark, a magnificent animal trotted down one of the valleys to the lake, to drink. it was certainly three times as big as the largest elephant, though slim and graceful of build as a fawn. here all further resemblance ceased. it was something like a greyhound in appearance, but the ears were broad and very large, and the dark eye exceptionally prominent. its tail was long and bushy; its hoof uncloven, and the colour of the skin was as dull copper. we were too much lost in admiration of the beautiful creature to shoot it down, and before we had recovered from our surprise, it bounded away towards the mountains with amazing speed. we subsequently counted eight more of these animals, grazing on the patches of red "grass" on the lower hills. "respecting the inhabitants of this new world," said the doctor; "really, its fauna and flora, so far as we have observed them, are simply grand." "bar the serpents, doctor," said graham. "more than satisfied," said temple, "i am charmed and delighted, and now share your conviction that a higher type of animal still remains to be discovered. you know to what i refer--creatures of intellect, formed in the image of god, like ourselves." "we had best now return, my friends. by the time we reach the _sirius_ the sun will be near setting, and it is not wise to pass through the swamp at dusk, after what we have already seen of its inhabitants," said the doctor. laden with a great variety of specimens, we made our way to the boat, and were soon rowing across the lake again towards the swamp. the breeze had died away, so that our sail was useless, and we had to pull the entire distance. the sun was sinking behind the range of mountains we had just left, as we stopped and began to pack up our boat; and by the time we had got everything inside the _sirius_, night had fallen. tired and hungry, we were glad to reach our "home" again, and as soon as we had eaten we all of us retired to rest, and passed a peaceful, uneventful night. if the monsters of the swamp were noisy, we did not hear them; not one of us woke until the sun had long risen. after breakfast, we commenced our task of digging out the _sirius_ from the mud. the doctor was busy preserving specimens, dissecting others, and writing his scientific journals. six hours' hard work sufficed to get the _sirius_ clear enough to start. we also took the precaution of putting a considerable amount of ballast into our air-ship, to replace the stores which had been consumed, so that we should not again experience any difficulty in descending. by the time all this was done the afternoon was well advanced, yet so weary of the swamp were we, that we decided to leave it at once. "we cannot do better than make for the beach where we landed this morning, on the other side of the lake, ascending about ten thousand feet as we cross. that will enable us to survey a good many miles of country," said the doctor to graham. slowly we soared away from the marsh forest, high over the reeds, up into the pure, fresh air of heaven, where from the balcony we could view the land and water below us. the swamp was enormous, many, many square miles in extent, and beyond it appeared a dense forest of quite a different kind of vegetation. the country, as far as we could see, from the base of the mountains to the shores of the lake and beyond it, was much the same throughout its area as that which we had already explored the previous day. certainly none of it bore the appearance of civilisation--all seemed virgin wilderness, and our hearts sank within us. beyond the belt of dark forest on the other side of the swamp, we could see the ocean; looking landwards, the highest of the mountains concealed the view. "do you think it advisable to go further to-day, doctor?" asked graham. "well, now we are up so high it will certainly be best to do as much surveying as possible, and then we can discuss our position and future movements to-night. put us up a few more thousand feet, graham, so that we may clear these mountains and see what the country is like beyond them." the scene from above the mountain range was indescribably beautiful. we looked down upon lofty snow-capped peaks, romantic valleys, leaping waterfalls, and slumbering lakes; upon wild and lonely plateaux, glaciers, and snow-fields; upon steep cliffs, gentle slopes, cone-shaped summits, and others like unto pyramids, pinnacles, or spires. we went right over the yawning crater, and looked down into the smoke and fire which rose gently from its hidden depths, now calm and peaceful as a sleeping child. we saw the birthplace of rivers, high up the hillsides, and could trace them from their source to the distant ocean; we noticed the various belts of vegetation growing on the mountain slopes from the lake to the snow-line--but we saw no trace of anything shaped and fashioned as ourselves! higher and higher we rose, and at last the country to the westward, or behind the mountains, gradually came into view. it was even more charmingly beautiful than the country we had just left behind us--more level, more wooded, better watered, and parts of it apparently under cultivation! our hearts beat fast within us as we saw what looked like vast enclosures, with long, winding canals running through them; and even more excited still did we become when we distinctly made out a colossal bridge which spanned a deep valley between two hills. "there! there are the signs of a higher intelligence at last; the brute creation does not reign supreme, as we feared," said temple, bursting into tears, and unable to control his feelings longer. graham waxed eloquent over the engineering qualities of the bridge, the enormous width of its span making the mightiest bridges of earth seem but as toys in comparison. we were too far away (quite thirty miles) to see much detail, but we could distinguish, as temple spoke, two vast cities, one on either hill, joined together by the bridge, with palaces and halls and lofty towers, apparently of white marble, glistening in the rays of the setting sun. upon seeing this wonderful city, doctor hermann very wisely gave the word to descend as quickly as possible, in case we might be observed. in five minutes we were safe on the ground again, the _sirius_ snugly hidden in a beautiful grove of trees and underwood on the banks of a stream, in a spot where we should at all events be able to retreat and readily conceal ourselves in case of emergency. "yes, temple, your fears were all unfounded," answered the doctor. "mars is inhabited by reasoning beings. i assure you it is most gratifying to find the speculations of my early days of study, and the conclusions of more matured years of experience, turning out to be absolute facts. when on earth, i used to dream of a new race of intellectual beings, far away out here; to ponder over their pursuits and their appearance; to wonder if they were more highly developed, physically and mentally, than we. now these strangers are but a few hours' walk away from us; and, if i mistake not, those beings that made and dwell in that fair city yonder are of a higher development even than ourselves. i prophesy their intellect is greater, their beauty fairer, their talents more numerous, their civilization more advanced, or not so much decayed as our own! to-morrow we will seek their acquaintance, and make ourselves known unto them!" to-morrow! how can we spend the hours that divide us from then! but darkness is settling fast around us, and we must wait in patience the coming of a new day. chapter ix. the morrow--and what came of it! never did four human beings await the coming of daylight with such feelings as ours. not one of us slept for a moment, the livelong night; our excitement was too intense, and the result of our doings on the morrow too momentous. we were up and out of the _sirius_ by sunrise, looking westwards across the undulating expanse of country, to obtain a glimpse of the fair city we saw yesterday; but vain were our endeavours; a group of low hills hid all from view. on a hill about twenty miles to the north of where we stood, however, we saw three mighty domes, the central one being more than twice the size of the others. from the way in which they glistened in the sunlight, we concluded that they were roofed with gold, or some metal unknown to us of the same colour and brilliancy. a large wood that surrounded them hid the remainder of the buildings from sight, but their size appeared to be enormous, dwarfing all earthly structures into utter insignificance. we started off in the yet early morning, fully armed and equipped for our walk across country to the distant city, to make the acquaintance of its yet unknown inhabitants. that they were beings of noble stature we had not the slightest doubt; for only a race of giants could have reared such a colossal city; besides, the very physical conditions of mars point to the existence of larger types of life than any now prevailing on earth. we had not walked more than four miles on our way before we reached country evidently in a high state of cultivation. we passed large enclosures of red "grass," divided by hedges of a cactus-like plant, similar to the one we noticed growing in the swamp. these fields were evidently crops, the herbage being finer and longer than that growing wild on the mountain slopes. there were other enclosures full of a creeping plant, something like convolvulus, but bearing a long narrow pod, full of small bean-like seeds; and in others were bushes laden with fruit as big as melons, and very similar in appearance. we were walking steadily along a broad kind of pathway between these enclosures, when an exclamation from sandy caused us to halt, and immediately confine our attention to something which the cautious scot was looking at on the ground before him. it was the imprint of feet in the soft, bare ground, and evidently the impressions of a being shod with moccasins, and of mighty stature. as we were all stooping down, intently examining the first absolute traces of the intellectual inhabitants of mars, we did not notice the approach of the being who had doubtless left these tracks behind. he came slowly along the path we were following--a being--shall we say a human being? for in all his outward frame he resembled ourselves, save that in stature he was a giant, quite nine feet in height. his features were noble-looking, almost like the egyptians of old, and his skin was wonderfully fair and beautiful. his black beard swept downwards to his breast, and his long bushy hair, of the same tint, was confined simply by a ring of some metal which just encircled the crown of his shapely head. he was clothed in a loosely flowing robe of some soft material, almost like silk, which draped from his neck to his knees, girded at the waist with a broad strap, from which dangled several curious articles of which we knew not the use. his legs and feet were covered with the skins of some beast, curiously ornamented. slowly but without a sign of fear he advanced towards us, carrying in his hands a long rod made of some metal. his expression was warlike; we had evidently to deal with no coward; but we could plainly see that his curiosity was most intense. with the exception, perhaps, of the doctor, all of us were visibly alarmed at this strange bold and haughty man, and had we not been assured by the calm confidence of our friend we should most certainly have felt inclined either to fight our visitor at once, or make the best of our way out of his presence. there was something uncanny about him. had he even spoken, the awe and mystery surrounding him would not have been so terrible. but he came towards us in absolute silence; and when about a dozen paces away from where we stood, he paused and watched us intently. doctor hermann, foolishly we thought, hailed him successively in german, in english, and in latin, but he made no sound in reply. he was examining us minutely, evidently full of confidence in the superiority of his size and strength. he must have looked upon us with much the same contemptuous wonder as the old travellers viewed the race of dwarfs that they assure us inhabit the vast forests of central africa. sandy at last hurled at him a perfect torrent of honest gaelic, which only seemed to rouse his anger, and he uttered several sounds which were evidently meant for words of warning, in a loud, imperious, but not unpleasant voice. his arm was raised as if in threat towards us, and all of us felt thoroughly alarmed, except the doctor, who advanced a step towards him with both hands held out as if in greeting. at this he pointed the long rod he was carrying towards one of the curious animals we had previously met with near the lake, which happened to be grazing quietly half-a-mile away, and within a second of time we saw the poor creature leap into the air and drop dead! we heard no report, we saw no flash! this was too much for sandy, and before we could prevent him his revolver was drawn, pointed at the unknown stranger, and fired once, twice, three times into his stalwart body! at the first shot he screamed with pain, and tried to level his rod at us; at the second he fell to the ground; the result of the third we never learned, for we all turned and fled as if for our lives towards the friendly cover which sheltered the _sirius_. as we ran behind the welcome shelter of the low hills we noticed several more of these strange beings, hastening from various directions to their fallen comrade; and as we had every reason to dread the deadly weapons with which they were most probably armed, we were glad to reach the wooded country and seek our refuge under the cover of the trees. with thankful hearts we reached the _sirius_, finding everything as we had left it. doctor hermann was angry beyond all measure with sandy for his foolishness in shooting without just provocation, and threatened that if he did not keep more command over himself in future, he should not carry firearms at all. "this, temple, is a most unfortunate occurrence--most unfortunate for us all," continued the doctor, after he had finished lecturing sandy, who was now all contrition, and cursing himself for his stupid blunder. "there is no telling what may happen now; it is impossible to estimate the amount of misfortune this unwarranted attack on a harmless being may bring upon us. it is folly now to think of visiting that fair city yonder, on foot, as i so much desired." "i quite agree with you, doctor; yet, after all, there is some little excuse for poor sandy. matters certainly looked threatening; my own hand, too, was on my revolver at the time." "well," continued temple, "all our arguments will avail us nothing now. regrets are useless; we are in a serious position. like all englishmen, we have readily got ourselves into a mess; and let us hope, like our countrymen, we shall display the usual quickness of resource in the time of difficulty and danger, and soon see a way out of it." "true, true, my dear temple," remarked the doctor, regaining his usual _sang froid_; "time is pressing. we may rest assured that this morning's work is well noised abroad, and ere long, there will be a hue and cry after us. although my remarks may savour of egotism, i can frankly say, i have no fear of any living being on this planet. from what little i have seen of its civilisation, i am confident that we shall, at any-rate, receive justice at the hands of its inhabitants. if a low-born labourer of the field--for such i take this martial, whom we have slain, to be--can show such courage, and be possessed of a weapon that makes the arms of earth seem but as the toys of barbarians, in comparison--if, i say, the lower classes of this planet's people are so much in advance of ourselves, then its aristocracy must be gifted with intelligence far higher than aught we wot of; and with such a people we have nought to fear, provided we can make them understand who we are, whence we came, and what is our mission. let us lose no time in getting away from here; let us visit the city yonder in the _sirius_, boldly and with brave hearts; and i feel sure we shall be received in a manner worthy of our confidence and our courage." "doctor, i am afraid your naturally brave nature makes you feel too sanguine. i frankly own that i am unable to acquiesce with all you say; still, i cannot suggest anything so good as an alternative, and am ready to act on your suggestion. let us hope all may yet be well," said temple. "we could start off elsewhere," said graham. "the good _sirius_ can carry us to some other part of this martial world, where we may have better luck with the natives." "gently, graham," rejoined the doctor; "you overlook the fact that we have nearly worn out our machinery. everything requires a thorough overhaul; as things are now, i much doubt if the _sirius_ would carry us a couple of hundred miles. i ascertained this before we started this morning." "as an engineer i ought to have known this, doctor; but, really, the excitement of the last few days seems to have knocked everything out of me. by all means let us visit the city with what little electric force is still left to us, and take our chance," answered graham, and his remarks were seconded by temple. our conversation was suddenly interrupted by a mighty blast from what we judged to be some instrument like a horn. it sounded so near that we each sprang up to look, fully expecting that the alarm had already been given and that our hiding-place was discovered. as we cautiously peeped between the trees, whilst standing on the balcony of the _sirius_, we beheld dozens of this mighty race of people, searching everywhere about the countryside; and another blast from the horn, which sounded much nearer than the previous one, informed us that some at least of our pursuers were coming in our direction, and that the discovery of our hiding-place was but a matter of a very short time. the climax was reached a few minutes afterwards when a black-bearded giant of herculean strength burst through the low underwood, and with a curious unearthly shout as of triumph rushed towards the _sirius_. perhaps fortunately for us he carried no rod-like weapon--his sole equipment seemed to be a mighty horn, whose bright and gleaming gold-like coils encircled his body several times! but he came too late! for ere he could get within twenty paces of the _sirius_ the command was given by doctor hermann, and graham set the engines in motion. we shot upwards towards the sky with great speed, and before our astonished pursuer could recover from his surprise we were a thousand feet above him in the air. however superior to us in their intelligence the people of mars might be, they were evidently nonplussed at our escape, and appeared to be utterly ignorant of aerial navigation in any form whatever. at least we thought so then, as we watched them gathering into terror-stricken groups below us, and ever and anon pointing to the _sirius_, now almost at rest four thousand feet above them. "doctor, how i wish we could manage to well clean our machinery, and be able to rely upon our electricity for safety. this is beating the enemy with a vengeance," said graham. "but, my young friend, you forget that we cannot live in the air; our mission is to make friends with these people, not to shun them; to fraternise with them in the common interests of humanity. now that we are here, a serious responsibility rests upon each and all of us--the teeming millions of our fellow-men, left behind on earth, will expect us to make the very most of our glorious opportunities, and to carry back to them a full history of the wonders of this new world and new race. 'advance' must be our watchword, until our work is done; even though our lives are lost in the effort. recall the words you uttered, graham, years ago, on that fateful evening, when you solemnly pledged yourself to this mission, nay, even devoted your life to its full accomplishment. our course is clear; put the _sirius_ up another ten thousand feet, and we will let her head towards the beautiful city yonder. we will come to rest on that elevation above it, and then be guided by events." the country below us seemed teeming with people, spreading about in all directions; and dense bodies of what looked like troops, could be distinguished coming from the city in the direction of the place where the _sirius_ had rested the previous night. evidently these people had some very rapid means of communication, one with the other. the entire district appeared to be thoroughly aroused, and the commotion was evidently increasing each moment. that we were seen was manifest--thousands of upturned faces told us that the _sirius_ was the centre of attraction, and every movement was keenly noted. we had now a much better view of the three glittering domes; they appeared to be the roof of some magnificent temple, whose walls seemed of white marble; but the dense growth of trees round the entire edifice, still concealed much of its rare beauty from our gaze. just as we came over the outskirts of this wonderful town, the _sirius_ received a terrible blow from some missile, which made her quiver from top to bottom, and we quite expected that we were about to fall to the ground. had the projectile struck us fairly, nothing could have saved us; but by good fortune it glanced obliquely along the sides of the _sirius_, and spent itself in space. "if i mistake not, that has been fired at us from the city below; but what the force was that hurled that bullet so high, and with such marvellously accurate aim is unknown to me, for no explosion accompanied it," said the doctor, with rather a disconcerted air. "it is time we descended of our own free will, doctor," answered temple, "otherwise we shall be brought down as ignominiously as a winged hawk, and there will then be a speedy end to us and our projects." we were now directly over the city. and such a noble city, too! the buildings were all of colossal grandeur, the streets wide, and at right angles; no smaller houses mingled with the rest--all were uniformly grand, though the variety of the architecture prevented the slightest monotony. there were several magnificent buildings which we concluded were palaces or seats of government, on the larger of the two hills on which the city rested, and some of these were surrounded by gardens. the top of each hill had been levelled, and the bridge between them was a superb structure, quite half a mile in width, and perhaps three miles in length! what surprised us beyond everything was the total absence of conveyances, or of any kind of beasts of burthen whatever in the spacious thoroughfares, which were crowded with people alone. "what palaces! what domes! what halls and towers! what streets!" shouted graham, carried away by his admiration for the architects and engineers who had planned and reared them. after earnest consultation we decided to descend at once, choosing a vast open square before one of the largest edifices, but which appeared to be deserted of people, as the exact spot. slowly we dropped through the air. nearer and nearer to the ground we came, each moment the magnificence of the city increasing as our eager scrutiny became closer. one thousand feet more! five hundred! one hundred only left! not a living creature in view! our hearts beat fast; our excitement became agony in its intensity. the courtyard seemed paved with precious stones of every hue, as large as ostrich-eggs; certainly no common stones of earth are like them, and none known to man, even the most rare, so large. curious plants and trees grew in well-kept beds; fountains of perfumed water shot like crystal rockets to the sky! all this, and more, we noted in the short time that we were descending the last few feet; but ere the _sirius_ could touch the ground, a thousand stalwart warrior-giants rushed out from every side! in an instant we were the centre of an excited frenzied throng, and our lives were apparently not worth another moment's purchase! chapter x. captivity. as may naturally be inferred, the language spoken on mars is totally different from any uttered by either of the civilised races on earth. we, of course, were ignorant of this dialect spoken on mars, and were unable to understand what was said to us at the time of our capture, or what the martials were saying to each other. but we were amazed to find how easily their language could be acquired, and in a very short space of time we were able to converse with this new people. curiously enough, on the other hand, the martials found great difficulty in mastering any of the languages of earth; and we were able to try them with latin, with greek, hebrew, german, french, gaelic, and english; and it was not for many weeks that even the higher classes of inhabitants acquired even a smattering of the latter tongue. for several moments it seemed as though our fate was sealed, as the gigantic troopers closed round the _sirius_ with fierce and angry gestures, some of them trying to climb up the sides and reach us as we stood in fear and trembling, looking down upon the surging throng from our station on the balcony. three words which were uttered incessantly by the crowd of soldiers, we were able to distinguish from all the rest of the tumult. they were, as near as we can express them, "yan ye bo," which being translated into english means "beings from the sky." angry shouts of "emi, emi, tat ya mos" filled the air, and these words we afterwards learned signified "slay, slay them at once." fortunately for us, our situation on the balcony, above the heads of the soldiers, gave us a momentary respite, and before they could find means to drag us from our refuge, a martial of commanding presence forced his way through the throng, scattering the troopers to the right and left, and with loud voice uttered the word "etoba" several times. this was evidently a command, for the soldiers withdrew several yards from the _sirius_ at once, and formed a cordon round us, silent and motionless as though on parade. all through this trying time, doctor hermann stood bare-headed on the balcony of the _sirius_ with hands and arms outspread, endeavouring to inspire the martials with confidence, and to convince them of our peaceable intentions; but we fear his supplications and his signs were thrown away. revolver in hand, temple and graham stood by the doctor, at whose urgent entreaty they were persuaded to put up their firearms and face the situation calmly. sandy, amidst the confusion, disappeared into the _sirius,_ terror-stricken as we thought, but he soon returned, armed with a mighty sword he had brought with him concealed in the _sirius_ unknown to us, and with which he assured us an ancestor of his had fought. by the time order had been obtained, we could see vast numbers of people crowding up to the square from all directions, and pressing forward to the lines of soldiers, eager to get a glimpse of what was taking place. keen as was our anxiety, we did not fail to notice the splendid physique of the inhabitants of this wonderful city, the variety in their dress, and the marvellous beauty of the female martials. the soldiers were clad in tightly-fitting green tunics, below which was a kilt-like dress, reaching to just above the knee. their muscular limbs were bare, but their feet were shod in high, tightly-fitting laced boots, and each was armed with a long tube of brass. their heads were encased in what looked to be massive iron helmets. we had not time to notice much, had our excitement permitted us to examine these things in detail, before the commandant stepped up to the _sirius_, in front of his troops, and bade us descend and yield ourselves into his custody. "it is very evident that we are about to be taken prisoners," said the doctor. "we had best submit to the inevitable, without any show of resistance. force will only incense these people against us; calmness may disarm their suspicions, and ensure us kindly, perhaps even friendly, treatment." "i don't like the look of things at all, doctor," answered temple, "but i am consoled with the thought that we have escaped from perils infinitely more terrible than this." "we will stick to our revolvers, if we can," said graham, pocketing his nickel-plated "bull dog" as he spoke. "i, for one, am not going to be slaughtered in cold blood without a fight for it." "i see no objection to our keeping these arms by us, in case of direst need; but my last advice is to keep calm, to keep calm," answered the doctor, with great emphasis on the latter word. further conversation was impossible, as the officer who had bidden us come forth was beginning to show signs of impatience at our delay. "beings from the sky, i, kaosp, captain of the king's troops in the city of edos, command your immediate surrender to me, so that you may explain yourselves to his majesty's rulers, and inform them from whence ye came and your business here. delay, or resistance will be visited with instant death." this seemed language of dreadful import to us, and without understanding a syllable of it, we dropped the ladder from the door, and, headed by the doctor, climbed slowly down to the ground, the eye of every martial standing within view being fixed upon us with the keenest attention. three at least of our little party looked like dwarfs as we stood before the hercules who had bidden us surrender ourselves to him; but graham suffered little by comparison with this giant. erect and defiant he stood before his captor, inch for inch almost as tall as him, broad and well-set in proportion, his muscular arms folded across his massive chest, his clear grey eyes scanning him curiously from head to foot. we could see that graham had created a favourable impression, and for that we were thankful. we stood in line before the poor old _sirius_, and awaited the next move in this singular scene. in a few moments the commander (kaosp, we will call him for the future), addressed some words to his troops, and then a dozen warriors stepped out from the ranks and formed an escort round us: a dozen more surrounded the _sirius_. kaosp then placed himself at the head of his soldiers, and gave the word to march. surrounded by the troops, we wended our way towards the noble palace across the square, the lines of soldiers opening and making a passage for us as we advanced. we passed under a lofty archway, went up a flight of steps, and then entered a magnificent hall with a domed roof. here all the guards remained behind, save two, and they and their leader escorted us across the marble floor to another archway, which led into a smaller hall. crossing this, we reached a door which opened automatically as we approached, and after going up a flight of steps, we reached a wide corridor. along this we walked until we came to another door, which opened in the same mysterious manner, and we were ushered into a large apartment, the door closing behind us at once, and we were left to ourselves. "beggin' your pardon, doctor, but this is what i call a shabby way to receive such distinguished visitors as the likes o' we. just to be popped in here like snared birds in a cage; after comin' all this way, too. bother tak' sich hospitality, says sandy cam'bell." we were too much absorbed in thinking over our future, to take any heed of sandy's remarks; and before we had time to form any definite plans, the door of our prison was thrown open, and kaosp appeared with two guards, and beckoned us to accompany them. "once more, my friends, let me implore you to keep cool," the doctor hurriedly whispered as we were marched away. we were conducted along vast corridors and through many doorways before we reached the entrance of a magnificent hall, where evidently the king and his ministers were assembled in state awaiting our arrival. the splendours of this building are beyond the power of any description. so suddenly did we find ourselves surrounded by the glitter and pomp of this brilliant gathering, that for several moments we stood still in utter amazement, bewildered, lost, in the glorious scene before us. we heard as in a dream the blast of what seemed a thousand trumpets heralding our approach, and as in a dream were conducted to a small raised platform in the very centre of the vast assembly, directly facing the king and his court. the hall was filled to overflowing with male and female martials (perhaps we ought to call them men and women), a sea of eager faces greeting our appearance, but the expressions upon those we looked at closely seemed by no means friendly disposed towards us. a hum of intense, yet suppressed excitement broke from the assembled throng as we stepped upon the dais in full view of all. the day was rapidly drawing to a close, the gloom of coming night beginning to settle on that vast gathering, as the doctor and his companions in captivity calmly stood, the observed of all observers, awaiting their fate. the half light seemed to increase the magnificence of the spacious building, by toning down its brilliancy and harmonising the wealth of rare colour that everywhere delighted the eye. the entire dome was covered with a painting of some mighty conflict; the panels of the walls were filled with others, so life-like, so realistic, that we blushed for very shame as we compared in our mind's eye these works of art with the masterpieces of earthly painters. noble groups of statuary, carved out of lustrous stones of a flesh-coloured tint, filled us with admiration; urns and vases and quaintly-designed ornaments of wood and metal were arranged with a keen eye for effect on every side; whilst the windows of coloured glass--if glass it was--were superb, both in their wonderful design and harmony of colour. garlands of foliage, the leaves of fine gold, twined round the marble pillars, bearing clusters of sparkling jewels designed as fruits; whilst before the throne was a fountain of cunning workmanship which cast up from unseen sources jets of scented water, that not only filled the building with a subtle ravishing perfume, but kept the atmosphere cool and refreshing. the audience which filled this hall of splendour was evidently a mixed one. what we took to be those of high degree surrounded the king and his ministers; round them were the guards and minor officers; whilst beyond them again was the populace. the floor rose gradually from the centre, so that every person could see and hear all that took place. the king and his courtiers were one blaze of glittering jewels and gorgeous colour; their robes and vestments being rare and costly to a degree undreamed of on earth, even by the wildest fancy of man. as in our own world, almost every type of countenance was to be observed among this vast assemblage; yet we could not help remarking that the men of mars were handsomer as a race than the men of earth, and that the women of mars were more beautiful. the old king himself was a grand specimen of manhood; his lofty brow, clearly cut features, long, flowing white beard, and commanding, dignified presence, made him every inch a king. he was surrounded with a host of noble councillors, almost as regal-looking as himself. the younger men were handsome, stalwart fellows--broad of chest and lithe of limb, moustached and bearded, sons of a race evidently at the zenith of its development, both mentally and physically. our hearts warmed towards them in honest admiration; we felt that we were in the presence of our superiors. the females at this gathering were remarkable for their exceeding beauty. edos must be a city of fair women if those assembled here around us were an average specimen of its lady inhabitants. the classic regularity of their features was superb; their wonderful wealth of hair, their marvellously clear complexion, the rare symmetry of their form, the expression of their beautiful eyes, their commanding presence--all combined in making them attractive to a degree undreamed of by dwellers on earth. in all that peerless galaxy of beauty, one magnificent creature with large expressive eyes, and hair of gold, seated close to the king himself, was fairer far than all the rest; her face and figure were sublime! she sat with queenly dignity, with a coronet aflame with jewels upon her lovely brow, gazing intently upon us, stirred to the very depths of her soul with wondering curiosity, and from time to time talking with the aged king, the theme of her conversation evidently being us poor captives; friendless and helpless in the centre of that gazing throng! she was dressed in a robe of delicate purple hue, which, though draped but loosely round her, still displayed in suggestive grace the beauty of her hidden form. her hair fell in rippling golden tresses far below her waist; her arms, looking white as marble in the deepening twilight, were bare to the shoulder. she sat, or rather reclined on a pile of softest skins, and her feet rested upon a mat of similar material. we noticed all that we have here described within a very few seconds from the time that we stepped upon the dais. then suddenly the vast hall was filled with brilliant artificial light, an electric light as far as we could judge, although the source of its supply was cunningly concealed. the effect was magical. the flashing gems and brilliant metals, the statuary, the polished pillars, walls, and floors, the sparkling scented water, the royal troops, the eager throng, formed a scene of unparalleled magnificence and splendour. as soon as the hall was illuminated as by the light of day, the proceedings began. an aged statesman, amidst breathless silence, rose up from his seat, crossed the floor, and stood opposite to where the king sat in solemn state. making a low and reverent obeisance, he began to tell the story of our appearance near their city; how we were met by the martial whose life we took; how we took refuge in the _sirius_, and, after the alarm had been given, how a search was made and our hiding-place discovered. then he described our evading further pursuit by soaring up into the air in our curious carriage; how we travelled over the city of edos, and were fired at by the soldiers; how we eventually came slowly down to the ground again to the square near the palace; and how we had been surrounded and taken prisoners by his majesty's troops at last. this address appeared to make a profound impression upon the multitude, and, so far as we could judge, the wrath of the people was exceedingly great. the odds were evidently against us, and each one of us felt--although at the time we did not understand a word of what was being said--that our position was momentarily becoming more serious. for several minutes after this harangue was finished, the silence was profound. every eye was turned towards us; the old king's face was grave and stern and troubled. then, as if to make matters worse, the silence was broken by a loud commotion at one of the entrances to the hall, and the next moment poor old rover broke through the ring of guards and officers, and leaping and barking for joy, hastened to sandy's side. at first the direst alarm prevailed, and we noticed the lovely woman by the king's side clutch his arm in terror, for of course our dog was even a stranger animal to the company here assembled than we were ourselves. at a word from sandy he lay down between us, and, curiously enough, there he was suffered to remain. he had broken out of the _sirius_, where in the excitement of our departure we had left and forgotten him, and made his way unerringly to his master's side--our only friend. we afterwards learned that the most serious part of our case was the slaying of the martial; and as the old minister told this part of his story, one of the guards advanced and pointed with his brass tube to sandy, indicating that he was the actual culprit. a long and animated discussion took place, in which the king occasionally joined, or was appealed to for his advice. then a long interval of silence followed, in which the king was evidently considering the facts which had been laid before him. our hearts beat fast; each one's right hand clasped the revolver concealed within his breast; for each had mentally determined to fight for life unto the bitter end. "courage," whispered dr. hermann, "and for the love of heaven do not fire until i give the signal. i am going to try and make these people understand a little of our history." a moment after, the doctor advanced a few steps towards the king, bowing low and with hands extended as if in welcome. the king watched him curiously, and so did we; for we had not the slightest idea what his intentions were. he then pointed to the open entrance, up into the night sky, where the planet earth, by some miraculous good fortune, chanced to be shining with unusual splendour almost alone in the firmament. then by various signs he attempted to explain how we had come from that particular star; that we were friends, and were anxious to gain their good will. we afterwards learned that the king had comprehended much of what the doctor had sought to convey; but prejudice ran high, and though personally inclined to befriend us, he was biassed by his ministers. the doctor rejoined us once more, and almost directly afterwards the king began to speak. as one man, the mighty throng saluted him and bowed in reverence. then the multitude, all standing, listening intently to his words, which were as follows: "beloved subjects and children: a great event hath happened amongst us, such as hath never been known to you, my people, throughout the long and glorious history of our race. five strange beings have made their appearance amongst us--from whence they come we know not; who they are, or what their object is in coming here, are also mysteries which we cannot readily solve. by shedding the blood of our poor brother yesterday, we fear these beings are of evil repute, and therefore should be treated as enemies of our race, and die. their leader, by sundry signs, hath sought to tell us that they come from the star-world ramos, which they call 'earth.' if this were true, and their hands were not stained in blood, we would welcome them as brothers, for our wise men have long suspected that beings fashioned like ourselves do dwell thereon. wisdom cometh slowly, and knowledge is gained by degrees. we will wait and see, my people, if these strangers can prove that what they say by signs is true. we of this world do nothing hurriedly, nor do we take life without just cause. we know not these strangers' tongues; nor they ours. justice bids us wait. forty days of grace will we allow them; then here, in this our hall of justice, shall they take their trial, and their fate be decided. we have spoken these words with such wisdom as god hath given us, and may he still continue to preserve my people from all harm." amidst shouts of approval the king ceased speaking, and as we understood not a word of what he had said, we concluded that our doom was decided. in all that mighty throng we had not one to befriend us. each face was stern and of forbidding aspect! yet, stay, there was one whose eyes were even wet with tears at our misfortune, and whose shy, pitying glances steeled our nerves anew. the lady by the king's side breathed hope in her glances. her lovely eyes were dimmed with tears for us, and we felt as men once more. love's all-potent power was working. by what attractive force was the latent spark of compassion ignited in that fair martial breast? she alone of all that multitude was drawn towards us by a bond of sympathy! who knows but that, all unconsciously, her spirit and ours may have mingled in that silent world of shadows, where language, race, or creed form no barrier to friendly intercourse, and where the inconveniences of space, as we experience them in our mortal shapes, are unknown? who, after this, shall say that lives may not be governed and influenced by beings on other worlds, in other spheres, just as the attraction of one planet can sway another from its course across the sky? by some subtle influence, we felt reassured; all thoughts of fighting for our lives departed, and when kaosp and his guards stepped forward, we followed them even cheerfully back to our prison, rover being allowed to trot behind at our heels. chapter xi. love and jealousy. once more we were ushered into the large and lofty room which was to be our prison house. our guards withdrew, the massive door swung back, moved by hidden automatic action, and we were left to our own sad reflections. "oh, for the good _sirius_, with everything in order!" sighed graham. "we would soon show these martial hosts that we are not the poor weak fools they take us to be." "tut, tut, graham," said the doctor, cheerily. "the game seems against us now, but we may hold the trump cards yet, man! besides, you have evidently made a conquest," he continued, with sly humour, "and that fair martial maiden may yet prove a guardian angel." "ah, doctor, sanguine as ever! what a hopeful old boy you are! but i, for one, seem to think we are in a deuce of a hole this time," said temple, with just a tinge of irritation in his voice. "i don't see the least call for any such joke at my expense, doctor," said graham, smilingly. "but there, it is best to look on the bright side of things." "ah, now i was right, after all! graham, the fair lady who seems so grieved about us, little dreams that she has made a conquest too!" "doctor, i feel peckish mysel', and i ken puir old rover misses his supper. surely they dinna mean starvin' o' us!" "all in good time, sandy; all in good time. here's a biscuit for rover, i happened to put in my pocket this morning," remarked the doctor, good-humouredly. "well, temple," he continued, "we have evidently been respited for some reason or other. that looks as though these strange people were not altogether unfriendly disposed towards us. we must make a lot of allowance for them, after all. think what a fuss five beings from mars would make, were they to drop from the sky into trafalgar square or palace yard, some fine day; and that, mind you, after killing in cold blood an innocent farm-labourer at ealing or hendon! why, all london would be wild with excitement, and a righteously incensed populace would be clamouring for their immediate trial and execution--the evening papers, especially! we take these inoffensive people by surprise, and, really, we are fortunate in having been able so far to conciliate them as to gain time--and that is all we want. we shall be----" but the doctor was interrupted by the door swinging open, and kaosp making his appearance once more, accompanied by the two attendant guards, and five servants bearing dishes. these dishes were of the costliest description, evidently of fine gold, beautifully chased, with curiously-shaped leaves and flowers, the like of which we had never seen before. each servant bore his dish in silent state, and placed it upon the inlaid marble table, then, bowing low, withdrew. the guards stationed themselves one on either side of the doorway, and then kaosp advanced, and in his unknown tongue, assisted by signs, conveyed to us the fact that it was by the king's desire that this food was brought, and that we were to sit down and eat. we began to look on kaosp almost as a friend; he seemed equally to be kindly disposed towards us, for he smiled and smote his breast--evidently a salute--as he and his guards departed. "come, come," said the doctor, "this is not so bad, after all. we must try and pick up their language, and then i have no doubt, by being able to explain ourselves, we shall be safe with these people. now, sandy, uncover our dishes, and let us see on what strange food we are expected to fare." "do, doctor, be serious!" remarked temple. "what are you going to do?" "why, eat, of course, man, since these captors of ours have condescended to supply us with the wherewithal to do so. i must confess, in spite of our bad luck, i begin to feel uncommonly hungry," said the doctor. it was all no good, however; temple seemed thoroughly cast down, and all that we could do or say failed to arouse him from his despondent mood. sandy was soon at work, and we found that under each larger cover was a dish divided into compartments, in which a variety of tempting-looking food was placed. we had flesh of various kinds, a liquor like clear soup, fruits, and square tablets of what appeared to be bread, yet very fruity to the taste. the large vase-like vessel contained pure water, and round the lower rim were hung several smaller vases, which were evidently to be used as drinking-cups. two curious instruments were attached to each dish, which took us some time to comprehend their use. the larger was fashioned something like a spoon, fastened in a carved wooden handle, yet one edge was sharp, and it was ultimately discovered that this served the purpose of knife and spoon in one. the other, a sharply-pointed piece of gold, also set in a handle of carved wood, we took to be a fork, and used it as such. we found the flesh, and one of the dishes of green vegetables, excellent, but the fruit, and what we must call bread, was not very palatable to us. "i doubt not that if we live here long," remarked graham, "we shall acquire a taste for the other viands. we can't expect to find everything suited to the tastes and customs of the men of earth." "that's true, graham," said temple, who was fast recovering his spirits, and beginning to take a more cheerful view of our situation. "it's astonishing what a difference a little food makes, in a hungry, even in a despondent man." our meal was quickly finished, sandy taking good care that rover had a plentiful portion of the feast. then graham produced his well-filled case, and each one of us enjoyed the precious luxury of a really good cigar--a "bock" of the choicest quality. "make the most of them, my comrades," said graham, striking a wax taper on the end of his silver match-case. "i have but a dozen, and heaven knows when we may get more. there's a score boxes left, at least, in the _sirius_, but i suppose they are lost to us for ever." in the middle of our smoke kaosp appeared with his guards, and great was his and their amazement to see us smoking. this is evidently an art unknown to the people of mars--tobacco, apparently, being a plant with which earth alone is blessed. by some curious action of his, a door in our prison opened and revealed to us another chamber, fitted up with luxuriant couches, soft as eider-down, on which by signs the friendly soldier informed us we might stretch our weary limbs in sleep. we passed into this ante room, and with friendly salute kaosp withdrew, and the door immediately closed behind him. it is almost needless to say that we passed a fairly comfortable night, yet we deemed it wisest to keep watch by turns, in case of surprise. the martial moons shone down through the windows of our prison with great brightness, two of them being visible together, and the planet earth (now much lower on the horizon than when we were in the hall of justice) looked like venus, as we often see her when fairly placed in the sky of our own world at home. it is unnecessary here to chronicle all the monotony of our confinement. one day passed much as another, so far as eating, drinking, and sleeping were concerned. we saw a great deal of the commander, kaosp, and from him we began to learn the martial tongue. the doctor possessed a marvellous aptitude for acquiring any new tongue on earth, and this served him in good stead on the planet mars. after a week's intercourse with kaosp he was able to converse in a broken sort of way, in three weeks he had mastered sufficient for all ordinary purposes. temple found it more difficult; sandy only picked up a few words and phrases from his master, but graham proved himself an apt pupil, and was almost as good a conversationist as the doctor, in even less time. from kaosp we learned much. he was the only one who acted as our jailor. we learned that the king had commanded him to teach us their language, so that we might be prepared to explain ourselves and our mission to him and his ministers at the trial, which he assured us was to take place in forty days from the time of our capture. we also learned that the beautiful being who sat near the king, in the hall of justice, was his own daughter; that her name was volinè; that she was her father's idol and his people's pride. many startling facts did kaosp tell us concerning his race. how their span of life averaged five hundred years, which, as the year of mars is twice the length of earth's, would be a thousand years of our time! how war was unknown amongst them; one king and one government ruling all civilized beings; how some parts of mars were inhabited by savage tribes and semi-human beasts; how their armies were kept up for protection against these uncivilized races, and for court pageantry; and also how one universal language prevailed. he also told us, among other things, that this stranger world was but thinly peopled, its inhabitants increasing very slowly, the results of a marriage rarely producing more than two or three offspring. that one of the most terrible scourges which troubled the martial world was the almost universal loss of memory that broke out like a plague from time to time, and that owing to this the people were exceedingly careful in keeping records of their pursuits, history, and progress. from what we learned from kaosp, respecting our preliminary examination in the hall of justice, we concluded that when our trial did take place we should be able to vindicate ourselves and make friends with these people. so that we looked forward to the event with eager interest, being most anxious to regain our liberty and explore this strange world to our hearts' desire. we also learned from kaosp that volinè, the king's daughter, had taken a great interest in us, and had deigned to make numerous enquiries about us from him, he being granted an audience each day, to inform her of whatever portion of our history he had been able to learn. the king himself was also eager to know how his captives fared, but never once did he come to see us in person. on the tenth morning of our imprisonment, kaosp brought startling news. nothing less than that volinè--volinè, the king's proud, beautiful daughter, was coming to visit us, in our prison, some time during the day. he told us how she had besought him to let her see us; how he had tried to dissuade her; and how, ultimately, she had commanded him to take her, and that he had not dared to disobey her wish. we were all full of expectant curiosity. attendants came, and prepared our large room for the unusual visit; and sandy's pocket dressing-case--his inseparable companion, even in captivity--was in great requisition by us all; for each of us felt it incumbent to make himself as presentable as possible to our fair and distinguished visitor. [illustration: "volinè."] she came. the day was nearly spent; the sun, in a sea of yellow radiance, was just about to sink behind the hills, as our prison doors were thrown open, and kaosp, saluting respectfully, with helmet in hand, ushered volinè and her attendant maidens into our presence. we have already alluded to her marvellous beauty, as we saw her reclining by her father's judgment-seat; but far more did her charms impress us now, as she swept, with all queenly grace, into our apartment, with head held high, and flowing golden tresses, mantling over her glorious bust and shoulders, and falling in silky coils below her waist. her outer dress was polished black--a loosely-fitting robe, girdled at the waist, and which clung in ravishing folds to her stately form. a diadem of glittering purple stones, like diamonds, encircled her brow, and her robe was fastened across her left shoulder by a jewelled buckle of fabulous richness. though of such commanding stature, she was grace itself; not a part of her magnificent figure out of proportion with the rest--a woman, yet a goddess, too. beauty personified! her lovely violet eyes gave an incomparable expression of saintly beauty to her countenance; and yet there was nothing meek or humble there; fire, and passion, and unbending will, lurked deep down in their purple, dreamy depths. no being in female form, whether human or divine, could have appeared more lovely, as volinè stood, surrounded by the subdued golden glory of the setting sun, which poured in at the window, and threw a halo round her. a murmur of admiration involuntarily burst from each one of us, as we stood, in rapt astonishment, gazing upon the fair being before us. then we each bowed low and respectfully, as she sank into the pillowed seat which had been provided for her. in truth, it was an impressive scene. two martial maidens stood on either side, carrying little golden vessels, suspended by chains of the same metal, and containing a subtle perfume, which soon pervaded our chamber with its sweetness. two other maidens bore long, tapering, white wands in their left hands--in their right hands they had bouquets of rare and curious flowers. "strangers," she commenced in a voice that was singularly sweet and musical--"for your names i know not--i, volinè, daughter of the king, give you greeting. i have bidden our trusty soldier kaosp conduct me hither, so that mine eyes may see that it is still well with ye, for i feel an interest in your fate. my ears are open to any complaint, which perchance ye may wish to make concerning your treatment in this our palace, since my royal father and his councillors, in their great wisdom, commanded that ye be held prisoners here. we dwellers in the city edos are not wanting in hospitality to the stranger; but ye are not our people, not of our world; we know ye not, still, volinè is your friend." doctor hermann advanced and kissed the white, ring-decked hand extended towards him, and did his best to convey our gratitude to the generous girl; telling her that we were friends, fashioned in the same creative mould as her own race; and that we came from the star which is known as ramos, but to us, its people, as "earth"; that we had come to study this new world of hers, and to take back our information, if we were spared to do so, to our fellow-men. john temple was then commanded by volinè to come forward and salute her, a mark of royal favour of which he was not slow to avail himself, as what man would not when the donor was so ravishingly beautiful as she! then sandy was called for, and bidden to bring rover, too. volinè was deeply interested, and asked many questions, through kaosp, concerning the scotsman and his dog. volinè's voice was distinctly less commanding in its tone, even tender, when with some slight hesitation she asked that graham might be presented to her; and as he came forward and pressed her hand to his lips for a moment, we all noticed a blush steal over her lovely face. as a special mark of her favour, she bade one of her attendant maidens hand to him the flowers she was carrying. graham already was, evidently, held high in her esteem. he was so utterly confounded by such an unexpected mark of royal favour that, beyond kissing the hand held out to him, he was unable to utter a word of gratitude, of compliment, or thanks. very soon after this the interview came to an end, and volinè with her attendants withdrew, leaving us to recover ourselves as if from some delicious dream. we had had no feminine society for years, and if the doctor and sandy did not miss it, certainly graham and temple did, and appreciated the visit of this peerless maiden to the uttermost. graham had to run the gauntlet of the doctor's and temple's chaff over volinè's very marked notice of him; but for the first time since we left earth he failed to enter into the spirit of our jokes, and every now and then we caught him as though engaged in deep and earnest thought. the magic spell of a first love was beginning to work within him, and from this time forth he would never be the same man again! "come, come, graham, my boy," said temple on the following day, as the two sat together after our morning meal; "what is the matter with you? why so melancholy? surely, volinè's is not the first pretty face you have seen?" "mr. temple," answered graham, "your last stray shot has hit the mark. no woman on earth, you know as well as i, is so incomparably beautiful as she. volinè is a goddess; the soul of beauty! would any fellow, especially situated as i am, fancy free, in the pride of early manhood, escape from such seductive attractions unscathed? from the moment that my eyes first fell upon her, i became conscious that i had found my ideal of female beauty at last--found it, alas! under circumstances which admit of no hope, however remote, to become ultimately its proud possessor. i have tried to conceal my feeling from you all; but love ever betrays itself. she has filled my thoughts by day, and my dreams by night. yes, i love her! and it is at least consoling to be able to confess my secret to such an old and tried friend as you. it relieves my feelings in some measure to tell them to another who can show some sympathy." "why, graham, you must be hard hit indeed! but your chance is not by any means a hopeless one. from what we can see, volinè is certainly interested in us, and in you particularly so." "but look at the differences of our race and station--ah! and my position, too, a prisoner, whose very life is threatened," graham sighed. "all the more need for you to put matters in their best light. go in and win, man. by doing so, you may gain your heart's desire, and save us from death. volinè is all-powerful. her word is second to the king's, and she is his only daughter. she looks upon you with decided favour already; and when once you get that far with a woman, the rest is easy--it is certainly so with the ladies of earth; and if we believe in doctor hermann's theory of universality, the maidens of mars must be made of much the same material," answered temple, laughing. "what you say, mr. temple, certainly puts matters in a different light. that flickering phantom men call hope, once more appears before me and bids me follow; but whither she may lead me is very doubtful." "i say, temple and graham, you two appear to have a very serious topic for your conversation this morning," said the doctor, rising from his seat at the other end of the room, where he had been busy writing memoranda in his pocket-book. the doctor was here interrupted by a visit from kaosp, who spent the remainder of the morning with us, helping us to acquire the martial language. in the afternoon we had another visit from volinè and her maidens. her attention to graham became even more pronounced, and she never seemed to tire of hearing him tell to her the story of earth. indeed, so much did she appear to enjoy his company, that the doctor and temple felt completely _de trop_. the doctor appeared annoyed at graham for encouraging this flirtation; but temple was secretly pleased, for he saw in it a possible escape from captivity. that night graham retired to rest earlier than usual, pleading a headache for excuse. we now had complete use of the two apartments, thanks to kaosp, the door separating them having been made to open and close at our will. the doctor and temple remained up, discussing one thing and another, until a late hour, the conversation eventually turning to the subject of volinè and graham. "doctor, i think it is rather a mistake on your part to show such an aversion to graham's conduct with volinè. you were the first to express an opinion, and even to hint that this girl might be of service." "how so? it's bound to end in trouble, not only to him, but to us. and as for the latter part of your remarks, why, it was only a silly joke on my part." "i differ from you, doctor. this woman is all-powerful here. the king may govern his people, but his daughter governs him; although he may not know it--what man ever does? and if we can once gain her good word, say even through her betrothal to graham, we are absolutely safe!" "all very well; all very well, temple, if things would turn out so; but when do things turn out exactly as we want them? there is much to be said on the other side of the question. kings have peculiar ideas as to rank and station; princesses, even in the nineteenth century, may not choose their own partners; at least, as far as our world is concerned. i dare say the king has his own views respecting his daughter, and then when this foolish affair becomes known, as it surely will, we shall only incur a still larger amount of royal anger than we do at present. it is too risky a business, and i will be no party to it. pray let us drop the subject, temple; the hour is late, and we had better go to rest." "as you will, doctor, but as sure as i am sitting here i am convinced that a love affair between graham and volinè is our only chance." "we shall see, temple. it is playing a dangerous game with our own lives as well as his own, and i am just as certain that it will end in disaster." volinè's visits became more and more frequent. rarely a day passed now that she did not either come in person, or send one of her attendant maids with flowers or fruits for the captives, but these gifts were really meant for graham alone. she exercised her royal prerogative and showed her marked preference for him in many ways. we were also allowed more liberty, presumably through her intercession, and were now even permitted to walk for a short time each day in an enclosed garden below our prison windows. this was a great boon, as the close confinement was beginning to tell upon us greatly, seasoned as we were to the lack of exercise through our long sojourn in the _sirius_. we had been in prison five weeks, when the love affair between graham and volinè assumed a more decided phase. volinè and he were lovers; more to each other than either thought or knew. fierce and uncontrollable love was smouldering in each heart, requiring but some accidental spark to set the whole aflame. this was not long in coming. a secret meeting was arranged between them. kaosp being love's ambassador, he conveyed the welcome news to graham that volinè wished to see him in the grounds. needless to say, the doctor was highly displeased at this; but being in the minority he had the good sense to let matters take their own course, satisfying himself by warning graham of the risk he ran. kaosp, too, showed some reluctance to be a party to this meeting. he feared discovery, and the king's anger; but pressure had evidently been put upon him, and as the dusk of evening deepened, he came, and secretly conducted graham to the garden below. graham must, of necessity, tell this portion of our narrative in his own words: "i followed kaosp, at his bidding, down the silent, deserted corridors, and at last felt the cool, refreshing night air beat against my face, as we passed under an arched gateway of the palace, into the open grounds. here he left me, telling me to keep along a narrow pathway, until i came to an arbour where i was to wait until volinè joined me. the night was gloriously fine; the martial moons were beaming in a cloudless sky; the stars scintillated sharp as swords in the heavens; the far-away earth shone with a dazzling fairness--the star of the evening. flowers threw off delicious fragrance, though i could not see them; here and there a tall, tapering tree, towering far above the lower vegetation of this wondrous garden, shone out clearly against the green-hued sky; whilst distant fountains sang their soothing song. oh, how can i express the expectant rapture that filled my soul, as i watched and waited for my darling! with leaden-flighted wings the moments dragged along; and yet she came not. was all a dream? if so, oh god! then let me dream for ever! for the suspense of waiting for volinè in that garden fair would be paradise, compared with the pain of awaking and finding that all had vanished with my opening eyes. "soft, yet distant footsteps at last fell upon my eager ears, and she for whom i waited came stealthily along towards our trysting-place. we met as lovers of long standing, even though no single word of love had passed between us; the kiss i reverently pressed upon her white, upturned brow, was the first i had ever given her. but the language of love is universal--neither race nor dialect forms a barrier to the communication of its sweet secrets one to the other. "'volinè, beloved,' i whispered, trembling with joy. 'you, for whom i have waited so long, have come to me at last!' "'oh! man of ramos, i am so happy to be with thee,' she answered, as i drew her gently within the shelter of the arbour, and sat down by her side. "'nay, volinè, will you not call me "harry"? i ask it as a royal favour.' "'but "harry" is not thy name. still, to please thee, i will grant thy request. "harry!"--"harry!" is much prettier, too; i had not thought of that.' "'but i had, volinè, and have been longing to hear my name fall from your sweet lips.' "'i fear, harry, that i shall incur my father's anger in coming thus. i have dared his wrath, because i like thee and thy companions much, and because i would save thee and them from all harm. now tell me all concerning thyself, for my soul is curious to know. tell me, harry, more of that mystic world from whence you came. are the women of that world more fair, more beautiful than we? doth no maid of ramos hold thy heart in bondage? hath not that power you tell me the sons and daughters of earth call love, yet had no resting-place in thy soul?' and as she spoke these last words, volinè laid her head upon my breast and gazed up into my face with her radiant love-lit eyes, as though she would read the innermost depths of my soul. "'ah! volinè, volinè, of a truth i tell you no woman has yet moved my heart like you have done,' i answered, gazing down into her peerless face, my pulses thrilled by the magnetic touch of her soft white hand resting trustfully in my own, and by the vision of her marvellous beauty. her breath intoxicated me with its warm, rich fragrance; her throbbing heart against my own filled my senses with the wild delirium of passionate ecstasy. "'volinè,' i whispered--'volinè, the maidens of that earth star yonder, glimmering serenely fair in the evening sky, are good and pure, and with no mean measure of beauty--even, volinè, as you are good, and as you are pure; but such beauty as yours is unknown amongst them. man only knows of beauty such as yours in the holy legends of his heaven; only the angels of his faith are decked in such graces as are yours; but in his mortal life he knows them not, save by imagination, and as they have been revealed to him. such peerless, queenly beauty as yours, volinè, no mortal man beheld before; such winning grace, such maidenly charm, are what we men of earth would call immortal and divine!' "'harry, thy words are sweet unto me, and i feel that they flow from thy heart; but i would have thee tell me more of that love, by which these men of earth enslave her daughters. thy words are full of flattery of my bodily form. is there nought else to charm thee, and bind thee closer to me, to unite thine immortal soul to mine?' "my arm stole gently round volinè's shapely waist without resistance--what bliss!--and i drew her yet nearer to me ere i made reply. "'volinè, my darling, i know nothing from experience of this love of which you bid me tell, and of which you are so curious to hear. no woman on that star-world yonder has won it from my heart. until i saw you i knew not love; but now its fires consume me. volinè, i love you as never man loved woman yet. for you i would die, and in dying glorify and exalt that love you have inspired! say, volinè, that you return my love, and make my happiness complete.' "'harry, thou art dearer to me than all men. nobles and princes of high degree have sought to woo me; but until i knew thee, i knew not the secret of my own heart.' "'bless you, dear one, for those precious words,' i answered, trembling in my great new-found joy. the love that is born of desire is sweet; but the mysterious power that welds two hearts together, making them throb as one, and bringing perfect harmony to both, is sweeter still. in willing rapture i yielded to the captivity of her arms, which like bonds of ivory whiteness held me. i felt her smooth cheek against my own, burning with modesty and love, and in my new-found happiness i rained hot kisses on her upturned, willing lips. closer and closer we stole into each other's arms; our sighs mingled together; time for us had now no measure; we lived but for each other; and in silent ecstasy we drank those pleasures that mutual love alone distils. "'harken, harry, someone approaches! i shall die of shame to be discovered thus, and my father's wrath will be terrible.' "'courage, darling; no one shall harm you while i am by your side.' and i gripped with my right hand my revolver. "but no one came to disturb the measure of our happiness, and the joyful moments, all too fleeting, slipped rapidly away. "'harry, now i must bid thee leave me; the hour is getting late, and my absence may be discovered.' "'stay, volinè. on earth, among my english race, when man makes love unto a woman, he pledges his troth to her with a ring of gold, set with jewels or precious stones, which she, the object of his choice, wears as a token upon the fourth finger of her left hand. so take this ring of mine as our love-pledge; let me place it on your finger--so--and promise me to wear it always there for my sake.' "'thy words are strange, harry, for no such custom is known to us. but what a pretty idea, though! i will take thy ring and wear it as thou sayest. but thou must have one of mine in return'; and as she spoke, volinè slipped a ring of curious workmanship from her finger, and placed it on my own. "'prize it, as thou wouldst prize me; guard it, as thou wouldst guard thy life; for it is a precious talisman, and was given to my mother by echri, the most sacred of our priests. no man of gathma dare harm or slay thee, if he knows that ring is on thy hand.' "'my darling, i will part with it only with my life! now, one more fond embrace ere you go; and with it i would crave your promise to meet me here again at the same hour----' "but the sentence was never finished, for a martial, who by his dress and mien i judged to be someone of high degree, stepped out from the arbour's shadow into the moonlight, saying in a contemptuous voice as he came: "'so, volinè, it is thee! meeting one of thy father's base-born prisoners here, at this hour and alone, to bestow thy favours and to lose thy honour. edos shall ring with thy shame before another sun hath set, and this evil stranger from the star-world ramos, and all his foul companions, shall pay with their lives for his insolent temerity this night.' "with a scream of terror, volinè tore herself away from my embrace and fled towards the palace, leaving me alone with the stranger. "'pray, who are you,' i asked, 'to question volinè's right to meet whomsoever she may please?' "'who am i? why should i gratify thy curiosity, thou dirt of ramos? for little, i would kill thee where thou standest! get thee back to thy prison cell, and prepare to die, for die thou surely shalt.' "'dirt, am i, you martial bully? that insult shall be wiped away at another time and in another place. but by what right do you dictate to her? breathe her name in scandal to a living soul, and i will thrash you like the cur you are. nay, more, the lying shame you bring upon her shall be washed away in your own worthless blood.' "'by the right of being her affianced lover,' he hissed, rather than spoke, and turning round, walked quickly away into the gloom. "'liar,' i shouted, as i watched his retreating form, for a moment half-inclined to shoot him as he went; but prudence forbade such a course, and slowly i returned to the arched doorway, where i found kaosp anxiously waiting to conduct me back again. not a word did i breathe to anyone of my adventure in the garden, although i lay awake until the yellow dawn, thinking of volinè and of my rival, and wondering greatly what the future would bring." chapter xii. condemned to die. in spite of all the questions put by temple and the doctor, graham resolutely refused to speak about his meeting with volinè in the garden, and this annoyed the doctor especially. "i don't like this want of confidence on your part, graham," he said, the following day. "not that i want to pry into a lover's secrets by any means, but our trial, as you well know, takes place in a few days, and i think, as being the leader of this expedition, recognised as such by common consent, and the duty of defending ourselves rightly falling on me, every fact that might be of service to us should be known to me, as well as any adverse circumstances that may resolve into evidence against us, so that i may be prepared to meet it." "doctor," graham answered, "i admit the justness of your remarks, but am sorry i cannot disclose what took place last night. the honour of the woman i love is involved; but, rest assured, i am quite prepared to defend my conduct if called upon to do so. believe me, nothing whatever was said respecting our position, nor did i obtain any information likely to be of service to us." "but did you really see and speak to volinè last night?" asked temple. "i admit that i did. now, do rest content with that, there's good fellows; and be assured that i am doing the best i can for us all. this ring i wear upon my finger was given to me by her, with the solemn assurance that it was a talisman against evil." "fudge, graham; you must be deep in love to believe such nonsense," said the doctor, testily. "nonsense or not, doctor, you see i wear it, and what is more, am inclined to believe in its virtues. it may be but a lover's trifle; but some strange instinct, call it superstition if you like, makes me feel that it will yet be of service to us." "well, it is my unbroken experience that if discord or trouble comes, a woman is invariably at the bottom of it." and with this parting shot the doctor walked away to study his note-book. "what a prejudice the doctor has against the ladies, graham!" said temple. "why, he is a regular woman-hater. depend upon it, some girl broke his heart in the long ago." "it is his only failing, and he is to be pitied more than blamed," graham answered. kaosp entered at this moment. his face wore a grave look, and he was unusually silent. graham alone guessed the cause; for he had no doubt whatever that what took place within the garden on the previous night was now known to him, although he never alluded to it in any way. he did not stay long, and after enquiring about our health, and various little matters, he shook each one of us by the hand, as was his custom now every time he went away. this mode of salutation greatly took his fancy, after we had explained it to him, and he seemed proud of his new accomplishment. when graham's turn to shake hands with him came, he started in surprise, and, drawing back, exclaimed: "volinè's talisman! how camest thou by that? know'st thou the charm of that ring? dost thou know that he whose finger carries it is safe from every harm that men of gathma can work? it is a passport from death itself; for it is the sacred ring of echri, the most powerful of our priests, before whom the king himself must bow!" "good kaosp, i came by it honestly. this ring was given to me by volinè herself, and by her its wondrous power was told to me. but these, my companions, ridicule its potency, and refuse to believe in its talismanic properties." "they know not what they say. i have heard and seen too much of its virtues to scoff at its power. but guard it jealously, for i would warn thee against its loss. no man of gathma will dare to take it from thee; for if thou hast received it as a gift, that man is cursed who would seek to rob thee of it by force, or yet by stealth." "not very likely, kaosp, for i will part with it only with my life," graham answered, as the good-natured soldier passed out. "well, doctor, what do you say now?" asked graham. "that it's all humbug; and, from the bottom of my heart, i wish volinè and her ring had been far away before we had the misfortune to visit edos." the arrival of our mid-day meal interrupted further conversation; nor did either of us allude to the subject again. day after day passed by, kaosp coming in as usual; but he was reticent, his visits were shorter, and in spite of all that graham could do, we saw that he evaded his questions. another thing that perplexed us exceedingly was the absence of volinè. from the day that graham met her in the garden she had never been to see us herself, nor had she sent any of her attendants with presents. what had befallen her we knew not. all was mystery. kaosp would not speak on the subject. this had a most depressing effect upon graham; he rarely ate, and still more rarely slept. we could see that his heart was heavy at her absence, and his failing to obtain any news whatever of his loved one made him morose, dispirited, and silent. "for the love of heaven," he said to kaosp on the day before our trial, "will you not tell me news of her? you must know what has taken place. has any harm befallen her?" "i am commanded by the king to silence," he answered, not without sorrow in his voice. "he hath bidden me hold no further conversation with you, his prisoners. you will know all on the morrow." the eventful morning dawned at last that was to decide our fate; to set us free, or mete to us our doom. "thank heaven!" said graham, earnestly, "all will soon be decided. this silence, this suspense, is slowly killing me." outside we could hear that something unusual was taking place. the heavy tramp of troops echoed from the distance in muffled tones; trumpet blasts at intervals sounded afar off, as if an army was being marshalled; and from time to time the noise of hurrying feet was heard in the corridor outside. for the first time kaosp failed to visit us. new guards came attending the servants that brought us our morning meal. we were all too excited to eat, and the dishes were taken away almost untouched. "one last word to you all," said the doctor. "whatever may be the result of this trial, be sure not to exhibit any anger. it will be no time, nor place, to strike for freedom in yonder hall of justice; for such could only end in failure. keep cool, i implore you, whatever the decision may be. we must wait and watch our opportunity." a few minutes before ten o'clock our prison doors were opened, and we were commanded by kaosp and the guards to follow them. we went in single file, our dog bringing up the rear, passing along the corridors, which were lined with martial troops on either side, through doorway after doorway until we reached an ante-room which we had not visited before. here we were detained for a few moments; then, amidst a fanfare of trumpets, we passed onward and entered the great hall of justice. the brilliant scene was much the same as on our previous visit, but more solemnity seemed to pervade the vast gathering. we heard the hum of voices before we reached the hall; but as we entered a great silence fell upon the assembled throng, and every eye was turned towards us as we slowly wended our way to the platform, and stepped one by one upon it. a hundred thousand martials of both sexes, and apparently of the highest grade of society, filled that vast hall; and from the tumult we could hear outside, as many more must have been clustering round in eager curiosity. the king and his ministers sat in their old places, and below them were a hundred scribes, whose business appeared to be to take down in writing all that was said. we noticed more soldiers than before, and the guard immediately surrounding us had been considerably augmented. directly we got upon the platform, graham's eyes wandered round the circle where the king and his ministers sat. his search was for volinè; but his quest was vain, for the luxurious throne upon which she had reclined was empty. the vacant seat was the last drop in the cup of his bitterness, and his face reflected the great sorrow that ate like a canker into his heart. deserted and lonely, even more so than we were, his sufferings were deeper than those of his comrades, and he faced his judges like one in a dream. the proceedings were commenced at once by the king, who from his throne commanded that the evidence against us should be given. the same aged minister, amid a deathlike silence, rose, and, bowing to the king, arraigned us thus: "great and mighty ruler, king of gathma, and father of its people, we have assembled here in this our justice hall to conduct the strangest proceedings that have ever taken place between its ancient walls. we are here to mete out fair and impartial justice to beings who belong not to the world on which we live, but have come unbidden amongst us from a region so remote that it appears but a bright and wandering planet in our heavens; for have they not said that they are from the star ramos, which they call earth? beyond our own moons ramos is the nearest orb to us, but its distance is so vast that no man of science in gathma hath yet been bold enough to say the space between our world and this can ever be traversed by men in mortal shape who shall survive the journey. this being so, we can only look upon these strangers as practisers of some magic art which they may ultimately employ to the danger of our people. they came here borne in a carriage of curious form and cunning workmanship, dropping from the sky to the east of edos. their arrival is immediately celebrated in bloodshed; for the inoffensive osa, a tiller of the soil, was killed by some explosive machine carried in their hand, which was turned upon him (here a great trooper, clad in armour, stepped forward and pointed with his weapon to sandy), and his wife and children are even now mourning sorely for his death. when pressed, they fled to their curious carriage, and escaped into the sky, whither no one of gathma could follow them; but instead of leaving us in peace, they had the temerity to advance through the air towards our city edos, and to descend therein, in the very precincts of thy royal palace. they speak a strange tongue; their dress, their manners, and customs are mysterious; their mission here seems one of blood. hath not holy echri foretold a great calamity to our people, heralded by signs and appearances in the heavens, from which we may escape if we only act with courage and promptitude? methinks these strangers are this sign. then we must take heed of holy echri's words of warning, and so destroy these men of ramos that not a trace of them shall be left. let them and their evil carriage be hurled into the lake of melag, from the crag remagaloth, so that all may be consumed in living fire, and we may see them no more. oh! mighty king and father, i beseech thee in thy wisdom to heed the words of thy faithful servant, whose hair hath grown hoary with the work of three hundred years in thy illustrious service. justice shall be done, osa be avenged, and gathma saved, if thou shalt only bid these strangers die!" this speech made a profound sensation, and was greeted with a thunder of applause from the surrounding multitude, as the aged councillor bowed low and returned to his seat. clearly, popular opinion was on his side, and we feared that our doom was sealed. graham alone felt relieved when the speech was done, for to his great, though secret joy, volinè's name had not been mentioned, and evidently the king and his councillors were in ignorance of his love for her, and the untoward occurrence in the garden. his rival had not dared to do as he had threatened, after all. "now, strangers from ramos," said the king, "have you aught to say to vindicate yourselves? no man shall be judged unfairly, or condemned unheard. speak, so that we may know your history, and learn if there be aught to swing the balance of justice in your favour. kaosp hath informed me that you are now able to converse in our tongue, and therefore to understand the charges that have been laid against you." hereupon doctor hermann, with note-book in hand, stepped forward, amidst a breathless silence, and said:-"king of gathma, and citizens of edos, i and my companions appear before you under circumstances which place us, unfortunately, at a great disadvantage. we came to visit your world, bearing tidings of peace, and bringing news of your brothers out yonder on the star ramos, hoping to return to them in due season as messengers of your goodwill, and partakers of your hospitality and kindness. but evil fortune overtook us as soon as we descended upon your soil, and to our everlasting regret our first intercourse with your people has ended fatally for one of your subjects. believe it or not, o king, but this husbandman, whom you call osa, threatened us with a deadly weapon, with which he had already slain some beast to intimidate us and to prove his prowess, and we purely in self-defence drew our firearms and struck him dead. we came here to gathma only as explorers and men of science, in quest of knowledge. we have no desire to slay your people nor to work them harm; of magic we know nothing; we are flesh and blood as yourselves--seekers after truth, who have braved the perils of a frightful voyage across the realms of space, with no other motive than to extend the philosophy of man. my life has been spent in solving the secrets that barred man's way across the noble pathway of the planets; my companions have assisted me by their labour, and by their riches, to make that attempt which we thought we had crowned with such brilliant success. for more than two long years have we sped onwards and onwards across the silent sky, threatened by dangers so awful, that we recall them even now with horror. and yet we find enemies in this new world, instead of friends; our bodies are weary and fain would rest, yet we only meet with strife; and we are condemned to die the most horrible of deaths because we did what any of you, placed as we were, would have done in self-defence. we are not cowards; we are not afraid to die; but in the name of science we plead for, nay, demand our lives, so that we may return to earth and tell our brothers yonder of the wonders of this new world." the doctor sat down amid a murmur of voices, but whether of approval or dissent we were unable to say. then the king, with a wave of his hand, made silence, and in a more friendly voice he said: "wilt not thy companions speak to us as well? have they got nought to say?" "say what you can, in martial, temple. it seems to be expected of us," said the doctor, in an undertone. "king and citizens of edos," said temple, "the words i shall say are few, for my tongue is not so fluent of your language as that of my friend who has already spoken. his words are my words. but i would ask you to let his great attainments as a man of science plead in his favour. his name is justly honoured among the men of earth; and he has triumphed over the secrets of the universe in a manner which should claim the respect and gratitude of such a wise and highly-cultured people as yourselves, rather than your hatred. i can only say that the crime for which we stand on trial to-day was justifiable, and needs no penalty to purge it. we shall be willing to live amongst you for a season, and to teach you much that cannot fail to be of inestimable service to your race. in condemning us to die you rob yourselves, and become guilty of a crime that a just god will visit with punishment." as temple withdrew sandy came to the front, and in excited english asked that mercy might be shown to his companions. "if ye want to murder somebody, murder me. these gentlemen here had no hand in shooting that farmer chap. i did it mysel'; for the fellow was after murderin' o' us. there wa' mischief lurking in his ugly een. i tell ye, they be as innocent as the lambs on the hillsides. i did it mysel', and am ready to dee for the deed; but let innocent men alone." he had spoken so far, although not a word was understood, save by us, and perhaps by kaosp, before graham could quieten him. "hold your tongue, sandy," he said, "they can't understand you. leave it to us. we will do all we can for your sake as well as our own." "that's true, mr. graham, but the blood o' the cam'bells within me boils wi' honest indignation when i see innocent men treated as criminals." graham now came to the front of the platform to speak. we all felt proud of him, as he stood erect and defiant before the multitude, tall and strong, but with face pale and furrowed with nights of sleepless anxiety over the fate of volinè. the king scanned him closely, and seemed impressed by his bold and manly bearing; and we noticed many of the ladies near us--women fair and well-formed as goddesses, each one of them--scrutinizing him closely, and whispering one to the other. "king and people of gathma," he commenced "my comrades and myself have listened in sorrow more than anger to the words of your learned councillor; and we fain would ask you, o king, in your royal wisdom, to set such bigoted utterances aside, and to decide our case on its simple merits. we came to your world as friends; but we are treated as the vilest of enemies, because we killed one who in another moment would have slain us. your weapons are more deadly than our own, as we had ample testimony before we struck a blow; and this osa treated us in no friendly spirit, giving us no opportunity of explaining ourselves to him. right gladly would we have done so. that we killed him we do not deny, but to say that the deed was premeditated and done in malice, is to say that which is false. we did not seek to escape the consequences of our act, or we could readily have done so in the carriage that bore us hither. we came to this city at once, and yielded ourselves to your authority without resistance, as kaosp, a worthy captain of your troops, can bear testimony. we are anxious to be friends, to knit together the peoples of earth and gathma in tranquil unity. we hold out the hand of brotherhood, the olive branch of peace, from our world to yours. grasp it in the same spirit in which it is extended towards you, and let each race, strangers now no more, reap the rich harvest of mutual benefits my comrades and myself have dared and done so much to sow!" graham's words produced a marked impression in our favour with the king, which he was not unwilling to show; but before he uttered the words we could see he was about to speak, a martial, dressed in the uniform of a prince or noble, rose to his feet and in a voice of thunder said: "enough! these men of ramos have spoken well, and with an oily tongue, o king, but hearken to my tidings before thy majesty decides their fate. one of them standing here before thee hath stained his hands with the innocent blood of thy subject, osa; but what is osa's blood compared with the dignity of a mighty monarch, and the honour of that monarch's daughter? the tallest of these men of ramos here before thee, he who with his persuasive tongue addressed thee last, hath dared to hold private converse with thy daughter volinè; to steal her heart, and to mantle her with shame! with mine own ears i heard the sweet yet poisoned words of yon seducer poured into thy innocent daughter's ears; with mine own eyes did i see them locked in tight embrace within an arbour in thy garden of siccoth-trees, at an hour when no maiden should wander forth unattended! if my words are lies, why is not volinè here by her father's side, as is her unvarying custom? why doth she shun our company? and why doth yonder stripling from ramos carry the sacred ring of echri upon his finger?--a gift from her! why?"---"base, craven-hearted bully," graham shouted, unable to control his anger longer--"coward, who would seek to rob a woman of all that is dearer to her than life--you lie! volinè is as pure and as free from sin as a babe unborn; her soul is whiter than the snows on your mountains' highest points; and the day shall yet come when i--yes, _i_--will make you proclaim her innocence as loudly as you now have cried her shame!" "by god! mr. graham, and if ye want any help, sandy cam'bell will be there," shouted sandy, carried away in his excitement at the prospect of a fight, yet understanding little of what was being said. graham was prevented by a dozen guards from saying more; but we noticed that not a man amongst them treated him roughly. did the ring he wore possess the magic power of which we had been told? the king was now filled with rage. anger so hot and violent filled his heart, that we could see he controlled it with the greatest effort; and the multitude of spectators were worked up into a state of frenzy by what had just been said. no language can express our amazement as we heard the damning words. graham alone could understand them, and our hearts were filled with despair. "say now, o king, if these men of ramos do not justly perish?" continued the prince, with a voice in which triumph and revenge were mingled. "shall they go free who spill innocent blood; yea, sully a woman of thy peerless race, and she thy daughter?" stung to madness by this bitter taunt, the king waved his hand towards the speaker, and in a stern and angry voice cried out:---"peace, peace, perodii. thou thyself hath fanned our wrath in proclaiming thus publicly our shame; and i bid thee retire at once to my privy chamber, whither i will hold consultation with thee. heed well thy words, perodii, for strongest proof of what thou sayest will be required of thee." then, addressing the officers and ministers of state, the king continued: "let these four men of ramos be taken back and guarded well. each one of them shall die. their blood shall wash away our dishonour. three days hence, at setting of the sun, let them meet their doom without prayer or priest, and be consumed with their handiwork within the fiery depths of melag, hurled therein from the crag remagaloth. lead them hence, and let me see them no more; for they have covered me with humiliation before my people, and bowed mine aged head in naked shame!" chapter xiii. the crag remagaloth. the sun was slowly setting, blazing in a hundred hues through the many-coloured windows, and filling the great hall with a mellow glory, as we were conducted back to our chamber, surrounded by an escort of twenty troopers. kaosp led the way; we could see that his heart was heavy, and that he sympathised with us in our great trouble. we were weak and faint from want of food. the reaction had come after the excitement of the day, and not one of us spoke to the other as we walked along with drooping heads and faltering steps. it was a great relief to escape from the noisy multitude and find quietness in our own chamber, where, left alone in our sorrow, and as dying men, we could rest and be in peace. there seemed no mercy whatever for us; not the remotest chance of escape from the horrid doom to which we had been condemned. suicide, it is true, was left, as our revolvers were still hidden in our pockets; for it was a remarkable fact that no one had shown any desire to search us since we had been made prisoners, and we were still unwatched. and yet each one in secret still hoped to escape even now, though he dared not to breathe his thoughts to the rest. had we not three days! what could we not do in them? oh! hope, when does man really abandon thee? only with life. not even the rejected lover, the ruined gambler, or the man who faces certain death--to the last we all of us cling tightly to thee, pandora's priceless gift to trouble-burdened man! food was brought to us almost immediately; and we were glad to see that kaosp continued at his post, as commander of the guard. "be ye of stout heart, o men of ramos. be not so cast down at misfortune! death is the portion of us all; and mark ye, the king may yet relent his anger, if he doth but see perodii's perfidy before three more suns have set," said kaosp cheerfully, as he shook us by the hand and went his way. "i am afraid, doctor, you must feel very bitterly against me," said graham, as we sadly ate our meal. "both you and temple must blame me for all this misfortune. i have no regrets for myself, but it is sore grief indeed to see you fall with me." "regrets are useless now, graham," said temple. "besides, i did all i could to further your suit with volinè, for i believed it wise to do so; i do not blame or reproach you. but we must escape! when, or how, i know not; but, graham, we must escape." "ah! all very well to say that, mr. temple, but we are too well guarded, and too closely watched. we had best sleep on the matter now, and consult together in the morning, when we are more refreshed." "graham," said the doctor, who from the moment the king had pronounced our doom had not spoken, "graham, if we, by any remote possibility, escape from this peril, take my advice on one thing--leave the women alone for the future. i am older than you, have had more experience, and have invariably found that they are the root of all mischief." graham answered not a word, but a vision of volinè, in all her splendid beauty, rose up before him as the doctor spoke. he saw her as she nestled in his arms, bashfully confessing her love for him in that garden of siccoth, and in his heart he vowed that nothing but strong death itself should tear them asunder. the hour was now late, and we sought to drown our sorrow in slumber. sandy had already gone to rest, and lay asleep with rover for his pillow. the nearness of death did not seem to trouble him, for we had explained to him the king's last words of doom. perhaps our many escapes from great peril had made him careless of danger, and inspired him with the confidence of being able to evade his enemies. strange to say that now we knew our fate we were more inclined to rest, and speedily we sank into a deep slumber. * * * * * "thou sleepest heavily, o man of ramos, even with death beside thee," whispered kaosp, as he shook graham roughly in his efforts to awaken him. "why, kaosp, where----what seek you?" said graham, starting up confused from sleep. "hush! let silence keep thy tongue. thy comrades sleep. put on thy garments and follow me. volinè would see thee!" "volinè! volinè? she here? good kaosp, conduct me to her quickly! how can i repay or thank you for such a boon as this?" "by holding thy peace! i hazard honour and face death to serve thee. haste thee! spend not thy precious fleeting moments in catechising me; for she whom thou lovest awaits thee, and thy time is short. in but an hour from now the guard is changed, and thou must be back again!" "i dressed in silent haste, and followed kaosp through the larger room out into the corridor. the worthy soldier had managed well; for not a guard was there; and we crept along until i felt his hand tighten on my arm, and heard him whisper: "'tarry thee one moment, for i would assure myself that all is safe. should'st unfriendly eyes see us here, my life would be the cost.' "he listened intently for a moment, but all was still. then, by some means unknown to me, he slid back a panel in the side of the corridor, and a puff of cold, damp air rushed into our faces. a dark, yawning gulf was before me, and i drew back with an involuntary shudder; but kaosp bid me enter. "'haste thee down these steps,' said he; 'they will take thee to a passage, which follow until thou reachest the garden of siccoth-trees; and there volinè awaits thee. i will meet thee here when thou returnest. but heed thee well the fleeting time.' "in another moment kaosp had closed the panel, and i was groping my way down the steps in perfect darkness. thirty-four deep steps i counted, and then i came to a passage with a smooth floor, which i walked along with caution, feeling the walls on either side as i went. for fifty paces i walked thus, the damp, poisonous air well-nigh choking me; and then i could hear the playing of the fountains, and directly afterwards i beheld the bright stars shimmering before me. "i waited and listened for a few seconds, before venturing from the passage out into the open garden; but, with the exception of the splashing fountains, all was silent as death. then i walked stealthily onwards, with eyes striving to penetrate the gloom, now on this side, now on that, and seeking to discover her whom i loved. presently, i saw her coming towards me with fleeting steps, down a broad pathway between the shrubs. i ran to meet her, and in another moment we were clasped in each other's arms. "'harry!' "'volinè!' "and so we met again; and as we uttered each other's name, in our reunion joy, i rained kiss after kiss upon her soft cheeks and willing lips; and the hot, scalding tears of grief, that trickled down her white, sorrow-stricken face, ploughed, as with molten fire, across my own. oh, the joy and yet the agony of that midnight tryst! we had met, yet only to say good-bye. i and my darling were to love no more in life, for in three fleeting days i must die. then a great mad thought came unto me; and i planned, in a moment of time, that volinè and i would flee--that i would take her with me to some far distant place, where we could live and love without fear. "'darling, we meet once more, but our lives are cloaked with sorrow. you know my fate. it is your royal father's will that i and my comrades die at sunset, three days hence. death is dreadful to me since the hour i saw and loved you. i, who have met this grim majestic thing called death in a hundred shapes without fear, do now see it approach with craven nerveless terror, for it comes to part me from you. dear one, this shall not be. let us haste away together to-night, let us fly from edos now!' "'harry, thou sayest that which is impossible, which cannot be,' she sobbed. 'knowest thou not that every way from siccoth is guarded well; nay, doubly guarded since i prevailed upon the king, my father, to let thee and thy companions wander therein.' "'volinè, your words ring like knells of death and cold despair across my heart.' "'nay, then, give not such freedom to despair. thou knowest i love thee; but thou must not show a woman's weakness, or, methinks, i should despise thee. brave men know not fear, and dangers flee affrighted from advancing courage,' she answered, woman-like, striving to excite a confidence and daring she by no means felt, although cunningly concealing her fears. '"your words, dear one, have robbed all sting from death, and make me look fearlessly upon my doom.' "'harry, dear, thou shalt not meet it. the ring i gave thee shall deliver thee from death. how or where, i know not; but echri's ring shall save thee!' "'truth in its virtues grows stronger and stronger within my heart. but, darling, the moments are speeding on, and we have much to say. pray, tell me now of this braggart perodii. he called you his affianced! he has dared to use your name as a synonym for shame, before a hundred thousand citizens of edos, and his lying words found favour with your father.' "'thou speakest truly, yet heed him not. my father now knows that i would rather die than mate with him, prince and noble though he be. i have braved my father's wrath, and i laughed to scorn perodii's cowardly blow at my honour, because i love thee! perodii's arms have never held me thus; his lips have never met my own. when he calleth me his, he lieth; harry, mark thee well my words--he lieth!' "'my precious one,' i whispered, 'your words are as strong wine unto me! tell me also what your father says concerning us, and of our discovery by perodii, near the arbour.' "'his wrath,' she continued, 'was terrible to witness, and i quailed before his bitter words! i told him but the truth, that thou hadst found favour with me. but, harry, that ring of echri's shall save thee, although my father and his soldiers dare to defy its sacred charms. so long as that ring shall circle round thy finger, death may not strike thee in violence, therefore guard it well for my sake as well as thine!' "'as life itself, for ever and for ever,' i whispered in her ear. 'but, dear one, it seems that i have only brought pain and trouble on you, even caused your precious name to be shrouded in dishonour among the public throng--estranged your father from you. now, after all you sacrifice for me, our happiness is turning but to wormwood and to gall.' "'and hadst it not been for me, thy comrades and thyself would now be free; for kaosp tells me the king was in a pardoning humour until perodii spoke. but the sands of the hour are nearly run, and it is time for thee to go. we must not imperil kaosp by tarrying here. he risketh much for us.' "as volinè spoke, what this our parting really meant, burst upon me in all its awful nakedness, and a great sigh of agony escaped unbidden from my heart. the hour had sped, and we must part. in all human probability, we were to see each other no more! no more! i clasped her yet more tightly to me, and felt her lovely form trembling like a frightened bird's in my embrace. her bosom heaved in sorrow, as i tenderly kissed her tears away, and smoothed her yellow tresses, which, like a web of spun gold, hung loose and careless over my arm. for a few brief moments thus together in silence, and then, as i kissed her once more, she broke gently from my embrace, and in sorrow walked slowly away, turning round as she did so, and sobbing said: "'keep a stout heart, dear harry. my prayers are said for thee; for i am all thine own. remember echri's ring, and fare thee well. beloved--fare--thee--well!' "she was gone! and i, with arms stretched out in entreaty towards her, stood desolate and alone in my sore despair! for several moments i stood as though turned to stone, calling her name in the empty garden, and repeating aloud those touching words of byron's: "'fare thee well, and if for ever, still for ever, fare thee well!' but only the stars and the trees and the fountains heard me--she whom i addressed, was gone! like some fair meteor she had rushed across my path, dazzled and attracted me during her fleeting stay beyond all power of resistance, and then as suddenly vanished from me, and left me in a chaos of misery and sorrow! "'may god in his mercy to me blot out from my memory the agony of this parting in the garden of siccoth; for i can never know happiness again so long as its terrors haunt me,' i prayed aloud in my woe, with face turned upwards to the starlit sky. "how i got back to the archway, and crept along the passage and up the steps to the sliding panel, i know not, for i went my way as one in a walking sleep, with all strength sapped from my trembling frame. "kaosp was awaiting my return in great anxiety, for the hour was already gone, and every moment he dreaded to hear the tramp of the guard coming to relieve him and his men. "'keep silent, and follow me with haste,' he whispered, 'or too late i shall repent me of lending willing ears to a woman's supplications. by great good fortune the guard is late, or this night's work would be known to my ruin!' "'i am really sorry, kaosp, that i have rewarded your good nature by jeopardizing your safety and your honour--but the hour has seemed so short!' "'ah! 'tis always so. lovers heed not time. but the hour with me hath seemed an age.' "we walked stealthily back again, not meeting a living soul; and i crept to my couch without waking one of my comrades. they all slept on in ignorance, and i resolved to keep my own counsel. the episode was too sacred and too painful to take anyone into my confidence; besides, no purpose would be gained, and i had nought to tell that would be of service in our dire necessity. kaosp shook me by the hand before he departed, and a few minutes afterwards, as i lay awake in my misery, thinking of all that had taken place within the past hour, i heard the new guard arrive and station themselves in the corridor beside the outer door!" it is unnecessary, for the purposes of this narrative, to record our doings during the three days of grace that were allowed us. we neither saw or heard anything of the king, volinè, or perodii. we were entirely shut off from all outside affairs, and we knew nothing of what was being done either in the palace or among the people of edos. we were treated precisely the same as before our trial, with the exception of being allowed to walk in the garden of siccoth. that privilege was denied, and we were kept close prisoners to our rooms. two things occurred, however, which call for special notice. the first was the withdrawal of kaosp and his men; he and they being replaced by an entirely new set of guards. the reason we could not discover. we sorely missed our old friend and his cheerful ways; and graham, at least, had some misgivings at his absence. had kaosp's breach of trust in aiding volinè and himself to meet after the trial become known, and his treachery punished? we could not get any information from our new warders. each one of them maintained a stolid silence, and never addressed a single word to either of us during those three dreadful days of suspense. the second thing worthy of mention was the fact that we were now watched day and night incessantly. there were always two guards with us, and every movement on our part was closely observed. but in spite of all this extra precaution we were never searched, and our little personal belongings remained untouched. wearily the days passed on, and we were filled with an agony of suspense, as our last few hours of life ebbed slowly yet surely away. not one of us appeared fully to realise the awfulness of our impending fate, for each in secret was buoyed up with the hope that our doom by some means would be averted. we hoped and hoped as the time slipped on; yet nothing occurred to warrant even the remotest thought that we should be saved. as usual, the doctor was most cheerful; temple and sandy were becoming exceedingly cast down; graham had secret faith in volinè and her mystic ring, which he still wore upon his finger. the fatal day dawned at last. but our guards exhibited precisely the same stolid demeanour, and breakfast was served to us as usual. we ate little, but drank deeply of a liquor somewhat resembling still hock, the effects of which were exceedingly stimulating and comforting. we had only had this "wine" at our noonday meals before, and we concluded that our captors had been kind enough to furnish us with this liquor to brace us for the coming ordeal at sunset. we little suspected that the "wine" was drugged, and had been given to us for a purpose! half an hour after the meal was over, each one of us felt a sickly stupor creeping over him, numbing his sense of feeling, and in subtle sureness robbing him of all use of his limbs. the early effects of the poison were by no means unpleasant. we were filled with a luxurious languor; a delicious feeling of rest, of freedom from anxiety came over us, but soon the poison had other effects, and we became speechless; the brain seemed a mass of molten fire; we appeared to be swelling into absolute giants; everything around us grew distorted, and every muscle seemed to become scorched and withered, until we sank into a complete state of coma! from this moment we remembered no more until we were awoke by a cool, fresh wind blowing on our faces, and a hum and roar, like that from some excited multitude, dinning as distant thunder in our ears. we tried to rise, but in vain; for every limb was draped in brass chains, and we were bound and helpless in the hands of our remorseless enemies! graham and sandy recovered quickly from the effects of the drug when once we regained consciousness, but we must have lain for many hours in a helpless state of stupor. we found ourselves in a tent, the entrance to which was folded back, but only the sky was visible, and this was hidden every few moments as the giant form of a soldier passed to and fro on guard outside. "curses on the refinement of their cruelty," said graham, as he looked round at his helpless comrades, and felt the brass fetters on his own legs and wrists. "damn their cunning! why could not they lead us out like men? upon my soul, it's something to be proud o'! they must ha' feared us, or they wouldna' ha' done this, mr. graham," said sandy, in rage. temple and the doctor did not speak. the drug seemed to have blunted all their powers of perception, and they lay helpless and still, as in a waking dream. "if we could only break these, mr. graham, we would at least die fighting, and show the incarnate devils that we dinna' fear death," said sandy, as he tore savagely at his chains; but, strong man as he was, their polished links only clanged and jingled in mockery. "it's no good, sandy," graham answered; "these brass chains were made to hold stronger men than you or i----" "men of ramos, the sun is setting, and the hour approaches when ye must die," said an officer, as he pushed the tent-door still wider open and walked towards us, followed by half-a-dozen soldiers. "troopers," he continued, "strike off the fetters from their feet and bring these prisoners forth." our feet and legs were soon set free, and we were bidden to rise. graham and sandy were on their feet directly; but when the doctor and temple tried to stand up they reeled like drunken men, and had to be assisted out of the tent by the guards. one by one we passed through the doorway out into the open air. were we still unconscious? were we still under the influence of a subtle poison? what wondrous magic, what enchantment was this? edos, the palace, the well-known gardens of siccoth--all had changed, as in the twinkling of an eye to us, and we found ourselves transported to the midst of a savage wilderness. how we had come hither we knew not; whilst drugged and helpless and unconscious we had been borne to this terrible place to die. we stood on a steep rugged hillside, some twenty yards or so from the summit. below us was a vast multitude of people, congregated in the form of a horseshoe round the mountain; around us was a cordon of soldiers, whilst at the very top of the mountain we saw the _sirius_, how or when conveyed thither we knew not. escape seemed utterly hopeless, and for the first time we realized that we were really about to die. the wild grandeur of that sunset scene can never fade from our memory. all round us were mountains whose rugged peaks were illuminated by the rays of the sinking sun, the snow gleaming on some of them like sheets of polished silver. a volcano, with a thin wreath of blue smoke curling gently skywards crowned the sides of the distant valley, and the ground all round us, and as far as we could see below us, was strewn with fantastic shaped boulders and masses of rock, but not a trace of vegetation could be seen amongst them. everything was desolate in that vale of bitterness and death; hideous the doom that condemned this strange place to barrenness and ruin. the face of the mountain was scarred and furrowed as with a vast despair, and the grey ghostly plain below seemed full of a horrid phantasm. no streams of water trickled down the hillsides; not a living thing was nourished by the barren, fruitless soil! beyond the summit, at a much higher elevation, hung a vast bank of gloomy vapour, like a bitter teardrop on the face of the desert wilderness, its surface gleaming in gold and frowning in grey as the lights and shadows played upon its constantly changing surface. [illustration: ... the sirius ... boldly outlined against the sky.] as soon as we had all got out of the tent we were conducted up the mountain-side towards the _sirius_, which stood boldly outlined against the sky at the summit. when we got to the top the scene was even more awful, enough to curdle the blood of the stoutest-hearted with horror. we stood upon the crag remagaloth, a jutting rock which arched and overhung in awful grandeur a vast lake of seething molten fire! five thousand feet below, in one clear terrible plunge, the cruel cliffs dipped down to this lake of flame; and on the brink of that rugged crag, jutting out like an index finger above the gulf, was the _sirius_, looking as if the slightest touch would overbalance her, and hurl her downwards into the fiery depths. the surface of this molten lake was remarkably still; here and there a tongue of flame shot upwards, and then sank again; here and there the seething mass heaved gently, as though simmering and swelling in sullen rage. the reflection lit up the surrounding rocks, and gleamed upon the armour and the faces of the troops, making them look like fiends in human guise. what words can describe our feelings as we stood chained and helpless on the brink of melag, awaiting our hideous doom! the sun already was half-hidden below the mountain-tops behind us in the distant west, and the plain of desolation below was fast cloaking its horrors in the gloom of night. earth shone as a pale star in the clear sky, and our eyes looked out with yearning love across the realms of space towards her, our home! alas, home no more! in a few more fleeting moments all would be over! we thought with horror of the death before us, of the actual time when the _sirius_, after falling five thousand feet like a winged and helpless bird, would strike with a dull gurgling sound the molten lake below; and then of what we should experience in that one brief, dreadful moment between life and death, when the ocean of living fire should surge over us in its pitiless embrace. we had little time for thought, however, for almost directly we reached the jutting crag the same commander stepped forward and said---"men of ramos, it is here that by the king's commands ye are to die. it is his royal will that this strange carriage in which ye came to gathma shall be consumed with ye; so that ye and your evil works may be entirely destroyed." as he spoke a loud tumultuous shout of approbation rose from the assembled hosts below us, and then a silence as of death came over the expectant throng as they watched in breathless excitement the closing scene of this awful execution. once more our feet were chained, so that we were utterly helpless. not one of us spoke as we were assisted up the ladder into the _sirius_. as we entered one by one we noticed a score or more stalwart troopers standing round, evidently waiting for the signal to hurl us over into the lake as soon as all was prepared. sandy and his dog were taken first, then graham, then temple, and last of all the doctor. as graham was going up the ladder, perodii stepped forward. we had not noticed him before, but he had come to see the death of his rival, and to mock and triumph over him in his helpless agony. "see, thou boasting fool, volinè hath deserted thee in thy hour of need! she comes not to see thee enter eternal fire! her shame is deeper than her love; and even her magic ring cannot help thee now! that silly, soul-saving echri, and his wondrous magic are impotent before a few brass chains and stalwart troopers!" "coward! breathe not her dear name to me, and keep your blasphemy for those who may appreciate it. were but my fetters loose, i would make carrion of your carcase; and i die breathing curses on your lying tongue," graham answered with wonderful coolness. "begone! leap thee into hell, and take thy punishment for meddling with things that concerned thee not," perodii continued, unable to conceal his mortification at his vain effort to rouse graham into a display of open anger. graham was stung to madness by perodii's bitter taunts, and as soon as he got inside the _sirius_ he tore at his chains like one possessed. the muscles of his arms swelled out like knotted ropes, and the veins on his hands seemed about to burst as he wrestled with the strong brass fetters. his strength seemed supernatural, and at last with a mighty wrench he snapped the links asunder, and with a cry of joy rushed down to the engine-room. already we heard the signal being given; the _sirius_ was toppling over, but instead of falling, the motors sped round and we rose upwards towards the clouds, triumphant over our enemies. a terrible cry of rage and disappointment came from the spectators. in his excitement graham forgot his manacled companions, and hurried out on to the balcony to taunt the baffled crowd below. as the _sirius_ slowly mounted through the air, a shout rose up from the cowed and frightened soldiers---"it is echri's magic ring that hath worked this marvel, and delivered these men of ramos out of our hands. woe, woe unto us for defying him!" "we shall meet again, perodii," shouted graham at the top of his voice, "and when we do i'll make you answer to me for all the evil you have wrought." the voices of the crowd were now only as a distant murmur, and soon after we were too far away to hear any sounds at all. graham soon found tools and released us from our fetters. "thank god, for once again delivering us from peril," said temple reverently. "the ring, the ring you all despised and scoffed at, has saved us," said graham; "for the hand which carried it found more than a giant's strength. call it superstition, if you will, but i solemnly swear that my unaided strength was not equal to those chains." "the best thing to do," said the doctor slowly, and with some impatience in his voice, for he was yet feeling dazed and weak, "is to settle where we are going. i am certain the _sirius_ cannot carry us three hundred miles." "let us put as much distance as possible between edos and ourselves," temple suggested. "very true, temple, but unfortunately we know not in which direction edos lies," the doctor answered. and so we sped on, we knew not whither, but keeping a sharp look-out. our course was nearly due north, a point or so east. the country, so far as we could judge in the deepening gloom, was forbidding in appearance, and the reflection from the lake of molten fire shone on the heavens for a vast distance. we seemed to have left all fertile lands behind us, and were hastening into regions of desert barrenness. two hours after our escape from remagaloth, our stock of electricity showed signs of becoming exhausted. we had not the wherewithal to generate more. we were now quite two hundred miles away to the north-eastward of the fire-lake, and here we were compelled to descend. we dropped gently down on what seemed to be a vast plain, barren of vegetation; and there, safe in the _sirius_, we ate a hearty meal, enjoyed the luxury of a cigar, and went to sleep, all eager for the dawn to disclose to us the nature of the country we had entered. chapter xiv. across the desert chados. we awoke at dawn feeling like new men, scarcely being able to realise the fact that we were free! the events of yesterday still lingered in our minds, like the remnants of a more than usually vivid dream. that all was real and true we could not bring ourselves to believe, so awful and inhuman seemed the doom we had so miraculously escaped. but the sun, as it rose in solemn splendour above the eastern edge of this strange world, soon dispelled our morbid thoughts and cheered us into activity. the view from the balcony of the _sirius_ was grand, though the country round us was sterile and desolate as the valley of death below remagaloth, from which we had been delivered at yester e'en! but we had life and liberty; the future was once more before us, full of hopes and possibilities, and each one felt that the worst was over and brighter prospects were now before us. we found everything in the _sirius_ precisely as we had left it. evidently the people of edos had shunned our carriage, and desired that we and all our belongings might be destroyed together. this was a fortunate circumstance for us, for had the _sirius_ been dismantled and pillaged we should have been in this wilderness without food. as soon as breakfast was over we consulted together as to what was best to be done. "there is no help for it, my friends," said the doctor; "the _sirius_ is wrecked, and we shall have to leave her to her fate. alas! she can give us safety no longer, and we may stay in her at our peril. we may be sure a search will be made for us, and that very quickly. our only course is to abandon her, taking with us as many absolute necessaries as we can conveniently carry among us, and set off at once towards more fertile country. the future must take care of itself entirely, and we be guided further solely by circumstances." "but, doctor, is there no hope of patching her up for a little time longer?" "none, graham; our motors are worn out; our generating material exhausted. we should require all the resources of a civilised community to make good her defects and replenish her power." "then there is nothing for it but to do as you suggest, doctor," said temple; and graham reluctantly acquiesced. while the doctor and sandy selected such articles as we were going to take, temple and graham went outside to reconnoitre, and to decide as to the best route we should take. there was little choice to be made. radiating in every direction from where we stood, the wide desert extended in one vast scene of ruinous waste. we stood on a wide uneven rockand sand-strewn plain, which reached to the horizon on every side. not a trace of vegetation could we detect sprouting from the bitter, ungenerous soil; not a stream or a pool cheered its wide expanse. all round the horizon were mountains of bare and forbidding aspect; some of them crested with what looked like snow; others volcanic, and belching smoke and fire. the route toward the north-east seemed the most feasible, for in that direction the mountains were not so high, and an apparent break in the rocky girdle suggested an easier passage over them. "north-east it must be, mr. temple. we ought to reach the mountains by to-morrow afternoon, and get through yonder pass to the country beyond them by evening of the next day, at latest." "i think so, too," said temple. "and now that is decided, let me take the opportunity of our few moments alone together, sincerely to thank you for our deliverance from death yesterday. you have saved my life, graham, and anything that i can do in return i shall be only too pleased. i have not cared to speak thus to you before the doctor, as i know the subject is distasteful to him. whenever a woman is concerned, no matter how remotely, all his good-humour and generosity vanish. he absolutely hates women, and all to do with them." "pray, mr. temple, do not thank me. i was but the agent of our deliverance, after all. thank this wonderful priest, echri, for it was he who saved us through volinè's mystic ring. why, or how, we know not; yet i am as sure of it as i am of my own existence. i cannot expect you and the rest to be so credulous as to believe in its virtues," he continued, looking at the ring and twirling it round his finger as he spoke, "but the feelings that came over me when i broke those fetters, yesternight, can never be expressed in words. ask me not to attempt to describe them; for i desire to keep what i then felt a sacred secret." "but talking of volinè, graham; i am really very sorry for you. it recalls my own young days when i wooed and won the charming girl who became my wife, but only to die with her infant son in twelve short fleeting months, and to leave me in lonely sorrow. i have not got over that trouble, graham, and i never shall, twenty years old though it is." "then, mr. temple, you can slightly understand my infatuation, my sincere love for this girl of gathma. is she not worthy of all the love that man can give? she is as good and as true as she is handsome. and yet, all now is over between us--all is over, and i shall see her no more!" "but you must cheer up. don't let the doctor see your weakness, for it will only make unpleasantness amongst us. things may come right yet. you know the old earth-saying about all things coming to him who waits? something tells me that even now we have not seen the last of edos, or of the king of gathma's daughter." "that you may be a true prophet, then, is my one prayer. for i love volinè, and without her my life is dreary and desolate as this desert around us." "well, graham, we had better get back to the _sirius_ now. i daresay the doctor is ready to start by this time; and if you take my advice you will let the subject of volinè, and all that happened in edos, form no part of our conversation. the doctor has strange ideas--what man of genius has not?--and at present it is best to humour him, for we require all his undivided energies to bring us safely through our perils." so conversing, temple and graham walked back towards the _sirius_, where we found the doctor and sandy had arranged into four packs the various necessaries he had selected from the stores. "well, friends, what is the result of your exploration?" said the doctor, smiling, and looking up from one of the packages he was strapping together. "travelling will be slow, doctor," answered graham, "for the ground is covered with loose sand and rough broken rock. our best course is north-east, towards the rent or defile in the mountains yonder. we should reach them by to-morrow afternoon." "then take a cup of this meat essence, and we will be off," said the doctor. "i think we have got all that we shall require for immediate use. water will be scarce, but i think we have a substitute. now have a last look round, and satisfy yourselves that you are leaving nothing you may value specially behind." at last we each shouldered our package, strapping it on our back like a knapsack, and with rifle in hand we turned from the _sirius_ and began our march. tears dimmed the doctor's eyes as he looked for the last time upon his cherished handiwork, every bolt and plate of which was dear to him; and not one of us left the good carriage without feelings of regret, for it seemed as though we were turning our backs on home! hour after hour we trudged along, now sinking knee-deep in fine sand, then slipping and stumbling as we slowly picked our way across stony ground, the sun beating down upon us from a clear and rainless sky. after exerting ourselves to the very utmost, we found that we had not advanced more than twelve miles from the _sirius_ by mid-day; and owing to the extreme clearness of the heated atmosphere, this distance did not appear much more than six. we halted to rest under the shadow of a big mass of rock which lay embedded in the sand, and here we ate our food and each drank a cup of wine and water from his flask. of pure water we had only one small cask, holding a gallon, which sandy carried slung from his shoulder. this we reserved for any emergency, but we hoped to find a stream or pool before nightfall. we allowed ourselves one hour's rest, then resumed our march, and continued struggling on till sunset. during the afternoon we crossed a stretch of better ground, and by the time we halted for the night, we seemed to have done at least half the distance that separated the _sirius_ from the mountains. we encamped in a rocky hollow. tent or fire we had none: we could not carry the one, and no materials for the other were to be got in this wilderness. we ate our cold supper and then fell asleep, with nothing but the starry sky above us, and with the soft sand for our beds. it was a lovely night, warm and windless and still, so that we experienced little or no discomfort, and awoke refreshed, just as the rising sun was tipping the distant hills with gold. not one drop of water, not the slightest sign of moisture had we discovered, and the night had been dry and dewless. not a blade of vegetation, or a trace of any living thing, could yet be seen---all was desert and barren. with no fire to warm or cook anything, our morning meal was not quite so savoury as it might have been, but we were hungry, and hungry men are rarely fastidious. meat essence dissolved in a little water, with biscuits and a draught of watered wine, formed our repast, and as soon as it was done we picked up our belongings and made an early start. we were anxious to get as much ground covered as possible before the sun became so oppressively powerful; besides, death stared us in the face on every side in this terrible wilderness, and delay might prove fatal to us all. slowly, terribly slowly, mile after mile was passed, and the mountains before us began to show out in more detail. they were barren and sterile enough. everything seemed withered and blasted, and the sun in fierce splendour travelled across the waterless heavens, and burnt into the bare rocks and sands, wasting his life-nourishing heat on a region of eternal desolation. by mid-day we were so fatigued that we sank down beside a big stone to rest our weary limbs and throbbing heads. eat we could not; our mouths were dry and parched, and we craved for water. there was but a quart of the precious fluid left--a quart of lukewarm, half-putrid water, between four thirsty men and a panting dog! sandy begged hard for a drop for his dog, and he moistened poor rover's mouth with a spoonful; but we ourselves tried to slake our awful thirst with a few of the doctor's lozenges. they answered admirably; but their effect was only momentary, and by the time each little cake was sucked away we were as thirsty as before. the sun beat down upon us remorselessly, and to save ourselves from being scorched to death we scraped a hole under the shadow of the stone, and there, huddled together in the scanty shade, we lay waiting for the sun to sink lower in the west before we tried to drag our weary feet a little farther. for three hours we remained in this hole in the sand; then once more we started on, moistening our mouths from our nearly empty flasks, and munching a biscuit as we went. towards night the temperature became much lower, and we were able to get along a little faster; but every mile that we went we found our burdens becoming heavier. yet we struggled on; nor did we seek a camping-place until we reached the lower slopes of the mountains. still all was desolation; closer scrutiny only confirmed the opinions formed by a more distant view, for the hills were as sterile and barren as the plain we had crossed. "never mind, my friends," said the doctor, "we have crossed the worst part. here, amid the mountains, we are sure of more shade, and shall most probably find water, if not on these slopes, surely on the other side." "well, doctor, if we don't find water soon, it will be all over with us," remarked temple. "i myself don't feel equal to another day like this has been." "none of us know the compass of our strength, or what we can do, until spurred on by the goads of necessity, temple," the doctor answered. we selected a sheltered nook among the rocks, each smoothing the sand into the semblance of a couch, and there we used the remainder of the water to make our essence, and then stretching our stiff and weary limbs, soon fell asleep. not one of us awoke again until the next day was far advanced. the sun was four hours high towards the zenith ere we roused from our slumber. the long sleep had done us good; our heads were easier; our thirst not so intense. we drank the remainder of our wine and water, ate a few biscuits, and then prepared for our onward march. the rocky pass between two rugged mountains lay straight before us, and in single file we went our way. at first the precipitous sides of the mountains nearly met overhead, and the path was little more than a gloomy fissure; but this soon widened out as we ascended, and we eventually found ourselves in a broad valley, with an uninterrupted view for miles. our great exertions in walking over the rock-strewn ground soon began to create acute thirst. we had no fluid now of any kind, and only a dozen lozenges were left. these we shared, three to each; and very soon the cravings for moisture triumphed and they were gone. we had nothing whatever now to assuage thirst! we must find water, or die! times without number we consulted together as to the propriety of throwing away our arms and ammunition; but still we continued to carry them, first in one hand, then in the other. then one or the other of us said he could go no farther, and begged the rest to leave him to die in peace. but we cheered and rallied him whose hopes of deliverance were ebbing, as best we could, and still toiled on. upwards! onwards! filled with all the torments of a raging thirst, we toiled, our feet heavy as though shod with lead; but still no sign of life--the same desolate wilderness, the same hot sun, the same bare rocks and stony way, continuing on and on apparently to eternity! all that livelong day we struggled on beneath a scorching sun. towards evening we were startled by a shout from sandy: "the water! doctor, the shining water! see, there! there! below ye on the left." we looked where sandy pointed, and there--could we trust our eyes? or was it but the fancy of a scorched and sun-disordered brain?--there, about a mile away, was a beautiful pool below the hillside, its shimmering waters glistening like silver in the setting sun! we literally danced for joy, and, nerved to new strength by the sight of the welcome waters, we ran helter-skelter over the rocks and stones towards them. when two hundred yards away we threw down our rifles, and slipped out of the straps that held our burdens, and each raced as for his life to be the first to revel in the feast! graham, being by far the strongest, reached the brink first; but instead of kneeling down to quench his thirst, he threw himself to the ground with a piteous groan of despair, saying: "we are lost! my comrades; we are lost! unless we can cool our burning tongues with mercury!" alas! graham's words were only too true, for the lake, which must have covered some hundreds of acres of ground, was one thick, fluid mass of quicksilver! we sat down by this costly, yet horrid pool, too overcome with bitter disappointment, and with the exertion of hastening thither, to speak; and not one of us stirred until the sun had set and night approached. "doctor," exclaimed temple at last, in a weak and weary voice, "we can go no further; we had best remain here and die." but doctor hermann made no answer. he was gazing into the lake at our feet in a half-conscious manner, muttering incoherently to himself about "majestic phenomenon" and "wonderful sight," and then he sank back unconscious! the scene now became intensely horrible. temple sat with pale hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes, his chin resting upon his knees; sandy was struggling with graham to reach the lake, swearing he would have water if he killed him in reaching it. but poor sandy was weak as a child, and graham in very kindness hurled him to the ground, where he lay like one dead. the only man with any control over himself, or with any strength, was graham, and he stood amongst his fallen companions, gaunt and haggard, with tears of sympathy for them trickling down his wan, wasted cheeks, and white face turned upwards to the sky. "oh, god!" he cried, in words that rattled hoarsely in his parched and burning throat--"oh, god! give us water, or be merciful and let us quickly die. oh, echri!" he panted, "servant of god, if your power admits, hear the voice of him who wears your sacred ring, crying for help in the wilderness, and send him succour. help!--me--and them--oh, god!--echri--ring--volinè;" but the last words became but rattling, meaningless sounds, and he too was overcome with faintness and thirst, and sank down among the rest to die! a few minutes later, temple alone remained conscious; but he felt too weak to move, and he sat there in his agony, watching the bright merciless stars come forth one by one, and the distant yellow ball of earth rise steadily above the mountains, until a drowsiness overcame him, and he mercifully fell into a troubled sleep. how long he slumbered we shall never know, but he woke trembling with cold, roused from his sleep by the chilly blast that was howling and shrieking round him. the heavens were of an inky blackness, save at irregular intervals, when the blue lightning lit up the banks of cloud for a fleeting moment. the cold wind, evidently charged with moisture, had brought new life upon its wings for temple, and he felt refreshed. he was still too weak to move, and sat shivering in astonished silence, viewing the progress of the storm. peal after peal of thunder shook the ground beneath him: flash after flash of lightning glanced along the lake of mercury, and illumined its smooth waveless surface like a mirror. then a few big heavy drops of rain spattered on the rocks, one of them striking him full on his forehead. a minute or so later, preceded by a warning roar, the tempest broke in all its fury. the rain beat down on the parched ground, wetting him and his companions to the skin, collecting into pools, and flowing in tiny rills and torrents between the rocks, and forming channels across the firmer beds of sand. the water revived temple like doses of some magic elixir, and he crawled to the nearest pool and drank his fill of this sweet, refreshing nectar from the sky! then amidst the tempest strife, and by the lightning's light, he dragged his cold and aching body towards his fallen comrades, his cap full of water, and beginning with graham, who was lying face downwards, he gently parted his dry cracked lips asunder, and poured a few drops between his teeth. the effect was instantaneous, and he showed signs of returning consciousness; by bathing his forehead, he was soon able to speak. "thank you, mr. temple," he faintly murmured, "i shall be better now. whoever expected rain in such a region! but leave me, and lend the poor doctor some assistance. i am afraid he is in a bad way." the rain had served sandy, too, in a remarkable way, and we heard him groping in the darkness, and drinking from his hands, which he filled from one of the numerous pools around us. in half an hour all of us could stand except the doctor; he was alive, but unable to move or speak. then the storm ceased, the sky cleared, and a yellow light over the east heralded the sun. daylight revealed the heaviness of the storm. we were surrounded by pools of sparkling rain-water, resting in the crevices of the rocks, and the mountain sides were furrowed with crystal streams, whose volume was fast becoming less as the sands absorbed them. sandy, by graham's direction, crawled off to search for the water-cask and the packs we had thrown away the previous evening. the cask we broke up, and with the wood we made a small fire. by careful management we contrived to heat sufficient water to make half-a-gallon of the meat essence, and a cup of this soon put new life into the doctor. poor rover was almost dead, and lay helpless where he had crouched down by sandy's side, hours before, and it took all his master's care to bring him round. by the time we had drunk our soup the sun had risen, and his generous rays--the rays we were but so ready to curse yesterday--soon dried our dripping garments, and warmed our bodies back to more vigorous life. we also dried and oiled our firearms, and packed our knapsacks afresh. but we were all too weak and exhausted to march, and we decided to stay and rest ourselves for a few hours. we had food and water in abundance, and if we could only find some fuel we should want little more. we left the side of the lake, and took up our quarters under the lee of a huge mass of rock, and here we stayed until noon. although feeling weak, we were then determined to try and push on once more. could we only get out of these desert regions, and enter a more fertile country, all might yet be well. then we could rest to our heart's desire, and recruit our wasted strength. feebly we started, tottering under our loads, but thankful to god that our lives had been spared once more, and that the pangs of a burning thirst were gone. truly all things seemed working in our favour; for had the rain fallen twelve hours later, not one of us would have survived, and our bones would now be bleaching in the sun on that desert waste! the ground became more even as we crawled along, and by creeping steadily forward we covered nearly twenty miles before sunset. then the country began to improve, and the distant hills appeared covered with forests to the snow-line. grasses and weeds peeped here and there among the stones, and a mile further on we saw a few stunted bushes, something like a clump of gorse, on the hillside. eagerly, and with new-born strength, we now pushed on, striving every nerve to reach some sort of cover before darkness made us halt for the night. we were not disappointed, and before the short twilight had faded, we found ourselves on the borders of a dense scrub, studded here and there with small trees. here we camped close to a pool of rain-water, and made a glorious fire of dead branches, with which we cooked our evening meal. then, stretching our weary limbs on beds of leaves, we rested for the night in comparative comfort and luxury. we were up early. thanks to splendid constitutions, the effects of our sufferings in the desert were passing rapidly away, although our pale and haggard faces continued to reflect our recent hardships for many days. the easiest route still led upwards, and after two hours' walking through a region rich with mineral wealth, we came to the borders of a forest on the crest of the hill, and looked down upon a wide and fruitful plain, covered with woods and fields and clusters of trees. three miles below us was a large city--evidently a great manufacturing centre, for there were furnaces and tall chimney-shafts belching smoke and flame, and we could even hear the distant hum and roar of busy industry! the change from desert, barren wilderness, to fat and fruitful land was startlingly sudden, and for many moments we stood on the crest of the hill, looking at the scene below us in silent amazement! whilst we were discussing the appearance of this smoke-beleaguered city, and wondering to ourselves what industries its people were engaged in, we were alarmed by cries of terror from a thicket a little way to the left, and almost directly afterwards a man rushed out towards us, pursued by a strange-looking beast, something like a wild boar, only with long-twisted horns growing from its forehead. comprehending in a moment the peril the poor fellow was in, graham without more ado pointed his rifle at the beast and fired, cleverly bringing it down dead. the hunter seemed paralysed with terror at the report of the rifle and its effects, and stood looking at us in amazement. "we are friends," said the doctor, with hands held out towards him. "come without fear and give us greeting. you are safe." hearing his own language spoken, the man advanced, saying as he did so: "strangers, my heart is full of gratitude for the service ye have rendered. command me to your bidding, and i obey. i am from pamax, yonder. my name is kios--and yours?" "we are strangers to your country and your world; we come from the star which you call ramos, which we call earth; and we come as brothers, in friendship and in peace," answered the doctor in an assuring voice. "are ye, then, the men of ramos, with whose evil fame all gathma rings? the men of ramos who escaped death at the crag remagaloth? are ye the slayers of osa? if so be ye are, i know your story as well as any man in edos, for we listened to each word of your trial and sentence here in pamax." "the same are we; but what know you of our captivity there? have you any tidings from edos?" queried graham, who ill-concealed his impatience to hear any possible news of his beloved. "men of ramos, i can tell ye much; but ye look faint and weary. follow me, and rest your tired limbs, and i will tell ye all i know." so saying, the good-natured hunter (for such we judged him to be) turned and beckoned us to follow him, throwing the huge dead beast across his mighty shoulders as he went. he led the way to a camp far in the thicket, where a wood fire was roasting some animal before a cosy tent. "enter, men of ramos; enter, and share a poor man's hospitality." gladly we did so, and after taking off our knapsacks, we seated ourselves on some soft skins and listened to his story. "first, i would ask ye how ye came hither. edos is many days' journey hence for they who needs must travel by stealth or on foot; remagaloth is yet further. i heard that ye escaped into the sky in a carriage of cunning workmanship. came ye hence in that?" "you speak quite truly, kios," said graham; "we escaped in the carriage that bore us from earth to gathma; but it conveyed us to a desert region which for days we had to cross on foot, nearly perishing of heat and thirst on the way." "the barren ground of which ye speak is the desert chados, and i marvel much to learn that ye have crossed it and yet do live! ye are now in the woods called theloth, the sole right and privilege of hunting therein being conferred on me by the king. i supply the palace at edos with wild meat and herbs, and i came from the city but yesterday." "then the distance cannot, surely, be so far," exclaimed temple. "we travel quickly in gathma," kios answered, "and i know full well ye could not have come by the same means as i----" "so you left edos so recently? then do you know aught of----?" said graham in eagerness. but kios, with upraised finger, said, "interrupt me not. i will tell ye all i know, but i must speak in mine own way. "the news of your miraculous escape from death," continued kios, "is on every tongue, both in edos and throughout civilised gathma; and, moreover, it is said that echri with his wondrous arts did save ye, for one of ye did wear a sacred ring of his upon your finger. ah! that is the same--all men of edos know it well," said kios, as graham held out his hand on which the curious talisman glittered. "the king and his ministers are wrath enough; but there are those who say his royal anger is not so bitter as it seemeth, and that volinè, his daughter, hath softened his heart toward ye. yet, in this, i only repeat the gossip of the streets of edos, and know not its truth. a prince, by name perodii, fans the king's smouldering wrath by taunts, and what, methinks, are probably falsehoods concerning ye. no man in all edos, save the king, is so powerful as he, nor is there a bigger blackguard within its walls. be warned against him, for his soul is full of evil, and he seeks your ruin. at his instigation, troops are searching the country through to find ye; and if ye be taken captive once more, no mercy will be shown ye if perodii can prevent it. i hate this perodii with a deadly bitter hatred, for he ruined my only child! curse him!" "know you aught of volinè, the king's daughter; or of kaosp, a worthy commander of the troops in edos?" asked graham anxiously. "of volinè i have no tidings; of kaosp i know nought but ill. he lies in prison, thrown there, some say, for treason to the king; yet others have it that perodii's lying tongue hath forged his fetters." "we are exceedingly grateful for the news you have told us," said the doctor warmly, "and your tidings will prove a great service to us. but we would ask you for further information about the city below us--pamax, i think you call it. is it safe for us to venture therein?" "no; ye go there at peril of your liberty and lives. know ye not that pamax doth great trade with edos; the king's troops are even there now in quest of ye. pamax is a city of rough working-people, where dirt and squalour are as plentiful as gold and splendour in edos. the people that dwell in pamax are cunning workers in metals; the hills around us are honeycombed with their mines. electric ways radiate from this city in all directions, to convey its merchandise to every part of gathma. it is a wondrous city, and its men are clever artificers; yet they are low of mind, and would, in their stupid ignorance, hand ye over to the guards at once. but four days' journey hence is the bright and noble city of helmath, full of scientific and highly-cultured people, a great centre of knowledge, and a lofty seat of learning. thither bend your steps; for those therein may welcome ye and plead your cause with the king. tarry with me here for a day or so, as my guests. revive your wasted strength, and rest your wearied bodies with me. i promise ye safety in the woods of theloth, and will send ye on your way to helmath with light and hopeful hearts." we consulted together for a moment, and then unanimously decided to accept the kind invitation kios had so generously offered us. we needed rest, we sought safety; and here we could obtain both, for a few days at least. we had already unbounded confidence in this open-hearted hunter, and felt that our safety was doubly assured through his bitter hatred of perodii. chapter xv. rivals meet again. for three days we stayed with kios and enjoyed his hospitality. he literally nursed us back to health and strength; making us savoury, nourishing dishes with a hunter's cunning, and giving us a preparation of medicinal herbs, which acted as a powerful tonic on our nerves, and braced us exceedingly. he gave up his bed to the doctor, and in countless ways covered us with kindness. the day before we left his camp, we prevailed upon him to leave us, and go down the hills into pamax to gain tidings of the soldiers who were in search of us. whilst he was away we cleaned our firearms, repacked our knapsacks, and made all ready for starting at dawn on the following day. kios returned towards sunset; but eager as we were to learn his tidings, we would not question him until he had eaten; nor did he evince any desire to communicate them before. "now, good kios, we would hear your news," said the doctor, as we drew round the camp fire and lit our cigars. "it is not altogether good, as i had hoped," he began. "the people can talk of nothing else but the men of ramos, meaning yourselves. their excitement hath increased; for some traders, who had journeyed to the lake of kimeth, near which ye have told me ye camped, returned to pamax yesternight, bringing with them scraps of strange food and other refuse ye must have left behind. the troops have started thither at dawn this morning; and what is worse, that villain perodii is at their head. he will never rest until ye are all once more in his power, for he bears ye strange and deadly hatred." "but, kios,----" began the doctor. "nay, hear me out, men of ramos, for i have but few more words to say. it is fortunate for ye that the troops have gone on this fool's errand; for they may search far and wide up there, and the time they waste ye will profit by. yet, when they return to pamax, as return they surely will, perodii's mood will not be pleasant; and ye may be assured that the journey to the borders of chados will not tend to cool his wrath against ye. men of ramos, ye must not linger here; i cannot answer for your safety longer. these woods will be searched, and it may be at daybreak. ye must start for helmath to-night--nay, at once." "but we are in ignorance of the way thither, and may lose ourselves in the darkness," said temple. "trouble not yourselves; for i will guide ye a few hours' journey hence, and put ye in the path that leads thereto." "i am afraid, worthy kios, we shall never be able to repay you," said the doctor. "ye saved my life; it is but well that i should seek to save yours in return. besides, i aim perodii a blow, through ye--and it is always sweet to strike one's enemies. know ye, i was rich and noble once, with rank and dignity almost as high as he. through his knavery and wickedness, i am degraded to the calling of a hunter to the palace, banished from my home in edos, and owe what little i now possess--even my life itself--to the clemency of the king. some day the truth may prevail, and i be restored to my rights. had perodii honour enough left to speak, he could accomplish this in few words; yet he remains silent; and i suffer, because i resented the great wrong he did me. but we waste time in needless words. get ye ready, and let us hasten hence; for the path is heavy, and the way is long." we reluctantly left our comfortable quarters, and started off with kios through the darkness. the night was calm and beautifully fine--just one of those delicious evenings that make the tropics of earth so sweet, when the broiling heat of the day is spent. kios led us by a circuitous route down the wooded hillside; and we passed so near to pamax, that the roar of its machinery sounded clearly in the night, and the glow from its thousands of furnaces shone against the sky like a mighty conflagration. "the men of pamax work late," remarked temple, with a manufacturer's instinct, and thinking of his own noisy looms at home on earth. "the wheels of their machinery are never still," answered kios. "the worker's lot is hard, but they are a cheerful community, if their greed of gain is great." we soon passed pamax, with its noise and fire, and reached the calm, quiet country again. at last the forest was left behind us, and we walked for an hour across a wide prairie, on which grew herbs of singular odour. then we followed the banks of a wide river, and after passing through a dark and dangerous swampy jungle--something like the forest of reeds in which we first descended--kios stopped and said: "men of ramos, here i must leave ye. the night will be nearly spent ere i get back to the woods of theloth, and there are those who must not see me return. look ye at yonder group of stars," pointing, as he spoke, to a constellation something like ursa major, the great bear, in our own heavens. "mark ye them well; keep them straight before ye; and in two hours' march ye will reach the sea. strike north along the coast a short day's journey, until ye come to a rocky creek. follow the stream that falls therein, skirting the base of a spent volcano; and in three days' more easy travelling, ye will sight the great observatory of helmath, standing on a high hill on your right hand. behind that hill is the city itself. advance ye with caution; and hold no converse with the men of gathma until ye reach helmath; or swift and certain ruin will overtake ye. now haste away, and fare ye well." without waiting to hear our words of thanks for all his kindness, kios waved his hand to us in farewell, and walked away into the gloom. we travelled slower without his guidance, for the way was rough; and sometimes clouds obscured the stars, which were our beacon light, and we had oft to wait until they had drifted by. instead, therefore, of reaching the coast in two hours, we were nearly six; and the day was breaking as the grey waters of the gathma sea spread far and wide before us. we were both tired and hungry; and so amongst the rocks on the beach we made a fire, and had our breakfast. then we sat and rested for two hours before beginning our march along the coast. after crossing some four miles of level sand, we reached a dense forest, which extended from the margin of the water inland beyond the range of our vision. here the curious vegetation was so dense that the sun failed to penetrate the canopy of foliage; but the ground was bare of brushwood, and walking was easy and pleasant. some curious trees, shaped like a mighty fungus, or an open umbrella, excited our wonder. they bore no leaves, but threw out a thick, unbroken canopy, of the colour and texture of an aloe plant, which curved downwards nearly to the ground; and above this, from the centre of the stem, shot a spike of crimson flowers, a yard or more in length. each tree formed an admirable tent; and many of them seemed to be of vast age; the canopy being furrowed as with the growth of centuries, the edges torn into dry and withered ribbons, and the stems of enormous girth. at first we really took them to be the habitations of human beings or beasts; and it was not until we had examined them closely that we ascertained they were really trees. as we went farther into the forest these curious trees increased in number and in size; indeed, in some places they covered the ground so thickly, that it was difficult to walk amongst them; and we found it best and quickest to make a detour. in passing one of these groves of vegetable umbrellas, we were startled by a perfect tumult of chattering cries, and scores of strange beings hurried out from under them and surrounded us, skipping and hopping about, running to and fro like fiends in the dusky light of the forest. had we not seen these singular beings with our own eyes, we should never have believed in their existence. they were fashioned much like ourselves from the feet to the shoulders, the arms, however, being proportionately much shorter--but there all outward resemblance ceased. neck they had none, the shoulders gradually tapering away to the head, which was free from hair, and the face was intermediate in expression between that of a man, and the higher or simian race of beasts. their bodies were entirely naked, and of a chalky-brown colour, and they averaged perhaps five feet in height. so fierce and threatening did these curious creatures become that we fired our rifles off to frighten them, which had the desired effect, and they fled in chattering terror, grinning and grimacing into the trees, and we saw them no more. whether they were gifted with greater than brute intelligence we know not; we were too startled and alarmed to make a closer acquaintance with them. dr. hermann himself was visibly disconcerted; and the rest of us were glad when they vanished from our sight, sandy especially so---perhaps he dreaded the doctor sending him in quest of one of these curious creatures. even our dog refused to go near them, and lay down trembling with fright. [illustration: scores of strange beasts hurried out from under them.] it seemed incredible that such a race of animals could exist, so near to so mighty and populous a town as pamax; but we were in a world of surprises, and things that appeared unnatural to us, were rational enough, no doubt, to the dwellers on the land of mars. all day we passed through this wonderful forest, now catching a glimpse of broad daylight as the trees grew less closely together, then entering a world of shadows and steamy gloom as the canopy became denser once more. we saw trees that were nothing but bare poles, tapering to a point far up in the sky, without branch or leaf, except a little green cup at the summit; others were draped in curiously-curled foliage; others, yet again, decked in noble, fan-shaped leaves a dozen feet across. some put us in mind of the earthly tropics; but the great majority were entirely new, both in growth and form. the vegetable wonders around us made us forget our fatigue, and even our hunger. we never once thought to halt and rest throughout the livelong day; and we continued walking on and on through the forest until we reached the creek which kios had told us we should find at the end of our day's journey. it was a wild, lonely spot, enclosed with tall cliffs on either side, and perhaps half a mile across. the forest continued on the other side at the top of the rocks, as it ceased on this. we had little trouble in finding a suitable camping-place by the side of a tiny stream which tumbled over the cliffs in a shower of spray into the creek below, and furnished us with fresh water, that of the sea being salt and bitter to the taste. here we formed a rude hut of branches, made our fire, and cooked some of the dried meat that kios had insisted we should take when we left his forest-home the previous evening. to-night we decided that one of us should keep watch while the others slept, in case of our retreat being discovered by enemies. but the night passed uneventfully away, nothing occurring to disturb our slumbers or to break our peace. we were moving early, and off on our way by sunrise. for the first hour or so we followed the creek through the depths of the forest; but when we reached the river the aspect of the country changed considerably. it was now an undulating park-like land, with groves of scarlet-foliaged trees. far away on the horizon loomed the towering heights of the exhausted volcano, round whose base was the path we had to follow. the scenery was very beautiful, but somehow we had not the heart to admire it, for we felt like fugitives flying to a castle of refuge, through a land teeming with unknown perils and hidden enemies. we left the river, as the banks were too steep and uneven to follow, and gradually ascended the lower spurs of the mountain, that being by far the easiest route. by noon we halted under the towering crest of the dead volcano. the sides were steep and rocky, though covered with many kinds of vegetation, notably a large tree with leaves and flowers like a rhododendron. here a deep hollow had become a small lake, fringed with curious rushes, over whose placid waters a large troop of white, legless birds, similar to those we saw before, were disporting themselves. here we made a fire, and cooked some food. as we were quietly eating our meal, we were startled by an exclamation from graham. "look! look!" he cried in an excited tone. "the troops! the troops from edos! we are discovered, surrounded!" the peril of our position was only too true. stealthily our pursuers had spread themselves in a wide semicircle from the river, extending their flanks round either side of the mountain; and, though still nearly a mile away, they were closing upon us with frightful haste. "leave all but the firearms and ammunition, and follow me," shouted the doctor, leading the way up the hillside amongst the dense brushwood. our movement was noticed at once by the approaching soldiers, and with a lusty shout they came on in hot pursuit. but the way was rough and steep, and we had the advantage of being much higher up the mountain slope than they. for quite two miles we struggled on, without losing ground or gaining it, until we reached a part of the mountain-side which was strewn with huge boulders of pumice. here we lost sight of our pursuers, although we could hear their shouts and trumpet-calls below us, and sank down to rest a moment and get our breath. we had not tarried here for more than half a minute, when sandy's practised eye caught sight of a hole in the ground, twenty paces lower down the hill. we went to examine it, and found that it was a crevice in the side of the volcano, just large enough at the entrance to squeeze our bodies through, but soon becoming much larger inside. "quick!" said the doctor, "help me to roll this block of pumice to the entrance. we can hide in this hole; at any rate, it is a chance--our only chance. we will place the stone so that, once inside, we can roll it over the opening, and by this means conceal the hole from view, should the soldiers happen to pass over the spot." the huge mass of pumice was exceedingly light, and we found no difficulty in doing what the doctor had suggested. one after the other we scrambled into the hillside crevice, and then graham, he being the strongest, managed to pull the stone over us, and we were immediately in darkness. now, for the first time, we missed poor rover; in our anxiety and excitement we had not noticed him near us for some time; nor did we ever see the faithful old dog again! here for half an hour we remained motionless, huddled together, and not daring to speak in voices higher than a whisper. we heard shout after shout from the troopers, and signal after signal from their loud-mouthed trumpets, and we knew our enemies were baffled, for we whom they sought so eagerly had utterly vanished! we heard them clambering over the boulders and dislodging the smaller stones as they wandered hither and thither round the place where we were concealed: and once a big warrior, panting for breath, actually came and leaned against the block of pumice that concealed our hiding-place, and then went his way! at last, all became still near at hand; we could hear our enemies in the distance, but the sound they made grew fainter and fainter, and then ceased altogether. they were gone, and for the present, at least, we were saved! meantime we had not been idle. as soon as we dared move without the possibility of the soldiers hearing us, we began to explore our refuge. the rift extended downwards and inwards towards the centre of the mountain, but the jagged rocks and the darkness made our progress most perilous, and at last we had to give up in despair. we struck a few wax-vestas graham chanced to have in one of his pockets, but their feeble flame only served to render the surrounding darkness more hideous and profound. there was nothing for it but to return to the entrance, and there we waited and waited all the afternoon until sunset, fearful to go out until the night should cloak our movements from the view of any enemies still lurking near. as the short twilight was coming to an end, the doctor said in a low tone: "one of us must go back to the camp by the lake, for our knapsacks. we must have food, if by any possible good fortune these troops have left our things undisturbed. the rest must stay here; for i think we could not find safer quarters for a day or so, until our enemies have grown weary of the search, and depart to try elsewhere. i am ready----" "no, doctor," broke in graham. "i will not hear of what you were about to propose. i volunteer the task of going back myself. you are far from strong yet, and the fatigue is too much for you." "but i am willing to go," said temple. "let me go, doctor! i can be back in no time, i am more used to the hills than any o' ye," pleaded sandy. "enough, comrades; the task, after all, is a trivial one. you remain here; i will go," graham answered; and pushing the block aside as he spoke, he scrambled out into the evening gloom, and we heard his cautious footsteps sounding fainter and fainter as he went his way. he picked a path down the steep hillside, and struggled through the thickets, every now and then stopping to listen. in half an hour he reached the lake; but, owing to the darkness, he had mistaken the path and gone nearly a mile to the east of the spot where our camp had been. perhaps it was fortunate that he did so; for across the water he saw the blazing fires of a great encampment, and dusky figures passing to and fro before them. so the troops of edos had not given up the search so readily; and perodii, evidently, was determined on revenge. cautiously graham made a detour, and reached the big rock where we had eaten our last meal; and there to his joy he found our knapsacks by the side of the blackened ashes of the fire. strong man as he was, he did not feel able to carry the four heavy packages. he therefore hid two under a heap of pumice stones, and trudged off back up the hill with the rest. he experienced great difficulty in getting back again, and even more in finding the block of stone that concealed our retreat. indeed, it is doubtful if he ever would have found it at all, had we not heard him stumbling about the stones, and guided him to the cave by our signal whistles. we were glad graham had got back safely, and to see that he had brought so much of our belongings; but the news that he had seen the camp-fires of our enemies sank like cold despair into our hearts. we had a bitterly relentless foe to deal with, and our situation seemed growing more and more hopeless. "i am very glad you brought my knapsack, graham," said the doctor, "as it contains my electric lamp. we will now go further into the cave, as it is important that we should know the extent of our resources when the hour of need comes." by the light from wax tapers, burnt one after the other, we got the package undone, and soon had the lamp in working order. its brilliant rays lit-up the cavity so well that we could see many yards before us. the doctor led the way, lamp in hand, and following him, we climbed down deeper and deeper, and further and further, into the very bowels of the dead volcano. the cavern now began to reach an enormous size, and our light was powerless to pierce the great blackness around us, comparatively speaking, for any distance. at first the lamp illuminated the rugged walls of this ancient furnace, and the rocks, in every conceivable fantastic shape, looked grim and ghostly in the blue electric light; but as we went on and on these jagged cliffs, moulded by the molten fires of long-passed ages, gradually receded from the penetrating light, until at last the rough ground beneath us was all that was visible, and the vast immeasurable dome of the extinct crater loomed in dark weird mystery around us, our lamp but as a feeble star within its profound unknown depths. we must have travelled nearly a mile into the mountain, when we were surprised beyond measure to see the starry vault of heaven through a vast rent in the top of the cavern, thousands of feet above our heads. the crater, the entire mountain, was hollow, and the hole in the shell above us had been the vent for its now long-ago burnt-out fire! we were actually in the very core of a volcano. we proceeded but a few more steps, when the rays from our lamp revealed a vast yawning chasm before us, the light reflecting on a gulf of blackness, and not being powerful enough to illumine the furthermost edge of the pit. we shuddered as we looked at the awful abyss, and pictured to ourselves our ghastly fate if we had by some fatality walked over its terrible edge. an immense block of stone, that graham and sandy rolled down the steep declivity which led to the actual chasm, pitched into the blackness, and we heard it thundering down into the dizzy depths, first striking on one side, and then on the other, as it rebounded in its awful leaps like a mere pebble, the sounds echoing and re-echoing through the hollow dome around us. then the blows sounded fainter and fainter to our ears, and finally died completely away, as if the boulder had leaped into another vaulted cavern still lower down, or been ground to dust by the force of its fall, and we heard no more! here under the very crest of the mountain, amongst the very roots of this rugged volcano, we lay down to rest; but not one of us could sleep. the grandeur of the surroundings kept us awake, even though we had put out our lamp, and the only ray of light in the pitchy darkness was the opening above us to the sky. all night we lay here watching the scintillating stars, like fiery gems, until one by one they became wan and indistinct with the coming dawn, and gradually the space around us was illumined as with a twilight brightness. the sun had risen, and the outer world was bathed in warmth; yet only a sickly reflection of the day penetrated into our magnificently grand, if cold and dismal refuge! anon the sun in his course across the sky shone down the mouth of the crater, and the light became stronger. we seated ourselves in the circle of his rays, and here we ate our cheerless meal--the remainder of the flesh we had had from kios, and a few biscuits. fortunately, our water supply was ample; the precious liquid dropped incessantly from far up in the rugged heights of the hollow mountain's roof; it trickled along the ground, and accumulated in little pools among the pumice stones at our feet. as we ate our meal, and tried to warm our chilled bodies in the faint sunshine, a great mass of rock came hurtling down from the very summit, and leaped with an awful rushing sound into the chasm, and for long we heard its terrific progress into the uttermost depths of the volcano. we looked up in terror and sprang to our feet, expecting each moment to be our last, and that the mountain itself was going to collapse and bury us like moles beneath its tottering ruins! but even a worse fate than that threatened us, for boldly outlined against the sky, with helmets glinting in the sun, peering down into the gloomy depths were several of the troops from edos, in the very act of hurling another piece of rock upon us. we started back in horror, and hurried out of the focus of that death-dealing aperture, burying ourselves from sight in the surrounding gloom. "so our hiding-place is discovered, and we may expect no mercy from the bloodhounds," said graham. "we will fight for liberty this time," rejoined the doctor, in a cool and resolute voice. "fight, and die fighting," he continued, "rather than fall into the power of those merciless, cold-blooded people of edos again." temple and sandy were equally determined to fight to the last, and we began to prepare ourselves for the coming fray. we again turned on our electric lamp, and retreated into the darkest depths of the cavern in search of some spot where we might advantageously fight our foes. we discovered a small mound of broken rocks on the floor of the mountain, and on the summit of this we built up a rough rampart, behind which we might find some shelter when firing. then, by the light of the lamp, we carefully examined our rifles and revolvers, and made ready our ammunition. we agreed that graham and sandy should fire, they being the best shots, and that the doctor and temple should load and hand the weapons. if we came to close quarters, each was to use his own revolver as best he could. before we had finished all our preparations, the great mountain vault began to echo with the steps of advancing troops. clearly they knew of this wondrous cavern, and must have been aware of other and easier ways of entrance than the one we had chanced to discover. they were searching every nook and corner of the mountain as they came, and we could now form some idea of the vastness of the cavern by the length of the advancing line of troops. what astonished us most was their method of illuminating their path through the darkness. as seen from the distance of a mile, the movements of the coming troops were marked by a line of little fire-balls, irregularly dancing and bobbing to and fro; and as the soldiers came nearer we saw that each one had what appeared to be an incandescent lamp attached to his left ankle, which lit up the ground before him for a few yards! we held our breath in our great excitement, and curiously watched the foe. then sandy and graham each took their trusty rifles and knelt behind the rough rampart, ready to fire the moment a good opportunity occurred. it was no use waiting until the troops advanced, because discovery was certain; their line of coming searchers were bound to cross the hill on which we were entrenched! our hiding-place was still undiscovered, and the troops were not more than two hundred yards away. we watched the line of lights break into two and circle round the yawning gulf; we saw a few troopers advance into the subdued light below the crater's mouth, and then disappear again into the darkness. then graham covered one of the dusky forms, and after taking careful aim, pulled the trigger and missed! the line was unbroken. a second afterwards, sandy's piece went off with no better luck, the light being too uncertain for accurate aim. the awful echoes that our exploding rifles raised are beyond the powers of language to describe them. the vast vault seemed to be cracking in twain, and the reverberations appeared never going to subside. for a moment the troops were filled with panic; but we heard voices as of commanders cheering and encouraging their faltering men, and a moment after we were literally blinded by a vivid flood of brilliant light which gleamed out from behind us. dazzled and blinded though we were, we saw at once that we were surrounded by enemies, another detachment having surprised us from the rear. we were now as exposed to view as if we had been in the open air, under the blazing sun of noonday, and before one of us could recover from his astonishment and fire a shot in defence, our position was stormed, our rifles and revolvers wrenched from our hands, and we were helpless as babes in the power of our enemies. what the light really was, whence it came, or how it was produced, we knew not, but it continued burning until we and our captors reached the open air. the wild, savage scene of grandeur, revealed when the hollow mountain was made to disclose its hidden splendour by the penetrating light, can never fade from our memory. though captives, and bowed down with hopeless despair, we were compelled to look, nay, even to admire! the misery of our position was forgotten in the glory of that cave, whose appearance bore eloquent and silent testimony to the stupendous forces of volcanic action. the brilliant light lit up even the very highest parts of the lofty mountain dome, showing hollows, and jagged points, and enormous icicle-shaped masses of gold and silver, and other richly-coloured but, to us, unknown metals, which had formed there as the molten interior of the volcano had suddenly cooled in rest. some of the half-burnt rocks scintillated with unconsumable crystals; others were ground smooth as marble by the troubled action of a seething sea; and great masses formed of a dozen different metals were to be seen here and there, wedged in between the ruin of rocks. so rugged and loose was the roof in some places, that it looked as if the very echoes of our footsteps would dislodge acres of boulders and send them tumbling down in mad confusion. but we were marched as quickly as possible out of the mountain, and, in spite of our cruel fate, in our hearts we were thankful to leave this terrible chasm behind us, and once more to find ourselves under the canopy of heaven, in the full and blessed light of day. we were immediately manacled, and conducted to the camp by the lake, where, in a spacious tent, perodii sat in state. a gleam of intense hatred passed over his dark and savagely handsome face as we were marshalled into his presence. all graham's courageous spirit seemed to return as he looked once more upon his rival and his enemy, and he returned perodii's glances with a look of withering and defiant scorn. "so, man of ramos, with all thy cunning and with all thy magic arts thou hast fallen once more into my power," said perodii in a sarcastic voice, addressing graham alone, and seeming not to notice the rest of us at all. 'we shall meet again,' thou saidst at remagaloth, and we have done so. and now thou shalt bitterly repent thy insolent behaviour, and to me shalt thou cry aloud in thy woe for mercy. thou shalt beg for death, yet shalt not die; thou shalt crave a speedy doom, yet shalt linger on and on in burning pain; but i will laugh at thy agony and scoff at thy prayers, thou low-born knave, thou seed of evil, who hath sought to steal the favours of the woman i desired." "you speak the words of a coward! strike off these cursed chains, i say, you lying scoundrel, and let fair combat decide between us. i fear no braggart such as you, who can only heap insults upon a fettered and a helpless man. strike off these chains, i say, and then----" "hold thy peace! or i will have thy noisy tongue cut out," perodii answered, stung by graham's bitter words. "back to edos shalt thou go; and the lake of melag shall be a couch of flowers compared with the bed of thorny agony on which thou now shalt slowly die. perodii hates thee: and--take heed of what thou sayest--hates thee for thy cursed interference with the woman he would have favoured, and might have wed!" "wife! wife! volinè your wife! know that she despises you as much as she loves and favours me, and long has she known your designs of evil upon at least one maiden's innocence. you, a scoundrel such as you, whose name is but another word for villainy throughout all edos, take volinè to wife!----" "take heed of what thou sayest, or thy death shall be made more terrible than the one i have already planned for thee," said perodii, starting to his feet in rage, and half drawing the heavy knife which hung sheathed from his girdle. "my words are true, as you will know," continued graham, his voice getting louder as he went on. "volinè is mine! coward, do you hear me?--is mine! behold this ring--her ring--upon my finger, a pledge and token of her love, and a talisman to preserve its wearer from a violent death!"--and as he spoke he held out his fettered hand, in triumph, to show his treasured gift. "then, when she weds thee, she shall have a corpse for her groom. ha! ha! methinks volinè, much as thou sayest she loves thee, will shun thee in death! death is but a sorry mate upon a bridal couch!" "your threats are but empty words. my comrades' lives and my own are in the king's keeping. he speaks, and we may die; he says the word, and we go free. already echri's displeasure has been shown by our miraculous escape from remagaloth. the king--yea, even the king--will not tempt his holy wrath a second time!" "for little i would strip this ring from off thy hand." "you dare not! know you not that he who seeks to take it by force, or by stealth, is cursed? and braver men than you would hesitate before risking their souls' damnation!" said graham calmly. "faugh! i want not thy paltry bauble. old echri is but a woman's comforter, and turns their pretty heads with his ghostly nonsense." "so long as i wear it, perodii, it is beyond your power to harm me, try as you will----" "enough! i forget myself in holding argument with such as thee," retorted perodii, who then, addressing the guards standing round us, said: "take this boasting fool from my presence, or by my eternal soul i may repent me my hatred, and by slaying him at once, cheat myself of the pleasure of witnessing his lingering agony." "perodii, the boasting is all with you----" graham's sentence was never finished, for he was hurried from the tent at once, and we quickly followed, surrounded by guards. graham was manacled heavier than the rest of us, stooping under the weight of his brazen fetters, and was confined by himself in the watchful keeping of a double guard. that night we were taken some distance across country, perhaps thirty miles, until we reached a large building standing by itself on an open plain. in this was a deep shaft which we descended by a winding stair; and there at the bottom we found waiting for us a curious carriage which passed through a tunnel or tube, fitting tightly as a piston-rod in a cylinder. this was worked either by some system of pneumatics or by electric currents, we could not say which, as our departure was so hurried. in two hours, as near as we could judge, travelling through this tube at a speed which put us in mind of the _sirius_, we reached another and similar building, and, ascending a spiral stair, came to the surface. to our utter astonishment we had reached edos, and were marched through the silent, deserted streets in the dead of night, back to our old prison in the king of gathma's palace! chapter xvi. volinè. heavily chained and without food we were left in our old quarters until morning, not even the benefit of a light being vouchsafed to us. for this harsh treatment we had only perodii to thank; indeed, it was highly improbable that the king had been apprised of our return, as we arrived at so late an hour. we passed the remainder of the night in miserable suspense, listening to the regular tramp of the guards outside, and saying little to each other. "i hope, graham, you now see the folly of your foolish intrigue with this woman. had it not been for her we should never have incurred the anger and the hatred of this prince perodii; the king would have overlooked our killing osa, and we should now be free," said the doctor, with more irritation in his voice than we had ever heard before. "come, come, doctor," answered temple, "it's no use reproaching graham; and this scoundrel of a prince perodii may yet go a little too far." "but how can that help us? how can his downfall shake off our fetters? how can his evil fortune bring our release from captivity, or save us from death?" continued the doctor, with a dogged determination to stick to his opinions on women in general. "i'll back a woman's wit to find a way," temple went on. "volinè's dislike for this perodii, and her partiality for graham, will act as irresistible incentives to triumph over the man she despises, and save the other whom she loves." "we have not had much evidence to confirm what you say, temple," said the doctor, as obstinately as ever. "true," answered temple; "but you cannot suppose that this girl has remained idle. depend upon it, her royal father has had to put up with a good deal of coaxing and entreaty on behalf of her lover. she will be sure to take advantage of our escape from remagaloth, and make the most of her time, unless she is very different from the girls of earth. perodii's absence from edos, too, favours her efforts, and she will have had a clear field. then there is this echri----" "pray draw the line at the supernatural. this ring affair is not worth serious words--a lot of humbugging duplicity, shielded by religion. no! you will never convince me, temple. as i said before, so i say again, women are the root of all mischief; and it is a thousand pities this volinè ever became mixed up in our affairs." "well, well, doctor, we won't argue further, it only makes unpleasantness." all through this controversy graham never uttered a word. he sat still in the darkest corner of the room, and only the occasional jingle of his brass fetters told us that he was awake. secretly he enjoyed this conversation about his dear one. it was untold joy to him to be back again under the very roof that sheltered her, to be so close to her; and the hope of seeing her again gave him strength, and brightened the dark hours of his captivity. he never lost confidence in the beautiful girl who had made him happy by giving him her love; and he knew that he and his companions would neither be forgotten nor forsaken in their need. he would not provoke discord in their little band by argument with his good and worthy friend, doctor hermann, on the only topic on which they were bound to disagree. he preferred to sit in silence through the night, with glad thoughts of volinè for his company. he had escaped what looked like certain death, he was back near the woman who was all-in-all to him; the very garden in which they had met and tasted the secrets of love was but outside the prison window; the dark hopeless future, which had appeared but a stormy plain of wild despair, stretching away, away unto death, seemed already tinged with the dawn of happiness! he knew volinè's ring had already delivered him twice from great peril; and he felt, whatever danger might betide, the secret of salvation therefrom circled round his finger a sacred charm against death. that he could impart a little of this confidence in the virtues of his treasure to his comrades was his constant wish--not for his own sake, but for theirs. yet all that he could say had been already said. the doctor continued to pooh-pooh its efficacy; temple was wont to smile and listen, half incredulous, yet impressed considerably by his earnestness. each, however, required more palpable proof than that already given. "they forget," graham continued to muse, as he lay listening to the doctor and temple talking, "that they are in a new world, beyond all earthly influence; and that the power of this holy echri is mysterious and unnatural, only because it is new and strange to us. were it rendered familiar to us by earthly custom and every-day experience, we should look upon it as a most natural thing. we must be prepared for all kinds of surprises here. if a great and holy man of this world possesses a power which is invested solely in god in our own, why should we marvel?" as he sat musing thus the ring upon his finger suddenly glowed with great heat, and made him cry out in agony. "why, graham, what is the matter?" said all three of his companions together. "nothing; it was a sudden spasm. i must have been dreaming. i am all right, i assure you," he answered, resolving to conceal the actual cause of his transient pain. "it seems like some manifestation of echri's," he mused. "well, i believe in his power, and have faith in his ring. i cannot help myself, i am compelled to do so." then, speaking aloud, he continued: "i hope you are not very greatly inconvenienced by these cursed fetters, my friends. the night is nearly spent, and i hope daylight will bring release." "mr. graham, ha' ye no chance o' breakin awa'?" said sandy. "these chains are uncommon heavy and tiresome." "none this time, sandy--i don't feel up to it; besides, they are stronger than they were before. be patient till the morning, and then we shall see what turns up. something good, i hope, for all our sakes." beyond a word or two of enquiry, first from one and then from another, as to how each was bearing up in misfortune, the remainder of the night was passed in silence. sometimes we dozed, and woke again with a start of alarm, wondering where we were; then we lay and listened to the guards pacing to and fro outside our door, or the noise of the distant fountains in the garden of siccoth. the time passed slowly enough, and by the dawn we felt terribly cramped and sore, owing to our being compelled to remain almost in one position the livelong night. the sun had been up several hours before our prison door was opened, and food brought to us. perodii came with the guards, and was again most insulting in his language. "let loose these dogs of ramos for a little season, until they have eaten," he commenced, addressing the guards standing at the half-open door. then turning to us, he exclaimed: "perodii hopes ye have all passed a pleasant night; they sleep safely who repose in chains. now up and to your victuals; but methinks ye will not find them such dainty fare as when the traitor kaosp provided them. by my soul, we will have no more of such nonsense! prisoners ye are; and as prisoners shall ye be treated, so long as perodii hath the charge of ye. and hark ye, no more shall that wanton wench, volinè, or her gifts and favours, be admitted here! guards, heed well my words; that man shall die who admits that forn----" "perodii! how darest thou utter such words concerning me, the daughter of thy king?" said volinè, and she pushed the trembling guards aside and walked into the room, her cheeks scarlet with burning indignation, her eyes aflame with anger, and her hands clenched tightly to control her passion. "what doest thou here, volinè?" exclaimed perodii, starting violently, and evidently ill at ease, but preserving with a mighty effort his usual air of bravado. "meddle not with my affairs, or, by the living god, i will acquaint the king with thy brazen interference." "what do i here? that is no business of thine. i come to set these prisoners free, and to conduct them to my father's presence, not as his captives but as his guests! strike off those bonds and chains this instant, or the king's just wrath shall overtake thee. guards! in the king's name volinè commands ye! strike off----" "stay!" shouted perodii in a voice of rage, and pointing to the door. "volinè, this is no place for thee! get thee hence to thy apartment, and there wait thy father's pleasure." "braggart, hold thy peace! volinè is no child, to be chid by thee. thou hast enough to answer for! go! the daughter of thy king hath bidden thee go!" "and what if i refuse? these guards are my servants, and await my orders." "thy servants! say the king's, thy master! now guards, advance, and do my bidding----" "let a soldier stir, and he shall die!" shrieked perodii, beside himself with passion. "we obey thee, volinè, even as we obey the king," said their captain, leading forward his men, and in a moment our fetters were struck off and we were free. perodii, without another word, walked away, his face livid with rage and hatred. "that mon bears us na guid-will, mr. graham," muttered sandy, as we watched the discomfited prince hurry away. our lives had been full of eventful surprises, from the moment that we had descended upon the surface of this strange world, and this last unexpected change in our fortunes seemed one of the most wonderful of all. as yet, volinè had not addressed a single syllable to any one of us; but a smile of ineffable sweetness stole over her handsome face, and blushes like as the tints of an opening rose glowed all unbidden on her cheeks as she glanced at graham for an instant, and met the look of admiration and pleasure with which he was lovingly regarding her--her, his dear one, from whom he had been ruthlessly torn asunder and had now rejoined. "good himos, thyself and thy comrades may now depart," said volinè, addressing the captain of the guard. "i will myself conduct these men of ramos to my father's presence. thou hast nought to fear from thy disobedience of perodii. from this hour must thou cease to take commands from him, until such time as it may be the king's, thy master's, pleasure to order otherwise." bowing low, himos gave the word to his troops, who marched away, led by him, from our prison-chamber along the corridor, but in an opposite direction to that taken by perodii. volinè then advanced towards us with hands held out in welcome, and smiling sweetly said, in a voice from time to time trembling with emotion: "men of ramos, no words that i can speak can say the sorrow that i feel for all the indignities and hardships ye have suffered since entering our royal city, edos. my soul doth grieve within me at your unjust treatment from the hands of the king, my father; but his mind hath been poisoned and biassed against ye by him who brought ye here in chains, and sought your ruin, to gratify his own feelings of revenge. since ye were so miraculously delivered from death at the crag remagaloth, the king hath doubted the wisdom of his judgment on ye, and ye would at least have been free to go your way unmolested, had not perodii prevailed upon the king to be allowed to take ye captives, to bring ye here again, and then to carry out the awful sentence of the supreme court himself! so far hath he been favoured, but his villainy is now unmasked; wiser counsel hath prevailed with the king. in bestowing upon ye, o distinguished and learned strangers from ramos, his royal pardon, he offers ye his hospitality and protection, so long as ye may make this our world your home. but come now with me to his royal presence, and hear words of welcome and of freedom from his own lips. he waiteth to break his morning bread with ye. "stay thee: no thanks are asked or needed," continued volinè, with upraised finger, as temple began to speak, "for methinks it is i that have brought much trouble on ye. besides, ye must be full of weariness and hunger, and it is not fitting or seemly that i should keep ye longer here." and as she spoke volinè placed a tiny whistle, wrought in fine gold and set with gems, between her lips, and blew three times, short and shrill, thereon. in a few moments two court-marshals, dressed in quaint and costly garb, and with long white wands tipped with crescents of crystal, appeared, together with four of volinè's female attendants, and stood in respectful silence by the doorway, bowing low as the king's fair daughter passed out, beckoning us to follow her. "we hear from this volinè only a few fragments of the reason for this change of opinion in our favour. she has left much more untold," whispered the doctor to temple, as they walked along side by side behind the marshals. "true, doctor," answered temple in an undertone, "but i have no doubt that this royal maid has been pleading our cause with her old father, and that her strong attachment to graham has lent eloquence to her oratory. the complete story of our pardon is reserved for his lucky ear alone." "say unlucky--most unlucky, temple; for that woman's toils are creeping round him, and too late he will feel them hampering his ambition and retarding his progress." "doctor, i must really give you up as an incurable. your ideas on women are out of all focus. still, you must admit that a woman has rescued us from a terrible position----" "into which she alone plunged us. no, no, temple. we shall never agree upon it--never!" and he relapsed into silence for the rest of the way. we walked along corridor after corridor, through lofty halls, and up and down wide staircases crammed full of curious and costly gems of art, until it seemed as though the colossal palace was an endless maze of enchantment and voluptuous grandeur. at the foot of the last staircase volinè and her maidens passed away through a lofty archway on the right, waving us a smiling farewell as she went, and we continued to follow the two marshals alone. at the top of this last flight of stairs we reached another archway, hung with soft and heavy draperies, on either side of which stood a guard, so still and inanimate that he looked carved out of the stone itself. as we crossed the twenty paces or so of the landing, these sphinx-like soldiers, with a common impulse, flung the curtains wide apart, and we passed through into a magnificent banquet-chamber. the scene before us dazzled us with its splendour. we had thought to meet the king alone, perhaps with his daughter; but, instead, we saw him sitting at the head of a table, round which a hundred male guests were also seated, to whom a sumptuous feast was evidently about to be served. five vacant seats, two on one, and three on the other side of the king, were empty, and to these, all travel-stained and grimy from the fight in the cave, we were conducted. "men of ramos, we meet more happily than we parted. welcome to our morning feast. eat and refresh yourselves, and having done so we may then speak together," said the king, bowing and smiling graciously. we each kept silence, but acknowledged the old king's cordial greeting with a respectful bow. then the meal commenced, and was continued in solemn silence, course after course, until the last dishes had been removed, and huge bowls of wine-like liquid had been placed upon the table. now the attendants withdrew, and shortly afterwards, from some hidden chamber, strains of sweet ravishing music poured in subtle cadence, and women's voices were heard singing a dreamy madrigal. then came a solo in a woman's voice, more entrancingly beautiful than all the rest, rising and falling in matchless compass--a song that had for its theme the birth and trials and triumph of love. was this last sweet, hidden singer volinè? and did she sing the story of her own tender passion? one of us at least was certain that the voice he heard was that of his beloved, and the words that wandered through the banquet-hall, like a hymn from paradise, were addressed to him. stirred to his soul's depth's, he listened, entranced, with throbbing pulses, to the message that was sung to him by a woman who was fashioned fairer than the cunningest conception of earthly man could picture! at last the music ceased, the singer's voice was hushed, and amidst a death-like silence, which held the assembled guests in thrall, the king addressed us: "strangers from the star-world ramos, having now broken your fast, it is my duty, here in the presence of my faithful ministers of state, to explain to ye the reason of your welcome here as free men and honoured guests. all the terrible indictment against ye, with the exception of the killing of osa, hath been proved to be false! i am satisfied that my daughter's honour and fair fame are as untarnished now as before ye came to edos, and that a noble of our court, by name perodii, hath lied. the high priest, echri, hath also spoken favourably of ye, and your cause hath been ably pleaded by the wise men that dwell in our good city helmath. my philosophers are learned in the science of the heavens, and they have said that the wondrous tale ye tell bears stamp of truth, and none of sorcery. that being so, we grant our royal pardon for the slaying of our subject osa, believing that, as ye have already said, he brought his fate upon himself, and in expressing our sorrow for the great misery and hardships we have caused ye, we welcome ye as friends and brothers, and bid you remain in edos as our guests so long as ye may have the wish. we regret we did not heed the words of the men of helmath sooner, but perodii's cunning made us ignore their counsel--and nought can kindle a father's wrath so readily, or feed its flame so well and warp his judgment, as the dishonour of his child. perodii's guilt was only proved to me at yesternight; hence his treatment of ye. he now is deep in our displeasure, and his seat at our royal board is empty. ye need fear him no more. our heralds shall proclaim your pardon, and your entrance into royal favour, throughout all edos, and then may ye wander in safety at your will." "my comrades and myself rejoice heartily at the words you have spoken, o king of gathma," said the doctor. "let peace and unity prevail between us, so that we may labour for the common weal of the children of your world and of ours. glorious possibilities are before us; and that the intercourse between the peoples of two sister-planets, when once fairly established, may bring forth nothing but good, i feel sure will be echoed as heartily by your majesty and your people as by my companions and myself. we thank you, king of gathma, for your clemency, and for the friendly sentiments you have just expressed, and will do our best ever to merit your friendship, your protection, and your hospitality!" the doctor's words were received with a salvo of applause from the brilliant gathering around us, and shortly afterwards the king left his seat, saying as he retired, followed by his court, that he would meet us again in a few hours, after the business of state was over. as soon as the king and his ministers had gone, servants arrived and conducted us to a suite of luxuriously fitted baths, where we made ourselves more presentable. fortunately, each had donned an entirely new outfit before we deserted the _sirius_, so that our task was by no means a difficult one. we were discussing our altered fortunes, after completing our toilet, when a marshal entered and, walking up to graham, said with a low bow: "art thou harry graham?" "i am; what is your pleasure?" he answered. "then volinè would see thee. follow me, and i will show thee to my mistress." "go and enjoy your well-deserved happiness," said temple, in english; but the doctor muttered something by no means complimentary to volinè. graham was too full of joy to feel angry with his old and eccentric friend, and thanking temple for his good wishes, turned and followed his conductor. once more he must furnish this portion of our narrative himself:-"leaving the saloon of baths, i followed my stately guide along a wide corridor, on either side of which was ranged statuary of priceless value, until we came to the wide staircase up which we had passed on our way to the banquet-chamber. through an archway at the foot of this, i knew the way led to volinè's apartments. at the bottom of this spacious stairway we met two of volinè's maids, and here the marshal bowed and left me. these maidens then stepped forward, and each taking one of my hands, they bade me come with them, and so i was led into volinè's presence. "i found my darling in a magnificent chamber, where every luxury that art and ingenuity could devise assisted in making the whole harmonious and splendid. she was reclining on a low couch, draped with rich dark furs of silky softness, her flossy hair falling all free and unrestrained around her bust and shoulders, one shapely arm resting along the back of the couch, the other pillowing her lovely head. what incarnation of female beauty! was my single thought as i beheld her there in all her splendour; and for a moment i stood upon the threshold of her room, spell-bound between my maiden guides, dazzled and bewildered by the vision of perfectness before me. with a smile for which any man would cheerfully have sold his soul, she rose into a sitting posture, saying: "'cyni, thou and thy sister may now leave.' "neither of us spoke nor moved further until the two maids had gone, leaving me standing as in a dream, watching the sweet picture before me. then volinè rose to her feet, and with smiles and blushes lending an added charm to her countenance, came towards me, murmuring my name! the spell was broken; and oblivious to aught else, i ran forward and clasped her in my arms again. "'oh, volinè, volinè! my darling; this is rapture indeed. how good of you to send for me thus!' "'happy do i feel to have thee with me again,' she answered, as her head sank nestling on my breast. "we kissed each other's lips, and together we drank the cup of our joy to the dregs in one long, intoxicating draught, without a single drop of bitterness to taint its sweetness. "but why dwell on the ecstasy of our embrace and of our meeting, after so much terrible sorrow? i led her unresistingly to the couch she had so lately left, arranged the fallen furs around her, and sat me down by her side. there, with one arm around her waist, and with my eyes feasting upon the beauty of her face and form, we conversed of all that had befallen us since last we talked together and parted in the garden siccoth, on that dreadful night before remagaloth. we talked those lovers' trifles, so sweet and apt when spoken, yet so cold and passionless and uninteresting when read by others unconcerned. "then volinè told me of all that had happened on the night we parted, as we thought for ever. how all her efforts were in vain; how she had visited echri and been comforted in her despair; how he had promised to intercede with the king. how he came too late; and how she spent the time that we were at remagaloth praying fervently for our salvation. she told me of her joy when the news of our wondrous escape was brought to edos; of echri's visit to the king; and of how the high and mighty priest had exerted his power, and delivered us from an unrighteous doom! "'daily since then, dear harry,' she told me amidst sobs and smiles, 'have i pleaded thy cause with my father; beseeching him to spare thee and thy companions; to discredit perodii's words, and to lend ear to the utterances of the great and good echri, and the men of helmath. i besought him to let ye go your way in peace, and not to cherish feelings of revenge and hatred unworthy of a mighty king. but all i could say availed me nothing definite. he felt keenly the disgrace and humiliation in the hall of justice, and his heart was still hardened towards ye, although i could perceive his mind was wavering, until driven to desperation i told my father the naked truth.' "'and what may that truth have been, darling?' i whispered, seeing her hesitate, with heart beating fast within me, and with the long-cherished hope that she had told the king of her love for me, and that royal favour had smiled upon my suit. "'dost thou press me to answer, harry?' "'indeed i do, my bonny one.' "'but, mayhap, my words will cause thee pain!' "'not more than the suspense and anxiety i now suffer, until i hear them, sweet one,' i answered, with faltering hope, dreading, yet eager to hear her reply. "'then hearken to my words, and interrupt me not until i have told thee all. i doubt me not that thou hast remembrance of perodii's conduct in siccoth, and of the lying words he then did speak. from that night, until the day of thy trial and sentence, he used his knowledge of our stolen interview as a power of evil and annoyance against me. his threats to make my honour the common gossip of the streets of edos bound my tongue to silence, for we women of gathma dread to have our fame tossed to and fro upon the breath of scandal. and so he forced his unwelcome attentions upon me. i bore them, harry, for thy sake; for he gave me solemn assurance that my meeting with thee should be told to no man, and that he would seek to save thee!' 'darling! by the----' "'nay, interrupt me not, harry,' she continued, placing a finger on my lips. 'thou knowest how he broke faith with me, and lied before my father and a hundred thousand dwellers of edos, and what woe his words have wrought. he lied because his passion found no favour in my sight, and because the king seemed in clement mood towards ye; and well dost thou know the evil of his words. i told thee of my father's wrath, and how he heard me without relenting, when last i met thee in the garden. after thy trial and sentence, perodii sought by threats to make me yield unto his wish, and mate with him, but rather would i spill mine own blood than be his wife. he even dared to attack me yet a second time, on the night of thy escape from remagaloth, and by cunning artifice entered my chamber, where i prayed for thee! cyni, by great good fortune, chanced to be with me----' "'by the living god, volinè, perodii shall answer to me for this,' i said, in a voice that echoed the anger and hatred burning in my soul. "'hush! and hear me on. i have but little else to tell thee. seeing that he had been witnessed by cyni he sped away, telling me that he was starting from edos that night to take thee prisoner again, and carry out himself the sentence that had been pronounced upon thee. i held my peace, hoping that some evil might overtake this perodii in his search, and praying that his quest might be vain; until i heard from a hunter noble, by name kios, that ye had struggled valiantly near helmath, yet had been overcome, and were being carried back to edos. then i told my father all, and proved my words by good cyni's aid. great was his wrath at the manner in which perodii had duped him, and quickly did he take steps to protect and befriend ye, as ye have already seen.' "'but why not have told your father all this long ago, darling?' "'my father hath many cares, and much business of state to do, and i did not like to add to his troubles.' "'but this perodii; what punishment will be meted out to him? surely, he merits death for so insulting the daughter of his king.' "'harry, our laws are not thy laws; our customs in gathma are not like those in ramos--earth, as it is called by thee. know thee, that even the king hath no power to put to death a noble of perodii's rank. he can but depose him from court----' "'but kios, whom we met near the city of pamax, told us that for some offence he had been condemned to die, and only saved his life through the clemency of the king.' "'ah! i also heard yesterday from worthy kios of your stay with him in the woods of theloth, and wish him well. but kios was not of such noble rank as perodii, who in station is next to the king.' "'that shall not prevent his reckoning with me, volinè. the day shall yet come when i will make him confess as publicly that his words were lies, as when he spoke them in your father's judgment hall.' "'heed him not, o harry; let him go his own evil way. cross not his path a second time, or he may do thee harm, and i----' "'should what, dear one?' i asked as i kissed her forehead. "'should never cease to grieve for thee; she answered, nestling closer to me, and gazing into my face with her splendid eyes. "'but i have no fear of such a coward as he; and by the customs of the earth i long have left, i swear he shall answer for his added insults on you.' "'harry, harry, dost thou not care for me enough to obey me? thou dost! then let perodii rest in the deep disgrace into which he hath already fallen. by the customs of edos, methinks no greater punishment could be given him. and now thou must leave me.' "'but when may i see you again, darling? to-night? yes, say to-night, and in the garden siccoth, by the arbour where you first met me.' "'well, thou hast my promise. now haste thee to thy comrades, for the hour hath arrived when my maids do come to me.' "'may the hour soon come, my darling, when we shall never have to part again,' i said to her, unable longer to control my feelings. "'what meanest thou?' "'i will tell you, my precious one, in siccoth's arbour, where, at sunset, i shall wait in weariness until you come,' i answered, as i kissed her again and again, before tearing myself away from her white, encircling arms. "once more three blasts were blown by volinè upon that golden whistle, and almost immediately cyni and her sister entered, and conducted me to the foot of the staircase, where i found the marshal waiting to escort me back to my companions. "i found them in one of the smaller rooms of the palace, happy enough, and full of what they had been doing during the morning that i had spent with volinè. temple had been amusing himself in wandering from room to room of this wonderful palace, passing his time in admiring the costly and beautiful works which adorned its interior; all of them new and strange, and like nothing to be found in the palaces of earth. the doctor and sandy had walked abroad into the streets and squares of edos, and were full of the curious scenes and customs they had witnessed, and the strange types of architecture they had seen. everywhere they had been treated with respect, although much curiosity was excited by their appearance and movements." "i was just telling temple that edos would scarcely suit a man of his commercial instincts," remarked the doctor to graham as he entered the room. the doctor had quite recovered his good temper, and the walk abroad had put him in the best of spirits. "what do you think of a city where there are no shops, nor marts of business? edos is a centre of luxury--a dwelling-place of the noble and those of high degree. none of its inhabitants toil or trade therein. it is an ideal city; smokeless, noiseless--a repository for the best and brightest results of the brain and genius of a world, and a gathering-place for its cultured people," continued the doctor, led away by his enthusiasm. "i want a hundred hands, graham, to chronicle all i have seen. my one regret is that my life will not be long enough to do justice to this glorious world, or to describe its endless wonders." and so the afternoon slipped away in pleasant, entertaining chat, varied by a light meal, which was served to us _al fresco_ by two of the palace servants. in the early evening the doctor, temple, and graham dined with the king--another sumptuous feast, at which the old monarch made himself especially agreeable, and never seemed to tire of hearing us recount our journey across the heavens, and tell of the world we had left. curiously enough, no ladies were numbered among the guests; but this and the morning feast, we learned afterwards, were state banquets, at which it is not etiquette for females to appear. graham--unknown, of course, to all the rest--chafed exceedingly under the long and almost endless interrogations of the king; for he thought of the tryst he had to keep with volinè. already the sun was sinking low in the western sky; and he was all impatience to hasten away. at last the meal was finished, and the brilliant gathering of nobles and ministers rose from the table, and separated into groups to carry on a friendly conversation. in the confusion graham managed to slip away unobserved, but took temple into his confidence before doing so, who promised to make excuses for him, if his absence chanced to be noticed by the king. "i left the banquet-hall just as the king and the doctor were eagerly engaged in a discussion upon the civilised forms of government on earth, slipping out unperceived, and hurrying along the corridor towards the staircase that led down to a lower corridor, to which i knew there was an entrance to the garden of siccoth-trees. i was just about to open this door, stooping down to examine the fastening thereof, when the hated voice of my rival, perodii, hissed into my ear the following words: "'spawn of evil, we meet again! how often more art thou going to cross my path and live? beware, or by my eternal soul i will slay thee even here.' "'prince perodii, i desire to have no further intercourse with you, and i waste precious time in answering your vulgar words.' "'so, so; that wanton wench, volinè, waits thee. my curse upon her for meddling----' "perodii never finished his sentence, for without thinking of the consequences of my act, and forgetting in my passion what i had promised volinè, i gave the prince a stunning blow full in the face with my clenched hand, and sent him reeling to the ground. "'take that; and may it teach you better manners,' i said, as i delivered the blow straight from my shoulder. 'and, hark you,' i continued, as he lay half-stunned upon the mosaic floor, 'if you ever dare to speak one more insulting word in my hearing, about the woman i love, may your worthless blood be upon your own head, for i will slay you as i would a brute beast.' "the prince by this time had recovered his feet, and stood mad with pain and rage, half blinded by the blow i had dealt him, and unsheathing the long knife that dangled in a jewelled scabbard from his waist. what the end would have been it is difficult to conjecture, but at that moment our good friend himos came along with a posse of troops, at sight of whom perodii sheathed his weapon and walked away, saying as he did so: "'the hour of my revenge is yet again delayed; but i will wait, aye, wait for centuries yet to come, if need be, and wipe out all thy insults in thy blood.' "nodding to himos, i sped through the doorway into the garden, and hurried along between the rows of curious shrubs and flowers towards the arbour where volinè had promised to meet me. already the sun was dipping behind the distant hills, and i feared that my darling might have come, and not finding me there, had gone away again. "the arbour was empty, and just as i saw it on that fateful night that seemed already sunless ages gone. i sat me down on the seat where we had embraced; then i walked to and fro along the path that her dear feet had trod, scarcely able to control my impatience as the day fell slowly into night and volinè came not. had harm befallen her? then terrible thoughts of perodii's mad vengeance floated through my brain, and i cursed myself for not killing him outright, and thus preventing him from working her evil. at last my ear caught footsteps sounding on the pathway, clearer and clearer in the still evening air. then she for whom i waited came from out of the shadows towards me, and in another moment my sorrow was changed to joy as i folded her in my arms. "'i fear i have kept thee waiting, but a disturbance in the palace has caused me delay. perodii hath lodged complaint against thee for striking him without cause, and my father is annoyed and angry that such a vulgar fray should have taken place under his roof. perodii now hath no business within our royal house, and my father refused to hear more of his words. harry, why didst thou not keep thy promise to me, and leave this man alone?' "'volinè, he is a coward and a liar. he alone is in the wrong, and thrust himself upon me as i came hither. he insulted you, and i struck him to the ground in my passion; but i am sorry now, for i have offended you. but pardon and forgive me, dear one, and let nothing come to mar our happiness. i will see the king anon, and tell him the simple truth. come! kiss me, and make me happy again.' "'thou dost not deserve it, harry; but there--' and as she kissed me she continued, 'and now heed my wishes better in future, or my forgiveness will be more slowly given, i promise thee.' "and so this little cloud above our happiness drifted away, and we enjoyed all the sweets of each other's company to the full. i was determined now, to-night, to ask volinè to be my wife. in spite of our differences of race, and inequality of rank and station, i resolved to tell her of my passion, and to hear my fate. "'volinè,' i whispered, as i drew her gently and yet closer to me--'volinè, do you not know that i love you more passionately than ever mortal man has loved before? do you not know that you have brought brightness into my life, and have taken that place in my heart which only one woman can ever fill?' "'but wilt thou always love me so?' "'always, darling; always--until the race of my life is run, and all power of loving is stayed by the hand of death. here, in this arbour, i swear it. by my home world yonder, and all that i hold dear thereon--see you, glimmering as a star above the tree-crests in the southern sky--i pledge to love and to worship you, volinè, so long as i have life to love, and breath to speak it. volinè, you are all in all to me; my first love and my last. without you, life is but another name for pain; with you, bright and radiant joy for ever. i am yours, and you are mine. volinè, be my wife. crown my happiness to-night by saying "yes."' "'stay, harry; thy last words have brought a strange and unknown pain to my heart, and revealed the misery that is now before me whichever way i answer thee. harry, the sweets of wifehood with thee are a joy which i may never hope to reach. there is one barrier that must ever stand between us, which maketh impossible a union between a son of thy world and a daughter of mine. it hath been so ordained, and therefore we cannot alter it to meet our will. this barrier of which i speak is the span of life. here, as thou knowest there are old men amongst us who have seen five hundred summers whiten into winter. four hundred years are the men of gathma's usual span, even as thou hast told me but seventy are the limit of the men of earth and thine. i am but five and twenty summers--comparatively in childhood, yet--and for fifty summers more i shall enjoy the sweets of youth. thou art in the middle of thy tiny course, and in a few more years will reach the close of thy allotted span. think then of my time of endless widowhood, sadly mourning for thee; yearning for the love i tasted, only to lose. were i to wife with thee, my short happiness would ever be clouded by its early end! it must not, cannot be!' "'volinè, your words blot out all brightness from my heart, which now feels turned to stone. all now is dismal woe again--woe without a ray of hope, and there is naught but death before me to free me from my pain. without you i cannot, will not, live, for life would be but a living death of dark despair. is there no hope for me? no hope, volinè dearest? am i but to review this promised land of happiness from afar off, only to turn my face away from its green pastures for ever? ah, no, it is too horrible!' "'my poor harry, it is as hard for me as for thee; for i love thee as a woman only loves when she doth love, that is with all her soul. no hope can lighten our darkness or leaven our sorrow. yet, stay! there is one way--one only; but, alas! it is all too terrible--too terrible to speak.' and here she burst into a passionate fit of sobbing, and clung tightly to me, stricken down with grief. "i soothed her as best i could, and dried her hot tears with my own parched lips, sighs of agony meanwhile breaking unbidden from my own heart, and big beads of sweat rolling off my forehead like drops of molten pain. "'speak, my darling, speak unto me,' i implored. 'give words unto your thoughts, and let me know and share them. volinè, speak? or my heart will burst with its heavy weight of woe.' "then, mingled with her sobs and moans of anguish, she spoke to me thus: "'harry, thou canst purchase happiness, but the price thou wilt have to pay is as costly as it is terrible! i have heard that holy echri hath the power of prolonging life, of endowing mortal man with forces that rejuvenate. the ordeal is awful. it is one of fire! to him who would so prolong or purchase life, the penalty is that he shall suffer all the horrors of death by fire. i know not the secrets of the mystic rite; but i will question echri on the morrow. doth it not seem unholy? and yet; and--yet--love--is--sweet----' "'volinè, your words bring new hope to my heart. if echri possesses this wondrous power, then will i prove my love for you in his fires. his furnace shall but burn the dross of my love away, but refine it into a yet purer passion!' "'oh, harry; how brave and how noble thou art! thy calmness gives me confidence. if thou hast will and courage to pass through this fire for me, then surely shalt thou be rewarded by calling me thine own--that is, provided my father hath no obstacle to urge against our union. but, brave one, the hour is already late, and we must return. meet me here to-morrow even, at setting sun, and i will bring thee news from echri. until then, adieu.' "'courage, courage, volinè, my darling. all shall yet be well,' i whispered to her, as we walked along the garden-paths towards the palace; and then planting kiss after kiss upon her willing, desire-athirsted lips, and snowy brow, i released her from my arms, and she went away. "love runs no smoother here, in gathma, than on earth, i mused, as i walked along the brilliantly-lighted corridors, thinking over the events of the past hour. a great and indefinable awe seemed creeping through every fibre of my body, as i thought and thought over the ghastly pledge i had just given, tempted by the vision of beauty in my arms. did i regret my hasty, passionate vow? i now asked myself in cooler moments. no, no, a thousand times no, i mentally answered my own question; for if the way to my own happiness lies through fire, through fire i am thoroughly prepared to go." * * * * * [here in the original ms. follows a long account of a scientific nature, which, though of the greatest importance to philosophers, might not be of sufficient interest to the general reading public. i have therefore deemed it expedient to omit this portion of the narrative, and keep as closely as possible to the fortunes of harry and volinè.--ed.] chapter xvii. at the temple on the hill verosi. "already my comrades had retired to rest, and i did not see any of them until the morrow. each one of us had now a separate chamber, fitted up with every convenience and every luxury; and after i had lightly supped a martial showed me to my own apartment. sleep i could not. the couch was soft; the surroundings all that might woo sleep for any man; but my eyes refused to close in slumber. hour after hour i lay there awake, busy with thoughts of the woman i was about to espouse, and of the awful conditions under which our union was to be made. all night i tossed in feverish excitement, until the sickly light of the yellow dawn crept between the window draperies. then i rose and dressed, and threw wide the casement, to let the refreshing morning air cool my burning temples. my tongue was dry and parched, and the cruel grip of a deadly fever seemed to have seized me. then a terrible dread came over me that i was becoming mad. was i still on earth, and my visit to this strange world, and all that had befallen me thereon, but the wild delusion of a madman's dream? i would seek out doctor hermann, if all was an absolute reality, tell him my symptoms, and let him prescribe some remedy. "early as it was, i left my room and sought the doctor's; for to stay there any longer i felt to be impossible. "'good morning, doctor----' "'why, graham,' said he, in a voice mingled with alarm and sympathy, rising from his couch as he spoke--'why, whatever ails you?' "'that is just what i came here to know, doctor. i feel all to pieces; generally out of sorts; and thought you might have some simple remedy at hand to brace me up a bit.' "'simple remedy! why, man, you look half dead. come, let me have a look at you. your pulse! ah! i thought so. you are exciting yourself too much over something or other. you don't want medicine. absolute rest is all i can prescribe. have you been to bed at all? you have! then go back to bed again, man----' "'but, doctor, i cannot sleep, try as i will. all night i have not closed my eyes.' "'then swallow a couple of those,' answered the doctor, taking two tiny, silver-coated pills from a phial in his pocket-case as he spoke. 'twelve hours' sleep should put you to rights. and just one word of advice, graham--don't worry yourself so much, whatever may be the cause, or you will be downright ill. there, be off to bed again, and i will look in later on.' "i took the pills, and went back to my bed; but it seemed hours and hours before the opiate acted, and i sank into a deep and dreamless slumber. the sun was low down in the western sky before i woke again; but the fever had left me, and i felt refreshed. by my bedside i found various meats, and a tall, slender flagon of 'wine'; but far more welcome to my opening eyes was a small nosegay of flowers, with a scroll of paper fastened to them, on which was written the two magic words 'ra volinè'--from volinè! heaven guard her from all evil! "i dressed in haste, eating as i did so, for the hour appointed for my meeting with her was nigh, and my heart was filled with anxiety for the news that she might bring. but ere i had time to leave my chamber a servant came, leaving a message from my darling, saying that she would see me in her apartments. at the foot of the stairway cyni and her sister waited my coming, and conducted me into the same room i had entered before. "volinè was waiting for me, and as the two handmaidens bowed and left, she came quickly to my side, a frightened, anxious look clouding her peerless face. "'what is the matter, dear one?' i asked, as i saw her troubled look, although i guessed the cause. "'thy sickness hath grieved me sorely, dear. art thou better now?' "'the sight of you makes illness flee. but my malady is more of the spirit than the body. darling, i cannot sleep for thoughts of you. that is all my ailment. and now let me thank you and kiss you for the pretty flowers. see; i wear them near my heart, and prize them much. but why do i see you here?' "'for two reasons. first, thou art not well enough to risk the chilly air of evening; and second, i have prevailed upon echri to meet thee here at a later hour. already have i seen him when he came to edos this morning, as is his daily custom, and by great good fortune persuaded him to grant my prayer. oh! harry, harry, canst thou bear this pain for me?' "'dear one, my word is given, and i am ready, even now, to-night, to pass through this mystic ceremony, if it but hastens the day of our happiness. have you yet made known our secret to the king?' "'alas! no; for i fear his refusal. but methinks i hadst better tell him before echri comes. he may ask if my father hath given his consent to our betrothal, and even refuse his aid if such hath not been given.' "'then, darling, tell your father of our love to-night,' and i took her in my arms as i spoke, and kissed her upturned face in boundless pride. "'as thou sayest, so will i do. yea, even now shall the king hear of my love for thee, and my desire to be thy wife.' "so speaking, volinè withdrew herself from my arms, and placing the whistle to her lips, called her faithful cyni into the room. "'is thy royal master engaged with business of state? learn, and tell me.' "'his majesty, o mistress, is in the hall of song.' "'alone?' "'even so, o mistress.' "'ah, then, conduct me to his presence, good cyni, for i would speak to him there'; and waving her hand to me volinè departed, leaving me to wait by myself whilst the question of our happiness was decided. "slowly the moments slipped away--one hour passed, another had nearly sped, and yet volinè came not. my heart was filled with forebodings of evil. dread had seized upon my soul, and so agitated did i begin to feel as the time wore on, that i trembled like an aspen, and my legs became unable to bear me. once more i passed through untold agonies of suspense, until at last i heard volinè's voice outside, bidding cyni leave her. "the look of triumph on her face as she entered told me her story before she could speak, yet her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes bore silent witness that the interview with the king, her father, had been by no means an unexciting one. "'my darling, i read your secret on your radiant face. now all is well, and i may justly claim you as my own.' "'thou sayest truly. my father hath said that i may wed thee; he hath consented to our troth, and, harry, i could cry with joy. but wilt thou always love me as thou lovest me now? art thou really sure? for i can tell thee, men of gathma are often known to tire of their wives.' "'then they cannot be one quarter so charmingly fascinating as you are, darling.' "'ah, flatterer, thou seemest to know the way to a woman's heart. who hath taught thee her weakness?' "'none of your sex, certainly, my sweet one, unless maybe i inherit it from those who have had more experience. but, volinè, why stay so long away? was your father at all inclined to withhold his sanction?' "'he was; for although succession to the crown of gathma never runs through female descendants, it was his wish that i should wed a noble of our own race. he hath prejudice against thee, for thou art not of this world; besides, he also urged thy short span of life.' "'but that is easily overcome, darling,' i urged. "'not so easily as thou thinkest; but i am not going to brood on that terror to-night--at least, not yet. i spoke of echri's power, and of thy own determination, and that bringeth me to what i hadst forgotten in my joy. my father at last consented to my wish; but he made it the condition that thou shouldst pass through this ordeal of fire. he sayeth that if thou hast the courage to face this awful trial, which will make thee more of gathma than of ramos, then, and then only, art thou worthy of being mate for me.' "'with you for my reward, dearest volinè, i would not hesitate to suffer the pangs of death a hundred times. i win your love in this ordeal----" "'nay, harry, thou hast won it long ago.' "'may heaven bless you for those precious words,' i answered, as i kissed her flushed cheeks, and drew her head gently down upon my shoulder. "a low knocking at the door broke the spell of our delicious pleasure, and we heard cyni, who had evidently being instructed to watch, saying: "'hearken, o mistress; echri the priest cometh.' "'then conduct him thither, cyni, with thy fleetest steps,' volinè answered, seating herself on a couch and smoothing her ruffled hair. "in a few moments this famous priest arrived, and i was not a little astonished to see with what reverence he was received. but his calm, saintly, dignified bearing seemed imperatively to demand respect, even obeisance. never before had i seen so aged a being, or one whose full-ripe years of life were borne with so much vigour and manliness. he came into volinè's room with a firm and upright step, his long hair and beard, which reached below his breast, white with the winters of centuries, setting off a singularly handsome and intelligent face. bareheaded, clad in a long loose black garment, tightened with a scarlet sash round his waist, and with a scroll of what looked like parchment in one hand, and a long, richly ornamented staff in the other, he advanced towards volinè saying:-"'god's blessing rest upon thee and thine, volinè, daughter of our well-loved king.' "'i thank thee, holy father, for thy kindly benediction, and also for showing me such favour in coming hither at so late an hour.' "'nay, nay, child. i am ever ready to comfort any sorrow, and assist distress. i come to talk of thy troubles, and, by god's good grace, relieve them.' "'but thou art weary, good father, and may not yet have supped. wilt thou not eat before thou hast converse with us?' "'god ever gives me strength unto the measure of my labours, child; and my humble fare awaits me in my mountain-home, as soon as the works of the day be done. this stranger here is the man of ramos, who was delivered from thy father's misplaced wrath at remagaloth?' "'the same, o father. see! thy sacred ring is even now upon his finger, thy talisman from evil.' "'and now, most reverend echri, i would offer you my gratitude, as well as that of my companions, for your timely and marvellous aid in the hour of our darkest need, both there and in the chados deserts, when we were perishing of thirst,' i said, advancing to where the old priest stood, and bowing to him respectfully. "'i ever seek to help all who put their faith in god, and blindly trust themselves to his omnipotence. but thou hast come a long journey, my son, from a world whose ways i know not save by their revelation to me in a vision. therein was declared unto me that ye do worship god, but in a different manner from us of gathma. therein, too, was declared unto me that, all in god's good time, the peoples of the worlds that roll across the sky in majesty and splendour, those balls that speak of his creative wisdom in their throbbing lights by night, shall be knit together in one grand brotherhood of god! this vision teacheth me that in thee and thy companions i see the shadowed prophecy beginning its fulfilment. ye have conquered space by your cunning arts, and the planets now no longer keep them to themselves. so will god gather those scattered worlds together and hold all his people united! and now volinè tells me that the passion ye call love hath taken root between ye, and that already thou hast asked her to wife. thou art but an agent of god in this wondrous thing, and being so, it is my holy duty to help thee yet again, in prolonging thy days, so that they shall equal hers. i hear that thou art willing to go through the holy rite that will endow thee with a longer span?' "'even so,' i answered, overwhelmed by the solemn words the old priest had uttered. "'but hast thou weighed well thine inclination? the ordeal that thou must pass is one of fire. know ye that fire is life, and life is fire? by passing fire ye enter life. but even so must death be conquered first!' "'holy father, i wait with growing impatience to so prolong my days, having all faith in your wondrous power to help me,' i answered with a trembling voice, awed beyond description by the subtle influence this old priest already had over me. "'then, at noon upon the morrow, come thou to the temple on the hill verosi, and there will i help thee to thy wish. volinè will show thee thither; and let your coming and your going be in secret, and be done by stealth.' "'come hither, volinè, for i would give my blessing to ye both before i go'--and the old priest, taller by a head and shoulders than i, stood up, and with one hand placed on volinè's head, and the other on my own, he breathed a silent prayer for us. "'and now, my children, i must get me gone. the nightly services of our holy house upon the hill await my ministration, and methinks ye both do tire of an old man's company.' "'we thank thee much for thy good offices, holy echri; and will keep faith with thee to-morrow. fare-thee-well.' "then taking up his staff, and his scroll of holy writings, the old priest, with a smile in which no human passions mingled, slowly went his way. "'now, harry, thou shalt sup with me to-night, as a mark of royal favour,' said volinè with a smile, 'and then must thou go and rest, and fortify thyself for the morrow.' "so saying, she led me into another and a smaller room adjoining, where cyni and her sister irolne waited to serve us with food. our meal over, i bade volinè adieu until the morrow, she promising to meet me at our old tryst in the garden of siccoth-trees, an hour before noon, whence we might journey together to the gold-domed temple on the distant hill of verosi. "'and so the morrow is to be the most eventful day of all my eventful life,' i mused, as i sat in my chamber looking out upon the palace grounds, now appearing in all the subtle beauty a tropical night alone can lend. there i sat for an hour or more, deeply pondering over the morrow's mysteries. 'where and what shall i, harry graham, be at the close of that all-fateful day?' my home, my earth, shone like a steady-burning brilliant in the green-blue southern sky; in a few hours more, and all the ties that bind me thereto will be burnt away--destroyed by fire! slowly, as i mused, her beautiful point of light sank lower and lower, and finally she dropped behind the garden-trees, and i bade her adieu--farewell, for with earthly eyes i should see her no more. one pang of regret, and one only, shot through my heart quicker than the lightning flash, and was gone; and then i cursed my weakness, for it seemed like a breach of loyalty to her! "all night i slept but little, and right glad was i to see the distant mountains, through my eastern window, tipped with ruddy day. i rose up from my couch and, early as it was, summoned herio, the servant who had been charged with the duty of attending to my personal needs. "'at what hour do my comrades take their morning meal, herio?' i asked as he entered. "'two hours from the present, sire.' "'then you will find me, if they make enquiry, in the garden below. i go there to breathe the morning air, and to refresh myself.' "truly, this garden was a wondrous place--filled with strange flowers and plants and trees, many of the latter festooned together by creepers which dropped in mid-air blooms of rare beauty and fragrance. it was graced with statuary, and with fountains which, by hidden means, dispelled a subtle perfume in their spray as the winds caught it and wafted it across the groves. here i wandered, striving to compose myself and steady my nerves for the coming trial. besides, i had no desire at present to betray myself, and to let my comrades know the step i was contemplating. when all was over, then might i tell them my secrets, but, until then, i deemed it best to keep my own counsel. "the time slipped quickly away, and herio came to summon me to eat. already my companions were at table, waiting for me. "'why, graham, wherever on earth--no, on mars--do you hide yourself?' said temple, as i entered the room. 'where did you conceal yourself last evening? we knew that you were a-bed all day, for the doctor came from time to time and saw you as you slept, but at night you utterly vanished.' "'i thought i told you explicitly to keep quiet, graham, and here you are gadding about the moment you awake, casting all my cautions to the winds.' "'now, doctor--and you, too, temple--as to where i spent the evening, i did so with volinè, at her invitation, and i assure you i was well taken care of----' "'really; i don't doubt it! what a lucky fellow you are! and when is the fatal day to be?' said temple carelessly, and with a merry laugh, determined to have his say for once, in spite of the doctor's presence, yet little dreaming of the awful signification his last lightly-spoken words had for me. "'i'm real glad to see you in such spirits, mr. temple, after all we have gone through lately,' i answered, trying to turn our conversation to subjects less personal and painful to me. 'what are your plans for the future, doctor? have you seen anything more of the king?' "'well, graham,' said the doctor, evidently as pleased as myself to see the conversation taking a more practical turn, for an argument of any feminine subject was his one abomination. 'well, temple and i had a long consultation with the king yesterday; and we are about to hold a grand scientific congress here in edos, to which all the leading philosophers are to be invited, and then we are going to discuss i don't know how many important subjects. the king is quite enthusiastic, especially on one great project we are contemplating, namely, the establishment of regular communication between earth and here. i have, also, a bit of news for you. i heard yesterday from our old friend kios that that rascal, that villain perodii, had destroyed the poor _sirius_--wrecked her completely!' "'doctor, you don't mean that?' "'but i do; and if i were a younger man, i would thrash him soundly for his mischief.' "'ah, doctor,' i answered, 'perodii is having his day, but retribution may be coming swiftly.' "'has come, but too late for me. the king has banished him from here.' "'a worse fate than that awaits him, or i am no prophet,' i added, in a tone of hatred. "'but your plans, doctor?' "'we are going to make exhaustive collections of the fauna and the flora of this planet. temple is going to investigate its commercial resources, visiting all the great centres of industry, acquiring information useful to the manufacturers of earth, and at the same time imparting whatever knowledge he may possess that is likely to be welcome here. you, graham, might do worse than go with temple--an engineer would be a useful companion. ah, graham, we have years of work before us--years. here, in my glory of triumph, i positively pity the poor scientists of earth, turning over and over their few theories and time-worn specimens, each with little better to do than to spend his life and efforts in seeking to overturn the views of his contemporaries on this question and on that. it is almost an event, nowadays, in the scientific world at home, for any real good new species to be discovered; and yet here a world, an entire world, crammed full of new and curious forms, lies before me!' "'you see, the doctor has not been idle,' said temple. "'indeed he has not,' i answered, 'and all you tell me interests me exceedingly.' at any other time i should have felt enchanted whilst listening to dear old doctor hermann's plans and projects, but this morning i heard all that was said like one in a dream. i was heartily glad when the doctor took temple off to hear of a wonderful account of some monster insect, whose habitat was in a valley near edos.' "'i suppose you are engaged for the day, graham?' said temple, slily, as the two walked away. "'i am going to write up some of my notes, and may then join you,' i answered evasively. already it wanted but an hour to the time i had promised volinè to meet her, so long had we lingered at table. "with ever increasing excitement, with nerves becoming strung unto their tightest tension, i passed that hour away, and then betook myself to the arbour where volinè was to join me. there, to my great astonishment, i found one of her maids--irolne, sister of cyni--awaiting my coming with a message from her mistress, saying that i was to go with this maiden, who would conduct me to a distant part of the palace grounds, where volinè already waited. along secluded paths, and twice for some considerable way underground, through wild and wondrous grottoes we went, until at last we came unto steps which seemed to lead into a large and lofty building, entirely underground. at the bottom of this stairway stood volinè, with cyni. we were in a round chamber, from which radiated in all directions large pipes or tunnels, similar to the one through which we were brought by perodii captives to edos. in the centre was a luxuriously-fitted car, by the side of which stood two marshals in royal uniform. "smiling sweetly to me, volinè stepped forward and said to these attendants: "'we would visit echri's temple on the hill verosi. place us thither with speed,' and, beckoning to me, she entered the brilliantly-lighted car, and i followed her and sat down by her side. then the car was turned round perhaps a quarter of a circle, and began to move forward into one of the pipes, and in an instant we were gliding onwards with ever-increasing speed. my arm stole round volinè's waist as we travelled on, and, kissing her, i said: "'you see, dear one, i am still as anxious to go through this ordeal of fire as i was when i left you last night.' "'i knew thou wouldst not fail, dear harry; but already my heart falters within me. even now there is time for thee to repent thy words.' "'and lose you? never, darling! i see happiness before me, happiness with you; and though the path that leads thereto is rough and terrible, the reward will all the sweeter be.' "we had no time for much further converse, as in a few minutes of time we slowed, and at last came to a stop in another building, similar in all respects to the one we had left. "instantly four venerable, white-haired priests approached, and with some invocation which i did not understand, assisted us to alight, and, in a tone of great respect, asked us to follow them. we walked up a sloping path in silence, and then found ourselves in a beautiful grove of trees, from which, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, towered the three mighty domes of burnished metal we had seen from the air, when approaching edos in the _sirius_. "escorted by our priestly guides, we wended our way between the trees, until we reached the lofty arched entrance to the temple. passing under this we came into a kind of courtyard, after crossing which we went through another and a smaller way, and here holy echri stood waiting to receive us. he was dressed much more imposingly, in a crimson robe, with a long rod of what looked like fine gold in his left hand, and a scroll of parchments, bound and suspended by a curiously-wrought chain of the same metal, in his right. "'welcome to our holy house, o daughter of the king, and man of ramos! welcome to the temple of god. thy faith is strong within thee, my son. have no fear, and follow me without dismay, for heaven shall lend thee strength equal to thy weakness.' "then, turning round, he led the way into a gorgeous sanctuary under one of the smaller domes. to say that i was astonished at the magnificence around me, conveys but a faint idea of my actual feelings. it was a temple of gems and costly fabrics, enough to excite the envy of a solomon, and fill his soul with despair. there were altars and curious structures whose uses were unknown to me, wrought in solid gold and garnished with jewels; there were rows and rows of venerable priests ranged in close array round each altar, some bearing pots of incense slung by chains of gold, others with rods of gold, others yet again with curious lamps that burnt so brilliantly that the eye could not look upon them without becoming almost blind to all other objects. then there was a sumptuous throne, encircled round about with a low trellis-work of gold, and behind that a lofty gallery, also filled with priests. as we entered a dirge-like chant was sung to strains of music, where and how played i know not, which vibrated through our very souls in its harmonious beauty. coming to a pause before the trellis-work, echri bade volinè and myself stand there together, and then, escorted by two aged priests, he went and sat him down thereon. then the music and the singing ceased, and a great silence fell upon the assembled throng, all eyes being fixed upon the throne, and we who stood before it. volinè clung to me, and i could feel that ever and anon she trembled violently. all were apparently waiting now for echri to act. soon he did so, by addressing me: "'man of ramos, the hour hath now arrived when, if thy faith or thy courage hath not failed thee, thou mayest, by the ordinance of eternal fire, obtain a greater span of years for thy decaying body. if thou hast the nerve within thee to let this living fire embrace thee, then shalt thou become possessed of that for which thy heart hath craved.' "then, addressing volinè, he continued: "'and hast thou, volinè, daughter of gathma's mighty king, sought and got thy royal father's free consent to take this man of ramos for thy husband? if so be thou hast, speak!' "'in truth, most holy echri, the king hath said that this shall be, and i assure thee this man of ramos, standing by my side, goes through thy sacred ceremony with the king's full knowledge and approval unto that end,' volinè answered, in a voice choked with the emotion that was fast overcoming her. "'enough! now let us, therefore, enter upon our solemn duty.' "and as he finished speaking, the multitude of priests formed themselves into procession; the incense-throwers swung their cups to and fro, the lamp-bearers hoisted their lights on high, and the singers in the gallery commenced their solemn anthems. when they had finished singing, the grand procession began its imposing movement to the distant strains of some wind-instrument of great power and loud tone, on which twelve priestly artistes played, with marvellous precision, a march of soul-stirring beauty, though sad and tenderly plaintive in its cadence. at the end of this long company of marching priests came volinè, echri, and myself; and so we wended our way around the spacious hall and under an archway, into a larger building which was beneath the mightiest of the three brazen domes. "this larger temple was fitted up even more gorgeously than the one we had left; and right in the centre thereof was a high altar, at the front of which flowed a constant stream of molten fire, smokeless and silent, yet so brilliant that it lighted up the vast dome into its uttermost recesses with a noonday brightness. the heat, as we passed within fifty paces of this wondrous fire-stream, was great, and beads of perspiration formed themselves on my face; but these were more the result of the great and awful excitement that filled my brain, than the glow of heat that radiated from this living furnace. as we passed, echri said: "'behold, my son, fire that hath never ceased to burn since gathma sprang from chaos! it is the primordial force that hath sustained and nourished life from the beginning of all things! yea, the blood that courses through the veins and arteries of worlds. it floweth here by a dark and rocky way beneath the ground, from the mountain of fire ye, perhaps, have noted some distance from edos.' "i nodded, for i was absolutely too awe-stricken to speak, and the old priest continued: "'note thee well its living, brilliant beauty, for it is the enemy thou hast to conquer, or rather the friend that will help thee to thy heart's desire.' "i shuddered as i listened to his awful words, yet somehow i felt no fear, no regret, no dread, only an overwhelming sense of reverence and wonder. "then, taking volinè and myself by the hand, he walked between us, and led us to the foot of another throne, and, walking up the seven steps of solid gold, sat him down thereon. the procession of priests continued walking on with slow and stately step, keeping time to the music that had now become louder, more triumphant in its melody, until, to the closing bars of this wondrous solo, they ranged themselves in one wide circle round the throne on which echri sat, and the high altar before which flowed the stream of fire. "amidst death-like silence four priests advanced, two carrying chains of gold, and two with some kind of vestments; and these they placed on a low table near, and then stood behind us, still and silent as the rest. volinè clasped my hand in terror, but she seemed too frightened to speak, and tears were coursing down her white lovely face! "'my son, our holy priests shall pray that god mayest give thee strength unto the measure of thy woe. meantime, these men will take thee and prepare thee for thy fiery trial.' "as soon as these words were finished, the four priests stepped forward and bade me follow them. they took me across the wide floor of the temple into a smaller chamber; and there i was divested of my garments, and draped in a priestly robe. then the chains were fastened around my wrists, and i was given a draught of some sweet and volatile liquid from a goblet of crystal, before being conducted back to echri's throne. volinè was sobbing loudly; but i felt brave, endowed with a new-found strength, and stood calmly waiting for the end to come. "'dost thou still desire to proceed through this ordeal, man of ramos?' said echri, in a solemn tone. 'hath thou still the inclination to wed this gracious lady, the daughter of our king, by such means as have already been explained to thee?' "'i am ready,' i answered in a firm, unfaltering voice, with my arms extended towards him, draped in their manacles of gold. 'fuse us in your fire, o holy priest! weld our souls together upon the altar-anvil of your strange mysterious faith! make our two loving hearts but one! i am ready to brave your fiery ordeal, e'en pass through the glowing furnace of your wondrous creed, to reach my wedded bliss.' "here volinè, by a great effort, composed herself to speak, and turning round, she looked at me in a tender, supplicating way, saying: "'oh, harry! harry! my love for thee is strong, yet my poor heart falters before echri's sacred furnace. alas! alas! my courage fails me! my dear one, my brave one, i am not worthy of such love as thine. leave me. return unto thine own people. spare thyself this agony of fire. return, i bid thee, and be safe.' "'nay, volinè, speak not so! for your words wound me worse than that fire i now yearn to pass through to reach the full measure of my joy. courage, darling, courage! as beseems a daughter of your noble, peerless race! i wait but echri's word to enter yon shrine of fire. he will unite our hearts together; for all things to him seem possible,' i answered, bowing reverently before the throne on which echri sat unmoved at volinè's sorrow, solemn and still as though carved in marble, patiently waiting to complete what i deemed the spiritual portion of our strange betrothal. "'oh! holy echri, this thing must not be. his pain is my pain; and if he will not spare himself, then must thou spare him,' volinè said, in a voice piteous to hear; and her words went each like a keen-edged dagger into my heart. turning to me, she continued: "'harry, thou shalt not go! yea, i will even wed thee as thou art. come back to me, for my heart is breaking. come back to me; come back and comfort my dreadful sorrow. oh! why did i tell thee of this terrible thing! oh! why did i tempt thee! why, oh why did i counsel thee to this! why send thee to such a doom of agony for me--thee, whom i love better than my own life!' "but even as volinè spoke i was led away by the attendant priests, feeling powerless to help the woman i loved, and growing more determined to consummate the dread doom before me. "they led me unto the fiery stream, and there, as echri rose and raised his voice in some unknown tongue, the floor gave way beneath me and i sank in an oblique direction into a small pit which seemed to me to be under, or in the very course of, the fiery stream! then all became dark, and i could hear, as afar off, the singing of the priests, their heaven-wrought music, and the piteous appeals of she whom i loved! shortly the agony of my awful situation entered into my soul; yet all was hopeless now; hopeless! a living death by fire approached me! i tried to cry out, but my voice was dumb; 'volinè,' the one word i could say, became but a hideous rattle in my burning throat; and as my eyes strove in vain to penetrate the ghastly gloom of this dread chamber, the blackness around me seemed to fall away, and a volume of white-hot fire approached! scorched and burnt by the sudden heat, all the agony of death entered into my soul in that one awful moment of time, my brain seemed to burst asunder with pain, and all became an instant blank! "how long this lasted i know not; but in what seemed to me the twinkling of an eye i awoke, and found myself in the same small chamber where the priests had robed and chained me. echri stood near, and the same priests were arranging my old garments ready for use. the melted gold of my manacles still hung in guttered streams from my wrists; my robe was burned to tinder; yet, otherwise, not one trace of fire marked my body, and even the downy hair upon my arms was soft and unsinged! the sacred ring upon my finger had also passed through the fire unscathed! at all this i marvelled greatly, and pondered in amazement. i felt myself, and yet i knew instinctively i was not. what had actually befallen me i had not a single remembrance; all was blotted out by that stream of raging fire. how this wonderful transformation had been accomplished i never learned. it was the jealously-kept secret of echri and his brother-priests. "'my son, thou hast acted as only a brave man couldst. begarb thyself, and hasten to the comfort of her whom thou lovest. she needs thy care.' "i walked by echri's side back into the temple and as i entered, a song of my triumph over death was raised in my honour, and strains of sweet music rolled through the mighty dome like a paean of praise. i ran forward in my new-found joy, and volinè, sobbing and weeping bitterly, fell senseless into my arms! "'joy doth not kill, my son. let her tears flow freely, for they will bear away her sorrow; and her faintness is but caused by her pleasure at seeing thee.' "slowly we brought my poor darling back to life, and then she and i wended our way from this tabernacle of fiery mystery into the place where we might start back to edos again. in my great concern for volinè, i forgot even to thank echri, or to speak to any living soul but her. all my thoughts were centered in volinè, and the moment that we were at last alone in the carriage i took her in my arms, and we rained passionate kisses upon each other's lips. "'oh, harry, how i love thee! verily hast thou won me at the shrine of death.' "'the joy that fills these fleeting moments is a full recompense for aught that i have suffered, darling. and now you must try and be your own dear self. i want to see the roses in your cheeks again, and the happy careless smile upon your lips once more. come, darling, cheer up now! all is over, and we have the long and radiant future before us.' "'wilt thou always be so good and kind and loving as thou art just now? oh, harry, i shall worship thee if thou art ever so.' "'for ever, my dear one! for i love you--love you better now, volinè, than i ever have before. and, darling, i have now a request to ask.' "'anything that i can grant thee thou canst have for asking. do with me as thou wilt.' "'then, dear one, when may i look for the consummation of my happiness? when shall our nuptials be? when will you name your bridal day, so that i may make you my own for evermore?' "'oh, harry, thy words almost frighten me! how impatient thou hast become! in how many months must i say--?' "'how--many--months--' i repeated in despair. 'nay, surely you will not be so cruel! promise me in one month--even in less.' "'if my father so wishes, then will i favour thee,' she answered, hiding her blushing cheeks upon my breast. 'now, wilt that content thee?' "by this time we had reached the palace grounds in edos again; and upon leaving the car we found volinè's two handmaidens waiting for their mistress. there i left her in their charge, and sought the palace by another way, alone." chapter xviii. the fight for volinè. the shades of night were beginning to fall as i crossed the garden of siccoth-trees, which was a fortunate circumstance for me, as i desired to see no one, least of all any of my companions, until my nerves felt steadier, for now they seemed shattered by the trying, terrible strain which they had undergone within the past few hours. by still further good fortune i gained the palace unobserved, except by the guard at the gates, and a solitary martial whom i met in one of the corridors near my own room. "i flung myself upon my couch and tried to think. but my thoughts were broken and confused. all that had taken place seemed as a dream. first one incident and then another of the weird ceremony flashed through my brain, and vanished; and then all returned together as swiftly, yet in disordered sequence, until i dropped into a troubled sleep. "for twelve hours i lay thus, only awaking in the morning to find my servant herio bending over me, saying in a voice which sounded as though it were miles away: "'sire! rouse thee; for the king would see thee. even now he awaiteth thy coming.' "'why, herio, what is the hour? how long have i slept? has anyone been here?--the doctor?--mr. temple?' "'the tenth hour of the new day soundeth, sire. but one soul hath entered thy chamber, and he whom thou callest "doctor." he watched by thee as thou slept, until midnight, and glanced at thee again at sunrise for a moment.' "quickly eating a light breakfast, and feeling more refreshed and stronger than i had done for many days, i followed herio to the apartment in which the king was awaiting me. volinè, looking pale and wan, was seated on the dais on her father's right hand; whilst below him, much to my surprise and embarrassment, were temple and the doctor. behind them, a hundred or more of the highest ministers of state sat in silence. blushes stole over volinè's lovely face as she smiled on me in welcome. temple and the doctor, gazing all the time in rapt astonishment, bade me a hearty good-morning; and the king, in his kindliest manner, told me to come and seat myself at his left hand. "'already, man of ramos, have i heard the full story of thy dauntless courage, yesterday, on the hill verosi. our beloved daughter volinè tells me of thy fortitude in meeting, wrestling with, and overcoming death by fire. right nobly hath thou done all that was required of thee, and thy reward shalt be that for which thy heart hath long desired, for now do i give thee my daughter to wife.' "here the old king stood up, and taking volinè's hand and mine, placed them in each other, saying:-"'in doing this thing i feel that the hand of wisdom hath guided me to a just atonement, and a wise repentance of my sin in seeking thy life and thy companions' lives without full cause. already hath echri told me my folly, and of his wondrous vision, in which was declared to him that with thy advent in gathma god's promise to unite his scattered universe was being fulfilled. thou art no more man of ramos only; man of gathma, too, hath thou become; and may thy lengthened span of life be used in binding these two sister-worlds in yet closer unity. i have but few more words to say. thou hast an enemy in edos, by name perodii. long hath he sought thy ruin, by divers means; yea, even at the cost of volinè's honour. that the lies he spoke concerning her were bred of jealousy of thee i now know, and his banishment from our royal presence is but a just punishment for his sin. but perodii is of a noble race, which hath many privileges i may not take away. one of these is that, being thy rival to the hand of my daughter, he hath the right to meet thee in single combat to decide the issue between ye. he hath claimed that right, and, moreover, he hath proclaimed throughout edos that to-morrow thou shalt do him battle or be slain by him as a coward. i ask thy answer to this challenge?' "'that i will meet him whenever he may choose; for few things would give me greater pleasure, o king of gathma, than to satisfy the hatred that long has lain between us,' i answered, still holding volinè's hand in mine. "'all shall be as thou sayest,' said the king, who, turning to his ministers, continued: 'let perodii hear these things at once, and let all be set in readiness for the morrow.' "and then the old king turned to leave the chamber, which was a signal for the assembled ministers to disperse unto their duties, bidding the doctor accompany him to discuss still further the projects which they had in view. i led volinè away towards her own apartments, and as we walked along she said: "'harry, thou hast grieved me sorely in respect to this meeting with perodii. have i not already counselled thee to leave him alone?' "'and be branded as a coward, darling! would you care to hear your lover's name bandied about edos as another name for cowardice? volinè, have no fears for me, as i have none for myself.' "'but perodii is cunning in the use of arms.' "'trouble not yourself, darling; for, with you as the issue between us, there lives no man in all wide gathma that should overcome me. besides, perodii's insults on you can only be answered for in this manner. before edos he once has lied; before edos shall he declare himself a speaker of lies.' "'as thou wilt, harry; but my heart will be heavy and comfortless until this fray is over.' "'and now, my darling, have you spoken to your father about our wedding-day?' "'i have; and he sayeth that it may be chosen by myself.' "'then if i overcome perodii in fair and open combat on the morrow, will you come unto me? volinè, let the morrow be our bridal day. nay, urge no obstacles, my dear one. say "yes," and give me new strength for the fray.' "'i will tell thee to-night, when thou meetest me in the arbour of siccoth. now hurry thee away, for there is much that i would do before the sun hath risen on the morrow.' "on my way back i met temple, and he was profuse in his congratulations on my happiness. "'why, graham, the events of the past four and twenty hours seem like a dream--even in this strange city of enchantment and wondrous surprises. now come along and have a chat. surely the beautiful volinè can spare you for one hour in which you may talk with your friends! to tell the truth, i feel almost afraid of you now, if all that i have heard is true.' "'well, mr. temple, and what may you have heard?' i asked, as we strolled out of the palace together, and sat ourselves down under the cool shade of a broad-leafed shrub. "'we have heard so much that, really, i scarcely know where to begin in describing it. briefly, it is this. that yesterday afternoon volinè and yourself went into that three-domed temple on the hill we saw from the _sirius_, and that there you went through some fiendish art of sorcery, which has professed to endow you with a longer span of life. after what happened at remagaloth, i must confess i felt a certain amount of faith in this priest echri's power; but that he can prolong your days, even to the extent of one, i do not believe----" "'i think you would, mr. temple, had you seen and experienced as much as i have. religious ordinances in this world are, as one might expect them to be, vastly different from any now on earth. here in gathma, there are holy men who appear to be direct agents of a supreme being, and through them almighty will is manifest. after all, there is nothing so very remarkable about this; for even in our world, during the days of the patriarchs, very similar conditions prevailed. it must be more than human sorcery or trickery that can send a man through a stream of molten fire unscathed, unsinged, as i went yesterday, although i suffered in one brief awful moment all the pain of death in that dread majestic element. whether i live to be seventy, or ten times seventy, time alone can prove; but i have every faith in echri's power. i can understand your scepticism; but let the solemn assurances of one who has seen his potency, and felt his power, change your opinion. how this wonder was worked, how my body escaped annihilation, or if destroyed how another so similar in all respects, that i cannot find one tittle of difference myself, was created, is as much a mystery to me as to you, as that fair temple yonder guards its secrets well.' "'but what good have you really done yourself, graham, in this thing, provided all be true?' "'increased my span of life at least tenfold, and won the hand of as fair a woman as was ever conceived!' "'and sold your soul to evil, i fear.' "'then i am content to abide by my bargain, although no thought of such a compact has ever suggested itself to me. but what is the doctor's opinion?' "'that you must be mad--mad, and blind with love; and that he has never seen such a rapid change in a man as has taken place in you since you met volinè. all interest in your old pursuits seems gone; all feelings of companionship for us are slipping away. i suppose it is ever so. i was the same myself in the long ago--when a mistress comes to reign in our heart, verily in the early days of her power she rules supreme! i don't think the dear old boy will ever quite forgive you. he has curious ideas on women; besides, he always insists that all the evil that has befallen us in edos was caused by her.' "'i am afraid 't were useless to deny the soft impeachment, mr. temple; but, after all, volinè--who, you yourself must own, is peerless amongst her sex--and i have had little time together, and more than our share of trials and troubles during our courtship. wait until i enter the noble army of benedicts. all being well, i expect my commission therein to-morrow, and then you will again find me heart and soul with you in all your plans. for if i overcome this scamp perodii--and a greater scoundrel never drew air--i hope to wed volinè before the day has passed. fancy perodii challenging me! it is the last trump-card in the trick of his revenge and hatred; but i think i hold the ace of his suit.' "'then you really mean to fight?' "'i should rather think i do. i am not quite a fool with the cutlass, or with the pistol either; and i picked up a few wrinkles in the use of the dagger when i was engineering some waterworks in spain, which may now be of service to me. and if personal prowess alone is to decide between us, well i will show this braggart, strong as he is, how a yorkshireman in good 'fettle' can 'wrastle,' as we say in that fair county of broad acres and honest hospitality.' "'well, i wish you every success, graham, my boy; every success, and every happiness; and no one in all edos will see you lead volinè to the altar--that is, if an altar forms a necessary article of the marriage ceremony in this strange world--with more genuine pleasure than i shall. i feel that indirectly, and through you, i owe my life to this girl, in spite of all that the doctor may say to the contrary; and that being so, i wish her every happiness too. besides, this match appears to find great favour with the king.' "'ah, for that i have to thank echri. it appears that he has had a vision in which it was declared that the peoples on the family of planets that circle round the sun are to be united; and that we having established communication between earth and mars, are fulfilling this sacred manifestation. this the king has only lately learned from echri, and it has done more than anything else to place us high in royal favour, and to win consent to my union with volinè.' "'well, now, about this fight to-morrow. have you no idea of the weapons, conditions of combat, and so on?' "'none; nor do i want any. but if you should chance to drop on sandy campbell, tell him that i would see him. i should like him near me to-morrow, just as a sort of henchman like---you understand?' "'i won't fail to send him if i get the chance, but the doctor keeps him more than busy. only this very morning he packed him off somewhere or other in search of some insect which, he tells me, is curiously allied to a beetle of earth.' "'gracious! poor old sandy! i have half a mind to pity him in his search for that illustrious bug.' "chatting together thus, the morning slipped quickly and pleasantly away, until we were summoned to our mid-day meal. neither the king nor volinè was present; and the doctor, as well, was too absorbed in his studies to make his appearance. i spent the afternoon posting up my journals, from which this portion of our narrative has been written; and in the evening i went unto our trysting-place, there to wait my loved one's coming. "verily the quiet, dreamy beauty of the night in this tropic region of mars is beyond all power of description. the atmosphere is balmier than in the torrid zone of earth, by reason of the greater remoteness of the sun; and the absence of all those insect-pests that make life there unendurable, especially during hours of darkness. such nights inspire love! such an atmosphere makes the tender, sacred passion glow with an intensity unknown in higher and cooler latitudes. the air breathes it; the night-birds sing it; the fountains, in their rising and falling cadence, echo it from grove to grove; the moons and stars, scintillating in their ether sea of blue, excite it; even the very flowers distil it in their ravishing perfume! ah! 't is a wondrous thing, this universal love! a legacy of god, immutable, unchanging through the unrecorded ages on every sphere where man doth dwell. best described as a passion of the night; as its subtle influence is strongest under a starlit sky; for doth it not droop and languish under the fierce light and blazing heat of day, requiring softer illuminants and balmier air to flourish in all its beautiful intensity! no other feeling evolved by the human mind can compare in tenderness or beauty with that of first love. he who has not known that incomparable joy-sorrow, knows not what it is to live; for of all the feelings that animate the human breast it is at once the most tender, the most pure, full of innocence, yet heavy with primordial sin, selfish, yet generous; passionate, yet without lust; divine, yet human! "but here my reverie in siccoth's arbour was broken by the foot-falls of volinè, and in a few moments she was by my side. "'ah, harry, dear; so thou art communing with thyself, or maybe with the stars. dost thou still cherish love for that mother earth, shining so witchingly fair above thee, or for anyone that doth dwell thereon? a woman?' "'nay, nay, my darling,' i answered, drawing her gently to my breast, and planting a kiss on her lips as i spoke, 'i have no thoughts away from you. you are the nucleus of them all, their one inspiration. i was musing to myself on love--ah! volinè, even on first love; the tender passion you, and you alone, have inspired within me. and i mused on the exceeding beauty of this wondrous thing, and of its universality; until your footsteps broke the thread of my reverie, and swept away the one sorrow-cloud that tinged my bliss and transformed it into perfect joy.' "'and what may this one cloud of sorrow be?' "'to be separated from you, even for one hour--one moment. my heart is yearning for the time when we may part no more--when i may proudly call you mine; mine for ever!' "'but is there no one who beckoneth to thee from that star-world yonder; no memory of one fairer in thy sight than i?' "'ah, darling,' i sighed, 'have i not told you that, until i saw you, i knew not love; and that the women of my native earth cannot compare with you in grace and beauty? i have but a single thought for all those teeming millions of humanity that people yon shining star, and that one is for the old father, who parted from me with his blessing when i left its surface years ago.' "'and i may never see him! dost thou know harry, i have great curiosity to visit thy native world. all would seem so wondrous strange to me.' "'and perhaps the day may yet come when i shall take my darling yonder; for i hear from my companions that great things are being planned, and that your royal father takes a deep interest in them. but now tell me, dear one, if to-morrow i may take you to myself for ever? is the morn to bring your bridal day?' "'ah, thy words have stirred sad thoughts within my heart. to-morrow thou hast promised to fight perodii.' "'and when the fight is over?----' "'why, then, if all--be--well,' she sighed, 'thou mayest have thy wish; for then will i become thy wife,' and she hid her blushing face, and stole yet closer into my arms. "'your words, dear one, make me feel happier than i can say,' and for a few moments neither of us spoke; and only the loud, fast beating of our own hearts broke the silence surrounding us. "'now, harry, i must leave thee. i would see my father before the evening hath passed.' "'then, when i see your dear face again, i may leave you no more. you will not be present at this fray to-morrow?' "'no, dear harry, i could not. but i will pray for thee; and when all is over, and thou art victorious--as i trust thou mayest be--then will i come to bring thee thy reward. now, fare thee well; and may all good fortune attend thee on the morrow,' and trying bravely to conceal her agitation and her tears, volinè walked with me through the silver, sheeny moonlight unto the palace; where, with a last, sweet kiss, she left me, and went her way. "the night was a restless, sleepless one for me; and right gladly i welcomed the first streaks of what was to prove one of the most eventful days of my life. i was up with the sun, and the first person i saw was himos; and from him i learned particulars of the coming duel. we were to fight with a peculiar kind of short, broad sword, in a large arena, where combats of this description were wont to be decided. the hour for the fray was ten; and the king had signified his intention of being present, and acting as umpire between us. then came sandy--his face absolutely beaming with delight at the prospect of a little fighting; and with a due sense of his importance on acting as my second. "'by bonnie prince charlie's memory, mr. graham, this is real guid news. i hear that ye are aboot to ha' a tussel with peerodii. de'il tak' him, when ye ha' done wi' him, mr. graham, for the muckle harm he has warked for us; and they do say that we are going to ha' a weddin', too. weel, weel, sandy cam'bell will step ye a highland reel, if he do it without the pipes an' a' that; an' good luck to ye an' your winsome bride, say i; for she is a bra' fine girl, and enough to turn the heads of a' who clap their een on her.' "'thanks for all your good wishes, sandy; and should we triumph over this rascal, you shall dance at my wedding to-night.' "'should we triumph, mr. graham. de'il a doot aboot it. he's na fightin' sort.' "'well, sandy, we shall soon know, now, whether there is any real grit in him or not. but have you heard anything from the doctor about this business?' i asked, just out of curiosity. "'indeed, an' i have. the doctor is powerful annoyed; and i heard him tell mr. temple, only last night, that this affair bears out what he has insisted on a' the time, that ye are daft--love daft; and it was no guid sayin' anything to ye, for ye were bound to gang ye're ain gait.' '"poor old boy! well, i hope he is in better temper to-day; for we must have him at the wedding--that is, all being well. and now, sandy, my boy, hasten away and learn what you can of the arrangements made for the fight. i am growing impatient to get it over, one way or the other.' "'right ye are, mr. graham. sandy cam'bell will do the best he can, for ye ha been a guid friend to me.' "and so saying, the blunt, yet honest scot, took himself off in the highest spirits, rejoicing that for one day, at least, he would be free from the task of hunting for the doctor's 'specimens' to engage in duties more congenial to his tastes. "i studiously avoided contact with either the doctor or temple, taking breakfast in my own room, from which i did not stir until summoned by the king's marshals to accompany them to the arena. i felt in little mood to talk until this fight was over. just before their arrival, i was agreeably surprised by a visit from irolne, who brought me a single white flower from her mistress, with the following message: "'wear this for volinè's sake. she loves thee, and prays for him she loves.' "the arena was situated in a remote part of the palace grounds, entirely strange to me. we could have travelled there by one of those wonderful 'tubes,' but i preferred to go on foot, thinking that the walk in the morning air might do me good. this duel between perodii and myself had made a great sensation, not only in edos, but in all the cities for many leagues around, and, early as was the hour, a vast concourse had assembled--all of noble birth, or high in station--to witness the fight. this colossal arena was open to the sky, although round the sides a kind of awning had been erected over the spectators, who must have numbered quite two hundred thousand strong. in the centre was a table on which half-a-dozen short swords were placed, and here i saw sandy carefully examining and testing the blades. already the king was seated, and by his side were temple, the doctor, and a few of the highest ministers. i stood with himos at the entrance to the arena, concealed from the gaze of the spectators, waiting for the proceedings to begin; but of my antagonist i had not yet caught a glimpse. then sandy came and helped me to prepare myself for the fight. this i did by taking off hat, coat, and vest, and with shirt-sleeves rolled up above my elbows, a scarlet sash bound tightly round my waist, i soon felt ready, even eager, for the fray. "we had not long to wait. first came twenty heralds into the arena, and having sounded a mighty blast upon their instruments, a marshal stepped forward, and then a great silence fell as he prepared to speak. "in a clear, ringing voice, which, owing to some marvellous system of acoustics, must have been heard to the uttermost parts of this grand enclosure, he said: "'man of ramos, his highness prince perodii being thy rival to the hand of our gracious mistress volinè, the king's daughter, hath called upon thee to fight with him, so that this issue between ye may be fairly tried by courage, strength, and the use of swords.' "here, followed by faithful sandy, i walked into the centre of the arena, bowing to the king, amidst a loud murmur of excitement and curiosity from the surrounding throng. "then followed another deafening blast from the twenty heralds, and once again the marshal spoke: "'prince perodii, this man of ramos, thy rival to the hand of volinè, our mistress, hath answered unto thy challenge, and standeth ready, so that this issue between ye may be fairly tried by courage, strength, and the use of swords.' "then once more amid murmurs of excitement, mingled not a little with applause from those who evidently were friends of my rival, perodii, stripped to the waist, walked proudly and confidently forward from another entrance towards me, stopping half-a-dozen paces from where i stood. each looked fiercely at the other, yet neither spoke. again a terrible silence fell as the king rose up and said: "'rivals for my beloved daughter's favour, ye have met to fight, so that the bitter enmity between ye may be closed. may god decide which is the better man by giving him strength to overcome the other. let truth and honour and courage, triumph over lies and shame and cowardice. take ye each a weapon, and let my sitting down be the signal for ye to begin.' "then we each stepped forward and took a sword; beautifully finished weapons, about two feet in length and two inches in breadth, dagger pointed, and keen as razors on their innermost edge. "each with his gleaming naked sword clasped in his right hand then faced the other, and after a moment's pause, perodii spoke: "'so, at last, the hour of my vengeance hath come; and here by my right of birth and station may i slay thee, and sweep thee from my path. look to it, for thy moments now are numbered.' "'i wait for you, perodii, and may heaven defend the right.' "'keep thy holy words for thine own comfort, thou boasting, short-lived fool; but methinks i will cut still shorter thy puny span with this,' and as he spoke he held aloft the glittering blade. "'you speak that of which you know nothing, perodii. my span of life is now as long as yours; for know you not that i have passed through holy rites that have endowed me with a fuller measure of years? but we waste time in profitless talk. come, put up your sword, and defend yourself----' "'hold! i see echri's ring upon thy finger. come, fight fairly. take off that cursed relic. we want none of echri's magic here.' "'coward! then you fear its virtues now! well, i have no wish to take advantage of you. here, sandy, hold this ring, and take care of it well. i would not lose it for a world'; and so saying, i slipped the precious talisman from my finger, and turned to give it to sandy. "that moment nearly proved fatal to me; for, without warning, perodii rushed forward and made a terrible thrust at my unguarded body. but sandy was too quick for him, and putting out his foot, he threw the prince headlong. "'na, na, mr. perodii, none o' that here. ye've got to fight fair and square, and not tak' a mon unawares.' "'coward!' i shouted. 'get up and defend yourself, or my indignation may prompt me to slay you where you are.' "but perodii, without another word, jumped to his feet again and attacked me with fury. our swords flashed like silver in the sunlight as we parried each other's blows and thrusts, perodii trying his best to strike me, i acting on the defensive, having decided to bide my time until the first frenzy of his attack was spent. not a sound was heard save the clashing of swords, and our deep-drawn breaths. then perodii, in one of his mad onslaughts, slipped and nearly fell, but recovered himself before i had time to drive in a blow; yet a thrilling sigh of excitement burst from the crowd, who thought that all was over. again we drew back, panting for breath, and burning with desire to slay each other. again with eyes sparkling in anger we closed, and once more the flashing, clanging swords sang the song of our hatred. perodii was skilled in the use of his weapon, and fought hard, but i think his courage was only the outcome of his deadly hate, which had worked him up into an uncontrollable rage. at last i clumsily gave him his chance, and was too late completely to parry one of his fierce strokes. his blade glanced off my own, and inflicted a deep, stinging cut in my arm. amidst my pain i heard cries of concern from the doctor and temple, as each jumped to their feet; but the king sat calmly looking on. then we drew back and stood panting until sandy had deftly and quickly bound up my wound, saying: "'gang in again, mr. graham, he's getting spent; besides, your wound will stiffen if ye do not keep your arm at wark.' "again we closed; and stung to desperation by my smarting wound, and thoughts of her who lonely and sadly was praying for me, and whose blood-stained flower still clung, ragged and drooping, to my heart, i fought and fought like one possessed, driving my antagonist back inch by inch, step by step, and forcing him to defend himself rather than to attack me. at last my opportunity came, and, with a rapid twisting stroke, i wrenched his blade from his hand and sent it spinning and gleaming into the air, amid a roar of excitement from the onlookers. but before i could recover myself he closed with me, and then began a wild, terrible struggle for life. soon we rolled to the ground together, and first one and then the other was uppermost and had a transient advantage. then we got on to our feet again, struggling one against the other, swaying now to this side, now to that, until i clasped him round the waist, and summoning all my strength for one mighty effort, i bent him nearly double as i would a reed, and hurled him limp and helpless over my head! quick as lightning i ran and seized my sword, and before perodii could recover or attempt to rise, my foot was planted on his breast, and my notched and gleaming sword held high over his throat. "'god,' i cried, 'has given you into my power; and now will i justly avenge all the insults you have heaped on me and mine, and wipe out the wrongs you have done the woman i love!' "here volinè entered, and sat down by her father's side, pale and trembling, and with tears starting down her lovely cheeks. "'mercy, as thou hopest for the same,' perodii whined in fear, now thoroughly cowed, and all the fight and courage knocked out of him by that last, terrible fall. "'mercy! what mercy would you have shown me were i in your place? however, if mercy you really crave, buy your miserable, worthless life by answering what i ask of you,' i shouted, withdrawing my foot and letting him rise. 'now, say that you lied when you conspired against kios, and worked his disgrace and banishment to pamax.' "'what know ye of kios?' "'speak the words that clear his name, or die,' i thundered. "'then, in this, i admit that i swore falsely, and conspired to ruin an--innocent--man.' "'further; you know full well the rest.' "'and that i did this thing to save myself from his just wrath, having ruined his only child,' he continued, amidst a growing storm of indignation. "'now will we speak of volinè; she whom you have so foully wronged and slandered. say that you lied in the hall of judgment, and to the king. say that volinè's honour is as untarnished as the mountain snow.' "'never!' he hissed. 'thou hast humbled me enough. curse thee!' "'i am not here to parley. say this. by the great god, you shall say it on your bended knees, or my sword shall sheath itself in your heart,' i shouted, waxing wroth as i thought of my darling's undeserved disgrace from the mouth of this scoundrel. "'my words were lies,' he hissed rather than spoke, as he sank upon, his knees, forced thereto at the point of my naked sword; and a look of malignant hatred stole over his face, as he glared at me with his bloodshot, glittering eyes in impotent rage, like some wild-beast helpless in the hunter's toils. "'now take yourself away, and never again molest me or mine, or dare to meddle with affairs that do not concern you. i stay me from wetting my hands in blood upon this, my wedding morn--volinè's nuptial day shall not be one of bloodshed, but stainless and happy as my bonny bride herself. now, get you gone while the spirit of my mercy lingers--go, and dare not to cross my path again,' and, amidst shouts of derision and anger, the vanquished prince left the arena, and we saw him no more. "then the heralds stepped forward again, and blew another blast; and the marshal commanded silence for the king to speak. he rose from his daughter's side, looking supremely pleased and gratified, and said: "'man of ramos, thou hast fought fairly and valiantly, and shown mercy to a vanquished foe, which doth thee great honour. thou hast answered thy rival's challenge as only a brave man couldst; and now most freely do i give thee my daughter to wife. she shall dower thee ten thousand times more handsomely than any woman of the star-world, ramos, thou hast lately left.' "'and her husband shall not be penniless, for i hereby promise him the sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling, as soon as communication is again established between gathma and earth, and he may be able to present my cheque for that amount,' said temple, jumping to his feet in excitement. "'there are riches here enough for both; but still i admire the spirit that hath prompted thee to make that remark,' the king answered, smiling. 'now let the day that dawned on strife and battle set on love and peace, for my daughter tells me she hath set the remainder thereof apart for a bridal feast.' "then a great, loud shout went up from the assembled throng, and the heralds played a song of victory upon their brazen instruments, as i stood blood-stained and ragged from the fray before the king, the observed of every eye. "'oh, king! i crave one more act of royal grace. let worthy kios, disgraced and wronged without cause, find place again in royal favour; and i would also ask that brave and gallant kaosp, a captain in your guard, be freed from captivity and restored to place. both these men owe their downfall to the cunning and the knavery of perodii.' "''tis but justice what thou hast asked, and it shall be done.' "then, bowing low to the king and volinè, i withdrew to put myself in better array. temple also came, and was congratulating me heartily on my victory, when the doctor made his appearance. "'well, graham,' he began, holding out his hand, 'it did my old heart good to see how you thrashed that villain. so the poor _sirius_ is avenged; for this public disgrace to such a man as perodii is a terrible punishment. well done, my friend! but let us see your injury. ah! merely a flesh wound; deep, but not dangerous, and will soon heal.' "'but, doctor, i thought i was too deep in your disfavour ever to win any expressions of approval from you again,' i retorted. "'there, there, graham, let all differences of opinion be put aside to-day. i am apt to speak hastily; and old men, with life behind them, are often too prone to judge the actions of younger men by their own experience. i withdraw all i have said, and wish, yes, heartily wish, her and you every happiness. i have too lively a recollection of your great assistance to my project, both on earth and during our journey hither, to grudge you the happiness you have tried so hard to win, and on which it is evident your heart is fixed. although my sentiments regarding women in general may never alter, i shall certainly make an exception in favour of the wondrous fair lady who is so soon to become your wife. but mind, graham, this is the only exception i ever made during my life's experience of the sex that is as frail as it is fair.' "'well and rightly spoken, doctor,' broke in temple. 'to-day, of all others, is a most opportune one to express such opinions. as you say, we owe a good deal to graham; and i am sure we all wish him joy and continued happiness.' "'i thank you, doctor, and you, too, mr. temple, for your kindly words, especially for those that relate to the girl i am about to wed. now, i am sure you will excuse me; for my place is by her side, after the hours of suspense she has suffered, since she knew of this fight with perodii. we shall meet again, i hope, a little later on, when, perhaps, i may have the happiness of being supported at the coming ceremony by two such old and trusty friends.' "'that you may,' answered the doctor and temple together, as i hastened to volinè, eager to rejoin my darling, and to soothe her fears away." chapter xix. wedded! "'my brave one; my brave one; art thou hurt?" were volinè's first words of greeting as we met in her prettily-arranged private room, adjoining the arena where the king had sat to see the fight, and where i had been conducted to her presence by the ever-faithful irolne. "'no, darling, 't is but a scratch,' i answered, as we kissed and nestled into each other's arms. 'volinè, no cloud may dim the lustre of our happiness now. surely, bride and groom ne'er had a future so bright and fair as ours! we leave the long dark vale of sorrow behind us, and stand at last upon the threshold of our perfect bliss.' "'harry, i cannot tell thee my happiness; made all the sweeter, methinks, by the anguish my soul hath suffered since last we met. but how proud i am of thee now thou hast vanquished perodii, and before all edos freed my name from evil gossip; i would sooner thee have done this thing than even my father.' "'ah, volinè, i thought of you when the fight waxed hottest, and that thought gave new strength to my arm when weakening by desperate effort. but all is over, and all is well. now, dear one, tell me of to-day--when is our bridal feast to be?' "'echri and his fellow-priests have already reached the palace, and all is in readiness to commence at setting of the sun; for that is the hour we people of edos assign unto this ceremony. but, harry, what a strange, strange wooing mine hath been, coloured more with sorrow than with gladness; and even the early hours of my wedding-day have not been free from strife.' "'all has been as you say. but now perfect peace shall be my darling's portion, and i will devote myself to smoothing her path across life's stormy way. my arms shall ever be her refuge in sorrow, and her resting place in joy.' "'always?' "'until life is done; for i love you with a passion that death can only destroy.' "'oh, harry, it is sweet to be loved like this. do all the men of ramos love like thee? methinks there are plenty of maidens in edos who would choose them a mate from thy world, rather than mine, if such be so.' "'well, darling, that there is love on earth as sweet, and pure, and true as ours i will not deny; but there is love that turns to bitterness and hatred. there are men who betray, deceive, and wrong in the sacred name of love; there are men who make vows of affection and constancy, only to break them.' "'ah! it is even so in gathma, and many the maid of edos that hath rued her marriage-vows before she hath well become a wife.' "'does my volinè doubt me--does a single misgiving haunt her heart, now that she has given that heart to me?' "'not one; not one! my faith in thee is boundless. i have no thought that thou may'st not share. now let us return. already the assembly hath dispersed, and the day draws on. besides, thou must feel faint and weary, after thy fight.' "'never weary in your precious company, darling,' i answered, as we rose and left the room. we strolled across the beautiful grounds together, volinè resting confidingly on my arm; and, as we walked along, our happiness seemed too great to be true, for not a single care pursued us. "'let us pass by siccoth's arbour yet once again as lovers, harry--the place where we parted when sorrow overwhelmed us, and hope lay dead.' "'ah! volinè, prospects are brighter now, indeed. see! the dear old place is just the same--to me the sweetest spot in all wide gathma; for here our vows of love were pledged!' "and as i spoke, the palace bells rang out a loud and merry peal, like an omen of good fortune to us. "'list thee, harry! my bridal bells! how strange that they should commence whilst we are here! oh! how their gladsome peals thrill through and through my soul! my wedding day! so soon! harry, do all the men and women of thy world marry so quickly after betrothal as we?' "'not all, my darling, not all. some tarry months, years; and some even so long that they do not wed at all. but if any man could love as i love, or had such a beautiful being for the object of his affections, the time would be no longer than with us--especially when fate smiles so sweetly upon my suit as now,' i answered, kissing her upturned face. "'indeed, thou art a consummate flatterer! and yet doth it not seem unmaidenly for me to yield so quickly and so readily to thy words of love?' "'ah! no, dear one, i prize you all the more for not delaying my happiness. besides, it seems years and years since we first met, so much having happened in the interval between then and now.' "'methinks thou hast made good use of thy time, if it hath been short!' she answered, with an artless, bewitching smile. "'but, volinè, what is it that has drawn you to me? surely there are men in gathma, in edos, more handsome than i, who would sell their souls for your smiles and favour?' "'thou knowest a woman little. it is not a handsome face altogether that draws or fascinates her heart; but open, winning ways, sympathies, and devoted love--love that her instincts tell her is true and unselfish; these be the things that gain her favour,' she answered, as we passed on towards the palace, where we parted until such time as the nuptial ceremonies commenced. "never before did time pass away so slowly as those few hours that intervened between noon and sunset on this my wedding-day. each moment was flighted with lead, each hour seemed ages to me who impatiently waited their course to run. all day long the palace bells, at intervals, rang out glad bridal tidings, and those of edos echoed back the stirring music. the city was _en fête_ to-day. the only daughter of gathma's king was beloved of the people, and each man and woman of edos, dames and nobles of high degree, strove hard to make her bridal day replete with joy and happiness. the palace swarmed with guests. from near and far they made its stately halls their rendez-vous or perfumes and fabrics of priceless worth--tributes of respect and love to the daughter of their king. then troop after troop of soldiers entered the palace gates, many dressed in uniforms and with accoutrements entirely unknown to me--garrisons from far-off places, summoned to do honour at the coming ceremony and feast." [1] at last the sun proclaimed the advent of evening, from the cloudless west, as he sank toward the mountain crests. all interest now was centred within the magnificent hall of ceremonies, a vast and lofty chamber in the western wing of the palace. here a great throng of guests had assembled to witness the brilliant nuptials. no word of ours can hope to describe the overwhelming splendours of that wondrous hall, as the last rays of the setting sun streamed through the gorgeously-coloured windows, upon what was literally one blaze of sparkling jewels. not a guest was there who did not scintillate with precious stones, cunningly arranged to harmonise with their rich and many-coloured raiment. then the delicate light-blue draperies, that hung in graceful folds round the entrances, contrasted well with the slender pillars of gold that shot upwards, fashioned like tree-trunks, to support the roof. in niches round the walls were arranged groups of statuary, all carved in the famous flesh-tinted marble, and on the walls themselves were paintings of fair women and handsome men, of strange landscapes, of fruits and flowers, of beasts and winged creatures--all drawn with marvellous skill and exceeding beauty. nearly one quarter of this mighty hall was still empty of people. the guests, who must have numbered nearly a hundred thousand, were all seated; the reserved space at the end of the hall was for those engaged in the nuptial ceremony. as the sun finally sank behind the mountains, casting the draperies of night o'er edos, the great hall suddenly became illumined with brilliant light, and almost simultaneously a score of heralds marched in and blew a lusty blast upon their trumpets of gold. at once a great silence of expectation seized the gay and laughing guests, and, amidst hushed excitement, all eyes were turned towards the grand entrance at the end of the hall. shortly the enormous curtains were drawn aside, and we could see the wide corridor behind them lined on either side with royal troops. then regiment after regiment of soldiers came along, with colours flying and bands playing triumphant music, each man taking up his allotted station with marvellous precision, until the entire space set apart for the coming ceremony was lined with treble rows of troops, whose armour and trappings shone like silver and gold in the brilliant light. scarcely had the soldiers taken up their position, when a long procession of virgins, a thousand strong, all clad in pure white raiment, carrying flowers and branches of some tree emblematical of peace, came along, walking fourteen abreast. nothing could exceed the loveliness of this maiden throng, as they assembled in a grand galaxy of beauty in front of the troops. following the virgins came a hundred priests, dressed in black robes and scarlet sashes, bearing incense and their long golden rods of office. after these came holy echri, attended by four of his sacred brothers; then a high minister of state, bearing a cushion, on which were rolls of parchment, seals, and a sword of gold; and then again another hundred priests, clad in purple robes and yellow sashes. then came all the high ministers of state, and representatives of various cities round edos, accompanied by their attendants and guards of honour. following these entered doctor hermann and sandy, escorted by a posse of guards attached to the palace, under the command of our old friend kaosp, reinstated to rank but a few hours before. directly after them came another band of music, playing a march of exceeding beauty, heralding the approach of the bridegroom-elect, supported by temple. graham's appearance sent a thrill of excitement through the spectators, and many the fair lady in that brilliant throng that envied volinè her good fortune in mating with him. he looked in the very prime of health and spirits, happy in the full pride of his handsome manhood; and a mighty cheer broke simultaneously from a hundred thousand people, who remembered his undying courage at remagaloth, and his matchless gallantry on the morning of that very day in deadly conflict with perodii. the excitement caused by graham's arrival had scarcely lulled when the band of court musicians entered, playing a triumphal air, followed by seventy heralds and the body-guard of royalty. after these came twenty-five princesses of edos, the number being symbolical of the age of the bride, each strewing flowers as they walked towards the altar, where echri and his four attendant priests stood waiting. then excitement and enthusiasm reached their highest pitch as the dear old white-haired king of gathma appeared, with volinè, his daughter, the bride-elect, leaning upon his left arm, followed by her handmaidens and another company of royal troops. as the king and his daughter entered, every one of that dense, joyous throng rose to their feet, and deafening shouts of loyalty and welcome seemed as though they would rend the hall asunder. the grandeur and brilliancy of the scene, now that the matchless pageant was complete, beggar all description--the sparkling jewels, the flashing arms and armour, the solemn-visaged priests, the hosts of white-decked virgins, the flower bearers, the musicians, the soldiers in their many-hued uniforms, the white-bearded ministers of state, the handsome men and lovely women, the endless officials and attendants--all assisting in making one gorgeous picture, one scene of indescribable beauty, in which the fair and blushing bride shone forth like a peerless pearl in all her maiden loveliness! all eyes were fixed on her. and in all truth she merited the universal tribute of admiration so spontaneously showered upon her. clothed in a flowing robe of white and costly fabric, neither silk nor satin, yet heavier and more beautiful than either, whose folds suggested, although they covered, the matchless beauty of her faultless form, fastened on the left shoulder, and studded across the open bosom with gems of sparkling whiteness, and girdled round the waist with a broad scarf or sash of the same colour. embossed upon this costly robe were bunches of flowers made of lustrous pale-pink gems. upon her head was a diadem of the same white fiery stones, and her wealth of hair hung down in its heavy crimped coils of golden glory. blushes suffused her cheeks and contrasted well with her snowy brow, whilst her liquid violet eyes shone with the passionate tenderness of a new-born subtle desire, as her white bosoms rose and fell in responsive harmony to the great joy surging and swelling within her heart! her white shapely arms were bare from the shoulder, and round each wrist was a broad bracelet of fine gold, united by a slender chain of the same precious metal, which hung down looped nearly to her feet. every inch a peerless queen she looked as she stood facing the altar, by her father's side, radiant with happiness, proud in her conquest, and conscious of her victory, as only a woman can be who weds the man of her choice for love. in a few moments the soul-inspiring music ceased, although its strains were already drowned in the tumult to all but those standing near the players. then the heralds again blew blasts upon their trumpets, as a signal for silence; and as the last echoes of their brazen call died away, echri stepped forward and said: "brethren, we are assembled here to celebrate one of the most solemn rites of our holy church; ye to witness, and i to perform, the ceremony of marriage between the beloved daughter of our temporal king, and a man who hath journeyed hither from the star-world earth, by us called ramos. god works his mighty will in divers ways; and in this union of hearts to-day, we see the beginning of the union of worlds. god, in wondrous apocalypse, hath promised this united universe to his now scattered people, and in his wisdom hath ordained that ramos and gathma shall first be linked together in the chain that is to spread unbroken round creation. throughout gathma's long and glorious march through time, no such union as we celebrate to-day hath ever been; it is an epoch in our history, and is pregnant with importance to the peoples that dwell on ramos and on here. more than usual solemnity hath, therefore, attached itself to this nuptial rite to-day; and it is my holy duty to inspire thoughts among ye which, although unusual at such ceremonies as these, are in full keeping with the one we now proceed to celebrate." "echri's words produced a great effect, and the breathless silence was even painfully intense when he ceased to speak. at this point the king turned towards echri, saying: "it is scarcely meet of me to interrupt thy holy offices; but, as thou hast well said, this ceremony stands in our annals alone; and that being so, i command indulgence." "proceed, o king, for thy words are wisdom," echri answered, with white head bowed in loyal reverence. "echri, as thou knowest, during all the countless ages of our royal race, it hath been the unvarying custom for the sons and daughters of our ancient and illustrious house to wed with those of high degree. our princes have taken unto themselves princesses to wife; and our princesses have had princes found them for husbands. our beloved daughter shall not break this unchanging edict, for i now create her spouse, this man from far-off ramos, a prince of our royal race, and instal him here and now with all the rights, privileges, and dignities pertaining to such rank." then addressing graham, who stood listening to the king's words in bewilderment, he continued: "man of ramos, by the ordeal of fire, and by the right of conquest, thou hast well merited the honour and the dignity i do now confer upon thee. no longer art thou harry graham, of earth or ramos; henceforth, as prince tihernah, of edos, shalt thou be known," and taking the gold sword from the minister standing by, he presented it to graham, with the roll of parchment and the seals confirming the rank to which he had just been exalted. graham's few stammering words of thanks were stopped by the king, who, interrupting him, smilingly commanded the wedding service to proceed. once more did echri step forward, and bade volinè and graham stand side by side before him at the altar. then, taking the slender chain of fine gold which connected the bracelets on volinè's wrists, he commanded graham to grasp it in his left hand and to break it asunder, saying as he did so: "the bondage of thy maidenhood this man hath broken; henceforward, in thy state of wifehood, shalt thou only cleave to him, and him only, who hath set thee free. "volinè, doth thou enter this state of thine own will, and prepared to abide by the conditions and fulfil the duties of thy sacred office as wife to him?" "even so, o holy father." "prince tihernah, thou takest this maiden unto thee of thine own will, and art thou prepared to abide by the conditions and fulfil the duties of thy sacred office as husband to her?" "even so, o holy father." then echri, taking volinè's left hand, placed it in graham's right, and as they stood thus together, the two hundred priests commenced to swing their incense-pots, and to sing a solemn chant in sweet harmonious voice. the singing and the incense-throwing having ceased, one of the aged priests attendant on echri came forward and gave to him an instrument, fashioned very like a lancet, but with a long carved handle of solid gold, embossed with gems. taking volinè's right hand in his, he pricked her arm below the elbow so that blood did flow, yet causing her no apparent pain. then taking graham's left hand, he proceeded to do the same unto him; and when the blood trickled down, he crossed volinè's arm and his, letting the two streams of blood intermingle in a tiny crimson torrent. "blood is life; so therefore let the lives of this man and maid mingle and fuse together that they do now and henceforward, until death, be one. may the arrows of god's wrath o'ertake all they who seek by temptation, force, or stealth, to break this bond asunder; and may his holy blessing rest upon ye both, as well as upon the unborn posterity within ye, for man and wife ye have now become!" this was all. yet the bridal ceremony was solemn and imposing to a degree no man could conceive, who had not witnessed it. as soon as all was over, the grand procession returned in the order that it entered, with the exception that volinè walked out blushing and smiling, leaning on her husband's arm. soon afterwards the assembly dispersed themselves, and the grand bridal feast was served to a thousand special guests. the gay and festive scene at the bridal banquet was little less imposing than the nuptial ceremony. the bride and bridegroom sat on the king's right hand, at the head of the table, both looking supremely happy, and both, if we mistake not, heartily wishing that the feast was over, and they could enjoy their new-found bliss entirely by themselves. the banquet over, volinè and harry had yet one more ordeal to pass, and this was the grand procession of triumph in which they were conducted to their own apartment--accompanied by the strains of music and the voice of song; by white-robed virgins, emblematical of innocence; by sad-faced priests, and officers of state; by high-born dames and nobles--all, according to ancient custom, bent upon seeing the last of the beautiful bride and her handsome groom at their chamber's threshold. here we draw the veil before the consummation of highest human happiness; for the tender, passionate secrets of the bridal chamber are too sweet and too holy to be made privy of all men! [footnote 1: this portion of the narrative is in the handwriting of john temple.--ed.] chapter xx. the last words from yonder. days and weeks have come and gone since the events recorded in the previous chapter. for seven days after the wedding, edos was entirely given up to feasting, to rejoicing, and to revelry. of graham--prince tihernah now--and his beautiful wife, we saw little during this interval; for the day following their marriage they left edos, to spend their honeymoon at the stately dwelling which had been given to them by the king for their own private use. both temple and the doctor have come in for their share of honours, each having received a title conferring many privileges. as soon as the actual wedding festivities were over, the doctor was hard at work again, busy with his investigations, and planning out in microscopic detail project after project, for the ultimate benefit of humanity. he was a very titan in his labours. he had called together--under the direct patronage of the king--in congress all the leading scientists of gathma, all the wise men of helmath, deeply skilled in the arts and sciences, with whom he discussed his plans and projects. the greatest and the most important of these was one for establishing regular communication between earth and mars. his views were accepted by his scientific compeers with the wildest enthusiasm, and a society was formed forthwith, pledged to carry out the daring scheme. the loss of the _sirius_ did not prove so disastrous, after all. there are cunning artificers and skilful engineers in many parts of gathma, able to work out the doctor's designs with even greater exactness than the men of earth. another point, vastly favouring the doctor's plans, was the wonderful development of electrical science, a branch of knowledge only in its infancy on earth. how this marvellous force has become utterly subservient to human will, in gathma, has been dimly hinted at in many parts of our narrative; but doctor hermann, whether wisely or not, has deemed it best to say little until we return to our native earth again. already a new carriage is being constructed on the same plan as the _sirius_, but embodying many improvements, some of them the result of our experience on the way hither, others the suggestions of cleverer engineers than we. several years must of necessity elapse before the grand experiment will be tried, as the doctor is anxious to acquire as much information as possible before returning. already his five-and-sixty years of life begin to press heavily upon him, and he feels that if he once gets back to earth, he will not be equal to the hardships and the risks of another journey here. younger men, we doubt not, will be eager and willing to make this awful plunge across the sky, as soon as the tidings of our glorious success reach earth, and they are put in possession of the secrets that will bear them triumphantly here. and now, as these manuscripts already exceed in bulk and weight the measure that has been allowed them by doctor hermann in his calculations when making the machine that is to attempt to bear them to earth, but few words are we permitted to say. the result of our enterprise has been one unqualified triumph. many perils, many hardships, many dangers have been encountered and have been overcome, as the reader of this stirring story, which is but a fragment of what we have to tell, already knows. we have piles upon piles of manuscripts dealing with scientific, social, and religious subjects; folios upon folios of sketches portraying objects upon which the eyes of earthly man have never rested, and of which he has not the faintest conception. a few of these we send with this. not only are we enriched with the knowledge we have gained for ourselves, but we are heavy-laden with the results of unnumbered centuries of scientific research, conducted by accomplished philosophers here. their discoveries in the science of astronomy are marvellous, and make us look upon our own attainments in this direction with supreme pity. the conditions of life upon this planet are exceptionally favourable to the advancement of this science, the grand age of the astronomers permitting them to perfect experiments and calculations, and observe phenomena which on our own world have to be left to posterity. many wondrous things have they told us of the movements of our own earth, not the least remarkable being a sudden change in the inclination of her axis, four thousand two hundred and twenty-five years ago--that awful catastrophe, as we read in our own holy records, that flooded parts of the world even to the summit of her mountains, and so changed the conditions of life upon her surface that all creatures that dwell thereon have not recovered, and never will recover, from its direful results. never can we forget the feelings of awe that crept over us as we read the record of our own tribulation and woe of our own fall from physical mightiness to nothingness, as observed--actually observed--by those men of gathma, who scrutinised the heavens with such wondrous skill in days when the science of the firmament, with us, still lay unquickened in the womb of time's futurity! there in those stirring records, too, we read of the changing aspect of our own polar regions, as viewed from gathma, more than thirty millions of miles away--of how the polar crescents of snow spread themselves lower and lower, higher and higher, devastating and depopulating continents! the attainments of zoologists are none the less grand. evolution, a theory that only dawned on earthly minds with the teaching of pythagoras, about two thousand four hundred years ago, and was only elaborated towards the close of the nineteenth century of the christian era, has here passed from speculation into fact, through the uninterrupted researches of ten thousand times ten thousand years! here has the human animal confessed his glorious unbroken descent from lower types, for the proofs of his ancestry are complete, and his wondrous descent doth only magnify his creator's glory in his sight. he has no bigoted past to wrestle with, and to shake his reason; no genesis to warp his judgment, or to stay the march of his intellect by saying: "things are so since time began; man's wisdom and his knowledge are false!" even to summarise our impressions of this beautiful planet-world of mars, or gathma, would require the space already taken by this narrative. but what appealed most forcibly to us, after a long sojourn upon its fair surface, was the vastness and stability of everything--its freedom from crime and from strife; the crusted age of all its institutions and customs; the superiority of its uniform religious dogma over our own divers beliefs; the calm dignity of its civilised inhabitants; and the arrangement of all things to harmonise with the extraordinary longevity of its people. in fine, it is a world at the very zenith of its long and gradually accumulated splendour--an ideal world at the summit of its glorious course, which can only be described as the bright and comely heir of time itself! having witnessed the splendours of this sister-world, and knowing the indescribable benefits which may accrue to the men of earth through intercourse with its people, we are anxious that our fellows shall partake, and that speedily, of the riches with which this world is blessed. we have therefore written this narrative partly as a message of hope, as tidings of humanity's great coming joy, trusting that it may reach earth, and be found, and published to all men. we may soon follow our messenger across the sky. even by the time that it falls upon the surface of our native world, we may be on our way thereto, bringing with us new ideas, novel inventions from the planet we have visited. we reserve the disclosure of our discoveries, and our secrets, until we reach earth again; for we feel it due to ourselves that we should proclaim them in person; and practical john temple considers that we should at least receive some financial return for the information it has cost us so much to obtain. one, however, of our little band elects to remain behind in gathma. graham, as yet, evinces no desire to visit his native world. the tender ties that bind him here are stronger than those earthly ones which may still linger within him. besides, we hear that already his union with this handsome maid of edos has been blessed! and that all in good time the link between earth and here will be forged yet more strongly in volinè's maternity! two days after the above lines were penned, temple and the doctor are engaged in an anxious consultation. the despatch of our manuscripts to earth forms the subject of discussion. the delicate-looking piece of mechanism lying on the table before us has been thoroughly tested, and proved successful. it is a small electrical engine, carrying enough motive force to propel it beyond the limits of this planet's attraction, attached to a cylinder of iron, in which our precious message is first to be encased, and then the two halves fixed together as one. "temple, if we can only get our messenger far enough into space, it will not be affected by attraction here, and the next body that should draw it onwards will be the earth." "well, i have but to add a few more lines, and then all may be sealed, and we can despatch our message on its stupendous flight across space. are your notes complete?" "a few more words of instruction, and i have done." on the morrow following this discussion our message is about to be despatched. it is a great day in edos. from far and wide the people of gathma have journeyed hither to see our words depart. in two hours' time we seal these manuscripts in their iron covering, and attach them to the motors. time is speeding on. the scene around us here is a curious and imposing one. we stand upon the summit of one of the hills on which the fair city of edos is built. a forge and brawny smiths, who have come hither from pamax to complete our task, are in the foreground; the king, surrounded by ministers and servants, by princes and priests, watches doctor hermann and temple with heightening wonderment, the latter busy writing these few last words. volinè and her husband peer over temple's shoulder as his fluent pen races across the sheets of white paper, describing this closing scene. a dense multitude lines the background, equally filled with curiosity and wonder. "what message, o king, may i send from you to my own people on the star-world earth?" said temple, pausing for a moment and turning towards the king of gathma. "a message of peace and goodwill! tell thy brothers yonder that the hand of fellowship is reaching out towards them from our world to thine, and that great things shall come to pass for their good and ours." "and your last words, doctor?" "are words of encouragement to the men of science at home. to my dear old friend darwin i especially address them. tell my brethren that i long to be amongst them, once more, to tell of my discoveries, and to increase the scope of their labours to an extent they have hitherto not dared even to dream!" "have you aught to say, graham--or, rather, prince tihernah?" said temple, smiling. "i will answer for him," said volinè, playfully. "tell the dwellers on thy star-world yonder that when the carriage which this message heralds doth arrive thereon, a princess of the royal house of gathma shall visit them." "let it be as you say, darling. if it is your wish to visit my world out there beyond the sky, then will i relinquish my desire to remain here in gathma always, and go with you; for, of a truth, there is nothing that i can deny you," said graham, his eyes filled with admiration and love for his peerless wife. we are now about to place this last page of our manuscript with the roll of others in their iron resting-place, and in ten more minutes from now they will have winged their flight away! adieu! "now, my comrades, your signatures, please." _signed_ heinrich hermann, f.r.s., john temple, harry graham, m.inst.c.e. adieu! adieu!! * * * * * _end of extract from the mss._ distributed proofreaders the country of the blind and other stories h. g. wells [illustration: he stopped, and then made a dash to escape from their closing ranks.] introduction the enterprise of messrs. t. nelson & sons and the friendly accommodation of messrs. macmillan render possible this collection in one cover of all the short stories by me that i care for any one to read again. except for the two series of linked incidents that make up the bulk of the book called _tales of space and time_, no short story of mine of the slightest merit is excluded from this volume. many of very questionable merit find a place; it is an inclusive and not an exclusive gathering. and the task of selection and revision brings home to me with something of the effect of discovery that i was once an industrious writer of short stories, and that i am no longer anything of the kind. i have not written one now for quite a long time, and in the past five or six years i have made scarcely one a year. the bulk of the fifty or sixty tales from which this present three-and-thirty have been chosen dates from the last century. this edition is more definitive than i supposed when first i arranged for it. in the presence of so conclusive an ebb and cessation an almost obituary manner seems justifiable. i find it a little difficult to disentangle the causes that have restricted the flow of these inventions. it has happened, i remark, to others as well as to myself, and in spite of the kindliest encouragement to continue from editors and readers. there was a time when life bubbled with short stories; they were always coming to the surface of my mind, and it is no deliberate change of will that has thus restricted my production. it is rather, i think, a diversion of attention to more sustained and more exacting forms. it was my friend mr. c.l. hind who set that spring going. he urged me to write short stories for the _pall mall budget_, and persuaded me by his simple and buoyant conviction that i could do what he desired. there existed at the time only the little sketch, "the jilting of jane," included in this volume--at least, that is the only tolerable fragment of fiction i find surviving from my pre-lewis-hind period. but i set myself, so encouraged, to the experiment of inventing moving and interesting things that could be given vividly in the little space of eight or ten such pages as this, and for a time i found it a very entertaining pursuit indeed. mr. hind's indicating finger had shown me an amusing possibility of the mind. i found that, taking almost anything as a starting-point and letting my thoughts play about it, there would presently come out of the darkness, in a manner quite inexplicable, some absurd or vivid little incident more or less relevant to that initial nucleus. little men in canoes upon sunlit oceans would come floating out of nothingness, incubating the eggs of prehistoric monsters unawares; violent conflicts would break out amidst the flower-beds of suburban gardens; i would discover i was peering into remote and mysterious worlds ruled by an order logical indeed but other than our common sanity. the 'nineties was a good and stimulating period for a short-story writer. mr. kipling had made his astonishing advent with a series of little blue-grey books, whose covers opened like window-shutters to reveal the dusty sun-glare and blazing colours of the east; mr. barrie had demonstrated what could be done in a little space through the panes of his _window in thrums_. the _national observer_ was at the climax of its career of heroic insistence upon lyrical brevity and a vivid finish, and mr. frank harris was not only printing good short stories by other people, but writing still better ones himself in the dignified pages of the _fortnightly review. longman's magazine_, too, represented a _clientèle_ of appreciative short-story readers that is now scattered. then came the generous opportunities of the _yellow book_, and the _national observer_ died only to give birth to the _new review_. no short story of the slightest distinction went for long unrecognised. the sixpenny popular magazines had still to deaden down the conception of what a short story might be to the imaginative limitation of the common reader--and a maximum length of six thousand words. short stories broke out everywhere. kipling was writing short stories; barrie, stevenson, frank-harris; max beerbohm wrote at least one perfect one, "the happy hypocrite"; henry james pursued his wonderful and inimitable bent; and among other names that occur to me, like a mixed handful of jewels drawn from a bag, are george street, morley roberts, george gissing, ella d'arcy, murray gilchrist, e. nesbit, stephen crane, joseph conrad, edwin pugh, jerome k. jerome, kenneth graham, arthur morrison, marriott watson, george moore, grant allen, george egerton, henry harland, pett ridge, w. w. jacobs (who alone seems inexhaustible). i dare say i could recall as many more names with a little effort. i may be succumbing to the infirmities of middle age, but i do not think the present decade can produce any parallel to this list, or what is more remarkable, that the later achievements in this field of any of the survivors from that time, with the sole exception of joseph conrad, can compare with the work they did before 1900. it seems to me this outburst of short stories came not only as a phase in literary development, but also as a phase in the development of the individual writers concerned. it is now quite unusual to see any adequate criticism of short stories in english. i do not know how far the decline in short-story writing may not be due to that. every sort of artist demands human responses, and few men can contrive to write merely for a publisher's cheque and silence, however reassuring that cheque may be. a mad millionaire who commissioned masterpieces to burn would find it impossible to buy them. scarcely any artist will hesitate in the choice between money and attention; and it was primarily for that last and better sort of pay that the short stories of the 'nineties were written. people talked about them tremendously, compared them, and ranked them. that was the thing that mattered. it was not, of course, all good talk, and we suffered then, as now, from the _à priori_ critic. just as nowadays he goes about declaring that the work of such-and-such a dramatist is all very amusing and delightful, but "it isn't a play," so we' had a great deal of talk about _the_ short story, and found ourselves measured by all kinds of arbitrary standards. there was a tendency to treat the short story as though it was as definable a form as the sonnet, instead of being just exactly what any one of courage and imagination can get told in twenty minutes' reading or so. it was either mr. edward garnett or mr. george moore in a violently anti-kipling mood who invented the distinction between the short story and the anecdote. the short story was maupassant; the anecdote was damnable. it was a quite infernal comment in its way, because it permitted no defence. fools caught it up and used it freely. nothing is so destructive in a field of artistic effort as a stock term of abuse. anyone could say of any short story, "a mere anecdote," just as anyone can say "incoherent!" of any novel or of any sonata that isn't studiously monotonous. the recession of enthusiasm for this compact, amusing form is closely associated in my mind with that discouraging imputation. one felt hopelessly open to a paralysing and unanswerable charge, and one's ease and happiness in the garden of one's fancies was more and more marred by the dread of it. it crept into one's mind, a distress as vague and inexpugnable as a sea fog on a spring morning, and presently one shivered and wanted to go indoors...it is the absurd fate of the imaginative writer that he should be thus sensitive to atmospheric conditions. but after one has died as a maker one may still live as a critic, and i will confess i am all for laxness and variety in this as in every field of art. insistence upon rigid forms and austere unities seems to me the instinctive reaction of the sterile against the fecund. it is the tired man with a headache who values a work of art for what it does not contain. i suppose it is the lot of every critic nowadays to suffer from indigestion and a fatigued appreciation, and to develop a self-protective tendency towards rules that will reject, as it were, automatically the more abundant and irregular forms. but this world is not for the weary, and in the long-run it is the new and variant that matter. i refuse altogether to recognise any hard and fast type for the short story, any more than i admit any limitation upon the liberties of the small picture. the short story is a fiction that may be read in something under an hour, and so that it is moving and delightful, it does not matter whether it is as "trivial" as a japanese print of insects seen closely between grass stems, or as spacious as the prospect of the plain of italy from monte mottarone. it does not matter whether it is human or inhuman, or whether it leaves you thinking deeply or radiantly but superficially pleased. some things are more easily done as short stories than others and more abundantly done, but one of the many pleasures of short-story writing is to achieve the impossible. at any rate, that is the present writer's conception of the art of the short story, as the jolly art of making something very bright and moving; it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or beautiful or profoundly illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen to fifty minutes to read aloud. all the rest is just whatever invention and imagination and the mood can give--a vision of buttered slides on a busy day or of unprecedented worlds. in that spirit of miscellaneous expectation these stories should be received. each is intended to be a thing by itself; and if it is not too ungrateful to kindly and enterprising publishers, i would confess i would much prefer to see each printed expensively alone, and left in a little brown-paper cover to lie about a room against the needs of a quite casual curiosity. and i would rather this volume were found in the bedrooms of convalescents and in dentists' parlours and railway trains than in gentlemen's studies. i would rather have it dipped in and dipped in again than read severely through. essentially it is a miscellany of inventions, many of which were very pleasant to write; and its end is more than attained if some of them are refreshing and agreeable to read. i have now re-read them all, and i am glad to think i wrote them. i like them, but i cannot tell how much the associations of old happinesses gives them a flavour for me. i make no claims for them and no apology; they will be read as long as people read them. things written either live or die; unless it be for a place of judgment upon academic impostors, there is no apologetic intermediate state. i may add that i have tried to set a date to most of these stories, but that they are not arranged in strictly chronological order. h. g. wells. contents. i. the jilting of jane ii. the cone iii. the stolen bacillus iv. the flowering of the strange orchid v. the avu observatory vi. aepyornis island vii. the remarkable case of davidson's eyes. viii. the lord of the dynamos. ix. the moth x. the treasure in the forest xi. the story of the late mr. elvesham xii. under the knife xiii. the sea raiders xiv. the obliterated man xv. the plattner story xvi. the red room xvii. the purple pileus xviii. a slip under the microscope xix. the crystal egg xx. the star xxi. the man who could work miracles xxii. a vision of judgment xxiii. jimmy goggles the god xxiv. miss winchelsea's heart xxv. a dream of armageddon xxvi. the valley of spiders xxvii. the new accelerator xxviii. the truth about pyecraft xxix. the magic shop xxx. the empire of the ants xxxi. the door in the wall xxxii. the country of the blind xxxiii. the beautiful suit i. the jilting of jane. as i sit writing in my study, i can hear our jane bumping her way downstairs with a brush and dust-pan. she used in the old days to sing hymn tunes, or the british national song for the time being, to these instruments, but latterly she has been silent and even careful over her work. time was when i prayed with fervour for such silence, and my wife with sighs for such care, but now they have come we are not so glad as we might have anticipated we should be. indeed, i would rejoice secretly, though it may be unmanly weakness to admit it, even to hear jane sing "daisy," or, by the fracture of any plate but one of euphemia's best green ones, to learn that the period of brooding has come to an end. yet how we longed to hear the last of jane's young man before we heard the last of him! jane was always very free with her conversation to my wife, and discoursed admirably in the kitchen on a variety of topics--so well, indeed, that i sometimes left my study door open--our house is a small one--to partake of it. but after william came, it was always william, nothing but william; william this and william that; and when we thought william was worked out and exhausted altogether, then william all over again. the engagement lasted altogether three years; yet how she got introduced to william, and so became thus saturated with him, was always a secret. for my part, i believe it was at the street corner where the rev. barnabas baux used to hold an open-air service after evensong on sundays. young cupids were wont to flit like moths round the paraffin flare of that centre of high church hymn-singing. i fancy she stood singing hymns there, out of memory and her imagination, instead of coming home to get supper, and william came up beside her and said, "hello!" "hello yourself!" she said; and etiquette being satisfied, they proceeded to talk together. as euphemia has a reprehensible way of letting her servants talk to her, she soon heard of him. "he is _such_ a respectable young man, ma'am," said jane, "you don't know." ignoring the slur cast on her acquaintance, my wife inquired further about this william. "he is second porter at maynard's, the draper's," said jane, "and gets eighteen shillings--nearly a pound--a week, m'm; and when the head porter leaves he will be head porter. his relatives are quite superior people, m'm. not labouring people at all. his father was a greengrosher, m'm, and had a churnor, and he was bankrup' twice. and one of his sisters is in a home for the dying. it will be a very good match for me, m'm," said jane, "me being an orphan girl." "then you are engaged to him?" asked my wife. "not engaged, ma'am; but he is saving money to buy a ring--hammyfist." "well, jane, when you are properly engaged to him you may ask him round here on sunday afternoons, and have tea with him in the kitchen;" for my euphemia has a motherly conception of her duty towards her maid-servants. and presently the amethystine ring was being worn about the house, even with ostentation, and jane developed a new way of bringing in the joint so that this gage was evident. the elder miss maitland was aggrieved by it, and told my wife that servants ought not to wear rings. but my wife looked it up in _enquire within_ and _mrs. motherly's book of household management_, and found no prohibition. so jane remained with this happiness added to her love. the treasure of jane's heart appeared to me to be what respectable people call a very deserving young man. "william, ma'am," said jane one day suddenly, with ill-concealed complacency, as she counted out the beer bottles, "william, ma'am, is a teetotaller. yes, m'm; and he don't smoke. smoking, ma'am," said jane, as one who reads the heart, "_do_ make such a dust about. beside the waste of money. _and_ the smell. however, i suppose they got to do it--some of them..." william was at first a rather shabby young man of the ready-made black coat school of costume. he had watery gray eyes, and a complexion appropriate to the brother of one in a home for the dying. euphemia did not fancy him very much, even at the beginning. his eminent respectability was vouched for by an alpaca umbrella, from which he never allowed himself to be parted. "he goes to chapel," said jane. "his papa, ma'am----" "his _what_, jane?" "his papa, ma'am, was church: but mr. maynard is a plymouth brother, and william thinks it policy, ma'am, to go there too. mr. maynard comes and talks to him quite friendly when they ain't busy, about using up all the ends of string, and about his soul. he takes a lot of notice, do mr. maynard, of william, and the way he saves his soul, ma'am." presently we heard that the head porter at maynard's had left, and that william was head porter at twenty-three shillings a week. "he is really kind of over the man who drives the van," said jane, "and him married, with three children." and she promised in the pride of her heart to make interest for us with william to favour us so that we might get our parcels of drapery from maynard's with exceptional promptitude. after this promotion a rapidly-increasing prosperity came upon jane's young man. one day we learned that mr. maynard had given william a book. "'smiles' 'elp yourself,' it's called," said jane; "but it ain't comic. it tells you how to get on in the world, and some what william read to me was _lovely_, ma'am." euphemia told me of this, laughing, and then she became suddenly grave. "do you know, dear," she said, "jane said one thing i did not like. she had been quiet for a minute, and then she suddenly remarked, 'william is a lot above me, ma'am, ain't he?'" "i don't see anything in that," i said, though later my eyes were to be opened. one sunday afternoon about that time i was sitting at my writing-desk-possibly i was reading a good book--when a something went by the window. i heard a startled exclamation behind me, and saw euphemia with her hands clasped together and her eyes dilated. "george," she said in an awe-stricken whisper, "did you see?" then we both spoke to one another at the same moment, slowly and solemnly: "_a silk hat! yellow gloves! a new umbrella!_" "it may be my fancy, dear," said euphemia; "but his tie was very like yours. i believe jane keeps him in ties. she told me a little while ago, in a way that implied volumes about the rest of your costume, 'the master _do_ wear pretty ties, ma'am.' and he echoes all your novelties." the young couple passed our window again on their way to their customary walk. they were arm in arm. jane looked exquisitely proud, happy, and uncomfortable, with new white cotton gloves, and william, in the silk hat, singularly genteel! that was the culmination of jane's happiness. when she returned, "mr. maynard has been talking to william, ma'am," she said, "and he is to serve customers, just like the young shop gentlemen, during the next sale. and if he gets on, he is to be made an assistant, ma'am, at the first opportunity. he has got to be as gentlemanly as he can, ma'am; and if he ain't, ma'am, he says it won't be for want of trying. mr. maynard has took a great fancy to him." "he _is_ getting on, jane," said my wife. "yes, ma'am," said jane thoughtfully; "he _is_ getting on." and she sighed. that next sunday as i drank my tea i interrogated my wife. "how is this sunday different from all other sundays, little woman? what has happened? have you altered the curtains, or re-arranged the furniture, or where is the indefinable difference of it? are you wearing your hair in a new way without warning me? i perceive a change clearly, and i cannot for the life of me say what it is." then my wife answered in her most tragic voice, "george," she said, "that william has not come near the place to-day! and jane is crying her heart out upstairs." there followed a period of silence. jane, as i have said, stopped singing about the house, and began to care for our brittle possessions, which struck my wife as being a very sad sign indeed. the next sunday, and the next, jane asked to go out, "to walk with william," and my wife, who never attempts to extort confidences, gave her permission, and asked no questions. on each occasion jane came back looking flushed and very determined. at last one day she became communicative. "william is being led away," she remarked abruptly, with a catching of the breath, apropos of tablecloths. "yes, m'm. she is a milliner, and she can play on the piano." "i thought," said my wife, "that you went out with him on sunday." "not out with him, m'm--after him. i walked along by the side of them, and told her he was engaged to me." "dear me, jane, did you? what did they do?" "took no more notice of me than if i was dirt. so i told her she should suffer for it." "it could not have been a very agreeable walk, jane." "not for no parties, ma'am." "i wish," said jane, "i could play the piano, ma'am. but anyhow, i don't mean to let _her_ get him away from me. she's older than him, and her hair ain't gold to the roots, ma'am." it was on the august bank holiday that the crisis came. we do not clearly know the details of the fray, but only such fragments as poor jane let fall. she came home dusty, excited, and with her heart hot within her. the milliner's mother, the milliner, and william had made a party to the art museum at south kensington, i think. anyhow, jane had calmly but firmly accosted them somewhere in the streets, and asserted her right to what, in spite of the consensus of literature, she held to be her inalienable property. she did, i think, go so far as to lay hands on him. they dealt with her in a crushingly superior way. they "called a cab." there was a "scene," william being pulled away into the four-wheeler by his future wife and mother-in-law from the reluctant hands of our discarded jane. there were threats of giving her "in charge." "my poor jane!" said my wife, mincing veal as though she was mincing william. "it's a shame of them. i would think no more of him. he is not worthy of you." "no, m'm," said jane. "he _is_ weak. "but it's that woman has done it," said jane. she was never known to bring herself to pronounce "that woman's" name or to admit her girlishness. "i can't think what minds some women must have--to try and get a girl's young man away from her. but there, it only hurts to talk about it," said jane. thereafter our house rested from william. but there was something in the manner of jane's scrubbing the front doorstep or sweeping out the rooms, a certain viciousness, that persuaded me that the story had not yet ended. "please, m'm, may i go and see a wedding tomorrow?" said jane one day. my wife knew by instinct whose wedding. "do you think it is wise, jane?" she said. "i would like to see the last of him," said jane. "my dear," said my wife, fluttering into my room about twenty minutes after jane had started, "jane has been to the boot-hole and taken all the left-off boots and shoes, and gone off to the wedding with them in a bag. surely she cannot mean--" "jane," i said, "is developing character. let us hope for the best." jane came back with a pale, hard face. all the boots seemed to be still in her bag, at which my wife heaved a premature sigh of relief. we heard her go upstairs and replace the boots with considerable emphasis. "quite a crowd at the wedding, ma'am," she said presently, in a purely conversational style, sitting in our little kitchen, and scrubbing the potatoes; "and such a lovely day for them." she proceeded to numerous other details, clearly avoiding some cardinal incident. "it was all extremely respectable and nice, ma'am; but _her_ father didn't wear a black coat, and looked quite out of place, ma'am. mr. piddingquirk--" "_who_?" "mr. piddingquirk--william that was, ma'am--had white gloves, and a coat like a clergyman, and a lovely chrysanthemum. he looked so nice, ma'am. and there was red carpet down, just like for gentlefolks. and they say he gave the clerk four shillings, ma'am. it was a real kerridge they had--not a fly. when they came out of church there was rice-throwing, and her two little sisters dropping dead flowers. and someone threw a slipper, and then i threw a boot--" "threw a _boot_, jane!" "yes, ma'am. aimed at her. but it hit _him_. yes, ma'am, hard. gev him a black eye, i should think. i only threw that one. i hadn't the heart to try again. all the little boys cheered when it hit him." after an interval--"i am sorry the boot hit _him_." another pause. the potatoes were being scrubbed violently. "he always _was_ a bit above me, you know, ma'am. and he was led away." the potatoes were more than finished. jane rose sharply with a sigh, and rapped the basin down on the table. "i don't care," she said. "i don't care a rap. he will find out his mistake yet. it serves me right. i was stuck up about him. i ought not to have looked so high. and i am glad things are as things are." my wife was in the kitchen, seeing to the higher cookery. after the confession of the boot-throwing, she must have watched poor jane fuming with a certain dismay in those brown eyes of hers. but i imagine they softened again very quickly, and then jane's must have met them. "oh, ma'am," said jane, with an astonishing change of note, "think of all that _might_ have been! oh, ma'am, i _could_ have been so happy! i ought to have known, but i didn't know...you're very kind to let me talk to you, ma'am...for it's hard on me, ma'am...it's har-r-r-r-d--" and i gather that euphemia so far forgot herself as to let jane sob out some of the fullness of her heart on a sympathetic shoulder. my euphemia, thank heaven, has never properly grasped the importance of "keeping up her position." and since that fit of weeping, much of the accent of bitterness has gone out of jane's scrubbing and brush work. indeed, something passed the other day with the butcher-boy--but that scarcely belongs to this story. however, jane is young still, and time and change are at work with her. we all have our sorrows, but i do not believe very much in the existence of sorrows that never heal. ii. the cone. the night was hot and overcast, the sky red-rimmed with the lingering sunset of midsummer. they sat at the open window, trying to fancy the air was fresher there. the trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening. farther were the three lights of the railway signal against the lowering sky. the man and woman spoke to one another in low tones. "he does not suspect?" said the man, a little nervously. "not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritated her. "he thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. he has no imagination, no poetry." "none of these men of iron have," he said sententiously. "they have no hearts." "_he_ has not," she said. she turned her discontented face towards the window. the distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of the tender. as the train passed, there was a glare of light above the cutting and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim grey of the embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train, smoke, and sound in one abrupt gulp. "this country was all fresh and beautiful once," he said; "and now--it is gehenna. down that way--nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching fire and dust into the face of heaven...but what does it matter? an end comes, an end to all this cruelty..._to-morrow."_ he spoke the last word in a whisper. "_to-morrow,"_ she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staring out of the window. "dear!" he said, putting his hand on hers. she turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another's. hers softened to his gaze. "my dear one!" she said, and then: "it seems so strange--that you should have come into my life like this--to open--" she paused. "to open?" he said. "all this wonderful world"--she hesitated, and spoke still more softly-"this world of _love_ to me." then suddenly the door clicked and closed. they turned their heads, and he started violently back. in the shadow of the room stood a great shadowy figure-silent. they saw the face dimly in the half-light, with unexpressive dark patches under the pent-house brows. every muscle in raut's body suddenly became tense. when could the door have opened? what had he heard? had he heard all? what had he seen? a tumult of questions. the new-comer's voice came at last, after a pause that seemed interminable. "well?" he said. "i was afraid i had missed you, horrocks," said the man at the window, gripping the window-ledge with his hand. his voice was unsteady. the clumsy figure of horrocks came forward out of the shadow. he made no answer to raut's remark. for a moment he stood above them. the woman's heart was cold within her. "i told mr. raut it was just possible you might come back," she said in a voice that never quivered. horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the chair by her little work-table. his big hands were clenched; one saw now the fire of his eyes under the shadow of his brows. he was trying to get his breath. his eyes went from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had trusted, and then back to the woman. by this time and for the moment all three half understood one another. yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things that choked them. it was the husband's voice that broke the silence at last. "you wanted to see me?" he said to raut. raut started as he spoke. "i came to see you," he said, resolved to lie to the last. "yes," said horrocks. "you promised," said raut, "to show me some fine effects of moonlight and smoke." "i promised to show you some fine effects of moonlight and smoke," repeated horrocks in a colourless voice. "and i thought i might catch you to-night before you went down to the works," proceeded raut, "and come with you." there was another pause. did the man mean to take the thing coolly? did he, after all, know? how long had he been in the room? yet even at the moment when they heard the door, their attitudes ... horrocks glanced at the profile of the woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. then he glanced at raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly. "of course," he said, "i promised to show you the works under their proper dramatic conditions. it's odd how i could have forgotten." "if i am troubling you--" began raut. horrocks started again. a new light had suddenly come into the sultry gloom of his eyes. "not in the least." he said. "have you been telling mr. raut of all these contrasts of flame and shadow you think so splendid?" said the woman, turning now to her husband for the first time, her confidence creeping back again, her voice just one half-note too high--"that dreadful theory of yours that machinery is beautiful, and everything else in the world ugly. i thought he would not spare you, mr. raut. it's his great theory, his one discovery in art." "i am slow to make discoveries," said horrocks grimly, damping her suddenly. "but what i discover ..." he stopped. "well?" she said. "nothing;" and suddenly he rose to his feet. "i promised to show you the works," he said to raut, and put his big, clumsy hand on his friend's shoulder. "and you are ready to go?" "quite," said raut, and stood up also. there was another pause. each of them peered through the indistinctness of the dusk at the other two. horrocks' hand still rested on raut's shoulder. raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial after all. but mrs. horrocks knew her husband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in her mind took a vague shape of physical evil. "very well," said horrocks, and, dropping his hand, turned towards the door. "my hat?" raut looked round in the half-light. "that's my work-basket," said mrs. horrocks with a gust of hysterical laughter. their hands came together on the back of the chair. "here it is!" he said. she had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but she could not frame a word. "don't go!" and "beware of him!" struggled in her mind, and the swift moment passed. "got it?" said horrocks, standing with the door half open. raut stepped towards him. "better say goodbye to mrs. horrocks," said the ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before. raut started and turned. "good-evening, mrs. horrocks," he said, and their hands touched. horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in him towards men. raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at her, her husband followed. she stood motionless while raut's light footfall and her husband's heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passage together. the front door slammed heavily. she went to the window, moving slowly, and stood watching, leaning forward. the two men appeared for a moment at the gateway in the road, passed under the street lamp, and were hidden by the black masses of the shrubbery. the lamplight fell for a moment on their faces, showing only unmeaning pale patches, telling nothing of what she still feared, and doubted, and craved vainly to know. then she sank down into a crouching attitude in the big arm-chair, her eyes-wide open and staring out at the red lights from the furnaces that flickered in the sky. an hour after she was still there, her attitude scarcely changed. the oppressive stillness of the evening weighed heavily upon raut. they went side by side down the road in silence, and in silence turned into the cinder-made byway that presently opened out the prospect of the valley. a blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valley with mystery. beyond were hanley and etruria, grey and dark masses, outlined thinly by the rare golden dots of the street lamps, and here and there a gas-lit window, or the yellow glare of some late-working factory or crowded public-house. out of the masses, clear and slender against the evening sky, rose a multitude of tall chimneys, many of them reeking, a few smokeless during a season of "play." here and there a pallid patch and ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the position of a pot-bank or a wheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky, marked some colliery where they raise the iridescent coal of the place. nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway, and half-invisible trains shunted--a steady puffing and rumbling, with every run a ringing concussion and a rhymthic series of impacts, and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steam across the further view. and to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the jeddah company blast furnaces, the central edifices of the big ironworks of which horrocks was the manager. they stood heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and the steam-hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither and thither. even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and black dust came boiling upwards towards the sky. "certainly you get some colour with your furnaces," said raut, breaking a silence that had become apprehensive. horrocks grunted. he stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning down at the dim steaming railway and the busy ironworks beyond, frowning as if he were thinking out some knotty problem. raut glanced at him and away again. "at present your moonlight effect is hardly ripe," he continued, looking upward; "the moon is still smothered by the vestiges of daylight." horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who has suddenly awakened. "vestiges of daylight? ... of course, of course." he too looked up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky. "come along," he said suddenly, and gripping raut's arm in his hand, made a move towards the path that dropped from them to the railway. raut hung back. their eyes met and saw a thousand things in a moment that their lips came near to say. horrocks's hand tightened and then relaxed. he let go, and before raut was aware of it, they were arm in arm, and walking, one unwillingly enough, down the path. "you see the fine effect of the railway signals towards burslem," said horrocks, suddenly breaking into loquacity, striding fast and tightening the grip of his elbow the while--"little green lights and red and white lights, all against the haze. you have an eye for effect, raut. it's fine. and look at those furnaces of mine, how they rise upon us as we come down the hill. that to the right is my pet--seventy feet of him. i packed him myself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five long years. i've a particular fancy for _him_. that line of red there--a lovely bit of warm orange you'd call it, raut--that's the puddlers' furnaces, and there, in the hot light, three black figures--did you see the white splash of the steam-hammer then?--that's the rolling mills. come along! clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across the floor! sheet tin, raut,--amazing stuff. glass mirrors are not in it when that stuff comes from the mill. and, squelch! there goes the hammer again. come along!" he had to stop talking to catch at his breath. his arm twisted into raut's with benumbing tightness. he had come striding down the black path towards the railway as though he was possessed. raut had not spoken a word, had simply hung back against horrocks's pull with all his strength. "i say," he said now, laughing nervously, but with an undertone of snarl in his voice, "why on earth are you nipping my arm off, horrocks, and dragging me along like this?" at length horrocks released him. his manner changed again. "nipping your arm off?" he said. "sorry. but it's you taught me the trick of walking in that friendly way." "you haven't learnt the refinements of it yet then," said raut, laughing artificially again. "by jove! i'm black and blue." horrocks offered no apology. they stood now near the bottom of the hill, close to the fence that bordered the railway. the ironworks had grown larger and spread out with their approach. they looked up to the blast furnaces now instead of down; the further view of etruria and hanley had dropped out of sight with their descent. before them, by the stile, rose a notice-board, bearing, still dimly visible, the words, "beware of the trains," half hidden by splashes of coaly mud. "fine effects," said horrocks, waving his arm. "here comes a train. the puffs of smoke, the orange glare, the round eye of light in front of it, the melodious rattle. fine effects! but these furnaces of mine used to be finer, before we shoved cones in their throats, and saved the gas." "how?" said raut. "cones?" "cones, my man, cones. i'll show you one nearer. the flames used to flare out of the open throats, great--what is it?--pillars of cloud by day, red and black smoke, and pillars of fire by night. now we run it off--in pipes, and burn it to heat the blast, and the top is shut by a cone. you'll be interested in that cone." "but every now and then," said raut, "you get a burst of fire and smoke up there." "the cone's not fixed, it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced by an equipoise. you shall see it nearer. else, of course, there'd be no way of getting fuel into the thing. every now and then the cone dips, and out comes the flare." "i see," said raut. he looked over his shoulder. "the moon gets brighter," he said. "come along," said horrocks abruptly, gripping his shoulder again, and moving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. and then came one of those swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that they leave one doubtful and reeling. half-way across, horrocks's hand suddenly clenched upon him like a vice, and swung him backward and through a half-turn, so that he looked up the line. and there a chain of lamp-lit carriage windows telescoped swiftly as it came towards them, and the red and yellow lights of an engine grew larger and larger, rushing down upon them. as he grasped what this meant, he turned his face to horrocks, and pushed with all his strength against the arm that held him back between the rails. the struggle did not last a moment. just as certain as it was that horrocks held him there, so certain was it that he had been violently lugged out of danger. "out of the way," said horrocks with a gasp, as the train came rattling by, and they stood panting by the gate into the ironworks. "i did not see it coming," said raut, still, even in spite of his own apprehensions, trying to keep up an appearance of ordinary intercourse. horrocks answered with a grunt. "the cone," he said, and then, as one who recovers himself, "i thought you did not hear." "i didn't," said raut. "i wouldn't have had you run over then for the world," said horrocks. "for a moment i lost my nerve," said raut. horrocks stood for half a minute, then turned abruptly towards the ironworks again. "see how fine these great mounds of mine, these clinker-heaps, look in the night! that truck yonder, up above there! up it goes, and out-tilts the slag. see the palpitating red stuff go sliding down the slope. as we get nearer, the heap rises up and cuts the blast furnaces. see the quiver up above the big one. not that way! this way, between the heaps. that goes to the puddling furnaces, but i want to show you the canal first." he came and took raut by the elbow, and so they went along side by side. raut answered horrocks vaguely. what, he asked himself, had really happened on the line? was he deluding himself with his own fancies, or had horrocks actually held him back in the way of the train? had he just been within an ace of being murdered? suppose this slouching, scowling monster _did_ know anything? for a minute or two then raut was really afraid for his life, but the mood passed as he reasoned with himself. after all, horrocks might have heard nothing. at any rate, he had pulled him out of the way in time. his odd manner might be due to the mere vague jealousy he had shown once before. he was talking now of the ash-heaps and the canal. "eigh?" said horrocks. "what?" said raut. "rather! the haze in the moonlight. fine!" "our canal," said horrocks, stopping suddenly. "our canal by moonlight and firelight is immense. you've never seen it? fancy that! you've spent too many of your evenings philandering up in newcastle there. i tell you, for real florid quality----but you shall see. boiling water ..." as they came out of the labyrinth of clinker-heaps and mounds of coal and ore, the noises of the rolling-mill sprang upon them suddenly, loud, near, and distinct. three shadowy workmen went by and touched their caps to horrocks. their faces were vague in the darkness. raut felt a futile impulse to address them, and before he could frame his words they passed into the shadows. horrocks pointed to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the furnaces. the hot water that cooled the tuyères came into it, some fifty yards up--a tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up from the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply about them, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black and red eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim. the shining black tower of the larger blast-furnace rose overhead out of the mist, and its tumultuous riot filled their ears. raut kept away from the edge of the water, and watched horrocks. "here it is red," said horrocks, "blood-red vapour as red and hot as sin; but yonder there, where the moonlight falls on it, and it drives across the clinker-heaps, it is as white as death." raut turned his head for a moment, and then came back hastily to his watch on horrocks. "come along to the rolling-mills," said horrocks. the threatening hold was not so evident that time, and raut felt a little reassured. but all the same, what on earth did horrocks mean about "white as death" and "red as sin"? coincidence, perhaps? they went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while, and then through the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant din the deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black, half-naked titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between the wheels, "come on," said horrocks in raut's ear; and they went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyères, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. it left one eye blinded for a while. then, with green and blue patches dancing across the dark, they went to the lift by which the trucks of ore and fuel and lime were raised to the top of the big cylinder. and out upon the narrow rail that overhung the furnace raut's doubts came upon him again. was it wise to be here? if horrocks did know--everything! do what he would, he could not resist a violent trembling. right under foot was a sheer depth of seventy feet. it was a dangerous place. they pushed by a truck of fuel to get to the railing that crowned the thing. the reek of the furnace, a sulphurous vapour streaked with pungent bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of hanley quiver. the moon was riding out now from among a drift of clouds, half-way up the sky above the undulating wooded outlines of newcastle. the steaming canal ran away from below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze of the flat fields towards burslem. "that's the cone i've been telling you of," shouted horrocks; "and, below that, sixty feet of fire and molten metal, with the air of the blast frothing through it like gas in soda-water." raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared down at the cone. the heat was intense. the boiling of the iron and the tumult of the blast made a thunderous accompaniment to horrocks's voice. but the thing had to be gone through now. perhaps, after all... "in the middle," bawled horrocks, "temperature near a thousand degrees. if _you_ were dropped into it ... flash into flame like a pinch of gunpowder in a candle. put your hand out and feel the heat of his breath. why, even up here i've seen the rain-water boiling off the trucks. and that cone there. it's a damned sight too hot for roasting cakes. the top side of it's three hundred degrees." "three hundred degrees!" said raut. "three hundred centigrade, mind!" said horrocks. "it will boil the blood out of you in no time." "eigh?" said raut, and turned. "boil the blood out of you in ... no, you don't!" "let me go!" screamed raut. "let go my arm!" with one hand he clutched at the hand-rail, then with both. for a moment the two men stood swaying. then suddenly, with a violent jerk, horrocks had twisted him from his hold. he clutched at horrocks and missed, his foot went back into empty air; in mid-air he twisted himself, and then cheek and shoulder and knee struck the hot cone together. he clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thing sank an infinitesimal amount as he struck it. a circle of glowing red appeared about him, and a tongue of flame, released from the chaos within, flickered up towards him. an intense pain assailed him at the knees, and he could smell the singeing of his hands. he raised himself to his feet, and tried to climb up the chain, and then something struck his head. black and shining with the moonlight, the throat of the furnace rose about him. horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel on the rail. the gesticulating figure was bright and white in the moonlight, and shouting, "fizzle, you fool! fizzle, you hunter of women! you hot-blooded hound! boil! boil! boil!" suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and flung it deliberately, lump after lump, at raut. "horrocks!" cried raut. "horrocks!" he clung, crying, to the chain, pulling himself up from the burning of the cone. each missile horrocks flung hit him. his clothes charred and glowed, and as he struggled the cone dropped, and a rush of hot, suffocating gas whooped out and burned round him in a swift breath of flame. his human likeness departed from him. when the momentary red had passed, horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing in agony--a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a sobbing, intermittent shriek. abruptly at the sight the ironmaster's anger passed. a deadly sickness came upon him. the heavy odour of burning flesh came drifting up to his nostrils. his sanity returned to him. "god have mercy upon me!" he cried. "o god! what have i done?" he knew the thing below him, save that it still moved and felt, was already a dead man--that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling in his veins. an intense realisation of that agony came to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. for a moment he stood irresolute, and then, turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the struggling thing that had once been a man. the mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the cone. with the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. as it passed, he saw the cone clear again. then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to the rail with both hands. his lips moved, but no words came to them. down below was the sound of voices and running steps. the clangour of rolling in the shed ceased abruptly. iii. the stolen bacillus. "this again," said the bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, "is well,--a preparation of the bacillus of cholera--the cholera germ." the pale-faced man peered down the microscope. he was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. "i see very little," he said. "touch this screw," said the bacteriologist; "perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. eyes vary so much. just the fraction of a turn this way or that." "ah! now i see," said the visitor. "not so very much to see after all. little streaks and shreds of pink. and yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! wonderful!" he stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in his hand towards the window. "scarcely visible," he said, scrutinising the preparation. he hesitated. "are these--alive? are they dangerous now?" "those have been stained and killed," said the bacteriologist. "i wish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe." "i suppose," the pale man said, with a slight smile, 'that you scarcely care to have such things about you in the living--in the active state?" "on the contrary, we are obliged to," said the bacteriologist. "here, for instance--" he walked across the room and took up one of several sealed tubes. "here is the living thing. this is a cultivation of the actual living disease bacteria." he hesitated. "bottled cholera, so to speak." a slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the pale man. "it's a deadly thing to have in your possession," he said, devouring the little tube with his eyes. the bacteriologist watched the morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. this man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. the lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the bacteriologist chiefly associated. it was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of; his topic, to take the most effective aspect of the matter. he held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. "yes, here is the pestilence imprisoned. only break such a little tube as this into a supply of drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that one must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste--say to them, 'go forth, increase and multiply, and replenish the cisterns,' and death--mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity--would be released upon this city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims. here he would take the husband from the wife, here the child from its mother, here the statesman from his duty, and here the toiler from his trouble. he would follow the water-mains, creeping along streets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they did not boil their drinking-water, creeping into the wells of the mineral water makers, getting washed into salad, and lying dormant in ices. he would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-troughs, and by unwary children in the public fountains. he would soak into the soil, to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. once start him at the water supply, and before we could ring him in, and catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis." he stopped abruptly. he had been told rhetoric was his weakness. "but he is quite safe here, you know--quite safe." the pale-faced man nodded. his eyes shone. he cleared his throat. "these anarchist--rascals," said he, "are fools, blind fools--to use bombs when this kind of thing is attainable. i think----" a gentle rap, a mere light touch of the finger-nails, was heard at the door. the bacteriologist opened it. "just a minute, dear," whispered his wife. when he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at his watch. "i had no idea i had wasted an hour of your time," he said. "twelve minutes to four. i ought to have left here by half-past three. but your things were really too interesting. no, positively i cannot stop a moment longer. i have an engagement at four." he passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and the bacteriologist accompanied him to the door, and then returned thoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. he was musing on the ethnology of his visitor. certainly the man was not a teutonic type nor a common latin one. "a morbid product, anyhow, i am afraid," said the bacteriologist to himself. "how he gloated over those cultivations of disease germs!" a disturbing thought struck him. he turned to the bench by the vapour bath, and then very quickly to his writing-table. then he felt hastily in his pockets and then rushed to the door. "i may have put it down on the hall table," he said. "minnie!" he shouted hoarsely in the hall. "yes, dear," came a remote voice. "had i anything in my hand when i spoke to you, dear, just now?" pause. "nothing, dear, because i remember----" "blue ruin!" cried the bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the front door and down the steps of his house to the street. minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. down the street a slender man was getting into a cab. the bacteriologist, hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running and gesticulating wildly towards this group. one slipper came off, but he did not wait for it. "he has gone _mad_!" said minnie; "it's that horrid science of his"; and, opening the window, would have called after him. the slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder. he pointed hastily to the bacteriologist, said something to the cabman, the apron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered, and in a moment cab and bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner. minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. then she drew her head back into the room again. she was dumbfounded. "of course he is eccentric," she meditated. "but running about london--in the height of the season, too--in his socks!" a happy thought struck her. she hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon the doorstep, and hailed a cab that opportunely crawled by. "drive me up the road and round havelock crescent, and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat." "velveteen coat, ma'am, and no 'at. very good, ma'am." and the cabman whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to this address every day in his life. some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that collects round the cabman's shelter at haverstock hill were startled by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse, driven furiously. they were silent as it went by, and then as it receded--"that's 'arry 'icks. wot's _he_ got?" said the stout gentleman known as old tootles. "he's a-using his whip, he is, _to_ rights," said the ostler boy. "hullo!" said poor old tommy byles; "here's another bloomin' loonatic. blowed if there ain't." "it's old george," said old tootles, "and he's drivin' a loonatic, _as_ you say. ain't he a-clawin' out of the keb? wonder if he's after 'arry 'icks?" the group round the cabman's shelter became animated. chorus: "go it, george!" "it's a race." "you'll ketch 'em!" "whip up!" "she's a goer, she is!" said the ostler boy. "strike me giddy!" cried old tootles. "here! _i'm_ a-goin' to begin in a minute. here's another comin'. if all the cabs in hampstead ain't gone mad this morning!" "it's a fieldmale this time," said the ostler boy. "she's a-followin' _him_," said old tootles. "usually the other way about." "what's she got in her 'and?" "looks like a 'igh 'at." "what a bloomin' lark it is! three to one on old george," said the ostler boy. "nexst!" minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. she did not like it, but she felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down haverstock hill and camden town high street with her eyes ever intent on the animated back view of old george, who was driving her vagrant husband so incomprehensibly away from her. the man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms tightly folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. his mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation. chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. but his exultation far exceeded his fear. no anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. ravachol, vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled into insignificance beside him. he had only to make sure of the water supply, and break the little tube into a reservoir. how brilliantly he had planned it, forged the letter of introduction and got into the laboratory, and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity! the world should hear of him at last. all those people who had sneered at him, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company undesirable, should consider him at last. death, death, death! they had always treated him as a man of no importance. all the world had been in a conspiracy to keep him under. he would teach them yet what it is to isolate a man. what was this familiar street? great saint andrew's street, of course! how fared the chase? he craned out of the cab. the bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. that was bad. he would be caught and stopped yet. he felt in his pocket for money, and found half a sovereign. this he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab into the man's face. "more," he shouted, "if only we get away." the money was snatched out of his hand. "right you are," said the cabman, and the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the glistening side of the horse. the cab swayed, and the anarchist, half-standing under the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance. he felt the brittle thing crack, and the broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. he fell back into the seat with a curse, and stared dismally at the two or three drops of moisture on the apron. he shuddered. "well, i suppose i shall be the first. _phew!_ anyhow, i shall be a martyr. that's something. but it is a filthy death, nevertheless. i wonder if it hurts as much as they say." presently a thought occurred to him--he groped between his feet. a little drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that to make sure. it was better to make sure. at any rate, he would not fail. then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the bacteriologist. in wellington street he told the cabman to stop, and got out. he slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. it was rapid stuff, this cholera poison. he waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast awaiting the arrival of the bacteriologist. there was something tragic in his pose. the sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity. he greeted his pursuer with a defiant laugh. "vive l'anarchie! you are too late, my friend, i have drunk it. the cholera is abroad!" the bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his spectacles. "you have drunk it! an anarchist! i see now." he was about to say something more, and then checked himself. a smile hung in the corner of his mouth. he opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at which the anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towards waterloo bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many people as possible. the bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance of minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and overcoat. "very good of you to bring my things," he said, and remained lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the anarchist. "you had better get in," he said, still staring. minnie felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. "put on my shoes? certainly, dear," said he, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure, now small in the distance, from his eyes. then suddenly something grotesque struck him, and he laughed. then he remarked, "it is really very serious, though. "you see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an anarchist. no--don't faint, or i cannot possibly tell you the rest. and i wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an anarchist, and took up a cultivation of that new species of bacterium i was telling you of that infest, and i think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys; and, like a fool, i said it was asiatic cholera. and he ran away with it to poison the water of london, and he certainly might have made things look blue for this civilised city. and now he has swallowed it. of course, i cannot say what will happen, but you know it turned that kitten blue, and the three puppies--in patches, and the sparrow--bright blue. but the bother is, i shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more. "put on my coat on this hot day! why? because we might meet mrs. jabber. my dear, mrs. jabber is not a draught. but why should i wear a coat on a hot day because of mrs.-----. oh! _very_ well." iv. the flowering of the strange orchid. the buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. you have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your taste may incline. the plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps--for the thing has happened again and again--there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. for the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? "john-smithia"! there have been worse names. it was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made winter wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales--that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. he was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. he might have collected stamps or coins, or translated horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. but, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse. "i have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to happen to me to-day." he spoke--as he moved and thought--slowly. "oh, don't say _that_!" said his housekeeper--who was also his remote cousin. for "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her. "you misunderstand me. i mean nothing unpleasant...though what i do mean i scarcely know. "to-day," he continued, after a pause, "peters' are going to sell a batch of plants from the andamans and the indies. i shall go up and see what they have. it may be i shall buy something good unawares. that may be it." he passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee. "are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day?" asked his cousin, as she filled his cup. "yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast. "nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. "i wonder why? things enough happen to other people. there is harvey. only the other week; on monday he picked up sixpence, on wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on friday his cousin came home from australia, and on saturday he broke his ankle. what a whirl of excitement!--compared to me." "i think i would rather be without so much excitement," said his housekeeper. "it can't be good for you." "i suppose it's troublesome. still ... you see, nothing ever happens to me. when i was a little boy i never had accidents. i never fell in love as i grew up. never married... i wonder how it feels to have something happen to you, something really remarkable. "that orchid-collector was only thirty-six--twenty years younger than myself--when he died. and he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. he killed a malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. and in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. it must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know--except, perhaps, the leeches." "i am sure it was not good for him," said the lady with conviction. "perhaps not." and then wedderburn looked at his watch. "twenty-three minutes past eight. i am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. i think i shall wear my alpaca jacket--it is quite warm enough--and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. i suppose--" he glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face. "i think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to london," she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "there's all between here and the station coming back." when he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. he had made a purchase. it was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so. "there are vandas," he said, "and a dendrobe and some palaeonophis." he surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. they were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. it was his custom to live all his visits to london over again in the evening for her and his own entertainment. "i knew something would happen to-day. and i have bought all these. some of them--some of them--i feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be remarkable. i don't know how it is, but i feel just as sure as if some one had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable. "that one "--he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome--"was not identified. it may be a palaeonophis--or it may not. it may be a new species, or even a new genus. and it was the last that poor batten ever collected." "i don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "it's such an ugly shape." "to me it scarcely seems to have a shape." "i don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper. "it shall be put away in a pot to-morrow." "it looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead." wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "it is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. but you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance. it may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. how busy i shall be to-morrow! i must see to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow i shall set to work." "they found poor batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp--i forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very orchids crushed up under his body. he had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and i suppose he fainted. these mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. it may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain." "i think none the better of it for that." "men must work though women may weep," said wedderburn with profound gravity. "fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine--if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine--and no one round you but horrible natives! they say the andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches--and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the necessary training. and just for people in england to have orchids!" "i don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing," said wedderburn. "anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid, and had let it wither. and it makes these things more interesting." "it makes them disgusting. i should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them. and just think, there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing! i never thought of that before. there! i declare i cannot eat another mouthful of dinner." "i will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window-seat. i can see them just as well there." the next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. he considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time. in the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange. several of the vandas and the dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. he was delighted, and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once, directly he made the discovery. "that is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets." "they look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said his housekeeper. "i don't like them." "why not?" "i don't know. they look like fingers trying to get at you. i can't help my likes and dislikes." "i don't know for certain, but i don't _think_ there are any orchids i know that have aerial rootlets quite like that. it may be my fancy, of course. you see they are a little flattened at the ends." "i don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. "i know it's very silly of me--and i'm very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much. but i can't help thinking of that corpse." "but it may not be that particular plant. that was merely a guess of mine." his housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "anyhow i don't like it," she said. wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. but that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt inclined. "there are such queer things about orchids," he said one day; "such possibilities of surprises. you know, darwin studied their fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant. well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. some of the cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never been found with seed." "but how do they form new plants?" "by runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. that is easily explained. the puzzle is, what are the flowers for? "very likely," he added, "_my_ orchid may be something extraordinary in that way. if so i shall study it. i have often thought of making researches as darwin did. but hitherto i have not found the time, or something else has happened to prevent it. the leaves are beginning to unfold now. i do wish you would come and see them!" but she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache. she had seen the plant once again, and the aerial rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. so that she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. they were of the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base he knew of no other leaves quite like them. the plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. and he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant. and at last the great thing happened. directly he entered the little glass house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great _paloeonophis lowii_ hid the corner where his new darling stood. there was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse. directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. and, behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. he stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration. the flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. he could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one. and the insufferable scent! how hot the place was! the blossoms swam before his eyes. he would see if the temperature was right. he made a step towards the thermometer. suddenly everything appeared unsteady. the bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. * * * * * at half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom. but wedderburn did not come in for his tea. "he is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten minutes. "his watch must have stopped. i will go and call him." she went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name. there was no reply. she noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume. then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes. for a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless. he was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. the tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands. she did not understand. then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood. with an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. she snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red. then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel. how they clung to him! she tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. she felt she was fainting, knew she must not. she left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. she caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the greenhouse. then she re-entered. she tugged now with renewed strength at wedderburn's motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. it still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. in a frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air. then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror. he was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches. the odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. for a moment he thought impossible things. "bring some water!" she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. when, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping with excitement, and with wedderburn's head upon her knee, wiping the blood from his face. "what's the matter?" said wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing them again at once. "go and tell annie to come out here to me, and then go for dr. haddon at once," she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and added, seeing he hesitated, "i will tell you all about it when you come back." presently wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, "you fainted in the hothouse." "and the orchid?" "i will see to that," she said. wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury. they gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. his housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to dr. haddon. "come to the orchid-house and see," she said. the cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled. most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. the stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. the doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the aerial rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated. the next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent. the door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all the array of wedderburn's orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. but wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure. v. in the avu observatory. the observatory at avu, in borneo, stands on the spur of the mountain. to the north rises the old crater, black at night against the unfathomable blue of the sky. from the little circular building, with its mushroom dome, the slopes plunge steeply downward into the black mysteries of the tropical forest beneath. the little house in which the observer and his assistant live is about fifty yards from the observatory, and beyond this are the huts of their native attendants. thaddy, the chief observer, was down with a slight fever. his assistant, woodhouse, paused for a moment in silent contemplation of the tropical night before commencing his solitary vigil. the night was very still. now and then voices and laughter came from the native huts, or the cry of some strange animal was heard from the midst of the mystery of the forest. nocturnal insects appeared in ghostly fashion out of the darkness, and fluttered round his light. he thought, perhaps, of all the possibilities of discovery that still lay in the black tangle beneath him; for to the naturalist the virgin forests of borneo are still a wonderland full of strange questions and half-suspected discoveries. woodhouse carried a small lantern in his hand, and its yellow glow contrasted vividly with the infinite series of tints between lavender-blue and black in which the landscape was painted. his hands and face were smeared with ointment against the attacks of the mosquitoes. even in these days of celestial photography, work done in a purely temporary erection, and with only the most primitive appliances in addition to the telescope, still involves a very large amount of cramped and motionless watching. he sighed as he thought of the physical fatigues before him, stretched himself, and entered the observatory. the reader is probably familiar with the structure of an ordinary astronomical observatory. the building is usually cylindrical in shape, with a very light hemispherical roof capable of being turned round from the interior. the telescope is supported upon a stone pillar in the centre, and a clockwork arrangement compensates for the earth's rotation, and allows a star once found to be continuously observed. besides this, there is a compact tracery of wheels and screws about its point of support, by which the astronomer adjusts it. there is, of course, a slit in the movable roof which follows the eye of the telescope in its survey of the heavens. the observer sits or lies on a sloping wooden arrangement, which he can wheel to any part of the observatory as the position of the telescope may require. within it is advisable to have things as dark as possible, in order to enhance the brilliance of the stars observed. the lantern flared as woodhouse entered his circular den, and the general darkness fled into black shadows behind the big machine, from which it presently seemed to creep back over the whole place again as the light waned. the slit was a profound transparent blue, in which six stars shone with tropical brilliance, and their light lay, a pallid gleam, along the black tube of the instrument. woodhouse shifted the roof, and then proceeding to the telescope, turned first one wheel and then another, the great cylinder slowly swinging into a new position. then he glanced through the finder, the little companion telescope, moved the roof a little more, made some further adjustments, and set the clockwork in motion. he took off his jacket, for the night was very hot, and pushed into position the uncomfortable seat to which he was condemned for the next four hours. then with a sigh he resigned himself to his watch upon the mysteries of space. there was no sound now in the observatory, and the lantern waned steadily. outside there was the occasional cry of some animal in alarm or pain, or calling to its mate, and the intermittent sounds of the malay and dyak servants. presently one of the men began a queer chanting song, in which the others joined at intervals. after this it would seem that they turned in for the night, for no further sound came from their direction, and the whispering stillness became more and more profound. the clockwork ticked steadily. the shrill hum of a mosquito explored the place and grew shriller in indignation at woodhouse's ointment. then the lantern went out and all the observatory was black. woodhouse shifted his position presently, when the slow movement of the telescope had carried it beyond the limits of his comfort. he was watching a little group of stars in the milky way, in one of which his chief had seen or fancied a remarkable colour variability. it was not a part of the regular work for which the establishment existed, and for that reason perhaps woodhouse was deeply interested. he must have forgotten things terrestrial. all his attention was concentrated upon the great blue circle of the telescope field--a circle powdered, so it seemed, with an innumerable multitude of stars, and all luminous against the blackness of its setting. as he watched he seemed to himself to become incorporeal, as if he too were floating in the ether of space. infinitely remote was the faint red spot he was observing. suddenly the stars were blotted out. a flash of blackness passed, and they were visible again. "queer," said woodhouse. "must have been a bird." the thing happened again, and immediately after the great tube shivered as though it had been struck. then the dome of the observatory resounded with a series of thundering blows. the stars seemed to sweep aside as the telescope--which had been unclamped--swung round and away from the slit in the roof. "great scott!" cried woodhouse. "what's this?" some huge vague black shape, with a flapping something like a wing, seemed to be struggling in the aperture of the roof. in another moment the slit was clear again, and the luminous haze of the milky way shone warm and bright. the interior of the roof was perfectly black, and only a scraping sound marked the whereabouts of the unknown creature. woodhouse had scrambled from the seat to his feet. he was trembling violently and in a perspiration with the suddenness of the occurrence. was the thing, whatever it was, inside or out? it was big, whatever else it might be. something shot across the skylight, and the telescope swayed. he started violently and put his arm up. it was in the observatory, then, with him. it was clinging to the roof apparently. what the devil was it? could it see him? he stood for perhaps a minute in a state of stupefaction. the beast, whatever it was, clawed at the interior of the dome, and then something flapped almost into his face, and he saw the momentary gleam of starlight on a skin like oiled leather. his water-bottle was knocked off his little table with a smash. the sense of some strange bird-creature hovering a few yards from his face in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to woodhouse. as his thought returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large bat. at any risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from his pocket, he tried to strike it on the telescope seat. there was a smoking streak of phosphorescent light, the match flared for a moment, and he saw a vast wing sweeping towards him, a gleam of grey-brown fur, and then he was struck in the face and the match knocked out of his hand. the blow was aimed at his temple, and a claw tore sideways down to his cheek. he reeled and fell, and he heard the extinguished lantern smash. another blow followed as he fell. he was partly stunned, he felt his own warm blood stream out upon his face. instinctively he felt his eyes had been struck at, and, turning over on his face to save them, tried to crawl under the protection of the telescope. he was struck again upon the back, and he heard his jacket rip, and then the thing hit the roof of the observatory. he edged as far as he could between the wooden seat and the eyepiece of the instrument, and turned his body round so that it was chiefly his feet that were exposed. with these he could at least kick. he was still in a mystified state. the strange beast banged about in the darkness, and presently clung to the telescope, making it sway and the gear rattle. once it flapped near him, and he kicked out madly and felt a soft body with his feet. he was horribly scared now. it must be a big thing to swing the telescope like that. he saw for a moment the outline of a head black against the starlight, with sharply-pointed upstanding ears and a crest between them. it seemed to him to be as big as a mastiff's. then he began to bawl out as loudly as he could for help. at that the thing came down upon him again. as it did so his hand touched something beside him on the floor. he kicked out, and the next moment his ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. he yelled again, and tried to free his leg by kicking with the other. then he realised he had the broken water-bottle at his hand, and, snatching it, he struggled into a sitting posture, and feeling in the darkness towards his foot, gripped a velvety ear, like the ear of a big cat. he had seized the water-bottle by its neck and brought it down with a shivering crash upon the head of the strange beast. he repeated the blow, and then stabbed and jabbed with the jagged end of it, in the darkness, where he judged the face might be. the small teeth relaxed their hold, and at once woodhouse pulled his leg free and kicked hard. he felt the sickening feel of fur and bone giving under his boot. there was a tearing bite at his arm, and he struck over it at the face, as he judged, and hit damp fur. there was a pause; then he heard the sound of claws; and the dragging of a heavy body away from him over the observatory floor. then there was silence, broken only by his own sobbing breathing, and a sound like licking. everything was black except the parallelogram of the blue skylight with the luminous dust of stars, against which the end of the telescope now appeared in silhouette. he waited, as it seemed, an interminable time. was the thing coming on again? he felt in his trouser-pocket for some matches, and found one remaining. he tried to strike this, but the floor was wet, and it spat and went out. he cursed. he could not see where the door was situated. in his struggle he had quite lost his bearings. the strange beast, disturbed by the splutter of the match, began to move again. "time!" called woodhouse, with a sudden gleam of mirth, but the thing was not coming at him again. he must have hurt it, he thought, with the broken bottle. he felt a dull pain in his ankle. probably he was bleeding there. he wondered if it would support him if he tried to stand up. the night outside was very still. there was no sound of any one moving. the sleepy fools had not heard those wings battering upon the dome, nor his shouts. it was no good wasting strength in shouting. the monster flapped its wings and startled him into a defensive attitude. he hit his elbow against the seat, and it fell over with a crash. he cursed this, and then he cursed the darkness. suddenly the oblong patch of starlight seemed to sway to and fro. was he going to faint? it would never do to faint. he clenched his fists and set his teeth to hold himself together. where had the door got to? it occurred to him he could get his bearings by the stars visible through the skylight. the patch of stars he saw was in sagittarius and south-eastward; the door was north--or was it north by west? he tried to think. if he could get the door open he might retreat. it might be the thing was wounded. the suspense was beastly. "look here!" he said, "if you don't come on, i shall come at you." then the thing began clambering up the side of the observatory, and he saw its black outline gradually blot out the skylight. was it in retreat? he forgot about the door, and watched as the dome shifted and creaked. somehow he did not feel very frightened or excited now. he felt a curious sinking sensation inside him. the sharply-defined patch of light, with the black form moving across it, seemed to be growing smaller and smaller. that was curious. he began to feel very thirsty, and yet he did not feel inclined to get anything to drink. he seemed to be sliding down a long funnel. he felt a burning sensation in his throat, and then he perceived it was broad daylight, and that one of the dyak servants was looking at him with a curious expression. then there was the top of thaddy's face upside down. funny fellow, thaddy, to go about like that! then he grasped the situation better, and perceived that his head was on thaddy's knee, and thaddy was giving him brandy. and then he saw the eyepiece of the telescope with a lot of red smears on it. he began to remember. "you've made this observatory in a pretty mess," said thaddy. the dyak boy was beating up an egg in brandy. woodhouse took this and sat up. he felt a sharp twinge of pain. his ankle was tied up, so were his arm and the side of his face. the smashed glass, red-stained, lay about the floor, the telescope seat was overturned, and by the opposite wall was a dark pool. the door was open, and he saw the grey summit of the mountain against a brilliant background of blue sky. "pah!" said woodhouse. "who's been killing calves here? take me out of it." then he remembered the thing, and the fight he had had with it. "what _was_ it?" he said to thaddy--"the thing i fought with?". "_you_ know that best," said thaddy. "but, anyhow, don't worry yourself now about it. have some more to drink." thaddy, however, was curious enough, and it was a hard struggle between duty and inclination to keep woodhouse quiet until he was decently put away in bed, and had slept upon the copious dose of meat extract thaddy considered advisable. they then talked it over together. "it was," said woodhouse, "more like a big bat than anything else in the world. it had sharp, short ears, and soft fur, and its wings were leathery. its teeth were little but devilish sharp, and its jaw could not have been very strong or else it would have bitten through my ankle." "it has pretty nearly," said thaddy. "it seemed to me to hit out with its claws pretty freely. that is about as much as i know about the beast. our conversation was intimate, so to speak, and yet not confidential." "the dyak chaps talk about a big colugo, a klang-utang--whatever that may be. it does not often attack man, but i suppose you made it nervous. they say there is a big colugo and a little colugo, and a something else that sounds like gobble. they all fly about at night. for my own part, i know there are flying foxes and flying lemurs about here, but they are none of them very big beasts." "there are more things in heaven and earth," said woodhouse--and thaddy groaned at the quotation--"and more particularly in the forests of borneo, than are dreamt of in our philosophies. on the whole, if the borneo fauna is going to disgorge any more of its novelties upon me, i should prefer that it did so when i was not occupied in the observatory at night and alone." vi. aepyornis island. the man with the scarred face leant over the table and looked at my bundle. "orchids?" he asked. "a few," i said. "cypripediums," he said. "chiefly," said i. "anything new? i thought not. _i_ did these islands twenty-five-twenty-seven years ago. if you find anything new here--well, it's brand new. i didn't leave much." "i'm not a collector," said i. "i was young then," he went on. "lord! how i used to fly round." he seemed to take my measure. "i was in the east indies two years, and in brazil seven. then i went to madagascar." "i know a few explorers by name," i said, anticipating a yarn. "whom did you collect for?" "dawson's. i wonder if you've heard the name of butcher ever?" "butcher--butcher?" the name seemed vaguely present in my memory; then i recalled _butcher_ v. _dawson_. "why!" said i, "you are the man who sued them for four years' salary--got cast away on a desert island..." "your servant," said the man with the scar, bowing. "funny case, wasn't it? here was me, making a little fortune on that island, doing nothing for it neither, and them quite unable to give me notice. it often used to amuse me thinking over it while i was there. i did calculations of it--big--all over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring." "how did it happen?" said i. "i don't rightly remember the case." "well... you've heard of the aepyornis?" "rather. andrews was telling me of a new species he was working on only a month or so ago. just before i sailed. they've got a thigh bone, it seems, nearly a yard long. monster the thing must have been!" "i believe you," said the man with the scar. "it _was_ a monster. sindbad's roc was just a legend of 'em. but when did they find these bones?" "three or four years ago--'91, i fancy. why?" "why? because _i_ found them--lord!--it's nearly twenty years ago. if dawson's hadn't been silly about that salary they might have made a perfect ring in 'em... _i_ couldn't help the infernal boat going adrift." he paused. "i suppose it's the same place. a kind of swamp about ninety miles north of antananarivo. do you happen to know? you have to go to it along the coast by boats. you don't happen to remember, perhaps?" "i don't. i fancy andrews said something about a swamp." "it must be the same. it's on the east coast. and somehow there's something in the water that keeps things from decaying. like creosote it smells. it reminded me of trinidad. did they get any more eggs? some of the eggs i found were a foot-and-a-half long. the swamp goes circling round, you know, and cuts off this bit. it's mostly salt, too. well... what a time i had of it! i found the things quite by accident. we went for eggs, me and two native chaps, in one of those rum canoes all tied together, and found the bones at the same time. we had a tent and provisions for four days, and we pitched on one of the firmer places. to think of it brings that odd tarry smell back even now. it's funny work. you go probing into the mud with iron rods, you know. usually the egg gets smashed. i wonder how long it is since these aepyornises really lived. the missionaries say the natives have legends about when they were alive, but i never heard any such stories myself.[*] but certainly those eggs we got were as fresh as if they had been new laid. fresh! carrying them down to the boat one of my nigger chaps dropped one on a rock and it smashed. how i lammed into the beggar! but sweet it was, as if it was new laid, not even smelly, and its mother dead these four hundred years, perhaps. said a centipede had bit him. however, i'm getting off the straight with the story. it had taken us all day to dig into the slush and get these eggs out unbroken, and we were all covered with beastly black mud, and naturally i was cross. so far as i knew they were the only eggs that have ever been got out not even cracked. i went afterwards to see the ones they have at the natural history museum in london; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. mine were perfect, and i meant to blow them when i got back. naturally i was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours' work just on account of a centipede. i hit him about rather." [footnote *: no european is known to have seen a live aepyornis, with the doubtful exception of macandrew, who visited madagascar in 1745.--h.g.w.] the man with the scar took out a clay pipe. i placed my pouch before him. he filled up absent-mindedly. "how about the others? did you get those home? i don't remember--" "that's the queer part of the story. i had three others. perfectly fresh eggs. well, we put 'em in the boat, and then i went up to the tent to make some coffee, leaving my two heathens down by the beach--the one fooling about with his sting and the other helping him. it never occurred to me that the beggars would take advantage of the peculiar position i was in to pick a quarrel. but i suppose the centipede poison and the kicking i had given him had upset the one--he was always a cantankerous sort--and he persuaded the other. "i remember i was sitting and smoking and boiling up the water over a spirit-lamp business i used to take on these expeditions. incidentally i was admiring the swamp under the sunset. all black and blood-red it was, in streaks--a beautiful sight. and up beyond the land rose grey and hazy to the hills, and the sky behind them red, like a furnace mouth. and fifty yards behind the back of me was these blessed heathen--quite regardless of the tranquil air of things--plotting to cut off with the boat and leave me all alone with three days' provisions and a canvas tent, and nothing to drink whatsoever beyond a little keg of water. i heard a kind of yelp behind me, and there they were in this canoe affair--it wasn't properly a boat--and, perhaps, twenty yards from land. i realised what was up in a moment. my gun was in the tent, and, besides, i had no bullets--only duck shot. they knew that. but i had a little revolver in my pocket, and i pulled that out as i ran down to the beach. "'come back!' says i, flourishing it. "they jabbered something at me, and the man that broke the egg jeered. i aimed at the other--because he was unwounded and had the paddle, and i missed. they laughed. however, i wasn't beat. i knew i had to keep cool, and i tried him again and made him jump with the whang of it. he didn't laugh that time. the third time i got his head, and over he went, and the paddle with him. it was a precious lucky shot for a revolver. i reckon it was fifty yards. he went right under. i don't know if he was shot, or simply stunned and drowned. then i began to shout to the other chap to come back, but he huddled up in the canoe and refused to answer. so i fired out my revolver at him and never got near him. "i felt a precious fool, i can tell you. there i was on this rotten, black beach, flat swamp all behind me, and the flat sea, cold after the sun set, and just this black canoe drifting steadily out to sea. i tell you i damned dawson's and jamrach's and museums and all the rest of it just to rights. i bawled to this nigger to come back, until my voice went up into a scream. "there was nothing for it but to swim after him and take my luck with the sharks. so i opened my clasp-knife and put it in my mouth, and took off my clothes and waded in. as soon as i was in the water i lost sight of the canoe, but i aimed, as i judged, to head it off. i hoped the man in it was too bad to navigate it, and that it would keep on drifting in the same direction. presently it came up over the horizon again to the south-westward about. the afterglow of sunset was well over now and the dim of night creeping up. the stars were coming through the blue. i swum like a champion, though my legs and arms were soon aching. "however, i came up to him by the time the stars were fairly out. as it got darker i began to see all manner of glowing things in the water-phosphorescence, you know. at times it made me giddy. i hardly knew which was stars and which was phosphorescence, and whether i was swimming on my head or my heels. the canoe was as black as sin, and the ripple under the bows like liquid fire. i was naturally chary of clambering up into it. i was anxious to see what he was up to first. he seemed to be lying cuddled up in a lump in the bows, and the stern was all out of water. the thing kept turning round slowly as it drifted---kind of waltzing, don't you know. i went to the stern and pulled it down, expecting him to wake up. then i began to clamber in with my knife in my hand, and ready for a rush. but he never stirred. so there i sat in the stern of the little canoe, drifting away over the calm phosphorescent sea, and with all the host of the stars above me, waiting for something to happen. "after a long time i called him by name, but he never answered. i was too tired to take any risks by going along to him. so we sat there. i fancy i dozed once or twice. when the dawn came i saw he was as dead as a doornail and all puffed up and purple. my three eggs and the bones were lying in the middle of the canoe, and the keg of water and some coffee and biscuits wrapped in a cape _argus_ by his feet, and a tin of methylated spirit underneath him. there was no paddle, nor, in fact, anything except the spirit-tin that i could use as one, so i settled to drift until i was picked up. i held an inquest on him, brought in a verdict against some snake, scorpion, or centipede unknown, and sent him overboard. "after that i had a drink of water and a few biscuits, and took a look round. i suppose a man low down as i was don't see very far; leastways, madagascar was clean out of sight, and any trace of land at all. i saw a sail going south-westward--looked like a schooner but her hull never came up. presently the sun got high in the sky and began to beat down upon me. lord! it pretty near made my brains boil. i tried dipping my head in the sea, but after a while my eye fell on the cape _argus_, and i lay down flat in the canoe and spread this over me. wonderful things these newspapers! i never read one through thoroughly before, but it's odd what you get up to when you're alone, as i was. i suppose i read that blessed old cape _argus_ twenty times. the pitch in the canoe simply reeked with the heat and rose up into big blisters. "i drifted ten days," said the man with the scar. "it's a little thing in the telling, isn't it? every day was like the last. except in the morning and the evening i never kept a look-out even--the blaze was so infernal. i didn't see a sail after the first three days, and those i saw took no notice of me. about the sixth night a ship went by scarcely half a mile away from me, with all its lights ablaze and its ports open, looking like a big firefly. there was music aboard. i stood up and shouted and screamed at it. the second day i broached one of the aepyornis eggs, scraped the shell away at the end bit by bit, and tried it, and i was glad to find it was good enough to eat. a bit flavoury--not bad, i mean--but with something of the taste of a duck's egg. there was a kind of circular patch, about six inches across, on one side of the yoke, and with streaks of blood and a white mark like a ladder in it that i thought queer, but i did not understand what this meant at the time, and i wasn't inclined to be particular. the egg lasted me three days, with biscuits and a drink of water. i chewed coffee berries too--invigorating stuff. the second egg i opened about the eighth day, and it scared me." the man with the scar paused. "yes," he said, "developing." "i daresay you find it hard to believe. _i_ did, with the thing before me. there the egg had been, sunk in that cold black mud, perhaps three hundred years. but there was no mistaking it. there was the--what is it?--embryo, with its big head and curved back, and its heart beating under its throat, and the yolk shrivelled up and great membranes spreading inside of the shell and all over the yolk. here was i hatching out the eggs of the biggest of all extinct birds, in a little canoe in the midst of the indian ocean. if old dawson had known that! it was worth four years' salary. what do _you_ think? "however, i had to eat that precious thing up, every bit of it, before i sighted the reef, and some of the mouthfuls were beastly unpleasant. i left the third one alone. i held it up to the light, but the shell was too thick for me to get any notion of what might be happening inside; and though i fancied i heard blood pulsing, it might have been the rustle in my own ears, like what you listen to in a seashell. "then came the atoll. came out of the sunrise, as it were, suddenly, close up to me. i drifted straight towards it until i was about half a mile from shore, not more, and then the current took a turn, and i had to paddle as hard as i could with my hands and bits of the aepyornis shell to make the place. however, i got there. it was just a common atoll about four miles round, with a few trees growing and a spring in one place, and the lagoon full of parrot-fish. i took the egg ashore and put it in a good place, well above the tide lines and in the sun, to give it all the chance i could, and pulled the canoe up safe, and loafed about prospecting. it's rum how dull an atoll is. as soon as i had found a spring all the interest seemed to vanish. when i was a kid i thought nothing could be finer or more adventurous than the robinson crusoe business, but that place was as monotonous as a book of sermons. i went round finding eatable things and generally thinking; but i tell you i was bored to death before the first day was out. it shows my luck--the very day i landed the weather changed. a thunderstorm went by to the north and flicked its wing over the island, and in the night there came a drencher and a howling wind slap over us. it wouldn't have taken much, you know, to upset that canoe. "i was sleeping under the canoe, and the egg was luckily among the sand higher up the beach, and the first thing i remember was a sound like a hundred pebbles hitting the boat at once, and a rush of water over my body. i'd been dreaming of antananarivo, and i sat up and holloaed to intoshi to ask her what the devil was up, and clawed out at the chair where the matches used to be. then i remembered where i was. there were phosphorescent waves rolling up as if they meant to eat me, and all the rest of the night as black as pitch. the air was simply yelling. the clouds seemed down on your head almost, and the rain fell as if heaven was sinking and they were baling out the waters above the firmament. one great roller came writhing at me, like a fiery serpent, and i bolted. then i thought of the canoe, and ran down to it as the water went hissing back again; but the thing had gone. i wondered about the egg then, and felt my way to it. it was all right and well out of reach of the maddest waves, so i sat down beside it and cuddled it for company. lord! what a night that was! "the storm was over before the morning. there wasn't a rag of cloud left in the sky when the dawn came, and all along the beach there were bits of plank scattered--which was the disarticulated skeleton, so to speak, of my canoe. however, that gave me something to do, for, taking advantage of two of the trees being together, i rigged up a kind of storm-shelter with these vestiges. and that day the egg hatched. "hatched, sir, when my head was pillowed on it and i was asleep. i heard a whack and felt a jar and sat up, and there was the end of the egg pecked out and a rum little brown head looking out at me. 'lord!' i said, 'you're welcome'; and with a little difficulty he came out. "he was a nice friendly little chap at first, about the size of a small hen--very much like most other young birds, only bigger. his plumage was a dirty brown to begin with, with a sort of grey scab that fell off it very soon, and scarcely feathers--a kind of downy hair. i can hardly express how pleased i was to see him. i tell you, robinson crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. but here was interesting company. he looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once, as though being hatched three hundred years too late was just nothing. 'glad to see you, man friday!' says i, for i had naturally settled he was to be called man friday if ever he was hatched, as soon as ever i found the egg in the canoe had developed. i was a bit anxious about his feed, so i gave him a lump of raw parrot-fish at once. he took it, and opened his beak for more. i was glad of that for, under the circumstances, if he'd been at all fanciful, i should have had to eat him after all. "you'd be surprised what an interesting bird that aepyornis chick was. he followed me about from the very beginning. he used to stand by me and watch while i fished in the lagoon, and go shares in anything i caught. and he was sensible, too. there were nasty green warty things, like pickled gherkins, used to lie about on the beach, and he tried one of these and it upset him. he never even looked at any of them again. "and he grew. you could almost see him grow. and as i was never much of a society man, his quiet, friendly ways suited me to a t. for nearly two years we were as happy as we could be on that island. i had no business worries, for i knew my salary was mounting up at dawsons'. we would see a sail now and then, but nothing ever came near us. i amused myself, too, by decorating the island with designs worked in sea-urchins and fancy shells of various kinds. i put aepyornis island all round the place very nearly, in big letters, like what you see done with coloured stones at railway stations in the old country, and mathematical calculations and drawings of various sorts. and i used to lie watching the blessed bird stalking round and growing, growing; and think how i could make a living out of him by showing him about if i ever got taken off. after his first moult he began to get handsome, with a crest and a blue wattle, and a lot of green feathers at the behind of him. and then i used to puzzle whether dawsons' had any right to claim him or not. stormy weather and in the rainy season we lay snug under the shelter i had made out of the old canoe, and i used to tell him lies about my friends at home. and after a storm we would go round the island together to see if there was any drift. it was a kind of idyll, you might say. if only i had had some tobacco it would have been simply just like heaven. "it was about the end of the second year our little paradise went wrong. friday was then about fourteen feet high to the bill of him, with a big, broad head like the end of a pickaxe, and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims, set together like a man's--not out of sight of each other like a hen's. his plumage was fine--none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich--more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go. and then it was he began to cock his comb at me and give himself airs, and show signs of a nasty temper ... "at last came a time when my fishing had been rather unlucky, and he began to hang about me in a queer, meditative way. i thought he might have been eating sea-cucumbers or something, but it was really just discontent on his part. i was hungry too, and when at last i landed a fish i wanted it for myself. tempers were short that morning on both sides. he pecked at it and grabbed it, and i gave him a whack on the head to make him leave go. and at that he went for me. lord! ... "he gave me this in the face." the man indicated his scar. "then he kicked me. it was like a carthorse. i got up, and seeing he hadn't finished, i started off full tilt with my arms doubled up over my face. but he ran on those gawky legs of his faster than a racehorse, and kept landing out at me with sledgehammer kicks, and bringing his pickaxe down on the back of my head. i made for the lagoon, and went in up to my neck. he stopped at the water, for he hated getting his feet wet, and began to make a shindy, something like a peacock's, only hoarser. he started strutting up and down the beach. i'll admit i felt small to see this blessed fossil lording it there. and my head and face were all bleeding, and--well, my body just one jelly of bruises. "i decided to swim across the lagoon and leave him alone for a bit, until the affair blew over. i shinned up the tallest palm-tree, and sat there thinking of it all. i don't suppose i ever felt so hurt by anything before or since. it was the brutal ingratitude of the creature. i'd been more than a brother to him. i'd hatched him, educated him. a great gawky, out-of-date bird! and me a human being--heir of the ages and all that. "i thought after a time he'd begin to see things in that light himself, and feel a little sorry for his behaviour. i thought if i was to catch some nice little bits of fish, perhaps, and go to him presently in a casual kind of way, and offer them to him, he might do the sensible thing. it took me some time to learn how unforgiving and cantankerous an extinct bird can be. malice! "i won't tell you all the little devices i tried to get that bird round again, i simply can't. it makes my cheek burn with shame even now to think of the snubs and buffets i had from this infernal curiosity. i tried violence. i chucked lumps of coral at him from a safe distance, but he only swallowed them. i shied my open knife at him and almost lost it, though it was too big for him to swallow. i tried starving him out and struck fishing, but he took to picking along the beach at low water after worms, and rubbed along on that. half my time i spent up to my neck in the lagoon, and the rest up the palm-trees. one of them was scarcely high enough, and when he caught me up it he had a regular bank holiday with the calves of my legs. it got unbearable. i don't know if you have ever tried sleeping up a palm-tree. it gave me the most horrible nightmares. think of the shame of it, too! here was this extinct animal mooning about my island like a sulky duke, and me not allowed to rest the sole of my foot on the place. i used to cry with weariness and vexation. i told him straight that i didn't mean to be chased about a desert island by any damned anachronisms. i told him to go and peck a navigator of his own age. but he only snapped his beak at me. great ugly bird, all legs and neck! "i shouldn't like to say how long that went on altogether. i'd have killed him sooner if i'd known how. however, i hit on a way of settling him at last. it is a south american dodge. i joined all my fishing-lines together with stems of seaweed and things, and made a stoutish string, perhaps twelve yards in length or more, and i fastened two lumps of coral rock to the ends of this. it took me some time to do, because every now and then i had to go into the lagoon or up a tree as the fancy took me. this i whirled rapidly round my head, and then let it go at him. the first time i missed, but the next time the string caught his legs beautifully, and wrapped round them again and again. over he went. i threw it standing waist-deep in the lagoon, and as soon as he went down i was out of the water and sawing at his neck with my knife ... "i don't like to think of that even now. i felt like a murderer while i did it, though my anger was hot against him. when i stood over him and saw him bleeding on the white sand, and his beautiful great legs and neck writhing in his last agony ... pah! "with that tragedy loneliness came upon me like a curse. good lord! you can't imagine how i missed that bird. i sat by his corpse and sorrowed over him, and shivered as i looked round the desolate, silent reef. i thought of what a jolly little bird he had been when he was hatched, and of a thousand pleasant tricks he had played before he went wrong. i thought if i'd only wounded him i might have nursed him round into a better understanding. if i'd had any means of digging into the coral rock i'd have buried him. i felt exactly as if he was human. as it was, i couldn't think of eating him, so i put him in the lagoon, and the little fishes picked him clean. i didn't even save the feathers. then one day a chap cruising about in a yacht had a fancy to see if my atoll still existed. "he didn't come a moment too soon, for i was about sick enough of the desolation of it, and only hesitating whether i should walk out into the sea and finish up the business that way, or fall back on the green things... "i sold the bones to a man named winslow--a dealer near the british museum, and he says he sold them to old havers. it seems havers didn't understand they were extra large, and it was only after his death they attracted attention. they called 'em aepyornis--what was it?" "_aepyornis vastus_," said i. "it's funny, the very thing was mentioned to me by a friend of mine. when they found an aepyornis, with a thigh a yard long, they thought they had reached the top of the scale, and called him _aepyornis maximus_. then some one turned up another thigh-bone four feet six or more, and that they called _aepyornis titan_. then your _vastus_ was found after old havers died, in his collection, and then a _vastissimus_ turned up." "winslow was telling me as much," said the man with the scar. "if they get any more aepyornises, he reckons some scientific swell will go and burst a blood-vessel. but it was a queer thing to happen to a man; wasn't it-altogether?" vii. the remarkable case of davidson's eyes. i. the transitory mental aberration of sidney davidson, remarkable enough in itself, is still more remarkable if wade's explanation is to be credited. it sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spending an intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, or being watched in our most secret operations by unsuspected eyes. it happened that i was the immediate witness of davidson's seizure, and so it falls naturally to me to put the story upon paper. when i say that i was the immediate witness of his seizure, i mean that i was the first on the scene. the thing happened at the harlow technical college, just beyond the highgate archway. he was alone in the larger laboratory when the thing happened. i was in a smaller room, where the balances are, writing up some notes. the thunderstorm had completely upset my work, of course. it was just after one of the louder peals that i thought i heard some glass smash in the other room. i stopped writing, and turned round to listen. for a moment i heard nothing; the hail was playing the devil's tattoo on the corrugated zinc of the roof. then came another sound, a smash--no doubt of it this time. something heavy had been knocked off the bench. i jumped up at once and went and opened the door leading into the big laboratory. i was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of the room, with a dazzled look on his face. my first impression was that he was drunk. he did not notice me. he was clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of his face. he put out his hand, slowly, rather hesitatingly, and then clutched nothing. "what's come to it?" he said. he held up his hands to his face, fingers spread out. "great scott!" he said. the thing happened three or four years ago, when every one swore by that personage. then he began raising his feet clumsily, as though he had expected to find them glued to the floor. "davidson!" cried i. "what's the matter with you?" he turned round in my direction and looked about for me. he looked over me and at me and on either side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me. "waves," he said; "and a remarkably neat schooner. i'd swear that was bellow's voice. _hullo_!" he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice. i thought he was up to some foolery. then i saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers. "what's up, man?" said i. "you've smashed the electrometer!" "bellows again!" said he. "friends left, if my hands are gone. something about electrometers. which way _are_ you, bellows?" he suddenly came staggering towards me. "the damned stuff cuts like butter," he said. he walked straight into the bench and recoiled. "none so buttery that!" he said, and stood swaying. i felt scared. "davidson," said i, "what on earth's come over you?" he looked round him in every direction. "i could swear that was bellows. why don't you show yourself like a man, bellows?" it occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind. i walked round the table and laid my hand upon his arm. i never saw a man more startled in my life. he jumped away from me, and came round into an attitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted with terror. "good god!" he cried. "what was that?" "it's i--bellows. confound it, davidson!" he jumped when i answered him and stared--how can i express it?--right through me. he began talking, not to me, but to himself. "here in broad daylight on a clear beach. not a place to hide in." he looked about him wildly. "here! i'm _off_." he suddenly turned and ran headlong into the big electro-magnet--so violently that, as we found afterwards, he bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly. at that he stepped back a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, "what, in heaven's name, has come over me?" he stood, blanched with terror and trembling violently, with his right arm clutching his left, where that had collided with the magnet. by that time i was excited and fairly scared. "davidson," said i, "don't be afraid." he was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before. i repeated my words in as clear and as firm a tone as i could assume. "bellows," he said, "is that you?" "can't you see it's me?" he laughed. "i can't even see it's myself. where the devil are we?" "here," said i, "in the laboratory." "the laboratory!" he answered in a puzzled tone, and put his hand to his forehead. "i _was_ in the laboratory--till that flash came, but i'm hanged if i'm there now. what ship is that?" "there's no ship," said i. "do be sensible, old chap." "no ship!" he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith. "i suppose," said he slowly, "we're both dead. but the rummy part is i feel just as though i still had a body. don't get used to it all at once, i suppose. the old shop was struck by lightning, i suppose. jolly quick thing, bellows--eigh?" "don't talk nonsense. you're very much alive. you are in the laboratory, blundering about. you've just smashed a new electrometer. i don't envy you when boyce arrives." he stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates. "i must be deaf," said he. "they've fired a gun, for there goes the puff of smoke, and i never heard a sound." i put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed. "we seem to have a sort of invisible bodies," said he. "by jove! there's a boat coming round the headland. it's very much like the old life after all--in a different climate." i shook his arm. "davidson," i cried, "wake up!" ii. it was just then that boyce came in. so soon as he spoke davidson exclaimed: "old boyce! dead too! what a lark!" i hastened to explain that davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. boyce was interested at once. we both did all we could to rouse the fellow out of his extraordinary state. he answered our questions, and asked us some of his own, but his attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about a beach and a ship. he kept interpolating observations concerning some boat and the davits, and sails filling with the wind. it made one feel queer, in the dusky laboratory, to hear him saying such things. he was blind and helpless. we had to walk him down the passage, one at each elbow, to boyce's private room, and while boyce talked to him there, and humoured him about this ship idea, i went along the corridor and asked old wade to come and look at him. the voice of our dean sobered him a little, but not very much. he asked where his hands were, and why he had to walk about up to his waist in the ground. wade thought over him a long time--you know how he knits his brows--and then made him feel the couch, guiding his hands to it. "that's a couch," said wade. "the couch in the private room of professor boyce. horse-hair stuffing." davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently that he could feel it all right, but he couldn't see it. "what _do_ you see?" asked wade. davidson said he could see nothing but a lot of sand and broken-up shells. wade gave him some other things to feel, telling him what they were, and watching him keenly. "the ship is almost hull down," said davidson presently, _apropos_ of nothing. "never mind the ship," said wade. "listen to me, davidson. do you know what hallucination means?" "rather," said davidson. "well, everything you see is hallucinatory." "bishop berkeley," said davidson. "don't mistake me," said wade. "you are alive and in this room of boyce's. but something has happened to your eyes. you cannot see; you can feel and hear, but not see. do you follow me?" "it seems to me that i see too much." davidson rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. "well?" he said. "that's all. don't let it perplex you. bellows here and i will take you home in a cab." "wait a bit." davidson thought. "help me to sit down," said he presently; "and now--i'm sorry to trouble you--but will you tell me all that over again?" wade repeated it very patiently. davidson shut his eyes, and pressed his hands upon his forehead. "yes," said he. "it's quite right. now my eyes are shut i know you're right. that's you, bellows, sitting by me on the couch. i'm in england again. and we're in the dark." then he opened his eyes. "and there," said he, "is the sun just rising, and the yards of the ship, and a tumbled sea, and a couple of birds flying. i never saw anything so real. and i'm sitting up to my neck in a bank of sand." he bent forward and covered his face with his hands. then he opened his eyes again. "dark sea and sunrise! and yet i'm sitting on a sofa in old boyce's room!... god help me!" iii. that was the beginning. for three weeks this strange affection of davidson's eyes continued unabated. it was far worse than being blind. he was absolutely helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatched bird, and led about and undressed. if he attempted to move, he fell over things or struck himself against walls or doors. after a day or so he got used to hearing our voices without seeing us, and willingly admitted he was at home, and that wade was right in what he told him. my sister, to whom he was engaged, insisted on coming to see him, and would sit for hours every day while he talked about this beach of his. holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely. he explained that when we left the college and drove home--he lived in hampstead village--it appeared to him as if we drove right through a sandhill--it was perfectly black until he emerged again--and through rocks and trees and solid obstacles, and when he was taken to his own room it made him giddy and almost frantic with the fear of falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty feet above the rocks of his imaginary island. he kept saying he should smash all the eggs. the end was that he had to be taken down into his father's consulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there. he described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole, with very little vegetation, except some peaty stuff, and a lot of bare rock. there were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white and disagreeable to see. the sea was often rough, and once there was a thunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes. once or twice seals pulled up on the beach, but only on the first two or three days. he said it was very funny the way in which the penguins used to waddle right through him, and how he seemed to lie among them without disturbing them. i remember one odd thing, and that was when he wanted very badly to smoke. we put a pipe in his hands--he almost poked his eye out with it--and lit it. but he couldn't taste anything. i've since found it's the same with me--i don't know if it's the usual case--that i cannot enjoy tobacco at all unless i can see the smoke. but the queerest part of his vision came when wade sent him out in a bath-chair to get fresh air. the davidsons hired a chair, and got that deaf and obstinate dependant of theirs, widgery, to attend to it. widgery's ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. my sister, who had been to the dogs' home, met them in camden town, towards king's cross, widgery trotting along complacently, and davidson, evidently most distressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract widgery's attention. he positively wept when my sister spoke to him. "oh, get me out of this horrible darkness!" he said, feeling for her hand. "i must get out of it, or i shall die." he was quite incapable of explaining what was the matter, but my sister decided he must go home, and presently, as they went uphill towards hampstead, the horror seemed to drop from him. he said it was good to see the stars again, though it was then about noon and a blazing day. "it seemed," he told me afterwards, "as if i was being carried irresistibly towards the water. i was not very much alarmed at first. of course it was night there--a lovely night." "of course?" i asked, for that struck me as odd. "of course," said he. "it's always night there when it is day here... well, we went right into the water, which was calm and shining under the moonlight--just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and flatter as i came down into it. the surface glistened just like a skin--it might have been empty space underneath for all i could tell to the contrary. very slowly, for i rode slanting into it, the water crept up to my eyes. then i went under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes. the moon gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintly glowing, came darting round me--and things that seemed made of luminous glass; and i passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oily lustre. and so i drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by one, and the moon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became a luminous purple-red. it was all very faint and mysterious, and everything seemed to quiver. and all the while i could hear the wheels of the bath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man in the distance selling the special _pall mall_. "i kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. it became inky black about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness, and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. the snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a time, there were no more weeds. the fishes came staring and gaping towards me, and into me and through me. i never imagined such fishes before. they had lines of fire along the sides of them as though they had been outlined with a luminous pencil. and there was a ghastly thing swimming backwards with a lot of twining arms. and then i saw, coming very slowly towards me through the gloom, a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something that drifted. i drove on straight towards it, and presently i saw in the midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. then it was i began to try to attract widgery's attention. a horror came upon me. ugh! i should have driven right into those half-eaten--things. if your sister had not come! they had great holes in them, bellows, and ... never mind. but it was ghastly!" iv. for three weeks davidson remained in this singular state, seeing what at the time we imagined was an altogether phantasmal world, and stone blind to the world around him. then, one tuesday, when i called i met old davidson in the passage. "he can see his thumb!" the old gentleman said, in a perfect transport. he was struggling into his overcoat. "he can see his thumb, bellows!" he said, with the tears in his eyes. "the lad will be all right yet." i rushed in to davidson. he was holding up a little book before his face, and looking at it and laughing in a weak kind of way. "it's amazing," said he. "there's a kind of patch come there." he pointed with his finger. "i'm on the rocks as usual, and the penguins are staggering and flapping about as usual, and there's been a whale showing every now and then, but it's got too dark now to make him out. but put something _there_, and i see it--i do see it. it's very dim and broken in places, but i see it all the same, like a faint spectre of itself. i found it out this morning while they were dressing me. it's like a hole in this infernal phantom world. just put your hand by mine. no--not there. ah! yes! i see it. the base of your thumb and a bit of cuff! it looks like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of the darkling sky. just by it there's a group of stars like a cross coming out." from that time davidson began to mend. his account of the change, like his account of the vision, was oddly convincing. over patches of his field of vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew transparent, as it were, and through these translucent gaps he began to see dimly the real world about him. the patches grew in size and number, ran together and spread until only here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes. he was able to get up and steer himself about, feed himself once more, read, smoke, and behave like an ordinary citizen again. at first it was very confusing to him to have these two pictures overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern, but in a little while he began to distinguish the real from the illusory. at first he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed only too anxious to complete his cure by taking exercise and tonics. but as that odd island of his began to fade away from him, he became queerly interested in it. he wanted particularly to go down into the deep sea again, and would spend half his time wandering about the low-lying parts of london, trying to find the water-logged wreck he had seen drifting. the glare of real daylight very soon impressed him so vividly as to blot out everything of his shadowy world, but of a night-time, in a darkened room, he could still see the white-splashed rocks of the island, and the clumsy penguins staggering to and fro. but even these grew fainter and fainter, and, at last, soon after he married my sister, he saw them for the last time. v. and now to tell of the queerest thing of all. about two years after his cure i dined with the davidsons, and after dinner a man named atkins called in. he is a lieutenant in the royal navy, and a pleasant, talkative man. he was on friendly terms with my brother-in-law, and was soon on friendly terms with me. it came out that he was engaged to davidson's cousin, and incidentally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of his _fiancée_. "and, by-the-by," said he, "here's the old _fulmar_." davidson looked at it casually. then suddenly his face lit up. "good heavens!" said he. "i could almost swear----" "what?" said atkins. "that i had seen that ship before." "don't see how you can have. she hasn't been out of the south seas for six years, and before then----" "but," began davidson, and then, "yes--that's the ship i dreamt of; i'm sure that's the ship i dreamt of. she was standing off an island that swarmed with penguins, and she fired a gun." "good lord!" said atkins, who had now heard the particulars of the seizure. "how the deuce could you dream that?" and then, bit by bit, it came out that on the very day davidson was seized, h.m.s. _fulmar_ had actually been off a little rock to the south of antipodes island. a boat had landed overnight to get penguins' eggs, had been delayed, and a thunderstorm drifting up, the boat's crew had waited until the morning before rejoining the ship. atkins had been one of them, and he corroborated, word for word, the descriptions davidson had given of the island and the boat. there is not the slightest doubt in any of our minds that davidson has really seen the place. in some unaccountable way, while he moved hither and thither in london, his sight moved hither and thither in a manner that corresponded, about this distant island. _how_ is absolutely a mystery. that completes the remarkable story of davidson's eyes. it's perhaps the best authenticated case in existence of real vision at a distance. explanation there is none forthcoming, except what professor wade has thrown out. but his explanation invokes the fourth dimension, and a dissertation on theoretical kinds of space. to talk of there being "a kink in space" seems mere nonsense to me; it may be because i am no mathematician. when i said that nothing would alter the fact that the place is eight thousand miles away, he answered that two points might be a yard away on a sheet of paper, and yet be brought together by bending the paper round. the reader may grasp his argument, but i certainly do not. his idea seems to be that davidson, stooping between the poles of the big electro-magnet, had some extraordinary twist given to his retinal elements through the sudden change in the field of force due to the lightning. he thinks, as a consequence of this, that it may be possible to live visually in one part of the world, while one lives bodily in another. he has even made some experiments in support of his views; but, so far, he has simply succeeded in blinding a few dogs. i believe that is the net result of his work, though i have not seen him for some weeks. latterly i have been so busy with my work in connection with the saint pancras installation that i have had little opportunity of calling to see him. but the whole of his theory seems fantastic to me. the facts concerning davidson stand on an altogether different footing, and i can testify personally to the accuracy of every detail i have given. viii. the lord of the dynamos. the chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled at camberwell, and kept the electric railway going, came out of yorkshire, and his name was james holroyd. he was a practical electrician, but fond of whisky, a heavy, red-haired brute with irregular teeth. he doubted the existence of the deity, but accepted carnot's cycle, and he had read shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry. his helper came out of the mysterious east, and his name was azuma-zi. but holroyd called him pooh-bah. holroyd liked a nigger help because he would stand kicking--a habit with holroyd--and did not pry into the machinery and try to learn the ways of it. certain odd possibilities of the negro mind brought into abrupt contact with the crown of our civilisation holroyd never fully realised, though just at the end he got some inkling of them. to define azuma-zi was beyond ethnology. he was, perhaps, more negroid than anything else, though his hair was curly rather than frizzy, and his nose had a bridge. moreover, his skin was brown rather than black, and the whites of his eyes were yellow. his broad cheekbones and narrow chin gave his face something of the viperine v. his head, too, was broad behind, and low and narrow at the forehead, as if his brain had been twisted round in the reverse way to a european's. he was short of stature and still shorter of english. in conversation he made numerous odd noises of no known marketable value, and his infrequent words were carved and wrought into heraldic grotesqueness. holroyd tried to elucidate his religious beliefs, and--especially after whisky--lectured to him against superstition and missionaries. azuma-zi, however, shirked the discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it. azuma-zi had come, clad in white but insufficient raiment, out of the stoke-hole of the _lord clive_, from the straits settlements and beyond, into london. he had heard even in his youth of the greatness and riches of london, where all the women are white and fair, and even the beggars in the streets are white, and he had arrived, with newly-earned gold coins in his pocket, to worship at the shrine of civilisation. the day of his landing was a dismal one; the sky was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle filtered down to the greasy streets, but he plunged boldly into the delights of shadwell, and was presently cast up, shattered in health, civilised in costume, penniless, and, except in matters of the direst necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil for james holroyd, and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at camberwell. and to james holroyd bullying was a labour of love. there were three dynamos with their engines at camberwell. the two that have been there since the beginning are small machines; the larger one was new. the smaller machines made a reasonable noise; their straps hummed over the drums, every now and then the brushes buzzed and fizzled, and the air churned steadily, whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. one was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating. but the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. the place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. this last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but azuma-zi accounted it unto the monster for mightiness and pride. if it were possible we would have the noises of that shed always about the reader as he reads, we would tell all our story to such an accompaniment. it was a steady stream of din, from which the ear picked out first one thread and then another; there was the intermittent snorting, panting, and seething of the steam engines, the suck and thud of their pistons, the dull beat on the air as the spokes of the great driving wheels came round, a note the leather straps made as they ran tighter and looser, and a fretful tumult from the dynamos; and, over all, sometimes inaudible, as the ear tired of it, and then creeping back upon the senses again, was this trombone note of the big machine. the floor never felt steady and quiet beneath one's feet, but quivered and jarred. it was a confusing, unsteady place, and enough to send anyone's thoughts jerking into odd zigzags. and for three months, while the big strike of the engineers was in progress, holroyd, who was a blackleg, and azuma-zi, who was a mere black, were never out of the stir and eddy of it, but slept and fed in the little wooden shanty between the shed and the gates. holroyd delivered a theological lecture on the text of his big machine soon after azuma-zi came. he had to shout to be heard in the din. "look at that," said holroyd; "where's your 'eathen idol to match 'im?" and azuma-zi looked. for a moment holroyd was inaudible, and then azuma-zi heard: "kill a hundred men. twelve per cent, on the ordinary shares," said holroyd, "and that's something like a gord." holroyd was proud of his big dynamo, and expatiated upon its size and power to azuma-zi until heaven knows what odd currents of thought that and the incessant whirling and shindy set up within the curly black cranium. he would explain in the most graphic manner the dozen or so ways in which a man might be killed by it, and once he gave azuma-zi a shock as a sample of its quality. after that, in the breathing-times of his labour--it was heavy labour, being not only his own, but most of holroyd's--azuma-zi would sit and watch the big machine. now and then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which holroyd would swear, but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing. the band ran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one watched was the complacent thud of the piston. so it lived all day in this big airy shed, with him and holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew--mere captive devils of the british solomon--had been, but a machine enthroned. those two smaller dynamos azuma-zi by force of contrast despised; the large one he privately christened the lord of the dynamos. they were fretful and irregular, but the big dynamo was steady. how great it was! how serene and easy in its working! greater and calmer even than the buddhas he had seen at rangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! the great black coils spun, spun, spun, the rings ran round under the brushes, and the deep note of its coil steadied the whole. it affected azuma-zi queerly. azuma-zi was not fond of labour. he would sit about and watch the lord of the dynamos while holroyd went away to persuade the yard porter to get whisky, although his proper place was not in the dynamo shed but behind the engines, and, moreover, if holroyd caught him skulking he got hit for it with a rod of stout copper wire. he would go and stand close to the colossus, and look up at the great leather band running overhead. there was a black patch on the band that came round, and it pleased him somehow among all the clatter to watch this return again and again. odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it. scientific people tell us that savages give souls to rocks and trees,--and a machine is a thousand times more alive than a rock or a tree. and azuma-zi was practically a savage still; the veneer of civilisation lay no deeper than his slop suit, his bruises, and the coal grime on his face and hands. his father before him had worshipped a meteoric stone, kindred blood, it may be, had splashed the broad wheels of juggernaut. he took every opportunity holroyd gave him of touching and handling the great dynamo that was fascinating him. he polished and cleaned it until the metal parts were blinding in the sun. he felt a mysterious sense of service in doing this. he would go up to it and touch its spinning coils gently. the gods he had worshipped were all far away. the people in london hid their gods. at last his dim feelings grew more distinct, and took shape in thoughts, and at last in acts. when he came into the roaring shed one morning he salaamed to the lord of the dynamos, and then, when holroyd was away, he went and whispered to the thundering machine that he was its servant, and prayed it to have pity on him and save him from holroyd. as he did so a rare gleam of light came in through the open archway of the throbbing machine-shed, and the lord of the dynamos, as he whirled and roared, was radiant with pale gold. then azuma-zi knew that his service was acceptable to his lord. after that he did not feel so lonely as he had done, and he had indeed been very much alone in london. and even when his work-time was over, which was rare, he loitered about the shed. then, the next time holroyd maltreated him, azuma-zi went presently to the lord of the dynamos and whispered, "thou seest, o my lord!" and the angry whirr of the machinery seemed to answer him. thereafter it appeared to him that whenever holroyd came into the shed a different note came into the sounds of the dynamo. "my lord bides his time," said azuma-zi to himself. "the iniquity of the fool is not yet ripe." and he waited and watched for the day of reckoning. one day there was evidence of short circuiting, and holroyd, making an unwary examination--it was in the afternoon--got a rather severe shock. azuma-zi from behind the engine saw him jump off and curse at the peccant coil. "he is warned," said azuma-zi to himself. "surely my lord is very patient." holroyd had at first initiated his "nigger" into such elementary conceptions of the dynamo's working as would enable him to take temporary charge of the shed in his absence. but when he noticed the manner in which azuma-zi hung about the monster he became suspicious. he dimly perceived his assistant was "up to something," and connecting him with the anointing of the coils with oil that had rotted the varnish in one place, he issued an edict, shouted above the confusion of the machinery, "don't 'ee go nigh that big dynamo any more, pooh-bah, or a'll take thy skin off!" besides, if it pleased azuma-zi to be near the big machine, it was plain sense and decency to keep him away from it. azuma-zi obeyed at the time, but later he was caught bowing before the lord of the dynamos. at which holroyd twisted his arm and kicked him as he turned to go away. as azuma-zi presently stood behind the engine and glared at the back of the hated holroyd, the noises of the machinery took a new rhythm, and sounded like four words in his native tongue. it is hard to say exactly what madness is. i fancy azuma-zi was mad. the incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his little store of knowledge and big store of superstitious fancy, at last, into something akin to frenzy. at any rate, when the idea of making holroyd a sacrifice to the dynamo fetich was thus suggested to him, it filled him with a strange tumult of exultant emotion. that night the two men and their black shadows were alone in the shed together. the shed was lit with one big arc light that winked and flickered purple. the shadows lay black behind the dynamos, the ball governors of the engines whirled from light to darkness, and their pistons beat loud and steady. the world outside seen through the open end of the shed seemed incredibly dim and remote. it seemed absolutely silent, too, since the riot of the machinery drowned every external sound. far away was the black fence of the yard with grey shadowy houses behind, and above was the deep blue sky and the pale little stars. azuma-zi suddenly walked across the centre of the shed above which the leather bands were running, and went into the shadow by the big dynamo. holroyd heard a click, and the spin of the armature changed. "what are you dewin' with that switch?" he bawled in surprise. "han't i told you----" then he saw the set expression of azuma-zi's eyes as the asiatic came out of the shadow towards him. in another moment the two men were grappling fiercely in front of the great dynamo. "you coffee-headed fool!" gasped holroyd, with a brown hand at his throat. "keep off those contact rings." in another moment he was tripped and reeling back upon the lord of the dynamos. he instinctively loosened his grip upon his antagonist to save himself from the machine. the messenger, sent in furious haste from the station to find out what had happened in the dynamo shed, met azuma-zi at the porter's lodge by the gate. azuma-zi tried to explain something, but the messenger could make nothing of the black's incoherent english, and hurried on to the shed. the machines were all noisily at work, and nothing seemed to be disarranged. there was, however, a queer smell of singed hair. then he saw an odd-looking crumpled mass clinging to the front of the big dynamo, and, approaching, recognised the distorted remains of holroyd. the man stared and hesitated a moment. then he saw the face, and shut his eyes convulsively. he turned on his heel before he opened them, so that he should not see holroyd again, and went out of the shed to get advice and help. when azuma-zi saw holroyd die in the grip of the great dynamo he had been a little scared about the consequences of his act. yet he felt strangely elated, and knew that the favour of the lord dynamo was upon him. his plan was already settled when he met the man coming from the station, and the scientific manager who speedily arrived on the scene jumped at the obvious conclusion of suicide. this expert scarcely noticed azuma-zi, except to ask a few questions. did he see holroyd kill himself? azuma-zi explained he had been out of sight at the engine furnace until he heard a difference in the noise from the dynamo. it was not a difficult examination, being untinctured by suspicion. the distorted remains of holroyd, which the electrician removed from the machine, were hastily covered by the porter with a coffee-stained table-cloth. somebody, by a happy inspiration, fetched a medical man. the expert was chiefly anxious to get the machine at work again, for seven or eight trains had stopped midway in the stuffy tunnels of the electric railway. azuma-zi, answering or misunderstanding the questions of the people who had by authority or impudence come into the shed, was presently sent back to the stoke-hole by the scientific manager. of course a crowd collected outside the gates of the yard--a crowd, for no known reason, always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a sudden death in london--two or three reporters percolated somehow into the engine-shed, and one even got to azuma-zi; but the scientific expert cleared them out again, being himself an amateur journalist. presently the body was carried away, and public interest departed with it. azuma-zi remained very quietly at his furnace, seeing over and over again in the coals a figure that wriggled violently and became still. an hour after the murder, to any one coming into the shed it would have looked exactly as if nothing remarkable had ever happened there. peeping presently from his engine-room the black saw the lord dynamo spin and whirl beside his little brothers, and the driving wheels were beating round, and the steam in the pistons went thud, thud, exactly as it had been earlier in the evening. after all, from the mechanical point of view, it had been a most insignificant incident--the mere temporary deflection of a current. but now the slender form and slender shadow of the scientific manager replaced the sturdy outline of holroyd travelling up and down the lane of light upon the vibrating floor under the straps between the engines and the dynamos. "have i not served my lord?" said azuma-zi inaudibly, from his shadow, and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear. as he looked at the big whirling mechanism the strange fascination of it that had been a little in abeyance since holroyd's death resumed its sway. never had azuma-zi seen a man killed so swiftly and pitilessly. the big humming machine had slain its victim without wavering for a second from its steady beating. it was indeed a mighty god. the unconscious scientific manager stood with his back to him, scribbling on a piece of paper. his shadow lay at the foot of the monster. was the lord dynamo still hungry? his servant was ready. azuma-zi made a stealthy step forward; then stopped. the scientific manager suddenly ceased his writing, walked down the shed to the endmost of the dynamos, and began to examine the brushes. azuma-zi hesitated, and then slipped across noiselessly into the shadow by the switch. there he waited. presently the manager's footsteps could be heard returning. he stopped in his old position, unconscious of the stoker crouching ten feet away from him. then the big dynamo suddenly fizzled, and in another moment azuma-zi had sprung out of the darkness upon him. first, the scientific manager was gripped round the body and swung towards the big dynamo, then, kicking with his knee and forcing his antagonist's head down with his hands, he loosened the grip on his waist and swung round away from the machine. then the black grasped him again, putting a curly head against his chest, and they swayed and panted as it seemed for an age or so. then the scientific manager was impelled to catch a black ear in his teeth and bite furiously. the black yelled hideously. they rolled over on the floor, and the black, who had apparently slipped from the vice of the teeth or parted with some ear--the scientific manager wondered which at the time--tried to throttle him. the scientific manager was making some ineffectual efforts to claw something with his hands and to kick, when the welcome sound of quick footsteps sounded on the floor. the next moment azuma-zi had left him and darted towards the big dynamo. there was a splutter amid the roar. the officer of the company who had entered stood staring as azuma-zi caught the naked terminals in his hands, gave one horrible convulsion, and then hung motionless from the machine, his face violently distorted. "i'm jolly glad you came in when you did," said the scientific manager, still sitting on the floor. he looked at the still quivering figure. "it is not a nice death to die, apparently--but it is quick." the official was still staring at the body. he was a man of slow apprehension. there was a pause. the scientific manager got up on his feet rather awkwardly. he ran his fingers along his collar thoughtfully, and moved his head to and fro several times. "poor holroyd! i see now." then almost mechanically he went towards the switch in the shadow and turned the current into the railway circuit again. as he did so the singed body loosened its grip upon the machine and fell forward on its face. the core of the dynamo roared out loud and clear, and the armature beat the air. so ended prematurely the worship of the dynamo deity, perhaps the most short-lived of all religions. yet withal it could at least boast a martyrdom and a human sacrifice. ix. the moth. probably you have heard of hapley--not w. t. hapley, the son, but the celebrated hapley, the hapley of _periplaneta hapliia_, hapley the entomologist. if so you know at least of the great feud between hapley and professor pawkins, though certain of its consequences may be new to you. for those who have not, a word or two of explanation is necessary, which the idle reader may go over with a glancing eye, if his indolence so incline him. it is amazing how very widely diffused is the ignorance of such really important matters as this hapley-pawkins feud. those epoch-making controversies, again, that have convulsed the geological society are, i verily believe, almost entirely unknown outside the fellowship of that body. i have heard men of fair general education even refer to the great scenes at these meetings as vestry-meeting squabbles. yet the great hate of the english and scotch geologists has lasted now half a century, and has "left deep and abundant marks upon the body of the science." and this hapley-pawkins business, though perhaps a more personal affair, stirred passions as profound, if not profounder. your common man has no conception of the zeal that animates a scientific investigator, the fury of contradiction you can arouse in him. it is the _odium theologicum_ in a new form. there are men, for instance, who would gladly burn professor ray lankester at smithfield for his treatment of the mollusca in the encyclopaedia. that fantastic extension of the cephalopods to cover the pteropods ... but i wander from hapley and pawkins. it began years and years ago, with a revision of the microlepidoptera (whatever these may be) by pawkins, in which he extinguished a new species created by hapley. hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied by a stinging impeachment of the entire classification of pawkins.[a] pawkins in his "rejoinder"[b] suggested that hapley's microscope was as defective as his power of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"-hapley was not a professor at that time. hapley in his retort,[c] spoke of "blundering collectors," and described, as if inadvertently, pawkins' revision as a "miracle of ineptitude." it was war to the knife. however, it would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these two great men quarrelled, and how the split between them widened until from the microlepidoptera they were at war upon every open question in entomology. there were memorable occasions. at times the royal entomological society meetings resembled nothing so much as the chamber of deputies. on the whole, i fancy pawkins was nearer the truth than hapley. but hapley was skilful with his rhetoric, had a turn for ridicule rare in a scientific man, was endowed with vast energy, and had a fine sense of injury in the matter of the extinguished species; while pawkins was a man of dull presence, prosy of speech, in shape not unlike a water-barrel, over conscientious with testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments. so the young men gathered round hapley and applauded him. it was a long struggle, vicious from the beginning and growing at last to pitiless antagonism. the successive turns of fortune, now an advantage to one side and now to another--now hapley tormented by some success of pawkins, and now pawkins outshone by hapley, belong rather to the history of entomology than to this story. [footnote a: "remarks on a recent revision of microlepidoptera." _quart. journ. entomological soc._, 1863.] [footnote b: "rejoinder to certain remarks," etc. _ibid._ 1864.] [footnote c: "further remarks," etc. _ibid._] but in 1891 pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the death's head moth. what the mesoblast of the death's head moth may be does not matter a rap in this story. but the work was far below his usual standard, and gave hapley an opening he had coveted for years. he must have worked night and day to make the most of his advantage. in an elaborate critique he rent pawkins to tatters--one can fancy the man's disordered black hair, and his queer dark eyes flashing as he went for his antagonist--and pawkins made a reply, halting, ineffectual, with painful gaps of silence, and yet malignant. there was no mistaking his will to wound hapley, nor his incapacity to do it. but few of those who heard him--i was absent from that meeting--realised how ill the man was. hapley got his opponent down, and meant to finish him. he followed with a simply brutal attack upon pawkins, in the form of a paper upon the development of moths in general, a paper showing evidence of a most extraordinary amount of mental labour, and yet couched in a violently controversial tone. violent as it was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified. it must have covered pawkins with shame and confusion of face. it left no loophole; it was murderous in argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an awful thing for the declining years of a man's career. the world of entomologists waited breathlessly for the rejoinder from pawkins. he would try one, for pawkins had always been game. but when it came it surprised them. for the rejoinder of pawkins was to catch influenza, proceed to pneumonia, and die. it was perhaps as effectual a reply as he could make under the circumstances, and largely turned the current of feeling against hapley. the very people who had most gleefully cheered on those gladiators became serious at the consequence. there could be no reasonable doubt the fret of the defeat had contributed to the death of pawkins. there was a limit even to scientific controversy, said serious people. another crushing attack was already in the press and appeared on the day before the funeral. i don't think hapley exerted himself to stop it. people remembered how hapley had hounded down his rival, and forgot that rival's defects. scathing satire reads ill over fresh mould. the thing provoked comment in the daily papers. this it was that made me think that you had probably heard of hapley and this controversy. but, as i have already remarked, scientific workers live very much in a world of their own; half the people, i dare say, who go along piccadilly to the academy every year, could not tell you where the learned societies abide. many even think that research is a kind of happy-family cage in which all kinds of men lie down together in peace. in his private thoughts hapley could not forgive pawkins for dying. in the first place, it was a mean dodge to escape the absolute pulverisation hapley had in hand for him, and in the second, it left hapley's mind with a queer gap in it. for twenty years he had worked hard, sometimes far into the night, and seven days a week, with microscope, scalpel, collecting-net, and pen, and almost entirely with reference to pawkins. the european reputation he had won had come as an incident in that great antipathy. he had gradually worked up to a climax in this last controversy. it had killed pawkins, but it had also thrown hapley out of gear, so to speak, and his doctor advised him to give up work for a time, and rest. so hapley went down into a quiet village in kent, and thought day and night of pawkins, and good things it was now impossible to say about him. at last hapley began to realise in what direction the pre-occupation tended. he determined to make a fight for it, and started by trying to read novels. but he could not get his mind off pawkins, white in the face and making his last speech--every sentence a beautiful opening for hapley. he turned to fiction--and found it had no grip on him. he read the "island nights' entertainments" until his "sense of causation" was shocked beyond endurance by the bottle imp. then he went to kipling, and found he "proved nothing," besides being irreverent and vulgar. these scientific people have their limitations. then unhappily, he tried besant's "inner house," and the opening chapter set his mind upon learned societies and pawkins at once. so hapley turned to chess, and found it a little more soothing. he soon mastered the moves and the chief gambits and commoner closing positions, and began to beat the vicar. but then the cylindrical contours of the opposite king began to resemble pawkins standing up and gasping ineffectually against check-mate, and hapley decided to give up chess. perhaps the study of some new branch of science would after all be better diversion. the best rest is change of occupation. hapley determined to plunge at diatoms, and had one of his smaller microscopes and halibut's monograph sent down from london. he thought that perhaps if he could get up a vigorous quarrel with halibut, he might be able to begin life afresh and forget pawkins. and very soon he was hard at work in his habitual strenuous fashion, at these microscopic denizens of the way-side pool. it was on the third day of the diatoms that hapley became aware of a novel addition to the local fauna. he was working late at the microscope, and the only light in the room was the brilliant little lamp with the special form of green shade. like all experienced microscopists, he kept both eyes open. it is the only way to avoid excessive fatigue. one eye was over the instrument, and bright and distinct before that was the circular field of the microscope, across which a brown diatom was slowly moving. with the other eye hapley saw, as it were, without seeing. he was only dimly conscious of the brass side of the instrument, the illuminated part of the table-cloth, a sheet of notepaper, the foot of the lamp, and the darkened room beyond. suddenly his attention drifted from one eye to the other. the table-cloth was of the material called tapestry by shopmen, and rather brightly coloured. the pattern was in gold, with a small amount of crimson and pale blue upon a greyish ground. at one point the pattern seemed displaced, and there was a vibrating movement of the colours at this point. hapley suddenly moved his head back and looked with both eyes. his mouth fell open with astonishment. it was a large moth or butterfly; its wings spread in butterfly fashion! it was strange it should be in the room at all, for the windows were closed. strange that it should not have attracted his attention when fluttering to its present position. strange that it should match the table-cloth. stranger far that to him, hapley, the great entomologist, it was altogether unknown. there was no delusion. it was crawling slowly towards the foot of the lamp. "new genus, by heavens! and in england!" said hapley, staring. then he suddenly thought of pawkins. nothing would have maddened pawkins more...and pawkins was dead! something about the head and body of the insect became singularly suggestive of pawkins, just as the chess king had been. "confound pawkins!" said hapley. "but i must catch this." and looking round him for some means of capturing the moth, he rose slowly out of his chair. suddenly the insect rose, struck the edge of the lampshade--hapley heard the "ping"--and vanished into the shadow. in a moment hapley had whipped off the shade, so that the whole room was illuminated. the thing had disappeared, but soon his practised eye detected it upon the wall-paper near the door. he went towards it poising the lamp-shade for capture. before he was within striking distance, however, it had risen and was fluttering round the room. after the fashion of its kind, it flew with sudden starts and turns, seeming to vanish here and reappear there. once hapley struck, and missed; then again. the third time he hit his microscope. the instrument swayed, struck and overturned the lamp, and fell noisily upon the floor. the lamp turned over on the table and, very luckily, went out. hapley was left in the dark. with a start he felt the strange moth blunder into his face. it was maddening. he had no lights. if he opened the door of the room the thing would get away. in the darkness he saw pawkins quite distinctly laughing at him. pawkins had ever an oily laugh. he swore furiously and stamped his foot on the floor. there was a timid rapping at the door. then it opened, perhaps a foot, and very slowly. the alarmed face of the landlady appeared behind a pink candle flame; she wore a night-cap over her grey hair and had some purple garment over her shoulders. "what _was_ that fearful smash?" she said. "has anything----" the strange moth appeared fluttering about the chink of the door. "shut that door!" said hapley, and suddenly rushed at her. the door slammed hastily. hapley was left alone in the dark. then in the pause he heard his landlady scuttle upstairs, lock her door, and drag something heavy across the room and put against it. it became evident to hapley that his conduct and appearance had been strange and alarming. confound the moth! and pawkins! however, it was a pity to lose the moth now. he felt his way into the hall and found the matches, after sending his hat down upon the floor with a noise like a drum. with the lighted candle he returned to the sitting-room. no moth was to be seen. yet once for a moment it seemed that the thing was fluttering round his head. hapley very suddenly decided to give up the moth and go to bed. but he was excited. all night long his sleep was broken by dreams of the moth, pawkins, and his landlady. twice in the night he turned out and soused his head in cold water. one thing was very clear to him. his landlady could not possibly understand about the strange moth, especially as he had failed to catch it. no one but an entomologist would understand quite how he felt. she was probably frightened at his behaviour, and yet he failed to see how he could explain it. he decided to say nothing further about the events of last night. after breakfast he saw her in her garden, and decided to go out and talk to reassure her. he talked to her about beans and potatoes, bees, caterpillars, and the price of fruit. she replied in her usual manner, but she looked at him a little suspiciously, and kept walking as he walked, so that there was always a bed of flowers, or a row of beans, or something of the sort, between them. after a while he began to feel singularly irritated at this, and to conceal his vexation went indoors and presently went out for a walk. the moth, or butterfly, trailing an odd flavour of pawkins with it, kept coming into that walk, though he did his best to keep his mind off it. once he saw it quite distinctly, with its wings flattened out, upon the old stone wall that runs along the west edge of the park, but going up to it he found it was only two lumps of grey and yellow lichen. "this," said hapley, "is the reverse of mimicry. instead of a butterfly looking like a stone, here is a stone looking like a butterfly!" once something hovered and fluttered round his head, but by an effort of will he drove that impression out of his mind again. in the afternoon hapley called upon the vicar, and argued with him upon theological questions. they sat in the little arbour covered with briar, and smoked as they wrangled. "look at that moth!" said hapley, suddenly, pointing to the edge of the wooden table. "where?" said the vicar. "you don't see a moth on the edge of the table there?" said hapley. "certainly not," said the vicar. hapley was thunderstruck. he gasped. the vicar was staring at him. clearly the man saw nothing. "the eye of faith is no better than the eye of science," said hapley awkwardly. "i don't see your point," said the vicar, thinking it was part of the argument. that night hapley found the moth crawling over his counterpane. he sat on the edge of the bed in his shirt sleeves and reasoned with himself. was it pure hallucination? he knew he was slipping, and he battled for his sanity with the same silent energy he had formerly displayed against pawkins. so persistent is mental habit, that he felt as if it were still a struggle with pawkins. he was well versed in psychology. he knew that such visual illusions do come as a result of mental strain. but the point was, he did not only _see_ the moth, he had heard it when it touched the edge of the lampshade, and afterwards when it hit against the wall, and he had felt it strike his face in the dark. he looked at it. it was not at all dreamlike, but perfectly clear and solid-looking in the candle-light. he saw the hairy body, and the short feathery antennae, the jointed legs, even a place where the down was rubbed from the wing. he suddenly felt angry with himself for being afraid of a little insect. his landlady had got the servant to sleep with her that night, because she was afraid to be alone. in addition she had locked the door, and put the chest of drawers against it. they listened and talked in whispers after they had gone to bed, but nothing occurred to alarm them. about eleven they had ventured to put the candle out, and had both dozed off to sleep. they woke up with a start, and sat up in bed, listening in the darkness. then they heard slippered feet going to and fro in hapley's room. a chair was overturned, and there was a violent dab at the wall. then a china mantel ornament smashed upon the fender. suddenly the door of the room opened, and they heard him upon the landing. they clung to one another, listening. he seemed to be dancing upon the staircase. now he would go down three or four steps quickly, then up again, then hurry down into the hall. they heard the umbrella stand go over, and the fanlight break. then the bolt shot and the chain rattled. he was opening the door. they hurried to the window. it was a dim grey night; an almost unbroken sheet of watery cloud was sweeping across the moon, and the hedge and trees in front of the house were black against the pale roadway. they saw hapley, looking like a ghost in his shirt and white trousers, running to and fro in the road, and beating the air. now he would stop, now he would dart very rapidly at something invisible, now he would move upon it with stealthy strides. at last he went out of sight up the road towards the down. then, while they argued who should go down and lock the door, he returned. he was walking very fast, and he came straight into the house, closed the door carefully, and went quietly up to his bedroom. then everything was silent. "mrs. colville," said hapley, calling down the staircase next morning, "i hope i did not alarm you last night." "you may well ask that!" said mrs. colville. "the fact is, i am a sleep-walker, and the last two nights i have been without my sleeping mixture. there is nothing to be alarmed about, really. i am sorry i made such an ass of myself. i will go over the down to shoreham, and get some stuff to make me sleep soundly. i ought to have done that yesterday." but half-way over the down, by the chalk pits, the moth came upon hapley again. he went on, trying to keep his mind upon chess problems, but it was no good. the thing fluttered into his face, and he struck at it with his hat in self-defence. then rage, the old rage--the rage he had so often felt against pawkins--came upon him again. he went on, leaping and striking at the eddying insect. suddenly he trod on nothing, and fell headlong. there was a gap in his sensations, and hapley found himself sitting on the heap of flints in front of the opening of the chalk-pits, with a leg twisted back under him. the strange moth was still fluttering round his head. he struck at it with his hand, and turning his head saw two men approaching him. one was the village doctor. it occurred to hapley that this was lucky. then it came into his mind with extraordinary vividness, that no one would ever be able to see the strange moth except himself, and that it behoved him to keep silent about it. late that night, however, after his broken leg was set, he was feverish and forgot his self-restraint. he was lying flat on his bed, and he began to run his eyes round the room to see if the moth was still about. he tried not to do this, but it was no good. he soon caught sight of the thing resting close to his hand, by the night-light, on the green table-cloth. the wings quivered. with a sudden wave of anger he smote at it with his fist, and the nurse woke up with a shriek. he had missed it. "that moth!" he said; and then, "it was fancy. nothing!" all the time he could see quite clearly the insect going round the cornice and darting across the room, and he could also see that the nurse saw nothing of it and looked at him strangely. he must keep himself in hand. he knew he was a lost man if he did not keep himself in hand. but as the night waned the fever grew upon him, and the very dread he had of seeing the moth made him see it. about five, just as the dawn was grey, he tried to get out of bed and catch it, though his leg was afire with pain. the nurse had to struggle with him. on account of this, they tied him down to the bed. at this the moth grew bolder, and once he felt it settle in his hair. then, because he struck out violently with his arms, they tied these also. at this the moth came and crawled over his face, and hapley wept, swore, screamed, prayed for them to take it off him, unavailingly. the doctor was a blockhead, a just-qualified general practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science. he simply said there was no moth. had he possessed the wit, he might still, perhaps, have saved hapley from his fate by entering into his delusion, and covering his face with gauze, as he prayed might be done. but, as i say, the doctor was a blockhead, and until the leg was healed hapley was kept tied to his bed, and with the imaginary moth crawling over him. it never left him while he was awake and it grew to a monster in his dreams. while he was awake he longed for sleep, and from sleep he awoke screaming. so now hapley is spending the remainder of his days in a padded room, worried by a moth that no one else can see. the asylum doctor calls it hallucination; but hapley, when he is in his easier mood, and can talk, says it is the ghost of pawkins, and consequently a unique specimen and well worth the trouble of catching. x. the treasure in the forest. the canoe was now approaching the land. the bay opened out, and a gap in the white surf of the reef marked where the little river ran out to the sea; the thicker and deeper green of the virgin forest showed its course down the distant hill slope. the forest here came close to the beach. far beyond, dim and almost cloudlike in texture, rose the mountains, like suddenly frozen waves. the sea was still save for an almost imperceptible swell. the sky blazed. the man with the carved paddle stopped. "it should be somewhere here," he said. he shipped the paddle and held his arms out straight before him. the other man had been in the fore part of the canoe, closely scrutinising the land. he had a sheet of yellow paper on his knee. "come and look at this, evans," he said. both men spoke in low tones, and their lips were hard and dry. the man called evans came swaying along the canoe until he could look over his companion's shoulder. the paper had the appearance of a rough map. by much folding it was creased and worn to the pitch of separation, and the second man held the discoloured fragments together where they had parted. on it one could dimly make out, in almost obliterated pencil, the outline of the bay. "here," said evans, "is the reef, and here is the gap." he ran his thumb-nail over the chart. "this curved and twisting line is the river--i could do with a drink now!--and this star is the place." "you see this dotted line," said the man with the map; "it is a straight line, and runs from the opening of the reef to a clump of palm-trees. the star comes just where it cuts the river. we must mark the place as we go into the lagoon." "it's queer," said evans, after a pause, "what these little marks down here are for. it looks like the plan of a house or something; but what all these little dashes, pointing this way and that, may mean i can't get a notion. and what's the writing?" "chinese," said the man with the map. "of course! _he_ was a chinee," said evans. "they all were," said the man with the map. they both sat for some minutes staring at the land, while the canoe drifted slowly. then evans looked towards the paddle. "your turn with the paddle now, hooker," said he. and his companion quietly folded up his map, put it in his pocket, passed evans carefully, and began to paddle. his movements were languid, like those of a man whose strength was nearly exhausted. evans sat with his eyes half closed, watching the frothy breakwater of the coral creep nearer and nearer. the sky was like a furnace, for the sun was near the zenith. though they were so near the treasure he did not feel the exaltation he had anticipated. the intense excitement of the struggle for the plan, and the long night voyage from the mainland in the unprovisioned canoe had, to use his own expression, "taken it out of him." he tried to arouse himself by directing his mind to the ingots the chinamen had spoken of, but it would not rest there; it came back headlong to the thought of sweet water rippling in the river, and to the almost unendurable dryness of his lips and throat. the rhythmic wash of the sea upon the reef was becoming audible now, and it had a pleasant sound in his ears; the water washed along the side of the canoe, and the paddle dripped between each stroke. presently he began to doze. he was still dimly conscious of the island, but a queer dream texture interwove with his sensations. once again it was the night when he and hooker had hit upon the chinamen's secret; he saw the moonlit trees, the little fire burning, and the black figures of the three chinamen--silvered on one side by moonlight, and on the other glowing from the firelight--and heard them talking together in pigeon-english--for they came from different provinces. hooker had caught the drift of their talk first, and had motioned to him to listen. fragments of the conversation were inaudible, and fragments incomprehensible. a spanish galleon from the philippines hopelessly aground, and its treasure buried against the day of return, lay in the background of the story; a shipwrecked crew thinned by disease, a quarrel or so, and the needs of discipline, and at last taking to their boats never to be heard of again. then chang-hi, only a year since, wandering ashore, had happened upon the ingots hidden for two hundred years, had deserted his junk, and reburied them with infinite toil, single-handed but very safe. he laid great stress on the safety--it was a secret of his. now he wanted help to return and exhume them. presently the little map fluttered and the voices sank. a fine story for two, stranded british wastrels to hear! evans' dream shifted to the moment when he had chang-hi's pigtail in his hand. the life of a chinaman is scarcely sacred like a european's. the cunning little face of chang-hi, first keen and furious like a startled snake, and then fearful, treacherous, and pitiful, became overwhelmingly prominent in the dream. at the end chang-hi had grinned, a most incomprehensible and startling grin. abruptly things became very unpleasant, as they will do at times in dreams. chang-hi gibbered and threatened him. he saw in his dream heaps and heaps of gold, and chang-hi intervening and struggling to hold him back from it. he took chang-hi by the pig-tail--how big the yellow brute was, and how he struggled and grinned! he kept growing bigger, too. then the bright heaps of gold turned to a roaring furnace, and a vast devil, surprisingly like chang-hi, but with a huge black tail, began to feed him with coals. they burnt his mouth horribly. another devil was shouting his name: "evans, evans, you sleepy fool!"--or was it hooker? he woke up. they were in the mouth of the lagoon. "there are the three palm-trees. it must be in a line with that clump of bushes," said his companion. "mark that. if we, go to those bushes and then strike into the bush in a straight line from here, we shall come to it when we come to the stream." they could see now where the mouth of the stream opened out. at the sight of it evans revived. "hurry up, man," he said, "or by heaven i shall have to drink sea water!" he gnawed his hand and stared at the gleam of silver among the rocks and green tangle. presently he turned almost fiercely upon hooker. "give _me_ the paddle," he said. so they reached the river mouth. a little way up hooker took some water in the hollow of his hand, tasted it, and spat it out. a little further he tried again. "this will do," he said, and they began drinking eagerly. "curse this!" said evans suddenly. "it's too slow." and, leaning dangerously over the fore part of the canoe, he began to suck up the water with his lips. presently they made an end of drinking, and, running the canoe into a little creek, were about to land among the thick growth that overhung the water. "we shall have to scramble through this to the beach to find our bushes and get the line to the place," said evans. "we had better paddle round," said hooker. so they pushed out again into the river and paddled back down it to the sea, and along the shore to the place where the clump of bushes grew. here they landed, pulled the light canoe far up the beach, and then went up towards the edge of the jungle until they could see the opening of the reef and the bushes in a straight line. evans had taken a native implement out of the canoe. it was l-shaped, and the transverse piece was armed with polished stone. hooker carried the paddle. "it is straight now in this direction," said he; "we must push through this till we strike the stream. then we must prospect." they pushed through a close tangle of reeds, broad fronds, and young trees, and at first it was toilsome going, but very speedily the trees became larger and the ground beneath them opened out. the blaze of the sunlight was replaced by insensible degrees by cool shadow. the trees became at last vast pillars that rose up to a canopy of greenery far overhead. dim white flowers hung from their stems, and ropy creepers swung from tree to tree. the shadow deepened. on the ground, blotched fungi and a red-brown incrustation became frequent. evans shivered. "it seems almost cold here after the blaze outside." "i hope we are keeping to the straight," said hooker. presently they saw, far ahead, a gap in the sombre darkness where white shafts of hot sunlight smote into the forest. there also was brilliant green undergrowth and coloured flowers. then they heard the rush of water. "here is the river. we should be close to it now," said hooker. the vegetation was thick by the river bank. great plants, as yet unnamed, grew among the roots of the big trees, and spread rosettes of huge green fans towards the strip of sky. many flowers and a creeper with shiny foliage clung to the exposed stems. on the water of the broad, quiet pool which the treasure-seekers now overlooked there floated big oval leaves and a waxen, pinkish-white flower not unlike a water-lily. further, as the river bent away from them, the water suddenly frothed and became noisy in a rapid. "well?" said evans. "we have swerved a little from the straight," said hooker. "that was to be expected." he turned and looked into the dim cool shadows of the silent forest behind them. "if we beat a little way up and down the stream we should come to something." "you said--" began evans. "_he_ said there was a heap of stones," said hooker. the two men looked at each other for a moment. "let us try a little down-stream first," said evans. they advanced slowly, looking curiously about them. suddenly evans stopped. "what the devil's that?" he said. hooker followed his finger. "something blue," he said. it had come into view as they topped a gentle swell of the ground. then he began to distinguish what it was. he advanced suddenly with hasty steps, until the body that belonged to the limp hand and arm had become visible. his grip tightened on the implement he carried. the thing was the figure of a chinaman lying on his face. the _abandon_ of the pose was unmistakable. the two men drew closer together, and stood staring silently at this ominous dead body. it lay in a clear space among the trees. near by was a spade after the chinese pattern, and further off lay a scattered heap of stones, close to a freshly dug hole. "somebody has been here before," said hooker, clearing his throat. then suddenly evans began to swear and rave, and stamp upon the ground. hooker turned white but said nothing. he advanced towards the prostrate body. he saw the neck was puffed and purple, and the hands and ankles swollen. "pah!" he said, and suddenly turned away and went towards the excavation. he gave a cry of surprise. he shouted to evans, who was following him slowly. "you fool! it's all right. it's here still." then he turned again and looked at the dead chinaman, and then again at the hole. evans hurried to the hole. already half exposed by the ill-fated wretch beside them lay a number of dull yellow bars. he bent down in the hole, and, clearing off the soil with his bare hands, hastily pulled one of the heavy masses out. as he did so a little thorn pricked his hand. he pulled the delicate spike out with his fingers and lifted the ingot. "only gold or lead could weigh like this," he said exultantly. hooker was still looking at the dead chinaman. he was puzzled. "he stole a march on his friends," he said at last. "he came here alone, and some poisonous snake has killed him... i wonder how he found the place." evans stood with the ingot in his hands. what did a dead chinaman signify? "we shall have to take this stuff to the mainland piecemeal, and bury it there for a while. how shall we get it to the canoe?" he took his jacket off and spread it on the ground, and flung two or three ingots into it. presently he found that another little thorn had punctured his skin. "this is as much as we can carry," said he. then suddenly, with a queer rush of irritation, "what are you staring at?" hooker turned to him. "i can't stand him ..." he nodded towards the corpse. "it's so like----" "rubbish!" said evans. "all chinamen are alike." hooker looked into his face. "i'm going to bury _that_, anyhow, before i lend a hand with this stuff." "don't be a fool, hooker," said evans, "let that mass of corruption bide." hooker hesitated, and then his eye went carefully over the brown soil about them. "it scares me somehow," he said. "the thing is," said evans, "what to do with these ingots. shall we re-bury them over here, or take them across the strait in the canoe?" hooker thought. his puzzled gaze wandered among the tall tree-trunks, and up into the remote sunlit greenery overhead. he shivered again as his eye rested upon the blue figure of the chinaman. he stared searchingly among the grey depths between the trees. "what's come to you, hooker?" said evans. "have you lost your wits?" "let's get the gold out of this place, anyhow," said hooker. he took the ends of the collar of the coat in his hands, and evans took the opposite corners, and they lifted the mass. "which way?" said evans. "to the canoe?" "it's queer," said evans, when they had advanced only a few steps, "but my arms ache still with that paddling." "curse it!" he said. "but they ache! i must rest." they let the coat down, evans' face was white, and little drops of sweat stood out upon his forehead. "it's stuffy, somehow, in this forest." then with an abrupt transition to unreasonable anger: "what is the good of waiting here all the day? lend a hand, i say! you have done nothing but moon since we saw the dead chinaman." hooker was looking steadfastly at his companion's face. he helped raise the coat bearing the ingots, and they went forward perhaps a hundred yards in silence. evans began to breathe heavily. "can't you speak?" he said. "what's the matter with you?" said hooker. evans stumbled, and then with a sudden curse flung the coat from him. he stood for a moment staring at hooker, and then with a groan clutched at his own throat. "don't come near me," he said, and went and leant against a tree. then in a steadier voice, "i'll be better in a minute." presently his grip upon the trunk loosened, and he slipped slowly down the stem of the tree until he was a crumpled heap at its foot. his hands were clenched convulsively. his face became distorted with pain. hooker approached him. "don't touch me! don't touch me!" said evans in a stifled voice. "put the gold back on the coat." "can't i do anything for you?" said hooker. "put the gold back on the coat." as hooker handled the ingots he felt a little prick on the ball of his thumb. he looked at his hand and saw a slender thorn, perhaps two inches in length. evans gave an inarticulate cry and rolled over. hooker's jaw dropped. he stared at the thorn for a moment with dilated eyes. then he looked at evans, who was now crumpled together on the ground, his back bending and straightening spasmodically. then he looked through the pillars of the trees and net-work of creeper stems, to where in the dim grey shadow the blue-clad body of the chinaman was still indistinctly visible. he thought of the little dashes in the corner of the plan, and in a moment he understood. "god help me!" he said. for the thorns were similar to those the dyaks poison and use in their blowing-tubes. he understood now what chang-hi's assurance of the safety of his treasure meant. he understood that grin now. "evans!" he cried. but evans was silent and motionless, save for a horrible spasmodic twitching of his limbs. a profound silence brooded over the forest. then hooker began to suck furiously at the little pink spot on the ball of his thumb--sucking for dear life. presently he felt a strange aching pain in his arms and shoulders, and his fingers seemed difficult to bend. then he knew that sucking was no good. abruptly he stopped, and sitting down by the pile of ingots, and resting his chin upon his hands and his elbows upon his knees, stared at the distorted but still quivering body of his companion. chang-hi's grin came into his mind again. the dull pain spread towards his throat and grew slowly in intensity. far above him a faint breeze stirred the greenery, and the white petals of some unknown flower came floating down through the gloom. xi. the story of the late mr. elvesham. i set this story down, not expecting it will be believed, but, if possible, to prepare a way of escape for the next victim. he, perhaps, may profit by my misfortune. my own case, i know, is hopeless, and i am now in some measure prepared to meet my fate. my name is edward george eden. i was born at trentham, in staffordshire, my father being employed in the gardens there. i lost my mother when i was three years old, and my father when i was five, my uncle, george eden, then adopting me as his own son. he was a single man, self-educated, and well-known in birmingham as an enterprising journalist; he educated me generously, fired my ambition to succeed in the world, and at his death, which happened four years ago, left me his entire fortune, a matter of about five hundred pounds after all outgoing charges were paid. i was then eighteen. he advised me in his will to expend the money in completing my education. i had already chosen the profession of medicine, and through his posthumous generosity and my good fortune in a scholarship competition, i became a medical student at university college, london. at the time of the beginning of my story i lodged at 11a university street in a little upper room, very shabbily furnished and draughty, overlooking the back of shoolbred's premises. i used this little room both to live in and sleep in, because i was anxious to eke out my means to the very last shillings-worth. i was taking a pair of shoes to be mended at a shop in the tottenham court road when i first encountered the little old man with the yellow face, with whom my life has now become so inextricably entangled. he was standing on the kerb, and staring at the number on the door in a doubtful way, as i opened it. his eyes--they were dull grey eyes, and reddish under the rims--fell to my face, and his countenance immediately assumed an expression of corrugated amiability. "you come," he said, "apt to the moment. i had forgotten the number of your house. how do you do, mr. eden?" i was a little astonished at his familiar address, for i had never set eyes on the man before. i was a little annoyed, too, at his catching me with my boots under my arm. he noticed my lack of cordiality. "wonder who the deuce i am, eh? a friend, let me assure you. i have seen you before, though you haven't seen me. is there anywhere where i can talk to you?" i hesitated. the shabbiness of my room upstairs was not a matter for every stranger. "perhaps," said i, "we might walk down the street. i'm unfortunately prevented--" my gesture explained the sentence before i had spoken it. "the very thing," he said, and faced this way, and then that. "the street? which way shall we go?" i slipped my boots down in the passage. "look here!" he said abruptly; "this business of mine is a rigmarole. come and lunch with me, mr. eden. i'm an old man, a very old man, and not good at explanations, and what with my piping voice and the clatter of the traffic----" he laid a persuasive skinny hand that trembled a little upon my arm. i was not so old that an old man might not treat me to a lunch. yet at the same time i was not altogether pleased by this abrupt invitation. "i had rather----" i began. "but i had rather," he said, catching me up, "and a certain civility is surely due to my grey hairs." and so i consented, and went with him. he took me to blavitiski's; i had to walk slowly to accommodate myself to his paces; and over such a lunch as i had never tasted before, he fended off my leading question, and i took a better note of his appearance. his clean-shaven face was lean and wrinkled, his shrivelled, lips fell over a set of false teeth, and his white hair was thin and rather long; he seemed small to me,--though indeed, most people seemed small to me,--and his shoulders were rounded and bent. and watching him, i could not help but observe that he too was taking note of me, running his eyes, with a curious touch of greed in them, over me, from my broad shoulders to my suntanned hands, and up to my freckled face again. "and now," said he, as we lit our cigarettes, "i must tell you of the business in hand. "i must tell you, then, that i am an old man, a very old man." he paused momentarily. "and it happens that i have money that i must presently be leaving, and never a child have i to leave it to." i thought of the confidence trick, and resolved i would be on the alert for the vestiges of my five hundred pounds. he proceeded to enlarge on his loneliness, and the trouble he had to find a proper disposition of his money. "i have weighed this plan and that plan, charities, institutions, and scholarships, and libraries, and i have come to this conclusion at last,"--he fixed his eyes on my face,--"that i will find some young fellow, ambitious, pure-minded, and poor, healthy in body and healthy in mind, and, in short, make him my heir, give him all that i have." he repeated, "give him all that i have. so that he will suddenly be lifted out of all the trouble and struggle in which his sympathies have been educated, to freedom and influence." i tried to seem disinterested. with a transparent hypocrisy i said, "and you want my help, my professional services maybe, to find that person." he smiled, and looked at me over his cigarette, and i laughed at his quiet exposure of my modest pretence. "what a career such a man might have!" he said. "it fills me with envy to think how i have accumulated that another man may spend---"but there are conditions, of course, burdens to be imposed. he must, for instance, take my name. you cannot expect everything without some return. and i must go into all the circumstances of his life before i can accept him. he _must_ be sound. i must know his heredity, how his parents and grandparents died, have the strictest inquiries made into his private morals." this modified my secret congratulations a little. "and do i understand," said i, "that i----" "yes," he said, almost fiercely. "you. _you_." i answered never a word. my imagination was dancing wildly, my innate scepticism was useless to modify its transports. there was not a particle of gratitude in my mind--i did not know what to say nor how to say it. "but why me in particular?" i said at last. he had chanced to hear of me from professor haslar; he said, as a typically sound and sane young man, and he wished, as far as possible, to leave his money where health and integrity were assured. that was my first meeting with the little old man. he was mysterious about himself; he would not give his name yet, he said, and after i had answered some questions of his, he left me at the blavitiski portal. i noticed that he drew a handful of gold coins from his pocket when it came to paying for the lunch. his insistence upon bodily health was curious. in accordance with an arrangement we had made i applied that day for a life policy in the loyal insurance company for a large sum, and i was exhaustively overhauled by the medical advisers of that company in the subsequent week. even that did not satisfy him, and he insisted i must be re-examined by the great doctor henderson. it was friday in whitsun week before he came to a decision. he called me down, quite late in the evening,--nearly nine it was,--from cramming chemical equations for my preliminary scientific examination. he was standing in the passage under the feeble gas-lamp, and his face was a grotesque interplay of shadows. he seemed more bowed than when i had first seen him, and his cheeks had sunk in a little. his voice shook with emotion. "everything is satisfactory, mr. eden," he said. "everything is quite, quite satisfactory. and this night of all nights, you must dine with me and celebrate your--accession." he was interrupted by a cough. "you won't have long to wait, either," he said, wiping his handkerchief across his lips, and gripping my hand with his long bony claw that was disengaged. "certainly not very long to wait." we went into the street and called a cab. i remember every incident of that drive vividly, the swift, easy motion, the vivid contrast of gas and oil and electric light, the crowds of people in the streets, the place in regent street to which we went, and the sumptuous dinner we were served with there. i was disconcerted at first by the well-dressed waiter's glances at my rough clothes, bothered by the stones of the olives, but as the champagne warmed my blood, my confidence revived. at first the old man talked of himself. he had already told me his name in the cab; he was egbert elvesham, the great philosopher, whose name i had known since i was a lad at school. it seemed incredible to me that this man, whose intelligence had so early dominated mine, this great abstraction, should suddenly realise itself as this decrepit, familiar figure. i daresay every young fellow who has suddenly fallen among celebrities has felt something of my disappointment. he told me now of the future that the feeble streams of his life would presently leave dry for me, houses, copyrights, investments; i had never suspected that philosophers were so rich. he watched me drink and eat with a touch of envy. "what a capacity for living you have!" he said; and then with a sigh, a sigh of relief i could have thought it, "it will not be long." "ay," said i, my head swimming now with champagne; "i have a future perhaps--of a passing agreeable sort, thanks to you. i shall now have the honour of your name. but you have a past. such a past as is worth all my future." he shook his head and smiled, as i thought, with half sad appreciation of my flattering admiration. "that future," he said, "would you in truth change it?" the waiter came with liqueurs. "you will not perhaps mind taking my name, taking my position, but would you indeed--willingly--take my years?" "with your achievements," said i gallantly. he smiled again. "kummel--both," he said to the waiter, and turned his attention to a little paper packet he had taken from his pocket. "this hour," said he, "this after-dinner hour is the hour of small things. here is a scrap of my unpublished wisdom." he opened the packet with his shaking yellow fingers, and showed a little pinkish powder on the paper. "this," said he--"well, you must guess what it is. but kummel--put but a dash of this powder in it--is himmel." his large greyish eyes watched mine with an inscrutable expression. it was a bit of a shock to me to find this great teacher gave his mind to the flavour of liqueurs. however, i feigned an interest in his weakness, for i was drunk enough for such small sycophancy. he parted the powder between the little glasses, and, rising suddenly, with a strange unexpected dignity, held out his hand towards me. i imitated his action, and the glasses rang. "to a quick succession," said he, and raised his glass towards his lips. "not that," i said hastily. "not that." he paused with the liqueur at the level of his chin, and his eyes blazing into mine. "to a long life," said i. he hesitated. "to a long life," said he, with a sudden bark of laughter, and with eyes fixed on one another we tilted the little glasses. his eyes looked straight into mine, and as i drained the stuff off, i felt a curiously intense sensation. the first touch of it set my brain in a furious tumult; i seemed to feel an actual physical stirring in my skull, and a seething humming filled my ears. i did not notice the flavour in my mouth, the aroma that filled my throat; i saw only the grey intensity of his gaze that burnt into mine. the draught, the mental confusion, the noise and stirring in my head, seemed to last an interminable time. curious vague impressions of half-forgotten things danced and vanished on the edge of my consciousness. at last he broke the spell. with a sudden explosive sigh he put down his glass. "well?" he said. "it's glorious," said i, though i had not tasted the stuff. my head was spinning. i sat down. my brain was chaos. then my perception grew clear and minute as though i saw things in a concave mirror. his manner seemed to have changed into something nervous and hasty. he pulled out his watch and grimaced at it. "eleven-seven! and to-night i must-seven-twenty-five. waterloo! i must go at once." he called for the bill, and struggled with his coat. officious waiters came to our assistance. in another moment i was wishing him good-bye, over the apron of a cab, and still with an absurd feeling of minute distinctness, as though--how can i express it?--i not only saw but _felt_ through an inverted opera-glass. "that stuff," he said. he put his hand to his forehead. "i ought not to have given it to you. it will make your head split to-morrow. wait a minute. here." he handed me out a little flat thing like a seidlitz-powder. "take that in water as you are going to bed. the other thing was a drug. not till you're ready to go to bed, mind. it will clear your head. that's all. one more shake--futurus!" i gripped his shrivelled claw. "good-bye," he said, and by the droop of his eyelids i judged he too was a little under the influence of that brain-twisting cordial. he recollected something else with a start, felt in his breast-pocket, and produced another packet, this time a cylinder the size and shape of a shaving-stick. "here," said he. "i'd almost forgotten. don't open this until i come to-morrow--but take it now." it was so heavy that i wellnigh dropped it. "all ri'!" said i, and he grinned at me through the cab window as the cabman flicked his horse into wakefulness. it was a white packet he had given me, with red seals at either end and along its edge. "if this isn't money," said i, "it's platinum or lead." i stuck it with elaborate care into my pocket, and with a whirling brain walked home through the regent street loiterers and the dark back streets beyond portland road. i remember the sensations of that walk very vividly, strange as they were. i was still so far myself that i could notice my strange mental state, and wonder whether this stuff i had had was opium--a drug beyond my experience. it is hard now to describe the peculiarity of my mental strangeness--mental doubling vaguely expresses it. as i was walking up regent street i found in my mind a queer persuasion that it was waterloo station, and had an odd impulse to get into the polytechnic as a man might get into a train. i put a knuckle in my eye, and it was regent street. how can i express it? you see a skilful actor looking quietly at you, he pulls a grimace, and lo!--another person. is it too extravagant if i tell you that it seemed to me as if regent street had, for the moment, done that? then, being persuaded it was regent street again, i was oddly muddled about some fantastic reminiscences that cropped up. "thirty years ago," thought i, "it was here that i quarrelled with my brother." then i burst out laughing, to the astonishment and encouragement of a group of night prowlers. thirty years ago i did not exist, and never in my life had i boasted a brother. the stuff was surely liquid folly, for the poignant regret for that lost brother still clung to me. along portland road the madness took another turn. i began to recall vanished shops, and to compare the street with what it used to be. confused, troubled thinking is comprehensible enough after the drink i had taken, but what puzzled me were these curiously vivid phantasm memories that had crept into my mind, and not only the memories that had crept in, but also the memories that had slipped out. i stopped opposite stevens', the natural history dealer's, and cudgelled my brains to think what he had to do with me. a 'bus went by, and sounded exactly like the rumbling of a train. i seemed to be dipping into some dark, remote pit for the recollection. "of course," said i, at last, "he has promised me three frogs to-morrow. odd i should have forgotten." do they still show children dissolving views? in those i remember one view would begin like a faint ghost, and grow and oust another. in just that way it seemed to me that a ghostly set of new sensations was struggling with those of my ordinary self. i went on through euston road to tottenham court road, puzzled, and a little frightened, and scarcely noticed the unusual way i was taking, for commonly i used to cut through the intervening network of back streets. i turned into university street, to discover that i had forgotten my number. only by a strong effort did i recall 11a, and even then it seemed to me that it was a thing some forgotten person had told me. i tried to steady my mind by recalling the incidents of the dinner, and for the life of me i could conjure up no picture of my host's face; i saw him only as a shadowy outline, as one might see oneself reflected in a window through which one was looking. in his place, however, i had a curious exterior vision of myself, sitting at a table, flushed, bright-eyed, and talkative. "i must take this other powder," said i. "this is getting impossible." i tried the wrong side of the hall for my candle and the matches, and had a doubt of which landing my room might be on. "i'm drunk," i said, "that's certain," and blundered needlessly on the staircase to sustain the proposition. at the first glance my room seemed unfamiliar. "what rot!" i said, and stared about me. i seemed to bring myself back by the effort, and the odd phantasmal quality passed into the concrete familiar. there was the old glass still, with my notes on the albumens stuck in the corner of the frame, my old everyday suit of clothes pitched about the floor. and yet it was not so real after all. i felt an idiotic persuasion trying to creep into my mind, as it were, that i was in a railway carriage in a train just stopping, that i was peering out of the window at some unknown station. i gripped the bed-rail firmly to reassure myself. "it's clairvoyance, perhaps," i said. "i must write to the psychical research society." i put the rouleau on my dressing-table, sat on my bed, and began to take off my boots. it was as if the picture of my present sensations was painted over some other picture that was trying to show through. "curse it!" said i; "my wits are going, or am i in two places at once?" half-undressed, i tossed the powder into a glass and drank it off. it effervesced, and became a fluorescent amber colour. before i was in bed my mind was already tranquillised. i felt the pillow at my cheek, and thereupon i must have fallen asleep. * * * * * i awoke abruptly out of a dream of strange beasts, and found myself lying on my back. probably every one knows that dismal, emotional dream from which one escapes, awake indeed, but strangely cowed. there was a curious taste in my mouth, a tired feeling in my limbs, a sense of cutaneous discomfort. i lay with my head motionless on my pillow, expecting that my feeling of strangeness and terror would pass away, and that i should then doze off again to sleep. but instead of that, my uncanny sensations increased. at first i could perceive nothing wrong about me. there was a faint light in the room, so faint that it was the very next thing to darkness, and the furniture stood out in it as vague blots of absolute darkness. i stared with my eyes just over the bedclothes. it came into my mind that some one had entered the room to rob me of my rouleau of money, but after lying for some moments, breathing regularly to simulate sleep, i realised this was mere fancy. nevertheless, the uneasy assurance of something wrong kept fast hold of me. with an effort i raised my head from the pillow, and peered about me at the dark. what it was i could not conceive. i looked at the dim shapes around me, the greater and lesser darknesses that indicated curtains, table, fireplace, bookshelves, and so forth. then i began to perceive something unfamiliar in the forms of the darkness. had the bed turned round? yonder should be the bookshelves, and something shrouded and pallid rose there, something that would not answer to the bookshelves, however i looked at it. it was far too big to be my shirt thrown on a chair. overcoming a childish terror, i threw back the bedclothes and thrust my leg out of bed. instead of coming out of my truckle-bed upon the floor, i found my foot scarcely reached the edge of the mattress. i made another step, as it were, and sat up on the edge of the bed. by the side of my bed should be the candle, and the matches upon the broken chair. i put out my hand and touched--nothing. i waved my hand in the darkness, and it came against some heavy hanging, soft and thick in texture, which gave a rustling noise at my touch. i grasped this and pulled it; it appeared to be a curtain suspended over the head of my bed. i was now thoroughly awake, and beginning to realise that i was in a strange room. i was puzzled. i tried to recall the overnight circumstances, and i found them now, curiously enough, vivid in my memory: the supper, my reception of the little packages, my wonder whether i was intoxicated, my slow undressing, the coolness to my flushed face of my pillow. i felt a sudden distrust. was that last night, or the night before? at any rate, this room was strange to me, and i could not imagine how i had got into it. the dim, pallid outline was growing paler, and i perceived it was a window, with the dark shape of an oval toilet-glass against the weak intimation of the dawn that filtered through the blind. i stood up, and was surprised by a curious feeling of weakness and unsteadiness. with trembling hands outstretched, i walked slowly towards the window, getting, nevertheless, a bruise on the knee from a chair by the way. i fumbled round the glass, which was large, with handsome brass sconces, to find the blind cord. i could not find any. by chance i took hold of the tassel, and with the click of a spring the blind ran up. i found myself looking out upon a scene that was altogether strange to me. the night was overcast, and through the flocculent grey of the heaped clouds there filtered a faint half-light of dawn. just at the edge of the sky the cloud-canopy had a blood-red rim. below, everything was dark and indistinct, dim hills in the distance, a vague mass of buildings running up into pinnacles, trees like spilt ink, and below the window a tracery of black bushes and pale grey paths. it was so unfamiliar that for the moment i thought myself still dreaming. i felt the toilet-table; it appeared to be made of some polished wood, and was rather elaborately furnished--there were little cut-glass bottles and a brush upon it. there was also a queer little object, horse-shoe shape it felt, with smooth, hard projections, lying in a saucer. i could find no matches nor candlestick. i turned my eyes to the room again. now the blind was up, faint spectres of its furnishing came out of the darkness. there was a huge curtained bed, and the fireplace at its foot had a large white mantel with something of the shimmer of marble. i leant against the toilet-table, shut my eyes and opened them again, and tried to think. the whole thing was far too real for dreaming. i was inclined to imagine there was still some hiatus in my memory, as a consequence of my draught of that strange liqueur; that i had come into my inheritance perhaps, and suddenly lost my recollection of everything since my good fortune had been announced. perhaps if i waited a little, things would be clearer to me again. yet my dinner with old elvesham was now singularly vivid and recent. the champagne, the observant waiters, the powder, and the liqueurs--i could have staked my soul it all happened a few hours ago. and then occurred a thing so trivial and yet so terrible to me that i shiver now to think of that moment. i spoke aloud. i said, "how the devil did i get here?" ... _and the voice was not my own_. it was not my own, it was thin, the articulation was slurred, the resonance of my facial bones was different. then, to reassure myself i ran one hand over the other, and felt loose folds of skin, the bony laxity of age. "surely," i said, in that horrible voice that had somehow established itself in my throat, "surely this thing is a dream!" almost as quickly as if i did it involuntarily, i thrust my fingers into my mouth. my teeth had gone. my finger-tips ran on the flaccid surface of an even row of shrivelled gums. i was sick with dismay and disgust. i felt then a passionate desire to see myself, to realise at once in its full horror the ghastly change that had come upon me. i tottered to the mantel, and felt along it for matches. as i did so, a barking cough sprang up in my throat, and i clutched the thick flannel nightdress i found about me. there were no matches there, and i suddenly realised that my extremities were cold. sniffing and coughing, whimpering a little, perhaps, i fumbled back to bed. "it is surely a dream," i whispered to myself as i clambered back, "surely a dream." it was a senile repetition. i pulled the bedclothes over my shoulders, over my ears, i thrust my withered hand under the pillow, and determined to compose myself to sleep. of course it was a dream. in the morning the dream would be over, and i should wake up strong and vigorous again to my youth and studies. i shut my eyes, breathed regularly, and, finding myself wakeful, began to count slowly through the powers of three. but the thing i desired would not come. i could not get to sleep. and the persuasion of the inexorable reality of the change that had happened to me grew steadily. presently i found myself with my eyes wide open, the powers of three forgotten, and my skinny fingers upon my shrivelled gums, i was, indeed, suddenly and abruptly, an old man. i had in some unaccountable manner fallen through my life and come to old age, in some way i had been cheated of all the best of my life, of love, of struggle, of strength, and hope. i grovelled into the pillow and tried to persuade myself that such hallucination was possible. imperceptibly, steadily, the dawn grew clearer. at last, despairing of further sleep, i sat up in bed and looked about me. a chill twilight rendered the whole chamber visible. it was spacious and well-furnished, better furnished than any room i had ever slept in before. a candle and matches became dimly visible upon a little pedestal in a recess. i threw back the bedclothes, and, shivering with the rawness of the early morning, albeit it was summer-time, i got out and lit the candle. then, trembling horribly, so that the extinguisher rattled on its spike, i tottered to the glass and saw--_elvesham's face_! it was none the less horrible because i had already dimly feared as much. he had already seemed physically weak and pitiful to me, but seen now, dressed only in a coarse flannel nightdress, that fell apart and showed the stringy neck, seen now as my own body, i cannot describe its desolate decrepitude. the hollow cheeks, the straggling tail of dirty grey hair, the rheumy bleared eyes, the quivering, shrivelled lips, the lower displaying a gleam of the pink interior lining, and those horrible dark gums showing. you who are mind and body together, at your natural years, cannot imagine what this fiendish imprisonment meant to me. to be young and full of the desire and energy of youth, and to be caught, and presently to be crushed in this tottering ruin of a body... but i wander from the course of my story. for some time i must have been stunned at this change that had come upon me. it was daylight when i did so far gather myself together as to think. in some inexplicable way i had been changed, though how, short of magic, the thing had been done, i could not say. and as i thought, the diabolical ingenuity of elvesham came home to me. it seemed plain to me that as i found myself in his, so he must be in possession of _my_ body, of my strength, that is, and my future. but how to prove it? then, as i thought, the thing became so incredible, even to me, that my mind reeled, and i had to pinch myself, to feel my toothless gums, to see myself in the glass, and touch the things about me, before i could steady myself to face the facts again. was all life hallucination? was i indeed elvesham, and he me? had i been dreaming of eden overnight? was there any eden? but if i was elvesham, i should remember where i was on the previous morning, the name of the town in which i lived, what happened before the dream began. i struggled with my thoughts. i recalled the queer doubleness of my memories overnight. but now my mind was clear. not the ghost of any memories but those proper to eden could i raise. "this way lies insanity!" i cried in my piping voice. i staggered to my feet, dragged my feeble, heavy limbs to the washhand-stand, and plunged my grey head into a basin of cold water. then, towelling myself, i tried again. it was no good. i felt beyond all question that i was indeed eden, not elvesham. but eden in elvesham's body! had i been a man of any other age, i might have given myself up to my fate as one enchanted. but in these sceptical days miracles do not pass current. here was some trick of psychology. what a drug and a steady stare could do, a drug and a steady stare, or some similar treatment, could surely undo. men have lost their memories before. but to exchange memories as one does umbrellas! i laughed. alas! not a healthy laugh, but a wheezing, senile titter. i could have fancied old elvesham laughing at my plight, and a gust of petulant anger, unusual to me, swept across my feelings. i began dressing eagerly in the clothes i found lying about on the floor, and only realised when i was dressed that it was an evening suit i had assumed. i opened the wardrobe and found some more ordinary clothes, a pair of plaid trousers, and an old-fashioned dressing-gown. i put a venerable smoking-cap on my venerable head, and, coughing a little from my exertions, tottered out upon the landing. it was then, perhaps, a quarter to six, and the blinds were closely drawn and the house quite silent. the landing was a spacious one, a broad, richly-carpeted staircase went down into the darkness of the hall below, and before me a door ajar showed me a writing-desk, a revolving bookcase, the back of a study chair, and a fine array of bound books, shelf upon shelf. "my study," i mumbled, and walked across the landing. then at the sound of my voice a thought struck me, and i went back to the bedroom and put in the set of false teeth. they slipped in with the ease of old, habit. "that's better," said i, gnashing them, and so returned to the study. the drawers of the writing-desk were locked. its revolving top was also locked. i could see no indications of the keys, and there were none in the pockets of my trousers. i shuffled back at once to the bedroom, and went through the dress suit, and afterwards the pockets of all the garments i could find. i was very eager, and one might have imagined that burglars had been at work, to see my room when i had done. not only were there no keys to be found, but not a coin, nor a scrap of paper--save only the receipted bill of the overnight dinner. a curious weariness asserted itself. i sat down and stared at the garments flung here and there, their pockets turned inside out. my first frenzy had already flickered out. every moment i was beginning to realise the immense intelligence of the plans of my enemy, to see more and more clearly the hopelessness of my position. with an effort i rose and hurried hobbling into the study again. on the staircase was a housemaid pulling up the blinds. she stared, i think, at the expression of my face. i shut the door of the study behind me, and, seizing a poker, began an attack upon the desk. that is how they found me. the cover of the desk was split, the lock smashed, the letters torn out of the pigeon-holes, and tossed about the room. in my senile rage i had flung about the pens and other such light stationery, and overturned the ink. moreover, a large vase upon the mantel had got broken--i do not know how. i could find no cheque-book, no money, no indications of the slightest use for the recovery of my body. i was battering madly at the drawers, when the butler, backed by two women-servants, intruded upon me. * * * * * that simply is the story of my change. no one will believe my frantic assertions. i am treated as one demented, and even at this moment i am under restraint. but i am sane, absolutely sane, and to prove it i have sat down to write this story minutely as the things happened to me. i appeal to the reader, whether there is any trace of insanity in the style or method, of the story he has been reading. i am a young man locked away in an old man's body. but the clear fact is incredible to everyone. naturally i appear demented to those who will not believe this, naturally i do not know the names of my secretaries, of the doctors who come to see me, of my servants and neighbours, of this town (wherever it is) where i find myself. naturally i lose myself in my own house, and suffer inconveniences of every sort. naturally i ask the oddest questions. naturally i weep and cry out, and have paroxysms of despair. i have no money and no cheque-book. the bank will not recognise my signature, for i suppose that, allowing for the feeble muscles i now have, my handwriting is still eden's. these people about me will not let me go to the bank personally. it seems, indeed, that there is no bank in this town, and that i have an account in some part of london. it seems that elvesham kept the name of his solicitor secret from all his household. i can ascertain nothing. elvesham was, of course, a profound student of mental science, and all my declarations of the facts of the case merely confirm the theory that my insanity is the outcome of overmuch brooding upon psychology. dreams of the personal identity indeed! two days ago i was a healthy youngster, with all life before me; now i am a furious old man, unkempt, and desperate, and miserable, prowling about a great, luxurious, strange house, watched, feared, and avoided as a lunatic by everyone about me. and in london is elvesham beginning life again in a vigorous body, and with all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of threescore and ten. he has stolen my life. what has happened i do not clearly know. in the study are volumes of manuscript notes referring chiefly to the psychology of memory, and parts of what may be either calculations or ciphers in symbols absolutely strange to me. in some passages there are indications that he was also occupied with the philosophy of mathematics. i take it he has transferred the whole of his memories, the accumulation that makes up his personality, from this old withered brain of his to mine, and, similarly, that he has transferred mine to his discarded tenement. practically, that is, he has changed bodies. but how such a change may be possible is without the range of my philosophy. i have been a materialist for all my thinking life, but here, suddenly, is a clear case of man's detachability from matter. one desperate experiment i am about to try. i sit writing here before putting the matter to issue. this morning, with the help of a table-knife that i had secreted at breakfast, i succeeded in breaking open a fairly obvious secret drawer in this wrecked writing-desk. i discovered nothing save a little green glass phial containing a white powder. round the neck of the phial was a label, and thereon was written this one word, "_release_." this may be--is most probably--poison. i can understand elvesham placing poison in my way, and i should be sure that it was his intention so to get rid of the only living witness against him, were it not for this careful concealment. the man has practically solved the problem of immortality. save for the spite of chance, he will live in my body until it has aged, and then, again, throwing that aside, he will assume some other victim's youth and strength. when one remembers his heartlessness, it is terrible to think of the ever-growing experience that... how long has he been leaping from body to body?... but i tire of writing. the powder appears to be soluble in water. the taste is not unpleasant. * * * * * there the narrative found upon mr. elvesham's desk ends. his dead body lay between the desk and the chair. the latter had been pushed back, probably by his last convulsions. the story was written in pencil and in a crazy hand, quite unlike his usual minute characters. there remain only two curious facts to record. indisputably there was some connection between eden and elvesham, since the whole of elvesham's property was bequeathed to the young man. but he never inherited. when elvesham committed suicide, eden was, strangely enough, already dead. twenty-four hours before, he had been knocked down by a cab and killed instantly, at the crowded crossing at the intersection of gower street and euston road. so that the only human being who could have thrown light upon this fantastic narrative is beyond the reach of questions. without further comment i leave this extraordinary matter to the reader's individual judgment. xii. under the knife. "what if i die under it?" the thought recurred again and again, as i walked home from haddon's. it was a purely personal question. i was spared the deep anxieties of a married man, and i knew there were few of my intimate friends but would find my death troublesome chiefly on account of their duty of regret. i was surprised indeed, and perhaps a little humiliated, as i turned the matter over, to think how few could possibly exceed the conventional requirement. things came before me stripped of glamour, in a clear dry light, during that walk from haddon's house over primrose hill. there were the friends of my youth: i perceived now that our affection was a tradition, which we foregathered rather laboriously to maintain. there were the rivals and helpers of my later career: i suppose i had been cold-blooded or undemonstrative--one perhaps implies the other. it may be that even the capacity for friendship is a question of physique. there had been a time in my own life when i had grieved bitterly enough at the loss of a friend; but as i walked home that afternoon the emotional side of my imagination was dormant. i could not pity myself, nor feel sorry for my friends, nor conceive of them as grieving for me. i was interested in this deadness of my emotional nature--no doubt a concomitant of my stagnating physiology; and my thoughts wandered off along the line it suggested. once before, in my hot youth, i had suffered a sudden loss of blood, and had been within an ace of death. i remembered now that my affections as well as my passions had drained out of me, leaving scarce anything but a tranquil resignation, a dreg of self-pity. it had been weeks before the old ambitions and tendernesses and all the complex moral interplay of a man had reasserted themselves. it occurred to me that the real meaning of this numbness might be a gradual slipping away from the pleasure-pain guidance of the animal man. it has been proven, i take it, as thoroughly as anything can be proven in this world, that the higher emotions, the moral feelings, even the subtle unselfishness of love, are evolved from the elemental desires and fears of the simple animal: they are the harness in which man's mental freedom goes. and it may be that as death overshadows us, as our possibility of acting diminishes, this complex growth of balanced impulse, propensity and aversion, whose interplay inspires our acts, goes with it. leaving what? i was suddenly brought back to reality by an imminent collision with the butcher-boy's tray. i found that i was crossing the bridge over the regent's park canal, which runs parallel with that in the zoological gardens. the boy in blue had been looking over his shoulder at a black barge advancing slowly, towed by a gaunt white horse. in the gardens a nurse was leading three happy little children over the bridge. the trees were bright green; the spring hopefulness was still unstained by the dusts of summer; the sky in the water was bright and clear, but broken by long waves, by quivering bands of black, as the barge drove through. the breeze was stirring; but it did not stir me as the spring breeze used to do. was this dulness of feeling in itself an anticipation? it was curious that i could reason and follow out a network of suggestion as clearly as ever: so, at least, it seemed to me. it was calmness rather than dulness that was coming upon me. was there any ground for the relief in the presentiment of death? did a man near to death begin instinctively to withdraw himself from the meshes of matter and sense, even before the cold hand was laid upon his? i felt strangely isolated--isolated without regret--from the life and existence about me. the children playing in the sun and gathering strength and experience for the business of life, the park-keeper gossiping with a nursemaid, the nursing mother, the young couple intent upon each other as they passed me, the trees by the wayside spreading new pleading leaves to the sunlight, the stir in their branches--i had been part of it all, but i had nearly done with it now. some way down the broad walk i perceived that i was tired, and that my feet were heavy. it was hot that afternoon, and i turned aside and sat down on one of the green chairs that line the way. in a minute i had dozed into a dream, and the tide of my thoughts washed up a vision of the resurrection. i was still sitting in the chair, but i thought myself actually dead, withered, tattered, dried, one eye (i saw) pecked out by birds. "awake!" cried a voice; and incontinently the dust of the path and the mould under the grass became insurgent. i had never before thought of regent's park as a cemetery, but now, through the trees, stretching as far as eye could see, i beheld a flat plain of writhing graves and heeling tombstones. there seemed to be some trouble: the rising dead appeared to stifle as they struggled upward, they bled in their struggles, the red flesh was torn away from the white bones. "awake!" cried a voice; but i determined i would not rise to such horrors. "awake!" they would not let me alone. "wake up!" said an angry voice. a cockney angel! the man who sells the tickets was shaking me, demanding my penny. i paid my penny, pocketed my ticket, yawned, stretched my legs, and, feeling now rather less torpid, got up and walked on towards langham place. i speedily lost myself again in a shifting maze of thoughts about death. going across marylebone road into that crescent at the end of langham place, i had the narrowest escape from the shaft of a cab, and went on my way with a palpitating heart and a bruised shoulder. it struck me that it would have been curious if my meditations on my death on the morrow had led to my death that day. but i will not weary you with more of my experiences that day and the next. i knew more and more certainly that i should die under the operation; at times i think i was inclined to pose to myself. the doctors were coming at eleven, and i did not get up. it seemed scarce worth while to trouble about washing and dressing, and though i read my newspapers and the letters that came by the first post, i did not find them very interesting. there was a friendly note from addison, my old school-friend, calling my attention to two discrepancies and a printer's error in my new book, with one from langridge venting some vexation over minton. the rest were business communications. i breakfasted in bed. the glow of pain at my side seemed more massive. i knew it was pain, and yet, if you can understand, i did not find it very painful. i had been awake and hot and thirsty in the night, but in the morning bed felt comfortable. in the night-time i had lain thinking of things that were past; in the morning i dozed over the question of immortality. haddon came, punctual to the minute, with a neat black bag; and mowbray soon followed. their arrival stirred me up a little. i began to take a more personal interest in the proceedings. haddon moved the little octagonal table close to the bedside, and, with his broad back to me, began taking things out of his bag. i heard the light click of steel upon steel. my imagination, i found, was not altogether stagnant. "will you hurt me much?" i said in an off-hand tone. "not a bit," haddon answered over his shoulder. "we shall chloroform you. your heart's as sound as a bell." and as he spoke, i had a whiff of the pungent sweetness of the anaesthetic. they stretched me out, with a convenient exposure of my side, and, almost before i realised what was happening, the chloroform was being administered. it stings the nostrils, and there is a suffocating sensation at first. i knew i should die--that this was the end of consciousness for me. and suddenly i felt that i was not prepared for death: i had a vague sense of a duty overlooked--i knew not what. what was it i had not done? i could think of nothing more to do, nothing desirable left in life; and yet i had the strangest disinclination to death. and the physical sensation was painfully oppressive. of course the doctors did not know they were going to kill me. possibly i struggled. then i fell motionless, and a great silence, a monstrous silence, and an impenetrable blackness came upon me. there must have been an interval of absolute unconsciousness, seconds or minutes. then with a chilly, unemotional clearness, i perceived that i was not yet dead. i was still in my body; but all the multitudinous sensations that come sweeping from it to make up the background of consciousness had gone, leaving me free of it all. no, not free of it all; for as yet something still held me to the poor stark flesh upon the bed--held me, yet not so closely that i did not feel myself external to it, independent of it, straining away from it. i do not think i saw, i do not think i heard; but i perceived all that was going on, and it was as if i both heard and saw. haddon was bending over me, mowbray behind me; the scalpel--it was a large scalpel--was cutting my flesh at the side under the flying ribs. it was interesting to see myself cut like cheese, without a pang, without even a qualm. the interest was much of a quality with that one might feel in a game of chess between strangers. haddon's face was firm and his hand steady; but i was surprised to perceive (_how_ i know not) that he was feeling the gravest doubt as to his own wisdom in the conduct of the operation. mowbray's thoughts, too, i could see. he was thinking that haddon's manner showed too much of the specialist. new suggestions came up like bubbles through a stream of frothing meditation, and burst one after another in the little bright spot of his consciousness. he could not help noticing and admiring haddon's swift dexterity, in spite of his envious quality and his disposition to detract. i saw my liver exposed. i was puzzled at my own condition. i did not feel that i was dead, but i was different in some way from my living self. the grey depression, that had weighed on me for a year or more and coloured all my thoughts, was gone. i perceived and thought without any emotional tint at all. i wondered if everyone perceived things in this way under chloroform, and forgot it again when he came out of it. it would be inconvenient to look into some heads, and not forget. although i did not think that i was dead, i still perceived quite clearly that i was soon to die. this brought me back to the consideration of haddon's proceedings. i looked into his mind, and saw that he was afraid of cutting a branch of the portal vein. my attention was distracted from details by the curious changes going on in his mind. his consciousness was like the quivering little spot of light which is thrown by the mirror of a galvanometer. his thoughts ran under it like a stream, some through the focus bright and distinct, some shadowy in the half-light of the edge. just now the little glow was steady; but the least movement on mowbray's part, the slightest sound from outside, even a faint difference in the slow movement of the living flesh he was cutting, set the light-spot shivering and spinning. a new sense-impression came rushing up through the flow of thoughts; and lo! the light-spot jerked away towards it, swifter than a frightened fish. it was wonderful to think that upon that unstable, fitful thing depended all the complex motions of the man; that for the next five minutes, therefore, my life hung upon its movements. and he was growing more and more nervous in his work. it was as if a little picture of a cut vein grew brighter, and struggled to oust from his brain another picture of a cut falling short of the mark. he was afraid: his dread of cutting too little was battling with his dread of cutting too far. then, suddenly, like an escape of water from under a lock-gate, a great uprush of horrible realisation set all his thoughts swirling, and simultaneously i perceived that the vein was cut. he started back with a hoarse exclamation, and i saw the brown-purple blood gather in a swift bead, and run trickling. he was horrified. he pitched the red-stained scalpel on to the octagonal table; and instantly both doctors flung themselves upon me, making hasty and ill-conceived efforts to remedy the disaster. "ice!" said mowbray, gasping. but i knew that i was killed, though my body still clung to me. i will not describe their belated endeavours to save me, though i perceived every detail. my perceptions were sharper and swifter than they had ever been in life; my thoughts rushed through my mind with incredible swiftness, but with perfect definition. i can only compare their crowded clarity to the effects of a reasonable dose of opium. in a moment it would all be over, and i should be free. i knew i was immortal, but what would happen i did not know. should i drift off presently, like a puff of smoke from a gun, in some kind of half-material body, an attenuated version of my material self? should i find myself suddenly among the innumerable hosts of the dead, and know the world about me for the phantasmagoria it had always seemed? should i drift to some spiritualistic _séance_, and there make foolish, incomprehensible attempts to affect a purblind medium? it was a state of unemotional curiosity, of colourless expectation. and then i realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body. the stress grew and grew. i seemed an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting. for one brief, terrible moment sensation came back to me. that feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. then the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the little room, swept away from under me and vanished, as a speck of foam vanishes down an eddy. i was in mid-air. far below was the west end of london, receding rapidly,--for i seemed to be flying swiftly upward,--and as it receded, passing westward like a panorama. i could see, through the faint haze of smoke, the innumerable roofs chimney-set, the narrow roadways, stippled with people and conveyances, the little specks of squares, and the church steeples like thorns sticking out of the fabric. but it spun away as the earth rotated on its axis, and in a few seconds (as it seemed) i was over the scattered clumps of town about ealing, the little thames a thread of blue to the south, and the chiltern hills and the north downs coming up like the rim of a basin, far away and faint with haze. up i rushed. and at first i had not the faintest conception what this headlong rush upward could mean. every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and wider, and the details of town and field, of hill and valley, got more and more hazy and pale and indistinct, a luminous grey was mingled more and more with the blue of the hills and the green of the open meadows; and a little patch of cloud, low and far to the west, shone ever more dazzlingly white. above, as the veil of atmosphere between myself and outer space grew thinner, the sky, which had been a fair springtime blue at first, grew deeper and richer in colour, passing steadily through the intervening shades, until presently it was as dark as the blue sky of midnight, and presently as black as the blackness of a frosty starlight, and at last as black as no blackness i had ever beheld. and first one star, and then many, and at last an innumerable host broke out upon the sky: more stars than anyone has ever seen from the face of the earth. for the blueness of the sky in the light of the sun and stars sifted and spread abroad blindingly: there is diffused light even in the darkest skies of winter, and we do not see the stars by day only because of the dazzling irradiation of the sun. but now i saw things--i know not how; assuredly with no mortal eyes--and that defect of bedazzlement blinded me no longer. the sun was incredibly strange and wonderful. the body of it was a disc of blinding white light: not yellowish, as it seems to those who live upon the earth, but livid white, all streaked with scarlet streaks and rimmed about with a fringe of writhing tongues of red fire. and shooting half-way across the heavens from either side of it and brighter than the milky way, were two pinions of silver white, making it look more like those winged globes i have seen in egyptian sculpture than anything else i can remember upon earth. these i knew for the solar corona, though i had never seen anything of it but a picture during the days of my earthly life. when my attention came back to the earth again, i saw that it had fallen very far away from me. field and town were long since indistinguishable, and all the varied hues of the country were merging into a uniform bright grey, broken only by the brilliant white of the clouds that lay scattered in flocculent masses over ireland and the west of england. for now i could see the outlines of the north of france and ireland, and all this island of britain, save where scotland passed over the horizon to the north, or where the coast was blurred or obliterated by cloud. the sea was a dull grey, and darker than the land; and the whole panorama was rotating slowly towards the east. all this had happened so swiftly that until i was some thousand miles or so from the earth i had no thought for myself. but now i perceived i had neither hands nor feet, neither parts nor organs, and that i felt neither alarm nor pain. all about me i perceived that the vacancy (for i had already left the air behind) was cold beyond the imagination of man; but it troubled me not. the sun's rays shot through the void, powerless to light or heat until they should strike on matter in their course. i saw things with a serene self-forgetfulness, even as if i were god. and down below there, rushing away from me,--countless miles in a second,--where a little dark spot on the grey marked the position of london, two doctors were struggling to restore life to the poor hacked and outworn shell i had abandoned. i felt then such release, such serenity as i can compare to no mortal delight i have ever known. it was only after i had perceived all these things that the meaning of that headlong rush of the earth grew into comprehension. yet it was so simple, so obvious, that i was amazed at my never anticipating the thing that was happening to me. i had suddenly been cut adrift from matter: all that was material of me was there upon earth, whirling away through space, held to the earth by gravitation, partaking of the earth-inertia, moving in its wreath of epicycles round the sun, and with the sun and the planets on their vast march through space. but the immaterial has no inertia, feels nothing of the pull of matter for matter: where it parts from its garment of flesh, there it remains (so far as space concerns it any longer) immovable in space. _i_ was not leaving the earth: the earth was leaving _me_, and not only the earth but the whole solar system was streaming past. and about me in space, invisible to me, scattered in the wake of the earth upon its journey, there must be an innumerable multitude of souls, stripped like myself of the material, stripped like myself of the passions of the individual and the generous emotions of the gregarious brute, naked intelligences, things of new-born wonder and thought, marvelling at the strange release that had suddenly come on them! as i receded faster and faster from the strange white sun in the black heavens, and from the broad and shining earth upon which my being had begun, i seemed to grow in some incredible manner vast: vast as regards this world i had left, vast as regards the moments and periods of a human life. very soon i saw the full circle of the earth, slightly gibbous, like the moon when she nears her full, but very large; and the silvery shape of america was now in the noonday blaze wherein (as it seemed) little england had been basking but a few minutes ago. at first the earth was large, and shone in the heavens, filling a great part of them; but every moment she grew smaller and more distant. as she shrank, the broad moon in its third quarter crept into view over the rim of her disc. i looked for the constellations. only that part of aries directly behind the sun and the lion, which the earth covered, were hidden. i recognised the tortuous, tattered band of the milky way with vega very bright between sun and earth; and sirius and orion shone splendid against the unfathomable blackness in the opposite quarter of the heavens. the pole star was overhead, and the great bear hung over the circle of the earth. and away beneath and beyond the shining corona of the sun were strange groupings of stars i had never seen in my life--notably a dagger-shaped group that i knew for the southern cross. all these were no larger than when they had shone on earth, but the little stars that one scarce sees shone now against the setting of black vacancy as brightly as the first-magnitudes had done, while the larger worlds were points of indescribable glory and colour. aldebaran was a spot of blood-red fire, and sirius condensed to one point the light of innumerable sapphires. and they shone steadily: they did not scintillate, they were calmly glorious. my impressions had an adamantine hardness and brightness: there was no blurring softness, no atmosphere, nothing but infinite darkness set with the myriads of these acute and brilliant points and specks of light. presently, when i looked again, the little earth seemed no bigger than the sun, and it dwindled and turned as i looked, until in a second's space (as it seemed to me), it was halved; and so it went on swiftly dwindling. far away in the opposite direction, a little pinkish pin's head of light, shining steadily, was the planet mars. i swam motionless in vacancy, and, without a trace of terror or astonishment, watched the speck of cosmic dust we call the world fall away from me. presently it dawned upon me that my sense of duration had changed; that my mind was moving not faster but infinitely slower, that between each separate impression there was a period of many days. the moon spun once round the earth as i noted this; and i perceived clearly the motion of mars in his orbit. moreover, it appeared as if the time between thought and thought grew steadily greater, until at last a thousand years was but a moment in my perception. at first the constellations had shone motionless against the black background of infinite space; but presently it seemed as though the group of stars about hercules and the scorpion was contracting, while orion and aldebaran and their neighbours were scattering apart. flashing suddenly out of the darkness there came a flying multitude of particles of rock, glittering like dust-specks in a sunbeam, and encompassed in a faintly luminous cloud. they swirled all about me, and vanished again in a twinkling far behind. and then i saw that a bright spot of light, that shone a little to one side of my path, was growing very rapidly larger, and perceived that it was the planet saturn rushing towards me. larger and larger it grew, swallowing up the heavens behind it, and hiding every moment a fresh multitude, of stars. i perceived its flattened, whirling body, its disc-like belt, and seven of its little satellites. it grew and grew, till it towered enormous; and then i plunged amid a streaming multitude of clashing stones and dancing dust-particles and gas-eddies, and saw for a moment the mighty triple belt like three concentric arches of moonlight above me, its shadow black on the boiling tumult below. these things happened in one-tenth of the time it takes to tell them. the planet went by like a flash of lightning; for a few seconds it blotted out the sun, and there and then became a mere black, dwindling, winged patch against the light. the earth, the mother mote of my being, i could no longer see. so with a stately swiftness, in the profoundest silence, the solar system fell from me as it had been a garment, until the sun was a mere star amid the multitude of stars, with its eddy of planet-specks lost in the confused glittering of the remoter light. i was no longer a denizen of the solar system: i had come to the outer universe, i seemed to grasp and comprehend the whole world of matter. ever more swiftly the stars closed in about the spot where antares and vega had vanished in a phosphorescent haze, until that part of the sky had the semblance of a whirling mass of nebulae, and ever before me yawned vaster gaps of vacant blackness, and the stars shone fewer and fewer. it seemed as if i moved towards a point between orion's belt and sword; and the void about that region opened vaster and vaster every second, an incredible gulf of nothingness into which i was falling. faster and ever faster the universe rushed by, a hurry of whirling motes at last, speeding silently into the void. stars glowing brighter and brighter, with their circling planets catching the light in a ghostly fashion as i neared them, shone out and vanished again into inexistence; faint comets, clusters of meteorites, winking specks of matter, eddying light-points, whizzed past, some perhaps a hundred millions of miles or so from me at most, few nearer, travelling with unimaginable rapidity, shooting constellations, momentary darts of fire, through that black, enormous night. more than anything else it was like a dusty draught, sunbeam-lit. broader and wider and deeper grew the starless space, the vacant beyond, into which i was being drawn. at last a quarter of the heavens was black and blank, and the whole headlong rush of stellar universe closed in behind me like a veil of light that is gathered together. it drove away from me like a monstrous jack-o'-lantern driven by the wind. i had come out into the wilderness of space. ever the vacant blackness grew broader, until the hosts of the stars seemed only like a swarm of fiery specks hurrying away from me, inconceivably remote, and the darkness, the nothingness and emptiness, was about me on every side. soon the little universe of matter, the cage of points in which i had begun to be, was dwindling, now to a whirling disc of luminous glittering, and now to one minute disc of hazy light. in a little while it would shrink to a point, and at last would vanish altogether. suddenly feeling came back to me--feeling in the shape of overwhelming terror; such a dread of those dark vastitudes as no words can describe, a passionate resurgence of sympathy and social desire. were there other souls, invisible to me as i to them, about me in the blackness? or was i indeed, even as i felt, alone? had i passed out of being into something that was neither being nor not-being? the covering of the body, the covering of matter, had been torn from me, and the hallucinations of companionship and security. everything was black and silent. i had ceased to be. i was nothing. there was nothing, save only that infinitesimal dot of light that dwindled in the gulf. i strained myself to hear and see, and for a while there was naught but infinite silence, intolerable darkness, horror, and despair. then i saw that about the spot of light into which the whole world of matter had shrunk there was a faint glow. and in a band on either side of that the darkness was not absolute. i watched it for ages, as it seemed to me, and through the long waiting the haze grew imperceptibly more distinct. and then about the band appeared an irregular cloud of the faintest, palest brown. i felt a passionate impatience; but the things grew brighter so slowly that they scarce seemed to change. what was unfolding itself? what was this strange reddish dawn in the interminable night of space? the cloud's shape was grotesque. it seemed to be looped along its lower side into four projecting masses, and, above, it ended in a straight line. what phantom was it? i felt assured i had seen that figure before; but i could not think what, nor where, nor when it was. then the realisation rushed upon me. _it was a clenched hand._ i was alone in space, alone with this huge, shadowy hand, upon which the whole universe of matter lay like an unconsidered speck of dust. it seemed as though i watched it through vast periods of time. on the forefinger glittered a ring; and the universe from which i had come was but a spot of light upon the ring's curvature. and the thing that the hand gripped had the likeness of a black rod. through a long eternity i watched this hand, with the ring and the rod, marvelling and fearing and waiting helplessly on what might follow. it seemed as though nothing could follow: that i should watch for ever, seeing only the hand and the thing it held, and understanding nothing of its import. was the whole universe but a refracting speck upon some greater being? were our worlds but the atoms of another universe, and those again of another, and so on through an endless progression? and what was i? was i indeed immaterial? a vague persuasion of a body gathering about me came into my suspense. the abysmal darkness about the hand filled with impalpable suggestions, with uncertain, fluctuating shapes. then, suddenly, came a sound, like the sound of a tolling bell: faint, as if infinitely far; muffled, as though heard through thick swathings of darkness: a deep, vibrating resonance, with vast gulfs of silence between each stroke. and the hand appeared to tighten on the rod. and i saw far above the hand, towards the apex of the darkness, a circle of dim phosphorescence, a ghostly sphere whence these sounds came throbbing; and at the last stroke the hand vanished, for the hour had come, and i heard a noise of many waters. but the black rod remained as a great band across the sky. and then a voice, which seemed to run to the uttermost parts of space, spoke, saying, "there will be no more pain." at that an almost intolerable gladness and radiance rushed in upon me, and i saw the circle shining white and bright, and the rod black and shining, and many things else distinct and clear. and the circle was the face of the clock, and the rod the rail of my bed. haddon was standing at the foot, against the rail, with a small pair of scissors on his fingers; and the hands of my clock on the mantel over his shoulder were clasped together over the hour of twelve. mowbray was washing something in a basin at the octagonal table, and at my side i felt a subdued feeling that could scarce be spoken of as pain. the operation had not killed me. and i perceived, suddenly, that the dull melancholy of half a year was lifted from my mind. xiii. the sea raiders. i. until the extraordinary affair at sidmouth, the peculiar species _haploteuthis ferox_ was known to science only generically, on the strength of a half-digested tentacle obtained near the azores, and a decaying body pecked by birds and nibbled by fish, found early in 1896 by mr. jennings, near land's end. in no department of zoological science, indeed, are we quite so much in the dark as with regard to the deep-sea cephalopods. a mere accident, for instance, it was that led to the prince of monaco's discovery of nearly a dozen new forms in the summer of 1895, a discovery in which the before-mentioned tentacle was included. it chanced that a cachalot was killed off terceira by some sperm whalers, and in its last struggles charged almost to the prince's yacht, missed it, rolled under, and died within twenty yards of his rudder. and in its agony it threw up a number of large objects, which the prince, dimly perceiving they were strange and important, was, by a happy expedient, able to secure before they sank. he set his screws in motion, and kept them circling in the vortices thus created until a boat could be lowered. and these specimens were whole cephalopods and fragments of cephalopods, some of gigantic proportions, and almost all of them unknown to science! it would seem, indeed, that these large and agile creatures, living in the middle depths of the sea, must, to a large extent, for ever remain unknown to us, since under water they are too nimble for nets, and it is only by such rare, unlooked-for accidents that specimens can be obtained. in the case of _haploteuthis ferox_, for instance, we are still altogether ignorant of its habitat, as ignorant as we are of the breeding-ground of the herring or the sea-ways of the salmon. and zoologists are altogether at a loss to account for its sudden appearance on our coast. possibly it was the stress of a hunger migration that drove it hither out of the deep. but it will be, perhaps, better to avoid necessarily inconclusive discussion, and to proceed at once with our narrative. the first human being to set eyes upon a living _haploteuthis_--the first human being to survive, that is, for there can be little doubt now that the wave of bathing fatalities and boating accidents that travelled along the coast of cornwall and devon in early may was due to this cause--was a retired tea-dealer of the name of fison, who was stopping at a sidmouth boarding-house. it was in the afternoon, and he was walking along the cliff path between sidmouth and ladram bay. the cliffs in this direction are very high, but down the red face of them in one place a kind of ladder staircase has been made. he was near this when his attention was attracted by what at first he thought to be a cluster of birds struggling over a fragment of food that caught the sunlight, and glistened pinkish-white. the tide was right out, and this object was not only far below him, but remote across a broad waste of rock reefs covered with dark seaweed and interspersed with silvery shining tidal pools. and he was, moreover, dazzled by the brightness of the further water. in a minute, regarding this again, he perceived that his judgment was in fault, for over this struggle circled a number of birds, jackdaws and gulls for the most part, the latter gleaming blindingly when the sunlight smote their wings, and they seemed minute in comparison with it. and his curiosity was, perhaps, aroused all the more strongly because of his first insufficient explanations. as he had nothing better to do than amuse himself, he decided to make this object, whatever it was, the goal of his afternoon walk, instead of ladram bay, conceiving it might perhaps be a great fish of some sort, stranded by some chance, and flapping about in its distress. and so he hurried down the long steep ladder, stopping at intervals of thirty feet or so to take breath and scan the mysterious movement. at the foot of the cliff he was, of course, nearer his object than he had been; but, on the other hand, it now came up against the incandescent sky, beneath the sun, so as to seem dark and indistinct. whatever was pinkish of it was now hidden by a skerry of weedy boulders. but he perceived that it was made up of seven rounded bodies distinct or connected, and that the birds kept up a constant croaking and screaming, but seemed afraid to approach it too closely. mr. fison, torn by curiosity, began picking his way across the wave-worn rocks, and finding the wet seaweed that covered them thickly rendered them extremely slippery, he stopped, removed his shoes and socks, and rolled his trousers above his knees. his object was, of course, merely to avoid stumbling into the rocky pools about him, and perhaps he was rather glad, as all men are, of an excuse to resume, even for a moment, the sensations of his boyhood. at any rate, it is to this, no doubt, that he owes his life. he approached his mark with all the assurance which the absolute security of this country against all forms of animal life gives its inhabitants. the round bodies moved to and fro, but it was only when he surmounted the skerry of boulders i have mentioned that he realised the horrible nature of the discovery. it came upon him with some suddenness. the rounded bodies fell apart as he came into sight over the ridge, and displayed the pinkish object to be the partially devoured body of a human being, but whether of a man or woman he was unable to say. and the rounded bodies were new and ghastly-looking creatures, in shape somewhat resembling an octopus, with huge and very long and flexible tentacles, coiled copiously on the ground. the skin had a glistening texture, unpleasant to see, like shiny leather. the downward bend of the tentacle-surrounded mouth, the curious excrescence at the bend, the tentacles, and the large intelligent eyes, gave the creatures a grotesque suggestion of a face. they were the size of a fair-sized swine about the body, and the tentacles seemed to him to be many feet in length. there were, he thinks, seven or eight at least of the creatures. twenty yards beyond them, amid the surf of the now returning tide, two others were emerging from the sea. their bodies lay flatly on the rocks, and their eyes regarded him with evil interest; but it does not appear that mr. fison was afraid, or that he realised that he was in any danger. possibly his confidence is to be ascribed to the limpness of their attitudes. but he was horrified, of course, and intensely excited and indignant, at such revolting creatures preying upon human flesh. he thought they had chanced upon a drowned body. he shouted to them, with the idea of driving them off, and finding they did not budge, cast about him, picked up a big rounded lump of rock, and flung it at one. and then, slowly uncoiling their tentacles, they all began moving towards him--creeping at first deliberately, and making a soft purring sound to each other. in a moment mr. fison realised that he was in danger. he shouted again, threw both his boots, and started off, with a leap, forthwith. twenty yards off he stopped and faced about, judging them slow, and behold! the tentacles of their leader were already pouring over the rocky ridge on which he had just been standing! at that he shouted again, but this time not threatening, but a cry of dismay, and began jumping, striding, slipping, wading across the uneven expanse between him and the beach. the tall red cliffs seemed suddenly at a vast distance, and he saw, as though they were creatures in another world, two minute workmen engaged in the repair of the ladder-way, and little suspecting the race for life that was beginning below them. at one time he could hear the creatures splashing in the pools not a dozen feet behind him, and once he slipped and almost fell. they chased him to the very foot of the cliffs, and desisted only when he had been joined by the workmen at the foot of the ladder-way up the cliff. all three of the men pelted them with stones for a time, and then hurried to the cliff top and along the path towards sidmouth, to secure assistance and a boat, and to rescue the desecrated body from the clutches of these abominable creatures. ii. and, as if he had not already been in sufficient peril that day, mr. fison went with the boat to point out the exact spot of his adventure. as the tide was down, it required a considerable detour to reach the spot, and when at last they came off the ladder-way, the mangled body had disappeared. the water was now running in, submerging first one slab of slimy rock and then another, and the four men in the boat--the workmen, that is, the boatman, and mr. fison--now turned their attention from the bearings off shore to the water beneath the keel. at first they could see little below them, save a dark jungle of laminaria, with an occasional darting fish. their minds were set on adventure, and they expressed their disappointment freely. but presently they saw one of the monsters swimming through the water seaward, with a curious rolling motion that suggested to mr. fison the spinning roll of a captive balloon. almost immediately after, the waving streamers of laminaria were extraordinarily perturbed, parted for a moment, and three of these beasts became darkly visible, struggling for what was probably some fragment of the drowned man. in a moment the copious olive-green ribbons had poured again over this writhing group. at that all four men, greatly excited, began beating the water with oars and shouting, and immediately they saw a tumultuous movement among the weeds. they desisted to see more clearly, and as soon as the water was smooth, they saw, as it seemed to them, the whole sea bottom among the weeds set with eyes. "ugly swine!" cried one of the men. "why, there's dozens!" and forthwith the things began to rise through the water about them. mr. fison has since described to the writer this startling eruption out of the waving laminaria meadows. to him it seemed to occupy a considerable time, but it is probable that really it was an affair of a few seconds only. for a time nothing but eyes, and then he speaks of tentacles streaming out and parting the weed fronds this way and that. then these things, growing larger, until at last the bottom was hidden by their intercoiling forms, and the tips of tentacles rose darkly here and there into the air above the swell of the waters. one came up boldly to the side of the boat, and clinging to this with three of its sucker-set tentacles, threw four others over the gunwale, as if with an intention either of oversetting the boat or of clambering into it. mr. fison at once caught up the boat-hook, and, jabbing furiously at the soft tentacles, forced it to desist. he was struck in the back and almost pitched overboard by the boatman, who was using his oar to resist a similar attack on the other side of the boat. but the tentacles on either side at once relaxed their hold, slid out of sight, and splashed into the water. "we'd better get out of this," said mr. fison, who was trembling violently. he went to the tiller, while the boatman and one of the workmen seated themselves and began rowing. the other workman stood up in the fore part of the boat, with the boat-hook, ready to strike any more tentacles that might appear. nothing else seems to have been said. mr. fison had expressed the common feeling beyond amendment. in a hushed, scared mood, with faces white and drawn, they set about escaping from the position into which they had so recklessly blundered. but the oars had scarcely dropped into the water before dark, tapering, serpentine ropes had bound them, and were about the rudder; and creeping up the sides of the boat with a looping motion came the suckers again. the men gripped their oars and pulled, but it was like trying to move a boat in a floating raft of weeds. "help here!" cried the boatman, and mr. fison and the second workman rushed to help lug at the oar. then the man with the boat-hook--his name was ewan, or ewen--sprang up with a curse and began striking downward over the side, as far as he could reach, at the bank of tentacles that now clustered along the boat's bottom. and, at the same time, the two rowers stood up to get a better purchase for the recovery of their oars. the boatman handed his to mr. fison, who lugged desperately, and, meanwhile, the boatman opened a big clasp-knife, and leaning over the side of the boat, began hacking at the spiring arms upon the oar shaft. mr. fison, staggering with the quivering rocking of the boat, his teeth set, his breath coming short, and the veins starting on his hands as he pulled at his oar, suddenly cast his eyes seaward. and there, not fifty yards off, across the long rollers of the incoming tide, was a large boat standing in towards them, with three women and a little child in it. a boatman was rowing, and a little man in a pink-ribboned straw hat and whites stood in the stern hailing them. for a moment, of course, mr. fison thought of help, and then he thought of the child. he abandoned his oar forthwith, threw up his arms in a frantic gesture, and screamed to the party in the boat to keep away "for god's sake!" it says much for the modesty and courage of mr. fison that he does not seem to be aware that there was any quality of heroism in his action at this juncture. the oar he had abandoned was at once drawn under, and presently reappeared floating about twenty yards away. at the same moment mr. fison felt the boat under him lurch violently, and a hoarse scream, a prolonged cry of terror from hill, the boatman, caused him to forget the party of excursionists altogether. he turned, and saw hill crouching by the forward row-lock, his face convulsed with terror, and his right arm over the side and drawn tightly down. he gave now a succession of short, sharp cries, "oh! oh! oh!--oh!" mr. fison believes that he must have been hacking at the tentacles below the water-line, and have been grasped by them, but, of course, it is quite impossible to say now certainly what had happened. the boat was heeling over, so that the gunwale was within ten inches of the water, and both ewan and the other labourer were striking down into the water, with oar and boat-hook, on either side of hill's arm. mr. fison instinctively placed himself to counterpoise them. then hill, who was a burly, powerful man, made a strenuous effort, and rose almost to a standing position. he lifted his arm, indeed, clean out of the water. hanging to it was a complicated tangle of brown ropes, and the eyes of one of the brutes that had hold of him, glaring straight and resolute, showed momentarily above the surface. the boat heeled more and more, and the green-brown water came pouring in a cascade over the side. then hill slipped and fell with his ribs across the side, and his arm and the mass of tentacles about it splashed back into the water. he rolled over; his boot kicked mr. fison's knee as that gentleman rushed forward to seize him, and in another moment fresh tentacles had whipped about his waist and neck, and after a brief, convulsive struggle, in which the boat was nearly capsized, hill was lugged overboard. the boat righted with a violent jerk that all but sent mr. fison over the other side, and hid the struggle in the water from his eyes. he stood staggering to recover his balance for a moment, and as he did so he became aware that the struggle and the inflowing tide had carried them close upon the weedy rocks again. not four yards off a table of rock still rose in rhythmic movements above the in-wash of the tide. in a moment mr. fison seized the oar from ewan, gave one vigorous stroke, then dropping it, ran to the bows and leapt. he felt his feet slide over the rock, and, by a frantic effort, leapt again towards a further mass. he stumbled over this, came to his knees, and rose again. "look out!" cried someone, and a large drab body struck him. he was knocked flat into a tidal pool by one of the workmen, and as he went down he heard smothered, choking cries, that he believed at the time came from hill. then he found himself marvelling at the shrillness and variety of hill's voice. someone jumped over him, and a curving rush of foamy water poured over him, and passed. he scrambled to his feet dripping, and without looking seaward, ran as fast as his terror would let him shoreward. before him, over the flat space of scattered rocks, stumbled the two work-men--one a dozen yards in front of the other. he looked over his shoulder at last, and seeing that he was not pursued, faced about. he was astonished. from the moment of the rising of the cephalopods out of the water he had been acting too swiftly to fully comprehend his actions. now it seemed to him as if he had suddenly jumped out of an evil dream. for there were the sky, cloudless and blazing with the afternoon sun, the sea weltering under its pitiless brightness, the soft creamy foam of the breaking water, and the low, long, dark ridges of rock. the righted boat floated, rising and falling gently on the swell about a dozen yards from shore. hill and the monsters, all the stress and tumult of that fierce fight for life, had vanished as though they had never been. mr. fison's heart was beating violently; he was throbbing to the finger-tips, and his breath came deep. there was something missing. for some seconds he could not think clearly enough what this might be. sun, sky, sea, rocks--what was it? then he remembered the boat-load of excursionists. it had vanished. he wondered whether he had imagined it. he turned, and saw the two workmen standing side by side under the projecting masses of the tall pink cliffs. he hesitated whether he should make one last attempt to save the man hill. his physical excitement seemed to desert him suddenly, and leave him aimless and helpless. he turned shoreward, stumbling and wading towards his two companions. he looked back again, and there were now two boats floating, and the one farthest out at sea pitched clumsily, bottom upward. iii. so it was _haploteuthis ferox_ made its appearance upon the devonshire coast. so far, this has been its most serious aggression. mr. fison's account, taken together with the wave of boating and bathing casualties to which i have already alluded, and the absence of fish from the cornish coasts that year, points clearly to a shoal of these voracious deep-sea monsters prowling slowly along the sub-tidal coast-line. hunger migration has, i know, been suggested as the force that drove them hither; but, for my own part, i prefer to believe the alternative theory of hemsley. hemsley holds that a pack or shoal of these creatures may have become enamoured of human flesh by the accident of a foundered ship sinking among them, and have wandered in search of it out of their accustomed zone; first waylaying and following ships, and so coming to our shores in the wake of the atlantic traffic. but to discuss hemsley's cogent and admirably-stated arguments would be out of place here. it would seem that the appetites of the shoal were satisfied by the catch of eleven people--for, so far as can be ascertained, there were ten people in the second boat, and certainly these creatures gave no further signs of their presence off sidmouth that day. the coast between seaton and budleigh salterton was patrolled all that evening and night by four preventive service boats, the men in which were armed with harpoons and cutlasses, and as the evening advanced, a number of more or less similarly equipped expeditions, organised by private individuals, joined them. mr. fison took no part in any of these expeditions. about midnight excited hails were heard from a boat about a couple of miles out at sea to the south-east of sidmouth, and a lantern was seen waving in a strange manner to and fro and up and down. the nearer boats at once hurried towards the alarm. the venturesome occupants of the boat--a seaman, a curate, and two schoolboys--had actually seen the monsters passing under their boat. the creatures, it seems, like most deep-sea organisms, were phosphorescent, and they had been floating, five fathoms deep or so, like creatures of moonshine through the blackness of the water, their tentacles retracted and as if asleep, rolling over and over, and moving slowly in a wedge-like formation towards the south-east. these people told their story in gesticulated fragments, as first one boat drew alongside and then another. at last there was a little fleet of eight or nine boats collected together, and from them a tumult, like the chatter of a market-place, rose into the stillness of the night. there was little or no disposition to pursue the shoal, the people had neither weapons nor experience for such a dubious chase, and presently--even with a certain relief, it may be--the boats turned shoreward. and now to tell what is perhaps the most astonishing fact in this whole astonishing raid. we have not the slightest knowledge of the subsequent movements of the shoal, although the whole south-west coast was now alert for it. but it may, perhaps, be significant that a cachalot was stranded off sark on june 3. two weeks and three days after this sidmouth affair, a living _haploteuthis_ came ashore on calais sands. it was alive, because several witnesses saw its tentacles moving in a convulsive way. but it is probable that it was dying. a gentleman named pouchet obtained a rifle and shot it. that was the last appearance of a living _haploteuthis_. no others were seen on the french coast. on the 15th of june a dead carcass, almost complete, was washed ashore near torquay, and a few days later a boat from the marine biological station, engaged in dredging off plymouth, picked up a rotting specimen, slashed deeply with a cutlass wound. how the former had come by its death it is impossible to say. and on the last day of june, mr. egbert caine, an artist, bathing near newlyn, threw up his arms, shrieked, and was drawn under. a friend bathing with him made no attempt to save him, but swam at once for the shore. this is the last fact to tell of this extraordinary raid from the deeper sea. whether it is really the last of these horrible creatures it is, as yet, premature to say. but it is believed, and certainly it is to be hoped, that they have returned now, and returned for good, to the sunless depths of the middle seas, out of which they have so strangely and so mysteriously arisen. xiv. the obliterated man. i was--you shall hear immediately why i am not now--egbert craddock cummins. the name remains. i am still (heaven help me!) dramatic critic to the _fiery cross_. what i shall be in a little while i do not know. i write in great trouble and confusion of mind. i will do what i can to make myself clear in the face of terrible difficulties. you must bear with me a little. when a man is rapidly losing his own identity, he naturally finds a difficulty in expressing himself. i will make it perfectly plain in a minute, when once i get my grip upon the story. let me see--where _am_ i? i wish i knew. ah, i have it! dead self! egbert craddock cummins! in the past i should have disliked writing anything quite so full of "i" as this story must be. it is full of "i's" before and behind, like the beast in revelation--the one with a head like a calf, i am afraid. but my tastes have changed since i became a dramatic critic and studied the masters--g.a.s., g.b.s., g.r.s., and the others. everything has changed since then. at least the story is about myself--so that there is some excuse for me. and it is really not egotism, because, as i say, since those days my identity has undergone an entire alteration. that past!... i was--in those days--rather a nice fellow, rather shy-taste for grey in my clothes, weedy little moustache, face "interesting," slight stutter which i had caught in my early life from a schoolfellow. engaged to a very nice girl, named delia. fairly new, she was-cigarettes--liked me because i was human and original. considered i was like lamb--on the strength of the stutter, i believe. father, an eminent authority on postage stamps. she read a great deal in the british museum. (a perfect pairing ground for literary people, that british museum--you should read george egerton and justin huntly m'carthy and gissing and the rest of them.) we loved in our intellectual way, and shared the brightest hopes. (all gone now.) and her father liked me because i seemed honestly eager to hear about stamps. she had no mother. indeed, i had the happiest prospects a young man could have. i never went to theatres in those days. my aunt charlotte before she died had told me not to. then barnaby, the editor of the _fiery cross_, made me--in spite of my spasmodic efforts to escape--dramatic critic. he is a fine, healthy man, barnaby, with an enormous head of frizzy black hair and a convincing manner, and he caught me on the staircase going to see wembly. he had been dining, and was more than usually buoyant. "hullo, cummins!" he said. "the very man i want!" he caught me by the shoulder or the collar or something, ran me up the little passage, and flung me over the waste-paper basket into the arm-chair in his office. "pray be seated," he said, as he did so. then he ran across the room and came back with some pink and yellow tickets and pushed them into my hand. "opera comique," he said, "thursday; friday, the surrey; saturday, the frivolity. that's all, i think." "but--" i began. "glad you're free," he said, snatching some proofs off the desk and beginning to read. "i don't quite understand," i said. "_eigh_?" he said, at the top of his voice, as though he thought i had gone and was startled at my remark. "do you want me to criticise these plays?" "do something with 'em... did you think it was a treat?" "but i can't." "did you call me a fool?" "well, i've never been to a theatre in my life." "virgin soil." "but i don't know anything about it, you know." "that's just it. new view. no habits. no _clichés_ in stock. ours is a live paper, not a bag of tricks. none of your clockwork professional journalism in this office. and i can rely on your integrity----" "but i've conscientious scruples----" he caught me up suddenly and put me outside his door. "go and talk to wembly about that," he said. "he'll explain." as i stood perplexed, he opened the door again, said, "i forgot this," thrust a fourth ticket into my hand (it was for that night--in twenty minutes' time) and slammed the door upon me. his expression was quite calm, but i caught his eye. i hate arguments. i decided that i would take his hint and become (to my own destruction) a dramatic critic. i walked slowly down the passage to wembly. that barnaby has a remarkable persuasive way. he has made few suggestions during our very pleasant intercourse of four years that he has not ultimately won me round to adopting. it may be, of course, that i am of a yielding disposition; certainly i am too apt to take my colour from my circumstances. it is, indeed, to my unfortunate susceptibility to vivid impressions that all my misfortunes are due. i have already alluded to the slight stammer i had acquired from a schoolfellow in my youth. however, this is a digression... i went home in a cab to dress. i will not trouble the reader with my thoughts about the first-night audience, strange assembly as it is,--those i reserve for my memoirs,--nor the humiliating story of how i got lost during the _entr'acte_ in a lot of red plush passages, and saw the third act from the gallery. the only point upon which i wish to lay stress was the remarkable effect of the acting upon me. you must remember i had lived a quiet and retired life, and had never been to the theatre before, and that i am extremely sensitive to vivid impressions. at the risk of repetition i must insist upon these points. the first effect was a profound amazement, not untinctured by alarm. the phenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in the minds of most people by early visits to the theatre. they get used to the fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodious snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors, and other emotional symbolism of the stage. it becomes at last a mere deaf-and-dumb language to them, which they read intelligently _pari passu_ with the hearing of the dialogue. but all this was new to me. the thing was called a modern comedy, the people were supposed to be english and were dressed like fashionable americans of the current epoch, and i fell into the natural error of supposing that the actors were trying to represent human beings. i looked round on my first-night audience with a kind of wonder, discovered--as all new dramatic critics do--that it rested with me to reform the drama, and, after a supper choked with emotion, went off to the office to write a column, piebald with "new paragraphs" (as all my stuff is--it fills out so) and purple with indignation. barnaby was delighted. but i could not sleep that night. i dreamt of actors--actors glaring, actors smiting their chests, actors flinging out a handful of extended fingers, actors smiling bitterly, laughing despairingly, falling hopelessly, dying idiotically. i got up at eleven with a slight headache, read my notice in the _fiery cross_, breakfasted, and went back to my room to shave, (it's my habit to do so.) then an odd thing happened. i could not find my razor. suddenly it occurred to me that i had not unpacked it the day before. "ah!" said i, in front of the looking-glass. then "hullo!" quite involuntarily, when i had thought of my portmanteau, i had flung up the left arm (fingers fully extended) and clutched at my diaphragm with my right hand. i am an acutely self-conscious man at all times. the gesture struck me as absolutely novel for me. i repeated it, for my own satisfaction. "odd!" then (rather puzzled) i turned to my portmanteau. after shaving, my mind reverted to the acting i had seen, and i entertained myself before the cheval glass with some imitations of jafferay's more exaggerated gestures. "really, one might think it a disease," i said--"stage-walkitis!" (there's many a truth spoken in jest.) then, if i remember rightly, i went off to see wembly, and afterwards lunched at the british museum with delia. we actually spoke about our prospects, in the light of my new appointment. but that appointment was the beginning of my downfall. from that day i necessarily became a persistent theatre-goer, and almost insensibly i began to change. the next thing i noticed after the gesture about the razor was to catch myself bowing ineffably when i met delia, and stooping in an old-fashioned, courtly way over her hand. directly i caught myself, i straightened myself up and became very uncomfortable. i remember she looked at me curiously. then, in the office, i found myself doing "nervous business," fingers on teeth, when barnaby asked me a question i could not very well answer. then, in some trifling difference with delia, i clasped my hand to my brow. and i pranced through my social transactions at times singularly like an actor! i tried not to--no one could be more keenly alive to the arrant absurdity of the histrionic bearing. and i did! it began to dawn on me what it all meant. the acting, i saw, was too much for my delicately-strung nervous system. i have always, i know, been too amenable to the suggestions of my circumstances. night after night of concentrated attention to the conventional attitudes and intonation of the english stage was gradually affecting my speech and carriage. i was giving way to the infection of sympathetic imitation. night after night my plastic nervous system took the print of some new amazing gesture, some new emotional exaggeration--and retained it. a kind of theatrical veneer threatened to plate over and obliterate my private individuality altogether. i saw myself in a kind of vision. sitting by myself one night, my new self seemed to me to glide, posing and gesticulating, across the room. he clutched his throat, he opened his fingers, he opened his legs in walking like a high-class marionette. he went from attitude to attitude. he might have been clockwork. directly after this i made an ineffectual attempt to resign my theatrical work. but barnaby persisted in talking about the polywhiddle divorce all the time i was with him, and i could get no opportunity of saying what i wished. and then delia's manner began to change towards me. the ease of our intercourse vanished. i felt she was learning to dislike me. i grinned, and capered, and scowled, and posed at her in a thousand ways, and knew--with what a voiceless agony!--that i did it all the time. i tried to resign again, and barnaby talked about "x" and "z" and "y" in the _new review,_ and gave me a strong cigar to smoke, and so routed me. and then i walked up the assyrian gallery in the manner of irving to meet delia, and so precipitated the crisis. "ah!--_dear_!" i said, with more sprightliness and emotion in my voice than had ever been in all my life before i became (to my own undoing) a dramatic critic. she held out her hand rather coldly, scrutinising my face as she did so. i prepared, with a new-won grace, to walk by her side. "egbert," she said, standing still, and thought. then she looked at me. i said nothing. i felt what was coming. i tried to be the old egbert craddock cummins of shambling gait and stammering sincerity, whom she loved, but i felt even as i did so that i was a new thing, a thing of surging emotions and mysterious fixity--like no human being that ever lived, except upon the stage. "egbert," she said, "you are not yourself." "ah!" involuntarily i clutched my diaphragm and averted my head (as is the way with them). "there!" she said. "_what do you mean_?" i said, whispering in vocal italics--you know how they do it--turning on her, perplexity on face, right hand down, left on brow. i knew quite well what she meant. i knew quite well the dramatic unreality of my behaviour. but i struggled against it in vain. "what do you mean?" i said, and, in a kind of hoarse whisper, "i don't understand!" she really looked as though she disliked me. "what do you keep on posing for?" she said. "i don't like it. you didn't use to." "didn't use to!" i said slowly, repeating this twice. i glared up and down the gallery with short, sharp glances. "we are alone," i said swiftly. "_listen!_" i poked my forefinger towards her, and glared at her. "i am under a curse." i saw her hand tighten upon her sunshade. "you are under some bad influence or other," said delia. "you should give it up. i never knew anyone change as you have done." "delia!" i said, lapsing into the pathetic. "pity me, augh! delia! _pit_--y me!" she eyed me critically. "_why_ you keep playing the fool like this i don't know," she said. "anyhow, i really cannot go about with a man who behaves as you do. you made us both ridiculous on wednesday. frankly, i dislike you, as you are now. i met you here to tell you so--as it's about the only place where we can be sure of being alone together----" "delia!" said i, with intensity, knuckles of clenched hands white. "you don't mean----" "i do," said delia. "a woman's lot is sad enough at the best of times. but with you----" i clapped my hand on my brow. "so, good-bye," said delia, without emotion. "oh, delia!" i said. "not _this_?" "good-bye, mr. cummins," she said. by a violent effort i controlled myself and touched her hand. i tried to say some word of explanation to her. she looked into my working face and winced. "i _must_ do it," she said hopelessly. then she turned from me and began walking rapidly down the gallery. heavens! how the human agony cried within me! i loved delia. but nothing found expression--i was already too deeply crusted with my acquired self. "good-baye!" i said at last, watching her retreating figure. how i hated myself for doing it! after she had vanished, i repeated in a dreamy way, "good-baye!" looking hopelessly round me. then, with a kind of heart-broken cry, i shook my clenched fists in the air, staggered to the pedestal of a winged figure, buried my face in my arms, and made my shoulders heave. something within me said "ass!" as i did so. (i had the greatest difficulty in persuading the museum policeman, who was attracted by my cry of agony, that i was not intoxicated, but merely suffering from a transient indisposition.) but even this great sorrow has not availed to save me from my fate. i see it; everyone sees it: i grow more "theatrical" every day. and no one could be more painfully aware of the pungent silliness of theatrical ways. the quiet, nervous, but pleasing e.c. cummins vanishes. i cannot save him. i am driven like a dead leaf before the winds of march. my tailor even enters into the spirit of my disorder. he has a peculiar sense of what is fitting. i tried to get a dull grey suit from him this spring, and he foisted a brilliant blue upon me, and i see he has put braid down the sides of my new dress trousers. my hairdresser insists upon giving me a "wave." i am beginning to associate with actors. i detest them, but it is only in their company that i can feel i am not glaringly conspicuous. their talk infects me. i notice a growing tendency to dramatic brevity, to dashes and pauses in my style, to a punctuation of bows and attitudes. barnaby has remarked it too. i offended wembly by calling him "dear boy" yesterday. i dread the end, but i cannot escape from it. the fact is, i am being obliterated. living a grey, retired life all my youth, i came to the theatre a delicate sketch of a man, a thing of tints and faint lines. their gorgeous colouring has effaced me altogether. people forget how much mode of expression, method of movement, are a matter of contagion. i have heard of stage-struck people before, and thought it a figure of speech. i spoke of it jestingly, as a disease. it is no jest. it is a disease. and i have got it badly! deep down within me i protest against the wrong done to my personality--unavailingly. for three hours or more a week i have to go and concentrate my attention on some fresh play, and the suggestions of the drama strengthen their awful hold upon me. my manners grow so flamboyant, my passions so professional, that i doubt, as i said at the outset, whether it is really myself that behaves in such a manner. i feel merely the core to this dramatic casing, that grows thicker and presses upon me--me and mine. i feel like king john's abbot in his cope of lead. i doubt, indeed, whether i should not abandon the struggle altogether-leave this sad world of ordinary life for which i am so ill fitted, abandon the name of cummins for some professional pseudonym, complete my self-effacement, and--a thing of tricks and tatters, of posing and pretence--go upon the stage. it seems my only resort--"to hold the mirror up to nature." for in the ordinary life, i will confess, no one now seems to regard me as both sane and sober. only upon the stage, i feel convinced, will people take me seriously. that will be the end of it. i _know_ that will be the end of it. and yet ... i will frankly confess ... all that marks off your actor from your common man ... i _detest_. i am still largely of my aunt charlotte's opinion, that play-acting is unworthy of a pure-minded man's attention, much more participation. even now i would resign my dramatic criticism and try a rest. only i can't get hold of barnaby. letters of resignation he never notices. he says it is against the etiquette of journalism to write to your editor. and when i go to see him, he gives me another big cigar and some strong whisky and soda, and then something always turns up to prevent my explanation. xv. the plattner story. whether the story of gottfried plattner is to be credited or not is a pretty question in the value of evidence. on the one hand, we have seven witnesses--to be perfectly exact, we have six and a half pairs of eyes, and one undeniable fact; and on the other we have--what is it?--prejudice, common-sense, the inertia of opinion. never were there seven more honest-seeming witnesses; never was there a more undeniable fact than the inversion of gottfried plattner's anatomical structure, and--never was there a more preposterous story than the one they have to tell! the most preposterous part of the story is the worthy gottfried's contribution (for i count him as one of the seven). heaven forbid that i should be led into giving countenance to superstition by a passion for impartiality, and so come to share the fate of eusapia's patrons! frankly, i believe there is something crooked about this business of gottfried plattner; but what that crooked factor is, i will admit as frankly, i do not know. i have been surprised at the credit accorded to the story in the most unexpected and authoritative quarters. the fairest way to the reader, however, will be for me to tell it without further comment. gottfried plattner is, in spite of his name, a freeborn englishman. his father was an alsatian who came to england in the 'sixties, married a respectable english girl of unexceptionable antecedents, and died, after a wholesome and uneventful life (devoted, i understand, chiefly to the laying of parquet flooring), in 1887. gottfried's age is seven-and-twenty. he is, by virtue of his heritage of three languages, modern languages master in a small private school in the south of england. to the casual observer he is singularly like any other modern languages master in any other small private school. his costume is neither very costly nor very fashionable, but, on the other hand, it is not markedly cheap or shabby; his complexion, like his height and his bearing, is inconspicuous. you would notice, perhaps, that, like the majority of people, his face was not absolutely symmetrical, his right eye a little larger than the left, and his jaw a trifle heavier on the right side. if you, as an ordinary careless person, were to bare his chest and feel his heart beating, you would probably find it quite like the heart of anyone else. but here you and the trained observer would part company. if you found his heart quite ordinary, the trained observer would find it quite otherwise. and once the thing was pointed out to you, you too would perceive the peculiarity easily enough. it is that gottfried's heart beats on the right side of his body. now, that is not the only singularity of gottfried's structure, although it is the only one that would appeal to the untrained mind. careful sounding of gottfried's internal arrangements by a well-known surgeon seems to point to the fact that all the other unsymmetrical parts of his body are similarly misplaced. the right lobe of his liver is on the left side, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are similarly contraposed. what is still more singular, unless gottfried is a consummate actor, we must believe that his right hand has recently become his left. since the occurrences we are about to consider (as impartially as possible), he has found the utmost difficulty in writing, except from right to left across the paper with his left hand. he cannot throw with his right hand, he is perplexed at meal-times between knife and fork, and his ideas of the rule of the road--he is a cyclist--are still a dangerous confusion. and there is not a scrap of evidence to show that before these occurrences gottfried was at all left-handed. there is yet another wonderful fact in this preposterous business. gottfried produces three photographs of himself. you have him at the age of five or six, thrusting fat legs at you from under a plaid frock, and scowling. in that photograph his left eye is a little larger than his right, and his jaw is a trifle heavier on the left side. this is the reverse of his present living condition. the photograph of gottfried at fourteen seems to contradict these facts, but that is because it is one of those cheap "gem" photographs that were then in vogue, taken direct upon metal, and therefore reversing things just as a looking-glass would. the third photograph represents him at one-and-twenty, and confirms the record of the others. there seems here evidence of the strongest confirmatory character that gottfried has exchanged his left side for his right. yet how a human being can be so changed, short of a fantastic and pointless miracle, it is exceedingly hard to suggest. in one way, of course, these facts might be explicable on the supposition that plattner has undertaken an elaborate mystification, on the strength of his heart's displacement. photographs may be faked, and left-handedness imitated. but the character of the man does not lend itself to any such theory. he is quiet, practical, unobtrusive, and thoroughly sane, from the nordau standpoint. he likes beer, and smokes moderately, takes walking exercise daily, and has a healthily high estimate of the value of his teaching. he has a good but untrained tenor voice, and takes a pleasure in singing airs of a popular and cheerful character. he is fond, but not morbidly fond, of reading,--chiefly fiction pervaded with a vaguely pious optimism,--sleeps well, and rarely dreams. he is, in fact, the very last person to evolve a fantastic fable. indeed, so far from forcing this story upon the world, he has been singularly reticent on the matter. he meets enquirers with a certain engaging--bashfulness is almost the word, that disarms the most suspicious. he seems genuinely ashamed that anything so unusual has occurred to him. it is to be regretted that plattner's aversion to the idea of post-mortem dissection may postpone, perhaps for ever, the positive proof that his entire body has had its left and right sides transposed. upon that fact mainly the credibility of his story hangs. there is no way of taking a man and moving him about in space as ordinary people understand space, that will result in our changing his sides. whatever you do, his right is still his right, his left his left. you can do that with a perfectly thin and flat thing, of course. if you were to cut a figure out of paper, any figure with a right and left side, you could change its sides simply by lifting it up and turning it over. but with a solid it is different. mathematical theorists tell us that the only way in which the right and left sides of a solid body can be changed is by taking that body clean out of space as we know it,--taking it out of ordinary existence, that is, and turning it somewhere outside space. this is a little abstruse, no doubt, but anyone with any knowledge of mathematical theory will assure the reader of its truth. to put the thing in technical language, the curious inversion of plattner's right and left sides is proof that he has moved out of our space into what is called the fourth dimension, and that he has returned again to our world. unless we choose to consider ourselves the victims of an elaborate and motiveless fabrication, we are almost bound to believe that this has occurred. so much for the tangible facts. we come now to the account of the phenomena that attended his temporary disappearance from the world. it appears that in the sussexville proprietary school, plattner not only discharged the duties of modern languages master, but also taught chemistry, commercial geography, bookkeeping, shorthand, drawing, and any other additional subject to which the changing fancies of the boys' parents might direct attention. he knew little or nothing of these various subjects, but in secondary as distinguished from board or elementary schools, knowledge in the teacher is, very properly, by no means so necessary as high moral character and gentlemanly tone. in chemistry he was particularly deficient, knowing, he says, nothing beyond the three gases (whatever the three gases may be). as, however, his pupils began by knowing nothing, and derived all their information from him, this caused him (or anyone) but little inconvenience for several terms. then a little boy named whibble joined the school, who had been educated (it seems) by some mischievous relative into an inquiring habit of mind. this little boy followed plattner's lessons with marked and sustained interest, and in order to exhibit his zeal on the subject, brought, at various times, substances for plattner to analyse. plattner, flattered by this evidence of his power of awakening interest, and trusting to the boy's ignorance, analysed these, and even, made general statements as to their composition. indeed, he was so far stimulated by his pupil as to obtain a work upon analytical chemistry, and study it during his supervision of the evening's preparation. he was surprised to find chemistry quite an interesting subject. so far the story is absolutely commonplace. but now the greenish powder comes upon the scene. the source of that greenish powder seems, unfortunately, lost. master whibble tells a tortuous story of finding it done up in a packet in a disused limekiln near the downs. it would have been an excellent thing for plattner, and possibly for master whibble's family, if a match could have been applied to that powder there and then. the young gentleman certainly did not bring it to school in a packet, but in a common eight-ounce graduated medicine bottle, plugged with masticated newspaper. he gave it to plattner at the end of the afternoon school. four boys had been detained after school prayers in order to complete some neglected tasks, and plattner was supervising these in the small class-room in which the chemical teaching was conducted. the appliances for the practical teaching of chemistry in the sussexville proprietary school, as in most small schools in this country, are characterised by a severe simplicity. they are kept in a small cupboard standing in a recess, and having about the same capacity as a common travelling trunk. plattner, being bored with his passive superintendence, seems to have welcomed the intervention of whibble with his green powder as an agreeable diversion, and, unlocking this cupboard, proceeded at once with his analytical experiments. whibble sat, luckily for himself, at a safe distance, regarding him. the four malefactors, feigning a profound absorption in their work, watched him furtively with the keenest interest. for even within the limits of the three gases, plattner's practical chemistry was, i understand, temerarious. they are practically unanimous in their account of plattner's proceedings. he poured a little of the green powder into a test-tube, and tried the substance with water, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and sulphuric acid in succession. getting no result, he emptied out a little heap--nearly half the bottleful, in fact--upon a slate and tried a match. he held the medicine bottle in his left hand. the stuff began to smoke and melt, and then exploded with deafening violence and a blinding flash. the five boys, seeing the flash and being prepared for catastrophes, ducked below their desks, and were none of them seriously hurt. the window was blown out into the playground, and the blackboard on its easel was upset. the slate was smashed to atoms. some plaster fell from the ceiling. no other damage was done to the school edifice or appliances, and the boys at first, seeing nothing of plattner, fancied he was knocked down and lying out of their sight below the desks. they jumped out of their places to go to his assistance, and were amazed to find the space empty. being still confused by the sudden violence of the report, they hurried to the open door, under the impression that he must have been hurt, and have rushed out of the room. but carson, the foremost, nearly collided in the doorway with the principal, mr. lidgett. mr. lidgett is a corpulent, excitable man with one eye. the boys describe him as stumbling into the room mouthing some of those tempered expletives irritable schoolmasters accustom themselves to use--lest worse befall. "wretched mumchancer!" he said. "where's mr. plattner?" the boys are agreed on the very words. ("wobbler," "snivelling puppy," and "mumchancer" are, it seems, among the ordinary small change of mr. lidgett's scholastic commerce.) where's mr. plattner? that was a question that was to be repeated many times in the next few days. it really seemed as though that frantic hyperbole, "blown to atoms," had for once realised itself. there was not a visible particle of plattner to be seen; not a drop of blood nor a stitch of clothing to be found. apparently he had been blown clean out of existence and left not a wrack behind. not so much as would cover a sixpenny piece, to quote a proverbial expression! the evidence of his absolute disappearance as a consequence of that explosion is indubitable. it is not necessary to enlarge here upon the commotion excited in the sussexville proprietary school, and in sussexville and elsewhere, by this event. it is quite possible, indeed, that some of the readers of these pages may recall the hearing of some remote and dying version of that excitement during the last summer holidays. lidgett, it would seem, did everything in his power to suppress and minimise the story. he instituted a penalty of twenty-five lines for any mention of plattner's name among the boys, and stated in the schoolroom that he was clearly aware of his assistant's whereabouts. he was afraid, he explains, that the possibility of an explosion happening, in spite of the elaborate precautions taken to minimise the practical teaching of chemistry, might injure the reputation of the school; and so might any mysterious quality in plattner's departure. indeed, he did everything in his power to make the occurrence seem as ordinary as possible. in particular, he cross-examined the five eye-witnesses of the occurrence so searchingly that they began to doubt the plain evidence of their senses. but, in spite of these efforts, the tale, in a magnified and distorted state, made a nine days' wonder in the district, and several parents withdrew their sons on colourable pretexts. not the least remarkable point in the matter is the fact that a large number of people in the neighbourhood dreamed singularly vivid dreams of plattner during the period of excitement before his return, and that these dreams had a curious uniformity. in almost all of them plattner was seen, sometimes singly, sometimes in company, wandering about through a coruscating iridescence. in all cases his face was pale and distressed, and in some he gesticulated towards the dreamer. one or two of the boys, evidently under the influence of nightmare, fancied that plattner approached them with remarkable swiftness, and seemed to look closely into their very eyes. others fled with plattner from the pursuit of vague and extraordinary creatures of a globular shape. but all these fancies were forgotten in inquiries and speculations when on the wednesday next but one after the monday of the explosion, plattner returned. the circumstances of his return were as singular as those of his departure. so far as mr. lidgett's somewhat choleric outline can be filled in from plattner's hesitating statements, it would appear that on wednesday evening, towards the hour of sunset, the former gentleman, having dismissed evening preparation, was engaged in his garden, picking and eating strawberries, a fruit of which he is inordinately fond. it is a large old-fashioned garden, secured from observation, fortunately, by a high and ivy-covered red-brick wall. just as he was stooping over a particularly prolific plant, there was a flash in the air and a heavy thud, and before he could look round, some heavy body struck him violently from behind. he was pitched forward, crushing the strawberries he held in his hand, and that so roughly, that his silk hat--mr. lidgett adheres to the older ideas of scholastic costume--was driven violently down upon his forehead, and almost over one eye. this heavy missile, which slid over him sideways and collapsed into a sitting posture among the strawberry plants, proved to be our long-lost mr. gottfried plattner, in an extremely dishevelled condition. he was collarless and hatless, his linen was dirty, and there was blood upon his hands. mr. lidgett was so indignant and surprised that he remained on all-fours, and with his hat jammed down on his eye, while he expostulated vehemently with plattner for his disrespectful and unaccountable conduct. this scarcely idyllic scene completes what i may call the exterior version of the plattner story--its exoteric aspect. it is quite unnecessary to enter here into all the details of his dismissal by mr. lidgett. such details, with the full names and dates and references, will be found in the larger report of these occurrences that was laid before the society for the investigation of abnormal phenomena. the singular transposition of plattner's right and left sides was scarcely observed for the first day or so, and then first in connection with his disposition to write from right to left across the blackboard. he concealed rather than ostended this curious confirmatory circumstance, as he considered it would unfavourably affect his prospects in a new situation. the displacement of his heart was discovered some months after, when he was having a tooth extracted under anaesthetics. he then, very unwillingly, allowed a cursory surgical examination to be made of himself, with a view to a brief account in the _journal of anatomy_. that exhausts the statement of the material facts; and we may now go on to consider plattner's account of the matter. but first let us clearly differentiate between the preceding portion of this story and what is to follow. all i have told thus far is established by such evidence as even a criminal lawyer would approve. every one of the witnesses is still alive; the reader, if he have the leisure, may hunt the lads out to-morrow, or even brave the terrors of the redoubtable lidgett, and cross-examine and trap and test to his heart's content; gottfried plattner himself, and his twisted heart and his three photographs, are producible. it may be taken as proved that he did disappear for nine days as the consequence of an explosion; that he returned almost as violently, under circumstances in their nature annoying to mr. lidgett, whatever the details of those circumstances may be; and that he returned inverted, just as a reflection returns from a mirror. from the last fact, as i have already stated, it follows almost inevitably that plattner, during those nine days, must have been in some state of existence altogether out of space. the evidence to these statements is, indeed, far stronger than that upon which most murderers are hanged. but for his own particular account of where he had been, with its confused explanations and wellnigh self-contradictory details, we have only mr. gottfried plattner's word. i do not wish to discredit that, but i must point out--what so many writers upon obscure psychic phenomena fail to do--that we are passing here from the practically undeniable to that kind of matter which any reasonable man is entitled to believe or reject as he thinks proper. the previous statements render it plausible; its discordance with common experience tilts it towards the incredible. i would prefer not to sway the beam of the reader's judgment either way, but simply to tell the story as plattner told it me. he gave me his narrative, i may state, at my house at chislehurst, and so soon as he had left me that evening, i went into my study and wrote down everything as i remembered it. subsequently he was good enough to read over a type-written copy, so that its substantial correctness is undeniable. he states that at the moment of the explosion he distinctly thought he was killed. he felt lifted off his feet and driven forcibly backward. it is a curious fact for psychologists that he thought clearly during his backward flight, and wondered whether he should hit the chemistry cupboard or the blackboard easel. his heels struck ground, and he staggered and fell heavily into a sitting position on something soft and firm. for a moment the concussion stunned him. he became aware at once of a vivid scent of singed hair, and he seemed to hear the voice of lidgett asking for him. you will understand that for a time his mind was greatly confused. at first he was under the impression that he was still standing in the class-room. he perceived quite distinctly the surprise of the boys and the entry of mr. lidgett. he is quite positive upon that score. he did not hear their remarks; but that he ascribed to the deafening effect of the experiment. things about him seemed curiously dark and faint, but his mind explained that on the obvious but mistaken idea that the explosion had engendered a huge volume of dark smoke. through the dimness the figures of lidgett and the boys moved, as faint and silent as ghosts. plattner's face still tingled with the stinging heat of the flash. he, was, he says, "all muddled." his first definite thoughts seem to have been of his personal safety. he thought he was perhaps blinded and deafened. he felt his limbs and face in a gingerly manner. then his perceptions grew clearer, and he was astonished to miss the old familiar desks and other schoolroom furniture about him. only dim, uncertain, grey shapes stood in the place of these. then came a thing that made him shout aloud, and awoke his stunned faculties to instant activity. _two of the boys, gesticulating, walked one after the other clean through him_! neither manifested the slightest consciousness of his presence. it is difficult to imagine the sensation he felt. they came against him, he says, with no more force than a wisp of mist. plattner's first thought after that was that he was dead. having been brought up with thoroughly sound views in these matters, however, he was a little surprised to find his body still about him. his second conclusion was that he was not dead, but that the others were: that the explosion had destroyed the sussexville proprietary school and every soul in it except himself. but that, too, was scarcely satisfactory. he was thrown back upon astonished observation. everything about him was profoundly dark: at first it seemed to have an altogether ebony blackness. overhead was a black firmament. the only touch of light in the scene was a faint greenish glow at the edge of the sky in one direction, which threw into prominence a horizon of undulating black hills. this, i say, was his impression at first. as his eye grew accustomed to the darkness, he began to distinguish a faint quality of differentiating greenish colour in the circumambient night. against this background the furniture and occupants of the class-room, it seems, stood out like phosphorescent spectres, faint and impalpable. he extended his hand, and thrust it without an effort through the wall of the room by the fireplace. he describes himself as making a strenuous effort to attract attention. he shouted to lidgett, and tried to seize the boys as they went to and fro. he only desisted from these attempts when mrs. lidgett, whom he (as an assistant master) naturally disliked, entered the room. he says the sensation of being in the world, and yet not a part of it, was an extraordinarily disagreeable one. he compared his feelings, not inaptly, to those of a cat watching a mouse through a window. whenever he made a motion to communicate with the dim, familiar world about him, he found an invisible, incomprehensible barrier preventing intercourse. he then turned his attention to his solid environment. he found the medicine bottle still unbroken in his hand, with the remainder of the green powder therein. he put this in his pocket, and began to feel about him. apparently he was sitting on a boulder of rock covered with a velvety moss. the dark country about him he was unable to see, the faint, misty picture of the schoolroom blotting it out, but he had a feeling (due perhaps to a cold wind) that he was near the crest of a hill, and that a steep valley fell away beneath his feet. the green glow along the edge of the sky seemed to be growing in extent and intensity. he stood up, rubbing his eyes. it would seem that he made a few steps, going steeply downhill, and then stumbled, nearly fell, and sat down again upon a jagged mass of rock to watch the dawn. he became aware that the world about him was absolutely silent. it was as still as it was dark, and though there was a cold wind blowing up the hill-face, the rustle of grass, the soughing of the boughs that should have accompanied it, were absent. he could hear, therefore, if he could not see, that the hillside upon which he stood was rocky and desolate. the green grew brighter every moment, and as it did so a faint, transparent blood-red mingled with, but did not mitigate, the blackness of the sky overhead and the rocky desolations about him. having regard to what follows, i am inclined to think that that redness may have been an optical effect due to contrast. something black fluttered momentarily against the livid yellow-green of the lower sky, and then the thin and penetrating voice of a bell rose out of the black gulf below him. an oppressive expectation grew with the growing light. it is probable that an hour or more elapsed while he sat there, the strange green light growing brighter every moment, and spreading slowly, in flamboyant fingers, upward towards the zenith. as it grew, the spectral vision of _our_ world became relatively or absolutely fainter. probably both, for the time must have been about that of our earthly sunset. so far as his vision of our world went, plattner, by his few steps downhill, had passed through the floor of the class-room, and was now, it seemed, sitting in mid-air in the larger schoolroom downstairs. he saw the boarders distinctly, but much more faintly than he had seen lidgett. they were preparing their evening tasks, and he noticed with interest that several were cheating with their euclid riders by means of a crib, a compilation whose existence he had hitherto never suspected. as the time passed, they faded steadily, as steadily as the light of the green dawn increased. looking down into the valley, he saw that the light had crept far down its rocky sides, and that the profound blackness of the abyss was now broken by a minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm. and almost immediately the limb of a huge heavenly body of blazing green rose over the basaltic undulations of the distant hills, and the monstrous hill-masses about him came out gaunt and desolate, in green light and deep, ruddy black shadows. he became aware of a vast number of ball-shaped objects drifting as thistledown drifts over the high ground. there were none of these nearer to him than the opposite side of the gorge. the bell below twanged quicker and quicker, with something like impatient insistence, and several lights moved hither and thither. the boys at work at their desks were now almost imperceptibly faint. this extinction of our world, when the green sun of this other universe rose, is a curious point upon which plattner insists. during the other-world night it is difficult to move about, on account of the vividness with which the things of this world are visible. it becomes a riddle to explain why, if this is the case, we in this world catch no glimpse of the other-world. it is due, perhaps, to the comparatively vivid illumination of this world of ours. plattner describes the midday of the other-world, at its brightest, as not being nearly so bright as this world at full moon, while its night is profoundly black. consequently, the amount of light, even in an ordinary dark room, is sufficient to render the things of the other-world invisible, on the same principle that faint phosphorescence is only visible in the profoundest darkness. i have tried, since he told me his story, to see something of the other-world by sitting for a long space in a photographer's dark room at night. i have certainly seen indistinctly the form of greenish slopes and rocks, but only, i must admit, very indistinctly indeed. the reader may possibly be more successful. plattner tells me that since his return he has dreamt and seen and recognised places in the other-world, but this is probably due to his memory of these scenes. it seems quite possible that people with unusually keen eyesight may occasionally catch a glimpse of this strange other-world about us. however, this is a digression. as the green sun rose, a long street of black buildings became perceptible, though only darkly and indistinctly, in the gorge, and after some hesitation, plattner began to clamber down the precipitous descent towards them. the descent was long and exceedingly tedious, being so not only by the extraordinary steepness, but also by reason of the looseness of the boulders with which the whole face of the hill was strewn. the noise of his descent--now and then his heels struck fire from the rocks--seemed now the only sound in the universe, for the beating of the bell had ceased. as he drew nearer, he perceived that the various edifices had a singular resemblance to tombs and mausoleums and monuments, saving only that they were all uniformly black instead of being white, as most sepulchres are. and then he saw, crowding out of the largest building, very much as people disperse from church, a number of pallid, rounded, pale-green figures. these dispersed in several directions about the broad street of the place, some going through side alleys and reappearing upon the steepness of the hill, others entering some of the small black buildings which lined the way. at the sight of these things drifting up towards him, plattner stopped, staring. they were not walking, they were indeed limbless, and they had the appearance of human heads, beneath which a tadpole-like body swung. he was too astonished at their strangeness, too full, indeed, of strangeness, to be seriously alarmed by them. they drove towards him, in front of the chill wind that was blowing uphill, much as soap-bubbles drive before a draught. and as he looked at the nearest of those approaching, he saw it was indeed a human head, albeit with singularly large eyes, and wearing such an expression of distress and anguish as he had never seen before upon mortal countenance. he was surprised to find that it did not turn to regard him, but seemed to be watching and following some unseen moving thing. for a moment he was puzzled, and then it occurred to him that this creature was watching with its enormous eyes something that was happening in the world he had just left. nearer it came, and nearer, and he was too astonished to cry out. it made a very faint fretting sound as it came close to him. then it struck his face with a gentle pat--its touch was very cold--and drove past him, and upward towards the crest of the hill. an extraordinary conviction flashed across plattner's mind that this head had a strong likeness to lidgett. then he turned his attention to the other heads that were now swarming thickly up the hill-side. none made the slightest sign of recognition. one or two, indeed, came close to his head and almost followed the example of the first, but he dodged convulsively out of the way. upon most of them he saw the same expression of unavailing regret he had seen upon the first, and heard the same faint sounds of wretchedness from them. one or two wept, and one rolling swiftly uphill wore an expression of diabolical rage. but others were cold, and several had a look of gratified interest in their eyes. one, at least, was almost in an ecstasy of happiness. plattner does not remember that he recognised any more likenesses in those he saw at this time. for several hours, perhaps, plattner watched these strange things dispersing themselves over the hills, and not till long after they had ceased to issue from the clustering black buildings in the gorge, did he resume his downward climb. the darkness about him increased so much that he had a difficulty in stepping true. overhead the sky was now a bright, pale green. he felt neither hunger nor thirst. later, when he did, he found a chilly stream running down the centre of the gorge, and the rare moss upon the boulders, when he tried it at last in desperation, was good to eat. he groped about among the tombs that ran down the gorge, seeking vaguely for some clue to these inexplicable things. after a long time he came to the entrance of the big mausoleum-like building from which the heads had issued. in this he found a group of green lights burning upon a kind of basaltic altar, and a bell-rope from a belfry overhead hanging down into the centre of the place. round the wall ran a lettering of fire in a character unknown to him. while he was still wondering at the purport of these things, he heard the receding tramp of heavy feet echoing far down the street. he ran out into the darkness again, but he could see nothing. he had a mind to pull the bell-rope, and finally decided to follow the footsteps. but, although he ran far, he never overtook them; and his shouting was of no avail. the gorge seemed to extend an interminable distance. it was as dark as earthly starlight throughout its length, while the ghastly green day lay along the upper edge of its precipices. there were none of the heads, now, below. they were all, it seemed, busily occupied along the upper slopes. looking up, he saw them drifting hither and thither, some hovering stationary, some flying swiftly through the air. it reminded him, he said, of "big snowflakes"; only these were black and pale green. in pursuing the firm, undeviating footsteps that he never overtook, in groping into new regions of this endless devil's dyke, in clambering up and down the pitiless heights, in wandering about the summits, and in watching the drifting faces, plattner states that he spent the better part of seven or eight days. he did not keep count, he says. though once or twice he found eyes watching him, he had word with no living soul. he slept among the rocks on the hillside. in the gorge things earthly were invisible, because, from the earthly standpoint, it was far underground. on the altitudes, so soon as the earthly day began, the world became visible to him. he found himself sometimes stumbling over the dark green rocks, or arresting himself on a precipitous brink, while all about him the green branches of the sussexville lanes were swaying; or, again, he seemed to be walking through the sussexville streets, or watching unseen the private business of some household. and then it was he discovered, that to almost every human being in our world there pertained some of these drifting heads; that everyone in the world is watched intermittently by these helpless disembodiments. what are they--these watchers of the living? plattner never learned. but two, that presently found and followed him, were like his childhood's memory of his father and mother. now and then other faces turned their eyes upon him: eyes like those of dead people who had swayed him, or injured him, or helped him in his youth and manhood. whenever they looked at him, plattner was overcome with a strange sense of responsibility. to his mother he ventured to speak; but she made no answer. she looked sadly, steadfastly, and tenderly--a little reproachfully, too, it seemed--into his eyes. he simply tells this story: he does not endeavour to explain. we are left to surmise who these watchers of the living may be, or, if they are indeed the dead, why they should so closely and passionately watch a world they have left for ever. it may be--indeed to my mind it seems just--that, when our life has closed, when evil or good is no longer a choice for us, we may still have to witness the working out of the train of consequences we have laid. if human souls continue after death, then surely human interests continue after death. but that is merely my own guess at the meaning of the things seen. plattner offers no interpretation, for none was given him. it is well the reader should understand this clearly. day after day, with his head reeling, he wandered about this strange lit world outside the world, weary and, towards the end, weak and hungry. by day--by our earthly day, that is--the ghostly vision of the old familiar scenery of sussexville, all about him, irked and worried him. he could not see where to put his feet, and ever and again with a chilly touch one of these watching souls would come against his face. and after dark the multitude of these watchers about him, and their intent distress, confused his mind beyond describing. a great longing to return to the earthly life that was so near and yet so remote consumed him. the unearthliness of things about him produced a positively painful mental distress. he was worried beyond describing by his own particular followers. he would shout at them to desist from staring at him, scold at them, hurry away from them. they were always mute and intent. run as he might over the uneven ground, they followed his destinies. on the ninth day, towards evening, plattner heard the invisible footsteps approaching, far away down the gorge. he was then wandering over the broad crest of the same hill upon which he had fallen in his entry into this strange other-world of his. he turned to hurry down into the gorge, feeling his way hastily, and was arrested by the sight of the thing that was happening in a room in a back street near the school. both of the people in the room he knew by sight. the windows were open, the blinds up, and the setting sun shone clearly into it, so that it came out quite brightly at first, a vivid oblong of room, lying like a magic-lantern picture upon the black landscape and the livid green dawn. in addition to the sunlight, a candle had just been lit in the room. on the bed lay a lank man, his ghastly white face terrible upon the tumbled pillow. his clenched hands were raised above his head. a little table beside the bed carried a few medicine bottles, some toast and water, and an empty glass. every now and then the lank man's lips fell apart, to indicate a word he could not articulate. but the woman did not notice that he wanted anything, because she was busy turning out papers from an old-fashioned bureau in the opposite corner of the room. at first the picture was very vivid indeed, but as the green dawn behind it grew brighter and brighter, so it became fainter and more and more transparent. as the echoing footsteps paced nearer and nearer, those footsteps that sound so loud in that other-world and come so silently in this, plattner perceived about him a great multitude of dim faces gathering together out of the darkness and watching the two people in the room. never before had he seen so many of the watchers of the living. a multitude had eyes only for the sufferer in the room, another multitude, in infinite anguish, watched the woman as she hunted with greedy eyes for something she could not find. they crowded about plattner, they came across his sight and buffeted his face, the noise of their unavailing regrets was all about him. he saw clearly only now and then. at other times the picture quivered dimly, through the veil of green reflections upon their movements. in the room it must have been very still, and plattner says the candle flame streamed up into a perfectly vertical line of smoke, but in his ears each footfall and its echoes beat like a clap of thunder. and the faces! two, more particularly near the woman's: one a woman's also, white and clear-featured, a face which might have once been cold and hard, but which was now softened by the touch of a wisdom strange to earth. the other might have been the woman's father. both were evidently absorbed in the contemplation of some act of hateful meanness, so it seemed, which they could no longer guard against and prevent. behind were others, teachers, it may be, who had taught ill, friends whose influence had failed. and over the man, too--a multitude, but none that seemed to be parents or teachers! faces that might once have been coarse, now purged to strength by sorrow! and in the forefront one face, a girlish one, neither angry nor remorseful, but merely patient and weary, and, as it seemed to plattner, waiting for relief. his powers of description fail him at the memory of this multitude of ghastly countenances. they gathered on the stroke of the bell. he saw them all in the space of a second. it would seem that he was so worked on by his excitement that, quite involuntarily, his restless fingers took the bottle of green powder out of his pocket and held it before him. but he does not remember that. abruptly the footsteps ceased. he waited for the next, and there was silence, and then suddenly, cutting through the unexpected stillness like a keen, thin blade, came the first stroke of the bell. at that the multitudinous faces swayed to and fro, and a louder crying began all about him. the woman did not hear; she was burning something now in the candle flame. at the second stroke everything grew dim, and a breath of wind, icy cold, blew through the host of watchers. they swirled about him like an eddy of dead leaves in the spring, and at the third stroke something was extended through them to the bed. you have heard of a beam of light. this was like a beam of darkness, and looking again at it, plattner saw that it was a shadowy arm and hand. the green sun was now topping the black desolations of the horizon, and the vision of the room was very faint. plattner could see that the white of the bed struggled, and was convulsed; and that the woman looked round over her shoulder at it, startled. the cloud of watchers lifted high like a puff of green dust before the wind, and swept swiftly downward towards the temple in the gorge. then suddenly plattner understood the meaning of the shadowy black arm that stretched across his shoulder and clutched its prey. he did not dare turn his head to see the shadow behind the arm. with a violent effort, and covering his eyes, he set himself to run, made, perhaps, twenty strides, then slipped on a boulder, and fell. he fell forward on his hands; and the bottle smashed and exploded as he touched the ground. in another moment he found himself, stunned and bleeding, sitting face to face with lidgett in the old walled garden behind the school. * * * * * there the story of plattner's experiences ends. i have resisted, i believe successfully, the natural disposition of a writer of fiction to dress up incidents of this sort. i have told the thing as far as possible in the order in which plattner told it to me. i have carefully avoided any attempt at style, effect, or construction. it would have been easy, for instance, to have worked the scene of the death-bed into a kind of plot in which plattner might have been involved. but, quite apart from the objectionableness of falsifying a most extraordinary true story, any such trite devices would spoil, to my mind, the peculiar effect of this dark world, with its livid green illumination and its drifting watchers of the living, which, unseen and unapproachable to us, is yet lying all about us. it remains to add that a death did actually occur in vincent terrace, just beyond the school garden, and, so far as can be proved, at the moment of plattner's return. deceased was a rate-collector and insurance agent. his widow, who was much younger than himself, married last month a mr. whymper, a veterinary surgeon of allbeeding. as the portion of this story given here has in various forms circulated orally in sussexville, she has consented to my use of her name, on condition that i make it distinctly known that she emphatically contradicts every detail of plattner's account of her husband's last moments. she burnt no will, she says, although plattner never accused her of doing so; her husband made but one will, and that just after their marriage. certainly, from a man who had never seen it, plattner's account of the furniture of the room was curiously accurate. one other thing, even at the risk of an irksome repetition, i must insist upon, lest i seem to favour the credulous, superstitious view. plattner's absence from the world for nine days is, i think, proved. but that does not prove his story. it is quite conceivable that even outside space hallucinations may be possible. that, at least, the reader must bear distinctly in mind. xvi. the red room. "i can assure you," said i, "that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me." and i stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand. "it is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance. "eight-and-twenty years," said i, "i have lived, and never a ghost have i seen as yet." the old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open. "ay," she broke in; "and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, i reckon. there's a many things to see, when one's still but eight-and-twenty." she swayed her head slowly from side to side. "a many things to see and sorrow for." i half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. i put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer old mirror at the end of the room. "well," i said, "if i see anything to-night, i shall be so much the wiser. for i come to the business with an open mind." "it's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once more. i heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside, and the door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. he supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. he made straight for an arm-chair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. the man with the withered arm gave this new-comer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire. "i said--it's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, when the coughing had ceased for a while. "it's my own choosing," i answered. the man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment and sideways, to see me. i caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. then he began to cough and splutter again. "why don't you drink?" said the man with the withered arm, pushing the beer towards him. the man with the shade poured out a glassful with a shaky hand that splashed half as much again on the deal table. a monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his action as he poured and drank. i must confess i had scarce expected these grotesque custodians. there is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. the three of them made me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another. "if," said i, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, i will make myself comfortable there." the old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from under the shade; but no one answered me. i waited a minute, glancing from one to the other. "if," i said a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted room of yours, i will relieve you from the task of entertaining me." "there's a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with the withered arm, looking at my feet as he addressed me. "but if you go to the red room to-night----" ("this night of all nights!" said the old woman.) "you go alone." "very well," i answered. "and which way do i go?" "you go along the passage for a bit," said he, "until you come to a door, and through that is a spiral staircase, and half-way up that is a landing and another door covered with baize. go through that and down the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the steps." "have i got that right?" i said, and repeated his directions. he corrected me in one particular. "and are you really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at me again for the third time, with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face. ("this night of all nights!" said the old woman.) "it is what i came for," i said, and moved towards the door. as i did so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. at the door i turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces. "good-night," i said, setting the door open. "it's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm. i left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then i shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage. i must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned, old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room in which they foregathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a matter-of-fact phase. they seemed to belong to another age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were different from this of ours, less certain; an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. their very existence was spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains. the ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly--the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of to-day. but with an effort i sent such thoughts to the right-about. the long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. the echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead. i came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that i fancied i heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, i pushed open the baize-covered door and stood in the corridor. the effect was scarcely what i expected, for the moonlight, coming in by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination. everything was in its place: the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of eighteen months ago. there were candles in the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in the moonlight. i was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. a bronze group stood upon the landing, hidden from me by the corner of the wall, but its shadow fell with marvellous distinctness upon the white panelling, and gave me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me. i stood rigid for half a minute perhaps. then, with my hand in the pocket that held my revolver, i advanced, only to discover a ganymede and eagle glistening in the moonlight. that incident for a time restored my nerve, and a porcelain chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as i passed him, scarcely startled me. the door to the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy corner. i moved my candle from side to side, in order to see clearly the nature of the recess in which i stood before opening the door. here it was, thought i, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. i glanced over my shoulder at the ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid silence of the landing. i entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key i found in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the scene of my vigil, the great red room of lorraine castle, in which the young duke had died. or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps i had just ascended. that had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, i thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. and there were other and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-credible beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband's jest of frightening her. and looking around that large sombre room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness. my candle was a little tongue of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light. i resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and dispel the fanciful suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a hold upon me. after satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, i began to walk about the room, peering round each article of furniture, tucking up the valances of the bed, and opening its curtains wide. i pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows before closing the shutters, leant forward and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling for any secret opening. there were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles in china candlesticks. all these i lit one after the other. the fire was laid, an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper,--and i lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well, i stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. i had pulled up a chintz-covered arm-chair and a table, to form a kind of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand. my precise examination had done me good, but i still found the remoter darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for the imagination. the echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. the shadow in the alcove at the end in particular, had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude. at last, to reassure myself, i walked with a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. i stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove, and left it in that position. by this time i was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition. my mind, however, was perfectly clear. i postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time i began to string some rhymes together, ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend of the place. a few i spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant. for the same reason i also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. my mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and i tried to keep it upon that topic. the sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled, me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim. the one in the alcove flared in a draught, and the fire-flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring. casting about for a remedy, i recalled the candles i had seen in the passage, and, with a slight effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, and presently returned with as many as ten. these i put in various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. it occurred to me that when the ghost came, i could warn him not to trip over them. the room was now quite brightly illuminated. there was something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and afforded a helpful sense of the passage of time. even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me. it was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there. i did not see the candle go out; i simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. "by jove!" said i aloud; "that draught's a strong one!" and, taking the matches from the table, i walked across the room in a leisurely manner, to relight the corner again. my first match would not strike, and as i succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. i turned my head involuntarily, and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. i rose at once to my feet. "odd!" i said. "did i do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?" i walked back, relit one, and as i did so, i saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it. there was no mistake about it. the flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and a thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. while i stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me. "this won't do!" said i, and first one and then another candle on the mantelshelf followed. "what's up?" i cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. at that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one i had relit in the alcove followed. "steady on!" i said. "these candles are wanted," speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while for the mantel candlesticks. my hands trembled so much that twice i missed the rough paper of the matchbox. as the mantel emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window were eclipsed. but with the same match i also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment i seemed to gain on the extinctions. but then in a volley there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and i struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither to take it. as i stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. with a cry of terror, i dashed at the alcove, then into the corner, and then into the window, relighting three, as two more vanished by the fireplace; then, perceiving a better way, i dropped the matches on the iron-bound deed-box in the corner, and caught up the bedroom candlestick. with this i avoided the delay of striking matches; but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the shadows i feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me and then on that. it was like a ragged storm-cloud sweeping out the stars. now and then one returned for a minute, and was lost again. i was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. i leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle, in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance. i bruised myself on the thigh against the table, i sent a chair headlong, i stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. my candle rolled away from me, and i snatched another as i rose. abruptly this was blown out, as i swung it off the table by the wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. but there was light still in the room, a red light that staved off the shadows from me. the fire! of course i could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it! i turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals, and splashing red reflections upon the furniture, made two steps towards the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished, the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and vanished, and as i thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain. the candle fell from my hand. i flung out my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and, lifting up my voice, screamed with all my might--once, twice, thrice. then i think i must have staggered to my feet. i know i thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and, with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a run for the door. but i had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. i staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furniture. i have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the darkness, of a cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as i darted to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing, and then i remember no more. i opened my eyes in daylight. my head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered arm was watching my face. i looked about me, trying to remember what had happened, and for a space i could not recollect. i rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. "where am i?" i asked; "i seem to remember you, and yet i cannot remember who you are." they told me then, and i heard of the haunted red room as one who hears a tale. "we found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your forehead and lips." it was very slowly i recovered my memory of my experience. "you believe now," said the old man, "that the room is haunted?" he spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken friend. "yes," said i; "the room is haunted." "and you have seen it. and we, who have lived here all our lives, have never set eyes upon it. because we have never dared... tell us, is it truly the old earl who----" "no," said i; "it is not." "i told you so," said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. "it is his poor young countess who was frightened----" "it is not," i said. "there is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far worse----" "well?" they said. "the worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man," said i; "and that is, in all its nakedness--fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. it followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room----" i stopped abruptly. there was an interval of silence. my hand went up to my bandages. then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. "that is it," said he. "i knew that was it. a power of darkness. to put such a curse upon a woman! it lurks there always. you can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer's day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. in the dusk it creeps along the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. there is fear in that room of hers--black fear, and there will be--so long as this house of sin endures." xvii. the purple pileus mr. coombes was sick of life. he walked away from his unhappy home, and, sick not only of his own existence but of everybody else's, turned aside down gaswork lane to avoid the town, and, crossing the wooden bridge that goes over the canal to starling's cottages, was presently alone in the damp pine woods and out of sight and sound of human habitation. he would stand it no longer. he repeated aloud with blasphemies unusual to him that he would stand it no longer. he was a pale-faced little man, with dark eyes and a fine and very black moustache. he had a very stiff, upright collar slightly frayed, that gave him an illusory double chin, and his overcoat (albeit shabby) was trimmed with astrachan. his gloves were a bright brown with black stripes over the knuckles, and split at the finger ends. his appearance, his wife had said once in the dear, dead days beyond recall--before he married her, that is--was military. but now she called him--it seems a dreadful thing to tell of between husband and wife, but she called him "a little grub." it wasn't the only thing she had called him, either. the row had arisen about that beastly jennie again. jennie was his wife's friend, and, by no invitation of mr. coombes, she came in every blessed sunday to dinner, and made a shindy all the afternoon. she was a big, noisy girl, with a taste for loud colours and a strident laugh; and this sunday she had outdone all her previous intrusions by bringing in a fellow with her, a chap as showy as herself. and mr. coombes, in a starchy, clean collar and his sunday frock-coat, had sat dumb and wrathful at his own table, while his wife and her guests talked foolishly and undesirably, and laughed aloud. well, he stood that, and after dinner (which, "as usual," was late), what must miss jennie do but go to the piano and play banjo tunes, for all the world as if it were a week-day! flesh and blood could not endure such goings on. they would hear next door, they would hear in the road, it was a public announcement of their disrepute. he had to speak. he had felt himself go pale, and a kind of rigour had affected his respiration as he delivered himself. he had been sitting on one of the chairs by the window--the new guest had taken possession of the arm-chair. he turned his head. "sun day!" he said over the collar, in the voice of one who warns. "sun day!" what people call a "nasty" tone, it was. jennie had kept on playing, but his wife, who was looking through some music that was piled on the top of the piano, had stared at him. "what's wrong now?" she said; "can't people enjoy themselves?" "i don't mind rational 'njoyment, at all," said little coombes, "but i ain't a-going to have week-day tunes playing on a sunday in this house." "what's wrong with my playing now?" said jennie, stopping and twirling round on the music-stool with a monstrous rustle of flounces. coombes saw it was going to be a row, and opened too vigorously, as is common with your timid, nervous men all the world over. "steady on with that music-stool!" said he; "it ain't made for 'eavy-weights." "never you mind about weights," said jennie, incensed. "what was you saying behind my back about my playing?" "surely you don't 'old with not having a bit of music on a sunday, mr. coombes?" said the new guest, leaning back in the arm-chair, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke and smiling in a kind of pitying way. and simultaneously his wife said something to jennie about "never mind 'im. you go on, jinny." "i do," said mr. coombes, addressing the new guest. "may i arst why?" said the new guest, evidently enjoying both his cigarette and the prospect of an argument. he was, by-the-by, a lank young man, very stylishly dressed in bright drab, with a white cravat and a pearl and silver pin. it had been better taste to come in a black coat, mr. coombes thought. "because," began mr. coombes, "it don't suit me. i'm a business man. i 'ave to study my connection. rational 'njoyment--" "his connection!" said mrs. coombes scornfully. "that's what he's always a-saying. we got to do this, and we got to do that--" "if you don't mean to study my connection," said mr. coombes, "what did you marry me for?" "i wonder," said jennie, and turned back to the piano. "i never saw such a man as you," said mrs. coombes. "you've altered all round since we were married. before--" then jennie began at the turn, turn, turn again. "look here!" said mr. coombes, driven at last to revolt, standing up and raising his voice. "i tell you i won't have that." the frock-coat heaved with his indignation. "no vi'lence, now," said the long young man in drab, sitting up. "who the juice are you?" said mr. coombes fiercely. whereupon they all began talking at once. the new guest said he was jennie's "intended," and meant to protect her, and mr. coombes said he was welcome to do so anywhere but in his (mr. coombes') house; and mrs. coombes said he ought to be ashamed of insulting his guests, and (as i have already mentioned) that he was getting a regular little grub; and the end was, that mr. coombes ordered his visitors out of the house, and they wouldn't go, and so he said he would go himself. with his face burning and tears of excitement in his eyes, he went into the passage, and as he struggled with his overcoat--his frock-coat sleeves got concertinaed up his arm--and gave a brush at his silk hat, jennie began again at the piano, and strummed him insultingly out of the house. turn, turn, turn. he slammed the shop door so that the house quivered. that, briefly, was the immediate making of his mood. you will perhaps begin to understand his disgust with existence. as he walked along the muddy path under the firs,--it was late october, and the ditches and heaps of fir needles were gorgeous with clumps of fungi,--he recapitulated the melancholy history of his marriage. it was brief and commonplace enough. he now perceived with sufficient clearness that his wife had married him out of a natural curiosity and in order to escape from her worrying, laborious, and uncertain life in the workroom; and, like the majority of her class, she was far too stupid to realise that it was her duty to co-operate with him in his business. she was greedy of enjoyment, loquacious, and socially-minded, and evidently disappointed to find the restraints of poverty still hanging about her. his worries exasperated her, and the slightest attempt to control her proceedings resulted in a charge of "grumbling." why couldn't he be nice-as he used to be? and coombes was such a harmless little man, too, nourished mentally on _self-help_, and with a meagre ambition of self-denial and competition, that was to end in a "sufficiency." then jennie came in as a female mephistopheles, a gabbling chronicle of "fellers," and was always wanting his wife to go to theatres, and "all that." and in addition were aunts of his wife, and cousins (male and female) to eat up capital, insult him personally, upset business arrangements, annoy good customers, and generally blight his life. it was not the first occasion by many that mr. coombes had fled his home in wrath and indignation, and something like fear, vowing furiously and even aloud that he wouldn't stand it, and so frothing away his energy along the line of least resistance. but never before had he been quite so sick of life as on this particular sunday afternoon. the sunday dinner may have had its share in his despair--and the greyness of the sky. perhaps, too, he was beginning to realise his unendurable frustration as a business man as the consequence of his marriage. presently bankruptcy, and after that---perhaps she might have reason to repent when it was too late. and destiny, as i have already intimated, had planted the path through the wood with evil-smelling fungi, thickly and variously planted it, not only on the right side, but on the left. a small shopman is in such a melancholy position, if his wife turns out a disloyal partner. his capital is all tied up in his business, and to leave her means to join the unemployed in some strange part of the earth. the luxuries of divorce are beyond him altogether. so that the good old tradition of marriage for better or worse holds inexorably for him, and things work up to tragic culminations. bricklayers kick their wives to death, and dukes betray theirs; but it is among the small clerks and shopkeepers nowadays that it comes most often to a cutting of throats. under the circumstances it is not so very remarkable--and you must take it as charitably as you can--that the mind of mr. coombes ran for a while on some such glorious close to his disappointed hopes, and that he thought of razors, pistols, bread-knives, and touching letters to the coroner denouncing his enemies by name, and praying piously for forgiveness. after a time his fierceness gave way to melancholia. he had been married in this very overcoat, in his first and only frock-coat that was buttoned up beneath it. he began to recall their courting along this very walk, his years of penurious saving to get capital, and the bright hopefulness of his marrying days. for it all to work out like this! was there no sympathetic ruler anywhere in the world? he reverted to death as a topic. he thought of the canal he had just crossed, and doubted whether he shouldn't stand with his head out, even in the middle, and it was while drowning was in his mind that the purple pileus caught his eye. he looked at it mechanically for a moment, and stopped and stooped towards it to pick it up, under the impression that it was some such small leather object as a purse. then he saw that it was the purple top of a fungus, a peculiarly poisonous-looking purple: slimy, shiny, and emitting a sour odour. he hesitated with his hand an inch or so from it, and the thought of poison crossed his mind. with that he picked the thing, and stood up again with it in his hand. the odour was certainly strong--acrid, but by no means disgusting. he broke off a piece, and the fresh surface was a creamy white, that changed like magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish-green colour. it was even an inviting-looking change. he broke off two other pieces to see it repeated. they were wonderful things these fungi, thought mr. coombes, and all of them the deadliest poisons, as his father had often told him. deadly poisons! there is no time like the present for a rash resolve. why not here and now? thought mr. coombes. he tasted a little piece, a very little piece indeed--a mere crumb. it was so pungent that he almost spat it out again, then merely hot and full-flavoured: a kind of german mustard with a touch of horse-radish and--well, mushroom. he swallowed it in the excitement of the moment. did he like it or did he not? his mind was curiously careless. he would try another bit. it really wasn't bad--it was good. he forgot his troubles in the interest of the immediate moment. playing with death it was. he took another bite, and then deliberately finished a mouthful. a curious, tingling sensation began in his finger-tips and toes. his pulse began to move faster. the blood in his ears sounded like a mill-race. "try bi' more," said mr. coombes. he turned and looked about him, and found his feet unsteady. he saw, and struggled towards, a little patch of purple a dozen yards away. "jol' goo' stuff," said mr. coombes. "e--lomore ye'." he pitched forward and fell on his face, his hands outstretched towards the cluster of pilei. but he did not eat any more of them. he forgot forthwith. he rolled over and sat up with a look of astonishment on his face. his carefully brushed silk hat had rolled away towards the ditch. he pressed his hand to his brow. something had happened, but he could not rightly determine what it was. anyhow, he was no longer dull--he felt bright, cheerful. and his throat was afire. he laughed in the sudden gaiety of his heart. had he been dull? he did not know; but at any rate he would be dull no longer. he got up and stood unsteadily, regarding the universe with an agreeable smile. he began to remember. he could not remember very well, because of a steam roundabout that was beginning in his head. and he knew he had been disagreeable at home, just because they wanted to be happy. they were quite right; life should be as gay as possible. he would go home and make it up, and reassure them. and why not take some of this delightful toadstool with him, for them to eat? a hatful, no less. some of those red ones with white spots as well, and a few yellow. he had been a dull dog, an enemy to merriment; he would make up for it. it would be gay to turn his coat-sleeves inside out, and stick some yellow gorse into his waistcoat pockets. then home--singing---for a jolly evening. after the departure of mr. coombes, jennie discontinued playing, and turned round on the music-stool again. "what a fuss about nothing!" said jennie. "you see, mr. clarence, what i've got to put up with," said mrs. coombes. "he is a bit hasty," said mr. clarence judicially. "he ain't got the slightest sense of our position," said mrs. coombes; "that's what i complain of. he cares for nothing but his old shop; and if i have a bit of company, or buy anything to keep myself decent, or get any little thing i want out of the housekeeping money, there's disagreeables. 'economy' he says; 'struggle for life,' and all that. he lies awake of nights about it, worrying how he can screw me out of a shilling. he wanted us to eat dorset butter once. if once i was to give in to him--there!" "of course," said jennie. "if a man values a woman," said mr. clarence, lounging back in the arm-chair, "he must be prepared to make sacrifices for her. for my own part," said mr. clarence, with his eye on jennie, "i shouldn't think of marrying till i was in a position to do the thing in style. it's downright selfishness. a man ought to go through the rough-and-tumble by himself, and not drag her--" "i don't agree altogether with that," said jennie. "i don't see why a man shouldn't have a woman's help, provided he doesn't treat her meanly, you know. it's meanness--" "you wouldn't believe," said mrs. coombes. "but i was a fool to 'ave 'im. i might 'ave known. if it 'adn't been for my father, we shouldn't 'ave 'ad not a carriage to our wedding." "lord! he didn't stick out at that?" said mr. clarence, quite shocked. "said he wanted the money for his stock, or some such rubbish. why, he wouldn't have a woman in to help me once a week if it wasn't for my standing out plucky. and the fusses he makes about money--comes to me, well, pretty near crying, with sheets of paper and figgers. 'if only we can tide over this year,' he says, 'the business is bound to go.' 'if only we can tide over this year,' i says; 'then it'll be, if only we can tide over next year. i know you,' i says. 'and you don't catch me screwing myself lean and ugly. why didn't you marry a slavey?' i says, 'if you wanted one--instead of a respectable girl,' i says." so mrs. coombes. but we will not follow this unedifying conversation further. suffice it that mr. coombes was very satisfactorily disposed of, and they had a snug little time round the fire. then mrs. coombes went to get the tea, and jennie sat coquettishly on the arm of mr. clarence's chair until the tea-things clattered outside. "what was that i heard?" asked mrs. coombes playfully, as she entered, and there was badinage about kissing. they were just sitting down to the little circular table when the first intimation of mr. coombes' return was heard. this was a fumbling at the latch of the front door. "'ere's my lord," said mrs. coombes. "went out like a lion and comes back like a lamb, i'll lay." something fell over in the shop: a chair, it sounded like. then there was a sound as of some complicated step exercise in the passage. then the door opened and coombes appeared. but it was coombes transfigured. the immaculate collar had been torn carelessly from his throat. his carefully-brushed silk hat, half-full of a crush of fungi, was under one arm; his coat was inside out, and his waistcoat adorned with bunches of yellow-blossomed furze. these little eccentricities of sunday costume, however, were quite overshadowed by the change in his face; it was livid white, his eyes were unnaturally large and bright, and his pale blue lips were drawn back in a cheerless grin. "merry!" he said. he had stopped dancing to open the door. "rational 'njoyment. dance." he made three fantastic steps into the room, and stood bowing. "jim!" shrieked mrs. coombes, and mr. clarence sat petrified, with a dropping lower jaw. "tea," said mr. coombes. "jol' thing, tea. tose-stools, too. brosher." "he's drunk," said jennie in a weak voice. never before had she seen this intense pallor in a drunken man, or such shining, dilated eyes. mr. coombes held out a handful of scarlet agaric to mr. clarence. "jo' stuff," said he; "ta' some." at that moment he was genial. then at the sight of their startled faces he changed, with the swift transition of insanity, into overbearing fury. and it seemed as if he had suddenly recalled the quarrel of his departure. in such a huge voice as mrs. coombes had never heard before, he shouted, "my house. i'm master 'ere. eat what i give yer!" he bawled this, as it seemed, without an effort, without a violent gesture, standing there as motionless as one who whispers, holding out a handful of fungus. clarence approved himself a coward. he could not meet the mad fury in coombes' eyes; he rose to his feet, pushing back his chair, and turned, stooping. at that coombes rushed at him. jennie saw her opportunity, and, with the ghost of a shriek, made for the door. mrs. coombes followed her. clarence tried to dodge. over went the tea-table with a smash as coombes clutched him by the collar and tried to thrust the fungus into his mouth. clarence was content to leave his collar behind him, and shot out into the passage with red patches of fly agaric still adherent to his face. "shut 'im in!" cried mrs. coombes, and would have closed the door, but her supports deserted her; jennie saw the shop door open, and vanished thereby, locking it behind her, while clarence went on hastily into the kitchen. mr. coombes came heavily against the door, and mrs. coombes, finding the key was inside, fled upstairs and locked herself in the spare bedroom. so the new convert to _joie de vivre_ emerged upon the passage, his decorations a little scattered, but that respectable hatful of fungi still under his arm. he hesitated at the three ways, and decided on the kitchen. whereupon clarence, who was fumbling with the key, gave up the attempt to imprison his host, and fled into the scullery, only to be captured before he could open the door into the yard. mr. clarence is singularly reticent of the details of what occurred. it seems that mr. coombes' transitory irritation had vanished again, and he was once more a genial playfellow. and as there were knives and meat choppers about, clarence very generously resolved to humour him and so avoid anything tragic. it is beyond dispute that mr. coombes played with mr. clarence to his heart's content; they could not have been more playful and familiar if they had known each other for years. he insisted gaily on clarence trying the fungi, and, after a friendly tussle, was smitten with remorse at the mess he was making of his guest's face. it also appears that clarence was dragged under the sink and his face scrubbed with the blacking brush--he being still resolved to humour the lunatic at any cost--and that finally, in a somewhat dishevelled, chipped, and discoloured condition, he was assisted to his coat and shown out by the back door, the shopway being barred by jennie. mr. coombes' wandering thoughts then turned to jennie. jennie had been unable to unfasten the shop door, but she shot the bolts against mr. coombes' latch-key, and remained in possession of the shop for the rest of the evening. it would appear that mr. coombes then returned to the kitchen, still in pursuit of gaiety, and, albeit a strict good templar, drank (or spilt down the front of the first and only frock-coat) no less than five bottles of the stout mrs. coombes insisted upon having for her health's sake. he made cheerful noises by breaking off the necks of the bottles with several of his wife's wedding-present dinner-plates, and during the earlier part of this great drunk he sang divers merry ballads. he cut his finger rather badly with one of the bottles--the only bloodshed in this story--and what with that, and the systematic convulsion of his inexperienced physiology by the liquorish brand of mrs. coombes' stout, it may be the evil of the fungus poison was somehow allayed. but we prefer to draw a veil over the concluding incidents of this sunday afternoon. they ended in the coal cellar, in a deep and healing sleep. an interval of five years elapsed. again it was a sunday afternoon in october, and again mr. coombes walked through the pine wood beyond the canal. he was still the same dark-eyed, black-moustached little man that he was at the outset of the story, but his double chin was now scarcely so illusory as it had been. his overcoat was new, with a velvet lapel, and a stylish collar with turn-down corners, free of any coarse starchiness, had replaced the original all-round article. his hat was glossy, his gloves newish--though one finger had split and been carefully mended. and a casual observer would have noticed about him a certain rectitude of bearing, a certain erectness of head that marks the man who thinks well of himself. he was a master now, with three assistants. beside him walked a larger sunburnt parody of himself, his brother tom, just back from australia. they were recapitulating their early struggles, and mr. coombes had just been making a financial statement. "it's a very nice little business, jim," said brother tom. "in these days of competition you're jolly lucky to have worked it up so. and you're jolly lucky, too, to have a wife who's willing to help like yours does." "between ourselves," said mr. coombes, "it wasn't always so. it wasn't always like this. to begin with, the missus was a bit giddy. girls are funny creatures." "dear me!" "yes. you'd hardly think it, but she was downright extravagant, and always having slaps at me. i was a bit too easy and loving, and all that, and she thought the whole blessed show was run for her. turned the 'ouse into a regular caravansery, always having her relations and girls from business in, and their chaps. comic songs a' sunday, it was getting to, and driving trade away. and she was making eyes at the chaps, too! i tell you, tom, the place wasn't my own." "shouldn't 'a' thought it." "it was so. well--i reasoned with her. i said, 'i ain't a duke, to keep a wife like a pet animal. i married you for 'elp and company.' i said, 'you got to 'elp and pull the business through.' she wouldn't 'ear of it. 'very well,' i says?? 'i'm a mild man till i'm roused,' i says, 'and it's getting to that.' but she wouldn't 'ear of no warnings." "well?" "it's the way with women. she didn't think i 'ad it in me to be roused. women of her sort (between ourselves, tom) don't respect a man until they're a bit afraid of him. so i just broke out to show her. in comes a girl named jennie, that used to work with her, and her chap. we 'ad a bit of a row, and i came out 'ere--it was just such another day as this--and i thought it all out. then i went back and pitched into them." "you did?" "i did. i was mad, i can tell you. i wasn't going to 'it 'er if i could 'elp it, so i went back and licked into this chap, just to show 'er what i could do. 'e was a big chap, too. well, i chucked him, and smashed things about, and gave 'er a scaring, and she ran up and locked 'erself into the spare room." "well?" "that's all. i says to 'er the next morning, 'now you know,' i says, 'what i'm like when i'm roused.' and i didn't have to say anything more." "and you've been happy ever after, eh?" "so to speak. there's nothing like putting your foot down with them. if it 'adn't been for that afternoon i should 'a' been tramping the roads now, and she'd 'a' been grumbling at me, and all her family grumbling for bringing her to poverty--i know their little ways. but we're all right now. and it's a very decent little business, as you say." they proceeded on their way meditatively. "women are funny creatures," said brother tom. "they want a firm hand," says coombes. "what a lot of these funguses there are about here!" remarked brother tom presently. "i can't see what use they are in the world." mr. coombes looked. "i dessay they're sent for some wise purpose," said mr. coombes. and that was as much thanks as the purple pileus ever got for maddening this absurd little man to the pitch of decisive action, and so altering the whole course of his life. xviii. a slip under the microscope. outside the laboratory windows was a watery-grey fog, and within a close warmth and the yellow light of the green-shaded gas lamps that stood two to each table down its narrow length. on each table stood a couple of glass jars containing the mangled vestiges of the crayfish, mussels, frogs, and guinea-pigs upon which the students had been working, and down the side of the room, facing the windows, were shelves bearing bleached dissections in spirits, surmounted by a row of beautifully executed anatomical drawings in white-wood frames and overhanging a row of cubical lockers. all the doors of the laboratory were panelled with blackboard, and on these were the half-erased diagrams of the previous day's work. the laboratory was empty, save for the demonstrator, who sat near the preparation-room door, and silent, save for a low, continuous murmur and the clicking of the rocker microtome at which he was working. but scattered about the room were traces of numerous students: hand-bags, polished boxes of instruments, in one place a large drawing covered by newspaper, and in another a prettily bound copy of _news from nowhere_, a book oddly at variance with its surroundings. these things had been put down hastily as the students had arrived and hurried at once to secure their seats in the adjacent lecture theatre. deadened by the closed door, the measured accents of the professor sounded as a featureless muttering. presently, faint through the closed windows came the sound of the oratory clock striking the hour of eleven. the clicking of the microtome ceased, and the demonstrator looked at his watch, rose, thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked slowly down the laboratory towards the lecture theatre door. he stood listening for a moment, and then his eye fell on the little volume by william morris. he picked it up, glanced at the title, smiled, opened it, looked at the name on the fly-leaf, ran the leaves through with his hand, and put it down. almost immediately the even murmur of the lecturer ceased, there was a sudden burst of pencils rattling on the desks in the lecture theatre, a stirring, a scraping of feet, and a number of voices speaking together. then a firm footfall approached the door, which began to open, and stood ajar, as some indistinctly heard question arrested the new-comer. the demonstrator turned, walked slowly back past the microtome, and left the laboratory by the preparation-room door. as he did so, first one, and then several students carrying notebooks entered the laboratory from the lecture theatre, and distributed themselves among the little tables, or stood in a group about the doorway. they were an exceptionally heterogeneous assembly, for while oxford and cambridge still recoil from the blushing prospect of mixed classes, the college of science anticipated america in the matter years ago--mixed socially, too, for the prestige of the college is high, and its scholarships, free of any age limit, dredge deeper even than do those of the scotch universities. the class numbered one-and-twenty, but some remained in the theatre questioning the professor, copying the black-board diagrams before they were washed off, or examining the special specimens he had produced to illustrate the day's teaching. of the nine who had come into the laboratory three were girls, one of whom, a little fair woman, wearing spectacles and dressed in greyish-green, was peering out of the window at the fog, while the other two, both wholesome-looking, plain-faced schoolgirls, unrolled and put on the brown holland aprons they wore while dissecting. of the men, two went down the laboratory to their places, one a pallid, dark-bearded man, who had once been a tailor; the other a pleasant-featured, ruddy young man of twenty, dressed in a well-fitting brown suit; young wedderburn, the son of wedderburn, the eye specialist. the others formed a little knot near the theatre door. one of these, a dwarfed, spectacled figure, with a hunchback, sat on a bent wood stool; two others, one a short, dark youngster, and the other a flaxen-haired, reddish-complexioned young man, stood leaning side by side against the slate sink, while the fourth stood facing them, and maintained the larger share of the conversation. this last person was named hill. he was a sturdily built young fellow, of the same age as wedderburn; he had a white face, dark grey eyes, hair of an indeterminate colour, and prominent, irregular features. he talked rather louder than was needful, and thrust his hands deeply into his pockets. his collar was frayed and blue with the starch of a careless laundress, his clothes were evidently ready-made, and there was a patch on the side of his boot near the toe. and as he talked or listened to the others, he glanced now and again towards the lecture theatre door. they were discussing the depressing peroration of the lecture they had just heard, the last lecture it was in the introductory course in zoology. "from ovum to ovum is the goal of the higher vertebrata," the lecturer had said in his melancholy tones, and so had neatly rounded off the sketch of comparative anatomy he had been developing. the spectacled hunchback had repeated it, with noisy appreciation, had tossed it towards the fair-haired student with an evident provocation, and had started one of these vague, rambling discussions on generalities, so unaccountably dear to the student mind all the world over. "that is our goal, perhaps--i admit it, as far as science goes," said the fair-haired student, rising to the challenge. "but there are things above science." "science," said hill confidently, "is systematic knowledge. ideas that don't come into the system--must anyhow--be loose ideas." he was not quite sure whether that was a clever saying or a fatuity until his hearers took it seriously. "the thing i cannot understand," said the hunchback, at large, "is whether hill is a materialist or not." "there is one thing above matter," said hill promptly, feeling he had a better thing this time; aware, too, of someone in the doorway behind him, and raising his voice a trifle for her benefit, "and that is, the delusion that there is something above matter." "so we have your gospel at last," said the fair student. "it's all a delusion, is it? all our aspirations to lead something more than dogs' lives, all our work for anything beyond ourselves. but see how inconsistent you are. your socialism, for instance. why do you trouble about the interests of the race? why do you concern yourself about the beggar in the gutter? why are you bothering yourself to lend that book "-he indicated william morris by a movement of the head--"to everyone in the lab.?" "girl," said the hunchback indistinctly, and glanced guiltily over his shoulder. the girl in brown, with the brown eyes, had come into the laboratory, and stood on the other side of the table behind him, with her rolled-up apron in one hand, looking over her shoulder, listening to the discussion. she did not notice the hunchback, because she was glancing from hill to his interlocutor. hill's consciousness of her presence betrayed itself to her only in his studious ignorance of the fact; but she understood that, and it pleased her. "i see no reason," said he, "why a man should live like a brute because he knows of nothing beyond matter, and does not expect to exist a hundred years hence." "why shouldn't he?" said the fair-haired student. "why _should_ he?" said hill. "what inducement has he?" "that's the way with all you religious people. it's all a business of inducements. cannot a man seek after righteousness for righteousness' sake?" there was a pause. the fair man answered, with a kind of vocal padding, "but--you see--inducement--when i said inducement," to gain time. and then the hunchback came to his rescue and inserted a question. he was a terrible person in the debating society with his questions, and they invariably took one form--a demand for a definition, "what's your definition of righteousness?" said the hunchback at this stage. hill experienced a sudden loss of complacency at this question, but even as it was asked, relief came in the person of brooks, the laboratory attendant, who entered by the preparation-room door, carrying a number of freshly killed guinea-pigs by their hind legs. "this is the last batch of material this session," said the youngster who had not previously spoken. brooks advanced up the laboratory, smacking down a couple of guinea-pigs at each table. the rest of the class, scenting the prey from afar, came crowding in by the lecture theatre door, and the discussion perished abruptly as the students who were not already in their places hurried to them to secure the choice of a specimen. there was a noise of keys rattling on split rings as lockers were opened and dissecting instruments taken out. hill was already standing by his table, and his box of scalpels was sticking out of his pocket. the girl in brown came a step towards him, and, leaning over his table, said softly, "did you see that i returned your book, mr. hill?" during the whole scene she and the book had been vividly present in his consciousness; but he made a clumsy pretence of looking at the book and seeing it for the first time. "oh, yes," he said, taking it up. "i see. did you like it?" "i want to ask you some questions about it--some time." "certainly," said hill. "i shall be glad." he stopped awkwardly. "you liked it?" he said. "it's a wonderful book. only some things i don't understand." then suddenly the laboratory was hushed by a curious, braying noise. it was the demonstrator. he was at the blackboard ready to begin the day's instruction, and it was his custom to demand silence by a sound midway between the "er" of common intercourse and the blast of a trumpet. the girl in brown slipped back to her place: it was immediately in front of hill's, and hill, forgetting her forthwith, took a notebook out of the drawer of his table, turned over its leaves hastily, drew a stumpy pencil from his pocket, and prepared to make a copious note of the coming demonstration. for demonstrations and lectures are the sacred text of the college students. books, saving only the professor's own, you may--it is even expedient to--ignore. hill was the son of a landport cobbler, and had been hooked by a chance blue paper the authorities had thrown out to the landport technical college. he kept himself in london on his allowance of a guinea a week, and found that, with proper care, this also covered his clothing allowance, an occasional waterproof collar, that is; and ink and needles and cotton, and such-like necessaries for a man about town. this was his first year and his first session, but the brown old man in landport had already got himself detested in many public-houses by boasting of his son, "the professor." hill was a vigorous youngster, with a serene contempt for the clergy of all denominations, and a fine ambition to reconstruct the world. he regarded his scholarship as a brilliant opportunity. he had begun to read at seven, and had read steadily whatever came in his way, good or bad, since then. his worldly experience had been limited to the island of portsea, and acquired chiefly in the wholesale boot factory in which he had worked by day, after passing the seventh standard of the board school. he had a considerable gift of speech, as the college debating society, which met amidst the crushing machines and mine models in the metallurgical theatre downstairs, already recognised--recognised by a violent battering of desks whenever he rose. and he was just at that fine emotional age when life opens at the end of a narrow pass like a broad valley at one's feet, full of the promise of wonderful discoveries and tremendous achievements. and his own limitations, save that he knew that he knew neither latin nor french, were all unknown to him. at first his interest had been divided pretty equally between his biological work at the college and social and theological theorising, an employment which he took in deadly earnest. of a night, when the big museum library was not open, he would sit on the bed of his room in chelsea with his coat and a muffler on, and write out the lecture notes and revise his dissection memoranda, until thorpe called him out by a whistle--the landlady objected to open the door to attic visitors--and then the two would go prowling about the shadowy, shiny, gas-lit streets, talking, very much in the fashion of the sample just given, of the god idea, and righteousness, and carlyle, and the reorganisation of society. and in the midst of it all, hill, arguing not only for thorpe, but for the casual passer-by, would lose the thread of his argument glancing at some pretty painted face that looked meaningly at him as he passed. science and righteousness! but once or twice lately there had been signs that a third interest was creeping into his life, and he had found his attention wandering from the fate of the mesoblastic somites or the probable meaning of the blastopore, to the thought of the girl with the brown eyes who sat at the table before him. she was a paying student; she descended inconceivable social altitudes to speak to him. at the thought of the education she must have had, and the accomplishments she must possess, the soul of hill became abject within him. she had spoken to him first over a difficulty about the alisphenoid of a rabbit's skull, and he had found that, in biology at least, he had no reason for self-abasement. and from that, after the manner of young people starting from any starting-point, they got to generalities, and while hill attacked her upon the question of socialism--some instinct told him to spare her a direct assault upon her religion--she was gathering resolution to undertake what she told herself was his aesthetic education. she was a year or two older than he, though the thought never occurred to him. the loan of _news from nowhere_ was the beginning of a series of cross loans. upon some absurd first principle of his, hill had never "wasted time" upon poetry, and it seemed an appalling deficiency to her. one day in the lunch hour, when she chanced upon him alone in the little museum where the skeletons were arranged, shamefully eating the bun that constituted his midday meal, she retreated, and returned to lend him, with a slightly furtive air, a volume of browning. he stood sideways towards her and took the book rather clumsily, because he was holding the bun in the other hand. and in the retrospect his voice lacked the cheerful clearness he could have wished. that occurred after the examination in comparative anatomy, on the day before the college turned out its students, and was carefully locked up by the officials, for the christmas holidays. the excitement of cramming for the first trial of strength had for a little while dominated hill, to the exclusion of his other interests. in the forecasts of the result in which everyone indulged he was surprised to find that no one regarded him as a possible competitor for the harvey commemoration medal, of which this and the two subsequent examinations disposed. it was about this time that wedderburn, who so far had lived inconspicuously on the uttermost margin of hill's perceptions, began to take on the appearance of an obstacle. by a mutual agreement, the nocturnal prowlings with thorpe ceased for the three weeks before the examination, and his landlady pointed out that she really could not supply so much lamp oil at the price. he walked to and fro from the college with little slips of mnemonics in his hand, lists of crayfish appendages, rabbits' skull-bones, and vertebrate nerves, for example, and became a positive nuisance to foot passengers in the opposite direction. but, by a natural reaction, poetry and the girl with the brown eyes ruled the christmas holiday. the pending results of the examination became such a secondary consideration that hill marvelled at his father's excitement. even had he wished it, there was no comparative anatomy to read in landport, and he was too poor to buy books, but the stock of poets in the library was extensive, and hill's attack was magnificently sustained. he saturated himself with the fluent numbers of longfellow and tennyson, and fortified himself with shakespeare; found a kindred soul in pope, and a master in shelley, and heard and fled the siren voices of eliza cook and mrs. hemans. but he read no more browning, because he hoped for the loan of other volumes from miss haysman when he returned to london. he walked from his lodgings to the college with that volume of browning in his shiny black bag, and his mind teeming with the finest general propositions about poetry. indeed, he framed first this little speech and then that with which to grace the return. the morning was an exceptionally pleasant one for london; there was a clear, hard frost and undeniable blue in the sky, a thin haze softened every outline, and warm shafts of sunlight struck between the house blocks and turned the sunny side of the street to amber and gold. in the hall of the college he pulled off his glove and signed his name with fingers so stiff with cold that the characteristic dash under the signature he cultivated became a quivering line. he imagined miss haysman about him everywhere. he turned at the staircase, and there, below, he saw a crowd struggling at the foot of the notice-board. this, possibly, was the biology list. he forgot browning and miss haysman for the moment, and joined the scrimmage. and at last, with his cheek flattened against the sleeve of the man on the step above him, he read the list-class i h. j. somers wedderburn william hill and thereafter followed a second class that is outside our present sympathies. it was characteristic that he did not trouble to look for thorpe on the physics list, but backed out of the struggle at once, and in a curious emotional state between pride over common second-class humanity and acute disappointment at wedderburn's success, went on his way upstairs. at the top, as he was hanging up his coat in the passage, the zoological demonstrator, a young man from oxford, who secretly regarded him as a blatant "mugger" of the very worst type, offered his heartiest congratulations. at the laboratory door hill stopped for a second to get his breath, and then entered. he looked straight up the laboratory and saw all five girl students grouped in their places, and wedderburn, the once retiring wedderburn, leaning rather gracefully against the window, playing with the blind tassel and talking, apparently, to the five of them. now, hill could talk bravely enough and even overbearingly to one girl, and he could have made a speech to a roomful of girls, but this business of standing at ease and appreciating, fencing, and returning quick remarks round a group was, he knew, altogether beyond him. coming up the staircase his feelings for wedderburn had been generous, a certain admiration perhaps, a willingness to shake his hand conspicuously and heartily as one who had fought but the first round. but before christmas wedderburn had never gone up to that end of the room to talk. in a flash hill's mist of vague excitement condensed abruptly to a vivid dislike of wedderburn. possibly his expression changed. as he came up to his place, wedderburn nodded carelessly to him, and the others glanced round. miss haysman looked at him and away again, the faintest touch of her eyes. "i can't agree with you, mr. wedderburn," she said. "i must congratulate you on your first-class, mr. hill," said the spectacled girl in green, turning round and beaming at him. "it's nothing," said hill, staring at wedderburn and miss haysman talking together, and eager to hear what they talked about. "we poor folks in the second class don't think so," said the girl in spectacles. what was it wedderburn was saying? something about william morris! hill did not answer the girl in spectacles, and the smile died out of his face. he could not hear, and failed to see how he could "cut in." confound wedderburn! he sat down, opened his bag, hesitated whether to return the volume of browning forthwith, in the sight of all, and instead drew out his new notebooks for the short course in elementary botany that was now beginning, and which would terminate in february. as he did so, a fat, heavy man, with a white face and pale grey eyes--bindon, the professor of botany, who came up from kew for january and february--came in by the lecture theatre door, and passed, rubbing his hands together and smiling, in silent affability down the laboratory. * * * * * in the subsequent six weeks hill experienced some very rapid and curiously complex emotional developments. for the most part he had wedderburn in focus--a fact that miss haysman never suspected. she told hill (for in the comparative privacy of the museum she talked a good deal to him of socialism and browning and general propositions) that she had met wedderburn at the house of some people she knew, and "he's inherited his cleverness; for his father, you know, is the great eye-specialist." "_my_ father is a cobbler," said hill, quite irrelevantly, and perceived the want of dignity even as he said it. but the gleam of jealousy did not offend her. she conceived herself the fundamental source of it. he suffered bitterly from a sense of wedderburn's unfairness, and a realisation of his own handicap. here was this wedderburn had picked up a prominent man for a father, and instead of his losing so many marks on the score of that advantage, it was counted to him for righteousness! and while hill had to introduce himself and talk to miss haysman clumsily over mangled guinea-pigs in the laboratory, this wedderburn, in some backstairs way, had access to her social altitudes, and could converse in a polished argot that hill understood perhaps, but felt incapable of speaking. not, of course, that he wanted to. then it seemed to hill that for wedderburn to come there day after day with cuffs unfrayed, neatly tailored, precisely barbered, quietly perfect, was in itself an ill-bred, sneering sort of proceeding. moreover, it was a stealthy thing for wedderburn to behave insignificantly for a space, to mock modesty, to lead hill to fancy that he himself was beyond dispute the man of the year, and then suddenly to dart in front of him, and incontinently to swell up in this fashion. in addition to these things, wedderburn displayed an increasing disposition to join in any conversational grouping that included miss haysman, and would venture, and indeed seek occasion, to pass opinions derogatory to socialism and atheism. he goaded hill to incivilities by neat, shallow, and exceedingly effective personalities about the socialist leaders, until hill hated bernard shaw's graceful egotisms, william morris's limited editions and luxurious wall-papers, and walter crane's charmingly absurd ideal working men, about as much as he hated wedderburn. the dissertations in the laboratory, that had been his glory in the previous term, became a danger, degenerated into inglorious tussels with wedderburn, and hill kept to them only out of an obscure perception that his honour was involved. in the debating society hill knew quite clearly that, to a thunderous accompaniment of banged desks, he could have pulverised wedderburn. only wedderburn never attended the debating society to be pulverised, because--nauseous affectation!--he "dined late." you must not imagine that these things presented themselves in quite such a crude form to hill's perception. hill was a born generaliser. wedderburn to him was not so much an individual obstacle as a type, the salient angle of a class. the economic theories that, after infinite ferment, had shaped themselves in hill's mind, became abruptly concrete at the contact. the world became full of easy-mannered, graceful, gracefully-dressed, conversationally dexterous, finally shallow wedderburns, bishops wedderburn, wedderburn m.p.'s, professors wedderburn, wedderburn landlords, all with finger-bowl shibboleths and epigrammatic cities of refuge from a sturdy debater. and everyone ill-clothed or ill-dressed, from the cobbler to the cab-runner, was a man and a brother, a fellow-sufferer, to hill's imagination. so that he became, as it were, a champion of the fallen and oppressed, albeit to outward seeming only a self-assertive, ill-mannered young man, and an unsuccessful champion at that. again and again a skirmish over the afternoon tea that the girl students had inaugurated left hill with flushed cheeks and a tattered temper, and the debating society noticed a new quality of sarcastic bitterness in his speeches. you will understand now how it was necessary, if only in the interests of humanity, that hill should demolish wedderburn in the forthcoming examination and outshine him in the eyes of miss haysman; and you will perceive, too, how miss haysman fell into some common feminine misconceptions. the hill-wedderburn quarrel, for in his unostentatious way wedderburn reciprocated hill's ill-veiled rivalry, became a tribute to her indefinable charm; she was the queen of beauty in a tournament of scalpels and stumpy pencils. to her confidential friend's secret annoyance, it even troubled her conscience, for she was a good girl, and painfully aware, from ruskin and contemporary fiction, how entirely men's activities are determined by women's attitudes. and if hill never by any chance mentioned the topic of love to her, she only credited him with the finer modesty for that omission. so the time came on for the second examination, and hill's increasing pallor confirmed the general rumour that he was working hard. in the aerated bread shop near south kensington station you would see him, breaking his bun and sipping his milk, with his eyes intent upon a paper of closely written notes. in his bedroom there were propositions about buds and stems round his looking-glass, a diagram to catch his eye, if soap should chance to spare it, above his washing basin. he missed several meetings of the debating society, but he found the chance encounters with miss haysman in the spacious ways of the adjacent art museum, or in the little museum at the top of the college, or in the college corridors, more frequent and very restful. in particular, they used to meet in a little gallery full of wrought-iron chests and gates, near the art library, and there hill used to talk, under the gentle stimulus of her flattering attention, of browning and his personal ambitions. a characteristic she found remarkable in him was his freedom from avarice. he contemplated quite calmly the prospect of living all his life on an income below a hundred pounds a year. but he was determined to be famous, to make, recognisably in his own proper person, the world a better place to live in. he took bradlaugh and john burns for his leaders and models, poor, even impecunious, great men. but miss haysman thought that such lives were deficient on the aesthetic side, by which, though she did not know it, she meant good wall-paper and upholstery, pretty books, tasteful clothes, concerts, and meals nicely cooked and respectfully served. at last came the day of the second examination, and the professor of botany, a fussy, conscientious man, rearranged all the tables in a long narrow laboratory to prevent copying, and put his demonstrator on a chair on a table (where he felt, he said, like a hindoo god), to see all the cheating, and stuck a notice outside the door, "door closed," for no earthly reason that any human being could discover. and all the morning from ten till one the quill of wedderburn shrieked defiance at hill's, and the quills of the others chased their leaders in a tireless pack, and so also it was in the afternoon. wedderburn was a little quieter than usual, and hill's face was hot all day, and his overcoat bulged with textbooks and notebooks against the last moment's revision. and the next day, in the morning and in the afternoon, was the practical examination, when sections had to be cut and slides identified. in the morning hill was depressed because he knew he had cut a thick section, and in the afternoon came the mysterious slip. it was just the kind of thing that the botanical professor was always doing. like the income tax, it offered a premium to the cheat. it was a preparation under the microscope, a little glass slip, held in its place on the stage of the instrument by light steel clips, and the inscription set forth that the slip was not to be moved. each student was to go in turn to it, sketch it, write in his book of answers what he considered it to be, and return to his place. now, to move such a slip is a thing one can do by a chance movement of the finger, and in a fraction of a second. the professor's reason for decreeing that the slip should not be moved depended on the fact that the object he wanted identified was characteristic of a certain tree stem. in the position in which it was placed it was a difficult thing to recognise, but once the slip was moved so as to bring other parts of the preparation into view, its nature was obvious enough. hill came to this, flushed from a contest with staining re-agents, sat down on the little stool before the microscope, turned the mirror to get the best light, and then, out of sheer habit, shifted the slips. at once he remembered the prohibition, and, with an almost continuous motion of his hands, moved it back, and sat paralysed with astonishment at his action. then, slowly, he turned his head. the professor was out of the room; the demonstrator sat aloft on his impromptu rostrum, reading the _q. jour. mi. sci_.; the rest of the examinees were busy, and with their backs to him. should he own up to the accident now? he knew quite clearly what the thing was. it was a lenticel, a characteristic preparation from the elder-tree. his eyes roved over his intent fellow-students, and wedderburn suddenly glanced over his shoulder at him with a queer expression in his eyes. the mental excitement that had kept hill at an abnormal pitch of vigour these two days gave way to a curious nervous tension. his book of answers was beside him. he did not write down what the thing was, but with one eye at the microscope he began making a hasty sketch of it. his mind was full of this grotesque puzzle in ethics that had suddenly been sprung upon him. should he identify it? or should he leave this question unanswered? in that case wedderburn would probably come out first in the second result. how could he tell now whether he might not have identified the thing without shifting it? it was possible that wedderburn had failed to recognise it, of course. suppose wedderburn too had shifted the slide? he looked up at the clock. there were fifteen minutes in which to make up his mind. he gathered up his book of answers and the coloured pencils he used in illustrating his replies and walked back to his seat. he read through his manuscript, and then sat thinking and gnawing his knuckle. it would look queer now if he owned up. he _must_ beat wedderburn. he forgot the examples of those starry gentlemen, john burns and bradlaugh. besides, he reflected, the glimpse of the rest of the slip he had had was, after all, quite accidental, forced upon him by chance, a kind of providential revelation rather than an unfair advantage. it was not nearly so dishonest to avail himself of that as it was of broome, who believed in the efficacy of prayer, to pray daily for a first-class. "five minutes more," said the demonstrator, folding up his paper and becoming observant. hill watched the clock hands until two minutes remained; then he opened the book of answers, and, with hot ears and an affectation of ease, gave his drawing of the lenticel its name. when the second pass list appeared, the previous positions of wedderburn and hill were reversed, and the spectacled girl in green, who knew the demonstrator in private life (where he was practically human), said that in the result of the two examinations taken together hill had the advantage of a mark--167 to 166 out of a possible 200. everyone admired hill in a way, though the suspicion of "mugging" clung to him. but hill was to find congratulations and miss haysman's enhanced opinion of him, and even the decided decline in the crest of wedderburn, tainted by an unhappy memory. he felt a remarkable access of energy at first, and the note of a democracy marching to triumph returned to his debating-society speeches; he worked at his comparative anatomy with tremendous zeal and effect, and he went on with his aesthetic education. but through it all, a vivid little picture was continually coming before his mind's eye--of a sneakish person manipulating a slide. no human being had witnessed the act, and he was cocksure that no higher power existed to see, it; but for all that it worried him. memories are not dead things but alive; they dwindle in disuse, but they harden and develop in all sorts of queer ways if they are being continually fretted. curiously enough, though at the time he perceived clearly that the shifting was accidental, as the days wore on, his memory became confused about it, until at last he was not sure--although he assured himself that he _was_ sure--whether the movement had been absolutely involuntary. then it is possible that hill's dietary was conducive to morbid conscientiousness; a breakfast frequently eaten in a hurry, a midday bun, and, at such hours after five as chanced to be convenient, such meat as his means determined, usually in a chop-house in a back street off the brompton road. occasionally he treated himself to threepenny or ninepenny classics, and they usually represented a suppression of potatoes or chops. it is indisputable that outbreaks of self-abasement and emotional revival have a distinct relation to periods of scarcity. but apart from this influence on the feelings, there was in hill a distinct aversion to falsity that the blasphemous landport cobbler had inculcated by strap and tongue from his earliest years. of one fact about professed atheists i am convinced; they may be--they usually are--fools, void of subtlety, revilers of holy institutions, brutal speakers, and mischievous knaves, but they lie with difficulty. if it were not so, if they had the faintest grasp of the idea of compromise, they would simply be liberal churchmen. and, moreover, this memory poisoned his regard for miss haysman. for she now so evidently preferred him to wedderburn that he felt sure he cared for her, and began reciprocating her attentions by timid marks of personal regard; at one time he even bought a bunch of violets, carried it about in his pocket, and produced it, with a stumbling explanation, withered and dead, in the gallery of old iron. it poisoned, too, the denunciation of capitalist dishonesty that had been one of his life's pleasures. and, lastly, it poisoned his triumph in wedderburn. previously he had been wedderburn's superior in his own eyes, and had raged simply at a want of recognition. now he began to fret at the darker suspicion of positive inferiority. he fancied he found justifications for his position in browning, but they vanished on analysis. at last--moved, curiously enough, by exactly the same motive forces that had resulted in his dishonesty--he went to professor bindon, and made a clean breast of the whole affair. as hill was a paid student, professor bindon did not ask him to sit down, and he stood before the professor's desk as he made his confession. "it's a curious story," said professor bindon, slowly realising how the thing reflected on himself, and then letting his anger rise,--"a most remarkable story. i can't understand your doing it, and i can't understand this avowal. you're a type of student--cambridge men would never dream--i suppose i ought to have thought--why _did_ you cheat?" "i didn't cheat," said hill. "but you have just been telling me you did." "i thought i explained--" "either you cheated or you did not cheat." "i said my motion was involuntary." "i am not a metaphysician, i am a servant of science--of fact. you were told not to move the slip. you did move the slip. if that is not cheating--" "if i was a cheat," said hill, with the note of hysterics in his voice, "should i come here and tell you?" "your repentance, of course, does you credit," said professor bindon, "but it does not alter the original facts." "no, sir," said hill, giving in in utter self-abasement. "even now you cause an enormous amount of trouble. the examination list will have to be revised." "i suppose so, sir." "suppose so? of course it must be revised. and i don't see how i can conscientiously pass you." "not pass me?" said hill. "fail me?" "it's the rule in all examinations. or where should we be? what else did you expect? you don't want to shirk the consequences of your own acts?" "i thought, perhaps----" said hill. and then, "fail me? i thought, as i told you, you would simply deduct the marks given for that slip." "impossible!" said bindon. "besides, it would still leave you above wedderburn. deduct only the marks! preposterous! the departmental regulations distinctly say----" "but it's my own admission, sir." "the regulations say nothing whatever of the manner in which the matter comes to light. they simply provide----" "it will ruin me. if i fail this examination, they won't renew my scholarship." "you should have thought of that before." "but, sir, consider all my circumstances----" "i cannot consider anything. professors in this college are machines. the regulations will not even let us recommend our students for appointments. i am a machine, and you have worked me. i have to do----" "it's very hard, sir." "possibly it is." "if i am to be failed this examination, i might as well go home at once." "that is as you think proper." bindon's voice softened a little; he perceived he had been unjust, and, provided he did not contradict himself, he was disposed to amelioration. "as a private person," he said, "i think this confession of yours goes far to mitigate your offence. but you have set the machinery in motion, and now it must take its course. i--i am really sorry you gave way." a wave of emotion prevented hill from answering. suddenly, very vividly, he saw the heavily-lined face of the old landport cobbler, his father. "good god! what a fool i have been!" he said hotly and abruptly. "i hope," said bindon, "that it will be a lesson to you." but, curiously enough, they were not thinking of quite the same indiscretion. there was a pause. "i would like a day to think, sir, and then i will let you know--about going home, i mean," said hill, moving towards the door. * * * * * the next day hill's place was vacant. the spectacled girl in green was, as usual, first with the news. wedderburn and miss haysman were talking of a performance of _the meistersingers_ when she came up to them. "have you heard?" she said. "heard what?" "there was cheating in the examination." "cheating!" said wedderburn, with his face suddenly hot. "how?" "that slide--" "moved? never!" "it was. that slide that we weren't to move--" "nonsense!" said wedderburn. "why! how could they find out? who do they say--?" "it was mr. hill." _hill_!" "mr. hill!" "not--surely not the immaculate hill?" said wedderburn, recovering. "i don't believe it," said miss haysman. "how do you know?" "i _didn't_," said the girl in spectacles. "but i know it now for a fact. mr. hill went and confessed to professor bindon himself." "by jove!" said wedderburn. "hill of all people. but i am always inclined to distrust these philanthropists-on-principle--" "are you quite sure?" said miss haysman, with a catch in her breath. "quite. it's dreadful, isn't it? but, you know, what can you expect? his father is a cobbler." then miss haysman astonished the girl in spectacles. "i don't care. i will not believe it," she said, flushing darkly under her warm-tinted skin. "i will not believe it until he has told me so himself-face to face. i would scarcely believe it then," and abruptly she turned her back on the girl in spectacles, and walked to her own place. "it's true, all the same," said the girl in spectacles, peering and smiling at wedderburn. but wedderburn did not answer her. she was indeed one of those people who seemed destined to make unanswered remarks. xix. the crystal egg. there was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near seven dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "c. cave, naturalist and dealer in antiquities," was inscribed. the contents of its window were curiously variegated. they comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a fly-blown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank. there was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished. and at that two people who stood outside the window were looking, one of them a tall, thin clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of dusky complexion and unobtrusive costume. the dusky young man spoke with eager gesticulation, and seemed anxious for his companion to purchase the article. while they were there, mr. cave came into his shop, his beard still wagging with the bread and butter of his tea. when he saw these men and the object of their regard, his countenance fell. he glanced guiltily over his shoulder, and softly shut the door. he was a little old man, with pale face and peculiar watery blue eyes; his hair was a dirty grey, and he wore a shabby blue frock-coat, an ancient silk hat, and carpet slippers very much down at heel. he remained watching the two men as they talked. the clergyman went deep into his trouser pocket, examined a handful of money, and showed his teeth in an agreeable smile. mr. cave seemed still more depressed when they came into the shop. the clergyman, without any ceremony, asked the price of the crystal egg. mr. cave glanced nervously towards the door leading into the parlour, and said five pounds. the clergyman protested that the price was high, to his companion as well as to mr. cave--it was, indeed, very much more than mr. cave had intended to ask when he had stocked the article--and an attempt at bargaining ensued. mr. cave stepped to the shop door, and held it open. "five pounds is my price," he said, as though he wished to save himself the trouble of unprofitable discussion. as he did so, the upper portion of a woman's face appeared above the blind in the glass upper panel of the door leading into the parlour, and stared curiously at the two customers. "five pounds is my price," said mr. cave, with a quiver in his voice. the swarthy young man had so far remained a spectator, watching cave keenly. now he spoke. "give him five pounds," he said. the clergyman glanced at him to see if he were in earnest, and when he looked at mr. cave again, he saw that the latter's face was white. "it's a lot of money," said the clergyman, and, diving into his pocket, began counting his resources. he had little more than thirty shillings, and he appealed to his companion, with whom he seemed to be on terms of considerable intimacy. this gave mr. cave an opportunity of collecting his thoughts, and he began to explain in an agitated manner that the crystal was not, as a matter of fact, entirely free for sale. his two customers were naturally surprised at this, and inquired why he had not thought of that before he began to bargain. mr. cave became confused, but he stuck to his story, that the crystal was not in the market that afternoon, that a probable purchaser of it had already appeared. the two, treating this as an attempt to raise the price still further, made as if they would leave the shop. but at this point the parlour door opened, and the owner of the dark fringe and the little eyes appeared. she was a coarse-featured, corpulent woman, younger and very much larger than mr. cave; she walked heavily, and her face was flushed. "that crystal _is_ for sale," she said. "and five pounds is a good enough price for it. i can't think what you're about, cave, not to take the gentleman's offer!" mr. cave, greatly perturbed by the irruption, looked angrily at her over the rims of his spectacles, and, without excessive assurance, asserted his right to manage his business in his own way. an altercation began. the two customers watched the scene with interest and some amusement, occasionally assisting mrs. cave with suggestions. mr. cave, hard driven, persisted in a confused and impossible story of an inquiry for the crystal that morning, and his agitation became painful. but he stuck to his point with extraordinary persistence. it was the young oriental who ended this curious controversy. he proposed that they should call again in the course of two days--so as to give the alleged inquirer a fair chance. "and then we must insist," said the clergyman. "five pounds." mrs. cave took it on herself to apologise for her husband, explaining that he was sometimes "a little odd," and as the two customers left, the couple prepared for a free discussion of the incident in all its bearings. mrs. cave talked to her husband with singular directness. the poor little man, quivering with emotion, muddled himself between his stories, maintaining on the one hand that he had another customer in view, and on the other asserting that the crystal was honestly worth ten guineas. "why did you ask five pounds?" said his wife. "_do_ let me manage my business my own way!" said mr. cave. mr. cave had living with him a step-daughter and a step-son, and at supper that night the transaction was re-discussed. none of them had a high opinion of mr. cave's business methods, and this action seemed a culminating folly. "it's my opinion he's refused that crystal before," said the step-son, a loose-limbed lout of eighteen. "but _five pounds_!" said the step-daughter, an argumentative young woman of six-and-twenty. mr. cave's answers were wretched; he could only mumble weak assertions that he knew his own business best. they drove him from his half-eaten supper into the shop, to close it for the night, his ears aflame and tears of vexation behind his spectacles. why had he left the crystal in the window so long? the folly of it! that was the trouble closest in his mind. for a time he could see no way of evading sale. after supper his step-daughter and step-son smartened themselves up and went out and his wife retired upstairs to reflect upon the business aspects of the crystal, over a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot water. mr. cave went into the shop, and stayed there until late, ostensibly to make ornamental rockeries for gold-fish cases, but really for a private purpose that will be better explained later. the next day mrs. cave found that the crystal had been removed from the window, and was lying behind some second-hand books on angling. she replaced it in a conspicuous position. but she did not argue further about it, as a nervous headache disinclined her from debate. mr. cave was always disinclined. the day passed disagreeably. mr. cave was, if anything, more absent-minded than usual, and uncommonly irritable withal. in the afternoon, when his wife was taking her customary sleep, he removed the crystal from the window again. the next day mr. cave had to deliver a consignment of dog-fish at one of the hospital schools, where they were needed for dissection. in his absence mrs. cave's mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the methods of expenditure suitable to a windfall of five pounds. she had already devised some very agreeable expedients, among others a dress of green silk for herself and a trip to richmond, when a jangling of the front door bell summoned her into the shop. the customer was an examination coach who came to complain of the non-delivery of certain frogs asked for the previous day. mrs. cave did not approve of this particular branch of mr. cave's business, and the gentleman, who had called in a somewhat aggressive mood, retired after a brief exchange of words--entirely civil, so far as he was concerned. mrs. cave's eye then naturally turned to the window; for the sight of the crystal was an assurance of the five pounds and of her dreams. what was her surprise to find it gone! she went to the place behind the locker on the counter, where she had discovered it the day before. it was not there; and she immediately began an eager search about the shop. when mr. cave returned from his business with the dogfish, about a quarter to two in the afternoon, he found the shop in some confusion, and his wife, extremely exasperated and on her knees behind the counter, routing among his taxidermic material. her face came up hot and angry over the counter, as the jangling bell announced his return, and she forthwith accused him of "hiding it." "hid _what_?" asked mr. cave. "the crystal!" at that mr. cave, apparently much surprised, rushed to the window. "isn't it here?" he said. "great heavens! what has become of it?" just then mr. cave's step-son re-entered the shop from, the inner room--he had come home a minute or so before mr. cave--and he was blaspheming freely. he was apprenticed to a second-hand furniture dealer down the road, but he had his meals at home, and he was naturally annoyed to find no dinner ready. but when he heard of the loss of the crystal, he forgot his meal, and his anger was diverted from his mother to his step-father. their first idea, of course, was that he had hidden it. but mr. cave stoutly denied all knowledge of its fate, freely offering his bedabbled affidavit in the matter--and at last was worked up to the point of accusing, first, his wife and then his stepson of having taken it with a view to a private sale. so began an exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion, which ended for mrs. cave in a peculiar nervous condition midway between hysterics and amuck, and caused the step-son to be half-an-hour late at the furniture establishment in the afternoon. mr. cave took refuge from his wife's emotions in the shop. in the evening the matter was resumed, with less passion and in a judicial spirit, under the presidency of the step-daughter. the supper passed unhappily and culminated in a painful scene. mr. cave gave way at last to extreme exasperation, and went out banging the front door violently. the rest of the family, having discussed him with the freedom his absence warranted, hunted the house from garret to cellar, hoping to light upon the crystal. the next day the two customers called again. they were received by mrs. cave almost in tears. it transpired that no one _could_ imagine all that she had stood from cave at various times in her married pilgrimage. ... she also gave a garbled account of the disappearance. the clergyman and the oriental laughed silently at one another, and said it was very extraordinary. as mrs. cave seemed disposed to give them the complete history of her life they made to leave the shop. thereupon mrs. cave, still clinging to hope, asked for the clergyman's address, so that, if she could get anything out of cave, she might communicate it. the address was duly given, but apparently was afterwards mislaid. mrs. cave can remember nothing about it. in the evening of that day the caves seem to have exhausted their emotions, and mr. cave, who had been out in the afternoon, supped in a gloomy isolation that contrasted pleasantly with the impassioned controversy of the previous days. for some time matters were very badly strained in the cave household, but neither crystal nor customer reappeared. now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that mr. cave was a liar. he knew perfectly well where the crystal was. it was in the rooms of mr. jacoby wace, assistant demonstrator at st. catherine's hospital, westbourne street. it stood on the sideboard partially covered by a black velvet cloth, and beside a decanter of american whisky. it is from mr. wace, indeed, that the particulars upon which this narrative is based were derived. cave had taken off the thing to the hospital hidden in the dog-fish sack, and there had pressed the young investigator to keep it for him. mr. wace was a little dubious at first. his relationship to cave was peculiar. he had a taste for singular characters, and he had more than once invited the old man to smoke and drink in his rooms, and to unfold his rather amusing views of life in general and of his wife in particular. mr. wace had encountered mrs. cave, too, on occasions when mr. cave was not at home to attend to him. he knew the constant interference to which cave was subjected, and having weighed the story judicially, he decided to give the crystal a refuge. mr. cave promised to explain the reasons for his remarkable affection for the crystal more fully on a later occasion, but he spoke distinctly of seeing visions therein. he called on mr. wace the same evening. he told a complicated story. the crystal he said had come into his possession with other oddments at the forced sale of another curiosity dealer's effects, and not knowing what its value might be, he had ticketed it at ten shillings. it had hung upon his hands at that price for some months, and he was thinking of "reducing the figure," when he made a singular discovery. at that time his health was very bad--and it must be borne in mind that, throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb--and he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. his wife was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private drinking; his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his step-son had conceived a violent dislike for him, and lost no chance of showing it. the requirements of his business pressed heavily upon him, and mr. wace does not think that he was altogether free from occasional intemperance. he had begun life in a comfortable position, he was a man of fair education, and he suffered, for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and insomnia. afraid to disturb his family, he would slip quietly from his wife's side, when his thoughts became intolerable, and wander about the house. and about three o'clock one morning, late in august, chance directed him into the shop. the dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where he perceived an unusual glow of light. approaching this, he discovered it to be the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the counter towards the window. a thin ray smote through a crack in the shutters, impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire interior. it occurred to mr. cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of optics as he had known them in his younger days. he could understand the rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior, but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. he approached the crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of the scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a calling. he was surprised to find the light not steady, but writhing within the substance of the egg, as though that object was a hollow sphere of some luminous vapour. in moving about to get different points of view, he suddenly found that he had come between it and the ray, and that the crystal none the less remained luminous. greatly astonished, he lifted it out of the light ray and carried it to the darkest part of the shop. it remained bright for some four or five minutes, when it slowly faded and went out. he placed it in the thin streak of daylight, and its luminousness was almost immediately restored. so far, at least, mr. wace was able to verify the remarkable story of mr. cave. he has himself repeatedly held this crystal in a ray of light (which had to be of a less diameter than one millimetre). and in a perfect darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. it would seem, however, that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally visible to all eyes; for mr. harbinger--whose name will be familiar to the scientific reader in connection with the pasteur institute--was quite unable to see any light whatever. and mr. wace's own capacity for its appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of mr. cave's. even with mr. cave the power varied very considerably: his vision was most vivid during states of extreme weakness and fatigue. now, from the outset, this light in the crystal exercised a curious fascination upon mr. cave. and it says more for his loneliness of soul than a volume of pathetic writing could do, that he told no human being of his curious observations. he seems to have been living in such an atmosphere of petty spite that to admit the existence of a pleasure would have been to risk the loss of it. he found that as the dawn advanced, and the amount of diffused light increased, the crystal became to all appearance non-luminous. and for some time he was unable to see anything in it, except at night-time, in dark corners of the shop. but the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as a background for a collection of minerals, occurred to him, and by doubling this, and putting it over his head and hands, he was able to get a sight of the luminous movement within the crystal even in the day-time. he was very cautious lest he should be thus discovered by his wife, and he practised this occupation only in the afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs, and then circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. and one day, turning the crystal about in his hands, he saw something. it came and went like a flash, but it gave him the impression that the object had for a moment opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange country; and turning it about, he did, just as the light faded, see the same vision again. now it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of mr. cave's discovery from this point. suffice that the effect was this: the crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture of a wide and peculiar country-side. it was not dream-like at all: it produced a definite impression of reality, and the better the light the more real and solid it seemed. it was a moving picture: that is to say, certain objects moved in it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real things, and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision changed, the picture changed also. it must, indeed, have been like looking through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to get at different aspects. mr. cave's statements, mr. wace assures me, were extremely circumstantial, and entirely free from any of that emotional quality that taints hallucinatory impressions. but it must be remembered that all the efforts of mr. wace to see any similar clarity in the faint opalescence of the crystal were wholly unsuccessful, try as he would. the difference in intensity of the impressions received by the two men was very great, and it is quite conceivable that what was a view to mr. cave was a mere blurred nebulosity to mr. wace. the view, as mr. cave described it, was invariably of an extensive plain, and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable height, as if from a tower or a mast. to the east and to the west the plain was bounded at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which reminded him of those he had seen in some picture; but what the picture was mr. wace was unable to ascertain. these cliffs passed north and south--he could tell the points of the compass by the stars that were visible of a night--receding in an almost illimitable perspective and fading into the mists of the distance before they met. he was nearer the eastern set of cliffs; on the occasion of his first vision the sun was rising over them, and black against the sunlight and pale against their shadow appeared a multitude of soaring forms that mr. cave regarded as birds. a vast range of buildings spread below him; he seemed to be looking down upon them; and as they approached the blurred and refracted edge of the picture they became indistinct. there were also trees curious in shape, and in colouring a deep mossy green and an exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal. and something great and brilliantly coloured flew across the picture. but the first time mr. cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his hands shook, his head moved, the vision came and went, and grew foggy and indistinct. and at first he had the greatest difficulty in finding the picture again once the direction of it was lost. his next clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the interval having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some useful experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley. the view was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his subsequent observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding the strange world from exactly the same spot, although he was looking in a different direction. the long façade of the great building, whose roof he had looked down upon before, was now receding in perspective. he recognised the roof. in the front of the façade was a terrace of massive proportions and extraordinary length, and down the middle of the terrace, at certain intervals, stood huge but very graceful masts, bearing small shiny objects which reflected the setting sun. the import of these small objects did not occur to mr. cave until some time after, as he was describing the scene to mr. wace. the terrace overhung a thicket of the most luxuriant and graceful vegetation, and beyond this was a wide grassy lawn on which certain broad creatures, in form like beetles but enormously larger, reposed. beyond this again was a richly decorated causeway of pinkish stone; and beyond that, and lined with dense red weeds, and passing up the valley exactly parallel with the distant cliffs, was a broad and mirror-like expanse of water. the air seemed full of squadrons of great birds, manoeuvring in stately curves; and across the river was a multitude of splendid buildings, richly coloured and glittering with metallic tracery and facets, among a forest of moss-like and lichenous trees. and suddenly something flapped repeatedly across the vision, like the fluttering of a jewelled fan or the beating of a wing, and a face, or rather the upper part of a face with very large eyes, came as it were close to his own and as if on the other side of the crystal. mr. cave was so startled and so impressed by the absolute reality of these eyes that he drew his head back from the crystal to look behind it. he had become so absorbed in watching that he was quite surprised to find himself in the cool darkness of his little shop, with its familiar odour of methyl, mustiness, and decay. and as he blinked about him, the glowing crystal faded and went out. such were the first general impressions of mr. cave. the story is curiously direct and circumstantial. from the outset, when the valley first flashed momentarily on his senses, his imagination was strangely affected, and as he began to appreciate the details of the scene he saw, his wonder rose to the point of a passion. he went about his business listless and distraught, thinking only of the time when he should be able to return to his watching. and then a few weeks after his first sight of the valley came the two customers, the stress and excitement of their offer, and the narrow escape of the crystal from sale, as i have already told. now, while the thing was mr. cave's secret, it remained a mere wonder, a thing to creep to covertly and peep at, as a child might peep upon a forbidden garden. but mr. wace has, for a young scientific investigator, a particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind. directly the crystal and its story came to him, and he had satisfied himself, by seeing the phosphorescence with his own eyes, that there really was a certain evidence for mr. cave's statements, he proceeded to develop the matter systematically. mr. cave was only too eager to come and feast his eyes on this wonderland he saw, and he came every night from half-past eight until half-past ten, and sometimes, in mr. wace's absence, during the day. on sunday afternoons, also, he came. from the outset mr. wace made copious notes, and it was due to his scientific method that the relation between the direction from which the initiating ray entered the crystal and the orientation of the picture were proved. and, by covering the crystal in a box perforated only with a small aperture to admit the exciting ray, and by substituting black holland for his buff blinds, he greatly improved the conditions of the observations; so that in a little while they were able to survey the valley in any direction they desired. so having cleared the way, we may give a brief account of this visionary world within the crystal. the things were in all cases seen by mr. cave, and the method of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal and report what he saw, while mr. wace (who as a science student had learnt the trick of writing in the dark) wrote a brief note of his report. when the crystal faded, it was put into its box in the proper position and the electric light turned on. mr. wace asked questions, and suggested observations to clear up difficult points. nothing, indeed, could have been less visionary and more matter-of-fact. the attention of mr. cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier visions. his first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. then he thought, grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. their heads were round and curiously human, and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled him on his second observation. they had broad, silvery wings, not feathered, but glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed fish and with the same subtle play of colour, and these wings were not built on the plan of bird-wing or bat, mr. wace learned, but supported by curved ribs radiating from the body. (a sort of butterfly wing with curved ribs seems best to express their appearance.) the body was small, but fitted with two bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles, immediately under the mouth. incredible as it appeared to mr. wace, the persuasion at last became irresistible that it was these creatures which owned the great quasi-human buildings and the magnificent garden that made the broad valley so splendid. and mr. cave perceived that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. they would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. but among them was a multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily to and fro. moreover, on the causeways and terraces, large-headed creatures similar to the greater winged flies, but wingless, were visible, hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle of tentacles. allusion has already been made to the glittering objects upon masts that stood upon the terrace of the nearer building. it dawned upon mr. cave, after regarding one of these masts very fixedly on one particularly vivid day that the glittering object there was a crystal exactly like that into which he peered. and a still more careful scrutiny convinced him that each one in a vista of nearly twenty carried a similar object. occasionally one of the large flying creatures would flutter up to one, and folding its wings and coiling a number of its tentacles about the mast, would regard the crystal fixedly for a space,--sometimes for as long as fifteen minutes. and a series of observations, made at the suggestion of mr. wace, convinced both watchers that, so far as this visionary world was concerned, the crystal into which they peered actually stood at the summit of the end-most mast on the terrace, and that on one occasion at least one of these inhabitants of this other world had looked into mr. cave's face while he was making these observations. so much for the essential facts of this very singular story. unless we dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of mr. wace, we have to believe one of two things: either that mr. cave's crystal was in two worlds at once, and that while it was carried about in one, it remained stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of the one in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to an observer in the corresponding crystal in the other world; and _vice versa_. at present, indeed, we do not know of any way in which two crystals could so come _en rapport_, but nowadays we know enough to understand that the thing is not altogether impossible. this view of the crystals as _en rapport_ was the supposition that occurred to mr. wace, and to me at least it seems extremely plausible... and where was this other world? on this, also, the alert intelligence of mr. wace speedily threw light. after sunset, the sky darkened rapidly-there was a very brief twilight interval indeed--and the stars shone out. they were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same constellations. mr. cave recognised the bear, the pleiades, aldebaran, and sirius; so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. following up this clue, mr. wace learned that the midnight sky was a darker blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a little smaller. _and there were two small moons!_ "like our moon but smaller, and quite differently marked," one of which moved so rapidly that its motion was clearly visible as one regarded it. these moons were never high in the sky, but vanished as they rose: that is, every time they revolved they were eclipsed because they were so near their primary planet. and all this answers quite completely, although mr. cave did not know it, to what must be the condition of things on mars. indeed, it seems an exceedingly plausible conclusion that peering into this crystal mr. cave did actually see the planet mars and its inhabitants. and if that be the case, then the evening star that shone so brilliantly in the sky of that distant vision was neither more nor less than our own familiar earth. for a time the martians--if they were martians--do not seem to have known of mr. cave's inspection. once or twice one would come to peer, and go away very shortly to some other mast, as though the vision was unsatisfactory. during this time mr. cave was able to watch the proceedings of these winged people without being disturbed by their attentions, and although his report is necessarily vague and fragmentary, it is nevertheless very suggestive. imagine the impression of humanity a martian observer would get who, after a difficult process of preparation and with considerable fatigue to the eyes, was able to peer at london from the steeple of st. martin's church for stretches, at longest, of four minutes at a time. mr. cave was unable to ascertain if the winged martians were the same as the martians who hopped about the causeways and terraces, and if the latter could put on wings at will. he several times saw certain clumsy bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes, white and partially translucent, feeding among certain of the lichenous trees, and once some of these fled before one of the hopping, round-headed martians. the latter caught one in its tentacles, and then the picture faded suddenly and left mr. cave most tantalisingly in the dark. on another occasion a vast thing, that mr. cave thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the causeway beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. as this drew nearer mr. cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of extraordinary complexity. and then, when he looked again, it had passed out of sight. after a time mr. wace aspired to attract the attention of the martians, and the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to the crystal mr. cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of signalling. but when at last mr. cave examined the crystal again the martian had departed. thus far these observations had progressed in early november, and then mr. cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the crystal were allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that, as occasion arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself with what was fast becoming the most real thing in his existence. in december mr. wace's work in connection with a forthcoming examination became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for a week, and for ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw nothing of cave. he then grew anxious to resume these investigations, and, the stress of his seasonal labours being abated, he went down to seven dials. at the corner he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's window, and then another at a cobbler's. mr. cave's shop was closed. he rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. he at once called mrs. cave, who was, mr. wace could not but observe, in cheap but ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. without any very great surprise mr. wace learnt that cave was dead and already buried. she was in tears, and her voice was a little thick. she had just returned from highgate. her mind seemed occupied with her own prospects and the honourable details of the obsequies, but mr. wace was at last able to learn the particulars of cave's death. he had been found dead in his shop in the early morning, the day after his last visit to mr. wace, and the crystal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands. his face was smiling, said mrs. cave, and the velvet cloth from the minerals lay on the floor at his feet. he must have been dead five or six hours when he was found. this came as a great shock to wace, and he began to reproach himself bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's ill-health. but his chief thought was of the crystal. he approached that topic in a gingerly manner, because he knew mrs. cave's peculiarities. he was dumfounded to learn that it was sold. mrs. cave's first impulse, directly cave's body had been taken upstairs, had been to write to the mad clergyman who had offered five pounds for the crystal, informing him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt, in which her daughter joined her, they were convinced of the loss of his address. as they were without the means required to mourn and bury cave in the elaborate style the dignity of an old seven dials inhabitant demands, they had appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in great portland street. he had very kindly taken over a portion of the stock at a valuation. the valuation was his own, and the crystal egg was included in one of the lots. mr. wace, after a few suitable condolences, a little off-handedly proffered perhaps, hurried at once to great portland street. but there he learned that the crystal egg had already been sold to a tall, dark man in grey. and there the material facts in this curious, and to me at least very suggestive, story come abruptly to an end. the great portland street dealer did not know who the tall dark man in grey was, nor had he observed him with sufficient attention to describe him minutely. he did not even know which way this person had gone after leaving the shop. for a time mr. wace remained in the shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless questions, venting his own exasperation. and at last, realising abruptly that the whole thing had passed out of his hands, had vanished like a vision of the night, he returned to his own rooms, a little astonished to find the notes he had made still tangible and visible upon, his untidy table. his annoyance and disappointment were naturally very great. he made a second call (equally ineffectual) upon the great portland street dealer, and he resorted to advertisements in such periodicals as were lively to come into the hands of a _bric-a-brac_ collector. he also wrote letters to _the daily chronicle_ and _nature_, but both those periodicals, suspecting a hoax, asked him to reconsider his action before they printed, and he was advised that such a strange story, unfortunately so bare of supporting evidence, might imperil his reputation as an investigator. moreover, the calls of his proper work were urgent. so that after a month or so, save for an occasional reminder to certain dealers, he had reluctantly to abandon the quest for the crystal egg, and from that day to this it remains undiscovered. occasionally, however, he tells me, and i can quite believe him, he has bursts of zeal, in which he abandons his more urgent occupation and resumes the search. whether or not it will remain lost for ever, with the material and origin of it, are things equally speculative at the present time. if the present purchaser is a collector, one would have expected the enquiries of mr. wace to have reached him through the dealers. he has been able to discover mr. cave's clergyman and "oriental"--no other than the rev. james parker and the young prince of bosso-kuni in java. i am obliged to them for certain particulars. the object of the prince was simply curiosity--and extravagance. he was so eager to buy because cave was so oddly reluctant to sell. it is just as possible that the buyer in the second instance was simply a casual purchaser and not a collector at all, and the crystal egg, for all i know, may at the present moment be within a mile of me, decorating a drawing-room or serving as a paper-weight--its remarkable functions all unknown. indeed, it is partly with the idea of such a possibility that i have thrown this narrative into a form that will give it a chance of being read by the ordinary consumer of fiction. my own ideas in the matter are practically identical with those of mr. wace. i believe the crystal on the mast in mars and the crystal egg of mr. cave's to be in some physical, but at present quite inexplicable, way _en rapport_, and we both believe further that the terrestrial crystal must have been--possibly at some remote date--sent hither from that planet, in order to give the martians a near view of our affairs. possibly the fellows to the crystals on the other masts are also on our globe. no theory of hallucination suffices for the facts. xx. the star. it was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in december. such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of the solar system. the sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. beyond the orbit of neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. that is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained. and, saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space until early in the twentieth century this strange wanderer appeared. a vast mass of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. by the second day it was clearly visible to any decent instrument, as a speck with a barely sensible diameter, in the constellation leo near regulus. in a little while an opera glass could attain it. on the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the heavens. "a planetary collision," one london paper headed the news, and proclaimed duchaine's opinion that this strange new planet would probably collide with neptune. the leader-writers enlarged upon the topic. so that in most of the capitals of the world, on january 3rd, there was an expectation, however vague, of some imminent phenomenon in the sky; and as the night followed the sunset round the globe, thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to see--the old familiar stars just as they had always been. until it was dawn in london and pollux setting and the stars overhead grown pale. the winter's dawn it was, a sickly filtering accumulation of daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows to show where people were astir. but the yawning policeman saw the thing, the busy crowds in the markets stopped agape, workmen going to their work betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news-carts, dissipation going home jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats, and, in the country, labourers trudging afield, poachers slinking home, all over the dusky quickening country it could be seen--and out at sea by seamen watching for the day--a great white star, come suddenly into the westward sky! brighter it was than any star in our skies; brighter than the evening star at its brightest. it still glowed out white and large, no mere twinkling spot of light, but a small, round, clear shining disc, an hour after the day had come. and where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs in the heavens. sturdy boers, dusky hottentots, gold coast negroes, frenchmen, spaniards, portuguese, stood in the warmth of the sunrise watching the setting of this strange new star. and in a hundred observatories there had been suppressed excitement, rising almost to shouting pitch, as the two remote bodies had rushed together, and a hurrying to and fro, to gather photographic apparatus and spectroscope, and this appliance and that, to record this novel, astonishing sight, the destruction of a world. for it was a world, a sister planet of our earth, far greater than our earth indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. neptune it was had been struck, fairly and squarely, by the strange planet from outer space, and the heat of the concussion had incontinently turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence. round the world that day, two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great white star, fading only as it sank westward and the sun mounted above it. everywhere men marvelled at it, but of all those who saw it none could have marvelled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a pigmy moon and climb zenithward and hang overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night. and when next it rose over europe everywhere were crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the great new star. it rose with a white glow in front of it, like the glare of a white fire, and those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried out at the sight of it. "it is larger," they cried. "it is brighter!" and indeed the moon, a quarter full and sinking in the west, was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star. "it is brighter!" cried the people clustering in the streets. but in the dim observatories the watchers held their breath and peered at one another. "_it is nearer_!" they said. "_nearer_!" and voice after voice repeated, "it is nearer," and the clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires, and in a thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the type. "it is nearer." men writing in offices, struck with a strange realisation, flung down their pens, men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words, "it is nearer." it hurried along awakening streets, it was shouted down the frost-stilled ways of quiet villages, men who had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in yellow-lit doorways shouting the news to the passers-by. "it is nearer," pretty women, flushed and glittering, heard the news told jestingly between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest they did not feel. "nearer! indeed. how curious! how very, very clever people must be to find out things like that!" lonely tramps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to comfort themselves--looking skyward. "it has need to be nearer, for the night's as cold as charity. don't seem much warmth from it if it _is_ nearer, all the same." "what is a new star to me?" cried the weeping woman, kneeling beside her dead. the schoolboy, rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for himself--with the great white star shining broad and bright through the frost-flowers of his window. "centrifugal, centripetal," he said, with his chin on his fist. "stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal force, what then? centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun! and this--! "do _we_ come in the way? i wonder--" the light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again. and it was now so bright that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself, hanging huge in the sunset. in a south african city a great man had married, and the streets were alight to welcome his return with his bride. "even the skies have illuminated," said the flatterer. under capricorn, two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits for love of one another, crouched together in a cane brake where the fire-flies hovered. "that is our star," they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliance of its light. the master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers from him. his calculations were already finished. in a small white phial there still remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active for four long nights. each day, serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his students, and then had come back at once to this momentous calculation. his face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from his drugged activity. for some time he seemed lost in thought. then he went to the window, and the blind went up with a click. half-way up the sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys, and steeples of the city, hung the star. he looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. "you may kill me," he said after a silence. "but i can hold you--and all the universe for that matter--in the grip of this small brain. i would not change. even now." he looked at the little phial. "there will be no need of sleep again," he said. the next day at noon, punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture theatre, put his hat on the end of the table as his habit was, and carefully selected a large piece of chalk. it was a joke among his students that he could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. he came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. "circumstances have arisen--circumstances beyond my control," he said, and paused, "which will debar me from completing the course i had designed. it would seem, gentlemen, if i may put the thing clearly and briefly, that--man has lived in vain." the students glanced at one another. had they heard aright? mad? raised eyebrows and grinning lips there were, but one or two faces remained intent upon his calm grey-fringed face. "it will be interesting," he was saying, "to devote this morning to an exposition, so far as i can make it clear to you, of the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. let us assume----" he turned towards the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that was usual to him. "what was that about 'lived in vain'?" whispered one student to another. "listen," said the other, nodding towards the lecturer. and presently they began to understand. * * * * * that night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion had carried it some way across leo towards virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save only jupiter near the zenith, capella, aldebaran, sirius, and the pointers of the bear. it was very white and beautiful. in many parts of the world that night a pallid halo encircled it about. it was perceptibly larger; in the clear refractive sky of the tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter the size of the moon. the frost was still on the ground in england, but the world was as brightly lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. one could see to read quite ordinary print by that cold, clear light, and in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan. and everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout christendom a sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the country-side like the belling of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew to a clangour in the cities. it was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no more, but to gather in their churches and pray. and overhead, growing larger and brighter, as the earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose the dazzling star. and the streets and houses were alight in all the cities, the shipyards glared, and whatever roads led to high country were lit and crowded all night long. and in all the seas about the civilized lands, ships with throbbing engines, and ships with bellying sails, crowded with men and living creatures, were standing out to ocean and the north. for already the warning of the master mathematician had been telegraphed all over the world and translated into a hundred tongues. the new planet and neptune, locked in a fiery embrace, were whirling headlong, ever faster and faster towards the sun. already every second this blazing mass flew a hundred miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased. as it flew now, indeed, it must pass a hundred million of miles, wide of the earth and scarcely affect it. but near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed, spun the mighty planet jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid round the sun. every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger. and the result of that attraction? inevitably jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would "describe a curved path," and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our earth. "earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to i know not what limit"--so prophesied the master mathematician. and overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and cold and livid blazed the star of the coming doom. to many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached it seemed that it was visibly approaching. and that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all central europe and france and england softened towards a thaw. but you must not imagine, because i have spoken of people praying through the night and people going aboard ships and people fleeing towards mountainous country, that the whole world was already in a terror because of the star. as a matter of fact, use and wont still ruled the world, and save for the talk of idle moments and the splendour of the night, nine human beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations. in all the cities the shops, save one here and there, opened and closed at their proper hours, the doctor and the undertaker plied their trades, the workers gathered in the factories, soldiers drilled, scholars studied, lovers sought one another, thieves lurked and fled, politicians planned their schemes. the presses of the newspapers roared through the nights, and many a priest of this church and that would not open his holy building to further what he considered a foolish panic. the newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000--for then, too, people had anticipated the end. the star was no star--mere gas--a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. there was no precedent for such a thing. common-sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. that night, at seven-fifteen by greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to jupiter. then the world would see the turn things would take. the master mathematician's grim warnings were treated by many as so much mere elaborate self-advertisement. common-sense at last, a little heated by argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed. so, too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about their nightly business, and, save for a howling dog here and there, the beast world left the star unheeded. and yet, when at last the watchers in the european states saw the star rise, an hour later, it is true, but no larger than it had been the night before, there were still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician--to take the danger as if it had passed. but hereafter the laughter ceased. the star grew--it grew with a terrible steadiness hour after hour, a little larger each hour, a little nearer the midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had turned night into a second day. had it come straight to the earth instead of in a curved path, had it lost no velocity to jupiter, it must have leapt the intervening gulf in a day; but as it was, it took five days altogether to come by our planet. the next night it had become a third the size of the moon before it set to english eyes, and the thaw was assured. it rose over america near the size of the moon, but blinding white to look at, and _hot_; and a breath of hot wind blew now with its rising and gathering strength, and in virginia, and brazil, and down the st. lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek of thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail unprecedented. in manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. and upon all the mountains of the earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon--in their upper reaches-with swirling trees and the bodies of beasts and men. they rose steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their banks at last, behind the flying population of their valleys. and along the coast of argentina and up the south atlantic the tides were higher than had ever been in the memory of man, and the storms drove the waters in many cases scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. and so great grew the heat during the night that the rising of the sun was like the coming of a shadow. the earthquakes began and grew until all down america from the arctic circle to cape horn, hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening, and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. the whole side of cotopaxi slipped out in one vast convulsion, and a tumult of lava poured out so high and broad and swift and liquid that in one day it reached the sea. so the star, with the wan moon in its wake, marched across the pacific, trailed the thunder-storms like the hem of a robe, and the growing tidal wave that toiled behind it, frothing and eager, poured over island and island and swept them clear of men: until that wave came at last--in a blinding light and with the breath of a furnace, swift and terrible it came--a wall of water, fifty feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long coasts of asia, and swept inland across the plains of china. for a space the star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood. and thus it was with millions of men that night--a flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall swift and white behind. and then death. china was lit glowing white, but over japan and java and all the islands of eastern asia the great star was a ball of dull red fire because of the steam and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming. above was the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods, and the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. soon the immemorial snows of thibet and the himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten million deepening converging channels upon the plains of burmah and hindostan. the tangled summits of the indian jungles were aflame in a thousand places, and below the hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected the blood-red tongues of fire. and in a rudderless confusion a multitude of men and women fled down the broad river-ways to that one last hope of men--the open sea. larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a terrible swiftness now. the tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly, speckled with storm-tossed ships. and then came a wonder. it seemed to those who in europe watched for the rising of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. in a thousand open spaces of down and upland the people who had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain. hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not. once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had counted lost to them for ever. in england it was hot and clear overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually, but in the tropics, sirius and capella and aldebaran showed through a veil of steam. and when at last the great star rose near ten hours late, the sun rose close upon it, and in the centre of its white heart was a disc of black. over asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung over india, its light had been veiled. all the plain of india from the mouth of the indus to the mouths of the ganges was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people. every minaret was a clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as heat and terror overcame them. the whole land seemed a-wailing, and suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out of the cooling air. men looking up, near blinded, at the star, saw that a black disc was creeping across the light. it was the moon, coming between the star and the earth. and even as men cried to god at this respite, out of the east with a strange inexplicable swiftness sprang the sun. and then star, sun, and moon rushed together across the heavens. so it was that presently to the european watchers star and sun rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then slower, and at last came to rest, star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. the moon no longer eclipsed the star but was lost to sight in the brilliance of the sky. and though those who were still alive regarded it for the most part with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender, there were still men who could perceive the meaning of these signs. star and earth had been at their nearest, had swung about one another, and the star had passed. already it was receding, swifter and swifter, in the last stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun. and then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky, the thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world; all over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of mud. everywhere the waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted ruins, and the earth littered like a storm-worn beach with all that had floated, and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its children. for days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way, and piling huge dykes and scooping out titanic gullies over the country-side. those were the days of darkness that followed the star and the heat. all through them, and for many weeks and months, the earthquakes continued. but the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden fields. such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports. and as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new. but of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over iceland and greenland and the shores of baffin's bay, so that the sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe their eyes, this story does not tell. nor of the movement of mankind, now that the earth was hotter, northward and southward towards the poles of the earth. it concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the star. the martian astronomers--for there are astronomers on mars, although they are very different beings from men--were naturally profoundly interested by these things. they saw them from their own standpoint of course. "considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sun," one wrote, "it is astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. all the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white discolouration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole." which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem at a distance of a few million miles. xxi. the man who could work miracles. a pantoum in prose. it is doubtful whether the gift was innate. for my own part, i think it came to him suddenly. indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe in miraculous powers. and here, since it is the most convenient place, i must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that he twisted up, and freckles. his name was george mcwhirter fotheringay--not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles--and he was clerk at gomshott's. he was greatly addicted to assertive argument. it was while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers. this particular argument was being held in the bar of the long dragon, and toddy beamish was conducting the opposition by a monotonous but effective "so _you_ say," that drove mr. fotheringay to the very limit of his patience. there were present, besides these two, a very dusty cyclist, landlord cox, and miss maybridge, the perfectly respectable and rather portly barmaid of the dragon. miss maybridge was standing with her back to mr. fotheringay, washing glasses; the others were watching him, more or less amused by the present ineffectiveness of the assertive method. goaded by the torres vedras tactics of mr. beamish, mr. fotheringay determined to make an unusual rhetorical effort. "looky here, mr. beamish," said mr. fotheringay. "let us clearly understand what a miracle is. it's something contrariwise to the course of nature, done by power of will, something what couldn't happen without being specially willed." "so _you_ say," said mr. beamish, repulsing him. mr. fotheringay appealed to the cyclist, who had hitherto been a silent auditor, and received his assent--given with a hesitating cough and a glance at mr. beamish. the landlord would express no opinion, and mr. fotheringay, returning to mr. beamish, received the unexpected concession of a qualified assent to his definition of a miracle. "for instance," said mr. fotheringay, greatly encouraged. "here would be a miracle. that lamp, in the natural course of nature, couldn't burn like that upsy-down, could it, beamish?" "_you_ say it couldn't," said beamish. "and you?" said fotheringay. "you don't mean to say--eh?" "no," said beamish reluctantly. "no, it couldn't." "very well," said mr. fotheringay. "then here comes someone, as it might be me, along here, and stands as it might be here, and says to that lamp, as i might do, collecting all my will--turn upsy-down without breaking, and go on burning steady, and--hullo!" it was enough to make anyone say "hullo!" the impossible, the incredible, was visible to them all. the lamp hung inverted in the air, burning quietly with its flame pointing down. it was as solid, as indisputable as ever a lamp was, the prosaic common lamp of the long dragon bar. mr. fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows of one anticipating a catastrophic smash. the cyclist, who was sitting next the lamp, ducked and jumped across the bar. everybody jumped, more or less. miss maybridge turned and screamed. for nearly three seconds the lamp remained still. a faint cry of mental distress came from mr. fotheringay. "i can't keep it up," he said, "any longer." he staggered back, and the inverted lamp suddenly flared, fell against the corner of the bar, bounced aside, smashed upon the floor, and went out. it was lucky it had a metal receiver, or the whole place would have been in a blaze. mr. cox was the first to speak, and his remark, shorn of needless excrescences, was to the effect that fotheringay was a fool. fotheringay was beyond disputing even so fundamental a proposition as that! he was astonished beyond measure at the thing that had occurred. the subsequent conversation threw absolutely no light on the matter so far as fotheringay was concerned; the general opinion not only followed mr. cox very closely but very vehemently. everyone accused fotheringay of a silly trick, and presented him to himself as a foolish destroyer of comfort and security. his mind was in a tornado of perplexity, he was himself inclined to agree with them, and he made a remarkably ineffectual opposition to the proposal of his departure. he went home flushed and heated, coat-collar crumpled, eyes smarting, and ears red. he watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he passed it. it was only when he found himself alone in his little bedroom in church row that he was able to grapple seriously with his memories of the occurrence, and ask, "what on earth happened?" he had removed his coat and boots, and was sitting on the bed with his hands in his pockets repeating the text of his defence for the seventeenth time, "i didn't want the confounded thing to upset," when it occurred to him that at the precise moment he had said the commanding words he had inadvertently willed the thing he said, and that when he had seen the lamp in the air he had felt that it depended on him to maintain it there without being clear how this was to be done. he had not a particularly complex mind, or he might have stuck for a time at that "inadvertently willed," embracing, as it does, the abstrusest problems of voluntary action; but as it was, the idea came to him with a quite acceptable haziness. and from that, following, as i must admit, no clear logical path, he came to the test of experiment. he pointed resolutely to his candle and collected his mind, though he felt he did a foolish thing. "be raised up," he said. but in a second that feeling vanished. the candle was raised, hung in the air one giddy moment, and as mr. fotheringay gasped, fell with a smash on his toilet-table, leaving him in darkness save for the expiring glow of its wick. for a time mr. fotheringay sat in the darkness, perfectly still. "it did happen, after all," he said. "and 'ow _i'm_ to explain it i _don't_ know." he sighed heavily, and began feeling in his pockets for a match. he could find none, and he rose and groped about the toilet-table. "i wish i had a match," he said. he resorted to his coat, and there was none there, and then it dawned upon him that miracles were possible even with matches. he extended a hand and scowled at it in the dark. "let there be a match in that hand," he said. he felt some light object fall across his palm and his fingers closed upon a match. after several ineffectual attempts to light this, he discovered it was a safety match. he threw it down, and then it occurred to him that he might have willed it lit. he did, and perceived it burning in the midst of his toilet-table mat. he caught it up hastily, and it went out. his perception of possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "here! _you_ be lit," said mr. fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. for a time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass. by this help he communed with himself in silence for a time. "how about miracles now?" said mr. fotheringay at last, addressing his reflection. the subsequent meditations of mr. fotheringay were of a severe but confused description. so far, he could see it was a case of pure willing with him. the nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. but he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth-brush. somewhere in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact of which he had indeed had inklings before, but no certain assurance. the scare and perplexity of his first discovery was now qualified by pride in this evidence of singularity and by vague intimations of advantage. he became aware that the church clock was striking one, and as it did not occur to him that his daily duties at gomshott's might be miraculously dispensed with, he resumed undressing, in order to get to bed without further delay. as he struggled to get his shirt over his head, he was struck with a brilliant idea. "let me be in bed," he said, and found himself so. "undressed," he stipulated; and, finding the sheets cold, added hastily, "and in my nightshirt--ho, in a nice soft woollen nightshirt. ah!" he said with immense enjoyment. "and now let me be comfortably asleep..." he awoke at his usual hour and was pensive all through breakfast-time, wondering whether his over-night experience might not be a particularly vivid dream. at length his mind turned again to cautious experiments. for instance, he had three eggs for breakfast; two his landlady had supplied, good, but shoppy, and one was a delicious fresh goose-egg, laid, cooked, and served by his extraordinary will. he hurried off to gomshott's in a state of profound but carefully concealed excitement, and only remembered the shell of the third egg when his landlady spoke of it that night. all day he could do no work because of this astonishing new self-knowledge, but this caused him no inconvenience, because he made up for it miraculously in his last ten minutes. as the day wore on his state of mind passed from wonder to elation, albeit the circumstances of his dismissal from the long dragon were still disagreeable to recall, and a garbled account of the matter that had reached his colleagues led to some badinage. it was evident he must be careful how he lifted frangible articles, but in other ways his gift promised more and more as he turned it over in his mind. he intended among other things to increase his personal property by unostentatious acts of creation. he called into existence a pair of very splendid diamond studs, and hastily annihilated them again as young gomshott came across the counting-house to his desk. he was afraid young gomshott might wonder how he had come by them. he saw quite clearly the gift required caution and watchfulness in its exercise, but so far as he could judge the difficulties attending its mastery would be no greater than those he had already faced in the study of cycling. it was that analogy, perhaps, quite as much as the feeling that he would be unwelcome in the long dragon, that drove him out after supper into the lane beyond the gasworks, to rehearse a few miracles in private. there was possibly a certain want of originality in his attempts, for, apart from his will-power, mr. fotheringay was not a very exceptional man. the miracle of moses' rod came to his mind, but the night was dark and unfavourable to the proper control of large miraculous snakes. then he recollected the story of "tannhäuser" that he had read on the back of the philharmonic programme. that seemed to him singularly attractive and harmless. he stuck his walking-stick--a very nice poona-penang lawyer-into the turf that edged the footpath, and commanded the dry wood to blossom. the air was immediately full of the scent of roses, and by means of a match he saw for himself that this beautiful miracle was indeed accomplished. his satisfaction was ended by advancing footsteps. afraid of a premature discovery of his powers, he addressed the blossoming stick hastily: "go back." what he meant was "change back;" but of course he was confused. the stick receded at a considerable velocity, and incontinently came a cry of anger and a bad word from the approaching person. "who are you throwing brambles at, you fool?" cried a voice. "that got me on the shin." "i'm sorry, old chap," said mr. fotheringay, and then, realising the awkward nature of the explanation, caught nervously at his moustache. he saw winch, one of the three immering constables, advancing. "what d'yer mean by it?" asked the constable. "hullo! it's you, is it? the gent that broke the lamp at the long dragon!" "i don't mean anything by it," said mr. fotheringay. "nothing at all." "what d'yer do it for then?" "oh, bother!" said mr. fotheringay. "bother indeed! d'yer know that stick hurt? what d'yer do it for, eh?" for the moment mr. fotheringay could not think what he had done it for. his silence seemed to irritate mr. winch. "you've been assaulting the police, young man, this time. that's what _you_ done." "look here, mr. winch," said mr. fotheringay, annoyed and confused, "i'm sorry, very. the fact is----" "well?" he could think of no way but the truth. "i was working a miracle." he tried to speak in an off-hand way, but try as he would he couldn't. "working a--! 'ere, don't you talk rot. working a miracle, indeed! miracle! well, that's downright funny! why, you's the chap that don't believe in miracles... fact is, this is another of your silly conjuring tricks--that's what this is. now, i tell you--" but mr. fotheringay never heard what mr. winch was going to tell him. he realised he had given himself away, flung his valuable secret to all the winds of heaven. a violent gust of irritation swept him to action. he turned on the constable swiftly and fiercely. "here," he said, "i've had enough of this, i have! i'll show you a silly conjuring trick, i will! go to hades! go, now!" he was alone! mr. fotheringay performed no more miracles that night, nor did he trouble to see what had become of his flowering stick. he returned to the town, scared and very quiet, and went to his bedroom. "lord!" he said, "it's a powerful gift--an extremely powerful gift. i didn't hardly mean as much as that. not really... i wonder what hades is like!" he sat on the bed taking off his boots. struck by a happy thought he transferred the constable to san francisco, and without any more interference with normal causation went soberly to bed. in the night he dreamt of the anger of winch. the next day mr. fotheringay heard two interesting items of news. someone had planted a most beautiful climbing rose against the elder mr. gomshott's private house in the lullaborough road, and the river as far as rawling's mill was to be dragged for constable winch. mr. fotheringay was abstracted and thoughtful all that day, and performed no miracles except certain provisions for winch, and the miracle of completing his day's work with punctual perfection in spite of all the bee-swarm of thoughts that hummed through his mind. and the extraordinary abstraction and meekness of his manner was remarked by several people, and made a matter for jesting. for the most part he was thinking of winch. on sunday evening he went to chapel, and oddly enough, mr. maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are not lawful." mr. fotheringay was not a regular chapelgoer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which i have already alluded, was now very much shaken. the tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on these novel gifts, and he suddenly decided to consult mr. maydig immediately after the service. so soon as that was determined, he found himself wondering why he had not done so before. mr. maydig, a lean, excitable man with quite remarkably long wrists and neck, was gratified at a request for a private conversation from a young man whose carelessness in religious matters was a subject for general remark in the town. after a few necessary delays, he conducted him to the study of the manse, which was contiguous to the chapel, seated him comfortably, and, standing in front of a cheerful fire--his legs threw a rhodian arch of shadow on the opposite wall--requested mr. fotheringay to state his business. at first mr. fotheringay was a little abashed, and found some difficulty in opening the matter. "you will scarcely believe me, mr. maydig, i am afraid"--and so forth for some time. he tried a question at last, and asked mr. maydig his opinion of miracles. mr. maydig was still saying "well" in an extremely judicial tone, when mr. fotheringay interrupted again: "you don't believe, i suppose, that some common sort of person--like myself, for instance--as it might be sitting here now, might have some sort of twist inside him that made him able to do things by his will." "it's possible," said mr. maydig. "something of the sort, perhaps, is possible." "if i might make free with something here, i think i might show you by a sort of experiment," said mr. fotheringay. "now, take that tobacco-jar on the table, for instance. what i want to know is whether what i am going to do with it is a miracle or not. just half a minute, mr. maydig, please." he knitted his brows, pointed to the tobacco-jar and said: "be a bowl of vi'lets." the tobacco-jar did as it was ordered. mr. maydig started violently at the change, and stood looking from the thaumaturgist to the bowl of flowers. he said nothing. presently he ventured to lean over the table and smell the violets; they were fresh-picked and very fine ones. then he stared at mr. fotheringay again. "how did you do that?" he asked. mr. fotheringay pulled his moustache. "just told it--and there you are. is that a miracle, or is it black art, or what is it? and what do you think's the matter with me? that's what i want to ask." "it's a most extraordinary occurrence." "and this day last week i knew no more that i could do things like that than you did. it came quite sudden. it's something odd about my will, i suppose, and that's as far as i can see." "is that--the only thing. could you do other things besides that?" "lord, yes!" said mr. fotheringay. "just anything." he thought, and suddenly recalled a conjuring entertainment he had seen. "here!" he pointed, "change into a bowl of fish--no, not that--change into a glass bowl full of water with goldfish swimming in it. that's better! you see that, mr. maydig?" "it's astonishing. it's incredible. you are either a most extraordinary... but no----" "i could change it into anything," said mr. fotheringay. "just anything. here! be a pigeon, will you?" in another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering round the room and making mr. maydig duck every time it came near him. "stop there, will you?" said mr. fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in the air. "i could change it back to a bowl of flowers," he said, and after replacing the pigeon on the table worked that miracle. "i expect you will want your pipe in a bit," he said, and restored the tobacco-jar. mr. maydig had followed all these later changes in a sort of ejaculatory silence. he stared at mr. fotheringay and in a very gingerly manner picked up the tobacco-jar, examined it, replaced it on the table. "_well_!" was the only expression of his feelings. "now, after that it's easier to explain what i came about," said mr. fotheringay; and proceeded to a lengthy and involved narrative of his strange experiences, beginning with the affair of the lamp in the long dragon and complicated by persistent allusions to winch. as he went on, the transient pride mr. maydig's consternation had caused passed away; he became the very ordinary mr. fotheringay of everyday intercourse again. mr. maydig listened intently, the tobacco-jar in his hand, and his bearing changed also with the course of the narrative. presently, while mr. fotheringay was dealing with the miracle of the third egg, the minister interrupted with a fluttering, extended hand. "it is possible," he said. "it is credible. it is amazing, of course, but it reconciles a number of amazing difficulties. the power to work miracles is a gift--a peculiar quality like genius or second sight; hitherto it has come very rarely and to exceptional people. but in this case...i have always wondered at the miracles of mahomet, and at yogi's miracles, and the miracles of madame blavatsky. but, of course--yes, it is simply a gift! it carries out so beautifully the arguments of that great thinker"-mr. maydig's voice sank--"his grace the duke of argyll. here we plumb some profounder law--deeper than the ordinary laws of nature. yes--yes. go on. go on!" mr. fotheringay proceeded to tell of his misadventure with winch, and mr. maydig, no longer overawed or scared, began to jerk his limbs about and interject astonishment. "it's this what troubled me most," proceeded mr. fotheringay; "it's this i'm most mijitly in want of advice for; of course he's at san francisco--wherever san francisco may be--but of course it's awkward for both of us, as you'll see, mr. maydig. i don't see how he can understand what has happened, and i daresay he's scared and exasperated something tremendous, and trying to get at me. i daresay he keeps on starting off to come here. i send him back, by a miracle, every few hours, when i think of it. and, of course, that's a thing he won't be able to understand, and it's bound to annoy him; and, of course, if he takes a ticket every time it will cost him a lot of money. i done the best i could for him, but, of course, it's difficult for him to put himself in my place. i thought afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched, you know--if hades is all it's supposed to be--before i shifted him. in that case i suppose they'd have locked him up in san francisco. of course i willed him a new suit of clothes on him directly i thought of it. but, you see, i'm already in a deuce of a tangle----" mr. maydig looked serious. "i see you are in a tangle. yes, it's a difficult position. how you are to end it..." he became diffuse and inconclusive. "however, we'll leave winch for a little and discuss the larger question. i don't think this is a case of the black art or anything of the sort. i don't think there is any taint of criminality about it at all, mr. fotheringay--none whatever, unless you are suppressing material facts. no, it's miracles--pure miracles--miracles, if i may say so, of the very highest class." he began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate, while mr. fotheringay sat with his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried. "i don't see how i'm to manage about winch," he said. "a gift of working miracles--apparently a very powerful gift," said mr. maydig, "will find a way about winch--never fear. my dear sir, you are a most important man--a man of the most astonishing possibilities. as evidence, for example! and in other ways, the things you may do..." "yes, _i've_ thought of a thing or two," said mr. fotheringay. "but-some of the things came a bit twisty. you saw that fish at first? wrong sort of bowl and wrong sort of fish. and i thought i'd ask someone." "a proper course," said mr. maydig, "a very proper course--altogether the proper course." he stopped and looked at mr. fotheringay. "it's practically an unlimited gift. let us test your powers, for instance. if they really _are_ ... if they really are all they seem to be." and so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behind the congregational chapel, on the evening of sunday, nov. 10, 1896, mr. fotheringay, egged on and inspired by mr. maydig, began to work miracles. the reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date. he will object, probably has already objected, that certain points in this story are improbable, that if any things of the sort already described had indeed occurred, they would have been in all the papers at that time. the details immediately following he will find particularly hard to accept, because among other things they involve the conclusion that he or she, the reader in question, must have been killed in a violent and unprecedented manner more than a year ago. now a miracle is nothing if not improbable, and as a matter of fact the reader _was_ killed in a violent and unprecedented manner in 1896. in the subsequent course of this story that will become perfectly clear and credible, as every right-minded and reasonable reader will admit. but this is not the place for the end of the story, being but little beyond the hither side of the middle. and at first the miracles worked by mr. fotheringay were timid little miracles--little things with the cups and parlour fitments, as feeble as the miracles of theosophists, and, feeble as they were, they were received with awe by his collaborator. he would have preferred to settle the winch business out of hand, but mr. maydig would not let him. but after they had worked a dozen of these domestic trivialities, their sense of power grew, their imagination began to show signs of stimulation, and their ambition enlarged. their first larger enterprise was due to hunger and the negligence of mrs. minchin, mr. maydig's housekeeper. the meal to which the minister conducted mr. fotheringay was certainly ill-laid and uninviting as refreshment for two industrious miracle-workers; but they were seated, and mr. maydig was descanting in sorrow rather than in anger upon his housekeeper's shortcomings, before it occurred to mr. fotheringay that an opportunity lay before him. "don't you think, mr. maydig," he said, "if it isn't a liberty, _i_----" "my dear mr. fotheringay! of course! no--i didn't think." mr. fotheringay waved his hand. "what shall we have?" he said, in a large, inclusive spirit, and, at mr. maydig's order, revised the supper very thoroughly. "as for me," he said, eyeing mr. maydig's selection, "i am always particularly fond of a tankard of stout and a nice welsh rarebit, and i'll order that. i ain't much given to burgundy," and forthwith stout and welsh rarebit promptly appeared at his command. they sat long at their supper, talking like equals, as mr. fotheringay presently perceived, with a glow of surprise and gratification, of all the miracles they would presently do. "and, by-the-by, mr. maydig," said mr. fotheringay, "i might perhaps be able to help you--in a domestic way." "don't quite follow," said mr. maydig, pouring out a glass of miraculous old burgundy. mr. fotheringay helped himself to a second welsh rarebit out of vacancy, and took a mouthful. "i was thinking," he said, "i might be able (_chum, chum_) to work (_chum, chum_) a miracle with mrs. minchin (_chum, chum_)--make her a better woman." mr. maydig put down the glass and looked doubtful. "she's----she strongly objects to interference, you know, mr. fotheringay. and--as a matter of fact--it's well past eleven and she's probably in bed and asleep. do you think, on the whole----" mr. fotheringay considered these objections. "i don't see that it shouldn't be done in her sleep." for a time mr. maydig opposed the idea, and then he yielded. mr. fotheringay issued his orders, and a little less at their ease, perhaps, the two gentlemen proceeded with their repast. mr. maydig was enlarging on the changes he might expect in his housekeeper next day, with an optimism, that seemed even to mr. fotheringay's supper senses a little forced and hectic, when a series of confused noises from upstairs began. their eyes exchanged interrogations, and mr. maydig left the room hastily. mr. fotheringay heard him calling up to his housekeeper and then his footsteps going softly up to her. in a minute or so the minister returned, his step light, his face radiant. "wonderful!" he said, "and touching! most touching!" he began pacing the hearthrug. "a repentance--a most touching repentance-through the crack of the door. poor woman! a most wonderful change! she had got up. she must have got up at once. she had got up out of her sleep to smash a private bottle of brandy in her box. and to confess it too!... but this gives us--it opens--a most amazing vista of possibilities. if we can work this miraculous change in _her_..." "the thing's unlimited seemingly," said mr. fotheringay. "and about mr. winch----" "altogether unlimited." and from the hearthrug mr. maydig, waving the winch difficulty aside, unfolded a series of wonderful proposals-proposals he invented as he went along. now what those proposals were does not concern the essentials of this story. suffice it that they were designed in a spirit of infinite benevolence, the sort of benevolence that used to be called post-prandial. suffice it, too, that the problem of winch remained unsolved. nor is it necessary to describe how far that series got to its fulfilment. there were astonishing changes. the small hours found mr. maydig and mr. fotheringay careering across the chilly market square under the still moon, in a sort of ecstasy of thaumaturgy, mr. maydig all flap and gesture, mr. fotheringay short and bristling, and no longer abashed at his greatness. they had reformed every drunkard in the parliamentary division, changed all the beer and alcohol to water (mr. maydig had overruled mr. fotheringay on this point); they had, further, greatly improved the railway communication of the place, drained flinder's swamp, improved the soil of one tree hill, and cured the vicar's wart. and they were going to see what could be done with the injured pier at south bridge. "the place," gasped mr. maydig, "won't be the same place to-morrow. how surprised and thankful everyone will be!" and just at that moment the church clock struck three. "i say," said mr. fotheringay, "that's three o'clock! i must be getting back. i've got to be at business by eight. and besides, mrs. wimms----" "we're only beginning," said mr. maydig, full of the sweetness of unlimited power. "we're only beginning. think of all the good we're doing. when people wake----" "but----," said mr. fotheringay. mr. maydig gripped his arm suddenly. his eyes were bright and wild. "my dear chap," he said, "there's no hurry. look"--he pointed to the moon at the zenith--"joshua!" "joshua?" said mr. fotheringay. "joshua," said mr. maydig. "why not? stop it." mr. fotheringay looked at the moon. "that's a bit tall," he said, after a pause. "why not?" said mr. maydig. "of course it doesn't stop. you stop the rotation of the earth, you know. time stops. it isn't as if we were doing harm." "h'm!" said mr. fotheringay. "well," he sighed, "i'll try. here!" he buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to the habitable globe, with as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power. "jest stop rotating, will you?" said mr. fotheringay. incontinently he was flying head over heels through the air at the rate of dozens of miles a minute. in spite of the innumerable circles he was describing per second, he thought; for thought is wonderful--sometimes as sluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous as light. he thought in a second, and willed. "let me come down safe and sound. whatever else happens, let me down safe and sound." he willed it only just in time, for his clothes, heated by his rapid flight through the air, were already beginning to singe. he came down with a forcible, but by no means injurious, bump in what appeared to be a mound of fresh-turned earth. a large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarily like the clock-tower in the middle of the market square, hit the earth near him, ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, and cement, like a bursting bomb. a hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocks and smashed like an egg. there was a crash that made all the most violent crashes of his past life seem like the sound of falling dust, and this was followed by a descending series of lesser crashes. a vast wind roared throughout earth and heaven, so that he could scarcely lift his head to look. for a while he was too breathless and astonished even to see where he was or what had happened. and his first movement was to feel his head and reassure himself that his streaming hair was still his own. "lord!" gasped mr. fotheringay, scarce able to speak for the gale, "i've had a squeak! what's gone wrong? storms and thunder. and only a minute ago a fine night. it's maydig set me on to this sort of thing. _what_ a wind! if i go on fooling in this way i'm bound to have a thundering accident!... "where's maydig? "what a confounded mess everything's in!" he looked about him so far as his flapping jacket would permit. the appearance of things was really extremely strange. "the sky's all right anyhow," said mr. fotheringay. "and that's about all that is all right. and even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up. but there's the moon overhead. just as it was just now. bright as midday. but as for the rest----where's the village? where's--where's anything? and what on earth set this wind a-blowing? i didn't order no wind." mr. fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain, and after one failure, remained on all fours, holding on. he surveyed the moonlit world to leeward, with the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. "there's something seriously wrong," said mr. fotheringay. "and what it is-goodness knows." far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare through the haze of dust that drove before a screaming gale but tumbled masses of earth and heaps of inchoate ruins, no trees, no houses, no familiar shapes, only a wilderness of disorder, vanishing at last into the darkness beneath the whirling columns and streamers, the lightnings and thunderings of a swiftly rising storm. near him in the livid glare was something that might once have been an elm-tree, a smashed mass of splinters, shivered from boughs to base, and further a twisted mass of iron girders--only too evidently the viaduct--rose out of the piled confusion. you see, when mr. fotheringay had arrested the rotation of the solid globe, he had made no stipulation concerning the trifling movables upon its surface. and the earth spins so fast that the surface at its equator is travelling at rather more than a thousand miles an hour, and in these latitudes at more than half that pace. so that the village, and mr. maydig, and mr. fotheringay, and everybody and everything had been jerked violently forward at about nine miles per second--that is to say, much more violently than if they had been fired out of a cannon. and every human being, every living creature, every house, and every tree--all the world as we know it--had been so jerked and smashed and utterly destroyed. that was all. these things mr. fotheringay did not, of course, fully appreciate. but he perceived that his miracle had miscarried, and with that a great disgust of miracles came upon him. he was in darkness now, for the clouds had swept together and blotted out his momentary glimpse of the moon, and the air was full of fitful struggling tortured wraiths of hail. a great roaring of wind and waters filled earth and sky, and peering under his hand through the dust and sleet to windward, he saw by the play of the lightnings a vast wall of water pouring towards him. "maydig!" screamed mr. fotheringay's feeble voice amid the elemental uproar. "here!--maydig! "stop!" cried mr. fotheringay to the advancing water. "oh, for goodness' sake, stop! "just a moment," said mr. fotheringay to the lightnings and thunder. "stop jest a moment while i collect my thoughts... and now what shall i do?" he said. "what _shall_ i do? lord! i wish maydig was about." "i know," said mr. fotheringay. "and for goodness' sake let's have it right _this_ time." he remained on all fours, leaning against the wind, very intent to have everything right. "ah!" he said. "let nothing what i'm going to order happen until i say 'off!'...lord! i wish i'd thought of that before!" he lifted his little voice against the whirlwind, shouting louder and louder in the vain desire to hear himself speak. "now then!--here goes! mind about that what i said just now. in the first place, when all i've got to say is done, let me lose my miraculous power, let my will become just like anybody else's will, and all these dangerous miracles be stopped. i don't like them. i'd rather i didn't work 'em. ever so much. that's the first thing. and the second is--let me be back just before the miracles begin; let everything be just as it was before that blessed lamp turned up. it's a big job, but it's the last. have you got it? no more miracles, everything as it was--me back in the long dragon just before i drank my half-pint. that's it! yes." he dug his fingers into the mould, closed his eyes, and said "off!" everything became perfectly still. he perceived that he was standing erect. "so _you_ say," said a voice. he opened his eyes. he was in the bar of the long dragon, arguing about miracles with toddy beamish. he had a vague sense of some great thing forgotten that instantaneously passed. you see that, except for the loss of his miraculous powers, everything was back as it had been, his mind and memory therefore were now just as they had been at the time when this story began. so that he knew absolutely nothing of all that is told here-knows nothing of all that is told here to this day. and among other things, of course, he still did not believe in miracles. "i tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can't possibly happen," he said, "whatever you like to hold. and i'm prepared to prove it up to the hilt." "that's what _you_ think," said toddy beamish, and "prove it if you can." "looky here, mr. beamish," said mr. fotheringay. "let us clearly understand what a miracle is. it's something contrariwise to the course of nature done by power of will..." xxii. a vision of judgment. i. bru-a-a-a. i listened, not understanding. wa-ra-ra-ra. "good lord!" said i, still only half awake. "what an infernal shindy!" ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra ta-ra-rra-ra. "it's enough," said i, "to wake----" and stopped short. where was i? ta-rra-rara--louder and louder. "it's either some new invention----" toora-toora-toora! deafening! "no," said i, speaking loud in order to hear myself. "that's the last trump." tooo-rraa! ii. the last note jerked me out of my grave like a hooked minnow. i saw my monument (rather a mean little affair, and i wished i knew who'd done it), and the old elm tree and the sea view vanished like a puff of steam, and then all about me--a multitude no man could number, nations, tongues, kingdoms, peoples--children of all the ages, in an amphitheatral space as vast as the sky. and over against us, seated on a throne of dazzling white cloud, the lord god and all the host of his angels. i recognised azrael by his darkness and michael by his sword, and the great angel who had blown the trumpet stood with the trumpet still half raised. iii. "prompt," said the little man beside me. "very prompt. do you see the angel with the book?" he was ducking and craning his head about to see over and under and between the souls that crowded round us. "everybody's here," he said. "everybody. and now we shall know-"there's darwin," he said, going off at a tangent. "_he'll_ catch it! and there--you see?--that tall, important-looking man trying to catch the eye of the lord god, that's the duke. but there's a lot of people one doesn't know. "oh! there's priggles, the publisher. i have always wondered about printers' overs. priggles was a clever man ... but we shall know now--even about him. "i shall hear all that. i shall get most of the fun before ... _my_ letter's s." he drew the air in between his teeth. "historical characters, too. see? that's henry the eighth. there'll be a good bit of evidence. oh, damn! he's tudor." he lowered his voice. "notice this chap, just in front of us, all covered with hair. paleolithic, you know. and there again--" but i did not heed him, because i was looking at the lord god. iv. "is this _all_?" asked the lord god. the angel at the book--it was one of countless volumes, like the british museum reading-room catalogue, glanced at us and seemed to count us in the instant. "that's all," he said, and added: "it was, o god, a very little planet." the eyes of god surveyed us. "let us begin," said the lord god. v. the angel opened the book and read a name. it was a name full of a's, and the echoes of it came back out of the uttermost parts of space. i did not catch it clearly, because the little man beside me said, in a sharp jerk, "_what's_ that?" it sounded like "ahab" to me; but it could not have been the ahab of scripture. instantly a small black figure was lifted up to a puffy cloud at the very feet of god. it was a stiff little figure, dressed in rich outlandish robes and crowned, and it folded its arms and scowled. "well?" said god, looking down at him. we were privileged to hear the reply, and indeed the acoustic properties of the place were marvellous. "i plead guilty," said the little figure. "tell them what you have done," said the lord god. "i was a king," said the little figure, "a great king, and i was lustful and proud and cruel. i made wars, i devastated countries, i built palaces, and the mortar was the blood of men. hear, o god, the witnesses against me, calling to you for vengeance. hundreds and thousands of witnesses." he waved his hands towards us. "and worse! i took a prophet--one of your prophets----" "one of my prophets," said the lord god. "and because he would not bow to me, i tortured him for four days and nights, and in the end he died. i did more, o god, i blasphemed. i robbed you of your honours----" "robbed me of my honours," said the lord god. "i caused myself to be worshipped in your stead. no evil was there but i practised it; no cruelty wherewith i did not stain my soul. and at last you smote me, o god!" god raised his eyebrows slightly. "and i was slain in battle. and so i stand before you, meet for your nethermost hell! out of your greatness daring no lies, daring no pleas, but telling the truth of my iniquities before all mankind." he ceased. his face i saw distinctly, and it seemed to me white and terrible and proud and strangely noble. i thought of milton's satan. "most of that is from the obelisk," said the recording angel, finger on page. "it is," said the tyrannous man, with a faint touch of surprise. then suddenly god bent forward and took this man in his hand, and held him up on his palm as if to see him better. he was just a little dark stroke in the middle of god's palm. "_did_ he do all this?" said the lord god. the recording angel flattened his book with his hand. "in a way," said the recording angel, carelessly. now when i looked again at the little man his face had changed in a very curious manner. he was looking at the recording angel with a strange apprehension in his eyes, and one hand fluttered to his mouth. just the movement of a muscle or so, and all that dignity of defiance was gone. "read," said the lord god. and the angel read, explaining very carefully and fully all the wickedness of the wicked man. it was quite an intellectual treat.--a little "daring" in places, i thought, but of course heaven has its privileges... vi. everybody was laughing. even the prophet of the lord whom the wicked man had tortured had a smile on his face. the wicked man was really such a preposterous little fellow. "and then," read the recording angel, with a smile that set us all agog, "one day, when he was a little irascible from over-eating, he--" "oh, not _that_," cried the wicked man, "nobody knew of _that_. "it didn't happen," screamed the wicked man. "i was bad--i was really bad. frequently bad, but there was nothing so silly--so absolutely silly--" the angel went on reading. "o god!" cried the wicked man. "don't let them know that! i'll repent! i'll apologise..." the wicked man on god's hand began to dance and weep. suddenly shame overcame him. he made a wild rush to jump off the ball of god's little finger, but god stopped him by a dexterous turn of the wrist. then he made a rush for the gap between hand and thumb, but the thumb closed. and all the while the angel went on reading--reading. the wicked man rushed to and fro across god's palm, and then suddenly turned about and fled up the sleeve of god. i expected god would turn him out, but the mercy of god is infinite. the recording angel paused. "eh?" said the recording angel. "next," said god, and before the recording angel could call the name a hairy creature in filthy rags stood upon god's palm. vii. "has god got hell up his sleeve then?" said the little man beside me. "_is_ there a hell?" i asked. "if you notice," he said--he peered between the feet of the great angels-"there's no particular indication of a celestial city." "'ssh!" said a little woman near us, scowling. "hear this blessed saint!" viii. "he was lord of the earth, but i was the prophet of the god of heaven," cried the saint, "and all the people marvelled at the sign. for i, o god, knew of the glories of thy paradise. no pain, no hardship, gashing with knives, splinters thrust under my nails, strips of flesh flayed off, all for the glory and honour of god." god smiled. "and at last i went, i in my rags and sores, smelling of my holy discomforts----" gabriel laughed abruptly. "and lay outside his gates, as a sign, as a wonder----" "as a perfect nuisance," said the recording angel, and began to read, heedless of the fact that the saint was still speaking of the gloriously unpleasant things he had done that paradise might be his. and behold, in that book the record of the saint also was a revelation, a marvel. it seemed not ten seconds before the saint also was rushing to and fro over the great palm of god. not ten seconds! and at last he also shrieked beneath that pitiless and cynical exposition, and fled also, even as the wicked man had fled, into the shadow of the sleeve. and it was permitted us to see into the shadow of the sleeve. and the two sat side by side, stark of all delusions, in the shadow of the robe of god's charity, like brothers. and thither also i fled in my turn. ix. "and now," said god, as he shook us out of his sleeve upon the planet he had given us to live upon, the planet that whirled about green sirius for a sun, "now that you understand me and each other a little better,...try again." then he and his great angels turned themselves about and suddenly had vanished... the throne had vanished. all about me was a beautiful land, more beautiful than any i had ever seen before--waste, austere, and wonderful; and all about me were the enlightened souls of men in new clean bodies... xxiii. jimmy goggles the god. "it isn't every one who's been a god," said the sunburnt man. "but it's happened to me--among other things." i intimated my sense of his condescension. "it don't leave much for ambition, does it?" said the sunburnt man. "i was one of those men who were saved from the _ocean pioneer_. gummy! how time flies! it's twenty years ago. i doubt if you'll remember anything of the _ocean pioneer_?" the name was familiar, and i tried to recall when and where i had read it. the _ocean pioneer_? "something about gold dust," i said vaguely, "but the precise--" "that's it," he said. "in a beastly little channel she hadn't no business in--dodging pirates. it was before they'd put the kybosh on that business. and there'd been volcanoes or something and all the rocks was wrong. there's places about by soona where you fair have to follow the rocks about to see where they're going next. down she went in twenty fathoms before you could have dealt for whist, with fifty thousand pounds worth of gold aboard, it was said, in one form or another." "survivors?" "three." "i remember the case now," i said. "there was something about salvage----" but at the word salvage the sunburnt man exploded into language so extraordinarily horrible that i stopped aghast. he came down to more ordinary swearing, and pulled himself up abruptly. "excuse me," he said, "but--salvage!" he leant over towards me. "i was in that job," he said. "tried to make myself a rich man, and got made a god instead. i've got my feelings---"it ain't all jam being a god," said the sunburnt man, and for some time conversed by means of such pithy but unprogressive axioms. at last he took up his tale again. "there was me," said the sunburnt man, "and a seaman named jacobs, and always, the mate of the _ocean pioneer_. and him it was that set the whole thing going. i remember him now, when we was in the jolly-boat, suggesting it all to our minds just by one sentence. he was a wonderful hand at suggesting things. 'there was forty thousand pounds,' he said, 'on that ship, and it's for me to say just where she went down.' it didn't need much brains to tumble to that. and he was the leader from the first to the last. he got hold of the sanderses and their brig; they were brothers, and the brig was the _pride of banya_, and he it was bought the diving dress--a second-hand one with a compressed air apparatus instead of pumping. he'd have done the diving too, if it hadn't made him sick going down. and the salvage people were mucking about with a chart he'd cooked up, as solemn as could be, at starr race, a hundred and twenty miles away. "i can tell you we was a happy lot aboard that brig, jokes and drink and bright hopes all the time. it all seemed so neat and clean and straightforward, and what rough chaps call a 'cert.' and we used to speculate how the other blessed lot, the proper salvagers, who'd started two days before us, were getting on, until our sides fairly ached. we all messed together in the sanderses' cabin--it was a curious crew, all officers and no men--and there stood the diving-dress waiting its turn. young sanders was a humorous sort of chap, and there certainly was something funny in the confounded thing's great fat head and its stare, and he made us see it too. 'jimmy goggles,' he used to call it, and talk to it like a christian. asked if he was married, and how mrs. goggles was, and all the little goggleses. fit to make you split. and every blessed day all of us used to drink the health of jimmy goggles in rum, and unscrew his eye and pour a glass of rum in him, until, instead of that nasty mackintosheriness, he smelt as nice in his inside as a cask of rum. it was jolly times we had in those days, i can tell you--little suspecting, poor chaps! what was a-coming. "we weren't going to throw away our chances by any blessed hurry, you know, and we spent a whole day sounding our way towards where the _ocean pioneer_ had gone down, right between two chunks of ropy grey rock--lava rocks that rose nearly out of the water. we had to lay off about half a mile to get a safe anchorage, and there was a thundering row who should stop on board. and there she lay just as she had gone down, so that you could see the top of the masts that was still standing perfectly distinctly. the row ended in all coming in the boat. i went down in the diving-dress on friday morning directly it was light. "what a surprise it was! i can see it all now quite distinctly. it was a queer-looking place, and the light was just coming. people over here think every blessed place in the tropics is a flat shore and palm-trees and surf, bless 'em! this place, for instance, wasn't a bit that way. not common rocks they were, undermined by waves; but great curved banks like ironwork cinder heaps, with green slime below, and thorny shrubs and things just waving upon them here and there, and the water glassy calm and clear, and showing you a kind of dirty gray-black shine, with huge flaring red-brown weeds spreading motionless, and crawling and darting things going through it. and far away beyond the ditches and pools and the heaps was a forest on the mountain flank, growing again after the fires and cinder showers of the last eruption. and the other way forest, too, and a kind of broken--what is it?--amby-theatre of black and rusty cinders rising out of it all, and the sea in a kind of bay in the middle. "the dawn, i say, was just coming, and there wasn't much colour about things, and not a human being but ourselves anywhere in sight up or down the channel. except the _pride of banya_, lying out beyond a lump of rocks towards the line of the sea. "not a human being in sight," he repeated, and paused. "_i_ don't know where they came from, not a bit. and we were feeling so safe that we were all alone that poor young sanders was a-singing. i was in jimmy goggles, all except the helmet. 'easy,' says always, 'there's her mast.' and after i'd had just one squint over the gunwale, i caught up the bogey, and almost tipped out as old sanders brought the boat round. when the windows were screwed and everything was all right, i shut the valve from the air-belt in order to help my sinking, and jumped overboard, feet foremost--for we hadn't a ladder. i left the boat pitching, and all of them staring down into water after me, as my head sank down into the weeds and blackness that lay about the mast. i suppose nobody, not the most cautious chap in the world, would have bothered about a look-out at such a desolate place. it stunk of solitude. "of course you must understand that i was a greenhorn at diving. none of us were divers. we'd had to muck about with the thing to get the way of it, and this was the first time i'd been deep. it feels damnable. your ears hurt beastly. i don't know if you've ever hurt yourself yawning or sneezing, but it takes you like that, only ten times worse. and a pain over the eyebrows here--splitting--and a feeling like influenza in the head. and it isn't all heaven in your lungs and things. and going down feels like the beginning of a lift, only it keeps on. and you can't turn your head to see what's above you, and you can't get a fair squint at what's happening to your feet without bending down something painful. and being deep it was dark, let alone the blackness of the ashes and mud that formed the bottom. it was like going down out of the dawn back into the night, so to speak. "the mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot of fishes, and then a lot of flapping red seaweed, and then whack i came with a kind of dull bang on the deck of the _ocean pioneer_, and the fishes that had been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm of flies from road stuff in summer-time. i turned on the compressed air again--for the suit was a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, in spite of the rum--and stood recovering myself. it struck coolish down there, and that helped take off the stuffiness a bit." "when i began to feel easier, i started looking about me. it was an extraordinary sight. even the light was extraordinary, a kind of reddy-coloured twilight, on account of the streamers of seaweed that floated up on either side of the ship. and far overhead just a moony, deep green blue. the deck of the ship, except for a slight list to starboard, was level, and lay all dark and long between the weeds, clear except where the masts had snapped when she rolled, and vanishing into black night towards the forecastle. there wasn't any dead on the decks, most were in the weeds alongside, i suppose; but afterwards i found two skeletons lying in the passengers' cabins, where death had come to them. it was curious to stand on that deck and recognise it all, bit by bit; a place against the rail where i'd been fond of smoking by starlight, and the corner where an old chap from sydney used to flirt with a widow we had aboard. a comfortable couple they'd been, only a month ago, and now you couldn't have got a meal for a baby crab off either of them. "i've always had a bit of a philosophical turn, and i daresay i spent the best part of five minutes in such thoughts before i went below to find where the blessed dust was stored. it was slow work hunting, feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue gleams down the companion. and there were things moving about, a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. crabs, i expect. i kicked a lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something all knobs and spikes. what do you think? backbone! but i never had any particular feeling for bones. we had talked the affair over pretty thoroughly, and always knew just where the stuff was stowed. i found it that trip. i lifted a box one end an inch or more." he broke off in his story. "i've lifted it," he said, "as near as that! forty thousand pounds' worth of pure gold! gold! i shouted inside my helmet as a kind of cheer, and hurt my ears. i was getting confounded stuffy and tired by this time--i must have been down twenty-five minutes or more--and i thought this was good enough. i went up the companion again, and as my eyes came up flush with the deck, a thundering great crab gave a kind of hysterical jump and went scuttling off sideways. quite a start it gave me. i stood up clear on deck and shut the valve behind the helmet to let the air accumulate to carry me up again--i noticed a kind of whacking from above, as though they were hitting the water with an oar, but i didn't look up. i fancied they were signalling me to come up. "and then something shot down by me--something heavy, and stood a-quiver in the planks. i looked, and there was a long knife i'd seen young sanders handling. thinks i, he's dropped it, and i was still calling him this kind of fool and that---for it might have hurt me serious--when i began to lift and drive up towards the daylight. just about the level of the top spars of the _ocean pioneer_, whack! i came against something sinking down, and a boot knocked in front of my helmet. then something else, struggling frightful. it was a big weight atop of me, whatever it was, and moving and twisting about. i'd have thought it a big octopus, or some such thing, if it hadn't been for the boot. but octopuses don't wear boots. it was all in a moment, of course. "i felt myself sinking down again, and i threw my arms about to keep steady, and the whole lot rolled free of me and shot down as i went up--" he paused. "i saw young sanders's face, over a naked black shoulder, and a spear driven clean through his neck, and out of his mouth and neck what looked like spirts of pink smoke in the water. and down they went clutching one another, and turning over, and both too far gone to leave go. and in another second my helmet came a whack, fit to split, against the niggers' canoe. it was niggers! two canoes full. "it was lively times i tell you? overboard came always with three spears in him. there was the legs of three or four black chaps kicking about me in the water. i couldn't see much, but i saw the game was up at a glance, gave my valve a tremendous twist, and went bubbling down again after poor always, in as awful a state of scare and astonishment as you can well imagine. i passed young sanders and the nigger going up again and struggling still a bit, and in another moment i was standing in the dim again on the deck of the _ocean pioneer_. "gummy, thinks i, here's a fix! niggers? at first i couldn't see anything for it but stifle below or stabs above. i didn't properly understand how much air there was to last me out, but i didn't feel like standing very much more of it down below. i was hot and frightfully heady, quite apart from the blue funk i was in. we'd never reckoned with these beastly natives, filthy papuan beasts. it wasn't any good coming up where i was, but i had to do something. on the spur of the moment, i clambered over the side of the brig and landed among the weeds, and set off through the darkness as fast as i could. i just stopped once and knelt, and twisted back my head in the helmet and had a look up. it was a most extraordinary bright green-blue above, and the two canoes and the boat floating there very small and distant like a kind of twisted h. and it made me feel sick to squint up at it, and think what the pitching and swaying of the three meant. "it was just about the most horrible ten minutes i ever had, blundering about in that darkness--pressure something awful, like being buried in sand, pain across the chest, sick with funk, and breathing nothing as it seemed but the smell of rum and mackintosh. gummy! after a bit, i found myself going up a steepish sort of slope. i had another squint to see if anything was visible of the canoes and boats, and then kept on. i stopped with my head a foot from the surface, and tried to see where i was going, but, of course, nothing was to be seen but the reflection of the bottom. then out i dashed, like knocking my head through a mirror. directly i got my eyes out of the water, i saw i'd come up a kind of beach near the forest. i had a look round, but the natives and the brig were both hidden by a big hummucky heap of twisted lava. the born fool in me suggested a run for the woods. i didn't take the helmet off, but i eased open one of the windows, and, after a bit of a pant, went on out of the water. you'd hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted. "of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your head in a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutes under water, you don't break any records running. i ran like a ploughboy going to work. and half-way to the trees i saw a dozen niggers or more, coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of way to meet me. "i just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of london. i had about as much chance of cutting back to the water as a turned turtle. i just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, and waited for them. there wasn't anything else for me to do. "but they didn't come on very much. i began to suspect why. 'jimmy goggles,' i says, 'it's your beauty does it.' i was inclined to be a little lightheaded, i think, with all these dangers about and the change in the pressure of the blessed air. 'who're ye staring at?' i said, as if the savages could hear me. 'what d'ye take me for? i'm hanged if i don't give you something to stare at,' i said, and with that i screwed up the escape valve and turned on the compressed air from the belt, until i was swelled out like a blown frog. regular imposing it must have been. i'm blessed if they'd come on a step; and presently one and then another went down on their hands and knees. they didn't know what to make of me, and they was doing the extra polite, which was very wise and reasonable of them. i had half a mind to edge back seaward and cut and run, but it seemed too hopeless. a step back and they'd have been after me. and out of sheer desperation i began to march towards them up the beach, with slow, heavy steps, and waving my blown-out arms about, in a dignified manner. and inside of me i was singing as small as a tomtit. "but there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over a difficulty,--i've found that before and since. people like ourselves, who're up to diving dresses by the time we're seven, can scarcely imagine the effect of one on a simple-minded savage. one or two of these niggers cut and run, the others started in a great hurry trying to knock their brains out on the ground. and on i went as slow and solemn and silly-looking and artful as a jobbing plumber. it was evident they took me for something immense. "then up jumped one and began pointing, making extraordinary gestures to me as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attention between me and something out at; sea. 'what's the matter now?' i said. i turned slowly on account of my dignity, and there i saw, coming round a point, the poor old _pride of banya_ towed by a couple of canoes. the sight fairly made me sick. but they evidently expected some recognition, so i waved my arms in a striking sort of non-committal manner. and then i turned and stalked on towards the trees again. at that time i was praying like mad, i remember, over and over again: 'lord help me through with it! lord help me through with it!' it's only fools who know nothing of danger can afford to laugh at praying." "but these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away like that. they started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of pressed me to take a pathway that lay through the trees. it was clear to me they didn't take me for a british citizen, whatever else they thought of me, and for my own part i was never less anxious to own up to the old country. "you'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with savages, but these poor, misguided, ignorant creatures took me straight to their kind of joss place to present me to the blessed old black stone there. by this time i was beginning to sort of realise the depth of their ignorance, and directly i set eyes on this deity i took my cue. i started a baritone howl, 'wow-wow,' very long on one note, and began waving my arms about a lot, and then very slowly and ceremoniously turned their image over on its side and sat down on it. i wanted to sit down badly, for diving dresses ain't much wear in the tropics. or, to put it different like, they're a sight too much. it took away their breath, i could see, my sitting on their joss, but in less time than a minute they made up their minds and were hard at work worshipping me. and i can tell you i felt a bit relieved to see things turning out so well, in spite of the weight on my shoulders and feet. "but what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes might think when they came back. if they'd seen me in the boat before i went down, and without the helmet on--for they might have been spying and hiding since over night--they would very likely take a different view from the others. i was in a deuce of a stew about that for hours, as it seemed, until the shindy of the arrival began. "but they took it down--the whole blessed village took it down. at the cost of sitting up stiff and stern, as much like those sitting egyptian images one sees as i could manage, for pretty nearly twelve hours, i should guess at least, on end, i got over it. you'd hardly think what it meant in that heat and stink. i don't think any of them dreamt of the man inside. i was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up with luck out of the water. but the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! they lit a stinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in a lot of gory muck--the worst parts of what they were feasting on outside, the beasts-and burnt it all in my honour. i was getting a bit hungry, but i understand now how gods manage to do without eating, what with the smell of burnt-offerings about them. and they brought in a lot of the stuff they'd got off the brig and, among other stuff, what i was a bit relieved to see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the compressed air affair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in and danced about me something disgraceful. it's extraordinary the different ways different people have of showing respect. if i'd had a hatchet handy i'd have gone for the lot of them--they made me feel that wild. all this time i sat as stiff as company, not knowing anything better to do. and at last, when nightfall came, and the wattle joss-house place got a bit too shadowy for their taste--all these here savages are afraid of the dark, you know--and i started a sort of 'moo' noise, they built big bonfires outside and left me alone in peace in the darkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows a bit and think things over, and feel just as bad as i liked. and lord! i was sick. "i was weak and hungry, and my mind kept on behaving like a beetle on a pin, tremendous activity and nothing done at the end of it. come round just where it was before. there was sorrowing for the other chaps, beastly drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and young sanders with the spear through his neck wouldn't go out of my mind. there was the treasure down there in the _ocean pioneer_, and how one might get it and hide it somewhere safer, and get away and come back for it. and there was the puzzle where to get anything to eat. i tell you i was fair rambling. i was afraid to ask by signs for food, for fear of behaving too human, and so there i sat and hungered until very near the dawn. then the village got a bit quiet, and i couldn't stand it any longer, and i went out and got some stuff like artichokes in a bowl and some sour milk. what was left of these i put away among the other offerings, just to give them a hint of my tastes. and in the morning they came to worship, and found me sitting up stiff and respectable on their previous god, just as they'd left me overnight. i'd got my back against the central pillar of the hut, and, practically, i was asleep. and that's how i became a god among the heathen--false god, no doubt, and blasphemous, but one can't always pick and choose. "now, i don't want to crack myself up as a god beyond my merits, but i must confess that while i was god to these people they was extraordinary successful. i don't say there's anything in it, mind you. they won a battle with another tribe--i got a lot of offerings i didn't want through it--they had wonderful fishing, and their crop of pourra was exceptional fine. and they counted the capture of the brig among the benefits i brought 'em. i must say i don't think that was a poor record for a perfectly new hand. and, though perhaps you'd scarcely credit it, i was the tribal god of those beastly savages for pretty nearly four months... "what else could i do, man? but i didn't wear that diving-dress all the time. i made 'em rig me up a sort of holy of holies, and a deuce of a time i had too, making them understand what it was i wanted them to do. that indeed was the great difficulty--making them understand my wishes. i couldn't let myself down by talking their lingo badly, even if i'd been able to speak at all, and i couldn't go flapping a lot of gestures at them. so i drew pictures in sand and sat down beside them and hooted like one o'clock. sometimes they did the things i wanted all right, and sometimes they did them all wrong. they was always very willing, certainly. all the while i was puzzling how i was to get the confounded business settled. every night before the dawn i used to march out in full rig and go off to a place where i could see the channel in which the _ocean pioneer_ lay sunk, and once even, one moonlight night, i tried to walk out to her, but the weeds and rocks and dark clean beat me. i didn't get back till full day, and then i found all those silly niggers out on the beach praying their sea-god to return to them. i was that vexed and tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and going down again, i could have punched their silly heads all round when they started rejoicing. hanged if i like so much ceremony. "and then came the missionary. that missionary! _what_ a guy! gummy! it was in the afternoon, and i was sitting in state in my outer temple place, sitting on that old black stone of theirs, when he came. i heard a row outside and jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter. 'they worship stocks and stones,' he said, and i knew what was up, in a flash. i had one of my windows out for comfort, and i sang out straight away on the spur of the moment. 'stocks and stones!' i says. 'you come inside,' i says, 'and i'll punch your blooming exeter hall of a head.' "there was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came, bible in hand, after the manner of them--a little sandy chap in specks and a pith helmet. i flatter myself that me sitting there in the shadows, with my copper head and my big goggles, struck him a bit of a heap at first. 'well,' i says, 'how's the trade in scissors?' for i don't hold with missionaries. "i had a lark with that missionary. he was a raw hand, and quite outclassed by a man like me. he gasped out who was i, and i told him to read the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. there wasn't no inscription; why should there be? but down he goes to read, and his interpreter, being of course as superstitious as any of them, more so by reason of his seeing missionary close to, took it for an act of worship and plumped down like a shot. all my people gave a howl of triumph, and there wasn't any more business to be done in my village after that journey, not by the likes of him. "but, of course, i was a fool to choke him off like that. if i'd had any sense i should have told him straight away of the treasure and taken him into co. i've no doubt he'd have come into co. a child, with a few hours to think it over, could have seen the connection between my diving dress and the loss of the _ocean pioneer_. a week after he left i went out one morning and saw the _motherhood_, the salver's ship from starr race, towing up the channel and sounding. the whole blessed game was up, and all my trouble thrown away. gummy! how wild i felt! and guying it in that stinking silly dress! four months!" the sunburnt man's story degenerated again. "think of it," he said, when he emerged to linguistic purity once more. "forty thousand pounds' worth of gold." "did the little missionary come back?" i asked. "oh yes! bless him! and he pledged his reputation there was a man inside the god, and started out to see as much with tremendous ceremony. but wasn't--he got sold again. i always did hate scenes and explanations, and long before he came i was out of it all--going home to banya along the coast, hiding in bushes by day, and thieving food from the villages by night. only weapon, a spear. no clothes, no money. nothing. my face, my fortune, as the saying is. and just a squeak of eight thousand pounds of gold--fifth share. but the natives cut up rusty, thank goodness, because they thought it was him had driven their luck away." xxiv. miss winchelsea's heart. miss winchelsea was going to rome. the matter had filled her mind for a month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into her conversation that quite a number of people who were not going to rome, and who were not likely to go to rome, had made it a personal grievance against her. some indeed had attempted quite unavailingly to convince her that rome was not nearly such a desirable place as it was reported to be, and others had gone so far as to suggest behind her back that she was dreadfully "stuck up" about "that rome of hers." and little lily hardhurst had told her friend mr. binns that so far as she was concerned miss winchelsea might "go to her old rome and stop there; _she_ (miss lily hardhurst) wouldn't grieve." and the way in which miss winchelsea put herself upon terms of personal tenderness with horace and benvenuto cellini and raphael and shelley and keats--if she had been shelley's widow she could not have professed a keener interest in his grave--was a matter of universal astonishment. her dress was a triumph of tactful discretion, sensible, but not too "touristy"'--miss winchelsea had a great dread of being "touristy"--and her baedeker was carried in a cover of grey to hide its glaring red. she made a prim and pleasant little figure on the charing cross platform, in spite of her swelling pride, when at last the great day dawned, and she could start for rome. the day was bright, the channel passage would be pleasant, and all the omens promised well. there was the gayest sense of adventure in this unprecedented departure. she was going with two friends who had been fellow-students with her at the training college, nice honest girls both, though not so good at history and literature as miss winchelsea. they both looked up to her immensely, though physically they had to look down, and she anticipated some pleasant times to be spent in "stirring them up" to her own pitch of aesthetic and historical enthusiasm. they had secured seats already, and welcomed her effusively at the carriage door. in the instant criticism of the encounter she noted that fanny had a slightly "touristy" leather strap, and that helen had succumbed to a serge jacket with side pockets, into which her hands were thrust. but they were much too happy with themselves and the expedition for their friend to attempt any hint at the moment about these things. as soon as the first ecstasies were over-fanny's enthusiasm was a little noisy and crude, and consisted mainly in emphatic repetitions of "just _fancy_! we're going to rome, my dear!--rome!"--they gave their attention to their fellow-travellers. helen was anxious to secure a compartment to themselves, and, in order to discourage intruders, got out and planted herself firmly on the step. miss winchelsea peeped out over her shoulder, and made sly little remarks about the accumulating people on the platform, at which fanny laughed gleefully. they were travelling with one of mr. thomas gunn's parties--fourteen days in rome for fourteen pounds. they did not belong to the personally conducted party, of course--miss winchelsea had seen to that--but they travelled with it because of the convenience of that arrangement. the people were the oddest mixture, and wonderfully amusing. there was a vociferous red-faced polyglot personal conductor in a pepper-and-salt suit, very long in the arms and legs and very active. he shouted proclamations. when he wanted to speak to people he stretched out an arm and held them until his purpose was accomplished. one hand was full of papers, tickets, counterfoils of tourists. the people of the personally conducted party were, it seemed, of two sorts; people the conductor wanted and could not find, and people he did not want and who followed him in a steadily growing tail up and down the platform. these people seemed, indeed, to think that their one chance of reaching rome lay in keeping close to him. three little old ladies were particularly energetic in his pursuit, and at last maddened him to the pitch of clapping them into a carriage and daring them to emerge again. for the rest of the time, one, two, or three of their heads protruded from the window wailing inquiries about "a little wicker-work box" whenever he drew near. there was a very stout man with a very stout wife in shiny black; there was a little old man like an aged hostler. "what _can_ such people want in rome?" asked miss winchelsea. "what can it mean to them?" there was a very tall curate in a very small straw hat, and a very short curate encumbered by a long camera stand. the contrast amused fanny very much. once they heard some one calling for "snooks." "i always thought that name was invented by novelists," said miss winchelsea. "fancy! snooks. i wonder which _is_ mr. snooks." finally they picked out a very stout and resolute little man in a large check suit. "if he isn't snooks, he ought to be," said miss winchelsea. presently the conductor discovered helen's attempt at a corner in carriages. "room for five," he bawled with a parallel translation on his fingers. a party of four together--mother, father, and two daughters-blundered in, all greatly excited. "it's all right, ma--you let me," said one of the daughters, hitting her mother's bonnet with a handbag she struggled to put in the rack. miss winchelsea detested people who banged about and called their mother "ma." a young man travelling alone followed. he was not at all "touristy" in his costume, miss winchelsea observed; his gladstone bag was of good pleasant leather with labels reminiscent of luxembourg and ostend, and his boots, though brown, were not vulgar. he carried an overcoat on his arm. before these people had properly settled in their places, came an inspection of tickets and a slamming of doors, and behold! they were gliding out of charing cross station on their way to rome. "fancy!" cried fanny, "we are going to rome, my dear! rome! i don't seem to believe it, even now." miss winchelsea suppressed fanny's emotions with a little smile, and the lady who was called "ma" explained to people in general why they had "cut it so close" at the station. the two daughters called her "ma" several times, toned her down in a tactless, effective way, and drove her at last to the muttered inventory of a basket of travelling requisites. presently she looked up. "lor!" she said, "i didn't bring _them_!" both the daughters said "oh, ma!" but what "them" was did not appear. presently fanny produced hare's _walks in rome_, a sort of mitigated guide-book very popular among roman visitors; and the father of the two daughters began to examine his books of tickets minutely, apparently in a search after english words. when he had looked at the tickets for a long time right way up, he turned them upside down. then he produced a fountain pen and dated them with considerable care. the young man having completed an unostentatious survey of his fellow-travellers produced a book and fell to reading. when helen and fanny were looking out of the window at chislehurst--the place interested fanny because the poor dear empress of the french used to live there--miss winchelsea took the opportunity to observe the book the young man held. it was not a guide-book but a little thin volume of poetry--_bound_. she glanced at his face--it seemed a refined, pleasant face to her hasty glance. he wore a little gilt _pince-nez_. "do you think she lives there now?" said fanny, and miss winchelsea's inspection came to an end. for the rest of the journey miss winchelsea talked little, and what she said was as agreeable and as stamped with refinement as she could make it. her voice was always low and clear and pleasant, and she took care that on this occasion it was particularly low and clear and pleasant. as they came under the white cliffs the young man put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stopped beside the boat, he displayed a graceful alacrity with the impedimenta of miss winchelsea and her friends. miss winchelsea "hated nonsense," but she was pleased to see the young man perceived at once that they were ladies, and helped them without any violent geniality; and how nicely he showed that his civilities were to be no excuse for further intrusions. none of her little party had been out of england before, and they were all excited and a little nervous at the channel passage. they stood in a little group in a good place near the middle of the boat--the young man had taken miss winchelsea's carry-all there and had told her it was a good place--and they watched the white shores of albion recede and quoted shakespeare and made quiet fun of their fellow-travellers in the english way. they were particularly amused at the precautions the bigger-sized people had taken against the little waves--cut lemons and flasks prevailed, one lady lay full length in a deck chair with a handkerchief over her face, and a very broad resolute man in a bright brown "touristy" suit walked all the way from england to france along the deck, with his legs as widely apart as providence permitted. these were all excellent precautions, and nobody was ill. the personally-conducted party pursued the conductor about the deck with inquiries, in a manner that suggested to helen's mind the rather vulgar image of hens with a piece of bacon rind, until at last he went into hiding below. and the young man with the thin volume of poetry stood at the stern watching england receding, looking rather lonely and sad to miss winchelsea's eye. and then came calais and tumultuous novelties, and the young man had not forgotten miss winchelsea's hold-all and the other little things. all three girls, though they had passed government examinations in french to any extent, were stricken with a dumb shame of their accents, and the young man was very useful. and he did not intrude. he put them in a comfortable carriage and raised his hat and went away. miss winchelsea thanked him in her best manner--a pleasing, cultivated manner--and fanny said he was "nice" almost before he was out of earshot. "i wonder what he can be," said helen. "he's going to italy, because i noticed green tickets in his book." miss winchelsea almost told them of the poetry, and decided not to do so. and presently the carriage windows seized hold upon them and the young man was forgotten. it made them feel that they were doing an educated sort of thing to travel through a country whose commonest advertisements were in idiomatic french, and miss winchelsea made unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-board advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface the landscape in our land. but the north of france is really uninteresting country, and after a time fanny reverted to hare's _walks_, and helen initiated lunch. miss winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had been trying to realise, she said, that she was actually going to rome, but she perceived at helen's suggestion that she was hungry, and they lunched out of their baskets very cheerfully. in the afternoon they were tired and silent until helen made tea. miss winchelsea might have dozed, only she knew fanny slept with her mouth open; and as their fellow-passengers were two rather nice, critical-looking ladies of uncertain age--who knew french well enough to talk it--she employed herself in keeping fanny awake. the rhythm of the train became insistent, and the streaming landscape outside became at last quite painful to the eye. they were already dreadfully tired of travelling before their night's stoppage came. the stoppage for the night was brightened by the appearance of the young man, and his manners were all that could be desired and his french quite serviceable. his coupons availed for the same hotel as theirs, and by chance, as it seemed, he sat next miss winchelsea at the _table d'hôte._ in spite of her enthusiasm for rome, she had thought out some such possibility very thoroughly, and when he ventured to make a remark upon the tediousness of travelling--he let the soup and fish go by before he did this--she did not simply assent to his proposition, but responded with another. they were soon comparing their journeys, and helen and fanny were cruelly overlooked in the conversation.. it was to be the same journey, they found; one day for the galleries at florence--"from what i hear," said the young man, "it is barely enough,"--and the rest at rome. he talked of rome very pleasantly; he was evidently quite well read, and he quoted horace about soracte. miss winchelsea had "done" that book of horace for her matriculation, and was delighted to cap his quotation. it gave a sort of tone to things, this incident--a touch of refinement to mere chatting. fanny expressed a few emotions, and helen interpolated a few sensible remarks, but the bulk of the talk on the girls' side naturally fell to miss winchelsea. before they reached rome this young man was tacitly of their party. they did not know his name nor what he was, but it seemed he taught, and miss winchelsea had a shrewd idea he was an extension lecturer. at any rate he was something of that sort, something gentlemanly and refined without being opulent and impossible. she tried once or twice to ascertain whether he came from oxford or cambridge, but he missed her timid opportunities. she tried to get him to make remarks about those places to see if he would say "come up" to them instead of "go down,"--she knew that was how you told a 'varsity man. he used the word "'varsity"--not university--in quite the proper way. they saw as much of mr. ruskin's florence as the brief time permitted; he met them in the pitti gallery and went round with them, chatting brightly, and evidently very grateful for their recognition. he knew a great deal about art, and all four enjoyed the morning immensely. it was fine to go round recognising old favourites and finding new beauties, especially while so many people fumbled helplessly with baedeker. nor was he a bit of a prig, miss winchelsea said, and indeed she detested prigs. he had a distinct undertone of humour, and was funny, for example, without being vulgar, at the expense of the quaint work of beato angelico. he had a grave seriousness beneath it all, and was quick to seize the moral lessons of the pictures. fanny went softly among these masterpieces; she admitted "she knew so little about them," and she confessed that to her they were "all beautiful." fanny's "beautiful" inclined to be a little monotonous, miss winchelsea thought. she had been quite glad when the last sunny alp had vanished, because of the staccato of fanny's admiration. helen said little, but miss winchelsea had found her a trifle wanting on the aesthetic side in the old days and was not surprised; sometimes she laughed at the young man's hesitating, delicate jests and sometimes she didn't, and sometimes she seemed quite lost to the art about them in the contemplation of the dresses of the other visitors. at rome the young man was with them intermittently. a rather "touristy" friend of his took him away at times. he complained comically to miss winchelsea. "i have only two short weeks in rome," he said, "and my friend leonard wants to spend a whole day at tivoli looking at a waterfall." "what is your friend leonard?" asked miss winchelsea abruptly. "he's the most enthusiastic pedestrian i ever met," the young man replied--amusingly, but a little unsatisfactorily, miss winchelsea thought. they had some glorious times, and fanny could not think what they would have done without him. miss winchelsea's interest and fanny's enormous capacity for admiration were insatiable. they never flagged--through pictures and sculpture galleries, immense crowded churches, ruins and museums, judas trees and prickly pears, wine carts and palaces, they admired their way unflinchingly. they never saw a stone pine or a eucalyptus but they named and admired it; they never glimpsed soracte but they exclaimed. their common ways were made wonderful by imaginative play. "here caesar may have walked," they would say. "raphael may have seen soracte from this very point." they happened on the tomb of bibulus. "old bibulus," said the young man. "the oldest monument of republican rome!" said miss winchelsea. "i'm dreadfully stupid," said fanny, "but who _was_ bibulus?" there was a curious little pause. "wasn't he the person who built the wall?" said helen. the young man glanced quickly at her and laughed. "that was balbus," he said. helen reddened, but neither he nor miss winchelsea threw any light upon fanny's ignorance about bibulus. helen was more taciturn than the other three, but then she was always taciturn, and usually she took care of the tram tickets and things like that, or kept her eye on them if the young man took them, and told him where they were when he wanted them. glorious times they had, these young people, in that pale brown cleanly city of memories that was once the world. their only sorrow was the shortness of the time. they said indeed that the electric trams and the '70 buildings, and that criminal advertisement that glares upon the forum, outraged their aesthetic feelings unspeakably; but that was only part of the fun. and indeed rome is such a wonderful place that it made miss winchelsea forget some of her most carefully prepared enthusiasms at times, and helen, taken unawares, would suddenly admit the beauty of unexpected things. yet fanny and helen would have liked a shop window or so in the english quarter if miss winchelsea's uncompromising hostility to all other english visitors had not rendered that district impossible. the intellectual and aesthetic fellowship of miss winchelsea and the scholarly young man passed insensibly towards a deeper feeling. the exuberant fanny did her best to keep pace with their recondite admiration by playing her "beautiful" with vigour, and saying "oh! _let's_ go," with enormous appetite whenever a new place of interest was mentioned. but helen developed a certain want of sympathy towards the end that disappointed miss winchelsea a little. she refused to see "anything" in the face of beatrice cenci--shelley's beatrice cenci!--in the barberini gallery; and one day, when they were deploring the electric trams, she said rather snappishly that "people must get about somehow, and it's better than torturing horses up these horrid little hills." she spoke of the seven hills of rome as "horrid little hills "! and the day they went on the palatine--though miss winchelsea did not know of this--she remarked suddenly to fanny, "don't hurry like that, my dear; _they_ don't want us to overtake them. and we don't say the right things for them when we _do_ get near." "i wasn't trying to overtake them," said fanny, slackening her excessive pace; "i wasn't indeed." and for a minute she was short of breath. but miss winchelsea had come upon happiness. it was only when she came to look back across an intervening tragedy that she quite realised how happy she had been pacing among the cypress-shadowed ruins, and exchanging the very highest class of information the human mind can possess, the most refined impressions it is possible to convey. insensibly emotion crept into their intercourse, sunning itself openly and pleasantly at last when helen's modernity was not too near. insensibly their interest drifted from the wonderful associations about them to their more intimate and personal feelings. in a tentative way information was supplied; she spoke allusively of her school, of her examination successes, of her gladness that the days of "cram" were over. he made it quite clear that he also was a teacher. they spoke of the greatness of their calling, of the necessity of sympathy to face its irksome details, of a certain loneliness they sometimes felt. that was in the colosseum, and it was as far as they got that day, because helen returned with fanny--she had taken her into the upper galleries. yet the private dreams of miss winchelsea, already vivid and concrete enough, became now realistic in the highest degree. she figured that pleasant young man lecturing in the most edifying way to his students, herself modestly prominent as his intellectual mate and helper; she figured a refined little home, with two bureaus, with white shelves of high-class books, and autotypes of the pictures of rossetti and burne jones, with morris's wall-papers and flowers in pots of beaten copper. indeed she figured many things. on the pincio the two had a few precious moments together, while helen marched fanny off to see the _muro torto_, and he spoke at once plainly. he said he hoped their friendship was only beginning, that he already found her company very precious to him, that indeed it was more than that. he became nervous, thrusting at his glasses with trembling fingers as though he fancied his emotions made them unstable. "i should of course," he said, "tell you things about myself. i know it is rather unusual my speaking to you like this. only our meeting has been so accidental--or providential--and i am snatching at things. i came to rome expecting a lonely tour ... and i have been so very happy, so very happy. quite recently i have found myself in a position--i have dared to think----, and----" he glanced over his shoulder and stopped. he said "demn!" quite distinctly--and she did not condemn him for that manly lapse into profanity. she looked and saw his friend leonard advancing. he drew nearer; he raised his hat to miss winchelsea, and his smile was almost a grin. "i've been looking for you everywhere, snooks," he said. "you promised to be on the piazza steps half-an-hour ago." snooks! the name struck miss winchelsea like a blow in the face. she did not hear his reply. she thought afterwards that leonard must have considered her the vaguest-minded person. to this day she is not sure whether she was introduced to leonard or not, nor what she said to him. a sort of mental paralysis was upon her. of all offensive surnames--snooks! helen and fanny were returning, there were civilities, and the young men were receding. by a great effort she controlled herself to face the inquiring eyes of her friends. all that afternoon she lived the life of a heroine under the indescribable outrage of that name, chatting, observing, with "snooks" gnawing at her heart. from the moment that it first rang upon her ears, the dream of her happiness was prostrate in the dust. all the refinement she had figured was ruined and defaced by that cognomen's unavoidable vulgarity. what was that refined little home to her now, spite of autotypes, morris papers, and bureaus? athwart it in letters of fire ran an incredible inscription: "mrs. snooks." that may seem a little thing to the reader, but consider the delicate refinement of miss winchelsea's mind. be as refined as you can and then think of writing yourself down:--"snooks." she conceived herself being addressed as mrs. snooks by all the people she liked least, conceived the patronymic touched with a vague quality of insult. she figured a card of grey and silver bearing 'winchelsea' triumphantly effaced by an arrow, cupid's arrow, in favour of "snooks." degrading confession of feminine weakness! she imagined the terrible rejoicings of certain girl friends, of certain grocer cousins from whom her growing refinement had long since estranged her. how they would make it sprawl across the envelope that would bring their sarcastic congratulations. would even his pleasant company compensate her for that? "it is impossible," she muttered; "impossible! _snooks!_" she was sorry for him, but not so sorry as she was for herself. for him she had a touch of indignation. to be so nice, so refined, while all the time he was "snooks," to hide under a pretentious gentility of demeanour the badge sinister of his surname seemed a sort of treachery. to put it in the language of sentimental science she felt he had "led her on." there were, of course, moments of terrible vacillation, a period even when something almost like passion bid her throw refinement to the winds. and there was something in her, an unexpurgated vestige of vulgarity that made a strenuous attempt at proving that snooks was not so very bad a name after all. any hovering hesitation flew before fanny's manner, when fanny came with an air of catastrophe to tell that she also knew the horror. fanny's voice fell to a whisper when she said _snooks_. miss winchelsea would not give him any answer when at last, in the borghese, she could have a minute with him; but she promised him a note. she handed him that note in the little book of poetry he had lent her, the little book that had first drawn them together. her refusal was ambiguous, allusive. she could no more tell him why she rejected him than she could have told a cripple of his hump. he too must feel something of the unspeakable quality of his name. indeed he had avoided a dozen chances of telling it, she now perceived. so she spoke of "obstacles she could not reveal"--"reasons why the thing he spoke of was impossible." she addressed the note with a shiver, "e.k. snooks." things were worse than she had dreaded; he asked her to explain. how _could_ she explain? those last two days in rome were dreadful. she was haunted by his air of astonished perplexity. she knew she had given him intimate hopes, she had not the courage to examine her mind thoroughly for the extent of her encouragement. she knew he must think her the most changeable of beings. now that she was in full retreat, she would not even perceive his hints of a possible correspondence. but in that matter he did a thing that seemed to her at once delicate and romantic. he made a go-between of fanny. fanny could not keep the secret, and came and told her that night under a transparent pretext of needed advice. "mr. snooks," said fanny, "wants to write to me. fancy! i had no idea. but should i let him?" they talked it over long and earnestly, and miss winchelsea was careful to keep the veil over her heart. she was already repenting his disregarded hints. why should she not hear of him sometimes--painful though his name must be to her? miss winchelsea decided it might be permitted, and fanny kissed her good-night with unusual emotion. after she had gone miss winchelsea sat for a long time at the window of her little room. it was moonlight, and down the street a man sang "santa lucia" with almost heart-dissolving tenderness... she sat very still. she breathed a word very softly to herself. the word was "_snooks_." then she got up with a profound sigh, and went to bed. the next morning he said to her meaningly, "i shall hear of you through your friend." mr. snooks saw them off from rome with that pathetic interrogative perplexity still on his face, and if it had not been for helen he would have retained miss winchelsea's hold-all in his hand as a sort of encyclopaedic keepsake. on their way back to england miss winchelsea on six separate occasions made fanny promise to write to her the longest of long letters. fanny, it seemed, would be quite near mr. snooks. her new school--she was always going to new schools--would be only five miles from steely bank, and it was in the steely bank polytechnic, and one or two first-class schools, that mr. snooks did his teaching. he might even see her at times. they could not talk much of him--she and fanny always spoke of "him," never of mr. snooks--because helen was apt to say unsympathetic things about him. her nature had coarsened very much, miss winchelsea perceived, since the old training college days; she had become hard and cynical. she thought he had a weak face, mistaking refinement for weakness as people of her stamp are apt to do, and when she heard his name was snooks, she said she had expected something of the sort. miss winchelsea was careful to spare her own feelings after that, but fanny was less circumspect. the girls parted in london, and miss winchelsea returned, with a new interest in life, to the girls' high school in which she had been an increasingly valuable assistant for the last three years. her new interest in life was fanny as a correspondent, and to give her a lead she wrote her a lengthy descriptive letter within a fortnight of her return. fanny answered, very disappointingly. fanny indeed had no literary gift, but it was new to miss winchelsea to find herself deploring the want of gifts in a friend. that letter was even criticised aloud in the safe solitude of miss winchelsea's study, and her criticism, spoken with great bitterness, was "twaddle!" it was full of just the things miss winchelsea's letter had been full of, particulars of the school. and of mr. snooks, only this much: "i have had a letter from mr. snooks, and he has been over to see me on two saturday afternoons running. he talked about rome and you; we both talked about you. your ears must have burnt, my dear..." miss winchelsea repressed a desire to demand more explicit information, and wrote the sweetest, long letter again. "tell me all about yourself, dear. that journey has quite refreshed our ancient friendship, and i do so want to keep in touch with you." about mr. snooks she simply wrote on the fifth page that she was glad fanny had seen him, and that if he _should_ ask after her, she was to be remembered to him _very kindly_ (underlined). and fanny replied most obtusely in the key of that "ancient friendship," reminding miss winchelsea of a dozen foolish things of those old schoolgirl days at the training college, and saying not a word about mr. snooks! for nearly a week miss winchelsea was so angry at the failure of fanny as a go-between that she could not write to her. and then she wrote less effusively, and in her letter she asked point-blank, "have you seen mr. snooks?" fanny's letter was unexpectedly satisfactory. "i _have_ seen mr. snooks," she wrote, and having once named him she kept on about him; it was all snooks--snooks this and snooks that. he was to give a public lecture, said fanny, among other things. yet miss winchelsea, after the first glow of gratification, still found this letter a little unsatisfactory. fanny did not report mr. snooks as saying anything about miss winchelsea, nor as looking a little white and worn, as he ought to have been doing. and behold! before she had replied, came a second letter from fanny on the same theme, quite a gushing letter, and covering six sheets with her loose feminine hand. and about this second letter was a rather odd little thing that miss winchelsea only noticed as she re-read it the third time. fanny's natural femininity had prevailed even against the round and clear traditions of the training college; she was one of those she-creatures born to make all her _m'_s and _n'_s and _u'_s and _r'_s and _e'_s alike, and to leave her _o'_s and _a'_s open and her _i'_s undotted. so that it was only after an elaborate comparison of word with word that miss winchelsea felt assured mr. snooks was not really "mr. snooks" at all! in fanny's first letter of gush he was mr. "snooks," in her second the spelling was changed to mr. "senoks." miss winchelsea's hand positively trembled as she turned the sheet over--it meant so much to her. for it had already begun to seem to her that even the name of mrs. snooks might be avoided at too great a price, and suddenly--this possibility! she turned over the six sheets, all dappled with that critical name, and everywhere the first letter had the form of an _e_! for a time she walked the room with a hand pressed upon her heart. she spent a whole day pondering this change, weighing a letter of inquiry that should be at once discreet and effectual; weighing, too, what action she should take after the answer came. she was resolved that if this altered spelling was anything more than a quaint fancy of fanny's, she would write forthwith to mr. snooks. she had now reached a stage when the minor refinements of behaviour disappear. her excuse remained uninvented, but she had the subject of her letter clear in her mind, even to the hint that "circumstances in my life have changed very greatly since we talked together." but she never gave that hint. there came a third letter from that fitful correspondent fanny. the first line proclaimed her "the happiest girl alive." miss winchelsea crushed the letter in her hand--the rest unread--and sat with her face suddenly very still. she had received it just before morning school, and had opened it when the junior mathematicians were well under way. presently she resumed reading with an appearance of great calm. but after the first sheet she went on reading the third without discovering the error:--"told him frankly i did not like his name," the third sheet began. "he told me he did not like it himself--you know that sort of sudden, frank way he has"--miss winchelsea did know. "so i said, 'couldn't you change it?' he didn't see it at first. well, you know, dear, he had told me what it really meant; it means sevenoaks, only it has got down to snooks--both snooks and noaks, dreadfully vulgar surnames though they be, are really worn forms of sevenoaks. so i said--even i have my bright ideas at times--'if it got down from sevenoaks to snooks, why not get it back from snooks to sevenoaks?' and the long and the short of it is, dear, he couldn't refuse me, and he changed his spelling there and then to senoks for the bills of the new lecture. and afterwards, when we are married, we shall put in the apostrophe and make it se'noks. wasn't it kind of him to mind that fancy of mine, when many men would have taken offence? but it is just like him all over; he is as kind as he is clever. because he knew as well as i did that i would have had him in spite of it, had he been ten times snooks. but he did it all the same." the class was startled by the sound of paper being viciously torn, and looked up to see miss winchelsea white in the face and with some very small pieces of paper clenched in one hand. for a few seconds they stared at her stare, and then her expression changed back to a more familiar one. "has any one finished number three?" she asked in an even tone. she remained calm after that. but impositions ruled high that day. and she spent two laborious evenings writing letters of various sorts to fanny, before she found a decent congratulatory vein. her reason struggled hopelessly against the persuasion that fanny had behaved in an exceedingly treacherous manner. one may be extremely refined and still capable of a very sore heart. certainly miss winchelsea's heart was very sore. she had moods of sexual hostility, in which she generalised uncharitably about mankind. "he forgot himself with me," she said. "but fanny is pink and pretty and soft and a fool--a very excellent match for a man." and by way of a wedding present she sent fanny a gracefully bound volume of poetry by george meredith, and fanny wrote back a grossly happy letter to say that it was "_all_ beautiful." miss winchelsea hoped that some day mr. senoks might take up that slim book and think for a moment of the donor. fanny wrote several times before and about her marriage, pursuing that fond legend of their "ancient friendship," and giving her happiness in the fullest detail. and miss winchelsea wrote to helen for the first time after the roman journey, saying nothing about the marriage, but expressing very cordial feelings. they had been in rome at easter, and fanny was married in the august vacation. she wrote a garrulous letter to miss winchelsea, describing her home-coming and the astonishing arrangements of their "teeny, weeny" little house. mr. se'noks was now beginning to assume a refinement in miss winchelsea's memory out of all proportion to the facts of the case, and she tried in vain to imagine his cultured greatness in a "teeny weeny" little house. "am busy enamelling a cosy corner," said fanny, sprawling to the end of her third sheet, "so excuse more." miss winchelsea answered in her best style, gently poking fun at fanny's arrangements, and hoping intensely that mr. se'noks might see the letter. only this hope enabled her to write at all, answering not only that letter but one in november and one at christmas. the two latter communications contained urgent invitations for her to come to steely bank on a visit during the christmas holidays. she tried to think that _he_ had told her to ask that, but it was too much like fanny's opulent good-nature. she could not but believe that he must be sick of his blunder by this time; and she had more than a hope that he would presently write her a letter beginning "dear friend." something subtly tragic in the separation was a great support to her, a sad misunderstanding. to have been jilted would have been intolerable. but he never wrote that letter beginning "dear friend." for two years miss winchelsea could not go to see her friends, in spite of the reiterated invitations of mrs. sevenoaks--it became full sevenoaks in the second year. then one day near the easter rest she felt lonely and without a soul to understand her in the world, and her mind ran once more on what is called platonic friendship. fanny was clearly happy and busy in her new sphere of domesticity, but no doubt _he_ had his lonely hours. did he ever think of those days in rome, gone now beyond recalling? no one had understood her as he had done; no one in all the world. it would be a sort of melancholy pleasure to talk to him again, and what harm could it do? why should she deny herself? that night she wrote a sonnet, all but the last two lines of the octave--which would not come; and the next day she composed a graceful little note to tell fanny she was coming down. and so she saw him again. even at the first encounter it was evident he had changed; he seemed stouter and less nervous, and it speedily appeared that his conversation had already lost much of its old delicacy. there even seemed a justification for helen's description of weakness in his face--in certain lights it _was_ weak. he seemed busy and preoccupied about his affairs, and almost under the impression that miss winchelsea had come for the sake of fanny. he discussed his dinner with fanny in an intelligent way. they only had one good long talk together, and that came to nothing. he did not refer to rome, and spent some time abusing a man who had stolen an idea he had had for a text-book. it did not seem a very wonderful idea to miss winchelsea. she discovered he had forgotten the names of more than half the painters whose work they had rejoiced over in florence. it was a sadly disappointing week, and miss winchelsea was glad when it came to an end. under various excuses she avoided visiting them again. after a time the visitor's room was occupied by their two little boys, and fanny's invitations ceased. the intimacy of her letters had long since faded away. xxv. a dream of armageddon. the man with the white face entered the carriage at rugby. he moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform i noted how ill he seemed. he dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. then he glanced again in my direction. i feigned to read. i feared i had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment i was surprised to find him speaking. "i beg your pardon?" said i. "that book," he repeated, pointing a lean finger, "is about dreams." "obviously," i answered, for it was fortnum-roscoe's _dream states_, and the title was on the cover. he hung silent for a space as if he sought words. "yes," he said, at last, "but they tell you nothing." i did not catch his meaning for a second. "they don't know," he added. i looked a little more attentively at his face. "there are dreams," he said, "and dreams." that sort of proposition i never dispute. "i suppose----" he hesitated. "do you ever dream? i mean vividly." "i dream very little," i answered. "i doubt if i have three vivid dreams in a year." "ah!" he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts. "your dreams don't mix with your memories?" he asked abruptly. "you don't find yourself in doubt: did this happen or did it not?" "hardly ever. except just for a momentary hesitation now and then. i suppose few people do." "does _he_ say----" he indicated the book. "says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity of impression and the like to account for its not happening as a rule. i suppose you know something of these theories----" "very little--except that they are wrong." his emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time. i prepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate his next remark. he leant forward almost as though he would touch me. "isn't there something called consecutive dreaming--that goes on night after night?" "i believe there is. there are cases given in most books on mental trouble." "mental trouble! yes. i daresay there are. it's the right place for them. but what i mean----" he looked at his bony knuckles. "is that sort of thing always dreaming? _is_ it dreaming? or is it something else? mightn't it be something else?" i should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face. i remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained--perhaps you know that look. "i'm not just arguing about a matter of opinion," he said. "the thing's killing me." "dreams?" "if you call them dreams. night after night. vivid!--so vivid ... this--" (he indicated the landscape that went streaming by the window) "seems unreal in comparison! i can scarcely remember who i am, what business i am on ..." he paused. "even now--" "the dream is always the same--do you mean?" i asked. "it's over." "you mean?" "i died." "died?" "smashed and killed, and now so much of me as that dream was is dead. dead for ever. i dreamt i was another man, you know, living in a different part of the world and in a different time. i dreamt that night after night. night after night i woke into that other life. fresh scenes and fresh happenings--until i came upon the last--" "when you died?" "when i died." "and since then--" "no," he said. "thank god! that was the end of the dream..." it was clear i was in for this dream. and, after all, i had an hour before me, the light was fading fast, and fortnum-roscoe has a dreary way with him. "living in a different time," i said: "do you mean in some different age?" "yes." "past?" "no, to come--to come." "the year three thousand, for example?" "i don't know what year it was. i did when i was asleep, when i was dreaming, that is, but not now--not now that i am awake. there's a lot of things i have forgotten since i woke out of these dreams, though i knew them at the time when i was--i suppose it was dreaming. they called the year differently from our way of calling the year... what _did_ they call it?" he put his hand to his forehead. "no," said he, "i forget." he sat smiling weakly. for a moment i feared he did not mean to tell me his dream. as a rule, i hate people who tell their dreams, but this struck me differently. i proffered assistance even. "it began----" i suggested. "it was vivid from the first. i seemed to wake up in it suddenly. and it's curious that in these dreams i am speaking of i never remembered this life i am living now. it seemed as if the dream life was enough while it lasted. perhaps----but i will tell you how i find myself when i do my best to recall it all. i don't remember anything clearly until i found myself sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. i had been dozing, and suddenly i woke up--fresh and vivid--not a bit dreamlike-because the girl had stopped fanning me." "the girl?" "yes, the girl. you must not interrupt or you will put me out." he stopped abruptly. "you won't think i'm mad?" he said. "no," i answered; "you've been dreaming. tell me your dream." "i woke up, i say, because the girl had stopped fanning me. i was not surprised to find myself there or anything of that sort, you understand. i did not feel i had fallen into it suddenly. i simply took it up at that point. whatever memory i had of _this_ life, this nineteenth-century life, faded as i woke, vanished like a dream. i knew all about myself, knew that my name was no longer cooper but hedon, and all about my position in the world. i've forgotten a lot since i woke--there's a want of connection--but it was all quite clear and matter-of-fact then." he hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his face forward, and looking up to me appealingly. "this seems bosh to you?" "no, no!" i cried. "go on. tell me what this loggia was like." "it was not really a loggia--i don't know what to call it. it faced south. it was small. it was all in shadow except the semicircle above the balcony that showed the sky and sea and the corner where the girl stood. i was on a couch--it was a metal couch with light striped cushions--and the girl was leaning over the balcony with her back to me. the light of the sunrise fell on her ear and cheek. her pretty white neck and the little curls that nestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, and all the grace of her body was in the cool blue shadow. she was dressed--how can i describe it? it was easy and flowing. and altogether there she stood, so that it came to me how beautiful and desirable she was, as though i had never seen her before. and when at last i sighed and raised myself upon my arm she turned her face to me--" he stopped. "i have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. i have had mother, sisters, friends, wife and daughters--all their faces, the play of their faces, i know. but the face of this girl--it is much more real to me. i can bring it back into memory so that i see it again--i could draw it or paint it. and after all--" he stopped--but i said nothing. "the face of a dream--the face of a dream. she was beautiful. not that beauty which is terrible, cold, and worshipful, like the beauty of a saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but a sort of radiation, sweet lips that softened into smiles, and grave gray eyes. and she moved gracefully, she seemed to have part with all pleasant and gracious things--" he stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. then he looked up at me and went on, making no further attempt to disguise his absolute belief in the reality of his story. "you see, i had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all i had ever worked for or desired, for her sake. i had been a master man away there in the north, with influence and property and a great reputation, but none of it had seemed worth having beside her. i had come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures, with her, and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a remnant at least of my life. while i had been in love with her before i knew that she had any care for me, before i had imagined that she would dare--that we should dare--all my life had seemed vain and hollow, dust and ashes. it _was_ dust and ashes. night after night, and through the long days i had longed and desired--my soul had beaten against the thing forbidden! "but it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things. it's emotion, it's a tint, a light that comes and goes. only while it's there, everything changes, everything. the thing is i came away and left them in their crisis to do what they could." "left whom?" i asked, puzzled. "the people up in the north there. you see--in this dream, anyhow--i had been a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in, to group themselves about. millions of men who had never seen me were ready to do things and risk things because of their confidence in me. i had been playing that game for years, that big laborious game, that vague, monstrous political game amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech and agitation. it was a vast weltering world, and at last i had a sort of leadership against the gang-you know it was called the gang--a sort of compromise of scoundrelly projects and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupidities and catch-words--the gang that kept the world noisy and blind year by year, and all the while that it was drifting, drifting towards infinite disaster. but i can't expect you to understand the shades and complications of the year--the year something or other ahead. i had it all--down to the smallest details--in my dream. i suppose i had been dreaming of it before i awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new development i had imagined still hung about me as i rubbed my eyes. it was some grubby affair that made me thank god for the sunlight. i sat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman, and rejoicing--rejoicing that i had come away out of all that tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. after all, i thought, this is life--love and beauty, desire and delight, are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, gigantic ends? and i blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leader when i might have given my days to love. but then, thought i, if i had not spent my early days sternly and austerely, i might have wasted myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the thought all my being went out in love and tenderness to my dear mistress, my dear lady, who had come at last and compelled me--compelled me by her invincible charm for me--to lay that life aside. "'you are worth it,' i said, speaking without intending her to hear; 'you are worth it, my dearest one; worth pride and praise and all things. love! to have _you_ is worth them all together.' and at the murmur of my voice she turned about. "'come and see,' she cried--i can hear her now--come and see the sunrise upon monte solaro.' "i remember how i sprang to my feet and joined her at the balcony. she put a white hand upon my shoulder and pointed towards great masses of limestone flushing, as it were, into life. i looked. but first i noted the sunlight on her face caressing the lines of her cheeks and neck. how can i describe to you the scene we had before us? we were at capri----" "i have been there," i said. "i have clambered up monte solaro and drunk _vero capri_--muddy stuff like cider--at the summit." "ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tell me--you will know if this was indeed capri. for in this life i have never been there. let me describe it. we were in a little room, one of a vast multitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny, hollowed out of the limestone of a sort of cape, very high above the sea. the whole island, you know, was one enormous hotel, complex beyond explaining, and on the other side there were miles of floating hotels, and huge floating stages to which the flying machines came. they called it a pleasure city. of course, there was none of that in your time--rather, i should say, _is_ none of that _now_. of course. now!--yes. "well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the cape, so that one could see east and west. eastward was a great cliff--a thousand feet high perhaps, coldly grey except for one bright edge of gold, and beyond it the isle of the sirens, and a falling coast that faded and passed into the hot sunrise. and when one turned to the west, distinct and near was a little bay, a little beach still in shadow. and out of that shadow rose solaro, straight and tall, flushed and golden-crested, like a beauty throned, and the white moon was floating behind her in the sky. and before us from east to west stretched the many-tinted sea all dotted with little sailing-boats. "to the eastward, of course, these little boats were gray and very minute and clear, but to the westward they were little boats of gold--shining gold--almost like little flames. and just below us was a rock with an arch worn through it. the blue sea-water broke to green and foam all round the rock, and a galley came gliding out of the arch." "i know that rock," i said. "i was nearly drowned there. it is called the faraglioni." "_faraglioni_? yes, _she_ called it that," answered the man with the white face. "there was some story--but that----" he put his hand to his forehead again. "no," he said, "i forget that story. "well, that is the first thing i remember, the first dream i had, that little shaded room and the beautiful air and sky and that dear lady of mine, with her shining arms and her graceful robe, and how we sat and talked in half whispers to one another. we talked in whispers, not because there was any one to hear, but because there was still such a freshness of mind between us that our thoughts were a little frightened, i think, to find themselves at last in words. and so they went softly. "presently we were hungry, and we went from our apartment, going by a strange passage with a moving floor, until we came to the great breakfast-room--there was a fountain and music. a pleasant and joyful place it was, with its sunlight and splashing, and the murmur of plucked strings. and we sat and ate and smiled at one another, and i would not heed a man who was watching me from a table near by. "and afterwards we went on to the dancing-hall. but i cannot describe that hall. the place was enormous, larger than any building you have ever seen--and in one place there was the old gate of capri, caught into the wall of a gallery high overhead. light girders, stems and threads of gold, burst from the pillars like fountains, streamed like an aurora across the roof and interlaced, like--like conjuring tricks. all about the great circle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strange dragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights. the place was inundated with artificial light that shamed the newborn day. and as we went through the throng the people turned about and looked at us, for all through the world my name and face were known, and how i had suddenly thrown up pride, and struggle to come to this place. and they looked also at the lady beside me, though half the story of how at last she had come to me was unknown or mistold. and few of the men who were there, i know, but judged me a happy man, in spite of all the shame and dishonour that had come upon my name. "the air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of the rhythm of beautiful motions. thousands of beautiful people swarmed about the hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad recesses; they were dressed in splendid colours and crowned with flowers; thousands danced about the great circle beneath the white images of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of youths and maidens came and went. we two danced, not the dreary monotonies of your days--of this time, i mean--but dances that were beautiful, intoxicating. and even now i can see my lady dancing--dancing joyously. she danced, you know, with a serious face; she danced with a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me and caressing me--smiling and caressing with her eyes. "the music was different," he murmured. "it went--i cannot describe it; but it was infinitely richer and more varied than any music that has ever come to me awake. "and then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came to speak to me. he was a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad for that place, and already i had marked his face watching me in the breakfasting hall, and afterwards as we went along the passage i had avoided his eye. but now, as we sat in a little alcove smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to and fro across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to me so that i was forced to listen. and he asked that he might speak to me for a little time apart. "'no,' i said. 'i have no secrets from this lady. what do you want to tell me?' "he said it was a trivial matter, or at least a dry matter, for a lady to hear. "'perhaps for me to hear,' said i. "he glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal to her. then he asked me suddenly if i. had heard of a great and avenging declaration that gresham had made. now, gresham had always before been the man next to myself in the leadership of that great party in the north. he was a forcible, hard, and tactless man, and only i had been able to control and soften him. it was on his account even more than my own, i think, that the others had been so dismayed at my retreat. so this question about what he had done re-awakened my old interest in the life i had put aside just for a moment. "'i have taken no heed of any news for many days,' i said. 'what has gresham been saying?' "and with that the man began, nothing loth, and i must confess ever; i was struck by gresham's reckless folly in the wild and threatening words he had used. and this messenger they had sent to me not only told me of gresham's speech, but went on to ask counsel and to point out what need they had of me. while he talked, my lady sat a little forward and watched his face and mine. "my old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves. i could even see myself suddenly returning to the north, and all the dramatic effect of it. all that this man said witnessed to the disorder of the party indeed, but not to its damage. i should go back stronger than i had come. and then i thought of my lady. you see--how can i tell you? there were certain peculiarities of our relationship--as things are i need not tell about that--which would render her presence with me impossible. i should have had to leave her; indeed, i should have had to renounce her clearly and openly, if i was to do all that i could do in the north. and the man knew _that_, even as he talked to her and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to duty were--first, separation, then abandonment. at the touch of that thought my dream of a return was shattered. i turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence was gaining ground with me. "'what have i to do with these things now?' i said. 'i have done with them. do you think i am coquetting with your people in coming here?' "'no,' he said; 'but----' "'why cannot you leave me alone? i have done with these things. i have ceased to be anything but a private man.' "'yes,' he answered. 'but have you thought?--this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions----' "i stood up. "'no,' i cried. 'i won't hear you. i took count of all those things, i weighed them--and i have come away." "he seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. he looked from me to where the lady sat regarding us. "'war,' he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then turned slowly from me and walked away. "i stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal had set going. "i heard my lady's voice. "'dear,' she said; 'but if they have need of you--' "she did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there. i turned to her sweet face, and the balance of my mood swayed and reeled. "'they want me only to do the thing they dare not do themselves,' i said. 'if they distrust gresham they must settle with him themselves.' "she looked at me doubtfully. "'but war--' she said. "i saw a doubt on her face that i had seen before, a doubt of herself and me, the first shadow of the discovery that, seen strongly and completely, must drive us apart for ever. "now, i was an older mind than hers, and i could sway her to this belief or that. "'my dear one,' i said, 'you must not trouble over these things. there will be no war. certainly there will be no war. the age of wars is past. trust me to know the justice of this case. they have no right upon me, dearest, and no one has a right upon me. i have been free to choose my life, and i have chosen this.' "'but _war_--' she said. "i sat down beside her. i put an arm behind her and took her hand in mine. i set myself to drive that doubt away--i set myself to fill her mind with pleasant things again. i lied to her, and in lying to her i lied also to myself. and she was only too ready to believe me, only too ready to forget. "very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening to our bathing-place in the grotta del bovo marino, where it was our custom to bathe every day. we swam and splashed one another, and in that buoyant water i seemed to become something lighter and stronger than a man. and at last we came out dripping and rejoicing and raced among the rocks. and then i put on a dry bathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun, and presently i nodded, resting my head against her knee, and she put her hand upon my hair and stroked it softly and i dozed. and behold! as it were with the snapping of the string of a violin, i was awakening, and i was in my own bed in liverpool, in the life of to-day. "only for a time i could not believe that all these vivid moments had been no more than the substance of a dream. "in truth, i could not believe it a dream, for all the sobering reality of things about me. i bathed and dressed as it were by habit, and as i shaved i argued why i of all men should leave the woman i loved to go back to fantastic politics in the hard and strenuous north. even if gresham did force the world back to war, what was that to me? i was a man, with the heart of a man, and why should i feel the responsibility of a deity for the way the world might go? "you know that is not quite the way i think about affairs, about my real affairs. i am a solicitor, you know, with a point of view. "the vision was so real, you must understand, so utterly unlike a dream, that i kept perpetually recalling little irrelevant details; even the ornament of a bookcover that lay on my wife's sewing-machine in the breakfast-room recalled with the utmost vividness the gilt line that ran about the seat in the alcove where i had talked with the messenger from my deserted party. have you ever heard of a dream that had a quality like that?" "like--?" "so that afterwards you remembered little details you had forgotten." i thought. i had never noticed the point before, but he was right. "never," i said. "that is what you never seem to do with dreams." "no," he answered. "but that is just what i did. i am a solicitor, you must understand, in liverpool, and i could not help wondering what the clients and business people i found myself talking to in my office would think if i told them suddenly i was in love with a girl who would be born a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried about the politics of my great-great-great-grandchildren. i was chiefly busy that day negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease. it was a private builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in every possible way. i had an interview with him, and he showed a certain want of temper that sent me to bed still irritated. that night i had no dream. nor did i dream the next night, at least, to remember. "something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. i began to feel sure it _was_ a dream. and then it came again. "when the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was very different. i think it certain that four days had also elapsed _in_ the dream. many things had happened in the north, and the shadow of them was back again between us, and this time it was not so easily dispelled. i began, i know, with moody musings. why, in spite of all, should i go back, go back for all the rest of my days, to toil and stress, insults, and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds of millions of common people, whom i did not love, whom too often i could not do other than despise, from the stress and anguish of war and infinite misrule? and, after all, i might fail. _they_ all sought their own narrow ends, and why should not i--why should not i also live as a man? and out of such thoughts her voice summoned me, and i lifted my eyes. "i found myself awake and walking. we had come out above the pleasure city, we were near the summit of monte solaro and looking towards the bay. it was the late afternoon and very clear. far away to the left ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky, and naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us was vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and the ruins of torre dell' annunziata and castellammare glittering and near." i interrupted suddenly: "you have been to capri, of course?" "only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. all across the bay beyond sorrento were the floating palaces of the pleasure city moored and chained. and northward were the broad floating stages that received the aeroplanes. aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, each bringing its thousands of pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to capri and its delights. all these things, i say, stretched below. "but we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual sight that evening had to show. five war aeroplanes that had long slumbered useless in the distant arsenals of the rhine-mouth were manoeuvring now in the eastward sky. gresham had astonished the world by producing them and others, and sending them to circle here and there. it was the threat material in the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. he was one of those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heaven to create disasters. his energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! but he had no imagination, no invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith in his stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through. i remember how we stood out upon the headland watching the squadron circling far away, and how i weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly the way things must _go_. and then even it was not too late. i might have gone back, i think, and saved the world. the people of the north would follow me, i knew, granted only that in one thing i respected their moral standards. the east and south would trust me as they would trust no other northern man. and i knew i had only to put it to her and she would have let me go... not because she did not love me! "only i did not want to go; my will was all the other way about. i had so newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: i was still so fresh a renegade from duty that the daylight clearness of what i _ought_ to do had no power at all to touch my will. my will was to live, to gather pleasures, and make my dear lady happy. but though this sense of vast neglected duties had no power to draw me, it could make me silent and preoccupied, it robbed the days i had spent of half their brightness and roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the night. and as i stood and watched gresham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro--those birds of infinite ill omen--she stood beside me, watching me, perceiving the trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly--her eyes questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. her face was grey because the sunset was fading out of the sky. it was no fault of hers that she held me. she had asked me to go from her, and again in the night-time and with tears she had asked me to go. "at last it was the sense of her that roused me from my mood. i turned upon her suddenly and challenged her to race down the mountain slopes. 'no,' she said, as if i jarred with her gravity, but i was resolved to end that gravity and made her run--no one can be very grey and sad who is out of breath---and when she stumbled i ran with my hand beneath her arm. we ran down past a couple of men, who turned back staring in astonishment at my behaviour--they must have recognised my face. and half-way down the slope came a tumult in the air--clang-clank, clang-clank--and we stopped, and presently over the hill-crest those war things came flying one behind the other." the man seemed hesitating on the verge of a description. "what were, they like?" i asked. "they had never fought," he said. "they were just like our ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. no one knew what they might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared to speculate. they were great driving things shaped like spear-heads without a shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft." "steel?" "not steel." "aluminium?" "no, no, nothing of that sort. an alloy that was very common--as common as brass, for example. it was called--let me see--" he squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "i am forgetting everything," he said. "and they carried guns?" "little guns, firing high explosive shells. they fired the guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the beak. that was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. no one could tell exactly what was going to happen. and meanwhile i suppose it was very fine to go whirling through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy. i guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what the real thing would be like. and these flying war machines, you know, were only one sort of the endless war contrivances that had been invented and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace. there were all sorts of these things that people were routing out and furbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had never been tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. you know the silly way of these ingenious sort of men who make these things; they turn 'em out as beavers build dams, and with no more sense of the rivers they're going to divert and the lands they're going to flood! "as we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again in the twilight i foresaw it all: i saw how clearly and inevitably things were driving for war in gresham's silly, violent hands, and i had some inkling of what war was bound to be under these new conditions. and even then, though i knew it was drawing near the limit of my opportunity, i could find no will to go back." he sighed. "that was my last chance. "we did not go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so we walked out upon the high terrace, to and fro, and--she counselled me to go back. "'my dearest,' she said, and her sweet face looked up to me, 'this is death. this life you lead is death. go back to them, go back to your duty--' "she began to weep, saying between her sobs, and clinging to my arm as she said it, 'go back--go back.' "then suddenly she fell mute, and glancing down at her face, i read in an instant the thing she had thought to do. it was one of those moments when one _sees_. "'no!' i said. "'no?' she asked, in surprise, and i think a little fearful at the answer to her thought. "'nothing,' i said, 'shall send me back. nothing! i have chosen. love, i have chosen, and the world must go. whatever happens, i will live this life--i will live for _you_! it--nothing shall turn me aside; nothing, my dear one. even if you died--even if you died--' "'yes?' she murmured, softly. "'then--i also would die.' "and before she could speak again i began to talk, talking eloquently--as i _could_ do in that life--talking to exalt love, to make the life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing i was deserting something hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thing to set aside. i bent all my mind to throw that glamour upon it, seeking not only to convert her but myself to that. we talked, and she clung to me, torn too between all that she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. and at last i did make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of the world only a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we two poor foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in that splendid delusion, drunken rather with that glorious delusion, under the still stars. "and so my moment passed. "it was my last chance. even as we went to and fro there, the leaders of the south and east were gathering their resolve, and the hot answer that shattered gresham's bluffing for ever took shape and waited. and all over asia, and the ocean, and the south, the air and the wires were throbbing with their warnings to prepare--prepare. "no one living, you know, knew what war was; no one could imagine, with all these new inventions, what horror war might bring. i believe most people still believed it would be a matter of bright uniforms and shouting charges and triumphs and flags and bands--in a time when half the world drew its food-supply from regions ten thousand miles away----" the man with the white face paused. i glanced at him, and his face was intent on the floor of the carriage. a little railway station, a string of loaded trucks, a signal-box, and the back of a cottage shot by the carriage window, and a bridge passed with a clap of noise, echoing the tumult of the train. "after that," he said, "i dreamt often. for three weeks of nights that dream was my life. and the worst of it was there were nights when i could not dream, when i lay tossing on a bed in _this_ accursed life; and _there_--somewhere lost to me--things were happening--momentous, terrible things... i lived at nights--my days, my waking days, this life i am living now, became a faded, far-away dream, a drab setting, the cover of the book." he thought. "i could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the dream, but as to what i did in the daytime--no. i could not tell--i do not remember. my memory--my memory has gone. the business of life slips from me--" he leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. for a long time he said nothing. "and then?" said i. "the war burst like a hurricane." he stared before him at unspeakable things. "and then?" i urged again. "one touch of unreality," he said, in the low tone of a man who speaks to himself, "and they would have been nightmares. but they were not nightmares--they were not nightmares. _no_!" he was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that there was a danger of losing the rest of the story. but he went on talking again in the same tone of questioning self-communion. "what was there to do but flight? i had not thought the war would touch capri--i had seemed to see capri as being out of it all, as the contrast to it all; but two nights after the whole place was shouting and bawling, every woman almost and every other man wore a badge--gresham's badge--and there was no music but a jangling war-song over and over again, and everywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. the whole island was a-whirl with rumours; it was said again and again, that fighting had begun. i had not expected this. i had seen so little of the life of pleasure that i had failed to reckon with this violence of the amateurs. and as for me, i was out of it. i was like a man who might have prevented the firing of a magazine. the time had gone. i was no one; the vainest stripling with a badge counted for more than i. the crowd jostled us and bawled in our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at my lady because no badge was on her, and we two went back to our own place again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and i a-quiver with rage. so furious was i, i could have quarrelled with her if i could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes. "all my magnificence had gone from me. i walked up and down our rock cell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the southward that flared and passed and came again. "'we must get out of this place,' i said over and over. 'i have made my choice, and i will have no hand in these troubles. i will have nothing of this war. we have taken our lives out of all these things. this is no refuge for us. let us go.' "and the next day we were already in flight from the war that covered the world. "and all the rest was flight--all the rest was flight." he mused darkly. "how much was there of it?" he made no answer. "how many days?" his face was white and drawn and his hands were clenched. he took no heed of my curiosity. i tried to draw him back to his story with questions. "where did you go?" i said. "when?" "when you left capri." "south-west," he said, and glanced at me for a second. "we went in a boat." "but i should have thought an aeroplane?" "they had been seized." i questioned him no more. presently i thought he was beginning again. he broke out in an argumentative monotone: "but why should it be? if, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress, _is_ life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? if there _is_ no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreams of quiet places are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? surely it was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; it was love had isolated us. love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty, more glorious than all else in life, in the very shape and colour of life, and summoned me away. i had silenced all the voices, i had answered all the questions--i had come to her. and suddenly there was nothing but war and death!" i had an inspiration. "after all," i said, "it could have been only a dream." "a dream!" he cried, flaming upon me, "a dream--when, even now--" for the first time he became animated. a faint flush crept into his cheek. he raised his open hand and clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. he spoke, looking away from me, and for all the rest of the time he looked away. "we are but phantoms," he said, "and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights--so be it? but one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream stuff, but eternal and enduring. it is the centre of my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. i loved her, that woman of a dream. and she and i are dead together! "a dream! how can it be a dream, when it drenched a living life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that i have lived for and cared for worthless and unmeaning? "until that very moment when she was killed i believed we had still a chance of getting away," he said. "all through the night and morning that we sailed across the sea from capri to salerno we talked of escape. we were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty, arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of the world. we were uplifted, as though our quest was a holy thing, as though love for one another was a mission... "even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock capri-already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and hiding-places that were to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the grey; but, indeed, i made a text of that and talked. there, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carving of grey, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. and out under the archway that is built over the piccola marina other boats were coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the mainland, another little string of boats came into view, driving before the wind towards the south-west. in a little while a multitude had come out, the remoter just little specks of ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff. "'it is love and reason,' i said, 'fleeing from all this madness of war.' "and though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying across the southern sky we did not heed it. there it was--a line of little dots in the sky--and then more, dotting the south-eastern horizon, and then still more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks. now they were all thin little strokes of blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of light. they came, rising and falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks or such-like birds, moving with a marvellous uniformity, and ever as they drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. the southward wing flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud athwart the sun. and then suddenly they swept round to the eastward and streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and clearer again until they vanished from the sky. and after that we noted to the northward, and very high, gresham's fighting machines hanging high over naples like an evening swarm of gnats. "it seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of birds. "even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east seemed to us to signify nothing... "each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still seeking that refuge where we might live and love. fatigue had come upon us, pain and many distresses. for though we were dusty and stained by our toilsome tramping, and half starved, and with the horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of the peasants--for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the peninsula--with these things haunting our minds it still resulted only in a deepening resolution to escape. oh, but she was brave and patient! she who had never faced hardship and exposure had courage for herself--and me. we went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. always we went on foot. at first there were other fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. some escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. many of the men were impressed. but we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to bribe a passage north, and i feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds. we had landed at salerno, and we had been turned back from cava, and we had tried to cross towards taranto by a pass over mount alburno, but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among the marshes by paestum, where those great temples stand alone. i had some vague idea that by paestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take once more to sea. and there it was the battle overtook us. "a sort of soul-blindness had me. plainly i could see that we were being hemmed in; that the great net of that giant warfare had us in its toils. many times we had seen the levies that had come down from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in the distance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition and preparing the mounting of the guns. once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spies--at any rate a shot had gone shuddering over us. several times we had hidden in woods from hovering aeroplanes. "but all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain... we were in an open place near those great temples at paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. how i can see it! my lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, and i was standing up watching to see if i could tell the distance of the firing that came and went. they were still, you know, fighting far from each other, with these terrible new weapons that had never before been used: guns that would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do----what _they_ would do no man could foretell. "i knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together. i knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and rest! "though all those things were in my mind, they were in the background. they seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. chiefly, i was thinking of my lady. an aching distress filled me. for the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. behind me i could hear her sobbing, but i would not turn round to her because i knew she had need of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. it was well, i thought, that she would weep and rest, and then we would toil on again, for i had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. even now i can see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek. "'if we had parted,' she said, 'if i had let you go--' "'no,' said i. 'even now i do not repent. i will not repent; i made my choice, and i will hold on to the end.' "and then-"overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us i heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown. they chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks and passed..." he put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips. "at the flash i had turned about... "you know--she stood up-"she stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me-"as though she wanted to reach me-"and she had been shot through the heart." he stopped and stared at me. i felt all that foolish incapacity an englishman feels on such occasions. i met his eyes for a moment, and then stared out of the window. for a long space we kept silence. when at last i looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles. he bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it. "i carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my arms--as though it mattered. i don't know why. they seemed a sort of sanctuary, you know, they had lasted so long, i suppose. "she must have died almost instantly. only--i talked to her--all the way." silence again. "i have seen those temples," i said abruptly, and indeed he had brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me. "it was the brown one, the big brown one. i sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms... silent after the first babble was over. and after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed... it was tremendously still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still--in spite of the thudding and banging that went all about the sky. "i seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and that the battle went away to the west. one aeroplane was struck, and overset and fell. i remember that--though it didn't interest me in the least. it didn't seem to signify. it was like a wounded gull, you know--flapping for a time in the water. i could see it down the aisle of the temple--a black thing in the bright blue water. "three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased. each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. that was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by--made just a fresh bright surface. "as the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater. "the curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who makes a trivial conversation, "is that i didn't _think_--i didn't think at all. i sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort of lethargy-stagnant. "and i don't remember waking up. i don't remember dressing that day. i know i found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in front of me, and how i was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that in reality i was sitting, stunned, in that paestum temple with a dead woman in my arms. i read my letters like a machine. i have forgotten what they were about." he stopped, and there was a long silence. suddenly i perceived that we were running down the incline from chalk farm to euston. i started at this passing of time. i turned on him with a brutal question with the tone of "now or never." "and did you dream again?" "yes." he seemed to force himself to finish. his voice was very low. "once more, and as it were only for a few instants. i seemed to have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones beside me. a gaunt body. not her, you know. so soon--it was not her... "i may have heard voices. i do not know. only i knew clearly that men were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage. "i stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. they were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them. "and further away i saw others, and then more at another point in the wall. it was a long lax line of men in open order. "presently the man i had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards the temple. he scrambled down with them and led them. he came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped. "at first i had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when i had seen they meant to come to the temple i was moved to forbid them. i shouted to the officer. "'you must not come here,' i cried, '_i_ am here. i am here with my dead.' "he stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown tongue. "i repeated what i had said. "he shouted again, and i folded my arms and stood still. presently he spoke to his men and came forward. he carried a drawn sword. "i signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. i told him again very patiently and clearly: 'you must not come here. these are old temples, and i am here with my dead.' "presently he was so close i could see his face clearly. it was a narrow face, with dull grey eyes, and a black moustache. he had a scar on his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. he kept shouting unintelligible things, questions perhaps, at me. "i know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not occur to me. as i tried to explain to him he interrupted me in imperious tones, bidding me, i suppose, stand aside. "he made to go past me, and i caught hold of him. "i saw his face change at my grip. "'you fool,' i cried. 'don't you know? she is dead!' "he started back. he looked at me with cruel eyes. "i saw a sort of exultant resolve leap into them--delight. then suddenly, with a scowl, he swept his sword back--_so_--and thrust." he stopped abruptly. i became aware of a change in the rhythm of the train. the brakes lifted their voices and the carriage jarred and jerked. this present world insisted upon itself, became clamorous. i saw through the steamy window huge electric lights glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages passing by, and then a signal-box, hoisting its constellation of green and red into the murky london twilight, marched after them. i looked again at his drawn features. "he ran me through the heart. it was with a sort of astonishment--no fear, no pain--but just amazement, that i felt it pierce me, felt the sword drive home into my body. it didn't hurt, you know. it didn't hurt at all." the yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing first rapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping with a jerk. dim shapes of men passed to and fro without. "euston!" cried a voice. "do you mean--?" "there was no pain, no sting or smart. amazement and then darkness sweeping over everything. the hot, brutal face before me, the face of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. it swept out of existence--" "euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "euston!" the carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood regarding us. the sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the london cobble-stones, came to my ears. a truck-load of lighted lamps blazed along the platform. "a darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things." "any luggage, sir?" said the porter. "and that was the end?" i asked. he seemed to hesitate. then, almost inaudibly, he answered, "_no_." "you mean?" "i couldn't get to her. she was there on the other side of the temple-and then--" "yes," i insisted. "yes?" "nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! my god! great birds that fought and tore." xxvi. the valley of spiders. towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. the difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle. for a space they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes. it spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless ravine to break its desolation of yellow grass. its purple distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills--hills it might be of a greener kind--and above them, invisibly supported, and seeming indeed to hang in the blue, were the snow-clad summits of mountains--that grew larger and bolder to the northwestward as the sides of the valley drew together. and westward the valley opened until a distant darkness under the sky told where the forests began. but the three men looked neither east nor west, but only steadfastly across the valley. the gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. "nowhere," he said, with a sigh of disappointment in his voice. "but, after all, they had a full day's start." "they don't know we are after them," said the little man on the white horse. "_she_ would know," said the leader bitterly, as if speaking to himself. "even then they can't go fast. they've got no beast but the mule, and all to-day the girl's foot has been bleeding----" the man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage on him. "do you think i haven't seen that?" he snarled. "it helps, anyhow," whispered the little man to himself. the gaunt man with the scarred lip stared impassively. "they can't be over the valley," he said. "if we ride hard----" he glanced at the white horse and paused. "curse all white horses!" said the man with the silver bridle, and turned to scan the beast his curse included. the little man looked down between the melancholy ears of his steed. "i did my best," he said. the two others stared again across the valley for a space. the gaunt man passed the back of his hand across the scarred lip. "come up!" said the man who owned the silver bridle, suddenly. the little man started and jerked his rein, and the horse hoofs of the three made a multitudinous faint pattering upon the withered grass as they turned back towards the trail... they rode cautiously down the long slope before them, and so came through a waste of prickly twisted bushes and strange dry shapes of thorny branches that grew amongst the rocks, into the levels below. and there the trail grew faint, for the soil was scanty, and the only herbage was this scorched dead straw that lay upon the ground. still, by hard scanning, by leaning beside the horses' necks and pausing ever and again, even these white men could contrive to follow after their prey. there were trodden places, bent and broken blades of the coarse grass, and ever and again the sufficient intimation of a footmark. and once the leader saw a brown smear of blood where the half-caste girl may have trod. and at that under his breath he cursed her for a fool. the gaunt man checked his leader's tracking, and the little man on the white horse rode behind, a man lost in a dream. they rode one after another, the man with the silver bridle led the way, and they spoke never a word. after a time it came to the little man on the white horse that the world was very still. he started out of his dream. besides the little noises of their horses and equipment, the whole great valley kept the brooding quiet of a painted scene. before him went his master and his fellow, each intently leaning forward to the left, each impassively moving with the paces of his horse; their shadows went before them--still, noiseless, tapering attendants; and nearer a crouched cool shape was his own. he looked about him. what was it had gone? then he remembered the reverberation from the banks of the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. and, moreover----? there was no breeze. that was it! what a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber! and the sky open and blank except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in the upper valley. he straightened his back, fretted with his bridle, puckered his lips to whistle, and simply sighed. he turned in his saddle for a time, and stared at the throat of the mountain gorge out of which they had come. blank! blank slopes on either side, with never a sign of a decent beast or tree-much less a man. what a land it was! what a wilderness! he dropped again into his former pose. it filled him with a momentary pleasure to see a wry stick of purple black flash out into the form of a snake, and vanish amidst the brown. after all, the infernal valley _was_ alive. and then, to rejoice him still more, came a little breath across his face, a whisper that came and went, the faintest inclination of a stiff black-antlered bush upon a little crest, the first intimations of a possible breeze. idly he wetted his finger, and held it up. he pulled up sharply to avoid a collision with the gaunt man, who had stopped at fault upon the trail. just at that guilty moment he caught his master's eye looking towards him. for a time he forced an interest in the tracking. then, as they rode on again, he studied his master's shadow and hat and shoulder, appearing and disappearing behind the gaunt man's nearer contours. they had ridden four days out of the very limits of the world into this desolate place, short of water, with nothing but a strip of dried meat under their saddles, over rocks and mountains, where surely none but these fugitives had ever been before--for _that_! and all this was for a girl, a mere wilful child! and the man had whole cityfuls of people to do his basest bidding--girls, women! why in the name of passionate folly _this_ one in particular? asked the little man, and scowled at the world, and licked his parched lips with a blackened tongue. it was the way of the master, and that was all he knew. just because she sought to evade him... his eye caught a whole row of high-plumed canes bending in unison, and then the tails of silk that hung before his neck flapped and fell. the breeze was growing stronger. somehow it took the stiff stillness out of things--and that was well. "hullo!" said the gaunt man. all three stopped abruptly. "what?" asked the master. "what?" "over there," said the gaunt man, pointing up the valley. "what?" "something coming towards us." and as he spoke a yellow animal crested a rise and came bearing down upon them. it was a big wild dog, coming before the wind, tongue out, at a steady pace, and running with such an intensity of purpose that he did not seem to see the horsemen he approached. he ran with his nose up, following, it was plain, neither scent nor quarry. as he drew nearer the little man felt for his sword. "he's mad," said the gaunt rider. "shout!" said the little man, and shouted. the dog came on. then when the little man's blade was already out, it swerved aside and went panting by them and passed. the eyes of the little man followed its flight. "there was no foam," he said. for a space the man with the silver-studded bridle stared up the valley. "oh, come on!" he cried at last. "what does it matter?" and jerked his horse into movement again. the little man left the insoluble mystery of a dog that fled from nothing but the wind, and lapsed into profound musings on human character. "come on!" he whispered to himself. "why should it be given to one man to say 'come on!' with that stupendous violence of effect? always, all his life, the man with the silver bridle has been saying that. if _i_ said it--!" thought the little man. but people marvelled when the master was disobeyed even in the wildest things. this half-caste girl seemed to him, seemed to every one, mad--blasphemous almost. the little man, by way of comparison, reflected on the gaunt rider with the scarred lip, as stalwart as his master, as brave and, indeed, perhaps braver, and yet for him there was obedience, nothing but to give obedience duly and stoutly... certain sensations of the hands and knees called the little man back to more immediate things. he became aware of something. he rode up beside his gaunt fellow. "do you notice the horses?" he said in an undertone. the gaunt face looked interrogation. "they don't like this wind," said the little man, and dropped behind as the man with the silver bridle turned upon him. "it's all right," said the gaunt-faced man. they rode on again for a space in silence. the foremost two rode downcast upon the trail, the hindmost man watched the haze that crept down the vastness of the valley, nearer and nearer, and noted how the wind grew in strength moment by moment. far away on the left he saw a line of dark bulks--wild hog, perhaps, galloping down the valley, but of that he said nothing, nor did he remark again upon the uneasiness of the horses. and then he saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great shining white ball like a gigantic head of thistledown, that drove before the wind athwart the path. these balls soared high in the air, and dropped and rose again and caught for a moment, and hurried on and passed, but at the sight of them the restlessness of the horses increased. then presently he saw that more of these drifting globes--and then soon very many more--were hurrying towards him down the valley. they became aware of a squealing. athwart the path a huge boar rushed, turning his head but for one instant to glance at them, and then hurling on down the valley again. and at that all three stopped and sat in their saddles, staring into the thickening haze that was coming upon them. "if it were not for this thistle-down--" began the leader. but now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of them. it was really not an even sphere at all, but a vast, soft, ragged, filmy thing, a sheet gathered by the corners, an aerial jelly-fish, as it were, but rolling over and over as it advanced, and trailing long cobwebby threads and streamers that floated in its wake. "it isn't thistle-down," said the little man. "i don't like the stuff," said the gaunt man. and they looked at one another. "curse it!" cried the leader. "the air's full of lit up there. if it keeps on at this pace long, it will stop us altogether." an instinctive feeling, such as lines out a herd of deer at the approach of some ambiguous thing, prompted them to turn their horses to the wind, ride forward for a few paces, and stare at that advancing multitude of floating masses. they came on before the wind with a sort of smooth swiftness, rising and falling noiselessly, sinking to earth, rebounding high, soaring--all with a perfect unanimity, with a still, deliberate assurance. right and left of the horsemen the pioneers of this strange army passed. at one that rolled along the ground, breaking shapelessly and trailing out reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and bands, all three horses began to shy and dance. the master was seized with a sudden, unreasonable impatience. he cursed the drifting globes roundly. "get on!" he cried; "get on! what do these things matter? how _can_ they matter? back to the trail!" he fell swearing at his horse and sawed the bit across its mouth. he shouted aloud with rage. "i will follow that trail, i tell you," he cried. "where is the trail?" he gripped the bridle of his prancing horse and searched amidst the grass. a long and clinging thread fell across his face, a grey streamer dropped about his bridle arm, some big, active thing with many legs ran down the back of his head. he looked up to discover one of those grey masses anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes about--but noiselessly. he had an impression of many eyes, of a dense crew of squat bodies, of long, many-jointed limbs hauling at their mooring ropes to bring the thing down upon him. for a space he stared up, reining in his prancing horse with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. then the flat of a sword smote his back, and a blade flashed overhead and cut the drifting balloon of spider-web free, and the whole mass lifted softly and drove clear and away. "spiders!" cried the voice of the gaunt man. "the things are full of big spiders! look, my lord!" the man with the silver bridle still followed the mass that drove away. "look, my lord!" the master found himself staring down at a red smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. he tried to grasp the situation. "ride for it!" the little man was shouting. "ride for it down the valley." what happened then was like the confusion of a battle. the man with the silver bridle saw the little man go past him, slashing furiously at imaginary cobwebs, saw him cannon into the horse of the gaunt man and hurl it and its rider to earth. his own horse went a dozen paces before he could rein it in. then he looked up to avoid imaginary dangers, and then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man standing and slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that streamed and wrapped about them both. and thick and fast as thistle-down on waste land on a windy day in july the cobweb masses were coming on. the little man had dismounted, but he dared not release his horse. he was endeavouring to lug the struggling brute back with the strength of one arm, while with the other he slashed aimlessly. the tentacles of a second grey mass had entangled themselves with the struggle, and this second grey mass came to its moorings, and slowly sank. the master set his teeth, gripped his bridle, lowered his head, and spurred his horse forward. the horse on the ground rolled over, there was blood and moving shapes upon the flanks, and the gaunt man suddenly leaving it, ran forward towards his master, perhaps ten paces. his legs were swathed and encumbered with grey; he made ineffectual movements with his sword. grey streamers waved from him; there was a thin veil of grey across his face. with his left hand he beat at something on his body, and suddenly he stumbled and fell. he struggled to rise, and fell again, and suddenly, horribly, began to howl, "oh--ohoo, ohooh!" the master could see the great spiders upon him, and others upon the ground. as he strove to force his horse nearer to this gesticulating, screaming grey object that struggled up and down, there came a clatter of hoofs, and the little man, in act of mounting, swordless, balanced on his belly athwart the white horse, and clutching its mane, whirled past. and again a clinging thread of grey gossamer swept across the master's face. all about him, and over him, it seemed this drifting, noiseless cobweb circled and drew nearer him... to the day of his death he never knew just how the event of that moment happened. did he, indeed, turn his horse, or did it really of its own accord stampede after its fellow? suffice it that in another second he was galloping full tilt down the valley with his sword whirling furiously overhead. and all about him on the quickening breeze, the spiders' air-ships, their air bundles and air sheets, seemed to him to hurry in a conscious pursuit. clatter, clatter, thud, thud,--the man with the silver bridle rode, heedless of his direction, with his fearful face looking up now right, now left, and his sword arm ready to slash. and a few hundred yards ahead of him, with a tail of torn cobweb trailing behind him, rode the little man on the white horse, still but imperfectly in the saddle. the reeds bent before them, the wind blew fresh and strong, over his shoulder the master could see the webs hurrying to overtake... he was so intent to escape the spiders' webs that only as his horse gathered together for a leap did he realise the ravine ahead. and then he realised it only to misunderstand and interfere. he was leaning forward on his horse's neck and sat up and back all too late. but if in his excitement he had failed to leap, at any rate he had not forgotten how to fall. he was horseman again in mid-air. he came off clear with a mere bruise upon his shoulder, and his horse rolled, kicking spasmodic legs, and lay still. but the master's sword drove its point into the hard soil, and snapped clean across, as though chance refused him any longer as her knight, and the splintered end missed his face by an inch or so. he was on his feet in a moment, breathlessly scanning the on-rushing spider-webs. for a moment he was minded to run, and then thought of the ravine, and turned back. he ran aside once to dodge one drifting terror, and then he was swiftly clambering down the precipitous sides, and out of the touch of the gale. there, under the lee of the dry torrent's steeper banks, he might crouch and watch these strange, grey masses pass and pass in safety till the wind fell, and it became possible to escape. and there for a long time he crouched, watching the strange, grey, ragged masses trail their streamers across his narrowed sky. once a stray spider fell into the ravine close beside him--a full foot it measured from leg to leg and its body was half a man's hand--and after he had watched its monstrous alacrity of search and escape for a little while and tempted it to bite his broken sword, he lifted up his iron-heeled boot and smashed it into a pulp. he swore as he did so, and for a time sought up and down for another. then presently, when he was surer these spider swarms could not drop into the ravine, he found a place where he could sit down, and sat and fell into deep thought and began, after his manner, to gnaw his knuckles and bite his nails. and from this he was moved by the coming of the man with the white horse. he heard him long before he saw him, as a clattering of hoofs, stumbling footsteps, and a reassuring voice. then the little man appeared, a rueful figure, still with a tail of white cobweb trailing behind him. they approached each other without speaking, without a salutation. the little man was fatigued and shamed to the pitch of hopeless bitterness, and came to a stop at last, face to face with his seated master. the latter winced a little under his dependent's eye. "well?" he said at last, with no pretence of authority. "you left him?" "my horse bolted." "i know. so did mine." he laughed at his master mirthlessly. "i say my horse bolted," said the man who once had a silver-studded bridle. "cowards both," said the little man. the other gnawed his knuckle through some meditative moments, with his eye on his inferior. "don't call me a coward," he said at length. "you are a coward, like myself." "a coward possibly. there is a limit beyond which every man must fear. that i have learnt at last. but not like yourself. that is where the difference comes in." "i never could have dreamt you would have left him. he saved your life two minutes before... why are you our lord?" the master gnawed his knuckles again, and his countenance was dark. "no man calls me a coward," he said. "no ... a broken sword is better than none ... one spavined white horse cannot be expected to carry two men a four days' journey. i hate white horses, but this time it cannot be helped. you begin to understand me? i perceive that you are minded, on the strength of what you have seen and fancy, to taint my reputation. it is men of your sort who unmake kings. besides which--i never liked you." "my lord!" said the little man. "no," said the master. "_no!_" he stood up sharply as the little man moved. for a minute perhaps they faced one another. overhead the spiders' balls went driving. there was a quick movement among the pebbles; a running of feet, a cry of despair, a gasp and a blow... towards nightfall the wind fell. the sun set in a calm serenity, and the man who had once possessed the silver bridle came at last very cautiously and by an easy slope out of the ravine again; but now he led the white horse that once belonged to the little man. he would have gone back to his horse to get his silver-mounted bridle again, but he feared night and a quickening breeze might still find him in the valley, and besides, he disliked greatly to think he might discover his horse all swathed in cobwebs and perhaps unpleasantly eaten. and as he thought of those cobwebs, and of all the dangers he had been through, and the manner in which he had been preserved that day, his hand sought a little reliquary that hung about his neck, and he clasped it for a moment with heartfelt gratitude. as he did so his eyes went across the valley. "i was hot with passion," he said, "and now she has met her reward. they also, no doubt--" and behold! far away out of the wooded slopes across the valley, but in the clearness of the sunset, distinct and unmistakable, he saw a little spire of smoke. at that his expression of serene resignation changed to an amazed anger. smoke? he turned the head of the white horse about, and hesitated. and as he did so a little rustle of air went through the grass about him. far away upon some reeds swayed a tattered sheet of grey. he looked at the cobwebs; he looked at the smoke. "perhaps, after all, it is not them," he said at last. but he knew better. after he had stared at the smoke for some time, he mounted the white horse. as he rode, he picked his way amidst stranded masses of web. for some reason there were many dead spiders on the ground, and those that lived feasted guiltily on their fellows. at the sound of his horse's hoofs they fled. their time had passed. from the ground, without either a wind to carry them or a winding-sheet ready, these things, for all their poison, could do him little evil. he flicked with his belt at those he fancied came too near. once, where a number ran together over a bare place, he was minded to dismount and trample them with his boots, but this impulse he overcame. ever and again he turned in his saddle, and looked back at the smoke. "spiders," he muttered over and over again. "spiders. well, well... the next time i must spin a web." xxvii. the new accelerator. certainly, if ever a man found a guinea when he was looking for a pin, it is my good friend professor gibberne. i have heard before of investigators overshooting the mark, but never quite to the extent that he has done. he has really, this time at any rate, without any touch of exaggeration in the phrase, found something to revolutionise human life. and that when he was simply seeking an all-round nervous stimulant to bring languid people up to the stresses of these pushful days. i have tasted the stuff now several times, and i cannot do better than describe the effect the thing had on me. that there are astonishing experiences in store for all in search of new sensations will become apparent enough. professor gibberne, as many people know, is my neighbour in folkestone. unless my memory plays me a trick, his portrait at various ages has already appeared in _the strand magazine_--think late in 1899 but i am unable to look it up because i have lent that volume to someone who has never sent it back. the reader may, perhaps, recall the high forehead and the singularly long black eyebrows that give such a mephistophelean touch to his face. he occupies one of those pleasant little detached houses in the mixed style that make the western end of the upper sandgate road so interesting. his is the one with the flemish gables and the moorish portico, and it is in the little room with the mullioned bay window that he works when he is down here, and in which of an evening we have so often smoked and talked together. he is a mighty jester, but, besides, he likes to talk to me about his work; he is one of those men who find a help and stimulus in talking, and so i have been able to follow the conception of the new accelerator right up from a very early stage. of course, the greater portion of his experimental work is not done in folkestone, but in gower street, in the fine new laboratory next to the hospital that he has been the first to use. as every one knows, or at least as all intelligent people know, the special department in which gibberne has gained so great and deserved a reputation among physiologists is the action of drugs upon the nervous system. upon soporifics, sedatives, and anaesthetics he is, i am told, unequalled. he is also a chemist of considerable eminence, and i suppose in the subtle and complex jungle of riddles that centres about the ganglion cell and the axis fibre there are little cleared places of his making, little glades of illumination, that, until he sees fit to publish his results, are still inaccessible to every other living man. and in the last few years he has been particularly assiduous upon this question of nervous stimulants, and already, before the discovery of the new accelerator, very successful with them. medical science has to thank him for at least three distinct and absolutely safe invigorators of unrivalled value to practising men. in cases of exhaustion the preparation known as gibberne's b syrup has, i suppose, saved more lives already than any lifeboat round the coast. "but none of these little things begin to satisfy me yet," he told me nearly a year ago. "either they increase the central energy without affecting the nerves, or they simply increase the available energy by lowering the nervous conductivity; and all of them are unequal and local in their operation. one wakes up the heart and viscera and leaves the brain stupefied, one gets at the brain champagne fashion, and does nothing good for the solar plexus, and what i want--and what, if it's an earthly possibility, i mean to have--is a stimulant that stimulates all round, that wakes you up for a time from the crown of your head to the tip of your great toe, and makes you go two--or even three--to everybody else's one. eh? that's the thing i'm after." "it would tire a man," i said. "not a doubt of it. and you'd eat double or treble--and all that. but just think what the thing would mean. imagine yourself with a little phial like this"--he held up a little bottle of green glass and marked his points with it--"and in this precious phial is the power to think twice as fast, move twice as quickly, do twice as much work in a given time as you could otherwise do." "but is such a thing possible?" "i believe so. if it isn't, i've wasted my time for a year. these various preparations of the hypophosphites, for example, seem to show that something of the sort... even if it was only one and a half times as fast it would do." "it _would_ do," i said. "if you were a statesman in a corner, for example, time rushing up against you, something urgent to be done, eh?" "he could dose his private secretary," i said. "and gain--double time. and think if _you_, for example, wanted to finish a book." "usually," i said, "i wish i'd never begun 'em." "or a doctor, driven to death, wants to sit down and think out a case. or a barrister--or a man cramming for an examination." "worth a guinea a drop," said i, "and more--to men like that." "and in a duel, again," said gibberne, "where it all depends on your quickness in pulling the trigger." "or in fencing," i echoed. "you see," said gibberne, "if i get it as an all-round thing, it will really do you no harm at all--except perhaps to an infinitesimal degree it brings you nearer old age. you will just have lived twice to other people's once--" "i suppose," i meditated, "in a duel--it would be fair?" "that's a question for the seconds," said gibberne. i harked back further. "and you really think such a thing _is_ possible?" i said. "as possible," said gibberne, and glanced at something that went throbbing by the window, "as a motor-bus. as a matter of fact--" he paused and smiled at me deeply, and tapped slowly on the edge of his desk with the green phial. "i think i know the stuff... already i've got something coming." the nervous smile upon his face betrayed the gravity of his revelation. he rarely talked of his actual experimental work unless things were very near the end. "and it may be, it may be--i shouldn't be surprised--it may even do the thing at a greater rate than twice." "it will be rather a big thing," i hazarded. "it will be, i think, rather a big thing." but i don't think he quite knew what a big thing it was to be, for all that. i remember we had several talks about the stuff after that. "the new accelerator" he called it, and his tone about it grew more confident on each occasion. sometimes he talked nervously of unexpected physiological results its use might have, and then he would get a little unhappy; at others he was frankly mercenary, and we debated long and anxiously how the preparation might be turned to commercial account. "it's a good thing," said gibberne, "a tremendous thing. i know i'm giving the world something, and i think it only reasonable we should expect the world to pay. the dignity of science is all very well, but i think somehow i must have the monopoly of the stuff for, say, ten years. i don't see why _all_ the fun in life should go to the dealers in ham." my own interest in the coming drug certainly did not wane in the time. i have always had a queer little twist towards metaphysics in my mind. i have always been given to paradoxes about space and time, and it seemed to me that gibberne was really preparing no less than the absolute acceleration of life. suppose a man repeatedly dosed with such a preparation: he would live an active and record life indeed, but he would be an adult at eleven, middle-aged at twenty-five, and by thirty well on the road to senile decay. it seemed to me that so far gibberne was only going to do for any one who took his drug exactly what nature has done for the jews and orientals, who are men in their teens and aged by fifty, and quicker in thought and act than we are all the time. the marvel of drugs has always been great to my mind; you can madden a man, calm a man, make him incredibly strong and alert or a helpless log, quicken this passion and allay that, all by means of drugs, and here was a new miracle to be added to this strange armoury of phials the doctors use! but gibberne was far too eager upon his technical points to enter very keenly into my aspect of the question. it was the 7th or 8th of august when he told me the distillation that would decide his failure or success for a time was going forward as we talked, and it was on the 10th that he told me the thing was done and the new accelerator a tangible reality in the world. i met him as i was going up the sandgate hill towards folkestone--i think i was going to get my hair cut, and he came hurrying down to meet me--i suppose he was coming to my house to tell me at once of his success. i remember that his eyes were unusually bright and his face flushed, and i noted even then the swift alacrity of his step. "it's done," he cried, and gripped my hand, speaking very fast; "it's more than done. come up to my house and see." "really?" "really!" he shouted. "incredibly! come up and see." "and it does--twice?" "it does more, much more. it scares me. come up and see the stuff. taste it! try it! it's the most amazing stuff on earth." he gripped my arm and; walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot, went shouting with me up the hill. a whole _char-à-banc_-ful of people turned and stared at us in unison after the manner of people in _chars-à-banc_. it was one of those hot, clear days that folkestone sees so much of, every colour incredibly bright and every outline hard. there was a breeze, of course, but not so much breeze as sufficed under these conditions to keep me cool and dry. i panted for mercy. "i'm not walking fast, am i?" cried gibberne, and slackened his pace to a quick march. "you've been taking some of this stuff," i puffed. "no," he said. "at the utmost a drop of water that stood in a beaker from which i had washed out the last traces of the stuff. i took some last night, you know. but that is ancient history now." "and it goes twice?" i said, nearing his doorway in a grateful perspiration. "it goes a thousand times, many thousand times!" cried gibberne, with a dramatic gesture, flinging open his early english carved oak gate. "phew!" said i, and followed him to the door. "i don't know how many times it goes," he said, with his latch-key in his hand. "and you----" "it throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it kicks the theory of vision into a perfectly new shape! ... heaven knows how many thousand times. we'll try all that after----the thing is to try the stuff now." "try the stuff?" i said, as we went along the passage. "rather," said gibberne, turning on me in his study. "there it is in that little green phial there! unless you happen to be afraid?" i am a careful man by nature, and only theoretically adventurous. i _was_ afraid. but on the other hand, there is pride. "well," i haggled. "you say you've tried it?" "i've tried it," he said, "and i don't look hurt by it, do i? i don't even look livery, and i _feel_----" i sat down. "give me the potion," i said. "if the worst comes to the worst it will save having my hair cut, and that, i think, is one of the most hateful duties of a civilised man. how do you take the mixture?" "with water," said gibberne, whacking down a carafe. he stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in his easy-chair; his manner was suddenly affected by a touch of the harley street specialist. "it's rum stuff, you know," he said. i made a gesture with my hand. "i must warn you, in the first place, as soon as you've got it down to shut your eyes, and open them very cautiously in a minute or so's time. one still sees. the sense of vision is a question of length of vibration, and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of shock to the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time if the eyes are open. keep 'em shut." "shut," i said. "good!" "and the next thing is, keep still. don't begin to whack about. you may fetch something a nasty rap if you do. remember you will be going several thousand times faster than you ever did before, heart, lungs, muscles, brain--everything--and you will hit hard without knowing it. you won't know it, you know. you'll feel just as you do now. only everything in the world will seem to be going ever so many thousand times slower than it ever went before. that's what makes it so deuced queer." "lor," i said. "and you mean----" "you'll see," said he, and took up a little measure. he glanced at the material on his desk. "glasses," he said, "water. all here. mustn't take too much for the first attempt." the little phial glucked out its precious contents. "don't forget what i told you," he said, turning the contents of the measure into a glass in the manner of an italian waiter measuring whisky. "sit with the eyes tightly shut and in absolute stillness for two minutes," he said. "then you will hear me speak." he added an inch or so of water to the little dose in each glass. "by-the-by," he said, "don't put your glass down. keep it in your hand and rest your hand on your knee. yes--so. and now----" he raised his glass. "the new accelerator," i said. "the new accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses and drank, and instantly i closed my eyes. you know that blank non-existence into which one drops when one has taken "gas." for an indefinite interval it was like that. then i heard gibberne telling me to wake up, and i stirred and opened my eyes. there he stood as he had been standing, glass still in hand. it was empty, that was all the difference. "well?" said i. "nothing out of the way?" "nothing. a slight feeling of exhilaration, perhaps. nothing more." "sounds?" "things are still," i said. "by jove! yes! they _are_ still. except the sort of faint pat, patter, like rain falling on different things. what is it?" "analysed sounds," i think he said, but i am not sure. he glanced at the window. "have you ever seen a curtain before a window fixed in that way before?" i followed his eyes, and there was the end of the curtain, frozen, as it were, corner high, in the act of flapping briskly in the breeze. "no," said i; "that's odd." "and here," he said, and opened the hand that held the glass. naturally i winced, expecting the glass to smash. but so far from smashing, it did not even seem to stir; it hung in mid-air--motionless. "roughly speaking," said gibberne, "an object in these latitudes falls 16 feet in the first second. this glass is falling 16 feet in a second now. only, you see, it hasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part of a second. that gives you some idea of the pace of my accelerator." and he waved his hand round and round, over and under the slowly sinking glass. finally he took it by the bottom, pulled it down and placed it very carefully on the table. "eh?" he said to me, and laughed. "that seems all right," i said, and began very gingerly to raise myself from my chair. i felt perfectly well, very light and comfortable, and quite confident in my mind. i was going fast all over. my heart, for example, was beating a thousand times a second, but that caused me no discomfort at all. i looked out of the window. an immovable cyclist, head down and with a frozen puff of dust behind his driving-wheel, scorched to overtake a galloping _char-à-banc_ that did not stir. i gaped in amazement at this incredible spectacle. "gibberne," i cried, "how long will this confounded stuff last?" "heaven knows!" he answered. "last time i took it i went to bed and slept it off. i tell you, i was frightened. it must have lasted some minutes, i think--it seemed like hours. but after a bit it slows down rather suddenly, i believe." i was proud to observe that i did not feel frightened--i suppose because there were two of us. "why shouldn't we go out?" i asked. "why not?" "they'll see us." "not they. goodness, no! why, we shall be going a thousand times faster than the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done. come along! which way shall we go? window, or door?" and out by the window we went. assuredly of all the strange experiences that i have ever had, or imagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little raid i made with gibberne on the folkestone leas, under the influence of the new accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. we went out by his gate into the road, and there we made a minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic. the tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses of this _char-à-banc,_ the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor--who was just beginning to yawn--were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. and quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat. and as parts of this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven people! the effect as we walked about the thing began by being madly queer and ended by being--disagreeable. there they were, people like ourselves and yet not like ourselves, frozen in careless attitudes, caught in mid-gesture. a girl and a man smiled at one another, a leering smile that threatened to last for evermore; a woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm on the rail and stared at gibberne's house with the unwinking stare of eternity; a man stroked his moustache like a figure of wax, and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with extended fingers towards his loosened hat. we stared at them, we laughed at them, we made faces at them, and then a sort of disgust of them came upon us, and we turned away and walked round in front of the cyclist towards the leas. "goodness!" cried gibberne, suddenly; "look there!" he pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the air with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languid snail--was a bee. and so we came out upon the leas. there the thing seemed madder than ever. the band was playing in the upper stand, though all the sound it made for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged last sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled ticking of some monstrous clock. frozen people stood erect, strange, silent, self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenading upon the grass. i passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in the act of leaping, and watched the slow movement of his legs as he sank to earth. "lord, look _here_!" cried gibberne, and we halted for a moment before a magnificent person in white faint--striped flannels, white shoes, and a panama hat, who turned back to wink at two gaily dressed ladies he had passed. a wink, studied with such leisurely deliberation as we could afford, is an unattractive thing. it loses any quality of alert gaiety, and one remarks that the winking eye does not completely close, that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeball and a little line of white. "heaven give me memory," said i, "and i will never wink again." "or smile," said gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth. "it's infernally hot, somehow," said i, "let's go slower." "oh, come along!" said gibberne. we picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. many of the people sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, but the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see. a purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violent struggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were many evidences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed to a considerable breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as our sensations went. we came out and walked a little way from the crowd, and turned and regarded it. to see all that multitude changed to a picture, smitten rigid, as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, was impossibly wonderful. it was absurd, of course; but it filled me with an irrational, an exultant sense of superior advantage. consider the wonder of it! all that i had said, and thought, and done since the stuff had begun to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so far as the world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "the new accelerator----" i began, but gibberne interrupted me. "there's that infernal old woman!" he said. "what old woman?" "lives next door to me," said gibberne. "has a lapdog that yaps. gods! the temptation is strong!" there is something very boyish and impulsive about gibberne at times. before i could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched the unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently with it towards the cliff of the leas. it was most extraordinary. the little brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightest sign of vitality. it kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent repose, and gibberne held it by the neck. it was like running about with a dog of wood. "gibberne," i cried, "put it down!" then i said something else. "if you run like that, gibberne," i cried, "you'll set your clothes on fire. your linen trousers are going brown as it is!" he clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge. "gibberne," i cried, coming up, "put it down. this heat is too much! it's our running so! two or three miles a second! friction of the air!" "what?" he said, glancing at the dog. "friction of the air," i shouted. "friction of the air. going too fast. like meteorites and things. too hot. and, gibberne! gibberne! i'm all over pricking and a sort of perspiration. you can see people stirring slightly. i believe the stuff's working off! put that dog down." "eh?" he said. "it's working off," i repeated. "we're too hot and the stuff's working off! i'm wet through." he stared at me, then at the band, the wheezy rattle of whose performance was certainly going faster. then with a tremendous sweep of the arm he hurled the dog away from him and it went spinning upward, still inanimate, and hung at last over the grouped parasols of a knot of chattering people. gibberne was gripping my elbow. "by jove!" he cried, "i believe it is! a sort of hot pricking and--yes. that man's moving his pocket-handkerchief! perceptibly. we must get out of this sharp." but we could not get out of it sharply enough. luckily, perhaps! for we might have run, and if we had run we should, i believe, have burst into flames. almost certainly we should have burst into flames! you know we had neither of us thought of that... but before we could even begin to run the action of the drug had ceased. it was the business of a minute fraction of a second. the effect of the new accelerator passed like the drawing of a curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. i heard gibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "sit down," he said, and flop, down upon the turf at the edge of the leas i sat--scorching as i sat. there is a patch of burnt grass there still where i sat down. the whole stagnation seemed to wake up as i did so, the disarticulated vibration of the band rushed together into a blast of music, the promenaders put their feet down and walked their ways, the papers and flags began flapping, smiles passed into words, the winker finished his wink and went on his way complacently, and all the seated people moved and spoke. the whole world had come alive again, was going as fast as we were, or rather we were going no faster than the rest of the world. it was like slowing down as one comes into a railway station. everything seemed to spin round for a second or two, i had the most transient feeling of nausea, and that was all. and the little dog, which had seemed to hang for a moment when the force of gibberne's arm was expended, fell with a swift acceleration clean through a lady's parasol! that was the saving of us. unless it was for one corpulent old gentleman in a bath-chair, who certainly did start at the sight of us, and afterwards regarded us at intervals with a darkly suspicious eye, and, finally, i believe, said something to his nurse about us, i doubt if a solitary person remarked our sudden appearance among them. plop! we must have appeared abruptly. we ceased to smoulder almost at once, though the turf beneath me was uncomfortably hot. the attention of every one-including even the amusements' association band, which on this occasion, for the only time in its history, got out of tune--was arrested by the amazing fact, and the still more amazing yapping and uproar caused by the fact, that a respectable, over-fed lapdog sleeping quietly to the east of the bandstand should suddenly fall through the parasol of a lady on the west--in a slightly singed condition due to the extreme velocity of its movements through the air. in these absurd days, too, when we are all trying to be as psychic, and silly, and superstitious as possible! people got up and trod on other people, chairs were overturned, the leas policeman ran. how the matter settled itself i do not know--we were much too anxious to disentangle ourselves from the affair and get out of range of the eye of the old gentleman in the bath-chair to make minute inquiries. as soon as we were sufficiently cool and sufficiently recovered from our giddiness and nausea and confusion of mind to do so we stood up, and skirting the crowd, directed our steps back along the road below the metropole towards gibberne's house. but amidst the din i heard very distinctly the gentleman who had been sitting beside the lady of the ruptured sunshade using quite unjustifiable threats and language to one of those chair-attendants who have "inspector" written on their caps: "if you didn't throw the dog," he said, "who _did_?" the sudden return of movement and familiar noises, and our natural anxiety about ourselves (our clothes were still dreadfully hot, and the fronts of the thighs of gibberne's white trousers were scorched a drabbish brown), prevented the minute observations i should have liked to make on all these things. indeed, i really made no observations of any scientific value on that return. the bee, of course, had gone. i looked for that cyclist, but he was already out of sight as we came into the upper sandgate road or hidden from us by traffic; the _char-à-banc_, however, with its people now all alive and stirring, was clattering along at a spanking pace almost abreast of the nearer church. we noted, however, that the window-sill on which we had stepped in getting out of the house was slightly singed, and that the impressions of our feet on the gravel of the path were unusually deep. so it was i had my first experience of the new accelerator. practically we had been running about and saying and doing all sorts of things in the space of a second or so of time. we had lived half an hour while the band had played, perhaps, two bars. but the effect it had upon us was that the whole world had stopped for our convenient inspection. considering all things, and particularly considering our rashness in venturing out of the house, the experience might certainly have been much more disagreeable than it was. it showed, no doubt, that gibberne has still much to learn before his preparation is a manageable convenience, but its practicability it certainly demonstrated beyond all cavil. since that adventure he has been steadily bringing its use under control, and i have several times, and without the slightest bad result, taken measured doses under his direction; though i must confess i have not yet ventured abroad again while under its influence. i may mention, for example, that this story has been written at one sitting and without interruption, except for the nibbling of some chocolate, by its means. i began at 6.25, and my watch is now very nearly at the minute past the half-hour. the convenience of securing a long, uninterrupted spell of work in the midst of a day full of engagements cannot be exaggerated. gibberne is now working at the quantitative handling of his preparation, with especial reference to its distinctive effects upon different types of constitution. he then hopes to find a retarder, with which to dilute its present rather excessive potency. the retarder will, of course, have the reverse effect to the accelerator; used alone it should enable the patient to spread a few seconds over many hours of ordinary time, and so to maintain an apathetic inaction, a glacier-like absence of alacrity, amidst the most animated or irritating surroundings. the two things together must necessarily work an entire revolution in civilised existence. it is the beginning of our escape from that time garment of which carlyle speaks. while this accelerator will enable us to concentrate ourselves with tremendous impact upon any moment or occasion that demands our utmost sense and vigour, the retarder will enable us to pass in passive tranquillity through infinite hardship and tedium. perhaps i am a little optimistic about the retarder, which has indeed still to be discovered, but about the accelerator there is no possible sort of doubt whatever. its appearance upon the market in a convenient, controllable, and assimilable form is a matter of the next few months. it will be obtainable of all chemists and druggists, in small green bottles, at a high but, considering its extraordinary qualities, by no means excessive price. gibberne's nervous accelerator it will be called, and he hopes to be able to supply it in three strengths: one in 200, one in 900, and one in 2000, distinguished by yellow, pink, and white labels respectively. no doubt its use renders a great number of very extraordinary things possible; for, of course, the most remarkable and, possibly, even criminal proceedings may be effected with impunity by thus dodging, as it were, into the interstices of time. like all potent preparations, it will be liable to abuse. we have, however, discussed this aspect of the question very thoroughly, and we have decided that this is purely a matter of medical jurisprudence and altogether outside our province. we shall manufacture and sell the accelerator, and as for the consequences--we shall see. xxviii. the truth about pyecraft. he sits not a dozen yards away. if i glance over my shoulder i can see him. and if i catch his eye--and usually i catch his eye--it meets me with an expression---it is mainly an imploring look--and yet with suspicion in it. confound his suspicion! if i wanted to tell on him i should have told long ago. i don't tell and i don't tell, and he ought to feel at his ease. as if anything so gross and fat as he could feel at ease! who would believe me if i did tell? poor old pyecraft! great, uneasy jelly of substance! the fattest clubman in london. he sits at one of the little club tables in the huge bay by the fire, stuffing. what is he stuffing? i glance judiciously, and catch him biting at a round of hot buttered teacake, with his eyes on me. confound him! --with his eyes on me! that settles it, pyecraft! since you _will_ be abject, since you _will_ behave as though i was not a man of honour, here, right under your embedded eyes, i write the thing down--the plain truth about pyecraft. the man i helped, the man i shielded, and who has requited me by making my club unendurable, absolutely unendurable, with his liquid appeal, with the perpetual "don't tell" of his looks. and, besides, why does he keep on eternally eating? well, here goes for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! pyecraft----. i made the acquaintance of pyecraft in this very smoking-room. i was a young, nervous new member, and he saw it. i was sitting all alone, wishing i knew more of the members, and suddenly he came, a great rolling front of chins and abdomina, towards me, and grunted and sat down in a chair close by me and wheezed for a space, and scraped for a space with a match and lit a cigar, and then addressed me. i forget what he said--something about the matches not lighting properly, and afterwards as he talked he kept stopping the waiters one by one as they went by, and telling them about the matches in that thin, fluty voice he has. but, anyhow, it was in some such way we began our talking. he talked about various things and came round to games. and thence to my figure and complexion. "_you_ ought to be a good cricketer," he said. i suppose i am slender, slender to what some people would call lean, and i suppose i am rather dark, still----i am not ashamed of having a hindu great-grandmother, but, for all that, i don't want casual strangers to see through me at a glance to _her_. so that i was set against pyecraft from the beginning. but he only talked about me in order to get to himself. "i expect," he said, "you take no more exercise than i do, and probably you eat no less." (like all excessively obese people he fancied he ate nothing.) "yet"--and he smiled an oblique smile--"we differ." and then he began to talk about his fatness and his fatness; all he did for his fatness and all he was going to do for his fatness; what people had advised him to do for his fatness and what he had heard of people doing for fatness similar to his. "_a priori_," he said, "one would think a question of nutrition could be answered by dietary and a question of assimilation by drugs." it was stifling. it was dumpling talk. it made me feel swelled to hear him. one stands that sort of thing once in a way at a club, but a time came when i fancied i was standing too much. he took to me altogether too conspicuously. i could never go into the smoking-room but he would come wallowing towards me, and sometimes he came and gormandised round and about me while i had my lunch. he seemed at times almost to be clinging to me. he was a bore, but not so fearful a bore as to be limited to me and from the first there was something in his manner--almost as though he knew, almost as though he penetrated to the fact that i _might_--that there was a remote, exceptional chance in me that no one else presented. "i'd give anything to get it down," he would say--"anything," and peer at me over his vast cheeks and pant. poor old pyecraft! he has just gonged; no doubt to order another buttered teacake! he came to the actual thing one day. "our pharmacopoeia," he said, "our western pharmacopoeia, is anything but the last word of medical science. in the east, i've been told----" he stopped and stared at me. it was like being at an aquarium. i was quite suddenly angry with him. "look here," i said, "who told you about my great-grandmother's recipes?" "well," he fenced. "every time we've met for a week," i said--"and we've met pretty often-you've given me a broad hint or so about that little secret of mine." "well," he said, "now the cat's out of the bag, i'll admit, yes, it is so. i had it----" "from pattison?" "indirectly," he said, which i believe was lying, "yes." "pattison," i said, "took that stuff at his own risk." he pursed his mouth and bowed. "my great-grandmother's recipes," i said, "are queer things to handle. my father was near making me promise----" "he didn't?" "no. but he warned me. he himself used one--once." "ah! ... but do you think----? suppose--suppose there did happen to be one----" "the things are curious documents," i said. "even the smell of 'em ... no!" but after going so far pyecraft was resolved i should go farther. i was always a little afraid if i tried his patience too much he would fall on me suddenly and smother me. i own i was weak. but i was also annoyed with pyecraft. i had got to that state of feeling for him that disposed me to say, "well, _take_ the risk!" the little affair of pattison to which i have alluded was a different matter altogether. what it was doesn't concern us now, but i knew, anyhow, that the particular recipe i used then was safe. the rest i didn't know so much about, and, on the whole, i was inclined to doubt their safety pretty completely. yet even if pyecraft got poisoned---i must confess the poisoning of pyecraft struck me as an immense undertaking. that evening i took that queer, odd-scented sandal-wood box out of my safe, and turned the rustling skins over. the gentleman who wrote the recipes for my great-grandmother evidently had a weakness for skins of a miscellaneous origin, and his handwriting was cramped to the last degree. some of the things are quite unreadable to me--though my family, with its indian civil service associations, has kept up a knowledge of hindustani from generation to generation--and none are absolutely plain sailing. but i found the one that i knew was there soon enough, and sat on the floor by my safe for some time looking at it. "look here," said i to pyecraft next day, and snatched the slip away from his eager grasp. "so far as i can make it out, this is a recipe for loss of weight. ("ah!" said pyecraft.) i'm not absolutely sure, but i think it's that. and if you take my advice you'll leave it alone. because, you know--i blacken my blood in your interest, pyecraft--my ancestors on that side were, so far as i can gather, a jolly queer lot. see?" "let me try it," said pyecraft. i leant back in my chair. my imagination made one mighty effort and fell flat within me. "what in heaven's name, pyecraft," i asked, "do you think you'll look like when you get thin?" he was impervious to reason, i made him promise never to say a word to me about his disgusting fatness again whatever happened--never, and then i handed him that little piece of skin. "it's nasty stuff," i said. "no matter," he said, and took it. he goggled at it. "but--but--" he said he had just discovered that it wasn't english. "to the best of my ability," i said, "i will do you a translation." i did my best. after that we didn't speak for a fortnight. whenever he approached me i frowned and motioned him away, and he respected our compact, but at the end of the fortnight he was as fat as ever. and then he got a word in. "i must speak," he said, "it isn't fair. there's something wrong. it's done me no good. you're not doing your great-grandmother justice." "where's the recipe?" he produced it gingerly from his pocket-book. i ran my eye over the items. "was the egg addled?" i asked. "no. ought it to have been?" "that," i said, "goes without saying in all my poor dear great-grandmother's recipes. when condition or quality is not specified you must get the worst. she was drastic or nothing... and there's one or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. you got _fresh_ rattlesnake venom?" "i got a rattlesnake from jamrach's. it cost--it cost----" "that's your affair anyhow. this last item----" "i know a man who----" "yes. h'm. well, i'll write the alternatives down. so far as i know the language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious. by-the-by, dog here probably means pariah dog." for a month after that i saw pyecraft constantly at the club and as fat and anxious as ever. he kept our treaty, but at times he broke the spirit of it by shaking his head despondently. then one day in the cloakroom he said, "your great-grandmother----" "not a word against her," i said; and he held his peace. i could have fancied he had desisted, and i saw him one day talking to three new members about his fatness as though he was in search of other recipes. and then, quite unexpectedly, his telegram came. "mr. formalyn!" bawled a page-boy under my nose, and i took the telegram and opened it at once. "_for heaven's sake come_.--_pyecraft_." "h'm," said i, and to tell the truth i was so pleased at the rehabilitation of my great-grandmother's reputation this evidently promised that i made a most excellent lunch. i got pyecraft's address from the hall porter. pyecraft inhabited the upper half of a house in bloomsbury, and i went there so soon as i had done my coffee and trappistine. i did not wait to finish my cigar. "mr. pyecraft?" said i, at the front door. they believed he was ill; he hadn't been out for two days. "he expects me," said i, and they sent me up. i rang the bell at the lattice-door upon the landing. "he shouldn't have tried it, anyhow," i said to myself. "a man who eats like a pig ought to look like a pig." an obviously worthy woman, with an anxious face and a carelessly placed cap, came and surveyed me through the lattice. i gave my name and she let me in in a dubious fashion. "well?" said i, as we stood together inside pyecraft's piece of the landing. "'e said you was to come in if you came," she said, and regarded me, making no motion to show me anywhere. and then, confidentially, "'e's locked in, sir." "locked in?" "locked 'imself in yesterday morning and 'asn't let any one in since, sir. and ever and again _swearing_. oh, my!" i stared at the door she indicated by her glances. "in there?" i said. "yes, sir." "what's up?" she shook her head sadly. "'e keeps on calling for vittles, sir. '_eavy_ vittles 'e wants. i get 'im what i can. pork 'e's had, sooit puddin', sossiges, noo bread. everythink like that. left outside, if you please, and me go away. 'e's eatin', sir, somethink _awful_." there came a piping bawl from inside the door: "that formalyn?" "that you, pyecraft?" i shouted, and went and banged the door. "tell her to go away." i did. then i could hear a curious pattering upon the door, almost like some one feeling for the handle in the dark, and pyecraft's familiar grunts. "it's all right," i said, "she's gone." but for a long time the door didn't open. i heard the key turn. then pyecraft's voice said, "come in." i turned the handle and opened the door. naturally i expected to see pyecraft. well, you know, he wasn't there! i never had such a shock in my life. there was his sitting-room in a state of untidy disorder, plates and dishes among the books and writing things, and several chairs overturned, but pyecraft---"it's all right, old man; shut the door," he said, and then i discovered him. there he was, right up close to the cornice in the corner by the door, as though some one had glued him to the ceiling. his face was anxious and angry. he panted and gesticulated. "shut the door," he said. "if that woman gets hold of it----" i shut the door, and went and stood away from him and stared. "if anything gives way and you tumble down," i said, "you'll break your neck, pyecraft." "i wish i could," he wheezed. "a man of your age and weight getting up to kiddish gymnastics----" "don't," he said, and looked agonised. "i'll tell you," he said, and gesticulated. "how the deuce," said i, "are you holding on up there?" and then abruptly i realised that he was not holding on at all, that he was floating up there--just as a gas-filled bladder might have floated in the same position. he began a struggle to thrust himself away from the ceiling and to clamber down the wall to me. "it's that prescription," he panted, as he did so. "your great-gran----" he took hold of a framed engraving rather carelessly as he spoke and it gave way, and he flew back to the ceiling again, while the picture smashed on to the sofa. bump he went against the ceiling, and i knew then why he was all over white on the more salient curves and angles of his person. he tried again more carefully, coming down by way of the mantel. it was really a most extraordinary spectacle, that great, fat, apoplectic-looking man upside down and trying to get from the ceiling to the floor. "that prescription," he said. "too successful." "how?" "loss of weight--almost complete." and then, of course, i understood. "by jove, pyecraft," said i, "what you wanted was a cure for fatness! but you always called it weight. you would call it weight." somehow i was extremely delighted. i quite liked pyecraft for the time. "let me help you!" i said, and took his hand and pulled him down. he kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. it was very like holding a flag on a windy day. "that table," he said, pointing, "is solid mahogany and very heavy. if you can put me under that----" i did, and there he wallowed about like a captive balloon, while i stood on his hearthrug and talked to him. i lit a cigar. "tell me," i said, "what happened?" "i took it," he said. "how did it taste?" "oh, _beastly_!" i should fancy they all did. whether one regards the ingredients or the probable compound or the possible results, almost all my great-grandmother's remedies appear to me at least to be extraordinarily uninviting. for my own part---"i took a little sip first." "yes?" "and as i felt lighter and better after an hour, i decided to take the draught." "my dear pyecraft!" "i held my nose," he explained. "and then i kept on getting lighter and lighter--and helpless, you know." he gave way suddenly to a burst of passion. "what the goodness am i to _do?_" he said. "there's one thing pretty evident," i said, "that you mustn't do. if you go out of doors you'll go up and up." i waved an arm upward. "they'd have to send santos-dumont after you to bring you down again." "i suppose it will wear off?" i shook my head. "i don't think you can count on that," i said. and then there was another burst of passion, and he kicked out at adjacent chairs and banged the floor. he behaved just as i should have expected a great, fat, self-indulgent man to behave under trying circumstances--that is to say, very badly. he spoke of me and of my great-grandmother with an utter want of discretion. "i never asked you to take the stuff," i said. and generously disregarding the insults he was putting upon me, i sat down in his armchair and began to talk to him in a sober, friendly fashion. i pointed out to him that this was a trouble he had brought upon himself, and that it had almost an air of poetical justice. he had eaten too much. this he disputed, and for a time we argued the point. he became noisy and violent, so i desisted from this aspect of his lesson. "and then," said i, "you committed the sin of euphuism. you called it, not fat, which is just and inglorious, but weight. you----" he interrupted to say that he recognised all that. what was he to _do?_ i suggested he should adapt himself to his new conditions. so we came to the really sensible part of the business. i suggested that it would not be difficult for him to learn to walk about on the ceiling with his hands---"i can't sleep," he said. but that was no great difficulty. it was quite possible, i pointed out, to make a shake-up under a wire mattress, fasten the under things on with tapes, and have a blanket, sheet, and coverlet to button at the side. he would have to confide in his housekeeper, i said; and after some squabbling he agreed to that. (afterwards it was quite delightful to see the beautifully matter-of-fact way with which the good lady took all these amazing inversions.) he could have a library ladder in his room, and all his meals could be laid on the top of his bookcase. we also hit on an ingenious device by which he could get to the floor whenever he wanted, which was simply to put the _british encyclopaedia_ (tenth edition) on the top of his open shelves. he just pulled out a couple of volumes and held on, and down he came. and we agreed there must be iron staples along the skirting, so that he could cling to those whenever he wanted to get about the room on the lower level. as we got on with the thing i found myself almost keenly interested. it was i who called in the housekeeper and broke matters to her, and it was i chiefly who fixed up the inverted bed. in fact, i spent two whole days at his flat. i am a handy, interfering sort of man with a screw-driver, and i made all sorts of ingenious adaptations for him--ran a wire to bring his bells within reach, turned all his electric lights up instead of down, and so on. the whole affair was extremely curious and interesting to me, and it was delightful to think of pyecraft like some great, fat blow-fly, crawling about on his ceiling and clambering round the lintel of his doors from one room to another, and never, never, never coming to the club any more... then, you know, my fatal ingenuity got the better of me. i was sitting by his fire drinking his whisky, and he was up in his favourite corner by the cornice, tacking a turkey carpet to the ceiling, when the idea struck me. "by jove, pyecraft!" i said, "all this is totally unnecessary." and before i could calculate the complete consequences of my notion i blurted it out. "lead underclothing," said i, and the mischief was done. pyecraft received the thing almost in tears. "to be right ways up again----" he said. i gave him the whole secret before i saw where it would take me. "buy sheet lead," i said, "stamp it into discs. sew 'em all over your underclothes until you have enough. have lead-soled boots, carry a bag of solid lead, and the thing is done! instead of being a prisoner here you may go abroad again, pyecraft; you may travel----" a still happier idea came to me. "you need never fear a shipwreck. all you need do is just slip off some or all of your clothes, take the necessary amount of luggage in your hand, and float up in the air----" in his emotion he dropped the tack-hammer within an ace of my head. "by jove!" he said, "i shall be able to come back to the club again." "the thing pulled me up short. by jove!" i said, faintly. "yes. of course--you will." he did. he does. there he sits behind me now, stuffing--as i live!--a third go of buttered teacake. and no one in the whole world knows--except his housekeeper and me---that he weighs practically nothing; that he is a mere boring mass of assimilatory matter, mere clouds in clothing, _niente, nefas_, the most inconsiderable of men. there he sits watching until i have done this writing. then, if he can, he will waylay me. he will come billowing up to me... he will tell me over again all about it, how it feels, how it doesn't feel, how he sometimes hopes it is passing off a little. and always somewhere in that fat, abundant discourse he will say, "the secret's keeping, eh? if any one knew of it--i should be so ashamed... makes a fellow look such a fool, you know. crawling about on a ceiling and all that..." and now to elude pyecraft, occupying, as he does, an admirable strategic position between me and the door. xxix. the magic shop. i had seen the magic shop from afar several times; i had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the basket trick, packs of cards that _looked_ all right, and all that sort of thing, but never had i thought of going in until one day, almost without warning, gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window, and so conducted himself that there was nothing for it but to take him in. i had not thought the place was there, to tell the truth--a modest-sized frontage in regent street, between the picture shop and the place where the chicks run about just out of patent incubators,--but there it was sure enough. i had fancied it was down nearer the circus, or round the corner in oxford street, or even in holborn; always over the way and a little inaccessible it had been, with something of the mirage in its position; but here it was now quite indisputably, and the fat end of gip's pointing finger made a noise upon the glass. "if i was rich," said gip, dabbing a finger at the disappearing egg, "i'd buy myself that. and that"--which was the crying baby, very human--"and that," which was a mystery, and called, so a neat card asserted, "buy one and astonish your friends." "anything," said gip, "will disappear under one of those cones. i have read about it in a book. "and there, dadda, is the vanishing halfpenny--only they've put it this way up so's we can't see how it's done." gip, dear boy, inherits his mother's breeding, and he did not propose to enter the shop or worry in any way; only, you know, quite unconsciously, he lugged my finger doorward, and he made his interest clear. "that," he said, and pointed to the magic bottle. "if you had that?" i said; at which promising inquiry he looked up with a sudden radiance. "i could show it to jessie," he said, thoughtful as ever of others. "it's less than a hundred days to your birthday, gibbles," i said, and laid my hand on the door-handle. gip made no answer, but his grip tightened on my finger, and so we came into the shop. it was no common shop this; it was a magic shop, and all the prancing precedence gip would have taken in the matter of mere toys was wanting. he left the burthen of the conversation to me. it was a little, narrow shop, not very well lit, and the door-bell pinged again with a plaintive note as we closed it behind us. for a moment or so we were alone and could glance about us. there was a tiger in _papier-mâché_ on the glass case that covered, the low counter--a grave, kind-eyed tiger that waggled his head in a methodical manner; there were several crystal spheres, a china hand holding magic cards, a stock of magic fish-bowls in various sizes, and an immodest magic hat that shamelessly displayed its springs. on the floor were magic mirrors; one to draw you out long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs, and one to make you short and fat like a draught; and while, we were laughing at these the shopman, as i suppose, came in. at any rate, there he was behind the counter--a curious, sallow, dark man, with one ear larger than the other and a chin like the toe-cap of a boot. "what can we have the pleasure?" he said, spreading his long magic fingers on the glass case; and so with a start we were aware of him. "i want," i said, "to buy my little boy a few simple tricks." "legerdemain?" he asked. "mechanical? domestic?" "anything amusing?" said i. "um!" said the shopman, and scratched his head for a moment as if thinking. then, quite distinctly, he drew from his head a glass ball. "something in this way?" he said, and held it out. the action was unexpected. i had seen the trick done at entertainments endless times before--it's part of the common stock of conjurers--but i had not expected it here. "that's good," i said, with a laugh. "isn't it?" said the shopman. gip stretched out his disengaged hand to take this object and found merely a blank palm. "it's in your pocket," said the shopman, and there it was! "how much will that be?" i asked. "we make no charge for glass balls," said the shopman politely. "we get them"--he picked one out of his elbow as he spoke--"free." he produced another from the back of his neck, and laid it beside its predecessor on the counter. gip regarded his glass ball sagely, then directed a look of inquiry at the two on the counter, and finally brought his round-eyed scrutiny to the shopman, who smiled. "you may have those two," said the shopman, "and, if you _don't_ mind one from my mouth. _so!_" gip counselled me mutely for a moment, and then in a profound silence put away the four balls, resumed my reassuring finger, and nerved himself for the next event. "we get all our smaller tricks in that way," the shopman remarked. i laughed in the manner of one who subscribes to a jest. "instead of going to the wholesale shop," i said. "of course, it's cheaper." "in a way," the shopman said. "though we pay in the end. but not so heavily--as people suppose... our larger tricks, and our daily provisions and all the other things we want, we get out of that hat... and you know, sir, if you'll excuse my saying it, there _isn't_ a wholesale shop, not for genuine magic goods, sir. i don't know if you noticed our inscription--the genuine magic shop." he drew a business card from his cheek and handed it to me. "genuine," he said, with his finger on the word, and added, "there is absolutely no deception, sir." he seemed to be carrying out the joke pretty thoroughly, i thought. he turned to gip with a smile of remarkable affability. "you, you know, are the right sort of boy." i was surprised at his knowing that, because, in the interests of discipline, we keep it rather a secret even at home; but gip received it in unflinching silence, keeping a steadfast eye on him. "it's only the right sort of boy gets through that doorway." and, as if by way of illustration, there came a rattling at the door, and a squeaking little voice could be faintly heard. "nyar! i _warn_ 'a go in there, dadda, i warn 'a go in there. ny-a-a-ah!" and then the accents of a downtrodden parent, urging consolations and propitiations. "it's locked, edward," he said. "but it isn't," said i. "it is, sir," said the shopman, "always--for that sort of child," and as he spoke we had a glimpse of the other youngster, a little, white face, pallid from sweet-eating and over-sapid food, and distorted by evil passions, a ruthless little egotist, pawing at the enchanted pane. "it's no good, sir," said the shopman, as i moved, with my natural helpfulness, doorward, and presently the spoilt child was carried off howling. "how do you manage that?" i said, breathing a little more freely. "magic!" said the shopman, with a careless wave of the hand, and behold! sparks of coloured fire flew out of his fingers and vanished into the shadows of the shop. "you were saying," he said, addressing himself to gip, "before you came in, that you would like one of our 'buy one and astonish your friends' boxes?" gip, after a gallant effort, said "yes." "it's in your pocket." and leaning over the counter--he really had an extraordinary long body-this amazing person produced the article in the customary conjurer's manner. "paper," he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with the springs; "string," and behold his mouth was a string box, from which he drew an unending thread, which when he had tied his parcel he bit off-and, it seemed to me, swallowed the ball of string. and then he lit a candle at the nose of one of the ventriloquist's dummies, stuck one of his fingers (which had become sealing-wax red) into the flame, and so sealed the parcel. "then there was the disappearing egg," he remarked, and produced one from within my coat-breast and packed it, and also the crying baby, very human. i handed each parcel to gip as it was ready, and he clasped them to his chest. he said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms was eloquent. he was the playground of unspeakable emotions. these, you know, were _real_ magics. then, with a start, i discovered something moving about in my hat-something soft and jumpy. i whipped it off, and a ruffled pigeon--no doubt a confederate--dropped out and ran on the counter, and went, i fancy, into a cardboard box behind the _papier-mâché_ tiger. "tut, tut!" said the shopman, dexterously relieving, me of my headdress; "careless bird, and--as i live--nesting!" he shook my hat, and shook out into his extended hand, two or three eggs, a large marble, a watch, about half a dozen of the inevitable glass balls, and then crumpled, crinkled paper, more and more and more, talking all the time of the way in which people neglect to brush their hats _inside_ as well as out--politely, of course, but with a certain personal application. "all sorts of things accumulate, sir... not _you_, of course, in particular... nearly every customer... astonishing what they carry about with them..." the crumpled paper rose and billowed on the counter more and more and more, until he was nearly hidden from us, until he was altogether hidden, and still his voice went on and on. "we none of us know what the fair semblance of a human being may conceal, sir. are we all then no better than brushed exteriors, whited sepulchres-----" his voice stopped--exactly like when you hit a neighbour's gramophone with a well-aimed brick, the same instant silence--and the rustle of the paper stopped, and everything was still... "have you done with my hat?" i said, after an interval. there was no answer. i stared at gip, and gip stared at me, and there were our distortions in the magic mirrors, looking very rum, and grave, and quiet... "i think we'll go now," i said. "will you tell me how much all this comes to?... "i say," i said, on a rather louder note, "i want the bill; and my hat, please." it might have been a sniff from behind the paper pile... "let's look behind the counter, gip," i said. "he's making fun of us." i led gip round the head-wagging tiger, and what do you think there was behind the counter? no one at all! only my hat on the floor, and a common conjurer's lop-eared white rabbit lost in meditation, and looking as stupid and crumpled as only a conjurer's rabbit can do. i resumed my hat, and the rabbit lolloped a lollop or so out of my way. "dadda!" said gip, in a guilty whisper. "what is it, gip?" said i. "i _do_ like this shop, dadda." "so should i," i said to myself, "if the counter wouldn't suddenly extend itself to shut one off from the door." but i didn't call gip's attention to that. "pussy!" he said, with a hand out to the rabbit as it came lolloping past us; "pussy, do gip a magic!" and his eyes followed it as it squeezed through a door i had certainly not remarked a moment before. then this door opened wider, and the man with one ear larger than the other appeared again. he was smiling still, but his eye met mine with something between amusement and defiance. "you'd like to see our showroom, sir," he said, with an innocent suavity. gip tugged my finger forward. i glanced at the counter and met the shopman's eye again. i was beginning to think the magic just a little too genuine. "we haven't _very_ much time," i said. but somehow we were inside the showroom before i could finish that. "all goods of the same quality," said the shopman, rubbing his flexible hands together, "and that is the best. nothing in the place that isn't genuine magic, and warranted thoroughly rum. excuse me, sir!" i felt him pull at something that clung to my coat-sleeve, and then i saw he held a little, wriggling red demon by the tail--the little creature bit and fought and tried to get at his hand--and in a moment he tossed it carelessly behind a counter. no doubt the thing was only an image of twisted indiarubber, but for the moment--! and his gesture was exactly that of a man who handles some petty biting bit of vermin. i glanced at gip, but gip was looking at a magic rocking-horse. i was glad he hadn't seen the thing. "i say," i said, in an undertone, and indicating gip and the red demon with my eyes, "you haven't many things like _that_ about, have you?" "none of ours! probably brought it with you," said the shopman--also in an undertone, and with a more dazzling smile than ever. "astonishing what people _will_, carry about with them unawares!" and then to gip, "do you see anything you fancy here?" there were many things that gip fancied there. he turned to this astonishing tradesman with mingled confidence and respect. "is that a magic sword?" he said. "a magic toy sword. it neither bends, breaks, nor cuts the fingers. it renders the bearer invincible in battle against any one under eighteen. half a crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. these panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful--shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility." "oh, dadda!" gasped gip. i tried to find out what they cost, but the shopman did not heed me. he had got gip now; he had got him away from my finger; he had embarked upon the exposition of all his confounded stock, and nothing was going to stop him. presently i saw with a qualm of distrust and something very like jealousy that gip had hold of this person's finger as usually he has hold of mine. no doubt the fellow was interesting, i thought, and had an interestingly faked lot of stuff, really _good_ faked stuff, still---i wandered after them, saying very little, but keeping an eye on this prestidigital fellow. after all, gip was enjoying it. and no doubt when the time came to go we should be able to go quite easily. it was a long, rambling place, that showroom, a gallery broken up by stands and stalls and pillars, with archways leading off to other departments, in which the queerest-looking assistants loafed and stared at one, and with perplexing mirrors and curtains. so perplexing, indeed, were these that i was presently unable to make out the door by which we had come. the shopman showed gip magic trains that ran without steam or clockwork, just as you set the signals, and then some very, very valuable boxes of soldiers that all came alive directly you took off the lid and said----i myself haven't a very quick ear, and it was a tongue-twisting sound, but gip--he has his mother's ear--got it in no time. "bravo!" said the shopman, putting the men back into the box unceremoniously and handing it to gip. "now," said the shopman, and in a moment gip had made them all alive again. "you'll take that box?" asked the shopman. "we'll take that box," said i, "unless you charge its full value. in which case it would need a trust magnate----" "dear heart! _no!_" and the shopman swept the little men back again, shut the lid, waved the box in the air, and there it was, in brown paper, tied up and--_with gip's full name and address on the paper!_ the shopman laughed at my amazement. "this is the genuine magic," he said. "the real thing." "it's a little too genuine for my taste," i said again. after that he fell to showing gip tricks, odd tricks, and still odder the way they were done. he explained them, he turned them inside out, and there was the dear little chap nodding his busy bit of a head in the sagest manner. i did not attend as well as i might. "hey, presto!" said the magic shopman, and then would come the clear, small "hey, presto!" of the boy. but i was distracted by other things. it was being borne in upon me just how tremendously rum this place was; it was, so to speak, inundated by a sense of rumness. there was something a little rum about the fixtures even, about the ceiling, about the floor, about the casually distributed chairs. i had a queer feeling that whenever i wasn't looking at them straight they went askew, and moved about, and played a noiseless puss-in-the-corner behind my back. and the cornice had a serpentine design with masks--masks altogether too expressive for proper plaster. then abruptly my attention was caught by one of the odd-looking assistants. he was some way off and evidently unaware of my presence--i saw a sort of three-quarter length of him over a pile of toys and through an arch--and, you know, he was leaning against a pillar in an idle sort of way doing the most horrid things with his features! the particular horrid thing he did was with his nose. he did it just as though he was idle and wanted to amuse himself. first of all it was a short, blobby nose, and then suddenly he shot it out like a telescope, and then out it flew and became thinner and thinner until it was like a long, red flexible whip. like a thing in a nightmare it was! he flourished it about and flung it forth as a fly-fisher flings his line. my instant thought was that gip mustn't see him. i turned about, and there was gip quite preoccupied with the shopman, and thinking no evil. they were whispering together and looking at me. gip was standing on a little stool, and the shopman was holding a sort of big drum in his hand. "hide and seek, dadda!" cried gip. "you're he!" and before i could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped the big drum over him. i saw what was up directly. "take that off," i cried, "this instant! you'll frighten the boy. take it off!" the shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held the big cylinder towards me to show its emptiness. and the little stool was vacant! in that instant my boy had utterly disappeared!... you know, perhaps, that sinister something that comes like a hand out of the unseen and grips your heart about. you know it takes your common self away and leaves you tense and deliberate, neither slow nor hasty, neither angry nor afraid. so it was with me. i came up to this grinning shopman and kicked his stool aside. "stop this folly!" i said. "where is my boy?" "you see," he said, still displaying the drum's interior, "there is no deception----" i put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous movement. i snatched again, and he turned from me and pushed open a door to escape. "stop!" i said, and he laughed, receding. i leapt after him--into utter darkness. _thud!_ "lor' bless my 'eart! i didn't see you coming, sir!" i was in regent street, and i had collided with a decent-looking working man; and a yard away, perhaps, and looking a little perplexed with himself, was gip. there was some sort of apology, and then gip had turned and come to me with a bright little smile, as though for a moment he had missed me. and he was carrying four parcels in his arm! he secured immediate possession of my finger. for the second i was rather at a loss. i stared round to see the door of the magic shop, and, behold, it was not there! there was no door, no shop, nothing, only the common pilaster between the shop where they sell pictures and the window with the chicks! ... i did the only thing possible in that mental tumult; i walked straight to the kerbstone and held up my umbrella for a cab. "'ansoms," said gip, in a note of culminating exultation. i helped him in, recalled my address with an effort, and got in also. something unusual proclaimed itself in my tail-coat pocket, and i felt and discovered a glass ball. with a petulant expression i flung it into the street. gip said nothing. for a space neither of us spoke. "dadda!" said gip, at last, "that _was_ a proper shop!" i came round with that to the problem of just how the whole thing had seemed to him. he looked completely undamaged--so far, good; he was neither scared nor unhinged, he was simply tremendously satisfied with the afternoon's entertainment, and there in his arms were the four parcels. confound it! what could be in them? "um!" i said. "little boys can't go to shops like that every day." he received this with his usual stoicism, and for a moment i was sorry i was his father and not his mother, and so couldn't suddenly there, _coram publico,_ in our hansom, kiss him. after all, i thought, the thing wasn't so very bad. but it was only when we opened the parcels that i really began to be reassured. three of them contained boxes of soldiers, quite ordinary lead soldiers, but of so good a quality as to make gip altogether forget that originally these parcels had been magic tricks of the only genuine sort, and the fourth contained a kitten, a little living white kitten, in excellent health and appetite and temper. i saw this unpacking with a sort of provisional relief. i hung about in the nursery for quite an unconscionable time... that happened six months ago. and now i am beginning to believe it is all right. the kitten had only the magic natural to all kittens, and the soldiers seemed as steady a company as any colonel could desire. and gip----? the intelligent parent will understand that i have to go cautiously with gip. but i went so far as this one day. i said, "how would you like your soldiers to come alive, gip, and march about by themselves?" "mine do," said gip. "i just have to say a word i know before i open the lid." "then they march about alone?" "oh, _quite_, dadda. i shouldn't like them if they didn't do that." i displayed no unbecoming surprise, and since then i have taken occasion to drop in upon him once or twice, unannounced, when the soldiers were about, but so far i have never discovered them performing in anything like a magical manner... it's so difficult to tell. there's also a question of finance. i have an incurable habit of paying bills. i have been up and down regent street several times looking for that shop. i am inclined to think, indeed, that in that matter honour is satisfied, and that, since gip's name and address are known to them, i may very well leave it to these people, whoever they may be, to send in their bill in their own time. xxx. the empire of the ants. when captain gerilleau received instructions to take his new gunboat, the _benjamin constant,_ to badama on the batemo arm of the guaramadema and there assist the inhabitants against a plague of ants, he suspected the authorities of mockery. his promotion had been romantic and irregular, the affections of a prominent brazilian lady and the captain's liquid eyes had played a part in the process, and the _diario_ and _o futuro_ had been lamentably disrespectful in their comments. he felt he was to give further occasion for disrespect. he was a creole, his conceptions of etiquette and discipline were pure-blooded portuguese, and it was only to holroyd, the lancashire engineer who had come over with the boat, and as an exercise in the use of english--his "th" sounds were very uncertain--that he opened his heart. "it is in effect," he said, "to make me absurd! what can a man do against ants? dey come, dey go." "they say," said holroyd, "that these don't go. that chap you said was a sambo----" "zambo;--it is a sort of mixture of blood." "sambo. he said the people are going!" the captain smoked fretfully for a time. "dese tings 'ave to happen," he said at last. "what is it? plagues of ants and suchlike as god wills. dere was a plague in trinidad--the little ants that carry leaves. orl der orange-trees, all der mangoes! what does it matter? sometimes ant armies come into your houses--fighting ants; a different sort. you go and they clean the house. then you come back again;--the house is clean, like new! no cockroaches, no fleas, no jiggers in the floor." "that sambo chap," said holroyd, "says these are a different sort of ant." the captain shrugged his shoulders, fumed, and gave his attention to a cigarette. afterwards he reopened the subject. "my dear 'olroyd, what am i to do about dese infernal ants?" the captain reflected. "it is ridiculous," he said. but in the afternoon he put on his full uniform and went ashore, and jars and boxes came back to the ship and subsequently he did. and holroyd sat on deck in the evening coolness and smoked profoundly and marvelled at brazil. they were six days up the amazon, some hundreds of miles from the ocean, and east and west of him there was a horizon like the sea, and to the south nothing but a sand-bank island with some tufts of scrub. the water was always running like a sluice, thick with dirt, animated with crocodiles and hovering birds, and fed by some inexhaustible source of tree trunks; and the waste of it, the headlong waste of it, filled his soul. the town of alemquer, with its meagre church, its thatched sheds for houses, its discoloured ruins of ampler days, seemed a little thing lost in this wilderness of nature, a sixpence dropped on sahara. he was a young man, this was his first sight of the tropics, he came straight from england, where nature is hedged, ditched, and drained, into the perfection of submission, and he had suddenly discovered the insignificance of man. for six days they had been steaming up from the sea by unfrequented channels; and man had been as rare as a rare butterfly. one saw one day a canoe, another day a distant station, the next no men at all. he began to perceive that man is indeed a rare animal, having but a precarious hold upon this land. he perceived it more clearly as the days passed, and he made his devious way to the batemo, in the company of this remarkable commander, who ruled over one big gun, and was forbidden to waste his ammunition. holroyd was learning spanish industriously, but he was still in the present tense and substantive stage of speech, and the only other person who had any words of english was a negro stoker, who had them all wrong. the second in command was a portuguese, da cunha, who spoke french, but it was a different sort of french from the french holroyd had learnt in southport, and their intercourse was confined to politenesses and simple propositions about the weather. and the weather, like everything else in this amazing new world, the weather had no human aspect, and was hot by night and hot by day, and the air steam, even the wind was hot steam, smelling of vegetation in decay: and the alligators and the strange birds, the flies of many sorts and sizes, the beetles, the ants, the snakes and monkeys seemed to wonder what man was doing in an atmosphere that had no gladness in its sunshine and no coolness in its night. to wear clothing was intolerable, but to cast it aside was to scorch by day, and expose an ampler area to the mosquitoes by night; to go on deck by day was to be blinded by glare and to stay below was to suffocate. and in the daytime came certain flies, extremely clever and noxious about one's wrist and ankle. captain gerilleau, who was holroyd's sole distraction from these physical distresses, developed into a formidable bore, telling the simple story of his heart's affections day by day, a string of anonymous women, as if he was telling beads. sometimes he suggested sport, and they shot at alligators, and at rare intervals they came to human aggregations in the waste of trees, and stayed for a day or so, and drank and sat about, and, one night, danced with creole girls, who found holroyd's poor elements of spanish, without either past tense or future, amply sufficient for their purposes. but these were mere luminous chinks in the long grey passage of the streaming river, up which the throbbing engines beat. a certain liberal heathen deity, in the shape of a demi-john, held seductive court aft, and, it is probable, forward. but gerilleau learnt things about the ants, more things and more, at this stopping-place and that, and became interested in his mission. "dey are a new sort of ant," he said. "we have got to be--what do you call it?--entomologie? big. five centimetres! some bigger! it is ridiculous. we are like the monkeys---sent to pick insects... but dey are eating up the country." he burst out indignantly. "suppose--suddenly, there are complications with europe. here am i--soon we shall be above the rio negro--and my gun, useless!" he nursed his knee and mused. "dose people who were dere at de dancing place, dey 'ave come down. dey 'ave lost all they got. de ants come to deir house one afternoon. everyone run out. you know when de ants come one must--everyone runs out and they go over the house. if you stayed they'd eat you. see? well, presently dey go back; dey say, 'the ants 'ave gone.' ... de ants _'aven't_ gone. dey try to go in--de son, 'e goes in. de ants fight." "swarm over him?" "bite 'im. presently he comes out again--screaming and running. he runs past them to the river. see? he gets into de water and drowns de ants-yes." gerilleau paused, brought his liquid eyes close to holroyd's face, tapped holroyd's knee with his knuckle. "that night he dies, just as if he was stung by a snake." "poisoned--by the ants?" "who knows?" gerilleau shrugged his shoulders. "perhaps they bit him badly... when i joined dis service i joined to fight men. dese things, dese ants, dey come and go. it is no business for men." after that he talked frequently of the ants to holroyd, and whenever they chanced to drift against any speck of humanity in that waste of water and sunshine and distant trees, holroyd's improving knowledge of the language enabled him to recognise the ascendant word _saüba_, more and more completely dominating the whole. he perceived the ants were becoming interesting, and the nearer he drew to them the more interesting they became. gerilleau abandoned his old themes almost suddenly, and the portuguese lieutenant became a conversational figure; he knew something about the leaf-cutting ant, and expanded his knowledge. gerilleau sometimes rendered what he had to tell to holroyd. he told of the little workers that swarm and fight, and the big workers that command and rule, and how these latter always crawled to the neck and how their bites drew blood. he told how they cut leaves and made fungus beds, and how their nests in caracas are sometimes a hundred yards across. two days the three men spent disputing whether ants have eyes. the discussion grew dangerously heated on the second afternoon, and holroyd saved the situation by going ashore in a boat to catch ants and see. he captured various specimens and returned, and some had eyes and some hadn't. also, they argued, do ants bite or sting? "dese ants," said gerilleau, after collecting information at a rancho, "have big eyes. they don't run about blind--not as most ants do. no! dey get in corners and watch what you do." "and they sting?" asked holroyd. "yes. dey sting. dere is poison in the sting." he meditated. "i do not see what men can do against ants. dey come and go." "but these don't go." "they will," said gerilleau. past tamandu there is a long low coast of eighty miles without any population, and then one comes to the confluence of the main river and the batemo arm like a great lake, and then the forest came nearer, came at last intimately near. the character of the channel changes, snags abound, and the _benjamin constant_ moored by a cable that night, under the very shadow of dark trees. for the first time for many days came a spell of coolness, and holroyd and gerilleau sat late, smoking cigars and enjoying this delicious sensation. gerilleau's mind was full of ants and what they could do. he decided to sleep at last, and lay down on a mattress on deck, a man hopelessly perplexed, his last words, when he already seemed asleep, were to ask, with a flourish of despair, "what can one do with ants?... de whole thing is absurd." holroyd was left to scratch his bitten wrists, and meditate alone. he sat on the bulwark and listened to the little changes in gerilleau's breathing until he was fast asleep, and then the ripple and lap of the stream took his mind, and brought back that sense of immensity that had been growing upon him since first he had left para and come up the river. the monitor showed but one small light, and there was first a little talking forward and then stillness. his eyes went from the dim black outlines of the middle works of the gunboat towards the bank, to the black overwhelming mysteries of forest, lit now and then by a fire-fly, and never still from the murmur of alien and mysterious activities... it was the inhuman immensity of this land that astonished and oppressed him. he knew the skies were empty of men, the stars were specks in an incredible vastness of space; he knew the ocean was enormous and untamable, but in england he had come to think of the land as man's. in england it is indeed man's, the wild things live by sufferance, grow on lease, everywhere the roads, the fences, and absolute security runs. in an atlas, too, the land is man's, and all coloured to show his claim to it-in vivid contrast to the universal independent blueness of the sea. he had taken it for granted that a day would come when everywhere about the earth, plough and culture, light tramways and good roads, an ordered security, would prevail. but now, he doubted. this forest was interminable, it had an air of being invincible, and man seemed at best an infrequent precarious intruder. one travelled for miles, amidst the still, silent struggle of giant trees, of strangulating creepers, of assertive flowers, everywhere the alligator, the turtle, and endless varieties of birds and insects seemed at home, dwelt irreplaceably--but man, man at most held a footing upon resentful clearings, fought weeds, fought beasts and insects for the barest foothold, fell a prey to snake and beast, insect and fever, and was presently carried away. in many places down the river he had been manifestly driven back, this deserted creek or that preserved the name of a _casa_, and here and there ruinous white walls and a shattered tower enforced the lesson. the puma, the jaguar, were more the masters here... who were the real masters? in a few miles of this forest there must be more ants than there are men in the whole world! this seemed to holroyd a perfectly new idea. in a few thousand years men had emerged from barbarism to a stage of civilisation that made them feel lords of the future and masters of the earth! but what was to prevent the ants evolving also? such ants as one knew lived in little communities of a few thousand individuals, made no concerted efforts against the greater world. but they had a language, they had an intelligence! why should things stop at that any more than men had stopped at the barbaric stage? suppose presently the ants began to store knowledge, just as men had done by means of books and records, use weapons, form great empires, sustain a planned and organised war? things came back to him that gerilleau had gathered about these ants they were approaching. they used a poison like the poison of snakes. they obeyed greater leaders even as the leaf-cutting ants do. they were carnivorous, and where they came they stayed... the forest was very still. the water lapped incessantly against the side. about the lantern overhead there eddied a noiseless whirl of phantom moths. gerilleau stirred in the darkness and sighed. "what can one _do?_" he murmured, and turned over and was still again. holroyd was roused from meditations that were becoming sinister by the hum of a mosquito. ii. the next morning holroyd learnt they were within forty kilometres of badama, and his interest in the banks intensified. he came up whenever an opportunity offered to examine his surroundings. he could see no signs of human occupation whatever, save for a weedy ruin of a house and the green-stained facade of the long-deserted monastery at mojû, with a forest tree growing out of a vacant window space, and great creepers netted across its vacant portals. several flights of strange yellow butterflies with semi-transparent wings crossed the river that morning, and many alighted on the monitor and were killed by the men. it was towards afternoon that they came upon the derelict _cuberta_. she did not at first appear to be derelict; both her sails were set and hanging slack in the afternoon calm, and there was the figure of a man sitting on the fore planking beside the shipped sweeps. another man appeared to be sleeping face downwards on the sort of longitudinal bridge these big canoes have in the waist. but it was presently apparent, from the sway of her rudder and the way she drifted into the course of the gunboat, that something was out of order with her. gerilleau surveyed her through a field-glass, and became interested in the queer darkness of the face of the sitting man, a red-faced man he seemed, without a nose-crouching he was rather than sitting, and the longer the captain looked the less he liked to look at him, and the less able he was to take his glasses away. but he did so at last, and went a little way to call up holroyd. then he went back to hail the cuberta. he hailed her again, and so she drove past him. _santa rosa_ stood out clearly as her name. as she came by and into the wake of the monitor, she pitched a little, and suddenly the figure of the crouching man collapsed as though all its joints had given way. his hat fell off, his head was not nice to look at, and his body flopped lax and rolled out of sight behind the bulwarks. "caramba!" cried gerilleau, and resorted to holroyd forthwith. holroyd was half-way up the companion. "did you see dat?" said the captain. "dead!" said holroyd. "yes. you'd better send a boat aboard. there's something wrong." "did you--by any chance--see his face?" "what was it like?" "it was--ugh!--i have no words." and the captain suddenly turned his back on holroyd and became an active and strident commander. the gunboat came about, steamed parallel to the erratic course of the canoe, and dropped the boat with lieutenant da cunha and three sailors to board her. then the curiosity of the captain made him draw up almost alongside as the lieutenant got aboard, so that the whole of the _santa rosa_, deck and hold, was visible to holroyd. he saw now clearly that the sole crew of the vessel was these two dead men, and though he could not see their faces, he saw by their outstretched hands, which were all of ragged flesh, that they had been subjected to some strange exceptional process of decay. for a moment his attention concentrated on those two enigmatical bundles of dirty clothes and laxly flung limbs, and then his eyes went forward to discover the open hold piled high with trunks and cases, and aft, to where the little cabin gaped inexplicably empty. then he became aware that the planks of the middle decking were dotted with moving black specks. his attention was riveted by these specks. they were all walking in directions radiating from the fallen man in a manner--the image came unsought to his mind--like the crowd dispersing from a bull-fight. he became aware of gerilleau beside him. "capo," he said, "have you your glasses? can you focus as closely as those planks there?" gerilleau made an effort, grunted, and handed him the glasses. there followed a moment of scrutiny. "it's ants," said the englishman, and handed the focused field-glass back to gerilleau. his impression of them was of a crowd of large black ants, very like ordinary ants except for their size, and for the fact that some of the larger of them bore a sort of clothing of grey. but at the time his inspection was too brief for particulars. the head of lieutenant da cunha appeared over the side of the cuberta, and a brief colloquy ensued. "you must go aboard," said gerilleau. the lieutenant objected that the boat was full of ants. "you have your boots," said gerilleau. the lieutenant changed the subject. "how did these men die?" he asked. captain gerilleau embarked upon speculations that holroyd could not follow, and the two men disputed with a certain increasing vehemence. holroyd took up the field-glass and resumed his scrutiny, first of the ants and then of the dead man amidships. he has described these ants to me very particularly. he says they were as large as any ants he has ever seen, black and moving with a steady deliberation very different from the mechanical fussiness of the common ant. about one in twenty was much larger than its fellows, and with an exceptionally large head. these reminded him at once of the master workers who are said to rule over the leaf-cutter ants; like them they seemed to be directing and co-ordinating the general movements. they tilted their bodies back in a manner altogether singular as if they made some use of the fore feet. and he had a curious fancy that he was too far off to verify, that most of these ants of both kinds were wearing accoutrements, had things strapped about their bodies by bright white bands like white metal threads... he put down the glasses abruptly, realising that the question of discipline between the captain and his subordinate had become acute. "it is your duty," said the captain, "to go aboard. it is my instructions." the lieutenant seemed on the verge of refusing. the head of one of the mulatto sailors appeared beside him. "i believe these men were killed by the ants," said holroyd abruptly in english. the captain burst into a rage. he made no answer to holroyd. "i have commanded you to go aboard," he screamed to his subordinate in portuguese. "if you do not go aboard forthwith it is mutiny--rank mutiny. mutiny and cowardice! where is the courage that should animate us? i will have you in irons, i will have you shot like a dog." he began a torrent of abuse and curses, he danced to and fro. he shook his fists, he behaved as if beside himself with rage, and the lieutenant, white and still, stood looking at him. the crew appeared forward, with amazed faces. suddenly, in a pause of this outbreak, the lieutenant came to some heroic decision, saluted, drew himself together and clambered upon the deck of the cuberta. "ah!" said gerilleau, and his mouth shut like a trap. holroyd saw the ants retreating before da cunha's boots. the portuguese walked slowly to the fallen man, stooped down, hesitated, clutched his coat and turned him over. a black swarm of ants rushed out of the clothes, and da cunha stepped back very quickly and trod two or three times on the deck. holroyd put up the glasses. he saw the scattered ants about the invader's feet, and doing what he had never seen ants doing before. they had nothing of the blind movements of the common ant; they were looking at him--as a rallying crowd of men might look at some gigantic monster that had dispersed it. "how did he die?" the captain shouted. holroyd understood the portuguese to say the body was too much eaten to tell. "what is there forward?" asked gerilleau. the lieutenant walked a few paces, and began his answer in portuguese. he stopped abruptly and beat off something from his leg. he made some peculiar steps as if he was trying to stamp on something invisible, and went quickly towards the side. then he controlled himself, turned about, walked deliberately forward to the hold, clambered up to the fore decking, from which the sweeps are worked, stooped for a time over the second man, groaned audibly, and made his way back and aft to the cabin, moving very rigidly. he turned and began a conversation with his captain, cold and respectful in tone on either side, contrasting vividly with the wrath and insult of a few moments before. holroyd gathered only fragments of its purport. he reverted to the field-glass, and was surprised to find the ants had vanished from all the exposed surfaces of the deck. he turned towards the shadows beneath the decking, and it seemed to him they were full of watching eyes. the cuberta, it was agreed; was derelict, but too full of ants to put men aboard to sit and sleep: it must be towed. the lieutenant went forward to take in and adjust the cable, and the men in the boat stood up to be ready to help him. holroyd's glasses searched the canoe. he became more and more impressed by the fact that a great if minute and furtive activity was going on. he perceived that a number of gigantic ants--they seemed nearly a couple of inches in length--carrying oddly-shaped burthens for which he could imagine no use--were moving in rushes from one point of obscurity to another. they did not move in columns across the exposed places, but in open, spaced-out lines, oddly suggestive of the rushes of modern infantry advancing under fire. a number were taking cover under the dead man's clothes, and a perfect swarm was gathering along the side over which da cunha must presently go. he did not see them actually rush for the lieutenant as he returned, but he has no doubt they did make a concerted rush. suddenly the lieutenant was shouting and cursing and beating at his legs. "i'm stung!" he shouted, with a face of hate and accusation towards gerilleau. then he vanished over the side, dropped into his boat, and plunged at once into the water. holroyd heard the splash. the three men in the boat pulled him out and brought him aboard, and that night he died. iii. holroyd and the captain came out of the cabin in which the swollen and contorted body of the lieutenant lay and stood together at the stern of the monitor, staring at the sinister vessel they trailed behind them. it was a close, dark night that had only phantom flickerings of sheet lightning to illuminate it. the cuberta, a vague black triangle, rocked about in the steamer's wake, her sails bobbing and flapping, and the black smoke from the funnels, spark-lit ever and again, streamed over her swaying masts. gerilleau's mind was inclined to run on the unkind things the lieutenant had said in the heat of his last fever. "he says i murdered 'im," he protested. "it is simply absurd. someone _'ad_ to go aboard. are we to run away from these confounded ants whenever they show up?" holroyd said nothing. he was thinking of a disciplined rush of little black shapes across bare sunlit planking. "it was his place to go," harped gerilleau. "he died in the execution of his duty. what has he to complain of? murdered!... but the poor fellow was--what is it?--demented. he was not in his right mind. the poison swelled him... u'm." they came to a long silence. "we will sink that canoe--burn it." "and then?" the inquiry irritated gerilleau. his shoulders went up, his hands flew out at right angles from his body. "what is one to _do?_" he said, his voice going up to an angry squeak. "anyhow," he broke out vindictively, "every ant in dat cuberta!--i will burn dem alive!" holroyd was not moved to conversation. a distant ululation of howling monkeys filled the sultry night with foreboding sounds, and as the gunboat drew near the black mysterious banks this was reinforced by a depressing clamour of frogs. "what is one to _do?_" the captain repeated after a vast interval, and suddenly becoming active and savage and blasphemous, decided to burn the _santa rosa_ without further delay. everyone aboard was pleased by that idea, everyone helped with zest; they pulled in the cable, cut it, and dropped the boat and fired her with tow and kerosene, and soon the cuberta was crackling and flaring merrily amidst the immensities of the tropical night. holroyd watched the mounting yellow flare against the blackness, and the livid flashes of sheet lightning that came and went above the forest summits, throwing them into momentary silhouette, and his stoker stood behind him watching also. the stoker was stirred to the depths of his linguistics. "_saüba_ go pop, pop," he said, "wahaw" and laughed richly. but holroyd was thinking that these little creatures on the decked canoe had also eyes and brains. the whole thing impressed him as incredibly foolish and wrong, but--what was one to _do_? this question came back enormously reinforced on the morrow, when at last the gunboat reached badama. this place, with its leaf-thatch-covered houses and sheds, its creeper-invaded sugar-mill, its little jetty of timber and canes, was very still in the morning heat, and showed never a sign of living men. whatever ants there were at that distance were too small to see. "all the people have gone," said gerilleau, "but we will do one thing anyhow. we will 'oot and vissel." so holroyd hooted and whistled. then the captain fell into a doubting fit of the worst kind. "dere is one thing we can do," he said presently, "what's that?" said holroyd. "'oot and vissel again." so they did. the captain walked his deck and gesticulated to himself. he seemed to have many things on his mind. fragments of speeches came from his lips. he appeared to be addressing some imaginary public tribunal either in spanish or portuguese. holroyd's improving ear detected something about ammunition. he came out of these preoccupations suddenly into english. "my dear 'olroyd!" he cried, and broke off with "but what _can_ one do?" they took the boat and the field-glasses, and went close in to examine the place. they made out a number of big ants, whose still postures had a certain effect of watching them, dotted about the edge of the rude embarkation jetty. gerilleau tried ineffectual pistol shots at these. holroyd thinks he distinguished curious earthworks running between the nearer houses, that may have been the work of the insect conquerors of those human habitations. the explorers pulled past the jetty, and became aware of a human skeleton wearing a loin cloth, and very bright and clean and shining, lying beyond. they came to a pause regarding this... "i 'ave all dose lives to consider," said gerilleau suddenly. holroyd turned and stared at the captain, realising slowly that he referred to the unappetising mixture of races that constituted his crew. "to send a landing party--it is impossible--impossible. they will be poisoned, they will swell, they will swell up and abuse me and die. it is totally impossible... if we land, i must land alone, alone, in thick boots and with my life in my hand. perhaps i should live. or again--i might not land. i do not know. i do not know." holroyd thought he did, but he said nothing. "de whole thing," said gerilleau suddenly, "'as been got up to make me ridiculous. de whole thing!" they paddled about and regarded the clean white skeleton from various points of view, and then they returned to the gunboat. then gerilleau's indecisions became terrible. steam was got up, and in the afternoon the monitor went on up the river with an air of going to ask somebody something, and by sunset came back again and anchored. a thunderstorm gathered and broke furiously, and then the night became beautifully cool and quiet and everyone slept on deck. except gerilleau, who tossed about and muttered. in the dawn he awakened holroyd. "lord!" said holroyd, "what now?" "i have decided," said the captain. "what--to land?" said holroyd, sitting up brightly. "no!" said the captain, and was for a time very reserved. "i have decided," he repeated, and holroyd manifested symptoms of impatience. "well,--yes," said the captain, "_i shall fire de big gun!_" and he did! heaven knows what the ants thought of it, but he did. he fired it twice with great sternness and ceremony. all the crew had wadding in their ears, and there was an effect of going into action about the whole affair, and first they hit and wrecked the old sugar-mill, and then they smashed the abandoned store behind the jetty. and then gerilleau experienced the inevitable reaction. "it is no good," he said to holroyd; "no good at all. no sort of bally good. we must go back--for instructions. dere will be de devil of a row about dis ammunition--oh! de _devil_ of a row! you don't know, 'olroyd..." he stood regarding the world in infinite perplexity for a space. "but what else was there to _do?_" he cried. in the afternoon the monitor started down stream again, and in the evening a landing party took the body of the lieutenant and buried it on the bank upon which the new ants have so far not appeared... iv. i heard this story in a fragmentary state from holroyd not three weeks ago. these new ants have got into his brain, and he has come back to england with the idea, as he says, of "exciting people" about them "before it is too late." he says they threaten british guiana, which cannot be much over a trifle of a thousand miles from their present sphere of activity, and that the colonial office ought to get to work upon them at once. he declaims with great passion: "these are intelligent ants. just think what that means!" there can be no doubt they are a serious pest, and that the brazilian government is well advised in offering a prize of five hundred pounds for some effectual method of extirpation. it is certain too that since they first appeared in the hills beyond badama, about three years ago, they have achieved extraordinary conquests. the whole of the south bank of the batemo river, for nearly sixty miles, they have in their effectual occupation; they have driven men out completely, occupied plantations and settlements, and boarded and captured at least one ship. it is even said they have in some inexplicable way bridged the very considerable capuarana arm and pushed many miles towards the amazon itself. there can be little doubt that they are far more reasonable and with a far better social organisation than any previously known ant species; instead of being in dispersed societies they are organised into what is in effect a single nation; but their peculiar and immediate formidableness lies not so much in this as in the intelligent use they make of poison against their larger enemies. it would seem this poison of theirs is closely akin to snake poison, and it is highly probable they actually manufacture it, and that the larger individuals among them carry the needle-like crystals of it in their attacks upon men. of course it is extremely difficult to get any detailed information about these new competitors for the sovereignty of the globe. no eye-witnesses of their activity, except for such glimpses as holroyd's, have survived the encounter. the most extraordinary legends of their prowess and capacity are in circulation in the region of the upper amazon, and grow daily as the steady advance of the invader stimulates men's imaginations through their fears. these strange little creatures are credited not only with the use of implements and a knowledge of fire and metals and with organised feats of engineering that stagger our northern minds--unused as we are to such feats as that of the saübas of rio de janeiro, who in 1841 drove a tunnel under the parahyba where it is as wide as the thames at london bridge--but with an organised and detailed method of record and communication analogous to our books. so far their action has been a steady progressive settlement, involving the flight or slaughter of every human being in the new areas they invade. they are increasing rapidly in numbers, and holroyd at least is firmly convinced that they will finally dispossess man over the whole of tropical south america. and why should they stop at tropical south america? well, there they are, anyhow. by 1911 or thereabouts, if they go on as they are going, they ought to strike the capuarana extension railway, and force themselves upon the attention of the european capitalist. by 1920 they will be half-way down the amazon. i fix 1950 or '60 at the latest for the discovery of europe. xxxi. the door in the wall. i. one confidential evening, not three months ago, lionel wallace told me this story of the door in the wall. and at the time i thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true story. he told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that i could not do otherwise than believe in him. but in the morning, in my own flat, i woke to a different atmosphere, and as i lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed, shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and me, and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from everyday realities, i saw it all as frankly incredible. "he was mystifying!" i said, and then: "how well he did it!... it isn't quite the thing i should have expected him, of all people, to do well." afterwards as i sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, i found myself trying to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in his impossible reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest, present, convey--i hardly know which word to use--experiences it was otherwise impossible to tell. well, i don't resort to that explanation now. i have got over my intervening doubts. i believe now, as i believed at the moment of telling, that wallace did to the very best of his ability strip the truth of his secret for me. but whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was the possessor of an inestimable privilege or the victim of a fantastic dream, i cannot pretend to guess. even the facts of his death, which ended my doubts for ever, throw no light on that. that much the reader must judge for himself. i forget now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. he was, i think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability i had made in relation to a great public movement, in which he had disappointed me. but he plunged suddenly. "i have," he said, "a preoccupation---"i know," he went on, after a pause, "i have been negligent. the fact is-it isn't a case of ghosts or apparitions--but--it's an odd thing to tell of, redmond--i am haunted. i am haunted by something--that rather takes the light out of things, that fills me with longings..." he paused, checked by that english shyness that so often overcomes us when we would speak of moving or grave or beautiful things. "you were at saint aethelstan's all through," he said, and for a moment that seemed to me quite irrelevant. "well"--and he paused. then very haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings, that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him. now that i have the clue to it, the thing seems written visibly in his face. i have a photograph in which that look of detachment has been caught and intensified. it reminds me of what a woman once said of him--a woman who had loved him greatly. "suddenly," she said, "the interest goes out of him. he forgets you. he doesn't care a rap for you--under his very nose..." yet the interest was not always out of him, and when he was holding his attention to a thing wallace could contrive to be an extremely successful man. his career, indeed, is set with successes. he left me behind him long ago: he soared up over my head, and cut a figure in the world that i couldn't cut--anyhow. he was still a year short of forty, and they say now that he would have been in office and very probably in the new cabinet if he had lived. at school he always beat me without effort--as it were by nature. we were at school together at saint aethelstan's college in west kensington for almost all our school-time. he came into the school as my coequal, but he left far above me, in a blaze of scholarships and brilliant performance. yet i think i made a fair average running. and it was at school i heard first of the "door in the wall"--that i was to hear of a second time only a month before his death. to him at least the door in the wall was a real door, leading through a real wall to immortal realities. of that i am now quite assured. and it came into his life quite early, when he was a little fellow between five and six. i remember how, as he sat making his confession to me with a slow gravity, he reasoned and reckoned the date of it. "there was," he said, "a crimson virginia creeper in it--all one bright uniform crimson, in a clear amber sunshine against a white wall. that came into the impression somehow, though i don't clearly remember how, and there were horse-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside the green door. they were blotched yellow and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so that they must have been new fallen. i take it that means october. i look out for horse-chestnut leaves every year and i ought to know. "if i'm right in that, i was about five years and four months old." he was, he said, rather a precocious little boy--he learnt to talk at an abnormally early age, and he was so sane and "old-fashioned," as people say, that he was permitted an amount of initiative that most children scarcely attain by seven or eight. his mother died when he was two, and he was under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess. his father was a stern, preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little attention, and expected great things of him. for all his brightness he found life a little grey and dull, i think. and one day he wandered. he could not recall the particular neglect that enabled him to get away, nor the course he took among the west kensington roads. all that had faded among the incurable blurs of memory. but the white wall and the green door stood out quite distinctly. as his memory of that childish experience ran, he did at the very first sight of that door experience a peculiar emotion, an attraction, a desire to get to the door and open it and walk in. and at the same time he had the clearest conviction that either it was unwise or it was wrong of him-he could not tell which--to yield to this attraction. he insisted upon it as a curious thing that he knew from the very beginning--unless memory has played him the queerest trick--that the door was unfastened, and that he could go in as he chose. i seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and repelled. and it was very clear in his mind, too, though why it should be so was never explained, that his father would be very angry if he went in through that door. wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with the utmost particularity. he went right past the door, and then, with his hands in his pockets and making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled right along beyond the end of the wall. there he recalls a number of mean dirty shops, and particularly that of a plumber and decorator with a dusty disorder of earthenware pipes, sheet lead, ball taps, pattern books of wall paper, and tins of enamel. he stood pretending to examine these things, and _coveting_, passionately desiring, the green door. then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. he made a run for it, lest hesitation should grip him again; he went plump with outstretched hand through the green door and let it slam behind him. and so, in a trice, he came into the garden that has haunted all his life. it was very difficult for wallace to give me his full sense of that garden into which he came. there was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one a sense of lightness and good happening and well-being; there was something in the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect and subtly luminous. in the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely glad--as only in rare moments, and when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this world. and everything was beautiful there... wallace mused before he went on telling me. "you see," he said, with the doubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, "there were two great panthers there... yes, spotted panthers. and i was not afraid. there was a long wide path with marble-edged flower borders on either side, and these two huge velvety beasts were playing there with a ball. one looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed. it came right up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the small hand i held out, and purred. it was, i tell you, an enchanted garden. i know. and the size? oh! it stretched far and wide, this way and that. i believe there were hills far away. heaven knows where west kensington had suddenly got to. and somehow it was just like coming home. "you know, in the very moment the door swung to behind me, i forgot the road with its fallen chestnut leaves, its cabs and tradesmen's carts, i forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience of home, i forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot all the intimate realities of this life. i became in a moment a very glad and wonder-happy little boy--in another world. it was a world with a different quality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light, with a faint clear gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of its sky. and before me ran this long wide path, invitingly, with weedless beds on either side, rich with untended flowers, and these two great panthers. i put my little hands fearlessly on their soft fur, and caressed their round ears and the sensitive corners under their ears, and played with them, and it was as though they welcomed me home. there was a keen sense of home-coming in my mind, and when presently a tall, fair girl appeared in the pathway and came to meet me, smiling, and said 'well?' to me, and lifted me, and kissed me, and put me down, and led me by the hand, there was no amazement, but only an impression of delightful rightness, of being reminded of happy things that had in some strange way been overlooked. there were broad red steps, i remember, that came into view between spikes of delphinium, and up these we went to a great avenue between very old and shady dark trees. all down this avenue, you know, between the red chapped stems, were marble seats of honour and statuary, and very tame and friendly white doves... "along this cool avenue my girl-friend led me, looking down--i recall the pleasant lines, the finely-modelled chin of her sweet kind face--asking me questions in a soft, agreeable voice, and telling me things, pleasant things i know, though what they were i was never able to recall... presently a little capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of ruddy brown and kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, looking up at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder. so we two went on our way in great happiness." he paused. "go on," i said. "i remember little things. we passed an old man musing among laurels, i remember, and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a broad shaded colonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart's desire. and there were many things and many people, some that still seem to stand out clearly and some that are a little vague; but all these people were beautiful and kind. in some way--i don't know how--it was conveyed to me that they all were kind to me, glad to have me there, and filling me with gladness by their gestures, by the touch of their hands, by the welcome and love in their eyes. yes----" he mused for a while. "playmates i found there. that was very much to me, because i was a lonely little boy. they played delightful games in a grass-covered court where there was a sun-dial set about with flowers. and as one played one loved... "but--it's odd--there's a gap in my memory. i don't remember the games we played. i never remembered. afterwards, as a child, i spent long hours trying, even with tears, to recall the form of that happiness. i wanted to play it all over again--in my nursery--by myself. no! all i remember is the happiness and two dear playfellows who were most with me... then presently came a sombre dark woman, with a grave, pale face and dreamy eyes, a sombre woman, wearing a soft long robe of pale purple, who carried a book, and beckoned and took me aside with her into a gallery above a hall--though my playmates were loth to have me go, and ceased their game and stood watching as i was carried away. come back to us!' they cried. 'come back to us soon!' i looked up at her face, but she heeded them not at all. her face was very gentle and grave. she took me to a seat in the gallery, and i stood beside her, ready to look at her book as she opened it upon her knee. the pages fell open. she pointed, and i looked, marvelling, for in the living pages of that book i saw myself; it was a story about myself, and in it were all the things that had happened to me since ever i was born... "it was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not pictures, you understand, but realities." wallace paused gravely--looked at me doubtfully. "go on," i said. "i understand." "they were realities---yes, they must have been; people moved and things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom i had near forgotten; then my father, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery, all the familiar things of home. then the front door and the busy streets, with traffic to and fro. i looked and marvelled, and looked half doubtfully again into the woman's face and turned the pages over, skipping this and that, to see more of this book and more, and so at last i came to myself hovering and hesitating outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the conflict and the fear. "'and next?' i cried, and would have turned on, but the cool hand of the grave woman delayed me. "'next?' i insisted, and struggled gently with her hand, pulling up her fingers with all my childish strength, and as she yielded and the page came over she bent down upon me like a shadow and kissed my brow. "but the page did not show the enchanted garden, nor the panthers, nor the girl who had led me by the hand, nor the playfellows who had been so loth to let me go. it showed a long grey street in west kensington, in that chill hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit, and i was there, a wretched little figure, weeping aloud, for all that i could do to restrain myself, and i was weeping because i could not return to my dear playfellows who had called after me, 'come back to us! come back to us soon!' i was there. this was no page in a book, but harsh reality; that enchanted place and the restraining hand of the grave mother at whose knee i stood had gone--whither had they gone?" he halted again, and remained for a time staring into the fire. "oh! the woefulness of that return!" he murmured. "well?" i said, after a minute or so. "poor little wretch i was!--brought back to this grey world again! as i realised the fulness of what had happened to me, i gave way to quite ungovernable grief. and the shame and humiliation of that public weeping and my disgraceful home-coming remain with me still. i see again the benevolent-looking old gentleman in gold spectacles who stopped and spoke to me--prodding me first with his umbrella. 'poor little chap,' said he; 'and are you lost then?'--and me a london boy of five and more! and he must needs bring in a kindly young policeman and make a crowd of me, and so march me home. sobbing, conspicuous, and frightened, i came back from the enchanted garden to the steps of my father's house. "that is as well as i can remember my vision of that garden--the garden that haunts me still. of course, i can convey nothing of that indescribable quality of translucent unreality, that _difference_ from the common things of experience that hung about it all; but that-that is what happened. if it was a dream, i am sure it was a day-time and altogether extraordinary dream... h'm!--naturally there followed a terrible questioning, by my aunt, my father, the nurse, the governess-everyone... "i tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first thrashing for telling lies. when afterwards i tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again for my wicked persistence. then, as i said, everyone was forbidden to listen to me, to hear a word about it. even my fairytale books were taken away from me for a time--because i was too 'imaginative.' eh? yes, they did that! my father belonged to the old school... and my story was driven back upon myself. i whispered it to my pillow--my pillow that was often damp and salt to my whispering lips with childish tears. and i added always to my official and less fervent prayers this one heartfelt request: 'please god i may dream of the garden. oh! take me back to my garden!' take me back to my garden! i dreamt often of the garden. i may have added to it, i may have changed it; i do not know... all this, you understand, is an attempt to reconstruct from fragmentary memories a very early experience. between that and the other consecutive memories of my boyhood there is a gulf. a time came when it seemed impossible i should ever speak of that wonder glimpse again." i asked an obvious question. "no," he said. "i don't remember that i ever attempted to find my way back to the garden in those early years. this seems odd to me now, but i think that very probably a closer watch was kept on my movements after this misadventure to prevent my going astray. no, it wasn't till you knew me that i tried for the garden again. and i believe there was a period-incredible as it seems now--when i forgot the garden altogether--when i was about eight or nine it may have been. do you remember me as a kid at saint aethelstan's?" "rather!" "i didn't show any signs, did i, in those days of having a secret dream?" ii. he looked up with a sudden smile. "did you ever play north-west passage with me?... no, of course you didn't come my way!" "it was the sort of game," he went on, "that every imaginative child plays all day. the idea was the discovery of a north-west passage to school. the way to school was plain enough; the game consisted in finding some way that wasn't plain, starting off ten minutes early in some almost hopeless direction, and working my way round through unaccustomed streets to my goal. and one day i got entangled among some rather low-class streets on the other side of campden hill, and i began to think that for once the game would be against me and that i should get to school late. i tried rather desperately a street that seemed a _cul-de-sac_, and found a passage at the end. i hurried through that with renewed hope. 'i shall do it yet,' i said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops that were inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my long white wall and the green door that led to the enchanted garden! "the thing whacked upon me suddenly. then, after all, that garden, that wonderful garden, wasn't a dream!" he paused. "i suppose my second experience with the green door marks the world of difference there is between the busy life of a schoolboy and the infinite leisure of a child. anyhow, this second time i didn't for a moment think of going in straight away. you see----. for one thing, my mind was full of the idea of getting to school in time--set on not breaking my record for punctuality. i must surely have felt _some_ little desire at least to try the door--yes. i must have felt that... but i seem to remember the attraction of the door mainly as another obstacle to my overmastering determination to get to school. i was immensely interested by this discovery i had made, of course--i went on with my mind full of it--but i went on. it didn't check me. i ran past, tugging out my watch, found i had ten minutes still to spare, and then i was going downhill into familiar surroundings. i got to school, breathless, it is true, and wet with perspiration, but in time. i can remember hanging up my coat and hat... went right by it and left it behind me. odd, eh?" he looked at me thoughtfully, "of course i didn't know then that it wouldn't always be there. schoolboys have limited imaginations. i suppose i thought it was an awfully jolly thing to have it there, to know my way back to it, but there was the school tugging at me. i expect i was a good deal distraught and inattentive that morning, recalling what i could of the beautiful strange people i should presently see again. oddly enough i had no doubt in my mind that they would be glad to see me... yes, i must have thought of the garden that morning just as a jolly sort of place to which one might resort in the interludes of a strenuous scholastic career. "i didn't go that day at all. the next day was a half holiday, and that may have weighed with me. perhaps, too, my state of inattention brought down impositions upon me, and docked the margin of time necessary for the _detour_. i don't know. what i do know is that in the meantime the enchanted garden was so much upon my mind that i could not keep it to myself. "i told. what was his name?--a ferrety-looking youngster we used to call squiff." "young hopkins," said i. "hopkins it was. i did not like telling him. i had a feeling that in some way it was against the rules to tell him, but i did. he was walking part of the way home with me; he was talkative, and if we had not talked about the enchanted garden we should have talked of something else, and it was intolerable to me to think about any other subject. so i blabbed. "well, he told my secret. the next day in the play interval i found myself surrounded by half a dozen bigger boys, half teasing, and wholly curious to hear more of the enchanted garden. there was that big fawcett--you remember him?--and carnaby and morley reynolds. you weren't there by any chance? no, i think i should have remembered if you were... "a boy is a creature of odd feelings. i was, i really believe, in spite of my secret self-disgust, a little flattered to have the attention of these big fellows. i remember particularly a moment of pleasure caused by the praise of crawshaw--you remember crawshaw major, the son of crawshaw the composer?--who said it was the best lie he had ever heard. but at the same time there was a really painful undertow of shame at telling what i felt was indeed a sacred secret. that beast fawcett made a joke about the girl in green----" wallace's voice sank with the keen memory of that shame. "i pretended not to hear," he said. "well, then carnaby suddenly called me a young liar, and disputed with me when i said the thing was true. i said i knew where to find the green door, could lead them all there in ten minutes. carnaby became outrageously virtuous, and said i'd have to--and bear out my words or suffer. did you ever have carnaby twist your arm? then perhaps you'll understand how it went with me. i swore my story was true. there was nobody in the school then to save a chap from carnaby, though crawshaw put in a word or so. carnaby had got his game. i grew excited and red-eared, and a little frightened. i behaved altogether like a silly little chap, and the outcome of it all was that instead of starting alone for my enchanted garden, i led the way presently--cheeks flushed, ears hot, eyes smarting, and my soul one burning misery and shame--for a party of six mocking, curious, and threatening schoolfellows. "we never found the white wall and the green door..." "you mean----?" "i mean i couldn't find it. i would have found it if i could. "and afterwards when i could go alone i couldn't find it. i never found it. i seem now to have been always looking for it through my school-boy days, but i never came upon it--never." "did the fellows--make it disagreeable?" "beastly... carnaby held a council over me for wanton lying. i remember how i sneaked home and upstairs to hide the marks of my blubbering. but when i cried myself to sleep at last it wasn't for carnaby, but for the garden, for the beautiful afternoon i had hoped for, for the sweet friendly women and the waiting playfellows, and the game i had hoped to learn again, that beautiful forgotten game... "i believed firmly that if i had not told--... i had bad times after that--crying at night and wool-gathering by day. for two terms i slackened and had bad reports. do you remember? of course you would! it was _you_--your beating me in mathematics that brought me back to the grind again." iii. for a time my friend stared silently into the red heart of the fire. then he said: "i never saw it again until i was seventeen. "it leapt upon me for the third time--as i was driving to paddington on my way to oxford and a scholarship. i had just one momentary glimpse. i was leaning over the apron of my hansom smoking a cigarette, and no doubt thinking myself no end of a man of the world, and suddenly there was the door, the wall, the dear sense of unforgettable and still attainable things. "we clattered by--i too taken by surprise to stop my cab until we were well past and round a corner. then i had a queer moment, a double and divergent movement of my will: i tapped the little door in the roof of the cab, and brought my arm down to pull out my watch. 'yes, sir!' said the cabman, smartly. 'er--well--it's nothing,' i cried. '_my_ mistake! we haven't much time! go on!' and he went on... "i got my scholarship. and the night after i was told of that i sat over my fire in my little upper room, my study, in my father's house, with his praise--his rare praise--and his sound counsels ringing in my ears, and i smoked my favourite pipe--the formidable bulldog of adolescence--and thought of that door in the long white wall. 'if i had stopped,' i thought, 'i should have missed my scholarship, i should have missed oxford--muddled all the fine career before me! i begin to see things better!' i fell musing deeply, but i did not doubt then this career of mine was a thing that merited sacrifice. "those dear friends and that clear atmosphere seemed very sweet to me, very fine but remote. my grip was fixing now upon the world. i saw another door opening--the door of my career." he stared again into the fire. its red light picked out a stubborn strength in his face for just one flickering moment, and then it vanished again. "well," he said and sighed, "i have served that career. i have done--much work, much hard work. but i have dreamt of the enchanted garden a thousand dreams, and seen its door, or at least glimpsed its door, four times since then. yes--four times. for a while this world was so bright and interesting, seemed so full of meaning and opportunity, that the half-effaced charm of the garden was by comparison gentle and remote. who wants to pat panthers on the way to dinner with pretty women and distinguished men? i came down to london from oxford, a man of bold promise that i have done something to redeem. something--and yet there have been disappointments... "twice i have been in love--i will not dwell on that--but once, as i went to someone who, i knew, doubted whether i dared to come, i took a short cut at a venture through an unfrequented road near earl's court, and so happened on a white wall and a familiar green door. 'odd!' said i to myself, 'but i thought this place was on campden hill. it's the place i never could find somehow--like counting stonehenge--the place of that queer daydream of mine.' and i went by it intent upon my purpose. it had no appeal to me that afternoon. "i had just a moment's impulse to try the door, three steps aside were needed at the most--though i was sure enough in my heart that it would open to me--and then i thought that doing so might delay me on the way to that appointment in which i thought my honour was involved. afterwards i was sorry for my punctuality--might at least have peeped in, i thought, and waved a hand to those panthers, but i knew enough by this time not to seek again belatedly that which is not found by seeking. yes, that time made me very sorry... "years of hard work after that, and never a sight of the door. it's only recently it has come back to me. with it there has come a sense as though some thin tarnish had spread itself over my world. i began to think of it as a sorrowful and bitter thing that i should never see that door again. perhaps i was suffering a little from overwork--perhaps it was what i've heard spoken of as the feeling of forty. i don't know. but certainly the keen brightness that makes effort easy has gone out of things recently, and that just at a time--with all these new political developments--when i ought to be working. odd, isn't it? but i do begin to find life toilsome, its rewards, as i come near them, cheap. i began a little while ago to want the garden quite badly. yes--and i've seen it three times." "the garden?" "no---the door! and i haven't gone in!" he leant over the table to me, with an enormous sorrow in his voice as he spoke. "thrice i have had my chance--_thrice_! if ever that door offers itself to me again, i swore, i will go in, out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. i will go and never return. this time i will stay... i swore it, and when the time came--_i didn't go_. "three times in one year have i passed that door and failed to enter. three times in the last year. "the first time was on the night of the snatch division on the tenants' redemption bill, on which the government was saved by a majority of three. you remember? no one on our side--perhaps very few on the opposite side-expected the end that night. then the debate collapsed like eggshells. i and hotchkiss were dining with his cousin at brentford; we were both unpaired, and we were called up by telephone, and set off at once in his cousin's motor. we got in barely in time, and on the way we passed my wall and door--livid in the moonlight, blotched with hot yellow as the glare of our lamps lit it, but unmistakable. 'my god!' cried i. 'what?' said hotchkiss. 'nothing!' i answered, and the moment passed. "'i've made a great sacrifice,' i told the whip as i got in. 'they all have,' he said, and hurried by. "i do not see how i could have done otherwise then. and the next occasion was as i rushed to my father's bedside to bid that stern old man farewell. then, too, the claims of life were imperative. but the third time was different; it happened a week ago. it fills me with hot remorse to recall it. i was with gurker and ralphs--it's no secret now, you know, that i've had my talk with gurker. we had been dining at frobisher's, and the talk had become intimate between us. the question of my place in the reconstructed ministry lay always just over the boundary of the discussion. yes--yes. that's all settled. it needn't be talked about yet, but there's no reason to keep a secret from you... yes--thanks! thanks! but let me tell you my story. "then, on that night things were very much in the air. my position was a very delicate one. i was keenly anxious to get some definite word from gurker, but was hampered by ralphs' presence. i was using the best power of my brain to keep that light and careless talk not too obviously directed to the point that concerned me. i had to. ralphs' behaviour since has more than justified my caution... ralphs, i knew, would leave us beyond the kensington high street, and then i could surprise gurker by a sudden frankness. one has sometimes to resort to these little devices... and then it was that in the margin of my field of vision i became aware once more of the white wall, the green door before us down the road. "we passed it talking. i passed it. i can still see the shadow of gurker's marked profile, his opera hat tilted forward over his prominent nose, the many folds of his neck wrap going before my shadow and ralphs' as we sauntered past. "i passed within twenty inches of the door. 'if i say good-night to them, and go in,' i asked myself, 'what will happen?' and i was all a-tingle for that word with gurker. "i could not answer that question in the tangle of my other problems. 'they will think me mad,' i thought. 'and suppose i vanish now!---amazing disappearance of a prominent politician!' that weighed with me. a thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me in that crisis." then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and, speaking slowly, "here i am!" he said. "here i am!" he repeated, "and my chance has gone from me. three times in one year the door has been offered me--the door that goes into peace, into delight, into a beauty beyond dreaming, a kindness no man on earth can know. and i have rejected it, redmond, and it has gone----" "how do you know?" "i know. i know. i am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks that held me so strongly when my moments came. you say i have success--this vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. i have it." he had a walnut in his big hand. "if that was my success," he said, and crushed it, and held it out for me to see. "let me tell you something, redmond. this loss is destroying me. for two months, for ten weeks nearly now, i have done no work at all, except the most necessary and urgent duties. my soul is full of inappeasable regrets. at nights--when it is less likely i shall be recognised--i go out. i wander. yes. i wonder what people would think of that if they knew. a cabinet minister, the responsible head of that most vital of all departments, wandering alone--grieving--sometimes near audibly lamenting-for a door, for a garden!" iv. i can see now his rather pallid face, and the unfamiliar sombre fire that had come into his eyes. i see him very vividly to-night. i sit recalling his words, his tones, and last evening's _westminster gazette_ still lies on my sofa, containing the notice of his death. at lunch to-day the club was busy with his death. we talked of nothing else. they found his body very early yesterday morning in a deep excavation near east kensington station. it is one of two shafts that have been made in connection with an extension of the railway southward. it is protected from the intrusion of the public by a hoarding upon the high road, in which a small doorway has been cut for the convenience of some of the workmen who live in that direction. the doorway was left unfastened through a misunderstanding between two gangers, and through it he made his way... my mind is darkened with questions and riddles. it would seem he walked all the way from the house that night--he has frequently walked home during the past session--and so it is i figure his dark form coming along the late and empty streets, wrapped up, intent. and then did the pale electric lights near the station cheat the rough planking into a semblance of white? did that fatal unfastened door awaken some memory? was there, after all, ever any green door in the wall at all? i do not know. i have told his story as he told it to me. there are times when i believe that wallace was no more than the victim of the coincidence between a rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and a careless trap, but that indeed is not my profoundest belief. you may think me superstitious, if you will, and foolish; but, indeed, i am more than half convinced that he had, in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something--i know not what---that in the guise of wall and door offered him an outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether more beautiful world. at any rate, you will say, it betrayed him in the end. but did it betray him? there you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men of vision and the imagination. we see our world fair and common, the hoarding and the pit. by our daylight standard he walked out of security into darkness, danger, and death. but did he see like that? xxxii. the country of the blind. three hundred miles and more from chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of ecuador's andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from the world of men, the country of the blind. long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows; and thither indeed men came, a family or so of peruvian half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil spanish ruler. then came the stupendous outbreak of mindobamba, when it was night in quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at yaguachi and all the fish floating dying even as far as guayaquil; everywhere along the pacific slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the old arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off the country of the blind for ever from the exploring feet of men. but one of these early settlers had chanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world had so terribly shaken itself, and he perforce had to forget his wife and his child and all the friends and possessions he had left up there, and start life over again in the lower world. he started it again but ill, blindness overtook him, and he died of punishment in the mines; but the story he told begot a legend that lingers along the length of the cordilleras of the andes to this day. he told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness, into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama, beside a vast bale of gear, when he was a child. the valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man could desire--sweet water, pasture, and even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high. far overhead, on three sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice; but the glacier stream came not to them but flowed away by the farther slopes, and only now and then huge ice masses fell on the valley side. in this valley it neither rained nor snowed, but the abundant springs gave a rich green pasture, that irrigation would spread over all the valley space. the settlers did well indeed there. their beasts did well and multiplied, and but one thing marred their happiness. yet it was enough to mar it greatly. a strange disease had come upon them, and had made all the children born to them there--and indeed, several older children also--blind. it was to seek some charm or antidote against this plague of blindness that he had with fatigue and danger and difficulty returned down the gorge. in those days, in such cases, men did not think of germs and infections but of sins; and it seemed to him that the reason of this affliction must lie in the negligence of these priestless immigrants to set up a shrine so soon as they entered the valley. he wanted a shrine--a handsome, cheap, effectual shrine--to be erected in the valley; he wanted relics and such-like potent things of faith, blessed objects and mysterious medals and prayers. in his wallet he had a bar of native silver for which he would not account; he insisted there was none in the valley with something of the insistence of an inexpert liar. they had all clubbed their money and ornaments together, having little need for such treasure up there, he said, to buy them holy help against their ill. i figure this dim-eyed young mountaineer, sunburnt, gaunt, and anxious, hat-brim clutched feverishly, a man all unused to the ways of the lower world, telling this story to some keen-eyed, attentive priest before the great convulsion; i can picture him presently seeking to return with pious and infallible remedies against that trouble, and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastness where the gorge had once come out. but the rest of his story of mischances is lost to me, save that i know of his evil death after several years. poor stray from that remoteness! the stream that had once made the gorge now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave, and the legend his poor, ill-told story set going developed into the legend of a race of blind men somewhere "over there" one may still hear to-day. and amidst the little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the disease ran its course. the old became groping and purblind, the young saw but dimly, and the children that were born to them saw never at all. but life was very easy in that snow-rimmed basin, lost to all the world, with neither thorns nor briars, with no evil insects nor any beasts save the gentle breed of llamas they had lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the shrunken rivers in the gorges up which they had come. the seeing had become purblind so gradually that they scarcely noted their loss. they guided the sightless youngsters hither and thither until they knew the whole valley marvellously, and when at last sight died out among them the race lived on. they had even time to adapt themselves to the blind control of fire, which they made carefully in stoves of stone. they were a simple strain of people at the first, unlettered, only slightly touched with the spanish civilisation, but with something of a tradition of the arts of old peru and of its lost philosophy. generation followed generation. they forgot many things; they devised many things. their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythical in colour and uncertain. in all things save sight they were strong and able, and presently the chance of birth and heredity sent one who had an original mind and who could talk and persuade among them, and then afterwards another. these two passed, leaving their effects, and the little community grew in numbers and in understanding, and met and settled social and economic problems that arose. generation followed generation. generation followed generation. there came a time when a child was born who was fifteen generations from that ancestor who went out of the valley with a bar of silver to seek god's aid, and who never returned. thereabouts it chanced that a man came into this community from the outer world. and this is the story of that man. he was a mountaineer from the country near quito, a man who had been down to the sea and had seen the world, a reader of books in an original way, an acute and enterprising man, and he was taken on by a party of englishmen who had come out to ecuador to climb mountains, to replace one of their three swiss guides who had fallen ill. he climbed here and he climbed there, and then came the attempt on parascotopetl, the matterhorn of the andes, in which he was lost to the outer world. the story of the accident has been written a dozen times. pointer's narrative is the best. he tells how the little party worked their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatest precipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a little shelf of rock, and, with a touch of real dramatic power, how presently they found nunez had gone from them. they shouted, and there was no reply; shouted and whistled, and for the rest of that night they slept no more. as the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall. it seems impossible he could have uttered a sound. he had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche. his track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. far, far below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising out of a narrow, shut-in valley--the lost country of the blind. but they did not know it was the lost country of the blind, nor distinguish it in any way from any other narrow streak of upland valley. unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon, and pointer was called away to the war before he could make another attack. to this day parascotopetl lifts an unconquered crest, and pointer's shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows. and the man who fell survived. at the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came down in the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow slope even steeper than the one above. down this he was whirled, stunned and insensible, but without a bone broken in his body; and then at last came to gentler slopes, and at last rolled out and lay still, buried amidst a softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and saved him. he came to himself with a dim fancy that he was ill in bed; then realised his position with a mountaineer's intelligence, and worked himself loose and, after a rest or so, out until he saw the stars. he rested flat upon his chest for a space, wondering where he was and what had happened to him. he explored his limbs, and discovered that several of his buttons were gone and his coat turned over his head. his knife had gone from his pocket and his hat was lost, though he had tied it under his chin. he recalled that he had been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of the shelter wall. his ice-axe had disappeared. he decided he must have fallen, and looked up to see, exaggerated by the ghastly light of the rising moon, the tremendous flight he had taken. for a while he lay, gazing blankly at that vast pale cliff towering above, rising moment by moment out of a subsiding tide of darkness. its phantasmal, mysterious beauty held him for a space, and then he was seized with a paroxysm of sobbing laughter... after a great interval of time he became aware that he was near the lower edge of the snow. below, down what was now a moonlit and practicable slope, he saw the dark and broken appearance of rock-strewn turf. he struggled to his feet, aching in every joint and limb, got down painfully from the heaped loose snow about him, went downward until he was on the turf, and there dropped rather than lay beside a boulder, drank deep from the flask in his inner pocket, and instantly fell asleep... he was awakened by the singing of birds in the trees far below. he sat up and perceived he was on a little alp at the foot of a vast precipice, that was grooved by the gully down which he and his snow had come. over against him another wall of rock reared itself against the sky. the gorge between these precipices ran east and west and was full of the morning sunlight, which lit to the westward the mass of fallen mountain that closed the descending gorge. below him it seemed there was a precipice equally steep, but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of chimney-cleft dripping with snow-water down which a desperate man might venture. he found it easier than it seemed, and came at last to another desolate alp, and then after a rock climb of no particular difficulty to a steep slope of trees. he took his bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it opened out above upon green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quite distinctly a cluster of stone huts of unfamiliar fashion. at times his progress was like clambering along the face of a wall, and after a time the rising sun ceased to strike along the gorge, the voices of the singing birds died away, and the air grew cold and dark about him. but the distant valley with its houses was all the brighter for that. he came presently to talus, and among the rocks he noted--for he was an observant man--an unfamiliar fern that seemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands. he picked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk and found it helpful. about midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and the sunlight. he was stiff and weary; he sat down in the shadow of a rock, filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down, and remained for a time resting before he went on to the houses. they were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the whole aspect of that valley became, as he regarded it, queerer and more unfamiliar. the greater part of its surface was lush green meadow, starred with many beautiful flowers, irrigated with extraordinary care, and bearing evidence of systematic cropping piece by piece. high up and ringing the valley about was a wall, and what appeared to be a circumferential water-channel, from which the little trickles of water that fed the meadow plants came, and on the higher slopes above this flocks of llamas cropped the scanty herbage. sheds, apparently shelters or feeding-places for the llamas, stood against the boundary wall here and there. the irrigation streams ran together into a main channel down the centre of the valley, and this was enclosed on either side by a wall breast high. this gave a singularly urban quality to this secluded place, a quality that was greatly enhanced by the fact that a number of paths paved with black and white stones, and each with a curious little kerb at the side, ran hither and thither in an orderly manner. the houses of the central village were quite unlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew; they stood in a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness; here and there their particoloured facade was pierced by a door, and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. they were particoloured with extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sort of plaster that was sometimes grey, sometimes drab, sometimes slate-coloured or dark brown; and it was the sight of this wild plastering first brought the word "blind" into the thoughts of the explorer. "the good man who did that," he thought, "must have been as blind as a bat." he descended a steep place, and so came to the wall and channel that ran about the valley, near where the latter spouted out its surplus contents into the deeps of the gorge in a thin and wavering thread of cascade. he could now see a number of men and women resting on piled heaps of grass, as if taking a siesta, in the remoter part of the meadow, and nearer the village a number of recumbent children, and then nearer at hand three men carrying pails on yokes along a little path that ran from the encircling wall towards the houses. these latter were clad in garments of llama cloth and boots and belts of leather, and they wore caps of cloth with back and ear flaps. they followed one another in single file, walking slowly and yawning as they walked, like men who have been up all night. there was something so reassuringly prosperous and respectable in their bearing that after a moment's hesitation nunez stood forward as conspicuously as possible upon his rock, and gave vent to a mighty shout that echoed round the valley. the three men stopped, and moved their heads as though they were looking about them. they turned their faces this way and that, and nunez gesticulated with freedom. but they did not appear to see him for all his gestures, and after a time, directing themselves towards the mountains far away to the right, they shouted as if in answer. nunez bawled again, and then once more, and as he gestured ineffectually the word "blind" came up to the top of his thoughts. "the fools must be blind," he said. when at last, after much shouting and wrath, nunez crossed the stream by a little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, and approached them, he was sure that they were blind. he was sure that this was the country of the blind of which the legends told. conviction had sprung upon him, and a sense of great and rather enviable adventure. the three stood side by side, not looking at him, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by his unfamiliar steps. they stood close together like men a little afraid, and he could see their eyelids closed and sunken, as though the very balls beneath had shrunk away. there was an expression near awe on their faces. "a man," one said, in hardly recognisable spanish--"a man it is--a man or a spirit--coming down from the rocks." but nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon life. all the old stories of the lost valley and the country of the blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain-"in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." "in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." and very civilly he gave them greeting. he talked to them and used his eyes. "where does he come from, brother pedro?" asked one. "down out of the rocks." "over the mountains i come," said nunez, "out of the country beyond there--where men can see. from near bogota, where there are a hundred thousands of people, and where the city passes out of sight." "sight?" muttered pedro. "sight?" "he comes," said the second blind man, "out of the rocks." the cloth of their coats nunez saw was curiously fashioned, each with a different sort of stitching. they startled him by a simultaneous movement towards him, each with a hand outstretched. he stepped back from the advance of these spread fingers. "come hither," said the third blind man, following his motion and clutching him neatly. and they held nunez and felt him over, saying no word further until they had done so. "carefully," he cried, with a finger in his eye, and found they thought that organ, with its fluttering lids, a queer thing in him. they went over it again. "a strange creature, correa," said the one called pedro. "feel the coarseness of his hair. like a llama's hair." "rough he is as the rocks that begot him," said correa, investigating nunez's unshaven chin with a soft and slightly moist hand. "perhaps he will grow finer." nunez struggled a little under their examination, but they gripped him firm. "carefully," he said again. "he speaks," said the third man. "certainly he is a man." "ugh!" said pedro, at the roughness of his coat. "and you have come into the world?" asked pedro. "_out_ of the world. over mountains and glaciers; right over above there, half-way to the sun. out of the great big world that goes down, twelve days' journey to the sea." they scarcely seemed to heed him. "our fathers have told us men may be made by the forces of nature," said correa. "it is the warmth of things and moisture, and rottenness--rottenness." "let us lead him to the elders," said pedro. "shout first," said correa, "lest the children be afraid... this is a marvellous occasion." so they shouted, and pedro went first and took nunez by the hand to lead him to the houses. he drew his hand away. "i can see," he said. "see?" said correa. "yes, see," said nunez, turning towards him, and stumbled against pedro's pail. "his senses are still imperfect," said the third blind man. "he stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. lead him by the hand." "as you will," said nunez, and was led along, laughing. it seemed they knew nothing of sight. well, all in good time he would teach them. he heard people shouting, and saw a number of figures gathering together in the middle roadway of the village. he found it tax his nerve and patience more than he had anticipated, that first encounter with the population of the country of the blind. the place seemed larger as he drew near to it, and the smeared plasterings queerer, and a crowd of children and men and women (the women and girls, he was pleased to note, had some of them quite sweet faces, for all that their eyes were shut and sunken) came about him, holding on to him, touching him with soft, sensitive hands, smelling at him, and listening at every word he spoke. some of the maidens and children, however, kept aloof as if afraid, and indeed his voice seemed coarse and rude beside their softer notes. they mobbed him. his three guides kept close to him with an effect of proprietorship, and said again and again, "a wild man out of the rock." "bogota," he said. "bogota. over the mountain crests." "a wild man--using wild words," said pedro. "did you hear that-_bogota_? his mind is hardly formed yet. he has only the beginnings of speech." a little boy nipped his hand. "bogota!" he said mockingly. "ay! a city to your village. i come from the great world--where men have eyes and see." "his name's bogota," they said. "he stumbled," said correa, "stumbled twice as we came hither." "bring him to the elders." and they thrust him suddenly through a doorway into a room as black as pitch, save at the end there faintly glowed a fire. the crowd closed in behind him and shut out all but the faintest glimmer of day, and before he could arrest himself he had fallen headlong over the feet of a seated man. his arm, outflung, struck the face of someone else as he went down; he felt the soft impact of features and heard a cry of anger, and for a moment he struggled against a number of hands that clutched him. it was a one-sided fight. an inkling of the situation came to him, and he lay quiet. "i fell down," he said; "i couldn't see in this pitchy darkness." there was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried to understand his words. then the voice of correa said: "he is but newly formed. he stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean nothing with his speech." others also said things about him that he heard or understood imperfectly. "may i sit up?" he asked, in a pause. "i will not struggle against you again." they consulted and let him rise. the voice of an older man began to question him, and nunez found himself trying to explain the great world out of which he had fallen, and the sky and mountains and sight and such-like marvels, to these elders who sat in darkness in the country of the blind. and they would believe and understand nothing whatever he told them, a thing quite outside his expectation. they would not even understand many of his words. for fourteen generations these people had been blind and cut off from all the seeing world; the names for all the things of sight had faded and changed; the story of the outer world was faded and changed to a child's story; and they had ceased to concern themselves with anything beyond the rocky slopes above their circling wall. blind men of genius had arisen among them and questioned the shreds of belief and tradition they had brought with them from their seeing days, and had dismissed all these things as idle fancies, and replaced them with new and saner explanations. much of their imagination had shrivelled with their eyes, and they had made for themselves new imaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and finger-tips. slowly nunez realised this; that his expectation of wonder and reverence at his origin and his gifts was not to be borne out; and after his poor attempt to explain sight to them had been set aside as the confused version of a new-made being describing the marvels of his incoherent sensations, he subsided, a little dashed, into listening to their instruction. and the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and religion, how that the world (meaning their valley) had been first an empty hollow in the rocks, and then had come, first, inanimate things without the gift of touch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense, and then men, and at last angels, whom one could hear singing and making fluttering sounds, but whom no one could touch at all, which puzzled nunez greatly until he thought of the birds. he went on to tell nunez how this time had been divided into the warm and the cold, which are the blind equivalents of day and night, and how it was good to sleep in the warm and work during the cold, so that now, but for his advent, the whole town of the blind would have been asleep. he said nunez must have been specially created to learn and serve the wisdom, they had acquired, and that for all his mental incoherency and stumbling behaviour he must have courage, and do his best to learn, and at that all the people in the doorway murmured encouragingly. he said the night--for the blind call their day night--was now far gone, and it behoved every one to go back to sleep. he asked nunez if he knew how to sleep, and nunez said he did, but that before sleep he wanted food. they brought him food--llama's milk in a bowl, and rough salted bread--and led him into a lonely place, to eat out of their hearing, and afterwards to slumber until the chill of the mountain evening roused them to begin their day again. but nunez slumbered not at all. instead, he sat up in the place where they had left him, resting his limbs and turning the unanticipated circumstances of his arrival over and over in his mind. every now and then he laughed, sometimes with amusement, and sometimes with indignation. "unformed mind!" he said. "got no senses yet! they little know they've been insulting their heaven-sent king and master. i see i must bring them to reason. let me think--let me think." he was still thinking when the sun set. nunez had an eye for all beautiful things, and it seemed to him that the glow upon the snowfields and glaciers that rose about the valley on every side was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. his eyes went from that inaccessible glory to the village and irrigated fields, fast sinking into the twilight, and suddenly a wave of emotion took him, and he thanked god from the bottom of his heart that the power of sight had been given him. he heard a voice calling to him from out of the village. "ya ho there, bogota! come hither!" at that he stood up smiling. he would show these people once and for all what sight would do for a man. they would seek him, but not find him. "you move not, bogota," said the voice. he laughed noiselessly, and made two stealthy steps aside from the path. "trample not on the grass, bogota; that is not allowed." nunez had scarcely heard the sound he made himself. he stopped amazed. the owner of the voice came running up the piebald path towards him. he stepped back into the pathway. "here i am," he said. "why did you not come when i called you?" said the blind man. "must you be led like a child? cannot you hear the path as you walk?" nunez laughed. "i can see it," he said. "there is no such word as _see_," said the blind man, after a pause. "cease this folly, and follow the sound of my feet." nunez followed, a little annoyed. "my time will come," he said. "you'll learn," the blind man answered. "there is much to learn in the world." "has no one told you, 'in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king'?" "what is blind?" asked the blind man carelessly over his shoulder. four days passed, and the fifth found the king of the blind still incognito, as a clumsy and useless stranger among his subjects. it was, he found, much more difficult to proclaim himself than he had supposed, and in the meantime, while he meditated his _coup d'état,_ he did what he was told and learnt the manners and customs of the country of the blind. he found working and going about at night a particularly irksome thing, and he decided that that should be the first thing he would change. they led a simple, laborious life, these people, with all the elements of virtue and happiness, as these things can be understood by men. they toiled, but not oppressively; they had food and clothing sufficient for their needs; they had days and seasons of rest; they made much of music and singing, and there was love among them, and little children. it was marvellous with what confidence and precision they went about their ordered world. everything, you see, had been made to fit their needs; each of the radiating paths of the valley area had a constant angle to the others, and was distinguished by a special notch upon its kerbing; all obstacles and irregularities of path or meadow had long since been cleared away; all their methods and procedure arose naturally from their special needs. their senses had become marvellously acute; they could hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away--could hear the very beating of his heart. intonation had long replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as garden work can be. their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dog can, and they went about the tending of the llamas, who lived among the rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter, with ease and confidence. it was only when at last nunez sought to assert himself that he found how easy and confident their movements could be. he rebelled only after he had tried persuasion. he tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight. "look you here, you people," he said. "there are things you do not understand in me." once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat with faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, and he did his best to tell them what it was to see. among his hearers was a girl, with eyelids less red and sunken than the others, so that one could almost fancy she was hiding eyes, whom especially he hoped to persuade. he spoke of the beauties of sight, of watching the mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. they told him there were indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of the rocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world; thence sprang a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dew and the avalanches fell; and when he maintained stoutly the world had neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said his thoughts were wicked. so far as he could describe sky and clouds and stars to them it seemed to them a hideous void, a terrible blankness in the place of the smooth roof to things in which they believed--it was an article of faith with them that the cavern roof was exquisitely smooth to the touch. he saw that in some manner he shocked them, and gave up that aspect of the matter altogether, and tried to show them the practical value of sight. one morning he saw pedro in the path called seventeen and coming towards the central houses, but still too far off for hearing or scent, and he told them as much. "in a little while," he prophesied, "pedro will be here." an old man remarked that pedro had no business on path seventeen, and then, as if in confirmation, that individual as he drew near turned and went transversely into path ten, and so back with nimble paces towards the outer wall. they mocked nunez when pedro did not arrive, and afterwards, when he asked pedro questions to clear his character, pedro denied and outfaced him, and was afterwards hostile to him. then he induced them to let him go a long way up the sloping meadows towards the wall with one complacent individual, and to him he promised to describe all that happened among the houses. he noted certain goings and comings, but the things that really seemed to signify to these people happened inside of or behind the windowless houses--the only things they took note of to test him by--and of these he could see or tell nothing; and it was after the failure of this attempt, and the ridicule they could not repress, that he resorted to force. he thought of seizing a spade and suddenly smiting one or two of them to earth, and so in fair combat showing the advantage of eyes. he went so far with that resolution as to seize his spade, and then he discovered a new thing about himself, and that was that it was impossible for him to hit a blind man in cold blood. he hesitated, and found them all aware that he had snatched up the spade. they stood alert, with their heads on one side, and bent ears towards him for what he would do next. "put that spade down," said one, and he felt a sort of helpless horror. he came near obedience. then he thrust one backwards against a house wall, and fled past him and out of the village. he went athwart one of their meadows, leaving a track of trampled grass behind his feet, and presently sat down by the side of one of their ways. he felt something of the buoyancy that comes to all men in the beginning of a fight, but more perplexity. he began to realise that you cannot even fight happily with creatures who stand upon a different mental basis to yourself. far away he saw a number of men carrying spades and sticks come out of the street of houses, and advance in a spreading line along the several paths towards him. they advanced slowly, speaking frequently to one another, and ever and again the whole cordon would halt and sniff the air and listen. the first time they did this nunez laughed. but afterwards he did not laugh. one struck his trail in the meadow grass, and came stooping and feeling his way along it. for five minutes he watched the slow extension of the cordon, and then his vague disposition to do something forthwith became frantic. he stood up, went a pace or so towards the circumferential wall, turned, and went back a little way. there they all stood in a crescent, still and listening. he also stood still, gripping his spade very tightly in both hands. should he charge them? the pulse in his ears ran into the rhythm of "in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king!" should he charge them? he looked back at the high and unclimbable wall behind--unclimbable because of its smooth plastering, but withal pierced with many little doors, and at the approaching line of seekers. behind these others were now coming out of the street of houses. should he charge them? "bogota!" called one. "bogota! where are you?" he gripped his spade still tighter, and advanced down the meadows towards the place of habitations, and directly he moved they converged upon him. "i'll hit them if they touch me," he swore; "by heaven, i will. i'll hit." he called aloud, "look here, i'm going to do what i like in this valley. do you hear? i'm going to do what i like and go where i like!" they were moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet moving rapidly. it was like playing blind man's buff, with everyone blindfolded except one. "get hold of him!" cried one. he found himself in the arc of a loose curve of pursuers. he felt suddenly he must be active and resolute. "you don't understand," he cried in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. "you are blind, and i can see. leave me alone!" "bogota! put down that spade, and come off the grass!" the last order, grotesque in its urban familiarity, produced a gust of anger. "i'll hurt you," he said, sobbing with emotion. "by heaven, i'll hurt you. leave me alone!" he began to run, not knowing clearly where to run. he ran from the nearest blind man, because it was a horror to hit him. he stopped, and then made a dash to escape from their closing ranks. he made for where a gap was wide, and the men on either side, with a quick perception of the approach of his paces, rushed in on one another. he sprang forward, and then saw he must be caught, and _swish_! the spade had struck. he felt the soft thud of hand and arm, and the man was down with a yell of pain, and he was through. through! and then he was close to the street of houses again, and blind men, whirling spades and stakes, were running with a sort of reasoned swiftness hither and thither. he heard steps behind him just in time, and found a tall man rushing forward and swiping at the sound of him. he lost his nerve, hurled his spade a yard wide at his antagonist, and whirled about and fled, fairly yelling as he dodged another. he was panic-stricken. he ran furiously to and fro, dodging when there was no need to dodge, and in his anxiety to see on every side of him at once, stumbling. for a moment he was down and they heard his fall. far away in the circumferential wall a little doorway looked like heaven, and he set off in a wild rush for it. he did not even look round at his pursuers until it was gained, and he had stumbled across the bridge, clambered a little way among the rocks, to the surprise and dismay of a young llama, who went leaping out of sight, and lay down sobbing for breath. and so his _coup d'état_ came to an end. he stayed outside the wall of the valley of the blind for two nights and days without food or shelter, and meditated upon the unexpected. during these meditations he repeated very frequently and always with a profounder note of derision the exploded proverb: "in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." he thought chiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these people, and it grew clear that for him no practicable way was possible. he had no weapons, and now it would be hard to get one. the canker of civilisation had got to him even in bogota, and he could not find it in himself to go down and assassinate a blind man. of course, if he did that, he might then dictate terms on the threat of assassinating them all. but--sooner or later he must sleep!... he tried also to find food among the pine trees, to be comfortable under pine boughs while the frost fell at night, and--with less confidence--to catch a llama by artifice in order to try to kill it--perhaps by hammering it with a stone--and so finally, perhaps, to eat some of it. but the llamas had a doubt of him and regarded him with distrustful brown eyes, and spat when he drew near. fear came on him the second day and fits of shivering. finally he crawled down to the wall of the country of the blind and tried to make terms. he crawled along by the stream, shouting, until two blind men came out to the gate and talked to him. "i was mad," he said. "but i was only newly made." they said that was better. he told them he was wiser now, and repented of all he had done. then he wept without intention, for he was very weak and ill now, and they took that as a favourable sign. they asked him if he still thought he could "_see_" "no," he said. "that was folly. the word means nothing--less than nothing!" they asked him what was overhead. "about ten times ten the height of a man there is a roof above the world-of rock--and very, very smooth." ... he burst again into hysterical tears. "before you ask me any more, give me some food or i shall die." he expected dire punishments, but these blind people were capable of toleration. they regarded his rebellion as but one more proof of his general idiocy and inferiority; and after they had whipped him they appointed him to do the simplest and heaviest work they had for anyone to do, and he, seeing no other way of living, did submissively what he was told. he was ill for some days, and they nursed him kindly. that refined his submission. but they insisted on his lying in the dark, and that was a great misery. and blind philosophers came and talked to him of the wicked levity of his mind, and reproved him so impressively for his doubts about the lid of rock that covered their cosmic casserole that he almost doubted whether indeed he was not the victim of hallucination in not seeing it overhead. so nunez became a citizen of the country of the blind, and these people ceased to be a generalised people and became individualities and familiar to him, while the world beyond the mountains became more and more remote and unreal. there was yacob, his master, a kindly man when not annoyed; there was pedro, yacob's nephew; and there was medina-saroté, who was the youngest daughter of yacob. she was little esteemed in the world of the blind, because she had a clear-cut face, and lacked that satisfying, glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty; but nunez thought her beautiful at first, and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation. her closed eyelids were not sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but lay as though they might open again at any moment; and she had long eyelashes, which were considered a grave disfigurement. and her voice was strong, and did not satisfy the acute hearing of the valley swains. so that she had no lover. there came a time when nunez thought that, could he win her, he would be resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of his days. he watched her; he sought opportunities of doing her little services, and presently he found that she observed him. once at a rest-day gathering they sat side by side in the dim starlight, and the music was sweet. his hand came upon hers and he dared to clasp it. then very tenderly she returned his pressure. and one day, as they were at their meal in the darkness, he felt her hand very softly seeking him, and as it chanced the fire leapt then and he saw the tenderness of her face. he sought to speak to her. he went to her one day when she was sitting in the summer moonlight spinning. the light made her a thing of silver and mystery. he sat down at her feet and told her he loved her, and told her how beautiful she seemed to him. he had a lover's voice, he spoke with a tender reverence that came near to awe, and she had never before been touched by adoration. she made him no definite answer, but it was clear his words pleased her. after that he talked to her whenever he could take an opportunity. the valley became the world for him, and the world beyond the mountains where men lived in sunlight seemed no more than a fairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. very tentatively and timidly he spoke to her of sight. sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence. she did not believe, she could only half understand, but she was mysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she completely understood. his love lost its awe and took courage. presently he was for demanding her of yacob and the elders in marriage, but she became fearful and delayed. and it was one of her elder sisters who first told yacob that medina-saroté and nunez were in love. there was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of nunez and medina-saroté; not so much because they valued her as because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissible level of a man. her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing could not be. the young men were all angry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to revile and strike nunez. he struck back. then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after that fight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against him. but they still found his marriage impossible. old yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and was grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder. "you see, my dear, he's an idiot. he has delusions; he can't do anything right." "i know," wept medina-saroté. "but he's better than he was. he's getting better. and he's strong, dear father, and kind--stronger and kinder than any i other man in the world. and he loves me--and, father, i love him." old yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable, and, besides-what made it more distressing--he liked nunez for many things. so he went and sat in the windowless council-chamber with the other elders and watched the trend of the talk, and said, at the proper time, "he's better than he was. very likely, some day, we shall find him as sane as ourselves." then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, had an idea. he was the great doctor among these people, their medicine-man, and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of curing nunez of his peculiarities appealed to him. one day when yacob was present he returned to the topic of nunez. "i have examined bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me. i think very probably he might be cured." "that is what i have always hoped," said old yacob. "his brain is affected," said the blind doctor. the elders murmured assent. "now, _what_ affects it?" "ah!" said old yacob. "_this_," said the doctor, answering his own question. "those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of bogota, in such a way as to affect his brain. they are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction." "yes?" said old yacob. "yes?" "and i think i may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical operation--namely, to remove these irritant bodies." "and then he will be sane?" "then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen." "thank heaven for science!" said old yacob, and went forth at once to tell nunez of his happy hopes. but nunez's manner of receiving the good news struck him as being cold and disappointing. "one might think," he said, "from the tone you take, that you did not care for my daughter." it was medina-saroté who persuaded nunez to face the blind surgeons. "_you_ do not want me," he said, "to lose my gift of sight?" she shook her head. "my world is sight." her head drooped lower. "there are the beautiful things, the beautiful little things--the flowers, the lichens among the rocks, the lightness and softness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting down of clouds, the sunsets and the stars. and there is _you_. for you alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face, your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together... it is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to you, that these idiots seek. instead, i must touch you, hear you, and never see you again. i must come under that roof of rock and stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your imagination stoops... no; you would not have me do that?" a disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. he stopped, and left the thing a question. "i wish," she said, "sometimes----" she paused. "yes," said he, a little apprehensively. "i wish sometimes--you would not talk like that." "like what?" "i know it's pretty--it's your imagination. i love it, but _now_----" he felt cold. "_now_?" he said faintly. she sat quite still. "you mean--you think--i should be better, better perhaps-----" he was realising things very swiftly. he felt anger, indeed, anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of understanding--a sympathy near akin to pity. "_dear_," he said, and he could see by her whiteness how intensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say. he put his arms about her, he kissed her ear, and they sat for a time in silence. "if i were to consent to this?" he said at last, in a voice that was very gentle. she flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. "oh, if you would," she sobbed, "if only you would!" * * * * * for a week before the operation that was to raise him from his servitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen, nunez knew nothing of sleep, and all through the warm sunlit hours, while the others slumbered happily, he sat brooding or wandered aimlessly, trying to bring his mind to bear on his dilemma. he had given his answer, he had given his consent, and still he was not sure. and at last work-time was over, the sun rose in splendour over the golden crests, and his last day of vision began for him. he had a few minutes with medina-saroté before she went apart to sleep. "to-morrow," he said, "i shall see no more." "dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all her strength. "they will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are going through this pain--you are going through it, dear lover, for _me_... dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, i will repay you. my dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice, i will repay." he was drenched in pity for himself and her. he held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers, and looked on her sweet face for the last time. "good-bye!" he whispered at that dear sight, "good-bye!" and then in silence he turned away from her. she could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping. he had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he went he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden armour, marching down the steeps... it seemed to him that before this splendour he, and this blind world in the valley, and his love, and all, were no more than a pit of sin. he did not turn aside as he had meant to do, but went on, and passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the rocks, and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow. he saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared over them to the things beyond he was now to resign for ever. he thought of that great free world he was parted from, the world that was his own, and he had a vision of those further slopes, distance beyond distance, with bogota, a place of multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a luminous mystery by night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and white houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. he thought how for a day or so one might come down through passes, drawing ever nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. he thought of the river journey, day by day, from great bogota to the still vaster world beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places, the rushing river day by day, until its banks receded and the big steamers came splashing by, and one had reached the sea--the limitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of islands, and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyings round and about that greater world. and there, unpent by mountains, one saw the sky--the sky, not such a disc as one saw it here, but an arch of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in which the circling stars were floating... his eyes scrutinised the great curtain of the mountains with a keener inquiry. for example, if one went so, up that gully and to that chimney there, then one might come out high among those stunted pines that ran round in a sort of shelf and rose still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge. and then? that talus might be managed. thence perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to the precipice that came below the snow; and if that chimney failed, then another farther to the east might serve his purpose better. and then? then one would be out upon the amber-lit snow there, and half-way up to the crest of those beautiful desolations. he glanced back at the village, then turned right round and regarded it steadfastly. he thought of medina-saroté, and she had become small and remote. he turned again towards the mountain wall, down which the day had come to him. then very circumspectly he began to climb. when sunset came he was no longer climbing, but he was far and high. he had been higher, but he was still very high. his clothes were torn, his limbs were blood-stained, he was bruised in many places, but he lay as if he were at his ease, and there was a smile on his face. from where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile below. already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire. the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire, and the little details of the rocks near at hand were drenched with subtle beauty--a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, the flash of crystal faces here and there, a minute, minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. there were deep mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was the illimitable vastness of the sky. but he heeded these things no longer, but lay quite inactive there, smiling as if he were satisfied merely to have escaped from the valley of the blind in which he had thought to be king. the glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and still he lay peacefully contented under the cold clear stars. xxxiii. the beautiful suit. there was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes. it was green and gold, and woven so that i cannot describe how delicate and fine it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that tied up under his chin. and the buttons in their newness shone like stars. he was proud and pleased by his suit beyond measure, and stood before the long looking-glass when first he put it on, so astonished and delighted with it that he could hardly turn himself away. he wanted to wear it everywhere, and show it to all sorts of people. he thought over all the places he had ever visited, and all the scenes he had ever heard described, and tried to imagine what the feel of it would be if he were to go now to those scenes and places wearing his shining suit, and he wanted to go out forthwith into the long grass and the hot sunshine of the meadow wearing it. just to wear it! but his mother told him "no." she told him he must take great care of his suit, for never would he have another nearly so fine; he must save it and save it, and only wear it on rare and great occasions. it was his wedding-suit, she said. and she took the buttons and twisted them up with tissue paper for fear their bright newness should be tarnished, and she tacked little guards over the cuffs and elbows, and wherever the suit was most likely to come to harm. he hated and resisted these things, but what could he do? and at last her warnings and persuasions had effect, and he consented to take off his beautiful suit and fold it into its proper creases, and put it away. it was almost as though he gave it up again. but he was always thinking of wearing it, and of the supreme occasions when some day it might be worn without the guards, without the tissue paper on the buttons, utterly and delightfully, never caring, beautiful beyond measure. one night, when he was dreaming of it after his habit, he dreamt he took the tissue paper from one of the buttons, and found its brightness a little faded, and that distressed him mightily in his dream. he polished the poor faded button and polished it, and, if anything, it grew duller. he woke up and lay awake, thinking of the brightness a little dulled, and wondering how he would feel if perhaps when the great occasion (whatever it might be) should arrive, one button should chance to be ever so little short of its first glittering freshness, and for days and days that thought remained with him distressingly. and when next his mother let him wear his suit, he was tempted and nearly gave way to the temptation just to fumble off one little bit of tissue paper and see if indeed the buttons were keeping as bright as ever. he went trimly along on his way to church, full of this wild desire. for you must know his mother did, with repeated and careful warnings, let him wear his suit at times, on sundays, for example, to and fro from church, when there was no threatening of rain, no dust blowing, nor anything to injure it, with its buttons covered and its protections tacked upon it, and a sun-shade in his hand to shadow it if there seemed too strong a sunlight for its colours. and always, after such occasions, he brushed it over and folded it exquisitely as she had taught him, and put it away again. now all these restrictions his mother set to the wearing of his suit he obeyed, always he obeyed them, until one strange night he woke up and saw the moonlight shining outside his window. it seemed to him the moonlight was not common moonlight, nor the night a common night, and for awhile he lay quite drowsily, with this odd persuasion in his mind. thought joined on to thought like things that whisper warmly in the shadows. then he sat up in his little bed suddenly very alert, with his heart beating very fast, and a quiver in his body from top to toe. he had made up his mind. he knew that now he was going to wear his suit as it should be worn. he had no doubt in the matter. he was afraid, terribly afraid, but glad, glad. he got out of his bed and stood for a moment by the window looking at the moonshine-flooded garden, and trembling at the thing he meant to do. the air was full of a minute clamour of crickets and murmurings, of the infinitesimal shoutings of little living things. he went very gently across the creaking boards, for fear that he might wake the sleeping house, to the big dark clothes-press wherein his beautiful suit lay folded, and he took it out garment by garment, and softly and very eagerly tore off its tissue-paper covering and its tacked protections until there it was, perfect and delightful as he had seen it when first his mother had given it to him--a long time it seemed ago. not a button had tarnished, not a thread had faded on this dear suit of his; he was glad enough for weeping as in a noiseless hurry he put it on. and then back he went, soft and quick, to the window that looked out upon the garden, and stood there for a minute, shining in the moonlight, with his buttons twinkling like stars, before he got out on the sill, and, making as little of a rustling as he could, clambered down to the garden path below. he stood before his mother's house, and it was white and nearly as plain as by day, with every window-blind but his own shut like an eye that sleeps. the trees cast still shadows like intricate black lace upon the wall. the garden in the moonlight was very different from the garden by day; moonshine was tangled in the hedges and stretched in phantom cobwebs from spray to spray. every flower was gleaming white or crimson black, and the air was a-quiver with the thridding of small crickets and nightingales singing unseen in the depths of the trees. there was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious shadows, and all the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with iridescent jewels of dew. the night was warmer than any night had ever been, the heavens by some miracle at once vaster and nearer, and, spite of the great ivory-tinted moon that ruled the world, the sky was full of stars. the little man did not shout nor sing for all his infinite gladness. he stood for a time like one awestricken, and then, with a queer small cry and holding out his arms, he ran out as if he would embrace at once the whole round immensity of the world. he did not follow the neat set paths that cut the garden squarely, but thrust across the beds and through the wet, tall, scented herbs, through the night-stock and the nicotine and the clusters of phantom white mallow flowers and through the thickets of southernwood and lavender, and knee-deep across a wide space of mignonette. he came to the great hedge, and he thrust his way through it; and though the thorns of the brambles scored him deeply and tore threads from his wonderful suit, and though burrs and goose-grass and havers caught and clung to him, he did not care. he did not care, for he knew it was all part of the wearing for which he had longed. "i am glad i put on my suit," he said; "i am glad i wore my suit." beyond the hedge he came to the duck-pond, or at least to what was the duck-pond by day. but by night it was a great bowl of silver moonshine all noisy with singing frogs, of wonderful silver moonshine twisted and clotted with strange patternings, and the little man ran down into its waters between the thin black rushes, knee-deep and waist-deep and to his shoulders, smiting the water to black and shining wavelets with either hand, swaying and shivering wavelets, amidst which the stars were netted in the tangled reflections of the brooding trees upon the bank. he waded until he swam, and so he crossed the pond and came out upon the other side, trailing, as it seemed to him, not duckweed, but very silver in long, clinging, dripping masses. and up he went through the transfigured tangles of the willow-herb and the uncut seeding grasses of the farther bank. he came glad and breathless into the high-road. "i am glad," he said, "beyond measure, that i had clothes that fitted this occasion." the high-road ran straight as an arrow flies, straight into the deep-blue pit of sky beneath the moon, a white and shining road between the singing nightingales, and along it he went, running now and leaping, and now walking and rejoicing, in the clothes his mother had made for him with tireless, loving hands. the road was deep in dust, but that for him was only soft whiteness; and as he went a great dim moth came fluttering round his wet and shimmering and hastening figure. at first he did not heed the moth, and then he waved his hands at it, and made a sort of dance with it as it circled round his head. "soft moth!" he cried, "dear moth! and wonderful night, wonderful night of the world! do you think my clothes are beautiful, dear moth? as beautiful as your scales and all this silver vesture of the earth and sky?" and the moth circled closer and closer until at last its velvet wings just brushed his lips... * * * * * and next morning they found him dead, with his neck broken, in the bottom of the stone pit, with his beautiful clothes a little bloody, and foul and stained with the duckweed from the pond. but his face was a face of such happiness that, had you seen it, you would have understood indeed how that he had died happy, never knowing that cool and streaming silver for the duckweed in the pond. 