 27 The views of an Erwanian philosopher concerning the rights of vegetables. Let me leave this unhappy story and return to the course of events among the Erwanians at large. No matter how many laws they passed, increasing the severity of the punishments inflicted on those who ate meat in secret, the people found means of setting them aside as fast as they were made. At times indeed, they would become almost obsolete, but when they were on the point of being repealed, some national disaster or the preaching of some fanatic would reawaken the conscience of the nation, and people were imprisoned by the thousand for illicitly selling and buying animal food. About six or seven hundred years, however, after the death of the old prophet, a philosopher appeared, who, though he did not claim to have any communication with an unseen power, laid down the law with as much confidence as if such a power had inspired him. Many think this philosopher did not believe his own teaching and, being in secret a great meat-eater, had no other end in view than reducing the prohibition against eating animal food to an absurdity, greater even than an Erwanian Puritan would be able to stand. Those who take this view hold that he knew how impossible it would be to get the nation to accept legislation that it held to be sinful. He knew also how hopeless it would be to convince people that it was not wicked to kill a sheep and eat it, unless he could show them that they must either sin to a certain extent or die. He therefore, it is believed, made the monstrous proposals of which I will now speak. He began by paying a tribute of profound respect for the old prophet, whose advocacy of the rights of animals to be admitted had done much to soften the national character and enlarge its views about the sanctity of life in general. But he urged that times had now changed, the lesson of which the country had stood in need had been sufficiently learnt, while as regards festivals much had become known that was not even suspected formally, and which, if the nation was to persevere in that strict adherence to the highest moral principles which had been the secret of its prosperity hitherto, must necessitate a radical change in its attitude towards them. It was indeed true that much was now known that had not been suspected formally, for the people had had no foreign enemies, and, being both quick-witted and inquisitive into the mysteries of nature, had made extraordinary progress in all the many branches of art and science. In the Chief Iwonian Museum I was shown a microscope of considerable power that was ascribed by the authorities to a date much about that of the philosopher of whom I am now speaking, and was even deposed by some to have been the instrument with which he had actually worked. This philosopher was professor of botany in the chief sea of learning then in Erwan, and whether with the help of the microscope still preserved, or with another, had arrived at a conclusion now universally accepted among ourselves. I mean that all, both animals and plants, have had a common ancestry, and that hence the second should be deemed as much alive as the first. He contended therefore that animals and plants were cousins, and would have been seen to be so all along if people had not made an arbitrary and unreasonable division between what they chose to call the animal and vegetable kingdoms. He declared and demonstrated to the satisfaction of all those who were able to form an opinion upon the subject, that there is no difference appreciable either by the eye or by any other test between a germ that will develop into an oak, a vine, a rose, and one that, given it to customs surroundings, will become a mouse, an elephant, or a man. He contended that the course of any germ's development was dictated by the habits of the germs from which it was descended, and of whose identity it had once formed part. If a germ found itself placed as the germs in the line of its ancestry replaced, it would do as its ancestors had done, and grow up into the same kind of organism as theirs. If it found the circumstances only a little different, it would make shift, successfully or unsuccessfully, to modify its development accordingly. If the circumstances were widely different, it would die, probably without an effort at self-adaptation. This, he argued, applied equally to the germs of plants and of animals. He therefore connected all, both animal and vegetable development, with intelligence, either spent and now unconscious, or still unspent and conscious, and in support of his view as regards vegetable life. He pointed to the way in which all plants have adapted themselves to their habitual environment, granting that vegetable intelligence at first sight appears to differ material from animal, yet, he urged, it is like it in the one essential fact, but though it has evidently busied itself about matters that are vital to the well-being of the organism that possesses it, it has never shown the slightest tendency to occupy itself with anything else. This, he insisted, is as great a proof of intelligence as any living being can give. Plants, said he, show no sign of interesting themselves in human affairs, we shall never get a rose to understand at five times seven or thirty-five, and there is no use in talking to an oak about fluctuations in the price of stocks. Hence, we say that the oak and the rose are unintelligent, and on finding that they do not understand our business, conclude that they do not understand their own. But what can a creature who talks in this way know about intelligence, which shows greater signs of intelligence, he or the rose and oak? And when we call plants stupid for not understanding our business, how capable do we show ourselves of understanding theirs? Can we form even the faintest conception of the way in which a seed from a rose tree turns earth, air, warmth, and water into a roseful blown? Where does it get its color from? From the earth, air, etc.? Yes, but how? Those petals of such ineffable texture, that hue that outvives the cheek of a child, that scent again? Look at earth, air, and water. These are all the raw material that the rose has got to work with. Does it show any sign of want of intelligence in the alchemy with which it turns mud into roselings? What chemists can do anything comparable? And why does no one try? Simply because everyone knows that no human intelligence is equal to the task. We give it up. It is the rose's department, let the rose attend to it, and be dubbed unintelligent because it battles us by the miracles it works, and the unconcerned business-like way in which it works them. See what pains again plants take to protect themselves against their enemies. They scratch, cut, sting, make bad smells, secrete them of dreadful poisons, which heaven only knows how they can try to make, cover their precious seeds with spines like those of a hedgehog, frighten insects with delicate nervous systems by assuming portentous shapes, hide themselves, grow in inaccessible places, and tell lies so plausibly as to deceive even their subtlest foes. They lay tracks smeared with bird-line to catch insects, and persuade them to drown themselves in pitchers which they have made of their leaves and fill with water. Others make themselves, as it were, into living wreck-tracks, which close with the spring on any insect that settles upon them. Others make their flowers into the shape of a certain fly that is a great pillager of honey, so that when the real fly comes it thinks the flowers are bespoke and goes on elsewhere. Some are so clever as to even overreach themselves like the horse radish, which gets pulled up and eaten for the sake of that pungency with which it protects itself against underground enemies. If, on the other hand, they think that any insect can be of service to them, see how pretty they make themselves. What is to be intelligent if to know how to do what one wants to do, and to do it repeatedly, is not to be intelligent. Some say that the rose seed does not want to grow into a rose bush. Why, then, in the name of all that is reasonable, does it grow? Likely enough, it is unaware of the one that is spurring it on to action. We have no reason to suppose that a human embryo knows that it wants to grow into a baby, or a baby into a man. Nothing ever shows signs of knowing what it is either wanting or doing, when its convictions both as to what it wants and how to get it, have been settled beyond further power of question. The less signs living creatures give of knowing what they do, provided they do it, and do it repeatedly and well, the greater proof they give that in reality they know how to do it, and have done it already on an infinite number of past occasions. Someone may say, he continued, what do you mean by talking about an infinite number of past occasions? When did a rose seed make itself into a rose bush on any past occasion? I answer this question with another. Did the rose seed ever form part of the identity of the rose bush on which it grew? Who can say that it did not? Again, I ask, was this rose bush ever linked by all those links that we commonly consider as constituting personal identity with a seed from which it and its turn grew? Who can say that it was not? Then, if rose seed number two is a continuation of the personality of its parent rose bush, and if that rose bush is a continuation of the personality of the rose seed from which it sprang, rose seed number two was also the continuation of the personality of the earlier rose seed, and this rose seed must be a continuation of the personality of the preceding rose seed, and so back and back add in to knighthood. Hence, it is impossible to deny continued personality between any existing rose seed and the earliest seed that can be called a rose seed at all. The answer then to our objective is not far to seek. The rose seed did what it now does in the persons of its ancestors, to whom it has been so linked as to be able to remember what those ancestors did when they were placed as the rose seed is now. Each stage of development brings back the recollection of the course taken in the preceding stage, and the development has been so often repeated that all doubt, and with all doubt, all consciousness of action, is suspended. But an objective may still say, granted that the linking between all successive generations has been so close and unbroken that each one of them may be conceived as able to remember what it did in the persons of its ancestors, how do you show that it actually did remember? The answer is, by the action which each generation takes, an action which repeats all phenomena that we commonly associate with memory, which is explicable on the supposition that it has been guided by memory, and which has neither been explained nor seems ever likely to be explained on any other theory than the supposition that there is an abiding memory between successive generations. Will anyone bring an example of any living creature whose actions we can understand, performing an effortfully difficult and intricate action, time after time, within variable success, and yet not knowing how to do it, and never having done it before? Show me the example and I will say no more, but until it is shown me, I show credit action where I cannot watch it, with being controlled by the same laws as when it is within our ken. It will become unconscious as soon as the skill that directs it has become perfected. Neither rose seed therefore nor embryo should be expected to show signs of knowing that they know what they know. If they showed such signs, the fact that they are knowing what they want, and how to get it, might more reasonably be doubted. Some of the passages already given in Chapter 23 were obviously inspired by the one just quoted. As I read it, in a reprint shown me by a professor who had edited much of the early literature on the subject, I could not but remember the one in which our Lord tells his disciples to consider the lilies of the field, who neither toil nor spin, but whose raiment surpasses even that of Solomon in all his glory. They toil not, neither do they spin? Is that so? Toil not? Perhaps not, now that the method of procedure is so well known as to admit of no further questions, but it is not likely that lilies came to make themselves so beautifully without having ever taken any pains about the matter. Neither do they spin, not with a spinning wheel, but is there no textile fabric and a leaf? What would the lilies of the field say if they heard one of us declaring that they neither toil nor spin? They would say, I take it, much what we should if we were to hear of their preaching humility on the text of Solomon's, and say, consider the Solomon's in all their glory. They toil not, neither do they spin. We should say that the lilies were talking about things that they did not understand, and that though the Solomon's do not toil nor spin, yet there had been no lack of either toiling or spinning before they came to be arrayed so gorgeously. Let me now return to the professor. I have said enough to show the general drift of the arguments on which he relied in order to show that vegetables are only animals under another name, but have not stated his case in anything like the fullness with which he laid it before the public. The conclusion he drew, or pretended to draw, was that if it was simple to kill and eat animals, it was not less simple to do the like by vegetables or their seeds. None such said should be eaten, save what had died a natural death, such as fruit that was lying on the ground and about to rot, or cabbage leaves that had turned yellow in late autumn. These and other like garbage he declared to be the only food that might be eaten with a clear conscience. Even so, the eater must plant the tips of any apples or pears that he may have eaten, or any plum stones, cherry stones, and the like, or he would come near to incurring the guilt of infanticide. The grain of cereals, according to him, was out of the question, for every such grain had a living soul as much as man had, and had as good a right as man to possess that soul in peace. Having thus driven his fellow countrymen into a corner at the point of a logical bayonet from which they felt that there was no escape, he proposed that the question what was to be done should be referred to an oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was whispered that a near relation of the philosophers was a lady's maid to the priestess who delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared that the strangely unequivocal answer of the oracle was obtained by backstair's influence. But whether this was so or no, the response as nearly as I can translate it was as follows. He who sins ought, sins more than he ought, but he who sins not, has much to be taught. It was clear that this response sanctioned at any rate the destruction of vegetable life when wanted as food by man, and so forcibly had the philosopher shown that what was sauce for vegetables was so also for animals that, though the Puritan party made a furious outcry, the acts for fitting the use of meat were repealed by a considerable majority. Thus, after several hundred years of wandering in the wilderness of philosophy, the country reached the conclusions that common sense had long since aroused that. Even the Puritans after a vain attempt to subsist on the kind of jam made of apples and yellow chemical leaves succumbed to the inevitable and resigned themselves to a diet of roast beef and mutton with all the usual adjuncts of a modern dinner table. One would have thought that the dance they had been led by the old prophet, and that still matter dance which the professor of botany had gravely, but as I believe insidiously, proposed to lead them, would have made the Arwanians for a long time suspicious of prophets, whether they profess to have communications with an unseen power or no. But so ingrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus save them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time would-be philosophers and fattists became more powerful than ever, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life, some account of which I had given in my earlier chapters. Indeed, I can see no hope for the Arwanians till they have got to understand that reason uncorrected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason. End of Chapter 27, Recording by Laura Davis Chapter 28 of Arwan This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Laura Davis. Arwan, by Samuel Butler. Chapter 28 Escape Though busily engaged in translating the extracts given in the last five chapters, I was also laying matters in train for my escape with Erawina. And indeed it was high time, for I received an intimation from one of the cashiers of the musical banks that I was to be prosecuted in a criminal court ostensibly for measles, but really for having owned a watch and attempted the reintroduction of machinery. I asked why measles, and was told that there was a fear less extenuating circumstances should prevent a jury from convicting me if I were indicted for typhus or smallpox, but that a verdict would probably be obtained for measles, a disease which could be sufficiently punished in a person of my age. I was given to understand that unless some unexpected change should come over to the mind of His Majesty, I might expect the blow to be struck within a very few days. My plan was this, that Erawina and I should escape in a balloon together. I fear that the reader will disbelieve this part of my story, yet in no other have I endeavored to adhere more conscientiously to facts, and can only throw myself upon his charity. I had already gained the ear of the Queen, and had so worked upon her curiosity that she promised to get leave for me to have a balloon made and inflated. I pointed out to her that no complicated machinery would be wanted, nothing, in fact, but a large quantity of oiled silk, a car, a few ropes, etc., etc., and some light kind of gas, such as the antiquarians who were acquainted with the means employed by the ancients for the production of the lighter gases could easily instruct her workmen how to provide. Her eagerness to see so strange a sight as the ascent of a human being into the sky overcame any scruples of conscience that she might have otherwise felt, and she set the antiquarians about showing her workmen how to make the gas, and sent her maids to buy, and oil, a very large quantity of silk, for I was determined that the balloon should be a big one, even before she began to try and gain the King's permission. This, however, she now set herself to do, for I had sent her word that my prosecution was imminent. As for myself, I need hardly say that I knew nothing about balloons, nor did I see my way to smuggling arowena into the car. Nevertheless, knowing that we had no other chance of getting away from Erwan, I drew inspiration from the extremity in which we were replaced, and made a pattern from which the Queen's workmen were able to work successfully. Meanwhile, the Queen's carriage builders set about making the car, and it was with the attachments of this to the balloon that I had the greatest difficulty. I doubt, indeed, whether I should have succeeded here, but for the great intelligence of a foreman who threw himself heart and soul into the matter, and often both foresaw requirements, the necessity for which had escaped me, and suggested the means of providing for them. It happened that there had been a long drought, during the latter part of which prayers had been vainly offered up in all the temples of the air god. When I first told Her Majesty that I wanted a balloon, I said my intention was to go up into the sky and prevail upon the air god by means of a personal interview. I owned that this proposition bordered on the idolatrous, but I have long since repented of it, and am little likely ever to repeat the offense. Moreover, the deceit, a serious thought was, will probably lead to the conversion of the whole country. When the Queen told His Majesty of my proposal, he at first not only ridiculed it, but was inclined to veto it. Being, however, a very exurious husband, he had length consented, as he eventually always did to everything on which the Queen had set her heart. He yielded all the more readily now, because he did not believe in the possibility of my ascent. He was convinced that even though the balloon should mount a few feet into the air, it would collapse immediately, wherein I should fall and break my neck, and he should be rid of me. He demonstrated this to her so convincingly that she was alarmed and tried to talk me into giving up the idea, but on finding that I persisted in my wish to have the balloon made, she produced an order from the King to the effect that all facilities I might require should be afforded to me. At the same time, Her Majesty told me that my attempted ascent would be made an article of impeachment against me in case I did not succeed in prevailing on the air god to stop the drought. Neither King nor Queen had any idea that I meant going right away if I could get the wind to take me, nor had he any conception of the existence of a certain steady upper current of air which was always setting in one direction, as could be seen by the shape of the higher clouds, which pointed invariably from southeast to northwest. I had myself long noticed this peculiarity in the climate, and attributed it, I believe dustly, to a trade wind which was constant at a few thousand feet above the earth, but was disturbed by local influences at lower elevations. My next business was to break the plan to Erawina, and to devise the means for getting her into the car. I felt sure that she would come with me, but had made up my mind that if her courage failed her, the whole thing should come to nothing. Erawina and I had been in constant communication through her maid, but I had thought it best not to tell her the details of my scheme till everything was settled. The time had now arrived, and I arranged for the maid that I should be admitted by a private door into Mr. Nassnabor's garden at about dusk on the following evening. I came at the appointed time. The girl let me into the garden, and bade me wait in a secluded alley until Erawina should come. It was now early summer, and the leaves were so thick upon the trees that even though someone else had entered the garden, I could have easily hidden myself. The night was one of extreme beauty. The sun had long set, but there was still a rosy gleam in the sky over the ruins of the railway station. Below me was the city already twinkling with lights, while beyond it stretched the planes from many a league until they blended with the sky. I just noted these things, but I could not heed them. I could heed nothing till, as I peered into the darkness of the alley. I perceived a white figure gliding swiftly towards me. I bounded towards it, and our thought could either prompt or check. I had caught Erawina to my heart, and covered her unresisting cheek with kisses. So overjoyed were we that we knew not how to speak. Indeed, I do not know when we should have found word when come to our senses, if the maid had not gone off into a fit of hysterics, and awakened us to the necessity of self-control. Then, briefly and plainly, I unfolded what I proposed. I showed her the darkest side, for I felt sure that the darker the prospect, the more likely she was to come. I told her that my plan would probably end in death for both of us, and that I dared not press it. That, at a word from her, it should be abandoned. Still, that there was just a possibility of our escaping together to some part of the world where there would be no bar to our getting married, and that I could see no other hope. She made no resistance, not a sign or hint of doubt or hesitation. She would do all I told her, and come whenever I was ready. So I bade her center maid to meet me nightly, told her that she must put a good face on, look as bright and happy as she could, so as to make a father and mother, and Zalora think that she was forgetting me, and be ready, at a moment's notice, to come to the queen's workshops, and be concealed among the ballast and under rugs in the car of the balloon. And so we parted. I hurried my preparations forward, for I feared rain, and also that the king might change his mind. But the weather continued dry, and in another week, the queen's workmen had finished the balloon and car, while the gas was ready to be turned on into the balloon at any moment. All being now prepared, I was to ascend on the following morning. I had stipulated for being allowed to take abundance of rugs and wrappings as protection from the colds of the upper atmosphere, and also ten or a dozen good-sized bags of ballast. I had nearly a quarter's pension in hand, and with this I feed Arawina's maid and bribe the queen's foreman, who would, I believe, have given me assistance even without a bribe. He helped me discreet food and wine in the bags of ballast, and on the morning of my ascent he kept the other workmen out of the way, while I got Arawina into the car. She came with early dawn, muffled up, and in her maid's dress. She was supposed to be gone to an early performance at one of the musical banks, and told me that she should not be missed till breakfast, but that her absence must then be discovered. I arranged the ballast about her so that it should conceal her as she lay at the bottom of the car, and covered her with wrappings. Although it still wanted some hours of the time fixed for my ascent, I could not trust myself one moment from the car, so I got into it once, and watched the gradual inflation of the balloon. Luggage I had none saved the provisions hidden in the ballast bags, the books of mythology, and the treatises on the machines, with my own manuscript diaries and translations. I sat quietly, and awaited the hour fixed for my departure. Quiet outwardly, but inwardly, I was in an agony of suspense lest Arawina's absence should be discovered before the arrival of the king and queen, who were to witness my ascent. They were not due yet for another two hours, and during this time a hundred things might happen, any one of which would undo me. At last the balloon was full. The pipe which had filled it was removed, the escape of gas having been first carefully precluded. Nothing remained to hinder the balloon from ascending, but the hands and weight of those who were holding on to it with ropes. I strained my eyes for the coming of the king and queen, but could see no sign of their approach. I looked in the direction of Mr. Nosnibur's house. There was nothing to indicate disturbance, but it was not yet breakfast time. The crowd began to gather. They were aware that I was under the displeasure of the court, but I could detect no signs of my being unpopular. On the contrary, I received many kindly expressions of regard and encouragement, with good wishes as to the result of my journey. I was speaking to one gentleman of my acquaintance, and telling him the substance of what I intended to do when I had got into the presence of the air-god. What he thought of me I cannot guess, for I am sure that he did not believe in the objective existence of the air-god, nor that I myself believed in it. When I became aware of a small crowd of people running as fast as they could from Mr. Nosnibur's house towards the queen's workshops. For the moment my pulse ceased beating, and then, knowing that the time had come when I must either do or die, I called vehemently to those who were holding the ropes, some thirty men, to let go at once, and made gestures signifying danger, and that there would be mischief if they held on longer. Many obeyed. The rest were too weak to hold onto the ropes, and were forced to let them go. On this the balloon bounded suddenly upwards, but my own feeling was that the earth had dropped off from me, and was sinking fast into open space beneath. This happened at the very moment that the attention of the crowd was divided, the one half paying he to the eager gestures of those coming from Mr. Nosnibur's house, and the other to the exclamations from myself. A minute more an arowena would doubtless have been discovered, but before that minute was over I was at such a height above the city that nothing could harm me, and every second both the town and the crowd became smaller and more confused. In an incredibly short time I could see little but a vast wall of blue planes rising up against me towards whichever side I looked. At first the balloon mounted vertically upwards, but after about five minutes, when we had already attained a very great elevation, I fancied that the objects on the plane beneath began to move from under me. I did not feel so much as a breath of wind, and could not suppose that the balloon itself was travelling. I was therefore wondering what the strange movement of fixed objects could mean, when it struck me that people in a balloon do not feel the wind in as much as they travel with it and offer it no resistance. Then I was happy in thinking that I must now have reached the invariable trade winds of the upper air, and that I should be very possibly wafted for hundreds or even thousands of miles, far from Erawan and the Erawanians. Already I had removed the wrappings and freed Erawina, but I soon covered her up with them again, for it was already very cold, and she was half stupefied with the strangeness of her position. And now began a time, dreamlike and delirious, of which I do not suppose that I shall ever recover a distinct recollection. Some things I can recall, as that we were air-long and velled in vapor which froze upon my mustache and whiskers. Then comes a memory of sitting for hours and hours in a thick fog, hearing no sound but my own breathing and Erawinas, for we hardly spoke, and seeing no sight but the car beneath us and beside us and the dark balloon above. Perhaps the most painful feeling, when the earth was hidden, was that the balloon was motionless, though our only hope lay in our going forward with an extreme of speed. From time to time, through a rift in the clouds, I caught a glimpse of earth, and was thankful to proceed that we must be flying forward faster than in an express train, but no sooner was the rift closed than the old conviction of our being stationary returned in full force, and was not to be reasoned with. There was another feeling also which was nearly as bad, for as a child that fears it has gone blind in a long tunnel if there is no light, so ere the earth had been many minutes hidden, I became half frightenless, we might not have broken away from it clean and forever. Now and again I ate and gave food to Erawina, but by guesswork as regards time. Then came darkness, a dreadful dreary time, without even the moon to cheer us. With dawn the scene was changed, the clouds were gone, and morning stars were shining, the rising of the splendid sun remained still impressed upon me as the most glorious that I have ever seen. Beneath us there was an embossed chain of mountains, with snow fresh fallen upon them, but we were far above them. We both of us felt our breathing seriously affected, but I would not allow the balloon to descend a single inch, not knowing for how long we might not need all the buoyancy which we could command. Indeed I was thankful to find that, after nearly four and twenty hours we were still at so great a height above the earth. In a couple of hours we had passed the ranges, which must have been some hundred and fifty miles across. And again I saw a tract of level plane extending far away to the horizon. I knew not where we were, and dared not descend, lest I should waste the power of the balloon. But I was half hopeful that we might be above the country from which I had originally started. I looked anxiously for any sign by which I could recognize it, but could see nothing, and feared that we might be above some distant part of Erwan, or a country inhabited by savages. While I was still in doubt the balloon was again wrapped in clouds, and we were left to blank space and two conjectures. The weary time dragged on. How I longed for my unhappy watch I felt as though not even time was moving, so dull and spellbound were our surroundings. Sometimes I would feel my pulse and count its beats for half an hour together, anything to mark the time, to prove that it was there, and to assure myself that we were within the blessed range of its influence, and not gone adrift into the timelessness of eternity. I had been doing this for the 20th or 30th time, and had fallen into a light sleep. I dreamed wildly of a journey in an express train, and of arriving at a railway station where the air was full of the sound of locomotive engines blowing off steam with a horrible and tremendous hissing. I woke frightened and uneasy, but the hissing and crashing noises pursued me now that I was awake, and forced me to own that they were real. What they were I knew not, but they grew gradually fainter and fainter, and after a time were lost. In a few hours the clouds broke, and I saw beneath me that which made the chilled blood run even colder in my veins. I saw the sea, and nothing but the sea, in the main black, but flecked with white heads of storm-tossed, angry waves. Eruini was sleeping quietly at the bottom of the car, and as I looked at her sweet and saintly beauty, I groaned and cursed myself for the misery into which I had brought her, but there was nothing for it now. I sat and waited for the worst, and presently I saw signs as though that worst were soon to be at hand, for the balloon had begun to sink. On first seeing the sea I had been impressed with the idea that we must have been falling, but now there could be no mistake. We were sinking, and that fast. I threw out a bag of ballast, and for a time we rose again, but in the course of a few hours the sinking reccomensed, and I threw out another bag. Then the battle commenced in earnest. It lasted all that afternoon and threw the night until the following evening. I had seen never a sail nor a sign of a sail, though I had half-blinded myself with straining my eyes incessantly in every direction. We had parted with everything but the clothes which we had upon our backs. Food and water were gone, all thrown out to the wheeling albatrosses, in order to save us a few hours or even minutes from the sea. I did not throw away the books till we were within a few feet of the water, and clung to my manuscripts to the very last. Hope there seemed none whatever. Yet, strangely enough, we were neither of us utterly hopeless, and even when the evil that we dreaded was upon us, and that which we greatly feared had come, we sat in the car of the balloon with the waters up to our middle, and still smiled with a ghastly hopefulness to one another. He who was crossed at St. Goddard will remember that below Andermott there was one of those alpine gorges which reached the very utmost limits of the sublime and terrible. The feelings of the traveler have become more and more highly wrought at every step, until at last the naked and overhanging precipices seem to close above his head, as he crosses a bridge hung in mid-air over a roaring waterfall, and enters on the darkness of a tunnel hewn out of the rock. What can be in store for him on emerging? Surely something even wilder and more desolate than that which he has seen already? Yet his imagination is paralyzed, and can suggest no fancy or vision of anything to surpass the reality which he had just witnessed. Odd and breathless he advances. When low, the light of the afternoon sun welcomes him as he leaves the tunnel, and behold a smiling valley, a babbling brook, a village with tall belfries, and Meadow is a brilliant green. These are the things which greet him, and he smiles to himself as the terror passes away, and in another moment is forgotten. So fared it now with ourselves. We had been in the waters in two or three hours, and the night had come upon us. We had said farewell for the hundredth time, and had resigned ourselves to meet the end. Indeed, I was myself battling with a drowsiness from which it was only too probable that I should never wake, when suddenly Erewine had touched me on the shoulder and pointed to a light and to a dark mass which was bearing right upon us. A cry for help, loud and clear and shrill, broke forth from both of us at once, and in another five minutes we were carried by kind and tender hands unto the deck of an Italian vessel. Chapter 29 of Erewine This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Laura Davis. Erewine by Samuel Butler. Chapter 29. Conclusion The ship was the Principe Umberto, bound from Calau to Genoa. She had carried a number of immigrants to Rio and gone thence to Calau, where she had taken in a cargo of guano, and was now on her way home. The captain was a certain Giovanni Gianni, a native of Cestri. He has kindly allowed me to refer to him in case the truth of my story should be disputed, but I grieve to say that I suffered him to mislead himself in some important particulars. I should add that when we were picked up we were a thousand miles from land. As soon as we were on board, the captain began questioning us about the Siege of Paris, from which city he had assumed that we must have come, notwithstanding our immense distance from Europe. As may be supposed, I had not heard a syllable about the war between France and Germany, and was too ill to do more than a sentence to all that he chose to put into my mouth. My knowledge of Italian is very imperfect, and I got a little from anything that he said, but I was glad to conceal the true point of our departure and resolved to take any cue that he chose to give me. The line that thus suggested itself was that there had been 10 or 12 others in the balloon, that I was an English malored, an arowena of Russian countess, that all the others had been drowned, and that the dispatches which we had carried were lost. I came afterwards to learn that this story would not have been credible had not the captain been for some weeks at sea, for I found that when we were picked up the Germans had already long been masters of Paris. As it was, the captain settled the whole story for me, and I was well content. In a few days we sighted an English vessel bound from Melbourne to London with wool. At my earnest request, in spite of stormy weather which rendered it dangerous for a boat to take us from one ship to the other, the captain consented to signal the English vessel, and we were received on board, but we were transferred with such difficulty that no communication took place as to the manner of our being found. I did indeed hear the Italian mate who was in charge of the boat shout out something in French to the effect that we had been picked up from a balloon, but the noise of the wind was so great, and the captain understood so little French that he caught nothing of the truth, and it was assumed that we were two persons who had been saved from shipwreck. When the captain asked me in what ship I had been wrecked, I said that a party of us had been carried out to sea in a pleasure boat by a strong current, and that arowena, whom I described as a Peruvian lady, and I were alone saved. There were several passengers whose goodness towards us we can never repay. I grieved to think that they cannot fail to discover that we did not take them fully into our confidence, but had we told them all, they would not have believed us, and I was determined that no one should hear of Erwan or have the chance of getting there before me as long as I could prevent it. Indeed, the recollection of the many falsehoods which I was then obliged to tell would render my life miserable were I not sustained by the consolations of my religion. Among the passengers there was a most estimable clergyman by whom arowena and I were married within a very few days of our coming on board. After a prosperous voyage of about two months, we sided the land's end, and in another week we were landed at London. A liberal subscription was made for us on board the ship, so that we found ourselves in no immediate difficulty about money. I accordingly took Arowena down into Somersetshire, where my mother and sisters had resided when I last heard of them. To my great sorrow I found that my mother was dead, and that her death had been accelerated by the report of my having been killed, which had been brought to my employer's station by Chauvak. It appeared that he must have waited for a few days to see whether I returned, that he then considered it safe to assume that I should never do so, and had accordingly made up a story about my having fallen into a whirlpool of seeding waters while coming down the gorge homeward. Search was made for my body, but the rascal had chosen to drown me in a place for there would be no chance of its ever being recovered. My sisters were both married, but neither the husbands was rich. No one seemed ever joyed on my return, and I soon discovered that when a man's relations have once mourned for him is dead, they seldom like the prospect of having to mourn for him a second time. Accordingly I returned to London with my wife, and through the assistance of an old friend, supported myself by writing good little stories for the magazines and for a track society. I was well paid, and I trust that I may not be considered presumptuous in saying that some of the most popular of brochures which are distributed in the streets, and which are to be found in the waiting rooms of the railway stations, have proceeded from my pen. During the time that I could spare, I arranged my notes and diary till they assumed their present shape. There remains for me nothing to add, safe to unfold the scheme which I proposed for the conversion of Erwan. That scheme has only been quite recently decided upon as the one which seems most likely to be successful. It will be seen at once that it would be madness for me to go with 10 or a dozen subordinate missionaries by the same way as that which led me to discover Erwan. I should be imprisoned for typhus, besides being handed over to the straighteners for having run away with Erowena. An even darker fate, to which I dare hardly again elude, would be reserved for my devoted fellow labourers. It is plain therefore that some other way must be found for getting at the Erwanians, and I am thankful to say that such another way is not wanting. One of the rivers which descends from the snowy mountains and passes through Erwan is known to be navigable for several hundred miles from its mouth. Its upper waters have never yet been explored, but I feel little doubt that it will be found possible to take a light gunboat, for we must protect ourselves, to the outskirts of the Erwanian country. I propose therefore that one of those associations should be formed in which the risk of each of its members is confined to the amount of his stake in the concern. The first step would be to drop a prospectus. In this I would advise that no mention should be made of the fact that the Erwanians are the lost tribes. The discovery is one of absorbing interest to myself, but it is of sentimental rather than commercial value, and business is business. The capital to be raised should not be less than fifty thousand pounds, and might be either in five or ten pound shares as hereafter determined. This should be amply sufficient for the expenses of an experimental voyage. When the money had been subscribed, it would be our duty to charter a steamer of some twelve or fourteen hundred tons burden, and with accommodation for a cargo of steerage passengers. She should carry two or three guns in case of her being attacked by savages at the mouth of the river. Votes of considerable size should be also provided, and I think it would be desirable that these also should carry two or three six pounders. The ship should be taken up the river as far as was considered safe, and a picked party should then ascend in the boats. The presence of both Erwania and myself would be necessary at this stage, in as much as our knowledge of the language would disarm suspicion and facilitate negotiations. We should begin by representing the advantages afforded to labor in the colony of Queensland, and point out to the Erwanians that by emigrating fither they would be able to amass, each and all of them, enormous fortunes, a fact which would be easily provable by a reference to statistics. I have no doubt that a very great number might be thus induced to come back with us in the larger boats, and that we could fill our vessel with emigrants in three or four journeys. Should we be attacked, our course would be even simpler, for the Erwanians have no gunpowder, and would be so surprised at the effects that we should be able to capture as many as we chose. In this case, we should feel able to engage them on more advantageous terms, for they would be prisoners of war. But even though we were to meet with no violence, I doubt not that a cargo of seven or eight hundred Erwanians could be induced when they were once on board the vessel to sign an agreement which should be mutually advantageous both to us and them. We should then proceed to Queensland and dispose of our engagement with the Erwanians to the sugar growers of that settlement, who are in great want of labor. It is believed that the money thus realised would enable us to declare a hands-in-dividend, and leave a considerable balance which might be spent in repeating our operations and bringing over other cargoes of Erwanians with fresh consequent profits. In fact, we could go backwards and forwards as long as there was a demand for labor in Queensland, or indeed in any other Christian colony, for the supply of our Erwanians would be unlimited, and they could be packed closely and fed at a very reasonable cost. It would be my duty and Erwanians to see that our immigrants should be bordered and lodged in the households of religious sugar growers. These persons would give them the benefit of that instruction, whereof they stand so greatly in need. Each day, as soon as they could be spared from their work in the plantations, they would be assembled for praise and be thoroughly grounded in the church catechism, while the whole of every Sabbath should be devoted to singing Psalms and church going. This must be insisted upon, both in order to put a stop to any uneasy feeling which might show itself either in Queensland or in the mother country as to the means whereby the Erwanians have been obtained, and also because it would give our own shareholders the comfort of reflecting that they were saving souls and filling their own pockets at one in the same moment. By the time the immigrants had got too old for work, they would have become thoroughly instructed in religion. They could then be shipped back to Erwan and carry the good seed with them. I can see no hate nor difficulty about the matter, and trust that this book will sufficiently advertise the scheme to ensure the subscription of the necessary capital. As soon as this is forthcoming, I will guarantee that I convert the Erwanians not only into good Christians, but into a source of considerable profit to the shareholders. I should add that I cannot claim the credit for having originated the above scheme. I had been for months at my wit's end, forming plan after plan for the evangelization of Erwan, when by one of those special interpositions, which should be a sufficient answer to the skeptic, I make even the most confirmed rationalists irrational. My eye was directed to the following paragraph in the Times newspaper of one of the first days in January 1872. Polynesians in Queensland The Marquis of Normandy, the new governor of Queensland, has completed his inspection of the northern districts of the colony. It is stated that at Macke, one of the best sugar-growing districts, his excellency saw a good deal to Polynesians. In the course of a speech to those who entertained him there, the Marquis said, I have been told that the means by which Polynesians were obtained were not legitimate, that I have failed to perceive this, insofar at least as Queensland is concerned. And, if one can judge by the countenances and manners of the Polynesians, they experience no regret at their position. But his excellency pointed out the advantage of giving them religious instruction. It would tend to set at rest an easy feeling which at present existed in the country to know that they were inclined to retain the Polynesians and teach them religion. I feel that comment is unnecessary and will therefore conclude with one word of thanks to the reader who may have had the patience to follow me through my adventures without losing his temper. But with two, for any who may write at once to the secretary of the Airwan Evangelization Company Limited at the address which shall hereafter be advertised and request to have his name put down as a shareholder. Post script. I had just received and corrected the last proof of the foregoing volume and was walking down the strand from Temple Bar to Charing Cross. When on passing Exeter Hall, I saw a number of devout looking people crowding into the building with faces full of interested and complacent anticipation. I stopped and saw an announcement that a missionary meeting was to be held forthwith and that the native missionary, the Reverend William Habakkuk from the colony from which I had started on my adventures, would be introduced and make a short address. After some level difficulty, I obtained admission and heard two or three speeches which were preparatory to the introduction of Mr. Habakkuk. One of these struck me as perhaps the most presumptuous that I had ever heard. The speaker said that the races of whom Mr. Habakkuk was a specimen were in all probability the lost ten tribes of Israel. I dared not contradict him then, but I felt angry and injured at hearing the speaker jump to so preposterous a conclusion upon such insufficient grounds. The discovery of the ten tribes is mine and mine only. I was still in the very height of indignation when there was a murmur of expectation in the hall and Mr. Habakkuk was brought forward. The reader may judge of my surprise at finding that he was none other than my old friend Chabakkuk. My jaw dropped and my eyes almost started out of my head with astonishment. The poor fellow was dreadfully frightened and the storm of applause which created his introduction seemed only to add to his confusion. I dare not trust myself to report his speech. Indeed, I could hardly listen to it for I was nearly choked with trying to suppress my feelings. I am sure that I caught the words Adelaide the Queen Dowager and I thought that I heard Mary Magdalene shortly afterwards, but I had then to leave the hall for fear of being turned out. While on the staircase I heard another burst of prolonged and rapturous applause, so I suppose the audience were satisfied. The feelings that came uppermost in my mind were hardly of a very solemn character, but I thought of my first acquaintance with Chabakkuk, of the scene in the woodshed, of the innumerable lies he had told me, of his repeated attempts on the brandy, and of many an incident which I had not thought it worthwhile to dwell upon. And I could not but derive some satisfaction from the hope that my own efforts might have contributed to the change which had been that was wrought upon him, and that the right which I had performed, however unprofessionally, on that wild upland riverbed had not been wholly without effect. I trust that what I have written about him in the earlier part of my book may not be libelous and that it may do him no harm with his employers. He was then unregenerate. I must certainly find him out and have a talk with him, but before I shall have time to do so these pages will be in the hands of the public. At the last moment I see a probability of a complication which causes me much uneasiness. Please subscribe quickly, address to the mansion house, caret of the Lord Mayor, whom I will instruct to receive names and subscriptions from me until I can organize the committee.