 CHAPTER 1 OF THE POISON BELT The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Being an account of another adventure of Professor George E. Challenger, Lord John Roxton, Professor Summerly, and Mr. E. D. Malone, the discoverers of The Lost World. CHAPTER 1 INTITLED THE BLURING OF LINES It is imperative that now at once, while these stupendous events are still clear in my mind, I should set them down with that exactness of detail which time may blur. But even as I do so, I am overwhelmed by the wonder of the fact that it should be our little group of The Lost World—Professor Challenger, Professor Summerly, Lord John Roxton, and myself—who have passed through this amazing experience. When some years ago I chronicled in the Daily Gazette our epic-making journey in South America, I little thought that it should ever fall to my lot to tell an even stranger personal experience, one which is unique in all human annals and which stand out in the records of history, as a great peak among the humble foothills which surround it. The event itself will always be marvellous, but the circumstances that we four were together at the time of this extraordinary episode came about in a most natural and indeed inevitable fashion. I will explain the events which led up to it as shortly and as clearly as I can. Although I am well aware that the fuller the detail upon such a subject, the more welcome it will be to the reader, for the public curiosity has been and still is insatiable. It was upon Friday, the 27th of August, a date forever memorable in the history of the world, that I went down to the office of my paper and asked for three days leave of absence from Mr. McArdle, who still presided over our news department. The good old scotchman shook his head, scratched his dwindling fringe of ruddy fluff, and finally put his reluctance into words. I was thinking, Mr. Malone, that we could employ you to advantage these days. I was thinking there was a story that you are the only man that could handle as it should be handled. I am sorry for that, said I, trying to hide my disappointment. Of course, if I am needed, there is an end of the matter, but the engagement was important and intimate. If I could be spared, well, I don't see that you can. It was bitter, but I had to put the best face I could upon it. After all, it was my own fault, for I should have known by this time that a journalist has no right to make plans of his own. Then I'll think no more of it, said I, with as much cheerfulness as I could assume at so short a notice. What was it that you wanted me to do? Well, it was just to interview that devil of a man down at Rutherfield. You don't mean Professor Challenger, I cried. I—it's just him that I do mean. He ran young Alex Simpson of the Courier a mile down the high road last week by the collar of his coat and the slack of his breeches. You'll have read of it, likely, in the police report. Our boys would as soon interview a loose alligator in the zoo. But you could do it, I'm thinking, an old friend like you. Why, said I, greatly relieved, that makes it all easy. It so happens that it was to visit Professor Challenger at Rutherfield that I was asking for leave of absence. The fact is that it is the anniversary of our main adventure on the plateau three years ago, and he has asked our whole party down to his house to see him and celebrate the occasion. Capital! cried Mr. McArdle, rubbing his hands and beaming through his glasses. Then you will be able to get his opinions out of him. In any other man I would say it was all moonshine, but the fella has made good once, and who knows but he may again. Get what out of him, I asked. What has he been doing? Haven't you seen his letter on scientific possibilities in today's times? No. McArdle dived down and picked a copy from the floor. Read it aloud, said he, indicating a column with his finger. I'd be glad to hear it again, for I am not sure now that I have the man's meaning clear in my head. This was the letter which I read to the news editor of the Gazette. Scientific Possibilities Sir, I have read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some less complimentary emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous letter of James Wilson McFail, which has lately appeared in your columns upon the subject of the blurring of Fraunhofer's lines in the spectra, both of the planets and of the fixed stars. He dismisses the matter as of no significance. To a wider intelligence it may well seem of very great possible importance, so great as to involve the ultimate welfare of very man, woman, and child upon this planet. I can hardly hope, by the use of scientific language, to convey any sense of my meaning to those ineffectual people who gather their ideas from the columns of a daily newspaper. I will endeavor, therefore, to condescend to their limitation and to indicate the situation by the use of a homely analogy which will be within the limits of the intelligence of your readers. Man, he's a wonder, a living wonder, said MacGarlal, shaking his head reflectively. He'd put up the feathers of a sucking dove and set up a riot at a Quaker's meeting. Ha! No wonder he has made London too hot for him. It's a pity, Mr. Malone, for it's a grand brain. Well, let's have the analogy. We will suppose, I read, that a small bundle of connected corks was launched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across the Atlantic. The corks drift slowly on, from day to day, with the same conditions all round them. If the corks were sentient, we could imagine that they would consider these conditions to be permanent and assured. But we, with our superior knowledge, know that many things might happen to surprise the corks. They may possibly float up against a ship, or a sleeping whale, or become entangled in seaweed. In any case, their voyage would probably end by their being thrown up on the rocky coast of Labrador. But what could they know of all this while they drifted so gently, day by day, in what they thought was a limitless and homogeneous ocean? Your readers will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in this parable, stands for the mighty ocean of ether through which we drift, and that the bunch of corks represents the little and obscure planetary system to which we belong. A third-rate sun, with its ragtag and bobtail of insignificant satellites, we float under the same daily conditions towards some unknown end, some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimate confines of space, where we are swept over an etheric niagra or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no room here for the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent, Mr. James Wilson McPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with a very close and interested attention every indication of change in those cosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate fate may depend. Even he'd have made a grand minister, said McArdle. It just booms like an organ. Let's get down to what it is that's troubling him. The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer's lines of the spectrum point, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of a subtle and singular character. Light from a planet is the reflected light of the sun. Light from a star is a self-produced light. But the spectra both from planets and stars have, in this instance, all undergone the same change. Is it, then, a change in those planets and stars? To me such an idea is inconceivable. What common change could simultaneous light come upon them all? Is it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but in the highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around us, and chemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then, is the third possibility? That it may be a change in the conducting medium, in that infinitely fine ether which extends from star to star and pervades the whole universe. Deep in that ocean we are floating upon a slow current. Might that current not drift out into belts of ether which are novel, and have properties of which we have never conceived? There is a change somewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it. It may be a good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a neutral one. We do not know. Shallow observers may treat the matter as one which can be disregarded, but one who, like myself, is possessed of the deeper intelligence of the true philosopher, will understand that the possibilities of the universe are incalculable, and that the wisest man is he who holds himself ready for the unexpected. To take an obvious example, who would undertake to say that the mysterious and universal outbreak of illness recorded in your columns this very morning as having broken out among the indigenous races of Sumatra has no connection with some cosmic change to which they may respond more quickly than the more complex peoples of Europe? I throw out the idea for what it is worth. To assert it is, in the present stage, as unprofitable as to deny it, but it is an unimaginative numbskull who is too dense to perceive that is well within the bounds of scientific possibility. Yours faithfully, George Edward Challenger, the Briers, Rutherfield. It's a fine stimulating letter, said MacArdle thoughtfully, fitting a cigarette into the long glass tube which he used as a holder. What your opinion of it, Mr. Malone? I had to confess my total and humiliating ignorance of the subject at issue. What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines? MacArdle had just been studying the matter with the aid of our tame scientist at the office, and he picked from his desk two of those many-colored spectral bands which bear a general resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some young and ambitious cricket club. He pointed out to me that there were certain black lines which formed crossbars upon the series of brilliant colors extending from the red at one end through gradations of orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo to the violet at the other. Those dark bands are Fraunhofer's lines, said he. The colors are just light itself. Every light, if you can split it up with a prism, gives the same colors. They tell us nothing. It is the lines that count because they vary according to what it may be that produces the light. It is these lines that have been blurred, instead of clear this last week, and all the astronomers have been quarreling over the reason. Here's a photograph of the blurred lines for our issue tomorrow. The public have taken no interest in the matter up to now, but this letter of challengers in the Times will make them wake up, I'm thinking. And this about Sumatra? Well, it's a long cry from a blurred line in the spectrum to a sick nigger in Sumatra, and yet the chile has shown us once before that he knows what he's talking about. There is some queer illness down yonder. That's beyond all doubt, and today there's a cable just come in from Singapore that the lighthouses are out of action in the Straits of Sundan, and two ships on the beach in consequence. Anyhow, it's good enough for you to interview challenger upon. If you get anything definite, let us have a column by Monday. I was coming out from the news editor's room, turning over my new mission in my mind, when I heard my name called from the waiting room below. It was a telegraph boy with a wire which had been forwarded from my lodgings at Streetham. The message was from the very man we had been discussing, and ran thus. Malone, 17 Hill Street, Streetham. Bring Oxygen. Challenger. Bring Oxygen. The Professor, as I remembered him, had an elephantine sense of humor, capable of the most clumsy and unwieldy gambolings. Was this one of those jokes which used to reduce him to uproarious laughter, when his eyes would disappear and he was all gaping mouth and wagging beard, supremely indifferent to the gravity of all around him? I turned the words over, but could make nothing even remotely jacos out of them. Then surely it was a concise order, though a very strange one. It was the last man in the world whose deliberate command I should care to disobey. Possibly some chemical experiment was afoot. Possibly—well, it was no business of mine to speculate upon why he wanted it. I must get it. It was nearly an hour before I should catch the train at Victoria. I took a taxi, and having ascertained the address from the telephone book, I made for the Oxygen Tube Supply Company in Oxford Street. As I alighted on the pavement at my destination, two youths submerged from the door of the establishment carrying an iron cylinder, which with some trouble they hoisted into a waiting motor-car. An elderly man was at their heels, scolding and directing in a creaky, sardonic voice. He turned towards me. There was no mistaking those austere features and that goatee beard. It was my old cross-grained companion, Professor Somerly. What! he cried, Don't tell me that you have had one of those preposterous telegrams for Oxygen. I exhibited it. Well, well, I have had one, too, and as you see very much against the grain I have acted upon it. A good friend is as impossible as ever. The need for Oxygen could not have been so urgent that he must desert the usual means of supply and encroach upon the time of those who are really busier than himself. Why could he not order it direct? I could only suggest that he probably wanted it at once. Or thought he did, which is quite another matter. But it is superfluous now for you to purchase any since I have this considerable supply. Still for some reason he seems to wish that I should bring Oxygen, too. It will be safer to do exactly what he tells me. Accordingly in spite of many grumbles and remonstrances from Somerly, I ordered an additional tube, which was placed with the other in his motor-car, for he had offered me a lift to Victoria. I turned away to pay off my taxi, the driver of which was very cantankerous and abusive over his fare. As I came back to Professor Somerly he was having a furious altercation with the men who had carried down the Oxygen, his little white goat's beard jerking with indignation. One of the fellows called him, I remember, a silly old bleached cockatoo, which so enraged his chauffeur that he bounded out of his seat to take the part of his insulted master, and it was all we could do to prevent a riot in the street. These little things may seem trivial to relate, and past as mere incidents at the time. It is only now, as I look back, that I see their relation to the whole story which I have to unfold. The chauffeur must, as it seemed to me, have been a novice, or else have lost his nerve in this disturbance, for he drove vilely on the way to the station. Once we nearly had collisions with other equally erratic vehicles, and I remember remarking to Somerly that the standard of driving in London had very much declined. Once we brushed the very edge of a great crowd which was watching a fight at the corner of the mall. The people who were much excited raised cries of anger at the clumsy driving, and one fellow sprang upon the step and waved a stick above our heads. I pushed him off, but we were glad when we had got clear of them and safe out of the park. These little events, coming one after the other, left me very jangled in my nerves, and I could see from my companion's petulet manner that his own patients had got to a low ebb. But our good humour was restored when we saw Lord John Rockston waiting for us upon the platform, his tall, thin figure clad in a yellow-tweed shooting suit, his keen face, with those unforgettable eyes, so fierce and yet so humorous, flashed with pleasure at the sight of us. His ruddy hair was shot with grey, and the furrows upon his brow had been cut a little deeper by Time's chisel. But in all else he was the Lord John who had been our good comrade in the past. Hello, Herr Professor! Hello, young fella! He shouted as he came toward us. He roared with amusement when he saw the oxygen cylinders upon the porter's trolley behind us. So you've got them too! He cried. Mine is in the van. Whatever can the old dear be after? Have you seen his letter in the Times? I asked. What was it? Stuff and nonsense! Said summerly, harshly. Well, it's at the bottom of this oxygen business, or I am mistaken, said I. Stuff and nonsense! He cried summerly again with quite unnecessary violence. We'd all got into a first-class smoker, and he'd already lit the short and charred old briar pipe which seemed to singe the end of his long, aggressive nose. Friend Challenger is a clever man, said he with great vehemence. No one can deny it. It's a fool that denies it. Look at his hat! There's a sixty-ounce brain inside it. A big engine running smooth and turning out clean work. Show me the engine house and I'll tell you the size of the engine. But he is a born charlatan. You've heard me tell him so to his face. A born charlatan with a kind of dramatic trick of jumping into the limelight. Things are quiet, so Friend Challenger sees a chance to set the public talking about him. You don't imagine that he seriously believes all this nonsense about a change in the ether and a danger to the human race? Was ever such a cock and bull story in this life? He sat like an old white raven, croaking and shaking with sardonic laughter. A wave of anger passed through me as I listened to summerly. It was disgraceful that he should speak thus of the leader who had been the source of all our fame and given us such an experience as no men have ever enjoyed. I had opened my mouth to utter some hot retort when Lord John got before me. You had a scrap once before with old man Challenger, said he sternly, and you were down and out inside ten seconds. It seems to me, Professor Summerly, that he's beyond your class, and the best you can do with him is to walk wide and leave him alone. Besides, said I, he has been a good friend to every one of us. Whatever his faults may be, he is as straight as a line, and I don't believe he ever speaks evil of his comrades behind their backs. Well said young fellow Malad, said Lord John Rockston. Then with a kindly smile he slapped Professor Summerly upon his shoulder. Come here, Professor, we're not going to quarrel at this time of day. We've seen too much together. But keep off the grass when you get near Challenger, for this young fellow and I have a bit of a weakness for the old deer. But Summerly was in no humor for compromise. His face was screwed up in rigid disapproval, and thick curls of angry smoke rolled up from his pipe. As to you, Lord John Rockston, he creaked, your opinion upon a matter of sciences of as much value in my eyes as my views upon a new type of shotgun would be in yours. I have my own judgment, sir, and I use it in my own way. Because it has misled me once, is that any reason why I should accept without criticism anything, however far-fetched, which this man may care to put forward? Are we to have a pope of science, with infallible decrees laid down ex-cathedra, and accepted without question by the poor, humble public? I tell you, sir, that I have a brain of my own, and that I should feel myself to be a snob and a slave if I did not use it. If it pleases you to believe this rigmarole about Ether and Fronhoffer's lines upon the spectrum, do so by all means, but do not ask one who is older and wiser than yourself to share in your folly. Is it not evident that if the Ether were affected to the degree which he maintains, and if it were obnoxious to human health, the result of it would already be apparent upon ourselves? Yes, sir, we should already be very far from our normal selves, and instead of sitting quietly discussing scientific problems in a railway train, we should be showing actual symptoms of the poison which was working within us. Where do we see any signs of this poisonous cosmic disturbance? Answer me that, sir. Answer me that. Come, come. No evasions. I pin you to an answer. I felt more and more angry. There was something very irritating and aggressive in Somerley's demeanor. I think that if you knew more about the facts you might be less positive in your opinion, said I. Somerley took his pipe from his mouth and fixed me with a stony stare. Pray what do you mean, sir, by that Somerley? Do you mean, sir, by that somewhat impertinent observation? I mean that when I was leaving the office the news editor told me that a telegram had come in confirming the general illness of the Sumatra natives, and adding that the lights had not been lit in the Straits of Sunda. Really! There should be some limits to human folly, cried Somerley, in a positive fury. Is it possible that you do not realize that Ether, if for a moment we adopt Challenger's preposterous supposition, is a universal substance which is the same here as at the other side of the world? To you for an instant, suppose, that there is an English Ether and a Sumatran Ether. Perhaps you imagine that the Ether of Kent is in some way superior to the Ether of Surrey, through which this train is now bearing us. There really are no bounds to the credulity and ignorance of the average layman. Is it conceivable that the Ether in Sumatra should be so deadly as to cause total insensibility at the very time when the Ether here has had no appreciable effect upon us, whatever? Personally, I can truly say that I never felt stronger in body or better balanced in mind in my life. That may be. I don't profess to be a scientific man, said I, though I have heard somewhere that the science of one generation is usually the fallacy of the next. But it does not take much common sense to see that, as we seem to know so little about Ether, it might be affected by some local conditions in various parts of the world, and might show an effect over there which would only develop later with us. With might in May you can prove anything, cried summerly furiously. Pigs may fly. Yes, sir, pigs may fly, but they don't. It is not worth arguing with you. Challenger has filled you with his nonsense, and you are both incapable of reason. I had to soon lay arguments before those railway cushions. I must say, Professor Summerly, that your manners do not seem to have improved since I last had the pleasure of meeting you, said Lord John severely. You Lordlings are not accustomed to hear the truth, Summerly answered with a bitter smile. It comes as a bit of a shock, does it not, when someone makes you realize that your title leaves you none of the less a very ignorant man. One my word, sir, said Lord John, very stern and rigid. If you were a younger man you would not dare to speak to me in so offensive a fashion. Summerly thrust out his chin with this little wagging tuft of goatee beard. I would have you know, sir, that young or old there has never been a time in my life when I was afraid to speak my mind to an ignorant coxcomb. Yes, sir, an ignorant coxcomb. If you had as many titles as slaves could invent and fools could adopt. For a moment Lord John's eyes blazed, and then with a tremendous effort he mastered his anger and leaned back in his seat, with arms folded and a bitter smile upon his face. To me all this was dreadful and deplorable. Like a wave the memory of the past swept over me, the good comradeship, the happy, adventurous days, all that we had suffered and worked for and won. That it should have come to this, to insults and abuse. Suddenly I was sobbing, sobbing in loud, gulping, uncontrollable sobs which refused to be concealed. My companions looked at me in surprise. I covered my face with my hands. It's all right," said I. Only, only it is such a pity. Your ill young fellow, that's what's amiss with you, said Lord John. I thought you were queer from the first. Your habits, sir, have not mended in these three years, said summarily, shaking his head. I also did not fail to observe your strange manner the moment we met. You need not waste your sympathy, Lord John. These tears are purely alcoholic. The man has been drinking by the way, Lord John. I called you a cox-comb just now, which was perhaps unduly severe. But the word reminds me of a small accomplishment, trivial but amusing which I used to possess. You know me as the austere man of science. Can you believe that I once had a well-deserved reputation in several nurseries as a farmyard imitator? Perhaps I can help you to pass the time in a pleasant way. Would it amuse you to hear me crow like a cock? No, sir," said Lord John, who was still greatly offended. It would not amuse me. My imitation of the clucking hen who has just laid an egg was also considered rather above the average. Might I venture? No, sir, no, certainly not. But in spite of this earnest prohibition, Professor Somerly laid down his pipe, and for the rest of our journey he entertained—or failed to entertain—us by a succession of bird-and-animal cries which seemed so absurd that my tears were suddenly changed into boisterous laughter, which must have become quite hysterical as I sat opposite this grave professor and saw him, or rather heard him, in the character of the uproarious rooster or the puppy whose tail had been trodden upon. Once Lord John passed across his newspaper, upon the margin of which he had written in pencil, "'Poor devil, mad as a hatter!' No doubt it was very eccentric, and yet the performance struck me as extraordinarily clever and amusing. Once this was going on, Lord John leaned forward and told me some interminable story about a buffalo and an Indian rajah, which seemed to me to have neither beginning nor end. Professor Somerly had just begun to cheer up like a canary, and Lord John to get to the climax of his story, when the train drew up at Jarvis Brook, which had been given us as the station for Rutherfield. And there was Challenger to meet us. His appearance was glorious. Not all the turkey-cocks in creation could match the slow, high-stepping dignity with which he paraded his own railway station, and the benignous smile of condescending encouragement with which he regarded everybody around him. If he had changed in anything since the days of old, it was that his points had become accentuated. The huge head and broad sweep of forehead, with its plastered lock of black hair, seemed even greater than before. His black beard poured forward in a more impressive cascade, and his clear gray eyes, with their insolent and sardonic eyelids, were even more masterful than of your. He gave me the amused handshake and encouraging smile which the headmaster bestows upon the small boy, and having greeted the others and helped to collect their bags and their cylinders of oxygen, he stowed us and them away in a large motor-car, which was driven by the same impassive Austen, the man of few words, which I had seen in the character of Butler upon the occasion of my first eventful visit to the Professor. Our journey led us up a winding hill through beautiful country. I sat in front with the chauffeur, but behind me my three comrades seemed to me to be all talking together. Before John was still struggling with his buffalo story, so far as I could make out, while once again I heard, as of old, the deep rumble of challenger and the insistent accents of summerly as their brains locked in high and fierce scientific debate, suddenly Austen slanted his mahogany face toward me without taking his eyes from his steering-wheel. I am under notice, said he. Dear me, said I. Everything seems strange today. Everyone said queer, unexpected things. It was like a dream. It's forty-seven times, said Austen reflectively. When do you go, I asked, for want of some better observation. I don't go, said Austen. The conversation seemed to have ended there, but presently he came back to it. If I was to go, who would look after him? He jerked his head toward his master. Who would he get to serve him? Someone else, I suggested, lamely. Not he. No one would stay a week. If I was to go, that house would run down like a watch with the mainspring out. I'm telling you because you're his friend, and you ought to know. If I was to take him at his word, but there I wouldn't have the art. He and the missus would be like two babes left out in a bundle. I'm just everything. And then he goes and gives me notice. Why would no one stay? I asked. Well, they wouldn't make endowances, same as I do. He's a very clever man, the master. So clever that he's clean balmy, sometimes. I've seen him right off his onion at no error. Well, look what he did this morning. What did he do? Austin bent over to me. He bit the housekeeper, said he in a horse whisper. Bit her. Yes, sir, bit her on the leg. I saw her with my own eyes, starting a marathon from the all door. Good gracious! So you'd say, sir, if you could see some of the goings on. He don't make friends with the neighbors. There's some of them thinks that when he was up among the monsters you wrote about, it was just home sweet home for the master, and he was never in fitter company. That's what they say. But I've served him 10 years, and I'm fond of him. And mind you, he's a great man, when all said and done, and it's an honor to serve him. But he does try one cruel at times. Now look at that, sir. That ain't what you might call old-fashioned hospitality, is it now? Just you read it for yourself. The car on its lowest speed had ground its way up a steep, curving ascent. At the corner a notice board peered over a well-clipped hedge. As Austin said, it was not difficult to read, for the words were few and arresting. Warning. Visitors, pressmen, and mendicants are not encouraged. G.E. Challenger. No, it's not what you might call hearty, said Austin, shaking his head and glancing up at the deplorable placard. It wouldn't look well in a Christmas card. I beg your pardon, sir, for I haven't spoke as much as this for many a long year. But today my feelings seem to have got the better of me. It can sack me till he's blue in the face, but I ain't going, that's flat. I'm his man, and he's my master, and so it will be, I expect, to the end of the chapter. We had passed between the white posts of a gate and up a curving drive, lined with rhododendron bushes. Beyond stood a low brick house picked out with white woodwork, very comfortable and pretty. Mrs. Challenger, a small, dainty, smiling figure, stood in the open doorway to welcome us. Well, my dear, said Challenger, bustling out of the car, here are our visitors. It is something new for us to have visitors, is it not? No love lost between us and our neighbors is there. If they could get rat poison into our baker's cart, I expect it would be there. It's dreadful, dreadful, said the lady, between laughter and tears. George is always quarreling with everyone. We haven't a friend on the countryside. It enables me to concentrate my attention upon my incomparable wife, said Challenger, passing his short, thick arm around her waist. Picture a gorilla and a gazelle, and you have the pair of them. Come, come, these gentlemen are tired from the journey, at lunch and should be ready. Has Sarah returned? The lady shook her head ruefully, and the professor laughed loudly and stroked his beard in his masterful fashion. Austin, he cried, when you have put up the car, you will kindly help your mistress to lay the lunch. Now, gentlemen, would you please step into my study, for there are one or two very urgent things which I am anxious to say to you. End of Chapter 2 OF THE POISON BELT This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE POISON BELT by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Chapter 2, entitled, THE TIDE OF DEATH. As we crossed the hall, the telephone bell rang, and we were the involuntary auditors of Professor Challenger's end of the ensuing dialogue. I say we, but no one within a hundred yards could have failed to hear the booming of that monstrous voice which reverberated through the house. His answers lingered in my mind. Yes, yes, of course, it is I. Yes, certainly, the Professor Challenger, the famous professor, who else? Of course, every word of it, otherwise I should not have written it. I shouldn't be surprised. There is every indication of it, within a day or so at the furthest. Well, I can't help that, can I? Very unpleasant, no doubt, but I rather fancy it will affect more important people than you. There is no use whining about it. No, I couldn't possibly. You must take your chance. That's enough, sir, nonsense. I have something more important to do than to listen to such twaddle. He shut off with a crash and led us upstairs into a large area apartment which formed his study. On the great mahogany desk, seven or eight unopened telegrams were lying. Really, he said, as he gathered them up, I begin to think that it would save my corresponded's money if I were to adopt a telegraphic address. Possibly, Noah, Rutherfield, would be the most appropriate. As usual, when he made an obscure joke, he leaned against the desk and bellowed in a proxism of laughter, his hand shaking so that it could hardly open the envelopes. Noah, Noah! He gassed with a face of beet root, while Lord John and I smiled in sympathy and, summerly, like a dispeptic goat, wagged his head in sardonic disagreement. Finally, Challenger, still rumbling and exploding, began to open his telegrams. The three of us stood in the bow window and occupied ourselves in admiring the magnificent view. It was certainly worth looking at. The road and its gentle curves had really brought us to a considerable elevation, 700 feet, as we afterwards discovered. Challenger's house was on the very edge of the hill and from its southern face, in which was the study window, one looked across the vast stretch of the wheel to where the gentle curves of the south downs formed an undulating horizon. In a cleft of the hills, a haze of smoke marked the position of loose. Immediately at our feet there lay a rolling plain of heather with the long, vivid green stretches of the crowbarrow golf course, all dotted with the players. A little to the south, through an opening in the woods, we could see a section of the main line from London to Brighton. In the immediate foreground under our very noses was a small enclosed yard in which stood the car which had brought us from the station. An ejaculation from Challenger caused us to turn. He had read his telegrams and had arranged them in a little methodical pile upon his desk. His broad, rugged face, or as much of it as was visible over the matted beard was still deeply flushed and he seemed to be under the influence of some strong excitement. Well, gentlemen, he said, in a voice as if he were addressing a public meeting, this is indeed an interesting reunion and it takes place under extraordinary, I may say, unprecedented circumstances. May I ask if you observed anything upon your journey from town? The only thing which I observed, said summerly with a sour smile, was that our young friend here has not improved in his manners during the years that have passed. I am sorry to state that I have had to seriously complain of his conduct in the train and I should be wanting in frightness if I did not say that has left a most unpleasant impression in my mind. Well, well, we all get a bit prosy sometimes, said Lord John. The young fella meant no real harm. After all, he's an international so if he takes a half an hour to describe a game of football he has more right to do it than most folk. Half an hour to describe a game, I cried indignantly, why it was you that took half an hour with some long-winded story about a buffalo, Professor Somerly will be my witness. I can hardly judge which of you was the most utterly wearisome, said Somerly. I declare to you, challenger, that I never wish to hear a football or a buffalo so long as I live. I have never said one word today about football, I protested. Lord John gave a shrill whistle and Somerly shook his head sadly. So early in the day, too, said he, it is indeed deplorable as I sat there in sad but thoughtful silence. In silence, cried Lord John, why you were doing a music hall turn of imitations all the way, more like a runaway gramophone than a man. Somerly drew himself up in bitter protest. You are pleased to be facetious, Lord John, said he with a face of vinegar. Why dash it all, this is clear madness, cried Lord John. Each of us seems to know what the others did and none of us knows what he did himself. Let's put it all together from the first. We got into a first-class smoker, that's clear, ain't it? Then we began to quarrel over friend Challenger's letter in the tines. Oh, you did, did you? Rumbled our host as Ilid's beginning to droop. You said, Somerly, that there was no possible truth in his contention. Dear me, said challenger, puffing out his chest and stroking his beard, no possible truth. I seem to have heard the words before. And may I ask with what arguments the great and famous Professor Somerly proceeded to demolish the humble individual who had ventured to express an opinion upon a matter of scientific possibility. Perhaps before he exterminates that unfortunate non-entity, he will condescend to give some reasons for the adverse views which he has formed. He bowed and shrugged and spread open his hands as he spoke with his elaborate and elephantine sarcasm. The reason was simple enough, said the dogged Somerly. I contended that if the ether surrounding the earth was so toxic in one quarter that it produced dangerous symptoms, it was hardly likely that we three of the railway carriage should be entirely unaffected. The explanation only brought up rorious merriment from challenger. He laughed until everything in the room seemed to rattle and quiver. Our worthy Somerly is, not for the first time, somewhat out of touch with the facts of the situation. Said he at last, mopping his heated brow. Now, gentlemen, I cannot make my point better than by detailing to you what I have myself done this morning. You will the more easily condone any metal aberration upon your own part when you realize that even I have had moments when my balance has been disturbed. We have had for some years in this household a housekeeper, one Sarah, with whose second name I have never attempted to burden my memory. She is a woman of a severe and forbidding aspect, prim and demure and her bearing, very impassive in her nature, and never known within our experience to show signs of any emotion. As I sat alone at my breakfast, Mrs. Challenger is in the habit of keeping her room up a morning. It suddenly entered my head that it would be entertaining and instructive to see whether I could find any limits to this woman's impeturbability. I devised a simple but effective experiment. Having upset a small vase of flowers which stood in the center of the cloth, I rang the bell and slipped under the table. She entered, and seeing the room empty, imagined that I had withdrawn to the study. As I had expected, she approached and leaned over the table to replace the vase. I had a vision of a cotton stocking and an elastic-sided boot. Pertruding my head, I sank my teeth into the calf of her leg. The experiment was successful beyond belief. For some moment she stood paralyzed, staring down at my head. Then, with a shriek, she tore herself free and rushed from the room. I pursued her with some thoughts of an explanation. But she flew down the drive, and some minutes afterwards I was able to pick her out with my field glasses, traveling very rapidly in a southwesternly direction. I tell you the anecdote for what it is worth. I drop it into your brains and await its germination. Is it illuminative? Has it conveyed anything to your minds? What do you think of it, Lord John? Lord John shook his head gravely. You'll be getting into serious trouble some of these days if you don't put a break on, said he. Perhaps you have some observation to make, summerly. You should drop all work instantly, challenger, and take three months in a German watering place, said he. Profound, profound, cried challenger. Now, my young friend, is it possible that wisdom may come from you where your seniors have so signally failed? And it did. I say it with all modesty, but it did. Of course it all seems obvious enough to you who know what occurred, but it was not so very clear when everything was new. But it came upon me suddenly with a full force of absolute conviction. Poison! I cried. Then, even as I said the word, my mind flashed back over the whole morning's experiences, past Lord John with his buffalo, past my own hysterical tears, past the outrageous conduct of Professor Summerly, to the queer happenings in London, the row in the park, the driving of the chauffeur, the quarrel at the oxygen warehouse, everything fitted suddenly into its place. Of course, I cried again. It is poison, we are all poisoned. Exactly, said challenger, rubbing his hands. We are all poisoned. Our planet has swum into the poison belt of ether and is now flying deeper into it at the rate of some millions of miles a minute. Our young friend has expressed the cause of all our troubles and perplexities in a single word, poison. We looked at each other in amazed silence. No comments seemed to meet the situation. There is a mental inhibition by which such symptoms can be checked and controlled, said challenger. I cannot expect to find it developed in all of you to the same point which it has reached in me, for I suppose that the strength of our different mental processes bears some proportion to each other. But no doubt it is appreciable even in our young friend here. After the little outburst of high spirits, which so alarmed my domestic, I sat down and reasoned with myself. I put it to myself that I had never before felt impelled to bite any of my household. The impulse had then been an abnormal one. In an instant I perceived the truth. My pulse upon examination was 10 beats above the usual and my reflexes were increased. I called upon my higher and saner self, the real G.E.C., seated serene and impregnable behind all mere molecular disturbance. I summoned him, I say, to watch the foolish mental tricks which the poison would play. I found that I was indeed the master. I could recognize and control a disordered mind. It was a remarkable exhibition of the victory of mind over matter, for it was a victory over that particular form of matter which is most intimately connected with mind. I might almost say that mind was at fault and that personality controlled it. Thus, when my wife came downstairs and I was impelled to slip behind the door and alarm her by some wild cry as she entered, I was able to stifle the impulse and to greet her with dignity and restraint. An overpowering desire to quack like a duck was met and mastered in the same fashion. Later, when I descended to order the car and found Austin bending over it absorbed in repairs, I controlled my open hand even after I had lifted it and refrained from giving him an experience which would possibly have caused him to follow in the steps of the housekeeper. On the contrary, I touched him on the shoulder and ordered the car to be at the door in time to meet your train. At the present instant I am most forcibly tempted to take Professor Somerly by that silly old beard of his and to shake his head violently backwards and forwards. And yet, as you see, I am perfectly restrained. Let me commend my example to you. I'll look out for that buffalo, said Lord John. And I for the football match. It may be that you are right, challenger, said Somerly in a chastened voice. I am willing to admit that my turn of mind is critical rather than constructive and that I am not a ready convert to any new theory, especially when it happens to be so unusual and fantastic as this one. However, as I cast my mind back over the events of the morning and as I reconsider the fatuous conduct of my companions, I find it easy to believe that some poison of an exciting kind was responsible for their symptoms. Challenger slapped his colleague good-humoredly upon the shoulder. We progress, said he, decidedly we progress. And pray, sir, asked Somerly humbly, what is your opinion as to the present outlook? With your permission I will say a few words upon that subject. He seated himself upon his desk, his short, stumpy leg swinging in front of him. We are assisting at a tremendous and awful function. It is, in my opinion, the end of the world. The end of the world! Our eyes turned to the great bow window and we looked out at the summer beauty of the countryside, the long slopes of heather, the great country houses, the cozy farms, the pleasure-seekers upon the links. The end of the world! One had often heard the words, but the idea that they could ever have an immediate practical significance, that it should not be at some vague date, but now, today, that was a tremendous, a staggering thought. We were all struck solemn and waited in silence for Challenger to continue. His overpowering presence and appearance lent such force to the solemnity of his words that, for a moment, all the crudities and absurdities of the man vanished, and he loomed before us as something majestic and beyond the range of ordinary humanity. Then, to me, at least, there came back the cheering recollection of how, twice, since we had entered the room he had roared with laughter. Surely, I thought, there are limits to metal detachment. The crisis cannot be so great or so pressing after all. You will conceive a bunch of grapes, said he, which are covered by some infinitesimal but noxious basilis. The gardener passes it through a disaffecting medium. It may be that he desires his grapes to be cleaner. It may be that he needs space to breed some fresh basilis less noxious than the last. He dips it into the poison and they are gone. Our gardener is, in my opinion, about to dip the solar system and the human basilis, the little mortal vibrio which twisted and wriggled upon the outer rind of the earth, will in an instant be sterilized out of existence. Again there was silence. It was broken by the high trill of the telephone bell. There is one of our basilis squeaking for help, said he with a grim smile. They are beginning to realize that their continued existence is not really one of the necessities of the universe. He was gone from the room for a minute or two. I remember that none of us spoke in his absence. The situation seemed beyond all words or comments. The medical officer of health for Brighton, said he when he returned, the symptoms are for some reason developing more rapidly upon the sea level. Our 700 feet of elevation give us an advantage. Folks seem to have learned that I am the first authority upon the question. No doubt it comes from my letter in the times. That was the mayor of a provincial town with whom I talked when we first arrived. You may have heard me upon the telephone. He seemed to put an entirely inflated value upon his own life. I helped him to readjust his ideas. Summerly had risen and was standing by the window. His thin, bony hands were trembling with his emotion. Challenger, said he earnestly, this thing is too serious for mere futile argument. Do not suppose that I desire to irritate you by any question I may ask, but I put it to you whether there may not be some fallacy in your information or in your reasoning. There is the sun shining as brightly as ever in the blue sky. There are the heather and the flowers and the birds. There are the folk enjoying themselves upon the golf links and the laborers yonder cutting the corn. You tell us that they and we may be on the very brink of destruction, that this sunlit day may be that day of doom which the human race has so long awaited. So far as we know, you found this tremendous judgment upon what? Upon some abnormal lines in a spectrum, upon rumors from Sumatra, upon some curious personal excitement which we have discerned in each other. This latter symptom is not so marked but that you and we could by a deliberate effort control it. You need not stand on ceremony with us, Challenger. We have all faced death together before now. Speak out and let us know exactly where we stand and what in your opinion are our prospects for our future. It was a brave, good speech, a speech from that staunch and strong spirit which lay behind all the acidities and angularities of the old zoologist. Lord John rose and shook him by the hand. My sentiment to a tick, said he, Now, Challenger, it's up to you to tell us where we are. We ain't nervous folk as you know well, but when it comes to making a weekend visit and finding you've run full butt into the day of judgment, it wants a bit of explaining. What's the danger and how much of it is there and what are we going to do to meet it? He stood tall and strong in the sunshine at the window with his brown hand upon the shoulder of summerly. I was lying back in an armchair and extinguished cigarette between my lips in that sort of half-days state in which impressions become exceedingly distinct. It may have been a new phase of the poisoning, but the delirious promptings had all passed away and were succeeded by an exceedingly languid and, at the same time, perceptive state of mind. I was a spectator. It did not seem to be any personal concern of mine, but here were three strong men and a great crisis, and it was fascinating to observe them. Challenger bent his heavy brows and stroked his beard before he answered. One could see that he was very carefully weighing his words. What was the last news when you left London? He asked. I was at the Gazette office about 10, said I. There was a Reuter just come in from Singapore to the effect that the sickness seemed to be universal in Sumatra and that the lighthouses had not been lit in consequence. They then said they were moving somewhat rapidly since then, said Challenger, picking up his pile of telegrams. I am in close touch both with the authorities and with the press, so that news is converging upon me from all parts. There is, in fact, a general and very insistent demand that I should come to London. But I see no good end to be served. From the accounts the poisonous effect begins with mental excitement. The rioting in Paris this morning is said to have been very violent and the Welsh colliers are in a state of uproar. So far as the evidence to hand can be trusted, this stimulative stage, which varies much in races and in individuals, is succeeded by a certain exaltation and mental lucidity. I seem to discern some signs of it at our young friend here, which, after an appreciable interval, turns to coma, deepening rapidly into death. I fancy, so far as my toxicology carries me, that there are some vegetable nerve poisons. That too, eh? Suggested summarily. Excellent! cried Challenger. I would make for scientific precision if we named our toxic agent. Let it be Dachuran. To you, my dear, summarily, belongs the honour, posthumous salace, but nonetheless unique, of having given a name to the universal destroyer, the great gardener's disinfectant. The symptoms of Dachuran, then, may be taken to be such as I indicate that it will involve the whole world and that no life can possibly remain behind, seems to me, to be certain, since ether is a universal medium. Up to now it has been capricious in the places where it is attacked, but the difference is only a matter of a few hours, and it is like an advancing tide which covers one strip of sand and then another, running hither and thither in irregular streams, until at last it has submerged it all. There are laws at work in connection with the action and distribution of Dachuran, which would have been of deep interest had the time at our disposal permitted us to study them. So far as I can trace them, here he glanced over his telegrams. The less developed races have been the first to respond to its influence. There are deplorable accounts from Africa, and the Australian Aborigines appear to have been already exterminated. The northern races have as yet shown greater resisting power than the southern. This, you see, is dated from Marseille at 9.45 this morning. I'd give it to you verbatim. All night delirious excitement throughout Provence, too mulled to fine growers at Nîmes, socialistic upheaval at Toulon, sudden illness attended by Coma, a tax population this morning, Pes Foudrean, great numbers of dead in the streets, paralysis of business and universal chaos. An hour later came the following from the same source. We are threatened with utter extermination, cathedrals and churches full to overflowing. The dead outnumber the living. It is inconceivable and horrible. Decease seems to be painless, but swift and inevitable. There is a similar telegram from Paris where the development is not yet as acute. India and Persia appear to be utterly wiped out. The Slavonic population of Austria is down, while the Teutonic has hardly been affected. Speaking generally, this dwellers upon the plains and upon the seashore seem, so far as my limited information goes, to have felt the effects more rapidly than those inland or on the heights. Even a little elevation makes a considerable difference, and perhaps if there be a survivor of the human race, he will again be found upon the summit of some Ararat. Even our own little hill may presently prove to be a temporary island amid a sea of disaster. But at the present rate of advance, a few shorthowers will submerge us all. Lord John Roxton wiped his brow. What beats me, said he, is how you could sit there laughing with that stack of telegrams under your hand. I've seen death as often as most folk, but universal death. It's awful. Has to the laughter, said Challenger. You will bear in mind that, like yourselves, I have not been exempt from the stimulating cerebral effects of the etheric poison. But as to the horror with which universal death appears to inspire you, I would put it to you that it is somewhat exaggerated. If you were sent to sea alone in an open boat to some unknown destination, your heart might well sink within you. The isolation, the uncertainty would oppress you. But if your voyage were made in a goodly ship, which bore within it all your relations and your friends, you would feel that, however uncertain your destination might still remain, you would at least have one common simultaneous experience, which would hold you to the end in the same close communion. A lonely death may be terrible, but a universal one, as painless as this would appear to be, is not, in my judgment, a matter for apprehension. Indeed, I could sympathize with the person who took the view that the horror lay in the idea of surviving when all that is learned, famous, and exalted had passed away. What then do you propose to do, as summerly, who had for once nodded his assent to the reasoning of his brother's scientist? To take our lunch, said Challenger, as the boom of a gong sounded through the house. We have a cook whose omelets are only excellent by her cutlets. We can but trust that no cosmic disturbance has dulled her excellent abilities. My Schwartzberger of ninety-six must also be rescued, so far as our earnest and united efforts can do it, from what would be a deplorable waste of a great vintage. He levered his great bulk off the desk, upon which he had sat while he announced the doom of the planet. Come, said he, if there is little time left, there is the more need that we should spend it in sober and reasonable enjoyment. And indeed it proved to be a very merry meal. It is true that we could not forget our awful situation. The full solemnity of the event loomed ever at the back of our minds and tempered our thoughts. But surely it is the soul which has never faced death which shies strongly from it at the end, to each of us men it had, for one great epic in our lives, been a familiar presence. As to the lady, she leaned upon the strong guidance of her mighty husband, and was well content to go with her his path might lead. The future was our fate. The present was our own. We passed it in goodly comradeship in gentle merriment. Our minds were, as I have said, singularly lucid. Even I struck sparks at times. As to Challenger, he was wonderful. Never have I so realized the elemental greatness of the man, the sweep and power of his understanding. Summerly drew him on with his chorus of sub-acid criticism, while Lord John and I laughed at the contest and the lady, her hand upon his sleeve, controlled the bellowings of the philosopher. Life, death, fate, the destiny of man. These were the stupendous subjects of that memorable hour, made vital by the fact that as the meal progressed strange, sudden exultations in my mind, and tinglings in my limbs proclaimed that the invisible tide of death was slowly and gently rising around us. Once I saw Lord John put his hand suddenly to his eyes, and once Summerly dropped back for an instant in his chair. Each breath we breathed was charged with strange forces, and yet our minds were happy and at ease. Presently Austin laid the cigarettes upon the table and was about to withdraw. Austin, said his master, Yes, sir. I thank you for your faithful service. A smile stole over the servant's gnarled face. I've done my duty, sir. I'm expecting the end of the world today, Austin. Yes, sir, what time, sir? I can't say, Austin, before evening. Very good, sir. The taciturn Austin saluted and withdrew, challenged her lit a cigarette and, drawing his chair closer to his wife's, he took her hand in his. You know how matters stand, dear, said he. I've explained it also to our friends here. You're not afraid, are you? It won't be painful, George. No more than laughing gas at the dentists. Every time you have had it, you have practically died. But that is a pleasant sensation. So may death be. The worn-out bodily machine can't record its impression, but we know the mental pleasure which lies in a dream or a trance. Nature may build a beautiful door and hang it with many a gauzy and shimmering curtain to make an entrance to the new life for our wandering souls. In all my probings of the actual, I have always found wisdom and kindness at the core. And if ever the frightened mortal needs tenderness, it is surely as he makes the passage perilous from life to life. No, summerly, I will have none of your materialism, for I, at least, am too great a thing to end in mere physical constituents, a packet of salts and three bucketfuls of water. Here, here, and he beat his great head with his huge hairy fist, there is something which uses matter, but is not of it, something which might destroy death, but which death can never destroy. Talking of death, said Lord John, I'm a Christian of sorts, but it seems to me there was something mighty natural in those ancestors of ours who were buried with their axes and bows and arrows and the like, same as if they were living on just the way as they had used to. I don't know, he added, looking round the table in a shame-faced way, that I wouldn't feel more homely myself if I was put away with my old 450 express and the Fallon piece, the shorter one with a rubbered stock and a clip or two of cartridges. Just a fool's fancy, of course, but there it is. How does it strike you, Herr Professor? Well, said Summerly, since you ask my opinion, it strikes me as an indefensible throwback to the Stone Age or before it. I am of the 20th century myself and would wish to die like a reasonable civilized man. I don't know that I am more afraid of death than the rest of you, for I am an oldish man and come what may, I can't have very much longer to live, but it is all against my nature to sit waiting without a struggle, like a sheep for the butcher. It is quite certain, Challenger, that there is nothing we can do to save us, nothing, said Challenger, to prolong our lives a few hours and thus to see the evolution of this mighty tragedy before we are actually involved in it. That may prove to be within my powers. I have taken certain steps. The oxygen? Exactly, the oxygen. But what can oxygen effect in the face of a poisoning of the ether? There is not a greater difference in quality between a brick bat and a gas than there is between oxygen and ether. They are different planes of matter. They cannot hinge upon one another. Come, Challenger, you could not defend such a proposition. My good summerly, this etheric poison is most certainly influenced by material agents. We see it in the methods and distribution of the outbreak. We should not a priori have expected it, but it is undoubtedly a fact. Hence I am strongly of opinion that a gas like oxygen, which increases the vitality and the resisting power of the body, would be extremely likely to delay the action of what you have so happily named the Daturon. It may be that I am mistaken, but I have every confidence in the correctness of my reasoning. Well, said Lord John, if you've got to sit suckin' at those tubes like so many babies with their puddles, I'm not takin' any. There will be no need for that. Challenger answered, We have made arrangements. It is to my wife that you chiefly owe it, that her boudoir shall be made as airtight as is practicable, with matting and varnish paper. Good heavens, Challenger, you don't suppose you can keep out ether with varnish paper? Really, my worthy friend, you are a trifle perverse in missing the point. It is not to keep out the ether that we have gone to such trouble. It is to keep in the oxygen. I trust that if we can ensure an atmosphere hyper-oxygenated to a certain point, we may be able to retain our senses. I had two tubes of the gas and you have brought me three more. It is not much, but it is something. How long with they last? I have not an idea. We will not turn them on until our symptoms become unbearable. Then we shall dull the gas out as it is urgently needed. It may give us some hours, possibly even some days, on which we may look out upon a blasted world. Our own fate is delayed to that extent and we will have the very singular experience, we five, of being in all probability, the absolute rear guard of the human race upon its march into the unknown. Perhaps you will be kind enough now to give me a hand with the cylinders. It seems to me that the atmosphere already grows somewhat more oppressive. End of chapter. Chapter three of The Poison Belt. This lever box recording is in the public domain. The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter three, entitled Submerged. The chamber which was destined to be the scene of our unforgettable experience was a charmingly feminine sitting room, some 14 or 16 feet square. At the end of it, divided by a curtain of red velvet, was a small apartment which formed the professor's dressing room. This in turn opened into a large bedroom. The curtain was still hanging, but the boudoir and dressing room could be taken as one chamber for the purposes of our experiment. One door and the window frame had been plastered round with varnish paper, so as to be practically sealed. Above the other door, which opened on to the landing, there hung a fan light which could be drawn by a cord when some ventilation became absolutely necessary. A large shrub in a tub stood in each corner. How to get rid of our excessive carbon dioxide without unduly wasting our oxygen is a delicate and vital question. Said Challenger, looking round him after the five iron tubes had been laid side by side against the wall. With longer time for preparation I could have brought the whole concentrated force of my intelligence to bear more fully upon the problem, but as it is we must do what we can. The shrubs will be of some small service. Two of the oxygen tubes are ready to be turned on at an instant's notice so that we cannot be taken unawares. At the same time it would be well not to go far from the room as the crisis may be a sudden and urgent one. There was a broad low window opening out upon a balcony. The view beyond was the same as that which we had already admired from the study. Looking out I could see no sign of disorder anywhere. There was a road curving down the side of the hill under my very eyes. A cab from the station, one of those prehistoric survivals which are only to be found in our country villages, was toiling slowly up the hill. Lower down was a nurse girl wheeling a perambulator and leading a second child by the hand. The blue reeks of smoke from the cottages gave the whole widespread landscape an air of settled order and homely comfort. Nowhere in the blue heaven or on the sunlit earth was there any foreshadowing of a catastrophe. The harvesters were back in the fields once more and the golfers in pairs and fours were still streaming round the links. There was so strange a turmoil within my own head and such a jangling of my over-strung nerves that the indifference of those people was amazing. Those fellows don't seem to feel any ill effects, said I pointing down at the links. Have you played golf? Asked Lord John. No, I have not. Well, young fella, when you do you'll learn that once fairly out on a round it would take the crack of doom to stop a true golfer. Hello, there's that telephone bell again. From time to time during and after lunch the high insistent ring had summoned the professor. He gave us the news as it came through to him in a few curt sentences. Such terrific items had never been registered in the world's history before. The great shadow was creeping up from the south like a rising tide of death. Egypt had gone through its delirium and was now comatose. Spain and Portugal after a wild frenzy in which the clericals and the anarchists had fought most desperately were now fallen silent. No cable messages were received any longer from South America. In North America the southern states after some terrible racial rioting had succumbed to the poison. North of Maryland the effect was not yet marked and in Canada it was hardly perceptible. Belgium, Holland, and Denmark had each in turn been affected. Despairing messages were flashing from every quarter to the great centers of learning to the chemists and the doctors of worldwide repute imploring their advice. The astronomers too were deluged with inquiries. Nothing could be done. The thing was universal and beyond our human knowledge or control. It was death. Painless but inevitable. Death for young and old, for weak and strong, for rich and poor, without hope or possibility of escape. Such was the news which in scattered distracted messages the telephone had brought us. The great cities already knew their fate and so far as we could gather we're preparing to meet it with dignity and resignation. Yet here were our golfers and laborers like the lambs who gamble under the shadow of the knife. It seemed amazing. And yet how could they know? It had all come upon us in one giant stride. What was there in the morning paper to alarm them? And now it was but three in the afternoon. Even as we looked some rumors seemed to have spread for we saw the reapers hurrying from the fields. Some of the golfers were returning to the clubhouse. They were running as if taking refuge from a shower. The little caddies trailed behind them. Others were continuing their game. The nurse had turned and was pushing her perambulator hurriedly up the hill again. I noticed that she had her hand to her brow. The cab had stopped and the tired horse with his head sunk to his knees was resting. Above there was a perfect summer sky, one huge vault of unbroken blue, save for a few fleecy white clouds over the distant downs. If the human race must die today it was at least upon a glorious deathbed. And yet all that gentle loveliness of nature made this terrific and wholesale destruction the more pityable and awful. Surely it was too goodly a residence that we should be so swiftly, so ruthlessly evicted from it. But I have said that the telephone bell had rung once more. Suddenly I heard Challenger's tremendous voice from the hall. Malone, he cried, you are wanted. I rushed down to the instrument. It was McArdle speaking from London. That you, Mr. Malone, cried his familiar voice. Mr. Malone, there are terrible goings on in London. For God's sake, see if Professor Challenger can suggest anything that can be done. He can suggest nothing, sir, I answered. He regards the crisis as universal and inevitable. We have some oxygen here, but it can only defer our fate for a few hours. Oxygen, cried the agonized voice. There is no time to get any. The office has been a perfect pandemonium ever since you left in the morning. Now half of the staff are insensible. I am weighed down with heaviness myself. From my window I can see the people lying thick in Fleet Street. The traffic is all held up, judging by the last telegrams, the whole world. His voice had been sinking and suddenly stopped. An instant later I heard through the telephone a muffled thud as if his head had fallen forward on the desk. Mr. McArdle, I cried. Mr. McArdle! There was no answer. I knew as I replaced the receiver that I should never hear his voice again. At that instant, just as I took a step backwards from the telephone, the thing was on us. It was as if we were bathers up to our shoulders in water who suddenly are submerged by a rolling wave. An invisible hand seemed to have quietly closed round my throat and to be gently pressing the life from me. I was conscious of immense suppression upon my chest, great tightness within my head, a loud singing in my ears, and bright flashes before my eyes. I staggered to the balustrades of the stair. At the same moment, rushing and snorting like a wounded buffalo, Challenger dashed past me a terrible vision with red purple face and gorge dyes and bristling hair. His little wife, insensible to all appearance, was slung over his great shoulder and he blundered and thundered up the stair, scrambling and tripping, but carrying himself and her through sheer will-force through that nephitic atmosphere to the haven of temporary safety. At the side of his effort, I too rushed up the steps, clambering, falling, clutching at the rail, until I tumbled half-senseless upon my face on the upper landing. Lord John's fingers of steel were in the collar of my coat and a moment later I was stretched upon my back, unable to speak or move on the Boudoir carpet. The woman lay beside me and summerly was bunched in a chair by the window, his head nearly touching his knees. As in a dream I saw Challenger, like a monstrous beetle, crawling slowly across the floor and a moment later I heard the gentle hissing of the escaping oxygen. Challenger breathed two or three times with enormous gulps, his lungs roaring as he drew in the vital gas. It works, he cried exultingly. My reasoning has been justified. He was up on his feet again, alert and strong. With a tube in his hand he rushed over to his wife and held it to her face. In a few seconds she moaned, stirred and sat up. He turned to me and I felt the tide of life stealing warmly through my arteries. My reason told me that it was but a little respite, and yet, carelessly as we talk of its value, every hour of existence now seemed an inestimable thing. Never have I known such a thrill of sensuous joy as came with that freshet of life. The weight fell away from my lungs, the band loosened from my brow, a sweet feeling of peace and gentle languid comfort stole over me. I lay watching summerly revive under the same remedy, and finally Lord John took his turn. He sprang to his feet and gave me a hand to rise while Challenger picked up his wife and laid her on the settee. Oh, George, I am so sorry you brought me back. She said, holding him by the hand. The door of death is indeed, as you said, hung with beautiful shimmering curtains. For once the choking feeling had passed it was all unspeakably soothing and beautiful. Why have you dragged me back? Because I wish that we make the passage together. We've been together so many years. It would be sad to fall apart at the supreme moment. For a moment in his tender voice I caught a glimpse of a new Challenger, something very far from the bullying, ranting, arrogant man who had alternately amazed and offended his generation. Here in the shadow of death was the innermost Challenger, the man who had won and held a woman's love. Suddenly his mood changed and he was our strong captain once again. Alone of all mankind I saw and foretold this catastrophe, said he with a ring of exultation and scientific triumph in his voice. As to you, my good summerly, I trust your last doubts have been resolved as to the meaning of the blurring of the lines in the spectrum and that you will no longer contend that my letter in the Times was based upon a delusion. For once our pugnacious colleague was deaf to a challenge. He could but sit gasping and stretching his long, thin limbs, as if to assure himself that he was still really upon this planet. Challenger walked across to the oxygen tube and the sound of the loud hissing fell away till it was the most gentle simulation. We must husband our supply of the gas, said he. The atmosphere of the room is now strongly hyper-oxygenated and I take it that none of us feel any distressing symptoms. We can only determine by actual experiments what amount added to the air will serve to neutralize the poison. Let us see how that will do. We sat in silent, nervous tension for five minutes or more, observing our own sensations. I had just begun to fancy that I felt the constriction round my temples again when Mrs. Challenger called out from the sofa that she was fainting. Her husband turned on more gas. In pre-scientific days, said he, they used to keep a white mouse in every submarine as its more delicate organization gave signs of a vicious atmosphere before it was perceived by the sailors. You, my dear, will be our white mouse. I have now increased the supply and you are better. Yes, I am better. Possibly we have hit upon the correct mixture. When we have ascertained exactly how little will serve, we shall be able to compute how long we shall be able to exist. Unfortunately, in resuscitating ourselves, we have already consumed a considerable proportion of this first tube. Does it matter? Asked Lord John, who was standing with his hands in his pockets up close to the window. If we have to go, what is the use of holding on? You don't suppose there's any chance for us? Challenger smiled and shook his head. Well then, don't you think there is more dignity in taking the jump and not waiting to be pushed in? If it must be so, I'm for saying our prayers, turning off the gas and opening the window. Why not? said the lady bravely. Surely, George, Lord John is right, and it is better so. I most strongly object, cried summerly in a quarellous voice, when we must die, let us by all means die, but to deliberately anticipate death seems to me to be a foolish and unjustifiable action. What does our young friend say to it? Asked Challenger, I think we should see it to the end. And I am strongly of the same opinion, said he. Then, George, if you say so, I think so too, cried the lady. Well, well, I'm only a-puttin' it as an argument, said Lord John. If you all want to see it through, I am with you. It's deucid, interesting, and no mistake about that. I've had my share of adventures in my life, and as many thrills as most folk, but I'm ended on my top note. Granting the continuity of life, said Challenger, a large assumption, cried summerly. Challenger stared at him in silent reproof. Granting the continuity of life, said he in his most didactic manner, none of us can predicate what opportunities of observation one may have from what we may call the spirit plane to the plane of matter. It surely must be evident to the most obtuse person, here he glared at summerly, that it is while we are ourselves material that we are most fitted to watch and form a judgment upon material phenomena. Therefore it is only by keeping alive for these few extra hours that we can hope to carry on with us to some future existence, a clear conception of the most stupendous event that the world, or the universe so far as we know it, has ever encountered. To me it would seem a deplorable thing that we should in any way curtail by so much as a minute, so wonderful an experience. I am strongly of the same opinion, cried summerly. Carried without a division, said Lord John, by George that poor devil of a chauffeur of yours down in the yard has made his last journey. No use making a sally and bringing him in. It would be absolute madness, cried summerly. Well, I suppose it would, said Lord John. It couldn't help him and would scatter our gas all over the house, even if we ever got back alive. My word, look at the little birds under the trees. We drew four chairs up to the long low window, the lady still resting with closed eyes upon the satis. I remember that the monstrous and grotesque idea crossed my mind. The illusion may have been heightened by the heavy stuffiness of the air which we were breathing, that we were in four front seats of the stalls at the last act of the drama of the world. In the immediate foreground, beneath our very eyes, was the small yard with the half-cleaned motor-car standing in it. Austin, the chauffeur, had received his final notice at last, for he was sprawling beside the wheel with a great black bruise upon his forehead where he had struck the step or mudguard in falling. He still held in his hand the nozzle of the hose with which he had been washing down his machine. A couple of small plain trees stood in a corner of the yard and underneath them lay several pathetic little balls of fluffy feathers with tiny feet uplifted. The sweep of death's scythe had included everything, great and small, within its swath. Over the wall of the yard we looked down upon the winding road which led to the station. A group of the reapers whom we had seen running from the fields were lying all pale-mell, their bodies crossing each other, at the bottom of it. Farther up, the nurse girl lay with her head and shoulders propped against the slope of the grassy bank. She had taken the baby from the parabulator and it was a motionless bundle of wraps in her arms. Close behind her a tiny patch upon the roadside showed where the little boy was stretched. Still nearer to us was the dead cab horse kneeling between the shafts. The old driver was hanging over the splash board like some grotesque scarecrow, his arms dangling absurdly in front of him. Through the window we could dimly discern that a young man was seated inside. The door was swinging open, and his hand was grasping the handle as if he had attempted to leap forth at the last instant. In the middle distance lay the golf links, dotted as they had been in the morning with the dark figures of the golfers, lying motionless upon the grass of the course or among the heather which skirted it. On one particular green there were eight bodies stretched where a foursome with its caddies had held to their game to the last. No bird flew in the blue vault of heaven. No man or beast moved upon the vast countryside which lay before us. The evening sun shone its peaceful radiance across it, but there brooded over it all the stillness and the silence of universal death, a death in which we were so soon to join. At the present instant that one frail sheet of glass by holding in the extra oxygen which counteracted the poisoned ether shut us off from the fate of all our kind. For a few short hours the knowledge and foresight of one man could preserve our little oasis of life in the vast desert of death and save us from participation in the common catastrophe. Then the gas would run low. We too should lie gasping upon that cherry-colored boudoir carpet and the fate of the human race and of all earthly life would be complete. For a long time in a mood which was too solemn for speech, we looked out at the tragic world. There is a house on fire, said Challenger at last, pointing to a column of smoke which rose above the trees. There will, I expect, be many such, possibly whole cities in flames when we consider how many folk may have dropped with lights in their hands. The fact of combustion is in itself enough to show that the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere is normal and that it is the ether which is at fault. Ah, there you see another blaze on the top of Crowborough Hill. It is the golf clubhouse, or I'm mistaken. There is the church clock chiming the hour. It would interest our philosophers to know that man-made mechanisms have survived the race who made it. By George, cried Lord John, rising it sightedly from his chair, what's that puff of smoke? It's a train. We heard the roar of it and presently it came flying into sight, going at what seemed to me to be a prodigious speed. Whence it had come or how far we had no means of knowing. Only by some miracle of luck could it have gone any distance. But now we were to see the terrific end of its career. A train of coal trucks stood motionless upon the line. We held our breath as the express roared along the same track. The crash was horrible. Engine and carriages piled themselves into a hill of splintered wood and twisted iron. Red spurts of flame flickered up from the wreckage until it was all a blaze. For half an hour we sat with hardly a word, stunned by the stupendous sight. Poor, poor people! Cried Mrs. Challenger at last, clinging with a whimper to her husband's arm. My dear, the passengers on that train were no more animate than the coals into which they crashed or the carbon which they have now become, said Challenger, stroking her hand soothingly. It was a train of the living when it left Victoria, but it was driven infrated by the dead long before it reached its fate. All over the world the same thing must be going on, said I as a vision of strange happenings rose before me. Think of the ships at sea, how they will steam on and on until the furnaces die down or until they run full tilt upon some beach. The sailing ships too, how they will back and fill with their cargoes of dead sailors while their timbers rot in their joints leak till one by one they sink below the surface. Perhaps a century hence the Atlantic may still be dotted with the old drifting derelicts. Add the folk and the coal mines, said summerly with a dismal chuckle. If ever geologists should by any chance live upon earth again they will have some strange theories of the existence of man in carboniferous strata. I don't profess to know about such things, remarked Lord John, but it seems to me the earth will be too let, empty, after this, when once our human crowd is wiped off it, how will it ever get on again? The world was empty before, challenger answered gravely. Under laws which in their inception are beyond and above us, it became peopled. Why may the same process not happen again? My dear challenger, you can't mean that? I am not in the habit, Professor Summerly, of saying things which I do not mean. The observation is trivial. Out went the beard and down came the eyelids. Well, you have lived an obstinate dogmatist and you mean to die one, said Summerly sourly. And you, sir, have lived an unimaginative obstructionist and never can hope now to emerge from it. Your worse critics will never accuse you of lacking imagination, Summerly retorted. Upon my word, said Lord John, it would be like you if you used up our last gasp of oxygen in abusing each other. What can it matter whether folk come back or not? It surely won't be in our time. In that remark, sir, you betray your own very pronounced limitations, said challenger severely. The true scientific mind is not to be tied down by its own conditions of time and space. It builds itself an observatory erected upon the borderline of present, which separates the infinite past from the infinite future. From this sure post it makes its salleys even to the beginning and to the end of all things. As to death, the scientific mind dies at its post, working in normal and methodic fashion to the end. It disregards so petty a thing as its own physical dissolution, as completely as it does all other limitations upon the plane of matter. Am I right, Professor Summerly? Summerly grumbled an ungracious assent. With certain reservations, I agree, said he. The ideal scientific mind, continued challenger, I put it in the third person rather than appear to be too self-complacent. The ideal scientific mind should be capable of thinking out a point of abstract knowledge in the interval between its owner falling from a balloon and reaching the earth. Men of this strong fiber are needed to form the conquerors of nature and the bodyguard of truth. It strikes me, nature's on top this time, said Lord John, looking out of the window. I've read some leading articles about you gentlemen controlling her, but she's getting a bit of her own back. It is but a temporary setback, said challenger with conviction. A few million years, what are they in the great cycle of time? The vegetable world has, as you can see, survived. Look at the leaves of that plane tree. The birds are dead, but the plant flourishes. From this vegetable life in pond and in marsh will come in time the tiny crawling microscopic slugs which are the pioneers of that great army of life in which for the instant we five have the extraordinary duty of serving as rearguard. Once the lowest form of life has established itself, the final advent of man is as certain as the growth of the oak from the acorn. The old circle will swing round once more. But the poison, I asked, will that not nip life in the bud? The poison may be a mere stratum or layer in the ether, a mephitic gulf stream across that mighty ocean in which we float, or tolerance may be established and life accommodate itself to a new condition. The mere fact that with a comparatively small hyperoxygenation of our blood we can hold out against it is surely a proof in itself that no very great change would be needed to enable animal life to endure it. The smoking house beyond the trees had burst into flame. We could see the high tongues of fire shooting up into the air. It's pretty awful. Mother Lord John, more impressed than I had ever seen him. Well, after all, what does it matter? I remarked. The world is dead. Cremation is surely the best burial. It would shorten us up if this house went ablaze. I foresaw the danger, said Challenger, and asked my wife to guard against it. Everything is quite safe, dear, but my head begins to throb again. What a dreadful atmosphere! We must change it, said Challenger. He bent over his cylinder of oxygen. It's nearly empty, said he. It has lasted us some three and a half hours. It is now close on eight o'clock. We shall get through the night comfortably. I should expect the end about nine o'clock tomorrow morning. We shall see one sunrise, which shall be all our own. He turned on his second tube, and opened for half a minute the fan light over the door. Then as the air became perceptibly better, but our own symptoms more acute, he closed it once again. By the way, said he, man does not live upon oxygen alone. It's dinner time and over. I assure you, gentlemen, that when I invited you to my home, and to what I had hoped would be an interesting reunion, I had intended that my kitchen should justify itself. However, we must do what we can. I am sure that you will agree with me that it would be folly to consume our air too rapidly by lighting an oil stove. I have some small provision of cold meats, bread, and pickles, which, with a couple of bottles of claret, may serve our turn. Thank you, my dear. Now, as ever, you are the queen of managers. It was indeed wonderful how, with the self-respect and sense of propriety of the British housekeeper, the lady had within a few minutes adorned the central table with a snow-white cloth, laid the napkins upon it, and set forth the simple meal with all the elegance of civilization, including an electric torch lamp in the center. Wonderful also was it to find that our appetites were ravenous. It is the measure of our emotion, said Challenger with that air of condescension with which he brought his scientific mind to the explanation of humble facts. We have gone through a great crisis. That means molecular disturbance. That, in turn, means the need for repair. Great sorrow or great joy should bring intense hunger, not abstinence from food, as our novelists will have it. That's why the country folk have great feasts at funerals, I hazarded. Exactly. Our young friend has hit upon an excellent illustration. Let me give you another slice of tongue. The same with savages, said Lord John, cutting away at the beef. I've seen them bearing a chief up their Erawimmy River, and they ate a hippo that must have weighed as much as a tribe. There are some of them down New Guinea way that eat the late lamented himself, just by way of a last tidy up. Well, of all the funeral feasts on this earth, I suppose the one we are taken is the queerest. The strange thing is, said Mrs. Challenger, that I find it impossible to feel grief for those who are gone. There are my father and mother at Bedford. I know that they are dead, and yet in this tremendous universal tragedy I can feel no sharp sorrow for any individuals, even for them. And my old mother in her cottage in Ireland, said I, I can see her in my mind's eye with her shawl and her lace cap lying back with closed eyes and the old high-backed chair near the window, her glasses and her book beside her. Why should I mourn her? She has passed, and I am passing, and I may be nearer her in some other life than England is to Ireland. Yet I grieve to think that that dear body is no more. As to the body, remarked Challenger, we do not mourn over the pairings of our nails nor the cut locks of our hair, though they were once part of ourselves. Neither does a one-legged man yearn sentimentally over his missing member. The physical body has rather been a source of pain and fatigue to us. It is the constant index of our limitations. Why then should we worry about its detachment from our psychical selves? If they can indeed be detached, some are grumbled, but anyhow universal death is dreadful. As I have already explained, said Challenger, a universal death must in its nature be far less terrible than an isolated one. Same in a battle, remarked Lord John. If you saw a single man lying on that floor with his chest knocked in, in a hole in his face, it would turn you sick. But I've seen 10,000 on their backs in the Sudan, and it gave me no such feeling. For when you are making history, the life of any man is too small a thing to worry over. When a thousand million pass over together, same has happened today. You can't pick your own particular out of the crowd. I wish it were well over with us, said the lady wistfully. Oh, George, I am so frightened. You'll be the bravest of us all, little lady, when the time comes. I've been a bluster-sold husband to you, dear, but you'll just bear in mind that G.E.C. is as he was made and couldn't help himself. After all, you wouldn't have had anyone else? No one in the whole wide world, dear, said she, and put her arms round his bull-neck. We three walked to the window and stood amazed at the sight which met our eyes. Darkness had fallen and the dead world was shrouded in gloom. But right across the southern horizon was one long vivid scarlet streak, waxing and waning in vivid pulses of life, leaping suddenly to a crimson zenith and then dying down to a glowing line of fire. Loses a blaze. No, it is brightened which is burning, said Challenger, stepping across to join us. You can see the curve back of the downs against the glow. That fire is miles on the farther side of it. The whole town must be a light. There were several red glares at different points and the pile of debris upon the railway line was still smoldering darkly, but they all seemed mere pinpoints of light compared to that monstrous conflagration throbbing beyond the hills. What copy it would have made for the Gazette? Had ever a journalist such an opening and so little chance of using it? The scoop of scoops and no one to appreciate it. And then suddenly the old instinct of recording came over me. If these men of science could be so true to their life's work to the very end, why should not I, in my humble way, be as constant? No human eye might ever rest upon what I had done, but the long night had to be passed somehow, and for me at least, sleep seemed to be out of the question. My notes would help to pass the weary hours and to occupy my thoughts. Thus it is that now I have before me the notebook with its scribbled pages, written confusedly upon my knee in the dim, waning light of our one electric torch. Had I the literary touch, they might have been worthy of the occasion. As it is, they may still serve to bring to other minds the long-drawn emotions and tremors of that awful night. End of chapter.