 CHAPTER 1 OF THE STOLEN BACILLUS AND OTHER STORIES This again, said the bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, is a preparation of the celebrated bacillus of cholera, the cholera germ. The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. I see very little, he said. Touch the screws, said the bacteriologist. Perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much, just the fraction of a turn this way or that. Ah, I see, said the visitor. Not so very much to see, after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink, and yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city. Wonderful! He stood up and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in his hand toward the window. Scarcely visible, he said, scrutinizing the preparation. He hesitated. Are these alive? Are they dangerous now? Those have been stained and killed, said the bacteriologist. I wish for my own part we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe. I suppose, the pale man said with a slight smile, that you scarcely care to have such things about you in the living, in the active state. On the contrary, we are obliged to, said the bacteriologist. Here, for instance, he walked across the room and took up one of several sealed tubes. Here is the living thing. This is the cultivation of the actual living disease bacteria, he hesitated, bottled cholera, so to speak. A slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the pale man. It's a deadly thing to have in your possession, he said, devouring the little tube with his eyes. The bacteriologist watched the morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep gray eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor, were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was, perhaps, natural with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic to take the most effective aspect of the matter. He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. Yes, here is the pestilence imprisoned. They break such a little tube as this into a supply of drinking water, say to these minute particles of life that one must need stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope, even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste, say to them, go forth, increase and multiply, and replenish the cisterns, and death. Mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity, would be released upon this city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims. Here he would take the husband from the wife, hear the child from its mother, hear the statesman from his duty, and hear the toiler from his trouble. He would follow the water mains creeping along streets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they did not boil their drinking water, creeping into the wells of the mineral water-makers, getting washed into salad and lying dormant in ices. He would wait, ready to be drunk in the horse troughs and by unwary children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. Once start him at the water supply, and before we could wring him in and catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis. He stopped abruptly. He had been told rhetoric was his weakness. But he is quite safe here, you know, quite safe. The pale-faced man nodded. His eyes shone. He cleared his throat. His anarchist rascals said he are fools, blind fools, to use bombs, when this kind of thing is attainable, I think. A gentle rap, a mere light touch of the fingernails, was heard at the door. The bacteriologist opened it. Just a minute, dear, whispered his wife. When he re-entered the laboratory, his visitor was looking at his watch. I had no idea. I had wasted an hour of your time, he said, twelve minutes to four. I ought to have left here by half-past three. But your things were really too interesting. No positively. I cannot stop a moment longer. I have an engagement at four. He passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and the bacteriologist accompanied him to the door and then returned thoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. He was musing on the ethnology of his visitor. Certainly the man was not a teutonic type, nor a common Latin one. A morbid product anyhow, I'm afraid, said the bacteriologist to himself, how he gloated on those cultivations of disease germs. A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapor bath, and then very quickly to his writing table. Then he felt hastily in his pockets, and then rushed to the door. I may have put it down on the hall table, he said. Mini! he shouted hoarsely in the hall. Yes, dear, came a remote voice. Had I anything in my hand when I spoke to you, dear, just now? Pause. Nothing, dear, because I remember. Blue Ruin! cried the bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the front door and down the steps of his house to the street. Mini, hearing the door slam violently, ran an alarm to the window. Down the street a slender man was getting into a cab. The bacteriologist, hatless, and in his carpet slippers was running and gesticulating wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, but he did not wait for it. He has gone mad, said Mini. It's that horrid science of his. An opening the window would have called after him. The slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder. He pointed hastily to the bacteriologist, said something to the cab man, the apron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horses' feet clattered, and in a moment, cab and bacteriologist, hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner. Mini remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she drew her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. Of course he is eccentric, she meditated, but running about London in the height of the season, too, in his socks. A happy thought struck her. She hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon the doorstep, and hailed the cab that, opportunely, crawled by. Drive me up the road and round Halflock Crescent and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat. Velveteen coat, mom, and no hat, very good, mom, and the cab man whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to this address every day in his life. Some few minutes later the little group of cab man and loafers that collects round the cab man's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse driven furiously. They were silent as it went by, and then as it receded. That's Ariix. What's he got? said the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles. He's a-using as whippy as to write, said the Osler boy. Hello, said poor old Tommy Biles. Here's another bloomin' lunatic, bloat if there ain't. It's old George, said Old Tootles, and he's drivin' a lunatic as you say. Ain't he clawin' out of the cab? Wonder if he's after Ariix. The group round the cab man's shelter became animated. Chorus, go it, George, it's a race. You'll catch him. Whip up. She's a goer, she is, said the Osler boy. Strike me giddy, cried Old Tootles. Here I'm going to begin in a minute. Here's another comin'. If all the cabs in hemstead ain't gone mad this morning. It's a field mail this time, said the Osler boy. She's a-following him, said Old Tootles. Usually the other way about. What's she got in her hand? Looks like a eye-at. What a bloomin' lark it is. Three to one on Old George, said the Osler boy. Next. Minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it, but she felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down Haverstock Hill in Camden Town High Street with her eyes ever intent on the animated back view of Old George, who is driving her vagrant husband so incomprehensibly away from her. The man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms tightly folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mix of fear and exaltation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, and behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exaltation far exceeded his fear. No anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravashol, Vaillon, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied, dwindled into insignificance beside him. He had only to make sure of the water supply, and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantly he had planned it, forged the letter of introduction and got into the laboratory, and how brilliantly he had ceased his opportunity. The world should hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered at him, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company undesirable, should consider him at last. Death! Death! Death! They had always treated him as a man of no importance. All the world had been in a conspiracy to keep him under. He would teach them yet what it is to isolate a man. What was this familiar street? Great St. Andrews Street, of course. How feared the chase? He craned out of the cab. The bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. That was bad. He would be caught and stopped yet. He felt in his pocket for money, and found half a sovereign. This he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cabin to the man's face. More he shouted, if only we get away. The money was snatched out of his hand. Right you are, said the cabman, and the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the glistening side of the horse. The cab swayed, and the anarchist, half standing under the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance. He felt the brittle thing crack, and the broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. He fell back into the seat with a curse, and stared dismally at the two or three drops of moisture on the apron. He shuddered. Well, I suppose I shall be the first. Anyhow, I shall be a martyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death, nevertheless. I wonder if it hurts as much as they say. Presently a thought occurred to him. He groped between his feet. A little drop was still in the broken end of the two. And he drank that to make sure. It was better to make sure, at any rate, he would not fail. Thus it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the bacteriologist. In Wellington Street, he told the cabin to stop and got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid stuff this cholera poison. He waved his cabin out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast, awaiting the arrival of the bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose. The sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity. He greeted his pursuer with a defiant laugh. « Vive la Narchie, you are too late, my friend. I have drunk it. The cholera is abroad. » The bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his spectacles. « You have drunk it, an anarchist I see now. He was about to say something more and then checked himself. A smile hung in the corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at which the anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off toward Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many people as possible. » The bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance of many upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and overcoat. « Very good of you to bring my things, he said, and remain lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the anarchist. You'd better get in, he said, still staring. » Many felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. « Put on my shoes, certainly, dear, said he, as the cab began to turn and hid the strutting black figure now small in the distance from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque struck him and he laughed. Then he remarked, « It is really very serious, though. » You see, that man came to my house to see me and he's an anarchist. No don't faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest, and I wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an anarchist, and took up a cultivation of that new species of bacterium I was telling you of, that infest and I think caused the blue patches upon various monkeys. And like a fool, I said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with it to poison the water of London and he certainly might have made things look blue for this civilized city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course I cannot say what will happen. But you know it turned that kitten blue, in the three puppies in patches in the sparrow bright blue. But the bother is, I shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more. Put on my coat on this hot day? Why? Because we might meet Mrs. Jabber? My dear, Mrs. Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a hot day because of Mrs. Oh, very well. End of chapter 1 Chapter 2 of the Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lauren Randall. The Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories by H. G. Wells. The Flowering of the Strange Orchid. The buying of orchids always has ended a certain speculative flavor. You have before you the brown shriveled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps, for the thing has happened again and again, there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser day after day. Some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the libellum, or some subtler coloration, or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike. And it may be even immortality, for the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name. And what so convenient is that of its discoverer? John Smithia. There have been worse names. It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wetterburn such a frequent attendant at these sales. That hope, and also may be the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps, or coins, or translated horrors, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms, but as it happened he grew orchids and had one ambitious little hot house. I have a fancy, he said over his coffee. That something is going to happen to me today. He spoke as he moved and thought, slowly. Oh, don't say that, said his housekeeper, who was also his remote cousin. For something happening was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her. You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant, but what I do mean I scarcely know. Today he continued after a pause. Peters are going to sell a batch of plants from the Andamons and the Indies. I shall go up and see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good unawares. That may be it. He passed his cup for a second cup full of coffee. Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day? Asked his cousin as she filled his cup. Yes, he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast. Nothing ever does happen to me, he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. I wonder why? Things enough happened to other people. There is Harvey, only the other week. On Monday he picked up six pence. On Wednesday his chicks all had the stackers. On Friday his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl of excitement compared to me. I think I would rather be without so much excitement, said his housekeeper. It can't be good for you. I suppose it's troublesome, still. You see, nothing ever happens to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in love as I grew up, never married. I wonder how it feels to have something happen to you, something really remarkable. That orchid collector was only thirty-six, twenty years younger than myself when he died, and he had been married twice and divorced once. He had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh he killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poison dart. And in the end he was killed by jungle leeches. It must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know, except perhaps the leeches. I am sure it was not good for him, said the lady with conviction. Perhaps not. And then Wutterborn looked at his watch. Twenty-three minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket. It is quite warm enough, and my gray felt hat and brown shoes, I suppose. He glanced out the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face. I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London. She said in a voice that admitted of no denial. There's all between here and the station coming back. When he returned, he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so. There are vandas, he said, and a dendrobe and some phallinopsis. He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for Hurt and his own entertainment. I knew something would happen today, and I have bought all these. Some of them, some of them, I feel sure. Do you know that some of them will be remarkable? I don't know how it is, but I feel just as sure as if someone had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable. That one, he pointed to a shriveled rhizome, was not identified. It may be a phallinopsis, or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus, and it was the last that poor batten ever collected. I don't like the look of it, said his housekeeper. It's such an ugly shape. To me, it scarcely seems to have a shape. I don't like those things that stick out, said his housekeeper. It shall be put away in a pot tomorrow. It looks, said the housekeeper, like a spider shaming dead. Wetterburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. It is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff, but you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be tomorrow. I must see tonight just exactly what to do with these things, and tomorrow I shall set to work. They found poor batten lying dead or dying in a mangrove swamp. I forget which. He began again presently. With one of these very orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain. I think none the better of it for that. Men must work though women may weep, said Wetterburn, with profound gravity. Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp. Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorideine and quinine. If men were left to themselves, they would live on chlorideine and quinine, and no one round you but horrible natives. They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches, and anyhow they can scarcely make good nurses not having the necessary training, and just for people in England to have orchids. I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seemed to enjoy that kind of thing, said Wetterburn. Anyhow the natives of his party were sufficiently civilized to take care of all his collection until his colleague who was an ornithologist came back again from the interior, though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had let it wither, and it makes these things more interesting. It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them, and just think there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing. I never thought of that before. There I declare I cannot eat another mouth full of dinner. I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window seat. I can see them just as well there. The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hot house, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange. Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam making to see it at once. Directly he made the discovery. That is a bud, he said, and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are acryl rootlets. They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown, said his housekeeper. I don't like them. Why not? I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can't help my likes and dislikes. I don't know for certain, but I don't think there are any orchids I know that have acryl rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends. I don't like them, said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. I know it's very silly of me, and I'm very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much, but I can't help thinking of that corpse. But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of mine. His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. Anyhow, I don't like it, she said. Wetterburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular whenever he felt inclined. There are such queer things about orchids, he said one day. Such possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilization and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant. Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known, the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilization in that way. Some of the Cipropidiums, for instance, there are no insects known that can possibly fertilize them, and some of them have never been found with seed. But how do they form new plants? By runners and tubers and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily explained. The puzzle is what are the flowers for? Very likely, he added, my orchid may be something extraordinary in that way. If so, I shall study it. I have often thought of making researches, as Darwin did, but hitherto I have not found the time, or something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to unfold now, I do wish you would come and see them. But she said that the orchid house was so hot it gave her the headache. She had seen the plant once again, and the acryl rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something, and they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity, so that she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and Wetterburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the ordinary broad form and a deep glossy green with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base. He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot water pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons now with some regularity, meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant. And at last, the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass house, he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great phalanopsis loii hid the corner where his new darling stood. There was a new odor in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent that overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse. Directly he noticed this, he hurried down to the strange orchid, and behold, the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration. The flowers were white with streaks of gold and orange upon the petals. The heavy labellin was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one, and the insufferable scent, how hot the place was, the blossoms swam before his eyes. He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the thermometer, suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. At half past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom, but Wetterburn did not come in for his tea. He is worshipping that horrid orchid, she told herself, and waited ten minutes. His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him. She went straight to the hot house and opening the door called his name. There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close and loaded with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot water pipes. For a minute perhaps she stood motionless. He was lying face upward at the foot of the strange orchid. The tentacle-like acryl rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together a tangle of gray ropes and stretched tight with her ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands. She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek. There trickled a little thread of blood. With an inarticulate cry she ran toward him and tried to pull him away from the leech like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles and their sap dripped red. Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head real. How they clung to him. She tore at the tough ropes and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door and after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air she had a brilliant inspiration. She caught up a flower pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the greenhouse. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at Wettabern's motionless body and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with a grimace tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy she lugged it and him into the open air. Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror. He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches. The odd job man was coming up the garden amazed at the smashing of glass and saw her emerge hauling the inanimate body with red stained hands for a moment he thought impossible things. Bring some water! she cried and her voice dispelled his fancies. When with a natural alacrity he returned with the water he found her weeping with excitement and with Wettabern's head upon her knee wiping the blood from his face. What's the matter? said Wettabern, opening his eyes feebly and closing them again at once. Go and tell Annie to come out here to me and then go for Dr. Haddon at once. She said to the odd job man so soon as he brought the water and added seeing he hesitated. I will tell you all about it when you come back. Presently Wettabern opened his eyes again and seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position she explained to him, you fainted in the hot house. In the orchid? I will see to that, she said. Wettabern had lost a good deal of blood but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to Dr. Haddon. Come to the orchid house and see, she said. The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn acryl rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. The doctor stooped toward it then saw that one of the acryl rootlets still stirred feebly and hesitated. The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze and all the array of Wettabern's orchids was shriveled and prostrate. But Wettabern himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of the Stolen Bay Silas and Other Stories. The Stolen Bay Silas and Other Stories by H. G. Wells. Chapter 3. In the Avoo Observatory. The observatory at Avoo in Borneo stands on the spur of the mountain. To the north rises the old crater black at night against the unfalemable blue of the sky. From the little circular building with its mushroom dome, the slopes plunge steeply downward into the black mysteries of the tropical forest beneath. The little house in which the observer and his assistant live is about fifty yards from the observatory and beyond this are the huts of their native attendants. Thaddey, the chief observer, was down with a slight fever. His assistant, Woodhouse, paused for a moment in silent contemplation of the tropical night before commencing his solitary vigil. The night was very still. Now in the invoices and laughter came from the native huts or the cry of some strange animal was heard from the midst of the mystery of the forest. Nocturnal insects appeared in ghostly fashion out of the darkness and flittered round his light. He thought, perhaps of all the possibilities of discovery that still lay in the black tangle beneath him. For to the naturalist the virgin forests of Borneo are still a wonderland full of strange questions and half-suspected discoveries. Woodhouse carried a small lantern in his hand and its yellow glow contrasted vividly with the infinite series of tints between lavender blue and black in which the landscape was painted. His hands and face were smeared with ointment against the attacks of the mosquitoes. Even in these days of celestial photography, work done in a purely temporary erection and with only the most primitive appliances in addition to the telescope still involves a very large amount of cramped and motionless watching. He sighed as he thought of the physical fatigues before him, stretched himself, and entered the observatory. The reader is probably familiar with the structure of an ordinary astronomical observatory. The building is usually cylindrical in shape with a very light temispherical roof capable of being turned round from the interior. The telescope is supported upon a stone pillar in the center and a clockwork arrangement compensates for the earth's rotation and allows a star once found to be continually observed. Besides this there is a compact tracery of wheels and screws about its point of support by which the astronomer adjusts it. There is of course a slit in the movable roof which follows the eye of the telescope in its survey of the heavens. The observer sits or lies on a sloping wooden arrangement which he can wheel to any part of the observatory as the position of the telescope may require. Within it is advisable to have things as dark as possible in order to enhance the brilliance of the stars observed. The lantern flared as Woodhouse entered his circular den and the general darkness fled into black shadows behind the big machine from which it presently seemed to creep back over the whole place again as the light waned. The slit was a profound transparent blue in which six stars shown with tropical brilliance and their light lay a pallid gleam along the black tube of the instrument. Woodhouse shifted the roof and then proceeding to the telescope turned first one wheel and then another a great cylinder slowly swinging into a new position. Then he glanced through the finder, the little companion telescope, moved the roof a little more, made some further adjustments, and set the clockwork in motion. He took off his jacket for the night was very hot and pushed into position the uncomfortable seat to which he was condemned for the next four hours. Then with a sigh he resigned himself to his watch upon the mysteries of space. There was no sound now in the observatory and the lantern waned steadily. Outside there was the occasional cry of some animal in alarm or pain or calling to its mate in the intermittent sounds of the Malay and Dayak servants. Presently one of the men began a queer chanting song in which the others joined at intervals. After this it would seem that they turned in for the night for no further sound came from their direction and the whispering stillness became more and more profound. The clockwork ticked steadily. The shrill hum of a mosquito explored the place and grew shriller in indignation at Woodhouse's ointment. Then the lantern went out and all the observatory was black. Woodhouse shifted his position presently when the slow movement of the telescope had carried it beyond the limits of his comfort. He was watching a little group of stars in the Milky Way in one of which his chief had seen or fancied a remarkable color variability. It was not a part of the regular work for which the establishment existed and for that reason perhaps Woodhouse was deeply interested. He must have forgotten things terrestrial. All his attention was concentrated upon the great blue circle of the telescope field, a circle powdered so it seemed with an innumerable multitude of stars and all luminous against the blackness of its setting. As he watched he seemed to himself to become incorporeal as if he too were floating in the ether of space. Infinitely remote was the faint red spot he was observing. Suddenly the stars were blotted out, a flash of blackness passed and they were visible again. Queer said Woodhouse, must have been a bird. The thing happened again and immediately after the great tube shivered as though it had been struck then the dome of the observatory resounded with a series of thundering blows. The stars seemed to sweep aside as the telescope, which had been undamped, swung round and away from the slit in the roof. Great Scott, cried Woodhouse, what's this? Some huge vague black shape with a flapping something like a wing seemed to be struggling in the aperture of the roof. In another moment the slit was clear again and the luminous haze of the milky way shone warm and bright. The interior of the roof was perfectly black and only a scraping sound marked the whereabouts of the unknown creature. Woodhouse had scrambled from the seat to his feet. He was trembling violently and in a perspiration with the suddenness of the occurrence was the thing, whatever it was, inside or out. It was big, whatever else it might be. Something shot across the skylight and the telescope swayed. He started violently and put his arm up. It was in the observatory then, with him. It was clinging to the roof, apparently. What the devil was it? Could it see him? He stood for perhaps a minute in a state of stupefaction. The beast, whatever it was, clawed at the interior of the dome and then something flapped almost into his face and he saw the momentary gleam of starlight on a skin-like oiled leather. His water bottle was knocked off his little table with a smash. The sense of some strange bird creature hovering a few yards from his face in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to Woodhouse. As his thought returned, he concluded that it must be some night bird or large bat. At any risk he would see what it was and pulling a match from his pocket. He tried to strike it on the telescope's seat. There was a smoking streak of phosphorous light. The match flared for a moment and he saw a vast wing sweeping towards him a gleam of gray brown fur and then he was struck in the face and the match knocked out of his hand. The blow was aimed at his temple and a claw towards sideways down his cheek. He reeled and fell and he heard the extinguished lantern smash. Another blow followed as he fell. He was partly stunned. He felt his own warm blood stream out upon his face. Instinctively he felt his eyes had been struck at and turning over on his face to protect them tried to crawl under the protection of the telescope. He was struck again upon the back and he heard his jacket rip and then the thing hit the roof of the observatory. He edged as far as he could between the wooden seat and the eyepiece of the instrument and turned his body round so that it was chiefly his feet that were exposed. With these he could at least kick. He was still in a mystified state. The strange beast banged about in the darkness and presently clung to the telescope making its sway and the gear rattle. Once it flapped near him and he kicked out madly and felt a soft body with his feet. He was horribly scared now. It must be a big thing to swing the telescope like that. He saw for a moment the outline of a head black against the starlight with sharply pointed upstanding ears and a crest between them. It seemed to him to be as big as a mastiff's. Then he began to bawl out as loudly as he could for help. At that the thing came down upon him again. As it did so his hand touched something beside him on the floor. He kicked out and the next moment his ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. He yelled again and tried to free his leg by kicking with the other. Then he realized he had the broken water bottle at his hand and snatching it. He struggled into a sitting posture and feeling in the darkness towards his foot gripped a velvety ear like the ear of a big cat. He had seized the water bottle by its neck and brought it down with a shivering crash upon the head of the strange beast. He repeated the blow and then stabbed and jobbed with a jagged end of it in the darkness where he judged the face might be. The small teeth relaxed their hold and at once Woodhouse pulled his leg free and kicked hard. He felt the sickening feel of fur and bone giving under his boot. There was a tearing bite at his arm and he struck over it at the face as he judged and hit damp fur. There was a pause and he heard the sound of claws on the dragging of a heavy body away from him over the observatory floor. Then there was silence, broken only by his own, sobbing, breathing, and a sound like licking. Everything was black except the parallelogram of the blue skylight with the luminous dust of stars against which the end of the telescope now appeared in silhouette. He waited as it seemed an interminable time. Was the thing coming on again? He felt in his trouser pocket for some matches and found one remaining. He tried to strike this but the floor was wet and his spat and went out. He cursed. He could not see where the door was situated. In his struggle he had quite lost his bearings. A strange beast disturbed by the splutter of the match began to move again. Time called Woodhouse with a sudden gleam of mirth. But the thing was not coming at him again. He must have hurt it, he thought, with the broken bottle. He felt a dull pain in his ankle. Probably he was bleeding there. He wondered if it would support him if he tried to stand up. The night outside was very still. There was no sound of anyone moving. The sleepy fools had not heard those wings battering upon the dome nor his shouts. It was no good wasting strength in shouting. The monster flapped its wings and startled him into a defensive attitude. He hit his elbow against the seat and it fell over with a crash. He cursed this and then he cursed the darkness. Suddenly the oblong patch of starlight seemed to sway to and fro. Was he going to faint? It would never do to faint. He clenched his fists and set his teeth to hold himself together. Where had the door got to? It occurred to him he could get his bearings by the stars visible through the skylight. The patch of stars he saw was in Sagittarius and southeastward. The door was north. Or was it north by west? He tried to think. If he could get the door open he might retreat. It might be the thing was wounded. The suspense was beastly. Look here, he said. If you don't come on I shall come at you. Then the thing began clamoring up the side of the observatory and he saw its black outline gradually blot out the skylight. Was it in retreat? He forgot about the door and watched as the dome shifted and creaked. Somehow he did not feel very frightened or excited now. He felt a curious sinking sensation inside him. The sharply defined patch of light with the black form moving across it seemed to be growing smaller and smaller. That was curious. He began to feel very thirsty and yet he did not feel inclined to get anything to drink. He seemed to be sliding down a long funnel. He felt a burning sensation in his throat and then he perceived it was broad daylight and that one of the Dyax servants was looking at him with a curious expression. Then there was the top of Thaddee's face upside down. Funny fellow Thaddee to go about like that. Then he grasped the situation better and perceived that his head was on Thaddee's knee and Thaddee was giving him brandy and then he saw the eyepiece of the telescope with a lot of red smears on it. He began to remember. You have made this observatory in a pretty mess, said Thaddee. The Dyax boy was beating up an egg and brandy. Woodhouse took this and set up. He felt a sharp twinge of pain. His ankle was tied up. So were his arm and the side of his face. The smashed glass, red stained, lay about the floor. The telescope seat was overturned and by the opposite wall was a dark pool. The door was open. He saw the gray summit of the mountain against a brilliant background of blue sky. Pah! said Woodhouse. Who's been killing calves here? Take me out of it. Then he remembered the thing and the fight he had had with it. What was it? he said to Thaddee. The thing I fought with. You know that best, said Thaddee. But anyhow, don't worry yourself now about it. Have some more to drink. Thaddee, however, was curious enough and it was a hard struggle between duty and inclination to keep Woodhouse quiet until he was decently put away in bed and had slept upon the copious dose of meat extract Thaddee considered advisable. They then talked it over together. It was, said Woodhouse, more like a big bat than anything else in the world. It had sharp, short ears and soft fur and its wings were leathery, its teeth were little, but devilish sharp and its jaw could not have been very strong or else it would have bitten through my ankle. It has pretty nearly, said Thaddee. It seemed to me to hit out with its claws pretty freely. That is about as much as I know about the beast. Our conversation was intimate, so to speak, yet not confidential. The Dyak chaps talk about a big colugo, a clangutang, whatever that may be. It does not often attack men, but I suppose you made it nervous. They say there is a big colugo and a little colugo and a something else that sounds like gobble. They all fly about at night. For my own part, I know there are flying foxes and flying lemurs about here, but they are none of them very big beasts. There are more things in heaven and earth, said Woodhouse, and Thaddee groaned at the quotation, and more particularly in the forests of Borneo than are dreamt of in our philosophies. On the whole, if the Borneo fauna is going to discourage any more of its novelties upon me, I should prefer that it did so when I was not occupied in the observatory at night and alone. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of The Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by James White The Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories by H. G. Wells The Triumphs of a Taxidermist Here are some of the secrets of taxidermy. They were told me by the taxidermist in a mood of elation. He told me them in the time between the first glass of whiskey and the fourth, when a man is no longer cautious and yet not drunk. We sat in his den together. His library it was, his sitting and his eating room, separated by a bead curtain so far as the sense of sight went from the noisome den where he plied his trade. He sat on a deck chair, and when he was not tapping refractory bits of coal with him, he kept his feet, on which he wore, after the manner of sandals, the holy relics of a pair of carpet slippers, out of the way upon the mantelpiece, among the glass eyes. And his trousers, by the by, though they have nothing to do with his triumphs, were a most horrible yellow plaid, such as they made when our fathers wore side whiskers and there were crinolins in the land. Further his hair was black, his face rosy, and his eye a fiery brown, and his coat was chiefly of grease upon a basis of velveteen, and his pipe had a bowl of china showing the graces, and his spectacles were always askew, the left eye glaring nakedly at you, small and penetrating, the right, seen through a glass darkly, magnified and mild. Thus his discourse ran. There never was a man who could stuff like me, bellows, never. I have stuffed elephants and I have stuffed moths, and the things have looked all the livelier and better for it. And I have stuffed human beings, chiefly amateur ornithologists, but I stuffed a nigger once. No, there was no law against it. I made him with all his fingers out and used him as a hat-rack, but that fool Homer's bee got up a quarrel with him late one night and spoiled him. That was before your time. It is hard to get skins or I would have another. Unpleasant? I don't see it. Seems to me taxidermy is a promising third course to burial or cremation. You could keep all your dear ones by you. Brickback of that sort stuck about the house would be as good as most company, and much less expensive. You might have them fitted up with clockwork to do things. Of course they would have to be varnished, but they need not shine more than lots of people do naturally. Old manning-trees bald head. Anyhow you could talk to them without interruption. Even aunts. There's a great future before taxidermy depend upon it. There is fossils again. He suddenly became silent. No, I don't think I ought to tell you that. He sucked at his pipe thoughtfully. Thanks, yes, not too much water. Of course what I tell you now will go no further. You know I have made some dodos in a great awk? No, evidently you are an amateur at taxidermy. My dear fellow, half the great awks in the world are about as genuine as the handkerchief of St. Veronica, as the holy coat of treves. We make them of grebes feathers and the like, and the great awks eggs too. Good heavens! Yes, we make them out of fine porcelain. I tell you it is worthwhile. They fetch—one fetched three hundred pounds only the other day. That one was really genuine, I believe, but of course one is never certain. It is very fine work, and afterwards you have to get them dusty, for no one who owns one of these precious eggs has ever the temerity to clean the thing. That's the beauty of the business. Even if they suspect an egg, they do not like to examine it too closely. At such brittle capital at best. You did not know that taxidermy rose to heights like that. My boy, it has risen higher. I have rivaled the hands of nature herself. One of the genuine great awks—his voice fell to a whisper—one of the genuine great awks was made by me. No, you must study ornithology and find out which it is yourself. And what is more, I have been approached by a syndicate of dealers to stalk one of the unexplored scaries to the north of Iceland with specimens. I may, some day, but I have another little thing in hand just now. Ever heard of the denornus? It is one of those big birds recently extinct in New Zealand. Moa is its common name, so called because extinct. There is no moa now, see? Well, they have got bones of it, and from some of the marshes even feathers and dried bits of skin. Now I am going to—well, there's no need to make any bones about it—going to forge a complete stuffed moa. I know a chap out there who will pretend to make the fine in a kind of antiseptic swamp and say he stuffed it at once as it threatened to fall to pieces. The feathers are peculiar, but I've got a simply lovely way of dodging up singed bits of ostrich plume. Yes, that is the new smell you noticed. They can only discover the fraud with a microscope, and it will hardly care to pull a nice specimen to bits for that. In this way, you see, I give my little push in the advancement of science. But all this is merely imitating nature. I have done more than that in my time. I have beaten her. He took his feet down from the mantleboard and lent over confidentially towards me. I have created birds, he said, in a low voice. New birds, improvements, like no birds that was ever seen before. He resumed his attitude during an impressive silence. Enriched the universe, rather. Some of the birds I made were new kinds of hunting birds, and very beautiful little things, but some of them were simply rum. The rummest, I think, was the animalopteryx gejuna, gejunus eum, empty, so called because there was really nothing in it. A thoroughly empty bird, except for stuffing. Old Javars has the thing now, and I suppose he is almost as proud of it as I am. It is a masterpiece, bellows. It has all the silly clumsiness of your pelican, all the solemn want of dignity of your parrot, all the gaunt ungameliness of a flamingo, with all the extravagant chromatic conflict of a mandarin duck. Such a bird. I made it out of the skeletons of a stork and a toucan, and a job lot of feathers. Taxidermy of that kind is just pure joy, bellows, to a real artist in the art. How did I come to make it? Simple enough, as all great inventions are. One of those young genii who write a science notes in the papers, got hold of a German pamphlet about the birds of New Zealand, and translated some of it by means of a dictionary and his mother Witt. He must have been one of a very large family with a small mother, and he got mixed between the living apteryx and the extinct animal apteryx. Talked about a bird five feet high, living in the jungles of the North Island, rare, shy, specimens difficult to obtain, and so on. Javars, who even for a collector is a miraculously ignorant man, read these paragraphs, and swore he would have the thing at any price. Rated the dealers with inquiries. It shows what a man can do by persistence, willpower. Here was a bird collector swearing he would have a specimen of a bird that did not exist, that never had existed, and which for a very shame of its own profane ungainliness probably would not exist now if it could help itself. And he got it. He got it. Have some more whiskey bellows, said the taxidermist, rousing himself from a transient contemplation of the mysteries of willpower and the collecting term of mind. And replenished, he proceeded to tell me of how he concocted a most attractive mermaid, and how an itinerant preacher, who could not get an audience because of it, smashed it because it was idolatry, or worse, at Burslem Wakes. But as the conversation of all the parties to this transaction, creator, would-be-preserver, and destroyer, was uniformly unfit for publication, this cheerful incident must still remain unprinted. The reader unacquainted with the dark ways of the collector may perhaps be inclined to doubt my taxidermist, but so far as great aux eggs and the bogus stuffed birds are concerned, I find that he has the confirmation of distinguished ornithological writers, and the note about the New Zealand bird certainly appeared in a morning paper of unblemished reputation, for the taxidermist keeps a copy and has shown it to me. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eddie Chigosi, The Stolen Bersilas, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells. A Deal in Ostriches. Talking of the price of birds, I have seen an ostrich that cost 300 pounds, said the taxidermist, recalling his youth of travel, 300 pounds. He looked at me over his spectacles. I have seen another that was refused at four. No, he said, it wasn't any fancy points. There was just plain ostriches, a little off-color, too owing to dietary, and there wasn't any particular restriction on the demand either. You would have thought five ostriches would have ruled cheap on an East Indian man, but the point was one of them had swallowed a diamond. The chap it had got it off was Sir Mohini Padisha, a tremendous swale, a Piccadilly swale, you might say, up to the neck of him, and then an ugly black head and a whopping turban with this diamond in it. The blessed bird pecked suddenly and had it, and when the chap made a fuss, it realized it had done wrong, I suppose, and went and mixed itself with the others to preserve its incog. It all happened in a minute. I was a man the first to arrive, and there was this heathen going over his gods and two sailors and the man who had charge of the buds laughing feet to split. It was a rummy way of losing a jewel. Come to think of it, the man in charge hadn't been about just at the moment so that he didn't know which bird it was. Clean lost, you see. I didn't feel half sorry to tell you the truth. The beggar had been swaggering over his blessed diamond ever since he came aboard. I think that goes from stem to stern of a ship in no time. Everyone was talking about it. Padisha went below to hide his feelings. At dinner, he pegged at a table by himself, him and two other Hindus. The captain kind of jeered at him about it, and he got very excited. He turned round and talked into my ear. He would not buy the buds. He would have his diamond. He demanded his rights as a British subject. His diamond must be found. He was farmed upon that. He would appeal to the house of lords. The man in charge of the buds was one of those wooden-headed chaps. You can't get a new idea into anyhow. He refused any proposal to interfere with the buds by way of medicine. His instructions were to feed them so and so, and treat them so and so, and it was as much as his place was worth not to feed them so and so, and treat them so and so. Padisha had wanted a stomach pump, though you can't do that to a bud, you know. This Padisha was full of bad law. Like most of these blessed Bengalis and talked of having a lien on the buds and so forth. But an old boy, who said his son was a London barista, argued that what a bud swallowed became ipso facto part of the bud, and that Padisha's only remedy lay in an action for damages, and even then it might be possible to show contributory negligence. He hadn't any right of way about an ostrich that didn't belong to him. That upset Padisha extremely. The more so as most of us expressed an opinion that that was the reasonable view. There wasn't any lawyer aboard to settle the matter, so we all talked pretty free. At last, after adding, it appears that he came round to the general opinion and went privately to the man in charge, and made an offer for all five ostriches. The next morning, there was a fine shinde at breakfast. The man hadn't any authority to deal with the buds, and nothing on earth would induce him to sell. But it seems he told Padisha that a Eurasian named Potter had already made him an offer, and on that Padisha denounced Potter before us all. But I think the most of us thought it rather smart of Potter, and I know that when Potter said that he had wired at adding to London to buy the buds, and would have an answer at Swayze, I cast pretty richly at a lost opportunity. At Swayze, Padisha gave way to tears, actual-weight tears, when Potter became the owner of the buds, and offered him 250 right off for the five, being more than 200 percent on what Potter had given. Potter said he would be hanged if he parted with a feather of them, and he meant to kill them off one by one and find the diamond. But afterwards, thinking it over, he relented a little. He was a gambling hound, was this Potter, a little queer at cards, and this kind of price-pocket business must have suited him down to the ground. Anyhow, he offered for a luck to sell the buds separately, to separate people by auction, at a starting price of 80 pounds for a bud. But one of them, he said, he meant to keep for luck. You must understand this diamond was a valuable one. A little Jew chap, a diamond merchant, who was with us, had put it at three or four thousand when Padisha had shown it to him, and this idea of an ostrich gamble caught on. Now, it happened that I had been having a few talks on the general subject with the man who looked after these ostriches. And quite incidentally, he had said one of the buds was ailing, and he fancied it had indigestion. It had one feather in its tail, almost all white, by which I knew it. And so when, next day the auction started with it, I capped Padisha's 85 by 90. I fancy I was a bit too sure and eager with my bid, and some of the others spotted the fact that I was in the know, and Padisha went for that particular bud like an irresponsible lunatic. At last the Jew diamond merchant got it for 175 pounds, and Padisha said 180 pounds just after the hammer came down, so Porter declared. At any rate, the Jew merchant secured it, and there and then he got a gun and shot it. Porter made a heads over first because he said it would injure the sale of the other three, and Padisha, of course, behaved like an idiot. But all of us were very much excited. I can tell you I was precious glad when that dissection was over, and no diamond had turned up. Precious glad. I had gone to 140 on that particular bud myself. The little Jew was like most Jews. He didn't make any great fuss over bad luck, but Porter declined to go on with the auction until it was understood that the goods could not be delivered until the sale was over. The little Jew wanted to argue that the case was exceptional, and as the discussion ran pretty even, the thing was postponed until the next morning. We had a lively dinner table that evening, I can tell you, but in the end, Porter got his way. Since it would stand to reason, he would be safer if he stuck to all the buds, and that we owed him some consideration for his sportsman-like behavior. And the old gentleman, whose son was a lawyer, said he had been thinking the thing over, and that it was very doubtful if, when a bud had been opened and the diamond recovered, it ought to be handed back to the proper owner. I remember I suggested it came under the laws of treasure trove, which was really the truth of the matter. There was a hot argument, and we said it was certainly foolish to kill the bud on board the ship. Then the old gentleman, going at large through his legal talk, tried to make out the sale was a lottery and illegal, and appealed to the captain. But Porter said he sold the buds as ostriches. He didn't want to sell any diamonds, he said, and didn't offer that as an inducement. The three buds he put up to the best of his knowledge and belief did not contain a diamond. It was in the one he kept, so he hoped. Prices ruled high next day, all the same. The fact that now there were four chances instead of five, of course, caused a rise. The blessed buds averaged 227, and, oddly enough, this publisher didn't secure one of them, not one. He made too much shandy, and when he ought to have been bidding, he was talking about liens, and besides, Porter was a bit down on him. One fell to a quiet little officer chap, another to the little Jew, and the third was syndicated by the engineers. And then Porter seemed suddenly sorry for having sold them, and said he would flang away a clear thousand pounds, and that very likely he would draw a blank, and that he always had been a fool. But when I went and had a bit over talk to him, with the idea of getting him to hedge on his last chance, I found he had already sold the bud he had reserved to a political chap that was on board, a chap who'd been studying Indian morals and social questions in his vacation. That last was the 300 pound bud. Well, they landed three of the blessed creatures at Brindisi, though the old gentleman said it was a breach of the customs regulations, and Porter and Padishah landed two. The Hindu seemed half mad as he saw his blessed diamond going this way and that, so to speak. He kept on saying he would get an injunction. He had injunction on the brain, and giving his name and address to the chaps who'd bought the buds, so that they would know where to send the diamond. None of them wanted his name and address, and none of them would give their own. It was a fine row, I can tell you, on the platform. They all went off by different trains. I came on to Southampton, and there I saw the last of the buds as I came ashore. It was the one the engineers bought, and it was standing up near the bridge, in a kind of crate, and looking as leggy and silly as setting for a valuable diamond as ever you saw, if it was a setting for a valuable diamond. How did it end? Oh, like that? Well, perhaps. Yes, there is one more thing that may throw light on it. A week or so after landing, I was down Regent Street, doing a bit of shopping, and who should I see, arm in arm, and having a proper time of it, but Padisha and Potter, if you come to think of it. Yes, I have thought that. Only, you see, there is no doubt the diamond was real, and Padisha was an imminent Hindu. I have seen his name in the papers often, but whether the bud swallowed the diamond certainly is another matter, as you say. Chapter 6 of the Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eddie Chigosi. The Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories by H. G. Wells Through a Window After his legs were set, they carried Bailey into the study and put him on a couch before the open window. There he lay, live, even a feverish man down to the loins, and below that, a double-barreled mummy swathed in white wrappings. He tried to read, even tried to write a little, but most of the time he looked out of the window. He had thought the window cheerful to begin with, but now he thanked God for it many times a day. Within, the room was dim and gray, and in the reflected light, the wear of the furniture showed plainly. His medicine and drink stood on the little table, with such litter as the bare branches of a bunch of grapes or the ashes of a cigar upon a green plate or a day-old evening paper. The view outside was flooded with light, and across the corner of it came the head of the acacia, and at the foot of the top of the balcony railing on Hammond Ion. In the foreground was the well-tarrering silver of the river, never quiet and yet never tiresome. Beyond was the reedy bank, a broad stretch of middle land, and then a dark line of trees ending in a group of poplars at the distant bend of the river, and upstanding behind them a square church tower. Up and down the river all day long, things were passing, now a string of barges drifting down to London, piled with lime or barrels of beer, then a steam launch, disengaging heavy masses of black smoke and disturbing the whole width of the river with long rolling waves, then an impetuous electric launch, and then a boatload of pleasure seekers, a solitary scholar, or a foe from some rowing club. Perhaps the river was quietest of a morning or late at night. One moonlight night, some people drifted down singing, and with a zither playing, it sounded very pleasantly across the water. In a few days, Bailey began to recognize some of the craft. In a week, he knew the intimate history of half a dozen. The launch losing from Fitzgibbons, two miles up, would go fretting by, sometimes three or four times a day, conspicuous with its coloring of Indian red and yellow, and its two Oriental attendants. And one day, to Bailey's vast amusement, the houseboat, Purple Emperor, came to a stop outside and breakfasted in the most shameless domesticity. Then one afternoon, the captain of a slow-moving barge began a quarrel with his wife as they came into sight from the left, and had carried it to personal violence before he vanished behind the window frame to the right. Bailey regarded all of this as an entertainment, got up to while away his illness, and applauded all the more moving incidents. Mrs. Green, coming in at rare intervals with his meals, would catch him clapping his hands or softly crying, encore, but the river players had other engagements, and his encore went unheeded. I should never have thought I could take such an interest in things that did not concern me, said Bailey, to Wilderspan, who used to come in, in his nervous, friendly way, and try to comfort the sufferer by being talked to. I thought this idle capacity was distinctive of little children and old maids, but it's just circumstances. I simply can't work, and things have to drift. It's no good to fret and struggle, and so I lie here and am as amused as a baby with a rattle at this river and its affairs. Sometimes, of course, it gets a bit dull, but not often. I would give anything, Wilderspan, for a swamp, just one swamp, once. Head swimming and a steam launch to the rescue, and a chap also hold out with a boat hook. There goes Fitzgibbon's launch. They have a new boat hook, I see, and the little blackie is still in the dumps. I don't think he is very well, Wilderspan. He's been like that for two or three days, squatting, sulky fashion and meditating over the churning of the water. Unwholesome for him to be always staring at the frothy water running away from the stern. They watched the little steamer fuss across the patch of Sunlit River, suffer momentary occultation from the acacia, and glide out of sight behind the dark window frame. I am getting a wonderful eye for details, said Bailey. I spotted that new boat hook at once. The other nigger is a funny little chap. He never used to swagger with the old boat hook like that. Malays, aren't they? said Wilderspan. Don't know, said Bailey. I thought one called all that sort of man a lascar. Then he began to tell Wilderspan what he knew of the private affairs of the houseboat, Papo Emperor. Funny, he said, how these people come from all points of the campus, from Oxford and Windsor, from Asia and Africa, and gather and pass opposite the window just to entertain me. One man floated out of the infinite the day before yesterday, caught one perfect crab opposite, lost and recovered a skull, and passed on again. Probably he will never come into my life again. So far as I am concerned, he has lived and had his little troubles, perhaps 30, perhaps 40 years on the earth, merely to make an ass of himself for three minutes in front of my window. Wonderful thing, Wilderspan, if you come to think of it. Yes, said Wilderspan. Isn't it? A day or two after this, Bailey had a brilliant morning. Indeed, towards the end of their affair, it became almost as exciting as any window show very well could be. We will however begin at the beginning. Bailey was all alone in the house, for his housekeeper had gone into the town three miles away to pay bills, and the servant had her holiday. The morning began dull. A canoe went up about half past nine, and later a boatload of camping men came down. But this was mere margin. Things became cheerful about ten o'clock. It began with something quite flattering in the remote distance, where the three poplars marked the riverbend. Pocket handkerchief, said Bailey, when he saw it. No, too big, flag perhaps. However, it was not a flag, for it jumped about. Man in whites running fast, and this way, said Bailey, what's luck, but his whites are precious loose. Then a singular thing happened. There was a minute pink gleam among the dark trees in the distance, and a little puff of pale gray that began to drift and vanish eastward. The man in white jumped and continued running. Presently the report of the short arrived. What the devil, said Bailey, looks as if someone was shooting at him. He sat up stiffly and stared hard. The white figure was coming along the pathway through the corn. It's one of those niggers from the Fitz Gibbons, said Bailey. Oh, may I be hunged. I wonder why he keeps sewing with his arm. Then three other figures became indistinctly visible against the dark background of the trees. Abruptly on the opposite bank, a man walked into the picture. He was black bearded, dressed in flannels, had a red belt, and a vast gray felt hat. He walked leaning very much forward, and with his hands swinging before him. Behind him, one could see the grass swept by the towing rope of the boat he was dragging. He was steadfastly regarding the white figure that was hurrying through the corn. Suddenly he stopped. Then with a peculiar gesture, Bailey could see that he began pulling in the tow rope hand over hand. Over the water could be heard the voices of the people in the still invisible boat. What are you after, hug shot, said someone. The individual with the red belt shouted something that was inaudible and went on lugging in the rope, looking over his shoulder at the advancing white figure as he did so. He came down the bank, and the rope bent alone among the reeds and lashed the water between his pools. Then just the bows of the boat came into view, with the towing must and a tall, fair-haired man standing up and trying to see over the bank. The boat bumped unexpectedly among the reeds, and the tall, fair-headed man disappeared suddenly, having apparently fallen back into the invisible part of the boat. There was a curse and some indistinct laughter. Hug shot did not laugh, but his stilly clambered into the boat and pushed off. Abruptly, the boat passed out of Bailey's sight, but it was still audible. The melody of voices suggested that its occupants were busy telling each other what to do. The running figure was drawing near the bank. Bailey could now see clearly that it was one of Fitz Gibbons' orientals, and began to realize what the seniorest thing the man carried in his hand might be. Three of the men followed one another through the corn, and the foremost carried what was probably the gun. They were perhaps two hundred yards or more behind the melee. It's a manhunt by all that's holy, said Bailey. The melee stopped for a moment and surveyed the bank to the right. Then he left the path, and, breaking through the corn, vanished in that direction. The three pursuers followed suit, and their heads and gesticulating arms above the corn. After a brief interval, also went out of Bailey's field of vision. Bailey so far forgot himself as to swear. Just as things were getting lively, he said, something like a woman's shriek came through the air, then shouts a howl, a dark walk upon the balcony outside that made Bailey jump, and then the report of a gun. This is precious had on an invalid, said Bailey. But more was to happen yet in his picture. In fact, a great deal more. The melee appeared again, running now along the bank upstream. His stride had more swing and less space in it than before. He was threatening someone ahead with the ugly crease he carried. The blade, Bailey noticed, was dull. It did not shine as still should. Then came the tall, fair man, brandishing a boat hook, and after him three other men in boarding costume, running clumsily with oars. The man with the grey hat and a red belt was not with them. After an interval, the three men with the gun reappeared, still in the corn, but now near the riverbank. They emerged upon the towing path, and hurried after the others. The opposite bank was left blank and desolate again. The sick room was disgraced by more profanity. I would give my life to see the end of this, said Bailey. There were indistinct shouts upstream. Once they seemed to be coming nearer, but they disappointed him. Bailey sat and grumbled. He was still grumbling when his eyes caught something black and round among the waves. Hello, he said. He looked narrowly and saw two triangular black bodies frothing every now and then about a yard in front of this. He was still doubtful when the little band of pursuers came into sight again and began to point to this floating object. They were talking eagerly. Then the man with the gun took aim. He is swimming the river by George, said Bailey. The Malay looked round, saw the gun, and went under. He came up so close to Bailey's bank of the river that one of the bars of the balcony hid him for a moment. As he emerged, the man with the gun fired. The Malay kept steadily onward. Bailey could see the wet hair on his forehead now and the crease between his teeth and was presently hidden by the balcony. This seemed to Bailey an unendurable wrong. The man was lost to him forever now, so he thought. Why couldn't the brute have got himself decently caught on the opposite bank or shot in the water? It's worse than Edwin Drude, said Bailey. Over the river, too, things had become an absolute blank. All seven men had gone downstream again, probably to get the boat and follow across. Bailey listened and waited. There was silence. Surely it's not over like this, said Bailey. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Then a tag with two badges went upstream. The attitudes of the men upon these were the attitudes of those who see nothing remarkable in earth, water, or sky. Clearly the whole affair had passed out of sight of the river. Probably the hunt had gone into the beach woods behind the house. Confound it, said Bailey, to be continued again and no chance this time of the sequel. But this is hard on a sick man. He had a step on the staircase behind him and looking round saw the door open. Mrs. Green came in and sat down, panting. She still had her bonnet on, her purse in her hand, and her little brown basket upon her arm. Over there, she said, and left Bailey to imagine the rest. Have a little whiskey and water, Mrs. Green, and tell me about it, said Bailey. Seeping a little, the lady began to recover her powers of explanation. One of those black creatures at the Feast Gibbons had gone mad and was running about with a big knife, stabbing people. He had killed a groom and stabbed the underbattler and almost cut the arm off a boarding gentleman. Running amok with a crease, said Bailey. I thought that was it. And he was hiding in the wood when she came through it from the town. What did he run after you? asked Bailey with a certain touch of glee in his voice. No, that was the horrible part of it, Mrs. Green explained. She had been right through the woods and had never known he was there. It was only when she met young Mr. Feast Gibbons carrying his gun in the shrubbery that she had anything about it. Apparently, what upset Mrs. Green was the lost opportunity for emotion. She was determined, however, to make the most of what was left her. To think he was there all the time, she said over and over again. Bailey endured this patiently enough for perhaps ten minutes. At last, he thought it advisable to assert himself. It's twenty past one, Mrs. Green, he said. Don't you think it's time you got me something to eat? This brought Mrs. Green suddenly to her knees. Oh Lord, sir, she said. Oh, don't go making me go out of this room, sir, till I know he is caught. He might have got into the house, sir. He might be creeping, creeping, with that knife of his along the passage this very, she broke off suddenly and glared over him at the window. Hello, Joe dropped. Bailey turned his head sharply. For the space of half a second, things seemed just as they were. There was the tree, the balcony, the shining river, the distant church tower. Then he noticed that the acacia was displaced about a foot to the right and that it was quivering and the leaves were rustling. The tree was shaking violently and a heavy punting was audible. In another moment, a hairy brown hand had appeared and clutched the balcony railings and in another the face of the melee was peering through these at the man on the couch. His expression was an unpleasant grin by reason of the crease he held between his teeth and he was bleeding from an ugly wound in his cheek. His hair, wet to drying, stuck out like horns from his head. His body was bare, save for the wet trousers that clank to him. Bailey's first impulse was to spring from the couch, but his legs reminded him that this was impossible. By means of the balcony and tree, the man slowly raised himself until he was visible to Mrs. Green. With a choking cry she made for the door and fumbled with the handle. Bailey thought swiftly and clutched a medicine bottle in either hand. One he flung and it smashed against the acacia, silently and deliberately and keeping his bright eyes fixed on Bailey, the melee clambered into the balcony. Bailey still clutching his second bottle, but with a sickening sinking feeling about his heart, watched first one leg coming over the railing and then the other. It was Bailey's impression that the melee took about an hour to get his second leg over the rail. The period that elapsed before the sitting position was changed to a standing one seemed enormous, days, weeks, possibly a year or so. Yet Bailey had no clear impression of anything going on in his mind during that vast period, except a vague wonder at his inability to throw the second medicine bottle. Suddenly the melee glanced over his shoulder. There was the crack of a rifle. He flung up his arms and came down upon the couch. Mrs. Green began a dismal shriek that seemed likely to last until doomsday. Bailey stared at the brown body with its shoulder blade driven in that wreathed painfully across his legs and rapidly staining and soaking the spotless bandages. Then he looked at the long crease with the reddish streaks upon its blade that lay an inch beyond the trembling brown fingers upon the floor. Then at Mrs. Green who had barked hard against the door and was staring at the body and shrieking in gusty outbursts as if she would wake the dead and then the body was shaken by one last convulsive effort. The melee gripped the crease, tried to raise himself with his left hand and collapsed. Then he raised his head, stared for a moment at Mrs. Green and twisting his face round looked at Bailey. With a gas pink groan the dying man succeeded in clutching the bed clothes with his disabled hand and by a violent effort which had Bailey's legs exceedingly wreathed sideways towards what must be his last victim. Then something seemed released in Bailey's mind and he brought down the second bottle with all his strength onto the malaise face. The crease fell heavily upon the floor. Easy with those legs, said Bailey as the young Fitz Gibbon and one of the boarding party lifted the body of him. Young Fitz Gibbon was very white in the face. I didn't mean to kill him, he said. It's just as well, said Bailey. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of the Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eddie Chigosi. The Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories by H. G. Wells. The Temptation of Haringey It is quite impossible to say whether this thing really happened. It depends entirely on the word of R. M. Haringey who is an artist. Following his version of the affair, the narrative deposes that Haringey went into his studio about 10 o'clock to see what he could make of the head that he had been working at the day before. The head in question was that of an Italian organ grinder and Haringey thought but was not quite sure that the title would be the Vigil. So far he is frank and his narrative bears the stamp of truth. He had seen the man expectant for pennies and with a promptness that suggested genius had had him in at once. Neil look up at that bracket said Haringey as if you expected pennies. Don't grin said Haringey. I don't want to paint your gums. Look as though you were unhappy. Now after a night's rest the picture proved decidedly unsatisfactory. It's good work said Haringey. That little bit in the neck but he walked about the studio and looked at the thing from this point and from that. Then he said a wicked word. In the original the word is given. Painting he says he said just a painting of an organ grinder a mere portrait. If it was a live organ grinder I wouldn't mind but somehow I never make things alive. I wonder if my imagination is wrong. This too has a truthful air. His imagination is wrong. That creative touch to take canvas and pigment and make a man as Adam was made of red ochre. But this thing if you made it walking about the streets you would know it was only a studio production. The little boys would tell it to ghanom and get framed. Some little touch. Well it won't do as it is. He went to the blinds and began to pull them down. They were made of blue Holland with the rollers at the bottom of the window so that you pull them down to get more light. He gathered his palette brushes and mall stick from his table. Then he turned to the picture and put a speck of brown in the corner of the mouth and shifted his attention this to the pupil of the eye. Then he decided that the chin was a trifle too impassive for a vigil. Presently he put down his impedimenta and lighting a pipe surveyed the progress of his work. I'm hanged if the thing isn't sneering at me said Haringey and he still believes it sneered. The animation of the figure had certainly increased but scarcely in the direction he wished. There was no mistake about the sneer. Vigil of the unbeliever said Haringey. Rather subtle and clever that. But the left eyebrow isn't cynical enough. He went and dabbed at the eyebrow and added a little to the lobe of the ear to suggest materialism. Further consideration ensued. Vigil's off I'm afraid said Haringey. Why not Mephistopheles. But that's a bit too common. A friend of the dodge not so seedy. The Amur won't do though. Too camelot. How about a scarlet robe and call him one of the sacred college? Humour in that and an appreciation of Middle Italian history. There is always Benvenuto Cellini said Haringey with a clever suggestion of a gold cup in one corner. But that would scarcely suit the complexion. He described himself as bubbling in this way in order to keep down an unaccountably unpleasant sensation of fear. The thing was certainly acquiring anything but a pleasing expression. Yet it was as certainly becoming far more of a living thing than it had been. If a sinister one. Far more alive than anything he had ever painted before. Call it portrait of a gentleman said Haringey. A certain gentleman. Won't do said Haringey. Still keeping up his courage. Kind of thing they call bad test. That sneer will have to come out. That gone and a little more fire in the eye. Never noticed how warm his eye was before and he might do for. What price passionate pilgrim. But that devilish face won't do. This side of the channel. Some little inaccuracy does it. He said. Eyebrows probably too oblique. They are with pulling the blind lower to get a better light and resuming palette and brushes. The face of the canvas seemed animated by a spirit of its own. Where the expression of Diableri came in he found impossible to discover. Experiment was necessary. The eyebrows. It could scarcely be the eyebrows. But he altered them. No. That was no better. In fact if anything a trifle more satanic. The corner of the mouth. More than ever a layer and now retouched. It was ominously grim. The eye then. Catastrophe. He had filled his brush with vermilion instead of brown. And yet he had felt sure it was brown. The eye seemed now to have rolled in its socket and was glaring at him. An eye of fire. In a flash of passion possibly something of the courage of panic. He struck the brush full of bright red a thwart the picture. And then a very curious thing. A very strange thing indeed occurred. If it did occur. The diabolified Italian before him shot both his eyes. Passed his mouth and wiped the color of his face with his hand. Then the red eye opened again. With a sound like the opening of lips and the face smiled. That was rather hasty of you said the picture. Haringey states that now that the worst had happened his self-position returned. He had a saving persuasion that devils were reasonable creatures. Why do you keep moving about then he said. Making faces and all that. Sneering and squinting while I am painting you. I don't say the picture. You do said Haringey. It's yourself said the picture. It's not myself said Haringey. It is yourself said the picture. No don't go hitting me with paint again because it's true. You have been trying to fluke an expression on my face all the morning. Really you haven't an idea what your picture ought to look like. I have said Haringey. You have not said the picture. You never have with your pictures. You always start with the vaguest presentiment of what you are going to do. It is to be something beautiful. You are sure of that and devote perhaps or tragic but beyond that it is all experiment and chance. My dear fellow you don't think you can paint a picture like that. Now it must be remembered that for what follows we have only Haringey's word. I shall paint a picture exactly as I like said Haringey calmly. This seemed to disconsert the picture a little. You can't paint a picture without an inspiration it remarked. But I had an inspiration for this. Inspiration sneered the sadonic figure. A fancy that came from your seeing an organ grinder looking up at a window. Vigil haha. You just started painting on the chance of something coming. That's what you did and when I saw you at it I came. I want a talk with you. At with you said the picture it's a poor business. You porter I don't know how it is but you don't seem to be able to throw your soul into it. You know too much it hampers you in the midst of your enthusiasm. You ask yourself whether something like this has not been done before and look here said Haringey who had expected something better than criticism from the devil. Are you going to talk studio to me. He filled his number 12 hog hair with red paint. The true artist said the picture is always an ignorant man an artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic. Warner I say what's that red paint for. I am going to paint you out said Haringey. I don't want to hear all that Tommy wrote. If you think just because I am an artist by trade I'm going to talk studio to you. You make a precious mistake. One minute said the picture evidently alarmed. I want to make you an offer a genuine offer. It's right what I'm saying you lack inspirations. Well no doubt you've heard of the Cathedral of Cologne and the Devil's Bridge and rubbish said Haringey do you think I want to go to perdition simply for the pleasure of painting a good picture and getting it slated. Take that. His blood was up. His danger only nailed him to action so he says so he planted a dab of vermilion in his creature's mouth. The Italian splattered and tried to wipe it off evidently horribly surprised and then according to Haringey they began a very remarkable struggle. Haringey splashing away with the red paint and the picture wriggling about and wiping it off as fast as he put it on. Two masterpieces said the demon. Two indubitable masterpieces for a Chelsea artist's soul. It's a bargain. Haringey replied with the paint brush. For a few minutes nothing could be heard but the brush going and the splattering and ejaculations of the Italian. A lot of the strokes he caught on his arm and hand though Haringey got over his guard often enough. Presently the paint on the palette gave out and the two antagonists stood breathless regarding each other. The picture was so smeared with red that it looked as if it had been rolling about a slaughterhouse and it was painfully out of breath and very uncomfortable with the wet paint trickling down its neck. Still the first round was in its favor on the whole. Think it said sticking placilly to its point. Two supreme masterpieces in different styles each equivalent to the cathedral. I know said Haringey and rushed out of the studio and along the passage towards his wife's boudoir. In another minute he was back with a large tin of enamel. Hedge sparrow's egg tint it was and a brush. At the sight of that the artistic devil with the red eye began to scream. Three masterpieces culminating masterpieces. Haringey delivered cut two across the demon and followed with a thrust in the eye. There was an indistinct rumbling four masterpieces and a spitting sound. But Haringey had the upper hand now and meant to keep it. With rapid bold strokes he continued to paint over the writhing canvas until at last it was a uniform field of shining hedge sparrow tint. Once the mouth reappeared and got as far as five master before he filled it with enamel. And near the end the red eye opened and glared at him indignantly. But at last nothing remained save a gleaming panel of drying enamel. For a little while a faint stirring beneath the surface puckered it slightly here and there but presently even that died away and the thing was perfectly still. Then Haringey according to Haringey's account lit his pipe and sat down and stared at the enameled canvas and tried to make out clearly what had happened. Then he walked round behind it to see if the back of it was at all remarkable. Then it was he began to regret that he had not photographed the devil before he painted him out. This is Haringey's story not mine. He supports it by a small canvas 24 by 20 enameled a pale green and by violent asservations. It is also true that he never has produced a masterpiece and in the opinion of his intimate friends probably never will. End of chapter seven