 Chapter 8 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 Recorded by Eric Leuschner The Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories by H.G. Wells The Flying Man The ethnologist looked at the Bimraj feather thoughtfully. They seemed loath to part with it, he said. It is sacred to the chiefs, said the lieutenant, just as yellow silk, you know, is sacred to the Chinese emperor. The ethnologist did not answer. He hesitated. Then opening the topic abruptly, what on earth is this cock and bull story they have of a flying man? The lieutenant smiled faintly. What did they tell you? I see, said the ethnologist, that you know of your fame. The lieutenant rolled himself a cigarette. I don't mind hearing about it once more. How does it stand at present? It's so confoundedly childish, said the ethnologist, becoming irritated. How did you play it off upon them? The lieutenant made no answer, but lounged back in his folding chair, still smiling. Here I am, come 400 miles out of my way to get what is left of the folklore of these people, before they are utterly demoralized by missionaries and the military, and all I find are a lot of impossible legends about a sandy haired scrub of an infantry lieutenant. How he is invulnerable, how he can jump over elephants, how he can fly. That's the toughest nut. One of the old gentlemen described your wings, said they had black plumage and were not quite as long as a mule. Said he often saw you by moonlight, hovering over the crests out towards the Shendu country. Confounded, man. The lieutenant laughed cheerfully. Go on, he said. Go on. The ethnologist did. At last he weared. To trade so, he said, on these unsophisticated children of the mountains. How could you bring yourself to do it, man? I'm sorry, said the lieutenant, but truly the thing was forced upon me. I can assure you I was driven to it. And at the time I had not the faintest idea how the chin imagination would take it. Or curiosity. I can only plead it was an indiscretion and not malice that made me replace the folklore by a new legend. But as you seem aggrieved, I will try to explain the business to you. It wasn't the time of the last Lushai expedition, but one. And Walters thought these people you have been visiting were friendly. So with an airy confidence in my capacity for taking care of myself, he sent me up the gorge, fourteen miles of it, with three of the Derbyshire men and half a dozen seapoys, two mules, and his blessing to see what popular feeling was like at that village you visited. A force of ten, not counting the mules, fourteen miles. And during a war, you saw the road. Road, said the ethnologist. It's better now than it was. When we went up, we had to wade in the river for a mile where the valley narrows, with a smart stream frothing around our knees and the stones as slippery as ice. There it was, I dropped my rifle. Afterwards, the sappers blasted the cliff with dynamite and made the convenient way you came by. Then below, where those very high cliffs come, we had to keep on dodging across the river. I should say we crossed it a dozen times in a couple of miles. We got inside of the place early the next morning. You know how it lies, on a spur halfway between the big hills. And as we began to appreciate how wickedly quiet the village lay under the sunlight, we came to a stop to consider. At that, they fired a lump of filed brass idol at us, just by way of a welcome. It came twanging down the slope to the right of us, where the boulders are, missed my shoulder by an inch or so, and plugged the mule that carried all the provisions and utensils. I never heard such a death rattle before since. And at that, we became aware of a number of gentlemen carrying matchlocks, and dressed in things like plaid dusters, dodging about along the neck between the village and the crest to the east. And with that encouragement, my expedition of ten men came round and set off at a smart trot down the valley again hitherward. We did not wait to save anything our dead had carried, but we kept the second mule with us. He carried my tent and some other rubbish out of a feeling of friendship. So ended the battle, ingloriously. Glancing back, I saw the valley dotted with the victors, shouting and firing at us, but no one was hit. These chins and their guns are very little good, except at a sitting shot. They will sit and finnick over a boulder for hours taking aim. And when they fire running, it is chiefly for stage effect. Hooker, one of the derby shiremen, fancied himself rather with the rifle and stopped behind for half a minute to try his luck as we turned the bend. But he got nothing. I'm not a xenophon to spin much of a yarn about my retreating army. We had to pull the enemy up twice in the next two miles when he became a bit pressing by exchanging shots with him, but it was a fairly monotonous affair. Hard breathing, chiefly, until we got near the place where the hills run towards the river and pinch the valley into a gorge. And there we very luckily caught a glimpse of half a dozen round black heads coming slanting ways over the hill to the left of us, the east that is, and almost parallel with us. At that I called a halt. Look here, says I, to Hooker and the other Englishman. What are we to do now? And I pointed to the heads. Get off, or I'm a nigger, said one of the men. We shall be, said another. You know the chin way, George? They can pot every one of us at fifty yards, says Hooker, in the place where the river is narrow. It's just suicide to go on down. I looked at the hill to the right of us. It grew steeper, lower down in the valley, but it still seemed climbable, and all the chins we had seen hither too had been on the other side of the stream. It's that or stopping, says one of the sepoys. So we started slanting up the hill. There was something faintly suggestive of a road running obliquely up the face of it, and that we followed. Some chins presently came into view up the valley, and I heard some shots. Then I saw one of the sepoys was sitting down about thirty yards below us. He had simply sat down without a word, apparently not wishing to give trouble. At that I called a halt again. I told Hooker to try another shot, and went back and found the man was hit in the leg. I took him up, carried him along to put him on the mule, already pretty well laden with the tent and other things which we had no time to take off. When I got up to the rest with him, Hooker had his empty martini in his hand and was grinning and pointing to a motionless black spot up in the valley. All the rest of the chins were behind boulders or back round the bend. Five hundred yards, said Hooker, if an inch, and I'll swear I'll hit him in the head. I told him to go and do it again, and with that we went on again. Now the hillside kept getting steeper as we pushed on, and the road we were following more and more of a shelf. At last it was mere cliff above and below us. It's the best road I have seen yet in Chinlush Island, said I to encourage the men, though I had a fear of what was coming. And in a few minutes the way bent round a corner of the cliff. Then finny, the ledge came to an end. As soon as he grasped the position one of the derby shiremen fell a swearing at the trap we had fallen into. The suppoys halted quietly, Hooker grunted and reloaded and went back to the bend. Then two of the suppoy chaps helped their comrade down and began to unload the mule. Now when I came to look about me, I began to think we had not been so very unfortunate after all. We were on a shelf perhaps ten yards across it at widest. Above it the cliff projected so that we could not be shot down upon, and below was an almost sheer precipice of perhaps two or three hundred feet. Lying down we were invisible to anyone across the ravine. The only approach was along the ledge, and on that one man was as good as a host. We were in a natural stronghold, with only one disadvantage. Our sole provision against hunger and thirst was one live mule. Still we were at most eight or nine miles from the main expedition, and no doubt after a day or so they would send up after us if we did not return. Ever been thirsty Graham? Not that kind said the ethnologist. We had the whole of that day, the night, and the next day of it, and only a trifle of dew we rung out of our clothes in the tent. And below us was the river going giggle giggle round a rock in midstream. I never knew such a barrenness of incident or such a quantity of sensation. The sun might have had Joshua's command still upon it for all the motion one could see, and it blazed like a near furnace. Towards the evening of the first day one of the Derbyshire men said something, nobody heard what, and went off round the bend of the cliff. We heard shots, and when Hooker looked round the corner he was gone. And in the morning the sapoi whose leg was shot was in delirium and jumped or fell over the cliff. Then we took the mule and shot it, and that must needs go over the cliff too in its last struggles leaving eight of us. We could see the body of the sapoi down below with his head in the water. He was lying face downwards, and so far as I could make out was scarcely smashed at all. Badly as the chins might covet his head they had the sense to leave it alone until the darkness came. At first we talked of all the chances there were of the main body hearing the firing and reckoned whether they would begin to miss us, and all that kind of thing, but we dried up as the evening came on. The sapois played games with bits of stone among themselves and afterwards told stories. The night was rather chilly, the second day nobody spoke. Our lips were black and our throats of fire, and we lay about on the ledge and glared at one another. Perhaps it's as well we kept our thoughts to ourselves. One of the British soldiers began writing some blasphemous rot on the rock with a bit of pipe clay about his last dying will until I stopped it. As I looked over the edge down into the valley and I saw the river rippling I was nearly tempted to go after the sapoi. It seemed a pleasant and desirable thing to go rushing down through the air with something to drink or no more thirst at any rate at the bottom. I remembered in time though that I was the officer in command and my duty to set a good example and that kept me from any such foolishness. Yet thinking of that put an idea into my head. Then I got up and looked at the tent and tent ropes and wondered why I had not thought of it before. Then I came and peered over the cliff again, this time the height seemed greater and the pose of sapoi rather more painful. But it was that or nothing. And to cut it short I parachuted. I got a big circle of canvas out of the tent about three times the size of that table cover and plugged the hole in the center and I tied eight ropes around it to meet in the middle and make a parachute. The other chaps lay about and watched me as though they thought it was a new kind of delirium. Then I explained my motion to the two British soldiers and how I meant to do it and as soon as the short dusk had darkened in tonight I risked it. They held the thing high up and I took a run the whole length of the ledge. The thing filled with air like a sail. But at the edge I will confess I funked and pulled up. As soon as I stopped I was ashamed of myself as well I might be in front of privates and went back and started again. Off I jumped this time with a kind of a sob I remember, clean into the air with the big white sail belling out above me. I must have thought at a frightful pace. It seemed a long time before I was sure that the thing meant to keep steady. At first it healed sideways. Then I noticed the face of the rock which seemed to be streaming up past me and me motionless. Then I looked down and saw the darkness of the river and the dead sepoy rushing up towards me. But in the indistinct light I also saw three chins seemingly aghast at the side of me and that the sepoy was decapitated. At that I wanted to go back again. Then my boot was in the mouth of one and in a moment he and I were in a heap of the canvas fluttering down on the top of us. By fancy I dashed out his brains with my foot. I expected nothing more than to be brained myself by the other two but the poor heathen had never heard of Baldwin and incontinently bolted. I struggled out of the tangle of dead chin and canvas and looked around. About ten paces off lay the head of the sepoy staring in the moonlight. Then I saw the water and went and drank. There wasn't a sound in the world but the footsteps of the departing chins and a faint shout from above and the gluck of the water. So soon as I had drunk my full I started off down the river. That about ends the explanation of the flying man's story. I never met a soul the whole eight miles of the way. I got to Walters camp by ten o'clock and a born idiot of a sentinel had the cheek to fire at me as I came trotting out of the darkness. So soon as I had hammered my story into winter's thick skull about fifty men started up the valley to clear the chins out and get our men down. But for my own part I had too good a thirst to provoke it by going with them. You have heard what kind of a yarn the chins made out of it. Wings as long as a mule eh? And black feathers. The gay lieutenant bird. Well well. The lieutenant mediated cheerfully for a moment. Then he added, you would scarcely credit it but when they got to the ridge at last they found two more of the sepoys had jumped over. The rest were alright, asked the ethnologist. Yes, said the lieutenant. The rest were alright, barring a certain thirst, you know. And at the memory he helped himself to a soda and whiskey again. End of chapter 8 The Stolen Basilisk and Other Stories by H. G. Wells The Diamond Maker Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane until nine in the evening and thereafter having some inkling of a headache I was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. So much of the sky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night and I determined to make my way down to the embankment and rest my eyes and cool my head by watching the variegated lights upon the river. Beyond comparison, the night is the best time for this place. A merciful darkness hides the dirt of the waters and the lights of this transition edge red, glaring orange, glass yellow and electric white are set in shadowy outlines of every possible shed between gray and deep purple. Through the arches of Waterloo Bridge a hundred points of light mark the sweep of the embankment and above its parapet rise the towers of Westminster warm gray against the starlight. The black river goes by with only a rare ripple breaking its silence and disturbing the reflections of the lights that swim upon its surface. A warm night said a voice at my side I turned my head and saw the profile of a man who was leaning over the parapet beside me. It was a refined face, not unhandsome though pinched and pale enough and the coat collar turned up and pinned around the throat marked his status in life as sharply as a uniform. I felt I was committed to the price of a bed and breakfast if I answered him. I looked at him curiously would he have anything to tell me worth the money or was he the common incapable incapable even of telling his own story? There was a quality of intelligence in his forehead and eyes and a certain tremulousness in his nether lip that decided me. Very warm I said but not too warm for us here. No he said still looking across the water it is pleasant enough here just now. It is good he continued after a pause to find anything so restful as this in London after one has been fretting about business all day about getting on, meeting obligations and paring dangers. I do not know what one would do if it were not for such pacific corners. He spoke with long pauses between the sentences you must know a little of the icsum labour of the world or you would not be here. But I doubt if you can be so brainwary and foot sore as I am but sometimes I doubt if the game is worth the candle. I feel inclined to throw the whole thing over name, wealth and position and take to some modest trade but I know if I abandon my ambition hardly as she uses me I should have nothing but remorse left for the rest of my days. He became silent. I looked at him in astonishment if ever I saw a man hopelessly hard up it was the man in front of me. He was rugged and he was dirty and cheven and unkempt. He looked as though he had been left in a dustbin for a week and he was talking to me of the icsum worries of a large business. I almost laughed outright either he was mad or playing a sorry jest on his own poverty. If high aims and high positions said I have their drawbacks of hard work and anxiety they have their compensations influence the power of doing good of assisting those weaker and poorer than ourselves and there is even a certain gratification in this play. My banter under the circumstances was in very vile test I spoke on the spur of the contrast of his appearance and speech. I was sorry even while I was speaking. He turned a haggard but very composed face upon me said he I forgot myself of course you would not understand he measured me for a moment no doubt it is very absurd you will not believe me even when I tell you so that it is fairly safe to tell you and it will be a comfort to tell someone I really have a big business in hand a very big business but there are troubles just now the fact is I make diamonds I suppose said I you are out of work just at present I am sick of being disbelieved he said impatiently and suddenly unbuttoning his wretched court he pulled out a little canvas bug that was hanging by a cord around his neck from this he produced a brown pebble I wonder if you know enough to know what that is he handed it to me now a year or so ago I had occupied my leisure in taking a London science degree so that I have a smarter ring of physics and mineralogy the thing was not unlike an uncut diamond a darker sort though far too large being almost as big as the top of my thumb I took it and so it had the form of a regular octahedron with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious of minerals I took out my pen knife and tried to scratch it vainly leaning forward towards the gas lamp I tried the thing on my watch glass a white line across that with the greatest ease I looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity it certainly is rather like a diamond but if so, it is a behemoth of diamonds where did you get it? I tell you I made it he said give it back to me he replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket I will sell it to you for 100 pounds he suddenly whispered eagerly with that my suspicions returned the thing might after all be merely a lamp of that almost equally hard substance corundum with an accidental resemblance in shape to the diamond or if it was a diamond how came he by it and why should he offer it at 100 pounds we looked into one another's eyes he seemed eager but honestly eager at that moment I believed it was a diamond he was trying to sell yet I am a poor man 100 pounds would leave a visible gap in my fortunes and no sane man would buy a diamond by gas light from a rugged trump on his personal warranty only still a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many thousands of pounds then thought I such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned in every book on gems and again I called to mind the stories of contraband and light fingered calfears at the cape I put the question of purchase on one side how did you get it? said I I made it I had had something of moissan but I knew his artificial diamonds were very small I shook my head you seem to know something of this kind of thing I will tell you a little about myself perhaps then you may think better of the purchase he turned round with his back to the river and put his hand in his pockets his side I know you will not believe me diamonds he began and as he spoke his voice lost its faint flavor of the trump and assumed something of the easy tone of an educated man are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in a suitable flux and under a suitable pressure the carbon crystallizes out not as black lead or charcoal powder but as small diamonds so much has been known to chemists for years but no one yet has hit upon exactly the right flux in which to melt up the carbon or exactly the right pressure for the best results consequently the diamonds made by chemists are small and dark and worthless as jewels now I you know have given up my life to this problem given my life to it I began to work at the conditions of diamond making when I was 17 and now I am 32 it seemed to me that it might take all the thought and energies of a man for 10 years or 20 years but even if it did the game was still worth the candle suppose one to have at last just hit the right trick before the secret got out and diamonds became as common as coal one might realize millions millions he paused and looked for my sympathy his eyes shone hungrily to think said he that I am on the verge of it all and here I had he proceeded about a thousand pounds when I was 21 and this I thought eked out by a little teaching would keep my researchers going a year or two was spent in study at Berlin chiefly and then I continued on my own account the trouble was the secrecy you see if once I had let out what I was doing other men might have been spurred on by my belief in the practicability of the idea and I do not pretend to be such a genius as to have been sure of coming in first in the case of a race for the discovery and you see it was important that if I really meant to make a pile people should not know it was an artificial process and capable of turning out diamonds by the turn so I had to work all alone at first I had a little laboratory but as my resources began to run out I had to conduct my experiments in a Richard and furnished room in Kentish town where I slept at last on a straw mattress on the floor among all my apparatus the money simply flowed away I grudged myself everything except scientific appliances I tried to keep things going by a little teaching but I am not a very good teacher and I have no university degree no very much education except in chemistry and I found I had to give a lot of time and labor for precious little money but I got nearer and nearer the thing three years ago I settled the problem of the composition of the flux and got near the pressure by putting this flux of mine and a certain carbon composition into a closed up gun barrel filling up with water sealing tightly and heating he paused rather risky said I yes it burst and smashed all my windows and a lot of my apparatus but I got a kind of diamond powder nevertheless following out the problem of getting a big pressure upon the molten mixture from which the things were to crystallize I hit upon some researchers at the Paris he exploded dynamite in a tightly screwed steel cylinder too strong to burst and I found he could crush rocks into a muck not unlike the South African bed in which diamonds are found it was a tremendous strain on my resources but I got a steel cylinder made for my purpose after his button I put in all my stuff and my explosives built up a fire in my furnace put the whole concern in and went out for a walk I could not help but laugh at his matter of fact manner did you not think it would blow up the house were there other people in the place it was in the interest of science he said ultimately there was a costamonga family on the floor below a begging letter writer in the room behind mine and two flower women were upstairs perhaps it was a bit thoughtless but possibly some of them were out when I came back the thing was just where I left it among the white hot coals the explosive hadn't burst the case and then I had a problem to face time is an important element in crystallization if you hurry the process the crystals are small it is only by prolonged standing that they grow to any size I resolved to let this apparatus cool for two years letting the temperature go down slowly during that time and I was quite out of money and with a big fire and the rent of my room as well as my hunger to satisfy I had scarcely a penny in the world I can hardly tell you all the shifts I was put to while I was making the diamonds I have sold newspapers, held horses, opened cup doors for many weeks I addressed envelopes I had a place as assistant to a man who owned a barrow and used to call down one side of the road while he called down the other once a week I had absolutely nothing to do and I begged what a week that was one day the fire was going out and I had eaten nothing all day and a little chap taking his girl out gave me six pence to show off thank heaven for vanity how the fish shops smelled but I went and spent it all on coals and had the furnace bright red again and then well hunger makes a fool of a man at last three weeks ago I let the fire out I took my cylinder and unscrewed it while it was still red hot that it punished my hands and I scraped out the crumbling lava like mass with a chisel and hammered it into a powder upon an iron plate and I found three big diamonds and five small ones as I sat on the floor hammering my door opened and my neighbor the begging letter writer came in he was drunk as he usually is nashist said he you are drunk said I destructive scoundrel said he go to your father said I meaning the father of lies never your mind said he and gave me a cunning wink and he capped and leaning up against the door with his other eye against the door post began to bubble of how he had been prying in my room and how he had gone to the police that morning and how they had taken down everything he had to say Sifi was a gem said he then I suddenly realized I was in a hole either I should have to tell this police my little secret and get the whole thing blown up or be lagged as an anarchist so I went up to my neighbor and took him by the collar and roll him out a bit and then I gathered up my diamonds and cleared out the evening newspaper has called my den the Kentish town bomb factory and now I cannot part with the things for love or money if I go into respectable jewellers they ask me to wait and go and whisper to a clerk to fetch a policeman and then I say I cannot wait and I found out a receiver of stolen goods and he simply stuck to the one I gave him and told me to prosecute if I wanted it back I am going about now with several hundred thousand pounds worth of diamonds around my neck and without either food or shelter you are the first person I have taken into my confidence I take your face and I am heart driven he looked into my eyes it would be madness said I for me to buy a diamond under the circumstances besides I do not carry hundreds of pounds about in my pocket yet I more than half believe your story I will if you like do this come to my office tomorrow you think I am a thief take kindly you will tell the police I am not coming into a trap somehow I am assured you are no thief here is my card take that anyhow you need not come to any appointment come when you will he took the card and an honest of my good will think better of it and come said I he shook his head doubtfully say back you have crowned with interest someday such interest as will amaze you said he anyhow you will keep the secret don't follow me he crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under the archway leading into Essex street and I let him go and that was the last I ever saw of him afterwards I had two letters from him asking me to send banknotes not checks to certain addresses I weighed the matter over and took what I conceived to be the wisest course once he called upon me when I was out my arch and described him as a very thin dirty and ragged man with a dreadful cough he left no message that was the finish of him so far as my story goes I wonder sometimes what has become of him was he an ingenious monomaniac or a fraudulent dealer in pebbles or has he really made diamonds as he asserted the latter is just sufficiently credible to make me think at times that I have missed the most brilliant opportunity of my life he may of course be dead and his diamonds carelessly thrown aside one I repeat was almost as big as my thumb or he may be still wondering about trying to sell the things it is just possible he may yet emerge upon society and passing a thwart my heavens in the serene altitude sacred to the wealthy and the well advertised reproach me silently for my want of enterprise I sometimes think I might at least have risked 5 pounds End of chapter 9 Orchids He asked a few, I said Superpitiums He said, chiefly, said I Anything new? I thought not I did these islands 25, 27 years ago If you find anything new here well, it's brand new I didn't leave much I'm not a collector, said I I was young then He went on Lord, how I used to fly round He seemed to take my measure I was in the East Indies 2 years and in Brazil 7 Then I went to Madagascar I knew a few explorers by name I said anticipating a yarn Whom did you collect for? Dawson's I wonder if you've heard the name of Butcher ever Butcher Butcher The name seemed vaguely present in my memory Then I recalled Butcher versus Dawson Why, said I You're the man who sued them for your salary Got cast away on a desert island Your servant Said the man with a scar, bowing Funny case, wasn't it Here was me making a little fortune on that island Doing nothing for it, neither And them quite unable to give me notice It often used to amuse me thinking over it while I was there I did calculations of it, big All over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring How did it happen, said I I don't rightly remember the case Well, you've heard of the Epeornus Rather, Andrews was telling me of a new species he was working on only a month or so ago Just before I sailed They've got a thigh bone It seems nearly a yard long Monster the thing must have been I believe you Said the man with a scar It was a monster Sinbad's rock was just a legend of them But when did they find these bones Three or four years ago Ninety-one I fancy, why Why, because I found them Lord, it's nearly twenty years ago If Dawson's hadn't been silly about that salary They might have made a perfect ring in them I couldn't help the infernal boat going adrift He paused I suppose it's the same place A kind of swamp about ninety miles north of Antananarivo Do you happen to know You have to go to it along the coast by boats You don't happen to remember perhaps I don't I fancy Andrew said something about a swamp It must be the same It's on the east coast And somehow there's something in the water that keeps things from decaying Like creosote it smells It reminded me of Trinidad Did they get any more eggs Some of the eggs I found were a foot and a half long The swamp goes circling round you know and cuts off this bit It's mostly salt too Well, what a time I had a bit I found the things quite by accident We went for eggs Me and two native chaps in one of those rum canoes all tied together and found the bones at the same time We had a tent and provisions for four days and we pitched on one of the firmer places to think of it brings that odd tarry smell back even now It's funny work You go probing into the mud with iron rods you know Usually the egg gets mashed I wonder how long it is since these epeornices really live The missionaries say the natives have legends about when they were alive but I never heard any such stories myself But certainly those eggs we got were as fresh as if they had been new-laid Fresh Carrying them down to the boat one of my nigger chaps dropped one on a rock and it smashed how I lambed into the beggar But sweet it was as if it was new-laid not even smelly and it's mother dead these four hundred years perhaps said a centipede had bit him However, I'm getting off the straight with the story It had taken us all day to dig into the slush and get these eggs out unbroken and we were all covered with beastly black mud and naturally I was cross So far as I knew they were the only eggs that have ever been got out not even cracked I went afterwards to see the ones they have at the Natural History Museum in London All of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic and bits missing Mine were perfect and I meant to blow them when I got back Naturally I was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours work just on the count of a centipede I hit him about rather No European is known to have seen a live epeornus with a doubtful exception of McAndrew who visited Madagascar in 1745 HGW The man with the scar took out a clay pipe I placed my pouch before him He filled up absentmindedly How about the others? Did you get those home? I don't remember That's the queer part of the story I had three others perfectly fresh eggs well we put them in the boat and then I went up to the tent to make some coffee leaving my two heathens down by the beach the one fooling about with his sting and the other helping him It never occurred to me that the beggars would take advantage of the peculiar position I was in to pick a quarrel but I suppose the centipede poison and the kicking I had given him had upset the one he was always a cantankerous sort and he persuaded the other I remember I was sitting and smoking and boiling up the water for a spirit lamp business I used to take on these expeditions Incidentally I was admiring the swamp under the sunset all black and blood red it was in streaks a beautiful sight and up beyond the land rose grey and hazy to the hills and the sky behind them red like a furnace mouth and fifty yards behind the back of me was these blessed heathen quite regardless of the tranquil air of things plotting to cut off with a boat and leave me all alone with three days provisions and a canvas tent and nothing to drink whatsoever beyond a little keg of water I heard a kind of yelp behind me and there they were in this canoe affair it wasn't properly a boat and perhaps twenty yards from land I realized what was up in a moment my gun was in the tent and besides I had no bullets only duck shot they knew that but I had a little revolver in my pocket and I pulled that out as I ran down the beach come back says I flourishing it they jabbered something at me and the man that broke the egg jeered I aimed at the other because he was unwounded and had the paddle and I missed they laughed however I wasn't beat I knew I had to keep cool and I tried him again and made him jump with the wing of it he didn't laugh that time the third time I got his head and over he went and the paddle with him it was a precious lucky shot for a revolver I reckon it was fifty yards he went right under I don't know if he was shot or simply stunned and drowned then I began to shout to the other chap to come back but he huddled up in the canoe and refused to answer so I fired out my revolver at him and never got near him I felt a precious fool I can tell you there I was on this rotten black beach flat swamp all behind me in the flat sea cold after the sunset and just this black canoe drifting steadily out to sea I tell you I dammed Dawson's and jam racks and museums and all the rest of it just to rights I bawled to this nigger to come back until my voice went up into a scream there was nothing for it but to swim after him and take my luck with the sharks so I opened my clasp knife and put it in my mouth and took off my clothes and waited in as soon as I was in the water I lost sight of the canoe but I aimed as I judged to head it off I hoped the man in it was too bad to navigate it and that it would keep on drifting in the same direction presently it came up over the horizon again to the southwestward about the afterglow of sunset was well over now in the dim of night creeping up the stars were coming through the blue I swam like a champion though my legs and arms were soon aching however I came up to him by the time the stars were fairly out as it got darker I began to see all manner of blowing things in the water phosphorescence you know at times it made me giddy I hardly knew which was stars and which was phosphorescence and whether I was swimming on my head or my heels the canoe was as black as sin and the ripple under the bow was like liquid fire I was naturally charry of clamoring up into it I was anxious to see what he was up to first he seemed to be lying cuddled up in a lump in the bow as the stern was all out of water the thing kept turning round slowly as it drifted kind of waltzing don't you know I went to the stern and pulled it down expecting him to wake up then I began to clamor in with my knife in my hand ready for a rush but he never stirred so there I sat in the stern of a little canoe drifting away over the calm phosphorescence sea and with all the host of the stars above me waiting for something to happen after a long time I called him by name but he never answered I was too tired to take any risks by going along to him so he sat there I fancy I dozed once or twice when the dawn came I saw he was as dead as a doornail and all puffed up in purple my three eggs my bones were lying in the middle of the canoe and a keg of water and some coffee and biscuits wrapped in a cape argus by his feet and a tin of methylated spirit underneath him there was no paddle nor in fact anything except the spirit tin that one could use as one so I settled to drift until I was picked up I held an inquest on him brought in a verdict against some snake scorpion or centipede unknown and sent him overboard after that I had a drink of water and a few biscuits and took a look around I suppose a man low down as I was don't see very far least ways Madagascar was clean out of sight in any trace of land at all I saw a sail going southwestward looked like a sooner but her hull never came up presently the sun got high in the sky and began to beat down upon me Lord it pretty near made my brains boil I tried dipping my head in the sea but after a while my eye fell on the cape argus and I lay down flat in the canoe and spread this over me wonderful things these newspapers I never read one through thoroughly before but it's odd what you get up to when you're alone as I was I suppose I read that blessed old cape argus twenty times the pitch in the canoe simply reeked with the heat and rose up into big blisters I drifted ten days said the man with a scar it's a little thing in the telling isn't it every day was like the last except in the morning and the evening I never kept a look out even the blaze was so infernal I didn't see a sail after the first three days and those I saw took no notice of me about the six night a ship went by scarcely half a mile away from me with all its lights of blaze and its ports open looking like a big firefly there was music aboard I stood up and shouted and screamed at it the second day I broached one of the epioness eggs scraped the shell away at the end bit by bit and tried it and I was glad to find it was good enough to eat a bit flavory not bad I mean but with something of the taste of a duck's egg there was a kind of circular patch about six inches across on one side of the oak and with streaks of blood and a white mark like a ladder in it that I thought queer but I did not understand what this meant at the time and I wasn't inclined to be particular the egg lasted me three days with biscuits and a drink of water I chewed coffee berries too invigorating stuff the second egg I opened about the eighth day and it scared me the man with a scar paused yes he said developing I dare say you find it hard to believe I did with a thing before me there the egg had been sunk in that cold black mud perhaps three hundred years but there was no mistaking it there was the what is it embryo with its big head and curved back and its heart beating under its throat and the yolk shriveled up and great membranes spreading inside the shell and all over the yolk here was I hatching out the eggs of the biggest of all extinct birds and a little canoe in the midst of the Indian Ocean if old Dawson had known that it was worth four year salary what do you think however I had to eat that precious thing up every bit of it before I sighted the reef and some of the mouthfuls were beastly unpleasant I left the third one alone I held it up to the light but the shell was too thick for me to get any notion of what might be happening inside and though I fancied I heard blood pulsing it might have been the rustle in my own ears like what you listen to in a seashell then came the atoll came out of the sunrise as it were suddenly close up to me I drifted straight toward it until I was about half a mile from shore not more and then the current took a turn and I had to paddle as hard as I could with my hands and bits of Epeornish shell to make the place however I got there it was just a common atoll about four miles round with a few trees growing and a spring in one place and the lagoon full of parrotfish I took the egg ashore and put it in a good place well above the tide lines and in the sun to give it all the chance I could and pulled the canoe up safe and loafed about prospecting it's rum how dull and atoll is as soon as I had found a spring all the interest seemed to vanish when I was a kid I thought nothing could be finer or more adventurous than the Robinson Crusoe business but that place was as monotonous as a book of sermons I went round finding eatable things and generally thinking but I tell you I was bored to death before the first day was out it shows my luck the very day I landed the weather changed a thunderstorm went by to the north and flicked its wing over the island and in the night there came a drencher and a howling wind slap over us it wouldn't have taken much you know to upset that canoe I was sleeping under the canoe and the egg was luckily among the sand higher up the beach and the first thing I remember was a sound like a hundred pebbles hitting the boat at once and a rush of water over my body I'd been dreaming of Antananarivo and I sat up followed to Intashi to ask her what the devil was up and clawed out at the chair where the matches used to be then I remembered where I was there were phosphorescent waves rolling up as if they meant to eat me and all the rest of the night as black as pitch the air was simply yelling the clouds seemed down on your head almost and the rain fell as if heaven was sinking and they were bailing out the waters above the firmament one great roller came writhing at me like a fiery serpent and I bolted then I thought of the canoe and ran down to it as the water went hissing back again but the thing had gone I wondered about the egg then and felt my way to it it was all right and well out of reach of the maddest waves so I sat down beside it and cuddled it for a company lord what a night that was the storm was over before the morning there wasn't a rag of cloud left in the sky when the dawn came and all along the beach there were bits of plank scattered which was the disarticulated skeleton so to speak of my canoe however that gave me something to do for taking advantage of two of the trees being together I rigged up a kind of storm shelter with these vestiges and that day the egg hatched hatched sir when my head was pillowed on it and I was asleep I heard a whack and felt a jar and sat up and there was the end of the egg pecked out and a run little brown head looking out at me lord I said you're welcome and with a little difficulty he came out he was a nice friendly little chap at first about the size of a small hen very much like most other young birds only bigger his plumage was a dirty brown to begin with with a sort of grey scab that fell off it very soon and scarcely feathers a kind of downy hair I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him I tell you Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness but here was interesting company he looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards like a hen and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once as though being hatched 300 years too late was just nothing glad to see you man Friday says I for I had naturally settled he was to be called man Friday if ever he was hatched as soon as ever I found the egg in the canoe had developed I was a bit anxious about his feed so I gave him a lump of raw parrotfish at once he took it and opened his beak for more I was glad of that for under the circumstances if he'd been at all fanciful I should have had to eat him after all you'd be surprised what an interesting bird that Epeornus chick was he followed me about from the very beginning he used to stand by me and watch while I fished in the lagoon and go shares in anything I caught and he was sensible too there were nasty green warty things like pickled gherkins used to lie about on the beach and he tried one of these and it upset him he never even looked at any of them again and he grew you could almost see him grow and as I was never much of a society man his quiet, friendly ways suited me to a T for nearly two years we were as happy as we could be on that island I had no business worries for I knew my salary was mounting up at Dawson's we would see a sale now and then but nothing ever came near us I amused myself too by decorating the island with designs worked in sea urchins and fancy shells of various kinds I put Epeornus Island all around the place very nearly in big letters like what you see done with colored stones like the ones I had in the old country and mathematical calculations and drawings of various sorts and I used to lie watching the blessed bird stalking round and growing growing and think how I could make a living out of him by showing him about if I ever got taken off after his first molt he began to get handsome with a crest and a blue wattle and a lot of green feathers at the behind of him and then I used to puzzle whether Dawson's had any right to claim him or not stormy weather and in the rainy season we lay snug under the shelter I had made and him lies about my friends at home and after a storm we would go round the island together to see if there was any drift it was a kind of idol you might say if only I had had some tobacco it would have been simply just like heaven it was about the end of the second year our little paradise went wrong Friday was then about 14 feet high to the bill of him with a big broad head like the end of a pickax and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims set together like a man's not outside of each other like a hens his plumage was fine none of the half-morning style of your ostrich more like a cassowary as far as color and texture go and then it was he began to caulk his comb at me and give himself airs and show signs of a nasty temper at last came a time when my fishing had been rather unlucky and he began to hang about me in a queer meditative way I thought he might have been eating sea cucumbers or something but it was really just discontent on his part I was hungry too and when at last I landed a fish I wanted it for myself tempers were short that morning on both sides he pecked at it and grabbed it and I gave him a whack on the head to make him leave go and at that he went for me lord he gave me this in the face the man indicated his scar then he kicked me it was like a cart horse I got up and seeing he hadn't finished I started off full tilt with my arms doubled up over my face but he ran on those gawky legs of his faster than a racehorse and kept landing out at me with sledgehammer kicks and bringing his pickaxe down on the back of my head I made for the lagoon and went in up to my neck he stopped at the water for he hated getting his feet wet and began to make a shindy something like a peacocks only horser he started strutting up and down the beach I'll admit I felt small to see this blessed fossil lording it there and my head and face were all bleeding and well my body just won jelly of bruises I decided to swim across the lagoon and leave him alone for a bit until the affair blew over I shunned up the tallest palm tree and sat there thinking of it all I don't suppose I ever felt so hurt by anything before or since it was the brutal ingratitude of the creature I'd been more than a brother to him I'd hatched him, educated him a great gawky out of date bird and me a human being heir of the ages and all that I thought after a time he'd begin to see things in that light himself and feel a little sorry for his behavior I thought if I was to catch some nice little bits of fish perhaps and go to him presently in a casual kind of way and offer them to him he might do the sensible thing it took me some time to learn how unforgiving and cantankerous an extinct bird can be malice I won't tell you all the little devices I tried to get that bird round again I simply can't it makes my cheek burn with shame the buffets I had from this infernal curiosity I tried violence I chucked lumps of coral at him from a safe distance but he only swallowed them I shied my open knife at him and almost lost it though it was too big for him to swallow I tried starving him out and struck fishing but he took to picking along the beach at low water after worms and rubbed along on that half my time I spent up to my neck in the lagoon and the rest up the palm trees one of them was scarcely high enough and when he caught me up it he had a regular bank holiday with the calves in my legs it got unbearable I don't know if you have ever tried sleeping up a palm tree it gave me the most horrible nightmares think of the shame of it too here was this extinct animal mooning about my island like a sulky duke and me not allowed to rest the soul of my foot on the place I used to cry with weariness and vexation I told him straight I didn't mean to be chased about a desert island by any damned anachronisms I told him to go and peck a navigator of his own age but he only snapped his beak at me great ugly bird all legs and neck I shouldn't like to say how long that went on off together I'd have killed him sooner if I'd known how however I hit on a way of settling him at last it is a South American dodge I joined all my fishing lines together with stems of seaweed and things and made a stoutish string perhaps 12 yards in length or more and I fastened two lumps of coral rock to the ends of this it took me some time to do because every now and then I had to go into the lagoon or up a tree as the fancy took me this I whirled rapidly around my head and then let it go at him the first time I missed but the next time the string caught his legs beautifully and wrapped around them again and again over he went I threw it standing waist deep in the lagoon and as soon as he went down I was out of the water and sawing at his neck with my knife I don't like to think of that even now I felt like a murderer while I did it though my anger was hot against him when I stood over him and saw him bleeding on the white sand and his beautiful great legs and neck writhing in his last agony pah with that tragedy loneliness came upon me like a curse good lord you can't imagine how I missed that bird I sat by his corpse and sorrowed over him and shivered as I looked round the desolate silent reef I thought of what a jolly little bird he had been when he was hatched and of a thousand pleasant tricks he had played before he went wrong I thought if I'd only wounded him I might have nursed him round into a better understanding if I'd had any means of digging into the coral rock I'd have buried him I felt exactly as if he was human as it was I couldn't think of eating him so I put him in the lagoon and the little fishes picked him clean I didn't even save the feathers then one day a chap cruising about in a yacht had a fancy to see if my atoll still existed he didn't come a moment too soon for I was about sick enough of the desolation of it and only hesitating whether I should walk out into the sea and finish up the business that way and call back on the green things I sold the bones to a man named Winslow a dealer near the British Museum and he says he sold them to old Havers it seems Havers didn't understand they were extra large and it was only after his death they attracted attention they called him Epeornus what was it Epeornus vastus said I it's funny the very thing was mentioned to me by a friend of mine when they found an Epeornus with a thigh a yard long they thought they had reached the top of the scale and called him Epeornus maximus then someone turned up another thigh bone four feet six or more and that they called Epeornus titan then your vastus was found after old Havers died in his collection and then a vastissimus turned up Winslow was telling me as much said the man with a scar if they get any more Epeornuses he reckons some scientific swell will go and burst a blood vessel but it was a queer thing to happen to a man wasn't it all together End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 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 Rick Veena The Stolen Basilisk and other stories by H. G. Wells The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes Part 1 The transitory mental aberration of Sidney Davidson remarkable enough in itself is still more remarkable if Wade's explanation is to be credited it sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future of spending an intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world or being watched in our most secret operations by unsuspected eyes it happened that I was the immediate witness of Davidson's seizure and so it falls naturally to me to put the story upon paper when I say that I was the immediate witness of his seizure I mean that I was the first on the scene the thing happened at the Harlow Technical College just beyond the Highgate Archway he was alone in the larger laboratory when the thing happened I was in a smaller room where the balances are writing up some notes the thunderstorm had completely upset my work of course it was just after one of the louder peels that I thought I heard some glass smash in the other room I stopped writing and turned round to listen for a moment I heard nothing the hail was playing the devil's tattoo on the corrugated zinc of the roof then came another sound a smash no doubt of it this time something heavy had been knocked off the bench I jumped up at once and went and opened a door leading into the big laboratory I was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh and saw Davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of the room with a dazzled look on his face my first impression was that he was drunk he did not notice me he was clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of his face he put out his hand slowly rather hesitatingly and then clutched nothing what's come to it he said he held up his hands to his face fingers spread out great scott he said the thing happened three or four years ago when everyone swore by that personage then he began raising his feet clumsily as though he had expected to find them glued to the floor Davidson cried I what's the matter with you he turned round in my direction and looked about for me he looked over me and at me and on either side of me without the slightest sign of seeing me waves he said and a remarkably neat schooner I'd swear that was bellows' voice hello he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice I thought he was up to some foolery then I saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers what's up man said I you've smashed the electrometer bellows again said he friends left if my hands are gone something about electrometers which way are you bellows he suddenly came staggering towards me the damned stuff cuts like butter he said he walked straight into the bench and recoiled none so buttery that he said and stood swaying I felt scared Davidson said I what on earths come over you he looked round him in every direction I could swear that was bellows why don't you show yourself like a man bellows it occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind I walked round the table and laid my hand upon his arm I never saw a man more startled in my life he jumped away from me and came round into an attitude of self defense his face fairly distorted with terror good god he cried what was that it's I bellows confounded Davidson he jumped when I answered him and stared how can I express it right through me he began talking not to me but to himself here in broad daylight on a clear beach not a place to hide in he looked about him wildly here I'm off he suddenly turned and ran headlong into the big electromagnet so violently that as we found afterwards he bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly at that he stepped back a pace and cried out with almost a whimper what in heaven's name has come over me he stood blanched with terror and trembling violently with his right arm clutching his left where that had collided with the magnet by that time I was excited and fairly scared Davidson said I don't be afraid I startled at my voice but not so excessively as before I repeated my words in as clear and firm a tone as I could assume bellows he said is that you can't you see it's me he laughed I can't even see it's myself where the devil are we here said I in the laboratory the laboratory he answered in a puzzled tone and put his hand to his forehead I was in the laboratory till that flash came but I'm hanged if I'm there now what ship is that there's no ship said I do be sensible old chap no ship he repeated and seemed to forget my denial forthwith I suppose said he slowly we're both dead but the rummy part as I feel just as though I still had a body don't get used to it all at once I suppose the old shop was struck by lightning I suppose jolly quick thing bellows eh don't talk nonsense you're very much alive you're in the laboratory blundering about smashed a new electrometer I don't envy you when boys arrives he stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates I must be deaf said he they fired a gun for there goes the puff of smoke and I never heard a sound I put my hand on his arm again and this time he was less alarmed I should have a sort of invisible bodies said he by jove there's a boat coming round to headland it's very much like the old life after all in a different climate I shook his arm Davidson I cried wake up part 2 it was just then that boys came in so soon as he spoke Davidson exclaimed boys dead too what a lark I hasten to explain that Davidson wasn't a kind of some nambulistic trance boys was interested at once we both did all we could to rouse the fellow out of his extraordinary state he answered our questions and asked us some of his own but his attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about a beach in the ship he kept interpolating observations concerning some boat and the davits and sails filling with the wind it made one feel queer in the dusky laboratory to hear him saying such things he was blind and helpless we had to walk him down the passage one at each elbow to boys' private room and while boys talked to him there and humored him about this ship idea I went along the corridor and asked old Wade to come and look at him the voice of our dean sobered him a little but not very much he asked where his hands were and why he had to walk about up to his waist in the ground Wade thought over him a long time you know how he nits his brows and then made him feel the couch guiding his hands to it that's a couch said Wade the couch in the private room of Professor Boyce horse hair stuffing Davidson felt about and puzzled over it and answered presently that he could feel it all right but he couldn't see it what do you see asked Wade Davidson said he could see nothing but a lot of sand and broken up shells Wade gave him some other things to feel telling him what they were and watching him keenly the ship is almost hulled down said Davidson presently apropos of nothing never mind the ship said Wade listen to me Davidson do you know what hallucination means rather said Davidson well everything you see is hallucinatory Bishop Berkeley said Davidson don't mistake me said Wade you are alive and in this room of voices but something has happened to your eyes you cannot see you can feel and hear but not see do you follow me it seems to me that I see too much Davidson rubbed his knuckles into his eyes well he said that's all don't let it perplex you bellows here and I will take you home in a cab Wade a bit Davidson thought help me to sit down said he presently and now I'm sorry to trouble you but will you tell me all that over again Wade repeated it very patiently Davidson shut his eyes and pressed his hands upon his forehead yes said he it's quite right now my eyes are shut I know you're right that's you bellows sitting by me on the couch I'm in England again and we're in the dark then he opened his eyes and there said he is the sun just rising and the yards of the ship and a tumbled sea and a couple of birds lying I never saw anything so real and I'm sitting up to my neck in a bank of sand he bent forward and covered his face with his hands then he opened his eyes again dark sea and sunrise and yet I'm sitting on a sofa in old boys' room God help me part three that was the beginning for three weeks this strange affection of Davidson's eyes continued unabated it was far worse than being blind he was absolutely helpless and had to be fed like a newly hatched bird and let about and undressed if he attempted to move he fell over things or stuck himself against walls or doors after a day or so he got used to hearing our voices without seeing us and willingly admitted he was at home and that Wade was right in what he told him my sister to whom he was engaged insisted on coming to see him and would sit for hours every day while he talked about this beach of his holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely he explained when we left the college and drove home he lived in Hampstead village it appeared to him as if we drove right through a sand hill it was perfectly black until he emerged again and through rocks and trees and solid obstacles and when he was taken to his own room it made him giddy in almost frantic with the fear of falling because going upstairs seemed to lift him 30 or 40 feet above the rocks of his imaginary island he kept saying he should smash all the eggs the end was that he had to be taken down into his father's consulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there he described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole would very little vegetation except some peaty stuff and a lot of bare rock there were multitudes of penguins and they made the rocks white and disagreeable to sea the sea was often rough and once there was a thunderstorm and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes once or twice seals pulled up on the beach but only on the first two or three days he said it was very funny the way in which the penguins used to waddle right through him and how he seemed to lie among them without disturbing them I remember one odd thing and that was when he wanted very badly to smoke we put a pipe in his hands he almost poked his eye out with it and lit it but he couldn't taste anything I've since found it's the same with me I don't know if it's the usual case that I cannot enjoy tobacco at all unless I can see the smoke but the queerest part of his vision came when Wade sent him out in a bath chair to get fresh air the Davidson's hired a chair and got that deaf and obstinate dependent of theirs Wigery to attend to it Wigery's ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar my sister who had been to the dog's home met them in Camden Town towards King's Cross Wigery trotting along complacently and Davidson evidently most distressed trying in his feeble blind way to get his attention he positively wept when my sister spoke to him oh get me out of this horrible darkness he said feeling for her hand I must get out of it or I shall die he was quite incapable of explaining what was the matter but my sister decided he must go home and presently as they went uphill towards Hampstead the horror seemed to drop from him he said it was good to see the stars again though it was then about noon in a blazing day it seemed he told me afterwards as if I was being carried irresistibly towards the water I was not very much alarmed at first of course it was night there a lovely night of course I asked for that struck me as odd of course said he it's always night there when it is day here well we went right into the water which was calm and shining under the moonlight just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and flatter as I came down into it the surface glistened just like a skin it might have been empty space underneath for all I could tell to the contrary very slowly for I rode slanting into it the water crept up to my eyes then I went under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes the moon gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim and fish faintly glowing came around to me and things that seemed made of luminous glass and I passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oily luster and so I drove down into the sea and the stars went out one by one and the moon grew greener and darker and the seaweed became a luminous purple red and everything seemed to quiver and all the while I could hear the wheels of the bath chair creaking and the footsteps of people going by and the man in the distance selling the special Paul Mall I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water it became inky black about me not a ray from above into that darkness and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter the snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit lamps but after a time there were no more weeds the fishes came staring and gaping towards me and into me and through me I never imagined such fishes before lines of fire along the sides of them as though they had been outlined with a luminous pencil and there was a ghastly thing swimming backwards with a lot of twining arms and then I saw coming very slowly towards me through the gloom a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes swimming and darting round something that drifted I drove on straight towards it and presently I saw in the midst of the tumult and by the light of the fish a bit of splintered spar looming over me in a dark hull tilting over and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them then it was I began to try to attract Wigery's attention a horror came upon me I should have driven right into those half-eaten things if your sister had not come they had great holes in them bellows and never mind but it was ghastly part four for three weeks Davidson remained in this singular state seeing what at the time we imagined was an altogether phantasmal world and stone blind to the world around him then one Tuesday when I called I met old Davidson in the passage he can see his thumb the old gentleman said in a perfect transport he was struggling into his overcoat he can see his thumb bellows he said with the tears in his eyes the lad will be all right yet I rushed in to Davidson he was holding up a little book before his face and looking at it and laughing in a weak kind of way it's amazing said he there's a kind of patch come there he pointed with his finger I'm under rocks as usual and the penguins are staggering and flapping about as usual and there's been a whale showing every now and then but it's got too dark now to make him out but put something there and I see it I do see it it's very dim and broken in places but I see it all the same like a faint specter of itself I found it out this morning while they were addressing me it's like a hole in this infernal phantom world just put your hand by mine no, not there ah, yes, I see it the base of your thumb in a bit of cuff it looks like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of the darkling sky just by it there's a group of stars like a cross coming out from that time Davidson began to mend his account of the change like his account of the vision was oddly convincing over patches of his field of vision the phantom world grew fainter grew transparent as it were and through these translucent gaps he began to see dimly the real world about him the patches grew in size and number ran together and spread until only here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes he was able to get up and steer himself about feed himself once more read, smoke and behave like an ordinary citizen again at first it was very confusing to him to have these two pictures overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern but in a little while he began to distinguish the real from the illusory at first he was unfainedly glad and seemed only too anxious to complete his cure by taking exercise and tonics but as that odd island of his began to fade away from him he became clearly interested in it he wanted particularly to go down into the deep sea again and would spend half his time wondering about the low lying parts of London trying to find the waterlogged wreck he had seen drifting the glare of real daylight very soon impressed him so vividly as to blot out everything of his shadowy world but of a night time in a darkened room he could still see the white splashed rocks of the island and the clumsy penguins staggering too and fro but even these grew fainter and fainter and at last soon after he married my sister he saw them for the last time and now to tell of the queerest thing of all about two years after his cure I dined with the Davidson's and after dinner a man named Atkins called in he is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and a pleasant talkative man he was on friendly terms with my brother-in-law and was soon on friendly terms with me it came out that he was engaged to Davidson's cousin and incidentally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of fiance and by the by said he here's the old fulma Davidson looked at it casually then suddenly his face lit up good heavens said he I could almost swear what said Atkins that I had seen that ship before don't see how you can have she hasn't been out of the South Seas for six years and before then but began Davidson and then yes that's the ship I dreamt of I'm sure that's the ship I dreamt of she was standing off an island that swarmed with penguins fired a gun good lord said Atkins who had now heard the particulars of the seizure how the deuce could you dream that and then bit by bit it came out that on the very day Davidson was seized HMS fulma had actually been off a little rock to the south of Antipodes Island a boat had landed overnight atkins eggs had been delayed in a thunderstorm drifting up the boat's crew had waited until the morning before rejoining the ship Atkins had been one of them and he corroborated word for word the descriptions Davidson had given of the island and the boat there is not the slightest doubt in any of our minds we have seen the place in some unaccountable way while he moved hither and thither in London his sight moved hither and thither in a manner that corresponded about this distant island how is absolutely a mystery that completes the remarkable story of Davidson's eyes it's perhaps the best authenticated case in existence of a real vision at a distance explanation there is none forthcoming except what Professor Wade has thrown out but his explanation invokes the fourth dimension in a dissertation on theoretical kinds of space to talk of there being a kink in space seems mere nonsense to me it may be because I am no mathematician when I said that nothing would alter the fact that the place is 8000 miles away he answered that two points might be a yard away on a sheet of paper and yet be brought together by bending the paper round the reader may grasp his argument but I certainly do not his idea seems to be that Davidson the looping between the poles of the big electromagnet had some extraordinary twist given to his retinal elements through the sudden change in the field of force due to the lightning he thinks as a consequence of this that it may be possible to live visually in one part of the world while one lives bodily in another in the same way that is the result of the lack of discernment of the environment and support of his views but so far he has simply succeeded in blinding a few dogs I believe that is the net result of his work though I have not seen him for some weeks laterally I have been so busy that it seems very seems fantastic to me the facts concerning Davidson stand on an altogether different footing and I can testify personally to the accuracy of every detail I have given and of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of the Stolen Basilisk and other stories this is a LibriVots recording are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this is a recording by Snowdrop58 Gloucester, England the Stolen Basilisk and other stories by H.G. Wells the Lord of the Dynamos the Chief Attendant of the three Dynamos he was called at Camberwell and kept the electric railway going came out of Yorkshire and his name was James Holroyd he was a practical electrician but fond of whisky a heavy red-haired brute with irregular teeth he doubted the existence of the deity but accepted Carnot's cycle and he read Shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry his helper came out of the mysterious east and his name was Izumazy but Holroyd called him Puba Holroyd liked to nigger help because he would stand kicking a habit with Holroyd and did not pry into the machinery and try to learn the ways of it certain odd possibilities of the Negro mind brought into abrupt contact with the crown of our civilization Holroyd never fully realised though just at the end he got some inkling of them to define Izumazy was beyond ethnology he was perhaps more negroid than anything else though his hair was curly rather than frizzy and his nose had a bridge moreover his skin was brown rather than black and the whites of his eyes were yellow his broad cheekbones and narrow chin gave his face something of the viperine V his head too was broad behind and low and narrow at the forehead as if his brain had been twisted round in the reverse way to a Europeans he was short of stature and still shorter of English in conversation he made numerous odd noises of no known marketable value and his infrequent words were carved and wrought into heraldic grotesqueness Holroyd tried to elucidate his religious beliefs and especially after Whiskey lectured to him against superstition and missionaries Izumazy however shirked the discussion of his gods even though he was kicked full for it Izumazy had come clad in white but insufficient raiment out of the stoke hole of the Lord Clive from the straight settlements and beyond into London he had heard even in his youth of the greatness and riches of London where all the women are white and fair and even the beggars in the streets are white and he had arrived with newly earned gold coins in his pocket to worship at the shrine of civilisation the day of his landing was a dismal one, the sky was done and a wind-worried drizzle filtered down to the greasy streets but he plunged boldly into the delights of Shadwell and was presently cast up shattered in health civilised in costume penniless and accepting matters of the direst necessity practically a dumb animal to toil for James Holroyd and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at Camberwell and to James Holroyd bullying was a labour of love there were three dynamos with their engines at Camberwell the two that have been there since the beginning are small machines the larger one was new the smaller machines made a reasonable noise their straps hummed over the drums every now and then the brushes buzzed and fizzled the air churned steadily woo woo woo between their poles one was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating but the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core which somehow sat part of the ironwork humming the place made the visitors head real with the throb throb throb of the engines the rotation of the big wheels the spinning ball valves the occasional spittings of the steam and over all the deep and ceasing surging note of the big dynamo this last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect but Azuma Zia counted it unto the monster for mightiness and pride if it were possible we would have the noises of that shed always about the reader as he reads we would tell all our story to such an accompaniment it was a steady stream of din from which the ear picked out first one thread and then another there was the intermittent snorting, panting and seething of the steam engines the suck and thud of their pistons the dull beat on the air as the spokes of the great driving wheels came round and note the leather straps made as they ran tighter and looser and a fretful tumult from the dynamos and over all sometimes inaudible as the ear tired of it and then creeping back upon the senses again was this trombone note of the big machine the floor never felt steady and quiet beneath one's feet but quivered and jarred it was a confusing and unsteady place and enough to send anyone's thoughts jerking into odd zigzags and for three months the big strike of the engineers was in progress Holroyd who was a blackleg and Azumazi who was a mere black were never out of the stir and eddy of it but slept and fed in the little wooden shanty between the shed and the gates Holroyd delivered a theological lecture on the text of his big machine soon after Azumazi came he had to shout to be heard in the din look at that said Holroyd where's your ear an idol to match him and Azumazi looked for a moment Holroyd was inaudible and then Azumazi heard kill a hundred men twelve percent on the ordinary shares said Holroyd and that's something like a god Holroyd was proud of his big dynamo and expaciated upon its size and power to Azumazi until heaven knows what odd currents of thought that and the incessant whirling and shindy set up within the curly black cranium he would explain in the most graphic manner the dozen or so ways in which a man might be killed by it and once he gave Azumazi a shock as a sample of its quality after that in the breathing times of his labour it was heavy labour being not only his own but most of Holroyd's Azumazi would sit and watch the big machine now and then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes at which Holroyd would swear but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing the band ran shouting over the shaft and ever behind one as one watched was the complacent third of the piston so it lived all day in this big airy shed with him and Holroyd to wait upon it not prisoned up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew mere captive devils of the British Solomon but a machine enthroned those two smaller dynamos Azumazi by force of contrast despised the large one he privately christened the lord of the dynamos they were fretful and irregular but the big dynamo was steady how great it was how serene and easy in its working the great black coils spun, spun, spun the rings ran round under the brushes and the deep note of its coil steadied the hole it affected Azumazi clearly Azumazi was not fond of labour he would sit about and watch the lord of the dynamos while Holroyd went away to persuade the yard porter to get whiskey although his proper place was not in the dynamo shed but behind the engines and moreover if Holroyd caught him skulking he got hit for it with a rod of stout copper wire he would go and stand close to the colossus and look up at the great leather band running overhead there was a black patch on the band that came round and it pleased him somehow among all the clatter to watch this return again and again odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it scientific people tell us that savages give souls to rocks and trees and a machine is a thousand times more alive than a rock or a tree and Azumazi was practically a savage still the veneer of civilisation lay no deeper than his slop suit his bruises and the coal grime on his face and hands his father before him had worshipped a meteoric stone kindred blood it may be had splashed the broad wheels of juggernaut he took every opportunity Holroyd gave him of touching and handling the great dynamo fascinating him he polished and cleaned it until the metal parts were blinding in the sun he felt a mysterious sense of service in doing this he would go up to it and touch it spinning coils gently the gods he had worshipped were all far away the people in London hid their gods at last his dim feelings grew more distinct and took shape in thoughts when he came into the roaring shed when morning he salamed to the lord of the dynamos and then when Holroyd was away he went and whispered to the thundering machine that he was its servant and prayed it to have pity on him and save him from Holroyd as he did though a rare gleam of light came in through the open archway of the throbbing machine shed and the lord of the dynamos as he whirled and roared was radiant with pale gold then Azuma Z knew that his service was acceptable to his lord after that he did not feel so lonely as he had done and he had indeed been very much alone in London and even when his work time was over which was rare he loitered about the shed then the next time Holroyd maltreated him Azuma Z went presently to the lord of the dynamos and whispered Thou seest oh my lord and the angry whore of the machinery seemed to answer him thereafter it appeared to him that whenever Holroyd came into the shed a different note came into the sounds of the dynamos my lord bides his time said Azuma Z to himself the iniquity of the fool is not yet ripe and he waited and watched for the day of reckoning one day there was evidence of short circuiting and Holroyd making an unwary examination it was late in the afternoon got a rather severe shock Azuma Z from behind the engine saw him jump off and curse at the peckent coil he is warned said Azuma Z to himself surely my lord is very patient Holroyd had at first initiated his nigger into such elementary conceptions of the dynamos working as would enable him to take temporary charge of the shed in his absence but when he noticed the manner in which Azuma Z hung about the monster he became suspicious he dimly perceived his assistant was up to something and connecting him to the anointing of the coils with oil that had rotted the varnishing one place he issued an edict shouted above the confusion of the machinery don't ego nigh that big dynamo any more poobah or I'll take thy skin off besides if it pleased Azuma Z to be near the big machine it was plain sense and decency to keep him away from it Azuma Z obeyed at the time but later he was caught bowing before the lord of the dynamos at which Holroyd twisted his arm and kicked him as he turned to go away as Azuma Z presently stood behind the engine and glared at the back of the hated Holroyd the noises of the machinery took a new rhythm and sounded like four words in his native tongue it is hard to say exactly what madness is I fancy Azuma Z was mad the incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shared may have churned up his little store of knowledge and big store of superstitious fancy at last into something akin to frenzy at any rate when the idea of making Holroyd a sacrifice to the dynamo fetish was thus suggested to him it filled him with a strange tumult of exultant emotion that night the two men and their black shadows were alone in the shed together the shed was lit with one big arc light that winked and flickered purple the shadows lay black behind the dynamo the ball governors of the engines whirled from light to darkness and their pistons beat loud and steady the world outside seen through the open end of the shed seemed incredibly dim and remote it seemed absolutely silent too since the riot of the machinery drowned every external sound far away was the black fence of the yard with grey shadowy houses behind and above was the deep blue sky and the pale little stars Azuma Z suddenly walked across the centre of the shed above which the leather bands were running and went into the shadow by the big dynamo Holroyd heard a click and the spin of the armature changed what you do with that switch he bawled in surprise and I told you then he saw the set expression of Azuma Z's eyes as the asiatic came out of the shadows towards him in another moment the two men were grappling fiercely in front of the great dynamo you coffee-headed fool gasped Holroyd with a brown hand at his throat keep off those contact rings in another moment he was tripped and reading back upon the lord of the dynamo he instinctively loosened his grip upon his antagonist to save himself from the machine the messenger sent him furious haste from the station to find out what had happened in the dynamo shed met Azuma Z at the porters lodge by the gate Azuma Z tried to explain something but the messenger could make nothing of the black's incoherent English and hurried on to the shed the machines were all noisily at work and nothing seemed to be disarranged there was, however, a queer smell of singed hair then he saw an odd-looking crumpled mass clinging to the front of the big dynamo and approaching recognised the distorted remains of Holroyd the man stared and hesitated a moment then he saw the face and shut his eyes convulsively he turned on his heel before he opened them so that he should not see Holroyd again and went out of the shed to get advice and help when Azuma Z saw Holroyd die in the grip of the great dynamo he had been a little scared about the consequences of his act yet he felt strangely elated knew that the favour of the lord dynamo was upon him his plan was already settled when he met the man coming from the station and the scientific manager who speedily arrived on the scene jumped at the obvious conclusion of suicide this expert scarcely noticed Azuma Z except to ask a few questions did he see Holroyd kill himself Azuma Z explained he had been out of sight at the engine furnace until he heard a difference in the noise from the dynamo it was not a difficult examination being untinctured by suspicion the distorted remains of Holroyd which the electrician removed from the machine were hastily covered by the porter with a coffee stained tablecloth somebody by a happy inspiration fetched a medical man the expert was chiefly anxious to get the machine at work again for seven or eight trains had stopped midway in the stuffy tunnels of the electric railway Azuma Z answering or misunderstanding the questions of the people who had by authority or impudence come into the shed was presently sent back to the stokehole by the scientific manager of course a crowd collected outside the gates of the yard a crowd for no known reason always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a sudden death in London two or three reporters percolated somehow into the engine shed and one even got to Azuma Z but the scientific expert cleared them out again being himself an amateur journalist presently the body was carried away and public interest departed with it Azuma Z remained very quietly at his furnace seeing over and over again in the coals a figure that wriggled violently and became still an hour after the murder to anyone coming into the shed it would have looked exactly as if nothing remarkable had ever happened there peeping presently from his engine room the black saw the lord dynamo spin and whirl beside his little brothers and the driving wheels were beating round and the steam in the pistons went third third exactly as it had been earlier in the evening after all from the mechanical point of view it had been a most insignificant incident the mere temporary deflection of a current but now the slender form and slender shadow of the scientific manager replaced the sturdy outline of Holroyd travelling up and down the lane of light upon the vibrating floor under the straps between the engines and the dynamos have I not served my lord said Azuma Z inaudibly from his shadow and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear as he looked at the big whirling mechanism the strange fascination of it that had been a little in abeyance since Holroyd's death resumed its sway never had Azuma Z seen a man killed so swiftly and pitilessly the big humming machine had slain its victim without wavering for a second from its steady beating it was indeed a mighty god the unconscious scientific manager stood with his back to him scribbling on a piece of paper his shadow lay at the foot of the monster was the lord dynamo still hungry? his servant was ready Azuma Z made a stealthy step forward then stopped the scientific manager suddenly stopped writing and walked down the shed to the end most of the dynamos and began to examine the brushes Azuma Z hesitated and then slipped across noiselessly into the shadow by the switch there he waited presently the manager's footsteps could be heard returning he stopped in his old position unconscious of the stoker crouching ten feet away from him then the big dynamo suddenly fizzled and in another moment Azuma Z had sprung out of the darkness upon him first the scientific manager was gripped round the body and swung towards the big dynamo then kicking with his knee and forcing his antagonist's head down with his hands he loosened the grip on his waist and swung round away from the machine then the black grasped him again putting a curly head against his chest and they swayed and panted as it seemed for an age or so then the scientific manager was impelled to catch a black ear in his teeth and bite furiously the black yelled hideously they rolled over on the floor and the black who had apparently slipped from the vise of the teeth or partied with some ear the scientific manager wondered which at the time tried to throttle him the scientific manager was making some ineffectual efforts to claw something with his hands and to kick when the welcome sound of quick footsteps sounded on the floor the next moment the Zoomerzi had left him and darted towards the big dynamo there was a splutter amid the roar the officer of the company who had entered stood staring as the Zoomerzi caught the naked terminals in his hands gave one horrible convulsion and then hung motionless from the machine his face violently distorted I'm jolly glad you came in when you did the scientific manager still sitting on the floor he looked at the still quivering figure it is not a nice death to die apparently but it is quick the official was still staring at the body he was a man of slow apprehension there was a pause the scientific manager got up on his feet rather awkwardly he ran his fingers along his collar thoughtfully and moved his head to and fro several times poor Holroyd I see now then almost mechanically he went towards the switch in the shadow and turned the current into the railway circuit again as he did so the singed body loosened its grip upon the machine and fell forward on its face the core of the dynamo roared out loud and clear and the armature beat the air so ended prematurely the worship of the dynamo deity perhaps the most short lived of all religions yet with all it could at least boast a martyrdom and a human sacrifice End of chapter 12