The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories
by
H. G. Wells

Part 1 out of 9



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THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

And Other Stories

H. G. WELLS







[Illustration: He stopped, and then made a dash to escape from their
closing ranks.]






INTRODUCTION

The enterprise of Messrs. T. Nelson & Sons and the friendly accommodation
of Messrs. Macmillan render possible this collection in one cover of all
the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again. Except for
the two series of linked incidents that make up the bulk of the book
called _Tales of Space and Time_, no short story of mine of the
slightest merit is excluded from this volume. Many of very questionable
merit find a place; it is an inclusive and not an exclusive gathering.
And the task of selection and revision brings home to me with something of
the effect of discovery that I was once an industrious writer of short
stories, and that I am no longer anything of the kind. I have not written
one now for quite a long time, and in the past five or six years I have
made scarcely one a year. The bulk of the fifty or sixty tales from which
this present three-and-thirty have been chosen dates from the last
century. This edition is more definitive than I supposed when first I
arranged for it. In the presence of so conclusive an ebb and cessation an
almost obituary manner seems justifiable.

I find it a little difficult to disentangle the causes that have
restricted the flow of these inventions. It has happened, I remark, to
others as well as to myself, and in spite of the kindliest encouragement
to continue from editors and readers. There was a time when life bubbled
with short stories; they were always coming to the surface of my mind, and
it is no deliberate change of will that has thus restricted my production.
It is rather, I think, a diversion of attention to more sustained and more
exacting forms. It was my friend Mr. C.L. Hind who set that spring going.
He urged me to write short stories for the _Pall Mall Budget_, and
persuaded me by his simple and buoyant conviction that I could do what he
desired. There existed at the time only the little sketch, "The Jilting of
Jane," included in this volume--at least, that is the only tolerable
fragment of fiction I find surviving from my pre-Lewis-Hind period. But I
set myself, so encouraged, to the experiment of inventing moving and
interesting things that could be given vividly in the little space of
eight or ten such pages as this, and for a time I found it a very
entertaining pursuit indeed. Mr. Hind's indicating finger had shown me an
amusing possibility of the mind. I found that, taking almost anything as a
starting-point and letting my thoughts play about it, there would
presently come out of the darkness, in a manner quite inexplicable, some
absurd or vivid little incident more or less relevant to that initial
nucleus. Little men in canoes upon sunlit oceans would come floating out
of nothingness, incubating the eggs of prehistoric monsters unawares;
violent conflicts would break out amidst the flower-beds of suburban
gardens; I would discover I was peering into remote and mysterious worlds
ruled by an order logical indeed but other than our common sanity.

The 'nineties was a good and stimulating period for a short-story writer.
Mr. Kipling had made his astonishing advent with a series of little
blue-grey books, whose covers opened like window-shutters to reveal
the dusty sun-glare and blazing colours of the East; Mr. Barrie had
demonstrated what could be done in a little space through the panes of his
_Window in Thrums_. The _National Observer_ was at the climax of
its career of heroic insistence upon lyrical brevity and a vivid finish,
and Mr. Frank Harris was not only printing good short stories by other
people, but writing still better ones himself in the dignified pages of
the _Fortnightly Review. Longman's Magazine_, too, represented a
_clientele_ of appreciative short-story readers that is now
scattered. Then came the generous opportunities of the _Yellow Book_,
and the _National Observer_ died only to give birth to the _New
Review_. No short story of the slightest distinction went for long
unrecognised. The sixpenny popular magazines had still to deaden down the
conception of what a short story might be to the imaginative limitation of
the common reader--and a maximum length of six thousand words. Short
stories broke out everywhere. Kipling was writing short stories; Barrie,
Stevenson, Frank-Harris; Max Beerbohm wrote at least one perfect one, "The
Happy Hypocrite"; Henry James pursued his wonderful and inimitable bent;
and among other names that occur to me, like a mixed handful of jewels
drawn from a bag, are George Street, Morley Roberts, George Gissing, Ella
d'Arcy, Murray Gilchrist, E. Nesbit, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad, Edwin
Pugh, Jerome K. Jerome, Kenneth Graham, Arthur Morrison, Marriott Watson,
George Moore, Grant Allen, George Egerton, Henry Harland, Pett Ridge, W.
W. Jacobs (who alone seems inexhaustible). I dare say I could recall as
many more names with a little effort. I may be succumbing to the
infirmities of middle age, but I do not think the present decade can
produce any parallel to this list, or what is more remarkable, that the
later achievements in this field of any of the survivors from that time,
with the sole exception of Joseph Conrad, can compare with the work they
did before 1900. It seems to me this outburst of short stories came not
only as a phase in literary development, but also as a phase in the
development of the individual writers concerned.

It is now quite unusual to see any adequate criticism of short stories in
English. I do not know how far the decline in short-story writing may not
be due to that. Every sort of artist demands human responses, and few men
can contrive to write merely for a publisher's cheque and silence, however
reassuring that cheque may be. A mad millionaire who commissioned
masterpieces to burn would find it impossible to buy them. Scarcely any
artist will hesitate in the choice between money and attention; and it was
primarily for that last and better sort of pay that the short stories of
the 'nineties were written. People talked about them tremendously,
compared them, and ranked them. That was the thing that mattered.

It was not, of course, all good talk, and we suffered then, as now, from
the _a priori_ critic. Just as nowadays he goes about declaring that
the work of such-and-such a dramatist is all very amusing and delightful,
but "it isn't a Play," so we' had a great deal of talk about _the_
short story, and found ourselves measured by all kinds of arbitrary
standards. There was a tendency to treat the short story as though it was
as definable a form as the sonnet, instead of being just exactly what any
one of courage and imagination can get told in twenty minutes' reading or
so. It was either Mr. Edward Garnett or Mr. George Moore in a violently
anti-Kipling mood who invented the distinction between the short story and
the anecdote. The short story was Maupassant; the anecdote was damnable.
It was a quite infernal comment in its way, because it permitted no
defence. Fools caught it up and used it freely. Nothing is so destructive
in a field of artistic effort as a stock term of abuse. Anyone could say
of any short story, "A mere anecdote," just as anyone can say
"Incoherent!" of any novel or of any sonata that isn't studiously
monotonous. The recession of enthusiasm for this compact, amusing form is
closely associated in my mind with that discouraging imputation. One felt
hopelessly open to a paralysing and unanswerable charge, and one's ease
and happiness in the garden of one's fancies was more and more marred by
the dread of it. It crept into one's mind, a distress as vague and
inexpugnable as a sea fog on a spring morning, and presently one shivered
and wanted to go indoors...It is the absurd fate of the imaginative writer
that he should be thus sensitive to atmospheric conditions.

But after one has died as a maker one may still live as a critic, and I
will confess I am all for laxness and variety in this as in every field of
art. Insistence upon rigid forms and austere unities seems to me the
instinctive reaction of the sterile against the fecund. It is the tired
man with a headache who values a work of art for what it does not contain.
I suppose it is the lot of every critic nowadays to suffer from
indigestion and a fatigued appreciation, and to develop a self-protective
tendency towards rules that will reject, as it were, automatically the
more abundant and irregular forms. But this world is not for the weary,
and in the long-run it is the new and variant that matter. I refuse
altogether to recognise any hard and fast type for the Short Story, any
more than I admit any limitation upon the liberties of the Small Picture.
The short story is a fiction that may be read in something under an hour,
and so that it is moving and delightful, it does not matter whether it is
as "trivial" as a Japanese print of insects seen closely between grass
stems, or as spacious as the prospect of the plain of Italy from Monte
Mottarone. It does not matter whether it is human or inhuman, or whether
it leaves you thinking deeply or radiantly but superficially pleased. Some
things are more easily done as short stories than others and more
abundantly done, but one of the many pleasures of short-story writing is
to achieve the impossible.

At any rate, that is the present writer's conception of the art of the
short story, as the jolly art of making something very bright and moving;
it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or beautiful or profoundly
illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen
to fifty minutes to read aloud. All the rest is just whatever invention
and imagination and the mood can give--a vision of buttered slides on a
busy day or of unprecedented worlds. In that spirit of miscellaneous
expectation these stories should be received. Each is intended to be a
thing by itself; and if it is not too ungrateful to kindly and
enterprising publishers, I would confess I would much prefer to see each
printed expensively alone, and left in a little brown-paper cover to lie
about a room against the needs of a quite casual curiosity. And I would
rather this volume were found in the bedrooms of convalescents and in
dentists' parlours and railway trains than in gentlemen's studies. I would
rather have it dipped in and dipped in again than read severely through.
Essentially it is a miscellany of inventions, many of which were very
pleasant to write; and its end is more than attained if some of them are
refreshing and agreeable to read. I have now re-read them all, and I am
glad to think I wrote them. I like them, but I cannot tell how much the
associations of old happinesses gives them a flavour for me. I make no
claims for them and no apology; they will be read as long as people read
them. Things written either live or die; unless it be for a place of
judgment upon Academic impostors, there is no apologetic intermediate
state.

I may add that I have tried to set a date to most of these stories, but
that they are not arranged in strictly chronological order.

H. G. WELLS.



CONTENTS.

I. THE JILTING OF JANE

II. THE CONE

III. THE STOLEN BACILLUS

IV. THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID

V. THE AVU OBSERVATORY

VI. AEPYORNIS ISLAND

VII. THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES.

VIII. THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS.

IX. THE MOTH

X. THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST

XI. THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM

XII. UNDER THE KNIFE

XIII. THE SEA RAIDERS

XIV. THE OBLITERATED MAN

XV. THE PLATTNER STORY

XVI. THE RED ROOM

XVII. THE PURPLE PILEUS

XVIII. A SLIP UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

XIX. THE CRYSTAL EGG

XX. THE STAR

XXI. THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES

XXII. A VISION OF JUDGMENT

XXIII. JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD

XXIV. MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART

XXV. A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON

XXVI. THE VALLEY OF SPIDERS

XXVII. THE NEW ACCELERATOR

XXVIII. THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT

XXIX. THE MAGIC SHOP

XXX. THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS

XXXI. THE DOOR IN THE WALL

XXXII. THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

XXXIII. THE BEAUTIFUL SUIT




I.

THE JILTING OF JANE.


As I sit writing in my study, I can hear our Jane bumping her way
downstairs with a brush and dust-pan. She used in the old days to sing
hymn tunes, or the British national song for the time being, to these
instruments, but latterly she has been silent and even careful over her
work. Time was when I prayed with fervour for such silence, and my wife
with sighs for such care, but now they have come we are not so glad as we
might have anticipated we should be. Indeed, I would rejoice secretly,
though it may be unmanly weakness to admit it, even to hear Jane sing
"Daisy," or, by the fracture of any plate but one of Euphemia's best green
ones, to learn that the period of brooding has come to an end.

Yet how we longed to hear the last of Jane's young man before we heard the
last of him! Jane was always very free with her conversation to my wife,
and discoursed admirably in the kitchen on a variety of topics--so well,
indeed, that I sometimes left my study door open--our house is a small
one--to partake of it. But after William came, it was always William,
nothing but William; William this and William that; and when we thought
William was worked out and exhausted altogether, then William all over
again. The engagement lasted altogether three years; yet how she got
introduced to William, and so became thus saturated with him, was always a
secret. For my part, I believe it was at the street corner where the Rev.
Barnabas Baux used to hold an open-air service after evensong on Sundays.
Young Cupids were wont to flit like moths round the paraffin flare of that
centre of High Church hymn-singing. I fancy she stood singing hymns there,
out of memory and her imagination, instead of coming home to get supper,
and William came up beside her and said, "Hello!" "Hello yourself!" she
said; and etiquette being satisfied, they proceeded to talk together.

As Euphemia has a reprehensible way of letting her servants talk to her,
she soon heard of him. "He is _such_ a respectable young man, ma'am,"
said Jane, "you don't know." Ignoring the slur cast on her acquaintance,
my wife inquired further about this William.

"He is second porter at Maynard's, the draper's," said Jane, "and gets
eighteen shillings--nearly a pound--a week, m'm; and when the head porter
leaves he will be head porter. His relatives are quite superior people,
m'm. Not labouring people at all. His father was a greengrosher, m'm, and
had a churnor, and he was bankrup' twice. And one of his sisters is in a
Home for the Dying. It will be a very good match for me, m'm," said Jane,
"me being an orphan girl."

"Then you are engaged to him?" asked my wife.

"Not engaged, ma'am; but he is saving money to buy a ring--hammyfist."

"Well, Jane, when you are properly engaged to him you may ask him round
here on Sunday afternoons, and have tea with him in the kitchen;" for my
Euphemia has a motherly conception of her duty towards her maid-servants.
And presently the amethystine ring was being worn about the house, even
with ostentation, and Jane developed a new way of bringing in the joint so
that this gage was evident. The elder Miss Maitland was aggrieved by it,
and told my wife that servants ought not to wear rings. But my wife looked
it up in _Enquire Within_ and _Mrs. Motherly's Book of Household
Management_, and found no prohibition. So Jane remained with this
happiness added to her love.

The treasure of Jane's heart appeared to me to be what respectable people
call a very deserving young man. "William, ma'am," said Jane one day
suddenly, with ill-concealed complacency, as she counted out the beer
bottles, "William, ma'am, is a teetotaller. Yes, m'm; and he don't smoke.
Smoking, ma'am," said Jane, as one who reads the heart, "_do_ make
such a dust about. Beside the waste of money. _And_ the smell.
However, I suppose they got to do it--some of them..."

William was at first a rather shabby young man of the ready-made black
coat school of costume. He had watery gray eyes, and a complexion
appropriate to the brother of one in a Home for the Dying. Euphemia did
not fancy him very much, even at the beginning. His eminent respectability
was vouched for by an alpaca umbrella, from which he never allowed himself
to be parted.

"He goes to chapel," said Jane. "His papa, ma'am----"

"His _what_, Jane?"

"His papa, ma'am, was Church: but Mr. Maynard is a Plymouth Brother, and
William thinks it Policy, ma'am, to go there too. Mr. Maynard comes and
talks to him quite friendly when they ain't busy, about using up all the
ends of string, and about his soul. He takes a lot of notice, do Mr.
Maynard, of William, and the way he saves his soul, ma'am."

Presently we heard that the head porter at Maynard's had left, and that
William was head porter at twenty-three shillings a week. "He is really
kind of over the man who drives the van," said Jane, "and him married,
with three children." And she promised in the pride of her heart to make
interest for us with William to favour us so that we might get our parcels
of drapery from Maynard's with exceptional promptitude.

After this promotion a rapidly-increasing prosperity came upon Jane's
young man. One day we learned that Mr. Maynard had given William a book.
"'Smiles' 'Elp Yourself,' it's called," said Jane; "but it ain't comic. It
tells you how to get on in the world, and some what William read to me was
_lovely_, ma'am."

Euphemia told me of this, laughing, and then she became suddenly grave.
"Do you know, dear," she said, "Jane said one thing I did not like. She
had been quiet for a minute, and then she suddenly remarked, 'William is a
lot above me, ma'am, ain't he?'"

"I don't see anything in that," I said, though later my eyes were to be
opened.

One Sunday afternoon about that time I was sitting at my writing-desk--
possibly I was reading a good book--when a something went by the window. I
heard a startled exclamation behind me, and saw Euphemia with her hands
clasped together and her eyes dilated. "George," she said in an
awe-stricken whisper, "did you see?"

Then we both spoke to one another at the same moment, slowly and solemnly:
"_A silk hat! Yellow gloves! A new umbrella!_"

"It may be my fancy, dear," said Euphemia; "but his tie was very like
yours. I believe Jane keeps him in ties. She told me a little while ago,
in a way that implied volumes about the rest of your costume, 'The master
_do_ wear pretty ties, ma'am.' And he echoes all your novelties."

The young couple passed our window again on their way to their customary
walk. They were arm in arm. Jane looked exquisitely proud, happy, and
uncomfortable, with new white cotton gloves, and William, in the silk hat,
singularly genteel!

That was the culmination of Jane's happiness. When she returned, "Mr.
Maynard has been talking to William, ma'am," she said, "and he is to serve
customers, just like the young shop gentlemen, during the next sale. And
if he gets on, he is to be made an assistant, ma'am, at the first
opportunity. He has got to be as gentlemanly as he can, ma'am; and if he
ain't, ma'am, he says it won't be for want of trying. Mr. Maynard has took
a great fancy to him."

"He _is_ getting on, Jane," said my wife.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jane thoughtfully; "he _is_ getting on."

And she sighed.

That next Sunday as I drank my tea I interrogated my wife. "How is this
Sunday different from all other Sundays, little woman? What has happened?
Have you altered the curtains, or re-arranged the furniture, or where is
the indefinable difference of it? Are you wearing your hair in a new way
without warning me? I perceive a change clearly, and I cannot for the life
of me say what it is."

Then my wife answered in her most tragic voice, "George," she said, "that
William has not come near the place to-day! And Jane is crying her heart
out upstairs."

There followed a period of silence. Jane, as I have said, stopped singing
about the house, and began to care for our brittle possessions, which
struck my wife as being a very sad sign indeed. The next Sunday, and the
next, Jane asked to go out, "to walk with William," and my wife, who never
attempts to extort confidences, gave her permission, and asked no
questions. On each occasion Jane came back looking flushed and very
determined. At last one day she became communicative.

"William is being led away," she remarked abruptly, with a catching of the
breath, apropos of tablecloths. "Yes, m'm. She is a milliner, and she can
play on the piano."

"I thought," said my wife, "that you went out with him on Sunday."

"Not out with him, m'm--after him. I walked along by the side of them, and
told her he was engaged to me."

"Dear me, Jane, did you? What did they do?"

"Took no more notice of me than if I was dirt. So I told her she should
suffer for it."

"It could not have been a very agreeable walk, Jane."

"Not for no parties, ma'am."

"I wish," said Jane, "I could play the piano, ma'am. But anyhow, I don't
mean to let _her_ get him away from me. She's older than him, and her
hair ain't gold to the roots, ma'am."

It was on the August Bank Holiday that the crisis came. We do not clearly
know the details of the fray, but only such fragments as poor Jane let
fall. She came home dusty, excited, and with her heart hot within her.

The milliner's mother, the milliner, and William had made a party to the
Art Museum at South Kensington, I think. Anyhow, Jane had calmly but
firmly accosted them somewhere in the streets, and asserted her right to
what, in spite of the consensus of literature, she held to be her
inalienable property. She did, I think, go so far as to lay hands on him.
They dealt with her in a crushingly superior way. They "called a cab."
There was a "scene," William being pulled away into the four-wheeler by
his future wife and mother-in-law from the reluctant hands of our
discarded Jane. There were threats of giving her "in charge."

"My poor Jane!" said my wife, mincing veal as though she was mincing
William. "It's a shame of them. I would think no more of him. He is not
worthy of you."

"No, m'm," said Jane. "He _is_ weak.

"But it's that woman has done it," said Jane. She was never known to bring
herself to pronounce "that woman's" name or to admit her girlishness. "I
can't think what minds some women must have--to try and get a girl's young
man away from her. But there, it only hurts to talk about it," said Jane.

Thereafter our house rested from William. But there was something in the
manner of Jane's scrubbing the front doorstep or sweeping out the rooms, a
certain viciousness, that persuaded me that the story had not yet ended.

"Please, m'm, may I go and see a wedding tomorrow?" said Jane one day.

My wife knew by instinct whose wedding. "Do you think it is wise, Jane?"
she said.

"I would like to see the last of him," said Jane.

"My dear," said my wife, fluttering into my room about twenty minutes
after Jane had started, "Jane has been to the boot-hole and taken all the
left-off boots and shoes, and gone off to the wedding with them in a bag.
Surely she cannot mean--"

"Jane," I said, "is developing character. Let us hope for the best."

Jane came back with a pale, hard face. All the boots seemed to be still in
her bag, at which my wife heaved a premature sigh of relief. We heard her
go upstairs and replace the boots with considerable emphasis.

"Quite a crowd at the wedding, ma'am," she said presently, in a purely
conversational style, sitting in our little kitchen, and scrubbing the
potatoes; "and such a lovely day for them." She proceeded to numerous
other details, clearly avoiding some cardinal incident.

"It was all extremely respectable and nice, ma'am; but _her_ father
didn't wear a black coat, and looked quite out of place, ma'am. Mr.
Piddingquirk--"

"_Who_?"

"Mr. Piddingquirk--William that was, ma'am--had white gloves, and a coat
like a clergyman, and a lovely chrysanthemum. He looked so nice, ma'am.
And there was red carpet down, just like for gentlefolks. And they say he
gave the clerk four shillings, ma'am. It was a real kerridge they had--not
a fly. When they came out of church there was rice-throwing, and her two
little sisters dropping dead flowers. And someone threw a slipper, and
then I threw a boot--"

"Threw a _boot_, Jane!"

"Yes, ma'am. Aimed at her. But it hit _him_. Yes, ma'am, hard. Gev
him a black eye, I should think. I only threw that one. I hadn't the heart
to try again. All the little boys cheered when it hit him."

After an interval--"I am sorry the boot hit _him_."

Another pause. The potatoes were being scrubbed violently. "He always
_was_ a bit above me, you know, ma'am. And he was led away."

The potatoes were more than finished. Jane rose sharply with a sigh, and
rapped the basin down on the table.

"I don't care," she said. "I don't care a rap. He will find out his
mistake yet. It serves me right. I was stuck up about him. I ought not to
have looked so high. And I am glad things are as things are."

My wife was in the kitchen, seeing to the higher cookery. After the
confession of the boot-throwing, she must have watched poor Jane fuming
with a certain dismay in those brown eyes of hers. But I imagine they
softened again very quickly, and then Jane's must have met them.

"Oh, ma'am," said Jane, with an astonishing change of note, "think of all
that _might_ have been! Oh, ma'am, I _could_ have been so happy!
I ought to have known, but I didn't know...You're very kind to let me talk
to you, ma'am...for it's hard on me, ma'am...it's har-r-r-r-d--"

And I gather that Euphemia so far forgot herself as to let Jane sob out
some of the fullness of her heart on a sympathetic shoulder. My Euphemia,
thank Heaven, has never properly grasped the importance of "keeping up her
position." And since that fit of weeping, much of the accent of bitterness
has gone out of Jane's scrubbing and brush work.

Indeed, something passed the other day with the butcher-boy--but that
scarcely belongs to this story. However, Jane is young still, and time and
change are at work with her. We all have our sorrows, but I do not believe
very much in the existence of sorrows that never heal.




II.

THE CONE.


The night was hot and overcast, the sky red-rimmed with the lingering
sunset of midsummer. They sat at the open window, trying to fancy the air
was fresher there. The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and
dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against the
hazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the railway
signal against the lowering sky. The man and woman spoke to one another in
low tones.

"He does not suspect?" said the man, a little nervously.

"Not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritated her. "He
thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. He has no
imagination, no poetry."

"None of these men of iron have," he said sententiously. "They have no
hearts."

"_He_ has not," she said. She turned her discontented face towards
the window. The distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and
grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of the
tender. As the train passed, there was a glare of light above the cutting
and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight black oblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim grey of the
embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the
tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train, smoke, and
sound in one abrupt gulp.

"This country was all fresh and beautiful once," he said; "and now--it is
Gehenna. Down that way--nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching fire
and dust into the face of heaven...But what does it matter? An end comes,
an end to all this cruelty..._To-morrow."_ He spoke the last word in
a whisper.

"_To-morrow,"_ she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staring
out of the window.

"Dear!" he said, putting his hand on hers.

She turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another's. Hers
softened to his gaze. "My dear one!" she said, and then: "It seems so
strange--that you should have come into my life like this--to open--" She
paused.

"To open?" he said.

"All this wonderful world"--she hesitated, and spoke still more softly--
"this world of _love_ to me."

Then suddenly the door clicked and closed. They turned their heads, and he
started violently back. In the shadow of the room stood a great shadowy
figure-silent. They saw the face dimly in the half-light, with
unexpressive dark patches under the pent-house brows. Every muscle in
Raut's body suddenly became tense. When could the door have opened? What
had he heard? Had he heard all? What had he seen? A tumult of questions.

The new-comer's voice came at last, after a pause that seemed
interminable. "Well?" he said.

"I was afraid I had missed you, Horrocks," said the man at the window,
gripping the window-ledge with his hand. His voice was unsteady.

The clumsy figure of Horrocks came forward out of the shadow. He made no
answer to Raut's remark. For a moment he stood above them.

The woman's heart was cold within her. "I told Mr. Raut it was just
possible you might come back," she said in a voice that never quivered.

Horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the chair by her little
work-table. His big hands were clenched; one saw now the fire of his eyes
under the shadow of his brows. He was trying to get his breath. His eyes
went from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had trusted, and then
back to the woman.

By this time and for the moment all three half understood one another.
Yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things that choked them.

It was the husband's voice that broke the silence at last.

"You wanted to see me?" he said to Raut.

Raut started as he spoke. "I came to see you," he said, resolved to lie to
the last.

"Yes," said Horrocks.

"You promised," said Raut, "to show me some fine effects of moonlight and
smoke."

"I promised to show you some fine effects of moonlight and smoke,"
repeated Horrocks in a colourless voice.

"And I thought I might catch you to-night before you went down to the
works," proceeded Raut, "and come with you."

There was another pause. Did the man mean to take the thing coolly? Did
he, after all, know? How long had he been in the room? Yet even at the
moment when they heard the door, their attitudes ... Horrocks glanced at
the profile of the woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. Then he
glanced at Raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly. "Of course," he
said, "I promised to show you the works under their proper dramatic
conditions. It's odd how I could have forgotten."

"If I am troubling you--" began Raut.

Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly come into the sultry
gloom of his eyes. "Not in the least." he said.

"Have you been telling Mr. Raut of all these contrasts of flame and shadow
you think so splendid?" said the woman, turning now to her husband for
the first time, her confidence creeping back again, her voice just one
half-note too high--"that dreadful theory of yours that machinery is
beautiful, and everything else in the world ugly. I thought he would not
spare you, Mr. Raut. It's his great theory, his one discovery in art."

"I am slow to make discoveries," said Horrocks grimly, damping her
suddenly. "But what I discover ..." He stopped.

"Well?" she said.

"Nothing;" and suddenly he rose to his feet.

"I promised to show you the works," he said to Raut, and put his big,
clumsy hand on his friend's shoulder. "And you are ready to go?"

"Quite," said Raut, and stood up also.

There was another pause. Each of them peered through the indistinctness of
the dusk at the other two.

Horrocks' hand still rested on Raut's shoulder. Raut half fancied still
that the incident was trivial after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her
husband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in
her mind took a vague shape of physical evil. "Very well," said Horrocks,
and, dropping his hand, turned towards the door.

"My hat?" Raut looked round in the half-light.

"That's my work-basket," said Mrs. Horrocks with a gust of hysterical
laughter. Their hands came together on the back of the chair. "Here it
is!" he said. She had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but she
could not frame a word. "Don't go!" and "Beware of him!" struggled in her
mind, and the swift moment passed.

"Got it?" said Horrocks, standing with the door half open.

Raut stepped towards him. "Better say goodbye to Mrs. Horrocks," said the
ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before.

Raut started and turned. "Good-evening, Mrs. Horrocks," he said, and their
hands touched.

Horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in him
towards men. Raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at her, her
husband followed. She stood motionless while Raut's light footfall and her
husband's heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passage
together. The front door slammed heavily. She went to the window, moving
slowly, and stood watching, leaning forward. The two men appeared for a
moment at the gateway in the road, passed under the street lamp, and were
hidden by the black masses of the shrubbery. The lamplight fell for a
moment on their faces, showing only unmeaning pale patches, telling
nothing of what she still feared, and doubted, and craved vainly to know.
Then she sank down into a crouching attitude in the big arm-chair, her
eyes-wide open and staring out at the red lights from the furnaces that
flickered in the sky. An hour after she was still there, her attitude
scarcely changed.

The oppressive stillness of the evening weighed heavily upon Raut. They
went side by side down the road in silence, and in silence turned into the
cinder-made byway that presently opened out the prospect of the valley.

A blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valley with mystery.
Beyond were Hanley and Etruria, grey and dark masses, outlined thinly by
the rare golden dots of the street lamps, and here and there a gas-lit
window, or the yellow glare of some late-working factory or crowded
public-house. Out of the masses, clear and slender against the evening
sky, rose a multitude of tall chimneys, many of them reeking, a few
smokeless during a season of "play." Here and there a pallid patch and
ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the position of a pot-bank or a
wheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky, marked some colliery
where they raise the iridescent coal of the place. Nearer at hand was the
broad stretch of railway, and half-invisible trains shunted--a steady
puffing and rumbling, with every run a ringing concussion and a rhymthic
series of impacts, and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steam
across the further view. And to the left, between the railway and the
dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal,
inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great
cylinders of the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of
the big ironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy and
threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten
iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and the
steam-hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither and
thither. Even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of the
giants, and the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and black
dust came boiling upwards towards the sky.

"Certainly you get some colour with your furnaces," said Raut, breaking a
silence that had become apprehensive.

Horrocks grunted. He stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning down at
the dim steaming railway and the busy ironworks beyond, frowning as if he
were thinking out some knotty problem.

Raut glanced at him and away again. "At present your moonlight effect is
hardly ripe," he continued, looking upward; "the moon is still smothered
by the vestiges of daylight."

Horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who has suddenly
awakened. "Vestiges of daylight? ... Of course, of course." He too looked
up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky. "Come along," he said
suddenly, and gripping Raut's arm in his hand, made a move towards the
path that dropped from them to the railway.

Raut hung back. Their eyes met and saw a thousand things in a moment that
their lips came near to say. Horrocks's hand tightened and then relaxed.
He let go, and before Raut was aware of it, they were arm in arm, and
walking, one unwillingly enough, down the path.

"You see the fine effect of the railway signals towards Burslem," said
Horrocks, suddenly breaking into loquacity, striding fast and tightening
the grip of his elbow the while--"little green lights and red and white
lights, all against the haze. You have an eye for effect, Raut. It's fine.
And look at those furnaces of mine, how they rise upon us as we come down
the hill. That to the right is my pet--seventy feet of him. I packed him
myself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five
long years. I've a particular fancy for _him_. That line of red
there--a lovely bit of warm orange you'd call it, Raut--that's the
puddlers' furnaces, and there, in the hot light, three black figures--did
you see the white splash of the steam-hammer then?--that's the rolling
mills. Come along! Clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across the floor!
Sheet tin, Raut,--amazing stuff. Glass mirrors are not in it when that
stuff comes from the mill. And, squelch! there goes the hammer again. Come
along!"

He had to stop talking to catch at his breath. His arm twisted into Raut's
with benumbing tightness. He had come striding down the black path towards
the railway as though he was possessed. Raut had not spoken a word, had
simply hung back against Horrocks's pull with all his strength.

"I say," he said now, laughing nervously, but with an undertone of snarl
in his voice, "why on earth are you nipping my arm off, Horrocks, and
dragging me along like this?"

At length Horrocks released him. His manner changed again. "Nipping your
arm off?" he said. "Sorry. But it's you taught me the trick of walking
in that friendly way."

"You haven't learnt the refinements of it yet then," said Raut, laughing
artificially again. "By Jove! I'm black and blue." Horrocks offered no
apology. They stood now near the bottom of the hill, close to the fence
that bordered the railway. The ironworks had grown larger and spread out
with their approach. They looked up to the blast furnaces now instead of
down; the further view of Etruria and Hanley had dropped out of sight with
their descent. Before them, by the stile, rose a notice-board, bearing,
still dimly visible, the words, "BEWARE OF THE TRAINS," half hidden by
splashes of coaly mud.

"Fine effects," said Horrocks, waving his arm. "Here comes a train. The
puffs of smoke, the orange glare, the round eye of light in front of it,
the melodious rattle. Fine effects! But these furnaces of mine used to be
finer, before we shoved cones in their throats, and saved the gas."

"How?" said Raut. "Cones?"

"Cones, my man, cones. I'll show you one nearer. The flames used to flare
out of the open throats, great--what is it?--pillars of cloud by day, red
and black smoke, and pillars of fire by night. Now we run it off--in
pipes, and burn it to heat the blast, and the top is shut by a cone.
You'll be interested in that cone."

"But every now and then," said Raut, "you get a burst of fire and smoke up
there."

"The cone's not fixed, it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced by
an equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, of course, there'd be no way
of getting fuel into the thing. Every now and then the cone dips, and out
comes the flare."

"I see," said Raut. He looked over his shoulder. "The moon gets brighter,"
he said.

"Come along," said Horrocks abruptly, gripping his shoulder again, and
moving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. And then came one of
those swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that they leave one doubtful
and reeling. Half-way across, Horrocks's hand suddenly clenched upon him
like a vice, and swung him backward and through a half-turn, so that he
looked up the line. And there a chain of lamp-lit carriage windows
telescoped swiftly as it came towards them, and the red and yellow lights
of an engine grew larger and larger, rushing down upon them. As he grasped
what this meant, he turned his face to Horrocks, and pushed with all his
strength against the arm that held him back between the rails. The
struggle did not last a moment. Just as certain as it was that Horrocks
held him there, so certain was it that he had been violently lugged out of
danger.

"Out of the way," said Horrocks with a gasp, as the train came rattling
by, and they stood panting by the gate into the ironworks.

"I did not see it coming," said Raut, still, even in spite of his own
apprehensions, trying to keep up an appearance of ordinary intercourse.

Horrocks answered with a grunt. "The cone," he said, and then, as one who
recovers himself, "I thought you did not hear."

"I didn't," said Raut.

"I wouldn't have had you run over then for the world," said Horrocks.

"For a moment I lost my nerve," said Raut.

Horrocks stood for half a minute, then turned abruptly towards the
ironworks again. "See how fine these great mounds of mine, these
clinker-heaps, look in the night! That truck yonder, up above there! Up
it goes, and out-tilts the slag. See the palpitating red stuff go sliding
down the slope. As we get nearer, the heap rises up and cuts the blast
furnaces. See the quiver up above the big one. Not that way! This way,
between the heaps. That goes to the puddling furnaces, but I want to show
you the canal first." He came and took Raut by the elbow, and so they went
along side by side. Raut answered Horrocks vaguely. What, he asked
himself, had really happened on the line? Was he deluding himself with his
own fancies, or had Horrocks actually held him back in the way of the
train? Had he just been within an ace of being murdered?

Suppose this slouching, scowling monster _did_ know anything? For a
minute or two then Raut was really afraid for his life, but the mood
passed as he reasoned with himself. After all, Horrocks might have heard
nothing. At any rate, he had pulled him out of the way in time. His odd
manner might be due to the mere vague jealousy he had shown once before.
He was talking now of the ash-heaps and the canal. "Eigh?" said Horrocks.

"What?" said Raut. "Rather! The haze in the moonlight. Fine!"

"Our canal," said Horrocks, stopping suddenly. "Our canal by moonlight and
firelight is immense. You've never seen it? Fancy that! You've spent too
many of your evenings philandering up in Newcastle there. I tell you, for
real florid quality----But you shall see. Boiling water ..."

As they came out of the labyrinth of clinker-heaps and mounds of coal and
ore, the noises of the rolling-mill sprang upon them suddenly, loud, near,
and distinct. Three shadowy workmen went by and touched their caps to
Horrocks. Their faces were vague in the darkness. Raut felt a futile
impulse to address them, and before he could frame his words they passed
into the shadows. Horrocks pointed to the canal close before them now: a
weird-looking place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the
furnaces. The hot water that cooled the tuyeres came into it, some fifty
yards up--a tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up
from the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply about
them, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black and red
eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim. The shining black tower
of the larger blast-furnace rose overhead out of the mist, and its
tumultuous riot filled their ears. Raut kept away from the edge of the
water, and watched Horrocks.

"Here it is red," said Horrocks, "blood-red vapour as red and hot as sin;
but yonder there, where the moonlight falls on it, and it drives across
the clinker-heaps, it is as white as death."

Raut turned his head for a moment, and then came back hastily to his watch
on Horrocks. "Come along to the rolling-mills," said Horrocks. The
threatening hold was not so evident that time, and Raut felt a little
reassured. But all the same, what on earth did Horrocks mean about "white
as death" and "red as sin"? Coincidence, perhaps?

They went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while, and then
through the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant din the deliberate
steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black,
half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between
the wheels, "Come on," said Horrocks in Raut's ear; and they went and
peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyeres, and saw the
tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. It left one eye
blinded for a while. Then, with green and blue patches dancing across the
dark, they went to the lift by which the trucks of ore and fuel and lime
were raised to the top of the big cylinder.

And out upon the narrow rail that overhung the furnace Raut's doubts came
upon him again. Was it wise to be here? If Horrocks did know--everything!
Do what he would, he could not resist a violent trembling. Right under
foot was a sheer depth of seventy feet. It was a dangerous place. They
pushed by a truck of fuel to get to the railing that crowned the thing.
The reek of the furnace, a sulphurous vapour streaked with pungent
bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley quiver. The moon
was riding out now from among a drift of clouds, half-way up the sky above
the undulating wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steaming canal ran away
from below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze
of the flat fields towards Burslem.

"That's the cone I've been telling you of," shouted Horrocks; "and, below
that, sixty feet of fire and molten metal, with the air of the blast
frothing through it like gas in soda-water."

Raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared down at the cone. The heat
was intense. The boiling of the iron and the tumult of the blast made a
thunderous accompaniment to Horrocks's voice. But the thing had to be gone
through now. Perhaps, after all...

"In the middle," bawled Horrocks, "temperature near a thousand degrees. If
_you_ were dropped into it ... flash into flame like a pinch of
gunpowder in a candle. Put your hand out and feel the heat of his breath.
Why, even up here I've seen the rain-water boiling off the trucks. And
that cone there. It's a damned sight too hot for roasting cakes. The top
side of it's three hundred degrees."

"Three hundred degrees!" said Raut.

"Three hundred centigrade, mind!" said Horrocks. "It will boil the blood
out of you in no time."

"Eigh?" said Raut, and turned.

"Boil the blood out of you in ... No, you don't!"

"Let me go!" screamed Raut. "Let go my arm!"

With one hand he clutched at the hand-rail, then with both. For a moment
the two men stood swaying. Then suddenly, with a violent jerk, Horrocks
had twisted him from his hold. He clutched at Horrocks and missed, his
foot went back into empty air; in mid-air he twisted himself, and then
cheek and shoulder and knee struck the hot cone together.

He clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thing sank an
infinitesimal amount as he struck it. A circle of glowing red appeared
about him, and a tongue of flame, released from the chaos within,
flickered up towards him. An intense pain assailed him at the knees, and
he could smell the singeing of his hands. He raised himself to his feet,
and tried to climb up the chain, and then something struck his head. Black
and shining with the moonlight, the throat of the furnace rose about
him.

Horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel on the
rail. The gesticulating figure was bright and white in the moonlight, and
shouting, "Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women! You hot-blooded
hound! Boil! boil! boil!"

Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and flung it
deliberately, lump after lump, at Raut.

"Horrocks!" cried Raut. "Horrocks!"

He clung, crying, to the chain, pulling himself up from the burning of the
cone. Each missile Horrocks flung hit him. His clothes charred and glowed,
and as he struggled the cone dropped, and a rush of hot, suffocating gas
whooped out and burned round him in a swift breath of flame.

His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red had passed,
Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with blood,
still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing in agony--a
cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a sobbing,
intermittent shriek.

Abruptly at the sight the ironmaster's anger passed. A deadly sickness
came upon him. The heavy odour of burning flesh came drifting up to his
nostrils. His sanity returned to him.

"God have mercy upon me!" he cried. "O God! what have I done?"

He knew the thing below him, save that it still moved and felt, was
already a dead man--that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling in
his veins. An intense realisation of that agony came to his mind, and
overcame every other feeling. For a moment he stood irresolute, and then,
turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the struggling
thing that had once been a man. The mass fell with a thud, and went
radiating over the cone. With the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling
confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. As it
passed, he saw the cone clear again.

Then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to the rail with
both hands. His lips moved, but no words came to them.

Down below was the sound of voices and running steps. The clangour of
rolling in the shed ceased abruptly.




III.

THE STOLEN BACILLUS.


"This again," said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the
microscope, "is well,--a preparation of the Bacillus of cholera--the
cholera germ."

The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not
accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his
disengaged eye. "I see very little," he said.

"Touch this screw," said the Bacteriologist; "perhaps the microscope is
out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of a turn this
way or that."

"Ah! now I see," said the visitor. "Not so very much to see after all.
Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles, those
mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!"

He stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in
his hand towards the window. "Scarcely visible," he said, scrutinising the
preparation. He hesitated. "Are these--alive? Are they dangerous now?"

"Those have been stained and killed," said the Bacteriologist. "I wish,
for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in the
universe."

"I suppose," the pale man said, with a slight smile, 'that you scarcely
care to have such things about you in the living--in the active state?"

"On the contrary, we are obliged to," said the Bacteriologist.
"Here, for instance--" He walked across the room and took up one of
several sealed tubes. "Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation of
the actual living disease bacteria." He hesitated. "Bottled cholera, so to
speak."

A slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the
pale man. "It's a deadly thing to have in your possession," he said,
devouring the little tube with his eyes. The Bacteriologist watched the
morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited him
that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested
him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and
deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet
keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic
deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the
Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer
evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of; his topic, to take
the most effective aspect of the matter.

He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. "Yes, here is the pestilence
imprisoned. Only break such a little tube as this into a supply of
drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that one must needs
stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see,
and that one can neither smell nor taste--say to them, 'Go forth, increase
and multiply, and replenish the cisterns,' and death--mysterious,
untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and
indignity--would be released upon this city, and go hither and thither
seeking his victims. Here he would take the husband from the wife, here
the child from its mother, here the statesman from his duty, and here the
toiler from his trouble. He would follow the water-mains, creeping along
streets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where
they did not boil their drinking-water, creeping into the wells of the
mineral water makers, getting washed into salad, and lying dormant in
ices. He would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-troughs, and by unwary
children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil, to reappear
in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. Once start him at
the water supply, and before we could ring him in, and catch him again,
he would have decimated the metropolis."

He stopped abruptly. He had been told rhetoric was his weakness.

"But he is quite safe here, you know--quite safe."

The pale-faced man nodded. His eyes shone. He cleared his throat. "These
Anarchist--rascals," said he, "are fools, blind fools--to use bombs when
this kind of thing is attainable. I think----"

A gentle rap, a mere light touch of the finger-nails, was heard at the
door. The Bacteriologist opened if. "Just a minute, dear," whispered his
wife.

When he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at his watch. "I
had no idea I had wasted an hour of your time," he said. "Twelve minutes
to four. I ought to have left here by half-past three. But your things
were really too interesting. No, positively I cannot stop a moment longer.
I have an engagement at four."

He passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and the Bacteriologist
accompanied him to the door, and then returned thoughtfully along the
passage to his laboratory. He was musing on the ethnology of his visitor.
Certainly the man was not a Teutonic type nor a common Latin one. "A
morbid product, anyhow, I am afraid," said the Bacteriologist to himself.
"How he gloated over those cultivations of disease germs!" A disturbing
thought struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapour bath, and then
very quickly to his writing-table. Then he felt hastily in his pockets and
then rushed to the door. "I may have put it down on the hall table," he
said.

"Minnie!" he shouted hoarsely in the hall.

"Yes, dear," came a remote voice.

"Had I anything in my hand when I spoke to you, dear, just now?"

Pause.

"Nothing, dear, because I remember----"

"Blue ruin!" cried the Bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the front
door and down the steps of his house to the street.

Minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. Down
the street a slender man was getting into a cab. The Bacteriologist,
hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running and gesticulating wildly
towards this group. One slipper came off, but he did not wait for it. "He
has gone _mad_!" said Minnie; "it's that horrid science of his"; and,
opening the window, would have called after him. The slender man, suddenly
glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder. He
pointed hastily to the Bacteriologist, said something to the cabman, the
apron of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered,
and in a moment cab and Bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up
the vista of the roadway and disappeared round the corner.

Minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she drew
her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. "Of course he is
eccentric," she meditated. "But running about London--in the height of the
season, too--in his socks!" A happy thought struck her. She hastily put
her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and
light overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon the doorstep, and hailed a cab
that opportunely crawled by. "Drive me up the road and round Havelock
Crescent, and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteen
coat and no hat."

"Velveteen coat, ma'am, and no 'at. Very good, ma'am." And the cabman
whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to this
address every day in his life.

Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that
collects round the cabman's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled by
the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse, driven
furiously.

They were silent as it went by, and then as it receded--"That's 'Arry
'Icks. Wot's _he_ got?" said the stout gentleman known as Old
Tootles.

"He's a-using his whip, he is, _to_ rights," said the ostler boy.

"Hullo!" said poor old Tommy Byles; "here's another bloomin' loonatic.
Blowed if there ain't."

"It's old George," said Old Tootles, "and he's drivin' a loonatic,
_as_ you say. Ain't he a-clawin' out of the keb? Wonder if he's after
'Arry 'Icks?"

The group round the cabman's shelter became animated. Chorus: "Go it,
George!" "It's a race." "You'll ketch 'em!" "Whip up!"

"She's a goer, she is!" said the ostler boy.

"Strike me giddy!" cried Old Tootles. "Here! _I'm_ a-goin' to begin
in a minute. Here's another comin'. If all the cabs in Hampstead ain't
gone mad this morning!"

"It's a fieldmale this time," said the ostler boy.

"She's a-followin' _him_," said Old Tootles. "Usually the other way
about."

"What's she got in her 'and?"

"Looks like a 'igh 'at."

"What a bloomin' lark it is! Three to one on old George," said the ostler
boy. "Nexst!"

Minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it, but she
felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down Haverstock Hill and
Camden Town High Street with her eyes ever intent on the animated back
view of old George, who was driving her vagrant husband so
incomprehensibly away from her.

The man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms tightly
folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of
destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fear
and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could
accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of
the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded his fear. No
Anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol,
Vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied
dwindled into insignificance beside him. He had only to make sure of the
water supply, and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantly
he had planned it, forged the letter of introduction and got into the
laboratory, and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity! The world
should hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered at him,
neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company
undesirable, should consider him at last. Death, death, death! They had
always treated him as a man of no importance. All the world had been in a
conspiracy to keep him under. He would teach them yet what it is to
isolate a man. What was this familiar street? Great Saint Andrew's Street,
of course! How fared the chase? He craned out of the cab. The
Bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. That was bad. He would be
caught and stopped yet. He felt in his pocket for money, and found half a
sovereign. This he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab into
the man's face. "More," he shouted, "if only we get away."

The money was snatched out of his hand. "Right you are," said the cabman,
and the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the glistening side of the
horse. The cab swayed, and the Anarchist, half-standing under the trap,
put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preserve
his balance. He felt the brittle thing crack, and the broken half of it
rang upon the floor of the cab. He fell back into the seat with a curse,
and stared dismally at the two or three drops of moisture on the apron.

He shuddered.

"Well, I suppose I shall be the first. _Phew!_ Anyhow, I shall be a
Martyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death, nevertheless. I wonder
if it hurts as much as they say."

Presently a thought occurred to him--he groped between his feet. A little
drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that to make
sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would not fail.

Then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the
Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and got
out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid stuff,
this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak,
and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast awaiting
the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose.
The sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity. He greeted his
pursuer with a defiant laugh.

"Vive l'Anarchie! You are too late, my friend, I have drunk it. The
cholera is abroad!"

The Bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his
spectacles. "You have drunk it! An Anarchist! I see now." He was about to
say something more, and then checked himself. A smile hung in the corner
of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend, at which
the Anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towards
Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many
people as possible. The Bacteriologist was so preoccupied with the vision
of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the
appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and
overcoat. "Very good of you to bring my things," he said, and remained
lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the Anarchist.

"You had better get in," he said, still staring. Minnie felt absolutely
convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home on her own
responsibility. "Put on my shoes? Certainly, dear," said he, as the cab
began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure, now small in the
distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque struck him, and
he laughed. Then he remarked, "It is really very serious, though.

"You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist.
No--don't faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted to
astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up a cultivation
of that new species of Bacterium I was telling you of that infest, and I
think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys; and, like a fool, I
said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with it to poison the water
of London, and he certainly might have made things look blue for this
civilised city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course, I cannot say what
will happen, but you know it turned that kitten blue, and the three
puppies--in patches, and the sparrow--bright blue. But the bother is, I
shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more.

"Put on my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs. Jabber.
My dear, Mrs. Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a
hot day because of Mrs.-----. Oh! _very_ well."




IV.

THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID.


The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You
have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you
must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your
taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a
respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps--for the thing
has happened again and again--there slowly unfolds before the delighted
eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel
richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or
unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one
delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new
miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so
convenient as that of its discoverer? "John-smithia"! There have been
worse names.

It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter
Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales--that hope, and also,
maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do
in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with
just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough
nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have
collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or
invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and
had one ambitious little hothouse.

"I have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to
happen to me to-day." He spoke--as he moved and thought--slowly.

"Oh, don't say _that_!" said his housekeeper--who was also his remote
cousin. For "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one
thing to her.

"You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant...though what I do mean I
scarcely know.

"To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to sell a batch
of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and see what
they have. It may be I shall buy something good unawares. That may be it."

He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.

"Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of
the other day?" asked his cousin, as she filled his cup.

"Yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast.

"Nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning to
think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people. There is
Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence, on Wednesday
his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin came home from
Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl of
excitement!--compared to me."

"I think I would rather be without so much excitement," said his
housekeeper. "It can't be good for you."

"I suppose it's troublesome. Still ... you see, nothing ever happens to
me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in love as
I grew up. Never married... I wonder how it feels to have something
happen to you, something really remarkable.

"That orchid-collector was only thirty-six--twenty years younger than
myself--when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once; he
had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed
a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end
he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been very troublesome,
but then it must have been very interesting, you know--except, perhaps,
the leeches."

"I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady with conviction.

"Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. "Twenty-three
minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that
there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket--it is
quite warm enough--and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose--"

He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then
nervously at his cousin's face.

"I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London," she
said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's all between here and
the station coming back."

When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a
purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to
buy, but this time he had done so.

"There are Vandas," he said, "and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis." He
surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid
out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin
all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his
custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for her
and his own entertainment.

"I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these. Some
of them--some of them--I feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be
remarkable. I don't know how it is, but I feel just as sure as if some one
had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable.

"That one "--he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome--"was not identified. It
may be a Palaeonophis--or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a
new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected."

"I don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "It's such an ugly
shape."

"To me it scarcely seems to have a shape."

"I don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper.

"It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow."

"It looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead."

Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "It is
certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of these
things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very beautiful
orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see to-night just
exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I shall set to work."

"They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp--I
forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very orchids
crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind
of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very
unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the
jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to
obtain."

"I think none the better of it for that."

"Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound
gravity.

"Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of
fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine--if men were left to
themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine--and no one round you
but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting
wretches--and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the
necessary training. And just for people in England to have orchids!"

"I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind
of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of his party were
sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his
colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior;
though they could not tell the species of the orchid, and had let it
wither. And it makes these things more interesting."

"It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria
clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying across
that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I cannot
eat another mouthful of dinner."

"I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the
window-seat. I can see them just as well there."

The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little
hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the
other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a
wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new
orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his
expectation of something strange.

Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but
presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was
delighted, and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it
at once, directly he made the discovery.

"That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves
there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets."

"They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said
his housekeeper. "I don't like them."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can't help
my likes and dislikes."

"I don't know for certain, but I don't _think_ there are any orchids
I know that have aerial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of
course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends."

"I don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning
away. "I know it's very silly of me--and I'm very sorry, particularly as
you like the thing so much. But I can't help thinking of that corpse."

"But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of
mine."

His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "Anyhow I don't like it," she
said.

Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did
not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in
particular, whenever he felt inclined.

"There are such queer things about orchids," he said one day; "such
possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilisation,
and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower was
contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant.
Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which
cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. Some of the
Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly
fertilise them, and some of them have never been found with seed."

"But how do they form new plants?"

"By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily
explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for?

"Very likely," he added, "_my_ orchid may be something extraordinary
in that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making
researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or
something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to
unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!"

But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache.
She had seen the plant once again, and the aerial rootlets, which were now
some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of
tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams,
growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that she had settled to her
entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and
Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the ordinary broad
form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards
the base He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed
on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement
by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And
he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the
approaching flowering of this strange plant.

And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass
house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great
_Paloeonophis Lowii_ hid the corner where his new darling stood.
There was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that
overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse.

Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. And,
behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of
blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped
before them in an ecstasy of admiration.

The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the
heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful
bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the
genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable scent! How hot the
place was! The blossoms swam before his eyes.

He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the
thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the
floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves
behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a
curve upward.

* * * * *

At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable
custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea.

"He is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten
minutes. "His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him."

She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name.
There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded
with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks
between the hot-water pipes.

For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless.

He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The
tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were
crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their
ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.

She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant
tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood.

With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away
from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their
sap dripped red.

Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel.
How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white
inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must
not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had
panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. She
caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the
greenhouse. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at
Wedderburn's motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to
the floor. It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a
frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air.

Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in
another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the
horror.

He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches.

The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass,
and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. For
a moment he thought impossible things.

"Bring some water!" she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. When,
with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping
with excitement, and with Wedderburn's head upon her knee, wiping the
blood from his face.

"What's the matter?" said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing
them again at once.

"Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Dr. Haddon at
once," she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and
added, seeing he hesitated, "I will tell you all about it when you come
back."

Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was
troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, "You fainted
in the hothouse."

"And the orchid?"

"I will see to that," she said.

Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered
no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of
meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper told her incredible
story in fragments to Dr. Haddon. "Come to the orchid-house and see," she
said.

The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly
perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already
withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The stem of the
inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were
growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. The doctor stooped
towards it, then saw that one of the aerial rootlets still stirred feebly,
and hesitated.

The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and
putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all
the array of Wedderburn's orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. But
Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his
strange adventure.




V.

IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY.


The observatory at Avu, in Borneo, stands on the spur of the mountain. To
the north rises the old crater, black at night against the unfathomable
blue of the sky. From the little circular building, with its mushroom
dome, the slopes plunge steeply downward into the black mysteries of the
tropical forest beneath. The little house in which the observer and his
assistant live is about fifty yards from the observatory, and beyond this
are the huts of their native attendants.

Thaddy, the chief observer, was down with a slight fever. His assistant,
Woodhouse, paused for a moment in silent contemplation of the tropical
night before commencing his solitary vigil. The night was very still. Now
and then voices and laughter came from the native huts, or the cry of some
strange animal was heard from the midst of the mystery of the forest.
Nocturnal insects appeared in ghostly fashion out of the darkness, and
fluttered round his light. He thought, perhaps, of all the possibilities
of discovery that still lay in the black tangle beneath him; for to the
naturalist the virgin forests of Borneo are still a wonderland full of
strange questions and half-suspected discoveries. Woodhouse carried a
small lantern in his hand, and its yellow glow contrasted vividly with the
infinite series of tints between lavender-blue and black in which the
landscape was painted. His hands and face were smeared with ointment
against the attacks of the mosquitoes.

Even in these days of celestial photography, work done in a purely
temporary erection, and with only the most primitive appliances in
addition to the telescope, still involves a very large amount of cramped
and motionless watching. He sighed as he thought of the physical fatigues
before him, stretched himself, and entered the observatory.

The reader is probably familiar with the structure of an ordinary
astronomical observatory. The building is usually cylindrical in shape,
with a very light hemispherical roof capable of being turned round from
the interior. The telescope is supported upon a stone pillar in the
centre, and a clockwork arrangement compensates for the earth's rotation,
and allows a star once found to be continuously observed. Besides this,
there is a compact tracery of wheels and screws about its point of
support, by which the astronomer adjusts it. There is, of course, a slit
in the movable roof which follows the eye of the telescope in its survey
of the heavens. The observer sits or lies on a sloping wooden arrangement,
which he can wheel to any part of the observatory as the position of the
telescope may require. Within it is advisable to have things as dark as
possible, in order to enhance the brilliance of the stars observed.

The lantern flared as Woodhouse entered his circular den, and the general
darkness fled into black shadows behind the big machine, from which it
presently seemed to creep back over the whole place again as the light
waned. The slit was a profound transparent blue, in which six stars shone
with tropical brilliance, and their light lay, a pallid gleam, along the
black tube of the instrument. Woodhouse shifted the roof, and then
proceeding to the telescope, turned first one wheel and then another, the
great cylinder slowly swinging into a new position. Then he glanced
through the finder, the little companion telescope, moved the roof a
little more, made some further adjustments, and set the clockwork in
motion. He took off his jacket, for the night was very hot, and pushed
into position the uncomfortable seat to which he was condemned for the
next four hours. Then with a sigh he resigned himself to his watch upon
the mysteries of space.

There was no sound now in the observatory, and the lantern waned steadily.
Outside there was the occasional cry of some animal in alarm or pain, or
calling to its mate, and the intermittent sounds of the Malay and Dyak
servants. Presently one of the men began a queer chanting song, in which
the others joined at intervals. After this it would seem that they turned
in for the night, for no further sound came from their direction, and the
whispering stillness became more and more profound.

The clockwork ticked steadily. The shrill hum of a mosquito explored the
place and grew shriller in indignation at Woodhouse's ointment. Then the
lantern went out and all the observatory was black.

Woodhouse shifted his position presently, when the slow movement of the
telescope had carried it beyond the limits of his comfort.

He was watching a little group of stars in the Milky Way, in one of which
his chief had seen or fancied a remarkable colour variability. It was not
a part of the regular work for which the establishment existed, and for
that reason perhaps Woodhouse was deeply interested. He must have
forgotten things terrestrial. All his attention was concentrated upon the
great blue circle of the telescope field--a circle powdered, so it seemed,
with an innumerable multitude of stars, and all luminous against the
blackness of its setting. As he watched he seemed to himself to become
incorporeal, as if he too were floating in the ether of space. Infinitely
remote was the faint red spot he was observing.

Suddenly the stars were blotted out. A flash of blackness passed, and they
were visible again.

"Queer," said Woodhouse. "Must have been a bird."

The thing happened again, and immediately after the great tube shivered as
though it had been struck. Then the dome of the observatory resounded with
a series of thundering blows. The stars seemed to sweep aside as the
telescope--which had been unclamped--swung round and away from the slit in
the roof.

"Great Scott!" cried Woodhouse. "What's this?"

Some huge vague black shape, with a flapping something like a wing, seemed
to be struggling in the aperture of the roof. In another moment the slit
was clear again, and the luminous haze of the Milky Way shone warm and
bright.

The interior of the roof was perfectly black, and only a scraping sound
marked the whereabouts of the unknown creature.

Woodhouse had scrambled from the seat to his feet. He was trembling
violently and in a perspiration with the suddenness of the occurrence. Was
the thing, whatever it was, inside or out? It was big, whatever else it
might be. Something shot across the skylight, and the telescope swayed. He
started violently and put his arm up. It was in the observatory, then,
with him. It was clinging to the roof apparently. What the devil was it?
Could it see him?

He stood for perhaps a minute in a state of stupefaction. The beast,
whatever it was, clawed at the interior of the dome, and then something
flapped almost into his face, and he saw the momentary gleam of starlight
on a skin like oiled leather. His water-bottle was knocked off his little
table with a smash.

The sense of some strange bird-creature hovering a few yards from his face
in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to Woodhouse. As his thought
returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large bat. At any
risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from his pocket, he
tried to strike it on the telescope seat. There was a smoking streak of
phosphorescent light, the match flared for a moment, and he saw a vast
wing sweeping towards him, a gleam of grey-brown fur, and then he was
struck in the face and the match knocked out of his hand. The blow was
aimed at his temple, and a claw tore sideways down to his cheek. He reeled
and fell, and he heard the extinguished lantern smash. Another blow
followed as he fell. He was partly stunned, he felt his own warm blood
stream out upon his face. Instinctively he felt his eyes had been struck
at, and, turning over on his face to save them, tried to crawl under the
protection of the telescope.

He was struck again upon the back, and he heard his jacket rip, and then
the thing hit the roof of the observatory. He edged as far as he could
between the wooden seat and the eyepiece of the instrument, and turned his
body round so that it was chiefly his feet that were exposed. With these
he could at least kick. He was still in a mystified state. The strange
beast banged about in the darkness, and presently clung to the telescope,
making it sway and the gear rattle. Once it flapped near him, and he
kicked out madly and felt a soft body with his feet. He was horribly
scared now. It must be a big thing to swing the telescope like that. He
saw for a moment the outline of a head black against the starlight, with
sharply-pointed upstanding ears and a crest between them. It seemed to him
to be as big as a mastiff's. Then he began to bawl out as loudly as he
could for help.

At that the thing came down upon him again. As it did so his hand touched
something beside him on the floor. He kicked out, and the next moment his
ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. He yelled again, and
tried to free his leg by kicking with the other. Then he realised he had
the broken water-bottle at his hand, and, snatching it, he struggled into
a sitting posture, and feeling in the darkness towards his foot, gripped a
velvety ear, like the ear of a big cat. He had seized the water-bottle by
its neck and brought it down with a shivering crash upon the head of the
strange beast. He repeated the blow, and then stabbed and jabbed with the
jagged end of it, in the darkness, where he judged the face might be.

The small teeth relaxed their hold, and at once Woodhouse pulled his leg
free and kicked hard. He felt the sickening feel of fur and bone giving
under his boot. There was a tearing bite at his arm, and he struck over it
at the face, as he judged, and hit damp fur.

There was a pause; then he heard the sound of claws; and the dragging of a
heavy body away from him over the observatory floor. Then there was
silence, broken only by his own sobbing breathing, and a sound like
licking. Everything was black except the parallelogram of the blue
skylight with the luminous dust of stars, against which the end of the
telescope now appeared in silhouette. He waited, as it seemed, an
interminable time.

Was the thing coming on again? He felt in his trouser-pocket for some
matches, and found one remaining. He tried to strike this, but the floor
was wet, and it spat and went out. He cursed. He could not see where the
door was situated. In his struggle he had quite lost his bearings. The
strange beast, disturbed by the splutter of the match, began to move
again. "Time!" called Woodhouse, with a sudden gleam of mirth, but the
thing was not coming at him again. He must have hurt it, he thought, with
the broken bottle. He felt a dull pain in his ankle. Probably he was
bleeding there. He wondered if it would support him if he tried to stand
up. The night outside was very still. There was no sound of any one
moving. The sleepy fools had not heard those wings battering upon the
dome, nor his shouts. It was no good wasting strength in shouting. The
monster flapped its wings and startled him into a defensive attitude. He
hit his elbow against the seat, and it fell over with a crash. He cursed
this, and then he cursed the darkness.

Suddenly the oblong patch of starlight seemed to sway to and fro. Was he
going to faint? It would never do to faint. He clenched his fists and set
his teeth to hold himself together. Where had the door got to? It occurred
to him he could get his bearings by the stars visible through the
skylight. The patch of stars he saw was in Sagittarius and south-eastward;
the door was north--or was it north by west? He tried to think. If he
could get the door open he might retreat. It might be the thing was
wounded. The suspense was beastly. "Look here!" he said, "if you don't
come on, I shall come at you."

Then the thing began clambering up the side of the observatory, and he saw
its black outline gradually blot out the skylight. Was it in retreat? He
forgot about the door, and watched as the dome shifted and creaked.
Somehow he did not feel very frightened or excited now. He felt a curious
sinking sensation inside him. The sharply-defined patch of light, with the
black form moving across it, seemed to be growing smaller and smaller.
That was curious. He began to feel very thirsty, and yet he did not feel
inclined to get anything to drink. He seemed to be sliding down a long
funnel.

He felt a burning sensation in his throat, and then he perceived it was
broad daylight, and that one of the Dyak servants was looking at him with
a curious expression. Then there was the top of Thaddy's face upside down.
Funny fellow, Thaddy, to go about like that! Then he grasped the situation
better, and perceived that his head was on Thaddy's knee, and Thaddy was
giving him brandy. And then he saw the eyepiece of the telescope with a
lot of red smears on it. He began to remember.

"You've made this observatory in a pretty mess," said Thaddy.

The Dyak boy was beating up an egg in brandy. Woodhouse took this and sat
up. He felt a sharp twinge of pain. His ankle was tied up, so were his
arm and the side of his face. The smashed glass, red-stained, lay about
the floor, the telescope seat was overturned, and by the opposite wall was
a dark pool. The door was open, and he saw the grey summit of the mountain
against a brilliant background of blue sky.

"Pah!" said Woodhouse. "Who's been killing calves here? Take me out of
it."

Then he remembered the Thing, and the fight he had had with it.

"What _was_ it?" he said to Thaddy--"the Thing I fought with?".

"_You_ know that best," said Thaddy. "But, anyhow, don't worry
yourself now about it. Have some more to drink."

Thaddy, however, was curious enough, and it was a hard struggle between
duty and inclination to keep Woodhouse quiet until he was decently put
away in bed, and had slept upon the copious dose of meat extract Thaddy
considered advisable. They then talked it over together.

"It was," said Woodhouse, "more like a big bat than anything else in the
world. It had sharp, short ears, and soft fur, and its wings were
leathery. Its teeth were little but devilish sharp, and its jaw could not
have been very strong or else it would have bitten through my ankle."

"It has pretty nearly," said Thaddy.

"It seemed to me to hit out with its claws pretty freely. That is about as
much as I know about the beast. Our conversation was intimate, so to
speak, and yet not confidential."

"The Dyak chaps talk about a Big Colugo, a Klang-utang--whatever that may
be. It does not often attack man, but I suppose you made it nervous. They
say there is a Big Colugo and a Little Colugo, and a something else that
sounds like gobble. They all fly about at night. For my own part, I know
there are flying foxes and flying lemurs about here, but they are none of
them very big beasts."

"There are more things in heaven and earth," said Woodhouse--and Thaddy
groaned at the quotation--"and more particularly in the forests of Borneo,
than are dreamt of in our philosophies. On the whole, if the Borneo fauna
is going to disgorge any more of its novelties upon me, I should prefer
that it did so when I was not occupied in the observatory at night and
alone."




VI.

AEPYORNIS ISLAND.


The man with the scarred face leant over the table and looked at my
bundle.

"Orchids?" he asked.

"A few," I said.

"Cypripediums," he said.

"Chiefly," said I.

"Anything new? I thought not. _I_ did these islands twenty-five--
twenty-seven years ago. If you find anything new here--well, it's brand
new. I didn't leave much."

"I'm not a collector," said I.

"I was young then," he went on. "Lord! how I used to fly round." He seemed
to take my measure. "I was in the East Indies two years, and in Brazil
seven. Then I went to Madagascar."

"I know a few explorers by name," I said, anticipating a yarn. "Whom did
you collect for?"

"Dawson's. I wonder if you've heard the name of Butcher ever?"

"Butcher--Butcher?" The name seemed vaguely present in my memory;
then I recalled _Butcher_ v. _Dawson_. "Why!" said I, "you are the
man who sued them for four years' salary--got cast away on a desert
island..."

"Your servant," said the man with the scar, bowing. "Funny case, wasn't
it? Here was me, making a little fortune on that island, doing nothing
for it neither, and them quite unable to give me notice. It often used
to amuse me thinking over it while I was there. I did calculations of
it--big--all over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring."

"How did it happen?" said I. "I don't rightly remember the case."

"Well... You've heard of the AEpyornis?"

"Rather. Andrews was telling me of a new species he was working on only a
month or so ago. Just before I sailed. They've got a thigh bone, it seems,
nearly a yard long. Monster the thing must have been!"

"I believe you," said the man with the scar. "It _was_ a monster.
Sindbad's roc was just a legend of 'em. But when did they find these
bones?"

"Three or four years ago--'91, I fancy. Why?"

"Why? Because _I_ found them--Lord!--it's nearly twenty years ago. If
Dawson's hadn't been silly about that salary they might have made a
perfect ring in 'em... _I_ couldn't help the infernal boat going
adrift."

He paused. "I suppose it's the same place. A kind of swamp about ninety
miles north of Antananarivo. Do you happen to know? You have to go to it
along the coast by boats. You don't happen to remember, perhaps?"

"I don't. I fancy Andrews said something about a swamp."

"It must be the same. It's on the east coast. And somehow there's
something in the water that keeps things from decaying. Like creosote it


 


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