The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle
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7 Chapter I
THE BLURRING OF LINES
It is imperative that now at once, while these stupendous events
are still clear in my mind, I should set them down with that
exactness of detail which time may blur. But even as I do so, I
am overwhelmed by the wonder of the fact that it should be our
little group of the "Lost World"--Professor Challenger,
Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and myself--who have
passed through this amazing experience.
When, some years ago, I chronicled in the Daily Gazette our
epoch-making journey in South America, I little thought that it
should ever fall to my lot to tell an even stranger personal
experience, one which is unique in all human annals and must
stand out in the records of history as a great peak among the
humble foothills which surround it. The event itself will always
be marvellous, but the circumstances that we four were together
at the time of this extraordinary episode came about in a most
natural and, indeed, inevitable fashion. I will explain the
events which led up to it as shortly and as clearly as I can,
though I am well aware that the fuller the detail upon such a
subject the more welcome it will be to the reader, for the
public curiosity has been and still is insatiable.
It was upon Friday, the twenty-seventh of August--a date forever
memorable in the history of the world--that I went down to the
office of my paper and asked for three days' leave of absence
from Mr. McArdle, who still presided over our news department.
The good old Scotchman shook his head, scratched his dwindling
fringe of ruddy fluff, and finally put his reluctance into words.
"I was thinking, Mr. Malone, that we could employ you to
advantage these days. I was thinking there was a story that you
are the only man that could handle as it should be handled."
"I am sorry for that," said I, trying to hide my disappointment.
"Of course if I am needed, there is an end of the matter. But
the engagement was important and intimate. If I could be spared----"
"Well, I don't see that you can."
It was bitter, but I had to put the best face I could upon it.
After all, it was my own fault, for I should have known by this
time that a journalist has no right to make plans of his own.
"Then I'll think no more of it," said I with as much
cheerfulness as I could assume at so short a notice. "What was
it that you wanted me to do?"
"Well, it was just to interview that deevil of a man down at
Rotherfield."
"You don't mean Professor Challenger?" I cried.
"Aye, it's just him that I do mean. He ran young Alec Simpson of
the Courier a mile down the high road last week by the collar
of his coat and the slack of his breeches. You'll have read of
it, likely, in the police report. Our boys would as soon
interview a loose alligator in the zoo. But you could do it,
I'm thinking--an old friend like you."
"Why," said I, greatly relieved, "this makes it all easy. It so
happens that it was to visit Professor Challenger at Rotherfield
that I was asking for leave of absence. The fact is, that it is
the anniversary of our main adventure on the plateau three years
ago, and he has asked our whole party down to his house to see
him and celebrate the occasion."
"Capital!" cried McArdle, rubbing his hands and beaming through
his glasses. "Then you will be able to get his opeenions out of
him. In any other man I would say it was all moonshine, but the
fellow has made good once, and who knows but he may again!"
"Get what out of him?" I asked. "What has he been doing?"
"Haven't you seen his letter on `Scientific Possibeelities' in
to-day's Times?"
"No."
McArdle dived down and picked a copy from the floor.
"Read it aloud," said he, indicating a column with his finger.
"I'd be glad to hear it again, for I am not sure now that I have
the man's meaning clear in my head."
This was the letter which I read to the news editor of the
Gazette:--
"SCIENTIFIC POSSIBILITIES"
"Sir,--I have read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some
less complimentary emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous
letter of James Wilson MacPhail which has lately appeared in
your columns upon the subject of the blurring of Fraunhofer's
lines in the spectra both of the planets and of the fixed stars.
He dismisses the matter as of no significance. To a wider
intelligence it may well seem of very great possible
importance--so great as to involve the ultimate welfare of every
man, woman, and child upon this planet. I can hardly hope, by
the use of scientific language, to convey any sense of my
meaning to those ineffectual people who gather their ideas from
the columns of a daily newspaper. I will endeavour, therefore,
to condescend to their limitation and to indicate the situation
by the use of a homely analogy which will be within the limits
of the intelligence of your readers."
"Man, he's a wonder--a living wonder!" said McArdle, shaking his
head reflectively. "He'd put up the feathers of a sucking-dove
and set up a riot in a Quakers' meeting. No wonder he has made
London too hot for him. It's a peety, Mr. Malone, for it's a
grand brain! We'll let's have the analogy."
"We will suppose," I read, "that a small bundle of connected
corks was launched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across
the Atlantic. The corks drift slowly on from day to day with the
same conditions all round them. If the corks were sentient we
could imagine that they would consider these conditions to be
permanent and assured. But we, with our superior knowledge, know
that many things might happen to surprise the corks. They might
possibly float up against a ship, or a sleeping whale, or become
entangled in seaweed. In any case, their voyage would probably
end by their being thrown up on the rocky coast of Labrador. But
what could they know of all this while they drifted so gently day
by day in what they thought was a limitless and homogeneous
ocean?
"Your readers will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in this
parable, stands for the mighty ocean of ether through which we
drift and that the bunch of corks represents the little and
obscure planetary system to which we belong. A third-rate sun,
with its rag tag and bobtail of insignificant satellites, we
float under the same daily conditions towards some unknown end,
some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimate
confines of space, where we are swept over an etheric Niagara or
dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no room here for
the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent, Mr.
James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with
a very close and interested attention every indication of change
in those cosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate fate
may depend."
"Man, he'd have made a grand meenister," said McArdle. "It just
booms like an organ. Let's get doun to what it is that's
troubling him."
"The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer's lines of the
spectrum point, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of
a subtle and singular character. Light from a planet is the
reflected light of the sun. Light from a star is a self-produced
light. But the spectra both from planets and stars have, in this
instance, all undergone the same change. Is it, then, a change
in those planets and stars? To me such an idea is inconceivable.
What common change could simultaneously come upon them all? Is
it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but in the
highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around
us, and chemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then,
is the third possibility? That it may be a change in the
conducting medium, in that infinitely fine ether which extends
from star to star and pervades the whole universe. Deep in that
ocean we are floating upon a slow current. Might that current
not drift us into belts of ether which are novel and have
properties of which we have never conceived? There is a change
somewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it.
It may be a good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a
neutral one. We do not know. Shallow observers may treat the matter
as one which can be disregarded, but one who like myself is
possessed of the deeper intelligence of the true philosopher
will understand that the possibilities of the universe are
incalculable and that the wisest man is he who holds himself
ready for the unexpected. To take an obvious example, who would
undertake to say that the mysterious and universal outbreak of
illness, recorded in your columns this very morning as having
broken out among the indigenous races of Sumatra, has no
connection with some cosmic change to which they may respond
more quickly than the more complex peoples of Europe? I throw
out the idea for what it is worth. To assert it is, in the
present stage, as unprofitable as to deny it, but it is an
unimaginative numskull who is too dense to perceive that it is
well within the bounds of scientific possibility.
"Yours faithfully,
"GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.
"THE BRIARS, ROTHERFIELD."
"It's a fine, steemulating letter," said McArdle thoughtfully,
fitting a cigarette into the long glass tube which he used as a
holder. "What's your opeenion of it, Mr. Malone?"
I had to confess my total and humiliating ignorance of the
subject at issue. What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines?
McArdle had just been studying the matter with the aid of our
tame scientist at the office, and he picked from his desk two of
those many-coloured spectral bands which bear a general
resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some young and ambitious
cricket club. He pointed out to me that there were certain black
lines which formed crossbars upon the series of brilliant colours
extending from the red at one end through gradations of orange,
yellow, green, blue, and indigo to the violet at the other.
"Those dark bands are Fraunhofer's lines," said he. "The colours
are just light itself. Every light, if you can split it up with
a prism, gives the same colours. They tell us nothing. It is
the lines that count, because they vary according to what it may be
that produces the light. It is these lines that have been blurred
instead of clear this last week, and all the astronomers
have been quarreling over the reason. Here's a photograph of the
blurred lines for our issue to-morrow. The public have taken no
interest in the matter up to now, but this letter of Challenger's
in the Times will make them wake up, I'm thinking."
"And this about Sumatra?"
"Well, it's a long cry from a blurred line in a spectrum to a
sick nigger in Sumatra. And yet the chiel has shown us once
before that he knows what he's talking about. There is some
queer illness down yonder, that's beyond all doubt, and to-day
there's a cable just come in from Singapore that the lighthouses
are out of action in the Straits of Sundan, and two ships on the
beach in consequence. Anyhow, it's good enough for you to
interview Challenger upon. If you get anything definite, let us
have a column by Monday."
I was coming out from the news editor's room, turning over my
new mission in my mind, when I heard my name called from the
waiting-room below. It was a telegraph-boy with a wire which had
been forwarded from my lodgings at Streatham. The message was
from the very man we had been discussing, and ran thus:--
Malone, 17, Hill Street, Streatham.--Bring oxygen.--Challenger.
"Bring oxygen!" The Professor, as I remembered him, had an
elephantine sense of humour capable of the most clumsy and
unwieldly gambollings. Was this one of those jokes which used to
reduce him to uproarious laughter, when his eyes would disappear
and he was all gaping mouth and wagging beard, supremely
indifferent to the gravity of all around him? I turned the words
over, but could make nothing even remotely jocose out of them.
Then surely it was a concise order--though a very strange one.
He was the last man in the world whose deliberate command I
should care to disobey. Possibly some chemical experiment was
afoot; possibly----Well, it was no business of mine to speculate
upon why he wanted it. I must get it. There was nearly an hour
before I should catch the train at Victoria. I took a taxi, and
having ascertained the address from the telephone book, I made
for the Oxygen Tube Supply Company in Oxford Street.
As I alighted on the pavement at my destination, two youths
emerged from the door of the establishment carrying an iron
cylinder, which, with some trouble, they hoisted into a waiting
motor-car. An elderly man was at their heels scolding and
directing in a creaky, sardonic voice. He turned towards me.
There was no mistaking those austere features and that goatee
beard. It was my old cross-grained companion, Professor
Summerlee.
"What!" he cried. "Don't tell me that _you_ have had one of
these preposterous telegrams for oxygen?"
I exhibited it.
"Well, well! I have had one too, and, as you see, very much
against the grain, I have acted upon it. Our good friend is as
impossible as ever. The need for oxygen could not have been so
urgent that he must desert the usual means of supply and
encroach upon the time of those who are really busier than
himself. Why could he not order it direct?"
I could only suggest that he probably wanted it at once.
"Or thought he did, which is quite another matter. But it is
superfluous now for you to purchase any, since I have this
considerable supply."
"Still, for some reason he seems to wish that I should bring
oxygen too. It will be safer to do exactly what he tells me."
Accordingly, in spite of many grumbles and remonstrances from
Summerlee, I ordered an additional tube, which was placed with
the other in his motor-car, for he had offered me a lift to
Victoria.
I turned away to pay off my taxi, the driver of which was very
cantankerous and abusive over his fare. As I came back to
Professor Summerlee, he was having a furious altercation with
the men who had carried down the oxygen, his little white goat's
beard jerking with indignation. One of the fellows called him,
I remember, "a silly old bleached cockatoo," which so enraged
his chauffeur that he bounded out of his seat to take the part
of his insulted master, and it was all we could do to prevent a
riot in the street.
These little things may seem trivial to relate, and passed as
mere incidents at the time. It is only now, as I look back, that
I see their relation to the whole story which I have to unfold.
The chauffeur must, as it seemed to me, have been a novice or
else have lost his nerve in this disturbance, for he drove
vilely on the way to the station. Twice we nearly had collisions
with other equally erratic vehicles, and I remember remarking
to Summerlee that the standard of driving in London
had very much declined. Once we brushed the very edge of a
great crowd which was watching a fight at the corner of the
Mall. The people, who were much excited, raised cries of
anger at the clumsy driving, and one fellow sprang upon the
step and waved a stick above our heads. I pushed him off, but
we were glad when we had got clear of them and safe out of
the park. These little events, coming one after the other,
left me very jangled in my nerves, and I could see from my
companion's petulant manner that his own patience had got to
a low ebb.
But our good humour was restored when we saw Lord John Roxton
waiting for us upon the platform, his tall, thin figure clad
in a yellow tweed shooting-suit. His keen face, with those
unforgettable eyes, so fierce and yet so humorous, flushed
with pleasure at the sight of us. His ruddy hair was shot
with grey, and the furrows upon his brow had been cut a
little deeper by Time's chisel, but in all else he was the
Lord John who had been our good comrade in the past.
"Hullo, Herr Professor! Hullo, young fella!" he shouted as
he came toward us.
He roared with amusement when he saw the oxygen cylinders
upon the porter's trolly behind us. "So you've got them
too!" he cried. "Mine is in the van. Whatever can the old
dear be after?"
"Have you seen his letter in the Times?" I asked.
"What was it?"
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Summerlee harshly.
"Well, it's at the bottom of this oxygen business, or I am
mistaken," said I.
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Summerlee again with quite
unnecessary violence. We had all got into a first-class
smoker, and he had already lit the short and charred old
briar pipe which seemed to singe the end of his long,
aggressive nose.
"Friend Challenger is a clever man," said he with great
vehemence. "No one can deny it. It's a fool that denies it.
Look at his hat. There's a sixty-ounce brain inside it--a big
engine, running smooth, and turning out clean work. Show me
the engine-house and I'll tell you the size of the engine.
But he is a born charlatan--you've heard me tell him so to
his face--a born charlatan, with a kind of dramatic trick of
jumping into the limelight. Things are quiet, so friend
Challenger sees a chance to set the public talking about him.
You don't imagine that he seriously believes all this
nonsense about a change in the ether and a danger to the
human race? Was ever such a cock-and-bull story in this life?"
He sat like an old white raven, croaking and shaking with
sardonic laughter.
A wave of anger passed through me as I listened to Summerlee.
It was disgraceful that he should speak thus of the leader
who had been the source of all our fame and given us such an
experience as no men have ever enjoyed. I had opened my mouth
to utter some hot retort, when Lord John got before me.
"You had a scrap once before with old man Challenger," said
he sternly, "and you were down and out inside ten seconds. It
seems to me, Professor Summerlee, he's beyond your class, and
the best you can do with him is to walk wide and leave him
alone."
"Besides," said I, "he has been a good friend to every one of
us. Whatever his faults may be, he is as straight as a line,
and I don't believe he ever speaks evil of his comrades behind
their backs."
"Well said, young fellah-my-lad," said Lord John Roxton. Then,
with a kindly smile, he slapped Professor Summerlee upon his
shoulder. "Come, Herr Professor, we're not going to quarrel at
this time of day. We've seen too much together. But keep off
the grass when you get near Challenger, for this young fellah
and I have a bit of a weakness for the old dear."
But Summerlee was in no humour for compromise. His face was
screwed up in rigid disapproval, and thick curls of angry smoke
rolled up from his pipe.
"As to you, Lord John Roxton," he creaked, "your opinion upon a
matter of science is of as much value in my eyes as my views
upon a new type of shot-gun would be in yours. I have my own
judgment, sir, and I use it in my own way. Because it has misled
me once, is that any reason why I should accept without
criticism anything, however far-fetched, which this man may care
to put forward? Are we to have a Pope of science, with
infallible decrees laid down _ex cathedra_, and accepted without
question by the poor humble public? I tell you, sir, that I have
a brain of my own and that I should feel myself to be a snob and
a slave if I did not use it. If it pleases you to believe this
rigmarole about ether and Fraunhofer's lines upon the spectrum,
do so by all means, but do not ask one who is older and wiser
than yourself to share in your folly. Is it not evident that if
the ether were affected to the degree which he maintains, and if
it were obnoxious to human health, the result of it would
already be apparent upon ourselves?" Here he laughed with
uproarious triumph over his own argument. "Yes, sir, we should
already be very far from our normal selves, and instead of
sitting quietly discussing scientific problems in a railway
train we should be showing actual symptoms of the poison which
was working within us. Where do we see any signs of this
poisonous cosmic disturbance? Answer me that, sir! Answer me
that! Come, come, no evasion! I pin you to an answer!"
I felt more and more angry. There was something very irritating
and aggressive in Summerlee's demeanour.
"I think that if you knew more about the facts you might be less
positive in your opinion," said I.
Summerlee took his pipe from his mouth and fixed me with a stony
stare.
"Pray what do you mean, sir, by that somewhat impertinent
observation?"
"I mean that when I was leaving the office the news editor told
me that a telegram had come in confirming the general illness of
the Sumatra natives, and adding that the lights had not been lit
in the Straits of Sunda."
"Really, there should be some limits to human folly!" cried
Summerlee in a positive fury. "Is it possible that you do not
realize that ether, if for a moment we adopt Challenger's
preposterous supposition, is a universal substance which is the
same here as at the other side of the world? Do you for an
instant suppose that there is an English ether and a Sumatran
ether? Perhaps you imagine that the ether of Kent is in some way
superior to the ether of Surrey, through which this train is now
bearing us. There really are no bounds to the credulity and
ignorance of the average layman. Is it conceivable that the
ether in Sumatra should be so deadly as to cause total
insensibility at the very time when the ether here has had no
appreciable effect upon us whatever? Personally, I can truly say
that I never felt stronger in body or better balanced in mind in
my life."
"That may be. I don't profess to be a scientific man," said I,
"though I have heard somewhere that the science of one
generation is usually the fallacy of the next. But it does not
take much common sense to see that, as we seem to know so little
about ether, it might be affected by some local conditions in
various parts of the world and might show an effect over there
which would only develop later with us."
"With `might' and `may' you can prove anything," cried Summerlee
furiously. "Pigs may fly. Yes, sir, pigs _may_ fly--but they
don't. It is not worth arguing with you. Challenger has filled
you with his nonsense and you are both incapable of reason. I
had as soon lay arguments before those railway cushions."
"I must say, Professor Summerlee, that your manners do not seem
to have improved since I last had the pleasure of meeting you,"
said Lord John severely.
"You lordlings are not accustomed to hear the truth," Summerlee
answered with a bitter smile. "It comes as a bit of a shock,
does it not, when someone makes you realize that your title
leaves you none the less a very ignorant man?"
"Upon my word, sir," said Lord John, very stern and rigid, "if
you were a younger man you would not dare to speak to me in so
offensive a fashion."
Summerlee thrust out his chin, with its little wagging tuft of
goatee beard.
"I would have you know, sir, that, young or old, there has never
been a time in my life when I was afraid to speak my mind to an
ignorant coxcomb--yes, sir, an ignorant coxcomb, if you had as
many titles as slaves could invent and fools could adopt."
For a moment Lord John's eyes blazed, and then, with a
tremendous effort, he mastered his anger and leaned back in his
seat with arms folded and a bitter smile upon his face. To me
all this was dreadful and deplorable. Like a wave, the memory of
the past swept over me, the good comradeship, the happy,
adventurous days--all that we had suffered and worked for and
won. That it should have come to this--to insults and abuse!
Suddenly I was sobbing--sobbing in loud, gulping, uncontrollable
sobs which refused to be concealed. My companions looked at me
in surprise. I covered my face with my hands.
"It's all right," said I. "Only--only it _is_ such a pity!"
"You're ill, young fellah, that's what's amiss with you," said
Lord John. "I thought you were queer from the first."
"Your habits, sir, have not mended in these three years," said
Summerlee, shaking his head. "I also did not fail to observe
your strange manner the moment we met. You need not waste your
sympathy, Lord John. These tears are purely alcoholic. The man
has been drinking. By the way, Lord John, I called you a coxcomb
just now, which was perhaps unduly severe. But the word reminds
me of a small accomplishment, trivial but amusing, which I used
to possess. You know me as the austere man of science. Can you
believe that I once had a well-deserved reputation in several
nurseries as a farmyard imitator? Perhaps I can help you to pass
the time in a pleasant way. Would it amuse you to hear me crow
like a cock?"
"No, sir," said Lord John, who was still greatly offended, "it
would _not_ amuse me."
"My imitation of the clucking hen who had just laid an egg was
also considered rather above the average. Might I venture?"
"No, sir, no--certainly not."
But in spite of this earnest prohibition, Professor Summerlee
laid down his pipe and for the rest of our journey he
entertained--or failed to entertain--us by a succession of bird
and animal cries which seemed so absurd that my tears were
suddenly changed into boisterous laughter, which must have
become quite hysterical as I sat opposite this grave Professor
and saw him--or rather heard him--in the character of the
uproarious rooster or the puppy whose tail had been trodden
upon. Once Lord John passed across his newspaper, upon the
margin of which he had written in pencil, "Poor devil! Mad as a
hatter." No doubt it was very eccentric, and yet the performance
struck me as extraordinarily clever and amusing.
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