XII
Let 'em be happy, and rest so contented,
They pay the tribute of their hearts and knees.
Thiery and Theodoret.
After passing some of his cultures through the filter, he injected subcutaneously the filtrate, composed of dead organisms and their toxins, into Lionel's arms and into his own. Taking one of the black-faced monkeys, which they had brought with them for the purpose, he shaved and cleansed a part of its neck, and injected a weak culture into the space prepared, after exposing the culture to a heat slightly below the heat necessary to kill the organisms. Into another monkey he injected a culture, weakened by a slight addition of carbolic. He had no great hope that the measure which he was preparing would be of use; he meant to try them all. "If I had had more time," he thought bitterly, "I might have succeeded." He had lost so much time in getting the culture to grow. As he sealed up the punctures with collodion, he said to himself that he had tried Lionel's cure, and that now he was free to try his own personal theories. He would kill some animal naturally immune, such as a wildebeest or a koodoo, and obtain serum from it direct, in as cleanly a manner as he could. Lionel had said that such a serum, so collected, would be useless and probably septic; but who cared for possible blood-poisoning when the alternative was certain death? Personally he would prefer a death by glanders to this drowsy dying. If he could disable an antelope, he might be able to obtain the blood by formal antiseptic methods in sterilised pots. It would be worth trying. He had taken serum from a horse in England. He knew the process. Unfortunately the heart of Africa is not like England, nor is a kicking, horned, wild beast, tearing the earth to tatters in the death-agony, like a staid and glossy horse neatly arranged to be tapped. "Besides," he thought, "the beast may be suffering from all manner of diseases, or it may hold germs in toleration which the blood of man could not tolerate. And how was he to go hunting with an equipment of sterile pots and pipes on his back?"
He liked the notion too well to be frightened by the difficulties. It offered the possibility of success; it gave him hope, and it kept his mind busily engaged. Even if he saw no wild game, the hunt would be a change to him. He was a moderately good rifle-shot. The foil was the only weapon at which he was really clever. As he looked to his rifle, he felt contempt for the unreality of his life in London. It had been a life presupposing an immense external artificiality. How little a thing upset it! How helpless he was when it had been upset. And what would happen to England when something upset London, and scattered its constituent poisons broadcast? He went out to the hunt.
The wind blew steadily from the direction of the forest. There was no chance of doing anything from that side. He could never approach game downwind. He would have to cross the river. He had never tried to cross the river. He did not even know if it were possible. The thought of the crocodiles and the mere sight of the swirling flood had kept him from examining the river. He had not been near it since he had sought with Lionel for the atoxyl bottles. What it looked like upstream he did not know. He went upstream to look for a ford.
At a little distance beyond the hill he came upon something which made him pause. The earth there had been torn into tracks by the waters of a recent thunder-storm. The cleanness of the cuttings reminded Roger of the little bog-bursts which he had seen in Ireland after excessive rains. In one of the tracks the rushing water had swept bare the paving of an ancient road, leaving it clear to the sky for about twenty yards. The road was of a hard even surface, like the flooring of a Zimbabwe. To the touch the surface was that of a very good cycling road in the best condition. The ruts of carts were faintly marked upon it in dents. The road seemed to have been made of hewn stones, covered over and bound with the powdered pounded granite used for the floors of the ruins. It was five of Roger's paces in breadth. The edges were channelled with gutters. Beyond the gutters were borders of small hewn blocks neatly arranged, so that the growths near the road might not spread over it. Judging by the direction of the uncovered part, the road entered the Zimbabwe through a gate in the west wall. In the other direction, away from the Zimbabwe, it led slantingly towards the river, keeping to the top of a ridge (possibly artificial), so as to avoid a low-lying tract still boggy from the flood. The river made a sharp bend at the point where the road impinged upon it. Below the bend the lie of the bank had an odd look, which recalled human endeavour even now, after the lapse of so many centuries. Greatly excited, Roger hurried up to look at the place.
It had been the port of the Zimbabwe. The bank had been cut away, so as to form a kind of dock. The stumps of the piles were still in the mud in places. They were strong, well-burnt wooden piles, such as are used for jetties everywhere. By the feel of the ground on the jetty top there was paved-work not far below it. A dig or two with a knife blade shewed that this was the case. The bank was paved like the road. Looking back towards the ruin, Roger could mark the track of the road running up to the wall. Even where it was overgrown he could tell its whereabouts by the comparative lightness of the colour of the grass upon it. Beyond the ruin, running almost straight to the south-east, he noticed a similar ribbon of light grass, marking another road. So this was a port, this Zimbabwe, a port at the terminus of a road. The road might lead direct to Ophir, whence Solomon obtained his ivory and apes and peacocks. Probably there were gold mines near at hand. This place, so quiet now, had once seen a gold-rush. The wharf there had been thronged by jostlers hurrying to the fields. The basin of ill-smelling red mud had once been full of ships. And what ships? What people? And when? "A brachycephalic people of clever gold-workers of unknown antiquity."
Just above the "port" the river was extremely narrow. Sticking out of the water in the narrow part were masses of masonry, which may at one time have served as the piers of a bridge. They were so close together that Roger crossed the river by them without difficulty. On the other side, as he had expected, the mark of the road was ruled in a dim line in the direction of the forest. The country was rougher on that side. The line of the road was marked less plainly.
Late that afternoon, after an exhausting stalk, he got two shots at what he took to be a koodoo[*] cow. He went forward out of heart, believing that both had missed. Bright blood on the grass shewed him that he had hit her. A little further on he found the cow down, with her hindquarters paralysed. She struggled to get up to face him, poor brute; but she was too hard hit; she was dying. When she had struggled a little, he was able to close with her, avoiding the great horns. He was even able to prepare the throat in some measure for the operation. Lastly, avoiding a final struggle, he contrived to sterilise his hands with a solution from one of the pots slung about him. The sight of his hands even after this made him despair of getting an uncontaminated serum. But there was no help for it. He took out the knife, made the incision in the throat, and inserted the sterilised tube.
[*] It was probably an oryx.
When he turned with his booty to go home, he noticed a little fawn which stood on a knoll above him, looking at him. She stood quite still, so shaded off against the grasses that only a lucky eye could distinguish her. She was waiting, perhaps, for him to go away, so that she might call her mother. She made no effort to run from him. Something in her appearance made him think that she was ill. The carriage of her head seemed queer. Her coat had a look of staring. He wished then, that he had brought his glasses, so that he might examine her narrowly. Moving round a little, he made sure that her coat was in poor condition. He judged that she might have been mauled by a beast of prey.
He was just about to move on when a thought occurred to him. What if the young of the wild game should not be immune? What if the bite of the infected tsetse should set up a mild form of nagana in them from which they recover? What if that mild sickness should confer a subsequent immunity on the inflicted individual? Surely the result would be obvious. "Vaccination" with the blood of the afflicted calf or fawn would set up a mild attack of the disease in man, and, perhaps, give him subsequent immunity from more virulent infection. The ailments of wild animals are few. What if this fawn should be suffering from a mild attack of the disease? He crept a little nearer to her, bending low down to see if he could see the swellings on the legs and belly which mark the disease in quadrupeds. He could not be sure of them. He could only be sure that the coat was staring, and that the nose and eyes were watery. He whistled gently to the little creature, hoping that she would be too young to be frightened of him. She stared at him with wide eyes, trembling slightly, flexing her ears. He whistled to her again. She called plaintively to her dam. She lowered her little head, ready to attack, pawing the ground like a warrior. Roger fired. Afterwards he felt as though he had killed a girl.
He returned to "Portobe" weighted down with jars, which he emptied carefully into sterilised pans. The result made "Portobe" look like a cannibal's dairy. An examination of the blood shewed that both animals had harboured trypanosomes in large numbers. When the blood had coagulated, he decanted the serum into sterilised bottles, to which he added minute quantities of antiseptic. That operation gave him his serum. He had now to test it for bacteria and for toxins. He added a portion from each bottle to various culture-mediums in test-tubes. He added these test portions to all his media, to glycerine-agar and glucose as well as to those better suited to the growth of trypanosomes.
He set them aside to incubate.
If there were bacteria in the sera they would increase and multiply on the delightful food of the media. When Roger came to examine the media, he came expecting to find them swarming with bacteria of all known kinds. He was naturally vain of the success of his hunting; but he knew that crude surgery out in the open is not so wholesome a method of obtaining serum as might be. Still, a close examination shewed him that the cultures had not developed bacteria. He was pleased at this; but his pleasure was dashed by the thought that it was rather too good to be true. He might have muddled the experiment by adding too much disinfectant to the sera while bottling, by using cultures which had in some way lost their attractiveness, or by some failure in the preparation of the slides. After going through his examination the second time, he decided to proceed. He injected large doses of the sera into two monkeys.
Again he was successful. The monkeys shewed no symptoms of poisoning. The sera, whatever they might be, were evidently harmless to the "homologous" animal. But the success made Roger even more doubtful of himself. It made him actually anxious, lest in adding disinfectant to the sera, he should have destroyed the protective forces in them, as well as the micro-organisms at which he had aimed. He delayed no longer. He injected Lionel with a large dose of the serum from the grown animal; he injected himself with the serum from the fawn. Going down to the village, he made a minute examination of those who were the least ill. Choosing out those who shewed no outward signs of the congenital or acquired forms of blood-poisoning, he injected them with sera, thinking that if they recovered he would use their sera for other cases. For his own part, he felt better already. The excitement of hope was on him. He had risen above his body.
For the next few days his life was a fever of hope, broken with hours of despair. One of his patients died suddenly the day after the injection. Lionel seemed no better. Another patient seemed markedly worse. He repeated the doses, and passed a miserable morning watching Lionel. The evening temperature shewed a marked decrease. An examination of the throat glands shewed that the trypanosomes had become less waggish. They were bunching into clumps, "agglutinising," with slow, irregular movements. That seemed to him to be the first hopeful sign. On studying his books he could not be sure that it really was a good sign. One book seemed to say that agglutination made the germs more virulent; another that it paralysed them. He could see for himself that they had ceased to multiply by splitting longitudinally. And from that he argued that their vitality had been weakened.
The next day Lionel was better; but the native patients were all worse. They were alarmingly worse. They shewed symptoms which were not in the books. They swelled slightly, as though the skin had been inflated. The flesh seemed bladdery and inelastic at the same time. The pigment of the skin became paler; the patients became an ashy grey colour. The blood of one of these sufferers killed a guinea-pig in three hours. After a short period of evident suffering they died, one after the other, apparently of the exhaustion following on high fever. Roger, in a dreadful state of mental anguish, stayed with them till they were dead, trying remedy after remedy. He felt that he had killed them all. He felt that their blood was on his hands. He felt that all those people might still have been alive had he not tried his wretched nostrum on them. There was no doubt that the sera had caused their deaths. Those who had had no serum injections were no worse than they had been. He wondered how long it would be before these symptoms of swelling and high fever appeared in himself and Lionel. He went back to "Portobe" expecting to find Lionel in high fever, going the road to Marumba.
He found Lionel weakly walking about outside the tent, conscious, but not yet able to talk intelligibly. He had not expected to see Lionel walk again. The sight made him forget the deaths down in the village. He shouted with joy. Closer examination made him less joyous. The skin of Lionel's arm, very dull and inelastic to the touch, was slightly swollen with something of the bladdery look which he had noticed in the men now dead. It was as though the body had been encased in a bladdery substance slightly inflated. He had no heart to test the symptoms upon the body of another animal. There was death enough about without that. He sat down over the microscope and examined his sera again and again. He could find no trace of any living micro-organisms. The sera seemed to be sterile. But he saw now that it had some evil effect upon those infected with trypanosomes. He could not guess the exact chemical nature of the effect. It probably affected the constituents of the blood in some way. The poison in the sera seemed to need the presence of trypanosomes to complete its virulence.
While he worked over the microscope, he noticed that his own flesh was developing the symptom. He put aside his work when he saw that. He concluded that Lionel and he were marked for death within twenty-four hours. Before death (as he had learned in the village) they might look to suffer much pain. After some hours of suffering they would become unconscious and delirious. After raving for a while they would die there in the lonely hut, and presently the ants would march in in regular ranks to give them cleanly burial. Their bones would lie on the cots till some thunderstorm swept them under mud. Nobody would ever hear of them. They would be forgotten. People in England would wonder what had become of them; they would wonder less as time went on, and at last they would cease to wonder. Newspapers would allude to him from time to time in paragraphs two lines long. Then, as his contemporaries grew older, that would stop, too. He would be forgotten, utterly, and nobody would know, and nobody would care.
It was dreadful to him to think that nobody would know. He could count on an hour or two of freedom from pain. Before the pain shut out the world from him, he would try to leave some record of what they were. He sat down to write a death-letter. It was useless, of course, and yet it might, perhaps, by a rare chance, some day, come to the knowledge of those whom he had known in England. He wondered who would find the letter, if it were ever found. Some great German scientist about to banish the disease. Some drunken English gold prospector with a cockney accent. Some missionary, or sportsman, or commercial traveller. More likely it would be some roving savage with a snuff-box in his earlobe, and a stone of copper wire about his limbs. He wrote out a short letter:
"Lionel Uppingham Huntley Heseltine, Roger Monkhouse Naldrett. Dying here of blood poisoning, following the use of koodoo serum for trypanosomiasis. Should this come to the hands of a European, he is requested to communicate with Dr. Heseltine, 47A Harley Square, Wimpole Street, W., London, England, and with the British Consul at Shirikanga, C. F. S."
He added a few words more; but afterwards erased them. He had given the essentials. There was no need to say more. He translated the brief message into French, Spanish, and German, and signed the copies. He placed the document in a tin soap box which he chained to an iron rod driven into the floor of the hut. When that was done, he felt that he had taken his farewell to life.
He thought of Ottalie, without hope of any kind. He was daunted by the thought of her. He could not feel that his soul would ever reach to her soul, across all those wilds. He was heavy with the growing of the change upon him. This death of which he had thought so grandly seemed very stupid now that he was coming to know it. He remembered reproving a young poet for the remark that death could not possibly be so stupid as life. It was monstrous to suppose that the young poet could be right after all. And yet——
He went out hurriedly and released all the laboratory animals: guinea-pigs, monkeys, and white rats. They should not die of starvation, poor beasts. They squeaked and gibbered excitedly for a minute or two, as they moved off to explore. Probably the snakes had them all within the week.
After some hours of waiting for the agony to begin, Roger fell asleep, and slept till the next morning. When he woke he sat up and looked about him, being not quite sure at first that he was still alive. His pulse was normal, his tongue was normal, his heart was normal. He felt particularly well. He looked at his flesh. The bladdery look had relapsed, the skin was normal again. Looking over to Lionel's cot, he saw that Lionel was not in the hut. Fearing that he had wandered out to die in a fit of delirium, he went out into the open to look for him.
It was a bright, windy, tropic morning, with a tonic briskness in the air such as one feels sometimes in England, in April and late September. One of the released monkeys was fast by the neck again upon his perch. He was munching a biscuit with his entire vitality. Lionel sat upon the wall, sunning himself in a blanket. His attitude suggested both great physical weakness, and entire self-confidence.
"I say, Roger," he began. "It's too bad. You are a juggins! You've let all our menagerie go. What are we to do for laboratory animals? I caught McGinty here. Otherwise we'd have been without a single one. Every cage in the place is wide open. What have you been doing?"
"My God!" said Roger. "He's cured!"
"Cured, sir?" said Lionel. "Why shouldn't I be? There's been nothing wrong with me except fever. But I'm not joking. I want to know about these animals. What were you thinking of to let them out?"
"Lionel," said Roger, "for the last five weeks you've been dying of sleeping sickness. The atoxyl was lost. I believe you threw it away."
"There's the atoxyl," said Lionel, pointing. "In the hole in the wall there. I put it there yesterday, after dosing those two."
Sure enough, there stood the bottle in the dimness of a hole in the wall. Roger must have passed it some fifty times.
"I looked for it everywhere," said Roger.
Lionel's eyes narrowed to the sharpness of medical scrutiny. He examined Roger for some time.
"Let me take your pulse, Lionel," said Roger, staring back.
"My pulse is all right," said Lionel. "Be off and look for guinea-pigs." The pulse was all right; so was the flesh of the wrist.
"I suppose the next thing you'll want me to believe is that I've still got sleeping sickness? Well, look at my tongue. Perhaps that will convince you." Lionel waited for an answer for a moment with protruding tongue. The tongue was steady. Lionel returned to the charge. "What have you been playing at with those Weissner serum pans?" he asked. "Have you been bleeding the monkeys? You seem to have been having a field-day generally."
"I tell you," said Roger, "that you've been dying of sleeping sickness for five weeks. Look at your temperature chart. Look at my diary. After the atoxyl was lost, I tried every mortal thing we had. And nothing was any good. You were drowsing away to death for days. Don't you remember?"
"I remember having fever, and you or somebody messing around with a needle. But, five weeks, man! Five weeks. Come!"
"I tell you, you have. You've been unconscious half the time."
"Well. If I've had sleeping sickness, how comes it that I'm here, talking to you? You say yourself the atoxyl was lost."
"Lionel," said Roger, "I injected you with a dead culture. After that, I shot a couple of koodoos (if they were koodoos), a cow and a fawn. The fawn had nagana or something. I took sera from them, and injected the sera into both of us. Great big doses in both cases. I injected the sera into seven poor devils in the village, and they all swelled up and died. It was awful, Lionel. What makes people swell up?"
"I don't know," said Lionel. "I suppose it might be anthrax. Was there fever?"
"Intense pain, very high fever, and death apparently from exhaustion. And you and I swelled up a little; and I made sure yesterday that we were both going to die too. I wrote letters, and stuck them up on a bar inside there."
"Oh, so that was what the rod was for? I thought it was something funny. And now we are both cured?"
"Yes. My God, Lionel, I'm thankful to hear your voice again. You don't know what it's been."
They shook hands.
"You're a public benefactor," said Lionel. He looked hard at Roger. "I give you best," he added. "I thought you were a griff. But you've found a cure, it seems. Eh? Look at him. It's the first time he's realised it!"
"But," Roger stammered, "I've killed seven with it; that's not what I call a cure."
"Did you inject the seven with the dead culture first?" Lionel asked.
"No. Only myself and you."
"There you are," said Lionel. "You griffs make the discoveries, and haven't got the gumption to see them. My good Lord! It's as plain as measles. You inject the dead culture. That's the first step. That makes the trypanosomes agglutinise. Very well, then. You inject your serum when they are agglutinised; not before. When they are agglutinised, the serum destroys them, after raising queer symptoms. When they are not agglutinised the serum destroys you by the excess of what causes the queer symptoms. I don't understand those symptoms. They are so entirely unexpected. Did you examine the blood?"
"One cubic centimetre of the venous blood killed a guinea-pig in three hours."
"Yes, no doubt. But did you look at the blood microscopically?"
"No," said Roger, ashamed. "I looked at my sera for streptococci."
"You juggins!" said Lionel. "Yet you come out and land on a cure. Well, well! You're a lucky dog. Let's go in and look at our glands." Roger noticed that he walked with the totter of one newly risen from a violent attack of fever.
Four months later, the two men reached Shirikanga in a canoe of their own making. They were paddled by four survivors from the village. All the rest were dead, either of sleeping sickness or of the serum. Lionel had not discovered what it was in the serum which caused the fatal symptoms. It contained some quality which caused the streptococci, or pus-forming microbes, to increase; but, as far as he could discover, this quality was exerted only when the patient's blood contained virulent trypanosomes, or some other active toxin-producing micro-organisms in the unagglutinised condition. They cured four of the villagers. They might have saved more had they been able to begin the treatment earlier in the disease. They were not dissatisfied with their success. They "had powler't up and down a bit," like the Jovial Huntsmen. They had come to some knowledge of each other, and to some extension of their faculties.
Scientifically, they had done less than they had hoped; but more than they had expected to do. They had been the first to cure cases with animal serum. They had been the first to study in any way the effect of nagana upon the young of wild game, and to prepare (as yet untested) vaccine from young antelopes, quaggas, and elands. They had discovered a wash of Paris green and lime which destroyed the tsetse pupas. They had cleared some three miles of fly belt. They had studied the tsetse. They had surveyed the whole and excavated a part of the Zimbabwe. Lastly, they had settled the foundations of friendship between them.
That was, perhaps, the best result of the expedition. They had settled a friendship likely to last through life. They were confident that they would do great things together. Shirikanga hove in sight at the river mouth. Two country barques lay at anchor there, with grimy awnings over their poops. Ashore, in the blaze of the day, were a few white-washed huts, from one of which a Union Jack floated. In the compound of another hut a negro was slowly hoisting the ball of a flag. He brought it to the truck and broke it out, so that it fluttered free. It was a red burgee, the letter B of the code.
"Mail day," said Lionel. "We shall be out of here to-night. We shall be at Banana by Wednesday. That means Antwerp by Wednesday three weeks. London's not far away."
"Good," said Roger. He was not thinking of London. He was thinking of a lonely Irish hill, where there were many yellow-hammers. The trees there stood up like ghosts. Round an old, grey, two-storied house the bees murmured. He was thinking that perhaps one or two roses might be in blossom about the house even a month later, when he would stand there.
He thought of his life in Africa, and of its bearing upon himself. It had done him good. He was worth more to the world than he had been a year before. He thought little of his success. It had been fortunate. It had saved Lionel. When he thought of his earlier life he sighed. He knew that he would have achieved more than that sorry triumph had he been trained. His life had been improvised, never organised. Great things are done only when the improvising mind has a great organisation behind it.
He thought it all over again when he lay in his bunk in a cabin of the Kabinda, on his way up-coast. He was at peace with the world. Clean sheets, the European faces, and the civilised meals in the saloon, had wiped out the memory of the past. Africa was already very dim to him. The Zimbabwe rose up in his mind like something seen in a dream, a dim, but rather grand shape. The miseries of the camp were dim. He had been sad that morning in bidding farewell to the four whose lives he had saved. Jellybags, Toro, Buckshot, and Pocahontas. He repeated their names and considered their engaging traits. Jellybags was the best of them. He had liked Jellybags. Jellybags had wanted to come with them. He would never see Jellybags again. He didn't care particularly. The sheets of the bunk were very comfortable. At the end of a great adventure things are seen in false proportions. Only the thought that those men had shared his life for a while gave him the suggestion of a qualm before he put them from his mind.
He thought of Ottalie. He saw her more clearly than of old. In the old days he had seen her through the pink mists of amatory sentiment. The sentiment was gone. Action had knocked it out of him. He saw her now as she was. She was more wonderful in the clearer light; more wonderful than ever; a fine, trained, scrupulous mind, drilled to a beautiful unerring choice in life. She was near and real to him, so real that he seemed to be within her mind, following its fearlessness. He felt that he understood her now. With a rush of emotion he felt that he could bring what she had been into the life of his time.
In the steamer at Banana was a German scientist bound to Sierra Leone. He spoke English. He asked the two friends about their achievement. Lionel told him that they had discovered a serum for the cure of trypanosomiasis. The German smiled. "Ah," he said. "There is already sera. The Japanese bacteriologist, what was his name? Shima? Oshima? Shiga? No, Hiroshiga. He have found a good serum, which makes der peoples die sometimes. Then there is Mühlbauer who have improved the serum of Hiroshiga. He have added a little trypanroth or a little mercury or somedings. Now he have cured everymans. I wonder you have not seen of Hiroshiga in der newspapers. He have make his experiments in der spring; and Mühlbauer he is now at Nairobi curing everymans. He have vaccination camps."
"Well," said Lionel. "We've been beaten on the post. You hear, Roger? All that we have done has been done."
"You wait," said Roger. "We're only beginning."
Afterwards he was sad that it was ending thus. He would have been proud to have given a cure to the world. It would have been an offering to Ottalie. She would have loved to share that honour. He had plucked that poor little flower for her at the risk of his life. It was hard to find that it was only a paper flower after all. He thought of Ottalie as standing at the window of the upper passage looking out for him. She seemed to him to be something of all cleanness and fearlessness, waiting for him to lead her into the world, so that men might serve her.
In Ottalie's old home, a month later, he saw his way. Leslie, Lionel, and himself sat together in the twilight, talking of her. Roger was deeply moved by a sense of her presence there. He leaned forward to them and spoke earnestly, asking them to join hands in building some memorial to her. "She was like a new spirit coming to the world," he said. "Like the new spirit. We ought to bring that new spirit into the world. Let us form a brotherhood of three to do that. We are three untrained enthusiasts. Let us prepare an organisation for the enthusiasts who come after us. Let us build up an interest in the new hygiene and the new science; in all that is cleanly and fearless. We could start a little school and laboratory together, and run a monthly paper preaching our tenets. All the ills of modern life come from dirt and sentiment, and the cowardice which both imply. If we stand together and attack those ills, year in and year out, we shall get rid of them. Little by little, if one stands at a street corner, the crowd gathers."
"Yes," said Leslie. "And you think dirt and sentiment the bad things? Well, perhaps you're right. They're both due to a want of order in the mind. What do you think, Lionel?"
"I?" said Lionel. "I say, certainly. We three are living in a most wonderful time. The world is just coming to see that science is not a substitute for religion, but religion of a very deep and austere kind. We are seeing only the beginning of it."
They settled a plan of action together.
Roger went out into the garden, and down the hill, thinking of the crusade against the weariness and filth of cities. There was an afterglow upon the hills. It fell with a ruddy glare on the window of his dream. It thrilled him. The light would fall there long after the house had fallen. It had lighted Ottalie. It had burned upon the pane when Ottalie's mother stood there. Nature was enduring; Nature the imperfect; Nature the enemy, which blighted the rose and spread the weed. Thinking of the woman who had waited for him there in his vision, he prayed that her influence in him might help to bring to earth that promised life, in which man, curbing Nature to his use, would assert a new law and rule like a king, where now, even in his strength, he walks sentenced, a prey to all things baser.
THE END
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Captain Margaret
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Captain Margaret, owner of the "Broken Heart," mild dreamer and hardy adventurer in one, is a type of character one does not often meet in fiction, and his troubled pursuit of the vision he is always seeing, in Mr. Masefield's telling, is a story such as we seldom hear. It is a strange crew that goes scurrying out of Salcombe Pool on a darkening flood-tide in the "Broken Heart," bound for the treasure-land of Darien. There is Captain Cammock, strong and fine, Stukeley the beast, Perrin the feeble, Olivia beautiful and blind, and Captain Margaret wisely good and uncomplaining—not a one of them but shines out from the story with unforgettable vividness. From England to Virginia and the Spanish Main with men at arms between decks goes the "Broken Heart" following her master's dream, and her thrilling voyage with its storms and battles is strongly and stirringly told. When John Masefield writes of the sea, the sea lives.
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Good Friday and Other Poems.
BY JOHN MASEFIELD
Cloth, $1.25, leather, $1.50.
The title piece in this new volume is a dramatic poem of sixty pages, the action of which takes place in the time of Christ. The characters introduced include Pontius Pilate, Joseph of Ramah and Herod. The play, for it is really such, is written in rhyme and is one of Mr. Masefield's most interesting and important contributions to literature. In addition to this there are in the book many sonnets and shorter poems embodying the very finest work Mr. Masefield has yet done.
The Tragedy of Nan.
New Edition.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25.
"One of the most distinctive tragedies written by a dramatist of the modern school."—N. Y. Evening Post.
The Faithful.
A Tragedy in Three Acts.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.50.
"A striking drama ... a notable work that will meet with the hearty appreciation of discerning readers."—The Nation.
Philip the King and Other Poems.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.50.
"Cannot fail to increase the already great reputation of John Masefield as a poetic dramatist.... Full of poetic imagination and dramatic force."—The Nation.
The Tragedy of Pompey the Great.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.50.
"He is no statuesque Pompey, spouting prose lines masquerading as poetry, Masefield has given us Pompey the man."—The Pittsburg Post.
Philip, the King and other Poems
BY JOHN MASEFIELD
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25
Mr. Masefield's new poetical drama again affirms his important position in the literature of to-day. In the volume are new poems of the sea, lyrics and a powerful poem on the present war.
Plaster Saints
BY ISRAEL ZANGWILL
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25
A new play of deep social significance.
The Melting Pot
BY ISRAEL ZANGWILL
Revised edition. Cloth, 12mo.
This is a revised edition of what is perhaps Mr. Zangwill's most popular play. Numerous changes have been made in the text, which has been considerably lengthened thereby. The appeal of the drama to the readers of this country is particularly strong, in that it deals with that great social process by which all nationalities are blended together for the making of the real American.
Makers of Madness
BY HERMANN HAGEDORN
Cloth, 12mo, $1.00
Many consider Mr. Hagedorn the most representative poet of the American spirit. Here he has written a stirring drama in which are revealed the horror and the pathos of the great struggle in Europe.
Salt Water Ballads.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.00; leather, $1.50.
No living poet has caught the wild beauty of the sea, and imprisoned it in such haunting verse.
The Everlasting Mercy, and the Widow in the
Bye-Street.
New and Revised Edition.
Cloth, $1.25; leather, $1.50.
"John Masefield is the man of the hour, and the man of to-morrow, too, in poetry and in the play writing craft."—JOHN GALSWORTHY.
The Story of a Round House and Other Poems.
New and Revised Edition.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.35; leather, $1.50.
"Ah! the story of that rounding the Horn! Never in prose has the sea been so tremendously described."—Chicago Evening Post.
A Mainsail Haul.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.50.
As a sailor before the mast Masefield has traveled the world over. Many of the tales in this volume are his own experiences.
The Daffodil Fields.
Second Edition.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.50.
"Neither in the design nor in the telling did, or could, 'Enoch Arden' come near the artistic truth of 'The Daffodil Fields.'"—SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, Cambridge University.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York