Then, by gradual but sensible degrees, the intensity of the darkness yielded; and, as layer after layer was lifted from him, or washed off, he recognised himself more fully. He was a Calcareous Accretion—(more black typing showed)—He was being treated with weak acid baths. There were hopes entertained of the result. (He overheard Someone say so.) He began to be interested in his own case; these accretions were little granular nodules found among the old dead earth of the clefts and fissures of the Ightham chalk; dead earth which had slipped down these rifts in the dead-and-gone long-ago when they were natural pitfalls in the surface of an Arctic tundra. In winter their dangers would have been hidden by the sheet of drifted snow through which an unwary reindeer calf had fallen to its doom. (He remembered that reindeer calf, also the Arctic fox which was tempted down by the meat; and the lemming which was chased down by the stoat, and how neither fox, lemming nor stoat ever got out again). In summer insects fell in, and his own case filled him with mild speculative hopes. The acid was fining him down, his chalky envelopes were leaving him, coat after coat. Oh, there was something inside—a something which was probably interesting—possibly a New Fact! (Here anticipation awoke in him.) Suppose, now, the chitinous core of him when washed clean and dissolved out should be recognisably Bombus hyperboreus, the big bumble-bee of the Arctic, the one so rare in collections, the insect which seems almost immune to frost, and goes booming from one little frozen flower-bell to another during the brief northern summer whilst snowflakes eddy round it! Such a find would be valuable, and New! Confirmatory as to climatic conditions, too.
"M'yess!" Someone was speaking above him, someone's finger pressed his wrist; he distinguished the ticking of a watch. He opened his eyes.
"W-What is all this?" and behold that underbred, uninteresting young doctor was looking down upon him with the subdued pride with which a medical man regards a case which will do him credit. (He had put a solid fortnight of holiday into it, for which, as he knew well, he could not legally recover a sou).
The Professor—(he was now the Professor again, and all the black marks, labels and Ightham-Fissure-Business were gone)—found himself bursting with a huge, novel experience, which it behoved him to get into writing if he died for it.
"P-pencil and paper—please."
And, eventually, he was allowed to have his way.
COLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH