Unable to resist the temptation, I telephoned through to one of the club's members—a bucolic-looking retired colonel who had greatly annoyed me on the voyage home by his frequent assertions of physical well-being.
"Well?" I inquired. "How are things?"
"Fine. . . . Fine!" he barked, as if on parade.
I heard him smite himself on the chest, or make some queer noise which sounded very like it. Then there was a peculiar metallic click followed by the confused sound of distant voices and an uncanny silence as I was suddenly cut off.
I got through again, however, and heard the terrible news that the poor old fellow had dropped dead!
Shaken and scared by such a disaster, I was far too afraid to make inquiries of any of the other old people that night.
Was it an omen? Was it the beginning of the end—or, at any rate, of the slow march back to a natural and respectable old age?
To the eternal shame of modern science in general, and of our expedition in particular, I regret to say that it was.
Old age did not creep stealthily upon them, as Nature normally arranged; it overtook them by leaps and bounds. Wrinkles appeared on the old people almost as swiftly as the rash of a disease. They went to bed at night and woke up next morning a year, or even two years older. In spite of their youthful posings and their ejaculations of: "Great!" "Never felt better!" "Fine!" they began doddering once more. After all the excitement and promise of the last twelve months, they had merely returned to England, home, and—bath-chairs.
It would be hypocritical of me to say that it was pathetic, for, logically considered, it was but the fulfilment of the law of all life—the wisely ordained destiny of man, and animal, and even vegetable. In time, I myself would bow to this great and inflexible law—as unflinchingly and calmly as my ancestors. Why, then, should I feel sorry for these people?