“That is true, but civilization—your industrial civilization—what is it? Not a system to be identified with the cause of human welfare, and hence worth preserving in some form or other at all costs, but a mere vicious outgrowth prejudicial to that welfare as we conceive it. The test of the worth of a civilization is its power to minister to human happiness. Judged by this standard your civilization has proved a failure. Mankind rushed to her embraces in hope, fought its way thither through long and weary centuries, and has for a reward the sneers of a mistress as exacting as she is icy:
“‘The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.’”
THE STORM GATHERING.
During the delivery of this harangue the wind had been steadily rising, and it now began to shriek through the stays in a fashion positively alarming. Foregoing further parley, I bent over the railing and strove to catch a glimpse of the angry sea-horses beneath us. But it was by this time too dark for the non-feline eye. Glancing upwards and around the horizon, I could see the awnings of the storm unrolling, with here and there a rift through which stole the feeble moonlight. A man came from the citadel and stepped up to us. It was Hartmann.
“Well,” he said, “we are in for it. The barometer is falling rapidly, and the storm is already gathering. Have a care for yourselves, comrades,” he added to his followers. “You, Stanley, follow me to the conning-tower. The log of the Attila may be worth writing to-night.”
I followed him gladly into the citadel, and down the stair leading to the narrow corridor which ran on to the bow. As we entered it the Attila seemed to reel with a violent shock that sent me spinning against the wall. The storm had burst. By the time I had picked myself up Hartmann had disappeared. I found my way after him into the tower, where he was standing, regulator in hand, with his eyes on the glass plate that looked forward into the night.
“We are rising,” he said, laconically. “Look!”
A fan of vivid glory cleft the darkness. Illumined by the electric search-light great masses of driving vapour were rushing by us; but other sight there was none. Suddenly a second squall struck us, and the Attila rolled like a liner in a cyclone; the lurch was horrible, and for a moment I thought we were capsizing—it must have been one of at least forty-five degrees followed by a very slow recovery. Hartmann was busy over a medley of wheels, levers, and regulators.
“We are passing through the cloud-belt at a very high speed,” he continued, as if the shock was a trifle. “My intention is, first, to let you see a storm from the quiet zone above it; secondly, to rush downwards into it that the Attila may show her mettle.”