“Immortal!” muttered Dr. Kremlin—“Immortal! Renewable at pleasure! My God!—then I have time before me—plenty of time!”
“You have, if you care for it—” said El-Râmi with a tinge of melancholy in his accents—“and if you continue to care for it. Few do, nowadays.”
But his companion scarcely heard him. He was balancing the little flask in his hand in wonderment and awe.
“Death by violence?” he repeated slowly. “But, my friend, may not God Himself use violence towards us? May He not snatch the unwilling soul from its earthly tenement at an unexpected moment,—and so, all the scheming and labour and patient calculation of years be ended in one flash of time?”
“God—if there be a God, which some are fain to believe there is,—uses no violence—” replied El-Râmi—“Deaths by violence are due to the ignorance, or brutality, or long-inherited foolhardiness and interference of man alone.”
“What of shipwreck?—storm?—lightning?”—queried Dr. Kremlin, still playing with the flask he held.
“You are not going to sea, are you?” asked El-Râmi smiling—“And surely you, of all men, should know that even shipwrecks are due to a lack of mathematical balance in shipbuilding. One little trifle of exactitude, which is always missing, unfortunately,—one little delicate scientific adjustment, and the fiercest storm and wind could not prevail against the properly poised vessel. As for lightning—of course people are killed by it if they persist in maintaining an erect position like a lightning-rod or conductor, while the electrical currents are in full play. If they were to lie flat down, as savages do, they could not attract the descending force. But who, among arrogant stupid men, cares to adopt such simple precautions? Any way, I do not see that you need fear any of these disasters.”
“No, no,”—said the old man meditatively, “I need not fear,—no, no! I have nothing to fear.”
His voice sank into silence. He and El-Râmi were sitting in a small square chamber of the tower,—very narrow, with only space enough for the one tiny table and two chairs which furnished it,—the walls were covered with very curious maps, composed of lines and curves and zigzag patterns, meaningless to all except Kremlin himself, whose dreamy gaze wandered to them between-whiles with an ardent yearning and anxiety. And ever that strange deep, monotonous humming noise surged through the tower as of a mighty wheel at work, the vibration of the sound seemed almost to shake the solid masonry, while mingling with it now and again came the wild sea-bird cry of the wind. El-Râmi listened.
“And still it moves?” he queried softly, using almost the words of Galileo,—“e pur si muove.”