OVER THE BORDER
BY MORGAN ROBERTSON
PUBLISHED BY
McCLURE'S MAGAZINE
AND
METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE
CONTENTS[1]
OVER THE BORDER
[THE LAST BATTLESHIP]
It was nearly midnight, and the battleship Argyll, stripped to bare steel, was drifting with banked fires but a full head of steam, waiting for daybreak to discover the enemy. New things were expected in this coming action. Wireless news had told of the presence of submarines, as yet unproved in war, and before the going down of the sun a high-power telescope on board had brought to view two small moving spots in the distant sky—airships; but whether they were friends or enemies had not been determined. No hammocks were piped that night—men slept at their stations or remained awake and talked; and aft on the superstructure a group of officers off duty discussed the possibilities of future warfare, and the coming place of the battleship under the menace of the bomb-dropping dirigible balloon and the invisible submarine with its deadly torpedo. All had taken part, some with laughter and joking, others with the earnest conviction of serious thought, and the discussion finally had narrowed down to a wordy combat between the highest and the lowest of the commissioned officers, Mr. Clarkson, the executive officer, and young Mr. Felton, temporarily the torpedo lieutenant. Mr. Felton had become dogmatic in his assertions, which is excusable at sea only in the young.
"But, Mr. Felton," said the executive officer, slowly and earnestly, "have a little common sense. Can't you see that conditions must change, that the battleship, like the steamship, has almost reached the limit of size and development, while the airship and the submarine are in their infancy?"
"But there must be a center, a nucleus of the fleet. How can you preserve the line of battle without such a backbone? Where will you put the admiral?"
"Up in the air, where he can see things?"
"And be seen, too, and shot at."
"Felton, an ordinary gas bag can travel faster than the speediest water craft ever constructed. We cannot hit a destroyer at full speed. How can we hit an airship above us? Gun sights are useless at such elevations, even though guns could be pointed."
"All a matter of mathematics. Design new ones."
"And suppose a few bombs come down on deck, or down the funnels; what'll happen to the boilers?"
"Armor the deck, and do away with funnels. We will soon have internal combustion engines, anyhow."
"And for submarine attack? Armor the bottom, too? Felton, a battleship will cease to be a battleship. With that weight of armor she could only carry the guns of a cruiser without a cruiser's speed."
"But she would still hold the line of battle."
"Until she was further reduced. Then she would not be even a cruiser. Finally she would sacrifice some of her armor—side armor, we'll say, because unnecessary—then, with enemies only above and below, she would lose it all, seal up and dive, or take wings and fly."
"Oh, Mr. Clarkson," said Felton, wearily, "you are a visionary and theorist. The battleship is here, a perfected fighting machine."
"But she cannot grow much better, while the flying machine and the submarine have just begun. Imagine the three types starting together. Which would be chosen?"
"It would depend upon the judgment, experience, and gray matter of the choosers. I"—young Mr. Felton threw out his chest—"would choose the battleship."
"Because you never hit one. There goes eight bells. Turn in, Felton, and sleep it off."
Amid the laughter—for Mr. Felton, as torpedo officer, had not yet scored a hit in his department—of the listening officers, the group dispersed, to stand watch, or sleep, until four hours later, when the striking of eight bells would again bring a change on the watches. It was Felton's turn in, and he went to his berth; but, hot and excited over the discussion, he remained awake, tossing and rolling, and mentally arguing with the impractical "first luff," until one bell had struck, then two, and finally three. Then he dozed off, and was sound asleep when the familiar stroke of the bell again rang in his ears. "Clang-clang, clang-clang."
"Only four bells," he murmured, sinking back for another two hours of sleep. But he had hardly lost consciousness when the gun-room orderly tapped at his door.
"Going into action, sir," he said. "You were called, and I thought you had wakened. All hands are at stations, sir."
Felton sprang out of his berth and dressed hurriedly. Until the enemy was within the "cruising radius" of torpedoes his station was on the bridge with the captain. As he ran along the gun deck he heard through the steel walls of the big ship the faint sound of distant firing, and when he had bounded up the forward companion steps to the main deck he could hear the singing of shells, and see through the inky blackness twinkling points of flame. A crash and a jar of the whole huge fabric told him that one ship of the enemy had the range, and that something had struck somewhere, and penetrated.
There was no time for sight-seeing. The bridge was above him, and the quickest road to it was by way of the turret, from the top of which he could swing himself up. He mounted the iron ladder bolted to the turret, but slipped on the hard steel roof and, with a force that deprived him of breath, was pressed sprawling on his face. But a deafening roar of sound from within the turret told him that the force came from below—from the explosion of a shell and one or more twelve-inch charges, perhaps the whole magazine in the depths. Hardly had his dazed faculties grasped this fact than another was borne in upon him. Gripping tightly the hand-hold of the turret hatch, and choked with gas fumes oozing through the sight holes in the hood, he felt that he was whirling through the air, upward and to port, he and the whole turret roof. As it turned in air he could see for a moment the dim, bulky outline of the ship below; then it faded into darkness, and he was clinging for dear life to that slowly canting disk of armored steel, until, as it assumed a perpendicular, he was holding his weight with one hand, very curiously, as he then thought, weighing very little. But he partook of the motion of the whole.
Something hard and rigid brushed him on the shoulder, and in a moment he was torn from his support to find himself clutching a smooth, round rod of what seemed to be steel or iron. It was perpendicular, and beyond in the darkness he made out another, and beyond another. Looking down he saw a long, pointed platform or deck, to the edge of which the rods led. He was clinging to the stanchion of an airship, but what kind of an airship he could not determine.
Thankful for life and a whole skin—though bruised and shocked almost into unconsciousness—he slid down the stanchion to the deck, and faced a man in the darkness—a tall man who peered down at his face.
"Hello, who are you, and where'd you come from?" he asked, rather kindly. "How'd you get aboard!"
"I hardly know myself. I hardly know I'm alive. This is an airship, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"My name is Felton, torpedo officer of the battleship Argyll. There was an explosion in the forward turret, and I was on top. I went up with the roof."
"Was that a turret top? I wondered what they were shooting at us."
"It was. I was rifling it. Which side are you on in this mix?"
"The side of the Lord."
The man whistled shrilly, and immediately half a dozen other dark forms materialized out of the dark. They threw themselves upon Felton, choked, pinioned, and bore him down, and before he could speak his protest he found himself bound hand and foot.
"Stay there," said the tall man, who seemed to be the commander, "until we need to expend weights. We did want a little more ballast."
Felton wisely accepted the situation, and remained through the waning night where they had placed him. They had not gagged him, and he was free to roll over and change his position when tired. He lay on what seemed to be a grating, but on turning to look at it, he found that it was the deck of the car, through the slits of which he could see lights below, and the quick gleaming of distant gun fire, but nothing on the black carpet that took form and identity.
In his immediate vicinity, however, objects were becoming faintly visible in the first blink of the morning light that had not yet reached the surface below. He made out the shape, size, and general construction of the craft that carried him. It was not the conventional elongated gas bag, with car and motor, rudder, and screw; nor was it suspended in the air by wings or planes, unless the long, concave roof above, toward the edge of which the stanchions led, performed some such function. Amidships were a vertical and a horizontal steering wheel, aft a noisily buzzing engine, and, behind it in the darkness, presumably, were the screw and rudders that propelled and guided the craft. Symmetrically disposed about the deck were long, steel cylinders that doubtless contained the compressed gas or air that worked the engine, and through and between them all a system of pipes, valves, levers, and indicators, as complicated as the fittings of an engine-room. The tall commander was at the wheel amidships, another man at the engine, and the rest of the crew, seven in all, were scattered about the deck "keeping lookout," not ahead, but down.
"There she is," said one, suddenly lifting his head. "Ahead, and to port."
"I see her," said the captain, peering down and shifting the wheel.
"You see, young man," he said to Felton, "we had to rise so suddenly to dodge that turret top that we lost sight of her."
"Do you mean to say," answered Felton, cautiously, for he did not yet understand the temper of these men, "that you can dodge anything?"
"We can dodge or outrun a shell, or anything else big enough to see. But it was dark, and we didn't see that turret coming. It almost hit us."
"What is your lifting power, captain?"
"The centrifugal force of the earth—partly, inconvenient in one respect, for we rise at a tangent. We descend by its opposite and balancing force, gravitation, which is more direct."
"How do you tap this centrifugal force?" asked the amazed Felton. "How do you overcome gravitation?"
"Gravitation is only one phase of magnetism. In magnetism, repulsion equals attraction. By reversing our polarity we are repelled from the earth at the speed of a falling body, but, of course, at a tangent."
"It's beyond me," said Felton. "Of course, that tangent would take you westward at the speed of the sun."
"In a succession of jumps—yes."
"But how do you change your polarity?" asked Felton, becoming interested.
"There is your ship down there, nearly beneath us." And the interest was crushed.
Felton looked down. The light was stronger now, and he could dimly see on the surface beneath the indefinite outlines of a battleship toward which the airship was heading. Not a light could be seen on her. Her fires were quiet; not a flare shone from her funnels. Though there was fighting at a distance, this craft was not engaged in it. Slowly, from the lofty point of view, she moved along on a course that crossed the course of the airship, and slowly the latter turned and followed, soon dropping squarely in her wake—if such term may be used—a full half-mile above. The engine now accelerated its speed, increasing its volume of noise; and this noise must have been heard on the battleship. A sudden illumination was seen—like a flash of heat lightning—then came the singing of a projectile, and with it the report of the gun.
"Oh, fudge!" said the captain, gently and pityingly. "Go ahead, boys."
It was now light enough for Felton to examine the faces of these men. To his surprise they were young, almost boyish. They were not in uniform. Their dress and faces were as commonplace as could be found in a factory; only the tall, thin young captain showing in voice and expression the signs of study and thought. He twirled the wheel, manipulated levers and valves within reach, and watched, downward through the slits, the big craft beneath.
The sun was rising in the east, and Felton could make out the details of the ship below—his own ship, with its familiar bridge, turrets, and superstructure, and an enormous, gaping hole forward where once had been the twelve-inch turret. Far to the south and east were other ships, pursued and pursuing, but which was friend and which enemy he could not make out. Warships, like bicycles, had become standardized.
A small, round shot was dropped over, and Felton watched it descend until it disappeared from sight. But soon a scarcely perceptible splash was seen—a little astern and to starboard, and the captain moved the wheel and turned a lever. Another shot, or finder, went down, and this splashed nearer. Then they lifted a pointed shell, vaned like a dynamite projectile, held it poised until the captain gave the word, and dropped it. It went down true as a plummet, and went out of sight. But its effects were soon seen in an uplifting of the quarter-deck close to the stern, and the rising of a cloud of yellow smoke.
"Nothing left of the steering gear," shuddered Felton. "Wonder how many were killed in that—and the other."
A six-inch gun on the superstructure was barking away, and shells still screamed upward, but none came near the airship.
"We'll silence that gun," the commander said, taking out his watch and slightly changing the course and speed. "Stand by."
They poised another shell, and at the word "drop" down it went. The commander pocketed his watch, and said: "Now for the rest of her; after turret next."
Felton heard, but was watching the descent of the shell. It went out of sight like the others, but soon he saw the uplift of deck, the yellow smoke of explosion, and a dismounted gun flying overboard.
"My God, captain!" he exclaimed. "Is this legitimate warfare? What chance has she? She can't hit back. That was the only gun she had with elevated trunnions."
"And she cost about four millions, didn't she?" answered the captain, derisively. "Did you ever hear about the boy who was reproved for clubbing a mule tied to a post? His excuse was that it had no darn business to be a mule. Mine is that you've no darn business to build battleships."
"Well, we may build airships, too," said Felton, helplessly.
He said no more, but watched, while his ship was picked to pieces. The after turret went next, its big guns lifting and falling across each other. It took two shells to do this, though the second may have had aid from the magazine beneath; for the whole turret rose with the explosion. Then the eight-inch turrets, one after the other, shattered to shapeless lumps under that terrible dropping bombardment; then the superstructure, with its inclosed armament of six-inch and smaller guns, received the fire; and when the whole expanse was an uneven tangle of riven plates, twisted rods, smashed boats, and uprooted ventilators, the funnels came in for attention. Three open, ten-foot tubes leading to the vitals, water-tube boilers and steam connections, one after another belched upward a mighty white cloud, and after each uprush of steam the dropping of bombs ceased until the steam had thinned; for in this deadly, leisurely destruction of a battleship, no bombs need be wasted.
There was still the gaping hole where once had been the forward turret, and the commander seemed to be studying this, as Felton, sick at heart and furious with impotent rage, lifted his gaze from the wreck, which, rolling slowly from filled compartments, smoking with inward flame, and covered with crawling dots seeking escape from the inferno beneath, had lately been his refuge and his home—the invincible, impregnable Argyll—queen among battleships.
"I say, there," called the captain to Felton. "What blew up that forward turret? No gun fire can reach a magazine, and it wasn't I that did it."
"How do I know? Perhaps it was something else like you," snapped Felton.
"Do you think," and the commander's face took on an anxious expression, "that it might have been a submarine's torpedo?"
"Find out."
"That's what I'll have to do. We'll go down and see."
One of the men, a big, lumbering fellow with a dull, moon-like face, came up to where Felton lay and kicked him.
"Don't talk like that to the boss," he said.
"D— you!" yelled Felton. "You kick a man bound and down. Loose my hands, if you dare. Loose my hands! I won't need my feet."
"Loose him," called the captain, unconcernedly.
"Give him his way."
The man stooped and unfastened the cord which held Felton's wrists, then, even as he scrambled to his feet, he released his ankles.
"Now, you dog, take it," he growled, launching his fist at the man's face. It landed squarely, and the man went down, bleeding. He arose, but instead of resisting, or making any attempt to strike back, stood placidly in his tracks while the angry man struck him again.
Once more he went down, to rise again and tranquilly face his assailant. Felton hesitated, while his anger cooled a little; this kind of fighting was new to him. But the kick in his ribs flashed into his mind and the anger came back. "Fight! Fight!" he growled, and again knocked the fellow down. This time he put all his strength, and the weight of his body into the blow, with the result that the man reeled aft past the steering gear before he fell. He sat up and turned his swollen, bleeding face toward Felton, but did not rise nor speak.
"You've had enough, I judge," said Felton. "Any one else here who wants to kick me?"
No one answered. They were all looking down, and even the victim joined in the scrutiny. Not one had seemed in any way interested in the fracas.
"Come on. Who's next?" said the puzzled Felton.
"It is against our rules here to fight," said the nearest man, without looking up. "We save our energies for the enemy."
"But it seems within your rules to kick a prisoner," answered Felton in disgust.
"Do you think," asked the captain, raising a troubled face, "that there are any submarine craft around?"
"How do I know?" answered Felton.
"I don't feel easy, at all," said the other, plaintively.
"How the devil," exclaimed Felton, "can a submarine hurt you?"
The captain looked down without answering, and Felton seated himself to cool off, wondering, the while, what particular brand of human nature was embodied in this crew, and half expecting a concerted attempt to bind him again. But nothing of the kind happened; and when his breathing and circulation were normal, he, too, looked down on the spectacle below.
The airship had descended to less than a hundred yards from the sea, and hung poised, not over the floating scrap heap that had once been a battleship, but to starboard. One look was enough for Felton; he saw men writhing among the wreckage, unable to crawl to the rail and end their agony. Smoke was coming from every aperture, and here and there a small tongue of flame shot up, and fell back into the smoke. Nauseated with horror, he closed his eyes, changed his position, and opened them on the placid sea on the other side—away from the Argyll. A smooth, rolling swell pulsed and ebbed along the surface, and it was slightly roughened with ripples; but this did not materially lessen the transparency of the ocean, viewed from a height. Fish were visible, swimming about in the depths, and Felton thought of sharks, waiting for the final plunge of that hot and smoking wreck. Far over, a movement on the surface caught his eye; it was a triangular arrangement of ripples such as is made by the cutwater of a boat moving slowly. The apex of the triangle pointed toward the Argyll, and it was coming toward her. As it drew near Felton made out the cause, a short length of pole extending about three feet out of water and moved by some power beneath. Then a huge, bulky shape, pointed like a fish, but foreshortened and distorted by reflection—a darker blue on the blue of the sea—appeared to view as the source of the motive power.
"There's a submarine, for you, captain," he called grimly. "See the periscope tube?"
"Where?" yelled the captain, excitedly. "Where is it?"
He sprang to his feet, and looked to where Felton pointed. The others followed suit, their cries, queries and alarmed faces increasing Felton's doubts as to their sanity.
"Oh, God help us!" cried the captain, mournfully, as he saw the tube and the shape beneath. "Jump—jump for your lives! Jump, you!"
He pointed at Felton, and sprang toward him.
"Why should I jump?" asked Felton, wonderingly, and prepared for defense. The others came at him, each shouting his loudest: "Jump, jump for your life! Overboard with you! Quick, you fool!"
Then one sprang to the rail, poised a moment and threw himself out into space. Another followed, and another.
"Jump, will you?" yelled the captain, gesticulating earnestly. "I'm in command. I must be last to go. Over with you. Over with you all."
They were crowding to the rail, where one after another, the rest of the crew took the leap. And Felton, amazed, alarmed without knowing why, and against all the dictates of cold reason and common sense, allowed the captain to push him to the rail.
"Over you go, now," commanded the latter, encouragingly. "Don't be afraid. I'm coming, but I must be last, you know."
This seemed to be irresistible logic to the bewildered young officer. With no further thought about the matter, he reached the rail, and without looking down, drew a deep breath and leaped—a victim of suggestion.
Three hundred feet is a long jump. He turned over twice in that terrible descent, and once, looking upward, he saw the sprawling form of the captain, and above it the quiescent airship. But when he looked again he did not distinguish the man, and a lessening spot in the western sky was all that could be seen of the airship.
With consciousness nearly gone he struck the water feet first and was almost split in two by the impact; but the cold shock brought back his lapsing senses, and he found himself feebly swimming, in which direction he could not tell, for it was pitch dark in the depths to which he had sunk. With aching lungs he swam and turned, looking for light that would indicate the surface, but saw nothing to guide him, and in utter despair was about to give up when light appeared. It was not a dim glow, like diffused sunlight, but a spark, a point of yellow, that grew larger and became a disk. It was approaching and now another appeared beside it, fainter, and crescent shaped. On the other side appeared a third and, dazed with physical agony that reached from lungs to brain, he recognized the dead lights of a submarine's conning tower. He looked for the hull beneath, and saw it, a dark blur that was growing in size.
It came swiftly at him, and just as he was reaching out, to ward himself from the pointed nose, there was a coughing thud, and something brushed by him in a blast of bubbles and went on. Then, with many sharp knocks on head, ribs, and knuckles, he was sucked with the inrush of water squarely into the open tube that had just discharged its torpedo. He heard a clang behind him, the shutting of the forward tube door, then a whistling sound; then he felt the pressure of air on his face and with a groan of thanksgiving he expelled the long breath he had taken above, and drew it into his lungs. But the pressure had nearly burst his ear drums before the tube was emptied of water, and the inner door was opened. With a gasping call for help, he crawled and hitched along the tube and men reached in to him. They pulled him out into the lighted handling room, where, too weak to stand, he fell to the floor, breathing in deep, convulsive gasps.
A man brought a bottle, lifted his head, and poured a generous portion of some stimulant down his throat. Felton had just strength to swallow, and it warmed and aroused him. He sat up and, being a torpedo expert, had little difficulty in assimilating his first impressions. He was acquainted with submarines; there was the tube from which he had emerged, beside it the air flasks and trimming tanks. Amidships the vertical and horizontal steering gear, and aft the engine and motor. In this much the craft resembled the conventional submarine that he knew. But there was this difference—that he noted when able to turn his head. The boat was stiffened with upright stanchions of about the size and length of the stanchions in the airship, and placed in about the same position along the sides. Another similarity struck him at his first glance around; and he wondered why he had not remarked it in the airship; the air flasks, trimming tanks, and spare torpedoes arranged along the sides, occupied the same relative positions as did the steel cylinders in the other, while the steering gear of both was amidships and the motive power aft.
"What have you caught this time, Bill?" called a voice from the wheel—a strangely familiar voice.
"Dunno," answered the man with the flask. "It's a sheep, I think, or maybe a dog; but it looks something like a horse. Have another drink, and tell us what you are."
Felton did not refuse a second draught. It brought him to his feet.
"I'm a man," he answered with spirit. "Are you guying me—in this exigency? I'm near dead."
"He says he's a man, sir," called the man.
"All right. Send him aft."
Felton was pushed, rather than led, to the man amidships.
"How do you do?" he said kindly. "So, you thought you'd visit us. We catch all our fish this way."
"My God, captain," answered Felton, "I'm not visiting! I jumped out of an airship, and was sucked into your tube. I'm glad I'm alive."
And then—was the liquor affecting his brain?—the captain's face, line for line, feature for feature, was the face of the captain of the airship, whom last he had seen sprawling above him in mid-air. Had he beaten him down, and been picked up first? It seemed impossible.
"How—what—how—" he stammered, rubbing his eyes. "How did you get here, captain? You jumped after me."
"I jumped after you? You are wandering. I saw you all jump, through the periscope, but I was here."
"Then it's the closest resemblance I ever saw. You're the living image of the airship's commander, or else it's the liquor. My head feels queer."
"No doubt. But it's not the liquor. You've had a terrible experience. It's a wonder the jump didn't kill you, as well as affect your mind."
Felton was not satisfied with the explanation. It was a strange and striking resemblance, nothing more; and he was about to say as much when a man came forward from the engine with an oil can. He was the duplicate in face and form of the man he had pommeled, but without the contusions. Felton blinked in amazement, then looked at the others, whom, in the agitation of his entrance, he had not closely observed. Man for man—nine in all—they duplicated the crew of the airship.
"My God," he stuttered. "Am I mad, or drunk?" His brain reeled, and, as it had reeled before, in the social life of a naval officer, he ascribed it to the liquor.
"You've drugged me," he yelled insanely. "Every man here is a double of another."
"Steady—steady, now," said the captain, stepping down and laying a hand on Felton's shoulder. "You're not drugged. You're a little off your balance, and the drink was too heavy. Every drunken man sees double. Isn't that so?"
This seemed logical, and Felton stammered assent. He sat down on the projecting bilge of a torpedo, trying to recover his mental balance. It was hard work, but finally he adjusted himself to the captain's point of view. It was a terrible jump—three hundred feet. He had escaped death by a miracle. Men had gone insane under less pressure, and he had taken two drinks of a powerful stimulant. He would be all right, in time—after a little sleep. Thus reconciled, he took note of his surroundings. The engine was stopped, the men forward had just finished reloading the torpedo tube, and the captain was peering into the periscope—the non-magnifying telescope which gives a view of the seascape.
"Come up here," he said, "and take a look." Felton climbed to the small platform on which the captain stood. Just before him was the eyepiece of the periscope, and, at a sign from the captain, he peeped into it. Pictured on the lens was the dismantled wreck of the Argyll, down by the head, a helpless, sinking wreck.
"She's floating on five compartments," said the captain. "I just filled the sixth, and I think we'll fill two at once this time. By the way, what did you fellows butt in for? It was my fight. I hit her last night, and blew up the forward magazine; then I lost her in the dark."
"But say," answered Felton, "which side are you on in this mix? You blew up the turret, you say, and the airship destroyed her. But the crew of that airship displayed mortal fear of you, and jumped overboard at sight of you."
"Exactly. They would have gone off at a tangent if they hadn't. It's better to die on your planet than to become a comet for all eternity."
"Like the airship. I see. But how did you do it, if I may ask?"
"I reversed his polarity, that's all. See that? Look, and listen."
The captain turned a lever, and a dynamo nearby began to revolve, while an arc lamp suspended from above glowed, glistened, and sparkled, as the current passed through the carbons. Soon it began a curious, musical buzzing, and the captain shut it off.
"Merely an alternating current through an arc," he explained. "But the electric impulses sent out by that singing arc are of a wave length and frequency produced by no other means. They are just right to turn his two magnetic poles into one, and—away he goes."
"I don't understand. Yes, I understand that you might reverse his polarity, or combine it, as you say, by some wireless method. But, which side are you on?"
"The side of the Lord."
"Look here, captain," said Felton, angrily. "That is the answer your double gave me when I asked him the same question last night. It means nothing. I am either a prisoner of war, or a guest entitled to consideration. Why do you treat me like a fool?"
"Because you are a fool. You believe in the invulnerability of the battleship. Well, there is one of the best. Look at her."
"I see. Destroyed, but not by you; by an enemy of yours. One who feared you."
"Yes, as mediocrity fears intelligence, as the child fears the dark, the savage the gun of the civilized soldier—humanity as a whole the unseen, the unexpected, the invisible. The airship is potential, but not final—she can be seen."
"And shot," said Felton, doggedly.
"Did that battleship hit your airship? You know that she could not. The airship's limitations are contained in her visibility. She cannot be hit by shot or shell, but she can be seen, and projected into space."
"Granted, but suppose she dropped a bomb on to your back before you saw her?"
"She could not, except in the dark; then she would have to strike a knife edge, and it would be an accident—one chance in millions. We are constructed like a razor-back hog, to deflect falling bombs."
"But you cannot deflect horizontal torpedoes," said Felton, looking up at the dome of the submarine. It looked curiously like the dome-shaped roof of the airship. "I know well," he went on, talking as was his wont among his fellow officers, "that if I could see your periscope tube with a telescope, I could hit you with one of my torpedoes."
"Your torpedoes?"
"I am torpedo officer of that battleship. I was on the turret top when you blew it up last night, and went up with it. I landed on the airship."
"You are a member of that battleship's crew?"
"I am." Felton dropped his eyes at the menace in the captain's voice. On the way his glance took in the curving walls of the submarine. They had become semi-transparent, and even as he looked they vanished, leaving a clear view of the sky and horizon with its string of fighting ships, pursued and pursuing. He was again in the airship, and the upright stanchions that he had first observed as anomalies in a submarine now served their legitimate purpose of supports to the roof.
"The drink," he murmured, while his brain swam, and his soundings disappeared in a mist. "They've drugged me."
"You belong to that battleship?" roared the captain, but Felton had sunk to the floor, incapable of voluntary action. The captain blew a whistle, and his crew answered. They surrounded him, with scowling faces, and lifted him to his feet. He could stand, but some inhibitory power prevented him from moving a muscle. Foremost among them was the man he had trounced, and this man struck him, again and again, in the face, and Felton essayed to strike back; but the paralysis of his muscles prevented him. His blows fell short.
"Back to the battleship," thundered the captain. "Load him into the tube. Expend that torpedo and make room."
Men sprang to the tube and turned levers. The captain sprang to the periscope. "Right," he said. "I'll finish her."
How an airship could fire a torpedo was beyond Felton's benumbed faculties at the time. He was struggling weakly, trying to strike, but unable to, pounded on the face and body by the implacable victim of his fists in the former fight, helplessly borne along toward the tube, now emptied of water.
"Back to the battleship," they chorused. "In with him."
Powerless to resist he was jammed head first into the tube. He heard the door creak into place behind him. Then he felt an impact of cold water, and he had barely sense to forestall this by an inhalation of air. Then, faintly as the voice of a telephone, came the voice of a man.
"The forrard door's jammed, it won't open."
"Hammer it," came the captain's voice. "Get a top-maul."
An age or two went by, while Felton lay imprisoned in the tube, holding his breath, and immersed in water. Then, faintly as the voices, came the sound of a heavy hammer on the walls of the tube:
"Clang-clang, clang-clang."
Felton awoke in his berth, as wet with perspiration as though still immersed in that tube. The gun-room orderly tapped at his door.
"Eight bells, sir," he said.
"All right," he answered. "Eight bells," he murmured to himself. "I heard the first four of them—let's see—about twelve hours ago. Twelve hours of experience between the fourth and fifth strokes. How long does a dream take? Darn a dream, anyhow."
[ABSOLUTE ZERO]
He was not exactly an imbecile—merely feeble-minded, unable to remember his past, or even the events of a year gone by—an elderly man who loafed about the studio building, a man with few wants and no vices, who picked up a scanty living by cleaning up studios for the artists, and occasionally posing for them. We called him Old Bill; he did not know his last name, and was subject to fainting spells.
The artist, like myself, was a marine painter, each of us having followed the sea when young, and in answering to the higher call that comes at least once in every man's life, had taken to art with the sea for a specialty. We both painted ships and shipwrecks, storms and sailors, but the difference between us in age, experience, and ability was so great that there was never anything but sincere friendship between us.
I welcomed his advice and criticism, and he welcomed my society, because, as he put it, my youth and enthusiasm revived his failing energies. His studio adjoined mine, and when the afternoon light had waned, I visited him to smoke, talk, and listen to his yarns, for he had been longer at sea than I had, and he had more to tell. Also, besides being a master of his art, he was a deep student of science, keeping himself well informed on each new invention and discovery; and his comments on such subjects were practical, logical, and conclusive.
As, for instance, in discussing that ninety-and-nine days' wonder, the wreck of the Titanic, and the proposed measures to prevent a repetition of such a terrible disaster, he had laughed at the futile idea of more lifeboats.
"All the lifeboats in the world," he said, "will not avail of themselves if they must be lowered from a boat deck seventy feet high, with the steamer rolling in a heavy sea. They would all smash against the side before half-way down. The Titanic had a smooth sea, remember."
"Long davits," I suggested, "to keep them well outboard."
"Long davits—long enough to answer the purpose—would foul one another."
"Short davits, then, and travelers up and down the side."
"Impracticable, even if a steamship company would be willing to disfigure their ships so much. In time of panic, the boats could not be fitted into the travelers."
"But don't you think," I asked, "that more and stronger compartments would solve the difficulty?"
"They would have to be as strong as the side of the ship," he answered, "and the necessary angle irons and bracings would interfere with cargo space and interior accommodations."
"Then a detachable upper deck," I said, "that would stay in place by gravity, but float if the hull sank."
"It would break into pieces in a seaway. It would need to be an upper section of two decks with an air space. Well, how about hatches, stairways, and masts leading to the lower body? The two ends of the ship, which are clear of these fixtures, would not hold all hands, and if you do away with hatches, making this upper section water-tight, how about the hundreds of people—engineers, firemen, and steerage passengers—imprisoned in the hull?"
"Right," I answered. "It seems, then, that the only safety from ice is in the Southern Lane route, and slow speed in a fog."
"Yes, unless this English scientist's invention proves practicable. Have you read of it?"
I had not, and said so.
"He intends," he explained, "to send forth at intervals sharp notes of inaudible sound which, acting like audible sound, will come back from an iceberg, a ship, or a coast as an echo, and the time elapsed, recorded by a suitable receiver, and divided by two, will give the distance."
"Inaudible sound," I answered. "That seems anomalous."
"Hypothetical rather—not yet proven. But who knows? There are sounds of too low and long a vibration—I do not mean the roll of a drum, which is merely a succession of beats—that cannot be cognized by the human ear. There are sounds too high to be heard, such sounds as the chirp of a cricket, or tweet of a bird. Some people never hear these sounds. Why not use these sounds, and receive their echoes by delicate instruments?"
"Give it up," I said hopelessly.
"They call silence the negation of sound," he continued, "as they call darkness the negation of light. There is polarity throughout the universe. We are aware of plus and minus quantities in mathematics, each calculable by the same methods.
"We know of the north and south poles of the magnet; we know of positive and negative electricity; we know, by the expansion of gases, that there is a force the opposite of gravitation, and which repels instead of attracts. Some theorists have called this force apergy. I believe that all these negative forces exist, but only in the presence, or because of the existence, of their opposites. For I know that cold, which, more than all other conditions, may seem to be a mere negation, will answer to the laws of other radiant energy, and, like heat, decrease in force as the square of the distance."
I looked stupidly at him, then at Old Bill, who, no more stupid than myself under this avalanche of erudition, was puttering about, cleaning up the studio. Not noticing my bewilderment, the old artist went on.
"But an iceberg," he said, "is too large to be cognized by the law of inverse squares. It would need a diaphragm bigger than itself—bigger than the largest ship, to collect its radiations of cold. Could it be reduced to a point, however, and its cold concentrated, we could calculate its distance and direction, at least, if not its size. You know the nature of a searchlight, do you not?"
He looked at me now, and, trying to bring an intelligent expression to my face, I nodded.
"An arc light in the focus of a parabolic reflector placed behind it," he continued. "Stand in the path of its beam and you will sensibly feel the heat. Place a large lens—as large as the aperture—in the way, and focus the beam on yourself, and you will feel a heat equal to that of the arc light—about seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit—less what has radiated into the surrounding air.
"Now, get out of that focus, and place an opaque disk on the center of the searchlight aperture, and the beam will go forth with a dark center, like a hollow pipe of light and heat. And this dark center will have the temperature of the outer air, plus only what has radiated into it from the surrounding pipe.
"But after passing through the lens both the light and the dark center will reach the same focus, and if you can place a thermometer, without burning yourself, near the focus of the dark core, you will notice a great drop in the temperature. So, you see, cold, while negative heat, is a minus quantity; but it needs the presence of heat to make it respond to the same laws that govern heat."
He paused for a moment, then looked at me; and this time I could not conceal the vacuous expression on my face. He smiled, then turned to Old Bill.
"Bill," he said, "what do you think about it? Do you think all gases will ultimately be solidified as they are now liquefied? Do you think the absolute zero of space can be determined by any application of the integral or the differential calculus?"
In answer to this whimsical question Bill said: "I dunno, sir. I can't calcilate. I jess 'member I washed the windows an' swept up an' dusted. D'ye want me in the mornin', sir?"
"No, Bill. If you're through, that'll do to-night."
"I'll want you, Bill," I interposed, as the old fellow started for the door. "Come at nine o'clock, and wear your oldest, raggedest clothes."
"Yes, sir," answered Bill, and departed.
"It's the last figure in the picture," I added quickly, to forestall a resumption of the harrowing lecture on matters I did not understand. "And it will be done about noon. I'll be glad if you will come in and look it over."
"Most certainly," said my friend. "Been a long time at it, haven't you?"
"Yes; but I didn't want to bother you until it was done. I want to be original, if I can, and depend on my own conceptions."
"That's right. Be yourself. I'll be in at noon, and look at it."
I had been a long time on that picture, in conception, composition, and execution; and it had followed a longer time of inactivity, during which I had done nothing in the way of work except to search my soul for an idea. At last it had come to me, and I had made sketches, one after the other, until, in composition, it was complete; then I had painted it.
Still, there lacked a motive. It was a picture, but it told no story intelligible to the eye without an explanatory title, and I had not yet thought of a title. The scene was on the deck of a ship—a flush-deck, polacca-masted craft, a type of rig I had seen but once in my travels—and the viewpoint was at the break of the poop, looking forward. The fore and mainsail were clewed up, hanging in the buntlines, and the flying jib was down a-bag on the jib-boom end.
The craft was heeled, a gale of wind blowing, as evidenced by the gray storm clouds and a sea washing over the bow, and scattered about the deck were dead men, of the Chinese, Malay, or negro type; but here consistency ended, for though these men were bareheaded and barefooted, indicating warm weather, huge icicles hung from the fife rails and scuttles, while the sea bordering the bow lost the translucency of water as it reached the deck, taking on the white, glistening effect of ice, in which some of the bodies were frozen.
Near the foremast, on the weather side, his feet and ankles hidden in ice, stood a huge negro holding over his head at full length the figure of a living man, his attitude indicating an intention to hurl him to the deck. On his dark, evil face, as on the faces of the dead men, was an expression of terror and pain.
But the face of the living man held over his head showed nothing. I had not yet painted the face, and that was why I wanted Old Bill, to take the pose and assume a terrified look. I had painted the others from my imagination, taking care only to make each one different; but this living face of a man about to be hurled to death was to be the center of the picture—to be worked out in detail, with all the high lights. A grotesque, Dantesque, Doresque, horrible idea for a picture, one might well think; but its incongruity never struck me as my mind had worked it out.
Old Bill came on time next morning, and, without looking at the painting, climbed to a plank I had placed between two easels about seven feet above the floor. He lay on his side, and at my direction assumed the pose I wanted—arms and legs outstretched, with fingers clutching at nothing. In this, he suited me; but when it came to taking a frightened look, he failed. His wrinkled features went into all sorts of contortions, and I painted, wiped out, and repainted, again and again, then gave it up. The world had treated Old Bill too kindly, I thought, and he could not comprehend fear.
When I had paid him for his time he left, and I painted in the face from imagination alone—giving it, not the wrinkled look of age, but youth, strength, and courage, and the terror that comes to youth and strength and courage when menaced with sudden death. Then, the picture finished, I sat back and smoked, while a weariness came over me that soon merged into slumber, from which I was awakened by a knock at the door. My cold pipe fell from my lips, and I arose to admit my neighbor, tutor, and critic—the old artist.
"There it is," I said, as I led him to the picture. "Old Bill didn't help much. He couldn't—"
"Great God, man!" he interrupted. "What are you doing? I thought you wanted to be original. Have you been through my old drawings?"
"No, I have not," I answered hotly. "What do you mean?"
He did not answer at once. He looked at the picture with eyes that almost bulged, muttering to himself: "Pango Sam, Wong Fing, Landy Jim." Then he turned to me, and said excitedly: "Were you on board that bark?"
I wondered if he had gone crazy, and did not answer.
"No," he said. "It happened before you were born. What manner of man are you—to see into the past? It is not prophecy. Wait!"
He darted out of my studio and into his own, where I heard him throwing things about, opening trunks and closets, and talking to himself. I relighted my pipe, seated myself, and waited, wondering what had upset him. After a time he returned, much calmer, and holding in one hand a painting, in the other a small tintype, the faces of which he concealed from me.
"Our finite minds," he said, as he stood above me, "consider only what appeals to the five senses. Our subconscious minds consider the infinite, in which there is neither time, nor space, nor distance. That mutiny and murder has occurred, is occurring, and will occur. You have dipped into the infinite, that is all. Look!"
He showed me the painting. It was dusty and dingy, but, with a few minor exceptions of detail, the exact duplicate of the painting on my easel!
"I painted this thirty years ago," he said, "and for twenty-five years it has lain at the bottom of an old trunk. The subject was too grisly for the market, and I did not try to sell it."
While I stared, open-eyed and open-mouthed, at his picture, and my pipe went out from my irregular, gasping breathing, he held before me the tintype. It was the picture of a young man clad in cheap, ready-made garments—the "store clothes" of the farmer, or the "shore clothes" of the sailor. And the face was the face that I had conceived for the man held aloft by the negro in my painting!
"I was that young fellow," he said, "and this tintype was taken at the end of that voyage."
"What does it mean?" I gasped. "Have I read your mind?"
"I do not know. It depends upon what else you know yourself. Can you tell me what killed those men? Can you tell me what killed the nigger, so that instead of being thrown twenty feet I merely slid down from his grip and bumped my elbow on the ice? Ice, understand, near the equator, in the Indian Ocean."
"I do not know," I choked. "Did this happen? When did it happen?"
"Nearly fifty years ago, when I was 'fore the mast, unable to understand. But it was one of the influences that led me to the study of science. Perhaps I could understand now, if I had the data. But I cannot remember, and I have not your power of intuition. It is a wonderful power, but as likely to harm as to help you. Have you studied physics at all?"
"Only in the most elementary way," I answered. "And something killed those men, you say—something you do not understand?"
"I can only surmise. Something struck them that froze them stiff, that turned moving salt water to ice in an instant, that killed the intelligence that directed it. It was a passenger, a young missionary going home—a young genius of a man with a bent toward material things, and a whole boatload of scientific paraphernalia that he was always experimenting with. He was on the poop-deck when this occurred, but went clean crazy when I fell to the deck. We put him in the Cape Town hospital, but up to the last he was demented. He alone could tell what he did to that bunch of mutineers, but he could not have lived much longer."
"Tell me the yarn," I suggested. "Perhaps I can make a further guess at it."
"The best way," he answered, "would be to hypnotize you and question your subconscious mind. It is done in the hospitals to learn of mysterious, baffling diseases, and why could not you tell how this happened? But I never hypnotized anyone, so I'll give you the yarn—tell you what I know, and perhaps you can get the rest."
He placed his picture, face downward, on my table, seated himself, and lighted his pipe as a preliminary to his story. But before he could begin there was a knock at the door, and I admitted Old Bill.
"Thought, sir," he said, "that you might want me to clean up when the job is done."
This was usual; when a piece of work was in the making I paid no attention to my place. Only when the last stroke was applied to a picture did I think of housecleaning, and send for Bill.
"All right," I answered. "But not right away. Come back in an hour, when we're through talking."
He had entered the room, and nodded at my answer, even though his eyes were fixed upon the painting on the easel.
"But ye haven't put my face in it, arter all, sir," he said.
"No, you didn't make good, Bill," I answered. Then my attention was taken by the expression of his face—a curious blankness which I knew too well. My neighbor noticed, too, and said sharply:
"Brace up, Bill! Brace up, man!"
I knew the remedy from former experience, and happened to have it in a closet. Quickly pouring a glass of liquor, I gave it to the shaking, tottering old man, and he swallowed it at a gulp.
"Thank ye, sir," he said a moment later, when he was steadier. "Ye know I don't drink, sir; but when I feel it comin' on, nothin' else but a drink'll stop the spell. I'll be back in an hour, sir."
He left, and the artist remarked: "Poor old Bill. He'll go out feet first one of these days, and that'll be the last of him. Well, I'll tell you about that bark. I shipped in her at Hongkong, and stuck to her at Batavia, where every other man 'fore the mast deserted. She was not exactly a hell ship, as hell ships go; but the skipper and two mates were American, with American ideas of discipline, and these ideas were too strenuous for the cosmopolitan crew of Dagoes, Dutchmen, and Sou'egians that had taken her down the China Sea.
"But the crew we took on at Batavia was worse; there was not a white man in the crowd. There were three giants among them—one, Wong Fing, a short-haired renegade from Ningpo, where he was wanted for cutting his brother's throat. Another was Pango Sam, a West Coast negro, and a capital seaman, but with a frightful temper. The third was Landy Jim, and I never knew his nationality. He was a half-breed, or a fourth-breed; when things went well with him he was yellow, but when angered he turned black, and his eyes turned red as his hair, which, though kinky, was the color of a brand-new brick. They were a fine trio, and the master spirits.
"The rest were the usual riffraff of the Orient, yellow and brown, barely able to speak English or understand orders, but able to get out of their own way, steer after a fashion, and pull a rope if put in their hands. With this crowd we went to sea, bound for Cape Town, and at the last moment our passenger, of whom I have spoken, joined us with his apparatus. There was nothing that I understood at the time, nor even now. He had a lot of tanks, flasks, carboys, spiral pipes, and such things, with a big, cup-shaped affair that might have been a reflector if it had not been so long. I remember it was polished inside, and perhaps now, could I see that outfit, I might make a guess as to what he was experimenting with.
"No, in painting that picture you did not read my mind, or you would have put the Reverend Mr. Mayhew in with the apparatus on the poop; for I saw it plainly, though unable to understand; and there is plenty of room in the foreground—on the poop. You have pictured Pango Sam correctly, and the fellow down on deck near the fore-rigging is Landy Jim, and Wong Fing is that fellow on the fore-hatch. It is wonderful, and it is more than mere mind reading, though I cannot say that you have got the features of the others. I cannot remember."
At this moment there was an interruption. The elevator boy appeared, announcing that a visitor had arrived, asking for my neighbor, and, with apologies and promises to return, he left me, leaving the door open. I sat there in my easy-chair thinking of the wonderful powers of the subconscious mind, as indicated in my own case, and wondering if I could go farther, and solve the mystery that was beyond the powers of my experienced and erudite old friend. I smoked and pondered, until my pipe went out, then filled and relighted it to smoke and ponder still more, while I looked at the picture I had painted. And as I looked the pipe went cold in my grasp, the fixed expression on the faces of Pango Sam, Wong Fing, and Landy Jim took on mobility of action, while the men on deck writhed in their dying agony.
My pipe fell to the floor again, and I roused up, realizing only that I had been half asleep, but also feeling the desire to fill in the hiatus—to place in the vacant foreground the scientific apparatus vaguely described by my friend. So, after a few preliminary outlinings in charcoal, I went at it, and soon I had placed the tanks and spiral pipes and the long, cup-shaped object described to me.
Vaguely, as I worked, I felt that I was merely obeying suggestion—following up the hints given me by my neighbor; yet, when I had finished, and seated myself for another smoke, I felt myself trembling from head to foot, as though I had actually lived the experience, and were suffering from the memories. From this state of mind I was aroused by the return of my neighbor.
"By George!" he said, as he looked at the painting. "Where do you get this? You have got it right, and refreshened my memory. Fifty years is a long time, and I had forgotten; but there is the whole apparatus, lacking only the Reverend Mr. Mayhew. Why didn't you put him in, behind that big, long cup?"
"Don't know," I answered. "Didn't think of him."
"Well, never mind. There is a reason for all things. No doubt you will yet get it all, if you delve farther into the infinite."
But I did not need to delve still farther, as will be apparent by what follows.
"There is not much to the yarn," he continued. "The trouble began in the usual way, from the white man's fixed idea that it is always safe to kick a nigger, and that a nigger is anything human, but not white. A good deal depends, of course, upon the kind of nigger that is kicked, and big Pango Sam was not accustomed to it. Neither were Wong Fing nor Landy Jim, but they all got it before we were well through the Straits of Sunda. All three threatened the second mate, who was doing the kicking, with sudden death, and the result was that we were all called aft and compelled, under the muzzle of three pistols, to hand in our sheath knives.
"I needed no such coercion, for, though I was a 'foremast hand, I had no great sympathy for, nor community of interest with, my shipmates. However, the skipper and two mates classed me in with the rest, and had as little sympathy for me. In fact, the only companionship I enjoyed on that passage was when I was at the wheel, and the passenger would talk with me. He was about my age, and seemed to have taken a liking to me; yet there was little that we could talk about. I was uneducated and crude, while his was the brightest mind I had come into contact with.
"Even then I could appreciate that he knew more of navigation than did the skipper, and I heard him say one day that the mistake of his life was in taking to the ministry instead of devoting himself to science. For preaching came hard to him, he said, while the study of science was a delight.
"Well, I hardly know how the trouble started. It was partly due to our losing our knives, for a sailor without a knife is like a mechanic without tools. It put us all in a bad humor; we had to untie with our fingers rackings, whippings, and stops which ordinarily we would have cut. And one day, when the passenger had his apparatus on the poop, a fierce squall hit us, and soon developed into a gale that demanded the taking in of canvas. There was no time to lift those heavy tanks and flasks down below, so, while we hauled on downhauls, clewlines, and buntlines, the passenger remained by his property, watching and guarding it.
"We had trouble at once from the lack of our knives, for the coils of all halyards had been stopped up clear of the deck, and we had to untie these while the three bullies of the after-guard yelled at us. Seas began boarding us, too, and that made matters worse. But finally we got the two royals, the gafftopsail, and the flying jib down, and the courses clewed up; but while the latter was being done, I and two of the small fry went aloft to furl, my job being the fore royal. I furled it, and had started down, when I looked below, and saw the whole crowd on deck fighting the two mates, with the helmsman running forward to join the row, leaving the skipper at the wheel.
"I slid down by the royal backstay, for while I had no great fellow-feeling for the officers, still, they were my countrymen, and I had no desire to take part in mutiny. Before I reached the deck, however, the fight was over, as far the mates were concerned. They were running aft, for their guns, I suppose, while all but Pango Sam lay stretched out on the deck, and he met me at the rail with murder in his eyes, knowing instinctively, I suppose, that I was not on his side.
"As I jumped to the deck and reached for a belaying pin, he grabbed me. I was utterly helpless in the grasp of that giant. He roared inarticulately, and frothed at the mouth as he lifted me at full length over his head, to dash me to the deck.
"But, as I told you, I merely slid down, to paralyze my crazy bone on hard ice—ice, remember, in the tropics. When I picked myself up Pango Sam was still standing, but dead and stiff, his feet frozen in the ice that covered the deck. Then I saw our passenger flat on his back. He never recovered his reason. His last intelligent speech was given as he fell to the deck, which was about a second or so after I fell myself. While at the wheel, a few days later, I heard the skipper quote it to the mate. It was: 'God have mercy upon my soul!' After that he uttered nothing but gibberish."
Behind us the sound of footsteps came to our ears: but before we could turn, or arise, a voice, fervent and agonized, repeated: "God have mercy upon my soul!" And Old Bill launched headlong between us, and lay unconscious on the floor at the foot of the easel.
"Another spell," said my neighbor. "It was coming to him, I guess. Help me lift him to your couch."
We laid the old fellow on the couch, where he lay with every indication of a fainting spell. But, though we worked over him for a time, he did not come out of it. He did not seem to be in a natural sleep, either, for his breath was too faint, his pulse too irregular. We watched him with growing disquiet for a while, then telephoned to the nearest hospital. Old Bill was taken away, still unconscious, and all we could do was to put him from our minds with the mental reservation that we would visit him.
We did not visit him. Work, engagements, the eternal scramble for money incidental to the life of every man who works for himself, prevented my neighbor and me from getting together for the visit. In a month, however, Old Bill visited us as we sat, discussing my picture; but we hardly recognized him, and, on his part, he did not recognize us at all.
His old face, though still wrinkled and withered, bore an alert, intelligent look far removed from the dull, stupid expression we had known; he was clad in well-fitting garments late from the tailor. He carried a cane, and on his hands were gloves which, as he removed them, showed fingers thick and stubby, but with the unmistakable signs of recent manicuring.
"Pardon me, gentlemen," he said, as he looked us over, "but I have been directed to this studio by an ambulance surgeon as the place from which I was taken in a comatose condition about a month ago. I wakened a few days later with the memories, the consciousness—the ego, I might say—of a young man of twenty-five. Had not that ego been in a good, stable condition I might have gone mad when I saw my old face in a mirror, and realized that I had lost fifty years of my life.
"Since then, however, I have been re-establishing my old connections, and I am now trying to learn what I have been, where I have been, and who I have been. Can you tell me anything? I am, or was once, a Methodist clergyman, named Franklin Mayhew; but I fear that I have forfeited the title of reverend."
"What?" exclaimed my neighbor. We had both risen to our feet, to stare at the metamorphosed Old Bill, but now we sat down, rather weak in the legs. I had the grace to motion our visitor to a chair.
"If you are the Reverend Franklin Mayhew," continued my neighbor, "did you once take passage in the bark Rangoon at Batavia, bound to Cape Town?"
"I did, and by my chronology it was but a month ago. The terrible scenes on board that vessel were the first things that came to my mind when I wakened in the hospital. Do you know anything about it? I want to know what happened to me."
"I do not know what happened to you, nor what happened to that crowd of mutineers. I was 'fore the mast in that bark, and remember you; but I have known you lately merely as a man-of-all-work around this building. I owe you a dollar for cleaning up my place"—our visitor raised his hand deprecatingly—"and we called you Bill. You couldn't remember your last name, nor very far back. You went crazy aboard that bark, Mr. Mayhew, and we put you ashore, still crazy, at Cape Town. I know nothing more."
"Nor does anyone else?" The look on his face was piteous.
"I doubt that you can gather up the threads. Why should you wish to? You must have lived a life of misery and hard labor. You were shocked into fainting by the sight of a picture, right here in this studio, and you have awakened to intelligence and mental activity."
"What picture?"
For answer I arose and wheeled the easel around so that the painting faced him. The effect upon him was more startling than had been the same experience upon my friend.
"Oh, God, help me!" he almost screamed. "God have mercy upon my soul! Why must it be perpetuated? Have I not suffered enough?" He covered his face with his hands, and with some misgiving I covered the picture with a cloth.
"That was it," he continued. "That was the last I remember on board that bark, and the first in the hospital the other day. I killed seven human beings—I, an ordained minister of the gospel!"
"Steady, sir," answered my neighbor, rising and laying a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. "You killed only six—how, I don't know—six bloodthirsty cutthroats who would have killed you if they'd had their way."
"But one was innocent," answered Mr. Mayhew, uncovering his moist eyes. "The young fellow in the clutch of the big negro."
"That was myself, and I am very much alive. In fact, Mr. Mayhew, you saved my life. You killed the nigger, but I simply fell down to the deck. Then I came aft and helped carry you below. Look here?" He lifted the cloth, and pointed to the face of the man held poised over the negro's head. "That's me. Never mind who painted this picture, but look here." He displayed the tintype. "Taken at the end of that voyage," he continued, "and still in my possession. No doubt, Mr. Mayhew, your mind gave way under the shock of the experience, and it returned to you when you looked at the reproduction. Now, don't worry about it any more. You did right to quell that mutiny."
"Perhaps—according to most standards. But I was a minister, and my conscience was already active enough from my devotion to science to the neglect of my clerical work. But perhaps you are right. I'll try and not worry."
I joined in with what encouragement I could offer, and when he had calmed somewhat my neighbor said: "You must tell me how you did it, Mr. Mayhew. You killed six worthless heathen, and saved the lives of several white men, by some application of intense cold. I am a student of science, but I cannot understand."
"Very simple," answered our guest. "You know that cold is merely negative heat, and, if reduced to a point, will act like heat, decreasing in strength as the square of the distance."
The old artist chuckled. "I knew it," he said. "Go on."
"And do you notice that the reflector in the picture has the elliptical curve, instead of the parabolic of the usual reflectors?"
I gasped. In painting that object into the picture I had not thought of curves. In fact, knew nothing of conic sections at the time.
"The secondary focus of that reflector," went on Mr. Mayhew, "was about sixty feet away. I had designed it for experimenting with light. In fact, I had invented the searchlight, now in general use, as I have learned by reading up lately. But I have also learned more—that in the fifty years of my darkness the scientific world has not caught up to me. At that time I had not only liquefied the six refractory gases of Clerk Maxwell, but had solidified hydrogen and discovered in advance a gas which I had not named, but which I now find is called helium. I had also succeeded in liquefying this gas."
"And in the focus of that reflector?" inquired the old artist, half rising from his chair.
"Was a small cup of liquefied helium, on which floated a lump of solid hydrogen. It produced a temperature of nearly two hundred and seventy-three minus centigrade—the absolute zero of space."
"And it froze the blood in their veins," commented the artist, reseating himself. "Lucky for me you didn't switch it a little higher."
I shivered, and after a few moments of silence I asked:
"If I did not read your mind, but delved into the infinite, as you say, why didn't I get this too?"
"Didn't have time, my boy. But you may have read the mind of Mr. Mayhew, the subconscious mind of Old Bill—the mind that never sleeps and never forgets, you know, and which retained through the years all that Mr. Mayhew had put into it; for you drew into the reflector the elliptical curve, which Mr. Mayhew conceived, but which never in my life have I considered in conjunction with reflectors."
"But you?" I asked again. "Your picture?"
"I painted from memory, and, if you will remember, left out the reflector. But Mr. Mayhew had also dipped into the infinite, and discovered what no living brain knew. Mr. Mayhew"—he turned to the still shaky old man—"you have lost, it is true, fifty years of your life. But your remaining years will be full of honor, profit, and ease, for the whole scientific world will rise to do you homage. You are still in advance, for you have not only isolated and liquefied helium, the last of the refractory gases, but you will ultimately solidify it."