"Challenger's sketch-book."
"You think he drew that animal?"
"Of course he did. Who else?"
"Well, then, the photographs?"
"There was nothing in the photographs. By your own admission you onlysaw a bird."
"A pterodactyl."
"That's what HE says. He put the pterodactyl into your head."
"Well, then, the bones?"
"First one out of an Irish stew. Second one vamped up for theoccasion. If you are clever and know your business you can fake a boneas easily as you can a photograph."
I began to feel uneasy. Perhaps, after all, I had been premature in myacquiescence. Then I had a sudden happy thought.
"Will you come to the meeting?" I asked.
Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.
"He is not a popular person, the genial Challenger," said he. "A lotof people have accounts to settle with him. I should say he is aboutthe best-hated man in London. If the medical students turn out therewill be no end of a rag. I don't want to get into a bear-garden."
"You might at least do him the justice to hear him state his own case."
"Well, perhaps it's only fair. All right. I'm your man for theevening."
When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than Ihad expected. A line of electric broughams discharged their littlecargoes of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humblerpedestrians, who crowded through the arched door-way, showed that theaudience would be popular as well as scientific. Indeed, it becameevident to us as soon as we had taken our seats that a youthful andeven boyish spirit was abroad in the gallery and the back portions ofthe hall. Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiarmedical student type. Apparently the great hospitals had each sentdown their contingent. The behavior of the audience at present wasgood-humored, but mischievous. Scraps of popular songs were chorusedwith an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture,and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised ajovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to therecipients of these dubious honors.
Thus, when old Doctor Meldrum, with his well-known curly-brimmedopera-hat, appeared upon the platform, there was such a universal queryof "Where DID you get that tile?" that he hurriedly removed it, andconcealed it furtively under his chair. When gouty Professor Wadleylimped down to his seat there were general affectionate inquiries fromall parts of the hall as to the exact state of his poor toe, whichcaused him obvious embarrassment. The greatest demonstration of all,however, was at the entrance of my new acquaintance, ProfessorChallenger, when he passed down to take his place at the extreme end ofthe front row of the platform. Such a yell of welcome broke forth whenhis black beard first protruded round the corner that I began tosuspect Tarp Henry was right in his surmise, and that this assemblagewas there not merely for the sake of the lecture, but because it hadgot rumored abroad that the famous Professor would take part in theproceedings.
There was some sympathetic laughter on his entrance among the frontbenches of well-dressed spectators, as though the demonstration of thestudents in this instance was not unwelcome to them. That greetingwas, indeed, a frightful outburst of sound, the uproar of the carnivoracage when the step of the bucket-bearing keeper is heard in thedistance. There was an offensive tone in it, perhaps, and yet in themain it struck me as mere riotous outcry, the noisy reception of onewho amused and interested them, rather than of one they disliked ordespised. Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as akindly man would meet the yapping of a litter of puppies. He satslowly down, blew out his chest, passed his hand caressingly down hisbeard, and looked with drooping eyelids and supercilious eyes at thecrowded hall before him. The uproar of his advent had not yet diedaway when Professor Ronald Murray, the chairman, and Mr. Waldron, thelecturer, threaded their way to the front, and the proceedings began.
Professor Murray will, I am sure, excuse me if I say that he has thecommon fault of most Englishmen of being inaudible. Why on earthpeople who have something to say which is worth hearing should not takethe slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strangemysteries of modern life. Their methods are as reasonable as to try topour some precious stuff from the spring to the reservoir through anon-conducting pipe, which could by the least effort be opened.Professor Murray made several profound remarks to his white tie and tothe water-carafe upon the table, with a humorous, twinkling aside tothe silver candlestick upon his right. Then he sat down, and Mr.Waldron, the famous popular lecturer, rose amid a general murmur ofapplause. He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and anaggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilatethe ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which wasintelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knackof being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precessiono
f the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highlyhumorous process as treated by him.
It was a bird's-eye view of creation, as interpreted by science, which,in language always clear and sometimes picturesque, he unfolded beforeus. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas, flaringthrough the heavens. Then he pictured the solidification, the cooling,the wrinkling which formed the mountains, the steam which turned towater, the slow preparation of the stage upon which was to be playedthe inexplicable drama of life. On the origin of life itself he wasdiscreetly vague. That the germs of it could hardly have survived theoriginal roasting was, he declared, fairly certain. Therefore it hadcome later. Had it built itself out of the cooling, inorganic elementsof the globe? Very likely. Had the germs of it arrived from outsideupon a meteor? It was hardly conceivable. On the whole, the wisestman was the least dogmatic upon the point. We could not--or at leastwe had not succeeded up to date in making organic life in ourlaboratories out of inorganic materials. The gulf between the dead andthe living was something which our chemistry could not as yet bridge.But there was a higher and subtler chemistry of Nature, which, workingwith great forces over long epochs, might well produce results whichwere impossible for us. There the matter must be left.
This brought the lecturer to the great ladder of animal life, beginninglow down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up rung by rungthrough reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a kangaroo-rat, acreature which brought forth its young alive, the direct ancestor ofall mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone in the audience.("No, no," from a sceptical student in the back row.) If the younggentleman in the red tie who cried "No, no," and who presumably claimedto have been hatched out of an egg, would wait upon him after thelecture, he would be glad to see such a curiosity. (Laughter.) It wasstrange to think that the climax of all the age-long process of Naturehad been the creation of that gentleman in the red tie. But had theprocess stopped? Was this gentleman to be taken as the final type--thebe-all and end-all of development? He hoped that he would not hurt thefeelings of the gentleman in the red tie if he maintained that,whatever virtues that gentleman might possess in private life, stillthe vast processes of the universe were not fully justified if theywere to end entirely in his production. Evolution was not a spentforce, but one still working, and even greater achievements were instore.
Having thus, amid a general titter, played very prettily with hisinterrupter, the lecturer went back to his picture of the past, thedrying of the seas, the emergence of the sand-bank, the sluggish,viscous life which lay upon their margins, the overcrowded lagoons, thetendency of the sea creatures to take refuge upon the mud-flats, theabundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth."Hence, ladies and gentlemen," he added, "that frightful brood ofsaurians which still affright our eyes when seen in the Wealden or inthe Solenhofen slates, but which were fortunately extinct long beforethe first appearance of mankind upon this planet."
"Question!" boomed a voice from the platform.
Mr. Waldron was a strict disciplinarian with a gift of acid humor, asexemplified upon the gentleman with the red tie, which made it perilousto interrupt him. But this interjection appeared to him so absurd thathe was at a loss how to deal with it. So looks the Shakespearean whois confronted by a rancid Baconian, or the astronomer who is assailedby a flat-earth fanatic. He paused for a moment, and then, raising hisvoice, repeated slowly the words: "Which were extinct before thecoming of man."
"Question!" boomed the voice once more.
Waldron looked with amazement along the line of professors upon theplatform until his eyes fell upon the figure of Challenger, who leanedback in his chair with closed eyes and an amused expression, as if hewere smiling in his sleep.
"I see!" said Waldron, with a shrug. "It is my friend ProfessorChallenger," and amid laughter he renewed his lecture as if this was afinal explanation and no more need be said.
But the incident was far from being closed. Whatever path the lecturertook amid the wilds of the past seemed invariably to lead him to someassertion as to extinct or prehistoric life which instantly brought thesame bulls' bellow from the Professor. The audience began toanticipate it and to roar with delight when it came. The packedbenches of students joined in, and every time Challenger's beardopened, before any sound could come forth, there was a yell of"Question!" from a hundred voices, and an answering counter cry of"Order!" and "Shame!" from as many more. Waldron, though a hardenedlecturer and a strong man, became rattled. He hesitated, stammered,repeated himself, got snarled in a long sentence, and finally turnedfuriously upon the cause of his troubles.
"This is really intolerable!" he cried, glaring across the platform."I must ask you, Professor Challenger, to cease these ignorant andunmannerly interruptions."