The Poison Belt (Professor Challenger 2)

"I think we should see it to the end."

"And I am strongly of the same opinion," said he.

"Then, George, if you say so, I think so too," cried the lady.

"Well, well, I'm only puttin' it as an argument," said Lord John. "Ifyou all want to see it through I am with you. It's dooced interestin',and no mistake about that. I've had my share of adventures in my life,and as many thrills as most folk, but I'm endin' on my top note."

"Granting the continuity of life," said Challenger.

"A large assumption!" cried Summerlee. Challenger stared at him insilent reproof.

"Granting the continuity of life," said he, in his most didactic manner,"none of us can predicate what opportunities of observation one may havefrom what we may call the spirit plane to the plane of matter. It surelymust be evident to the most obtuse person" (here he glared a Summerlee)"that it is while we are ourselves material that we are most fitted towatch and form a judgment upon material phenomena. Therefore it is onlyby keeping alive for these few extra hours that we can hope to carry onwith us to some future existence a clear conception of the moststupendous event that the world, or the universe so far as we know it,has ever encountered. To me it would seem a deplorable thing that weshould in any way curtail by so much as a minute so wonderful anexperience."

"I am strongly of the same opinion," cried Summerlee.

"Carried without a division," said Lord John. "By George, that poordevil of a chauffeur of yours down in the yard has made his last journey.No use makin' a sally and bringin' him in?"

"It would be absolute madness," cried Summerlee.

"Well, I suppose it would," said Lord John. "It couldn't help him andwould scatter our gas all over the house, even if we ever got back alive.My word, look at the little birds under the trees!"

We drew four chairs up to the long, low window, the lady still restingwith closed eyes upon the settee. I remember that the monstrous andgrotesque idea crossed my mind--the illusion may have been heightened bythe heavy stuffiness of the air which we were breathing--that we were infour front seats of the stalls at the last act of the drama of the world.

In the immediate foreground, beneath our very eyes, was the small yardwith the half-cleaned motor-car standing in it. Austin, the chauffeur,had received his final notice at last, for he was sprawling beside thewheel, with a great black bruise upon his forehead where it had struckthe step or mud-guard in falling. He still held in his hand the nozzleof the hose with which he had been washing down his machine. A couple ofsmall plane trees stood in the corner of the yard, and underneath themlay several pathetic little balls of fluffy feathers, with tiny feetuplifted. The sweep of death's scythe had included everything, great andsmall, within its swath.

Over the wall of the yard we looked down upon the winding road, which ledto the station. A group of the reapers whom we had seen running from thefields were lying all pell-mell, their bodies crossing each other, at thebottom of it. Farther up, the nurse-girl lay with her head and shoulderspropped against the slope of the grassy bank. She had taken the babyfrom the perambulator, and it was a motionless bundle of wraps in herarms. Close behind her a tiny patch upon the roadside showed where thelittle boy was stretched. Still nearer to us was the dead cab-horse,kneeling between the shafts. The old driver was hanging over thesplash-board like some grotesque scarecrow, his arms dangling absurdly infront of him. Through the window we could dimly discern that a young manwas seated inside. The door was swinging open and his hand was graspingthe handle, as if he had attempted to leap forth at the last instant. Inthe middle distance lay the golf links, dotted as they had been in themorning with the dark figures of the golfers, lying motionless upon thegrass of the course or among the heather which skirted it. On oneparticular green there were eight bodies stretched where a foursome withits caddies had held to their game to the last. No bird flew in the bluevault of heaven, no man or beast moved upon the vast countryside whichlay before us. The evening sun shone its peaceful radiance across it,but there brooded over it all the stillness and the silence of universaldeath--a death in which we were so soon to join. At the present in

stantthat one frail sheet of glass, by holding in the extra oxygen whichcounteracted the poisoned ether, shut us off from the fate of all ourkind. For a few short hours the knowledge and foresight of one man couldpreserve our little oasis of life in the vast desert of death and save usfrom participation in the common catastrophe. Then the gas would runlow, we too should lie gasping upon that cherry-coloured boudoir carpet,and the fate of the human race and of all earthly life would be complete.For a long time, in a mood which was too solemn for speech, we looked outat the tragic world.

"There is a house on fire," said Challenger at last, pointing to a columnof smoke which rose above the trees. "There will, I expect, be manysuch--possibly whole cities in flames--when we consider how many folk mayhave dropped with lights in their hands. The fact of combustion is initself enough to show that the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere isnormal and that it is the ether which is at fault. Ah, there you seeanother blaze on the top of Crowborough Hill. It is the golf clubhouse,or I am mistaken. There is the church clock chiming the hour. It wouldinterest our philosophers to know that man-made mechanisms have survivedthe race who made it."

"By George!" cried Lord John, rising excitedly from his chair. "What'sthat puff of smoke? It's a train."

We heard the roar of it, and presently it came flying into sight, goingat what seemed to me to be a prodigious speed. Whence it had come, orhow far, we had no means of knowing. Only by some miracle of luck couldit have gone any distance. But now we were to see the terrific end ofits career. A train of coal trucks stood motionless upon the line. Weheld our breath as the express roared along the same track. The crashwas horrible. Engine and carriages piled themselves into a hill ofsplintered wood and twisted iron. Red spurts of flame flickered up fromthe wreckage until it was all ablaze. For half an hour we sat withhardly a word, stunned by the stupendous sight.

"Poor, poor people!" cried Mrs. Challenger at last, clinging with awhimper to her husband's arm.

"My dear, the passengers on that train were no more animate than thecoals into which they crashed or the carbon which they have now become,"said Challenger, stroking her hand soothingly. "It was a train of theliving when it left Victoria, but it was driven and freighted by the deadlong before it reached its fate."

"All over the world the same thing must be going on," said I as a visionof strange happenings rose before me. "Think of the ships at sea--howthey will steam on and on, until the furnaces die down or until they runfull tilt upon some beach. The sailing ships too--how they will back andfill with their cargoes of dead sailors, while their timbers rot andtheir joints leak, till one by one they sink below the surface. Perhapsa century hence the Atlantic may still be dotted with the old driftingderelicts."

"And the folk in the coal-mines," said Summerlee with a dismal chuckle."If ever geologists should by any chance live upon earth again they willhave some strange theories of the existence of man in carboniferousstrata."

"I don't profess to know about such things," remarked Lord John, "but itseems to me the earth will be 'To let, empty,' after this. When once ourhuman crowd is wiped off it, how will it ever get on again?"

"The world was empty before," Challenger answered gravely. "Under lawswhich in their inception are beyond and above us, it became peopled. Whymay the same process not happen again?"

"My dear Challenger, you can't mean that?"

"I am not in the habit, Professor Summerlee, of saying things which I donot mean. The observation is trivial." Out went the beard and down camethe eyelids.

"Well, you lived an obstinate dogmatist, and you mean to die one," saidSummerlee sourly.

"And you, sir, have lived an unimaginative obstructionist and never canhope now to emerge from it."

"Your worst critics will never accuse you of lacking imagination,"Summerlee retorted.

"Upon my word!" said Lord John. "It would be like you if you used up ourlast gasp of oxygen in abusing each other. What can it matter whetherfolk come back or not? It surely won't be in our time."