"The highest of which we have cognizance."
"That, sir, goes without saying."
"Think of all the millions and possibly billions of years that the earthswung empty through space--or, if not empty, at least without a sign orthought of the human race. Think of it, washed by the rain and scorchedby the sun and swept by the wind for those unnumbered ages. Man onlycame into being yesterday so far as geological times goes. Why, then,should it be taken for granted that all this stupendous preparation wasfor his benefit?"
"For whose then--or for what?"
Summerlee shrugged his shoulders.
"How can we tell? For some reason altogether beyond our conception--andman may have been a mere accident, a by-product evolved in the process.It is as if the scum upon the surface of the ocean imagined that theocean was created in order to produce and sustain it, or a mouse in acathedral thought that the building was its own proper ordainedresidence."
I have jotted down the very words of their argument, but now itdegenerates into a mere noisy wrangle with much polysyllabic scientificjargon upon each side. It is no doubt a privilege to hear two suchbrains discuss the highest questions; but as they are in perpetualdisagreement, plain folk like Lord John and I get little that is positivefrom the exhibition. They neutralize each other and we are left as theyfound us. Now the hubbub has ceased, and Summerlee is coiled up in hischair, while Challenger, still finge
ring the screws of his microscope, iskeeping up a continual low, deep, inarticulate growl like the sea after astorm. Lord John comes over to me, and we look out together into thenight.
There is a pale new moon--the last moon that human eyes will ever restupon--and the stars are most brilliant. Even in the clear plateau air ofSouth America I have never seen them brighter. Possibly this ethericchange has some effect upon light. The funeral pyre of Brighton is stillblazing, and there is a very distant patch of scarlet in the western sky,which may mean trouble at Arundel or Chichester, possibly even atPortsmouth. I sit and muse and make an occasional note. There is asweet melancholy in the air. Youth and beauty and chivalry and love--isthis to be the end of it all? The starlit earth looks a dreamland ofgentle peace. Who would imagine it as the terrible Golgotha strewn withthe bodies of the human race? Suddenly, I find myself laughing.
"Halloa, young fellah!" says Lord John, staring at me in surprise. "Wecould do with a joke in these hard times. What was it, then?"
"I was thinking of all the great unsolved questions," I answer, "thequestions that we spent so much labor and thought over. Think ofAnglo-German competition, for example--or the Persian Gulf that my oldchief was so keen about. Whoever would have guessed, when we fumed andfretted so, how they were to be eventually solved?"
We fall into silence again. I fancy that each of us is thinking offriends that have gone before. Mrs. Challenger is sobbing quietly, andher husband is whispering to her. My mind turns to all the most unlikelypeople, and I see each of them lying white and rigid as poor Austin doesin the yard. There is McArdle, for example, I know exactly where he is,with his face upon his writing desk and his hand on his own telephone,just as I heard him fall. Beaumont, the editor, too--I suppose he islying upon the blue-and-red Turkey carpet which adorned his sanctum. Andthe fellows in the reporters' room--Macdona and Murray and Bond. Theyhad certainly died hard at work on their job, with note-books full ofvivid impressions and strange happenings in their hands. I could justimagine how this one would have been packed off to the doctors, and thatother to Westminster, and yet a third to St. Paul's. What glorious rowsof head-lines they must have seen as a last vision beautiful, neverdestined to materialize in printer's ink! I could see Macdona among thedoctors--"Hope in Harley Street"--Mac had always a weakness foralliteration. "Interview with Mr. Soley Wilson." "Famous Specialist says'Never despair!'" "Our Special Correspondent found the eminent scientistseated upon the roof, whither he had retreated to avoid the crowd ofterrified patients who had stormed his dwelling. With a manner whichplainly showed his appreciation of the immense gravity of the occasion,the celebrated physician refused to admit that every avenue of hope hadbeen closed." That's how Mac would start. Then there was Bond; he wouldprobably do St. Paul's. He fancied his own literary touch. My word,what a theme for him! "Standing in the little gallery under the dome andlooking down upon that packed mass of despairing humanity, groveling atthis last instant before a Power which they had so persistently ignored,there rose to my ears from the swaying crowd such a low moan of entreatyand terror, such a shuddering cry for help to the Unknown, that----" andso forth.
Yes, it would be a great end for a reporter, though, like myself, hewould die with the treasures still unused. What would Bond not give,poor chap, to see "J. H. B." at the foot of a column like that?
But what drivel I am writing! It is just an attempt to pass the wearytime. Mrs. Challenger has gone to the inner dressing-room, and theProfessor says that she is asleep. He is making notes and consultingbooks at the central table, as calmly as if years of placid work laybefore him. He writes with a very noisy quill pen which seems to bescreeching scorn at all who disagree with him.
Summerlee has dropped off in his chair and gives from time to time apeculiarly exasperating snore. Lord John lies back with his hands in hispockets and his eyes closed. How people can sleep under such conditionsis more than I can imagine.
Three-thirty a.m. I have just wakened with a start. It was five minutespast eleven when I made my last entry. I remember winding up my watchand noting the time. So I have wasted some five hours of the little spanstill left to us. Who would have believed it possible? But I feel verymuch fresher, and ready for my fate--or try to persuade myself that I am.And yet, the fitter a man is, and the higher his tide of life, the moremust he shrink from death. How wise and how merciful is that provisionof nature by which his earthly anchor is usually loosened by many littleimperceptible tugs, until his consciousness has drifted out of itsuntenable earthly harbor into the great sea beyond!
Mrs. Challenger is still in the dressing room. Challenger has fallenasleep in his chair. What a picture! His enormous frame leans back, hishuge, hairy hands are clasped across his waistcoat, and his head is sotilted that I can see nothing above his collar save a tangled bristle ofluxuriant beard. He shakes with the vibration of his own snoring.Summerlee adds his occasional high tenor to Challenger's sonorous bass.Lord John is sleeping also, his long body doubled up sideways in abasket-chair. The first cold light of dawn is just stealing into theroom, and everything is grey and mournful.
I look out at the sunrise--that fateful sunrise which will shine upon anunpeopled world. The human race is gone, extinguished in a day, but theplanets swing round and the tides rise or fall, and the wind whispers,and all nature goes her way, down, as it would seem, to the very amoeba,with never a sign that he who styled himself the lord of creation hadever blessed or cursed the universe with his presence. Down in the yardlies Austin with sprawling limbs, his face glimmering white in the dawn,and the hose nozzle still projecting from his dead hand. The whole ofhuman kind is typified in that one half-ludicrous and half-patheticfigure, lying so helpless beside the machine which it used to control.
Here end the notes which I made at the time. Henceforward events weretoo swift and too poignant to allow me to write, but they are too clearlyoutlined in my memory that any detail could escape me.
Some chokiness in my throat made me look at the oxygen cylinders, and Iwas startled at what I saw. The sands of our lives were running verylow. At some period in the night Challenger had switched the tube fromthe third to the fourth cylinder. Now it was clear that this also wasnearly exhausted. That horrible feeling of constriction was closing inupon me. I ran across and, unscrewing the nozzle, I changed it to ourlast supply. Even as I did so my conscience pricked me, for I felt thatperhaps if I had held my hand all of them might have passed in theirsleep. The thought was banished, however, by the voice of the lady fromthe inner room crying:--
"George, George, I am stifling!"
"It is all right, Mrs. Challenger," I answered as the others started totheir feet. "I have just turned on a fresh supply."
Even at such a moment I could not help smiling at Challenger, who with agreat hairy fist in each eye was like a huge, bearded baby, new wakenedout of sleep. Summerlee was shivering like a man with the ague, humanfears, as he realized his position, rising for an instant above thestoicism of the man of science. Lord John, however, was as cool andalert as if he had just been roused on a hunting morning.
"Fifthly and lastly," said he, glancing at the tube. "Say, young fellah,don't tell me you've been writin' up your impressions in that paper onyour knee."
"Just a few notes to pass the time."
"Well, I don't believe anyone but an Irishman would have done that. Iexpect you'll have to wait till little brother amoeba gets grown upbefore you'll find a reader. He don't seem to take much stock of thingsjust at present. Well, Herr Professor, what are the prospects?"
Challenger was looking out at the great drifts of morning mist which layover the landscape. Here and there the wooded hills rose like conicalislands out of this woolly sea.
"It might be a winding sheet," said Mrs. Challenger, who had entered inher dressing-gown. "There's that song of yours, George, 'Ring out theold, ring in the new.' It was prophetic. But you are shivering, my poordear friends. I have been warm under a
coverlet all night, and you coldin your chairs. But I'll soon set you right."
The brave little creature hurried away, and presently we heard thesizzling of a kettle. She was back soon with five steaming cups of cocoaupon a tray.