The Poison Belt (Professor Challenger 2)

Full in our flushed faces, before the last tinkle of falling fragmentshad died away, there came the wholesome breath of the wind, blowingstrong and sweet.

I don't know how long we sat in amazed silence. Then as in a dream, Iheard Challenger's voice once more.

"We are back in normal conditions," he cried. "The world has cleared thepoison belt, but we alone of all mankind are saved."

Chapter V

THE DEAD WORLD

I remember that we all sat gasping in our chairs, with that sweet, wetsouth-western breeze, fresh from the sea, flapping the muslin curtainsand cooling our flushed faces. I wonder how long we sat! None of usafterwards could agree at all on that point. We were bewildered,stunned, semi-conscious. We had all braced our courage for death, butthis fearful and sudden new fact--that we must continue to live after wehad survived the race to which we belonged--struck us with the shock of aphysical blow and left us prostrate. Then gradually the suspendedmechanism began to move once more; the shuttles of memory worked; ideasweaved themselves together in our minds. We saw, with vivid, mercilessclearness, the relations between the past, the present, and thefuture--the lives that we had led and the lives which we would have tolive. Our eyes turned in silent horror upon those of our companions andfound the same answering look in theirs. Instead of the joy which menmight have been expected to feel who had so narrowly escaped an imminentdeath, a terrible wave of darkest depression submerged us. Everything onearth that we loved had been washed away into the great, infinite,unknown ocean, and here were we marooned upon this desert island of aworld, without companions, hopes, or aspirations. A few years' skulkinglike jackals among the graves of the human race and then our belated andlonely end would come.

"It's dreadful, George, dreadful!" the lady cried in an agony of sobs."If we had only passed with the others! Oh, why did you save us? I feelas if it is we that are dead and everyone else alive."

Challenger's great eyebrows were drawn down in concentrated thought,while his huge, hairy paw closed upon the outstretched hand of his wife.I had observed that she always held out her arms to him in trouble as achild would to its mother.

"Without being a fatalist to the point of nonresistance," said he, "Ihave always found that the highest wisdom lies in an acquiescence withthe actual." He spoke slowly, and there was a vibration of feeling inhis sonorous voice.

"I do _not_ acquiesce," said Summerlee firmly.

"I don't see that it matters a row of pins whether you acquiesce orwhether you don't," remarked Lord John. "You've got to take it, whetheryou take it fightin' or take it lyin' down, so what's the odds whetheryou acquiesce or not?

"I can't remember that anyone asked our permission before the thingbegan, and nobody's likely to ask it now. So what difference can it makewhat we may think of it?"

"It is just all the difference between happiness and misery," saidChallenger with an abstracted face, still patting his wife's hand. "Youcan swim with the tide and have peace in mind and soul, or you can thrustagainst it and be bruised and weary. This business is beyond us, so letus accept it as it stands and say no more."

"But what in the world are we to do with our lives?" I asked, appealingin desperation to the blue, empty heaven.

"What am I to do, for example? There are no newspapers, so there's anend of my vocation."

"And there's nothin' left to shoot, and no more soldierin', so there's anend of mine," said Lord John.

"And there are no students, so there's an end of mine," cried Summerlee.

"But I have my husband and my house, so I can thank heaven that there isno end of mine," said the lady.

"Nor is there an end of mine," remarked Challenger, "for science is notdead, and this catastrophe in itself will offer us many most absorbingproblems for investigation."

He had now flung open the windows and we were gazing out upon the silentand motionless landscape.

"Let me consider," he continued. "It was about three, or a little after,yesterday afternoon that the world finally entered the poison belt to theextent of being completely submerged. It is now nine o'clock. Thequestion is, at what hour did we pass out from it?"

"The air was very bad at daybreak," said I.

"Later than that," said Mrs. Challenger. "As late as eight o'clock Idistinctly felt the same choking at my throat which came at the outset."

"Then we shall say that it passed just after eight o'clock. Forseventeen hours the world has been soaked in the poisonous ether. Forthat length of time the Great Gardener has sterilized the human moldwhich had grown over the surface of His fruit. Is it possible that thework is incompletely done--that others may have survived besidesourselves?"

"That's what I was wonderin'," said Lord John. "Why should we be the onlypebbles on the beach?"

"It is absurd to suppose that anyone besides ourselves can possibly havesurvived," said Summerlee with conviction. "Consider that the poison wasso virulent that even a man who is as strong as an ox and has not a nervein his body, like Malone here, could hardly get up the stairs before hefell unconscious. Is it likely that anyone could stand seventeen minutesof it, far less hours?"

"Unless someone saw it coming and made preparation, same as old friendChallenger did."

"That, I think, is hardly probable," said Challenger, projecting hisbeard and sinking his eyelids. "The combination of observation,inference, and anticipatory imagination which enabled me to foresee thedanger is what one can hardly expect twice in the same generation."

"Then your conclusion is that everyone is certainly dead?"

"There can be little doubt of that. We have to remember, however, thatthe poison worked from below upwards and would possibly be less virulentin the higher strata of the atmosphere. It is strange, indeed, that itshould be so; but it presents one of those features which will afford usin the future a fascinating field for study. One could imagine,therefore, that if one had to search for survivors one would turn one'seyes with best hopes of success to some Tibetan village or some Alpinefarm, many thousands of feet above the sea level."