What
with the physical shocks incidental
to my first interview with Professor
Challenger and the mental ones
which accompanied the second,
I was a somewhat demoralized
journalist by the time I found
myself in Enmore Park once more.
In my aching head the one thought
was throbbing that there really
was truth in this man's story,
that it was of tremendous consequence,
and that it would work up into
inconceivable copy for the Gazette
when I could obtain permission
to use it. A taxicab was waiting
at the end of the road, so I
sprang into it and drove down
to the office. McArdle was at
his post as usual.
"Well," he cried, expectantly, "what
may it run to? I'm thinking,
young man, you have been in the
wars. Don't tell me that he assaulted
you."
"We had a little
difference at first."
"What a man
it is! What did you do?"
"Well, he became
more reasonable and we had
a chat. But I got
nothing out of him--nothing for
publication."
"I'm not so
sure about that. You got a
black eye out of him,
and that's for publication. We
can't have this reign of terror,
Mr. Malone. We must bring the
man to his bearings. I'll have
a leaderette on him to-morrow
that will raise a blister. Just
give me the material and I will
engage to brand the fellow for
ever. Professor Munchausen--how's
that for an inset headline? Sir
John Mandeville redivivus--Cagliostro--all
the imposters and bullies in
history. I'll show him up for
the fraud he is."
"I wouldn't
do that, sir."
"Why not?"
"Because he
is not a fraud at all."
"What!" roared McArdle. "You
don't mean to say you really
believe this stuff of his about
mammoths and mastodons and great
sea sairpents?"
"Well, I don't
know about that. I don't think
he makes any claims
of that kind. But I do believe
he has got something new."
"Then for Heaven's
sake, man, write it up!"
"I'm longing to, but all I
know he gave me in confidence
and on condition that I didn't." I
condensed into a few sentences
the Professor's narrative. "That's
how it stands."
McArdle looked deeply incredulous.
"Well, Mr. Malone," he said
at last, "about this scientific
meeting to-night; there can be
no privacy about that, anyhow.
I don't suppose any paper will
want to report it, for Waldron
has been reported already a dozen
times, and no one is aware that
Challenger will speak. We may
get a scoop, if we are lucky.
You'll be there in any case,
so you'll just give us a pretty
full report. I'll keep space
up to midnight."
My day was a busy one, and
I had an early dinner at the
Savage Club with Tarp Henry,
to whom I gave some account of
my adventures. He listened with
a sceptical smile on his gaunt
face, and roared with laughter
on hearing that the Professor
had convinced me.
"My dear chap,
things don't happen like that
in real life.
People don't stumble upon enormous
discoveries and then lose their
evidence. Leave that to the novelists.
The fellow is as full of tricks
as the monkey-house at the Zoo.
It's all bosh."
"But the American
poet?"
"He never existed."
"I saw his
sketch-book."
"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 only
saw 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
the occasion. If you are clever
and know your business you can
fake a bone as easily as you
can a photograph."
I began to feel uneasy. Perhaps,
after all, I had been premature
in my acquiescence. 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 lot of people have accounts
to settle with him. I should
say he is about the best-hated
man in London. If the medical
students turn out there will
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 the
evening."
When we arrived
at the hall we found a much
greater concourse
than I had expected. A line of
electric broughams discharged
their little cargoes of white-bearded
professors, while the dark stream
of humbler pedestrians, who crowded
through the arched door-way,
showed that the audience would
be popular as well as scientific.
Indeed, it became evident to
us as soon as we had taken our
seats that a youthful and even
boyish spirit was abroad in the
gallery and the back portions
of the hall. Looking behind me,
I could see rows of faces of
the familiar medical student
type. Apparently the great hospitals
had each sent down their contingent.
The behavior of the audience
at present was good-humored,
but mischievous. Scraps of popular
songs were chorused with an enthusiasm
which was a strange prelude to
a scientific lecture, and there
was already a tendency to personal
chaff which promised a jovial
evening to others, however embarrassing
it might be to the recipients
of these dubious honors.
Thus, when
old Doctor Meldrum, with his
well-known curly-brimmed
opera-hat, appeared upon the
platform, there was such a universal
query of "Where DID you get that
tile?" that he hurriedly removed
it, and concealed it furtively
under his chair. When gouty Professor
Wadley limped down to his seat
there were general affectionate
inquiries from all parts of the
hall as to the exact state of
his poor toe, which caused him
obvious embarrassment. The greatest
demonstration of all, however,
was at the entrance of my new
acquaintance, Professor Challenger,
when he passed down to take his
place at the extreme end of the
front row of the platform. Such
a yell of welcome broke forth
when his black beard first protruded
round the corner that I began
to suspect Tarp Henry was right
in his surmise, and that this
assemblage was there not merely
for the sake of the lecture,
but because it had got rumored
abroad that the famous Professor
would take part in the proceedings.
There was some
sympathetic laughter on his
entrance among
the front benches of well-dressed
spectators, as though the demonstration
of the students in this instance
was not unwelcome to them. That
greeting was, indeed, a frightful
outburst of sound, the uproar
of the carnivora cage when the
step of the bucket-bearing keeper
is heard in the distance. There
was an offensive tone in it,
perhaps, and yet in the main
it struck me as mere riotous
outcry, the noisy reception of
one who amused and interested
them, rather than of one they
disliked or despised. Challenger
smiled with weary and tolerant
contempt, as a kindly man would
meet the yapping of a litter
of puppies. He sat slowly down,
blew out his chest, passed his
hand caressingly down his beard,
and looked with drooping eyelids
and supercilious eyes at the
crowded hall before him. The
uproar of his advent had not
yet died away when Professor
Ronald Murray, the chairman,
and Mr. Waldron, the lecturer,
threaded their way to the front,
and the proceedings began.
Professor Murray
will, I am sure, excuse me
if I say that
he has the common fault of most
Englishmen of being inaudible.
Why on earth people who have
something to say which is worth
hearing should not take the slight
trouble to learn how to make
it heard is one of the strange
mysteries of modern life. Their
methods are as reasonable as
to try to pour some precious
stuff from the spring to the
reservoir through a non-conducting
pipe, which could by the least
effort be opened. Professor Murray
made several profound remarks
to his white tie and to the water-carafe
upon the table, with a humorous,
twinkling aside to the silver
candlestick upon his right. Then
he sat down, and Mr. Waldron,
the famous popular lecturer,
rose amid a general murmur of
applause. He was a stern, gaunt
man, with a harsh voice, and
an aggressive manner, but he
had the merit of knowing how
to assimilate the ideas of other
men, and to pass them on in a
way which was intelligible and
even interesting to the lay public,
with a happy knack of being funny
about the most unlikely objects,
so that the precession of the
Equinox or the formation of a
vertebrate became a highly humorous
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 before us. He told us
of the globe, a huge mass of
flaming gas, flaring through
the heavens. Then he pictured
the solidification, the cooling,
the wrinkling which formed the
mountains, the steam which turned
to water, the slow preparation
of the stage upon which was to
be played the inexplicable drama
of life. On the origin of life
itself he was discreetly vague.
That the germs of it could hardly
have survived the original roasting
was, he declared, fairly certain.
Therefore it had come later.
Had it built itself out of the
cooling, inorganic elements of
the globe? Very likely. Had the
germs of it arrived from outside
upon a meteor? It was hardly
conceivable. On the whole, the
wisest man was the least dogmatic
upon the point. We could not--or
at least we had not succeeded
up to date in making organic
life in our laboratories out
of inorganic materials. The gulf
between the dead and the living
was something which our chemistry
could not as yet bridge. But
there was a higher and subtler
chemistry of Nature, which, working
with great forces over long epochs,
might well produce results which
were impossible for us. There
the matter must be left.
This brought
the lecturer to the great ladder
of animal life,
beginning low down in molluscs
and feeble sea creatures, then
up rung by rung through reptiles
and fishes, till at last we came
to a kangaroo-rat, a creature
which brought forth its young
alive, the direct ancestor of
all mammals, and presumably,
therefore, of everyone in the
audience. ("No, no," from a sceptical
student in the back row.) If
the young gentleman in the red
tie who cried "No, no," and who
presumably claimed to have been
hatched out of an egg, would
wait upon him after the lecture,
he would be glad to see such
a curiosity. (Laughter.) It was
strange to think that the climax
of all the age-long process of
Nature had been the creation
of that gentleman in the red
tie. But had the process stopped?
Was this gentleman to be taken
as the final type--the be-all
and end-all of development? He
hoped that he would not hurt
the feelings of the gentleman
in the red tie if he maintained
that, whatever virtues that gentleman
might possess in private life,
still the vast processes of the
universe were not fully justified
if they were to end entirely
in his production. Evolution
was not a spent force, but one
still working, and even greater
achievements were in store.
Having thus,
amid a general titter, played
very prettily
with his interrupter, the lecturer
went back to his picture of the
past, the drying of the seas,
the emergence of the sand-bank,
the sluggish, viscous life which
lay upon their margins, the overcrowded
lagoons, the tendency of the
sea creatures to take refuge
upon the mud-flats, the abundance
of food awaiting them, their
consequent enormous growth. "Hence,
ladies and gentlemen," he added, "that
frightful brood of saurians which
still affright our eyes when
seen in the Wealden or in the
Solenhofen slates, but which
were fortunately extinct long
before the 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, as
exemplified upon the gentleman
with the red tie, which made
it perilous to interrupt him.
But this interjection appeared
to him so absurd that he was
at a loss how to deal with it.
So looks the Shakespearean who
is confronted by a rancid Baconian,
or the astronomer who is assailed
by a flat- earth fanatic. He
paused for a moment, and then,
raising his voice, repeated slowly
the words: "Which were extinct
before the coming of man."
"Question!" boomed
the voice once more.
Waldron looked with amazement
along the line of professors
upon the platform until his eyes
fell upon the figure of Challenger,
who leaned back in his chair
with closed eyes and an amused
expression, as if he were smiling
in his sleep.
"I see!" said Waldron, with
a shrug. "It is my friend Professor
Challenger," and amid laughter
he renewed his lecture as if
this was a final explanation
and no more need be said.
But the incident
was far from being closed.
Whatever path the
lecturer took amid the wilds
of the past seemed invariably
to lead him to some assertion
as to extinct or prehistoric
life which instantly brought
the same bulls' bellow from the
Professor. The audience began
to anticipate it and to roar
with delight when it came. The
packed benches of students joined
in, and every time Challenger's
beard opened, 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 hardened lecturer and a strong
man, became rattled. He hesitated,
stammered, repeated himself,
got snarled in a long sentence,
and finally turned furiously
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 and unmannerly
interruptions."
There was a hush over the hall,
the students rigid with delight
at seeing the high gods on Olympus
quarrelling among themselves.
Challenger levered his bulky
figure slowly out of his chair.
"I must in turn ask you, Mr.
Waldron," he said, "to cease
to make assertions which are
not in strict accordance with
scientific fact."
The words unloosed
a tempest. "Shame!
Shame!" "Give him a hearing!" "Put
him out!" "Shove him off the
platform!" "Fair play!" emerged
from a general roar of amusement
or execration. The chairman was
on his feet flapping both his
hands and bleating excitedly. "Professor
Challenger--personal--views--
later," were the solid peaks
above his clouds of inaudible
mutter. The interrupter bowed,
smiled, stroked his beard, and
relapsed into his chair. Waldron,
very flushed and warlike, continued
his observations. Now and then,
as he made an assertion, he shot
a venomous glance at his opponent,
who seemed to be slumbering deeply,
with the same broad, happy smile
upon his face.
At last the lecture came to
an end--I am inclined to think
that it was a premature one,
as the peroration was hurried
and disconnected. The thread
of the argument had been rudely
broken, and the audience was
restless and expectant. Waldron
sat down, and, after a chirrup
from the chairman, Professor
Challenger rose and advanced
to the edge of the platform.
In the interests of my paper
I took down his speech verbatim.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," he
began, amid a sustained interruption
from the back. "I beg pardon--Ladies,
Gentlemen, and Children--I must
apologize, I had inadvertently
omitted a considerable section
of this audience" (tumult, during
which the Professor stood with
one hand raised and his enormous
head nodding sympathetically,
as if he were bestowing a pontifical
blessing upon the crowd), "I
have been selected to move a
vote of thanks to Mr. Waldron
for the very picturesque and
imaginative address to which
we have just listened. There
are points in it with which I
disagree, and it has been my
duty to indicate them as they
arose, but, none the less, Mr.
Waldron has accomplished his
object well, that object being
to give a simple and interesting
account of what he conceives
to have been the history of our
planet. Popular lectures are
the easiest to listen to, but
Mr. Waldron" (here he beamed
and blinked at the lecturer) "will
excuse me when I say that they
are necessarily both superficial
and misleading, since they have
to be graded to the comprehension
of an ignorant audience." (Ironical
cheering.) "Popular lecturers
are in their nature parasitic." (Angry
gesture of protest from Mr. Waldron.) "They
exploit for fame or cash the
work which has been done by their
indigent and unknown brethren.
One smallest new fact obtained
in the laboratory, one brick
built into the temple of science,
far outweighs any second-hand
exposition which passes an idle
hour, but can leave no useful
result behind it. I put forward
this obvious reflection, not
out of any desire to disparage
Mr. Waldron in particular, but
that you may not lose your sense
of proportion and mistake the
acolyte for the high priest." (At
this point Mr. Waldron whispered
to the chairman, who half rose
and said something severely to
his water-carafe.) "But enough
of this!" (Loud and prolonged
cheers.) "Let me pass to some
subject of wider interest. What
is the particular point upon
which I, as an original investigator,
have challenged our lecturer's
accuracy? It is upon the permanence
of certain types of animal life
upon the earth. I do not speak
upon this subject as an amateur,
nor, I may add, as a popular
lecturer, but I speak as one
whose scientific conscience compels
him to adhere closely to facts,
when I say that Mr. Waldron is
very wrong in supposing that
because he has never himself
seen a so-called prehistoric
animal, therefore these creatures
no longer exist. They are indeed,
as he has said, our ancestors,
but they are, if I may use the
expression, our contemporary
ancestors, who can still be found
with all their hideous and formidable
characteristics if one has but
the energy and hardihood to seek
their haunts. Creatures which
were supposed to be Jurassic,
monsters who would hunt down
and devour our largest and fiercest
mammals, still exist." (Cries
of "Bosh!" "Prove it!" "How do
YOU know?" "Question!") "How
do I know, you ask me? I know
because I have visited their
secret haunts. I know because
I have seen some of them." (Applause,
uproar, and a voice, "Liar!") "Am
I a liar?" (General hearty and
noisy assent.) "Did I hear someone
say that I was a liar? Will the
person who called me a liar kindly
stand up that I may know him?" (A
voice, "Here he is, sir!" and
an inoffensive little person
in spectacles, struggling violently,
was held up among a group of
students.) "Did you venture to
call me a liar?" ("No, sir, no!" shouted
the accused, and disappeared
like a jack-in-the-box.) "If
any person in this hall dares
to doubt my veracity, I shall
be glad to have a few words with
him after the lecture." ("Liar!") "Who
said that?" (Again the inoffensive
one plunging desperately, was
elevated high into the air.) "If
I come down among you----" (General
chorus of "Come, love, come!" which
interrupted the proceedings for
some moments, while the chairman,
standing up and waving both his
arms, seemed to be conducting
the music. The Professor, with
his face flushed, his nostrils
dilated, and his beard bristling,
was now in a proper Berserk mood.) "Every
great discoverer has been met
with the same incredulity--the
sure brand of a generation of
fools. When great facts are laid
before you, you have not the
intuition, the imagination which
would help you to understand
them. You can only throw mud
at the men who have risked their
lives to open new fields to science.
You persecute the prophets! Galileo!
Darwin, and I----" (Prolonged
cheering and complete interruption.)
All this is from my hurried
notes taken at the time, which
give little notion of the absolute
chaos to which the assembly had
by this time been reduced. So
terrific was the uproar that
several ladies had already beaten
a hurried retreat. Grave and
reverend seniors seemed to have
caught the prevailing spirit
as badly as the students, and
I saw white-bearded men rising
and shaking their fists at the
obdurate Professor. The whole
great audience seethed and simmered
like a boiling pot. The Professor
took a step forward and raised
both his hands. There was something
so big and arresting and virile
in the man that the clatter and
shouting died gradually away
before his commanding gesture
and his masterful eyes. He seemed
to have a definite message. They
hushed to hear it.
"I will not detain you," he
said. "It is not worth it. Truth
is truth, and the noise of a
number of foolish young men--and,
I fear I must add, of their equally
foolish seniors--cannot affect
the matter. I claim that I have
opened a new field of science.
You dispute it." (Cheers.) "Then
I put you to the test. Will you
accredit one or more of your
own number to go out as your
representatives and test my statement
in your name?"
Mr. Summerlee, the veteran
Professor of Comparative Anatomy,
rose among the audience, a tall,
thin, bitter man, with the withered
aspect of a theologian. He wished,
he said, to ask Professor Challenger
whether the results to which
he had alluded in his remarks
had been obtained during a journey
to the headwaters of the Amazon
made by him two years before.
Professor Challenger answered
that they had.
Mr. Summerlee desired to know
how it was that Professor Challenger
claimed to have made discoveries
in those regions which had been
overlooked by Wallace, Bates,
and other previous explorers
of established scientific repute.
Professor Challenger answered
that Mr. Summerlee appeared to
be confusing the Amazon with
the Thames; that it was in reality
a somewhat larger river; that
Mr. Summerlee might be interested
to know that with the Orinoco,
which communicated with it, some
fifty thousand miles of country
were opened up, and that in so
vast a space it was not impossible
for one person to find what another
had missed.
Mr. Summerlee declared, with
an acid smile, that he fully
appreciated the difference between
the Thames and the Amazon, which
lay in the fact that any assertion
about the former could be tested,
while about the latter it could
not. He would be obliged if Professor
Challenger would give the latitude
and the longitude of the country
in which prehistoric animals
were to be found.
Professor Challenger replied
that he reserved such information
for good reasons of his own,
but would be prepared to give
it with proper precautions to
a committee chosen from the audience.
Would Mr. Summerlee serve on
such a committee and test his
story in person?
Mr. Summerlee: "Yes, I will." (Great
cheering.)
Professor Challenger: "Then
I guarantee that I will place
in your hands such material as
will enable you to find your
way. It is only right, however,
since Mr. Summerlee goes to check
my statement that I should have
one or more with him who may
check his. I will not disguise
from you that there are difficulties
and dangers. Mr. Summerlee will
need a younger colleague. May
I ask for volunteers?"
It is thus
that the great crisis of a
man's life springs out at
him. Could I have imagined when
I entered that hall that I was
about to pledge myself to a wilder
adventure than had ever come
to me in my dreams? But Gladys--was
it not the very opportunity of
which she spoke? Gladys would
have told me to go. I had sprung
to my feet. I was speaking, and
yet I had prepared no words.
Tarp Henry, my companion, was
plucking at my skirts and I heard
him whispering, "Sit down, Malone!
Don't make a public ass of yourself." At
the same time I was aware that
a tall, thin man, with dark gingery
hair, a few seats in front of
me, was also upon his feet. He
glared back at me with hard angry
eyes, but I refused to give way.
"I will go, Mr. Chairman," I
kept repeating over and over
again.
"Name! Name!" cried
the audience.
"My name is
Edward Dunn Malone. I am the
reporter of the Daily
Gazette. I claim to be an absolutely
unprejudiced witness."
"What is YOUR name, sir?" the
chairman asked of my tall rival.
"I am Lord
John Roxton. I have already
been up the Amazon, I
know all the ground, and have
special qualifications for this
investigation."
"Lord John Roxton's reputation
as a sportsman and a traveler
is, of course, world-famous," said
the chairman; "at the same time
it would certainly be as well
to have a member of the Press
upon such an expedition."
"Then I move," said Professor
Challenger, "that both these
gentlemen be elected, as representatives
of this meeting, to accompany
Professor Summerlee upon his
journey to investigate and to
report upon the truth of my statements."
And so, amid shouting and cheering,
our fate was decided, and I found
myself borne away in the human
current which swirled towards
the door, with my mind half stunned
by the vast new project which
had risen so suddenly before
it. As I emerged from the hall
I was conscious for a moment
of a rush of laughing students--down
the pavement, and of an arm wielding
a heavy umbrella, which rose
and fell in the midst of them.
Then, amid a mixture of groans
and cheers, Professor Challenger's
electric brougham slid from the
curb, and I found myself walking
under the silvery lights of Regent
Street, full of thoughts of Gladys
and of wonder as to my future.
Suddenly there was a touch
at my elbow. I turned, and found
myself looking into the humorous,
masterful eyes of the tall, thin
man who had volunteered to be
my companion on this strange
quest.
"Mr. Malone, I understand," said
he. "We are to be companions--what?
My rooms are just over the road,
in the Albany. Perhaps you would
have the kindness to spare me
half an hour, for there are one
or two things that I badly want
to say to you."
|