The Poison Belt

ory of the human race. As I said when I began my narrative, when that history comes to be written, this occurrence will surely stand out among all other events li

f life, the earnest desire to develop and improve, have grown and become real with us to a degree that has leavened our whole society from end to end? It is something beyond sects and beyond dogmas. It is rather an alteration of perspective, a shifting of our sense of proportion, a vivid realization that we are insignificant and evanescent creatures, existing on sufferance and at the mercy of the first chill wind from the unknown. But if the world has grown graver with this knowledge it is not, I think, a sadder place in consequence. Surely we are agreed that the more sober and restrained pleasures of the present are deeper as well as wiser than the n

ection was practically simultaneous. There are numerous witnesses that Big Ben pointed to ten minutes past six at the moment. The Astronomer Royal has fixed the Greenwich time at twelve past six. On the other hand, Laird Johnson, a very capable East Anglia observer

plans for the future. I sat by the open window, my chin resting upon my hand and my mind absorbed in the misery of our situation. Could we continue to live? That was the question which I had begun to ask myself. Was it possible to exist upon a dead world? Just as in physics the greater body draws to itself the lesser, would we not feel an overpowering attraction from that vast body of humanity which had passed into the unkno

hat it was that absurd, emaciated, superannuated cab-horse which held my gaze. Slowly and wheezily it was climbing the slope. Then my eye traveled to the driver sitting hunc

And yet here was the world resuscitated-here was life come back in an instant full tide to the planet. Now, as my eyes wandered all over the great landscape, I saw it in every direction-and moving, to my amazement, in the very same groove in which it had halted. There were the golfers. Was it possible that they were going on with their game? Yes, t

ment and congratulation, in the yard. How we all shook hands and laughed as we came together, and how Mrs.

allenger, you don't mean to believe that those folk were asleep with the

ken for death. While it endures, the temperature falls, the respiration disappears, the heartbeat is indistinguishable-in fact, it is death, save that it

name, and we know as little of the result as we do of the poison which has caused

ing which I had heard from above. He had been holding his head in silenc

e grumbled. "Can't

he matter

ne has been fooling with the car. I e

n looked

"I expect I came over queer when I was hosing her down. I seem to remember fl

was also explained to him. He listened with an air of deep distrust when told how an amateur had driven his car and with absorbed interest

de the Bank of

, Au

llions inside and

t wa

d, and turned dismally once

from it. An instant later the maid, who looked as tousled and bewildered as if she had that instant been aroused from the deepest sleep, app

le: "After all, it is natural that the whole world sh

Summerlee, "for he was on the road i

mes Baxter, London Corres

see him?

ot

considerate to others. Surely you have lear

d shook his big,

ization, the ready tool of the quack and the hindrance of the

d. "Come, sir, this is a stranger who has made a journ

vance against any such outrageous invasion of my private life." Muttering and mu

led out his notebook and plun

erica would very much like to hear more about this dan

now pressing upon the world,

ooked at him i

hat the world might run into

hend any such dange

looked even m

Challenger, are y

; that is

no such danger. I am alluding to your own letter, publis

ger's turn to

. "No London Times was

admit that the London Times is a daily paper." He drew out a co

uckled and ru

said he. "So you read t

s,

t once to i

s,

ything unusual upon

y human than I have ever seen them. The baggage man set out to tell m

ing e

r, not that

t hour did you

erican

ems to be a case of 'Is this nigger fishing, or is

terest me. Do you

was half-p

ou arr

arter-pa

u hired

t wa

suppose it is

eckon the best pa

do you think

, maybe, with that

uld be thr

a trifle

t your

and then stared at

y record, sure. The sun is pretty low, now that I come to l

of anything remarkable

e that I wanted to say something to the driver and that I couldn't make him

one, will continue the issue of his papers, and very much amazed he will be at finding that an issue is missing. Yes, my young friend," he added to the American reporter, with a sudden mood of amused geniality, "it may interest you to know that the world has swum through the poisonous current whic

rsion of the account which appeared in the Monday edition of the Daily Gazette-an account which has been universally admitted to be the greatest journalistic sc

HT HOURS'

ENTED EX

NGER J

ESPONDEN

LING NA

XYGEN

MOTO

D L

G THE MI

ES AND LO

IT

et, so far as one observer could draw it, during one long day of its existence. Challenger and Summerlee have treated the matter in a joint scientific pa

uote the sonorous passages in which the greatest of daily papers ended its admirable leade

s and impotence. The world has paid a fearful price for its schooling. Hardly yet have we learned the full tale of disaster, but the destruction by fire of New York, of Orleans, and of Brighton constitutes in itself one of the greatest tragedies in the history of our race. When the account of the railway and shipping accidents has been completed, it will furnish grim reading, although there is evidence to show that in the vast majority of cases the drivers of trains and engineers of steamers succeeded in shutting off their motive power before succumbing to the poison. But the material damage, enormous as it is both in