Much as I dislike it, I am obliged to include this story in a volume
devoted to fiction: I have attempted to tell it as an absolutely true
story, but until three months ago, when the indisputable proofs were
placed before the British Association by Professor James Holroyd,
I was regarded as an impostor. Now that the Smithsonian Institute
in Washington, the Philadelphia Zoölogical Society, and the Natural
History Museum of New York city, are convinced that the story is
truthful and accurate in every particular, I prefer to tell it my own
way. Professor Holroyd urges me to do this, although Professor Bruce
Stoddard, of Columbia College, is now at work upon a pamphlet, to be
published the latter part of next month, describing scientifically the
extraordinary discovery which, to the shame of the United States, was
first accepted and recognised in England.
Now, having no technical ability concerning the affair in question,
and having no knowledge of either comparative anatomy or zoölogy, I
am perhaps unfitted to tell this story. But the story is true; the
episode occurred under my own eyes--here, within a few hours' sail of
the Battery. And as I was one of the first persons to verify what has
long been a theory among scientists, and, moreover, as the result of
Professor Holroyd's discovery is to be placed on exhibition in Madison
Square Garden on the twentieth of next month, I have decided to tell,
as simply as I am able, exactly what occurred.
I first wrote out the story on April 1, 1896. The North American
Review, the Popular Science Monthly, the Scientific American, Nature,
Forest and Stream, and the Fossiliferous Magazine in turn rejected it;
some curtly informing me that fiction had no place in their columns.
When I attempted to explain that it was not fiction, the editors of
these periodicals either maintained a contemptuous silence, or bluntly
notified me that my literary services and opinions were not desired.
But finally, when several publishers offered to take the story as
fiction, I cut short all negotiations and decided to publish it myself.
Where I am known at all, it is my misfortune to be known as a writer
of fiction. This makes it impossible for me to receive a hearing from a
scientific audience. I regret it bitterly, because now, when it is too
late, I am prepared to prove certain scientific matters of interest,
and to produce the proofs. In this case, however, I am fortunate, for
nobody can dispute the existence of a thing when the bodily proof is
exhibited as evidence.
This is the story; and if I write it as I write fiction, it is because
I do not know how to write it otherwise.
I was walking along the beach below Pine Inlet, on the south shore
of Long Island. The railroad and telegraph station is at West Oyster
Bay. Everybody who has travelled on the Long Island Railroad knows the
station, but few, perhaps, know Pine Inlet. Duck shooters, of course,
are familiar with it; but as there are no hotels there, and nothing
to see except salt meadow, salt creek, and a strip of dune and sand,
the summer-squatting public may probably be unaware of its existence.
The local name for the place is Pine Inlet; the maps give its name as
Sand Point, I believe, but anybody at West Oyster Bay can direct you
to it. Captain McPeek, who keeps the West Oyster Bay House, drives duck
shooters there in winter. It lies five miles southeast from West Oyster
Bay.
I had walked over that afternoon from Captain McPeek's. There was a
reason for my going to Pine Inlet--it embarrasses me to explain it,
but the truth is I meditated writing an ode to the ocean. It was out
of the question to write it in West Oyster Bay, with the whistle of
locomotives in my ears. I knew that Pine Inlet was one of the loneliest
places on the Atlantic coast; it is out of sight of everything except
leagues of gray ocean. Rarely one might make out fishing smacks
drifting across the horizon. Summer squatters never visited it;
sportsmen shunned it, except in winter. Therefore, as I was about to do
a bit of poetry, I thought that Pine Inlet was the spot for the deed.
So I went there.
As I was strolling along the beach, biting my pencil reflectively,
tremendously impressed by the solitude and the solemn thunder of
the surf, a thought occurred to me: how unpleasant it would be if I
suddenly stumbled on a summer boarder. As this joyless impossibility
flitted across my mind, I rounded a bleak sand dune.
A summer girl stood directly in my path.
If I jumped, I think the young lady has pardoned me by this time. She
ought to, because she also started, and said something in a very faint
voice. What she said was "Oh!"
She stared at me as though I had just crawled up out of the sea to bite
her. I don't know what my own expression resembled, but I have been
given to understand it was idiotic.
Now I perceived, after a few moments, that the young lady was
frightened, and I knew I ought to say something civil. So I said, "Are
there any mosquitoes here?"
"No," she replied, with a slight quiver in her voice; "I have only seen
one, and it was biting somebody else."
I looked foolish; the conversation seemed so futile, and the young
lady appeared to be more nervous than before. I had an impulse to say,
"Do not run; I have breakfasted," for she seemed to be meditating a
plunge into the breakers. What I did say was: "I did not know anybody
was here. I do not intend to intrude. I come from Captain McPeek's,
and I am writing an ode to the ocean." After I had said this it seemed
to ring in my ears like, "I come from Table Mountain, and my name is
Truthful James."