He looked round him in every direction. ‘I could swear that was
Bellows. Why don’t you show yourself like a man, Bellows?’
It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind. I walked
round the table and laid my hand upon his arm. I never saw a man more
startled in my life. He jumped away from me, and came round into an
attitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted with terror. ‘Good
God!’ he cried. ‘What was that?’
‘It’s I--Bellows. Confound it, Davidson!’
He jumped when I answered him and stared--how can I express it?--right
through me. He began talking, not to me, but to himself. ‘Here in broad
daylight on a clear beach. Not a place to hide in.’ He looked about him
wildly. ‘Here! I’m _off_.’ He suddenly turned and ran headlong into
the big electro-magnet--so violently that, as we found afterwards, he
bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly. At that he stepped back a
pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, ‘What, in Heaven’s name, has
come over me?’ He stood, blanched with terror and trembling violently,
with his right arm clutching his left, where that had collided with the
magnet.
By that time I was excited and fairly scared. ‘Davidson,’ said I,
‘don’t be afraid.’
He was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before. I
repeated my words in as clear and as firm a tone as I could assume.
‘Bellows,’ he said, ‘is that you?’
‘Can’t you see it’s me?’
He laughed. ‘I can’t even see it’s myself. Where the devil are we?’
‘Here,’ said I, ‘in the laboratory.’
‘The laboratory!’ he answered in a puzzled tone, and put his hand to
his forehead. ‘I _was_ in the laboratory--till that flash came, but I’m
hanged if I’m there now. What ship is that?’
‘There’s no ship,’ said I. ‘Do be sensible, old chap.’
‘No ship,’ he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith. ‘I
suppose,’ said he slowly, ‘we’re both dead. But the rummy part is I
feel just as though I still had a body. Don’t get used to it all at
once, I suppose. The old shop was struck by lightning, I suppose. Jolly
quick thing, Bellows--eh?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. You’re very much alive. You are in the
laboratory, blundering about. You’ve just smashed a new electrometer. I
don’t envy you when Boyce arrives.’
He stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates. ‘I must be
deaf,’ said he. ‘They’ve fired a gun, for there goes the puff of smoke,
and I never heard a sound.’
I put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed. ‘We
seem to have a sort of invisible bodies,’ said he. ‘By Jove! there’s a
boat coming, round the headland. It’s very much like the old life after
all--in a different climate.’