THE STOLEN BACILLUS AND OTHER INCIDENTS
BY H.G. WELLS
AUTHOR OF "THE TIME MACHINE"
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, STRAND
LONDON
1895
_Colonial Library_
TO
H.B. MARRIOTT WATSON
Most of the stories in this collection appeared originally in the
_Pall Mall Budget_, two were published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
and one in _St James's Gazette_. I desire to make the usual
acknowledgments. The third story in the book was, I find, reprinted
by the _Observatory_, and the "Lord of the Dynamos" by the Melbourne
_Leader_.
H.G. WELLS.
CONTENTS
I. THE STOLEN BACILLUS
II. THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID
III. IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY
IV. THE TRIUMPHS OF A TAXIDERMIST
V. A DEAL IN OSTRICHES
VI. THROUGH A WINDOW
VII. THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY
VIII. THE FLYING MAN
IX. THE DIAMOND MAKER
X. AEPYORNIS ISLAND
XI. THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES
XII. THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS
XIII. THE HAMMERPOND PARK BURGLARY
XIV. A MOTH--_GENUS NOVO_
XV. THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST
THE STOLEN BACILLUS
"This again," said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under
the microscope, "is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of
cholera--the cholera germ."
The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not
accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his
disengaged eye. "I see very little," he said.
"Touch this screw," said the Bacteriologist; "perhaps the microscope
is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of a
turn this way or that."
"Ah! now I see," said the visitor. "Not so very much to see after all.
Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles,
those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!"
He stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held
it in his hand towards the window. "Scarcely visible," he said,
scrutinising the preparation. He hesitated. "Are these--alive? Are
they dangerous now?"
"Those have been stained and killed," said the Bacteriologist. "I
wish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in
the universe."
"I suppose," the pale man said with a slight smile, "that you scarcely
care to have such things about you in the living--in the active
state?"
"On the contrary, we are obliged to," said the Bacteriologist. "Here,
for instance--" He walked across the room and took up one of several
sealed tubes. "Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation of the
actual living disease bacteria." He hesitated, "Bottled cholera, so to
speak."
A slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the
pale man.
"It's a deadly thing to have in your possession," he said, devouring
the little tube with his eyes. The Bacteriologist watched the morbid
pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited
him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend,
interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank
black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous
manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel
change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific
worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps
natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal
nature of his topic, to take the most effective aspect of the matter.
He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. "Yes, here is the
pestilence imprisoned. Only break such a little tube as this into a
supply of drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that
one must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of the
microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste--say
to them, 'Go forth, increase and multiply, and replenish the
cisterns,' and death--mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and
terrible, death full of pain and indignity--would be released upon
this city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims. Here he
would take the husband from the wife, here the child from its mother,
here the statesman from his duty, and here the toiler from his
trouble. He would follow the water-mains, creeping along streets,
picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they
did not boil their drinking-water, creeping into the wells of the
mineral-water makers, getting washed into salad, and lying dormant in
ices. He would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-troughs, and by
unwary children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil,
to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. Once
start him at the water supply, and before we could ring him in, and
catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis."
He stopped abruptly. He had been told rhetoric was his weakness.
"But he is quite safe here, you know--quite safe."
The pale-faced man nodded. His eyes shone. He cleared his throat.
"These Anarchist--rascals," said he, "are fools, blind fools--to use
bombs when this kind of thing is attainable. I think--"
A gentle rap, a mere light touch of the finger-nails was heard at the
door. The Bacteriologist opened it. "Just a minute, dear," whispered
his wife.
When he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at his
watch. "I had no idea I had wasted an hour of your time," he said.
"Twelve minutes to four. I ought to have left here by half-past three.
But your things were really too interesting. No, positively I cannot
stop a moment longer. I have an engagement at four."
He passed out of the room reiterating his thanks, and the
Bacteriologist accompanied him to the door, and then returned
thoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. He was musing on the
ethnology of his visitor. Certainly the man was not a Teutonic type
nor a common Latin one. "A morbid product, anyhow, I am afraid," said
the Bacteriologist to himself. "How he gloated on those cultivations
of disease-germs!" A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to the
bench by the vapour-bath, and then very quickly to his writing-table.
Then he felt hastily in his pockets, and then rushed to the door. "I
may have put it down on the hall table," he said.
"Minnie!" he shouted hoarsely in the hall.
"Yes, dear," came a remote voice.
"Had I anything in my hand when I spoke to you, dear, just now?"
Pause.
"Nothing, dear, because I remember--"
"Blue ruin!" cried the Bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the
front door and down the steps of his house to the street.
Minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the
window. Down the street a slender man was getting into a cab. The
Bacteriologist, hatless, and in his carpet slippers, was running and
gesticulating wildly towards this group. One slipper came off, but
he did not wait for it. "He has gone _mad_!" said Minnie; "it's that
horrid science of his"; and, opening the window, would have called
after him. The slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struck
with the same idea of mental disorder. He pointed hastily to the
Bacteriologist, said something to the cabman, the apron of the cab
slammed, the whip swished, the horse's feet clattered, and in a moment
cab, and Bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded up the vista of
the roadway and disappeared round the corner.
Minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she
drew her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. "Of
course he is eccentric," she meditated. "But running about London--in
the height of the season, too--in his socks!" A happy thought struck
her. She hastily put her bonnet on, seized his shoes, went into the
hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs, emerged upon
the doorstep, and hailed a cab that opportunely crawled by. "Drive
me up the road and round Havelock Crescent, and see if we can find a
gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat."
"Velveteen coat, ma'am, and no 'at. Very good, ma'am." And the cabman
whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to
this address every day in his life.
Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that
collects round the cabmen's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled
by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse,
driven furiously.
They were silent as it went by, and then as it receded--"That's 'Arry
'Icks. Wot's _he_ got?" said the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles.
"He's a-using his whip, he is, _to_ rights," said the ostler boy.
"Hullo!" said poor old Tommy Byles; "here's another bloomin' loonatic.
Blowed if there aint."
"It's old George," said old Tootles, "and he's drivin' a loonatic,
_as_ you say. Aint he a-clawin' out of the keb? Wonder if he's after
'Arry 'Icks?"
The group round the cabmen's shelter became animated. Chorus: "Go it,
George!" "It's a race." "You'll ketch 'em!" "Whip up!"
"She's a goer, she is!" said the ostler boy.
"Strike me giddy!" cried old Tootles. "Here! _I'm_ a-goin' to begin
in a minute. Here's another comin'. If all the kebs in Hampstead aint
gone mad this morning!"
"It's a fieldmale this time," said the ostler boy.
"She's a followin' _him_," said old Tootles. "Usually the other way
about."
"What's she got in her 'and?"
"Looks like a 'igh 'at."
"What a bloomin' lark it is! Three to one on old George," said the
ostler boy. "Nexst!"
Minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it but
she felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down Haverstock
Hill and Camden Town High Street with her eyes ever intent on the
animated back view of old George, who was driving her vagrant husband
so incomprehensibly away from her.
The man in the foremost cab sat crouched in the corner, his arms
tightly folded, and the little tube that contained such vast
possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a
singular mixture of fear and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of
being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this
was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his
exultation far exceeded his fear. No Anarchist before him had ever
approached this conception of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all those
distinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled into
insignificance beside him. He had only to make sure of the water
supply, and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantly
he had planned it, forged the letter of introduction and got into the
laboratory, and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity! The
world should hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered at
him, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company
undesirable, should consider him at last. Death, death, death! They
had always treated him as a man of no importance. All the world had
been in a conspiracy to keep him under. He would teach them yet what
it is to isolate a man. What was this familiar street? Great Saint
Andrew's Street, of course! How fared the chase? He craned out of the
cab. The Bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. That was bad.
He would be caught and stopped yet. He felt in his pocket for money,
and found half-a-sovereign. This he thrust up through the trap in the
top of the cab into the man's face. "More," he shouted, "if only we
get away."
The money was snatched out of his hand. "Right you are," said the
cabman, and the trap slammed, and the lash lay along the glistening
side of the horse. The cab swayed, and the Anarchist, half-standing
under the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the
apron to preserve his balance. He felt the brittle thing crack, and
the broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. He fell back
into the seat with a curse, and stared dismally at the two or three
drops of moisture on the apron.
He shuddered.
"Well! I suppose I shall be the first. _Phew_! Anyhow, I shall be a
Martyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death, nevertheless. I
wonder if it hurts as much as they say."
Presently a thought occurred to him--he groped between his feet. A
little drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that
to make sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would not
fail.
Then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the
Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and
got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid
stuff this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to
speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast
awaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic
in his pose. The sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity.
He greeted his pursuer with a defiant laugh.
"Vive l'Anarchie! You are too late, my friend. I have drunk it. The
cholera is abroad!"
The Bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his
spectacles. "You have drunk it! An Anarchist! I see now." He was about
to say something more, and then checked himself. A smile hung in the
corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend,
at which the Anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off
towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against
as many people as possible. The Bacteriologist was so preoccupied with
the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise
at the appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes
and overcoat. "Very good of you to bring my things," he said,
and remained lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the
Anarchist.
"You had better get in," he said, still staring. Minnie felt
absolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home
on her own responsibility. "Put on my shoes? Certainly dear," said
he, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure,
now small in the distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something
grotesque struck him, and he laughed. Then he remarked, "It is really
very serious, though."
"You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist.
No--don't faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted
to astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up a
cultivation of that new species of Bacterium I was telling you of,
that infest, and I think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys;
and like a fool, I said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with
it to poison the water of London, and he certainly might have made
things look blue for this civilised city. And now he has swallowed it.
Of course, I cannot say what will happen, but you know it turned
that kitten blue, and the three puppies--in patches, and the
sparrow--bright blue. But the bother is, I shall have all the trouble
and expense of preparing some more.
"Put on my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs
Jabber. My dear, Mrs Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a
coat on a hot day because of Mrs--. Oh! _very_ well."
THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID
The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour.
You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for
the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your
good-luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or
dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your
money, or perhaps--for the thing has happened again and again--there
slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day
after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist
of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry.
Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green
spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of Nature
may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as
that of its discoverer? "Johnsmithia"! There have been worse names.
It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made
Winter-Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales--that hope,
and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest
interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual
man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of
necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting
employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated
Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it
happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse.
"I have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to
happen to me to-day." He spoke--as he moved and thought--slowly.
"Oh, don't say _that_!" said his housekeeper--who was also his remote
cousin. For "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one
thing to her.
"You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant ... though what I do
mean I scarcely know.
"To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to sell a
batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and
see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good, unawares.
That may be it."
He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.
"Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me
of the other day?" asked his cousin as she filled his cup.
"Yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast.
"Nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning
to think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people.
There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence,
on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin
came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a
whirl of excitement!--compared to me."
"I think I would rather be without so much excitement," said his
housekeeper. "It can't be good for you."
"I suppose it's troublesome. Still ... you see, nothing ever happens
to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in
love as I grew up. Never married.... I wonder how it feels to have
something happen to you, something really remarkable.
"That orchid-collector was only thirty-six--twenty years younger than
myself--when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once;
he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He
killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in
the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been
very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you
know--except, perhaps, the leeches."
"I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady, with conviction.
"Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. "Twenty-three
minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train,
so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca
jacket--it is quite warm enough--and my grey felt hat and brown shoes.
I suppose--"
He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and
then nervously at his cousin's face.
"I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London,"
she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's all between
here and the station coming back."
When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a
purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to
buy, but this time he had done so.
"There are Vandas," he said, "and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis."
He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were
laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his
cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It
was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the
evening for her and his own entertainment.
"I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these.
Some of them--some of them--I feel sure, do you know, that some of
them will be remarkable. I don't know how it is, but I feel just
as sure as if someone had told me that some of these will turn out
remarkable.
"That one"--he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome--"was not identified.
It may be a Palaeonophis--or it may not. It may be a new species,
or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever
collected."
"I don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "It's such an
ugly shape."
"To me it scarcely seems to have a shape."
"I don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper.
"It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow."
"It looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead."
Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "It
is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of
these things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very
beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see
to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I
shall set to work."
"They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp--I
forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very
orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days
with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These
mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say,
was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant
that cost him his life to obtain."
"I think none the better of it for that."
"Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound
gravity.
"Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill
of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine--if men were
left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine--and no
one round you but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are
most disgusting wretches--and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good
nurses, not having the necessary training. And just for people in
England to have orchids!"
"I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that
kind of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of his party
were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until
his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the
interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had
let it wither. And it makes these things more interesting."
"It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria
clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying
across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I
declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner."
"I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the
window-seat. I can see them just as well there."
The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little
hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all
the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was
having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about
these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted
to his expectation of something strange.
Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but
presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was
delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see
it at once, directly he made the discovery.
"That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves
there, and those little things coming out here are aërial rootlets."
"They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown,"
said his housekeeper. "I don't like them."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can't
help my likes and dislikes."
"I don't know for certain, but I don't _think_ there are any orchids I
know that have aërial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of
course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends."
"I don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and
turning away. "I know it's very silly of me--and I'm very sorry,
particularly as you like the thing so much. But I can't help thinking
of that corpse."
"But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of
mine."
His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "Anyhow I don't like it," she
said.
Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that
did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this
orchid in particular, whenever he felt inclined.
"There are such queer things about orchids," he said one day;
"such possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their
fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary
orchid-flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen
from plant to plant. Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids
known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in
that way. Some of the Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects
known that can possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never be
found with seed."
"But how do they form new plants?"
"By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily
explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for?
"Very likely," he added, "_my_ orchid may be something extraordinary
in that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making
researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or
something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to
unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!"
But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the
headache. She had seen the plant once again, and the aërial rootlets,
which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately
reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got
into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that
she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that
plant again, and Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were
of the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and
dots of deep red towards the base. He knew of no other leaves quite
like them. The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer,
and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the
hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons
now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of
this strange plant.
And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little
glass house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great
_Palaeonophis Lowii_ hid the corner where his new darling stood.
There was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that
overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse.
Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. And,
behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of
blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped
before them in an ecstasy of admiration.
The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals;
the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a
wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at
once that the genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable
scent! How hot the place was! The blossoms swam before his eyes.
He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the
thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the
floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green
leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways,
and then in a curve upward.
* * * * *
At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their
invariable custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea.
"He is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited
ten minutes. "His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him."
She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his
name. There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and
loaded with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the
bricks between the hot-water pipes.
For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless.
He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The
tentacle-like aërial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but
were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight
with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.
She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant
tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood.
With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him
away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles,
and their sap dripped red.
Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head
reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and
the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting,
knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door,
and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a
brilliant inspiration. She caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the
windows at the end of the green-house. Then she re-entered. She tugged
now with renewed strength at Wedderburn's motionless body, and brought
the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with the
grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy, she lugged it and him
into the open air.
Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one,
and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away
from the horror.
He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches.
The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of
glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained
hands. For a moment he thought impossible things.
"Bring some water!" she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies.
When, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found
her weeping with excitement, and with Wedderburn's head upon her knee,
wiping the blood from his face.
"What's the matter?" said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and
closing them again at once.
"Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Doctor
Haddon at once," she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the
water; and added, seeing he hesitated, "I will tell you all about it
when you come back."
Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was
troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, "You
fainted in the hothouse."
"And the orchid?"
"I will see to that," she said.
Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had
suffered no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some
pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper
told her incredible story in fragments to Dr Haddon. "Come to the
orchid-house and see," she said.
The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the
sickly perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn aërial rootlets
lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks.
The stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and
the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals.
The doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the aërial
rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated.
The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and
putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and
all the array of Wedderburn's orchids was shrivelled and prostrate.
But Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory
of his strange adventure.
IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY
The observatory at Avu, in Borneo, stands on the spur of the mountain.
To the north rises the old crater, black at night against the
unfathomable blue of the sky. From the little circular building, with
its mushroom dome, the slopes plunge steeply downward into the black
mysteries of the tropical forest beneath. The little house in which
the observer and his assistant live is about fifty yards from the
observatory, and beyond this are the huts of their native attendants.
Thaddy, the chief observer, was down with a slight fever. His
assistant, Woodhouse, paused for a moment in silent contemplation of
the tropical night before commencing his solitary vigil. The night
was very still. Now and then voices and laughter came from the native
huts, or the cry of some strange animal was heard from the midst of
the mystery of the forest. Nocturnal insects appeared in ghostly
fashion out of the darkness, and fluttered round his light. He
thought, perhaps, of all the possibilities of discovery that still
lay in the black tangle beneath him; for to the naturalist the virgin
forests of Borneo are still a wonderland full of strange questions and
half-suspected discoveries. Woodhouse carried a small lantern in his
hand, and its yellow glow contrasted vividly with the infinite series
of tints between lavender-blue and black in which the landscape was
painted. His hands and face were smeared with ointment against the
attacks of the mosquitoes.
Even in these days of celestial photography, work done in a purely
temporary erection, and with only the most primitive appliances in
addition to the telescope, still involves a very large amount of
cramped and motionless watching. He sighed as he thought of the
physical fatigues before him, stretched himself, and entered the
observatory.
The reader is probably familiar with the structure of an ordinary
astronomical observatory. The building is usually cylindrical in
shape, with a very light hemispherical roof capable of being turned
round from the interior. The telescope is supported upon a stone
pillar in the centre, and a clockwork arrangement compensates for the
earth's rotation, and allows a star once found to be continuously
observed. Besides this, there is a compact tracery of wheels and
screws about its point of support, by which the astronomer adjusts it.
There is, of course, a slit in the movable roof which follows the eye
of the telescope in its survey of the heavens. The observer sits or
lies on a sloping wooden arrangement, which he can wheel to any part
of the observatory as the position of the telescope may require.
Within it is advisable to have things as dark as possible, in order to
enhance the brilliance of the stars observed.
The lantern flared as Woodhouse entered his circular den, and the
general darkness fled into black shadows behind the big machine, from
which it presently seemed to creep back over the whole place again as
the light waned. The slit was a profound transparent blue, in which
six stars shone with tropical brilliance, and their light lay, a
pallid gleam, along the black tube of the instrument. Woodhouse
shifted the roof, and then proceeding to the telescope, turned first
one wheel and then another, the great cylinder slowly swinging into a
new position. Then he glanced through the finder, the little
companion telescope, moved the roof a little more, made some further
adjustments, and set the clockwork in motion. He took off his jacket,
for the night was very hot, and pushed into position the uncomfortable
seat to which he was condemned for the next four hours. Then with a
sigh he resigned himself to his watch upon the mysteries of space.
There was no sound now in the observatory, and the lantern waned
steadily. Outside there was the occasional cry of some animal in alarm
or pain, or calling to its mate, and the intermittent sounds of the
Malay and Dyak servants. Presently one of the men began a queer
chanting song, in which the others joined at intervals. After this it
would seem that they turned in for the night, for no further sound
came from their direction, and the whispering stillness became more
and more profound.
The clockwork ticked steadily. The shrill hum of a mosquito explored
the place and grew shriller in indignation at Woodhouse's ointment.
Then the lantern went out and all the observatory was black.
Woodhouse shifted his position presently, when the slow movement of
the telescope had carried it beyond the limits of his comfort.
He was watching a little group of stars in the Milky Way, in one of
which his chief had seen or fancied a remarkable colour variability.
It was not a part of the regular work for which the establishment
existed, and for that reason perhaps Woodhouse was deeply interested.
He must have forgotten things terrestrial. All his attention was
concentrated upon the great blue circle of the telescope field--a
circle powdered, so it seemed, with an innumerable multitude of stars,
and all luminous against the blackness of its setting. As he watched
he seemed to himself to become incorporeal, as if he too were floating
in the ether of space. Infinitely remote was the faint red spot he was
observing.
Suddenly the stars were blotted out. A flash of blackness passed, and
they were visible again.
"Queer," said Woodhouse. "Must have been a bird."
The thing happened again, and immediately after the great tube
shivered as though it had been struck. Then the dome of the
observatory resounded with a series of thundering blows. The stars
seemed to sweep aside as the telescope--which had been undamped--swung
round and away from the slit in the roof.
"Great Scott!" cried Woodhouse. "What's this?"
Some huge vague black shape, with a flapping something like a wing,
seemed to be struggling in the aperture of the roof. In another moment
the slit was clear again, and the luminous haze of the Milky Way shone
warm and bright.
The interior of the roof was perfectly black, and only a scraping
sound marked the whereabouts of the unknown creature.
Woodhouse had scrambled from the seat to his feet. He was trembling
violently and in a perspiration with the suddenness of the occurrence.
Was the thing, whatever it was, inside or out? It was big, whatever
else it might be. Something shot across the skylight, and the
telescope swayed. He started violently and put his arm up. It was
in the observatory, then, with him. It was clinging to the roof,
apparently. What the devil was it? Could it see him?
He stood for perhaps a minute in a state of stupefaction. The beast,
whatever it was, clawed at the interior of the dome, and then
something flapped almost into his face, and he saw the momentary
gleam of starlight on a skin like oiled leather. His water-bottle was
knocked off his little table with a smash.
The sense of some strange bird-creature hovering a few yards from his
face in the darkness was indescribably unpleasant to Woodhouse. As his
thought returned he concluded that it must be some night-bird or large
bat. At any risk he would see what it was, and pulling a match from
his pocket, he tried to strike it on the telescope seat. There was a
smoking streak of phosphorescent light, the match flared for a moment,
and he saw a vast wing sweeping towards him, a gleam of grey-brown
fur, and then he was struck in the face and the match knocked out of
his hand. The blow was aimed at his temple, and a claw tore sideways
down to his cheek. He reeled and fell, and he heard the extinguished
lantern smash. Another blow followed as he fell. He was partly
stunned, he felt his own warm blood stream out upon his face.
Instinctively he felt his eyes had been struck at, and, turning over
on his face to protect them, tried to crawl under the protection of
the telescope. He was struck again upon the back, and he heard his
jacket rip, and then the thing hit the roof of the observatory. He
edged as far as he could between the wooden seat and the eyepiece of
the instrument, and turned his body round so that it was chiefly his
feet that were exposed. With these he could at least kick. He was
still in a mystified state. The strange beast banged about in the
darkness, and presently clung to the telescope, making it sway and the
gear rattle. Once it flapped near him, and he kicked out madly and
felt a soft body with his feet. He was horribly scared now. It must be
a big thing to swing the telescope like that. He saw for a moment the
outline of a head black against the starlight, with sharply-pointed
upstanding ears and a crest between them. It seemed to him to be as
big as a mastiff's. Then he began to bawl out as loudly as he could for
help.
At that the thing came down upon him again. As it did so his hand
touched something beside him on the floor. He kicked out, and the
next moment his ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. He
yelled again, and tried to free his leg by kicking with the other.
Then he realised he had the broken water-bottle at his hand, and,
snatching it, he struggled into a sitting posture, and feeling in the
darkness towards his foot, gripped a velvety ear, like the ear of a
big cat. He had seized the water-bottle by its neck and brought it
down with a shivering crash upon the head of the strange beast. He
repeated the blow, and then stabbed and jobbed with the jagged end of
it, in the darkness, where he judged the face might be.
The small teeth relaxed their hold, and at once Woodhouse pulled his
leg free and kicked hard. He felt the sickening feel of fur and bone
giving under his boot. There was a tearing bite at his arm, and he
struck over it at the face, as he judged, and hit damp fur.
There was a pause; then he heard the sound of claws and the dragging
of a heavy body away from him over the observatory floor. Then there
was silence, broken only by his own sobbing breathing, and a sound
like licking. Everything was black except the parallelogram of the
blue skylight with the luminous dust of stars, against which the end
of the telescope now appeared in silhouette. He waited, as it seemed,
an interminable time. Was the thing coming on again? He felt in his
trouser-pocket for some matches, and found one remaining. He tried
to strike this, but the floor was wet, and it spat and went out. He
cursed. He could not see where the door was situated. In his struggle
he had quite lost his bearings. The strange beast, disturbed by the
splutter of the match, began to move again. "Time!" called Woodhouse,
with a sudden gleam of mirth, but the thing was not coming at him
again. He must have hurt it, he thought, with the broken bottle. He
felt a dull pain in his ankle. Probably he was bleeding there. He
wondered if it would support him if he tried to stand up. The night
outside was very still. There was no sound of any one moving. The
sleepy fools had not heard those wings battering upon the dome, nor
his shouts. It was no good wasting strength in shouting. The monster
flapped its wings and startled him into a defensive attitude. He hit
his elbow against the seat, and it fell over with a crash. He cursed
this, and then he cursed the darkness.
Suddenly the oblong patch of starlight seemed to sway to and fro. Was
he going to faint? It would never do to faint. He clenched his fists
and set his teeth to hold himself together. Where had the door got
to? It occurred to him he could get his bearings by the stars visible
through the skylight. The patch of stars he saw was in Sagittarius and
south-eastward; the door was north--or was it north by west? He tried
to think. If he could get the door open he might retreat. It might be
the thing was wounded. The suspense was beastly. "Look here!" he said,
"if you don't come on, I shall come at you."
Then the thing began clambering up the side of the observatory, and
he saw its black outline gradually blot out the skylight. Was it in
retreat? He forgot about the door, and watched as the dome shifted and
creaked. Somehow he did not feel very frightened or excited now. He
felt a curious sinking sensation inside him. The sharply-defined patch
of light, with the black form moving across it, seemed to be growing
smaller and smaller. That was curious. He began to feel very thirsty,
and yet he did not feel inclined to get anything to drink. He seemed
to be sliding down a long funnel.
He felt a burning sensation in his throat, and then he perceived it
was broad daylight, and that one of the Dyak servants was looking at
him with a curious expression. Then there was the top of Thaddy's face
upside down. Funny fellow, Thaddy, to go about like that! Then he
grasped the situation better, and perceived that his head was on
Thaddy's knee, and Thaddy was giving him brandy. And then he saw the
eyepiece of the telescope with a lot of red smears on it. He began to
remember.
"You've made this observatory in a pretty mess," said Thaddy.
The Dyak boy was beating up an egg in brandy. Woodhouse took this and
sat up. He felt a sharp twinge of pain. His ankle was tied up, so were
his arm and the side of his face. The smashed glass, red-stained,
lay about the floor, the telescope seat was overturned, and by the
opposite wall was a dark pool. The door was open, and he saw the grey
summit of the mountain against a brilliant background of blue sky.
"Pah!" said Woodhouse. "Who's been killing calves here? Take me out of
it."
Then he remembered the Thing, and the fight he had had with it.
"What _was_ it?" he said to Thaddy--"The Thing I fought with?"
"_You_ know that best," said Thaddy. "But, anyhow, don't worry
yourself now about it. Have some more to drink."
Thaddy, however, was curious enough, and it was a hard struggle
between duty and inclination to keep Woodhouse quiet until he was
decently put away in bed, and had slept upon the copious dose of
meat-extract Thaddy considered advisable. They then talked it over
together.
"It was," said Woodhouse, "more like a big bat than anything else in
the world. It had sharp, short ears, and soft fur, and its wings were
leathery. Its teeth were little, but devilish sharp, and its jaw could
not have been very strong or else it would have bitten through my
ankle."
"It has pretty nearly," said Thaddy.
"It seemed to me to hit out with its claws pretty freely. That
is about as much as I know about the beast. Our conversation was
intimate, so to speak, and yet not confidential."
"The Dyak chaps talk about a Big Colugo, a Klang-utang--whatever
that may be. It does not often attack man, but I suppose you made it
nervous. They say there is a Big Colugo and a Little Colugo, and a
something else that sounds like gobble. They all fly about at night.
For my own part I know there are flying foxes and flying lemurs about
here, but they are none of them very big beasts."
"There are more things in heaven and earth," said Woodhouse--and
Thaddy groaned at the quotation--"and more particularly in the forests
of Borneo, than are dreamt of in our philosophies. On the whole, if
the Borneo fauna is going to disgorge any more of its novelties upon
me, I should prefer that it did so when I was not occupied in the
observatory at night and alone."
THE TRIUMPHS OF A TAXIDERMIST
Here are some of the secrets of taxidermy. They were told me by the
taxidermist in a mood of elation. He told me them in the time between
the first glass of whisky and the fourth, when a man is no longer
cautious and yet not drunk. We sat in his den together; his library it
was, his sitting and his eating-room--separated by a bead curtain, so
far as the sense of sight went, from the noisome den where he plied
his trade.
He sat on a deck chair, and when he was not tapping refractory bits of
coal with them, he kept his feet--on which he wore, after the manner
of sandals, the holy relics of a pair of carpet slippers--out of the
way upon the mantel-piece, among the glass eyes. And his trousers,
by-the-by--though they have nothing to do with his triumphs--were a
most horrible yellow plaid, such as they made when our fathers wore
side-whiskers and there were crinolines in the land. Further, his hair
was black, his face rosy, and his eye a fiery brown; and his coat was
chiefly of grease upon a basis of velveteen. And his pipe had a bowl
of china showing the Graces, and his spectacles were always askew, the
left eye glaring nakedly at you, small and penetrating; the right,
seen through a glass darkly, magnified and mild. Thus his discourse
ran: "There never was a man who could stuff like me, Bellows, never. I
have stuffed elephants and I have stuffed moths, and the things have
looked all the livelier and better for it. And I have stuffed human
beings--chiefly amateur ornithologists. But I stuffed a nigger once.
"No, there is no law against it. I made him with all his fingers out
and used him as a hat-rack, but that fool Homersby got up a quarrel
with him late one night and spoilt him. That was before your time. It
is hard to get skins, or I would have another.