The old man showed pleasure in being thus called upon. He cleared his
throat and began.
“Twenty or thirty years ago my story was in great demand. But in these
days nobody seems interested--”
“There you go!” Hare-Lip cried hotly. “Cut out the funny stuff and talk
sensible. What's _interested?_ You talk like a baby that don't know
how.”
“Let him alone,” Edwin urged, “or he'll get mad and won't talk at all.
Skip the funny places. We'll catch on to some of what he tells us.”
“Let her go, Granser,” Hoo-Hoo encouraged; for the old man was already
maundering about the disrespect for elders and the reversion to cruelty
of all humans that fell from high culture to primitive conditions.
The tale began.
“There were very many people in the world in those days. San Francisco
alone held four millions--”
“What is millions?” Edwin interrupted.
Granser looked at him kindly.
“I know you cannot count beyond ten, so I will tell you. Hold up your
two hands. On both of them you have altogether ten fingers and thumbs.
Very well. I now take this grain of sand--you hold it, Hoo-Hoo.” He
dropped the grain of sand into the lad's palm and went on. “Now that
grain of sand stands for the ten fingers of Edwin. I add another grain.
That's ten more fingers. And I add another, and another, and another,
until I have added as many grains as Edwin has fingers and thumbs. That
makes what I call one hundred. Remember that word--one hundred. Now I
put this pebble in Hare-Lip's hand. It stands for ten grains of sand, or
ten tens of fingers, or one hundred fingers. I put in ten pebbles. They
stand for a thousand fingers. I take a mussel-shell, and it stands for
ten pebbles, or one hundred grains of sand, or one thousand fingers....”
And so on, laboriously, and with much reiteration, he strove to build
up in their minds a crude conception of numbers. As the quantities
increased, he had the boys holding different magnitudes in each of
their hands. For still higher sums, he laid the symbols on the log of
driftwood; and for symbols he was hard put, being compelled to use the
teeth from the skulls for millions, and the crab-shells for billions.
It was here that he stopped, for the boys were showing signs of becoming
tired.
“There were four million people in San Francisco--four teeth.”
The boys' eyes ranged along from the teeth and from hand to hand, down
through the pebbles and sand-grains to Edwin's fingers. And back again
they ranged along the ascending series in the effort to grasp such
inconceivable numbers.
“That was a lot of folks, Granser,” Edwin at last hazarded.
“Like sand on the beach here, like sand on the beach, each grain of sand
a man, or woman, or child. Yes, my boy, all those people lived right
here in San Francisco. And at one time or another all those people
came out on this very beach--more people than there are grains of sand.
More--more--more. And San Francisco was a noble city. And across the
bay--where we camped last year, even more people lived, clear from Point
Richmond, on the level ground and on the hills, all the way around to
San Leandro--one great city of seven million people.--Seven teeth...
there, that's it, seven millions.”
Again the boys' eyes ranged up and down from Edwin's fingers to the
teeth on the log.
“The world was full of people. The census of 2010 gave eight billions
for the whole world--eight crab-shells, yes, eight billions. It was not
like to-day. Mankind knew a great deal more about getting food. And the
more food there was, the more people there were. In the year 1800, there
were one hundred and seventy millions in Europe alone. One hundred years
later--a grain of sand, Hoo-Hoo--one hundred years later, at 1900, there
were five hundred millions in Europe--five grains of sand, Hoo-Hoo, and
this one tooth. This shows how easy was the getting of food, and how men
increased. And in the year 2000 there were fifteen hundred millions
in Europe. And it was the same all over the rest of the world. Eight
crab-shells there, yes, eight billion people were alive on the earth
when the Scarlet Death began.
“I was a young man when the Plague came--twenty-seven years old; and I
lived on the other side of San Francisco Bay, in Berkeley. You remember
those great stone houses, Edwin, when we came down the hills from Contra
Costa? That was where I lived, in those stone houses. I was a professor
of English literature.”
[Illustration: I was a professor of English literature 054]
Much of this was over the heads of the boys, but they strove to
comprehend dimly this tale of the past.
“What was them stone houses for?” Hare-Lip queried.
“You remember when your dad taught you to swim?” The boy nodded.
“Well, in the University of California--that is the name we had for
the houses--we taught young men and women how to think, just as I have
taught you now, by sand and pebbles and shells, to know how many people
lived in those days. There was very much to teach. The young men and
women we taught were called students. We had large rooms in which we
taught. I talked to them, forty or fifty at a time, just as I am talking
to you now. I told them about the books other men had written before
their time, and even, sometimes, in their time--”
“Was that all you did?--just talk, talk, talk?” Hoo-Hoo demanded. “Who
hunted your meat for you? and milked the goats? and caught the fish?”
“A sensible question, Hoo-Hoo, a sensible question. As I have told you,
in those days food-getting was easy. We were very wise. A few men got
the food for many men. The other men did other things. As you say, I
talked. I talked all the time, and for this food was given me--much
food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not tasted in sixty
years and shall never taste again. I sometimes think the most wonderful
achievement of our tremendous civilization was food--its inconceivable
abundance, its infinite variety, its marvellous delicacy. O my
grandsons, life was life in those days, when we had such wonderful
things to eat.”
This was beyond the boys, and they let it slip by, words and thoughts,
as a mere senile wandering in the narrative.
“Our food-getters were called _freemen_. This was a joke. We of the
ruling classes owned all the land, all the machines, everything. These
food-getters were our slaves. We took almost all the food they got, and
left them a little so that they might eat, and work, and get us more
food--”
“I'd have gone into the forest and got food for myself,” Hare-Lip
announced; “and if any man tried to take it away from me, I'd have
killed him.”
The old man laughed.
“Did I not tell you that we of the ruling class owned all the land, all
the forest, everything? Any food-getter who would not get food for us,
him we punished or compelled to starve to death. And very few did that.
They preferred to get food for us, and make clothes for us, and prepare
and administer to us a thousand--a mussel-shell, Hoo-Hoo--a thousand
satisfactions and delights. And I was Professor Smith in those
days--Professor James Howard Smith. And my lecture courses were very
popular--that is, very many of the young men and women liked to hear me
talk about the books other men had written.
“And I was very happy, and I had beautiful things to eat. And my hands
were soft, because I did no work with them, and my body was clean
all over and dressed in the softest garments--
“He surveyed his mangy goat-skin with disgust.
“We did not wear such things in those days. Even the slaves had better
garments. And we were most clean. We washed our faces and hands often
every day. You boys never wash unless you fall into the water or go
swimming.”
“Neither do you Granzer,” Hoo-Hoo retorted.
“I know, I know, I am a filthy old man, but times have changed. Nobody
washes these days, there are no conveniences. It is sixty years since I
have seen a piece of soap.
[Illustration: Sixty years since I have seen a piece of soap. 059]
“You do not know what soap is, and I shall not tell you, for I am telling
the story of the Scarlet Death. You know what sickness is. We called
it a disease. Very many of the diseases came from what we called germs.
Remember that word--germs. A germ is a very small thing. It is like a
woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year when
they run in the forest. Only the germ is very small. It is so small that
you cannot see it--”
Hoo-Hoo began to laugh.
“You're a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can't see. If you
can't see 'em, how do you know they are? That's what I want to know. How
do you know anything you can't see?”
“A good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see--some of
them. We had what we called microscopes and ultramicroscopes, and we put
them to our eyes and looked through them, so that we saw things larger
than they really were, and many things we could not see without the
microscopes at all. Our best ultramicroscopes could make a germ look
forty thousand times larger. A mussel-shell is a thousand fingers like
Edwin's. Take forty mussel-shells, and by as many times larger was the
germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after that, we
had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the
forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still. And
thus we saw all these things which our eyes of themselves could not see.
Take a grain of sand. Break it into ten pieces. Take one piece and break
it into ten. Break one of those pieces into ten, and one of those into
ten, and one of those into ten, and one of those into ten, and do it all
day, and maybe, by sunset, you will have a piece as small as one of the
germs.” The boys were openly incredulous. Hare-Lip sniffed and sneered
and Hoo-Hoo snickered, until Edwin nudged them to be silent.
“The woodtick sucks the blood of the dog, but the germ, being so very
small, goes right into the blood of the body, and there it has
many children. In those days there would be as many as a billion--a
crab-shell, please--as many as that crab-shell in one man's body. We
called germs micro-organisms. When a few million, or a billion, of them
were in a man, in all the blood of a man, he was sick. These germs were
a disease. There were many different kinds of them--more different kinds
than there are grains of sand on this beach. We knew only a few of the
kinds. The micro-organic world was an invisible world, a world we could
not see, and we knew very little about it. Yet we did know something.
There was the _bacillus anthracis_; there was the _micrococcus_; there
was the _Bacterium termo_, and the _Bacterium lactis_--that's what
turns the goat milk sour even to this day, Hare-Lip; and there were
_Schizomycetes_ without end. And there were many others....”
Here the old man launched into a disquisition on germs and their
natures, using words and phrases of such extraordinary length and
meaninglessness, that the boys grinned at one another and looked out
over the deserted ocean till they forgot the old man was babbling on.
“But the Scarlet Death, Granser,” Edwin at last suggested.
Granser recollected himself, and with a start tore himself away from the
rostrum of the lecture-hall, where, to another world audience, he
had been expounding the latest theory, sixty years gone, of germs and
germ-diseases.
“Yes, yes, Edwin; I had forgotten. Sometimes the memory of the past is
very strong upon me, and I forget that I am a dirty old man, clad in
goat-skin, wandering with my savage grandsons who are goatherds in
the primeval wilderness. 'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,' and so
lapsed our glorious, colossal civilization. I am Granser, a tired old
man. I belong to the tribe of Santa Rosans. I married into that tribe.
My sons and daughters married into the Chauffeurs, the Sacramen-tos, and
the Palo-Altos. You, Hare-Lip, are of the Chauffeurs. You, Edwin, are
of the Sacramentos. And you, Hoo-Hoo, are of the Palo-Altos. Your tribe
takes its name from a town that was near the seat of another great
institution of learning. It was called Stanford University. Yes, I
remember now. It is perfectly clear. I was telling you of the Scarlet
Death. Where was I in my story?”
“You was telling about germs, the things you can't see but which make
men sick,” Edwin prompted.
“Yes, that's where I was. A man did not notice at first when only a few
of these germs got into his body. But each germ broke in half and became
two germs, and they kept doing this very rapidly so that in a short time
there were many millions of them in the body. Then the man was sick. He
had a disease, and the disease was named after the kind of a germ that
was in him. It might be measles, it might be influenza, it might be
yellow fever; it might be any of thousands and thousands of kinds of
diseases.
“Now this is the strange thing about these germs. There were always new
ones coming to live in men's bodies. Long and long and long ago, when
there were only a few men in the world, there were few diseases. But
as men increased and lived closely together in great cities and
civilizations, new diseases arose, new kinds of germs entered their
bodies. Thus were countless millions and billions of human beings
killed. And the more thickly men packed together, the more terrible were
the new diseases that came to be. Long before my time, in the middle
ages, there was the Black Plague that swept across Europe. It swept
across Europe many times. There was tuberculosis, that entered into men
wherever they were thickly packed. A hundred years before my time there
was the bubonic plague. And in Africa was the sleeping sickness. The
bacteriologists fought all these sicknesses and destroyed them, just as
you boys fight the wolves away from your goats, or squash the mosquitoes
that light on you. The bacteriologists--”
“But, Granser, what is a what-you-call-it?” Edwin interrupted.
“You, Edwin, are a goatherd. Your task is to watch the goats. You know a
great deal about goats. A bacteriologist watches germs. That's his
task, and he knows a great deal about them. So, as I was saying, the
bacteriologists fought with the germs and destroyed them--sometimes.
There was leprosy, a horrible disease. A hundred years before I was
born, the bacteriologists discovered the germ of leprosy. They knew all
about it. They made pictures of it. I have seen those pictures. But
they never found a way to kill it. But in 1984, there was the Pantoblast
Plague, a disease that broke out in a country called Brazil and that
killed millions of people. But the bacteriologists found it out, and
found the way to kill it, so that the Pantoblast Plague went no farther.
They made what they called a serum, which they put into a man's body and
which killed the pantoblast germs without killing the man. And in 1910,
there was Pellagra, and also the hookworm. These were easily killed
by the bacteriologists. But in 1947 there arose a new disease that had
never been seen before. It got into the bodies of babies of only ten
months old or less, and it made them unable to move their hands and
feet, or to eat, or anything; and the bacteriologists were eleven years
in discovering how to kill that particular germ and save the babies.
“In spite of all these diseases, and of all the new ones that continued
to arise, there were more and more men in the world. This was because it
was easy to get food. The easier it was to get food, the more men
there were; the more men there were, the more thickly were they packed
together on the earth; and the more thickly they were packed, the more
new kinds of germs became diseases. There were warnings. Soldervetzsky,
as early as 1929, told the bacteriologists that they had no guaranty
against some new disease, a thousand times more deadly than any they
knew, arising and killing by the hundreds of millions and even by the
billion. You see, the micro-organic world remained a mystery to the end.
They knew there was such a world, and that from time to time armies of
new germs emerged from it to kill men.
“And that was all they knew about it. For all they knew, in that
invisible micro-organic world there might be as many different kinds of
germs as there are grains of sand on this beach. And also, in that same
invisible world it might well be that new kinds of germs came to be.
It might be there that life originated--the 'abysmal fecundity,'
Soldervetzsky called it, applying the words of other men who had written
before him....”
It was at this point that Hare-Lip rose to his feet, an expression of
huge contempt on his face.
[Illustration: Granser, you make me sick with your gabble 071]
“Granser,” he announced, “you make me sick with your gabble. Why don't
you tell about the Red Death? If you ain't going to, say so, an' we'll
start back for camp.”
The old man looked at him and silently began to cry. The weak tears of
age rolled down his cheeks and all the feebleness of his eighty-seven
years showed in his grief-stricken countenance.
“Sit down,” Edwin counselled soothingly. “Granser's all right. He's just
gettin' to the Scarlet Death, ain't you, Granser? He's just goin' to
tell us about it right now. Sit down, Hare-Lip. Go ahead, Granser.”