Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS
BY FRANK R. STOCKTON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE-THALIA
II. THE SARDIS WORKS
III. MARGARET RALEIGH
IV. THE MISSION OF SAMUEL BLOCK V. UNDER WATER
VI. VOICES FROM THE POLAR SEAS
VII. GOOD NEWS GOES FROM SARDIS
VIII. THE DEVIL ON THE DIPSEY
IX. THE ARTESIAN RAY
X. “LAKE SHIVER”
XI. THEY BELIEVE IT IS THE POLAR SEA
XII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL TAKES COMMAND
XIII. LONGITUDE EVERYTHING
XIV. A REGION OF NOTHINGNESS
XV. THE AUTOMATIC SHELL
XVI. THE TRACK OF THE SHELL
XVII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL DECLINES TO GO WHALING
XVIII. MR. MARCY'S CANAL
XIX. THE ICY GATEWAY
XX. “THAT IS HOW I LOVE YOU”
XXI. THE CAVE OF LIGHT
XXII. CLEWE'S THEORY
XXIII. THE LAST DIVE OF THE DIPSEY
XXIV. ROVINSKI COMES TO THE SURFACE
XXV. LAURELS
THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS
CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE-THALIA
It was about noon of a day in early summer that a westward-bound
Atlantic liner was rapidly nearing the port of New York. Not long
before, the old light-house on Montauk Point had been sighted, and the
company on board the vessel were animated by the knowledge that in a few
hours they would be at the end of their voyage.
The vessel now speeding along the southern coast of Long Island was the
Euterpe-Thalia, from Southampton. On Wednesday morning she had left her
English port, and many of her passengers were naturally anxious to be
on shore in time to transact their business on the last day of the week.
There were even some who expected to make their return voyage on the
Melpomene-Thalia, which would leave New York on the next Monday.
The Euterpe-Thalia was one of those combination ocean vessels which had
now been in use for nearly ten years, and although the present voyage
was not a particularly rapid one, it had been made in a little less than
three days.
As may be easily imagined, a vessel like this was a very different
craft from the old steamers which used to cross the Atlantic--“ocean
greyhounds” they were called--in the latter part of the nineteenth
century.
It would be out of place here to give a full description of the vessels
which at the period of our story, in 1947, crossed the Atlantic at
an average time of three days, but an idea of their construction
will suffice. Most of these vessels belonged to the class of the
Euterpe-Thalia, and were, in fact, compound marine structures, the two
portions being entirely distinct from each other. The great hull of
each of these vessels contained nothing but its electric engines and its
propelling machinery, with the necessary fuel and adjuncts.
The upper portion of the compound vessel consisted of decks and quarters
for passengers and crew and holds for freight. These were all comprised
within a vast upper hull, which rested upon the lower hull containing
the motive power, the only point of contact being an enormous
ball-and-socket joint. Thus, no matter how much the lower hull might
roll and pitch and toss, the upper hull remained level and comparatively
undisturbed.
Not only were comfort to passengers and security to movable freight
gained by this arrangement of the compound vessel, but it was now
possible to build the lower hull of much less size than had been the
custom in the former days of steamships, when the hull had to be large
enough to contain everything. As the more modern hull held nothing but
the machinery, it was small in comparison with the superincumbent upper
hull, and thus the force of the engine, once needed to propel a vast
mass through the resisting medium of the ocean, was now employed upon a
comparatively small hull, the great body of the vessel meeting with no
resistance except that of the air.
It was not necessary that the two parts of these compound vessels
should always be the same. The upper hulls belonging to one of the
transatlantic lines were generally so constructed that they could be
adjusted to any one of their lower or motive-power hulls. Each hull had
a name of its own, and so the combination name of the entire vessel was
frequently changed.
It was not three o'clock when the Euterpe-Thalia passed through the
Narrows and moved slowly towards her pier on the Long Island side of
the city. The quarantine officers, who had accompanied the vessel on her
voyage, had dropped their report in the official tug which had met the
vessel on her entrance into the harbor, and as the old custom-house
annoyances had long since been abolished, most of the passengers were
prepared for a speedy landing.
One of these passengers--a man about thirty-five--stood looking out
over the stern of the vessel instead of gazing, as were most of his
companions, towards the city which they were approaching. He looked out
over the harbor, under the great bridge gently spanning the distance
between the western end of Long Island and the New Jersey shore--its
central pier resting where once lay the old Battery--and so he gazed
over the river, and over the houses stretching far to the west, as if
his eyes could catch some signs of the country far beyond. This
was Roland Clewe, the hero of our story, who had been studying and
experimenting for the past year in the scientific schools and workshops
of Germany. It was towards his own laboratory and his own workshops,
which lay out in the country far beyond the wide line of buildings and
settlements which line the western bank of the Hudson, that his heart
went out and his eyes vainly strove to follow.
Skilfully steered, the Thalia moved slowly between high stone piers of
massive construction; but the Euterpe, or upper part of the vessel, did
not pass between the piers, but over them both, and when the pier-heads
projected beyond her stern the motion of the lower vessel ceased; then
the great piston, which supported the socket in which the ball of the
Euterpe moved, slowly began to descend into the central portion of the
Thalia, and as the tide was low, it was not long before each side of
the upper hull rested firmly and securely upon the stone piers. Then the
socket on the lower vessel descended rapidly until it was entirely clear
of the ball, and the Thalia backed out from between the piers to take
its place in a dock where it would be fitted for the voyage of the next
day but one, when it would move under the Melpomene, resting on its
piers a short distance below, and, adjusting its socket to her ball,
would lift her free from the piers and carry her across the ocean.
The pier of the Euterpe was not far from the great Long Island and New
Jersey Bridge, and Roland Clewe, when he reached the broad sidewalk
which ran along the river-front, walked rapidly towards the bridge. When
he came to it he stepped into one of the elevators, which were placed at
intervals along its sides from the waterfront to the far-distant point
where it touched the land, and in company with a dozen other pedestrians
speedily rose to the top of the bridge, on which moved two great
platforms or floors, one always keeping on its way to the east, and the
other to the west. The floor of the elevator detached itself from the
rest of the structure and kept company with the movable platform until
all of its passengers had stepped on to the latter, when it returned
with such persons as wished to descend at that point.
As Clewe took his way along the platform, walking westward with it, as
if he would thus hasten his arrival at the other end of the bridge,
he noticed that great improvements had been made during his year of
absence. The structures on the platforms, to which people might retire
in bad weather or when they wished refreshments, were more numerous and
apparently better appointed than when he had seen them last, and the
long rows of benches on which passengers might sit in the open air
during their transit had also increased in number. Many people walked
across the bridge, taking their exercise, while some who were out for
the air and the sake of the view walked in the direction opposite to
that in which the platform was moving, thus lengthening the pleasant
trip.
At the great elevator over the old Battery many passengers went down and
many came up, but the wide platforms still moved to the east and moved
to the west, never stopping or changing their rate of speed.
Roland Clewe remained on the bridge until he had reached its western
end, far out on the old Jersey flats, and there he took a car of the
suspended electric line, which would carry him to his home, some fifty
miles in the interior. The rails of this line ran along the top of
parallel timbers, some twenty feet from the ground, and below and
between these rails the cars were suspended, the wheels which rested on
the rails being attached near the top of the car. Thus it was impossible
for the cars to run off the track; and as their bottoms or floors were
ten or twelve feet from the ground, they could meet with no dangerous
obstacles. In consequence of the safety of this structure, the trains
were run at a very high speed.
Roland Clewe was a man who had given his life, even before he ceased to
be a boy, to the investigation of physical science and its applications,
and those who thought they knew him called him a great inventor; but
he, who knew himself better than any one else could know him, was aware
that, so far, he had not invented anything worthy the power which he
felt within himself.
After the tidal wave of improvements and discoveries which had burst
upon the world at the end of the nineteenth century there had been a
gradual subsidence of the waters of human progress, and year by year
they sank lower and lower, until, when the twentieth century was yet
young, it was a common thing to say that the human race seemed to have
gone backward fifty or even a hundred years.
It had become fashionable to be unprogressive. Like old furniture in
the century which had gone out, old manners, customs, and ideas had
now become more attractive than those which were modern and present.
Philosophers said that society was retrograding, that it was becoming
satisfied with less than was its due; but society answered that it was
falling back upon the things of its ancestors, which were sounder and
firmer, more simple and beautiful, more worthy of the true man and
woman, than all that mass of harassing improvement which had swept
down upon mankind in the troubled and nervous days at the end of the
nineteenth century.
On the great highways, smooth and beautiful, the stage-coach had taken
the place to a great degree of the railroad train; the steamship, which
moved most evenly and with less of the jarring and shaking consequent
upon high speed, was the favored vessel with ocean travellers. It
was not considered good form to read the daily papers; and only those
hurried to their business who were obliged to do so in order that their
employers might attend to their affairs in the leisurely manner which
was then the custom of the business world.
Fast horses had become almost unknown, and with those who still used
these animals a steady walker was the favorite. Bicycles had gone out as
the new century came in, it being a matter of course that they should
be superseded by the new electric vehicles of every sort and fashion, on
which one could work the pedals if he desired exercise, or sit quietly
if his inclinations were otherwise, and only the very young or the
intemperate allowed themselves rapid motion on their electric wheels. It
would have been considered as vulgar at that time to speed over a smooth
road as it would have been thought in the nineteenth century to run
along the city sidewalk.
People thought the world moved slower; at all events, they hoped
it would soon do so. Even the wiser revolutionists postponed their
outbreaks. Success, they believed, was fain to smile upon effort which
had been well postponed.
Men came to look upon a telegram as an insult; the telephone was
preferred, because it allowed one to speak slowly if he chose. Snap-shot
cameras were found only in the garrets. The fifteen minutes' sittings
now in vogue threw upon the plate the color of the eyes, hair, and the
flesh tones of the sitter. Ladies wore hoop skirts.
But these days of passivism at last passed by; earnest thinkers had not
believed in them; they knew they were simply reactionary, and could
not last; and the century was not twenty years old when the world found
itself in a storm of active effort never known in its history before.
Religion, politics, literature, and art were called upon to get up and
shake themselves free of the drowsiness of their years of inaction.
On that great and crowded stage where the thinkers of the world were
busy in creating new parts for themselves without much reference to what
other people were doing in their parts, Roland Clewe was now ready to
start again, with more earnestness and enthusiasm than before, to essay
a character which, if acted as he wished to act it, would give him
exceptional honor and fame, and to the world, perhaps, exceptional
advantage.