"He intends," he explained, "to send forth at intervals sharp notes
of inaudible sound which, acting like audible sound, will come back
from an iceberg, a ship, or a coast as an echo, and the time elapsed,
recorded by a suitable receiver, and divided by two, will give the
distance."
"Inaudible sound," I answered. "That seems anomalous."
"Hypothetical rather--not yet proven. But who knows? There are sounds
of too low and long a vibration--I do not mean the roll of a drum,
which is merely a succession of beats--that cannot be cognized by the
human ear. There are sounds too high to be heard, such sounds as the
chirp of a cricket, or tweet of a bird. Some people never hear these
sounds. Why not use these sounds, and receive their echoes by delicate
instruments?"
"Give it up," I said hopelessly.
"They call silence the negation of sound," he continued, "as they
call darkness the negation of light. There is polarity throughout the
universe. We are aware of plus and minus quantities in mathematics,
each calculable by the same methods.
"We know of the north and south poles of the magnet; we know of
positive and negative electricity; we know, by the expansion of gases,
that there is a force the opposite of gravitation, and which repels
instead of attracts. Some theorists have called this force apergy. I
believe that all these negative forces exist, but only in the presence,
or because of the existence, of their opposites. For I know that cold,
which, more than all other conditions, may seem to be a mere negation,
will answer to the laws of other radiant energy, and, like heat,
decrease in force as the square of the distance."
I looked stupidly at him, then at Old Bill, who, no more stupid than
myself under this avalanche of erudition, was puttering about, cleaning
up the studio. Not noticing my bewilderment, the old artist went on.
"But an iceberg," he said, "is too large to be cognized by the law of
inverse squares. It would need a diaphragm bigger than itself--bigger
than the largest ship, to collect its radiations of cold. Could it
be reduced to a point, however, and its cold concentrated, we could
calculate its distance and direction, at least, if not its size. You
know the nature of a searchlight, do you not?"
He looked at me now, and, trying to bring an intelligent expression to
my face, I nodded.
"An arc light in the focus of a parabolic reflector placed behind it,"
he continued. "Stand in the path of its beam and you will sensibly feel
the heat. Place a large lens--as large as the aperture--in the way, and
focus the beam on yourself, and you will feel a heat equal to that of
the arc light--about seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit--less what has
radiated into the surrounding air.
"Now, get out of that focus, and place an opaque disk on the center
of the searchlight aperture, and the beam will go forth with a dark
center, like a hollow pipe of light and heat. And this dark center will
have the temperature of the outer air, plus only what has radiated into
it from the surrounding pipe.
"But after passing through the lens both the light and the dark center
will reach the same focus, and if you can place a thermometer, without
burning yourself, near the focus of the dark core, you will notice
a great drop in the temperature. So, you see, cold, while negative
heat, is a minus quantity; but it needs the presence of heat to make it
respond to the same laws that govern heat."
He paused for a moment, then looked at me; and this time I could not
conceal the vacuous expression on my face. He smiled, then turned to
Old Bill.
"Bill," he said, "what do you think about it? Do you think all gases
will ultimately be solidified as they are now liquefied? Do you think
the absolute zero of space can be determined by any application of the
integral or the differential calculus?"
In answer to this whimsical question Bill said: "I dunno, sir. I can't
calcilate. I jess 'member I washed the windows an' swept up an' dusted.
D'ye want me in the mornin', sir?"
"No, Bill. If you're through, that'll do to-night."
"I'll want you, Bill," I interposed, as the old fellow started for the
door. "Come at nine o'clock, and wear your oldest, raggedest clothes."
"Yes, sir," answered Bill, and departed.
"It's the last figure in the picture," I added quickly, to forestall a
resumption of the harrowing lecture on matters I did not understand.
"And it will be done about noon. I'll be glad if you will come in and
look it over."
"Most certainly," said my friend. "Been a long time at it, haven't you?"
"Yes; but I didn't want to bother you until it was done. I want to be
original, if I can, and depend on my own conceptions."
"That's right. Be yourself. I'll be in at noon, and look at it."
I _had_ been a long time on that picture, in conception, composition,
and execution; and it had followed a longer time of inactivity, during
which I had done nothing in the way of work except to search my soul
for an idea. At last it had come to me, and I had made sketches, one
after the other, until, in composition, it was complete; then I had
painted it.
Still, there lacked a motive. It was a picture, but it told no story
intelligible to the eye without an explanatory title, and I had
not yet thought of a title. The scene was on the deck of a ship--a
flush-deck, polacca-masted craft, a type of rig I had seen but once
in my travels--and the viewpoint was at the break of the poop,
looking forward. The fore and mainsail were clewed up, hanging in the
buntlines, and the flying jib was down a-bag on the jib-boom end.
The craft was heeled, a gale of wind blowing, as evidenced by the gray
storm clouds and a sea washing over the bow, and scattered about the
deck were dead men, of the Chinese, Malay, or negro type; but here
consistency ended, for though these men were bareheaded and barefooted,
indicating warm weather, huge icicles hung from the fife rails and
scuttles, while the sea bordering the bow lost the translucency of
water as it reached the deck, taking on the white, glistening effect of
ice, in which some of the bodies were frozen.
Near the foremast, on the weather side, his feet and ankles hidden in
ice, stood a huge negro holding over his head at full length the figure
of a living man, his attitude indicating an intention to hurl him to
the deck. On his dark, evil face, as on the faces of the dead men, was
an expression of terror and pain.
But the face of the living man held over his head showed nothing. I had
not yet painted the face, and that was why I wanted Old Bill, to take
the pose and assume a terrified look. I had painted the others from
my imagination, taking care only to make each one different; but this
living face of a man about to be hurled to death was to be the center
of the picture--to be worked out in detail, with all the high lights. A
grotesque, Dantesque, Doresque, horrible idea for a picture, one might
well think; but its incongruity never struck me as my mind had worked
it out.
Old Bill came on time next morning, and, without looking at the
painting, climbed to a plank I had placed between two easels about
seven feet above the floor. He lay on his side, and at my direction
assumed the pose I wanted--arms and legs outstretched, with fingers
clutching at nothing. In this, he suited me; but when it came to taking
a frightened look, he failed. His wrinkled features went into all sorts
of contortions, and I painted, wiped out, and repainted, again and
again, then gave it up. The world had treated Old Bill too kindly, I
thought, and he could not comprehend fear.
When I had paid him for his time he left, and I painted in the face
from imagination alone--giving it, not the wrinkled look of age, but
youth, strength, and courage, and the terror that comes to youth and
strength and courage when menaced with sudden death. Then, the picture
finished, I sat back and smoked, while a weariness came over me that
soon merged into slumber, from which I was awakened by a knock at the
door. My cold pipe fell from my lips, and I arose to admit my neighbor,
tutor, and critic--the old artist.
"There it is," I said, as I led him to the picture. "Old Bill didn't
help much. He couldn't--"
"Great God, man!" he interrupted. "What are you doing? I thought you
wanted to be original. Have you been through my old drawings?"
"No, I have not," I answered hotly. "What do you mean?"
He did not answer at once. He looked at the picture with eyes that
almost bulged, muttering to himself: "Pango Sam, Wong Fing, Landy
Jim." Then he turned to me, and said excitedly: "Were you on board
that bark?"