by Jerry
Then the bitterness of my fate overwhelmed me. Here, with this treasure of a kingdom, this jewel that could not be priced, this wealth beyond an Emperor’s—and here only to die! My stolid apathy vanished, old thoughts dominated once more, old habits, old desires. I thought of Eleanor then in her warm, sunny home, the blossoms that bloomed around her, the birds that sang, the cheerful evening fires, the longing thoughts for one who never came, who never was to come. But I would! I cried, where human voice had never cried before. I would return! I would take this treasure with me! I would not be defrauded! Should not I, a man, conquer this inanimate blind matter? I reached out my hands to seize it. Slowly it receded slowly, and less slowly, or was the motion of the ice still carrying me onwards? Had we encircled this apex? And were we driving out into the open and uncovered North, and so down the seas and out to the open main of black water again? If so—if I could live through it—I must have this thing!
I rose, and as well as I could, with my cramped and stiffened limbs, I moved to go back for it. It was useless; the current that carried us was growing invincible, the gaping gulfs of the outer seas were sucking us towards them. I fell; I scrambled to my feet; I would still have gone back, but, as I attempted it, the ice whereon I was inclined ever so slightly, tipped more boldly, gave way, and rose in a billow; broke, and piled over on another mass beneath. Then the cavern was behind us, and I comprehended that this ice-stream, having doubled its central point, now in its outward movement encountered the still incoming body, and was to pile above and pass over it, the whole expanse bending, cracking, breaking, crowding, and compressing, till its rearing tumult made bergs more mountainous than the off-shot glaciers of the Greenland continent, that should ride safely down, to crumble in the surging seas below As block after block of the rent ice rose in the air, lighted by the blue and bristling aurora-points, toppled and mounted higher, it seemed to me that now indeed I was battling with those elemental agencies in the dreadful fight I had desired—one man against the might of matter. I sprang from that block to another; I gained my balance on a third, climbing, shouldering, leaping, struggling, holding with my hands, catching with my feet, crawling, stumbling, tottering, rising higher and higher with the mountain ever making progress; a power unknown to my foes coming to my aid, a blessed rushing warmth that glowed on all the surface of my skin, that set the blood to racing in my veins, that made my heart beat with newer hope, sink with newer despair, rise buoyant with new determination. Except when the shaft of light pierced the shivering sky’ I could not see or guess the height that I had gained. I was vaguely aware of chasms that were bottomless, of precipices that opened on them, of pinnacles rising round me in aerial spires, when suddenly’ the shelf, on which I must have stood, yielded, as if it were pushed by great hands, swept down a steep incline like an avalanche, stopped halfway, but sent me flying on, sliding, glancing, like a shooting-star, down, down the slippery side, breathless, dizzy; smitten with blistering pain by awful winds that whistled by me, far out upon the level ice below that tilted up and down again with the great resonant plash of open water and, conscious for a moment that I lay at last upon a fragment that the mass behind urged on, I knew and I remembered nothing more.
Faces were bending over me when I opened my eyes again, rough, uncouth, and bearded faces, but no monsters of the Pole.
Whalemen, rather, smelling richly of train-oil, but I could recall nothing in all my life one fraction so beautiful as they; the angels on whom I hope to open my eyes when Death has really taken me will scarcely seem sights more blest than did those rude whalers of the North Pacific Sea. The North Pacific Sea—for it was there that I was found, explain it how you may—whether the Albatross had pierced farther to the west than her sailing-master knew, and had lost her reckoning with a disordered compass-needle under new’ stars—or whether I had really been the sport of the demoniac beings of the ice, tossed by them from zone to zone in a dozen hours. The whalers, real creatures enough, had discovered me on a block of ice, they said; nor could I, in their opinion, have been many days undergoing my dreadful experience, for there was still food in my wallet when they opened it They would never believe a word of my story, and, so far from regarding me as one who had proved the North-West Passage in my own person, they considered me a mere idle maniac, as uncomfortable a thing to have on shipboard as a ghost or a dead body, wrecked and unable to account for myself, and gladly transferred me to a homeward-bound Russian man-of-war, whose officers afforded me more polite but quite as decided scepticism.
I have never to this day found any one who believed my story when I told it so you can take it for what it is worth. Even my Uncle Paul flouted it, and absolutely refused to surrender the sum on whose expectation I had taken ship; while my old ancestor, who hung peeling over the hall fire, dropped from his frame in disgust at the idea of one of his hard-cash descendants turning romancer. But all I know is that the Albatross never sailed into port again, and that if I open my knife today and lay it on the table it will wheel about till the tip of its blade points full at the North Star.
I have never found anyone to believe me, did I say? Yes, there is one Eleanor never doubted a word of my narration, never asked me if cold and suffering had not shaken my reason. But then, after the first recital, she has never been willing to hear another word about it, and if I ever allude to my lost treasure or the possibility of instituting a search for it. she asks me if I need more lessons to be content with the treasure that I have, and gathers up her work and gently leaves the room. So that, now I speak of it so seldom, if I had not told the thing to you it might come to pass that I should forget altogether the existence of my mass of moonstone. My mass of moonshine, old Paul calls it. I let him have his say; he can not have that nor anything else much longer; but when all is done I recall Galileo and I mutter to myself, ‘Per si muove—it was a mass of moonstone! With these eyes I saw it, with these hands I touched it, with this heart I longed for it, with this will I mean to have it yet!’
A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE; OR, THE WORLD IN THE TWENTY-NINTH CENTURY
Elizabeth T. Corbett
(SCENE.—A drawing room in a handsome house in New York. The room is elegantly furnished, but is chiefly remarkable for the absence of furnace, register, fireplace, or any other visible source of warmth. The gas fixtures are also lacking. On one side is a sort of clock-face or dial-plate (though without hands or figures) let into the wall, and just beneath it stands an elegant card receiver. The only occupant of the room is a lady, who sits before a piece of furniture resembling an escritoire, but she is not writing, although her fingers move busily. Presently a young girl enters and addresses her with:)
Miss Trevor: Well, Edith, what does Georgiana say? Where is she now?
Mrs. Trevor: She hasn’t said much. I have been doing all the talking, and my fingers are fairly stiff with fatigue. She is still in Germany, and she proposes that we should join her there on Saturday; at the baths, you know.
Miss Trevor: On Saturday? Why, do you recollect that this is Tuesday, and we should have only to-morrow in which to get ready? I don’t think we can do it, Edith.
Mrs. Trevor: Nor I; but we might take Saturday’s balloon, and so reach her on Monday evening. What do you say? Shall I tell her that we will go?
Miss Trevor: Yes, by all means.
(Mrs. Trevor resumes the movement of her fingers for a few moments, then pushes her chair back wearily.)
Mrs. Trevor: There! I am too tired for any more correspondence. I wish some one would come in and talk to us.
Miss Trevor: Your wish, is granted, for see—Dr. Renington and the Professor are at the door.
(Already the dial plate before mentioned has opened, and discloses the likeness of a gentleman, while a visiting-card drops into the receiver. The next moment a second picture replaces the first, and a second card drops into the receiver.)
Mrs. Trevor: Yes, there they are—I am so glad.
(She touches a small silver knob. Immediately the lar
ge doors at the further end of the room slide open, and two arm chairs are seen rising through the floor of the hall beyond. Two gentlemen advance, greetings are interchanged, and conversation begins.)
Professor: Excuse me, Mrs. Trevor, but is not your house oppressively warm? The temperature is certainly too high for health.
Mrs. Trevor: So it seems to me, but I cannot account for it. We have, opened, but one jar of caloric since yesterday, and that is our usual allowance at this time of year. It must be stronger than common.
Miss Trevor. (Laughing.) I shall be obliged to confess my misdeed! The truth is, Clara, that I upset a whole jar some hours ago in the library, and so you have been suffering the consequences ever since.
Dr. Renington: Never mind, Miss Clara, you have not done half the mischief that the Professor did when he went with me to the North Pole last month.
Miss Trevor: Oh, do tell me what he did; won’t you, Doctor?
Dr. Renington: Of course I will. You must know that he began by capturing a white bear and bringing it on board the yacht.
Mrs. Trevor: Alive?
Dr. Renington: Very much alive, my dear madam, as you will see when I tell you what happened. The beast got loose, rushed into our store-room, and contrived to break nearly every jar of caloric we had on board, before we could secure him.
Miss Trevor: And what did you do to the bear?
Dr. Renington: Well, we hadn’t an opportunity of punishing him as he deserved, because he came to a speedy end. The immense quantity of caloric so suddenly liberated, quite overcame his bear-ship; in fact, he was partially roasted on the spot.
Miss Trevor: Oh, how horrid! poor thing.
Dr. Renington: You might better expend your compassion on the real sufferers, Miss Clara. We were in a terrible plight, for we had so little caloric left that we were obliged to use it nearly all for melting the ice through which we passed on our return; consequently we did not dare to warm the cabin at all. For my part, I was nearly frozen, and I have never quite thawed since.
Mrs. Trevor: Why that was really dreadful. Where did the accident occur, doctor?
Dr. Renington: In the north-west passage.
Professor: But as I told you at the time, Renington, you were enabled to realize some of the sufferings of the ancient navigators, before our present method of carrying heat into frigid latitudes was ever dreamed of.
Mrs. Trevor: Professor, you astonish me. Did people ever venture into those frozen regions without protection from the intense cold?
Professor: They did indeed, and endured incredible hardships in so doing.
Dr. Renington: And now we provide ourselves with a few dozen jars of condensed heat, and suffer no inconvenience from the lowest possible temperatures.
Miss Trevor: Unless you take a bear on board.
Professor: Come, Miss Clara, that is hardly fair.
Mrs. Trevor: Tell me, when was it that people first began to use caloric, or condensed heat, as we use it?
Professor: About two hundred years ago. By the way, that twenty-seventh century was a remarkable one in the world’s history. It was crowded with discoveries and inventions, all more or less important, though not equally conspicuous. Our present mode of communicating with our absent friends was then perfected: before that period, men had tried in turn telegraphs, and telephones, as they were called—both cumbersome, intricate contrivances, full of defects and liable to accidents. They learned by slow degrees the true uses and powers of electricity—in fact, the most advanced minds of the nineteenth century would have flouted as incredible some of the commonest appliances of the twenty-ninth. But the inventor always has been, and always will be, in advance of his generation.
Miss Trevor: Oh, Professor, tell us more about these discoveries, won’t you? Give us a little lecture.
Mrs. Trevor: No, don’t begin there. Tell us something about the nineteenth century, for that is what we have been studying lately. How little the people of that epoch knew!
Professor: And how much they thought they knew!
Miss Trevor: Yes, that is so comical. One would imagine, to read the literature of the time, that they had attained the pinnacle of greatness and wisdom.
Professor: Yet they crossed the ocean in steamships—great, slow, clumsy things, which consumed eight or ten days in the voyage.
Dr. Renington: And considered forty miles an hour by rail fast traveling.
Professor: And employed the poorer classes for their household servants.
Miss Trevor: Yes, I was so amused with that—wasn’t it odd? Didn’t they know enough to have mechanical servants?
Professor: No, Miss Clara, neither they nor their children were able to solve that difficult domestic problem. It was not until the twenty-sixth century that mechanical servants were first constructed; and even then they were so poorly made, and so inadequate, that they were seldom used. It took nearly a hundred years to perfect the invention, and make them what they are now.
Miss Trevor: Apropos of that, we had a droll experience here last week. Tell them about your new cook, Edith.
Mrs. Trevor: Oh, a most absurd thing; but since Clara has spoken of it, I may as well tell you. I was over-persuaded last week to buy a new patent cook, with so many improvements that I was completely won over. So I purchased the thing, and told Dawson, my housekeeper, to set it going at once. Unfortunately, we had a dinner-party that evening, and you can imagine how I felt when I found that everything was completely spoiled—literally burned to cinders! To cap the climax of my miseries, just as it was time to make the coffee the horrid thing stopped entirely, stood stock still, and all the screwing and oiling only made it worse!
Professor: But why not have sent for the inventor or the merchant?
Mrs. Trevor: We did; but when the man who made it came next morning, he insisted that Dawson had put it out of order. Of course that was absurd, for Dawson has been with me for five years, and he manages all the servants beautifully, though I have some very complicated ones. There is my new waiter with the double suspension attachment, which is such an intricate thing; and Dawson understood it from the very first, although I don’t even yet, and I never dare to put a finger on it.
Miss Trevor: But I did put a finger on it one day, and the consequence was that he poured a whole bottle of wine into my glass, or rather over it.
Dr. Renington: It is scarcely to be wondered at that these mishaps occur sometimes; the greater wonder is that they don’t occur oftener. I set my letter-writer at work not long ago to write a letter of sympathy and condolence to a friend who had lost his wife, but instead he sent a letter of congratulation.