Movement.
Brethren of aphids, but brethren also of stars, you will perceive the infinitesimal in relation to the immense, borne away together by the Law that regulates everything!
Then, Messieurs, the immense and the infinitesimal will seem to you to be equals, with regard to the infinite in which they move obediently. Then, too, you will conceive that the unanimous ascension of beings is identified with the circle of total movement, and that it is, if I might put it thus, the orbit of existence.
Then, finally, by virtue of having contemplated here the Humankind that Progress raised so high to drag down so low, we shall obtain a great enlightenment, and you will emerge from this enclosure, Messieurs, with the notion and the proof of an exceedingly important truth; for you will know that Progress is not a goal, in the narrow sense that our moralists understand, but, on the contrary, the very Force that raises us all from oblivion and leads us all back to it, with the same gentleness, the same certainty and the same means, in order to maintain universal, eternal, infinite life!
Repeated applause. Lively animation.
The professor, surrounded, receives congratulations. Groups press around the platform on which the Human is standing.
In the middle of that crowd, the animal shows signs of great nervous distress; its face is grimacing with tics and its eyes, rolling in their orbits, frequently turn toward the professor, from whom it seems to be imploring help.
In spite of the prohibition on the blackboard, hands reach out toward it, to stroke it. It utters shrill cries, and becomes more and more distressed.
At a signal from the professor, the assistants open the cage, in which the Human hurriedly takes refuge. It is seen crouching down at the back.
The keepers take it away.
* * *
1 46° is the approximate latitude of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps.
2 I have substituted the Latin Dipneumona for the text’s Dipneusties; implying possession of two sets or kinds of breathing apparatus, it has been applied to various animal groups, the one intended here probably being lungfishes, imagined as the ancestors of all land vertebrates. The obsolete term Gastraead referred to a hypothetical primitive organism similar in form to an embryonic gastrula: an aggregation of cells whose components have begun to differentiate, but still seems capable of assuming any mature form. It was a derivative of Ernst Haeckel’s assertion that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” which is only true in a very vague, quasi-metaphorical sense.
THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON
William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918), the son of an Anglican clergyman, did not get along with his father and ran away to sea in his teens; he developed his physical strength in order to resist bullying. When he eventually qualified as a mate he developed a strong interest in photography, recording the various phenomena he encountered in his travels. His early writings were poetry and non-fiction, but when he settled on land he opened a school of physical culture and began selling fiction to the American pulp magazines, much of it consisting of horror stories set at sea, frequently featuring bizarre life-forms, tacitly or explicitly set within a distinctive metaphysical context that placed them in a unique sector of scientific romance. The Boats of the “Glen-Carrig” (1907) runs together two of the several stories he set in the Sargasso Sea but his second patchwork novel, The House on the Borderland (1908) is a more extravagant metaphysical fantasy including a spectacular cosmic vision. His last-published novel, The Night Land (1912), is a phantasmagorical far-futuristic fantasy. He was killed in action during the Great War.
“The Voice in the Night,” first published in the November 1907 issue of Blue Book and reprinted in Men of the Deep Waters (1914), is typical in its substance of the tales of exotic biological menace set in remote parts of the world that Hodgson wrote during the first phase of his career; it is the most poignantly harrowing of them all.
It was a dark starless night. We were becalmed in the Northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea.
With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping for’ard in their den; while Will—my friend and the master of our little craft—was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin.
Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail:
“Schooner, ahoy!”
The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer, because of my surprise.
It came again—a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the sea on our port broadside:
“Schooner, ahoy!”
“Hullo!” I sung out, having gathered my wits somewhat. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“You need not be afraid,” answered the queer voice, having probably noticed some trace of confusion in my tone. “I am only an old man.”
The pause sounded oddly; but it was only afterwards that it came back to me with any significance.
“Why don’t you come alongside, then?” I queried somewhat snappishly; for I liked not his hinting at my having been a trifle shaken.
“I . . . I . . . can’t. It wouldn’t be safe. I. . . .” The voice broke off, and there was silence.
“What do you mean?” I asked, growing more and more astonished. “Why not safe? Where are you?”
I listened for a moment; but there came no answer. And then, a sudden indefinite suspicion, of I know not what, coming to me, I stepped swiftly to the binnacle, and took out the lighted lamp. At the same time, I knocked on the deck with my heel to waken Will. Then I was back at the side, throwing the yellow funnel of light out into the silent immensity beyond our rail. As I did so, I heard a slight, muffled cry, and then the sound of a splash as though someone had dipped oars abruptly. Yet I cannot say that I saw anything with certainty; save, it seemed to me, that with the first flash of the light, there had been something in the waters, where there was now nothing.
“Hullo, there!” I called. “What foolery is this?”
But there came only the indistinct sounds of a boat being pulled away into the night.
Then I heard Will’s voice, from the direction of the after scuttle: “What’s up, George?”
“Come here, Will,” I said.
“What is it?” he asked, coming across the deck.
I told him the queer thing which had happened. He put several questions; then, after a moment’s silence, he raised his hands to his lips, and hailed: “Boat, ahoy!”
From a long distance away there came back to us a faint reply, and my companion repeated his call. Presently, after a short period of silence, there grew in our hearing the muffled sound of oars; at which Will hailed again.
This time there was a reply.
“Put away the light.”
“I’m damned if I will,” I muttered; but Will told me to do as the voice bade, and I shoved it down under the bulwarks.
“Come nearer,” he said, and the oar-strokes continued. Then, when apparently some half-dozen fathoms distant, they again ceased.
“Come alongside,” exclaimed Will. “There’s nothing to be frightened of aboard here!”
“Promise that you will not show the light?”
“What’s to do with you,” I burst out, “that you’re so infernally afraid of the light?”
“Because . . .” began the voice, and stopped short.
“Because what?” I asked quickly.
Will put his hand on my shoulder. “Shut up a minute, old man,” he said, in a low voice. “Let me tackle him.”
He leant more over the rail.
“See here, Mister,” he said, “this is a pretty queer business, you coming upon us like this, right out in the middle of the blessed Pacific. How are we to know
what sort of a hanky-panky trick you’re up to? You say there’s only one of you. How are we to know, unless we get a squint at you—eh? What’s your objection to the light, anyway?”
As he finished, I heard the noise of the oars again, and then the voice came; but now from a greater distance, and sounding extremely hopeless and pathetic.
“I’m sorry . . . sorry! I would not have troubled you, only I am hungry, and . . . so is she.”
The voice died away, and the sound of the oars, dipping irregularly, was borne to us.
“Stop!” sung out Will. “I don’t want to drive you away. Come back! We’ll keep the light hidden, if you don’t like it.” He turned to me. “It’s a damned queer rig, this; but I think there’s nothing to be afraid of?”
There was a question in his tone, and I replied. “No, I think the poor devil’s been wrecked around here, and gone crazy.”
The sound of the oars drew nearer.
“Shove that lamp back in the binnacle,” said Will; then he leaned over the rail and listened.
I replaced the lamp, and came back to his side. The dipping of the oars ceased some dozen yards distant.
“Won’t you come alongside now?” asked Will in an even voice. “I have had the lamp put back in the binnacle.”
“I . . . I cannot,” replied the voice. “I dare not come nearer. I dare not even pay you for the . . . the provisions.”
“That’s all right,” said Will, and hesitated. “You’re welcome to as much grub as you can take. . . .” Again he hesitated.
“You are very good,” exclaimed the voice. “May God, who understands everything, reward you. . . .” It broke off huskily.
“The . . . the lady?” said Will, abruptly. “Is she . . .?”
“I have left her behind upon the island,” came the voice.
“What island?” I cut in.
“I know not its name,” returned the voice. “I would to God . . .!” it began, and checked itself as suddenly.
“Could we not send a boat for her?” asked Will at this point.
“No!” said the voice, with extraordinary emphasis. “My God! No!” There was a moment’s pause; then it added, in a tone which seemed a merited reproach: “It was because of our want I ventured . . . because her agony tortured me.”
“I am a forgetful brute,” exclaimed Will. “Just wait a minute, whoever you are, and I will bring you something at once.”
In a couple of minutes he was back again, and his arms were full of various edibles. He paused at the rail.
“Can’t you come alongside for them?”
“No . . . I dare not,” replied the voice, and it seemed to me that in its tones I detected a note of stifled craving—as though the owner hushed a mortal desire. It came to me then in a flash, that the poor old creature out here in the darkness was suffering for actual need of that which Will held in his arms; and yet, because of some unintelligible dread, refraining from dashing to the side of our little schooner, and receiving it. And with the lightning-like conviction, there came the knowledge that the Invisible was not mad, but sanely facing some intolerable horror.
“Damn it, Will!” I said, full of many feelings, over which predominated a vast sympathy. “Get a box. We must float off the stuff to him in it.”
This we did, propelling it away from the vessel, out into the darkness, by means of a boathook. In a minute, a slight cry from the Invisible came to us, and we knew that he had secured the box.
A little later, he called out a farewell to us, and so heartful a blessing that I am sure we were the better for it. Then, without more ado, we heard the ply of the oars across the darkness.
“Pretty soon off,” remarked Will, with perhaps just a little sense of injury.
“Wait,” I replied. “I think somehow he’ll come back. He must have been badly needing that food.”
“And the lady,” said Will. For a moment he was silent; then he continued: “It’s the queerest thing I’ve ever tumbled across, since I’ve been fishing.”
“Yes,” I said, and fell to pondering.
And so the time slipped away . . . an hour, another and still Will stayed with me; for the queer adventure had knocked all desire for sleep out of him.
The third hour was three parts through, when we heard again the sound of oars across the silent ocean.
“Listen!” said Will, a low note of excitement in his voice.
“He’s coming, just as I thought,” I muttered.
The dipping of the oars grew nearer, and I noted that the strokes were firmer and longer. The food had been needed.
They came to a stop a little distance off the broadside, and the queer voice came again to us through the darkness: “Schooner, ahoy!”
“That you?” asked Will.
“Yes,” replied the voice. “I left you suddenly, but . . . but there was great need.”
“The lady?” questioned Will.
“The . . . lady is grateful now on earth. She will be more grateful soon in . . . in heaven.”
Will began to make some reply, in a puzzled voice, but became confused, and broke off short. I said nothing. I was wondering at the curious pauses, and, apart from my wonder, I was full of a great sympathy.
The voice continued: “We . . . she and I, have talked, as we shared the result of God’s tenderness and yours. . . .”
Will interposed, but without coherence.
“I beg of you not to . . . to belittle your deed of Christian charity this night,” said the voice. “Be sure that it has not escaped His notice.” It stopped, and there was a full minute’s silence. Then it came again: “We have spoken together upon that which . . . which has befallen us. We had thought to go out, without telling any, of the terror which has come into our . . . lives. She is with me in believing that tonight’s happenings are under a special ruling, and that it is God’s wish that we should tell to you all that we have suffered since . . . since. . . .”
“Yes?” said Will softly.
“Since the sinking of the Albatross.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed, involuntarily. “She left Newcastle for ’Frisco some six months ago, and hasn’t been heard of since.”
“Yes,” answered the voice, “but some few degrees to the north of the line she was caught in a terrible storm, and dismasted. When the day came, it was found that she was leaking badly, and, presently, it falling to a calm, the sailors took to the boats, leaving . . . leaving a young lady—my fiancée—and myself upon the wreck.
“We were below, gathering together a few of our possessions, when they left. They were entirely callous, through fear, and when we came up on the deck, we saw them only as small shapes afar off upon the horizon. Yet we did not despair, but set to work and constructed a small raft. Upon this we put such few matters as it would hold, including a quantity of water and some ship’s biscuit. Then, the vessel being very deep in the water, we got ourselves on to the raft, and pushed off.
“It was later, when I observed that we seemed to be in the way of some tide or current, which bore us from the ship at an angle; so that in the course of three hours, by my watch, her hull became invisible to our sight, her broken masts remaining in view for a somewhat longer period. Then, towards evening, it grew misty, and so through the night. The next day we were still encompassed by the mist, the weather remaining quiet.
“For four days we drifted through this strange haze, until, on the evening of the fourth day, there grew upon our ears the murmur of breakers at a distance. Gradually it became plainer, and, somewhat after midnight, it appeared to sound upon either hand at no very great space. The raft was raised upon a swell several times, and then we were in smooth water, and the noise of the breakers was behind.
“When the morning came, we found that we were in a sort of great lagoon; but of this we noticed little at the time; for close before us, through the enshrouding mist, loomed the hull of a large sailing vessel. With one accord we fell upon our knees and thanked God; for we thought that here was an end to
our perils. We had much to learn.
“The raft drew near to the ship, and we shouted on them to take us aboard; but none answered. Presently the raft touched against the side of the vessel, and, seeing a rope hanging downwards, I seized it and began to climb. Yet I had much ado to make my way up, because of a kind of gray, lichenous fungus which had seized upon the rope, and which blotched the side of the ship lividly.
“I reached the rail and clambered over it, on to the deck. Here I saw that the decks were covered, in great patches, with gray masses, some of them rising into nodules several feet in height; but at the time I thought less of this matter than of the possibility of there being people aboard the ship. I shouted; but none answered. Then I went to the door below the poop deck. I opened it, and peered in. There was a great smell of staleness, so that I knew in a moment that nothing living was within, and with the knowledge, I shut the door quickly, for I felt suddenly lonely.
“I went back to the side where I had scrambled up. My . . . my sweetheart was still sitting quietly upon the raft. Seeing me look down she called up to know whether there were any aboard the ship. I replied that the vessel had the appearance of having been long deserted, but that if she would wait a little I would see whether there was anything in the shape of a ladder by which she could ascend to the deck. Then we would make a search through the vessel together. A little later, on the opposite side of the decks, I found a rope-ladder. This I carried across, and a minute afterwards she was beside me.
“Together we explored the cabins and apartments in the after part of the ship; but nowhere was there any sign of life. Here and there within the cabins themselves, we came across odd patches of that queer fungus; but this, as my sweetheart said, could be cleansed away.
“In the end, having assured ourselves that the after portion of the vessel was empty, we picked our ways to the bow, between the ugly gray nodules of that strange growth; and here we made a further search, which told us that there was indeed none aboard but ourselves.
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