He held out a sheet of paper. I didn’t understand the symbols on it, but Sherman gave an exclamation, as Grimshaw went on:
“You see the importance? Colossal! But it must be proved to the scientific world. Therefore I have produced artificial dwarfs by the correct stimulation of the endocrines, combined with injections of enzyme Theta. But there was a drawback; animals did not yield satisfactory results. The enzyme appears to be confined to man in its effects. By the use of it, I have produced midgets as small as two feet, six inches in height. Unfortunately, it was impossible to release any of these creatures into the world as normal midgets. American civilization is so prejudiced against research! I have been forced to introduce my midgets to the use of narcotics, and even of a single narcotic of my own composition, in order to retain control of them.
“But with you four, gentlemen, the experiment is on an altogether higher plane. You are to be the first of a new order of super-midgets, or sub-midgets, hein? That is a joke, not so? My moron patients usually died when I attempted extremely small size, but all of you except possibly Mr. Kraicki, are of a mental constitution to withstand the treatments and emerge as complete individuals only a few inches in size. I am preparing a report on this. It will not be publishable during my lifetime, but afterward the name of Grimshaw—”
Note by the editors—At this point the gap in the manuscript occurs, presumably representing the lost capsule. As to the details given in the manuscript: no report of Dr. Grimshaw’s experiments has been discovered. If there ever was such a report, it was presumably destroyed by Voyna before his arrest. A Pinkerton detective named Dougherty (not Doherty) was committed to Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium in 1922. A man named Arthur Kaye was also under treatment there at the same time, but it has been impossible to trace anyone named Kraicki or an interne named Sherman. The deaths of Dougherty and Kaye were reported at widely separated intervals; that of the detective in 1923, that of Kaye not until March, 1924. A Miss Millicent Armbruster did live at the address given in the Doherty manuscript. The records show she married a man named Kellett in October, 1922, after which all trace of her is lost.
The contents of the remaining capsule follow:
—stumbled over a grass root, and we had to stop for him. The grass was forest-like in its density, and if we had not waited we certainly would have lost him. The beetle got away in the excitement, so we had no meat that night, either. Kaye climbed a chick-weed and reported that the garden was still too far away for us to make that night, so we camped in a tuft of grass. It was cold. The piece of bandage was so rough it rasped our skins and the three asleep had to use all the silk for coverlets. I had the second watch. Every time I stumbled into a grass-blade it would deluge me with icy dew, like a shower bath.
In the morning Kraicki began to whine about not getting enough to eat, and we practically had to drag him along. An hour’s journey brought us to a decaying twig, which offered material for a fire, provided we could find anything to cook over a fire. We pulled some of the fibers loose and took them along. I was surprised at the amount we could carry, but Sherman said it was because we were on “the right side of the square-cube law,” whatever that is. There would be no difficulty about making the fire, that we knew, between the pebbles and the piece of watch-spring Sherman had found the day before.
A little farther along Sherman, who was in the lead, gave a shout from behind a tuft of grass. We found him standing over a June-bug, which was lying on its back, kicking feebly. I attacked it with the piece of watch-spring, but the shell turned my point and all I got was a nasty scratch on the back from one of the barbed legs. Sherman suggested we turn him over and work under the wing-cases, but I was afraid he would fly away before we could do anything, so we decided to build a pyre over the insect and cook it where it lay.
Striking a spark from a stone may be easy for Indians, but it wasn’t for us. When we did get the fire alight, the heat produced so much activity on the June-bug’s part that it kicked the wood away and we were back where we started. Kaye and I finally got a stone—it was as big as our two bodies—and managed to bash the June-bug’s head in. It wiggled a little after that, but there was no objection to our fire. We had forgotten how quickly flame would run through the few fibers of twig we had, and it was a good deal of a task to keep the blaze burning till our meal was cooked.
The meat in the legs, just where they swell out before joining the body was good; not unlike crab-meat to the taste. That in the body was not so well cooked and very fat besides. Kraicki was the only one who would eat much of it.
By the time we had finished the June-bug it was already late afternoon, and we decided against trying for the garden that night. There was a good deal of June-bug meat left and we did not wish to get too far from our base of supply until we had some assurance of more. The question of weapons was partly solved by working loose the wing-cases of the June-bug and splitting them down with the watch-spring. Properly sharpened on a stone they made not inefficient poniards.
Kaye, who is something of an antiquarian, set to work in the afternoon to make a sling out of some of the tough grass fibers. He practiced with it until dark, and managed to knock a couple of flies off grass blades. It was an interesting, but impractical feat, as after the first try, none of us cared to attempt fly-meat again. Next morning he did manage to knock over a bee, however, and we got some valuable meat from that. About a week later he managed to remove from our path a very grim-looking spider.
My paper is running short. I must compress this account. Our main problem was clothing. After we had solved the food difficulty, we decided on a journey around the park, hoping to find a handkerchief someone had dropped. We never did find that, but down at the edge of the stream we came on a chair where one of the internes had left not only a medicine case, but a book, some writing paper and a bottle of ink.
This was a real treasure. Kaye and I hammered the catch of the medicine case open with a stone. Besides various oddments of no particular use to us, it contained a number of capsules, from which we emptied the contents, whereupon we had baskets as carryalls, and very useful they were. We succeeded in breaking one of the bottles, and with the sharpened shards of glass managed to fashion some tools and weapons. It was an interesting plunge into the stone age.
I must hurry. The paper on which we tried to write a record was too heavy and the beetle’s leg which I tried to use for a pen was too scratchy. But the book, by great good luck turned out to be Brinkley’s “History of Japan”—on India paper. We worried a couple of the fly-leaves loose.
Even then I doubt whether I would have taken the time to write this record but for what happened the other day. We were fairly comfortable in our grass hut and well supplied with both clothing and food after Sherman killed the mole and Kraicki made the discovery that the yellow centers of some grass stems made good vegetables, like asparagus in taste. We figured on getting into the house for the winter; it probably wouldn’t be too hard to forage for food.
But three days ago the change came. Sherman and Kraicki had gone hunting together, while Kaye and I were experimenting with various materials for bows, when Sherman burst in on us, very pale and with his moleskin jacket disordered. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Where’s Kraicki?”
“Gone,” he choked out. “Grimshaw’s got a cat.”
That’s why I’m leaving this record. I hope to God somebody besides Grimshaw finds it.
The Uncharted Isle - Clark Ashton Smith
I do not know how long I had been drifting in the boat. There are several days and nights that I remember only as alternate blanks of greyness and darkness; and, after these, there came a phantasmagoric eternity of delirium and an indeterminate lapse into pitch-black oblivion. The sea-water I had swallowed must have revived me; for when I came to myself, I was lying at the bottom of the boat with my head a little lifted in the stern, and six inches of brine lapping at my lips. I was gasping and strangling with the mouthfuls I had taken; the boat was tossing r
oughly, with more water coming over the sides at each toss; and I could hear the sound of breakers not far away.
I tried to sit up, and succeeded, after a prodigious effort. My thoughts and sensations were curiously confused, and I found it difficult to orient myself in any manner. The physical sensation of extreme thirst was dominant over all else—my mouth was lined with running, throbbing fire—and I felt light-headed, and the rest of my body was strangely limp and hollow. It was hard to remember just what had happened; and, for a moment, I was not even puzzled by the fact that I was alone in the boat. But, even to my dazed, uncertain senses, the roar of those breakers had conveyed a distinct warning of peril; and, sitting up, I reached for the oars.
The oars were gone, but, in my enfeebled state, it was not likely that I could have made much use of them anyway. I looked around, and saw that the boat was drifting rapidly in the wash of a shore-ward current, between two low-lying darkish reefs half-hidden by flying veils of foam. A steep and barren cliff loomed before me; but, as the boat neared it, the cliff seemed to divide miraculously, revealing a narrow chasm through which I floated into the mirror-like waters of a still lagoon. The passage from the rough sea without, to a realm of sheltered silence and seclusion, was no less abrupt than the transition of events and scenery which often occurs in a dream.
The lagoon was long and narrow, and ran sinuously away between level shores that were fringed with an ultra-tropical vegetation. There were many fern-palms, of a type I had never seen, and many stiff, gigantic cycads, and wide-leaved grasses taller than young trees. I wondered a little about them even then; though, as the boat drifted slowly toward the nearest beach, I was mainly preoccupied with the clarifying and assorting of my recollections. These gave me more trouble than one would think.
I must have been a trifle light-headed still; and the sea-water I had drunk couldn’t have been very good for me, either, even though it had helped to revive me. I remembered, of course, that I was Mark Irwin, first mate of the freighter Auckland, plying between Callao and Wellington; and I recalled only too well the night when Captain Melville had wrenched me bodily from my bunk, from the dreamless under-sea of a dog-tired slumber, shouting that the ship was on fire. I recalled the roaring hell of flame and smoke through which we had fought our way to the deck, to find that the vessel was already past retrieving, since the fire had reached the oil that formed part of her cargo; and then the swift launching of boats in the lurid glare of the conflagration. Half the crew had been caught in the blazing fore-castle; and those of us who escaped were compelled to put off without water or provisions. We had rowed for days in a dead calm, without sighting any vessel, and were suffering the tortures of the damned, when a storm had arisen. In this storm, two of the boats were lost; and the third, which was manned by Captain Melville, the second mate, the boatswain and myself, had alone survived. But sometime during the storm, or during the days and nights of delirium that followed, my companions must have gone overboard… This much I recalled; but all of it was somehow unreal and remote, and seemed to pertain only to another person than the one who was floating shore-ward on the waters of a still lagoon. I felt very dreamy and detached; and even my thirst didn’t trouble me half as much now as it had on awakening.
The boat touched a beach of fine, pearly sand, before I began to wonder where I was and to speculate concerning the shores I had reached. I knew that we had been hundreds of miles south-west of Easter Island on the night of the fire, in a part of the Pacific where there is no other land; and certainly this couldn’t be Easter Island. What, then, could it be? I realized with a sort of shock that I must have found something not on any charted course or geological map. Of course, it was an isle of some kind; but I could form no idea of its possible extent; and I had no way of deciding off-hand whether it was peopled or unpeopled. Except for the lush vegetation, and a few queer-looking birds and butterflies, and some equally queer-looking fish in the lagoon, there was no visible life anywhere.
I got out of the boat, feeling very weak and wobbly in the hot white sunshine that poured down upon everything like a motionless universal cataract. My first thought was to find fresh water; and I plunged at random among the
mighty fern-trees, parting their enormous leaves with extreme effort, and sometimes reeling against their boles to save myself from falling. Twenty or thirty paces, however, and then I came to a tiny rill that sprang in shattered crystal from a low ledge, to collect in a placid pool where ten-inch mosses and broad, anemone-like blossoms mirrored themselves. The water was cool and sweet: I drank profoundly, and felt the benison of its freshness permeate all my parched tissues.
Now I began to look around for some sort of edible fruit. Close to the stream, I found a shrub that was trailing its burden of salmon-yellow drupes on the giant mosses. I couldn’t identify the fruit; but its aspect was delicious, and I decided to take a chance. It was full of a sugary pulp; and strength returned to me even as I ate. My brain cleared, and I recovered many, if not all, of the faculties that had been in a state of partial abeyance.
I went back to the boat, and bailed out all the sea-water; then I tried to drag the boat as far up on the sand as I could, in case I might need it again at any future time. My strength was inadequate to the task; and still fearing that the tide might carry it away, I cut some of the high grasses with my clasp-knife and wove them into a long rope, with which I moored the boat to the nearest palm-tree.
Now, for the first time, I surveyed my situation with an analytic eye, and became aware of much that I had hitherto failed to observe or realize. A medley of queer impressions thronged upon me, some of which could not have arrived through the avenues of the known senses. To begin with, I saw more clearly the abnormal oddity of the plant-forms about me: they were not the palm-ferns, grasses and shrubs that are native to south sea islands: their leaves, their stems, their frondage, were mainly of uncouth archaic types, such as might have existed in former aeons, on the sea-lost littorals of Mu. They differed from anything I had seen in Australia or New Guinea, those asylums of a primeval flora; and, gazing upon them, I was overwhelmed with intimations of a dark and prehistoric antiquity. And the silence around me seemed to become the silence of dead ages and of things that have gone down beneath oblivion’s tide. From that moment, I felt that there was something wrong about the island. But somehow I couldn’t tell just what it was, or seize definitely upon everything that contributed to this impression.
Aside from the bizarre-looking vegetation, I noticed that there was a queerness about the very sun. It was too high in the heavens for any latitude to which I could conceivably have drifted; and it was too large anyway; and the sky was unnaturally bright, with a dazzling incandescence. There was a spell of perpetual quietude upon the air, and never the slightest rippling of leaves or water; and the whole landscape hung before me like a monstrous vision of unbelievable realms apart from time and space. According to all the maps, that island couldn’t exist, anyhow…. More and more decisively, I knew that there was something wrong: I felt an eerie confusion, a weird
bewilderment, like one who has been cast away on the shores of an alien planet; and it seemed to me that I was separated from my former life, and from everything I had ever known, by an interval of distance more impermeable than all the blue leagues of sea and sky; that, like the island itself, I was lost to all possible reorientation. For a few instants, this feeling became a nervous panic, a paralyzing horror.
In an effort to overcome my agitation, I set off along the shore of the lagoon, pacing with feverish rapidity. It occurred to me that I might as well explore the island; and perhaps, after all, I might find some clue to the mystery, might stumble on something of explanation or reassurance.
After several serpent-like turns of the winding water, I reached the end of the lagoon. Here the country began to slope upward toward a high ridge, heavily wooded with the same vegetation I had already met, to which a long-leaved araucaria was now added. This ridge was apparently the crest of t
he island; and, after a half-hour of groping among the ferns, the stiff archaic shrubs and araucarias, I managed to surmount it.
Here, through a rift in the foliage, I looked down upon a scene no less incredible than unexpected. The further shore of the island was visible below me; and, all along the curving beach of a land-locked harbor, were the stone roofs and towers of a town! Even at that distance, I could see that the architecture was of an unfamiliar type; and I was not sure at first glance whether the buildings were ancient ruins or the homes of a living people. Then, beyond the roofs, I saw that several strange-looking vessels were moored at a sort of mole, flaunting their orange sails in the sunlight.
My excitement was indescribable: at most (if the island were peopled at all) I had thought to find a few savage huts; and here below me were edifices that betokened a considerable degree of civilization! What they were, or who had builded them, were problems beyond surmise; but, as I hastened down the slope toward the harbor, a very human eagerness was mingled with the dumbfoundment and stupefaction I had been experiencing. At least, there were people on the island; and, at the realization of this, the horror that had been a part of my bewilderment was dissipated for the nonce.
When I drew nearer to the houses, I saw that they were indeed strange. But the strangeness was not wholly inherent in their architectural forms; nor was I able to trace its every source, or define it in any way, by word or image. The houses were built of a stone whose precise color I cannot recall, since it was neither brown nor red nor grey, but a hue that seemed to combine, yet differ from, all these; and I remember only that the general type of construction was low and square, with square towers. The strangeness lay in more than this—in the sense of a remote and stupefying antiquity that emanated from them like an odor: I knew at once that they were old as the uncouth primordial trees and grasses, and, like these, were parcel of a long-forgotten world.
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 38