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Revolt of the Birds - Melville Davisson Post · Revolt of the Birds

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of the Revolt of the Birds by Melville
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  Speaker 1: Davison post. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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  Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker. The
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  Speaker 1: Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison, post chapter one.
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  Speaker 1: It was the last outpost of down going men, a
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  Speaker 1: sort of seamen's club in the abominable environs of Hong Kong.
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  Speaker 1: The Wufang Company maintained it for the white officers employed
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  Speaker 1: in its service. Everybody knows the reputation of the Wu
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  Speaker 1: Fang Company. It is the most notorious of all the
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  Speaker 1: Oriental companies trading in the China Sea. Gun running, opium,
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  Speaker 1: even piracy are charged against it when its ships are
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  Speaker 1: out of the beaten track. It was a room under
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  Speaker 1: a warehouse, looking out on a sort of canal, and
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  Speaker 1: which the waters seemed to lie stagnant and unmoving. There
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  Speaker 1: were tables in it, and a dirty matting on the floor.
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  Speaker 1: Against the wall were a few shelves made from packing cases.
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  Speaker 1: In them were some stained, dog eared works on navigation.
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  Speaker 1: There was dirty canvas on the wall. There was the
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  Speaker 1: stench of alcohol in it and tobacco. A single window
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  Speaker 1: fouled with cobweb, looking out on the canal. Alone lighted it.
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  Speaker 1: One marked a smoky lamp against the wall, a cheap
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  Speaker 1: kerosene lamp that the Germans used to put out in
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  Speaker 1: the east. It was afternoon and hot. A few men
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  Speaker 1: were in the room. They were strange, human derelicts on
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  Speaker 1: the way down, but maintaining a sort of air, a
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  Speaker 1: sort of manner, as though it were a memory from
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  Speaker 1: the honorable life from which they had descended. A queer
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  Speaker 1: group gathered from all portions of the earth. They were
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  Speaker 1: all at the very end of life, I mean, at
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  Speaker 1: the end of any form of life that one could
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  Speaker 1: speak of. This club of the Wufang Company was the
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  Speaker 1: last stand of their fleet in the world. One stepped
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  Speaker 1: off from it into the abyss of the far east.
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  Speaker 1: A little wizened chinaman gliding about in slippered feet, carried
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  Speaker 1: in the drink in the tobacco that the Wufang Company provided.
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  Speaker 1: The drink was a poisonous brandy. I had drifted in
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  Speaker 1: here on my mission. Some one had told me to
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  Speaker 1: see Bennett of the Wufang Company. He would have the
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  Speaker 1: last knowledge of men disappearing into the Mystery of the East,
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  Speaker 1: the last glimpse of them as they descended through its
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  Speaker 1: fluid floor. He now sat beyond me at a table
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  Speaker 1: by the window. He was a big man, with pale
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  Speaker 1: blue eyes, a heavy, pasty face pitted with smallpox, A
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  Speaker 1: strange human creature. It was impossible to tell the nationality
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  Speaker 1: of the man. I think he was an American, and
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  Speaker 1: I think he must have been bred and trained for
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  Speaker 1: the sea. He might have been in the naval service
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  Speaker 1: of the States in his far off youth. I knew
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  Speaker 1: what was commonly known about the man before I went
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  Speaker 1: to find him. He had been in every form of service,
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  Speaker 1: and on every sea. He knew all about the world
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  Speaker 1: of waters, and he had gone steadily down. One heard
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  Speaker 1: little about the causes of this descent. There was always
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  Speaker 1: a break in the narrative when one gets the history
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  Speaker 1: of the Derelict of the East, a sort of hiatus
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  Speaker 1: where the speaker pauses, gets another cigarette out of the
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  Speaker 1: box on the table, or makes some vague gesture. One
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  Speaker 1: is supposed to understand that at this point in the
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  Speaker 1: man's life, something happened, and he took yet another step downward. Thus,
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  Speaker 1: in the end, they come into the service of the
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  Speaker 1: Wufang company, and from it the Abyss engulfs them. There
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  Speaker 1: were three other men in the room besides Bennett. I
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  Speaker 1: tried to place them in their nationality. One was a German,
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  Speaker 1: a northern German. He was not past forty, a big blonde.
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  Speaker 1: Bennett called him the Baron Nordheim. Another I thought was
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  Speaker 1: an Italian, a little dark man, thin and very carefully dressed.
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  Speaker 1: And there was an Englishman with the strong, clean cut
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  Speaker 1: features of some of the best families of his race. Tall, stooped,
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  Speaker 1: he sat in his chair as though all energy in
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  Speaker 1: him had been removed. The man drew my attention for
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  Speaker 1: the one fact that the conspicuous element in him was
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  Speaker 1: an utter weakness. There was no firm fiber left. There
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  Speaker 1: was no resistance to evil in that face or figure.
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  Speaker 1: He maintained the manner, the speech, and the customs of
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  Speaker 1: his race, but it was easy to see that he
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  Speaker 1: was seized upon and dominated by any temptation that approached him.
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  Speaker 1: I hardly understood how he could be of any service,
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  Speaker 1: even to the Wufang company. But as I have said,
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  Speaker 1: its activities were buried. They all wore a sort of uniform.
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  Speaker 1: Bennett had the uniform of an English skipper, threadbare and stained,
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  Speaker 1: picked up doubtless at some seaman's sail by the Wufang company.
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  Speaker 1: There was good cloth and gold braid on these other
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  Speaker 1: ship captain's uniforms, but it was cloth long, wetted with
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  Speaker 1: sea water and dried in the sun, and it was
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  Speaker 1: tarnished gold braid. The Englishman had an ancient copy of
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  Speaker 1: the Times. He was near sighted, and he held it
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  Speaker 1: close to his face. It was torn. The Chinese servant
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  Speaker 1: had probably fished it out of a rubbish heap somewhere
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  Speaker 1: in the European quarter. The Wuffeg Company did not keep
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  Speaker 1: up the periodicals of the world for its sea captains.
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  Speaker 1: It provided, as I have said, only the essentials uniforms
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  Speaker 1: of the service. Drink tobacco, and what was more important
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  Speaker 1: than any I imagine opium. The Italian had been reading
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  Speaker 1: a thumb worn little book when I came in. He
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  Speaker 1: put it down on the floor beside the chair, his
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  Speaker 1: big finger marking a page in it. He sat perfectly still,
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  Speaker 1: his other hand on his knee, his eyes fixed on
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  Speaker 1: the floor beyond him. He paid no attention to either
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  Speaker 1: Bennett or myself. He did not seem to see us,
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  Speaker 1: to see anything. I am trying to make you realize
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  Speaker 1: this place and the men I found in it, it
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  Speaker 1: did not seem to belong in the world. The men
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  Speaker 1: in the place seemed to belong in some form of nightmare,
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  Speaker 1: some vague conception of a hell where men maintained the
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  Speaker 1: forms and manners of the world from which they had descended.
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  Speaker 1: But it was all a sort of abominable pretense. They
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  Speaker 1: spoke with exaggerated courtesy. They were careful to accord each
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  Speaker 1: his title and distinction. They listened attentively when one spoke,
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  Speaker 1: and they made some remark at the end of it,
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  Speaker 1: or some courteous interjection. But one felt, as I have said,
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  Speaker 1: that it was all a ghastly pretense. I had directed
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  Speaker 1: the conversation. I had an object in it. It began
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  Speaker 1: when I entered, precisely after the manner of conversation in
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  Speaker 1: any officer's club in the East. I had a letter
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  Speaker 1: of introduction to Bennett. It had been given to me
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  Speaker 1: with a significant smile. If I wished to get anything
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  Speaker 1: out of these men, I must respect their fictions. I
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  Speaker 1: must maintain the formalities customary among officers of the class
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  Speaker 1: to which they pretended. One can understand why these derelicts
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  Speaker 1: were sticklers for form. It was the only thing they had.
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  Speaker 1: It maintained the pretension in which they alone existed. I
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  Speaker 1: had gotten the conversation directed towards strange happenings on the sea,
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  Speaker 1: toward mysterious incidents which had happened in their lives. I
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  Speaker 1: thought these incidents might give me some information on the
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  Speaker 1: thing I was after. But before the conversation reached the point,
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  Speaker 1: I was impressed with how nearly it resembled the conversation
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  Speaker 1: in the real Officers Club in Hong Kong. And what
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  Speaker 1: was other resemblance to the real club. These men were
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  Speaker 1: authorities on some form of life in which they were engaged.
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  Speaker 1: But it was not this counterfeit conversation of the real
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  Speaker 1: club that I was after. I moved it into another direction.
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  Speaker 1: I moved it into the direction of the experiences I
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  Speaker 1: spoke of. Bennett helped me. I do not know that
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  Speaker 1: he realized precisely what I was seeking, But here was
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  Speaker 1: a field in which he could be very proud of
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  Speaker 1: his associates, in which they would excel, surely of all
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  Speaker 1: persons in the world. They had had the largest experience
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  Speaker 1: of extraordinary events they gave me. These events as one
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  Speaker 1: recites the incidents of an historical narrative. It is not
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  Speaker 1: my intention here to elaborate what they said. Their strange
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  Speaker 1: tales have little to do directly with this story, except
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  Speaker 1: as it happened, they each illustrated a vital point in it.
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  Speaker 1: I listened, made the reply courteous, and thanked them for
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  Speaker 1: their consideration of me. I bought them tobacco and brandy,
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  Speaker 1: and bid them adieu when they went out, for they
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  Speaker 1: presently drifted out, leaving Bennett and myself alone by the
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  Speaker 1: table near the cobwebbed window that looked out on the
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  Speaker 1: sluggish canal. I was not impressed with the stories of
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  Speaker 1: the strange events that these men related. I said that
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  Speaker 1: much to Bennett. I said, they impressed me as fiction.
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  Speaker 1: He was silent for some time. He moved his big
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  Speaker 1: hand over his face. Finally he replied they might be true.
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  Speaker 1: He said, incredible things happen. He directed my attention to
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  Speaker 1: the little worn book lying by the chair in which
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  Speaker 1: the Italian had been seated. There is nothing too incredible
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  Speaker 1: to be attached to these men, he said, you wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: believe the things in which these men are interested. Let
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  Speaker 1: me get you that book. He got up, heavily crossed
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  Speaker 1: the room, picked up the book, and put it down,
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  Speaker 1: open before me. It was a translation in Italian of
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  Speaker 1: the Passing of Arthur, with quaint pictures of the three
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  Speaker 1: queens who came, in the legend in a mystic barge
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  Speaker 1: to take Arthur to Avalon. I looked at the book
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  Speaker 1: with some astonishment. What interest could a down going man
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  Speaker 1: have in a thing like this? Bennett was leaning over
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  Speaker 1: the table. He looked at me strangely. Do you think
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  Speaker 1: a thing like that could happen? He said? I told
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  Speaker 1: him that it never did happen in this world, that
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  Speaker 1: it was a fairy story, this tale of Arthur with
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  Speaker 1: the queen's and Avalon. The ship. Captain said he was
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  Speaker 1: not so certain of it. He had known things just
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  Speaker 1: as incredible to happen. A fairy story couldn't beat it.
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  Speaker 1: It was no use to say a thing could not
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  Speaker 1: happen because it sounded like a fairy story. Take for example,
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  Speaker 1: the things these men told here. They might be true,
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  Speaker 1: and they might be lies. Men in the far East
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  Speaker 1: got infected with the arrabe knights virus, but strange things.
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  Speaker 1: Incredible things did happen in the China Sea. Bennett sat
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  Speaker 1: over the tumbler of vile brandy, his arms heavily on
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  Speaker 1: the table. I didn't drink this stuff. I kept pouring
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  Speaker 1: it out on the dirty matting. It was a trick.
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  Speaker 1: I had become deaftin one acquires skill when one must
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  Speaker 1: save one's self from poison. There was a new English
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  Speaker 1: label on the bottle, too new. That label was printed
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  Speaker 1: somewhere in a cellar, and the liquid only the devil
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  Speaker 1: knew what it was. Alcohol of some sort as a
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  Speaker 1: base with any cheap filler that would bite. Cheap was
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  Speaker 1: the idea. The Wufang company was after the kick for
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  Speaker 1: the money. He spoke suddenly, without moving. He prepared his
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  Speaker 1: words with an interjection, a sort of vocal comment, the
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  Speaker 1: sound one utters alone when one finally arrives at a
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  Speaker 1: conclusion or comes to the end of considering something incredible.
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  Speaker 1: That story Chillingsworth told just now he made a correction,
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  Speaker 1: Captain Chilworth, He spoke the words precisely. The talk, as
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  Speaker 1: I have said, had been on the mysteries of the sea,
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  Speaker 1: Strange things that happen in out of the way places
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  Speaker 1: of the world of water, indeterminate things that lie in
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  Speaker 1: the twilight country between dreams and the hard reality of life.
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  Speaker 1: This story that Bennett was thinking of was the story
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  Speaker 1: the English skipper related. The mystery of dreams had come
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  Speaker 1: into the talk dreams. The Englishman had repeated the word
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  Speaker 1: as one pronounces a formula which he wishes profoundly to consider.
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  Speaker 1: He was devitalized with opium, and the mere uttering of
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  Speaker 1: sound seemed a labor to him. But the voice went
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  Speaker 1: on in its weary monotony. He was a trader, a
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  Speaker 1: dirty little beast of a trader. And he had a picture.
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  Speaker 1: It was a water color drawing of a bit of coast.
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  Speaker 1: It was a neat, little dirty picture, but it was
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  Speaker 1: very clear in its details. One would have said that
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  Speaker 1: it was drawn and painted in from life. The coast
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  Speaker 1: line was as definite as a survey. The grove of
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  Speaker 1: cocoanut trees on its south point seemed placed with a
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  Speaker 1: sort of mathematical accuracy. The curve of the beach looked
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  Speaker 1: like a photograph. The sweep of the core reef that
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  Speaker 1: bowed around the inlet was as precisely placed as though
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  Speaker 1: it had been taken from a chart. The market place
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  Speaker 1: was between two of the cocoanut trees. I would have
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  Speaker 1: sworn that a geodetic survey had mapped it, and some
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  Speaker 1: artists sketched it in. And yet the tired voice drawled.
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  Speaker 1: It was a dream, he said, the dirty little beast,
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  Speaker 1: that he saw it first in his dream on the
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  Speaker 1: night he had to run for it. He had looted
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  Speaker 1: the firm of which he was a clerk, and he
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  Speaker 1: had to clear out. It was his one big job
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  Speaker 1: at the end of a crooked career. And he kept
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  Speaker 1: on seeing it in a dream, that one spot marked
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  Speaker 1: between the two cocoanut trees. He could not draw the picture,
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  Speaker 1: nor paint it in, but he could see it. He
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  Speaker 1: got so he could see it like a picture in
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  Speaker 1: a mirror, and finally he got a little half cast
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  Speaker 1: to make the picture for him. It must have been
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  Speaker 1: a tedious business. It did take days on end, he said.
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  Speaker 1: But you must realize how well he knew the details.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, the picture wasn't entirely correct. He would explain
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  Speaker 1: it like an engineer explaining the slight errors in a blueprint.
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  Speaker 1: The coral reef wasn't such a perfect arc. It had
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  Speaker 1: a twist in it, and the top of one of
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  Speaker 1: those cocoanut trees was heavier than the other, and the
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  Speaker 1: stem thickened a bit more at the earth. He was
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  Speaker 1: very much concerned to correct the details, and he took
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  Speaker 1: a lot of trouble about it. You could not stop him.
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  Speaker 1: He'd creased the picture with his thumb nail and run
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  Speaker 1: after you to explain the thing was real that dream.
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  Speaker 1: There was no marked inflection in the tired voice that
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  Speaker 1: went on. The little Beast was written by this fixed idea.
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  Speaker 1: There was some sort of treasure buried between those two
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  Speaker 1: coconut trees, and its exact location had been revealed to
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  Speaker 1: him in a dream. The dream kept coming back with
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  Speaker 1: the regularity of a cyclic monomania of the mind. He
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  Speaker 1: would go at everybody that he could get to listen.
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  Speaker 1: He would divide the treasure with anyone who would go
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  Speaker 1: with him to find it. He said he had an
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  Speaker 1: instinct about the direction. There was never a human creature
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  Speaker 1: so possessed with a single fixed object in life. The
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  Speaker 1: Little Beast made his life a hell with it. He
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  Speaker 1: would work all day like a sleeve, unloading green ships,
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  Speaker 1: carrying the bags up out of the hold along with
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  Speaker 1: the coolies, and then he would tramp about at night
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  Speaker 1: doing anything about the brothels, with petty thefts thrown in.
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  Speaker 1: He did it for years until he finally got enough
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  Speaker 1: cash together to buy an old hull that had an
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  Speaker 1: engine in it, too dangerous for even the Chinese to
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  Speaker 1: risk a cargo on. He must have had the devil's
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  Speaker 1: time to pick up a crew, even the very few
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  Speaker 1: that he could get along with. For all his energy,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the creature could not man the craft alone. There was
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  Speaker 1: an engine of sorts in the scale of a hull,
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  Speaker 1: and there was the navigation of the thing to manage.
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  Speaker 1: And two there was the indefinite voyage that he was
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  Speaker 1: setting out on. He could not secure a crew from
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  Speaker 1: a port, but he did the thing in some fashion.
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  Speaker 1: After all, for a few dollars mechs, a dive leader
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  Speaker 1: would shang Hi a crew for him. And so he
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  Speaker 1: went to find his treasure. And he did find it,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: but it didn't turn out precisely as he expected. He
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  Speaker 1: was bit off on what was buried between the two
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  Speaker 1: coconut trees. It turned out this way. The resident, who
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  Speaker 1: was already on that spot of the coast, wrote it
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  Speaker 1: in his report to the agent at Hong Kong. There
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  Speaker 1: was a storm in the old craft beached on the
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  Speaker 1: reef and broke up. The little traitor with the dream
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  Speaker 1: washed ashore with his lungs full of sea water, and
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  Speaker 1: the resident buried him at the marked place between the
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  Speaker 1: two cocoanut trees. Bennett took a drink out of the
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  Speaker 1: dirty tumbler. He sat back from the table, his big
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  Speaker 1: hands placidly linked together across his stomach. Hell, he said
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: that man was tricked into hunting for his own death.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: That was the long and short of it. He had
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  Speaker 1: a vision, a quest, and he was always longing to
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: go on it, planning to go on it. Saved, starved, lied,
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  Speaker 1: stole nothing too damned low. Finally he has enough dollars
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  Speaker 1: mex to get the undertaker's stuff that they sold him
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  Speaker 1: for a ship, and he goes on his quest. Ghastly
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  Speaker 1: joke all that trouble to get killed. He laughed, a
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  Speaker 1: sort of chuckle that undulated his body in like a wave.
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  Speaker 1: He made one see what he was thinking, a pagan
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  Speaker 1: fate somewhere behind the world, chuckling as he was chuckling
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  Speaker 1: now over its little pleasantry with a fool of a mortal. Ah.
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  Speaker 1: It was the interjection again. It summed up his conclusion
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  Speaker 1: on the thing. It summed up also our conclusion. Man
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  Speaker 1: is altogether the sport of fortune. The ancient said. I
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  Speaker 1: wished to get him out of this reflection an end
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  Speaker 1: to his own adventure that would lead along to the
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  Speaker 1: thing I was after. I saw a little in this
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  Speaker 1: incident bearing on anything that concerned me. Just then later
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  Speaker 1: I remembered it, not that it is a part of
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  Speaker 1: this story. It has nothing to do with this story.
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  Speaker 1: But you will recall it presently, just as I recalled it,
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  Speaker 1: not for itself, but because it has a vague resemblance
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  Speaker 1: to something that happened to another man. And you will
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  Speaker 1: see perhaps what I think I saw the big notion
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  Speaker 1: under all religions. You see, this traitor was a dirty
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  Speaker 1: little beast, had been that from the cradle. He was
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  Speaker 1: so far over on the devil's side that even Bennett
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  Speaker 1: looked down on him. Think how far over that would be.
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  Speaker 1: But how about a man who wasn't on the devil's side?
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  Speaker 1: That was the vague relation I saw a little later
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: on you will understand that this was the English skipper
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  Speaker 1: Chillingsworth's story. The story I have just repeated. I recalled
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  Speaker 1: it in the intervals between Bennett's comments. I don't think
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  Speaker 1: he saw the bearing of it on the mystery that
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: he was about to narrate, but perhaps he did see
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  Speaker 1: it in a way. At any rate, he turned sharp
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: off into his own adventure. His voice changed. He spoke slowly,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: like one who wishes his words to be considered. I
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: was coming up from the Malay Peninsula. I had a
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: ship of the Wu Fang company, nothing to brag on.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: He made a slight gesture with the little finger of
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: one of his hands. A great deal like the ship
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Chillingsworth's trader picked up mostly rust. There's one thing these
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: damned Chinese know, the resistance of old iron. If the
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: rusts don't go through, they will take a chance on it.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Of course we are the men who take the chance.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: He included the room in a sweep of the eye.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: What's a white man's life to a Chinese trader? Of course,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: the cargoes something to him. He's concerned about that. But
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the crew and the skipper, if the sea gets them,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: why damn the luck. And there's the accrude wages to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the good. There's no executor to knows it out. And
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: who's weeping on the dock for any white man in
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the service of the Wufang company. There was a brief
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: interval of silence, as though for a moment the man
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: recalled the narrow margin that, in some dangerous experience had
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: barely saved him. We had shipped our cargo at sea
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: and were on the way north. We were loaded heavy.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: The old freighter was pretty deep in the water. Loaded
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: too heavy, I thought, But that's neither here nor there.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: The skipper on the Dutch ship wanted me to carry
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: a little stuff as a favor to him, and of
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: course I did the freemasonry of the sea. He shot
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: his head forward at me in a sort of gesture.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: I knew what he meant, a little crooked business on
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: the side. Even the canny Chinese shipowner couldn't stop that.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: He would figure what his ship could carry, and the
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: skipper would add a few bags or a few cases
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: on his own hook. We were creeping north. No one
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: could make time with that junk heap. The old engines
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: in her knew what she could stand. Any sort of
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: speed would have shaken the bolts out of her rusty plates.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: But the sea was like a floor, not a ripple
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: on it. She chugged along in that glassy sea with
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the smoke hanging around her rusty stack. There wasn't any
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: wind enough to carry the smoke away, but that was luck.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know what we should have done in a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: sea still, there's that resistance an old iron that I mentioned.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: The damned chinks can smell it out. We might have
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: weathered a gale, but I didn't want to try, not
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: with the weight we had in the rusty hull. And
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that's what kept me with a weather eye out and
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: a finger up for a breeze. I knew the primitive test.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I had seen the Chinese sailors at it. To wet
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: the finger and hold it up. It will feel cold
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: on the side of the wind. And I could realize
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Bennett's concern. He had the old freighter overloaded. A squall
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: might put her under. It was about noon, Bennett continued,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: when the thing began to happen. I was keeping a
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: pretty sharp look out. You see. We were out of
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the usual trade route north, a good distance west of it,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and we had the sea to ourselves. I understood what
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: he meant. He was running some sort of contraband German
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: rifles reshipped at sea perhaps, or the devil knows what,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and he was keeping out of the track of ships.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: He wanted the sea to himself. As he said it,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: he would keep a sharp look out, both for wind
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: and ships. He went on, My reflection wasn't audible. The
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: lookout gave me a signal of something west. Strange. How
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: sharp eyed a native can be. Give me a chink
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: in a crow's nest to see everything under the sky,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: he said. There was a cloud appearing that brought me up.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I was a tiffin in the officer's cabin. I had
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: ice and some bottles, a present from the Dutch skipper
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I left them. I wanted to look at that cloud,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: but I couldn't make out anything, not even with a glass.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: The sea, as far as the eye could reach, was
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: as clear as a plate of metal. There wasn't a
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: ripple on it. I cursed the chink in the top
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and sent another up. He squinted about a bit and
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: began to squeal. There was a tiny cloud to the west.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: He paused, fiddling the fingers of his folded hands. An
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: hour later I saw it, I mean, with the glass,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: a speck of a cloud on the extreme horizon of
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the sea. I got a chair up and sat down
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: on the bridge. That cloud troubled me. It would be
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: a land storm on the way out. If it hung together,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: it would be one of those dangerous tornadoes following a track.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: If we were in the track. He turned the thumb
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of one of his hands slowly down. It was a
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: gesture more significant than any word he could have spoken,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: a gesture like the decree of a fate. There were
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of islands to the west of us, some
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: not charted, hardly any of them known. We were taking
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a chance on this route north. I shouldn't have risked it,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: perhaps except for the Dutch skipper's bottles. After all, I
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: wasn't there to insure the damned cargo. The long packing
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: cases were marked mowing scythes from brimmen. That was the
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: woofing company's business. I kept watching that cloud, that speck
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: in the sea. It was right on the water. That
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: would be the track of a tornado. But what puzzled
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: me was that it did not seem to move. The
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: cloud of a tornado ought to travel, It ought to
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: travel like hell. I thought the thing must be smoke
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: from a steamer, But it didn't look like any smoke
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: that I had ever seen, and it didn't act like smoke.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: The chinks in the top jabbered at the suggestion of smoke.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: It was not smoke, And presently they began to jabber
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: about the cloud. They hung out of the top like
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: a pair of yellow jacks in the box. And finally
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: they gave me another decision. It was a sail. He
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: put his two big hands out on the table in
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: front of him, as one might put out documents to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: prove a statement. They seemed, as one would say, it
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: detached from the man. Then we noticed something that we
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: had overlooked in the excitement. There was a bit of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: air moving, a faint breeze coming to us from the land.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: The thing was a sail. I saw it after a time,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: but there was something about it that didn't seem right
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: in a sail. The chinks in the top marked it,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and I could see it when the land breeze freshened.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: It looked heavy and formless. A sail ought to have
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a sharp outline. It was moving directly out toward the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: route of the steamer. It ought to cross our track
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: north about dark. If the breeze held, it was a
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: damned curious thing, and I kept a watch on it,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: but I wasn't concerned about it. There was no threat
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: in the bit of wind. We were not in for
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: a storm, and a thing with a sail like that
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: could only be some native craft. Beating about that conclusion
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: was correct in part. I mean it was a native
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: craft when it came within reach of the glass, a
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Chinese sailing sampong of the common type along the coast.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: There was nothing unusual about the sampong. The thing that
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: puzzled me, puzzled the chinks in the top was the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: aspect of the sails on the crude rigging. They looked
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: heavy and ponderous. The whole rigging seemed to be covered
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: with a loose, thick, wooly sail, not drawn taut, but
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: hanging as though it were draped over the rigging. I
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: was astonished. I'd never seen anything like that on any
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: sailing craft on any water in the world. But in
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the slight breeze, it seemed able to carry the sampan
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: slowly out into the open sea. He didn't move his
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: hands now, they remained before him, like two bags of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: coin before a player on a gaming table. I had
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: only a native crew, no other white man. A native
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: crew isn't curious. A thing has got to get out
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: of the order of nature to get a native crew excited.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: But something about the sail on that sampan worked the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Chinese up. It worked me up too. I didn't give
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: a fiddler's curse for the sompan. It would cross the
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: route of the ship a mile ahead, and the night
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: would take it, could have it and be damned for me.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Still it puzzled me as I watched it, just as
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the Chinks watched it. I could hear the jabber in
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the top, and there was a yellow head everywhere about
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the deck. As the outline of the thing grew clearer,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: one could understand why the native lookout called the thing
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: a cloud when he first saw it. It was a
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: cloud at any rate. It was no proper sail. It
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: was something heavy and thick mast around the rigging, A
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: heavy cloud of some sort banked around the rigging. That
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: was the impression I got, and that is what it was.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I continued to watch it through the afternoon as the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: breeze carried the sampond out across our route ahead. It
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: reached the line of the steamer ahead about sunset, and
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: then a miracle happened. He rested his weight heavily on
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: his hands and looked at me steadily across the table.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: You could call it only a miracle. I had my
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: glass on the craft at the moment, and every chink
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: was watching. That thick, wooly cloud sail suddenly detached itself
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: from the rigging of the sampan, lifted and moved away,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: and it moved against the wind, back toward the land
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: from which it had come. He shot out his jaw
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: against the wind. That would be a miracle. I saw it,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and every native of the crew saw it. There was
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: an audible murmur, like a sigh over the whole ship,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that oriental murmur of profound astonishment that one hears perhaps
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: once in a life, as though the sea had opened.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Bennett did not say very much about it, but I
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: could understand the profound curiosity on the ship as the
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: sampan approached under this strange sail, and when the cloud
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: lifted and went back against the wind, the whole crew
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: must have hung breathless, a yellow head out of every
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: hole on that ship. To get the earliest possible solution
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: to this mystery. They understood clouds and wind They were
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: creature of the sea. Clouds and winds were important to them.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: They studied them, they weighed the phenomena of them. They
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: were vital factors. And when suddenly the definite order of
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: nature was reversed, they were appalled. A cloud did not
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: move against the wind. A thing like that had never
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: been observed to happen since the world began. It was
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: beyond every detail of their experience. It was beyond every
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: experience from the beginning. As the winds moved, so did
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: the clouds in heaven move. But here was a wind
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: blowing from the land, and here was a cloud that
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: lifted and went away in the opposite direction. It was
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a thing that reversed life, and it impressed this old
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: primitive race more profoundly than any modern phenomena of mystery
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: could possibly have impressed it. If there had been a
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: dead man come to life, they would have been astonished.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: If they had seen an ancient woman growing back to
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: her youth, they would have been amazed with it. But
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: they could have explained it as being the protein quality
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: of a drug, the result of some feet of a
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: witch doctor, the spell of some manner of magic, or
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the thing white men accomplished with their miracle business. But
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: there was no white man here except the captain of
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the ship, who seemed equally amazed with the thing. And
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: there was no witch doctor. There was no magic. This
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: was the sea that they traveled and dwelt on as
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: races travel and dwell on the land. This was the
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: sea they knew. How could the order of nature get
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: reversed here? There could be no explanation of it unless
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the explanation awaited them on the sampan that they were overhauling,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the spon that now stood bare rigged on the sea,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: motionless on the track of the route north they approached it.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: It must have been the tensest sort of journey the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: last hour of the old freighter as it chugged toward
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the mystery of the Sampan. It is a marvel to us,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: to the people of any other race, that no effort
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: was made to increase the speed of the freighter. That
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: would be the inscrutable oriental control of self. They must
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: have been wild to know what was on the deck
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of the sumb Pon. But it would be like this
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: ancient race to move toward it with the usual calm.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: An English Stoker would have coaled his ship and strained
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: his engines. There would have been every form of hurry.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: But there was no change on the deck of the freighter,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: except that a yellow head popped out at every corner.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Bennett was himself on the deck of the freighter, on
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the bridge of it. If this absurdity of a ship
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: had a bridge. He kept a glass on the sumb pan.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: At the first distances it seemed empty. Nothing moved on it.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: It seemed to undulate gently in the sea under its
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: bare rigging. Bennett said he thought it was an abandoned,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: derelict of a thing drifting about. Certainly there was no
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: crew on it. They would be moving, baking some sort
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: of signal, but there was no signal visible, and there
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: was no motion of any living thing on the deck.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: He concled luted finally that the sampan was abandoned. He
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: said something like it. He called out to the men
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: in the top, but they did not agree with him.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: They saw clearer with their naked eye. These orientals bred
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: to the visibility of the sea than the exotic white
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: man could. At once with his glass, they said there
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: was something on the sompan, an indefinite something. Bennett tried
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: to make it out, and finally he got it in
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: the glass. It looked like a heap or bundle lying
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: on the bare deck. That detail intrigued his curiosity. What
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: sort of cargo could such a drifting craft carry? A
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: mystery craft convoyed by a sail cloud that lifted from
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: its rigging and set aside by its axe the established
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: laws of the universe, they could not make out what
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: this cargo was as the freighter advanced, but the men
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: in the top began to have some conception of it
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: or some theory about it. Usually silent, they began to chatter.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Bennett did not wire into their theory. Perhaps there was
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: a bit of pride in this denial to his curiosity. Surely,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: with a glass a white man could see as well
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: as a half naked yellow asiatic in the top. At
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: any rate, he could presently see as well. And presently
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: he did see what the cargo was. It took a
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: clearer outline it became visible through his glass. Bennett sat
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: back in his chair, looking down at his motionless hands
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: on the table, his heavy face, and a sort of reflection.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: When we overhauled the sumb pond, he said, it was
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: standing motionless in the sea, no sign of a sail
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: on its bare rigging. The only thing on it was
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: an unconscious white man lying in the sun on the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: rotten deck. End of chapter one, Chapter two of The
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison post. This LibriVox
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Chapter two. Before I go into the strange details Bennett
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: gave me when he picked up the Chinese sum pond
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: in the rout of his steamer that night, I want
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to get another thing before you, the story the German
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: derelict Captain told me in the club room of the
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Wufang Company. It is not a part of Bennett's story,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: but it bears upon it in one prime essential and
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: you will grasp the whole sweep of Bennett's narrative in
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: its deeper meaning if you carry forward in your mind
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the controlling idea in Nordheim's story. Captain the Baron Nordheim,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: as Bennett addressed him. You see, as I have said,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: they were careful of distinctions. It was the only thing
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: they had left. And this derelict might have been a baron,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: he might have been anything. One never knows. I did
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: not look him up in the Almanac de Gotha, but
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the Almanac de Gotha records more than one down going
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: man stepping into the Abyss. At any rate, he was
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: an educated German. I don't know what sent him on
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: his way to the Wufang company. There was a hint
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: of it, I think in this story. He told the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: story I am relating, he had been caught in a
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: line and taken overboard from his ship. He could not swim.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: The line had played out, and he had gone down.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: It was a smooth sea with a clear green water,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and he had descended slowly, he said, feet first and upright,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: turning a little, but maintaining this position. Persons on the
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: deck could see him as he disappeared thus into the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: depths of the sea. It was a fragment of time
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: before they could get the line taut. That was the
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: point about the adventure, the very brief time involved. He
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: could not have been more than sixty seconds in the sea.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And yet he said, in that period of time he relived,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: in every accurate detail, a dramatic portion of his life.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I think he meant the most disastrous portion of it,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: perhaps the portion of it that sent him out of
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: his class into the East and finally into the club
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: of the Wufang company. He related the incident in dramatic detail.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: One could see that it was a fragment of life.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Something the man had lived contracted to its essentials. He
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: had been a student of the University of Giesen and
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the province of Hesse. There had been the usual complications
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: with a woman. This baron Nordheim must have been a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: fine type of young German in that day. The devitalizing
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: East had not removed every evidence of it. One could
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: see what the man had been. Such complications would ordinarily
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: have been of no importance, But as it happened, the
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: young woman was of the elevated class in Hesse, and
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: one of her relatives took it up. He was a
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: member of the Imperial Guard. He came down from Berlin,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and there was a duel, Nordheim said, in the brief
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: period of his descent into the sea, he passed again
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: through every detail of this duel. At five o'clock in
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: the morning, they went out from Giesen and carriages to
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: a student's clubhouse in a neighboring province. It was the
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: usual spectacular duel so dear to the dramatic Germans sense.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: The two men were stripped to the waist and armed
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: with sabers. They stood just opposite one another, so that
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: with the arm extending, a point of the saber could
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: touch the opponent to the eye. A duel so arranged
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: would be a deadly affair, but the German race gets
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the maximum of dramatic effect with the minimum of peril
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: in its tragic affairs. Two aides armed with sabers stood
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: between the opponents, and the duellists were not permitted to
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: move from their positions. The duel went on for some
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: time with the appearance of a desperate affair, but it
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: was stopped constantly. There was hardly a thrust of the
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: saber that was not intercepted. If blood were drawn, the
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: aids intervened and the surgeons consulted. Finally, the guardsmen touched
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Nordheim on the forearm, an artery was cut and the
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: duel ended. The thing would have been all in proper
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: form but for the fact that real human emotions were involved.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: The girl was engaged to the guardsman. A word or
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: two passed between the men. At the end of the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: formal duel, and suddenly, before the managers of the affair
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: could interfere, there was a moment of actual fighting. The
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: guardsman was killed, and Nordheim had to get out of
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: the empire. The man did not precisely say this in
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: the story, but he gave details enough to make it certain.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: It was the big tragic event at the turn of
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: his life. He was a civilian, he had killed an
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: officer of the emperor's guard. There was no chance that
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: he would go clear of it. The only chance he
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: had was to disappear, and so he came into Asia
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: and the Wufean company. There was no relation in this
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: incident to Bennett's adventure, except that it bears on a
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: certain feature that will presently develop, the feature of time.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: That was the point Nordheim was making that time was
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: merely a condition of the mind. It could be suspended,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: or it could be strangely lengthened. Extreme peril in the
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: presence of death could endeath extended. A moment could be
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: made to cover a long period of time. That was
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the point he made, and that is the point that
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: bears on Bennett's story. As I have said, he could
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: not have been longer than sixty seconds in the sea,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and yet he had relived in every detail the experiences
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: of his life for a very considerable period. Was time
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: then strangely subject to human emotion. Thus, in a day
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: one might, under certain conditions of the mind, have the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: experiences and sensations of a lifetime. If the situation were
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: tense enough, if the feeling were overpowering enough, time could
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: be extended as one stretches an elastic band. Of course,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Nordheim knew nothing about this story I got from Bennett,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: but his experiences for the brief period of time in
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: the sea had set him to thinking about this condition
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: of time, and a further experience made it almost an
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: obsession with him, a sort of fixed idea that a
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: German can so easily get absorbed into this further ex experience.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: In fact, the really strange thing which he had started
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: out to relate had added to his interest in this idea.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Somewhere the actual situs of these wanderings were never precisely charted.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Up a sluggish river of the Melee Peninsula, there was
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: a German resident. He was alone in this wilderness of Asia.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: It wasn't certain what the contraband was. He traded in
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: raw opium. Perhaps the Wufang Company had located him, and
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: it sent Nordheim in on one of its leprous ships
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: to get the stuff he had to sell. That's the
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: reason the spot on the coast remained indefinite in the
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: man's story. The Wufang Company did not wish the world
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: to know where precisely its doubtful customers were located, or
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: the destination of its ships. But if the contraband which
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: the resident sold to the Wufang Company was left in doubt,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: there was no doubt about what Nordheim took to the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: recluse in exchange French champagne and hashish. The resident in
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: his thatch house at the end of the Sluggish Rags
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: explained it to Northheim. Hasheesh had a strange effect on
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: the human mind. It lengthens one's conception of time, The
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: residence said, I get drunk, I take the drug, and
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: so it happens that in one afternoon I enjoy myself
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: for a month. It was a finger's touch on an
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: immense mystery. A lost German in a forest of Asia
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: was on the way to one of the greatest discoveries
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: of the age. He had outwitted time, he had hit
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: upon a plan to extend the pleasant periods of it.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Northheim said there was no doubt about the effects of
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: the drug. It did extend the consciousness of time. Grave
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: professors had experimented with it in the universities at Berlin.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: In half an hour one could traverse the length of
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: unter de Linden. But if one swallowed a portion of
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the drug, a very limited portion, one seemed a whole
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: afternoon in that pleasant walk. Strange that this astounding quality
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: in the Asiatic hemp should have received so little attention
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: from the savants of the world. What an immense control
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: one would have over one's life if one could extend
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: for a long period brief happy moments in it. Carry
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: this incident in mind as we go forward with Bennett's
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: amazing narrative. Bennett said, there was nothing on the flimsy
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: craft to take aboard but the man. That strange cloud,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: that sale cloud that had brought the sampan out was
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: a clean mystery, a thing like witchcraft, a thing out
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: of the order of nature. A cloud does not travel
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: back against the wind. Bennett said that if he alone
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: had seen it, he might have believed himself under the
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: delusion of a mirage of the sea. But every native
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: of the crew saw it, and the appalling mystery of
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: it overcame the abysmal reserve of the race. There was
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: the profound comment of that murmur, heard like a sigh
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: out of the bosom of the crew. And there was
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: another thing. There was an intent in the phenomenon of
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: that cloud, a definite intent. It brought the sum pond
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: out to the steamer, and it withdrew when that voyage
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: was accomplished. One could go just so far with coincidence,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and then the human understanding balked at it. There was
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: the old illustration. If one found three trees at an
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: equal distance apart and standing in a precise line, that
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: might be chance. But if one found seven trees thus arranged,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: there was an intent behind it. Somebody had planted them.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Chance didn't go ahead with a plan. Chance was a
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: kind of accident. But this thing was no accident. That
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: cloud moved to a purpose, the purpose of getting that
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: white man to the steamer, and it did it. Then
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: it went back against the wend. That was the thing
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: that got his goat, as he expressed, it got the
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: goat of the crew, and he went on about it.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Of course, I was thinking of the bottles and the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: ice that the Dutch skipper had given him. But I
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: got away from that rational explanation a moment later. I
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: got away from it with a decided start. He began
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: to describe the white man, and presently, in a flash,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I knew him. It was Arthur Hudson. It took a
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: profound effort to control my face, to control my amazement.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Hudson was a missing man, but not one of the
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: missing men I was after. There was no dosser entry
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: for which he was wanted. He wasn't involved with a crime,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: but he was involved in a romance that had hung
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: for its seven days on the tongue of London, and
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: then he had vanished out of all human knowledge. I
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: knew all about it. There was a girl, of course,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: and I had what she knew. Everything she knew, even
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the letters the man had written. She had made a
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: clean breast of it to me, and I knew the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: details running out in every direction from the culminating dramatic incident.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: It's marvelous. It's incredible how an efficient secret service can
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: get at the very hidden details in a case when
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: it goes carefully after them, and we had gone carefully
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: after the details. In this case. Hudson was an American
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: of an important family, and at the time the earth
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: swallowed him, he was rich. I shall have something in
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: detail to say about this feature presently, And the girl
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: was socially prominent in England, rather too prominent, as it
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: turned out. The other man, there was always another man
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: in these triangles, was notorious Lord X. I don't want
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: to name him. Everybody knows his career and how it ended.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Bennett was going on. He was discussing a philosophy. I
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: did not follow him. He had deflected from the narrative
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: into a rambling discussion on coincidence and design and events
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: with an endless array of examples. I was thinking back
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: over Hudson's affair. He had visited in England as a boy,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: and in the country he had met this English girl.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: There had sprung up a youthful romance and a sort
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: of engagement. The girl then was one of those slim, fresh,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: wholesome youngsters that our English race can breed in its
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: best country families. What London does to some of the
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: finest of them later on, as it did to her,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: is enough to crucify the very souls in us. Hudson
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: went home with this ideal of her firmly fixed. His
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: father had died and the estate was involved. In fact,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: there was only a string of bituminous coal mines as
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: an asset, and they were going to pot, as such
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: properties go to pot when there is no personal supervision
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: by the owners. Arthur Hudson was the only heir, the
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: only individual in fact living at his father's death. He
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to marry this English girl and live in England.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: He was wild about her and the outdoor country life.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: But for this he had to have money. He had
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: to get his father's wrecked estate on its feet, and
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: he went about it like a man. He sold the
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: house on Long Island and went down into the coal
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: region himself. It was an awful place to put in
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: the days of one's life. The Long Valley was a
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: pot of smoke, the river a stinking yellow drain. There
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: were only the shacks of the miners to live in
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the scalm of southern Europe, to talk with women like
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: beasts of burden, men like underground gnomes. It was awful,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: but there was firm fiber in the man, great stuff,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the stuff of the builders of empires in him. He
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: stuck it five years in that hell, and the thing
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that kept him up was this English girl, I mean
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the ideal of her. It was the thing in his
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: heart that held all this physical horror back from him.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: And the ideal became finer all the time the man's
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: worship polished it. He could endure this hell for a
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: season because from the smoke of its pit he was
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: going to the clean air of England and to this
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: lovely girl, fresh like a blossom. He thought of her
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: in every moment of his waking life, but not in
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: the unconscious sleep life. That was a thing he complained of.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: He never could see this girl in his dreams. He
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: never could dream of her. He wrote it in his
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: letters to the Girl, the letters I saw. He did
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: have a dream about a girl, a dream that kept
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: coming back, always the same. But it wasn't this English
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: girl that he saw in it. It was a girl
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: that he had never seen anywhere, a slender, dark haired
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: girl with a delicate ethereal beauty like a dryad and
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: a sacred grove or a fairy woman. A flock of
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: birds moved always about her, settled on the earth, beside her,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: arose beside her, convoyed her like a treasure. It was
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: always the same. If he dreamed of a woman at all,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: it was always this woman. He poured it all out
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: to his sweetheart in England. He resented this intrusion. He
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: wanted to dream of her, but it was of no
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: use to resent it. The thing was beyond his will.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: And here was another strange thing, the resentment at the
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: parallel life I mean, the real and the dream life
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: that alternated in this man's consciousnes was not confined to one.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: It lay equally in the two lives Hudson's subconscious soul,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: if one may put it that way, in worship of
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: this dream woman of the birds resented and rejected the
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: other worship of his conscious soul. The man lived in
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: two worlds, and he was not the same man in them,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: at least in his heart. He was not the same man.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: But strangely, his introspections were the same in both, I
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: mean in method he considered and he reflected in the
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: one precisely as he considered and reflected in the other.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: And thus considering in the one state, he could not
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: understand his attitude in the other. Awake he was in
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: love with this girl in England, thought of her, only
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: longed for her. And when the night came on him,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: he turned to the other with a sort of shudder
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: of the soul for what he had escaped. He could
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: see then that this incomparable Dryad moving with the birds
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: was the one he longed for, was the one only
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: woman in the world for him that limitation is too narrow,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the one only woman in time, in space. For him,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: there was no doubt about it. Something like the drunken
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: confusion of a drug would clear away, and he seemed
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: to see, seemed to see clearly that the other obsession
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: was a sort of derangement of the soul. Then the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: day would come, and this whole life would withdraw into
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: the region of the fancy. It was this day life
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: that prevailed, it would always prevail in such a conflict.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: We are creatures of the sun, and what appear in
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: it are the realities of the world. To us. The
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: innumerable unstable states of the mind in the vast realm
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: of dreams do not move us to their will with
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the insistence of our waking impressions. Nevertheless, they profoundly impress us,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: impress us sometimes as of a deeper significance than the
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: waking phenomena that we call life. Our old mysterious religions
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: teach that it was through the vehicle of the dream
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: that the soul of man was received its vital message,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: as though the withdrawal of sense impressions put the human
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: mind in a closer touch with the intelligence behind the world.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: It's all inconceivably mysterious letters went on. The English girl
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: was amused to keep Hudson thinking of her as a
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: country innocent. He got no idea of the change that
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: was going on, the smart, fast life she was getting
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: into the descent. Then he sold out, got a fortune
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: in an American bank and came to England. He did
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: not tell his sweetheart he was coming the strike of
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: fortune and the sale of the properties, and his coming
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: for her was to be a surprise. The surprise was
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: on the other side. I may as well write it
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: all out here. Why tone it down, It's the truth.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Hudson called up the country house. When he got to London.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: They gave a woman's club in the city. The club
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: said the girl was out for the week end at
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Earldmere House. He asked a man he knew in his
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: club about it. He said, if you you have a
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: birdy in that nest, you had better cut along. Hudson
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: thought he meant the distance. The man added a word
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: or two. The ants a sound sleeper. Hudson got the
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: route to the house from a road map, picked up
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: a motor and drove out. It was no great distance,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: only an hour or so out, but a tire went down.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of trouble, no spare case, it seemed,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: or something of the sort. At any rate. It was
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: rather late when he arrived. Too late to go in,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: he thought, But he was crazy to see the girl.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: To see the house that held her would be something.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: He bade the motorist wait, and he walked up. It
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: was a heavenly night. There was no moon, but the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: whole heaven was white with stars. It was a night
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: designed in paradise for a long absent lover to come
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: home to his sweetheart. Hudson was surprised at a turn
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: of the path to see lights in the house. He
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: thought it would be one of the country houses that
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: shut up early from what his friend said of the ant,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and to cut along. It seemed to be a drawing
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: room that was lighted. The other parts of the house
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: were dark. He advanced on the path and presently he
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: caught the sound of faint music and noises. There was
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: a French casement door opening from the lighted drawing room
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: on to the lawn. It was ajar and Hudson went in.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: You see the charm and surprise moved him. The girl
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: would go red and white and breathless when he appeared,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: poor devil. I would like to leave the rest of
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: it out, but it is a part of this complicated truth.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: It's a fragment of this history of a life. Things
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: happen and one has to face them. A surgeon doesn't
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: draw back before a malformation of the body. And it's
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: a demonstration in the new philosophy, the philosophy of experiment,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: that the generation coming up has got in its head.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: I've no comment to make on it. The girl told
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: me what happened when she showed me Hudson's letters, and
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: made a clean breast of it. She had gone out
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: to spend the week end at Earldmere House. At dinner,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Lord X had a bottle of champagne brought in. The
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: old aunt objected. Young girls were not offered champagne in
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: her day. There was a bit of protest from the Englishman,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: and the girl smiled, but the wishes of the old
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: aunt were respected. The man put the champagne back into
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: the ice. He made a little amusing gesture, a lift
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: of the eyebrows, as one would say, oh well, let
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: it go for the present. That was the first act
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: in the drama. The second came after dinner in the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: drawing room, when Lord X set a record of American
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: jazz on a victrola and put back the rugs. The
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: old aunt made another protest. It was no proper music
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: for a drawing room, and no proper dance for a
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: young girl. X shut off the record. He made the
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: same gesture, a sort of signal as among conspirators. They
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: had a rubber of bridge a dummy for fourth and
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the evening ended. Everybody took a candle and went up.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: But the girl had a hint of a plan. It
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: was added to the english man's good night with the
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: candle and sleeps like the dead. Read a bit. She
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: did read a bit, took off her evening dress and
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the tight things, as she put it, There was a
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: light by the bed and some French novels, not any
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: that one could purchase at a newsstand. The illustrations, the
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: girl said, entreagued her. She read propped up among the pillows.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: An hour later she heard a light tap on the
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: door and X's voice. Slip on something and come down.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: She slipped on a dressing gown. She made a point
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: about that in her story, not about the conventionality of
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: the garment, but about the lure of it. It was
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: a Paris creation. She looked at herself a moment as
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: she passed the mirror. She thought she was stunning in it.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: She found Lord X with the bucket of ice in
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: the drawing room and the champagne. There were two bottles
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: in it. Now they drank it. He had the rugs
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: back and they tried the American jazz record. He had
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: a table cover over the victrola to soften the sound.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: The girl laughed at the way he played the part.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Of course, she understood the man's Victorian aunt was a joke.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: All London knew about the little play acting. It was
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: part of the game. Gave it a tone, you see,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: as she said it. But it was getting a bit overdone.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: He would have to get a new stunt. This was
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: on the way to being standardized. She laughed. That was
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: the thing that affected me in her story. The way
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: she regarded the trick. It wasn't what one did, It
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: was the way by which one came to do it,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: To be cleverly managed was the point. Was the whole point.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Of course, one was never misled. One respected the fiction
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: if it were clever. She indicated the formula one must
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: give an affair the aspect of romantic accident. Then Arthur
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Hudson stepped through the door into the drawing room. The
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: girl said she was dancing with Lord X when over
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: his shoulder she saw the man. She did not see
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: him enter. She saw him standing just inside. She didn't
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: know how long he had been inside. The Englishman was
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: getting a bit out of hand. He might have kissed
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: her just then, or the moment before she stopped and
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the Englishman turned. He went at Hudson with a rush,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: she said. Hudson did not move, did not look at
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the man. He stood looking at her, his eyes wide,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: his mouth gaping. He never did seem to look at
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Lord X. When the man reached the door, he struck
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: him with his clenched hand, but he did not look
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: at him. It was a terrific blow. It crushed out
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Lord X's nose all over his face. No surgeon could
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: ever restore it. It broke out the front teeth in
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: both the upper and lower jaws, and it damaged the
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: muscles of the left eye so that it was drawn
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: down for life. That was one thing in the tragedy
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: that the girl seemed to admire, that terrific right hander.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: She laughed. It spoiled his profession, it did. He wasn't
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: pretty to look at. After that, he slid entirely across
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: the drawing room into the opposite corner. The girl said.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: It was some moments before she knew Hudson. She was
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: a bit dizzy, and objects weren't quite clear. She didn't move.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: She kept putting her hair back from her face. She
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: had a great wealth of straw colored hair. She was
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: a beauty of the loveliest English type, and she knew it.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: That was another point about her. She enjoyed observing what
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: this beauty did to men, the reactions from it. She
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: was looking for the reaction of it even now on
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: Hudson think of it, at the crisis of such a tragedy.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: But what do I know about women? What does any
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: man know about them? She thought she was lovely, and
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: she was, And she waited for Hudson to speak, to
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: come to her. He didn't move. She wondered about it
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: when she told me, how could any normal man hold
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: out like that against the lure of her? She may
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: have been must a bit. Lord X was a normal man.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: The dressing gown may have fallen away on either side
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: from her shoulders, But clothes are allure. That's the object
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: of clothes, one more a single garment before the whole
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: world nowadays on the beach at Dauville, and she had three,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: counting the dressing gown for one. She thought she was
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: a beauty that night, a beauty. Just then? What was
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: the matter with this American? Did I know? He did
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: not move, but all at once he changed his face
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: changed or else. She finally saw him clearly through the
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: haze that she was trying to put back with that
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: gesture toward her hair. He stood now a relaxed heap
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: against the door. He looked bewildered, puzzled, uncertain, bewildered. There
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: isn't a word to describe it precisely. He looked as
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: the soul of a man might look if some awful
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: accident had suddenly ejected it out of his body and
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: did not know what to do. That's precisely it. That's
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: precisely how the man looked. I got that profound impression
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: from her description of him. She did not speak to him.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: She was waiting on the lure, waiting on the charm
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: of her to move him. But he spoke finally. His
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: voice was low, as though it came from a long distance.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: What he said was the other perhaps I can find her,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: and he went out. I am compelled to give you
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: this incident in its detail, if you are to understand
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the sort of man Hudson was. The girl kept coming
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: back to her query about him in our talk. What
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: was the matter with the American? Did he expect to
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: crack a ROC's egg and find a woman within it?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: The world had changed. The new generation had made up
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: their minds to live, to live all they could in
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: the time they had, And the more experiences one had,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the more reactions, the more one lived. Did he expect
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: to find her waiting for him a little country, innocent
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: in a blossomed pasture, in what sort of sarcophagus had
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: the man been entombed. It was the day of women.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: Women had come into their inheritance of freedom at last,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: and they proposed to make the most of it. Life
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: was too precious to be risked blindly, as it was
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: too precious to be wasted. Imagine going to live with
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: a man for one's life when one knew nothing about
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a man. Did any man of us enter an irrevocable
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: situation until after he knew pretty thoroughly all about it?
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: And experience was life? Look at the thing. If one
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: had an afternoon to see all the pictures in a gallery,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: would one spend the whole of it before a single picture?
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: One would see the gallery, and then if one preferred
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: a certain picture in it, one might come back to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: sit comfortably on a lounge before it, for any time
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: that one had over What could one know of life?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: If one knew only one man, one picture, Look at
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the waste of it? She was right. There was something
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the matter with Hudson. He belonged in another world, in
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: another conception of life, and he disappeared reared out of
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: this new one that had risen? Did he find the other?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: I was keen to get Bennett back into his story
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I was so engrossed with the memory that I had
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: hardly noticed that Bennett's voice had ceased. He was sitting
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: quite still now, But he had been at the brandy
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: bottle while I was in my reflection. It was empty.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: I got him back into his story. He had taken
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the unconscious man on to the deck of the steamer,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: abandoning the sampond to the sea. He had fortunately the
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: bottles and the ice. He put a mattress on the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: deck for the man. It was still hot, the land
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: breeze was gone. There was not wind enough now to
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: move the soampon out of the track of the steamer.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: He said a native to keep a towel wet in
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: cold water on the man's head. And he got some
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: brandy in him, a tea spoonful at a time. But
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: he never did get him back to more than fitful consciousness.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: And in these intervals Bennett got his story out of him.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: He got it in fragments, fragments that did not go together,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: either in sequence or in time, but in a sort
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: of way Bennett could fit them together himself. The man
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: went through the night and his delirium, and the next
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: day they rigged up a shelter over him on the deck,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: some old canvas to keep the sun off. The man
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: seemed greatly disturbed when they tried to move him into
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the cabin. Even in delirium, he fought against it. He
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: wanted to remain on the open deck, and he had
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: his way. I put the query that ran before the story,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: what became of Hudson? Bennett sat looking at the empty
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: brandy bottle. I took the hint. The slippered old Chinese
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: waiter shuffled in again. Bennett dribbled the brandy into his
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: dirty glass, as one might measure out the treasure of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: a vintage. The man had disappeared from the deck of
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: his ship in the night. He did not know what
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: had become of him. He thought at the time that
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: the man had rolled off the deck into the sea,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: but he wasn't so certain about it. And the older
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: he got, and the more he thought about it, the
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: less certain he was. Maybe what the delirious man said
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: would have happened to him had in fact happened. He
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: stopped abruptly, as though a sudden, profound reflection had seized him.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I took advantage of that to pour my measure of
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the brandy on the dirty matting. When I looked up,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Bennett's face was turned toward the window. He made a
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: gesture toward it with his thumb. He indicated a sparrow outside.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: The sparrow was picking a caterpillar from the lid of
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a packing box. God, he said, a man's a fool
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: to think that he can see and understand all that's
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: going on around him. He doesn't even see what he
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: could see if he looked, Not to mention the mysteries,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: he doesn't see the danger he's in from that thing.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: He jerked his thumb toward the lid of the packing box.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Our fates in it. We talk about the end of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the great war. God, We're in the greatest war that
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: the human mind ever dreamed of. No conception of war
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: ever equalled the one we are in, the one that
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: goes on day and night, no quarter, no armistice, a deadly, ruthless,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: determined struggle for possession of the earth, with extermination for
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the vanquished, extermination. We can't patch up a piece with
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: this enemy. We can't even patch up a truce. It
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: goes on. If we win, we live, if we lose.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: He put out the fingers of his big hand and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: then closed them slowly. He could not have made a
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: more forcible gesture. He went on, You can't reason with
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: this enemy. It doesn't reason. It goes on a thing
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: that we simply can't get at. The will to victory.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: We used to hear a lot about that in the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: German War. But this enemy has the instinct to victory.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Think of that. You can't break down the morale of
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: an instinct. It's outside of propaganda, outside of fear, outside
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: of panic. Death. Don't touch it, disaster, don't touch it. God.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: He repeated, the thumb jerk toward the window. Man has
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: one great act. It may save him the birds, But
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: for the aid of this ally, the great insect life
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: would overrun the world like a wave. In a year,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: every green thing would vanish. There wouldn't be a leaf
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: or a grass blade. The human race would be driven
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: to the sea for food. It would have to dig
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: in to live. It couldn't hold out. In a dozen years,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: it would cease to exist. There was a tense vigor
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: in the man's words, but there was no vigor of
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: declamation in his voice. He sat stooped over in his chair,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: and he spoke like one idly in a reflection, one
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: who wasn't concerned about an effect. I was puzzled. What
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: sort of a tangent was he on? I meant so
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: far as Hudson and the mystery about him was concerned.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: But the vivid pictures he created gripped me. One saw
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: what he meant. Of course, everybody had thought idly along
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: the line, but who had ever realized the immensity of it?
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: If our ally failed us? He shrugged his big shoulders.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: They alone checked the advance of this loathsome conqueror. They
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: hold the line. If the enemy breaks through, were doomed,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: and we don't give a thought to them. We don't
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: even know the wars on He paused, And we see
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: fifty million tons of insects shift from one sector to
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: another point of attack. We see a dozen cubic miles
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: of space filled with the enemy in some sudden drive
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: on us, and we leave our fate to the birds.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: I thought Bennett was drunk. I thought he had gotten
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: into one of those ruts of the mind common to
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: men and liquor. But he was not drunk. How he
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: sat up under that terrible brandy was a wonder. But
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: he did sit up under it. The only effect of
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: the drink that one could notice was that he became
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: a little more precise in his expressions and a little
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: more mysterious. He made a gesture with his hand toward
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: the window, either to dismiss the subject which he had elaborated,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: or to include it with the story he returned to.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: He came back to the unconscious man on the deck
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: of his ship, muttering in the shadow of the rotten canvas.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: He began to talk about him. How had he come here?
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: What had happened to him? There was no white man
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: on any island of this sea, and this craft had
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: not come from the wreck of a ship. No ship
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: would carry a rotten sampond on its davits. It came
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: out from the land under the mystery sail. Bennett continued
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: to do all he could to get the man on
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: his feet, but it was no go. He got some
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: broth in him, and the spoonfuls of liquor, and now
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: and then he got some fragment of his story. One
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: could visualize the thing, the curious ship captain sitting by
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: the delirious man, noting every word, considering every gesture and expression,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: and putting it together as one puts together the fragments
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: of a puzzle, now giving it up as a fantastic vagary,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and then coming back to it for the truth. There
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: was one thing in the fragments that Bennett got that
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: struck me with the impact of a blow. The man
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: said that there had been a woman with him on
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: the sampan. That fragment had a marked significance for me.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: It connected Hudson with the affair I detailed a moment ago.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: It completed his adventure with the English girl. One thought
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: instantly of his last significant sentence, when he was standing
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: by his dead self in the door of Lord X's
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: drawing room. The other perhaps I can find her? Had
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: he found her? Or was it merely that persistent dream
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: coming out in the delirium? How could there have been
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: a girl with him on this rotten sampon at this
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: point in the China Sea. Was it the dream again?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: If it were, that here was a parallel for Chillingsworth's
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: traitor the same ending. I thought it was the brandy
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: in Bennett at the time that made him so complaisant,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: so willing to accept the mystery in Hudson's disappearance, to
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: believe what the man said in his delirium. But it
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: was not the brandy. I can believe it, and I
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: do not drank the brandy of the Wufeng company. Hudson
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: said that there was a girl with him on the sumpon,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: and that she had gone away in the cloud that
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: had made a sail to bring the sampan out to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: the ship. He said the cloud would come for him.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: That was the reason he fought, even in his delirium,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: for his open place on the deck. Did it come
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: for him? Bennett kept putting that query as he got
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: on with the story. At any rate, the man was gone.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: One morning when Bennett came out on the deck, the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: Native lookout set a thick cloud past the ship. But
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: as Bennett said, any native would be short to add
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: a wonder of his own to the rest of these wonders.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: End of chapter two, Chapter three of The Revolt of
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: the Birds by Melville Davison post this LibriVox recordings in
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: the public Domain read by Ben Tucker. Chapter three, Bennett
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: pieced out Hudson's adventure on his way north. He was
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: idle on the ship, and this strange affair gave him
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: something to do. I could see him on that dead
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: water under a sky that did not change. The rusty
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: freighter lepros in the sun. Putting the thing together, as
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: one puts together the tiny fragments of a letter torn
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: to bits, One spreads them all out on a table
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: before one and goes at what seems a hopeless task.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: But the man had the time and the motive, and
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: he got a sort of unity in the end out
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: of the fragments. Of course, the details would not be
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: precisely correct. One had to supply missing parts. And yet
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: he had from his basket of scraps now and then
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: an incident of startling detail like the scene on the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: sea before his ship came up, and segments that were
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: mostly blank, dark places that could not be filled, could
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: not in fact be imagined. What happened to Hudson immediately
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: after he disappeared out of London that night, how he
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: had got into Asia, and so forth. Bennett gave it
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: all up. Beyond a certain point. He worked forward from
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: an event on the sea, taking that event for a beginning.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: He did not endeavor to go back of that event.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: It was a thing that seemed to stick in the
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: memory of the delirious man. He had been set adrift
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: in the sampond from a ship. Bennett thought that was
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: all the story at first, the man had been set
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: adrift and he had picked him up. But he saw
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: later it was the beginning of the whole thing. This
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: is how Bennett finally worked it out from the vague
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: data he had. It was conjecture, merely a sort of theory,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: but something of the sort seemed to be indicated. Something
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: of the sort was at the origin of the thing.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: At any rate, it made what one might call a
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: working hypothesis. Hudson was looking for something, He was searching
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: the world for it. How he had got into Asia,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: and how he came to set out on his quest,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: and what the quest was were dead points to Bennet.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: He could not get them precisely coupled up. He could
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: not piece out this portion of the story. But he
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: had a marvelous memory. He gave me the fragments out
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: of Hudson's babble. He did not know precisely what they indicated,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: and he did not join them up. But to me
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: they were sign boards along the way of the man's adventures.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: I had all that went before. Bennett did not understand
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: these fragments from Hudson's talk, but I could put the
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: whole thing together. He had set out on a quest,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: and he had a sort of instinct about it. I
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: don't think that in the beginning the instinct led him.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: I think the first thing was the flight of panic
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: to get out of London. Was the idea to get away,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: to get as far from that cursed city as the
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: earth would permit him to go, And so he crossed
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Europe into Asia. That would be the first impulse, to
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: put all the distance one could between the city of
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: this tragic disaster and himself, between the wreck of his
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: life and the future. Then when he had got some
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: hold on himself, he would go about their for the
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: other woman. And perhaps that quest was not entirely a
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: vague wander lure. Chillingsworth's traitor said that he had an
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: instinct about where the island was that he saw in
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: his dreams. Perhaps Hudson too had some sort of instinct
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: about where the thing was that he sought. It doesn't
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: get us anywhere to reject such a theory with a smile.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: When one has a profound feeling there may be some
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: lure of direction in it. What is it that guides
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: the birds and their migrations, and the schools of fish
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: that travel in the sea. It must be some sort
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: of instinctive direction toward the thing they seek. Of course,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: it would be a mystery. But are we not surrounded,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: hedged in by mysteries? Do they not lie in every direction?
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: We have no adequate explanation for any one of them.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: Are not the very ablest scientists constantly presenting us with mystery.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: An old naturalist in the south of France brings a
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: cocoon containing a moth into province from distant part of Europe.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: He brings a single one. There is no moth of
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: that species in this part of France. He screens it
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: in a room and hatches it out, and on a
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: day when it reaches a certain period of maturity, there
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: appears a mate for it at the window. The thing
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: is incredible. It is beyond belief, It is beyond explanation.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: But it happens, and it is true. The old naturalist
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: has no explanation to offer. What living man can have
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: an explanation to offer? How could a moth in a
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: distant part of Europe know that another would be hatched
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: out in a screened room in province and travel across
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: the hills and valleys to it. And how could the
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: moth carried into captivity by the naturalist in its dormant state,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: when it awoke to life, call a mate out of
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the far away world to it. The thing appalls us,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: It staggers the human mind. We can't explain it. It
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: may be beyond reason if one likes, but it is
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: not beyond faith that Hudson had unconsciously, perhaps some instinct
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: of direction about the thing he sought. Why should a
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: moth and province possess a mystery of direction that the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: human soul is denied? The man was dominated by an
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: intense longing, a longing that cannot be gaged by any
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: little measure, a thing like the pole of the stars,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: like the pole of the Earth on its satellite. This
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: dream life had been half of the man's existence. It
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: was now the whole of it. Is there any wonder
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: that he finally got on the way to the thing
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: he sought? Bennett said that if anything existed in Asia,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: there would be a rumor of it somewhere. That's the truth.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: Any man with any experience of the East knows that
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: the English discovered it again and again in India. When
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: there were no means of communication, no telegraphs, no flash signals, nothing,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: there would be a rumor among the natives in the
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: cities of the coast about battles on that day in
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: the interior. If there was a fight anywhere in the hills,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: something would be known of it. Although it was not
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: possible to have any direct means of communication. No one
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: understands this. It is one of the phenomena of mystery.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: And so it happened that somewhere on the coast Hudson
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: got a rumor of a white woman and the birds,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: and he set out to find her. Perhaps we have
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: a hint of the thing in what we call the
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: affinity of elements, the lure that a grain of metal
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: has for another grain, the leap of steel filings to
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: a magnet. Might not that mystery of attraction be extended
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: across the world across space. Hudson had then hired a
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: Chinese crew with a ship of sorts to take him
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: on the search for the girl. When they arrived near
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: to the point of destination, somewhere on the south coast,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: the native crew refused to land. There were all kinds
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: of trouble, but the Oriental obstinacy held they would not
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: go ashore. The ship was apparently standing out to see
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: off some point on the coast. The coast, has Bennett
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: said earlier in his story, is practically unknown, no law runs,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: and it is dotted with islands not charted undiscovered. In fact,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: he could not precisely understand what was wrong why the
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: crew went into mutiny. Here there would be some powerful
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: reason for that. A Chinese trader usually keeps his word,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: and the ship must have been had from some sort
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: of trader. The devil's contention went on for a night,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: with the ship standing out to sea and the coast
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: visible to the west. Any One with the knowledge of
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: the East, with an experience of the Oriental, can picture
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: the desperate position in which Hudson found himself when the
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: ship that he hired to adventure on his quest would
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: not go into the coast. He could make out this
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: coast with the eye faintly in the distance, and on
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: it somewhere was the one he sought, if the instinct
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: in him was correct, that instinct of the soul which
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: means so profound a mystery. He had not only that
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: intense feeling to direct him. But he had also a
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: rumor that had come to him in Asia. There must
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: have been a very definite rumor about this girl currently
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: in the waste places of the east in which he
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: had been wandering, definite enough to give a location to
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: the point of land toward which the course of the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: ship had been directed. There seemed to be no doubt
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: about the fact that the one Hudson was seeking was
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: somewhere behind the dim coast outline that emerged vaguely from
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: the sea on its western horizon. These details came out
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: in the man's delirium. They gave a framework for the
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: picture that one could so easily visualize. It must have
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: been the devil's situation for a man like Hudson, a
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: man who had been following a dream, a dream that
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: his whole life was absorbed in, that embodied now every hope,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: every fortune of the future. A thing that had been
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: a vague fancy, a thing that could be only, a
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: matter that had no reality, that had no place in
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: the actualities of existence, now on this day, with the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: main land to be outlined in the distance, had become
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: a part of life. It had hardened into fact. It
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: had moved from a fairy kingdom of dreams into the
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: land of living men. This woman that he sought was
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: not a fancy. Then, she was not a fairy creature
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: imagined in an extravaganza of the mind. She was a
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: living woman. And to the west, beyond the strip of
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: Placid Sea, she awaited him. Then, at the very hour
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: when his hand was extended to touch her, he was
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: held up by this wall. The ship stopped. It was
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: easy enough to imagine that scene. The Oriental crew would
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: not be above board with their resistance. The Oriental does
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: not come out like the English sailor with a determined
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: stand against you. The engines of the ship would stop.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: The impatient white man would make an inquiry. He would
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: be told that something about the engines was broken down.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: He would be met by obsequious apologies. The broken engine
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: would be speedily repaired. He would be assured that his
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: wishes would be carried out. If he were not familiar
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: with the East, he would be deceived by this. Perhaps
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: for a time he was deceived by it. One going
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: into Asia from the west would take these expressions in
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: their literal meaning. He would expect them to be carried out.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: He would know later what they meant. Bennett would have
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: known instantly, or any of the white men in the
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: service of the Wu Fang company. Of course, an engine
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: might break down, an accident could easily happen to the
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: engines that must have been in the ship. Hudson picked up.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: Any accident in fact, might have happened to it. But
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: it was certain that there was a delay here for
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: the man, not the result of any accident. Somewhere in
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: the haze of delirium, Hudson said, the crew mutinied that,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: in plain terms, would be the actual fact that Chinese
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: crew had decided not to go into this coast line.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: Hudson discovered that fact a little later on. It is
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: probable that for the moment, perhaps for the duration of
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: a day, he was misled by the excuses they gave him.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: But he must have discovered presently that there was no
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: substance in those excuses. The ship stood out in the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: sea while the crew pretended to repair the engines. Hudson
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: sat on the deck looking at the line of the coast.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: He was certain now to reach it. His ship would
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: presently go on, and an hour or two he could
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: go ashore. He must have had a vast upward sweep
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: of the heart at the contemplation of it. Before the
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: sun set, he would be in the land of the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: fairy woman and the birds. He never had a doubt
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: about it. That fact, Bennett said, was constantly evident in
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: his delirium. But the ship did not go on the
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: insistence of the white Man must have made itself felt.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Then it would certainly make itself presently felt. He would
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: not have remained an afternoon in his chair. He would
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: have finally gone to inquire about the engines. He would
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: have sent for his Chinese skipper. One can visualize that
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: official clearly enough to make a painted water color. He
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: would wear a cap of the German Merchant Marine, and
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: there the uniform of the service would stop. He would
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: have the usual Chinese garment, and he would go barefoot.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: But he would be very polite and apologetic. He would
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: explain the accident to the engines. The explanation would avoid details,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: but he would assure the white Man that the ship
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: would go on. When he was pressed for the hour
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: at which this happy event would take place, he would
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: have recourse to the vague gestures of the east and
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: its vaguer expression. No can tell, excellency. It is a
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: useful expression with the Oriental when he does not mean
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: to tell, or when there is nothing in fact to tell.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Night would have fallen, and the ship would have stood
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: out in this same position in the sea. Its would
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: have been deserted. Hudson would have found himself alone. A
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: Chinese crew has the quality of rats. They can disappear
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: in a moment at the sound of one's voice. A
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: whole crew can vanish. It can disappear into a ship,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: as vermin disappear into a wall. With the Knight lying
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: on the sea, Hudson would find himself on what appeared
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: to be an abandoned ship. He would have discovered nothing.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: If he happened on to one of the crew, the
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: ubiquitous creature after every kind of apology, would slip away
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: from him. If he found the skipper, he would have
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: found the smiling Oriental profuse in his explanations of regret,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: explanations always with the same delphic expression, no can tell, excellency.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: It would be a night of long anxiety for the man.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Fear would present itself, the dread of something behind this
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: extraordinary accident that was given to him for an excuse. Finally,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: a suspicion would arise, and when the morning finally dawned
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: on the sea, he would understand. He must have understood finally,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: the expressions in his delirium make that certain. Then he
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: would come to realize that the ship would not go
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: into the coast. He must have been profoundly puzzled when
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: he did come finally to understand it. That land vaguely
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: to be made out in the distance was an island,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: But it was an island enveloped in some sort of horror.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: He could not make out just what this horror was.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: There was something there that put the fear of death
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: into this Chinese crew. What was it? The man would
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: have no conception of the real fact about it, and
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: he would get no definite idea from the indirections that
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: an Oriental would be sure to give him. But it
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: was something that no man dared to face. He presented
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: every inducement to the Chinese skipper. He would double what
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: he had offered for the ship. When he began to
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: realize that the crew would not go on, the first
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: explanation that would appear to him was that he was
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: being held up for a higher price. The thing had
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: every aspect of that sort of blackmail. That would be
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: a convincing reason, and it would not be out of
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: character in Asia. One coming into the far East would
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: hit at once. On that explanation, Bennett would have rejected it.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: The Chinese trader, even the skipper of such a ship,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: would be strangely honest about his bargain. Such a subterfuge
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: would not have occurred to him. The man doubtless honestly
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: wished to go on to carry out his contract with
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: the White Man if he could. But no inducement that
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: could be offered would move the crew. Panic had enveloped it.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: Neither force nor the lure of money would move it.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: Then a strange thing happened, a thing that Hudson, new
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: to the East, thought strange, a thing not strange to
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: the Wu Fang company. The Chinese skipper offered to return
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: the money that Hudson had paid for the voyage. The
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: crew would not go into this land of terrors. He
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: would go back to the port from which they had sailed.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: He would return the White Man to the very spot
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: from which he had stepped on to the ship. He
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: would return his money to him. In fact, offered the
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: gold in a bag to him. The discussion went on
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: until midday, this bitter, desperate struggle between the will of
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: the white man and the terror of the crew. But
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: he was not a man to be turned back from
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: the thing he wanted. He was not to be held
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: up by a fear of death, by a fear of anything.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: And so finally he made his decision. If the crew
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: would not go in, he would go in himself. There
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: was a bare rigged sum pond on the excuse of
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: a ship. There would be no boat on its davits.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: The thing would probably be fastened on the deck, something
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: to be called a boat. In the ship papers There
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: would always be papers of a sort. The Chinese skipper
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: must have labored to persuade Hudson from this mad adventure.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: He would find something awful on that island. He did
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: not undertake to define it. Perhaps he did not know
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: what it was, some horror of death, sure to destroy
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: any one who would go ashore on it. He would
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: fall back on the idiomatic expression. No can tell, excellency,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: it is certain at any rate that they put Hudson
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: overboard in the sumpon to drift ashore, or he went
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: of his own Will Bennett didn't know. There was suggestive
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: hints in Hudson's wild talk that there was a current
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: running that would beach the Sumpon when it got in
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: the drift of it. The Chinese skipper or whatever the
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: chink called himself, who had charge of Hudson's ship Nuthas
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: he put the Sumpon afloat in this current, it would
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: drift in. If the mad White Man was determined to
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: go ashore on this cursed hell of an island. It
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: is impossible to think of a situation more tragic than this.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: Hudson alone on the deck of the Sumpon, drifting with
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: the current toward this island of mystery. He must have
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: been in some degree impressed with the immovable fear of
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: the Chinese crew. He could not wholly reject it. The
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: Oriental is sound when you get to the base in him.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: When he acts, he has always a good and sufficient
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: reason for it. He's not a creature of whims. I
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: suppose Hudson thought that he was facing one of the
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: beggaries of a superstition, but he must have had some
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: concern beyond that. No man ever voyaged on a wilder adventure,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: even Chillingsworth's trader had a definite picture of the port
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: he sailed for. Hudson had no conception of this outline
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: of land toward which the sampond drifted. There was something
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: awfully wrong with it. That was all he knew, except
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: the one big fact that he had to land on
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: it to find his woman of dreams. It was like
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: an Arabian Nights story. A dragon guarded this coast. But
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: what sort of dragon? He never could get a hint
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: of that out of the Chinese crew or the inscrutable
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: skipper under his German cap. The Oriental mind seemed to
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: scamper back into its hole in the wall when he
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: tried to drive it in on this mystery. But it
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: was definite on one essential point. Death awaited any human
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: creature that landed. All the circumlocutions of the Oriental jabber
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: drifted back to that Hudson must have considered a thing.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: So definite was he going into just that death? The
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: reflection must have given him some concern. The life he
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: was seeking to enter had not been a life of reality.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Perhaps the only way to it was the way out.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: There was another thing about this tragic situation that puzzled Bennett,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: and at first it also puzzled me. How did Hudson
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: expect to get back to the ship. To go adrift
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: in that bare rigged craft seemed an utter abandonment of
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: himself to the sea, to death, to whatever fate awaited him.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: It was clear enough from the side of the Chinese skipper.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Why bother about a man who was going to his death?
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: That would be Oriental common sense. One who could not
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: come back would need no way planned for a return,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: And so, like a practical person, he put out to
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: sea with his ship when the night shut down. That
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: would be the chink side. As Bennett summed it up,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: he was uncertain about Hudson's side of it. He may
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: have got a promise from the Chinese skipper to stand
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: by and take him off if he were able to
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: signal the ship from the coast. That would be the
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: practical thing to do, and the Oriental would have made
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: that agreement made it. To break it, to keep it
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: would be to accomplish the sort of folly that the sound,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: practical Asiatic mind does not waste time over keeping faith
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: with a dead man. Of course, there is the further
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: theory that Hudson was burning his Bridges. Bennett rejected that,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: but I do not reject it. He would share in
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: the fate of his woman of dreams. She was the
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: only thing he had. He had gone practically out of
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: life to seek her. He was given up everything for
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: this dream. In fact, it was no longer a dream.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: It was the one reality. Everything else, all the life
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: we call reality, was allusion to this man. I could
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: understand it, but picture the thing drifting with that sum
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: pun alone slowly in a sea current into some form
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: of horror that set a whole Chinese crew squealing when
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: they thought about it. The chink was right. The sum
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: pond landed about an hour before sunset, and the crew
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: was right. Hudson was appalled with the aspect of the
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: island as he approached it. He got an ever increasingly
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: better view of it as the current carried him in.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: The whole sweep of the island looked like the wreck
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: of a world. It looked devastated, as by some hideous
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: toxic blight. There wasn't a tree, shrub, or green living
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: thing on it. And the point was the appalling point
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: that it had been originally a fertile, cultivated green island.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: Ranking rich in this tropical sea, Hudson, and from the
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: deck of the sompon as he approached, thought the island
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: had been gassed, as one might say, that is, some
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: volcanic actions had released a toxic sulfur vapor through a
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: crevice or the like, and the whole island, so to speak,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: had been gassed. That was the only explanation that occurred
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: to the man, the only explanation possible. He began to
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: look out for a breath of this vapor, some evidence
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: of it in the air as the sampon drifted in,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: but he could detect nothing. That fact gave him a
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: profound concern. Would this toxic gas be of some unknown
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: chemical constituency and odorless? Such gases were not wholly unknown
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: to science. There might be such a deadly gas in
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: nature and escaping here. Then he recalled that there were
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: in fact certain heavy toxic gases that lay close to
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: the earth, making in certain portions of the world what
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: were called death zones. Dogs and low standing animals died
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: in these. A man on a horse would sometimes pass unharmed.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: He concluded that this was the correct solution of the mystery.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: It accounted for the hideous devastation of all forms of
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: vegetable life, and for the deadly fear of the Chinese crew.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: These death zones had in all quarters of the world
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: an appalling terror for the native mind, death coupled with
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: some malicious devil purpose. This theory went to pieces when
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: the sampan beached. Hudson saw it. When he waded ashore
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: and housard the sampond to a point of rock. The
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: island had a form of life creeping over it. It
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: was matted with insects, like a rotten carcass. They were everywhere,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: in millions in numbers beyond any computation known even to
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: the magnitudes of celestial mathematics. The whole island crawled, reeked
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: with insects. They met the man at the water. He
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: crushed through them to get up the beach. They swarmed
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: around him, spread over his feet, his legs, and he
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: retreated into the sea. Of the sampan was over a
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: point of rock, standing out in the water from the beach.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: He waded back to its clean deck, clearing the insects
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: from his body in the salt water. He sat down
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: then to consider what he would do. Evidently, there was
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: no living thing in this awful place except this loathsome
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: cover of insects that was matted over it. The Chinese
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: crew were right to mutiny. It was a death island,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: a death island more awful than anything that could occur
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: to the human fancy in its wildest nightmare. The living
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: creature that went ashore on that island would meet the
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: most loathsome death possible to imagine. Enveloped in that crawling mass,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: and devoured by it, the horror was inconceivable. The man
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: was appalled. He had landed on the shore of a hell.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: And he stood there on the deck of the sampon,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: trying to comprehend in some degree the magnitude of the horror.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: He searched the whole sweep of land. It had been
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: a beauty thing once in this tropic sea, a paradise
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: of a thing. And now it was a loathsome carcass
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: of a world festering with things that crawled. There could
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: be no human creature in this ghastly hell. But there was.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: Hudson saw smoke to the west, a thin thread of
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: blue climbing into the sky. It was along the coast,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: at the edge of the sea, and obscured by a
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: rising shoulder of the island. The sand beach sloped gently out.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: There was only a ripple of water. Hudson got down
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: into the sea, and, keeping within the protection of the water,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: started to explore the coast to the west in the
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: direction of the smoke. He found a house setting at
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: the water's edge. It was the very strangest house that
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: one could imagine. Bennett could not get the details very
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: clearly out of Hudson's wild talk. It seemed to be
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: a type of the mission house in the East, except
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: that it was screened all over with a close matting
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: of every sort of fabric to be found in that
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: part of the world, and there was a sort of
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: screened way running from it right down into the sea.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: There was no opening on the island side. Doors that
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: way had all been closed and sealed tight. The chimney
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: pipe from which the smoke ascended had a closed wire
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: screen over it. Hudson got a conception of these things
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: as he approached through the water. Man had been driven
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: out of this island. The invading insects had forced him out,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: crowded him out. Here at the water's edge was the
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: last stand of the last people on it. He entered
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: wading into the covered way from the sea. Bennett had
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: difficulty to piece out the story here. The speech of
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: the unconscious man under the sail screen on his deck
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: got rapid ran into a swift jumble of expressions. But
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: from the hard fragments in the froth of delirium, Bennett
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: understood that Hudson found in that house the thing he
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: was seeking, and that events happened quickly. Bennett said, there
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: was a missionary and his daughter in the house, and
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: there was also an Oriental. He couldn't quite determine the
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: status of the Oriental. He seemed to have been the
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: king or head man of the island originally, and he
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: seemed also to be at the time Hudson landed the
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: source of the food supply of the three besieged persons.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: They were horribly besieged by the vast armies of insects
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: that had overrun the island. Fish was the only food
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: the Oriental got it out of the sea. It was
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: this thin smoke from the fish cooking over a fire
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: of dried insects that had signaled Hudson. Bennett wasn't quite
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: clear about the status or relation of the persons that
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: is with respect to the Oriental. The missionary was dying,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: did die the night Hudson came in. The girl, it seemed,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: thought it was friendship for her father that kept the
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: Oriental in their service. He could have got away. Bennett,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: who knew the Oriental mind better, thought the native hung
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: on to get the girl. When the old man finally died.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: The dying man himself had some fearful idea of that sort.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: He seemed to keep alive on that fear, for he
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: snapped out the moment it was relaxed. He was a
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: thin ghost of a man under a blanket, and he
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: hailed Hudson as an answer to prayer, a messenger of
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: rescue that God had sent him. There was only life
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: enough in the creature to utter his blessing over the
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: visitor when he came in. They buried him that night
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: under the floor of the house. Hudson raved over the girl.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: Bennett couldn't get the dope, as he called it, on her.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Clear Hudson seemed to know her, seemed to have been
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: mad about her for a long time. He jabbered of
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: her as a dream woman, a wonder of God, a
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: fairy creature out of some strange heaven, Bennett couldn't get
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: it straightened out. She was a dark haired, slender girl
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: with masses of hair around, a face of dreams, a
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: sort of wonder creature imagined in the fancy of a
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: drug in sacred groves. Of course, I knew Hudson had
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: found the one he was seeking. The instinct in him
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: was sound. She was here, besieged by the insects, in
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: this accursed place, and following the incess since of his dream,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: he had come finally to her across the waste of
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: the world. It was the waste of the world to him.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: When one loves a woman, or the ideal or the
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: dream of a woman, as he did, as all of
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: us sometimes do, the whole world is a devastation without her.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: You must remember how awfully his reality of life had
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: been wrecked. The whole physical aspect of reality had gone
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: down with it. He had to find her, and he
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: did find her. He had come to her here in
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: this lost corner of Asia, come to her from the
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: other side of the world, with only the instinct in
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: the dream to guide him. He had come to her
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: precisely as the moth had come to the screened window
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: and province seeking its mate, carried away by the old
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: Naturalist out of the south of Europe. It was an
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: equally inexplicable example of that profound mystery. I have no
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: verbal theory about it. The old Naturalist sensibly had none.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: He gave it up. There was some instinct, we may
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: call it, that, leading the moth to its mate, leading
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: Hudson over four thousand miles of sea to the girl.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: He longed for some instinct, some sense direction of the soul,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: that the despair of a consuming emotion can, in its
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: dire extremity, summoned to its aid God to have looked
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: on at that meeting. Think of the thing when Hudson
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: came wading through the sea into that house, and lifting
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: up his face, saw the girl standing before him. Here
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: she was a reality and in the world, her eyes wide,
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: her dark hair cloud about her face, her slender body
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: as of a dryad out of a sacred grove. Remember that,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: up to this very hour, for all the passion in him,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: she had been a mere fancy of the mind, a
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: vision of the night watches. For all his longing, he
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: could not be certain that she lived. He could hope,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: he could believe, he could have the faith of the apostles,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: but he could not be certain. The pin fingers fail
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: when one tries to write down the sweep of heavenly
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: joy that must have surged up in his soul. He
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: had found her. The old pagan peoples groping in the
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: dark at the morning of the world made that thrill
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: of the soul. The cult of a religion. A man
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: would give his roof tree in his lands, he would
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: give the days of his life. He would give a
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: promised heaven of angel choruses for a day, for an
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: hour with a woman that he loved. Like this, Think
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: of the thing. Think of the vast difference between the
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: meeting in this house and that other meeting in Lord
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: X's house in the environs of London. Remember, there was
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: nothing with which to peace out the scene. One had
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: to get it from conjecture. The fragments Hudson gave in
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: his mad talk were only hints of it. They were
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: the merest vague hints. Bennett wasn't certain at first that
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: there had in fact been any such person on the island,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: but in the end, when he got the puzzle all
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: pieced together, he saw there must have been the dope
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: on the situation was more definite. This had been one
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: of the great fertile rice islands of the China Sea,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: a green paradise cultivated like a garden. No spot on
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: the whole earth could have equalled it. As though the
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: authority that had made the world had finished up there
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: a bit of the job precisely to suit him, just
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: to see what he could turn out if he did
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: his best on it. But it was the old story
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: of human selfishness. The flocks of migrating birds stopped over
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: on this island, and they took some toll of the
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: rice fields. They also removed the insects from the fields,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: but the natives seemed not to consider that it was
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: the toll of the rice that they complained of. They
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: took this complaint to their Oriental headman, and he worked
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: out a plan to poison the birds. The missionary and
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: his daughter protested. The old man pointed out what would happen.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: He knew what the insect life on the earth would
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: do to it if the birds were removed. He was
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: an American, it seemed, and he had the data from
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: his own country. The insect life and man were in
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: a terrific struggle for possession of the earth. The birds
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: alone held the earth for the race. The prodigious procreation
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: of insect life was simply incomprehensible. Five billions of birds
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: in the United States of America alone stood between the
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: human population of that country and the devastation of death.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: If the birds were driven from the island, the insect
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: life would destroy it. But it was no go. There
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: was that fixed notion in the Oriental mind. Bennett understood it.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: This headman purchased a cargo of arsenic from a tramp
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: trader and put it out. The migrating birds were poisoned
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: by millions. And just here is where the girl stood
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: out in Hudson's wild talk. She was on the side
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: of the birds. She tried to frighten them out of
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: the poisoned rice fields. She fed them clean rice on
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: top of the mission house. And in the bit of
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: garden about it. The birds learned finally, after the awful slaughter,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: they came only to the mission for the clean rice.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: She fed them as long as she could get the rice.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: They swarmed around her. She stood out a picture like
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: that in Hudson's Delirium. There was a point in the
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: whole incredible adventure. The girl and the birds they knew her,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: swarmed to her, seemed to pass the knowledge of her along.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: They abandoned the island, but long after the clean rice
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: to feed them failed, they continued to circle over the
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: mission house on their way north. Continued still to do it.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: When the birds revolted, the insects did the rest. Hudson
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: saw the result. The paradise became a loathsome hell. The
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: native population was exterminated, driven into the sea. This house
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: was the last stand. The missionary held the advance of
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: the insects with poisoned sprays from the remainder of the
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: arsenic cargo, but he was driven out. As all life,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: animal and vegetable was driven out, screened in a cage
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: to be constantly wetted with poison. He was besieged at
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: the water's edge. This was the situation when Hudson waited
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: in around the point of land from the deck of
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: the sampon. He arrived on the stroke of time. The
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: besieged persons were in the last extremity. There was no
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: further material for screens. The store of arsenic was used up.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: There was no food but fish. The old missionary was dying,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: and the thing he found was no mere vague dread.
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: The Oriental knew what he was about. One incident convinced
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: Hudson if any man with the knowledge of the East
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: needed a proof. There was an old service pistol with
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: some cartridges hanging on the wall by the girl's bed
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: in her father's room. When Hudson examined it, he found
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: it useless. The firing pin had been filed off. That
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: pistol just there gave Hudson a clue, he thought, to
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: the girl's state of mind, but she kept it from
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: the dying man. She consoled him with a strange fancy.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: The birds would take care of her. If anything happened
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: to him, they would take her to the land they
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: migrated to, some fairy country. It was a brave piece
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: of business, but she got the dying man in half
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: belief of it. His deep religious convictions, no doubt, gave
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: the fancy a sort of substance. It fitted into the
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: inscrutable compensations of God. Some way was always found to
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: rescue the righteous God. Sometimes. Since the birds the ravens
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: had fed Elijah in the wilderness, the girl drew on
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: the sacred text, it would be all right, He need
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: have no fear about it. And she adorned the idea
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: and elaborated it for the dying man, to the extent
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: even of conjectures on the land to which the birds
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: would take her, some vague earthly paradise, the destination of
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: the birds in their mysterious migration. It was brave business,
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: with that old service pistol, the actual reality the only
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: escape for her. One had to realize that the old
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: man was hanging to life by a mere cobweb. He
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: did not understand anything beyond the elemental fact that a
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: white man had arrived and that they were now all right.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: He could go. It must have been like one of
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: those dramatic scenes in the Old Testament scriptures. The messenger
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: of God, long prayed for, had appeared. All peril, all
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: anxiety for his daughter was ended. The cobweb thread of
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: life parted in the blessing the feeble man poured out
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: like that, the old man passed. He did not know
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: how little Hudson could help. How the white man must
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: have damned that mutinous Chinese crew with his ship standing by.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: But there was no ship. There was only the bare
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: sumpun Hauser to a point of rock undulating in the sea,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: parted by a dozen strides of salt water. From this
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: loathsome island, Hudson and the girl faced the fact, with
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: the Oriental grinning by the door. The Native was disturbed,
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: but he was not giving up. Bennett understood something of
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: the workings of the native mind. A chink can wait
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: when he sees a thing on its way to him.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Otherwise he doesn't wait. He can be as quick as
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: the men of any race. It was of no use
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: to wait now. But there was one thing the Oriental
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: didn't realize. The white men, he knew, were physically enervated
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: by the East. He didn't count on the iron body
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: Hudson brought with him into Asia, the gain he got
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: out of the coal fields when he was retrieving his fortune,
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: the iron body that made such a ghastly wreck of
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: Lord X. That night in the drawing room, things moved quickly.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: There was only one thing to do. They must trust
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: themselves to the sea. Bennett stopped here in his narrative.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: He poured out another glass of brandy, poured the dirty
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: glass full to the brim, but he did not at
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: once drink it. He sat back in his chair with
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: his big hands folded in front of him. Here had
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: been a difficult place to piece together with Hudson's fragments.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: What happened wasn't precisely clear. One thing, however, was certain.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: There had been a very devil of a fight. It
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: had started like a flash, with some jitsu grip that
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: the Oriental had tried on Hudson as he passed behind him.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: Bennett knew the sort of thing, had seen it on
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: the South Coast, seen men's spines snapped by it. A
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: cruelly quick thing. But the Native hadn't got his grip
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: quite right. Hudson had a warning, or he changed his
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: position at the moment, and the chink wasn't counting on
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: an iron body against his jitsu. Anyway, the trick failed,
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: and that devil's fight got under way. The native must
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: have been a husky brute. The fight wrecked the house,
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: wrecked all the netting, and went on outside. Bennett didn't
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: know the details, but it ended in an old fashioned
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: English hiplock that brought the Oriental down with his own
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: spine snapped. He couldn't move, and the insects got him.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: Bennett paused. One needed no comment on that awful loathsome
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: or Hudson and the girl had to run for it.
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: Then the insects swarmed in. Now that the poisoned nettings
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: all around the house were gone, there was no time
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: for anything. They had to go. They waded along the beach,
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: through the water to the samnpon it laid their housard
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: to the point of rock, and Hudson got it off.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: Their only chance was on the sea, a damned poor chance,
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: has Bennett said, But it was the only one. The
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: crawling curse over that whole island extended to the water
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: on every side. It overran the house now and everything
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: it contained, no living thing could remain, could live an
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: hour outside the security of the sea. Stripped clean. It
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: was a choice of deaths. That's how it looked to Bennett,
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: how it must have looked a Hudson. But anything was
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: better than what the chink got, a raw trunk, denuded
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: of every feature, writhing in a massive vermin One would
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: die clean in the sea, But even that fortune seemed denied.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: That the current ran landward. That's how Hudson managed to
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: come ashore, And in spite of every effort, the man
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: could not get the sampoon out into the open sea.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: He worked like a piece of plank for an oar,
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: and the girl helped, but the current was against them.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: It always brought the craft back to the island. That
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: doomed spot seemed to draw them like a magnet. They
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: couldn't manage to come clear of it. The cruel, disheartening
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: struggle went on between the trapped man and the sea.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: The two people toiling like the damned, would get the
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: craft out for a distance, and then the current would
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: suck it in. There could be only one end. A
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: sea current doesn't tire out. It seemed like a strange,
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: vicious in tint in nature against them. There was a
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: bit of wind blowing toward the sea, enough to stimulate
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: hope in the man, always to a further effort, but
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: it was a little irony of the wicked gods. With
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: any sort of sail, the sampon would have over the current,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: but there was nothing but the bare rigging for the
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: wind to drift through. Then, when the end appeared, the
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: miracle happened. A great swarm of white birds moving north
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: settled on the rigging of the sampan clustered massed on
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: it like a hive of bees. They were small, downy things,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: and their close, cluttered feathery bodies covered all the bare rigging,
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: as with a blanket of cotton wool. It made a sail.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: The resistance to the wind offered by this compact feathery
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: mass was enough to overcome the current. The sampan moved
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: out into the open sea. Bennett stopped again in his narrative.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: The fingers of his big hands interlaced before him moved
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: as in a sort of tattoo. I don't know, he said,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: and again I don't know. It was a profound comment,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: going to the core of the thing. It was a
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: migrating flock. I suppose, worn out with a long flight
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: and taking the first rest to confind every bird crowding
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: in to get a foothold. They would pack up like
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: that if they were exhausted. But I don't know. He
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: didn't mean a doubt on the essential fact. He meant
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: a doubt on what one would call a rational explanation
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: of it. He looked out the window at the slimy
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: canal and about him at the club room of the
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: Wufeg Company, carpeted with its dirty matting. He put out
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: one of his hands, took up the glass of brandy
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: and drank it as one would a cup of water.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe time don't count, he said. I caught it the word.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: It was the very point, And between the end of
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: that sentence and the next I had a flashed vision
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: of the scene. They were together for a day on
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: the sea, for a day convoyed by the birds, They
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: were together on the rotten deck of the Chinese sampon.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: How long was that? Not the hemp of Asia only
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: can extend the conception of time. Great emotion can extend it.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: I wrote it down a day, but was it not?
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: Rather the days and nights of a life eons light
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: year duration incredibly extended. This is the very point that
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: Nordheim's story put its thumb on. It's the reason I
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: gave you that derelict story in detail. The extension of
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: time that the man experienced in the moment of his
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: descent into the sea, the extension of time that the
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: lost creature sought at the head of his river in
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: the Malay Peninsula. They were evidence, persuasive evidence of the
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: vast incredible possibility. Time is no reality, It is no
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: thing fixed in nature. It is a condition of the mind.
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: Great emotions play the devil with it. Even the physical
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: transmutations of a drug can put it out of balance.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: You see now why I repeated the stories of the
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: two derelicts in the club room of the Wufeng Company.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: Suppose you had got the idea that Hudson's dream ended
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: like the dream of Chillingsworth's traitor ended death at the
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: end of it. That would be the end in one view,
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: if one saw only a single, narrow, culminating fact. But
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: here was the human mind, drugged by a great emotion,
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: out of all conception of time, seated on the deck
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: of the sumpond, together, convoyed by the birds, the sea
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: extending like an empty world about them they lived on.
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: Bennett summed the whole thing up in his next sentence.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe that day on the sea was enough for them.
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: That was a further vital point. We can't stand much.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, the human body won't stand a long strain.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: It goes to pieces. They couldn't have lived like that
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: in any world we know. We have no word to
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: describe what that man and that girl felt for one another.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: The rotten deck of that hot, dirty Chinese sum pond
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: was a paradise they were together. That summed it up.
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: Bennett fingered the dirty brandy glass. There came a sudden
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: energy in his voice. Don't we slave through a whole
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: hell of a life just to get a moment of
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: what we want? Does anybody know how big that moment
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: can be? Maybe it can feel all the time there is,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: he arose. It was a marvel to me that he
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: could stand with all that vicious liquor in him. He
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: picked up the Italian translation of The Passing of Arthur
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: that his companion had left lying by the chair when
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: he went out, crossed the room, and carefully set it
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: in the packing box shelf beside the old books on navigation.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know what happened, he said. The girl may
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: have slipped from the deck of the sumpond into the
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: sea after the exhaustion of that terrible adventure. That white
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: man may have rolled into the sea from the deck
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: of my ship. Or the two of them may have
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: passed with the birds to some earthly paradise. Anyway, he
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: was gone one morning, and the native lookout said he
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: saw the cloud pass end of Chapter three, end of
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: The Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison post