The Lost World, Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  "Question!"

  What with the physical shocks incidental to my first interview withProfessor Challenger and the mental ones which accompanied the second,I was a somewhat demoralized journalist by the time I found myself inEnmore Park once more. In my aching head the one thought was throbbingthat there really was truth in this man's story, that it was oftremendous consequence, and that it would work up into inconceivablecopy for the Gazette when I could obtain permission to use it. Ataxicab was waiting at the end of the road, so I sprang into it anddrove down to the office. McArdle was at his post as usual.

  "Well," he cried, expectantly, "what may it run to? I'm thinking,young man, you have been in the wars. Don't tell me that he assaultedyou."

  "We had a little difference at first."

  "What a man it is! What did you do?"

  "Well, he became more reasonable and we had a chat. But I got nothingout of him--nothing for publication."

  "I'm not so sure about that. You got a black eye out of him, andthat's for publication. We can't have this reign of terror, Mr.Malone. We must bring the man to his bearings. I'll have a leaderetteon him to-morrow that will raise a blister. Just give me the materialand I will engage to brand the fellow for ever. ProfessorMunchausen--how's that for an inset headline? Sir John Mandevilleredivivus--Cagliostro--all the imposters and bullies in history. I'llshow him up for the fraud he is."

  "I wouldn't do that, sir."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he is not a fraud at all."

  "What!" roared McArdle. "You don't mean to say you really believe thisstuff of his about mammoths and mastodons and great sea sairpents?"

  "Well, I don't know about that. I don't think he makes any claims ofthat kind. But I do believe he has got something new."

  "Then for Heaven's sake, man, write it up!"

  "I'm longing to, but all I know he gave me in confidence and oncondition that I didn't." I condensed into a few sentences theProfessor's narrative. "That's how it stands."

  McArdle looked deeply incredulous.

  "Well, Mr. Malone," he said at last, "about this scientific meetingto-night; there can be no privacy about that, anyhow. I don't supposeany paper will want to report it, for Waldron has been reported alreadya dozen times, and no one is aware that Challenger will speak. We mayget a scoop, if we are lucky. You'll be there in any case, so you'lljust give us a pretty full report. I'll keep space up to midnight."

  My day was a busy one, and I had an early dinner at the Savage Clubwith Tarp Henry, to whom I gave some account of my adventures. Helistened with a sceptical smile on his gaunt face, and roared withlaughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.

  "My dear chap, things don't happen like that in real life. Peopledon't stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence.Leave that to the novelists. The fellow is as full of tricks as themonkey-house at the Zoo. It's all bosh."

  "But the American poet?"

  "He never existed."

  "I saw his sketch-book."

  "Challenger's sketch-book."

  "You think he drew that animal?"

  "Of course he did. Who else?"

  "Well, then, the photographs?"

  "There was nothing in the photographs. By your own admission you onlysaw a bird."

  "A pterodactyl."

  "That's what HE says. He put the pterodactyl into your head."

  "Well, then, the bones?"

  "First one out of an Irish stew. Second one vamped up for theoccasion. If you are clever and know your business you can fake a boneas easily as you can a photograph."

  I began to feel uneasy. Perhaps, after all, I had been premature in myacquiescence. Then I had a sudden happy thought.

  "Will you come to the meeting?" I asked.

  Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.

  "He is not a popular person, the genial Challenger," said he. "A lotof people have accounts to settle with him. I should say he is aboutthe best-hated man in London. If the medical students turn out therewill be no end of a rag. I don't want to get into a bear-garden."

  "You might at least do him the justice to hear him state his own case."

  "Well, perhaps it's only fair. All right. I'm your man for theevening."

  When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than Ihad expected. A line of electric broughams discharged their littlecargoes of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humblerpedestrians, who crowded through the arched door-way, showed that theaudience would be popular as well as scientific. Indeed, it becameevident to us as soon as we had taken our seats that a youthful andeven boyish spirit was abroad in the gallery and the back portions ofthe hall. Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiarmedical student type. Apparently the great hospitals had each sentdown their contingent. The behavior of the audience at present wasgood-humored, but mischievous. Scraps of popular songs were chorusedwith an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture,and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised ajovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to therecipients of these dubious honors.

  Thus, when old Doctor Meldrum, with his well-known curly-brimmedopera-hat, appeared upon the platform, there was such a universal queryof "Where DID you get that tile?" that he hurriedly removed it, andconcealed it furtively under his chair. When gouty Professor Wadleylimped down to his seat there were general affectionate inquiries fromall parts of the hall as to the exact state of his poor toe, whichcaused him obvious embarrassment. The greatest demonstration of all,however, was at the entrance of my new acquaintance, ProfessorChallenger, when he passed down to take his place at the extreme end ofthe front row of the platform. Such a yell of welcome broke forth whenhis black beard first protruded round the corner that I began tosuspect Tarp Henry was right in his surmise, and that this assemblagewas there not merely for the sake of the lecture, but because it hadgot rumored abroad that the famous Professor would take part in theproceedings.

  There was some sympathetic laughter on his entrance among the frontbenches of well-dressed spectators, as though the demonstration of thestudents in this instance was not unwelcome to them. That greetingwas, indeed, a frightful outburst of sound, the uproar of the carnivoracage when the step of the bucket-bearing keeper is heard in thedistance. There was an offensive tone in it, perhaps, and yet in themain it struck me as mere riotous outcry, the noisy reception of onewho amused and interested them, rather than of one they disliked ordespised. Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as akindly man would meet the yapping of a litter of puppies. He satslowly down, blew out his chest, passed his hand caressingly down hisbeard, and looked with drooping eyelids and supercilious eyes at thecrowded hall before him. The uproar of his advent had not yet diedaway when Professor Ronald Murray, the chairman, and Mr. Waldron, thelecturer, threaded their way to the front, and the proceedings began.

  Professor Murray will, I am sure, excuse me if I say that he has thecommon fault of most Englishmen of being inaudible. Why on earthpeople who have something to say which is worth hearing should not takethe slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strangemysteries of modern life. Their methods are as reasonable as to try topour some precious stuff from the spring to the reservoir through anon-conducting pipe, which could by the least effort be opened.Professor Murray made several profound remarks to his white tie and tothe water-carafe upon the table, with a humorous, twinkling aside tothe silver candlestick upon his right. Then he sat down, and Mr.Waldron, the famous popular lecturer, rose amid a general murmur ofapplause. He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and anaggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilatethe ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which wasintelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knackof being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precessiono
f the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highlyhumorous process as treated by him.

  It was a bird's-eye view of creation, as interpreted by science, which,in language always clear and sometimes picturesque, he unfolded beforeus. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas, flaringthrough the heavens. Then he pictured the solidification, the cooling,the wrinkling which formed the mountains, the steam which turned towater, the slow preparation of the stage upon which was to be playedthe inexplicable drama of life. On the origin of life itself he wasdiscreetly vague. That the germs of it could hardly have survived theoriginal roasting was, he declared, fairly certain. Therefore it hadcome later. Had it built itself out of the cooling, inorganic elementsof the globe? Very likely. Had the germs of it arrived from outsideupon a meteor? It was hardly conceivable. On the whole, the wisestman was the least dogmatic upon the point. We could not--or at leastwe had not succeeded up to date in making organic life in ourlaboratories out of inorganic materials. The gulf between the dead andthe living was something which our chemistry could not as yet bridge.But there was a higher and subtler chemistry of Nature, which, workingwith great forces over long epochs, might well produce results whichwere impossible for us. There the matter must be left.

  This brought the lecturer to the great ladder of animal life, beginninglow down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up rung by rungthrough reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a kangaroo-rat, acreature which brought forth its young alive, the direct ancestor ofall mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone in the audience.("No, no," from a sceptical student in the back row.) If the younggentleman in the red tie who cried "No, no," and who presumably claimedto have been hatched out of an egg, would wait upon him after thelecture, he would be glad to see such a curiosity. (Laughter.) It wasstrange to think that the climax of all the age-long process of Naturehad been the creation of that gentleman in the red tie. But had theprocess stopped? Was this gentleman to be taken as the final type--thebe-all and end-all of development? He hoped that he would not hurt thefeelings of the gentleman in the red tie if he maintained that,whatever virtues that gentleman might possess in private life, stillthe vast processes of the universe were not fully justified if theywere to end entirely in his production. Evolution was not a spentforce, but one still working, and even greater achievements were instore.

  Having thus, amid a general titter, played very prettily with hisinterrupter, the lecturer went back to his picture of the past, thedrying of the seas, the emergence of the sand-bank, the sluggish,viscous life which lay upon their margins, the overcrowded lagoons, thetendency of the sea creatures to take refuge upon the mud-flats, theabundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth."Hence, ladies and gentlemen," he added, "that frightful brood ofsaurians which still affright our eyes when seen in the Wealden or inthe Solenhofen slates, but which were fortunately extinct long beforethe first appearance of mankind upon this planet."

  "Question!" boomed a voice from the platform.

  Mr. Waldron was a strict disciplinarian with a gift of acid humor, asexemplified upon the gentleman with the red tie, which made it perilousto interrupt him. But this interjection appeared to him so absurd thathe was at a loss how to deal with it. So looks the Shakespearean whois confronted by a rancid Baconian, or the astronomer who is assailedby a flat-earth fanatic. He paused for a moment, and then, raising hisvoice, repeated slowly the words: "Which were extinct before thecoming of man."

  "Question!" boomed the voice once more.

  Waldron looked with amazement along the line of professors upon theplatform until his eyes fell upon the figure of Challenger, who leanedback in his chair with closed eyes and an amused expression, as if hewere smiling in his sleep.

  "I see!" said Waldron, with a shrug. "It is my friend ProfessorChallenger," and amid laughter he renewed his lecture as if this was afinal explanation and no more need be said.

  But the incident was far from being closed. Whatever path the lecturertook amid the wilds of the past seemed invariably to lead him to someassertion as to extinct or prehistoric life which instantly brought thesame bulls' bellow from the Professor. The audience began toanticipate it and to roar with delight when it came. The packedbenches of students joined in, and every time Challenger's beardopened, before any sound could come forth, there was a yell of"Question!" from a hundred voices, and an answering counter cry of"Order!" and "Shame!" from as many more. Waldron, though a hardenedlecturer and a strong man, became rattled. He hesitated, stammered,repeated himself, got snarled in a long sentence, and finally turnedfuriously upon the cause of his troubles.

  "This is really intolerable!" he cried, glaring across the platform."I must ask you, Professor Challenger, to cease these ignorant andunmannerly interruptions."

  There was a hush over the hall, the students rigid with delight atseeing the high gods on Olympus quarrelling among themselves.Challenger levered his bulky figure slowly out of his chair.

  "I must in turn ask you, Mr. Waldron," he said, "to cease to makeassertions which are not in strict accordance with scientific fact."

  The words unloosed a tempest. "Shame! Shame!" "Give him a hearing!""Put him out!" "Shove him off the platform!" "Fair play!" emergedfrom a general roar of amusement or execration. The chairman was onhis feet flapping both his hands and bleating excitedly. "ProfessorChallenger--personal--views--later," were the solid peaks above hisclouds of inaudible mutter. The interrupter bowed, smiled, stroked hisbeard, and relapsed into his chair. Waldron, very flushed and warlike,continued his observations. Now and then, as he made an assertion, heshot a venomous glance at his opponent, who seemed to be slumberingdeeply, with the same broad, happy smile upon his face.

  At last the lecture came to an end--I am inclined to think that it wasa premature one, as the peroration was hurried and disconnected. Thethread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience wasrestless and expectant. Waldron sat down, and, after a chirrup fromthe chairman, Professor Challenger rose and advanced to the edge of theplatform. In the interests of my paper I took down his speech verbatim.

  "Ladies and Gentlemen," he began, amid a sustained interruption fromthe back. "I beg pardon--Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children--I mustapologize, I had inadvertently omitted a considerable section of thisaudience" (tumult, during which the Professor stood with one handraised and his enormous head nodding sympathetically, as if he werebestowing a pontifical blessing upon the crowd), "I have been selectedto move a vote of thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque andimaginative address to which we have just listened. There are pointsin it with which I disagree, and it has been my duty to indicate themas they arose, but, none the less, Mr. Waldron has accomplished hisobject well, that object being to give a simple and interesting accountof what he conceives to have been the history of our planet. Popularlectures are the easiest to listen to, but Mr. Waldron" (here he beamedand blinked at the lecturer) "will excuse me when I say that they arenecessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to begraded to the comprehension of an ignorant audience." (Ironicalcheering.) "Popular lecturers are in their nature parasitic." (Angrygesture of protest from Mr. Waldron.) "They exploit for fame or cashthe work which has been done by their indigent and unknown brethren.One smallest new fact obtained in the laboratory, one brick built intothe temple of science, far outweighs any second-hand exposition whichpasses an idle hour, but can leave no useful result behind it. I putforward this obvious reflection, not out of any desire to disparage Mr.Waldron in particular, but that you may not lose your sense ofproportion and mistake the acolyte for the high priest." (At this pointMr. Waldron whispered to the chairman, who half rose and said somethingseverely to his water-carafe.) "But enough of this!" (Loud andprolonged cheers.) "Let me pass to some subject of wider interest.What is the particular point upon which I, as an original investigator,have challenged our lecturer's accuracy? It is upon the permanence ofcertain types of animal life upon the
earth. I do not speak upon thissubject as an amateur, nor, I may add, as a popular lecturer, but Ispeak as one whose scientific conscience compels him to adhere closelyto facts, when I say that Mr. Waldron is very wrong in supposing thatbecause he has never himself seen a so-called prehistoric animal,therefore these creatures no longer exist. They are indeed, as he hassaid, our ancestors, but they are, if I may use the expression, ourcontemporary ancestors, who can still be found with all their hideousand formidable characteristics if one has but the energy and hardihoodto seek their haunts. Creatures which were supposed to be Jurassic,monsters who would hunt down and devour our largest and fiercestmammals, still exist." (Cries of "Bosh!" "Prove it!" "How do YOU know?""Question!") "How do I know, you ask me? I know because I have visitedtheir secret haunts. I know because I have seen some of them."(Applause, uproar, and a voice, "Liar!") "Am I a liar?" (Generalhearty and noisy assent.) "Did I hear someone say that I was a liar?Will the person who called me a liar kindly stand up that I may knowhim?" (A voice, "Here he is, sir!" and an inoffensive little person inspectacles, struggling violently, was held up among a group ofstudents.) "Did you venture to call me a liar?" ("No, sir, no!"shouted the accused, and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box.) "If anyperson in this hall dares to doubt my veracity, I shall be glad to havea few words with him after the lecture." ("Liar!") "Who said that?"(Again the inoffensive one plunging desperately, was elevated high intothe air.) "If I come down among you----" (General chorus of "Come,love, come!" which interrupted the proceedings for some moments, whilethe chairman, standing up and waving both his arms, seemed to beconducting the music. The Professor, with his face flushed, hisnostrils dilated, and his beard bristling, was now in a proper Berserkmood.) "Every great discoverer has been met with the sameincredulity--the sure brand of a generation of fools. When great factsare laid before you, you have not the intuition, the imagination whichwould help you to understand them. You can only throw mud at the menwho have risked their lives to open new fields to science. Youpersecute the prophets! Galileo! Darwin, and I----" (Prolongedcheering and complete interruption.)

  All this is from my hurried notes taken at the time, which give littlenotion of the absolute chaos to which the assembly had by this timebeen reduced. So terrific was the uproar that several ladies hadalready beaten a hurried retreat. Grave and reverend seniors seemed tohave caught the prevailing spirit as badly as the students, and I sawwhite-bearded men rising and shaking their fists at the obdurateProfessor. The whole great audience seethed and simmered like aboiling pot. The Professor took a step forward and raised both hishands. There was something so big and arresting and virile in the manthat the clatter and shouting died gradually away before his commandinggesture and his masterful eyes. He seemed to have a definite message.They hushed to hear it.

  "I will not detain you," he said. "It is not worth it. Truth istruth, and the noise of a number of foolish young men--and, I fear Imust add, of their equally foolish seniors--cannot affect the matter.I claim that I have opened a new field of science. You dispute it."(Cheers.) "Then I put you to the test. Will you accredit one or moreof your own number to go out as your representatives and test mystatement in your name?"

  Mr. Summerlee, the veteran Professor of Comparative Anatomy, rose amongthe audience, a tall, thin, bitter man, with the withered aspect of atheologian. He wished, he said, to ask Professor Challenger whetherthe results to which he had alluded in his remarks had been obtainedduring a journey to the headwaters of the Amazon made by him two yearsbefore.

  Professor Challenger answered that they had.

  Mr. Summerlee desired to know how it was that Professor Challengerclaimed to have made discoveries in those regions which had beenoverlooked by Wallace, Bates, and other previous explorers ofestablished scientific repute.

  Professor Challenger answered that Mr. Summerlee appeared to beconfusing the Amazon with the Thames; that it was in reality a somewhatlarger river; that Mr. Summerlee might be interested to know that withthe Orinoco, which communicated with it, some fifty thousand miles ofcountry were opened up, and that in so vast a space it was notimpossible for one person to find what another had missed.

  Mr. Summerlee declared, with an acid smile, that he fully appreciatedthe difference between the Thames and the Amazon, which lay in the factthat any assertion about the former could be tested, while about thelatter it could not. He would be obliged if Professor Challenger wouldgive the latitude and the longitude of the country in which prehistoricanimals were to be found.

  Professor Challenger replied that he reserved such information for goodreasons of his own, but would be prepared to give it with properprecautions to a committee chosen from the audience. Would Mr.Summerlee serve on such a committee and test his story in person?

  Mr. Summerlee: "Yes, I will." (Great cheering.)

  Professor Challenger: "Then I guarantee that I will place in yourhands such material as will enable you to find your way. It is onlyright, however, since Mr. Summerlee goes to check my statement that Ishould have one or more with him who may check his. I will notdisguise from you that there are difficulties and dangers. Mr.Summerlee will need a younger colleague. May I ask for volunteers?"

  It is thus that the great crisis of a man's life springs out at him.Could I have imagined when I entered that hall that I was about topledge myself to a wilder adventure than had ever come to me in mydreams? But Gladys--was it not the very opportunity of which shespoke? Gladys would have told me to go. I had sprung to my feet. Iwas speaking, and yet I had prepared no words. Tarp Henry, mycompanion, was plucking at my skirts and I heard him whispering, "Sitdown, Malone! Don't make a public ass of yourself." At the same time Iwas aware that a tall, thin man, with dark gingery hair, a few seats infront of me, was also upon his feet. He glared back at me with hardangry eyes, but I refused to give way.

  "I will go, Mr. Chairman," I kept repeating over and over again.

  "Name! Name!" cried the audience.

  "My name is Edward Dunn Malone. I am the reporter of the DailyGazette. I claim to be an absolutely unprejudiced witness."

  "What is YOUR name, sir?" the chairman asked of my tall rival.

  "I am Lord John Roxton. I have already been up the Amazon, I know allthe ground, and have special qualifications for this investigation."

  "Lord John Roxton's reputation as a sportsman and a traveler is, ofcourse, world-famous," said the chairman; "at the same time it wouldcertainly be as well to have a member of the Press upon such anexpedition."

  "Then I move," said Professor Challenger, "that both these gentlemen beelected, as representatives of this meeting, to accompany ProfessorSummerlee upon his journey to investigate and to report upon the truthof my statements."

  And so, amid shouting and cheering, our fate was decided, and I foundmyself borne away in the human current which swirled towards the door,with my mind half stunned by the vast new project which had risen sosuddenly before it. As I emerged from the hall I was conscious for amoment of a rush of laughing students--down the pavement, and of an armwielding a heavy umbrella, which rose and fell in the midst of them.Then, amid a mixture of groans and cheers, Professor Challenger'selectric brougham slid from the curb, and I found myself walking underthe silvery lights of Regent Street, full of thoughts of Gladys and ofwonder as to my future.

  Suddenly there was a touch at my elbow. I turned, and found myselflooking into the humorous, masterful eyes of the tall, thin man who hadvolunteered to be my companion on this strange quest.

  "Mr. Malone, I understand," said he. "We are to be companions--what?My rooms are just over the road, in the Albany. Perhaps you would havethe kindness to spare me half an hour, for there are one or two thingsthat I badly want to say to you."