The world below
have never known it attempted. We cannot be as one of themselves, and
above them also. It comes to me again, as I have thought before, that
you are like a seed of death to the world I know, and the end is beyond
my dreaming.”
I answered, “I owe you the debt of my life, and I cannot tell at how
great a risk you have saved it. But I do not wish you to do things for
me of which the consequences may be beyond our understanding.
“I thought to show you that I could cross the lake unaided, and I have
only made my weakness more evident. I think it may be right that I
should go alone in future; for when you called upon me first not to
fear, I am aware that I failed you, and I suppose it was from that that
the danger became so imminent.”
She answered, “That is true; and by my code it may be right to say that
you failed me, where it was beyond the power of your body (which is
truly contemptible) to do otherwise. But I have thought, and see that by
your own code I failed you for my pleasure only, for which I have no
excuse of weakness to offer. I do not think another man would have left
you, as I did. You think I showed courage because I interposed to save
you, at some risk to myself.
“Whether there were risk I do not know; nor how great it may have been;
but I think you showed a greater courage, being what you are, to go
forward alone, and that, not to save my life, but to give me a needless
pleasure, against which you might have protested reasonably.
“But we have still a long way to go before evening, and we shall do well
to face the remainder of the journey, the difficulties of which we
cannot tell till we meet them.”
While we conversed in this way, I had been observing the scene around
me. We had landed upon the edge of a forest of a more varied luxuriance
than that in which we had rested upon the higher land two nights before.
Here, as elsewhere, I saw no sign of grass, nor of any similar
straight-bladed growth, but the ground was covered by mosses, very deep
and soft, and close-creeping herbage of other kinds in many shades of
green and yellow. The trees were of many beautiful and unfamiliar forms,
some of great size and height, but not too crowded to show their
contours, nor the sky between them. Their foliage was of shades that
varied from the palest yellow to the deepest gold, with infrequent hints
of red, and there was one broad-spreading bush which was entirely of a
beetroot crimson.
It was very still--for the coming storms of which I had been told might
bring rain in the night, but did not yet disturb the peace of the
daytime--and of a beauty at which my breath paused for a moment, and of
which I cannot hope to tell you.
But I was not looking for beauty. The need for beauty is continual, and
for food is intermittent only. Yet the last is the more urgent while it
remains unsatisfied.
It is true that man cannot live by bread alone, but it is equally so
that he cannot live long without it. I remembered our compact that I
should be self-supporting in future. I knew the swiftness with which my
companion considered it natural to travel. I was aware of the
importance, not merely of reaching the tunnel-entrance by nightfall, but
of doing so in such condition that we should be prepared at once to
explore it. I looked round in a natural anxiety to discover some means
of nourishment.
I saw nothing to encourage hope, except that there was a curious
fruit-like formation upon the hanging branches of a tree behind us.
The leaves of this tree were very long and narrow, and of so light a
yellow as to give an effect of whiteness, like the palest petals of the
Californian poppy. At the root of many of the leaves there was a
smooth-skinned tawny fruit, of the size of a loganberry. Opening it, I
found that it was a fruit very certainly, containing a juicy pulp, and
in the midst a single slender seed, of the size and shape of that of a
lettuce. I tasted it cautiously, and found it delicious. My companion
watched me with a friendly but unconcealed amusement.
After a time, she gave the glance by which I knew that she wished our
minds to communicate.
“You have really no means of knowing,” she asked, “whether they may
assist or kill you? Is this because you are in a world of strangeness,
or are you accustomed to this exciting uncertainty?”
I replied, “I have senses of taste and scent, which warn me that many
things are unfit for eating, but they are not entirely reliable. The
creatures of my kind depend largely upon tradition, as their own lives
are too short to acquire much knowledge--and as, even were it otherwise,
they would doubtless die in the experimental stages of obtaining it--and
we eat such things as our ancestors have eaten before us.
“Here, my only method is to choose such substances as appear most like
to those which I have known to be wholesome, and eat a small portion. If
the taste be good, and no ill consequence follow, in a few hours I can
eat more freely.”
“Your lives may be short,” she said, “but, at least, they lack dullness.
How shall you go bad, if it should chance to be a wrong thing that you
are now eating?”
I controlled an impulse of irritation before I answered, “I shall not go
bad, for I am testing the food very carefully. But I shall be the more
careful because of the thoughts you have, and I may keep you here in
consequence till you are tired of waiting. There are many ways of going
bad for those who eat the wrong things, and none of them is pleasant.”
“If your kind can avoid such poisons through their traditions, how do
you know of the effects of many?” she asked me.
It was ever so, when we commenced exchange of thought upon the world
which I had left, that the starting-point was quickly out of sight
behind us.
“There are a variety of very poisonous substances, either vegetable or
mineral abstracts, which can be mixed with food or drink without easy
detection. As our bodies frequently break down through defective
construction, or our own misuses, or from unavoidable hardships, before
their final dissolution, we employ men to repair them, and they make use
of these poisons in minute quantities, and in the honest belief that we
benefit from them.
“It follows that these poisons are prepared in great quantities, and are
readily procurable.
“There is a custom among us of mixing one or other of these poisons in
the food or drink of an acquaintance or relation whose life might be
terminated to our advantage. Probably this custom is not very general,
but that is difficult to judge, as it is practised very quietly, owing
to a law which provides that the neck of a successful poisoner shall be
broken, after an interval of some weeks, during which they are kept
alive in great mental agony.” (“Do you mean that an unsuccessful
poisoner would be treated with comparative leniency?” her mind
interpolated. “Yes,” I replied, “our laws always encourage
incompetence). However many of these cases may escape notice, it is
usual to detect a few every year.”
“The one who is considered to be the most likely to have committed the
crime is then arrested, and all the available evidence is so arranged as
(if possible) to prove his guilt. But strict proof is not necessary for
a conviction in such cases, the practice being that the degree of proof
required is in an inverse ratio to the repellent nature of the crime
committed.
“I suppose that the great majority of those who are convicted are
guilty, although, owing to the way in which these trials are conducted,
and the nature of the evidence which is accepted as conclusive, it would
be a very simple matter for anyone of average intelligence to poison
another in such a way that suspicion would fall upon some other member
of the household, and it is not reasonable to suppose that this is never
attempted successfully.
“But my mind wanders.
“At these trials it is usual to announce in public the nature of the
poison used, the quantities required, the methods by which they may be
procured, their effects, and the ease or difficulty with which they may
afterwards be detected, and these particulars are distributed throughout
the nation, so that anyone desiring to poison another need not be
hindered by ignorance of such essential details.
“There is also, every year, a large number of people who destroy their
own bodies, although we have (grotesquely enough) a law prohibiting this
practice,--and here, at least, we discourage incompetence, for we can
only punish those who fail, the rest being beyond the reach of our
cruelties,--and a proportion of these people use poisons to effect their
purpose, so that you will see that there is no difficulty in obtaining
knowledge of the effect of such substances.”
“I think” she replied, “that my Leader showed the accuracy of her
judgment when she classified you as of the Batwing Kind, though your
race is, at least collectively, of a stupidity which it must be hard to
rival throughout the ages.
“But tell me this. You have shown me already that there are many other
species of animals which dwell in your world, and which you consider to
be inferior, because you have the power to destroy them,--Surely no
conclusive reason!--Do they also suffer from the same disability, or are
they better able to select their appropriate foods?”
I answered, conscious of the derision which laughed within her, and not
entirely without a flicker of satisfaction, as I recognised that the
ellipses of my thought confused her.
“It is true that for one species to have the power of destruction over
another is a practical supremacy, and I may have impressed my thought
upon you in that way without careful differentiation. To admit it
absolutely would be to place the germ of a disease which we might be
unable to conquer as beside or above us.
“We do consider that we are supreme of earthly creatures, but we could
assert this supremacy on widely different grounds....
“As to your first question, the physical senses of the lower animals are
more acute than our own, because they depend entirely upon them.
“Those that are allowed to live wildly, through our indifference, or in
parts of the earth which we have not yet populated, appear to avoid
unwholesome food without difficulty. But if they cause us any annoyance
we are able to show our superiority by cunningly mixing poison with some
attractive substance, by eating which they die very miserably.”
“I am glad to think,” she answered, “that there are some parts of your
earth which are still clean,” and then she received my thought in
silence as it continued.
“But I must qualify my thought to this extent. There are numerous
species of animals which we have subdued to our own purposes, and that
we confine around us, either that they may do work on our behalf, or
that we may eat their bodies, or both, and there is a diminished ability
to avoid poisonous substances among these creatures, as their lives
approximate more nearly to the condition of those who keep them.--But
this touches on much which would be long to explain, and I see that you
do not understand fairly, if I give you the facts only.”
She answered, “It is a wonderful world, and a very hideous. But I have
much to ask concerning these creatures that dwell with you, and that you
eat when they die. For the time, let us leave it.”
While we had conversed in this way, I had been occupied in opening the
small parcel of my remaining possessions, and drying them as well as I
was able, their importance to me being too great for my mind to be
seriously affected by the knowledge that she regarded them as a humorous
evidence of my inferiority to every other created thing, though she
admitted very frankly that the Dwellers were not entirely exempt from a
corresponding necessity.