HiLobrow is pleased to present the ninth installment of our serialization of Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and his follow-up story, “As Easy as A.B.C.”). New installments will appear each Wednesday for 12 weeks.

With the Night Mail follows the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible battling the perfect storm. Between London and Quebec we learn that a planet-wide Aerial Board of Control (A.B.C.) now enforces a technocratic system of command and control not only in the skies but in world affairs, too. A follow-up story, “As Easy As A.B.C.,” recounts what happens when agitators in Chicago demand a return of democracy: The A.B.C. sends zeppelins armed with sound weapons to subdue not the agitators, but a mob who would destroy them! With the Night Mail is set in 2000, and it first appeared in 1905; 2012 marks the centennial of the first publication of “As Easy As A.B.C.”

In June, HiLoBooks will publish a beautiful new edition of With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”), checked against the 1909 first published edition (Doubleday), with an Introduction by science fiction author Matthew De Abaitua, and an Afterword by science fiction author Bruce Sterling. SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED! CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY.
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LAST WEEK: “One knows vaguely that there is such a thing as a Fleet somewhere on the Planet, and that, theoretically, it exists for the purposes of what used to be known as ‘war.’ Only a week before, while visiting a glacier sanatorium behind Gothaven, I had seen some squadrons making false auroras far to the north while they manoeuvred round the Pole; but, naturally, it had never occurred to me that the things could be used in earnest.”

ALL EXCERPTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

‘The Board hasn’t shown what you might call a fat spark on this occasion,’ said De Forest, wiping his eyes. ‘I hope I didn’t look as big a fool as you did, Arnott! Hullo! What on earth is that? Dad coming home from Chicago?’

There was a rattle and a rush, and a five-plough cultivator, blades in air like so many teeth, trundled itself at us round the edge of the timber, fuming and sparking furiously.

‘Jump!’ said Arnott, as we hurled ourselves through the none-too-wide door. ‘Never mind about shutting it. Up!’

The Victor Pirolo lifted like a bubble, and the vicious machine shot just underneath us, clawing high as it passed.

‘There’s a nice little spit-kitten for you!’ said Arnott, dusting his knees. ‘We ask her a civil question. First she circuits us and then she plays a cultivator at us!’

‘And then we fly,’ said Dragomirof. If I were forty years more young, I would go back and kiss her. Ho! Ho!’

‘I,’ said Pirolo, ‘would smack her! My pet ship has been chased by a dirty plough; a—how do you say?—agricultural implement.’

‘Oh, that is Illinois all over,’ said De Forest. ‘They don’t content themselves with talking about privacy. They arrange to have it. And now, where’s your alleged fleet, Arnott? We must assert ourselves against this wench.’

Arnott pointed to the black heavens. ‘Waiting on—up there,’ said he. ‘Shall I give them the whole installation, sir?’

‘Oh, I don’t think the young lady is quite worth that,’ said De Forest. ‘Get over Chicago, and perhaps we’ll see something.’

In a few minutes we were hanging at two thousand feet over an oblong block of incandescence in the centre of the little town.

‘That looks like the old City Hall. Yes, there’s Salati’s Statue in front of it,’ said Takahira.

‘But what on earth are they doing to the place? I thought they used it for a market nowadays! Drop a little, please.’

We could hear the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines—the cheap Western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed glass for their rough country roads. Three or four surfacers worked on each side of a square of ruins. The brick and stone wreckage crumbled, slid forward, and presently spread out into white-hot pools of sticky slag, which the levelling-rods smoothed more or less flat. Already a third of the big block had been so treated, and was cooling to dull red before our astonished eyes.

‘It is the Old Market,’ said De Forest. ‘Well, there’s nothing to prevent Illinois from making a road through a market. It doesn’t interfere with traffic, that I can see.’

‘Hsh!’ said Arnott, gripping me by the shoulder. ‘Listen! They’re singing. Why on the earth are they singing?’

We dropped again till we could see the black fringe of people at the edge of that glowing square.

At first they only roared against the roar of the surfacers and levellers. Then the words came up clearly—the words of the Forbidden Song that all men knew, and none let pass their lips—poor Pat MacDonough’s Song, made in the days of the Crowds and the Plague—every silly word of it loaded to sparking-point with the Planet’s inherited memories of horror, panic, fear and cruelty. And Chicago—innocent, contented little Chicago—was singing it aloud to the infernal tune that carried riot, pestilence and lunacy round our Planet a few generations ago!

‘Once there was The People—Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People, and it made a hell of earth!’

(Then the stamp and pause):

‘Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, oh, ye slain!
Once there was The People—it shall never be again!’

The levellers thrust in savagely against the ruins as the song renewed itself again, again and again, louder than the crash of the melting walls.

De Forest frowned.

I don’t like that,’ he said. ‘They’ve broken back to the Old Days! They’ll be killing somebody soon. I think we’d better divert ’em, Arnott.’

‘Ay, ay, sir.’ Arnott’s hand went to his cap, and we heard the hull of the Victor Pirolo ring to the command: ‘Lamps! Both watches stand by! Lamps! Lamps! Lamps!’

‘Keep still!’ Takahira whispered to me. ‘Blinkers, please, quartermaster.’

‘It’s all right—all right!’ said Pirolo from behind, and to my horror slipped over my head some sort of rubber helmet that locked with a snap. I could feel thick colloid bosses before my eyes, but I stood in absolute darkness.

‘To save the sight,’ he explained, and pushed me on to the chart-room divan. ‘You will see in a minute.’

As he spoke I became aware of a thin thread of almost intolerable light, let down from heaven at an immense distance—one vertical hair’s breadth of frozen lightning.

‘Those are our flanking ships,’ said Arnott at my elbow. ‘That one is over Galena. Look south—that other one’s over Keithburg. Vincennes is behind us, and north yonder is Winthrop Woods. The Fleet’s in position, sir’—this to De Forest. ‘As soon as you give the word.’

‘Ah no! No!’ cried Dragomiroff at my side. I could feel the old man tremble. ‘I do not know all that you can do, but be kind! I ask you to be a little kind to them below! This is horrible horrible!’

‘”When a Woman kills a Chicken,/Dynasties and Empires sicken,”‘ Takahira quoted. ‘It is too late to be gentle now.’

‘Then take off my helmet! Take off my helmet!’ Dragomiroff began hysterically.

Pirolo must have put his arm round him.

‘Hush,’ he said, ‘I am here. It is all right, Ivan, my dear fellow.’

‘I’ll just send our little girl in Bureau County a warning,’ said Arnott. ‘She don’t deserve it, but we’ll allow her a minute or two to take mamma to the cellar.’

In the utter hush that followed the growling spark after Arnott had linked up his Service Communicator with the invisible Fleet, we heard “MacDonough’s Song” from the city beneath us grow fainter as we rose to position. Then I clapped my hand before my mask lenses, for it was as though the floor of Heaven had been riddled and all the inconceivable blaze of suns in the making was poured through the manholes.

‘You needn’t count,’ said Arnott. I had had no thought of such a thing. ‘There are two hundred and fifty keels up there, five miles apart. Full power, please, for another twelve seconds.’

The firmament, as far as eye could reach, stood on pillars of white fire. One fell on the glowing square at Chicago, and turned it black.

‘Oh! Oh! Oh! Can men be allowed to do such things?’ Dragomiroff cried, and fell across our knees.

‘Glass of water, please,’ said Takahira to a helmeted shape that leaped forward. ‘He is a little faint.’

The lights switched off, and the darkness stunned like an avalanche. We could hear Dragomiroff’s teeth on the glass edge.

Pirolo was comforting him.

‘All right, all ra-ight,’ he repeated. ‘Come and lie down. Come below and take off your mask. I give you my word, old friend, it is all right. They are my siege-lights. Little Victor Pirolo‘s leetle lights. You know me! I do not hurt people.’

‘Pardon!’ Dragomiroff moaned. ‘I have never seen Death. I have never seen the Board take action. Shall we go down and burn them alive, or is that already done?’

‘Oh, hush,’ said Pirolo, and I think he rocked him in his arms.

‘Do we repeat, sir?’ Arnott asked De Forest.

‘Give ’em a minute’s break,’ De Forest replied.’ They may need it.’

We waited a minute, and then “MacDonough’s Song,” broken but defiant, rose from undefeated Chicago.

‘They seem fond of that tune,’ said De Forest. ‘I should let ’em have it, Arnott.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Arnott, and felt his way to the Communicator keys.

No lights broke forth, but the hollow of the skies made herself the mouth for one note that touched the raw fibre of the brain. Men hear such sounds in delirium, advancing like tides from horizons beyond the ruled foreshores of space.

‘That’s our pitch-pipe,’ said Arnott. ‘We may be a bit ragged. I’ve never conducted two hundred and fifty performers before.’ He pulled out the couplers, and struck a full chord on the Service Communicators.

The beams of light leaped down again, and danced, solemnly and awfully, a stilt-dance, sweeping thirty or forty miles left and right at each stiff-legged kick, while the darkness delivered itself—there is no scale to measure against that utterance—of the tune to which they kept time. Certain notes—one learnt to expect them with terror—cut through one’s marrow, but, after three minutes, thought and emotion passed in indescribable agony.

We saw, we heard, but I think we were in some sort swooning. The two hundred and fifty beams shifted, re-formed, straddled and split, narrowed, widened, rippled in ribbons, broke into a thousand white-hot parallel lines, melted and revolved in interwoven rings like old-fashioned engine-turning, flung up to the zenith, made as if to descend and renew the torment, halted at the last instant, twizzled insanely round the horizon, and vanished, to bring back for the hundredth time darkness more shattering than their instantly renewed light over all Illinois. Then the tune and lights ceased together, and we heard one single devastating wail that shook all the horizon as a rubbed wet finger shakes the rim of a bowl.

‘Ah, that is my new siren,’ said Pirolo. ‘You can break an iceberg in half, if you find the proper pitch. They will whistle by squadrons now. It is the wind through pierced shutters in the bows.’

I had collapsed beside Dragomiroff, broken and snivelling feebly, because I had been delivered before my time to all the terrors of Judgment Day, and the Archangels of the Resurrection were hailing me naked across the Universe to the sound of the music of the spheres.

Then I saw De Forest smacking Arnott’s helmet with his open hand. The wailing died down in a long shriek as a black shadow swooped past us, and returned to her place above the lower clouds.

‘I hate to interrupt a specialist when he’s enjoying himself,’ said De Forest. ‘But, as a matter of fact, all Illinois has been asking us to stop for these last fifteen seconds.’

‘What a pity.’ Arnott slipped off his mask. ‘I wanted you to hear us really hum. Our lower C can lift street-paving.’

‘It is Hell—Hell!’ cried Dragomiroff, and sobbed aloud.

Arnott looked away as he answered: ‘It’s a few thousand volts ahead of the old shoot-’em-and-sink-’em game, but I should scarcely call it that. What shall I tell the Fleet, sir?’

‘Tell ’em we’re very pleased and impressed. I don’t think they need wait on any longer. There isn’t a spark left down there.’ De Forest pointed. ‘They’ll be deaf and blind.’

‘Oh, I think not, sir. The demonstration lasted less than ten minutes.’

‘Marvellous!’ Takahira sighed. ‘I should have said it was half a night. Now, shall we go down and pick up the pieces?’

‘But first a small drink,’ said Pirolo. ‘The Board must not arrive weeping at its own works.’

‘I am an old fool—an old fool!’ Dragomiroff began piteously. ‘I did not know what would happen. It is all new to me. We reason with them in Little Russia.’

NEXT WEEK: “If you’ve ever been ground-circuited,’ said the Mayor, ‘you’ll know it don’t improve any man’s temper to be held up straining against nothing. No, sir! Eight or nine hundred folk kept pawing and buzzing like flies in treacle for two hours, while a pack of perfectly safe Serviles invades their mental and spiritual privacy, may be amusing to watch, but they are not pleasant to handle afterwards.’”

Stay tuned!

RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION: “Radium Age” is HiLobrow’s name for the 1904–33 era, which saw the discovery of radioactivity, the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. This era also saw the publication of genre-shattering writing by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Karel Čapek, H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yevgeny Zamyatin, E.M. Forster, Philip Wylie, and other pioneers of post-Verne/Wells, pre-Golden Age “science fiction.” More info here.

HILOBOOKS: The mission of HiLoBooks is to serialize novels on HiLobrow; and also, as of 2012, operating as an imprint of Richard Nash’s Cursor, to reissue Radium Age science fiction in beautiful new print editions. In May 2012, we will publish Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague; in June, Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”); in July, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt; in September, H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook; in October, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins; and in November, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land. For more information, visit the HiLoBooks homepage.

READ: You are reading Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail and “As Easy As A.B.C.” Also read our serialization of: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | H. Rider Haggard’s When The World Shook

READ: HiLobrow’s previous serialized novels, both original works: James Parker’s The Ballad of Cocky The Fox (“a proof-of-concept that serialization can work on the Internet” — The Atlantic) and Karinne Keithley Syers’s Linda Linda Linda. We also publish original stories and comics.

HiLobrow is pleased to present the fifth installment of our serialization of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt. New installments will appear each Tuesday for 12 weeks.

If you alone had discovered that the Earth was about to be engulfed in a belt of poisonous “ether” from outer space, what would you do? Professor Challenger, a controversial scientist whose intellectual sprezzatura may remind you of Arthur Conan Doyle’s more famous fictional detective character, assembles the adventurers with whom he’d once romped through a South American jungle (in The Lost World, published in 1912) and locks them in his wife’s dressing room. Less a thriller than a brainteaser set against a catastrophic backdrop, in this 1913 sequel Challenger & Co. inquire into the method of the mind, and the relationship of intuition to reason, even as the world ends.

“To anyone who has had the delightful experience of traveling in The Lost World with Professor Challenger the bare announcement that that brilliant and eccentric personage plays a most important part in this new tale will quite suffice. For who, having once met the Professor, would not desire to continue the acquaintance?” — New York Times (1913).

“It’s impossible to read The Poison Belt, written in 1913, and not see in its exterminating vision a shadow of the coming war that would, only slightly less effectively, destroy Conan Doyle’s world.” — Gordon Dahlquist (2012 blurb for HiLoBooks)

In July, HiLoBooks will publish a beautiful new edition of The Poison Belt, with an introduction by Radium Age science fiction scholar (and HiLobrow editor) Joshua Glenn. Afterword by Gordon Dahlquist, author of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, The Dark Volume, and the forthcoming The Chemickal Marriage.

ORDER YOUR COPY NOW!

ALL EXCERPTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

LAST WEEK: “It was a remarkable exhibition of the victory of mind over matter, for it was a victory over that particular form of matter which is most intimately connected with mind. I might almost say that mind was at fault and that personality controlled it. Thus, when my wife came downstairs and I was impelled to slip behind the door and alarm her by some wild cry as she entered, I was able to stifle the impulse and to greet her with dignity and restraint. An overpowering desire to quack like a duck was met and mastered in the same fashion.”

And, indeed, it proved to be a very merry meal. It is true that we could not forget our awful situation. The full solemnity of the event loomed ever at the back of our minds and tempered our thoughts. But surely it is the soul which has never faced death which shies strongly from it at the end. To each of us men it had, for one great epoch in our lives, been a familiar presence. As to the lady, she leaned upon the strong guidance of her mighty husband and was well content to go whither his path might lead. The future was our fate. The present was our own. We passed it in goodly comradeship and gentle merriment. Our minds were, as I have said, singularly lucid. Even I struck sparks at times. As to Challenger, he was wonderful! Never have I so realized the elemental greatness of the man, the sweep and power of his understanding. Summerlee drew him on with his chorus of subacid criticism, while Lord John and I laughed at the contest and the lady, her hand upon his sleeve, controlled the bellowings of the philosopher. Life, death, fate, the destiny of man—these were the stupendous subjects of that memorable hour, made vital by the fact that as the meal progressed strange, sudden exaltations in my mind and tinglings in my limbs proclaimed that the invisible tide of death was slowly and gently rising around us. Once I saw Lord John put his hand suddenly to his eyes, and once Summerlee dropped back for an instant in his chair. Each breath we breathed was charged with strange forces. And yet our minds were happy and at ease. Presently Austin laid the cigarettes upon the table and was about to withdraw.

“Austin!” said his master.

“Yes, sir?”

“I thank you for your faithful service.”

A smile stole over the servant’s gnarled face.

“I’ve done my duty, sir.”

“I’m expecting the end of the world to-day, Austin.”

“Yes, sir. What time, sir?”

“I can’t say, Austin. Before evening.”

“Very good, sir.”

The taciturn Austin saluted and withdrew. Challenger lit a cigarette, and, drawing his chair closer to his wife’s, he took her hand in his.

“You know how matters stand, dear,” said he. “I have explained it also to our friends here. You’re not afraid are you?”

“It won’t be painful, George?”

“No more than laughing-gas at the dentist’s. Every time you have had it you have practically died.”

“But that is a pleasant sensation.”

“So may death be. The worn-out bodily machine can’t record its impression, but we know the mental pleasure which lies in a dream or a trance. Nature may build a beautiful door and hang it with many a gauzy and shimmering curtain to make an entrance to the new life for our wondering souls. In all my probings of the actual, I have always found wisdom and kindness at the core; and if ever the frightened mortal needs tenderness, it is surely as he makes the passage perilous from life to life. No, Summerlee, I will have none of your materialism, for I, at least, am too great a thing to end in mere physical constituents, a packet of salts and three bucketfuls of water. Here—here”—and he beat his great head with his huge, hairy fist—”there is something which uses matter, but is not of it—something which might destroy death, but which Death can never destroy.”

“Talkin’ of death,” said Lord John. “I’m a Christian of sorts, but it seems to me there was somethin’ mighty natural in those ancestors of ours who were buried with their axes and bows and arrows and the like, same as if they were livin’ on just the same as they used to. I don’t know,” he added, looking round the table in a shamefaced way, “that I wouldn’t feel more homely myself if I was put away with my old .450 Express and the fowlin’-piece, the shorter one with the rubbered stock, and a clip or two of cartridges—just a fool’s fancy, of course, but there it is. How does it strike you, Herr Professor?”

“Well,” said Summerlee, “since you ask my opinion, it strikes me as an indefensible throwback to the Stone Age or before it. I’m of the twentieth century myself, and would wish to die like a reasonable civilized man. I don’t know that I am more afraid of death than the rest of you, for I am an oldish man, and, come what may, I can’t have very much longer to live; but it is all against my nature to sit waiting without a struggle like a sheep for the butcher. Is it quite certain, Challenger, that there is nothing we can do?”

“To save us—nothing,” said Challenger. “To prolong our lives a few hours and thus to see the evolution of this mighty tragedy before we are actually involved in it—that may prove to be within my powers. I have taken certain steps—”

“The oxygen?”

“Exactly. The oxygen.”

“But what can oxygen effect in the face of a poisoning of the ether? There is not a greater difference in quality between a brick-bat and a gas than there is between oxygen and ether. They are different planes of matter. They cannot impinge upon one another. Come, Challenger, you could not defend such a proposition.”

“My good Summerlee, this etheric poison is most certainly influenced by material agents. We see it in the methods and distribution of the outbreak. We should not a priori have expected it, but it is undoubtedly a fact. Hence I am strongly of opinion that a gas like oxygen, which increases the vitality and the resisting power of the body, would be extremely likely to delay the action of what you have so happily named the daturon. It may be that I am mistaken, but I have every confidence in the correctness of my reasoning.”

“Well,” said Lord John, “if we’ve got to sit suckin’ at those tubes like so many babies with their bottles, I’m not takin’ any.”

“There will be no need for that,” Challenger answered. “We have made arrangements—it is to my wife that you chiefly owe it—that her boudoir shall be made as airtight as is practicable. With matting and varnished paper—”

“Good heavens, Challenger, you don’t suppose you can keep out ether with varnished paper?”

“Really, my worthy friend, you are a trifle perverse in missing the point. It is not to keep out the ether that we have gone to such trouble. It is to keep in the oxygen. I trust that if we can ensure an atmosphere hyper-oxygenated to a certain point, we may be able to retain our senses. I had two tubes of the gas and you have brought me three more. It is not much, but it is something.”

“How long will they last?”

“I have not an idea. We will not turn them on until our symptoms become unbearable. Then we shall dole the gas out as it is urgently needed. It may give us some hours, possibly even some days, on which we may look out upon a blasted world. Our own fate is delayed to that extent, and we will have the very singular experience, we five, of being, in all probability, the absolute rear guard of the human race upon its march into the unknown. Perhaps you will be kind enough now to give me a hand with the cylinders. It seems to me that the atmosphere already grows somewhat more oppressive.”

The chamber which was destined to be the scene of our unforgettable experience was a charmingly feminine sitting-room, some fourteen or sixteen feet square. At the end of it, divided by a curtain of red velvet, was a small apartment which formed the Professor’s dressing-room. This in turn opened into a large bedroom. The curtain was still hanging, but the boudoir and dressing-room could be taken as one chamber for the purposes of our experiment. One door and the window frame had been plastered round with varnished paper so as to be practically sealed. Above the other door, which opened on to the landing, there hung a fanlight which could be drawn by a cord when some ventilation became absolutely necessary. A large shrub in a tub stood in each corner.

“How to get rid of our excessive carbon dioxide without unduly wasting our oxygen is a delicate and vital question,” said Challenger, looking round him after the five iron tubes had been laid side by side against the wall. “With longer time for preparation I could have brought the whole concentrated force of my intelligence to bear more fully upon the problem, but as it is we must do what we can. The shrubs will be of some small service. Two of the oxygen tubes are ready to be turned on at an instant’s notice, so that we cannot be taken unawares. At the same time, it would be well not to go far from the room, as the crisis may be a sudden and urgent one.”

There was a broad, low window opening out upon a balcony. The view beyond was the same as that which we had already admired from the study. Looking out, I could see no sign of disorder anywhere. There was a road curving down the side of the hill, under my very eyes. A cab from the station, one of those prehistoric survivals which are only to be found in our country villages, was toiling slowly up the hill. Lower down was a nurse girl wheeling a perambulator and leading a second child by the hand. The blue reeks of smoke from the cottages gave the whole widespread landscape an air of settled order and homely comfort. Nowhere in the blue heaven or on the sunlit earth was there any foreshadowing of a catastrophe. The harvesters were back in the fields once more and the golfers, in pairs and fours, were still streaming round the links. There was so strange a turmoil within my own head, and such a jangling of my overstrung nerves, that the indifference of those people was amazing.

“Those fellows don’t seem to feel any ill effects,” said I, pointing down at the links.

“Have you played golf?” asked Lord John.

“No, I have not.”

“Well, young fellah, when you do you’ll learn that once fairly out on a round, it would take the crack of doom to stop a true golfer. Halloa! There’s that telephone-bell again.”

From time to time during and after lunch the high, insistent ring had summoned the Professor. He gave us the news as it came through to him in a few curt sentences. Such terrific items had never been registered in the world’s history before. The great shadow was creeping up from the south like a rising tide of death. Egypt had gone through its delirium and was now comatose. Spain and Portugal, after a wild frenzy in which the Clericals and the Anarchists had fought most desperately, were now fallen silent. No cable messages were received any longer from South America. In North America the southern states, after some terrible racial rioting, had succumbed to the poison. North of Maryland the effect was not yet marked, and in Canada it was hardly perceptible. Belgium, Holland, and Denmark had each in turn been affected. Despairing messages were flashing from every quarter to the great centres of learning, to the chemists and the doctors of world-wide repute, imploring their advice. The astronomers too were deluged with inquiries. Nothing could be done. The thing was universal and beyond our human knowledge or control. It was death—painless but inevitable—death for young and old, for weak and strong, for rich and poor, without hope or possibility of escape. Such was the news which, in scattered, distracted messages, the telephone had brought us. The great cities already knew their fate and so far as we could gather were preparing to meet it with dignity and resignation. Yet here were our golfers and laborers like the lambs who gambol under the shadow of the knife. It seemed amazing. And yet how could they know? It had all come upon us in one giant stride. What was there in the morning paper to alarm them? And now it was but three in the afternoon. Even as we looked some rumour seemed to have spread, for we saw the reapers hurrying from the fields. Some of the golfers were returning to the club-house. They were running as if taking refuge from a shower. Their little caddies trailed behind them. Others were continuing their game. The nurse had turned and was pushing her perambulator hurriedly up the hill again. I noticed that she had her hand to her brow. The cab had stopped and the tired horse, with his head sunk to his knees, was resting. Above there was a perfect summer sky—one huge vault of unbroken blue, save for a few fleecy white clouds over the distant downs. If the human race must die to-day, it was at least upon a glorious death-bed. And yet all that gentle loveliness of nature made this terrific and wholesale destruction the more pitiable and awful. Surely it was too goodly a residence that we should be so swiftly, so ruthlessly, evicted from it!

But I have said that the telephone-bell had rung once more. Suddenly I heard Challenger’s tremendous voice from the hall.

“Malone!” he cried. “You are wanted.”

I rushed down to the instrument. It was McArdle speaking from London.

“That you, Mr. Malone?” cried his familiar voice. “Mr. Malone, there are terrible goings-on in London. For God’s sake, see if Professor Challenger can suggest anything that can be done.”

“He can suggest nothing, sir,” I answered. “He regards the crisis as universal and inevitable. We have some oxygen here, but it can only defer our fate for a few hours.”

“Oxygen!” cried the agonized voice. “There is no time to get any. The office has been a perfect pandemonium ever since you left in the morning. Now half of the staff are insensible. I am weighed down with heaviness myself. From my window I can see the people lying thick in Fleet Street. The traffic is all held up. Judging by the last telegrams, the whole world—”

His voice had been sinking, and suddenly stopped. An instant later I heard through the telephone a muffled thud, as if his head had fallen forward on the desk.

“Mr. McArdle!” I cried. “Mr. McArdle!”

There was no answer. I knew as I replaced the receiver that I should never hear his voice again.

NEXT WEEK: “‘Granting the continuity of life,’ said he, in his most didactic manner, ‘none of us can predicate what opportunities of observation one may have from what we may call the spirit plane to the plane of matter. It surely must be evident to the most obtuse person’ (here he glared a Summerlee) ‘that it is while we are ourselves material that we are most fitted to watch and form a judgment upon material phenomena. Therefore it is only by keeping alive for these few extra hours that we can hope to carry on with us to some future existence a clear conception of the most stupendous event that the world, or the universe so far as we know it, has ever encountered.’”

Stay tuned!

RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION: “Radium Age” is HiLobrow’s name for the 1904–33 era, which saw the discovery of radioactivity, the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. This era also saw the publication of genre-shattering writing by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Karel Čapek, H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yevgeny Zamyatin, E.M. Forster, Philip Wylie, and other pioneers of post-Verne/Wells, pre-Golden Age “science fiction.” More info here.

HILOBOOKS: The mission of HiLoBooks is to serialize novels on HiLobrow; and also, as of 2012, operating as an imprint of Richard Nash’s Cursor, to reissue Radium Age science fiction in beautiful new print editions. In May 2012, we will publish Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague; in June, Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”); in July, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt; in September, H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook; in October, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins; and in November, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land. For more information, visit the HiLoBooks homepage.

READ: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, serialized between January and April 2012; and Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”), serialized between March and June 2012.

READ: HiLobrow’s previous serialized novels, both original works: James Parker’s The Ballad of Cocky The Fox (“a proof-of-concept that serialization can work on the Internet” — The Atlantic) and Karinne Keithley Syers’s Linda Linda Linda. We also publish original stories and comics.

Human Resources departments no longer content themselves with new hire orientation; their goal now is to minimize the time before new employees are “onboard,” which in turn reduces new employee turnover. “Drilling new hires in the company’s values and priorities,” “instilling an optimistic attitude towards the company,” “helping new hires identify with their employer” — all these bland HR euphemisms mean the same thing: “getting new recruits to drink the Kool-Aid.”

ALSO: Alienation | Big Rock Candy Mountains | Corporation | Dawdle | Employee of the Month | Flazy | Greybearding | Hobo | Inemuri | Jack of All Trades | Knock Off Work | Lazy | Micawberish | Nobbing It | Pink Slip | Quitter | Robot | Stakhanovite | Time and Motion Study | Unemployment | Volupté | Wage Slavery | Xerox Subsidy | Yakuza | Zero Drag

While most of Flemish-Belgian composer WIM MERTENS’ (born 1953) work features piano or classical guitar, some of his compositions utilize pinball machines, a group of thirteen clarinets, or Mertens’ own distinctive countertenor voice. It’s that voice that haunts many of his best works, singing in a lyrical language that Mertens devised. His minimal compositions have found their way into the 1987 Peter Greenaway film The Belly of an Architect and the 1988 film Shadow Man; he’s also the author of American Minimal Music, an examination of composers like Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and LaMonte Young; and he’s got over 50 albums under his belt. One of his most iconic tracks is “Struggle for Pleasure,” a stirring blend of strings and piano that makes you feel that your mind is blossoming open like a heavy flower. The song also inspired the influential electronica track “Café Del Mar”, voted number one in Pete Tong’s Top 20 Dance Tracks of the last 20 years. Mertens even gets a shout out in a recent James Bond novel, though we imagine the movie studios won’t be calling on him to develop an opening theme any time soon. More’s the pity: Mertens is one of the best composers you’ve never heard.

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On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Ed Ricketts and George Lucas.

READ MORE about men and women born on the cusp between the Boomers (1944-53) and the Original Generation X (1954-63).

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CREDITS: Superman #183, 1966. Art by Kurt Schaffenberger.

SIMILAR HILOBROW SERIES: SUBSUPERMEN — Golden Age heroes who didn’t make the grade | MEET THE L.I.S. — John Hilgart discovers “implicit superheroes” concealed within comic-book mastheads | 4CP FRIDAY — themed comic-book detail galleries, curated by admirers of John Hilgart’s 4CP project | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM — 25 writers on 25 Jack Kirby panels | ANNOTATED GIF — Kerry Callen brings comic book covers to life | CHESS MATCH — a gallery of pulp fiction chess games | COMICALLY VINTAGE — that’s-what-she-said vintage comic panels | DC — THE NEW 52 — an 11-year-old reviews DC’s new lineup | FILE X — a one-of-a-kind gallery of “X” pulp paperback covers | SECRET PANEL — Silver Age comics’ double entendres | SKRULLICISM — they lurk among us

CLICK HERE for more comics and cartoon-related posts on HiLobrow.

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CREDITS: Ad for Posters, Unexpected #135, 1972.

SIMILAR HILOBROW SERIES: SUBSUPERMEN — Golden Age heroes who didn’t make the grade | MEET THE L.I.S. — John Hilgart discovers “implicit superheroes” concealed within comic-book mastheads | 4CP FRIDAY — themed comic-book detail galleries, curated by admirers of John Hilgart’s 4CP project | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM — 25 writers on 25 Jack Kirby panels | ANNOTATED GIF — Kerry Callen brings comic book covers to life | CHESS MATCH — a gallery of pulp fiction chess games | COMICALLY VINTAGE — that’s-what-she-said vintage comic panels | DC — THE NEW 52 — an 11-year-old reviews DC’s new lineup | FILE X — a one-of-a-kind gallery of “X” pulp paperback covers | SECRET PANEL — Silver Age comics’ double entendres | SKRULLICISM — they lurk among us

CLICK HERE for more comics and cartoon-related posts on HiLobrow.

The splenetic, prolific writer PHILIP GORDON WYLIE (1902-71) studied science, mathematics, and psychology in an effort to understand why 20th-century humankind was so narrow-minded, hypocritical, conventional, and — as a result — mediocre. In the Twenties, he was a spokesman for the sexually liberated “now” generation; in the Thirties, he wrote the screenplay for the Buster Crabbe vehicle King of the Jungle; in the Forties, he was an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy; in the Fifties, his magazine writing popularized orchid cultivation and sport fishing. (All of which demonstrates that idlers — Wylie’s 1933 Harper’s essay, “The Quitter as Hero,” champions “liquidity” over stick-to-it-iveness — aren’t lazy.) I’m particularly interested in Wylie’s influence on science fiction’s “superman” meme, via his 1930 novel Gladiator, in which a super-strong, invulnerable man builds a fortress of solitude, adopts a secret identity, and vows to aid humankind (before despairing of flawed mortals), and via his even more pessimistic superman novel, The Savage Gentleman (1932). He is best known today, however, for his 1933 novel When Worlds Collide (written with Edwin Balmer), in which scientists rescue a group of men and women, and bear witness to the collapse of civilization, just before the Earth is destroyed; and for the 1942 nonfiction bestseller Generation of Vipers, which lambastes politicians, professors, businessmen, preachers, and — in a chapter for which he will never be forgiven, though this reader suspects that Wylie was a proto-feminist outraged by the debased condition of American women — what he called the unhealthy cult of “Momism.”

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On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Tony Hancock, Joseph Beuys, Ian Dury, Edward Lear, Katharine Hepburn, George Carlin.

READ MORE about members of the Hardboiled (1894-1903) Generation.

HiLobrow is pleased to present the tenth installment of our serialization of H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook. New installments will appear each Friday for 24 weeks.

“If this is pulp fiction it’s high pulp: a Wagnerian opera of an adventure tale, a B-movie humanist apocalypse and chivalric romance,” says Lydia Millet in a blurb written for HiLoBooks. “When the World Shook has it all — English gentlemen of leisure, a devastating shipwreck, a volcanic tropical island inhabited by cannibals, an ancient princess risen from the grave, and if that weren’t enough a friendly, ongoing debate between a godless materialist and a devout Christian. H. Rider Haggard’s rich universe is both profoundly camp and deeply idealistic.”

Haggard’s only science fiction novel was first published in 1919. In September 2012, HiLoBooks will publish a beautiful new edition of When the World Shook, with an introduction by Atlantic Monthly contributing editor James Parker. NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDERING!

SUBSCRIBE to HiLobrow’s serialized fiction via RSS.

LAST WEEK: “‘Great heavens!’ I exclaimed, ‘here’s magic.’ ‘There’s no such thing,’ answered Bickley in his usual formula. Then an explanation seemed to strike him and he added, ‘Not magic but radium or something of the sort. That’s how the temperature was kept up. In sufficient quantity it is practically indestructible, you see. My word! this old gentleman knew a thing or two.’”

ALL EXCERPTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

I crept round him and took my stand by the sleeper’s head, that I might watch her face, which was well worth watching, while Bickley, with his medicine at hand, remained near her feet, I think engaged in disinfecting the syringe in some spirit or acid. I believe he was about to make an attempt to use it when suddenly, as though beneath the influence of the hypnotic passes, a change appeared on the Glittering Lady’s face. Hitherto, beautiful as it was, it had been a dead face though one of a person who had suddenly been cut off while in full health and vigour a few hours, or at the most a day or so before. Now it began to live again; it was as though the spirit were returning from afar, and not without toil and tribulation.

Expression after expression flitted across the features; indeed these seemed to change so much from moment to moment that they might have belonged to several different individuals, though each was beautiful. The fact of these remarkable changes with the suggestion of multiform personalities which they conveyed impressed both Bickley and myself very much indeed. Then the breast heaved tumultuously; it even appeared to struggle. Next the eyes opened. They were full of wonder, even of fear, but oh! what marvelous eyes. I do not know how to describe them, I cannot even state their exact colour, except that it was dark, something like the blue of sapphires of the deepest tint, and yet not black; large, too, and soft as a deer’s. They shut again as though the light hurt them, then once more opened and wandered about, apparently without seeing.

At length they found my face, for I was still bending over her, and, resting there, appeared to take it in by degrees. More, it seemed to touch and stir some human spring in the still-sleeping heart. At least the fear passed from her features and was replaced by a faint smile, such as a patient sometimes gives to one known and well loved, as the effects of chloroform pass away. For a while she looked at me with an earnest, searching gaze, then suddenly, for the first time moving her arms, lifted them and threw them round my neck.

The old man stared, bending his imperial brows into a little frown, but did nothing. Bickley stared also through his glasses and sniffed as though in disapproval, while I remained quite still, fighting with a wild impulse to kiss her on the lips as one would an awakening and beloved child. I doubt if I could have done so, however, for really I was immovable; my heart seemed to stop and all my muscles to be paralysed.

I do not know for how long this endured, but I do know how it ended. Presently in the intense silence I heard Bastin’s heavy voice and looking round, saw his big head projecting into the sepulchre.

“Well, I never!” he said, “you seem to have woke them up with a vengeance. If you begin like that with the lady, there will be complications before you have done, Arbuthnot.”

Talk of being brought back to earth with a rush! I could have killed Bastin, and Bickley, turning on him like a tiger, told him to be off, find wood and light a large fire in front of the statue. I think he was about to argue when the Ancient gave him a glance of his fierce eyes, which alarmed him, and he departed, bewildered, to return presently with the wood.

But the sound of his voice had broken the spell. The Lady let her arms fall with a start, and shut her eyes again, seeming to faint. Bickley sprang forward with his sal volatile and applied it to her nostrils, the Ancient not interfering, for he seemed to recognise that he had to deal with a man of skill and one who meant well by them.

In the end we brought her round again and, to omit details, Bickley gave her, not coffee and brandy, but a mixture he compounded of hot water, preserved milk and meat essence. The effect of it on her was wonderful, since a few minutes after swallowing it she sat up in the coffin. Then we lifted her from that narrow bed in which she had slept for—ah! how long? and perceived that beneath her also were crystal boxes of the radiant, heat-giving substance. We sat her on the floor of the sepulchre, wrapping her also in a blanket.

Now it was that Tommy, after frisking round her as though in welcome of an old friend, calmly established himself beside her and laid his black head upon her knee. She noted it and smiled for the first time, a marvelously sweet and gentle smile. More, she placed her slender hand upon the dog and stroked him feebly.

Bickley tried to make her drink some more of his mixture, but she refused, motioning him to give it to Tommy. This, however, he would not do because there was but one cup. Presently both of the sleepers began to shiver, which caused Bickley anxiety. Abusing Bastin beneath his breath for being so long with the fire, he drew the blankets closer about them.

Then an idea came to him and he examined the glowing boxes in the coffin. They were loose, being merely set in prepared cavities in the crystal. Wrapping our handkerchiefs about his hand, he took them out and placed them around the wakened patients, a proceeding of which the Ancient nodded approval. Just then, too, Bastin returned with his first load of firewood, and soon we had a merry blaze going just outside the sepulchre. I saw that they observed the lighting of this fire by means of a match with much interest.

Now they grew warm again, as indeed we did also—too warm. Then in my turn I had an idea. I knew that by now the sun would be beating hotly against the rock of the mount, and suggested to Bickley, that, if possible, the best thing we could do would be to get them into its life-giving rays. He agreed, if we could make them understand and they were able to walk. So I tried. First I directed the Ancient’s attention to the mouth of the cave which at this distance showed as a white circle of light. He looked at it and then at me with grave inquiry. I made motions to suggest that he should proceed there, repeating the word “Sun” in the Orofenan tongue. He understood at once, though whether he read my mind rather than what I said I am not sure. Apparently the Glittering Lady understood also and seemed to be most anxious to go. Only she looked rather pitifully at her feet and shook her head. This decided me.

I do not know if I have mentioned anywhere that I am a tall man and very muscular. She was tall, also, but as I judged not so very heavy after her long fast. At any rate I felt quite certain that I could carry her for that distance. Stooping down, I lifted her up, signing to her to put her arms round my neck, which she did. Then calling to Bickley and Bastin to bring along the Ancient between them, with some difficulty I struggled out of the sepulchre, and started down the cave. She was more heavy than I thought, and yet I could have wished the journey longer. To begin with she seemed quite trustful and happy in my arms, where she lay with her head against my shoulder, smiling a little as a child might do, especially when I had to stop and throw her long hair round my neck like a muffler, to prevent it from trailing in the dust.

A bundle of lavender, or a truss of new-mown hay, could not have been more sweet to carry and there was something electric about the touch of her, which went through and through me. Very soon it was over, and we were out of the cave into the full glory of the tropical sun. At first, that her eyes might become accustomed to its light and her awakened body to its heat, I set her down where shadow fell from the overhanging rock, in a canvas deck chair that had been brought by Marama with the other things, throwing the rug about her to protect her from such wind as there was. She nestled gratefully into the soft seat and shut her eyes, for the motion had tired her. I noted, however, that she drew in the sweet air with long breaths.

Then I turned to observe the arrival of the Ancient, who was being borne between Bickley and Bastin in what children know as a dandy-chair, which is formed by two people crossing their hands in a peculiar fashion. It says much for the tremendous dignity of his presence that even thus, with one arm round the neck of Bickley and the other round that of Bastin, and his long white beard falling almost to the ground, he still looked most imposing.

Unfortunately, however, just as they were emerging from the cave, Bastin, always the most awkward of creatures, managed to leave hold with one hand, so that his passenger nearly came to the ground. Never shall I forget the look that he gave him. Indeed, I think that from this moment he hated Bastin. Bickley he respected as a man of intelligence and learning, although in comparison with his own, the latter was infantile and crude; me he tolerated and even liked; but Bastin he detested. The only one of our party for whom he felt anything approaching real affection was the spaniel Tommy.

We set him down, fortunately uninjured, on some rugs, and also in the shadow. Then, after a little while, we moved both of them into the sun. It was quite curious to see them expand there. As Bickley said, what happened to them might well be compared to the development of a butterfly which has just broken from the living grave of its chrysalis and crept into the full, hot radiance of the light. Its crinkled wings unfold, their brilliant tints develop; in an hour or two it is perfect, glorious, prepared for life and flight, a new creature.

So it was with this pair, from moment to moment they gathered strength and vigour. Near-by to them, as it happened, stood a large basket of the luscious native fruits brought that morning by the Orofenans, and at these the Lady looked with longing. With Bickley’s permission, I offered them to her and to the Ancient, first peeling them with my fingers. They ate of them greedily, a full meal, and would have gone on had not the stern Bickley, fearing untoward consequences, removed the basket. Again the results were wonderful, for half an hour afterwards they seemed to be quite strong. With my assistance the Glittering Lady, as I still call her, for at that time I did not know her name, rose from the chair, and, leaning on me, tottered a few steps forward. Then she stood looking at the sky and all the lovely panorama of nature beneath, and stretching out her arms as though in worship. Oh! how beautiful she seemed with the sunlight shining on her heavenly face!

Now for the first time I heard her voice. It was soft and deep, yet in it was a curious bell-like tone that seemed to vibrate like the sound of chimes heard from far away. Never have I listened to such another voice. She pointed to the sun whereof the light turned her radiant hair and garments to a kind of golden glory, and called it by some name that I could not understand. I shook my head, whereon she gave it a different name taken, I suppose, from another language. Again I shook my head and she tried a third time. To my delight this word was practically the same that the Orofenans used for “sun.”

“Yes,” I said, speaking very slowly, “so it is called by the people of this land.”

She understood, for she answered in much the same language:

“What, then, do you call it?”

“Sun in the English tongue,” I replied.

“Sun. English,” she repeated after me, then added, “How are you named, Wanderer?”

“Humphrey,” I answered.

“Hum—fe—ry!” she said as though she were learning the word, “and those?”

“Bastin and Bickley,” I replied.

Over these patronymics she shook her head; as yet they were too much for her.

“How are you named, Sleeper?” I asked.

“Yva,” she answered.

“A beautiful name for one who is beautiful,” I declared with enthusiasm, of course always in the rich Orofenan dialect which by now I could talk well enough.

She repeated the words once or twice, then of a sudden caught their meaning, for she smiled and even coloured, saying hastily with a wave of her hand towards the Ancient who stood at a distance between Bastin and Bickley, “My father, Oro; great man; great king; great god!”

At this information I started, for it was startling to learn that here was the original Oro, who was still worshipped by the Orofenans, although of his actual existence they had known nothing for uncounted time. Also I was glad to learn that he was her father and not her old husband, for to me that would have been horrible, a desecration too deep for words.

“How long did you sleep, Yva?” I asked, pointing towards the sepulchre in the cave.

After a little thought she understood and shook her head hopelessly, then by an afterthought, she said,

“Stars tell Oro to-night.”

So Oro was an astronomer as well as a king and a god. I had guessed as much from those plates in the coffin which seemed to have stars engraved on them.

At this point our conversation came to an end, for the Ancient himself approached, leaning on the arm of Bickley who was engaged in an animated argument with Bastin.

“For Heaven’s sake!” said Bickley, “keep your theology to yourself at present. If you upset the old fellow and put him in a temper he may die.”

“If a man tells me that he is a god it is my duty to tell him that he is a liar,” replied Bastin obstinately.

“Which you did, Bastin, only fortunately he did not understand you. But for your own sake I advise you not to take liberties. He is not one, I think, with whom it is wise to trifle. I think he seems thirsty. Go and get some water from the rain pool, not from the lake.”

Bastin departed and presently returned with an aluminum jug full of pure water and a glass. Bickley poured some of it into a glass and handed it to Yva who bent her head in thanks. Then she did a curious thing. Having first lifted the glass with both hands to the sky and held it so for a few seconds, she turned and with an obeisance poured a little of it on the ground before her father’s feet.

A libation, thought I to myself, and evidently Bastin agreed with me, for I heard him mutter,

“I believe she is making a heathen offering.”

Doubtless we were right, for Oro accepted the homage by a little motion of the head. After this, at a sign from him she drank the water. Then the glass was refilled and handed to Oro who also held it towards the sky. He, however, made no libation but drank at once, two tumblers of it in rapid succession.

By now the direct sunlight was passing from the mouth of the cave, and though it was hot enough, both of them shivered a little. They spoke together in some language of which we could not understand a word, as though they were debating what their course of action should be. The dispute was long and earnest. Had we known what was passing, which I learned afterwards, it would have made us sufficiently anxious, for the point at issue was nothing less than whether we should or should not be forthwith destroyed—an end, it appears, that Oro was quite capable of bringing about if he so pleased. Yva, however, had very clear views of her own on the matter and, as I gather, even dared to threaten that she would protect us by the use of certain powers at her command, though what these were I do not know.

While the event hung doubtful Tommy, who was growing bored with these long proceedings, picked up a bough still covered with flowers which, after their pretty fashion, the Orofenans had placed on the top of one of the baskets of food. This small bough he brought and laid at the feet of Oro, no doubt in the hope that he would throw it for him to fetch, a game in which the dog delighted. For some reason Oro saw an omen in this simple canine performance, or he may have thought that the dog was making an offering to him, for he put his thin hand to his brow and thought a while, then motioned to Bastin to pick up the bough and give it to him.

Next he spoke to his daughter as though assenting to something, for I saw her sigh in relief. No wonder, for he was conveying his decision to spare our lives and admit us to their fellowship.

After this again they talked, but in quite a different tone and manner. Then the Glittering Lady said to me in her slow and archaic Orofenan:

“We go to rest. You must not follow. We come back perhaps tonight, perhaps next night. We are quite safe. You are quite safe under the beard of Oro. Spirit of Oro watch you. You understand?”

I said I understood, whereon she answered:

“Good-bye, O Humfe-ry.”

“Good-bye, O Yva,” I replied, bowing.

Thereon they turned and refusing all assistance from us, vanished into the darkness of the cave leaning upon each other and walking slowly.

“You seem to have made the best of your time, old fellow,” said Bickley in rather a sour voice.

“I never knew people begin to call each other by their Christian names so soon,” added Bastin, looking at me with a suspicious eye.

“I know no other,” I said.

“Perhaps not, but at any rate you have another, though you don’t seem to have told it to her. Anyway, I am glad they are gone, for I was getting tired of being ordered by everybody to carry about wood and water for them. Also I am terribly hungry as I can’t eat before it is light. They have taken most of the best fruit to which I was looking forward, but thank goodness they do not seem to care for pork.”

“So am I,” said Bickley, who really looked exhausted. “Get the food, there’s a good fellow. We’ll talk afterwards.”

When we had eaten, somewhat silently, I asked Bickley what he made of the business; also whither he thought the sleepers had gone.

“I think I can answer the last question,” interrupted Bastin. “I expect it is to a place well known to students of the Bible which even Bickley mentions sometimes when he is angry. At any rate, they seem to be very fond of heat, for they wouldn’t part from it even in their coffins, and you will admit that they are not quite natural, although that Glittering Lady is so attractive as regards her exterior.”

Bickley waved these remarks aside and addressed himself to me.

“I don’t know what to think of it,” he said; “but as the experience is not natural and everything in the Universe, so far as we know it, has a natural explanation, I am inclined to the belief that we are suffering from hallucinations, which in their way are also quite natural. It does not seem possible that two people can really have been asleep for an unknown length of time enclosed in vessels of glass or crystal, kept warm by radium or some such substance, and then emerge from them comparatively strong and well. It is contrary to natural law.”

“How about microbes?” I asked. “They are said to last practically for ever, and they are living things. So in their case your natural law breaks down.”

“That is true,” he answered. “Some microbes in a sealed tube and under certain conditions do appear to possess indefinite powers of life. Also radium has an indefinite life, but that is a mineral. Only these people are not microbes nor are they minerals. Also, experience tells us that they could not have lived for more than a few months at the outside in such circumstances as we seemed to find them.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“I suggest that we did not really find them at all; that we have all been dreaming. You know that there are certain gases which produce illusions, laughing gas is one of them, and that these gases are sometimes met with in caves. Now there were very peculiar odours in that place under the statue, which may have worked upon our imaginations in some such way. Otherwise we are up against a miracle, and, as you know, I do not believe in miracles.”

“I do,” said Bastin calmly. “You’ll find all about it in the Bible if you will only take the trouble to read. Why do you talk such rubbish about gases?”

“Because only gas, or something of the sort, could have made us imagine them.”

“Nonsense, Bickley! Those people were here right enough. Didn’t they eat our fruit and drink the water I brought them without ever saying thank you? Only, they are not human. They are evil spirits, and for my part I don’t want to see any more of them, though I have no doubt Arbuthnot does, as that Glittering Lady threw her arms round his neck when she woke up, and already he is calling her by her Christian name, if the word Christian can be used in connection with her. The old fellow had the impudence to tell us that he was a god, and it is remarkable that he should have called himself Oro, seeing that the devil they worship on the island is also called Oro and the place itself is named Orofena.”

“As to where they have gone,” continued Bickley, taking no notice of Bastin, “I really don’t know. My expectation is, however, that when we go to look tomorrow morning—and I suggest that we should not do so before then in order that we may give our minds time to clear—we shall find that sepulchre place quite empty, even perhaps without the crystal coffins we have imagined to stand there.”

“Perhaps we shall find that there isn’t a cave at all and that we are not sitting on a flat rock outside of it,” suggested Bastin with heavy sarcasm, adding, “You are clever in your way, Bickley, but you can talk more rubbish than any man I ever knew.”

“They told us they would come back tonight or tomorrow,” I said. “If they do, what will you say then, Bickley?”

“I will wait till they come to answer that question. Now let us go for a walk and try to change our thoughts. We are all over-strained and scarcely know what we are saying.”

“One more question,” I said as we rose to start. “Did Tommy suffer from hallucinations as well as ourselves?”

“Why not?” answered Bickley. “He is an animal just as we are, or perhaps we thought we saw Tommy do the things he did.”

“When you found that basket of fruit, Bastin, which the natives brought over in the canoe, was there a bough covered with red flowers lying on the top of it?”

“Yes, Arbuthnot, one bough only; I threw it down on the rock as it got in the way when I was carrying the basket.”

“Which flowering bough we all thought we saw the Sleeper Oro carry away after Tommy had brought it to him.”

“Yes; he made me pick it up and give it to him,” said Bastin.

“Well, if we did not see this it should still be lying on the rock, as there has been no wind and there are no animals here to carry it away. You will admit that, Bickley?”

He nodded.

“Then if it has gone you will admit also that the presumption is that we saw what we thought we did see?”

“I do not know how that conclusion can be avoided, at any rate so far as the incident of the bough is concerned,” replied Bickley with caution.

Then, without more words, we started to look. At the spot where the bough should have been, there was no bough, but on the rock lay several of the red flowers, bitten off, I suppose, by Tommy while he was carrying it. Nor was this all. I think I have mentioned that the Glittering Lady wore sandals which were fastened with red studs that looked like rubies or carbuncles. On the rock lay one of these studs. I picked it up and we examined it. It had been sewn to the sandal-strap with golden thread or silk. Some of this substance hung from the hole drilled in the stone which served for an eye. It was as rotten as tinder, apparently with extreme age. Moreover, the hard gem itself was pitted as though the passage of time had taken effect upon it, though this may have been caused by other agencies, such as the action of the radium rays. I smiled at Bickley who looked disconcerted and even sad. In a way it is painful to see the effect upon an able and earnest man of the upsetting of his lifelong theories.

We went for our walk, keeping to the flat lands at the foot of the volcano cone, for we seemed to have had enough of wonders and to desire to reassure ourselves, as it were, by the study of natural and familiar things. As it chanced, too, we were rewarded by sundry useful discoveries. Thus we found a place where the bread-tree and other fruits, most of them now ripe, grew in abundance, as did the yam. Also, we came to an inlet that we noticed was crowded with large and beautiful fish from the lake, which seemed to find it a favourite spot. Perhaps this was because a little stream of excellent water ran in here, overflowing from the great pool or mere which filled the crater above.

At these finds we rejoiced greatly, for now we knew that we need not fear starvation even should our supply of food from the main island be cut off. Indeed, by help of some palm-leaf stalks which we wove together roughly, Bastin, who was rather clever at this kind of thing, managed to trap four fish weighing two or three pounds apiece, wading into the water to do so. It was curious to observe with what ease he adapted himself to the manners and customs of primeval man, so much so, indeed, that Bickley remarked that if he could believe in re-incarnation, he would be absolutely certain that Bastin was a troglodyte in his last sojourn on the earth.

However this might be, Bastin’s primeval instincts and abilities were of the utmost service to us. Before we had been many days on that island he had built us a kind of native hut or house roofed with palm leaves in which, until provided with a better, as happened afterwards, we ate and he and Bickley slept, leaving the tent to me. Moreover, he wove a net of palm fibre with which he caught abundance of fish, and made fishing-lines of the same material (fortunately we had some hooks) which he baited with freshwater mussels and the insides of fish. By means of these he secured some veritable monsters of the carp species that proved most excellent eating. His greatest triumph, however, was a decoy which he constructed of boughs, wherein he trapped a number of waterfowl. So that soon we kept a very good table of a sort, especially after he had learned how to cook our food upon the native plan by means of hot stones. This suited us admirably, as it enabled Bickley and myself to devote all our time to archaeological and other studies which did not greatly interest Bastin.

NEXT WEEK: “‘Receive the curse of Oro,’ said the Ancient again. Then followed a terrible spectacle. The man went raving mad. He bounded into the air to a height inconceivable. He threw himself upon the ground and rolled upon the rock. He rose again and staggered round and round, tearing pieces out of his arms with his teeth. He yelled hideously like one possessed. He grovelled, beating his forehead against the rock. Then he sat up, slowly choked and—died.”

Stay tuned!

RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION: “Radium Age” is HiLobrow’s name for the 1904–33 era, which saw the discovery of radioactivity, the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. This era also saw the publication of genre-shattering writing by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Karel Čapek, H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yevgeny Zamyatin, E.M. Forster, Philip Wylie, and other pioneers of post-Verne/Wells, pre-Golden Age “science fiction.” More info here.

HILOBOOKS: The mission of HiLoBooks is to serialize novels on HiLobrow; and also, as of 2012, operating as an imprint of Richard Nash’s Cursor, to reissue Radium Age science fiction in beautiful new print editions. In May 2012, we will publish Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague; in June, Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”); in July, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt; in September, H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook; in October, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins; and in November, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land. For more information, visit the HiLoBooks homepage.

READ: You are reading H. Rider Haggard’s When The World Shook. Also read our serialization of: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail and “As Easy As A.B.C.” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt

READ: HiLobrow’s previous serialized novels, both original works: James Parker’s The Ballad of Cocky The Fox (“a proof-of-concept that serialization can work on the Internet” — The Atlantic) and Karinne Keithley Syers’s Linda Linda Linda. We also publish original stories and comics.

The Jewish German- and English-language poet ROSE AUSLÄNDER (Rosalie Beatrice Scherzer, 1901-88) lived, learned, and wrote in, fled from, returned to, was jailed and hid in, and left again from Czernowitz in the Bukowina — a region now shared between Romania and Ukraine. A spiritual insurrection was afoot in Czernowitz so pretty that it just had to disappear. Arbitrary borders it seemed no one cared about floated away. Fortunately, Ausländer breathed in enough Spinoza during her youth there to carry her all the way to here. Ausländer strolled in the no man’s land between seeing too much and innocence. Titanic, otherworldy strength to resist any of her own edges being dulled. Childlike, bending strength to drain cruelty into fairytales. Solemnly letting the bread rise in a ghetto selected just for her before she baked it for a dying mother. Ausländer’s lyricism is simple, modern chiffre. Elusively complex because the road to essence is a long and circuitous one no one has time to explain outside poetry’s density.

Another year as ring/grown in the tree/that stands still and/obliviously circles/with the earth

How something can grow old, outward, show burns and scars and droughts only after you cut it open. The tree that stands still but bends and spins mindlessly along.

I find Ausländer’s 1976 poetry and prose collection Im Aschenregen die Spur Deines Namens a headache and a heartache. The volume’s title (Aschenregen means literally a rain of ashes but sounds beautiful) makes me think there’s poetry in everything, that I could and should write poetry, and that I’ll never write poetry. It makes the translator in me quit and then try: “A Trace of Your Name in the Fallout.”

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On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Martha Graham, Phil Silvers, Richard Feynman, and Denver Pyle.

READ MORE about members of the Hardboiled (1894-1903) Generation.

Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye was criticized, at the time, as an unfocused, ironic put-down of classic private-eye movies. In fact, it is a long goodbye to the Sixties (1964–73), the last era during which intellectuals believed that social control is exercised through anything so palpable as class domination. Like other paranoid progressives, Altman was disturbed and fascinated by the notion that what passes for life is an invisible prison, that real life (as 1968 Situationist graffiti had put it) is elsewhere. Altman’s avatar of Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is neither cool, calm, nor collected; in the scene shown here, he wanders the aisles of a supermarket at night muttering to himself. The garish ranks of cat- and dog-food cans are late capitalism’s prison bars. Marlowe is more imprisoned, in this scene, than he is when he actually goes to jail. Although the antidote to such Baudelairean spleen is volupté, i.e., the freedom that we experience at the beach (which, according to the Situationist metaphor, is to be found beneath the street’s paving stones, if only we’d tear them up to form barricades), Altman’s Marlowe is forever prevented from enjoying California’s sea, sky, or sun. He is a creature of the night and the city, a scuttling cockroach (think of all those shots in which he peers out from a dark room); in this, Altman is entirely faithful to classic private-eye movies.

An occasional series analyzing some of the author’s favorite moments in the positioning or movement of actors in a movie.