Great Stone of Sardis

by Frank Richard Stockton

  Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer

  THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS

  BY FRANK R. STOCKTON

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE-THALIA

  II. THE SARDIS WORKS

  III. MARGARET RALEIGH

  IV. THE MISSION OF SAMUEL BLOCK V. UNDER WATER

  VI. VOICES FROM THE POLAR SEAS

  VII. GOOD NEWS GOES FROM SARDIS

  VIII. THE DEVIL ON THE DIPSEY

  IX. THE ARTESIAN RAY

  X. "LAKE SHIVER"

  XI. THEY BELIEVE IT IS THE POLAR SEA

  XII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL TAKES COMMAND

  XIII. LONGITUDE EVERYTHING

  XIV. A REGION OF NOTHINGNESS

  XV. THE AUTOMATIC SHELL

  XVI. THE TRACK OF THE SHELL

  XVII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL DECLINES TO GO WHALING

  XVIII. MR. MARCY'S CANAL

  XIX. THE ICY GATEWAY

  XX. "THAT IS HOW I LOVE YOU"

  XXI. THE CAVE OF LIGHT

  XXII. CLEWE'S THEORY

  XXIII. THE LAST DIVE OF THE DIPSEY

  XXIV. ROVINSKI COMES TO THE SURFACE

  XXV. LAURELS

  THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS

  CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE-THALIA

  It was about noon of a day in early summer that a westward-boundAtlantic liner was rapidly nearing the port of New York. Not longbefore, the old light-house on Montauk Point had been sighted, and thecompany on board the vessel were animated by the knowledge that in a fewhours they would be at the end of their voyage.

  The vessel now speeding along the southern coast of Long Island was theEuterpe-Thalia, from Southampton. On Wednesday morning she had left herEnglish port, and many of her passengers were naturally anxious to beon shore in time to transact their business on the last day of the week.There were even some who expected to make their return voyage on theMelpomene-Thalia, which would leave New York on the next Monday.

  The Euterpe-Thalia was one of those combination ocean vessels which hadnow been in use for nearly ten years, and although the present voyagewas not a particularly rapid one, it had been made in a little less thanthree days.

  As may be easily imagined, a vessel like this was a very differentcraft from the old steamers which used to cross the Atlantic--"oceangreyhounds" they were called--in the latter part of the nineteenthcentury.

  It would be out of place here to give a full description of the vesselswhich at the period of our story, in 1947, crossed the Atlantic atan average time of three days, but an idea of their constructionwill suffice. Most of these vessels belonged to the class of theEuterpe-Thalia, and were, in fact, compound marine structures, the twoportions being entirely distinct from each other. The great hull ofeach of these vessels contained nothing but its electric engines and itspropelling machinery, with the necessary fuel and adjuncts.

  The upper portion of the compound vessel consisted of decks and quartersfor passengers and crew and holds for freight. These were all comprisedwithin a vast upper hull, which rested upon the lower hull containingthe motive power, the only point of contact being an enormousball-and-socket joint. Thus, no matter how much the lower hull mightroll and pitch and toss, the upper hull remained level and comparativelyundisturbed.

  Not only were comfort to passengers and security to movable freightgained by this arrangement of the compound vessel, but it was nowpossible to build the lower hull of much less size than had been thecustom in the former days of steamships, when the hull had to be largeenough to contain everything. As the more modern hull held nothing butthe machinery, it was small in comparison with the superincumbent upperhull, and thus the force of the engine, once needed to propel a vastmass through the resisting medium of the ocean, was now employed upon acomparatively small hull, the great body of the vessel meeting with noresistance except that of the air.

  It was not necessary that the two parts of these compound vesselsshould always be the same. The upper hulls belonging to one of thetransatlantic lines were generally so constructed that they could beadjusted to any one of their lower or motive-power hulls. Each hull hada name of its own, and so the combination name of the entire vessel wasfrequently changed.

  It was not three o'clock when the Euterpe-Thalia passed through theNarrows and moved slowly towards her pier on the Long Island side ofthe city. The quarantine officers, who had accompanied the vessel on hervoyage, had dropped their report in the official tug which had met thevessel on her entrance into the harbor, and as the old custom-houseannoyances had long since been abolished, most of the passengers wereprepared for a speedy landing.

  One of these passengers--a man about thirty-five--stood looking outover the stern of the vessel instead of gazing, as were most of hiscompanions, towards the city which they were approaching. He looked outover the harbor, under the great bridge gently spanning the distancebetween the western end of Long Island and the New Jersey shore--itscentral pier resting where once lay the old Battery--and so he gazedover the river, and over the houses stretching far to the west, as ifhis eyes could catch some signs of the country far beyond. Thiswas Roland Clewe, the hero of our story, who had been studying andexperimenting for the past year in the scientific schools and workshopsof Germany. It was towards his own laboratory and his own workshops,which lay out in the country far beyond the wide line of buildings andsettlements which line the western bank of the Hudson, that his heartwent out and his eyes vainly strove to follow.

  Skilfully steered, the Thalia moved slowly between high stone piers ofmassive construction; but the Euterpe, or upper part of the vessel, didnot pass between the piers, but over them both, and when the pier-headsprojected beyond her stern the motion of the lower vessel ceased; thenthe great piston, which supported the socket in which the ball of theEuterpe moved, slowly began to descend into the central portion of theThalia, and as the tide was low, it was not long before each side ofthe upper hull rested firmly and securely upon the stone piers. Then thesocket on the lower vessel descended rapidly until it was entirely clearof the ball, and the Thalia backed out from between the piers to takeits place in a dock where it would be fitted for the voyage of the nextday but one, when it would move under the Melpomene, resting on itspiers a short distance below, and, adjusting its socket to her ball,would lift her free from the piers and carry her across the ocean.

  The pier of the Euterpe was not far from the great Long Island and NewJersey Bridge, and Roland Clewe, when he reached the broad sidewalkwhich ran along the river-front, walked rapidly towards the bridge. Whenhe came to it he stepped into one of the elevators, which were placed atintervals along its sides from the waterfront to the far-distant pointwhere it touched the land, and in company with a dozen other pedestriansspeedily rose to the top of the bridge, on which moved two greatplatforms or floors, one always keeping on its way to the east, and theother to the west. The floor of the elevator detached itself from therest of the structure and kept company with the movable platform untilall of its passengers had stepped on to the latter, when it returnedwith such persons as wished to descend at that point.

  As Clewe took his way along the platform, walking westward with it, asif he would thus hasten his arrival at the other end of the bridge,he noticed that great improvements had been made during his year ofabsence. The structures on the platforms, to which people might retirein bad weather or when they wished refreshments, were more numerous andapparently better appointed than when he had seen them last, and thelong rows of benches on which passengers might sit in the open airduring their transit had also increased in number. Many people walkedacross the bridge, taking their exercise, while some who were out forthe air and the sake of the view walked in the direction opposite tothat in which the platfo
rm was moving, thus lengthening the pleasanttrip.

  At the great elevator over the old Battery many passengers went down andmany came up, but the wide platforms still moved to the east and movedto the west, never stopping or changing their rate of speed.

  Roland Clewe remained on the bridge until he had reached its westernend, far out on the old Jersey flats, and there he took a car of thesuspended electric line, which would carry him to his home, some fiftymiles in the interior. The rails of this line ran along the top ofparallel timbers, some twenty feet from the ground, and below andbetween these rails the cars were suspended, the wheels which rested onthe rails being attached near the top of the car. Thus it was impossiblefor the cars to run off the track; and as their bottoms or floors wereten or twelve feet from the ground, they could meet with no dangerousobstacles. In consequence of the safety of this structure, the trainswere run at a very high speed.

  Roland Clewe was a man who had given his life, even before he ceased tobe a boy, to the investigation of physical science and its applications,and those who thought they knew him called him a great inventor; buthe, who knew himself better than any one else could know him, was awarethat, so far, he had not invented anything worthy the power which hefelt within himself.

  After the tidal wave of improvements and discoveries which had burstupon the world at the end of the nineteenth century there had been agradual subsidence of the waters of human progress, and year by yearthey sank lower and lower, until, when the twentieth century was yetyoung, it was a common thing to say that the human race seemed to havegone backward fifty or even a hundred years.

  It had become fashionable to be unprogressive. Like old furniture inthe century which had gone out, old manners, customs, and ideas hadnow become more attractive than those which were modern and present.Philosophers said that society was retrograding, that it was becomingsatisfied with less than was its due; but society answered that it wasfalling back upon the things of its ancestors, which were sounder andfirmer, more simple and beautiful, more worthy of the true man andwoman, than all that mass of harassing improvement which had sweptdown upon mankind in the troubled and nervous days at the end of thenineteenth century.

  On the great highways, smooth and beautiful, the stage-coach had takenthe place to a great degree of the railroad train; the steamship, whichmoved most evenly and with less of the jarring and shaking consequentupon high speed, was the favored vessel with ocean travellers. Itwas not considered good form to read the daily papers; and only thosehurried to their business who were obliged to do so in order that theiremployers might attend to their affairs in the leisurely manner whichwas then the custom of the business world.

  Fast horses had become almost unknown, and with those who still usedthese animals a steady walker was the favorite. Bicycles had gone out asthe new century came in, it being a matter of course that they shouldbe superseded by the new electric vehicles of every sort and fashion, onwhich one could work the pedals if he desired exercise, or sit quietlyif his inclinations were otherwise, and only the very young or theintemperate allowed themselves rapid motion on their electric wheels. Itwould have been considered as vulgar at that time to speed over a smoothroad as it would have been thought in the nineteenth century to runalong the city sidewalk.

  People thought the world moved slower; at all events, they hopedit would soon do so. Even the wiser revolutionists postponed theiroutbreaks. Success, they believed, was fain to smile upon effort whichhad been well postponed.

  Men came to look upon a telegram as an insult; the telephone waspreferred, because it allowed one to speak slowly if he chose. Snap-shotcameras were found only in the garrets. The fifteen minutes' sittingsnow in vogue threw upon the plate the color of the eyes, hair, and theflesh tones of the sitter. Ladies wore hoop skirts.

  But these days of passivism at last passed by; earnest thinkers had notbelieved in them; they knew they were simply reactionary, and couldnot last; and the century was not twenty years old when the world founditself in a storm of active effort never known in its history before.Religion, politics, literature, and art were called upon to get up andshake themselves free of the drowsiness of their years of inaction.

  On that great and crowded stage where the thinkers of the world werebusy in creating new parts for themselves without much reference to whatother people were doing in their parts, Roland Clewe was now ready tostart again, with more earnestness and enthusiasm than before, to essaya character which, if acted as he wished to act it, would give himexceptional honor and fame, and to the world, perhaps, exceptionaladvantage.