CHAPTER XXV. LAURELS
Nothing but a perusal of the newspapers, magazines, and scientificjournals of the day could give any idea of the enthusiastic interestwhich was shown all over the civilized world in Roland Clewe's accountof the discovery of the north pole. His paper on the subject, which wasthe first intimation the public had of the great news, was telegraphedto every part of the world and translated into nearly every writtenlanguage. Sardis became a Mecca for explorers and scientific people athome and abroad, and honors of every kind were showered by geographicaland other learned societies upon Clewe and the brave company who hadvoyaged under the ice.
Each member of the party who had sailed on the Dipsey became a hero andspent most of those days in according receptions to reporters, scholars,travellers, sportsmen, and as many of the general public as could beaccommodated.
Sarah Block received her numerous visitors in the parlor of the housewhich had been occupied by Mr. Clewe (and which he had vacated in herfavor the moment he had heard an intimation that she would like to haveit), in a beautiful gown made of the silky fibre from the pods of theAmerican milk-weed, then generally used in the manufacture of the finestfabrics.
Sarah fully appreciated her position as the woman who had visited thepole, a position not only unique at the time, but which she believedwould always remain so. In every way she endeavored to make herappearance suitable to her new position. She wore the best clothes thather money could buy, and furnished her new house very handsomely. Shediscarded her old silver andirons and fender, which required continualcleaning, and which would not have been tolerated by her except thatthey were made of a metal which was now so cheap as to be used forhousehold utensils, and she put in their place a beautiful set ofpolished brass, such as people used in her mother's time. Whenever Sarahfound any one whom she considered worthy to listen, she gave a veryfull account of her adventures, never omitting the loss of her warm andcomfortable shoes, which misfortune, together with the performances ofRovinski, and all the dangers consequent, and the acquaintance ofthe tame and lonely whale, she attributed to the fact that there werethirteen people on board.
Sammy's accounts were in a more cheerful key, and his principles werenot affected by his success. He never had believed that there was anygood in finding the pole, and he did not believe it now. When they gotthere, it was just like any other part of the ocean, and it required agreat deal of arithmetic and navigation to find out where it was,even when they were looking at it; besides, as he had found out to hisdisgust, even when they had discovered it, it was not the real pole towhich the needle of the compass points.
Moreover, if there had been any distinctive mark about it, except thebuoy which they had anchored there, and even if it really were the poleto which needles should point, there was no particular good in findingit, unless other people could get there. But in regard to any otherexpedition reaching the open polar sea under the ice, Sammy had gravedoubts. If a whale could not get out of that sea there was every reasonwhy nobody else should try to get into it; the Dipsey's entrance wasthe barest scratch, and he would not try it again if the north pole weremarked out by a solid mountain of gold.
Roland Clewe refused in all personal interviews to receive thelaudations offered him as the discoverer of the pole. It was true thatthe expedition had been planned by him, and all the arrangements andmechanisms which had insured its success were of his invention, but hesteadily insisted that Mr. Gibbs and Sammy, as representatives of theparty, should be awarded the glory of the great discovery.
The remarkable success of this most remarkable expedition aroused awidespread spirit of arctic exploration. Not only were voyages under theice discussed and planned, but there was a strong feeling in favor ofoverland travel by means of the electric-motor sledges; and in Englandand Norway expeditions were organized for the purpose of reaching thepolar sea in this way. It was noticed in most that was written andsaid upon this subject that one of the strongest inducements for arcticexpeditions was the fact that there would be found on the shores of thepolar sea a telegraph station, by means of which instantaneous news ofsuccess could be transmitted.
The interest of sportsmen, especially of the hunters of big game, wasgreatly excited by the statement that there was a whale in the polarsea. These great creatures being extinct everywhere else, it would be aunique and crowning glory to capture this last survivor of his race; andthere were many museums of natural history which were already discussingcontracts with intending polar whalers for the purchase of the skeletonof the last whale.
During all this time of enthusiasm and excitement, Roland Clewe madeno reference, in any public way, to his great discovery, which, in hisopinion, far surpassed in importance to the world all possible arcticdiscoveries. He was busily engaged in increasing the penetratingdistance of his Artesian ray, and when the public mind should havesufficiently recovered from the perturbation into which it had beenthrown by the discovery of the pole, he intended to lay before it theresults of his researches into the depths of the earth.
At last the time arrived when he was ready for the announcement of thegreat achievement of his life. The machinery for the production of theArtesian ray had been removed to the larger building which had containedthe automatic shell, and was set up very near the place where the mouthof the great shaft had been.
The lenses were arranged so that the path of the great ray should rundown alongside of the shaft and but a few feet from it. The screen wasset up as it had been in the other building, and everything was madeready for the operations of the photic borer.
The address which Roland Clewe now delivered to the company was madeas brief and as much to the point as possible. The description of theArtesian ray was listened to with the deepest interest and with a vastamount of unexpressed incredulity. What he subsequently said regardinghis automatic shell and its accidental descent through fourteen milesof the earth's crust, excited more interest and more incredulity, notentirely unexpressed. Clewe was well known as a man of science, aninventor, an electrician of rare ability, and a person of seriouspurpose and strict probity, but it was possible for a man of greatattainments and of the highest moral character to become a littletwisted in his intellect.
When at last the speaker told of his descent into the shaft; ofhis passage fourteen miles into the interior of the earth; of hisdiscoveries, on which he based his theory that the centre of our globeis one vast diamond, there was a general laugh from the reporters'quarter, and the men of science began to move uneasily in their seatsand to talk to each other. Professor Tippengray, her silver hair brushedsmoothly back from her pale countenance, sat looking at the speakerthrough her gold spectacles, as if the rays from her bright eyes wouldpenetrate into the very recesses of his soul. Not an atom of doubt wasin her mind; she never doubted, she believed or she disbelieved. Atpresent she believed; she had come there to do that, and she would wait,and when the proper time had come to disbelieve she would do so.
If there had been any disposition in the audience to consideratelyleave the man of shattered intellect to the care of his friends, itdisappeared when Clewe said that he would now be glad to show to allpresent the workings of the Artesian ray. Crazy as he might be, theywanted to wait and see what he had done. The workmen who had charge ofthe machinery were on hand, and in a few moments a circle of light wasglowing on the ground within the screen. Clewe now announced that hewould take those present, one at a time, inside the enclosure and showthem how light could be made to penetrate miles downward into the solidearth and rock.
Professor Tippengray was the first one invited to step within thescreen. Clewe stood at the entrance ready to explain or to hand herthe necessary telescopes; and as the portion of her body which remainedvisible was between him and the light, there was nothing to disturb hisnerves.
The lenses were so set that they could penetrate almost instantly tothe depth which had previously been reached, but Clewe made his raymove downward somewhat slowly; he did not wish, especially to the firstobserver,
to show everything at once.
As she beheld at her feet a great lighted well, extending downwardbeyond the reach of her sharp eyes, Professor Tippengray stepped backwith a scream which caused nearly everybody in the audience to start tohis feet. Clewe expected this. He raised his hand to the company, askingthem to keep still; then he handed Professor Tippengray a stick.
"Take this," he said, "and strike that disk of light; you will find itas solid ground as that you stand on." She did so.
"It is solid!" she gasped; "but where is the end of the stick?"
He turned off the light; there was the end of the stick, and therewas the little patch of sandy gravel, which he stepped upon, stampingheavily as he did so. He then retired outside the screen. ProfessorTippengray turned to the audience.
"It is all right, gentlemen," she said; "there is nothing to be afraidof. I am going on with the investigation."
Down, down, down went the light, and, telescope in hand, she stood closeto the shining edge of the apparent shaft.
"Presently," Clewe said, "you will see the end of the shaft which myArtesian ray is making; then you will perceive a vast expanse of lightednothingness; that is the great cleft in the diamond which I described toyou. In this, apparently suspended in light, you will notice the brokenconical end of an enormous iron shell, the shell which made the realtunnel down which I descended in the car."
At this she turned around and looked at him. Even into her strong mindthe sharp edge of distrust began to insert itself.
"Look!" said he.
She looked through her telescope. There was the cave of light; there wasthe shattered end of the shell.
The hands which held the telescope began to tremble. Quickly Clewe drewher away.
"Now," said he, "do you believe?"
For a few moments she could not speak, and then she whispered, "Ibelieve that I have seen what you have told me I should see."
Now succeeded a period of intense excitement, such as was perhaps neverbefore known in an assembly of scientific people. One by one, eachperson was led by Clewe inside the screen and shown the magical shaft oflight. Each received the revelation according to his nature. Some weredumfounded and knew not what to think, others suspected all sorts oftricks, especially with the telescopes, but a well-known optician, whoby Clewe's request had brought a telescope of his own, quickly disprovedall suspicions of this kind. Many could not help doubting what they hadseen, but it was impossible for them to formulate their doubts, withthat wonderful shaft of light still present to their mental visions.
For more than two hours Roland Clewe exhibited the action of hisArtesian ray. Then he called the company to order. He had shown them hisshaft of light, and now he would give them some facts in regard to thereal shaft made by the automatic shell.
Every man who had been concerned in Mr. Clewe's descent into the shaft,and those who had assisted in the sounding and the photographing, aswell as the persons who had been present when Rovinski was drawn upfrom its depths, now came forward and gave his testimony. Clewe thenexhibited the photographs he had taken with his suspended camera, andto the geologists present these were revelations of absorbing interest;seeing so much that they understood, it was difficult to doubt what theysaw and did not understand.
Now that what Clewe had just told them was substantiated by a number ofwitnesses, and now that they had heard from these men that a plummet, acamera, and a car had been lowered fourteen miles into the bowels of theearth, they had no reason to suppose that the great shaft had existedonly in the imagination of one crazy man, and they could not believethat all these assistants and workmen were lunatics or liars. Still theydoubted. Clewe could see that in their faces as they intently listenedto him.
"My friends," said he, "I have set before you nearly all the factsconnected with my experience in the shaft, but one important fact I havenot yet mentioned. I am quite sure that few, if any of you, believe thatI descended into the cleft of a great diamond lying beneath what we callthe crust of the earth. I will now state that before I left that cavityI picked up some fragments of the material of which it is composed,which were splintered off when my shell fell into it. I will show youone of them."
A man brought a table covered with a blue cloth, and from one of hispockets Clewe drew a small bag. Opening this, he took out a diamondwhich he had brought up from the cave of light, and placed it on themiddle of the table.
"This," he said, "is a fragment of the mass of diamond into which Idescended. I have called it 'The Great Stone of Sardis.'"
Nobody spoke, nobody seemed to breathe. The huge diamond, of theform and size of a large lemon, lay glowing upon the dark cloth, itsirregular facets--all of them clean-cut and polished, the resultsof fracture--absorbed and reflected the light, and a halo of subduedradiance surrounded the great gem like a tender mist.
"I brought away a number of fragments of the diamond," said Clewe, hisvoice sounding as if he spoke into an empty hall, "and some of them havebeen tested by two of the gentlemen present. Here are the stones whichhave been tested." And he laid some small pieces on the cloth. "They areof the same material as the large one. I brought them all from what Ibelieve to be the great central core of the earth."
Everybody pressed forward, they surrounded the table. One of thejewelers reverently took up the great stone; then in his other hand hetook one of the smaller fragments, which he instantly recognized fromits peculiar shape. He looked from one to the other; presently he said:
"They are the same substances. This is a diamond." And he laid the greatstone back upon the cloth.
"Is there any other place on the surface of this earth, or is there anymine," inquired a shrill voice from the company, "where one could get adiamond like that?"
"There is no such place known to mortal man," replied the jeweler.
"Then," said the same shrill voice, which belonged to a professor fromHarvard, "I think it is the duty of every one present, whose mind iscapable of it, to believe that the centre of this earth, or a part ofthat centre, is a vast diamond; at the same time I would say that mymind is not capable of such a belief."
The public excitement produced by the announcement of the discovery ofthe pole was a trifle compared to that resulting from the news of theproceedings of that day. Clewe's address, with full accounts by thereporters, was printed everywhere, and it was not long before thelearned world had given itself up to the discussion.
From this controversy Roland Clewe kept himself aloof. He had done allthat he wanted to do, he had shown all that he cared to show; now hewould let other people investigate his facts and his reasonings andargue about them; he would retire--he had done enough.
Professor Tippengray was one of the most enthusiastic defenders ofClewe's theories, and wrote a great deal on the subject.
"Granted," she said, in one of her articles, "that the carboniferousminerals, of which the diamond is one, are derived from vegetablematter, and that wood and plants must have existed before the diamond,where, may I ask, did the prediamond-forests derive their carbon? Inwhat form did it exist before they came into being?"
In another essay she said:
"Half a century ago it was discovered that a man could talk througha thousand miles of wire, and yet now we doubt that a man can descendthrough fourteen miles of rock."
As to the Artesian ray itself, there could be no doubt whatever, forwhen Clewe, in one of his experiments, directed it horizontally througha small mountain and objects could be plainly discerned upon the otherside, discussions in regard to the genuineness of the action of thephotic borer were useless.
In medicine, as well as surgery, the value of the Artesian ray wasspeedily admitted by the civilized world. To eliminate everythingbetween the eye of the surgeon and the affected portion of a humanorganism was like the rising of the sun upon a hitherto benightedregion.
In the winter, Margaret Raleigh and Roland Clewe were married. Theytravelled; they lived and loved in pleasant places; and they returnedthe next year rich in new ide
as and old art trophies. They bought a fineestate, and furnished it and improved it as an artist paints a picture,without a thought of the cost of the colors he puts upon it. They wererich enough to have everything they cared to wish for. Undue toil andtroubled thought had been the companions of Roland Clewe for many ayear, and their company had been imposed upon him by his poverty; nowhe would not, nor would his wife, allow that companionship to be imposedupon him by his riches.
The Great Stone of Sardis was sold to a syndicate of kings, each memberof which was unwilling that this dominant gem of the world should belongexclusively to any royal family other than his own. When a coronationshould occur, each member of the syndicate had a right to the use ofthe jewel; at other times it remained in the custody of one of the greatbankers of the world, who at stated periods allowed the inhabitants ofsaid planet to gaze upon its transcendent brilliancy.
But the Works at Sardis were not given up. Margaret was not jealousof her rival, Science, and if Roland had ceased to be an inventor, adiscoverer, a philosopher, simply because he had become a rich and happyhusband, he would have ceased to be the Roland she had loved so long.
The discovery of the north pole had given him fame and honor; for,notwithstanding the fact that he had never been there, he was alwaysconsidered as the man who had given to the world its only knowledge ofits most northern point.
But in his heart Roland Clewe placed little value upon this discovery.Before Mr. Gibbs had announced the exact location of the north pole, allthe students of geography had known where it was; before the eyes of theparty on the Dipsey had rested upon the spot pointed out by Mr. Gibbs,it was well understood that the north pole was either an invisible pointon the surface of ice or an invisible point on the surface of water.If no possible good could result from a journey such as the Dipsey hadmade, no subsequent good of a similar kind could ever be expected; forthe next submarine vessel which attempted a northern journey under theice was as likely to remain under the ice as it was to emerge into theopen air; and if any one reached the open sea upon motor sledges, itwould be necessary for them to carry boats with them if they desired somuch as a sight of that weather-vane which, no matter how the wind blew,always pointed to the south.
It was the Artesian ray which Clewe considered the great achievement ofhis life, and to this he intended to devote the remainder of his workingdays. It was his object to penetrate deeper and deeper with this rayinto the interior of the earth. He could always provide himself withtelescopes which would show him the limit reached by his photic borer,and so long as that limit was a transparent disk, illuminated by hisgreat ray, so long he would believe in the existence of the diamondcentre of the earth. But when the penetrating light reached somethingdifferent, then would come the time for a change in his theories.
Discussion and controversy in regard to the discoveries of the Artesianray continued, often with great earnestness and heat, in learnedcircles, and there were frequent demands upon Clewe to demonstrate thetruth of his descent of fourteen miles below the surface of the earth byan actual exhibition of the shaft he had made or by the construction ofanother.
But to such requests Clewe turned a deaf ear. It would be impossible forhim to open his old shaft. If in any way he could remove the rocks andsoil which now blocked up its upper portion for a distance of half amile, it would be impossible to reconstruct any portion which had beenobstructed. The smooth and polished walls of the shaft, which gave Clewesuch assurance of safety from falling fragments, would not exist if thetunnel were opened.
As to a new shaft--that would require a new automatic shell, and thisClewe was not willing to construct. In fact, rather than make a newopening to the cave of light, he would prefer that people should doubtthat any such cave existed. The more he thought of his own descent intothat great cleft, the more he thought of the horrible danger of slidingdown some invisible declivity to awful, unknown regions; the more hethought of the mysterious death of Rovinski, the more firmly did hedetermine that not by his agency should a human being descend again tothose mysterious depths. He would do all that he could to enable men tosee into the interior of this earth, but he would do nothing to help anyman to get there.
The controversies in regard to their discoveries and theory disturbedRoland and Margaret not a whit; they worked steadily, with energy andzeal, and, above all, they worked without that dreadful cloud which sofrequently overhangs the laborer in new fields--the fear that the meansof labor will disappear before the object of the work shall come inview.
One morning in the early summer, Roland rushed into the room whereMargaret sat.
"I have made a discovery!" he exclaimed. "Come quickly, I want to showit to you!"
The heart of the young wife sank. During all these happy days the onlyshadow that ever flitted across her sky was the thought that some noveltemptation of science might turn her husband from the great work towhich he had dedicated himself. Much that he had purposed to do, he had,at her earnest solicitation, set aside in favor of what she consideredthe greatest task to which a human being could give his time, his labor,and his thought. It had been long since she had heard her husband speakof a new discovery, and the words chilled her spirit.
"Come," he said, "quickly!" And, taking her by the hand, he led her outupon the lawn.
Over the soft green turf, under the beautiful trees, by the brightflowers of the parterres and through the natural beauty of the charmingpark, he led her; but not a word did she say of the soft colors and thesoft air. Not a flower did she look at. It seemed to her as if she troda bleak and stony road. She dreaded what she might hear, what she mightsee.
He led her hastily through a gate in the garden wall; they passedthrough the garden, and, whispering to her to step lightly, they entereda quiet, shady spot beyond the house grounds.
"This way," he whispered. "Stoop down. Do you see that shining thingwith bright-red patches of color? It is an old tomato-can; a robin hasbuilt her nest in it; there are three dear little birds inside; themother-bird is away, and I wanted you to come before she returned. Isn'tit lucky that I should have found that? And here, in our own grounds?I don't believe there was ever another robin who made her nest in atomato-can!"
Doubtless the two birds who had made that nest sincerely loved eachother; and there were at that moment a great many other birds, and agreat many men and women, in the same plight, but never anywhere did anyhuman being possess a soul so happy as that of Margaret at that moment.
"Roland," she said, "when I first knew you, you would not have noticedsuch a little thing as that."
"I couldn't afford it," he said.
"It is the sweetest charm of all your triumphs!" said she.
"What is?" he asked.
"That you feel able to afford it now," answered Margaret.
Samuel Block and his wife Sarah found that life grew pleasanter as theygrew older. Fortunate winds had blown down to them from the distantnorth; the substantial rewards of the enterprise were eminentlysatisfactory, and the honors which came to them were not at allunwelcome even to the somewhat cynical Samuel.
Sitting one evening with his wife before a cheering fire--for both ofthem were wedded to the old-fashioned ways of keeping warm--Sammy laiddown the daily paper with a smile.
"There's an account here," he said, "of a lot o' fools who are goin' tofit out a submarine-ship to try to go under the ice to the pole, as wedid. They may get there, and they may get back; they may get there, andthey may never get back; and they may never get there, and never getback; but whichever of the three it happens to be, it'll be of no moregood than if they measured a mile to see how many inches there was init."
"Sammy," exclaimed Sarah, "I do think you are old enough to stop talkin'such nonsense as that. To be sure, there was a good many things that Iobjected to in that voyage to the pole. In the first place, there wasthirteen people on board, which was the greatest mistake ever committedby a human explorin' party; and then, agin, there was no provision forkeepin' whales from bumpin' the ship, an
d if you knew the number ofhours that I laid awake on that Dipsey thinkin' what would happen if thefrolicsome whale determined not to be left alone, and should follow usinto narrow quarters, you would understand my feelin's on that subject;but as to sayin' there wasn't no good in the expedition--I think that'sdownright wickedness. Look at that fender; look at them andirons, thembeautiful brass candlesticks, and that shovel and tongs, with handlesshinin' like gold! If it hadn't been that we discovered the pole, and sogot able to afford good furniture, all those handsome things would havebeen made of common silver, just as if they was pots and kittles, orgarden-spades!"
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