Part 2

When I concluded to descend I was compelled to take a circular course in order not to come down too rapidly.

I had scanned the desert for the palm trees, mentioned by my father, by the aid of my telescope, which I had brought with me, the field glass being thought by me too small for the purpose.

I soon discerned three monstrous trees which seemed to have but one top to them all. Finding no other object of the same or a similar nature on the surface of this ocean of sand, I rightly conjectured that I had descried the proper point and so maneuvered my vessel as to reach it easily, when I observed a horde of warriors of the desert gesticulating wildly below me. I saw all this with my telescope, as I was still too far above the surface of the earth to have made the discovery with the naked eye.

I was not in the least daunted by this discovery, and continued my descent.

The swiftness of the animals carrying those nomads was marvelous, for, though I traveled with greater speed than that of the wind, they seemed to be always beneath my car and were increasing in numbers.

Ever and anon I could see a puff of smoke and hear a little explosion, but it did not disturb me.

Down, down, I came, and when I was within a few hundred feet of the ground I heard a great battering as of hail. The sky was serene and clear. Then I discovered the cause. It was the patter of the bullets of those Arabs on the bottom of my ship. I had wisely provided against any damage by such things by sheathing the bottom side of my carriage with a coating of steel.

When they had shot away all their ammunition and saw that I still descended, paying no more attention to them than I did to the wind, they fell upon their faces in worship, and would not raise their heads from the ground even when I walked in their midst, which I was shortly doing.

V

_The finding of the Giant Brain; its message to me; my pursuit of the treasure it located for me; the breaking of the North Pole—all these are given in historic sequence as prefatory to the real adventures, which are given at length in their proper order later on._

AS I made directly toward the three trees the worshipers mechanically made way for me; but when I started up one of the trees there was a loud exclamation. The number of voices being so great the roll of the sound was like terrific thunder, and caused such a vibration of the trees that I should have lost my hold and fallen had it not been I had provided myself with suitable tree-climbers.

I looked down upon the crowd whose heads were up, and they bowed them with such rapidity and unanimity that when they struck the ground they produced a much more violent concussion and vibration than had their voices.

As it was now getting dusk I brought into requisition the belt which I had prepared. It was of glass and filled with gas, and by sending through it a current of electricity from my storage battery which I carried in my hip pocket there was produced instantly a bright light around my waist, which enabled me to see what I was doing.

One or two venturesome ones had probably observed the illumination and had communicated the fact to the entire assembly; for the awe with which they gazed upon me was so intense as to pin me tightly to the tree.

By a very simple device, which consisted in having three compartments of different colors—red, white, and blue—by changing the current from one to the other rapidly the effect produced upon my worshipers was such as to paralyze them, and they fell over like rags, thus releasing me from the pressure of their gaze.

I was then able to proceed to the top, and was soon within a great nest, such as my father had described. In the bottom thereof was a very black object, which, upon closer examination, had somewhat the appearance of a flattened egg—flattened longitudinally. Upon still closer examination, the resemblance to a human head of gigantic size became so striking as to lead me to believe the body of a man was beneath, the top of his head merely projecting, and what I had supposed was a nest was in reality a sort of head gear.

However, by placing my hand beside it, I found I could lift it quite readily, and there was no man under it or attached to it. Then I saw the similarity in appearance to a human brain with greater clearness. By shaking it I discovered no indication of any contents. It was also very hard to the touch, so much so I failed to make an indentation in it with anything I had at hand.

It was so large I could barely encompass it with both arms as I prepared to remove it to the ground. How I was to get down with it I could not for a moment imagine. As I stood upon the edge of the nest trying to decide the manner of my descent it slipped from my hands and fell with great force upon a rock.

When my audience beheld me with that thing in my arms they stood up with such precision of movement it seemed they were all fastened together and worked by one electrical button, and when it dropped those nearest ran backward with such force they were piled ten or fifteen deep before they could get very far.

I at once descended and grasped my prize which I examined minutely and discovered there were open seams in it just as there are in the skull of a man, and with very little difficulty I soon had the skull removed—for such it now proved to be, and I had laying in my lap what was in reality a mammoth brain.

Some peculiarity about it tempted me to examine it critically, which I did with the eye-piece of my telescope.

Judge of my surprise if you can when I beheld upon each prominence of this brain a picture of good size (thanks to my microscope) and I was deeply absorbed in studying them.

As I moved the glass about I seemed conscious of hearing something which I soon found to be but the undulations of light on the part of the brain I was then scrutinizing. I finally concluded that what I really heard were messages from that brain to somebody; but, if so, were in a tongue unknown to me, though I confess to being somewhat of a linguist. It certainly was a very dead tongue as it was a very dead brain.

On looking up I beheld before me one who was, as I afterward learned, the shiek of this tribe which surrounded me. I motioned to him to sit beside me, and, holding the glass where I had had it, indicated to him my desire that he should look through it.

He gazed so long and was so excited I began to fear he would absorb the whole thing, and, impelled by that fear, I exclaimed: “When!”

This startled him somewhat, for he jumped back in surprise.

After gazing at me for some moments in silence, he asked:

“Do you speak English?”

I told him I did and asked him to tell me what he saw or heard when he looked through the glass.

Thereupon he spoke as follows, which I reported in shorthand, verbatim et literatim, at one time having learned the art from Sir Isaac Pitman when he was a lad:

“O, thou of the sky, whose flight is swifter than that of the old eagle; whose movements are more graceful than those of the young fawn at day-break; whose actions are as noiseless as the kiss of the dew upon the tulip; whose voice is as sweet as the murmur of the rivulet; whose countenance is as glorious as the full-robed orb of night as she rises from her eastern couch; whose mind is as brilliant as the scintillations of the Milky Way;

“O, listen to the words of thy servant, who kneels before thee, who feels the honor a monarch bestows on his subject; whose right hand and whose left hand; whose right foot and whose left foot; whose right ear and whose left ear; whose right eye and whose left eye; whose right nostril and whose left nostril, shall be at thy service; whose mouth shall speak thy messages; whose mind shall think thy thoughts—thy servant of the Desert, We Ali.

“O, listen to the words he speaks unto thee; for they are not the words of his feeble tongue; they are not the pictures of his impotent thoughts.

“O, listen to his words.

“O, listen to the words that come to thee from the ages; that come to thee alone; that tell thee a secret no other man may know.

“O, listen to the words.

“O, listen to the words that came into the ear of thy servant, We Ali, through his eye as he gazed into this magic glass thy hand has produced.

“These are the words.

“O, listen.

“O, listen and learn: In the mountains of Siberia is a place; deep in the ground lies a treasure; a treasure rich beyond imagination; powerful beyond words; there lies a treasure and it is thine.

“O, listen: When thou approachest the place thou shalt know it by its fearful power; for it shall draw metals unto it with great vehemence.”

We Ali stopped. I meditated. He was repeating to me a message the owner of this brain had received, and he thought it a message to me.

By the aid of the Arabs I got my ship of state on the nest. Soon there came a great simoon from the north and I sailed away.

As I proceeded I found great difficulty in breathing, on account of the coldness of the air and the speed at which I was traveling. But I had prepared for this, having with me a coil of pipe, beneath which I lighted a spirit lamp; thereupon by breathing through this pipe I got along very well, as the air was warmed sufficiently by the lamp to make my respiration comfortable.

The needle of my compass was drawn downward; but, before I could stop my vehicle, I had reached the North Pole, against which I struck with such force as to shatter it, and bring myself precipitately to the ground, by which fall I should have been killed had it not been for thousands of polar bears that were huddled around the pole asleep and upon whom I fell. My aeroplane, however, was not damaged, because of its coat of steel.

VI

_The truthful statement of the mechanism of the North Pole; the monster gimlet; the flight to Saturn; the race with detachable brains; the Egg-hearts; people who live without eating; and the finding of the dazzling treasure are here given in categorical fullness._

THE point of my compass was now toward the south.

I discovered the sleeping bears were in reality dead ones. I learned it in this way.

I saw two live bears at a distance coming toward me, dragging between them another one which they brought to the Pole and placed against it.

This aroused my curiosity and, by a close inspection, I found the mystery of the ease with which the earth rotated was solved. The bears were very fat, and, as they were put up tight against the Pole the rotation of the earth gradually worked the oil out of them, and thus served to grease the Pole and keep it from sticking.

As there was no eminence at hand from which to start my ship, for I had broken off the Pole, I was in a dilemma for a short time only. Remembering what the good shiek, We Ali, told me, I ran a wire around my machine, to which I attached my storage battery, thus converting it into a magnet.

Had it not been for the remainder of the Pole I should have shot by on the other side of the earth, as, inadvertently, I had started the current around in the wrong direction; I had made my magnet positive when it should have been negative. I corrected the error and flew with great speed in the direction of the magnetic mountain, against which I should have struck with precipitation, had not the rate at which I went been enough to raise my aeroplane on the air, and I rose to the top of the mountain, which I should have barely passed over had I not released the current at the proper time and landed quietly on the top.

So great was the magnetic power of this mountain my compass was destroyed, the needle having been pulled down so hard as to bend it out of shape. In fact, the compass box itself was drawn so violently as to tear its way through my pocket and strike the ground with a great noise.

Thus I was satisfied I was on the exact spot indicated by the petrified brain. As I knew it was probably several hundred feet to the treasure, I set about arranging a device for extracting it.

Out of steel I formed a gigantic bit or auger with a very slow spiral. By attaching my wires to it properly I made it positive, and it started into the ground at a great rate. At last I heard it grinding on a solid surface. When I made sure it would go no deeper, I reversed the current and it came back to the surface; but it came with such rapidity I did not have time to stop the current, and it went on out and up, carrying me with it, to Saturn, upon which it struck and started in with great rapidity, it having been turned around in the transit. If one of the wires had not broken I presume I should have been carried clear through, out on the other side, and away off into space. As it was, it stopped as I was entering the surface. This little incident led me to the conclusion that Saturn has also a magnetic mountain and I struck upon it, or, rather, in its rings, as it was upon one of them I struck, as I afterward learned.

I was completely filled with surprise when I saw rolling along great numbers of skulls similar to the one I had found in the Desert of Sahara. Soon there was a circle around me of these queer objects, completely hemming me in, and I began, very quickly, the readjustment of my auger, with the object in view of getting out of there on short notice, as I did not know to what extent these things might go.

I was on the point of turning on the current, when the largest of the number rolled up to my feet and seemed to be trying to communicate with me. I decided to await developments, for a time at least.

I adjusted my eye-piece and set it upon the surface of this thing, and was no better off than before. Suddenly it rolled away at a swift pace, and I soon saw it returning on the top of a giant of terrible dimensions, and I would have turned on the current right then and there, but somehow I couldn’t. I was not frightened in the least, but there was something about his face that held me there. I do not really believe I wanted to remain.

Think of a face that was nothing but a monster eye—no mouth; no nose; no ears—just one great eye of a beautiful blue color.

I felt better in a moment, for this eye had such power I had no difficulty in understanding its messages and it seemed to understand my thoughts perfectly, and we were soon volubly communicating.

I learned that these were the people who inhabited the outer ring of Saturn; that they only used their bodies when they wished to go great distances. They never ate anything; never drank anything; communicated with each other by vibrations only. Their thoughts started vibrations in the ether which affected all their brains alike and instantly. I became so accustomed to their way of talk I seldom spoke, communicating by thought alone. Indeed, speech was wholly useless, and had I remained there long enough I doubt not I should have forgotten how to talk.

They took me to one of the other rings, inhabited by a still more peculiar people, for they had no heads at all. In place of that adornment, they had only one strong arm, at the end of which was a very small hand. Otherwise they were like ordinary mortals, if they had been dressed up. As it was, they were nothing but muscles, veins, and bones.

They had a heart shaped something like a transparent goose egg. They communicated with each other by the motions of the blood within this egg, which they detected by grasping the other fellow’s egg and feeling the blood bubble. They had no lungs, getting their vitality by absorption from the atmosphere. It was perfectly ludicrous to observe a number of these queer people laughing, and they seemed to be very merry. The ebullitions of the blood at such times was terrific, and they would twist that one arm in the oddest manner. I forgot to say they worked their machine, if I may use the term, on the hour-glass principle. The blood went from one side to the other through a hole in a middle partition, and when it all got into the lower compartment the hand would take hold of it and turn the other side up.

But I was not really astonished until I got onto the body of Saturn.

There I found a people very much like ourselves; in fact, in appearance they were just like ourselves; but they neither ate nor drank, and I was much at a loss to understand how they existed, as they seemed to possess all of the parts of a human body. Neither were they immortals; for they were very flashy in their habits and life generally.

I saw a number of these people standing in a line. Another one had a pump attached to a pipe that led into a pond filled with bright red liquid. As each one came up, he would insert the nozzle of his pump under his left arm and fill him up. I then learned that twice a day they had their hearts filled with new blood, which was found in numberless springs all over the surface of Saturn. By this frequent replenishing of the system with new blood all disease was avoided.

It occasionally happens there, so I was told, that a mischievous one would go to another part of the country and bring a little of the blood that was pumped into the servants or black people and pour it into the spring where the other people replenished. In that case the people who used this tainted spring would be spotted for a while, and so would the one who did it. As soon as the spots began to appear, by changing to another pure spring the blemishes would gradually disappear.

There were springs for all of the different animals, which seemed peculiar to me at first; but I learned that the different animals were the same people trying experiments upon themselves by using different kinds of blood.

One of the marvelous things about Saturn was the fact there was no night there, the luminosity of the rings being such as to keep it a perpetual day; hence the people never slept there.

Another fact that attracted my attention was there was no heat in the center of Saturn, and that it was all on the surface; therefore, there was no winter; just perpetual spring. The inhabitants told me Saturn was not old enough for the heat to have got down to the center; that it was a young planet; when the oldest inhabitant was a child it was not even necessary to inject blood into their hearts.

So I was satisfied that in all probability they would ultimately reach our state of perfection.

It was quite amusing to observe their consternation when I asked for something to eat and drink. They knew nothing about it, and thought I wanted something to wear, or a wagon, or any old thing but a lunch.

Finding a number of trees bearing very nice apples and a spring of clear water, I began to eat and drink, at which they crowded around me so thickly, and the outer ones pressed with such eagerness, the inner ones were finally pushed upon me, and I was nearly suffocated and crushed.

At last, I got back to my auger, reversed the current and was glad to find myself again speeding toward earth.

As before, the instrument was turned around in transit and it struck in the self-same place; but this time I had presence of mind to stop it at the surface.

I beheld the grand spiral it had made and walked down. All the way down, and it was no mean distance I can tell you, I had no difficulty in seeing where to place my feet, for it was perfectly light. This confused me, as I had expected the deeper I went the darker it would be. The contrary proved true; so true, that when I reached the bottom the light was so dazzling I was compelled to shade my eyes every few moments. When they did get used to the brilliancy, I discovered the cause of it.

The auger had drilled out a large room in a solid bed of diamonds; but the strangest thing about it was, it had, by its swift revolutions cut all the diamonds in proper shape for setting. This accounted for the extreme brightness of the light; it was but the reflections from the countless gems.

When I had become immured to my glittering surroundings, I investigated, and found a very handsome box in a small hole in one of the sides of the apartment.

In this box I found the following documents:

VII

_Wherein I give the contents of one of the documents I found in the box, consisting of several Narrations, in which Ka In extricates himself from a dilemma and produces our pleasant and agreeable seasons; the origin of the Ice Age; the real but little known cause of the Great Flood; the lovers with the terrible eyes and the artful maidens; the origin of shaving the face and cutting the hair; the Tower of Babel. Also tracing my genealogy from Ka In to Li Ur, who wrote this document._

THOUGH I have studied all the known languages under all the instructors of prominence, and have acquired their proper pronunciation by speaking each language in all its dialects with the people who used them naturally, I have been compelled to translate the following documents by the application of my wide and varied knowledge thus gained of the idioms of the numerous classes with whom I have come in contact.

I have taken the liberty, in a few instances, to “fill in” in order to embellish the meager language in which the original is written, believing I shall be pardoned for thus doing when it is understood how much of interest has thereby been added to the narrative. Yet I have endeavored to retain the originality of expression and turn of sentence.

FIRST DOCUMENT

Li Ur, a giant, who was the son of Li Ing, who was the son of Tru Thless, who was the son of Fal Seh Ood, who was the son of Pur Jur Ri, who was the son of Fa Kir, who lived about the time of the Great Flood on the Earth, who was the son of Fa Bel, who was the son of Ka In, the patriarch, sends greetings to all students of the World, and, therefore, of its history, and begs all will take heed, meditate upon, ponder over and deeply consider the following tidbits of knowledge, information and belief gathered from the writings of my fathers.

Hear ye, therefore, and profit by the utterances which have to do with nothing but authenticated and undoubted verbatim reports made by expert stenographers who took the words as they fell from the lips of my ancestors. So great was the rapidity with which they were spoken and so swift the writers aforesaid, many volumes were spoken and transcribed in a few moments of time.

_First Narrative_

The first of my narrations is in the words and figures following, to wit, that is to say:

In the days when there was no hurt within, upon, around, about, over and under, in or out of the land, the sea, the clouds, or the air there was a giant who was my remote ancestor. This giant, whose name was Ka In, was a harvester of grain and like seeds. It so happened after laboring morning, noon and evening for about a thousand years his mind was impressed with the terrific thought he would probably be compelled to continue so doing throughout eternity if some change were not determined upon and put into execution; for there was but one kind or quality or state of weather upon all the land from one year’s end to another year’s end. There was also no rain during which he might rest; just so soon as one crop came to maturity another started and demanded his attention. There was also no winter during which he might recuperate his wasted strength and energies.