Part 2

It came swiftly at him, and just as he was reaching out, to ward himself from the pointed nose, there was a coughing thud, and something brushed by him in a blast of bubbles and went on. Then, with many sharp knocks on head, ribs, and knuckles, he was sucked with the inrush of water squarely into the open tube that had just discharged its torpedo. He heard a clang behind him, the shutting of the forward tube door, then a whistling sound; then he felt the pressure of air on his face and with a groan of thanksgiving he expelled the long breath he had taken above, and drew it into his lungs. But the pressure had nearly burst his ear drums before the tube was emptied of water, and the inner door was opened. With a gasping call for help, he crawled and hitched along the tube and men reached in to him. They pulled him out into the lighted handling room, where, too weak to stand, he fell to the floor, breathing in deep, convulsive gasps.

A man brought a bottle, lifted his head, and poured a generous portion of some stimulant down his throat. Felton had just strength to swallow, and it warmed and aroused him. He sat up and, being a torpedo expert, had little difficulty in assimilating his first impressions. He was acquainted with submarines; there was the tube from which he had emerged, beside it the air flasks and trimming tanks. Amidships the vertical and horizontal steering gear, and aft the engine and motor. In this much the craft resembled the conventional submarine that he knew. But there was this difference--that he noted when able to turn his head. The boat was stiffened with upright stanchions of about the size and length of the stanchions in the airship, and placed in about the same position along the sides. Another similarity struck him at his first glance around; and he wondered why he had not remarked it in the airship; the air flasks, trimming tanks, and spare torpedoes arranged along the sides, occupied the same relative positions as did the steel cylinders in the other, while the steering gear of both was amidships and the motive power aft.

"What have you caught this time, Bill?" called a voice from the wheel--a strangely familiar voice.

"Dunno," answered the man with the flask. "It's a sheep, I think, or maybe a dog; but it looks something like a horse. Have another drink, and tell us what you are."

Felton did not refuse a second draught. It brought him to his feet.

"I'm a man," he answered with spirit. "Are you guying me--in this exigency? I'm near dead."

"He says he's a man, sir," called the man.

"All right. Send him aft."

Felton was pushed, rather than led, to the man amidships.

"How do you do?" he said kindly. "So, you thought you'd visit us. We catch all our fish this way."

"My God, captain," answered Felton, "I'm not visiting! I jumped out of an airship, and was sucked into your tube. I'm glad I'm alive."

And then--was the liquor affecting his brain?--the captain's face, line for line, feature for feature, was the face of the captain of the airship, whom last he had seen sprawling above him in mid-air. Had he beaten him down, and been picked up first? It seemed impossible.

"How--what--how--" he stammered, rubbing his eyes. "How did you get here, captain? You jumped after me."

"I jumped after you? You are wandering. I saw you all jump, through the periscope, but I was here."

"Then it's the closest resemblance I ever saw. You're the living image of the airship's commander, or else it's the liquor. My head feels queer."

"No doubt. But it's not the liquor. You've had a terrible experience. It's a wonder the jump didn't kill you, as well as affect your mind."

Felton was not satisfied with the explanation. It was a strange and striking resemblance, nothing more; and he was about to say as much when a man came forward from the engine with an oil can. He was the duplicate in face and form of the man he had pommeled, but without the contusions. Felton blinked in amazement, then looked at the others, whom, in the agitation of his entrance, he had not closely observed. Man for man--nine in all--they duplicated the crew of the airship.

"My God," he stuttered. "Am I mad, or drunk?" His brain reeled, and, as it had reeled before, in the social life of a naval officer, he ascribed it to the liquor.

"You've drugged me," he yelled insanely. "Every man here is a double of another."

"Steady--steady, now," said the captain, stepping down and laying a hand on Felton's shoulder. "You're not drugged. You're a little off your balance, and the drink was too heavy. Every drunken man sees double. Isn't that so?"

This seemed logical, and Felton stammered assent. He sat down on the projecting bilge of a torpedo, trying to recover his mental balance. It was hard work, but finally he adjusted himself to the captain's point of view. It was a terrible jump--three hundred feet. He had escaped death by a miracle. Men had gone insane under less pressure, and he had taken two drinks of a powerful stimulant. He would be all right, in time--after a little sleep. Thus reconciled, he took note of his surroundings. The engine was stopped, the men forward had just finished reloading the torpedo tube, and the captain was peering into the periscope--the non-magnifying telescope which gives a view of the seascape.

"Come up here," he said, "and take a look." Felton climbed to the small platform on which the captain stood. Just before him was the eyepiece of the periscope, and, at a sign from the captain, he peeped into it. Pictured on the lens was the dismantled wreck of the _Argyll_, down by the head, a helpless, sinking wreck.

"She's floating on five compartments," said the captain. "I just filled the sixth, and I think we'll fill two at once this time. By the way, what did you fellows butt in for? It was my fight. I hit her last night, and blew up the forward magazine; then I lost her in the dark."

"But say," answered Felton, "which side are you on in this mix? You blew up the turret, you say, and the airship destroyed her. But the crew of that airship displayed mortal fear of you, and jumped overboard at sight of you."

"Exactly. They would have gone off at a tangent if they hadn't. It's better to die on your planet than to become a comet for all eternity."

"Like the airship. I see. But how did you do it, if I may ask?"

"I reversed his polarity, that's all. See that? Look, and listen."

The captain turned a lever, and a dynamo nearby began to revolve, while an arc lamp suspended from above glowed, glistened, and sparkled, as the current passed through the carbons. Soon it began a curious, musical buzzing, and the captain shut it off.

"Merely an alternating current through an arc," he explained. "But the electric impulses sent out by that singing arc are of a wave length and frequency produced by no other means. They are just right to turn his two magnetic poles into one, and--away he goes."

"I don't understand. Yes, I understand that you might reverse his polarity, or combine it, as you say, by some wireless method. But, which side are you on?"

"The side of the Lord."

"Look here, captain," said Felton, angrily. "That is the answer your double gave me when I asked him the same question last night. It means nothing. I am either a prisoner of war, or a guest entitled to consideration. Why do you treat me like a fool?"

"Because you are a fool. You believe in the invulnerability of the battleship. Well, there is one of the best. Look at her."

"I see. Destroyed, but not by you; by an enemy of yours. One who feared you."

"Yes, as mediocrity fears intelligence, as the child fears the dark, the savage the gun of the civilized soldier--humanity as a whole the unseen, the unexpected, the invisible. The airship is potential, but not final--she can be seen."

"And shot," said Felton, doggedly.

"Did that battleship hit your airship? You know that she could not. The airship's limitations are contained in her visibility. She cannot be hit by shot or shell, but she can be seen, and projected into space."

"Granted, but suppose she dropped a bomb on to your back before you saw her?"

"She could not, except in the dark; then she would have to strike a knife edge, and it would be an accident--one chance in millions. We are constructed like a razor-back hog, to deflect falling bombs."

"But you cannot deflect horizontal torpedoes," said Felton, looking up at the dome of the submarine. It looked curiously like the dome-shaped roof of the airship. "I know well," he went on, talking as was his wont among his fellow officers, "that if I could see your periscope tube with a telescope, I could hit you with one of my torpedoes."

"Your torpedoes?"

"I am torpedo officer of that battleship. I was on the turret top when you blew it up last night, and went up with it. I landed on the airship."

"You are a member of that battleship's crew?"

"I am." Felton dropped his eyes at the menace in the captain's voice. On the way his glance took in the curving walls of the submarine. They had become semi-transparent, and even as he looked they vanished, leaving a clear view of the sky and horizon with its string of fighting ships, pursued and pursuing. He was again in the airship, and the upright stanchions that he had first observed as anomalies in a submarine now served their legitimate purpose of supports to the roof.

"The drink," he murmured, while his brain swam, and his soundings disappeared in a mist. "They've drugged me."

"You belong to that battleship?" roared the captain, but Felton had sunk to the floor, incapable of voluntary action. The captain blew a whistle, and his crew answered. They surrounded him, with scowling faces, and lifted him to his feet. He could stand, but some inhibitory power prevented him from moving a muscle. Foremost among them was the man he had trounced, and this man struck him, again and again, in the face, and Felton essayed to strike back; but the paralysis of his muscles prevented him. His blows fell short.

"Back to the battleship," thundered the captain. "Load him into the tube. Expend that torpedo and make room."

Men sprang to the tube and turned levers. The captain sprang to the periscope. "Right," he said. "I'll finish her."

How an airship could fire a torpedo was beyond Felton's benumbed faculties at the time. He was struggling weakly, trying to strike, but unable to, pounded on the face and body by the implacable victim of his fists in the former fight, helplessly borne along toward the tube, now emptied of water.

"Back to the battleship," they chorused. "In with him."

Powerless to resist he was jammed head first into the tube. He heard the door creak into place behind him. Then he felt an impact of cold water, and he had barely sense to forestall this by an inhalation of air. Then, faintly as the voice of a telephone, came the voice of a man.

"The forrard door's jammed, it won't open."

"Hammer it," came the captain's voice. "Get a top-maul."

An age or two went by, while Felton lay imprisoned in the tube, holding his breath, and immersed in water. Then, faintly as the voices, came the sound of a heavy hammer on the walls of the tube:

"Clang-clang, clang-clang."

Felton awoke in his berth, as wet with perspiration as though still immersed in that tube. The gun-room orderly tapped at his door.

"Eight bells, sir," he said.

"All right," he answered. "Eight bells," he murmured to himself. "I heard the first four of them--let's see--about twelve hours ago. Twelve hours of experience between the fourth and fifth strokes. How long does a dream take? Darn a dream, anyhow."

ABSOLUTE ZERO

He was not exactly an imbecile--merely feeble-minded, unable to remember his past, or even the events of a year gone by--an elderly man who loafed about the studio building, a man with few wants and no vices, who picked up a scanty living by cleaning up studios for the artists, and occasionally posing for them. We called him Old Bill; he did not know his last name, and was subject to fainting spells.

The artist, like myself, was a marine painter, each of us having followed the sea when young, and in answering to the higher call that comes at least once in every man's life, had taken to art with the sea for a specialty. We both painted ships and shipwrecks, storms and sailors, but the difference between us in age, experience, and ability was so great that there was never anything but sincere friendship between us.

I welcomed his advice and criticism, and he welcomed my society, because, as he put it, my youth and enthusiasm revived his failing energies. His studio adjoined mine, and when the afternoon light had waned, I visited him to smoke, talk, and listen to his yarns, for he had been longer at sea than I had, and he had more to tell. Also, besides being a master of his art, he was a deep student of science, keeping himself well informed on each new invention and discovery; and his comments on such subjects were practical, logical, and conclusive.

As, for instance, in discussing that ninety-and-nine days' wonder, the wreck of the _Titanic_, and the proposed measures to prevent a repetition of such a terrible disaster, he had laughed at the futile idea of more lifeboats.

"All the lifeboats in the world," he said, "will not avail of themselves if they must be lowered from a boat deck seventy feet high, with the steamer rolling in a heavy sea. They would all smash against the side before half-way down. The _Titanic_ had a smooth sea, remember."

"Long davits," I suggested, "to keep them well outboard."

"Long davits--long enough to answer the purpose--would foul one another."

"Short davits, then, and travelers up and down the side."

"Impracticable, even if a steamship company would be willing to disfigure their ships so much. In time of panic, the boats could not be fitted into the travelers."

"But don't you think," I asked, "that more and stronger compartments would solve the difficulty?"

"They would have to be as strong as the side of the ship," he answered, "and the necessary angle irons and bracings would interfere with cargo space and interior accommodations."

"Then a detachable upper deck," I said, "that would stay in place by gravity, but float if the hull sank."

"It would break into pieces in a seaway. It would need to be an upper section of two decks with an air space. Well, how about hatches, stairways, and masts leading to the lower body? The two ends of the ship, which are clear of these fixtures, would not hold all hands, and if you do away with hatches, making this upper section water-tight, how about the hundreds of people--engineers, firemen, and steerage passengers--imprisoned in the hull?"

"Right," I answered. "It seems, then, that the only safety from ice is in the Southern Lane route, and slow speed in a fog."

"Yes, unless this English scientist's invention proves practicable. Have you read of it?"

I had not, and said so.

"He intends," he explained, "to send forth at intervals sharp notes of inaudible sound which, acting like audible sound, will come back from an iceberg, a ship, or a coast as an echo, and the time elapsed, recorded by a suitable receiver, and divided by two, will give the distance."

"Inaudible sound," I answered. "That seems anomalous."

"Hypothetical rather--not yet proven. But who knows? There are sounds of too low and long a vibration--I do not mean the roll of a drum, which is merely a succession of beats--that cannot be cognized by the human ear. There are sounds too high to be heard, such sounds as the chirp of a cricket, or tweet of a bird. Some people never hear these sounds. Why not use these sounds, and receive their echoes by delicate instruments?"

"Give it up," I said hopelessly.

"They call silence the negation of sound," he continued, "as they call darkness the negation of light. There is polarity throughout the universe. We are aware of plus and minus quantities in mathematics, each calculable by the same methods.

"We know of the north and south poles of the magnet; we know of positive and negative electricity; we know, by the expansion of gases, that there is a force the opposite of gravitation, and which repels instead of attracts. Some theorists have called this force apergy. I believe that all these negative forces exist, but only in the presence, or because of the existence, of their opposites. For I know that cold, which, more than all other conditions, may seem to be a mere negation, will answer to the laws of other radiant energy, and, like heat, decrease in force as the square of the distance."

I looked stupidly at him, then at Old Bill, who, no more stupid than myself under this avalanche of erudition, was puttering about, cleaning up the studio. Not noticing my bewilderment, the old artist went on.

"But an iceberg," he said, "is too large to be cognized by the law of inverse squares. It would need a diaphragm bigger than itself--bigger than the largest ship, to collect its radiations of cold. Could it be reduced to a point, however, and its cold concentrated, we could calculate its distance and direction, at least, if not its size. You know the nature of a searchlight, do you not?"

He looked at me now, and, trying to bring an intelligent expression to my face, I nodded.

"An arc light in the focus of a parabolic reflector placed behind it," he continued. "Stand in the path of its beam and you will sensibly feel the heat. Place a large lens--as large as the aperture--in the way, and focus the beam on yourself, and you will feel a heat equal to that of the arc light--about seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit--less what has radiated into the surrounding air.

"Now, get out of that focus, and place an opaque disk on the center of the searchlight aperture, and the beam will go forth with a dark center, like a hollow pipe of light and heat. And this dark center will have the temperature of the outer air, plus only what has radiated into it from the surrounding pipe.

"But after passing through the lens both the light and the dark center will reach the same focus, and if you can place a thermometer, without burning yourself, near the focus of the dark core, you will notice a great drop in the temperature. So, you see, cold, while negative heat, is a minus quantity; but it needs the presence of heat to make it respond to the same laws that govern heat."

He paused for a moment, then looked at me; and this time I could not conceal the vacuous expression on my face. He smiled, then turned to Old Bill.

"Bill," he said, "what do you think about it? Do you think all gases will ultimately be solidified as they are now liquefied? Do you think the absolute zero of space can be determined by any application of the integral or the differential calculus?"

In answer to this whimsical question Bill said: "I dunno, sir. I can't calcilate. I jess 'member I washed the windows an' swept up an' dusted. D'ye want me in the mornin', sir?"

"No, Bill. If you're through, that'll do to-night."

"I'll want you, Bill," I interposed, as the old fellow started for the door. "Come at nine o'clock, and wear your oldest, raggedest clothes."

"Yes, sir," answered Bill, and departed.

"It's the last figure in the picture," I added quickly, to forestall a resumption of the harrowing lecture on matters I did not understand. "And it will be done about noon. I'll be glad if you will come in and look it over."

"Most certainly," said my friend. "Been a long time at it, haven't you?"

"Yes; but I didn't want to bother you until it was done. I want to be original, if I can, and depend on my own conceptions."

"That's right. Be yourself. I'll be in at noon, and look at it."

I _had_ been a long time on that picture, in conception, composition, and execution; and it had followed a longer time of inactivity, during which I had done nothing in the way of work except to search my soul for an idea. At last it had come to me, and I had made sketches, one after the other, until, in composition, it was complete; then I had painted it.

Still, there lacked a motive. It was a picture, but it told no story intelligible to the eye without an explanatory title, and I had not yet thought of a title. The scene was on the deck of a ship--a flush-deck, polacca-masted craft, a type of rig I had seen but once in my travels--and the viewpoint was at the break of the poop, looking forward. The fore and mainsail were clewed up, hanging in the buntlines, and the flying jib was down a-bag on the jib-boom end.

The craft was heeled, a gale of wind blowing, as evidenced by the gray storm clouds and a sea washing over the bow, and scattered about the deck were dead men, of the Chinese, Malay, or negro type; but here consistency ended, for though these men were bareheaded and barefooted, indicating warm weather, huge icicles hung from the fife rails and scuttles, while the sea bordering the bow lost the translucency of water as it reached the deck, taking on the white, glistening effect of ice, in which some of the bodies were frozen.

Near the foremast, on the weather side, his feet and ankles hidden in ice, stood a huge negro holding over his head at full length the figure of a living man, his attitude indicating an intention to hurl him to the deck. On his dark, evil face, as on the faces of the dead men, was an expression of terror and pain.

But the face of the living man held over his head showed nothing. I had not yet painted the face, and that was why I wanted Old Bill, to take the pose and assume a terrified look. I had painted the others from my imagination, taking care only to make each one different; but this living face of a man about to be hurled to death was to be the center of the picture--to be worked out in detail, with all the high lights. A grotesque, Dantesque, Doresque, horrible idea for a picture, one might well think; but its incongruity never struck me as my mind had worked it out.

Old Bill came on time next morning, and, without looking at the painting, climbed to a plank I had placed between two easels about seven feet above the floor. He lay on his side, and at my direction assumed the pose I wanted--arms and legs outstretched, with fingers clutching at nothing. In this, he suited me; but when it came to taking a frightened look, he failed. His wrinkled features went into all sorts of contortions, and I painted, wiped out, and repainted, again and again, then gave it up. The world had treated Old Bill too kindly, I thought, and he could not comprehend fear.

When I had paid him for his time he left, and I painted in the face from imagination alone--giving it, not the wrinkled look of age, but youth, strength, and courage, and the terror that comes to youth and strength and courage when menaced with sudden death. Then, the picture finished, I sat back and smoked, while a weariness came over me that soon merged into slumber, from which I was awakened by a knock at the door. My cold pipe fell from my lips, and I arose to admit my neighbor, tutor, and critic--the old artist.

"There it is," I said, as I led him to the picture. "Old Bill didn't help much. He couldn't--"

"Great God, man!" he interrupted. "What are you doing? I thought you wanted to be original. Have you been through my old drawings?"

"No, I have not," I answered hotly. "What do you mean?"

He did not answer at once. He looked at the picture with eyes that almost bulged, muttering to himself: "Pango Sam, Wong Fing, Landy Jim." Then he turned to me, and said excitedly: "Were you on board that bark?"

I wondered if he had gone crazy, and did not answer.

"No," he said. "It happened before you were born. What manner of man are you--to see into the past? It is not prophecy. Wait!"