On this, however, he was soon reassured. The stranger unhooked some apparatus resembling a telephone and clapped it against Smith’s helmet; he immediately felt a new electric throbbing, and then the unmistakeable voice of the United States speaking very distantly in his ear.

  “See here,” said the voice, “has the City Inspector seen you?”

  “What Inspector? What City?” asked Smith.

  “Why, our City, of course. Gubbina City,” answered the native.

  “Good heavens,” cried Smith. “You don’t mean to tell me that men actually live down here.”

  “Only seventy-five thousand of them at present,” admitted the other man, “but we’re an expansive burg. You must be about the only guy that don’t know how Old Man Gubbins bought all the bottom of the Atlantic dirt cheap, because all the other boobs thought it was only dirt with nothing to it. He’s planted his factories here; and I tell you, Sir, this is going to be the new civilisation. Folks used to put paradise above the sky, but I guess the real paradise is going to be under the sea.”

  “It’s got a garden like paradise anyhow,” said Smith, “a garden of sea-anemones for flowers. You’ll be telling me next you have a dogfish chained up instead of a dog.”

  “Why, as to that,” answered the other, “these private fancies aren’t exactly encouraged by the old man, and he says the gardens have got to go. Of course in our situation we have to do pretty much as we’re told by the headquarters on land; and the old man likes to keep his finger on the string — I guess we’re all on a string; and if we did have a dog, it would be on a chain.”

  “And I think you’re on a chain yourself,” said Smith. “What an awful life — to live and die breathing air that is only pumped down to you by the favour of somebody miles away.”

  “Where do you live?” asked the American abruptly.

  “Brompton,” replied Smith; he found the conversation had become quite easy, easier than an ordinary telephone.

  “Are there many brooks in Brompton?” asked his companion, “or have you a well in your front garden, or do you go out and drink the rain? No, you have all your water pumped to you by the favour of somebody miles away. I don’t see there’s much difference between us. You are surrounded by air and have water pumped to you. We are surrounded by water and have air pumped to us. But we should both die if anything went wrong.”

  “You must have great confidence in Mr. Gubbins and the people who sent you down,” said Smith. “Suppose he sold the plant to somebody else; suppose he went mad; suppose there was a strike or a revolution. Who are these gods who sit above you in the heights and give you the very breath of life in your underworld?”

  “Let’s see,” said the other, with an air of abstraction, “I forget the names of the Water Board that supplies Brompton.”

  “My God,” cried Smith, “and I never knew them either!”

  Then he was silent and stared away into the distance beyond the dome. He saw something that looked at first like a forest of very thin trees of almost infinite height; then he saw it was a bunch or fringe formed of countless filaments like the filament he had seen attached to the distant figure of the other diver. It seemed to waver in a rhythmic manner and then gradually recede.

  “Men falling in for work,” said his informant briefly.

  “It’s horrible,” cried Smith suddenly. “They are like marionettes.”

  “I fancy you people are hung on wires too; telephone wires; telegraph wires; all sorts of wires. But it’s odd you should mention marionettes; for there really is a proposal for something of the sort. Some of them up there think the work could be better checked if wires were really attached to the arms and legs of the operatives, so that — what are you doing?”

  “I’m going back!” cried Smith, “I’m going back where I can get a breath of fresh air.”

  “No,” said the other, and his voice rang sad and hollow in his helmet. “That is the one thing you can never do. You cannot go back. You cannot go back to the primitive man drinking of the river. This is the way the whole world is going; if you did return to your own cities, you would soon find them so thick with chemical vapours that air will have to be pumped into them from the country outside. But you will never go.”

  He lurched forward and caught the other diver by his vital part, which is the pipe above him, only to be caught by the other in the same fashion. They hung there in a deadlock, each in a new fashion with his grip on the other’s wind-pipe. Then Smith felt everything blacken about him, and awoke very slowly to find Dr. Robinson administering first aid on the pier.

  “You’re all right,” he was saying, reassuringly, “You weren’t down ten minutes when the thing caught somehow for a jiffy — here, you needn’t be so energetic as that yet. Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Brompton,” replied Smith, rising on wavering legs, “I want to see if anything — if anything more’s happened there.”

  The Great Amalgamation

  (From the lost Book of Arthur, mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth.)

  But when Sir Percivale, the good knight, came to the mouth of the mighty cavern where the monster lay, he was sore astonished to behold the heaps of whitened bones of them that had gone before him on the quest, with here and there the cloven shield or splintered lance of some knight who would ride no more. And there went to and fro amid the mounds of death an aged man with a grey beard, that was a wizard, and seemed to be numbering the bones and writing down the names of the dead in a great book.

  “By my science,” he said, “I am thus enabled to prophesy what are the chances of any champion’s good fortune. For the laws of number cannot lie; and it is my pleasure, fair sir, to bid you know that there are now five thousand three hundred and seventy-two chances to one, that the end of your venture will be evil.”

  But Sir Percivale, being young and careless of science, hardly heard the words of the wise man; but rather lamented aloud over the dead, among whom lay many whose crests and quarterings he knew; and cried weeping:

  “Alas, Sir Fortinbras, the good lord, that was clad from head to heel in copper and red gold and his hair red as a sunset; like a fire or a moving furnace was he ever in the front of battle; and here he lies pale like ashes. And woe is me for the good knight Sir Scudemore that dwelt in the high wood and drew the bow of which the shafts were like thunderbolts; six heathen kings they slew in the path that went down to Severne.

  And while the young man wept, the old man smiled and said, as one who speaks comfortably to another: —

  “Trust me, Sir Knight, that all is well with them; and that they have but amended the folly of their first attempt. For it was their error that they went always one by one, so that the foe could devour them piece-meal; but now they have become part of a mighty order and act together always, without it being possible for one to go lonely or to stray; fierce and smiling youth at which the sun stands amazed; and when that might and splendour comes out of its cavern, it is as though there were a new sunrise at moon.”

  And even as he spoke, there was a far-off movement as if in dim and distant halls hollowed out of the very heart of the mountains; and along vast and vaulted corridors there was a trampling as of many terrible feet and a high hard noise like the trumpets before an army; and a moment after there came out into the sun a vast and fearful thing, covered with scales larger than scutcheons, and rayed with spikes standing out like many spears; carrying with it all the weapons of an army and yet one soul and one body, such as God permits to walk upon the hills of the world. For this was the Dragon, that had devoured many men, and Sir Percivale spurned aside the sage and the scattered bones, and, with a great cry, set his lance in rest...

  On Secular Education

  Once upon a time a boy was born in a square enclosure between four blank walls, where he grew up without knowledge of any other place; nor did he remember his mother or what had become of her. The only person he ever saw, as he grew up, was a sort of Guardian or Warder of the place, who passed a great deal of the time walking round and round the top of the walls like a sentinel. He was a rather remarkable old party, with a quaint sort of old-fashioned top hat and very big and bushy beard or whiskers. But he wore a very big and powerful pair of spectacles, which showed that he was delightfully scientific as well as nearly blind; and he always carried under his arm a big gun; which was enough to prove that he was the Law and the Executive.

  The occupation of the boy, to which he was introduced very early in life, was as follows. In one of the walls there was a round hole, just large enough to allow a sort of iron rope or rod to pass out across the enclosure and vanish into an exactly identical round hole in the opposite wall. In this continuously moving cord it was the boy’s business to cut notches at very exact intervals and with very considerable exertion. Sometimes, at noon and late at night, he was allowed to desist, to sleep and eat a little food which the old gentleman brought to him; and on these occasions the old gentleman was so kind as to utter a short homily of the most humane and sympathetic sort; pointing out the privileges which the youth enjoyed in so orderly and reliable an environment.

  “You have complete liberty of thought,” explained the Guardian, “and you are doubtless exercising that faculty by admiring the neatness of the mechanism and wondering how less happy human beings can support a rude existence without it.”

  “Well,” answered the boy, “it must be remembered that I have never yet seen any other human beings, happy or otherwise. As a matter of fact, I am rather wondering who I am.”

  “We will resume this discussion in twelve hours’ time,” said the Guardian, looking at his watch, “when the conversation will turn upon what is the most hygienic meal-time.”

  The youth resumed his labours; but his mind was clearly given over to a morbid brooding, for he actually stopped in the middle of his pleasing industry to say:

  “What is all this for?”

  “Enjoying as you do complete liberty of speech,” replied the old gentleman on the wall, “you will probably wish to discuss whether your hour of sleep should be fifteen minutes later.”

  “I mean,” cried the boy, with a gesture as of despair, “where does all this stuff go to?”

  “The complete liberty of public discussion of which you justly boast,” remarked the Guardian, “will be resumed in three weeks’ time.”

  So the boy took up his chopper again and began to chop bits out of the iron rope until he was weary; when he suddenly hurled his chopper over the wall and flung out his arms with a wild gesture to the sky.

  “Who made all this?” he cried, “Who built this place, and why?”

  “Silence!” cried the Guardian from the wall, in a voice of thunder, “You enjoy complete liberty of thought and speech; and I will not allow you to be fettered by Creed or Dogma.”

  A Fish Story

  There was a thoughtful silence in the inn parlour, when the fisherman had finished a statement accompanied with wide lateral gestures but exact calculations. The parson said in a ruminant manner:

  “They say the first story about a fish was the story of Jonah.”

  “What do you mean?” said the fisherman indignantly, “are you implying that you don’t believe my story?”

  “It is far more improper,” said the parson, controlling the corners of his mouth, “for you to be implying that I don’t believe the story of Jonah.”

  “Why, nobody believes that nowadays,” snorted the fisherman, “science exploded all those fairy tales long ago. Even you parsons can’t explain how a whale could swallow a man.”

  “There are things almost as hard to swallow,” observed his clerical companion. “For that matter, science itself has her fish stories. Look at Wells’s scientific romances; and some that have come true as well.”

  “That’s just the difference,” replied the angler excitedly “those can be explained; you may not know the explanation but a scientist could explain them step by step. The mind of man is the explanation; I can always believe that a man can do marvellous things.”

  “Evidently,” said the parson gravely.

  “Yes,” interposed the traveller, who had so far remained silent; for he was a stranger in these parts and not a country gentleman like the fisherman; he was (I am sorry to say) a journalist; and on a walking tour at that. None the less he continued, though in a low and almost hollow voice, “yes, it’s the human explanation that counts. I remember a trifling incident that happened to me when I was young; which shows how a little human ingenuity will produce something that seems quite odd for the moment. I used to fish as a boy, as boys do, with any bit of string or bent pin that came to hand; I had a good deal of luck; and I have prided myself since on getting practical results without bothering much about theory or expert advice. I think I was a bit put off all that by an old uncle of mine, who was so fearfully theoretical that he would go and study the skeletons of fishes in the museum, and pore over diagrams and sections of the cells and organs of fishes, before he would even go out to catch a tittlebat in a pond. The consequence was that the poor old boy got his legs entangled in his own tackle the first time he ever went fishing and fell off the end of a pier and got drowned, just when he was explaining the system of nerve-centres in some of the polyps of the South Seas. Well, as I say, I think this old tragedy of my Uncle William drove me to the opposite extreme: but I went about whipping all the streams and seas of the world with anything that came handy, and swearing that experience is the only way to anywhere. Sometimes I used the wrong thing and caught a log; sometimes, by some mistake or other, I used the right and caught nothing. They say any stick is good enough to beat a dog with; any rod is good enough to catch a shark with — that was my motto and a very good one, even if it didn’t catch the shark. It caught other things, of course. As the other proverb says, anything was fish that came to my net; and when I had played an old hat for hours at Margate and nearly been pulled into the water by a plunging packing case bent on escape, I told myself that I was getting experience every hour.

  “One evening about dusk I was sitting near the end of a long, narrow stone breakwater that ran out into a gently troubled sea. The waves swayed and swelled restlessly but with little noise, now and again rising high enough before they sank to catch a gleam from the last livid strip of sunset. Then, as I watched through the growing twilight such surges rise and fall, I became conscious of one that rose and did not fall. The ridge of the high wave remained rigid against the sky as if suddenly frozen into an iceberg; then I looked again and myself seemed turned to ice. The black shape was the shape of a fin, like the fin of a shark, but as big as the flapper of a whale. The next moment the world turned upside down.

  “I might have thought it was an earthquake, or rather a seaquake; for a mountain had risen out of the sea. Only I saw that the mountain had eyes; eyes as huge as bay windows and standing out of its head almost like horns. The monster was of a dim purple shade changing below to a chocolate or dark red fringed with fins lined as with copper or red gold. But I had but an instant to observe it, for by the next it had butted into the breakwater shaking it from end to end like a vibrant cord; and in that same instant I knew the monster had my hook in its mouth. And then something happened that convinced me I was not awake: or there was no reason in Nature. What followed was nightmare enough, but nothing could ever equal that first departure from the sanity of sight. Instead of rebounding from the breakwater or breaking it, the great fish threw one fin across it, seeming to clutch as with a claw. Then with one huge, sickening heave, it heaved itself on to that wall of stone and remained balanced on it, like a balloon on a tightrope, its fins waving on each side to keep the balance like the wings of an enormous bird. In desperation, I plucked at my line, only to find it pulled in the opposite direction and myself along with it. The thing did not move; but by some munching or swallowing motion it was sucking my line into its inside as a windlass winds up a rope. I was dragged to its very jaws before I had time to let go. Then line and rod vanished with a flick and a jerk down the living cavern, and I turned and ran back along the causeway, shrieking aloud. Once I looked wildly over my shoulder, and beheld a new horror. The monster had moved. It was measurably nearer to me than it had been. How in the name of Hell a fish could thus live and walk out of water I did not know; but I knew I was being pursued with a mysterious malignity; it was like being hunted by a giant snail. When I came to the steep slopes of grey, glimmering, multitudinous pebbles, they sank and failed under my feet, even as all reality was failing under me. It was like trying to escape on a treadmill. I tumbled on my face, as if to bury my head in the heaped-up stones in despair; and I heard behind the dragging and shifting noises of the shingle, as the shapeless fish crawled up the hill; the land of the living, where it had no right to be alive. Then I turned recklessly and realised, as a final light of unreason, that it was dead. It was moving: but it was dead. It was marching inland on its flat fins like a huge starfish; but it was dead. Something told me there was no light behind those protuberant eyes that glistened in the growing moonshine; and in a final fury, I caught up a spar of sea-timber that lay on the shore and struck furiously at the foe. The spar had a long, rusty nail standing out like the head of a pickaxe. It rent the monstrous bulk from end to end, like the ripping up of a balloon; and from the inside there stepped out my Uncle William, whom I had not met for years.