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_ Nothing but a perusal of the newspapers, magazines, and
scientific journals of the day could give any idea of the
enthusiastic interest which was shown all over the civilized
world in Roland Clewe's account of the discovery of the north
pole. His paper on the subject, which was the first intimation
the public had of the great news, was telegraphed to every part
of the world and translated into nearly every written language.
Sardis became a Mecca for explorers and scientific people at home
and abroad, and honors of every kind were showered by geographical
and other learned societies upon Clewe and the brave company who
had voyaged under the ice.
Each member of the party who had sailed on the Dipsey became a
hero and spent most of those days in according receptions to
reporters, scholars, travellers, sportsmen, and as many of the
general public as could be accommodated.
Sarah Block received her numerous visitors in the parlor of the
house which had been occupied by Mr. Clewe (and which he had
vacated in her favor the moment he had heard an intimation that
she would like to have it), in a beautiful gown made of the silky
fibre from the pods of the American milk-weed, then generally
used in the manufacture of the finest fabrics.
Sarah fully appreciated her position as the woman who had visited
the pole, a position not only unique at the time, but which she
believed would always remain so. In every way she endeavored to
make her appearance suitable to her new position. She wore the
best clothes that her money could buy, and furnished her new
house very handsomely. She discarded her old silver andirons and
fender, which required continual cleaning, and which would not
have been tolerated by her except that they were made of a metal
which was now so cheap as to be used for household utensils, and
she put in their place a beautiful set of polished brass, such as
people used in her mother's time. Whenever Sarah found any one
whom she considered worthy to listen, she gave a very full
account of her adventures, never omitting the loss of her warm
and comfortable shoes, which misfortune, together with the
performances of Rovinski, and all the dangers consequent, and the
acquaintance of the tame and lonely whale, she attributed to the
fact that there were thirteen people on board.
Sammy's accounts were in a more cheerful key, and his principles
were not affected by his success. He never had believed that
there was any good in finding the pole, and he did not believe it
now. When they got there, it was just like any other part of the
ocean, and it required a great 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 his disgust, even when they had
discovered it, it was not the real pole to which the needle of
the compass points.
Moreover, if there had been any distinctive mark about it, except
the buoy which they had anchored there, and even if it really
were the pole to which needles should point, there was no
particular good in finding it, unless other people could get
there. But in regard to any other expedition reaching the open
polar sea under the ice, Sammy had grave doubts. If a whale
could not get out of that sea there was every reason why nobody
else should try to get into it; the Dipsey's entrance was the
barest scratch, and he would not try it again if the north pole
were marked out by a solid mountain of gold.
Roland Clewe refused in all personal interviews to receive the
laudations offered him as the discoverer of the pole. It was
true that the expedition had been planned by him, and all the
arrangements and mechanisms which had insured its success were of
his invention, but he steadily insisted that Mr. Gibbs and Sammy,
as representatives of the party, should be awarded the glory of
the great discovery.
The remarkable success of this most remarkable expedition aroused
a widespread spirit of arctic exploration. Not only were voyages
under the ice discussed and planned, but there was a strong feeling
in favor of overland travel by means of the electric-motor sledges;
and in England and Norway expeditions were organized for the
purpose of reaching the polar sea in this way. It was noticed in
most that was written and said upon this subject that one of the
strongest inducements for arctic expeditions was the fact that
there would be found on the shores of the polar sea a telegraph
station, by means of which instantaneous news of success could
be transmitted.
The interest of sportsmen, especially of the hunters of big game,
was greatly excited by the statement that there was a whale in
the polar sea. These great creatures being extinct everywhere
else, it would be a unique and crowning glory to capture this
last survivor of his race; and there were many museums of natural
history which were already discussing contracts with intending
polar whalers for the purchase of the skeleton of the last whale.
During all this time of enthusiasm and excitement, Roland Clewe
made no reference, in any public way, to his great discovery,
which, in his opinion, far surpassed in importance to the world
all possible arctic discoveries. He was busily engaged in
increasing the penetrating distance of his Artesian ray, and when
the public mind should have sufficiently recovered from the
perturbation into which it had been thrown by the discovery of
the pole, he intended to lay before it the results of his
researches into the depths of the earth.
At last the time arrived when he was ready for the announcement
of the great achievement of his life. The machinery for the
production of the Artesian ray had been removed to the larger
building which had contained the automatic shell, and was set up
very near the place where the mouth of the great shaft had been.
The lenses were arranged so that the path of the great ray should
run down alongside of the shaft and but a few feet from it. The
screen was set up as it had been in the other building, and
everything was made ready for the operations of the photic borer.
The address which Roland Clewe now delivered to the company was
made as brief and as much to the point as possible. The
description of the Artesian ray was listened to with the deepest
interest and with a vast amount of unexpressed incredulity. What
he subsequently said regarding his automatic shell and its
accidental descent through fourteen miles of the earth's crust,
excited more interest and more incredulity, not entirely
unexpressed. Clewe was well known as a man of science, an
inventor, an electrician of rare ability, and a person of serious
purpose and strict probity, but it was possible for a man of
great attainments and of the highest moral character to become a
little twisted in his intellect.
When at last the speaker told of his descent into the shaft; of
his passage fourteen miles into the interior of the earth; of his
discoveries, on which he based his theory that the centre of our
globe is one vast diamond, there was a general laugh from the
reporters' quarter, and the men of science began to move uneasily
in their seats and to talk to each other. Professor Tippengray,
her silver hair brushed smoothly back from her pale countenance,
sat looking at the speaker through her gold spectacles, as if the
rays from her bright eyes would penetrate into the very recesses
of his soul. Not an atom of doubt was in her mind; she never
doubted, she believed or she disbelieved. At present 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
considerately leave the man of shattered intellect to the care of
his friends, it disappeared when Clewe said that he would now be
glad to show to all present the workings of the Artesian ray.
Crazy as he might be, they wanted to wait and see what he had
done. The workmen who had charge of the machinery were on hand,
and in a few moments a circle of light was glowing on the ground
within the screen. Clewe now announced that he would take those
present, one at a time, inside the enclosure and show them how
light could be made to penetrate miles downward into the solid
earth and rock.
Professor Tippengray was the first one invited to step within the
screen. Clewe stood at the entrance ready to explain or to hand
her the necessary telescopes; and as the portion of her body
which remained visible was between him and the light, there was
nothing to disturb his nerves.
The lenses were so set that they could penetrate almost instantly
to the depth which had previously been reached, but Clewe made
his ray move downward somewhat slowly; he did not wish,
especially to the first observer, to show everything at once.
As she beheld at her feet a great lighted well, extending
downward beyond the reach of her sharp eyes, Professor Tippengray
stepped back with a scream which caused nearly everybody in the
audience to start to his feet. Clewe expected this. He raised
his hand to the company, asking them to keep still; then he
handed Professor Tippengray a stick.
"Take this," he said, "and strike that disk of light; you will
find it as 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
there was the little patch of sandy gravel, which he stepped
upon, stamping heavily as he did so. He then retired outside the
screen. Professor Tippengray turned to the audience.
"It is all right, gentlemen," she said; "there is nothing to be
afraid of. I am going on with the investigation."
Down, down, down went the light, and, telescope in hand, she
stood close to the shining edge of the apparent shaft.
"Presently," Clewe said, "you will see the end of the shaft which
my Artesian ray is making; then you will perceive a vast expanse
of lighted nothingness; that is the great cleft in the diamond
which I described to you. In this, apparently suspended in
light, you will notice the broken conical end of an enormous iron
shell, the shell which made the real tunnel down which I
descended in the car."
At this she turned around and looked at him. Even into her
strong mind the sharp edge of distrust began to insert itself.
"Look!" said he.
She looked through her telescope. There was the cave of light;
there was the shattered end of the shell.
The hands which held the telescope began to tremble. Quickly
Clewe drew her away.
"Now," said he, "do you believe?"
For a few moments she could not speak, and then she whispered, "I
believe that I have seen what you have told me I should see."
Now succeeded a period of intense excitement, such as was perhaps
never before known in an assembly of scientific people. One by
one, each person was led by Clewe inside the screen and shown the
magical shaft of light. Each received the revelation according
to his nature. Some were dumfounded and knew not what to think,
others suspected all sorts of tricks, especially with the
telescopes, but a well-known optician, who by Clewe's request had
brought a telescope of his own, quickly disproved all suspicions
of this kind. Many could not help doubting what they had seen,
but it was impossible for them to formulate their doubts, with
that wonderful shaft of light still present to their mental
visions.
For more than two hours Roland Clewe exhibited the action of his
Artesian ray. Then he called the company to order. He had shown
them his shaft of light, and now he would give them some facts in
regard to the real 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, as well as the persons who had been present when
Rovinski was drawn up from its depths, now came forward and gave
his testimony. Clewe then exhibited the photographs he had taken
with his suspended camera, and to the geologists present these
were revelations of absorbing interest; seeing so much that they
understood, it was difficult to doubt what they saw and did not
understand.
Now that what Clewe had just told them was substantiated by a
number of witnesses, and now that they had heard from these men
that a plummet, a camera, and a car had been lowered fourteen
miles into the bowels of the earth, they had no reason to suppose
that the great shaft had existed only in the imagination of one
crazy man, and they could not believe that all these assistants
and workmen were lunatics or liars. Still they doubted. Clewe
could see that in their faces as they intently listened to him.
"My friends," said he, "I have set before you nearly all the
facts connected with my experience in the shaft, but one
important fact I have not yet mentioned. I am quite sure that
few, if any of you, believe that I descended into the cleft of a
great diamond lying beneath what we call the crust of the earth.
I will now state that before I left that cavity I 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 you one
of them."
A man brought a table covered with a blue cloth, and from one of
his pockets Clewe drew a small bag. Opening this, he took out a
diamond which he had brought up from the cave of light, and
placed it on the middle of the table.
"This," he said, "is a fragment of the mass of diamond into which
I descended. I have called it 'The Great Stone of Sardis.'"
Nobody spoke, nobody seemed to breathe. The huge diamond, of the
form and size of a large lemon, lay glowing upon the dark cloth,
its irregular facets--all of them clean-cut and polished, the
results of fracture--absorbed and reflected the light, and a halo
of subdued radiance surrounded the great gem like a tender mist.
"I brought away a number of fragments of the diamond," said
Clewe, his voice sounding as if he spoke into an empty hall, "and
some of them have been tested by two of the gentlemen present.
Here are the stones which have been tested." And he laid some
small pieces on the cloth. "They are of the same material as the
large one. I brought them all from what I believe to be the
great central core of the earth."
Everybody pressed forward, they surrounded the table. One of the
jewelers reverently took up the great stone; then in his other
hand he took one of the smaller fragments, which he instantly
recognized from its 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 great stone back upon the cloth.
"Is there any other place on the surface of this earth, or is
there any mine," inquired a shrill voice from the company, "where
one could get a diamond 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
from Harvard, "I think it is the duty of every one present, whose
mind is capable of it, to believe that the centre of this earth,
or a part of that centre, is a vast diamond; at the same time I
would say that my mind is not capable of such a belief."
The public excitement produced by the announcement of the
discovery of the pole was a trifle compared to that resulting
from the news of the proceedings of that day. Clewe's address,
with full accounts by the reporters, was printed everywhere, and
it was not long before the learned world had given itself up to
the discussion.
From this controversy Roland Clewe kept himself aloof. He had
done all that he wanted to do, he had shown all that he cared to
show; now he would let other people investigate his facts and his
reasonings and argue about them; he would retire--he had done
enough.
Professor Tippengray was one of the most enthusiastic defenders
of Clewe's theories, and wrote a great deal on the subject.
"Granted," she said, in one of her articles, "that the
carboniferous minerals, of which the diamond is one, are derived
from vegetable matter, and that wood and plants must have existed
before the diamond, where, may I ask, did the prediamond-forests
derive their carbon? In what 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
through a thousand miles of wire, and yet now we doubt that a man
can descend through fourteen miles of rock."
As to the Artesian ray itself, there could be no doubt whatever,
for when Clewe, in one of his experiments, directed it horizontally
through a small mountain and objects could be plainly discerned
upon the other side, discussions in regard to the genuineness of
the action of the photic borer were useless.
In medicine, as well as surgery, the value of the Artesian ray
was speedily admitted by the civilized world. To eliminate
everything between the eye of the surgeon and the affected
portion of a human organism was like the rising of the sun upon a
hitherto benighted region.
In the winter, Margaret Raleigh and Roland Clewe were married.
They travelled; they lived and loved in pleasant places; and they
returned the next year rich in new ideas and old art trophies.
They bought a fine estate, 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 were rich enough to have everything
they cared to wish for. Undue toil and troubled thought had been
the companions of Roland Clewe for many a year, and their company
had been imposed upon him by his poverty; now he would not, nor
would his wife, allow that companionship to be imposed upon him
by his riches.
The Great Stone of Sardis was sold to a syndicate of kings, each
member of which was unwilling that this dominant gem of the world
should belong exclusively to any royal family other than his own.
When a coronation should occur, each member of the syndicate had
a right to the use of the jewel; at other times it remained in
the custody of one of the great bankers of the world, who at
stated periods allowed the inhabitants of said planet to gaze
upon its transcendent brilliancy.
But the Works at Sardis were not given up. Margaret was not
jealous of her rival, Science, and if Roland had ceased to be an
inventor, a discoverer, a philosopher, simply because he had
become a rich and happy husband, 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 always considered as the man who had given to the world its
only knowledge of its 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, all the students of geography had known where it
was; before the eyes of the party 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 point on 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 had
made, no subsequent good of a similar kind could ever be
expected; for the next submarine vessel which attempted a
northern journey under the ice was as likely to remain under the
ice as it was to emerge into the open air; and if any one reached
the open sea upon motor sledges, it would be necessary for them
to carry boats with them if they desired so much 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 of his life, and to this he intended to devote the
remainder of his working days. It was his object to penetrate
deeper and deeper with this ray into the interior of the earth.
He could always provide himself with telescopes which would show
him the limit reached by his photic borer, and so long as that
limit was a transparent disk, illuminated by his great ray, so
long he would believe in the existence of the diamond centre of
the earth. But when the penetrating light reached something
different, then would come the time for a change in his theories.
Discussion and controversy in regard to the discoveries of the
Artesian ray continued, often with great earnestness and heat, in
learned circles, and there were frequent demands upon Clewe to
demonstrate the truth of his descent of fourteen miles below the
surface of the earth by an actual exhibition of the shaft he had
made or by the construction of another.
But to such requests Clewe turned a deaf ear. It would be
impossible for him to open his old shaft. If in any way he could
remove the rocks and soil which now blocked up its upper portion
for a distance of half a mile, it would be impossible to
reconstruct any portion which had been obstructed. The smooth
and polished walls of the shaft, which gave Clewe such assurance
of safety from falling fragments, would not exist if the tunnel
were opened.
As to a new shaft--that would require a new automatic shell, and
this Clewe was not willing to construct. In fact, rather than
make a new opening to the cave of light, he would prefer that
people should doubt that any such cave existed. The more he
thought of his own descent into that great cleft, the more he
thought of the horrible danger of sliding down some invisible
declivity to awful, unknown regions; the more he thought of the
mysterious death of Rovinski, the more firmly did he determine
that not by his agency should a human being descend again to
those mysterious depths. He would do all that he could to enable
men to see into the interior of this earth, but he would do
nothing to help any man to get there.
The controversies in regard to their discoveries and theory
disturbed Roland and Margaret not a whit; they worked steadily,
with energy and zeal, and, above all, they worked without that
dreadful cloud which so frequently overhangs the laborer in new
fields--the fear that the means of labor will disappear before
the object of the work shall come in view.
One morning in the early summer, Roland rushed into the room
where Margaret sat.
"I have made a discovery!" he exclaimed. "Come quickly, I want
to show it to you!"
The heart of the young wife sank. During all these happy days
the only shadow that ever flitted across her sky was the thought
that some novel temptation of science might turn her husband from
the great work to which he had dedicated himself. Much that he
had purposed to do, he had, at her earnest solicitation, set
aside in favor of what she considered the 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 speak of a new
discovery, and the words chilled her spirit.
"Come," he said, "quickly!" And, taking her by the hand, he led
her out upon the lawn.
Over the soft green turf, under the beautiful trees, by the
bright flowers of the parterres and through the natural beauty of
the charming park, he led her; but not a word did she say of the
soft colors and the soft air. Not a flower did she look at. It
seemed to her as if she trod a bleak and stony road. She dreaded
what she might hear, what she might see.
He led her hastily through a gate in the garden wall; they passed
through the garden, and, whispering to her to step lightly, they
entered a quiet, shady spot beyond the house grounds.
"This way," he whispered. "Stoop down. Do you see that shining
thing with bright-red patches of color? It is an old tomato-can;
a robin has built her nest in it; there are three dear little
birds inside; the mother-bird is away, and I wanted you to come
before she returned. Isn't it 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 a tomato-can!"
Doubtless the two birds who had made that nest sincerely loved
each other; and there were at that moment a great many other
birds, and a great many men and women, in the same plight, but
never anywhere did any human 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
noticed such 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 they grew older. Fortunate winds had blown down to them from
the distant north; the substantial rewards of the enterprise were
eminently satisfactory, and the honors which came to them were
not at all unwelcome even to the somewhat cynical Samuel.
Sitting one evening with his wife before a cheering fire--for
both of them were wedded to the old-fashioned ways of keeping
warm--Sammy laid down the daily paper with a smile.
"There's an account here," he said, "of a lot o' fools who are
goin' to fit out a submarine-ship to try to go under the ice to
the pole, as we did. They may get there, and they may get back;
they may get there, and they may never get back; and they may
never get there, and never get back; but whichever of the three
it happens to be, it'll be of no more good than if they measured
a mile to see how many inches there was in it."
"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 I objected to in that voyage to the pole. In the first
place, there was thirteen people on board, which was the greatest
mistake ever committed by a human explorin' party; and then,
agin, there was no provision for keepin' whales from bumpin'
the ship, and if you knew the number of hours that I laid awake
on that Dipsey thinkin' what would happen if the frolicsome
whale determined not to be left alone, and should follow us into
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's downright wickedness. Look at that fender; look
at them andirons, them beautiful brass candlesticks, and that
shovel and tongs, with handles shinin' like gold! If it hadn't
been that we discovered the pole, and so got able to afford
good furniture, all those handsome things would have been
made of common silver, just as if they was pots and kittles, or
garden-spades!"
THE END.
The Great Stone of Sardis, by Frank R. Stockton. _
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