The story hunter

The narrator of the following quaint story was a little man, very soberly dressed, and very timid in his demeanour. He appeared to be greatly in awe of his wife, of whom he spoke with due, or perhaps I might say undue, humility and deference. If his habiliments were sober, I am much afraid his habits were the reverse; his nose was very rubicund, and its bright colouring contrasted oddly with his coat, once black, but now tinged with a disreputable greenish hue.

He sat in an awkward position on the very edge of the seat, acquiesced in everything I said, and was of such a feeble, backboneless character, that after he had consumed half a tumbler of whiskey at a gulp, I had no trouble in hypnotizing him (without even asking his consent) as he lolled back on the chair in a very drowsy condition.

Slight hope was mine of eliciting anything like a story from this intemperate little gentleman, and it was an agreeable surprise, therefore, when he reeled off the following, which I will call “A Visitor from Mars.”

A VISITOR FROM MARS.

That a spirit could visit this earth from such a distant planet as Mars, my wife would not believe for a moment, explain it how I would.

She required a proof, and proof I could have given her had she only attended to her household duties and kept my pockets in proper repair, instead of prying into things that did not concern her; beside, was not the verbal description of my shadowy visitor and his extraordinary conversation sufficient to convince any one but an obstinate woman that what I spoke was solid truth?

Why should she imagine that the inordinately hot weather of the past summer had had such a soporific effect upon me, that, in wooing Morpheus, I simply dreamed of my visitor?

Why should she think that because I had my spirit flask with me during my afternoon ramble that I——?—but allow me, my intelligent reader, to lay my story before you, and I think you will bear me out that there is a foundation in it.

To begin at the beginning.

It was a hot, dreamy day in the middle of August, and I was staying at the old-fashioned, out-of-the-world, under-the-hill town of Minehead in Somersetshire. The atmosphere being too hot for sitting indoors, and the water much too clear for fishing, I thought I would take a stroll to Horner Woods, which lie under the great hills, just this side of Stoke Pero, and in the immediate neighbourhood of Dunkery Beacon, which is precisely one-third of a mile high.

Opening my umbrella and using it as a sunshade, I wandered listlessly along the two or three miles which intervene between Minehead and my haunt, and took a long time in reaching the recumbent tree upon which I loved to sit and sketch or read. A more charming or solitary spot cannot be found in all the West Country.

The walk leads up a narrow valley, skirted on either side by hills rising abruptly to a height of many hundred feet, culminating in the giant Dunkery Beacon, whose bald head, as I have said, breaks the horizon seventeen hundred feet above sea level. The feet of these giant hills are clad in trees and underwood of such an impenetrable nature, that as one walks in the valley and looks up the acclivities, one can see but a few score yards, and then the mass of wood and foliage becomes so black and dense that the eye cannot penetrate it.

Of course, as in all western valleys, a bubbling, murmuring trout stream flows through it towards the sea, into which it falls at the pretty village of Porlock, some miles distant; and as it twists and falls from and among the great boulders with which the bed of the stream is thickly strewn, it is easy to fancy one hears persons conversing at no great distance, so peculiar is the murmuring noise of the waters. Perhaps the water has its familiar spirits! Why not? We know that spirits and water are frequently very intimate with each other, and produce much talk and idle chatter, and possibly they are spirit voices that we hear, although we cannot make much sense of them.

It was a fairy spot I had selected, and as I sat on my comfortable seat on the mossy old fallen monarch of the woods, with my back resting comfortably against a bough, which gave it the support of an arm-chair, I could not help imagining that such a spot would just have suited Robin Hood and his merry men. In fact, I amused myself by peopling the glade in my imagination.

There—under that great branching oak might rest several mighty casks of ale, round which the men in Lincoln green would cluster, lying in various picturesque attitudes, with their bows and arrows hanging from the branches of surrounding trees, ready to be snatched down at a moment’s notice in case of any alarm. There—where that patch of yellow-green grass crept out from the withered oak, I would have a party of dancers tripping it to pipe and tabour; and down yonder precipitous path should come the lofty Little John, with a fine deer across his broad shoulders; while in the arbour formed by those three hawthorn trees, I could imagine the sturdy form and graceful figure of Robin himself and the fair Maid Marian. Then Friar Tuck must be among them; yes, he should have a large horn of ale and——thud!!

“Why, where in the name of fortune came you from?” I cried, as a little fat man in cassock and hood plumped down on the soft turf beside me. “Have I the pleasure of addressing his reverence, Friar Tuck?”

“Friar Tuck! No, my friend—never heard of that gentleman. My name is Friar Bacon.”

“Friar Bacon!” I exclaimed. “Why, surely you never had anything to do with this jovial company—Robin Hood and his merry men?”

But as I swept my arm round to give emphasis to my speech, I perceived, to my astonishment, that nought but trees and rocks met my view on every side, my foresters had vanished, and I found myself in the presence of a short, stout, rubicund monk, who should have been dust these six hundred years.

“Bacon,” I murmured, looking doubtingly at my visitor; “why, how is it possible that you, who died, if my memory serves me rightly, ere the close of the thirteenth century, can be here before me at the end of the nineteenth? You are joking with me, my friend.”

“Oh no,” replied my visitor, “it is extremely simple. You must know that I, with many other learned men, have formed a scientific colony, so to speak, in the planet Mars. We have many among us known to you by repute. St. Dunstan, Newton, Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Euclid, and many others, are of our company, and right harmoniously we live together. Live, I say, but of course you will understand I mean exist, for we have for many ages passed from the flesh, and are now simply etherealized bodies, or, if you will, spirits!

“You would ask how came we in Mars?

“Well, let it suffice if I inform you, that by the sanction of the Great Spirit, we, Advancers of Mankind, are allowed a special parole, as a recompense for our toil on earth, and there in Mars we exist, instead of perambulating this dense earth of yours, in a spirit form, till we are required ‘At the Last.’

“Just place your hand upon my breast.”

I did so, but my fingers meeting no resistance, I extended my arm, and could see my hand emerge beyond the figure as the jolly friar remarked:

“There, you see, I am pure spirit, double distilled, and I trust highly rectified.

“Well,” he continued, “I have not long to stay, so I will have a short chat with you, and then, heigh presto! back to my cosy planet. You see it is only once in two years we get very close to your earth, that is, at a certain time we are only 35 millions of miles from you, whilst at another time we are as much as 244 millions of miles away. Therefore as we travel fast I must not linger long, or I shall be late at our monthly scientific meeting, which takes place to-morrow.”

I could not refrain from asking him what the planet Mars was like, and he very civilly informed me that it was prettier than the earth, and its climate milder; “beside which,” said he—

“The genial seasons are longer; we have a spring of 192 days, and a summer of 180; whilst the autumn is of 150, and the winter of 147 days’ duration only. A longish year, as you will observe, nearly 690 days; but then we are so busy and so happy that we do not notice the flight of time. Time is an object to you mortals, but we philosophers totally disregard it. If you visited our planet you would find one thing in particular very trying to you in your present gross form—we have no atmosphere to speak of.

“We neither eat, drink, nor sleep; require no clothing, that is no renewal of clothing, for this cassock is the shade of the last costume I wore when on earth, and will probably last me till the Crack of Doom; consequently we are enabled to employ the whole of our time in scientific research.”

“Might I venture to inquire into the nature of your scientific studies?” I timidly inquired.

“Why certainly,” he replied, rubbing his forehead reflectively; and as he drew his hand across the noble expanse of his frontal bone, I could see a rush of little sparks follow his shadowy fingers. This set me to gaze more intently at his phenomenal person, and as I did so I was surprised to find that I could see quite through what should have been the frontal bone, and there, in the cavity of the cranium, I beheld his brain at work thinking. It simply appeared like revolving smoke curling this way and that, and taking fantastic forms; halting, and then moving on again in complex but orderly movement.

Seeing my utter astonishment, he good-naturedly enlightened me as to the strange appearance.

“The brain,” said he, “is the man, it never dies, and in our case is the only part which does not entirely become spirit, that is, transparent spirit. It always remains a foggy, cloudy kind of ether, visible to mortals; and they are constantly walking through and sitting surrounded by it, though they know it not.

“You probably do not believe in ghosts or spirits, yet you are surrounded by them day and night, and when, by a variety of accidental causes, one becomes materialized you see it, and immediately write off to a newspaper about it as something wonderful. Ha! ha! If I could only open your eyes and show you the number of ghosts in this silent and solitary spot you would scarcely believe your eyes; there are thousands!”

Then looking at me with his peculiar, luminous eyes he inquired, “Did you ever notice a kind of mist floating over graveyards during certain days of damp, muggy weather?”

“Yes,” I replied, “often; but what of that?”

“What of that!—why,” continued Bacon, “that is the spirit, the soul, the brain of disembodied mortals, which floats till the Final Day just above the ground, the rock, the sea, or wherever the body was buried.”

I marvelled at this, whereupon my communicative friend went further, and said:—

“Do you not know that these spirits may be conversed with by mortals? You have a certain control over electricity, you have the phonograph, the electrophone, and the telephone—trifles in comparison to what we have invented in Mars—but with these you have only to proceed in this way. You simply——”

But ere he uttered another word a wind swept through the wood with a crackling sound, at which the Friar bowed his head and quietly uttered the words “I obey!” It was evident by his uneasy movements and facial expression that he had been stayed from enlightening me further by some unseen spirits, so, to turn the subject, I said:—

“What is there appertaining to this earth in which we might advance our knowledge, by invention or otherwise?”

The little monk looked at me with a mirthful face, putting his jolly head on one side, and with a look in his eyes as if he would say, “Don’t you wish you may pump me?” said:—

“I must tell you plainly, that by our bond we are forbidden to tell to mortals the secrets we possess, but I will just give you a little idea or two that you may experimentalize upon, and see what you are clever enough to make of notions that we have already established as practical scientific facts.

“Electricity with you is only in its infancy, it is but just born—yet you have taken several steps in the right direction; you have the phonograph, the electrophone, and the telephone, all of which are very well in their way, but you must go further with them. If you are clever enough you can make the phonograph convey thought as well as speech, so that you and I, being a mile apart, could, with the help of an improved phonograph, convey our thoughts to each other. With a certain instrument conversation with departed spirits might be held and the very secrets of the grave revealed, and the great——” But here the wind again sighed through the valley, and the monk again bowed and meekly crossed himself, having evidently ventured too far beyond the bounds of his suggestions.

“The electrophone,” said he, “may easily be improved, so that in combination with a certain machine which I may tell you is on the eve of being invented in America, will not only give you the voice of the person speaking at a distance, but also his or her likeness with every line of the features expressing the individuality of the person under notice.

“Electricians of the Nineteenth Century! why, you have only reached ‘A’ in the alphabet of electrical possibilities. How absurd of you to use horseflesh to draw loads, and raise or lower heavy masses, and to use steam—noisy, bulky steam—for locomotives and marine engines, and to write with ink and even use hand-power to sew with, when everything could be done quicker, easier, cheaper, and cleaner by the touchstone of all future motion—electricity!

“There, get along, ye mortals of to-day!” and the little man rolled about with laughter, “ye laggards, why, if half-a-dozen of our company in Mars had had your scientific instruments and delicate machinery in our day we should have made an entirely different world of this earth. Why, my old friend Archimedes would have obtained a fulcrum for his lever long before now, and if no one had prevented him would have attempted to hurl the earth right out of the planetary system into space. Oh, he is even now a most mischievous fellow, though you would not think it to look at him; his ambition is boundless, and his scientific pranks are at times very reprehensible. Only last week, just for the fun of the thing, he blew Sir Isaac Newton nearly to the sun, and when the poor fellow returned to Mars after several days’ absence we scarcely knew him, he had become so sunburnt with his visit to the suburbs of the great luminary. It was beyond a joke, you know.” Then the little man went off into another paroxysm of laughter at the thought of poor Sir Isaac’s burnt spirit-face.

“What,” queried I, “can you tell me of ships and navigation? Have we reached the limit of speed in the merchant service, and the zenith of offensive and defensive power in the Navy?”

These questions sent the little man off into a fresh fit of laughter, and he looked at me as much as to say, “You ignoramus, you type of mortal feebleness and conceit.” Presently having calmed down he proceeded:—

“I must tell you that Nelson is with us in spirit, and has turned out a capital inventor. He follows eagerly all that takes place, navally, in the little dots on the globe called Great Britain, and you will scarcely believe it when I tell you, that he has invented a wooden ship that would in one brief hour destroy your entire navy.”

“How could it be done?” said I.

“Ah! there you are! I cannot tell you, I can only give you an idea. My lord’s ship is of wood, compressed india-rubber, and cork! The only thing you have to discover is how to place your caoutchouc so that when a shot is fired at your ship it passes clean through it and the hole immediately closes, just as the water closes after it is cloven by the ship’s hull. Firing at Nelson’s ship would have the same effect as if you thrust your walking-stick through me or through your own shadow.”

“But,” I asked eagerly, “how would he destroy our navy in an hour?”

“Why,” said the Friar, “he and Sir Humphrey Davy have invented an explosive of such vast power, that a single pound weight would destroy the strongest ironclad afloat, and he can fire it from an ordinary shoulder gun, with which he delights to practise at the mountains of Mars. He can chip a thousand-ton mountain top off with a single shot; we have to stop him at it, for he quite spoils the scenery, and alters it so completely that we are in danger of losing ourselves. He calls his destructive agent ‘infernite,’ and it really is quite diabolical.”

“And of speed in merchant vessels,” I remarked, “what of that?”

“There you are all wrong again, you have gone right off the proper path. Why, your passenger vessels actually float on the surface of the sea, instead of fathoms below it; consequently you have both wind and waves to contend with, which is absurdly and palpably wrong to any one who gives the least reflection to the matter.

“Set your inventive faculties to work, control and compress your air—by the way, see that you get it pure, sea air is always best and safest—sink your hermetically-sealed ship by hydraulic arrangements, pitch your great thumping steam monsters overboard, and propel your vessel with civilized and cleanly electric force, and there you are! America in twenty-four hours! India in three days! China in five! and Australia in a week!!

“This speed should have been attained years since; but your engineers are so in love with great smoky furnaces, steel monsters, and grimy coal and grease, that it will take some time before they get off with the ugly old love (steam) and on with the elegant new one (electric force).”

I nodded approval, and put another query. “Can we do anything more to improve the locomotive engine both as to safety and speed? Of course I gather from what you have just said that electricity could be made to take the place of steam, and then we should get a much quicker and safer service of trains than at present.”

“Quicker service of trains?” he echoed, and looked at me in feigned amazement. “Trains and locomotives, did you say? Why, my dear friend, you astonish me. To improve your service, gather up all your network of iron rails, but leave your stations intact for the present, and pitch both the rails and the horrid shrieking engines into the midst of the Atlantic, not into the North Sea, for that is so shallow that the immense pile of old iron would cause an obstruction to submarine navigation, and quite spoil the fishing-ground, though it would be an excellent iron tonic to the fish.

“Then, having done that, invent a neat little electric aërostat—it can and has been done by us—and simply fly from point to point, from station to station if you will, noiselessly and expeditiously. Edinburgh or Dublin in three hours, or St. Petersburg in ten, would be a fair speed. What are they made of, do you say? Well, there is that bothering bond that seals my lips, or I would willingly make a sketch and give you a specification with pleasure.

“You know that certain chemicals produce certain gases. Gas is a power: it may be converted into a motive power. Do you follow?”

I bowed.

“For the fabric: do you know that six goose quills will support a man?—if not, I can assure you they will; there is lightness and strength for you! What can, with equal economy, be beaten thinner or is lighter than aluminium?—a new metal with you, I find. For propelling mechanism, study the wing of the swift-flying birds, created by our Great Spirit; you cannot improve on that, but you can modify and adapt it to your particular purpose.”

Then casting his eye upon my umbrella, which was lying open beside me (for I had used it to keep the sun off), he bade me observe its form, which I did.

“In that worm-produced fabric,” said he, pointing to the silk shade, “you have the form of the best sustainer (parachute) that even we have yet discovered. There! I have mentioned your principal materials, now set to work, and do not longer disfigure your beautiful islands with iron webs, rabbit burrows, and crawling beetles, for such, I am told, your railway systems appear to the inhabitants of your satellite the Moon, who have very powerful telescopes, and are fond of gazing at their big brother the Earth.

“Really, when I come to reflect upon the condition of you mortals, your whole system seems strange; here, six centuries after I have left the earth, you are actually eating and drinking just as when I was among you (and I was no mean connoisseur of a bottle of Sack or Malmsey), and, consequently, you are always ill and ailing. It therefore follows, as a matter of course, that half of you die before there is any necessity for you to do so.

“For the first thousand or two years after the Creation, people knew what was good for them, and partook of everything fresh and good, and lived for centuries; but now it appears to me that you have a system in vogue among you called adulteration, by which one half of the community seeks to partially poison the other half, simply to gather together as many pieces of gold as they can hoard in a few years, and when they die they leave these gold coins to some one else to scatter to the four winds and the Evil One, for their so-called amusement. All very nice, I dare say, but why do you not do as I did—work, and discover the Philosopher’s Stone and Elixir Vitæ! Then, having discovered them, you could be as rich as you pleased, and live as long as you had any desire to.”

“Interrupting you,” I ventured, “would it be against your bond to impart to me, a mortal, the secret of those two great discoveries you claim to have made when on earth? Would you be induced by anything I could offer you, or do for you, to divulge the component parts of your Elixir Vitæ?”

The jolly little man laughed till his sides vibrated like a blanc-mange, at the very idea of my being able to do anything for him, or offer him any equivalent for his priceless secret of continued life.

“Ha! ha! Ho! ho! My friend, you would be the death of me if it were possible to kill a spirit; I declare I feel quite a curious feeling just where my ribs ought to be, by indulging in such hearty laughter as I have not experienced for quite a century.

“My friend, I will give you the recipe for the Elixir of Life with pleasure, as it was my own discovery previous to my death, so that I may divulge it to any one I choose. The ingredients are so simple that it is a wonder scores of alchemists did not discover it as I did, but doubtless it was the simplicity of the various items that caused them to miss the mark. They searched for curious and complex mixtures, for crystals and ores, powders and nostrums, distillations and subtle gases, and other things of a complex nature, when the real articles were right under their very noses, and in everyday use!

“Here is the solution to the buried secret; for buried it was when they laid me in the grave six centuries agone, for I told it to no man, nor did I take advantage of it to prolong my own life, as I had worked so hard that I longed for a thorough rest, and am now enjoying it, for we spirits never tire.

“Take one ounce of acetic acid, it is a preventive of frivolity; one pound of pure alcohol, which gives spirit and vigour whenever used; of laudanum three drams, as a soporific giving a quiet and steady demeanour; and add two drams of ground cloves, for spice is very preserving to the body.

“Next you add three pints of distilled water, which is a very cleansing agent, and with it put in a few twigs of birch, which is a capital corrective, and every man requires somewhat of the kind at times.

“Then you take a few—but I am sure you will forget all these things, so, if you will lend me a piece of paper and a pencil (which are things we lacked in our day), I will write down the various ingredients and quantities for you, and you can get them made up at any chemist’s; here are twenty-seven ingredients in all, each good for something; miss one, and you spoil the harmony of the whole, and the prescription is useless. Everything must be absolutely free from adulteration, or only a partial success will be the result.”

Then for a quarter of an hour he scribbled away, occasionally pausing, and cocking his head upon one side to recollect things which he had stored in his busy memory centuries ago.

His smoky brain revolved at a great rate as I watched him write the formula.

“There,” said he at last, as he handed me the wonderful secret, which was to make me live to see ships float under water, people fly through the air, and electricity the great motive power of the world, “I think you will find that correct, and I shall be glad to meet you here this day one hundred years hence, to see how matters are going with you. By the way, what is the time?”

I now perceived that it was grown quite dark, and the stars were twinkling through the trees, a fact which I had not before noted, so absorbed had I been with the strange conversation of my visitor.

I looked at my watch.

“It is five minutes past ten o’clock,” I said.

“Goodness me!” said the friar; “how I shall have to hurry. I should have left at seven o’clock, as I am due at Mars not later than midnight, or I forfeit my liberty for one generation; and thirty years without a fly to some planet or other is no joke. Ta, ta!”

And as I looked at my jolly friend he scared me by suddenly becoming perfectly incandescent; he glowed for an instant like a furnace at white heat, then with a whizz and a flash he was gone so quickly that the eye could only follow him for a trice, and then he disappeared into space; at least his bodily form disappeared by apparently transforming itself into a star, which grew smaller and less brilliant, till it was entirely lost amid the myriads of others which studded the sky.

I smelt for brimstone, but there was not even a sign of it that I could detect.

I felt dizzy, and stiff, and stupid, but gathering my umbrella, books, and flask together (the latter quite empty, by the by, possibly upset), I made for Minehead, but found it a long and difficult walk. Sitting so long in one position had cramped and affected my legs to such a degree, that it was with much meandering and uncertainty that I reached my apartments near the little pier.

My wife, good soul, was waiting up for me, and as I entered she pointed to the clock, which was then striking twelve.

Thinking of Friar Bacon, I exclaimed half aloud—“I wonder if he reached home in time? What a flight, thirty-five million miles in less than three hours!”

At this my wife shook her head, and remarked that bed was the best place for me; and as she kindly assisted me to undress, I did not contradict her.

When I awoke next morning I felt in a very unsettled state of mind, and collecting my wandered senses, I endeavoured to account to my wife for my absence of the previous day, by telling her of my adventure with the monk in Horner Woods. She was moved when I told her that the paper in my waistcoat pocket would prove what I asserted to be true.

“Kindly feel in the right-hand pocket of my waistcoat, get out the paper, and read for yourself,” I remarked quietly but triumphantly.

She felt as directed.

Nothing was there save a large hole!

I had lost the paper; and with it my character for veracity and the knowledge of “How to Live for Ever” into the bargain.

AFTER CONCLUSION OF STORY.

I hardly like to say it, but I verily believe my guest had been drinking heavily, and that he was suffering from delirium tremens, or, as it is commonly called for conciseness, “the blues”; anyway, when he left the caravan he was mumbling to himself, casting furtive glances to right and left, and gesticulating very much as he walked down the road. I am afraid I did the poor man a great wrong in giving him so much raw spirit; but then I console myself with the knowledge that I was only indirectly to blame, having merely placed the decanter upon the table, as I would for any other visitor, and expressed a wish that he would help himself; with which suggestion he complied by diminishing my spirit store more rapidly than I had intended. The following day I sent him a pamphlet upon temperance, as a set-off against my ill-timed hospitality, and trust that he read it with profit.

My guest was such a confirmed believer in spirits that he would have made a capital medium for any professional spiritualist. He was familiar with almost every spirit nameable, and had been at one time or other possessed of them all, knowing where to find both the best and the worst of them.