It was winter when we arrived at a place which we thought at first was the right one. The inhabitants came out to meet us and took us in: they took our arms and took us inside walls, and then we saw that the windows were barred and that the doors could not be opened. We became frightened, smelling the caged smell that was in the place, and seeing the locked garden where men with dead eyes swept the unfallen leaves. We saw sleepers laid out in a mass-grave, and officials going amongst them with sleep in their hands. We were more frightened then, we looked at one another and whispered, What kind of sleep is this? knowing now that certainly we had not reached the right destination.
From there we escaped finally, and travelled farther, and in the end we arrived, in spite of all the obstacles. How glad we were to think we had got to our own place! How glad we were to be able to rest at last! Yes, it seems wonderful that the dangers are all behind us. But even now we sometimes wonder about things, and think of the lost sun and the smiles that we knew in the beginning. We suffered much in avoiding those treacherous smiles: we passed through many trials to escape that traitorous sun.
Now we are safe at last. We are secure. We are at peace. But even in the midst of the security and the peace… Still, at certain moments… we wonder, secretly, if it was worth it… if peace and security are really worth the splendour they cost to buy.
It is night; and there is nothing false here. Night is reliable. Night does not dazzle us with treacherous fires. Night keeps a dark enduring silence for us… like sleep, deep sleep. By our own will we came here and tasted sleep before there was any need, because we loved to gaze at the face of night. But not quite at home… even among loved shadows… we can’t forget altogether the splendid sun… we sometimes have to dream of the place we came from.
The blissful eye, conscientiously keeping an eye on everything in its turn, takes a turn at eyeing microbic matters, applies itself to the eyepiece (microscope by Negretti and Zambra), and makes a leisurely tour of the slide-wide situation.
A peaceful pastoral scene is here displayed on the fluorescent field, quite in order and as it should be, unexciting, of course, but who is not prepared to sacrifice whatsit to whatsit these days? There is, we think, general agreement that we all have to face a period of whatsit and lessened whatsit for some time to come.
In addition to those of us who are actively engaged in one of the whatsits, very many other people are turning towards whatsit as an outlet for their thoughts and energies, and either as a means of increasing whatsit for whatsit motives, or as a whatsit to take the place of other whatsits not now within their reach.
There is no more gratifying sight for the enthusiast than a contented culture of healthy whatsits placidly browsing upon the pabulum scientifically prepared by those who have studied whatsits and understand the many problems which may cause anxiety.
What is it that emerges from this droplet of broth, or is it bouillon, deposited with professional precision upon the slide? What menacing creatures are these, battened on the nourishing fluid, which now encircle and stalk down their unconscious victims?
The successful preservation of whatsit often depends on the ability of the whatsit to combat and destroy the various whatsit and whatsit whatsits, which manoeuvre so much more rapidly, and which, if not speedily checked, will often ruin the whole of a whatsit in a whatsit. The great secret is to be continually on the watch, and to attack the whatsit at the outset before it has had time to gain a whatsit.
On this occasion the experimenter (though doubtless familiar with every branch of the technique), perhaps in the pursuit of further knowledge, makes no attempt to interfere with the fate of these hapless humble martyrs to science, but dispassionately observes the onslaught of the voracious attackers who tear into their prey like tigers and devour them wholly till no single trace remains.
But Nemesis is not far away.
No whatsit need remain in any uncertainty about the kind of whatsit to use in a whatsit, for information is freely available to all and it is the duty of every whatsit one of us to make himself familiar with a few simple whatsits for whatsit. Remember that a whatsit’s whatsit may depend on your whatsit. Whatsit now
Swift indeed is the retribution which overtakes the aggressors; and for a display of poetic justice it would be hard to rival the terrible scene which now ensues. A third infinitesimal drop is planted deftly on the slide, an agent so powerful that, extending rapidly in a thin film around and over the fierce corpuscular conquerors, it instantaneously absorbs them into itself, eliminating them in a second by a horrid process of ingurgitation.
Tiring, one imagines, of this close concentration upon bacillic dramatics, a simple adjustment on the part of the eye (Pinto et Issaverdens precision instruments) scales the operational field up to major proportions. A truly astounding scene is forthwith presented, one guaranteed to strike the stoutest heart with terror and amazement. The very seat of reason itself quakes under the visual impact of this awful spectacle, hardly to be expressed in ordinary words. How can one describe even the background, that dark and whirling storm of fiery particles, blinding and burning and asphyxiating at die same time? It’s a fog and yet it’s a fire, intolerable heat combined with suffocating obscurity. Through this murky inferno, huge armour-plated monsters, blind and mad, are charging in all directions, demented, hideous, driven by their Gadarene frenzy to charge each other in indiscriminate fury, stampeded and possessed by maniacal fiends.
Even the perennially untroubled eye of the Heaven-Born prefers not to linger on this unspeakable shambles
and passes on through the world wilderness of death to a large remote semi-demolished, sham-antique building. Under powerful moonshine lamp-flood black forms are busily hauling and hoisting and heaving apart various beams, arches, windows, etc., of this fake medieval edifice. View of the partially dismantled whole narrows down to a doorway; moves over trampled ground to a mock mulberry tree which two sweaty workmen in singlets are preparing to remove. They unhook several large boughs hinged to the main trunk, drop them carelessly on the ground (the torn faded fabric leaves flutter dusty in dust); wrench remainder of tree from its socket; struggle off, lugging it between them.
The general view again, very briefly, indefinitely, outlines blurred and figures eliminated; retreating almost immediately to distant glimpse of roughly similarly-shaped sand-castle on a deserted beach in moonlight. The tide comes in quickly. Views of successive small summer waves breaking (with soft soooooon sound), opening white-lipped mouths on the sand, each sucking a few inches nearer the castle.
The first wave reaches the castle wall. The white wavelips suck at the sand with their sibilance, insidiously: soooon soooooon sooooon (each wave sucking a little harder, higher, undermining the castle).
The sand walls spread, subside, sink, settle, submerge — their soft almost soundless sigh sunk in the sea sound.
In a house where furnished seaside lodgings are rented a girl, asleep in her bed, green slippers under the bed as she kicked them off toe-to-heel, dreams, stirs and hears the subsidence (it is only a dressing-gown slipping off the end of the bed); she does not wake; although she changes position.
The empty beach with the sand now covered by water, smooth and full. The moon gravely passes with quiet deliberation behind a cloud, drawing after her all detail; leaving only the tranquilly breathing breast of dark and murmurous water; which the eye observes, as it seems, pensively, and one is anthropomorphically inclined to believe, with relief in respite, until