ted. In
the blaze of light which had been suddenly poured upon us we felt
somewhat like malefactors unexpectedly enveloped in the illumination of
a policeman's dark lantern.

Meanwhile, the object which we had in view in retreating to the satellite
was not lost sight of, and the services of the chief linguists of the
expedition were again called into use for the purpose of acquiring a
new language. The experiment was conducted in the flagship. The fact
that this time it was not a monster belonging to an utterly alien race
upon whom we were to experiment, but a beautiful daughter of our common
Mother Eve, added zest and interest as well as the most confident hopes
of success to the efforts of those who were striving to understand the
accents of her tongue.

Lingual Difficulties Ahead.

Still the difficulty was very great, notwithstanding the conviction
of the professors that her language would turn out to be a form of the
great Indo-European speech from which the many tongues of civilized men
upon the earth had been derived.

The learned men, to tell the truth, gave the poor girl no rest. For hours
at a time they would ply her with interrogations by voice and by gesture,
until, at length, wearied beyond endurance, she would fall asleep before
their faces.

Then she would be left undisturbed for a little while, but the moment her
eyes opened again the merciless professors flocked about her once more,
and resumed the tedious iteration of their experiments.

Our Heidelberg professor was the chief inquisitor, and he revealed
himself to us in a new and entirely unexpected light. No one could have
anticipated the depth and variety of his resources. He placed himself
in front of the girl and gestured and gesticulated, bowed, nodded,
shrugged his shoulders, screwed his face into an infinite variety of
expressions, smiled, laughed, scowled and accompanied all these dumb
shows with posturings, exclamations, queries, only half expressed in
words, and cadences which, by some ingenious manipulation of the tones
of the voice, he managed to make as marvellous expressive of his desires.

He was a universal actor--comedian, tragedian, buffoon--all in one. There
was no shade of human emotion which he did not seem capable of giving
expression to.

The Professor Does His Best.

His every attitude was a symbol, and all his features became in quick
succession types of thought and exponents of hidden feelings, while his
inquisi