inctly felt the same choking at my throat which came at the outset."
"Then we shall say that it passed just after eight o'clock. For
seventeen hours the world has been soaked in the poisonous ether. For
that length of time the Great Gardener has sterilized the human mold
which had grown over the surface of His fruit. Is it possible that the
work is incompletely done--that others may have survived besides
ourselves?"
"That's what I was wonderin'" said Lord John. "Why should we be the only
pebbles on the beach?"
"It is absurd to suppose that anyone besides ourselves can possibly have
survived," said Summerlee with conviction. "Consider that the poison was
so virulent that even a man who is as strong as an ox and has not a nerve
in his body, like Malone here, could hardly get up the stairs before he
fell unconscious. Is it likely that anyone could stand seventeen minutes
of it, far less hours?"
"Unless someone saw it coming and made preparation, same as old friend
Challenger did."
"That, I think, is hardly probable," said Challenger, projecting his
beard and sinking his eyelids. "The combination of observation,
inference, and anticipatory imagination which enabled me to foresee the
danger is what one can hardly expect twice in the same generation."
"Then your conclusion is that everyone is certainly dead?"
"There can be little doubt of that. We have to remember, however, that
the poison worked from below upwards and would possibly be less virulent
in the higher strata of the atmosphere. It is strange, indeed, that it
should be so; but it presents one of those features which will afford us
in the future a fascinating field for study. One could imagine,
therefore, that if one had to search for survivors one would turn one's
eyes with best hopes of success to some Tibetan village or some Alpine
farm, many thousands of feet above the sea level."
"Well, considerin' that there are no railroads and no steamers you might
as well talk about survivors in the moon," said Lord John. "But what I'm
askin' myself is whether it's really over or whether it's only half-time."
Summerlee craned his neck to look round the horizon. "It seems clear and
fine," said he in a very dubious voice; "but so it did yesterday. I am
by no means assured that it is all over."
Challenger shrugged his shoulders.
"We must come back once more to our fatalism," said he. "If the world
has undergone this experience before, which
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