How strange the words look scribbled at the top of the emptypage of my book! How stranger still that it is I, Edward Malone,who have written them--I who started only some twelve hours agofrom my rooms in Streatham without one thought of the marvelswhich the day was to bring forth! I look back at the chain ofincidents, my interview with McArdle, Challenger's first note ofalarm in the Times, the absurd journey in the train, thepleasant luncheon, the catastrophe, and now it has come tothis--that we linger alone upon an empty planet, and so sure isour fate that I can regard these lines, written from mechanicalprofessional habit and never to be seen by human eyes, as thewords of one who is already dead, so closely does he stand tothe shadowed borderland over which all outside this one littlecircle of friends have already gone. I feel how wise and truewere the words of Challenger when he said that the real tragedywould be if we were left behind when all that is noble and goodand beautiful had passed. But of that there can surely be nodanger. Already our second tube of oxygen is drawing to an end.We can count the poor dregs of our lives almost to a minute.

We have just been treated to a lecture, a good quarter of anhour long, from Challenger, who was so excited that he roaredand bellowed as if he were addressing his old rows of scientificsceptics in the Queen's Hall. He had certainly a strangeaudience to harangue: his wife perfectly acquiescent andabsolutely ignorant of his meaning, Summerlee seated in theshadow, querulous and critical but interested, Lord Johnlounging in a corner somewhat bored by the whole proceeding, andmyself beside the window watching the scene with a kind ofdetached attention, as if it were all a dream or something inwhich I had no personal interest whatever. Challenger sat at thecentre table with the electric light illuminating the slideunder the microscope which he had brought from his dressingroom. The small vivid circle of white light from the mirror lefthalf of his rugged, bearded face in brilliant radiance and halfin deepest shadow. He had, it seems, been working of late uponthe lowest forms of life, and what excited him at the presentmoment was that in the microscopic slide made up the day beforehe found the amoeba to he still alive.

"You can see it for yourselves," he kept repeating in greatexcitement. "Summerlee, will you step across and satisfyyourself upon the point? Malone, will you kindly verify what Isay? The little spindle-shaped things in the centre are diatomsand may be disregarded since they are probably vegetable ratherthan animal. But the right-hand side you will see an undoubtedamoeba, moving sluggishly across the field. The upper screw isthe fine adjustment. Look at it for yourselves."

Summerlee did so and acquiesced. So did I and perceived a littlecreature which looked as if it were made of ground glass flowingin a sticky way across the lighted circle. Lord John wasprepared to take him on trust.

"I'm not troublin' my head whether he's alive or dead," said he."We don't so much as know each other by sight, so why should Itake it to heart? I don't suppose he's worryin' himself over thestate of OUR health."

I laughed at this, and Challenger looked in my direction withhis coldest and most supercilious stare. It was a mostpetrifying experience.

"The flippancy of the half-educated is more obstructive toscience than the obtuseness of the ignorant," said he. "If LordJohn Roxton would condescend----"

"My dear George, don't be so peppery," said his wife, with herhand on the black mane that drooped over the microscope. "Whatcan it matter whether the amoeba is alive or not?"

"It matters a great deal," said Challenger gruffly.

"Well, let's hear about it," said Lord John with a good-humouredsmile. "We may as well talk about that as anything else. If youthink I've been too off-hand with the thing, or hurt its feelin'sin any way, I'll apologize."

"For my part," remarked Summerlee in his creaky, argumentativevoice, "I can't see why you should attach such importance to thecreature being alive. It is in the same atmosphere as ourselves,so naturally the poison does not act upon it. If it were outsideof this room it would be dead, like all other animal life."

"Your remarks, my good Summerlee," said Challenger with enormouscondescension (oh, if I could paint that over-bearing, arrogantface in the vivid circle of reflection from the microscopemirror!)--"your remarks show that you imperfectly appreciatethe situation. This specimen was mounted yesterday and ishermetically sealed. None of our oxygen can reach it. But theether, of course, has penetrated to it, as to every other pointupon the universe. Therefore, it has survived the poison. Hence,we may argue that every amoeba outside this room, instead ofbeing dead, as you have erroneously stated, has really survivedthe catastrophe."

"Well, even now I don't feel inclined to hip-hurrah about it,"said Lord John. "What does it matter?"

"It just matters this, that the world is a living instead of adead one. If you had the scientific imagination, you would castyour mind forward from this one fact, and you would see some fewmillions of years hence--a mere passing moment in the enormousflux of the ages--the whole world teeming once more with theanimal and human life which will spring from this tiny root. Youhave seen a prairie fire where the flames have swept every traceof grass or plant from the surface of the earth and left only ablackened waste. You would think that it must be forever desert.Yet the roots of growth have been left behind, and when you passthe place a few years hence you can no longer tell where theblack scars used to be. Here in this tiny creature are the rootsof growth of the animal world, and by its inherent development,and evolution, it will surely in time remove every trace of thisincomparable crisis in which we are now involved."

"Dooced interestin'!" said Lord John, lounging across andlooking through the microscope. "Funny little chap to hangnumber one among the family portraits. Got a fine big shirt-studon him!"

"The dark object is his nucleus," said Challenger with the airof a nurse teaching letters to a baby.

"Well, we needn't feel lonely," said Lord John laughing."There's somebody livin' besides us on the earth."

"You seem to take it for granted, Challenger," said Summerlee,"that the object for which this world was created was that itshould produce and sustain human life."

"Well, sir, and what object do you suggest?" asked Challenger,bristling at the least hint of contradiction.

"Sometimes I think that it is only the monstrous conceit ofmankind which makes him think that all this stage was erectedfor him to strut upon."

"We cannot be dogmatic about it, but at least without what youhave ventured to call monstrous conceit we can surely say thatwe are the highest thing in nature."

"The highest of which we have cognizance."

"That, sir, goes without saying."

"Think of all the millions and possibly billions of years thatthe earth swung empty through space--or, if not empty, at leastwithout a sign or thought of the human race. Think of it, washedby the rain and scorched by the sun and swept by the wind forthose unnumbered ages. Man only came into being yesterday so faras geological times goes. Why, then, should it be taken forgranted that all this stupendous preparation was for hisbenefit?"

"For whose then--or for what?"

Summerlee shrugged his shoulders.

"How can we tell? For some reason altogether beyond ourconception--and man may have been a mere accident, a by-productevolved in the process. It is as if the scum upon the surface ofthe ocean imagined that the ocean was created in order toproduce and sustain it or a mouse in a cathedral thought thatthe building was its own proper ordained residence."

I have jotted down the very words of their argument, but now itdegenerates into a mere noisy wrangle with much polysyllabicscientific jargon upon each side. It is no doubt a privilege tohear two such brains discuss the highest questions; but as theyare in perpetual disagreement, plain folk like Lord John and Iget little that is positive from the exhibition. They neutralizeeach other and we are left as they found us. Now the hubbub hasceased, and Summerlee is coiled up in his chair, whileChallenger, still fingering the screws of his microscope, iskeeping up a continual low, deep, inarticulate growl like thesea after a storm. Lord John comes over to me, and we look outtogether into the night.

There is a pale new moon--the last moon that human eyes willever rest upon--and the stars are most brilliant. Even in theclear plateau air of South America I have never seen thembrighter. Possibly this etheric change has some effect uponlight. The funeral pyre of Brighton is still blazing, and thereis a very distant patch of scarlet in the western sky, which maymean trouble at Arundel or Chichester, possibly even atPortsmouth. I sit and muse and make an occasional note. Thereisa sweet melancholy in the air. Youth and beauty and chivalry andlove--is this to be the end of it all? The starlit earth looksa dreamland of gentle peace. Who would imagine it as theterrible Golgotha strewn with the bodies of the human race?Suddenly, I find myself laughing.

"Halloa, young fellah!" says Lord John, staring at me insurprise. "We could do with a joke in these hard times. Whatwasit, then?"

"I was thinking of all the great unsolved questions," I answer,"the questions that we spent so much labor and thought over.Think of Anglo-German competition, for example--or the PersianGulf that my old chief was so keen about. Whoever would haveguessed, when we fumed and fretted so, how they were to beeventually solved?"

We fall into silence again. I fancy that each of us is thinkingof friends that have gone before. Mrs. Challenger is sobbingquietly, and her husband is whispering to her. My mind turns toall the most unlikely people, and I see each of them lying whiteand rigid as poor Austin does in the yard. There is McArdle, forexample, I know exactly where he is, with his face upon hiswriting desk and his hand on his own telephone, just as I heardhim fall. Beaumont, the editor, too--I suppose he is lying uponthe blue-and-red Turkey carpet which adorned his sanctum. Andthe fellows in the reporters' room--Macdona and Murray and Bond.They had certainly died hard at work on their job, withnote-booksfull of vivid impressions and strange happenings in theirhands. I could just imagine how this one would have been packedoff to the doctors, and that other to Westminster, and yet athird to St. Paul's. What glorious rows of head-lines they musthave seen as a last vision beautiful, never destined tomaterialize in printer's ink! I could see Macdona among thedoctors--"Hope in Harley Street"--Mac had always a weakness foralliteration. "Interview with Mr. Soley Wilson." "FamousSpecialist says `Never despair!'" "Our Special Correspondentfound the eminent scientist seated upon the roof, whither he hadretreated to avoid the crowd of terrified patients who hadstormed his dwelling. With a manner which plainly showed hisappreciation of the immense gravity of the occasion, thecelebrated physician refused to admit that every avenue of hopehad been closed." That's how Mac would start. Then there wasBond; he would probably do St. Paul's. He fancied his ownliterary touch. My word, what a theme for him! "Standing in thelittle gallery under the dome and looking down upon that packedmass of despairing humanity, groveling at this last instantbefore a Power which they had so persistently ignored, thererose to my ears from the swaying crowd such a low moan ofentreaty and terror, such a shuddering cry for help to theUnknown, that----" and so forth.

Yes, it would be a great end for a reporter, though, likemyself, he would die with the treasures still unused. What wouldBond not give, poor chap, to see "J. H. B." at the foot of acolumn like that?

But what drivel I am writing! It is just an attempt to pass theweary time. Mrs. Challenger has gone to the inner dressing-room,and the Professor says that she is asleep. He is making notesand consulting books at the central table, as calmly as if yearsof placid work lay before him. He writes with a very noisy quillpen which seems to be screeching scorn at all who disagree withhim.

Summerlee has dropped off in his chair and gives from time totime a peculiarly exasperating snore. Lord John lies back withhis hands in his pockets and his eyes closed. How people cansleep under such conditions is more than I can imagine.

Three-thirty a.m. I have just wakened with a start. It was fiveminutes past eleven when I made my last entry. I rememberwinding up my watch and noting the time. So I have wasted somefive hours of the little span still left to us. Who would havebelieved it possible? But I feel very much fresher, and readyfor my fate--or try to persuade myself that I am. And yet, thefitter a man is, and the higher his tide of life, the more musthe shrink from death. How wise and how merciful is thatprovision of nature by which his earthly anchor is usuallyloosened by many little imperceptible tugs, until hisconsciousness has drifted out of its untenable earthly harborinto the great sea beyond!

Mrs. Challenger is still in the dressing room. Challenger hasfallen asleep in his chair. What a picture! His enormous frameleans back, his huge, hairy hands are clasped across hiswaistcoat, and his head is so tilted that I can see nothingabove his collar save a tangled bristle of luxuriant beard. Heshakes with the vibration of his own snoring. Summerlee adds hisoccasional high tenor to Challenger's sonorous bass. Lord Johnis sleeping also, his long body doubled up sideways in abasket-chair. The first cold light of dawn is just stealing intothe room, and everything is grey and mournful.

I look out at the sunrise--that fateful sunrise which will shineupon an unpeopled world. The human race is gone, extinguished ina day, but the planets swing round and the tides rise or fall,and the wind whispers, and all nature goes her way, down, as itwould seem, to the very amoeba, with never a sign that he whostyled himself the lord of creation had ever blessed or cursedthe universe with his presence. Down in the yard lies Austinwith sprawling limbs, his face glimmering white in the dawn, andthe hose nozzle still projecting from his dead hand. The wholeof human kind is typified in that one half-ludicrous andhalf-pathetic figure, lying so helpless beside the machine whichit used to control.

Here end the notes which I made at the time. Henceforward eventswere too swift and too poignant to allow me to write, but theyare too clearly outlined in my memory that any detail couldescape me.

Some chokiness in my throat made me look at the oxygencylinders, and I was startled at what I saw. The sands of ourlives were running very low. At some period in the nightChallenger had switched the tube from the third to the fourthcylinder. Now it was clear that this also was nearly exhausted.That horrible feeling of constriction was closing in upon me. Iran across and, unscrewing the nozzle, I changed it to our lastsupply. Even as I did so my conscience pricked me, for I feltthat perhaps if I had held my hand all of them might have passedin their sleep. The thought was banished, however, by the voiceof the lady from the inner room crying:--

"George, George, I am stifling!"

"It is all right, Mrs. Challenger," I answered as the othersstarted to their feet. "I have just turned on a fresh supply."

Even at such a moment I could not help smiling at Challenger,who with a great hairy fist in each eye was like a huge, beardedbaby, new wakened out of sleep. Summerlee was shivering like aman with the ague, human fears, as he realized his position,rising for an instant above the stoicism of the man of science.Lord John, however, was as cool and alert as if he had just beenroused on a hunting morning.

"Fifthly and lastly," said he, glancing at the tube. "Say, youngfellah, don't tell me you've been writin' up your impressions inthat paper on your knee."

"Just a few notes to pass the time."

"Well, I don't believe anyone but an Irishman would have donethat. I expect you'll have to wait till little brother amoebagets grown up before you'll find a reader. He don't seem to takemuch stock of things just at present. Well, Herr Professor, whatare the prospects?"

Challenger was looking out at the great drifts of morning mistwhich lay over the landscape. Here and there the wooded hillsrose like conical islands out of this woolly sea.

"It might be a winding sheet," said Mrs. Challenger, who hadentered in her dressing-gown. "There's that song of yours,George, `Ring out the old, ring in the new.' It was prophetic.But you are shivering, my poor dear friends. I have been warmunder a coverlet all night, and you cold in your chairs. ButI'll soon set you right."

The brave little creature hurried away, and presently we heardthe sizzling of a kettle. She was back soon with five steamingcups of cocoa upon a tray.

"Drink these," said she. "You will feel so much better."

And we did. Summerlee asked if he might light his pipe, and weall had cigarettes. It steadied our nerves, I think, but it wasa mistake, for it made a dreadful atmosphere in that stuffyroom. Challenger had to open the ventilator.

"How long, Challenger?" asked Lord John.

"Possibly three hours," he answered with a shrug.

"I used to be frightened," said his wife. "But the nearer I gettoit, the easier it seems. Don't you think we ought to pray,George?"

"You will pray, dear, if you wish," the big man answered, verygently. "We all have our own ways of praying. Mine is acompleteacquiescence in whatever fate may send me--a cheerfulacquiescence. The highest religion and the highest science seemto unite on that."

"I cannot truthfully describe my mental attitude as acquiescenceand far less cheerful acquiescence," grumbled Summerlee over hispipe. "I submit because I have to. I confess that I should haveliked another year of life to finish my classification of thechalk fossils."

"Your unfinished work is a small thing," said Challengerpompously, "when weighed against the fact that my own MAGNUMOPUS, `The Ladder of Life,' is still in the first stages. Mybrain, my reading, my experience--in fact, my whole uniqueequipment--were to be condensed into that epoch-making volume.And yet, as I say, I acquiesce."

"I expect we've all left some loose ends stickin' out," saidLord John. "What are yours, young fellah?"

"I was working at a book of verses," I answered.

"Well, the world has escaped that, anyhow," said Lord John."There's always compensation somewhere if you grope around."

"What about you?" I asked.

"Well, it just so happens that I was tidied up and ready. I'dpromised Merivale to go to Tibet for a snow leopard in thespring. But it's hard on you, Mrs. Challenger, when you havejust built up this pretty home."

"Where George is, there is my home. But, oh, what would I notgive for one last walk together in the fresh morning air uponthose beautiful downs!"

Our hearts re-echoed her words. The sun had burst through thegauzy mists which veiled it, and the whole broad Weald waswashed in golden light. Sitting in our dark and poisonousatmosphere that glorious, clean, wind-swept countryside seemeda very dream of beauty. Mrs. Challenger held her hand stretchedout to it in her longing. We drew up chairs and sat in asemicircle in the window. The atmosphere was already very close.It seemed to me that the shadows of death were drawing in uponus--the last of our race. It was like an invisible curtainclosing down upon every side.

"That cylinder is not lastin' too well," said Lord John with along gasp for breath.

"The amount contained is variable," said Challenger, "dependingupon the pressure and care with which it has been bottled. I aminclined to agree with you, Roxton, that this one is defective."

"So we are to be cheated out of the last hour of our lives,"Summerlee remarked bitterly. "An excellent final illustration ofthe sordid age in which we have lived. Well, Challenger, now isyour time if you wish to study the subjective phenomena ofphysical dissolution."

"Sit on the stool at my knee and give me your hand," saidChallenger to his wife. "I think, my friends, that a furtherdelay in this insufferable atmosphere is hardly advisable. Youwould not desire it, dear, would you?"

His wife gave a little groan and sank her face against his leg.

"I've seen the folk bathin' in the Serpentine in winter," saidLord John. "When the rest are in, you see one or two shiverin'on the bank, envyin' the others that have taken the plunge. It'sthe last that have the worst of it. I'm all for a header andhave done with it."

"You would open the window and face the ether?"

"Better be poisoned than stifled."

Summerlee nodded his reluctant acquiescence and held out histhin hand to Challenger.

"We've had our quarrels in our time, but that's all over," saidhe. "We were good friends and had a respect for each other underthe surface. Good-by!"

"Good-by, young fellah!" said Lord John. "The window's plasteredup. You can't open it."

Challenger stooped and raised his wife, pressing her to hisbreast, while she threw her arms round his neck.

"Give me that field-glass, Malone," said he gravely.

I handed it to him.

"Into the hands of the Power that made us we render ourselvesagain!" he shouted in his voice of thunder, and at the words hehurled the field-glass through the window.

Full in our flushed faces, before the last tinkle of fallingfragments had died away, there came the wholesome breath of thewind, blowing strong and sweet.

I don't know how long we sat in amazed silence. Then as in adream, I heard Challenger's voice once more.

"We are back in normal conditions," he cried. "The world hascleared the poison belt, but we alone of all mankind are saved."