Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 110, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1919 — The Deep Sea Peril [ARTICLE]

The Deep Sea Peril

By VICTOR ROUSSEAU

CHAPTER I—Continued.1 —Continued. — 2 — Paget nodded, and resigned himself tn his friend’s guidance. “We ll have a little dinner first," said the captain. “We have an excellent chef here. and. between ourselves. I have eaten nothing but ship's biscuit for the past three weeks. And afterward, when we have got our cigars alight. I'll take you into the cardroom, which is never in use, and give you my message to the world. It Is embodied more fully in my manuscript, which 1 shall hand you before you go. And now let us forget that melancholy exhibition of human folly and fall to." Pleased with his phrase, he led the way into the dining room, where he did full justice to an excellent meal. After dinner the two lit their cigars. and the captain led the way out of the dining room across a small hall and into the cardroom, a little, deserted place, through the opposite door of which they could see the smoking room and hear the noisy cries of the members. Masterman closed it. and the sound subsided to a distant rumble. “The cardroom was built to be sound-proof," he explained. “It is, except in the case of voices of unusual timbre.” “Quite sq,” said Donald. ... The old sea captain hesitated queer|y, tried the chairs, and at last stretched himself out in a comfortable one before the fire, inviting Donald to be seated opposite him. “You’re my only hope now, my lad," be said in an even voice. “I’ve sailed on my last voyage, Donald. I’m going to die.” CHAPTER It. In the March Hares’ Club. “I hope not, captain,” answered Donald. _..“l’m afraid there isn’t any doubt of it,” answered Masterman. “It’s an old organic trouble, likely to carry me off at any time, and progressive in character. Before I left for the Shetlands, the doctor gave me a year. That was ten months ago, and my experiences haven’t lengthened the respite. You’ve followed deep-sea exploration, haven’t you?" “A little,” answered Donald. “We Americans seem to have taken the lead since the days of the Challenger.” “Yes, Yankees have done' good work,” said Masterman. “But I’ve got them all beaten now. Nobody- will bother his head about the earlier discoveries after the next few weeks. You've heard about the known forms of deep-sea life, haven't you?” Without waiting for a reply, he began to speak about the strange organisms that had been dredged from the ocean bottom, so that Donald saw the whole picture in Masterman’s brain. He saw the eyeless fishes that had abandoned the effort to see, and fishes with eyes as large as dinner plates, with which they caught the gleams of phosphorescence that betokened the pursuit of wandering sea scavengers. There were fishes that carried their own lures in the form of luminous tentacles. In the abysmal depths, in a realm of perpetual night, these organisms perpetuated an Inferno of slaughter, preying upon each other, roving on their Insatiable quest for food. Masterman leaned forward and spoke emphatically. “When they are brought up—up through three miles of water —they explode mostly, Donald,” he said. “If they didn't —well, I've seen thii gs that would make a stout man faint, my lad.” Paget shuddered as his inind eon- ; ceived the. picture that the old captain painted. He saw the giant monsters of the abyss lurking among the yellow, carnivorous lilies that bend and sway in league-long gardens, catching the plankton, the floating or drifting organic life of the sea, that comes down like finest meal from above, but always ready for larger prey. “It’s murder enthroned, Donald,” said Masterman. “There isn't love—not even maternal love. Nor pity, either. Suppose our world were like that!’’ He was watching Donald keenly as he spoke. “We take life as we find it," Lieutenant Paget answered. “But, thank heaven, life has its compensations, which make it worth the luring." He was thinking of Ida Kennedy as' be spoke. “But once our life was like that,” persisted Masterman. “And we’ve risen above it ; Don’t tell me there isn’t a, God when we’ve done that. Just as the beautiful birds evolved out of vicious reptiles. You know, of course, our ancestors were sea crea- , tyres. That’s why the specific gravity of the human body is about the name as that 1 of salt water.’ We were made to live in the sea. We come Xrom fishes. You believe that?” . “Yes, science tells us so.”

“Good. Now you've studied at school what I've only read in books, but you know that there was a time when the seas were w arm. Steaming baths, and the steam formed clouds, that the sun had never been seen. Before the sun appeared. the world was just diffused light and darkness. There’s an answer to your Bible critj,x S 1 0-sity lle.n.eiiis is_ all wrong, beciiuse It says light was made before the sun. Light did exist, before the sun wat> dreamed of, so far as man is concerned. “You’re right, sir,” answered Donald, who like most sailors, was a religious man. - “And then,’’ continued Masterman, “what does the record tell us? The moving creatures that have life were made, and the great sea monsters, Leviathan and his kind, and the fowls of the air. And afterward the earth monsters, and creeping things. And man not till the last. Now don’t tell me, lieutenant, that the man who wrote the story of the creation wasn’t an up-to-date scientist. “Well, sir, at last the day came when the waters had cooled, the clouds opened, and the sun streamed through. By that time the ocean wasn’t pleasant a place to live in as formerly, especially as the climatic zones were appearing. No doubt there was a rush to the equator on tlje part of the surface monsters. But the ocean beds were still warm fjom the hot rocks, and the heat down there was good for several thousand, or hundred thousand years yet. “So some of the sea creatures remained in the depths, and others preferred to bask on the rocks in the sunlight. Then their gills began to be replaced by lungs, or else they had gills as well as lungs, or an intermediate apparatus.” “Common today, captain. Certain lizards develop either lungs or gills, according to the medium in which they live.” “Welt, sir, as I understand it, the first organisms that came out on land were armor plated, like the crabs and -spiny fossil fishes. Their bones were on the outside, to protect them against being eaten. But after a while the progressive ones turned themselves inside out. Those that didn’t, remained like the turtles and degenerated. The rest found that it was easier to escape their enemies by using their bones as props and developing speed. <!!Now, lieutenant, suppose men had developed that way in the depths of the sea. Suppose you had a race of men who had discovered, not necessarily turning themselves inside out, like us, although they might have done so, but other means to avoid being eaten —say invisibility.” “There I can refute you,” answered Donald. “Man has developed from an extinct ape, an ancestor of his cousins, the four anthropoids, supposedly a chimpanzeelike creature with the structure of a gibbon, from which he obtained his erect posture. Your sea creatures would have had to go through the lemur-ape forms.” “But let us suppose a man who developed off the line,” persisted llasterman. “A manlike organism with webbed feet—something like a manseal. How about mermen? Do you believe there Is anything In that story ?” “I hardly think so, captain.” “How about the old legends of the Cyclopses?” “A myth, Masterman. Besides, the Cyclops kept cattle and lived upon land.” “But they ate men, lieutenant. However, let us call our men of the sea imaginary. Grant that there might be such creatures, though. You'll admit that, with life so hard under the ocean, they'd have developed more cunning along certain lines than the human race. And they wouldn't know much about pity or love, or anything except how to find their food.” “I'll grant that,” answered Donald, '•if we accept the hypothesis that such creatures exist.” “Good! Put a pin there, my lad. Now, as we were saying, after thousands of years the heat at the bottom of the sea would disappear by its diffusion through the oceans everywhere. The depths would grow too cold for them. It's bitter cold in the water at 31 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Wouldn't the time come when they, too, would feel the impulse to migrate into the sun?” “No, Masterman. Their breathing—” “I know what you're going to say, lieutenant. You’re going to tell me that, even if they could breathe air, they couldn't live when' the pressure of those miles of ocean'was removed. But suppose nature has been busy preparing for the change during thousands of years, while she has been modifying their gills into lungs, as she worked on the brontosaurs. That’s how nature works—quietly, softly, secretly, till she’s ready to launch her thunderbolt. “Suppose a second human swarm, man’s poor cousins, is getting ready to overrun the earth, and put down man from his throne. Suppose the puny swarms of monkey-men, whit*, yellow and black, that crawl upon the face of the globe and imagine themselves its owners, are going to be ob-

literated, not from Mars or Venus, but out of the earth’s own vitals!” Captain Masterman sat bolt upright as he spoke; he looked like some old prophet spelling out the doom of man. The intense earnestness in his words shook Paget’s incredulity for a moment, and left him sick with horror. “Suppose-- that civilization, every.xhing which has gone to make .up the life we know—family love, IjooSb, monuments, parliaments, ships—all of it is to be at the mercy of this merciless horde, and that we are going to fight harder than we have fought since the days when we held our own against the saber-tooth! Who’d think or care then whether he was an Englishman or a Dutchman; who’d trouble whether his friends were white men, negroes, Hottentots or Chinese, so long as they we?e human? *Wouldn’t’ that make for the brotherhood of man, Donald? Wouldn't we set all our convicts free? Wouldn’t kings shake hands .with anarchists and college professors with coal heavers? Wouldn’t class and race vanish like dreams when the night’s over? And maybe that’s'what God’s working for, lieutenant!” . “But the impossibility,.Masterman! Granting the Incredible supposition that theses deep-sea organisms exist, and could live under a pressure enormously increased, and breathe —” “We’re supposing that, “How could they survive the struggle for existence in an unnatural element?” , “Lieutenant, man has existed since tertiary times, f>ut fie never learned to fly till 1908. He npver went up in a balloon until a hundred and fifty years ago. Our imaginations can’t rise to the realization of what this generation has done, but our descendants will look on us as demigods, and the Wright brothers will become myths, like that chap that invented cooking, Prom —Prom —?” “Prometheus.” “Yes, sir. Well, then, after living for thousands of years at the bottom of five miles of air, an ocean of oxygen and nitrogen, we’ve found out how to get up on top of it. They are living at the bottom of an ocean of oxygen and hydrogen. Suppose they learned to fly, too! “You can see what they’d do. Some of their scouts, who had gone on ahead, would discover that the dry land was teeming with food. Food in such quantities as these hungry monsters had never dreamed about. Food in solid chunks, instead of dissolved particles of plankton, varied with an occasional cannibal dinner. And light by which to capture it —sunlight! No more hunting down their prey with phosphorescent torches! “At first they’d nibble the grass and leaves of the trees. But they’d find that cellulose is pretty indigestible stuff. Then one of them would discover a dead bird or rabbit, and another that sheep and cattle make good eating, and then —” /’Then man!” muttered Donald, gripping the arms of his chair. The madman’s picture had become dreadfully real to him. “Other bodieswouldfollowthe scouts, Donald. They wouldn’t be quite adapted to dry land at first. They’d make their way along the river beds. They’d swarm up the Hudson, the Rhine, the Severn, the Mississippi. That’s what we did, and even today we haven't got very far from the river banks. Well, they’d rest and recuperate, eating the fish they found, until the supply became exhausted. Then —” “Good Lord!” gasped Donald, And then the reaction came. Of course Masterman was raving mad, the maddest member of the March Hares’ club. What a fool he had been to let the old fellow’s dismal prophecies get on his nerves! He leaned forward and placed his hand on Masterman’s knee. “Did you go to the navy office with the idea of telling that to the secretary?” he asked. “I did, sir,” answered Masterman. a “Then, if I may say so without giving offense, It is a mefey that you failed to secure an interview with him,” said Donald. “Why, Masterman —er—you know how hard it is to convince anyone of the truth of anything a little out of the ordinary.” He' was feeling his way carefully now, to avoid hurting the pld fellow. “Why, Masterman, if you were to make such a suggestion as that at the navy office, they’d shut you up as a—as not quite right,” he said.

The inevitable villain of the piece makes his appearance in the next installment.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)