The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents Read online

  THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES

  The transitory mental aberration of Sidney Davidson, remarkable enoughin itself, is still more remarkable if Wade's explanation is tobe credited. It sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities ofintercommunication in the future, of spending an intercalary fiveminutes on the other side of the world, or being watched in our mostsecret operations by unsuspected eyes. It happened that I was theimmediate witness of Davidson's seizure, and so it falls naturally tome to put the story upon paper.

  When I say that I was the immediate witness of his seizure, I meanthat I was the first on the scene. The thing happened at the HarlowTechnical College, just beyond the Highgate Archway. He was alone inthe larger laboratory when the thing happened. I was in a smallerroom, where the balances are, writing up some notes. The thunderstormhad completely upset my work, of course. It was just after one of thelouder peals that I thought I heard some glass smash in the otherroom. I stopped writing, and turned round to listen. For a momentI heard nothing; the hail was playing the devil's tattoo on thecorrugated zinc of the roof. Then came another sound, a smash--nodoubt of it this time. Something heavy had been knocked off the bench.I jumped up at once and went and opened the door leading into the biglaboratory.

  I was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw Davidsonstanding unsteadily in the middle of the room, with a dazzled look onhis face. My first impression was that he was drunk. He did not noticeme. He was clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of hisface. He put out his hand, slowly, rather hesitatingly, and thenclutched nothing. "What's come to it?" he said. He held up his handsto his face, fingers spread out. "Great Scot!" he said. The thinghappened three or four years ago, when everyone swore by thatpersonage. Then he began raising his feet clumsily, as though he hadexpected to find them glued to the floor.

  "Davidson!" cried I. "What's the matter with you?" He turned round inmy direction and looked about for me. He looked over me and at meand on either side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me."Waves," he said; "and a remarkably neat schooner. I'd swear that wasBellows' voice. _Hullo_!" He shouted suddenly at the top of his voice.

  I thought he was up to some foolery. Then I saw littered about hisfeet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers. "What'sup, man?" said I. "You've smashed the electrometer!"

  "Bellows again!" said he. "Friends left, if my hands are gone.Something about electrometers. Which way _are_ you, Bellows?" Hesuddenly came staggering towards me. "The damned stuff cuts likebutter," he said. He walked straight into the bench and recoiled."None so buttery that!" he said, and stood swaying.

  I felt scared. "Davidson," said I, "what on earth's come over you?"

  He looked round him in every direction. "I could swear that wasBellows. Why don't you show yourself like a man, Bellows?"

  It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind. I walkedround the table and laid my hand upon his arm. I never saw a man morestartled in my life. He jumped away from me, and came round into anattitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted with terror. "GoodGod!" he cried. "What was that?"

  "It's I--Bellows. Confound it, Davidson!"

  He jumped when I answered him and stared--how can I express it?--rightthrough me. He began talking, not to me, but to himself. "Here inbroad daylight on a clear beach. Not a place to hide in." He lookedabout him wildly. "Here! I'm _off_." He suddenly turned and ranheadlong into the big electro-magnet--so violently that, as we foundafterwards, he bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly. At that hestepped back a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, "What, inheaven's name, has come over me?" He stood, blanched with terror andtrembling violently, with his right arm clutching his left, where thathad collided with the magnet.

  By that time I was excited and fairly scared. "Davidson," said I,"don't be afraid."

  He was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before. Irepeated my words in as clear and firm a tone as I could assume."Bellows," he said, "is that you?"

  "Can't you see it's me?"

  He laughed. "I can't even see it's myself. Where the devil are we?"

  "Here," said I, "in the laboratory."

  "The laboratory!" he answered, in a puzzled tone, and put his hand tohis forehead. "I _was_ in the laboratory--till that flash came, butI'm hanged if I'm there now. What ship is that?"

  "There's no ship," said I. "Do be sensible, old chap."

  "No ship!" he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith. "Isuppose," said he, slowly, "we're both dead. But the rummy part is Ifeel just as though I still had a body. Don't get used to it all atonce, I suppose. The old shop was struck by lightning, I suppose.Jolly quick thing, Bellows--eigh?"

  "Don't talk nonsense. You're very much alive. You are in thelaboratory, blundering about. You've just smashed a new electrometer.I don't envy you when Boyce arrives."

  He stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates. "I mustbe deaf," said he. "They've fired a gun, for there goes the puff ofsmoke, and I never heard a sound."

  I put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed. "Weseem to have a sort of invisible bodies," said he. "By Jove! there's aboat coming round the headland. It's very much like the old life afterall--in a different climate."

  I shook his arm. "Davidson," I cried, "wake up!"

  II.

  It was just then that Boyce came in. So soon as he spoke Davidsonexclaimed: "Old Boyce! Dead too! What a lark!" I hastened to explainthat Davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. Boyce wasinterested at once. We both did all we could to rouse the fellow outof his extraordinary state. He answered our questions, and askedus some of his own, but his attention seemed distracted by hishallucination about a beach and a ship. He kept interpolatingobservations concerning some boat and the davits and sails fillingwith the wind. It made one feel queer, in the dusky laboratory, tohear him saying such things.

  He was blind and helpless. We had to walk him down the passage, oneat each elbow, to Boyce's private room, and while Boyce talked tohim there, and humoured him about this ship idea, I went along thecorridor and asked old Wade to come and look at him. The voice of ourDean sobered him a little, but not very much. He asked where his handswere, and why he had to walk about up to his waist in the ground. Wadethought over him a long time--you know how he knits his brows--andthen made him feel the couch, guiding his hands to it. "That's acouch," said Wade. "The couch in the private room of Professor Boyce.Horsehair stuffing."

  Davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently thathe could feel it all right, but he couldn't see it.

  "What _do_ you see?" asked Wade. Davidson said he could see nothingbut a lot of sand and broken-up shells. Wade gave him some otherthings to feel, telling him what they were, and watching him keenly.

  "The ship is almost hull down," said Davidson, presently, _apropos_ ofnothing.

  "Never mind the ship," said Wade. "Listen to me, Davidson. Do you knowwhat hallucination means?"

  "Rather," said Davidson.

  "Well, everything you see is hallucinatory."

  "Bishop Berkeley," said Davidson.

  "Don't mistake me," said Wade. "You are alive and in this room ofBoyce's. But something has happened to your eyes. You cannot see; youcan feel and hear, but not see. Do you follow me?"

  "It seems to me that I see too much." Davidson rubbed his knucklesinto his eyes. "Well?" he said.

  "That's all. Don't let it perplex you. Bellows, here, and I will takeyou home in a cab."

  "Wait a bit." Davidson thought. "Help me to sit down," said he,presently; "and now--I'm sorry to trouble you--but will you tell meall that over again?"

  Wade repeated it very patiently. Davidson shut his eyes, and pressedhis hands upon his forehead. "Yes," said he. "It's quite right. Now myeyes are shut I know you're right. That's you, Bellows, sitting by meon the couch. I'm in England again. And we're in the dark."

  Then he opened his eyes, "And there," said he, "is the sun justrisi
ng, and the yards of the ship, and a tumbled sea, and a couple ofbirds flying. I never saw anything so real. And I'm sitting up to myneck in a bank of sand."

  He bent forward and covered his face with his hands. Then he openedhis eyes again. "Dark sea and sunrise! And yet I'm sitting on a sofain old Boyce's room! ... God help me!"

  III.

  That was the beginning. For three weeks this strange affection ofDavidson's eyes continued unabated. It was far worse than being blind.He was absolutely helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatchedbird, and led about and undressed. If he attempted to move he fellover things or stuck himself against walls or doors. After a day orso he got used to hearing our voices without seeing us, and willinglyadmitted he was at home, and that Wade was right in what he told him.My sister, to whom he was engaged, insisted on coming to see him, andwould sit for hours every day while he talked about this beach of his.Holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely. He explained thatwhen we left the College and drove home--he lived in Hampsteadvillage--it appeared to him as if we drove right through asandhill--it was perfectly black until he emerged again--and throughrocks and trees and solid obstacles, and when he was taken to his ownroom it made him giddy and almost frantic with the fear of falling,because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty feet abovethe rocks of his imaginary island. He kept saying he should smash allthe eggs. The end was that he had to be taken down into his father'sconsulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there.

  He described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole,with very little vegetation, except some peaty stuff, and a lot ofbare rock. There were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rockswhite and disagreeable to see. The sea was often rough, and once therewas a thunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes. Onceor twice seals pulled up on the beach, but only on the first two orthree days. He said it was very funny the way in which the penguinsused to waddle right through him, and how he seemed to lie among themwithout disturbing them.

  I remember one odd thing, and that was when he wanted very badly tosmoke. We put a pipe in his hands--he almost poked his eye out withit--and lit it. But he couldn't taste anything. I've since found it'sthe same with me--I don't know if it's the usual case--that I cannotenjoy tobacco at all unless I can see the smoke.

  But the queerest part of his vision came when Wade sent him out in abath-chair to get fresh air. The Davidsons hired a chair, and got thatdeaf and obstinate dependent of theirs, Widgery, to attend to it.Widgery's ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. My sister, whohad been to the Dogs' Home, met them in Camden Town, towards King'sCross, Widgery trotting along complacently, and Davidson evidentlymost distressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract Widgery'sattention.

  He positively wept when my sister spoke to him. "Oh, get me out ofthis horrible darkness!" he said, feeling for her hand. "I must getout of it, or I shall die." He was quite incapable of explaining whatwas the matter, but my sister decided he must go home, and presently,as they went up hill towards Hampstead, the horror seemed to drop fromhim. He said it was good to see the stars again, though it was thenabout noon and a blazing day.

  "It seemed," he told me afterwards, "as if I was being carriedirresistibly towards the water. I was not very much alarmed at first.Of course it was night there--a lovely night."

  "Of course?" I asked, for that struck me as odd.

  "Of course," said he. "It's always night there when it is day here....Well, we went right into the water, which was calm and shining underthe moonlight--just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader andflatter as I came down into it. The surface glistened just like askin--it might have been empty space underneath for all I could tellto the contrary. Very slowly, for I rode slanting into it, the watercrept up to my eyes. Then I went under and the skin seemed to breakand heal again about my eyes. The moon gave a jump up in the sky andgrew green and dim, and fish, faintly glowing, came darting roundme--and things that seemed made of luminous glass, and I passedthrough a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oily lustre. And so Idrove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by one, and themoon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became a luminouspurple-red. It was all very faint and mysterious, and everythingseemed to quiver. And all the while I could hear the wheels of thebath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a manin the distance selling the special _Pall Mall_.

  "I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. It became inkyblack about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness,and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The snakybranches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spiritlamps; but, after a time, there were no more weeds. The fishes camestaring and gaping towards me, and into me and through me. I neverimagined such fishes before. They had lines of fire along the sidesof them as though they had been outlined with a luminous pencil. Andthere was a ghastly thing swimming backwards with a lot of twiningarms. And then I saw, coming very slowly towards me through the gloom,a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it drew nearer intomultitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something thatdrifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in themidst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splinteredspar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowingphosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit atthem. Then it was I began to try to attract Widgery's attention.A horror came upon me. Ugh! I should have driven right into thosehalf-eaten--things. If your sister had not come! They had great holesin them, Bellows, and ... Never mind. But it was ghastly!"

  IV.

  For three weeks Davidson remained in this singular state, seeing whatat the time we imagined was an altogether phantasmal world, and stoneblind to the world around him. Then, one Tuesday, when I called I metold Davidson in the passage. "He can see his thumb!" the old gentlemansaid, in a perfect transport. He was struggling into his overcoat. "Hecan see his thumb, Bellows!" he said, with the tears in his eyes. "Thelad will be all right yet."

  I rushed in to Davidson. He was holding up a little book before hisface, and looking at it and laughing in a weak kind of way.

  "It's amazing," said he. "There's a kind of patch come there." Hepointed with his finger. "I'm on the rocks as usual, and the penguinsare staggering and flapping about as usual, and there's been a whaleshowing every now and then, but it's got too dark now to make him out.But put something _there_, and I see it--I do see it. It's very dimand broken in places, but I see it all the same, like a faint spectreof itself. I found it out this morning while they were dressing me.It's like a hole in this infernal phantom world. Just put your hand bymine. No--not there. Ah! Yes! I see it. The base of your thumb and abit of cuff! It looks like the ghost of a bit of your hand stickingout of the darkling sky. Just by it there's a group of stars like across coming out."

  From that time Davidson began to mend. His account of the change, likehis account of the vision, was oddly convincing. Over patches of hisfield of vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew transparent, asit were, and through these translucent gaps he began to see dimlythe real world about him. The patches grew in size and number, rantogether and spread until only here and there were blind spots leftupon his eyes. He was able to get up and steer himself about, feedhimself once more, read, smoke, and behave like an ordinary citizenagain. At first it was very confusing to him to have these twopictures overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern,but in a little while he began to distinguish the real from theillusory.

  At first he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed only too anxious tocomplete his cure by taking exercise and tonics. But as that oddisland of his began to fade away from him, he became queerlyinterested in it. He wanted particularly to go down into the deep seaagain, and would spend half his time wandering about the low lyingparts of London, trying to find the water-logged wreck he had seendrifting. The glare of real daylight very soon impressed him sovividly as to blot out everything of his shadowy world, but
of a nighttime, in a darkened room, he could still see the white-splashed rocksof the island, and the clumsy penguins staggering to and fro. But eventhese grew fainter and fainter, and, at last, soon after he married mysister, he saw them for the last time.

  V.

  And now to tell of the queerest thing of all. About two years afterhis cure I dined with the Davidsons, and after dinner a man namedAtkins called in. He is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, anda pleasant, talkative man. He was on friendly terms with mybrother-in-law, and was soon on friendly terms with me. It came outthat he was engaged to Davidson's cousin, and incidentally he tookout a kind of pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of_fiancee_. "And, by-the-by," said he, "here's the old _Fulmar_."

  Davidson looked at it casually. Then suddenly his face lit up. "Goodheavens!" said he. "I could almost swear--"

  "What?" said Atkins.

  "That I had seen that ship before."

  "Don't see how you can have. She hasn't been out of the South Seas forsix years, and before then--"

  "But," began Davidson, and then, "Yes--that's the ship I dreamt of,I'm sure that's the ship I dreamt of. She was standing off an islandthat swarmed with penguins, and she fired a gun."

  "Good Lord!" said Atkins, who had now heard the particulars of theseizure. "How the deuce could you dream that?"

  And then, bit by bit, it came out that on the very day Davidson wasseized, H.M.S. _Fulmar_ had actually been off a little rock tothe south of Antipodes Island. A boat had landed overnight to getpenguins' eggs, had been delayed, and a thunderstorm drifting up, theboat's crew had waited until the morning before rejoining the ship.Atkins had been one of them, and he corroborated, word for word, thedescriptions Davidson had given of the island and the boat. There isnot the slightest doubt in any of our minds that Davidson has reallyseen the place. In some unaccountable way, while he moved hither andthither in London, his sight moved hither and thither in a mannerthat corresponded, about this distant island. _How_ is absolutely amystery.

  That completes the remarkable story of Davidson's eyes. It's perhapsthe best authenticated case in existence of a real vision at adistance. Explanation there is none forthcoming, except what ProfessorWade has thrown out. But his explanation invokes the Fourth Dimension,and a dissertation on theoretical kinds of space. To talk of therebeing "a kink in space" seems mere nonsense to me; it may be becauseI am no mathematician. When I said that nothing would alter the factthat the place is eight thousand miles away, he answered that twopoints might be a yard away on a sheet of paper and yet be broughttogether by bending the paper round. The reader may grasp hisargument, but I certainly do not. His idea seems to be that Davidson,stooping between the poles of the big electro-magnet, had someextraordinary twist given to his retinal elements through the suddenchange in the field of force due to the lightning.

  He thinks, as a consequence of this, that it may be possible to livevisually in one part of the world, while one lives bodily in another.He has even made some experiments in support of his views; but, sofar, he has simply succeeded in blinding a few dogs. I believe that isthe net result of his work, though I have not seen him for some weeks.Latterly I have been so busy with my work in connection with the SaintPancras installation that I have had little opportunity of calling tosee him. But the whole of his theory seems fantastic to me. The factsconcerning Davidson stand on an altogether different footing, and Ican testify personally to the accuracy of every detail I have given.