194 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



summoning Wagrom the explorer, Glosh of the Eve- 

 ning Post, Stewartson Ampill the novelist, and the 

 rest of our old friends : then the warm friendly light 

 of the candles, the excellent port, the absence of 

 women, the reminiscences, the asterisks, the. . . . 



Mercaptan refuses to allow the rest to come into 

 the laboratory, in case something should go wrong. 

 He straps the machine on his shoulders, makes a 

 final connection; his life processes begin to work 

 faster, faster, ever faster. The first efi'ect of course 

 was a change of colour. The blue oblong of the 

 window bec-ame green — yellow — orange — red. Mean- 

 while each wave-length of the ultra-violet became 

 blue, and itself ran down the gamut of colour. Then 

 came the turn of the X-rays — by their dim light he 

 groped about, till they too became relatively too slow 

 for his retina. That ought to make him blind, of 

 course — but no! Mr. Wells had thought that all 

 out; and he came into a state of nearly maximum 

 speed where he perceived a brilliant, phosphorescent 

 light given out by all objects, generated by disturb- 

 ances of a wave-length unimaginably, undiscoverably 

 small. Meanwhile he had passed through an amaz- 

 ing experience — he had heard the veritable music of 

 the spheres! That had happened when in his ac- 

 celeration he had, so to speak, caught up with the 

 light-waves, until they were tuned to his ear's organ 

 of Corti: and all that had been visible in his ordi- 

 nary life was now to be appreciated by hearing. Un- 

 fortunately, as his ears possessed no lens, this uni- 



