Sept. 19, 1884.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



235 



polar axis, K A s at right angles to P P', the tlirection 

 in which a star that rises due east is seen when due south. 

 Then, as the traveller sets off square to N A S, and keeps 

 on travelling in a direction square to the line drawn (as 

 S A N is) to the axis P P', it is clear that he travels in 

 a plane square to the axis P P'. Let A B be the arc he 

 traverses round K, then N B S' is his new northaiidsouth 

 liue, and K B *-' the new direction of the star when due 

 south. Thus the angle s K s' is that by which the star 

 comes sooner to the south. A B then, the path of the 

 traveller, measures the angle he has traversed round K. 

 But we have seen that that angle is about 10^, where A B 

 is about 130 miles. Hence, if the new path of the 

 traveller is a circle, it has a circumference of 3G times 430 

 miles, or 15,480 miles— that is, a radius of about 5,000 

 miles. 



Our traveller continues his journey, and finds that there 

 is a uniform change corresponding to a uniform increase 

 of the angle A K B, as he travels uniformly onwards, and 

 he concludes that the path he follows is therefore a circle 

 about K. Nay, he can continue his journey until he comes 

 quite round to A again, and he thus finds that that circle 

 has a circumference of about 15,500 miles, as his first 

 ■observations promised. 



Thus he learns that a second section of his dwelling- 

 place is circular, and this at once suggests that he is living 

 ■upon a sphere, because the sphere is the only figure whose 

 sections are all circular. 



We shall now see how he completes the demonstration 

 as the earth's globular figure, and then, with a brief sketch 

 of the less perfect demonstrations commonly found in 

 treatises of astronomy, and a few comments on some 

 phenomena which have seemed to throw doubt on the 

 theory that the earth is globular, this chupter on deter- 

 mining the figure of the earth will be completed. 

 (To be continued.) 



DICKENS'S STORY LEFT HALF TOLD. 



A QUASI SCIEXTIFIC IXQl'IRY INTO 



THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 

 By Thomas Foster. 



(^Continued from page 210.) 



ri10 return to the events preceding the attempted murder. 

 X It has been arranged, we note thirdly, that Mr. 

 Grewgious is to dine with Rosa on Christmas Day. As 

 an essentially methodical man, he would (irobably make 

 the journey ou Christmas eve, arriving perhaps at Cloister- 

 ham late in the evening. He might even have gone to the 

 Crozier (the orthodox hotel), afterwards visited by Mr. 

 Datchery. Certainly Mr. Grewgious was at Cloisterham 

 early on the 25th, but how early we are not told. Rather 

 strange, I take it, that we see nothing of Mr. Grewgious 

 till late on the evening of the 27th, nearly three days after 

 the attempted murder, and that then he comes only to 

 speak to Jasper in a tone which would be utterly brutal 

 unless Mr. Grewgious were absolutely certain that Jasjier 

 was the murderous villain to whom all the trouble was 

 due. This tone, which Mr. Grewgious maintains not only 

 throughout the scene with Jasper but to the last, could not 

 possibly be based on such suspicions as Rosa would have 

 conveyed to him (in any case). From no one but from 

 Jasper himself or from Drood, could Grewgious have 

 derived that sure information which would alone cause a 

 rigidly just, though angular man like him to treit Jasper 

 as he did. 



So much for some of the points preceding the attempted 

 murder. (These and other matters are more fully dealt 

 with in my article in Leisure Readings.) Let us now turn 

 to what is related in connection with that event. 



It is clear, in the first place, that Jasper is careful to 

 drug his victim ; we have seen how he drugged Durdles, 

 carefully watching how the drug took efiect, and in what 

 way the victim passed from under its influence. It was 

 probably after Drood's return froru his walk with Neville 

 to see the eflects of the storm, that Jasper persuaded him, 

 in what Drood called his moddleycoddleying way, to take 

 a warm drink before going out to watch the eflects of the 

 storm from the tower. 



It is clear, secondly, that Jasper's first attack on Drood 

 was made with " the large black scarf of strong close-woven 

 silk," which he probably pretended to round his victim's 

 throat to keep him from the cold, but (having him once so 

 held) drew suddenly tighter, and hauling Drood to the edge 

 of the tower, cast him down to " tliat stillest part which 

 the cathedral overshadowed," and on which he had gazed so 

 intently when on his expedition with Durdles. But Drood 

 struggles so that " some stones on the summit of the great 

 tower " are " displaced " (by the storm, the people think 

 next day) ; as he falls, the fierce wind mercifully drives his 

 body against the sculptured face of the tower, to which he 

 clutches, breaking his fall. (For though, we learn after- 

 wards, when Jasper goes through the scene again under the 

 influence of opium, there was " no struggle, no conscious- 

 ness of peril, no entreaty," yet was there something which, 

 in his many visions of the event before it happened, he had 

 iiever seen. "I never saw tliat before," he says.) Falling to 

 the roof, Drood clutches the lead covering, a part of which 

 is carried away, rolling up as more and more yields with his 

 weight. (The strength of the wind, supposing nothing were 

 indicated by what is said about the roof, would have sufficed 

 to carry Drood from the direct downward course to the 

 slant roof, still further breaking his fall.) But when Jasper 

 descends, after looking down (as he afterwards tells us) on 

 the body of his victim, he finds Drood apparently dead, 

 strips from the body the watch, chain, and breast-pin, which 

 can alone, as he thinks, resist the corroding action of the 

 quicklime, and casts it into the tomb prepared for it, 

 locking the door of that tomb and of the crypt, and 

 hastening to his own room. 



So much we can gues-^, and indeed so much Dickens may be 

 said to tell us. 1 take it that then (as in Dickens's striking 

 story, " The Signalman '), the dream-voice which Durdles 

 had heard the preceding Christmas Eve is heard in reality 

 Durdles lying drunk in the precincts, and unnoticed by 

 Jasper, hears, after Jasper has retreated, a terrible scream 

 (but not, this time, "the howl of a dog"), and making 

 use of his wonderful power of determining what lies inside 

 stone walls, detects just what he had described during the 

 "extraordinary expedition," — inside Mrs. Japsea's tomb, 

 " Something betwixt us, sure enough, some rubbish left in 

 that same six-foot space," and opening the tomb finds that 

 rubbish to be quicklime, into which has been hastily flung 

 the body of Drood, his face fortunately protected by the 

 strong silk shawl with which Jasper had intended to 

 throttle him. 



We may suppose that Durdles dragged the body out of 

 the tomb and out of the crypt, and was there presently 

 assaulted first and helped afterwards by the impish Deputy. 

 They carry the body away — perhaps to the Traveller's 

 Rest, where as Drood came to himself he would be taken, 

 all draggled and lime-stained as he was, for one of Durdles' 

 workmen, who " doing what was correct by the season," 

 had fallen into a heap of quicklime and narrowly escaped 

 death. Durdles himself, being drunk, would readily have 



