370 MY LIFE [Chap. 



calculated from the known dimensions of the earth. Mr. 

 Hampden declined to look through either telescope, saying 

 he trusted to Mr. Carpenter ; while the latter declared posi- 

 tively that they had won, and that we knew it ; that the fact 

 that the distant signal appeared below the middle one as far 

 as the middle one did below the cross-hair, proved that the 

 three were in a straight line, and that the earth was flat, and 

 he rejected the view in the large telescope as proving nothing 

 for the reasons already stated. 



At first Mr. Hampden refused to appoint an umpire, 

 because my referee, Mr. Coulcher, refused to discuss the 

 question with Mr. Carpenter ; but after a few days he agreed 

 that Mr. Walsh should be the umpire, after receiving the 

 reports of the two referees. He had, in fact, unbounded con- 

 fidence in what Mr. Carpenter told him, and firmly believed 

 that the experiments had demonstrated the flat earth, and 

 that no honest man could think otherwise. 



But Mr. Walsh decided without any hesitation that I had 

 proved what I undertook to prove. He published the whole 

 of the particulars with the reports of the referees and their 

 sketches in the Field oi March 18 and 26, while a consider- 

 able correspondence and discussion went on for some weeks 

 later. At Mr. Hampden's request he allowed Mr. Carpenter 

 to send in a long argument to show that the experiments 

 were all in Mr. Hampden's favour, and having considered 

 them, he wrote to Mr. Hampden that he should hand me the 

 stakes on a certain day if he had no other reason to adduce 

 why he should not do so. Thereupon Mr. Hampden wrote 

 to him demanding his money back on the ground that the 

 decision was unjust, and ought to have been given in his 

 favour. In thus writing to Hampden and receiving his 

 demand for his deposit to be returned, Mr. Walsh made a 

 great mistake, which had serious consequences for me. The 

 law declares that all wagers are null and void, and that money 

 lost by betting is not recoverable at law. But the judges 

 have decided that when a wager is given against him by the 

 umpire, the loser can claim his money back from the stake- 

 holder if the latter has not already paid it away to the winner. 



