THE POISON 
BELT. 
By A. CONAN DOYLE. 
Illustrated by Harry Rountree. 
CHAPTER VI. 
AT AWAKENING. 
now I come to the end 
this extraordinary inci- 
t so overshadowing in 
importance, not only in 
own small, individual 
s, but in the general 
history of the human race. 
As I said when 1 began my narrative, 
when that history comes to be written this 
occurrence will surely stand out among all 
other events like a mountain towering among 
its foothills. Our generation has been 
reserved for a very special fate since it has 
been chosen to experience so wonderful a 
thing. How long its effect may last— how 
long mankind may preserve the humility and 
reverence which this great shock has taught 
it, can only be shown by the future. I think 
it is safe to say that things can never be 
quite the same again. Never can one 
realize how powerless and ignorant one is, 
and how one is upheld by an unseen hand, 
until for an instant that hand has seemed 
to close and to crush. Death has been 
imminent upon us. We know that at 
any moment it may be again. That grim 
presence shadows our lives, but who can deny 
that in that shadow the sense of duty, the 
feeling of sobriety and responsibility, _ the 
appreciation of the gravity and of the objects 
of life, the earnest desire to develop and im- 
prove, have grown and become real with us 
to a degree that has leavened our whole 
society from end to end ? It is something 
beyond sects and beyond dogmas. It is 
rather an alteration of perspective, a shifting of 
our sense of proportion, a vivid realization 
that we are insignificant and evanescent 
creatures, existing on sufferance and at 
the mercy of the first chill wind from the 
unknown. But f the world has grown 
graver with this know' ledge it is not, I 
CopyrighL, 1913, 
think, a sadder place in consequence. 
Surely we are agreed that the more sober 
and restrained pleasures of the present are 
deeper as well as wiser than the noisy, foolish 
hustle which passed so often for enjoyment 
in the days of old — days so recent and yet 
already so inconceivable. Those empty lives 
which were wasted in aimless visiting and being 
visited, in the worry of great and unnecessary 
households, in the arranging and eating of 
elaborate and tedious meals, have now found 
rest and health in the reading, the music, the 
gentle family communion which comes from 
a simpler and saner division of their time. 
With greater health and greater pleasure 
they are richer than before, even after they 
have paid those increased contributions to 
the common fund which have so raised the 
standard of life in these islands. 
There is some clash of opinion as to the 
exact hour of the great awakening. It is 
generally agreed that, apart from the difference 
of clocks, there may have been local causes 
which influenced the action of the poison. 
Certainly, in each separate district the resur- 
rection w r as practically simultaneous. There 
are numerous witnesses that Big Ben pointed 
to ten minutes past six at the moment. The 
Astronomer Royal has fixed the Greenwich 
time at twelve past six. On the other hand, 
Laird Johnson, a very capable East Anglian 
observer, has recorded six-twenty as the 
hour. In the Hebrides it wus as late as seven. 
In our own case there can be no doubt what- 
ever, for 1 was seated in Challenger’s study 
with his carefully-tested chronometer in front 
of me at the moment. The hour was a 
quarter-past six. 
An enormous depression was weighing upon 
my spirits. The cumulative effect of all the 
dreadful sights which we had seen upon our 
journey was heavy upon my soul. With my 
abounding animal health and great physical 
energy any kind of mental clouding w r as a 
by A. C^nan Doyle. 
THE 
