“Why,” said I, greatly relieved, “this makes it all easy.  It so happens that it was to visit Professor Challenger at Rotherfield that I was asking for leave of absence.  The fact is, that it is the anniversary of our main adventure on the plateau three years ago, and he has asked our whole party down to his house to see him and celebrate the occasion.”

“Capital!” cried McArdle, rubbing his hands and beaming through his glasses.  “Then you will be able to get his opeenions out of him.  In any other man I would say it was all moonshine, but the fellow has made good once, and who knows but he may again!”

“Get what out of him?” I asked.  “What has he been doing?”

“Haven’t you seen his letter on `Scientific Possibeelities’ in to-day’s Times?”

“No.”

McArdle dived down and picked a copy from the floor.

“Read it aloud,” said he, indicating a column with his finger.  “I’d be glad to hear it again, for I am not sure now that I have the man’s meaning clear in my head.”

This was the letter which I read to the news editor of the
Gazette:—­

“Scientific possibilities”

“Sir,—­I have read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some less complimentary emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous letter of James Wilson MacPhail which has lately appeared in your columns upon the subject of the blurring of Fraunhofer’s lines in the spectra both of the planets and of the fixed stars.  He dismisses the matter as of no significance.  To a wider intelligence it may well seem of very great possible importance—­so great as to involve the ultimate welfare of every man, woman, and child upon this planet.  I can hardly hope, by the use of scientific language, to convey any sense of my meaning to those ineffectual people who gather their ideas from the columns of a daily newspaper.  I will endeavour, therefore, to condescend to their limitation and to indicate the situation by the use of a homely analogy which will be within the limits of the intelligence of your readers.”

“Man, he’s a wonder—­a living wonder!” said McArdle, shaking his head reflectively.  “He’d put up the feathers of a sucking-dove and set up a riot in a Quakers’ meeting.  No wonder he has made London too hot for him.  It’s a peety, Mr. Malone, for it’s a grand brain!  We’ll let’s have the analogy.”

“We will suppose,” I read, “that a small bundle of connected corks was launched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across the Atlantic.  The corks drift slowly on from day to day with the same conditions all round them.  If the corks were sentient we could imagine that they would consider these conditions to be permanent and assured.  But we, with our superior knowledge, know that many things might happen to surprise the corks.  They might possibly float up against a ship, or a sleeping whale, or become entangled in seaweed.  In any case, their voyage would probably end by their being thrown up on the rocky coast of Labrador.  But what could they know of all this while they drifted so gently day by day in what they thought was a limitless and homogeneous ocean?