“You had a scrap once before with old man Challenger,” said he sternly, “and you were down and out inside ten seconds.  It seems to me, Professor Summerlee, he’s beyond your class, and the best you can do with him is to walk wide and leave him alone.”

“Besides,” said I, “he has been a good friend to every one of us.  Whatever his faults may be, he is as straight as a line, and I don’t believe he ever speaks evil of his comrades behind their backs.”

“Well said, young fellah-my-lad,” said Lord John Roxton.  Then, with a kindly smile, he slapped Professor Summerlee upon his shoulder.  “Come, Herr Professor, we’re not going to quarrel at this time of day.  We’ve seen too much together.  But keep off the grass when you get near Challenger, for this young fellah and I have a bit of a weakness for the old dear.”

But Summerlee was in no humour for compromise.  His face was screwed up in rigid disapproval, and thick curls of angry smoke rolled up from his pipe.

“As to you, Lord John Roxton,” he creaked, “your opinion upon a matter of science is of as much value in my eyes as my views upon a new type of shot-gun would be in yours.  I have my own judgment, sir, and I use it in my own way.  Because it has misled me once, is that any reason why I should accept without criticism anything, however far-fetched, which this man may care to put forward?  Are we to have a Pope of science, with infallible decrees laid down ex cathedra, and accepted without question by the poor humble public?  I tell you, sir, that I have a brain of my own and that I should feel myself to be a snob and a slave if I did not use it.  If it pleases you to believe this rigmarole about ether and Fraunhofer’s lines upon the spectrum, do so by all means, but do not ask one who is older and wiser than yourself to share in your folly.  Is it not evident that if the ether were affected to the degree which he maintains, and if it were obnoxious to human health, the result of it would already be apparent upon ourselves?” Here he laughed with uproarious triumph over his own argument.  “Yes, sir, we should already be very far from our normal selves, and instead of sitting quietly discussing scientific problems in a railway train we should be showing actual symptoms of the poison which was working within us.  Where do we see any signs of this poisonous cosmic disturbance?  Answer me that, sir!  Answer me that!  Come, come, no evasion!  I pin you to an answer!”

I felt more and more angry.  There was something very irritating and aggressive in Summerlee’s demeanour.

“I think that if you knew more about the facts you might be less positive in your opinion,” said I.

Summerlee took his pipe from his mouth and fixed me with a stony stare.

“Pray what do you mean, sir, by that somewhat impertinent observation?”

“I mean that when I was leaving the office the news editor told me that a telegram had come in confirming the general illness of the Sumatra natives, and adding that the lights had not been lit in the Straits of Sunda.”