The Country of the Blind

The transitory mental aberration of Sidney Davidson, remarkable enough in itself, is still more remarkable if Wade’s explanation is to be credited.  It sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spending an intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, or being watched in our most secret operations by unsuspected eyes.  It happened that I was the immediate witness of Davidson’s seizure, and so it falls naturally to me to put the story upon paper.

When I say that I was the immediate witness of his seizure, I mean that I was the first on the scene.  The thing happened at the Harlow Technical College, just beyond the Highgate Archway.  He was alone in the larger laboratory when the thing happened.  I was in a smaller room, where the balances are, writing up some notes.  The thunderstorm had completely upset my work, of course.  It was just after one of the louder peals that I thought I heard some glass smash in the other room.  I stopped writing, and turned round to listen.  For a moment I heard nothing; the hail was playing the devil’s tattoo on the corrugated zinc of the roof.  Then came another sound, a smash—­no doubt of it this time.  Something heavy had been knocked off the bench.  I jumped up at once and went and opened the door leading into the big laboratory.

I was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw Davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of the room, with a dazzled look on his face.  My first impression was that he was drunk.  He did not notice me.  He was clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of his face.  He put out his hand, slowly, rather hesitatingly, and then clutched nothing.  “What’s come to it?” he said.  He held up his hands to his face, fingers spread out.  “Great Scott!” he said.  The thing happened three or four years ago, when every one swore by that personage.  Then he began raising his feet clumsily, as though he had expected to find them glued to the floor.

“Davidson!” cried I.  “What’s the matter with you?” He turned round in my direction and looked about for me.  He looked over me and at me and on either side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me.  “Waves,” he said; “and a remarkably neat schooner.  I’d swear that was Bellow’s voice. Hullo!” He shouted suddenly at the top of his voice.

I thought he was up to some foolery.  Then I saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers.  “What’s up, man?” said I.  “You’ve smashed the electrometer!”

“Bellows again!” said he.  “Friends left, if my hands are gone.  Something about electrometers.  Which way are you, Bellows?” He suddenly came staggering towards me.  “The damned stuff cuts like butter,” he said.  He walked straight into the bench and recoiled.  “None so buttery that!” he said, and stood swaying.

I felt scared.  “Davidson,” said I, “what on earth’s come over you?”

He looked round him in every direction.  “I could swear that was Bellows.  Why don’t you show yourself like a man, Bellows?”

It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind.  I walked round the table and laid my hand upon his arm.  I never saw a man more startled in my life.  He jumped away from me, and came round into an attitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted with terror.  “Good God!” he cried.  “What was that?”

“It’s I—­Bellows.  Confound it, Davidson!”

He jumped when I answered him and stared—­how can I express it?—­right through me.  He began talking, not to me, but to himself.  “Here in broad daylight on a clear beach.  Not a place to hide in.”  He looked about him wildly.  “Here!  I’m off.”  He suddenly turned and ran headlong into the big electro-magnet—­so violently that, as we found afterwards, he bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly.  At that he stepped back a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, “What, in Heaven’s name, has come over me?” He stood, blanched with terror and trembling violently, with his right arm clutching his left, where that had collided with the magnet.

By that time I was excited and fairly scared.  “Davidson,” said I, “don’t be afraid.”

He was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before.  I repeated my words in as clear and as firm a tone as I could assume.  “Bellows,” he said, “is that you?”

“Can’t you see it’s me?”

He laughed.  “I can’t even see it’s myself.  Where the devil are we?”

“Here,” said I, “in the laboratory.”

“The laboratory!” he answered in a puzzled tone, and put his hand to his forehead.  “I was in the laboratory—­till that flash came, but I’m hanged if I’m there now.  What ship is that?”

“There’s no ship,” said I.  “Do be sensible, old chap.”

“No ship!” he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith.  “I suppose,” said he slowly, “we’re both dead.  But the rummy part is I feel just as though I still had a body.  Don’t get used to it all at once, I suppose.  The old shop was struck by lightning, I suppose.  Jolly quick thing, Bellows—­eigh?”

“Don’t talk nonsense.  You’re very much alive.  You are in the laboratory, blundering about.  You’ve just smashed a new electrometer.  I don’t envy you when Boyce arrives.”

He stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates.  “I must be deaf,” said he.  “They’ve fired a gun, for there goes the puff of smoke, and I never heard a sound.”

I put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed.  “We seem to have a sort of invisible bodies,” said he.  “By Jove! there’s a boat coming round the headland.  It’s very much like the old life after all—­in a different climate.”

I shook his arm.  “Davidson,” I cried, “wake up!”