The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories

  III.

  That was the beginning. For three weeks this strange affection ofDavidson's eyes continued unabated. It was far worse than being blind. Hewas absolutely helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatched bird, andled about and undressed. If he attempted to move, he fell over things orstruck himself against walls or doors. After a day or so he got used tohearing our voices without seeing us, and willingly admitted he was athome, and that Wade was right in what he told him. My sister, to whom hewas engaged, insisted on coming to see him, and would sit for hours everyday while he talked about this beach of his. Holding her hand seemed tocomfort him immensely. He explained that when we left the College anddrove home--he lived in Hampstead village--it appeared to him as if wedrove right through a sandhill--it was perfectly black until he emergedagain--and through rocks and trees and solid obstacles, and when he wastaken to his own room it made him giddy and almost frantic with the fearof falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty feetabove the rocks of his imaginary island. He kept saying he should smashall the eggs. The end was that he had to be taken down into his father'sconsulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there.

  He described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole, withvery little vegetation, except some peaty stuff, and a lot of bare rock.There were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white anddisagreeable to see. The sea was often rough, and once there was athunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes. Once or twiceseals pulled up on the beach, but only on the first two or three days. Hesaid it was very funny the way in which the penguins used to waddle rightthrough him, and how he seemed to lie among them without disturbing them.

  I remember one odd thing, and that was when he wanted very badly to smoke.We put a pipe in his hands--he almost poked his eye out with it--and litit. But he couldn't taste anything. I've since found it's the same withme--I don't know if it's the usual case--that I cannot enjoy tobacco atall unless I can see the smoke.

  But the queerest part of his vision came when Wade sent him out in aBath-chair to get fresh air. The Davidsons hired a chair, and got thatdeaf and obstinate dependant of theirs, Widgery, to attend to it.Widgery's ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. My sister, who hadbeen to the Dogs' Home, met them in Camden Town, towards King's Cross,Widgery trotting along complacently, and Davidson, evidently mostdistressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract Widgery'sattention.

  He positively wept when my sister spoke to him. "Oh, get me out of thishorrible darkness!" he said, feeling for her hand. "I must get out of it,or I shall die." He was quite incapable of explaining what was the matter,but my sister decided he must go home, and presently, as they went uphilltowards Hampstead, the horror seemed to drop from him. He said it was goodto see the stars again, though it was then about noon and a blazing day.

  "It seemed," he told me afterwards, "as if I was being carriedirresistibly towards the water. I was not very much alarmed at first. Ofcourse it was night there--a lovely night."

  "Of course?" I asked, for that struck me as odd.

  "Of course," said he. "It's always night there when it is day here...Well, we went right into the water, which was calm and shining under themoonlight--just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and flatter as Icame down into it. The surface glistened just like a skin--it might havebeen empty space underneath for all I could tell to the contrary. Veryslowly, for I rode slanting into it, the water crept up to my eyes. Then Iwent under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes. Themoon gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintlyglowing, came darting round me--and things that seemed made of luminousglass; and I passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oilylustre. And so I drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one byone, and the moon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became aluminous purple-red. It was all very faint and mysterious, and everythingseemed to quiver. And all the while I could hear the wheels of theBath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man inthe distance selling the special _Pall Mall_.

  "I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. It became inkyblack about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness, and thephosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The snaky branches ofthe deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after atime, there were no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping towardsme, and into me and through me. I never imagined such fishes before. Theyhad lines of fire along the sides of them as though they had been outlinedwith a luminous pencil. And there was a ghastly thing swimming backwardswith a lot of twining arms. And then I saw, coming very slowly towards methrough the gloom, a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it drewnearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round somethingthat drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in themidst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splinteredspar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowingphosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them.Then it was I began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror cameupon me. Ugh! I should have driven right into those half-eaten--things. Ifyour sister had not come! They had great holes in them, Bellows, and ...Never mind. But it was ghastly!"

  IV.

  For three weeks Davidson remained in this singular state, seeing what atthe time we imagined was an altogether phantasmal world, and stone blindto the world around him. Then, one Tuesday, when I called I met oldDavidson in the passage. "He can see his thumb!" the old gentleman said,in a perfect transport. He was struggling into his overcoat. "He can seehis thumb, Bellows!" he said, with the tears in his eyes. "The lad will beall right yet."

  I rushed in to Davidson. He was holding up a little book before his face,and looking at it and laughing in a weak kind of way.

  "It's amazing," said he. "There's a kind of patch come there." He pointedwith his finger. "I'm on the rocks as usual, and the penguins arestaggering and flapping about as usual, and there's been a whale showingevery now and then, but it's got too dark now to make him out. But putsomething _there_, and I see it--I do see it. It's very dim andbroken in places, but I see it all the same, like a faint spectre ofitself. I found it out this morning while they were dressing me. It's likea hole in this infernal phantom world. Just put your hand by mine. No--notthere. Ah! Yes! I see it. The base of your thumb and a bit of cuff! Itlooks like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of the darklingsky. Just by it there's a group of stars like a cross coming out."

  From that time Davidson began to mend. His account of the change, like hisaccount of the vision, was oddly convincing. Over patches of his field ofvision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew transparent, as it were, andthrough these translucent gaps he began to see dimly the real world abouthim. The patches grew in size and number, ran together and spread untilonly here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes. He was able toget up and steer himself about, feed himself once more, read, smoke, andbehave like an ordinary citizen again. At first it was very confusing tohim to have these two pictures overlapping each other like the changingviews of a lantern, but in a little while he began to distinguish the realfrom the illusory.

  At first he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed only too anxious to completehis cure by taking exercise and tonics. But as that odd island of hisbegan to fade away from him, he became queerly interested in it. He wantedparticularly to go down into the deep sea again, and would spend half histime wandering about the low-lying parts of London, trying to find thewater-logged wreck he had seen drifting. The glare of real daylight verysoon impressed him so vividly as to blot out everything of his shadowyworld, but of a night-time, in a darkened room, he could still see thewhite-splashed rocks of the island, and the clumsy penguins staggering toand fro. But even these grew fainter and fainter, and, at last, soon afterhe married my sister, he saw them for the last time.

  V.

  And now to tell of the queerest thing of
all. About two years after hiscure I dined with the Davidsons, and after dinner a man named Atkinscalled in. He is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and a pleasant, talkativeman. He was on friendly terms with my brother-in-law, and was soon onfriendly terms with me. It came out that he was engaged to Davidson'scousin, and incidentally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case toshow us a new rendering of his _fiancee_. "And, by-the-by," said he,"here's the old _Fulmar_."

  Davidson looked at it casually. Then suddenly his face lit up. "Goodheavens!" said he. "I could almost swear----"

  "What?" said Atkins.

  "That I had seen that ship before."

  "Don't see how you can have. She hasn't been out of the South Seas for sixyears, and before then----"

  "But," began Davidson, and then, "Yes--that's the ship I dreamt of; I'msure that's the ship I dreamt of. She was standing off an island thatswarmed with penguins, and she fired a gun."

  "Good Lord!" said Atkins, who had now heard the particulars of theseizure. "How the deuce could you dream that?"

  And then, bit by bit, it came out that on the very day Davidson wasseized, H.M.S. _Fulmar_ had actually been off a little rock to thesouth of Antipodes Island. A boat had landed overnight to get penguins'eggs, had been delayed, and a thunderstorm drifting up, the boat's crewhad waited until the morning before rejoining the ship. Atkins had beenone of them, and he corroborated, word for word, the descriptions Davidsonhad given of the island and the boat. There is not the slightest doubt inany of our minds that Davidson has really seen the place. In someunaccountable way, while he moved hither and thither in London, his sightmoved hither and thither in a manner that corresponded, about this distantisland. _How_ is absolutely a mystery.

  That completes the remarkable story of Davidson's eyes. It's perhaps thebest authenticated case in existence of real vision at a distance.Explanation there is none forthcoming, except what Professor Wade hasthrown out. But his explanation invokes the Fourth Dimension, and adissertation on theoretical kinds of space. To talk of there being "a kinkin space" seems mere nonsense to me; it may be because I am nomathematician. When I said that nothing would alter the fact that theplace is eight thousand miles away, he answered that two points might be ayard away on a sheet of paper, and yet be brought together by bending thepaper round. The reader may grasp his argument, but I certainly do not.His idea seems to be that Davidson, stooping between the poles of the bigelectro-magnet, had some extraordinary twist given to his retinal elementsthrough the sudden change in the field of force due to the lightning.

  He thinks, as a consequence of this, that it may be possible to livevisually in one part of the world, while one lives bodily in another. Hehas even made some experiments in support of his views; but, so far, hehas simply succeeded in blinding a few dogs. I believe that is the netresult of his work, though I have not seen him for some weeks. Latterly Ihave been so busy with my work in connection with the Saint Pancrasinstallation that I have had little opportunity of calling to see him. Butthe whole of his theory seems fantastic to me. The facts concerningDavidson stand on an altogether different footing, and I can testifypersonally to the accuracy of every detail I have given.