The Great Stone of Sardis

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THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS

BY FRANK R. STOCKTON

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE-THALIA

II. THE SARDIS WORKS

III. MARGARET RALEIGH

IV. THE MISSION OF SAMUEL BLOCK V. UNDER WATER

VI. VOICES FROM THE POLAR SEAS

VII. GOOD NEWS GOES FROM SARDIS

VIII. THE DEVIL ON THE DIPSEY

IX. THE ARTESIAN RAY

X. "LAKE SHIVER"

XI. THEY BELIEVE IT IS THE POLAR SEA

XII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL TAKES COMMAND

XIII. LONGITUDE EVERYTHING

XIV. A REGION OF NOTHINGNESS

XV. THE AUTOMATIC SHELL

XVI. THE TRACK OF THE SHELL

XVII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL DECLINES TO GO WHALING

XVIII. MR. MARCY'S CANAL

XIX. THE ICY GATEWAY

XX. "THAT IS HOW I LOVE YOU"

XXI. THE CAVE OF LIGHT

XXII. CLEWE'S THEORY

XXIII. THE LAST DIVE OF THE DIPSEY

XXIV. ROVINSKI COMES TO THE SURFACE

XXV. LAURELS

THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS

CHAPTER I

THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE-THALIA

It was about noon of a day in early summer that a westward-bound
Atlantic liner was rapidly nearing the port of New York. Not long
before, the old light-house on Montauk Point had been sighted,
and the company on board the vessel were animated by the knowledge
that in a few hours they would be at the end of their voyage.

The vessel now speeding along the southern coast of Long Island
was the Euterpe-Thalia, from Southampton. On Wednesday morning
she had left her English port, and many of her passengers were
naturally anxious to be on shore in time to transact their business
on the last day of the week. There were even some who expected to
make their return voyage on the Melpomene-Thalia, which would
leave New York on the next Monday.

The Euterpe-Thalia was one of those combination ocean vessels
which had now been in use for nearly ten years, and although the
present voyage was not a particularly rapid one, it had been made
in a little less than three days.

As may be easily imagined, a vessel like this was a very
different craft from the old steamers which used to cross the
Atlantic--"ocean greyhounds" they were called--in the latter part
of the nineteenth century.

It would be out of place here to give a full description of the
vessels which at the period of our story, in 1947, crossed the
Atlantic at an average time of three days, but an idea of their
construction will suffice. Most of these vessels belonged to the
class of the Euterpe-Thalia, and were, in fact, compound marine
structures, the two portions being entirely distinct from each
other. The great hull of each of these vessels contained nothing
but its electric engines and its propelling machinery, with the
necessary fuel and adjuncts.

The upper portion of the compound vessel consisted of decks and
quarters for passengers and crew and holds for freight. These
were all comprised within a vast upper hull, which rested upon
the lower hull containing the motive power, the only point of
contact being an enormous ball-and-socket joint. Thus, no matter
how much the lower hull might roll and pitch and toss, the upper
hull remained level and comparatively undisturbed.

Not only were comfort to passengers and security to movable
freight gained by this arrangement of the compound vessel, but it
was now possible to build the lower hull of much less size than
had been the custom in the former days of steamships, when the
hull had to be large enough to contain everything. As the more
modern hull held nothing but the machinery, it was small in
comparison with the superincumbent upper hull, and thus the force
of the engine, once needed to propel a vast mass through the
resisting medium of the ocean, was now employed upon a
comparatively small hull, the great body of the vessel meeting
with no resistance except that of the air.

It was not necessary that the two parts of these compound vessels
should always be the same. The upper hulls belonging to one of
the transatlantic lines were generally so constructed that they
could be adjusted to any one of their lower or motive-power
hulls. Each hull had a name of its own, and so the combination
name of the entire vessel was frequently changed.

It was not three o'clock when the Euterpe-Thalia passed through
the Narrows and moved slowly towards her pier on the Long Island
side of the city. The quarantine officers, who had accompanied
the vessel on her voyage, had dropped their report in the
official tug which had met the vessel on her entrance into the
harbor, and as the old custom-house annoyances had long since
been abolished, most of the passengers were prepared for a speedy
landing.

One of these passengers--a man about thirty-five--stood looking
out over the stern of the vessel instead of gazing, as were most
of his companions, towards the city which they were approaching.
He looked out over the harbor, under the great bridge gently
spanning the distance between the western end of Long Island and
the New Jersey shore--its central pier resting where once lay the
old Battery--and so he gazed over the river, and over the houses
stretching far to the west, as if his eyes could catch some signs
of the country far beyond. This was Roland Clewe, the hero of
our story, who had been studying and experimenting for the past
year in the scientific schools and workshops of Germany. It was
towards his own laboratory and his own workshops, which lay out
in the country far beyond the wide line of buildings and
settlements which line the western bank of the Hudson, that his
heart went out and his eyes vainly strove to follow.

Skilfully steered, the Thalia moved slowly between high stone
piers of massive construction; but the Euterpe, or upper part of
the vessel, did not pass between the piers, but over them both,
and when the pier-heads projected beyond her stern the motion of
the lower vessel ceased; then the great piston, which supported
the socket in which the ball of the Euterpe moved, slowly began
to descend into the central portion of the Thalia, and as the
tide was low, it was not long before each side of the upper hull
rested firmly and securely upon the stone piers. Then the socket
on the lower vessel descended rapidly until it was entirely clear
of the ball, and the Thalia backed out from between the piers to
take its place in a dock where it would be fitted for the voyage
of the next day but one, when it would move under the Melpomene,
resting on its piers a short distance below, and, adjusting its
socket to her ball, would lift her free from the piers and carry
her across the ocean.

The pier of the Euterpe was not far from the great Long Island and
New Jersey Bridge, and Roland Clewe, when he reached the broad
sidewalk which ran along the river-front, walked rapidly towards
the bridge. When he came to it he stepped into one of the
elevators, which were placed at intervals along its sides from the
waterfront to the far-distant point where it touched the land, and
in company with a dozen other pedestrians speedily rose to the top
of the bridge, on which moved two great platforms or floors, one
always keeping on its way to the east, and the other to the west.
The floor of the elevator detached itself from the rest of the
structure and kept company with the movable platform until all of
its passengers had stepped on to the latter, when it returned with
such persons as wished to descend at that point.

As Clewe took his way along the platform, walking westward with
it, as if he would thus hasten his arrival at the other end of
the bridge, he noticed that great improvements had been made
during his year of absence. The structures on the platforms, to
which people might retire in bad weather or when they wished
refreshments, were more numerous and apparently better appointed
than when he had seen them last, and the long rows of benches on
which passengers might sit in the open air during their transit
had also increased in number. Many people walked across the
bridge, taking their exercise, while some who were out for the
air and the sake of the view walked in the direction opposite to
that in which the platform was moving, thus lengthening the
pleasant trip.

At the great elevator over the old Battery many passengers went
down and many came up, but the wide platforms still moved to the
east and moved to the west, never stopping or changing their rate
of speed.

Roland Clewe remained on the bridge until he had reached its
western end, far out on the old Jersey flats, and there he took a
car of the suspended electric line, which would carry him to his
home, some fifty miles in the interior. The rails of this line
ran along the top of parallel timbers, some twenty feet from the
ground, and below and between these rails the cars were
suspended, the wheels which rested on the rails being attached
near the top of the car. Thus it was impossible for the cars to
run off the track; and as their bottoms or floors were ten or
twelve feet from the ground, they could meet with no dangerous
obstacles. In consequence of the safety of this structure, the
trains were run at a very high speed.

Roland Clewe was a man who had given his life, even before he
ceased to be a boy, to the investigation of physical science and
its applications, and those who thought they knew him called him
a great inventor; but he, who knew himself better than any one
else could know him, was aware that, so far, he had not invented
anything worthy the power which he felt within himself.

After the tidal wave of improvements and discoveries which had
burst upon the world at the end of the nineteenth century there
had been a gradual subsidence of the waters of human progress,
and year by year they sank lower and lower, until, when the
twentieth century was yet young, it was a common thing to say
that the human race seemed to have gone backward fifty or even a
hundred years.

It had become fashionable to be unprogressive. Like old
furniture in the century which had gone out, old manners,
customs, and ideas had now become more attractive than those
which were modern and present. Philosophers said that society
was retrograding, that it was becoming satisfied with less than
was its due; but society answered that it was falling back upon
the things of its ancestors, which were sounder and firmer, more
simple and beautiful, more worthy of the true man and woman, than
all that mass of harassing improvement which had swept down upon
mankind in the troubled and nervous days at the end of the
nineteenth century.

On the great highways, smooth and beautiful, the stage-coach had
taken the place to a great degree of the railroad train; the
steamship, which moved most evenly and with less of the jarring
and shaking consequent upon high speed, was the favored vessel
with ocean travellers. It was not considered good form to read
the daily papers; and only those hurried to their business who
were obliged to do so in order that their employers might attend
to their affairs in the leisurely manner which was then the
custom of the business world.

Fast horses had become almost unknown, and with those who still
used these animals a steady walker was the favorite. Bicycles
had gone out as the new century came in, it being a matter of
course that they should be superseded by the new electric
vehicles of every sort and fashion, on which one could work the
pedals if he desired exercise, or sit quietly if his inclinations
were otherwise, and only the very young or the intemperate
allowed themselves rapid motion on their electric wheels. It
would have been considered as vulgar at that time to speed over a
smooth road as it would have been thought in the nineteenth
century to run along the city sidewalk.

People thought the world moved slower; at all events, they hoped
it would soon do so. Even the wiser revolutionists postponed
their outbreaks. Success, they believed, was fain to smile upon
effort which had been well postponed.

Men came to look upon a telegram as an insult; the telephone was
preferred, because it allowed one to speak slowly if he chose.
Snap-shot cameras were found only in the garrets. The fifteen
minutes' sittings now in vogue threw upon the plate the color of
the eyes, hair, and the flesh tones of the sitter. Ladies wore
hoop skirts.

But these days of passivism at last passed by; earnest thinkers
had not believed in them; they knew they were simply reactionary,
and could not last; and the century was not twenty years old when
the world found itself in a storm of active effort never known in
its history before. Religion, politics, literature, and art were
called upon to get up and shake themselves free of the drowsiness
of their years of inaction.

On that great and crowded stage where the thinkers of the world
were busy in creating new parts for themselves without much
reference to what other people were doing in their parts, Roland
Clewe was now ready to start again, with more earnestness and
enthusiasm than before, to essay a character which, if acted as
he wished to act it, would give him exceptional honor and fame,
and to the world, perhaps, exceptional advantage.

CHAPTER II

THE SARDIS WORKS

At the little station of Sardis, in the hill country of New
Jersey, Roland Clewe alighted from the train, and almost
instantly his hand was grasped by an elderly man, plainly and
even roughly dressed, who appeared wonderfully glad to see him.
Clewe also was greatly pleased at the meeting.

"Tell me, Samuel, how goes everything?" said Clewe, as they
walked off. "Have you anything to say that you did not
telegraph? How is your wife?"

"She's all right," was the answer. "And there's nothin'
happened, except, night before last, a man tried to look into
your lens-house."

"How did he do that?" exclaimed Clewe, suddenly turning upon his
companion. "I am amazed! Did he use a ladder?"

Old Samuel grinned. "He couldn't do that, you know, for the
flexible fence would keep him off. No; he sailed over the place
in one of those air-screw machines, with a fan workin' under the
car to keep it up."

"And so he soared up above my glass roof and looked down, I
suppose?"

"That's what he did," said Samuel; "but he had a good deal of
trouble doin' it. It was moonlight, and I watched him."

"Why didn't you fire at him?" asked Clewe. "Or at least let fly
one of the ammonia squirts and bring him down?"

"I wanted to see what he would do," said the old man. "The
machine he had couldn't be steered, of course. He could go up
well enough, but the wind took him where it wanted to. But I
must give this feller the credit of sayin' that he managed his
basket pretty well. He carried it a good way to the windward of
the lens-house, and then sent it up, expectin' the wind to take
it directly over the glass roof, but it shifted a little, and so
he missed the roof and had to try it again. He made two or three
bad jobs of it, but finally managed it by hitchin' a long cord to
a tree, and then the wind held him there steady enough to let him
look down for a good while."

"You don't tell me that!" cried Clewe. "Did you stay there and
let him look down into my lens-house?"

The old man laughed. "I let him look down," said he, "but he
didn't see nothin'. I was laughin' at him all the time he was at
work. He had his instruments with him, and he was turnin' down
his different kinds of lights, thinkin', of course, that he could
see through any kind of coverin' that we put over our machines;
but, bless you! he couldn't do nothin', and I could almost hear
him swear as he rubbed his eyes after he had been lookin' down
for a little while."

Clewe laughed. "I see," said he. "I suppose you turned on the
photo-hose."

"That's just what I did," said the old man. "Every night while
you were away I had the lens-room filled with the revolving-light
squirts, and when these were turned on I knew there was no
gettin' any kind of rays through them. A feller may look through
a roof and a wall, but he can't look through light comin' the
other way, especially when it's twistin' and curlin' and
spittin'."

"That's a capital idea," said Clewe. "I never thought of using
the photo-hose in that way. But there are very few people in
this world who would know anything about my new lens machinery
even if they saw it. This fellow must have been that Pole,
Rovinski. I met him in Europe, and I think he came over here not
long before I did."

"That's the man, sir," said Samuel. "I turned a needle searchlight
on him just as he was givin' up the business, and I have got a little
photograph of him at the house. His face is mostly beard, but
you'll know him."

"What became of him?" asked Clewe.

"My light frightened him," he said, "and the wind took him over
into the woods. I thought, as you were comin' home so soon, I
wouldn't do nothin' more. You had better attend to him
yourself."

"Very good," said Clewe. "I'll do that."

The home of Roland Clewe, a small house plainly furnished, but
good enough for a bachelor's quarters, stood not half a mile from
the station, and near it were the extensive buildings which he
called his Works. Here were laboratories, large machine-shops in
which many men were busy at all sorts of strange contrivances in
metal and other materials; and besides other small edifices there
was a great round tower-like structure, with smooth iron walls
thirty feet high and without windows, and which was lighted and
ventilated from the top. This was Clewe's special workshop; and
besides old Samuel Block and such workmen as were absolutely
necessary and could be trusted, few people ever entered it but
himself. The industries in the various buildings were diverse,
some of them having no apparent relation to the others. Each of
them was expected to turn out something which would revolutionize
something or other in this world, but it was to his lens-house
that Roland Clewe gave, in these days, his special attention.
Here a great enterprise was soon to begin, more important in his
eyes than anything else which had engaged human endeavor.

When sometimes in his moments of reflection he felt obliged to
consider the wonders of applied electricity, and give them their
due place in comparison with the great problem he expected to
solve, he had his moments of doubt. But these moments did not
come frequently. The day would arrive when from his lens-house
there would be promulgated a great discovery which would astonish
the world.

During Roland Clewe's absence in Germany his works had been left
under the general charge of Samuel Block. This old man was not a
scientific person; he was not a skilled mechanic; in fact, he had
been in early life a shoemaker. But when Roland Clewe, some five
years before, had put up his works near the little village of
Sardis, he had sent for Block, whom he had known all his life and
who was at that time the tenant of a small farm, built a cottage
for him and his wife, and told him to take care of the place.
From planning the grounds and superintending fences, old Sammy
had begun to keep an eye upon builders and mechanics; and, being
a very shrewd man, he had gradually widened the sphere of his
caretaking, until, at this time, he exercised a nominal
supervision over all the buildings. He knew what was going on in
each; he had a good idea, sometimes, of the scientific basis of
this or that bit of machinery, and had gradually become
acquainted with the workings and management of many of the
instruments; and now and then he gave to his employer very good
hints in regard to the means of attaining an end, more especially
in the line of doing something by instrumentalities not intended
for that purpose. If Sammy could take any machine which had been
constructed to bore holes, and with it plug up orifices, he would
consider that he had been of advantage to his kind.

Block was a thoroughly loyal man. The interests of his employer
were always held by him first and above everything. But although
the old man understood, sometimes very well, and always in a fair
degree, what the inventor was trying to accomplish, and
appreciated the magnitude and often the amazing nature of his
operations, he never believed in any of them.

Sammy was a thoroughly old-fashioned man. He had been born and
had grown up in the days when a steam-locomotive was good enough
and fast enough for any sensible traveller, and he greatly
preferred a good pair of horses to any vehicle which one steered
with a handle and regulated the speed thereof with a knob.
Roland Clew e might devise all the wonderful contrivances he
pleased, and he might do all sorts of astonishing things with
them, but Sammy would still be of the opinion that, even if the
machines did all that they were expected to do, the things they
did generally would not be worth the doing.

Still, the old man would not interfere by word or deed with any
of the plans or actions of his employer. On the contrary, he
would help him in every possible way--by fidelity, by suggestion,
by constant devotion and industry; but, in spite of all that, it
was one of the most firmly founded principles of his life that
Roland Clewe had no right to ask him to believe in the value of
the wild and amazing schemes he had on hand.

Before Roland Clewe slept that night he had visited all his
workshops, factories, and laboratories. His men had been busily
occupied during his absence under the directions of their various
special managers, and those in charge were of the opinion that
everything had progressed as favorably and as rapidly as should
have been expected; but Roland Clewe was not satisfied, even
though many of his inventions and machines were much nearer
completion than he had expected to find them. The work necessary
to be done in his lens-house before he could go on with the great
work of his life was not yet finished.

As well as he could judge, it would be a month or two before he
could devote himself to those labors in his lens-house the
thought of which had so long filled his mind by day, and even
during his sleep.

CHAPTER III

MARGARET RALEIGH

After breakfast the-following morning Roland Clewe mounted his
horse and rode over to a handsome house which stood upon a hill
about a mile and a half from Sardis. Horses, which had almost
gone out of use during the first third of the century, were now
getting to be somewhat in fashion again. Many people now
appreciated the pleasure which these animals had given to the
world since the beginning of history, and whose place, in an
aesthetic sense, no inanimate machine could supply. As Roland
Clewe swung himself from the saddle at the foot of a broad flight
of steps, the house door was opened and a lady appeared.

"I saw you coming!" she exclaimed, running down the steps to meet
him.

She was a handsome woman, inclined to be tall, and some five
years younger than Clewe. This was Mrs. Margaret Raleigh,
partner with Roland Clewe in the works at Sardis, and, in fact,
the principal owner of that great estate. She was a widow, and
her husband had been not only a man of science, but a very rich
man; and when he died, at the outset of his career, his widow
believed it her duty to devote his fortune to the prosecution and
development of scientific works. She knew Roland Clewe as a hard
student and worker, as a man of brilliant and original ideas, and
as the originator of schemes which, if carried out successfully,
would place him among the great inventors of the world.

She was not a scientific woman in the strict sense of the word,
but she had a most thorough and appreciative sympathy with all
forms of physical research, and there was a distinctiveness and
grandeur in the aims towards which Roland Clewe had directed his
life work which determined her to unite, with all the power of
her money and her personal encouragement, in the labors he had
set for himself.

Therefore it was that the main part of the fortune left by
Herbert Raleigh had been invested in the shops and foundries at
Sardis, and that Roland Clewe and Margaret Raleigh were partners
and co-owners in the business and the plant of the establishment.

"I am glad to welcome you back," said she, her hand in his. "But
it strikes me as odd to see you come upon a horse; I should have
supposed that by this time you would arrive sliding over the
tree-tops on a pair of aerial skates."

"No," said he. "I may invent that sort of thing, but I prefer to
use a horse. Don't you remember my mare? I rode her before I
went away. I left her in old Sammy's charge, and he has been
riding her every day."

"And glad enough to do it, I am sure," said she, "for I have
heard him say that the things he hates most in this world are
dead legs. 'When I can't use mine,' he said, 'let me have some
others that are alive.' This is such a pretty creature," she
added, as Clewe was looking about for some place to which he
might tie his animal, "that I have a great mind to learn to ride
myself!"

"A woman on a horse would be a queer sight," said he; and with
this they went into the house.

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