The Great Dark
Before It Happened Statement by Mrs. Edwards
We were in no way prepared for this dreadful thing. We were a happy family, we had been happy from the beginning; we did not know what trouble was, we were not thinking of it nor expecting it.
My husband was thirty-five years old, and seemed ten years younger, for he was one of those fortunate people who by nature are overcharged with breezy spirits and vigorous health, and from whom cares and troubles slide off without making any impression. He was my ideal, and indeed my idol. In my eyes he was everything that a man ought to be, and in spirit and body beautiful. We were married when I was a girl of sixteen, and we now had two children, comely and dear little creatures: Jessie, eight years old, and Bessie, six.
The house had been in a pleasant turmoil all day, this 19th of March, for it was Jessieâs birthday. Henry (my husband) had romped with the children till I was afraid he would tire them out and unfit them for their party in the evening, which was to be a childrenâs fancy dress dance; and so I was glad when at last in the edge of the evening he took them to our bedroom to show them the grandest of all the presents, the microscope. I allowed them fifteen minutes for this show. I would put the children into their costumes, then, and have them ready to receive their great flock of little friends and the accompanying parents. Henry would then be free to jot down in shorthand (he was a past master in that art) an essay which he was to read at the social club the next night. I would show the children to him in their smart costumes when the party should be over and the goodnight kisses due.
I left the three in a state of great excitement over the microscope, and at the end of the fifteen minutes I returned for the children. They and their papa were examining the wonders of a drop of water through a powerful lens. I delivered the children to a maid and they went away. Henry said, âI will take forty winks and then go to work. But I will make a new experiment with the drop of water first. Wonât you please strengthen the drop with the merest touch of Scotch whisky and stir up the animals?â
Then he threw himself on the sofa and before I could speak he uttered a snore. That came of romping the whole day. In reaching for the whisky decanter I knocked off the one that contained brandy and it broke. The noise stopped the snore. I stooped and gathered up the broken glass hurriedly in a towel, and when I rose to put it out of the way he was gone. I dipped a broomstraw in the Scotch whisky and let a wee drop fall upon the glass slide where the water drop was, then I crossed to the glass door to tell him it was ready. But he had lit the gas and was at his table writing. It was the rule of the house not to disturb him when he was at work; so I went about my affairs in the picture gallery, which was our houseâs ballroom.
Statement by Mr. Edwards
We were experimenting with the microscope. And pretty ignorantly. Among the little glass slides in the box we found one labeled âsection of a flyâs eye.â In its center was faintly visible a dot. We put it under a low-power lens and it showed up like a fragment of honeycomb. We put it under a stronger lens and it became a window sash. We put it under the most powerful lens of all, then there was room in the field for only one pane of the several hundred. We were childishly delighted and astonished at the magnifying capacities of that lens, and said, âNow we can find out if there really are living animals in a drop of water, as the books say.â
We brought some stale water from a puddle in the carriage house where some rotten hay lay soaking, sucked up a dropperful and allowed a tear of it to fall on a glass slide. Then we worked the screws and brought the lens down until it almost touched the water; then shut an eye and peered eagerly down through the barrel. A disappointmentânothing showed. Then we worked the screws again and made the lens touch the water. Another disappointmentânothing visible. Once more we worked the screws and projected the lens hard against the glass slide itself. Then we saw the animals! Not frequently, but now and then. For a time there would be a great empty blank; then a monster would enter one horizon of this great white sea made so splendidly luminous by the reflector and go plowing across and disappear beyond the opposite horizon. Others would come and go at intervals and disappear. The lens was pressing against the glass slide; therefore how could those bulky creatures crowd through between and not get stuck? Yet they swam with perfect freedom; it was plain that they had all the room and all the water that they needed. Then how unimaginably little they must be! Moreover, that wide circular sea which they were traversing was only a small part of our drop of stale water; it was not as big as the head of a pin; whereas the entire drop, flattened out on the glass, was as big around as a childâs finger ring. If we could have gotten the whole drop under the lens we could have seen those gruesome fishes swim leagues and leagues before they dwindled out of sight at the further shore!
I threw myself on the sofa profoundly impressed by what I had seen, and oppressed with thinkings. An ocean in a drop of waterâand unknown, uncharted, unexplored by man! By man, who gives all his time to the Africas and the poles, with this unsearched marvelous world right at his elbow. Then the Superintendent of Dreams appeared at my side, and we talked it over. He was willing to provide a ship and crew, but said, âIt will be like any other voyage of the sortânot altogether a holiday excursion.â
âThat is all right; it is not an objection.â
âYou and your crew will be much diminished, as to size, but you need not trouble about that, as you will not be aware of it. Your ship itself, stuck upon the point of a needle, would not be discoverable except through a microscope of very high power.â
âI do not mind these things. Get a crew of whalers. It will be well to have men who will know what to do in case we have trouble with those creatures.â â
âBetter still if you avoid them.â
âI shall avoid them if I can, for they have done me no harm, and I would not wantonly hurt any creature, but I shanât run from them. They have an ugly look, but I thank God I am not afraid of the ugliest that ever plowed a drop of water.â
âYou think so now, with your five feet eight, but it will be a different matter when the mote that floats in a sunbeam is Mont Blanc compared to you.â
âIt is no matter; you have seen me face dangers beforeââ
âFinish with your ordersâthe night is slipping away.â
âVery well, then. Provide me a naturalist to tell me the names of the creatures we see; and let the ship be a comfortable one and perfectly appointed and provisioned, for I take my family with me.â
Half a minute later (as it seemed to me), a hoarse voice broke on my ear:
âTopsails allâlet go the lee braceâsheet home the stunsâle boomâhearty, now, and all together!â
I turned out, washed the sleep out of my eyes with a dash of cold water, and stepped out of my cabin, leaving Alice quietly sleeping in her berth. It was a blustering night and dark, and the air was thick with a driving mist out of which the tall masts and bellying clouds of sail towered spectrally, faintly flecked here and there aloft by the smothered signal lanterns. The ship was heaving and wallowing in the heavy seas, and it was hard to keep oneâs footing on the moist deck. Everything was dimmed to obliteration, almost; the only thing sharply defined was the foamy mane of white water, sprinkled with phosphorescent sparks, which broke away from the lee bow. Men were within twenty steps of me, but I could not make out their figures; I only knew they were there by their voices. I heard the quartermaster report to the second mate, âEight bells, sir.â
âVery wellâmake it so.â
Then I heard the muffled sound of the distant bell, followed by a far-off cry: âEight bells and a cloudy morningâanchor watch turn out!â
I saw the glow of a match photograph a pipe and part of a face against the solid bank of darkness, and groped my way thither and found the second mate.
âWhat of the weather, mate?â
âI donât see that itâs any better, sir, than it was the first day out, ten days ago; if anything itâs worseâthicker and blacker, I mean. You remember the spitting snow flurries we had that night?â
âYes.â
âWell, weâve had them again tonight. And hail and sleet besides, bâGeorge! And here it comes again.â
We stepped into the sheltering lee of the galley, and stood there listening to the lashing of the hail along the deck and the singing of the wind in the cordage.
The mate said, âIâve been at sea thirty years, man and boy, but for a level ten-day stretch of unholy weather this bangs anything I ever struck, north of the Hornâif we are north of it. For Iâm blest if I know where we areâdo you?â
It was an embarrassing question. I had been asked it very confidentially by my captain, long ago, and had been able to state that I didnât know; and had been discreet enough not to go into any particulars; but this was the first time that any officer of the ship had approached me with the matter. I said, âWell, no, Iâm not a sailor, but I am surprised to hear you say you donât know where we are.â
He was caught. It was his turn to be embarrassed. First he began to hedge, and vaguely let on that perhaps he did know, after all; but he made a lame fist of it, and presently gave it up and concluded to be frank and take me into his confidence.
âIâm going to be honest with you, sirâand donât give me away.â He put his mouth close to my ear and sheltered it against the howling wind with his hand to keep from having to shout, and said impressively, âNot only I donât know where we are, sir, but by God the captain himself donât know!â
I had met the captainâs confession by pretending to be frightened and distressed at having engaged a man who was ignorant of his business; and then he had changed his note and told me he had only meant that he had lost his bearings in the thick weatherâa thing which would rectify itself as soon as he could get a glimpse of the sun. But I was willing to let the mate tell me all he would, so long as I was not to âgive it away.â
âNo, sir, he donât know where he is; lets on to, but he donât. I mean, he lets on to the crew, and his daughters, and young Phillips the purser, and of course to you and your family, but here lately he donât let on any more to the chief mate and me. And worried? I tell you heâs worried plumb to his vitals.â
âI must say I donât much like the look of this, Mr. Turner.â
âWell, donât let on, sir; keep it to yourselfâmaybe itâll come out all right; hope it will. But you look at the factsâjust look at the facts. We sail northâsee? North-and-by-east-half-east, to be exact. Noon the fourth day out, heading for Sable Islandâought to see it, weather rather thin for this voyage. Donât see it. Think the dead reckoning ainât right, maybe. We bang straight along, all the afternoon. No Sable Island. Damned if we didnât run straight over it! It warnât there. What do you think of that?â
âDear me, it is awfulâawfulâif true.â
âIf true. Well, it is true. True as anything that ever was, I take my oath on it. And then Greenland. We three banked our hopes on Greenland. Night before last we couldnât sleep for uneasiness; just anxiety, you know, to see if Greenland was going to be there. By the dead reckoning she was due to be in sight along anywhere from five to seven in the morning, if clear enough. But we stayed on deck all night. Of course two of us had no business there, and had to scuttle out of the way whenever a man came along, or they would have been suspicious. But five oâclock came, seven oâclock, eight oâclock, ten oâclock, and at last twelveâand then the captain groaned and gave in! He knew well enough that if there had been any Greenland left weâd have knocked a corner off of it long before that.â
âThis is appalling!â
âYou may hunt out a bigger word than that and it wonât cover it, sir. And Lord, to see the captain, gray as ashes, sweating and worrying over his chart all day yesterday and all day today, and spreading his compasses here and spreading them there, and getting suspicious of his chronometer, and damning the dead reckoningâjust suffering death and taxes, you know, and me and the chief mate helping and suffering, and that purser and the captainâs oldest girl spooning and cackling around, just in heaven! Iâm a poor man, sir, but if I could buy out half of each of âemâs ignorance and put it together and make it a whole, blamed if I wouldnât put up my last nickel to do it, you hear me. Nowââ
A wild gust of wind drowned the rest of his remark and smothered us in a fierce flurry of snow and sleet. He darted away and disappeared in the gloom, but first I heard his voice hoarsely shouting, âTurn out, all hands, shorten sail!â
There was a rush of feet along the deck, and then the gale brought the dimmed sound of far-off commands:
âMizzen foretop halyards thereâall clew garnets heave and awayânow then, with a willâsheet home!â
And then the plaintive notes that told that the men were handling the kites: