Williams news., 1918-03-14

liberated, not from Mars or Venus, but | out of the earthS own vitalsI" Captain Masterman sat bolt upright as he spoke; he looked like some old prophet spelling out the doom of man. The intense earnestness in his words shook Paget's incredulity for a mo- ment, and left him sick with horror. | Suppose that civilization, every thing which has gone to make up the life we know-family love, books, monuments, parlfaments, ships-all of 1t is to be at the mercy of this mer- ciless horde, and that we are going to fight harder than we have fought since the days when we held our own against the saber-tooth! Who'd think or care then whether he was an Eng | lishman or Dutchman; ; who'd trouble whether his friends were white men, | negroes, HOttentots or Chinese, so | long as they were human? Wouldn't 1 that make for the brotherhood of man. Donald? Wouldn't we set all our con- victs free? Wouldn't kings shake hands with anarchists and college pro- fessors with coal beavers? Wouldn't | class and race vanish like dreams when the nights over? And maybe that's what Gods working for, lieu tenant l''
 But the impossibility, Masterman Granting the incredible supposition that these deep-sea organisms exist, and could live under a pressure enor- mously increased, and breathe-' We're supposing that, lieutenant D 'How could they survive the strug- gle for existence in an unnatural ele- ment?"
 Lieutenant, man has existed since tertiary times, but he never learned to fly till 1908. He never went up in balloon until a hundred and fifty years ago. Our imaginations can't rise to the realization of what this generation has done, but our descend ants will look on us as demigods, and the Wright brothers will become myths, like that chap that invented cooking, Prom-Prom-?" "Prometheus.''
 "Yes, sir. We'll, then, after living for thousands of years at the bottom of five miles of air, an ocean of oxy- gen and nitrogen, we've found out how to get up on top of it. They are hv- ing at the bottom of an ocean of oxy- gen and hydrogen. Suppose they learned to fly, tool
 You can see what they'd do. Some of their scouts, who had gone on, ahead, would discover that the dry land was teeming with food. Food in such quantities as these hungry mon- sters had never dreamed about. Food in solid chunks, instead of dissolved particles of plankton, varied with an occasional cannibal dinner. And light by which to capture it-sunlight! No more hunting down their prey with phosphorescent torches!
 At first they'd nibble the grass and leaves of the trees. But they'd find that cellulose is pretty indigestible stuff. Then one of them would dis cover a dead bird or rabbit, and an other that sheep and cattle make good eating, and then-''
 "Then manI' muttered Donald, gripping the arms of his chair. The madman's picture had become dread fully real to him.
 "Other bodies would follow the scouts, Donald. They wouldn't be quite adapted to dry land at first. They'd make their way along the river beds. They'd swarm up the Hud- son, the Rhine, the Severn, the Mis- sissippi. That's what we did, and even today we haven't got very far from the river banks. Well, they'd rest and recuperate, eating the fish they found, until %he supply became exhausted. Then"
 Good Lord !" gasped Donald, And then the reaction came. Of course Masterman was raving mad, the mad dest member of the March flares club. What fool he had been to let the old fellows dismal prophecies get on his nerves!
 He leaned forward and placed his hand on Masterman's knee.
 "Did you go to the navy office with the idea of telling that to the secre- tary?" he asked.
 'I did, sir," answered Masterman.
 ''Then, if I may say so without giv- ing offense, it is a mercy that you him." said Donald. "Why, Masterman -er-you know how hard it is to- convince anyone of the truth of any thing little out of the ordinary" He was feeling his way carefully now, to avoid hurting the old fellow. "Why, Masterman. if you were to make such a suggestion as that at the navy office, they'd shut you up as a-as not quite right" he said.