Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1924-05-16

creatures would have had to g
through the lemur-ape FORMS"
But let us suppose a man who de
yeloped off the line" persisted Mas
terman. "a manlike organism witt
webbed feet-something like a man
seal. How about mermen? Do you
believe there is anything in that
story?"
. 81 hardly think so, captain"
"How about the old legends of the
Cyclopses?"
"a myth, Masterman. Besides, the
Cyclops kept cattle and lived upon
land"
''But they ate men, lieutenant. How
ever, let us call our men of the sea
imaginary. Grant that there might
be such creatures, though. You'll adj
nit that, with life so hard under the
ocean, they'd have developed more
cunning along certain lines than the
human race. And they wouldn't know
much about pity or love, or anything
except how to find their food"
"Pll grant that" answered Donald,
'1f we accept the hypothesis that such
creatures exist"
"Good Put pin there, my lad.
Now, as we were saying, after thou
sands of years the heat at the bottom
of the sea would disappear by its diff
fusion through the oceans every
where. The depths would grow too
cold for them. It's bitter cold in the
water at 81 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
| Wouldn't the time come when they,
too, would feel the impulse to migrate
into the sum-"
mo, Masterman. Their breathing"
81 know what you're going to say,
lieutenant. You're going to tell me
that, even if they could breathe air,
they couldn't live when the pressure
of those miles of ocean was removed.
But suppose nature has been busy
preparing for the change during thou
sands of years, while she has been
modifying their gills into lungs, as
she worked on the brontosaurs. That's
how nature works-quietly, softly, Sc
cretly, till she's ready to launch her
thunderbolt
Suppose q second human swarm
mans poor cousins, is getting ready |
to overrun the earth, and put down
man from his throne. Suppose the
puny swarms of monkey-men, white, |
yellow and black, that crawl upon the /
face of the globe and imagine them
selves its owners, are going to be OBJ
liberated, not from Mars or Venus, but |
out of the earth's own vitals %
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, parliaments, ships-all of
it is to be at the mercy of this mer-
CHESS 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 Dutehman who'd trouble
whether his friends were white men,
negroes, Hottentots or Chinese, so
long as they were human? Wouldn't
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
tenantl"
"But the impossibility, Mastermanl
Granting the incredible supposition
that these deep-sea organisms exist,
and could live under a pressure enor-
nously increased, and breathe"
"We're supposing that, lieutenant"
"How could they survive the strug-
gle for existence in an unnatural ele-
nent?"
Lieutenant, man has existed since
ertiary times, but he never learned
o fly till 1908. He never went up in
/ balloon until a hundred and fifty
ears ago. Our imaginations can't
Use to the realization of what this
has done, but our descend
nts win look on us as demigods, and t
he Wright brothers will become n
myths, like that chap that invented u
cooking, Prom-Prom-?" t,
"Prometheus."
"Yes, sir. Well then, after living Il
or thousands of years at the bottom Il
f five miles of air, an ocean of oxy- n
en- and nitrogen, we've found out how h
D get up on top of X. They are liy- cl
lg at the bottom of an ocean of oxy-
en- and hydrogen. Suppose they fl
earned to fly, too! 81
"You can see what they'd do. Some h,
{ their scouts, who had gone on nj
head, would discover that the dry
md was teeming with food. Food in h,
lch quantities as these hungry mon ii
ers had never dreamed about. Food pI
solid chunks, instead of dissolved la
articles of plankton, varied with an 81
cannibal dinner. And light