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I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who's half a man,
Or the man who's half a boy.



Foreword

Mr. E. D. Malone desires to state that both the injunction for restraint and the libel action have been
withdrawn unreservedly by Professor G. E. Challenger, who, being satisfied that no criticism or comment in
this book is meant in an offensive spirit, has guaranteed that he will place no impediment to its publication
and circulation.


Table of Contents

I "There Are Heroisms All Round Us"
II "Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger"
III "He is a Perfectly Impossible Person"
IV "It's Just the very Biggest Thing in the World"
V "Question!"
VI "I was the Flail of the Lord"
VII "To-morrow we Disappear into the Unknown"
VIII "The Outlying Pickets of the New World"
IX "Who could have Foreseen it?"
X "The most Wonderful Things have Happened"
XI "For once I was the Hero"
XII "It was Dreadful in the Forest"
XIII "A Sight which I shall Never Forget"
XIV "Those Were the Real Conquests"
XV "Our Eyes have seen Great Wonders"
XVI "A Procession! A Procession!"



I "There Are Heroisms All Round Us"

Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth,--a fluffy, feathery, untidy
cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If anything could
have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he
really believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his
company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of
being an authority.

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the
token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.

"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the world were called up simultaneously, and
immediate payment insisted upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved
me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my
presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting.

At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All that evening I had felt like the soldier
who awaits the signal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse alternating
in his mind.

She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And
yet how aloof! We had been friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same comradeship
which I might have established with one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,--perfectly frank,
perfectly kindly, and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease
with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its
companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head,
the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure-- these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply,
are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as that--or had inherited it in that
race memory which we call instinct.