Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 06.djvu/98
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In the Abyss
(Concluded)
padded compartment began spinning about him, and he fainted. His next recollection was of his cabin, and of the doctor's voice.
But that is the substance of the extraordinary story that Elstead related in fragments to the officers of the Ptarmigan. He promised to write it all down at a later date. His mind was chiefly occupied with the improvement of his apparatus, which was effected at Rio.
It remains only to tell that on February 2, 1896, he made his second descent into the ocean abyss, with the improvements his first experience suggested. What happened we shall probably never know. He never returned. The Ptarmigan beat about over the point of his submersion, seeking him in vain for thirteen days. Then she returned to Rio, and the news was telegraphed to his friends. So the matter remains for the present. But it is hardly probable that no further attempt will be made to verify his strange story of these hitherto unsuspected cities of the deep sea.
The End.
A "PSALM" OF LIGHT
By Beta
Tell me not in Einstein's numbers
Time is but an empty dream
And the space is dead that cumbers
And things are not where they seem.
Time is real, space is earnest
V o'er c is but a tool
With which thou perhaps discernest
But a jot of nature's rule.
Not Minkowski, no nor Riemen,
Framed our destined end or way;
Nor yet Maxwell nor his demon
Fix the ether or its sway.
Larmor's curls and Planck's equation
Order not one single flash,
Nor can Lorentz' transformation
Transcend mortal's mental hash.
Whims of wranglers all remind us
"As the twig, the tree's inclined."
And howe'er their bents may blind us
"Naught exists without the mind."
Wrangler's art is set on axioms,
Man-conceived, by man expressed
And like most of man's contraptions
May have faults when brought to test.
Let us then not be excited
Just because the starlight curves:—
Euclid's line was thought, not sighted.
Common sense, as ever, serves.
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