The Crystal Egg / H.G. Wells

There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near

Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C.

Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents

of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant

tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes,

two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys

(one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a fly-blown ostrich egg

or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass

fish-tank. There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of

crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished.

And at

that two people who stood outside the window were looking, one of them a

tall, thin clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of dusky

complexion and unobtrusive costume. The dusky young man spoke with eager

gesticulation, and seemed anxious for his companion to purchase the

article.

While they were there, Mr. Cave came into his shop, his beard still

wagging with the bread and butter of his tea. When he saw these men and

the object of their regard, his countenance fell. He glanced guiltily over

his shoulder, and softly shut the door. He was a little old man, with pale

face and peculiar watery blue eyes; his hair was a dirty grey, and he wore

a shabby blue frock-coat, an ancient silk hat, and carpet slippers very

much down at heel. He remained watching the two men as they talked. The

clergyman went deep into his trouser pocket, examined a handful of money,

and showed his teeth in an agreeable smile. Mr. Cave seemed still more

depressed when they came into the shop.

The clergyman, without any ceremony, asked the price of the crystal egg.

Mr. Cave glanced nervously towards the door leading into the parlour, and

said five pounds. The clergyman protested that the price was high, to his

companion as well as to Mr. Cave--it was, indeed, very much more than Mr.

Cave had intended to ask when he had stocked the article--and an attempt

at bargaining ensued. Mr. Cave stepped to the shop door, and held it open.

"Five pounds is my price," he said, as though he wished to save himself

the trouble of unprofitable discussion. As he did so, the upper portion of

a woman's face appeared above the blind in the glass upper panel of the

door leading into the parlour, and stared curiously at the two customers.

"Five pounds is my price," said Mr. Cave, with a quiver in his voice.

The swarthy young man had so far remained a spectator, watching Cave

keenly. Now he spoke. "Give him five pounds," he said. The clergyman

glanced at him to see if he were in earnest, and when he looked at Mr.

Cave again, he saw that the latter's face was white. "It's a lot of

money," said the clergyman, and, diving into his pocket, began counting

his resources. He had little more than thirty shillings, and he appealed

to his companion, with whom he seemed to be on terms of considerable

intimacy. This gave Mr. Cave an opportunity of collecting his thoughts,

and he began to explain in an agitated manner that the crystal was not, as

a matter of fact, entirely free for sale. His two customers were naturally

surprised at this, and inquired why he had not thought of that before he

began to bargain. Mr. Cave became confused, but he stuck to his story,

that the crystal was not in the market that afternoon, that a probable

purchaser of it had already appeared. The two, treating this as an attempt

to raise the price still further, made as if they would leave the shop.

But at this point the parlour door opened, and the owner of the dark

fringe and the little eyes appeared.

She was a coarse-featured, corpulent woman, younger and very much larger

than Mr. Cave; she walked heavily, and her face was flushed. "That crystal

_is_ for sale," she said. "And five pounds is a good enough price for

it. I can't think what you're about, Cave, not to take the gentleman's

offer!"

Mr. Cave, greatly perturbed by the irruption, looked angrily at her over

the rims of his spectacles, and, without excessive assurance, asserted his

right to manage his business in his own way. An altercation began. The two

customers watched the scene with interest and some amusement, occasionally

assisting Mrs. Cave with suggestions. Mr. Cave, hard driven, persisted in

a confused and impossible story of an inquiry for the crystal that

morning, and his agitation became painful. But he stuck to his point with

extraordinary persistence. It was the young Oriental who ended this

curious controversy. He proposed that they should call again in the course

of two days--so as to give the alleged inquirer a fair chance. "And then

we must insist," said the clergyman. "Five pounds." Mrs. Cave took it on

herself to apologise for her husband, explaining that he was sometimes "a

little odd," and as the two customers left, the couple prepared for a free

discussion of the incident in all its bearings.

Mrs. Cave talked to her husband with singular directness. The poor little

man, quivering with emotion, muddled himself between his stories,

maintaining on the one hand that he had another customer in view, and on

the other asserting that the crystal was honestly worth ten guineas. "Why

did you ask five pounds?" said his wife. "_Do_ let me manage my

business my own way!" said Mr. Cave.

Mr. Cave had living with him a step-daughter and a step-son, and at supper

that night the transaction was re-discussed. None of them had a high

opinion of Mr. Cave's business methods, and this action seemed a

culminating folly.

"It's my opinion he's refused that crystal before," said the step-son, a

loose-limbed lout of eighteen.

"But _Five Pounds_!" said the step-daughter, an argumentative young

woman of six-and-twenty.

Mr. Cave's answers were wretched; he could only mumble weak assertions

that he knew his own business best. They drove him from his half-eaten

supper into the shop, to close it for the night, his ears aflame and tears

of vexation behind his spectacles. Why had he left the crystal in the

window so long? The folly of it! That was the trouble closest in his mind.

For a time he could see no way of evading sale.

After supper his step-daughter and step-son smartened themselves up and

went out and his wife retired upstairs to reflect upon the business

aspects of the crystal, over a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot

water. Mr. Cave went into the shop, and stayed there until late,

ostensibly to make ornamental rockeries for gold-fish cases, but really

for a private purpose that will be better explained later. The next day

Mrs. Cave found that the crystal had been removed from the window, and

was lying behind some second-hand books on angling. She replaced it in a

conspicuous position. But she did not argue further about it, as a nervous

headache disinclined her from debate. Mr. Cave was always disinclined. The

day passed disagreeably. Mr. Cave was, if anything, more absent-minded

than usual, and uncommonly irritable withal. In the afternoon, when his

wife was taking her customary sleep, he removed the crystal from the

window again.

The next day Mr. Cave had to deliver a consignment of dog-fish at one of

the hospital schools, where they were needed for dissection. In his

absence Mrs. Cave's mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the

methods of expenditure suitable to a windfall of five pounds. She had

already devised some very agreeable expedients, among others a dress of

green silk for herself and a trip to Richmond, when a jangling of the

front door bell summoned her into the shop. The customer was an

examination coach who came to complain of the non-delivery of certain

frogs asked for the previous day. Mrs. Cave did not approve of this

particular branch of Mr. Cave's business, and the gentleman, who had

called in a somewhat aggressive mood, retired after a brief exchange of

words--entirely civil, so far as he was concerned. Mrs. Cave's eye then

naturally turned to the window; for the sight of the crystal was an

assurance of the five pounds and of her dreams. What was her surprise to

find it gone!

She went to the place behind the locker on the counter, where she had

discovered it the day before. It was not there; and she immediately began

an eager search about the shop.

When Mr. Cave returned from his business with the dogfish, about a quarter

to two in the afternoon, he found the shop in some confusion, and his

wife, extremely exasperated and on her knees behind the counter, routing

among his taxidermic material. Her face came up hot and angry over the

counter, as the jangling bell announced his return, and she forthwith

accused him of "hiding it."

"Hid _what_?" asked Mr. Cave.

"The crystal!"

At that Mr. Cave, apparently much surprised, rushed to the window. "Isn't

it here?" he said. "Great Heavens! what has become of it?"

Just then Mr. Cave's step-son re-entered the shop from, the inner room--he

had come home a minute or so before Mr. Cave--and he was blaspheming

freely. He was apprenticed to a second-hand furniture dealer down the

road, but he had his meals at home, and he was naturally annoyed to find

no dinner ready.

But when he heard of the loss of the crystal, he forgot his meal, and his

anger was diverted from his mother to his step-father. Their first idea,

of course, was that he had hidden it. But Mr. Cave stoutly denied all

knowledge of its fate, freely offering his bedabbled affidavit in the

matter--and at last was worked up to the point of accusing, first, his

wife and then his stepson of having taken it with a view to a private

sale. So began an exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion, which

ended for Mrs. Cave in a peculiar nervous condition midway between

hysterics and amuck, and caused the step-son to be half-an-hour late at

the furniture establishment in the afternoon. Mr. Cave took refuge from

his wife's emotions in the shop.

In the evening the matter was resumed, with less passion and in a judicial

spirit, under the presidency of the step-daughter. The supper passed

unhappily and culminated in a painful scene. Mr. Cave gave way at last to

extreme exasperation, and went out banging the front door violently. The

rest of the family, having discussed him with the freedom his absence

warranted, hunted the house from garret to cellar, hoping to light upon

the crystal.

The next day the two customers called again. They were received by Mrs.

Cave almost in tears. It transpired that no one _could_ imagine all

that she had stood from Cave at various times in her married pilgrimage.

... She also gave a garbled account of the disappearance. The clergyman

and the Oriental laughed silently at one another, and said it was very

extraordinary. As Mrs. Cave seemed disposed to give them the complete

history of her life they made to leave the shop. Thereupon Mrs. Cave,

still clinging to hope, asked for the clergyman's address, so that, if she

could get anything out of Cave, she might communicate it. The address was

duly given, but apparently was afterwards mislaid. Mrs. Cave can remember

nothing about it.

In the evening of that day the Caves seem to have exhausted their

emotions, and Mr. Cave, who had been out in the afternoon, supped in a

gloomy isolation that contrasted pleasantly with the impassioned

controversy of the previous days. For some time matters were very badly

strained in the Cave household, but neither crystal nor customer

reappeared.

Now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that Mr. Cave was a liar.

He knew perfectly well where the crystal was. It was in the rooms of Mr.

Jacoby Wace, Assistant Demonstrator at St. Catherine's Hospital,

Westbourne Street. It stood on the sideboard partially covered by a black

velvet cloth, and beside a decanter of American whisky. It is from Mr.

Wace, indeed, that the particulars upon which this narrative is based were

derived. Cave had taken off the thing to the hospital hidden in the

dog-fish sack, and there had pressed the young investigator to keep it for

him. Mr. Wace was a little dubious at first. His relationship to Cave was

peculiar. He had a taste for singular characters, and he had more than

once invited the old man to smoke and drink in his rooms, and to unfold

his rather amusing views of life in general and of his wife in particular.

Mr. Wace had encountered Mrs. Cave, too, on occasions when Mr. Cave was

not at home to attend to him. He knew the constant interference to which

Cave was subjected, and having weighed the story judicially, he decided to

give the crystal a refuge. Mr. Cave promised to explain the reasons for

his remarkable affection for the crystal more fully on a later occasion,

but he spoke distinctly of seeing visions therein. He called on Mr. Wace

the same evening.

He told a complicated story. The crystal he said had come into his

possession with other oddments at the forced sale of another curiosity

dealer's effects, and not knowing what its value might be, he had ticketed

it at ten shillings. It had hung upon his hands at that price for some

months, and he was thinking of "reducing the figure," when he made a

singular discovery.

At that time his health was very bad--and it must be borne in mind that,

throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb--and

he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive

ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. His wife

was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private

drinking; his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his step-son

had conceived a violent dislike for him, and lost no chance of showing it.

The requirements of his business pressed heavily upon him, and Mr. Wace

does not think that he was altogether free from occasional intemperance.

He had begun life in a comfortable position, he was a man of fair

education, and he suffered, for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and

insomnia. Afraid to disturb his family, he would slip quietly from his

wife's side, when his thoughts became intolerable, and wander about the

house. And about three o'clock one morning, late in August, chance

directed him into the shop.

The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where he

perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this, he discovered it to

be the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the counter

towards the window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the shutters,

impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire

interior.

It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of

optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the

rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior,

but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. He approached the

crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of

the scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a

calling. He was surprised to find the light not steady, but writhing

within the substance of the egg, as though that object was a hollow sphere

of some luminous vapour. In moving about to get different points of view,

he suddenly found that he had come between it and the ray, and that the

crystal none the less remained luminous. Greatly astonished, he lifted it

out of the light ray and carried it to the darkest part of the shop. It

remained bright for some four or five minutes, when it slowly faded and

went out. He placed it in the thin streak of daylight, and its

luminousness was almost immediately restored.

So far, at least, Mr. Wace was able to verify the remarkable story of Mr.

Cave. He has himself repeatedly held this crystal in a ray of light (which

had to be of a less diameter than one millimetre). And in a perfect

darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did

undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however,

that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally

visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger--whose name will be familiar to the

scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute--was quite

unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its

appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even

with Mr. Cave the power varied very considerably: his vision was most

vivid during states of extreme weakness and fatigue.

Now, from the outset, this light in the crystal exercised a curious

fascination upon Mr. Cave. And it says more for his loneliness of soul

than a volume of pathetic writing could do, that he told no human being of

his curious observations. He seems to have been living in such an

atmosphere of petty spite that to admit the existence of a pleasure would

have been to risk the loss of it. He found that as the dawn advanced, and

the amount of diffused light increased, the crystal became to all

appearance non-luminous. And for some time he was unable to see anything

in it, except at night-time, in dark corners of the shop.

But the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as a background for a

collection of minerals, occurred to him, and by doubling this, and putting

it over his head and hands, he was able to get a sight of the luminous

movement within the crystal even in the day-time. He was very cautious

lest he should be thus discovered by his wife, and he practised this

occupation only in the afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs, and then

circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. And one day, turning the

crystal about in his hands, he saw something. It came and went like a

flash, but it gave him the impression that the object had for a moment

opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange country; and

turning it about, he did, just as the light faded, see the same vision

again.

Now it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of Mr.

Cave's discovery from this point. Suffice that the effect was this: the

crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the

direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture of

a wide and peculiar country-side. It was not dream-like at all: it

produced a definite impression of reality, and the better the light the

more real and solid it seemed. It was a moving picture: that is to say,

certain objects moved in it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real

things, and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision

changed, the picture changed also. It must, indeed, have been like looking

through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to get at

different aspects.

Mr. Cave's statements, Mr. Wace assures me, were extremely circumstantial,

and entirely free from any of that emotional quality that taints

hallucinatory impressions. But it must be remembered that all the efforts

of Mr. Wace to see any similar clarity in the faint opalescence of the

crystal were wholly unsuccessful, try as he would. The difference in

intensity of the impressions received by the two men was very great, and

it is quite conceivable that what was a view to Mr. Cave was a mere

blurred nebulosity to Mr. Wace.

The view, as Mr. Cave described it, was invariably of an extensive plain,

and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable height, as if

from a tower or a mast. To the east and to the west the plain was bounded

at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which reminded him of those

he had seen in some picture; but what the picture was Mr. Wace was unable

to ascertain. These cliffs passed north and south--he could tell the

points of the compass by the stars that were visible of a night--receding

in an almost illimitable perspective and fading into the mists of the

distance before they met. He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs; on the

occasion of his first vision the sun was rising over them, and black

against the sunlight and pale against their shadow appeared a multitude of

soaring forms that Mr. Cave regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings

spread below him; he seemed to be looking down upon them; and as they

approached the blurred and refracted edge of the picture they became

indistinct. There were also trees curious in shape, and in colouring a

deep mossy green and an exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal.

And something great and brilliantly coloured flew across the picture. But

the first time Mr. Cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his

hands shook, his head moved, the vision came and went, and grew foggy and

indistinct. And at first he had the greatest difficulty in finding the

picture again once the direction of it was lost.

His next clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the

interval having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some useful

experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley. The view

was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his subsequent

observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding the strange world

from exactly the same spot, although he was looking in a different

direction. The long façade of the great building, whose roof he had looked

down upon before, was now receding in perspective. He recognised the roof.

In the front of the façade was a terrace of massive proportions and

extraordinary length, and down the middle of the terrace, at certain

intervals, stood huge but very graceful masts, bearing small shiny objects

which reflected the setting sun. The import of these small objects did not

occur to Mr. Cave until some time after, as he was describing the scene to

Mr. Wace. The terrace overhung a thicket of the most luxuriant and

graceful vegetation, and beyond this was a wide grassy lawn on which

certain broad creatures, in form like beetles but enormously larger,

reposed. Beyond this again was a richly decorated causeway of pinkish

stone; and beyond that, and lined with dense red weeds, and passing up the

valley exactly parallel with the distant cliffs, was a broad and

mirror-like expanse of water. The air seemed full of squadrons of great

birds, manoeuvring in stately curves; and across the river was a multitude

of splendid buildings, richly coloured and glittering with metallic tracery

and facets, among a forest of moss-like and lichenous trees. And suddenly

something flapped repeatedly across the vision, like the fluttering of a

jewelled fan or the beating of a wing, and a face, or rather the upper

part of a face with very large eyes, came as it were close to his own and

as if on the other side of the crystal. Mr. Cave was so startled and so

impressed by the absolute reality of these eyes that he drew his head back

from the crystal to look behind it. He had become so absorbed in watching

that he was quite surprised to find himself in the cool darkness of his

little shop, with its familiar odour of methyl, mustiness, and decay. And

as he blinked about him, the glowing crystal faded and went out.

Such were the first general impressions of Mr. Cave. The story is

curiously direct and circumstantial. From the outset, when the valley

first flashed momentarily on his senses, his imagination was strangely

affected, and as he began to appreciate the details of the scene he saw,

his wonder rose to the point of a passion. He went about his business

listless and distraught, thinking only of the time when he should be able

to return to his watching. And then a few weeks after his first sight of

the valley came the two customers, the stress and excitement of their

offer, and the narrow escape of the crystal from sale, as I have already

told.

Now, while the thing was Mr. Cave's secret, it remained a mere wonder, a

thing to creep to covertly and peep at, as a child might peep upon a

forbidden garden. But Mr. Wace has, for a young scientific investigator, a

particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind. Directly the crystal and

its story came to him, and he had satisfied himself, by seeing the

phosphorescence with his own eyes, that there really was a certain

evidence for Mr. Cave's statements, he proceeded to develop the matter

systematically. Mr. Cave was only too eager to come and feast his eyes on

this wonderland he saw, and he came every night from half-past eight until

half-past ten, and sometimes, in Mr. Wace's absence, during the day. On

Sunday afternoons, also, he came. From the outset Mr. Wace made copious

notes, and it was due to his scientific method that the relation between

the direction from which the initiating ray entered the crystal and the

orientation of the picture were proved. And, by covering the crystal in a

box perforated only with a small aperture to admit the exciting ray, and

by substituting black holland for his buff blinds, he greatly improved the

conditions of the observations; so that in a little while they were able

to survey the valley in any direction they desired.

So having cleared the way, we may give a brief account of this visionary

world within the crystal. The things were in all cases seen by Mr. Cave,

and the method of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal and

report what he saw, while Mr. Wace (who as a science student had learnt

the trick of writing in the dark) wrote a brief note of his report. When

the crystal faded, it was put into its box in the proper position and the

electric light turned on. Mr. Wace asked questions, and suggested

observations to clear up difficult points. Nothing, indeed, could have

been less visionary and more matter-of-fact.

The attention of Mr. Cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like

creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier

visions. His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a

time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he thought,

grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads were round and

curiously human, and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled

him on his second observation. They had broad, silvery wings, not

feathered, but glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed fish and

with the same subtle play of colour, and these wings were not built on the

plan of bird-wing or bat, Mr. Wace learned, but supported by curved ribs

radiating from the body. (A sort of butterfly wing with curved ribs seems

best to express their appearance.) The body was small, but fitted with two

bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles, immediately under the

mouth. Incredible as it appeared to Mr. Wace, the persuasion at last

became irresistible that it was these creatures which owned the great

quasi-human buildings and the magnificent garden that made the broad

valley so splendid. And Mr. Cave perceived that the buildings, with other

peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which

opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight

upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and

hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged

creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and

across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled

lazily to and fro. Moreover, on the causeways and terraces, large-headed

creatures similar to the greater winged flies, but wingless, were visible,

hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle of tentacles.

Allusion has already been made to the glittering objects upon masts that

stood upon the terrace of the nearer building. It dawned upon Mr. Cave,

after regarding one of these masts very fixedly on one particularly vivid

day that the glittering object there was a crystal exactly like that into

which he peered. And a still more careful scrutiny convinced him that each

one in a vista of nearly twenty carried a similar object.

Occasionally one of the large flying creatures would flutter up to one,

and folding its wings and coiling a number of its tentacles about the

mast, would regard the crystal fixedly for a space,--sometimes for as long

as fifteen minutes. And a series of observations, made at the suggestion

of Mr. Wace, convinced both watchers that, so far as this visionary world

was concerned, the crystal into which they peered actually stood at the

summit of the end-most mast on the terrace, and that on one occasion at

least one of these inhabitants of this other world had looked into Mr.

Cave's face while he was making these observations.

So much for the essential facts of this very singular story. Unless we

dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to

believe one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two

worlds at once, and that while it was carried about in one, it remained

stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it

had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar

crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of the

one in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to an observer

in the corresponding crystal in the other world; and _vice versa_. At

present, indeed, we do not know of any way in which two crystals could so

come _en rapport_, but nowadays we know enough to understand that the

thing is not altogether impossible. This view of the crystals as _en

rapport_ was the supposition that occurred to Mr. Wace, and to me at

least it seems extremely plausible...

And where was this other world? On this, also, the alert intelligence of

Mr. Wace speedily threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened rapidly--

there was a very brief twilight interval indeed--and the stars shone out.

They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same

constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and

Sirius; so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system,

and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own.

Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight sky was a

darker blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a little

smaller. _And there were two small moons!_ "like our moon but

smaller, and quite differently marked," one of which moved so rapidly that

its motion was clearly visible as one regarded it. These moons were never

high in the sky, but vanished as they rose: that is, every time they

revolved they were eclipsed because they were so near their primary

planet. And all this answers quite completely, although Mr. Cave did not

know it, to what must be the condition of things on Mars.

Indeed, it seems an exceedingly plausible conclusion that peering into

this crystal Mr. Cave did actually see the planet Mars and its

inhabitants. And if that be the case, then the evening star that shone so

brilliantly in the sky of that distant vision was neither more nor less

than our own familiar earth.

For a time the Martians--if they were Martians--do not seem to have known

of Mr. Cave's inspection. Once or twice one would come to peer, and go

away very shortly to some other mast, as though the vision was

unsatisfactory. During this time Mr. Cave was able to watch the

proceedings of these winged people without being disturbed by their

attentions, and although his report is necessarily vague and fragmentary,

it is nevertheless very suggestive. Imagine the impression of humanity a

Martian observer would get who, after a difficult process of preparation

and with considerable fatigue to the eyes, was able to peer at London from

the steeple of St. Martin's Church for stretches, at longest, of four

minutes at a time. Mr. Cave was unable to ascertain if the winged Martians

were the same as the Martians who hopped about the causeways and terraces,

and if the latter could put on wings at will. He several times saw certain

clumsy bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes, white and partially translucent,

feeding among certain of the lichenous trees, and once some of these fled

before one of the hopping, round-headed Martians. The latter caught one in

its tentacles, and then the picture faded suddenly and left Mr. Cave most

tantalisingly in the dark. On another occasion a vast thing, that Mr. Cave

thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the

causeway beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer

Mr. Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of

extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it had passed

out of sight.

After a time Mr. Wace aspired to attract the attention of the Martians,

and the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to

the crystal Mr. Cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately

turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of

signalling. But when at last Mr. Cave examined the crystal again the

Martian had departed.

Thus far these observations had progressed in early November, and then Mr.

Cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the crystal were

allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that, as occasion

arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself with what was fast

becoming the most real thing in his existence.

In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming examination

became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for a week, and for

ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw nothing of Cave. He

then grew anxious to resume these investigations, and, the stress of his

seasonal labours being abated, he went down to Seven Dials. At the corner

he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's window, and then another at a

cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed.

He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at once

called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in cheap but

ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without any very great

surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already buried. She was in

tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just returned from

Highgate. Her mind seemed occupied with her own prospects and the

honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace was at last able to

learn the particulars of Cave's death. He had been found dead in his shop

in the early morning, the day after his last visit to Mr. Wace, and the

crystal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands. His face was smiling,

said Mrs. Cave, and the velvet cloth from the minerals lay on the floor at

his feet. He must have been dead five or six hours when he was found.

This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began to reproach himself

bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's

ill-health. But his chief thought was of the crystal. He approached that

topic in a gingerly manner, because he knew Mrs. Cave's peculiarities. He

was dumfounded to learn that it was sold.

Mrs. Cave's first impulse, directly Cave's body had been taken upstairs,

had been to write to the mad clergyman who had offered five pounds for the

crystal, informing him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt, in which

her daughter joined her, they were convinced of the loss of his address.

As they were without the means required to mourn and bury Cave in the

elaborate style the dignity of an old Seven Dials inhabitant demands, they

had appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in Great Portland Street. He

had very kindly taken over a portion of the stock at a valuation. The

valuation was his own, and the crystal egg was included in one of the

lots. Mr. Wace, after a few suitable condolences, a little off-handedly

proffered perhaps, hurried at once to Great Portland Street. But there he

learned that the crystal egg had already been sold to a tall, dark man in

grey. And there the material facts in this curious, and to me at least

very suggestive, story come abruptly to an end. The Great Portland Street

dealer did not know who the tall dark man in grey was, nor had he observed

him with sufficient attention to describe him minutely. He did not even

know which way this person had gone after leaving the shop. For a time Mr.

Wace remained in the shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless

questions, venting his own exasperation. And at last, realising abruptly

that the whole thing had passed out of his hands, had vanished like a

vision of the night, he returned to his own rooms, a little astonished to

find the notes he had made still tangible and visible upon, his untidy

table.

His annoyance and disappointment were naturally very great. He made a

second call (equally ineffectual) upon the Great Portland Street dealer,

and he resorted to advertisements in such periodicals as were lively to

come into the hands of a _bric-a-brac_ collector. He also wrote

letters to _The Daily Chronicle_ and _Nature_, but both those

periodicals, suspecting a hoax, asked him to reconsider his action before

they printed, and he was advised that such a strange story, unfortunately

so bare of supporting evidence, might imperil his reputation as an

investigator. Moreover, the calls of his proper work were urgent. So that

after a month or so, save for an occasional reminder to certain dealers,

he had reluctantly to abandon the quest for the crystal egg, and from that

day to this it remains undiscovered. Occasionally, however, he tells me,

and I can quite believe him, he has bursts of zeal, in which he abandons

his more urgent occupation and resumes the search.

Whether or not it will remain lost for ever, with the material and origin

of it, are things equally speculative at the present time. If the present

purchaser is a collector, one would have expected the enquiries of Mr.

Wace to have reached him through the dealers. He has been able to discover

Mr. Cave's clergyman and "Oriental"--no other than the Rev. James Parker

and the young Prince of Bosso-Kuni in Java. I am obliged to them for

certain particulars. The object of the Prince was simply curiosity--and

extravagance. He was so eager to buy because Cave was so oddly reluctant

to sell. It is just as possible that the buyer in the second instance was

simply a casual purchaser and not a collector at all, and the crystal egg,

for all I know, may at the present moment be within a mile of me,

decorating a drawing-room or serving as a paper-weight--its remarkable

functions all unknown. Indeed, it is partly with the idea of such a

possibility that I have thrown this narrative into a form that will give

it a chance of being read by the ordinary consumer of fiction.

My own ideas in the matter are practically identical with those of Mr.

Wace. I believe the crystal on the mast in Mars and the crystal egg of Mr.

Cave's to be in some physical, but at present quite inexplicable, way

_en rapport_, and we both believe further that the terrestrial

crystal must have been--possibly at some remote date--sent hither from

that planet, in order to give the Martians a near view of our affairs.

Possibly the fellows to the crystals on the other masts are also on our

globe. No theory of hallucination suffices for the facts.