United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Or in fencing," I echoed. "You see," said Gibberne, "if I get it as an all-round thing, it will really do you no harm at all except perhaps to an infinitesimal degree it brings you nearer old age. You will just have lived twice to other people's once " "I suppose," I meditated, "in a duel it would be fair?" "That's a question for the seconds," said Gibberne. I harked back further.
The temptation is strong!" There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times. Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched the unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. The little brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightest sign of vitality.
It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent repose, and Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about with a dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it down!" Then I said something else. "If you run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set your clothes on fire. Your linen trousers are going brown as it is!" He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge.
"The New Accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses and drank, and instantly I closed my eyes. You know that blank non-existence into which one drops when one has taken "gas." For an indefinite interval it was like that. Then I heard Gibberne telling me to wake up, and I stirred and opened my eyes. There he stood as he had been standing, glass still in hand.
I said, nearing his doorway in a grateful perspiration. "It goes a thousand times, many thousand times!" cried Gibberne, with a dramatic gesture, flinging open his Early English carved oak gate. "Phew!" said I, and followed him to the door. "I don't know how many times it goes," he said, with his latch-key in his hand. "And you "
But so far from smashing, it did not even seem to stir; it hung in mid-air motionless. "Roughly speaking," said Gibberne, "an object in these latitudes falls 16 feet in the first second. This glass is falling 16 feet in a second now. Only, you see, it hasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part of a second. That gives you some idea of the pace of my Accelerator."
Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had, or imagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little raid I made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of the New Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. We went out by his gate into the road, and there we made a minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic.
"Goodness!" cried Gibberne, suddenly; "look there!" He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the air with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languid snail was a bee. And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder than ever.
But Gibberne was far too eager upon his technical points to enter very keenly into my aspect of the question. It was the 7th or 8th of August when he told me the distillation that would decide his failure or success for a time was going forward as we talked, and it was on the 10th that he told me the thing was done and the New Accelerator a tangible reality in the world.
I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in the act of leaping, and watched the slow movement of his legs as he sank to earth. "Lord, look here!" cried Gibberne, and we halted for a moment before a magnificent person in white faint striped flannels, white shoes, and a Panama hat, who turned back to wink at two gaily dressed ladies he had passed.
Word Of The Day