The Grain Ship. Morgan Robertson

      "The ship was rolling heavily in the trough of a Biscay sea, which, no matter how the wind, is a violent, troublesome heave of cross-forces. The upper canvas was carried away, or hanging in the buntlines. Some of the braces were adrift and the yards swinging. We had the courses clewed up when the men were alive, and the lower yards were fairly square; so the ship, with the aid of the head-sails, kept the canvas full, and she sailed along, manned by a crew of rabid rats, a crazy first mate, and a half-crazy second mate. I knew I was half-crazy, for I had a fixed, insistent thought that would not go—that of a little school-ma'am who had whipped me in childhood. I deserved the whipping, but—Lord, how I hated her now!

      "I feared the mate. He was again nosing me around the deck, glaring murder at me and talking to himself. I feared him more than I feared the rats, for I could brush them off. I could not get out of his sight; but I did venture on grabbing a circular life-buoy from the quarter-rail as I passed it, and slipping it over my head, and he did not seem to notice the maneuver. I was resolved, as a last resort, to jump into the sea with this scant protection against death by drowning, hunger, or thirst, rather than risk another assault by this lunatic or a bite from a rat. These were numbered now by the thousands. The deck was black with them in places, and here and there a rope was as big around as a stove-pipe.

      "All was quiet this last day aboard. The mate busied himself in following me around, talking to the rats and to himself, even as they bit him, and I busied myself in quietly keeping out of his way and brushing off rats that climbed my legs. I was dead tired, being on my feet so long, and in sheer desperation and love of life I hoped for another convulsion that would give me relief from the strain. But before it came to him I was out of his way, and, I strongly suspect, he was out of the way of the convulsion.

      "He caught me on the forecastle deck and made for me, half mad from the disease, but wholly mad from his mental state. There was no escape except out the head-gear, and I went that way, with him after me. Out the bowsprit, on to the jib foot-ropes, and out toward the end I went, hoping to reach the martingale-stay and slip down it to the back-ropes. I did so, but he scrambled down, tumbling and clutching, and gripped me just abaft the dolphin-striker. His face was twisted in frenzy, and he growled and barked like a dog, occasionally breaking into a horrible, rat-like squeal. But he didn't bite me; he simply squeezed me in both arms, and in that effort lost his hold on the back-rope and fell, taking me with him. We struck the water together, and his grip loosened, for he was now up against something too strong for him—the sound and sight and feeling of cold water. When we came up, the cutwater was between us, and I didn't see him again, though I heard his convulsive gurgling and screaming from the other side of the ship. Then the sounds stopped, and I think he must have gone under; but I was too busy with myself to speculate much. I was trying to get a finger-nail grip on that smooth, black side slipping by me, but could not. There was nothing to get hold of, and no ropes were hanging over. Then I thought of the rudder and the iron bumpkin on it that the rudder-chains fastened to, and swam with all my strength under the quarter as it came along. But it was no good. The life-buoy hampered me in swimming, and I missed the rudder by an inch.

      "The ship went on and left me alone on the sea. I remember very little of it. I think my mind must have slowly gone out of me, leaving me another person. I remember a few sensations—and it only seems like a week ago to me—one, of being alone on the surface of the sea at night, supported by the life-buoy; and then, I seemed to be back among the rats, but that was just as I wakened on your floor here. The next sensation was the sight of you, and the sound of your voice, speaking to me, and then the knowledge that I was really alive and ashore."

      "And the woman out the Boston Road?" I inquired at length.

      "I will write to her as I promised. But I will not go there. Boston is too close to the sea."

FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS

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      I had known him for a painter of renown—a master of his art, whose pictures, which sold for high prices, adorned museums, the parlors of the rich, and, when on exhibition, were hung low and conspicuous. Also, I knew him for an expert photographer—an "art photographer," as they say, one who dealt with this branch of industry as a fad, an amusement, and who produced pictures that in composition, lights, and shades rivaled his productions with the brush.

      His cameras were the best that the market could supply, yet he was able, from his knowledge of optics and chemistry, to improve them for his own uses far beyond the ability of the makers. His studio was filled with examples of his work, and his mind was stocked with information and opinions on all subjects ranging from international policies to the servant-girl problem.

      He was a man of the world, gentlemanly and successful, about sixty years old, kindly and gracious of manner, and out of this kindliness and graciousness had granted me the compliment of his friendship, and access to his studio whenever I felt like calling upon him.

      Yet it never occurred to me that the wonderful and technically correct marines hanging on his walls were due to anything but the artist's conscientious study of his subject, and only his casual mispronounciation of the word "leeward," which landsmen pronounce as spelled, but which rolls off the tongue of a sailor, be he former dock rat or naval officer, as "looward," and his giving the long sounds to the vowels of the words "patent" and "tackle," that induced me to ask if he had ever been to sea.

      "Why, yes," he answered. "Until I was thirty I had no higher ambition than to become a skipper of some craft; but I never achieved it. The best I did was to sign first mate for one voyage—and that one was my last. It was on that voyage that I learned something of the mysterious properties of light, and it made me a photographer, then an artist. You are wrong when you say that a searchlight cannot penetrate fog."

      "But it has been tried," I remonstrated.

      "With ordinary light. Yes, of course, subject to refraction, reflection, and absorption by the millions of minute globules of water it encounters."

      We had been discussing the wreck of the Titanic, the most terrible marine disaster of history, the blunders of construction and management, and the later proposed improvements as to the lowering of boats and the location of ice in a fog.

      Among these considerations was also the plan of carrying a powerful searchlight whose beam would illumine the path of a twenty-knot liner and render objects visible in time to avoid them. In regard to this I had contended that a searchlight could not penetrate fog, and if it could, would do as much harm as good by blinding and confusing the watch officers and lookouts on other craft.

      "But what other kind of light can be used?" I asked, in answer to his mention of ordinary light.

      "Invisible light," he answered. "I do not mean the Röntgen ray, nor the emanation from radium, both of which are invisible, but neither of which is light, in that neither can be reflected nor refracted. Both will penetrate many different kinds of matter, but it needs reflection or refraction to make visible an object on which it impinges. Understand?"

      "Hardly," I answered dubiously. "What kind of visible light is there, if not radium or the Röntgen ray? You can photograph with either, can't you?"

      "Yes, but to see what you have photographed you must develop the film. And there is no time for that aboard a fast steamer running through the ice and the fog. No, it is mere theory, but I have an idea that the ultraviolet light—the actinic rays beyond the violet end of the spectrum, you know—will penetrate fog to a great distance, and in spite of its higher refractive power, which would distort and magnify an object, it is better than nothing."

      "But what makes you think that it will penetrate fog?" I queried. "And if it is invisible itself, how will it illumine an object?"

      "As to your first question," he answered, with a smile, "it is well known to surgeons that ultraviolet light will penetrate the human body to the depth of an inch, while the visible rays are reflected at the surface. And it has been known to photographers for fifty years that this light—easily isolated by dispersion through