CHAPTER XXVI
GRIMM'S LAW AGAIN
Dinner was now announced, and Oxenden laid the manuscript aside;whereupon they adjourned to the cabin, where they proceeded to discussboth the repast and the manuscript.
"Well," said Featherstone, "More's story seems to be approaching acrisis. What do you think of it now, Melick? Do you still think it asensational novel?"
"Partly so," said Melick; "but it would be nearer the mark to call ita satirical romance."
"Why not a scientific romance?"
"Because there's precious little science in it, but a good deal ofquiet satire."
"Satire on what?" asked Featherstone. "I'll be hanged if I can seeit."
"Oh, well," said Melick, "on things in general. The satire is directedagainst the restlessness of humanity; its impulses, feelings, hopes,and fears--all that men do and feel and suffer. It mocks us byexhibiting a new race of men, animated by passions and impulses whichare directly the opposite of ours, and yet no nearer happiness than weare. It shows us a world where our evil is made a good, and our goodan evil; there all that we consider a blessing is had inabundance--prolonged and perpetual sunlight, riches, power, fame--andyet these things are despised, and the people, turning away from them,imagine that they can find happiness in poverty, darkness, death, andunrequited love. The writer thus mocks at all our dearest passions andstrongest desires; and his general aim is to show that the mere searchfor happiness per se is a vulgar thing, and must always result inutter nothingness. The writer also teaches the great lesson that thehappiness of man consists not in external surroundings, but in theinternal feelings, and that heaven itself is not a place, but a state.It is the old lesson which Milton extorted from Satan:
"'What matter where, if I be still the same--'
"Or again:
"'The mind is its own place, and of itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven--'"
"That's good too," cried Oxenden. "That reminds me of the Germancommentators who find in the Agamemnon of AEschylus or the OEdipusof Sophocles or the Hamlet of Shakespeare motives and purposesof which the authors could never have dreamed, and give us ametaphysical, beer-and-tobacco, High-Dutch Clytemnestra or Antigone orLady Macbeth. No, my boy, More was a simple sailor, and had no idea ofsatirizing anything."
"How, then, do you account for the perpetual undercurrent of meaningand innuendo that may be found in every line?"
"I deny that there is anything of the sort," said Oxenden. "It is aplain narrative of facts; but the facts are themselves such that theygive a new coloring to the facts of our own life. They are in suchprofound antithesis to European ways that we consider them as beingwritten merely to indicate that difference. It is like the Germaniaof Tacitus, which many critics still hold to be a satire on Romanways, while as a matter of fact it is simply a narrative of Germanmanners and customs."
"I hope," cried Melick, "that you do not mean to compare this awfulrot and rubbish to the Germania of Tacitus?"
"By no means," said Oxenden; "I merely asserted that in one respectthey were analogous. You forced on the allusion to the Germania bycalling this 'rot and rubbish' a satirical romance."
"Oh, well," said Melick, "I only referred to the intention of thewriter. His plan is one thing and his execution quite another. Hisplan is not bad, but he fails utterly in his execution. The style isdetestable. If he had written in the style of a plain seaman, andtold a simple unvarnished tale, it would have been all right. In orderto carry out properly such a plan as this the writer should take Defoeas his model, or, still better, Dean Swift. Gulliver's Travels andRobinson Crusoe show what can be done in this way, and form astandard by which all other attempts must be judged. But this writeris tawdry; he has the worst vices of the sensational school--he showseverywhere marks of haste, gross carelessness, and universalfeebleness. When he gets hold of a good fancy, he lacks the patiencethat is necessary in order to work it up in an effective way. He is agross plagiarist, and over and over again violates in the most glaringmanner all the ordinary proprieties of style. What can be more absurd,for instance, than the language which he puts into the mouth ofLayelah? Not content with making her talk like a sentimentalboarding-school, bread-and-butter English miss, he actually forgetshimself so far as to put in her mouth a threadbare joke, whicheveryone has heard since childhood."
"What is that?"
"Oh, that silly speech about the athaleb swallowing its victualswhole."
"What's the matter with that?" asked Oxenden. "It's merely a chanceresemblance. In translating her words into English they fell byaccident into that shape. No one but you would find fault with them.Would it have been better if he had translated her words into thescientific phraseology which the doctor made use of with regard to theichthyosaurus? He might have made it this way: 'Does it bite?' 'No; itswallows its food without mastication.' Would that have been better?Besides, it's all very well to talk of imitating Defoe and Swift; butsuppose he couldn't do it?"
"Then he shouldn't have written the book."
"In that case how could his father have heard about his adventures?"
"His father!" exclaimed Melick. "Do you mean to say that you stillaccept all this as bona fide?"
"Do you mean to say," retorted Oxenden, "that you still have any doubtabout the authenticity of this remarkable manuscript?"
At this each looked at the other; Melick elevated his eyebrows, andOxenden shrugged his shoulders, but each seemed unable to find wordsto express his amazement at the other's stupidity, and so they tookrefuge in silence.
"What do you understand by this athaleb, doctor?" asked Featherstone.
"The athaleb?" said the doctor. "Why, it is clearly the pterodactyl."
"By-the-bye," interrupted Oxenden, "do please take notice of thatname. It affords another exemplification of 'Grimm's Law.' The Hebrewword is 'ataleph,' and means bat. The Kosekin word is 'athaleb.' Hereyou see the thin letter of Hebrew represented by the aspirated letterof the Kosekin language, while the aspirated Hebrew is represented bythe Kosekin medial."
"Too true," exclaimed Melick, in a tone of deep conviction; "and now,Oxenden, won't you sing us a song?"
"Nonsense," said Featherstone; "let the doctor tell us about theathaleb."
"Well," resumed the doctor, "as I was saying, it must be undoubtedlythe pterodactyl. It is a most extraordinary animal, and is a speciesof flying lizard, although differing from the lizard in many respects.It has the head and neck of a bird, the trunk and tail of an ordinarymammal, the jaws and teeth of a reptile, and the wings of a bat. Owendescribes one whose sweep of wings exceeded twenty feet, and many havebeen found of every gradation of size down to that of a bat. There isno reason why they should not be as large as More says; and I for mypart do not suspect him of exaggeration. Some have supposed that alate, lingering individual may have suggested the idea of the fabulousdragon--an idea which seems to be in the minds of nearly all the humanrace, for in the early records of many nations we find the destructionof dragons assigned to their gods and heroes. The figure of thepterodactyl represents pretty closely that which is given to thedragons. It is not impossible that they may have existed into theperiod which we call prehistoric, and that monsters far larger thanany which we have yet discovered may have lingered until the time whenman began to increase upon the earth, to spread over its surface, andto carve upon wood and stone representations of the most strikingobjects around him. When the living pterodactyls had disappeared thememory of them was preserved; some new features were added, and theimagination went so far as to endow them with the power of belchingforth smoke and flames. Thus the dragon idea pervaded the minds ofmen, and instead of a natural animal it became a fabulous one.
"The fingers of the forelegs were of the ordinary dimensions, andterminated with crooked nails, and these were probably used to suspendthemselves from trees. When in repose it rested on its hind legs likea bird, and held its neck curving behind, so that its enormous headshould not disturb its equilibrium. The size and form of
the feet, ofthe leg, and of the thigh prove that they could hold themselves erectwith firmness, their wings folded, and move about in this way likebirds, just as More describes them as doing. Like birds they couldalso perch on trees, and could crawl like bats and lizards along therocks and cliffs.
"Some think that they were covered with scales, but I am of theopinion that they had a horny hide, with a ridge of hair running downtheir backs--in which opinion I am sustained by More's account. Thesmaller kinds were undoubtedly insectivorous, but the larger ones musthave been carnivorous, and probably fed largely on fish."
"Well, at any rate," said Melick, gravely, "this athaleb solves thedifficult question as to how the Troglodytes emigrated to the SouthPole."
"How?" asked the doctor.
"Why, they must have gone there on athalebs! Your friends thepterodactyls probably lingered longest among the Troglodytes, who,seeing that they were rapidly dying out, concluded to depart toanother and a better world. One beauty of this theory is that itcannot possibly be disproved; another is that it satisfies all therequirements of the case; a third is that it accounts for thedisappearance of the pterodactyls in our world, and their appearanceat the South Pole; and there are forty or fifty other facts, allincluded in this theory, which I have not time just now to enumerate,but will try to do so after we have finished reading the manuscript. Iwill only add that the athaleb must be regarded as another link whichbinds the Kosekin to the Semitic race."
"Another link?" said Oxenden. "That I already have; and it is one thatcarries conviction with it."
"All your arguments invariably do, my dear fellow."
"What is it?" asked the doctor.
"The Kosekin alphabet," said Oxenden.
"I can't see how you can make anything out of that," said the doctor.
"Very well, I can easily explain," replied Oxenden. "In the firstplace we must take the old Hebrew alphabet. I will write down theletters in their order first."
Saying this he hastily jotted down some letters on a piece of paper,and showed to the doctor the following:
Labials. Palatals. Linguals. A B C (or G) D E F Ch (or H) Dh (or Th) I Liquids, L M N O P K T
"That," said he, "is substantially the order of the old Hebrewalphabet."
"But," said the doctor, "the Kosekin alphabet differs in its orderaltogether from that."
"That very difference can be shown to be all the stronger proof of aconnection between them," said Oxenden.
"I should like to know how."
"The fact is," said Oxenden, "these letters are representeddifferently in the two languages in exact accordance with Grimm'sLaw."
"By Jove!" cried Featherstone, "Grimm's Law again!"
"According to that law," continued Oxenden, "the letters of thealphabet ought to change their order. Now let us leave out the vowelsand linguals, and deal only with the mutes. First, we have in theHebrew alphabet the medials B, G, and D. Very well; in the Kosekin wehave standing first the thin letters, or tenues, according to Grimm'sLaw, namely, P, K, T. Next we have in the Hebrew the aspirates F, Ch,Dh. In the Kosekin alphabet we have corresponding to them the medialsB, G, D. Next we have in the Hebrew the tenues, or thin letters P, K,T. In the Kosekin we have the corresponding aspirates F, Ch, Th. Thevowels, liquids, and sibilants need not be regarded just here, for theproof from the mutes is sufficient to satisfy any reasonable man."
"Well," said Melick, "I for one am thoroughly satisfied, and don'tneed another single word. The fact is, I never knew before theall-sufficient nature of Grimm's Law. Why, it can unlock any mystery!When I get home I must buy one--a tame one, if possible--and keep himwith me always. It is more useful to a literary man than to any other.It is said that with a knowledge of Grimm's Law a man may wanderthrough the world from Iceland to Ceylon, and converse pleasantly inall the Indo-European languages. More must have had Grimm's Law stowedaway somewhere about him; and that's the reason why he escaped theicebergs, the volcanoes, the cannibals, the subterranean channelmonster, and arrived at last safe and sound in the land of theKosekin. What I want is Grimm's Law--a nice tidy one, well trained, ingood working order, and kind in harness; and the moment I get one Iintend to go to the land of the Kosekin myself."