them. Challenger bent his
heavy brows and stroked his beard before he answered. One could see that
he was very carefully weighing his words.

"What was the last news when you left London?" he asked.

"I was at the Gazette office about ten," said I. "There was a Reuter
just come in from Singapore to the effect that the sickness seemed to be
universal in Sumatra and that the lighthouses had not been lit in
consequence."

"Events have been moving somewhat rapidly since then," said Challenger,
picking up his pile of telegrams. "I am in close touch both with the
authorities and with the press, so that news is converging upon me from
all parts. There is, in fact, a general and very insistent demand that I
should come to London; but I see no good end to be served. From the
accounts the poisonous effect begins with mental excitement; the rioting
in Paris this morning is said to have been very violent, and the Welsh
colliers are in a state of uproar. So far as the evidence to hand can be
trusted, this stimulative stage, which varies much in races and in
individuals, is succeeded by a certain exaltation and mental lucidity--I
seem to discern some signs of it in our young friend here--which, after
an appreciable interval, turns to coma, deepening rapidly into death. I
fancy, so far as my toxicology carries me, that there are some vegetable
nerve poisons----"

"Datura," suggested Summerlee.

"Excellent!" cried Challenger. "It would make for scientific precision
if we named our toxic agent. Let it be daturon. To you, my dear
Summerlee, belongs the honour--posthumous, alas, but none the less
unique--of having given a name to the universal destroyer, the Great
Gardener's disinfectant. The symptoms of daturon, then, may be taken to
be such as I indicate. That it will involve the whole world and that no
life can possibly remain behind seems to me to be certain, since ether is
a universal medium. Up to now it has been capricious in the places which
it has attacked, but the difference is only a matter of a few hours, and
it is like an advancing tide which covers one strip of sand and then
another, running hither and thither in irregular streams, until at last
it has submerged it all. There are laws at work in connection with the
action and distribution of daturon which would have been of deep interest
had the time at our disposal permitted us to study them. So far as I can
trace them"--here he glanced over his telegr