the eyelids.

"Well, you lived an obstinate dogmatist, and you mean to die one," said
Summerlee sourly.

"And you, sir, have lived an unimaginative obstructionist and never can
hope now to emerge from it."

"Your worst critics will never accuse you of lacking imagination,"
Summerlee retorted.

"Upon my word!" said Lord John. "It would be like you if you used up our
last gasp of oxygen in abusing each other. What can it matter whether
folk come back or not? It surely won't be in our time."

"In that remark, sir, you betray your own very pronounced limitations,"
said Challenger severely. "The true scientific mind is not to be tied
down by its own conditions of time and space. It builds itself an
observatory erected upon the border line of present, which separates the
infinite past from the infinite future. From this sure post it makes its
sallies even to the beginning and to the end of all things. As to death,
the scientific mind dies at its post working in normal and methodic
fashion to the end. It disregards so petty a thing as its own physical
dissolution as completely as it does all other limitations upon the plane
of matter. Am I right, Professor Summerlee?"

Summerlee grumbled an ungracious assent.

"With certain reservations, I agree," said he.

"The ideal scientific mind," continued Challenger--"I put it in the third
person rather than appear to be too self-complacent--the ideal scientific
mind should be capable of thinking out a point of abstract knowledge in
the interval between its owner falling from a balloon and reaching the
earth. Men of this strong fibre are needed to form the conquerors of
nature and the bodyguard of truth."

"It strikes me nature's on top this time," said Lord John, looking out of
the window. "I've read some leadin' articles about you gentlemen
controllin' her, but she's gettin' a bit of her own back."

"It is but a temporary setback," said Challenger with conviction. "A few
million years, what are they in the great cycle of time? The vegetable
world has, as you can see, survived. Look at the leaves of that plane
tree. The birds are dead, but the plant flourishes. From this vegetable
life in pond and in marsh will come, in time, the tiny crawling
microscopic slugs which are the pioneers of that great army of life in
which for the instant we five have the extraordinary duty of serving as
rear guard. Once the lowest form of life has established itself, the
final