The Poison Belt

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Bring oxygen – Challenger." The gang from 'The Lost World' is back together, but the reunion is much more dramatic than they had hoped. As Professor Challenger has predicted, the Earth is moving into a belt of poisonous ether and their only chance of survival is joining him in his house and watch the whole shebang go down together. Though very different from the first in the series, 'The Poison Belt' (1913) is equally interesting and can be enjoyed in its own right. Like in his Sherlock Holmes series Conan Doyle displays, in the Challenger books, a knack for writing memorable characters and situations; his description of people going crazy from the ether will have you in hysterics.-

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAGA Egmont
• Release date: Jan 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9789176392782

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, writing his debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle wrote notable books in the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Poison Belt

SAGA Egmont

The Poison Belt

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Copyright © 1913, 2020 Arthur Conan Doyle and SAGA Egmont

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ISBN: 9789176392782

1. e-book edition, 2020

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Arthur Conan Doyle & Professor Challenger

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

George Edward Challenger, better known as Professor Challenger, is a fictional character in a series of fantasy and science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike Conan Doyle's laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, dominating figure.

Edward Malone, the narrator of The Lost World, the novel in which Challenger first appeared, described his first meeting with the character:

His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size, which took one's breath away – his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top hat, had I ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard, which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-grey under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.

He was also a pretentious and self-righteous scientific jack-of-all-trades. Although considered by Malone's editor, Mr McArdle, to be just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science, his ingenuity could be counted upon to solve any problem or get out of any unsavoury situation, and be sure to offend and insult several other people in the process. Challenger was, in many ways, rude, crude, and without social conscience or inhibition. Yet he was a man capable of great loyalty and his love of his wife was all encompassing.

Like Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger was based on a real person — in this case, a professor of physiology named William Rutherford, who had lectured at the University of Edinburgh while Conan Doyle studied medicine there.

The canon includes:

Novels

1912 – The Lost World, which describes an expedition to a plateau in South America where prehistoric creatures including dinosaurs still survive.

1913 – The Poison Belt, in which the earth passes through a cloud of poisonous ether.

1926 – The Land of Mist, a story of the supernatural, reflecting the strong belief in Spiritualism Conan Doyle developed later in life.

Short stories

1928 – When the World Screamed, on Challenger's World Echinus theory.

1929 – The Disintegration Machine, concerning the potentially-dangerous new invention by a scientist named Theodore Nemor.

Source: WIKIPEDIA

Chapter 1 - The Blurring of Lines

It is imperative that now at once, while these stupendous events are still clear in my mind, I should set them down with that exactness of detail which time may blur. But even as I do so, I am overwhelmed by the wonder of the fact that it should be our little group of the Lost World—Professor Challenger, Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and myself—who have passed through this amazing experience.

When, some years ago, I chronicled in the Daily Gazette our epoch-making journey in South America, I little thought that it should ever fall to my lot to tell an even stranger personal experience, one which is unique in all human annals and must stand out in the records of history as a great peak among the humble foothills which surround it. The event itself will always be marvellous, but the circumstances that we four were together at the time of this extraordinary episode came about in a most natural and, indeed, inevitable fashion. I will explain the events which led up to it as shortly and as clearly as I can, though I am well aware that the fuller the detail upon such a subject the more welcome it will be to the reader, for the public curiosity has been and still is insatiable.

It was upon Friday, the twenty-seventh of August—a date forever memorable in the history of the world—that I went down to the office of my paper and asked for three days' leave of absence from Mr. McArdle, who still presided over our news department. The good old Scotchman shook his head, scratched his dwindling fringe of ruddy fluff, and finally put his reluctance into words.

I was thinking, Mr. Malone, that we could employ you to advantage these days. I was thinking there was a story that you are the only man that could handle as it should be handled.

I am sorry for that, said I, trying to hide my disappointment. Of course if I am needed, there is an end of the matter. But the engagement was important and intimate. If I could be spared—

Well, I don't see that you can.

It was bitter, but I had to put the best face I could upon it. After all, it was my own fault, for I should have known by this time that a journalist has no right to make plans of his own.

Then I'll think no more of it, said I with as much cheerfulness as I could assume at so short a notice. What was it that you wanted me to do?

Well, it was just to interview that deevil of a man down at Rotherfield.

You don't mean Professor Challenger? I cried.

Aye, it's just him that I do mean. He ran young Alec Simpson of the Courier a mile down the high road last week by the collar of his coat and the slack of his breeches. You'll have read of it, likely, in the police report. Our boys would as soon interview a loose alligator in the zoo. But you could do it, I'm thinking—an old friend like you.

Why, said I, greatly relieved, this makes it all easy. It so happens that it was to visit Professor Challenger at Rotherfield that I was asking for leave of absence. The fact is, that it is the anniversary of our main adventure on the plateau three years ago, and he has asked our whole party down to his house to see him and celebrate the occasion.

Capital! cried McArdle, rubbing his hands and beaming through his glasses. Then you will be able to get his opeenions out of him. In any other man I would say it was all moonshine, but the fellow has made good once, and who knows but he may again!

Get what out of him? I asked. What has he been doing?

Haven't you seen his letter on 'Scientific Possibeelities' in to-day's Times?

No.

McArdle dived down and picked a copy from the floor.

Read it aloud, said he, indicating a column with his finger. I'd be glad to hear it again, for I am not sure now that I have the man's meaning clear in my head.

This was the letter which I read to the news editor of the Gazette:—

SCIENTIFIC POSSIBILITIES

"Sir,—I have read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some less complimentary emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous letter of James Wilson MacPhail which has lately appeared in your columns upon the subject of the blurring of Fraunhofer's lines in the spectra both of the planets and of the fixed stars. He dismisses the matter as of no significance. To a wider intelligence it may well seem of very great possible importance—so great as to involve the ultimate welfare of every man, woman, and child upon this planet. I can hardly hope, by the use of scientific language, to convey any sense of my meaning to those ineffectual people who gather their ideas from the columns