"Arthur C. Doyle - The Poison Belt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

"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 of a daily newspaper. I will endeavour, therefore, to
condescend to their limitation and to indicate the situation by
the use of a homely analogy which will be within the limits of
the intelligence of your readers."

"Man, he's a wonder--a living wonder!" said McArdle, shaking his
head reflectively. "He'd put up the feathers of a sucking-dove
and set up a riot in a Quakers' meeting. No wonder he has made
London too hot for him. It's a peety, Mr. Malone, for it's a
grand brain! We'll let's have the analogy."

"We will suppose," I read, "that a small bundle of connected
corks was launched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across
the Atlantic. The corks drift slowly on from day to day with the
same conditions all round them. If the corks were sentient we
could imagine that they would consider these conditions to be
permanent and assured. But we, with our superior knowledge, know
that many things might happen to surprise the corks. They might
possibly float up against a ship, or a sleeping whale, or become
entangled in seaweed. In any case, their voyage would probably
end by their being thrown up on the rocky coast of Labrador. But
what could they know of all this while they drifted so gently day
by day in what they thought was a limitless and homogeneous ocean?

Your readers will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in this
parable, stands for the mighty ocean of ether through which we
drift and that the bunch of corks represents the little and