Professor Challenger returns from the Lost World—to face a cosmic peril that may wipe out all life on Earth!

Professor Challenger, the intrepid curmudgeon first introduced in The Lost World, discovers that the Earth is hurtling toward a belt of poisonous gas that may exterminate the human race. He sends an urgent summons to three companions, survivors from his astonishing dinosaur expedition in South America.

And he gives them one alarming command—“Bring oxygen.”

Locked together in a sealed room, breathing canisters of oxygen, Professor Challenger, Edward Malone, Lord John Roxton, and Professor Summerlee watch the outside world go mad.

Earth careens into the poison belt. People collapse in their tracks, unmonitored machines run amok … and civilization dies before their eyes.

And their oxygen is running out …

From the creator of Sherlock Holmes, The Poison Belt is the second adventure featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest scientist hero.

The Poison Belt

Professor Challenger Adventures

A. Conan Doyle

Foreword by Kevin J. Anderson

The Poison Belt

Copyright © The Poison Belt was originally published in 1913.

This work is in the public domain.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

The ebook edition of this book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share the ebook edition with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

WordFire Press has chosen to reissue selected out-of-print novels, in hopes of creating a new readership. Because these works were written in a different time, some attitudes and phrasing may seem outdated to a modern audience. After careful consideration, rather than revising the author’s work, we have chosen to preserve the original wording and intent.

EBook ISBN: 978-1-68057-276-6

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68057-275-9

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-68057-277-3

Case Bind ISBN: 978-1-68057-278-0

Illustrations by Harry Roundtree in The Strand Magazine (March-July 1913)

Cover design by Janet McDonald. Cover artwork images by Adobe Stock

Kevin J. Anderson, Art Director

Published by WordFire Press, LLC, PO Box 1840, Monument CO 80132

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press eBook Edition 2021

WordFire Press Trade Paperback Edition 2021

WordFire Press Hardcover Edition 2021

Printed in the USA

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Contents

Foreword

Kevin J. Anderson

Preface

1. The Blurring of Lines

2. The Tide of Death

3. Submerged

4. A Diary of the Dying

5. The Dead World

6. The Great Awakening

About the Author

About the Illustrator

If You Liked…

Other WordFire Press Classic Titles

Foreword

Overshadowed by Holmes

Kevin J. Anderson

At the turn of the 20th century, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) was one of the world’s most popular writers. His creation, the great detective Sherlock Holmes, ranks as one of the most beloved and recognizable characters in all of literature.

Any writer strives to produce stories that will attain worldwide acclaim and draw legions of fans, devoted readers who wait breathlessly for the next work. The popularity of Sherlock Holmes granted Doyle enough success that he was able to lead a very comfortable life as a writer.

For Doyle, however, Holmes was also a curse, a creative burden. The fans were like endlessly gawping baby chicks: hungry, demanding more, more, more.

In 1912, he created a new, larger-than-life series character, Professor George Edward Challenger, in hopes of developing an entirely new popular hero and legion of fans, but he was unable to break the addiction and the demand for more Sherlock Holmes stories.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Scotland, where he attended medical school, then traveled as a ship’s doctor to Africa and even the Arctic. He returned to the United Kingdom and settled down on the English coast. When he was just a student with tight finances, Doyle began writing to earn extra income. He wrote about various subjects that interested him, ranging from mummies to man-eating plants—fodder that would find its way into his exceptional and imaginative adventures.

Doyle wrote two early novels, but his first full-length publication, in 1887, was the novel A Study in Scarlet, which introduced Sherlock Holmes, followed by another Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four (1890), both of which were well received. Doyle, however, considered such writing to be hackwork strictly for income.

In the early 1890s, Doyle made a crucial decision which had tremendous impact for himself and for Holmes. Instead of writing full-length novels, he decided to feature his great detective in a series of short fiction.

Magazines were booming in London, and the author realized that a recurring character in numerous stories would build an audience, whereas full novels that were serialized in the magazines often saw dwindling readership as customers missed one or two installments. That choice was commercially brilliant. Self-contained Sherlock Holmes mystery stories were a huge hit, and readers lined up at the newsstands waiting for each new appearance of their favorite eccentric detective.

Because of the tremendous success, Doyle demanded—and received—more and more payment for each new Holmes tale, but even so he soon found them to be an intense burden. Doyle considered his “serious work” to be historical fiction. He personally believed The White Company, which takes place in the 14th century, to be his masterpiece, while he thought the Holmes stories were lowbrow. The readers disagreed.

As the stories’ popularity reached a fever pitch, so, too, did Doyle’s impatience with writing them. Near the end of 1891, he expressed his exasperation in a letter to his mother: “I think of slaying Holmes … and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.” To which his mother responded, “You won’t! You can’t! You mustn’t!”

But by 1893, Doyle had become so weary of his great detective that he killed off Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland in a final duel with his archenemy Professor Moriarty. The readers wailed, the publishers gnashed their teeth and despaired. Doyle was firm and focused on writing other work, but nothing approached the same measure of success.

Finally, nine years later, he had to face the reality that his fame and success was forever pinned on Sherlock Holmes. His character had become greater than the author’s desire for independence.

In 1902 Sherlock Holmes returned in a new novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, which launched a new series of Holmes tales with nothing more than a glib explanation that reports of the detective’s death had been greatly exaggerated.

Even so, Doyle had not completely given up his aspirations of creating a new character to rival Holmes.

In 1912, Doyle finally recaptured some of that spark by introducing a new series hero utterly unlike the persistent Sherlock Holmes. The Lost World was the first novel to feature the irascible Professor George Edward Challenger, a groundbreaking tale of adventurers exploring a remote South American plateau where dinosaurs had never become extinct. Challenger was a loud, opinionated, energetic bear of a man—a prototype for Indiana Jones. Doyle himself described Challenger as “a character who has always amused me more than any other which I have invented.”

The Lost World was an immense success, and the author himself had great fun disguising himself as the bearlike, bearded Professor for promotion and book signings after the publication of The Lost World.

A year later, the second Professor Challenger adventure appeared, The Poison Belt.

Despite his efforts and hopes, however, Doyle was never able to make Professor Challenger into such a crowd favorite. The great adventurer starred in only one more novel, The Land of Mist, in 1925, and two other short stories “When the World Screamed” (1928) and “The Disintegration Machine” (1929).

Even though overshadowed by Sherlock Holmes in Doyle’s career, Professor Challenger is a noteworthy, groundbreaking character in imaginative fiction.

WordFire Press is pleased to produce fine new editions of these novels. Come along for the adventure. We hope you enjoy the ride.

—Kevin J. Anderson, publisher

WordFire Press

Being an account of another adventure of

Prof. George E. Challenger, Lord John Roxton,

Prof. Summerlee, and Mr. E.D. Malone,

the discoverers of “The Lost World”

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 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! Well, 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 obscure planetary system to which we belong. A third-rate sun, with its rag tag and bobtail of insignificant satellites, we float under the same daily conditions towards some unknown end, some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimate confines of space, where we are swept over an etheric Niagara or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no room here for the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent, Mr. James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with a very close and interested attention every indication of change in those cosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate fate may depend.’”

“Man, he’d have made a grand meenister,” said McArdle. “It just booms like an organ. Let’s get doun to what it is that’s troubling him.”

“‘The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer’s lines of the spectrum point, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of a subtle and singular character. Light from a planet is the reflected light of the sun. Light from a star is a self-produced light. But the spectra both from planets and stars have, in this instance, all undergone the same change. Is it, then, a change in those planets and stars? To me such an idea is inconceivable. What common change could simultaneously come upon them all? Is it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but in the highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around us, and chemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then, is the third possibility? That it may be a change in the conducting medium, in that infinitely fine ether which extends from star to star and pervades the whole universe. Deep in that ocean we are floating upon a slow current. Might that current not drift us into belts of ether which are novel and have properties of which we have never conceived? There is a change somewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it. It may be a good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a neutral one. We do not know. Shallow observers may treat the matter as one which can be disregarded, but one who like myself is possessed of the deeper intelligence of the true philosopher will understand that the possibilities of the universe are incalculable and that the wisest man is he who holds himself ready for the unexpected. To take an obvious example, who would undertake to say that the mysterious and universal outbreak of illness, recorded in your columns this very morning as having broken out among the indigenous races of Sumatra, has no connection with some cosmic change to which they may respond more quickly than the more complex peoples of Europe? I throw out the idea for what it is worth. To assert it is, in the present stage, as unprofitable as to deny it, but it is an unimaginative numbskull who is too dense to perceive that it is well within the bounds of scientific possibility.