Every woman who reads this would, in all probability, like to box Macpherson’s ears. And, indeed, he had the good grace to be ashamed of himself, though, if doctors did not push individual experiments a trifle too far occasionally, the mass of humanity would be the worse for their caution. Nevertheless, though he contented himself with asking the third officer to shield the boy from the keen surface air of the sea, his mind was busy. Karl’s wonderful comprehension of root words was known to him, and he felt that the expressions “dark,” “fog,” “something seems to press me back,” even the unwonted excuse of being “tired,” were not chosen at random. Then he remembered how a friend had taken him once, when home on furlough, to witness certain telephonic tests conducted by the Post-office engineers at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. An instrument was affixed to an appliance which registered 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 miles of resistance at will, for such high tensions are needed when sea-cables are laid. It was instructive to hear the same human voice dying away as the conductivity of the wire decreased. Again, he happened to be present when the Indo-European Telegraph Company carried out their famous experiment, and actually linked a transmitter in Paris with a receiver in Calcutta. As far away as Teheran the action of the electric indicator was sharp and distinct, but from Constantinople westwards through Vienna the current became sluggish, until the supreme effort of Paris required slow and careful manipulation ere the message emerged from chaos. Here were unfailing indications of what Karl meant by “pressing back” and “tired.” But what was the significance of the darkness, the fog? Suddenly Macpherson asked himself: “What was the force which fought against the thousands of miles of telegraph wire? Suppose there was no wire? Yet the force remained!” It came to him that the child cast his bright intelligence forth in ever-spreading Hertzian waves, and that his perceptive powers diminished with distance, on the well-established ratio of the decrease of sound as the circle widens and air-waves lengthen with slower movement. Moreover, the apparent difficulty of reconciling his instant discovery of planets known only to astronomers with his inability to penetrate deeply the gloom of earth vanished when the lateral density of the air mantle was taken into account. To see the three moons of Jupiter! That was a marvel in itself. Strangely enough, Du Maurier, an artist dreamer, had attributed the power to one of the characters in his novel _The Martian_. But that was a phase in a spirit romance; here was a child with eyes like telescopes and ears like telephones. Greatly was the scientist tempted to try Karl again on the nearer, and wholly unknown, physical features of Colombo. But he resisted and vigorously chafed the Armenian’s chest and back, though, to be sure, the tenacious clinging of the youth to the canvas buoy rendered such massage difficult.