The Country of the Blind, and Other StoriesWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science fiction, English
He describes himself as making a strenuous effort to attract attention. He
shouted to Lidgett, and tried to seize the boys as they went to and fro.
He only desisted from these attempts when Mrs. Lidgett, whom he (as an
Assistant Master) naturally disliked, entered the room. He says the
sensation of being in the world, and yet not a part of it, was an
extraordinarily disagreeable one. He compared his feelings, not inaptly,
to those of a cat watching a mouse through a window. Whenever he made a
motion to communicate with the dim, familiar world about him, he found an
invisible, incomprehensible barrier preventing intercourse.
He then turned his attention to his solid environment. He found the
medicine bottle still unbroken in his hand, with the remainder of the
green powder therein. He put this in his pocket, and began to feel about
him. Apparently he was sitting on a boulder of rock covered with a velvety
moss. The dark country about him he was unable to see, the faint, misty
picture of the schoolroom blotting it out, but he had a feeling (due
perhaps to a cold wind) that he was near the crest of a hill, and that a
steep valley fell away beneath his feet. The green glow along the edge of
the sky seemed to be growing in extent and intensity. He stood up, rubbing
his eyes.
It would seem that he made a few steps, going steeply downhill, and then
stumbled, nearly fell, and sat down again upon a jagged mass of rock to
watch the dawn. He became aware that the world about him was absolutely
silent. It was as still as it was dark, and though there was a cold wind
blowing up the hill-face, the rustle of grass, the soughing of the boughs
that should have accompanied it, were absent. He could hear, therefore, if
he could not see, that the hillside upon which he stood was rocky and
desolate. The green grew brighter every moment, and as it did so a faint,
transparent blood-red mingled with, but did not mitigate, the blackness of
the sky overhead and the rocky desolations about him. Having regard to
what follows, I am inclined to think that that redness may have been an
optical effect due to contrast. Something black fluttered momentarily
against the livid yellow-green of the lower sky, and then the thin and
penetrating voice of a bell rose out of the black gulf below him. An
oppressive expectation grew with the growing light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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