The Germ Growers: An Australian story of adventure and mysteryPotter, Robert
Science
The Germ Growers: An Australian story of adventure and mystery
Potter, Robert
Science fiction, Australian
We bathed quickly, and after our bath we availed ourselves gladly of
the change of raiment which our host had placed at our disposal. We
exchanged a very few words, and those few did not attempt to deal with
the mystery which was thickening about us. Jack’s face expressed a
mixture of surprise and mistrust, each in an extreme degree. My own
face, as Jack told me later on, expressed sheer bewilderment.
Certainly that was my feeling until far into the middle of the next
day. I did not really believe that I was awake and in my senses, and I
kept going back and back in my thoughts trying to find out when and
where I fell asleep or was stunned.
After our bath we returned into the larger room. We were then very
hungry, and we lay down each upon a couch, expecting to be soon
summoned to the evening meal, for by this time the afternoon was well
advanced. The weather was pleasantly warm, and we would have dropped
asleep if we had not been kept awake by hunger. We both remembered at
the same moment the plates of confections which our host had offered
us. We took first one and then another of each kind in the order which
he had indicated, letting them slowly melt in our mouths. The taste of
them, although pleasant, was rather strange, but yet not altogether
unfamiliar. The taste of the first sort faintly resembled the taste of
roast beef; of the second, of pine-apple; of the third, of sweet wine,
specially of muscatel. The effect of them was extraordinary; we felt
that we had partaken of an agreeable and substantial meal; our hunger
and thirst were gone, and we were quite refreshed. And then, as will
happen when one dines well after a laborious and exciting day, we both
fell sound asleep. We slept all through the night and on until a
little after sunrise, and, not to go into details, we rose immediately
and breakfasted as we had dined. We had scarce finished our meal when
we became aware of the tramp of many men at no great distance from us,
and we hurried to the door. We saw then, what neither of us had
noticed the evening before, that the broad road, out of which we had
turned in order to reach our present resting-place, opened out at the
distance of about two hundred yards from the flight of steps into a
large square, formed as the road itself was formed, and planted around
the borders with trees, under the shade of which were several benches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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