sent to sea alone in an open boat to some unknown destination,
your heart might well sink within you. The isolation, the
uncertainty, would oppress you. But if your voyage were made in
a goodly ship, which bore within it all your relations and your
friends, you would feel that, however uncertain your destination
might still remain, you would at least have one common and
simultaneous experience which would hold you to the end in the
same close communion. A lonely death may be terrible, but a
universal one, as painless as this would appear to be, is not,
in my judgment, a matter for apprehension. Indeed, I could
sympathize with the person who took the view that the horror lay
in the idea of surviving when all that is learned, famous, and
exalted had passed away."

"What, then, do you propose to do?" asked Summerlee, who had for
once nodded his assent to the reasoning of his brother scientist.

"To take our lunch," said Challenger as the boom of a gong
sounded through the house. "We have a cook whose omelettes are
only excelled by her cutlets. We can but trust that no cosmic
disturbance has dulled her excellent abilities. My Scharzberger
of '96 must also be rescued, so far as our earnest and united
efforts can do it, from what would be a deplorable waste of a
great vintage." He levered his great bulk off the desk, upon
which he had sat while he announced the doom of the planet.
"Come," said he. "If there is little time left, there is the
more need that we should spend it in sober and reasonable
enjoyment."

And, indeed, it proved to be a very merry meal. It is true that