THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES

I. — The transitory mental aberration of Sidney Davidson, remarkable enough in itself, is still more remarkable if Wade's

explanation is to be credited. It sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spending

an intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, or being watched in our most secret operations by unsuspected

eyes. It happened that I was the immediate witness of Davidson's seizure, and so it falls naturally to me to put the story upon

paper.

When I say that I was the immediate witness of his seizure, I mean that I was the first on the scene. The thing happened at

the Harlow Technical College, just beyond the Highgate Archway. He was alone in the larger laboratory when the thing

happened. I was in a smaller room, where the balances are, writing up some notes. The thunderstorm had completely upset

my work, of course. It was just after one of the louder peals that I thought I heard some glass smash in the other room. I

stopped writing, and turned round to listen. For a moment I heard nothing; the hail was playing the devil's tattoo on the

corrugated zinc of the roof. Then came another sound, a smash—no doubt of it this time. Something heavy had been knocked

off the bench. I jumped up at once and went and opened the door leading into the big laboratory.

I

was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw Davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of the room, with a

dazzled look on his face. My first impression was that he was drunk. He did not notice me. He was clawing out at something

invisible a yard in front of his face. He put out his hand, slowly, rather hesitatingly, and then clutched nothing. "What's come to

it?" he said. He held up his hands to his face, fingers spread out. "Great Scott!" he said. The thing happened three or four

years ago, when every one swore by that personage. Then he began raising his feet clumsily, as though he had expected to

find them glued to the floor.

"Davidson!" cried I. "What's the matter with you?" He turned round in my direction and looked about for me. He looked over

me and at me and on either side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me. "Waves," he said; "and a remarkably neat

schooner. I'd swear that was Bellow's voice. Hullo!" He shouted suddenly at the top of his voice.

I

thought he was up to some foolery. Then I saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our

electrometers. "What's up, man?" said I. "You've smashed the electrometer!"

"Bellows again!" said he. "Friends left, if my hands are gone. Something about electrometers. Which way are you,

Bellows?" He suddenly came staggering towards me. "The damned stuff cuts like butter," he said. He walked straight into the

bench and recoiled. "None so buttery that!" he said, and stood swaying.

I felt scared. "Davidson," said I, "what on earth's come over you?"

He looked round him in every direction. "I could swear that was Bellows. Why don't you show yourself like a man, Bellows?"

It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind. I walked round the table and laid my hand upon his arm. I never

saw a man more startled in my life. He jumped away from me, and came round into an attitude of self-defence, his face fairly

distorted with terror. "Good God!" he cried. "What was that?"

"It's I—Bellows. Confound it, Davidson!"

He jumped when I answered him and stared—how can I express it?—right through me. He began talking, not to me, but to

himself. "Here in broad daylight on a clear beach. Not a place to hide in." He looked about him wildly. "Here! I'm off." He

suddenly turned and ran headlong into the big electro-magnet—so violently that, as we found afterwards, he bruised his

shoulder and jawbone cruelly. At that he stepped back a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, "What, in Heaven's name,

has come over me?" He stood, blanched with terror and trembling violently, with his right arm clutching his left, where that had

collided with the magnet.

By that time I was excited and fairly scared. "Davidson," said I, "don't be afraid."

He was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before. I repeated my words in as clear and as firm a tone as I could

assume. "Bellows," he said, "is that you?"

"Can't you see it's me?"

He laughed. "I can't even see it's myself. Where the devil are we?"

"Here," said I, "in the laboratory."

"The laboratory!" he answered in a puzzled tone, and put his hand to his forehead. "I was in the laboratory—till that flash

came, but I'm hanged if I'm there now. What ship is that?"

"There's no ship," said I. "Do be sensible, old chap."

"No ship!" he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith. "I suppose," said he slowly, "we're both dead. But the

rummy part is I feel just as though I still had a body. Don't get used to it all at once, I suppose. The old shop was struck by

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lightning, I suppose. Jolly quick thing, Bellows—eigh?"

"Don't talk nonsense. You're very much alive. You are in the laboratory, blundering about. You've just smashed a new

electrometer. I don't envy you when Boyce arrives."

He stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates. "I must be deaf," said he. "They've fired a gun, for there

goes the puff of smoke, and I never heard a sound."

I put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed. "We seem to have a sort of invisible bodies," said he.

"By Jove! there's a boat coming round the headland. It's very much like the old life after all—in a different climate."

I shook his arm. "Davidson," I cried, "wake up!"

II. — It was just then that Boyce came in. So soon as he spoke Davidson exclaimed: "Old Boyce! Dead too! What a lark!" I

hastened to explain that Davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. Boyce was interested at once. We both did all we

could to rouse the fellow out of his extraordinary state. He answered our questions, and asked us some of his own, but his

attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about a beach and a ship. He kept interpolating observations concerning

some boat and the davits, and sails filling with the wind. It made one feel queer, in the dusky laboratory, to hear him saying

such things.

He was blind and helpless. We had to walk him down the passage, one at each elbow, to Boyce's private room, and while

Boyce talked to him there, and humoured him about this ship idea, I went along the corridor and asked old Wade to come and

look at him. The voice of our Dean sobered him a little, but not very much. He asked where his hands were, and why he had

to walk about up to his waist in the ground. Wade thought over him a long time—you know how he knits his brows—and then

made him feel the couch, guiding his hands to it. "That's a couch," said Wade. "The couch in the private room of Professor

Boyce. Horse-hair stuffing."

Davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently that he could feel it all right, but he couldn't see it.

"What do you see?" asked Wade. Davidson said he could see nothing but a lot of sand and broken-up shells. Wade gave

him some other things to feel, telling him what they were, and watching him keenly.

"The ship is almost hull down," said Davidson presently, apropos of nothing.

"Never mind the ship," said Wade. "Listen to me, Davidson. Do you know what hallucination means?"

"Rather," said Davidson.

"Well, everything you see is hallucinatory."

"Bishop Berkeley," said Davidson.

"Don't mistake me," said Wade. "You are alive and in this room of Boyce's. But something has happened to your eyes. You

cannot see; you can feel and hear, but not see. Do you follow me?"

"It seems to me that I see too much." Davidson rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. "Well?" he said.

"That's all. Don't let it perplex you. Bellows here and I will take you home in a cab."

"Wait a bit." Davidson thought. "Help me to sit down," said he presently; "and now—I'm sorry to trouble you—but will you tell

me all that over again?"

Wade repeated it very patiently. Davidson shut his eyes, and pressed his hands upon his forehead. "Yes," said he. "It's quite

right. Now my eyes are shut I know you're right. That's you, Bellows, sitting by me on the couch. I'm in England again. And

we're in the dark."

Then he opened his eyes. "And there," said he, "is the sun just rising, and the yards of the ship, and a tumbled sea, and a

couple of birds flying. I never saw anything so real. And I'm sitting up to my neck in a bank of sand."

He bent forward and covered his face with his hands. Then he opened his eyes again. "Dark sea and sunrise! And yet I'm

sitting on a sofa in old Boyce's room!... God help me!"

III. — That was the beginning. For three weeks this strange affection of Davidson's eyes continued unabated. It was far

worse than being blind. He was absolutely helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatched bird, and led about and

undressed. If he attempted to move, he fell over things or struck himself against walls or doors. After a day or so he got used

to hearing our voices without seeing us, and willingly admitted he was at home, and that Wade was right in what he told him.

My sister, to whom he was engaged, insisted on coming to see him, and would sit for hours every day while he talked about

this beach of his. Holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely. He explained that when we left the College and drove

home—he lived in Hampstead village—it appeared to him as if we drove right through a sandhill—it was perfectly black until

he emerged again—and through rocks and trees and solid obstacles, and when he was taken to his own room it made him

giddy and almost frantic with the fear of falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty feet above the rocks of

his imaginary island. He kept saying he should smash all the eggs. The end was that he had to be taken down into his father's

consulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there.

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He described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole, with very little vegetation, except some peaty stuff, and

a lot of bare rock. There were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white and disagreeable to see. The sea was

often rough, and once there was a thunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes. Once or twice seals pulled up

on the beach, but only on the first two or three days. He said it was very funny the way in which the penguins used to waddle

right through him, and how he seemed to lie among them without disturbing them.

I remember one odd thing, and that was when he wanted very badly to smoke. We put a pipe in his hands—he almost

poked his eye out with it—and lit it. But he couldn't taste anything. I've since found it's the same with me—I don't know if it's

the usual case—that I cannot enjoy tobacco at all unless I can see the smoke.

But the queerest part of his vision came when Wade sent him out in a Bath-chair to get fresh air. The Davidsons hired a

chair, and got that deaf and obstinate dependant of theirs, Widgery, to attend to it. Widgery's ideas of healthy expeditions

were peculiar. My sister, who had been to the Dogs' Home, met them in Camden Town, towards King's Cross, Widgery trotting

along complacently, and Davidson, evidently most distressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract Widgery's attention.

He positively wept when my sister spoke to him. "Oh, get me out of this horrible darkness!" he said, feeling for her hand. "I

must get out of it, or I shall die." He was quite incapable of explaining what was the matter, but my sister decided he must go

home, and presently, as they went uphill towards Hampstead, the horror seemed to drop from him. He said it was good to see

the stars again, though it was then about noon and a blazing day.

"It seemed," he told me afterwards, "as if I was being carried irresistibly towards the water. I was not very much alarmed at

first. Of course it was night there—a lovely night."

"Of course?" I asked, for that struck me as odd.

"Of course," said he. "It's always night there when it is day here... Well, we went right into the water, which was calm and

shining under the moonlight—just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and flatter as I came down into it. The surface

glistened just like a skin—it might have been empty space underneath for all I could tell to the contrary. Very slowly, for I rode

slanting into it, the water crept up to my eyes. Then I went under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes.

The moon gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintly glowing, came darting round me—and things

that seemed made of luminous glass; and I passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oily lustre. And so I

drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by one, and the moon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed

became a luminous purple-red. It was all very faint and mysterious, and everything seemed to quiver. And all the while I could

hear the wheels of the Bath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man in the distance selling the special

Pall Mall.

"I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. It became inky black about me, not a ray from above came down

into that darkness, and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The snaky branches of the deeper weeds

flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a time, there were no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping

towards me, and into me and through me. I never imagined such fishes before. They had lines of fire along the sides of them

as though they had been outlined with a luminous pencil. And there was a ghastly thing swimming backwards with a lot of

twining arms. And then I saw, coming very slowly towards me through the gloom, a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it

drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something that drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and

presently I saw in the midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull

tilting over, and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. Then it was I began

to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror came upon me. Ugh! I should have driven right into those half-eaten—things. If

your sister had not come! They had great holes in them, Bellows, and ... Never mind. But it was ghastly!"

IV. — For three weeks Davidson remained in this singular state, seeing what at the time we imagined was an altogether

phantasmal world, and stone blind to the world around him. Then, one Tuesday, when I called I met old Davidson in the

passage. "He can see his thumb!" the old gentleman said, in a perfect transport. He was struggling into his overcoat. "He can

see his thumb, Bellows!" he said, with the tears in his eyes. "The lad will be all right yet."

I rushed in to Davidson. He was holding up a little book before his face, and looking at it and laughing in a weak kind of

way.

"It's amazing," said he. "There's a kind of patch come there." He pointed with his finger. "I'm on the rocks as usual, and the

penguins are staggering and flapping about as usual, and there's been a whale showing every now and then, but it's got too

dark now to make him out. But put something there, and I see it—I do see it. It's very dim and broken in places, but I see it all

the same, like a faint spectre of itself. I found it out this morning while they were dressing me. It's like a hole in this infernal

phantom world. Just put your hand by mine. No—not there. Ah! Yes! I see it. The base of your thumb and a bit of cuff! It looks

like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of the darkling sky. Just by it there's a group of stars like a cross coming out."

From that time Davidson began to mend. His account of the change, like his account of the vision, was oddly convincing.

Over patches of his field of vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew transparent, as it were, and through these translucent

gaps he began to see dimly the real world about him. The patches grew in size and number, ran together and spread until

only here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes. He was able to get up and steer himself about, feed himself once

more, read, smoke, and behave like an ordinary citizen again. At first it was very confusing to him to have these two pictures

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overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern, but in a little while he began to distinguish the real from the

illusory.

At first he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed only too anxious to complete his cure by taking exercise and tonics. But as

that odd island of his began to fade away from him, he became queerly interested in it. He wanted particularly to go down into

the deep sea again, and would spend half his time wandering about the low-lying parts of London, trying to find the water

logged wreck he had seen drifting. The glare of real daylight very soon impressed him so vividly as to blot out everything of

his shadowy world, but of a night-time, in a darkened room, he could still see the white-splashed rocks of the island, and the

clumsy penguins staggering to and fro. But even these grew fainter and fainter, and, at last, soon after he married my sister,

he saw them for the last time.

V. — And now to tell of the queerest thing of all. About two years after his cure I dined with the Davidsons, and after dinner

a man named Atkins called in. He is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and a pleasant, talkative man. He was on friendly terms

with my brother-in-law, and was soon on friendly terms with me. It came out that he was engaged to Davidson's cousin, and

incidentally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of his fiancie. "And, by-the-by," said he,

"here's the old Fulmar."

Davidson looked at it casually. Then suddenly his face lit up. "Good heavens!" said he. "I could almost swear——"

"What?" said Atkins.

"That I had seen that ship before."

"Don't see how you can have. She hasn't been out of the South Seas for six years, and before then——"

"But," began Davidson, and then, "Yes—that's the ship I dreamt of; I'm sure that's the ship I dreamt of. She was standing off

an island that swarmed with penguins, and she fired a gun."

"Good Lord!" said Atkins, who had now heard the particulars of the seizure. "How the deuce could you dream that?"

And then, bit by bit, it came out that on the very day Davidson was seized, H.M.S. Fulmar had actually been off a little rock

to the south of Antipodes Island. A boat had landed overnight to get penguins' eggs, had been delayed, and a thunderstorm

drifting up, the boat's crew had waited until the morning before rejoining the ship. Atkins had been one of them, and he

corroborated, word for word, the descriptions Davidson had given of the island and the boat. There is not the slightest doubt in

any of our minds that Davidson has really seen the place. In some unaccountable way, while he moved hither and thither in

London, his sight moved hither and thither in a manner that corresponded, about this distant island. How is absolutely a

mystery.

That completes the remarkable story of Davidson's eyes. It's perhaps the best authenticated case in existence of real vision

at a distance. Explanation there is none forthcoming, except what Professor Wade has thrown out. But his explanation

invokes the Fourth Dimension, and a dissertation on theoretical kinds of space. To talk of there being "a kink in space" seems

mere nonsense to me; it may be because I am no mathematician. When I said that nothing would alter the fact that the place

is eight thousand miles away, he answered that two points might be a yard away on a sheet of paper, and yet be brought

together by bending the paper round. The reader may grasp his argument, but I certainly do not. His idea seems to be that

Davidson, stooping between the poles of the big electro-magnet, had some extraordinary twist given to his retinal elements

through the sudden change in the field of force due to the lightning.

He thinks, as a consequence of this, that it may be possible to live visually in one part of the world, while one lives bodily in

another. He has even made some experiments in support of his views; but, so far, he has simply succeeded in blinding a few

dogs. I believe that is the net result of his work, though I have not seen him for some weeks. Latterly I have been so busy with

my work in connection with the Saint Pancras installation that I have had little opportunity of calling to see him. But the whole

of his theory seems fantastic to me. The facts concerning Davidson stand on an altogether different footing, and I can testify

personally to the accuracy of every detail I have given.