THE noblest fellows in the world, excepting engine-drivers, are these explorers, who are hurled ashore with no survivors on atolls, where a pirate crew have read their "Treasure Island" through. What is the force that makes these chaps leave England, home and beauty? Is it their health? The Law perhaps? or just a sense of duty? or don't you think that it may be their noble curiosity? They do not, like the doctor, grope in surreptitious quest of pirates with a stethoscope or listen to their chest, affirming that the countersign must always be "Say ninety-nine." Nor when the ship's boy overhears the second mate impart at midnight to the mutineers the secret of the chart, do they employ the chart for your uninteresting temperature. Nor do they have a pocket-book in which they make a note, whenever they shake hands with Hook, or slit a ruffian's throat, nor when they ask for ransom is blackmail described "For services." Certainly not! They want to know the meaning of typhoons, where mammoths, where the buffalo under what secret moons have, like Red Indians, with no sound attained what Happy Hunting Ground? They steer beyond the evening-star, and challenge their own dream to overtake the things that are behind the things that seem, and do not care if death should be the price of curiosity. Whereas the doctor's only wish is to discover whether a child who lives on milk and fish will vanish altogether, or change into the sort of fairy they bring in bottles from the dairy. Moreover they direct their art to liver, bile, and lung, and never notice you've a heart until a valve is sprung, and only think about your eyes the moment when the vision dies. And thus there are two ways, it seems, and anyone can choose them, to risk your life and keep your dreams, or keep it safe and lose them. Take your own choice (I don't advise) of what for you is Paradise. But whether what you choose is free, or medically cribbed is, as with all men your course will be 'twixt Scylla and Charybdis. But still for heroes there are seas beyond the Gates of Hercules. |