Under the Seat.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 284, 10 July 1873, Page 11

Under the Seat.

("Cltambers's Journal") " Smoking-carriage, sir ? " asked the tip-expecting porter, as he bore my rugs and minor packages along the platform. I said yes, and he made me comfortable, and received his sixpence. Then the guard came to look after my well-being, but got nothing more than innocent gratitude, which was perhaps all be desired. I have no doubt that I did him injustice in attributing his efforts to induce a fat old gentleman with a cough; a lean old gentleman who was snuffy; and a middle-aged gentleman enveloped in wraps, the lower part of whose face was covered up like a female Turk's, an evident wiD do w-sh utter, to enter my carriage, in order to spite me. Duty to his employers alone made him endeavor to fill up, but the British anxiety to get as much room as possible for my money was strong within me, and stirred uncharitable suspicions. You may lead a horse to the water, or an antinicotinian old gentleman to a smoking-carriage, but you can't make him get in ; and when each in turn put his head into my compartment, he jibbed, for some late occupants of it had been cigar, not pipe smokors, and it was rather strong. So I was apparently left; alone — alone with the "Times," and all the comic weeklies, and a modern poem. The doors were banged, tho engine whistled, the train began to move. It would not stop again till we got to Peterborough, so that I was safe to be undisturbed so far. There were sixseats, and I could occupy as many of them as a limited number of members permitted. I almost wished myself an Octopus, to take full advantage of the situation. Calming down, I hung up my hat, putjon a gaudy piece of needle work, won in a bazaar raffle, lit my pipe, and began to enjoy myself. I sat in the left-hand corner, with my back to the engine, absorbed in a big lawsuit. It is great fun to read a cross-examination, and watch how a clever lawyer will make an honest man perjure himself. "It reads almost like a crime, I remarked aloud ; " but then it is au honorable, lawful, and beneficial crime. Soldiers kill people's bodies, lawyers kill people's reputations, all for the good of society in the long run." While I was uttering the word "run," my ankles were grasped suddenly and firmly ; then, before I could recover from the shock, they wore jerked backwards under tbe seat with such force that I was thrown forwards, sprawling. I tried to rise, but my right wrist was seized, and the arm twisted till I was helpless, and presently I found myself on the floor of the carriage, face downwards, a sharp knee being scientifically pressed into the small of my back, and both arms fixed behind me. My elbows wero tied together, and then the knee was removed, and my ankles were secured. During this latter operation, 1 kicked and struggled. " Hum ! " said a deliberative voice, " that will be awkward. Let's see ; ah, these will do." '• These" were my sticks and umbrella, which some one proceeded to apply as splints to the backs of my legs, using the straps which had kept them in a bundle to fix them at the ankle and above the knee. When he bad done, I was as helpless as a trussed turkey. Then I was turned over carefully and tenderly, and for the first time saw my assailant. He was a gentlemanly looking man, dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, gray trousers, and neckcloth. His hair and whiskers were just turning grizzly, his chin and upper lip were clean shaved. His forehead was high, his eyes prominent and fixed in their expression, his nose aquiline, hia mouth a slit. He was of middle height, spare, but wiry; indeed his muscles must have beeu exceptionally elastic and feline, for you would never have thought, to look at him, that he could stow himself away under the seat of a railway carriage so compactly. He contemplated me, with his chin in his right hand, and his right elbow on his left hand, and said thoughtfully : " Just so. All for the good of society in the long-run — an admirable sentiment, my dear sir , let it be a consolation to you, if I should cause you any little annoyance." He took a shagreen spectacle case from his pocket, wiped the glasses carefully with a silk handkerchief, and adjusted them on his nose. Then he produced an oblong box, which he unlocked, and placed on one of the seats. After which he sat down quietly in the place I had occupied three minutes before, a position which brought him close over my head and chest, as I lay supine and helpless at j his feet. "Do you know anything of anatomy ? " he asked. I was as completely in his power as a witness in the cross-examining counsel's, and prudence dictated that I should be equally ready to answer the most frivolous and impertinent questions with politeness. I said that I did not. " Ah ! " he said; " well, perhaps you may have heard of the spleen? Exactly. Now, science has never as yet beenabletofindouttheuseofthatorgan, and the man who would bequeath that knowledge to posterity, would rank with the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, and confer an inestimable

benefit on humanity for the remainder of the world's lease. I propose to dissect you." "You will not got much glory by that," said I, forcing myself to seem to tako this outrageous practical joke in good part. "An ungrateful generation may or may not profit by your discoveries, but it will infallibly hang you." " Not so," he blandly replied. " I am a surgeon, who once had a very considerable practice, but I had to stand my trial for an experiment, which proved fatal, on one of my patients. The jury, unable to understand the sacrifices which an earnest inquirer is ever ready to offer at the shrine of science, declared mo mad, and I was placed in confinement. You see that I can act with impunity." And he opened the box. I broke out in a cold sweat. Was it all real ? Could the man be in earnest? "But," said I, " surely you can get dead ! bodies to dissect, without having recourse to a crime ? And again, if generations of anatomists have failed, in twenty thousand investigations, to discover the spleen — if you yourself have always failed hitherto, why should you suppose that this one attempt should be more successful than the others ? " " Because, my rtear sir," said the man, with the smile of one who has caught a bright idea, " all former investigations, including my own, have been made on dead subjects, while I propose to examine your vital organs with a powerful magnifying glass, while they are exercising their normal functions." "What!" I gasped. "You will never have the barbarity " • And here my voice choked. '■ O yes ; I have conquered that prejudice against inflicting suffering which is natural to the mind enfeebled by civilisation. For many years I secretly practised vivisection upon animals : I once had a cat, an animal very tenacious of life, under my scalpel for a week. Bufc we have no time to wasle in conversation. You will not be put to any needless suffering ; those iustruments are not my own, blunted for want of use ; I took the precaution of borrowing the case of the gentleman under whose caro I have been placed, before making my escape." While speaking thus, he took out the hideous little instruments, and examined them one by one. They were of various appalling shapes, and I gazed upon them with the horrible fascination of a bird under the power of a snake. Of one only could I tell the use ; a thin, trenchant blade, which cut you almost to look at it. lie knelt across me, arranged his implements on the scat to his right ; laid a note-book, pencil, and watch on that to his left, and took off my neckcloth and collar, murmuring: '"The clothes are very much in my way ; I wish that you were properly prepared for the operation." It flashed across me, in my despair, that I had heard of madmen being foiled by an apparent acquiescence in their murderous intentions. " After all," I forced myself to say, " what is one life to the benefit of the human race ? Since mine is demanded by science, let me aid you. Remove these bonds, and allow me to take off my coat and waistcoat." He smiled and shook his head. "Life is sweet; I will not trust j>ou," he said, unfastening my waistcoat, and turning back the laps as fur as he could. Then taking a pair of scissors, he proceeded to cut a shirtfront away, so that presently my chest was bared to his experiments. Whether I closed my eyes or was seized with vertigo, I do not know, but for a moment or two I lost sight of everything, and had visions ; a sort of grotesque nightmare it was, the figures in which I recall but very indistinctly ; but I remember that the moat prominent of them was a pig, or rather a pork, hanging up outside a butcher's shop, the appearance of which bore a mysterious resemblance to myself. These delirious fantasies were dispelled by a sharp pang ; the anatomist had made a first slight incision. I saw his calm face leaning over me ; the cruel blade with which he was about to make another and a deeper cut ; his fingers, already crimson with my blood : and I struggled frantically. My operator immediately withdrew his armed hand, and stood erect. Then, watching his opportunity, be placed his right foot on the lower part of my breast-bone, so that by pressure he could suffocate me. " Listen, my friend," ho said : " I will endeavor not to injure any vital organ, but if you wriggle about, I shall not be able to avoid doing so. Another thing, if you" He was interrupted by three sharp whistles from the engine, so shrill and piercing as to drown his voice. " Impede me by these absurd convulsive movements, I shall be compelled to sever those muscles, which " He never completed his sentence. There was a mighty shock, a crash as if all the worlds had rushed together. I was shot under the seat, where I lay uninjured, and in safety, amidst the most horrible din ; breaking, tearing, shrieking, cries for help, and the roar of escaping steam. I had strained the bonds which secured my elbows in my struggles, and the jerk of the collision snapped them ; so that when I began to get my wits-together, I founl my hands free. To liberate my legs was then a very

easy matter, but not bo to extricate myself, the next thing I set about. The whole top of tho carriage, from where the stuffed cushion part ends, was carried sheer away ; and amidst the debris which encumbered my movements lay the mangled and decapitated body of the madman who, intending to assail my life, had, by keeping me down at the bottom of the carriage, saved it. Moeal. — When alone in a railway carriage, it may be worth while to take a look below the seats !