Page:The Poison Belt - Conan Doyle, 1913.djvu/227

 186  shook hands and laughed as we came together, and how Mrs. Challenger kissed us all in her emotion, before she finally threw herself into the bear-hug of her husband!

"But they could not have been asleep!" cried Lord John. "Dash it all, Challenger, you don't mean me to believe that those folk were asleep with their staring eyes and stiff limbs, and that awful death-grin on their faces!"

"It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said Challenger. "It has been a rare phenomenon in the past and has constantly been mistaken for death. While it endures the temperature falls, the respiration disappears, the heart-beat is indistinguishable—in fact, it is death, save that it is evanescent. Even the most comprehensive mind"—here he closed his eyes and simpered—"could hardly conceive a universal outbreak of it in this fashion." "You may label it catalepsy," remarked Summerlee, "but, after all, that is only a