Strange and wild were the trials he had made; many and great the sacrifices and blood offerings lavished on his dead in the hope of seeing that one spasm which would show that death might yet be conquered; many the engines, the machines, the artificial hearts, the applications of electricity that he had invented; many the powerful reactives he had distilled wherewith to excite the long dead nerves, or those which but two days had ceased to feel.

The hidden essence was still undiscovered, the meaning of vitality eluded his profoundest study, his keenest pursuit.

The body died, and yet the nerves could still be made to act as though alive for the space of a few hours--in rare cases for a day.

With his eyes he had seen a dead man spring half across a room from the effects of a few drops of musk--on the first day; with his eyes he had seen the dead twist themselves, and move and grin under the electric current--provided it had not been too late.

But that "too late" had baffled him, and from his first belief that life might be restored when once gone, he had descended to what seemed the simpler proposition of the two, to the problem of maintaining life indefinitely so long as its magic essence lingered in the flesh and blood.