A
powerful but lackadaisical fellow might, with only a few dollars at
stake, make a very poor showing; yet to preserve his life he might make
a really wonderful leap. What effect, then, did mental condition exert
on a man like Peters under the circumstances attending this unparalleled
leap? Think of the enormous muscular power developed by the message
received through the nerves from a mind thus affected! His own life, and
that of another, if not of two others, depended upon the success of his
effort. Under such circumstances muscular power would either be
paralyzed, or else intensified beyond our common conception of such
force. Peters positively asserts, that when a boy of sixteen he
frequently leaped from the flat upper deck of a boat--that is, from a
height of twenty feet--into the surrounding water, habitually covering a
distance of from forty to forty-five feet; whilst other boys, under the
same conditions, rarely covered twenty-five feet, and never thirty."
A moment later Bainbridge arose to depart; but he lingered for a moment,
standing, and with his left hand resting on the centre table, began to
speak in a general way of the great antarctic crater and its surrounding
wonders.
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