The horror of the thing began to leave me, for I was fascinated by what he said, and I began to feel the same spirit with which he was inspired.
[Illustration: “He lifted the sheet and I started back with a strange mixture of awe and horror.” (See page 8.)]
He took me into his private laboratory, and before my eyes, with only the contents of a few re-agent bottles, a blowpipe, and an electric battery, he made a mass of human flesh. I will not give you the formula, neither will I tell you in detail how it was done. God forbid that any other man should see what I saw afterward.
“Now, all that remains is the final experiment, and that with your help I propose making to-night,” said the Professor. “What we have to do is as much of a riddle to me as it is to you. It is purely and simply an experiment. I am going to pass through that lifeless clay the same current of electricity which, if sent through a living man, would produce death. Of course, with a man who had died from the giving out of some vital function I could not hope to succeed, but the organs of this man which I have made are in a perfectly healthy condition. It is my hope, therefore, that the current which would destroy a living man will bring this thing to life.”
We bore that naked body, not a corpse, and yet so terribly like, into the electric laboratory, and laid it on a slab of slate. Just at the base of its brain we scraped a little bare spot not larger than a pea, and, as I live, a drop of blood oozed out. On the right wrist, just over the pulse, we made another abrasion, and to these spots we brought the positive and negative wires from off the mains of the street current outside.
I held the two bare uninsulated bits of copper close to the flesh, Professor Holbrok switched into circuit 2,000 volts of electricity, and then before our starting eyes that thing which was only a mass of chemical compounds _became a man_.
A convulsive twitching brought the body almost into a sitting position, then the mouth opened and there burst forth from the lips a groan.
I have been in the midst of battles, and I have seen men dying all around me, torn to ribbons by shot and shell, and I have not flinched; but when I tore the wires from that writhing, groaning shape, and saw its chest begin to heave with spasmodic breathing, I fainted.