A Real-Life Experience That Eclipsed a Flight of Fancy

There had to be an exception to my conviction that no one-- no one --can foresee the future. (The ability occasionally to predict a future event from a set of circumstances is of course established, but there is no certainty in it.)

“I would be very much inclined to agree with you,” writes Keith Douglas Young of Coronado, “except that at the time I read your story my mind flashed back to Mark Twain’s classic ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.’

“Since I am reasonably certain you must have read this at some time in your life, you will recall, therefore, how the time-traveling hero, Hank Morgan, escaped execution by successfully predicting an eclipse of the sun. Implausible, perhaps, but there is almost nothing else he could have prophesied. Eclipses, seasons and the return of comets are about the only things that man has been able to predict with accuracy.”

Though I had forgotten Hank Morgan’s name, I do indeed remember his fabulous exploit in predicting the eclipse. Looking into the book again, I find that Morgan is superintendent of a Hartford arms factory. In a crowbar fight with a man called Hercules, he receives a blow to the head. He wakes up in England in the year 528. One of Arthur’s knights takes him prisoner and escorts him to Camelot. Being strange, he is sentenced to be burned alive at high noon.

Told that the date is June 21, 528, he remembers that a solar eclipse occurred on that date at three minutes after noon. He warns them that if he is executed he will black out the sun and throw the world into darkness. Just as Merlin, the court magician, is about to light the fire, a shadow falls across the sun. The court is panicked. There is much fear and trembling and awe of a man with such powers. Even Merlin is eclipsed. Arthur not only spares Morgan but makes him his right-hand man. Such is the power of prophecy.

By the way, it was a wonderful book. I probably read it when I was 12. It does not have the literary stature of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” but I liked it better.

In his notes for the book Twain evidently planned to have fun with knights in armor. “Dream of being a knight-errant in armor in the middle ages. . . . No pockets in the armor. . . . No way to manage certain requirements of nature. . . . Can’t scratch. . . . cold in the head--can’t blow--can’t get at handkerchief, can’t use iron sleeve. . . . Make disagreeable clatter when I enter church. . . . “

In the writing, the book became a satirical indictment of human tyranny and so-called progress but it remains a comic classic. (Picture knights in armor riding bicycles and playing baseball.)

Even more fascinating than Twain’s fictional account is Young’s own story of a similar experience in Papua “a good many years ago.”

He recalls that “armed with the exact date and time of a solar eclipse, I was able to astound the entire population of a Papuan village when, with a few magical waves of my extended arms and some muttered incantations, I was able to obscure the face of what up to that moment had been a blazing tropical sun. Not only that, but to restore its brilliance when I had managed to overcome the feigned displeasure which had compelled me to resort to apparent magic.”

I don’t know exactly what Young means by “a good many years ago,” but I imagine the time was after World War II, before Papua became independent as Papua New Guinea.

Perhaps then Papua was still much like it was pictured in the National Geographic magazines of my boyhood. The natives were extremely primitive--perhaps the last primitives left on Earth. They wore only loincloths--men and women--they used primitive tools, they tattooed and scarred themselves, and they believed in various spirit gods. Their astonishment at Young’s magic must have been even more profound than that of Arthur’s court.

“My clubmates at the Adventurers Club may not regard me as a fully qualified magician,” Young says, “but there’s a certain tribe which once did. I was back in Papua New Guinea as recently as last July--Lae, Madang, Oro Bay, etc., but the folk there seem a great deal more sophisticated these days.”

I suppose all people everywhere aspire to modernity. We can’t expect them to remain primitive just to please National Geographic and us. Everyone wants flush toilets, microwave ovens and television.

Yet there is something melancholy in Young’s report that “the folk there seem a great deal more sophisticated these days.”

Sooner or later they’ll be wearing business suits and miniskirts and their economy will be based on the manufacture of computers.

Next thing you know they’ll be making their own atom bombs.