II.
All of our readers will remember the curiosity, the speculation, thehorror, the apprehension, and the sympathy universally excited when, onthe tenth of September, it was learned from the morning papers thatRussell, the new capital of Harrison, was cut off from allcommunication. Each morning sheet hinted darkly at the cause of thisunheard-of calamity. The _Daily Braggart_ said there was no doubt that acyclone of gigantic proportions, followed by a water-spout, had sweptthe city entirely away, and that its evening edition would print fulldetails of the "awful visitation," with pictures by their specialartists, now on the spot, illustrating the ruin.
Rut there was one piece of additional news about Russell that only the_Daily Planet_ gave. Let us quote, in order to be perfectly accurate.The sheet is before us as we write:
"EXTRAORDINARY CALAMITY!
"RUSSELL CUT OFF FROM ALL COMMUNICATION!
"_The citizens of the State of Harrison are wild with apprehension. As yet we cannot speculate on the nature of this disaster. Up to this moment no one knows what it is. We will be honest, and say we know no more than our neighbors. But this much is assured: Not only is communication cut off within a radius of twenty miles of the ill-fated city, but it is impossible to re-establish it at present. There are forces at work as yet uncatalogued by scientists. There is a definite circle drawn about Russell, and to cross it means death. Two men repairing the C. H. & S. F. tracks dropped, smitten by a mysterious and invisible hand. The white mile post announced that Russell was twenty miles from the spot where the corpses of these brave fellows lay. What baneful miasma envelops this broad area? What is the fate of the thousands within its borders? Time will tell. Our reporters are on the spot. But as we go to press we do not know._"
Most people sniffed at this "dead line" as the wildest newspaper canardof the lot. Many shook their heads. While those who had relatives orfriends or business connections in Russell tried to drown their horriblesuspense as best they could.
The _Planet_, it may be remembered, closed its leading editorial asfollows:
"_We are a Democratic paper, and we had little love for this baby State and its upstart capital, created solely to guarantee a Republican majority at the next presidential election. But when the news that an inscrutable fate had overtaken this fraudulent State (we may be pardoned for saying that it seems to us a sort of Divine retribution for political jobbery) party feeling was washed away in that common compassion that all Christians feel for their enemies in adversity._"
Who could mistake the diction of the uncompromising but tender chief?
But it happened this time, as so often before, that the _Planet's_information was true. Again that enterprising daily had made its "scoop"on the other papers. Its elation was pardonable.
It is an indisputable fact that civilization as it progresses developsin its advance new diseases and new catastrophes. Hay fever and lagrippe were not popular a hundred years ago. To breed a first-classcyclone, cut down your trees and dry up your water supply. This has beenconscientiously attended to, and the natural consequences havefollowed. Science can eliminate the simooms that strike Bombay andCalcutta at such a day year after year, by simply flooding the desert ofSahara. England can be more easily conquered by deflecting the GulfStream a quarter of a point than by a thousand ironclads. Who knows butthat it would be less expensive to change her into a glacier than tobombard her with hundred-ton guns?
More white people are killed by railroad accidents yearly in our highlycivilized land than were slaughtered by native braves in the palmy daysof the "Last of the Mohicans." It is a fact that our boastedcivilization, instead of affording surer protection, murders more men inone way or another than barbarism, only in the present case the victimsare not eaten; the coffins are sumptuous; the processions decorous; themourners in good form; the burial service pregnant with hope, andculture is not shocked. With us murder is committed by corporations, notby paid assassins. That is the difference. The assassin fails in hisblows once in a while; the corporation never.
But where was Russell? What was the nature of the calamity? Theimpenetrable fact that there was an actual, invisible dead line castabout that territory, with Russell as its centre, became confirmed withevery report. It will be recalled that all the railroad tracks enteringthe doomed city were twisted as if clawed by a maddened monster. Itpresented a similar appearance to the South Carolina railroad on the dayof the Charleston earthquake. This gave rise again to the earthquaketheory. But why had not the shock been felt? No rumble had been heard.Could an earthquake account for the deadly something that filled theair?
No intelligence came from Russell. The way must be forced to it.
Who forgets the relief expeditions started in wagons and on foot fromevery point of the compass? These were invariably repelled on reachingthe dead line. We could understand the fetid miasma that made the GreatDismal Swamp an unknowable country. We could comprehend the encroachingdead line of the spreading yellow fever bacillus. But this fearfuldeath, that brooded silently, impenetrably, mysteriously and occultlyover a vast area once the garden of civilization, baffled all attemptsat explanation. Even birds were observed to vacate this tract. Only afew sinister buzzards wheeled their flight, with straight, unflappingwings, high above Russell, almost out of sight, as if they were theembodied ghosts of Russell's unbaptized inhabitants.
What was that implacable power? Reporters and trackmen who steadilyscoffed at it were themselves attacked with violent heart-beats whenthey crossed the invisible and fatal line. A convulsion of all themembers followed, as if in an epileptic fit,--insensibility and,generally, death ensued. Many who were with difficulty rescued, and whofinally recovered, averred that they experienced an overcoming odor,acid and penetrating, such as is peculiar to ozone when manufactured ina chemical laboratory.
At the end of the fourth day of Russell's complete isolation a despairsettled upon the country. England was staggered by the uniqueness ofthese phenomena. The French Academy of Sciences, after a prolongedsitting, announced that they could suggest no solution. It is only toowell remembered that the newspaper bulletins were besieged in our owncities, but these offered no further information or encouragement. Wasadvanced civilization responsible for this disaster or not? That was theburning question. Or was this a special visitation of God, a plague newto the medical world, spontaneously generated, sporadic in itsappearance, and destined forever to be an _obscurum per obscurius_ orperhaps to spread with further undetermined horrors?
Thousands were now on the ground. They encompassed that section about asJoshua did the city of Jericho, as the settlers did the Territory ofOklahoma on the day of its opening, as the rabble do a house when amurder has been committed.
On the evening of the fourth day from the time when the messenger boybrought the first despatch to the office of the _Daily Planet_, itschief, obviously nervous for the first time in his public life, receivedthe following cipher telegram, which cheered him wonderfully:
"_On the spot. Situation desperate. Worse than described. Will penetrate to Russell or die. Dead line still impassable. Trust me._
"SWIFT"