overlooking them all, one English boy witha clean Eton collar sitting on a bicycle, supported by a lamp-post whichhis arms clasped, he proving clearly the extraordinary suddenness of thedeath which had overtaken them all.
I did not know whither, nor why, I went, nor had I the least ideawhether all this was visually seen by me in the world which I had known,or in some other, or was all phantasy of my disembodied spirit--for Ihad the thought that I, too, might be dead since old ages, and my spiritwandering now through the universe of space, in which there is neithernorth nor south, nor up nor down, nor measure nor relation, nor aughtwhatever, save an uneasy consciousness of a dream about bottomlessness.Of grief or pain, I think, I felt nothing; though I have a sort ofmemory now that some sound, resembling a sob or groan, though it wasneither, came at regular clockwork intervals from my bosom during threeor four days. Meantime, my brain registered like a tape-machine detailsthe most frivolous, the most ludicrous--the name of a street, StrondStreet, Snargate Street; the round fur cap--black fur for the side,white ermine for the top--of a portly Karaite priest on his back, whoserobes had been blown to his spread knees, as if lifted and neatly foldedthere; a violin-bow gripped between the thick, irregular teeth of alittle Spaniard with brushed-back hair and mad-looking eyes; odd shoeson the foot of a French girl, one black, one brown. They lay in thestreet about as numerous as gunners who fall round their carriage, atintervals of five to ten feet, the majority--as was the case also inNorway, and on the ships--in poses of distraction, with spread arms, orwildly distorted limbs, like men who, the instant before death, calledupon the rocks and hills to cover them.
* * * * *
On the left I came to an opening in the land, called, I believe, 'TheShaft,' and into this I turned, climbing a very great number of steps,almost covered at one point with dead: the steps I began to count, butleft off, then the dead, and left off. Finally, at the top, which mustbe even higher than the Castle, I came to a great open space laid outwith gravel-walks, and saw fortifications, barracks, a citadel. I didnot know the town, except by passings-through, and was surprised at thebreadth of view. Between me and the Castle to the east lay the districtof crowding houses, brick and ragstone, mixed in the distance with vagueazure haze; and to the right the harbour, the sea, with their ships; andvisible around me on the heights seven or eight dead, biting the dust;the sun now high and warm, with hardly a cloud in the sky; and yonder amist, which was the coast of France.
It seemed too big for one poor man.
My head nodded. I sat on a bench, black-painted and hard, the seat andback of horizontal boards, with intervals; and as I looked, I nodded,heavy-headed and weary: for it was too big for me. And as I nodded, withforehead propped on my left hand, and the packet of pemmican cakes in myright, there was in my head, somehow, an old street-song of mychildhood: and I groaned it sleepily, like coronachs and drear funerealnenias, dirging; and the packet beat time in my right hand, falling andraising, falling heavily and rising, in time.
I'll buy the ring, You'll rear the kids: Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. . . . . . . . . . . Ting, ting, Won't we be happy? Ting, ting, That shall be it: I'll buy the ring, You'll rear the kids: Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. . . . . . . . . . .
So maundering, I fell forward upon my face, and for twenty-three hours,the living undistinguished from the dead, I slept there.
* * * * *
I was awakened by drizzle, leapt up, looked at a silver chronometerwhich, attached by a leather to my belt, I carried in mybreeches-pocket, and saw that it was 10 A.M. The sky was dark, and amoaning wind--almost a new thing now to me--had arisen.
I ate some pemmican, for I had a reluctance--needless as it turnedout--to touch any of the thousand luxuries here, sufficient no doubt,in a town like Dover alone, to last me five or six hundred years, if Icould live so long; and, having eaten, I descended The Shaft, and spentthe whole day, though it rained and blustered continually, in wanderingabout. Reasoning, in my numb way, from the number of ships on the sea, Iexpected to find the town over-crowded with dead: but this was not so;and I should say, at a venture, that not a thousand English, nor fifteenthousand foreigners, were in it: for that westward rage and stampedemust have operated here also, leaving the town empty but for the evernew-coming hosts.
The first thing which I did was to go into an open grocer's shop, whichwas also a post and telegraph office, with the notion, I suppose, to geta message through to London. In the shop a single gas-light was burningits last, and this, with that near the pier, were the only two that Isaw: and ghastly enough they looked, transparently wannish, and as itwere ashamed, like blinking night-things overtaken by the glare of day.I conjectured that they had so burned and watched during months, oryears: for they were now blazing diminished, with streaks and rays inthe flame, as if by effort, and if these were the only two, they musthave needed time to all-but exhaust the works. Before the counter lay afashionably-dressed negro with a number of tied parcels scattered abouthim, and on the counter an empty till, and behind it a tall thin womanwith her face resting sideways in the till, fingers clutching the outercounter-rim, and such an expression of frantic terror as I never saw. Igot over the counter to a table behind a wire-gauze, and, like a numbfool, went over the Morse alphabet in my mind before touching thetransmitting key, though I knew no code-words, and there, big enough tobe seen, was the ABC dial, and who was to answer my message I did notask myself: for habit was still strong upon me, and my mind refused toreason from what I saw to what I did not see; but the moment I touchedthe key, and peered greedily at the galvanometer-needle at my right, Isaw that it did not move, for no current was passing; and with a kind offright, I was up, leapt, and got away from the place, though there was agreat number of telegrams about the receiver which, if I had been in mysenses, I would have stopped and read.
Turning the corner of the next street, I saw wide-open the door of asubstantial large house, and went in. From bottom to top there was noone there, except one English girl, sitting back in an easy-chair in thedrawing-room, which was richly furnished with Valenciennes curtains andazure-satin things. She was a girl of the lowest class, hardly clad inblack rags, and there she lay with hanging jaw, in a very crooked andawkward pose, a jemmy at her feet, in her left hand a roll ofbank-notes, and in her lap three watches. In fact, the bodies which Isaw here were, in general, either those of new-come foreigners, or elseof the very poor, the very old, or the very young.
But what made me remember this house was that I found here on one of thesofas a newspaper: _The Kent Express_; and sitting unconscious of mydead neighbour, I pored a long while over what was written there.
It said in a passage which I tore out and kept:
'Telegraphic communication with Tilsit, Insterburg, Warsaw, Cracow,Przemysl, Gross Wardein, Karlsburg, and many smaller towns lyingimmediately eastward of the 21st parallel of longitude has ceased duringthe night. In some at least of them there must have been operators stillat their duty, undrawn into the great westward-rushing torrent: but asall messages from Western Europe have been answered only by that dreadmysterious silence which, just three months and two days since,astounded the world in the case of Eastern New Zealand, we can onlyassume that these towns, too, have been added to the long and mournfullist; indeed, after last evening's Paris telegrams we might haveprophesied with some certainty, not merely their overthrow, but even thehour of it: for the rate-uniformity of the slow-riding vapour which istouring our globe is no longer doubtful, and has even been definitelyfixed by Professor Craven at 100-1/2 miles per day, or 4 miles 330 yardsper hour. Its nature, its origin, remains, of course, nothing but matterof conjecture: for it leaves no living thing behind it: nor, God knows,is that of any moment now to us who remain. The rumour that it isassociated with an odour of almonds is declared, on high authority, tobe improbable; but the morose purple of its impending gloom has beenattested by
tardy fugitives from the face of its rolling and smokymarch.
'Is this the end? We do not, and cannot, believe it. Will the pure skywhich we to-day see above us be invaded in nine days, or less, by thissmoke of the Pit of Darkness? In spite of the assurances of thescientists, we still doubt. For, if so, to what purpose that long dramaof History, in which we seem to see the Hand of the Dramaturgist?Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, satisfying to one'ssense of the complete: but History, so far, long as it has been,resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act. Can it be that theManager, utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and 'hang up' thepiece for ever? Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet: andif the fair earth which he has turned into Hell, send forth now upon himthe smoke of Hell, little the wonder. But we cannot yet believe. Thereis a sparing strain in nature, and through the world, as a thread, isspun a silence which smiles, and on the end of events we