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Title: Nordenholt's Million

Author: J. J. Connington

Release date: February 15, 2021 [eBook #64567]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORDENHOLT'S MILLION ***

Transcriber’s note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).





NORDENHOLT’S MILLION


      *      *      *      *      *      *

_RECENT FICTION_

  THE DOVE’S NEST & OTHER STORIES
    By KATHERINE MANSFIELD

  THE KEY OF DREAMS
    By L. ADAMS BECK

  THE SLEEPER BY MOONLIGHT
    By K. BALBERNIE

  THE THRESHOLD
    By MARTHA KINROSS

  SWEET PEPPER
    By GEOFFREY MOSS

  PONJOLA
    By CYNTHIA STOCKLEY

  DESOLATE SPLENDOUR
    By MICHAEL SADLEIR

  CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.

      *      *      *      *      *      *


NORDENHOLT’S MILLION

by

J. J. CONNINGTON






Constable & Co. Ltd.
London · Bombay · Sydney
1923

Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
Bungay, Suffolk.




  TO
  J. N. C.




CONTENTS


   CHAP.                                          PAGE

      I. GENESIS                                     1

     II. THE COMING OF “THE BLIGHT”                 16

    III. _B. DIAZOTANS_                             26

     IV. PANIC                                      35

      V. NORDENHOLT                                 41

     VI. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BREAKING-STRAIN      64

    VII. NORDENHOLT’S MILLION                       88

   VIII. THE CLYDE VALLEY                          103

     IX. INTERMEZZO                                125

      X. THE DEATH OF THE LEVIATHAN                140

     XI. FATA MORGANA                              149

    XII. NUIT BLANCHE                              156

   XIII. RECONSTRUCTION                            189

    XIV. WINTER IN THE OUTER WORLD                 208

     XV. DOCUMENT B. 53. X. 15                     224

    XVI. IN THE NITROGEN AREA                      240

   XVII. PER ITER TENEBRICOSUM                     256

  XVIII. THE ELEVENTH HOUR                         271

    XIX. THE BREAKING-STRAIN                       289

     XX. ASGARD                                    298




NORDENHOLT’S MILLION




CHAPTER I

Genesis


I suppose that in the days before the catastrophe I was a very
fair representative of the better type of business man. I had been
successful in my own line, which was the application of mass-production
methods to a better pattern of motor-car than had yet been dealt with
upon a large scale; and the Flint car had been a good speculation.
I was thinking of bringing out an economical type of gyroscopic
two-wheeler just at the time we were overwhelmed. Organisation was my
strong point; and much of my commercial success was due to a new system
of control which I had introduced into my factories. I mention this
point in passing, because it was this capacity of mine which first
brought me to the notice of Nordenholt.

Although at the time of which I speak I had become more a director
than a designer, I was originally by profession a mechanical engineer;
and in my student days I had had a scientific training, some remnants
of which still fluttered in tatters in odd corners of my mind. I
could check the newspaper accounts of new discoveries in chemistry
and physics well enough to know when the reporters blundered grossly;
geology I remembered vaguely, though I could barely have distinguished
augite from muscovite under a microscope: but the biological group of
subjects had never come within my ken. The medical side of science was
a closed book as far as I was concerned.

Yet, like many educated men of that time, I took a certain interest
in scientific affairs. I read the accounts of the British Association
in the newspapers year by year; I bought a copy of _Nature_ now and
again when a new line of research caught my attention; and occasionally
I glanced through some of these popular _réchauffés_ of various
scientific topics by means of which people like myself were able to
persuade themselves that they were keeping in touch with the advance of
knowledge.

It was this taste of mine which brought me into contact with
Wotherspoon; for, beyond his interest in scientific affairs, he and I
had little enough in common. It is over a quarter of a century since I
saw him last, for he must have died in the first year of our troubles;
but I can still recall him very clearly: a short, stout man--“pudgy”
is perhaps the word which best describes him--with a drooping, untidy
moustache half-covering but not concealing the slackness of his
mouth; fair hair, generally brushed in a lank mass to one side of his
forehead; and watery eyes which had a look in them as of one crushed
beneath a weight of knowledge and responsibility.

As a matter of fact, I doubt if his knowledge was sufficiently profound
or extensive to crush any ordinary person; and as he had a private
income and no dependants, I could not understand what responsibilities
weighed upon him. He certainly held no official post in the scientific
world which might have burdened him; for despite numerous applications
on his part, none of the Universities had seen fit to utilise his
services in even the meanest capacity.

To be quite frank, he was a dabbler. He originated nothing, discovered
nothing, improved nothing; and yet, by some means, he had succeeded in
imposing himself upon the public mind. He delivered courses of popular
lectures on the work of real investigators; and I believe that these
lectures were well attended. He wrote numerous books dealing with the
researches of other men; and the publication of volume after volume
kept him in the public eye. Whenever an important discovery was made
by some real scientific expert, Wotherspoon would sit down and compile
newspaper articles on the subject with great facility; and by these
methods he achieved, among inexperienced readers, the reputation of a
sort of arbiter in the scientific field. “As Mr. Wotherspoon says in
the article which we publish elsewhere” was a phrase which appeared
from time to time in the leader columns of the more sensational Press.

Naturally, he was disliked by the men who actually did the scientific
work of the world and who had little time to spare for cultivating
notoriety. He was a member of a large number of those societies to
which admission can be gained by payment of an entrance fee and
subscription; and on the bills of his lectures and the title-pages
of his books his name was followed by a string of letters which the
uninitiated assumed to imply great scientific ability. His application
for admission to the Royal Society had, however, been unsuccessful--a
failure which he frequently and publicly attributed to jealousy.

It appears strange that such a man as this should have been selected
by Fate as the agent of disaster; and it seems characteristic of him
that, when the key of the problem was lying beside him, his energy was
entirely engrossed in writing newspaper paragraphs on another matter.
His mind worked exclusively through the medium of print and paper; so
that even the most striking natural phenomenon escaped his observation.

At that time he lived in one of the houses of Cumberland Terrace,
overlooking Regent’s Park. I cannot recall the number; and the
place has long ago disappeared; but I remember that it was near St.
Katherine’s College and it overlooked the grounds of St. Katherine’s
House. Wotherspoon carried his scientific aura even into the
arrangement of his residence; for what was normally the drawing-room
of the house had been turned into a kind of laboratory-reception-room;
so that casual visitors might be impressed by his ardour in the pursuit
of knowledge. When anyone called upon him, he was always discovered
in this room, fingering apparatus, pouring liquids from one tube
into another, producing precipitates or doing something else which
would strike the unwary as being part of a recondite process. I had a
feeling, when I came upon him in the midst of these manœuvres, that
he had sprung up from his chair at the sound of the door bell and had
plunged hastily into his operations. I know enough to distinguish real
work from make-believe; and Wotherspoon never gave me the impression
that he was engaged in anything better than window-dressing. At any
rate, nothing ever was made public with regard to the results of these
multitudinous experiments; and when, occasionally, I asked him if he
proposed to bring out a paper, he merely launched into a diatribe
against the jealousy of scientific men.

It was about this time that Henley-Davenport was making his earlier
discoveries in the field of induced radioactivity. The results were
too technical for the unscientific man to appreciate; but I had
become interested, not so much in details as in possibilities; and I
determined to go across the Park and pay a visit to Wotherspoon one
evening. I knew that, as far as published information went, he would be
in possession of the latest news; and it was easier to get it from him
than to read it myself.

It was warm weather then. I decided to use my car instead of walking
through the Park. I had a slight headache, and I thought that possibly
a short spin later, in the cool of the evening, might take it away. As
I drove, I noticed how thunder-clouds were banking up on the horizon,
and I congratulated myself that even if they broke I should have the
shelter of the car and be saved a walk home through the rain.

When I reached Cumberland Terrace, I was, as I expected, shown up into
Wotherspoon’s sanctum. I found him, as usual, deeply engrossed in work:
he had his eye to the tube of a large microscope, down which he was
staring intently. I noticed a slight change in the equipment of the
room. There seemed to be fewer retorts, flasks and test-tube racks than
there usually were; and two large tables at the windows were littered
with flat glass dishes containing thin slabs of pinkish material which
seemed to be gelatine. Things like incubators took up a good deal of
the remaining space. But I doubt if it is worth while describing what
I saw: I know very little of such things; and I question whether his
apparatus would have passed muster with an expert in any case.

After a certain amount of fumbling with the microscope, which seemed
largely a formal matter leading to nothing, he rose from his seat and
greeted me with his customary pre-occupied air. For a time we smoked
and talked of Henley-Davenport’s work; but after he had answered my
questions it became evident that he had no further interest in the
subject; and I was not surprised when, after a pause, he broke entirely
new ground in his next remark.

“Do you know, Flint,” he said, “I am losing interest in all these
investigations of the atomic structure. It seems to me that while
unimaginative people like Henley-Davenport are groping into the depths
of the material Universe, the real thing is passing them by. After all,
what is mere matter in comparison with the problems of life? I have
given up atoms and I am going to begin work upon living organisms.”

That was so characteristic of Wotherspoon. He was always “losing
interest in” something and “going to begin work” upon something else.
I nodded without saying anything. After all, it seemed of very little
importance what he “worked” at.

“I wonder if you ever reflect, Flint,” he continued, “if you ever
ponder over our position in this Universe? Here we stand, like Dante,
‘midway in this our mortal life’; at the half-way house between the
cradle and the grave in time. And in space, too, we represent the
middle term between the endless stretches of the Macrocosm and the
bottomless deeps of the Microcosm. Look up at the night-sky and your
eyes will tingle with the rays from long-dead stars, suns that were
blotted out ages ago though the light they sent out before they died
still thrills across the ether on its journey to our Earth. Take
your microscope, and you find a new world before you; increase the
magnification and another, tinier cosmos sweeps into your ken. And so,
with ever-growing lens-power, we can peer either upward into stellar
space or downward into the regions of the infinitesimal, while between
these deeps we ourselves stand for a time on our precarious bridge of
Earth.”

I began to suspect that he was trying over some phrases for a coming
lecture; but it was early yet and I could not decently make an excuse
for leaving him. I took a fresh cigar and let him go on without
interruption.

“It always seems strange to me how little the man in the street knows
of the things around him. The microscopic world has no existence as
far as his mind is concerned. A grain of dust is too small for him to
notice; it must blow into his eye before he appreciates that it has
perceptible size at all. And yet, all about him and within him there
lives this wonderful race of beings, passing to and fro in his veins
as we do in the streets and avenues of a great city; coming to birth,
going about their concerns, falling ill and dying, just as men do in
London at this hour. Think of the battles, the victories, and the
defeats which take place minute by minute in the tiniest drop of our
blood; and the issue of the war may be the life or death of one of us.
They talk of the struggle for existence; but the real struggle for
existence is going on within us and not in the outer world. Phagocyte
against bacterium--that is where the fitness of an organism comes to
its ultimate test. A slight hitch in the reinforcements, a minute’s
delay in bringing numbers to bear, and the keystone is out of the
edifice; nothing is left but a ruin.

“It always reminds me of those frontier skirmishes--a mere handful of
troops engaged on either side--upon the issue of which the fate of
an empire may depend. Get a new set of enemies, some novel type of
bacteria with fresh tactics which the phagocytes cannot cope with--and
down comes a human being. It strikes wonder into me, that, you know. A
human body is so colossal in comparison with these bacteria that they
can have no idea even of our existence; and yet they can destroy the
whole machinery upon which our life depends. It’s almost as if a few
shots fired in Africa could crumble the whole Earth into an impalpable
dust.

“And it is not only within us that these struggles are going on. When
you came in, I was just studying some specimens of organisms which are
equally vital to us. Come over here to the microscope, Flint, and have
a look at them yourself.”

When I had got the focus adjusted to suit my eyes, I must confess that
I was astonished by what I saw. Somehow, in the course of my reading,
I had picked up the idea that bacteria were rod-like creatures which
floated inertly in liquids at the mercy of the currents; but at the
first glance I realised how much below the reality my conception had
been. In the field of the instrument I saw a score of objects, rod-like
in their main structure, it is true, but so mantled with the fringes of
their fine, thread-like cilia that their baculite character was almost
concealed. Nor were they the inert things which I had supposed them to
be; for, as I watched them, now one and again another would dart with
prodigious swiftness from point to point in the circle of illumination.
I had rarely seen such relative activity in any creature. The speed of
their movements was so great that my eye could not follow them in their
tracks. They appeared to be at rest one instant and then to vanish,
reappearing as suddenly in some fresh spot. I watched them, fascinated,
for some minutes, trying to trace the vibrations of the cilia which
projected them from place to place at such enormous speeds; but either
my eye was untrained or the movements of the thread-like fringes were
too rapid to be seen. It was certainly an illuminating glimpse into the
life of the under-world.

When I had risen from the microscope table, Wotherspoon took me over to
one of the benches before the window and showed me the glass vessels
containing the pinkish gelatine. These slabs, he told me, were cultures
of bacteria. One placed a few organisms on the gelatine and there they
grew and multiplied enormously.

“These specimens here,” said Wotherspoon, “are not the same variety
as the ones on the microscope slide. They have nothing whatever to
do with disease; and yet, as I told you, they have an influence upon
animal life. I suppose you never heard of nitrifying and denitrifying
bacteria?”

I admitted that the names were unfamiliar to me.

“Just so. Few people seem to take any interest in these vital problems.
Now you do know that internally we swarm with all sorts of germs,
noxious in some cases, beneficent in others; but I suppose it never
struck you that our bodies form only a trifling part of the material
world; and that outside these living islets there is space for all
sorts of microscopic flora and fauna to grow and multiply? And need
these creatures be absolutely isolated from the interests of animals?
Not at all.

“Now what is the essential thing, apart from air and water, which we
derive from the outside world? Food, isn’t it? Did it ever occur to you
to inquire where your food comes from, ultimately?”

“Well, of course,” I said, “it comes from all over the world. I don’t
know whether the wheat I eat in my bread comes from Canada or the
States or Argentina, or was home-grown. It doesn’t seem to me a matter
of importance, anyway.”

“That isn’t what I mean at all,” Wotherspoon interrupted, “I want you
to look at it in another way. I suppose you had your usual style of
dinner to-day. Just think of the items: soup, fish, meat, bread, and so
on. Your soup was made from bones and vegetables; your fish course was
originally an animal; so was your joint; your sweet was probably purely
vegetable; and your dessert certainly was a plant product. Now don’t
you see what I mean?”

“No, I confess I don’t.”

“Haven’t I just shown you that everything you ate comes from either the
animal or vegetable kingdom? You don’t bite bits out of the crockery,
like the Mad Hatter. Everything you use to keep your physical machine
alive is something which has already had life in it? Isn’t that so? You
never think of having a meal of pure chemicals, do you?”

“It never occurred to me; and I doubt it I shall begin now. It doesn’t
sound very appetising.”

“It would be worse than that; but follow my argument further. Take the
case of your joint. Presumably that came from an ox or a sheep. Where
did the animal, whatever it was, get _its_ food? From the vegetable
kingdom, in the form of grass. Isn’t it clear that everything you
yourself eat comes, either directly or indirectly, from the plants?
And aren’t all animals on the same footing as yourself--they depend
ultimately on the vegetables for their sustenance, don’t they? A fox
may live on poultry; but the chickens he kills have grown fat by
eating grain; and so you come back to the plants again. If you like to
look on it in that way, we are all parasites on the plants; we cannot
live without them. Our digestive machinery is so specialised that
it will assimilate only a certain type of material--protoplasm--and
unless it is supplied with that material, we starve. We can convert the
protoplasm of other animals or of plants to our own use; but we cannot
manufacture protoplasm from its elements. We have to get it ready-made
from the vegetables, either directly or indirectly.

“Now the foundation-stone of protoplasm is the element nitrogen. The
plants draw on the store of nitrogenous compounds in the soil in order
to build up their tissues; and then we eat the plants and thus transfer
this material to our own organisms. What happens next? Do we return
the nitrogen to the soil? Not we. We throw it into the sea in the form
of sewage. So you see the net outcome of the process is that we are
gradually using up the stores of nitrogen compounds in the soil, with
the result that the plants have less and less nitrogen to live on.”

“Well, but surely four-fifths of the atmosphere is nitrogen? That seems
to me a big enough reserve to be drawn on.”

“So it would be, if the plants could tap it directly; but they can’t do
that except in the case of some exceptional ones. Most plants simply
cannot utilise nitrogen until it has been combined with some other
element. They can’t touch it in the uncombined state, as it is in the
atmosphere; so that as far as the nitrogen in the air goes, it is
useless to plants. They can’t thrive on pure nitrogen, any more than
you can feed yourself on a mixture of charcoal, hydrogen, oxygen and
nitrogen; though these elements are all that you need in the way of
diet to keep life going.

“No, Flint, we are actually depleting the soil of these nitrogen
compounds at a very rapid rate indeed. Why, even in the first decade
of the twentieth century South America was exporting no less than
15,000,000 tons of nitrogen compounds which she dug out of the natural
deposits in the nitre beds of Chili and Peru; and all that vast
quantity was being used as artificial manure to replace the nitrogenous
loss in the soil of the agricultural parts of the world. The loss
is so great that it even pays to run chemical processes for making
nitrogenous materials from the nitrogen of the air--the fixation of
nitrogen, they call it.

“Well, that is surely enough to show you how much hangs upon this
nitrogen question. If we go on as we are doing, there will eventually
be a nitrogen famine; the soil will cease to yield crops; and we shall
go short of food. It’s no vision I am giving you; the thing has already
happened in a modified form in America. There they used up the soil by
continual drafts on it, wheat crops year after year in the same places.
The result was that the land ceased to be productive; and we had the
rush of American farmers into Canada in the early days of the century
to utilise the virgin soil across the border instead of their own
exhausted fields.”

“I suppose you know all about it,” I said, “but where do these come in?”

I pointed to the pinkish disks of the cultures.

“These are what are called denitrifying bacteria. Although the plants
can’t act upon pure nitrogen and convert it into compounds which they
can feed upon, some bacteria have the knack. The nitrifying bacteria
can link up nitrogen with other elements so as to produce nitrogenous
material which the plants can then utilise. So that if we grow these
nitrifying bacteria in the soil, we help the plants to get more food.
The denitrifying bacteria, on the other hand--these ones here--act in
just the opposite way. Wherever they find nitrogenous compounds, they
break them down and liberate the nitrogen from them, so that it goes
back into the air and is lost to us again.

“So you see that outside our bodies we have bacteria working for or
against us. The nitrifying bacteria are helping to pile up further
supplies of nitrogen compounds upon which the plants can draw and
whereon, indirectly, we ourselves can be supported. The denitrifying
bacteria, on the other hand, are continually nibbling at the basic
store of our food; decomposing the nitrogen compounds and freeing the
nitrogen from them in the form of the pure gas which is useless to us
from the point of view of food.”

“You mean that a large increase in the numbers of the one set would
put us in clover, whereas multiplication of the other lot would mean a
shortness of supplies?”

“Exactly. And we have no idea of the forces which govern the
reproduction of these creatures. It’s quite within the bounds of
possibility that some slight change in the external conditions might
reinforce one set and decimate the other; and such a change would have
almost unpredictable influences on our food problem.”

At this moment the thunder-clouds, which had grown heavier as time
passed, evidently reached their full tension. A tremendous flash shot
across the sky; and on its heel, so close as to be almost simultaneous,
there came a shattering peal of thunder. We looked out; but I had been
so dazzled by the brilliance of the flash that I could see little. The
air was very still; no rain had yet fallen; and my skin tingled with
the electrical tension of the atmosphere. Wotherspoon felt it also,
he told me. It was evident that we were in the vicinity of some very
powerful disturbance.

“Awfully hot to-night, isn’t it?” I said. “Suppose we have some more
air? It’s stifling in here.”

Wotherspoon pushed the broad leaves of the French windows apart; but no
breeze came to cool us; though in the silence after the thunder-clap I
heard the rustle of leaves from the trees below us. We stood, one at
either end of the bench with the cultures on it, trying to draw cooler
air into our lungs; and all the while I felt as though a multitude of
tiny electric sparks were running to and fro upon the surface of my
body.

Suddenly, over St. Katherine’s House, a sphere of light appeared in
the air. It was not like lightning, brilliantly though it shone. It
seemed to hover for a few seconds above the roof, almost motionless.
Then it began slowly to advance in a wavering flight, approaching us
and sinking by degrees in the sky as it came. To me, it appeared to
be about a foot in diameter; but Wotherspoon afterwards estimated it
at rather less. In any case, it was of no great size; and its rate of
approach was not more than five miles an hour.

For some seconds I watched it coming. It had a peculiar vacillating
motion, rather like that which one sees in the flight of certain kinds
of summer flies. Now it would hover almost motionless, then suddenly
it would dart forward for twenty yards or so, only to resume its
oscillation about a fixed point.

But to tell the truth, I watched it in such a state of fascination
that I doubt if any coherent thoughts passed through my mind; so that
my impressions may have been inaccurate. All that I remember clearly
is a state of extreme tension. I never feel quite comfortable during
a thunder-storm; and the novelty of the phenomenon increased this
discomfort, for I did not know what turn it might take next.

Slowly the luminous sphere crossed the edge of the Park, dipping
suddenly as though the iron railings had attracted it; and now it was
almost opposite our window. For a moment its impetus seemed to carry it
onwards, slantingly along the terrace; then, with a dart it swung from
its course and entered the window at which we stood.

From its behaviour at the Park rail, I am inclined to think that it
was drawn from its line of flight by the attracting power of the metal
balustrade which protected the little balcony outside the window; and
that its velocity carried it past the iron, so that it came to rest
within the room, just over the table between us.

Instinctively, both Wotherspoon and I recoiled from this flaming
apparition, shrinking back as far as possible from it on either side.
Beyond this movement we seemed unable to go, for neither of us stepped
out of the window recess. Between us, the ball of fire hung almost
motionless; but before my eyes were dazzled I saw that it was spinning
with tremendous velocity on a horizontal axis; and it seemed to me
that its substance was a multitude of tiny sparks whirling in orbits
about its centre. Its light was like that from a spirit-lamp charged
with common salt; for over it I caught a glimpse of Wotherspoon’s
flinching face, all shadowed and green. As I watched the fire-ball,
shading my eyes with my hands, I saw that it was slowly settling, just
as a soap-bubble sinks in the air. Lower it descended and lower, still
spinning furiously on its axis. Then, after what seemed an interminable
period of suspense, it collided with the table.

There came a dull explosion which jerked me from my feet and drove me
back against a chair. I saw Wotherspoon collapse and then everything
vanished in the darkness which followed the concussion.

It must have been half a minute before I was able to recover from the
shock and pull myself together. When I got to my feet again, I found
Wotherspoon half-standing, half-leaning against the door, one panel of
which had been blown out. The room was strewn with wreckage: broken
glass, scattered papers, and shattered furniture. The electric lamps
had been smashed by the force of the explosion.

Wotherspoon and I recovered almost simultaneously; and on comparing
notes--which was difficult at first owing to our being temporarily
deaf--we found that neither of us had suffered any serious injury. A
few slight cuts with flying glass were apparently the worst of the
damage which we had sustained. There was a sharp tang in the air of
the room which made us cough for some time until it cleared away; but
whatever the gas may have been, it left no permanent effects on us.

When we had procured lights and pulled ourselves together sufficiently
to make a fuller examination of the room, we began to appreciate the
extent of the damage and to congratulate ourselves still more upon the
escape which we had had. The whole place was littered with fragments
of furniture. The incubators had been shattered; and their contents,
smashed into countless fragments, lay all over the floor. But it was on
the bench at the window that the full force of the fire-ball had spent
itself. There was hardly anything recognisable in the heap of debris.
The wooden planks had been torn and broken with tremendous force. The
little balcony was filled with sticks which had been thrown outward by
the explosion; and, as we found afterwards, a good deal of material had
been projected half-way across the road. Of the denitrifying bacteria
cultures or their cases there was hardly a trace, except a few tiny
splinters of glass.

I did not wait much longer with Wotherspoon; for, to tell the truth,
my nerves were badly shaken by my experiences. I got him to come
downstairs with me and we had a stiff glass of brandy each; and then I
telephoned for a taxi to take me home. My own car was standing at the
door; but I did not trust my ability to drive it in traffic at that
moment. It seemed better to send my man round for it after I got home.

I went back in the taxi, with my nerves on edge.




CHAPTER II

The Coming of “The Blight”


Next morning I still felt the effects of the shock; and decided not
to go to my office. I stayed indoors all day. When the evening papers
came, I found in them brief accounts of the fire-ball; and in one case
there was an article by Wotherspoon under the heading: “Well-known
Scientist’s Strange Experience.” One or two reporters called at my
house later in the day in search of copy, but I sent them on to
Cumberland Terrace. In some of the reports I figured as “a well-known
motor manufacturer,” whilst in others I was referred to simply as “a
friend of Mr. Wotherspoon.” I had little difficulty in surmising the
authorship of the latter group.

In the ordinary course of events, the fire-ball would have been much
less than a nine days’ wonder, even in spite of Wotherspoon’s industry
in compiling accounts of it and digging out parallel cases from the
correspondence columns of old volumes of _Nature_ and _Knowledge_;
actually its career as a news item was made briefer still. An entirely
different phenomenon shouldered it out of the limelight almost
immediately.

After staying indoors all day, I felt the need of fresh air; and
resolved to walk across the Park to Cumberland Terrace to see whether
Wotherspoon had quite recovered from the shock. I had not much doubt
in my mind upon the point; for the traces of his journalistic activity
were plain enough; and showed that he was certainly not incapacitated.
However, as I wanted a stroll and as I might as well have an object
before me, I decided to go and see him.

Twilight was coming on as I crossed the suspension bridge. Even after
the thunder-storm on the previous night there had been no rainfall; and
although the temperature had fallen until the air was almost chilly,
there was as yet no dew on the ground. I stopped on the bridge to watch
the tints of the western sky; for these London after-glow effects
always pleased me.

As I leaned on the rail, I heard the low drone of aerial engines;
and in a few seconds the broad wings of the Australian Express swept
between me and the sky. Even in those days I could never see one of
these vast argosies passing overhead without a throb in my veins.

The great air-services had just come to their own; and aeroplanes
started from London four and five times daily for America, Asia,
Africa, and Australia. In the windows of the air-offices the flight of
these vessels could be followed hour by hour on the huge world-maps
over which moved tiny models showing the exact positions of the various
aeroplanes on the globe. Watching the dots moving across the surface
of the charts, one could call up, with very little imagination, the
landscapes which were sweeping into the view of travellers on board the
real machines as they glided through these far-distant spaces of the
air. This one, two days out from London, would be sighting the pagoda
roofs of Pekin as the night was coming on; that one, on the Pacific
route, had just finished filling up its tanks at Singapore and was
starting on the long course to Australia; the passengers on this other
would be watching the sun standing high over Victoria Nyanza; while,
on the Atlantic, the Western Ocean Express and the South American Mail
were racing the daylight into a fourth continent.

I think it was these maps which first brought home to me distinctly
how the spaces of the world had shrunk on the “time-scale” with the
coming of the giant aeroplanes. The pace had been growing swifter
and ever swifter since the middle of the nineteenth century. Up
to that day, there had been little advance since the time of the
earlier sailing-vessels. Then came the change from sail to steam;
and the Atlantic crossing contracted in its duration. The great
Trans-continental railways quickened transit once more; again there
was a shrinkage in the time-scale. Vladivostok came within ten days of
London; from Cairo to the Cape was only five days. But with the coming
of the air-ways the acceleration was greater still; and we reckoned
in hours the journeys which, in the nineteenth century days, had been
calculated in weeks and even months. All the outposts of the world were
drawing nearer together.

It was not this shrinkage only which the air-maps suggested. In the
early twentieth century the telegraphs and submarine cables had spread
their network over the world, linking nation to nation and coast to
coast; but their ramifications dwindled in perspective when compared
with the complex network of the air-ways which now enmeshed the globe.
London lay like a spider at the centre of the web of communications,
the like of which the world had never seen before; and along each
thread the aeroplanes were speeding to and from all the quarters of the
earth.

Rapid communication we had had since the days of the extension of the
telegraph; but it had been limited to the transmission of thoughts
and of news. The coming of the aeroplanes had changed all that.
These tracks on the air-maps were not mere wires thrilling with the
quiverings of the electric current. Along them material things were
passing continually; a constant interchange of passengers and goods was
taking place hourly over the multitudinous routes. For good or ill,
humanity was becoming linked together until it formed a single unit.

It is curious that all the prophetic writers of the early twentieth
century concentrated their attention almost exclusively upon the racial
and social reactions which might be expected to follow from this
knitting of the world into a connected whole and the resultant increase
of traffic between the nations over the now contracted world-spaces.
They had seen the interminglings of races which began in the steamship
days; and they deduced that the process would be intensified in the new
era of air-transit; so that, in the end of their dreams, they saw the
possibility of a World Federation stretching its rule over the whole
globe and bringing with it the end of wars. None of them, strangely
enough, had foreseen the real effects which this intercommunication was
to bring forth.

To a certain extent, their foresight had been justified. With the
coming of the air-ways, the war-spirit was temporarily exorcised. The
vast increase in the size and number of air-craft and the terrors of an
aerial war, with all its untested possibilities, served to rein in even
the most ardent of military nations. Standing armies still persisted;
but their numbers had been diminished to a few thousands; for under
the new conditions the old huge and unwieldy terrestrial forces could
neither be fed, nor protected from aerial attacks.

Thus as I leaned on the rail of the suspension bridge and looked out
over the greenery of the Park it seemed to me a very pleasant world.
Those of the younger generation can hardly imagine how fair it was
or how inexhaustible it seemed. Thousands of square miles of Africa
and South America were still virgin soil, store-houses of untapped
resources waiting for humanity to draw upon their abundance. There was
food for all the thousand millions of mankind; and, as the population
rose, fresh lands could be brought under cultivation for the mere
labour of clearing the soil of its surplus vegetation. It was the
Golden Age of humanity; yet few of us recognised it. We looked either
backward into the past or forward into the future when we sought the
Islands of the Blest: while all about us lay Paradise, and the Earth
blossomed like a huge garden which was ours for the taking.

I left my visions with a sigh and continued my way across the Park. The
prolonged spell of heat was affecting the vegetation. The trees were
dusty; and the grass seemed to have lost something of its brilliant
green. I remember that after I had crossed the Broad Walk I noticed
especially how moribund all the plant-life of the Park appeared to be.
There was an air of decline about it, though no tints of autumn had yet
appeared in the leaves.

Wotherspoon was, as usual, in his laboratory. The glass of the windows
had been replaced; but otherwise the place was much in its disordered
condition. I suspect that he had purposely refrained from getting it
cleared up, in order to impress reporters with the actual damage which
the explosion had done; and that when the reporters had ceased to
call he had left things as they were with the idea of fascinating any
visitors who might come.

He was sitting at his writing-desk, surrounded by piles of books from
which he was apparently extracting information for the purpose of some
fresh article he had in hand; and when I came in he asked me to excuse
him for a few minutes until he had got his data completed. In order to
amuse me in the meanwhile, he dragged out his microscope and a pile of
slides which he thought might interest me.

Before he went back to his work, it struck me that I would like to see
the bacteria again; and I picked up from the floor some fragments of
glass which evidently had formed part of his cultures, since particles
of the pink gelatine adhered to them still. I asked him to fix the
microscope for me, so that I could examine these things; and he wetted
the stuff with some water and put a drop of it under the lens, leaving
me to focus it myself while he went back to his writing-desk. He was
soon deep in his article.

As I gazed down at the field of the microscope, I saw again the clumps
of bacilli, some floating aimlessly in masses, others darting here and
there in the disk of illumination. I studied them for a time without
noticing anything peculiar; but at last it struck me that the field was
becoming congested with the creatures. I looked more carefully; and
now there seemed little doubt of the fact. The numbers of them were
increasing almost visibly. I concentrated my attention on a small group
in one corner of the slide and was able, in spite of the confusion
introduced by their rapid and erratic movements, to feel certain that
they were multiplying so fast that I could almost estimate the increase
in percentages minute by minute.

“Here, Wotherspoon,” I said, “come and have a look through this. These
bacteria of yours seem to be spawning or something.”

“I wish you wouldn’t interrupt, there’s a good chap,” he said in a
peevish tone. “Don’t you know that writing takes all one’s attention? I
can’t do two things at once; and this article must be finished on time
if it is to be of any use to me or anyone else. Just amuse yourself for
half an hour and then I shall be at your disposal if you want me.”

It was said so ungraciously that I took offence; and as his original
“few minutes” had now apparently extended to “half an hour” I thought
it best to leave him to himself. When I said good-night to him, he
seemed to regard it as an extra interruption; so I was not sorry to go.
I left him still delving into the masses of printed material around him.

And that was how Wotherspoon missed the greatest discovery that ever
came his way. It was waiting for him across the table, for I doubt if
he could have failed to draw the obvious conclusion had he actually
taken the trouble to examine the phenomenon with his own eyes. But
his interest was concentrated upon his writing; and his chance passed
him by. After Johnston published his views, Wotherspoon made what I
can only consider to be a dishonest attempt to secure priority on the
ground that he was aware of the facts but had not had time to work out
the subject fully before Johnston rushed into print; but he secured
no support from any authoritative quarter; and even the newspapers
had by that time seen the necessity of consulting experts, so that he
was unable to place the numerous articles which he wrote to confute
Johnston.

       *       *       *       *       *

Three days later, Regent’s Park again figured in the columns of the
newspapers.

The first mention of the matter which I saw was in an evening journal.
I had been reading a short account of a locust plague in China which
was reported to have destroyed crops upon a large scale and caused a
panic emigration of the inhabitants of the devastated district, owing
to the failure of supplies. Just below this article, my eye caught a
paragraph headed:

  STRANGE BLIGHT IN REGENT’S PARK.

It appeared that the vegetation in the Park had been attacked by some
peculiar disease, the symptoms of which were evidently not very clear
to the writer of the paragraph. According to him, the plants were
withering away; but there seemed to be no fungus or growth on the
leaves which would account for their decrepitude. Trees and flowers
equally with the grass were attacked by the blight. While throwing
out a hint that the prolonged drought might possibly account for the
phenomenon, the reporter indicated that the thing was rather more
local than might have been anticipated from this cause; for the worst
effects of the blight were to be found in the vegetation of the strip
between Gloucester Gate and the Outer Circle in one direction and
between the Broad Walk and the Park edge in the other. Beyond this
oblong, the damage done was not so readily recognisable.

That evening, as the fine weather still held, I walked through Regent’s
Park to see for myself what truth there was in the newspaper talk.
More people than usual were out; for in addition to the normal crowds
of pedestrians, it was evident that others had come, like myself, to
examine the blight. The Broad Walk was thronged; for the Londoner of
those days was one of the most inquisitive creatures in existence.

It was evident that, considered from the “show” point of view, the
state of affairs had been a disappointment to the people. I heard
numerous comments as I walked among the crowd; and the tone was one of
disparagement. The general feeling seemed to be that the thing was a
mare’s nest or a newspaper hoax.

“Blight, they calls it?” said one stout old woman as I passed; “I’d
like to blight the young feller what wrote all that in the papers about
it, I would! Me putting on my best things and walking ever so far on a
hot night to see nothing better than a lot of dried grass. I thought it
would be fair seething with grasshoppers,” and she shook her head till
the trimmings of her antique hat trembled with her vehemence. Evidently
she had mixed up the Chinese locusts and the Regent’s Park affair in
her mind.

Other people shared her discontent; and the younger section of the
crowd had begun to seek for amusement by means of spasmodic outbursts
of horse-play.

What I saw of the phenomenon was certainly not very thrilling. All
the grass to the east of the Broad Walk had the appearance of being
sun-blasted. The green tint had gone from it and it had turned
straw-colour. On the west side of the Walk there were patches of
stricken vegetation scattered here and there as far as one could see,
but the effect was not so marked towards the Inner Circle.

I stooped down and rooted up a tuft of withered grass in order to
examine it more closely; and to my surprise it came away readily in
my hand, leaving the roots almost clear of earth. I could see nothing
peculiar about the grass itself; even the most careful inspection
failed to reveal any adherent fungus or growth of any description which
might account for the phenomenon. I began to think that, after all, the
whole thing was due to the heat of the past few weeks, and that the
local appearance of the effects was a mere chance.

Next day, however, this idea was put out of court by the news that
the blight had spread to the other London parks. Hyde Park suffered
severely in the corner between the Marble Arch and the Serpentine;
the gardens of Buckingham Palace were also affected; and the grass in
Battersea Park showed sporadic outbreaks of the disease also. Victoria
Park, however, seemed to have escaped almost intact; though some traces
could be detected.

I learned that the Park gardeners had endeavoured to check the
extension of the disease--for it spread almost visibly in places--by
spraying the vegetation with the usual vermin-killers; but these had
been found to have no influence upon the growth of the smitten areas.

By this time, the newspapers had begun to make the matter a main
feature. The heading: “THE BLIGHT” occupied the principal column;
and correspondence had been opened on the subject in several of
the journals. But as yet the matter was not exciting any interest
outside London. It was regarded as a purely local manifestation of no
particular import; and although some of the writers of London Letters
for the provincial Press alluded to it in their articles, it was
usually referred to with a sneer at the “silly season attitude” of
supposedly weighty newspapers.

This tone underwent a rapid change, however, on the following day. Even
the staid dailies of the Provinces became electrified with the news;
and over most of the area of southern England the breakfast tables were
ahum with conversations on the Blight and its effects; for the morning
papers were filled with telegrams announcing the extension of the
affected area broadcast over the Home Counties; and the headlines ran:

  SPREAD OF THE NEW BLIGHT

  ALL HOME COUNTIES AFFECTED

  TOTAL FAILURE OF CROPS FEARED




CHAPTER III

_B. Diazotans_[1]


At this point, I remember, the long spell of dry weather reached its
end. A heavy series of thunderstorms marked its termination; and for
three days the country was deluged with rain and swept by intermittent
gales. The cracked ground drank up the moisture; but still more showers
fell, until there was mud everywhere.

These meteorological changes in themselves were sufficiently grave
from the farmer’s point of view; but even more serious was the state
of things revealed after the rain had ceased. Whether it was due to
the weather conditions or whether it was a vagary produced by factors
beyond discovery will never be known; but the fact is established that
the spread of the Blight became accentuated during the rainy period.
Wherever it had secured a hold during the hot weather it became more
malignant in its effects; and its extension to fresh fields was so
great that hardly a grain-growing area in the country escaped at this
time. It penetrated as far north as the Border agricultural districts;
and devastated fields were found even in Perthshire.

Since the potato blight in 1845, no such rapid and extensive
destruction of food supplies had been known. The standing crops in
the affected areas withered; and a total failure of the home-grown
cereals seemed to be inevitable. Nor was it only in this section of the
food-supply that the attacks of the Blight became evident. Fruit-trees
seemed arrested in their productivity; vegetables failed to ripen and
began to rot. Everywhere the vegetable kingdom seemed to be falling
into a decline. The great market-gardens and nurseries showed the trace
of the same mysterious agent. Roses withered on their stems; and even
the hot-house plants suffered equally with their open-air fellows. The
only crop which appeared to escape the general disaster was hay.

And now it became clear that the Blight, as it was still called,
was going to produce effects in the most widely-separated fields of
activity. With a total failure of the crops, the financial side of the
question came to the front. Throughout the length and breadth of the
land, small farmers were beginning to realise that it was to be a year
of utter disaster, ending probably in bankruptcy and ruin. The larger
land-owners looked forward to the collapse of tenants and the failure
of rents. Mortgage-holders began to consider the nature of their
security, and when it was agricultural land they were placed in doubt
as to their best course; for no one could foresee whether the Blight
was a temporary epidemic or a permanent factor which would reappear
with the next crops. And all these varying influences had their effects
upon the great financial operations of the City; for even in that
industrial age the land had maintained its value as a basic security
which apparently could not suffer deterioration beyond a definite point.

This, however, was only a minor field of the Blight’s reactions. With
the probable failure of the home crop looming before him, even the man
in the street could not fail to perceive the more obvious results. It
meant a greater dependence upon imported food-stuffs and especially
imported grain. Argentina, Canada, India and the United States must
make up the missing supplies; and since almost half our cereals were
home-grown at that period, the price of food was certain to rise by
leaps and bounds; so that every family in the land would be affected by
the catastrophe.

Then a further factor was brought to light. With the failure of grain
and even of grass, it would be impossible to keep alive the cattle
which furnished part of the nation’s food. The milk supply would be
gravely affected also, from the same cause.

It is difficult for us now to look back and catch again the spirit of
that time. Never before, even during the war, had the food of Britain
been endangered to such a degree. And the steadily rising prices were
sufficient to bring home to the most thoughtless the actual imminence
of the peril. I can recall, however, that at first there was no panic
of any kind. It was assumed by all of us that although we might have
to go short of our usual lavish supplies, yet we should always have
enough food to carry us through to the next harvest. The whole world
was our granary; and if we were prepared to pay the higher prices which
we saw to be inevitable, we had no reason to suppose that we should
lack imported grain. Our attitude was quite comprehensible under the
circumstances, I think. In the past we had always been able to obtain
food; and there seemed no doubt that the same would hold good through
this shortage.

The newspapers were fairly evenly divided in their expressed opinions.
The Government had recently adjourned Parliament, after a session in
which their majority had oscillated dangerously more than once, and
the Opposition Press seized upon the Blight in order to embarrass
the Cabinet, and especially the Prime Minister, as far as possible.
They clamoured that the Government should take steps to secure the
food supply of the country by making immediate purchases of wheat in
the foreign markets. They demanded that a system of rationing should
be established forthwith; and that cases of food-hoarding should be
stringently punished. Day after day they held up to public obloquy the
individual members of the Cabinet, who were then scattered on holiday;
the amusements of each of them were described and coupled with sneering
hopes that they would succeed better in their games than they had done
in the government of the country and the safeguarding of the national
interests. Echoes of the Mazanderan Development Syndicate scandal were
kept alive in the most ingenious manner.

The Government Press, naturally, professed to see in the inactivity of
the Cabinet a proof that they had the matter well in hand. Avoidance of
panic, restriction by voluntary effort of all unnecessary consumption
of food, and the postponement of inquiries likely to interfere with the
wise projects of the Premier: these formed the stock of their leading
articles.

The gutter organ of the Opposition retorted by publishing the complete
menu of the Premier’s dinner on the previous day, which it had
obtained from some waiter in the hotel at which he was staying; and
it accompanied this item of news by interspersed extracts from the
Government organs in which appeals had been made for a less luxurious
form of living.

It must be remembered that this stage of the sequence of events
occupied only a brief period. If I am not wrong, it was within ten days
of the outbreak of the Blight that we got the first American cables
announcing the appearance of the epidemic among the great wheat areas
of the Middle West. Almost immediately after came similar news from
Canada.

The meaning of this was not at first appreciated by the people as a
whole. They still clung to the idea that grain would be forthcoming if
a sufficiently high price were paid for it; but those of us who had
tried to forecast the possibilities of the situation found our worst
fears taking concrete form. Soon even the unthinking were forced to
understand what the American news implied. If the Blight spread over
the wheat-fields of the Western continent, there would be no surplus
grain there for export at all. That source of supply would barely
suffice for the mouths at home.

Then, following each other like hammer-strokes upon metal, each biting
deeper than the last, came the cables from the rest of the world.
Egypt reported the outbreak of the Blight in the Nile valley; British
East Africa became affected. The news from the Argentine fell like a
thunderbolt, for we realised that with it the last great open source
of wheat had failed. The Don and Volga basins followed with the same
tale. Over India, the Blight raged with almost unheard-of virulence.
Then, days after the others, Australia was smitten, and our last hopes
vanished.

       *       *       *       *       *

During all this period, it must be remembered, we had no idea of the
origin of our calamities. We referred to the thing always as “The
Blight,” though it was made clear at quite an early stage that no
plant parasite was concerned in the matter at all. The most careful
microscopic examination of affected vegetation had been made without
revealing anything in the nature of a fungus or noxious growth.

Yet, on looking backward, I cannot help feeling that we, and especially
I myself, were strangely blind to the obvious in the matter. I have
already mentioned that when I rooted up a clump of grass in Regent’s
Park it came away from the soil without resistance; and that when I
examined the roots I found them almost as free of earthy deposit as
if it had been grown in sand. That, coupled with what I already knew,
should have put me on the track of the explanation; and yet I failed
to draw the simplest deduction from what I observed. To account for
this obtuseness, I can only suggest that already the idea of a “Blight”
had taken root in my mind; and that I was so obsessed with the idea of
a parasite that I never considered the facts from any other point of
view. Since others proved to be equally slow in arriving at the truth,
I can only conclude that they were misled in their mental processes
much as I myself was.

As I have said on a previous page, it was to Johnston, the
bacteriologist, that we owe the discovery. It appears that he had been
growing some bacteria in cultures; and, whether by accident or design,
he had left one of his cultivation media open to the air. On examining
the germs some days later, he had discovered in the culture a type of
bacterium with which he was unfamiliar. He proceeded to isolate it in
the usual way--I believe it is done by dabbing a needle-point into the
culture and using the few micro-organisms which stick to the needle
as the parents of a fresh colony--and he was amazed at its fecundity.
There had never been such a case of bacterial fertility in his
experience.

A paper in the _Lancet_ brought the description of the creature
to the notice of the scientific world. Johnston himself had not
recognised the nature of the organism, as he had never dealt with this
type of bacteria before; but from his description an agricultural
bacteriologist named Vincent was able to identify it as being almost
identical with one of the denitrifying group, from which it differed
only in its immense power of multiplication. It was hurriedly
christened _Bacterium diazotans_, on account of its denitrifying
qualities. Further examination showed that its capacity for breaking
down nitrogenous material far surpassed that of any known denitrifying
agent.

With these discoveries, the mystery of the new blight vanished. An
examination of the soil of stricken areas showed that it swarmed
with colonies of _B. diazotans_--to use the customary medical
contraction--and the whole secret of the destruction was revealed.

It was evident that these new and super-active bacteria attacked the
soil, disintegrated all the nitrogenous compounds within their range
and thus left the plants without nourishment. The death of the plant
followed as a natural result; but the matter did not end there. By
destroying the nitrogenous compounds in the soil, the bacteria altered
the whole texture of the earth in which they grew. All the nitrogenous
organic matter which forms so large a part of the binding material of
some soils was destroyed utterly; with the consequence that the mineral
particles, which previously had been resting in an organic matrix, were
now free to move. Only the clays retained their tenacious character:
all other soils degenerated into sand.

There has, of course, been a great deal of speculation upon the origin
of _B. diazotans_. Hartwell suggested that it came to us from Venus,
propelled by light-pressure across the abysses of space. Inshelwood put
forward the view that in _B. diazotans_ we had an example of bacteria,
originally endemic, changing their habits and spreading into fresh
regions.

Personally, I believe neither hypothesis. I feel sure that I saw the
birth of the first _B. diazotans_ on that night in Wotherspoon’s
laboratory, under the action of the fire-ball; and the evidence is
simple enough.

Every living creature is a wonderfully constructed electrical machine.
Each beat of our hearts, each systole of our lungs, each contraction of
a muscle in our frame produces a tiny electrical current. Our organism
is a mass of colloids and electrolytes which transmit these charges
hither and thither throughout our systems; and were we gifted with an
electrical sense in addition to those which we already have, we should
see each other as complexities of conductors along which currents were
playing with every movement of our body.

This complex electrical system is acutely sensible to external
electrical conditions. Anyone who has held the handles of an induction
coil or who has taken a spark from a Leyden jar knows the physiological
effects which these things produce. The influence of high-tension
currents upon the growth of plants has been proved beyond dispute.

Now it seems to me that in this effect of an external electric charge
upon the internal mechanism of an organism we have a clue to the origin
of these new bacteria. I have already told how the fire-ball, in its
explosion, shattered the denitrifying cultures in Wotherspoon’s room;
and it seems clear that at the moment of the concussion there must have
been a tremendous play of electrical forces about the spot. We know
hardly anything with regard to the nature of the electrical fields
existing in such things as these fire-balls; and it is quite possible
that they may be different from anything of which we have any knowledge
among the more usual displays of electrical energy. I believe, then,
that it is in the action of the fire-ball that we must seek for an
explanation of the change in habit of Wotherspoon’s denitrifying
bacteria.

Again, I have mentioned my observation of the rapid multiplication of
the denitrifying bacteria which I made with Wotherspoon’s microscope
on the following day. That also seems to me to have a bearing upon the
problem; though I admit quite frankly that my evidence is only that of
a layman. It is in every way regrettable that Wotherspoon, having tired
of using his room as an exhibit, should have cleared away every trace
of the wreckage before any expert examination of it could be made; for
in this way the crucial evidence on the point was destroyed.

Further, in support of my views, I would point out that the very first
known occurrence of _B. diazotans_ was that which had Regent’s Park
as its site; and that the first place of attack was in the immediate
neighbourhood of Wotherspoon’s house in Cumberland Terrace. This can
hardly be disregarded, when it is considered in connection with the
other facts which I have mentioned.

At this time of day there can be no question that London formed the
focus from which _B. diazotans_ spread throughout the world. I have
described the ramifications of the great air-services; and it seems
to me obvious that the organisms were carried to and fro upon the
surface of the globe by the agency of the aeroplanes. The order of
attack at various points indicates this very clearly, in my opinion.
First came the American and Egyptian outbreaks; then Uganda and South
America; and finally, long after the others, Australia showed traces
of the devastation. I have checked the possible dates of arrival in
these various places, taking into account the relative swiftnesses of
the aeroplanes on the different routes; and the results can hardly be
gainsaid. Allowing, as one must, a certain latitude for the time of
development of the microbe in various spots, there seems little doubt
that the dates of the outbreaks fell into the same succession as the
times of arrival of the various London air-services.




CHAPTER IV

Panic


In dealing with the subsequent stage of affairs in this country, I
feel myself at a loss. Matters of fact, sequences of events, definite
incidents in a chain of affairs: all these can be described without
much difficulty and with a certain detachment on the part of the
narrator. But when it comes to indicating the transition from one
psychological state to another, the task is one which would require
for its proper fulfilment a more practised pen than mine; and it is
precisely this transitional period which I must now attempt to make
clear in retrospect; for without an understanding of it my narrative
would lack one of its corner-stones.

Apart from the mere question of narration, however, there is a further
difficulty which cannot be evaded. I myself passed through this crisis
and underwent day by day these changes in outlook which I shall have
to portray; so that the personal factor cannot be eliminated from
my account. Yet my own feelings and views must not be allowed to
monopolise the field; since they had not the slightest influence upon
the main current of popular feeling.

I have used the word “current,” and perhaps it is the best one which
I could have chosen to express the thing which baffles me. As a man
walks by the side of a mountain stream, he sees the volume of the water
change as it grows from rill to rivulet and from rivulet to river;
yet no single tributary is of any notable size. Gradually, almost
imperceptibly, the banks diverge, the sound of the running water grows
louder and yet louder: until at last comes a sweep over the rapids and
the thunder of the fall below.

It was in this way that events merged into each other between the
outbreak and the complete realisation of our fears. The transition
from security to panic was not made in one swift step. Rather it came
little by little, and at no point could one indicate precisely how
the public feeling had changed from that of the previous day. A whole
series of tiny impulses, each in itself almost negligible, served to
drive us from one mental position to the next; and a complete analysis
of the psychology of the time would be an impossible task. I propose,
therefore, merely to indicate some of these innumerable factors which
played upon our spirits; so that this blank in my narrative may be
filled in some way, even if only roughly.

It was not until the Blight had spread far over the Home Counties that
the general public became interested in the matter at all; and at this
period the mass of people in the country districts were almost the
only ones who saw any cause for alarm. The town-dwellers seldom came
in direct contact with the sources of their food-supply; in fact it
is doubtful if the lower-class Londoner of the old days could have
answered a direct question as to the date of harvesting. Food came to
them daily in a form which suggested very little with regard to its
original nature. Wheat they knew only in the form of bread or flour;
meat was divorced almost entirely from the shapes of the animals from
which it was derived; tea, coffee and sugar brought with them no
visions of tea-gardens on the Indian hills or sugar plantations under
the West Indian sun. The furthest traceable point of origin of these
things, as far as most of the population was concerned, was to be
found in the retail shops. Thus there was a certain sluggishness in
apprehension among the main bulk of the people when they read in the
newspapers that the crops had failed. To them, it simply meant that we
should have to buy in another market; just as they had to go to a fresh
grocer when their own dealer ran short of some commodity which they
required.

In the country districts, and especially in the great centres of the
agricultural portions of the kingdom, the outlook was different, but
still restricted in its scope. Failure of the crops to them meant
financial loss, hard times, stringency, urgent personal economy and
the hope of better luck in the following season. Though closer to the
soil, the country folk were unmoved by any outlook wider than that
which included the direct effects of the Blight upon their industry.
And, indeed, they had little time in which to speculate upon ultimate
reactions, for their attention was concentrated almost wholly upon
their efforts to remedy the damage already done or to protect from
injury any portions of the crop which had not yet been attacked.

Thus at this stage the mental surface of the country as a whole
remained unruffled. Here and there, of course, a few of us had grasped
what might be entailed if the Blight destroyed the whole of the home
supplies; but I doubt if even the most far-sighted had imagined that
anything but a local shortage was in prospect.

With the arrival of the American cables, the situation changed
slightly. The tone of the newspapers became graver, and they
endeavoured to awake their readers to the fact that the possibility of
a serious shortage had become a certainty. Edition after edition poured
out from the printing-presses and the headlines grew in magnitude
from hour to hour. “_The Blight in America_” was the first type of
intimation, which attracted but little interest and was placed in the
“third-class” column of the papers. Then came appreciation of the
importance of the news; the headlines increased in size and moved up
nearer the centre of readers’ interest: “_Spread of the Blight in the
Wheat Districts_.” Next came a sudden jump to the first place on the
page and heavily leaded type in the headlines: “_Failure of Wheat Crop
in America_.”

Even at this stage, the readers as a whole failed to connect the news
with anything in their daily life. Gradually it was borne in upon
their minds that the collapse of the American crops--including the
Canadian--meant a very rapid rise in the price of cereal food-stuffs;
but further than this they refused to look. At that time the cattle
question had not been noticed at all; and the general feeling simply
resolved itself into a decision to avoid bread as far as possible and
eat meat instead.

With the arrival of reports from the remaining wheat-growing districts,
the newspapers increased their efforts to awaken their readers to the
gravity of the situation. “_The World Shortage_” occupied the place of
honour in their columns, and was supported by telegrams and cables from
all parts of the globe telling the same tale of crop failure with a
steady monotony.

As I look back upon these days I can only marvel at the ingrained
conservatism of the human mind. It is true that on the whole the public
were at last beginning to understand the situation. They had grasped
the fact that almost all the known regions of wheat-growing land had
been attacked; and that a shortage was inevitable. But, none the less,
in their inmost thoughts they still clung to the fixed idea that
_somewhere_ in the world there was bound to be a store of wheat--or if
not wheat, then rice or some other edible grain--which would enable
us to pass through the coming winter without undue restriction of our
food supplies. It was perhaps a manifestation of that eternal optimism
which is necessary if the race is to survive at all; or possibly it
represented a trust in the Government’s capacity to arrange some means
whereby supplies would be forthcoming in due course. Whatever its
origin, it was among the most marked features of that strange time.

I remember that one of the side-issues of the disaster created at that
stage far deeper impressions than the catastrophe itself. With the
failure of the American supplies over a huge area, the Wheat Pit became
convulsed with an outbreak of gambling such as had never been seen
before. Chicago went crazy; and legitimate business gave place to a
fury of speculation which grew ever more intense as the news came in of
further extensions of the devastated areas. Before the Blight appeared
in America, December wheat had been offered at 233¼; but in the earlier
stages of the game of speculation it rushed up to 405: and before the
end came it was dealt with at prices which were purely illusory, since
they corresponded to nothing tangible in commodities. Thousands of
bears were ruined in the preliminary moves; and in the end the whole
machinery of the Pit was brought to a standstill owing to there being
no sellers.

Of course that series of transactions had no real influence upon the
course of events; but the public, both here and in America, failed to
see this; and the bitterest feelings found vent concerning “gambling in
the food of the people.” It is quite possible that the anger uselessly
expended on this subject served to keep the public from concentrating
their attention upon the real problem of the world shortage. Huge
quantities of wheat were dealt with on paper; and the people, being
unfamiliar with the methods of Chicago speculation, assumed that these
enormous transactions actually represented the transfer of millions
of bushels of real grain from seller to buyer. The sharp upward trend
of flour and bread prices at home served to confirm their impression
that the gambling in the Pit was responsible for their troubles; and
Rodman’s attempt--which was practically successful--to corner wheat,
led to violent criticism and even, at one time, to an effort to lynch
him.

It was not only in the wheat market that this fever of speculation
showed itself. Maize, oats, barley and cotton also became counters in
the game and rose to incredible prices. Unknown men appeared in the
world of finance and for days maintained their positions as controllers
of the markets. Many of the great firms in America ventured their
capital rashly and suffered disaster.

In its ultimate effects also, the gamble in food-stuffs exerted a
profound influence on the stream of public opinion. The news of the
speculations in Chicago, the descriptions of the turbulent scenes in
the Wheat Pit, where at one time revolvers were fired by super-excited
members, the tales of huge fortunes won and lost in a day, the deep
under-current of resentment at this callous trading upon the world’s
necessities, all tended in the end to bring into view the real state
of the wheat question. And now the newspapers were printing the single
word FAMINE as a headline; and the people were beginning to ask in
ominous tones: “What is the Government doing?”

It was at this time that, to my profound surprise, I received a private
letter from the Prime Minister requesting my attendance at a meeting
which he had arranged.




CHAPTER V

Nordenholt


Probably with a view to avoiding the attention of the Press, the
meeting was held elsewhere than at No. 10 Downing Street. I found
myself in what looked like a Board meeting-room. A fire burned in the
grate, for it was a chilly day. Down the centre of the room stretched
a long table around which a number of men were sitting, some of whom
were familiar as great figures in the industrial world. At the head of
the table I recognised the Premier, flanked on either hand by a Cabinet
Minister. A chair was vacant half-way up the table, opposite the
fireplace; and I took it on a gesture from the Premier.

Almost at once, the Prime Minister rose to his feet. He looked worn and
agitated; but even under the evidences of the strain he endeavoured to
assume a cheerful and confident air. He was a man I had never trusted;
and I now had my first opportunity of examining him at close quarters.
In repose, his face fell into the heavy lines of the successful
barrister; but when he became animated, a mechanical smile flitted
across it which in some way displeased me more than the expression
which it veiled. He seemed to me a typical example of the _faux
bonhomme_. In politics he had gained a reputation for dilatory conduct
combined with a mastery in the art of managing a majority; and his
mind was saturated with the idea of Party advantage. Of real loyalty
I suspect he had very little; but when one of his Cabinet blundered
heavily, he would step into the limelight with a fine gesture and
assume all responsibility. In this way he kept his Government intact
and gained a reputation for fidelity without losing anything; for he
well knew that no one would call him to account for the responsibility
which he had assumed.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you will probably wonder why we have invited
you to meet us here to-day. We all know the unhappy state of affairs
into which the country has fallen. There is dissatisfaction abroad;
and the Government is being held responsible for conditions which were
none of its making. I will speak plainly to you, for it is no time for
reservations. Something must be done to allay public anxiety, which
is growing more intense as time goes on. I am not one of those who
take these passing scares seriously; but we cannot afford to ignore
the present feeling: and some measures are necessary to satisfy this
clamour. It is a time when all of us must come to the aid of the
Executive.

“The Cabinet is dispersed at the moment. Many of the members are
abroad and are unable to return at present, owing to a disorganisation
of transport. But pending their return and the decisions which we
shall then be forced to take, I thought it right to call together you
gentlemen, large employers of labour, and to enlist your aid in the
work we shall have to do. It is essential that the Government should
retain public confidence at the present time. I think we are agreed
upon that point. Nothing could be more fatal than a General Election
forced upon us under the reigning conditions.

“We have taken steps to call Parliament together immediately, in order
to lay before it certain measures which we believe will enable us to
tide over this crisis. But in the meantime we must try to pacify the
working classes, who are being agitated by the dismal forecasts of
the newspapers. I have no desire to inquire into the origin of the
jeremiads which are being printed daily in a certain group of papers;
but I cannot help noticing that they all tend towards a discrediting of
myself and my colleagues. There is a cry for action; whereas I think
all of you will agree that consideration is required, so that the
action, if it should become necessary, may be well-contrived.

“It is in these circumstances that we have called you gentlemen
together. We propose to lay before you the main points of our scheme;
and when you have heard them, we count upon you, as great employers
of labour, to lay the matter before your employés. We shall use the
newspapers also to disseminate our proposals; but personal efforts can
do more than any printed appeals. I trust that we shall not look in
vain for the cordial co-operation which is absolutely requisite at this
crisis.”

As this speech proceeded, I had become more and more uneasy. Through it
all ran the governing thought that something must be done, which was
true enough; but the thing which he proposed to do, it appeared to me,
was to persuade the country that all was well, whereas I felt that the
essential matter was to prepare against a practical calamity.

“We have given a great deal of thought to our proposals, though we have
not wasted time in the consideration of details. The broad outlines are
all that are required for our present purpose; and we have confined
our attention to them. My friend the Home Secretary”--he indicated the
colleague who sat on his left--“will be good enough to read to you the
heads of our decisions. I may say, however, that these decisions are
only of a temporary nature. We may find it necessary to modify some of
them in due course; and they must not be regarded as in any way final.
Possibly”--he let the mechanical smile play over the company--“possibly
some of those present may be able to suggest certain modifications at
this meeting. If these modifications are such that we can adopt them,
we shall be only too glad to do so.”

He sat down; and the Home Secretary rose in his turn. Saxenham had the
reputation of being dull but honest. He had no force of character, but
he had won his way into the Cabinet mainly because he had never been
known to stoop to a false action in the whole course of his career.
On this account he represented a mainstay of the Government, which
in other ways was not too scrupulous. His brain was one which worked
slowly; and his personal admiration for the Prime Minister was such
that he followed him blindly without seeing too clearly whither he was
being led. He cleared his throat and took up a sheet of paper which
contained the Government proposals.

“I think that it will be best if I take the various proposals seriatim
and elucidate each of them, as I come to it, by a short commentary.

“_First_, we shall issue a Government statement to the Press with the
object of reassuring the public and putting an end to this rising
clamour for action in haste. In this statement we shall call attention
to the fact that there is at present a twelve-weeks’ supply of food in
the country, which, with due care, would itself be sufficient to last
the population until the next harvest. We shall make it clear that the
Government have under earnest consideration the steps which it may be
necessary to take in the future; and we shall appeal to the public to
pay no heed to alarmist statements from interested quarters.

“_Second_, we shall advise the King to issue a Proclamation on the same
lines. We believe that this may have a greater effect in some quarters
than an official Government statement.

“_Third_, we shall make arrangements for taking over the food stores in
the country, though we hope that it will not be necessary to do so.

“_Fourth_, we shall make arrangements to purchase with the national
moneys the surplus food supplies of grain. We shall be able to pay
higher prices than private importers; and I have little doubt that we
shall thus be able to stock our granaries with food sufficient to carry
us through until well beyond the next harvest.

“_Fifth_, we shall prepare a system of rationing, as soon as we have
obtained our supplies and know definitely how much food can be allotted
per head to the population.

“_Sixth_, since a continuance of the present crisis will undoubtedly
lead to widespread distress and unemployment, we propose to take under
consideration a system of unemployment relief; so that there may be no
centres of disturbance generated among the population by idleness or
lack of money.

“_Seventh_, we shall invite the scientific experts on agriculture to
devote their attention to the problem of increasing the crops in the
next harvest, so that such a state of affairs as this may not again
arise.”

He paused, with an air of finality, though he did not resume his seat.
At the head of the table, the Prime Minister was apparently plunged in
thought. Suddenly I was struck by the employment to which the third
member of the Cabinet was putting his time. With the sheets of paper in
front of him he was constructing a series of toys. A box, a cock-boat,
an extraordinarily life-like frog lay before him on the table, and he
was busily engaged in the production of something which looked like a
bird. I learned afterwards that this was a trick of his, the outcome of
his peculiarly nervous temperament. Not wishing to be detected watching
him, I turned my eyes away; and as I swept my glance round the table, I
suddenly found myself in turn the object of scrutiny.

My first impression was of two steel-blue eyes fixed upon my own with
an almost disquieting intensity of gaze. I had the feeling of being
examined, not only physically but mentally, as though by some hypnotic
power my very thoughts were being brought to light. Usually, in a
casual interchange of glances, one or other of two is diverted almost
at once; but in this case I felt in some way unable to withdraw my eyes
from those before me; while my _vis-à-vis_ continued to examine me with
a steadfast attention which, strangely enough, suggested no rudeness.

He was a man of more than the average height, over six feet I found
later when he rose from his chair. His features suggested no particular
race, though there was an elusive resemblance to the Red Indian type
which I felt rather than saw; but this was perhaps intensified by
the jet-black hair and the clean-shaven face. All these are mere
details of little importance. What impressed me most about him was
an air of conscious power, which would have singled him out in any
gathering. Looking from him to the Prime Minister, it crossed my mind
that while the Premier counterfeited power in his appearance, this
unknown embodied it; and yet there was no parade, for he appeared to be
entirely devoid of self-consciousness. Before he removed his eyes from
mine I saw an inscrutable smile curve his lips. I say inscrutable, for
I could not read what it meant; but it resembled the expression of a
man who has just checked a calculation and found it to be accurate.

It has taken me some time to describe this incident; but actually it
can have occupied hardly more than a fraction of a minute; for, as I
took my eyes away from his, I heard the Home Secretary continue:

“These, gentlemen, are our proposals; and I think that they cover the
necessary ground. We wish especially to draw your attention to the
sixth one: for it is that which has chiefly moved us to lay these
matters before you ere we make them public. It concerns unemployment,
if you remember. We have brought you into our councils because all
of you are large employers of labour in different lines of industry;
and we would welcome any suggestions from you now with regard to the
possible modes of application of this scheme in practice. As Mr. Biles
has told you, it is essential at this moment to avoid discontent among
the proletariat. Europe is in a very disturbed condition, and a change
of Government at this juncture would have disastrous effects. I can say
no more upon that point; but I wish you to understand that we urgently
require your co-operation at this time.”

He sat down; and the Prime Minister rose again.

“I think you will see, gentlemen, from what the Home Secretary has
said, that the Government has the situation well in hand. The only
matter about which we are at all concerned is the liquor question. It
is clear that we can hardly sacrifice grain for the manufacture of
alcohol until we are sure that we have in stock a sufficiency of food
for the country’s needs. A shortage of liquor, however, may lead to
industrial unrest; and it is this possible unrest which we desire your
help in preventing. We wish if possible to get directly into touch with
the workers of the nation; and we have approached you first of all.
Later we intend to interview the Trades Union leaders with the same
object. But time presses; and I shall be glad to hear any criticisms of
our plans if you will be so good as to give your views.”

He sank back into his chair and again the smile faded almost at once.
For a moment there was a pause. Then the man opposite me rose to his
feet.

“Who is that?” I whispered to my neighbour.

“Nordenholt.”

Nordenholt! I looked at him with even more attention than before. For
two decades that name had rung through the world, and yet, meeting him
now face to face, I had not recognised him. Nor was this astonishing;
for no portrait of him had ever come to my notice. The daily photo
papers, the illustrated weeklies, even _Punch_ itself, had never
printed so much as a sketch of him. He had leaped into fame simply
as a name to which no physical complement had been attached. By some
mysterious influence behind the scenes, he had avoided the usual Press
illustrator with a success which left him unrecognisable to the man in
the street.

So this--I looked at him again--so this was Nordenholt, the Platinum
King, the multi-millionaire, wrecker of two Governments. No wonder that
I had felt him to be out of the common. I am no hero-worshipper; yet
Nordenholt had always exercised an attraction upon my mind, even though
he was only a name. In many respects he seemed to be the kind of man I
should have liked to be, if I had his character and gifts.

When he rose, I found that his voice matched his appearance; it was
deep, grave and harmonious, although he spoke without any rhetorical
turn. Had he chosen to force himself to the front in politics, that
instrument would have served him to sway masses of men by its mere
charm. I thought that I detected a faint sub-tinge of irony in it as he
began. He wasted no time upon preliminaries but went straight to the
point.

“Are we to understand that this paper in the hands of the Home
Secretary contains a full statement of the measures which the
Cabinet--or such members of it as are available--have decided upon up
to the present?”

The Prime Minister nodded assent. I seemed to detect a certain
uneasiness in his pose since Nordenholt had risen.

“May I see the paper?... Thank you.”

He read it over slowly and then, still retaining it in his hand,
continued:

“Perhaps I have not fathomed your purpose in drawing it up; but if I
am correct in my interpretation, it seems to me an excellent scheme. I
doubt if anything better could be devised.”

The nervous frown left the Premier’s face and was replaced by
a satisfied smile; the Home Secretary, after a pause of mental
calculation, also seemed to be relieved; while the Colonial Secretary
put down his paper model and looked up at Nordenholt with an expression
of mild astonishment. It was evident that they had hardly expected this
approval. The hint of irony in the speaker’s voice grew more pronounced:

“This scheme of yours, if I am not mistaken, is a piece of
window-dressing, pure and simple. You felt that you had to make some
show of energy; and to pacify the public you bring forward these
proposals. The first two of them achieve nothing practical; and the
remaining five concern steps which you propose to take at some future
time, but which you have not yet considered fully. Am I correct?”

The Colonial Secretary broke in angrily in reply:

“I object to the word window-dressing. These proposals give in outline
the steps which we shall take in due course. They represent the
principles which we shall use as our guides. You surely did not expect
us to work out the details for this meeting?”

Nordenholt’s voice remained unchanged.

“No, I did not expect _you_ to have worked out the details of this
scheme. I will confine myself to principles if you wish it. I see that
in the fourth clause you anticipate the purchase of foreign grain,
though at an enhanced price. May I ask where you propose to secure it?
It is common knowledge that it cannot be obtained within the Empire, so
presumably you have some other granary in your minds. Possibly you have
already taken steps.”

The face of the Colonial Secretary lit up with a flash of malice.

“You are quite correct in both conjectures. Australia and Canada have
suffered so severely from the Blight that we can expect nothing from
them, and I am afraid that Russia is in the same condition. But we have
actually issued instructions to agents in America to purchase all the
wheat which they can obtain, and advices have arrived showing that we
control already a very large supply.”

“Excellent forethought. I fear, however, that it has been wasted
through no fault of yours. At ten o’clock this morning, the Government
of the United States prohibited the export of food-stuffs of any
description. You will not get your supplies.”

“But that is contrary to their Constitution! How can they do that?” The
Prime Minister was evidently startled. “And how do you come to know of
it while we have had no advice?”

“A censorship was established over the American cables and wireless
just before this decision was made public. They do not wish it to
be known here until they have had time to make their arrangements.
My information came through my private wireless, which was seized
immediately after transmitting it.”

“But ... but ...” stammered the Home Secretary, “this complicates our
arrangements in a most unforeseen manner. It is a most serious piece of
news. Biles, we never took that into account.”

“Sufficient unto the day, Saxenham. This Government has been in
difficult places before; but we always succeeded in turning the corner
successfully. Don’t let us yield to panic now. If we think over the
matter for a while, I do not doubt that we shall see daylight through
it in the end.”

Nordenholt listened to this interchange of views in scornful silence.

“One of the details which have still to be thought out, I suppose,
Biles,” he continued. “Don’t let it delay us at present. There is
another point upon which I wish some information.”

The meeting was a curious study by this time. Almost without seeming
to notice it, Nordenholt had driven the three Cabinet Ministers into a
corner; and he now seemed to dominate them as though they were clerks
who had been detected in scamping their work. Personality was telling
in the contest, for contest it had now become.

“This news which I have given you implies that the twelve-weeks’ supply
of food in the country is all that we have at our command anywhere.
What do you propose to do?”

“We shall have to take stock and begin the issue of ration tickets as
soon as possible.”

“Twelve-weeks’ supply; how long will that last the country under your
arrangements?”

The Colonial Secretary made a rapid calculation on a sheet of paper.

“As we shall need to carry on till the next harvest, I suppose it means
that the daily ration will have to be reduced to less than a quarter of
the full amount--three-thirteenths, to be exact.”

“And you are satisfied with that calculation?”

The Colonial Secretary glanced over his figures.

“Yes, I see no reason to alter it. Naturally it will mean great
privation; and the working class will be difficult to keep in hand; but
I see no objection to carrying on till next year when the harvest will
be due. The potato crop will come in early and help us.”

Nordenholt looked at him for a moment and then laughed contemptuously.
Suddenly his almost pedantic phraseology dropped away.

“Simpson, you beat the band. I never heard anything like it.”

Then his manner changed abruptly.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked roughly, “that you haven’t realised
yet that there will be _no_ next harvest? Don’t you understand that
things have changed, once for all? The soil is done for. There will be
no crops again until every inch of it is revivified in some way. ‘The
potato crop will come in early and help us!’ I’ve consulted some men
who know; and they tell me that within a year it will be impossible to
raise more than a small fraction even of the worst crop we ever saw in
this country.”

The Premier was the only one of the three who stood fast under this
blow.

“That is certainly a serious matter, Nordenholt,” he said; “but there
is nothing to be gained from hard words. Let us think over the case,
and I feel sure that some way out of this apparent _impasse_ can be
found. Surely some of these scientific experts could suggest something
which might get us out of the difficulty. I don’t despair. Past
experience has always shown that with care one can avoid most awkward
embarrassments.”

“The ‘awkward embarrassment,’ as you call it, amounts to this. How are
you going to feed fifty millions of people for an indefinite time when
your supplies are only capable of feeding them normally for twelve
weeks? Put them on ‘three-thirteenth rations’ as Simpson suggests;
and when the next harvest comes in you will find you have a good deal
less than ‘three-thirteenth rations’ per head for them. What’s your
solution, Biles? You will have to produce it quick; for every hour
you sit thinking means a bigger inroad into the available supplies.
Remember, this is something new in your experience. You aren’t up
against a majority you can wheedle into taking your advice. This time
you are up against plain facts of Nature; and arguments are out of
court. Now I ask a plain question; and I’m going to get a straight
answer from you for once: What are your plans?”

The Premier pondered the matter in silence for a couple of minutes;
then, apparently, the instinct of the old Parliamentary hand came
uppermost in his mind. The habits of thought which have lasted through
a generation cannot be broken instantaneously. With a striving after
dignity, which was only half successful he said:

“Parliament is about to meet. I shall go there and lay this matter
before the Great Inquest of the nation and let them decide.”

“Three days wasted; and probably two days of talk at least before
anything is settled; then two days more before you can bring anything
into gear: one week’s supplies eaten up and nothing to show for it. Is
that your solution?”

“Yes.”

“You are determined on that? No wavering?”

“No.”

“Very good, Biles. I give you the fairest warning. On the day that you
meet the House of Commons, I shall place upon the paper a series of
questions which will expose the very root of the Mazanderan scandal,
and I shall supply full information on the subject to the Opposition
Press. I have had every document in my possession for the last year.
I can prove that you yourself were in it up to the neck; I have notes
of all the transactions with Rimanez and Co. And I know all about the
Party Funds also. If that once gets into print, Biles, you are done
for--thumbs down!”

He imitated the old death sign of the Roman arena. The Premier sat as
if frozen in his chair. His face had gone a dirty grey. Nordenholt
towered over him with contempt on his features. Suddenly the Colonial
Secretary sprang to his feet.

“This is blackmail, Nordenholt,” he cried furiously. “Do you think you
can do that sort of thing and not be touched? You may think you are
safe behind your millions; but if you carried out your threat there
isn’t a decent man who would speak to you again. You daren’t do it!”

“If you speak to me like that again, Simpson, I’ll take care that no
decent man speaks to you either,” Nordenholt said, calmly. “There’s
another set of notes besides those on Mazanderan. I have the whole
dossier of the house in Carshalton Terrace in my desk. I’ll publish
them too, unless you come to heel. It will be worse than Mazanderan,
Simpson. It will be prison.”

In his turn, the Colonial Secretary collapsed into his chair. Whatever
the threat had been, it had evidently brought him face to face with
ruin; and guilt was written across his face.

But Saxenham had paid no attention to this interruption. In his slow
way he was evidently turning over in his mind what Nordenholt had said
to the Prime Minister; and now he spoke almost in a tone of anguish:

“Johnnie, Johnnie,” he said. “Deny it! Deny it at once. You can’t sit
under that foul charge. Our hands were clean, weren’t they? You said
they were, in the House. There’s no truth in what Nordenholt says, is
there? Is there, Johnnie?”

But the Premier sat like a statue in his chair, staring in front of him
with unseeing eyes. The affairs of the Mazanderan Development Syndicate
had been a bad business; and if the connection between it and the
Government could be proved, after what had already passed, it was an
end of Biles and the total discredit of his Party. Nordenholt, still on
his feet, looked down at the silent figure without a gleam of pity in
his face. Somehow I understood that he was playing for a great stake,
though no flicker of interest crossed his countenance.

The strain was broken by Saxenham getting to his feet. I knew his
record, and I could guess what his feelings must have been. He stood
there, a pathetic little figure, with shaking hands and dim eyes, a
worshipper who had found his god only a broken image. He turned and
looked at us in a pitiful way and then faced round to the wrecker.

“Nordenholt,” he said, “he doesn’t deny it. Is it really true? Can you
give me your word?”

Nordenholt’s face became very gentle and all the hardness died out of
his voice.

“Yes, Saxenham, it is true. I give you my word of honour for its truth.
He can’t deny it.”

“Then I’ve backed a lie. I believed him. And now I’ve misled people.
I’ve gone on to platforms and denied the truth of it; pledged my word
that it was a malicious falsehood. Oh! I can’t face it, Nordenholt. I
can’t face it. This finishes me with public service. I--I----”

He covered his face with his hands and I could see the tears trickle
between his fingers. He had paid his price for being honest.

But the Premier was of sterner stuff. He looked up at Nordenholt at
last with a gleam of hatred which he suppressed almost as it came:

“Well, Nordenholt, what’s your price?”

“So you’ve seen reason, Biles? Not like poor Saxenham, eh?” There
was an under-current of bitterness in the tone, but it was almost
imperceptible. “Well, it’s not hard. You take your orders from me now.
You cover me with your full responsibility. You understand? You always
were good at assuming responsibility. Have it now.”

“Do I understand you to mean that you would like to be a Dictator?”

“No, you haven’t got it quite correctly. I _mean_ to be Dictator.”

The Prime Minister had relapsed into his stony attitude. There was
no trace of feeling on his face; but I could understand the mental
commotion which must lie behind that blank countenance. Under cover
of fine phrases, he had always sought the lowest form of Party
advantage; his political nostrum had become part and parcel of his
individuality, and he had never looked higher than the intricacies of
the Parliamentary game. Now, suddenly, he had been brought face to
face with reality; and it had broken him. To do him justice, I believe
that he might have faced personal discredit with indifference. He had
done it before and escaped with his political life. But Nordenholt had
struck him on an even more vital spot. If the Mazanderan affair came
into the daylight, his Party would be ruined; and he would have been
responsible. I give him the credit of supposing that it was upon the
larger and not upon the personal issue that he surrendered.

Nordenholt, having gained his object, refrained from going further. He
turned away from the upper end of the table and addressed the rest of
us.

“Gentlemen, you see the state of affairs. We cannot wait for the slow
machinery of politics to revolve through its time-honoured cycles
before beginning to act. Something must be done at once. Every moment
is now of importance. I wish to lay before you what appears to me the
only method whereby we can save something out of the wreck.

“I have been thinking out the problem with the greatest care; and I
believe that even now it is not too late, if you will give me your
support. This meeting was called at my suggestion; and I supplied a
list of your names because all of you will be needed if my scheme is to
be carried out. But before I divulge it, I must ask from each of you
an absolutely unconditional promise of secrecy. Will you give that,
Ross? And you, Arbuthnot?...”

He went from individual to individual round the table; and to my
astonishment, used my own name with the others. How he knew me, I could
not understand.

When he had secured a promise from all present, he continued:

“In the first place, I had better tell you what I have done.
Immediately the Blight began to ravage the American wheat-fields, I
bought up all the grain which was available from last year’s crop and
got it shipped as soon as possible. It is on the high seas now; so
we have evaded the new prohibition of exports. I need not give you
figures; but it amounts to a considerable quantity. This, of course, I
carried through at my own expense.

“I have also had printed a series of ration tickets and explanatory
leaflets sufficient to last the whole country for three weeks. This
also I did at my private charges.

“Further, I have placed orders with the printers and bill-posters for
the placarding of certain notices. Some of these, I expect, are already
posted up on the hoardings.

“I mention these matters merely in order to show you that I have not
been idle and that I am fully convinced of the necessity for speed.”

He paused for a few seconds to let this sink in.

“Now we come to the main problem. Saxenham has told you the state
of affairs; and I have supplemented it sufficiently to allow of
your forming a judgment on the case. We have a population of fifty
millions in the country. We have a food supply which will last, with
my additions to it, for perhaps fourteen weeks. Beyond that we have
nothing in hand. The next supply cannot make its appearance for at
least a year. I have omitted the yield of the present crop, as I wish
to be on the safe side; and I find that most of the grain is useless.
When the new crop comes in, it will be, under present conditions,
negligible in quantity owing to the soil-destruction which the
_Bacillus diazotans_ has wrought. That, I think, is a fair statement of
the case as it stands.

“What results can we look for? If we ration the nation, even if we
allow only a quarter of the normal supplies per day, our whole stock
will be exhausted within the year. There will be a large percentage
of deaths owing to underfeeding; but at the end of the year I think
we might look forward to having a debilitated population of some
thirty millions to feed. Will the new crop give us food for them? I
have consulted men who know the subject and they tell me that it is
an impossibility. We could not raise food enough, under the present
conditions, to support even a reasonable percentage of that population.”

He paused again, as though to let this sink in also.

“Gentlemen, this nation stands at the edge of its grave. That is the
simple truth.”

We had all seen the trend of his reasoning; but this cold statement
sent a shiver through the meeting. When he spoke again, it was in an
even graver tone.

“You must admit, gentlemen, that we cannot hope to keep alive even
half of the population until crops become plentiful once more. There
is only a single choice before us. Either we distribute the available
food uniformly throughout the country or we take upon ourselves the
responsibility of an unequal allotment. If we choose the first course,
all of us will die without reprieve. It is not a matter of sentiment;
it is the plain logic of figures. No safety lies in that course. What
about the second?

“Let us assume that we choose the alternative. We select from the
fifty millions of our population those whom we regard as most fitted
to survive. We lay aside from our stores sufficient to support this
fraction; and we distribute among the remainder of the people the
residuum of our food. If they can survive on that scale of rations,
well and good. If not, we cannot turn aside the course of Nature.”

The Prime Minister looked up. Evidently, behind his impassive mask, he
had been following the reasoning.

“If I understand you aright,” he said, “you are proposing to murder a
large proportion of the population by slow starvation?”

“No. What I am trying to do is to save some millions of them from a
certain death. It just depends upon which way you look at it, Biles.
But have it your own way if it pleases you.

“Now, gentlemen, the calculation is a simple one. We have enough food
to last a population of fifty millions for fourteen weeks. From that
we deduct five weeks’ supplies for the whole population; which leaves
us with four hundred and fifty million weekly rations. We select five
million people whom we decide must survive; and these four hundred and
fifty million rations will keep them fed for ninety weeks--say a year
and nine months. It will really be longer than that; for I anticipate
rather heavy ravages of disease on account of the monotony of the diet
and the lack of fresh vegetables. That is in the nature of things; and
we cannot evade it.

“That then, is the only alternative. It is, as the Prime Minister has
said, a death sentence on by far the greater part of the people in
these islands; but I see no way out of the difficulties in which we
are involved. It is not we who have passed that sentence. Nature has
done it; and all that we can achieve is the rescue of a certain number
of the victims. With your help, I propose to undertake that work of
rescue.”

I doubt if those sitting round the table had more than the vaguest
glimpse of what all this meant. When a death-roll reaches high figures,
the mind refuses to grasp its implications. Very few people have any
concrete idea of what the words “one million” stand for. We only
understood that there was impending a human catastrophe on a scale
which dwarfed all preceding tragedies. Beyond that, I know that I, for
one, could not force my mind.

“We are thus left with five million survivors,” Nordenholt continued.
“But this does not reach the crux of the matter. The nitrogen of the
soil has vanished; and it must be replaced if the earth is ever again
to bring forth fruits. That task devolves upon mankind, for Nature
works too slowly for our purposes. In order to feed these five million
mouths--or what is left of them when the food supply runs out--we have
to raise crops next year; and to raise these crops we must supply the
soil with the necessary nitrogenous material.

“I have consulted men who know”--this seemed to be his only phrase when
he referred to his authorities--“and they tell me that it can be done
if we bend our whole energies to the task. All the methods of using
the nitrogen of the air have been worked out in detail long ago: the
Birkeland-Eyde process, Serpek’s method, the Schönherr and the Haber-Le
Rossignol processes, as well as nitrolim manufacture and so forth. We
have only to set up enough machinery and work hard--very hard--and we
shall be able to produce by chemical processes the material which we
require. That is what the five million will have to do. There will be
no idlers among them. At first it will be work in the dark, for we
cannot calculate how much material we require until the agricultural
experts have made their experiments upon the soil. But I understand
that it is quite within the bounds of possibility that we shall be
successful.

“I come now to another point. These five million survivors cannot be
scattered up and down the country. They must be brought into a definite
area, for two reasons. In the first place, we must have them under our
control so that we can make food-distribution simple; and, in the
second place, we must be able to protect them from attack. Remember,
outside this area there will be millions dying of starvation, and these
millions will be desperate. We can take no risks.”

He took a roll from behind his chair and unfolded upon the table a
large map of the British Isles marked with patches of colour.

“As to the choice of a segregation area, we are limited by various
factors. We shall need coal for the basis of our work; therefore it
would suit us best to place our colony near one of the coal-fields. We
shall need iron for our new machinery; and it would be best to choose
some centre in which foundries are already numerous. We shall need to
house our five million survivors and we cannot spend time in building
new cities for them. And, finally, we need a huge water-supply for
that population. On this map, I have had these various factors marked
in colour. In some places, as you see, three of the desiderata are
co-existent; but there is only one region in which we find all four
conditions satisfied--in the Clyde Valley. There you have coal and
iron; there are already in existence enormous numbers of foundries and
machine-shops; the city of Glasgow alone is capable of accommodating
over a million human beings; and the water-supply is ample. This, I
think, is sufficient to direct our choice to that spot.

“There are two further reasons why I am in favour of the Clyde Valley.
It is a defensible position, for one thing. North of it you have only
a very limited population--some three millions or even less. On the
south, it is far removed from the main centres of population in the
Midlands and London. This will be an advantage later on. Again, second
point, we have to look forward to cultivation next year. Bordering the
Clyde Valley, within easy reach, lie the tracts which, before the
Blight, used to be the most fertile land in the country. The fields are
ready for us to sow, once we have replaced the vanished nitrogen. I
think there is no better place which we could select.

“Now, gentlemen, I have put my scheme before you. I have not given you
more than the outlines of it. I know that it seems visionary at first;
but you must either take it or leave it. We cannot wait for Parliament
or for anybody else. The thing must be done now. Will you help?”

A murmur of assent passed round the table. Even the Prime Minister
joined in the common approval; and I saw Nordenholt thank him with a
glance.

“Very good, gentlemen. I have most of the preliminaries worked out
in sufficient detail to let us get ahead. To-morrow we meet again
here at nine in the morning, and by that time I hope to have further
information for each of you. In the meantime, will you be good
enough to think over the points at which this scheme will touch
your own special branches of industry? We have an immense amount of
improvisation before us; and we must be ready for things as they come.
Thank you.”

He seated himself; and for the first time I realised what he had
done. By sheer force of personality and a clear mind, he had carried
us along with him and secured our assent to a scheme which, wild-cat
though it might appear, seemed to be the only possible way out of the
crisis. He had constituted himself a kind of Dictator, though without
any of the trappings of the office; and no one had dared to oppose
him. The cold brutality with which he had treated the politicians was
apparently justified; for I now saw whither their procrastination would
have led us. But I must confess that I was dazed by the rapidity with
which his moves had been made. Possibly in my account I have failed to
reproduce the exact series of transitions by which he passed from stage
to stage. I was too intent at the time to take clear mental notes of
what occurred; but I believe that I have at least drawn a picture which
comes near to the reality.

The meeting was at its end. Nordenholt went across to speak to the
Prime Minister; while the others began to leave the room in groups of
two and three. I moved towards the door, when Nordenholt looked up and
caught my eye.

“Just wait a minute, Flint, please.”

He continued his earnest talk with the Premier for a few minutes, then
handed over an envelope containing a bulky mass of papers. At last he
came to me and we went out together.

“You might come round to my place for a short time, Flint,” he said.
“My car is waiting for us. I want you to be one of my right-hand men in
this business and there are some things I wish to explain to you now.
It may not seem altogether relevant to you; but I think it is necessary
if we are to work together well.”




CHAPTER VI

The Psychology of the Breaking-strain


With my entry into Nordenholt’s house I hoped to gain a clearer
insight into certain sides of his character; for the possessions which
a man accumulates about him serve as an index to his mind even when
his reticence gives no clue to his nature. I had expected something
uncommon, from what I had already seen of him; but my forecasts were
entirely different from the reality.

The room into which he ushered me was spacious and high-ceilinged; a
heavy carpet, into the pile of which my feet sank, covered the floor;
a few arm-chairs were scattered here and there; and a closed roll-top
desk stood in a corner. One entire side of the room was occupied by
bookshelves. Beyond this, there was nothing. It was the simplest
furnishing I had ever seen; and in the house of a multi-millionaire
it astonished me. I had somehow expected to find lavishness in some
form: art in one or other of its interpretations, or at any rate an
indication of Nordenholt’s tastes. But this room defeated me by its
very plainness. There appeared to be no starting-point for an analysis.
To me it seemed a place where a man could think without distraction;
and then, at the desk, put his thoughts into practical application.

As we entered, Nordenholt excused himself for a moment. He wished to
give instructions to his secretary. Some telephoning had to be done at
once; and then he would be at my disposal. I heard him go into the next
room.

When I am left alone in a strange house with nothing to fill in
my time, I gravitate naturally to the bookcases; so that now I
mechanically moved over to the serried rows of shelves which lined one
side of the room. Here at last I might get some clue to the workings
of Nordenholt’s mind. Glancing along the backs of the volumes, I
found that the first shelf contained only works on metaphysics and
psychology. Somewhat puzzled by this selection, I passed from tier to
tier, and still no other subject came in view. A rapid examination of
the cases from end to end showed me that the entire library dealt with
this single theme, the main bulk of the works being psychological.

This discovery overturned in my mind several nebulous conjectures which
I had begun to form as to Nordenholt’s character. What sort of a man
was this, a millionaire, reputed to be one of the shrewdest financiers
of the day, who stocked his study entirely with psychological works
among which not a single financial book of reference was to be found?
Coupled with the stark simplicity of the furniture, this clue seemed
unlikely to lead me far.

As I was pondering, the door opened and Nordenholt returned. While it
was still ajar, I heard the trill of a telephone bell and a girl’s
voice giving a number; then the door closed and cut off further
sounds. Thus after ten minutes in his house I had gathered only three
things about him: he was simple, almost Spartan, in his tastes; he was
interested in psychology; and his secretary was a girl and not a man.

He came forward towards me; and again I had the sensation of command in
his appearance. His great height and easy movements may have accounted
for it in part; but I am taller than the average myself; so that it
was not entirely this. Even now I cannot analyse the feeling which he
produced, not on myself alone, but upon all those with whom he came in
contact. Personal magnetism may satisfy some people as an explanation;
but what is personal magnetism but a name? In some inexplicable manner,
Nordenholt gave the impression of a vast reservoir of pent-up force,
seldom unloosed but ever ready to spring into action if required; and
in these unfathomable eyes there seemed to brood an uncanny and yet not
entirely unsympathetic perception which chilled me with its aloofness
and nevertheless drew me to him in some way which is not clear to me
even now. Under that slow and minute inspection, eye to eye, I felt all
my human littleness, all my petty weaknesses exposed and weighed; but
I felt also that behind this unrelenting scrutiny there was a depth of
understanding which struck an even balance and saved me from contempt.
I can put it no better than that.

He motioned me to a chair and took another himself. For a few moments
he remained silent; and when he spoke I was struck by the change in
his tone. At the meeting, he had spoken decisively, almost bitterly at
times; but now a ring of sadness entered into that great musical voice.

“I wonder, Flint,” he said, “I wonder if you understand what we have
taken in hand to-day? I doubt if any of us see where all this is
leading us. I see the vague outlines of it before us; but beyond a
certain point one cannot go.”

He paused, deep in thought for a few seconds; then, as though waking
suddenly to life again, offered me a cigar and took one himself. When
he spoke again, it was in a different tone.

“Perhaps you wonder why I picked you out--of course it was I who got
you invited to that meeting; I wanted to look you over there before
making up my mind about you. Well, I have means of knowing about
people; and you struck me as the man I needed in this work. I’ve been
watching you for some years, Flint; ever since you made your mark, in
fact. You aren’t one of my young men--the ones they call ‘Nordenholt’s
gang,’ I believe--but you are of my kind; and I knew that I could get
you if I wanted you for something big.”

In any other man this would have struck me as insolence; but Nordenholt
had already established such an influence over me that I felt flattered
rather than ruffled by this calm assumption on his part.

“But in some ways it’s a disadvantage now that we didn’t come together
earlier,” he continued. “You remember Nelson and his captains--the
band of brothers? Nothing can be accomplished on a grand scale without
that feeling; and possibly I have left it until too late to get into
touch with you. It depends on yourself, Flint. I know you, possibly as
well as you know yourself; but you know nothing of me. With my young
men,” and a tinge of pride came into his voice, “with my young men,
that difficulty doesn’t arise. They know me as well as anyone can--well
enough, at any rate, for us to work together for a common object, no
matter how big the stake may be. But you, Flint, represent a foreign
mind in the machine. I want you to understand some things; in fact,
it’s essential that you should see the lines on which I work; for
otherwise we shall be at cross-purposes. I wonder how it can be done?”

He leaned back in his chair and smoked silently for a few minutes. I
said nothing; for I was quite content to await whatever he had to put
into words. I only wondered what form it would take. When he broke the
silence, it was on quite unexpected lines. He looked at his watch.

“Three hours yet before we can do anything further. I might as well
spend part of it on this; and possibly I can give you an idea of my
outlook on things which will help you when we are working together up
North.

“When I was quite a child, Flint, I used to take a certain delight in
doing things which had an element of risk in them--physical risk,
I mean. I liked to climb difficult trees, to work my way out on to
dangerous bits of roof, to walk across tree-trunks spanning streams,
and so forth. There’s that element of risk at the back of all real
enjoyment, to my mind. It needn’t be physical risk necessarily, though
there you have it in perhaps its most acute aspect; but at the root of
a gamble of any sort where the stakes are high you find this factor
lying, whether it is noticeable or not.

“One of my earliest experiences in that direction took the form of
walking along a slippery wall which was high enough to make a fall
from it a serious matter. I mastered the art of keeping on the wall
to perfection; and then, finding that pall upon me, I endeavoured to
complicate it by jumping across the gap made by a gateway. It was an
easy distance: I proved that to myself by practising on the ground from
a standing take-off. And the nature of the wall offered no particular
difficulty, for I tested myself in jumping a similar gap between two
slippery tree-trunks laid end to end. Yet when I came to the actual gap
in the wall, my muscles simply refused to obey me; and time after time
I drew back involuntarily from the spring.

“I was an introspective child; and this puzzled me. I knew that I
could accomplish the feat with ease; and yet something prevented my
attempting it. I fell to analysing my sensations and tracing down the
various factors in the case; and, of course, it was not long until I
came to the crucial point. Does this bore you? I am sorry if it does,
but you’ll see the point of it by-and-by.”

While he had been speaking, I had had a most curious impression. His
argument, whatever it might be, was evidently addressed to me; and yet
all through it I had the feeling that it was not altogether to me that
he was talking. In some way I gathered the idea that while he spoke
to me his mind was working upon another line, testing and re-testing
some chain of reasoning which was illustrated by his anecdote; so that
while I looked upon one aspect of it he was scanning the same facts
from a totally different point of view and reading into them something
which I was not intended to grasp.

“Obviously the crux of the matter was the height of the wall and the
fear of hurting myself severely if I missed my leap,” he continued.
“Once I had discovered that--and of course it took much less time to do
so than it takes now to explain the case--I set about another trial. I
made up my mind that I would think nothing of the chance of slipping,
and that this time I would accomplish the feat with ease. Yet once more
I failed to bring my body up to the effort. Something stronger than my
consciousness was at work; and it defeated me.”

He smiled sardonically at some memory or other.

“I practised jumping along a marked portion of the wall where it was
lower; and I found that I could accomplish the distance with ease.
Whereupon my childish mind formulated the problem in this way; and I
believe that it was correct in doing so. The ultimate factor in the
thing was the fear of a damaging fall. Within limits, I was prepared to
take the risk; as had been shown by the success on the lower parts of
the wall. But at the high place beside the gateway, my resolution had
given way under a strain of nervousness. And at once there came into my
mind the conception of a breaking-strain. Up to a certain tension, my
conscious mind worked perfectly; but, beyond that, there was a complete
collapse. Something had snapped under the strain. I may say that I
finally accomplished the leap successfully; I simply wouldn’t allow
myself to be beaten in a thing I knew I could do.”

He halted for a moment as though this marked a turning-point in his
thoughts.

“This idea of the breaking-strain remained fixed in my child’s mind,
however; and I used to amuse myself by conjecturing all sorts of
hypothetical cases in which it played a part. It finally grew to be a
sort of mild obsession with me, and I would ask myself continually:
“Why did So-and-so do this rather than that?” and would then set
to work to discover the factors at the back of his actions and the
tension-snap which had driven him into something which was unexpected
from his normal line of conduct.

“You can understand, Flint, how this practice grew upon me. It is
the most interesting thing in the world; and the materials for
applying it are everywhere about us in our everyday life. I extracted
endless amusement from it; and as I grew up into boyhood I found its
fascination greater than ever. I took a never-failing interest in
probing at the hidden springs of conduct and trying to establish these
breaking-strains in the people before me.

“Then, as I grew older I discovered the Law Courts. There you see the
philosophy of the breaking-strain brought into touch with real life
in a practical form. I used to go and watch some well-known barrister
handling a hostile witness; and suddenly I understood that all these
men were merely fumbling empirically after the thing that I had studied
from my earliest days. What does a barrister want to do with a hostile
witness? To break him down, to throw him out of his normal line of
thought and then to fish among the dislocated machinery for something
which suits his own case. It afforded me endless interest to follow the
methods of each different cross-examiner. I learned a great deal in the
Courts; and I came away from them convinced that I had found something
of more than mere academic interest. This breaking-strain question
was one which could be applied to affairs of the greatest practical
importance. It was actually so applied in law cases. Why not utilise it
in other directions also?”

I found him watching me keenly to see if I followed his line of
thought. After a moment, he went on:

“It sounds so obvious now, Flint; but I believe that I alone saw it as
a scientific problem. Your blackmailer, your poker-sharp, all those
types of mind had been working on the thing in a crude way; but to me
it appeared from a different angle. Everyone else had looked on it
in the form of special cases, particular men who had to be swayed by
particular motives. I began as a youth where they left off. I spent
some years on it, Flint, examining it in all its bearings; and finally
I evolved a system of classification which enabled me to approach any
specific case along general lines. I can’t go into that now; but it
suddenly gave me an insight into motives and actions such as I doubt if
anyone ever had before.”

He paused and watched the smoke curling up from his cigar. Again he
seemed to be deep in the consideration of some problem connected with
and yet alien to what he had been saying. For a time he was lost in
thought; and I waited to hear the rest of the story.

“Well, Flint,” he went on at last, “it certainly seemed on the face
of it to be a very useless accomplishment from the practical point
of view; from the standpoint of mere cash, I mean. And yet, it still
fascinated me. When I was quite a young man I determined to go to
Canada and take up lumber. I was an orphan; there was nothing to keep
me in this country, for I had no near relations; and I felt that it
might do me good to cut loose from things here and go away into the
woods for a time. I had enough capital to start in a small way; so I
went. My ideas of the lumber-trade were vague at the time. If I had
known what it was, I doubt if I should have touched it.

“At first sight, it looked a hopeless venture. I knew nothing of
the trade; I was a youngster then; I’d had no training in financial
operations. Failure seemed to be the only outcome; and the men on the
spot laughed at me. I simply would not admit that I was beaten at the
start; and everything drove me on against my better judgment. And I
had one tremendous asset. I knew men.

“I knew men better than anyone else out there. I never made a mistake
in my choice. I collected a few good men at the start to help me;
and through them I gathered others almost as good. In a year I had
made progress; in two years I was a success; and very soon I became
somebody to reckon with. And through it all, Flint, I knew practically
nothing about the actual trade. That was only a tool in my hands. What
I dealt in was men and men’s minds. I could gauge a man’s capacity to
a hair; and I picked my managers and foremen from the very best. They
were glad to come to me, somehow. They felt I understood them; and no
inefficients were comfortable with me. I never had to discharge them;
they simply went of their own accord. I left everything to my staff,
for I knew them thoroughly and gauged their capacities to a degree. And
because I knew them I found the right place for each man; so that the
work went forward with perfect smoothness and efficiency. Before I had
been five years there I was on the road to being a rich man.”

His tone expressed no satisfaction. It was clear that I was not
expected to admire his talents.

“Then, suddenly, came the discovery of platinum on a large scale in
the neighbourhood of my district. You know what that meant; but you
must remember that in those days it was a very different matter from
now. It was like the Yukon gold rush in some of its aspects. The place
swarmed with prospectors, mostly men of no education, whose main object
was to get as much as they could in a hurry and then go elsewhere to
spend the money the platinum brought them. Meanwhile, the platinum
market was convulsed, and the price swayed to and fro from day to day.
You must remember that in those times the thing was in the hands of a
very few men; for the supply was limited. The Canadian mines overthrew
the nicely-adjusted balance of the market and everything suffered in
consequence; for the uses of platinum directly or indirectly spread
over a very large field of human industry.”

That part of his history was more or less familiar to me, but I did not
interrupt.

“One day it occurred to me that here in Canada we had a case parallel
to the state of affairs in the Diamond Fields before the Kimberley
amalgamation. Why not repeat Cecil Rhodes’ methods? Just as he
regulated the price of diamonds, I could regulate the price of platinum
if I could get control of the Canadian mines, for they were by far the
most important in the world.

“Again, I knew nothing of platinum, just as I had known nothing of
lumber; but I was able to pay for the best advice, to pay for secrecy
as well; and to judge the experts, I had my knowledge of men to help
me. I got the best men, I chose only men whom my insight enabled me to
pick out; and I began to buy up claims quietly under their guidance.
Here again psychology came in. I could tell at a glance when a man
was a “quitter” and when a miner would refuse to sell. I could gauge
almost to a sovereign the price that would prove the breaking-strain
for any particular owner. I can’t tell you how it is done; it is partly
inborn, perhaps, partly acquired; but I know that my knowledge is quite
incommunicable.

“To make a long story short, I had acquired a very fair percentage of
the valuable ground when suddenly I discovered that five other men had
been struck with the same idea; and that prices were rising beyond
anything I could hope to pay. It was a case for amalgamation; but I
did not see my way through it quite so simply. Two of them I knew to
be honest. One of them I could not trust, although he had hitherto
never shown any signs of crookedness; but I knew his breaking-strain,
and I knew also that the temptations to which he would be exposed
under any amalgamation scheme would be too great for him. He had to
be eliminated. The other two were weak men who could be dealt with
easily enough. I needn’t give you the details. I approached the two
honest men, combined with them, and with the joint capital of the three
of us I bought out the third competitor. The other two we dealt with
separately, buying out the one and taking the other in along with us.
My partners trusted me with the negotiations, again because I knew men
and their motives.

“And that was how I made my first million. Remember, I knew nothing
about the materials I had handled in the making of it. I never took
the slightest interest in the things themselves--and I took very
little interest in the money either, for my tastes are simple. What
did interest me was the psychology of the thing, the probing among
the springs and levers of men’s minds, and the working out of all the
complex strains and stresses which form the background of our reason
and our emotions. The million was a mere by-product of the process.

“But with the million there came another interest. Up to that time
I had applied my methods to individual cases; but it struck me,
after the strain of the amalgamation negotiations was over, that my
generalisations were capable of a wider application. I took up the
study of political affairs over here; and I found that my principles
enabled me to gauge the psychology of masses even more easily than
those of individuals. As a practical test, I stood for Parliament; and
got elected without any difficulty. Of course one of the Parties was
glad to have me--a millionaire isn’t likely to go a-begging at their
door for long--but you may remember that I won that election by my own
methods. The Party machines tried to copy them, of course, at a later
date; but they failed hopelessly because they were merely repeating
mechanically some operations which I had designed for a special case.

“I took very little interest in politics, though. I had no sympathy
with the usual methods of the politicians; and at times I revolted
against them effectually.”

He was evidently thinking of the two episodes which had gained him the
nickname of the Wrecker.

“When I began, I think I told you that the element of risk enters
largely into one’s pleasures; and I believe that holds good in
politics. The work of a politician, and especially of a Cabinet
Minister, is largely in the nature of a gamble. To most of them,
politics is an empirical science; for they have little time to study
the basis of it. I’ll do them the justice to say that I don’t think
it is a mere matter of clinging to their salaries which keeps them
in office; it’s mainly that they enjoy the feeling of swaying great
events. With an Empire like ours, the stakes are tremendous; and
there’s a certain sensation to be got out of gambling on that scale.
Mind you, I doubt if they realise themselves that this is what they
enjoy in the political game; but it is actually what does sway them to
a great extent.

“Now so long as it’s a mere question of some parochial point, I don’t
mind their enjoying their sensations. It matters very little in the
long run whether one Bill or another passes Parliament; and if they
fight over minor questions, I don’t care. But twice in my political
career I saw that the Party game was threatening trouble on bigger
lines. The Anglo-Peruvian agreement and the Malotu Islands question
were affairs that cut down to the bed-rock of things; and I couldn’t
stand aside and see them muddled in the usual way. I had to assert
myself there, whether I liked it or not. And when I did intervene, my
mental equipment made the result a certainty. _I_ knew the country and
the country’s average opinion in a way that none of them did; and I
had only to strike at the vital point. They call me the Wrecker; and
I suppose I did bring down two Governments on these questions; but it
wasn’t so difficult for me.

“But, as I told you, I never had much interest in politics. I like real
things; and the political game is more than half make-believe. I still
have my seat in the House; but I think they are gladdest when I am not
there.

“Well, I am afraid I’m making a long story of it; but I think you will
see the drift of it now. Politics failed to give me what I wanted. I
had no turn for the routine of it; and I had no wish to be involved in
all the petty manœuvres upon which the nursing of a majority depends.
Mind you, I could have done it better than any of them, with that
peculiar bent of mine. They consult me whenever a crisis arises; and
I can generally pull them through. After all, it’s a case of handling
men, there as everywhere else.

“However, I wanted something better to amuse me than the squaring of
some nonentity with a knighthood or the pacification of some indignant
office-seeker who had been passed over. I wanted to feel myself pitted
against men who really were experts in their own line. And that was how
I came to take up finance in earnest.”

He paused again and lighted a fresh cigar. While he was doing so, I
watched his face. In any other man, his autobiographic sketch would
have seemed egotistical; and possibly I have raised that impression in
my reproduction of it; for I can only give the sense of what he said. I
cannot put on paper the tones of his voice--the faint tinge of contempt
with which he spoke of his triumphs, as though they were child’s
play. Nor can I do more than indicate here and there that peculiar
sensation of duality which his talk took on more and more clearly as
he proceeded. It was as though the Nordenholt whom I saw before me
were telling his story whilst over behind him stood some greater
personality, following the narrative and tracing out in it the clues
which were to lead on to some events still in the distant future.

“Finance, Flint,” he continued. “That was the field where I came into
my own at last. Money in itself is nothing, nothing whatever. But the
making of money, the duel of brain against brain with not even the
counters on the table, that’s the great game. The higher branches of
finance are simply a combination of arithmetic and psychology. They’re
divorced absolutely from any idea of material gain or loss. Railways,
steamship lines, coal, oil, wheat, cotton or wool--do you imagine that
one thinks of these concrete things while one plays the game? Not at
all. They are the merest pawns. The whole affair is compressed into
groups of figures and the glimpses of the other man’s brain which one
gets here and there throughout the operations. And I played a straight
game, Flint; no small investor was ever ruined through my manœuvres. I
doubt if any other financier can say as much. I went into the thing as
a game, a big, risky game for my own hand; and I refused to gamble in
the savings of little men. I took my gains from the big men who opposed
me, not from the swarm of innocents.”

It was true, I remembered. Nordenholt had played the game of finance in
a way never seen before. He had made many men’s fortunes--a by-product,
as he would have said, no doubt--but no one had ever gone into the
arena unwarned by him. When he had laid his plans, carried out his
preliminary moves and was ready to strike, a full-page advertisement
had appeared in every newspaper in the country. “MR. NORDENHOLT ADVISES
THE SMALL INVESTOR TO REFRAIN FROM OPERATING IN WHEAT,” or whatever it
might be that he proposed to deal in himself. Then, after giving time
for this to take effect, he struck his first blow. Wonderful struggles
these were, fought out often far in the depths of that strange sea of
finance, so that hardly a ripple came to the surface. Often, too, the
agitation reached the upper waters and there would be glimpses of the
two vast organisations convulsed by their efforts; here a mass of foam
only, there some strange tentacle stretching out to reach its prey or
to coil itself around a vantage-point which it could use as a fulcrum
in further exertions. During this period, the Exchanges of the world
would be shaken, there would be failures, hammerings, ruin for those
who had ventured into the contest despite the warnings. Then, suddenly,
the cascading waves would be stilled. One of the antagonists had gone
under.

A fresh advertisement would appear: “MR. NORDENHOLT HAS CEASED HIS
OPERATIONS.” It was a strange requiem over the grave of some king of
finance. Nordenholt was always victorious. And with the collapse of his
opponent, the small speculators flocked into the markets of the world
and completed the downfall.

Finally, after the gains had been counted, he advertised again asking
all those who had involuntarily suffered by his contest to submit
their claims to him; and every genuine case was paid in full. He could
afford it, no doubt; but how many would have done it? I knew from
that move of his that he really spoke the truth when he said that
money in itself was nothing to him. And it perhaps illustrates as well
as anything the impression he produced upon my mind that afternoon.
On the one side he was cold, calculating, pitiless to those whom he
regarded as his enemies and the enemies of the smaller investor; on the
other, he was full of understanding and compassion for those whom he
had maimed in the course of his gigantic operations. The Wheat Trust,
the Cotton Combine, Consolidated Industries, the Steel Magnates, and
the Associated Railways, all had gone down before him; and he had
ground their leaders into the very dust. And in every case, he had
opened his campaign as soon as they had shown signs of using their
power to oppress the common people. It may have been merely a move
in his psychological strategy; he may have waited until the man in
the street had begun to be uneasy for the future, so that this great
intangible mass of opinion was enlisted on his side. But I prefer
to think otherwise: and I was associated with Nordenholt in the end
as closely as any man. No one ever knew him, no one ever fathomed
that personality--of that I am certain. He was always a riddle. But
I believe that his cool intelligence, his merciless tactics, all had
behind them a depth of understanding and a sympathy with the helpless
minority. I know this is almost incredible in face of his record; but I
am convinced of its truth.

“At the end of it all,” he went on, “I can look back and say that my
theories were justified. I knew nothing of finance; but I chose my
advisers well. I knew what my opponents relied upon and what they
regarded as points which could be given up without affecting their
general position. The rest was simply a matter of psychology. How could
I bring the breaking-strain to bear?

“Well, when I left it, the financial world had handed over to me a
fortune which, I suppose, has seldom been equalled. There was nothing
in it, you know, Flint, nothing whatever. It merely happened that I
was trained in a way different from everyone else. They were plotting
and scheming with shares and stocks and debentures, skying this one,
depressing that one and keeping their attention fixed on the Exchanges.
I came to the thing from a different angle. The movements of the
markets meant little to me in comparison with the workings of the
brains behind those markets. I could foresee the line of their advance;
and I knew how to take them in the flank at the right moment. I fought
them on ground they could not understand. They knew the mind of the
small investor thoroughly, for they had fleeced him again and again.
I began by clearing the small speculator off the board; and thus they
were deprived of their trump card. They had to fight me instead of
ruining him; and they had no idea what I was. It was incredibly simple,
when you think of it. That is why you never found anything about my
personality in the newspapers. I paid them to leave me alone. No one
knew me; and I was able to fight in the dark.

“But when I grew tired of it at last, I had an enormous fortune. What
was I to do with it? Money in itself one can do nothing with. If I were
put to it, I doubt if I could spend £5,000 a year and honestly say that
I had got value for it--I mean direct personal enjoyment. I cast about
for some use to which I could turn this enormous mass of wealth. You
may smile, Flint, but it is one of the most difficult problems I ever
took up. I hate waste; and I wanted to see some direct, practical value
for all these accumulated millions. What was I to do?

“I looked back on the work of some of my predecessors. Carnegie used to
spend his money on libraries; but do libraries yield one any intimate
satisfaction? Can one really say that they would give one a feeling
that one’s money had been spent to a good purpose? Apparently they
did to him; but that sort of thing wouldn’t appeal to me. Then there
is art. Pierpont Morgan amassed a huge collection; but there again I
don’t feel on safe ground. Is one’s money merely to go in accumulating
painted canvas for the elect to pore over? The man in the street cannot
appreciate these things even if he could see them. I gave up that idea.

“Then I came across a life of Cecil Rhodes and he seemed to be more
akin to me in some ways. Empire building is a big thing and, if you
believe in Empires, it’s a good thing. There is something satisfactory
in knowing that you are preparing the way for future generations,
laying the foundations in the desert and awaiting the tramp of those
far-off generations which will throng the streets of the unbuilt
cities. A great dream, Flint. One needs a prospicience and a fund of
hope to deal in things like that. But I want to see results in my own
day; I want to be sure that I’m on the right lines and not merely
rearing a dream-fabric which will fade out and pass away long before
it has its chance of materialisation. I want something which I can see
in action now and yet something which will go down from generation to
generation.

“I thought long over it, Flint. Time and again I seemed to glimpse what
I wanted; and yet it eluded me. Then, suddenly, I realised that I had
the very thing at my gates. Youth.

“All over the world there are youngsters growing up who will be stifled
in their development by mere financial troubles. They have the brains
and the character to make good in time; but at what a cost! All their
best energy goes in fulfilling the requirements of our social system,
getting a roof over their heads, climbing the ladder step by step,
waiting for dead men’s shoes. Then, when they come to their own, more
often than not their heart’s desire has withered. I don’t mean that
they are failures; but they have used up their powers in overcoming
those minor difficulties which beset us all. It was an essay of
Huxley’s that brought the thing clearly before me. ‘If the nation could
purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of £100,000
down,’ he said, ‘he would be dirt-cheap at the money.’ And with that,
in a flash, I saw my way clear. I would go about in search of these
potential leaders among our youth. My peculiar insight would suffice to
keep me on the right lines there. I would make the way easy for them,
but not too easy. I would test and re-test them till I was sure of
them. And then I would give them all that they desired and open up the
world to them to work out their destinies.

“I did it in time. Even now I’m only at the beginning of the
experiment, but already I feel that I have spent my money well. I have
given a push to things; and although I can see no further than this
generation, I know that I have opened a road for the next. Each of them
is a centre for others to congregate around and so the thing spreads
like the circles in a pool. I have thrown in the stone; but long after
I am gone the waves will be beating outward and breaking upon unknown
shores....”

He paused and seemed to fall into a day-dream for a few moments. Then
he spoke again.

“That was the origin of my young men, Flint; the Nordenholt gang”--he
sneered perceptibly at the words. “Many of them have gone down in the
race. One cannot foresee everything, you know, try as one may. But
the residuum are a picked lot. They are scattered throughout all the
industries and professions of the Empire; and all of them are far up
in their own pursuits. I often wondered whether anything would come of
it in my day beyond individual successes; but now I see a culmination
before me. We shall all go up side by side to Armageddon and my own men
will be with me in this struggle against the darkness. Man never put
his hand to a bigger task than this in front of us; and I shall need
my young men to help me. If we fail, the Earth falls back beyond the
Eolithic Age once more and Man has lived in vain.”

His voice had risen with pride as he spoke of his helpers; but at the
close I heard again the sub-current of sadness come into the deep
tones. I had been jarred by his exposition at the meeting, by his
apparent callousness in outlook; but now I thought I saw behind the
mask.

Again he sat pondering for some moments; but at last he threw off
his preoccupation; and when he spoke it was more directly to me than
hitherto.

“Possibly you may wonder, Flint, why it is that with all these
resources in my hands I have come to you for help; and why I have never
approached you before. The fact is, I watched you from your start
and stood by to help you if you needed me; but you made good alone,
and I never interfere with a man unless it is absolutely necessary.
You made good without my assistance; and I thought too well of you
to offer any. But I watched you, as I said--I have my own ways of
getting information--and I knew that you were just the man I required
for a particular section of the work in front of us. Your factory
organisation showed me that. There will be an enormous task before you;
but I know that you’ll be the right man in the right place. I never
make a mistake, when it is a case of this kind. You aren’t an untried
man.”

From anyone else, I would have regarded this as clumsy flattery; but so
great an influence had Nordenholt acquired over me even in that single
afternoon that I never looked at the matter in that light at all. His
manner showed no patronage or admiration; it seemed merely that he was
stating facts as he knew them, without caring much about my opinion.

“But it seems to me,” he went on, “that I’ve talked enough about
personal affairs already. I want to try to give you some views on the
main thing in front of us. You and I, Flint, have been born and grown
up in the midst of this civilisation; and I expect that you, like most
other people, have been oblivious of the changes which have come about;
for they have been so gradual that very few of us have noticed them at
all.

“When you begin low down in the scale of Creation, you find creatures
without any specialised organs. The simplest living things are just
spots of protoplasm, mere aggregations of cells, each of which
performs functions common to them all. Then, step by step as you rise
in the scale, specialisation sets in: the cells become differentiated
from one another; and each performs a function of its own. You get
the cells of the nerves receiving and transmitting sensation; you get
cells engaged in nutrition processes; there are other cells devoted
to producing motion. And with this specialisation you get the dawn
of something which apparently did not exist before: the structure
as a whole acquires a personality of its own, distinct from the
individualities of the cells which go to build it up.

“But the inverse process is also possible. When the body as a whole
suffers death, you still have a certain period during which the cells
have an existence. Hair grows after death, for example.

“Now if you look at the trend of civilisation, you will see that we are
passing into a stage of specialisation. In the Middle Ages, a man might
be a celebrated artist and yet be in the forefront of the science of
his day--like Leonardo da Vinci; but in our time you seldom find a man
who is first-class in more than one line. In the national body, each
individual citizen is a specialised cell; and if he diverged from his
normal functions he would disorganise the machine, just as a cancer
cell disorganises the body in which it grows.

“But this civilisation of ours has come to the edge of its grave.
It is going to die. There is no help for it. What I fear is that in
its death-throe it may destroy even the hope of a newer and perhaps
better civilisation in the future. It is going to starve to death;
and a starving organism is desperate. So long as it retains its
present organised and coherent life, it will be a danger to us; and
for our own safety--I mean the safety of the future generations--we
must disorganise it as soon as possible. We must throw it back at a
step, if we can, to the old unspecialised conditions; for then it
will lose its most formidable powers and break up of itself. Did you
ever read Hobbes? He thought of the State as a great Leviathan, an
artificial man of greater strength and stature than the natural man,
for whose protection and defence it was contrived; and the soul of this
artificial creature he found in sovereignty. How can we bring about the
_débâcle_ of this huge organism? That is the problem I have been facing
this afternoon.

“The Leviathan’s life-blood is the system of communications throughout
the country; and I doubt if we can cripple that sufficiently rapidly
and effectively to bring about the downfall. It would take too long
and excite too much opposition if we did it thoroughly. We must
have something subtler, Flint, something which will strike at each
individual intelligence and isolate it from its fellows as far as
possible. It’s my old problem of the breaking-strain again on the
very widest scale. We must find some psychological weapon to help us.
Nothing else will do.”

It seemed as though he were appealing to me for suggestions; but I had
nothing to offer. I had never considered such a problem; and at first
sight it certainly seemed insoluble. Given that men already had the
certainty of death before them, what stronger motive could one bring to
bear?

“I must think over it further,” he said at last, “I think I see a
glimmering of some possibilities. After all, it’s my own line.”

He dropped the subject and seemed to sink into his own thoughts for
a time. When he broke the silence once more, it was on an entirely
different subject.

“I wonder if you ever read the Norse mythology, Flint? No? Well, you’ve
missed something. The gods of Greece were a poor lot, a kind of divine
collection of Fermiers Généreaux with much the same tastes; but the
Scandinavian divinities were in a different class. They were human in
a way; but their humanity wasn’t of the baser sort. And over them
all hung that doom of Ragnarök, their Twilight, when the forces of
Evil would be loosed for the final struggle to bring darkness upon the
earth. It’s the strangest forecast of our present crisis. As Ragnarök
drew near, brother was to turn against brother; bloodshed was to sweep
the land. Then was to come the Winter, three years long, when all
trees were to fail and all fruits to perish, while the race of men
died by hunger and cold and violence. And with Ragnarök the very Gods
themselves were to pass away in their struggle with all the Forces of
Evil and Darkness.

“But they were only half-gods, deified men. Behind them, the All-Father
stood; and beyond that time of terror there lay the hope of Gimle, the
new age when all would again be young and fair.

“I look beyond these coming horrors to a new Gimle, Flint; a time
when Earth will renew her youth and we shall shake free from all the
trammels which this dying civilisation has twined about our feet. It
will come, I feel sure. But only a few of us leaders will see it. The
strain will be too much for us; only the very toughest will survive.
But each of us must work to the very last breath to save something upon
which we can build anew. There must be no shrinking in either will or
emotion. I warn you that it will be terrible. To save mankind from
the terror of the giants, Odin gave his eye to Mimir in return for a
draught of the Well of Knowledge. Some of us will have to give our
lives.... A few of us will lose our very souls.... It will be worth it!”

I was amazed to find this train of mysticism in that cold mind. Yet,
after all, is it surprising? Almost all the great men of history have
been mystics of one kind or another. Nordenholt rose; and something
which had burned in his eyes died out suddenly. He went to the roll-top
desk and took from it a bundle of papers.

“Here are your instructions, Flint. Everything has been foreseen, I
think, for the start. Follow them implicitly as far as they go; and
after that I trust you to carry out the further steps which you will
see are required.”

As he was shaking hands with me, another thought seemed to strike him.

“By the way, of course you understand that the whole of this scheme
depends for success on our being able to exterminate these bacilli? If
we cannot do that, they will simply attack any nitrogenous manure which
we use. I am putting my bacteriologists on to the problem at once; but
in any case the nitrogen scheme must go ahead. Without it, no success
is possible, even if we destroyed _B. diazotans_. So go ahead.”

His car awaited me at the door. On the drive home, I saw in the
streets crowds gathered around hoarding after hoarding and staring up
at enormous placards which had just been posted. The smaller type was
invisible to me; but gigantic lettering caught my eye as I passed.

  +-------------------------------------------+
  |                NITROGEN                   |
  |                                           |
  |                                           |
  |         ONE MILLION MEN WANTED            |
  |                                           |
  |                                           |
  |                              NORDENHOLT   |
  +-------------------------------------------+




CHAPTER VII

Nordenholt’s Million


Of all the incidents in that afternoon, I think the sight of these
placards brought home to me most forcibly two of the salient
characteristics of Nordenholt’s many-sided mind: his foresight and
his self-reliance. Their appearance in the streets at that moment
showed that they formed part of a plan which had been decided upon
several days in advance, since time had to be allowed for printing
and distributing them; whilst the fact that they were being posted up
within two hours of the close of the meeting proved that Nordenholt
had never had the slightest doubt of his success in dominating the
Ministers.

Later on, I became familiar with these posters. They were not identical
by any means; and I learned to expect a difference in their wording
according to the district in which they were posted up. The methods
of varied personal appeal had long been familiar to the advertising
world; but I found that Nordenholt had broken away from tradition and
had staked everything upon his knowledge of the human mind. In these
advertisements his psychological instinct was developed in an uncanny
degree which was clear enough to me, who knew the secret; but I doubt
if any man without my knowledge would have seen through the superficial
aspect of them quite so readily.

In this first stage of his campaign he had to conceal his hand. The
advertisements were merely the first great net which he spread in
order to capture every man who would be at all likely to be useful
to him, while the meshes had to be left wide enough to allow the
undesirable types to slip through. The proclamations--for they really
took this form--set forth concisely the exact danger which threatened
the food-supply of the country; explained why it was essential that
immense masses of nitrogenous material must be manufactured; and called
for the immediate enrolment of volunteers from selected trades and
professions.

As a primary inducement, the scale of remuneration offered was far
above the normal pay in any given line. It was, in fact, so high that I
fell at once to calculating the approximate total of wages which would
be payable weekly; and the figures took me by surprise when I worked
them out. No single private fortune, however gigantic, could have kept
the machinery running for even a few months at the uttermost. When I
pointed this out to Nordenholt he seemed amused and rather taken aback;
but his surprise was at my obtuseness and not at my calculations.

“Well, I’m slightly astonished, Flint. I thought you would have seen
deeper into it than that. Hasn’t it occurred to you that within six
weeks money, as we understand it, will be valueless? If we pay up
during the time we are getting things arranged, that will be all that
is required. Once the colony is founded, there will be no trade between
it and the outside world, naturally; and inside our own group we could
arrange any type of currency we choose. But, as a matter of fact,
we shall go on just as usual; and Treasury notes sufficient for the
purpose are already being printed.”

But the cash inducement was not the only one upon which he relied even
in his preliminary moves. Patriotism, the spirit of public service,
the promise of opportunities for talent and many other driving forces
were enlisted in the campaign. These more specialised appeals were
mainly sent out in the form of advertisements in the newspapers--great
whole-page announcements which appeared in unusual places in the
journals. I suppose to a man of enormous wealth most things are
possible, especially when the wealth is coupled with a personality like
Nordenholt’s; but it certainly amazed me to find his advertisements
taking the place of the normal “latest news” space in many papers. Nor
was this the only way in which his influence made itself felt. The
editorial comments, and even the news columns of the journals, dealt
at length with his scheme; and he secured the support of papers which
were quite above any suspicion of being amenable to outside influence.
On the face of it, of course, his plans--so far as they were made
public--were obviously sound; but I cannot help feeling that below this
almost unanimous chorus of praise in the leading articles there must be
some influence at work beyond mere casual approbation. Very probably
Nordenholt had seen his way to enlist the sympathy of editors by some
more direct methods, possibly by calling the controllers of policy
together and utilising his magnetic personality and persuasive powers.

In my own field of work at the first I found some difficulties in my
dealings with the Trades Union officials, who were suspicious of our
methods. They feared that we contemplated dilution on a huge scale;
and they were anxious to know the details of our plans. I consulted
Nordenholt on the point and found him prepared.

“Of course that was bound to arise as soon as we began to move on
a big scale. Well, you can assure them that we shall act strictly
according to the law of the matter. Promise them that as far as working
conditions go, we shall begin by letting the men fix their own hours of
work; and if any man is dissatisfied with these, we will pay him on the
spot a bonus of six months’ wages and let him leave instantly if he so
desires.

“Point out to them that, in the cases of some trades, I may have to
enlist the majority of the Unionists in the country; and that I am
not going to tie their hands by any previous arrangements: they shall
settle the matter for themselves. If that doesn’t satisfy them, you may
tell them definitely--and put it in writing if they wish--that under
no circumstances will I expect my employés to work for longer hours or
less pay than any other Trades Unionist in the country.”

I jotted the phrase down in my pocket-book.

“I may as well tell you, Flint, that I have given instructions to the
recruiting offices. No Trades Union Leader will be engaged by me under
any circumstances whatever. It’s real working men that I want; and I
don’t think much of the Union leaders from the point of view of actual
work.”

He looked at me for a moment and I saw a faint smile on his face.

“It seems to me, Flint, that even yet you haven’t managed to see this
thing in perspective. You must really get into your mind the fact that
there is going to be a clean break between the old system and the new
one we are making. Look at the thing in all its bearings. Once we are
up North, men shall work for me as I choose and for what I choose.
There will be no Factory Acts and Trades Union regulations or any other
hindrance to our affairs. They come here and try to put a spoke in my
wheel? I don’t mind that at all. But I do see that they are trying,
whether wilfully or through sheer ignorance, to hamper this work which
is essential to the race. Therefore I propose to meet them with fair
words. It’s not for me to enlighten their ignorance if it has persisted
up to now in the face of all this. I make them that promise, and if
they can’t understand its meaning, that is no affair of mine. _We_
know, if they’re too dense to see it, that in a few months there won’t
be a Trades Unionist left in the country, outside the colony! There
will be no wages drawn outside our frontier; so even if I paid our men
nothing, still I should be keeping my promise to the strict letter.”

“I see your point,” I said; “all’s fair and so forth?”

“Also, we shall have trouble, up there, I have no doubt. Probably there
will be a ca’ canny party among our recruits. They will have every
chance at first. I won’t interfere with them. But once the situation
clears up a little, I shall deal with them--and I shall do it by the
hand of their own fellows. They won’t last long. Now get along and
promise these officials exactly what I have told you.”

I offered no criticisms of his methods. His brain was far better than
mine. When I remember that he must have drafted the outlines of his
scheme and arranged most of the preliminaries of its execution in less
time than it would have taken me to decide upon a new factory-site,
I am still lost in amazement at the combination of wide outlook and
tremendous concentration of thought which the task involved.

Despite the carefully-planned deterrents which appeared in the
proclamations, the recruiting was enormous from the first.
“Nordenholt’s Million”--as the popular phrase ran--was not really a
million at all; but Nordenholt knew the influence of a round figure
upon the public imagination and it was near enough for all practical
purposes. He had looked on the thing in the broadest possible lines at
the start, and had drawn up a rough classification for the use of the
recruiting stations. To begin with, he limited the enlistment to men
between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five; though exceptional
cases received special consideration. On this basis, he expected to get
all the men he required. Three-quarters of a million of these were to
be married men with an upper limit of four children, preferably between
the ages of six and twelve. In addition to this, he was prepared to
accept half a million young unmarried men. Half a million unmarried
girls were also selected. The net result of this was that in the end he
obtained in round numbers the following classes:

  Husbands              750,000
  Wives                 750,000
  Children            2,250,000
  Bachelors             500,000
  Girls                 500,000
                     ----------
              Total   4,750,000

That left a margin of a quarter of a million below his original
estimate of five millions; and this he kept free for the time being,
partly because some of the number would be made up by specialists who
did not come under the general recruitment organisation and partly,
possibly, for taking in at the last moment any cases which might be
specially desirable.

At a later date I had an opportunity of questioning him as to his
reasons in laying down this classification: and they struck me as sound.

“In the first place, I want a solid backbone to this enterprise. I get
that by selecting the married men. They have got a stake in the thing
already in their wives, and especially in their children. I know that
the children mean the consumption of a vast quantity of food for which
we shall get no direct return in the form of labour; but I believe that
the steadying effect introduced by them will be worth the loss. We are
going to put this colony under a strain which is about as great as
human nature can bear; and I want everything on our side that can be
brought there.

“Then again, they will help to form a sort of public opinion. Don’t
forget that the ultimate aim of this affair is to carry on the race. I
could have done that by selecting bachelors and girls in equal numbers
and simply going ahead on that basis. But we must have discipline; and
unless you have some established order we should simply have ended by
a Saturnalia. You couldn’t have prevented it, considering the nervous
strain we are going to put on these people. I have no use for that sort
of thing; so I chose a majority of men with families, whose natural
instincts are to keep down the bacchanalian element among the unmarried.

“But in addition to these married men, I needed others who had a free
hand and who had only their own lives to risk. In certain lines, the
unmarried man can be relied upon where the married man shivers in his
shoes to some extent. That accounts for the bachelor element.

“But, since a preponderance of males over females would be bound to
lead to trouble, I had to enrol enough girls to bring up the balance.
Possibly they may also serve to spur on the younger men to work; and
they will be able to help in the actual task before us in a good many
ways, like the Munition girls of the War period.”

It seemed to me then the only possible solution of the problem; and it
worked in practice. We can’t tell how things would have fared if any
other arrangements had been made, so I must leave it at that. Anyway,
I think Nordenholt enlisted two of the strongest instincts of humanity
on his side in addition to the fear of hunger: and that was a definite
gain.

“Nordenholt’s Million” was, of course, a microcosm of the national
industries. It would serve no purpose to catalogue the trades which
were represented in it. Miners, iron- and steel-workers, electricians
and makers of electrical machinery preponderated; but Nordenholt had
looked ahead to agriculture and the needs of the population after the
danger of famine was past.

In the early stages, the statistical branch--recruited from the great
insurance companies--was perhaps the hardest worked of all. The most
diverse problems presented themselves for treatment; and they could
only be handled in the most rough-and-ready fashion until we were able
to bring calculation to bear. Without the help of the actuaries, I
believe that there would have been a collapse at various points, in
spite of all our foresight.

I have not attempted to do more than indicate in outline the activities
which engrossed us at that time. In my memory, it lives as a period of
frantic and often very successful improvisation. New problems cropped
up at every turn. The decision of one day might entail a recasting of
plans in some field which at first sight seemed totally divorced from
the question under consideration. Each line of that complex system
had to be kept abreast of the rest, so that there was no disjunction,
no involuntary halt for one section to come up with the remainder, no
clash between two departments of the organisation. And yet, somehow,
it seemed to work with more smoothness than we had expected. Behind us
all, seated at the nucleus of that complex web of activities, there
was Nordenholt, seldom interfering but always ready to give a sharp
decision should the need arise. And I think the presence of that cool
intelligence behind us had a moral effect upon our minds. He never
lessened our initiative, never showed any sign of vexation when things
began to go wrong. He treated us all as colleagues, though we knew that
he was our master. And under his examination, difficulties seemed to
fade away in our hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not until the meeting of Parliament that the Government
connection with Nordenholt’s scheme became known to the public; but on
the first day of the session the Prime Minister introduced a Bill which
subsequently became the Billeting Act; and this brought to light the
fact that Nordenholt was not working merely as a private individual.
Under the Act, the Government took powers to house the Nitrogen
Volunteers, as they were termed, in any locality which might be found
necessary. The wording of the Act gave them the fullest power in this
matter; but it was so contrived that no one suspected the establishment
of only a single Nitrogen Area.

In his speech on the second Reading, the Premier excelled all his
previous tactical exercises. He explained very clearly the nature
of the peril which threatened the country; and he pointed out that
the measure was necessary in order to cope with the danger. The new
Nitrogen work would entail great shiftings of labour hither and
thither, as the new factories grew up; and it was essential to provide
dwellings for the artisans engaged in the industry. Everything must
give way to this; and since houses could not be built in the short time
available, some sort of arrangement must be made which would, he hoped,
be merely temporary. He explained that the Government had empowered
Nordenholt to carry out the early arrangements; and he was able to give
statistics showing the progress which had already been made during the
last few days.

At the same time, he introduced a second Bill, somewhat on the lines of
the old Defence of the Realm Act, which enabled the Government to cope
with circumstances as they arose without the necessity of prolonged
Parliamentary debates.

So ingeniously did he handle the matter that there was practically no
opposition to either measure. It must be remembered that the influence
of the Press had been exerted almost entirely in favour of Nordenholt’s
scheme. The previous clamour for action had been succeeded by a chorus
of praise; and the bold initiative shown in the Nitrogen plans had been
acclaimed throughout the country.

Meanwhile, Nordenholt was making the best of two worlds. Nominally,
he was engaged in a private enterprise over which the Government had
no control; actually, he had the whole State machinery at his back to
assist him in his operations. This dual nature of the matter enabled
him to carry out his work with a minimum of interference from red taped
officials, while at the same time he was able to command the resources
of State Departments in any line wherein they could be of service
to him. After the passing of the two Acts, the Government adjourned
Parliament, to avoid the putting of awkward questions; so that during
the ensuing weeks the Nitrogen undertaking could progress without any
fear of interference or undue publicity.

Transport was the first problem which occupied Nordenholt’s attention.
It was in this connection that I caught my first glimpse of the
“Nordenholt Gang” at work. The executive staffs of the railways were
left intact, but one day there descended upon them a quiet little man
in spectacles with full authority in his pocket. Grogan had apparently
never been connected with railways in his life, as far as I knew, but
he took control of the whole system in the country without showing the
faintest sign of hesitation. How he acquired his knowledge, I never
learned; but I gathered that he had originally made his mark by his
investigations of the effect of trade-routes upon commerce.

His work was to indicate the broad outlines of the scheme, and the
railway officials then filled in the details. Yet I was told that he
seemed to know to a truck the demands which his projects would entail
upon the railways; and he never put forward anything which led to a
breakdown. I think he had that type of mind which sees straight through
the details to the core of an undertaking and which yet retains in due
perspective the minutiæ of the machinery.

And it was not only the railways which he had in his charge. All
the motor services were brought under his control as well. It was a
bewilderingly complex affair; and he had to act as a kind of liaison
centre between the two departments, clearing up any troubles which
arose and co-ordinating the twin methods of transport. I think he had
the power of mental visualisation developed to an abnormal extent;
and his memory must have been quite out of the common. To assist
him, he had the largest railway map I have ever seen--it covered a
whole floor--and on it were placed blocks of metal showing the exact
situation of every truck, carriage and locomotive in the kingdom. These
were moved from time to time by his assistants in accordance with
telegraphic information; and if he doubted his recollections at any
moment he could go and study the groupings upon it.

I remember seeing him once when things had got slightly out of gear,
his hands full of telegraph forms, his feet encased in felt slippers
to avoid marking the surface of the map, studying a point in the Welsh
system where a number of trucks had been stranded in sidings. With the
briefest consideration he seemed to come to a decision, for he gave his
orders to an assistant:

“Locomotive, Newport to Crumlin, _via_ Tredegar Junction. (It can’t
go through Abercarne, because the 3.46 is on the line now and I
don’t want to waste time shunting.) Then on to Cwm--C-w-m--to pick
up twenty-seven trucks in the siding. All right. After that, back
to Aberbeeg--b-double-e-g--since the line is blocked at Victoria by
No. 702. Then Blaina--B-l-a-i-n-a--and Abergavenny. All right....
Stop a moment. Map-measure, please. Motor Fleet 37 will be at
Abergavenny about then with some stores for the North. Hold train at
Abergavenny and wire them to stop No. 37 as it passes. That will fill
up ten trucks, I think. All right. Train Hereford, Birmingham, via
Leominster. Load twelve trucks Birmingham. Tamworth, pick up five
truck-loads--food, that red block there--then North behind No. 605. All
right. Then wire Abergavenny to send No. 37 to Monmouth. They’ll get
their orders there. All right.”

So it went on, I am told, hour after hour, throughout the day. Even
the details of the diurnal traffic were not sufficient; for as he went
along, he planned the night-operations as well. When he retired for the
short sleep-time which he took, every point had been regulated for the
ensuing five hours.

At first, everything culminated in the word “North”; but almost
immediately the whirling traffic on the south going rails had to be
considered also, as it grew in volume. How he managed it, I do not
know; but he seemed to have some sub-conscious faculty of drawing a
balance-sheet of the traffic at any moment; so that he knew if he was
sending too much North or too little South. Personally, I imagine
that he owed his success to a power akin to that of the professional
chess-player who can play a dozen blindfold games at one time.
Everybody has the faculty of mental visualisation developed in a
greater or less degree; but in Grogan, as far as traffic was concerned,
it seems to have attained supernormal proportions. I believe that he
actually “saw” in his mind the whole of England covered with his trains
and motor fleets and that he had by some means established time-scales
which enabled him to calculate the moments at which any train or fleet
would pass a series of given points. It was, of course, an immensely
more difficult affair than blindfold chess-playing; but I think it
clearly depended upon cognate processes.

Congleton, the Shipping Director, had a much easier task. For him there
was no trouble of blocked rails or interleaving traffic. His main
difficulty arose from berthing accommodation, which was a comparatively
simple affair. Most of the food-supplies were transferred North on
board ship; and a certain amount of the shifting of population was also
done in this way, especially the removal of the Glasgow inhabitants.

I can only give the merest outline of these great operations; for
the details are too intricate to be described here. Nordenholt’s
first step was to commandeer most of the public halls in the country,
which were then fitted up with partitions, etc., in order to convert
them into temporary dwelling-places for families. Thereafter, he
began to move his Nitrogen Volunteers into the Clyde Valley step by
step; and simultaneously, under the Billeting Act, he evicted the
local population to make room for his men. There was a considerable
outcry; and at times the military had to be employed to persuade the
reluctant to move out of their homes; but after the first few cases of
obstruction had been dealt with firmly, the people recognised that it
was useless to protest. Edinburgh was also treated in the same way; for
Nordenholt had planned to occupy a belt of country running from coast
to coast. He had to find room for a population of five millions; and it
was evidently going to be a difficult matter.

Looking back upon it now, it was a wonderful piece of work, carried out
without any very serious hitches. To transfer a population of nearly
ten millions, and to distribute five millions of that over a wide
area of England--for this was the only way in which house-room could
be found for them--was a gigantic task. Fabulous sums were expended
in finding living-room for the refugees in the houses of residents
throughout England; and eventually all of them had roofs over their
heads, in private dwellings, in converted halls or in commandeered
hotels.

Meanwhile, in Glasgow itself, the ever-growing Nitrogen Area was
surrounded with military pickets which prevented the mingling of
new-comers and the old population. This precaution of Nordenholt’s was
mainly directed against the possibility of rioting; for the feeling
between the expelled inhabitants and the incomers was extremely bitter:
but it served another purpose in that it tended to surround the
Nitrogen Area with a certain atmosphere of mystery. This was heightened
by the stoppage of all telegraphic and telephonic communication between
Glasgow and the South. Soon the only information obtainable in England
with regard to affairs in the Clyde Valley came from emigrants; and
with the end of the exodus, even the mails ceased and an impenetrable
veil fell between the two parts of the island.

A similar screen had fallen between England and Ireland at a slightly
earlier date. All postal and telegraphic communication was broken
off, and no vessels were permitted to trade with the Irish ports.
It was by this means that the knowledge of the great Raid was kept
secret. Nordenholt was almost ready to disclose his hand; and the Raid
could not be postponed if any cattle were to be obtained alive. By a
series of lightning sweeps, the military rounded up all the available
live-stock in the island and drove them to the nearest ports, where
ships were awaiting them. Bitter guerrilla warfare raged along the
tracks of the columns; and the last pages in Irish history were marked
with bloodshed. Not that it mattered much, since all were to die in any
case before very long.

But I am now coming to the last stages of the exodus. All the required
food, all the available machinery and all the Nitrogen Volunteers had
been sent up into the Clyde Valley. Without warning, after a secret
session, Parliament had resolved to transfer itself to Glasgow. Now
came the final moves. On the last day, only pickets of the Military
Volunteers--the Labour Defence Force, as Nordenholt had renamed
them--were left behind in every important town.

During that night a carefully-planned course of destruction was
followed. Every telegraph and telephone exchange was gutted; the
remaining artillery was rendered useless; all the printing machinery
of newspapers was wrecked; every aeroplane destroyed and practically
all aerodromes burned: and as the trains and motors went northward in
the night, bridge after bridge on the line or road was blown up. When
morning came, there was a complete stoppage of all the normal channels
of communication; and up to the Border, the railways had been put out
of action for months. It was the second step in Nordenholt’s plan.

Hitherto, I have chronicled his successes; but now I must deal with his
single failure. He had intended to persuade the King to take refuge
in the Clyde Valley, and had even, I believe, found a residence for
him near Glasgow. Here, however, he met with a rebuff. I never learned
the details of the interview; but it appears that the King refused to
save himself. He felt it his duty to share the fate of his people.
Nordenholt pleaded that if the King himself would not come, at least
the Prince of Wales might be sent; but here also he failed to carry
his point. The Prince point-blank rejected the suggestion. Knowing
Nordenholt, I could hardly conceive that his persuasive proposals could
fail to take effect; but it was evident that he met with no success.

“He understood perfectly,” Nordenholt said to me later. “Both of them
thoroughly understood what it meant. I think they felt that a Crown
rescued at that price wouldn’t be worth wearing. At any rate, they
refused to come North.”




CHAPTER VIII

The Clyde Valley


Hitherto my narrative has had a certain unity; for I have been
describing a chain of events, each of which followed naturally from
its fore-runners; but now comes a bifurcation. I have explained how
the Clyde Valley had been isolated, step by step, from the rest of the
country; and when the last food-stores and troops had been brought into
the Nitrogen Area, communications between the two districts ceased.
From that moment, the two regions had different histories; and I cannot
deal with them in an intertwined chronological sequence. I shall
therefore continue my account of the Clyde Valley experiment now; and
shall deal later with the collapse of civilisation in England.

When planning his colony, Nordenholt decided to occupy a belt of
country between the Forth and Clyde which contained all the required
materials in the form of coal and iron. Other things, such as copper,
he brought into the region in quantities which he believed would
suffice for months.

The frontier included something like a thousand square miles of
territory; and within the boundary lay the whole industrial tract of
mid-Scotland with its countless pits, mines, foundries, factories,
ship-building yards and other resources.

Under Congleton’s arrangements, as many ships as possible had been
brought into the Clyde and Forth at the last moment; and thereafter the
Navy blocked the entrances with mine-fields upon an enormous scale.
Nothing, either surface craft or submarine, could have penetrated
either estuary.

Aerial defence was a secondary matter. No invasion in force would come
by that road; and the destruction of the aerodromes had disposed of any
early attempts at mere malicious damage. Defences were established,
however, around the central area; and to accommodate the aeroplanes and
airships which had been brought North, immense flying-grounds were laid
out on the level reaches of the lower Clyde.

The storage of the food-supplies cost much thought; but by utilising
every spare corner, including railway and tramway depots, it had
been possible to get them all under cover and under guard. A strict
rationing system was put in force, though the allowance was quite up to
normal quantities. The main trouble was, as Nordenholt had anticipated,
a shortage of vegetables; and there was also a considerable deficit
in the meat-supply. However, after a complete census had been taken,
it seemed likely that we should be able to hold out without much
difficulty.

These material factors had given little trouble in our arrangements;
but when the human counters came into the question, the resulting
complications were much greater than appeared at first sight.
Taking the problem at its simplest, we had coal at the one end and
manufactured nitrogenous products at the other; and the quantity of
the latter depended roughly on the amount of the former, since coal
represented our source of energy and also part of our raw material in
certain of the processes employed. But, in addition, we needed coal
for lighting, either by gas or electricity, and also for heating; so
that our actual coal output had to be larger than that required for
the mere fixation of nitrogen. Then the number of miners had to be
adjusted in proportion to those of the remaining workmen in each stage
of the process; for it was wasteful to feed men who were employed in
producing a superfluity which could not be utilised. Again, the problem
was complicated by the fact that the coal could not immediately be
used as it was hewn. Time had to be allowed for the construction and
erection of the machinery whereby the atmospheric nitrogen was to be
fixed; and this introduced further complications into the calculations.
Finally, to omit intermediate details, the number of labourers required
for spreading the nitrogenous manure upon the soil was governed by the
quantities of this material which could be prepared.

But even when calculations had been made which covered all this ground,
a further factor entered into the problem. In dealing with a million
workers, death, disease and accidents have to be taken into account,
since in their effects they touch large numbers of individuals. The
incidence of these factors is not uniform in all trades; and hence
corrections had to be introduced to bring the various groups into
proportion.

The whole of these calculations had, of course, been made during
the period of enrolment; and the reason I lay stress upon them at
this stage is to show how accurately each section of the machine was
dovetailed into the neighbouring parts. It was impossible to foresee
everything: in fact what happened showed that some factors are beyond
calculation. But when the Nitrogen Area started as a going concern,
everything possible had been provided for, as far as could be seen. It
was no fault of Nordenholt’s that things went as they did in the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

With the segregation of the Nitrogen Area from the rest of the Kingdom,
and the transference of Parliament to Glasgow, a problem arose which
required instant settlement. A dual control in the district might
have been fraught with all manner of evil possibilities; and it was
essential, once for all, to decide where the ultimate power lay.
Nordenholt allowed no time to be wasted in the matter. At the first
meeting of the House of Commons after the Area was definitely closed,
he took his seat as a Member and moved the adjournment of the House
on a matter of urgent public importance. His speech, as reported
officially, was very short.

“Mr. Speaker--Sir, I have watched the proceedings in this House
closely during the last weeks; and I have noted that a certain number
of members seem animated by a spirit of factious opposition to the
Government measures. I call the attention of the House to the state of
grave peril in which we all stand; and I ask them if this conduct has
their support. I have no wish to complicate matters. We have all of us
more responsibility on our shoulders than we can bear; and I have no
sympathy with these methods. Those who think with me in this matter
will vote with me in the lobby. I move that this House do now adjourn.”

The motion was seconded and the question put without further debate.
About forty members went into the lobby against Nordenholt. While they
were still there, he drew a whistle from his pocket and blew three
shrill blasts. A picket of the Labour Defence Force entered the House
in response to the signal and arrested the malcontent members, whom
they removed in custody. When the remainder of the Members returned to
the Chamber, Nordenholt took his stand before the Mace.

“Gentlemen”--he dropped the usual ceremonial form of address--“I wished
to allow these members who do not agree with me to select themselves;
and I adopted the simplest and most convincing method of doing so,
though I could have laid my hand on every one of them without this
demonstration. These gentlemen, it appears, are not satisfied with the
manner in which things are being done here. I would point out to you
that the creation of the Nitrogen Area has been mine from the start;
and that the machinery of it is controlled by me now. There is no room
for dual control in an enterprise of this magnitude. I offer you all
positions in which you can help the remnant of the nation in saving
itself; but there are no such positions in this House. Do you agree?”

For a moment there was silence, then an angry murmur ran from bench to
bench. Nordenholt continued:

“Those members who were removed from the House will to-night be
embarked on airships; and by this time to-morrow I trust that they will
all be safely landed, each in the constituency which he represents.
Since they do not wish to aid us in the Nitrogen Area, it is fitting
that they should go back to their constituents and assist them in the
troubles which are about to break upon them. Are you content?”

Again there was a murmur, but this time less defiant.

“Finally, gentlemen, as I hear some whispers of constitutionalism, I
have here a Proclamation by the King. He has dissolved Parliament. You
are no longer clothed with even the semblance of authority.”

The assembly was thunderstruck; for there seemed to be no reply to this.

“I may say,” continued Nordenholt, “that some of you are of no personal
value in this enterprise. These gentlemen also will be returned to
their proper residences immediately. The remainder, whom I can trust,
will be so good as to apply at my offices to-morrow, when their work
will be explained to them. There is only one ultimate authority here
now--myself.”

It was a sadly diminished assembly that appeared on the morrow. Neither
the Prime Minister nor the Colonial Secretary was found among its
numbers.

       *       *       *       *       *

With the working men who formed the majority of the Nitrogen
Volunteers, Nordenholt’s methods were entirely different. Here he had
in the first stages to conciliate those with whom he dealt and to
educate them gradually into an understanding of the task before them.
In the beginning, no man worked more than eight hours per day or five
days a week; and the general run of the workmen had a thirty-five hour
week. Nordenholt’s object in this was two-fold. In the first place, he
instilled into the men that he was an easy task-master; and secondly,
he was able, by keeping check of the output, to place his finger upon
those men who even under those easy conditions were not doing their
full share. These workers he proposed to eliminate at a later period;
but he wished to allow them to condemn themselves.

Next he set going various newspapers. The contents of these, of course,
dealt entirely with doings within the Nitrogen Area; but their readers
soon grew accustomed to this: and as the main object of the journals
was propaganda, the less actual news there was in them, the more likely
it became that the propaganda would be read for want of something
better.

Through these papers, he began to explain very clearly the necessity
for the work upon which they were engaged, handling the subject in all
manner of ways and making it seem almost new each time by the fresh
treatment which it received from day to day. During this period no
hint of the underlying purpose of the Nitrogen Area was given, beyond
the suggestion that it was a convenient spot, in view of its natural
resources.

In order to alleviate any grievances which they might feel, he devised
a system of workmen’s committees, one for each trade; and the members
of these bodies were elected separately by the married and unmarried
men in proportion to their numbers. In this way he secured a majority
of the more responsible men upon each committee, although no fault
could be found with the method of election. Whatever grievances were
ventilated by these committees were met immediately or the reasons
against compliance with the demands were clearly and courteously
explained.

In fact, throughout this stage of the Nitrogen Area history,
Nordenholt’s main object was to show himself in the light of a comrade
rather than a task-master. He was building up a fund of popularity,
even at considerable cost, in order that he might draw upon it later.
It was a difficult game to play; for he could not afford to drive with
an altogether loose rein in view of the necessity for haste; but, as he
himself said, he understood men; and he was perhaps able to gain their
confidence at a cheaper rate than most people in his position could
have done. Like myself, he believed that fundamentally the working man
is a sound man, provided that he is dealt with openly and is not made
suspicious.

Within a fortnight, in one way and another, practically every man in
the Area understood the importance of his work. I question whether
this was not the greatest of Nordenholt’s triumphs, though perhaps in
perspective it may seem a small affair in comparison with other events.
But the generation of enthusiasm is a difficult matter, much more
difficult than feats which produce immediate effects.

In one respect Nordenholt gauged the psychology of the masses
accurately. He did not make himself cheap. Except at a few mass
meetings which he addressed, none of the rank and file ever saw him at
all. He knew the value of aloofness and a touch of mystery.

But he did not confine himself to moves made openly upon the board.
Behind the scenes he had collected an Intelligence Division, the
existence of which was known only to a few; and by means of it he was
able to put his finger on a weak spot or a centre of disaffection
with extraordinary promptitude. Grievances were often remedied long
before the appropriate committee had been able to cast their statement
of them into a definite form. Nor, as I shall have to tell later, did
this Intelligence Division confine its operations to the Nitrogen Area
itself; for its network spread over the whole Kingdom.

As soon as the machinery of the Area was working satisfactorily,
Nordenholt took a step in advance. The Workmen’s Committees were
supplied with the actual statistics of production and it was explained
to them that speeding-up must begin. The ultimate object was still
concealed; but sufficient information was laid before them to show that
at their present rate of output the nitrogenous materials prepared by
the end of the twelve months would be totally insufficient to yield
food enough for even the population of the Area itself, without taking
the outer regions into account. They were then asked to suggest means
by which output might be raised; and time was given them to think the
matter out in all its bearings. Without hesitation they agreed that
there must be an increase in productivity.

To raise the output and also to check the points where any loss was
occurring, Nordenholt introduced a series of statistical charts and
at the same time divided the workmen in each trade into gangs of a
definite number. At the end of each week, these charts were submitted
to the Trade Committee and the gangs which were failing to do their
share were indicated. By pointing out that a fixed quantity of material
must be obtained per week unless disaster were to ensue, Nordenholt
was able to make it clear to the Committees that slackness in one
gang entailed extra exertions on the rest. There was no question of
an employer trying to force up the standard of work: it was simply a
question whether they wished to starve or live.

The effect of this was striking; and certainly it was a novelty in
working conditions. Every man became a policeman for his neighbours,
since he knew that slackness on their part would demand greater
exertions upon his own. The Committees instituted a system of
inspectors, nominated by themselves, to see that work was properly
carried out; and these inspectors reported both to the Committees and
to Nordenholt himself, through special officials. Before long, both the
Committees and Nordenholt had an extensive black list of inefficient
workers; and the stage was being set for another drastic lesson.

For three days the Area newspapers contained full accounts of the state
into which things had drifted; and it was made obvious even to the
most ignorant what the inevitable result would be if the output were
not raised. Then, having thus prepared his ground, Nordenholt summoned
a meeting of workmen delegates. It was the first time that most of
those present had seen him; and I think he counted upon making his
personality tell. He had no chairman or any of the usual machinery of a
meeting; everything was concentrated upon the tall dark figure, alone
upon the platform.

It was a short speech which he made; but he delivered it very slowly,
making every point tell as he went along and leaving time for each
statement to sink well home into the minds of his audience. He began
by a clear account of the objects for which they were working--and he
had the gift of lucid exposition. He handled the statistical side of
the matter in detail, and yet so simply that even the dullest could
understand him. When he had completed his survey, every man present saw
the state of affairs in all its bearings.

Then, for the first time, he explained to them that those in the
Nitrogen Area were all that could be saved; and that their salvation
could be accomplished only at the cost of labour far in excess of
anything they had anticipated.

“Now, men,” he continued, “remember that I am not your task-master.
I am merely striving, like yourselves, to avert this calamity; and
I think I have already shown you that I have spent my best efforts
in our common cause. I have no wish to dictate to you. I leave the
decision in your own hands. Those of you who wish to starve may do
so. It is your own decision; even though it involves your wives and
families, I will not interfere. I ask no man to work harder than he
thinks necessary.

“But I put this point before you. Is it right that a man who will not
strain himself in the common service should reap where he has not sown?
Is it right that any man should batten upon the labour of you all while
refusing to do his utmost? Will you permit wilful inefficiency to rob
you and your children of their proper share in the means of safety? Or
do you believe that this community should rid itself of parasites?

“I leave myself entirely in your hands in the matter. I take no
decision without your consent. If you choose to toil in order that they
may take bread from your children’s mouths, it is no affair of mine. I
will do my best for you all, in any case. But I would be neglecting my
duty did I not warn you that there is no bread to spare. Every mouthful
has been counted; and even at the best we shall just struggle through.

“These are the facts. Do you wish to retain these inefficients among
you? Without your consent, I can make no move. I ask you here and now
for your decision.”

He held the meeting in the hollow of his hand. Cries of “No. Away with
them. No spongers,” and the like were heard on all sides. Nordenholt
held up his hand, and silence came at once. The meeting hung on his
words.

“Those in favour of allowing this inefficiency to continue, stand up.”

No one rose.

“Very good, men. I will carry out your decision. This meeting is at an
end.”

The morning papers contained a full report of his speech; but before
they were in the hands of the populace, Nordenholt had acted. All the
ca’ canny workmen had been arrested during the night, along with their
families, and removed to the southern boundary, where they were placed
on trains and motors ready for transport to the Border. The thing was
done with absolute silence and with such efficiency that it seemed more
like kidnapping than an ordinary process of arrest. Nordenholt knew
the advantage of mystery; and he proposed to make these disappearances
strike home on the public mind. The inefficients vanished without
leaving a clue behind.

At the Border, each of them was supplied with provisions exactly
equivalent to the rations remaining in the outer world; and they were
then abandoned as they stood. Nothing was ever known of their fate.
When the works opened again in the morning, their fellows missed them
from the gangs and time enough was allowed for their disappearance to
sink in; after which a redistribution took place which closed up the
gaps. But the very mystery served to heighten the effect of the lesson.
For the first time, Fear in more than one form had entered the Nitrogen
Area.

I remembered what Nordenholt had said to me some weeks earlier: “I
shall deal with them--and I shall do it by the hand of their own
fellows.”

So you can understand the roaring tide of industry which mounted day by
day in the Area. This sudden stroke had done more than anything else to
convince the people of the seriousness of the situation. Ten thousand
men had been condemned and had vanished on an instant--Nordenholt
made no secret of the number; and the remainder realised that things
must indeed be grave when a step of this kind had been necessary. He
had given no time for amendment: condemnation had been followed by
the execution of the sentence: and it was they themselves who had
pronounced the decree. They could not lay it upon his shoulders. And
the veil of mystery which enwrapped the fate of the convicted ones had
its value in more than one direction. Had Nordenholt caused them to be
shot, public sympathy would have been aroused. But this impenetrable
secrecy baffled speculation and prevented men from forming any concrete
picture which might arouse compassion.

Choosing his moment, Nordenholt announced that, in future, the
factories would be run continuously, shift after shift, throughout
the twenty-four hours. For a time he called a halt to the newspaper
campaign for increased output. He would need this form of publicity
later; and he did not wish it to become staled by constant repetition.

For the present he was satisfied. Everything was now in train and
he was into his stride all along the line. At last statistics were
accumulating which would enable him to gauge exactly how the machinery
was running; and he held his hand until a balance-sheet could be drawn
with accuracy.

       *       *       *       *       *

At this point in my narrative I am trying to produce a conspectus of
the Nitrogen Area as it was during that period in its career. I leave
to the imagination of my readers the task of picturing that gigantic
concentration of human effort: the eternal smoke-cloud from a thousand
chimney-stalks lying ever between us and the sun; the murky twilight
of the streets at noon; the whir of dynamos and the roar of the great
electric arcs; the unintermittent thunder of trains pouring coal into
the city; and, above all, the half-naked figures in the factories,
toiling, toiling, shift after shift in one incessant strain through
the four-and-twenty hours. No one can ever depict the details of that
panorama.

But alongside this vast outpouring of physical energy there lay another
world, calm, orderly and almost silent, yet equally important to the
end in view: the world of the scientific experts in their laboratories
and research stations. To pass from one region to the other was like a
transition from pandemonium to a cloister.

Nordenholt had grouped his experts into three main classes, though
of course these groups by no means included all the investigators
he controlled. It was here that the Nordenholt Gang were strongest,
for the path of the scientific man is one which offered the greatest
chances to Nordenholt’s scheme for the furthering of youth.

In the first place came the group of chemists and electricians who
were engaged upon the improvement of nitrogen fixation methods; and
between this section and the factories there was a constant _liaison_;
so that each new plant which was erected might contain the very latest
improvements devised by the experts.

The second group contained the bacteriologists, whose task it was to
investigate the habits of _B. diazotans_, to determine whether it could
be exterminated in any practical manner and to discover what methods
could be employed to prevent its ravaging the new crops when they were
obtainable.

Finally, the experts in agriculture overlapped with the chemical
group, since many of the questions before them were concerned with the
chemistry of the soil. I have already mentioned how the action of _B.
diazotans_ disintegrated the upper strata of the land and reduced the
soil to a friable material. This formed one of the most troublesome
features in the cultivation problem, since the porosity of the ground
allowed water to sink through, and thus plants sown in the affected
fields were left without any liquid upon which they could draw for
sustenance. It was J. F. Hope, I believe, who finally suggested a
solution of the matter. His process consisted in mixing colloid
minerals such as clays with the soil and thus forming less permeable
beds; and the agricultural experts were able to establish the minimum
percentages of clay which were required in order to make crops grow.

I have mentioned these points in order to show how much we in the Area
depended upon the pure scientists for help. But it must not be supposed
that only those lines of scientific investigation capable of immediate
application were kept in view by Nordenholt. I learned later, as I
shall tell in its proper place, that he had cast further afield than
that.

I cannot give details of the work on the scientific side, because I
have no intimate acquaintance with them; but I met the results on
every hand in the course of my own department’s affairs. From day to
day a new machine would be passed for service and put into operation,
some fresh catalyst would be sent down for trial on a large scale
after having been tested in the laboratory, or there might be a slight
variation in the relative quantities of the ingredients in some of our
factory processes. There was a constant touch between research and
large-scale operations.

In the course of this I used often to have to visit the Research
Section; and in some ways I found it a mental anodyne in my
perplexities. These long, airy laboratories, with their spotless
cleanliness and delicate apparatus, formed a pleasant contrast to the
grimy factories and gigantic machines among which part of my days were
passed. And I found that the popular conception of the scientific man
as a dry-as-dust creature was strangely wide of the mark. It may be
that Nordenholt’s picked men differed from others of their class; but
I found in them a directness in speech and a sense of humour which I
had not anticipated. After the hurry and confusion of the improvisation
which marked the opening of the Nitrogen Area, the quiet certainty
of the work in the Research Section seemed like a glimpse of another
world. I do not mean that they talked like super-men or that the
investigations were always successful; but over it all there was an
atmosphere of clockwork precision which somehow gave one confidence.
These men, it struck me for the first time, had always been contending
with Nature in their struggle to wrest her secrets from her; while
we in the other world had been sparring against our fellows with
Nature standing above us in the conflict, so great and so remote that
we had never understood even that she was there. Now, under the new
conditions, all was changed for us; while to these scientific experts
it was merely the opening of a fresh field in their long-drawn-out
contest.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the inception of Nordenholt’s scheme, my own work had dealt with
varied lines of activity which brought me into contact with diverse
departments of the machine; but when the transfer to the Clyde Valley
took place, I settled down into more definite duties. Nordenholt had
picked me out, I believe, on the strength of my knowledge of factory
organisation; and my first post in the North dealt with this branch.
Thus in the earlier days, my work took me into the machine-shops and
yards where the heavy machinery was being built or remodelled; and so I
came into direct contact with the human element.

But as time went on, the range of my control increased; and as my
work extended I had to delegate this section more and more to my
subordinates. I became, through a gradual series of transitions, the
checker of efficiency over most of the Area activities.

The under-current of all my memories of that time is a series
of curves. Graphs of coal-supply from each pit, so that the
fluctuation of output might be controlled and investigated; graphs of
furnace-production from day to day, whereby all might be kept up to
concert-pitch; graphs comparing one process with another in terms of
power and efficiency; graphs of workmen’s ages and effectiveness;
graphs of total power-consumption; graphs of remaining food-supplies
extrapolated to show probable consumption under various scales; graphs
of population changes; graphs of health-statistics: all these passed
through my hands in their final form until I began to lose touch with
the real world about me and to look upon disasters costing many lives
merely as something which produced a point of inflexion in my curves.

Nordenholt had established his central offices in the University and
had cleared the benches from all the classrooms to make room for his
staff. It was probably the best choice he could have made; since it
provided within a limited area sufficient office-room to house everyone
whom he might wish to call into consultation at a moment’s notice at
any time; and it had the further advantage that all the scientific
experts had been given the University laboratories to work in, so that
they also were within easy call. He himself had chosen as his private
office the old Senate Room. The Randolph Hall had been fitted up as a
kind of card-index library wherein were stored all the facts of which
he might be in need at any time; and the Court Room was converted into
his secretary’s office and connected with the Senate Room by a door
driven through the wall.

In Nordenholt’s office a huge graph extended right across the wall over
the fireplace. It was an enormous diagram, covering the period from
the starting of the Nitrogen Area and extending, as far as its numbered
abscissæ were concerned, beyond the harvest-time in the next year. Each
morning, before Nordenholt came to his office, the new daily points
were inserted on it and joined up with the preceding curves. One line,
in red, expressed the amount of food remaining; another, in green,
showed the quantity of nitrogenous material synthesised up to date;
whilst the third curve, in purple, indicated approximately the crop
which might be expected from the nitrogenous manure in hand. Of all the
sights in the Nitrogen Area, I think that series of curves made the
deepest impression upon me. It was so impersonal, a cold record of our
position and our prospects, untinged by any human factor. The slow rise
of the green curve; the steady fall of the red line--our whole future
was locked up in these relative trends.

I remember one morning in Nordenholt’s office, where I had gone to
consult him on some point or other. We had discussed the matter in
hand; and I was about to leave him when he called me back.

“I haven’t seen much of you lately, Flint,” he said. “Sit down for a
few minutes, will you? I want a rest from all this for a short time;
and I think it would do you good to get clear of things for a while
also. What do you do with yourself at nights?”

I told him that I usually worked rather late.

“That won’t do as a steady thing. I know the work has to be done; and
I know you have to work till midnight, and after it often, to keep
abreast of things. But if you do it without a break now and again
you’ll simply get stale and lose grip. You may keep on working long
hours; but what you do in the end won’t be so efficient. Take to-night
off. Come to dinner with me and we’ll try to shake loose from Nitrogen
for a while. I’ve asked Henley-Davenport also.”

I accepted eagerly enough, though with a somewhat rueful feeling that
it meant harder work on the following day if I was to overtake arrears.
But I wanted to meet Henley-Davenport. As I mentioned at the beginning
of this narrative, before the irruption of _B. diazotans_ into the
world, he had been engaged upon radioactivity investigations; and I
was anxious to hear what he was doing. I knew that Nordenholt set
great store by his work--he was one of the Nordenholt young men--and
I was interested. But my main reason for accepting was, of course,
Nordenholt himself. As time went on, he fascinated me more and more;
and I grasped at every opportunity of studying his complex personality.
I doubt if I have been able to throw light upon it in these pages. I
have given vignettes here and there to the best of my ability; but
I know that I have failed to set down clearly the feeling which he
always gave me, the distinction between the surface personality and the
greater forces moving behind that screen. The superficial part is easy
to describe; but the noumenon of Nordenholt is a thing beyond me. I
only felt it; I never saw it: and I doubt if any man ever saw it fully
revealed.

Just then the door of the secretary’s room opened and someone came in.
Curiously enough, I had never seen Nordenholt’s secretary before. She
seemed to be about twenty-four, fair-haired and slim, dressed like any
other business girl; but it was her face which struck me most. She
looked fragile and at the corners of the sensitive mouth I thought I
saw evidences of strain. Somehow she seemed out of place amid all this
grimness: her world should have been one of ease and happiness.

“These are the figures you wanted with regard to A. 323, Uncle
Stanley,” she said, as she handed over a card.

“Thanks, Elsa. By the way, this is Mr. Flint. You’ve heard me speak of
him often. My ward, Miss Huntingtower, Flint. She acts as my secretary.”

We exchanged the commonplaces usual to the situation. I noticed that
Nordenholt’s voice changed as he spoke to her: a ring of cheerfulness
came into it which was not usually there. In a few minutes he dismissed
her and we sat down again.

“Now, Flint, there’s another example of the effect of too hard work.
We’re all running things rather fine, nowadays. As for myself, it
doesn’t matter. So long as I can see this year through, it’s immaterial
to me what the ultimate effect may be. I can afford to run things to
their end. But you younger people have most of your lives before you.
I’m not hinting that you can spare yourselves; but you must try to
leave something for the future. When it’s all over, we shall still need
directors; and you must manage to combine hard work now with enough
reserve force to prevent a collapse in the moment of success.

“That’s why I planned amusement for the workers as well as a time
schedule for the factories. We aren’t dealing with machines which can
be run continuously and not suffer. We have to give the men a change
of interest. I suppose some of you thought I was wrong in cumbering
ourselves with all these football players, actors and actresses,
music-hall artistes and so on, who produce nothing directly towards our
object? For all I know you may jib at the sight of the thousands who
go down to the Celtic Park every Saturday afternoon to watch a gang
of professionals playing Soccer. I don’t. I know that these thousands
are getting fresh air and exercising their lungs in yelling applause.
I couldn’t get them to do it any other way; and I want them to do it.
Then the halls and theatres occupy them in the evenings when they
aren’t working; and that keeps them from brooding over their troubles.
I don’t want men to accumulate here and there and grouse over the
strain I put on them. That’s why I picked out the best of the whole
Stage and brought them here. The Labour section is getting better value
for its amusement money than it ever got in its life before; and I’m
getting what I want too.

“That’s why I cornered tobacco and liquor also. We must remove every
scrap of restraint on pleasure, Flint, or we should have trouble
at once. They must have their smoke and they must have drink in
moderation. You can’t run this kind of colony on narrow lines.

“And there’s another thing, perhaps the most important of all under
the conditions we are in: religion. I’m not talking about creeds or
anything of that kind. I’ve studied most of them from the point of view
of psychology; and they’re empty things; life left them long ago. But
behind all that mass of outworn lumber there’s a real feeling which
can’t be neglected if we are to get the best out of things. That’s
why I brought all these ministers of the various denominations into
the Area. We must have them; and as far as I could, I picked the best
of them. But I’ll have no idlers here. They have to do their day’s
work with the rest of us and do their teaching afterwards. Every man
ought to be able to _do_ something. After all, Christ was a carpenter
before He took up His work. That’s what has been wrong with ninety per
cent. of parsons since the Churches started. They don’t know anything
practical and they mistake talk for work. What was the average sermon
except expanding a text, with illustrations--diluting the Bible with
talk, just as a dishonest milkman waters his milk.

“Well, I’ve picked the best I could get; and I’ve given them a free
hand. But I wish I were sure where it is all going to lead. It’s
the most difficult problem I ever tackled, I know. Our conditions
aren’t parallel, but I am half-afraid of reproducing the story of the
Anabaptists in Münster. You can’t get heavy physical and mental tension
in an unprepared population without seeing some strange things. I
introduced these ministers as a brake on that line of development.

“And what a chance they have! It’s when men are most helpless that
they turn to religion; and here we are going to have a field in which
much might be sown. If only they are equal to the times! But it’s no
affair of mine. They must work out their own salvation and perhaps the
salvation of their people if they can.

“As for us, Flint, we’ve got enough work of our own in this world.
Take my advice and clear every idea of humanity out of your mind: stick
to your curves and graphs and don’t think beyond them. If once you let
your imagination stray over the real meaning of them--in toil and pain
and death--you’ll never be able to carry on. I can’t help seeing it
all; and that’s why I pin myself to the Curve there. I don’t want to
look beyond it. I want to keep myself detached from all that as far as
possible; for I can’t afford to be biased. It’s difficult; and in a few
weeks more it will be still harder, when these unheard cries of agony
go up in the South. But what can one do? I must shut my ears as best I
can and go forward; or everything will fall to pieces and we shall save
nothing out of the wreck. What a prospect, eh?

“Now, Flint,”--he sprang up--“off to work again, both of us. We can’t
afford to waste time if we are to have an evening free from worry. I’ll
see you at dinner.”

As I reached the door, he called me back and spoke low:

“By the way, Miss Huntingtower doesn’t know all our plans. Keep off the
subject of the South. She hasn’t been told anything about that; and I
want to keep it from her as long as I can. You understand?”

“Yes, if you wish it. But surely she must have some knowledge of the
state of affairs. You can’t have managed to keep her in the dark about
the whole thing?”

“It wasn’t difficult. She looks after certain special branches of my
correspondence and so on; and nothing except actual Area business
passes through her hands, so she has seen nothing beyond that. And once
she finishes her work for the day I’ve made it a rule for her that she
takes no further interest in the situation. I told her she must get her
mind clear of it at night, or she would get stale and be no use to me.
That was quite enough. She doesn’t even read the newspapers.”

“But what’s the use of keeping her in the dark? She is bound to know
all about it soon enough.”

“There’s a great difference, Flint, between learning of a thing after
it is irrevocable and hearing of it while there is time to protest
against it. Once a catastrophe is over, it _is_ over; and the shock is
lighter than if one feels it coming and struggles against it. I don’t
wish Miss Huntingtower to hear anything about the South until the whole
thing is at an end down there. She’ll accept it then, since there is
nothing else for it. I don’t wish her to be put in the position of
feeling that she ought to do all she can to prevent its coming about.
You understand?”




CHAPTER IX

Intermezzo


In order to understand the impression which that evening left upon
me, it is necessary to bear in mind the conditions under which I had
been living for the last few weeks. In the earlier stages I had been
oscillating between my office, with its ever-accumulating mass of
papers, on the one hand; and the grime and clangour of the factories
and furnaces upon the other. Then, gradually, I saw less and less
of the concrete machinery of our safety and slipped almost wholly
into the work of control from a distance. Lists, sheets of figures,
graphs, letters dictated or read, telephonic communications, reports
from factory managers, all surged up before me in a daily deluge. My
meals were eaten hurriedly at a side-table in my office; and my lights
burned far into the morning in the attempt to cope with the torrent
which I had to control. Often as the dawn was coming up through the
smoke-clouds of the city I walked home with a wearied mind through
which endless columns of figures chased each other; and my eyes
had broken down under the strain to the extent that I had to use
pilocarpine almost constantly. I was beginning to look back on the old
life in London, with its theatre parties and dinners, as if it were
another existence which I should never re-enter. I seemed shut off from
it by some nebulous yet impenetrable curtain; and when I thought of it
at times, I felt that it had passed away beyond recall. All the softer
side of civilisation, it seemed, must go down, once for all, in this
cataclysm; and from our efforts a harder, harsher world would be born.
Ease and luxury had vanished, leaving us stripped to our necessities.

And suddenly I found myself in the old surroundings once more. I was
ushered into a room which, though its simplicity recalled Nordenholt’s
other environments, still betrayed a woman’s hand at every point. There
was no litter of meaningless nicknacks; every touch went to build up
a harmonious whole: and it was unmistakably a feminine mind which
had designed it. As I glanced down the room, I saw Miss Huntingtower
standing by the fireplace; and it flashed across me that, whether by
accident or design, the room formed a framework for her.

As she came forward to meet me, her smile effaced the strained
expression which I had noticed in the morning. In these surroundings
she seemed different, somehow. The artistry of the room fitted her own
beauty so that each appeared to find its complement in the other. It
seemed to me that she was designed by destiny for this environment, and
not for the harder work of the world. And yet, she gave no suggestion
of triviality; there was no hint of a feminine desire to attract. It
must have been that she harmonised so well with the frame in which I
saw her. And the personality which gazed from her eyes seemed in some
way to blend with this world of shaded lights, graceful outlines and
innate simplicity.

Nordenholt came into the room almost at once with a grave apology to
Miss Huntingtower for being late.

“Convenient having a house in the University Square,” he said to me.
“If we hadn’t taken over some of these professors’ residences, it would
have meant such a waste of time getting to and fro between one’s home
and the office. That was one reason why I selected the University as a
centre. We had the whole thing ready-made for us.”

Henley-Davenport arrived almost at once; and we went down to dinner. I
had begun to re-acclimatise myself in these surroundings; but I still
recall that evening in every detail. The shaded candles on the table,
which soothed my straining eyes, the glitter of silver and crystal on
the snowy cloth, Nordenholt’s lean visage half in shadow except when
he leaned forward into the soft illumination, Henley-Davenport’s sharp
voice driving home a point, and Miss Huntingtower’s eager face as she
glanced from speaker to speaker or put a question to one of us: with
it all, I seemed back again in my lost world and the Nitrogen Area
appeared to belong to another region of my life.

But even here it penetrated, though faintly. The usual topics of
conversation were gone: theatres, books, all our old interests had been
uprooted and cast aside, so that we could only take them up in the
form of reminiscence. And, as a matter of fact, we talked very little
about them. I tried one or two tentative efforts; but Henley-Davenport,
who had known Nordenholt and his ward longer than I, made very little
attempt to follow me: and I soon gathered that Miss Huntingtower was
better pleased with other subjects.

What appeared to interest her most was the general situation; and I was
rather flattered to find that she seemed anxious to hear my own views.

She seemed to be one of those people who are gifted with the faculty of
drawing one out. I don’t mean that she sat silent and merely listened;
but she had the knack of stimulating one to talk and of keeping one to
the main line by occasional questions, which showed that she had not
only followed what had been said but had silently commented upon it
as one went along. Yet she never appeared to lose her charm by aping
masculinity. Her outlook was a feminine one in its essentials, even if
her mind was acute. And she had the gift of naturalness. There was no
artificiality either in look or speech. She made me feel almost at once
as though I had known her for years.

One thing I did notice about her. Whenever Nordenholt spoke she seemed
to hang on his words and to weigh them mentally. The two seemed to be
joined by some intimate bond of understanding; and I could see that
Nordenholt was proud of her in his way.

Dinner drew to an end, and Nordenholt began to question Henley-Davenport
about his researches. Miss Huntingtower interrupted at the beginning
with a request for simple language.

“If you begin talking about uranium-X₁ and meso-thorium-2, then I won’t
understand you, and I want to know what it is all about.”

“Well, Miss Huntingtower, I think I can make it plain without using
uranium-X₁ or even eka-tantalum; but it’s hard that I should be
forbidden to use all these fine-sounding words, eh? Isn’t it? I submit
under protest. It takes away half the pleasure of telling things when
one has to put them in mere vulgar English.

“Well”--he had an extraordinary habit of interjecting “well” and by
inflecting it in various ways, making it serve as a kind of prelude to
his sentences, a sort of keynote, as it were--“Well, I take it that
you know what radioactivity is. Some of the atoms are spontaneously
breaking down into simpler materials, and in that breakdown they
liberate an amount of energy which is immeasurably greater than
anything we can obtain by the ordinary chemical reactions which occur
when coal is burned or when gas is lighted.

“Well, if we could tap that store of energy which evidently lies within
the atom we should have Nature at our feet. She would be done for,
beaten, out of the struggle: and we should simply have to walk over the
remains and take what we wanted. Until the thing is actually done, none
of us can grasp what it will mean; for no one has ever seen unlimited
energy under control in this world. We have always had to fight hard
for every unit of it that we used.

“Well, there is no doubt that atoms _can_ be broken down. All the
radioactive elements split up spontaneously without any help from
us. But the quantities of them which we can gather together are so
extremely minute that as a source of energy they are feebler than an
ordinary wax vesta, for all practical purposes.

“So far, so good. We know the thing can be done; but we haven’t hit on
the way of doing it. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear, thanks,” said Miss Huntingtower, with a smile. “Radium
without tears, Part I. Now the second lesson, please.”

“Well, don’t be too optimistic. There may be tears in the second part.
It’s a little stiffer. The majority of the elements are perfectly
stable; they undergo no radioactive decompositions; so that they give
off no energy. But all the same, if our views are right, they contain
a store of pent-up energy quite as great as that of the radioactive
set. It’s like two clocks, both wound up. One of them, the radioactive
clock, is going all the time and the mainspring is running down.
You know it is going because it gives out a tick; and we recognise
radioactivity by certain tests of a somewhat similar type, only we
‘listen’ for electrical effects instead of the sound-waves you detect
when the clock ticks. Now the second clock, the one that is wound up
but hasn’t been started, is like the ordinary element. If you could
give it a shake, it would start off ticking.

“Well, what we want to do is to start the non-radioactive elements
ticking. We are looking for the right kind of shake to give them in
order to start them off. If we can find that, then we shall get all the
energy we need, because we can utilise enormous quantities of material
where now we have only the traces of radioactive stuff.”

“A risky business,” said Nordenholt. “Your first successful experiment
will be rather catastrophic, won’t it?”

“Probably. But I’ve left full notes of everything I’ve done, so someone
else will be able to continue if anything happens to me.

“Well, the real trouble is that it takes a lot to shake up the internal
machinery of an atom. Rutherford did it long ago by using a stream of
alpha-particles from radium to smash up the nitrogen atom. That was
in 1920 or thereabouts. You see, we have no ordinary force intense
enough to break up atoms of the stable elements; we have to go to the
radioactive materials to get energy sufficiently concentrated to make a
beginning.

“Now, what I have been following out is this. Perhaps I can show you it
best by an experiment. Can you get me some safety match-boxes?”

A dozen of these were brought, and he stood them each on its end in a
line.

“Now,” he continued, “it requires a certain force in a blow from my
finger to knock down one of these boxes; and if I take the ten boxes
separately, it would need ten times that force to throw them all
flat. But if I arrange them so that as each one falls it strikes its
neighbour, then I can knock the whole lot down with a single touch. The
first one collides with the second, and the second in falling upsets
the third, and so on to the end of the line.

“Well, that is what I have been following out amongst the atoms. I
know that the alpha-rays of radium will upset the equilibrium of other
atoms; and what is wanted is to get the second set of atoms to upset
a third and so forth. Hitherto I have not been able to hit upon the
proper train of atoms to use. Somehow it seems to sputter out half-way,
just as a train of powder fails to catch fire all along its line if one
part of it isn’t thick enough to carry the flame on. But I have got far
enough to show that it can be done. It’s rather pretty to follow, if
one has enough imagination to read behind the measurements. You really
must come and see it, Nordenholt.”

“Do you think it will come out soon?” asked Miss Huntingtower.

“Sooner or later, is all one can say. But it might come any day.”

Nordenholt rose from the table.

“I’ll come across now, if you can let me see that experiment,” he said.
“I’m more interested than I can tell you; and I want to discuss some
points with you. I’m taking the evening off anyway, and I may as well
make myself useful. How long will it take--an hour? All right. Flint,
will you amuse Miss Huntingtower till I get back?”

He and Henley-Davenport went out, leaving us to return upstairs.

For a time we talked of one thing and another till at last, by what
transitions I cannot now remember, we touched upon her secretaryship,
and I asked her how she came to occupy the post.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked. “I warn you it will be rather
a long story if I tell you it; and it will probably seem rather dull to
you.”

“Don’t be afraid. I am sure I shall not find it dull.”

“Well, let’s pretend we are characters in a novel and the distressed
heroine will proceed to relate the story of her life. ‘I was born of
poor but honest parents....’ Will that do to start?”

“Must you begin at the beginning? I usually skip first chapters myself.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to begin fairly early if you are to understand.
Mr. Nordenholt isn’t my uncle, really, you know. My father was a
distant relation of his. When Father and Mother died I was quite a tiny
child; I only remember them vaguely now: and Uncle Stanley was the
only relation I had in the world. I believe, too, that I was the only
relative he had, certainly I was the only one I ever heard him speak
of, except Father and Mother. It was just after he had made his fortune
in Canada, and he must have been about thirty then. It appears that
Father had written to him much earlier, asking him to look after me if
anything happened to him and Mother; and when they were drowned--it was
a boating accident--he came home to this country and took me to live
with him.

“I was only about eight then, and I missed Father and Mother so. I
cried and cried; and he spent hours with me, trying to comfort me.
Somehow he did me good. I don’t know how he did it; but he seemed to
understand so well.”

Again I had come across a new side in Nordenholt’s character. I could
hardly picture that grim figure--for even at thirty Nordenholt must
have been grim--comforting that tiny scrap of humanity in distress. And
yet she was right: he did understand.

“And with it all, he didn’t spoil me. He knew, of course, that when I
grew up I would have more money than I knew what to do with; and he
determined that I should get the full pleasure out of it by coming to
it unspoilt and with unjaded feelings. He brought me up in the simplest
way you can imagine. I had no expensive toys, but I liked the ones I
had all the better for that. It gave more scope for the imagination,
you see: and I had even more than the child’s ordinary imaginative
power. When we played fairy tales together he used to be the Ogre or
the Prince Charming, and I could see him so well either way. He laughs
now when I remind him that he used to make a good Prince Charming.

“Well, so it went on, year after year; and we grew up with more in
common than either father and daughter or brother and sister. Somehow
I picked up his ways of looking at things; and I caught from him
something of his understanding of people. He never put any ideals
before me; but I think he himself gave me something to carve out an
ideal from. Oh, there’s nobody like Uncle Stanley! I don’t know anybody
who comes up to his shoulder.”

“I’ve only known him for a few weeks, Miss Huntingtower,” I said, “but
I’ve seen enough to agree with you in that.”

“Have you? I’m so glad. It shows that we’re the same sort of person,
doesn’t it? For I know some people hate him--and I hate them for it!”

She clenched her teeth with an air that was half-play, half-earnest.

“I’m going to skip a few years and come to the fairy-tale part of my
story: the Three Wishes. When I grew up, Uncle Stanley told me that
he had settled an immense sum on me and that I could do exactly as I
wished. I think I failed him at that point. He expected me to go and
have a good time; and--I didn’t. I didn’t want to have a good time. I
had been thinking over all he had done for me; and I wanted something
else entirely. I wanted to give him something in return for all his
kindness to me when I was a tiny little thing; and I was afraid that he
wouldn’t let me. I went to him one day and asked him to give me three
wishes. Now even with me, Uncle Stanley is careful; and he wanted to
know what the wishes were before he would promise.

“‘I don’t know myself yet,’ I said, ‘but I want to feel that I have
three things in reserve that I can ask you to do.’ ‘I promise no
impossibilities,’ he told me, ‘but if the things are really possible,
you can have them.’ ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘the first of them is that I
want to be trained as a secretary.’

“He laughed at me, of course; and when I persisted, he pointed out
to me that I was my own mistress and that I needn’t have asked his
permission to get trained. ‘You’ve wasted one of your wishes, Elsa,’
he said, ‘and I’m going to hold you to your bargain.’ ‘Well, I wanted
your consent to it anyway,’ I told him.

“I went and took a secretary’s training, the most complete I could
get. You don’t know how I enjoyed it. I hated the work, of course; but
I felt all the time that I was getting ready to be of use to Uncle
Stanley; and even the dullest parts of the thing seemed to be lightened
by that.

“When I was fully trained, I went to him again. ‘I want my second wish
now: I want you to take me as your private secretary.’ I don’t know
that he was altogether pleased then. I think he imagined that I would
be a nuisance or inefficient or something. But he kept his promise and
took me to work with him.

“You can’t guess what I felt about it. I worked hard; I did everything
correctly; and I knew him better than anyone else, so that I could help
him just when he needed it. Of course, I’m not his only secretary; but
I know I suit him better than any of the others. I’ve begun to pay
off my debt to him bit by bit; and yet I always seem just as deep in
as ever. He’s always been so good to me, you know. But still, I _am_
useful to him; and I’m not merely there on sufferance now. I know he
appreciates my work.”

“I doubt if you would be there long if he didn’t,” I said. “From what I
have seen of him he isn’t likely to employ amateurs even as a favour.
I think he would have let you see you were useless unless you had made
good.”

“Oh, if he had been the least dissatisfied with me I would have gone at
once as soon as I saw it. I want to be a help and not a hindrance. But
now I have answered your question, although it has taken rather a long
time to do it.”

Some inane compliment came to my lips but I bit it back without
speaking it. She didn’t seem to be the sort of girl who wanted flattery.

“I think you are helping more than Mr. Nordenholt with your work just
now,” I said at length. “You seem to have found your way into the
centre of the biggest thing this country has ever seen.”

Her face clouded for a moment.

“Yes, it’s a great thing, isn’t it? But do you ever think what failure
might mean, Mr. Flint? Think of all these poor people starving and of
us unable to help them. It would be terrible. Sometimes I think of it
and it makes me feel that we bear a fearful responsibility. I don’t
mean that I personally have any real responsibility. I don’t take
myself so seriously as all that. But the men at the head, Uncle Stanley
and the rest of you--it’s a fearful burden to take on your shoulders.
I’m only a cog in the machine and could be replaced to-morrow; but you
people, the experts, couldn’t be replaced. Fifty millions of people! I
can’t even begin to understand what fifty million deaths would mean. I
do hope, oh, I do so hope that we shall be successful. If anyone but
Uncle Stanley were at the head of it I should doubt; but I feel almost
quite safe with him at the helm. He never failed yet, you know.”

“No,” I said, “he never failed yet.”

What would she think when the full plans of Nordenholt--who “never
failed yet”--were revealed to her? I wondered how this fragile girl
would take it. She wouldn’t simply weep and forget, I was sure. She
seemed to have high ideals and she evidently idolised Nordenholt. It
would be a terrible catastrophe for her. I dreaded the next steps in
the conversation, for I did not want to lie to her; and I saw no other
way out of it if she turned the talk into the wrong channel.

Nordenholt’s hour was up and I began to feel that the old life was
slipping away from me again. For a few minutes we sat silent; for she
did not speak and I was afraid to reopen the conversation lest she
should continue her line of thought. I watched her as she sat: the
tiny shoe, the sweep of the black gown without a sparkle of jewellery
to relieve it, the clean curves of her white throat, and over all the
lustre of her hair. Would there be any place for all this in the new
world? I wondered. Things would be too hard for her fragility, perhaps.

As ten o’clock struck Nordenholt came in. He looked more cheerful than
when he had left us, though as he dropped into a chair I noticed that
he seemed to be physically tired.

“Henley-Davenport asked me to make his excuses to you, Elsa. He wants
to work out something which struck him when we were over at his
laboratory; so I left him there.”

He smoked for a while in silence, as though ruminating over what he had
seen.

“That’s a brave man if you want to see one,” he said at last. “From
what he told me, there will be a terrible explosion the first time he
manages to jar up his atomic powder-magazine; and yet he goes into the
thing as coolly as though he were lighting a cigarette. I hope he pulls
it off. More hangs on that than one can well estimate just now. It may
be the last shot in our locker for all we know.”

“But surely, Uncle Stanley, you have foreseen everything?”

“I’m not omniscient, Elsa, though perhaps you have illusions on the
point. I do what I can, but one must allow a good deal of latitude for
the unpredictable which always exists. And in this affair, I am afraid
the unpredictable will not be on the helping side. But don’t worry your
head over that; we can’t help it. What’s wrong with you to-night. You
look more worried than usual. Tired?”

“Not specially.”

“Would you sing to us a little?”

“Only something very short, then.” She moved to the piano. “What do you
want?”

“Oh, let’s see.... I’d like.... No, you wouldn’t care for it. Let’s
think again.”

“No, no, Uncle Stanley; I’ll sing anything you wish,” she said, but
when he asked for the second Song in Cymbeline, her brows contracted.

“Must you have that one? Won’t the first song do instead?”

“I’d rather have the other. Only the last two verses, for I see you are
tired.”

She sat down at the piano and played the preliminary chords. I had
never heard the air, possibly it was an unusual setting.

  “_Fear no more the lightning flash,
      Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
  Fear not slander, censure rash;
      Thou hast finished joy and moan:
  All lovers young, all lovers must,
  Consign to thee, and come to dust._”

It was a wonderful piece of singing. In the first lines her voice rose
clear and confident, reassuring against the mere physical perils. Then
with the faintest change of tone, just sufficient to mark the shift
in the form of menace, she sang the third line; and let a tinge of
melancholy creep into the next. With the last couplet something new
came into the music, possibly a drop into the minor; and her voice
seemed to fill with an echo of all lost hopes and spent delights. Then
it rose again, full and strong in the mandatory lines of the final
verse, set to a different air, till at last it died away once more with
infinite tenderness:

  “_Quiet consummation have;
  And renownèd be thy grave._”

I sat spellbound after she had ended. It was wonderful art. She closed
the piano and rose from her seat.

“I can’t imagine why you dislike that air,” said Nordenholt.

“Oh, it’s so gloomy, Uncle Stanley. I don’t care to think about things
like that.”

“Gloomy? You misread it, I’m sure. I wish I could be sure of Fidele’s
luck.

  ‘_Fear not slander, censure rash._’

Which of us can feel sure of being free from these? Not I. And what
better could one wish for in the end?

  ‘_And renownèd be thy grave._’

How many ghosts could boast of that after a hundred years?”

“Well, none of us will know about that part of it,” she said lightly.
“But I don’t think you need trouble about the ‘censure rash.’ None of
your own people will blame you; and I know you care nothing for the
rest. Even if they all turned against you, you would always have me,
you know.”

“Is that a promise, Elsa?” he asked gravely; and something in his tone
made her glance at him. “Would you really stand by me no matter what
happened? Don’t say yes, unless you really mean it.”

She stood in front of him, eye to eye, for a moment without speaking.

“I don’t understand,” she said at last. “You never doubted me before.
It hurts. Of course I promise you. No matter what happens I won’t leave
you. But you must promise never to send me away until I want to go.”

“Very good, Elsa, I promise.”

The strain seemed to relax in a moment. I don’t think they realised how
strange it all seemed to me. They were living in their own world, and
I was outside, I felt, rather bitterly. And of course, none of us was
quite normal at that time.

Miss Huntingtower came to me and held out her hand.

“Thanks so much for coming, Mr. Flint. Somehow I feel as if I
had known you for years instead of only a few hours. Now I’ll say
good-night and leave you with Uncle Stanley.”

“Wait a minute, Elsa,” said Nordenholt. “It seems to me that all three
of us have been cooped up indoors too much lately. Our nerves are
getting on edge. Don’t deny it, Flint, in your case. You haven’t a leg
to stand on. I heard you differing from one of your clerks to-day. We’d
all be the better for fresh air now and again. One afternoon a week,
after this, we’ll take a car out into the country. I can do my thinking
there just as well as anywhere else; and Mr. Flint can drive to keep
his mind off business. That’s settled. I told you before that amusement
of some sort has to come into our routine, Flint; so you must just make
up your mind to it. I can’t replace you if you collapse; so I can’t
allow you to go on like this. You don’t look half the man you were six
weeks ago.”

I required no pressing, partly because I knew that Nordenholt was right
in what he said.




CHAPTER X

The Death of the Leviathan


In this narrative I must give some account of the happenings in the
outer world; for, without this, the picture which I am attempting to
draw would be distorted in its perspective. At this point, then, I
shall begin to interleave the description of the Northern experiment
with sketches of the state of affairs elsewhere; and later I shall
return to the more connected form of my narrative.

It may reasonably be asked how it comes about that I am able to give
any account at all of occurrences in England immediately after the
closing of the Nitrogen Area, since I have taken pains to show the
complete severance of land-communications between the two sections of
the country. I have already hinted that all connection between these
regions was not abolished.

Nordenholt feared an invasion of the Clyde Valley by some, at least, of
the multitudes in the South as soon as they became famine-stricken. It
was hardly to be expected that, with the knowledge of the food in the
North which they had, they would remain quiescent when the pinch came;
and it was essential to have warning of any hostile movements ere they
actually gained strength enough to become dangerous. For this purpose,
he had organised his Intelligence Department outside as well as within
the Area.

There was no difficulty in introducing his agents into any district.
Night landings by parachute from airships, or even the daylight
descents of an aeroplane on a misty day, were simple enough to arrange;
and his spies could be picked up again at preconcerted times and places
when their return was desired.

In this way, there flowed into the Nitrogen Area a constant stream of
information which enabled him to piece together a connected picture of
the affairs outside our frontier.

I have had access to the summaries of these documents; and it is upon
this basis that I have built the next stage of my narrative. These
reports, of course, were not published at the time.

As to the rest of the world, I have had to depend upon the wireless
messages which were received by the huge installation Nordenholt had
set up; and also upon the various accounts which have been published in
more recent times.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have already mentioned that the last stage of the exodus involved the
destruction, as complete as was practicable, of roads, railways and
telegraphic communications; and I have mentioned also the breaking-up
of newspaper printing machinery. Following his usual course, Nordenholt
had determined on utilising to the full the psychological factors in
the problem; and it was upon the moral rather than on the mere physical
effect of this disorganisation that he relied in his planning.

The immediate effect upon the Southern population seems to have
been all that he had hoped. On the morning after the last night of
the exodus, England was still unperturbed. The absence of the usual
newspapers was accepted without marked astonishment; for no one had
any idea that it was more than a temporary interruption. Each city and
town assumed simply that something had gone wrong in their particular
area. No one seems to have imagined that anything but a local mishap
had occurred. The failure of the telegraphs was also discounted to some
extent.

The local railway services continued to run without exciting comment
by their intermittent character; for already Grogan’s operations had
disorganised them to such an extent that ordinary time-tables were
useless.

The food-supply was still in full swing under the rationing system
which Nordenholt had introduced; and no shortage had suggested itself
to anyone, even among the staffs of the local control centres.

Thus for at least a couple of days England remained almost normal, with
the exception of the disorganisation of the communications between
district and district. There was no panic. The population simply went
along its old paths with the feeling that by the end of the week these
temporary difficulties would be overcome and things would clear up.

The next stage was marked by the increasing difficulty of
communications. Owing to the withdrawal of Grogan and his staff,
simultaneously with the disappearance of the greater part of the
available locomotives into the Nitrogen Area, the train services fell
more and more into disorganisation. Within a very short time, travel
from one part of the country to another could only be accomplished by
the aid of motors.

The newspapers had been restarted; but they were no longer the organs
to which people had been accustomed. Printed from presses usually
employed for books, they could not be produced in anything approaching
the old quantities; and the break-up of communications had shattered
their organisation for the collection of information. They were mere
fly-sheets, consisting of two or three leaves of quarto size at the
largest and containing very little general news of any description.
Not only were they printed in small numbers, but the difficulties of
circulating the available copies were considerable; so that within a
very short time the greater part of the population had to depend upon
information passing orally from one to another.

This was the state into which Nordenholt had planned to bring them. His
agents, proceeding upon a carefully considered plan, formed centres
for the spread of rumours which grew more and more incredible as
they were magnified by repetition. Hostile invasions, the capture of
London, the assassination of the Premier, anarchist plots, earthquakes
which had interrupted the normal services of the country, all sorts of
catastrophes were invoked to account for the breakdown of the system
under which men had dwelt so long. But the period of rumours exhausted
the belief of the people. Very soon no one paid any attention to the
stories which, nevertheless, sped across the country in the form of
idle gossip.

Having thus manœuvred the inhabitants of England into a state of
total disbelief in rumour, Nordenholt made his next move. Hundreds of
aeroplanes ranged over the country, firing guns to attract attention
and then dropping showers of leaflets which were eagerly collected and
read. In these messages from the sky, a complete account was given of
the efforts which were being made in the North to save the situation.
Short articles upon the Nitrogen Area and its vital importance to the
food-supply were scattered broadcast; and by their clear language and
definite figures of production they carried conviction to the minds of
the readers. Here, at last, was reliable news.

No hint, of course, was given in these aerial bulletins of the real
purpose underlying the Nitrogen Area. Their whole tone was optimistic;
for Nordenholt wished to make his final blow the heavier by raising
hopes at first. Once his agents had assured him that the people
believed implicitly in his aeroplane news-service, he struck hard.

In my account of his explanation of his breaking-strain theory, I
have indicated roughly the general lines upon which his attack was
based. He had accomplished the breakdown of the social organism into
its component parts by the interruption of communications throughout
the land; but the final stage of the process was to be the isolation of
each individual from his fellows as far as that was possible.

Suddenly, the news leaflets became charged with a fresh type of
intelligence. At first there was a single item describing the detection
of two cases of a new form of disease in the Nitrogen Area. Then, in
succeeding issues, the spread of the epidemic was chronicled without
comment.

  PLAGUE SPREADING.

  TWENTY CASES TO-DAY.

The next bulletins contained detailed accounts of the symptoms of the
disease, laying stress upon the painful character of the ailment. It
was said in some ways to resemble hydrophobia, though its course was
more prolonged and the sufferings entailed by it were more severe.

Then further accounts of the extension of the scourge were rained down
from the sky:

  PLAGUE TOTAL: 10,000 CASES.

  NO RECOVERIES.

Hitherto the news had confined the Plague to the Nitrogen Area; and
people had not thought it would spread beyond these limits; but in
the next stage of the propaganda this hope was taken from them. The
messages to Southern England described how the disease had made its
appearance in Newcastle and in Hull; those leaflets intended for the
western districts also gave the same information. In the North of
England, the intelligence took the form of accounts of the discovery of
the plague in London. In every case, care was taken that there was no
direct communication between the “affected centre” and the spots where
the news was dropped.

The penultimate series of publications was in the form of lists of
precautions to be taken to avoid the disease. It was described as
contagious and not infectious; and people were advised to avoid
mingling with their neighbours as far as possible. Complete isolation
would ensure safety, since it had been established that the plague was
not air-borne. Horrible details of the sufferings of patients were also
published.

Finally, the last group of leaflets represented a steady crescendo.

  ENORMOUS SPREAD OF PLAGUE IN NITROGEN AREA.
  100,000 CASES.

  SPREAD OF PLAGUE THROUGH ENGLAND.
  ONLY A FEW DISTRICTS FREE.

  NITROGEN AREA DECIMATED.
  POPULATION DYING IN THE STREETS.

  DOOM IN THE CLYDE VALLEY.
  TOTAL FAILURE OF NITROGEN SCHEME.
  DEATH OF NORDENHOLT.

The ultimate message was hurriedly printed with blotched type:

  THE NITROGEN AREA IS ALMOST UNINHABITED, THE REMAINDER OF THE
  POPULATION HAVING FLED IN PANIC. THE PLAGUE IS SPREADING BROADCAST
  OVER ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. ISOLATE YOURSELVES, OTHERWISE SAFETY IS
  IMPOSSIBLE.

After this had been dropped from the air, the skies remained empty. No
aeroplanes appeared.

Thus, with a stunning suddenness, the population of the kingdom
learned that their hopes were shattered. It is true that there were
still channels of communication open here and there through which the
news might have spread to contradict the stories from the sky. But
Nordenholt had done his work with demonic certainty. By the very form
of his attack he closed these few remaining routes along which the
truth might have percolated. Strangers were forbidden to enter any
district for fear that they might bring the Plague with them; and thus
each community remained closed to the outer world. With the increase in
the terror, even neighbouring villages ceased to have any connection
with one another. The Leviathan was dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

With this closing of the avenues of communication, the problem of
food-supply became acute. The rations remaining in each centre were
distributed hurriedly and inefficiently among the population; and then
the end was in sight.

I have no wish to dwell upon that side of the story. I saw glimpses
of it, as I shall tell in due course, but all I need do here is to
indicate certain results which flowed naturally from the condition of
things.

When the coal- and food-shortage became acute, the population divided
itself naturally into two classes. On the one hand were those who,
moved either by timidity of new conditions or a fear of the Plague,
fortified themselves in their dwellings and ceased to stir beyond their
doors until the end overtook them; whilst, on the other, a second
section of the population driven either by despair or adventurousness,
quitted the districts in which it knew there was no hope of survival
and went forth into the unknown to seek better conditions.

Thus in the ultimate stages of the _débâcle_, the country resembled a
group of armed camps through which wandered a floating population of
many thousand souls, growing more and more desperate as they journeyed
onward in search of an unattainable goal. In the movements of this
migratory horde, two main streams could be perceived. Those who had
set forth from the cities knew that no food remained in the large
aggregations of population; and they therefore wandered ever outward
from their starting-point; the country legions, knowing that the land
was barren, fixed their eyes upon the great centres in the hope that
there the stores of food would still be unexhausted. Both were doomed
to disappointment, but despair drove them on from point to point.

Of all the centres of attraction, London formed the greatest magnet
to draw to itself these floating and isolated particles of humanity.
Like fragments of flotsam in a whirlpool, they were attracted into its
confines; and once within that labyrinth, they emerged no more. Lost in
its unfamiliar mazes, they wandered here and there, unable to escape
even if they had wished to do so; and no Ariadne waited on them with
her clue. Perhaps I overrate the strangeness of the spectacle and lay
more stress upon it than it deserves. It may be that in the depths of
the country even weirder things were done. But London I saw with my own
eyes in the last stages of its career; and I cannot shake myself free
from the impression made upon me by that uncanny shadow-show beneath
the moon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gradually but surely the tide of human existence ebbed in Britain
outside the Nitrogen Area. Here and there in the central districts
there might be isolated patches whereon some living creatures remained
by accident with food sufficient to prolong their vitality for a
little longer; but after a few months even these were obliterated and
the last survivors of the race of men were to be found clinging to
the coasts of the island where food was still to be procured from the
sea. Some of them struggled through the Famine period under these
conditions; but most of them perished eventually from starvation; for
even in the marine areas conditions were changing and the old abundant
harvest of sea-creatures had passed away. The herring and other edible
fish were driven to new feeding-grounds. The supply brought in by
the fishing-boats diminished steadily, until at last men ceased to
go out upon the waters and gave up the struggle. The winter was an
exceptionally bitter one--possibly the change in the surface conditions
produced by _B. diazotans_ affected the world-climate, though that is
still a moot point--and the cold completed the work. Long before the
spring came, Britain was a mere Raft of the _Medusa_ lying upon the
waters and peopled by a handful of survivors out of what had once been
a mighty company.




CHAPTER XI

Fata Morgana


To explain how I came to witness the spectacle of London in its
extremity, I must go back to the evening at Nordenholt’s which I have
already described. He persisted in his project of forcing us into the
fresh air, often twice or thrice a week if the weather was favourable;
and to tell the truth, I was nothing loath. Over a hundred hours of my
week were spent in concentrated mental activity under conditions which
removed me more and more from direct contact with human affairs as time
went on; and I looked forward with pleasure to these brief interludes
during which I could take up once more the threads of my old life and
its interests.

Nordenholt himself contributed but little to the conversation on these
excursions. Sometimes he brought with him one of his numerous experts
and spent the time in technical discussions; but usually he occupied
the back seat of the car alone, lost in his thoughts and plans, while I
drove and Miss Huntingtower sat beside me.

As our time was limited, and we wished to avoid the city as much as
possible, our routes were mainly those to the west, by the Kilpatrick
Hills or the Campsies. We never pushed farther afield, as Nordenholt
had forbidden me to go outside the boundaries of the Nitrogen Area. I
think he was afraid of what she might see by the roadside if we passed
the frontier.

Even during these few short afternoons, I came to know her better.
Somehow I had got the impression that she was graver than her years
justified; but I found that in this estimate I was mistaken. She was
sobered by the responsibility of her work, but underneath this she
seemed to have a natural craving for the enjoyment of life, and a
capacity for making the best of things which was suited to my own mood.
She was quite unaffected; I never found her posing in any way. Whether
she chattered nonsense--and I believe both of us did that at times--or
was discussing the future, she gave me the impression of being
perfectly natural.

We used to make all sorts of plans for the future of the world, once
the danger was past; half-trivial, half-serious schemes which somehow
took on an air of fairy-tale reality. “When I am Queen, I will set
such and such a grievance right”; “In the first year of my Presidency,
I will publish an edict forbidding so and so.” Between us, on these
drives, we planned a fairy kingdom in the future, a new Garden of
the Hesperides, a dream-built Thelema of sunlit walls and towers and
pleasure-grounds wherein might dwell the coming generations of men.
The future! Somehow that was always with us. Less and less did we go
backward into the past. That world was over, never to return; but the
years still to come gave us full scope for our fancies and to them we
turned with eager eyes.

The diversion grew upon us as time went on. It was always spontaneous,
for our work gave neither of us an opportunity for thinking out
details; and each afternoon brought its fresh store of improvisations.
Through it all, she was the dreamer of dreams; it was my part to throw
her visions into a practically attainable form: and gradually, out of
it all, there arose a fabric of phantasy which yet had its foundations
in the solid earth.

It took form; we could walk its streets in reverie and pace its lawns.
And gradually that land of Faerie came to be peopled with inhabitants,
mere phantasms at first, but growing ever more real as we talked of
them between ourselves. Half in jest and half in earnest we created
them, and soon they twined themselves about our hearts. Children of our
brain, they were; dearer than any earthly offspring, for from them we
need fear no disappointments.

Fata Morgana we christened our City, after the mirage in the Straits of
Messina; for it had that mixture of clear outline and unsubstantiality
which seemed to fit the name.

So we planned the future together out of such stuff as dreams are made
on. And behind us, grim and silent, sat Nordenholt, the real architect
of the coming time.

       *       *       *       *       *

He never interrupted our talks; and I had no idea that he had even
overheard them until one day he called me into his office. He seemed
unusually grave.

“Sit down, Jack,” he said, and I started slightly to hear him use the
name, since hitherto I had always been simply “Flint” to him. “I’ve got
something serious to discuss with you; and it won’t keep much longer.”

He looked up at the great Nitrogen Curve above the mantelpiece and
seemed to brood over the inclinations of the red and green lines upon
it. They were closing upon one another now, though some distance still
separated them.

“Did it ever occur to you that I can’t go on for ever?”

“Well, I suppose that none of us can go on for ever; but I don’t think
I would worry too much over that, Nordenholt. Of course you’re doing
thrice the work that I am; but I don’t see much sign of it affecting
you yet.”

“Have a good look.”

He swung round to the light so that I could see his face clearly;
and it dawned upon me that it was very different from the face I
had seen first at the meeting in London. The old masterfulness was
there, increased if anything; but the leanness was accentuated over
the cheek-bones and there was a weary look in the eyes which was
new to me. I had never noticed the change, even though I saw him
daily--possibly because of that very fact. The alteration had been so
gradual that it was only by comparing him with what I remembered that I
could trace its full extent.

“Satisfied, eh?”

“Well, there is a change, certainly; but I don’t think it amounts to
much.”

“The inside is worse than the surface, I’m afraid. But don’t worry
about that. I’ll last the distance, I believe. It’s what will happen
after the finish that is perplexing me now.”

I muttered something which I meant to be encouraging.

“Well, have it your own way, if you like,” he replied; “but I _know_. I
have enough energy to see me through this stage of the thing; but this
is only a beginning. After it, comes reconstruction; and I shall be
exhausted by that time. I can carry on under this strain long enough to
see safety in sight; but someone else must take up the burden then. I
won’t risk doing it myself. I must have a fresh mind on the thing. So I
have to cast about me now for my successor.”

It was a great shock to hear him speak in this tone. Somehow I had
become so accustomed to look up to Nordenholt as a tower of strength
that it was hard to realise that there might some day be a change
of masters. And yet, like all his views, this was accurate. When we
reached the other bank, he would have strained himself to the utmost
and would have very few reserves left.

“I’ve been watching you, Jack,” he went on. “I’ve got fairly sharp
ears; and your talks in the car interested me.”

I was aghast at this; for I had believed that these dreams and
plannings were things entirely between Miss Huntingtower and myself.
They certainly were not meant for anyone else.

“At first,” he went on, “I thought it was only talk to pass the time;
but by-and-by I saw how it attracted you both. After all, there are
worse ways of passing an afternoon than in building castles in the
air. But what I liked about your castles was that they had their roots
in the earth. You have a knack of solid building, Jack, even in your
dreams. It’s a rare gift, very rare. I felt more friendly to you when I
followed all that.”

There was no patronage in his tone. As usual, he seemed to be stating
what appeared to him an obvious conclusion.

“The upshot is,” he went on, “that I’m going to dismiss you from
your present post and put you in charge of a new Department dealing
with Reconstruction. There will be one condition--or rather two
conditions--attached to it; but they aren’t hard ones. Will you take
it?”

Of course I was taken completely aback. I had never dreamed of such
a thing; and I hardly knew what to say. I stammered some sort of an
acceptance as soon as I could find my voice.

“Very good. You cut loose from your present affairs from this moment.
Anglesey will take over. You can give him all the pointers he asks for
to-day; and after that he must fend for himself. I’ll have no two minds
on that line of work.

“Now as to the new thing. It will make you my successor, of course;
and I want to start with a word of warning. Unlimited power is bad for
any man. You have only to look at the example of the Cæsars to see
that: Caligula, Tiberius, Nero, you’ll find the whole sordid business
in Suetonius. And I can tell you the same thing at first hand myself.
I’ve got unlimited power here nowadays; and it isn’t doing me any good.
I feel that I am going downhill under it daily. You’ll probably see it
yourself before long, although I’ve fought to keep it in check. So much
for the warning.

“Now as to the conditions. I admired your dream-cities, Jack. I wish
you could build them all in stone. But even if you were to do that,
they would still have to be peopled; and I doubt if you will find the
men and women whom you want for them among the present population.
Mind you, I believe you have good material there; but it has a basis
in the brute which none of your dream-people had. You don’t realise
that factor; you couldn’t understand its strength unless you saw it
actually before you: and my first condition is meant to let you see the
frailty with which you will have to contend and which you will have to
eliminate before you can see that visionary race pacing the gardens in
your Fata Morgana. It’s all in full blast within five hundred miles
of here. London is thronged with people just the same as those down
there in the factories; and I want you to see what it amounts to when
you take off the leash. So the first condition is that you go down
to London and see it with your own eyes. I could prepare you for it
from the reports I have; but I think it will be better if you see it
for yourself and don’t trust to any other person. I’ll make all the
arrangements; and you can leave in a couple of days.”

I am no enthusiast for digging into the baser side of human nature, and
the prospect which he held out was not an inviting one to me. But I
could see that he laid stress upon it, so I merely nodded my consent.

“Now the second condition. I daresay that you alone could plan a very
good scheme of reconstruction; but it would be a pure male scheme. You
can’t put yourself in any woman’s place and see things with her eyes,
try as you will. But this Fata Morgana of yours, when it rises, has to
be inhabited by both men and women; and you have to make it as fit for
the women as for the men. That’s where you would collapse.”

“I suppose you’re right. I don’t know much about a woman’s point of
view. I never had even a sister to enlighten me.”

“Quite so. I judged as much from some things. Well, my second condition
is that you take over Elsa as a colleague. It was hearing the two of
you talk that gave me the idea of using you, Jack; so it is only fair
that she should have a share in the thing also.”

“But would Miss Huntingtower leave you?”

“I’ll try to persuade her. Anyway, leave it to me. But remember, Jack,
not a word to her about London or the South. She knows nothing of that
yet. I’ve kept her work confined entirely to Area affairs. I want to
spare her as long as I can; for she’ll take it hard when it comes.
She’ll take it very hard, I’m afraid. Until you’re back from London I
shall say nothing to her about your being away, lest she asks where you
have gone.”

I was still dazzled by the promotion he had promised me; and I thanked
him for it, again and again. When I left him, my mind was still full of
it all. I don’t know that I felt the responsibility at first; it was
rather the chance of bringing things nearer to that dream-city which we
had built upon the clouds, that I felt most strongly. I had no doubt
that I could lay the foundations securely; and upon them Elsa could
build those fragile upper courses in which she delighted. It would be
our own Fata Morgana, but reared by human hands.

So I dreamed....




CHAPTER XII

Nuit Blanche


The aeroplane which carried me southward alighted on the Hendon
flying-ground when dusk was falling. As we crossed Hertfordshire I had
seen in front of me, to the south-east, a great pall of cloud which
seemed to hang above the city; and as the daylight faded, this curtain
became lit up with a red glow like the sky above a blast-furnace.

When we landed, I found that all arrangements had already been made by
Nordenholt; for after I had removed my flying kit an untidy-looking,
unshaven man made his appearance, who introduced himself as my guide
for the night. He advised me to have a meal and try to snatch a little
sleep before we started. We dined together in one of the buildings--for
Nordenholt had spared the Hendon aerodrome in the general destruction
of the exodus, though he had burned all the aeroplanes which were
there at the time--and during the meal my guide gave me hints as to my
behaviour while I was under his charge, so that I might not attract
attention under the new conditions. Above all, he warned me not to show
any surprise at anything I might see.

After I had dozed for a time, he reappeared and insisted on rubbing
some burnt cork well into my skin under the eyes and on my cheeks, and
also giving my hands and the rest of my face a lighter treatment with
the same medium.

“You look far too well-fed and clean to pass muster here. There’s very
little soap left now; and most of us don’t shave. Must make you look
the part.”

He handed me two ·45 Colt pistols and a couple of loaded spare
magazines.

“Shove these extra cartridges into a handy pocket as well. The Colts
are loaded and there’s an extra cartridge in the breech of each. That
gives you eighteen shots without reloading; and sixteen more when you
snick in the fresh magazines. You know how to do it? Pull down the
safety catches. If you have to shoot, shoot at once; and shoot in any
case of doubt. Don’t stop to argue.”

A motor-car was waiting for us with two men in the front seats. The
glass of the wind-screen bore a small square of paper with a red cross
printed on the white ground; and I saw that one of the side-light
glasses had been painted a peculiar colour. My guide and I climbed
into the back seats and the car moved off. When we passed out of the
aerodrome I observed that the entrance was defended by machine-guns;
and a large flag of some coloured bunting was flown on a short staff.
As it waved in the air, I caught the letters “PLAGUE” on it.

“To keep off visitors,” said my guide. “By the way, my name’s Glendyne.
Oh, by Jove, I’ve forgotten something important.”

He took out of the door-pocket a couple of armlets with the Red Cross
on them and fastened one on my left arm, putting the other one on
himself. I gathered that they formed part of his disguise.

It was night now. The sky was clear except for some clouds on the
horizon and the full moon was up, so that we hardly needed the
head-lights to see our way. Again I noticed the peculiar red glow which
I had seen from the aeroplane; but now, being nearer, I saw flickerings
in it. There were no artificial lights, either of gas or electricity,
in the streets through which we passed. Very occasionally I saw human
forms moving in the distance; but they were too far off for me to
distinguish what sort of person was abroad. In the main, the figures
which I espied were reclining on the ground, some singly, others in
groups; and for a time I did not realise that these were corpses.

We soon diverged from the main road and drove through a series of
by-streets in which I lost my sense of direction until at last I
discovered that we were passing the old Cavalry Barracks in Albany
Street.

“Halt!”

The car drew up suddenly and in the glare of our head-lights I saw a
group of men carrying rifles and fixed bayonets; bandoliers were slung
across their shoulders, but otherwise there was no sign of uniform.

“Where’s your permit?... Doctor’s car, is it? We’ve been taken in by
that once before. Never again, thank you. Out with that permit if you
have it, or it will be the worse for you.”

The armed group covered us with their rifles while Glendyne searched in
his pocket. At last he produced a paper which the leader of the patrol
examined.

“Oh, it’s you, Glendyne? Sorry to trouble you, but we can’t help it.
A medical car came through the other night and played Old Harry with
a patrol at Park Square; so we have to be careful, you see. I think
it was some of Johansen’s little lot who had stolen a Red Cross car.
Stephen got them with a bomb at Hanover Gate later in the evening and
there wasn’t enough left to be sure who they were. Why they can’t leave
this district alone beats me. They have most of London left to rollic
in; and yet they must come here where no one wants them. By the way,
where are you going?”

“Leaving the car at Wood’s Garage. Going down to the Circus on foot
after that, I think; probably via Euston, though.”

“All right. I’ll telephone down. Sanderson’s patrol is out there in
Portland Place and he might shoot you by accident. I’ll get him to look
out for you on your way back.”

“Thanks. Very good of you, I’m sure.”

Our car ran forward again to the foot of Albany Street, where we turned
in to a large public garage.

“What was that patrol?” I asked Glendyne.

“Local Vigilance Committee. Some districts have them. Trying to keep
out the scum and looters.”

“But what about this being a medical car?”

“I _am_ a medical. Was an asylum doctor before Nordenholt picked me
out for this job. Medical cars can go anywhere even now; but we can do
better on foot for the particular work you want to-night.”

He seemed to be a man of few words; but I had been struck by the empty
state of the garage and wished to know where the usual multitude of
cars had gone.

“Most owners took their machines away in the rush out of London. Any
cars left were looted long ago. Have to leave a guard now on any car,
otherwise we’d have the petrol stolen before we were back. You’ll see
later.”

There were no lights burning in the Euston Road, either in the streets
or at house-windows. Coming in the car, I had given little heed to
the lack of passers-by; but here, in a district which swarmed with
population in the old days, I could not help being struck by the change
of atmosphere. All inhabitants seemed to have vanished, leaving not a
trace. I asked Glendyne if this region was entirely deserted; but he
explained to me that in all probability there were still a number of
survivors.

“No one shows a light after dark in a house if they can help it,” he
said. “It simply invites looters.”

“The full moon stood well above the house-tops, lighting up the streets
far ahead of us. Wheeled traffic seemed non-existent; nor could I see
a single human being. Just beyond the Tube Station, however, I observed
what I took to be a bundle of clothes lying by the roadside. Closer
inspection proved it to be a complete skeleton dressed in a shabby
suit of serge. While I was puzzling over this, Glendyne, seeing my
perplexity, gave me the explanation.”

“Looking for the flesh, I suppose? Gone long ago. _B. diazotans_ takes
care of that, or we should have had a real Plague instead of a fake
one, considering the number of deaths there have been. As soon as
life goes out, all flesh is attacked by bacteria, but _B. diazotans_
beats the putrefying bacteria in quick action. You’ll find no decaying
corpses about. Quite a clean affair.”

Leaving the skeleton behind us, we continued our way. I suppose if I
had been a novelist’s hero I should have examined the pockets of the
man and discovered some document of priceless value in them. I must
confess the idea of searching the clothes never occurred to me till
long afterwards; and I doubt if there was anything useful in them
anyway.

As we walked eastwards towards Euston I noticed that the red glow
before us was shot now and again with a tongue of flame. We passed
several isolated corpses, or rather skeletons, and suddenly I came upon
a group of them which covered most of the roadway. I noticed that all
the heads pointed in one direction and that the greater number of the
dead had accumulated on the steps of a looted public-house. Noticing my
astonishment, Glendyne condescended to explain.

“Crawled there at the last gasp looking for alcohol to brace them up
for another day, I expect. See the attitudes? All making for the door.
Hopeless, anyway. The stuff must have been looted long before they got
near it. Curious how one finds them like that, all clustered together,
either at the door of a pub or the porch of a church. A Martian would
think that drink and religion were the only things which attracted
humanity in the end.”

It was near Whitfield Street that I saw a relic of the exodus from
London. Two cars, a limousine and a big five-seater, had collided at
high speed; for both of them were badly wrecked, and the touring-car
had been driven right across the pavement and through a shop-front.
To judge from the skeletons in the limousine, its passengers had been
killed by the shock.

Leaving this scene of disaster, we walked eastward again. I glanced
up each side-street as I passed, but there were no signs of living
beings. In the stillness, our footsteps rang upon the pavements; but
the noise attracted no one to our neighbourhood. It was not until we
reached the corner of Tottenham Court Road that I was again reminded
of my fellow-men. A sound of distant singing reached my ears: fifty
or a hundred voices rising and falling in some simple air which had
a strangely familiar ring, though I could not recall exactly what it
reminded me of at the time. The singers were far off, however; for when
we halted at the street-corner I could see no one in Tottenham Court
Road; and we went on our way once more.

The notice-boards at the gate of Euston Station were covered with
recently-posted bills; and seeing the word PLAGUE in large letters
upon some of them I halted for a moment to read the inscriptions.
They were all of a kind: quack advertisements of nostrums to prevent
the infection or to cure the disease. I was somewhat grimly amused to
find that there was still a market for such trash even amid the final
convulsion of humanity. The only difference between them and their
fore-runners was that instead of money the vendors demanded food in
exchange for their cures. Flour, bread, or oatmeal seemed to be the
currency in vogue.

The station itself was dark; but here and there in the Hotel windows
glowed with lamp or candle-light. “Probably some select orgy or
other,” was Glendyne’s explanation; and he refused to investigate
further. “No use thrusting oneself in where one isn’t wanted. In these
times the light alone is a danger signal when you know your way about.”

It was in Endsleigh Gardens that we came across another living
creature. Half-way along, I caught sight of a figure crouching in a
doorway. At first I took it for a skeleton; but as we drew near it rose
to its feet and I found that it was a man, indescribably filthy and
with a matted beard. When he spoke to us, I detected a Semitic tinge in
his speech.

“Give me some food, kind gentlemen! Jahveh will reward you. A sparrow,
or even some biscuit crumbs? Be merciful, kind gentlemen.”

“Got none to spare,” said Glendyne roughly.

“Ah, kind gentlemen, kind gentlemen, surely you have food for a
starving man? See, I will pay you for it. A sovereign for a sparrow?
_Two_ sovereigns for a sparrow? Listen, kind gentlemen, five pounds for
a rat--eight pounds if it is a fat one. I could make soup with a rat.”

“There’s no food here for you.”

“But, gentlemen, you don’t understand; you don’t understand. I can make
you rich. Gold, much fine gold, for a miserable sparrow--or a rat! You
think I am too poor to have gold? You despise me because I am clothed
in rags? What are rags to me, who am richer than Solomon? I can pay; I
can pay.”

He kept pace with us, shuffling along in the gutter; and I noticed that
the sole of one of his boots flapped loose at each step he took. After
glancing around suspiciously as though afraid of being overheard, he
continued in a lower tone:

“Jahveh has laid a great task upon me. I can _make_ gold! Give me
food, even the smallest scrap, and you shall be richer than Solomon.
All that your hearts desire shall be yours, kind gentlemen. Apes,
ivory, peacocks and the riches of the East shall come to you. I will
give you gold for your palaces and you shall deck them with beryl and
chrysoberyl, sapphire, chrysolite and sardonyx. Diamonds shall be
yours, and the stones of Sardis.... These do not tempt you? I curse you
by the bones of Isaac! May all the burden of Gerizim and Ebal fall upon
you!”

He broke off, almost inarticulate with rage; then, mastering himself,
he continued in a calmer tone.

“A few crumbs of bread, kind gentlemen; even the scrapings of your
pocket-linings. Or a sparrow? Think what can be bought with my gold.
Slaves to your desire, concubines of the fairest, brought from all the
parts of the world, whose love is more than wine....”

It enraged me to hear this filthy object profaning all the material
splendours of the world; and I thrust him aside roughly. My movement
seemed to bring his suppressed anger to its climax.

“You doubt me? You will not hear the word of Jahveh’s messenger? See,
I will make gold before you; and then you shall fall down and offer me
all the food you have--for I know you have food. Look well, O fools; I
will make gold for you this moment.”

He stooped down as though lifting something invisible in handfuls and
then made the motion of throwing.

“See! My gold! I throw it abroad. Look how it glitters in the light of
the moon. Hear how it tinkles as it falls upon the pavement. There”--he
pointed suddenly--“see how the coins spin and run upon the ground.
Gold! Much fine gold! Is it not enough? Then here is more.”

He repeated his motion of lifting something, this time with both hands
as though he were delving in loose sand.

“See! Gold dust! I throw it; and it falls in showers. I scatter it;
and there is a golden cloud about us. I give it all to you, kind
gentlemen. Surely all this is worth a rat, a fat one; a rat to make
soup?”

He looked at us expectantly, holding out his empty hands as though they
contained something which he wished us to examine.

“Still you are not convinced? Not so much as a sparrow for all this
gold? I have fallen amid a generation of vipers. Ha! You would rob me
of my gold; you would take it all and give me not so much as a rat?
But I shall escape you. Even now I go to prepare the streets of the
new Jerusalem. Jahveh has commanded me that I make them ready with my
finest gold. He has prepared the smelting-furnace here in this city; it
burns with fire; and I have but to lay my gold in its streets so that
they shall all be covered. I go! Gold! Gold!”

He ran from us; and we heard his voice in Gordon Street crying “Gold!
Gold!” as he went.

After he had left us, we came by Upper Woburn Place into Tavistock
Square; and it was here that I met the first _petroleuse_. Some houses
were burning in Burton Crescent. Suddenly at the corner of the entry
I saw a figure appear, an oldish woman in rags, carrying a petrol tin
and a dipper. She hobbled along, throwing liquid from her tin at every
house-door as she passed. Sometimes she broke a window and threw petrol
into the room beyond. I lost sight of her when she turned into Burton
Street; but she soon reappeared, having evidently exhausted her stores.
She now carried an improvised torch in her hand with which she set
fire to the petrol spilled about the doors on her previous passage.
Soon each doorway was a mass of flames; and she retired into Burton
Crescent, with a final glance to see that her work had been well done.

“That sort of thing is going on all over the East End now,” said
Glendyne, “and you see that it is spreading westward too. It
began by the East Enders running out of coal. Then they took to
lighting bonfires in the streets with wood from the houses, to keep
themselves warm. And finally houses caught fire and they got the
taste for destruction. You’re seeing the last of London. There are no
fire-brigades now. It’s only a question of time before the whole city
is ablaze.”

Russell Square was dark like all the rest of the streets; but the moon
lit it up sufficiently for us to see what was going on in Southampton
Row, where a band of men were engaged in breaking into a druggist’s
shop.

“What do they expect to find there?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem very
promising from the looter’s point of view.”

“Cocaine and morphia, of course,” Glendyne replied, “or ether to get
drunk on, if they aren’t very sophisticated. They’ll do anything to
keep down hunger pangs nowadays, you know.”

We crossed the south side of Russell Square, making for Montague
Street, when my attention was attracted by the sound of singing which
I had previously heard in Tottenham Court Road. The voices were nearer
this time; and I was able to make out one line of the song:

  “_Here we go dancing, under the Moon...._”

“What’s that?” I asked Glendyne.

“What? Oh, that? Some of the Dancers, I expect. We’ll come across them
later on, no doubt. Nothing to be alarmed about. Come along!”

Just as we were moving on, however, at the turning into Montague Street
there came a soft whirring behind us; a great limousine car drew up
at the kerb; and from its interior descended a tall figure which
approached us. As he drew near, I saw in the moonlight that it was a
thin and white-haired man, showing no signs of the usual grime. He
seemed a gentle old man, out of place in this city of nightmare; but
as I looked more closely into his face I could see something abnormal
in his eyes.

“You will excuse me for interrupting you, gentlemen; but I wish to put
an important question to you. What is Truth?”

Glendyne gave an impatient snarl in reply. Probably he was completely
_blasé_ by this time; and took little interest in the vagaries of the
human mind. As for myself, I was so taken aback by this latest comer
that I could only stare without answering.

The old man looked at us eagerly for a moment; then disappointment
clouded his face and he turned back to his car. We watched him without
speaking as he stepped into it. The chauffeur drove on, leaving us as
silently as he had come.

When we reached the great gates of the British Museum, I was somewhat
surprised to find them standing wide. I suppose that even amid the
abnormalities of this new London my memory was working upon its old
lines, and it seemed strange to see this entrance open at that time of
night. To my astonishment, Glendyne turned into the court.

“I just want to show you a curious survival in the Reading Room here.”

Inside the building, all was dark; but by the light of an electric
torch we found our way to the back of the premises. The Reading Room
was dotted here and there with tiny lights like stars in the gloom; and
within each nimbus I saw a face bent in the study of a volume.

“Still reading, you see,” said Glendyne. “Even in the last crash some
of them are eager for knowledge. How they find the books they want
passes my comprehension; for, of course, there is no one left to give
them out. But they seem able to pick out what they need from the
shelves.”

He threw his flashlight here and there in the gloom, lighting up
figure after figure. Some of them turned and gazed toward us with
dazzled eyes; but others continued their reading without paying us any
attention. It reminded me of a glimpse into the City of Dreadful Night;
but it seemed better than the things we had met in our wanderings
outside. After all, there was something almost heroic in this vain
acquirement of learning at a moment when human things seemed doomed to
destruction.

As we emerged from the Museum, it seemed to me that the glare of the
flames in the sky was brighter; but this may have been due merely to
the increased sensitiveness of my retina after the darkness within the
building. We turned to the right and followed Great Russell Street
westwards.

We crossed Oxford Street and turned down Charing Cross Road. At the
lower end of the street, houses were burning furiously, and I could
hear the sound of the fires and the crash of falling girders. Beyond
Cambridge Circus the road was impassable. Sutton Street seemed to be
the only way left to us. As we came into it, I noticed that the dead
were much more numerous here and that many of them held clasped in
their skeleton hands a crucifix or a rosary.

“Making their way to St. Patrick’s when they died,” Glendyne explained
to me. As we came closer to the church, we found living mingled with
the dead. Some of them were so feeble that they could crawl no further;
but others were still making efforts to drag themselves nearer to the
door. Organ music came from the porch, and I halted amid the dead and
dying to listen to the voices of the choir:

  “_Dies irae, dies illa
  Solvet saeclum in favilla...._”

It was weirdly apposite, there in the centre of that burning city. Then
the choir continued:

  “_Tuba mirum spargens sonum
  Per sepulchra regionum
  Coget omnes ante thronum._”

Hardly had the thunder of the great vowels died away when from the
crowd around us came a bitter cry, the sound of some soul in its agony.
It startled me; and as I turned round, there ran a movement through
that multitude of dead and dying, as though in very truth the trumpets
had called the dead to life and judgment. The cry had been heard within
the church; for a priest came to the porch and blessed them. It seemed
to bring comfort to those alive.

“Let’s get out of this,” I said to Glendyne. “We can’t help; and it’s
needless to stay here. I can’t stand it.”

“All right,” he said philosophically. “Personally, I don’t mind this
so much as some of the other things one sees. These people, you know,
by their way of it, have put themselves under the protection of the
Church. Their path is clear. There’s only Death now for them, and,
after all, each of us comes to that in his own time. _They_ will go out
with easy minds.”

As we came into Soho Square, I was reminded of the fact that even in
this city of the dying, human passions still remained. From Greek
Street came the sound of revolver shots: three in rapid succession,
evidently a duel, and then a gasping cry, followed by a final shot.
Then silence for a moment; and at last the noise of heavy foot-falls
dying away in the direction of Old Compton Street.

“What’s that?”

“How should I know?” Glendyne retorted. “Probably some of the foreign
scum settling a difference among themselves. We never bother about
this district. Too dangerous to poke one’s nose into. If I were to go
and try to help, I’d most probably get shot for my pains. One gets to
know one’s way about, after a time. A few weeks ago I tried the Good
Samaritan on one of these foreigners and he almost succeeded in knifing
me for my pains. I suppose he thought I was one of his friends come
to finish the job. He was shot through the lung anyway, so I don’t
suppose I could have helped much, even if I had persisted.”

Soho Square was deserted. The mingled red and silver light from the
burning houses and the moon lay across it; but nothing moved. We turned
northward into Soho Street. It also was empty when we entered it; but
while we walked up it a figure entered it from the Oxford Street end.
As it approached, Glendyne made a gesture of recognition, and when the
two met it was evident that they were well acquainted with one another.

“That you, Glendyne? Glad to see you again. It’s a week since we met, I
think.”

It was a tall thin clergyman with a clear-cut ascetic face,
clean-shaven in spite of the prevailing lack of soap. For the first
time that night I saw that the city had thrown up a man who was
definitely sane. His keen glance, his air of competence and his
matter-of-fact mode of speech were in strong contrast to what I had
become accustomed to expect from the inhabitants of this Inferno.
Glendyne introduced me with some perfunctory words which left my
presence unexplained; and the clergyman seemed to accept me without
comment.

“Things are going from bad to worse, Glendyne,” he said. “I’m sometimes
tempted to take advantage of your offer and clear out some of these
places with a bomb or two.”

“What’s wrong now?” Glendyne inquired, without much apparent interest.

“Well, I can stand a good deal--have had to, you know. But when it
comes to open idolatry in the West End, I must say I begin to draw the
line.”

“Remember two can play at that game, if you _do_ begin. If you
interfere with them, they will interfere with you.”

“Of course, you’re quite right. So far we have had no persecution; I’ll
say that for them. But sometimes temptation is as bad as persecution,
or even worse. Persecution couldn’t last long now anyway; and it would
only knit us together: but temptation is a different matter. I’ve
lost two girls in the last three days--enticed away by the Dancers.
Sickening business, for one knows how that always ends. One of them
was taken from my side as we were walking along the street together;
and I was jammed in the crowd and could do nothing. She just cracked
up, got hysterical and darted off. I lost sight of her almost at once.
Of course she never came back. Damn them!” he ended with extraordinary
bitterness.

“Well, it can’t be helped. You do all that a man can do to keep them
sane; and if you fail, it’s no fault of yours.”

“What has that to do with it?” cried the clergyman vehemently. “Do
you think I care one way or another for that? It’s the sight of these
souls going down to damnation that I care about. In a few days we
must all meet our Judge, and these poor things go before Him soiled
in body and soul! _That’s_ what hurts, Glendyne. Six months ago we
were all living a normal life; I was preaching the Gospel and doing my
best to bring light into these people’s lives. I doubt I was slack in
some ways, knowing what I do now. I didn’t realise the gulfs in the
darkness through which we walked in this world. I knew very little of
the horrors lurking under the surface. And now comes this outpouring of
Hell! I used to think one should cover up all the worst in life, keep
it from one’s eyes. Perhaps if I had known more, I might have been of
more use now. But at first I didn’t know. I didn’t recognise the forms
under which temptation could come. Half my flock had fallen before
I had opened my eyes to what was happening. Think of that! My sheer
ignorance of life, look what it has cost!”

“Well, well,” said Glendyne. “No use crying over spilt milk, is there?
You did your best according to your lights. You weren’t trained as a
mental specialist, you know.”

“Thanks so much, Bildad Redivivus, but I’m afraid your argument helps
no more nowadays than it did a few thousand years ago in the Land of
Uz. I _ought_ to have known better; but I shut my eyes. I thought these
things unclean and despised them; and now they have ruined my work
because I did not take the trouble to understand them.

“You can’t guess what it is like now, Glendyne. They are celebrating
the Black Mass in Hyde Park and holding Witches’ Sabbaths. All the old
evil things which we thought had died out of the race have reappeared,
all the foulest practices and superstitions have come to life. It’s
terrible.”

“The old gods were never dead, although you pretended they were. Now
they have come again, you have got to make the best of it. It’s not for
long, anyway. Another week or two and the last food will be gone.”

“I pray for that day, Glendyne. I never thought to see it; but I go on
my knees many times daily and pray that it may come soon. Some of my
people I know will be stedfast; but the contagion attacks the younger
ones with an awful swiftness.”

“Collective hysteria. I know. Keep them indoors as much as possible,
especially the girls. You can do nothing more.”

“I suppose not. Anyway, I’ll do what I can, if only I can hold out
till the end myself. And to think that once I used to imagine that a
minister’s life circled round through sermons, prayer-meetings and
visiting the sick! Why, I didn’t know the beginnings of it!”

“Don’t worry about the past. I’m speaking as a medico now. Get on with
your work and leave the thinking till you have time for it. Eternity’s
pretty long, you know.”

“Well, if I take your advice I must be getting back to my work.
Good-night, both of you. I’ll see you next week again, perhaps,
Glendyne.”

He walked on, leaving us to continue our exploration. Glendyne was
silent for some minutes. When at last he spoke, it was in a graver tone
than I had heard him use before.

“That’s a splendid chap,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at
the tall figure behind us. “I don’t envy him, though. His awakening
has been a rude one in this affair. Six months ago he knew absolutely
nothing of life. He was earnest and all that; but a perfect child in
things of the world. The result was that when the blow came he was
absolutely helpless. He fought for a time with the old platitudes--and
he fought well, I can tell you, for he has a tremendous personality.
But he was out of court from the first. I’ve seen things done under his
very eyes without his even noticing what was happening. At last I gave
him a few pointers from my own experience; and now he has some vague
ideas what the temptations really are and how he can best counter them.
And he works like a Trojan. A splendid chap. What a chance he has, if
he had only had the knowledge; and how he regrets it now, poor beggar.
You know, at the very first, he simply led his people down the slope
without knowing it. Worked up their religious emotion, you see, until
they were simply gunpowder for the flame. What a mess! And all with the
best intentions too.”

It was an extraordinarily long speech from Glendyne; and it gave me
some measure of his liking for the clergyman. I gathered that they
often met in the course of their work.

By this time we had emerged into Oxford Street. Glendyne was about to
cross the road, when suddenly he caught sight of a train of figures,
about a hundred and fifty in all, I should say, who were advancing up
the middle of the street. Each had his hands on the shoulders of the
person in front of him and the procession advanced towards us slowly,
whilst I heard again the air with which I had become familiar.

“The Dancers!” muttered Glendyne. “Keep a grip on yourself, now, Flint.
No hysteria, if you please.”

I was angry at being treated in this way, for I am not an hysterical
subject either outwardly or inwardly; but as the procession drew nearer
I realised that he was right to give me a sharp warning. They advanced
slowly, as I said, keeping time to the air which they sang and which I
now recognised as being something like one of the old nursery lullabies
I heard when I was a child. It had the knack of penetrating far into
one’s subconsciousness and bringing up into the light all sorts of
forgotten childish fancies which had long slipped from my waking
thoughts. There was no regularity in the dancing, except that the whole
procession kept time to the air: each individual danced as he chose,
provided that he kept his hands upon the shoulders before him so that
the line remained intact. Men and women were intermingled without any
order in the company. Their faces were rapt, as though in some ecstasy;
and a strange, compelling magnetism seemed to emanate from the whole
scene.

  “_Here we go ... dancing ... under the ... Moon,
  Lifting our ... feet to the ... time of the ... tune.
  Come, brother, ... Come, sister, ... join in our ... line;
  Join with us ... now in this ... dancing divine._”

So they came up toward us, while that strange magnetic attraction grew
ever stronger upon me. For some reason which I could not fathom, I felt
a profound desire to join in the procession. A kind of hallucinatory
craving came over me, though I fought it down. At last Glendyne’s voice
broke the spell.

“Fine example of choreomania, isn’t it? Perfectly well-recognised
type. The old Dancing Mania of the fourteenth century. Bound to arise
under conditions like the present.”

The phrases fell on my ear and by their matter-of-factness seemed
to come between me and the fascination which the lullaby and the
rhythmical motion had begun to exercise upon my mind. Almost without
any feeling whatever, I watched the Dancers approaching.

  “_Here we go ... dancing ... under the ... Moon.
  Join in our ... chain, it will ... break all too ... soon.
  When this verse ... ends, then ... scatter like ... rain;
  And each dance a ... lone till we ... form it a ... gain._”

At the last word of the verse, the procession dissolved into a whirling
crowd of figures, dancing, springing, spinning in their aimless
evolutions. We were caught up in the mob; and only Glendyne’s grip on
my arm prevented my being jostled from his side. A knot of the Dancers
came about us and strove to excite us into their revels. Women with
tossing hair besought us breathlessly to join them; men dragged at us,
striving to bring us out among them. All the faces wore the same look
of ardency, the same expression about the lips. Some were weary; but
still the excitement bore them up in their convulsions. The temptation
to join them became almost irresistible; and I felt myself being drawn
into their ranks when suddenly the singing broke out once more.

  “_Here we go ... dancing ... under the ... Moon...._”

The procession reformed in haste, gathering length as it went; and the
Dancers began again to move eastward along Oxford Street. I watched
them go, still feeling the attraction long after they were past; and
only some minutes later I realised that Glendyne was still gripping my
arm.

“Perhaps you understand now the way in which those two girls were
lost,” he said. “A slight weakening of control, eh? Not so bad for a
man; but when a girl gives in to it!... Let’s go up Rathbone Place,
now. I expect we may meet something interesting in that direction.”

Interesting! I had had enough of interest these last few minutes. I
was still quivering with the rhythm of that doggerel song. However,
I followed him across Oxford Street, into Rathbone Place. Here the
clothed skeletons lay more thickly about our path. Between Oxford
Street and Black Horse Yard I counted thirty-seven. Many of them lay
in the road; but the majority were huddled in corners and doorways,
as though the poor wretches had sought a quiet place in which to die.
In the distance I heard wild shouting and the sound of something like
a tom-tom being beaten intermittently; whilst in the silences between
these outbursts, the roar of the flames somewhere in the neighbourhood
came to me over the roofs.

At the corner of Gresse Street, a gaunt creature sidled up to us
furtively; looked us up and down for a moment; and whispered to me:
“Are _you_ one of us?” Then, catching sight of the Red Cross on my arm,
he fled into the darkness of the side-street without waiting for an
answer.

In Percy Street, the _petroleuses_ were at work, methodically drenching
houses with oil and setting them alight. One side of the street was
already ablaze; and the light wind was blowing clouds of sparks
broadcast over the neighbouring roofs. London was clearly doomed.
Nothing could save it now, even had anyone wished to do so. As we stood
at the street-corner, one of the hags passed us and snarled as she went
by:

“We’ll roast you out of the West End soon, you ---- burjwaw! There’ll
be lights enough for you and yer women to dance by when Molly comes
with her pail. You’ve trod us down and starved us long enough. It’s
our turn now. It’s our turn now, d’yer hear? I could burn ye as
ye stand”--she drew back her bucket as though to drench us with
petrol--“but I want ye to dance with the rest to make it complete.
We’ll fix ye before long, we will.”

At the southern end of Charlotte Street a rough cross had been erected
in the middle of the road and to it clung the remains of a skeleton.
Most of the bones had fallen to the ground, but enough remained to show
that a body--dead or alive--had been crucified there at one time. Over
the head of the cross was nailed a placard with the inscription:

  ACHTUNG!
  EINGANG VERBOTEN.
  WIR SIND HIER ZU HAUSE
  STÖREN UNS NICHT.

Glendyne was evidently acquainted with the placard, for he did not
come forward to read it. He turned to the left and led me into Upper
Rathbone Place.

“Mostly Germans in Charlotte Street now,” he said. “A branch of the
East End colony, and just about as bad as their friends. I pity anyone
who falls into their hands. Ugh!”

He spat on the ground as though he had a bad taste in his mouth.

“Thank goodness, this is only a small colony, for that sort of thing is
apt to contaminate everything in its neighbourhood. Down East it’s on a
bigger scale. Hark to that!”

Across the house-roofs between us and Charlotte Street there came a
long quivering cry as of someone in the extremity of physical and
mental agony; then it was drowned in a burst of laughter. Glendyne
gritted his teeth.

“To-morrow night, if the moonlight holds, I’ll have an aeroplane down
here and give them a taste. They’re all of a kind, in there; so it’s
easy enough to be sure we get the right ones. Loathsome swine!”

We cut across into Newman Street. At the door of St. Andrew’s Hall a
weird figure was standing--a man dressed as a faun, evidently in a
costume which had been looted from some theatrical wardrobe. When he
caught sight of us, he ran in our direction, leaping and bounding in an
ungainly fashion along the pavement and halting occasionally to blow
shrilly upon a reed pipe.

“Pan is not dead!” he cried. “I bring the good tidings! All the world
awakes again after its long sleep; and the fauns in the forests are
pursuing the hamadryads and following the light feet of the oreads once
more upon the hills of Arcady. Io! Io! Evohé! Swift be the hunting!

“The Old Gods slumbered; but Echo, watching by rock and pool, ever
answered our calling through the years. Awake! Awake! O Gods! Hear
again the pipes of Pan!”

He blew a melancholy air upon his instrument, prancing grotesquely the
while.

“Syrinx, reed-maiden, men have not forgotten thee! Again they hear the
wailings of thy soul in the pipes of Pan.”

He danced again, looking up at the moon.

“Diana! Long hast thou watched us from thy throne in the skies, but now
the nights of thy hunting are come once more. Prepare the bow, gird
on thy quiver and come with us again as in the days of old. Dost thou
remember the white goat? Join us, O Huntress!”

Again he made music with his pipes.

“Syrinx, Syrinx! I come to seek thee in the reeds by the river. Awake!
The world begins anew.”

And crying “Syrinx, O Syrinx!” he ran from us and disappeared into
Mortimer Street.

Glendyne turned into Castle Street East. I could not see any reason
for these continual turnings and windings in our wanderings, but I
suppose that he had some definite itinerary in his mind, some route
which would give him the best opportunity of exhibiting to me the
varied aspects of London at this time. Here again the skeletons lay
scattered, though there appeared to be no aggregations of them in any
particular localities. Behind us, the Tottenham Court Road district
seemed ablaze; and flames leaped above the house-roofs to the east.

Suddenly, after we had passed Berners Street, I heard a confused sound
of shouting, yells, running feet and the notes of a horn. Glendyne
started violently and dragged me rapidly into the shelter of a
house-door near the corner of Wells Street.

“This is a case where the Red Cross is no protection,” he said
hurriedly. “It’s Herne and his pack. Keep as much under cover as you
can. We shall probably not be noticed,” he added. “They seem to be in
full cry. There!”

As he spoke, a single man rushed into view at the corner. He was
running with his head down, looking neither to right nor left, but I
caught a glimpse of his face as he passed and I have never seen terror
marked so deeply on any countenance. He was evidently exhausted, yet
he seemed to be driven on by a frantic fear which kept him on his feet
even though he staggered and slipped as he went by.

“The quarry,” said Glendyne. “Now comes the pack.”

Almost on the heels of the fugitive, a horde of pursuers swept into
sight: about forty or fifty men and women running with long, easy
strides. Some of them shouted as they ran, others passed in silence;
but all had a dreadful air of intentness. It was more like the final
stage of a fox-hunt than anything else that I can recall. Leading
the crew was a huge negro, running with an open razor in his hand;
and I saw flecks of foam on his mouth as he passed. Next to him was
a chestnut-haired girl wearing an evening dress which had once been
magnificent. She had kilted up the skirt for ease in running. A silver
horn was in her hand; and on it she blew from time to time, whilst the
pack yelled in reply. The whole thing passed in a flash; and we heard
them retreating into the distance towards Oxford Street.

“What’s that ghastly business?” I asked Glendyne. I had pulled out my
pistol almost unconsciously when the pack swept into sight; but he had
laid a grip on my wrist and prevented me from firing.

“The nigger in front was Herne--Herne the Hunter, they call him. They
hunt in a pack, you see, and run down any isolated individual they
happen to come across in their prowlings. I wish we could get hold of
them; but they seldom come near any of the picketed areas. They can
get all the sport they need without that. Once the hunt is up, they
recognise nothing. That’s why I told you the Red Cross wouldn’t save
you. If they chase, they kill; and they seem able to run anyone down. I
never heard of a victim escaping them.”

“What do they do it for?”

“Pleasure, fun, anything you like. It gives them a peculiar delight to
hunt and kill. You see, Flint, in these times the instincts which are
normally under control have all broken loose upon us; and the hunting
instinct is one of the very oldest we have. In ordinary times, it comes
out in fox-hunting or grouse-shooting or some wild form like that. But
nowadays there is no restraint and the instinct can glut itself to the
full. Man-hunting is the final touch of pleasure for these creatures.”

“Who was the girl at the head of them?”

“Oh, that? She was Lady Angela.” He gave a sneering laugh. “What an
incongruity there is in some names! Satanita was what she ought to have
been christened if everyone had their rights. And yet, in the old days,
one could never have suspected this in her. I knew her, you know, and
I more than liked her. She used to sing me old French songs; and one of
them was rather a horrible production. It ought to have put me on my
guard; but I suppose every man is a fool where women are concerned.”

He broke off and hummed to himself a snatch of an old air:

  “_Pour passer ces nuits blanches,
    Gallery, mes enfants,
  Chassait tous les dimanches
    Et battais les paysans.
        Entendez-vous la sarabande?..._”

“And so now she’s running a kind of Chasse-Gallery on her own account
along with that human devil, Herne. It shows how little one knows.”

Just as we approached Oxford Mansions, I heard the sound of a
pistol-shot, and when we came up to the spot we found a still warm body
with a Colt automatic clasped in its hand. “Suicide,” said Glendyne
briefly, after examining the body. “The short way out.”

There was nothing to be done, so we turned away. As we did so a black
shadow dropped out of the sky and I saw a huge crow alighting by the
side of the corpse. I think that this incident made as great an effect
upon me as any. Times had changed indeed when crows became night-birds.
Glendyne watched me drive the brute away from the corpse without
attempting to help.

“What’s the use? It will be back as soon as we go; and I don’t suppose
you want to stay here all night? Birds are desperate for food nowadays,
and that fellow may give you more than you expect if you don’t leave
him alone. The old fear of man has left them, you know, nowadays.”

Before we had gone many steps, we encountered another inhabitant, a
cadaverous young man with an acid stain on his sleeve. He stopped and
wished us “Good-evening,” being apparently glad to meet someone to
whom he could talk. It was a relief to find that he appeared to be
perfectly sane. I had become so accustomed to abnormality by this time
that I think his sanity came almost as an unexpected thing. I asked him
what he did to pass the time.

“I was working at some alkaloid constitutions when the Plague came, and
I just went on with that. I’ve got one definitely settled except for
the position of a single methyl radicle, now; and I think I shall get
that fixed in a day or two. But probably you aren’t a chemist?”

“No. Not my line.”

“Rather a pity--for me, I mean. One does like to explain what one has
done; and there’s no chance of that now.”

It seemed to me a pity that this enthusiast should be lost. Probably
Nordenholt could find some use for him.

“I think I could put you in touch with some other chemists if you like;
but you would need to trust me in the matter. Is there anyone depending
on you, any relatives?”

“No, they’re all gone by now.”

“Well, I think I might manage it. I believe I could put you in the way
of being some use; and it might be the saving of your life, too, for I
suppose your food is almost out.”

A famished look came into his face and I realised what food meant to
him.

“Could you? I’d be awfully grateful. I’m down to the laboratory stores
of glycerine and fatty acids now for nourishment, and it’s pretty thin,
I can tell you. Could you really do something?”

In his excitement, he clutched my arm: and at that he recoiled with a
look of horror on his face.

“You damned cannibal!” he cried. “Did you think you would take me in?
I suppose your friend was standing by with the sandbag, eh?”

He retreated a few steps and cursed me with almost hysterical violence.

“If I had a pistol I would finish you,” he cried. “You don’t deserve
to live. And to think you nearly took me in. I suppose you would have
enticed me to your den with that fairy-tale of yours.”

And with an indescribable sound of disgust he turned and ran up
Margaret Court, cursing as he went.

“What’s all that about?” I asked Glendyne. “It’s more than Greek to me.”

“Of course you wouldn’t understand. I forgot that you people up in
the North don’t know there’s a famine on. Don’t you see that when he
gripped your sleeve he found a normal arm inside instead of a starved
one; and he drew the natural conclusion.”

“What natural conclusion?”

“Really, Flint, you are a bit obtuse. You know that food here is almost
unprocurable except by those who have rationed themselves carefully
from the start and have still some stores to go on with. How do you
think the rest of them live? Of course the poor beggar found you in
normal condition and he jumped to the conclusion that you were a
cannibal like a large number of the survivors. What else could he
think? He imagined that we were holding him in talk until we could
sandbag him or knock him out somehow for the sake of his valuable
carcase. See now?”

This seemed to be the last straw. Curiously enough, I had never given
a thought to the food problem. I had simply assumed that these people
in the streets were living on hoarded stores. Cannibalism! I had never
dreamed of such a thing in London, even this London.

Glendyne laughed sarcastically at the expression on my face. “Why, you
are nearly as innocent as my poor clerical friend,” he said at last.
“Can’t you understand that _nothing_ counts nowadays. There isn’t any
law, or order, or public opinion or anything else that might restrain
brutes. You’ve got the final argument of civilisation in your pocket--a
brace of them, besides the loose cartridges--and that’s the King and
the Law Courts nowadays. The only thing left is the strong hand;
everything else has gone long ago. For the most of the survivors there
isn’t any morality or ethics or public spirit. They simply want to live
and enjoy themselves; and they don’t care how they do it. Get that well
into your head, Flint.”

Over the next part of our exploration I may draw a veil. We traversed
the stretch from Oxford Circus to Regent Circus, which was the centre
of the remaining life of London in those days. One cannot describe the
details of saturnalia; and I leave the matter at that. It surpassed my
wildest anticipations. At Piccadilly Circus I found a gigantic negro
acting as priest in some Voodoo mysteries. The court of Burlington
House had been turned into a temple of Khama. I was glad indeed
when we were able to make our way into the less frequented squares
to the north. Even the quiet skeletons seemed more akin to me than
these wretches whom I saw exulting in their devilry. Glendyne had
under-estimated the thing when he said that there was no public opinion
left to control men and women. There was a new public opinion based on
the principle of “Eat, Drink, for to-morrow we die”; and the collective
spirit of these crowds urged humanity on to excesses which no single
individual would have dared.

We came to the Langham by Cavendish Square and Chandos Street. As we
stood at the hotel door, I could see the lights of the bonfires and
hear the yells and shrieks of the revellers at the Circus; but Langham
Place was comparatively quiet. Eastward, the sky was ruddy with the
flames of the burning city; southward, the bonfires shone crimson
against the pale moonlight; to the north, up Portland Place, the
streets were half in shadow and half lit up by the brilliancy of the
moon.

We walked northward, taking the unshadowed side of the road. Glendyne
had shown me the worst now, and only the return to our car remained
before us. I drew a breath of relief as we turned the bend of Langham
Place and the bulk of the Langham Hotel cut us off from the sight of
these lights behind us. Here, under the moon, things seemed purer and
more peaceful.

We came to the corner of Duchess Street without seeing anyone; but just
as we reached the crossing, a familiar figure stepped out. It was Lady
Angela. This time I could see her plainly in the moonlight; a tall,
chestnut-haired girl, beautiful certainly, but with the beauty of an
animal type, tigress-like. Her dress was torn and a splash of fresh
blood lay across her breast. In her hand was the silver horn which I
had noticed before. She started as she recognised Glendyne.

“Well, Geoffrey,” she said; “we haven’t met for some time. You’re
looking thinner than when I saw you last.”

It was just as if she were greeting a friend whom she had lost sight
of for a few weeks. She did not seem to see the incongruity of things.
For all that her tone showed, they might have met casually in a
drawing-room.

“It’s no use, Angela, I saw you in Berners Street to-night, you and
your beasts. I knew all about you long ago. You needn’t pretend with
me.”

She flushed, not with shame I could guess, but with anger.

“So you disapprove, do you, little man? You’re one of the kind that
can’t understand a girl enjoying herself, are you? But if I were to
whistle, you would come to heel quick enough. You were keen enough on
me in the old days and I could make you keen again if I wished.”

She drew herself up and, despite her tattered dress and disordered
hair, she made a splendid figure. Her voice became coaxing.

“Geoffrey, don’t you think you could take me away from all this? It
isn’t my real self that does these things; it’s something that masters
me and forces me to do them against my will. If you would help me, I
could pull up. You used to be fond of me. Take me now.”

Glendyne did not hesitate.

“It’s no good, Angela. You’re corrupt to the core, and you can’t
conceal it. I’ve no use for you. You couldn’t be straight if you tried.
Do you think I want the associate of a nigger? And what a nigger at
that!”

She began to answer him, but her voice choked with fury. She raised
the silver horn to her lips; blew shrilly for a moment and then cried:
“Herne! Herne! Here’s sport for you! Here’s sport!”

“I might have known that brute wouldn’t be far off if you were here,”
said Glendyne bitterly. “Flint, use your shots in groups of three. It’s
a signal to the patrol. We may pull out yet. Here they come, the whole
pack!”

There was a trampling of feet in Duchess Street and I heard quite close
at hand the hunting-cries of the band of ruffians. Glendyne fired nine
times into the darkness of the street and we turned to run. Lady Angela
watched us at first without moving, brooding on her revenge. By the
time we had gone fifty yards, the whole pack was in full cry after us
up Portland Place.

“We may run across Sanderson’s car before they get us,” Glendyne panted
as he ran beside me. “The triple shots may bring him. Run for all
you’re worth.”

He had removed the empty magazine as he ran and now turned for a moment
and fired thrice in rapid succession at our pursuers. I did the same.
But there was no check in the chase. We still maintained our distance
ahead of them, but we gained nothing. All at once I began to find
that I was falling behind. I was hopelessly out of training; and my
side ached, while my feet seemed leaden. I ran staggeringly, just as I
had seen the other quarry run in the earlier part of the night; and I
gasped for breath as I ran.

I shall never forget that nightmare chase. Once I turned round and
fired to gain time if possible. I heard Glendyne’s pistol also, more
than once. But nothing seemed to check the pursuit. I felt it gaining
on me; and the silver horn sounded always nearer each time it blew. It
was no distance that we ran, but the pace was killing. I was afraid
that we might be cut off by a fresh party emerging from Cavendish
Street or Weymouth Street; but we passed these in safety. I learned
afterwards that Herne’s band hunted like hounds, in a body, never
separating into sections. Their pleasure was in the chase as much as
anything; and they employed no strategy to trap their victims.

Just south of Devonshire Street I stumbled and fell. Glendyne wheeled
round at once and tried to keep off the pack with his pistols; but as
I rose to my feet again I saw them still coming on. The moon showed up
their brutal faces hardly twenty yards away. I had given myself up for
lost, when Glendyne shouted: “Lie down!” and rolled me over with his
hand on my shoulder while he flung himself face downwards on the road.
A dazzling glare shone in my eyes and passed; and then I saw a motor
swinging in the road and the squat shape of a Lewis gun projected over
its side.

I turned over and saw the pack almost upon us. Then came the roll of
the Lewis gun and the maniacs stopped as though they had struck some
invisible barrier. Herne crashed to the ground. Lady Angela staggered,
stood for a moment fumbling with her horn, and then fell face downward.
The remainder of the band turned and fled into Weymouth Street.

Glendyne picked himself up and went across to Lady Angela’s body. She
was quite dead, at which he seemed relieved. I understood better when
I saw one of the men in the patrol car going round amongst the wounded
and finishing them with his revolver.

Sanderson, the patrol leader, spoke a few words to Glendyne; and then
the car swung off into Park Crescent and disappeared. The whole thing
had taken only a few seconds; and we were left alone with the dead.

“It’s all right now, Flint,” said Glendyne. “They won’t dare to come
back. Besides, the leaders are gone”--he kicked the negro’s body--“and
they were the worst. I’ll take this as a souvenir, I think.”

He picked up the little silver horn; and I wondered what it would
remind him of in later days.

It was in Park Crescent that I got my last glimpse of the new London.
On the pavement, half-way round to Copeland Road Station, I saw
something moving; and on examining it closely I found that it was a
dying man. All about him were rats which were attacking him, while he
feebly tried to keep them at bay. He was too weak to defend himself and
already he had been badly bitten. There was nothing to be done; but
Glendyne and I stood beside him till he died, while the rats huddled in
a circle about him, waiting their chance. Glendyne kept them back by
flashing his electric torch on them when they became too venturesome.

That was my last sight of London in these days; and looking back upon
it, I cannot help feeling that this squalid tragedy was symbolical
of greater things. The old civilisation went its way, healthy on the
surface, full of life and vigour, apparently unshakable in its power.
Yet all the while, at the back of it there lurked in odd corners the
brutal instincts, darting into view at times for a moment and then
returning into the darkness which was their home. Suddenly came the
Famine: and civilisation shook, grew weaker and lost its power over
men. With that, all the evil passions were unleashed and free to run
abroad. Bolder and bolder they grew, till at last civilisation went
down before them, feebly attempting to ward them off and failing more
and more to protect itself. It was the dying man and the rats on a
gigantic scale.

I came back to the Clyde Valley a very different being. Now I knew what
had to be fought if our Fata Morgana was to rise on solid foundations;
and the task appalled me.




CHAPTER XIII

Reconstruction


When I saw Nordenholt again after my return, I found that I had no
need to describe my experiences. He seemed to know exactly where I had
been and what had happened to me. I suspect that Glendyne must have
furnished him with a full report of the night’s doings.

“Well, Jack,” he greeted me; “what do you think of things now?”

“I’m down in the depths,” I confessed frankly. “If that’s what lies
at the roots of humanity, I see no chance of building much upon such
foundations. The trail of the brute’s over everything.”

“Of course it is! The whole of our machine is constructed on a brute
basis. Did you need to go to London to see that? Why, man, every time
you walk you swing your left hand and your right foot in time with each
other; and that’s only a legacy of some four-footed ancestor which ran
with the near fore-leg and off hind-leg acting in unison. Of course
the brute is the basis. A wolf-pack will give you a microcosm of a
nation: family life, struggles between wolf and wolf for a living,
co-operation against an external enemy or prey. But don’t forget that
humanity has refined things a little. Give it credit for that at least.
People laugh at the calf-love of a boy; but in many cases that has no
sexual feeling in it; it has touched a less brutal spring somewhere in
the machine. There’s altruism, too; it isn’t so uncommon as you think.
And patriotism isn’t necessarily confined to a mere tooth-and-claw
grapple with a hated opponent; it might still exist even if wars
were abolished. I know you’re still under the cloud, Jack; but don’t
think that the sun has gone down for good simply because it’s hidden.
All I wanted you to see was that you must be on your guard in your
reconstruction. You and Elsa were planning for an ideal humanity. I
want you to make things bearable for the flesh-and-blood units with
which you have to work. Don’t strain them too high.”

“I wish I could find my way through it all,” I said. “But anyway I see
your point. What you wanted was to let me know which was sand and which
was rock to build on, wasn’t it? You were afraid I was mistaking it all
for solid ground?”

“That’s about it. Remember, with decent luck you ought to have a clean
slate to start with. Most of our old troubles have solved themselves,
or will solve themselves in the course of the next few months. There’s
no idle class in the Nitrogen Area; money’s only a convenient fiction
and now they know it by experience; there’s no Parliament, no gabble
about Democracy, no laws that a man can’t understand. I’ve made a clean
sweep of most of the old system; and the rest will go down before we’re
done.”

“I know that, but to tell the truth I don’t know where to begin
building. It seems an impossible business; the more I look at it the
less confidence I have in myself.”

“Don’t worry so much about that. You’ll see that it will solve itself
step by step. It’s not so much cut-and-dried plans you need as a
flexible mind combined with general principles. It’s the principles
that will worry you.”

“I suppose you are right,” I said.

“It’s obvious if you look at it. Your first stages will be the
getting of these five million people into two sets: one on the land
to cultivate it; the other still working on nitrogen. That’s evident.
The whole of that part of the thing is a matter of statistics and
calculation; there’s nothing in it, so far as thinking goes. After
that, you have to arrange to get the best out of the people mentally
and morally; and I think Elsa will be a help to you there. By the way,
she refuses to leave me.”

“Then how am I going to get her help?”

“Oh, I’ve arranged that she is to have lighter work and she’ll have the
evenings free; so you and she can consult then, if you will.”

This seemed to be enough to go on with.

“There’s another thing, Jack,” he continued, “I’ve got good news for
you. It appears from the work that the bacteriologists are doing that
_B. diazotans_ is a short-lived creature. According to their results,
the whole lot will die out in less than three months from now, as
far as this part of the country is concerned. Apparently it combined
tremendous reproductive power with a very short existence; and it’s
now reaching the end of its tether. So in three months we ought to be
able to get the nitrogenous stuff on to the fields without any fear
of having it decomposed. That was what always frightened me; for if
_B. diazotans_ had been a permanent thing, the whole scheme would have
collapsed. I foresaw that, but we just had to take the chance; and I
always hoped that if the worst came to the worst we might hit on some
anti-agent which would destroy the brutes. You know that in some places
it hasn’t produced any effect at all; the local conditions seem against
it, somehow.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Reconstruction! I remember those early days when I sat in my office
for hours together, making notes of schemes which I tore up next day
with an ever-increasing irritation at my own sterility. Given a clean
slate to start with, it seems at first sight the easiest thing in the
world to draw the plans of a Utopia, or at any rate to rough in the
outlines when one is not hampered by details. Try it yourself! You may
have better luck or a greater imagination than I had; and possibly
you may succeed in satisfying yourself: but remember that I had real
responsibility upon me; mine was not the easy dreaming of a literary
man dealing with puppets drawn from his ink-pot, malleable to his
will; it was a flesh-and-blood humanity with all its weaknesses, its
failings, its meannesses that I had to deal with in my schemes.

I cannot tell how many sketches I made and discarded in turn. Most of
them I had not even courage to put upon the files; so that I cannot now
trace the evolution of my ideas. I can recall that, as time went on, my
projects became more and more modest in their scope; and I think that
they seem to fall into four main divisions.

At the start, I began by imagining an ideal humanity, something like
the dwellers in our Fata Morgana; and from this picture I deducted bit
by bit all that seemed unrealisable with humanity as it was. I cut
away a custom here, a tradition there, until I had reduced the whole
sketch to a framework. And when I put this framework together upon
paper and saw what it contained, I found it to be an invertebrate mass
of disconnected shreds and tatters with no life in it and no hope of
existence. I remember even now the disappointment which that discovery
gave me. I began to understand the gulf between comfortable theories
and hard facts.

In the next stage of my development, I leaned mainly upon the future. I
was still under the sting of my disillusion; and I discarded the idea
that existing humanity could ever enter the courts of Fata Morgana. I
tried to plan foundations upon which the newer generations could rise
to the heights. Education! Had we ever in the old days understood the
meaning of the word? Had we ever consciously tried to draw out all
that was best in the human mind? Or had we merely stuffed the human
intellect with disconnected scraps of knowledge, the mere bones from
which all the flesh had wasted away? We had a clean slate--how often
my mind recurred to that simile in those days--could we not write
something better upon it than had been written in the past? A chasm
separated us from the older days; we need be hampered by no traditions.
Could we not start a fresh line?

I pondered this for days on end. It seemed to be feasible in some ways;
but in other directions I saw the difficulties to the full. The clean
slate was not a real thing at all. Environment counts for so much; and
all the adult minds in the community had been bred in the atmosphere of
the past. Their influence would always be there to hamper us, bearing
down upon the younger generations and cramping them in the old ideas.
There could be no clean severance between present and future, only a
gradual change of outlook through the years.

My third stage of evolution led on from this conclusion. I accepted the
present as it was and then tried to discover ways in which improvements
might be made in the future. Again I spent days in picking out faults
and making additions to the fabric of society; and at the end of it
all I found, as I had done before, that the result was a patchwork,
something which had no organic life of its own.

At this point, I think, I began to despair entirely; and I fell
back upon pure materialism. I considered the matter solely from the
standpoint of the practical needs of the time; for there I felt myself
upon sure ground. Whatever happened, I must have ready a concrete
scheme which would tide us over our early stages in the future.

I secured statistics showing the proportions of the population which
would be required in all the different branches of labour during
the coming year; and in doing this I had to divide them into groups
according as they were to work on the land or were required for keeping
up the supply of fixed nitrogen from the factories. My charts showed
me the areas which we expected to have under cultivation at given
dates in the future. I was back again in the unreal world of graphs
and curves; and I think that in some ways it was an advantage to me to
eliminate the human factor. It kept me from brooding too much over my
recollections of humanity in its decline.

On this materialistic basis, the whole thing resolved itself into
a problem of labour economy: the devising of a method whereby the
greatest yield of food could be obtained with the smallest expenditure
of power. Here I was on familiar ground; for it was my factory problem
over again, though the actual conditions were different. There were
only two main sides to the question: on the one hand I had to ensure
the greatest amount of food possible and on the other I had to look to
the ease of distribution of that food when it was produced. The idea of
huge tractor-ploughed areas followed as a matter of course; and from
this developed the conception of humanity gathered into a number of
moderately-sized aggregations rather than spread in cottages here and
there throughout the country-side. Each of these centres of population
would contain within itself all the essentials of existence and would
thus be a single unit capable of almost independent existence.

Having in this way roughed out my scheme, other factors forced
themselves on my attention. I had no wish to utilise the old villages
which still remained dotted here and there about the country-side.
Their sizes and positions had been dictated by conditions which had
now passed away; and it seemed better to make a clean sweep of them
and start afresh. From the purely practical standpoint, the erection
of huge phalansteries at fixed points would no doubt have been the
simplest solution of the problem; but I rejected this conception. I
wanted something better than barracks for my people to live in. I
wanted variety, not a depressing uniformity. And I wanted beauty also.

Step by step I began to see my way clearer before me. And now that
I look back upon it, I was simply following in the track of Nature
herself. To make sure of the material things, to preserve the race
first of all; then to increase comfort, to make some spot of the
Earth’s surface different from the rest for each of us, to create a
“home”; lastly, when the material side had been buttressed securely,
to turn to the mind and open it to beauty: that seems to me to be the
normal progress of humanity in the past, from the Stone Age onwards.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was at this period that Elsa Huntingtower came more into my life.
While I was laying down the broad outlines of the material side of the
coming reconstruction, I had preferred to work alone; for in dealing
with problems of this nature, it seems to me best to have a single mind
upon the work. It was largely a matter of dry statistics, calculations,
graphs, estimates, cartography and so forth; and since it seemed to me
to be governed almost entirely by practical factors, I did not think
that much could be gained by calling for her help. I waited till I had
the outlines of the project completed before applying to Nordenholt in
the matter. When I spoke to him, he agreed with what I had done.

“I don’t want to see your plans, Jack. It’s your show; and if I were to
see them I would probably want to make suggestions and shake your trust
in your own judgment. Much better not.”

“What about Miss Huntingtower’s help? Am I not to get that?”

“That’s a different matter entirely. She ought to give you the feminine
point of view, which I couldn’t do. Let’s see. She can consult with you
in the evenings. Will that do?”

I agreed; and it was arranged that thereafter I was to spend the
evenings at Nordenholt’s house, where she and I could discuss things
in peace. Nordenholt left us almost entirely to ourselves, though
occasionally he would come into the room where we worked: but he
refused to take any interest in our affairs.

“One thing at a time for me, nowadays,” he used to say, when she
appealed to him. “My affair is to bring things up to the point where
you two can take over. Your business is to be ready to pull the
starting-lever when I give you the word. I won’t look beyond my limits.”

And, indeed, he had enough to do at that time. Things were not always
smooth in the Nitrogen Area; and I could see signs that they might
even become more difficult. Since I had left my own department, I had
gained more information about the general state of affairs; and I could
comprehend the possibilities of wreckage which menaced us as the months
went by.

I have said before that it is almost impossible for me to retrace in
detail the evolution of my reconstruction plans; and in the part where
Elsa Huntingtower and I collaborated, my recollections are even more
confused than they are with regard to the work I did alone. So much of
it was developed by discussions between us that in the end it was hard
to say who was really responsible for the final form of the schemes
which we laid down in common. She brought a totally new atmosphere into
the problem, details mostly, but details which meant the remodelling of
much that I had planned.

One example will be sufficient to show what I mean. I had, as I have
mentioned, planned a series of semi-isolated communities scattered over
the cultivable area; and I had gone the length of getting my architects
to design houses which I thought would be the best possible compromise:
something that would please the average taste without offending people
who happened to be particular in details. I showed some of these
drawings to her, expecting approval. She examined them carefully for a
long time, without saying anything.

“Well, Mr. Flint,” she said at last, “I know you will think I am very
hard to please; but personally I wouldn’t live in one of these things
if you paid me to do it.”

“What’s wrong with them? That one was drawn by Atkinson, and I believe
he’s supposed to be a rather good architect.”

“Of course he is. That’s just what condemns him in my mind. Don’t you
know that for generations the ‘best architects’ have been imposing on
people, giving them something that no one wants; and carrying it off
just because they are the ‘best architects’ and are supposed to know
what is the right thing. And not one of them ever seems to have taken
the trouble to find out what a woman wants, in a house. Not one.

“Don’t you see the awful sameness in these designs, for one thing? You
men seem to think that if you get four walls and a roof, everything
is all right. Can’t you understand that one woman wants something
different from another one?”

There certainly was a monotony about the designs, now I came to look at
them.

“Now here’s a suggestion,” she went on. “It may not be practical, but
it’s your business to make it practicable, and not simply to accept
what another man tells you is possible or impossible. You say that your
trouble is that you want to standardise, so as to make production on a
large scale easy. So you’ve simply set out to standardise your finished
product; and you want to build so many houses of one type and so many
of another type and let your people choose between the two types. Now
my idea is quite different. Suppose that you were to standardise your
_material_ so that it is capable of adaptation? You see what I mean?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” I said.

“Like Meccano. You get a dozen strips of metal and some screws and
wheels; and out of that you can build fifty different models, using the
same pieces in each model. Well, why not try to design your girders and
beams and doors and so forth, in such a way that out of the same set
you could erect a whole series of different houses. It doesn’t seem to
me an impossibility if you get someone with brains to do it.”

“It sounds all right in theory; but I’m not so sure about the practical
side.”

“Of course if you put some old fogey on to it he won’t be able to
do it; but try a young man who believes in the idea and you’ll
get it done, I’m sure. It may mean making each part a little more
complicated than it would normally be; but that doesn’t matter much in
mass-production, does it?”

“It’s not an insuperable difficulty.”

“Well, another thing. Get your architect to draw up sketches of all the
possible combinations he can get out of his standardised material; and
then when people want a house, they can look at the different designs
and among them all they are almost sure to find something that suits
their taste. It is much better than your idea of three or four standard
house-patterns, anyway.”

“I’ll see what can be done.”

“Oh, the thing will be easy enough if you mean to have it. A child can
build endless castles with a single box of bricks; and surely a man’s
brain ought to be able to do with beams and joists what a child does
with bricks.”

I give this as an example of her suggestions. Some of her improvements
seemed trivial to me; but I took it that it was just these trivial
things that made all the difference to a feminine mind; so I followed
her more or less blindly.

Our collaboration was an ideal one, notwithstanding some hard-fought
debatable points. More and more, as time went on, I began to understand
the wisdom Nordenholt had shown in demanding that I should take her
into partnership. Our minds worked on totally different lines; but for
that very reason we completed each other, one seeing what the other
missed. I found that she was open to conviction if one could actually
put a finger on any weak point in her schemes.

And, behind the details of our plans, I began to see more and more
clearly the outlines of her character. I suppose that most men, thrown
into daily contact with any girl above the average in looks and brains,
will drift into some sort of admiration which is hardly platonic; but
in these affairs propinquity usually completes what it has begun by
showing up weak points in character or little mannerisms which end by
repelling instead of attracting. In a drawing-room, people are always
on their guard to some extent; but in the midst of absorbing work,
real character comes out. One sees gaps in intelligence; failures
to follow out a line of thought become apparent; any inharmony in
character soon makes itself felt. One seldom sees teachers marrying
their girl-students. But in Elsa Huntingtower I found a brain as good
as my own, though working along different lines. I expect that her
association with Nordenholt had given her chances which few girls ever
have; but she had natural abilities which had been sharpened by that
contact. She puzzled me, I must admit. My mind works very much in
the concrete; I like to see every step along the road, to test each
foothold before trusting my weight upon it. To me, her mental processes
seemed to depend more upon some intuition than did mine; but I believe
now that her reasoning was as rigid as my own and that it seemed
disjointed merely because her steps were different from mine. My brain
worked in arithmetical progression, if I may put it so, whilst hers
followed a geometrical progression. Often it was a dead heat between
the hare and the tortoise; for my steady advance attained the goal just
when her mysterious leaps of intelligence had brought her to the same
point by a different path.

It was not until we had cleared the ground of the main practical
difficulties that we allowed ourselves to think of the future. At
first, everything was subordinated to the necessity of getting
something coherent planned which would be ready for the ensuing stage
after the Nitrogen Area had done its work. But once we had convinced
ourselves that we had roughed out things on the material side, we
turned our minds in other directions as a kind of relaxation. Of course
we held divergent opinions upon many questions.

“What you want, Mr. Flint, is to build a kind of human rabbit hutch,
designed on the best hygienic lines. I can see that at the back of your
mind all the time. You think material things ought to come first, don’t
you?”

“I certainly want to see the people well housed and well cared for
before going any further.”

“And then?”

“Oh, after that, I want other things as well, naturally.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I want. I want to see them _happy_.”

I can still remember that evening. The table between us was covered
with papers; and a shaded lamp threw a soothing light upon them. All
the rest of the room was in shadow; and I saw her face against the
setting of the darkness behind her. In the next room I could feel
the slow steps of Nordenholt in his study, pacing up and down as he
revolved some problem in his mind.

“When I think about it,” she went on, after a pause, “you men amaze
me. In the mass, I mean, of course; I’m not talking about individuals.
There seem to be three classes of you. The biggest class is simply
looking for what it calls ‘a good time.’ It wants to enjoy itself;
it looks on the world just as a playground; and it never seems to get
beyond the stage of a child crying for amusement in a nursery. At the
end of things, that type leaves the world just where the world was
before. It achieves nothing; and often it merely bores itself. It
doesn’t even know how to look for happiness. I don’t see much chance
for that type in the future, now that things have changed.

“Then there’s a second class which is a shade better. They want to
make money; and they’re generally successful in that, for they are
single-minded. But in concentrating on money, it seems to me, they
lose everything else. In the end, they can do nothing with their money
except turn it into more. They can’t spend it profitably; they haven’t
had the education for that. They just gather money in, and gather it
in, and become more and more slaves to their acquisitive instincts.
To a certain extent they are better than the first type of men, for
they do incidentally achieve something in the world. You can’t begin
to make money without doing _something_. You need to manufacture or
to transport goods or develop resources or organise in some way; so
mankind as a whole profits incidentally.

“Then you come to the last of the types: the men who want to _do_
something. Activity is their form of happiness. All the inventors and
discoverers and explorers belong to that class, all the artists and
engineers and builders of things, great or small. Their happiness is
in creation, bringing something new into the world, whether it’s new
knowledge or new methods or new beauty. But they are the smallest class
of all.”

“What amazes you in that?”

“The difference in the proportions of men in the different classes, of
course. You know what the third type get out of life: you’re one of
them yourself. Wouldn’t things be better if everyone got these things?
Don’t you think the pleasure of creation is the greatest of all?”

“Of course I do; but that’s because I’m built that way. I can’t help
it.”

“Well, I think that a good many of the rest of us have the instinct
too; but it gets stifled very early. It seems to me that our education
in the past has been all wrong. It has never been education at all, in
the proper sense of the term. It’s been a case of putting things into
minds instead of drawing out what the mind contains already.”

I was struck by the similarity between her thoughts and my own upon
this matter; but after all, there was nothing surprising in that; it
was what everyone thought who had speculated at all on the problem. She
was silent for a time; then she continued:

“It’s just like the thing we were speaking of to-night. A child’s
mind is like a box of bricks; and each child has a different box with
bricks unlike those of any other child. Our educational system has been
arranged to force each child to build a standard pattern of house from
its bricks, whether the bricks were suitable or not. The whole training
has been drawn up to suit what they call ‘the average child’--a thing
that never existed. So you get each child’s mind cramped in all sorts
of directions, capacities stifled, a rooted distaste for knowledge
engendered--a pretty result to aim at!”

“I don’t think you realise the difficulties of the thing,” I said. “The
younger generation isn’t a handful; it’s a largish mass to tackle:
and one must cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. The number of
possible instructors is limited by the labour market.”

“Hearken to the voice of the ‘practical man.’” She laughed, but not
unkindly. “You don’t seem to realise, Mr. Flint, that things _can_ be
done if one is determined to do them--physical impossibilities apart,
of course. When a conjurer devises a trick, do you think that he sets
out by considering his available machinery? Not at all. He first thinks
of the illusion he wants to produce; and he fits his machinery to that.
What we need to do is to fix on our aim and then invent machinery for
it. You seem to me always to put the cart before the horse and to work
on the lines: ‘What can we do with the machinery we have?’ That’s all
wrong, you know. We’re on the edge of a new time now; and we can do
as we please. The old system is gone; and we can set up anything we
choose. What we have to be sure is that the end we work toward is the
right one.”

We discussed education from various points of view, I remember; but
what struck me most in her ideas was the emphasis which she laid on
the faculty of wonder. One of her fears was that, in the stress of the
new time, life would become machine-made and that the human race might
degenerate into a mere set of engine-tenders to whom the whole world of
imagination was closed.

“I would begin with the tiny children,” she said, “and feed their minds
on fairy tales. Only they would be new kinds of fairy tales--something
to bring the wonder of Fairyland into their daily life. The old fairy
tales were always about things ‘once upon a time’ and in some dim
far-off country which no child ever reached. I want to bring Fairyland
to their very doors and keep some of the mystery in life. I wouldn’t
mind if they grew superstitious and believed in gnomes and elves and
sprites and such things, so long as they felt the world was wonderful.
We mustn’t let them become mere slaves to machinery. Life needs a tinge
of unreality if one is to get the most out of it, so long as it is the
right kind of unreality. Did you ever read Hudson’s _Crystal Age_?”

“No, I never came across it.”

“Do you mind if I show you something in it?”

She rose and took down a book from its shelf; then, coming back into
the lamplight, searched for a passage and began to read:

“‘Thus ... we come to the wilderness of Coradine.... There a stony
soil brings forth only thorns, and thistles, and sere tufts of grass;
and blustering winds rush over the unsheltered reaches, where the
rough-haired goats huddle for warmth; and there is no melody save
the many-toned voices of the wind and the plover’s wild cry. There
dwell the children of Coradine, on the threshold of the wind-vexed
wilderness, where the stupendous columns of green glass uphold the roof
of the House of Coradine; the ocean’s voice is in their rooms, and the
inland-blowing wind brings to them the salt spray and yellow sand swept
at low tide from the desolate floors of the sea, and the white-winged
bird flying from the black tempest screams aloud in their shadowy
halls. There, from the high terraces, when the moon is at its full, we
see the children of Coradine gathered together, arrayed like no others,
in shining garments of gossamer threads, when, like thistledown chased
by eddying winds, now whirling in a cloud, now scattering far apart,
they dance their moonlight dances on the wide alabaster floors; and
coming and going they pass away, and seem to melt into the moonlight,
yet ever to return again with changeful melody and new measures. And,
seeing this, all those things in which we ourselves excel seem poor in
comparison, becoming pale in our memories. For the winds and waves, and
the whiteness and grace, have been ever with them; and the winged seed
of the thistle, and the flight of the gull, and the storm-vexed sea,
flowering in foam, and the light of the moon on sea and barren land,
have taught them this art, and a swiftness and grace which they alone
possess.’”

The moonbeam-haunted vision which the words called up seemed to touch
something in my mind; a long-closed gate of Faery swung softly
ajar; and once more I seemed to hear the faint and far-off horns of
Elfland as I had heard them when I was a child. Wearied with toil in
my ruthless world of the present, I paused, unconscious for a moment,
before this gateway of the Unreal. I felt the call of the seas that
wash the dim coasts of Ultima Thule and of the strange birds crying to
each other in the trees of Hy-Brasil.

Miss Huntingtower sat silent; and when I came out of these few seconds
of reverie, I found that she had been watching my expression keenly:

“You ‘wake from day-dreams to this real Night,’ apparently, Mr. Flint.
I could see you had gone a-wandering, even if it was only for an
instant or two. I’m glad; for it shows you understand.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I have given an account of some of these apparently aimless and
inconclusive discussions between us in order to show clearly the manner
in which we went to work. At first, we oscillated between the practical
side of things, the planning of houses, the laying out of towns, the
applications of electricity and so forth, on the one hand, and the
most abstract considerations of the mental side of the problem on the
other. I remember that one evening we began with the desirability of
uniforms for the population while at work. I was in favour of it on
the grounds that it would facilitate mass-production and would also
mark the worker’s trade and possibly thus develop a greater _esprit de
corps_. She conceded these points, but insisted that women should be
allowed to dress as they chose, once their work was done. This brought
us to the question of luxury trades, and so led by degrees to the
consideration of the cultivation of artistic taste and finally to the
problems of Art in general under the new conditions. Looking back, I
see that our earlier advances were mainly gropings towards something
which we had not clearly conceived ourselves. We did not know exactly
what we wanted; and we threshed out many matters more for the sake
of clarifying our ideas than with any real intention of applying our
conclusions in practice.

Gradually, however, things grew more definite as we proceeded. We had
certain ideas in common, general principles which we both accepted:
and as time went on, this skeleton began to clothe itself in flesh and
become a living organism. She converted me to her idea that happiness
meant more than anything, provided it was gained in the right way.
Altruism was her ideal, I found, because to her it appeared to be the
most general mode of reaching contentment. At the back of all her
ideas, this ideal seemed to lie. She wanted the new world to be a happy
world; and each of her suggestions and all of her criticism took this
as a basis.

It seems hardly necessary to enter into an account of the final form
which we gave to our plans. It was not Fata Morgana that we built;
but I think that at least we laid the foundation-stone upon which our
dream-city may yet arise. These far-flung communities which you know
to-day, these groves and pleasure-grounds, these lakes and pleasances,
bright streets and velvet lawns, all sprang from our brain: and the
children who throng them, happier and more intelligent than their
fathers in their day, are also in part our work, taught and trained in
the ideals which inspired us. If anything, we were too timid in our
planning, for we had no clue to what the future held in store for us.
Had we known in time, we might have ventured to launch into the air
the high towers of Fata Morgana itself to catch the rising sun. On the
material side, we could have done it; but I believe we were wise in
our timidity. Dream-cities are not to be trodden by the human foot.
The refining of mankind will be a longer process than the building of
cities; and only a pure race could live in happiness in that Theleme
which we planned.

Looking backward, I think that during all these hours of designing
and peering into the future I caught something of her spirit and she
something of mine. By imperceptible stages we came together, mind
reaching out to mind. Unnoticed by ourselves, our collaboration grew
more efficient; our divergences less and less.

I can still recall these long lamp-lit evenings, the rustle of her
skirts as she moved about the room, the cadences of her voice, the
eagerness and earnestness of her face under its crown of fair hair.
Often, as we moulded the future in that quiet room with its shaded
lights, we must have seemed like children with an ever-new plaything
which changed continually beneath our hands. Meanwhile, over us and
between us stood the shadow of Nordenholt, ever grimmer as the days
went by, carrying his projects to their ruthless termination like some
great machine which pursues its appointed course uninfluenced by human
failings or human desires. To me, at that time, he seemed to loom above
us like some labouring Titan, aloof, mysterious, inscrutable.




CHAPTER XIV

Winter in the Outer World


My narrative has hitherto been confined to affairs in the British
Isles; but to give a complete picture of the time I must now deal, even
though very briefly, with the effects of _B. diazotans_ in other parts
of the globe. My account will, of necessity, be incomplete: because our
knowledge of that period is at best a scanty one.

I have already indicated the part which the great air-ways played in
distribution of _B. diazotans_ over the world; but once it had been
planted in the new centres to which the aeroplanes carried it, other
factors came into action. From South-western Europe, the North-East
Trade Winds bore the bacilli across the Atlantic and spread them upon
the seaboard of South America, especially around the mouths of the
Amazon. The winds on the coast of North America caught up the germs and
drove them eventually to Scandinavia and even further east. New Guinea,
Borneo, Sumatra and the other islands of the chain were devastated
from the Australian centres. Madagascar was contaminated also, though
the point of origin in this case is not definitely known. Probably
the ocean currents played their part, as they certainly did in the
destruction of Polynesian vegetation.

Climate had a considerable influence upon the development of the
bacilli, once they were scattered. In the Tropics, they multiplied with
even greater rapidity than they had done in the North Temperate Zone.
On the Congo and in the Amazonian forests they seem to have undergone
a process of reproduction almost inconceivably swift. Those which
drifted up into the frigid regions of the North and South, however,
appear to have perished almost without a struggle: either on account of
the low temperature or the lack of nitrogenous material, they produced
very little effect in either of these districts. The sea-plants seem to
have been unaffected by them there; and one of the strangest results of
this inactivity was the complete change in habits of various fishes,
which now sought in the freezing North the feeding and breeding-grounds
which suited them best. The herring left the North Sea and the cod
quitted the Banks in search of purer water. On the other hand, the
great masses of weed in the Sargasso Sea were almost completely
destroyed, along with the other accumulations south-east of New Zealand
and in the North Pacific.

It must not be assumed, however, that wherever the colonies of _B.
diazotans_ alighted, devastation followed as a matter of course. For
some reason, which has never been made clear, certain areas proved
themselves immune from attack; so that they remained like oases of
cultivable land amid the surrounding deserts. The areas thus preserved
from sterility were not of any great size; usually they amounted only
to a few hundred acres in extent, though in isolated cases larger
tracts were found unaffected here and there.

With the recognition of the world-wide influence of _B. diazotans_, the
land became divided into two sections: the food-producing districts and
the consuming but non-productive areas. Nowhere was there sufficient
grain to make safety a certainty. In America, most of the available
food-stuffs were still in or near their places of origin when the panic
began to grow.

In the matter of meat, things were much in the same state. Those
countries which produced great supplies of cattle prohibited exports;
and the beasts were hurriedly slaughtered and the carcases salted to
preserve them, as soon as the failure of the grass made it impossible
to conserve live-stock.

Each country offered features of its own in the _débâcle_; but I can
only deal with one or two outstanding cases here.

The European conditions were so similar to those which I have already
depicted in the case of Britain that I need not describe them at
all. Southern Russia fared better than her neighbours; for after the
Famine there were still some remnants of her population left alive;
and it seems probable that the lower density of the Russian population
retarded the extinction of humanity in this region long after the worst
period had been reached in the western area.

In Africa and India, the course of the devastation was marked by
risings in which all Europeans seem to have perished. Thus we have no
descriptions of the later stages of the disaster in either case.

In China, the inhabitants of the densely-populated rice-growing
districts of Eastern China were the first to have the true position of
affairs forced upon their notice; and, leaving their useless fields,
they began to move westwards. At first the stirrings were merely
sporadic; but gradually these isolated movements reinforced one another
until some millions of Chinese were drifting into Western China and
setting up reactions among the populations which they encountered on
their way. From Manchuria, great masses of them forced their way up
the Amur Valley into Transbaikalia. Others, sweeping over Pekin on the
road, emerged upon the banks of the Hoang Ho. The inhabitants of the
Honan Province moved westward, increasing in numbers as they recruited
from the local populations _en route_. A massacre of foreigners took
place all over China.

In its general character, this huge wandering of the Mongol races
recalls the movements which led eventually to the downfall of the
Roman Empire; but the parallel is illusory. In the days of Gengis
Khan, the Eastern hordes could always find food to support them on
their line of march, either in the form of local supplies which they
captured, or in the herds which they drove with them as they advanced.
But in this new tumultuous outbreak, food was unprocurable; and the
irruption melted away almost before the confines of China had been
reached. Some immense bands descended from Yunnan into Burmah; but they
appear to have perished among the rotting vegetation. Another series
of smaller bodies penetrated into Thibet, where they died among the
snows. The furthest stirrings of the wave appear to have been felt in
Chinese Turkestan; and apparently Kashgar and Yarkand were centres from
which other waves might have spread: but it seems probable that these
westernmost movements were checked by the tangle of the Pamirs and
Karakorams. Nothing appears to have reached Samarkand. But here, again,
it is difficult to discover what actually did occur. Any survivors who
have been interrogated are of the illiterate class, who had no definite
conception of the route which they followed in their wanderings.

The history of Japan under the influence of _B. diazotans_ is of
especial interest, since it presents the closest parallel to our own
experiences. At the outbreak of the Famine, the practical minds of
the Japanese statesmen seem to have acted with the promptitude which
Nordenholt had shown. They had not his psychological insight, it is
true; but they had a simpler problem before them, since they could
ignore public opinion entirely. Fairly complete accounts of their
operations are in existence, so far as the outer manifestations of
their policy are concerned, though we know little as yet of the inner
history of the events.

Kiyotome Zada appears to have been the Japanese Nordenholt. Under
his direction, two great expeditions raided Manchuria and Eastern
China with the object of capturing the largest possible quantity
of food-stuffs. It is probable that these two invasions, with the
consequent loss of food-supplies, led to the great stirrings among the
population of China. A Nitrogen Area was set up in the South Island,
the Kobe shipyards being its nucleus. Thereafter the history follows
very closely upon that of the Clyde Valley experiment, except in its
last stages.

Among the other Pacific communities the Famine proved almost completely
destructive. I have already told of the spreading of _B. diazotans_
through the chain of islands between Australia and Burmah. In Australia
itself no attempt was made to found a nitrogen-producing plant on a
sufficiently large scale.

One curious episode deserves mention. In the earlier days of the
Famine, news reached the Australian ports that certain of the
Polynesian islands were still free from the scourge; and a frenzied
emigration followed. But each ship carried with it the freight of _B.
diazotans_, so that this exodus merely served to spread the bacilli
into spots which otherwise they might not have reached. Before very
long the whole of Polynesia was involved in the disaster. Some diaries
have been discovered on board deserted vessels; and in every case the
history is the same: the long search through devastated islands, the
discovery at last of some untouched spot in the ocean wilderness, the
rejoicings, the landing, and then, a few days later, the realisation
that here also the bacillus had made its appearance. What seems most
curious is the fact that in many cases it was weeks before the ship’s
company grasped the apparently obvious truth that their own appearance
coincided with the arrival of the fatal germs. It never seems to have
occurred to any of them that they bore with them the very thing which
they were trying to escape. So they went from island to island,
seeking refuge from a plague which stood ever at their elbow, until at
last their stores failed.

On the West Coast of South America a new phenomenon appeared. The
huge deposits of nitrates in Bolivia and South Peru formed the best
breeding-ground for _B. diazotans_ which had yet been detected, with
the result that nitrogen poured into the atmosphere in unheard-of
volumes. In most places the winds were sufficient to disperse these
invisible clouds of gas; but in some spots the arrival of the bacilli
coincided with a dead calm, so that the nitrogen remained in the
neighbourhood in which it was generated. The great salt swamp in the
Potosi district furnished the best example of this phenomenon. The
whole surface frothed and boiled for days together; and the atmosphere
in the neighbourhood became so heavily charged with nitrous fumes that
the air was almost unbreatheable. All the inhabitants of the district
fled before this, to them, inexplicable danger; and the effects
extended as far as Llica and the railway junction at Uyuni. In this
“caliche” district, the destruction of combined nitrogen probably
attained its maximum; and the propagation of _B. diazotans_ never
reached such a level in any other part of the world.

But with this enormous multiplication of the bacilli, other events
followed. Carried north and east by winds, these huge quantities
of the germs found their way into the headwaters of the Amazon and
its tributaries, and were thus carried eastward into the very heart
of the tropical forests, where they continued to breed with almost
inconceivable rapidity. Soon the whole of the vegetation in this region
was in a decline; and the Amazon valley degenerated into a swamp choked
with dead and dying plants. Humanity was driven out long before the
end came. Animal life could not persist in the midst of this noisome
wilderness.

The same phenomena appeared, though in a different form, over the
southern part of South America. Here also the great rivers formed
the main distributing agencies for the bacilli; and the whole
cattle-raising district was devastated. The stock was slaughtered
on a huge scale as soon as it became clear that vegetation had
perished; but owing to mismanagement and transport difficulties the
preservatives necessary to make the best of the meat thus obtained were
not procurable in sufficient quantities. Nevertheless, by converting
as much as possible into biltong, more than sufficient was preserved
to keep a very large part of the population alive during the Famine;
and in later days, by trading their surplus dried meat for cereals and
nitrogenous compounds, they succeeded in rescuing a greater proportion
of lives than might have been anticipated.

To complete this survey of the world at that period, the effect of
_B. diazotans_ upon North America still remains to be told. I have
already given some information with regard to the spread of the Blight
across the Middle West; but I must mention that it was in this part
of the world especially that these curious isolated immune areas were
observed, wherein the bacillus seemed to make no headway. Thousands of
acres in all were found to be untouched by the denitrifying organisms.

At the time of the Famine the civilisation of North America was in a
curious condition, mainly owing to the influx of a foreign element
which had taken place to a greater and greater extent after the War.
The immigrants had come in such numbers that assimilation of them was
impossible, and in this way the stability of the central Government
was weakened. To a great extent the Southern States had fallen into
the hands of the negroes, but similar segregations were to be found
in other parts of the country. Germans accumulated in one State,
Italians in another, East Europeans and Slavs in yet other areas. Thus
Congress became subject to the group system of government, with all the
weaknesses which such a system brings in its train.

When _B. diazotans_ first made its appearance in the Continent the
Government in power was composed of feeble men, without character and
unfitted for bold decisions. The prohibition of cereal exports was a
measure arising from panic rather than foresight; and once this had
been put in operation, the Government rested on its oars and awaited
the turn of events.

Thus at this period the United States presented the spectacle of a
series of unsympathetic communities united by the slender bonds of a
weak central Government, and divided amongst themselves by the very
deepest cleavages. The grain-growing districts regarded the cities as
parasites upon the food-supply which had been raised; while the city
population, having only secured a certain amount of the available
food-stuffs, looked upon the Middle Westerners as an anti-social group
of hoarders. But even within these two large groups, minor cleavages
had come to light. The poorer classes, appalled at the rise in prices,
had begun to cry out against the rich. Hasty and ill-considered
legislation was passed which, instead of curing the troubles, merely
served to augment them; and soon the whole country was seething with
undercurrents of hatred for government of any kind.

With so much inflammable material, an outbreak was only a question of
time; and soon something almost akin to anarchy prevailed. Food at
any price became the cry. Those who controlled great stores of grain
had to defend them; those who lacked sustenance had no reason to
wait in patience. Civil war of the most bitter type broke out almost
simultaneously throughout the country.

Hostilities took a form which had never been imagined in any previous
fighting. In the old days one of the main objectives in the siege of
an area was the shutting out of supplies from the besieged garrison.
In this American war, however, the exact opposite held good. A
starving population encircled the areas in which food was stored
and endeavoured to force its way in; while the defenders were well
supplied with rations. Nor was this all. It was well recognised
among the besiegers that the supplies within the besieged area were
insufficient to meet the demands which would be made upon them if the
attacking force as a whole broke through the line of the defence; and
therefore each individual attacker felt that his comrades were also his
competitors, whom he had no great desire to see survive. Again, in the
previous history of warfare, any loss on the part of the garrison was
irreparable, since no reinforcements could penetrate the encircling
lines of enemies; but in this new form of combat any member of the
attacking force was willing to secede to the garrison if they would
allow him to do so, since by this means he could secure food. Thus
the casualties of the garrison could be made good simply by admitting
besiegers to take the place of those who had been killed.

In the main, these sieges took place at points where the harvested
grain, such as it was, had been accumulated for transport; but even the
areas which had proved immune from the attacks of _B. diazotans_ were
attacked by far-sighted men who looked beyond the immediate future and
who wished to control these remaining fertile areas in view of next
year’s supplies.

I have before me the diary of a combatant in one of these operations;
and it appears to me that I can best give an idea of the prevailing
conditions by summarising his narrative.

At the time of the outbreak he resided in Omaha; and the earlier
pages of his journal are occupied by a description of some rioting
which occurred in that city, ending with its destruction by fire.
During the upheaval he became possessed, in some way which he does
not describe, of a rifle, a considerable amount of ammunition, a
certain store of food. Thus equipped, and accompanied by four friends
similarly provided, young Hinkinson was able to get away in a Ford car
from Omaha in advance of the main body of citizens who were now left
houseless. Rumours of food-supplies led them towards Cedar Falls; but
at Ackley they discovered the error of their information and were for a
time at fault. Turning southward, they followed various indications and
finally located a fertile area in the triangle Mexico-Moberly-Hannibal.
At Palmyra, their motor broke down permanently; and they were forced to
abandon it. Collecting as much of their equipment as they could carry,
they tramped along the railway line and eventually reached Monroe City,
which was very close to the outer edge of the contest raging around the
fertile area.

From indications in the diary, it seems clear that Hinkinson and his
companions expected to find at Monroe City some sort of headquarters of
the attacking forces; but as they were unable to discover anything of
the kind, they continued their march, being joined by a small band of
other armed men who had arrived at Monroe City about the same time as
themselves.

Almost before they were aware of it, they blundered into the
firing-line. Apparently they had already been much surprised to find
no signs of a controlling spirit in charge of the operations; but
their actual coming under fire seems to have astounded them. They had
expected to find a vast system of trench-warfare in existence; and had
been keenly on the look-out for signs of digging which would indicate
to them that they had reached the rear positions of the attacking
force. What they actually found, as bullets began to whistle around
them, was a thin line of civilians with rifles and bandoliers who
were lying flat on the grass and firing, apparently aimlessly into
the distance. At times, some of the riflemen would get up, run a few
yards and then lie down again; but there seemed to be no discipline or
ordered activity traceable in their methods. It appeared to be a purely
individualistic form of warfare.

Hinkinson added himself to the skirmishing line, more from a desire for
personal safety than with any understanding of what was happening. It
appears that he lay there most of the afternoon, firing occasionally
into the distance from which the bullets came. His four friends were
also engaged in his immediate vicinity.

Later in the day his neighbour in the skirmishing line spoke to him and
suggested that he might form a sixth in the party. Hinkinson learned
from this man that during the night the attackers generally fought
among themselves for any food which there might be; and he proposed
that the Hinkinson party should stand watch about during the darkness,
so as to avoid robbery. They agreed to this; as it seemed the best
policy: though Hinkinson himself, in the entry he made at the end of
the day, seems to throw doubt upon the likelihood of such proceedings.

Fortunately, they did not entirely trust their new comrade; and one of
the five kept awake while pretending to sleep. When the night grew dark
they heard movements in the skirmishing line, rifles were still blazing
intermittently up and down the front, and here and there they caught
the groans of the wounded. But in addition to these sounds, to which
they had by this time grown accustomed, they heard scuffles, cries of
anger, hard breathing and all the noises of men wrestling with each
other. It was a cloudy, moonless night and nothing could be seen. At
last, long before dawn, they discovered their friend of the afternoon
engaged in rifling one of their food-bags. Finding himself discovered,
he fled into the darkness and they never saw him again.

It was not until well on in the next day that Hinkinson made any
further discoveries; but fresh surprises were awaiting him. He learned
that the firing-line to which he was opposed was not a portion of
the defence of the area at all, but was part of the attacking group.
This puzzled him for a day or two, to judge from the remarks which he
made in his journal; but at length he seems to have understood that
his fellow-attackers were almost as much to be feared as the actual
defenders.

He gives a sketch on one page of his diary showing the situation as he
understood it. In the centre lies the actual fertile area, surrounded
by an elaborate system of entrenchments. This zone he terms the Defence
Zone. About a mile outside this, but coming much closer in parts, lies
what he describes as the Offensive-Defensive Circle. When he reached
this section, as we learn from a later part of his journal, he found it
very roughly entrenched, the main works being rifle-pits rather than
connected trench-lines. This Offensive-Defensive Circle was occupied
by part of the attacking force; but the actual fighting in it was upon
both front and rear. The holders of this Circle wished to force their
way into the Defence Zone; but having gained a start upon the late
comers whose firing-line lay still further to the rear, they proposed
to retard as far as possible any advance in force from the outermost
lines. Thus the combatants of the Circle, as soon as they had forced
their way into it, devoted their attention to sniping new-comers who
might follow them up; then seizing any opportunity, they made their
way forward toward the centre and joined the inner skirmishing line
which directed its fire upon the entrenchments of the actual Defence
Zone. The outermost region, in which Hinkinson and his friends found
themselves, was composed of men who had either arrived late on the
field or failed to struggle forward in face of the sniping from the
Circle.

In both the outer ring and the Circle the dominating idea was food.
There was no commissariat and no central directing body of any kind.
When a man joined the outer ring, he knew that he had only the supplies
which he carried with him; beyond that, he could count upon nothing
except what he could steal from his neighbours. The only chance of life
was to fight a way up to the centre as soon as possible and take the
chance of being recruited by the garrison.

While the Hinkinson group remained intact, they were able to protect
themselves from food-thieves; but on the fourth day in the skirmishing
line one of the five was severely wounded; and, knowing how little
care was given to wounded men, he shot himself. Two more were killed
by snipers on the fifth day. Three days later, Hinkinson managed to
establish himself in a rifle-pit of the Circle; and he thus lost sight
of his remaining friend.

Life in the Circle was lived under appalling conditions, for it was
within range of both the Defence Zone and the outer skirmishing line;
and there was very little chance of exercise even at night. Food was
scarcer here than in the outer ring; and consequently raids for food
were almost incessant during the hours of darkness. Ammunition was
also very scarce; and Hinkinson was only able to keep up his supply by
searching the bodies which lay in his neighbourhood. After two days in
the rifle-pit he seems to have suffered from some form of influenza.
The only thing which he notes with satisfaction is the fact that there
was no artillery in the whole action. It was a case of rifle-fire from
beginning to end.

After his third day in the rifle-pit, he succeeded in making his way
into the inner firing-line of the Circle, so that at last he was
actually in contact with the Defence Zone. He was astonished to find
that the defenders were using up ammunition much faster than the
attacking forces; and it is clear that this puzzled him, as he could
see no reason for it. He had expected to find them running short.

His entry into the Defence Zone was due, apparently, to a stroke
of good luck. On the day which brought him face to face with the
defenders, he saw an attack made from the Circle upon the entrenchments
before him. It was an utterly haphazard affair: first one man ran
forward, then two or three others joined him; and finally the force of
suggestion brought the major part of the attackers to their feet and
hurled them upon the trenches before them, which at this point were
only a few hundred yards away. Despite its random character, it seems
to have been successful to some extent. A considerable number went
down before a bombing attack made from the trenches; but despite this
a fairly large band surmounted the parapet and disappeared beyond. A
confused sound of rifle-firing was followed by a short silence; and
then a regular volley seemed to have been fired. None of the attacking
party reappeared.

According to Hinkinson’s reading of the situation, a number of the
defenders had been killed in the hand-to-hand struggle in the trenches;
and he concluded that this was his best opportunity to endeavour to
gain a footing among the defence force, which would now be weakened
slightly and possibly anxious for recruits.

At this point, his diary is illegible and I can throw no light upon the
subjects included in the hiatus. When it becomes readable again, I find
him a member of the defending group.

Apparently on this side of the debatable land discipline was as marked
as it was absent from the other side. The death penalty was inflicted
for the slightest error. Once or twice Hinkinson seems to have run
considerable risks in this direction through no great fault of his own.

He found that the defence problem was in some ways a complex one,
whilst in other directions it was simplified considerably by the unique
conditions of the new warfare. Owing to the enormous perimeter which
had to be defended, the garrison was almost wholly used up in forming
a very thin firing-line which was liable to be rushed at any point by
strong bodies of the attacking force, as, indeed, he had already seen
himself. Given sufficient spontaneous co-operation for a raid, the
trenches could be entered without any real difficulty by the survivors
of a charge. But once within the defended lines, the attackers were
accepted as part of the defence force, provided that their numbers
were not in excess of the casualties produced by their onset. Thus the
_personnel_ of the trench-lines changed from day to day, dead defenders
being replaced by successful raiders whose main interest had changed
sides. Under such conditions, the maintenance of discipline was a
matter which required the sternest measures. The garrison was always up
to full strength; but its members were not a military body in the usual
sense, since they changed from time to time as new recruits took the
places of the killed. Of _esprit de corps_ in the usual meaning of the
words there was not a trace; but its place was taken by the instinct of
self-preservation, which seems to have made not a bad substitute.

As to the question of ammunition-supply, which had puzzled Hinkinson
so much during his experiences in the outer zones, it became simple
when once he was inside the trench-lines. There appears to have been
a regular traffic by aeroplane between the food-area and the outer
world, munitions being imported by air in exchange for food which the
air-craft took back on their return trips.

       *       *       *       *       *

Readers can now picture for themselves the state of the world after
the Famine had done its worst. The great cities which marked the
culmination of civilisation had all shared the fate of London; and most
of the towns had gone the same road. All the vast and complex machinery
which mankind had so laboriously gathered together in these teeming
areas had been destroyed by fire.

Here and there--in Scotland, in Japan, and in a couple of American
centres--Nitrogen Areas were in full activity; and the traditions
of pre-Famine times were being kept alive, though with profound
modifications; but outside the boundaries of these regions the only
human beings left in the world were a mere handful, scattered up and
down the globe and existing hazardously upon chance discoveries of
food-stuffs here and there. The Esquimaux had a better prospect of
survival than most of these relics of civilisation.

But the trifling changes involved in the downfall of humanity were
overshadowed by the effects of _B. diazotans_ upon the face of the
earth. All that had once been arable land became a desert strewn
with the bones of men. The vast virgin forests of America, Northern
Europe and tropical Africa became mere heaps of rotting vegetation:
pestilential swamps into which no man could penetrate and survive.
Apart from these regions, the land-surface was sandy, except where
boulder-clay deposits kept it together. Water ebbed away in these
thirsty deserts; and with its disappearance the climate changed over
vast areas of the world.

Those who went out in the early aeroplane exploring expeditions across
these stricken and barren lands came to understand, as they had never
done before, the meaning of the abomination of desolation.




CHAPTER XV

Document B. 53. X. 15


I think I have made it clear that when I took over the Reconstruction
at Nordenholt’s request I did so in a disinterested spirit, by which
I mean that no personal aims of my own were concerned. I began the
work solely in the hope that my plans would ensure the welfare of some
millions of people, hardly any of whom I knew as individuals. It is
true that I put my whole heart into the task and that I strove with
all my might to bring its conclusion within the scope of possibility.
I could do no less, in view of the immense responsibility which I had
undertaken. Possibly my narrative has minimised the labour which the
effort involved; if so, I cannot help it.

Even my early stages of collaboration with Elsa Huntingtower failed to
alter this attitude of my mind. I still saw the problem as one in which
great masses of people were involved; and although I appreciated the
fact that these masses were composed of individuals each with his or
her separate destiny to work out for good or ill, yet it never occurred
to me to regard myself as one of them.

I think that the vision of Fata Morgana, growing ever clearer in my
mental vision, forced my thoughts into a fresh channel. In my mind’s
eye I saw that happy city, thronged with its joyous people; and
gradually I began to picture myself treading those lawns and wandering
amid its gardens. Alone? No, I wanted some kindred spirit, someone who
could share the victory with me; and Elsa Huntingtower was the only
one who had part and lot in it. She and I had built its dreaming spires
together by our common labour; and it was with her that I would stray
in fancy through its courts. Of all humanity, we two alone had rightful
seizin in its soil.

It was late before I recognised where all this was leading me; but when
at last I awakened, it drove me with ten-fold force. I wanted no dim
future through which I might rove as a shadow among shadows; they had
served their turn in the scheme of things and brought me face to face
with reality. If Paradise lay before me, Eve must be there, else it
would be a mockery: if I had to face failure, I needed a comforter. I
wanted Elsa.

I mistrust all novelists’ descriptions of the psychology of a man in
love. To me, that passion seems an integration of selfishness and
selflessness each developed to its highest pitch and so intimately
mingled that one cannot tell where the dividing line between them lies.
Luckily, analysis of this kind is beyond the scope of my narrative. The
affairs of Elsa Huntingtower and me, so far as they concerned ourselves
alone, have no place upon my canvas; but since in their reactions they
impinged upon a greater engine, I cannot pass them over in silence
without omitting a factor which must have had its influence upon events.

       *       *       *       *       *

I suppose, from what I see around me, that the average man falls
in love by degrees. He seems to be subjected to two forces which
alternately act upon him in opposite directions, so that his advance
to his goal is intermittent and sometimes slow. In my case, there
was nothing of this wavering. Somehow, as soon as I realised what my
feelings were, I could not delay an hour longer than was necessary.
The real fact was, I suspect, that I did not suddenly fall in love,
though I seemed, even to myself, to have done so. In all probability I
had been falling in love for weeks without knowing it; and when the
illumination came, the long sub-conscious travail had prepared me for
instant action.

As it happened, it was one of the days on which we usually motored
into the country. At two o’clock I was in the Square with the car; and
almost at once the door opened and Elsa appeared. My dreams had far
outrun reality; and as the slim fur-clad figure came down the steps I
felt my pulse leap. It lasted only for a moment, but I think she read
my face like an open book. Behind her came Nordenholt, looking very
tired. I could not help seeing the change which the last months had
made in him. The deep lines on his face were deeper still; his eyes
seemed to be different in some way, though as piercing as ever; and his
step had lost the lightness it had when I saw him first in London. He
looked me over, as he usually did, but said nothing as he stepped into
the back of the car. Elsa took her customary place beside me; and it
gave me a novel thrill as I arranged the rug about her. It seemed as
though something had fallen from my eyes so that I saw her in a new and
wonderful aspect.

As we drove westward and over the Canal, I noticed that she seemed
disinclined to talk; and as I myself was busy with my dreams, I did not
try to force the conversation. We had passed Bearsden and were in the
open country before she had spoken three sentences; and even these were
wilfully commonplace. Reflecting on this, and being myself surcharged
with emotion, I was vain enough to guess that she was thinking of me
and of what I had to tell her; for I had a curious feeling that she
must know what was in my mind. So the milestones swept by, and still
the three of us remained silent.

It was a dreary landscape through which we drove; but all landscapes in
those days were bleak and sinister. In the little wood beyond Bearsden,
the trees were uprooted and slanting here and there, owing to the new
soil giving them no support. Some, which had threatened to fall across
the road, had been cut down. Further on, the Kilpatrick Hills loomed
over us, dark from the lack of vegetation; while across the Blane
valley, once so green, the smooth folds of the Campsies lay black under
the wintry sky. Only here and there, where snow covered the ground, did
things remind one of the old days.

Past the Half Way House, along Stockiemuir with its blasted heather
under its snow, up the hill at the foot of Finnick Glen the great car
ran; and yet none of us spoke a word. Once, after that, Nordenholt gave
me a direction; and we turned off toward Loch Lomond.

When we reached the lochside, beyond Balloch, he made me stop the car.

“I’m going to get out here and walk up towards Luss,” he said. “You
take the car on to the head of the loch and pick me up on the way back.
Don’t hurry. I want some exercise.”

The door slammed; and we moved off. I looked back and saw him standing
by the water-side; and it struck me that his attitude was that of an
old man. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his motor-coat; and
his position seemed to exaggerate the stoop of his shoulders. He looked
so very, very tired. I realised, all at once, that he was ageing long
before his time, worn out by his colossal task. An emotion which was as
much dismay as pity swept over me in an instant. Then, as I watched, he
pulled himself up and stood erect again, gazing over the water to the
desolate islets. The car swung round a corner; and when I looked back
once more, he was out of sight.

But that picture haunted me as I drove up the loch. I guessed at last
what this struggle was costing him. Somehow I had never realised it
before. I had come to regard Nordenholt as almost akin to the natural
forces, the embodiment of some great store of energy which worked
upon human destiny calmly and ever certainly. I had looked up to his
strength and leaned upon it unconsciously, knowing only that it was
there. And now, in that brief vision, I had seen that my support
was itself weakening, even though for an instant. There had been a
recovery, the old dominating attitude reappeared as he pulled himself
together again. But before this I had never seen effort in that
attitude; and I saw it now. Even in my exalted condition, the sight of
that weary figure struck down into my memory.

Elsa had not looked back. She sat beside me, her clean-cut profile
emerging from her dark furs, gazing straight before her at the road
ahead. We ran through Luss without a word to each other. My heart was
throbbing with excitement; and yet I hesitated to break the silence.
Some miles further up the road, before we reached Tarbet, she asked me
to stop the car and suggested that we should go down to the water’s
edge.

It was there that I at last found speech and, having found it, poured
out what I had to say in a torrent of words none of which I can
remember now. I had rehearsed that scene many a time in my mind, and
yet it all came unexpectedly. I had never anticipated this opportunity.
I had thought that some time, when we talked of the future we were
planning, I would tell her what I needed to make it complete. And I had
thought of how she would take my pleading: I had forecast how she would
look and what she would reply. But in none of my visions had I foreseen
the reality.

She listened to me coldly, almost as if her mind were occupied with
other things. I grew more passionate, I think, striving to make her
understand my emotion; and yet she seemed almost indifferent to what
I said. At last I stopped, chilled by this aloofness which I did not
understand. In my wildest imaginings I had never thought of this
_dénouement_ of the situation. I think I must have grown cold myself:
for though I can recall nothing of my previous words, the rest of the
scene is graven on my mind. For some moments after I had ceased, she
remained silent; then at length she spoke, with an accent in her voice
which I had never heard before. I remember that she had taken off one
glove and stood twisting it in her hands while she talked.

“I got you to stop the car here because I have something to ask you,
something of tremendous importance to me. Forgive me if I put it first
and don’t answer you immediately. I’m ... I’m very grateful for all you
have said. But this thing comes before everything; and you must let me
ask you about it before we come to ... to our own affairs.”

A pang of apprehension shot through me. What could she be driving at
which was of greater importance than our future?

“As I was going over my papers to-day,” she went on, “I came across one
which seemed to have been missorted. It didn’t belong to my section. I
glanced at it casually; and then I read it. Have you any idea what it
referred to?”

“No.”

“It said things I could hardly grasp. Even now I think it must be a
mistake. I can’t believe it was a real document. It must have been a
hoax or something like that. And yet, it had the usual serial numbers
on it: B. 53. X. 15.”

My throat was dry, but I managed to pull myself together and make a
sound like “Well?” She came close to me and looked me straight in the
eyes--so like Nordenholt’s gaze in some ways--and I tried to bring my
features into a mask.

“Is it true that everyone outside the Area has been left to die? Is it
true that there has been a deliberate plot to starve all the men, all
the women, even the little children in the country? Tell me that, and
tell me at once. Don’t wait to wrap it up in fine phrases. Tell me the
truth _now_.”

I stood before her, silent.

“So it _is_ true; and you knew it! You acquiesced in it. You even
helped in it; I can see it in your face. You cur!”

Still I could not find my voice. This was a different scene from
that I had thought of only ten short minutes before. It was not that
I felt anything myself, except a sort of dull comprehension that my
dreams were shattered; but the sight of the pain in her face moved me
more than I could express in words. I wanted to help her. I wanted
to justify the plan Nordenholt had made. And yet something kept me
tongue-tied. I could find no phrase to open my explanations. The
outpouring of speech which I had found so easy only a few seconds
earlier now seemed dried up. I merely watched her, saying nothing. For
a time she struggled with herself, trying to master her feelings. All
this time her face had been set; not a tear had come to her eyelashes.

“I have a right to know who planned this,” she continued, after a
pause. “Do you know what I thought at first? I suspected Uncle Stanley.
I even suspected _him_. But I don’t, now. I know him too well. I didn’t
even question him about it. I didn’t want to worry him until I had
found out whether it was true or not. But it _is_ true. Who planned it?
Answer me!”

There was no concealment possible. Once she had the clue, she would
discover everything almost immediately. Not even delay was to be gained
by a lie. And with her clear eyes upon me, I could not have lied even
had I wished to do so. She might never be mine; but I was hers to do as
she wished. For a moment I hesitated, turning over in my mind the idea
of referring her to Nordenholt himself; but I abandoned that almost
instantaneously. The shock would be greater if it came from him; better
let me bear the brunt.

“Your uncle planned it. I helped him.”

“Uncle Stanley! You don’t expect me to believe that? It shows how
little you know of us both if you think....”

Her voice became tinged with doubt, and tears, too, came into it.
The evidence was too clear. Only Nordenholt could have carried out
such a gigantic scheme. And possibly she read the truth in my face as
well. For a moment she seemed frozen, a rigid and silent statue. All
the flush had left her cheeks and above the softness of her furs her
features seemed as though carved in marble. When she spoke again, she
seemed to be trying to convince herself.

“Did Uncle Stanley suggest it? I can’t believe it. It’s impossible.
He couldn’t do a thing like that. You don’t know him. He couldn’t. He
couldn’t. I know he couldn’t.”

Even in that moment of tension, I could not help reflecting how little
a woman can know of a man’s mind. Half our mental processes are shut
off from them, as probably half of theirs are closed books to us.
The great barrier of sex divides us; and our outlook upon the world
can never be the same. This girl had been in close communion with
Nordenholt through most of her life; and yet she failed to recognise at
once as his handiwork the greatest achievement to which he had put his
powers.

She wavered on her feet. I stepped forward to catch her but she struck
aside my hand. Then she seated herself on a bank. I looked away; and
when I saw her again she was sitting, her face buried in her hands,
while her fragile figure shook with suppressed sobbing.

“Elsa,” I said, “you don’t understand. It’s come upon you suddenly; and
you’ve been swept off your feet by it. But it was all for the best. It
had to be done.”

She looked up. On her face, still wet with tears, I saw only contempt
and bitterness.

“It had to be done?” she echoed. “Do you mean that forty millions of
people _had_ to be robbed of their food and left to starve? Can’t you
see what it means, or are you made of stone? Think of men seeing their
mothers dying; think of lovers watching their sweethearts starve; and
the children in their mothers’ arms. And you, _you_ say calmly that ‘It
had to be done.’ You aren’t a machine. You had the right to choose. And
you chose _that_!”

“You don’t understand,” I repeated wearily. Somehow the strain of the
situation seemed to have robbed me of my forces.

“No, I don’t understand. How can I, when it means that the men I
thought most of in the world turn out to be nothing but murderers on
a gigantic scale? I can’t believe it, even yet. Is it ... is it all a
mistake? Oh! I want to wake up out of this nightmare; I want to wake
up. Tell me it’s a nightmare and not real.”

Her voice sounded almost like that of a terrified child in the dark.

“It’s no nightmare,” I said. “Try to see what it meant. There wasn’t
enough food for us all. Somebody had to die if the rest were to be
saved.”

“And so you elected to be one of the rest? I congratulate you. A most
laudable decision, I am sure,” she said contemptuously. “It would
indeed have been a pity if you had gone short of food in order to save
the lives of a mere score of children; tiny, helpless little things
that can’t do more than cry as they starve.”

“You don’t understand,” I repeated. “There was no chance of saving them
in any case. They were doomed from the start. All we did was to ensure
that _somebody_ would survive. If the food had been evenly distributed,
we should all have died; but your uncle laid his plans to save millions
of people. Surely you can see that?”

She thought for a moment; and then attacked in a fresh direction.

“Who gave you the right to choose among them? You seem to think you
are a demi-god with the power of life and death in your hands. How
could _you_ take the responsibility of the choice? And how could you
bear to save yourself when you knew other men, and perhaps better men,
had to die? I can’t understand you. You’re so different from what I
thought you were. Somehow all my ideals seem to be breaking. You and
Uncle Stanley were the two finest men I had met. I never dreamed for a
moment that you would turn out to have feet of clay. And now....”

I tried hard to put our case before her. I explained the state of
things at the outbreak of the Famine. I gave her figures to prove that
Nordenholt had only worked to save what he could from the disaster. It
was all of no avail. I think that the picture of the starving children
filled her mind to the exclusion of almost everything else; and that
she hardly listened to what I said. Once she whispered to herself,
“Poor little mites,” just when I thought I had caught her attention at
last. I gave it up in the end. She looked away across the loch, where
the first stars were lighting up behind the hills; and we stood in
silence, so close in space, so remote from each other in our thoughts.
At last she spoke again.

“Still I don’t understand it all. I see your view; but I can’t share
it. It seems so cold-blooded, so horrible. But I can’t understand you,
just when I thought I knew you through and through. Tell me, how could
you talk of Fata Morgana and all our dreams when you _knew_ that this
terrible thing was happening? That’s what I don’t grasp.”

“I can’t explain it to you. Probably I keep my mind in compartments.
But never mind about me, Elsa; I’m done for now. I don’t matter.
But you mustn’t condemn your uncle along with me. He never led you
on to dream dreams, so you haven’t that against him. I want you to
believe me that he has been a saviour and not a destroyer, as you seem
to think. Don’t lose your faith in him until you understand. Don’t
prejudge things till you know everything. Speak to him yourself before
you come to a conclusion. He depends on you, more than you think,
perhaps. And he’s worked himself to the bone to save those few millions
that are left to us. Don’t judge him till you know everything.”

She looked at me more kindly than she had done since the beginning.

“That’s just what I should have expected from what I knew of you,
Mr. Flint. You think of him first and don’t bother about yourself.
You aren’t selfish. I can’t understand you, somehow. You seem such a
mixture; and until to-day I had no idea you were a mixture at all. It’s
all so difficult.”

She ended with a choke in her voice and turned towards the car. I
followed her and switched on the head-lights, ready to start. She
climbed into her seat; and I put the rug around her knees. Just as I
was on the point of starting, she spoke again.

“You’ve told me all I need to know; but I must hear it from Uncle
Stanley himself. I’ll go on being his secretary. I’ll do all I can to
help. But I hate you both. Yes, if this is true, I hate him too. What
else do you expect? You look on yourselves as saviours, it seems. You
may be that, but you certainly are murderers. You can’t even see why I
abhor you both. That shows you the gulf between us. Oh, I hate you, I
hate you, with this cold calculation of yours: so much food, so many
lives. Is that the way to handle human destinies? Drive on.”

A little further down the road, she spoke again in a quivering voice
which she strove to keep level and cold:

“This ends any work together. I couldn’t bear it in your case. With
Uncle Stanley it’s different. I will go back to my old place with him.
But I never want to see _you_ again, Mr. Flint. I’ve lost two illusions
to-day; and I don’t wish to be reminded of them more than I need be.
I promised him that I would always help him; and I’m going to keep my
promise, cost what it may. But I never promised _you_ anything.”

For a few minutes I drove on in silence. The whole world seemed to have
fallen around me. All that I had longed for, all my future, seemed to
have collapsed in that short afternoon. I was not angry; I don’t think
I was even completely conscious of what it all meant. I felt stunned by
an unexpected blow. At last I roused myself.

“Elsa,” I said, “do you remember the first evening we met?”

She never moved.

“You sang that dirge from Cymbeline, you remember? When you’re calmer,
I want you to think over it. I don’t want you to have any regrets. Mr.
Nordenholt can’t last for ever under this strain. Think carefully.”

She made no sign that she had heard me speak. The car whirred through
the dusk, while we sat silent and aloof from each other. It was a
return very different from that which I had hoped for when I set
out. I was almost glad when, further down the loch, the beams of the
head-lights showed us the figure of Nordenholt in the road. I pulled up
the car beside him; and Elsa leaned forward in her seat.

“Uncle Stanley, Mr. Flint has told me everything. I saw a document this
morning, B. 53. X. 15; and I forced Mr. Flint to explain what it meant.
Did you really plan this awful thing?”

I could not see Nordenholt’s face in the shadow; but his voice was as
steady as ever in his reply. Afterwards I realised that he must have
foreseen such a situation as this long before.

“It is perfectly true, Elsa. Anything that Mr. Flint has told you is
probably correct, though his connection with the matter is very slight.”

“But he says that you planned it all and that he helped you. I can’t
... I can’t quite understand it all. It’s a mistake, isn’t it? It’s not
your real plan, surely. You’re going to save all these people in the
South, aren’t you?”

“Every soul that can be saved by me will be saved, Elsa. You can count
on that.”

“But you will give them all a chance of life, won’t you? You won’t take
away all the food from them?”

“There’s no food to spare.”

For a few moments there was silence. Elsa made a sudden movement, and
I guessed that she had recoiled from Nordenholt’s touch. At last she
spoke again, in a way I had not anticipated.

“Do you remember my three wishes, Uncle Stanley? You gave me two of
them and now I want the third. You promised me the whole three; and
you never broke your word yet. I want you to save these people in the
South. That’s my third wish.”

I think it was that which made me realise the gulf that yawned between
us, more than anything that had gone before. How could she imagine
that Nordenholt’s vast machine could be deflected on account of
some childish promise? And yet her voice had taken on a new tone of
confidence; everything, she thought, was going to be set right. It
seems she must have believed, even then, that the treatment of the
South was only one of a number of alternative schemes; and that she
could force the adoption of some other, not so good, perhaps, but still
possible, as a solution. Her very belief in Nordenholt’s powers led her
to assume that he must have several plans ready pigeon-holed, and that
the rejection of one merely entailed the substitution of some other
which was already cut and dried.

“When that promise was made, Elsa, there was one condition: your wish
was not to be an impossible one. This _is_ impossible.”

“Oh!” There was such an agony in her voice that I felt it rasp my
already over-tried nerves.

“That is final, Elsa. There is nothing more to be said.”

For almost a minute she made no reply. In the silence I could feel her
struggling for control of her voice. When at last she spoke, she seemed
to have fought down her emotion, for her tone was almost indifferent:

“Very well, Uncle Stanley. You refuse to help these people; but I am
not so easy in my mind. I will go into the South myself and do my best
to help them; and if I cannot help, I can at least take the same risks
as they do. _I_ can’t stay here, well fed and well cared for when they
are suffering.”

“You will not do that, Elsa. No, I don’t mean to prevent you going if
you wish, though you have no idea what you would be going to. But I
haven’t brought you up to be a shirker; and you’re needed here. You
have the whole of your work at your finger-ends and if you go it will
dislocate that department temporarily; and we can’t afford to have even
a temporary upset at this stage. You promised you would stay, no matter
what happened; and I ask you to keep your promise now. I also tell you
that I need you, and your work here is helping to save lives in the
Area, more lives than you could ever save outside. Now do you wish to
go?”

She thought for a time, evidently weighing one thing and another. While
she was still silent, I broke in, wisely or unwisely I did not know.

“If Elsa goes into the South, Nordenholt, I go with her to look after
her. You must find someone else to take my place. I can’t let her go
alone.”

Nordenholt’s voice was as calm as ever.

“You understand, Elsa? If you go, you take away Mr. Flint; and although
I can replace you in your department, I doubt if I can get anyone
as good as he is in his line. Go South and you cripple one of the
essential parts of the Area. Stay here, and you help us all towards
safety--and we are not near the safety-line yet. Which is it to be? I
put no pressure on you. I only point out what I think is your duty.”

I had expected some angry reply, some hurried decision which might
bring disaster in its train; but luckily things took a different turn.
I believe that the strain had been too great for her. Now came the
collapse; and before I knew what had happened, she had broken into
tears. Nordenholt leaned over her, trying to comfort her; but it was
useless; and he let her work out her fit of emotion to the end. At last
she pulled herself together.

“If you are sure you need me, I will stay. But I hate you both. I hate
the work. I hate the Area and everything in it. I’ll keep my promise to
you; but things will never be the same again.... And, oh, this morning
I was so happy.”

Nordenholt climbed aboard the car without another word, and I drove on
into the dark. Now and again I heard a half-suppressed sob from the
girl at my side; but that was all. At the door of Nordenholt’s house I
stopped. Elsa left me without uttering even “Good-night.” I watched her
tall, slim figure go up the steps and disappear; and something blinded
me. I found Nordenholt standing at the side of the car.

“Poor chap,” he said, with an immense pity in his voice. “So you’re
involved too? I wish it had been otherwise. Well, well; I couldn’t hope
to keep it from her much longer at the best. But I’m very, very sorry.
She’ll take it so hard. Her type never looks at these things the way we
do.”

He paused and looked at me keenly in the light of the terrace lamps.
When he spoke once more, his voice sounded very weary.

“Stand by me, Jack. Get your part ready in time. Don’t flinch because
of this. I’m nearly at the end of my tether.”

I could not trust myself to speak. We shook hands in silence, and he
went up the steps into the house.




CHAPTER XVI

In the Nitrogen Area


I have no wish to dwell overmuch upon my own affairs in this narrative;
for they formed a mere ripple on the surface of the torrent of events
which was bearing all of us along in its course. Yet to exclude them
entirely would be to omit something which is of importance; for they
must have influenced my outlook upon the situation as a whole and
possibly made me view it through eyes different from those which I had
used before.

My dreams and desires had come to the ground almost ere they were in
being; and what made it more bitter to me was that I felt they had been
crushed, not on their merits, but merely as subsidiaries which had
shared in the collapse of a more central matter. I guessed that Elsa
had, to some extent, at any rate, shared my feelings; and it was this
which made the downfall of my hopes all the harder to bear.

Try as I would, I could find no reason behind her attitude; and even
now, looking back upon that time, I cannot appreciate her motives.
In the whole affair of the Nitrogen Area I had been guided by purely
intellectual considerations. Nordenholt himself had advised me to keep
a tight rein upon any feelings which might divert me from this course.
And I was thus, perhaps, less able to appreciate her standpoint then
than I would have been a few months earlier.

On her side emotion, and not intellect, was the guiding star. The
picture of starving millions which had broken upon her without warning
had overpowered her normally clear brain. Thus there lay between us
a gulf which nothing seemed capable of filling. I thought, and still
believe, that emotion is a will-o’-the-wisp by which alone no man can
steer a course; but it is useless to deny its power when once it has
laid its influence upon a mind. Even had she given me a chance, I doubt
if I would have tried to reason with her; and she gave me no chance. I
never saw her alone; and when she met me perforce or by accident, she
treated me practically as a stranger. All the long evenings of planning
and dreaming had gone out of our lives.

As soon as I could make an opportunity, I questioned Nordenholt as to
the state of affairs. He answered me perfectly frankly.

“Elsa has never said a word to me about the South. I think she shrinks
from the idea even in her own mind; and she shrinks from me because
of it, as I can see. But she sticks to her work, even if she loathes
coming into contact with me daily; and I keep her as hard at it as I
can. The less time she has to think, the better for her; and I don’t
mean to leave her any time to brood over the affair. Poor girl, you
mustn’t feel hard about her, Jack. I can understand what it means to
her; and to you also: and her part is the saddest. She simply hates me
now; I can feel it. And neither of us can help her, that’s the worst of
it.”

To Nordenholt himself the situation must have been a terrible one; for
Elsa was closer to him than any other human being could ever be: and
the position now was worse even than if he had lost her entirely. I am
sure that he had never felt anything more than affection for her; but
she had become more to him, perhaps, just for that reason. I often used
to think that they formed natural complements for one another: he with
his great build and powerful personality, she with her slender grace
and her character, strong as his own, perhaps, but in a far different
sphere.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was about this period _B. diazotans_ began to die out from the
face of the world which it had wrecked. I have already told how
Nordenholt had given me the news when it was still a possibility of
the future. From their studies upon isolated colonies of the microbe,
the bacteriologists had predicted its end. They had found a rapid
falling-off in its power of multiplication; and the segregation of a
number of the pests soon led to their perishing.

When it became clear that _B. diazotans_ was doomed, Nordenholt began
to send out scouting aeroplanes to collect samples of soil from various
districts and bring them back to the laboratories of the Nitrogen Area
where they could be examined. All told the same tale of extinction.
Gradually, the aeroplanes were sent further and further on their
journeys into the stricken lands; and at last it became clear that as
far as a large part of Europe was concerned, the terror was at an end.
The soil, of course, was completely ruined; but there was little to
fear in the way of a recrudescence of the blight.

It seems, nowadays, very strange that we had not already foreseen this
result; for the cause of it lay upon the surface of things. Once the
denitrifying bacteria had destroyed all the nitrogen compounds in the
soil, there was nothing left for them to live upon; and they perished
of starvation in their turn, following in the track of all the larger
organisms which their depredations had ruined.

As soon as Nordenholt had established the definite decease of _B.
diazotans_ in the accessible parts of the European continent, he sent
out the news to the whole remaining world with which he was in touch
through his wireless installation; and after some time had been spent
in various centres in which the remnants of humanity were gathered
together, word came back from the most widely-separated areas that
all over the world _B. diazotans_ had ceased to exist. In many places
it had even left no traces of any kind behind it; for as some of the
bacteria died their bodies, being nitrogenous, had served as food for
those still living; until at last the merest trace of their organisms
was all that could be found in the soil.

So this plague passed from the world as swiftly as it came; and its
passing left the future more certain than seemed possible in the early
stages of its career.

       *       *       *       *       *

But if our gravest danger was thus removed, we in the Nitrogen Area
had other troubles which were nearer to us at that time. In his very
earliest calculations, Nordenholt, as I have told, had foreseen that
disease would be prevalent owing to the monotony of the diet which was
entailed by our conditions. The lack of fresh vegetables and the use
of salted meat gave rise to scurvy, which we endeavoured to ward off
by manufacturing a kind of synthetic lime juice for the population.
The success of this was not complete, however, and the disease caused
a very marked falling-off in the productive power of our labour. For
a time it seemed as though we were actually losing ground in our
factories, just at the moment when the destruction of the denitrifying
bacteria had raised our hopes to a high degree.

Nor was scurvy our only trouble. The debilitated health of the people
laid them open to all sorts of minor diseases, with their concomitant
decline in physical energy. Of these, the most serious was a new type
of influenza which ravaged the Nitrogen Area and caused thousands
of deaths. Here again, a fall in output coincided with the growth
and spread of the disease; but since the death-roll was a heavy one,
the number of mouths diminished markedly as well; so that it almost
appeared as though the two factors might balance each other. If there
were less food in the future, there would be fewer people to consume it.

I think the period of the influenza epidemic was one of the most trying
of all in the Nitrogen Area. As the reported cases increased in number,
individual medical attention became impossible; for many doctors died
of the scourge, and we could not risk the total annihilation of the
medical profession. Treatment of the disease was standardised as far as
possible and committed to the care of rapidly-trained laymen. Possibly
this led to many deaths which might have been avoided with more
efficient methods; but it was the only means which would leave us with
a supply of trained medical men who would be required in the future.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the heels of the influenza epidemic, and possibly produced by it,
came a period of labour unrest in the Area. It was only what I had
always anticipated; for the strain which we were putting upon the
workers had now increased almost to the breaking point. There was no
way out of the difficulty, however; for unless the work was done, the
safety of the whole community would be imperilled. None the less, I
could not help finding excuses in my mind for those toiling millions.
To them, the connection between the factories and the food-supply must
have been difficult to trace; for they could hardly follow all the
ramifications in the lines between the coal in the pits and the next
harvest which was not even sown.

Nordenholt succeeded in stifling most of the disaffection by means of
a fresh newspaper campaign of propaganda. He had given his journals
a long period of rest in this direction, purposely, I believe, in
order that he might utilise them more effectively when this new
emergency arose. But though he certainly produced a marked effect by
his efforts, there remained among the workers an under-current of
discontent which could not be exorcised. It was not a case of open
disaffection which could have been dealt with by drastic methods; the
Intelligence section were unable to fasten upon any clear cases of what
in the old days would have been called sedition. It was rather a change
for the worse in the general attitude and outlook of the labouring part
of the community: an affair of atmosphere which left nothing solid
for Nordenholt to grasp firmly. Though I was out of direct touch with
affairs at the time, even I could not help the feeling that things were
out of joint. The demeanour of the workers in the streets was somehow
different from what it had been in the earlier days. There was a
sullenness and a tinge of aggressiveness in the air.

And in Nordenholt himself I noticed a corresponding change. He seemed
to me by degrees to be losing his impersonal standpoint. The new
situation appeared to be making him more and more dictatorial as time
went by. He had always acted as a Dictator; but in his personal contact
with men he had preserved an attitude of aloofness and certainty which
had taken the edge off the Dictatorship. Now, I noticed, his methods
were becoming more direct; and he was making certain test-points into
trials of strength, open and avowed, between himself and those who
opposed him. He always won, of course; but it was a different state of
things from that which had marked the inception of the Nitrogen Area.
There was more of the master and less of the comrade about him now.

Yet, looking back upon it all, I cannot but admit that his methods
were justified. The disaffection was noticeable; and only a strong
hand could put it down. Nordenholt’s tactics were probably the best
under the circumstances; but nevertheless they brought him into a
fresh orientation with regard to the workers. Instead of leading them,
he began more and more openly to drive them along the road which he
wished them to take.

       *       *       *       *       *

I see that I have omitted to mention the attempted invasion of the
Nitrogen Area from the coasts of Europe which took place just before
this. To tell the truth, it was so complete a fiasco that it had almost
passed from my mind; but a few words may be devoted to it here.

When the Famine had done its work in Germany there still remained for
a time a number of inhabitants who had seized the food in the country
by force and who were thus enabled to prolong their existence while
their fellows died out. They belonged mainly to the old military class.
When they in turn ran short of supplies, their natural thought was to
plunder someone weaker than themselves; and learning of the existence
of the Clyde Valley colony, they determined that it furnished the most
probable source of loot. Apparently they imagined that the Fleet in the
Firth of Forth was deserted; for in order to excite no suspicion they
had kept their airships at long-range in the reconnaissances which they
undoubtedly made in advance of their actual onset; and it seems most
probable that they imagined they had nothing to fear beyond the risks
incident to the invasion of an unprotected country. At least, so it
appears to me; and there were no survivors of the expedition from whom
the truth might have been discovered.

Under cover of night, they seem to have put most of their men on board
merchant ships and sailed for the British coast at a time which would
have brought them off the land in the early hours of the morning when,
no doubt, they expected to get ashore without attracting attention,
since they must have supposed all the coastal inhabitants had perished.
Actually, however, their manœuvres had been followed by the seaplane
patrol which cruised in the North Sea; and as soon as they left port,
the Fleet was got into a state of preparedness. The two forces met
somewhere on the high seas; the German squadron, utterly defenceless,
was sunk without any resistance worthy of the name.

This was the only actual attempt at invasion which the Nitrogen Area
had to repel; for Nordenholt’s aeroplane propaganda had checked any
desire on the part of the survivors of the Famine in this country to
approach the Clyde Valley under any conditions.

       *       *       *       *       *

Though Nordenholt succeeded in suppressing the outward manifestations
of labour unrest at this period, I think it is fairly clear that he
was unable to reach down to the sources of the trouble. At the root of
things lay a vague dissatisfaction with general conditions, which it
was impossible to exorcise; and this peculiar spirit manifested itself
in all sorts of sporadic forms which gave a good deal of trouble before
they could be got under control.

For example, at about this time, there was an outbreak of something
akin to the dancing mania which I had seen in London. It began by a
rapid extension of normal dancing in the halls of the city; but from
this it soon passed into revelry in the public squares at night; and
finally took the form of corybantic displays in the streets. As soon
as it began to demoralise the people, Nordenholt applied the drastic
treatment of a fire-hose to the groups of dancers; and, between this
method and ridicule, he succeeded in stamping out the disease before it
had attained dangerous proportions.

But this was only one of the symptoms of the grave troubles which were
menacing the success of Nordenholt’s plans. I do not doubt that he had
foreseen the condition into which affairs had drifted; but it seems to
me that he recognised the impossibility of eradicating the roots of the
discontent. Its origin lay in the actual material and moral states of
affairs; and without abandoning his whole scheme it was impossible to
change these things.

I know that during these months he stiffened the discipline of the
Labour Defence Force considerably in view of eventualities; and he had
frequent conferences with the officers in command of its various units.
I guessed, from what I saw, that in future he intended to drive the
population into safety if he could not lead them there; and I confess
that at times I took a very gloomy view of our chances of success.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was during this trying period, I think, that Nordenholt’s young
men were his greatest source of strength. He was always in touch
with them; and in some way he seemed to draw encouragement from them
while spurring them on to further efforts. They seemed to lean on him
and yet to support him in his work; and often I felt that without
some comradeship as this our whole plans would have been doomed to
failure. The Nordenholt Gang practically occupied all the posts of any
responsibility in the Nitrogen Area; and this, I expect, rendered the
working of the machine much smoother than it would otherwise have been.

Since my new work brought me into touch with many fresh departments, my
acquaintance with Nordenholt’s men increased; and I was amazed to find
the ramifications of his system and the super-excellence of the human
material in which he had dealt. They were all young, hardly any were
over thirty-five and most were younger; yet they seemed to have a fund
of moral courage and self-reliance which struck me especially in those
dark times. They never seemed to doubt that in the end things would
come right. It was not that they blindly trusted in Nordenholt to the
exclusion of common sense: for they all seemed to face the facts quite
squarely. But behind their even weighings of the situation I detected
an unspoken yet whole-hearted belief that Nordenholt would bring us
through without a hitch. Hero-worship has its uses, when it is soundly
based; and all of them, it was easy to see, had made Nordenholt their
hero. When I thought over the many-sided nature of their activities and
the differences of personality among them, I could not help finding
my view of Nordenholt himself expanding. They were all picked men,
far above the average; their minds worked on different lines; their
interests were as divergent as the Poles: and yet, one and all, they
recognised Nordenholt as their master. I do not mean that he excelled
them in their own special lines: for I doubt, in many cases, whether
he had even a grip of the elements of the subjects which they had made
their own. But he had been able to impress upon all these various
intellects the feeling that he was in a class by himself; and that
effect implied immense personality in him.

Despite their widely different fields of activity, there was a very
strong _esprit de corps_ among them all; and it was not for some time
that I felt myself to be received on equal terms with the rest. I think
they felt that I was outside their particular circle, at first. But the
real passport into it was efficiency; and when I had had time to show
my power of organisation, they accepted me at once as one of themselves.

Of them all, I think Henley-Davenport interested me most, though I
can hardly put into words the reasons which led to this attraction. I
never learned how Nordenholt had discovered him originally; but I found
that when Henley-Davenport began to open up the subject of induced
radioactivity, Nordenholt had stepped in and bought up for him a huge
supply of various radioactive materials which he required in his work
and which he had despaired of acquiring on account of their enormous
cost.

What struck me most about him was his fearlessness. Once he gave me,
incidentally in the course of a talk upon something else, a suggestion
of the risks which his work entailed. It seemed to me that I would have
faced half a dozen other kinds of death rather than that one. Purely
as a matter of physiological interest, he told me that the effect of
radioactive materials on a large scale upon the human body would exceed
the worst inventions of mediæval torturers.

“The radiations, you know,” he said, drawing at his cigarette. “The
radiations have a knack of destroying tissue; but they don’t produce
immediate effects. The skin remains quite healthy, to all appearances,
for days after the damage is done. Then you get festering sores
appearing on the affected parts.

“Well, on a large scale, the affected parts will be the whole surface
of the body; so that in itself will be pretty bad, as you can see. Poor
old Job will have to take a back seat after this.

“Then, again, I expect enormous quantities of radioactive gas will be
evolved; and probably one will breathe some of it into one’s lungs.
The result of that will be rather worse than the external injuries, of
course. I doubt if a man will last half an hour under that treatment;
but that half-hour will be the limit in pain.”

“Can’t you use a mask or some lead protection?” I asked. “Or could you
not fix up the whole thing in a bomb-proof case which would keep the
rays from things outside?”

“Well, that’s the first thing one thinks of, naturally; but to tell the
truth it’s impracticable for various reasons. Some of them are implicit
in the nature of the processes I’m using; but even apart from that,
look at the state of affairs when the thing does go off with a bang. It
will be one of the biggest explosions, considering the amounts I have
to use; and if I’m going to be flung about like a child’s toy, I prefer
to fly light and not have a sheet of lead mail to go along with me and
crush me when I strike anything. As to a mask, nothing would stick on.
You would simply be asking to have your face driven in, if you wore
anything of the kind.

“No, I’ve been lucky so far. I’ve only lost three fingers in a minor
burst-up. And I’m going to stake on my luck rather than risk certain
damage. But if I can only pull it off, Flint.... Nordenholt thinks a
lot of it; and I don’t want to disappoint him if I can help it. If I do
go to glory, I’ll at least leave something behind me which will make it
more than worth while.”

Nordenholt, I learned later, _did_ “think a lot of it.” I spoke to him
on the subject one day; and I was astonished to find how much stress he
laid on the Henley-Davenport work.

“You don’t realise it, Jack; but it’s just on the cards that our
whole future turns on Henley-Davenport. I see things coming. They’re
banking up on the horizon already; and if the storm bursts, nothing but
Henley-Davenport can save us. And the worst of it is that he doesn’t
seem to be getting ahead much at present. It’s no fault of his. No
one could work harder; and the other two--Struthers and Anderson--are
just as keen. But it doesn’t come out, somehow. And the tantalising
thing is that he has proved it _can_ be done; only at present it isn’t
economical. He gets energy liberated, all right; but where we need a
ton of gunpowder, he can only give us a percussion cap, so to speak. If
only he can hit on it in time....”

       *       *       *       *       *

For my own part, that period was depressing. All the joy had gone out
of my work. Only after I had lost her did I realise how great a part
Elsa had played in my planning of the future. Her disappearance cast
a shade over all my schemes; and soon I gave up entirely the side of
the reconstruction in which we had collaborated. I could not bear to
think over again the lines along which we had worked so intimately in
common. I simply put them out of my mind and concentrated my attention
exclusively upon the material aspects of the problem.

I have said this quite freely; though possibly the reader may look
upon me as a weak man for allowing such factors to enter into so vast
a matter. Had I been superhuman, no doubt, I could have shut my mind
to the past; and gone forward without flinching. But I never imagined
that I was a super-man; and at this time especially I felt anything but
superhuman. I was wounded to the quick; and all I desired was to avoid
the whole subject of Elsa in my thoughts. And when I come to think of
it, it seems quite probable that I did my best work in this way. If I
had continued to dream of Fata Morgana and all its wonders, I should
simply have drugged myself with a mental opiate and my work would have
suffered on other sides.

Elsa’s whole attitude to Nordenholt and myself had been a puzzle. I
could not understand why she should have been so bitter against us; for
try as I could, I failed to see anything discreditable in our doings.
The logic of events had thrust us into the position we occupied, it
seemed to me; and I could not appreciate her view of the situation.

Nordenholt kept silence on the subject for some days after our trip
up Loch Lomond; but he finally gave me his views in reply to urgent
questioning.

“I think it’s something like this, Jack: from what I know of Elsa in
the past, she’s got a vivid imagination, very vivid; and it happens to
be the pictorial imagination. Give her a line of description, and she
has the power of calling up the scene in her mind, filling in missing
details and producing something which impresses her profoundly.”

“Well, I don’t see what that’s got to do with calling me a brute,” I
said. “It doesn’t seem to help me much.”

“It’s quite clear to me. The few details she got from that confounded
missorted form were enough to start her imagination. She instinctively
called up a vision of starving people, suffering children and all the
rest of the affairs in the South. And you know, Jack, these visions
of hers are wonderfully clear and sharp. It wasn’t you who built Fata
Morgana on these afternoons; it was her imagination that did it and you
followed in her track.”

“Yes, you’re quite right, Nordenholt. I don’t think I would have so
much as thought of dream-cities if she hadn’t led the way. And she
certainly had the knack of making them seem concrete.”

“Very well; assume she had this vision of starving humanity. You know
her type of mind--everything for others? What sort of effect would that
picture produce upon her? A tremendous revulsion of feeling, eh? Her
whole emotional side would be up in arms; and she has strong emotions,
though she doesn’t betray them. Her intellectual side didn’t get a
chance against the combination of that picture and her ideals. It was
simply swept out at once.

“But in spite of all her emotions, she’s level-headed. Sooner or later
she’ll begin to think more calmly. And she’s very just, too. That ought
to help, I think. Oh, I don’t despair about her; or rather, I wouldn’t
despair about her if it weren’t for some things that are coming yet.
I’m not going to buoy you up with any hopes, Jack, for I believe in
dealing straight. I can’t let you hope for much; we’ve both lost
enormously in her eyes. But I’ve seen cases in which her imagination
misled her before and her reason came out in the end. It may be so this
time. But don’t expect anything, Jack; and don’t try to gain anything.
She’s a very straight girl, and if she finds she has been wrong she
won’t hesitate to come and admit it to you without any encouragement
on your part. But it has been a horrible affair for her; and you must
remember that, if you think hardly of her at times.”

“_I_ think hardly of her! You don’t know me, Nordenholt, or you
wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, for both our sakes, I hope her intellect will get control of her
feelings. I hate to see her going about her work and know that she has
lost all faith in me now. She was the one creature in the world that
loved me, you know, Jack; and it’s hard.”

Then he laughed contemptuously, as though at his own weakness.

“It’s quite evident I’m not the man I was, Jack. But somehow, in this
affair we’re both in the same boat to some extent; and I let that slip
out. You see that Elsa hasn’t the monopoly of an emotional temperament!”

       *       *       *       *       *

All great undertakings with uncertain ends appear to run the same
course. First there is the period of inception, a time of high hopes
and eager toil and self-sacrifice; then, as the novelty wears away,
there follows a stage in which the first enthusiasm has died down and
an almost automatic persistence takes the place of the great emotional
driving-force of the early days; later still, when enthusiasm has
vanished, there comes a time when the meaner side of human nature
reasserts itself. My narrative has reached the point of junction
between these last two divisions; and the pages which I have yet to
write must perforce deal mainly with the troubles which beset us in the
period of lassitude and nerve-strain which followed naturally upon the
other phases of the situation.

I have thrown this chapter into a series of isolated sections; for I
believe that such a treatment best suggests the state of things at the
time. We had lost the habit of connected thought, as far as the greater
events were concerned. Our daily round absorbed our attention; and it
was only occasionally that we were jarred out of our grooves by some
event of salient importance.

The whole atmosphere which surrounded us was depressing; and it slowly
and surely made its impression upon our minds and formed the background
upon which our thoughts moved. The gloom of the smoke-filled sky had
its reaction upon our psychology. The old sunlight seemed to have
vanished from our lives. And at this time we were all beginning to pay
the price for the feverish activity of the earlier days in the Area.
Our work, whether mental or physical, wearied us sooner than before;
and its monotony irritated our nerves. Such recreations as we had--and
they were few enough at this time--failed to relieve the tension. Among
the labouring classes, in particular, this condition of lassitude
showed itself in a marked degree.

Nordenholt, with his finger on the pulse of things, grew more and more
anxious as time went on. On the surface, he still appeared optimistic;
but from chance phrases here and there I deduced that his uneasiness
was increasing; and that he anticipated something which I myself could
not foresee. Knowing what I do now, it seems to me that in those days
I must have been blind indeed not to understand what was before us;
but I frankly confess that I missed the many signs which lay in our
path from day to day. When the disaster came upon us, it took me almost
completely by surprise.




CHAPTER XVII

Per Iter Tenebricosum


After Elsa had rejected any further collaboration with me, I was forced
at times to consult Nordenholt upon certain points in my schemes which
seemed to me to require the criticism of a fresh mind; and I thus fell
into the habit of seeing him in his office at intervals.

“Things are in a bad way, Jack,” he said to me at the end of one of
these interviews. “You don’t see everything that’s going on, of course;
so you couldn’t be expected to be on the alert for it; but it’s only
right to warn you that we’re coming up against the biggest trouble
we’ve had yet in the Area.”

“Of course things are anything but satisfactory, I know,” I replied.
“The output’s going down and there seems to be no way of screwing the
men up to increase it. But is it really fatal, do you think? We seem
even now to have the thing well in hand.”

I glanced up at the great Nitrogen Curve above the fireplace. The red
and green lines upon it appeared to me to show a state of affairs
which, if not all that we could wish, was at least satisfactory as
compared with what might have been. Nordenholt followed my glance.

“That practical trend of mind which you have, Jack, sometimes keeps
you from seeing realities. What lies at the root of the trouble just
now isn’t output or slackness or anything like that. These are only
symptoms of the real disease. It’s not in the concrete things that
I see the danger, except indirectly. The true peril comes from the
intangibles; ideas, states of mind, sub-conscious reflections. I’ve
told you often that the material world is only the outward show which
hardly matters: the real things are the minds of the men who live in
it. It’s their movements you need to look at if you want to gauge
affairs.”

“I stick to what I know, Nordenholt, as I’ve often told you. I’m no
psychologist; and I have to look on the material side because I’m out
of my depth in the other. But let’s hear what you have in your mind
about the state of affairs.”

“Well, you’ve been busy enough with your own work; so probably you
haven’t had time to observe how things are going; but I can put the
thing in a nutshell. We’ve weathered a good many difficulties; but
now we’re up against the biggest of them all. I see all the signs of
a revival in the near future--and it isn’t going to be a Christian
revival. It spells trouble of the worst description.”

Now that my attention had been drawn to the point, a score of incidents
flashed across my mind in confirmation of what he said. I had noticed
an increased attendance at the meetings of street-preachers; and also
a growth in the number of the preachers themselves. As I went about
the city in the evenings I had seen in many places knots of people
assembled round some speaker who, with emotion-contorted visage, was
striving to move them by his eloquence.

Once I had even stopped for a few minutes to listen to a sermon being
preached outside the Central Station by the Reverend John P. Wester;
and I still remembered the effect which it had produced upon me. He
was a tall man with a flowing red beard and a voice which enabled him
to make himself heard to huge audiences in the open air. He repelled
me by the cloudiness of his utterances--I hate loose thinking--and
also by the touch of fanaticism which clung to his discourses; for I
instinctively detest a fanatic. Yet in spite of this I felt strangely
attracted by him. He had the gift of gripping his hearers; and I could
see how he played upon them as a great musician plays upon a favourite
instrument. Remotely he reminded me of Nordenholt in the way in which
he seemed to know by instinct the points to which his rhetorical
attacks should be directed; but the resemblance between the two men
ended at this. It was always reason to which Nordenholt appealed in
the end; whilst emotional chords were the ones which the Reverend John
fingered with success.

“Now you’ve told me, I believe you’re right,” I said. “I _have_ seen
signs of something like a revival. The crowds seem to be taking a
greater interest in religion.”

“I wish they would,” Nordenholt returned, abruptly. “They won’t get it
from the Reverend John. He’s out for something quite different. It’s
just what I feared would happen, sooner or later. It always crops up
under conditions like those we are in just now. We’ve strained the
human machine to its utmost in all this work; and we’re on the edge of
possibilities in the way of collective hysteria.

“Now that man Wester is at the root of half the trouble we are having
just now. I don’t mean that he is creating it; nothing of that sort:
but his personality forms a centre round which the thing collects.
The thing itself is there anyway: but if it weren’t for him and some
others, it would remain fluid; it wouldn’t become really dangerous.
But Wester is a fanatic and with his oratorical powers he carries
the weaker people off their feet, especially the women. He’s got a
following. What worries me is, where he’s going to lead them. He’s got
a kink in him. Still, I’m trusting that we may be able to weather the
thing without using force even now. But if he goes too far, I’ll break
him like _that_.”

He tapped a stick of sealing wax on his desk and broke it in two.
Again I reflected how unlike this was to the Nordenholt I had known at
first, the man who could unfold huge plans without so much as a gesture
to help out his meaning. He must have read the thought in my eyes, for
he laughed, half at himself, I think.

“Quite right, Jack. These theatrical touches seem to be growing on me,
of late. I must really try to cure myself. But, all the same, I mean
to keep my eye on the Reverend John. If he sets up as a prophet--and I
expect he will do that one of these days--I’ll take the risk and put
him down. But it’s a tricky business, I can tell you. Until he actually
becomes dangerous, I shall let him go on.”

It was only natural, after that, for me to take more interest in the
career of the Reverend John. I even attended one of his open-air
meetings from start to finish; and I was still more impressed by his
command over his hearers. The material of his sermons seemed to me
commonplace in the extreme: it was not by the novelty of his subjects
but by his personal force that he impressed his audiences and raised
them to a state of exaltation. Zion, the River, The Tree of Life, Eden,
the loosing of burdens, rest and joy eternal: all the old phrases
were utilised. From what I heard of his preaching, it seemed to me
innocuous. A brief time of suffering and sorrow upon earth and then
the heavens would open and the Elect would enter into their endless
happiness: these appeared to be the elements of the creed which he
expounded; and I could see little reason for Nordenholt’s anxiety.

At last, however, I began to notice something novel in the sermons. The
change came so gradually that I could hardly be sure when it began.
Probably he had opened up his fresh line so tentatively that I had not
observed it at the time; and it was only after he had already been
changing step by step in his subject that I became clearly conscious of
his new tone.

With the greatest skill he contrived to use the old expressions while
inflecting them with a fresh intention. At last, however, there could
be no doubt as to his meaning. It was no longer Christianity that he
preached, but a kind of bastard Buddhism. Up to that point in his
career he had spoken of earthly affairs as a trial through which we
must pass in order to attain to bliss in the Hereafter; but in his
newer phase the things of the material world became entirely secondary.

Eternal rest, eternal joy, eternal peace: these were his main themes;
and to the exhausted and nerve-racked population they had an attraction
of the most subtle kind. The Reverend John was a psychologist like
Nordenholt, though he worked in a narrower groove; and he well knew how
to utilise the levers of the human consciousness. Eternal rest! What
more attractive prospect could be held out to that toil-worn race?

Slowly, with the most gradual of transitions, he began to assume the
mantle of a prophet; and with that phase new names began to emerge in
his discourses. The Four Truths, the Middle Path, the Five Hindrances,
Arahatship, Karma: these cropped up from time to time in sermons which
were daily becoming wilder in their phraseology.

I have no wish to be unfair to the Reverend John. He was a fanatic;
and no fanatic is entirely sane. I am sure, also, that in the earlier
stages of his campaign he strove merely for the spiritual good of the
people as he understood it. But it is necessary to say also that I
believe he became crazed in the end; and that the ultimate effect of
his preaching led us to the very edge of disaster. It is not for me to
weigh or judge him; he preferred his visions to material safety; whilst
my own mind is concerned more with the things of this earth than with
what may come later.

His preaching now passed into a stage where even I could appreciate
its dangerous character. More and more, his sermons took the form of
belittlings of the material world; while the joys of eternal life were
held up in comparison. It was not long until he was openly questioning
whether our human existence was worth prolonging at all. Would it
not be better, he asked, to throw off these shackles of the Flesh at
once rather than live for a few years longer amid the sorrows and
temptations of this world? Why not discard this earthly mantle and
enter at once into Nirvana?

This appeared to me a mere preaching of suicide; but if his followers
chose to adopt his suggestions, it seemed to me a matter for
themselves. I had always regarded suicide as the back-door out of life;
though I had never under-estimated the courage of those who turn its
handle. Yet it seemed to me evidence of a certain want of toughness of
fibre, a lack of fitness to survive; and, personally, I had no desire
to retain in the world anyone who seemed unable to bear its strains.

His next phase of development, however, opened my eyes. By this time he
had become a great power among the people. Many a king has been treated
with less reverence than his followers showed to him. Crowds flocked
to his meetings, standing thickly even when they stretched far beyond
the reach of that magnificent voice. In the streets he was saluted as
though he were a superhuman agent. There were attempts made to get him
to touch the sick in the hope that he might heal them.

From afar, Nordenholt watched all this rising surge of emotion. In some
ways, the two men resembled each other; but their motives were wide
apart as the Poles. Both had their ideals, higher than the normal;
but these ideals were in deadly antagonism to each other. Both, it is
possible, were right; but the clash of right with right is the highest
form of tragedy; and collision between them was inevitable.

“The Reverend John has been a great disappointment to me, Jack,”
Nordenholt admitted to me one day. “That man has the makings of a
great demagogue or a great saint in him; and it seems to me that the
spin of the coin has gone against me, for I thought the saint would
come uppermost. He isn’t as big as I thought he was. His head has
been turned by all this adulation; and unless I am mistaken again we
shall find him becoming a public danger before very long. He thinks he
has his own work to do, preparing for the Kingdom of Heaven; and in
doing that he seems to sweep aside all earthly affairs as trifles. He
despises them. I don’t. To me, he seems to be like a child in a game
who won’t abide by the rules. His heaven may be all right; but if it
is to be attained by shirking one’s work on earth--not _striving_ to
live--it seems to me a poor business. I think life is important, or it
wouldn’t exist; and I’m working to keep it in existence. He seems to
believe it is of no value, if he really means what he says. We can’t
agree, that’s evident.”

It was not long before the Reverend John’s campaign filled even my
mind with apprehension. His style of preaching changed and grew more
incoherent; his phraseology became wilder; and a minatory tone crept
into his sermons. And the tremendous personality of the speaker,
coupled with all the art of the orator, made even these obscure ravings
powerful to influence the minds of his hearers.

He began to speak of curses from heaven upon a generation which had
forgotten the right path. The Famine was a sign that all life was to be
swept from the earth’s face. And thence he passed to the proposition
that any struggling against the Famine was a hindrance to the workings
of the universe.

I think that it was about this time that he discarded ordinary clothes
and began to go about clad in a curious garment manufactured from
the skin of some animal. Except for his fiery beard, he recalled the
sandal-shod John the Baptist represented in old illustrated Bibles. Nor
was he alone in this fashion: some of his more prominent adherents also
adopted it, though in their cases the results were not so imposing.

And now things moved rapidly towards their end.

The Reverend John preached daily in the streets, predicting a universal
entry into Nirvana. His curses against those who worked for the
physical salvation of the people to the detriment of their Karma became
louder and more frequent; and it was not long until he spent most of
his energies in comminations. From cursings, he passed to threats; and
his attacks upon Nordenholt grew in vehemence day by day. And still
Nordenholt, to my growing wonder, held his hand and forbore to strike.

By this time the religious mania was spreading rapidly throughout
the population of the Area. The skin-clad followers of the Reverend
John ran nightly through the streets crying that the Great Day was at
hand and calling upon the people to repent of their sins and turn to
righteousness. Strange scenes were witnessed; and stranger doctrines
preached. It was a weird time.

Meanwhile, the preaching of the revivalist was becoming more and
more exalted. He named himself a Prophet, the last and the greatest.
He began to be more definite in his predictions; events which he
foreshadowed were foretold as coming to pass at stated dates. At last
he gave out that three days later he and his followers would publicly
ascend to heaven in a cloud of glory; and that the world of earthly
things would pass away as he did so.

And still Nordenholt held his hand. I could not understand it; for
by this time I had seen where the teaching of the Reverend John was
leading us. Work was slowing down in the factories; crowds of all
classes were spending their whole time following their Prophet;
and the mere numbers of them were becoming a serious menace to the
safety of the Area. At last I became so anxious on the subject that I
went to consult Nordenholt on the matter. I had begun to doubt if he
appreciated the gravity of the situation.

I found him sitting before the fire in his office, smoking and gazing
before him as though wrapped in his reflections.

“Look here, Nordenholt,” I said. “I suppose you grasp the seriousness
of affairs nowadays? Isn’t it about time something was done? It seems
to me that you’ll need to grasp this nettle before long anyway. Why let
it grow any bigger?”

“Afraid I’m losing my grip, eh? Not yet, Jack, not yet awhile. But I
will _grasp_ it before long. I’m only waiting the proper moment. I’ve
waited for weeks; and now I think it’s nearly due at last.”

“But the man’s insane, Nordenholt. You see that, don’t you? Why wait
any longer. Grab him now and be done with it--at least that’s what I
should do if I were in charge.”

“No, I’m going to give him three days more. If I interfered now, it
would spoil everything. Wait till he has seen his prophecy fail, and
then we can tackle him.”

“I don’t see any use waiting; but I suppose you know best.”

“I do know best, Jack, believe me. Come back here in three days, at
half-past eleven, and you’ll see my methods. I’m going to teach these
people a lesson this time.”

He leaned back in his chair and fixed his eyes on the old stone image
of the Pope’s head which, under its glass bell, forms part of the
mantelpiece.

“What differences there are in the way religion works on a man, Jack.
There was an old chap in the dark ages, that Pope; and he believed in
spreading the light by education. He founded the University here. And
then you have this fanatic to-day whose one idea seems to be to reduce
everything to chaos again. What a difference! And yet each of them
thinks that he is inspired to do the right thing in his day.”

He threw away the end of his cigar and rose.

“Come back in three days, Jack. You’ll see it all then. I needn’t
explain it now.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The events of the following two days filled me with uneasiness; and I
began to fear that for once Nordenholt had erred in his calculations.
The tumult and agitation centring around the figure of the revivalist
increased; his preaching became more and more menacing; and it seemed
to me that he had been allowed too much rope. By this time he was
quite frankly attacking the whole scheme of the Nitrogen Area as an
act of impiety which would call down the wrath of the Divinity in the
immediate future. And mingled with these cursings he poured forth his
prophecies, which grew hourly more detailed. He and his Elect would
ascend into the sky at noon, he declared; and that all men might see
this come about, he proposed to take his stand by the Roberts’ statue
in Kelvingrove Park, from which eminence he would be visible to the
assembled crowds.

Rumours ran through the Area, growing wilder and yet more wild as they
passed from lip to lip. Even the most unimaginative of the population
felt the strange electric power which seemed to flow out from the
revivalist; and the tales of his doings were magnified and distorted
out of all semblance of reality. Just as Nordenholt had predicted, all
the formless unrest of the Area crystallised round the personality of
the preacher and took shape and substance. Work was abandoned by the
greater part of the Area labour; and the factories, usually thronged by
shift after shift, remained almost untenanted during those two days in
which the populace awaited the promised miracle.

Meanwhile the followers of the revivalist redoubled their efforts and
their conduct grew less and less restrained. The labourers who remained
at work were assaulted by bands of these fanatics, and driven from the
doors of the factories. Order seemed to have vanished from the Area;
for I found that Nordenholt had withdrawn the Labour Defence Force
entirely from the streets, allowing the madmen to do their will. It
seemed as though the Area were being permitted to relapse into chaos.

The uninterrupted preaching of the revivalist had wrought the whole
population into a state of strained expectation. Even those who scoffed
at his claims were affected by the atmosphere of the time; and there
was in most minds an uneasy questioning: “Suppose that it should all be
true?”

       *       *       *       *       *

At half-past eleven, I went to Nordenholt’s office as I had promised.
He was alone, seated at his huge desk. The usual mass of papers had
been cleared away and I noticed that their place had been taken by
a small piece of apparatus like a telephone in some respects and an
ordinary electric bell-push on a wooden stand. Temporary wires ran from
these to the window.

“Come in, Jack. You’re just in time for the curtain.”

“It seems to me, Nordenholt, that the curtain ought to have been rung
down on this thing long ago. You’ve waited far too long, if you ask me.”

“I don’t think I’ve miscalculated. And to tell you the truth, Jack,
this is the biggest thing I’ve had to think out so far. It’s make or
break with us this time; and we’ve never been as near disaster before.
But I’ve thought it out; and I believe I’m right. Have a cigar.”

He pushed a box across to me and I cut and lit one mechanically.

“This thing here,” he tapped the instrument, “is a dictaphone. The
transmitter’s fixed up in the statue over there.”

He nodded in the direction of the Park below our windows. I got up and
looked out. As far as my view reached, the ground was concealed by a
closely-packed crowd of people, all standing motionless and intent upon
the group on the open space around the statue. There had been some
singing of hymns earlier in the morning; but now the vast concourse had
fallen silent as their expectation rose to fever-heat and the hour of
the miracle drew near.

“I’m going to give him every chance,” said Nordenholt’s voice behind
me. “Let him pull off his miracle if he can. If he can’t, then I expect
trouble; and at the first word of danger I hear, I’ll settle with
him at last. I don’t mind his preaching suicide; but if he starts to
threaten the work of the Area, it will be on his own head.”

The three-quarters had struck from the great bells above our heads;
and, a few minutes later, Nordenholt switched on the dictaphone.
Suddenly the clarion voice of the revivalist seemed to fill the room in
which we stood.

“My brothers! In a few brief moments I shall leave you, ascending in
glory to the skies. While I am yet with you, heed my words. Turn from
this idle show which blinds your eyes. Turn from this heavy labour and
unceasing toil. Turn from this valley of sin and sorrow. Turn from the
lusts of the flesh and the lures of material things. Long and weary has
been the way; life after life have we suffered, but when we pass into
Nirvana there is rest for you, rest for each of you, eternal rest! O my
brothers, all that are worn with the bearing of burdens, all that are
taxed beyond your powers, all that are a-faint and borne down, follow
after me into Nirvana, where none shall be a-weary and where all shall
rest. There shall be no more toil, no more fatigue, no more striving
and no more labour. There shall be rest, everlasting rest, a long
sweet slumber under the trees, while the river flows by your feet and
its murmur lulls you in your eternal rest.”

Even in the harsh reproduction of the dictaphone I could feel the
magic of the cadences of that splendid voice, soothing, comforting,
promising the multitude the prize which to them must have seemed the
most desirable of all. And through it all the steady repetition of
“Rest” ran with an almost hypnotic effect. Incoherent though it was,
the appeal struck at the very centre of each over-driven being in that
throng.

“Rest, rest for all. Surcease of toil. Do you not feel it already,
my brothers? Languor creeps over you; you faint as you stand. And
I promise rest to you all. Follow me and you shall rest in those
fields; there where you may dream away the long, long days among the
flowers, lying at ease. There where the songs of birds shall but stir
you faintly in your dreams, and all the tumult of the world shall be
stilled within your ears.”

He paused; and the silence seemed almost like a continuation of his
speech. The multitude seemed frozen into stone. Then came an isolated
phrase:

“Into Nirvana; Nirvana where there is rest....”

The voice died away in a soothing murmur which yet had its compelling
power. Nordenholt looked at his watch.

“Two minutes yet. So far, he hasn’t been actively objectionable; but I
can guess what is coming.”

Again the dictaphone sounded.

“But a few moments now, my brothers, then I and my Elect shall ascend
into the skies. Look well, O my brothers. Mark our passage to our rest.”

His voice ceased. There was a dead silence. Then, suddenly, with
a preliminary vibration of machinery, the clock above us struck.
Four double chimes for the quarters and then the heavy note of the
hour-strokes. Nordenholt listened grimly until all twelve had been
rung. Then I heard his voice, even as ever, without the faintest tinge
of irony:

“The passing bell!”

With the twelfth stroke there came through the windows a great wave
of indescribable sound, the loosing of breath among the thousands who
were gathered far below us in the Kelvin valley. Then again there was
silence. Nordenholt suddenly leaned forward to his desk and placed his
finger on the ivory button.

“Now’s the danger-point, Jack. He’ll try to divert attention from his
failure. But I’m ready for him.”

I began mechanically to count seconds, with no particular reason, but
simply because I felt I must do something. Two minutes passed; and
then through the windows came a long groaning note, the voice of the
multitude smitten with disillusion at the failure of the miracle which
they had expected. It rolled in a huge volume of sound across the Park
and then died away.

Suddenly the dictaphone poured out a torrent of words. The voice was no
longer calm; all the quiet strength had gone out of it, and, instead,
the tones were those of an infuriated man seeking some object upon
which to wreak his anger. But with all his rage the Reverend John had
a ready mind. In a moment he seems to have seen a possible loophole of
escape.

“No!” he cried, “I will not ascend for yet awhile. Work remains to be
done here, in this godless city; and I will renounce my rest until it
has been brought to its end. Life must cease ere I can seek my rest. I
bid you follow me that we may accomplish the task which has been laid
upon me. Over yonder”--he evidently pointed towards us--“over yonder
sits the Arch-Enemy; he who strives to chain pure spirits in this
web of flesh. His hand is on all this city, so that the smoke of her
burning goes up to the skies. Break asunder the chains which he is
forging. Destroy the evil works which he has planned. Wreck the engines
which he has designed. Come, my brothers; the doom is pronounced
against all the works of his hand. Come, follow me and end it all.
Destroy! Destroy! so that this world of sorrow and of sin may pass away
like an evil vision and life may be no more. Destroy! Destroy!”

Nordenholt, listening intently, pressed his finger upon the ivory
stud. There was a moment’s pause, and then from the eastern end of the
building came a sound of machine-guns. It lasted only for a few seconds
and then died out.

“They couldn’t miss at that range,” said Nordenholt. “That’s the end of
the Reverend John personally. But I doubt if we are finished with him
altogether even now.”




CHAPTER XVIII

The Eleventh Hour


I have set down all my doubts as to the wisdom of Nordenholt’s
treatment of the Reverend John; and it is only right to place on the
other side the fact that events proved he had gauged matters better
than I had done. He had foreseen the trend of the revivalist’s thoughts
and had deduced their climax, probably long before Wester himself
had understood the road he had placed his feet upon. Nordenholt had
allowed the excitement to grow without check, even to its highest
point, without interfering in the least; because he calculated that the
supreme disillusion would produce a revulsion of feeling which could
be attained in no other way. And his calculation proved to be correct.
Morally shaken by the failure of the miracle which they had been led
to expect, and which many of them had counted upon with certainty, the
populace allowed itself to be driven back into the factories and mines
without a word of protest. Their dreams were shattered and they fell
back into reality without the strength to resist any dominant will. It
seemed as though the last difficulties were disappearing before us;
and that the path now led straight onward to our goal. So I thought,
at least, but Nordenholt doubted. And, as it turned out, he again saw
more clearly than I. We might be done with the Reverend John; but the
Reverend John had not finished with us, dead as he was.

The next ten days saw the institution of a merciless system in the
works and mines of the Area. During the period of the revivalist’s
activity there had been an accelerated fall in the output; and
Nordenholt determined that this must be made good as soon as possible.
Possibly also he believed that a spell of intense physical exertion
would exhaust the workers and leave them no time to indulge in
recollections and reflections which might be dangerous. Whatever his
motives may have been, his methods were drastic in the extreme. The
minimum necessary output was trebled; and the members of any group
who failed to attain it were promptly deported into the desert of the
South. Surely entrenched behind the loyalty of the Labour Defence
Force, Nordenholt threw aside any concealment and ruled the whole Area
as a despot. The end in view was all that he now seemed to see; and he
broke men and threw them aside without the slightest hesitation. More
than ever, it seemed to me at this time, he was like a machine, rolling
forward along its appointed path, careless of all the human lives and
the human interests which he ground to powder under his irresistible
wheels. I began to think of him at times in the likeness of Jagannatha,
the Lord of the World, under whose car believers cast themselves to
death. But none of Nordenholt’s victims were willing ones.

Unlimited power, as Nordenholt himself had pointed out to me, is a
perilous gift to any man. The human mind is not fitted for strains of
this magnitude; and even Nordenholt’s colossal personality suffered,
I believe, from the stress of his despotic rule. But where a smaller
man would have frittered away his energies in petty oppression or
aimless regulation, Nordenholt never lost sight of his main objective:
and I believe that his harshness in the end arose merely from his
ever-growing determination to bring his enterprise to success.
Concentrating his mind entirely upon this, he may have suffered from
a loss of perspective which made him ruthless in his demands upon the
labouring masses of the Area. If this were so, I cannot find it in
me to blame him, in view of the responsibility which he bore. But I
have a suspicion that he feared a coming disaster, and that he was
determined to take time by the forelock by forcing up production ere
the catastrophe overtook us.

       *       *       *       *       *

After the death of the revivalist, his followers disappeared. The
meetings at street corners no longer took place; the wild skin-clad
figures ran no more through the city. I believe that Nordenholt took
steps to arrest those of the inner circle who escaped the machine-guns
in the Park; but many of them seem to have slipped through his fingers
in spite of the efficiency of his Secret Service. Probably they were
kept in concealment by sympathisers, of whom there were still a number
in spite of the general disillusionment. On the surface, the whole
movement appeared to have been arrested completely; but, as we were to
learn, it was not blotted out.

I can still remember the first news of the disaster. A trill on my
telephone bell, and then the voice of Nordenholt speaking:

“Hullo!... That you, Jack?... Come over here, will you?... At my
office. I may need you.... It’s a bad affair.... What?... Two of
the pit-shafts have been destroyed. No way of reaching the crowd
underground. I’m afraid it’s a bad business.”

When I reached his office he was still at the telephone, evidently
speaking to the scene of the catastrophe.

“Yes?... Shaft closed completely?... How long do you think it will
take to reopen it?... Permanent? Mean to say you can’t reopen it?...
Months?... How many men below just now?... Six hundred, you think?...
That’s taking the number of lamps missing, I suppose.... Well, find out
exactly as soon as you can.”

He rang off and was just about to call up another number, the second
pit, I suppose, when the telephone bell sounded an inward call.

“Yes?... What’s that? Numbers what?... Three, seven, eight, ten,
thirteen, fourteen.... Ring off! I’ll speak to you again.”

He rang furiously for the exchange.

“Put me through to the Coal Control. Quick, now.... Hullo! Is that you,
Sinclair?... Nordenholt.... Send out a general call. Bring every man to
the surface at once.... Yes, every pit in the Area. Hurry! It’s life or
death.... Report when you get news.”

Without leaving the instrument he called up another number.

“Go on. No. 14 was the last.... Take down these numbers, Jack.... 3, 7,
8, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19.... That all?... Good. Get me the figures of
losses as soon as you can. Also a note of the damage. Good-bye.”

Behind this disjointed sequence of phrases I had caught hints of the
magnitude of the calamity; and I was to some extent prepared for what I
heard when he had time to turn to me at last.

“Eleven pits have been destroyed almost simultaneously, Jack. No. 23
and No. 27 went first; and then that list I gave you just now. There
are no details yet; but it’s quite evidently malicious. Dynamite, I
think, to judge from the few facts I’ve got. The shafts are completely
blocked, as far as we know; and every man underground is done for.”

“How many does that amount to?”

“There are no figures yet; but it will run into more than three figures
anyway.”

Again the shrill call of the telephone bell sounded. He took up the
receiver.

“Yes?... What’s that? No. 31 and No. 33?... Complete block? No hope?...
Do your best.”

He turned to me.

“Two more gone, before we could get the men up. It’s a very widespread
affair. I told you we hadn’t done with the Reverend John.”

“What’s he got to do with it?” I asked, astonished.

“Some of his friends carrying out the work he left unfinished. They
mean to smash the Area; and they’ve hit us on our weakest point,
there’s no doubt. No coal, no work in the factories, no nitrogen. This
is serious, Jack.”

Another call on the telephone brought the news that three more pits
had been destroyed. Nordenholt rang up the Coal Control once more and
urged them to even greater haste in their efforts to get the men to the
surface. Then he turned back to me.

“Do you realise what it all means, Jack? As far as I can see, it’s the
beginning of the end for us. We can’t pull through on this basis; and I
doubt if we have heard the full extent of the disaster even now.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I have endeavoured to convey the impression made upon my mind by the
first news of the catastrophe; but little purpose would be served
by continuing the story in detail. All that morning we stood by the
telephone, gathering in the tale of disaster bit by bit in disjointed
fragments as it came over the wire. Here and there, items of better
news filtered through: reports that in some pits the whole of the
underground workers had been brought safely to the surface, accounts of
the immunity of certain shafts. But as a whole it was a black record
which we gathered in. The work had been planned with skill; and the
execution had not fallen below the level of the plan. In one or two
cases the miscreants had been detected in the act and captured before
they had time to do any damage; but these discoveries were very few.
As far as most of the pits were concerned, we never were able to
establish how the work had been done; for all traces were buried under
the debris in the wrecked shafts, which have been left unopened ever
since the catastrophe. One thing was certain, the whole of the workers
actually in the galleries at the time of the explosions were lost for
good and all. They were far beyond the reach of any human help.

It is no part of my plan to do more than indicate the horror of this
calamity. I draw no pen-pictures of the crowds around the pit-heads,
the crying of the women, the ever-recurring demands for the names of
the lost. These were features common to all mining accidents in the old
days; and this one differed from the rest only in its magnitude and not
in its form.

Owing to the colossal scale of the casualty list it was impossible to
minimise the matter in any way. Nordenholt decided to tell the truth in
full as soon as the total losses were definitely established. He gave
his newspapers a free hand; and by the late afternoon the placards were
in the streets.

  TERRIBLE DISASTERS IN COAL DISTRICT.

  MANY SHAFTS BLOCKED.

  ALL UNDERGROUND WORKERS ENTOMBED.

  11,000 DEAD.

To most of those who read the accounts of the catastrophe, it seemed
a terrible blow of Fate; but we at the centre of things knew that the
immediate loss was as nothing in comparison with the ultimate results
which it would bring in its train. All the largest pits were out of
action. The coal output, even at the best, could not possibly keep pace
with the demands of the future; and with the failure of fuel, the whole
activities of the Area must come to a standstill. Just on the edge of
success, it seemed all our efforts were to be in vain. From beyond the
grave the dead fanatic had struck his blow at the material world which
he hated; and we shuddered under the shock.

Throughout that day I was with Nordenholt. I think that he felt the
need of someone beside him, some audience which would force him to
keep an outwardly unshaken front. But to me it was a nightmare. The
_débâcle_ in itself had broken my nerve, coming thus without warning;
but Nordenholt’s prevision of the ultimate results which it would
exercise seemed to take away the last ray of hope.

“It’s no use whining, Jack; we’ve just got to take it as well as we
can. First of all, the coal output will cease entirely for a long time.
Not a man will go into even the ‘safe’ pits after this until everything
has been examined thoroughly; and that will take days and days. It’s no
use blinking that side of it.”

“Why not force them in?” I asked. “Turn out the Defence Force and drive
them to the pits. We _must_ have coal.”

“No good. I know what they’re thinking now; and even if you shot half
of them the rest wouldn’t go down. It’s no use thinking of it. I know.”

“Why didn’t the Intelligence Section get wind of it?”

“Don’t blame them; they couldn’t have done more than they did. Don’t
you realise that if a man is prepared to sacrifice his life--and these
fanatics who did the damage were the first victims themselves--there’s
nothing that can stop him? The Intelligence people had nothing to
go on. The whole of this thing was organised and carried through by
a handful of men, some of whom were evidently employed in the pits
themselves. It was so rapidly planned and executed that no secret
service could have got at it in time. Remember, we’re making explosives
on a big scale, so that thefts are easy.”

“And if you’re right, what is to happen?”

“Go on as long as we can; then see how we stand; and after that, if
necessary, decimate the population of the Area so as to bring our
numbers down to what we can feed in future. There’s nothing else for
it.”

“I hope it won’t come to that, Nordenholt.”

“It’s no choice of mine; but if it’s forced on me, I’ll do it. I’m
going to see this thing through, Jack, at _any_ cost now. Millions have
been swept out of existence already by the Famine; and I’m not going to
stick at the loss of a few more hundred thousands so long as we pull
through in the end.”

       *       *       *       *       *

In the main, Nordenholt’s forecast of the attitude which the miners
would adopt proved to be correct. A certain number of workers, braver
or less imaginative than the rest, returned to work in the “safe” pits
in the course of a day or two; but the main bulk of the labour remained
sullenly aloof. Nothing would induce them to set foot in the galleries.
Work above-ground they would do, wherever it was necessary to preserve
the pits from deterioration; but they had no intention of descending
into the subterranean world again. Better to starve in the light of
day than run the risk of hungering in some prison in the bowels of the
earth. Neither threats nor cajolings served to move them from this
decision.

Nordenholt, as a last resource, sent exploring parties into the South
to examine the deserted coal-fields of England in the hope that some
of them might be workable; but the various missions returned with
reports that nothing could be done. During the period since the mining
population had died out, the pits had become unsafe, some by the
infiltration of water, others by the destruction of the machinery and
yet more by the disrepair of the galleries. Here and there a mine was
discovered which could still be operated; and parties were drafted
South to work it; but in most cases so much labour was required to put
the shafts and galleries in repair that we were unable to look forward
to anything like the previous coal-supply even at the best.

Meanwhile Nordenholt, day by day, grew more and more grim. While
there was any hope of utilising the mining population, he clung to it
tenaciously; but as time passed it became clearer that the Area had
received its death-blow. He began to draft his ex-miners into other
branches of industry bit by bit; but with the fall in the coal-supply
there was little use for them there, since very soon all the activities
of the Area would have to cease.

I watched him closely during that period; and I could see the effect
which the strain was producing upon him. The disaster had struck us
just when we seemed to have reached the turning-point in the Area’s
history, at the very time when all seemed to be sure in front of us.
It was a blow which would have prostrated a weaker man; but Nordenholt
had a tenacity far above the ordinary. He meant, I know, to carry out
his decision to decimate the Area if necessary; but he held his hand
until it was absolutely certain that all was lost. I think he must have
had at the back of his mind a hope that everything would come right in
the end; though I doubt if his grounds for that belief were any but the
most slender.

For my own part, I went through that period like an automaton. The
suddenness of the catastrophe seemed, in some way, to have deadened my
imagination; and I carried on my work mechanically without thinking of
where it was all leading us. With this new holocaust looming over the
Area, Elsa seemed further away than ever. If she had revolted at the
story of the South, it seemed to me that this fresh sacrifice of lives
in the Area itself would deepen her hatred for the men who planned it.

It seemed the very irony of Fate that Nordenholt should choose this
juncture to tell me his views on her feelings.

“Elsa seems to be coming round a little at last, Jack,” he said to
me one day, “I think her emotional side has worked itself out in the
contemplation of the Famine; and her reason’s getting a chance again.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked. “I haven’t seen anything to make
me hopeful about it.”

“You wouldn’t notice anything. You don’t know her well enough--Oh,
don’t get vexed. Even if you are in love with her, you’ve only known
her for a very short time, whereas I’ve studied her since she was a
child. I know the symptoms. She’s coming round a little.”

“Much good that will do now! If you decimate the Area it will be worse
than ever. I hate to think of my own affairs in the middle of this
catastrophe; but I simply can’t help it. If your plan goes through,
it’s the end of my romance.”

He played with the cord of his desk telephone for a moment before
replying. I could see that he had some doubt as to whether he ought to
speak or not. At last he made up his mind.

“If you’re brooding over things as much as all that, Jack, I suppose I
must say something; but I’m very much afraid of raising false hopes.
You wonder, probably, why I don’t go straight ahead and weed out the
useless mouths now and be done with it? Well, the fact is I’m staking
it all on the next couple of days. Henley-Davenport seems, by his way
of it, to be just on the edge of something definite at last. If he
pulls it off, then all’s well. If not....”

“What do you mean?”

“If Henley-Davenport gets his results, we won’t need coal; because we
shall have all the energy we require from his process. I’ve stretched
things to the limit in the hope that he will give us the ace of trumps
and not the two. If he succeeds, we don’t need to weed out the Area;
we can go on as we are; and we shall be absolutely certain to pull
through with every soul alive. But I shouldn’t have told you this,
perhaps; it may be only a false hope and will just depress you more by
the reaction. But you look so miserable that I thought I had better
take the risk.”

“When do you expect to know definitely?”

“He promised me that within two days he would be able to tell me,
one way or the other. Of course, even if he fails now, he may pull
it off later; but I can only wait two days more before beginning the
elimination of all the useless mouths in the Area. Everything is ready
to put into operation in that direction. But I hope we may not need
these plans. It’s just a chance, Jack; so don’t build too much on it.”

It was advice easy enough to give; but I found it very hard to follow.
All that day my hopes were rising; things seemed brighter at last: and
it was only now and again that I stopped to remind myself that the
whole thing was a gamble with colossal stakes. Even Nordenholt himself
was afraid to count too much upon Henley-Davenport, though I knew that
he believed implicitly in his capacity. But even as I said this to
myself I felt my spirits rising. After the certainty of disaster which
had confronted us, even this hazard was a relief. For the first time
in many weeks I began to build castles in the air once more. I was
half-afraid to do so; but I could not help myself. And as the hours
passed by bringing no news of success or failure, I think my nerves
must have become more and more tense. A whole day went by without news
of any kind.

       *       *       *       *       *

The morning of the following day seemed interminable to me. I knew that
within another twenty-four hours Nordenholt would have given up all
hope of Henley-Davenport’s success and would be setting in motion the
machinery which he had devised for reducing the population of the Area;
and as hour after hour passed without bringing any news, I became more
and more restless. I tried to work and to ease my mind by concentrating
it upon details; but I soon found that this was useless. Strive as I
might, I could not banish the thought of the tragedy which hung over us.

At 3.27 p.m.--I know the exact minute, because my watch was stopped
then and I read the time from it afterwards--I was standing beside
my desk, consulting some papers on a file. Suddenly I heard a high
detonation, a sound so sharp that I can liken it to nothing familiar.
The air seemed full of flying splinters of glass; and simultaneously
I was wrenched from my foothold and flung with tremendous violence
against my desk. Then, it seemed, a dead silence fell.

I found that my right hand was streaming with blood from various cuts
made by the razor-edges of the broken glass of the window. More blood
was pouring from a gash on my forehead; but my eyes had escaped injury.
When I moved, I found I suffered acute pain; though no bones seemed to
be broken. The concussion had completely deafened me; and, as I found
afterwards, my left ear-drum had been perforated, so that even to this
day I can hear nothing on that side.

All about me the office was in confusion. Every pane of glass had
been blown inward from the windows and the place looked as though a
whirlwind had swept through it, scattering furniture and papers in its
track. The shock had dazed me; and for several minutes I stood gazing
stupidly at the havoc around me. It was, I am sure, at least five
minutes before I grasped what had happened. As soon as I did so, I made
my way, still in intense pain, down the stairs and into the quadrangle.

The pavements were littered with fragments of broken glass which
had fallen outward in the breaking of the windows; but there was not
so much of this as I had expected, since most of the panes had been
driven inward by the explosion. Quite a crowd of people were running
out of the building and making in the direction of the new Chemistry
Department in University Avenue. I followed them, noticing as I passed
the Square that all the chimney-pots of the houses seemed to have been
swept off, though I could see no traces of them on the ground. Later
on, I found that they had been blown down on the further side of the
terrace.

When I came in sight of the Chemistry building I was amazed, even
though I was prepared for a catastrophe. One whole wing had been
reduced to a heap of ruins, a mere pile of building-stone and joists
flung together in utter confusion. Here and there among the debris,
jets of steam and dust were spouting up; and from time to time came
an eruption of small stones from the wreckage. The remainder of the
edifice still stood almost intact save for its broken windows and
shattered doors.

What astonished me at the time was that the whole scene recalled a
cinema picture--violent motion without a sound to accompany it. I
saw spouts of dust, falling masses of masonry, people running and
gesticulating in the most excited manner; yet no whisper of sound
reached me. It was only when someone came up and spoke directly to me
that I discovered that I was temporarily stone deaf; for I could see
his lips moving but could hear nothing whatever.

Like everyone else, I began to remove the debris. I think that we
understood even then that it was hopeless to think of saving anyone
from this wreckage, but we were all moved to do something which might
at least give us the illusion that we were helping. As I pulled and
tugged with the others, I began to appreciate the enormous power of
the explosive which had been at work. In an ordinary concussion,
iron can be bent out of shape; but here I came across steel rafters
which were cut clean through as though by a knife. I remember thinking
vaguely that the explosive must have acted, as dynamite does, against
the solid materials around it instead of spending its force upwards;
for otherwise the whole place would have suffered a bombardment from
flying blocks of stone.

For some time I toiled with the others. I saw Nordenholt’s figure
close at hand. Then the sky seemed to take on a tinge of violet which
deepened suddenly. I saw a black spot before my eyes; and apparently I
fainted from loss of blood.

       *       *       *       *       *

Even now, the causes of the Chemistry Department disaster are unknown.
Henley-Davenport and his two assistants perished instantaneously in the
explosion--in fact Henley-Davenport’s body was never recovered from
the wreckage at all. A third assistant, who had been in the next room
at the time, lived long enough to tell us the exact stage at which the
catastrophe occurred; but even he could throw no direct light upon its
origin.

From Henley-Davenport’s notes, which we found in his house, it seems
clear that his efforts had been directed towards producing the
disintegration of iron; and that on the morning of the accident he
had completed his chain of radioactive materials which furnished the
accelerated evolution of energy required to break up the iron atoms.
As we know now, he succeeded in his experiment and his iron yielded
the short-period isotopes of chromium, titanium and calcium until the
end-product of the series--argon--was produced. The four successive
alpha-ray changes, following each other at intervals of a few seconds,
liberated a tremendous store of intra-atomic energy; but, knowing
the extremely minute quantities with which Henley-Davenport worked,
it seems difficult to believe that the explosion which destroyed his
laboratory was produced by this trace of material. To me it seems much
more probable that his apparatus was shattered at the moment of the
first disintegration of iron and that thus some of the short-period
products were scattered abroad throughout the room, setting up
radioactive change in certain of the metallic objects which they
touched. No other explanation appears to fit the facts. We shall never
learn the truth of the matter now; but knowing Henley-Davenport’s
care and foresight, I cannot see any other way of accounting for the
violence of the explosion.

Luckily for us, no radioactive gas is produced by the disintegration of
iron; for had there been any such material among the decay products it
is probable that most of those who had run to the scene of the disaster
would have perished.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I recovered consciousness again I found myself lying on a couch.
A doctor was bandaging my hand. Nordenholt, looking very white and
shaken, was sitting in a chair by the fire. At first I was too weak to
do more than look round me; but after a few minutes I felt better and
was able to speak to Nordenholt.

“What has happened? Did they get Henley-Davenport out of the wreck?”

“No, there’s no hope of that, Jack. He’s dead; and the best thing one
can say is that he must have been killed instantaneously. But he’s done
the trick for us, if we can only follow his track. He evidently tapped
atomic energy of some kind or other. Did you notice the sharpness of
the explosion before you were knocked out? There’s never been anything
like it.”

“What’s going to happen now?” I was still unable to think clearly.

“I’ve sent Mitchell down to Henley-Davenport’s house to look at his
last notes--he kept them there and he promised me to indicate each day
what he proposed to do next, so that we’d have something to go on if
anything like this happened. Mitchell will ring up as soon as he has
found them.”

I heard afterwards that among the ruins of the laboratory Nordenholt
had been struck by a falling beam and had just escaped with his
life; but his voice gave no hint of it. I think that his complete
concentration upon the main problem prevented him from realising that
he might be badly hurt.

The telephone bell rang suddenly and Nordenholt went to the receiver.

“Yes, Mitchell.... You’ve got the notes?... Good.... You can repeat
what he was doing?... No doubt about it?... All right. Start at once.
We must have it immediately, cost what it may.... Come round here
before you begin; but get going at once. There isn’t a minute to spare.”

Nordenholt replaced the receiver.

“I thought I could trust Henley-Davenport,” he said. “He’s left
everything in order, notes written up to lunch-time complete and a full
draft of his last experiment, which will allow Mitchell to carry on.”

A few minutes later, Mitchell himself appeared and gave us some further
details. In his jottings, Henley-Davenport had suggested some possible
modifications of the experiment which had ended so disastrously;
and Mitchell proposed to try the effect of these alterations in the
conditions. Before he left us, he sat down at Nordenholt’s desk and
made a few notes of the process he intended to try, handing the paper
to Nordenholt when he had finished. I can still remember his alert
expression as he wrote and the almost finical care with which he
flicked the ash from the end of the cigarette as he rose from the
desk. It was the last time any of us saw him.

“Well, that’s all. I’m off.”

Nordenholt rose stiffly from his chair and shook hands with Mitchell as
he went out. Then he passed to the telephone and rang up a number.

“Is that you, Kingan? Go across to the South Wing of the Chemistry
place. Mitchell is there. See all that he does and then clear out
before he tries the experiment. We must keep track of things, come what
may. If he goes down, you will take on after him. Good-bye.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Just after seven o’clock, there was another tremendous explosion; but
this time the concussion seemed less violent than before. Mitchell
himself was not killed outright; but he suffered injuries which proved
fatal within a few days. Meanwhile the work went on. One after another,
the Chemistry section of Nordenholt’s young men went into the furnace,
some to be killed instantaneously, others to escape alive, but blasted
almost out of recognition by the forces which they unchained. Yet none
of them faltered. Link by link they built up the chain which was to
bring safety to the Area; and each link represented a life lost or a
body crippled. Day after day the work went on, interrupted periodically
by the rending crash of these fearful explosions, until at last it
seemed almost beyond hope that the problem would ever be solved. But
ten days later Barclay staggered into Nordenholt’s room, smothered in
bandages, with one arm useless at his side, and gasped out the news
that he had been successful.

Looking back on that moment, I sometimes wonder that we were not almost
hysterical with joy; but as a matter of fact, none of us said anything
at all. Probably we did not really grasp the thing at the time. I know
that I was busy getting a drink ready for Barclay, who had collapsed
as soon as he gave his news; and all that I remember of Nordenholt is a
picture of him standing looking out of the window with his back to us.
Certainly it wasn’t the kind of scene one might have imagined.




CHAPTER XIX

The Breaking-strain


Although Barclay’s work furnished us with the means of tapping the
stores of energy which lie imprisoned within the atoms of elementary
matter, it did not place us immediately in a position to utilise these
immense forces for practical purposes. To tell the truth, we were
in much the same position as a savage to whom a dynamite cartridge
has been given, ready fitted with a detonator. We could liberate the
energy, but at first we could not bring it under control.

The next few weeks were spent in planning and building machine after
machine. All the best talent of Nordenholt’s group of engineers was
brought to bear on the problem; but time after time we had to admit
failure. Either the engines were too fragile for the power which they
employed or there was some radical defect in their construction which
could only be detected on trial. Thus the days passed in a series of
disappointments, until it seemed almost as though hope of success was
fading before our eyes.

During that period, Nordenholt himself grew visibly older. It was the
last lap in his great race against Time; and I think that this final
strain told on him more than any that had gone before. The mines of the
Area were still empty and silent; no fuel was coming forward to fill
the gaps in our ever-shrinking reserves; and within a very short period
the whole industry of the Area must collapse for want of coal.

His anxiety was marked by a total change in his habits. Hitherto,
he had sat in his office, directing from afar all the multitudinous
activities of the Area, aloof from direct contact with details. Now, I
noticed, he was continually about the machine-shops and factories in
which the new atomic engines were being constructed; he had frequent
consultations with his engineers and designers; he seemed to be
incapable of isolating himself from the progress which was very slowly
being made. Possibly he felt that in this last effort he must utilise
all the magnetic power of his personality to stimulate his craftsmen in
their labours.

Whatever his motives may have been, when I think of him in those last
days my memory always calls up a picture of that lean, dark figure
against a background of drawing-office or engineering-shop. I see him
discussing plans with his inventors, encouraging his workmen, watching
the trial of engine after engine. And after every failure I seem to
see him a little more weary, with a grimmer set in the lines about his
mouth and a heavier stoop in his shoulders, as though the weight of his
responsibilities was crushing him by degrees as the days went by.

Yet he never outwardly wavered in his belief in success. He knew--we
all knew--that the power was there if we could but find the means of
harnessing it. The uncertainty had gone; and all that remained was a
problem in chemistry and mechanics. But time was a vital factor to us;
and more than once I myself began to doubt whether we should succeed in
our efforts before it was too late.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last came success. One of my most vivid memories of that time is the
scene in Beardmore’s yard when the Milne-Reid engine was tested for
the first time. Nordenholt and I had motored down from the University
to see the trial. By this time we were both familiar with the general
appearance of atomic engines; but to me, at least, the new machine
was a surprise. Its huge, distorted bulk seemed unlike anything which
I had seen before: the enormous barrel of the disintegration-chamber
overhung the main mass of machinery and gave it in some way a
far-off resemblance to a gigantic howitzer on its carriage; and this
resemblance was heightened by the absence of flywheels or any of the
usual fittings of an engine. Although I was an engineer, I could make
but little of this complex instrument, designed to utilise a power
greater than any I had ever dreamed of; and I listened eagerly to the
two inventors as they described its salient characteristics.

Nordenholt, who had seen the plans, seemed to pay little attention to
either Milne or Reid. He was evidently impatient for results and cared
little for the methods by which they were to be obtained, so long as
the machinery did its work.

The last cables were being attached to the engine as we stood beside
it; for Nordenholt had insisted on a test being made as soon as the
machine was completed. The workmen screwed up the connections, everyone
stood back a little, and then a switch was pushed home. Immediately the
whole misshapen bulk seemed to be galvanised into violent activity and
with a roar beyond the roof above us the torrent of escaping helium
and argon made its way through the exhaust-pipe. The needle of the
indicator dial jumped suddenly upward till it registered many thousands
of horse-power.

But we had seen all this before and had seen it, too, followed by a
collapse; so that we waited eagerly to learn how the engine would stand
the strain. For an hour we waited there, while the mechanics poured oil
continually into the tanks to keep the racing bearings from heating;
and still the machine ran smoothly and the thunder of the escape-pipe
roared above us. It was impossible to make oneself heard amid that
clangour; and we exchanged congratulations scribbled on odd pieces of
paper. After an hour, Milne shut off the disintegrator; and the great
engine slowly sank to rest.

All of us were still deafened by the sound of the exhaust; and it was
by dumb-show and a handshake that Nordenholt conveyed his thanks to the
two designers. I heard a faint cheer from the workmen.

Nordenholt did not stay long. Within a few minutes, he and I were
back in the motor, on the way home. As we went, I heard behind us the
tremendous blast of the escaping gases; they had restarted the engine;
and to my ears it sounded sweeter than any symphony, for it meant
safety to us all.

       *       *       *       *       *

When we reached the University, I noticed that Nordenholt stepped from
the car with the air of an invalid. He seemed to have used up all
his forces in a last effort; and now he moved slowly and almost with
difficulty. At the Randolph Stair, he took my arm and leaned heavily on
me as we climbed a step at a time. When we reached the top, he seemed
out of breath. At last we reached his office and he dropped into his
chair at the desk with visible relief.

“It’s my heart, Jack,” he said, after a moment or two. “It’s been going
wrong for months; and I think it’s badly strained. I knew it was going;
and in ordinary circumstances I would have looked after myself; but it
wasn’t worth while, as things were. I simply couldn’t take things easy.
I had to work on until I saw daylight before me or dropped on the way.”

He paused, as though pulling his strength together. In the next room I
could hear Elsa’s typewriter clicking. Nordenholt heard it also; and
rose after a few minutes. He went to the door between the two rooms and
spoke to her, telling her the news of the engine.

“It’s success at last, Elsa. We’re through. Everything’s safe now.”

I heard her voice in reply; and then he closed the door and reseated
himself at the desk.

“It’s your turn now, Jack. I’ve done my part. I’m leaving the future in
your hands; and I believe you’ll make good. I wish I could help you;
but I’m done, now. I would only hamper you if I tried to do anything.”

I tried to say something reassuring, but the words faltered on my
lips. The sight of that drawn face was proof enough. Nordenholt had
driven his physical machine as ruthlessly as he had driven his factory
workers; and it was clear that he had overstrained his bodily powers.
His tremendous will had kept him on his feet until the moment of
success; but I could see now what it had cost him. He had drawn on his
vital capital; and with the accomplishment of his task a revulsion had
set in and the over-tired body was exacting its toll.

As I sat looking at him there, a great feeling of loneliness swept
over me. Here, before me, was the man upon whose strength I had leaned
for the past months, the mind which had seen so clearly, the will
which had held its line so tenaciously; and now, I felt, Nordenholt
was leaning on me in his turn. It seemed almost an inversion of the
course of Nature; and with the realisation of it, I felt a sense of an
enormous loss. In the next stages of the Area’s history, there would
be no Nordenholt to lean upon: I would have to stand on my own feet,
and I doubted my capacity. Almost without my recognising it, I had been
working always with Nordenholt in my mind, even in my own department.
I had carried out things boldly because I knew that ever in reserve
behind me were that brain and that will of his which could see further
and drive harder than I could dare; and I had relied unconsciously upon
him to steer me through my difficulties if they proved too great for my
own powers. And now, by the look on his face and the weariness of his
voice, I knew that I stood alone. I had no right to throw my burdens on
his shoulders any more.

And with a gulp in the throat, I remembered that he trusted me to go
forward. I suppose I ought to have felt some joy in the knowledge that
he had left the reconstruction in my hands; but any pride I had in this
was swallowed up in that devastating feeling of loss. With the collapse
of Nordenholt, something had gone out of my world, never to return. It
left me in some way maimed; and I felt as though the main source of my
strength had been cut away just when I most needed all my powers.

“You’ll do your best, Jack? The Area trusted us. Don’t let them down.”

I tried to tell him I would do my utmost; but I had difficulty in
finding words. I could see that he understood me, however.

“There’s one thing I’m sorry about--Elsa. She hasn’t come round yet.
But she will, in time. She hates me still, I know; and it’s a pity, for
I need her now, more than I ever did before. I’m a very sick man, Jack.
Luckily, this breach between us has let her stand on her own feet. She
doesn’t need me so much as she did.”

He fell silent; and for a time we sat without speaking. When he spoke
again, I could see the lines on which his thoughts had been running.

“If anything happens to me, Jack, you’ll look after Elsa, won’t you?
I’d like to know that she was all right. I know it’s hard as things
are; but you’ll do that for me, even though it tantalises you?”

I promised; and then I suggested telephoning for a doctor to look after
him.

“Not just now, Jack--I’m tired. I don’t want to be bothered answering
questions. I’m very tired.... And I’ve finished my work at last. We’ve
pulled through. I can take a rest.... Wake me in a quarter of an hour,
will you? I want a sleep badly.”

He leaned forward in his chair and rested his face on his arms. In a
moment he seemed to fall into slumber. I thought it was probably the
best thing for him at the time; and I turned to the fire and to my
thoughts.

I fell to thinking of all that had happened since first I met him;
and then I cast further back yet to the evening I had spent at
Wotherspoon’s house. How the disaster had developed step by step,
spreading its effects gradually and with slowly-increasing intensity
over wider and ever-wider areas. If only Wotherspoon had stuck to
chemistry and left bacteriology alone; if only he had chosen some other
organisms than the denitrifying bacteria; if only the fire-ball had not
come that night; if ... if ... if.... All the Might-have-beens rose
before me as I gazed at the flickerings in the fire. If only Elsa had
followed reason and not emotion ... if only.... And so the maddening
train of thought went on, minute by minute, while in the next room I
could hear the click of her typewriter. Emotion! After all I could not
pretend to scorn it, for what were my own feelings but emotion too?

The clock in the tower above me struck a quarter. Nordenholt did not
stir and I let him sleep on. It appeared to me that rest was what he
needed most.

It seemed curious how divorced I had become from the Past. The old life
had been swept away utterly and I found difficulty in recalling much of
it to mind. The meeting with Nordenholt, the founding of the Area, my
time with Elsa, London in its last days, the Reverend John: these were
the things which seemed burned into my memory. All that had gone before
was mirage, faint, unsubstantial, part of another existence. Even our
Fata Morgana was more real to me than that old life.

And with that I fell back into deeper gloom. I have not tried to
paint myself other than I am. I had never reached the height of pure
endeavour to which Nordenholt had attained, though sometimes, under
his influence, I came near it. And now, at the recollection of our
dream-city, I felt a keen pang. Why should I attempt to raise that
fabric to the skies, why should I wear myself out in toiling to erect
these halls and palaces through which I must wander alone? Why, indeed?
What was the population of the Area to me, after all? But even amid my
most bitter reflections I knew that I would do my best. Nordenholt had
trusted me.

A fresh chime from the great bell overhead roused me from my musings. I
went across to Nordenholt, not knowing whether to wake him or not. When
I reached his side, something in his attitude struck me. I touched his
hand and found it cold.

For a moment, I think I failed to recognise what had happened. Then I
shook him gently; and the truth broke upon my mind. That great engine
which had wrought so hard and so long would never move again. The brain
which had guided the fortunes of the Area up to the last moment had
sunk to its eternal rest.

It was some minutes before I was able to pull myself together after
the discovery. When I got my feelings under control, I was still badly
shaken; for otherwise I would never have done what I did do. I went
straight to the door and called Elsa. She was sitting at her desk and
she looked up at my voice.

“Well, what is it, Mr. Flint?”

“It’s.... Come here.... It’s Nordenholt; he....”

Before I had completed the sentence she had risen and passed me. I
think she must have seen something in my face which led her to expect
the worst news. She went up to the desk where Nordenholt was still
leaning with his face on his arms. Like me, she did not immediately
grasp what had happened.

“Uncle Stanley! What’s wrong? Aren’t you well?”

She rested her hand on his shoulder and shook him gently, just as I
had done. In the silence, I heard, far down the Clyde, the roaring of
the atomic engine--the great call sweeping across the Area and bearing
with it the news of Nordenholt’s final triumph. They were varying the
running of the machine and the waves of sound rose and fell like the
beating of gigantic wings above the city.

Suddenly she turned to me.

“What is it? You don’t mean he’s _dead_?”

I could only nod in answer; I could not find words. For an instant she
stood, leaning over him, and then she slipped down beside his chair and
put her arms round him.

“Oh, he’s dead. He’s dead. He’ll never speak to me again!... And I
hated him, I hated him.... I made it hard for him.... And now he can’t
tell me if he forgives me.... Oh, what shall I do, Jack? What shall I
do? Please help me. He was so good to me; and I hurt him so.... Oh,
please help me, Jack. Tell me he forgave me.... I’ve only got _you_
now....”




CHAPTER XX

Asgard


Immediately after the death of Nordenholt, I took over the control of
the Area and instituted the great reorganisation forced upon us by the
new conditions. Almost our last reserves of coal were used up in the
foundries where we built the new atomic engines; but we succeeded in
manufacturing a number of machines sufficient for our purposes; and
once these were complete, we had no further need of the old-fashioned
fuel. The output of nitrogenous materials sprang up by leaps and
bounds; and the danger of starvation was over.

All our miners were sent into the neighbouring areas, where they were
put to work in spreading synthetic nitrogenous manure upon the fields,
after Hope’s colloids had been ploughed into the soil to retain water
in the ground. At last came the harvest, poor in most places, yet
sufficient for our needs. The game was won.

It was after this that we began to send aeroplanes over the world in
search of any other remnants of the human race which had survived. I
was too much occupied with Area affairs to share in these voyages; but
the airmen’s reports made clear enough the extent of the catastrophe
which had befallen the planet. As I expected, the site of London was
covered with a mere heap of charred and shattered ruins cumbering it
to an extent that prevented us from even thinking of rebuilding the
city in the new age. It was not worth while clearing away the debris,
when other sites were open to us for our new centres of population.
The same fate had befallen almost all the great cities, not only in
Britain but also across the Continent. Above the ruins of Paris, the
gaunt fabric of the Eiffel Tower still stood as a witness to men’s
achievements in the past; but it was almost alone. Everything capable
of destruction by fire had gone down in the frenzy of the last days of
the old civilisation.

I have already sketched the effects of the Famine upon the population
of the globe. Our explorers found one or two colonies alive in America;
and at a slightly later date we got in touch with the Japanese Area.
Beyond this, the human race had perished from the face of the earth.

The strangest of all the changes seen by the aerial explorers must have
been in Central Africa and the Amazon Valley. There, where vegetable
life had seemed undisputed sovereign of vast regions, only a blackened
wilderness remained. Fires had raged over great spaces, leaving ashes
behind them; but in general there was hardly a trace of the old-time
forests and swamps. The Sahara stretched southward to the Equator; and
the Kalahari Desert had extended up to the Great Lakes--so quickly had
the soil of these regions degenerated into sand. In past ages, man had
never tapped these vast store-houses of forest and veldt; and Fate
decided that they should go down to destruction still unutilised.

Once the safety-line was passed and we were assured of food sufficient
to maintain our people, other troubles faced us; and I am not sure
that the next ten years was not really our most dangerous period. Had
Nordenholt lived, things would perhaps have been easier for us; but the
difficulties besetting us were implicit in the nature of things and I
question if he could have exorcised them entirely.

We had, on the one side, a mass of manual labourers whose intelligence
unfitted them for anything beyond bodily toil; while on the other hand
we had supplies of physical energy from the atomic engines which
made the employment of human labour supererogatory. Yet to leave the
major part of our population entirely idle was to invite disaster. The
development of the atomic engine had at one blow thrown out of gear the
nicely-adjusted social machinery devised by Nordenholt; and we had to
arrange almost instantly vast alterations in our methods of employment.

It was under the pressure of these conditions that we became builders
of great cities. Nineveh and Thebes were our first sketches; then came
Atlantis, our main power-station which we built on Islay; after that we
erected Lyonnesse and Tara, fairer than the others, for we learned as
we wrought. Then, as I began to grope toward my masterpiece, I planned
Theleme. And, last of all, the spires and towers of Asgard grew into
the sky.

Once the cities had been planned, we employed a further contingent
of labour in constructing huge roads between them, gigantic arteries
which cut across the country like the Roman ways in earlier centuries,
arrow-straight, but broader and better engineered than anything before
constructed.

Our building materials were new. The introduction of atomic energy gave
us electric furnaces on a scale undreamed of before; and we were able
to produce a glassy and resistant substance which can be made in any
tint. It is of this that Asgard is constructed; and I believe that no
weather conditions alone will wear it down.

       *       *       *       *       *

As I sit here at my desk, I see outstretched before me the panorama of
Asgard, the concrete embodiment of our Fata Morgana, so far as that
vision could be made real in stone. It is not the City of our dreams,
I admit; yet in its beauty there is a touch of wonder and of mystery
that makes it kin to that builded phantom of our minds. None of our
cities shall ever bear the name of Fata Morgana, which was the mother
of them all. There shall be no profanation of that castle in the air.
Instead we have given to our cities titles which link their material
splendours to the more ancient glories of myth and tradition; Asgard
and Lyonnesse, Tara and Atlantis, Nineveh, Thebes and Theleme.

Rarely, nowadays, do I feel despondent; but when the fit comes over me,
I open the box in which I still keep the papers relating to the time
when I was planning my garden cities. I finger my documents and turn
over my sketches, ever amazed at the gulf which lies between my hopes
of that day and our achievements of the present. Here and there, on the
margin of some modest ground-plan, I find scribbled notes of caution to
myself not to expect such vast projects to be practicable in the near
future. And then, after losing myself in this atmosphere of the past, I
go to the great windows and look down upon Asgard. For once, at least,
in this world, hope has been far outrun by achievement. Splendours of
which I never dreamed have come into being and lie before my eyes as
I gaze. With all this confronting me, my despondency slips away and I
regain sure confidence in the future.

Cities and gardens have I raised in Dreamland. Other cities and other
gardens I have seen spring from the ground of this world in answer to
my call. But of all these, Asgard is nearest to my heart; for it is the
last which I shall create. Other men will surpass me; new wonderlands
will rise in the future: but Asgard is my masterpiece and I shall build
no more.

Ten years have gone by since the last stone was laid in my city; yet
every morning as I come to my windows, I find in it fresh beauties to
delight my eyes. Fronting the sea it stands; and its fore-court is a
vast stretch of silver sand between the horns of the bay. Behind it
the ground rises to a semicircle of low hills set here and there with
groves and fretted with silver waterfalls. Through all the changes of
the year these slopes are green; for snow never drifts upon them nor
do mists gather to hide them from my view. Only the swift cloud-shadows
flitting athwart them bring fresh lights and shades into the picture as
they pass.

Nor do I weary of this greenery. Slowly vegetation is creeping back
upon the face of the world; but still there are vast deserts where no
blade grows: and in my own cities I planned masses of verdure so that
they might be like oases among the barren spaces of the earth.

Between the hills and the sea, the city stands--a vast space of woods
and fields and gardens from among the greenery of which rise here and
there high halls and palaces of rose-tinted stone. Here and there amid
the green lie broad lakes to catch the sun; and great tree-shadowed
pools, like crystal mirrors, stand rippleless among the groves. And
throughout the city there is ever the sound of streams and rivulets
falling from the hills and making music for us with their murmurings as
they pass.

Scattered about this pleasance are the dwellings of my citizens, built
of the rose-coloured stone which breaks the monotony of the verdure;
but the houses are sparse, for our population is small. Asgard is only
for the few who can enjoy its beauties: the many have other cities more
suited to their tastes; and they have no wish to come hither. But those
who dwell with us have full time to fall under its spell; for Asgard is
a city of leisure, though not an idle one.

When darkness falls on Asgard, great soft beacons shine out upon the
hills, throwing a mellow radiance across the valley; and down in the
woods and along the broad ways of the city, the silver lamps are
lighted, till all Asgard gleams in outline beside the sea. In the
expanses of the parks and under the shadow of the woods are sprays
of coloured orbs to guide the passer-by; and from hour to hour these
change their tint, so that there is no sameness in them.

Often I come to my windows in the night and gaze out upon that
far-flung tracery of stars across the valley, rivalling the skies
above, as though ten thousand meteors had fallen from the heavens
and still blazed where they lay upon the earth. And through my
open casement come the faint and perfumed breezes, bringing their
subtropical warmth as they blow across the valley; and I hear, faint
and afar, the sounds of music mingling with the rustling of the trees.

Others may plan; others may build fairer cities in the sun: but I have
given my best; and Asgard almost consoles me for the loss of that Fata
Morgana which I shall never see.


FOOTNOTE:

[1] Pronounce Di-ay´-zō-tans´.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.



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