In the Days of the Comet Read online

Page 32


  Section 6

  I halted, and stood planning what I had to do.

  Should I go to bungalow after bungalow until one of the two I soughtanswered to my rap? But suppose some servant intervened!

  Should I wait where I was--perhaps until morning--watching? Andmeanwhile------

  All the nearer bungalows were very still now. If I walked softlyto them, from open windows, from something seen or overheard,I might get a clue to guide me. Should I advance circuitously,creeping upon them, or should I walk straight to the door? It wasbright enough for her to recognize me clearly at a distance of manypaces.

  The difficulty to my mind lay in this, that if I involved otherpeople by questions, I might at last confront my betrayers withthese others close about me, ready to snatch my weapon and seizemy hands. Besides, what names might they bear here?

  "Boom!" the sound crept upon my senses, and then again it came.

  I turned impatiently as one turns upon an impertinence, and behelda great ironclad not four miles out, steaming fast across thedappled silver, and from its funnels sparks, intensely red, pouredout into the night. As I turned, came the hot flash of its guns,firing seaward, and answering this, red flashes and a streamingsmoke in the line between sea and sky. So I remembered it, and Iremember myself staring at it--in a state of stupid arrest. It wasan irrelevance. What had these things to do with me?

  With a shuddering hiss, a rocket from a headland beyond the villageleapt up and burst hot gold against the glare, and the sound ofthe third and fourth guns reached me.

  The windows of the dark bungalows, one after another, leapt out,squares of ruddy brightness that flared and flickered and becamesteadily bright. Dark heads appeared looking seaward, a door opened,and sent out a brief lane of yellow to mingle and be lost in thecomet's brightness. That brought me back to the business in hand.

  "Boom! boom!" and when I looked again at the great ironclad,a little torchlike spurt of flame wavered behind her funnels. Icould hear the throb and clangor of her straining engines. . . .

  I became aware of the voices of people calling to one another inthe village. A white-robed, hooded figure, some man in a bathingwrap, absurdly suggestive of an Arab in his burnous, came out fromone of the nearer bungalows, and stood clear and still and shadowlessin the glare.

  He put his hands to shade his seaward eyes, and shouted to peoplewithin.

  The people within--MY people! My fingers tightened on my revolver.What was this war nonsense to me? I would go round among the hummockswith the idea of approaching the three bungalows inconspicuouslyfrom the flank. This fight at sea might serve my purpose--exceptfor that, it had no interest for me at all. Boom! boom! The hugevoluminous concussions rushed past me, beat at my heart and passed.In a moment Nettie would come out to see.

  First one and then two other wrappered figures came out of thebungalows to join the first. His arm pointed seaward, and his voice,a full tenor, rose in explanation. I could hear some of the words."It's a German!" he said. "She's caught."

  Some one disputed that, and there followed a little indistinctbabble of argument. I went on slowly in the circuit I had markedout, watching these people as I went.

  They shouted together with such a common intensity of directionthat I halted and looked seaward. I saw the tall fountain flung bya shot that had just missed the great warship. A second rose stillnearer us, a third, and a fourth, and then a great uprush of dust,a whirling cloud, leapt out of the headland whence the rocket hadcome, and spread with a slow deliberation right and left. Hard onthat an enormous crash, and the man with the full voice leapt andcried, "Hit!"

  Let me see! Of course, I had to go round beyond the bungalows, andthen come up towards the group from behind.

  A high-pitched woman's voice called, "Honeymooners! honeymooners!Come out and see!"

  Something gleamed in the shadow of the nearer bungalow, anda man's voice answered from within. What he said I did not catch,but suddenly I heard Nettie calling very distinctly, "We've beenbathing."

  The man who had first come out shouted, "Don't you hear the guns?They're fighting--not five miles from shore."

  "Eh?" answered the bungalow, and a window opened.

  "Out there!"

  I did not hear the reply, because of the faint rustle of my ownmovements. Clearly these people were all too much occupied by thebattle to look in my direction, and so I walked now straight towardthe darkness that held Nettie and the black desire of my heart.

  "Look!" cried some one, and pointed skyward.

  I glanced up, and behold! The sky was streaked with bright greentrails. They radiated from a point halfway between the westernhorizon and the zenith, and within the shining clouds of the meteora streaming movement had begun, so that it seemed to be pouringboth westwardly and back toward the east, with a crackling sound, asthough the whole heaven was stippled over with phantom pistol-shots.It seemed to me then as if the meteor was coming to help me,descending with those thousand pistols like a curtain to fend offthis unmeaning foolishness of the sea.

  "Boom!" went a gun on the big ironclad, and "boom!" and the gunsof the pursuing cruisers flashed in reply.

  To glance up at that streaky, stirring light scum of the sky madeone's head swim. I stood for a moment dazed, and more than a littlegiddy. I had a curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose,after all, the fanatics were right, and the world WAS coming to anend! What a score that would be for Parload!

  Then it came into my head that all these things were happening toconsecrate my revenge! The war below, the heavens above, were thethunderous garment of my deed. I heard Nettie's voice cry out notfifty yards away, and my passion surged again. I was to return toher amid these terrors bearing unanticipated death. I was to possessher, with a bullet, amidst thunderings and fear. At the thought Ilifted up my voice to a shout that went unheard, and advanced nowrecklessly, revolver displayed in my hand.

  It was fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards--the little groupof people, still heedless of me, was larger and more important now,the green-shot sky and the fighting ships remoter. Some one dartedout from the bungalow, with an interrupted question, and stopped,suddenly aware of me. It was Nettie, with some coquettish darkwrap about her, and the green glare shining on her sweet face andwhite throat. I could see her expression, stricken with dismay andterror, at my advance, as though something had seized her by theheart and held her still--a target for my shots.

  "Boom!" came the ironclad's gunshot like a command. "Bang!" thebullet leapt from my hand. Do you know, I did not want to shoother then. Indeed I did not want to shoot her then! Bang! and Ihad fired again, still striding on, and--each time it seemed I hadmissed.

  She moved a step or so toward me, still staring, and then someoneintervened, and near beside her I saw young Verrall.

  A heavy stranger, the man in the hooded bath-gown, a fat, foreign-lookingman, came out of nowhere like a shield before them. He seemed apreposterous interruption. His face was full of astonishment andterror. He rushed across my path with arms extended and open hands,as one might try to stop a runaway horse. He shouted some nonsense.He seemed to want to dissuade me, as though dissuasion had anythingto do with it now.

  "Not you, you fool!" I said hoarsely. "Not you!" But he hid Nettienevertheless.

  By an enormous effort I resisted a mechanical impulse to shootthrough his fat body. Anyhow, I knew I mustn't shoot him. Fora moment I was in doubt, then I became very active, turned asideabruptly and dodged his pawing arm to the left, and so found twoothers irresolutely in my way. I fired a third shot in the air, justover their heads, and ran at them. They hastened left and right; Ipulled up and faced about within a yard of a foxy-faced young mancoming sideways, who seemed about to grapple me. At my resolutehalt he fell back a pace, ducked, and threw up a defensive arm,and then I perceived the course was clear, and ahead of me, youngVerrall and Nettie--he was holding her arm to help her--runningaway. "Of course!" said I.

  I fired a fourth ineffectual shot, and then in an acce
ss of furyat my misses, started out to run them down and shoot them barrel tobackbone. "These people!" I said, dismissing all these interferences.. . . "A yard," I panted, speaking aloud to myself, "a yard! Tillthen, take care, you mustn't--mustn't shoot again."

  Some one pursued me, perhaps several people--I do notknow, we left them all behind. . . .

  We ran. For a space I was altogether intent upon the swift monotonyof flight and pursuit. The sands were changed to a whirl of greenmoonshine, the air was thunder. A luminous green haze rolled aboutus. What did such things matter? We ran. Did I gain or lose? thatwas the question. They ran through a gap in a broken fence thatsprang up abruptly out of nothingness and turned to the right. Inoted we were in a road. But this green mist! One seemed to ploughthrough it. They were fading into it, and at that thought I madea spurt that won a dozen feet or more.

  She staggered. He gripped her arm, and dragged her forward. Theydoubled to the left. We were off the road again and on turf. Itfelt like turf. I tripped and fell at a ditch that was somehowfull of smoke, and was up again, but now they were phantomshalf gone into the livid swirls about me. . . .

  Still I ran.

  On, on! I groaned with the violence of my effort. I staggeredagain and swore. I felt the concussions of great guns tear past methrough the murk.

  They were gone! Everything was going, but I kept on running. Oncemore I stumbled. There was something about my feet that impededme, tall grass or heather, but I could not see what it was, onlythis smoke that eddied about my knees. There was a noise and spinningin my brain, a vain resistance to a dark green curtain that wasfalling, falling, falling, fold upon fold. Everything grew darkerand darker.

  I made one last frantic effort, and raised my revolver, fired mypenultimate shot at a venture, and fell headlong to the ground.And behold! the green curtain was a black one, and the earth andI and all things ceased to be.

  BOOK THE SECOND

  THE GREEN VAPORS

  CHAPTER THE FIRST

  THE CHANGE