The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER TWENTY

A litter of crumpled, wasted paper lies around me upon the dusty floor. For two long nights I have sat in the feeble flicker of my home-made lantern, struggling for words to describe the evening of the Cataclysm and the day that followed. I have been groping for inspiration to paint into my picture the whole agony of England in those stricken hours, but every attempt has led my pen into a flounder of impotence. My supply of paper is growing short and I am conscious of a growing weakness. This afternoon I fainted in the street as I returned from Kensington Gardens with wood for my fire. I have never fainted in my life before and it was twilight when my senses returned to me. I staggered home, fearful lest I should die before my story is finished and all my work should have been in vain.

I must seek no longer for grand words and ‘purple patches’ to describe the things that happened: I must tell my story, simply and directly. The great picture of stricken England that I dreamed of writing must give place to a small, intimate picture of the tiny corner in which I lived. I shall tell everything and conceal nothing: if at times my behaviour seems irresponsible and ridiculous I can only ask the reader to bear in mind the hideous conditions which were influencing my reason through those hours.

I was very tired as I returned home at midnight from the cricket match. The brave, impudent conception of that last event in our ‘gala week’ had been blasted by the hurricane into a pitiful anticlimax. Laughter was over. The people of Beadle returned home in silence to face the end.

I entered my dark house and went to my library. It had been an easy matter to keep cheerful in company with those grand people of the village. What with the hard physical work in Burgin Park during the day and our nightly programme of entertainments I had scarcely had a moment to myself. But now it was all over, and nothing remained but to wait for the end. With a sinking heart I realised that almost two days still remained: two days that I must spend for the most part in solitude. If only the whole thing had ended that night upon the cricket ground! – ended with the Colonel and Pat and Robin beside me beneath those elms!

I glanced around my library. The old room had meant so much to me at one time. During those autumn days when I alone in the village had known what lay in store, this room had been a prison: sometimes a torture chamber in which I had nursed that dreadful secret in solitude. But I had been in it very little in the past few weeks. So tired was I after my work at the dugout that usually I had gone very early to bed, merely sitting a few minutes in the room to write my diary and yawn my head off. And now, for two final nights, it was to become my prison again.

It was well past midnight. I knew that I ought to go to bed, but there was something revolting in the thought of sleep with eternal sleep so close at hand. I had a desperate yearning to make the utmost of the few hours that remained to me. A few moments before I had been wishing these hours away, but now I found myself counting them like a miser – counting them as a schoolboy might count the last hours of his holiday. It occurred to me what an interesting competition a newspaper could organise: ‘If two days of life remained to you – how would you choose to spend them?’ How various the entries would be! Some would vote for a pack of hounds, a sturdy horse and one last glorious run across the country: others for a box each night at the opera. My own desires were simple and modest. Tomorrow afternoon I would take my favourite walk. I wanted to see the trees and the downs and the distant river from the hillside for the last time. Tonight I would read.

I went to my bookcase. My hands moved instinctively away from the classics – the heavy books of history and philosophy that had helped me through unhappy times in days gone by. Instinctively I went to an obscure, untidy row of books in the corner of the lowest shelf: the oldest friends in my library – the treasures of my boyhood.

I took The Wind in the Willows. I drew my chair to the dying fire and roamed once again in the fragrant meadows with Badger and Mole and the immortal Mr Toad. The first streaks of dawn were coming as at last I arose to go to bed, and as I looked over the silvering valley I no longer saw a stricken world upon the brink of eternity. I thought instead of those myriads of little animals stirring from their winter sleep: wide-eyed and cock-eared for the Pipes of Pan.

I slept deeply and peacefully from the moment I closed my eyes.

Sunday was a calm, clear day, incredibly like all other Sundays that had passed in Beadle. Everyone attended morning service and in the afternoon I took the long walk I had promised myself on the night before.

After tea I read the Sunday papers. I have said little concerning the manner in which the newspapers and the radio had dealt with those closing days. Gradually – almost imperceptibly – they had discarded their exciting, almost flippant approach to the crisis. They still kept up their spirit of optimism, stressing in particular the magnificent preparations made by the authorities and the impregnable strength of the dugouts, but a serious undertone had strengthened with the passage of time and I doubt whether any finer messages have ever been published to compare with the leading articles upon that last Sunday. There was an inspiring article by the Archbishop of Canterbury entitled ‘Courage’, and straightforward messages from famous men in different walks of life, all stressing the theme: ‘there’s a fighting chance! – keep your spirits up!’ Millions must have become brave again and renewed their faith as they sat with their newspapers upon that calm Sunday afternoon.

At evening service the Vicar reminded his congregation of instructions already issued for the following day, and ended a touching little sermon with the words: ‘we shall meet again tomorrow night.’

There was no storm that evening to break the quietness. Towards sunset the sky was filled with a deep blue glow. Then heavy clouds banked up from the east, bringing a few big, leaden drops of rain. The moon, when it rose, was hidden by the clouds, although its fierce light seeped through the lighter places like molten bronze.

That night I took from my bookcase another of my boyhood’s friends. For many hours, until the dawn came, I journeyed down the Mississippi with Huckleberry Finn, his friend Tom Sawyer and Jim, the negro. Once more I conjured up those brooding, limitless plains with the little lamplit shacks in the groves beside the river. As I undressed in the grey quietness of my bedroom I realised that Monday had come: Monday the 3rd of May.

The reader may feel that I have dwelt over-long upon these last eventless hours. That may be true, but there is reason for it. Even though seven years have passed: even though I have been approaching this day through the softened light of memory, a growing horror has been stealing upon me as I draw near, and I have sought with my pen to postpone this dreadful day as once I sought to postpone it with books and work and every possible expedient.

Every night, as I have lain down my pen I have sighed with relief and whispered to myself: ‘you are still a month away’ – ‘you have still ten days’ – ‘the “gala week” remains.’ But now nothing remains, for the 3rd of May has dawned.

I awoke at eight when Mrs Buller brought my tea. I drank the tea and slept again till nine. I drew back my curtains upon a dark, leaden morning, more like November than the first week of May. It seemed as if even the normal functions of weather had ended, and the country lay embalmed beneath a dusty glass case. As I returned up the hillside from tending my poultry I found myself panting for breath. I cannot describe the atmosphere of that morning: it was neither warm nor cold – damp nor dry – a dead, fetid sickliness surrounded me like a pall.

The newspapers were published upon four pages only that morning. It would have been a mockery to produce Society News, the City Page or the Garden Corner. And there was little beyond some final official instructions, a few messages and some advice concerning ‘after precautions’. There was a cartoon by Bridgnorth: an effigy representing the world facing the moon – behind the world lay all the dead crises and terrors of the past which the world had faced and triumphed over, suggesting that the world could face and still defeat its most terrible trial of all. On the front page of every newspaper appeared short messages of hope and courage from the heads of every great nation upon the earth. For the first time in history the whole world stood as if clasping hands – quarrels forgotten, friendships remembered in a last great ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

I had intended to spend the day in quiet, reflective solitude but towards midday the awful monotony of that dead grey atmosphere and tomblike stillness became intolerable. I had an aching hunger for companionship – for somebody – anybody – to speak to. I could scarcely go into the kitchen and talk with Mrs Buller, for she was busy preparing lunch, so I took my hat and stick and walked down to the village.

I went slowly and deliberately, for any hurry, even the slightest stumble, brought suffocation upon me as if an iron band were tightening around my throat.

The village was deserted: everyone, I imagine, was preparing for their journey to the dugout in a few hours’ time. My footsteps echoed down the silent street: a woman peered at me in surprise through a cottage window. I felt a fool and a coward, and silently retraced my steps for home.

As Mrs Buller was clearing away my lunch I enquired whether her preparations were complete for going to the dugout that afternoon.

‘Everything’s ready,’ replied the old lady. ‘I’m filling two flasks with coffee and taking…’

‘One flask will be sufficient,’ I said – and then I broke to her the news that I had kept from her as long as possible. ‘I shall not be coming to the dugout myself, Mrs Buller. I have decided to stay here.’

My decision may seem a reckless one: the wilful casting away of my slender chance of survival, but for months the thought of that dugout had haunted me. Ever since childhood I had had a horror of closed-in places. I can face a violent thunderstorm upon an open hillside without a tremor, but I have never been able to face an underground train and will walk up a dozen flights of stairs to avoid a self-controlled lift.

The thought of being shut inside that dugout for hours on end without hope of escape was horrible, and when Colonel Parker told me that he, with Pat and Robin, had decided to remain at The Manor House I had breathed a sigh of thankfulness. If those brave souls could stay, then I too could stay without suggestion of cowardice.

Another thing that revolted me from the dugout was the thought of being penned up for hours without end with Dr Hax, who was bound to throw his weight about and would drive me mad.

Mrs Buller was surprised at my decision, but not in the way that I had anticipated. I had expected her to regard me as a reckless lunatic, but instead she stared at me with disapproving eyes and asked: ‘How could I do such a thing?’

As a result of the fatalistic letter she had received from that silly old lady with whom she was once in service, Mrs Buller had completely given up hope of survival and had accepted this night as definitely the end of the world. She was one of those simple, tidy souls to whom a decent burial was the only essential luxury of life. She had frequently told me that her father was taken to his grave in a hearse with two men standing upon the ledge at the back of it and I knew that she hungered after a similar dignity. It had gradually dawned upon the poor old lady that, if the world ended, there would be no one to bury her, and the dugout had become to her the next best thing. She had not been keen about it at first, but when she heard that the Vicar would be there her mind was content. His presence would consecrate the dugout and the honour of being buried with the Vicar made up for the disappointment of being denied a grave to herself.

That I should wilfully refuse the only decent form of burial now open to me filled her with reproachful disappointment. I became, I think, a pagan in her eyes and no longer her master.

‘Just as you think, sir,’ she murmured, and left the room. In a little while her loyalty got the better of her. She returned to say that she had laid out my tea in the drawing-room.

‘The teapot’s on the stove, sir – with the caddy beside it: you’ll remember to give the pot a rinse with hot water before you put the tea in?’ She stood by the door, her fingers roving up and down its side: ‘You sure you won’t come, sir? – the Vicar said everybody was to go.’

‘I’m quite sure, Mrs Buller. This is my home. I would rather stay here.’

At four o’clock I walked with the old lady to the garden gate: she had been my housekeeper for over six years – I had never known any other servant in this house. At the gate I shook her hand – the first time in all those years that I had touched those thin, worn fingers.

‘It’ll be all right, Mrs Buller.’

‘It’s in God’s hands,’ she replied.

I watched her go down the winding lane – a blanket over her arm, a little basket in her hand containing her flask of coffee and a book to read – her Bible. Something told me that I should never see her again. As I returned to my home and entered the gloomy hall it was a home no longer. That frail old woman had taken its spirit and soul with her down the lane.

I could not stay in that house alone. I went out to my tool shed and emptied some flower-pots onto my stack of mould. I took my pruning scissors and began to cut back some shrubs that encroached upon the drive. I had to do something: something with my hands to hack a few resisting minutes from those ghastly, silent hours.

From my garden I could see the village people coming from their homes and going in little groups towards the dugout in Burgin Park. I should have stayed indoors during that heartrending hour, for as I watched them go I had a desperate longing to be with them. The horror of the sealed dugout suddenly became trivial beside the horror of my approaching isolation. I tried to keep my eyes away from the village – blindly and senselessly I clipped at the shrubs – but the lifeless atmosphere had made the stems so soft and flabby that my scissors twisted them in vain.

From the crest of my garden I could just see the dugout between the trees. I could see Sapper Evans bustling about, closing two of the doors. One door alone remained open and the Vicar and Dr Hax stood beside it welcoming the people as they arrived. Two or three of the younger men, including Charlie Hurst, were acting as ‘reception clerks’. They were conducting the people down the dugout steps, presumably to show them their appointed places, for presently the people would come up again without their blankets and belongings and sit down upon the grass. A woman moved amongst them serving tea and biscuits and the children seemed happy and high-spirited as they played upon the hillside. I looked at my watch: it needed ten minutes to five: there was still just time for me to get hold of a blanket and run wildly to the dugout before the doors were closed. I was in a torment of indecision and only the thought of my friends in The Manor House across the valley sustained my resolution to remain.

And then a sickening thought came to me. Supposing Colonel Parker, with Pat and Robin, had decided to go to the dugout after all? Supposing that I were alone – the only human soul upon the face of the earth? Panic seized me: utter solitude became a horror ten thousand times worse than a crowded dugout. I nearly ran shouting to the crest of my garden to wave my arms at the dugout and beg them to wait for me.

But it was too late: even as I looked I saw the Vicar and Sapper Evans calling to the people. I saw them rise from the grass and file down the steps, and I could bear to look no longer. I went into my house and threw myself into my library chair. I lay there sobbing for breath, for the air was suffocating. I threw open the window and the air that flowed in to me was like a freshly opened tomb: it was cold and evil-smelling – horribly stagnant. I went round my house and closed and bolted every window to retain as long as possible the air that was at least sweet enough to live in.

Presently I went out into my garden. A stubbornness in my nature urged me to see whether I could still breathe outdoors. It was difficult but not impossible. The hillside around the dugout was deserted now: deserted save for a solitary figure standing by the dugout door – the squat little figure of Sapper Evans. He was gazing around as if searching for a late-comer who might be upon his way. Was he waiting for me? He came out a little way and looked into the sky: he went back, adjusted something above the entrance and closed the door behind him. As the door closed, the clock in Beadle Church tower pealed the hour of five. The Sapper had been true to military punctuality until the last.

It was still two hours from sunset, but a heavy, turgid twilight had begun to fall. The closing of that last steel door in Burgin Park had at least ended my torment of indecision. Nothing on earth could gain me entrance now: whatever my feelings I must face the night alone, but as I turned to go back to my house I was filled with relief and thankfulness. A square of amber light struck through the gloom. It came from across the valley, from the windows of The Manor House, and I knew that my friends were there to keep me company. Almost light-heartedly I went to the kitchen to make my tea. Within sight of me – practically within calling distance – were Pat and Robin, and the Colonel.

As I drank my tea I considered my position. If the forecast of the experts was correct, I still had two hours of safety in which to make my plans, and after careful reflection I decided to meet the crisis in the dining-room. The hurricane on Saturday night had come from the east: and the moon also would come from the east. My dining-room was open to the west side, and while the side of a house was not in itself much protection against a falling moon, I gained a lot of moral comfort by selecting a room as far away from its approach as possible. Built into the wall of the dining-room – well away from the windows – was a deep alcove. It had the additional protection of an arched roof, and there was a snug, safe look about it. I removed the sideboard from this alcove and placed a sofa there: I brought pillows and blankets from my bedroom and made a rough but serviceable bed.

I then went right over the house, taking down the pictures – removing china ornaments and stacking them into cupboards. I began to feel excited, almost elated as I carried out this work. I was the solitary defender of a besieged fort and the spirit of adventure gripped me. I was determined to make my stronghold impregnable.

Having ‘streamlined’ the house, wrapped all the kitchen crockery in tablecloths and packed it safely in the drawers, I gave thought to the windows. The air outside was growing steadily more stagnant and unbreathable, for when I crossed the few yards to my tool-shed to get a screwdriver it was like passing through a sickly, muddy fog. So long as I could keep the house airtight I should be all right, and I spent an hour gumming strips of stout brown paper around the frames of the windows. I stuffed the chimneys tightly with wet towels, and even had the foresight to gum a square of paper over the letter-box.

The clock in Beadle Church struck seven. It was uncanny to hear that solitary old clock, placidly chiming the quarters to an empty world. There was not much longer to wait now, and there was little else for me to do. Several times I had paused in my work and gone to my library window to stare at the light in The Manor House across the valley. I saw a shadow move across the window and I wondered what they were doing in that old raftered room to pass those leaden hours.

The night outside was incredibly quiet: once I thought I heard a purr of a motor-cycle away up the valley, but I could not believe that anyone was abroad. At half-past seven I mixed a strong whisky and soda, placed it upon a small table beside the alcove and lay down upon the sofa to read.

In times of great nerve strain I have always been thankful that my recourse to alcohol is rare. Had I been accustomed to a whisky and soda every night the stimulant I took that evening would have been to little purpose. But as it was I quickly felt its warm peacefulness come glowing through my veins and despite the perilous nearness of the crisis I found it possible to read, even to enjoy, the first chapter of Treasure Island.

Occasionally I lowered my book to listen, but the world outside was deathly still. Once I was startled by a sudden plop as the wet towel I had stuffed up the chimney fell into the fireplace. I pushed it back and sustained it with the poker, but even as I did so a sickly, tomb-like odour flowed down from the outer world.

Half-past seven struck from the church tower. I went to the windows and met utter blackness – just my own reflection with the book in my hand. I sniffed around the frames to assure myself that I had thoroughly sealed out that fetid air. It seemed all right. I returned to the couch to read again.

I finished my whisky and lay staring at the arched ceiling of the alcove. I could hear the clock in the hall knocking away the seconds, and suddenly a thought occurred that almost made me laugh out loud. What a joke if nothing happened! – what a joke if the moon just disappeared and dawn came back to an unscathed world! Early in the morning I would put my hat on, rakishly, to the back of my head: I would go down to Burgin Park, and wait for those steel doors to open slowly and fearfully. As Dr Hax came crawling out I would saunter up to him with my hands in my pockets and say: ‘Hullo! – what have you been up to?’ What a wonderful joke! – but how infinitely more wonderful if fate allowed me to play it! – if nothing happened after all! Every minute that passed in quietness increased my exultation: my conviction that the crisis had come and gone, leaving us unharmed. As I lay there with hands clasped behind my head the whole glorious future that I had given up surged back to life again. I was only forty-seven, I had many happy, energetic years ahead: this strange interlude and pause in my life would add fire to my ambitions. No longer would I be content to sweep the board at worthless local poultry shows – I would thrust my way into the National Class: even to the International, and triumph with my pullets in Paris and Stockholm and Amsterdam: the strains that I bred in Beadle would bring regeneration to the poultry of the world!

I may have dozed: I do not know – it may only have been those absurd imaginings of the future that distracted my attention from the first strange sounds that broke the stillness: I can only say that when gradually I became aware of them I knew that the sounds had been gathering for some little while in my subconscious mind. I sat up and listened: my book slipped to the ground: I rose from the sofa and went to the window.

It was just as dark, just as quiet outside, but there was a subtle difference in that impenetrable stagnation. It was as if my home lay fathoms deep in a stagnant, murky lake: as if, after many hours of calmness, something had come to ripple and worry the placid surface far above me. At first it was a feeling rather than a sound: when the church clock struck eight, each note came to me in different volume and varying quality: some strokes came clear and resonant as if a slight north wind were carrying them, and then a note would quiver strangely and be followed by one so muffled that it scarcely reached me.

Something very strange was happening, but even as I grew conscious of that encroaching, nameless horror, I clung with all my power to the obstinate hope that the danger time had passed.

I was more angry than afraid. I was so delighted about the idea of meeting Dr Hax and laughing at him as he crept out of the dugout in the morning that I became furious at the possibility of anything happening to prevent it.

But there was little time for thoughts of Dr Hax. I could deceive myself no longer. Definite sounds were above me now – a long-drawn, wailing sigh like an animal in pain. It died away – then came again more fiercely: it became a groan: a shriek – and the hurricane was in the valley.

At first it was like the hurricane of Saturday night when the wind had howled above us, leaving the cricket ground almost unscathed, but nothing on that Saturday compared with the first ‘buffet’ that struck my house. It felt as if a huge sea monster had swung its tail and struck my house a resounding blow in the face: I heard something crash and roll upstairs: the glass fell from the table beside the couch and bounced upon the carpet.

My house no longer lay beneath the storm: as the tempest rose it lashed away the darkness. Light returned – but not the steady, golden light of yesterday: it came in a dirty brown, diseased glow that pulsated with the morbid rhythm of a totem drum. For the space of a second I saw the light in The Manor House across the valley – then suddenly it was gone. With its going my own lights flickered. They struggled to life again: for a little while they seemed to pulsate in horrid mesmerism with the brown glow of the sky – then went out completely. I staggered to my table and gripped the torch placed there in readiness, but I had no need to use it now. The dingy brown sky became wild and luminous: through its dirty brownness came a blood-red streak: swelling and pulsating until the whole sky was filled by it. The heavens seemed to pant and bleed like the shattered lung of a dying giant.

The wind no longer came in scattered, thudding blows: it came in a torrent – one shrieking, ceaseless torrent of maniacal fury. I stood by the window fascinated: I could not move: there came a great rending as if the whole hillcrest were being torn open from horizon to horizon – I saw the giant elms brace themselves – quiver and fall like corn before a scythe. One, seized in a freakish eddy, stood for a few seconds completely upon its head with its roots waving like branches before it collapsed downwards into its own tangled foliage. Something came with a mighty crash against the back of my house: the whole structure swayed and I heard a cascade of falling tiles. Stupefied by the shock I found myself wondering whether my ‘All in’ policy would be of any use. Mercifully the hurricane was coming from the east: my house was built a little below the hillcrest upon the western side and but for this protection nothing could have saved it from being swept bodily away. The downfall of those giant elms upon the crest had not ended their torment: as I watched I saw huge limbs torn from them, whipped up and spun grotesquely to eternity. Something dark and square, that looked like a shed, came flying up the valley, rolling over and over in the air at least a hundred feet from the earth. Around it, like small planets, whirled a number of fluffy balls – my chicken house! – my poultry! – dead, helpless, fluffy balls – and I had known them all by name!

I could bear it no longer: my head was throbbing like mad: horribly it seemed to throb in harmony with the red, pulsating sky. I staggered to the sofa within the alcove – I threw myself onto it, turned my face to the wall, dragged the blanket over my head and lay sobbing like a child – I cried aloud: as loud as I possibly could to drown the agony of that shrieking tempest.

How long I lay there I do not know: it seemed a year, but I do not think it was for more than half an hour. I thrust my fingers into my ears and the roaring of my own blood drowned the devastation of the earth.

Slowly I became conscious of a new and weird sensation. Once, years before, on my cruise to the Canary Islands, our little ship had struck a violent storm in the Bay of Biscay and one moment of that storm had lived vividly in my memory. We were lifted onto the crest of a huge swell and had then descended to the very bottom of a gulley: the fall had seemed endless and we appeared to sink and sink to the very bottom of the ocean.

And now, as I lay upon my couch, the sensation came again, but magnified a thousandfold. My body seemed gradually to become as light as a feather. I hardly felt the couch beneath me – we were sinking, and sinking. The whole house – the whole world was sinking.

There was something very peaceful in it: and suddenly I understood the reason. The tempest had left us. The raging inferno had passed as a tortured soul might pass from a shattered body, leaving a miracle of stillness and peace behind it.

Peace… and stillness? – Was there nothing else? – Was there not also death?

My terror had given place to relief and overwhelming gladness. The lightness of my body upon this couch… the fading of all sound from my ears could mean but one thing… the gentle passing of my life. In a little while I should feel my body no longer – the drop of the lids over my aching eyes: the throb in my temples – all pain, all torment, would be gone for ever. I lay there waiting peacefully for some final sign – some subtle change to tell me that bodily life was done with, conscious only of a thankfulness that, much as I had suffered, I had been spared at least the agonies of a body maimed and shattered by a falling house.

Just as I was becoming certain that I must now be dead, I was startled by the rudest and most unexpected shock of the whole evening. Suddenly – without warning, the window burst. I cannot say that it broke: it just burst as a bottle of beer might burst if placed beside the fire. The force that burst the glass did not come from outside: it came from within as if an invisible elephant were in the room and had leaned against the pane. The glass flew outwards but made no sound as it fell, and then to my astonishment a pile of notepaper and envelopes upon the writing table whisked up and flew in a stream through the window. They fluttered up a few yards, then dropped like sheets of lead onto the path.

Strange flashes of comprehension sometimes come in moments of extreme danger, for despite my astonishment I realised dimly what had happened. The atmosphere had left the earth – I remembered the words of Professor Hartley, spoken months ago: ‘The earth may be jolted out of its skin of atmosphere.’ That accounted for the sudden silence, for without air there can be no sound. But the thought was gone within a second, for almost at once I was struggling in that room like a drowning man. As the air had left the outside world the pressure of the atmosphere in this room had burst the window and was whistling away into the night. I was suffering agonies of physical pain: my head seemed to swell like a balloon and my limbs felt horribly big and bloated. I staggered to the door: I heard the air whistling through the keyhole from the outside hall and as I turned the handle the door flew open, almost stunning me.

As the air rushed from the hall towards the shattered window I was able to take one great, God-sent breath of it that gave me the strength to struggle onwards to the door of my library.

As the door opened inwards I had to throw my whole weight against it before it would give against the pressure of air within. I fell into the room and the door crashed to behind me. I lay panting for breath upon the floor, blood gushing from my ears. But there was air in here, and I quickly recovered. The windows of the library were latticed in lead, with thick diamond-shaped panes that had withstood the strain. But I could hear the precious, life-giving atmosphere whistling under the door like water through the sluice gates of a mill. I dragged up the hearth-rug and wedged it along the crack: it was easier to keep air within the room than to keep it out, for the pressure drew the rug tightly against the leak and the hissing stopped.

I was thinking calmly and logically again: for greater safety I closed the shutters over the windows to lessen the pressure against the glass. I examined the chimney and was glad of my foresight in blocking it with a wet towel. The room seemed airtight now. How long I could live in it I did not know – I scarcely cared: I was almost angry with myself for allowing that frantic instinct for self-preservation to turn a quick death in my drawing-room into a slow death by suffocation in my library.

I dropped into my armchair – inexpressibly tired – clammy with perspiration. I wiped the blood from my ears and tried to coax saliva into my parched mouth.

I think that I must have fainted, for it could not possibly have been sleep. I returned to consciousness with a ghastly headache that seemed to be forcing my eyes from their sockets: my tongue was swollen – I could not swallow. I faced a slow, agonising death, pitifully different from the peaceful end that I had hoped for upon the couch in the drawing-room a few hours ago. I looked at my watch and struck a match to see the time: the flame burnt red and stale in the used-up air: it was ten o’clock – a bare two hours since the agony began. In normal times I would not yet be thinking of going to bed!

As I sat there with fuddled brain, breathing slowly and lightly to preserve the fetid air to the uttermost, I thought that I heard a sound. I listened and it came again – the faintest ripple of something like water. Hope surged within me: if there were sound there must be air!

I went to the door and determined to open it. In any case it would be better to die at once than to bear the slow agony of suffocation in this room.

I drew the hearth-rug from the bottom of the door. I knelt and held my hand against the crack. There was a slight movement, whether of air going out or coming in I could not tell.

I summoned my courage, took hold of the handle, and pulled. The door opened with ease – there was air upon earth again!

It was bitterly cold, with a sickly, sulphurous taste – but it was air – and breathable. I stood there for a moment, taking deep thankful draughts of it. It made me cough. I retched and was slightly sick, but I felt better for it. Across the dark hall the drawing-room door stood open: beyond, through the broken window, I could see a faint grey light. I walked through the hall and into the drawing-room. I went to the broken window, threw it open and looked out.

What I saw should not, I suppose, have affected me as strangely as it did, but my nerves were wrecked and my brain incapable of further strain.

I was prepared to look from that window upon a shattered world: I was prepared to see the valley heaped with wreckage and the whole village of Beadle swept away. But I saw no valley before me: I saw instead what seemed to be a flat field almost level with my eyes: a limitless plain upon which some light crop like clover rippled in a steady wind.

To say that I could not believe my eyes is an understatement. I could not believe my brain or my intelligence. For a moment I wondered whether the whole house had been lifted bodily from its foundations and carried by the tornado into the Steppes of Russia, but I discarded the idea as too absurd.

The sounds came to me: the ripple-ripple that I had heard so lightly in the shuttered library were louder and more constant here. It was very dark: I found my torch upon the floor and flashed it onto the plain beyond the window.

It was not a plain: it was water, a vast expanse of inky, sluggish water moving slowly by the window within a few feet of the walls.

I had heard a lot about lost men upon the desert – in the last delirium of thirst: stumbling onwards and onwards towards calm sheets of water that tantalised their maddened brains. I was sure now that I was mad. Floods I could imagine – floods that might even penetrate this inland valley – but before me was an ocean: moving placidly 500 feet above the level of the sea!

I stood there without thought: I stood with dull eyes and deadened brain until a huge black shape came slowly within my vision and quenched the faint greyness of the night. It looked like an immense ship, sleepily nosing its way to harbour. For a moment its vast bulk seemed within touching distance and I thought that portholes passed me. The water was closer now: it was lapping against the very walls of the house: what I had taken to be the ripples of wind across a field of clover now showed themselves to be long, rhythmic waves, advancing steadily – each wave adding a little to the rising surface of the ocean.

I do not remember going back to my library – I have only a hazy recollection of sitting for a long while in my armchair, drumming the arm-rests with my fingers and saying out loud again and again: ‘Mad! – quite mad! – raving mad! – solitary raving madman in an empty world!’

When I awoke I felt something upon my knee: it was an open book, with my torch lying upon it. There was a little light coming through the open door. I sat puzzling over it for a long time – puzzling where the book had come from and what it was. I flashed my torch upon the title page: Downland Rambles in Hampshire. It conveyed nothing. It baffled me.

Dimly I began to remember. I had gone to my bookshelf to get a book to see if I could read. I had argued that if I could read I might not be mad after all. With trembling fingers I opened the book and flashed on the torch:

‘…the track becomes difficult to follow as the summit of the downs is reached…’

The words made sense and I understood them! I rose from my chair, quivering with excitement: I flashed my torch around, saying: ‘fireplace! – bookshelf! – cupboard!’ I knew the words and the purpose of each thing! I threw myself down beside my chair and gave thanks to God for the blessing of sanity.

I went to the cupboard. A syphon was there. I pressed the nozzle to my parched lips and felt the cool, sweet water hiss into my burning throat.

I went to the window and threw the shutters open. Dawn was coming over the stricken hillside: the sweetest dawn that I have ever seen. The valley was still deep in darkness but that ghostly ocean had gone as weirdly as it came.

I ran across the hall and flung the door wide to the glorious sunlight: I ran into the drawing-room, flung myself upon the couch and lay there laughing and sobbing. I was alive! – the sun was rising! – the world was saved!