THE WRATH OF SUL.
The earthquake, in the twinkling of an eye, had changed the face of
all nature around them, and while it did so it annihilated stereotyped
manners and conventional restraints. To Zenobia it did not seem strange
that Linton's arms should be folded protectingly about her, or that she
should cling to him, face to face and heart to heart. The moment of the
earth's convulsion had bridged a gulf and wrought a revelation. They
knew themselves, beyond all doubt, for what they were, lovers and twin
souls, pledged to each other by unspoken vows.
The dreadful shock had come and gone, but the external changes
and terrors which the catastrophe had brought about could not be
immediately realised. Presently they discovered that the ground had
moved with them, and that they had been swept to a considerable
distance from the plateau on which they had been standing. A great
gap yawned where the sundial had stood. Peter had disappeared. They
themselves had been saved from falling by the trunk of a giant
tree--one of the few which had not been up-rooted--while below them, on
the slope of the hill, new spaces were revealed where other trees had
crashed down to the ground.
The air was full of a strange echoing din, caused by the collapse of
buildings outside the limits of the park and in the town below. In
the midst of these reverberating sounds, and in strange contrast, was
heard the prolonged wail of terrified women and the shrill cry of a
frightened child.
Gasping, and looking up the hill, they could see, rising from
Lansdown, dense volumes of sulphurous smoke, through which shot vivid
gleams of forking flame. Elsewhere a greyish veil began to spread
across the land. A steaming, suffocating atmosphere choked their lungs.
"There may be another shock! We must escape for our very lives," Linton
whispered hoarsely.
Zenobia, white to the lips, made a faint gesture of assent. "Hold my
hand! We must find a way across the river," he said quickly.
Again she made an obedient sign; and Linton, guiding her, they moved
cautiously forward in the strange grey twilight which began to enfold
them.
Awe-inspiring sounds had been succeeded by a silence which was scarcely
less terrible. A sense of horror half paralysed their faculties as
they cautiously moved forward down the slope. Almost at their feet
had opened a chasm which revealed many solid blocks of masonry, such
as had been used of old in the construction of the Roman Baths. The
rending of the earth had exposed to view a section of what looked like
the foundations of an ancient and imposing temple. Between the massive
walls, at the bottom of some steps, they observed a narrow cell or
chamber, and as they stepped past the shadowy opening, Zenobia's foot
came into contact with an ancient Roman lamp.
Of these things neither of them was fully conscious at the moment. They
were mental photographs, vivid experiences unconsciously stored in
memory and fraught with a strange confirmatory significance not yet to
be appreciated.
Hand in hand, picking their steps apprehensively, they made their
way between the fallen trees down to the broad avenue leading to the
lower gate of the Park. Here, at the gate, for the first time they
encountered evidence of death and disaster in the town itself. Houses
had collapsed on every side; distracting moans and piteous cries from
unseen sufferers assailed their ears. For a moment they paused before
a monumental heap of stone and timber, impelled to render help in
answer to these vague but terrible appeals.
"We can do nothing," groaned Linton, in answer to Zenobia's questioning
pause. "Come," and he led her quickly round the wreckage of the houses.
Stumbling, half running, they made their way by a devious route down
towards the heart of the town. In Queen Square there was a frightened
crowd. Women and children, weeping and sobbing, were kneeling on
the roadway with hands upraised in prayer. Men came running towards
them shouting unintelligible warnings ... questions. Terrified faces
appeared at many upper windows. They saw a frenzied girl leap from the
parapet of a tottering house and disappear behind a heap of ruins.
In the lower streets the destruction wrought was less noticeable,
but a new terror was revealed. The sound of rushing waters reached
their ears, and every moment white-faced men and women tore past
them, crying in shrill tones: "The Spring! the Spring!" Then they saw
eddying streams of steaming, orange-tinted water creep round street
corners, overflow the gutters, and spread into the road. The water rose
so rapidly that they had to turn aside and once more take to higher
ground. They found themselves crossing Milsom Street, and as they did
so a loud explosion sounded at the upper end, accompanied with an
over-powering smell of gas. Screams rent the air, and another crowd
of men and women, some of them carrying children in their arms, came
rushing helter-skelter down the street.
None of the houses at the lower end had fallen, but several were
bulging forward and appeared to be deserted. And here already
the predatory instinct was at work. Linton caught the arm of a
filthy-looking tramp just as he raised an iron bar to smash the plate
glass window of a jeweller's shop. He hurled the thief aside, then
grasping Zenobia's hand again he dragged her forward, making for the
nearest bridge.
But once again their way was barred. From a great crack in the
roadway a fountain--a geyser--of the yellow, steaming water suddenly
leaped into the air. To avoid it they were compelled to make another
circuit. They hurried down some narrow streets and reached the open
space in front of the theatre. Fighting their way through excited and
gesticulating groups of people, they passed the hospital, and, turning
to the right, reached the front of the Grand Pump Room Hotel. Limping
and enfeebled invalids, who could scarcely move unaided, were streaming
from the the building, appealing eagerly for guidance to a way of
escape from the perils that surrounded them. Tremulous but unheeded
questions were heard on every side as Linton and Zenobia crossed the
road and reached the Colonnade. To their right, from the doorways of
the Grand Pump Room itself, another flood of tinted steaming water was
pouring rapidly over the broad pavement and stealing into the Abbey
Church. By keeping close to the opposite wall they escaped the stream,
and leaving the great Church, which so far seemed intact, upon their
right, they soon reached the space in front of the Guildhall. Only a
little distance and they would gain the bridge!
"This way!" cried Zenobia, as Linton, who knew nothing of the town,
stopped in hesitation. But as she spoke, the pavement, barely ten
yards away, bulged suddenly, then split apart, and with a violent rush
another geyser burst into the street. They drew back just in time, and
hurried breathlessly towards the Station Road. On their left rose the
tall building of the Empire Hotel; behind them was the Abbey. A sudden
shout impelled them to look back. A third geyser had opened in the
middle of the roadway, and in an instant columns of steaming water were
spouting high into the air.
"Quick! Quick!" urged Linton. His voice was scarcely audible, for
as they approached the river a mighty roar was coming from the weir,
dominating the multitudinous sounds of terror which filled the air on
every side.
In this appalling crisis earth and air and water seemed united as in a
ruthless conspiracy for the destruction of humanity. In the presence
of these vast, mysterious, and irresistible forces, man, the boasted
master, lord of creation, was subdued and helpless. The effect produced
on the inhabitants of the city was that with which the struggling
atoms of the race, accustomed only to a calm and ordered system, ever
encounter nature in her moods of unfamiliar violence. In tempests of
the deep, in the awful hurricane, when winds and seas mix and contend
in a Titanic conflict, nature ignores the puppets tossing on the
helpless ship, or half drowned on the surging raft. What is man in
presence of the waterspout that towers from the ocean to the clouds?
How shall he face the unfathomable whirlpool that yawns for the frail
boat in which he is compelled to trust? Whither shall we fly, when,
as now, the earth vomits forth from unimaginable caverns the scalding
water floods that she has stored within her depths throughout uncounted
centuries? None can stand unmoved when the hills smoke and the earth
trembles; when darkness, a darkness that may be felt, spreads in a
sinister and all-pervading veil over a world that seems abandoned to
the powers of evil? Powdery ashes were falling everywhere upon the
doomed city. From Lansdown a vast vaporous column, a dreadful blend of
water, bitumen, and sulphur, rose high into the clouds. As the great
column branched and spread, assuming the form of an enormous pine-tree,
the darkness deepened, save where, above the hill itself, red-coloured
flames slashed hither and thither through the cloud at frequent
intervals. Terrific explosions accompanied these manifestations; and
Linton, as he half carried Zenobia towards the river, was possessed
with the fear that the great hill might be completely riven and pour
forth streams of boiling water or of lava, that would not only submerge
the town itself but destroy all life within a radius of many miles.
Conceivably, indeed, it might be the beginning of the end--the end,
at least, of England; for what were the British Isles but the summit
of some vast mountain whose foundations were buried deep in the
unfathomed sea? It had been forgotten that Great Britain with Ireland
and its Giant's Causeway, afforded incontrovertible evidence of
volcanic origin. These islands, with the Hebrides, the Faroe Islets,
and, finally, Iceland, in fact constituted a vast volcanic chain, with
Mount Hecla as its seismic terminus--a focus more active than Vesuvius
itself. And here, at the other end of the chain, was Bath, where for
thousands of years the waters of Sul had maintained a disregarded
warning of that inevitable convulsion which, at last and in the fulness
of time, had come to pass.
In the midst of these flashing thoughts and fears that darted through
his brain, Linton was possessed with the conviction that their only
possible hope of safety lay in crossing the river, the surging roar of
which each moment became more audible and threatening. Others in great
numbers were animated with the same belief. Linton and Zenobia, indeed,
found themselves involved in a madly-rushing crowd of panic-stricken
men and women. Swept this way and that, they were in danger of being
hurled to the ground and trodden underfoot by thousands of hurrying
fellow creatures bent on self-preservation and on nothing else.
Still supporting Zenobia with one arm and fighting his way forward step
by step, Linton presently managed to turn the angle of the tall hotel.
On their right the river, swollen enormously by the inrush from the
hidden springs, had almost reached the level of the parapet. Boiling
floods had poured, and still poured, into the Avon, blending with the
normal stream; and the soul-subduing terror of the scene was augmented
by the great clouds of steam that rose from the surface of the hurtling
river.
With desperate exertions, still supporting his half-fainting companion,
Linton reached the turning towards the bridge. The narrow entrance was
choked with a dense and struggling crowd, through which half a dozen
men, lashing frantically at rearing horses, strove recklessly to force
a passage. Screams and oaths blended with the angry roaring of the
weir. The struggling people swayed hither and thither in dense compact
masses, while a body of firemen from the station close at hand, seized
the heads of several horses and forced them back to give the foot
passengers some slight chance of escape.
Individual efforts were futile in the midst of this confused and
fighting crowd. By the impetus and weight of numbers, however, Linton
and Zenobia, holding closely to each other, were swept as in a human
eddy on to the bridge itself. The same contributory force of numbers,
close packed between the windows of the shops, carried them rapidly
towards the other side. Again and again there was a crash of glass
as the terrific pressure forced in one or other of the windows; but
far more ominous was the angry, roaring voice of the invisible river
beneath them. Rising higher and yet higher every moment, it buffeted
the bridge with unceasing and increasing violence, the torrent whirling
round the piers and buttresses, fiercely impatient for greater
destruction, as it tore upon its way towards the thundering weir.
It was a question of time, and the time must needs be brief. The bridge
must go. Half way across, beneath the feet of the scrambling, sobbing
crowd, the roadway split and cracked. There was a sudden lurch that
sent Linton and Zenobia, with a dozen others, into the open doorway
of a right-hand shop. Like all the rest of the bridge buildings, it
was but one storey high, and at the end of the short passage a narrow
stairway gave access through a trapdoor to the leads. Linton, breathing
heavily from his exertions, gasping a few words of encouragement to
Zenobia, pondered in a flash the possibilities of the position. Those
who had been swept into the deserted shop with them were making frantic
and futile efforts to force their way back into the endless crowd that
still streamed across the bridge in such maddened haste. But a place
once lost in that dense multitude never could be recovered. In truth,
there was no choice, and in a moment his resolve was taken.
"The roof," he whispered, half to himself, "the roof!" Mounting the
steps, he swept back the trapdoor, and, reaching down his hand, drew
Zenobia after him. They emerged upon the flat roof of the shop. Only a
dwarf party wall divided it from the rest.
Below, on their left, the rushing and tumbling tide of humanity pressed
forward to the Bathwick side. Below, on their right, they beheld the
terrifying river, curdled in foam and throwing off increasing clouds of
heavy steam. They scrambled forward quickly, passing on from roof to
roof. Behind them came the sudden sound of rending masonry. A dreadful
scream, a wild cry of despair from the multitude, pierced the powdery
air. The bridge was slowly yielding to the enormous pressure of the
swollen river; but Linton and Zenobia had safely reached the other
side. Raising the trap door of the last shop in the row they descended
rapidly and gained the road. Here the congested throng spread out
across the wider space, and hurried onward to Great Pulteney Street.
As they paused there came a sound--terrible, arresting,
never-to-be-forgotten--the united wail of despairing voices, rising
above the crash of the collapsing bridge as it carried with it, down
into the boiling flood, hundreds of helpless and entangled fugitives.
Zenobia, clinging convulsively to her protector, drew sobbing breaths
at those appalling sounds. But for his supporting arms she would have
sunk fainting to the ground.
"Courage," he whispered. "Courage still."
For the moment he himself believed that on this side of the river they
were safe. But at that instant they felt again beneath their feet the
quaking of the ground--a long and undulating throb. They reeled against
a wall and stood there panting, until a quickened sense of peril
impelled them once again to hasten forward. Turning up Edward Street,
and leaving the church upon their left, they climbed the hill, until
exhaustion compelled them to sink down upon a roadside bench and ease
their labouring lungs.
Thick grey smoke, heavy with choking particles and powdery ashes, was
spreading everywhere; and from this higher ground, looking back towards
the fiery summit of the volcanic hill, they could see cloud after cloud
of fire-torn vapour mounting with spiral motion towards the darkened
heavens.
Wearied though they were, they struggled to their feet, and once more
set their faces towards the hill. Linton fully realised that the area
of disturbance was far wider than he had at first supposed. Safety, if
attainable at all, could only be secured by placing many miles between
themselves and the volcanic district. It was no time for weighing small
considerations. Silently he decided what to do.
They reached the house in which the President had spent and ended
the last days of his life. The hall door was wide open; darkness and
silence reigned in the interior. The servants, obviously, had fled.
Linton shouted, but no answer came. It was clear to him that the
engineer of the _Albatross_ was in full flight with the rest.
Bidding Zenobia rest a minute in the hall, he opened the glass doors on
the inner side and ran down the steps into the garden. There lay the
_Albatross_, ready, as he knew, for an immediate aerial journey. His
own knowledge of the mechanism of an air-ship, though not complete,
was now sufficient, or, at any rate, it must be trusted. The boat
was rather smaller than the _Bladud_, and in some respects contained
improvements. A swift examination of the machinery satisfied him that
the _Albatross_ was fit for flight.
Hurrying up the steps he called Zenobia. She came to him obediently and
instantly, calmness restored to her, and in her look a ready submission
to all that he thought best.
"Will you trust yourself to me?" he asked very tenderly, taking her
hand. "The boat is ready. I think you will be safe."
"I trust you in all things," she answered. "I am ready."
He led her down the steps into the garden and helped her to her seat on
the stern-bench of the _Albatross_.
"You can steer?" he asked.
"Yes, if you direct me."
"All's ready, then. Keep her before the wind. Now, up and away!"
He himself stepped into the boat and immediately switched on the motive
power, adjusting the gear to suit the plans he had already formed.
The _Albatross_ rose steadily into the air, then, gathering speed in a
few rapid circles, began like some huge bird to wing her flight from
the dread scene of the catastrophe.
Behind them as they sped upon their way arose another violent
detonation. Suddenly the clouded air was rent with vivid lightning, and
this revealed the falling pinnacles of the Abbey Church. Then, as the
thunder crashed above their heads, Linton beheld a vast and fiery chasm
open in the labouring hill. Out of its lurid depths the waters of Sul
leaped upwards in a mighty column, a fountain, as it were, of liquid
fire.
Then darkness settled on the scene, and all was still.
The End.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
The Devil's Peepshow.
_By the Author of "A Time of Terror."_
Morning Post.--"_The Devil's Peepshow_ is a remarkable book.... Its
interest is never in doubt.... The causeries of this little company
afford just those opportunities for political criticisms and shrewd
moralising in which the author is singularly felicitous.... But the
political lessons are not framed in epigram alone.... The delightful
and erudite essay on the 'Weird of the Wanderer' is, perhaps, the best
thing in the book, and strikes the undercurrent of mysticism with
fine suggestiveness.... Whoever the author is, he is a man of nice
penetration, and a philosopher worth listening to."
Westminster Review. "Love and politics in equal proportions form the
main ingredients of _The Devil's Peepshow_, ... and the lurid title ...
serves as a fitting preliminary to the series of sensational episodes
that make up this story with an unmistakable purpose."
Liverpool Daily Post. "The volume is as thrilling as its
predecessor.... The central theme of the story, that of a strong man of
high qualities and noble ambitions, who falls a victim to the lures of
an enchantress, is well developed. The author has force of style."
Irish Times.--"The most impressive passages are those regarding the
unfortunate position of some of the middle classes."
Yorkshire Dally Post.--" ... it is a very up-to-date story of London
Society during the season 1906, in which all the prominent politicians
and personages of the day take part.... The novel is, however, no
mere sensational melodrama, for the author makes it the medium for
expressing very freely his ideas on politics and religion, which are
by no means complimentary to the present Government, whose individual
members he ridicules unsparingly and not without power ... the very
strength of the contrast gives it relish."
A TIME OF TERROR
(Second Edition).
Evening Standard.--"A politico-social romance of London and
England--prophetic, of course, sensational and thrilling."
Scotchman.--"Truly a time of terror, and the anonymous author has a
clever enough pen with which to expose the vices--some of them real
enough--of the opening years of the twentieth century."
Outlook.--"The story of a man's revenge against a nation, our own.
After war and internal anarchy, the capture of the Kaiser and the death
of the avenger ends with a national thanksgiving. Very eventful."
The Tribune.--"Whatever the cause, the occurrences are certainly
terrible; ... beside the lurid vision, enormous in range and horrifying
in nature, the accumulated sensations of a score of 'shilling shockers'
pale into insignificance.... The book is written with much spirit."
Yorkshire Post.--"The details are worked out so cleverly that there is
a thrill on nearly every page. This is the work, one would say, of a
practised writer, and the lover of sensational literature should not
omit to read it."
Literary World.--"This is a well-written, and in many respects a
powerful story.... There are many sensational scenes, and plentiful
satire of the social and political world of to-day."
Aberdeen Free Press.--"The unaffectedly hair-raising title is indeed
a fitting preliminary to a series of as startling episodes as have
stirred the body corporate of English fiction for many a day.... The
whole book is, it is true, sensationalism, but it is sensationalism
with a purpose.... Some passages contain a fine plea for the Christian
faith. It is a most original book, and at its lowest value an excellent
entertainment."
Newcastle Daily Journal.--"_A Time of Terror_ is original in conception
and vividly effective in development. Its author is sure to be heard of
again, and a later work from his pen will be eagerly awaited."
Third (Sixpenny) Edition now on Sale.
HURST & BLACKETT, Ltd.