All of our readers will remember the curiosity, the speculation, the
horror, the apprehension, and the sympathy universally excited when, on
the tenth of September, it was learned from the morning papers that
Russell, the new capital of Harrison, was cut off from all
communication. Each morning sheet hinted darkly at the cause of this
unheard-of calamity. The _Daily Braggart_ said there was no doubt that a
cyclone of gigantic proportions, followed by a water-spout, had swept
the city entirely away, and that its evening edition would print full
details of the "awful visitation," with pictures by their special
artists, now on the spot, illustrating the ruin.
Rut there was one piece of additional news about Russell that only the
_Daily Planet_ gave. Let us quote, in order to be perfectly accurate.
The sheet is before us as we write:
"EXTRAORDINARY CALAMITY!
"RUSSELL CUT OFF FROM ALL COMMUNICATION!
"_The citizens of the State of Harrison are wild with
apprehension. As yet we cannot speculate on the nature of this
disaster. Up to this moment no one knows what it is. We will be
honest, and say we know no more than our neighbors. But this
much is assured: Not only is communication cut off within a
radius of twenty miles of the ill-fated city, but it is
impossible to re-establish it at present. There are forces at
work as yet uncatalogued by scientists. There is a definite
circle drawn about Russell, and to cross it means death. Two
men repairing the C. H. & S. F. tracks dropped, smitten by a
mysterious and invisible hand. The white mile post announced
that Russell was twenty miles from the spot where the corpses
of these brave fellows lay. What baneful miasma envelops this
broad area? What is the fate of the thousands within its
borders? Time will tell. Our reporters are on the spot. But as
we go to press we do not know._"
Most people sniffed at this "dead line" as the wildest newspaper canard
of the lot. Many shook their heads. While those who had relatives or
friends or business connections in Russell tried to drown their horrible
suspense as best they could.
The _Planet_, it may be remembered, closed its leading editorial as
follows:
"_We are a Democratic paper, and we had little love for this
baby State and its upstart capital, created solely to guarantee
a Republican majority at the next presidential election. But
when the news that an inscrutable fate had overtaken this
fraudulent State (we may be pardoned for saying that it seems
to us a sort of Divine retribution for political jobbery) party
feeling was washed away in that common compassion that all
Christians feel for their enemies in adversity._"
Who could mistake the diction of the uncompromising but tender chief?
But it happened this time, as so often before, that the _Planet's_
information was true. Again that enterprising daily had made its "scoop"
on the other papers. Its elation was pardonable.
It is an indisputable fact that civilization as it progresses develops
in its advance new diseases and new catastrophes. Hay fever and la
grippe were not popular a hundred years ago. To breed a first-class
cyclone, cut down your trees and dry up your water supply. This has been
conscientiously attended to, and the natural consequences have
followed. Science can eliminate the simooms that strike Bombay and
Calcutta at such a day year after year, by simply flooding the desert of
Sahara. England can be more easily conquered by deflecting the Gulf
Stream a quarter of a point than by a thousand ironclads. Who knows but
that it would be less expensive to change her into a glacier than to
bombard her with hundred-ton guns?
More white people are killed by railroad accidents yearly in our highly
civilized land than were slaughtered by native braves in the palmy days
of the "Last of the Mohicans." It is a fact that our boasted
civilization, instead of affording surer protection, murders more men in
one way or another than barbarism, only in the present case the victims
are not eaten; the coffins are sumptuous; the processions decorous; the
mourners in good form; the burial service pregnant with hope, and
culture is not shocked. With us murder is committed by corporations, not
by paid assassins. That is the difference. The assassin fails in his
blows once in a while; the corporation never.
But where was Russell? What was the nature of the calamity? The
impenetrable fact that there was an actual, invisible dead line cast
about that territory, with Russell as its centre, became confirmed with
every report. It will be recalled that all the railroad tracks entering
the doomed city were twisted as if clawed by a maddened monster. It
presented a similar appearance to the South Carolina railroad on the day
of the Charleston earthquake. This gave rise again to the earthquake
theory. But why had not the shock been felt? No rumble had been heard.
Could an earthquake account for the deadly something that filled the
air?
No intelligence came from Russell. The way must be forced to it.
Who forgets the relief expeditions started in wagons and on foot from
every point of the compass? These were invariably repelled on reaching
the dead line. We could understand the fetid miasma that made the Great
Dismal Swamp an unknowable country. We could comprehend the encroaching
dead line of the spreading yellow fever bacillus. But this fearful
death, that brooded silently, impenetrably, mysteriously and occultly
over a vast area once the garden of civilization, baffled all attempts
at explanation. Even birds were observed to vacate this tract. Only a
few sinister buzzards wheeled their flight, with straight, unflapping
wings, high above Russell, almost out of sight, as if they were the
embodied ghosts of Russell's unbaptized inhabitants.
What was that implacable power? Reporters and trackmen who steadily
scoffed at it were themselves attacked with violent heart-beats when
they crossed the invisible and fatal line. A convulsion of all the
members followed, as if in an epileptic fit,--insensibility and,
generally, death ensued. Many who were with difficulty rescued, and who
finally recovered, averred that they experienced an overcoming odor,
acid and penetrating, such as is peculiar to ozone when manufactured in
a chemical laboratory.
At the end of the fourth day of Russell's complete isolation a despair
settled upon the country. England was staggered by the uniqueness of
these phenomena. The French Academy of Sciences, after a prolonged
sitting, announced that they could suggest no solution. It is only too
well remembered that the newspaper bulletins were besieged in our own
cities, but these offered no further information or encouragement. Was
advanced civilization responsible for this disaster or not? That was the
burning question. Or was this a special visitation of God, a plague new
to the medical world, spontaneously generated, sporadic in its
appearance, and destined forever to be an _obscurum per obscurius_ or
perhaps to spread with further undetermined horrors?
Thousands were now on the ground. They encompassed that section about as
Joshua did the city of Jericho, as the settlers did the Territory of
Oklahoma on the day of its opening, as the rabble do a house when a
murder has been committed.
On the evening of the fourth day from the time when the messenger boy
brought the first despatch to the office of the _Daily Planet_, its
chief, obviously nervous for the first time in his public life, received
the following cipher telegram, which cheered him wonderfully:
"_On the spot. Situation desperate. Worse than described. Will
penetrate to Russell or die. Dead line still impassable. Trust
me._
"SWIFT"