It was on a Friday that the fog came down upon us. The weather was very
fine up to the middle of November that autumn. The fog did not seem to
have anything unusual about it. I have seen many worse fogs than that
appeared to be. As day followed day, however, the atmosphere became
denser and darker, caused, I suppose, by the increasing volume of coal-
smoke poured out upon it. The peculiarity about those seven days was
the intense stillness of the air. We were, although we did not know it,
under an air-proof canopy, and were slowly but surely exhausting the
life-giving oxygen around us, and replacing it by poisonous carbonic
acid gas. Scientific men have since showed that a simple mathematical
calculation might have told us exactly when the last atom of oxygen
would have been consumed; but it is easy to be wise after the event.
The body of the greatest mathematician in England was found in the
Strand. He came that morning from Cambridge. During the fog there was
always a marked increase in the death rate, and on this occasion the
increase was no greater than usual until the sixth day. The newspapers
on the morning of the seventh were full of startling statistics, but at
the time of going to press the full significance of the alarming figures
was not realized. The editorials of the morning papers on the seventh
day contained no warning of the calamity that was so speedily to follow
their appearance. I lived then at Ealing, a Western suburb of London,
and came every morning to Cannon Street by a certain train. I had up to
the sixth day experienced no inconvenience from the fog, and this was
largely due, I am convinced, to the unnoticed operations of the
American machine.
On the fifth and sixth days Sir John did not come to the City, but he
was in his office on the seventh. The door between his room and mine
was closed. Shortly after ten o'clock I heard a cry in his room,
followed by a heavy fall. I opened the door, and saw Sir John lying
face downwards on the floor. Hastening towards him, I felt for the
first time the deadly effect of the deoxygenized atmosphere, and before
I reached him I fell first on one knee and then headlong. I realized
that my senses were leaving me, and instinctively crawled back to my
own room, where the oppression was at once lifted, and I stood again
upon my feet, gasping. I closed the door of Sir John's room, thinking
it filled with poisonous fumes, as, indeed, it was. I called loudly for
help, but there was no answer. On opening the door to the main office I
met again what I thought was the noxious vapor. Speedily as I closed
the door, I was impressed by the intense silence of the usually busy
office, and saw that some of the clerks were motionless on the floor,
and others sat with their heads on their desks as if asleep. Even at
this awful moment I did not realize that what I saw was common to all
London, and not, as I imagined, a local disaster, caused by the
breaking of some carboys in our cellar. (It was filled with chemicals
of every kind, of whose properties I was ignorant, dealing as I did
with the accountant, and not the scientific side of our business.) I
opened the only window in my room, and again shouted for help. The
street was silent and dark in the ominously still fog, and what now
froze me with horror was meeting the same deadly, stifling atmosphere
that was in the rooms. In falling I brought down the window, and shut
out the poisonous air. Again I revived, and slowly the true state of
things began to dawn upon me.
I was in an oasis of oxygen. I at once surmised that the machine on my
shelf was responsible for the existence of this oasis in a vast desert
of deadly gas. I took down the American's machine, fearful in moving it
that I might stop its working. Taking the mouthpiece between my lips I
again entered Sir John's room, this time without feeling any ill
effects. My poor master was long beyond human help. There was evidently
no one alive in the building except myself. Out in the street all was
silent and dark. The gas was extinguished, but here and there in shops
the incandescent lights were still weirdly burning, depending, as they
did, on accumulators, and not on direct engine power. I turned
automatically towards Cannon Street Station, knowing my way to it even
if blindfolded, stumbling over bodies prone on the pavement, and in
crossing the street I ran against a motionless 'bus, spectral in the
fog, with dead horses lying in front, and their reins dangling from the
nerveless hand of a dead driver. The ghostlike passengers, equally
silent, sat bolt upright, or hung over the edge boards in attitudes
horribly grotesque.