THE TERROR OF IT.
Leacraft and Jim reached the hotel at the Caledonian station, in a
crowd of breathless men, all anxious to escape to more reassuring
neighborhoods. Thomsen and the young lady so opportunely rescued had
availed themselves of the restorative resources of the hotel, and had
largely recovered from the exposure and scare of their experience.
Leacraft met Sir John C-- standing at the entrance of the hotel, his
face clouded with grief and anxiety. Strained to the last limit of
endurance by his unwearied exertion to secure the safety of the people,
and almost prostrated by the desolating sorrow of deserting the great
city, the distinguished publisher expressed in his looks his intense
misery of mind. Leacraft expressed a few words of condolence, which
were hardly noticed, and then hurried to the former writing room of
the hotel, where he found a fire burning, and a hastily prepared
luncheon, around which a dense crowd of men were collected, filling the
room almost to suffocation, greedily devouring the welcome repast, and
muttering doubts of their eventually escaping at all if they remained
any longer.
“Sir John hates to get away,” commented one. “He just can’t make up
his mind to go. His heart is broke. But what’s the use? We can’t stay
here and be buried alive. The trainmen say it’s a hard job now to get
through, and all the way to Glenarken is full of big drifts. I say we
must shake this, and it’s nobody’s right to run our heads into danger
for the whim of a little love for the old town. Sure, we are all hard
enough up, and it’s we that has not got a roof to our heads, nor a bite
to our stomachs that has the worst to fear. It’s a cruel sufferin’ to
think of it at all; but so it is, and it’s no use fashing.”
“Weel, weel,” said another, “it’s an awfu’ plight, and naebody can say
what’s next. We maun better be dead than to pit our heads in a pother
of snaw and wait for next simmer to melt us out.”
“Simmer, man, is it!” exclaimed a rough cart-man with a huge ham
sandwich in each hand, and his jaws working on the remnants of their
predecessor. “Simmer! It’s all up with the simmers frae now to the end
o’ the warld. It’s bonny Scotland good-bye, and mind you, man, you’ll
never see gorze again on the Queen’s Drive, I’m thinking, and you’ll
never tak’ your bonnet aff on Arthur’s seat, nor pluck the daisy on
Holy Rood mead. You’ll never canter to the Pentlands, nor hear the sang
of praise go up frae the Roslin chapel, and you’ll nae hear the bell
toll frae Grey Friars kirk, nor mark time wi’ the Hielanders in St.
Giles’, and you’ll never bide the chance when you can see old Hay’s
shop in High street, nor watch the middlings stare their een out at
John Knox’s hame. It’s ower by naw,” and the good fellow turned away
in a choking effort to repress his own tears, and swallow the generous
morsels he had bitten from his overloaded hands.
Leacraft pressed by these disturbed groups, and found, after he
had inducted Jim to the hospitalities of the various tables, his
own strength and composure deserting him. He sank into a chair and
covered his face with his hands. It seemed as if he had lived through
some dreadful nightmare, and the weird and sickening sense of yet
more miseries, rising thick and fast, covering with gloom a nation’s
happiness, stunned him.
A soft voice awoke him. He looked up hastily and saw the lady whose
arms, half an hour before, had clung unresistingly around his neck.
She was unquestionably very pretty, and the returning flush upon her
cheeks gave the alabaster clearness of her brow a singular effrontery
of beauty. Elsewhere, or under different circumstances, it would have
produced in Leacraft a momentary suspicion of artifice. As it was, it
held his attention long enough for him to notice that the hair covering
her head luxuriantly was a raven black, and was gathered beneath the
hood of a soft brown sealskin fur, which clothed her form, while two
wonderful opal bracelets, relieved with ruby jewels, in alternating
links, most incongruously graced her wrists, the gloves on her fingers
were evidently distended by rings, and a superb necklace of diamonds
and peridots encircled closely her neck, seen through the half-opened
cape. Leacraft rose mechanically to his feet, still conscious of
effort, and looked wonderingly at the young face, and at that of her
companion, Mr. Thomsen, the Scotchman.
“My cousin and I”--the voice was exquisitely gentle and
expressive--“can never repay you. It is a slight thing to say to you
how much we thank you, but it is not impossible that we can both yet
show you our gratitude in some manner that will mean more than words,
mean as much for you as your sacrifice meant for us. Is not that so,
Ned?”
She turned to Mr. Thomsen, who advanced and accosted Leacraft with
courteous alacrity. “I am sure, sir, you appreciate our sense of
devotion to yourself. You extricated my cousin and myself from a
certain and dangerous imprisonment. It might have been something more
dreadful. And perhaps,” with a reluctant gaze at the young woman, and
a smile of understanding for Leacraft, “you may wish to understand
better how the perilous predicament you found us in occurred. It was
very simple. This lady, Miss Ethel Tobit,” Leacraft bowed, “was left
with myself, her cousin, at the home of her father and mother, on Pitt
street, to complete the packing of a quantity of valuables which were
at the last moment to be placed in a safe and left there for recovery
later; it does now seem as if that word was a poor mask for Never. We
had brought food for the house, and felt no fears of escaping before
the streets became impassable. Then this last storm broke, and this
afternoon, late in the day, we started out--but we had waited too long.
My cousin sank under the exertion; I was disabled by a fall, in which
my side was seriously bruised. We took refuge in St. Andrew’s Church,
whose doors stood providently unclosed, though to swing them out I
had to dig with my hands a crevice for their movement, in the rising
snow banks forcing them constantly back. Our vigil began. The city in
all directions around us was deserted. We could hear the workers on
Princes street occasionally, in the lulls of the hurricane, and the
whistle from the station sent thrills of anguish through us, as we felt
we should soon be alone in an empty city. It was as impossible for
us in our crippled state to return to the house in Pitt street as to
reach Princes street. We then began calling, and it was you, sir, who
responded. I think hunger and thirst would have made it impossible,
even in the day, for us to have left our retreat, and only the--”
“Don’t, Ned,” cried the quivering girl; “don’t don’t! It’s too awful
to think of. We need all our best spirits as it is--but to think--Oh!
it’s too horrible!” And she hid her face against her cousin’s breast,
and broke into sobs. Leacraft felt the embarrassment, and was ill at
ease, though somehow at that mournful moment the sight of a beautiful
woman seemed a compensation, and in this case, as she lifted her
tearful face to Leacraft, piteously struggling to smile, it awoke in
him a kind of ardor to be always near her. He looked almost tenderly
at her and said: “I think I have every reason to thank my good fortune
and this remarkable weather for a very pleasant adventure. Well, No!”
he continued, as he caught the reproachful and grieving glance of Miss
Tobit, “that is too cynical. Heaven knows we are all broken-hearted
enough to-night to relinquish any false gayety, or even the appearance
of it, but certainly, Miss Tobit, I hope this chance acquaintance will
establish a friendship between us. It will be the only compensation for
this night of agony, and perhaps for all the other nights of agony that
still await us. You will not refuse it?”
Miss Tobit turned instinctively to her friend, and Leacraft, betrayed
into an earnestness perhaps somewhat out of place, had a fleeting
glance of an evanescent smile, and then the words, even more sweetly
spoken than at first, came to his ears:
“It would be all your own fault if we fail to be friends. I am sure I
can keep my side of the contract.”
Mr. Thomsen watched this brief exchange of promises not altogether with
approval, if the faintly forming frown on his face meant anything,
and the evident inclination to take Miss Tobit away from Leacraft’s
proximity. But he was entirely courteous, and with a half-whispered
comment that, “It would not do now to tire their benefactor any more,”
he moved off and drew the lady with him. And then the summons came from
the other end of the room that all was in readiness, that Sir John was
on the train, and that the attempt to reach the south was to be made.
There was much confusion and some indecent precipitation to gain the
door, and in the rush Leacraft lost sight of his newly made friends,
but found, to his great satisfaction, Jim at his side, for Jim had
turned out to be that sort of a fellow that meets predicaments with
coolness, and quietly, without words, instills confidence.
Leacraft was a little nettled over his seriousness with Miss Tobit,
because it revealed again to himself that prosaic stiffness of language
which he consciously recognized as having formed an element of failure
with Miss Garrett, whose plastic wit found in it a source of amusement.
He walked towards the door, wondering bitterly why women placed so much
value on a turn of speech, or the accent of a compliment, when his
musing discontent was interrupted by a hand laid on his arm. He turned
around and saw a member of the Common Council of the city, associated
with Sir John C-- in the last days of the city’s government. The
stranger accosted him. “Mr. Leacraft, the Provost Marshal wishes you to
share his compartment. He has a great desire to speak with you on the
affairs of the city, and the dreadful things which seem to be before
us. This way, sir,” and he motioned to a large parlor coach in the
centre of the train.
Leacraft retained him. Placing his hand on Jim’s shoulder, he said,
“This man goes with me.” The councilman for a moment looked puzzled,
but almost instantly rejoined, “Certainly, sir; your personal
attendants are welcome.”
Leacraft laughed and exclaimed, “No, sir, this is no personal attendant
of mine. This is only a brave man, whom I am proud to call my friend,”
and as he turned to Jim the latter gave him a glance of the sincerest
gratitude and pride.
The councilman waived the privilege of questions and nodding
vigorously his assent, led Leacraft and Jim to the car of Sir John.
It was a car of an American type, and comfortably provided with couches
and seats, tables and easy chairs. A number of men were already in
it, and some refreshments, with the circulation of bottles of Scotch
whiskey, showed Leacraft the unappeasible claims of man’s appetite,
even in the ruins of his own fortune.
Sir John occupied a chair at a round table in a further corner of the
compartment, and as Leacraft made his way towards him, the eyes of the
city’s chief gazed at him in return with inexpressible weariness and
sadness. Leacraft motioned Jim to a seat, and took the proffered hand
of Sir John, who let his arm fall heavily on the table, and still kept
his eyes fixed on Leacraft, motionless and silent. It was Leacraft who
first spoke:
“I think, Sir John, that it was a few years ago that I secured your
intervention for a poor fellow who was condemned offhand, and you were
willing to help me turn the law back in its course, that it might have
an opportunity to find out what it was made for--murder or justice.”
“Yes, I do recall it, and, Mr. Leacraft, do you know,” replied Sir
John, “that that day seems unmercifully far away. It seems as if you
and I lived then in another world, and as if we perhaps had died, and
were living in quite a different one now, and one very much worse,
however bad the old one was. I am too dazed with all this. I feel as
if I must wake up and find it all a horrible nightmare. But there can
be no excuse for self-deception with me. I have studied this question.
I am one of the most convinced that Scotland is doomed. Yes,” and the
speaker straightened himself with a movement of exhaustion, “that
England is doomed, too, that we are about to see primal conditions
returning which are normal physiographic states, but which will destroy
our civilization. Listen,” and as Leacraft sank into a chair near
him, he leaned again upon the table and spoke with a sort of eager
impatience at his own logic, as if he invited and expected and hoped
for contradiction. “Listen. The isothermals as they existed before
this calamity were a travesty on the map; they were an outrage upon
meteorological symmetry. See here,” and Sir John drew out a portfolio
which he opened on the table before him; he opened it and displayed a
Mercator projection of the world.
He was about to continue when a shout, which had mingled with it
a throb of grief, like a loud wail, entered their ears--Leacraft
noticed at the moment that the train was moving; it had been moving
for some time. He looked out of the compartment window. “We are
leaving Edinburgh,” his voice sank to a sympathetic whisper, as Sir
C-- suddenly turned to gaze, too, along with all the rest, upon the
shrouded city.
The snow was falling from a leaden sky, and the mantled city, with its
higher buildings, here a spire, there a monument, like an irregular
mound hiding a burial, was indistinctly, very partially, seen. The men
and one woman--the Scotch girl saved that afternoon from the tomb of
snow--were standing in the coaches, leaning out of the open windows, to
fathom the dull, mottling obscurity of the air, to catch--to be forever
remembered--some recognized feature of the great, beautiful habitation
now left in the on-coming night time, to be buried in the whirling
wreaths. Hidden between its hills, imperishable but unseen, and waiting
for its resurrection again into the joy of life and usefulness--a
dead city, save for those brigands who, like wolves or ghouls, dared
death to fatten on abandoned riches, amid its solemn, terrifying
loneliness! Strange vicissitude! and as Leacraft descried, in a blurred
exaggeration of its natural size, the dome of St. George’s Church,
opposite the Albert Memorial, a voice somewhere among the tearful and
dumb gazers repeated this verse from Burns’ invocation to the honored
and historic site:
With awe-struck thought and pitying tears,
I view that noble, stately dome
Where Scotia’s kings of other years,
Fam’d heroes, had their royal home.
Alas! how changed the times to come!
Their royal name low in the dust!
Their hapless race wild-wandering roam,
Tho’ rigid law cries out,’twas just!
Though the train made a toilsome way and interrupted progress, with
steam sweepers ahead of it, the city soon faded away. The eye could
not long pierce that forest of descending veils of snow, the sepulchre
would soon be accomplished, and the spectators shuddered at the thought
of those voluntarily immured and hapless wretches, who had seized this
chance for a few hours’ reckless pleasure, and then--their own death,
murdered by each other’s hand in the furious combat for survival, or
choked with the many fingers of the frost at their necks. And Leacraft
remained at the window still looking, while Sir John patiently waited,
staring at his map, or raising his eyes expectantly to Leacraft, to
resume his attention.
A bitter thought passed through Leacraft’s mind. Edinburgh had been
faithless. Dressed in beauty, rich in reputation, nurtured in elegance
and culture, she had been wickedly selfish. Her streets were filled
with embruted men and women, with the vassals of drink and depravity;
her picturesque quarters hid misery and vulgar need, unsanitary and
simply mean corners of wretchedness, filled with creatures to whom life
was an uneasy mixture of sleep and drunkenness. She had done nothing
for these. Her life was part of the life of the whole kingdom, and the
word of that life was selfishness, the stupid adhesion to conventional
usage which kept the land from the people, which loaded taxes and
rents upon a slaving many, for the perpetuation of an indulgent and
luxurious life to the few. The upper surfaces of society, brilliant
and dazzlingly sleek with pride, and puffed up with the vanity of
knowledge, cushioned upon a contemptuous forgetfulness of duty, of
sympathy, conceitedly viewing their reflections in Burke’s Peerage, or
Chalmer’s Landed Gentry, begrudging every concession to modern sense
of justice, denying the equality of men, fostering the silly homage of
their inferiors, and rankly gathering around the idiocy of a futile
monarchy. It was a class life, a class gospel, a class cultus, the
arrogance of a classification of the humans of society, which made the
joy of the world the prerogative of those who by birth or fortune found
themselves foreordained to possess it, and who now--God willing--would
fight every inch of their vantage ground to keep that advantage,
believing that a fine suavity of demeanor, a generous support of
fashion, a supercilious deference to education as an aristocratic
embellishment, a pretentious clemency of judgement and an unfailing
church attendance, would save them before any supernatural tribunal--if
indeed such a tribunal existed--of particular blame. Those among them
yet endowed with the pulses of human feeling, gentle in spirit and
blessed with the better sentimentalities of religion, visited the
poor, and dropped lunch baskets at their doors, and assumed the fine
benison of stooping angels--a shallow thoughtlessness which did nothing
for the regeneration of permanent social outrages. The unemployed
might clamor, the poor might continue to multiply, and the young and
ambitious might sail away on white wings to the new life of America,
but the lord and landlord must still remain, because in the sight of
the Lord God Almighty the lord and the landlord are part and parcel
of the eternal order of things, an appanage of His eternal throne
and a reflection of the rule of Heaven. And beneath all this was the
sickly obsequiousness and snuffling adoration of ordinary men, which of
course the lord and ladies despised, but which after all was helpful in
keeping up the distinguished humbug.
This on its best side, but there was a worse side. There was moral
depravity; there was ruthless wickedness; there was a set so smart
that they defied decency and rectitude, and travelled on the currents
of their passions to all the maelstroms of moral rottenness. The King
himself had violated the measures of sobriety and faithfulness. And
this imposing and historical structure, must now totter to its fall
before the drifting snowflake. Truly the simple shall confound the
wise. Leacraft turned from his melancholy thoughts to the friendly face
of Sir John, who, catching his eye, resumed his conversation.
“This map will make it quite plain that the position of our nation
as a commercial, as a political fabric, is a geographical absurdity,
a necessary paradox. Look!” and Sir John pinned down the map on the
table, and drew Leacraft down towards its attentive examination. “Here!
is an occular demonstration of our false position, a charted proof that
we are in a wrong place, a spot of possible change, that will reverse
all previous experiences if the right conditions supervene. The change
has come, and Scotland returns to its appointed allegiance. It belongs
to the Kings of the Ice. See,” and he leaned over the map in a kind of
ecstacy of despair, speaking rapidly as his fingers traced the lines
he indicated. “See! consider these enormities. Land’s End and the
Scilly Islands, where palms grow, are on the degree of 50 degree north
latitude, which is the same as Notre Dame Bay in New Foundland, the
same as Manitoba, the same as the most northern Kurile Islands. Do you
know what the temperature of these places are? I will tell you. The
average winter temperature of northern New Foundland is 10 degrees,
that of Manitoba 9 degrees, and that of the Kurile Islands, 12 degrees.
“The average temperature of Land’s End is 40 degrees. Well, that
may not strike you as a contrast so sharp as to warrant my dire
prediction, but you must learn to see in average temperatures much
more than is simply indicated in the mere differences in degrees.
Averages are utterly misleading, so far as they mean habitable
conditions. A temperature of 0 for six months, and a temperature of 80
degrees, for the remaining six months furnishes the harmless average
of 40 degrees, but a land suffering from the affliction of a climate
such as that, would be useless for the larger purposes of a civilized
community. Averages produce an impression of uniformity, whereas they
conceal the most obstreperous changes--and a small difference, such as
you observe between the temperature of the Scilly islands, and these
inclement and impossible districts of Canada or Kamtchatka, means that
though all are on the same latitude, they are as diversely adapted
for modern life as the tropics and the north pole. Why are the Scilly
islands adapted for tulips and spring peas, when Manitoba yet sleeps in
snow?
“From the point of view of a primary instruction in temperature,
hottest at the equator, coldest at the pole, and graded all the
way between; it is a preposterous caprice. It is a caprice. And a
civilization flourishing under the auspices of a caprice, will come
to grief. Climate is a symbol of vagaries, contradictions and sudden
affinities. It is the atmospheric expression for the feminine and the
poetic in men. As a matter of fact contingencies of interfering land
surfaces, of changing barometric pressure, of oceanic tides, of air
currents, of solar radiation, combine into a labyrinth of possibilities
to make places that ought to be cold, hot, and vice versa.
“But they are evanescent possibilities, and the founders of empires
who rely on them will some day be brought back with stunning, abject
terror, as we now are, to the realization of first principles, that
latitudes are invincible barriers to the diffusion of the race, and
that the nations neglecting their plain meaning court disaster. Well;
you know the explanation of all these whims of nature. The old story;
the Gulf Stream with its millions of units of heat forced northward
by wind pressure, and accelerated eastward by the equatorial velocity
it starts out with, our insular position bathed in oceanic waters,
holding immense deposits of the sun’s heat; the open seas north of
us; the great furnace stores of heat in Africa, like a nearby factory
heating our thin coasts. That is common knowledge--but these accidents
of position, these migratory tides are holding in check invincible
tendencies. Like a child’s push against an evenly balanced boulder
they keep off the descent of disaster, but like another child’s push
in the opposite direction, a sudden alteration of coast lines reduces
our boasted exemption to a shadow, and London, Edinburgh, Liverpool,
Glasgow, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburgh--the great cities of the
world--pay at last the penalty of an infringement of nature’s Common
Law.
“Heat is life, and cold is death, and no blank optimism may hope for
national achievement in the frosts of winter. Our civilization, the
civilization of northern Europe, has overstepped the limits of climatic
permission, as this globe is made. We are the victims of a deception.
Primary conditions of temperature are returning, a meteorological hoax
is exploded, and 50 degrees north latitude will mean in Europe what
it has always meant elsewhere. But look at Edinburgh, look at these
isothermals on the map, attributing to her the temperature of far
southern latitudes. Too obvious an absurdity to last. True enough. Yes,
but fugitive; an episode only. So flat a contradiction of the economy
of this round earth should never have misled us. And we have had
warnings--”
Mr. C-- stopped; his agitation fairly choked him. Leacraft sympathized
with the gentleman’s distress. His bitterness of heart had created a
mental hallucination, an unbalanced affectation of epigram. Leacraft
interposed: “Well, Sir John, the empire of Great Britain has no
reason to regret its existence, even if it is based on a climatic
fallacy. There have been some things done in it which no change in
temperature will obliterate, unless the Ice Age is returning and we
all decline into extinction north and south, and the Earth is again
without form and void. You speak of caprices. How can you tell this
is not a caprice, too, a monstrous subterfuge of Nature to teach us
a lesson, letting us come back again when we are better, when we can
feel and keep grateful to Her for letting us live at all. You err in
deduction Sir John. A round Earth exposed to the sun’s heat with a
zenith movement from 23,28 north latitude to 23,28 south latitude, must
exhibit water currents flowing north, and bringing with them equatorial
temperatures. Such a fact is as normal as that the same earth must be
colder at the poles than at the equator. You are involved in a sophism,
because you assume a principle which is imaginary, so far as its
invariable truth is concerned.
“And what warnings have we ever had?”
“Warnings!” said Sir John, after a moment’s silence during which he
regarded Leacraft with a guarded hopefulness, “Warnings! Many.” And he
took out a note book from which he read. “The winters of 1544, 1608,
1709, were terrific--the thermometer at Paris in 1709, sank to nine
degrees below zero Fah. In 1788–1789, the river Seine froze over in
November. Then there was 1794–5, 1798–9, when the rivers of Europe
were frozen over. In 1795, the mercury in Paris registered ten degrees
below zero, although at the same time in London the temperature was
nearly seven degrees above zero. And then we have 1812–3 when Napoleon
failed, defeated by the cold rather than the Russians. In 1819–20, in
1829–30, in 1840–41, in 1853–4, 1870–71, during the Franco-German war,
with the cold greater at the south than in the north of France, and
when--this is worth noting--the Gulf Stream was driven backward by a
north wind, and banked up, as it were, at Spain and Portugal; in all
these years there were intensely cold winters, which if continued, and
reinforced by storms, and increased by the disappearance of some of the
helpful agencies that now keeps up our supply of caloric, would mean,
could only mean our extinction.
“Now as for degrees of cold--I quote from Flammarion--‘the greatest
cold yet experienced has been twenty-four degrees below zero in France,
five degrees below in England, twelve below in Belgium and Holland,
sixty-seven degrees in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, forty-six in Russia,
thirty-two in Germany, ten degrees below in Spain and Portugal.’ These
are Fahrenheit records. These severities tell us our danger.”
“It seems to me,” rejoined Leacraft, “that they tell us nothing of the
sort. It is a mild madness to misconstrue them so completely. These
extremes of temperatures are far lower than any we have observed, and
yet we have been expelled from Scotland. It is the snow. These endless
heaping torrents from the skies that have driven us out, and they--I
do believe it--will continue; but it has no parallel. Nothing warned us
of this--and as to our climatic safety, it was as fixed as the change
of day to night when, without warning, without precedent, a bridge
of mountains tumbles into a hole in the sea, another bridge rises as
a dam, and either occurrence seemed about as likely as that the moon
would fall into the sun. I think indeed the advantage of a guess might
have lain with the latter supposition.”
“Well. The snow; you say it will continue,” said Sir John with a sudden
reflex action of revolt. “Why will it continue?”
“I estimate the probability for that in this way,” answered Leacraft.
“The atmosphere is a system of balances never at rest, unless in
equilibrium, and never in equilibrium except at rare intervals, and
then in limited and favored spots. This state of inequilibrium causes
constant motion, currents, storms, winds and precipitation, whether
of rain or snow, depending on temperature and position. Now the motor
power of the movement in all this atmospheric mass is difference of
temperature, the hot air rising and flowing to the poles, and the cold
air of the poles descending and flowing to the equator. That is the
A. B. C. of meteorological physics. But the revolution of the earth
causes the cold polar winds to blow from the northeast and the warm
equatorial winds to blow from the southwest, that is with reference
to our position in the northern hemisphere. Now if we are undergoing
a progressive refrigeration, the contrast in temperatures between our
latitude and the temperature of the equator increases, and because
of that, the velocity of the wind blowing from the latter increases
too, and the moisture that these winds would have dropped over the
equatorial zones is carried further north, and our annual precipitation
is thereby increased--our snow falls become more continuous and
thicker. Think what the removal of the Gulf Stream means. Croll has
clearly shown that the heat bearing capacity of the Gulf Stream is
enormous. It seems incredible. I recall some of his statements. He
says that the Gulf Stream conveys as much heat as is received from the
sun by over one million and a half square miles at the equator, and
the amount thus conveyed is equal to all the heat which falls upon the
globe within thirty-two miles on each side of the equator; further
that the quantity of heat conveyed by the Gulf Stream in one year is
equal to the heat which falls, on an average, on three millions and a
half square miles of the arctic regions, and that there is actually
therefore nearly one-half as much heat transferred from tropical
regions by the Gulf Stream as is received from the sun by the entire
Arctic regions, the quantity conveyed from the tropics by the stream to
that received from the sun by the Arctic regions being nearly as two
to five. And it is this fact of the tremendous drain that the Gulf
Stream makes on the equatorial regions, those immense manufactories of
heat, that its removal--meaning the sudden abstraction of this heat
or much of it from our latitude--produces a more forceful interchange
in the airs of the north and the south. It produces winds of a higher
velocity, and because of this, the wind coming to us from the Equator
does not so quickly free itself of its contained moisture. Croll has
shown in his splendid work of theory and proof, that the winds warmed
by the Gulf stream are the true causes for our unusual and exceptional
heat above corresponding positions on the western side of the Atlantic
basin. The Gulf Stream gone, these warming winds will bring us heat no
longer. But they will bring us moisture, and in larger quantities, and
then the process of refrigeration over our chilled coasts will turn
that into snow. The snows will be deeper, and they will last longer. In
this way, Croll, defending himself against the criticism of Findlay,
shows that the winds--the anti-trades blowing from the south to replace
the atmospheric emptiness--I suppose we might say vacuum--left by the
descent of the cold winds from the poles, parted with the most of
their moisture in the equatorial belt. Now by reason of their greater
velocity they will not do that; they will reach us much less despoiled
of their watery burdens.
“Our highlands and our coast position make us natural condensers.
To-day we have a rainfall in the year of about thirty inches. That may
now be doubled. The southwest winds are our most general winds. Out of
a thousand as a maximum, during the year, two hundred and twenty-five
are from the southwest. These are wet winds. And in the same total
there are one hundred and eleven south winds which also carry moisture,
making a possible percentage of one third of all the winds that blow
over us as rain winds, or now by reason of our altered state as snow
makers. But this relative frequency will now be increased. There will
be a longer continuation of the west winds, because as I have suggested
they will be stronger. They are to-day most intense in the winter
months. Our south and southwest winds gather moisture from a wide
expanse of sea, the same expanse from which they formerly gathered heat
from the Gulf Stream was widely diffused over the north Atlantic, both
north and south, for as Croll shows, by reason of a high barometric
pressure somewhere off the west of Maderia and a low pressure north of
Iceland, the tendency of the air south of the English Isles at that
point is to flow north. But these winds are no longer heat carriers.
They bring moisture only. They bear to us through the air the winding
sheets of our burial.”
The two men looked at each other, and it was a look of anguish. The
sudden cruel dreadfulness, the hideous mutation which might send the
English people out of their land on the strange quest for a new home
crushed them into an emotional inanition. They did not seem to exist.
Their lips lost their color, and only the paralysis of stupor saved
them from breaking down into sobs.
It was a few moments later that Leacraft spoke. He asked, “And the
people of Glasgow. How did they get away?”
Sir John Clarke scarcely raised his head and his words scarcely formed
an articulate whisper; “They went by steamers.”