THE FLIGHT
"Yes," I replied, "we cannot remain here another night. Think what
would be the effect if a fire broke out anywhere in this block!"
He looked at me in a startled way.
"True," he said; "we must fly. I would cheerfully give my life if its
sacrifice would arrest these horrors; but it would not."
Christina came and stood beside him. He wrote a letter to General
Quincy. He made three copies of it. Selecting three of his best men,
he gave each a copy, and told them to make their way together, well
armed, to the armory of the airships. It was a perilous journey, but
if either of them reached his destination, he was to deliver his copy
of the letter to the general. In it Max asked General Quincy to send
him one of the "Demons," as promised, that night at eight o'clock;
and he also requested, as a signal that the messengers had reached
him and that the air-ship would come, that he would send up a single
Demon, high in the air, at once on receiving the letter.
We went to the roof with our field-glasses. In two hours, we thought,
the messengers, walking rapidly, would reach the armory. Two hours
passed. Nothing was visible in the heavens in the direction of the
armory, although we swept the whole region with our glasses. What if
our messengers had all been slain? What if General Quincy refused to
do as he had agreed, for no promises were likely to bind a man in
such a dreadful period of anarchy? Two hours and a quarter--two hours
and a half passed, and no signal. We began to despair. Could we
survive another night of horrors? At last
Estella, who had been quietly looking to the west with her glass,
cried out:
"See! there is something rising in the air."
We looked. Yes, thank heaven! it was the signal. The Demon rose like
a great hawk to a considerable height, floated around for awhile in
space, and then slowly descended.
It would come!
All hands were set at work. A line was formed from the roof to the
rooms below; and everything of value that we desired to carry with us
was passed from hand to hand along the line and placed in heaps,
ready for removal. Even the women joined eagerly in the work. We did
not look for our messengers; they were to return to us in the
air-ship.
The afternoon was comparatively quiet. The mobs on the street seemed
to be looking for food rather than treasure. They were, however,
generally resting, worn out; they were sleeping--preparing for the
evening. With nightfall the saturnalia of death would begin again
with redoubled force.
We ate our dinner at six; and then Mr. Phillips suggested that we
should all join in family prayers. We might never have another
opportunity to do so, he said. He prayed long and earnestly to God to
save the world and protect his dear ones; and we all joined fervently
in his supplications to the throne of grace.
At half past seven, equipped for the journey, we were all upon the
roof, looking out in the direction of the west for the coming of the
Demon. A little before eight we saw it rise through the twilight
above the armory. Quincy, then, was true to his pledge. It came
rapidly toward us, high in the air; it circled around, and at last
began to descend just over our heads. It paused about ten feet above
the roof, and two ladders were let down. The ladies and Mr. Phillips
were first helped up to the deck of the vessel; and the men began to
carry up the boxes, bales, trunks, money, books and instruments we
had collected together.
Just at this moment a greater burst of tumult reached my ears. I went
to the parapet and looked down. Up the street, to the north, came a
vast concourse of people. It stretched far back for many blocks. My
first notion was that they were all drunk, their outcries were so
vociferous. They shouted, yelled and screamed. Some of them bore
torches, and at their head marched a ragged fellow with a long pole,
which he carried upright before him. At the top of it was a black
mass, which I could not make out in the twilight. At this instant
they caught sight of the Demon, and the uproar redoubled; they danced
like madmen, and I could hear Max's name shouted from a hundred lips.
"What does it mean?" I asked him.
"It means that they are after me. Hurry up, men," he continued,
"hurry up."
We all sprang to work; the women stood at the top and received the
smaller articles as a line of men passed them up.
Then came a thunderous voice from below:
"Open the door, or we will break it down."
Max replied by casting a bomb over the parapet. It exploded, killing
half a dozen men. But this mob was not to be intimidated like the
thieves. The bullets began to fly; fortunately the gathering darkness
protected us. The crowd grew blacker, and more dense and turbulent.
Then a number of stalwart fellows appeared, bearing a long beam,
which they proposed to use as a battering-ram, to burst open the
door, which had resisted all previous attacks.
"Bring down one of the death bombs," said Max to the men in the Demon.
Two stout fellows, belonging to the air-ship, carried down,
carefully, between them, a great black sphere of iron.
"Over with it!" cried Max.
There was a crash, an explosion; the insurgents caught a whiff of the
poisoned air; the men dropped the beam; there was a rush backward
amid cries of terror, and the street was clear for a considerable
space around the house.
"Hurry, men, hurry!" cried Max.
I peeped over the parapet. A number of the insurgents were rushing
into a house three doors distant. In a few moments they poured out
again, looking behind them as they ran.
"I fear they have fired that house," I said to Max.
"I expected as much," he replied, quietly.
"Hurry, men, hurry," he again cried.
The piles on the roof were diminishing rapidly. I turned to pass up
bundles of my precious books. Another sound broke on my ears; a
roaring noise that rapidly increased--it was the fire. The mob
cheered. Then bursts of smoke poured out of the windows of the doomed
house; then great arms and hands of flame reached out and snapped and
clutched at the darkness, as if they would drag down ancient Night
itself, with all its crown of stars, upon the palpitating breast of
the passionate conflagration. Then the roof smoked; then it seemed to
burst open, and vast volumes of flame and smoke and showers of sparks
spouted forth. The blaze brought the mob into fearful relief, but
fortunately it was between us and the great bulk of our enemies.
"My God," said Max, "it is Cæsar's head!"
I looked, and there, sure enough, upon the top of the long pole I had
before noticed, was the head of the redoubtable giant. It stood out
as if it had been painted in gory characters by the light of the
burning house upon that background of darkness. I could see the
glazed and dusty eyes; the protruding tongue; the great lower jaw
hanging down in hideous fashion; and from the thick, bull-like neck
were suspended huge gouts of dried and blackened blood.
"It is the first instinct of such mobs," said Max, quietly, to
suspect their leaders and slay them. They killed Cæsar, and then came
after me. When they saw the air-ship they were confirmed in their
suspicions; they believe that I am carrying away their treasure."
I could not turn my eyes from that ferocious head. It fascinated me.
It waved and reeled with the surging of the mob. It seemed to me to
be executing a hideous dance in mid-air, in the midst of that
terrible scene; it floated over it like a presiding demon. The
protruding tongue leered at the blazing house and the unspeakable
horrors of that assemblage, lit up, as it was, in all its awful
features, by the towering conflagration.
The crowd yelled and the fire roared. The next house was blazing now,
and the roof of the one nearest us was smoking. The mob, perceiving
that we did not move, concluded that the machinery of the air-ship
was broken, and screamed with joy as the flames approached us.
Up, up, went bundle and package and box; faster, and faster, and
faster. We were not to be intimidated by fire or mobs! The roof of
the house next us was now blazing, and we could hear the fire, like a
furnace, roaring within it.
The work is finished; every parcel is safe.
"Up, up, men!"
Max and I were the last to leave the roof; it had become insufferably
hot. We stood on the deck; the engineer touched the lever of the
electric engine; the great bird swayed for an instant, and then began
to rise, like a veritable Phoenix from its nest of flame, surrounded
by cataracts of sparks. As the mob saw us ascend, veiled dimly, at
first, by that screen of conflagration, they groaned with dismay and
disappointment. The bullets flew and hissed around us, but our
metallic sides laughed them to scorn. Up, up, straight and swift as
an arrow we rose. The mighty city lay unrolled below us, like a great
map, starred here and there with burning houses. Above the trees of
Union Square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by the
bon-fires, where Cæsar's Column was towering to the skies, bearing
the epitaph of the world.
I said to Max:
"What will those millions do to-morrow?"
"Starve," he said.
"What will they do next week?"
"Devour each other," he replied.
There was silence for a time.
"Will not civil government rise again out of this ruin?" I asked.
"Not for a long time," he replied. "Ignorance, passion, suspicion,
brutality, criminality, will be the lions in the path. Men who have
such dreadful memories of labor can scarcely be forced back into it.
And who is to employ them? After about three-fourths of the human
family have died of hunger, or been killed, the remainder,
constituting, by the law of the survival of the fittest, the most
powerful and brutal, will find it necessary, for self-defense against
each other, to form squads or gangs. The greatest fighter in each of
these will become chief, as among all savages. Then the history of
the world will be slowly repeated. A bold ruffian will conquer a
number of the adjacent squads, and become a king. Gradually, and in
its rudest forms, labor will begin again; at first exercised
principally by slaves. Men will exchange liberty for protection.
After a century or two a kind of commerce may arise. Then will follow
other centuries of wars, between provinces or nations. A new
aristocracy will spring up. Culture will lift its head. A great
power, like Rome in the old world, may arise. Some vast superstition
may take possession of the world; and Alfred, Victoria and Washington
may be worshiped, as Saturn, Juno and Hercules were in the past; with
perhaps dreadful and bloody rites like those of the Carthaginians and
ancient Mexicans. And so, step by step, mankind will re-enact the
great human drama, which begins always with a tragedy, runs through a
comedy, and terminates in a catastrophe."
The city was disappearing--we were over the ocean--the cool salt
breeze was refreshing. We both looked back.
"Think," I said, "what is going on yonder."
Max shuddered. There was a sullen light in his eyes. He looked at his
father, who was on his knees praying.
"I would destroy the world," he said, "to save him from a living
death."
He was justifying himself unto himself.
"Gabriel," he said, after a pause, "if this outbreak had not occurred
now, yet would it certainly have come to pass. It was but a question
of time. The breaking-strain on humanity was too great. The world
could not have gone on; neither could it have turned back. The crash
was inevitable. It may be God's way of wiping off the blackboard. It
may be that the ancient legends of the destruction of our race by
flood and fire are but dim remembrances of events like that which is
now happening."
"It may be so, Max," I replied; and we were silent.
Even the sea bore testimony to the ruin of man. The lighthouses no
longer held up their fingers of flame to warn the mariner from the
treacherous rocks. No air-ship, brilliant with many lights shining
like innumerable eyes, and heavy with passengers, streamed past us
with fierce swiftness, splitting the astonished and complaining air.
Here and there a sailing vessel, or a steamer, toiled laboriously
along, little dreaming that, at their journey's end, starving
creatures would swarm up their sides to kill and devour.
How still and peaceful was the night--the great, solemn, patient
night! How sweet and pure the air! How delightful the silence to ears
that had rung so lately with the clamors of that infuriated mob! How
pleasant the darkness to eyeballs seared so long by fire and flame
and sights of murder! Estella and Christina came and sat down near
us. Their faces showed the torture they had endured,--not so much
from fear as from the shock and agony with which goodness
contemplates terrific and triumphant evil.
I looked into the grand depths of the stars above us; at that endless
procession of shining worlds; at that illimitable expanse of silence.
And I thought of those vast gaps and lapses of manless time, when all
these starry hosts unrolled and marshaled themselves before the
attentive eyes of God, and it had not yet entered into his heart to
create that swarming, writhing, crawling, contentious mass we call
humanity. And I said to myself, "Why should a God condescend to such
a work as man?"
And yet, again, I felt that one grateful heart, that darted out the
living line of its love and adoration from this dark and perturbed
earth, up to the shining throne of the Great Intelligence, must be of
more moment and esteem in the universe than millions of tons of
mountains--yea, than a wilderness of stars. For matter is but the
substance with which God works; while thought, love, conscience and
consciousness are parts of God himself. We think; therefore we are
divine: we pray; therefore we are immortal.
Part of God! The awful, the inexpressible, the incomprehensible God.
His terrible hand swirls, with unresting power, yonder innumerable
congregation of suns in their mighty orbits, and yet stoops, with
tender touch, to build up the petals of the anemone, and paint with
rainbow hues the mealy wings of the butterfly.
I could have wept over man; but I remembered that God lives beyond
the stars.