Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
BEALBY
A HOLIDAY
BY
H. G. WELLS
AUTHOR OF “THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN,” ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1915
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON.
COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY H. G. WELLS.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1915.
Reprinted March, 1915. April, 1915. May, 1915. July, 1915. August, 1915.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS 1
II. A WEEK-END AT SHONTS 22
III. THE WANDERERS 56
IV. THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING 95
V. THE SEEKING OF BEALBY 131
VI. BEALBY AND THE TRAMP 190
VII. THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER 226
VIII. HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED 263
BEALBY
CHAPTER I
YOUNG BEALBY GOES TO SHONTS
§ 1
The cat is the offspring of a cat and the dog of a dog, but butlers and
lady’s maids do not reproduce their kind. They have other duties.
So their successors have to be sought among the prolific, and
particularly among the prolific on great estates. Such are gardeners,
but not under-gardeners, gamekeepers, and coachmen—but not lodge people,
because their years are too great and their lodges too small. And among
those to whom this opportunity of entering service came was young
Bealby, who was the stepson of Mr. Darling, the gardener of Shonts.
Everyone knows the glories of Shonts. Its façade. Its two towers. The
great marble pond. The terraces where the peacocks walk and the lower
lake with the black and white swans. The great park and the avenue. The
view of the river winding away across the blue country. And of the
Shonts Velasquez—but that is now in America. And the Shonts Rubens,
which is in the National Gallery. And the Shonts porcelain. And the
Shonts past history; it was a refuge for the old faith; it had priest’s
holes and secret passages. And how at last the Marquis had to let Shonts
to the Laxtons—the Peptonized Milk and Baby Soother people—for a long
term of years. It was a splendid chance for any boy to begin his
knowledge of service in so great an establishment, and only the natural
perversity of human nature can explain the violent objection young
Bealby took to anything of the sort. He did. He said he did not want to
be a servant, and that he would not go and be a good boy and try his
very best in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him
at Shonts. On the contrary.
He communicated these views suddenly to his mother as she was preparing
a steak and kidney pie in the bright little kitchen of the gardener’s
cottage. He came in with his hair all ruffled and his face hot and
distinctly dirty, and his hands in his trousers pockets in the way he
had been repeatedly told not to.
“Mother,” he said, “I’m not going to be a steward’s boy at the house
anyhow, not if you tell me to, not till you’re blue in the face. So
that’s all about it.”
This delivered, he remained panting, having no further breath left in
him.
His mother was a thin firm woman. She paused in her rolling of the dough
until he had finished, and then she made a strong broadening sweep of
the rolling pin, and remained facing him, leaning forward on that
implement with her head a little on one side.
“You will do,” she said, “whatsoever your father has said you will do.”
“’E isn’t my father,” said young Bealby.
His mother gave a snapping nod of the head expressive of extreme
determination.
“Anyhow I ain’t going to do it,” said young Bealby, and feeling the
conversation was difficult to sustain he moved towards the staircase
door with a view to slamming it.
“You’ll do it,” said his mother, “right enough.”
“You see whether I do,” said young Bealby, and then got in his door-slam
rather hurriedly because of steps outside.
Mr. Darling came in out of the sunshine a few moments later. He was a
large, many-pocketed, earthy-whiskered man with a clean-shaven
determined mouth, and he carried a large pale cucumber in his hand.
“I tole him,” he said.
“What did he say?” asked his wife.
“Nuthin’,” said Mr. Darling.
“’E says ’e won’t,” said Mrs. Darling.
Mr. Darling regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.
“I never see such a boy,” said Mr. Darling. “Why—’e’s _got_ to.”
§ 2
But young Bealby maintained an obstinate fight against the inevitable.
He had no gift of lucid exposition. “I ain’t going to be a servant,” he
said. “I don’t see what right people have making a servant of me.”
“You got to be something,” said Mr. Darling.
“Everybody’s got to be something,” said Mrs. Darling.
“Then let me be something else,” said young Bealby.
“_I_ dessay you’d like to be a gentleman,” said Mr. Darling.
“I wouldn’t mind,” said young Bealby.
“You got to be what your opportunities give you,” said Mr. Darling.
Young Bealby became breathless. “Why shouldn’t I be an engine driver?”
he asked.
“All oily,” said his mother. “And getting yourself killed in an
accident. And got to pay fines. You’d _like_ to be an engine driver.”
“Or a soldier.”
“Oo!—a Swaddy!” said Mr. Darling decisively.
“Or the sea.”
“With that weak stummik of yours,” said Mrs. Darling.
“Besides which,” said Mr. Darling, “it’s been arranged for you to go up
to the ’ouse the very first of next month. And your box and everything
ready.”
Young Bealby became very red in the face. “I won’t go,” he said very
faintly.
“You will,” said Mr. Darling, “if I ’ave to take you by the collar and
the slack of your breeches to get you there.”
§ 3
The heart of young Bealby was a coal of fire within his breast
as—unassisted—he went across the dewy park up to the great house,
whither his box was to follow him.
He thought the world a “rotten show.”
He also said, apparently to two does and a fawn, “If you think I’m going
to stand it, you know, you’re JOLLY-well mistaken.”
I do not attempt to justify his prejudice against honourable usefulness
in a domestic capacity. He had it. Perhaps there is something in the air
of Highbury, where he had spent the past eight years of his life, that
leads to democratic ideals. It is one of those new places where estates
seem almost forgotten. Perhaps too there was something in the Bealby
strain....
I think he would have objected to any employment at all. Hitherto he had
been a remarkably free boy with a considerable gusto about his freedom.
Why should that end? The little village mixed school had been a soft job
for his Cockney wits, and for a year and a half he had been top boy. Why
not go on being top boy?
Instead of which, under threats, he had to go across the sunlit corner
of the park, through that slanting morning sunlight which had been so
often the prelude to golden days of leafy wanderings! He had to go past
the corner of the laundry where he had so often played cricket with the
coachman’s boys (already swallowed up into the working world), he had to
follow the laundry wall to the end of the kitchen, and there, where the
steps go down and underground, he had to say farewell to the sunlight,
farewell to childhood, boyhood, freedom. He had to go down and along the
stone corridor to the pantry, and there he had to ask for Mr. Mergleson.
He paused on the top step and looked up at the blue sky across which a
hawk was slowly drifting. His eyes followed the hawk out of sight beyond
a cypress bough, but indeed he was not thinking about the hawk, he was
not seeing the hawk; he was struggling with a last wild impulse of his
ferial nature. “Why not sling it?” his ferial nature was asking. “Why
not even now—_do a bunk_?”
It would have been better for him perhaps and better for Mr. Mergleson
and better for Shonts if he had yielded to the whisper of the Tempter.
But his heart was heavy within him, and he had no lunch. And never a
penny. One can do but a very little bunk on an empty belly! “Must” was
written all over him. He went down the steps.
The passage was long and cool and at the end of it was a swing door.
Through that and then to the left, he knew one had to go, past the
stillroom and so to the pantry. The maids were at breakfast in the
stillroom with the door open. The grimace he made in passing was
intended rather to entertain than to insult, and anyhow a chap must do
something with his face. And then he came to the pantry and into the
presence of Mr. Mergleson.
Mr. Mergleson was in his shirt-sleeves and generally dishevelled, having
an early cup of tea in an atmosphere full of the bleak memories of
overnight. He was an ample man with a large nose, a vast under lip and
mutton-chop side-whiskers. His voice would have suited a succulent
parrot. He took out a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and regarded
it. “Ten minutes past seven, young man,” he said, “isn’t seven o’clock.”
Young Bealby made no articulate answer.
“Just stand there for a minute,” said Mr. Mergleson, “and when I’m at
libbuty I’ll run through your duties.” And almost ostentatiously he gave
himself up to the enjoyment of his cup of tea.
Three other gentlemen in deshabille sat at table with Mr. Mergleson.
They regarded young Bealby with attention, and the youngest, a
red-haired, barefaced youth in shirt-sleeves and a green apron was moved
to a grimace that was clearly designed to echo the scowl on young
Bealby’s features.
The fury that had been subdued by a momentary awe of Mr. Mergleson
revived and gathered force. Young Bealby’s face became scarlet, his eyes
filled with tears and his mind with the need for movement. After all,—he
wouldn’t stand it. He turned round abruptly and made for the door.
“Where’n earth you going to?” cried Mr. Mergleson.
“He’s shy!” cried the second footman.
“Steady on!” cried the first footman and had him by the shoulder in the
doorway.
“Lemme _go_!” howled the new recruit, struggling. “I won’t be a blooming
servant. I won’t.”
“Here!” cried Mr. Mergleson, gesticulating with his teaspoon, “bring ’im
to the end of the table there. What’s this about a blooming servant?”
Bealby, suddenly blubbering, was replaced at the end of the table.
“May I ask what’s this about a blooming servant?” asked Mr. Mergleson.
Sniff and silence.
“Did I understand you to say that you ain’t going to be a blooming
servant, young Bealby?”
“Yes,” said young Bealby.
“Thomas,” said Mr. Mergleson, “just smack ’is ’ed. Smack it rather
’ard....”
Things too rapid to relate occurred. “So you’d _bite_, would you?” said
Thomas....
“Ah!” said Mr. Mergleson. “_Got_ ’im! That one!” ...
“Just smack ’is ’ed once more,” said Mr. Mergleson....
“And now you just stand there, young man, until I’m at libbuty to attend
to you further,” said Mr. Mergleson, and finished his tea slowly and
eloquently....
The second footman rubbed his shin thoughtfully.
“If I got to smack ’is ’ed much,” he said, “’e’d better change into his
slippers.”
“Take him to ’is room,” said Mr. Mergleson getting up. “See ’e washes
the grief and grubbiness off ’is face in the handwash at the end of the
passage and make him put on his slippers. Then show ’im ’ow to lay the
table in the steward’s room.”
§ 4
The duties to which Bealby was introduced struck him as perplexingly
various, undesirably numerous, uninteresting and difficult to remember,
and also he did not try to remember them very well because he wanted to
do them as badly as possible and he thought that forgetting would be a
good way of starting at that. He was beginning at the bottom of the
ladder; to him it fell to wait on the upper servants, and the green
baize door at the top of the service staircase was the limit of his
range. His room was a small wedge-shaped apartment under some steps
leading to the servants’ hall, lit by a window that did not open and
that gave upon the underground passage. He received his instructions in
a state of crumpled mutinousness, but for a day his desire to be
remarkably impossible was more than counterbalanced by his respect for
the large able hands of the four man-servants, his seniors, and by a
disinclination to be returned too promptly to the gardens. Then in a
tentative manner he broke two plates and got his head smacked by Mr.
Mergleson himself. Mr. Mergleson gave a staccato slap quite as powerful
as Thomas’s but otherwise different. The hand of Mr. Mergleson was large
and fat and he got his effects by dash, Thomas’s was horny and lingered.
After that young Bealby put salt in the teapot in which the housekeeper
made tea. But that he observed she washed out with hot water before she
put in the tea. It was clear that he had wasted his salt, which ought to
have gone into the kettle.
Next time,—the kettle.
Beyond telling him his duties almost excessively nobody conversed with
young Bealby during the long hours of his first day in service. At
midday dinner in the servants’ hall, he made one of the kitchen-maids
giggle by pulling faces intended to be delicately suggestive of Mr.
Mergleson, but that was his nearest approach to disinterested human
intercourse.
When the hour for retirement came,—“Get out of it. Go to bed, you dirty
little Kicker,” said Thomas. “We’ve had about enough of you for one
day”—young Bealby sat for a long time on the edge of his bed weighing
the possibilities of arson and poison. He wished he had some poison.
Some sort of poison with a medieval manner, poison that hurts before it
kills. Also he produced a small penny pocket-book with a glazed black
cover and blue edges. He headed one page of this “Mergleson” and entered
beneath it three black crosses. Then he opened an account to Thomas, who
was manifestly destined to be his principal creditor. Bealby was not a
forgiving boy. At the village school they had been too busy making him a
good Churchman to attend to things like that. There were a lot of
crosses for Thomas.
And while Bealby made these sinister memoranda downstairs Lady
Laxton—for Laxton had bought a baronetcy for twenty thousand down to the
party funds and a tip to the whip over the Peptonized Milk
flotation—Lady Laxton, a couple of floors above Bealby’s ruffled head
mused over her approaching week-end party. It was an important week-end
party. The Lord Chancellor of England was coming. Never before had she
had so much as a member of the Cabinet at Shonts. He was coming, and do
what she would she could not help but connect it with her very strong
desire to see the master of Shonts in the clear scarlet of a Deputy
Lieutenant. Peter would look so well in that. The Lord Chancellor was
coming, and to meet him and to circle about him there were Lord John
Woodenhouse and Slinker Bond, there were the Countess of Barracks and
Mrs. Rampound Pilby, the novelist, with her husband Rampound Pilby,
there was Professor Timbre, the philosopher, and there were four smaller
(though quite good) people who would run about very satisfactorily among
the others. (At least she thought they would run about very
satisfactorily amongst the others, not imagining any evil of her cousin
Captain Douglas.)
All this good company in Shonts filled Lady Laxton with a pleasant
realization of progressive successes but at the same time one must
confess that she felt a certain diffidence. In her heart of hearts she
knew she had not made this party. It had happened to her. How it might
go on happening to her, she did not know, it was beyond her control. She
hoped very earnestly that everything would pass off well.
The Lord Chancellor was as big a guest as any she had had. One must grow
as one grows, but still,—being easy and friendly with him would be, she
knew, a tremendous effort. Rather like being easy and friendly with an
elephant. She was not good at conversation. The task of interesting
people taxed her and puzzled her....
It was Slinker Bond, the whip, who had arranged the whole
business—after, it must be confessed, a hint from Sir Peter. Laxton had
complained that the government were neglecting this part of the country.
“They ought to show up more than they do in the county,” said Sir Peter,
and added almost carelessly, “I could easily put anybody up at Shonts.”
There were to be two select dinner parties and a large but still select
Sunday lunch to let in the countryside to the spectacle of the Laxtons
taking their (new) proper place at Shonts....
It was not only the sense of her own deficiencies that troubled Lady
Laxton; there were also her husband’s excesses. He had—it was no use
disguising it—rather too much the manner of an employer. He had a way of
getting, how could one put it?—_confident_ at dinner and Mergleson
seemed to _delight_ in filling up his glass. Then he would contradict a
good deal.... She felt that Lord Chancellors however are the sort of men
one doesn’t contradict....
Then the Lord Chancellor was said to be interested in philosophy—a
difficult subject. She had got Timbre to talk to him upon that. Timbre
was a professor of philosophy at Oxford, so that was sure to be all
right. But she wished she knew one or two good safe things to say in
philosophy herself. She had long felt the need of a secretary, and now
she felt it more than ever. If she had a secretary, she could just tell
him what it was she wanted to talk about and he could get her one or two
of the right books and mark the best passages and she could learn it all
up.
She feared—it was a worrying fear—that Laxton would say right out and
very early in the week-end that he didn’t believe in philosophy. He had
a way of saying he “didn’t believe in” large things like that,—art,
philanthropy, novels, and so on. Sometimes he said, “I don’t believe in
all this”—art or whatever it was. She had watched people’s faces when he
had said it and she had come to the conclusion that saying you don’t
believe in things isn’t the sort of thing people say nowadays. It was
wrong, somehow. But she did not want to tell Laxton directly that it was
wrong. He would remember if she did, but he had a way of taking such
things rather badly at the time.... She hated him to take things badly.
“If one could invent some little hint,” she whispered to herself.
She had often wished she was better at hints.
She was, you see, a gentlewoman, modest, kindly. Her people were quite
good people. Poor, of course. But she was not clever, she was anything
but clever. And the wives of these captains of industry need to be very
clever indeed if they are to escape a magnificent social isolation. They
get the titles and the big places and all that sort of thing; people
don’t at all intend to isolate them, but there is nevertheless an
inadvertent avoidance....
Even as she uttered these words, “If one could invent some little hint,”
Bealby down there less than forty feet away through the solid floor
below her feet and a little to the right was wetting his stump of pencil
as wet as he could in order to ensure a sufficiently emphatic fourteenth
cross on the score sheet of the doomed Thomas. Most of the other
thirteen marks were done with such hard breathing emphasis that the
print of them went more than halfway through that little blue-edged
book.
§ 5
The arrival of the week-end guests impressed Bealby at first merely as a
blessed influence that withdrew the four men-servants into that unknown
world on the other side of the green baize door, but then he learnt that
it also involved the appearance of five new persons, two valets and
three maids, for whom places had to be laid in the steward’s room.
Otherwise Lady Laxton’s social arrangements had no more influence upon
the mind of Bealby than the private affairs of the Emperor of China.
There was something going on up there, beyond even his curiosity. All he
heard of it was a distant coming and going of vehicles and some slight
talk to which he was inattentive while the coachman and grooms were
having a drink in the pantry—until these maids and valets appeared. They
seemed to him to appear suddenly out of nothing, like slugs after rain,
black and rather shiny, sitting about inactively and quietly consuming
small matters. He disliked them, and they regarded him without affection
or respect.
Who cared? He indicated his feeling towards them as soon as he was out
of the steward’s room by a gesture of the hand and nose venerable only
by reason of its antiquity.
He had things more urgent to think about than strange valets and maids.
Thomas had laid hands on him, jeered at him, inflicted shameful
indignities on him and he wanted to kill Thomas in some frightful
manner. (But if possible unobtrusively.)
If he had been a little Japanese boy, this would have been an entirely
honourable desire. It would have been Bushido and all that sort of
thing. In the gardener’s stepson however it is—undesirable....
Thomas, on the other hand, having remarked the red light of revenge in
Bealby’s eye and being secretly afraid, felt that his honour was
concerned in not relaxing his persecutions. He called him “Kicker” and
when he did not answer to that name, he called him “Snorter,” “Bleater,”
“Snooks,” and finally tweaked his ear. Then he saw fit to assume that
Bealby was deaf and that ear-tweaking was the only available method of
address. This led on to the convention of a sign language whereby ideas
were communicated to Bealby by means of painful but frequently quite
ingeniously symbolical freedoms with various parts of his person. Also
Thomas affected to discover uncleanliness in Bealby’s head and succeeded
after many difficulties in putting it into a sinkful of lukewarm water.
Meanwhile young Bealby devoted such scanty time as he could give to
reflection to debating whether it is better to attack Thomas suddenly
with a carving knife or throw a lighted lamp. The large pantry inkpot of
pewter might be effective in its way, he thought, but he doubted whether
in the event of a charge it had sufficient stopping power. He was also
curiously attracted by a long two-pronged toasting-fork that hung at the
side of the pantry fireplace. It had _reach_....
Over all these dark thoughts and ill-concealed emotions Mr. Mergleson
prevailed, large yet speedy, speedy yet exact, parroting orders and
making plump gestures, performing duties and seeing that duties were
performed.
Matters came to a climax late on Saturday night at the end of a trying
day, just before Mr. Mergleson went round to lock up and turn out the
lights.
Thomas came into the pantry close behind Bealby, who, greatly belated
through his own inefficiency, was carrying a tray of glasses from the
steward’s room, applied an ungentle hand to his neck, and ruffled up his
back hair in a smart and painful manner. At the same time Thomas
remarked, “Burrrrh!”
Bealby stood still for a moment and then put down his tray on the table
and, making peculiar sounds as he did so, resorted very rapidly to the
toasting fork.... He got a prong into Thomas’s chin at the first prod.
How swift are the changes of the human soul! At the moment of his thrust
young Bealby was a primordial savage; so soon as he saw this incredible
piercing of Thomas’s chin—for all the care that Bealby had taken it
might just as well have been Thomas’s eye—he moved swiftly through the
ages and became a simple Christian child. He abandoned violence and
fled.
The fork hung for a moment from the visage of Thomas like a twisted
beard of brass, and then rattled on the ground.
Thomas clapped his hand to his chin and discovered blood.
“You little—!” He never found the right word (which perhaps is just as
well); instead he started in pursuit of Bealby.
Bealby—in his sudden horror of his own act—and Thomas fled headlong into
the passage and made straight for the service stairs that went up into a
higher world. He had little time to think. Thomas with a red-smeared
chin appeared in pursuit. Thomas the avenger. Thomas really roused.
Bealby shot through the green baize door and the pursuing footman pulled
up only just in time not to follow him.
Only just in time. He had an instinctive instant anxious fear of great
dangers. He heard something, a sound as though the young of some very
large animal had squeaked feebly. He had a glimpse of something black
and white—and large....
Then something, some glass thing, smashed.
He steadied the green baize door which was wobbling on its brass hinges,
controlled his panting breath and listened.
A low rich voice was—ejaculating. It was not Bealby’s voice, it was the
voice of some substantial person being quietly but deeply angry. They
were the ejaculations restrained in tone but not in quality of a ripe
and well-stored mind,—no boy’s thin stuff.
Then very softly Thomas pushed open the door—just widely enough to see
and as instantly let it fall back into place.
Very gently and yet with an alert rapidity he turned about and stole
down the service stairs.
His superior officer appeared in the passage below.
“Mr. Mergleson,” he cried, “I say—Mr. Mergleson.”
“What’s up?” said Mr. Mergleson.
“He’s gone!”
“Who?”
“Bealby.”
“Home?” This almost hopefully.
“No.”
“Where?”
“Up there! I think he ran against somebody.”
Mr. Mergleson scrutinized his subordinate’s face for a second. Then he
listened intently; both men listened intently.
“Have to fetch him out of that,” said Mr. Mergleson, suddenly preparing
for brisk activity.
Thomas bent lower over the banisters.
“_The Lord Chancellor!_” he whispered with white lips and a sideways
gesture of his head.
“What about ’im?” said Mergleson, arrested by something in the manner of
Thomas.
Thomas’s whisper became so fine that Mr. Mergleson drew nearer to catch
it and put up a hand to his ear. Thomas repeated the last remark. “He’s
just through there—on the landing—cursing and swearing—’orrible
things—more like a mad turkey than a human being.”
“Where’s Bealby?”
“He must almost ’ave run into ’im,” said Thomas after consideration.
“But now—where is he?”
Thomas pantomimed infinite perplexity.
Mr. Mergleson reflected and decided upon his line. He came up the
service staircase, lifted his chin and with an air of meek officiousness
went through the green door. There was no one now on the landing, there
was nothing remarkable on the landing except a broken tumbler, but
half-way up the grand staircase stood the Lord Chancellor. Under one arm
the great jurist carried a soda water syphon and he grasped a decanter
of whisky in his hand. He turned sharply at the sound of the green baize
door and bent upon Mr. Mergleson the most terrible eyebrows that ever,
surely! adorned a legal visage. He was very red in the face and
savage-looking.
“Was it _you_,” he said with a threatening gesture of the decanter, and
his voice betrayed a noble indignation, “Was it _you_ who slapped me
behind?”
“Slapped you behind, me lord??”
“Slapped me _behind_. Don’t I speak—plainly?”
“I—such a libbuty, me lord!”
“Idiot! I ask you a plain question—”
With almost inconceivable alacrity Mr. Mergleson rushed up three steps,
leapt forward and caught the syphon as it slipped from his lordship’s
arm.
He caught it, but at a price. He overset and, clasping it in his hands,
struck his lordship first with the syphon on the left shin and then
butted him with a face that was still earnestly respectful in the knees.
His lordship’s legs were driven sideways, so that they were no longer
beneath his centre of gravity. With a monosyllabic remark of a
topographical nature his lordship collapsed upon Mr. Mergleson. The
decanter flew out of his grasp and smashed presently with emphasis upon
the landing below. The syphon, escaping from the wreckage of Mr.
Mergleson and drawn no doubt by a natural affinity, rolled noisily from
step to step in pursuit of the decanter....
It was a curious little procession that hurried down the great staircase
of Shonts that night. First the whisky like a winged harbinger with the
pedestrian syphon in pursuit. Then the great lawyer gripping the great
butler by the tails of his coat and punching furiously. Then Mr.
Mergleson trying wildly to be respectful—even in disaster. First the
Lord Chancellor dived over Mr. Mergleson, grappling as he passed, then
Mr. Mergleson, attempting explanations, was pulled backwards over the
Lord Chancellor; then again the Lord Chancellor was for a giddy but
vindictive moment uppermost; a second rotation and they reached the
landing.
Bang! There was a deafening report—