Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century

by Ignatius Donnelly

sparksspouted forth. The blaze brought the mob into fearful relief, butfortunately it was between us and the great bulk of our enemies.

  "My God," said Max, "it is Caesar's head!"

  I looked, and there, sure enough, upon the top of the long pole I hadbefore noticed, was the head of the redoubtable giant. It stood outas if it had been painted in gory characters by the light of theburning house upon that background of darkness. I could see theglazed and dusty eyes; the protruding tongue; the great lower jawhanging down in hideous fashion; and from the thick, bull-like neckwere suspended huge gouts of dried and blackened blood.

  "It is the first instinct of such mobs," said Max, quietly, tosuspect their leaders and slay them. They killed Caesar, and then cameafter me. When they saw the air-ship they were confirmed in theirsuspicions; 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 tobe executing a hideous dance in mid-air, in the midst of thatterrible scene; it floated over it like a presiding demon. Theprotruding tongue leered at the blazing house and the unspeakablehorrors of that assemblage, lit up, as it was, in all its awfulfeatures, 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, perceivingthat we did not move, concluded that the machinery of the air-shipwas broken, and screamed with joy as the flames approached us.

  Up, up, went bundle and package and box; faster, and faster, andfaster. We were not to be intimidated by fire or mobs! The roof ofthe house next us was now blazing, and we could hear the fire, like afurnace, 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 insufferablyhot. We stood on the deck; the engineer touched the lever of theelectric engine; the great bird swayed for an instant, and then beganto rise, like a veritable Phoenix from its nest of flame, surroundedby cataracts of sparks. As the mob saw us ascend, veiled dimly, atfirst, by that screen of conflagration, they groaned with dismay anddisappointment. The bullets flew and hissed around us, but ourmetallic sides laughed them to scorn. Up, up, straight and swift asan arrow we rose. The mighty city lay unrolled below us, like a greatmap, starred here and there with burning houses. Above the trees ofUnion Square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by thebon-fires, where Caesar's Column was towering to the skies, bearingthe 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 havesuch dreadful memories of labor can scarcely be forced back into it.And who is to employ them? After about three-fourths of the humanfamily have died of hunger, or been killed, the remainder,constituting, by the law of the survival of the fittest, the mostpowerful and brutal, will find it necessary, for self-defense againsteach other, to form squads or gangs. The greatest fighter in each ofthese will become chief, as among all savages. Then the history ofthe world will be slowly repeated. A bold ruffian will conquer anumber of the adjacent squads, and become a king. Gradually, and inits rudest forms, labor will begin again; at first exercisedprincipally by slaves. Men will exchange liberty for protection.After a century or two a kind of commerce may arise. Then will followother centuries of wars, between provinces or nations. A newaristocracy will spring up. Culture will lift its head. A greatpower, like Rome in the old world, may arise. Some vast superstitionmay take possession of the world; and Alfred, Victoria and Washingtonmay be worshiped, as Saturn, Juno and Hercules were in the past; withperhaps dreadful and bloody rites like those of the Carthaginians andancient Mexicans. And so, step by step, mankind will re-enact thegreat human drama, which begins always with a tragedy, runs through acomedy, and terminates in a catastrophe."

  The city was disappearing--we were over the ocean--the cool saltbreeze 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 hisfather, who was on his knees praying.

  "I would destroy the world," he said, "to save him from a livingdeath."

  He was justifying himself unto himself.

  "Gabriel," he said, after a pause, "if this outbreak had not occurrednow, yet would it certainly have come to pass. It was but a questionof time. The breaking-strain on humanity was too great. The worldcould not have gone on; neither could it have turned back. The crashwas inevitable. It may be God's way of wiping off the blackboard. Itmay be that the ancient legends of the destruction of our race byflood and fire are but dim remembrances of events like that which isnow happening."

  "It may be so, Max," I replied; and we were silent.

  Even the sea bore testimony to the ruin of man. The lighthouses nolonger held up their fingers of flame to warn the mariner from thetreacherous rocks. No air-ship, brilliant with many lights shininglike innumerable eyes, and heavy with passengers, streamed past uswith fierce swiftness, splitting the astonished and complaining air.Here and there a sailing vessel, or a steamer, toiled laboriouslyalong, little dreaming that, at their journey's end, starvingcreatures would swarm up their sides to kill and devour.

  How still and peaceful was the night--the great, solemn, patientnight! How sweet and pure the air! How delightful the silence to earsthat had rung so lately with the clamors of that infuriated mob! Howpleasant the darkness to eyeballs seared so long by fire and flameand sights of murder! Estella and Christina came and sat down nearus. Their faces showed the torture they had endured,--not so muchfrom fear as from the shock and agony with which goodnesscontemplates terrific and triumphant evil.

  I looked into the grand depths of the stars above us; at that endlessprocession of shining worlds; at that illimitable expanse of silence.And I thought of those vast gaps and lapses of manless time, when allthese starry hosts unrolled and marshaled themselves before theattentive eyes of God, and it had not yet entered into his heart tocreate that swarming, writhing, crawling, contentious mass we callhumanity. And I said to myself, "Why should a God condescend to sucha work as man?"

  And yet, again, I felt that one grateful heart, that darted out theliving line of its love and adoration from this dark and perturbedearth, up to the shining throne of the Great Intelligence, must be ofmore moment and esteem in the universe than millions of tons ofmountains--yea, than a wilderness of stars. For matter is but thesubstance with which God works; while thought, love, conscience andconsciousness are parts of God himself. We think; therefore we aredivine: we pray; therefore we are immortal.

  Part of God! The awful, the inexpressible, the incomprehensible God.His terrible hand swirls, with unresting power, yonder innumerablecongregation of suns in their mighty orbits, and yet stoops, withtender touch, to build up the petals of the anemone, and paint withrainbow hues the mealy wings of the butterfly.

  I could have wept over man; but I remembered that God lives beyondthe stars.

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  EUROPE

  The next day we were flying over the ocean. The fluctuous andchangeable waves were beneath us, with their multitudinous hues andcolors, as light and foam and billows mingled. Far as the eye couldreach, they seemed to be climbing over each other forever, like theendless competitions of men in the arena of life. Above us was thepanorama of the clouds--so often the harbingers of terror; for evenin their gentlest forms they foretell the tempest, which is evergathering the mists around it like a garment, and, howeverslow-paced, is still advancing.

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p; A whale spouted. Happy nature! How cunningly were the wet, slidingwaves accommodated to that smooth skin and those nerves which riotedin the play of the tumbling waters. A school of dolphins leaped andgamboled, showing their curved backs to the sun in sudden glimpses; avast family; merry, social, jocund, abandoned to happiness. The gullsflew about us as if our ship was indeed a larger bird; and I thoughtof the poet's lines wherein he describes--

  "The gray gull, balanced on its bow-like wings, Between two black waves, seeking where to dive."

  And here were more kindly adjustments. How the birds took advantageof the wind and made it lift them or sink them, or propel themforward; tacking, with infinite skill, right in the eye of the gale,like a sailing-vessel. It was not toil--it was delight, rapture--thevery glory and ecstasy of living. Everywhere the benevolence of Godwas manifest: light, sound, air, sea, clouds, beast, fish