The Purple Cloud

by M. P. Shiel

find placardedlarge the words: "Why were ye afraid?" A dignified Hope, therefore--evennow, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of theCondor of Death--becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an attitude amongsome of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry:"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Here, therefore, O Lord! OLord, look down, and save!

  'But even as we thus write of hope, Reason, if we would hear her,whispers us "fool": and inclement is the sky of earth. No more ships canNew York Harbour contain, and whereas among us men die weekly ofprivations by the hundred thousand, yonder across the sea they perish bythe million: for where the rich are pinched, how can the poor live?Already 700 out of the 1000 millions of our race have perished, and theempires of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror ofanarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating themore deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes andcomes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester,Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs hischild, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields liewaste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces,banks and hospitals; we understand that late last night threeterritorial regiments, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Lotian and EastLancashire Regiments, riotously disbanded themselves, shooting twoofficers; infectious diseases, as we all know, have spread beyond limit;in several towns the police seem to have disappeared, and, in nearlyall, every vestige of decency; the results following upon the suddenrelease of the convicts appear to be monstrous in the respectivedistricts; and within three short months Hell seems to have acquiredthis entire planet, sending forth Horror, like a rabid wolf, andDespair, like a disastrous sky, to devour and confound her. Hear,therefore, O Lord, and forgive our iniquities! O Lord, we beseech Thee!Look down, O Lord, and spare!'

  * * * * *

  When I had read this, and the rest of the paper, which had one wholesheet-side blank, I sat a long hour there, eyeing a little patch of thepurple ash on a waxed board near the corner where the girl sat with hertime-pieces, so useless in her Eternity; and there was not a feeling inme, except a pricking of curiosity, which afterwards became morbid andravenous, to know something more of that cloud, or smoke, of which thisman spoke, of its dates, its origin, its nature, its minute details.Afterwards, I went down, and entered several houses, searching for morepapers, but did not find any; then I found a paper-shop which was open,with boards outside, but either it had been deserted, or printing musthave stopped about the date of the paper which I had read, for the onlythree news-papers there were dated long prior, and I did not read them.

  Now it was raining, and a blustering autumn day it was, distributing theodours of the world, and bringing me continual mixed whiffs of flowersand the hateful stench of decay. But I would not mind it much.

  I wandered and wandered, till I was tired of spahi and bashi-bazouk, ofGreek and Catalan, of Russian 'pope' and Coptic abuna, of dragoman andCalmuck, of Egyptian maulawi and Afghan mullah, Neapolitan and sheik,and the nightmare of wild poses, colours, stuffs and garbs, theyellow-green kefie of the Bedouin, shawl-turbans of Baghdad, thevoluminous rose-silk tob of women, and face-veils, and stark distortednakedness, and sashes of figured muslin, and the workman's cords, andthe red tarboosh. About four, for very weariness, I was sitting on adoor-steep, bent beneath the rain; but soon was up again, fascinated nodoubt by this changing bazaar of sameness, its chance combinations andpermutations, and novelty in monotony. About five I was at a station,marked Harbour Station, in and about which lay a considerable crowd, butnot one train. I sat again, and rested, rose and roamed again; soonafter six I found myself at another station, called 'Priory'; and here Isaw two long trains, both crowded, one on a siding, and one at theup-platform.

  I examined both engines, and found them of the old boiler steam-typewith manholes, heaters, autoclaves, feed-pump, &c., now rare in westerncountries, except England. In one there was no water, but in that at theplatform, the float-lever, barely tilted toward the float, showed thatthere was some in the boiler. Of this one I overhauled all themachinery, and found it good, though rusted. There was plenty of fuel,and oil, which I supplemented from a near shop: and during ninetyminutes my brain and hands worked with an intelligence as it wereautomatic, of their own motion. After three journeys across the stationand street, I saw the fire blaze well, and the manometer move; when thelever of the safety-valve, whose load I lightened by half an atmosphere,lifted, I jumped down, and tried to disconnect the long string ofcarriages from the engine: but failed, the coupling being an automaticarrangement new to me; nor did I care. It was now very dark; but therewas still oil for bull's-eye and lantern, and I lit them. I forgotnothing. I rolled driver and stoker--the guard was absent--one to theplatform, one upon the rails: and I took their place there. At about8.30 I ran out from Dover, my throttle-valve pealing high a longfalsetto through the bleak and desolate night.

  * * * * *

  My aim was London. But even as I set out, my heart smote me: I knewnothing of the metals, their junctions, facing-points, sidings,shuntings, and complexities. Even as to whether I was going toward, oraway from, London, I was not sure. But just in proportion as my firsttimorousness of the engine hardened into familiarity and self-sureness,I quickened speed, wilfully, with an obstinacy deaf and blind.

  Finally, from a mere crawl at first, I was flying at a shockingvelocity, while something, tongue in cheek, seemed to whisper me: 'Theremust be other trains blocking the lines, at stations, in yards, andeverywhere--it is a maniac's ride, a ride of death, and FlyingDutchman's frenzy: remember your dark five-deep brigade of passengers,who rock and bump together, and will suffer in a collision.' But withmulish stubbornness I thought: 'They wished to go to London'; and on Iraged, not wildly exhilarated, so far as I can remember, nor lunatic,but feeling the dull glow of a wicked and morose Unreason urge in mybosom, while I stoked all blackened at the fire, or saw the vague massof dead horse or cow, running trees and fields, and dark homestead anddeep-slumbering farm, flit ghostly athwart the murky air, as thehalf-blind saw 'men like trees walking.'

  Long, however, it did not last: I could not have been twenty miles fromDover when, on a long reach of straight lines, I made out before me atarpaulined mass opposite a signal-point: and at once callousnesschanged to terror within me. But even as I plied the brake, I felt thatit was too late: I rushed to the gangway to make a wild leap down anembankment to the right, but was thrown backward by a quick series ofrough bumps, caused by eight or ten cattle which lay there across thelines: and when I picked myself up, and leapt, some seconds before theimpact, the speed must have considerably slackened, for I received nofracture, but lay in semi-coma in a patch of yellow-flowered whin onlevel ground, and was even conscious of a fire on the lines forty yardsaway, and, all the night, of vague thunder sounding from somewhere.

  * * * * *

  About five, or half-past, in the morning I was sitting up, rubbing myeyes, in a dim light mixed with drizzle. I could see that the train ofmy last night's debauch was a huddled-up chaos of fallen carriages anddisfigured bodies. A five-barred gate on my left opened into a hedge,and swung with creaks: two yards from my feet lay a little shaggy ponywith swollen wan abdomen, the very picture of death, and also about me anumber of dead wet birds.

  I picked myself up, passed through the gate, and walked up a row oftrees to a house at their end. I found it to be a little country-tavernwith a barn, forming one house, the barn part much larger than thetavern part. I went into the tavern by a small side-door--behind thebar--into a parlour--up a little stair--into two rooms: but no one wasthere. I then went round into the barn, which was paved withcobble-stones, and there lay a dead mare and foal, some fowls, with twocows. A ladder-stair led to a closed trap-door in the floor above. Iwent up, and in the middle of a wilderness of hay saw ninepeople--labourers, no doubt--five men and four women, huddled together,and with th
em a tin-pail containing the last of some spirit; so thatthese had died merry.

  I slept three hours among them, and afterwards went back to the tavern,and had some biscuits of which I opened a new tin, with some ham, jamand apples, of which I made a good meal, for my pemmican was gone.

  Afterwards I went following the rail-track on foot, for the engines ofboth the collided trains were smashed. I knew northward from southwardby the position of the sun: and after a good many stoppages at houses,and by railway-banks, I came, at about eleven in the night, to a greatand populous town.

  By the Dane John and the Cathedral, I immediately recognised it asCanterbury, which I knew quite well. And I walked up Castle Street tothe High Street, conscious for the first time of thatregularly-repeated sound, like a sob or groan, which was proceeding frommy throat. As there was no visible moon, and these old streets very dim,I had