The Poison Belt

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  Chapter V

  THE DEAD WORLD

  I remember that we all sat gasping in our chairs, with that sweet, wetsouth-western breeze, fresh from the sea, flapping the muslin curtainsand cooling our flushed faces. I wonder how long we sat! None of usafterwards could agree at all on that point. We were bewildered,stunned, semi-conscious. We had all braced our courage for death, butthis fearful and sudden new fact--that we must continue to live after wehad survived the race to which we belonged--struck us with the shock of aphysical blow and left us prostrate. Then gradually the suspendedmechanism began to move once more; the shuttles of memory worked; ideasweaved themselves together in our minds. We saw, with vivid, mercilessclearness, the relations between the past, the present, and thefuture--the lives that we had led and the lives which we would have tolive. Our eyes turned in silent horror upon those of our companions andfound the same answering look in theirs. Instead of the joy which menmight have been expected to feel who had so narrowly escaped an imminentdeath, a terrible wave of darkest depression submerged us. Everything onearth that we loved had been washed away into the great, infinite,unknown ocean, and here were we marooned upon this desert island of aworld, without companions, hopes, or aspirations. A few years' skulkinglike jackals among the graves of the human race and then our belated andlonely end would come.

  "It's dreadful, George, dreadful!" the lady cried in an agony of sobs."If we had only passed with the others! Oh, why did you save us? I feelas if it is we that are dead and everyone else alive."

  Challenger's great eyebrows were drawn down in concentrated thought,while his huge, hairy paw closed upon the outstretched hand of his wife.I had observed that she always held out her arms to him in trouble as achild would to its mother.

  "Without being a fatalist to the point of nonresistance," said he, "Ihave always found that the highest wisdom lies in an acquiescence withthe actual." He spoke slowly, and there was a vibration of feeling inhis sonorous voice.

  "I do _not_ acquiesce," said Summerlee firmly.

  "I don't see that it matters a row of pins whether you acquiesce orwhether you don't," remarked Lord John. "You've got to take it, whetheryou take it fightin' or take it lyin' down, so what's the odds whetheryou acquiesce or not?

  "I can't remember that anyone asked our permission before the thingbegan, and nobody's likely to ask it now. So what difference can it makewhat we may think of it?"

  "It is just all the difference between happiness and misery," saidChallenger with an abstracted face, still patting his wife's hand. "Youcan swim with the tide and have peace in mind and soul, or you can thrustagainst it and be bruised and weary. This business is beyond us, so letus accept it as it stands and say no more."

  "But what in the world are we to do with our lives?" I asked, appealingin desperation to the blue, empty heaven.

  "What am I to do, for example? There are no newspapers, so there's anend of my vocation."

  "And there's nothin' left to shoot, and no more soldierin', so there's anend of mine," said Lord John.

  "And there are no students, so there's an end of mine," cried Summerlee.

  "But I have my husband and my house, so I can thank heaven that there isno end of mine," said the lady.

  "Nor is there an end of mine," remarked Challenger, "for science is notdead, and this catastrophe in itself will offer us many most absorbingproblems for investigation."

  He had now flung open the windows and we were gazing out upon the silentand motionless landscape.

  "Let me consider," he continued. "It was about three, or a little after,yesterday afternoon that the world finally entered the poison belt to theextent of being completely submerged. It is now nine o'clock. Thequestion is, at what hour did we pass out from it?"

  "The air was very bad at daybreak," said I.

  "Later than that," said Mrs. Challenger. "As late as eight o'clock Idistinctly felt the same choking at my throat which came at the outset."

  "Then we shall say that it passed just after eight o'clock. Forseventeen hours the world has been soaked in the poisonous ether. Forthat length of time the Great Gardener has sterilized the human moldwhich had grown over the surface of His fruit. Is it possible that thework is incompletely done--that others may have survived besidesourselves?"

  "That's what I was wonderin'," said Lord John. "Why should we be the onlypebbles on the beach?"

  "It is absurd to suppose that anyone besides ourselves can possibly havesurvived," said Summerlee with conviction. "Consider that the poison wasso virulent that even a man who is as strong as an ox and has not a nervein his body, like Malone here, could hardly get up the stairs before hefell unconscious. Is it likely that anyone could stand seventeen minutesof it, far less hours?"

  "Unless someone saw it coming and made preparation, same as old friendChallenger did."

  "That, I think, is hardly probable," said Challenger, projecting hisbeard and sinking his eyelids. "The combination of observation,inference, and anticipatory imagination which enabled me to foresee thedanger is what one can hardly expect twice in the same generation."

  "Then your conclusion is that everyone is certainly dead?"

  "There can be little doubt of that. We have to remember, however, thatthe poison worked from below upwards and would possibly be less virulentin the higher strata of the atmosphere. It is strange, indeed, that itshould be so; but it presents one of those features which will afford usin the future a fascinating field for study. One could imagine,therefore, that if one had to search for survivors one would turn one'seyes with best hopes of success to some Tibetan village or some Alpinefarm, many thousands of feet above the sea level."

  "Well, considerin' that there are no railroads and no steamers you mightas well talk about survivors in the moon," said Lord John. "But what I'maskin' myself is whether it's really over or whether it's only half-time."

  Summerlee craned his neck to look round the horizon. "It seems clear andfine," said he in a very dubious voice; "but so it did yesterday. I amby no means assured that it is all over."

  Challenger shrugged his shoulders.

  "We must come back once more to our fatalism," said he. "If the worldhas undergone this experience before, which is not outside the range ofpossibility, it was certainly a very long time ago. Therefore, we mayreasonably hope that it will be very long before it occurs again."

  "That's all very well," said Lord John, "but if you get an earthquakeshock you are mighty likely to have a second one right on the top of it.I think we'd be wise to stretch our legs and have a breath of air whilewe have the chance. Since our oxygen is exhausted we may just as well becaught outside as in."

  It was strange the absolute lethargy which had come upon us as a reactionafter our tremendous emotions of the last twenty-four hours. It was bothmental and physical, a deep-lying feeling that nothing mattered and thateverything was a weariness and a profitless exertion. Even Challengerhad succumbed to it, and sat in his chair, with his great head leaningupon his hands and his thoughts far away, until Lord John and I, catchinghim by each arm, fairly lifted him on to his feet, receiving only theglare and growl of an angry mastiff for our trouble. However, once wehad got out of our narrow haven of refuge into the wider atmosphere ofeveryday life, our normal energy came gradually back to us once more.

  But what were we to begin to do in that graveyard of a world? Could evermen have been faced with such a question since the dawn of time? It istrue that our own physical needs, and even our luxuries, were assured forthe future. All the stores of food, all the vintages of wine, all thetreasures of art were ours for the taking. But what were we to _do_?Some few tasks appealed to us at once, since they lay ready to our hands.We descended into the kitchen and laid the two domestics upon theirrespective beds. They seemed to have died without suffering, one in thechair by the fire, the other upon the scullery floor. Then we carried inpoor Austin from the yard. His muscles were set as hard as a board inthe most exaggerated rigor mort
is, while the contraction of the fibreshad drawn his mouth into a hard sardonic grin. This symptom wasprevalent among all who had died from the poison. Wherever we went wewere confronted by those grinning faces, which seemed to mock at ourdreadful position, smiling silently and grimly at the ill-fated survivorsof their race.

  "Look here," said Lord John, who had paced restlessly about thedining-room whilst we partook of some food, "I don't know how you fellowsfeel about it, but for my part, I simply _can't_ sit here and do nothin'."

  "Perhaps," Challenger answered, "you would have the kindness to suggestwhat you think we ought to do."

  "Get a move on us and see all that has happened."

  "That is what I should myself propose."

  "But not in this little country village. We can see from the window allthat this place can teach us."

  "Where should we go, then?"

  "To London!"

  "That's all very well," grumbled Summerlee. "You may be equal to aforty-mile walk, but I'm not so sure about Challenger, with his stumpylegs, and I am perfectly sure about myself." Challenger was very muchannoyed.

  "If you could see your way, sir, to confining your remarks to your ownphysical peculiarities, you would find that you had an ample field forcomment," he cried.

  "I had no intention to offend you, my dear Challenger," cried ourtactless friend. "You can't be held responsible for your own physique.If nature has given you a short, heavy body you cannot possibly helphaving stumpy legs."

  Challenger was too furious to answer. He could only growl and blink andbristle. Lord John hastened to intervene before the dispute became moreviolent.

  "You talk of walking. Why should we walk?" said he.

  "Do you suggest taking a train?" asked Challenger, still simmering.

  "What's the matter with the motor-car? Why should we not go in that?"

  "I am not an expert," said Challenger, pulling at his beard reflectively."At the same time, you are right in supposing that the human intellect inits higher manifestations should be sufficiently flexible to turn itselfto anything. Your idea is an excellent one, Lord John. I myself willdrive you all to London."

  "You will do nothing of the kind," said Summerlee with decision.

  "No, indeed, George!" cried his wife. "You only tried once, and youremember how you crashed through the gate of the garage."

  "It was a momentary want of concentration," said Challenger complacently."You can consider the matter settled. I will certainly drive you all toLondon."

  The situation was relieved by Lord John.

  "What's the car?" he asked.

  "A twenty-horsepower Humber."

  "Why, I've driven one for years," said he. "By George!" he added. "Inever thought I'd live to take the whole human race in one load. There'sjust room for five, as I remember it. Get your things on, and I'll beready at the door by ten o'clock."

  Sure enough, at the hour named, the car came purring and crackling fromthe yard with Lord John at the wheel. I took my seat beside him, whilethe lady, a useful little buffer state, was squeezed in between the twomen of wrath at the back. Then Lord John released his brakes, slid hislever rapidly from first to third, and we sped off upon the strangestdrive that ever human beings have taken since man first came upon theearth.

  You are to picture the loveliness of nature upon that August day, thefreshness of the morning air, the golden glare of the summer sunshine,the cloudless sky, the luxuriant green of the Sussex woods, and the deeppurple of heather-clad downs. As you looked round upon the many-colouredbeauty of the scene all thought of a vast catastrophe would have passedfrom your mind had it not been for one sinister sign--the solemn,all-embracing silence. There is a gentle hum of life which pervades aclosely-settled country, so deep and constant that one ceases to observeit, as the dweller by the sea loses all sense of the constant murmur ofthe waves. The twitter of birds, the buzz of insects, the far-off echoof voices, the lowing of cattle, the distant barking of dogs, roar oftrains, and rattle of carts--all these form one low, unremitting note,striking unheeded upon the ear. We missed it now. This deadly silencewas appalling. So solemn was it, so impressive, that the buzz and rattleof our motor-car seemed an unwarrantable intrusion, an indecent disregardof this reverent stillness which lay like a pall over and round the ruinsof humanity. It was this grim hush, and the tall clouds of smoke whichrose here and there over the country-side from smoldering buildings,which cast a chill into our hearts as we gazed round at the gloriouspanorama of the Weald.

  And then there were the dead! At first those endless groups of drawn andgrinning faces filled us with a shuddering horror. So vivid and mordantwas the impression that I can live over again that slow descent of thestation hill, the passing by the nurse-girl with the two babes, the sightof the old horse on his knees between the shafts, the cabman twistedacross his seat, and the young man inside with his hand upon the opendoor in the very act of springing out. Lower down were six reapers allin a litter, their limbs crossing, their dead, unwinking eyes gazingupwards at the glare of heaven. These things I see as in a photograph.But soon, by the merciful provision of nature, the over-excited nerveceased to respond. The very vastness of the horror took away from itspersonal appeal. Individuals merged into groups, groups into crowds,crowds into a universal phenomenon which one soon accepted as theinevitable detail of every scene. Only here and there, where someparticularly brutal or grotesque incident caught the attention, did themind come back with a sudden shock to the personal and human meaning ofit all.

  Above all, there was the fate of the children. That, I remember, filledus with the strongest sense of intolerable injustice. We could havewept--Mrs. Challenger did weep--when we passed a great council school andsaw the long trail of tiny figures scattered down the road which led fromit. They had been dismissed by their terrified teachers and werespeeding for their homes when the poison caught them in its net. Greatnumbers of people were at the open windows of the houses. In TunbridgeWells there was hardly one which had not its staring, smiling face. Atthe last instant the need of air, that very craving for oxygen which wealone had been able to satisfy, had sent them flying to the window. Thesidewalks too were littered with men and women, hatless and bonnetless,who had rushed out of the houses. Many of them had fallen in theroadway. It was a lucky thing that in Lord John we had found an expertdriver, for it was no easy matter to pick one's way. Passing through thevillages or towns we could only go at a walking pace, and once, Iremember, opposite the school at Tonbridge, we had to halt some timewhile we carried aside the bodies which blocked our path.

  A few small, definite pictures stand out in my memory from amid that longpanorama of death upon the Sussex and Kentish high roads. One was thatof a great, glittering motor-car standing outside the inn at the villageof Southborough. It bore, as I should guess, some pleasure party upontheir return from Brighton or from Eastbourne. There were three gailydressed women, all young and beautiful, one of them with a Peking spanielupon her lap. With them were a rakish-looking elderly man and a youngaristocrat, his eyeglass still in his eye, his cigarette burned down tothe stub between the fingers of his begloved hand. Death must have comeon them in an instant and fixed them as they sat. Save that the elderlyman had at the last moment torn out his collar in an effort to breathe,they might all have been asleep. On one side of the car a waiter withsome broken glasses beside a tray was huddled near the step. On theother, two very ragged tramps, a man and a woman, lay where they hadfallen, the man with his long, thin arm still outstretched, even as hehad asked for alms in his lifetime. One instant of time had putaristocrat, waiter, tramp, and dog upon one common footing of inert anddissolving protoplasm.

  I remember another singular picture, some miles on the London side ofSevenoaks. There is a large convent upon the left, with a long, greenslope in front of it. Upon this slope were assembled a great number ofschool children, all kneeling at prayer. In front of them was a fringeof nuns, and higher up the slope, facing toward
s them, a single figurewhom we took to be the Mother Superior. Unlike the pleasure-seekers inthe motor-car, these people seemed to have had warning of their dangerand to have died beautifully together, the teachers and the taught,assembled for their last common lesson.

  My mind is still stunned by that terrific experience, and I grope vainlyfor means of expression by which I can reproduce the emotions which wefelt. Perhaps it is best and wisest not to try, but merely to indicatethe facts. Even Summerlee and Challenger were crushed, and we heardnothing of our companions behind us save an occasional whimper from thelady. As to Lord John, he was too intent upon his wheel and thedifficult task of threading his way along such roads to have time orinclination for conversation. One phrase he used with such wearisomeiteration that it stuck in my memory and at last almost made me laugh asa comment upon the day of doom.

  "Pretty doin's! What!"

  That was his ejaculation as each fresh tremendous combination of deathand disaster displayed itself before us. "Pretty doin's! What!" hecried, as we descended the station hill at Rotherfield, and it was still"Pretty doin's! What!" as we picked our way through a wilderness ofdeath in the High Street of Lewisham and the Old Kent Road.

  It was here that we received a sudden and amazing shock. Out of thewindow of a humble corner house there appeared a fluttering handkerchiefwaving at the end of a long, thin human arm. Never had the sight ofunexpected death caused our hearts to stop and then throb so wildly asdid this amazing indication of life. Lord John ran the motor to thecurb, and in an instant we had rushed through the open door of the houseand up the staircase to the second-floor front room from which the signalproceeded.

  A very old lady sat in a chair by the open window, and close to her, laidacross a second chair, was a cylinder of oxygen, smaller but of the sameshape as those which had saved our own lives. She turned her thin,drawn, bespectacled face toward us as we crowded in at the doorway.

  "I feared that I was abandoned here forever," said she, "for I am aninvalid and cannot stir."

  "Well, madam," Challenger answered, "it is a lucky chance that wehappened to pass."

  "I have one all-important question to ask you," said she. "Gentlemen, Ibeg that you will be frank with me. What effect will these events haveupon London and North-Western Railway shares?"

  We should have laughed had it not been for the tragic eagerness withwhich she listened for our answer. Mrs. Burston, for that was her name,was an aged widow, whose whole income depended upon a small holding ofthis stock. Her life had been regulated by the rise and fall of thedividend, and she could form no conception of existence save as it wasaffected by the quotation of her shares. In vain we pointed out to herthat all the money in the world was hers for the taking and was uselesswhen taken. Her old mind would not adapt itself to the new idea, and shewept loudly over her vanished stock. "It was all I had," she wailed."If that is gone I may as well go too."

  Amid her lamentations we found out how this frail old plant had livedwhere the whole great forest had fallen. She was a confirmed invalid andan asthmatic. Oxygen had been prescribed for her malady, and a tube wasin her room at the moment of the crisis. She had naturally inhaled someas had been her habit when there was a difficulty with her breathing. Ithad given her relief, and by doling out her supply she had managed tosurvive the night. Finally she had fallen asleep and been awakened bythe buzz of our motor-car. As it was impossible to take her on with us,we saw that she had all necessaries of life and promised to communicatewith her in a couple of days at the latest. So we left her, stillweeping bitterly over her vanished stock.

  As we approached the Thames the block in the streets became thicker andthe obstacles more bewildering. It was with difficulty that we made ourway across London Bridge. The approaches to it upon the Middlesex sidewere choked from end to end with frozen traffic which made all furtheradvance in that direction impossible. A ship was blazing brightlyalongside one of the wharves near the bridge, and the air was full ofdrifting smuts and of a heavy acrid smell of burning. There was a cloudof dense smoke somewhere near the Houses of Parliament, but it wasimpossible from where we were to see what was on fire.

  "I don't know how it strikes you," Lord John remarked as he brought hisengine to a standstill, "but it seems to me the country is more cheerfulthan the town. Dead London is gettin' on my nerves. I'm for a castround and then gettin' back to Rotherfield."

  "I confess that I do not see what we can hope for here," said ProfessorSummerlee.

  "At the same time," said Challenger, his great voice booming strangelyamid the silence, "it is difficult for us to conceive that out of sevenmillions of people there is only this one old woman who by somepeculiarity of constitution or some accident of occupation has managed tosurvive this catastrophe."

  "If there should be others, how can we hope to find them, George?" askedthe lady. "And yet I agree with you that we cannot go back until we havetried."

  Getting out of the car and leaving it by the curb, we walked with somedifficulty along the crowded pavement of King William Street and enteredthe open door of a large insurance office. It was a corner house, and wechose it as commanding a view in every direction. Ascending the stair,we passed through what I suppose to have been the board-room, for eightelderly men were seated round a long table in the centre of it. The highwindow was open and we all stepped out upon the balcony. From it wecould see the crowded city streets radiating in every direction, whilebelow us the road was black from side to side with the tops of themotionless taxis. All, or nearly all, had their heads pointed outwards,showing how the terrified men of the city had at the last moment made avain endeavor to rejoin their families in the suburbs or the country.Here and there amid the humbler cabs towered the great brass-spangledmotor-car of some wealthy magnate, wedged hopelessly among the dammedstream of arrested traffic. Just beneath us there was such a one ofgreat size and luxurious appearance, with its owner, a fat old man,leaning out, half his gross body through the window, and his podgy hand,gleaming with diamonds, outstretched as he urged his chauffeur to make alast effort to break through the press.

  A dozen motor-buses towered up like islands in this flood, the passengerswho crowded the roofs lying all huddled together and across each others'laps like a child's toys in a nursery. On a broad lamp pedestal in thecentre of the roadway, a burly policeman was standing, leaning his backagainst the post in so natural an attitude that it was hard to realizethat he was not alive, while at his feet there lay a ragged newsboy withhis bundle of papers on the ground beside him. A paper-cart had gotblocked in the crowd, and we could read in large letters, black uponyellow, "Scene at Lord's. County Match Interrupted." This must havebeen the earliest edition, for there were other placards bearing thelegend, "Is It the End? Great Scientist's Warning." And another, "IsChallenger Justified? Ominous Rumours."

  Challenger pointed the latter placard out to his wife, as it thrustitself like a banner above the throng. I could see him throw out hischest and stroke his beard as he looked at it. It pleased and flatteredthat complex mind to think that London had died with his name and hiswords still present in their thoughts. His feelings were so evident thatthey aroused the sardonic comment of his colleague.

  "In the limelight to the last, Challenger," he remarked.

  "So it would appear," he answered complacently. "Well," he added as helooked down the long vista of the radiating streets, all silent and allchoked up with death, "I really see no purpose to be served by ourstaying any longer in London. I suggest that we return at once toRotherfield and then take counsel as to how we shall most profitablyemploy the years which lie before us."

  Only one other picture shall I give of the scenes which we carried backin our memories from the dead city. It is a glimpse which we had of theinterior of the old church of St. Mary's, which is at the very pointwhere our car was awaiting us. Picking our way among the prostratefigures upon the steps, we pushed open the swing door and entered. Itwas a wonderful sight. The
church was crammed from end to end withkneeling figures in every posture of supplication and abasement. At thelast dreadful moment, brought suddenly face to face with the realities oflife, those terrific realities which hang over us even while we followthe shadows, the terrified people had rushed into those old city churcheswhich for generations had hardly ever held a congregation. There theyhuddled as close as they could kneel, many of them in their agitationstill wearing their hats, while above them in the pulpit a young man inlay dress had apparently been addressing them when he and they had beenoverwhelmed by the same fate. He lay now, like Punch in his booth, withhis head and two limp arms hanging over the ledge of the pulpit. It wasa nightmare, the grey, dusty church, the rows of agonized figures, thedimness and silence of it all. We moved about with hushed whispers,walking upon our tip-toes.

  And then suddenly I had an idea. At one corner of the church, near thedoor, stood the ancient font, and behind it a deep recess in which therehung the ropes for the bell-ringers. Why should we not send a messageout over London which would attract to us anyone who might still bealive? I ran across, and pulling at the list-covered rope, I wassurprised to find how difficult it was to swing the bell. Lord John hadfollowed me.

  "By George, young fellah!" said he, pulling off his coat. "You've hit ona dooced good notion. Give me a grip and we'll soon have a move on it."

  But, even then, so heavy was the bell that it was not until Challengerand Summerlee had added their weight to ours that we heard the roaringand clanging above our heads which told us that the great clapper wasringing out its music. Far over dead London resounded our message ofcomradeship and hope to any fellow-man surviving. It cheered our ownhearts, that strong, metallic call, and we turned the more earnestly toour work, dragged two feet off the earth with each upward jerk of therope, but all straining together on the downward heave, Challenger thelowest of all, bending all his great strength to the task and flopping upand down like a monstrous bull-frog, croaking with every pull. It was atthat moment that an artist might have taken a picture of the fouradventurers, the comrades of many strange perils in the past, whom fatehad now chosen for so supreme an experience. For half an hour we worked,the sweat dropping from our faces, our arms and backs aching with theexertion. Then we went out into the portico of the church and lookedeagerly up and down the silent, crowded streets. Not a sound, not amotion, in answer to our summons.

  "It's no use. No one is left," I cried.

  "We can do nothing more," said Mrs. Challenger. "For God's sake, George,let us get back to Rotherfield. Another hour of this dreadful, silentcity would drive me mad."

  We got into the car without another word. Lord John backed her round andturned her to the south. To us the chapter seemed closed. Little did weforesee the strange new chapter which was to open.