Tales of Space and Time H. G. Wells 3137 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tales of Space and Time

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: Tales of Space and Time

Author: H. G. Wells

Release date: November 30, 2008 [eBook #27365]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27365

Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh, Stephen Blundell
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF
SPACE AND TIME ***

Tales of Space and Time

Tales of Space
and Time

By H. G. WELLS, Author of "When
the Sleeper Wakes" "The War of the
Worlds" etc.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
LONDON AND NEW YORK
1900

Copyright, 1899, by Harper & Brothers

All rights reserved

Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical
errors have been corrected without note. Dialect
and variant spellings have been retained.

Contents

PAGE
The Crystal Egg 1
The Star 35
A Story of the Stone Age 59
A Story of the Days to Come 165
The Man who could Work Miracles 325

THE CRYSTAL EGG

There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near
Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C.
Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of
its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks
and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two
skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one
holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so,
some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank.
There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked
into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished. And at that two people,
who stood outside the window, were looking, one of them a tall, thin
clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of dusky complexion and
unobtrusive costume. The dusky young man spoke with eager gesticulation,
and seemed anxious for his companion to purchase the article.
While they were there, Mr. Cave came into his shop, his beard still
wagging with the bread and butter of his tea. When he saw these men and
the object of their regard, his countenance fell. He glanced guiltily over his
shoulder, and softly shut the door. He was a little old man, with pale face
and peculiar watery blue eyes; his hair was a dirty grey, and he wore a
shabby blue frock coat, an ancient silk hat, and carpet slippers very much
down at heel. He remained watching the two men as they talked. The
clergyman went deep into his trouser pocket, examined a handful of money,
and showed his teeth in an agreeable smile. Mr. Cave seemed still more
depressed when they came into the shop.
The clergyman, without any ceremony, asked the price of the crystal egg.
Mr. Cave glanced nervously towards the door leading into the parlour, and
said five pounds. The clergyman protested that the price was high, to his
companion as well as to Mr. Cave—it was, indeed, very much more than
Mr. Cave had intended to ask, when he had stocked the article—and an
attempt at bargaining ensued. Mr. Cave stepped to the shop-door, and held it

open. "Five pounds is my price," he said, as though he wished to save
himself the trouble of unprofitable discussion. As he did so, the upper
portion of a woman's face appeared above the blind in the glass upper panel
of the door leading into the parlour, and stared curiously at the two
customers. "Five pounds is my price," said Mr. Cave, with a quiver in his
voice.
The swarthy young man had so far remained a spectator, watching Cave
keenly. Now he spoke. "Give him five pounds," he said. The clergyman
glanced at him to see if he were in earnest, and, when he looked at Mr. Cave
again, he saw that the latter's face was white. "It's a lot of money," said the
clergyman, and, diving into his pocket, began counting his resources. He
had little more than thirty shillings, and he appealed to his companion, with
whom he seemed to be on terms of considerable intimacy. This gave Mr.
Cave an opportunity of collecting his thoughts, and he began to explain in
an agitated manner that the crystal was not, as a matter of fact, entirely free
for sale. His two customers were naturally surprised at this, and inquired
why he had not thought of that before he began to bargain. Mr. Cave
became confused, but he stuck to his story, that the crystal was not in the
market that afternoon, that a probable purchaser of it had already appeared.
The two, treating this as an attempt to raise the price still further, made as if
they would leave the shop. But at this point the parlour door opened, and
the owner of the dark fringe and the little eyes appeared.
She was a coarse-featured, corpulent woman, younger and very much
larger than Mr. Cave; she walked heavily, and her face was flushed. "That
crystal is for sale," she said. "And five pounds is a good enough price for it.
I can't think what you're about, Cave, not to take the gentleman's offer!"
Mr. Cave, greatly perturbed by the irruption, looked angrily at her over
the rims of his spectacles, and, without excessive assurance, asserted his
right to manage his business in his own way. An altercation began. The two
customers watched the scene with interest and some amusement,
occasionally assisting Mrs. Cave with suggestions. Mr. Cave, hard driven,
persisted in a confused and impossible story of an enquiry for the crystal
that morning, and his agitation became painful. But he stuck to his point
with extraordinary persistence. It was the young Oriental who ended this
curious controversy. He proposed that they should call again in the course

of two days—so as to give the alleged enquirer a fair chance. "And then we
must insist," said the clergyman, "Five pounds." Mrs. Cave took it on
herself to apologise for her husband, explaining that he was sometimes "a
little odd," and as the two customers left, the couple prepared for a free
discussion of the incident in all its bearings.
Mrs. Cave talked to her husband with singular directness. The poor little
man, quivering with emotion, muddled himself between his stories,
maintaining on the one hand that he had another customer in view, and on
the other asserting that the crystal was honestly worth ten guineas. "Why
did you ask five pounds?" said his wife. "Do let me manage my business
my own way!" said Mr. Cave.
Mr. Cave had living with him a step-daughter and a step-son, and at
supper that night the transaction was re-discussed. None of them had a high
opinion of Mr. Cave's business methods, and this action seemed a
culminating folly.
"It's my opinion he's refused that crystal before," said the step-son, a
loose-limbed lout of eighteen.
"But Five Pounds!" said the step-daughter, an argumentative young
woman of six-and-twenty.
Mr. Cave's answers were wretched; he could only mumble weak
assertions that he knew his own business best. They drove him from his
half-eaten supper into the shop, to close it for the night, his ears aflame and
tears of vexation behind his spectacles. "Why had he left the crystal in the
window so long? The folly of it!" That was the trouble closest in his mind.
For a time he could see no way of evading sale.
After supper his step-daughter and step-son smartened themselves up and
went out and his wife retired upstairs to reflect upon the business aspects of
the crystal, over a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot water. Mr. Cave
went into the shop, and stayed there until late, ostensibly to make
ornamental rockeries for goldfish cases but really for a private purpose that
will be better explained later. The next day Mrs. Cave found that the crystal
had been removed from the window, and was lying behind some second-
hand books on angling. She replaced it in a conspicuous position. But she

did not argue further about it, as a nervous headache disinclined her from
debate. Mr. Cave was always disinclined. The day passed disagreeably. Mr.
Cave was, if anything, more absent-minded than usual, and uncommonly
irritable withal. In the afternoon, when his wife was taking her customary
sleep, he removed the crystal from the window again.
The next day Mr. Cave had to deliver a consignment of dog-fish at one of
the hospital schools, where they were needed for dissection. In his absence
Mrs. Cave's mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the methods of
expenditure suitable to a windfall of five pounds. She had already devised
some very agreeable expedients, among others a dress of green silk for
herself and a trip to Richmond, when a jangling of the front door bell
summoned her into the shop. The customer was an examination coach who
came to complain of the non-delivery of certain frogs asked for the previous
day. Mrs. Cave did not approve of this particular branch of Mr. Cave's
business, and the gentleman, who had called in a somewhat aggressive
mood, retired after a brief exchange of words—entirely civil so far as he
was concerned. Mrs. Cave's eye then naturally turned to the window; for the
sight of the crystal was an assurance of the five pounds and of her dreams.
What was her surprise to find it gone!
She went to the place behind the locker on the counter, where she had
discovered it the day before. It was not there; and she immediately began an
eager search about the shop.
When Mr. Cave returned from his business with the dog-fish, about a
quarter to two in the afternoon, he found the shop in some confusion, and
his wife, extremely exasperated and on her knees behind the counter,
routing among his taxidermic material. Her face came up hot and angry
over the counter, as the jangling bell announced his return, and she
forthwith accused him of "hiding it."
"Hid what?" asked Mr. Cave.
"The crystal!"
At that Mr. Cave, apparently much surprised, rushed to the window. "Isn't
it here?" he said. "Great Heavens! what has become of it?"

Just then, Mr. Cave's step-son re-entered the shop from the inner room—
he had come home a minute or so before Mr. Cave—and he was
blaspheming freely. He was apprenticed to a second-hand furniture dealer
down the road, but he had his meals at home, and he was naturally annoyed
to find no dinner ready.
But, when he heard of the loss of the crystal, he forgot his meal, and his
anger was diverted from his mother to his step-father. Their first idea, of
course, was that he had hidden it. But Mr. Cave stoutly denied all
knowledge of its fate—freely offering his bedabbled affidavit in the matter
—and at last was worked up to the point of accusing, first, his wife and then
his step-son of having taken it with a view to a private sale. So began an
exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion, which ended for Mrs.
Cave in a peculiar nervous condition midway between hysterics and amuck,
and caused the step-son to be half-an-hour late at the furniture
establishment in the afternoon. Mr. Cave took refuge from his wife's
emotions in the shop.
In the evening the matter was resumed, with less passion and in a judicial
spirit, under the presidency of the step-daughter. The supper passed
unhappily and culminated in a painful scene. Mr. Cave gave way at last to
extreme exasperation, and went out banging the front door violently. The
rest of the family, having discussed him with the freedom his absence
warranted, hunted the house from garret to cellar, hoping to light upon the
crystal.
The next day the two customers called again. They were received by Mrs.
Cave almost in tears. It transpired that no one could imagine all that she had
stood from Cave at various times in her married pilgrimage.... She also gave
a garbled account of the disappearance. The clergyman and the Oriental
laughed silently at one another, and said it was very extraordinary. As Mrs.
Cave seemed disposed to give them the complete history of her life they
made to leave the shop. Thereupon Mrs. Cave, still clinging to hope, asked
for the clergyman's address, so that, if she could get anything out of Cave,
she might communicate it. The address was duly given, but apparently was
afterwards mislaid. Mrs. Cave can remember nothing about it.

In the evening of that day, the Caves seem to have exhausted their
emotions, and Mr. Cave, who had been out in the afternoon, supped in a
gloomy isolation that contrasted pleasantly with the impassioned
controversy of the previous days. For some time matters were very badly
strained in the Cave household, but neither crystal nor customer reappeared.
Now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that Mr. Cave was a
liar. He knew perfectly well where the crystal was. It was in the rooms of
Mr. Jacoby Wace, Assistant Demonstrator at St. Catherine's Hospital,
Westbourne Street. It stood on the sideboard partially covered by a black
velvet cloth, and beside a decanter of American whisky. It is from Mr.
Wace, indeed, that the particulars upon which this narrative is based were
derived. Cave had taken off the thing to the hospital hidden in the dog-fish
sack, and there had pressed the young investigator to keep it for him. Mr.
Wace was a little dubious at first. His relationship to Cave was peculiar. He
had a taste for singular characters, and he had more than once invited the
old man to smoke and drink in his rooms, and to unfold his rather amusing
views of life in general and of his wife in particular. Mr. Wace had
encountered Mrs. Cave, too, on occasions when Mr. Cave was not at home
to attend to him. He knew the constant interference to which Cave was
subjected, and having weighed the story judicially, he decided to give the
crystal a refuge. Mr. Cave promised to explain the reasons for his
remarkable affection for the crystal more fully on a later occasion, but he
spoke distinctly of seeing visions therein. He called on Mr. Wace the same
evening.
He told a complicated story. The crystal he said had come into his
possession with other oddments at the forced sale of another curiosity
dealer's effects, and not knowing what its value might be, he had ticketed it
at ten shillings. It had hung upon his hands at that price for some months,
and he was thinking of "reducing the figure," when he made a singular
discovery.
At that time his health was very bad—and it must be borne in mind that,
throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb—and
he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive ill-
treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. His wife was
vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private drinking;

his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his step-son had
conceived a violent dislike for him, and lost no chance of showing it. The
requirements of his business pressed heavily upon him, and Mr. Wace does
not think that he was altogether free from occasional intemperance. He had
begun life in a comfortable position, he was a man of fair education, and he
suffered, for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and insomnia. Afraid to
disturb his family, he would slip quietly from his wife's side, when his
thoughts became intolerable, and wander about the house. And about three
o'clock one morning, late in August, chance directed him into the shop.
The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where he
perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this, he discovered it to be
the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the counter towards the
window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the shutters, impinged upon
the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire interior.
It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of
optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the
rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior, but
this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. He approached the
crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of the
scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a calling.
He was surprised to find the light not steady, but writhing within the
substance of the egg, as though that object was a hollow sphere of some
luminous vapour. In moving about to get different points of view, he
suddenly found that he had come between it and the ray, and that the crystal
none the less remained luminous. Greatly astonished, he lifted it out of the
light ray and carried it to the darkest part of the shop. It remained bright for
some four or five minutes, when it slowly faded and went out. He placed it
in the thin streak of daylight, and its luminousness was almost immediately
restored.
So far, at least, Mr. Wace was able to verify the remarkable story of Mr.
Cave. He has himself repeatedly held this crystal in a ray of light (which
had to be of a less diameter than one millimetre). And in a perfect darkness,
such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly
appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however, that the
luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally visible to all

eyes; for Mr. Harbinger—whose name will be familiar to the scientific
reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute—was quite unable to see any
light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its appreciation was out of
comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even with Mr. Cave the power
varied very considerably: his vision was most vivid during states of extreme
weakness and fatigue.
Now, from the outset this light in the crystal exercised a curious
fascination upon Mr. Cave. And it says more for his loneliness of soul than
a volume of pathetic writing could do, that he told no human being of his
curious observations. He seems to have been living in such an atmosphere
of petty spite that to admit the existence of a pleasure would have been to
risk the loss of it. He found that as the dawn advanced, and the amount of
diffused light increased, the crystal became to all appearance non-luminous.
And for some time he was unable to see anything in it, except at night-time,
in dark corners of the shop.
But the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as a background for a
collection of minerals, occurred to him, and by doubling this, and putting it
over his head and hands, he was able to get a sight of the luminous
movement within the crystal even in the daytime. He was very cautious lest
he should be thus discovered by his wife, and he practised this occupation
only in the afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs, and then
circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. And one day, turning the
crystal about in his hands, he saw something. It came and went like a flash,
but it gave him the impression that the object had for a moment opened to
him the view of a wide and spacious and strange country; and, turning it
about, he did, just as the light faded, see the same vision again.
Now, it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of Mr.
Cave's discovery from this point. Suffice that the effect was this: the crystal,
being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the direction of the
illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture of a wide and peculiar
countryside. It was not dream-like at all: it produced a definite impression
of reality, and the better the light the more real and solid it seemed. It was a
moving picture: that is to say, certain objects moved in it, but slowly in an
orderly manner like real things, and, according as the direction of the
lighting and vision changed, the picture changed also. It must, indeed, have

been like looking through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass
about to get at different aspects.
Mr. Cave's statements, Mr. Wace assures me, were extremely
circumstantial, and entirely free from any of that emotional quality that
taints hallucinatory impressions. But it must be remembered that all the
efforts of Mr. Wace to see any similar clarity in the faint opalescence of the
crystal were wholly unsuccessful, try as he would. The difference in
intensity of the impressions received by the two men was very great, and it
is quite conceivable that what was a view to Mr. Cave was a mere blurred
nebulosity to Mr. Wace.
The view, as Mr. Cave described it, was invariably of an extensive plain,
and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable height, as if
from a tower or a mast. To the east and to the west the plain was bounded at
a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which reminded him of those he
had seen in some picture; but what the picture was Mr. Wace was unable to
ascertain. These cliffs passed north and south—he could tell the points of
the compass by the stars that were visible of a night—receding in an almost
illimitable perspective and fading into the mists of the distance before they
met. He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs, on the occasion of his first
vision the sun was rising over them, and black against the sunlight and pale
against their shadow appeared a multitude of soaring forms that Mr. Cave
regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings spread below him; he seemed to
be looking down upon them; and, as they approached the blurred and
refracted edge of the picture, they became indistinct. There were also trees
curious in shape, and in colouring, a deep mossy green and an exquisite
grey, beside a wide and shining canal. And something great and brilliantly
coloured flew across the picture. But the first time Mr. Cave saw these
pictures he saw only in flashes, his hands shook, his head moved, the vision
came and went, and grew foggy and indistinct. And at first he had the
greatest difficulty in finding the picture again once the direction of it was
lost.
His next clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the interval
having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some useful
experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley. The view
was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his subsequent

observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding this strange
world from exactly the same spot, although he was looking in a different
direction. The long façade of the great building, whose roof he had looked
down upon before, was now receding in perspective. He recognised the
roof. In the front of the façade was a terrace of massive proportions and
extraordinary length, and down the middle of the terrace, at certain
intervals, stood huge but very graceful masts, bearing small shiny objects
which reflected the setting sun. The import of these small objects did not
occur to Mr. Cave until some time after, as he was describing the scene to
Mr. Wace. The terrace overhung a thicket of the most luxuriant and graceful
vegetation, and beyond this was a wide grassy lawn on which certain broad
creatures, in form like beetles but enormously larger, reposed. Beyond this
again was a richly decorated causeway of pinkish stone; and beyond that,
and lined with dense red weeds, and passing up the valley exactly parallel
with the distant cliffs, was a broad and mirror-like expanse of water. The air
seemed full of squadrons of great birds, manœuvring in stately curves; and
across the river was a multitude of splendid buildings, richly coloured and
glittering with metallic tracery and facets, among a forest of moss-like and
lichenous trees. And suddenly something flapped repeatedly across the
vision, like the fluttering of a jewelled fan or the beating of a wing, and a
face, or rather the upper part of a face with very large eyes, came as it were
close to his own and as if on the other side of the crystal. Mr. Cave was so
startled and so impressed by the absolute reality of these eyes, that he drew
his head back from the crystal to look behind it. He had become so
absorbed in watching that he was quite surprised to find himself in the cool
darkness of his little shop, with its familiar odour of methyl, mustiness, and
decay. And, as he blinked about him, the glowing crystal faded, and went
out.
Such were the first general impressions of Mr. Cave. The story is
curiously direct and circumstantial. From the outset, when the valley first
flashed momentarily on his senses, his imagination was strangely affected,
and, as he began to appreciate the details of the scene he saw, his wonder
rose to the point of a passion. He went about his business listless and
distraught, thinking only of the time when he should be able to return to his
watching. And then a few weeks after his first sight of the valley came the

two customers, the stress and excitement of their offer, and the narrow
escape of the crystal from sale, as I have already told.
Now, while the thing was Mr. Cave's secret, it remained a mere wonder, a
thing to creep to covertly and peep at, as a child might peep upon a
forbidden garden. But Mr. Wace has, for a young scientific investigator, a
particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind. Directly the crystal and its
story came to him, and he had satisfied himself, by seeing the
phosphorescence with his own eyes, that there really was a certain evidence
for Mr. Cave's statements, he proceeded to develop the matter
systematically. Mr. Cave was only too eager to come and feast his eyes on
this wonderland he saw, and he came every night from half-past eight until
half-past ten, and sometimes, in Mr. Wace's absence, during the day. On
Sunday afternoons, also, he came. From the outset Mr. Wace made copious
notes, and it was due to his scientific method that the relation between the
direction from which the initiating ray entered the crystal and the
orientation of the picture were proved. And, by covering the crystal in a box
perforated only with a small aperture to admit the exciting ray, and by
substituting black holland for his buff blinds, he greatly improved the
conditions of the observations; so that in a little while they were able to
survey the valley in any direction they desired.
So having cleared the way, we may give a brief account of this visionary
world within the crystal. The things were in all cases seen by Mr. Cave, and
the method of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal and
report what he saw, while Mr. Wace (who as a science student had learnt the
trick of writing in the dark) wrote a brief note of his report. When the
crystal faded, it was put into its box in the proper position and the electric
light turned on. Mr. Wace asked questions, and suggested observations to
clear up difficult points. Nothing, indeed, could have been less visionary
and more matter-of-fact.
The attention of Mr. Cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like
creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier visions.
His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a time that
they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he thought, grotesquely
enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads were round, and curiously
human, and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled him on his

second observation. They had broad, silvery wings, not feathered, but
glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed fish and with the same subtle
play of colour, and these wings were not built on the plan of bird-wing or
bat, Mr. Wace learned, but supported by curved ribs radiating from the
body. (A sort of butterfly wing with curved ribs seems best to express their
appearance.) The body was small, but fitted with two bunches of prehensile
organs, like long tentacles, immediately under the mouth. Incredible as it
appeared to Mr. Wace, the persuasion at last became irresistible, that it was
these creatures which owned the great quasi-human buildings and the
magnificent garden that made the broad valley so splendid. And Mr. Cave
perceived that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that
the great circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress
and entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a
smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. But among them was a
multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths
and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic
ground-beetles crawled lazily to and fro. Moreover, on the causeways and
terraces, large-headed creatures similar to the greater winged flies, but
wingless, were visible, hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle of
tentacles.
Allusion has already been made to the glittering objects upon masts that
stood upon the terrace of the nearer building. It dawned upon Mr. Cave,
after regarding one of these masts very fixedly on one particularly vivid
day, that the glittering object there was a crystal exactly like that into which
he peered. And a still more careful scrutiny convinced him that each one in
a vista of nearly twenty carried a similar object.
Occasionally one of the large flying creatures would flutter up to one,
and, folding its wings and coiling a number of its tentacles about the mast,
would regard the crystal fixedly for a space,—sometimes for as long as
fifteen minutes. And a series of observations, made at the suggestion of Mr.
Wace, convinced both watchers that, so far as this visionary world was
concerned, the crystal into which they peered actually stood at the summit
of the endmost mast on the terrace, and that on one occasion at least one of
these inhabitants of this other world had looked into Mr. Cave's face while
he was making these observations.

So much for the essential facts of this very singular story. Unless we
dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to believe
one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two worlds at once,
and that, while it was carried about in one, it remained stationary in the
other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it had some peculiar
relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar crystal in this other
world, so that what was seen in the interior of the one in this world was,
under suitable conditions, visible to an observer in the corresponding crystal
in the other world; and vice versa. At present, indeed, we do not know of
any way in which two crystals could so come en rapport, but nowadays we
know enough to understand that the thing is not altogether impossible. This
view of the crystals as en rapport was the supposition that occurred to Mr.
Wace, and to me at least it seems extremely plausible....
And where was this other world? On this, also, the alert intelligence of
Mr. Wace speedily threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened rapidly—
there was a very brief twilight interval indeed—and the stars shone out.
They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same
constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and
Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and,
at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own.
Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight sky was a darker
blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a little smaller.
And there were two small moons! "like our moon but smaller, and quite
differently marked" one of which moved so rapidly that its motion was
clearly visible as one regarded it. These moons were never high in the sky,
but vanished as they rose: that is, every time they revolved they were
eclipsed because they were so near their primary planet. And all this
answers quite completely, although Mr. Cave did not know it, to what must
be the condition of things on Mars.
Indeed, it seems an exceedingly plausible conclusion that peering into
this crystal Mr. Cave did actually see the planet Mars and its inhabitants.
And, if that be the case, then the evening star that shone so brilliantly in the
sky of that distant vision, was neither more nor less than our own familiar
earth.

For a time the Martians—if they were Martians—do not seem to have
known of Mr. Cave's inspection. Once or twice one would come to peer,
and go away very shortly to some other mast, as though the vision was
unsatisfactory. During this time Mr. Cave was able to watch the proceedings
of these winged people without being disturbed by their attentions, and,
although his report is necessarily vague and fragmentary, it is nevertheless
very suggestive. Imagine the impression of humanity a Martian observer
would get who, after a difficult process of preparation and with
considerable fatigue to the eyes, was able to peer at London from the
steeple of St. Martin's Church for stretches, at longest, of four minutes at a
time. Mr. Cave was unable to ascertain if the winged Martians were the
same as the Martians who hopped about the causeways and terraces, and if
the latter could put on wings at will. He several times saw certain clumsy
bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes, white and partially translucent, feeding
among certain of the lichenous trees, and once some of these fled before
one of the hopping, round-headed Martians. The latter caught one in its
tentacles, and then the picture faded suddenly and left Mr. Cave most
tantalisingly in the dark. On another occasion a vast thing, that Mr. Cave
thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the
causeway beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer
Mr. Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of
extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it had passed
out of sight.
After a time Mr. Wace aspired to attract the attention of the Martians, and
the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to the
crystal Mr. Cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately turned
on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of signalling.
But when at last Mr. Cave examined the crystal again the Martian had
departed.
Thus far these observations had progressed in early November, and then
Mr. Cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the crystal were
allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that, as occasion arose
in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself with what was fast
becoming the most real thing in his existence.

In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming
examination became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for a
week, and for ten or eleven days—he is not quite sure which—he saw
nothing of Cave. He then grew anxious to resume these investigations, and,
the stress of his seasonal labours being abated, he went down to Seven
Dials. At the corner he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's window, and
then another at a cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed.
He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at once
called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in cheap but
ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without any very great
surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already buried. She was in
tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just returned from Highgate.
Her mind seemed occupied with her own prospects and the honourable
details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace was at last able to learn the
particulars of Cave's death. He had been found dead in his shop in the early
morning, the day after his last visit to Mr. Wace, and the crystal had been
clasped in his stone-cold hands. His face was smiling, said Mrs. Cave, and
the velvet cloth from the minerals lay on the floor at his feet. He must have
been dead five or six hours when he was found.
This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began to reproach himself
bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's ill-health.
But his chief thought was of the crystal. He approached that topic in a
gingerly manner, because he knew Mrs. Cave's peculiarities. He was
dumbfounded to learn that it was sold.
Mrs. Cave's first impulse, directly Cave's body had been taken upstairs,
had been to write to the mad clergyman who had offered five pounds for the
crystal, informing him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt in which her
daughter joined her, they were convinced of the loss of his address. As they
were without the means required to mourn and bury Cave in the elaborate
style the dignity of an old Seven Dials inhabitant demands, they had
appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in Great Portland Street. He had
very kindly taken over a portion of the stock at a valuation. The valuation
was his own and the crystal egg was included in one of the lots. Mr. Wace,
after a few suitable consolatory observations, a little off-handedly proffered
perhaps, hurried at once to Great Portland Street. But there he learned that

the crystal egg had already been sold to a tall, dark man in grey. And there
the material facts in this curious, and to me at least very suggestive, story
come abruptly to an end. The Great Portland Street dealer did not know
who the tall dark man in grey was, nor had he observed him with sufficient
attention to describe him minutely. He did not even know which way this
person had gone after leaving the shop. For a time Mr. Wace remained in
the shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless questions, venting his
own exasperation. And at last, realising abruptly that the whole thing had
passed out of his hands, had vanished like a vision of the night, he returned
to his own rooms, a little astonished to find the notes he had made still
tangible and visible upon his untidy table.
His annoyance and disappointment were naturally very great. He made a
second call (equally ineffectual) upon the Great Portland Street dealer, and
he resorted to advertisements in such periodicals as were likely to come into
the hands of a bric-a-brac collector. He also wrote letters to The Daily
Chronicle and Nature, but both those periodicals, suspecting a hoax, asked
him to reconsider his action before they printed, and he was advised that
such a strange story, unfortunately so bare of supporting evidence, might
imperil his reputation as an investigator. Moreover, the calls of his proper
work were urgent. So that after a month or so, save for an occasional
reminder to certain dealers, he had reluctantly to abandon the quest for the
crystal egg, and from that day to this it remains undiscovered. Occasionally,
however, he tells me, and I can quite believe him, he has bursts of zeal, in
which he abandons his more urgent occupation and resumes the search.
Whether or not it will remain lost for ever, with the material and origin of
it, are things equally speculative at the present time. If the present purchaser
is a collector, one would have expected the enquiries of Mr. Wace to have
reached him through the dealers. He has been able to discover Mr. Cave's
clergyman and "Oriental"—no other than the Rev. James Parker and the
young Prince of Bosso-Kuni in Java. I am obliged to them for certain
particulars. The object of the Prince was simply curiosity—and
extravagance. He was so eager to buy, because Cave was so oddly reluctant
to sell. It is just as possible that the buyer in the second instance was simply
a casual purchaser and not a collector at all, and the crystal egg, for all I
know, may at the present moment be within a mile of me, decorating a
drawing-room or serving as a paper-weight—its remarkable functions all

unknown. Indeed, it is partly with the idea of such a possibility that I have
thrown this narrative into a form that will give it a chance of being read by
the ordinary consumer of fiction.
My own ideas in the matter are practically identical with those of Mr.
Wace. I believe the crystal on the mast in Mars and the crystal egg of Mr.
Cave's to be in some physical, but at present quite inexplicable, way en
rapport, and we both believe further that the terrestrial crystal must have
been—possibly at some remote date—sent hither from that planet, in order
to give the Martians a near view of our affairs. Possibly the fellows to the
crystals in the other masts are also on our globe. No theory of hallucination
suffices for the facts.

The Star

THE STAR

It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made,
almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the
planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun,
had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected
retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely
calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were
unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the
astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote
speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great
excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable
enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly
growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the
orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and its
satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind.
Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of
the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids,
and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats
the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as
human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank
emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. That is the smallest
estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is
attained. And, saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest
flame, no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space,
until early in the twentieth century this strange wanderer appeared. A vast
mass of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the
black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. By the second day it
was clearly visible to any decent instrument, as a speck with a barely
sensible diameter, in the constellation Leo near Regulus. In a little while an
opera glass could attain it.

On the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two
hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance of
this unusual apparition in the heavens. "A Planetary Collision," one London
paper headed the news, and proclaimed Duchaine's opinion that this strange
new planet would probably collide with Neptune. The leader writers
enlarged upon the topic. So that in most of the capitals of the world, on
January 3rd, there was an expectation, however vague of some imminent
phenomenon in the sky; and as the night followed the sunset round the
globe, thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to see—the old familiar
stars just as they had always been.
Until it was dawn in London and Pollux setting and the stars overhead
grown pale. The Winter's dawn it was, a sickly filtering accumulation of
daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows to
show where people were astir. But the yawning policeman saw the thing,
the busy crowds in the markets stopped agape, workmen going to their
work betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news-carts, dissipation going home
jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats, and in the
country, labourers trudging afield, poachers slinking home, all over the
dusky quickening country it could be seen—and out at sea by seamen
watching for the day—a great white star, come suddenly into the westward
sky!
Brighter it was than any star in our skies; brighter than the evening star at
its brightest. It still glowed out white and large, no mere twinkling spot of
light, but a small round clear shining disc, an hour after the day had come.
And where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one
another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery
signs in the Heavens. Sturdy Boers, dusky Hottentots, Gold Coast negroes,
Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, stood in the warmth of the sunrise
watching the setting of this strange new star.
And in a hundred observatories there had been suppressed excitement,
rising almost to shouting pitch, as the two remote bodies had rushed
together, and a hurrying to and fro, to gather photographic apparatus and
spectroscope, and this appliance and that, to record this novel astonishing
sight, the destruction of a world. For it was a world, a sister planet of our
earth, far greater than our earth indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into

flaming death. Neptune it was, had been struck, fairly and squarely, by the
strange planet from outer space and the heat of the concussion had
incontinently turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence.
Round the world that day, two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great
white star, fading only as it sank westward and the sun mounted above it.
Everywhere men marvelled at it, but of all those who saw it none could
have marvelled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who
far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a
pigmy moon and climb zenithward and hang overhead and sink westward
with the passing of the night.
And when next it rose over Europe everywhere were crowds of watchers
on hilly slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the
rising of the great new star. It rose with a white glow in front of it, like the
glare of a white fire, and those who had seen it come into existence the
night before cried out at the sight of it. "It is larger," they cried. "It is
brighter!" And, indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the west was
in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had it
as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star.
"It is brighter!" cried the people clustering in the streets. But in the dim
observatories the watchers held their breath and peered at one another. "It is
nearer," they said. "Nearer!"
And voice after voice repeated, "It is nearer," and the clicking telegraph
took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires, and in a thousand cities
grimy compositors fingered the type. "It is nearer." Men writing in offices,
struck with a strange realisation, flung down their pens, men talking in a
thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words,
"It is nearer." It hurried along awakening streets, it was shouted down the
frost-stilled ways of quiet villages, men who had read these things from the
throbbing tape stood in yellow-lit doorways shouting the news to the
passers-by. "It is nearer." Pretty women, flushed and glittering, heard the
news told jestingly between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest
they did not feel. "Nearer! Indeed. How curious! How very, very clever
people must be to find out things like that!"

Lonely tramps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to
comfort themselves—looking skyward. "It has need to be nearer, for the
night's as cold as charity. Don't seem much warmth from it if it is nearer, all
the same."
"What is a new star to me?" cried the weeping woman kneeling beside
her dead.
The schoolboy, rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for
himself—with the great white star, shining broad and bright through the
frost-flowers of his window. "Centrifugal, centripetal," he said, with his
chin on his fist. "Stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal force,
what then? Centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun! And this—!"
"Do we come in the way? I wonder—"
The light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later
watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again. And it was now
so bright that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself,
hanging huge in the sunset. In a South African city a great man had married,
and the streets were alight to welcome his return with his bride. "Even the
skies have illuminated," said the flatterer. Under Capricorn, two negro
lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits, for love of one another,
crouched together in a cane brake where the fire-flies hovered. "That is our
star," they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliance
of its light.
The master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers
from him. His calculations were already finished. In a small white phial
there still remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active
for four long nights. Each day, serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given
his lecture to his students, and then had come back at once to this
momentous calculation. His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from
his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought. Then he
went to the window, and the blind went up with a click. Half way up the
sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys and steeples of the city, hung the
star.

He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. "You
may kill me," he said after a silence. "But I can hold you—and all the
universe for that matter—in the grip of this little brain. I would not change.
Even now."
He looked at the little phial. "There will be no need of sleep again," he
said. The next day at noon, punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture
theatre, put his hat on the end of the table as his habit was, and carefully
selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke among his students that he
could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and
once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. He came
and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces,
and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing.
"Circumstances have arisen—circumstances beyond my control," he said
and paused, "which will debar me from completing the course I had
designed. It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and
briefly, that—Man has lived in vain."
The students glanced at one another. Had they heard aright? Mad? Raised
eyebrows and grinning lips there were, but one or two faces remained intent
upon his calm grey-fringed face. "It will be interesting," he was saying, "to
devote this morning to an exposition, so far as I can make it clear to you, of
the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. Let us assume—"
He turned towards the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that
was usual to him. "What was that about 'lived in vain?'" whispered one
student to another. "Listen," said the other, nodding towards the lecturer.
And presently they began to understand.
That night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion had carried it
some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its brightness was so great that the
sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn,
save only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius and the
pointers of the Bear. It was very white and beautiful. In many parts of the
world that night a pallid halo encircled it about. It was perceptibly larger; in
the clear refractive sky of the tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter
the size of the moon. The frost was still on the ground in England, but the
world was as brightly lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. One could see

to read quite ordinary print by that cold clear light, and in the cities the
lamps burnt yellow and wan.
And everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout
Christendom a sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the countryside
like the belling of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew to a
clangour in the cities. It was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry
towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no
more, but to gather in their churches and pray. And overhead, growing
larger and brighter, as the earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose
the dazzling star.
And the streets and houses were alight in all the cities, the shipyards
glared, and whatever roads led to high country were lit and crowded all
night long. And in all the seas about the civilised lands, ships with
throbbing engines, and ships with bellying sails, crowded with men and
living creatures, were standing out to ocean and the north. For already the
warning of the master mathematician had been telegraphed all over the
world, and translated into a hundred tongues. The new planet and Neptune,
locked in a fiery embrace, were whirling headlong, ever faster and faster
towards the sun. Already every second this blazing mass flew a hundred
miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased. As it flew now,
indeed, it must pass a hundred million of miles wide of the earth and
scarcely affect it. But near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed,
spun the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid round the
sun. Every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the
greatest of the planets grew stronger. And the result of that attraction?
Inevitably Jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path,
and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush,
would "describe a curved path" and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass
very close to, our earth. "Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea
waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to I know not what limit"—
so prophesied the master mathematician.
And overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and cold and livid, blazed
the star of the coming doom.

To many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that
it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and
the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England
softened towards a thaw.
But you must not imagine because I have spoken of people praying
through the night and people going aboard ships and people fleeing towards
mountainous country that the whole world was already in a terror because
of the star. As a matter of fact, use and wont still ruled the world, and save
for the talk of idle moments and the splendour of the night, nine human
beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations. In all the
cities the shops, save one here and there, opened and closed at their proper
hours, the doctor and the undertaker plied their trades, the workers gathered
in the factories, soldiers drilled, scholars studied, lovers sought one another,
thieves lurked and fled, politicians planned their schemes. The presses of
the newspapers roared through the nights, and many a priest of this church
and that would not open his holy building to further what he considered a
foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000—for
then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star—mere gas—
a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was
no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere,
scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That
night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to
Jupiter. Then the world would see the turn things would take. The master
mathematician's grim warnings were treated by many as so much mere
elaborate self-advertisement. Common sense at last, a little heated by
argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed. So, too,
barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about their
nightly business, and save for a howling dog here and there, the beast world
left the star unheeded.
And yet, when at last the watchers in the European States saw the star
rise, an hour later it is true, but no larger than it had been the night before,
there were still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician—to take
the danger as if it had passed.
But hereafter the laughter ceased. The star grew—it grew with a terrible
steadiness hour after hour, a little larger each hour, a little nearer the

midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had turned night into a
second day. Had it come straight to the earth instead of in a curved path,
had it lost no velocity to Jupiter, it must have leapt the intervening gulf in a
day, but as it was it took five days altogether to come by our planet. The
next night it had become a third the size of the moon before it set to English
eyes, and the thaw was assured. It rose over America near the size of the
moon, but blinding white to look at, and hot; and a breath of hot wind blew
now with its rising and gathering strength, and in Virginia, and Brazil, and
down the St. Lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek
of thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail unprecedented. In
Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. And upon all the mountains of
the earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers
coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon—in their
upper reaches—with swirling trees and the bodies of beasts and men. They
rose steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their
banks at last, behind the flying population of their valleys.
And along the coast of Argentina and up the South Atlantic the tides were
higher than had ever been in the memory of man, and the storms drove the
waters in many cases scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. And so
great grew the heat during the night that the rising of the sun was like the
coming of a shadow. The earthquakes began and grew until all down
America from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, hillsides were sliding,
fissures were opening, and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. The
whole side of Cotopaxi slipped out in one vast convulsion, and a tumult of
lava poured out so high and broad and swift and liquid that in one day it
reached the sea.
So the star, with the wan moon in its wake, marched across the Pacific,
trailed the thunderstorms like the hem of a robe, and the growing tidal wave
that toiled behind it, frothing and eager, poured over island and island and
swept them clear of men. Until that wave came at last—in a blinding light
and with the breath of a furnace, swift and terrible it came—a wall of water,
fifty feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long coasts of Asia, and swept
inland across the plains of China. For a space the star, hotter now and larger
and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the
wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and
trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in

helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the
murmur of the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that night—a
flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant,
and the flood like a wall swift and white behind. And then death.
China was lit glowing white, but over Japan and Java and all the islands
of Eastern Asia the great star was a ball of dull red fire because of the steam
and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming.
Above was the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods, and
the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the
immemorial snows of Thibet and the Himalaya were melting and pouring
down by ten million deepening converging channels upon the plains of
Burmah and Hindostan. The tangled summits of the Indian jungles were
aflame in a thousand places, and below the hurrying waters around the
stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected the blood-
red tongues of fire. And in a rudderless confusion a multitude of men and
women fled down the broad river-ways to that one last hope of men—the
open sea.
Larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a terrible
swiftness now. The tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the
whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged
incessantly, speckled with storm-tossed ships.
And then came a wonder. It seemed to those who in Europe watched for
the rising of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. In a
thousand open spaces of down and upland the people who had fled thither
from the floods and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for
that rising in vain. Hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the
star rose not. Once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they
had counted lost to them forever. In England it was hot and clear overhead,
though the ground quivered perpetually, but in the tropics, Sirius and
Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of steam. And when at last
the great star rose near ten hours late, the sun rose close upon it, and in the
centre of its white heart was a disc of black.
Over Asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the movement of the
sky, and then suddenly, as it hung over India, its light had been veiled. All

the plain of India from the mouth of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges
was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples
and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people. Every minaret was a
clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as
heat and terror overcame them. The whole land seemed a-wailing, and
suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath
of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out of the cooling air. Men looking
up, near blinded, at the star, saw that a black disc was creeping across the
light. It was the moon, coming between the star and the earth. And even as
men cried to God at this respite, out of the East with a strange inexplicable
swiftness sprang the sun. And then star, sun and moon rushed together
across the heavens.
So it was that presently, to the European watchers, star and sun rose close
upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then slower, and at last
came to rest, star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the
sky. The moon no longer eclipsed the star but was lost to sight in the
brilliance of the sky. And though those who were still alive regarded it for
the most part with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair
engender, there were still men who could perceive the meaning of these
signs. Star and earth had been at their nearest, had swung about one another,
and the star had passed. Already it was receding, swifter and swifter, in the
last stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun.
And then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky, the
thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world; all over the earth
was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the
volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of
mud. Everywhere the waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted
ruins, and the earth littered like a storm-worn beach with all that had
floated, and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its children. For days the
water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the
way, and piling huge dykes and scooping out Titanic gullies over the
country side. Those were the days of darkness that followed the star and the
heat. All through them, and for many weeks and months, the earthquakes
continued.

But the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage
only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and
sodden fields. Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came
stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new
marks and shoals of once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided men
perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun
larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now
fourscore days between its new and new.
But of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the
saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had
come over Iceland and Greenland and the shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the
sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could
scarce believe their eyes, this story does not tell. Nor of the movement of
mankind now that the earth was hotter, northward and southward towards
the poles of the earth. It concerns itself only with the coming and the
passing of the Star.
The Martian astronomers—for there are astronomers on Mars, although
they are very different beings from men—were naturally profoundly
interested by these things. They saw them from their own standpoint of
course. "Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung
through our solar system into the sun," one wrote, "it is astonishing what a
little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the
familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and
indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white
discolouration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole." Which only
shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance
of a few million miles.

A Story of the Stone Age

A STORY OF THE STONE AGE

I—UGH-LOMI AND UYA

This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning
of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we
call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed
through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and
level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by
the name of the North Sea. In that remote age the valley which runs along
the foot of the Downs did not exist, and the south of Surrey was a range of
hills, fir-clad on the middle slopes, and snow-capped for the better part of
the year. The cores of its summits still remain as Leith Hill, and Pitch Hill,
and Hindhead. On the lower slopes of the range, below the grassy spaces
where the wild horses grazed, were forests of yew and sweet-chestnut and
elm, and the thickets and dark places hid the grizzly bear and the hyæna,
and the grey apes clambered through the branches. And still lower amidst
the woodland and marsh and open grass along the Wey did this little drama
play itself out to the end that I have to tell. Fifty thousand years ago it was,
fifty thousand years—if the reckoning of geologists is correct.
And in those days the spring-time was as joyful as it is now, and sent the
blood coursing in just the same fashion. The afternoon sky was blue with
piled white clouds sailing through it, and the southwest wind came like a
soft caress. The new-come swallows drove to and fro. The reaches of the
river were spangled with white ranunculus, the marshy places were starred
with lady's-smock and lit with marsh-mallow wherever the regiments of the
sedges lowered their swords, and the northward-moving hippopotami, shiny
black monsters, sporting clumsily, came floundering and blundering
through it all, rejoicing dimly and possessed with one clear idea, to splash
the river muddy.
Up the river and well in sight of the hippopotami, a number of little buff-
coloured animals dabbled in the water. There was no fear, no rivalry, and no

enmity between them and the hippopotami. As the great bulks came
crashing through the reeds and smashed the mirror of the water into silvery
splashes, these little creatures shouted and gesticulated with glee. It was the
surest sign of high spring. "Boloo!" they cried. "Baayah. Boloo!" They were
the children of the men folk, the smoke of whose encampment rose from
the knoll at the river's bend. Wild-eyed youngsters they were, with matted
hair and little broad-nosed impish faces, covered (as some children are
covered even nowadays) with a delicate down of hair. They were narrow in
the loins and long in the arms. And their ears had no lobes, and had little
pointed tips, a thing that still, in rare instances, survives. Stark-naked vivid
little gipsies, as active as monkeys and as full of chatter, though a little
wanting in words.
Their elders were hidden from the wallowing hippopotami by the crest of
the knoll. The human squatting-place was a trampled area among the dead
brown fronds of Royal Fern, through which the crosiers of this year's
growth were unrolling to the light and warmth. The fire was a smouldering
heap of char, light grey and black, replenished by the old women from time
to time with brown leaves. Most of the men were asleep—they slept sitting
with their foreheads on their knees. They had killed that morning a good
quarry, enough for all, a deer that had been wounded by hunting dogs; so
that there had been no quarrelling among them, and some of the women
were still gnawing the bones that lay scattered about. Others were making a
heap of leaves and sticks to feed Brother Fire when the darkness came
again, that he might grow strong and tall therewith, and guard them against
the beasts. And two were piling flints that they brought, an armful at a time,
from the bend of the river where the children were at play.
None of these buff-skinned savages were clothed, but some wore about
their hips rude girdles of adder-skin or crackling undressed hide, from
which depended little bags, not made, but torn from the paws of beasts, and
carrying the rudely-dressed flints that were men's chief weapons and tools.
And one woman, the mate of Uya the Cunning Man, wore a wonderful
necklace of perforated fossils—that others had worn before her. Beside
some of the sleeping men lay the big antlers of the elk, with the tines
chipped to sharp edges, and long sticks, hacked at the ends with flints into
sharp points. There was little else save these things and the smouldering fire
to mark these human beings off from the wild animals that ranged the

country. But Uya the Cunning did not sleep, but sat with a bone in his hand
and scraped busily thereon with a flint, a thing no animal would do. He was
the oldest man in the tribe, beetle-browed, prognathous, lank-armed; he had
a beard and his cheeks were hairy, and his chest and arms were black with
thick hair. And by virtue both of his strength and cunning he was master of
the tribe, and his share was always the most and the best.
Eudena had hidden herself among the alders, because she was afraid of
Uya. She was still a girl, and her eyes were bright and her smile pleasant to
see. He had given her a piece of the liver, a man's piece, and a wonderful
treat for a girl to get; but as she took it the other woman with the necklace
had looked at her, an evil glance, and Ugh-lomi had made a noise in his
throat. At that, Uya had looked at him long and steadfastly, and Ugh-lomi's
face had fallen. And then Uya had looked at her. She was frightened and she
had stolen away, while the feeding was still going on, and Uya was busy
with the marrow of a bone. Afterwards he had wandered about as if looking
for her. And now she crouched among the alders, wondering mightily what
Uya might be doing with the flint and the bone. And Ugh-lomi was not to
be seen.
Presently a squirrel came leaping through the alders, and she lay so quiet
the little man was within six feet of her before he saw her. Whereupon he
dashed up a stem in a hurry and began to chatter and scold her. "What are
you doing here," he asked, "away from the other men beasts?" "Peace," said
Eudena, but he only chattered more, and then she began to break off the
little black cones to throw at him. He dodged and defied her, and she grew
excited and rose up to throw better, and then she saw Uya coming down the
knoll. He had seen the movement of her pale arm amidst the thicket—he
was very keen-eyed.
At that she forgot the squirrel and set off through the alders and reeds as
fast as she could go. She did not care where she went so long as she escaped
Uya. She splashed nearly knee-deep through a swampy place, and saw in
front of her a slope of ferns—growing more slender and green as they
passed up out of the light into the shade of the young chestnuts. She was
soon amidst the trees—she was very fleet of foot, and she ran on and on
until the forest was old and the vales great, and the vines about their stems
where the light came were thick as young trees, and the ropes of ivy stout

and tight. On she went, and she doubled and doubled again, and then at last
lay down amidst some ferns in a hollow place near a thicket, and listened
with her heart beating in her ears.
She heard footsteps presently rustling among the dead leaves, far off, and
they died away and everything was still again, except the scandalising of
the midges—for the evening was drawing on—and the incessant whisper of
the leaves. She laughed silently to think the cunning Uya should go by her.
She was not frightened. Sometimes, playing with the other girls and lads,
she had fled into the wood, though never so far as this. It was pleasant to be
hidden and alone.
She lay a long time there, glad of her escape, and then she sat up
listening.
It was a rapid pattering growing louder and coming towards her, and in a
little while she could hear grunting noises and the snapping of twigs. It was
a drove of lean grisly wild swine. She turned about her, for a boar is an ill
fellow to pass too closely, on account of the sideway slash of his tusks, and
she made off slantingly through the trees. But the patter came nearer, they
were not feeding as they wandered, but going fast—or else they would not
overtake her—and she caught the limb of a tree, swung on to it, and ran up
the stem with something of the agility of a monkey.
Down below the sharp bristling backs of the swine were already passing
when she looked. And she knew the short, sharp grunts they made meant
fear. What were they afraid of? A man? They were in a great hurry for just a
man.
And then, so suddenly it made her grip on the branch tighten
involuntarily, a fawn started in the brake and rushed after the swine.
Something else went by, low and grey, with a long body; she did not know
what it was, indeed she saw it only momentarily through the interstices of
the young leaves; and then there came a pause.
She remained stiff and expectant, as rigid almost as though she was a part
of the tree she clung to, peering down.
Then, far away among the trees, clear for a moment, then hidden, then
visible knee-deep in ferns, then gone again, ran a man. She knew it was

young Ugh-lomi by the fair colour of his hair, and there was red upon his
face. Somehow his frantic flight and that scarlet mark made her feel sick.
And then nearer, running heavily and breathing hard, came another man. At
first she could not see, and then she saw, foreshortened and clear to her,
Uya, running with great strides and his eyes staring. He was not going after
Ugh-lomi. His face was white. It was Uya—afraid! He passed, and was still
loud hearing, when something else, something large and with grizzled fur,
swinging along with soft swift strides, came rushing in pursuit of him.
Eudena suddenly became rigid, ceased to breathe, her clutch convulsive,
and her eyes starting.
She had never seen the thing before, she did not even see him clearly
now, but she knew at once it was the Terror of the Woodshade. His name
was a legend, the children would frighten one another, frighten even
themselves with his name, and run screaming to the squatting-place. No
man had ever killed any of his kind. Even the mighty mammoth feared his
anger. It was the grizzly bear, the lord of the world as the world went then.
As he ran he made a continuous growling grumble. "Men in my very lair!
Fighting and blood. At the very mouth of my lair. Men, men, men. Fighting
and blood." For he was the lord of the wood and of the caves.
Long after he had passed she remained, a girl of stone, staring down
through the branches. All her power of action had gone from her. She
gripped by instinct with hands and knees and feet. It was some time before
she could think, and then only one thing was clear in her mind, that the
Terror was between her and the tribe—that it would be impossible to
descend.
Presently when her fear was a little abated she clambered into a more
comfortable position, where a great branch forked. The trees rose about her,
so that she could see nothing of Brother Fire, who is black by day. Birds
began to stir, and things that had gone into hiding for fear of her movements
crept out....
After a time the taller branches flamed out at the touch of the sunset.
High overhead the rooks, who were wiser than men, went cawing home to
their squatting-places among the elms. Looking down, things were clearer

and darker. Eudena thought of going back to the squatting-place; she let
herself down some way, and then the fear of the Terror of the Woodshade
came again. While she hesitated a rabbit squealed dismally, and she dared
not descend farther.
The shadows gathered, and the deeps of the forest began stirring. Eudena
went up the tree again to be nearer the light. Down below the shadows came
out of their hiding-places and walked abroad. Overhead the blue deepened.
A dreadful stillness came, and then the leaves began whispering.
Eudena shivered and thought of Brother Fire.
The shadows now were gathering in the trees, they sat on the branches
and watched her. Branches and leaves were turned to ominous, quiet black
shapes that would spring on her if she stirred. Then the white owl, flitting
silently, came ghostly through the shades. Darker grew the world and
darker, until the leaves and twigs against the sky were black, and the ground
was hidden.
She remained there all night, an age-long vigil, straining her ears for the
things that went on below in the darkness, and keeping motionless lest some
stealthy beast should discover her. Man in those days was never alone in the
dark, save for such rare accidents as this. Age after age he had learnt the
lesson of its terror—a lesson we poor children of his have nowadays
painfully to unlearn. Eudena, though in age a woman, was in heart like a
little child. She kept as still, poor little animal, as a hare before it is started.
The stars gathered and watched her—her one grain of comfort. In one
bright one she fancied there was something like Ugh-lomi. Then she fancied
it was Ugh-lomi. And near him, red and duller, was Uya, and as the night
passed Ugh-lomi fled before him up the sky.
She tried to see Brother Fire, who guarded the squatting-place from
beasts, but he was not in sight. And far away she heard the mammoths
trumpeting as they went down to the drinking-place, and once some huge
bulk with heavy paces hurried along, making a noise like a calf, but what it
was she could not see. But she thought from the voice it was Yaaa the
rhinoceros, who stabs with his nose, goes always alone, and rages without
cause.

At last the little stars began to hide, and then the larger ones. It was like
all the animals vanishing before the Terror. The Sun was coming, lord of the
sky, as the grizzly was lord of the forest. Eudena wondered what would
happen if one star stayed behind. And then the sky paled to the dawn.
When the daylight came the fear of lurking things passed, and she could
descend. She was stiff, but not so stiff as you would have been, dear young
lady (by virtue of your upbringing), and as she had not been trained to eat at
least once in three hours, but instead had often fasted three days, she did not
feel uncomfortably hungry. She crept down the tree very cautiously, and
went her way stealthily through the wood, and not a squirrel sprang or deer
started but the terror of the grizzly bear froze her marrow.
Her desire was now to find her people again. Her dread of Uya the
Cunning was consumed by a greater dread of loneliness. But she had lost
her direction. She had run heedlessly overnight, and she could not tell
whether the squatting-place was sunward or where it lay. Ever and again
she stopped and listened, and at last, very far away, she heard a measured
chinking. It was so faint even in the morning stillness that she could tell it
must be far away. But she knew the sound was that of a man sharpening a
flint.
Presently the trees began to thin out, and then came a regiment of nettles
barring the way. She turned aside, and then she came to a fallen tree that she
knew, with a noise of bees about it. And so presently she was in sight of the
knoll, very far off, and the river under it, and the children and the
hippopotami just as they had been yesterday, and the thin spire of smoke
swaying in the morning breeze. Far away by the river was the cluster of
alders where she had hidden. And at the sight of that the fear of Uya
returned, and she crept into a thicket of bracken, out of which a rabbit
scuttled, and lay awhile to watch the squatting-place.
The men were mostly out of sight, saving Wau, the flint-chopper; and at
that she felt safer. They were away hunting food, no doubt. Some of the
women, too, were down in the stream, stooping intent, seeking mussels,
crayfish, and water-snails, and at the sight of their occupation Eudena felt
hungry. She rose, and ran through the fern, designing to join them. As she
went she heard a voice among the bracken calling softly. She stopped. Then

suddenly she heard a rustle behind her, and turning, saw Ugh-lomi rising
out of the fern. There were streaks of brown blood and dirt on his face, and
his eyes were fierce, and the white stone of Uya, the white Fire Stone, that
none but Uya dared to touch, was in his hand. In a stride he was beside her,
and gripped her arm. He swung her about, and thrust her before him
towards the woods. "Uya," he said, and waved his arms about. She heard a
cry, looked back, and saw all the women standing up, and two wading out
of the stream. Then came a nearer howling, and the old woman with the
beard, who watched the fire on the knoll, was waving her arms, and Wau,
the man who had been chipping the flint, was getting to his feet. The little
children too were hurrying and shouting.
"Come!" said Ugh-lomi, and dragged her by the arm.
She still did not understand.
"Uya has called the death word," said Ugh-lomi, and she glanced back at
the screaming curve of figures, and understood.
Wau and all the women and children were coming towards them, a
scattered array of buff shock-headed figures, howling, leaping, and crying.
Over the knoll two youths hurried. Down among the ferns to the right came
a man, heading them off from the wood. Ugh-lomi left her arm, and the two
began running side by side, leaping the bracken and stepping clear and
wide. Eudena, knowing her fleetness and the fleetness of Ugh-lomi, laughed
aloud at the unequal chase. They were an exceptionally straight-limbed
couple for those days.
They soon cleared the open, and drew near the wood of chestnut-trees
again—neither afraid now because neither was alone. They slackened their
pace, already not excessive. And suddenly Eudena cried and swerved aside,
pointing, and looking up through the tree-stems. Ugh-lomi saw the feet and
legs of men running towards him. Eudena was already running off at a
tangent. And as he too turned to follow her they heard the voice of Uya
coming through the trees, and roaring out his rage at them.
Then terror came in their hearts, not the terror that numbs, but the terror
that makes one silent and swift. They were cut off now on two sides. They
were in a sort of corner of pursuit. On the right hand, and near by them,

came the men swift and heavy, with bearded Uya, antler in hand, leading
them; and on the left, scattered as one scatters corn, yellow dashes among
the fern and grass, ran Wau and the women; and even the little children
from the shallow had joined the chase. The two parties converged upon
them. Off they went, with Eudena ahead.
They knew there was no mercy for them. There was no hunting so sweet
to these ancient men as the hunting of men. Once the fierce passion of the
chase was lit, the feeble beginnings of humanity in them were thrown to the
winds. And Uya in the night had marked Ugh-lomi with the death word.
Ugh-lomi was the day's quarry, the appointed feast.
They ran straight—it was their only chance—taking whatever ground
came in the way—a spread of stinging nettles, an open glade, a clump of
grass out of which a hyæna fled snarling. Then woods again, long stretches
of shady leaf-mould and moss under the green trunks. Then a stiff slope,
tree-clad, and long vistas of trees, a glade, a succulent green area of black
mud, a wide open space again, and then a clump of lacerating brambles,
with beast tracks through it. Behind them the chase trailed out and
scattered, with Uya ever at their heels. Eudena kept the first place, running
light and with her breath easy, for Ugh-lomi carried the Fire Stone in his
hand.
It told on his pace—not at first, but after a time. His footsteps behind her
suddenly grew remote. Glancing over her shoulder as they crossed another
open space, Eudena saw that Ugh-lomi was many yards behind her, and
Uya close upon him, with antler already raised in the air to strike him down.
Wau and the others were but just emerging from the shadow of the woods.
Seeing Ugh-lomi in peril, Eudena ran sideways, looking back, threw up
her arms and cried aloud, just as the antler flew. And young Ugh-lomi,
expecting this and understanding her cry, ducked his head, so that the
missile merely struck his scalp lightly, making but a trivial wound, and flew
over him. He turned forthwith, the quartzite Fire Stone in both hands, and
hurled it straight at Uya's body as he ran loose from the throw. Uya shouted,
but could not dodge it. It took him under the ribs, heavy and flat, and he
reeled and went down without a cry. Ugh-lomi caught up the antler—one

tine of it was tipped with his own blood—and came running on again with a
red trickle just coming out of his hair.
Uya rolled over twice, and lay a moment before he got up, and then he
did not run fast. The colour of his face was changed. Wau overtook him,
and then others, and he coughed and laboured in his breath. But he kept on.
At last the two fugitives gained the bank of the river, where the stream
ran deep and narrow, and they still had fifty yards in hand of Wau, the
foremost pursuer, the man who made the smiting-stones. He carried one, a
large flint, the shape of an oyster and double the size, chipped to a chisel
edge, in either hand.
They sprang down the steep bank into the stream, rushed through the
water, swam the deep current in two or three strokes, and came out wading
again, dripping and refreshed, to clamber up the farther bank. It was
undermined, and with willows growing thickly therefrom, so that it needed
clambering. And while Eudena was still among the silvery branches and
Ugh-lomi still in the water—for the antler had encumbered him—Wau
came up against the sky on the opposite bank, and the smiting-stone,
thrown cunningly, took the side of Eudena's knee. She struggled to the top
and fell.
They heard the pursuers shout to one another, and Ugh-lomi climbing to
her and moving jerkily to mar Wau's aim, felt the second smiting-stone
graze his ear, and heard the water splash below him.
Then it was Ugh-lomi, the stripling, proved himself to have come to
man's estate. For running on, he found Eudena fell behind, limping, and at
that he turned, and crying savagely and with a face terrible with sudden
wrath and trickling blood, ran swiftly past her back to the bank, whirling the
antler round his head. And Eudena kept on, running stoutly still, though she
must needs limp at every step, and the pain was already sharp.
So that Wau, rising over the edge and clutching the straight willow
branches, saw Ugh-lomi towering over him, gigantic against the blue; saw
his whole body swing round, and the grip of his hands upon the antler. The
edge of the antler came sweeping through the air, and he saw no more. The
water under the osiers whirled and eddied and went crimson six feet down

the stream. Uya following stopped knee-high across the stream, and the
man who was swimming turned about.
The other men who trailed after—they were none of them very mighty
men (for Uya was more cunning than strong, brooking no sturdy rivals)—
slackened momentarily at the sight of Ugh-lomi standing there above the
willows, bloody and terrible, between them and the halting girl, with the
huge antler waving in his hand. It seemed as though he had gone into the
water a youth, and come out of it a man full grown.
He knew what there was behind him. A broad stretch of grass, and then a
thicket, and in that Eudena could hide. That was clear in his mind, though
his thinking powers were too feeble to see what should happen thereafter.
Uya stood knee-deep, undecided and unarmed. His heavy mouth hung open,
showing his canine teeth, and he panted heavily. His side was flushed and
bruised under the hair. The other man beside him carried a sharpened stick.
The rest of the hunters came up one by one to the top of the bank, hairy,
long-armed men clutching flints and sticks. Two ran off along the bank
down stream, and then clambered to the water, where Wau had come to the
surface struggling weakly. Before they could reach him he went under
again. Two others threatened Ugh-lomi from the bank.
He answered back, shouts, vague insults, gestures. Then Uya, who had
been hesitating, roared with rage, and whirling his fists plunged into the
water. His followers splashed after him.
Ugh-lomi glanced over his shoulder and found Eudena already vanished
into the thicket. He would perhaps have waited for Uya, but Uya preferred
to spar in the water below him until the others were beside him. Human
tactics in those days, in all serious fighting, were the tactics of the pack.
Prey that turned at bay they gathered around and rushed. Ugh-lomi felt the
rush coming, and hurling the antler at Uya, turned about and fled.
When he halted to look back from the shadow of the thicket, he found
only three of his pursuers had followed him across the river, and they were
going back again. Uya, with a bleeding mouth, was on the farther side of
the stream again, but lower down, and holding his hand to his side. The
others were in the river dragging something to shore. For a time at least the
chase was intermitted.

Ugh-lomi stood watching for a space, and snarled at the sight of Uya.
Then he turned and plunged into the thicket.
In a minute, Eudena came hastening to join him, and they went on hand
in hand. He dimly perceived the pain she suffered from the cut and bruised
knee, and chose the easier ways. But they went on all that day, mile after
mile, through wood and thicket, until at last they came to the chalkland,
open grass with rare woods of beech, and the birch growing near water, and
they saw the Wealden mountains nearer, and groups of horses grazing
together. They went circumspectly, keeping always near thicket and cover,
for this was a strange region—even its ways were strange. Steadily the
ground rose, until the chestnut forests spread wide and blue below them,
and the Thames marshes shone silvery, high and far. They saw no men, for
in those days men were still only just come into this part of the world, and
were moving but slowly along the river-ways. Towards evening they came
on the river again, but now it ran in a gorge, between high cliffs of white
chalk that sometimes overhung it. Down the cliffs was a scrub of birches
and there were many birds there. And high up the cliff was a little shelf by a
tree, whereon they clambered to pass the night.
They had had scarcely any food; it was not the time of year for berries,
and they had no time to go aside to snare or waylay. They tramped in a
hungry weary silence, gnawing at twigs and leaves. But over the surface of
the cliffs were a multitude of snails, and in a bush were the freshly laid eggs
of a little bird, and then Ugh-lomi threw at and killed a squirrel in a beech-
tree, so that at last they fed well. Ugh-lomi watched during the night, his
chin on his knees; and he heard young foxes crying hard by, and the noise
of mammoths down the gorge, and the hyænas yelling and laughing far
away. It was chilly, but they dared not light a fire. Whenever he dozed, his
spirit went abroad, and straightway met with the spirit of Uya, and they
fought. And always Ugh-lomi was paralysed so that he could not smite nor
run, and then he would awake suddenly. Eudena, too, dreamt evil things of
Uya, so that they both awoke with the fear of him in their hearts, and by the
light of the dawn they saw a woolly rhinoceros go blundering down the
valley.
During the day they caressed one another and were glad of the sunshine,
and Eudena's leg was so stiff she sat on the ledge all day. Ugh-lomi found

great flints sticking out of the cliff face, greater than any he had seen, and
he dragged some to the ledge and began chipping, so as to be armed against
Uya when he came again. And at one he laughed heartily, and Eudena
laughed, and they threw it about in derision. It had a hole in it. They stuck
their fingers through it, it was very funny indeed. Then they peeped at one
another through it. Afterwards, Ugh-lomi got himself a stick, and thrusting
by chance at this foolish flint, the stick went in and stuck there. He had
rammed it in too tightly to withdraw it. That was still stranger—scarcely
funny, terrible almost, and for a time Ugh-lomi did not greatly care to touch
the thing. It was as if the flint had bit and held with its teeth. But then he got
familiar with the odd combination. He swung it about, and perceived that
the stick with the heavy stone on the end struck a better blow than anything
he knew. He went to and fro swinging it, and striking with it; but later he
tired of it and threw it aside. In the afternoon he went up over the brow of
the white cliff, and lay watching by a rabbit-warren until the rabbits came
out to play. There were no men thereabouts, and the rabbits were heedless.
He threw a smiting-stone he had made and got a kill.
That night they made a fire from flint sparks and bracken fronds, and
talked and caressed by it. And in their sleep Uya's spirit came again, and
suddenly, while Ugh-lomi was trying to fight vainly, the foolish flint on the
stick came into his hand, and he struck Uya with it, and behold! it killed
him. But afterwards came other dreams of Uya—for spirits take a lot of
killing, and he had to be killed again. Then after that the stone would not
keep on the stick. He awoke tired and rather gloomy, and was sulky all the
forenoon, in spite of Eudena's kindliness, and instead of hunting he sat
chipping a sharp edge to the singular flint, and looking strangely at her.
Then he bound the perforated flint on to the stick with strips of rabbit skin.
And afterwards he walked up and down the ledge, striking with it, and
muttering to himself, and thinking of Uya. It felt very fine and heavy in the
hand.
Several days, more than there was any counting in those days, five days,
it may be, or six, did Ugh-lomi and Eudena stay on that shelf in the gorge of
the river, and they lost all fear of men, and their fire burnt redly of a night.
And they were very merry together; there was food every day, sweet water,
and no enemies. Eudena's knee was well in a couple of days, for those
ancient savages had quick-healing flesh. Indeed, they were very happy.

On one of those days Ugh-lomi dropped a chunk of flint over the cliff.
He saw it fall, and go bounding across the river bank into the river, and after
laughing and thinking it over a little he tried another. This smashed a bush
of hazel in the most interesting way. They spent all the morning dropping
stones from the ledge, and in the afternoon they discovered this new and
interesting pastime was also possible from the cliffbrow. The next day they
had forgotten this delight. Or at least, it seemed they had forgotten.
But Uya came in dreams to spoil the paradise. Three nights he came
fighting Ugh-lomi. In the morning after these dreams Ugh-lomi would walk
up and down, threatening him and swinging the axe, and at last came the
night after Ugh-lomi brained the otter, and they had feasted. Uya went too
far. Ugh-lomi awoke, scowling under his heavy brows, and he took his axe,
and extending his hand towards Eudena he bade her wait for him upon the
ledge. Then he clambered down the white declivity, glanced up once from
the foot of it and flourished his axe, and without looking back again went
striding along the river bank until the overhanging cliff at the bend hid him.
Two days and nights did Eudena sit alone by the fire on the ledge
waiting, and in the night the beasts howled over the cliffs and down the
valley, and on the cliff over against her the hunched hyænas prowled black
against the sky. But no evil thing came near her save fear. Once, far away,
she heard the roaring of a lion, following the horses as they came northward
over the grass lands with the spring. All that time she waited—the waiting
that is pain.
And the third day Ugh-lomi came back, up the river. The plumes of a
raven were in his hair. The first axe was red-stained, and had long dark hairs
upon it, and he carried the necklace that had marked the favourite of Uya in
his hand. He walked in the soft places, giving no heed to his trail. Save a
raw cut below his jaw there was not a wound upon him. "Uya!" cried Ugh-
lomi exultant, and Eudena saw it was well. He put the necklace on Eudena,
and they ate and drank together. And after eating he began to rehearse the
whole story from the beginning, when Uya had cast his eyes on Eudena,
and Uya and Ugh-lomi, fighting in the forest, had been chased by the bear,
eking out his scanty words with abundant pantomime, springing to his feet
and whirling the stone axe round when it came to the fighting. The last fight
was a mighty one, stamping and shouting, and once a blow at the fire that

sent a torrent of sparks up into the night. And Eudena sat red in the light of
the fire, gloating on him, her face flushed and her eyes shining, and the
necklace Uya had made about her neck. It was a splendid time, and the stars
that look down on us looked down on her, our ancestor—who has been
dead now these fifty thousand years.

II—THE CAVE BEAR

In the days when Eudena and Ugh-lomi fled from the people of Uya
towards the fir-clad mountains of the Weald, across the forests of sweet
chestnut and the grass-clad chalkland, and hid themselves at last in the
gorge of the river between the chalk cliffs, men were few and their
squatting-places far between. The nearest men to them were those of the
tribe, a full day's journey down the river, and up the mountains there were
none. Man was indeed a newcomer to this part of the world in that ancient
time, coming slowly along the rivers, generation after generation, from one
squatting-place to another, from the south-westward. And the animals that
held the land, the hippopotamus and rhinoceros of the river valleys, the
horses of the grass plains, the deer and swine of the woods, the grey apes in
the branches, the cattle of the uplands, feared him but little—let alone the
mammoths in the mountains and the elephants that came through the land in
the summer-time out of the south. For why should they fear him, with but
the rough, chipped flints that he had not learnt to haft and which he threw
but ill, and the poor spear of sharpened wood, as all the weapons he had
against hoof and horn, tooth and claw?
Andoo, the huge cave bear, who lived in the cave up the gorge, had never
even seen a man in all his wise and respectable life, until midway through
one night, as he was prowling down the gorge along the cliff edge, he saw
the glare of Eudena's fire upon the ledge, and Eudena red and shining, and
Ugh-lomi, with a gigantic shadow mocking him upon the white cliff, going
to and fro, shaking his mane of hair, and waving the axe of stone—the first
axe of stone—while he chanted of the killing of Uya. The cave bear was far
up the gorge, and he saw the thing slanting-ways and far off. He was so
surprised he stood quite still upon the edge, sniffing the novel odour of

burning bracken, and wondering whether the dawn was coming up in the
wrong place.
He was the lord of the rocks and caves, was the cave bear, as his slighter
brother, the grizzly, was lord of the thick woods below, and as the dappled
lion—the lion of those days was dappled—was lord of the thorn-thickets,
reed-beds, and open plains. He was the greatest of all meat-eaters; he knew
no fear, none preyed on him, and none gave him battle; only the rhinoceros
was beyond his strength. Even the mammoth shunned his country. This
invasion perplexed him. He noticed these new beasts were shaped like
monkeys, and sparsely hairy like young pigs. "Monkey and young pig," said
the cave bear. "It might not be so bad. But that red thing that jumps, and the
black thing jumping with it yonder! Never in my life have I seen such
things before!"
He came slowly along the brow of the cliff towards them, stopping thrice
to sniff and peer, and the reek of the fire grew stronger. A couple of hyænas
also were so intent upon the thing below that Andoo, coming soft and easy,
was close upon them before they knew of him or he of them. They started
guiltily and went lurching off. Coming round in a wheel, a hundred yards
off, they began yelling and calling him names to revenge themselves for the
start they had had. "Ya-ha!" they cried. "Who can't grub his own burrow?
Who eats roots like a pig?... Ya-ha!" for even in those days the hyæna's
manners were just as offensive as they are now.
"Who answers the hyæna?" growled Andoo, peering through the
midnight dimness at them, and then going to look at the cliff edge.
There was Ugh-lomi still telling his story, and the fire getting low, and
the scent of the burning hot and strong.
Andoo stood on the edge of the chalk cliff for some time, shifting his vast
weight from foot to foot, and swaying his head to and fro, with his mouth
open, his ears erect and twitching, and the nostrils of his big, black muzzle
sniffing. He was very curious, was the cave bear, more curious than any of
the bears that live now, and the flickering fire and the incomprehensible
movements of the man, let alone the intrusion into his indisputable
province, stirred him with a sense of strange new happenings. He had been

after red deer fawn that night, for the cave bear was a miscellaneous hunter,
but this quite turned him from that enterprise.
"Ya-ha!" yelled the hyænas behind. "Ya-ha-ha!"
Peering through the starlight, Andoo saw there were now three or four
going to and fro against the grey hillside. "They will hang about me now all
the night ... until I kill," said Andoo. "Filth of the world!" And mainly to
annoy them, he resolved to watch the red flicker in the gorge until the dawn
came to drive the hyæna scum home. And after a time they vanished, and he
heard their voices, like a party of Cockney beanfeasters, away in the
beechwoods. Then they came slinking near again. Andoo yawned and went
on along the cliff, and they followed. Then he stopped and went back.
It was a splendid night, beset with shining constellations, the same stars,
but not the same constellations we know, for since those days all the stars
have had time to move into new places. Far away across the open space
beyond where the heavy-shouldered, lean-bodied hyænas blundered and
howled, was a beechwood, and the mountain slopes rose beyond, a dim
mystery, until their snow-capped summits came out white and cold and
clear, touched by the first rays of the yet unseen moon. It was a vast silence,
save when the yell of the hyænas flung a vanishing discordance across its
peace, or when from down the hills the trumpeting of the new-come
elephants came faintly on the faint breeze. And below now, the red flicker
had dwindled and was steady, and shone a deeper red, and Ugh-lomi had
finished his story and was preparing to sleep, and Eudena sat and listened to
the strange voices of unknown beasts, and watched the dark eastern sky
growing deeply luminous at the advent of the moon. Down below, the river
talked to itself, and things unseen went to and fro.
After a time the bear went away, but in an hour he was back again. Then,
as if struck by a thought, he turned, and went up the gorge....
The night passed, and Ugh-lomi slept on. The waning moon rose and lit
the gaunt white cliff overhead with a light that was pale and vague. The
gorge remained in a deeper shadow and seemed all the darker. Then by
imperceptible degrees, the day came stealing in the wake of the moonlight.
Eudena's eyes wandered to the cliff brow overhead once, and then again.
Each time the line was sharp and clear against the sky, and yet she had a

dim perception of something lurking there. The red of the fire grew deeper
and deeper, grey scales spread upon it, its vertical column of smoke became
more and more visible, and up and down the gorge things that had been
unseen grew clear in a colourless illumination. She may have dozed.
Suddenly she started up from her squatting position, erect and alert,
scrutinising the cliff up and down.
She made the faintest sound, and Ugh-lomi too, light-sleeping like an
animal, was instantly awake. He caught up his axe and came noiselessly to
her side.
The light was still dim, the world now all in black and dark grey, and one
sickly star still lingered overhead. The ledge they were on was a little grassy
space, six feet wide, perhaps, and twenty feet long, sloping outwardly, and
with a handful of St. John's wort growing near the edge. Below it the soft,
white rock fell away in a steep slope of nearly fifty feet to the thick bush of
hazel that fringed the river. Down the river this slope increased, until some
way off a thin grass held its own right up to the crest of the cliff. Overhead,
forty or fifty feet of rock bulged into the great masses characteristic of
chalk, but at the end of the ledge a gully, a precipitous groove of
discoloured rock, slashed the face of the cliff, and gave a footing to a
scrubby growth, by which Eudena and Ugh-lomi went up and down.
They stood as noiseless as startled deer, with every sense expectant. For a
minute they heard nothing, and then came a faint rattling of dust down the
gully, and the creaking of twigs.
Ugh-lomi gripped his axe, and went to the edge of the ledge, for the
bulge of the chalk overhead had hidden the upper part of the gully. And
forthwith, with a sudden contraction of the heart, he saw the cave bear half-
way down from the brow, and making a gingerly backward step with his
flat hind-foot. His hind-quarters were towards Ugh-lomi, and he clawed at
the rocks and bushes so that he seemed flattened against the cliff. He looked
none the less for that. From his shining snout to his stumpy tail he was a
lion and a half, the length of two tall men. He looked over his shoulder, and
his huge mouth was open with the exertion of holding up his great carcase,
and his tongue lay out....

He got his footing, and came down slowly, a yard nearer.
"Bear," said Ugh-lomi, looking round with his face white.
But Eudena, with terror in her eyes, was pointing down the cliff.
Ugh-lomi's mouth fell open. For down below, with her big fore-feet
against the rock, stood another big brown-grey bulk—the she-bear. She was
not so big as Andoo, but she was big enough for all that.
Then suddenly Ugh-lomi gave a cry, and catching up a handful of the
litter of ferns that lay scattered on the ledge, he thrust it into the pallid ash
of the fire. "Brother Fire!" he cried, "Brother Fire!" And Eudena, starting
into activity, did likewise. "Brother Fire! Help, help! Brother Fire!"
Brother Fire was still red in his heart, but he turned to grey as they
scattered him. "Brother Fire!" they screamed. But he whispered and passed,
and there was nothing but ashes. Then Ugh-lomi danced with anger and
struck the ashes with his fist. But Eudena began to hammer the firestone
against a flint. And the eyes of each were turning ever and again towards
the gully by which Andoo was climbing down. Brother Fire!
Suddenly the huge furry hind-quarters of the bear came into view,
beneath the bulge of the chalk that had hidden him. He was still clambering
gingerly down the nearly vertical surface. His head was yet out of sight, but
they could hear him talking to himself. "Pig and monkey," said the cave
bear. "It ought to be good."
Eudena struck a spark and blew at it; it twinkled brighter and then—went
out. At that she cast down flint and firestone and stared blankly. Then she
sprang to her feet and scrambled a yard or so up the cliff above the ledge.
How she hung on even for a moment I do not know, for the chalk was
vertical and without grip for a monkey. In a couple of seconds she had slid
back to the ledge again with bleeding hands.
Ugh-lomi was making frantic rushes about the ledge—now he would go
to the edge, now to the gully. He did not know what to do, he could not
think. The she-bear looked smaller than her mate—much. If they rushed
down on her together, one might live. "Ugh?" said the cave bear, and Ugh-

lomi turned again and saw his little eyes peering under the bulge of the
chalk.
Eudena, cowering at the end of the ledge, began to scream like a gripped
rabbit.
At that a sort of madness came upon Ugh-lomi. With a mighty cry, he
caught up his axe and ran towards Andoo. The monster gave a grunt of
surprise. In a moment Ugh-lomi was clinging to a bush right underneath the
bear, and in another he was hanging to its back half buried in fur, with one
fist clutched in the hair under its jaw. The bear was too astonished at this
fantastic attack to do more than cling passive. And then the axe, the first of
all axes, rang on its skull.
The bear's head twisted from side to side, and he began a petulant
scolding growl. The axe bit within an inch of the left eye, and the hot blood
blinded that side. At that the brute roared with surprise and anger, and his
teeth gnashed six inches from Ugh-lomi's face. Then the axe, clubbed close,
came down heavily on the corner of the jaw.
The next blow blinded the right side and called forth a roar, this time of
pain. Eudena saw the huge, flat feet slipping and sliding, and suddenly the
bear gave a clumsy leap sideways, as if for the ledge. Then everything
vanished, and the hazels smashed, and a roar of pain and a tumult of shouts
and growls came up from far below.
Eudena screamed and ran to the edge and peered over. For a moment,
man and bears were a heap together, Ugh-lomi uppermost; and then he had
sprung clear and was scaling the gully again, with the bears rolling and
striking at one another among the hazels. But he had left his axe below, and
three knob-ended streaks of carmine were shooting down his thigh. "Up!"
he cried, and in a moment Eudena was leading the way to the top of the
cliff.
In half a minute they were at the crest, their hearts pumping noisily, with
Andoo and his wife far and safe below them. Andoo was sitting on his
haunches, both paws at work, trying with quick exasperated movements to
wipe the blindness out of his eyes, and the she-bear stood on all-fours a
little way off, ruffled in appearance and growling angrily. Ugh-lomi flung

himself flat on the grass, and lay panting and bleeding with his face on his
arms.
For a second Eudena regarded the bears, then she came and sat beside
him, looking at him....
Presently she put forth her hand timidly and touched him, and made the
guttural sound that was his name. He turned over and raised himself on his
arm. His face was pale, like the face of one who is afraid. He looked at her
steadfastly for a moment, and then suddenly he laughed. "Waugh!" he said
exultantly.
"Waugh!" said she—a simple but expressive conversation.
Then Ugh-lomi came and knelt beside her, and on hands and knees
peered over the brow and examined the gorge. His breath was steady now,
and the blood on his leg had ceased to flow, though the scratches the she-
bear had made were open and wide. He squatted up and sat staring at the
footmarks of the great bear as they came to the gully—they were as wide as
his head and twice as long. Then he jumped up and went along the cliff face
until the ledge was visible. Here he sat down for some time thinking, while
Eudena watched him. Presently she saw the bears had gone.
At last Ugh-lomi rose, as one whose mind is made up. He returned
towards the gully, Eudena keeping close by him, and together they
clambered to the ledge. They took the firestone and a flint, and then Ugh-
lomi went down to the foot of the cliff very cautiously, and found his axe.
They returned to the cliff as quietly as they could, and set off at a brisk
walk. The ledge was a home no longer, with such callers in the
neighbourhood. Ugh-lomi carried the axe and Eudena the firestone. So
simple was a Palæolithic removal.
They went up-stream, although it might lead to the very lair of the cave
bear, because there was no other way to go. Down the stream was the tribe,
and had not Ugh-lomi killed Uya and Wau? By the stream they had to keep
—because of drinking.
So they marched through beech trees, with the gorge deepening until the
river flowed, a frothing rapid, five hundred feet below them. Of all the
changeful things in this world of change, the courses of rivers in deep

valleys change least. It was the river Wey, the river we know to-day, and
they marched over the very spots where nowadays stand little Guildford and
Godalming—the first human beings to come into the land. Once a grey ape
chattered and vanished, and all along the cliff edge, vast and even, ran the
spoor of the great cave bear.
And then the spoor of the bear fell away from the cliff, showing, Ugh-
lomi thought, that he came from some place to the left, and keeping to the
cliff's edge, they presently came to an end. They found themselves looking
down on a great semi-circular space caused by the collapse of the cliff. It
had smashed right across the gorge, banking the up-stream water back in a
pool which overflowed in a rapid. The slip had happened long ago. It was
grassed over, but the face of the cliffs that stood about the semicircle was
still almost fresh-looking and white as on the day when the rock must have
broken and slid down. Starkly exposed and black under the foot of these
cliffs were the mouths of several caves. And as they stood there, looking at
the space, and disinclined to skirt it, because they thought the bears' lair lay
somewhere on the left in the direction they must needs take, they saw
suddenly first one bear and then two coming up the grass slope to the right
and going across the amphitheatre towards the caves. Andoo was first; he
dropped a little on his fore-foot and his mien was despondent, and the she-
bear came shuffling behind.
Eudena and Ugh-lomi stepped back from the cliff until they could just
see the bears over the verge. Then Ugh-lomi stopped. Eudena pulled his
arm, but he turned with a forbidding gesture, and her hand dropped. Ugh-
lomi stood watching the bears, with his axe in his hand, until they had
vanished into the cave. He growled softly, and shook the axe at the she-
bear's receding quarters. Then to Eudena's terror, instead of creeping off
with her, he lay flat down and crawled forward into such a position that he
could just see the cave. It was bears—and he did it as calmly as if it had
been rabbits he was watching!
He lay still, like a barked log, sun-dappled, in the shadow of the trees. He
was thinking. And Eudena had learnt, even when a little girl, that when
Ugh-lomi became still like that, jaw-bone on fist, novel things presently
began to happen.

It was an hour before the thinking was over; it was noon when the two
little savages had found their way to the cliff brow that overhung the bears'
cave. And all the long afternoon they fought desperately with a great
boulder of chalk; trundling it, with nothing but their unaided sturdy
muscles, from the gully where it had hung like a loose tooth, towards the
cliff top. It was full two yards about, it stood as high as Eudena's waist, it
was obtuse-angled and toothed with flints. And when the sun set it was
poised, three inches from the edge, above the cave of the great cave bear.
In the cave conversation languished during that afternoon. The she-bear
snoozed sulkily in her corner—for she was fond of pig and monkey—and
Andoo was busy licking the side of his paw and smearing his face to cool
the smart and inflammation of his wounds. Afterwards he went and sat just
within the mouth of the cave, blinking out at the afternoon sun with his
uninjured eye, and thinking.
"I never was so startled in my life," he said at last. "They are the most
extraordinary beasts. Attacking me!"
"I don't like them," said the she-bear, out of the darkness behind.
"A feebler sort of beast I never saw. I can't think what the world is
coming to. Scraggy, weedy legs.... Wonder how they keep warm in winter?"
"Very likely they don't," said the she-bear.
"I suppose it's a sort of monkey gone wrong."
"It's a change," said the she-bear.
A pause.
"The advantage he had was merely accidental," said Andoo. "These
things will happen at times."
"I can't understand why you let go," said the she-bear.
That matter had been discussed before, and settled. So Andoo, being a
bear of experience, remained silent for a space. Then he resumed upon a
different aspect of the matter. "He has a sort of claw—a long claw that he
seemed to have first on one paw and then on the other. Just one claw.

They're very odd things. The bright thing, too, they seemed to have—like
that glare that comes in the sky in daytime—only it jumps about—it's really
worth seeing. It's a thing with a root, too—like grass when it is windy."
"Does it bite?" asked the she-bear. "If it bites it can't be a plant."
"No——I don't know," said Andoo. "But it's curious, anyhow."
"I wonder if they are good eating?" said the she-bear.
"They look it," said Andoo, with appetite—for the cave bear, like the
polar bear, was an incurable carnivore—no roots or honey for him.
The two bears fell into a meditation for a space. Then Andoo resumed his
simple attentions to his eye. The sunlight up the green slope before the cave
mouth grew warmer in tone and warmer, until it was a ruddy amber.
"Curious sort of thing—day," said the cave bear. "Lot too much of it, I
think. Quite unsuitable for hunting. Dazzles me always. I can't smell nearly
so well by day."
The she-bear did not answer, but there came a measured crunching sound
out of the darkness. She had turned up a bone. Andoo yawned. "Well," he
said. He strolled to the cave mouth and stood with his head projecting,
surveying the amphitheatre. He found he had to turn his head completely
round to see objects on his right-hand side. No doubt that eye would be all
right to-morrow.
He yawned again. There was a tap overhead, and a big mass of chalk
flew out from the cliff face, dropped a yard in front of his nose, and starred
into a dozen unequal fragments. It startled him extremely.
When he had recovered a little from his shock, he went and sniffed
curiously at the representative pieces of the fallen projectile. They had a
distinctive flavour, oddly reminiscent of the two drab animals of the ledge.
He sat up and pawed the larger lump, and walked round it several times,
trying to find a man about it somewhere....
When night had come he went off down the river gorge to see if he could
cut off either of the ledge's occupants. The ledge was empty, there were no
signs of the red thing, but as he was rather hungry he did not loiter long that

night, but pushed on to pick up a red deer fawn. He forgot about the drab
animals. He found a fawn, but the doe was close by and made an ugly fight
for her young. Andoo had to leave the fawn, but as her blood was up she
stuck to the attack, and at last he got in a blow of his paw on her nose, and
so got hold of her. More meat but less delicacy, and the she-bear, following,
had her share. The next afternoon, curiously enough, the very fellow of the
first white rock fell, and smashed precisely according to precedent.
The aim of the third, that fell the night after, however, was better. It hit
Andoo's unspeculative skull with a crack that echoed up the cliff, and the
white fragments went dancing to all the points of the compass. The she-bear
coming after him and sniffing curiously at him, found him lying in an odd
sort of attitude, with his head wet and all out of shape. She was a young
she-bear, and inexperienced, and having sniffed about him for some time
and licked him a little, and so forth, she decided to leave him until the odd
mood had passed, and went on her hunting alone.
She looked up the fawn of the red doe they had killed two nights ago, and
found it. But it was lonely hunting without Andoo, and she returned
caveward before dawn. The sky was grey and overcast, the trees up the
gorge were black and unfamiliar, and into her ursine mind came a dim sense
of strange and dreary happenings. She lifted up her voice and called Andoo
by name. The sides of the gorge re-echoed her.
As she approached the caves she saw in the half light, and heard a couple
of jackals scuttle off, and immediately after a hyæna howled and a dozen
clumsy bulks went lumbering up the slope, and stopped and yelled derision.
"Lord of the rocks and caves—ya-ha!" came down the wind. The dismal
feeling in the she-bear's mind became suddenly acute. She shuffled across
the amphitheatre.
"Ya-ha!" said the hyænas, retreating. "Ya-ha!"
The cave bear was not lying quite in the same attitude, because the
hyænas had been busy, and in one place his ribs showed white. Dotted over
the turf about him lay the smashed fragments of the three great lumps of
chalk. And the air was full of the scent of death.

The she-bear stopped dead. Even now, that the great and wonderful
Andoo was killed was beyond her believing. Then she heard far overhead a
sound, a queer sound, a little like the shout of a hyæna but fuller and lower
in pitch. She looked up, her little dawn-blinded eyes seeing little, her
nostrils quivering. And there, on the cliff edge, far above her against the
bright pink of dawn, were two little shaggy round dark things, the heads of
Eudena and Ugh-lomi, as they shouted derision at her. But though she could
not see them very distinctly she could hear, and dimly she began to
apprehend. A novel feeling as of imminent strange evils came into her heart.
She began to examine the smashed fragments of chalk that lay about
Andoo. For a space she stood still, looking about her and making a low
continuous sound that was almost a moan. Then she went back
incredulously to Andoo to make one last effort to rouse him.

III—THE FIRST HORSEMAN

In the days before Ugh-lomi there was little trouble between the horses
and men. They lived apart—the men in the river swamps and thickets, the
horses on the wide grassy uplands between the chestnuts and the pines.
Sometimes a pony would come straying into the clogging marshes to make
a flint-hacked meal, and sometimes the tribe would find one, the kill of a
lion, and drive off the jackals, and feast heartily while the sun was high.
These horses of the old time were clumsy at the fetlock and dun-coloured,
with a rough tail and big head. They came every spring-time north-
westward into the country, after the swallows and before the hippopotami,
as the grass on the wide downland stretches grew long. They came only in
small bodies thus far, each herd, a stallion and two or three mares and a foal
or so, having its own stretch of country, and they went again when the
chestnut-trees were yellow and the wolves came down the Wealden
mountains.
It was their custom to graze right out in the open, going into cover only
in the heat of the day. They avoided the long stretches of thorn and
beechwood, preferring an isolated group of trees void of ambuscade, so that
it was hard to come upon them. They were never fighters; their heels and
teeth were for one another, but in the clear country, once they were started,

no living thing came near them, though perhaps the elephant might have
done so had he felt the need. And in those days man seemed a harmless
thing enough. No whisper of prophetic intelligence told the species of the
terrible slavery that was to come, of the whip and spur and bearing-rein, the
clumsy load and the slippery street, the insufficient food, and the knacker's
yard, that was to replace the wide grass-land and the freedom of the earth.
Down in the Wey marshes Ugh-lomi and Eudena had never seen the
horses closely, but now they saw them every day as the two of them raided
out from their lair on the ledge in the gorge, raiding together in search of
food. They had returned to the ledge after the killing of Andoo; for of the
she-bear they were not afraid. The she-bear had become afraid of them, and
when she winded them she went aside. The two went together everywhere;
for since they had left the tribe Eudena was not so much Ugh-lomi's woman
as his mate; she learnt to hunt even—as much, that is, as any woman could.
She was indeed a marvellous woman. He would lie for hours watching a
beast, or planning catches in that shock head of his, and she would stay
beside him, with her bright eyes upon him, offering no irritating suggestions
—as still as any man. A wonderful woman!
At the top of the cliff was an open grassy lawn and then beechwoods, and
going through the beechwoods one came to the edge of the rolling grassy
expanse, and in sight of the horses. Here, on the edge of the wood and
bracken, were the rabbit-burrows, and here among the fronds Eudena and
Ugh-lomi would lie with their throwing-stones ready, until the little people
came out to nibble and play in the sunset. And while Eudena would sit, a
silent figure of watchfulness, regarding the burrows, Ugh-lomi's eyes were
ever away across the greensward at those wonderful grazing strangers.
In a dim way he appreciated their grace and their supple nimbleness. As
the sun declined in the evening-time, and the heat of the day passed, they
would become active, would start chasing one another, neighing, dodging,
shaking their manes, coming round in great curves, sometimes so close that
the pounding of the turf sounded like hurried thunder. It looked so fine that
Ugh-lomi wanted to join in badly. And sometimes one would roll over on
the turf, kicking four hoofs heavenward, which seemed formidable and was
certainly much less alluring.

Dim imaginings ran through Ugh-lomi's mind as he watched—by virtue
of which two rabbits lived the longer. And sleeping, his brains were clearer
and bolder—for that was the way in those days. He came near the horses,
he dreamt, and fought, smiting-stone against hoof, but then the horses
changed to men, or, at least, to men with horses' heads, and he awoke in a
cold sweat of terror.
Yet the next day in the morning, as the horses were grazing, one of the
mares whinnied, and they saw Ugh-lomi coming up the wind. They all
stopped their eating and watched him. Ugh-lomi was not coming towards
them, but strolling obliquely across the open, looking at anything in the
world but horses. He had stuck three fern-fronds into the mat of his hair,
giving him a remarkable appearance, and he walked very slowly. "What's
up now?" said the Master Horse, who was capable, but inexperienced.
"It looks more like the first half of an animal than anything else in the
world," he said. "Fore-legs and no hind."
"It's only one of those pink monkey things," said the Eldest Mare.
"They're a sort of river monkey. They're quite common on the plains."
Ugh-lomi continued his oblique advance. The Eldest Mare was struck
with the want of motive in his proceedings.
"Fool!" said the Eldest Mare, in a quick conclusive way she had. She
resumed her grazing. The Master Horse and the Second Mare followed suit.
"Look! he's nearer," said the Foal with a stripe.
One of the younger foals made uneasy movements. Ugh-lomi squatted
down, and sat regarding the horses fixedly. In a little while he was satisfied
that they meant neither flight nor hostilities. He began to consider his next
procedure. He did not feel anxious to kill, but he had his axe with him, and
the spirit of sport was upon him. How would one kill one of these
creatures?—these great beautiful creatures!
Eudena, watching him with a fearful admiration from the cover of the
bracken, saw him presently go on all fours, and so proceed again. But the
horses preferred him a biped to a quadruped, and the Master Horse threw up
his head and gave the word to move. Ugh-lomi thought they were off for

good, but after a minute's gallop they came round in a wide curve, and
stood winding him. Then, as a rise in the ground hid him, they tailed out,
the Master Horse leading, and approached him spirally.
He was as ignorant of the possibilities of a horse as they were of his. And
at this stage it would seem he funked. He knew this kind of stalking would
make red deer or buffalo charge, if it were persisted in. At any rate Eudena
saw him jump up and come walking towards her with the fern plumes held
in his hand.
She stood up, and he grinned to show that the whole thing was an
immense lark, and that what he had done was just what he had planned to
do from the very beginning. So that incident ended. But he was very
thoughtful all that day.
The next day this foolish drab creature with the leonine mane, instead of
going about the grazing or hunting he was made for, was prowling round
the horses again. The Eldest Mare was all for silent contempt. "I suppose he
wants to learn something from us," she said, and "Let him." The next day he
was at it again. The Master Horse decided he meant absolutely nothing. But
as a matter of fact, Ugh-lomi, the first of men to feel that curious spell of
the horse that binds us even to this day, meant a great deal. He admired
them unreservedly. There was a rudiment of the snob in him, I am afraid,
and he wanted to be near these beautifully-curved animals. Then there were
vague conceptions of a kill. If only they would let him come near them! But
they drew the line, he found, at fifty yards. If he came nearer than that they
moved off—with dignity. I suppose it was the way he had blinded Andoo
that made him think of leaping on the back of one of them. But though
Eudena after a time came out in the open too, and they did some
unobtrusive stalking, things stopped there.
Then one memorable day a new idea came to Ugh-lomi. The horse looks
down and level, but he does not look up. No animals look up—they have
too much common-sense. It was only that fantastic creature, man, could
waste his wits skyward. Ugh-lomi made no philosophical deductions, but he
perceived the thing was so. So he spent a weary day in a beech that stood in
the open, while Eudena stalked. Usually the horses went into the shade in

the heat of the afternoon, but that day the sky was overcast, and they would
not, in spite of Eudena's solicitude.
It was two days after that that Ugh-lomi had his desire. The day was
blazing hot, and the multiplying flies asserted themselves. The horses
stopped grazing before midday, and came into the shadow below him, and
stood in couples nose to tail, flapping.
The Master Horse, by virtue of his heels, came closest to the tree. And
suddenly there was a rustle and a creak, a thud.... Then a sharp chipped flint
bit him on the cheek. The Master Horse stumbled, came on one knee, rose
to his feet, and was off like the wind. The air was full of the whirl of limbs,
the prance of hoofs, and snorts of alarm. Ugh-lomi was pitched a foot in the
air, came down again, up again, his stomach was hit violently, and then his
knees got a grip of something between them. He found himself clutching
with knees, feet, and hands, careering violently with extraordinary
oscillation through the air—his axe gone heaven knows whither. "Hold
tight," said Mother Instinct, and he did.
He was aware of a lot of coarse hair in his face, some of it between his
teeth, and of green turf streaming past in front of his eyes. He saw the
shoulder of the Master Horse, vast and sleek, with the muscles flowing
swiftly under the skin. He perceived that his arms were round the neck, and
that the violent jerkings he experienced had a sort of rhythm.
Then he was in the midst of a wild rush of tree-stems, and then there
were fronds of bracken about, and then more open turf. Then a stream of
pebbles rushing past, little pebbles flying sideways athwart the stream from
the blow of the swift hoofs. Ugh-lomi began to feel frightfully sick and
giddy, but he was not the stuff to leave go simply because he was
uncomfortable.
He dared not leave his grip, but he tried to make himself more
comfortable. He released his hug on the neck, gripping the mane instead.
He slipped his knees forward, and pushing back, came into a sitting position
where the quarters broaden. It was nervous work, but he managed it, and at
last he was fairly seated astride, breathless indeed, and uncertain, but with
that frightful pounding of his body at any rate relieved.

Slowly the fragments of Ugh-lomi's mind got into order again. The pace
seemed to him terrific, but a kind of exultation was beginning to oust his
first frantic terror. The air rushed by, sweet and wonderful, the rhythm of
the hoofs changed and broke up and returned into itself again. They were on
turf now, a wide glade—the beech-trees a hundred yards away on either
side, and a succulent band of green starred with pink blossom and shot with
silver water here and there, meandered down the middle. Far off was a
glimpse of blue valley—far away. The exultation grew. It was man's first
taste of pace.
Then came a wide space dappled with flying fallow deer scattering this
way and that, and then a couple of jackals, mistaking Ugh-lomi for a lion,
came hurrying after him. And when they saw it was not a lion they still
came on out of curiosity. On galloped the horse, with his one idea of escape,
and after him the jackals, with pricked ears and quickly-barked remarks.
"Which kills which?" said the first jackal. "It's the horse being killed," said
the second. They gave the howl of following, and the horse answered to it
as a horse answers nowadays to the spur.
On they rushed, a little tornado through the quiet day, putting up startled
birds, sending a dozen unexpected things darting to cover, raising a myriad
of indignant dung-flies, smashing little blossoms, flowering complacently,
back into their parental turf. Trees again, and then splash, splash across a
torrent; then a hare shot out of a tuft of grass under the very hoofs of the
Master Horse, and the jackals left them incontinently. So presently they
broke into the open again, a wide expanse of turfy hillside—the very grassy
downs that fall northward nowadays from the Epsom Stand.
The first hot bolt of the Master Horse was long since over. He was falling
into a measured trot, and Ugh-lomi, albeit bruised exceedingly and quite
uncertain of the future, was in a state of glorious enjoyment. And now came
a new development. The pace broke again, the Master Horse came round on
a short curve, and stopped dead....
Ugh-lomi became alert. He wished he had a flint, but the throwing-flint
he had carried in a thong about his waist was—like the axe—heaven knows
where. The Master Horse turned his head, and Ugh-lomi became aware of
an eye and teeth. He whipped his leg into a position of security, and hit at

the cheek with his fist. Then the head went down somewhere out of
existence apparently, and the back he was sitting on flew up into a dome.
Ugh-lomi became a thing of instinct again—strictly prehensile; he held by
knees and feet, and his head seemed sliding towards the turf. His fingers
were twisted into the shock of mane, and the rough hair of the horse saved
him. The gradient he was on lowered again, and then—"Whup!" said Ugh-
lomi astonished, and the slant was the other way up. But Ugh-lomi was a
thousand generations nearer the primordial than man: no monkey could
have held on better. And the lion had been training the horse for countless
generations against the tactics of rolling and rearing back. But he kicked
like a master, and buck-jumped rather neatly. In five minutes Ugh-lomi
lived a lifetime. If he came off the horse would kill him, he felt assured.
Then the Master Horse decided to stick to his old tactics again, and
suddenly went off at a gallop. He headed down the slope, taking the steep
places at a rush, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, and, as they
rode down, the wide expanse of valley sank out of sight behind the
approaching skirmishers of oak and hawthorn. They skirted a sudden
hollow with the pool of a spring, rank weeds and silver bushes. The ground
grew softer and the grass taller, and on the right-hand side and the left came
scattered bushes of May—still splashed with belated blossom. Presently the
bushes thickened until they lashed the passing rider, and little flashes and
gouts of blood came out on horse and man. Then the way opened again.
And then came a wonderful adventure. A sudden squeal of unreasonable
anger rose amidst the bushes, the squeal of some creature bitterly wronged.
And crashing after them appeared a big, grey-blue shape. It was Yaaa the
big-horned rhinoceros, in one of those fits of fury of his, charging full tilt,
after the manner of his kind. He had been startled at his feeding, and
someone, it did not matter who, was to be ripped and trampled therefore.
He was bearing down on them from the left, with his wicked little eye red,
his great horn down and his tail like a jury-mast behind him. For a minute
Ugh-lomi was minded to slip off and dodge, and then behold! the staccato
of the hoofs grew swifter, and the rhinoceros and his stumpy hurrying little
legs seemed to slide out at the back corner of Ugh-lomi's eye. In two
minutes they were through the bushes of May, and out in the open, going
fast. For a space he could hear the ponderous paces in pursuit receding

behind him, and then it was just as if Yaaa had not lost his temper, as if
Yaaa had never existed.
The pace never faltered, on they rode and on.
Ugh-lomi was now all exultation. To exult in those days was to insult.
"Ya-ha! big nose!" he said, trying to crane back and see some remote speck
of a pursuer. "Why don't you carry your smiting-stone in your fist?" he
ended with a frantic whoop.
But that whoop was unfortunate, for coming close to the ear of the horse,
and being quite unexpected, it startled the stallion extremely. He shied
violently. Ugh-lomi suddenly found himself uncomfortable again. He was
hanging on to the horse, he found, by one arm and one knee.
The rest of the ride was honourable but unpleasant. The view was chiefly
of blue sky, and that was combined with the most unpleasant physical
sensations. Finally, a bush of thorn lashed him and he let go.
He hit the ground with his cheek and shoulder, and then, after a
complicated and extraordinarily rapid movement, hit it again with the end
of his backbone. He saw splashes and sparks of light and colour. The
ground seemed bouncing about just like the horse had done. Then he found
he was sitting on turf, six yards beyond the bush. In front of him was a
space of grass, growing greener and greener, and a number of human beings
in the distance, and the horse was going round at a smart gallop quite a long
way off to the right.
The human beings were on the opposite side of the river, some still in the
water, but they were all running away as hard as they could go. The advent
of a monster that took to pieces was not the sort of novelty they cared for.
For quite a minute Ugh-lomi sat regarding them in a purely spectacular
spirit. The bend of the river, the knoll among the reeds and royal ferns, the
thin streams of smoke going up to Heaven, were all perfectly familiar to
him. It was the squatting-place of the Sons of Uya, of Uya from whom he
had fled with Eudena, and whom he had waylaid in the chestnut woods and
killed with the First Axe.
He rose to his feet, still dazed from his fall, and as he did so the
scattering fugitives turned and regarded him. Some pointed to the receding

horse and chattered. He walked slowly towards them, staring. He forgot the
horse, he forgot his own bruises, in the growing interest of this encounter.
There were fewer of them than there had been—he supposed the others
must have hid—the heap of fern for the night fire was not so high. By the
flint heaps should have sat Wau—but then he remembered he had killed
Wau. Suddenly brought back to this familiar scene, the gorge and the bears
and Eudena seemed things remote, things dreamt of.
He stopped at the bank and stood regarding the tribe. His mathematical
abilities were of the slightest, but it was certain there were fewer. The men
might be away, but there were fewer women and children. He gave the
shout of home-coming. His quarrel had been with Uya and Wau—not with
the others. "Children of Uya!" he cried. They answered with his name, a
little fearfully because of the strange way he had come.
For a space they spoke together. Then an old woman lifted a shrill voice
and answered him. "Our Lord is a Lion."
Ugh-lomi did not understand that saying. They answered him again
several together, "Uya comes again. He comes as a Lion. Our Lord is a
Lion. He comes at night. He slays whom he will. But none other may slay
us, Ugh-lomi, none other may slay us."
Still Ugh-lomi did not understand.
"Our Lord is a Lion. He speaks no more to men."
Ugh-lomi stood regarding them. He had had dreams—he knew that
though he had killed Uya, Uya still existed. And now they told him Uya
was a Lion.
The shrivelled old woman, the mistress of the fire-minders, suddenly
turned and spoke softly to those next to her. She was a very old woman
indeed, she had been the first of Uya's wives, and he had let her live beyond
the age to which it is seemly a woman should be permitted to live. She had
been cunning from the first, cunning to please Uya and to get food. And
now she was great in counsel. She spoke softly, and Ugh-lomi watched her
shrivelled form across the river with a curious distaste. Then she called
aloud, "Come over to us, Ugh-lomi."

A girl suddenly lifted up her voice. "Come over to us, Ugh-lomi," she
said. And they all began crying, "Come over to us, Ugh-lomi."
It was strange how their manner changed after the old woman called.
He stood quite still watching them all. It was pleasant to be called, and
the girl who had called first was a pretty one. But she made him think of
Eudena.
"Come over to us, Ugh-lomi," they cried, and the voice of the shrivelled
old woman rose above them all. At the sound of her voice his hesitation
returned.
He stood on the river bank, Ugh-lomi—Ugh the Thinker—with his
thoughts slowly taking shape. Presently one and then another paused to see
what he would do. He was minded to go back, he was minded not to.
Suddenly his fear or his caution got the upper hand. Without answering
them he turned, and walked back towards the distant thorn-trees, the way he
had come. Forthwith the whole tribe started crying to him again very
eagerly. He hesitated and turned, then he went on, then he turned again, and
then once again, regarding them with troubled eyes as they called. The last
time he took two paces back, before his fear stopped him. They saw him
stop once more, and suddenly shake his head and vanish among the
hawthorn-trees.
Then all the women and children lifted up their voices together, and
called to him in one last vain effort.
Far down the river the reeds were stirring in the breeze, where,
convenient for his new sort of feeding, the old lion, who had taken to man-
eating, had made his lair.
The old woman turned her face that way, and pointed to the hawthorn
thickets. "Uya," she screamed, "there goes thine enemy! There goes thine
enemy, Uya! Why do you devour us nightly? We have tried to snare him!
There goes thine enemy, Uya!"
But the lion who preyed upon the tribe was taking his siesta. The cry
went unheard. That day he had dined on one of the plumper girls, and his

mood was a comfortable placidity. He really did not understand that he was
Uya or that Ugh-lomi was his enemy.
So it was that Ugh-lomi rode the horse, and heard first of Uya the lion,
who had taken the place of Uya the Master, and was eating up the tribe. And
as he hurried back to the gorge his mind was no longer full of the horse, but
of the thought that Uya was still alive, to slay or be slain. Over and over
again he saw the shrunken band of women and children crying that Uya was
a lion. Uya was a lion!
And presently, fearing the twilight might come upon him, Ugh-lomi
began running.

IV—UYA THE LION

The old lion was in luck. The tribe had a certain pride in their ruler, but
that was all the satisfaction they got out of it. He came the very night that
Ugh-lomi killed Uya the Cunning, and so it was they named him Uya. It
was the old woman, the fire-minder, who first named him Uya. A shower
had lowered the fires to a glow, and made the night dark. And as they
conversed together, and peered at one another in the darkness, and
wondered fearfully what Uya would do to them in their dreams now that he
was dead, they heard the mounting reverberations of the lion's roar close at
hand. Then everything was still.
They held their breath, so that almost the only sounds were the patter of
the rain and the hiss of the raindrops in the ashes. And then, after an
interminable time, a crash, and a shriek of fear, and a growling. They sprang
to their feet, shouting, screaming, running this way and that, but brands
would not burn, and in a minute the victim was being dragged away
through the ferns. It was Irk, the brother of Wau.
So the lion came.
The ferns were still wet from the rain the next night, and he came and
took Click with the red hair. That sufficed for two nights. And then in the
dark between the moons he came three nights, night after night, and that
though they had good fires. He was an old lion with stumpy teeth, but very

silent and very cool; he knew of fires before; these were not the first of
mankind that had ministered to his old age. The third night he came
between the outer fire and the inner, and he leapt the flint heap, and pulled
down Irm the son of Irk, who had seemed like to be the leader. That was a
dreadful night, because they lit great flares of fern and ran screaming, and
the lion missed his hold of Irm. By the glare of the fire they saw Irm
struggle up, and run a little way towards them, and then the lion in two
bounds had him down again. That was the last of Irm.
So fear came, and all the delight of spring passed out of their lives.
Already there were five gone out of the tribe, and four nights added three
more to the number. Food-seeking became spiritless, none knew who might
go next, and all day the women toiled, even the favourite women, gathering
litter and sticks for the night fires. And the hunters hunted ill: in the warm
spring-time hunger came again as though it was still winter. The tribe might
have moved, had they had a leader, but they had no leader, and none knew
where to go that the lion could not follow them. So the old lion waxed fat
and thanked heaven for the kindly race of men. Two of the children and a
youth died while the moon was still new, and then it was the shrivelled old
fire-minder first bethought herself in a dream of Eudena and Ugh-lomi, and
of the way Uya had been slain. She had lived in fear of Uya all her days,
and now she lived in fear of the lion. That Ugh-lomi could kill Uya for good
—Ugh-lomi whom she had seen born—was impossible. It was Uya still
seeking his enemy!
And then came the strange return of Ugh-lomi, a wonderful animal seen
galloping far across the river, that suddenly changed into two animals, a
horse and a man. Following this portent, the vision of Ugh-lomi on the
farther bank of the river.... Yes, it was all plain to her. Uya was punishing
them, because they had not hunted down Ugh-lomi and Eudena.
The men came straggling back to the chances of the night while the sun
was still golden in the sky. They were received with the story of Ugh-lomi.
She went across the river with them and showed them his spoor hesitating
on the farther bank. Siss the Tracker knew the feet for Ugh-lomi's. "Uya
needs Ugh-lomi," cried the old woman, standing on the left of the bend, a
gesticulating figure of flaring bronze in the sunset. Her cries were strange
sounds, flitting to and fro on the borderland of speech, but this was the

sense they carried: "The lion needs Eudena. He comes night after night
seeking Eudena and Ugh-lomi. When he cannot find Eudena and Ugh-lomi,
he grows angry and he kills. Hunt Eudena and Ugh-lomi, Eudena whom he
pursued, and Ugh-lomi for whom he gave the death-word! Hunt Eudena
and Ugh-lomi!"
She turned to the distant reed-bed, as sometimes she had turned to Uya in
his life. "Is it not so, my lord?" she cried. And, as if in answer, the tall reeds
bowed before a breath of wind.
Far into the twilight the sound of hacking was heard from the squatting-
places. It was the men sharpening their ashen spears against the hunting of
the morrow. And in the night, early before the moon rose, the lion came and
took the girl of Siss the Tracker.
In the morning before the sun had risen, Siss the Tracker, and the lad
Wau-Hau, who now chipped flints, and One Eye, and Bo, and the Snail-
eater, the two red-haired men, and Cat's-skin and Snake, all the men that
were left alive of the Sons of Uya, taking their ash spears and their smiting-
stones, and with throwing-stones in the beast-paw bags, started forth upon
the trail of Ugh-lomi through the hawthorn thickets where Yaaa the
Rhinoceros and his brothers were feeding, and up the bare downland
towards the beechwoods.
That night the fires burnt high and fierce, as the waxing moon set, and
the lion left the crouching women and children in peace.
And the next day, while the sun was still high, the hunters returned—all
save One Eye, who lay dead with a smashed skull at the foot of the ledge.
(When Ugh-lomi came back that evening from stalking the horses, he found
the vultures already busy over him.) And with them the hunters brought
Eudena bruised and wounded, but alive. That had been the strange order of
the shrivelled old woman, that she was to be brought alive—"She is no kill
for us. She is for Uya the Lion." Her hands were tied with thongs, as though
she had been a man, and she came weary and drooping—her hair over her
eyes and matted with blood. They walked about her, and ever and again the
Snail-eater, whose name she had given, would laugh and strike her with his
ashen spear. And after he had struck her with his spear, he would look over
his shoulder like one who had done an over-bold deed. The others, too,

looked over their shoulders ever and again, and all were in a hurry save
Eudena. When the old woman saw them coming, she cried aloud with joy.
They made Eudena cross the river with her hands tied, although the
current was strong and when she slipped the old woman screamed, first
with joy and then for fear she might be drowned. And when they had
dragged Eudena to shore, she could not stand for a time, albeit they beat her
sore. So they let her sit with her feet touching the water, and her eyes
staring before her, and her face set, whatever they might do or say. All the
tribe came down to the squatting-place, even curly little Haha, who as yet
could scarcely toddle, and stood staring at Eudena and the old woman, as
now we should stare at some strange wounded beast and its captor.
The old woman tore off the necklace of Uya that was about Eudena's
neck, and put it on herself—she had been the first to wear it. Then she tore
at Eudena's hair, and took a spear from Siss and beat her with all her might.
And when she had vented the warmth of her heart on the girl she looked
closely into her face. Eudena's eyes were closed and her features were set,
and she lay so still that for a moment the old woman feared she was dead.
And then her nostrils quivered. At that the old woman slapped her face and
laughed and gave the spear to Siss again, and went a little way off from her
and began to talk and jeer at her after her manner.
The old woman had more words than any in the tribe. And her talk was a
terrible thing to hear. Sometimes she screamed and moaned incoherently,
and sometimes the shape of her guttural cries was the mere phantom of
thoughts. But she conveyed to Eudena, nevertheless, much of the things that
were yet to come, of the Lion and of the torment he would do her. "And
Ugh-lomi! Ha, ha! Ugh-lomi is slain?"
And suddenly Eudena's eyes opened and she sat up again, and her look
met the old woman's fair and level. "No," she said slowly, like one trying to
remember, "I did not see my Ugh-lomi slain. I did not see my Ugh-lomi
slain."
"Tell her," cried the old woman. "Tell her—he that killed him. Tell her
how Ugh-lomi was slain."

She looked, and all the women and children there looked, from man to
man.
None answered her. They stood shame-faced.
"Tell her," said the old woman. The men looked at one another.
Eudena's face suddenly lit.
"Tell her," she said. "Tell her, mighty men! Tell her the killing of Ugh-
lomi."
The old woman rose and struck her sharply across her mouth.
"We could not find Ugh-lomi," said Siss the Tracker, slowly. "Who hunts
two, kills none."
Then Eudena's heart leapt, but she kept her face hard. It was as well, for
the old woman looked at her sharply, with murder in her eyes.
Then the old woman turned her tongue upon the men because they had
feared to go on after Ugh-lomi. She dreaded no one now Uya was slain. She
scolded them as one scolds children. And they scowled at her, and began to
accuse one another. Until suddenly Siss the Tracker raised his voice and
bade her hold her peace.
And so when the sun was setting they took Eudena and went—though
their hearts sank within them—along the trail the old lion had made in the
reeds. All the men went together. At one place was a group of alders, and
here they hastily bound Eudena where the lion might find her when he came
abroad in the twilight, and having done so they hurried back until they were
near the squatting-place. Then they stopped. Siss stopped first and looked
back again at the alders. They could see her head even from the squatting-
place, a little black shock under the limb of the larger tree. That was as well.
All the women and children stood watching upon the crest of the mound.
And the old woman stood and screamed for the lion to take her whom he
sought, and counselled him on the torments he might do her.
Eudena was very weary now, stunned by beatings and fatigue and sorrow,
and only the fear of the thing that was still to come upheld her. The sun was

broad and blood-red between the stems of the distant chestnuts, and the
west was all on fire; the evening breeze had died to a warm tranquillity. The
air was full of midge swarms, the fish in the river hard by would leap at
times, and now and again a cockchafer would drone through the air. Out of
the corner of her eye Eudena could see a part of the squatting-knoll, and
little figures standing and staring at her. And—a very little sound but very
clear—she could hear the beating of the firestone. Dark and near to her and
still was the reed-fringed thicket of the lair.
Presently the firestone ceased. She looked for the sun and found he had
gone, and overhead and growing brighter was the waxing moon. She looked
towards the thicket of the lair, seeking shapes in the reeds, and then
suddenly she began to wriggle and wriggle, weeping and calling upon Ugh-
lomi.
But Ugh-lomi was far away. When they saw her head moving with her
struggles, they shouted together on the knoll, and she desisted and was still.
And then came the bats, and the star that was like Ugh-lomi crept out of its
blue hiding-place in the west. She called to it, but softly, because she feared
the lion. And all through the coming of the twilight the thicket was still.
So the dark crept upon Eudena, and the moon grew bright, and the
shadows of things that had fled up the hillside and vanished with the
evening came back to them short and black. And the dark shapes in the
thicket of reeds and alders where the lion lay, gathered, and a faint stir
began there. But nothing came out therefrom all through the gathering of
the darkness.
She looked at the squatting-place and saw the fires glowing smoky-red,
and the men and women going to and fro. The other way, over the river, a
white mist was rising. Then far away came the whimpering of young foxes
and the yell of a hyæna.
There were long gaps of aching waiting. After a long time some animal
splashed in the water, and seemed to cross the river at the ford beyond the
lair, but what animal it was she could not see. From the distant drinking-
pools she could hear the sound of splashing, and the noise of elephants—so
still was the night.

The earth was now a colourless arrangement of white reflections and
impenetrable shadows, under the blue sky. The silvery moon was already
spotted with the filigree crests of the chestnut woods, and over the shadowy
eastward hills the stars were multiplying. The knoll fires were bright red
now, and black figures stood waiting against them. They were waiting for a
scream.... Surely it would be soon.
The night suddenly seemed full of movement. She held her breath.
Things were passing—one, two, three—subtly sneaking shadows.... Jackals.
Then a long waiting again.
Then, asserting itself as real at once over all the sounds her mind had
imagined, came a stir in the thicket, then a vigorous movement. There was a
snap. The reeds crashed heavily, once, twice, thrice, and then everything
was still save a measured swishing. She heard a low tremulous growl, and
then everything was still again. The stillness lengthened—would it never
end? She held her breath; she bit her lips to stop screaming. Then something
scuttled through the undergrowth. Her scream was involuntary. She did not
hear the answering yell from the mound.
Immediately the thicket woke up to vigorous movement again. She saw
the grass stems waving in the light of the setting moon, the alders swaying.
She struggled violently—her last struggle. But nothing came towards her. A
dozen monsters seemed rushing about in that little place for a couple of
minutes, and then again came silence. The moon sank behind the distant
chestnuts and the night was dark.
Then an odd sound, a sobbing panting, that grew faster and fainter. Yet
another silence, and then dim sounds and the grunting of some animal.
Everything was still again. Far away eastwards an elephant trumpeted,
and from the woods came a snarling and yelping that died away.
In the long interval the moon shone out again, between the stems of the
trees on the ridge, sending two great bars of light and a bar of darkness
across the reedy waste. Then came a steady rustling, a splash, and the reeds
swayed wider and wider apart. And at last they broke open, cleft from root
to crest.... The end had come.

She looked to see the thing that had come out of the reeds. For a moment
it seemed certainly the great head and jaw she expected, and then it
dwindled and changed. It was a dark low thing, that remained silent, but it
was not the lion. It became still—everything became still. She peered. It
was like some gigantic frog, two limbs and a slanting body. Its head moved
about searching the shadows....
A rustle, and it moved clumsily, with a sort of hopping. And as it moved
it gave a low groan.
The blood rushing through her veins was suddenly joy. "Ugh-lomi!" she
whispered.
The thing stopped. "Eudena," he answered softly with pain in his voice,
and peering into the alders.
He moved again, and came out of the shadow beyond the reeds into the
moonlight. All his body was covered with dark smears. She saw he was
dragging his legs, and that he gripped his axe, the first axe, in one hand. In
another moment he had struggled into the position of all fours, and had
staggered over to her. "The lion," he said in a strange mingling of exultation
and anguish. "Wau!—I have slain a lion. With my own hand. Even as I slew
the great bear." He moved to emphasise his words, and suddenly broke off
with a faint cry. For a space he did not move.
"Let me free," whispered Eudena....
He answered her no words but pulled himself up from his crawling
attitude by means of the alder stem, and hacked at her thongs with the sharp
edge of his axe. She heard him sob at each blow. He cut away the thongs
about her chest and arms, and then his hand dropped. His chest struck
against her shoulder and he slipped down beside her and lay still.
But the rest of her release was easy. Very hastily she freed herself. She
made one step from the tree, and her head was spinning. Her last conscious
movement was towards him. She reeled, and dropped. Her hand fell upon
his thigh. It was soft and wet, and gave way under her pressure; he cried out
at her touch, and writhed and lay still again.

Presently a dark dog-like shape came very softly through the reeds. Then
stopped dead and stood sniffing, hesitated, and at last turned and slunk back
into the shadows.
Long was the time they remained there motionless, with the light of the
setting moon shining on their limbs. Very slowly, as slowly as the setting of
the moon, did the shadow of the reeds towards the mound flow over them.
Presently their legs were hidden, and Ugh-lomi was but a bust of silver. The
shadow crept to his neck, crept over his face, and so at last the darkness of
the night swallowed them up.
The shadow became full of instinctive stirrings. There was a patter of
feet, and a faint snarling—the sound of a blow.

There was little sleep that night for the women and children at the
squatting-place until they heard Eudena scream. But the men were weary
and sat dozing. When Eudena screamed they felt assured of their safety, and
hurried to get the nearest places to the fires. The old woman laughed at the
scream, and laughed again because Si, the little friend of Eudena,
whimpered. Directly the dawn came they were all alert and looking towards
the alders. They could see that Eudena had been taken. They could not help
feeling glad to think that Uya was appeased. But across the minds of the
men the thought of Ugh-lomi fell like a shadow. They could understand
revenge, for the world was old in revenge, but they did not think of rescue.
Suddenly a hyæna fled out of the thicket, and came galloping across the
reed space. His muzzle and paws were dark-stained. At that sight all the
men shouted and clutched at throwing-stones and ran towards him, for no
animal is so pitiful a coward as the hyæna by day. All men hated the hyæna
because he preyed on children, and would come and bite when one was
sleeping on the edge of the squatting-place. And Cat's-skin, throwing fair
and straight, hit the brute shrewdly on the flank, whereat the whole tribe
yelled with delight.
At the noise they made there came a flapping of wings from the lair of
the lion, and three white-headed vultures rose slowly and circled and came
to rest amidst the branches of an alder, overlooking the lair. "Our lord is
abroad," said the old woman, pointing. "The vultures have their share of

Eudena." For a space they remained there, and then first one and then
another dropped back into the thicket.
Then over the eastern woods, and touching the whole world to life and
colour, poured, with the exaltation of a trumpet blast, the light of the rising
sun. At the sight of him the children shouted together, and clapped their
hands and began to race off towards the water. Only little Si lagged behind
and looked wonderingly at the alders where she had seen the head of
Eudena overnight.
But Uya, the old lion, was not abroad, but at home, and he lay very still,
and a little on one side. He was not in his lair, but a little way from it in a
place of trampled grass. Under one eye was a little wound, the feeble little
bite of the first axe. But all the ground beneath his chest was ruddy brown
with a vivid streak, and in his chest was a little hole that had been made by
Ugh-lomi's stabbing-spear. Along his side and at his neck the vultures had
marked their claims. For so Ugh-lomi had slain him, lying stricken under
his paw and thrusting haphazard at his chest. He had driven the spear in
with all his strength and stabbed the giant to the heart. So it was the reign of
the lion, of the second incarnation of Uya the Master, came to an end.
From the knoll the bustle of preparation grew, the hacking of spears and
throwing-stones. None spake the name of Ugh-lomi for fear that it might
bring him. The men were going to keep together, close together, in the
hunting for a day or so. And their hunting was to be Ugh-lomi, lest instead
he should come a-hunting them.
But Ugh-lomi was lying very still and silent, outside the lion's lair, and
Eudena squatted beside him, with the ash spear, all smeared with lion's
blood, gripped in her hand.

V—THE FIGHT IN THE LION'S THICKET

Ugh-lomi lay still, his back against an alder, and his thigh was a red mass
terrible to see. No civilised man could have lived who had been so sorely
wounded, but Eudena got him thorns to close his wounds, and squatted
beside him day and night, smiting the flies from him with a fan of reeds by

day, and in the night threatening the hyænas with the first axe in her hand;
and in a little while he began to heal. It was high summer, and there was no
rain. Little food they had during the first two days his wounds were open. In
the low place where they hid were no roots nor little beasts, and the stream,
with its water-snails and fish, was in the open a hundred yards away. She
could not go abroad by day for fear of the tribe, her brothers and sisters, nor
by night for fear of the beasts, both on his account and hers. So they shared
the lion with the vultures. But there was a trickle of water near by, and
Eudena brought him plenty in her hands.
Where Ugh-lomi lay was well hidden from the tribe by a thicket of
alders, and all fenced about with bulrushes and tall reeds. The dead lion he
had killed lay near his old lair on a place of trampled reeds fifty yards away,
in sight through the reed-stems, and the vultures fought each other for the
choicest pieces and kept the jackals off him. Very soon a cloud of flies that
looked like bees hung over him, and Ugh-lomi could hear their humming.
And when Ugh-lomi's flesh was already healing—and it was not many days
before that began—only a few bones of the lion remained scattered and
shining white.
For the most part Ugh-lomi sat still during the day, looking before him at
nothing, sometimes he would mutter of the horses and bears and lions, and
sometimes he would beat the ground with the first axe and say the names of
the tribe—he seemed to have no fear of bringing the tribe—for hours
together. But chiefly he slept, dreaming little because of his loss of blood
and the slightness of his food. During the short summer night both kept
awake. All the while the darkness lasted things moved about them, things
they never saw by day. For some nights the hyænas did not come, and then
one moonless night near a dozen came and fought for what was left of the
lion. The night was a tumult of growling, and Ugh-lomi and Eudena could
hear the bones snap in their teeth. But they knew the hyæna dare not attack
any creature alive and awake, and so they were not greatly afraid.
Of a daytime Eudena would go along the narrow path the old lion had
made in the reeds until she was beyond the bend, and then she would creep
into the thicket and watch the tribe. She would lie close by the alders where
they had bound her to offer her up to the lion, and thence she could see
them on the knoll by the fire, small and clear, as she had seen them that

night. But she told Ugh-lomi little of what she saw, because she feared to
bring them by their names. For so they believed in those days, that naming
called.
She saw the men prepare stabbing-spears and throwing-stones on the
morning after Ugh-lomi had slain the lion, and go out to hunt him, leaving
the women and children on the knoll. Little they knew how near he was as
they tracked off in single file towards the hills, with Siss the Tracker leading
them. And she watched the women and children, after the men had gone,
gathering fern-fronds and twigs for the night fire, and the boys and girls
running and playing together. But the very old woman made her feel afraid.
Towards noon, when most of the others were down at the stream by the
bend, she came and stood on the hither side of the knoll, a gnarled brown
figure, and gesticulated so that Eudena could scarce believe she was not
seen. Eudena lay like a hare in its form, with shining eyes fixed on the bent
witch away there, and presently she dimly understood it was the lion the old
woman was worshipping—the lion Ugh-lomi had slain.
And the next day the hunters came back weary, carrying a fawn, and
Eudena watched the feast enviously. And then came a strange thing. She
saw—distinctly she heard—the old woman shrieking and gesticulating and
pointing towards her. She was afraid, and crept like a snake out of sight
again. But presently curiosity overcame her and she was back at her spying-
place, and as she peered her heart stopped, for there were all the men, with
their weapons in their hands, walking together towards her from the knoll.
She dared not move lest her movement should be seen, but she pressed
herself close to the ground. The sun was low and the golden light was in the
faces of the men. She saw they carried a piece of rich red meat thrust
through by an ashen stake. Presently they stopped. "Go on!" screamed the
old woman. Cat's-skin grumbled, and they came on, searching the thicket
with sun-dazzled eyes. "Here!" said Siss. And they took the ashen stake
with the meat upon it and thrust it into the ground. "Uya!" cried Siss,
"behold thy portion. And Ugh-lomi we have slain. Of a truth we have slain
Ugh-lomi. This day we slew Ugh-lomi, and to-morrow we will bring his
body to you." And the others repeated the words.

They looked at each other and behind them, and partly turned and began
going back. At first they walked half turned to the thicket, then facing the
mound they walked faster looking over their shoulders, then faster; soon
they ran, it was a race at last, until they were near the knoll. Then Siss who
was hindmost was first to slacken his pace.
The sunset passed and the twilight came, the fires glowed red against the
hazy blue of the distant chestnut-trees, and the voices over the mound were
merry. Eudena lay scarcely stirring, looking from the mound to the meat
and then to the mound. She was hungry, but she was afraid. At last she crept
back to Ugh-lomi.
He looked round at the little rustle of her approach. His face was in
shadow. "Have you got me some food?" he said.
She said she could find nothing, but that she would seek further, and
went back along the lion's path until she could see the mound again, but she
could not bring herself to take the meat; she had the brute's instinct of a
snare. She felt very miserable.
She crept back at last towards Ugh-lomi and heard him stirring and
moaning. She turned back to the mound again; then she saw something in
the darkness near the stake, and peering distinguished a jackal. In a flash
she was brave and angry; she sprang up, cried out, and ran towards the
offering. She stumbled and fell, and heard the growling of the jackal going
off.
When she arose only the ashen stake lay on the ground, the meat was
gone. So she went back, to fast through the night with Ugh-lomi; and Ugh-
lomi was angry with her, because she had no food for him; but she told him
nothing of the things she had seen.
Two days passed and they were near starving, when the tribe slew a
horse. Then came the same ceremony, and a haunch was left on the ashen
stake; but this time Eudena did not hesitate.
By acting and words she made Ugh-lomi understand, but he ate most of
the food before he understood; and then as her meaning passed to him he
grew merry with his food. "I am Uya," he said; "I am the Lion. I am the

Great Cave Bear, I who was only Ugh-lomi. I am Wau the Cunning. It is
well that they should feed me, for presently I will kill them all."
Then Eudena's heart was light, and she laughed with him; and afterwards
she ate what he had left of the horseflesh with gladness.
After that it was he had a dream, and the next day he made Eudena bring
him the lion's teeth and claws—so much of them as she could find—and
hack him a club of alder. And he put the teeth and claws very cunningly into
the wood so that the points were outward. Very long it took him, and he
blunted two of the teeth hammering them in, and was very angry and threw
the thing away; but afterwards he dragged himself to where he had thrown
it and finished it—a club of a new sort set with teeth. That day there was
more meat for them both, an offering to the lion from the tribe.
It was one day—more than a hand's fingers of days, more than anyone
had skill to count—after Ugh-lomi had made the club, that Eudena while he
was asleep was lying in the thicket watching the squatting-place. There had
been no meat for three days. And the old woman came and worshipped after
her manner. Now while she worshipped, Eudena's little friend Si and
another, the child of the first girl Siss had loved, came over the knoll and
stood regarding her skinny figure, and presently they began to mock her.
Eudena found this entertaining, but suddenly the old woman turned on them
quickly and saw them. For a moment she stood and they stood motionless,
and then with a shriek of rage, she rushed towards them, and all three
disappeared over the crest of the knoll.
Presently the children reappeared among the ferns beyond the shoulder of
the hill. Little Si ran first, for she was an active girl, and the other child ran
squealing with the old woman close upon her. And over the knoll came Siss
with a bone in his hand, and Bo and Cat's-skin obsequiously behind him,
each holding a piece of food, and they laughed aloud and shouted to see the
old woman so angry. And with a shriek the child was caught and the old
woman set to work slapping and the child screaming, and it was very good
after-dinner fun for them. Little Si ran on a little way and stopped at last
between fear and curiosity.
And suddenly came the mother of the child, with hair streaming, panting,
and with a stone in her hand, and the old woman turned about like a wild

cat. She was the equal of any woman, was the chief of the fire-minders, in
spite of her years; but before she could do anything Siss shouted to her and
the clamour rose loud. Other shock heads came into sight. It seemed the
whole tribe was at home and feasting. But the old woman dared not go on
wreaking herself on the child Siss befriended.
Everyone made noises and called names—even little Si. Abruptly the old
woman let go of the child she had caught and made a swift run at Si for Si
had no friends; and Si, realising her danger when it was almost upon her,
made off headlong, with a faint cry of terror, not heeding whither she ran,
straight to the lair of the lion. She swerved aside into the reeds presently,
realising now whither she went.
But the old woman was a wonderful old woman, as active as she was
spiteful, and she caught Si by the streaming hair within thirty yards of
Eudena. All the tribe now was running down the knoll and shouting and
laughing ready to see the fun.
Then something stirred in Eudena; something that had never stirred in her
before; and, thinking all of little Si and nothing of her fear, she sprang up
from her ambush and ran swiftly forward. The old woman did not see her,
for she was busy beating little Si's face with her hand, beating with all her
heart, and suddenly something hard and heavy struck her cheek. She went
reeling, and saw Eudena with flaming eyes and cheeks between her and
little Si. She shrieked with astonishment and terror, and little Si, not
understanding, set off towards the gaping tribe. They were quite close now,
for the sight of Eudena had driven their fading fear of the lion out of their
heads.
In a moment Eudena had turned from the cowering old woman and
overtaken Si. "Si!" she cried, "Si!" She caught the child up in her arms as it
stopped, pressed the nail-lined face to hers, and turned about to run towards
her lair, the lair of the old lion. The old woman stood waist-high in the
reeds, and screamed foul things and inarticulate rage, but did not dare to
intercept her; and at the bend of the path Eudena looked back and saw all
the men of the tribe crying to one another and Siss coming at a trot along
the lion's trail.

She ran straight along the narrow way through the reeds to the shady
place where Ugh-lomi sat with his healing thigh, just awakened by the
shouting and rubbing his eyes. She came to him, a woman, with little Si in
her arms. Her heart throbbed in her throat. "Ugh-lomi!" she cried, "Ugh-
lomi, the tribe comes!"
Ugh-lomi sat staring in stupid astonishment at her and Si.
She pointed with Si in one arm. She sought among her feeble store of
words to explain. She could hear the men calling. Apparently they had
stopped outside. She put down Si and caught up the new club with the lion's
teeth, and put it into Ugh-lomi's hand, and ran three yards and picked up the
first axe.
"Ah!" said Ugh-lomi, waving the new club, and suddenly he perceived
the occasion and, rolling over, began to struggle to his feet.
He stood but clumsily. He supported himself by one hand against the
tree, and just touched the ground gingerly with the toe of his wounded leg.
In the other hand he gripped the new club. He looked at his healing thigh;
and suddenly the reeds began whispering, and ceased and whispered again,
and coming cautiously along the track, bending down and holding his fire-
hardened stabbing-stick of ash in his hand, appeared Siss. He stopped dead,
and his eyes met Ugh-lomi's.
Ugh-lomi forgot he had a wounded leg. He stood firmly on both feet.
Something trickled. He glanced down and saw a little gout of blood had
oozed out along the edge of the healing wound. He rubbed his hand there to
give him the grip of his club, and fixed his eyes again on Siss.
"Wau!" he cried, and sprang forward, and Siss, still stooping and
watchful, drove his stabbing-stick up very quickly in an ugly thrust. It
ripped Ugh-lomi's guarding arm and the club came down in a counter that
Siss was never to understand. He fell, as an ox falls to the pole-axe, at Ugh-
lomi's feet.
To Bo it seemed the strangest thing. He had a comforting sense of tall
reeds on either side, and an impregnable rampart, Siss, between him and
any danger. Snail-eater was close behind and there was no danger there. He
was prepared to shove behind and send Siss to death or victory. That was

his place as second man. He saw the butt of the spear Siss carried leap away
from him, and suddenly a dull whack and the broad back fell away forward,
and he looked Ugh-lomi in the face over his prostrate leader. It felt to Bo as
if his heart had fallen down a well. He had a throwing-stone in one hand
and an ashen stabbing-stick in the other. He did not live to the end of his
momentary hesitation which to use.
Snail-eater was a readier man, and besides Bo did not fall forward as Siss
had done, but gave at his knees and hips, crumpling up with the toothed
club upon his head. The Snail-eater drove his spear forward swift and
straight, and took Ugh-lomi in the muscle of the shoulder, and then he
drove him hard with the smiting-stone in his other hand, shouting out as he
did so. The new club swished ineffectually through the reeds. Eudena saw
Ugh-lomi come staggering back from the narrow path into the open space,
tripping over Siss and with a foot of ashen stake sticking out of him over his
arm. And then the Snail-eater, whose name she had given, had his final
injury from her, as his exultant face came out of the reeds after his spear.
For she swung the first axe swift and high, and hit him fair and square on
the temple; and down he went on Siss at prostrate Ugh-lomi's feet.
But before Ugh-lomi could get up, the two red-haired men were tumbling
out of the reeds, spears and smiting-stones ready, and Snake hard behind
them. One she struck on the neck, but not to fell him, and he blundered
aside and spoilt his brother's blow at Ugh-lomi's head. In a moment Ugh-
lomi dropped his club and had his assailant by the waist, and had pitched
him sideways sprawling. He snatched at his club again and recovered it.
The man Eudena had hit stabbed at her with his spear as he stumbled from
her blow, and involuntarily she gave ground to avoid him. He hesitated
between her and Ugh-lomi, half turned, gave a vague cry at finding Ugh-
lomi so near, and in a moment Ugh-lomi had him by the throat, and the club
had its third victim. As he went down Ugh-lomi shouted—no words, but an
exultant cry.
The other red-haired man was six feet from her with his back to her, and
a darker red streaking his head. He was struggling to his feet. She had an
irrational impulse to stop his rising. She flung the axe at him, missed, saw
his face in profile, and he had swerved beyond little Si, and was running
through the reeds. She had a transitory vision of Snake standing in the

throat of the path, half turned away from her, and then she saw his back.
She saw the club whirling through the air, and the shock head of Ugh-lomi,
with blood in the hair and blood upon the shoulder, vanishing below the
reeds in pursuit. Then she heard Snake scream like a woman.
She ran past Si to where the handle of the axe stuck out of a clump of
fern, and turning, found herself panting and alone with three motionless
bodies. The air was full of shouts and screams. For a space she was sick and
giddy, and then it came into her head that Ugh-lomi was being killed along
the reed-path, and with an inarticulate cry she leapt over the body of Bo and
hurried after him. Snake's feet lay across the path, and his head was among
the reeds. She followed the path until it bent round and opened out by the
alders, and thence she saw all that was left of the tribe in the open,
scattering like dead leaves before a gale, and going back over the knoll.
Ugh-lomi was hard upon Cat's-skin.
But Cat's-skin was fleet of foot and got away, and so did young Wau-Hau
when Ugh-lomi turned upon him, and Ugh-lomi pursued Wau-Hau far
beyond the knoll before he desisted. He had the rage of battle on him now,
and the wood thrust through his shoulder stung him like a spur. When she
saw he was in no danger she stopped running and stood panting, watching
the distant active figures run up and vanish one by one over the knoll. In a
little time she was alone again. Everything had happened very swiftly. The
smoke of Brother Fire rose straight and steady from the squatting-place, just
as it had done ten minutes ago, when the old woman had stood yonder
worshipping the lion.
And after a long time, as it seemed, Ugh-lomi reappeared over the knoll,
and came back to Eudena, triumphant and breathing heavily. She stood, her
hair about her eyes and hot-faced, with the blood-stained axe in her hand, at
the place where the tribe had offered her as a sacrifice to the lion. "Wau!"
cried Ugh-lomi at the sight of her, his face alight with the fellowship of
battle, and he waved his new club, red now and hairy; and at the sight of his
glowing face her tense pose relaxed somewhat, and she stood sobbing and
rejoicing.
Ugh-lomi had a queer unaccountable pang at the sight of her tears; but he
only shouted "Wau!" the louder and shook the axe east and west. He called

manfully to her to follow him and turned back, striding, with the club
swinging in his hand, towards the squatting-place, as if he had never left the
tribe; and she ceased her weeping and followed quickly as a woman should.
So Ugh-lomi and Eudena came back to the squatting-place from which
they had fled many days before from the face of Uya; and by the squatting-
place lay a deer half eaten, just as there had been before Ugh-lomi was man
or Eudena woman. So Ugh-lomi sat down to eat, and Eudena beside him
like a man, and the rest of the tribe watched them from safe hiding-places.
And after a time one of the elder girls came back timorously, carrying little
Si in her arms, and Eudena called to them by name, and offered them food.
But the elder girl was afraid and would not come, though Si struggled to
come to Eudena. Afterwards, when Ugh-lomi had eaten, he sat dozing, and
at last he slept, and slowly the others came out of the hiding-places and
drew near. And when Ugh-lomi woke, save that there were no men to be
seen, it seemed as though he had never left the tribe.
Now, there is a thing strange but true: that all through this fight Ugh-lomi
forgot that he was lame, and was not lame, and after he had rested behold!
he was a lame man; and he remained a lame man to the end of his days.
Cat's-skin and the second red-haired man and Wau-Hau, who chipped
flints cunningly, as his father had done before him, fled from the face of
Ugh-lomi, and none knew where they hid. But two days after they came and
squatted a good way off from the knoll among the bracken under the
chestnuts and watched. Ugh-lomi's rage had gone, he moved to go against
them and did not, and at sundown they went away. That day, too, they found
the old woman among the ferns, where Ugh-lomi had blundered upon her
when he had pursued Wau-Hau. She was dead and more ugly than ever, but
whole. The jackals and vultures had tried her and left her;—she was ever a
wonderful old woman.
The next day the three men came again and squatted nearer, and Wau-
Hau had two rabbits to hold up, and the red-haired man a wood-pigeon, and
Ugh-lomi stood before the women and mocked them.
The next day they sat again nearer—without stones or sticks, and with
the same offerings, and Cat's-skin had a trout. It was rare men caught fish in
those days, but Cat's-skin would stand silently in the water for hours and

catch them with his hand. And the fourth day Ugh-lomi suffered these three
to come to the squatting-place in peace, with the food they had with them.
Ugh-lomi ate the trout. Thereafter for many moons Ugh-lomi was master
and had his will in peace. And on the fulness of time he was killed and
eaten even as Uya had been slain.

A Story of the Days to Come

A STORY OF THE DAYS TO COME

I—THE CURE FOR LOVE

The excellent Mr. Morris was an Englishman, and he lived in the days of
Queen Victoria the Good. He was a prosperous and very sensible man; he
read the Times and went to church, and as he grew towards middle age an
expression of quiet contented contempt for all who were not as himself
settled on his face. He was one of those people who do everything that is
right and proper and sensible with inevitable regularity. He always wore
just the right and proper clothes, steering the narrow way between the smart
and the shabby, always subscribed to the right charities, just the judicious
compromise between ostentation and meanness, and never failed to have his
hair cut to exactly the proper length.
Everything that it was right and proper for a man in his position to
possess, he possessed; and everything that it was not right and proper for a
man in his position to possess, he did not possess.
And among other right and proper possessions, this Mr. Morris had a
wife and children. They were the right sort of wife, and the right sort and
number of children, of course; nothing imaginative or highty-flighty about
any of them, so far as Mr. Morris could see; they wore perfectly correct
clothing, neither smart nor hygienic nor faddy in any way, but just sensible;
and they lived in a nice sensible house in the later Victorian sham Queen
Anne style of architecture, with sham half-timbering of chocolate-painted
plaster in the gables, Lincrusta Walton sham carved oak panels, a terrace of
terra cotta to imitate stone, and cathedral glass in the front door. His boys
went to good solid schools, and were put to respectable professions; his
girls, in spite of a fantastic protest or so, were all married to suitable, steady,
oldish young men with good prospects. And when it was a fit and proper
thing for him to do so, Mr. Morris died. His tomb was of marble, and,
without any art nonsense or laudatory inscription, quietly imposing—such
being the fashion of his time.

He underwent various changes according to the accepted custom in these
cases, and long before this story begins his bones even had become dust,
and were scattered to the four quarters of heaven. And his sons and his
grandsons and his great-grandsons and his great-great-grandsons, they too
were dust and ashes, and were scattered likewise. It was a thing he could
not have imagined, that a day would come when even his great-great-
grandsons would be scattered to the four winds of heaven. If any one had
suggested it to him he would have resented it. He was one of those worthy
people who take no interest in the future of mankind at all. He had grave
doubts, indeed, if there was any future for mankind after he was dead.
It seemed quite impossible and quite uninteresting to imagine anything
happening after he was dead. Yet the thing was so, and when even his great-
great-grandson was dead and decayed and forgotten, when the sham half-
timbered house had gone the way of all shams, and the Times was extinct,
and the silk hat a ridiculous antiquity, and the modestly imposing stone that
had been sacred to Mr. Morris had been burnt to make lime for mortar, and
all that Mr. Morris had found real and important was sere and dead, the
world was still going on, and people were still going about it, just as
heedless and impatient of the Future, or, indeed, of anything but their own
selves and property, as Mr. Morris had been.
And, strange to tell, and much as Mr. Morris would have been angered if
any one had foreshadowed it to him, all over the world there were scattered
a multitude of people, filled with the breath of life, in whose veins the blood
of Mr. Morris flowed. Just as some day the life which is gathered now in the
reader of this very story may also be scattered far and wide about this
world, and mingled with a thousand alien strains, beyond all thought and
tracing.
And among the descendants of this Mr. Morris was one almost as
sensible and clear-headed as his ancestor. He had just the same stout, short
frame as that ancient man of the nineteenth century, from whom his name
of Morris—he spelt it Mwres—came; he had the same half-contemptuous
expression of face. He was a prosperous person, too, as times went, and he
disliked the "new-fangled," and bothers about the future and the lower
classes, just as much as the ancestral Morris had done. He did not read the
Times: indeed, he did not know there ever had been a Times—that

institution had foundered somewhere in the intervening gulf of years; but
the phonograph machine, that talked to him as he made his toilet of a
morning, might have been the voice of a reincarnated Blowitz when it dealt
with the world's affairs. This phonographic machine was the size and shape
of a Dutch clock, and down the front of it were electric barometric
indicators, and an electric clock and calendar, and automatic engagement
reminders, and where the clock would have been was the mouth of a
trumpet. When it had news the trumpet gobbled like a turkey, "Galloop,
galloop," and then brayed out its message as, let us say, a trumpet might
bray. It would tell Mwres in full, rich, throaty tones about the overnight
accidents to the omnibus flying-machines that plied around the world, the
latest arrivals at the fashionable resorts in Tibet, and of all the great
monopolist company meetings of the day before, while he was dressing. If
Mwres did not like hearing what it said, he had only to touch a stud, and it
would choke a little and talk about something else.
Of course his toilet differed very much from that of his ancestor. It is
doubtful which would have been the more shocked and pained to find
himself in the clothing of the other. Mwres would certainly have sooner
gone forth to the world stark naked than in the silk hat, frock coat, grey
trousers and watch-chain that had filled Mr. Morris with sombre self-respect
in the past. For Mwres there was no shaving to do: a skilful operator had
long ago removed every hair-root from his face. His legs he encased in
pleasant pink and amber garments of an air-tight material, which with the
help of an ingenious little pump he distended so as to suggest enormous
muscles. Above this he also wore pneumatic garments beneath an amber
silk tunic, so that he was clothed in air and admirably protected against
sudden extremes of heat or cold. Over this he flung a scarlet cloak with its
edge fantastically curved. On his head, which had been skilfully deprived of
every scrap of hair, he adjusted a pleasant little cap of bright scarlet, held on
by suction and inflated with hydrogen, and curiously like the comb of a
cock. So his toilet was complete; and, conscious of being soberly and
becomingly attired, he was ready to face his fellow-beings with a tranquil
eye.
This Mwres—the civility of "Mr." had vanished ages ago—was one of
the officials under the Wind Vane and Waterfall Trust, the great company
that owned every wind wheel and waterfall in the world, and which pumped

all the water and supplied all the electric energy that people in these latter
days required. He lived in a vast hotel near that part of London called
Seventh Way, and had very large and comfortable apartments on the
seventeenth floor. Households and family life had long since disappeared
with the progressive refinement of manners; and indeed the steady rise in
rents and land values, the disappearance of domestic servants, the
elaboration of cookery, had rendered the separate domicile of Victorian
times impossible, even had any one desired such a savage seclusion. When
his toilet was completed he went towards one of the two doors of his
apartment—there were doors at opposite ends, each marked with a huge
arrow pointing one one way and one the other—touched a stud to open it,
and emerged on a wide passage, the centre of which bore chairs and was
moving at a steady pace to the left. On some of these chairs were seated
gaily-dressed men and women. He nodded to an acquaintance—it was not
in those days etiquette to talk before breakfast—and seated himself on one
of these chairs, and in a few seconds he had been carried to the doors of a
lift, by which he descended to the great and splendid hall in which his
breakfast would be automatically served.
It was a very different meal from a Victorian breakfast. The rude masses
of bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they
could be made palatable, the still recognisable fragments of recently killed
animals, hideously charred and hacked, the eggs torn ruthlessly from
beneath some protesting hen,—such things as these, though they constituted
the ordinary fare of Victorian times, would have awakened only horror and
disgust in the refined minds of the people of these latter days. Instead were
pastes and cakes of agreeable and variegated design, without any suggestion
in colour or form of the unfortunate animals from which their substance and
juices were derived. They appeared on little dishes sliding out upon a rail
from a little box at one side of the table. The surface of the table, to judge
by touch and eye, would have appeared to a nineteenth-century person to be
covered with fine white damask, but this was really an oxidised metallic
surface, and could be cleaned instantly after a meal. There were hundreds of
such little tables in the hall, and at most of them were other latter-day
citizens singly or in groups. And as Mwres seated himself before his elegant
repast, the invisible orchestra, which had been resting during an interval,
resumed and filled the air with music.

But Mwres did not display any great interest either in his breakfast or the
music; his eye wandered incessantly about the hall, as though he expected a
belated guest. At last he rose eagerly and waved his hand, and
simultaneously across the hall appeared a tall dark figure in a costume of
yellow and olive green. As this person, walking amidst the tables with
measured steps, drew near, the pallid earnestness of his face and the unusual
intensity of his eyes became apparent. Mwres reseated himself and pointed
to a chair beside him.
"I feared you would never come," he said. In spite of the intervening
space of time, the English language was still almost exactly the same as it
had been in England under Victoria the Good. The invention of the
phonograph and suchlike means of recording sound, and the gradual
replacement of books by such contrivances, had not only saved the human
eyesight from decay, but had also by the establishment of a sure standard
arrested the process of change in accent that had hitherto been so inevitable.
"I was delayed by an interesting case," said the man in green and yellow.
"A prominent politician—ahem!—suffering from overwork." He glanced at
the breakfast and seated himself. "I have been awake for forty hours."
"Eh dear!" said Mwres: "fancy that! You hypnotists have your work to
do."
The hypnotist helped himself to some attractive amber-coloured jelly. "I
happen to be a good deal in request," he said modestly.
"Heaven knows what we should do without you."
"Oh! we're not so indispensable as all that," said the hypnotist,
ruminating the flavour of the jelly. "The world did very well without us for
some thousands of years. Two hundred years ago even—not one! In
practice, that is. Physicians by the thousand, of course—frightfully clumsy
brutes for the most part, and following one another like sheep—but doctors
of the mind, except a few empirical flounderers there were none."
He concentrated his mind on the jelly.
"But were people so sane—?" began Mwres.

The hypnotist shook his head. "It didn't matter then if they were a bit silly
or faddy. Life was so easy-going then. No competition worth speaking of—
no pressure. A human being had to be very lopsided before anything
happened. Then, you know, they clapped 'em away in what they called a
lunatic asylum."
"I know," said Mwres. "In these confounded historical romances that
every one is listening to, they always rescue a beautiful girl from an asylum
or something of the sort. I don't know if you attend to that rubbish."
"I must confess I do," said the hypnotist. "It carries one out of oneself to
hear of those quaint, adventurous, half-civilised days of the nineteenth
century, when men were stout and women simple. I like a good swaggering
story before all things. Curious times they were, with their smutty railways
and puffing old iron trains, their rum little houses and their horse vehicles. I
suppose you don't read books?"
"Dear, no!" said Mwres, "I went to a modern school and we had none of
that old-fashioned nonsense. Phonographs are good enough for me."
"Of course," said the hypnotist, "of course"; and surveyed the table for
his next choice. "You know," he said, helping himself to a dark blue
confection that promised well, "in those days our business was scarcely
thought of. I daresay if any one had told them that in two hundred years'
time a class of men would be entirely occupied in impressing things upon
the memory, effacing unpleasant ideas, controlling and overcoming
instinctive but undesirable impulses, and so forth, by means of hypnotism,
they would have refused to believe the thing possible. Few people knew
that an order made during a mesmeric trance, even an order to forget or an
order to desire, could be given so as to be obeyed after the trance was over.
Yet there were men alive then who could have told them the thing was as
absolutely certain to come about as—well, the transit of Venus."
"They knew of hypnotism, then?"
"Oh, dear, yes! They used it—for painless dentistry and things like that!
This blue stuff is confoundedly good: what is it?"
"Haven't the faintest idea," said Mwres, "but I admit it's very good. Take
some more."

The hypnotist repeated his praises, and there was an appreciative pause.
"Speaking of these historical romances," said Mwres, with an attempt at
an easy, off-hand manner, "brings me—ah—to the matter I—ah—had in
mind when I asked you—when I expressed a wish to see you." He paused
and took a deep breath.
The hypnotist turned an attentive eye upon him, and continued eating.
"The fact is," said Mwres, "I have a—in fact a—daughter. Well, you
know I have given her—ah—every educational advantage. Lectures—not a
solitary lecturer of ability in the world but she has had a telephone direct,
dancing, deportment, conversation, philosophy, art criticism ..." He
indicated catholic culture by a gesture of his hand. "I had intended her to
marry a very good friend of mine—Bindon of the Lighting Commission—
plain little man, you know, and a bit unpleasant in some of his ways, but an
excellent fellow really—an excellent fellow."
"Yes," said the hypnotist, "go on. How old is she?"
"Eighteen."
"A dangerous age. Well?"
"Well: it seems that she has been indulging in these historical romances
—excessively. Excessively. Even to the neglect of her philosophy. Filled
her mind with unutterable nonsense about soldiers who fight—what is it?—
Etruscans?"
"Egyptians."
"Egyptians—very probably. Hack about with swords and revolvers and
things—bloodshed galore—horrible!—and about young men on torpedo
catchers who blow up—Spaniards, I fancy—and all sorts of irregular
adventurers. And she has got it into her head that she must marry for Love,
and that poor little Bindon—"
"I've met similar cases," said the hypnotist. "Who is the other young
man?"

Mwres maintained an appearance of resigned calm. "You may well ask,"
he said. "He is"—and his voice sank with shame—"a mere attendant upon
the stage on which the flying-machines from Paris alight. He has—as they
say in the romances—good looks. He is quite young and very eccentric.
Affects the antique—he can read and write! So can she. And instead of
communicating by telephone, like sensible people, they write and deliver—
what is it?"
"Notes?"
"No—not notes.... Ah—poems."
The hypnotist raised his eyebrows. "How did she meet him?"
"Tripped coming down from the flying-machine from Paris—and fell
into his arms. The mischief was done in a moment!"
"Yes?"
"Well—that's all. Things must be stopped. That is what I want to consult
you about. What must be done? What can be done? Of course I'm not a
hypnotist; my knowledge is limited. But you—?"
"Hypnotism is not magic," said the man in green, putting both arms on
the table.
"Oh, precisely! But still—!"
"People cannot be hypnotised without their consent. If she is able to
stand out against marrying Bindon, she will probably stand out against
being hypnotised. But if once she can be hypnotised—even by somebody
else—the thing is done."
"You can—?"
"Oh, certainly! Once we get her amenable, then we can suggest that she
must marry Bindon—that that is her fate; or that the young man is
repulsive, and that when she sees him she will be giddy and faint, or any
little thing of that sort. Or if we can get her into a sufficiently profound
trance we can suggest that she should forget him altogether—"

"Precisely."
"But the problem is to get her hypnotised. Of course no sort of proposal
or suggestion must come from you—because no doubt she already distrusts
you in the matter."
The hypnotist leant his head upon his arm and thought.
"It's hard a man cannot dispose of his own daughter," said Mwres
irrelevantly.
"You must give me the name and address of the young lady," said the
hypnotist, "and any information bearing upon the matter. And, by the bye, is
there any money in the affair?"
Mwres hesitated.
"There's a sum—in fact, a considerable sum—invested in the Patent
Road Company. From her mother. That's what makes the thing so
exasperating."
"Exactly," said the hypnotist. And he proceeded to cross-examine Mwres
on the entire affair.
It was a lengthy interview.
And meanwhile "Elizebeθ Mwres," as she spelt her name, or "Elizabeth
Morris" as a nineteenth-century person would have put it, was sitting in a
quiet waiting-place beneath the great stage upon which the flying-machine
from Paris descended. And beside her sat her slender, handsome lover
reading her the poem he had written that morning while on duty upon the
stage. When he had finished they sat for a time in silence; and then, as if for
their special entertainment, the great machine that had come flying through
the air from America that morning rushed down out of the sky.
At first it was a little oblong, faint and blue amidst the distant fleecy
clouds; and then it grew swiftly large and white, and larger and whiter, until
they could see the separate tiers of sails, each hundreds of feet wide, and the
lank body they supported, and at last even the swinging seats of the
passengers in a dotted row. Although it was falling it seemed to them to be
rushing up the sky, and over the roof-spaces of the city below its shadow

leapt towards them. They heard the whistling rush of the air about it and its
yelling siren, shrill and swelling, to warn those who were on its landing-
stage of its arrival. And abruptly the note fell down a couple of octaves, and
it had passed, and the sky was clear and void, and she could turn her sweet
eyes again to Denton at her side.
Their silence ended; and Denton, speaking in a little language of broken
English that was, they fancied, their private possession—though lovers have
used such little languages since the world began—told her how they too
would leap into the air one morning out of all the obstacles and difficulties
about them, and fly to a sunlit city of delight he knew of in Japan, half-way
about the world.
She loved the dream, but she feared the leap; and she put him off with
"Some day, dearest one, some day," to all his pleading that it might be soon;
and at last came a shrilling of whistles, and it was time for him to go back
to his duties on the stage. They parted—as lovers have been wont to part for
thousands of years. She walked down a passage to a lift, and so came to one
of the streets of that latter-day London, all glazed in with glass from the
weather, and with incessant moving platforms that went to all parts of the
city. And by one of these she returned to her apartments in the Hotel for
Women where she lived, the apartments that were in telephonic
communication with all the best lecturers in the world. But the sunlight of
the flying stage was in her heart, and the wisdom of all the best lecturers in
the world seemed folly in that light.
She spent the middle part of the day in the gymnasium, and took her
midday meal with two other girls and their common chaperone—for it was
still the custom to have a chaperone in the case of motherless girls of the
more prosperous classes. The chaperone had a visitor that day, a man in
green and yellow, with a white face and vivid eyes, who talked amazingly.
Among other things, he fell to praising a new historical romance that one of
the great popular story-tellers of the day had just put forth. It was, of course,
about the spacious times of Queen Victoria; and the author, among other
pleasing novelties, made a little argument before each section of the story,
in imitation of the chapter headings of the old-fashioned books: as for
example, "How the Cabmen of Pimlico stopped the Victoria Omnibuses,
and of the Great Fight in Palace Yard," and "How the Piccadilly Policeman

was slain in the midst of his Duty." The man in green and yellow praised
this innovation. "These pithy sentences," he said, "are admirable. They
show at a glance those headlong, tumultuous times, when men and animals
jostled in the filthy streets, and death might wait for one at every corner.
Life was life then! How great the world must have seemed then! How
marvellous! They were still parts of the world absolutely unexplored.
Nowadays we have almost abolished wonder, we lead lives so trim and
orderly that courage, endurance, faith, all the noble virtues seem fading
from mankind."
And so on, taking the girls' thoughts with him, until the life they led, life
in the vast and intricate London of the twenty-second century, a life
interspersed with soaring excursions to every part of the globe, seemed to
them a monotonous misery compared with the dædal past.
At first Elizabeth did not join in the conversation, but after a time the
subject became so interesting that she made a few shy interpolations. But he
scarcely seemed to notice her as he talked. He went on to describe a new
method of entertaining people. They were hypnotised, and then suggestions
were made to them so skilfully that they seemed to be living in ancient
times again. They played out a little romance in the past as vivid as reality,
and when at last they awakened they remembered all they had been through
as though it were a real thing.
"It is a thing we have sought to do for years and years," said the
hypnotist. "It is practically an artificial dream. And we know the way at last.
Think of all it opens out to us—the enrichment of our experience, the
recovery of adventure, the refuge it offers from this sordid, competitive life
in which we live! Think!"
"And you can do that!" said the chaperone eagerly.
"The thing is possible at last," the hypnotist said. "You may order a
dream as you wish."
The chaperone was the first to be hypnotised, and the dream, she said,
was wonderful, when she came to again.
The other two girls, encouraged by her enthusiasm, also placed
themselves in the hands of the hypnotist and had plunges into the romantic

past. No one suggested that Elizabeth should try this novel entertainment; it
was at her own request at last that she was taken into that land of dreams
where there is neither any freedom of choice nor will....
And so the mischief was done.
One day, when Denton went down to that quiet seat beneath the flying
stage, Elizabeth was not in her wonted place. He was disappointed, and a
little angry. The next day she did not come, and the next also. He was
afraid. To hide his fear from himself, he set to work to write sonnets for her
when she should come again....
For three days he fought against his dread by such distraction, and then
the truth was before him clear and cold, and would not be denied. She
might be ill, she might be dead; but he would not believe that he had been
betrayed. There followed a week of misery. And then he knew she was the
only thing on earth worth having, and that he must seek her, however
hopeless the search, until she was found once more.
He had some small private means of his own, and so he threw over his
appointment on the flying stage, and set himself to find this girl who had
become at last all the world to him. He did not know where she lived, and
little of her circumstances; for it had been part of the delight of her girlish
romance that he should know nothing of her, nothing of the difference of
their station. The ways of the city opened before him east and west, north
and south. Even in Victorian days London was a maze, that little London
with its poor four millions of people; but the London he explored, the
London of the twenty-second century, was a London of thirty million souls.
At first he was energetic and headlong, taking time neither to eat nor sleep.
He sought for weeks and months, he went through every imaginable phase
of fatigue and despair, over-excitement and anger. Long after hope was
dead, by the sheer inertia of his desire he still went to and fro, peering into
faces and looking this way and that, in the incessant ways and lifts and
passages of that interminable hive of men.
At last chance was kind to him, and he saw her.
It was in a time of festivity. He was hungry; he had paid the inclusive fee
and had gone into one of the gigantic dining-places of the city; he was

pushing his way among the tables and scrutinising by mere force of habit
every group he passed.
He stood still, robbed of all power of motion, his eyes wide, his lips
apart. Elizabeth sat scarcely twenty yards away from him, looking straight
at him. Her eyes were as hard to him, as hard and expressionless and void
of recognition, as the eyes of a statue.
She looked at him for a moment, and then her gaze passed beyond him.
Had he had only her eyes to judge by he might have doubted if it was
indeed Elizabeth, but he knew her by the gesture of her hand, by the grace
of a wanton little curl that floated over her ear as she moved her head.
Something was said to her, and she turned smiling tolerantly to the man
beside her, a little man in foolish raiment knobbed and spiked like some odd
reptile with pneumatic horns—the Bindon of her father's choice.
For a moment Denton stood white and wild-eyed; then came a terrible
faintness, and he sat before one of the little tables. He sat down with his
back to her, and for a time he did not dare to look at her again. When at last
he did, she and Bindon and two other people were standing up to go. The
others were her father and her chaperone.
He sat as if incapable of action until the four figures were remote and
small, and then he rose up possessed with the one idea of pursuit. For a
space he feared he had lost them, and then he came upon Elizabeth and her
chaperone again in one of the streets of moving platforms that intersected
the city. Bindon and Mwres had disappeared.
He could not control himself to patience. He felt he must speak to her
forthwith, or die. He pushed forward to where they were seated, and sat
down beside them. His white face was convulsed with half-hysterical
excitement.
He laid his hand on her wrist. "Elizabeth?" he said.
She turned in unfeigned astonishment. Nothing but the fear of a strange
man showed in her face.

"Elizabeth," he cried, and his voice was strange to him: "dearest—you
know me?"
Elizabeth's face showed nothing but alarm and perplexity. She drew
herself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman with
mobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyes
examined Denton. "What do you say?" she asked.
"This young lady," said Denton,—"she knows me."
"Do you know him, dear?"
"No," said Elizabeth in a strange voice, and with a hand to her forehead,
speaking almost as one who repeats a lesson. "No, I do not know him. I
know—I do not know him."
"But—but ... Not know me! It is I—Denton. Denton! To whom you used
to talk. Don't you remember the flying stages? The little seat in the open
air? The verses—"
"No," cried Elizabeth,—"no. I do not know him. I do not know him.
There is something.... But I don't know. All I know is that I do not know
him." Her face was a face of infinite distress.
The sharp eyes of the chaperone flitted to and fro from the girl to the
man. "You see?" she said, with the faint shadow of a smile. "She does not
know you."
"I do not know you," said Elizabeth. "Of that I am sure."
"But, dear—the songs—the little verses—"
"She does not know you," said the chaperone. "You must not.... You have
made a mistake. You must not go on talking to us after that. You must not
annoy us on the public ways."
"But—" said Denton, and for a moment his miserably haggard face
appealed against fate.
"You must not persist, young man," protested the chaperone.
"Elizabeth!" he cried.

Her face was the face of one who is tormented. "I do not know you," she
cried, hand to brow. "Oh, I do not know you!"
For an instant Denton sat stunned. Then he stood up and groaned aloud.
He made a strange gesture of appeal towards the remote glass roof of the
public way, then turned and went plunging recklessly from one moving
platform to another, and vanished amidst the swarms of people going to and
fro thereon. The chaperone's eyes followed him, and then she looked at the
curious faces about her.
"Dear," asked Elizabeth, clasping her hand, and too deeply moved to
heed observation, "who was that man? Who was that man?"
The chaperone raised her eyebrows. She spoke in a clear, audible voice.
"Some half-witted creature. I have never set eyes on him before."
"Never?"
"Never, dear. Do not trouble your mind about a thing like this."

And soon after this the celebrated hypnotist who dressed in green and
yellow had another client. The young man paced his consulting-room, pale
and disordered. "I want to forget," he cried. "I must forget."
The hypnotist watched him with quiet eyes, studied his face and clothes
and bearing. "To forget anything—pleasure or pain—is to be, by so much—
less. However, you know your own concern. My fee is high."
"If only I can forget—"
"That's easy enough with you. You wish it. I've done much harder things.
Quite recently. I hardly expected to do it: the thing was done against the
will of the hypnotised person. A love affair too—like yours. A girl. So rest
assured."
The young man came and sat beside the hypnotist. His manner was a
forced calm. He looked into the hypnotist's eyes. "I will tell you. Of course
you will want to know what it is. There was a girl. Her name was Elizabeth
Mwres. Well ..."

He stopped. He had seen the instant surprise on the hypnotist's face. In
that instant he knew. He stood up. He seemed to dominate the seated figure
by his side. He gripped the shoulder of green and gold. For a time he could
not find words.
"Give her me back!" he said at last. "Give her me back!"
"What do you mean?" gasped the hypnotist.
"Give her me back."
"Give whom?"
"Elizabeth Mwres—the girl—"
The hypnotist tried to free himself; he rose to his feet. Denton's grip
tightened.
"Let go!" cried the hypnotist, thrusting an arm against Denton's chest.
In a moment the two men were locked in a clumsy wrestle. Neither had
the slightest training—for athleticism, except for exhibition and to afford
opportunity for betting, had faded out of the earth—but Denton was not
only the younger but the stronger of the two. They swayed across the room,
and then the hypnotist had gone down under his antagonist. They fell
together....
Denton leaped to his feet, dismayed at his own fury; but the hypnotist lay
still, and suddenly from a little white mark where his forehead had struck a
stool shot a hurrying band of red. For a space Denton stood over him
irresolute, trembling.
A fear of the consequences entered his gently nurtured mind. He turned
towards the door. "No," he said aloud, and came back to the middle of the
room. Overcoming the instinctive repugnance of one who had seen no act
of violence in all his life before, he knelt down beside his antagonist and
felt his heart. Then he peered at the wound. He rose quietly and looked
about him. He began to see more of the situation.
When presently the hypnotist recovered his senses, his head ached
severely, his back was against Denton's knees and Denton was sponging his

face.
The hypnotist did not speak. But presently he indicated by a gesture that
in his opinion he had been sponged enough. "Let me get up," he said.
"Not yet," said Denton.
"You have assaulted me, you scoundrel!"
"We are alone," said Denton, "and the door is secure."
There was an interval of thought.
"Unless I sponge," said Denton, "your forehead will develop a
tremendous bruise."
"You can go on sponging," said the hypnotist sulkily.
There was another pause.
"We might be in the Stone Age," said the hypnotist. "Violence! Struggle!"
"In the Stone Age no man dared to come between man and woman," said
Denton.
The hypnotist thought again.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"While you were insensible I found the girl's address on your tablets. I
did not know it before. I telephoned. She will be here soon. Then—"
"She will bring her chaperone."
"That is all right."
"But what—? I don't see. What do you mean to do?"
"I looked about for a weapon also. It is an astonishing thing how few
weapons there are nowadays. If you consider that in the Stone Age men
owned scarcely anything but weapons. I hit at last upon this lamp. I have
wrenched off the wires and things, and I hold it so." He extended it over the

hypnotist's shoulders. "With that I can quite easily smash your skull. I will
—unless you do as I tell you."
"Violence is no remedy," said the hypnotist, quoting from the "Modern
Man's Book of Moral Maxims."
"It's an undesirable disease," said Denton.
"Well?"
"You will tell that chaperone you are going to order the girl to marry that
knobby little brute with the red hair and ferrety eyes. I believe that's how
things stand?"
"Yes—that's how things stand."
"And, pretending to do that, you will restore her memory of me."
"It's unprofessional."
"Look here! If I cannot have that girl I would rather die than not. I don't
propose to respect your little fancies. If anything goes wrong you shall not
live five minutes. This is a rude makeshift of a weapon, and it may quite
conceivably be painful to kill you. But I will. It is unusual, I know,
nowadays to do things like this—mainly because there is so little in life that
is worth being violent about."
"The chaperone will see you directly she comes—"
"I shall stand in that recess. Behind you."
The hypnotist thought. "You are a determined young man," he said, "and
only half civilised. I have tried to do my duty to my client, but in this affair
you seem likely to get your own way...."
"You mean to deal straightly."
"I'm not going to risk having my brains scattered in a petty affair like
this."
"And afterwards?"

"There is nothing a hypnotist or doctor hates so much as a scandal. I at
least am no savage. I am annoyed.... But in a day or so I shall bear no
malice...."
"Thank you. And now that we understand each other, there is no
necessity to keep you sitting any longer on the floor."

II—THE VACANT COUNTRY

The world, they say, changed more between the year 1800 and the year
1900 than it had done in the previous five hundred years. That century, the
nineteenth century, was the dawn of a new epoch in the history of mankind
—the epoch of the great cities, the end of the old order of country life.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of mankind still
lived upon the countryside, as their way of life had been for countless
generations. All over the world they dwelt in little towns and villages then,
and engaged either directly in agriculture, or in occupations that were of
service to the agriculturist. They travelled rarely, and dwelt close to their
work, because swift means of transit had not yet come. The few who
travelled went either on foot, or in slow sailing-ships, or by means of
jogging horses incapable of more than sixty miles a day. Think of it!—sixty
miles a day. Here and there, in those sluggish times, a town grew a little
larger than its neighbours, as a port or as a centre of government; but all the
towns in the world with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants could be
counted on a man's fingers. So it was in the beginning of the nineteenth
century. By the end, the invention of railways, telegraphs, steamships, and
complex agricultural machinery, had changed all these things: changed
them beyond all hope of return. The vast shops, the varied pleasures, the
countless conveniences of the larger towns were suddenly possible, and no
sooner existed than they were brought into competition with the homely
resources of the rural centres. Mankind were drawn to the cities by an
overwhelming attraction. The demand for labour fell with the increase of
machinery, the local markets were entirely superseded, and there was a
rapid growth of the larger centres at the expense of the open country.

The flow of population townward was the constant preoccupation of
Victorian writers. In Great Britain and New England, in India and China,
the same thing was remarked: everywhere a few swollen towns were visibly
replacing the ancient order. That this was an inevitable result of improved
means of travel and transport—that, given swift means of transit, these
things must be—was realised by few; and the most puerile schemes were
devised to overcome the mysterious magnetism of the urban centres, and
keep the people on the land.
Yet the developments of the nineteenth century were only the dawning of
the new order. The first great cities of the new time were horribly
inconvenient, darkened by smoky fogs, insanitary and noisy; but the
discovery of new methods of building, new methods of heating, changed all
this. Between 1900 and 2000 the march of change was still more rapid; and
between 2000 and 2100 the continually accelerated progress of human
invention made the reign of Victoria the Good seem at last an almost
incredible vision of idyllic tranquil days.
The introduction of railways was only the first step in that development
of those means of locomotion which finally revolutionised human life. By
the year 2000 railways and roads had vanished together. The railways,
robbed of their rails, had become weedy ridges and ditches upon the face of
the world; the old roads, strange barbaric tracks of flint and soil, hammered
by hand or rolled by rough iron rollers, strewn with miscellaneous filth, and
cut by iron hoofs and wheels into ruts and puddles often many inches deep,
had been replaced by patent tracks made of a substance called Eadhamite.
This Eadhamite—it was named after its patentee—ranks with the invention
of printing and steam as one of the epoch-making discoveries of the world's
history.
When Eadham discovered the substance, he probably thought of it as a
mere cheap substitute for india rubber; it cost a few shillings a ton. But you
can never tell all an invention will do. It was the genius of a man named
Warming that pointed to the possibility of using it, not only for the tires of
wheels, but as a road substance, and who organised the enormous network
of public ways that speedily covered the world.

These public ways were made with longitudinal divisions. On the outer
on either side went foot cyclists and conveyances travelling at a less speed
than twenty-five miles an hour; in the middle, motors capable of speed up
to a hundred; and the inner, Warming (in the face of enormous ridicule)
reserved for vehicles travelling at speeds of a hundred miles an hour and
upward.
For ten years his inner ways were vacant. Before he died they were the
most crowded of all, and vast light frameworks with wheels of twenty and
thirty feet in diameter, hurled along them at paces that year after year rose
steadily towards two hundred miles an hour. And by the time this revolution
was accomplished, a parallel revolution had transformed the ever-growing
cities. Before the development of practical science the fogs and filth of
Victorian times vanished. Electric heating replaced fires (in 2013 the
lighting of a fire that did not absolutely consume its own smoke was made
an indictable nuisance), and all the city ways, all public squares and places,
were covered in with a recently invented glass-like substance. The roofing
of London became practically continuous. Certain short-sighted and foolish
legislation against tall buildings was abolished, and London, from a squat
expanse of petty houses—feebly archaic in design—rose steadily towards
the sky. To the municipal responsibility for water, light, and drainage, was
added another, and that was ventilation.
But to tell of all the changes in human convenience that these two
hundred years brought about, to tell of the long foreseen invention of flying,
to describe how life in households was steadily supplanted by life in
interminable hotels, how at last even those who were still concerned in
agricultural work came to live in the towns and to go to and fro to their
work every day, to describe how at last in all England only four towns
remained, each with many millions of people, and how there were left no
inhabited houses in all the countryside: to tell all this would take us far from
our story of Denton and his Elizabeth. They had been separated and
reunited, and still they could not marry. For Denton—it was his only fault—
had no money. Neither had Elizabeth until she was twenty-one, and as yet
she was only eighteen. At twenty-one all the property of her mother would
come to her, for that was the custom of the time. She did not know that it
was possible to anticipate her fortune, and Denton was far too delicate a
lover to suggest such a thing. So things stuck hopelessly between them.

Elizabeth said that she was very unhappy, and that nobody understood her
but Denton, and that when she was away from him she was wretched; and
Denton said that his heart longed for her day and night. And they met as
often as they could to enjoy the discussion of their sorrows.
They met one day at their little seat upon the flying stage. The precise
site of this meeting was where in Victorian times the road from Wimbledon
came out upon the common. They were, however, five hundred feet above
that point. Their seat looked far over London. To convey the appearance of
it all to a nineteenth-century reader would have been difficult. One would
have had to tell him to think of the Crystal Palace, of the newly built
"mammoth" hotels—as those little affairs were called—of the larger railway
stations of his time, and to imagine such buildings enlarged to vast
proportions and run together and continuous over the whole metropolitan
area. If then he was told that this continuous roof-space bore a huge forest
of rotating wind-wheels, he would have begun very dimly to appreciate
what to these young people was the commonest sight in their lives.
To their eyes it had something of the quality of a prison, and they were
talking, as they had talked a hundred times before, of how they might
escape from it and be at last happy together: escape from it, that is, before
the appointed three years were at an end. It was, they both agreed, not only
impossible but almost wicked, to wait three years. "Before that," said
Denton—and the notes of his voice told of a splendid chest—"we might
both be dead!"
Their vigorous young hands had to grip at this, and then Elizabeth had a
still more poignant thought that brought the tears from her wholesome eyes
and down her healthy cheeks. "One of us," she said, "one of us might be—"
She choked; she could not say the word that is so terrible to the young
and happy.
Yet to marry and be very poor in the cities of that time was—for any one
who had lived pleasantly—a very dreadful thing. In the old agricultural
days that had drawn to an end in the eighteenth century there had been a
pretty proverb of love in a cottage; and indeed in those days the poor of the
countryside had dwelt in flower-covered, diamond-windowed cottages of
thatch and plaster, with the sweet air and earth about them, amidst tangled

hedges and the song of birds, and with the ever-changing sky overhead. But
all this had changed (the change was already beginning in the nineteenth
century), and a new sort of life was opening for the poor—in the lower
quarters of the city.
In the nineteenth century the lower quarters were still beneath the sky;
they were areas of land on clay or other unsuitable soil, liable to floods or
exposed to the smoke of more fortunate districts, insufficiently supplied
with water, and as insanitary as the great fear of infectious diseases felt by
the wealthier classes permitted. In the twenty-second century, however, the
growth of the city storey above storey, and the coalescence of buildings,
had led to a different arrangement. The prosperous people lived in a vast
series of sumptuous hotels in the upper storeys and halls of the city fabric;
the industrial population dwelt beneath in the tremendous ground-floor and
basement, so to speak, of the place.
In the refinement of life and manners these lower classes differed little
from their ancestors, the East-enders of Queen Victoria's time; but they had
developed a distinct dialect of their own. In these under ways they lived and
died, rarely ascending to the surface except when work took them there.
Since for most of them this was the sort of life to which they had been born,
they found no great misery in such circumstances; but for people like
Denton and Elizabeth, such a plunge would have seemed more terrible than
death.
"And yet what else is there?" asked Elizabeth.
Denton professed not to know. Apart from his own feeling of delicacy, he
was not sure how Elizabeth would like the idea of borrowing on the
strength of her expectations.
The passage from London to Paris even, said Elizabeth, was beyond their
means; and in Paris, as in any other city in the world, life would be just as
costly and impossible as in London.
Well might Denton cry aloud: "If only we had lived in those days,
dearest! If only we had lived in the past!" For to their eyes even nineteenth-
century Whitechapel was seen through a mist of romance.

"Is there nothing?" cried Elizabeth, suddenly weeping. "Must we really
wait for those three long years? Fancy three years—six-and-thirty months!"
The human capacity for patience had not grown with the ages.
Then suddenly Denton was moved to speak of something that had
already flickered across his mind. He had hit upon it at last. It seemed to
him so wild a suggestion that he made it only half seriously. But to put a
thing into words has ever a way of making it seem more real and possible
than it seemed before. And so it was with him.
"Suppose," he said, "we went into the country?"
She looked at him to see if he was serious in proposing such an
adventure.
"The country?"
"Yes—beyond there. Beyond the hills."
"How could we live?" she said. "Where could we live?"
"It is not impossible," he said. "People used to live in the country."
"But then there were houses."
"There are the ruins of villages and towns now. On the clay lands they are
gone, of course. But they are still left on the grazing land, because it does
not pay the Food Company to remove them. I know that—for certain.
Besides, one sees them from the flying machines, you know. Well, we
might shelter in some one of these, and repair it with our hands. Do you
know, the thing is not so wild as it seems. Some of the men who go out
every day to look after the crops and herds might be paid to bring us
food...."
She stood in front of him. "How strange it would be if one really
could...."
"Why not?"
"But no one dares."
"That is no reason."

"It would be—oh! it would be so romantic and strange. If only it were
possible."
"Why not possible?"
"There are so many things. Think of all the things we have, things that
we should miss."
"Should we miss them? After all, the life we lead is very unreal—very
artificial." He began to expand his idea, and as he warmed to his exposition
the fantastic quality of his first proposal faded away.
She thought. "But I have heard of prowlers—escaped criminals."
He nodded. He hesitated over his answer because he thought it sounded
boyish. He blushed. "I could get some one I know to make me a sword."
She looked at him with enthusiasm growing in her eyes. She had heard of
swords, had seen one in a museum; she thought of those ancient days when
men wore them as a common thing. His suggestion seemed an impossible
dream to her, and perhaps for that reason she was eager for more detail. And
inventing for the most part as he went along, he told her, how they might
live in the country as the old-world people had done. With every detail her
interest grew, for she was one of those girls for whom romance and
adventure have a fascination.
His suggestion seemed, I say, an impossible dream to her on that day, but
the next day they talked about it again, and it was strangely less impossible.
"At first we should take food," said Denton. "We could carry food for ten
or twelve days." It was an age of compact artificial nourishment, and such a
provision had none of the unwieldy suggestion it would have had in the
nineteenth century.
"But—until our house," she asked—"until it was ready, where should we
sleep?"
"It is summer."
"But ... What do you mean?"

"There was a time when there were no houses in the world; when all
mankind slept always in the open air."
"But for us! The emptiness! No walls—no ceiling!"
"Dear," he said, "in London you have many beautiful ceilings. Artists
paint them and stud them with lights. But I have seen a ceiling more
beautiful than any in London...."
"But where?"
"It is the ceiling under which we two would be alone...."
"You mean...?"
"Dear," he said, "it is something the world has forgotten. It is Heaven and
all the host of stars."
Each time they talked the thing seemed more possible and more desirable
to them. In a week or so it was quite possible. Another week, and it was the
inevitable thing they had to do. A great enthusiasm for the country seized
hold of them and possessed them. The sordid tumult of the town, they said,
overwhelmed them. They marvelled that this simple way out of their
troubles had never come upon them before.
One morning near Midsummer-day, there was a new minor official upon
the flying stage, and Denton's place was to know him no more.
Our two young people had secretly married, and were going forth
manfully out of the city in which they and their ancestors before them had
lived all their days. She wore a new dress of white cut in an old-fashioned
pattern, and he had a bundle of provisions strapped athwart his back, and in
his hand he carried—rather shame-facedly it is true, and under his purple
cloak—an implement of archaic form, a cross-hilted thing of tempered
steel.
Imagine that going forth! In their days the sprawling suburbs of Victorian
times with their vile roads, petty houses, foolish little gardens of shrub and
geranium, and all their futile, pretentious privacies, had disappeared: the
towering buildings of the new age, the mechanical ways, the electric and
water mains, all came to an end together, like a wall, like a cliff, near four

hundred feet in height, abrupt and sheer. All about the city spread the carrot,
swede, and turnip fields of the Food Company, vegetables that were the
basis of a thousand varied foods, and weeds and hedgerow tangles had been
utterly extirpated. The incessant expense of weeding that went on year after
year in the petty, wasteful and barbaric farming of the ancient days, the
Food Company had economised for ever more by a campaign of
extermination. Here and there, however, neat rows of bramble standards and
apple trees with whitewashed stems, intersected the fields, and at places
groups of gigantic teazles reared their favoured spikes. Here and there huge
agricultural machines hunched under waterproof covers. The mingled
waters of the Wey and Mole and Wandle ran in rectangular channels; and
wherever a gentle elevation of the ground permitted a fountain of
deodorised sewage distributed its benefits athwart the land and made a
rainbow of the sunlight.
By a great archway in that enormous city wall emerged the Eadhamite
road to Portsmouth, swarming in the morning sunshine with an enormous
traffic bearing the blue-clad servants of the Food Company to their toil. A
rushing traffic, beside which they seemed two scarce-moving dots. Along
the outer tracks hummed and rattled the tardy little old-fashioned motors of
such as had duties within twenty miles or so of the city; the inner ways were
filled with vaster mechanisms—swift monocycles bearing a score of men,
lank multicycles, quadricycles sagging with heavy loads, empty gigantic
produce carts that would come back again filled before the sun was setting,
all with throbbing engines and noiseless wheels and a perpetual wild
melody of horns and gongs.
Along the very verge of the outermost way our young people went in
silence, newly wed and oddly shy of one another's company. Many were the
things shouted to them as they tramped along, for in 2100 a foot-passenger
on an English road was almost as strange a sight as a motor car would have
been in 1800. But they went on with steadfast eyes into the country, paying
no heed to such cries.
Before them in the south rose the Downs, blue at first, and as they came
nearer changing to green, surmounted by the row of gigantic wind-wheels
that supplemented the wind-wheels upon the roof-spaces of the city, and
broken and restless with the long morning shadows of those whirling vanes.

By midday they had come so near that they could see here and there little
patches of pallid dots—the sheep the Meat Department of the Food
Company owned. In another hour they had passed the clay and the root
crops and the single fence that hedged them in, and the prohibition against
trespass no longer held: the levelled roadway plunged into a cutting with all
its traffic, and they could leave it and walk over the greensward and up the
open hillside.
Never had these children of the latter days been together in such a lonely
place.
They were both very hungry and footsore—for walking was a rare
exercise—and presently they sat down on the weedless, close-cropped
grass, and looked back for the first time at the city from which they had
come, shining wide and splendid in the blue haze of the valley of the
Thames. Elizabeth was a little afraid of the unenclosed sheep away up the
slope—she had never been near big unrestrained animals before—but
Denton reassured her. And overhead a white-winged bird circled in the blue.
They talked but little until they had eaten, and then their tongues were
loosened. He spoke of the happiness that was now certainly theirs, of the
folly of not breaking sooner out of that magnificent prison of latter-day life,
of the old romantic days that had passed from the world for ever. And then
he became boastful. He took up the sword that lay on the ground beside
him, and she took it from his hand and ran a tremulous finger along the
blade.
"And you could," she said, "you—could raise this and strike a man?"
"Why not? If there were need."
"But," she said, "it seems so horrible. It would slash.... There would
be"—her voice sank,—"blood."
"In the old romances you have read often enough ..."
"Oh, I know: in those—yes. But that is different. One knows it is not
blood, but just a sort of red ink.... And you—killing!"
She looked at him doubtfully, and then handed him back the sword.

After they had rested and eaten, they rose up and went on their way
towards the hills. They passed quite close to a huge flock of sheep, who
stared and bleated at their unaccustomed figures. She had never seen sheep
before, and she shivered to think such gentle things must needs be slain for
food. A sheep-dog barked from a distance, and then a shepherd appeared
amidst the supports of the wind-wheels, and came down towards them.
When he drew near he called out asking whither they were going.
Denton hesitated, and told him briefly that they sought some ruined
house among the Downs, in which they might live together. He tried to
speak in an off-hand manner, as though it was a usual thing to do. The man
stared incredulously.
"Have you done anything?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Denton. "Only we don't want to live in a city any longer.
Why should we live in cities?"
The shepherd stared more incredulously than ever. "You can't live here,"
he said.
"We mean to try."
The shepherd stared from one to the other. "You'll go back to-morrow,"
he said. "It looks pleasant enough in the sunlight.... Are you sure you've
done nothing? We shepherds are not such great friends of the police."
Denton looked at him steadfastly. "No," he said. "But we are too poor to
live in the city, and we can't bear the thought of wearing clothes of blue
canvas and doing drudgery. We are going to live a simple life here, like the
people of old."
The shepherd was a bearded man with a thoughtful face. He glanced at
Elizabeth's fragile beauty.
"They had simple minds," he said.
"So have we," said Denton.
The shepherd smiled.

"If you go along here," he said, "along the crest beneath the wind-wheels,
you will see a heap of mounds and ruins on your right-hand side. That was
once a town called Epsom. There are no houses there, and the bricks have
been used for a sheep pen. Go on, and another heap on the edge of the root-
land is Leatherhead; and then the hill turns away along the border of a
valley, and there are woods of beech. Keep along the crest. You will come
to quite wild places. In some parts, in spite of all the weeding that is done,
ferns and bluebells and other such useless plants are growing still. And
through it all underneath the wind-wheels runs a straight lane paved with
stones, a roadway of the Romans two thousand years old. Go to the right of
that, down into the valley and follow it along by the banks of the river. You
come presently to a street of houses, many with the roofs still sound upon
them. There you may find shelter."
They thanked him.
"But it's a quiet place. There is no light after dark there, and I have heard
tell of robbers. It is lonely. Nothing happens there. The phonographs of the
story-tellers, the kinematograph entertainments, the news machines—none
of them are to be found there. If you are hungry there is no food, if you are
ill no doctor ..." He stopped.
"We shall try it," said Denton, moving to go on. Then a thought struck
him, and he made an agreement with the shepherd, and learnt where they
might find him, to buy and bring them anything of which they stood in
need, out of the city.
And in the evening they came to the deserted village, with its houses that
seemed so small and odd to them: they found it golden in the glory of the
sunset, and desolate and still. They went from one deserted house to
another, marvelling at their quaint simplicity, and debating which they
should choose. And at last, in a sunlit corner of a room that had lost its outer
wall, they came upon a wild flower, a little flower of blue that the weeders
of the Food Company had overlooked.
That house they decided upon; but they did not remain in it long that
night, because they were resolved to feast upon nature. And moreover the
houses became very gaunt and shadowy after the sunlight had faded out of
the sky. So after they had rested a little time they went to the crest of the hill

again to see with their own eyes the silence of heaven set with stars, about
which the old poets had had so many things to tell. It was a wonderful sight,
and Denton talked like the stars, and when they went down the hill at last
the sky was pale with dawn. They slept but little, and in the morning when
they woke a thrush was singing in a tree.
So these young people of the twenty-second century began their exile.
That morning they were very busy exploring the resources of this new
home in which they were going to live the simple life. They did not explore
very fast or very far, because they went everywhere hand-in-hand; but they
found the beginnings of some furniture. Beyond the village was a store of
winter fodder for the sheep of the Food Company, and Denton dragged
great armfuls to the house to make a bed; and in several of the houses were
old fungus-eaten chairs and tables—rough, barbaric, clumsy furniture, it
seemed to them, and made of wood. They repeated many of the things they
had said on the previous day, and towards evening they found another
flower, a harebell. In the late afternoon some Company shepherds went
down the river valley riding on a big multicycle; but they hid from them,
because their presence, Elizabeth said, seemed to spoil the romance of this
old-world place altogether.
In this fashion they lived a week. For all that week the days were
cloudless, and the nights nights of starry glory, that were invaded each a
little more by a crescent moon.
Yet something of the first splendour of their coming faded—faded
imperceptibly day after day; Denton's eloquence became fitful, and lacked
fresh topics of inspiration; the fatigue of their long march from London told
in a certain stiffness of the limbs, and each suffered from a slight
unaccountable cold. Moreover, Denton became aware of unoccupied time.
In one place among the carelessly heaped lumber of the old times he found
a rust-eaten spade, and with this he made a fitful attack on the razed and
grass-grown garden—though he had nothing to plant or sow. He returned to
Elizabeth with a sweat-streaming face, after half an hour of such work.
"There were giants in those days," he said, not understanding what wont
and training will do. And their walk that day led them along the hills until

they could see the city shimmering far away in the valley. "I wonder how
things are going on there," he said.
And then came a change in the weather. "Come out and see the clouds,"
she cried; and behold! they were a sombre purple in the north and east,
streaming up to ragged edges at the zenith. And as they went up the hill
these hurrying streamers blotted out the sunset. Suddenly the wind set the
beech-trees swaying and whispering, and Elizabeth shivered. And then far
away the lightning flashed, flashed like a sword that is drawn suddenly, and
the distant thunder marched about the sky, and even as they stood
astonished, pattering upon them came the first headlong raindrops of the
storm. In an instant the last streak of sunset was hidden by a falling curtain
of hail, and the lightning flashed again, and the voice of the thunder roared
louder, and all about them the world scowled dark and strange.
Seizing hands, these children of the city ran down the hill to their home,
in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was weeping
with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and brittle and
active with the pelting hail.
Then began a strange and terrible night for them. For the first time in
their civilised lives they were in absolute darkness; they were wet and cold
and shivering, all about them hissed the hail, and through the long neglected
ceilings of the derelict home came noisy spouts of water and formed pools
and rivulets on the creaking floors. As the gusts of the storm struck the
worn-out building, it groaned and shuddered, and now a mass of plaster
from the wall would slide and smash, and now some loosened tile would
rattle down the roof and crash into the empty greenhouse below. Elizabeth
shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his gay and flimsy city cloak
about her, and so they crouched in the darkness. And ever the thunder broke
louder and nearer, and ever more lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a
momentary gaunt clearness the steaming, dripping room in which they
sheltered.
Never before had they been in the open air save when the sun was
shining. All their time had been spent in the warm and airy ways and halls
and rooms of the latter-day city. It was to them that night as if they were in

some other world, some disordered chaos of stress and tumult, and almost
beyond hoping that they should ever see the city ways again.
The storm seemed to last interminably, until at last they dozed between
the thunderclaps, and then very swiftly it fell and ceased. And as the last
patter of the rain died away they heard an unfamiliar sound.
"What is that?" cried Elizabeth.
It came again. It was the barking of dogs. It drove down the desert lane
and passed; and through the window, whitening the wall before them and
throwing upon it the shadow of the window-frame and of a tree in black
silhouette, shone the light of the waxing moon....
Just as the pale dawn was drawing the things about them into sight, the
fitful barking of dogs came near again, and stopped. They listened. After a
pause they heard the quick pattering of feet seeking round the house, and
short, half-smothered barks. Then again everything was still.
"Ssh!" whispered Elizabeth, and pointed to the door of their room.
Denton went half-way towards the door, and stood listening. He came
back with a face of affected unconcern. "They must be the sheep-dogs of
the Food Company," he said. "They will do us no harm."
He sat down again beside her. "What a night it has been!" he said, to hide
how keenly he was listening.
"I don't like dogs," answered Elizabeth, after a long silence.
"Dogs never hurt any one," said Denton. "In the old days—in the
nineteenth century—everybody had a dog."
"There was a romance I heard once. A dog killed a man."
"Not this sort of dog," said Denton confidently. "Some of those romances
—are exaggerated."
Suddenly a half bark and a pattering up the staircase; the sound of
panting. Denton sprang to his feet and drew the sword out of the damp
straw upon which they had been lying. Then in the doorway appeared a

gaunt sheep-dog, and halted there. Behind it stared another. For an instant
man and brute faced each other, hesitating.
Then Denton, being ignorant of dogs, made a sharp step forward. "Go
away," he said, with a clumsy motion of his sword.
The dog started and growled. Denton stopped sharply. "Good dog!" he
said.
The growling jerked into a bark.
"Good dog!" said Denton. The second dog growled and barked. A third
out of sight down the staircase took up the barking also. Outside others
gave tongue—a large number it seemed to Denton.
"This is annoying," said Denton, without taking his eye off the brutes
before him. "Of course the shepherds won't come out of the city for hours
yet. Naturally these dogs don't quite make us out."
"I can't hear," shouted Elizabeth. She stood up and came to him.
Denton tried again, but the barking still drowned his voice. The sound
had a curious effect upon his blood. Odd disused emotions began to stir; his
face changed as he shouted. He tried again; the barking seemed to mock
him, and one dog danced a pace forward, bristling. Suddenly he turned, and
uttering certain words in the dialect of the underways, words
incomprehensible to Elizabeth, he made for the dogs. There was a sudden
cessation of the barking, a growl and a snapping. Elizabeth saw the snarling
head of the foremost dog, its white teeth and retracted ears, and the flash of
the thrust blade. The brute leapt into the air and was flung back.
Then Denton, with a shout, was driving the dogs before him. The sword
flashed above his head with a sudden new freedom of gesture, and then he
vanished down the staircase. She made six steps to follow him, and on the
landing there was blood. She stopped, and hearing the tumult of dogs and
Denton's shouts pass out of the house, ran to the window.
Nine wolfish sheep-dogs were scattering, one writhed before the porch;
and Denton, tasting that strange delight of combat that slumbers still in the
blood of even the most civilised man, was shouting and running across the

garden space. And then she saw something that for a moment he did not
see. The dogs circled round this way and that, and came again. They had
him in the open.
In an instant she divined the situation. She would have called to him. For
a moment she felt sick and helpless, and then, obeying a strange impulse,
she gathered up her white skirt and ran downstairs. In the hall was the
rusting spade. That was it! She seized it and ran out.
She came none too soon. One dog rolled before him, well-nigh slashed in
half; but a second had him by the thigh, a third gripped his collar behind,
and a fourth had the blade of the sword between its teeth, tasting its own
blood. He parried the leap of a fifth with his left arm.
It might have been the first century instead of the twenty-second, so far
as she was concerned. All the gentleness of her eighteen years of city life
vanished before this primordial need. The spade smote hard and sure, and
cleft a dog's skull. Another, crouching for a spring, yelped with dismay at
this unexpected antagonist, and rushed aside. Two wasted precious
moments on the binding of a feminine skirt.
The collar of Denton's cloak tore and parted as he staggered back; and
that dog too felt the spade, and ceased to trouble him. He sheathed his
sword in the brute at his thigh.
"To the wall!" cried Elizabeth; and in three seconds the fight was at an
end, and our young people stood side by side, while a remnant of five dogs,
with ears and tails of disaster, fled shamefully from the stricken field.
For a moment they stood panting and victorious, and then Elizabeth,
dropping her spade, covered her face, and sank to the ground in a paroxysm
of weeping. Denton looked about him, thrust the point of his sword into the
ground so that it was at hand, and stooped to comfort her.

At last their more tumultuous emotions subsided, and they could talk
again. She leant upon the wall, and he sat upon it so that he could keep an
eye open for any returning dogs. Two, at any rate, were up on the hillside
and keeping up a vexatious barking.

She was tear-stained, but not very wretched now, because for half an hour
he had been repeating that she was brave and had saved his life. But a new
fear was growing in her mind.
"They are the dogs of the Food Company," she said. "There will be
trouble."
"I am afraid so. Very likely they will prosecute us for trespass."
A pause.
"In the old times," he said, "this sort of thing happened day after day."
"Last night!" she said. "I could not live through another such night."
He looked at her. Her face was pale for want of sleep, and drawn and
haggard. He came to a sudden resolution. "We must go back," he said.
She looked at the dead dogs, and shivered. "We cannot stay here," she
said.
"We must go back," he repeated, glancing over his shoulder to see if the
enemy kept their distance. "We have been happy for a time.... But the world
is too civilised. Ours is the age of cities. More of this will kill us."
"But what are we to do? How can we live there?"
Denton hesitated. His heel kicked against the wall on which he sat. "It's a
thing I haven't mentioned before," he said, and coughed; "but ..."
"Yes?"
"You could raise money on your expectations," he said.
"Could I?" she said eagerly.
"Of course you could. What a child you are!"
She stood up, and her face was bright. "Why did you not tell me before?"
she asked. "And all this time we have been here!"
He looked at her for a moment, and smiled. Then the smile vanished. "I
thought it ought to come from you," he said. "I didn't like to ask for your

money. And besides—at first I thought this would be rather fine."
There was a pause.
"It has been fine," he said; and glanced once more over his shoulder.
"Until all this began."
"Yes," she said, "those first days. The first three days."
They looked for a space into one another's faces, and then Denton slid
down from the wall and took her hand.
"To each generation," he said, "the life of its time. I see it all plainly now.
In the city—that is the life to which we were born. To live in any other
fashion ... Coming here was a dream, and this—is the awakening."
"It was a pleasant dream," she said,—"in the beginning."
For a long space neither spoke.
"If we would reach the city before the shepherds come here, we must
start," said Denton. "We must get our food out of the house and eat as we
go."
Denton glanced about him again, and, giving the dead dogs a wide berth,
they walked across the garden space and into the house together. They
found the wallet with their food, and descended the blood-stained stairs
again. In the hall Elizabeth stopped. "One minute," she said. "There is
something here."
She led the way into the room in which that one little blue flower was
blooming. She stooped to it, she touched it with her hand.
"I want it," she said; and then, "I cannot take it...."
Impulsively she stooped and kissed its petals.
Then silently, side by side, they went across the empty garden-space into
the old high road, and set their faces resolutely towards the distant city—
towards the complex mechanical city of those latter days, the city that had
swallowed up mankind.

III—THE WAYS OF THE CITY

Prominent if not paramount among world-changing inventions in the
history of man is that series of contrivances in locomotion that began with
the railway and ended for a century or more with the motor and the patent
road. That these contrivances, together with the device of limited liability
joint stock companies and the supersession of agricultural labourers by
skilled men with ingenious machinery, would necessarily concentrate
mankind in cities of unparallelled magnitude and work an entire revolution
in human life, became, after the event, a thing so obvious that it is a matter
of astonishment it was not more clearly anticipated. Yet that any steps
should be taken to anticipate the miseries such a revolution might entail
does not appear even to have been suggested; and the idea that the moral
prohibitions and sanctions, the privileges and concessions, the conception
of property and responsibility, of comfort and beauty, that had rendered the
mainly agricultural states of the past prosperous and happy, would fail in
the rising torrent of novel opportunities and novel stimulations, never seems
to have entered the nineteenth-century mind. That a citizen, kindly and fair
in his ordinary life, could as a shareholder become almost murderously
greedy; that commercial methods that were reasonable and honourable on
the old-fashioned countryside, should on an enlarged scale be deadly and
overwhelming; that ancient charity was modern pauperisation, and ancient
employment modern sweating; that, in fact, a revision and enlargement of
the duties and rights of man had become urgently necessary, were things it
could not entertain, nourished as it was on an archaic system of education
and profoundly retrospective and legal in all its habits of thought. It was
known that the accumulation of men in cities involved unprecedented
dangers of pestilence; there was an energetic development of sanitation; but
that the diseases of gambling and usury, of luxury and tyranny should
become endemic, and produce horrible consequences was beyond the scope
of nineteenth-century thought. And so, as if it were some inorganic process,
practically unhindered by the creative will of man, the growth of the
swarming unhappy cities that mark the twenty-first century accomplished
itself.
The new society was divided into three main classes. At the summit
slumbered the property owner, enormously rich by accident rather than

design, potent save for the will and aim, the last avatar of Hamlet in the
world. Below was the enormous multitude of workers employed by the
gigantic companies that monopolised control; and between these two the
dwindling middle class, officials of innumerable sorts, foremen, managers,
the medical, legal, artistic, and scholastic classes, and the minor rich, a
middle class whose members led a life of insecure luxury and precarious
speculation amidst the movements of the great managers.
Already the love story and the marrying of two persons of this middle
class have been told: how they overcame the obstacles between them, and
how they tried the simple old-fashioned way of living on the countryside
and came back speedily enough into the city of London. Denton had no
means, so Elizabeth borrowed money on the securities that her father
Mwres held in trust for her until she was one-and-twenty.
The rate of interest she paid was of course high, because of the
uncertainty of her security, and the arithmetic of lovers is often sketchy and
optimistic. Yet they had very glorious times after that return. They
determined they would not go to a Pleasure city nor waste their days
rushing through the air from one part of the world to the other, for in spite
of one disillusionment, their tastes were still old-fashioned. They furnished
their little room with quaint old Victorian furniture, and found a shop on the
forty-second floor in Seventh Way where printed books of the old sort were
still to be bought. It was their pet affectation to read print instead of hearing
phonographs. And when presently there came a sweet little girl, to unite
them further if it were possible, Elizabeth would not send it to a creche, as
the custom was, but insisted on nursing it at home. The rent of their
apartments was raised on account of this singular proceeding, but that they
did not mind. It only meant borrowing a little more.
Presently Elizabeth was of age, and Denton had a business interview with
her father that was not agreeable. An exceedingly disagreeable interview
with their money-lender followed, from which he brought home a white
face. On his return Elizabeth had to tell him of a new and marvellous
intonation of "Goo" that their daughter had devised, but Denton was
inattentive. In the midst, just as she was at the cream of her description, he
interrupted. "How much money do you think we have left, now that
everything is settled?"

She stared and stopped her appreciative swaying of the Goo genius that
had accompanied her description.
"You don't mean...?"
"Yes," he answered. "Ever so much. We have been wild. It's the interest.
Or something. And the shares you had, slumped. Your father did not mind.
Said it was not his business, after what had happened. He's going to marry
again.... Well—we have scarcely a thousand left!"
"Only a thousand?"
"Only a thousand."
And Elizabeth sat down. For a moment she regarded him with a white
face, then her eyes went about the quaint, old-fashioned room, with its
middle Victorian furniture and genuine oleographs, and rested at last on the
little lump of humanity within her arms.
Denton glanced at her and stood downcast. Then he swung round on his
heel and walked up and down very rapidly.
"I must get something to do," he broke out presently. "I am an idle
scoundrel. I ought to have thought of this before. I have been a selfish fool.
I wanted to be with you all day...."
He stopped, looking at her white face. Suddenly he came and kissed her
and the little face that nestled against her breast.
"It's all right, dear," he said, standing over her; "you won't be lonely now
—now Dings is beginning to talk to you. And I can soon get something to
do, you know. Soon.... Easily.... It's only a shock at first. But it will come all
right. It's sure to come right. I will go out again as soon as I have rested, and
find what can be done. For the present it's hard to think of anything...."
"It would be hard to leave these rooms," said Elizabeth; "but——"
"There won't be any need of that—trust me."
"They are expensive."

Denton waved that aside. He began talking of the work he could do. He
was not very explicit what it would be; but he was quite sure that there was
something to keep them comfortably in the happy middle class, whose way
of life was the only one they knew.
"There are three-and-thirty million people in London," he said: "some of
them must have need of me."
"Some must."
"The trouble is ... Well—Bindon, that brown little old man your father
wanted you to marry. He's an important person.... I can't go back to my
flying-stage work, because he is now a Commissioner of the Flying Stage
Clerks."
"I didn't know that," said Elizabeth.
"He was made that in the last few weeks ... or things would be easy
enough, for they liked me on the flying stage. But there's dozens of other
things to be done—dozens. Don't you worry, dear. I'll rest a little while, and
then we'll dine, and then I'll start on my rounds. I know lots of people—
lots."
So they rested, and then they went to the public dining-room and dined,
and then he started on his search for employment. But they soon realised
that in the matter of one convenience the world was just as badly off as it
had ever been, and that was a nice, secure, honourable, remunerative
employment, leaving ample leisure for the private life, and demanding no
special ability, no violent exertion nor risk, and no sacrifice of any sort for
its attainment. He evolved a number of brilliant projects, and spent many
days hurrying from one part of the enormous city to another in search of
influential friends; and all his influential friends were glad to see him, and
very sanguine until it came to definite proposals, and then they became
guarded and vague. He would part with them coldly, and think over their
behaviour, and get irritated on his way back, and stop at some telephone
office and spend money on an animated but unprofitable quarrel. And as the
days passed, he got so worried and irritated that even to seem kind and
careless before Elizabeth cost him an effort—as she, being a loving woman,
perceived very clearly.

After an extremely complex preface one day, she helped him out with a
painful suggestion. He had expected her to weep and give way to despair
when it came to selling all their joyfully bought early Victorian treasures,
their quaint objects of art, their antimacassars, bead mats, repp curtains,
veneered furniture, gold-framed steel engravings and pencil drawings, wax
flowers under shades, stuffed birds, and all sorts of choice old things; but it
was she who made the proposal. The sacrifice seemed to fill her with
pleasure, and so did the idea of shifting to apartments ten or twelve floors
lower in another hotel. "So long as Dings is with us, nothing matters," she
said. "It's all experience." So he kissed her, said she was braver than when
she fought the sheep-dogs, called her Boadicea, and abstained very
carefully from reminding her that they would have to pay a considerably
higher rent on account of the little voice with which Dings greeted the
perpetual uproar of the city.
His idea had been to get Elizabeth out of the way when it came to selling
the absurd furniture about which their affections were twined and tangled;
but when it came to the sale it was Elizabeth who haggled with the dealer
while Denton went about the running ways of the city, white and sick with
sorrow and the fear of what was still to come. When they moved into their
sparsely furnished pink-and-white apartments in a cheap hotel, there came
an outbreak of furious energy on his part, and then nearly a week of
lethargy during which he sulked at home. Through those days Elizabeth
shone like a star, and at the end Denton's misery found a vent in tears. And
then he went out into the city ways again, and—to his utter amazement—
found some work to do.
His standard of employment had fallen steadily until at last it had reached
the lowest level of independent workers. At first he had aspired to some
high official position in the great Flying or Wind Vane or Water Companies,
or to an appointment on one of the General Intelligence Organisations that
had replaced newspapers, or to some professional partnership, but those
were the dreams of the beginning. From that he had passed to speculation,
and three hundred gold "lions" out of Elizabeth's thousand had vanished one
evening in the share market. Now he was glad his good looks secured him a
trial in the position of salesman to the Suzannah Hat Syndicate, a Syndicate,
dealing in ladies' caps, hair decorations, and hats—for though the city was

completely covered in, ladies still wore extremely elaborate and beautiful
hats at the theatres and places of public worship.
It would have been amusing if one could have confronted a Regent Street
shopkeeper of the nineteenth century with the development of his
establishment in which Denton's duties lay. Nineteenth Way was still
sometimes called Regent Street, but it was now a street of moving platforms
and nearly eight hundred feet wide. The middle space was immovable and
gave access by staircases descending into subterranean ways to the houses
on either side. Right and left were an ascending series of continuous
platforms each of which travelled about five miles an hour faster than the
one internal to it, so that one could step from platform to platform until one
reached the swiftest outer way and so go about the city. The establishment
of the Suzannah Hat Syndicate projected a vast façade upon the outer way,
sending out overhead at either end an overlapping series of huge white glass
screens, on which gigantic animated pictures of the faces of well-known
beautiful living women wearing novelties in hats were thrown. A dense
crowd was always collected in the stationary central way watching a vast
kinematograph which displayed the changing fashion. The whole front of
the building was in perpetual chromatic change, and all down the façade—
four hundred feet it measured—and all across the street of moving ways,
laced and winked and glittered in a thousand varieties of colour and
lettering the inscription—

Suzanna! 'ets! Suzanna! 'ets!

A broadside of gigantic phonographs drowned all conversation in the
moving way and roared "hats" at the passer-by, while far down the street
and up, other batteries counselled the public to "walk down for Suzannah,"
and queried, "Why don't you buy the girl a hat?"
For the benefit of those who chanced to be deaf—and deafness was not
uncommon in the London of that age, inscriptions of all sizes were thrown
from the roof above upon the moving platforms themselves, and on one's
hand or on the bald head of the man before one, or on a lady's shoulders, or
in a sudden jet of flame before one's feet, the moving finger wrote in
unanticipated letters of fire "'ets r chip t'de," or simply "'ets." And spite of
all these efforts so high was the pitch at which the city lived, so trained

became one's eyes and ears to ignore all sorts of advertisement, that many a
citizen had passed that place thousands of times and was still unaware of
the existence of the Suzannah Hat Syndicate.
To enter the building one descended the staircase in the middle way and
walked through a public passage in which pretty girls promenaded, girls
who were willing to wear a ticketed hat for a small fee. The entrance
chamber was a large hall in which wax heads fashionably adorned rotated
gracefully upon pedestals, and from this one passed through a cash office to
an interminable series of little rooms, each room with its salesman, its three
or four hats and pins, its mirrors, its kinematographs, telephones and hat
slides in communication with the central depôt, its comfortable lounge and
tempting refreshments. A salesman in such an apartment did Denton now
become. It was his business to attend to any of the incessant stream of
ladies who chose to stop with him, to behave as winningly as possible, to
offer refreshment, to converse on any topic the possible customer chose,
and to guide the conversation dexterously but not insistently towards hats.
He was to suggest trying on various types of hat and to show by his manner
and bearing, but without any coarse flattery, the enhanced impression made
by the hats he wished to sell. He had several mirrors, adapted by various
subtleties of curvature and tint to different types of face and complexion,
and much depended on the proper use of these.
Denton flung himself at these curious and not very congenial duties with
a good will and energy that would have amazed him a year before; but all to
no purpose. The Senior Manageress, who had selected him for appointment
and conferred various small marks of favour upon him, suddenly changed
in her manner, declared for no assignable cause that he was stupid, and
dismissed him at the end of six weeks of salesmanship. So Denton had to
resume his ineffectual search for employment.
This second search did not last very long. Their money was at the ebb. To
eke it out a little longer they resolved to part with their darling Dings, and
took that small person to one of the public creches that abounded in the city.
That was the common use of the time. The industrial emancipation of
women, the correlated disorganisation of the secluded "home," had
rendered creches a necessity for all but very rich and exceptionally-minded
people. Therein children encountered hygienic and educational advantages

impossible without such organisation. Creches were of all classes and types
of luxury, down to those of the Labour Company, where children were
taken on credit, to be redeemed in labour as they grew up.
But both Denton and Elizabeth being, as I have explained, strange old-
fashioned young people, full of nineteenth-century ideas, hated these
convenient creches exceedingly and at last took their little daughter to one
with extreme reluctance. They were received by a motherly person in a
uniform who was very brisk and prompt in her manner until Elizabeth wept
at the mention of parting from her child. The motherly person, after a brief
astonishment at this unusual emotion, changed suddenly into a creature of
hope and comfort, and so won Elizabeth's gratitude for life. They were
conducted into a vast room presided over by several nurses and with
hundreds of two-year-old girls grouped about the toy-covered floor. This
was the Two-year-old Room. Two nurses came forward, and Elizabeth
watched their bearing towards Dings with jealous eyes. They were kind—it
was clear they felt kind, and yet ...
Presently it was time to go. By that time Dings was happily established in
a corner, sitting on the floor with her arms filled, and herself, indeed, for the
most part hidden by an unaccustomed wealth of toys. She seemed careless
of all human relationships as her parents receded.
They were forbidden to upset her by saying good-bye.
At the door Elizabeth glanced back for the last time, and behold! Dings
had dropped her new wealth and was standing with a dubious face.
Suddenly Elizabeth gasped, and the motherly nurse pushed her forward and
closed the door.
"You can come again soon, dear," she said, with unexpected tenderness in
her eyes. For a moment Elizabeth stared at her with a blank face. "You can
come again soon," repeated the nurse. Then with a swift transition Elizabeth
was weeping in the nurse's arms. So it was that Denton's heart was won
also.
And three weeks after our young people were absolutely penniless, and
only one way lay open. They must go to the Labour Company. So soon as
the rent was a week overdue their few remaining possessions were seized,

and with scant courtesy they were shown the way out of the hotel. Elizabeth
walked along the passage towards the staircase that ascended to the
motionless middle way, too dulled by misery to think. Denton stopped
behind to finish a stinging and unsatisfactory argument with the hotel
porter, and then came hurrying after her, flushed and hot. He slackened his
pace as he overtook her, and together they ascended to the middle way in
silence. There they found two seats vacant and sat down.
"We need not go there—yet?" said Elizabeth.
"No—not till we are hungry," said Denton.
They said no more.
Elizabeth's eyes sought a resting-place and found none. To the right
roared the eastward ways, to the left the ways in the opposite direction,
swarming with people. Backwards and forwards along a cable overhead
rushed a string of gesticulating men, dressed like clowns, each marked on
back and chest with one gigantic letter, so that altogether they spelt out:

"Purkinje's Digestive Pills."

An anæmic little woman in horrible coarse blue canvas pointed a little girl
to one of this string of hurrying advertisements.
"Look!" said the anæmic woman: "there's yer father."
"Which?" said the little girl.
"'Im wiv his nose coloured red," said the anæmic woman.
The little girl began to cry, and Elizabeth could have cried too.
"Ain't 'e kickin' 'is legs!—just!" said the anæmic woman in blue, trying to
make things bright again. "Looky—now!"
On the façade to the right a huge intensely bright disc of weird colour
span incessantly, and letters of fire that came and went spelt out—

"Does this make you Giddy?"

Then a pause, followed by

"Take a Purkinje's Digestive Pill."

A vast and desolating braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature,
put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The
Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The
very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is like
Shakspeare. He has six toes, dresses in red, and never cleans his teeth. Hear
Him!"
Denton's voice became audible in a gap in the uproar. "I never ought to
have married you," he was saying. "I have wasted your money, ruined you,
brought you to misery. I am a scoundrel.... Oh, this accursed world!"
She tried to speak, and for some moments could not. She grasped his
hand. "No," she said at last.
A half-formed desire suddenly became determination. She stood up.
"Will you come?"
He rose also. "We need not go there yet."
"Not that. But I want you to come to the flying stages—where we met.
You know? The little seat."
He hesitated. "Can you?" he said, doubtfully.
"Must," she answered.
He hesitated still for a moment, then moved to obey her will.
And so it was they spent their last half-day of freedom out under the open
air in the little seat under the flying stages where they had been wont to
meet five short years ago. There she told him, what she could not tell him in
the tumultuous public ways, that she did not repent even now of their
marriage—that whatever discomfort and misery life still had for them, she
was content with the things that had been. The weather was kind to them,
the seat was sunlit and warm, and overhead the shining aëroplanes went and
came.

At last towards sunsetting their time was at an end, and they made their
vows to one another and clasped hands, and then rose up and went back into
the ways of the city, a shabby-looking, heavy-hearted pair, tired and hungry.
Soon they came to one of the pale blue signs that marked a Labour
Company Bureau. For a space they stood in the middle way regarding this
and at last descended, and entered the waiting-room.
The Labour Company had originally been a charitable organisation; its
aim was to supply food, shelter, and work to all comers. This it was bound
to do by the conditions of its incorporation, and it was also bound to supply
food and shelter and medical attendance to all incapable of work who chose
to demand its aid. In exchange these incapables paid labour notes, which
they had to redeem upon recovery. They signed these labour notes with
thumb-marks, which were photographed and indexed in such a way that this
world-wide Labour Company could identify any one of its two or three
hundred million clients at the cost of an hour's inquiry. The day's labour was
defined as two spells in a treadmill used in generating electrical force, or its
equivalent, and its due performance could be enforced by law. In practice
the Labour Company found it advisable to add to its statutory obligations of
food and shelter a few pence a day as an inducement to effort; and its
enterprise had not only abolished pauperisation altogether, but supplied
practically all but the very highest and most responsible labour throughout
the world. Nearly a third of the population of the world were its serfs and
debtors from the cradle to the grave.
In this practical, unsentimental way the problem of the unemployed had
been most satisfactorily met and overcome. No one starved in the public
ways, and no rags, no costume less sanitary and sufficient than the Labour
Company's hygienic but inelegant blue canvas, pained the eye throughout
the whole world. It was the constant theme of the phonographic newspapers
how much the world had progressed since nineteenth-century days, when
the bodies of those killed by the vehicular traffic or dead of starvation,
were, they alleged, a common feature in all the busier streets.
Denton and Elizabeth sat apart in the waiting-room until their turn came.
Most of the others collected there seemed limp and taciturn, but three or
four young people gaudily dressed made up for the quietude of their
companions. They were life clients of the Company, born in the Company's

creche and destined to die in its hospital, and they had been out for a spree
with some shillings or so of extra pay. They talked vociferously in a later
development of the Cockney dialect, manifestly very proud of themselves.
Elizabeth's eyes went from these to the less assertive figures. One seemed
exceptionally pitiful to her. It was a woman of perhaps forty-five, with
gold-stained hair and a painted face, down which abundant tears had
trickled; she had a pinched nose, hungry eyes, lean hands and shoulders,
and her dusty worn-out finery told the story of her life. Another was a grey-
bearded old man in the costume of a bishop of one of the high episcopal
sects—for religion was now also a business, and had its ups and downs.
And beside him a sickly, dissipated-looking boy of perhaps two-and-twenty
glared at Fate.
Presently Elizabeth and then Denton interviewed the manageress—for
the Company preferred women in this capacity—and found she possessed
an energetic face, a contemptuous manner, and a particularly unpleasant
voice. They were given various checks, including one to certify that they
need not have their heads cropped; and when they had given their thumb-
marks, learnt the number corresponding thereunto, and exchanged their
shabby middle-class clothes for duly numbered blue canvas suits, they
repaired to the huge plain dining-room for their first meal under these new
conditions. Afterwards they were to return to her for instructions about their
work.
When they had made the exchange of their clothing Elizabeth did not
seem able to look at Denton at first; but he looked at her, and saw with
astonishment that even in blue canvas she was still beautiful. And then their
soup and bread came sliding on its little rail down the long table towards
them and stopped with a jerk, and he forgot the matter. For they had had no
proper meal for three days.
After they had dined they rested for a time. Neither talked—there was
nothing to say; and presently they got up and went back to the manageress
to learn what they had to do.
The manageress referred to a tablet. "Y'r rooms won't be here; it'll be in
the Highbury Ward, Ninety-seventh Way, number two thousand and
seventeen. Better make a note of it on y'r card. You, nought nought nought,

type seven, sixty-four, b.c.d., gamma forty-one, female; you 'ave to go to
the Metal-beating Company and try that for a day—fourpence bonus if ye're
satisfactory; and you, nought seven one, type four, seven hundred and nine,
g.f.b., pi five and ninety, male; you 'ave to go to the Photographic Company
on Eighty-first Way, and learn something or other—I don't know—
thrippence. 'Ere's y'r cards. That's all. Next! What? Didn't catch it all? Lor!
So suppose I must go over it all again. Why don't you listen? Keerless,
unprovident people! One'd think these things didn't matter."
Their ways to their work lay together for a time. And now they found
they could talk. Curiously enough, the worst of their depression seemed
over now that they had actually donned the blue. Denton could talk with
interest even of the work that lay before them. "Whatever it is," he said, "it
can't be so hateful as that hat shop. And after we have paid for Dings, we
shall still have a whole penny a day between us even now. Afterwards—we
may improve,—get more money."
Elizabeth was less inclined to speech. "I wonder why work should seem
so hateful," she said.
"It's odd," said Denton. "I suppose it wouldn't be if it were not the
thought of being ordered about.... I hope we shall have decent managers."
Elizabeth did not answer. She was not thinking of that. She was tracing
out some thoughts of her own.
"Of course," she said presently, "we have been using up work all our
lives. It's only fair—"
She stopped. It was too intricate.
"We paid for it," said Denton, for at that time he had not troubled himself
about these complicated things.
"We did nothing—and yet we paid for it. That's what I cannot
understand."
"Perhaps we are paying," said Elizabeth presently—for her theology was
old-fashioned and simple.

Presently it was time for them to part, and each went to the appointed
work. Denton's was to mind a complicated hydraulic press that seemed
almost an intelligent thing. This press worked by the sea-water that was
destined finally to flush the city drains—for the world had long since
abandoned the folly of pouring drinkable water into its sewers. This water
was brought close to the eastward edge of the city by a huge canal, and then
raised by an enormous battery of pumps into reservoirs at a level of four
hundred feet above the sea, from which it spread by a billion arterial
branches over the city. Thence it poured down, cleansing, sluicing, working
machinery of all sorts, through an infinite variety of capillary channels into
the great drains, the cloacae maximae, and so carried the sewage out to the
agricultural areas that surrounded London on every side.
The press was employed in one of the processes of the photographic
manufacture, but the nature of the process it did not concern Denton to
understand. The most salient fact to his mind was that it had to be
conducted in ruby light, and as a consequence the room in which he worked
was lit by one coloured globe that poured a lurid and painful illumination
about the room. In the darkest corner stood the press whose servant Denton
had now become: it was a huge, dim, glittering thing with a projecting hood
that had a remote resemblance to a bowed head, and, squatting like some
metal Buddha in this weird light that ministered to its needs, it seemed to
Denton in certain moods almost as if this must needs be the obscure idol to
which humanity in some strange aberration had offered up his life. His
duties had a varied monotony. Such items as the following will convey an
idea of the service of the press. The thing worked with a busy clicking so
long as things went well; but if the paste that came pouring through a feeder
from another room and which it was perpetually compressing into thin
plates, changed in quality the rhythm of its click altered and Denton
hastened to make certain adjustments. The slightest delay involved a waste
of paste and the docking of one or more of his daily pence. If the supply of
paste waned—there were hand processes of a peculiar sort involved in its
preparation, and sometimes the workers had convulsions which deranged
their output—Denton had to throw the press out of gear. In the painful
vigilance a multitude of such trivial attentions entailed, painful because of
the incessant effort its absence of natural interest required, Denton had now
to pass one-third of his days. Save for an occasional visit from the manager,

a kindly but singularly foul-mouthed man, Denton passed his working hours
in solitude.
Elizabeth's work was of a more social sort. There was a fashion for
covering the private apartments of the very wealthy with metal plates
beautifully embossed with repeated patterns. The taste of the time
demanded, however, that the repetition of the patterns should not be exact—
not mechanical, but "natural"—and it was found that the most pleasing
arrangement of pattern irregularity was obtained by employing women of
refinement and natural taste to punch out the patterns with small dies. So
many square feet of plates was exacted from Elizabeth as a minimum, and
for whatever square feet she did in excess she received a small payment.
The room, like most rooms of women workers, was under a manageress:
men had been found by the Labour Company not only less exacting but
extremely liable to excuse favoured ladies from a proper share of their
duties. The manageress was a not unkindly, taciturn person, with the
hardened remains of beauty of the brunette type; and the other women
workers, who of course hated her, associated her name scandalously with
one of the metal-work directors in order to explain her position.
Only two or three of Elizabeth's fellow-workers were born labour serfs;
plain, morose girls, but most of them corresponded to what the nineteenth
century would have called a "reduced" gentlewoman. But the ideal of what
constituted a gentlewoman had altered: the faint, faded, negative virtue, the
modulated voice and restrained gesture of the old-fashioned gentlewoman
had vanished from the earth. Most of her companions showed in
discoloured hair, ruined complexions, and the texture of their reminiscent
conversations, the vanished glories of a conquering youth. All of these
artistic workers were much older than Elizabeth, and two openly expressed
their surprise that any one so young and pleasant should come to share their
toil. But Elizabeth did not trouble them with her old-world moral
conceptions.
They were permitted, and even encouraged to converse with each other,
for the directors very properly judged that anything that conduced to
variations of mood made for pleasing fluctuations in their patterning; and
Elizabeth was almost forced to hear the stories of these lives with which her
own interwove: garbled and distorted they were by vanity indeed and yet

comprehensible enough. And soon she began to appreciate the small spites
and cliques, the little misunderstandings and alliances that enmeshed about
her. One woman was excessively garrulous and descriptive about a
wonderful son of hers; another had cultivated a foolish coarseness of
speech, that she seemed to regard as the wittiest expression of originality
conceivable; a third mused for ever on dress, and whispered to Elizabeth
how she saved her pence day after day, and would presently have a glorious
day of freedom, wearing ... and then followed hours of description; two
others sat always together, and called one another pet names, until one day
some little thing happened, and they sat apart, blind and deaf as it seemed to
one another's being. And always from them all came an incessant tap, tap,
tap, tap, and the manageress listened always to the rhythm to mark if one
fell away. Tap, tap, tap, tap: so their days passed, so their lives must pass.
Elizabeth sat among them, kindly and quiet, grey-hearted, marvelling at
Fate: tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap.
So there came to Denton and Elizabeth a long succession of laborious
days, that hardened their hands, wove strange threads of some new and
sterner substance into the soft prettiness of their lives, and drew grave lines
and shadows on their faces. The bright, convenient ways of the former life
had receded to an inaccessible distance; slowly they learnt the lesson of the
underworld—sombre and laborious, vast and pregnant. There were many
little things happened: things that would be tedious and miserable to tell,
things that were bitter and grievous to bear—indignities, tyrannies, such as
must ever season the bread of the poor in cities; and one thing that was not
little, but seemed like the utter blackening of life to them, which was that
the child they had given life to sickened and died. But that story, that
ancient, perpetually recurring story, has been told so often, has been told so
beautifully, that there is no need to tell it over again here. There was the
same sharp fear, the same long anxiety, the deferred inevitable blow, and the
black silence. It has always been the same; it will always be the same. It is
one of the things that must be.
And it was Elizabeth who was the first to speak, after an aching, dull
interspace of days: not, indeed, of the foolish little name that was a name no
longer, but of the darkness that brooded over her soul. They had come
through the shrieking, tumultuous ways of the city together; the clamour of
trade, of yelling competitive religions, of political appeal, had beat upon

deaf ears; the glare of focussed lights, of dancing letters, and fiery
advertisements, had fallen upon the set, miserable faces unheeded. They
took their dinner in the dining-hall at a place apart. "I want," said Elizabeth
clumsily, "to go out to the flying stages—to that seat. Here, one can say
nothing...."
Denton looked at her. "It will be night," he said.
"I have asked,—it is a fine night." She stopped.
He perceived she could find no words to explain herself. Suddenly he
understood that she wished to see the stars once more, the stars they had
watched together from the open downland in that wild honeymoon of theirs
five years ago. Something caught at his throat. He looked away from her.
"There will be plenty of time to go," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
And at last they came out to their little seat on the flying stage, and sat
there for a long time in silence. The little seat was in shadow, but the zenith
was pale blue with the effulgence of the stage overhead, and all the city
spread below them, squares and circles and patches of brilliance caught in a
mesh-work of light. The little stars seemed very faint and small: near as
they had been to the old-world watcher, they had become now infinitely
remote. Yet one could see them in the darkened patches amidst the glare,
and especially in the northward sky, the ancient constellations gliding
steadfast and patient about the pole.
Long our two people sat in silence, and at last Elizabeth sighed.
"If I understood," she said, "if I could understand. When one is down
there the city seems everything—the noise, the hurry, the voices—you must
live, you must scramble. Here—it is nothing; a thing that passes. One can
think in peace."
"Yes," said Denton. "How flimsy it all is! From here more than half of it
is swallowed by the night.... It will pass."
"We shall pass first," said Elizabeth.
"I know," said Denton. "If life were not a moment, the whole of history
would seem like the happening of a day.... Yes—we shall pass. And the city

will pass, and all the things that are to come. Man and the Overman and
wonders unspeakable. And yet ..."
He paused, and then began afresh. "I know what you feel. At least I
fancy.... Down there one thinks of one's work, one's little vexations and
pleasures, one's eating and drinking and ease and pain. One lives, and one
must die. Down there and everyday—our sorrow seemed the end of life....
"Up here it is different. For instance, down there it would seem
impossible almost to go on living if one were horribly disfigured, horribly
crippled, disgraced. Up here—under these stars—none of those things
would matter. They don't matter.... They are a part of something. One seems
just to touch that something—under the stars...."
He stopped. The vague, impalpable things in his mind, cloudy emotions
half shaped towards ideas, vanished before the rough grasp of words. "It is
hard to express," he said lamely.
They sat through a long stillness.
"It is well to come here," he said at last. "We stop—our minds are very
finite. After all we are just poor animals rising out of the brute, each with a
mind, the poor beginning of a mind. We are so stupid. So much hurts. And
yet ...
"I know, I know—and some day we shall see.
"All this frightful stress, all this discord will resolve to harmony, and we
shall know it. Nothing is but it makes for that. Nothing. All the failures—
every little thing makes for that harmony. Everything is necessary to it, we
shall find. We shall find. Nothing, not even the most dreadful thing, could
be left out. Not even the most trivial. Every tap of your hammer on the
brass, every moment of work, my idleness even ... Dear one! every
movement of our poor little one ... All these things go on for ever. And the
faint impalpable things. We, sitting here together.—Everything ...
"The passion that joined us, and what has come since. It is not passion
now. More than anything else it is sorrow. Dear ..."
He could say no more, could follow his thoughts no further.

Elizabeth made no answer—she was very still; but presently her hand
sought his and found it.

IV—UNDERNEATH

Under the stars one may reach upward and touch resignation, whatever
the evil thing may be, but in the heat and stress of the day's work we lapse
again, come disgust and anger and intolerable moods. How little is all our
magnanimity—an accident! a phase! The very Saints of old had first to flee
the world. And Denton and his Elizabeth could not flee their world, no
longer were there open roads to unclaimed lands where men might live
freely—however hardly—and keep their souls in peace. The city had
swallowed up mankind.
For a time these two Labour Serfs were kept at their original occupations,
she at her brass stamping and Denton at his press; and then came a move for
him that brought with it fresh and still bitterer experiences of life in the
underways of the great city. He was transferred to the care of a rather more
elaborate press in the central factory of the London Tile Trust.
In this new situation he had to work in a long vaulted room with a
number of other men, for the most part born Labour Serfs. He came to this
intercourse reluctantly. His upbringing had been refined, and, until his ill
fortune had brought him to that costume, he had never spoken in his life,
except by way of command or some immediate necessity, to the white-
faced wearers of the blue canvas. Now at last came contact; he had to work
beside them, share their tools, eat with them. To both Elizabeth and himself
this seemed a further degradation.
His taste would have seemed extreme to a man of the nineteenth century.
But slowly and inevitably in the intervening years a gulf had opened
between the wearers of the blue canvas and the classes above, a difference
not simply of circumstances and habits of life, but of habits of thought—
even of language. The underways had developed a dialect of their own:
above, too, had arisen a dialect, a code of thought, a language of "culture,"
which aimed by a sedulous search after fresh distinction to widen
perpetually the space between itself and "vulgarity." The bond of a common

faith, moreover, no longer held the race together. The last years of the
nineteenth century were distinguished by the rapid development among the
prosperous idle of esoteric perversions of the popular religion: glosses and
interpretations that reduced the broad teachings of the carpenter of Nazareth
to the exquisite narrowness of their lives. And, spite of their inclination
towards the ancient fashion of living, neither Elizabeth nor Denton had
been sufficiently original to escape the suggestion of their surroundings. In
matters of common behaviour they had followed the ways of their class,
and so when they fell at last to be Labour Serfs it seemed to them almost as
though they were falling among offensive inferior animals; they felt as a
nineteenth-century duke and duchess might have felt who were forced to
take rooms in the Jago.
Their natural impulse was to maintain a "distance." But Denton's first
idea of a dignified isolation from his new surroundings was soon rudely
dispelled. He had imagined that his fall to the position of a Labour Serf was
the end of his lesson, that when their little daughter had died he had
plumbed the deeps of life; but indeed these things were only the beginning.
Life demands something more from us than acquiescence. And now in a
roomful of machine minders he was to learn a wider lesson, to make the
acquaintance of another factor in life, a factor as elemental as the loss of
things dear to us, more elemental even than toil.
His quiet discouragement of conversation was an immediate cause of
offence—was interpreted, rightly enough I fear, as disdain. His ignorance of
the vulgar dialect, a thing upon which he had hitherto prided himself,
suddenly took upon itself a new aspect. He failed to perceive at once that
his reception of the coarse and stupid but genially intended remarks that
greeted his appearance must have stung the makers of these advances like
blows in their faces. "Don't understand," he said rather coldly, and at
hazard, "No, thank you."
The man who had addressed him stared, scowled, and turned away.
A second, who also failed at Denton's unaccustomed ear, took the trouble
to repeat his remark, and Denton discovered he was being offered the use of
an oil can. He expressed polite thanks, and this second man embarked upon
a penetrating conversation. Denton, he remarked, had been a swell, and he

wanted to know how he had come to wear the blue. He clearly expected an
interesting record of vice and extravagance. Had Denton ever been at a
Pleasure City? Denton was speedily to discover how the existence of these
wonderful places of delight permeated and defiled the thought and honour
of these unwilling, hopeless workers of the underworld.
His aristocratic temperament resented these questions. He answered "No"
curtly. The man persisted with a still more personal question, and this time
it was Denton who turned away.
"Gorblimey!" said his interlocutor, much astonished.
It presently forced itself upon Denton's mind that this remarkable
conversation was being repeated in indignant tones to more sympathetic
hearers, and that it gave rise to astonishment and ironical laughter. They
looked at Denton with manifestly enhanced interest. A curious perception of
isolation dawned upon him. He tried to think of his press and its unfamiliar
peculiarities....
The machines kept everybody pretty busy during the first spell, and then
came a recess. It was only an interval for refreshment, too brief for any one
to go out to a Labour Company dining-room. Denton followed his fellow-
workers into a short gallery, in which were a number of bins of refuse from
the presses.
Each man produced a packet of food. Denton had no packet. The
manager, a careless young man who held his position by influence, had
omitted to warn Denton that it was necessary to apply for this provision. He
stood apart, feeling hungry. The others drew together in a group and talked
in undertones, glancing at him ever and again. He became uneasy. His
appearance of disregard cost him an increasing effort. He tried to think of
the levers of his new press.
Presently one, a man shorter but much broader and stouter than Denton,
came forward to him. Denton turned to him as unconcernedly as possible.
"Here!" said the delegate—as Denton judged him to be—extending a cube
of bread in a not too clean hand. He had a swart, broad-nosed face, and his
mouth hung down towards one corner.

Denton felt doubtful for the instant whether this was meant for civility or
insult. His impulse was to decline. "No, thanks," he said; and, at the man's
change of expression, "I'm not hungry."
There came a laugh from the group behind. "Told you so," said the man
who had offered Denton the loan of an oil can. "He's top side, he is. You
ain't good enough for 'im."
The swart face grew a shade darker.
"Here," said its owner, still extending the bread, and speaking in a lower
tone; "you got to eat this. See?"
Denton looked into the threatening face before him, and odd little
currents of energy seemed to be running through his limbs and body.
"I don't want it," he said, trying a pleasant smile that twitched and failed.
The thickset man advanced his face, and the bread became a physical
threat in his hand. Denton's mind rushed together to the one problem of his
antagonist's eyes.
"Eat it," said the swart man.
There came a pause, and then they both moved quickly. The cube of
bread described a complicated path, a curve that would have ended in
Denton's face; and then his fist hit the wrist of the hand that gripped it, and
it flew upward, and out of the conflict—its part played.
He stepped back quickly, fists clenched and arms tense. The hot, dark
countenance receded, became an alert hostility, watching its chance. Denton
for one instant felt confident, and strangely buoyant and serene. His heart
beat quickly. He felt his body alive, and glowing to the tips.
"Scrap, boys!" shouted some one, and then the dark figure had leapt
forward, ducked back and sideways, and come in again. Denton struck out,
and was hit. One of his eyes seemed to him to be demolished, and he felt a
soft lip under his fist just before he was hit again—this time under the chin.
A huge fan of fiery needles shot open. He had a momentary persuasion that
his head was knocked to pieces, and then something hit his head and back
from behind, and the fight became an uninteresting, an impersonal thing.

He was aware that time—seconds or minutes—had passed, abstract,
uneventful time. He was lying with his head in a heap of ashes, and
something wet and warm ran swiftly into his neck. The first shock broke up
into discrete sensations. All his head throbbed; his eye and his chin
throbbed exceedingly, and the taste of blood was in his mouth.
"He's all right," said a voice. "He's opening his eyes."
"Serve him——well right," said a second.
His mates were standing about him. He made an effort and sat up. He put
his hand to the back of his head, and his hair was wet and full of cinders. A
laugh greeted the gesture. His eye was partially closed. He perceived what
had happened. His momentary anticipation of a final victory had vanished.
"Looks surprised," said some one.
"'Ave any more?" said a wit; and then, imitating Denton's refined accent.
"No, thank you."
Denton perceived the swart man with a blood-stained handkerchief
before his face, and somewhat in the background.
"Where's that bit of bread he's got to eat?" said a little ferret-faced
creature; and sought with his foot in the ashes of the adjacent bin.
Denton had a moment of internal debate. He knew the code of honour
requires a man to pursue a fight he has begun to the bitter end; but this was
his first taste of the bitterness. He was resolved to rise again, but he felt no
passionate impulse. It occurred to him—and the thought was no very
violent spur—that he was perhaps after all a coward. For a moment his will
was heavy, a lump of lead.
"'Ere it is," said the little ferret-faced man, and stooped to pick up a
cindery cube. He looked at Denton, then at the others.
Slowly, unwillingly, Denton stood up.
A dirty-faced albino extended a hand to the ferret-faced man. "Gimme
that toke," he said. He advanced threateningly, bread in hand, to Denton.

"So you ain't 'ad your bellyful yet," he said. "Eh?"
Now it was coming. "No, I haven't," said Denton, with a catching of the
breath, and resolved to try this brute behind the ear before he himself got
stunned again. He knew he would be stunned again. He was astonished how
ill he had judged himself beforehand. A few ridiculous lunges, and down he
would go again. He watched the albino's eyes. The albino was grinning
confidently, like a man who plans an agreeable trick. A sudden perception
of impending indignities stung Denton.
"You leave 'im alone, Jim," said the swart man suddenly over the blood-
stained rag. "He ain't done nothing to you."
The albino's grin vanished. He stopped. He looked from one to the other.
It seemed to Denton that the swart man demanded the privilege of his
destruction. The albino would have been better.
"You leave 'im alone," said the swart man. "See? 'E's 'ad 'is licks."
A clattering bell lifted up its voice and solved the situation. The albino
hesitated. "Lucky for you," he said, adding a foul metaphor, and turned with
the others towards the press-room again. "Wait for the end of the spell,
mate," said the albino over his shoulder—an afterthought. The swart man
waited for the albino to precede him. Denton realised that he had a reprieve.
The men passed towards an open door. Denton became aware of his
duties, and hurried to join the tail of the queue. At the doorway of the
vaulted gallery of presses a yellow-uniformed labour policeman stood
ticking a card. He had ignored the swart man's hæmorrhage.
"Hurry up there!" he said to Denton.
"Hello!" he said, at the sight of his facial disarray. "Who's been hitting
you?"
"That's my affair," said Denton.
"Not if it spiles your work, it ain't," said the man in yellow. "You mind
that."

Denton made no answer. He was a rough—a labourer. He wore the blue
canvas. The laws of assault and battery, he knew, were not for the likes of
him. He went to his press.
He could feel the skin of his brow and chin and head lifting themselves to
noble bruises, felt the throb and pain of each aspiring contusion. His
nervous system slid down to lethargy; at each movement in his press
adjustment he felt he lifted a weight. And as for his honour—that too
throbbed and puffed. How did he stand? What precisely had happened in
the last ten minutes? What would happen next? He knew that here was
enormous matter for thought, and he could not think save in disordered
snatches.
His mood was a sort of stagnant astonishment. All his conceptions were
overthrown. He had regarded his security from physical violence as
inherent, as one of the conditions of life. So, indeed, it had been while he
wore his middle-class costume, had his middle-class property to serve for
his defence. But who would interfere among Labour roughs fighting
together? And indeed in those days no man would. In the Underworld there
was no law between man and man; the law and machinery of the state had
become for them something that held men down, fended them off from
much desirable property and pleasure, and that was all. Violence, that ocean
in which the brutes live for ever, and from which a thousand dykes and
contrivances have won our hazardous civilised life, had flowed in again
upon the sinking underways and submerged them. The fist ruled. Denton
had come right down at last to the elemental—fist and trick and the
stubborn heart and fellowship—even as it was in the beginning.
The rhythm of his machine changed, and his thoughts were interrupted.
Presently he could think again. Strange how quickly things had
happened! He bore these men who had thrashed him no very vivid ill-will.
He was bruised and enlightened. He saw with absolute fairness now the
reasonableness of his unpopularity. He had behaved like a fool. Disdain,
seclusion, are the privilege of the strong. The fallen aristocrat still clinging
to his pointless distinction is surely the most pitiful creature of pretence in
all this clamant universe. Good heavens! what was there for him to despise
in these men?

What a pity he had not appreciated all this better five hours ago!
What would happen at the end of the spell? He could not tell. He could
not imagine. He could not imagine the thoughts of these men. He was
sensible only of their hostility and utter want of sympathy. Vague
possibilities of shame and violence chased one another across his mind.
Could he devise some weapon? He recalled his assault upon the hypnotist,
but there were no detachable lamps here. He could see nothing that he could
catch up in his defence.
For a space he thought of a headlong bolt for the security of the public
ways directly the spell was over. Apart from the trivial consideration of his
self-respect, he perceived that this would be only a foolish postponement
and aggravation of his trouble. He perceived the ferret-faced man and the
albino talking together with their eyes towards him. Presently they were
talking to the swart man, who stood with his broad back studiously towards
Denton.
At last came the end of the second spell. The lender of oil cans stopped
his press sharply and turned round, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand. His eyes had the quiet expectation of one who seats himself in a
theatre.
Now was the crisis, and all the little nerves of Denton's being seemed
leaping and dancing. He had decided to show fight if any fresh indignity
was offered him. He stopped his press and turned. With an enormous
affectation of ease he walked down the vault and entered the passage of the
ash pits, only to discover he had left his jacket—which he had taken off
because of the heat of the vault—beside his press. He walked back. He met
the albino eye to eye.
He heard the ferret-faced man in expostulation. "'E reely ought, eat it,"
said the ferret-faced man. "'E did reely."
"No—you leave 'im alone," said the swart man.
Apparently nothing further was to happen to him that day. He passed out
to the passage and staircase that led up to the moving platforms of the city.

He emerged on the livid brilliance and streaming movement of the public
street. He became acutely aware of his disfigured face, and felt his swelling
bruises with a limp, investigatory hand. He went up to the swiftest platform,
and seated himself on a Labour Company bench.
He lapsed into a pensive torpor. The immediate dangers and stresses of
his position he saw with a sort of static clearness. What would they do to-
morrow? He could not tell. What would Elizabeth think of his brutalisation?
He could not tell. He was exhausted. He was aroused presently by a hand
upon his arm.
He looked up, and saw the swart man seated beside him. He started.
Surely he was safe from violence in the public way!
The swart man's face retained no traces of his share in the fight; his
expression was free from hostility—seemed almost deferential. "'Scuse
me," he said, with a total absence of truculence. Denton realised that no
assault was intended. He stared, awaiting the next development.
It was evident the next sentence was premeditated. "Whad—I—was—
going—to say—was this," said the swart man, and sought through a silence
for further words.
"Whad—I—was—going—to say—was this," he repeated.
Finally he abandoned that gambit. "You're aw right," he cried, laying a
grimy hand on Denton's grimy sleeve. "You're aw right. You're a ge'man.
Sorry—very sorry. Wanted to tell you that."
Denton realised that there must exist motives beyond a mere impulse to
abominable proceedings in the man. He meditated, and swallowed an
unworthy pride.
"I did not mean to be offensive to you," he said, "in refusing that bit of
bread."
"Meant it friendly," said the swart man, recalling the scene; "but—in
front of that blarsted Whitey and his snigger—Well—I 'ad to scrap."
"Yes," said Denton with sudden fervour: "I was a fool."

"Ah!" said the swart man, with great satisfaction. "That's aw right.
Shake!"
And Denton shook.
The moving platform was rushing by the establishment of a face
moulder, and its lower front was a huge display of mirror, designed to
stimulate the thirst for more symmetrical features. Denton caught the
reflection of himself and his new friend, enormously twisted and
broadened. His own face was puffed, one-sided, and blood-stained; a grin of
idiotic and insincere amiability distorted its latitude. A wisp of hair
occluded one eye. The trick of the mirror presented the swart man as a gross
expansion of lip and nostril. They were linked by shaking hands. Then
abruptly this vision passed—to return to memory in the anæmic meditations
of a waking dawn.
As he shook, the swart man made some muddled remark, to the effect
that he had always known he could get on with a gentleman if one came his
way. He prolonged the shaking until Denton, under the influence of the
mirror, withdrew his hand. The swart man became pensive, spat
impressively on the platform, and resumed his theme.
"Whad I was going to say was this," he said; was gravelled, and shook
his head at his foot.
Denton became curious. "Go on," he said, attentive.
The swart man took the plunge. He grasped Denton's arm, became
intimate in his attitude. "'Scuse me," he said. "Fact is, you done know 'ow to
scrap. Done know 'ow to. Why—you done know 'ow to begin. You'll get
killed if you don't mind. 'Ouldin' your 'ands—There!"
He reinforced his statement by objurgation, watching the effect of each
oath with a wary eye.
"F'r instance. You're tall. Long arms. You get a longer reach than any one
in the brasted vault. Gobblimey, but I thought I'd got a Tough on. 'Stead of
which ... 'Scuse me. I wouldn't have 'it you if I'd known. It's like fighting
sacks. 'Tisn' right. Y'r arms seemed 'ung on 'ooks. Reg'lar—'ung on 'ooks.
There!"

Denton stared, and then surprised and hurt his battered chin by a sudden
laugh. Bitter tears came into his eyes.
"Go on," he said.
The swart man reverted to his formula. He was good enough to say he
liked the look of Denton, thought he had stood up "amazing plucky. On'y
pluck ain't no good—ain't no brasted good—if you don't 'old your 'ands.
"Whad I was going to say was this," he said. "Lemme show you 'ow to
scrap. Jest lemme. You're ig'nant, you ain't no class; but you might be a very
decent scrapper—very decent. Shown. That's what I meant to say."
Denton hesitated. "But—" he said, "I can't give you anything—"
"That's the ge'man all over," said the swart man. "Who arst you to?"
"But your time?"
"If you don't get learnt scrapping you'll get killed,—don't you make no
bones of that."
Denton thought. "I don't know," he said.
He looked at the face beside him, and all its native coarseness shouted at
him. He felt a quick revulsion from his transient friendliness. It seemed to
him incredible that it should be necessary for him to be indebted to such a
creature.
"The chaps are always scrapping," said the swart man. "Always. And, of
course—if one gets waxy and 'its you vital ..."
"By God!" cried Denton; "I wish one would."
"Of course, if you feel like that—"
"You don't understand."
"P'raps I don't," said the swart man; and lapsed into a fuming silence.
When he spoke again his voice was less friendly, and he prodded Denton
by way of address. "Look see!" he said: "are you going to let me show you

'ow to scrap?"
"It's tremendously kind of you," said Denton; "but—"
There was a pause. The swart man rose and bent over Denton.
"Too much ge'man," he said—"eh? I got a red face.... By gosh! you are—
you are a brasted fool!"
He turned away, and instantly Denton realised the truth of this remark.
The swart man descended with dignity to a cross way, and Denton, after a
momentary impulse to pursuit, remained on the platform. For a time the
things that had happened filled his mind. In one day his graceful system of
resignation had been shattered beyond hope. Brute force, the final, the
fundamental, had thrust its face through all his explanations and glosses and
consolations and grinned enigmatically. Though he was hungry and tired, he
did not go on directly to the Labour Hotel, where he would meet Elizabeth.
He found he was beginning to think, he wanted very greatly to think; and
so, wrapped in a monstrous cloud of meditation, he went the circuit of the
city on his moving platform twice. You figure him, tearing through the
glaring, thunder-voiced city at a pace of fifty miles an hour, the city upon
the planet that spins along its chartless path through space many thousands
of miles an hour, funking most terribly, and trying to understand why the
heart and will in him should suffer and keep alive.
When at last he came to Elizabeth, she was white and anxious. He might
have noted she was in trouble, had it not been for his own preoccupation.
He feared most that she would desire to know every detail of his indignities,
that she would be sympathetic or indignant. He saw her eyebrows rise at the
sight of him.
"I've had rough handling," he said, and gasped. "It's too fresh—too hot. I
don't want to talk about it." He sat down with an unavoidable air of
sullenness.
She stared at him in astonishment, and as she read something of the
significant hieroglyphic of his battered face, her lips whitened. Her hand—
it was thinner now than in the days of their prosperity, and her first finger

was a little altered by the metal punching she did—clenched convulsively.
"This horrible world!" she said, and said no more.
In these latter days they had become a very silent couple; they said
scarcely a word to each other that night, but each followed a private train of
thought. In the small hours, as Elizabeth lay awake, Denton started up
beside her suddenly—he had been lying as still as a dead man.
"I cannot stand it!" cried Denton. "I will not stand it!"
She saw him dimly, sitting up; saw his arm lunge as if in a furious blow
at the enshrouding night. Then for a space he was still.
"It is too much—it is more than one can bear!"
She could say nothing. To her, also, it seemed that this was as far as one
could go. She waited through a long stillness. She could see that Denton sat
with his arms about his knees, his chin almost touching them.
Then he laughed.
"No," he said at last, "I'm going to stand it. That's the peculiar thing.
There isn't a grain of suicide in us—not a grain. I suppose all the people
with a turn that way have gone. We're going through with it—to the end."
Elizabeth thought grayly, and realised that this also was true.
"We're going through with it. To think of all who have gone through with
it: all the generations—endless—endless. Little beasts that snapped and
snarled, snapping and snarling, snapping and snarling, generation after
generation."
His monotone, ended abruptly, resumed after a vast interval.
"There were ninety thousand years of stone age. A Denton somewhere in
all those years. Apostolic succession. The grace of going through. Let me
see! Ninety—nine hundred—three nines, twenty-seven—three thousand
generations of men!—men more or less. And each fought, and was bruised,
and shamed, and somehow held his own—going through with it—passing it
on.... And thousands more to come perhaps—thousands!

"Passing it on. I wonder if they will thank us."
His voice assumed an argumentative note. "If one could find something
definite ... If one could say, 'This is why—this is why it goes on....'"
He became still, and Elizabeth's eyes slowly separated him from the
darkness until at last she could see how he sat with his head resting on his
hand. A sense of the enormous remoteness of their minds came to her; that
dim suggestion of another being seemed to her a figure of their mutual
understanding. What could he be thinking now? What might he not say
next? Another age seemed to elapse before he sighed and whispered: "No. I
don't understand it. No!" Then a long interval, and he repeated this. But the
second time it had the tone almost of a solution.
She became aware that he was preparing to lie down. She marked his
movements, perceived with astonishment how he adjusted his pillow with a
careful regard to comfort. He lay down with a sigh of contentment almost.
His passion had passed. He lay still, and presently his breathing became
regular and deep.
But Elizabeth remained with eyes wide open in the darkness, until the
clamour of a bell and the sudden brilliance of the electric light warned them
that the Labour Company had need of them for yet another day.
That day came a scuffle with the albino Whitey and the little ferret-faced
man. Blunt, the swart artist in scrapping, having first let Denton grasp the
bearing of his lesson, intervened, not without a certain quality of patronage.
"Drop 'is 'air, Whitey, and let the man be," said his gross voice through a
shower of indignities. "Can't you see 'e don't know 'ow to scrap?" And
Denton, lying shamefully in the dust, realised that he must accept that
course of instruction after all.
He made his apology straight and clean. He scrambled up and walked to
Blunt. "I was a fool, and you are right," he said. "If it isn't too late ..."
That night, after the second spell, Denton went with Blunt to certain
waste and slime-soaked vaults under the Port of London, to learn the first
beginnings of the high art of scrapping as it had been perfected in the great
world of the underways: how to hit or kick a man so as to hurt him
excruciatingly or make him violently sick, how to hit or kick "vital," how to

use glass in one's garments as a club and to spread red ruin with various
domestic implements, how to anticipate and demolish your adversary's
intentions in other directions; all the pleasant devices, in fact, that had
grown up among the disinherited of the great cities of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, were spread out by a gifted exponent for Denton's
learning. Blunt's bashfulness fell from him as the instruction proceeded, and
he developed a certain expert dignity, a quality of fatherly consideration. He
treated Denton with the utmost consideration, only "flicking him up a bit"
now and then, to keep the interest hot, and roaring with laughter at a happy
fluke of Denton's that covered his mouth with blood.
"I'm always keerless of my mouth," said Blunt, admitting a weakness.
"Always. It don't seem to matter, like, just getting bashed in the mouth—not
if your chin's all right. Tastin' blood does me good. Always. But I better not
'it you again."
Denton went home, to fall asleep exhausted and wake in the small hours
with aching limbs and all his bruises tingling. Was it worth while that he
should go on living? He listened to Elizabeth's breathing, and remembering
that he must have awaked her the previous night, he lay very still. He was
sick with infinite disgust at the new conditions of his life. He hated it all,
hated even the genial savage who had protected him so generously. The
monstrous fraud of civilisation glared stark before his eyes; he saw it as a
vast lunatic growth, producing a deepening torrent of savagery below, and
above ever more flimsy gentility and silly wastefulness. He could see no
redeeming reason, no touch of honour, either in the life he had led or in this
life to which he had fallen. Civilisation presented itself as some catastrophic
product as little concerned with men—save as victims—as a cyclone or a
planetary collision. He, and therefore all mankind, seemed living utterly in
vain. His mind sought some strange expedients of escape, if not for himself
then at least for Elizabeth. But he meant them for himself. What if he
hunted up Mwres and told him of their disaster? It came to him as an
astonishing thing how utterly Mwres and Bindon had passed out of his
range. Where were they? What were they doing? From that he passed to
thoughts of utter dishonour. And finally, not arising in any way out of this
mental tumult, but ending it as dawn ends the night, came the clear and
obvious conclusion of the night before: the conviction that he had to go
through with things; that, apart from any remoter view and quite sufficient

for all his thought and energy, he had to stand up and fight among his
fellows and quit himself like a man.
The second night's instruction was perhaps less dreadful than the first;
and the third was even endurable, for Blunt dealt out some praise. The
fourth day Denton chanced upon the fact that the ferret-faced man was a
coward. There passed a fortnight of smouldering days and feverish
instruction at night; Blunt, with many blasphemies, testified that never had
he met so apt a pupil; and all night long Denton dreamt of kicks and
counters and gouges and cunning tricks. For all that time no further
outrages were attempted, for fear of Blunt; and then came the second crisis.
Blunt did not come one day—afterwards he admitted his deliberate
intention—and through the tedious morning Whitey awaited the interval
between the spells with an ostentatious impatience. He knew nothing of the
scrapping lessons, and he spent the time in telling Denton and the vault
generally of certain disagreeable proceedings he had in mind.
Whitey was not popular, and the vault disgorged to see him haze the new
man with only a languid interest. But matters changed when Whitey's
attempt to open the proceedings by kicking Denton in the face was met by
an excellently executed duck, catch and throw, that completed the flight of
Whitey's foot in its orbit and brought Whitey's head into the ash-heap that
had once received Denton's. Whitey arose a shade whiter, and now
blasphemously bent upon vital injuries. There were indecisive passages,
foiled enterprises that deepened Whitey's evidently growing perplexity; and
then things developed into a grouping of Denton uppermost with Whitey's
throat in his hand, his knee on Whitey's chest, and a tearful Whitey with a
black face, protruding tongue and broken finger endeavouring to explain the
misunderstanding by means of hoarse sounds. Moreover, it was evident that
among the bystanders there had never been a more popular person than
Denton.
Denton, with proper precaution, released his antagonist and stood up. His
blood seemed changed to some sort of fluid fire, his limbs felt light and
supernaturally strong. The idea that he was a martyr in the civilisation
machine had vanished from his mind. He was a man in a world of men.

The little ferret-faced man was the first in the competition to pat him on
the back. The lender of oil cans was a radiant sun of genial congratulation....
It seemed incredible to Denton that he had ever thought of despair.
Denton was convinced that not only had he to go through with things, but
that he could. He sat on the canvas pallet expounding this new aspect to
Elizabeth. One side of his face was bruised. She had not recently fought,
she had not been patted on the back, there were no hot bruises upon her
face, only a pallor and a new line or so about the mouth. She was taking the
woman's share. She looked steadfastly at Denton in his new mood of
prophecy. "I feel that there is something," he was saying, "something that
goes on, a Being of Life in which we live and move and have our being,
something that began fifty—a hundred million years ago, perhaps, that goes
on—on: growing, spreading, to things beyond us—things that will justify us
all.... That will explain and justify my fighting—these bruises, and all the
pain of it. It's the chisel—yes, the chisel of the Maker. If only I could make
you feel as I feel, if I could make you! You will, dear, I know you will."
"No," she said in a low voice. "No, I shall not."
"So I might have thought—"
She shook her head. "No," she said, "I have thought as well. What you
say—doesn't convince me."
She looked at his face resolutely. "I hate it," she said, and caught at her
breath. "You do not understand, you do not think. There was a time when
you said things and I believed them. I am growing wiser. You are a man,
you can fight, force your way. You do not mind bruises. You can be coarse
and ugly, and still a man. Yes—it makes you. It makes you. You are right.
Only a woman is not like that. We are different. We have let ourselves get
civilised too soon. This underworld is not for us."
She paused and began again.
"I hate it! I hate this horrible canvas! I hate it more than—more than the
worst that can happen. It hurts my fingers to touch it. It is horrible to the
skin. And the women I work with day after day! I lie awake at nights and
think how I may be growing like them...."

She stopped. "I am growing like them," she cried passionately.
Denton stared at her distress. "But—" he said and stopped.
"You don't understand. What have I? What have I to save me? You can
fight. Fighting is man's work. But women—women are different.... I have
thought it all out, I have done nothing but think night and day. Look at the
colour of my face! I cannot go on. I cannot endure this life.... I cannot
endure it."
She stopped. She hesitated.
"You do not know all," she said abruptly, and for an instant her lips had a
bitter smile. "I have been asked to leave you."
"Leave me!"
She made no answer save an affirmative movement of the head.
Denton stood up sharply. They stared at one another through a long
silence.
Suddenly she turned herself about, and flung face downward upon their
canvas bed. She did not sob, she made no sound. She lay still upon her face.
After a vast, distressful void her shoulders heaved and she began to weep
silently.
"Elizabeth!" he whispered—"Elizabeth!"
Very softly he sat down beside her, bent down, put his arm across her in a
doubtful caress, seeking vainly for some clue to this intolerable situation.
"Elizabeth," he whispered in her ear.
She thrust him from her with her hand. "I cannot bear a child to be a
slave!" and broke out into loud and bitter weeping.
Denton's face changed—became blank dismay. Presently he slipped from
the bed and stood on his feet. All the complacency had vanished from his
face, had given place to impotent rage. He began to rave and curse at the
intolerable forces which pressed upon him, at all the accidents and hot
desires and heedlessness that mock the life of man. His little voice rose in

that little room, and he shook his fist, this animalcule of the earth, at all that
environed him about, at the millions about him, at his past and future and
all the insensate vastness of the overwhelming city.

V—BINDON INTERVENES

In Bindon's younger days he had dabbled in speculation and made three
brilliant flukes. For the rest of his life he had the wisdom to let gambling
alone, and the conceit to believe himself a very clever man. A certain desire
for influence and reputation interested him in the business intrigues of the
giant city in which his flukes were made. He became at last one of the most
influential shareholders in the company that owned the London flying
stages to which the aëroplanes came from all parts of the world. This much
for his public activities. In his private life he was a man of pleasure. And
this is the story of his heart.
But before proceeding to such depths, one must devote a little time to the
exterior of this person. Its physical basis was slender, and short, and dark;
and the face, which was fine-featured and assisted by pigments, varied from
an insecure self-complacency to an intelligent uneasiness. His face and head
had been depilated, according to the cleanly and hygienic fashion of the
time, so that the colour and contour of his hair varied with his costume. This
he was constantly changing.
At times he would distend himself with pneumatic vestments in the
rococo vein. From among the billowy developments of this style, and
beneath a translucent and illuminated headdress, his eye watched jealously
for the respect of the less fashionable world. At other times he emphasised
his elegant slenderness in close-fitting garments of black satin. For effects
of dignity he would assume broad pneumatic shoulders, from which hung a
robe of carefully arranged folds of China silk, and a classical Bindon in
pink tights was also a transient phenomenon in the eternal pageant of
Destiny. In the days when he hoped to marry Elizabeth, he sought to
impress and charm her, and at the same time to take off something of his
burthen of forty years, by wearing the last fancy of the contemporary buck,
a costume of elastic material with distensible warts and horns, changing in
colour as he walked, by an ingenious arrangement of versatile

chromatophores. And no doubt, if Elizabeth's affection had not been already
engaged by the worthless Denton, and if her tastes had not had that odd bias
for old-fashioned ways, this extremely chic conception would have ravished
her. Bindon had consulted Elizabeth's father before presenting himself in
this garb—he was one of those men who always invite criticism of their
costume—and Mwres had pronounced him all that the heart of woman
could desire. But the affair of the hypnotist proved that his knowledge of
the heart of woman was incomplete.
Bindon's idea of marrying had been formed some little time before
Mwres threw Elizabeth's budding womanhood in his way. It was one of
Bindon's most cherished secrets that he had a considerable capacity for a
pure and simple life of a grossly sentimental type. The thought imparted a
sort of pathetic seriousness to the offensive and quite inconsequent and
unmeaning excesses, which he was pleased to regard as dashing
wickedness, and which a number of good people also were so unwise as to
treat in that desirable manner. As a consequence of these excesses, and
perhaps by reason also of an inherited tendency to early decay, his liver
became seriously affected, and he suffered increasing inconvenience when
travelling by aëroplane. It was during his convalescence from a protracted
bilious attack that it occurred to him that in spite of all the terrible
fascinations of Vice, if he found a beautiful, gentle, good young woman of a
not too violently intellectual type to devote her life to him, he might yet be
saved to Goodness, and even rear a spirited family in his likeness to solace
his declining years. But like so many experienced men of the world, he
doubted if there were any good women. Of such as he had heard tell he was
outwardly sceptical and privately much afraid.
When the aspiring Mwres effected his introduction to Elizabeth, it
seemed to him that his good fortune was complete. He fell in love with her
at once. Of course, he had always been falling in love since he was sixteen,
in accordance with the extremely varied recipes to be found in the
accumulated literature of many centuries. But this was different. This was
real love. It seemed to him to call forth all the lurking goodness in his
nature. He felt that for her sake he could give up a way of life that had
already produced the gravest lesions on his liver and nervous system. His
imagination presented him with idyllic pictures of the life of the reformed
rake. He would never be sentimental with her, or silly; but always a little

cynical and bitter, as became the past. Yet he was sure she would have an
intuition of his real greatness and goodness. And in due course he would
confess things to her, pour his version of what he regarded as his
wickedness—showing what a complex of Goethe, and Benvenuto Cellini,
and Shelley, and all those other chaps he really was—into her shocked, very
beautiful, and no doubt sympathetic ear. And preparatory to these things he
wooed her with infinite subtlety and respect. And the reserve with which
Elizabeth treated him seemed nothing more nor less than an exquisite
modesty touched and enhanced by an equally exquisite lack of ideas.
Bindon knew nothing of her wandering affections, nor of the attempt
made by Mwres to utilise hypnotism as a corrective to this digression of her
heart; he conceived he was on the best of terms with Elizabeth, and had
made her quite successfully various significant presents of jewellery and the
more virtuous cosmetics, when her elopement with Denton threw the world
out of gear for him. His first aspect of the matter was rage begotten of
wounded vanity, and as Mwres was the most convenient person, he vented
the first brunt of it upon him.
He went immediately and insulted the desolate father grossly, and then
spent an active and determined day going to and fro about the city and
interviewing people in a consistent and partly-successful attempt to ruin
that matrimonial speculator. The effectual nature of these activities gave
him a temporary exhilaration, and he went to the dining-place he had
frequented in his wicked days in a devil-may-care frame of mind, and dined
altogether too amply and cheerfully with two other golden youths in their
early forties. He threw up the game; no woman was worth being good for,
and he astonished even himself by the strain of witty cynicism he
developed. One of the other desperate blades, warmed with wine, made a
facetious allusion to his disappointment, but at the time this did not seem
unpleasant.
The next morning found his liver and temper inflamed. He kicked his
phonographic-news machine to pieces, dismissed his valet, and resolved
that he would perpetrate a terrible revenge upon Elizabeth. Or Denton. Or
somebody. But anyhow, it was to be a terrible revenge; and the friend who
had made fun at him should no longer see him in the light of a foolish girl's
victim. He knew something of the little property that was due to her, and

that this would be the only support of the young couple until Mwres should
relent. If Mwres did not relent, and if unpropitious things should happen to
the affair in which Elizabeth's expectations lay, they would come upon evil
times and be sufficiently amenable to temptation of a sinister sort. Bindon's
imagination, abandoning its beautiful idealism altogether, expanded the idea
of temptation of a sinister sort. He figured himself as the implacable, the
intricate and powerful man of wealth pursuing this maiden who had scorned
him. And suddenly her image came upon his mind vivid and dominant, and
for the first time in his life Bindon realised something of the real power of
passion.
His imagination stood aside like a respectful footman who has done his
work in ushering in the emotion.
"My God!" cried Bindon: "I will have her! If I have to kill myself to get
her! And that other fellow—!"
After an interview with his medical man and a penance for his overnight
excesses in the form of bitter drugs, a mitigated but absolutely resolute
Bindon sought out Mwres. Mwres he found properly smashed, and
impoverished and humble, in a mood of frantic self-preservation, ready to
sell himself body and soul, much more any interest in a disobedient
daughter, to recover his lost position in the world. In the reasonable
discussion that followed, it was agreed that these misguided young people
should be left to sink into distress, or possibly even assisted towards that
improving discipline by Bindon's financial influence.
"And then?" said Mwres.
"They will come to the Labour Company," said Bindon. "They will wear
the blue canvas."
"And then?"
"She will divorce him," he said, and sat for a moment intent upon that
prospect. For in those days the austere limitations of divorce of Victorian
times were extraordinarily relaxed, and a couple might separate on a
hundred different scores.

Then suddenly Bindon astonished himself and Mwres by jumping to his
feet. "She shall divorce him!" he cried. "I will have it so—I will work it so.
By God! it shall be so. He shall be disgraced, so that she must. He shall be
smashed and pulverised."
The idea of smashing and pulverising inflamed him further. He began a
Jovian pacing up and down the little office. "I will have her," he cried. "I
will have her! Heaven and Hell shall not save her from me!" His passion
evaporated in its expression, and left him at the end simply histrionic. He
struck an attitude and ignored with heroic determination a sharp twinge of
pain about the diaphragm. And Mwres sat with his pneumatic cap deflated
and himself very visibly impressed.
And so, with a fair persistency, Bindon sat himself to the work of being
Elizabeth's malignant providence, using with ingenious dexterity every
particle of advantage wealth in those days gave a man over his fellow-
creatures. A resort to the consolations of religion hindered these operations
not at all. He would go and talk with an interesting, experienced and
sympathetic Father of the Huysmanite sect of the Isis cult, about all the
irrational little proceedings he was pleased to regard as his heaven-
dismaying wickedness, and the interesting, experienced and sympathetic
Father representing Heaven dismayed, would with a pleasing affectation of
horror, suggest simple and easy penances, and recommend a monastic
foundation that was airy, cool, hygienic, and not vulgarised, for viscerally
disordered penitent sinners of the refined and wealthy type. And after these
excursions, Bindon would come back to London quite active and passionate
again. He would machinate with really considerable energy, and repair to a
certain gallery high above the street of moving ways, from which he could
view the entrance to the barrack of the Labour Company in the ward which
sheltered Denton and Elizabeth. And at last one day he saw Elizabeth go in,
and thereby his passion was renewed.
So in the fullness of time the complicated devices of Bindon ripened, and
he could go to Mwres and tell him that the young people were near despair.
"It's time for you," he said, "to let your parental affections have play.
She's been in blue canvas some months, and they've been cooped together
in one of those Labour dens, and the little girl is dead. She knows now what

his manhood is worth to her, by way of protection, poor girl. She'll see
things now in a clearer light. You go to her—I don't want to appear in this
affair yet—and point out to her how necessary it is that she should get a
divorce from him...."
"She's obstinate," said Mwres doubtfully.
"Spirit!" said Bindon. "She's a wonderful girl—a wonderful girl!"
"She'll refuse."
"Of course she will. But leave it open to her. Leave it open to her. And
some day—in that stuffy den, in that irksome, toilsome life they can't help it
—they'll have a quarrel. And then—"
Mwres meditated over the matter, and did as he was told.
Then Bindon, as he had arranged with his spiritual adviser, went into
retreat. The retreat of the Huysmanite sect was a beautiful place, with the
sweetest air in London, lit by natural sunlight, and with restful quadrangles
of real grass open to the sky, where at the same time the penitent man of
pleasure might enjoy all the pleasures of loafing and all the satisfaction of
distinguished austerity. And, save for participation in the simple and
wholesome dietary of the place and in certain magnificent chants, Bindon
spent all his time in meditation upon the theme of Elizabeth, and the
extreme purification his soul had undergone since he first saw her, and
whether he would be able to get a dispensation to marry her from the
experienced and sympathetic Father in spite of the approaching "sin" of her
divorce; and then ... Bindon would lean against a pillar of the quadrangle
and lapse into reveries on the superiority of virtuous love to any other form
of indulgence. A curious feeling in his back and chest that was trying to
attract his attention, a disposition to be hot or shiver, a general sense of ill-
health and cutaneous discomfort he did his best to ignore. All that of course
belonged to the old life that he was shaking off.
When he came out of retreat he went at once to Mwres to ask for news of
Elizabeth. Mwres was clearly under the impression that he was an
exemplary father, profoundly touched about the heart by his child's
unhappiness. "She was pale," he said, greatly moved; "She was pale. When

I asked her to come away and leave him—and be happy—she put her head
down upon the table"—Mwres sniffed—"and cried."
His agitation was so great that he could say no more.
"Ah!" said Bindon, respecting this manly grief. "Oh!" said Bindon quite
suddenly, with his hand to his side.
Mwres looked up sharply out of the pit of his sorrows, startled. "What's
the matter?" he asked, visibly concerned.
"A most violent pain. Excuse me! You were telling me about Elizabeth."
And Mwres, after a decent solicitude for Bindon's pain, proceeded with
his report. It was even unexpectedly hopeful. Elizabeth, in her first emotion
at discovering that her father had not absolutely deserted her, had been
frank with him about her sorrows and disgusts.
"Yes," said Bindon, magnificently, "I shall have her yet." And then that
novel pain twitched him for the second time.
For these lower pains the priest was comparatively ineffectual, inclining
rather to regard the body and them as mental illusions amenable to
contemplation; so Bindon took it to a man of a class he loathed, a medical
man of extraordinary repute and incivility. "We must go all over you," said
the medical man, and did so with the most disgusting frankness. "Did you
ever bring any children into the world?" asked this gross materialist among
other impertinent questions.
"Not that I know of," said Bindon, too amazed to stand upon his dignity.
"Ah!" said the medical man, and proceeded with his punching and
sounding. Medical science in those days was just reaching the beginnings of
precision. "You'd better go right away," said the medical man, "and make
the Euthanasia. The sooner the better."
Bindon gasped. He had been trying not to understand the technical
explanations and anticipations in which the medical man had indulged.
"I say!" he said. "But do you mean to say ... Your science ..."

"Nothing," said the medical man. "A few opiates. The thing is your own
doing, you know, to a certain extent."
"I was sorely tempted in my youth."
"It's not that so much. But you come of a bad stock. Even if you'd have
taken precautions you'd have had bad times to wind up with. The mistake
was getting born. The indiscretions of the parents. And you've shirked
exercise, and so forth."
"I had no one to advise me."
"Medical men are always willing."
"I was a spirited young fellow."
"We won't argue; the mischief's done now. You've lived. We can't start
you again. You ought never to have started at all. Frankly—the Euthanasia!"
Bindon hated him in silence for a space. Every word of this brutal expert
jarred upon his refinements. He was so gross, so impermeable to all the
subtler issues of being. But it is no good picking a quarrel with a doctor.
"My religious beliefs," he said, "I don't approve of suicide."
"You've been doing it all your life."
"Well, anyhow, I've come to take a serious view of life now."
"You're bound to, if you go on living. You'll hurt. But for practical
purposes it's late. However, if you mean to do that—perhaps I'd better mix
you a little something. You'll hurt a great deal. These little twinges ..."
"Twinges!"
"Mere preliminary notices."
"How long can I go on? I mean, before I hurt—really."
"You'll get it hot soon. Perhaps three days."
Bindon tried to argue for an extension of time, and in the midst of his
pleading gasped, put his hand to his side. Suddenly the extraordinary pathos

of his life came to him clear and vivid. "It's hard," he said. "It's infernally
hard! I've been no man's enemy but my own. I've always treated everybody
quite fairly."
The medical man stared at him without any sympathy for some seconds.
He was reflecting how excellent it was that there were no more Bindons to
carry on that line of pathos. He felt quite optimistic. Then he turned to his
telephone and ordered up a prescription from the Central Pharmacy.
He was interrupted by a voice behind him. "By God!" cried Bindon; "I'll
have her yet."
The physician stared over his shoulder at Bindon's expression, and then
altered the prescription.
So soon as this painful interview was over, Bindon gave way to rage. He
settled that the medical man was not only an unsympathetic brute and
wanting in the first beginnings of a gentleman, but also highly incompetent;
and he went off to four other practitioners in succession, with a view to the
establishment of this intuition. But to guard against surprises he kept that
little prescription in his pocket. With each he began by expressing his grave
doubts of the first doctor's intelligence, honesty and professional
knowledge, and then stated his symptoms, suppressing only a few more
material facts in each case. These were always subsequently elicited by the
doctor. In spite of the welcome depreciation of another practitioner, none of
these eminent specialists would give Bindon any hope of eluding the
anguish and helplessness that loomed now close upon him. To the last of
them he unburthened his mind of an accumulated disgust with medical
science. "After centuries and centuries," he exclaimed hotly; "and you can
do nothing—except admit your helplessness. I say, 'save me'—and what do
you do?"
"No doubt it's hard on you," said the doctor. "But you should have taken
precautions."
"How was I to know?"
"It wasn't our place to run after you," said the medical man, picking a
thread of cotton from his purple sleeve. "Why should we save you in

particular? You see—from one point of view—people with imaginations
and passions like yours have to go—they have to go."
"Go?"
"Die out. It's an eddy."
He was a young man with a serene face. He smiled at Bindon. "We get on
with research, you know; we give advice when people have the sense to ask
for it. And we bide our time."
"Bide your time?"
"We hardly know enough yet to take over the management, you know."
"The management?"
"You needn't be anxious. Science is young yet. It's got to keep on
growing for a few generations. We know enough now to know we don't
know enough yet.... But the time is coming, all the same. You won't see the
time. But, between ourselves, you rich men and party bosses, with your
natural play of the passions and patriotism and religion and so forth, have
made rather a mess of things; haven't you? These Underways! And all that
sort of thing. Some of us have a sort of fancy that in time we may know
enough to take over a little more than the ventilation and drains. Knowledge
keeps on piling up, you know. It keeps on growing. And there's not the
slightest hurry for a generation or so. Some day—some day, men will live
in a different way." He looked at Bindon and meditated. "There'll be a lot of
dying out before that day can come."
Bindon attempted to point out to this young man how silly and irrelevant
such talk was to a sick man like himself, how impertinent and uncivil it was
to him, an older man occupying a position in the official world of
extraordinary power and influence. He insisted that a doctor was paid to
cure people—he laid great stress on "paid"—and had no business to glance
even for a moment at "those other questions." "But we do," said the young
man, insisting upon facts, and Bindon lost his temper.
His indignation carried him home. That these incompetent impostors,
who were unable to save the life of a really influential man like himself,

should dream of some day robbing the legitimate property owners of social
control, of inflicting one knew not what tyranny upon the world. Curse
science! He fumed over the intolerable prospect for some time, and then the
pain returned, and he recalled the made-up prescription of the first doctor,
still happily in his pocket. He took a dose forthwith.
It calmed and soothed him greatly, and he could sit down in his most
comfortable chair beside his library (of phonographic records), and think
over the altered aspect of affairs. His indignation passed, his anger and his
passion crumbled under the subtle attack of that prescription, pathos
became his sole ruler. He stared about him, at his magnificent and
voluptuously appointed apartment, at his statuary and discreetly veiled
pictures, and all the evidences of a cultivated and elegant wickedness; he
touched a stud and the sad pipings of Tristan's shepherd filled the air. His
eye wandered from one object to another. They were costly and gross and
florid—but they were his. They presented in concrete form his ideals, his
conceptions of beauty and desire, his idea of all that is precious in life. And
now—he must leave it all like a common man. He was, he felt, a slender
and delicate flame, burning out. So must all life flame up and pass, he
thought. His eyes filled with tears.
Then it came into his head that he was alone. Nobody cared for him,
nobody needed him! at any moment he might begin to hurt vividly. He
might even howl. Nobody would mind. According to all the doctors he
would have excellent reason for howling in a day or so. It recalled what his
spiritual adviser had said of the decline of faith and fidelity, the
degeneration of the age. He beheld himself as a pathetic proof of this; he,
the subtle, able, important, voluptuous, cynical, complex Bindon, possibly
howling, and not one faithful simple creature in all the world to howl in
sympathy. Not one faithful simple soul was there—no shepherd to pipe to
him! Had all such faithful simple creatures vanished from this harsh and
urgent earth? He wondered whether the horrid vulgar crowd that perpetually
went about the city could possibly know what he thought of them. If they
did he felt sure some would try to earn a better opinion. Surely the world
went from bad to worse. It was becoming impossible for Bindons. Perhaps
some day ... He was quite sure that the one thing he had needed in life was
sympathy. For a time he regretted that he left no sonnets—no enigmatical

pictures or something of that sort behind him to carry on his being until at
last the sympathetic mind should come....

It seemed incredible to him that this that came was extinction. Yet his
sympathetic spiritual guide was in this matter annoyingly figurative and
vague. Curse science! It had undermined all faith—all hope. To go out, to
vanish from theatre and street, from office and dining-place, from the dear
eyes of womankind. And not to be missed! On the whole to leave the world
happier!
He reflected that he had never worn his heart upon his sleeve. Had he
after all been too unsympathetic? Few people could suspect how subtly
profound he really was beneath the mask of that cynical gaiety of his. They
would not understand the loss they had suffered. Elizabeth, for example,
had not suspected....
He had reserved that. His thoughts having come to Elizabeth gravitated
about her for some time. How little Elizabeth understood him!
That thought became intolerable. Before all other things he must set that
right. He realised that there was still something for him to do in life, his
struggle against Elizabeth was even yet not over. He could never overcome
her now, as he had hoped and prayed. But he might still impress her!
From that idea he expanded. He might impress her profoundly—he might
impress her so that she should for evermore regret her treatment of him. The
thing that she must realise before everything else was his magnanimity. His
magnanimity! Yes! he had loved her with amazing greatness of heart. He
had not seen it so clearly before—but of course he was going to leave her
all his property. He saw it instantly, as a thing determined and inevitable.
She would think how good he was, how spaciously generous; surrounded
by all that makes life tolerable from his hand, she would recall with infinite
regret her scorn and coldness. And when she sought expression for that
regret, she would find that occasion gone forever, she should be met by a
locked door, by a disdainful stillness, by a white dead face. He closed his
eyes and remained for a space imagining himself that white dead face.
From that he passed to other aspects of the matter, but his determination
was assured. He meditated elaborately before he took action, for the drug he
had taken inclined him to a lethargic and dignified melancholy. In certain
respects he modified details. If he left all his property to Elizabeth it would

include the voluptuously appointed room he occupied, and for many
reasons he did not care to leave that to her. On the other hand, it had to be
left to some one. In his clogged condition this worried him extremely.
In the end he decided to leave it to the sympathetic exponent of the
fashionable religious cult, whose conversation had been so pleasing in the
past. "He will understand," said Bindon with a sentimental sigh. "He knows
what Evil means—he understands something of the Stupendous Fascination
of the Sphinx of Sin. Yes—he will understand." By that phrase it was that
Bindon was pleased to dignify certain unhealthy and undignified departures
from sane conduct to which a misguided vanity and an ill-controlled
curiosity had led him. He sat for a space thinking how very Hellenic and
Italian and Neronic, and all those things, he had been. Even now—might
one not try a sonnet? A penetrating voice to echo down the ages, sensuous,
sinister, and sad. For a space he forgot Elizabeth. In the course of half an
hour he spoilt three phonographic coils, got a headache, took a second dose
to calm himself, and reverted to magnanimity and his former design.
At last he faced the unpalatable problem of Denton. It needed all his
newborn magnanimity before he could swallow the thought of Denton; but
at last this greatly misunderstood man, assisted by his sedative and the near
approach of death, effected even that. If he was at all exclusive about
Denton, if he should display the slightest distrust, if he attempted any
specific exclusion of that young man, she might—misunderstand. Yes—she
should have her Denton still. His magnanimity must go even to that. He
tried to think only of Elizabeth in the matter.
He rose with a sigh, and limped across to the telephonic apparatus that
communicated with his solicitor. In ten minutes a will duly attested and
with its proper thumb-mark signature lay in the solicitor's office three miles
away. And then for a space Bindon sat very still.
Suddenly he started out of a vague reverie and pressed an investigatory
hand to his side.
Then he jumped eagerly to his feet and rushed to the telephone. The
Euthanasia Company had rarely been called by a client in a greater hurry.

So it came at last that Denton and his Elizabeth, against all hope, returned
unseparated from the labour servitude to which they had fallen. Elizabeth
came out from her cramped subterranean den of metal-beaters and all the
sordid circumstances of blue canvas, as one comes out of a nightmare. Back
towards the sunlight their fortune took them; once the bequest was known
to them, the bare thought of another day's hammering became intolerable.
They went up long lifts and stairs to levels that they had not seen since the
days of their disaster. At first she was full of this sensation of escape; even
to think of the underways was intolerable; only after many months could
she begin to recall with sympathy the faded women who were still below
there, murmuring scandals and reminiscences and folly, and tapping away
their lives.
Her choice of the apartments they presently took expressed the
vehemence of her release. They were rooms upon the very verge of the city;
they had a roof space and a balcony upon the city wall, wide open to the sun
and wind, the country and the sky.
And in that balcony comes the last scene in this story. It was a summer
sunsetting, and the hills of Surrey were very blue and clear. Denton leant
upon the balcony regarding them, and Elizabeth sat by his side. Very wide
and spacious was the view, for their balcony hung five hundred feet above
the ancient level of the ground. The oblongs of the Food Company, broken
here and there by the ruins—grotesque little holes and sheds—of the
ancient suburbs, and intersected by shining streams of sewage, passed at
last into a remote diapering at the foot of the distant hills. There once had
been the squatting-place of the children of Uya. On those further slopes
gaunt machines of unknown import worked slackly at the end of their spell,
and the hill crest was set with stagnant wind vanes. Along the great south
road the Labour Company's field workers in huge wheeled mechanical
vehicles, were hurrying back to their meals, their last spell finished. And
through the air a dozen little private aëroplanes sailed down towards the
city. Familiar scene as it was to the eyes of Denton and Elizabeth, it would
have filled the minds of their ancestors with incredulous amazement.
Denton's thoughts fluttered towards the future in a vain attempt at what that
scene might be in another two hundred years, and, recoiling, turned towards
the past.

He shared something of the growing knowledge of the time; he could
picture the quaint smoke-grimed Victorian city with its narrow little roads
of beaten earth, its wide common-land, ill-organised, ill-built suburbs, and
irregular enclosures; the old countryside of the Stuart times, with its little
villages and its petty London; the England of the monasteries, the far older
England of the Roman dominion, and then before that a wild country with
here and there the huts of some warring tribe. These huts must have come
and gone and come again through a space of years that made the Roman
camp and villa seem but yesterday; and before those years, before even the
huts, there had been men in the valley. Even then—so recent had it all been
when one judged it by the standards of geological time—this valley had
been here; and those hills yonder, higher, perhaps, and snow-tipped, had
still been yonder hills, and the Thames had flowed down from the
Cotswolds to the sea. But the men had been but the shapes of men,
creatures of darkness and ignorance, victims of beasts and floods, storms
and pestilence and incessant hunger. They had held a precarious foothold
amidst bears and lions and all the monstrous violence of the past. Already
some at least of these enemies were overcome....
For a time Denton pursued the thoughts of this spacious vision, trying in
obedience to his instinct to find his place and proportion in the scheme.
"It has been chance," he said, "it has been luck. We have come through. It
happens we have come through. Not by any strength of our own....
"And yet ... No. I don't know."
He was silent for a long time before he spoke again.
"After all—there is a long time yet. There have scarcely been men for
twenty thousand years—and there has been life for twenty millions. And
what are generations? What are generations? It is enormous, and we are so
little. Yet we know—we feel. We are not dumb atoms, we are part of it—
part of it—to the limits of our strength and will. Even to die is part of it.
Whether we die or live, we are in the making....
"As time goes on—perhaps—men will be wiser.... Wiser....
"Will they ever understand?"

He became silent again. Elizabeth said nothing to these things, but she
regarded his dreaming face with infinite affection. Her mind was not very
active that evening. A great contentment possessed her. After a time she laid
a gentle hand on his beside her. He fondled it softly, still looking out upon
the spacious gold-woven view. So they sat as the sun went down. Until
presently Elizabeth shivered.
Denton recalled himself abruptly from these spacious issues of his
leisure, and went in to fetch her a shawl.

The Man Who Could Work Miracles

THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES
A PANTOUM IN PROSE

It is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it
came to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did
not believe in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the most convenient
place, I must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of a hot brown,
very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that he twisted up, and freckles.
His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay—not the sort of name by any
means to lead to any expectation of miracles—and he was clerk at
Gomshott's. He was greatly addicted to assertive argument. It was while he
was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of
his extraordinary powers. This particular argument was being held in the
bar of the Long Dragon, and Toddy Beamish was conducting the opposition
by a monotonous but effective "So you say," that drove Mr. Fotheringay to
the very limit of his patience.
There were present, besides these two, a very dusty cyclist, landlord Cox,
and Miss Maybridge, the perfectly respectable and rather portly barmaid of
the Dragon. Miss Maybridge was standing with her back to Mr.
Fotheringay, washing glasses; the others were watching him, more or less
amused by the present ineffectiveness of the assertive method. Goaded by
the Torres Vedras tactics of Mr. Beamish, Mr. Fotheringay determined to
make an unusual rhetorical effort. "Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr.
Fotheringay. "Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's something
contrariwise to the course of nature done by power of Will, something what
couldn't happen without being specially willed."
"So you say," said Mr. Beamish, repulsing him.
Mr. Fotheringay appealed to the cyclist, who had hitherto been a silent
auditor, and received his assent—given with a hesitating cough and a glance
at Mr. Beamish. The landlord would express no opinion, and Mr.

Fotheringay, returning to Mr. Beamish, received the unexpected concession
of a qualified assent to his definition of a miracle.
"For instance," said Mr. Fotheringay, greatly encouraged. "Here would be
a miracle. That lamp, in the natural course of nature, couldn't burn like that
upsy-down, could it, Beamish?"
"You say it couldn't," said Beamish.
"And you?" said Fotheringay. "You don't mean to say—eh?"
"No," said Beamish reluctantly. "No, it couldn't."
"Very well," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Then here comes someone, as it
might be me, along here, and stands as it might be here, and says to that
lamp, as I might do, collecting all my will—Turn upsy-down without
breaking, and go on burning steady, and—Hullo!"
It was enough to make anyone say "Hullo!" The impossible, the
incredible, was visible to them all. The lamp hung inverted in the air,
burning quietly with its flame pointing down. It was as solid, as
indisputable as ever a lamp was, the prosaic common lamp of the Long
Dragon bar.
Mr. Fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows
of one anticipating a catastrophic smash. The cyclist, who was sitting next
the lamp, ducked and jumped across the bar. Everybody jumped, more or
less. Miss Maybridge turned and screamed. For nearly three seconds the
lamp remained still. A faint cry of mental distress came from Mr.
Fotheringay. "I can't keep it up," he said, "any longer." He staggered back,
and the inverted lamp suddenly flared, fell against the corner of the bar,
bounced aside, smashed upon the floor, and went out.
It was lucky it had a metal receiver, or the whole place would have been
in a blaze. Mr. Cox was the first to speak, and his remark, shorn of needless
excrescences, was to the effect that Fotheringay was a fool. Fotheringay
was beyond disputing even so fundamental a proposition as that! He was
astonished beyond measure at the thing that had occurred. The subsequent
conversation threw absolutely no light on the matter so far as Fotheringay
was concerned; the general opinion not only followed Mr. Cox very closely

but very vehemently. Everyone accused Fotheringay of a silly trick, and
presented him to himself as a foolish destroyer of comfort and security. His
mind was in a tornado of perplexity, he was himself inclined to agree with
them, and he made a remarkably ineffectual opposition to the proposal of
his departure.
He went home flushed and heated, coat-collar crumpled, eyes smarting
and ears red. He watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he
passed it. It was only when he found himself alone in his little bed-room in
Church Row that he was able to grapple seriously with his memories of the
occurrence, and ask, "What on earth happened?"
He had removed his coat and boots, and was sitting on the bed with his
hands in his pockets repeating the text of his defence for the seventeenth
time, "I didn't want the confounded thing to upset," when it occurred to him
that at the precise moment he had said the commanding words he had
inadvertently willed the thing he said, and that when he had seen the lamp
in the air he had felt that it depended on him to maintain it there without
being clear how this was to be done. He had not a particularly complex
mind, or he might have stuck for a time at that "inadvertently willed,"
embracing, as it does, the abstrusest problems of voluntary action; but as it
was, the idea came to him with a quite acceptable haziness. And from that,
following, as I must admit, no clear logical path, he came to the test of
experiment.
He pointed resolutely to his candle and collected his mind, though he felt
he did a foolish thing. "Be raised up," he said. But in a second that feeling
vanished. The candle was raised, hung in the air one giddy moment, and as
Mr. Fotheringay gasped, fell with a smash on his toilet-table, leaving him in
darkness save for the expiring glow of its wick.
For a time Mr. Fotheringay sat in the darkness, perfectly still. "It did
happen, after all," he said. "And 'ow I'm to explain it I don't know." He
sighed heavily, and began feeling in his pockets for a match. He could find
none, and he rose and groped about the toilet-table. "I wish I had a match,"
he said. He resorted to his coat, and there was none there, and then it
dawned upon him that miracles were possible even with matches. He
extended a hand and scowled at it in the dark. "Let there be a match in that

hand," he said. He felt some light object fall across his palm, and his fingers
closed upon a match.
After several ineffectual attempts to light this, he discovered it was a
safety-match. He threw it down, and then it occurred to him that he might
have willed it lit. He did, and perceived it burning in the midst of his toilet-
table mat. He caught it up hastily, and it went out. His perception of
possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its
candlestick. "Here! you be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the
candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a
wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from this to the little
flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking
glass. By this help he communed with himself in silence for a time.
"How about miracles now?" said Mr. Fotheringay at last, addressing his
reflection.
The subsequent meditations of Mr. Fotheringay were of a severe but
confused description. So far, he could see it was a case of pure willing with
him. The nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further
experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. But he lifted a sheet of
paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a
snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new
tooth-brush. Somewhen in the small hours he had reached the fact that his
will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact of
which he had certainly had inklings before, but no certain assurance. The
scare and perplexity of his first discovery was now qualified by pride in this
evidence of singularity and by vague intimations of advantage. He became
aware that the church clock was striking one, and as it did not occur to him
that his daily duties at Gomshott's might be miraculously dispensed with, he
resumed undressing, in order to get to bed without further delay. As he
struggled to get his shirt over his head, he was struck with a brilliant idea.
"Let me be in bed," he said, and found himself so. "Undressed," he
stipulated; and, finding the sheets cold, added hastily, "and in my nightshirt
—no, in a nice soft woollen nightshirt. Ah!" he said with immense
enjoyment. "And now let me be comfortably asleep...."

He awoke at his usual hour and was pensive all through breakfast-time,
wondering whether his overnight experience might not be a particularly
vivid dream. At length his mind turned again to cautious experiments. For
instance, he had three eggs for breakfast; two his landlady had supplied,
good, but shoppy, and one was a delicious fresh goose-egg, laid, cooked,
and served by his extraordinary will. He hurried off to Gomshott's in a state
of profound but carefully concealed excitement, and only remembered the
shell of the third egg when his landlady spoke of it that night. All day he
could do no work because of this astonishingly new self-knowledge, but
this caused him no inconvenience, because he made up for it miraculously
in his last ten minutes.
As the day wore on his state of mind passed from wonder to elation,
albeit the circumstances of his dismissal from the Long Dragon were still
disagreeable to recall, and a garbled account of the matter that had reached
his colleagues led to some badinage. It was evident he must be careful how
he lifted frangible articles, but in other ways his gift promised more and
more as he turned it over in his mind. He intended among other things to
increase his personal property by unostentatious acts of creation. He called
into existence a pair of very splendid diamond studs, and hastily annihilated
them again as young Gomshott came across the counting-house to his desk.
He was afraid young Gomshott might wonder how he had come by them.
He saw quite clearly the gift required caution and watchfulness in its
exercise, but so far as he could judge the difficulties attending its mastery
would be no greater than those he had already faced in the study of cycling.
It was that analogy, perhaps, quite as much as the feeling that he would be
unwelcome in the Long Dragon, that drove him out after supper into the
lane beyond the gas-works, to rehearse a few miracles in private.
There was possibly a certain want of originality in his attempts, for apart
from his will-power Mr. Fotheringay was not a very exceptional man. The
miracle of Moses' rod came to his mind, but the night was dark and
unfavourable to the proper control of large miraculous snakes. Then he
recollected the story of "Tannhäuser" that he had read on the back of the
Philharmonic programme. That seemed to him singularly attractive and
harmless. He stuck his walking-stick—a very nice Poona-Penang lawyer—
into the turf that edged the footpath, and commanded the dry wood to
blossom. The air was immediately full of the scent of roses, and by means

of a match he saw for himself that this beautiful miracle was indeed
accomplished. His satisfaction was ended by advancing footsteps. Afraid of
a premature discovery of his powers, he addressed the blossoming stick
hastily: "Go back." What he meant was "Change back;" but of course he
was confused. The stick receded at a considerable velocity, and
incontinently came a cry of anger and a bad word from the approaching
person. "Who are you throwing brambles at, you fool?" cried a voice. "That
got me on the shin."
"I'm sorry, old chap," said Mr. Fotheringay, and then realising the
awkward nature of the explanation, caught nervously at his moustache. He
saw Winch, one of the three Immering constables, advancing.
"What d'yer mean by it?" asked the constable. "Hullo! It's you, is it? The
gent that broke the lamp at the Long Dragon!"
"I don't mean anything by it," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Nothing at all."
"What d'yer do it for then?"
"Oh, bother!" said Mr. Fotheringay.
"Bother indeed! D'yer know that stick hurt? What d'yer do it for, eh?"
For the moment Mr. Fotheringay could not think what he had done it for.
His silence seemed to irritate Mr. Winch. "You've been assaulting the
police, young man, this time. That's what you done."
"Look here, Mr. Winch," said Mr. Fotheringay, annoyed and confused,
"I'm very sorry. The fact is——"
"Well?"
He could think of no way but the truth. "I was working a miracle." He
tried to speak in an off-hand way, but try as he would he couldn't.
"Working a——! 'Ere, don't you talk rot. Working a miracle, indeed!
Miracle! Well, that's downright funny! Why, you's the chap that don't
believe in miracles.... Fact is, this is another of your silly conjuring tricks—
that's what this is. Now, I tell you——"

But Mr. Fotheringay never heard what Mr. Winch was going to tell him.
He realised he had given himself away, flung his valuable secret to all the
winds of heaven. A violent gust of irritation swept him to action. He turned
on the constable swiftly and fiercely. "Here," he said, "I've had enough of
this, I have! I'll show you a silly conjuring trick, I will! Go to Hades! Go,
now!"
He was alone!
Mr. Fotheringay performed no more miracles that night, nor did he
trouble to see what had become of his flowering stick. He returned to the
town, scared and very quiet, and went to his bed-room. "Lord!" he said, "it's
a powerful gift—an extremely powerful gift. I didn't hardly mean as much
as that. Not really.... I wonder what Hades is like!"
He sat on the bed taking off his boots. Struck by a happy thought he
transferred the constable to San Francisco, and without any more
interference with normal causation went soberly to bed. In the night he
dreamt of the anger of Winch.
The next day Mr. Fotheringay heard two interesting items of news.
Someone had planted a most beautiful climbing rose against the elder Mr.
Gomshott's private house in the Lullaborough Road, and the river as far as
Rawling's Mill was to be dragged for Constable Winch.
Mr. Fotheringay was abstracted and thoughtful all that day, and
performed no miracles except certain provisions for Winch, and the miracle
of completing his day's work with punctual perfection in spite of all the bee-
swarm of thoughts that hummed through his mind. And the extraordinary
abstraction and meekness of his manner was remarked by several people,
and made a matter for jesting. For the most part he was thinking of Winch.
On Sunday evening he went to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig,
who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are
not lawful." Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapel goer, but the system
of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very
much shaken. The tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on these
novel gifts, and he suddenly decided to consult Mr. Maydig immediately

after the service. So soon as that was determined, he found himself
wondering why he had not done so before.
Mr. Maydig, a lean, excitable man with quite remarkably long wrists and
neck, was gratified at a request for a private conversation from a young man
whose carelessness in religious matters was a subject for general remark in
the town. After a few necessary delays, he conducted him to the study of the
Manse, which was contiguous to the chapel, seated him comfortably, and,
standing in front of a cheerful fire—his legs threw a Rhodian arch of
shadow on the opposite wall—requested Mr. Fotheringay to state his
business.
At first Mr. Fotheringay was a little abashed, and found some difficulty in
opening the matter. "You will scarcely believe me, Mr. Maydig, I am
afraid"—and so forth for some time. He tried a question at last, and asked
Mr. Maydig his opinion of miracles.
Mr. Maydig was still saying "Well" in an extremely judicial tone, when
Mr. Fotheringay interrupted again: "You don't believe, I suppose, that some
common sort of person—like myself, for instance—as it might be sitting
here now, might have some sort of twist inside him that made him able to
do things by his will."
"It's possible," said Mr. Maydig. "Something of the sort, perhaps, is
possible."
"If I might make free with something here, I think I might show you by a
sort of experiment," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Now, take that tobacco-jar on
the table, for instance. What I want to know is whether what I am going to
do with it is a miracle or not. Just half a minute, Mr. Maydig, please."
He knitted his brows, pointed to the tobacco-jar and said: "Be a bowl of
vi'lets."
The tobacco-jar did as it was ordered.
Mr. Maydig started violently at the change, and stood looking from the
thaumaturgist to the bowl of flowers. He said nothing. Presently he
ventured to lean over the table and smell the violets; they were fresh-picked
and very fine ones. Then he stared at Mr. Fotheringay again.

"How did you do that?" he asked.
Mr. Fotheringay pulled his moustache. "Just told it—and there you are. Is
that a miracle, or is it black art, or what is it? And what do you think's the
matter with me? That's what I want to ask."
"It's a most extraordinary occurrence."
"And this day last week I knew no more that I could do things like that
than you did. It came quite sudden. It's something odd about my will, I
suppose, and that's as far as I can see."
"Is that—the only thing. Could you do other things besides that?"
"Lord, yes!" said Mr. Fotheringay. "Just anything." He thought, and
suddenly recalled a conjuring entertainment he had seen. "Here!" He
pointed. "Change into a bowl of fish—no, not that—change into a glass
bowl full of water with goldfish swimming in it. That's better! You see that,
Mr. Maydig?"
"It's astonishing. It's incredible. You are either a most extraordinary ...
But no——"
"I could change it into anything," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Just anything.
Here! be a pigeon, will you?"
In another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering round the room and
making Mr. Maydig duck every time it came near him. "Stop there, will
you," said Mr. Fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in the air. "I
could change it back to a bowl of flowers," he said, and after replacing the
pigeon on the table worked that miracle. "I expect you will want your pipe
in a bit," he said, and restored the tobacco-jar.
Mr. Maydig had followed all these later changes in a sort of ejaculatory
silence. He stared at Mr. Fotheringay and, in a very gingerly manner, picked
up the tobacco-jar, examined it, replaced it on the table. "Well!" was the
only expression of his feelings.
"Now, after that it's easier to explain what I came about," said Mr.
Fotheringay; and proceeded to a lengthy and involved narrative of his
strange experiences, beginning with the affair of the lamp in the Long

Dragon and complicated by persistent allusions to Winch. As he went on,
the transient pride Mr. Maydig's consternation had caused passed away; he
became the very ordinary Mr. Fotheringay of everyday intercourse again.
Mr. Maydig listened intently, the tobacco-jar in his hand, and his bearing
changed also with the course of the narrative. Presently, while Mr.
Fotheringay was dealing with the miracle of the third egg, the minister
interrupted with a fluttering extended hand—
"It is possible," he said. "It is credible. It is amazing, of course, but it
reconciles a number of amazing difficulties. The power to work miracles is
a gift—a peculiar quality like genius or second sight—hitherto it has come
very rarely and to exceptional people. But in this case ... I have always
wondered at the miracles of Mahomet, and at Yogi's miracles, and the
miracles of Madame Blavatsky. But, of course! Yes, it is simply a gift! It
carries out so beautifully the arguments of that great thinker"—Mr.
Maydig's voice sank—"his Grace the Duke of Argyll. Here we plumb some
profounder law—deeper than the ordinary laws of nature. Yes—yes. Go on.
Go on!"
Mr. Fotheringay proceeded to tell of his misadventure with Winch, and
Mr. Maydig, no longer overawed or scared, began to jerk his limbs about
and interject astonishment. "It's this what troubled me most," proceeded Mr.
Fotheringay; "it's this I'm most mijitly in want of advice for; of course he's
at San Francisco—wherever San Francisco may be—but of course it's
awkward for both of us, as you'll see, Mr. Maydig. I don't see how he can
understand what has happened, and I daresay he's scared and exasperated
something tremendous, and trying to get at me. I daresay he keeps on
starting off to come here. I send him back, by a miracle, every few hours,
when I think of it. And of course, that's a thing he won't be able to
understand, and it's bound to annoy him; and, of course, if he takes a ticket
every time it will cost him a lot of money. I done the best I could for him,
but of course it's difficult for him to put himself in my place. I thought
afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched, you know—if Hades is
all it's supposed to be—before I shifted him. In that case I suppose they'd
have locked him up in San Francisco. Of course I willed him a new suit of
clothes on him directly I thought of it. But, you see, I'm already in a deuce
of a tangle——"

Mr. Maydig looked serious. "I see you are in a tangle. Yes, it's a difficult
position. How you are to end it ..." He became diffuse and inconclusive.
"However, we'll leave Winch for a little and discuss the larger question. I
don't think this is a case of the black art or anything of the sort. I don't think
there is any taint of criminality about it at all, Mr. Fotheringay—none
whatever, unless you are suppressing material facts. No, it's miracles—pure
miracles—miracles, if I may say so, of the very highest class."
He began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate, while Mr. Fotheringay sat
with his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried. "I don't
see how I'm to manage about Winch," he said.
"A gift of working miracles—apparently a very powerful gift," said Mr.
Maydig, "will find a way about Winch—never fear. My dear Sir, you are a
most important man—a man of the most astonishing possibilities. As
evidence, for example! And in other ways, the things you may do...."
"Yes, I've thought of a thing or two," said Mr. Fotheringay. "But—some
of the things came a bit twisty. You saw that fish at first? Wrong sort of
bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I'd ask someone."
"A proper course," said Mr. Maydig, "a very proper course—altogether
the proper course." He stopped and looked at Mr. Fotheringay. "It's
practically an unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance. If they
really are ... If they really are all they seem to be."
And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behind
the Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896, Mr.
Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig, began to work miracles.
The reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date. He will
object, probably has already objected, that certain points in this story are
improbable, that if any things of the sort already described had indeed
occurred, they would have been in all the papers a year ago. The details
immediately following he will find particularly hard to accept, because
among other things they involve the conclusion that he or she, the reader in
question, must have been killed in a violent and unprecedented manner
more than a year ago. Now a miracle is nothing if not improbable, and as a
matter of fact the reader was killed in a violent and unprecedented manner a

year ago. In the subsequent course of this story that will become perfectly
clear and credible, as every right-minded and reasonable reader will admit.
But this is not the place for the end of the story, being but little beyond the
hither side of the middle. And at first the miracles worked by Mr.
Fotheringay were timid little miracles—little things with the cups and
parlour fitments, as feeble as the miracles of Theosophists, and, feeble as
they were, they were received with awe by his collaborator. He would have
preferred to settle the Winch business out of hand, but Mr. Maydig would
not let him. But after they had worked a dozen of these domestic trivialities,
their sense of power grew, their imagination began to show signs of
stimulation, and their ambition enlarged. Their first larger enterprise was
due to hunger and the negligence of Mrs. Minchin, Mr. Maydig's
housekeeper. The meal to which the minister conducted Mr. Fotheringay
was certainly ill-laid and uninviting as refreshment for two industrious
miracle-workers; but they were seated, and Mr. Maydig was descanting in
sorrow rather than in anger upon his housekeeper's shortcomings, before it
occurred to Mr. Fotheringay that an opportunity lay before him. "Don't you
think, Mr. Maydig," he said, "if it isn't a liberty, I——"
"My dear Mr. Fotheringay! Of course! No—I didn't think."
Mr. Fotheringay waved his hand. "What shall we have?" he said, in a
large, inclusive spirit, and, at Mr. Maydig's order, revised the supper very
thoroughly. "As for me," he said, eyeing Mr. Maydig's selection, "I am
always particularly fond of a tankard of stout and a nice Welsh rarebit, and
I'll order that. I ain't much given to Burgundy," and forthwith stout and
Welsh rarebit promptly appeared at his command. They sat long at their
supper, talking like equals, as Mr. Fotheringay presently perceived, with a
glow of surprise and gratification, of all the miracles they would presently
do. "And, by the bye, Mr. Maydig," said Mr. Fotheringay, "I might perhaps
be able to help you—in a domestic way."
"Don't quite follow," said Mr. Maydig pouring out a glass of miraculous
old Burgundy.
Mr. Fotheringay helped himself to a second Welsh rarebit out of vacancy,
and took a mouthful. "I was thinking," he said, "I might be able (chum,

chum) to work (chum, chum) a miracle with Mrs. Minchin (chum, chum)—
make her a better woman."
Mr. Maydig put down the glass and looked doubtful. "She's—— She
strongly objects to interference, you know, Mr. Fotheringay. And—as a
matter of fact—it's well past eleven and she's probably in bed and asleep.
Do you think, on the whole——"
Mr. Fotheringay considered these objections. "I don't see that it shouldn't
be done in her sleep."
For a time Mr. Maydig opposed the idea, and then he yielded. Mr.
Fotheringay issued his orders, and a little less at their ease, perhaps, the two
gentlemen proceeded with their repast. Mr. Maydig was enlarging on the
changes he might expect in his housekeeper next day, with an optimism that
seemed even to Mr. Fotheringay's supper senses a little forced and hectic,
when a series of confused noises from upstairs began. Their eyes exchanged
interrogations, and Mr. Maydig left the room hastily. Mr. Fotheringay heard
him calling up to his housekeeper and then his footsteps going softly up to
her.
In a minute or so the minister returned, his step light, his face radiant.
"Wonderful!" he said, "and touching! Most touching!"
He began pacing the hearthrug. "A repentance—a most touching
repentance—through the crack of the door. Poor woman! A most wonderful
change! She had got up. She must have got up at once. She had got up out
of her sleep to smash a private bottle of brandy in her box. And to confess it
too!... But this gives us—it opens—a most amazing vista of possibilities. If
we can work this miraculous change in her ..."
"The thing's unlimited seemingly," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And about Mr.
Winch—"
"Altogether unlimited." And from the hearthrug Mr. Maydig, waving the
Winch difficulty aside, unfolded a series of wonderful proposals—proposals
he invented as he went along.
Now what those proposals were does not concern the essentials of this
story. Suffice it that they were designed in a spirit of infinite benevolence,

the sort of benevolence that used to be called post-prandial. Suffice it, too,
that the problem of Winch remained unsolved. Nor is it necessary to
describe how far that series got to its fulfilment. There were astonishing
changes. The small hours found Mr. Maydig and Mr. Fotheringay careering
across the chilly market-square under the still moon, in a sort of ecstasy of
thaumaturgy, Mr. Maydig all flap and gesture, Mr. Fotheringay short and
bristling, and no longer abashed at his greatness. They had reformed every
drunkard in the Parliamentary division, changed all the beer and alcohol to
water (Mr. Maydig had overruled Mr. Fotheringay on this point); they had,
further, greatly improved the railway communication of the place, drained
Flinder's swamp, improved the soil of One Tree Hill, and cured the Vicar's
wart. And they were going to see what could be done with the injured pier
at South Bridge. "The place," gasped Mr. Maydig, "won't be the same place
to-morrow. How surprised and thankful everyone will be!" And just at that
moment the church clock struck three.
"I say," said Mr. Fotheringay, "that's three o'clock! I must be getting back.
I've got to be at business by eight. And besides, Mrs. Wimms—"
"We're only beginning," said Mr. Maydig, full of the sweetness of
unlimited power. "We're only beginning. Think of all the good we're doing.
When people wake—"
"But—," said Mr. Fotheringay.
Mr. Maydig gripped his arm suddenly. His eyes were bright and wild.
"My dear chap," he said, "there's no hurry. Look"—he pointed to the moon
at the zenith—"Joshua!"
"Joshua?" said Mr. Fotheringay.
"Joshua," said Mr. Maydig. "Why not? Stop it."
Mr. Fotheringay looked at the moon.
"That's a bit tall," he said after a pause.
"Why not?" said Mr. Maydig. "Of course it doesn't stop. You stop the
rotation of the earth, you know. Time stops. It isn't as if we were doing
harm."

"H'm!" said Mr. Fotheringay. "Well." He sighed. "I'll try. Here—"
He buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to the habitable globe,
with as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power. "Jest stop
rotating, will you," said Mr. Fotheringay.
Incontinently he was flying head over heels through the air at the rate of
dozens of miles a minute. In spite of the innumerable circles he was
describing per second, he thought; for thought is wonderful—sometimes as
sluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous as light. He thought
in a second, and willed. "Let me come down safe and sound. Whatever else
happens, let me down safe and sound."
He willed it only just in time, for his clothes, heated by his rapid flight
through the air, were already beginning to singe. He came down with a
forcible, but by no means injurious bump in what appeared to be a mound
of fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarily
like the clock-tower in the middle of the market-square, hit the earth near
him, ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, and masonry,
like a bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocks and
smashed like an egg. There was a crash that made all the most violent
crashes of his past life seem like the sound of falling dust, and this was
followed by a descending series of lesser crashes. A vast wind roared
throughout earth and heaven, so that he could scarcely lift his head to look.
For a while he was too breathless and astonished even to see where he was
or what had happened. And his first movement was to feel his head and
reassure himself that his streaming hair was still his own.
"Lord!" gasped Mr. Fotheringay, scarce able to speak for the gale, "I've
had a squeak! What's gone wrong? Storms and thunder. And only a minute
ago a fine night. It's Maydig set me on to this sort of thing. What a wind! If
I go on fooling in this way I'm bound to have a thundering accident!...
"Where's Maydig?
"What a confounded mess everything's in!"
He looked about him so far as his flapping jacket would permit. The
appearance of things was really extremely strange. "The sky's all right
anyhow," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And that's about all that is all right. And

even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up. But there's the moon
overhead. Just as it was just now. Bright as midday. But as for the rest—
Where's the village? Where's—where's anything? And what on earth set this
wind a-blowing? I didn't order no wind."
Mr. Fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain, and after one failure,
remained on all fours, holding on. He surveyed the moonlit world to
leeward, with the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. "There's
something seriously wrong," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And what it is—
goodness knows."
Far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare through the haze of
dust that drove before a screaming gale but tumbled masses of earth and
heaps of inchoate ruins, no trees, no houses, no familiar shapes, only a
wilderness of disorder vanishing at last into the darkness beneath the
whirling columns and streamers, the lightnings and thunderings of a swiftly
rising storm. Near him in the livid glare was something that might once
have been an elm-tree, a smashed mass of splinters, shivered from boughs
to base, and further a twisted mass of iron girders—only too evidently the
viaduct—rose out of the piled confusion.
You see, when Mr. Fotheringay had arrested the rotation of the solid
globe, he had made no stipulation concerning the trifling movables upon its
surface. And the earth spins so fast that the surface at its equator is
travelling at rather more than a thousand miles an hour, and in these
latitudes at more than half that pace. So that the village, and Mr. Maydig,
and Mr. Fotheringay, and everybody and everything had been jerked
violently forward at about nine miles per second—that is to say, much more
violently than if they had been fired out of a cannon. And every human
being, every living creature, every house, and every tree—all the world as
we know it—had been so jerked and smashed and utterly destroyed. That
was all.
These things Mr. Fotheringay did not, of course, fully appreciate. But he
perceived that his miracle had miscarried, and with that a great disgust of
miracles came upon him. He was in darkness now, for the clouds had swept
together and blotted out his momentary glimpse of the moon, and the air
was full of fitful struggling tortured wraiths of hail. A great roaring of wind

and waters filled earth and sky, and, peering under his hand through the dust
and sleet to windward, he saw by the play of the lightnings a vast wall of
water pouring towards him.
"Maydig!" screamed Mr. Fotheringay's feeble voice amid the elemental
uproar. "Here!—Maydig!
"Stop!" cried Mr. Fotheringay to the advancing water. "Oh, for goodness'
sake, stop!
"Just a moment," said Mr. Fotheringay to the lightnings and thunder.
"Stop jest a moment while I collect my thoughts.... And now what shall I
do?" he said. "What shall I do? Lord! I wish Maydig was about.
"I know," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And for goodness' sake let's have it right
this time."
He remained on all fours, leaning against the wind, very intent to have
everything right.
"Ah!" he said. "Let nothing what I'm going to order happen until I say
'Off!'.... Lord! I wish I'd thought of that before!"
He lifted his little voice against the whirlwind, shouting louder and
louder in the vain desire to hear himself speak. "Now then!—here goes!
Mind about that what I said just now. In the first place, when all I've got to
say is done, let me lose my miraculous power, let my will become just like
anybody else's will, and all these dangerous miracles be stopped. I don't like
them. I'd rather I didn't work 'em. Ever so much. That's the first thing. And
the second is—let me be back just before the miracles begin; let everything
be just as it was before that blessed lamp turned up. It's a big job, but it's the
last. Have you got it? No more miracles, everything as it was—me back in
the Long Dragon just before I drank my half-pint. That's it! Yes."
He dug his fingers into the mould, closed his eyes, and said "Off!"
Everything became perfectly still. He perceived that he was standing
erect.
"So you say," said a voice.

He opened his eyes. He was in the bar of the Long Dragon, arguing about
miracles with Toddy Beamish. He had a vague sense of some great thing
forgotten that instantaneously passed. You see that, except for the loss of his
miraculous powers, everything was back as it had been, his mind and
memory therefore were now just as they had been at the time when this
story began. So that he knew absolutely nothing of all that is told here,
knows nothing of all that is told here to this day. And among other things, of
course, he still did not believe in miracles.
"I tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can't possibly happen," he
said, "whatever you like to hold. And I'm prepared to prove it up to the
hilt."
"That's what you think," said Toddy Beamish, and "Prove it if you can."
"Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Let us clearly
understand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to the course of
nature done by power of Will...."

THE END

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London

When the
Sleeper Wakes
A Story of the Days to Come. By H. G. Wells, Author
of "The War of the Worlds," &c.
"When the Sleeper Wakes," by far the longest story Mr. Wells has yet
given us, presents a spacious picture of the development of our civilisation

during the next two hundred years. The sleeper is a typical liberal-minded
man of means of the nineteenth century, and he awakens from a cataleptic
trance in the year 2100, to discover that by an ironic combination of
circumstances he has become the central figure of an enormous political
convulsion. His attempt to rise to the responsibilities of his position, his
struggle for power—inspired by an enthusiastic girl—with the great
political organiser Ostrog, give the great structural lines of the story.
"He fell to sleep a fanatical democrat—a socialist: he woke a tyrant; he died fighting with the
people against the tyranny he had unconsciously fashioned while he slept. Surely a theme of
magnificent possibilities—a theme more fertile in romance even than the central idea of 'The War of
the Worlds.' The discovery of such material is in itself no mean triumph."—Bookman.

"One of the cleverest books ever written."—Birmingham Post.

"Mr. Wells sustains his reputation as the leading novelist of the unknown in his latest effort of
imagination, 'When the Sleeper Wakes.'"—The World.

"There is more than the triumph of extravagant fancy in Mr. Wells's book; its undertones are well
worth attention too."—The World.

"Mr. Wells beats Jules Verne on his own ground."—Daily News.

"An enthralling effort of imagination, vivid and bizarre as a powerful nightmare."—The
Guardian.

"This is undoubtedly a most remarkable book, a tour de force of the intellect and imagination."—
The Queen.

Harper & Brothers, 45 Albemarle Street
London, W.

Successful Short Stories

By Thomas Hardy
A Group of Noble Dames. Price 6s.
Life's Little Ironies. Price 6s.
Wessex Tales. Price 6s.
By Mary E. Wilkins
A New England Nun. Price 6s.
Silence. Price 6s.
By Mrs. Francis Blundell
In a North Country Village.
Illustrated by Frank Felloes. Price 6s.
By E. F. Benson
Six Common Things. Price 3s. 6d.
By Barry Pain
In a Canadian Canoe. Price 3s. 6d.
By Eden Phillpotts
Down Dartmoor Way. Price 6s.
By Annie Trumbull Slosson
Seven Dreamers. Price 6s.
By Margaret Deland
Old Chester Tales.
Illustrated by Howard Pyle. Price 6s.

Harper & Brothers, 45 Albemarle Street
London, W.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF SPACE
AND TIME ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be
renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law
means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the
Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States
without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying
and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook,
except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying
royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge
anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg
eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by
U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any
other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you
agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License
available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing
Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work,
you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the
terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright)
agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement,
you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy
of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to
be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on
or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can
do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying
with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a
lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you
follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to
Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual
work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are
removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing
Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can
easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you
share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a
constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the
laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before
downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating
derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work.
The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status
of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied
or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with
this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in
the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country
where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from
texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice
indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the
work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without
paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on
the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the
permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply
with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed
by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project
Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the
copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License
terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any
other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently
displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or
immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the
official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no
additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of
exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work
in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format
must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph
1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing,
copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply
with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to
or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the
use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the
owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate
royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days
following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to
prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly
marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about
donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does
not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You
must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works
possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all
access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in
this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project

Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works
not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and
the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription
errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that
damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to
you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you
discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you
can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund.
If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to

you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work
electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you
may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or
limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable
to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum
disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity
or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause
to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg
work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project
Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic
works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including
obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the

efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of
life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance
they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring
that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for
generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for
Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations
can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)
(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of
Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541.
Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s
laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the
number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment

including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are
particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States.
Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort,
much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these
requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not
received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have
not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against
accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us
with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any
statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the
United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods
and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including
checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg
electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with
anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg
eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions,
all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a

copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in
compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how
to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email
newsletter to hear about new eBooks.