Sixty Days to Live (31 page)

Margery, sweltering in the kitchen but with her usual sense of duty to be done, insisted on cooking them a lunch; but no one except Oliver could do justice to it. Hemmingway, Lavina and Sam, having slept through the morning, were roused for the meal and appeared in dressing-gowns; but all of them were so tense with excitement that they could hardly manage to swallow a few mouthfuls of the food that Margery had cooked.

After the meal they tried the wireless again but it still gave out only a nerve-racking hotch-potch of unintelligible sounds. Then Sam helped to clear away. With a smile at Lavina, he said:

‘Hadn’t you better give Margery a hand in washing-up?’

She did not return his smile, and it was the first time Sam had known that happen since they had been married. Instead, she almost scowled, glanced down at her beautiful, slender hands, and replied quietly:

‘If Margery wants any help she can call me; but if I’ve got to become a charwoman I rather hope the comet does hit us.’

She would have performed any menial task without complaint for a person she loved, providing it was not expected of her as a daily drudgery, but she saw no reason whatever why she should do anything of the kind when there was somebody else to do it for them. Margery was used to such things, and didn’t mind them, so Lavina considered that Sam had been extremely tactless in drawing attention to her own laziness.

In the early afternoon there was another series of earthquake shocks, and, when the outer sphere of the Ark had righted itself again after one which was particularly severe, they were alarmed to see that the level of the lake was lower, and its waters appeared to be seeping away into some invisible chasm below it; but another shock restored the situation as a humped waterspout, about four feet high, suddenly appeared in its centre, and the waters came bubbling back to their original level.

It was shortly after this that they observed a group of people running across the meadows towards the southern shore of the lake. Through binoculars it was as easy to study them as though
they had been at comparatively close quarters. All of them were pouring with perspiration, and clad in the scantiest garments. On reaching the lake-side both women and men tore off their remaining clothes, and plunged into the water.

‘It’s the heat,’ said Oliver, tapping the dial of a thermometer which registered the temperature outside the Ark. ‘It’s over 120 degrees in the sun out there, as hot as in the Sahara. They’re trying to cool themselves by taking refuge in the water.’

‘Poor wretches,’ sighed Lavina. ‘Can’t we possibly take some of them into the Ark? It’s too awful to see them suffering like that.’

‘We’ve only got two spare bunks—those that Roy and Derek should have occupied,’ Sam replied doubtfully.

But they were not called upon to make any such terrible decision as to whether they should overcrowd the Ark or leave the distraught people to their fate. Another tremor churned up the waters of the lake and, staggering to its banks, the terrified bathers dashed away stark naked over the meadow.

‘ “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad,” ‘quoted Gervaise, ‘and it seems that a merciful god is intervening in this instance. The comet’s rays must be so strong now that everyone exposed to them is probably quite ignorant of what he is doing.’

Lavina caught Hemmingway’s eye but they both looked quickly away from each other again.

‘That’s it,’ agreed Sam, ‘and if they have been driven mad they’ll at least be saved from this awful suspense or any real understanding of what’s happening when the last phase occurs to-night.’

Sweltering still, they lay about in the easy-chairs while one or other of them continued to keep a look-out through the portholes. It was about half-past four when Margery suddenly cried:

‘Look! There’s a car coming.’

They jumped to their feet and peered out in the direction of the drive, which was visible for some distance until it was hidden where it curved up to the house. A low, long-bonneted car was streaking along it.

‘By Jove, it’s mine!’ exclaimed Hemmingway.

‘Derek!’ cried Lavina. ‘Derek’s got here after all!’
The car suddenly swerved from the drive, apparently out of control, and came charging down the bank towards them. Leaving the grass it plunged into the water, sending up a great sheet of spray, and wallowed to a halt, half-submerged and with its tyres bogged in mud, about ten feet out from the bank. Its driver was thrown violently forward across the wheel and remained there sagging over it.

‘Quick! We must get him!’ cried Sam, as Gervaise sprang to the door of the Ark.

The second he opened it a blast of hot air surged in, searing them like the breath of a furnace. But the men of the party all scrambled into the punt and started to propel it as swiftly as they could towards the water-logged car. Running to the door the girls watched them as they dragged Derek’s limp body from the wreckage and, having lain it in the bottom of the punt, began to pole back as though all the devils of hell were after them.

When they reached the Ark perspiration was streaming from them; their shirts were soaking with it and all of them, temporarily affected by the comet’s rays, were laughing or cursing insanely. Gasping, swearing, staggering about like drunken people, they pulled Derek into the Ark and slammed its door shut again.

It was several moments before the rescuers recovered physically or mentally from their brief adventure, but the two girls carried Derek’s unconscious form into the men’s cabin, bathed his face, undressed him and got him between the sheets in one of the bunks.

Ten minutes later Gervaise, his handsome, aquiline features unusually grave, came to look at Derek and, after a brief examination, declared that he was suffering from concussion through his head’s having hit the windscreen of the car so hard as he was thrown forward. They did what they could for him and tucked him up; but Gervaise thought it probable that he would not come to for several hours and feared that, when he did, he might have lost his sanity from having been exposed for the whole day to the comet’s rays.

Unnoticed by them while they had been looking after Derek, the sky had started to cloud over. Great, dense, sharp-edged, thunderous masses were rolling up from the east and the wind was rising.

By six o’clock both the sun and the comet had been blotted out and the force of the wind had become terrific. They could not hear its screaming as the Ark was now sealed again, but watching through the port-holes they could witness the effect of the gale.

With greedy insistence the wind was tearing at the leaves of the trees and shrubs in the park. Small branches were being broken off and carried bouncing away across the grass. Many of the smaller trees were bent right over in sharp curves. A great elm was torn up by its roots and crashed to earth. The wind increased to hurricane violence, bushes were uprooted and blown like pieces of paper across the unkempt garden. Tree after tree snapped under the terrific strain.

The sky was still black but by the discoloration of the mica over the port-holes they knew that the awful red light must still be shining through it. Another ‘quake came and then the rain.

It streamed down with tropical fury, in such a spate that they could not see a yard beyond the port-holes, and it seemed that the very heavens had opened, just as in the Biblical account of the Flood.

By seven it had eased a little and great jagged streaks of lightning flashed almost continuously from the pitch-black sky. Even the fact of the Ark being sealed did not prevent the crash of the thunder reaching them. In peal after peal it rolled through the heavens like the echoing broadsides of great guns. The lake was churning like an angry sea and the outer sphere of the Ark was rocking wildly; but its internal platform was still held steady by its gyroscopes and its anchors prevented it from being washed up on the lake shore.

‘The house!’ cried Gervaise suddenly. ‘The house!’ And through the murk they saw a red glow up the slope in the distance. Stapleton Court had been struck by lightning and one side of it was burning fiercely.

A quarter of an hour later the rain ceased and they watched the fire as it ate up the old mansion. Gervaise seemed heartbroken. It had been his home for so many years. He had resorted to so many shifts to keep it out of the clutches of mortgagees; exercised so much ingenuity to preserve it and its parklands from the hands of vandals. Even so sober a man could not quite grip
the fact that a roving comet might really destroy the whole earth in a few hours’ time. Somehow he had always felt that after a brief sojourn in the Ark he would return to that beloved home, and now, whatever might befall, that could never be; it was being consumed before his eyes by flames.

Sam began to mutter useless words of comfort but Lavina promptly stopped him; she knew better than any of them, even Margery, what her father was feeling in those moments.

The lake had overflowed its banks, flooded by the terrific downpour. On one side it now stretched for half a mile across low-lying meadows, on the other it had risen half-way up the sloping lawn below the house. From time to time earth tremors made it sink or rise with startling suddenness and agitated its waters until they became like a rough sea, while on its shores oaks and elms crashed earthwards.

By eight o’clock the house was a flaming pile, more than half-consumed; but without warning another cloudburst shut it out from them and the spate of water was so solid that when the torrent eased, just about nine, they saw that it had extinguished the fire in the burning mansion.

From what little they could see through the still sheeting rain the tempest raged without abatement. The lake was half full of shattered trees which had been blown into it and were now being thrown about upon the heaving waters. Earth tremors shook the land almost without cessation; fork-lightning streaked the skies; earsplitting thunder boomed and reverberated overhead; the fury of the elements was indescribable.

From the time that they had rescued Derek the inmates of the Ark had thought of nothing but watching the incredibly terrible spectacle which was occurring before them. Hour after hour they had remained by the port-holes peering from them at every opportunity; nobody had even thought of suggesting an evening meal; they had forgotten the time and the fact that the chronometers might be ticking out the last minutes of their lives.

It was Oliver who recalled them to the probability of their impending fate by saying quietly:

‘In case any of you wish to make last-minute preparations, I think I ought to warn you that it is now 10.45. We have only ten minutes to go.’

They left the port-holes then and looked at each other. It seemed that there was nothing to say, nothing to be done but to commend themselves to the mercy of the Father of all things.

Oliver alone remained near his instruments checking and recording. Margery went a little apart and, kneeling down, bowed her head in prayer. Sam’s instinct was to follow her example but Lavina stood beside him holding his hand and he did not like to withdraw it. Gervaise had never made his daughters follow a conventional religion. Since Margery liked going to church he showed his tacit approval because he recognised that such devotions took the place of other things for certain types of women but when, at the age of sixteen, Lavina had told him that she did not wish to go to church any more because it bored her, he told her that, in that case, the church had ceased to serve any useful purpose for her. Lavina had never gone again but she was supremely confident that there was a God who would deal justly with her if she died, without her kneeling down to mumble set phrases or personal pleas for assistance.

She stood there with her chin up, staring with unseeing eyes at the wall of the Ark. Sam was beside her and Gervaise, on her other side, put an arm gently round her shoulders. Hemmingway sat down in an armchair opposite them and lit a cigarette. He had decided, quite dispassionately, that she was superbly beautiful and as he gazed up at her face the artist in him took a curious delight in the thought that, if they had to die, that living masterpiece was the last thing he would ever see.

Those last minutes seemed to drag interminably. The lake outside was still like a storm-tossed sea. The terrific downpour continued. Earthquake shocks were still felt through the buffer of the surrounding waters.

Sam was thinking over and over again: ‘It can’t happen. It can’t happen—not to us.’ Gervaise, that this was the greatest adventure that anyone could ever set out upon; either they would be blacked out in a few minutes or be re-born into a strange new world; Lavina, that she had had a lot of fun in this life and that it wouldn’t be her fault if she didn’t have a lot of fun in the next. Hemmingway was wondering vaguely if death would take them instantaneously or if they would first be called on to face awful
torments and, in the meantime, gazing enchanted at the perfection of Lavina’s face. Margery was hypnotising herself with a rapid repetition of whispered words.

The tense silence was shattered by Oliver’s voice as he announced quietly: ‘By Greenwich Mean Time it is now 10.55.’

For a moment nothing happened—nothing at all. They stared at each other waiting, wondering, holding their breath, tensing their muscles in an agony of suspense.

Suddenly the Ark began to rise. They could no longer see what was going on outside, but it felt for a second as though they were in an express lift soaring upward.

There was a terrific jerk. Both the cables had snapped as the huge sphere was flung sideways right out of the water. It hovered in the air for a second then came plunging back into the lake. The electric lights flickered and went out. The mechanism of its gyroscopes was constructed to counter roll; not to withstand violent shocks. The floor tilted. Instantly the whole cabin was in confusion. Oliver fell backwards from his instruments; the others staggered, lost their balance and pitched forward on their faces. The chairs slid sideways, bumping into one another. Books, boxes, binoculars and a score of other things crashed to the floor and rolled about it as the Ark, its gyroscopes broken, lurched heavily from side to side in the frightful upheaval.