The Doomsman, Page 2

  II

  THE NIGHT OF THE TERROR

  The reader, desiring to inform himself _in extenso_ regarding thephysical and social changes that followed the catastrophe by which theancient civilization was so suddenly subverted, would do well to consultthe final authority upon the subject, the learned Vigilas, author of_The Later Cosmos_ (elephant folio edition). But for our present purposea brief epitome should suffice. To borrow then, with all dueacknowledgments, from our admirable historian:

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  "It was in the later years of the twentieth century that the GreatChange came; at least, so the traditions agree, and how is a man to knowcertainly of such things except as he learns them from his father'slips? True, the accounts differ, and widely so at times, but that muchis to be expected--where were there ever two men who heard or saw thesame things in the same way? It is human nature that we should coloreven transparent fact with the reflected glow of our passions andfancies, and so the distortion becomes inevitable; we should besatisfied if, to-day, we succeed in making out even the broad outlinesof the picture.

  "It appears tolerably certain that the wreck of the ancient civilizationtook place about three generations ago, the catastrophe being bothsudden and overwhelming; moreover, all the authorities agree that onlyan infinitesimal portion of the race escaped, with whole skins, fromwhat were, in very sooth, cities of destruction. These fortunate oneswere naturally the politically powerful and the immensely rich, and theyowed their safety to the fact that they were able to seize upon theshipping in the harbors for their exclusive use. The fugitives sailedaway, presumably to the southward, and so disappeared from the pages ofauthentic history. We know nothing for certain; only that they departed,and that we saw their faces no more.

  "Let us reconstruct, as best we may, the panorama of those few but awfuldays. The first rush was naturally to the country, but the crowds,choking the ferry and railway stations, were quickly confronted with theterror-stricken thousands of the suburbs, who were flocking to the cityfor refuge. And all through the dragging hours the same despairingreports flowed in from the remoter rural districts; everywhere theTerror walked, and men were dying like flies. From ocean to ocean, fromthe lakes to the gulf, the shadow rushed, and now the whole land lay indarkness.

  "Such was the situation in what was then the United States of America,and similar conditions prevailed throughout the habitable world. Londonand Hong-Kong, Vienna and Pekin, Buenos Ayres and Archangel--from everydirection came the same inquiry, to every questioner was returned thesame answer. It was the end of all things.

  "Coincidently with this great recession of the human tide, occurred theeclipse of industry, science, and, indeed, every form of thought andprogress. The plough rusted in the furrow, the half-formed web droppedto pieces in the loom, the very crops stood unharvested in the fields,to be finally devoured by the birds and by a horde of rats and mice. Upto the last moment there had been confusion and dismay certainly, butthe wheels of trade and of the civil administration had continued toturn; men had stood at their posts in answer to the call of duty orimpressed by the blind instinct of habit. And then, suddenly, the sunwent down, only to rise again upon a silent land.

  "The relapse into barbarism was swift. The few who had escaped weresegregated from one another in small family groups, each man contentwith the bare necessities of animal existence and fearing the face ofthe stranger. Under such circumstances, there could be but littleneighborly intercourse, and the ancient highways speedily becameovergrown with grass and weeds, or else they were undermined and washedout by the winter storms. It was not until the second generation afterthe Terror that men once more began to draw together, in obedience toinherited instincts, and even then the new movement must have beenlargely brought about through the increasing aggressions of theDoomsmen. But of this in another place.

  "It has been asserted that fire played a principal part in thedestruction of the ancient cities, and it was at one time supposed thatthese extensive conflagrations were partly accidental and partlyattributable to the wide-spread lawlessness that marked the closinghours of the greatest drama in all history. But later researches haveevolved a new theory, and it now seems probable that the torch wasemployed by the authorities themselves as a final and truly a desperatemeasure. An heroic cautery, but, alas, a useless one.

  "The comparative exemption of New York from the universal fate goes tosupport rather than to discredit this hypothesis. It escaped thedynamite cartridge and the torch simply because in that city norecognized authority remained in power; there was no one to carry outthe imperative orders of the federal government. There were, of course,many isolated cases of incendiarism, but the city did not suffer fromany general and organized conflagration, as was the fate of Philadelphiaand St. Louis and New Orleans. The destiny of the metropolis was decidedin a different way; already it had passed into the keeping of theDoomsmen.

  "In effect, then, the highly civilized North American continent hadrelapsed, within the brief period of ninety years, into its primevalestate. In every direction stretched an inhospitable wilderness ofmorass and forest, with a few feeble settlements of the Stockade peoplefringing the principal waterways, and here and there the smoke of anencampment of the Painted Men rising in a thin spiral from out of thevast ocean of green leaves. To-day the wild boar ranges where once thetide of human passion most turbulently flowed, and the poor herdsman,eating his noonday curds from a wooden bowl, crushes with indifferentheel the priceless bit of faience lying half hidden in the rottingleaves. Everywhere, the old order changing and disappearing, only torecreate itself in form ever more fantastic and enfeebled, a dead being,and yet inextricably bound up with the life of the new age. And overall, the shadow of Doom, gigantic, threatening, omnipotent."