The Doomsman | Page 5

and the current had scoured out for itself an ever-deepening channel in the soft, alluvial soil. A clump of alders, just bursting into leaf, masked the bed of the stream at one particular point, where the bank rose into a miniature bluff. Constans, from his elevated position, was enabled to overlook this point, and so to make out the figure of a mounted man behind the alder screen, his horse standing belly deep in the water. It was the cavalier of the ostrich-feathers; and then, through the white trunks of the birches, he caught the flutter of a woman's gown. Constans tried to shout, to call out, but the vocal chords refused to relax, the sounds rattled in his throat.

II
THE NIGHT OF THE TERROR
The reader, desiring to inform himself in extenso regarding the physical and social changes that followed the catastrophe by which the ancient civilization was so suddenly subverted, would do well to consult the final authority upon the subject, the learned Vigilas, author of The Later Cosmos (elephant folio edition). But for our present purpose a brief epitome should suffice. To borrow then, with all due acknowledgments, from our admirable historian:
"It was in the later years of the twentieth century that the Great Change came; at least, so the traditions agree, and how is a man to know certainly of such things except as he learns them from his father's lips? True, the accounts differ, and widely so at times, but that much is to be expected--where were there ever two men who heard or saw the same things in the same way? It is human nature that we should color even transparent fact with the reflected glow of our passions and fancies, and so the distortion becomes inevitable; we should be satisfied if, to-day, we succeed in making out even the broad outlines of the picture.
"It appears tolerably certain that the wreck of the ancient civilization took place about three generations ago, the catastrophe being both sudden and overwhelming; moreover,all the authorities agree that only an infinitesimal portion of the race escaped, with whole skins, from what were, in very sooth, cities of destruction. These fortunate ones were naturally the politically powerful and the immensely rich, and they owed their safety to the fact that they were able to seize upon the shipping in the harbors for their exclusive use. The fugitives sailed away, presumably to the southward, and so disappeared from the pages of authentic 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 awful days. The first rush was naturally to the country, but the crowds, choking the ferry and railway stations, were quickly confronted with the terror-stricken thousands of the suburbs, who were flocking to the city for refuge. And all through the dragging hours the same despairing reports flowed in from the remoter rural districts; everywhere the Terror walked, and men were dying like flies. From ocean to ocean, from the lakes to the gulf, the shadow rushed, and now the whole land lay in darkness.
"Such was the situation in what was then the United States of America, and similar conditions prevailed throughout the habitable world. London and Hong-Kong, Vienna and Pekin, Buenos Ayres and Archangel--from every direction came the same inquiry, to every questioner was returned the same answer. It was the end of all things.
"Coincidently with this great recession of the human tide, occurred the eclipse of industry, science, and, indeed, every form of thought and progress. The plough rusted in the furrow, the half-formed web dropped to 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. Up to the last moment there had been confusion and dismay certainly, but the wheels of trade and of the civil administration had continued to turn; men had stood at their posts in answer to the call of duty or impressed by the blind instinct of habit. And then, suddenly, the sun went down, only to rise again upon a silent land.
"The relapse into barbarism was swift. The few who had escaped were segregated from one another in small family groups, each man content with the bare necessities of animal existence and fearing the face of the stranger. Under such circumstances, there could be but little neighborly intercourse, and the ancient highways speedily became overgrown with grass and weeds, or else they were undermined and washed out by the winter storms. It was not until the second generation after the Terror that men once more began to draw together, in obedience to inherited instincts, and even then the new movement must have been largely brought