The Thames Valley Catastrophe | Page 8

this valley it was certain that the lava-stream must flow; and, indeed, at
the present day, the basin around is completely filled by one of the
solidest and most forbidding masses of black basalt in the country. Still,
I made up my mind to descend and cut across the low- lying ground
towards Harrow. If I failed, I felt, after all, I was but one unit more in

what I now began to realize as a prodigious national calamity.
I was just coasting down the hill, with Uxbridge lying snug and
unconscious in the glen below me, when a slight and unimportant
accident occurred which almost rendered impossible my further
progress. It was past the middle of August; the hedges were being cut;
and this particular lane, bodered by a high thorn fence, was strewn with
the mangled branches of the may-bushes. At any other time, I should
have remembered the danger and avoided them; that day, hurrying
down hill for dear life and for Ethel, I forgot to notice them. The
consequence was, I was pulled up suddenly by finding my front wheel
deflated; this untimely misfortune almost unmanned me. I dismounted
and examined the tyre; it had received a bad puncture. I tried inflating
again, in hopes the hole might be small enough to make that precaution
sufficient. But it was quite useless. I found I must submit to stop and
doctor up the puncture. Fortunately, I had the necessary apparatus in
my wallet.
I think it was the weirdest episode of all that weird ride--this sense of
stopping impatiently, while the fiery flood still surged on towards
London, in order to go through all the fiddling and troublesome little
details of mending a pneumatic tyre. The moment and the operation
seemed so sadly out of harmony. A countryman passed by on a cart,
obviously suspecting nothing; that was another point which added
horror to the occasion--that so near the catastrophe, so very few people
were even aware what was taking place beside them. Indeed, as is well
known, I was one of the very few who saw the eruption during its
course, and yet managed to escape from it. Elsewhere, those who tried
to run before it, either to escape themselves or to warn others of the
danger, were overtaken by the lava before they could reach a place of
safety. I attribute this mainly to the fact that most of them continued
along the high roads in the valley, or fled instinctively for shelter
towards their homes, instead of making at once for the heights and the
uplands.
The countryman stopped and looked at me.
"The more haste the less speed!" he said, with proverbial wisdom.

I glanced up at him, and hesitated. Should I warn him of his doom, or
was it useless? "Keep up on the hills," I said, at last. "An unspeakable
calamity is happening in the valley. Flames of fire are flowing down it,
as from a great burning mountain. You will be cut off by the eruption."
He stared at me blankly, and burst into a meaningless laugh. "Why,
you're one of them Salvation Army fellows," he exclaimed, after a short
pause. "You're trying to preach to me. I'm going to Uxbridge." And he
continued down the hill towards certain destruction.
It was hours, I feel sure, before I had patched up that puncture, though I
did it by the watch in four and a half minutes. As soon as I had blown
out my tyre again I mounted once more, and rode at a breakneck pace
to Uxbridge. I passed down the straggling main street of the suburban
town, crying aloud as I went, "Run, run, to the downs! A flood of lava
is rushing up the valley! To the hills, for your lives! All the Thames
bank is blazing!" Nobody took the slightest heed; they stood still in the
street for a minute with open mouths: then they returned to their
customary occupations. A quarter of an hour later, there was no such
place in the world as Uxbridge.
I followed the main road through the village which I have since
identified as Hillingdon; then I diverged to the left, partly by roads and
partly by field paths of whose exact course I am still uncertain, towards
the hill at Harrow. When I reached the town, I did not strive to rouse
the people, partly because my past experience had taught me the futility
of the attempt, and partly because I rightly judged that they were safe
from the inundation; for as it never quite covered the dome of St. Paul's,
part of which still protrudes from the sea of basalt, it did not reach the
level of the northern heights of London. I rode on through Harrow
without one word