第18章

There are some of them down New Guinea way that eat the late-lamented himself, just by way of a last tidy up.Well, of all the funeral feasts on this earth, I suppose the one we are takin' is the queerest.""The strange thing is," said Mrs.Challenger, "that I find it impossible to feel grief for those who are gone.There are my father and mother at Bedford.I know that they are dead, and yet in this tremendous universal tragedy I can feel no sharp sorrow for any individuals, even for them.""And my old mother in her cottage in Ireland," said I."I can see her in my mind's eye, with her shawl and her lace cap, lying back with closed eyes in the old high-backed chair near the window, her glasses and her book beside her.Why should I mourn.

her? She has passed and I am passing, and I may be nearer her in some other life than England is to Ireland.Yet I grieve to think that that dear body is no more.""As to the body," remarked Challenger, "we do not mourn over the parings of our nails nor the cut locks of our hair, though they were once part of ourselves.Neither does a one-legged man yearn sentimentally over his missing member.The physical body has rather been a source of pain and fatigue to us.It is the constant index of our limitations.Why then should we worry about its detachment from our psychical selves?""If they can indeed be detached," Summerlee grumbled."But, anyhow, universal death is dreadful.""As I have already explained," said Challenger, "a universal death must in its nature be far less terrible than a isolated one.""Same in a battle," remarked Lord John."If you saw a single man lying on that floor with his chest knocked in and a hole in his face it would turn you sick.But I've seen ten thousand on their backs in the Soudan, and it gave me no such feelin', for when you are makin' history the life of any man is too small a thing to worry over.When a thousand million pass over together, same as happened to-day, you can't pick your own partic'lar out of the crowd.""I wish it were well over with us," said the lady wistfully.

"Oh, George, I am so frightened."

"You'll be the bravest of us all, little lady, when the time comes.I've been a blusterous old husband to you, dear, but you'll just bear in mind that G.E.C.is as he was made and couldn't help himself.After all, you wouldn't have had anyone else?""No one in the whole wide world, dear," said she, and put her arms round his bull neck.We three walked to the window and stood amazed at the sight which met our eyes.

Darkness had fallen and the dead world was shrouded in gloom.

But right across the southern horizon was one long vivid scarlet streak, waxing and waning in vivid pulses of life, leaping suddenly to a crimson zenith and then dying down to a glowing line of fire.

"Lewes is ablaze!"

"No, it is Brighton which is burning," said Challenger, stepping across to join us."You can see the curved back of the downs against the glow.That fire is miles on the farther side of it.

The whole town must be alight."

There were several red glares at different points, and the pile of DEBRIS upon the railway line was still smoldering darkly, but they all seemed mere pin-points of light compared to that monstrous conflagration throbbing beyond the hills.What copy it would have made for the Gazette! Had ever a journalist such an opening and so little chance of using it--the scoop of scoops, and no one to appreciate it? And then, suddenly, the old instinct of recording came over me.If these men of science could be so true to their life's work to the very end, why should not I, in my humble way, be as constant? No human eye might ever rest upon what I had done.But the long night had to be passed somehow, and for me at least, sleep seemed to be out of the question.My notes would help to pass the weary hours and to occupy my thoughts.Thus it is that now I have before me the notebook with its scribbled pages, written confusedly upon my knee in the dim, waning light of our one electric torch.Had Ithe literary touch, they might have been worthy of the occasion, As it is, they may still serve to bring to other minds the long-drawn emotions and tremors of that awful night.