<SPAN name="chap06"></SPAN>
<h3> Chapter VI </h3>
<h3> THE GREAT AWAKENING </h3>
<p>And now I come to the end of this extraordinary incident, so
overshadowing in its importance, not only in our own small, individual
lives, but in the general history of the human race. As I said when I
began my narrative, when that history comes to be written, this
occurrence will surely stand out among all other events like a mountain
towering among its foothills. Our generation has been reserved for a
very special fate since it has been chosen to experience so wonderful a
thing. How long its effect may last—how long mankind may preserve the
humility and reverence which this great shock has taught it—can only be
shown by the future. I think it is safe to say that things can never be
quite the same again. Never can one realize how powerless and ignorant
one is, and how one is upheld by an unseen hand, until for an instant
that hand has seemed to close and to crush. Death has been imminent upon
us. We know that at any moment it may be again. That grim presence
shadows our lives, but who can deny that in that shadow the sense of
duty, the feeling of sobriety and responsibility, the appreciation of the
gravity and of the objects of life, the earnest desire to develop and
improve, have grown and become real with us to a degree that has leavened
our whole society from end to end? It is something beyond sects and
beyond dogmas. It is rather an alteration of perspective, a shifting of
our sense of proportion, a vivid realization that we are insignificant
and evanescent creatures, existing on sufferance and at the mercy of the
first chill wind from the unknown. But if the world has grown graver
with this knowledge it is not, I think, a sadder place in consequence.
Surely we are agreed that the more sober and restrained pleasures of the
present are deeper as well as wiser than the noisy, foolish hustle which
passed so often for enjoyment in the days of old—days so recent and yet
already so inconceivable. Those empty lives which were wasted in aimless
visiting and being visited, in the worry of great and unnecessary
households, in the arranging and eating of elaborate and tedious meals,
have now found rest and health in the reading, the music, the gentle
family communion which comes from a simpler and saner division of their
time. With greater health and greater pleasure they are richer than
before, even after they have paid those increased contributions to the
common fund which have so raised the standard of life in these islands.</p>
<p>There is some clash of opinion as to the exact hour of the great
awakening. It is generally agreed that, apart from the difference of
clocks, there may have been local causes which influenced the action of
the poison. Certainly, in each separate district the resurrection was
practically simultaneous. There are numerous witnesses that Big Ben
pointed to ten minutes past six at the moment. The Astronomer Royal has
fixed the Greenwich time at twelve past six. On the other hand, Laird
Johnson, a very capable East Anglia observer, has recorded six-twenty as
the hour. In the Hebrides it was as late as seven. In our own case
there can be no doubt whatever, for I was seated in Challenger's study
with his carefully tested chronometer in front of me at the moment. The
hour was a quarter-past six.</p>
<br/>
<p>An enormous depression was weighing upon my spirits. The cumulative
effect of all the dreadful sights which we had seen upon our journey was
heavy upon my soul. With my abounding animal health and great physical
energy any kind of mental clouding was a rare event. I had the Irish
faculty of seeing some gleam of humor in every darkness. But now the
obscurity was appalling and unrelieved. The others were downstairs
making their plans for the future. I sat by the open window, my chin
resting upon my hand and my mind absorbed in the misery of our situation.
Could we continue to live? That was the question which I had begun to
ask myself. Was it possible to exist upon a dead world? Just as in
physics the greater body draws to itself the lesser, would we not feel an
overpowering attraction from that vast body of humanity which had passed
into the unknown? How would the end come? Would it be from a return of
the poison? Or would the earth be uninhabitable from the mephitic
products of universal decay? Or, finally, might our awful situation prey
upon and unbalance our minds? A group of insane folk upon a dead world!
My mind was brooding upon this last dreadful idea when some slight noise
caused me to look down upon the road beneath me. The old cab horse was
coming up the hill!</p>
<p>I was conscious at the same instant of the twittering of birds, of
someone coughing in the yard below, and of a background of movement in
the landscape. And yet I remember that it was that absurd, emaciated,
superannuated cab-horse which held my gaze. Slowly and wheezily it was
climbing the slope. Then my eye traveled to the driver sitting hunched
up upon the box and finally to the young man who was leaning out of the
window in some excitement and shouting a direction. They were all
indubitably, aggressively alive!</p>
<p>Everybody was alive once more! Had it all been a delusion? Was it
conceivable that this whole poison belt incident had been an elaborate
dream? For an instant my startled brain was really ready to believe it.
Then I looked down, and there was the rising blister on my hand where it
was frayed by the rope of the city bell. It had really been so, then.
And yet here was the world resuscitated—here was life come back in an
instant full tide to the planet. Now, as my eyes wandered all over the
great landscape, I saw it in every direction—and moving, to my
amazement, in the very same groove in which it had halted. There were
the golfers. Was it possible that they were going on with their game?
Yes, there was a fellow driving off from a tee, and that other group upon
the green were surely putting for the hole. The reapers were slowly
trooping back to their work. The nurse-girl slapped one of her charges
and then began to push the perambulator up the hill. Everyone had
unconcernedly taken up the thread at the very point where they had
dropped it.</p>
<p>I rushed downstairs, but the hall door was open, and I heard the voices
of my companions, loud in astonishment and congratulation, in the yard.
How we all shook hands and laughed as we came together, and how Mrs.
Challenger kissed us all in her emotion, before she finally threw herself
into the bear-hug of her husband.</p>
<p>"But they could not have been asleep!" cried Lord John. "Dash it all,
Challenger, you don't mean to believe that those folk were asleep with
their staring eyes and stiff limbs and that awful death grin on their
faces!"</p>
<p>"It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said
Challenger. "It has been a rare phenomenon in the past and has
constantly been mistaken for death. While it endures, the temperature
falls, the respiration disappears, the heartbeat is indistinguishable—in
fact, it <i>is</i> death, save that it is evanescent. Even the most
comprehensive mind"—here he closed his eyes and simpered—"could hardly
conceive a universal outbreak of it in this fashion."</p>
<p>"You may label it catalepsy," remarked Summerlee, "but, after all, that
is only a name, and we know as little of the result as we do of the
poison which has caused it. The most we can say is that the vitiated
ether has produced a temporary death."</p>
<p>Austin was seated all in a heap on the step of the car. It was his
coughing which I had heard from above. He had been holding his head in
silence, but now he was muttering to himself and running his eyes over
the car.</p>
<p>"Young fat-head!" he grumbled. "Can't leave things alone!"</p>
<p>"What's the matter, Austin?"</p>
<p>"Lubricators left running, sir. Someone has been fooling with the car.
I expect it's that young garden boy, sir."</p>
<p>Lord John looked guilty.</p>
<p>"I don't know what's amiss with me," continued Austin, staggering to his
feet. "I expect I came over queer when I was hosing her down. I seem to
remember flopping over by the step. But I'll swear I never left those
lubricator taps on."</p>
<p>In a condensed narrative the astonished Austin was told what had happened
to himself and the world. The mystery of the dripping lubricators was
also explained to him. He listened with an air of deep distrust when
told how an amateur had driven his car and with absorbed interest to the
few sentences in which our experiences of the sleeping city were
recorded. I can remember his comment when the story was concluded.</p>
<p>"Was you outside the Bank of England, sir?"</p>
<p>"Yes, Austin."</p>
<p>"With all them millions inside and everybody asleep?"</p>
<p>"That was so."</p>
<p>"And I not there!" he groaned, and turned dismally once more to the
hosing of his car.</p>
<p>There was a sudden grinding of wheels upon gravel. The old cab had
actually pulled up at Challenger's door. I saw the young occupant step
out from it. An instant later the maid, who looked as tousled and
bewildered as if she had that instant been aroused from the deepest
sleep, appeared with a card upon a tray. Challenger snorted ferociously
as he looked at it, and his thick black hair seemed to bristle up in his
wrath.</p>
<p>"A pressman!" he growled. Then with a deprecating smile: "After all, it
is natural that the whole world should hasten to know what I think of
such an episode."</p>
<p>"That can hardly be his errand," said Summerlee, "for he was on the road
in his cab before ever the crisis came."</p>
<p>I looked at the card: "James Baxter, London Correspondent, New York
Monitor."</p>
<p>"You'll see him?" said I.</p>
<p>"Not I."</p>
<p>"Oh, George! You should be kinder and more considerate to others.
Surely you have learned something from what we have undergone."</p>
<p>He tut-tutted and shook his big, obstinate head.</p>
<p>"A poisonous breed! Eh, Malone? The worst weed in modern civilization,
the ready tool of the quack and the hindrance of the self-respecting man!
When did they ever say a good word for me?"</p>
<p>"When did you ever say a good word to them?" I answered. "Come, sir,
this is a stranger who has made a journey to see you. I am sure that you
won't be rude to him."</p>
<p>"Well, well," he grumbled, "you come with me and do the talking. I
protest in advance against any such outrageous invasion of my private
life." Muttering and mumbling, he came rolling after me like an angry
and rather ill-conditioned mastiff.</p>
<p>The dapper young American pulled out his notebook and plunged instantly
into his subject.</p>
<p>"I came down, sir," said he, "because our people in America would very
much like to hear more about this danger which is, in your opinion,
pressing upon the world."</p>
<p>"I know of no danger which is now pressing upon the world," Challenger
answered gruffly.</p>
<p>The pressman looked at him in mild surprise.</p>
<p>"I meant, sir, the chances that the world might run into a belt of
poisonous ether."</p>
<p>"I do not now apprehend any such danger," said Challenger.</p>
<p>The pressman looked even more perplexed.</p>
<p>"You are Professor Challenger, are you not?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Yes, sir; that is my name."</p>
<p>"I cannot understand, then, how you can say that there is no such danger.
I am alluding to your own letter, published above your name in the London
Times of this morning."</p>
<p>It was Challenger's turn to look surprised.</p>
<p>"This morning?" said he. "No London Times was published this morning."</p>
<p>"Surely, sir," said the American in mild remonstrance, "you must admit
that the London Times is a daily paper." He drew out a copy from his
inside pocket. "Here is the letter to which I refer."</p>
<p>Challenger chuckled and rubbed his hands.</p>
<p>"I begin to understand," said he. "So you read this letter this morning?"</p>
<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
<p>"And came at once to interview me?"</p>
<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
<p>"Did you observe anything unusual upon the journey down?"</p>
<p>"Well, to tell the truth, your people seemed more lively and generally
human than I have ever seen them. The baggage man set out to tell me a
funny story, and that's a new experience for me in this country."</p>
<p>"Nothing else?"</p>
<p>"Why, no, sir, not that I can recall."</p>
<p>"Well, now, what hour did you leave Victoria?"</p>
<p>The American smiled.</p>
<p>"I came here to interview you, Professor, but it seems to be a case of
'Is this nigger fishing, or is this fish niggering?' You're doing most of
the work."</p>
<p>"It happens to interest me. Do you recall the hour?"</p>
<p>"Sure. It was half-past twelve."</p>
<p>"And you arrived?"</p>
<p>"At a quarter-past two."</p>
<p>"And you hired a cab?"</p>
<p>"That was so."</p>
<p>"How far do you suppose it is to the station?"</p>
<p>"Well, I should reckon the best part of two miles."</p>
<p>"So how long do you think it took you?"</p>
<p>"Well, half an hour, maybe, with that asthmatic in front."</p>
<p>"So it should be three o'clock?"</p>
<p>"Yes, or a trifle after it."</p>
<p>"Look at your watch."</p>
<p>The American did so and then stared at us in astonishment.</p>
<p>"Say!" he cried. "It's run down. That horse has broken every record,
sure. The sun is pretty low, now that I come to look at it. Well,
there's something here I don't understand."</p>
<p>"Have you no remembrance of anything remarkable as you came up the hill?"</p>
<p>"Well, I seem to recollect that I was mighty sleepy once. It comes back
to me that I wanted to say something to the driver and that I couldn't
make him heed me. I guess it was the heat, but I felt swimmy for a
moment. That's all."</p>
<p>"So it is with the whole human race," said Challenger to me. "They have
all felt swimmy for a moment. None of them have as yet any comprehension
of what has occurred. Each will go on with his interrupted job as Austin
has snatched up his hose-pipe or the golfer continued his game. Your
editor, Malone, will continue the issue of his papers, and very much
amazed he will be at finding that an issue is missing. Yes, my young
friend," he added to the American reporter, with a sudden mood of amused
geniality, "it may interest you to know that the world has swum through
the poisonous current which swirls like the Gulf Stream through the ocean
of ether. You will also kindly note for your own future convenience that
to-day is not Friday, August the twenty-seventh, but Saturday, August the
twenty-eighth, and that you sat senseless in your cab for twenty-eight
hours upon the Rotherfield hill."</p>
<p>And "right here," as my American colleague would say, I may bring this
narrative to an end. It is, as you are probably aware, only a fuller and
more detailed version of the account which appeared in the Monday edition
of the Daily Gazette—an account which has been universally admitted to
be the greatest journalistic scoop of all time, which sold no fewer than
three-and-a-half million copies of the paper. Framed upon the wall of my
sanctum I retain those magnificent headlines:—</p>
<br/>
<h3> TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS' WORLD COMA<br/> UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE<br/> CHALLENGER JUSTIFIED<br/> OUR CORRESPONDENT ESCAPES<br/> ENTHRALLING NARRATIVE<br/> THE OXYGEN ROOM<br/> WEIRD MOTOR DRIVE<br/> DEAD LONDON<br/> REPLACING THE MISSING PAGE<br/> GREAT FIRES AND LOSS OF LIFE<br/> WILL IT RECUR?<br/> </h3>
<br/>
<p>Underneath this glorious scroll came nine and a half columns of
narrative, in which appeared the first, last, and only account of the
history of the planet, so far as one observer could draw it, during one
long day of its existence. Challenger and Summerlee have treated the
matter in a joint scientific paper, but to me alone was left the popular
account. Surely I can sing "Nunc dimittis." What is left but
anti-climax in the life of a journalist after that!</p>
<p>But let me not end on sensational headlines and a merely personal
triumph. Rather let me quote the sonorous passages in which the greatest
of daily papers ended its admirable leader upon the subject—a leader
which might well be filed for reference by every thoughtful man.</p>
<p>"It has been a well-worn truism," said the Times, "that our human race
are a feeble folk before the infinite latent forces which surround us.
From the prophets of old and from the philosophers of our own time the
same message and warning have reached us. But, like all oft-repeated
truths, it has in time lost something of its actuality and cogency. A
lesson, an actual experience, was needed to bring it home. It is from
that salutory but terrible ordeal that we have just emerged, with minds
which are still stunned by the suddenness of the blow and with spirits
which are chastened by the realization of our own limitations and
impotence. The world has paid a fearful price for its schooling. Hardly
yet have we learned the full tale of disaster, but the destruction by
fire of New York, of Orleans, and of Brighton constitutes in itself one
of the greatest tragedies in the history of our race. When the account
of the railway and shipping accidents has been completed, it will furnish
grim reading, although there is evidence to show that in the vast
majority of cases the drivers of trains and engineers of steamers
succeeded in shutting off their motive power before succumbing to the
poison. But the material damage, enormous as it is both in life and in
property, is not the consideration which will be uppermost in our minds
to-day. All this may in time be forgotten. But what will not be
forgotten, and what will and should continue to obsess our imaginations,
is this revelation of the possibilities of the universe, this destruction
of our ignorant self-complacency, and this demonstration of how narrow is
the path of our material existence and what abysses may lie upon either
side of it. Solemnity and humility are at the base of all our emotions
to-day. May they be the foundations upon which a more earnest and
reverent race may build a more worthy temple."</p>
<br/><br/><br/><br/>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />