The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  in the harbour were flung on land like seaweed, and there battered

  to pieces by the breakers . The waves dashed against the cliff, which

  if in any place it had been before loosened, now gave way, and the

  affrighted crowd saw vast fragments of the near earth fall with crash

  and roar into the deep . This sight operated differently on different

  persons . The greater part thought it a judgment of God, to prevent

  or punish our emigration from our native land . Many were doubly

  eager to quit a nook of ground now become their prison, which ap-

  peared unable to resist the inroads of ocean’s giant waves .

  When we arrived at Dover, after a fatiguing day’s journey, we all

  required rest and sleep; but the scene acting around us soon drove

  away such ideas . We were drawn, along with the greater part of our

  companions, to the edge of the cliff, there to listen to and make a

  thousand conjectures . A fog narrowed our horizon to about a quarter

  of a mile, and the misty veil, cold and dense, enveloped sky and

  sea in equal obscurity . What added to our inquietude was the cir-

  cumstance that two-thirds of our original number were now waiting

  for us in Paris, and clinging, as we now did most painfully, to any

  addition to our melancholy remnant, this division, with the tameless

  impassable ocean between, struck us with affright . At length, after

  loitering for several hours on the cliff, we retired to Dover Castle,

  whose roof sheltered all who breathed the English air, and sought the

  sleep necessary to restore strength and courage to our worn frames

  and languid spirits .

  Early in the morning Adrian brought me the welcome intelli-

  gence that the wind had changed: it had been south-west; it was now

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  north-east . The sky was stripped bare of clouds by the increasing

  gale, while the tide at its ebb seceded entirely from the town . The

  change of wind rather increased the fury of the sea, but it altered

  its late dusky hue to a bright green; and in spite of its unmitigated

  clamour, its more cheerful appearance instilled hope and pleasure .

  All day we watched the ranging of the mountainous waves, and to-

  wards sunset a desire to decypher the promise for the morrow at its

  setting, made us all gather with one accord on the edge of the cliff .

  When the mighty luminary approached within a few degrees of the

  tempest-tossed horizon, suddenly, a wonder! three other suns, alike

  burning and brilliant, rushed from various quarters of the heavens

  towards the great orb; they whirled round it . The glare of light was

  intense to our dazzled eyes; the sun itself seemed to join in the dance,

  while the sea burned like a furnace, like all Vesuvius a-light, with

  flowing lava beneath. The horses broke loose from their stalls in

  terror—a herd of cattle, panic struck, raced down to the brink of the

  cliff, and blinded by light, plunged down with frightful yells in the

  waves below . The time occupied by the apparition of these meteors

  was comparatively short; suddenly the three mock suns united in

  one, and plunged into the sea . A few seconds afterwards, a deafen-

  ing watery sound came up with awful peal from the spot where they

  had disappeared .

  Meanwhile the sun, disencumbered from his strange satellites,

  paced with its accustomed majesty towards its western home .

  When—we dared not trust our eyes late dazzled, but it seemed

  that—the sea rose to meet it—it mounted higher and higher, till the

  fiery globe was obscured, and the wall of water still ascended the

  horizon; it appeared as if suddenly the motion of earth was revealed

  to us—as if no longer we were ruled by ancient laws, but were turned

  adrift in an unknown region of space . Many cried aloud, that these

  were no meteors, but globes of burning matter, which had set fire to

  the earth, and caused the vast cauldron at our feet to bubble up with

  its measureless waves; the day of judgment was come they averred,

  and a few moments would transport us before the awful counte-

  nance of the omnipotent judge; while those less given to visionary

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  terrors, declared that two conflicting gales had occasioned the last

  phaenomenon . In support of this opinion they pointed out the fact

  that the east wind died away, while the rushing of the coming west

  mingled its wild howl with the roar of the advancing waters . Would

  the cliff resist this new battery? Was not the giant wave far higher

  than the precipice? Would not our little island be deluged by its ap-

  proach? The crowd of spectators fled. They were dispersed over the

  fields, stopping now and then, and looking back in terror. A sublime

  sense of awe calmed the swift pulsations of my heart—I awaited the

  approach of the destruction menaced, with that solemn resignation

  which an unavoidable necessity instils . The ocean every moment

  assumed a more terrific aspect, while the twilight was dimmed by

  the rack which the west wind spread over the sky . By slow degrees

  however, as the wave advanced, it took a more mild appearance;

  some under current of air, or obstruction in the bed of the waters,

  checked its progress, and it sank gradually; while the surface of the

  sea became uniformly higher as it dissolved into it . This change took

  from us the fear of an immediate catastrophe, although we were still

  anxious as to the final result. We continued during the whole night to

  watch the fury of the sea and the pace of the driving clouds, through

  whose openings the rare stars rushed impetuously; the thunder of

  conflicting elements deprived us of all power to sleep.

  This endured ceaselessly for three days and nights . The stout-

  est hearts quailed before the savage enmity of nature; provisions

  began to fail us, though every day foraging parties were dispersed to

  the nearer towns . In vain we schooled ourselves into the belief, that

  there was nothing out of the common order of nature in the strife

  we witnessed; our disasterous and overwhelming destiny turned the

  best of us to cowards . Death had hunted us through the course of

  many months, even to the narrow strip of time on which we now

  stood; narrow indeed, and buffeted by storms, was our footway

  overhanging the great sea of calamity—

  As an unsheltered northern shore

  Is shaken by the wintry wave—

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  And frequent storms for evermore,

  (While from the west the loud winds rave,

  Or from the east, or mountains hoar)

  The struck and tott’ring sand-bank lave.21

  It required more than human energy to bear up against the men-

  aces of destruction that every where surrounded us .

  After the lapse of three days, the gale died away, the sea-gull

  sailed upon the calm bosom of the windless atmosphere, and the last

  yellow leaf on the topmost branch of the oak hung without motion .

  The sea no longer broke with fury; but a swell setting in steadily

  for shore, with long sweep and sullen burst replaced the roar of


  the breakers . Yet we derived hope from the change, and we did not

  doubt that after the interval of a few days the sea would resume its

  tranquillity . The sunset of the fourth day favoured this idea; it was

  clear and golden . As we gazed on the purple sea, radiant beneath,

  we were attracted by a novel spectacle; a dark speck—as it neared,

  visibly a boat—rode on the top of the waves, every now and then

  lost in the steep vallies between . We marked its course with eager

  questionings; and, when we saw that it evidently made for shore,

  we descended to the only practicable landing place, and hoisted a

  signal to direct them . By the help of glasses we distinguished her

  crew; it consisted of nine men, Englishmen, belonging in truth to the

  two divisions of our people, who had preceded us, and had been for

  several weeks at Paris . As countryman was wont to meet country-

  man in distant lands, did we greet our visitors on their landing, with

  outstretched hands and gladsome welcome . They were slow to re-

  ciprocate our gratulations . They looked angry and resentful; not less

  than the chafed sea which they had traversed with imminent peril,

  though apparently more displeased with each other than with us . It

  was strange to see these human beings, who appeared to be given

  forth by the earth like rare and inestimable plants, full of towering

  passion, and the spirit of angry contest. Their first demand was to be

  conducted to the Lord Protector of England, so they called Adrian,

  21

  Chorus in Oedipus Coloneus .

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  though he had long discarded the empty title, as a bitter mockery of

  the shadow to which the Protectorship was now reduced . They were

  speedily led to Dover Castle, from whose keep Adrian had watched

  the movements of the boat . He received them with the interest and

  wonder so strange a visitation created . In the confusion occasioned

  by their angry demands for precedence, it was long before we could

  discover the secret meaning of this strange scene . By degrees, from

  the furious declamations of one, the fierce interruptions of another,

  and the bitter scoffs of a third, we found that they were deputies

  from our colony at Paris, from three parties there formed, who, each

  with angry rivalry, tried to attain a superiority over the other two .

  These deputies had been dispatched by them to Adrian, who had

  been selected arbiter; and they had journied from Paris to Calais,

  through the vacant towns and desolate country, indulging the while

  violent hatred against each other; and now they pleaded their several

  causes with unmitigated party-spirit .

  By examining the deputies apart, and after much investigation,

  we learnt the true state of things at Paris . Since parliament had

  elected him Ryland’s deputy, all the surviving English had submit-

  ted to Adrian . He was our captain to lead us from our native soil to

  unknown lands, our lawgiver and our preserver. On the first arrange-

  ment of our scheme of emigration, no continued separation of our

  members was contemplated, and the command of the whole body

  in gradual ascent of power had its apex in the Earl of Windsor . But

  unforeseen circumstances changed our plans for us, and occasioned

  the greater part of our numbers to be divided for the space of nearly

  two months, from the supreme chief . They had gone over in two dis-

  tinct bodies; and on their arrival at Paris dissension arose between

  them .

  They had found Paris a desert. When first the plague had ap-

  peared, the return of travellers and merchants, and communications

  by letter, informed us regularly of the ravages made by disease on

  the continent . But with the encreased mortality this intercourse

  declined and ceased . Even in England itself communication from

  one part of the island to the other became slow and rare . No vessel

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  stemmed the flood that divided Calais from Dover; or if some mel-

  ancholy voyager, wishing to assure himself of the life or death of his

  relatives, put from the French shore to return among us, often the

  greedy ocean swallowed his little craft, or after a day or two he was

  infected by the disorder, and died before he could tell the tale of the

  desolation of France . We were therefore to a great degree ignorant

  of the state of things on the continent, and were not without some

  vague hope of finding numerous companions in its wide track. But

  the same causes that had so fearfully diminished the English nation

  had had even greater scope for mischief in the sister land . France

  was a blank; during the long line of road from Calais to Paris not

  one human being was found . In Paris there were a few, perhaps a

  hundred, who, resigned to their coming fate, flitted about the streets

  of the capital and assembled to converse of past times, with that

  vivacity and even gaiety that seldom deserts the individuals of this

  nation .

  The English took uncontested possession of Paris . Its high houses

  and narrow streets were lifeless. A few pale figures were to be dis-

  tinguished at the accustomed resort at the Tuileries; they wondered

  wherefore the islanders should approach their ill-fated city—for in

  the excess of wretchedness, the sufferers always imagine, that their

  part of the calamity is the bitterest, as, when enduring intense pain,

  we would exchange the particular torture we writhe under, for any

  other which should visit a different part of the frame . They listened

  to the account the emigrants gave of their motives for leaving their

  native land, with a shrug almost of disdain—“Return,” they said,

  “return to your island, whose sea breezes, and division from the

  continent gives some promise of health; if Pestilence among you

  has slain its hundreds, with us it has slain its thousands . Are you

  not even now more numerous than we are?—A year ago you would

  have found only the sick burying the dead; now we are happier; for

  the pang of struggle has passed away, and the few you find here are

  patiently waiting the final blow. But you, who are not content to die,

  breathe no longer the air of France, or soon you will only be a part

  of her soil .”

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  Thus, by menaces of the sword, they would have driven back

  those who had escaped from fire. But the peril left behind was

  deemed imminent by my countrymen; that before them doubtful and

  distant; and soon other feelings arose to obliterate fear, or to replace

  it by passions, that ought to have had no place among a brotherhood

  of unhappy survivors of the expiring world .

  The more numerous division of emigrants, which arrived first at

  Paris, assumed a superiority of rank and power; the second party

  asserted their independence . A third was formed by a sectarian, a

  self-erected prophet, who, while he attributed all power and rule to

  God, strove to get the real command of his comrades into his own

  hands . This third division consisted of fewest individuals, but their


  purpose was more one, their obedience to their leader more entire,

  their fortitude and courage more unyielding and active .

  During the whole progress of the plague, the teachers of religion

  were in possession of great power; a power of good, if rightly direct-

  ed, or of incalculable mischief, if fanaticism or intolerance guided

  their efforts . In the present instance, a worse feeling than either of

  these actuated the leader . He was an impostor in the most deter-

  mined sense of the term . A man who had in early life lost, through

  the indulgence of vicious propensities, all sense of rectitude or self-

  esteem; and who, when ambition was awakened in him, gave him-

  self up to its influence unbridled by any scruple. His father had been

  a methodist preacher, an enthusiastic man with simple intentions;

  but whose pernicious doctrines of election and special grace had

  contributed to destroy all conscientious feeling in his son . During

  the progress of the pestilence he had entered upon various schemes,

  by which to acquire adherents and power . Adrian had discovered

  and defeated these attempts; but Adrian was absent; the wolf as-

  sumed the shepherd’s garb, and the flock admitted the deception: he

  had formed a party during the few weeks he had been in Paris, who

  zealously propagated the creed of his divine mission, and believed

  that safety and salvation were to be afforded only to those who put

  their trust in him .

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  When once the spirit of dissension had arisen, the most frivolous

  causes gave it activity. The first party, on arriving at Paris, had taken

  possession of the Tuileries; chance and friendly feeling had induced

  the second to lodge near to them . A contest arose concerning the

  distribution of the pillage; the chiefs of the first division demanded

  that the whole should be placed at their disposal; with this assump-

  tion the opposite party refused to comply . When next the latter went

  to forage, the gates of Paris were shut on them . After overcoming

  this difficulty, they marched in a body to the Tuileries. They found

  that their enemies had been already expelled thence by the Elect, as

  the fanatical party designated themselves, who refused to admit any

  into the palace who did not first abjure obedience to all except God,

  and his delegate on earth, their chief . Such was the beginning of