“The passing bell!”
With the twelfth stroke there came through the windows a great wave of indescribable sound, the loosing of breath among the thousands who were gathered far below us in the Kelvin valley. Then again there was silence. Nordenholt suddenly leaned forward to his desk and placed his finger on the ivory button.
“Now’s the danger-point, Jack. He’ll try to divert attention from his failure. But I’m ready for him.”
I began mechanically to count seconds, with no particular reason, but simply because I felt I must do something. Two minutes passed; and then through the windows came a long groaning note, the voice of the multitude smitten with disillusion at the failure of the miracle which they had expected. It rolled in a huge volume of sound across the Park and then died away.
Suddenly the loudspeaker poured out a torrent of words. The voice was no longer calm; all the quiet strength had gone out of it, and, instead, the tones were those of an infuriated man seeking some object upon which to wreak his anger. But with all his rage the Reverend John had a ready mind. In a moment he seemed to have seen a possible loophole of escape.
“No!” he cried, “I will not ascend for yet awhile. Work remains to be done here, in this godless city; and I will renounce my rest until it has been brought to its end. Life must cease ere I can seek my rest. I bid you follow me that we may accomplish the task which has been laid upon me. Over yonder”—he evidently pointed towards us—“over yonder sits the Arch-Enemy; he who strives to chain pure spirits in this web of flesh. His hand is on all this city, so that the smoke of her burning goes up to the skies. Break asunder the chains which he is forging. Destroy the evil works which he has planned. Wreck the engines which he has designed. Come, my brothers; the doom is pronounced against all the works of his hand. Come, follow me and end it all. Destroy! Destroy! So that this world of sorrow and of sin may pass away like an evil vision and life may be no more. Destroy! Destroy!”
Nordenholt, listening intently, pressed his finger upon the ivory stud. There was a moment’s pause, and then from the eastern end of the building came a sound of machine-guns. It lasted only for a few seconds and then died out.
“They couldn’t miss at that range,” said Nordenholt. “That’s the end of the Reverend John personally. But I doubt if we are finished with him altogether even now.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ELEVENTH HOUR
I HAVE set down all my doubts as to the wisdom of Nordenholt’s treatment of the Reverend John; and it is only right to place on the other side the fact that events proved he had gauged matters better than I had done. He had foreseen the trend of the revivalist’s thoughts and had deduced their climax probably long before Wester himself had understood the road he had placed his feet upon. Nordenholt had allowed the excitement to grow without check, even to its highest point, without interfering in the least; because he calculated that the supreme disillusion would produce a revulsion of feeling which could be attained in no other way. And his calculation proved to be correct. Morally shaken by the failure of the miracle which they had been led to expect, and which many of them had counted upon with certainty, the populace allowed itself to be driven back into the factories and mines without a word of protest. Their dreams were shattered and they fell back into reality without the strength to resist any dominant will. It seemed as though the last difficulties were disappearing before us; and that the path now led straight onward to our goal. So I thought, at least, but Nordenholt doubted. And, as it turned out, he again saw more clearly than I. We might be done with the Reverend John; but the Reverend John had not finished with us, dead as he was.
The next ten days saw the institution of a merciless system in the works and mines of the Area. During the period of the revivalist’s activity there had been an accelerated fall in the output; and Nordenholt determined that this must be made good as soon as possible. Possibly also he believed that a spell of intense physical exertion would exhaust the workers and leave them no time to indulge in recollections and reflections which might be dangerous. Whatever his motives may have been, his methods were drastic in the extreme. The minimum necessary output was trebled; and the members of any group who failed to attain it were promptly deported into the desert of the South. Surely entrenched behind the loyalty of the Labour Defence Force, Nordenholt threw aside any concealment and ruled the whole Area as a despot. The end in view was all that he now seemed to see; and he broke men and threw them aside without the slightest hesitation. More than ever, it seemed to me at this time, he was like a machine, rolling forward along its appointed path, careless of all the human lives and the human interests which he ground to powder under his irresistible wheels. I began to think of him at times in the likeness of Jagannatha, the Lord of the World, under whose car believers cast themselves to death. But none of Nordenholt’s victims were willing ones.
Unlimited power, as Nordenholt himself had pointed out to me, is a perilous gift to any man. The human mind is not fitted for strains of this magnitude; and even Nordenholt’s colossal personality suffered, I believe, from the stress of his despotic rule. But where a smaller man would have frittered away his energies in petty oppression or aimless regulation, Nordenholt never lost sight of his main objective: and I believe that his harshness in the end arose merely from his ever-growing determination to bring his enterprise to success. Concentrating his mind entirely upon this, he may have suffered from a loss of perspective which made him ruthless in his demands upon the laboring masses of the Area. If this were so, I cannot find it in me to blame him, in view of the responsibility which he bore. But I have a suspicion that he feared a coming disaster, and that he was determined to take time by the forelock by forcing up production ere the catastrophe overtook us.
*****
After the death of the revivalist, his followers disappeared. The meetings at street corners no longer took place; the wild skin-clad figures ran no more through the city. I believe that Nordenholt took steps to arrest those of the inner circle who escaped the machine-guns in the Park; but many of them seem to have slipped through his fingers in spite of the efficiency of his Secret Service. Probably they were kept in concealment by sympathisers, of whom there were still a number in spite of the general disillusionment. On the surface, the whole movement appeared to have been arrested completely; but, as we were to learn, it was not blotted out.
I can still remember the first news of the disaster. A trill on my telephone bell, and then the voice of Nordenholt speaking:
“Hullo! . . . That you, Jack? . . . Come over here, will you? . . . At my office. I may need you. . . . It’s a bad affair. . . . What? . . . Two of the pit-shafts have been destroyed. No way of reaching the crowd underground. I’m afraid it’s a bad business.”
When I reached his office he was still at the telephone, evidently speaking to the scene of the catastrophe.
“Yes? . . . Shaft closed completely? . . . How long do you think it will take to reopen it? . . . Permanent? Mean to say you can’t reopen it? . . . Months? . . . How many men below just now? . . . Six hundred, you think? . . . That’s taking the number of lamps missing, I suppose. . . . Well, find out exactly as soon as you can.”
He rang off and was just about to call up another number, the second pit, I suppose, when the telephone bell sounded an inward call.
“Yes? . . . What’s that? Numbers what? . . . Three, seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen. . . . Ring off! I’ll speak to you again.”
He rang furiously for the exchange.
“Put me through to the Coal Control. Quick, now. . . . Hullo! Is that you, Sinclair? . . Nordenholt. . . . Send out a general call. Bring every man to the surface at once. . . . Yes, every pit in the Area. Hurry! It’s life or death. . . . Report when you get the news.”
Without leaving the instrument he called up another number.
“Go on. No. 14 was the last. . . . Take down these numbers, Jack. . . . 3, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19. . . . That all? . . . Good. Get me
the figures of losses as soon as you can. Also a note of the damage. Good-bye.”
Behind this disjointed sequence of phrases I had caught hints of the magnitude of the calamity; and I was to some extent prepared for what I heard when he had time to turn to me at last.
“Eleven pits have been destroyed almost simultaneously, Jack. No. 23 and No. 27 went first; and then that list I gave you just now. There are no details yet; but it’s quite evidently malicious. Dynamite, I think, to judge from the few facts I’ve got. The shafts are completely blocked, as far as we know; and every man underground is done for.”
“How many does that amount to?”
“There are no figures yet; but it will run into more than three figures anyway.”
Again the shrill call of the telephone bell sounded. He took up the receiver.
“Yes? . . . What’s that? No. 31 and No. 33? . . . Complete block? No hope? . . . Do your best.”
He turned to me.
“Two more gone, before we could get the men up. It’s a very widespread affair. I told you we hadn’t done with the Reverend John.”
“What’s he got to do with it?” I asked, astonished.
“Some of his friends carrying out the work he left unfinished. They mean to smash the Area; and they’ve hit us on our weakest point, there’s no doubt. No coal, no work in the factories, no nitrogen. This is serious, Jack.”
Another call on the telephone brought the news that three more pits had been destroyed. Nordenholt rang up the Coal Control once more and urged them to even greater haste in their efforts to get the men to the surface. Then he turned back to me.
“Do you realise what it all means, Jack? As far as I can see, it’s the beginning of the end for us. We can’t pull through on this basis; and I doubt if we have heard the full extent of the disaster even now.”
*****
I have endeavoured to convey the impression made upon my mind by the first news of the catastrophe; but little purpose would be served by continuing the story in detail. All that morning we stood by the telephone, gathering in the tale of disaster bit by bit in disjointed fragments as it came over the wire. Here and there, items of better news filtered through: reports that in some pits the whole of the underground workers had been brought safely to the surface, accounts of the immunity of certain shafts. But as a whole it was a black record which we gathered in. The work had been planned with skill; and the execution had not fallen below the level of the plan. In one or two cases the miscreants had been detected in the act and captured before they had time to do any damage; but these discoveries were very few. As far as most of the pits were concerned, we never were able to establish how the work had been done; for all traces were buried under the debris in the wrecked shafts, which have been left unopened ever since the catastrophe. One thing was certain, the whole of the workers actually in the galleries at the time of the explosions were lost for good and all. They were far beyond the reach of any human help.
It is no part of my plan to do more than indicate the horror of this calamity. I draw no pen-pictures of the crowds around the pit-heads, the crying of the women, the ever-recurring demands for the names of the lost. These were features common to all mining accidents in the old days; and this one differed from the rest only in its magnitude and not in its form.
Owing to the colossal scale of the casualty list it was impossible to minimise the matter in any way. Nordenholt decided to tell the truth in full as soon as the total losses were definitely established. He gave his newspapers a free hand; and by the late afternoon the placards were in the streets.
TERRIBLE DISASTERS IN COAL DISTRICT.
MANY SHAFTS BLOCKED.
ALL UNDERGROUND WORKERS ENTOMBED.
11,000 DEAD.
To most of those who read the accounts of the catastrophe, it seemed a terrible blow of Fate; but we at the centre of things knew that the immediate loss was as nothing in comparison with the ultimate results which it would bring in its train. All the largest pits were out of action. The coal output, even at the best, could not possibly keep pace with the demands of the future; and with the failure of fuel, the whole activities of the Area must come to a standstill. Just on the edge of success, it seemed all our efforts were to be in vain. From beyond the grave the dead fanatic had struck his blow at the material world which he hated; and we shuddered under the shock.
Throughout that day I was with Nordenholt. I think that he felt the need of someone beside him, some audience which would force him to keep an outwardly unshaken front. But to me it was a nightmare. The debacle in itself had broken my nerve, coming thus without warning; but Nordenholt’s prevision of the ultimate results which it would exercise seemed to take away the last ray of hope.
“It’s no use whining, Jack; we’ve just got to take it as well as we can. First of all, the coal output will cease entirely for a long time. Not a man will go into even the ‘safe’ pits after this until everything has been examined thoroughly; and that will take days and days. It’s no use blinking that side of it.”
“Why not force them in?” I asked. “Turn out the Defence Force and drive them to the pits. We must have coal.”
“No good. I know what they’re thinking now; and even if you shot half of them the rest wouldn’t go down. It’s no use thinking of it. I know.”
“Why didn’t the Intelligence Section get wind of it?”
“Don’t blame them; they couldn’t have done more than they did. Don’t you realise that if a man is prepared to sacrifice his life—and these fanatics who did the damage were the first victims themselves—there’s nothing that can stop him? The Intelligence people had nothing to go on. The whole of this thing was organised and carried through by a handful of men, some of whom were evidently employed in the pits themselves. It was so rapidly planned and executed that no secret service could have got at it in time. Remember, we’re making explosives on a big scale, so that thefts are easy.”
“And if you’re right, what is to happen?”
“Go on as long as we can; then see how we stand; and after that, if necessary, decimate the population of the Area so as to bring our numbers down to what we can feed in future. There’s nothing else for it.”
“I hope it won’t come to that, Nordenholt.”
“It’s no choice of mine; but if it’s forced on me, I’ll do it. I’m going to see this thing through, Jack, at any cost now. Millions have been swept out of existence already by the Famine; and I’m not going to stick at the loss of a few more hundred thousands so long as we pull through in the end.”
*****
In the main, Nordenholt’s forecast of the attitude which the miners would adopt proved to be correct. A certain number of workers, braver or less imaginative than the rest, returned to work in the “safe” pits in the course of a day or two; but the main bulk of the labour remained sullenly aloof. Nothing would induce them to set foot in the galleries. Work above-ground they would do, wherever it was necessary to preserve the pits from deterioration; but they had no intention of descending into the subterranean world again. Better to starve in the light of day than run the risk of hungering in some prison in the bowels of the earth. Neither threats nor cajolings served to move them from this decision.
Nordenholt, as a last resource, sent exploring parties into the South to examine the deserted coal-fields of England in the hope that some of them might be workable; but the various missions returned with reports that nothing could be done. During the period since the mining population had died out, the pits had become unsafe, some by the infiltration of water, others by the destruction of the machinery and yet more by the disrepair of the galleries. Here and there a mine was discovered which could still be operated; and parties were drafted south to work it; but in most cases so much labour was required to put the shafts and galleries in repair that we were unable to look forward to anything like the previous coal-supply even at the best.
Meanwhile Nordenholt, day by day, grew more and more grim. While th
ere was any hope of utilising the mining population, he clung to it tenaciously; but as time passed it became clearer that the Area had received its death-blow. He began to draft his ex-miners into other branches of industry bit by bit; but with the fall in the coal-supply there was little use for them there, since very soon all the activities of the Area would have to cease.
I watched him closely during that period; and I could see the effect which the strain was producing upon him. The disaster had struck us just when we seemed to have reached the turning-point in the Area’s history, at the very time when all seemed to be sure in front of us. It was a blow which would have prostrated a weaker man; but Nordenholt had a tenacity far above the ordinary. He meant, I know, to carry out his decision to decimate the Area if necessary; but he held his hand until it was absolutely certain that all was lost. I think he must have had at the back of his mind a hope that everything would come right in the end; though I doubt if his grounds for that belief were any but the most slender.
For my own part, I went through that period like an automaton. The suddenness of the catastrophe seemed, in some way, to have deadened my imagination; and I carried on my work mechanically without thinking of where it was all leading us. With this new holocaust looming over the Area, Elsa seemed further away than ever. If she had revolted at the story of the South, it seemed to me that this fresh sacrifice of lives in the Area itself would deepen her hatred for the men who planned it.
It seemed the very irony of Fate that Nordenholt should choose this juncture to tell me his views on her feelings.
“Elsa seems to be coming round a little at last, Jack,” he said to me one day. “I think her emotional side has worked itself out in the contemplation of the Famine; and her reason’s getting a chance again.”
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