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The War in the Air Chapter 11 Parts 4 & 5 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, Parts four and five of War in the Air.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Karina Schultz. War in
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  Speaker 1: the Air by H. G. Wells, Chapter eleven, Parts four
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  Speaker 1: and five, Part four. Across this somber spectacle of disaster
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  Speaker 1: goes a minute and insignificant person, for whom, perhaps the
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  Speaker 1: readers of this story have now some slight solicitude of him.
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  Speaker 1: There remains to be told, just one single and miraculous thing.
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  Speaker 1: Through a world darkened and lost, through a civilization in
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  Speaker 1: its death agony, our little cockney errant went and found
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  Speaker 1: his edna. He found his edna. He got back across
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  Speaker 1: the Atlantic, partly by means of an order from the President,
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  Speaker 1: and partly through his own good luck. He contrived to
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  Speaker 1: get himself aboard a British brig in the timber trade
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  Speaker 1: that put out from Boston without cargo. Chiefly, it would seem,
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  Speaker 1: because its captain had a vague idea of getting home
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  Speaker 1: to South Shields, Bert was able to ship himself upon her,
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  Speaker 1: mainly because of the seamanlike appearance of his rubber boots.
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  Speaker 1: They had a long eventful voyage. They were chased, or
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  Speaker 1: imagined themselves to be chased for some hours by an
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  Speaker 1: Asiatic ironclad, which was presently engaged by a British cruiser.
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  Speaker 1: The two ships fought for three hours, circling and driving
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  Speaker 1: southward as they fought, until the twilight and the cloud
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  Speaker 1: drift of a rising gale swallowed them up. A few
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  Speaker 1: days later, Bert's ship lost her rudder and mainmast in
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  Speaker 1: the gale. The crew ran out of food and subsisted
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  Speaker 1: on fish. They saw strange airships going eastward near the
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  Speaker 1: Azories and landed to get provisions and repair the rudder
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  Speaker 1: at Teneriffe. There they found the town destroyed and two
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  Speaker 1: big liners with dead still aboard, sunken in the harbor.
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  Speaker 1: From there they got canned food and material for repairs,
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  Speaker 1: but their operations were greatly impeded by the hostility of
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  Speaker 1: a band of men amidst the ruins of the town,
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  Speaker 1: who sniped them and tried to drive them away. At Mogador,
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  Speaker 1: they stayed and sent a boat ashore for water, and
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  Speaker 1: were nearly captured by an Arab Ruse. Here too, they
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  Speaker 1: got the Purple Death aboard and sailed with it incubating
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  Speaker 1: in their blood. The cook sickened first, and then the mate,
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  Speaker 1: and presently every one was down, and three in the
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  Speaker 1: forecastle were dead. It chanced to be calm weather, and
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  Speaker 1: they drifted helplessly and indeed careless of their fate, backwards
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  Speaker 1: toward the equator. The captain doctored them all with rum.
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  Speaker 1: Nine died altogether, and of the four survivors none understood navigation.
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  Speaker 1: When at last they took heart again and could handle
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  Speaker 1: a sail, they made a course by the stars roughly northward,
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  Speaker 1: and were already short of food once more when they
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  Speaker 1: fell in with a petrol driven ship from Rio to Cardiff,
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  Speaker 1: short handed by reason of the Purple Death, and glad
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  Speaker 1: to take them aboard. So at last, after a year
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  Speaker 1: of wandering, Bert reached England. He landed in bright June
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  Speaker 1: weather and found the Purple Death was there, just beginning
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  Speaker 1: its ravages. The people were in a state of panic
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  Speaker 1: in Cardiff, and many have fled to the hills, and
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  Speaker 1: directly the steamer came to the harbor. She was boarded,
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  Speaker 1: and her residue of food impounded by some unauthenticated provisional committee.
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  Speaker 1: Bert tramped through a country disorganized by pestilence, foodless, and
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  Speaker 1: shaken to the very base of its immemorial order. He
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  Speaker 1: came near death in starvation many times, and once he
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  Speaker 1: was drawn into scenes of violence that might have ended
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  Speaker 1: his career. But the Bert Smallways who tramped from Cardiff
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  Speaker 1: to London vaguely going home, vaguely seeking something of his
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  Speaker 1: own that had no tangible form. But Edna was a
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  Speaker 1: very different person from the desert dervish who was swept
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  Speaker 1: out of England in mister Butteridge's balloon a year before.
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  Speaker 1: He was brown and lean and enduring, steady eyed and
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  Speaker 1: pestilence salted, and his mouth, which had once hung open
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  Speaker 1: shut now like a steel trap. Across his brow ran
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  Speaker 1: a white scar that he had got in a fight
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  Speaker 1: on the brig in Cardiff. He had felt the need
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  Speaker 1: of new clothes and a weapon, and had, by means
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  Speaker 1: that would have shocked him a year ago, secured a
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  Speaker 1: flannel shirt, a corduroy suit, and a revolver and fifty
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  Speaker 1: cartridges from an abandoned pawnbroker's. He also got some soap
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  Speaker 1: and had his first real wash for thirteen months in
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  Speaker 1: a stream outside the town. The vigilance bands that had
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  Speaker 1: at first shot plunderers very freely were now either entirely
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  Speaker 1: dispersed by the plague or busy between town and cemetery.
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  Speaker 1: In a vain attempt to keep pace with it, he
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  Speaker 1: prowled on the outskirts of the town for three or
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  Speaker 1: four days, starving, and then went back to join the
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  Speaker 1: hospital corps for a week, and so fortified himself with
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  Speaker 1: a few square meals before he started eastward. The Welsh
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  Speaker 1: and English countryside at that time presented the stree rangest
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  Speaker 1: mingling of the assurance and wealth of the opening twentieth century,
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  Speaker 1: with a sort of door risque medievalism. All the gear,
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  Speaker 1: the houses and monorails, the farm hedges and power cables,
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  Speaker 1: the roads and pavements, the sign posts and advertisements of
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  Speaker 1: the former order were still for the most part intact. Bankruptcy,
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  Speaker 1: social collapse, famine and pestilence had done nothing to damage these,
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  Speaker 1: and it was only to the great capitals and ganglionic centers,
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  Speaker 1: as it were, of this state that positive destruction had come.
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  Speaker 1: Any One dropped suddenly into the country would have noticed
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  Speaker 1: very little difference. He would have remarked, first, perhaps that
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  Speaker 1: all the hedges need a clipping, that the roadside grass
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  Speaker 1: grew rank, that the road tracks were unusually rain worn,
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  Speaker 1: and that the cottages by the wayside seemed in many
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  Speaker 1: cases shut up. That a telephone wire had dropped here,
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  Speaker 1: and that a cart stood abandoned by the wayside. But
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  Speaker 1: he would still find his hunger wetted by the bright
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  Speaker 1: assurance that Wilder's canned peach were excellent, or that there
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  Speaker 1: was nothing so good for the breakfast table as gobbled sausages.
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  Speaker 1: And then suddenly would come the doerresque element, the skeleton
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  Speaker 1: of a horse, or some crumpled mass of rags in
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  Speaker 1: the ditch, with gaunt extended feet and a yellow, purple
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  Speaker 1: blotched skin and face, or what had been a face
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  Speaker 1: gaunt and glaring and devastated. Then here would be a
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  Speaker 1: field that had been plowed and not sown, and here
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  Speaker 1: a field of corn carelessly trampled by beasts, and here
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  Speaker 1: a hoarding torn down across the road to make a fire.
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  Speaker 1: Then presently he would meet a man or a woman,
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  Speaker 1: yellow faced and probably negligently dressed, and armed, prowling for food.
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  Speaker 1: These people would have the complexions and eyes and expressions
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  Speaker 1: of tramps or criminals, and often the clothing of prosperous
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  Speaker 1: middle class or upper class people. Many of these would
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  Speaker 1: be eager for news and willing to give help and
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  Speaker 1: even scraps of queer meat or crusts of gray and
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  Speaker 1: doughy bread in return for it. They would listen to
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  Speaker 1: Bert's story with avidity and attempt to keep him with
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  Speaker 1: them for a day or so. The virtual cessation of
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  Speaker 1: postal distribution and the collapse of all newspaper enterprise had
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  Speaker 1: left an immense and aching gap in the mental life
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  Speaker 1: of this time. Men had suddenly lost sight of the
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  Speaker 1: ends of the earth, and had still to recover the
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  Speaker 1: rumor spreading habits of the Middle Ages. In their eyes,
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  Speaker 1: in their bearing, in their talk was the quality of
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  Speaker 1: lost and deoriented souls. As Bert traveled from parish to
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  Speaker 1: parish and from district to district, avoiding as far as
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  Speaker 1: possible those festering centers of violence and despair the larger towns,
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  Speaker 1: he found the condition of affairs varying widely. In one
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  Speaker 1: parish he would find the large house burnt, the vicarage wrecked,
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  Speaker 1: evidently in violent conflict. For some suspected and perhaps imaginary
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  Speaker 1: store of food, unburied dead everywhere, and the whole mechanism
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  Speaker 1: of the community at a state. In another he would
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  Speaker 1: find organizing forces stoutly at work, newly painted notice boards
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  Speaker 1: warning off vagrants, the roads and still cultivated fields policed
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  Speaker 1: by armed men, the pestilence under control, even nursing going on,
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  Speaker 1: a store of food husbanded, the cattle and sheep well guarded,
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  Speaker 1: and a group of two or three justices, the village
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  Speaker 1: doctor or a farmer dominating the whole place, a reversion
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  Speaker 1: in fact to the autonomous community of the fifteenth century.
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  Speaker 1: But at any time such a village would be liable
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  Speaker 1: to a raid of Asiatics or Africans, or such like
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  Speaker 1: air pirates, demanding petrol and alcohol or provisions. The price
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  Speaker 1: of its order was an almost intolerable watchfulness and tension.
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  Speaker 1: Then the approach to the confused problems of some larger
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  Speaker 1: center of population and the presence of a more intricate
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  Speaker 1: conflict would be marked by roughly speared notices of quarantine
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  Speaker 1: or strangers shot, or by a string of decaying plunderers
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  Speaker 1: dangling from the telephone poles at the roadside. About Oxford,
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  Speaker 1: big boards were put on the roofs warning all air
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  Speaker 1: wanderers off with the single word guns taking their risks.
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  Speaker 1: Amidst these things, cyclists still kept abroad, and once or
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  Speaker 1: twice during Bert's long tramp, powerful motor cars containing massed
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  Speaker 1: and goggled figures went tearing past him. There were few
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  Speaker 1: police in evidence, but ever and again squads of gaunt
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  Speaker 1: and tattered soldier cyclists would come drifting along, and such
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  Speaker 1: encounters became more frequent as he got out of Wales
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  Speaker 1: into England. Amidst all this wreckage, they were still campaigning.
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  Speaker 1: He had had some idea of resorting to the workhouses
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  Speaker 1: for the night if hunger pressed him too closely, but
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  Speaker 1: some of these were closed and others converted into temporary hospitals,
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  Speaker 1: and one he came up to at twilight near a
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  Speaker 1: village in Gloucestershire, stood with all its doors and windows open,
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  Speaker 1: silent as the grave, and as he found to his
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  Speaker 1: horror by dumbling along evil smelling corridors full of unburied dead.
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  Speaker 1: From Gloucestershire, Bert went northward to the British Aeronautic Park
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  Speaker 1: outside Birmingham, in the hope that he might be taken
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  Speaker 1: on and given food for there. The government, or at
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  Speaker 1: any rate the War Office, still existed as an energetic fact,
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  Speaker 1: concentrated amist collapse and social disaster. Upon the effort to
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  Speaker 1: keep the British flag still flying in the air and
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  Speaker 1: trying to brisk up Mayor and mayor and magistrate and magistrate.
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  Speaker 1: In a new effort of organization, they had brought together
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  Speaker 1: all the best of the surviving artisans from that region.
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  Speaker 1: They had provisioned the park for a siege, and they
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  Speaker 1: were urgently building a larger type of Butteridge machine. Bert
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  Speaker 1: could get no footing at this work. He was not
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  Speaker 1: sufficiently skilled, and he had drifted to Oxford when the
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  Speaker 1: great fight occurred in which these works were finally wrecked.
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  Speaker 1: He saw something, but not very much, of the battle
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  Speaker 1: from a place called a Boer Hill. He saw the
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  Speaker 1: Asiatic squadron coming up across the hills to the southwest,
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  Speaker 1: and he saw one of their airships circling southward again,
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  Speaker 1: chased by two aeroplanes, the one that was ultimately overtaken,
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  Speaker 1: wrecked and burnt at Edge Hill. But he never learned
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  Speaker 1: the issue of the combat as a whole. He crossed
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  Speaker 1: the Thames from Eton to Windsor and made his way
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  Speaker 1: round the south of London to Bonn Hill, and there
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  Speaker 1: he found his brother Tom, looking like some dark, defensive
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  Speaker 1: animal in the old shop, just recovering from the purple death,
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  Speaker 1: and Jessica upstairs delirious and as it seemed to him,
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  Speaker 1: dying grimly. She raved of sending out orders to customers
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  Speaker 1: and scolded Tom perpetually lest he should be late with
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  Speaker 1: missus Thompson's potatoes and Missus hopkins cauliflower, though all business
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  Speaker 1: had long since ceased, and Tom had developed a quite
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  Speaker 1: uncanny skill in the snaring of rats and sparrows and
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  Speaker 1: the concealment of certain stores of cereals and biscuits from
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  Speaker 1: plundered grocer's shops. Tom received his brother with the sword
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  Speaker 1: of guarded warmth lor. He said, it's Bert. I thought
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  Speaker 1: you'd be coming back some day, and I'm glad to
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  Speaker 1: see you, but I can't arst you to eat anything,
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  Speaker 1: because I haven't got anything to eat where you been
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  Speaker 1: Bert all this time. Bert reassured his brother by a
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  Speaker 1: glimpse of a partly eaten swede, and was still telling
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  Speaker 1: his story in fragments and parentheses when he discovered behind
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  Speaker 1: the counter a yellow and forgotten note addressed to himself.
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  Speaker 1: What's this? He said, and found it was a year
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  Speaker 1: old note from Edna. She came here, said Tom, like
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  Speaker 1: one who recalls a trivial thing, astin for you, an
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  Speaker 1: askin for us to take her in. And that was
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  Speaker 1: after the battle and set and clappin' rise of fire.
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  Speaker 1: I was for takin her in, but Jessica wouldn't have it.
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  Speaker 1: So she borrowed five shillings of me quiet like, and
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  Speaker 1: went on. I daresay she's told you she had. Bert
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  Speaker 1: found she had gone on, she said in her note
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  Speaker 1: to an aunt an uncle who had a brick field
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  Speaker 1: near Orsham. And there at last, after another fortnight of
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  Speaker 1: adventurous journeying, Bert found her. Part five. When Bert and
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  Speaker 1: Edna set eyes on one another, they stared and laughed foolishly,
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  Speaker 1: so changed they were, and so ragged and surprised, And
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  Speaker 1: then they both fell weeping. Oh, Bertie boy, She cried,
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  Speaker 1: you've come, you've come, and put out her arms and staggered.
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  Speaker 1: I told him. He said he'd kill me if I
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  Speaker 1: didn't marry'em. But Edna was not married. And when presently
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  Speaker 1: Bert could get talk from her, she explained the task
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  Speaker 1: before him. That little patch of lonely agricultural country had
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  Speaker 1: fallen under the power of a band of bullies led
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  Speaker 1: by a chief called Bill Gore, who had begun life
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  Speaker 1: as a butcher boy and developed into a prize fighter
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  Speaker 1: and a professional sport. They had been organized by a
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  Speaker 1: local nobleman of former eminence upon the turf, but after
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  Speaker 1: a time he had disappeared. No one quite knew how,
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  Speaker 1: and Bill had succeeded to the leadership of the countryside,
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  Speaker 1: and had developed his teacher's methods with considerable vigor. There
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  Speaker 1: had been a strain of advanced philosophy about the local nobleman,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and his mind ran to improving the race and producing
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  Speaker 1: the overman, which in practice took the form of himself,
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  Speaker 1: especially and his little band in moderation marrying with some frequency.
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  Speaker 1: Bill followed up the idea with an enthusiasm that even
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  Speaker 1: trenched upon his popularity with his followers. One day, he
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: had happened upon Edna attending her pigs, and had at
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  Speaker 1: once fallen a wooing with great urgency among the troughs
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  Speaker 1: of slush. Edna had made a gallant resistance, but he
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: was still vigorously about and extraordinarily impatient. He might, she said,
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  Speaker 1: come at any time, as she looked Bert in the eyes.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: They were back already in the barbaric stage when a
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  Speaker 1: man must fight for his love, And here one deplores
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: the conflicts of truth with the chivalrous tradition. One would
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  Speaker 1: like to tell of Bert sallying forth to challenge his rival,
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  Speaker 1: of a ring formed and a spirited encounter, and Bert,
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  Speaker 1: by some miracle of pluck and love and good fortune winning,
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  Speaker 1: but indeed nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, he reloaded
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  Speaker 1: his revolver very carefully, and then sat in the best
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  Speaker 1: room of the cottage by the derelict brickfield, looking anxious
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  Speaker 1: and perplexed and listening to talk about Bill and his ways,
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  Speaker 1: and thinking, thinking. Then suddenly Edna's aunt, with a thrill
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: in her voice, announced the appearance of that individual. He
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: was coming with two others of his gang through the
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  Speaker 1: garden gate. Bert got up, put the woman aside, and
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: looked out. They presented remarkable figures. They wore a sort
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  Speaker 1: of uniform of red golfing jackets and white sweaters, football
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  Speaker 1: singlet and stockings and boots, and each had let his
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: fancy play about his head dress Bill had woman's hat
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  Speaker 1: full of cock's feathers, and all had wild, slouching cowboy brims.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Bert sighed and stood up deeply thoughtful, and Edna watched
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  Speaker 1: him marveling. The women stood quite still. He left the
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  Speaker 1: window and went out into the passage, rather slowly and
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  Speaker 1: with the careworn expression of a man who gives his
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  Speaker 1: mind to a complex and uncertain business. Edna he called,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and when she came he opened the front door. He asked,
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  Speaker 1: very simply, and pointing to the foremost of the three,
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  Speaker 1: that him sure, and being told that it was, shot
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  Speaker 1: his rival instantly and very accurately through the chest. He
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: then shot Bill's best man, much less tidily, in the head,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and then shot at and winked the third man as
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: he fled. The third gentleman yelped and continued running with
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a comical end on twist. Then Bert stood still, meditating,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: with the pistol in his hand, and quite regardless of
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the women behind him. So far things had gone well.
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  Speaker 1: It became evident to him that if he did not
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: go into politics at once, he would be hanged as
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: an assassin. And accordingly, and without a word to the women,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: he went down to the village public house he had
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: passed an hour before on his way to Edna, entered
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  Speaker 1: it from the rear and confronted the little band of
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: ambiguous Ruffs who were drinking in the tap room and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: discussing matrimony and Bill's affection in a facetious but envious manner,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: with a casually held but carefully reloaded revolver, and an
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: invitation to join what he called, I regret to say,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: a vigilance committee under his direction. It's wanted about here,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and some of us are getting it up. He presented
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: himself as one having friends outside, though indeed he had
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: no friends at all in the world but Edna and
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: her aunt and two female cousins. There was a quick
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  Speaker 1: but entirely respectful discussion of the situation. They thought him
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  Speaker 1: a lunatic who had tramped into this neighborhood ignorant of Bill.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: They desired to temporize until their leader came, Bill would
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: settle him. Some one spoke of Bill. Bill's dead. I
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: just shot him, said Bert. We don't need reckon with him.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: He's shot, and a red aired chap with a squint
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  Speaker 1: he shot. We've settled up all that. There ain't goin
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  Speaker 1: to be no more Bill. Ever, e'd got wrong ideas
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  Speaker 1: about marriage and things. It's his sort of chap we're
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: after that carried the meeting Bill was perfunctorily buried, and
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  Speaker 1: Bert's vigilance committee for so it continued to be called
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  Speaker 1: reigned in his stead. That is the end of this story.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: So far as Bert Smallways is concerned. We leave him
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: with his edna to become squatters among the clay and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: oak thickets of the walled, far away from the stream
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  Speaker 1: of events. From that time forth, life became a succession
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: of peasant encounters, an affair of pigs and hens, and
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: small needs and little economies and children, until Clapham and
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: bun Hill, and all the life of the scientific age
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: became to Bert no more than the fading memory of
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: a dream. He never knew how the war in the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: air went on, nor whether it still went on. There
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: were rumors of airships going and coming, and of happening's
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: London word. Once or twice their shadows fell on him
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: as he worked, But whence they came or whither they went,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: he could not tell. Even his desire to tell died
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: out for want of food. At times came robbers and thieves.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: At times came diseases among the beasts, and shortness of food.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Once the country was worried by a pack of borehounds
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: he helped to kill. He went through many inconsecutive irrelevant adventures.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: He survived them all. Accident and death came near them
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: both ever and again, and passed them by. And they
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: loved and suffered and were happy. And she bore him
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: many children, eleven children, one after the other, of whom
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: only four succumbed to the necessary hardships of their simple life.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: They lived and did well, as well was understood in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: those days. They went the way of all flesh, year
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: by year. End of Chapter eleven, Parts four and five.