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In the Days of the Comet Book Second Chapter Second Section 1-2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book two, Chapter two, Sections one and two of In
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book two,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter two, Sections one and two. The Awakening, So the
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  Speaker 1: great day came to me, And even as I had awakened,
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  Speaker 1: so in that same dawn, the whole world awoke. For
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  Speaker 1: the whole world of living things had been overtaken by
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  Speaker 1: the same tide of insensibility. In an hour, at the
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  Speaker 1: touch of this new gas in the comet, the shiver
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  Speaker 1: of catalytic change had passed about the globe. They say
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  Speaker 1: it was the nitrogen of the air, the old azote,
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  Speaker 1: that in the twinkling of an eye was changed out
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  Speaker 1: of itself, and in an hour or so became a
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  Speaker 1: respirable gas, differing indeed from oxygen, but helping and sustaining
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  Speaker 1: its action, a bath of strength and healing for nerve
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  Speaker 1: and brain. I do not know the precise changes that occurred,
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  Speaker 1: nor the names our chemists give them. My work has
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  Speaker 1: carried me away from such things. Only this I know
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  Speaker 1: I and all men were renewed. I picture to myself
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  Speaker 1: this thing happening in space, a planetary moment, the faint smudge,
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  Speaker 1: the slender whirl of a meteor drawing nearer to this planet,
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  Speaker 1: This planet like a ball, like a shaded, rounded ball,
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  Speaker 1: floating in the void, with its little, nearly impalpable coat
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  Speaker 1: of cloud and air, with its dark pools of ocean,
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  Speaker 1: its gleaming ridges of land. And as that midge from
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  Speaker 1: the void touches it, the transparent gaseous outer shell clouds
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  Speaker 1: in an instant green, and then slowly clears again thereafter
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  Speaker 1: for three hours or more. We know the minimum time
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  Speaker 1: for the change was almost exactly three hours, because all
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  Speaker 1: the clocks and watches kept going everywhere. No man, nor beast,
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  Speaker 1: nor bird, nor any living thing that breathed the air
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  Speaker 1: stirred at all, but lay still everywhere on Earth that day,
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  Speaker 1: in the ears of every one who breathed, there had
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  Speaker 1: been the same humming in the air, the same rush
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  Speaker 1: of green vapors, the crepitation, the streaming down of shooting stars.
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  Speaker 1: The Hindoo had stayed his morning's work in the fields
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  Speaker 1: to stare and march and fall the blue clothed Chinaman
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  Speaker 1: fell head foremost athwart his mid day bowl of rice.
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  Speaker 1: The Japanese merchant came out from some chaffering in his office, amazed,
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  Speaker 1: and presently lay there before his door. The evening gazers
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  Speaker 1: by the golden gates were overtaken as they waited for
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  Speaker 1: the rising of the great star. This had happened in
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  Speaker 1: every city of the world, in every lonely valley, in
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  Speaker 1: every home and house and shelter, and every open place.
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  Speaker 1: On the high seas. The crowding steamship passengers, eager for
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  Speaker 1: any wonder, gaped and marbled, and were suddenly terror stricken,
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  Speaker 1: and struggled for the gangways, and were overcome. The captains
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  Speaker 1: staggered on the bridge and fell. The stoker fell headlong
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  Speaker 1: among his coals. The engines throbbed upon their way, untended.
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  Speaker 1: The fishing craft drove by without a hail, with swaying rudder,
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  Speaker 1: healing and dipping. The great voice of material Fate cried halt,
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  Speaker 1: and in the midst of the play, the actors staggered, dropped,
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  Speaker 1: and were still. The figure runs from my pen in
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  Speaker 1: New York. That very thing occurred. Most of the theatrical
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  Speaker 1: audiences dispersed. But in two crowded houses, the company, fearing
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  Speaker 1: a panic, went on playing amidst the gloom, and the people,
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  Speaker 1: trained by many a previous disaster, stuck to their seats,
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  Speaker 1: and there they sat. The back rose, only moving a little,
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  Speaker 1: And there, in disciplined lines, they drooped and failed, nodded,
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  Speaker 1: and fell forward or slid down upon the floor. I
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  Speaker 1: am told by Parload, though indeed I know nothing of
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  Speaker 1: the reasoning on which his confidence rests, that within an
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  Speaker 1: hour of the great moment of impact, the first green
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  Speaker 1: modification of nitrogen had dissolved and passed away, leaving the
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  Speaker 1: air as translucent as ever. The rest of that wonderful
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  Speaker 1: interlude was clear, had any had eyes to see its clearness.
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  Speaker 1: In London it was night, but in New York, for example,
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  Speaker 1: people were in the full bustle of the evening's enjoyment.
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  Speaker 1: In Chicago they were sitting down to dinner. The whole
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  Speaker 1: world was abroad. The moonlight must have illuminated streets and
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  Speaker 1: squares littered with crumpled figures through which such electric cars
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  Speaker 1: as had no automatic brakes, had plowed on their way
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  Speaker 1: until they were stopped by the fallen bodies. People lay
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  Speaker 1: in their dress clothes, in dining rooms, restaurants, on staircases,
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  Speaker 1: in halls everywhere, just as they had been overcome, men gambled,
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  Speaker 1: men drinking, thieves, lurking and hidden places. Sinful couples were
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  Speaker 1: caught to arise with awakened mind and conscience amidst the
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  Speaker 1: disorder of their sin. America, the comet reached in the
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  Speaker 1: full tide of evening life. But Britain lay asleep. But
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  Speaker 1: as I have told, Britain did not slumber so deeply,
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  Speaker 1: but that she was in the full tide of what
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  Speaker 1: may have been battle and the great victory. Up and
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  Speaker 1: down the North Sea. Our warships swept together like a
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  Speaker 1: net about their foes. On land too, That night was
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  Speaker 1: to have decided great issues. The German camps were under
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  Speaker 1: arms from Reddington to Markirch. Their infantry columns were lying
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  Speaker 1: in swaths like mown hay in arrested night march on
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  Speaker 1: every track between Longaion and Thayancourt, and between Avricourt and Donim.
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  Speaker 1: The hills beyond Spincourt were dusted thick with hidden French riflemen.
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  Speaker 1: The thin lash of the French skirmishers sprawled out amidst
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  Speaker 1: spades and unfinished rifle pits in coils that wrapped about
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  Speaker 1: the heads of the German columns, thence along the Vogees
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  Speaker 1: Watershed and out across the frontier near Belford, nearly to
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  Speaker 1: the Rhine. The Hungarian the Italian peasant yawned and thought
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  Speaker 1: the morning dark, and turned over to fall into a
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  Speaker 1: dreamless sleep. The Mahometan world spread its carpet and was
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  Speaker 1: taken in prayer. And in Sydney, in Melbourne, in New Zealand,
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  Speaker 1: the thing was a fog in the afternoon that scattered
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  Speaker 1: the crowd on race courses and cricket fields, and stopped
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  Speaker 1: the unloading of shipping, and brought men out from their
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  Speaker 1: afternoon rest to stagger and litter the streets. Section two.
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  Speaker 1: My thoughts go into the woods and wildernesses and jungles
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  Speaker 1: of the world, to the wild life that shared man's suspension.
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  Speaker 1: And I think of a thousand feral acts, interrupted and
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  Speaker 1: truncated as it were frozen like the frozen words Pantagruel
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  Speaker 1: met at sea. Not only men it was that were quieted.
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  Speaker 1: All living creatures that breathe the air became insensible, impassive things, motionless,
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  Speaker 1: brutes and birds lay amidst the drooping trees and herbage
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  Speaker 1: in the universal twilight. The tiger sprawled beside his fresh
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  Speaker 1: struck victim, who bled to death in a dreamless sleep.
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  Speaker 1: The very flies came sailing down the air with wings outspread.
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  Speaker 1: The spider hung crumpled in his loaded net like some
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  Speaker 1: gaily painted snowflake. The butterfly drifted to earth and grounded
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  Speaker 1: and was still. And as a queer contrast, one gathers
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  Speaker 1: that the fishes in the sea suffered not at all.
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  Speaker 1: Speaking of the fishes reminds me of a queer little
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  Speaker 1: inset upon that great world, dreaming. The odd fate of
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  Speaker 1: the crew of the submarine vessel B ninety four has
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  Speaker 1: always seemed memorable to me, so far as I know.
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  Speaker 1: They were the only men alive who never saw that
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  Speaker 1: vale of green drawn across the world, all the while
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  Speaker 1: that the stillness held above. They were working into the
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  Speaker 1: mouth of the elbe, past the booms and the mines,
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  Speaker 1: very slowly and carefully. A sinister crustacean of steel explosive
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  Speaker 1: crammed along the muddy bottom. They trailed a long clue
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  Speaker 1: that was to guide their fellows from the mother ship,
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  Speaker 1: floating a wash outside. Then in the long channel beyond
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  Speaker 1: the forts, they came up at last to mark down
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  Speaker 1: their victims and get air. That must have been before
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  Speaker 1: or the twilight of dawn, for they tell of the
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  Speaker 1: brightness of the stars. They were amazed to find themselves
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  Speaker 1: not three hundred yards from an iron clad that had
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  Speaker 1: run ashore in the mud and healed over with the
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  Speaker 1: falling tide. It was a fire amidships, but no one
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  Speaker 1: heeded that. No one in all that strange queer silence
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  Speaker 1: heeded that. And not only this wrecked vessel, but all
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  Speaker 1: the dark ships lying about them. It seemed to their
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  Speaker 1: perplexed and startled minds must be full of dead men. Theirs,
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  Speaker 1: I think, must have been one of the strangest of
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  Speaker 1: all experiences. They were never insensible at once, and I
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  Speaker 1: am told, with a sudden catch of laughter, they began
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  Speaker 1: to breathe the new air. None of them is proved
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  Speaker 1: a writer. We have no picture of their wonder no
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  Speaker 1: description of what was said. But we know these men
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  Speaker 1: were active and awake for an hour and a half
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  Speaker 1: at least before the general awakening came. And when at
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  Speaker 1: last the Germans stirred and sat up, they found these
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  Speaker 1: strangers in possession of their battleship, the submarine carelessly adrift,
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  Speaker 1: and the Englishmen, begrimed and weary, but with a sort
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  Speaker 1: of furious exultation, still busy in the bright dawn rescuing
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  Speaker 1: insensible enemies from the sinking conflagration. But the thought of
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  Speaker 1: certain stokers, the sailors of the submarine failed altogether to save,
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  Speaker 1: brings me back to the thread of grotesque horror that
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  Speaker 1: runs through all this event, the thread I cannot overlook,
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  Speaker 1: for all the splendors of human well being that have
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  Speaker 1: come from it. I cannot forget the unguided ships they
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  Speaker 1: drove ashore, that went down in disaster with all their
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  Speaker 1: sleeping hands, Nor how inland motor cars rushed to destruction
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  Speaker 1: upon the roads, and trains upon the railways kept on
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  Speaker 1: in spite of signals, to be found at last by
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  Speaker 1: their amazed, reviving drivers standing on unfamiliar lines, their fires
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  Speaker 1: exhausted or less lucky, to be discovered by astonished peasants
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  Speaker 1: or awakening porters, smashed and crumpled up into heaps of smoking,
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  Speaker 1: crackling ruin. The foundry fires of the four towns still
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  Speaker 1: blazed the smoke of our burning still denied, the sky
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  Speaker 1: fires burnt, indeed the brighter for the change and spread.
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  Speaker 1: End of Book two, Chapter two, Sections one and two.