LITMIR.BIZ

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place on which he was standing.

      It ran north-eastward, troubled by a crossing wind, but with no great roughness of surface. It broke against the steep slope beneath him with a continued murmur. It sparkled in the sunlight.

      It was scattered over with many drowned and broken things. A dead ox drifted past. Other things. But he saw neither man nor woman.

      Only, at the last, washed to his feet (for he had descended, as he gazed, to the water’s level), there came a human arm, torn from its trunk by some mechanical violence, with a bundle of drenched parchments still clutched in the dead hand, which was plainly that of a woman.

      He went to the top of the little knoll on which fortune had marooned him. The water was round him on every side.

      He looked in the direction of his own home. There was nothing there now but the level waste of the flood. He remembered that Helen had been too injured to walk. She could not swim. She would not have left the children. There was no hope, no faintest hope, that the seas could have spared them.

      He wondered whether he might find them floating in the water, but he saw that even that hope must be fruitless. The current was sweeping everything to the northeast, far out and beyond him.

      He considered the possibility that he could himself escape from his present confinement. He saw that the water was not rising—had even sunk somewhat from its highest level—and though it surrounded his place of refuge, it did not appear to be more than two or three feet deep on the northern side, and of a width of about twenty yards, beyond which the ground rose again, and gave prospect of a wider range and a greater security.

      He watched it for a few minutes, wondering whether it were still declining, so that an hour’s patience might give an easier passage. He supposed that there would be tidal changes, apart from the vital question of whether the land had settled to a final stability. Certainly the water had been higher than it now was. But that might only be because it had swirled further up the slope at the first rush. He observed no change during the few moments that his patience lasted. Then he stepped in.

      It was not an easy crossing. He waded more than waist-deep in places, and though there was no such current as hurried past on the other side, yet the water that was diverted to this side of the knoll was flowing steadily in the same direction, and made it difficult to keep his feet and a straight course to the nearest point of the dry ground before him.

      He stumbled once over an obstacle the water hid, and recovered himself with difficulty, drenched to the shoulders.

      Having dry ground beneath him once again, he wrung out his soaked garments as best he could, but he was in no mood to linger. Even beyond the calls of thirst and hunger, or of any physical discomfort, was the desire to gain the highest point he could, and learn how much of solid land was still remaining around him.

      When he gained this view, he was relieved of any immediate apprehension, for though he saw little either to south or east but wastes of wrack-strewn water, it was equally evident that the land remained unflooded for at least a space of some miles in the opposite directions.

      Relieved of the fear that he had been marooned on a spot of land too small for human sustenance, he turned his thoughts to the primitive necessities of the wild-food, and water, and shelter from the certainties of rain and cold.

      CHAPTER III

      The first day he saw no man. His search for food was so far fortunate that he came upon the little heap of articles which he had thrown aside on the previous night, when he had first tried to outrun the water, that he might go to the rescue of his family. Among these were the broken remains of the eggs that he had been carrying, from which he was able to recover a sufficient part of their contents to provide the meal he was needing.

      Beyond that he got little. He searched in deserted gardens. He ate lettuce and radishes. He made a slow and meagre meal of green peas that had scarcely begun to form in the pods. He ate half-grown gooseberries, green and hard. He searched in charred ruins for food which was not there.

      In the evening he came upon an isolated tool-shed in a large garden. Built in a very sheltered corner, it was still standing. There he lay down and slept.

      That day he remembered clearly, but he had little recollection of those that followed.

      He must have been ill for days. The shock to mind and body the unusual exertions, the effects of wet and exposure, and of unsuitable food, had their natural consequences.

      Had he been unsound in any vital organ he would have had little chance of recovery. As it was, he probably owed his life to the fact that the shed had been used by a gardener who had left a pot half full of cold tea.

      This, being desperate with thirst, and after an interval of illness, of which he could not guess the duration, he found, and drank. In a cupboard he found a lump of mouldy bread, which he chewed as he lay.

      After this he had a time of healthful sleep, and then staggered uncertainly into a sunlit world.

      He had little strength, but the instinct for life was strong and his constitution uninjured.

      Of the succeeding days his memory was blurred and dream-like.

      Though he had little strength, he had much patience. He lay for many hours over a burrow, till he had caught a rabbit in his bare hands. He cooked it, somehow, for there had been matches in the shed, and he made a fire of wood without difficulty.

      He followed a strayed hen, it seemed for days, till he had found the place where she was laying.

      He dug up potatoes, still unripe and small, but which he could cook till his matches ended. He learned to eat raw beans.

      Strength came again, and with it the desire to adventure further.

      He searched among ruined houses, but was several days before he had any means of making another fire.

      His greatest find at this time was a sack of sharps in a farm outbuilding, and a smaller quantity of bran. When he had secured a further supply of matches he made this meal into a kind of thick soup, and it was delicious to his altered palate.

      He came on a woman who had sustained life, with an amazing vitality, crawling upon the ground, and dragging after her a broken leg.

      He stayed beside her, doubtless prolonging her life, and almost certainly increasing her misery, after the tradition in which he had been educated. He could not save her life, for which an amputation would have been the only hope, and that was beyond his skill or resources.

      She died unconquered, as she had lived, being too great for circumstances. She died with a faith serene and untroubled. Having fought hard for life, she accepted death confidently. “Though He slay me yet will I trust Him,” she quoted, when the fever slackened.

      She lay unconscious for two days before he was sufficiently sure that she was dead to bury her from the flies.

      After that, he came on an open drain in a deserted highway, at which a navvy was blindly excavating. The man begged his assistance for the useless labour. He was plainly mad, and when Martin declined to help him he made a murderous attack, from which Martin escaped with difficulty.

      He wondered how the man lived.

      He avoided that stretch of road for the following days, until he came on the man again, then in a condition of raving insanity. He mistook Martin for his Creator, and cursed him in words unfit for reproduction.

      In the end Martin was compelled to kill him with his own pick.

      At this time Martin did not go far from the shore which overlooked the place of the ruins of his own home. When his physical needs were satisfied, he would sit for many hours gazing over the water. His body recovered strength. His health became more vigorous than it had ever been, but his mind lacked incentive to do more than provide for his immediate necessities.

      His reason told him that the whole earth could not be under water. He expected continually to see the smoke of some approaching steamer.

      But the seas remained empty.

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