This Way to the End Times Page 5

  It began to look as if no solid land, except the islet that had saved our lives, existed on earth and that we were the only survivors of the cataclysm, the last inhabitants of a world buried in the shifting shroud of the sea!

  If this were true, we should not be slow to perish in our turn. In spite of strict rationing, the provisions on board were by now running low, and in our predicament we must abandon all hope of renewing them. These seas were yielding us no fish whatever.

  I WILL ABRIDGE MY ACCOUNT of that frightening voyage. If I were to report it in detail, attempting to relive it day by day, the memory would drive me mad. For, however strange and terrible the events both before and since, and however dismal the prospects of the future (a future that I shall not witness), during that infernal voyage we knew the limit of human terror. That endless cruise on a sea without end! To expect every day to accost some coast, yet to find the term of our voyage ceaselessly deferred! To live crouching over maps upon which men had engraved sinuous shore lines, and to realize that nothing, absolutely nothing, was left of regions they had thought eternal! To tell ourselves that the earth had throbbed with innumerable living beings, that billions and billions of men and animals had pervaded its lands and flashed through the air, and that all at once everything was dead, that all lives had been extinguished together like a little flame in a gust of wind! To seek everywhere for our fellows, and to seek in vain! To acquire little by little the certitude that beyond our little company there existed no living thing, and to become gradually conscious of loneliness in the middle of an unmerciful universe!

  Have I found words capable of expressing our anguish? Probably not. In no language can there exist words adequate to cope with a situation without precedent.

  After having reconnoitered the waters covering the Indian peninsula, we sailed northward again for ten days and next turned west. Then, with no change in our desperate situation, we passed over the chain of the Urals, now become submarine mountains, and entered what had been Europe. We turned southward and sailed as far as twenty degrees below the equator; and then, wearily abandoning our unrewarded search in that direction, we resumed a northerly course over an expanse of water that had drowned Africa, Spain, and the Pyrenees. By this time our very terror had turned into a stale numbness. We had been marking our course on the ship’s charts, and as we advanced we would say: “Here was Moscow . . . Warsaw . . . Berlin . . . Vienna . . . Rome . . . Tunis . . . Timbuctu . . . Oran . . . Madrid . . .” But, with increasing unconcern, we found ourselves reciting these names without feeling.

  And yet I, at least, had not exhausted my capacity to suffer. I knew so on the day—it was, perhaps December 11—when Captain Morris said to me: “Here was Paris. . . .” At these words, I felt that my soul had been snatched from me. Let the entire universe be inundated, yes! But France—my France!—and Paris that was her symbol . . .

  I heard a sob. I turned: Simonat, too, was weeping.

  Four days later, having reached the latitude of Edinburgh, we turned back toward the southwest, seeking Ireland, and then set a course east. The truth is, we were wandering at random, for there was no more reason to go in one direction than in any other. . . .

  We passed over London, whose liquid tomb was saluted by the entire crew. Five days afterward, when in the neighborhood of Danzig, Captain Morris turned about and ordered a southwest course. The helmsman obeyed passively. What did it matter to him? Would it not be the same thing everywhere?

  It was on the ninth day of pursuing this course that we ate our last morsel of biscuit.

  As we were eyeing each other haggardly, Captain Morris suddenly ordered the engines started. Even now I ask myself what impulse he was obeying. The order was carried out: the speed of our ship was accelerated.

  TWO DAYS LATER WE WERE already suffering cruelly from hunger. Two more days and almost everyone stubbornly refused to leave his berth; only the Captain, Simonat, a few crewmen, and I had the energy to carry on the management of the ship.

  Next day—our fifth day of fasting—the number of volunteer crewmen was further decreased. In another twenty-four hours nobody would have the strength to remain on his feet.

  By then we had been cruising for more than seven months. For more than seven months we had persisted in seeking a goal that evidently had no existence. And as I was reflecting that this was perhaps the eighth of January, I realized that the calendar had lost all meaning.

  Now, it was on this day, while I was at the wheel, straining to keep my feeble attention on the prescribed course, that I seemed to make out something in the west. Though certain that it was an illusion, I stared intently.

  No, I had not been deceived.

  I gave a wild shout and then, gripping the wheel, cried out: “Land ahead to the starboard!”

  What magical words! The dying were all immediately revived, and their emaciated forms crowded along the starboard rail.

  “It is land, for a fact,” said Captain Morris, after having studied what might have been a cloud rising on the horizon.

  Within a half hour it was impossible to have the least doubt. Land it certainly was that we were meeting out in the middle of the Atlantic—after our failure to find any land where the former continents had been!

  Towards three o’clock in the afternoon, the details of the coast that was barring our way became clear, and we felt a rebirth of despair. For in truth this coast resembled no other, and none of us could recall ever having seen land as unlikely, as completely hostile to man, as this.

  On all land inhabited before the disaster, green had been an abounding color. We could recall no coast so disinherited, no country so barren, that it could not support some shrubs, or tufts of gorse, or at least traces of lichen and moss. But here, nothing at all. We could distinguish only a high, blackish cliff, with a chaos of fallen rocks along its base. Here was the most utter, most absolute desolation.

  For two dreadful days we coasted along without discovering any break in that sheer cliff. But towards the evening of the second day we found an ample harbor, well sheltered from the winds of the open sea, at the head of which we dropped anchor.

  Our first thought as soon as we landed in the ship’s boats, was to collect food on the beach. There were turtles by the hundreds, and shellfish by the millions. Off the ledges we could see a fabulous quantity of crabs, lobsters, and crawfish, as well as innumerable fish. From all appearances, this teeming harbor would suffice, in default of other resources, to support us indefinitely.

  When we were restored, we were able, by way of a cut in the cliff, to reach the plateau, where we could look out over a broad expanse of country. The view from the water had not been deceptive: on all sides, in every direction, there were only arid rocks, covered with wrack and seaweed, mostly dried, without as much as a single blade of grass, nor any living thing, either on the ground or in the sky. Here and there, little lakes—pools, rather—glistened in the rays of the sun. But when we tried to slake our thirst, we found the water brackish.

  We were not surprised, to tell the truth. The fact confirmed what we had suspected from the first: namely that this unknown continent had been born yesterday, that it had emerged, all of a piece, from the depths of the sea. This explained its barrenness and its complete lack of terrestrial life. It explained, too, the thick bed of slime, uniformly spread, which, owing to evaporation, was beginning to crack and to be reduced to dust.

  Our bearings, taken at noon on the following day, proved to be 17° 20’ north latitude and 23° 55’ west longitude. According to our map we were in the open sea at about the latitude of Cape Verde. But now as far as we could see land was extending to the west and water to the east.

  HOWEVER STERN AND INHOSPITABLE WAS the territory upon which we had set foot, we were forced to be content with it. So the unloading of the Virginia was undertaken without delay. We dragged up to the plateau everything she carried, without discrimination. But first we had secured the vessel fast by head and stern with four anchors on a fiftee
n-fathom bottom. In this tranquil harbor she would be safe, and we ran no risk in leaving her to herself.

  As soon as the unloading was finished, our new life began. In the first place, it was expedient—

  AT THIS POINT IN HIS translation, the Zartog Sofr had to break it off. He had come to the first gap in the recital (and one of great moment, probably, since there seemed a quantity of pages missing)—a gap followed by several others still more considerable, as far as could be judged. Evidently dampness had got to a great number of the outer sheets of the roll, notwithstanding the protection of the metal case: there remained, indeed, only a few fragments of varying length, with a context forever destroyed. They succeeded each other in the following order.

  HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN since we disembarked on this coast? I cannot say definitely. I asked Doctor Moreno, who has been keeping a calendar of the passing days. He said: “Six months . . . a few days . . . more or less.” So he, too, confesses to have lost count.

  Well, I saw it coming! In less than six months, we have lost confidence in our reckoning of time. How very promising!

  But our negligence, after all, is not very astonishing. We are devoting all our attention, all our activity, to the task of keeping alive. Feeding ourselves is a problem, the solution of which requires the entire day. What do we eat? Fish, when we find any—but they grow more difficult to find every day, for our incessant pursuit is scaring them off. We eat turtle eggs, too, and certain edible seaweeds. By evening we are fed, but exhausted, and we think only of sleep.

  Tents have been improvised from the Virginia’s sails. I suppose that before long we must construct more substantial shelters.

  Sometimes we shoot a bird. The atmosphere is not so deserted as we had first thought; ten or twelve familiar species are represented on this new continent. These are exclusively birds capable of long flight: swallows, albatrosses, cordwainers, and a number of others. Apparently they do not find enough to eat in this barren land, for they wheel ceaselessly over our encampment, waiting for leavings from our miserable table. Sometimes we pick up one that has died of hunger, thus sparing our powder and shot.

  Happily, there is some chance that our situation will not always remain so unpleasant. We discovered a sack of wheat in the Virginia’s hold, and we have sown half of it. We shall be a lot better off when the grain is ripe. But will it germinate? The ground is covered with a thick bed of alluvium, sandy mud enriched by the decomposition of seaweed. However mediocre its quality, it is humus none the less. When we landed, it was impregnated with salt; but since then diluvial rains have copiously washed the surface, and all the hollows are now filled with sweet water.

  All the same, the alluvial bed is free of salt only to a very slight depth: the streams and rivers that are beginning to develop are all extremely brackish, proving that the subsoil is still saturated.

  To sow half the wheat and keep the other half as a reserve, we nearly had to fight: part of the crew of the Virginia wanted to make bread of it at once. We were forced to—

  . . . FROM THE Virginia. The rats immediately scampered into the interior, and we have not seen them again. We can only believe that they have found something to feed on. If so, the land, without our knowledge, must be yielding—

  . . . TWO YEARS, at least, that we have been here! The wheat has succeeded wonderfully; we have almost all the bread we want, and our fields are ever gaining in extent. But what a struggle against the birds! They have strangely multiplied and all around our tillage—

  IN SPITE OF THE DEATHS I have related above, our little tribe has not diminished. On the contrary! My son and my ward have three children, and each of the three other families has as many. All the little rascals are radiant with health. It is as if the human species were possessed of a greater vigor, a more intense vitality, since it has been so reduced in number. But whatever the causes—

  WE HAD BEEN HERE FOR ten years, and we knew nothing of this continent. We were acquainted only with the area contained within a radius of a few kilometers around the place where we disembarked. It was Doctor Bathurst who made us feel ashamed of our apathy; at his instigation we refitted the Virginia—a task that required almost six months—and went on a voyage of exploration.

  We returned only the day before yesterday. The voyage had lasted longer than we had expected, but we were resolved that it should be complete.

  We have circumnavigated our continent, which, not counting the tiny islet, we have every reason to believe must be the only surviving land on the surface of the globe. Its shores appeared to be everywhere alike, that is to say, very harsh and wild.

  Our tour was interrupted by several excursions into the interior: we hoped especially to find traces of the Azores and of Madeira, for these islands, because of their location in the Atlantic, ought to have formed a part of this new continent. We found not the slightest vestige of them. All that we have been able to establish is that the ground was convulsed and buried under a thick layer of lava on the sites of the islands, which obviously were destroyed by violent volcanic activity.

  But if we did not discover what we were looking for, we did discover something we certainly were not looking for! Half buried in the lava, in the latitude of the Azores, we came upon evidence of human work—and not the work of the Azorians, our contemporaries of yesterday. There were remains of columns and pottery of a kind we had never seen before. After examining them, Doctor Moreno expressed the opinion that those remains must have survived from ancient Atlantis, and that the volcanic eruption had brought them to the surface.

  Perhaps Doctor Moreno is right. If it ever existed, Atlantis would indeed have been located somewhere near the bearings of the new continent. Verification of the legend would reveal a singular thing: the development, in the same place, of three successive cultures not descending one from another.

  Whatever the answer, I confess that the problem leaves me cold. We have enough to do with the present, without troubling ourselves about the past.

  NOW THAT WE HAVE REGAINED our home encampment, it strikes us that, compared with the rest of the country, ours seems a favored region. The reason is that the color green, formerly so abundant in nature, is here not entirely unknown, whereas it is completely absent from the rest of the continent. We had not noticed this fact up to now, but it is undeniable. Grasses, which did not exist when first we arrived, are now springing up quite plentifully around us. They belong, however, only to a small number of the most common species, the seeds of which have doubtless been carried here by the birds.

  It must not be concluded from what I have said that there is no vegetation except for the few species carried over from the old days. As a result of an amazing adaptation, there exists, on the contrary, a vegetation in a rudimentary or promissory state, at least, over all the continent.

  The marine plants that covered it when it emerged from the sea died, for the most part, under the light of the sun. But a few persisted, in lakes, ponds, and pools that the heat progressively dried up. At the same time, rivers and streams were beginning to appear temporarily quite suitable, in that the water was salty, to nourish the weeds and marsh grasses. When the surface, and then the depths, of the soil had been cleared of salt, and the water had turned fresh, most of the plants were destroyed. A small number of them, however, were capable of adapting themselves to new living conditions, and have been flourishing almost as well in the fresh water as they had when it was salty. And the phenomenon has not stopped there: some of the plants, endowed with still greater power of adaptation, having grown used to fresh water, are now growing used to fresh air, and first up the river banks, and then moving inch by inch from one place to another, they have been creeping towards the interior.

  We have witnessed this adaptation in the act, and we can attest that these plants are showing not only biochemical but also structural modification. Already a few stalks are rising, as if timidly, toward the sky. We can foresee that one day a varied flora will thus be created from common roots, and that a
violent struggle may be waged between the new species and those descending from the old order of things brought in by us and the birds.

  We are led to speculate that what is happening to the flora may also happen to the fauna. In the neighborhood of running water—

  THE LAST FEW SHEETS CONTAINED intact the end of the manuscript.

  I FEEL VERY OLD. CAPTAIN Morris is dead. Doctor Bathurst is about sixty-five; Doctor Moreno, sixty; I, sixty-eight. We three shall soon be done with life. But first we shall accomplish our elected task and, in so far as it may lie in our power, come to the aid of future generations in the struggle awaiting them.

  But will they see the light of day, those future generations?

  I am tempted to say yes if I take into account only the multiplication of my kind. Children are swarming all over the place, and in this healthful climate, in a country where wild beasts and most of the old diseases are unknown, longevity is common. Our colony has tripled in number.

  On the other hand, I am tempted to say no if I consider the profound intellectual decay of my companions in misfortune.

  It is ironic that our little group of castaways were well equipped to turn human knowledge to account: it included one particularly capable man of action—Captain Morris, now deceased; two men of better-than-average education—my son and myself; and two genuine scientists—Doctor Bathurst and Doctor Moreno. With such material, something could have been accomplished. But nothing has been accomplished. The preservation of our physical lives has from the very beginning been (and still is) our only care. As from the first, we devote our time to the search for food, and in the evening we sink exhausted into heavy sleep.

  Alas! it is only too certain that humanity, of which we are the sole representatives, is on the road to rapid regression leading to brutehood. Among the sailors from the Virginia, men originally of no refinement, the signs of animality are more conspicuous; but my son and I have forgotten much of what we once knew, and Doctor Bathurst and Doctor Moreno themselves have let their minds lie fallow. Our intellectual life has withered away.