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officer who had rescued us. He painfully lifted himself on his elbow and
turned loose with his automatic pistol.
'There goes my chance of promotion,' Garthwaite laughed, as a woman bore down
on the wounded man, brandishing a butcher's cleaver. 'Come on. It's the wrong
direction, but we'll get out somehow.'
And we fled eastward through the quiet streets, prepared at every cross
street for anything to happen. To the south a monster conflagration was
filling the sky, and we knew that the great ghetto was burning. At last I sank
down on the sidewalk. I was exhausted and could go no further. I was bruised
and sore and aching in every limb; yet I could not escape smiling at
Garthwaite, who was rolling a cigarette and saying:
'I know I'm making a mess of rescuing you, but I can't get head nor tail of
the situation. It's all a mess. Every time we try to break out, something
happens and we're turned back. We're only a couple of blocks now from where I
got you out of that entrance. Friend and foe are all mixed up. It's chaos. You
can't tell who is in those darned buildings. Try to find out, and you get a
bomb on your head. Try to go peaceably on your way, and you run into a mob and
are killed by machine-guns, or you run into the Mercenaries and are killed by
your own comrades from a roof. And on top of it all the mob comes along and
kills you too.'
He shook his head dolefully, lighted his cigarette, and sat down beside me.
'And I'm that hungry,' he added, 'I could eat cobblestones.'
The next moment he was on his feet again and out in the street prying up a
cobblestone. He came back with it and assaulted the window of a store behind
us.
'It's ground floor and no good,' he explained as he helped me through the
hole he had made; 'but it's the best we can do. You get a nap and I'll
reconnoitre. I'll finish this rescue all right, but I want time, time, lots of
it and something to eat.'
It was a harness store we found ourselves in, and he fixed me up a couch of
horse blankets in the private office well to the rear. To add to my
wretchedness a splitting headache was coming on, and I was only too glad to
close my eyes and try to sleep.
'I'll be back,' were his parting words.'I don't hope to get an auto, but I'll
surely bring some grub,1anyway.'
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And that was the last I saw of Garthwaite for three years. Instead of coming
back, he was carried away to a hospital with a bullet through his lungs and
another through the fleshy part of his neck.
1Food.
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Chapter 24
Nightmare
I HAD not closed my eyes the night before on the Twentieth Century, and what
of that and of my exhaustion I slept soundly. When I first awoke, it was
night. Garthwaite had not returned. I had lost my watch and had no idea of the
time. As I lay with my eyes closed, I heard the same dull sound of distant
explosions. The inferno was still raging. I crept through the store to the
front. The reflection from the sky of vast conflagrations made the street
almost as light as day. One could have read the finest print with ease. From
several blocks away came the crackle of small hand-bombs and the churning of
machine-guns, and from a long way off came a long series of heavy explosions.
I crept back to my horse blankets and slept again.
When next I awoke a sickly yellow light was filtering in on me. It was dawn
of the second day. I crept to the front of the store. A smoke pall, shot
through with lurid gleams, filled the sky. Down the opposite side of the
street tottered a wretched slave. One hand he held tightly against his side
and behind him he left a bloody trail. His eyes roved everywhere, and they
were filled with apprehension and dread. Once he looked straight across at me,
and in his face was all the dumb pathos of the wounded and hunted animal. He
saw me, but there was no kinship between us, and with him, at least, no
sympathy of understanding; for he cowered perceptibly and dragged himself on.
He could expect no aid in all God's world. He was a helot in the great hunt of
helots that the masters were making. All he could hope for, all he sought, was
some hole to crawl away in and hide like any animal. The sharp clang of a
passing ambulance at the corner gave him a start. Ambulances were not for such
as he. With a groan of pain he threw himself into a doorway. A minute later he
was out again and desperately hobbling on.
I went back to my horse blankets and waited an hour for Garthwaite. My
headache had not gone away. On the contrary, it was increasing. It was by an
effort of will only that I was able to open my eyes and look at objects. And
with the opening of my eyes and the looking came intolerable torment. Also, a
great pulse was beating in my brain. Weak and reeling, I went out through the
broken window and down the street, seeking to escape, instinctively and
gropingly from the awful shambles. And thereafter I lived nightmare. My memory
of what happened in the succeeding hours is the memory one would have of
nightmare. Many events are focused sharply on my brain, but between these
indelible pictures I retain are intervals of unconsciousness. What occurred in
those intervals I know not, and never shall know.
I remember stumbling at the corner over the legs of a man. It was the poor
hunted wretch that had dragged himself past my hiding-place. How distinctly do
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I remember his poor, pitiful, gnarled hands as he lay there on the
pavement hands that were more hoof and claw than hands, all twisted and
distorted by the toil of all his days, with on the palms a horny growth of
callous half an inch thick. And as I picked myself up and started on, I looked
into the face of the thing and saw that it still lived; for the eyes, dimly
intelligent, were looking at me and seeing me.
After that came a kindly blank. I knew nothing, saw nothing, merely tottered
on in my quest for safety. My next nightmare vision was a quiet street of the
dead. I came upon it abruptly, as a wanderer in the country would come upon a
flowing stream. Only this stream I gazed upon did not flow. It was congealed
in death. From pavement to pavement, and covering the sidewalks, it lay there,
spread out quite evenly, with only here and there a lump or mound of bodies to
break the surface.Poor driven people of the abyss, hunted helots-they lay
there as the rabbits in California after a drive.1Up the street and down I
looked. There was no movement, no sound. The quiet buildings looked down upon
the scene from their many windows. And once, and once only, I saw an arm that
moved in that dead stream. I swear I saw it move, with a strange writhing
gesture of agony, and with it lifted a head, gory with nameless horror, that
gibbered at me and then lay down again and moved no more.
I remember another street, with quiet buildings on either side, and the panic
that smote me into consciousness as again I saw the people of the abyss, but
this time in a stream that flowed and came on. And then I saw there was
nothing to fear. The stream moved slowly, while from it arose groans and
lamentations, cursings, babblings of senility, hysteria, and insanity; for
these were the very young and the very old, the feeble and the sick, the
helpless and the hopeless, all the wreckage of the ghetto.The burning of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]