The Tremendous Event Read online

  CHAPTER V

  VIRGIN SOIL

  It was hardly later than one o'clock in the morning. The storm wasless furious and the squalls had ceased, so that Simon suddenly beganto walk as quickly as the trifling obstacles over which he stumbledand the dim light of the sky would permit. For that matter, if hebranched off too far in either direction, the nearer sound of thewaves would serve as a warning.

  In this way he passed Dieppe and followed a direction which, while itvaried by reason of curves and sudden turns, nevertheless, in hisopinion, ran parallel with the Norman coast. During the whole of thisfirst stage of his journey, he was only half-aware of what he wasdoing and had no thought but of making headway, feeling certain thathis explorations would be interrupted from one minute to the next. Itdid not seem to him that he was penetrating into unlimited regions,but rather that he was really persistently pushing towards a goalwhich was close at hand, but which receded so soon as he approached itand which was no other than the extreme point of this miraculouspeninsula.

  "There," he said to himself. "There it is. I've got there. The newground goes as far as that. . . ."

  But the new ground continued to stretch into the darkness; and alittle later he repeated:

  "It's over there. The line of breakers is closing up. I can see it."

  But the line opened out, leaving a passage by which Simon pursued hisway.

  Two o'clock. . . . Half-past two. . . . Sometimes the water was up tohis knees, sometimes his feet sank into a bed of thicker sand. Thesewere the low-lying parts, the valleys of the peninsula; and theremight perhaps be some, thought Simon where these beds would be deepenough to bar his passage. He went on all the more briskly. Ascentsrose in front of him, leading him to mounds forty or fifty feet inheight, whose farther slopes he descended rapidly. And, lost in theimmensity of the sea, imprisoned by it, absorbed by it, he had theillusion that he was running over its surface, along the back of greatfrozen, motionless waves.

  He halted. Before him a speck of light had crossed the darkness, along, a very long way off. Four times he saw the flame reappear atregular intervals. Fifteen seconds later came a fresh series offlashes, followed by a similar interval of darkness.

  "A light-house!" murmured Simon. "A light-house which the disaster hasspared!"

  Just here the embankment ran in the direction of the light-house; andSimon calculated that it would thus end at Treport, or perhaps farthernorth, if the light-house marked the estuary of the Somme, which washighly probable. In that case he would have to walk four or five hourslonger, at the same swift pace.

  But he lost the intermittent gleams as suddenly as he had caught sightof them. He looked and failed to find them and felt overwhelmed, asthough, after the death of these little twinkling flames, he could nolonger hope ever to escape from the heavy darkness which was stiflinghim or to discover the tremendous secret in pursuit of which he haddarted. What was he doing? Where was he? What did it all mean? Whatwas the use of making such efforts?

  "Forward!" he cried. "At the double! and we don't do any morethinking. I shall understand presently, when I get there. Until then,it's a matter of going on and on, like a beast of burden."

  He spoke aloud, to shake off his drowsiness. And, as a protest againsta weakness of which he was ashamed, he set off at a run.

  It was a quarter past three. In the keener air of the morning he wasconscious of a sense of well-being. Moreover, he noticed that theobscurity around him was becoming lighter and was gradually liftinglike a mist.

  The first glimmer of dawn appeared. The day broke quickly and at lastthe new land was visible to Simon's eyes, grey, as he had supposed,and yellower in places, with streaks of sand and hollows filled withwater in which all sorts of fish were seen struggling or dying, with awhole galaxy of little islands and irregular shoals, beaches of fine,close-packed gravel, tracts of sea-weed and gentle undulations, likethose of a rich plain.

  And in the midst of it all there was ever a multitude of objects whosereal shape could no longer be distinguished, remnants enlarged andswollen by the addition of everything that could be encrusted orfastened on them, or else eaten away, worn out, corroded, ordisintegrated by everything that helps to dissolve or to destroy.

  They were flotsam and jetsam of all kinds. Past counting, glisteningwith slime, of all types and of all materials, of an age to bereckoned in months or years, it might be in centuries, they borewitness to the unbroken procession of thousands and thousands ofwrecks. And, as many as were these remnants of wood and iron, so manywere the human lives engulfed in companies of tens and hundreds.Youth, health, wealth, hope: each wreck represented the destruction ofall their dreams, of all their realities; and each also recalled thedistress of the living, the mourning of mothers and wives.

  And the field of death stretched away indefinitely, an immense, tragiccemetery, such as the earth had never known, with endless lines ofgraves, tombstones and funeral monuments. To the right and left therewas nothing, nothing but a dense fog rising from the water, hiding thehorizon as completely as the veils of night and making it impossiblefor Simon to see more than a hundred yards in front of him. But fromthis fog new land-formations continued to emerge; and this seemed tohim to fall so strictly within the domain of the fabulous and theincredible that he easily imagined them to be rising from the depthson his approach and assuming form and substance to offer him apassage.

  A little after four o'clock there was a return of the gale, anoffensive of ugly clouds emitting volleys of rain and hail. The windmade a gap in the clouds, which it drove north and south, and then, onSimon's right, parallel with a belt of rosy light which divided thewaves from the black sky, the coast-line became visible.

  It was a vaguely defined line which might have been taken for a finestreak of motionless clouds; but he knew its general appearance sowell that he did not hesitate for a moment. It was the cliffs of theSeine-Inferieurs and the Somme, between Le Treport and Cayeux.

  He rested for a few minutes; then, to lighten his outfit, he pulledoff his boots, which were too heavy, and his leather jacket, which wasmaking him too hot. Then taking his father's wallet out of the jacket,he found in one of the pockets two biscuits and a stick of chocolatewhich he himself had put there, so to speak, unwittingly.

  After making a meal of these, he set out again briskly, not with thecautious gait of an explorer who does not know whither he is going andwho measures his efforts, but at the pace of an athlete who has fixedhis time-table and keeps to it in spite of obstacles and difficulties.A strange light-heartedness uplifted him. He was glad to expend somuch of the force which he had been storing for all these years and toexpend it on a task of which he knew nothing, but of which he felt theexceptional greatness. His elbows were well tucked in and his headthrown back. His bare feet marked the sand with a faint trail. Thewind bathed his face and played in and out of his hair. What joy!

  He kept up his pace for nearly four hours. Why should he hold himselfin? He was always expecting the new formation to change its directionand, bending suddenly to the right, to join the coast of the Somme.And he went forward in all confidence.

  At certain points, progress became arduous. The sea had got up; andhere and there the waves, rushing over those places where the sand,though clear of the water, was unprotected by a barrier of rocks,formed in the narrower portions actual rivers, flowing from one sideto the other, which Simon had to wade, almost knee-deep in water.Moreover, he had taken so little food that he began to be racked withhunger. He had to slow down. And another hour went by.

  The great squalls had blown over. The returning sea-fogs seemed tohave deadened the wind and were now closing in on him again. Once moreSimon was walking through moving clouds which concealed his path fromhim. Less sure of himself, attacked by a sudden sense of lonelinessand distress, he soon experienced a lassitude to which he wasunwilling to surrender.

  This was a mistake. He recognized the fact: nevertheless, he struggledon as though in fulfillment of the most imperious duty. With an
obstinate ring in his voice, he gave himself his orders:

  "Forward: Ten minutes more! . . . You must! . . . And, once more, tenminutes!"

  On either side lay things which, in any other circumstances, wouldhave held his attention. An iron chest, three old guns, small-arms,cannon-balls, a submarine. Enormous fish lay stranded on the sand.Sometimes a white sea-gull circled through space.

  And so he came to a great wreck whose state of preservation betrayeda recent disaster. It was an overturned steamer, with her keel deeplyburied in a sandy hollow, while her black stern stood erect,displaying a broad pink stripe on which Simon read:

  "The _Bonne Vierge_. Calais."

  And he remembered. The _Bonne Vierge_ was one of the two boats whoseloss had been announced in the telegrams posted up at Newhaven.Employed in the coasting-trade between the north and west of France,she had sunk at a spot which lay in a direct line between Calais andLe Havre; and Simon saw in this a positive proof that he was stillfollowing the French coast, passing those seamarks whose names he nowrecalled: the Ridin de Dieppe, the Bassure de Baas, the Vergoyer andso on.

  It was ten o'clock in the morning. From the average pace which he hadmaintained, allowing for deviation and for hilly ground, Simoncalculated that he had covered a distance of nearly forty miles as thecrow flies and that he ought to find himself approximately on a levelwith Le Touquet.

  "What am I risking if I push on?" he asked himself. "At most I shouldhave to do another forty miles to pass through the Straits of Doverand come out into the North Sea . . . in which case my position wouldbe none too cheerful. But it will be devilish odd if, between this andthat, I don't touch land somewhere. The only trouble is, whether it'sforty miles on or forty miles back, those things can't be done on anempty stomach."

  Fortunately, for he was feeling symptoms of a fatigue to which he wasunaccustomed, the problem solved itself without his assistance. Aftergoing round the wreck, he managed to crawl under the poop and therediscovered a heap of packing-cases which evidently formed part of thecargo. All were more or less split or broken or gaping at the corners.But one of them, whose lid Simon had no difficulty in prying open,contained tins of syrup, bottles of wine and stacks of canned foods:meat, fish, vegetables and fruits.

  "Splendid!" he said, laughing. "Luncheon is served, sir. On top ofthat, a little rest; and the sooner I'm off the better!"

  He made an excellent lunch; and a long siesta, under the vessel, amongthe packing-cases, restored his strength completely. When he woke andsaw that his watch was already pointing to noon, he felt uneasy at thewaste of time and suddenly reflected that others must have taken thesame path and would now be able to catch him up and outstrip him. Andhe did not intend this to happen. Accordingly, feeling as fit as atthe moment of starting, provided with the indispensable provisions anddetermined to follow up the adventure to the very end, without acompanion to share his glory or to rob him of it, he set off again ata very brisk, unflagging pace.

  "I shall get there," he thought, "I mean to get there. All this is anunprecedented phenomenon, the creation of a tract of land which willutterly change the conditions of life in this part of the world. Imean to be there first and to see . . . to see what? I don't know,_but I mean to do it_."

  What rapture to tread a soil on which no one has ever set foot! Mentravel in search of this rapture to the utmost ends of the earth, toremote countries, no matter where; and very often the secret is hardlyworth discovering. As for Simon, he was having his wonderful adventurein the heart of the oldest regions of old Europe. The Channel! TheFrench coast! To be treading virgin soil here, of all places, wheremankind had lived for three or four thousand years! To behold sightsthat no other eye had ever looked upon! To come after the Gauls, theRomans, the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons and to be the first to pass! Tobe the first to pass this way, ahead of the millions and millions ofmen who would follow in his track, on the new path which he would haveinaugurated!

  One o'clock. . . . Half-past one. . . . More ridges of sand, morewrecks. Always that curtain of clouds. And always Simon's lingeringimpression of a goal which eluded him. The tide, still low, wasleaving a greater number of islands uncovered. The waves were breakingfar out to sea and rolling across wide sand-banks as though the newland had widened considerably.

  About two o'clock in the afternoon, he came upon higher undulationsfollowed by a series of sandy flats in which his feet sank to agreater depth than usual. Absorbed by the dreary spectacle of a ship'smast protruding from the sand, with its tattered and coloured flagflopping in the wind, he pressed on all unsuspecting. In a fewminutes, the sand was up to his knees, then half-way up his thighs. Helaughed, still unheeding.

  In the end, however, unable to advance, he tried to return: hisefforts were useless. He attempted to lift his legs by treading, asthough climbing a flight of stairs, but he could not. He brought hishands into play, laying them flat on the sands: they too went under.

  Then he broke into a flood of perspiration. He suddenly understood thehideous truth: he was caught in a quicksand.

  It was soon over. He did not sink with the slowness that lends alittle hope to the agony of despair. Simon fell, so to speak, into avoid. His hips, his waist, his chest disappeared. His outstretchedarms checked his descent for a moment. He stiffened his body, hestruggled. In vain. The sand rose like water to his shoulders, to hisneck.

  He began to shout. But in the immensity of these solitudes, to whomwas his appeal addressed? Nothing could save him from the mosthorrible of deaths. Then it was that he shut his eyes and withclenched lips sealed his mouth, which was already full of the taste ofthe sand, and, in a fit of terror, he gave himself up for lost.