The Tremendous Event Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  TRIUMPH

  Afterwards, he never quite understood the chance to which he owed hislife. The most that he could remember was that one of his feet touchedsomething solid which served him as a support and that something elseenabled him to advance, now a step, now two or three, to lift himselflittle by little out of his living tomb and to leave it alive. Whathad happened? Had he come upon a loose plank of the buried vesselwhose flag he saw before him? He did not know. But what he neverforgot was the horror of that minute, which was followed by such acollapse of all his will and strength that he remained for a long timelying on a piece of wreckage, unable to move a limb and shuddering allover with fever and mental anguish.

  He set off again mechanically, under the irresistible influence ofconfused feelings which bade him go forward and reconnoitre. But hehad lost his former energy. His eyes remain obstinately fixed uponthe ground. For no appreciable reason, he judged certain spots to bedangerous and avoided them by making a circuit, or even leapt back asthough at the sight of an abyss. Simon Dubosc was afraid.

  Moreover, after reading on a piece of wood from a wreck the name of LeHavre, that is to say, the port which lay behind him, he asked himselfanxiously whether the new land had not changed its direction; whether,by doubling upon itself, it was not leading him into the widest partof the Channel.

  The thought of no longer knowing where he was or whither he was goingincreased his lassitude twofold. He felt overwhelmed, discouraged,terribly alone. He had no hope of rescue, either by sea, on which noboat would dare put out, or from the air, which the sea-fog had madeimpossible for aeroplanes. What would happen then?

  Nevertheless he walked on; and the hours went by; and the belt of landunrolled vaguely before his eyes the same monotonous spectacle, thesame melancholy sand-hills, the same dreary landscapes on which no sunhad ever shone.

  "I shall get there," he repeated, stubbornly. "I mean to get there; Imust and shall."

  Four o'clock. He often looked at his watch, as though expecting amiraculous intervention at some precise moment, he did not know when.Worn out by excessive and ill-directed efforts, exhausted by the fearof a hideous death, he was gradually yielding beneath the weight of afatigue which tortured his body and unhinged his brain. He was afraid.He dreaded the trap laid for him by the sands. He dreaded thethreatening night, the storm and, above all, hunger, for all hisprovisions had been lost in the abyss of the quicksand.

  The agony which he suffered! A score of times he was on the point ofstretching himself on the ground and abandoning the struggle. But thethought of Isabel sustained him; and he walked on and on.

  And then, suddenly, an astonishing sight held him motionless. Was itpossible? He hesitated to believe it, so incredible did the realityseem to him. But how could he doubt the evidence of his eyes?

  He stooped forward. Yes, it was really that: there were footprints!The ground was marked with footprints, the prints of two bare feet,very plainly defined and apparently quite recent.

  And immediately his stupefaction made way for a great joy, aroused bythe sudden and clear conception of a most undeniable fact: the newland was indeed connected, as he had supposed, with some point on thenorthern coast of France; and from this point, which could not be veryremote, in view of the distance which he himself had covered, one ofhis fellow-creatures had come thus far.

  Delighted to feel that there was human life near at hand, herecollected the incident where Robinson Crusoe discovers the imprintof a naked foot on the sand of his desert island:

  "It's Man Friday's footprint!" he said, laughing. "There is a Friday,too, in this land of mine! Let's see if we can find him!"

  At the point where he had crossed the trail, it branched off to theleft and approached the sea. Simon was feeling surprised at notmeeting or catching sight of any one, when he discovered that theauthor of the footprints, after going round a shapeless wreck, hadturned and was therefore walking in the same direction as himself.

  After twenty minutes, the trail, intersected by a gully which ranacross it, escaped him for a time. He found it again and followed it,skirting the base of a chain of rather high sand-hills, which endedsuddenly in a sort of craggy cliff.

  On rounding this cliff Simon started back. On the ground, flat on itsface, with the arms at right angles to the body, lay the corpse of aman, curiously dressed in a very short, yellow leather waistcoat and apair of trousers, likewise leather, the ends of which were bell-shapedand slit in the Mexican fashion. In the middle of his back was thehilt of a dagger which had been driven between the shoulder-blades.

  What astonished Simon when he had turned the body over was that theface was brick-red, with prominent cheek-bones and long, black hair:it was the undoubted face of a Redskin. Blood trickled from the mouth,which was distorted by a hideous grin. The eyes were wide open, andshowed only their whites. The contracted fingers had gripped the sandlike claws. The body was still warm.

  "It can't be an hour since he was killed," said Simon, whose hand wastrembling. And he added, "What the deuce brought the fellow here? Bywhat unheard-of chance have I come upon a Redskin in this desert?"

  The dead man's pockets contained no papers to give Simon anyinformation. But, near the body, within the actual space in which thestruggle had taken place, another trail of footsteps came to an end, adouble trail, made by the patterned rubber soles of a man who had comeand gone. And, ten yards away, Simon picked up a gold hundred-francpiece, with the head of Napoleon I. and the date 1807.

  He followed this double trail, which led him to the edge of the sea.Here a boat had been put aground. It was now easy to reconstruct thetragedy. Two men who had landed on this newly-created shore had setout to explore it, each taking his own direction. One of them, anIndian, had found, in the hulk of some wreck, a certain quantity ofgold coins, perhaps locked up in a strong-box. The other, to obtainthe treasure for himself, had murdered his companion, and reembarked.

  Thus, on this virgin soil, Simon was confronted--it was the first signof life--with a crime, with an act of treachery, with armed cupiditycommitting murder, with the human animal. A man finds gold. One ofhis fellows attacks and kills him.

  Simon pushed onwards without further delay, feeling certain that thesetwo men, doubtless bolder than the rest, were only the forerunners ofothers coming from the mainland. He was eager to see these others, toquestion them upon the point whence they had started, the distancewhich they had covered and many further particulars which as yetremained unexplained.

  The thought of this meeting filled him with such happiness that heresisted his longing for rest. Yet what a torture was this almostuninterrupted effort! He had walked for sixteen hours since leavingDieppe. It was eighteen hours since the moment when the great upheavalhad driven him from his home. In ordinary times the effort would nothave been beyond his strength. But under what lamentable conditionshad he accomplished it!

  He walked on and on. Rest? And what if the others, coming behind himfrom Dieppe, should succeed in catching him up?

  The scene was always the same. Wrecks marked his path, like so manytomb-stones. The mist still hung above the endless grave-yard.

  After walking an hour, he was brought to a stop. The sea barred hisway.

  The sea facing him! His disappointment was not unmixed with anger. Wasthis then the limit of his journey and were all these convulsions ofnature to end merely in the creation of a peninsula cut off in thismeaningless fashion?

  But, on scanning from the sloping shore the waves tossing their foamto where he stood, he perceived at some distance a darker mass, whichgradually emerged from the mist; and he felt sure that this was acontinuation of the newly-created land, beyond a depression covered bythe sea:

  "I must get across," said Simon.

  He removed his clothes, made them into a bundle, tied it round hisneck and entered the water. For him the crossing of this strait, inwhich, besides, he was for some time able to touch bottom, was merechild's-play. He landed, dried himself and resu
med his clothes.

  A very gentle ascent led him, after some five hundred yards, to areef, overtopped by actual hills of sand, but of sand so firm that hedid not hesitate to set foot on it. He therefore climbed till hereached the highest crest of these hills.

  And it was here, at this spot--where a granite column was raisedsubsequently, with an inscription in letters of gold: two names and adate--it was here, on the 4th of June, at ten minutes past six in theevening, above a vast amphitheatre girt about with sand-hills like thebenches of a circus, it was here that Simon Dubosc at last saw,climbing to meet him, a man.

  He did not move at first, so strong was his emotion. The man came onslowly, sauntering, as it were, examining his surroundings and pickinghis way. When at last he raised his head, he gave a start of surpriseat seeing Simon and then waved his cap. Then Simon rushed towards him,with outstretched arms and an immense longing to press him to hisbreast.

  At a distance the stranger seemed a young man. He was dressed like afisherman, in a brown canvas smock and trousers. His feet were bare;he was tall and broad-shouldered. Simon shouted to him:

  "I've come from Dieppe. You, what town do you come from? Did you takelong to get here? Are you alone?"

  He could see that the fisherman was smiling and that his tanned,clean-shaven face wore a frank and happy expression.

  They met and clasped hands; and Simon repeated:

  "I started from Dieppe at one in the morning. And you? What port doyou come from?"

  The man began to laugh and replied in words which Simon could notunderstand. He did not understand them, though he well enoughrecognized the language in which they were uttered. It was English,but a dialect spoken by the lower orders. He concluded that this wasan English fisherman employed at Calais or Dunkirk.

  He spoke to him again, dwelling on his syllables and pointing to thehorizon:

  "Calais? Dunkirk?"

  The other repeated these two names as well as he could, as thoughtrying to grasp their meaning. At last his face lit up and he shookhis head.

  Then, turning round and pointing in the direction from which he hadcome, he twice said:

  "Hastings. . . . Hastings. . . ."

  Simon started. But the amazing truth did not appear to him at once,though he was conscious of its approach and was absolutelydumbfounded. Of course, the fisherman was referring to Hastings ashis birthplace or his usual home. But where had he come from at thismoment?

  Simon made a suggestion:

  "Boulogne? Wimereux?"

  "No, no!" replied the stranger. "Hastings. . . . England. . . ."

  And his arm pointed persistently to the same quarter of the horizon,while he as persistently repeated:

  "England. . . . England. . . ."

  "What? What's that you're saying?" cried Simon. And he seized the manviolently by the shoulders. "What's that you're saying? That's Englandbehind you? You've come from England? No, no! You can't mean that.It's not true!"

  The sailor struck the ground with his foot:

  "_England!_" he repeated, thus denoting that the ground which he hadstamped upon led to the English mainland.

  Simon was flabbergasted. He took out his watch and moved hisforefinger several times round the dial.

  "What time did you start? How many hours have you been walking?"

  "Three," replied the Englishman, opening his fingers.

  "Three hours!" muttered Simon. "We are three hours from the Englishcoast!"

  This time the whole stupendous truth forced itself upon him. At thesame moment he realized what had caused his mistake. As the Frenchcoast ran due north, from the estuary of the Somme, it was inevitablethat, in pursuing a direction parallel to the French coast, he shouldend by reaching the English coast at Folkestone or Dover, or, if hispath inclined slightly toward the west, at Hastings.

  Now he had not taken this into account. Having had proof on threeoccasions that France was on his right and not behind him, he hadwalked with his mind dominated by the certainty that France was closeat hand and that her coast might loom out of the fog at any moment.

  And it was the English coast! And the man who had loomed into sightwas a man of England!

  What a miracle! How his every nerve throbbed as he held this man inhis arms and gazed into his friendly face! He was exalted by theintuition of the extraordinary things which the tremendous event ofthe last few hours implied, in the present and the future; and hismeeting with this man of England was the very symbol of that event.

  And the fisherman, too, felt the incomparable grandeur of the momentwhich had brought them together. His quiet smile was full ofsolemnity. He nodded his head in silence. And the two men, face toface, looking into each other's eyes, gazed at each other with thepeculiar affection of those who have never been parted, who havestriven side by side and who receive together the reward of theiractions performed in common.

  The Englishman wrote his name on a piece of paper: William Brown. AndSimon, yielding to one of his natural outbursts of enthusiasm, said:

  "William Brown, we do not speak the same language; you do notunderstand me and I understand you only imperfectly; and still we arebound together more closely than two loving brothers could be. Ourembrace has a significance which we cannot yet imagine. You and Irepresent the two greatest and noblest countries in the world; andthey are mingled together in our two persons."

  He was weeping. The Englishman still smiled, but his eyes were moistwith tears. Excitement, excessive fatigue, the violence of theemotions which he had experienced that day, produced in Simon a sortof intoxication in which he found an unsuspected source of energy.

  "Come," he said to the fisherman catching hold of his arm. "Come, showme the way."

  He would not even allow William Brown to help him in difficult places,so determined was he to accomplish this glorious and magnificentundertaking by his unaided efforts.

  This last stage of his journey lasted three hours.

  Almost at the start they passed three Englishmen, to whom Brownaddressed a few words and who, while continuing on their road, utteredexclamations of surprise. Then came two more, who stopped for a momentwhile Brown explained the situation. These two turned back with Simonand the fisherman; and all four, on coming closer to the sea, wereattracted by a voice appealing for help.

  Simon ran forward and was the first to reach a woman lying on thesand. The waves were drenching her with their spray. She was bound bycords which fettered her legs, held her arms motionless against herbody, pressed the wet silk of her blouse against her breast andbruised the bare flesh of her shoulders. Her black hair, cut rathershort and fastened in front by a little gold chain, framed a dazzlingface, with lips like the petals of a red flower and a warm, brownskin, burnt by the sun. The face, to an artist like Simon, was of abrilliant beauty and recalled to his mind certain feminine types whichhe had encountered in Spain or South America. Quickly he cut herbonds; and then, as his companions were approaching before he had timeto question her, he slipped off his jacket and covered her beautifulshoulders with it.

  She gave him a grateful glance, as though this delicate act was themost precious compliment which he could pay her:

  "Thank you, thank you!" she murmured. "You are French, are you not?"

  But groups of people came hurrying along, followed by a more numerouscompany. Brown told the story of Simon's adventure; and Simon foundhimself separated from the young woman without learning more abouther. People crowded about him, asking him questions. At every momentfresh crowds mingled with the procession which bore him along in itsmidst.

  All these people seemed to Simon unusually excited and strange intheir behaviour. He soon learnt that the earthquake had devastated theEnglish coast. Hastings, having been, like Dieppe, a centre of seismicshocks, was partly destroyed.

  About eight o'clock they came to the edge of a deep depression quitetwo-thirds of a mile in width. Filled with water until the middle ofthe afternoon, this depression, by a stroke of luck for Simon, haddelayed the progress of th
ose who were flying from Hastings and whohad ventured upon the new land.

  A few minutes later, the fog being now less dense, Simon was able todistinguish the endless row of houses and hotels which lines thesea-fronts of Hastings and St. Leonards. By this time, his escortconsisted of three or four hundred people; and many others, doubtlessdriven from their houses, were wandering in all directions with dazedexpressions on their faces.

  The throng about him became so thick that soon he was able to seenothing in the heavy gloom of the twilight but their crowded heads andshoulders. He replied as best he could to the thousand questions whichwere put to him; and his replies, repeated from mouth to mouth,aroused cries of astonishment and admiration.

  Gradually, lights appeared in the Hastings windows. Simon, exhaustedbut indomitable, was walking briskly, sustained by a nervous energywhich seemed to be renewed as and when he expended it. And suddenly heburst out laughing to think--and certainly no thought could have beenmore stimulating or better calculated to give a last fillip to hisfailing strength--to think that he, Simon Dubosc, a man of the goodold Norman stock, was setting foot in England at the very spot whereWilliam the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, had landed in the eleventhcentury! Hastings! King Harold and his mistress, Edith of the swan'sneck! The great adventure of yore was being reenacted! For the secondtime the virgin isle was conquered . . . and conquered by a Norman!

  "I believe destiny is favouring me, my Lord Bakefield," he said tohimself.

  The new land joined the mainland between Hastings and St. Leonards. Itwas intersected by valleys and fissures, bristling with rocks andfragments of the cliffs, in the midst of which lay, in anindescribable jumble, the wreckage of demolished piers, fallenlighthouses, stranded and shattered ships. But Simon saw nothing ofall this. His eyes were too weary to distinguish things save through amist.

  They reached the shore. What happened next? He was vaguely consciousthat some one was leading him, through streets with broken pavementsand between heaps of ruins, to the hall of a casino, a strange,dilapidated building, with tottering walls and a gaping roof, butnevertheless radiant with electric light.

  The municipal authorities had assembled here to receive him. Champagnewas drunk. Hymns of rejoicing were sung with religious fervour. Astirring spectacle and, at the same time, a striking proof of thenational self-control, this celebration improvised in the midst of atown in ruins. But every one present had the impression that somethingof a very great importance had occurred, something so great that itoutweighed the horror of the catastrophe and the consequent mourning:France and England were united!

  France and England were united; and the first man who had walked fromthe one country to the other by the path which had risen from the verydepths of the ancient Channel that used to divide them was there, intheir midst. What could they do but honour him? He represented in hismagnificent effort the vitality and the inexhaustible ardour ofFrance. He was the hero and the herald of the most mysterious future.

  A tremendous burst of cheering rose to the platform on which he stood.The crowd thronged about him, the men shook him by the hand, theladies kissed him. They pressed him to make a speech which all couldhear and understand. And Simon, leaning over these people, whoseenthusiasm blended with his own exaltation, stammered a few words inpraise of the two nations.

  The frenzy was so violent and unbridled that Simon was jostled,carried off his feet, swept into the crowd and lost among the verypeople who were looking for him. His only thought was to go into thefirst hotel that offered and throw himself down on a bed. A handseized his; and a voice said:

  "Come with me; I will show you the way."

  He recognized the young woman whom he had released from her bonds. Herface likewise was transfigured with emotion.

  "You have done a splendid thing," she said. "I don't believe anyother man could have done it. . . . You are above all other men.. . ."

  An eddy in the crowd tore them apart, although the stranger's handclutched his. He fell to the floor among the overturned chairs, pickedhimself up again and was feeling at the end of his tether as he nearedone of the exits, when suddenly he stood to attention. Strengthreturned to his limbs. Lord Bakefield and Isabel were standing beforehim.

  Eagerly Isabel held out her hand:

  "We were there, Simon. We saw you. I'm proud of you, Simon."

  He was astonished and confused.

  "Isabel! Is it really you?"

  She smiled, happy to see him so much moved in her presence.

  "It really is; and it's quite natural, since we live at Battle, a mileaway. The catastrophe has spared the house but we came to Hastings tohelp the sufferers and in that way heard of your arrival . . . of yourtriumph, Simon."

  Lord Bakefield did not budge. He pretended to be looking in anotherdirection. Simon addressed him.

  "May I take it, Lord Bakefield, that you will regard this day's workas a first step towards the goal for which I am making?"

  The old nobleman, stiff with pride and resentment, vouchsafed noreply.

  "Of course," Simon continued, "I haven't conquered England. But allthe same there seem to be a series of circumstances in my favour whichpermit me at least to ask you whether you consider that the first ofyour conditions has been fulfilled."

  This time Lord Bakefield seemed to be making up his mind. But, just ashe was going to reply--and his features expressed no great amount ofgood-will--Isabel intervened:

  "Don't ask my father any questions, Simon . . . He appreciates thewonderful thing that you have done at its true value. But you and Ihave offended him too seriously for him to be able to forgive you justyet. We must let time wipe out the unpleasant memory."

  "Time!" echoed Simon, with a laugh. "Time! The trouble is that I haveonly twelve days left in which to triumph over all the labours putupon me. After conquering England, I have still to win the laurels ofHercules . . . or of Don Quixote."

  "Well," she said, "in the meantime hurry off and go to bed. That's thebest thing you can do for the moment."

  And she drew Lord Bakefield away with her.