The earthquake, in the twinkling of an eye, had changed the face of all nature around them, and while it did so it annihilated stereotyped manners and conventional restraints. To Zenobia it did not seem strange that Linton's arms should be folded protectingly about her, or that she should cling to him, face to face and heart to heart. The moment of the earth's convulsion had bridged a gulf and wrought a revelation. They knew themselves, beyond all doubt, for what they were, lovers and twin souls, pledged to each other by unspoken vows. The dreadful shock had come and gone, but the external changes and terrors which the catastrophe had brought about could not be immediately realised. Presently they discovered that the ground had moved with them, and that they had been swept to a considerable distance from the plateau on which they had been standing. A great gap yawned where the sundial had stood. Peter had disappeared. They themselves had been saved from falling by the trunk of a giant tree—one of the few which had not been up-rooted—while below them, on the slope of the hill, new spaces were revealed where other trees had crashed down to the ground.
The air was full of a strange echoing din, caused by the collapse of buildings outside the limits of the park and in the town below. In the midst of these reverberating sounds, and in strange contrast, was heard the prolonged wail of terrified women and the shrill cry of a frightened child.
Gasping, and looking up the hill, they could see,[Pg 180] rising from Lansdown, dense volumes of sulphurous smoke, through which shot vivid gleams of forking flame. Elsewhere a greyish veil began to spread across the land. A steaming, suffocating atmosphere choked their lungs.
"There may be another shock! We must escape for our very lives," Linton whispered hoarsely.
Zenobia, white to the lips, made a faint gesture of assent. "Hold my hand! We must find a way across the river," he said quickly.
Again she made an obedient sign; and Linton, guiding her, they moved cautiously forward in the strange grey twilight which began to enfold them.
Awe-inspiring sounds had been succeeded by a silence which was scarcely less terrible. A sense of horror half paralysed their faculties as they cautiously moved forward down the slope. Almost at their feet had opened a chasm which revealed many solid blocks of masonry, such as had been used of old in the construction of the Roman Baths. The rending of the earth had exposed to view a section of what looked like the foundations of an ancient and imposing temple. Between the massive walls, at the bottom of some steps, they observed a narrow cell or chamber, and as they stepped past the shadowy opening, Zenobia's foot came into contact with an ancient Roman lamp.
Of these things neither of them was fully conscious at the moment. They were mental photographs, vivid experiences unconsciously stored in memory and fraught with a strange confirmatory significance not yet to be appreciated.
Hand in hand, picking their steps apprehensively, they made their way between the fallen trees down to the broad avenue leading to the lower gate of the Park. Here, at the gate, for the first time they encountered evidence of death and disaster in the town itself. Houses had collapsed on every side; distracting moans and piteous cries from unseen sufferers assailed[Pg 181] their ears. For a moment they paused before a monumental heap of stone and timber, impelled to render help in answer to these vague but terrible appeals.
"We can do nothing," groaned Linton, in answer to Zenobia's questioning pause. "Come," and he led her quickly round the wreckage of the houses.
Stumbling, half running, they made their way by a devious route down towards the heart of the town. In Queen Square there was a frightened crowd. Women and children, weeping and sobbing, were kneeling on the roadway with hands upraised in prayer. Men came running towards them shouting unintelligible warnings ... questions. Terrified faces appeared at many upper windows. They saw a frenzied girl leap from the parapet of a tottering house and disappear behind a heap of ruins.
In the lower streets the destruction wrought was less noticeable, but a new terror was revealed. The sound of rushing waters reached their ears, and every moment white-faced men and women tore past them, crying in shrill tones: "The Spring! the Spring!" Then they saw eddying streams of steaming, orange-tinted water creep round street corners, overflow the gutters, and spread into the road. The water rose so rapidly that they had to turn aside and once more take to higher ground. They found themselves crossing Milsom Street, and as they did so a loud explosion sounded at the upper end, accompanied with an over-powering smell of gas. Screams rent the air, and another crowd of men and women, some of them carrying children in their arms, came rushing helter-skelter down the street.
None of the houses at the lower end had fallen, but several were bulging forward and appeared to be deserted. And here already the predatory instinct was at work. Linton caught the arm of a filthy-looking tramp just as he raised an iron bar to smash the plate glass window of a jeweller's shop. He hurled the thief[Pg 182] aside, then grasping Zenobia's hand again he dragged her forward, making for the nearest bridge.
But once again their way was barred. From a great crack in the roadway a fountain—a geyser—of the yellow, steaming water suddenly leaped into the air. To avoid it they were compelled to make another circuit. They hurried down some narrow streets and reached the open space in front of the theatre. Fighting their way through excited and gesticulating groups of people, they passed the hospital, and, turning to the right, reached the front of the Grand Pump Room Hotel. Limping and enfeebled invalids, who could scarcely move unaided, were streaming from the the building, appealing eagerly for guidance to a way of escape from the perils that surrounded them. Tremulous but unheeded questions were heard on every side as Linton and Zenobia crossed the road and reached the Colonnade. To their right, from the doorways of the Grand Pump Room itself, another flood of tinted steaming water was pouring rapidly over the broad pavement and stealing into the Abbey Church. By keeping close to the opposite wall they escaped the stream, and leaving the great Church, which so far seemed intact, upon their right, they soon reached the space in front of the Guildhall. Only a little distance and they would gain the bridge!
"This way!" cried Zenobia, as Linton, who knew nothing of the town, stopped in hesitation. But as she spoke, the pavement, barely ten yards away, bulged suddenly, then split apart, and with a violent rush another geyser burst into the street. They drew back just in time, and hurried breathlessly towards the Station Road. On their left rose the tall building of the Empire Hotel; behind them was the Abbey. A sudden shout impelled them to look back. A third geyser had opened in the middle of the roadway, and in an instant columns of steaming water were spouting high into the air.
"Quick! Quick!" urged Linton. His voice was[Pg 183] scarcely audible, for as they approached the river a mighty roar was coming from the weir, dominating the multitudinous sounds of terror which filled the air on every side.
In this appalling crisis earth and air and water seemed united as in a ruthless conspiracy for the destruction of humanity. In the presence of these vast, mysterious, and irresistible forces, man, the boasted master, lord of creation, was subdued and helpless. The effect produced on the inhabitants of the city was that with which the struggling atoms of the race, accustomed only to a calm and ordered system, ever encounter nature in her moods of unfamiliar violence. In tempests of the deep, in the awful hurricane, when winds and seas mix and contend in a Titanic conflict, nature ignores the puppets tossing on the helpless ship, or half drowned on the surging raft. What is man in presence of the waterspout that towers from the ocean to the clouds? How shall he face the unfathomable whirlpool that yawns for the frail boat in which he is compelled to trust? Whither shall we fly, when, as now, the earth vomits forth from unimaginable caverns the scalding water floods that she has stored within her depths throughout uncounted centuries? None can stand unmoved when the hills smoke and the earth trembles; when darkness, a darkness that may be felt, spreads in a sinister and all-pervading veil over a world that seems abandoned to the powers of evil? Powdery ashes were falling everywhere upon the doomed city. From Lansdown a vast vaporous column, a dreadful blend of water, bitumen, and sulphur, rose high into the clouds. As the great column branched and spread, assuming the form of an enormous pine-tree, the darkness deepened, save where, above the hill itself, red-coloured flames slashed hither and thither through the cloud at frequent intervals. Terrific explosions accompanied these manifestations; and Linton, as he half carried Zenobia towards the river, was possessed with the fear[Pg 184] that the great hill might be completely riven and pour forth streams of boiling water or of lava, that would not only submerge the town itself but destroy all life within a radius of many miles.
Conceivably, indeed, it might be the beginning of the end—the end, at least, of England; for what were the British Isles but the summit of some vast mountain whose foundations were buried deep in the unfathomed sea? It had been forgotten that Great Britain with Ireland and its Giant's Causeway, afforded incontrovertible evidence of volcanic origin. These islands, with the Hebrides, the Faroe Islets, and, finally, Iceland, in fact constituted a vast volcanic chain, with Mount Hecla as its seismic terminus—a focus more active than Vesuvius itself. And here, at the other end of the chain, was Bath, where for thousands of years the waters of Sul had maintained a disregarded warning of that inevitable convulsion which, at last and in the fulness of time, had come to pass.
In the midst of these flashing thoughts and fears that darted through his brain, Linton was possessed with the conviction that their only possible hope of safety lay in crossing the river, the surging roar of which each moment became more audible and threatening. Others in great numbers were animated with the same belief. Linton and Zenobia, indeed, found themselves involved in a madly-rushing crowd of panic-stricken men and women. Swept this way and that, they were in danger of being hurled to the ground and trodden underfoot by thousands of hurrying fellow creatures bent on self-preservation and on nothing else.
Still supporting Zenobia with one arm and fighting his way forward step by step, Linton presently managed to turn the angle of the tall hotel. On their right the river, swollen enormously by the inrush from the hidden springs, had almost reached the level of the parapet. Boiling floods had poured, and still[Pg 185] poured, into the Avon, blending with the normal stream; and the soul-subduing terror of the scene was augmented by the great clouds of steam that rose from the surface of the hurtling river.
With desperate exertions, still supporting his half-fainting companion, Linton reached the turning towards............