of
the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened
skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the
hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and
ringing with the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended
my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought
I--in a year. . .

With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and
the old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever.

CHAPTER NINE

WRECKAGE

And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is
not altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly,
all that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and
praising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget.

Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that,
so far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow,
several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the
previous night. One man--the first--had gone to St. Martin's-le-Grand,
and, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to
telegraph to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the
world; a thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly
flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin,
Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the
verge of the pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard,
shouting and staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making
up trains, even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church
bells that had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news,
until all England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced,
unkempt, scorched along every country lane shouting of unhoped
deliverance, shouting to gaunt, staring figures of despair. And for
the food! Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the
Atlantic, corn, bread, and meat were tearing to our relief. All the
shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days. But of
all this I have no memory. I drifted--a demented man. I found myself
in a house of kindly people, who had found me on the third day
wandering, weeping, and raving through the streets of St. John's Wood.
They have told me since that I was singing some insane doggerel about
"The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah! The Last Man Left Alive!" Troubled
as they were with their own