t
all, must have moved through a slough of bodies pushed from behind, and
forming a packed homogeneous mass on the metals: and I knew that they
_had_ moved. Nor could _I_ now move, unless I decided to wade: for flesh
was everywhere, on the roofs of trains, cramming the interval between
them, on the platforms, splashing the pillars like spray, piled on
trucks and lorries, a carnal quagmire; and outside, it filled the space
between a great host of vehicles, carpeting all that region of London.
And all here that odour of blossoms, which nowhere yet, save on one vile
ship, had failed, was now wholly overcome by another: and the thought
was in my head, my God, that if the soul of man had sent up to Heaven
the odour which his body gave to me, then it was not so strange that
things were as they were.

I got out from the station, with ears, God knows, that still awaited the
accustomed noising of this accursed town, habituated as I now was to all
the dumb and absent void of Soundlessness; and I was overwhelmed in a
new awe, and lost in a wilder woesomeness, when, instead of lights and
business, I saw the long street which I knew brood darker than Babylons
long desolate, and in place of its ancient noising, heard, my God, a
shocking silence, rising higher than I had ever heard it, and blending
with the silence of the inane, eternal stars in heaven.

* * * * *

I could not get into any vehicle for some time, for all thereabouts was
practically a mere block; but near the Park, which I attained by
stooping among wheels, and selecting my foul steps, I overhauled a
Daimler car, found in it two cylinders of petrol, lit the ignition-lamp,
removed with averted abhorrence three bodies, mounted, and broke that
populous stillness. And through streets nowhere empty of bodies I went
urging eastward my jolting, and spattered, and humming way.

That I should have persisted, with so much pains, to come to this
unbounded catacomb, seems now singular to me: for by that time I could
not have been sufficiently daft to expect to find another being like
myself on the earth, though I cherished, I remember, the irrational hope
of yet somewhere finding dog, or cat, or horse, to be with me, and would
anon think bitterly of Reinhardt, my Arctic dog, which my own hand had
shot. But, in reality, a morbid curiosity must have been within me all
the time to read the real truth of what had happened, so far as it was
known, or g