CHAPTER VI.

THE TERROR OF IT.

Leacraft and Jim reached the hotel at the Caledonian station, in a crowd of breathless men, all anxious to escape to more reassuring neighborhoods. Thomsen and the young lady so opportunely rescued had availed themselves of the restorative resources of the hotel, and had largely recovered from the exposure and scare of their experience. Leacraft met Sir John C-- standing at the entrance of the hotel, his face clouded with grief and anxiety. Strained to the last limit of endurance by his unwearied exertion to secure the safety of the people, and almost prostrated by the desolating sorrow of deserting the great city, the distinguished publisher expressed in his looks his intense misery of mind. Leacraft expressed a few words of condolence, which were hardly noticed, and then hurried to the former writing room of the hotel, where he found a fire burning, and a hastily prepared luncheon, around which a dense crowd of men were collected, filling the room almost to suffocation, greedily devouring the welcome repast, and muttering doubts of their eventually escaping at all if they remained any longer.

“Sir John hates to get away,” commented one. “He just can’t make up his mind to go. His heart is broke. But what’s the use? We can’t stay here and be buried alive. The trainmen say it’s a hard job now to get through, and all the way to Glenarken is full of big drifts. I say we must shake this, and it’s nobody’s right to run our heads into danger for the whim of a little love for the old town. Sure, we are all hard enough up, and it’s we that has not got a roof to our heads, nor a bite to our stomachs that has the worst to fear. It’s a cruel sufferin’ to think of it at all; but so it is, and it’s no use fashing.”

“Weel, weel,” said another, “it’s an awfu’ plight, and naebody can say what’s next. We maun better be dead than to pit our heads in a pother of snaw and wait for next simmer to melt us out.”

“Simmer, man, is it!” exclaimed a rough cart-man with a huge ham sandwich in each hand, and his jaws working on the remnants of their predecessor. “Simmer! It’s all up with the simmers frae now to the end o’ the warld. It’s bonny Scotland good-bye, and mind you, man, you’ll never see gorze again on the Queen’s Drive, I’m thinking, and you’ll never tak’ your bonnet aff on Arthur’s seat, nor pluck the daisy on Holy Rood mead. You’ll never canter to the Pentlands, nor hear the sang of praise go up frae the Roslin chapel, and you’ll nae hear the bell toll frae Grey Friars kirk, nor mark time wi’ the Hielanders in St. Giles’, and you’ll never bide the chance when you can see old Hay’s shop in High street, nor watch the middlings stare their een out at John Knox’s hame. It’s ower by naw,” and the good fellow turned away in a choking effort to repress his own tears, and swallow the generous morsels he had bitten from his overloaded hands.

Leacraft pressed by these disturbed groups, and found, after he had inducted Jim to the hospitalities of the various tables, his own strength and composure deserting him. He sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. It seemed as if he had lived through some dreadful nightmare, and the weird and sickening sense of yet more miseries, rising thick and fast, covering with gloom a nation’s happiness, stunned him.

A soft voice awoke him. He looked up hastily and saw the lady whose arms, half an hour before, had clung unresistingly around his neck. She was unquestionably very pretty, and the returning flush upon her cheeks gave the alabaster clearness of her brow a singular effrontery of beauty. Elsewhere, or under different circumstances, it would have produced in Leacraft a momentary suspicion of artifice. As it was, it held his attention long enough for him to notice that the hair covering her head luxuriantly was a raven black, and was gathered beneath the hood of a soft brown sealskin fur, which clothed her form, while two wonderful opal bracelets, relieved with ruby jewels, in alternating links, most incongruously graced her wrists, the gloves on her fingers were evidently distended by rings, and a superb necklace of diamonds and peridots encircled closely her neck, seen through the half-opened cape. Leacraft rose mechanically to his feet, still conscious of effort, and looked wonderingly at the young face, and at that of her companion, Mr. Thomsen, the Scotchman.

“My cousin and I”--the voice was exquisitely gentle and expressive--“can never repay you. It is a slight thing to say to you how much we thank you, but it is not impossible that we can both yet show you our gratitude in some manner that will mean more than words, mean as much for you as your sacrifice meant for us. Is not that so, Ned?”

She turned to Mr. Thomsen, who advanced and accosted Leacraft with courteous alacrity. “I am sure, sir, you appreciate our sense of devotion to yourself. You extricated my cousin and myself from a certain and dangerous imprisonment. It might have been something more dreadful. And perhaps,” with a reluctant gaze at the young woman, and a smile of understanding for Leacraft, “you may wish to understand better how the perilous predicament you found us in occurred. It was very simple. This lady, Miss Ethel Tobit,” Leacraft bowed, “was left with myself, her cousin, at the home of her father and mother, on Pitt street, to complete the packing of a quantity of valuables which were at the last moment to be placed in a safe and left there for recovery later; it does now seem as if that word was a poor mask for Never. We had brought food for the house, and felt no fears of escaping before the streets became impassable. Then this last storm broke, and this afternoon, late in the day, we started out--but we had waited too long. My cousin sank under the exertion; I was disabled by a fall, in which my side was seriously bruised. We took refuge in St. Andrew’s Church, whose doors stood providently unclosed, though to swing them out I had to dig with my hands a crevice for their movement, in the rising snow banks forcing them constantly back. Our vigil began. The city in all directions around us was deserted. We could hear the workers on Princes street occasionally, in the lulls of the hurricane, and the whistle from the station sent thrills of anguish through us, as we felt we should soon be alone in an empty city. It was as impossible for us in our crippled state to return to the house in Pitt street as to reach Princes street. We then began calling, and it was you, sir, who responded. I think hunger and thirst would have made it impossible, even in the day, for us to have left our retreat, and only the--”

“Don’t, Ned,” cried the quivering girl; “don’t don’t! It’s too awful to think of. We need all our best spirits as it is--but to think--Oh! it’s too horrible!” And she hid her face against her cousin’s breast, and broke into sobs. Leacraft felt the embarrassment, and was ill at ease, though somehow at that mournful moment the sight of a beautiful woman seemed a compensation, and in this case, as she lifted her tearful face to Leacraft, piteously struggling to smile, it awoke in him a kind of ardor to be always near her. He looked almost tenderly at her and said: “I think I have every reason to thank my good fortune and this remarkable weather for a very pleasant adventure. Well, No!” he continued, as he caught the reproachful and grieving glance of Miss Tobit, “that is too cynical. Heaven knows we are all broken-hearted enough to-night to relinquish any false gayety, or even the appearance of it, but certainly, Miss Tobit, I hope this chance acquaintance will establish a friendship between us. It will be the only compensation for this night of agony, and perhaps for all the other nights of agony that still await us. You will not refuse it?”

Miss Tobit turned instinctively to her friend, and Leacraft, betrayed into an earnestness perhaps somewhat out of place, had a fleeting glance of an evanescent smile, and then the words, even more sweetly spoken than at first, came to his ears:

“It would be all your own fault if we fail to be friends. I am sure I can keep my side of the contract.”

Mr. Thomsen watched this brief exchange of promises not altogether with approval, if the faintly forming frown on his face meant anything, and the evident inclination to take Miss Tobit away from Leacraft’s proximity. But he was entirely courteous, and with a half-whispered comment that, “It would not do now to tire their benefactor any more,” he moved off and drew the lady with him. And then the summons came from the other end of the room that all was in readiness, that Sir John was on the train, and that the attempt to reach the south was to be made. There was much confusion and some indecent precipitation to gain the door, and in the rush Leacraft lost sight of his newly made friends, but found, to his great satisfaction, Jim at his side, for Jim had turned out to be that sort of a fellow that meets predicaments with coolness, and quietly, without words, instills confidence.

Leacraft was a little nettled over his seriousness with Miss Tobit, because it revealed again to himself that prosaic stiffness of language which he consciously recognized as having formed an element of failure with Miss Garrett, whose plastic wit found in it a source of amusement. He walked towards the door, wondering bitterly why women placed so much value on a turn of speech, or the accent of a compliment, when his musing discontent was interrupted by a hand laid on his arm. He turned around and saw a member of the Common Council of the city, associated with Sir John C-- in the last days of the city’s government. The stranger accosted him. “Mr. Leacraft, the Provost Marshal wishes you to share his compartment. He has a great desire to speak with you on the affairs of the city, and the dreadful things which seem to be before us. This way, sir,” and he motioned to a large parlor coach in the centre of the train.

Leacraft retained him. Placing his hand on Jim’s shoulder, he said, “This man goes with me.” The councilman for a moment looked puzzled, but almost instantly rejoined, “Certainly, sir; your personal attendants are welcome.”

Leacraft laughed and exclaimed, “No, sir, this is no personal attendant of mine. This is only a brave man, whom I am proud to call my friend,” and as he turned to Jim the latter gave him a glance of the sincerest gratitude and pride.

The councilman waived the privilege of questions and nodding vigorously his assent, led Leacraft and Jim to the car of Sir John.

It was a car of an American type, and comfortably provided with couches and seats, tables and easy chairs. A number of men were already in it, and some refreshments, with the circulation of bottles of Scotch whiskey, showed Leacraft the unappeasible claims of man’s appetite, even in the ruins of his own fortune.

Sir John occupied a chair at a round table in a further corner of the compartment, and as Leacraft made his way towards him, the eyes of the city’s chief gazed at him in return with inexpressible weariness and sadness. Leacraft motioned Jim to a seat, and took the proffered hand of Sir John, who let his arm fall heavily on the table, and still kept his eyes fixed on Leacraft, motionless and silent. It was Leacraft who first spoke:

“I think, Sir John, that it was a few years ago that I secured your intervention for a poor fellow who was condemned offhand, and you were willing to help me turn the law back in its course, that it might have an opportunity to find out what it was made for--murder or justice.”

“Yes, I do recall it, and, Mr. Leacraft, do you know,” replied Sir John, “that that day seems unmercifully far away. It seems as if you and I lived then in another world, and as if we perhaps had died, and were living in quite a different one now, and one very much worse, however bad the old one was. I am too dazed with all this. I feel as if I must wake up and find it all a horrible nightmare. But there can be no excuse for self-deception with me. I have studied this question. I am one of the most convinced that Scotland is doomed. Yes,” and the speaker straightened himself with a movement of exhaustion, “that England is doomed, too, that we are about to see primal conditions returning which are normal physiographic states, but which will destroy our civilization. Listen,” and as Leacraft sank into a chair near him, he leaned again upon the table and spoke with a sort of eager impatience at his own logic, as if he invited and expected and hoped for contradiction. “Listen. The isothermals as they existed before this calamity were a travesty on the map; they were an outrage upon meteorological symmetry. See here,” and Sir John drew out a portfolio which he opened on the table before him; he opened it and displayed a Mercator projection of the world.

He was about to continue when a shout, which had mingled with it a throb of grief, like a loud wail, entered their ears--Leacraft noticed at the moment that the train was moving; it had been moving for some time. He looked out of the compartment window. “We are leaving Edinburgh,” his voice sank to a sympathetic whisper, as Sir C-- suddenly turned to gaze, too, along with all the rest, upon the shrouded city.

The snow was falling from a leaden sky, and the mantled city, with its higher buildings, here a spire, there a monument, like an irregular mound hiding a burial, was indistinctly, very partially, seen. The men and one woman--the Scotch girl saved that afternoon from the tomb of snow--were standing in the coaches, leaning out of the open windows, to fathom the dull, mottling obscurity of the air, to catch--to be forever remembered--some recognized feature of the great, beautiful habitation now left in the on-coming night time, to be buried in the whirling wreaths. Hidden between its hills, imperishable but unseen, and waiting for its resurrection again into the joy of life and usefulness--a dead city, save for those brigands who, like wolves or ghouls, dared death to fatten on abandoned riches, amid its solemn, terrifying loneliness! Strange vicissitude! and as Leacraft descried, in a blurred exaggeration of its natural size, the dome of St. George’s Church, opposite the Albert Memorial, a voice somewhere among the tearful and dumb gazers repeated this verse from Burns’ invocation to the honored and historic site:

With awe-struck thought and pitying tears, I view that noble, stately dome Where Scotia’s kings of other years, Fam’d heroes, had their royal home. Alas! how changed the times to come! Their royal name low in the dust! Their hapless race wild-wandering roam, Tho’ rigid law cries out,’twas just!

Though the train made a toilsome way and interrupted progress, with steam sweepers ahead of it, the city soon faded away. The eye could not long pierce that forest of descending veils of snow, the sepulchre would soon be accomplished, and the spectators shuddered at the thought of those voluntarily immured and hapless wretches, who had seized this chance for a few hours’ reckless pleasure, and then--their own death, murdered by each other’s hand in the furious combat for survival, or choked with the many fingers of the frost at their necks. And Leacraft remained at the window still looking, while Sir John patiently waited, staring at his map, or raising his eyes expectantly to Leacraft, to resume his attention.

A bitter thought passed through Leacraft’s mind. Edinburgh had been faithless. Dressed in beauty, rich in reputation, nurtured in elegance and culture, she had been wickedly selfish. Her streets were filled with embruted men and women, with the vassals of drink and depravity; her picturesque quarters hid misery and vulgar need, unsanitary and simply mean corners of wretchedness, filled with creatures to whom life was an uneasy mixture of sleep and drunkenness. She had done nothing for these. Her life was part of the life of the whole kingdom, and the word of that life was selfishness, the stupid adhesion to conventional usage which kept the land from the people, which loaded taxes and rents upon a slaving many, for the perpetuation of an indulgent and luxurious life to the few. The upper surfaces of society, brilliant and dazzlingly sleek with pride, and puffed up with the vanity of knowledge, cushioned upon a contemptuous forgetfulness of duty, of sympathy, conceitedly viewing their reflections in Burke’s Peerage, or Chalmer’s Landed Gentry, begrudging every concession to modern sense of justice, denying the equality of men, fostering the silly homage of their inferiors, and rankly gathering around the idiocy of a futile monarchy. It was a class life, a class gospel, a class cultus, the arrogance of a classification of the humans of society, which made the joy of the world the prerogative of those who by birth or fortune found themselves foreordained to possess it, and who now--God willing--would fight every inch of their vantage ground to keep that advantage, believing that a fine suavity of demeanor, a generous support of fashion, a supercilious deference to education as an aristocratic embellishment, a pretentious clemency of judgement and an unfailing church attendance, would save them before any supernatural tribunal--if indeed such a tribunal existed--of particular blame. Those among them yet endowed with the pulses of human feeling, gentle in spirit and blessed with the better sentimentalities of religion, visited the poor, and dropped lunch baskets at their doors, and assumed the fine benison of stooping angels--a shallow thoughtlessness which did nothing for the regeneration of permanent social outrages. The unemployed might clamor, the poor might continue to multiply, and the young and ambitious might sail away on white wings to the new life of America, but the lord and landlord must still remain, because in the sight of the Lord God Almighty the lord and the landlord are part and parcel of the eternal order of things, an appanage of His eternal throne and a reflection of the rule of Heaven. And beneath all this was the sickly obsequiousness and snuffling adoration of ordinary men, which of course the lord and ladies despised, but which after all was helpful in keeping up the distinguished humbug.

This on its best side, but there was a worse side. There was moral depravity; there was ruthless wickedness; there was a set so smart that they defied decency and rectitude, and travelled on the currents of their passions to all the maelstroms of moral rottenness. The King himself had violated the measures of sobriety and faithfulness. And this imposing and historical structure, must now totter to its fall before the drifting snowflake. Truly the simple shall confound the wise. Leacraft turned from his melancholy thoughts to the friendly face of Sir John, who, catching his eye, resumed his conversation.

“This map will make it quite plain that the position of our nation as a commercial, as a political fabric, is a geographical absurdity, a necessary paradox. Look!” and Sir John pinned down the map on the table, and drew Leacraft down towards its attentive examination. “Here! is an occular demonstration of our false position, a charted proof that we are in a wrong place, a spot of possible change, that will reverse all previous experiences if the right conditions supervene. The change has come, and Scotland returns to its appointed allegiance. It belongs to the Kings of the Ice. See,” and he leaned over the map in a kind of ecstacy of despair, speaking rapidly as his fingers traced the lines he indicated. “See! consider these enormities. Land’s End and the Scilly Islands, where palms grow, are on the degree of 50 degree north latitude, which is the same as Notre Dame Bay in New Foundland, the same as Manitoba, the same as the most northern Kurile Islands. Do you know what the temperature of these places are? I will tell you. The average winter temperature of northern New Foundland is 10 degrees, that of Manitoba 9 degrees, and that of the Kurile Islands, 12 degrees.

“The average temperature of Land’s End is 40 degrees. Well, that may not strike you as a contrast so sharp as to warrant my dire prediction, but you must learn to see in average temperatures much more than is simply indicated in the mere differences in degrees. Averages are utterly misleading, so far as they mean habitable conditions. A temperature of 0 for six months, and a temperature of 80 degrees, for the remaining six months furnishes the harmless average of 40 degrees, but a land suffering from the affliction of a climate such as that, would be useless for the larger purposes of a civilized community. Averages produce an impression of uniformity, whereas they conceal the most obstreperous changes--and a small difference, such as you observe between the temperature of the Scilly islands, and these inclement and impossible districts of Canada or Kamtchatka, means that though all are on the same latitude, they are as diversely adapted for modern life as the tropics and the north pole. Why are the Scilly islands adapted for tulips and spring peas, when Manitoba yet sleeps in snow?

“From the point of view of a primary instruction in temperature, hottest at the equator, coldest at the pole, and graded all the way between; it is a preposterous caprice. It is a caprice. And a civilization flourishing under the auspices of a caprice, will come to grief. Climate is a symbol of vagaries, contradictions and sudden affinities. It is the atmospheric expression for the feminine and the poetic in men. As a matter of fact contingencies of interfering land surfaces, of changing barometric pressure, of oceanic tides, of air currents, of solar radiation, combine into a labyrinth of possibilities to make places that ought to be cold, hot, and vice versa.

“But they are evanescent possibilities, and the founders of empires who rely on them will some day be brought back with stunning, abject terror, as we now are, to the realization of first principles, that latitudes are invincible barriers to the diffusion of the race, and that the nations neglecting their plain meaning court disaster. Well; you know the explanation of all these whims of nature. The old story; the Gulf Stream with its millions of units of heat forced northward by wind pressure, and accelerated eastward by the equatorial velocity it starts out with, our insular position bathed in oceanic waters, holding immense deposits of the sun’s heat; the open seas north of us; the great furnace stores of heat in Africa, like a nearby factory heating our thin coasts. That is common knowledge--but these accidents of position, these migratory tides are holding in check invincible tendencies. Like a child’s push against an evenly balanced boulder they keep off the descent of disaster, but like another child’s push in the opposite direction, a sudden alteration of coast lines reduces our boasted exemption to a shadow, and London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Glasgow, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburgh--the great cities of the world--pay at last the penalty of an infringement of nature’s Common Law.

“Heat is life, and cold is death, and no blank optimism may hope for national achievement in the frosts of winter. Our civilization, the civilization of northern Europe, has overstepped the limits of climatic permission, as this globe is made. We are the victims of a deception. Primary conditions of temperature are returning, a meteorological hoax is exploded, and 50 degrees north latitude will mean in Europe what it has always meant elsewhere. But look at Edinburgh, look at these isothermals on the map, attributing to her the temperature of far southern latitudes. Too obvious an absurdity to last. True enough. Yes, but fugitive; an episode only. So flat a contradiction of the economy of this round earth should never have misled us. And we have had warnings--”

Mr. C-- stopped; his agitation fairly choked him. Leacraft sympathized with the gentleman’s distress. His bitterness of heart had created a mental hallucination, an unbalanced affectation of epigram. Leacraft interposed: “Well, Sir John, the empire of Great Britain has no reason to regret its existence, even if it is based on a climatic fallacy. There have been some things done in it which no change in temperature will obliterate, unless the Ice Age is returning and we all decline into extinction north and south, and the Earth is again without form and void. You speak of caprices. How can you tell this is not a caprice, too, a monstrous subterfuge of Nature to teach us a lesson, letting us come back again when we are better, when we can feel and keep grateful to Her for letting us live at all. You err in deduction Sir John. A round Earth exposed to the sun’s heat with a zenith movement from 23,28 north latitude to 23,28 south latitude, must exhibit water currents flowing north, and bringing with them equatorial temperatures. Such a fact is as normal as that the same earth must be colder at the poles than at the equator. You are involved in a sophism, because you assume a principle which is imaginary, so far as its invariable truth is concerned.

“And what warnings have we ever had?”

“Warnings!” said Sir John, after a moment’s silence during which he regarded Leacraft with a guarded hopefulness, “Warnings! Many.” And he took out a note book from which he read. “The winters of 1544, 1608, 1709, were terrific--the thermometer at Paris in 1709, sank to nine degrees below zero Fah. In 1788–1789, the river Seine froze over in November. Then there was 1794–5, 1798–9, when the rivers of Europe were frozen over. In 1795, the mercury in Paris registered ten degrees below zero, although at the same time in London the temperature was nearly seven degrees above zero. And then we have 1812–3 when Napoleon failed, defeated by the cold rather than the Russians. In 1819–20, in 1829–30, in 1840–41, in 1853–4, 1870–71, during the Franco-German war, with the cold greater at the south than in the north of France, and when--this is worth noting--the Gulf Stream was driven backward by a north wind, and banked up, as it were, at Spain and Portugal; in all these years there were intensely cold winters, which if continued, and reinforced by storms, and increased by the disappearance of some of the helpful agencies that now keeps up our supply of caloric, would mean, could only mean our extinction.

“Now as for degrees of cold--I quote from Flammarion--‘the greatest cold yet experienced has been twenty-four degrees below zero in France, five degrees below in England, twelve below in Belgium and Holland, sixty-seven degrees in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, forty-six in Russia, thirty-two in Germany, ten degrees below in Spain and Portugal.’ These are Fahrenheit records. These severities tell us our danger.”

“It seems to me,” rejoined Leacraft, “that they tell us nothing of the sort. It is a mild madness to misconstrue them so completely. These extremes of temperatures are far lower than any we have observed, and yet we have been expelled from Scotland. It is the snow. These endless heaping torrents from the skies that have driven us out, and they--I do believe it--will continue; but it has no parallel. Nothing warned us of this--and as to our climatic safety, it was as fixed as the change of day to night when, without warning, without precedent, a bridge of mountains tumbles into a hole in the sea, another bridge rises as a dam, and either occurrence seemed about as likely as that the moon would fall into the sun. I think indeed the advantage of a guess might have lain with the latter supposition.”

“Well. The snow; you say it will continue,” said Sir John with a sudden reflex action of revolt. “Why will it continue?”

“I estimate the probability for that in this way,” answered Leacraft. “The atmosphere is a system of balances never at rest, unless in equilibrium, and never in equilibrium except at rare intervals, and then in limited and favored spots. This state of inequilibrium causes constant motion, currents, storms, winds and precipitation, whether of rain or snow, depending on temperature and position. Now the motor power of the movement in all this atmospheric mass is difference of temperature, the hot air rising and flowing to the poles, and the cold air of the poles descending and flowing to the equator. That is the A. B. C. of meteorological physics. But the revolution of the earth causes the cold polar winds to blow from the northeast and the warm equatorial winds to blow from the southwest, that is with reference to our position in the northern hemisphere. Now if we are undergoing a progressive refrigeration, the contrast in temperatures between our latitude and the temperature of the equator increases, and because of that, the velocity of the wind blowing from the latter increases too, and the moisture that these winds would have dropped over the equatorial zones is carried further north, and our annual precipitation is thereby increased--our snow falls become more continuous and thicker. Think what the removal of the Gulf Stream means. Croll has clearly shown that the heat bearing capacity of the Gulf Stream is enormous. It seems incredible. I recall some of his statements. He says that the Gulf Stream conveys as much heat as is received from the sun by over one million and a half square miles at the equator, and the amount thus conveyed is equal to all the heat which falls upon the globe within thirty-two miles on each side of the equator; further that the quantity of heat conveyed by the Gulf Stream in one year is equal to the heat which falls, on an average, on three millions and a half square miles of the arctic regions, and that there is actually therefore nearly one-half as much heat transferred from tropical regions by the Gulf Stream as is received from the sun by the entire Arctic regions, the quantity conveyed from the tropics by the stream to that received from the sun by the Arctic regions being nearly as two to five. And it is this fact of the tremendous drain that the Gulf Stream makes on the equatorial regions, those immense manufactories of heat, that its removal--meaning the sudden abstraction of this heat or much of it from our latitude--produces a more forceful interchange in the airs of the north and the south. It produces winds of a higher velocity, and because of this, the wind coming to us from the Equator does not so quickly free itself of its contained moisture. Croll has shown in his splendid work of theory and proof, that the winds warmed by the Gulf stream are the true causes for our unusual and exceptional heat above corresponding positions on the western side of the Atlantic basin. The Gulf Stream gone, these warming winds will bring us heat no longer. But they will bring us moisture, and in larger quantities, and then the process of refrigeration over our chilled coasts will turn that into snow. The snows will be deeper, and they will last longer. In this way, Croll, defending himself against the criticism of Findlay, shows that the winds--the anti-trades blowing from the south to replace the atmospheric emptiness--I suppose we might say vacuum--left by the descent of the cold winds from the poles, parted with the most of their moisture in the equatorial belt. Now by reason of their greater velocity they will not do that; they will reach us much less despoiled of their watery burdens.

“Our highlands and our coast position make us natural condensers. To-day we have a rainfall in the year of about thirty inches. That may now be doubled. The southwest winds are our most general winds. Out of a thousand as a maximum, during the year, two hundred and twenty-five are from the southwest. These are wet winds. And in the same total there are one hundred and eleven south winds which also carry moisture, making a possible percentage of one third of all the winds that blow over us as rain winds, or now by reason of our altered state as snow makers. But this relative frequency will now be increased. There will be a longer continuation of the west winds, because as I have suggested they will be stronger. They are to-day most intense in the winter months. Our south and southwest winds gather moisture from a wide expanse of sea, the same expanse from which they formerly gathered heat from the Gulf Stream was widely diffused over the north Atlantic, both north and south, for as Croll shows, by reason of a high barometric pressure somewhere off the west of Maderia and a low pressure north of Iceland, the tendency of the air south of the English Isles at that point is to flow north. But these winds are no longer heat carriers. They bring moisture only. They bear to us through the air the winding sheets of our burial.”

The two men looked at each other, and it was a look of anguish. The sudden cruel dreadfulness, the hideous mutation which might send the English people out of their land on the strange quest for a new home crushed them into an emotional inanition. They did not seem to exist. Their lips lost their color, and only the paralysis of stupor saved them from breaking down into sobs.

It was a few moments later that Leacraft spoke. He asked, “And the people of Glasgow. How did they get away?”

Sir John Clarke scarcely raised his head and his words scarcely formed an articulate whisper; “They went by steamers.”