Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1915 — The SCARLET PLAGUE [ARTICLE]

The SCARLET PLAGUE

By JACK LONDON

SYNOPSIS. —4— In a California valley an old man, one of the few survivors of a world-wide plague that has destroyed civilization, tells the story of the Scarlet Plague to hl* grandsons. CHAPTER ll—Continued. "Sit down," Edwin counseled soothingly. "Qranser’s all right. He’s just gettln’ to the Scarlet Death, ain't you, Granser? He’s just goin’ to tell us about it right now. Sit down, HareUp. Go ahead, Granser.? The old man wiped the tears away on his grimy knuckles and took up the tale in a tremulous, piping voice that soon strengthened as he got the •wing of the narrative. “It was in the summer of 2013 that the plague came. I was twenty-seven years old, and well do I remember it. Wireless dispatches—” Hare-Lip spat loudly his disgust, and Granser hastened to ma-e amends. “We talked through the air in those days, thousands ahd thousands of miles, And the word came of a strango disease that had broken out in New York. There were seventeen millions of people living then in that noblest city of America. Nobody thought anything about the news. It was only a small thing. There had been only a few deaths. It seemed, though, that they had died very quickly, and that one of the first signs of the disease was the turning red of the face and all the body. Within twenty-four hours came the report of the first case in Chicago. And on the same day, it was made public that London, the greatest city in the world next to Chicago, had been secretly fighting the plague for two weeks and censoring the news dispatches—that is, not permitting the word to go forth to the rest of the world that London had the plague.

"It looked serious, but we in California, like everywhere else, were not alarmed. We were sure that the bacteriologists would find a way to overcome this new germ just as they had overcome other germs in the past. But the trouble was the astonishing quickness with which this germ destroyed human beings, and the fact that it inevitably killed any human body it entered. No one ever recovered. There was the old Asiatic cholera, when you might eat dinner with a well man in the evening, and the next morning, if you got up early enough, you Would see him being hauled by your window in the death cart. But this new plague was quicker than that—much quicker. From the moment of the first signs of it, a man would be dead in an hour. Some lasted for several hours. Many died within ten or fifteen minutes of the appearance of the first signs. “The heart began to beat faster and the heat of the body to increase. Then came the scarlet rash, spreading like wildfire over the face and body. Most persons never noticed the increase in heat and heartbeat, and the first they knew was when the scarlet rash came out. Usually, they had convulsions at the time of the appearance of the rash. But these convulsions did not last long and were not very severe. If one lived through them, he became perfectly quiet, and only did he feel a numbness swiftly creeping up his body from the feet The heels became numb first, then the legs and hips, and when the numbness reached as high as his heart he died. They did not rave or sleep. Their minds always remained cool and calm up to the moment their hearts numbed and stopped. And another strange thing was the rapidity of decomposition. No sooner was a person dead than the body seemed to fall to pieces, to fly apart, to melt away even as you looked at it. That was one of the reasons the plague spread so rapidly. All the billions of germs in a corpse were so immediately released. “And it was because of all this that the bacteriologists had so little chance in fighting the germs. They were killed in their laboratories even as they studied the germs of the Scarlet Death. They were heroes. As fast as they perished, others stepped forth and took their places. It was in London that they first isolated it. The news was telegraphed everywhere. Trask wa» the name of the man who succeeded in this, but within thirty hours he was dead. Then came the

struggle in all the laboratories to find something that would kill, the plague germs. All drugs failed. You see, the problem was to get a drug, or serum, that would kill the germ in the body and not kill the body. They tried to fight it with other germs, to put into the body of a sick man germs that were the enemies of the plague germs —” ”knd you can’t see these germ things, Oranser,” Hare-Lip objected, “and here you gabble, gabble, gabble about them as if they was anything, when they’re nothing at alt Anything you can’t see ain’t —that's what. Fight* ing things that ain’t with things that ain’t! They must have been all fools $n them days. That’s 'Why they

croaked. I ain’t goin’ to believe in such rot I tell you that” Granser promptly began to weep, while Edwin hotly took up his defense. “Look here, Hare-Lip, you believe in lots of things you can’t see.” Hare-Lip shook his head. “You believe in dead men walking about You never seen one dead man walk about” "I tell you I see ’em, last winter, when I was wolf hunting with dad.” “Well, you always spit when you cross running water,” Edwin challenged. “That’s to keep off bad luck,” was Hare-Lip’s defense. “You believe in bad luck?” “Sure.” “An’ you ain’t never seen, bad luck,” Edwin concluded triumphantly. “You’re just as bad as Granser and his germs. You believe in what you don't see. Go on, Granser.” Hare-Lip, crushed by this metaphysical defeat, remained silent, and the old man went on. Often and often, though this narrative must not be clogged by the details, was Granser’s tale interrupted while the boys squabbled among themselves. Also, among themselves they kept up a constant, lowvoiced explanation and conjecture, as they strove to follow the old man into his unknown and vanished world. “The Scarlet Death broke out in San Francisco. The first death came on a Monday morning. By Thursday they i were dying like files in Oakland and San Francisco. They died everywhere —in their bedj, at their work, walking along the street. It was on Tuesday that I saw my first death —Miss Collbran, one of my students, sitting right there before my eyes, In my lecture room. I noticed her face while I was talking. It had suddenly turned scarlet. I ceased speaking and could only look at her, for the first fear of the plague was already on all of us and we knew that it had come. The young women screamed and ran out of the room. So did the young men run out, all but two. Miss Collbran’s convulsions were very mild and lasted less than a minute. One of the young men fetched her a glass of water. She drank only a little of it, and cried out: " ‘My feet.’ All sensation has left them.’ “After a minute she said, ‘I have no feet. I am unaware that I have any feet. And my knees are cold. I can scarcely feel that I have knees.’ “She lay on the floor, a bundle of notebooks under her head. And we could do nothing. The coldness and the numbness crept up past her hips to her heart, and when it reached her heart she was dead. In fifteen minutes, by the clock —I timed it —she was dead, there, in my own classroom, dead. And she was a very beautiful, strong, healthy young woman. And from the first sign of the plague to her death only fifteen minutes elapsed. That will show you how swift was the Scarlet Death. “Yet in thqse few minutes I remained with the dying woman in my classroom, the alarm had spread over the university; and the students, by thousands, all of them, had deserted the lecture rooms and laboratories. When I emerged, on my way to make report to the president of the faculty, I found the university deserted. Across the campus were several stragglers hurrying for their homes. Two of them were running. “President Hoag I found in his office, alone, looking very old and very gray, with a multitude of wrinkles in his face that I had never seen before. At the sight of me, he pulled himself to his feet and tottered away to the inner office, banging the door after him and locking it. You see, he knew I had been exposed, and he was afraid. He shouted to me through the door to go away. I shall never forget my feelings as I walked down the silent corridors and out across that deserted campus. I was not afraid, I had been exposed, and I looked upon myself as already dead. It was not that, but a feeling of awful depression that impressed me. Everything had stopped. It was like the end of the world to me—my world. I had been born within sight and sound of the university. It had my predestined career. My father had been a professor there before me, and his father before him. For a century and a half had this university, like a splendid machine, been running steadily on. And now, in an instant, it had stopped. It was like seeing the sacred flame die down on some thrice sacred altar. I was shocked, .unutterably shocked. “When I arrived home, my housekeeper screamed as I entered and fled away. And when I rang, I found the housemaid had likewise fled. I investigated. In the kitchen I found the cook on the point of departure. But she screamed, too, and in her haste dropped a suitcase of her personal belongings and ran out of the house and across the grounds, still screaming. I can hear her scream to this day. You see, we did not act in this way when ordinary diseases smote us. We were always calm over such things, and

sent for tie doctors and nurse*, who knew just what to do. But this was different It struck so suddenly, and killed so swiftly, and never missed a stroke. When the scarlet rash appeared on a person’s face, that person was marked by death. There. was never a known case of a recovery. I “I was alone in my big house. As I have told you often before, in those days we could talk with one another over the wires or through the air. The telephone bell rang, and I •found my brother talking to me. He told me that he was not coming home for fear of catching the plague from me, and that he had taken out two sisters to stop at Professor Bacon’s home. He advised me to remain where I was, and wait to find out whether or not I had caught the plague. “To all of this I agreed, staying in my house and for the first time in my life attempting to cook. And the plague did not come out on me. By means of the telephone I could talk with whomsoever I pleased and get the news. Also, there were the warehouses. Murder and robbery and drunkenness were at every door, so that I could know what was happening with the rest of the world.”

CHAPTER 111. The Survival of the Fittest. “New York city and Chicago were in chaos. And what happened with them was happening in all large cities. A third of the New York police were dead. Their chief was also dead, likewise the mayor. All law and order had ceased. The bodies were lying in the streets unburled. All railroads and vessels carrying food and such things into the great city had ceased running, and mobs of the hungry poor were pillaging the stores and warehouses. Murder and robbery and drunkenness were everywhere. Already the people had fled from the city by millions —at first the rich, in their private motor, cars and dirigibles, and then the great mass of the population, on foot, carrying the plague with them, themselves starving and pillaging the farmers and all the towns on the way.

“The man who sent this news, the wireless operator, was alone with his instruments on the top of a lofty building. The people remaining in the city —he estimated them at several hundred thousand—had gone mad from fear and drink, and on all sides of him great fires were raging. He was a hero, that man who staid by his post—an obscure newspaper man, most likely. "For twenty-four hours, he said, no transatlantic airships had arrived, and no more messages were coming from England. He did state, though, that a message from Berlin —that’s In Germany—announced that Hoffmeyer, a bacteriologist of the Metchnikoff school, had discovered the serum for the plague. That was the last word, to this day, that we of America ever received from Europe. If Hoffmeyer discovered the serum, it was too late, or, otherwise, long ere this, explorers from Europe would have come looking for us. We can only conclude that what happened in America happened in Europe, and that, at the best, some several score may have survived the Scarlet Death on that whole continent "For one day longer the dispatches continued to come from New York. Then they, too, ceased. The man who had sent them, perched in his lofty building, had either died of the plague or been consumed in the great conflagration he had described as raging around him. And what had occurred in New York had been duplicated in all the other cities. It was the same in San Francisco, and Oakland, and Berkeley. By Thursday the people were dying so rapidly that their corpses could not be handled, and dead bodies lay everywhere. Thursday night the panic outrush for the country began. Imagine, my grandsons, people, thicker than the salmonrun you have seen on the Sacramento river, pouring out of the cities by millions, madly over the country, in vain attempt to escape the übiquitous death. You see, they carried the germs with them. Even the airships of the rich, fleeirig for mountain and desert fastnesses, carried the germs.

“I was telling about the airships of the rich. They carried the plague with them, and no matter where they fled, they died. I never encountered but one survivor of any of them—Mungerson. He was afterward at Santa Rosa, and he married my eldest daughter. He came into the tribe eight years after the plague. He was then nineteen years old, and he was compelled to wait twelve years more before he could marry. You see, there were no unmarried women, and some of the older daughters of the Santa Rosans were already bespoken. So he was forced to wait until my Mary had grown to sixteen years. It was his son, Gimp-Leg, who was killed last year by the mountain Hon. “Mungerson was eleven years old at the time of the plague. His father was one of the Industrial Magnates, a very wealthy, powerful man. It was on his airship the Condor, that they were fleeing, with all the family, for the wilds of British Columbia, which is far to the north of here. But there was some accident, and they were wrecked near Mt Shasta. You have heard of that mountain. It is far to the north. The plague broke out among them, and this boy of eleven was the only survivor. For eight years he was alone, wandering over a deserted land and looking vainly for his own kind. And at last traveling south, he picked up with us, the Santa Rosans. (TO M - '