Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1915 — The SCARIET PLAGUE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SCARIET PLAGUE

by JACK LONDON

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CHAPTER lll—Continued. •‘An hour later, at a window on the ground floor, 1 heard pandemonium break out In the camps of the prowlers. There were cries and screams, and shots from many pistols. As we afterward conjectured, this fight had been precipitated by an attempt on the part of those that were well to drive out those that were sick. At any rate, a number of the plaguestricken prowlers escaped across the campus and drifted against our doors. We warned them back, but they cursed us and discharged a fusillade from their pistols. Professor Merryweather, at one of the windows, was Instantly killed, the bullet striking him squarely between the eyes. We opened fire in turn, and all the prowlers fled away with the exception of 'three. One was a woman. The plague was on them and they were reckless. Like foul fiends, there in the red glare from the skies, with faces biasing, they continued to curse us and fire at us. One of the men I shot with my own hand. After that the other man and the woman, still cursing us, lay down under our windows, where we were compelled to watch them die of the plague. “The situation was critical. The explosions of the powder magazines had broken all the windows of the Chemistry building, so that we were exposed to the germs from the corpses. The sanitary committee was called upon to act, and it responded nobly. Two men were required to go out and remove the corpses, and this meant the probable sacrifice of their own lives, for, having performed the task, they were not to be permitted to reenter the building. One of the professors, who was a bachelor, and one of the under-graduates volunteered. They bade good-by to us and went forth. They were heroes. They gave up their lives that four hundred others might live. After they had performed their work, they stood for a moment, at a distance, looking at us wistfully. They they waved their hands in farewell and went away slowly across the campus toward the burning city.

“And yet It was all useless. The next morning the first one of us was smitten with the plague—a little nurse girl in the family of Professor Stout It was no time for weak-kneed, sentimental policies. On the chance that she might be the only one, we thrust her forth from the building and commanded her to be gone. She went away slowly across the campus wringing her hands and crying pitifully. We felt like brutes, but what were we to do? There were four hundred of ns, and individuals had to be sacrificed.

“In one of the laboratories three families had domiciled themselves, and that afternoon we found among them no less than four corpses and seven cases of the plague in all its different stages.

“Then it was that the horror began. Leaving the dead lie, we forced the living ones to segregate themselves In another room. The plague began to break out among the rest of us, and as fast as the symptoms appeared, we sent the stricken ones to these segregated rooms. We compelled them to walk there by themselves, so as to avoid laying hands on them. It was heartrending. But still the plague raged among us, and room after room was filled with the dead and dying. And so we who were yet clean retreated to the next floor, and to the next, before this sea of the dead, that, room by room and floor by floor, inundated the building.

“The place became a charnel house, and in the middle of the night the survivors fled forth, taking nothing with them except arms and ammunition and a heavy store of tinned foods. We camped on the opposite side of the campus from the prowlers, and, while some stood guard, others of us volunteered to scout into the city in quest of horses, motor cars, carts and wagons, or anything that would carry out provisions and enable us to emulate the banded workingmen I had seen fighting their way out to the open country. “I was one of these scouts, and Doctor Hoyle, remembering that his motor car had been left behind in his home garage, told me to look for it We scouted In pairs, and Dombey, a young undergraduate, accompanied me. We had to cross half a mile of the residence portion of the city to get to Debtor Hoyle’s home. Here the buildings stood apart, in the midst of trees and grassy lawns, and here the fires had played freaks, burning whole blocks, skipping blocks, and often skipping a single in a block. And here, too, the prowlers were still at their work. We carried our automatic pistols openly In our hands, and looked desperate enough, forsooth, to keep them from attacking us. But at Doctor Hoyle’s house the thing happened. Untouched by fire, even as we to it the smoke and flames burst torth. "Tbm miscreant who had set fire to

It staggered down the steps and out along the driveway. Sticking out of his coat pockets were bottles of whisky, and he was very drunk. My first Impulse was to shoot him, and I have never ceased regretting that I did not Staggering and maundering to himself, with bloodshot eyes and a raw and bleeding slash down one side of his bewhlskered face, he was altogether the most nauseating specimen of degradation and filth 1 had ever encountered. I did not shoot him, and he leaned against a tree on the lawn to let us go by. It was the most absolute, wanton act. Just as we were opposite him, he suddenly drew a pistol and shot Dombey through the head: The next instant I shot him. But It was too late. Dombey expired without a groan, immediately. I doubt If he ever knew what had happened to him. .

“Leaving the two corpses, I hurried on past the burning house to the garage, and there found Doctor Hoyle’s motor car. The tanks were filled with gasoline, and it was ready for use. And it was in this car that I threaded the streets of the ruined city and came back to the survivors on the campus. The other scouts returned, but none had been so fortunate. Professor Fairmead had found a Shetland pony, but the poor creature, tied in a stable and abandoned for days, was so weak from want of food and water that it could carry no burden at all. Some of the men were for turning it loose, but I insisted that we should lead It along with us, so that, if we got out of food, we would have It to eat “There were forty-seven of us when we started, many being women and children. The president of the faculty, an old man to begin with, and now hopelessly broken by the awful happenings of the past week, rode in the motor car with several young children and the aged mother of Proses-

sor Fairmead. Wathope, a young professor of English, who had a grievous bullet wound in his leg, drove the car. The rest of us walked, Professor Fairmead leading the pony. “Our progress was painfully slow. The women and children could not walk fast They did not dream of walking, my grandsons, in the way all people walk today. In truth, none of us knew how to walk. It was not until after the plague that I learned really to walk. So it was that the pace of the slowest was the pace of ail, for we dared not separate on account of the prowlers. There were not so many now of these human beasts of prey. The plague had already well diminished their numbers, but enough still lived to be a constant menace to us. Many of the beautiful residences were untouched by fire, yet smoking rains were everywhere. The prowlers, too, seemed to have got over their insensate desire to burn, and it was more rarely that we saw houses freshly on fire. “Several of us scouted among the private garages in search of motor cars and gasoline. But in this we were unsuccessful. The first great flights from the cities had swept all such utilities away. Calgan, a fine young man. was lost in this work. He was shot by prowlers while crossing a lawn. Yet this was our only casualty, though once a drunken brute deliberately opened fire on all of us. Luckily, he fired .wildly, and we shot him before he had done any hurt “At Fruitvale, still In the heart of the magnificent residence soctlon at

the city, the plague again smote as. Professor Fairmead was the victim. Making signs to us that his mother was not to know, he turned aside into the grounds of a beautiful mansion. He sat down forlornly on the steps of the front veranda, and I, having lingered, waved him a last farewell. That night, several miles beyond Fruitvale and still In {he city, we made camp. And that night we shifted camp twice to get away from our dead. In the morning there were thirty of us. I shall never forget the president of the faculty. During the morning’s march his wife, who was walking, betrayed the fatal symptoms, and when she drew aside to let us go on he insisted on leaving the motor car and remaining with her. There was quite a discussion about this, hut in the edd we gave in. It was Just as well, for we knew not which ones of us, if any, might ultimately escape. “That night, the second of our march, we encamped beyond Haywards in the first stretches of country. And in the morning there were eleven of us that lived. Also, during the night, Wathope, the professor with the wounded leg, deserted us in the motor car. He took with him his sister and his mother and most of our tinned provisions. It was that day, in the afternoon, while resting by the wayside, that I saw the last airship t shall ever see. The smoke was much thinner here in the country, and I first sighted the ship drifting and veering helplessly at an elevation of two thousand feet. What had happened I could not conjectrue, but even as we looked we saw her bow dip down lower and lower. Then the bulkheads of the various gas chambers must have burst, for, quite perpendicular, she fell like a plummet to the earth. And from that day to this I have not seen another airship. Often and often, during the next few years, I scanned the sky for them, hoping against hope that somewhere in the world civilization had survived. But It was not to be. What happened with us in California must have happened with everybody everywhere. "Another day, and at Niles there were three of us. Beyond Niles, in the middle of the highway, we found Wathope. The motor car had broken down, and there, on the rugs which they had spread on the ground, lay the bodies of his sister, his mother and himself. “Wearied by the unusual exercise of continual walking, that night I slept heavily. Canfield and Parsons, my last companions, were dead of the plague. Of the four hundred that sought shelter in the Chemistry building, and of the forty-seven that began the march, I alone remained —I and the Shetland pony. Why this should be so there is no explaining. I did not catch the plague, that is all. I was immune. I was merely the one lucky man in a million—just as every survivor was one in a million, or, rather, in several millions, for the proportion was at least that.

"For two days I sheltered In a pleasant grove where there had been no deaths. days, while badly depressed and believing that my turn would come at any moment, nevertheless I rested and recuperated. So did the pony. And on the third day, putting what small store of tinned provisions I possessed on the pony’s back, I started on across a very lonely land. Not a live man, woman or child did I encounter, though the dead were everywhere. Food, however, was abundant. The land then was not as it is now. It was all cleared of trees and brush, and it was cultivated. The food for millions of mouths was growing, ripening and going to waste. From the fields and orchards I gathered vegetables, fruits and berries. Around the deserted farmhouses I got eggs and caught chickens. And frequently I found supplies of tinned provisions in the storerooms. “A strange thing was what was taking place with all the domestic animals. The chickens and ducks were the first to be destroyed, while the pigs were the first to go wild, followed by the cats. Nor were the dogs long in adapting themselves to the changed conditions. There was a veritable plague of dogs. They devoured the corpees, barked and howled during the nights, and in the daytime slunk about In the distance. As the time went by I noticed a change In their behavior. At first they were apart from one another, very suspicious and very prone to fight, but after a not very long while they began to come together and run in packs. The dog, you see, always was a social animal, and this was true before ever he came to be domesticated by man. In the last days of the world, before the plague, there were many, many very different kinds of doga—dogs without hair and dogs with warm fur, dogs so small that they would make scarcely a mouthful for other dogs that were as large as mountain lions. Well, all the small dogs, and the weak types, wertf killed by their fellows. Also, the very large ones were not adapted for the wild llfef and bred out. As a result the many different kinds of dogs disappeared,, and there remained only, running in packs, the medium-sized wolfish dogs that you know today. “The horses also went wild and ill the fine breeds we had degenerated Into the small mustang you know today. The cows likewise went wild, as did the pigeons and the sheep. And that a few of the chickens survived you know yourself. But the wild chicken of today is quite a different ♦htn g from the chickens we had In those days." "r CTO BE CONTINUED.)

The Miscreant Who Had Set Fire to It Staggered Down the Steps.