Sixty Days to Live

It was hard work ploughing through the heavy snow so they were a little tired after their ramble and, as sundown came far earlier in this high latitude than in mid-August in England, Gervaise suggested that when they had finished their picnic they should abandon their exploration for that day and return to the Ark.

On the way back they reverted to their discussion of the previous night about the hardships of being compelled to winter in the Arctic; but both Gervaise and Hemmingway were comparatively cheerful about it.

Gervaise pointed out that if they could not find better accommodation they still had the Ark in which to live. That would mean that they would have to continue living in rather cramped quarters but, in the Ark, they would have every reasonable comfort and would suffer no more from being thrown about in rough weather. As they had used hardly any of their petrol for propelling the sphere they still had the bulk of their supply which, used economically, should be sufficient to run the electric-light and heating plants through the winter. They would have to cut down their rations of food but there Were ways in which these could be supplemented. The dead cattle they had come across had already decayed to such a degree through their forty-three days' submergence in the flood waters that, although now frozen meat, they were no longer fit for human consumption. But there would be nuts on the trees, edible roots in the ground and seeds which could be crushed for life-giving substances.

Hemmingway took up the theme to add that if the supply of food looked like giving out before the spring came round they could eke out their tinned goods with stews of seeds and roots from their own stores of these, many of which were edible. Moreover, the fact that they had discovered a motor tractor that morning showed that the land was farmable; so, although it would mean hard work to clear the snow, there was no reason why they should not sow some patches of cereals and root-crops during the next few weeks before the land had frozen solid and the real Arctic winter set in.

For the hundredth time they congratulated themselves on their forethought in stocking the Ark with so many items and implements which would now prove more valuable than gold and ensure their being able to maintain themselves even in such a terrible climate. The Ark and its contents were their fortress and their salvation.

It was four o'clock when they came over the last crest and sighted it; a huge snowball in a flat field half a mile away. They were still a quarter of a mile off when a sudden cry of dismay burst from the whole party. A great tongue of flame, red, fierce and curling, had leapt from the doorway of the sphere, lighting up the snow all round with a lurid glare.

Instantly they began to run towards it. They had not covered a dozen yards when a human figure appeared right in the centre of the flame. It was Fink-Drummond. With a piercing scream he leapt down the snow-steps and raced away across the field.

His clothes were on fire and his shrieks of agony could have been heard a mile away as he floundered down the slope away from them.

Derek, who was leading the party, turned a little in his stride and raced after him while the others ran straight on towards the Ark. When they reached it they drew to an abrupt halt and stood there panting, their faces expressing every shade of fear, horror and distress.

Either deliberately in a fit of lunacy, or through some accident, Fink-Drummond must have set light to the petrol tanks in the bilge of the Ark. Its interior was now a white-hot furnace. There was no way in which they could enter it, except by the door, and that was a roaring sheet of flame so fierce that they had to stand twenty yards away to prevent themselves being scorched.

There was nothing whatever that they could do. They were compelled to stand there in helpless misery, watching while the angry fire devoured all their possessions and all those stores which meant their very hope of life.

Five minutes later, Derek came panting back to them. 'He's dead,' he gasped. 'He fell before I caught up with him. If only the poor fool had had the sense to roll in the snow instead of running away like that he might have saved himself; but every stitch he had on was burnt to a cinder. The shock must have killed him.'

The flames issuing from the Ark gradually grew less fierce. After a time they died down to a flicker and Gervaise, mounting the snow-bank which had only partially melted, peered over the charred platform into the Ark's interior. The deck was gone, the partitions had disappeared; all that was left was a heap of glowing ashes. He stumbled down the bank again and joined the others.

They were still standing there half an hour later, robbed of initiative, utterly stricken by this appalling catastrophe. The brief wintry afternoon was nearly over; night was approaching. They had nothing but the clothes they stood up in and they were alone, friendless, foodless, fireless, in the grim, snowbound Arctic,

The Frozen World

They were at their wit's end to know what to do. All Hemmingway's academic knowledge was now completely useless. Sam's flair for dealing with obstreperous shareholders of company meetings and shaking world markets left him with no more idea than a child how to cope with the situation. Derek's knowledge of the countryside at home in England could not help him to maintain the party in this totally different climate. Margery could cook but she was helpless without food and fire. Even Lavina, whose presence would have cheered most people who were temporarily stranded, had not the power to raise their spirits now that it seemed that they were condemned to die there. It was Gervaise who showed his natural capacity for leadership.

'Come,' he said, rousing at last, 'it's no good our remaining here. We must seek shelter for the night.'

Margery shrugged despairingly. 'What shelter is there? We've spent two days looking for the house Sam and Hemmingway saw when we first arrived here, but we haven't found it; so we certainly shan't be able to in the darkness.'

'I didn't suppose we could,' Gervaise replied shortly; 'but we still have an hour's twilight and we've got to find shelter somewhere from this wind, even if it's only under a hedge.'

Turning on his heel, he led them back towards the higher ground and selected a place half a mile from the burnt-out Ark where two snow-banks, covering high hedges, met at right-angles in the corner of a field. Derek and Hemmingway still had the spades so he set them to dig out the snow from the drift and pack it into a third wall. He then sent Sam and the two girls off to collect any broken branches or brushwood they could find by turning up the snow under the nearest large trees.

As they brought it in he arranged it just outside the opening of the three-sided pen which the two younger men were forming. Soon there was a big enough pile and he managed to light some dead twigs from some old papers they had in their pockets and a petrol lighter. Even when the bonfire blazed up he would not allow the party to rest, but made them continue gathering wood so that they should have a sufficient supply to keep the fne going throughout the night.

Except for the wind, from which they were protected in their pen. the weather was clement. Darkness fell and the stars came out overhead, but Gervaise was still not satisfied. He made them strip the half-decayed leaves from the branches that had been brought in until they had two big piles apiece; one to use as a pillow on the snow-ledge that Hemmingway had fashioned, and the other, a much larger one, in which to bury their feet.

He then ordered them to take off their outer coats. Margery's, Lavina's and his own he spread on the ground, after which he said that they must lie down in a row as close as they could get to one another, spread the remaining three coats over them and pile up the heaps of leaves over their feet and ankles. Derek and Hemmingway took the two outside places in the row, as they had volunteered to watch alternately and keep the fire going through the night with fresh supplies of fuel. Gervaise and Sam came next, with the two girls in the centre.

As they had hollowed out places for their hips they were not uncomfortable and, crowded close together, they were surprised at the warmth they obtained from each other's bodies when they were lying at full length under the shelter of the hedges and the wall.

Once they had time to think, their thoughts were chaotic. Nightmarish speculations about their impending fate through cold or starvation flickered through their brains. Unless they could find some human habitation it did not seem possible that they could manage to exist for long under such terrible conditions, and, even if they could find a house, where were they to get food with which to support themselves through the long Arctic winter? But they were very tired after their long day's tramp, the shock of- seeing their refuge and all it

K contained destroyed, and their recent labours, and, one by one, they dropped off to sleep.

When morning dawned the fire was still burning brightly. Derek and Hemmingway had fulfilled their task and, waking each other at intervals, had kept it going. Having warmed themselves at it they decided to set off at once, as they had nothing to pack and only the two spades to carry with them. Every moment was precious as, if they failed to discover some place that they could make a permanent headquarters while they devoted their energies to searching for food, it was certain that cold and hunger would put an end to them within the next few days. Since they had not succeeded in locating the grey stone house on two previous expeditions it seemed foolish to expend further time in looking for it; yet they had no idea which direction would give them the best prospect of coming upon some distant habitation.

'I think our best plan,' Gervaise announced, 'is to make for the highest ground we can see. Jan Mayen Island is about forty miles long but only five to ten miles broad. If we can reach a spot where we can get a good view in several directions we should be able to see the sea. Once we've done that, we must head for it and follow the coast-line until we find a village, as it's certain that in an island like this nearly all the inhabitants would live down by the shore.'

For an hour they trudged slowly but determinedly on, plodding through the crisp snow up the gentle slopes towards the higher ground to the north. Crossing a high bank they came down into a broad, snowy bottom. They followed it for some distance until they arrived at a place where it was intersected by another shallower valley, the sides of which were less than 20 feet in height and were, in fact, only banks crowned by buried hedges.

It was Hemmingway who suddenly pointed to one of the corners of the intersection and began to run towards it. Almost at the same second the others also noticed that the top of a signpost was protruding some feet above the snow. They followed his lead and, coming to a halt, stood there spellbound with amazement.

The signpost had two arms, one of which read: 'woodside place 1 Mile', and the other 'london 19 Miles'.

Lavina began to laugh. To find such a thing in the Arctic Circle was positively fantastic and, quite obviously, beyond the bounds of possibility. Throwing her arms round her father's neck, she cried:

'You darling old silly, with your funny calculations! You were right off the map, my sweet—right off the map. We're still in England.'

It was impossible to believe that she was not right. The signpost stared them in the face and forbade all argument; yet Gervaise remained utterly bewildered.

He had taken two observations on each occasion that he had shot the sun and had taken the altitude of half a dozen stars as well. It was inconceivable that those could all be wrong and every one of them had worked out to show that their position was within a few minutes of 71 degrees 25 minutes north.

Hemmingway, who had checked his sums, supported him in his assertion that his calculations had been correct, but the fact that the country with its meadows, little woods and small fields was so like England bore out the message of the signpost.

As they set out to explore a little farther, taking the wider of the two valleys which they now had reason to believe was a road, Lavina said:

'I wonder what part of England we're in? I've never heard of Woodside Place. Have any of you?' 'No,' murmured the others, and Sam added: 'Wherever it is it's only nineteen miles from London.' 'Perhaps,' said Gervaise, 'but I wouldn't be too certain of that. There's just a chance that some mad Englishman may have settled on Jan Mayen Island and put the signpost up for a joke. The sun and the stars can't lie, you know, and it's very easy to take accurate observations with a sextant; in fact, if you've once learnt how, as I did many years ago, it's impossible to make a mistake.'

For a time they trudged on in silence, depressed again by the thought that his theory of the mad Englishman might conceivably be right, but twenty minutes later they came to another crossroads which also had a signpost. It had three arms which read respectively: 'woodhill Mile', 'London 18 Miles', 'hat-field 3 Miles'.

That settled the question. Not only were they in England, but they were on the northern outskirts of London in the county of Hertfordshire.

At last they were able to give rein to their feelings. The hunger they had been beginning to feel from having had neither supper nor breakfast, the cold, and the loss of all their possessions were all forgotten as they joyfully took the road south, to London. But Gervaise was still extremely puzzled about his calculations being so many hundreds of miles out, and as they marched along he began to postulate a theory which might account for it.

'You may remember,' he said, 'how Oliver mentioned on one occasion that some scientists believe the South Sea Islands to be the remnants of another great comet which hit the earth many millenniums ago. There is a theory about the axis of the earth which ties up with that. Most of the planets revolve with the plane of their equators horizontal to the sun so that there are no seasons and the climate on different parts of their surface remains the same the whole year round. The theory is that our earth was like that originally, but when this first great comet hit it in the South Pacific the blow was so terrific that it threw it right off its axis, shifting the North Pole from a spot about degrees north of Scotland to its present position—or rather, to that which we know it to have occupied before the new comet hit us; and that instead of swinging back again the earth, from then on, revolved round a new axis at a tilt of 23| degrees to the sun.'

'The business of the mammoths supports that,' said Hemmingway. 'Their remains are found in Siberia and in the Andes at high altitudes where the climate of the world as we knew it would have made it quite impossible for such animals to live.'

'How about the ice ages, though?' Lavina inquired. 'The ice caps shifted up and down, didn't they? So for long periods when there wasn't much ice Siberia might have been quite warm enough for them to live in.'

'That doesn't explain the mammoths in the Andes. There is a high plateau in Peru which is not more than 10 degrees south of the equator, and the southern ice cap certainly never got as far north as that. On the plateau there are the bones of hundreds and hundreds of mammoths. The only explanation for their all being found together is that the place must have once been a mammoths' feeding-ground, and the fact that they could not possibly have lived at such a height, owing to its low temperature, proves that they were all wiped out by some sudden and drastic change of climate before they had time to migrate to pastures nearer the sea level. No one has been able to explain what could have caused such a change; but Ger-vaise's theory of the shifting of the axis of the earth would certainly do so.'

'Exactly!' agreed Gervaise quickly. 'And I suggest that since our comet hit the earth in the Northern Pacific, it threw the earth back again practically on to its original axis. We know too, that the impact occurred in longitude 165 degrees west so, if I'm right, the new North Pole must be some 20 degrees farther south on the 15th parallel of longitude east, which would place it approximately on the coast of north-western Norway. In consequence, Britain would be well up within the Arctic Circle.'

The others agreed that his reasoning offered the only possible explanation which tallied with the two established facts that they were only about twenty miles north of London and yet their latitude was 71 degrees north. But, after a moment, Lavina said gloomily:

'In that case we'll still have to spend the rest of our lives like Eskimos, so it doesn't seem that we're much better off than we were before.'

'Oh, yes, we are,' Sam hastened to reassure her. 'All London is ours for the taking. Houses, food, furs, jewels. Why, you'll be able to sleep in the Queen's bed at Buckingham Palace for the rest of your life if you want to.'

'That would be rather fun,' she admitted. 'I hadn't thought of it quite that way. The whole idea of London being a city of the dead is so terrible, but I suppose we'll get used to that, and once we do there'll be all sorts of queer ways in which we can amuse ourselves.'

'I think I shall make my headquarters in the British Museum,' said Gervaise thoughtfully. 'Some of the manuscripts may have been damaged by the water, which is tragic, but being packed side by side on their shelves the volumes can't have suffered very much. It's a little awe-inspiring, though, for a bibliophile like myself suddenly to find that the greatest library in the world is his for the taking.'

Suddenly Hemmingway began to laugh, and on Sam's asking what had bitten him, he replied: 'All our lives long we've been striving to make money. You and I, Sam, have been pretty successful. Gervaise and Derek haven't striven so hard but a few months ago both of them would have found a few thousands apiece very useful. Now, all of us are billionaires—multi-billionaires. The jewels in the Tower of London, the gold in the Bank of England, the script and securities of the greatest city in the world are all ours if we like to go and collect them. But we shan't, because they're utterly useless to us.'

'Not quite,' said Lavina. 'The Koh-i-noor, or whatever the big diamond is in the top of the crown, would have a much more appropriate setting if I wore it in my hair.'

'That's all very well,' grunted Derek, 'but d'you realise that there's not a horse left alive; and there's not a partridge or a pheasant, nor even any eggs to restock the coverts.'

'You'll still be able to fish,' Hemmingway consoled him. 'Cut a nice hole in the ice of the Thames and put a light down it as the Eskimos do. That attracts the fish, then you can spear them.'

Derek gave him a supercilious smile. 'Evidently you're not a fisherman, or you'd know that that sort of thing isn't fishing.'

Margery brought them all down to earth by suddenly remarking : 'It's all very well for you to talk about fun and jewels and living in Buckingham Palace or the British Museum and things like that, but you're not being very practical. What we have to find are a few small houses which can be easily run so that there's not too far to carry the food from their kitchens.'

'That's right,' Sam nodded. 'And, after all, what more do we want as long as we've got food and fire and comfortable beds to sleep in? I'm afraid we've rather overlooked the fact, too, that we've still got the best part of twenty miles to walk to London.'

'Now we're on the main road we'll find plenty of houses to rest in,' said Gervaise. 'A great many of the jerry-built places outside London will have been demolished by the flood, like those cottages we came upon the other day, but I should think that most of the better built places will still be standing.'

He had hardly spoken when they came round a bend in the road and saw a good-sized house among some trees a quarter of a mile ahead. It was a two-storeyed building and a snowdrift, almost as high as the house, buried one wall. The roof was heavily covered and the only patches of mellow red brick which showed through the snow were under the front windows; but with a sense of fresh excitement they hurried forward, scrambled over the banked-up snow which hid a hedge, and approached the front door.

All the windows of the house had given under the pressure of the water and stared at them blank and foreboding like the eye-sockets in a skull. The door had swollen from the wet so they had some difficulty in getting it open and, as Derek and Hemmingway forced it with their united weight, a mass of snow slid down from the porch upon the others. Shaking it off, they went inside.

There was a thin coating of ice on the floor of the hallway which crunched under their feet as they advanced and, just as they entered the first room on the right, Derek slipped and fell. The whole floor of the room was covered with a three-inch-thick layer of glassy ice from the flood water which had failed to drain away and stuck fast in it, at all sorts of odd angles were its furnishings, which looked as though they had been hurled about by a typhoon. Actually, the flood water had only swept the ornaments from their places and floated the lighter pieces of furniture up to the ceiling until, on its receding, they had been left scattered about the floor. Long icicles hung from the ceiling and the walls had a satin-like sheen from the frost rime that covered them.

It was a sitting-room equipped with pieces typical of middle-class England during the last three generations. Lavina sat down on the sofa, which had remained upright, but she promptly stood up again, as its appearance was extraordinarily deceptive. With its rather worn cretonne cover it did not outwardly appear very different from any other sofa, but the whole thing had been water-logged during the flood and frozen afterwards so that it was now as solid as a piece of iron.

Margery had gone straight through to the back of the house and she called to them from the kitchen. When they joined her they found her in the larder. It contained the half of a cold chicken, some eggs, fruit and other oddments. The discolouration of the fruit showed that it had gone bad, although it was now frozen solid. The eggs were encased in a solid pack of ice as the flood water, which had filled the bowl in which they were, had had no means of draining away; while several broken plates and odd items of food lay half buried in the ice on the floor where they had been swept when the waters had gushed through the larder window.

They were all now ravenously hungry and Derek immediately suggested: 'How about a meal before we go any farther?'

'That's just what I was thinking,' Margery laughed, laying hold of the dish on which the chicken reposed to wrench it up from its bed of ice.

'Don't bother with that chicken,' said Gervaise quickly. 'It was submerged in the flood for forty-three days at least and it must have gone bad long before it became frozen. The eggs will be bad too. We must see if we can find any food in tins.'

In a kitchen cupboard they found some tins of sweet-corn and salmon; also some pots of jam, although there were no bread or biscuits with which to eat it. They were so cold that they badly needed a hot meal, so Margery said:

'There won't be any gas or electricity but I could heat up the sweet-corn and salmon if some of you will get a fire going in the sitting-room.'

Instead of going outside to see if there was a supply of coal or wood in a nearby shed, Derek, having found a chopper, returned to the front room and began to hack some of the lighter furniture to pieces: remarking as he did so that, as they would have the whole stock of Harrod's, Maple's and Hampton's from which to choose at their leisure, they could well afford to use the stuff in their temporary quarters for firewood. Hemmingway, who had joined him and was busily applying the poker to a hideous Victorian cabinet, replied:

'You can have all the furniture shops and Mr. Drage's plain vans as well. I intend to furnish my flat with some of the pieces from the South Kensington Museum. As for this hideous muck, I derive a peculiar joy from smashing it.' Lighting a fire was not as easy as they had imagined. The

wood lit all right but huge clouds of smoke bellowed out from the fireplace and it was soon apparent that the chimney was blocked, probably by ice or snow. After an equally fruitless attempt in the grate of the dining-room, which lay on the other side of the hall, they carried their remaining supplies of broken wood back to the kitchen on Gervaise's suggesting that their only course was now to light a fire on its stone floor.

The mess of sweet-corn and salmon was eventually cooked, but only after the greatest difficulties. And, as the bonfire filled the room with smoke and melted the ice on the floor and the icicles which hung from the ceiling, they ate in considerable discomfort.

After this unsatisfactory experiment they again took the road to London. A hundred yards along it they came to a big mound in its middle which, on examination, proved to be a buried car that had overturned and still had its frozen passengers in it. Farther on they found other humps concealing more wrecked cars, vans and lorries. It was past midday when they left the house, and trudging through the snow was heavy work so it was half past one by the time they entered Potters Bar.

Since finding the first house, where they had cooked their meal, they had seen others almost constantly along the sides of the highway; some standing back from the road in their own gardens, others in rows; but most of the rows had been demolished by the flood and were now only indicated by long, snow-covered humps at the roadside. Many of the single houses, too, had collapsed and in those which remained every window had been broken.

At three o'clock they were passing through Monken Hadley, where the buildings became more numerous, and half an hour later, in the middle of Barnet, they came to a place where the road disappeared, being completely blocked. At first they wondered what the snow-covered eminence in their path might be but as they mounted it the uneven surface beneath the snow soon showed them that they were walking on heaped-up bricks. A whole block of shops and flats had collapsed and been swept by the flood right into the middle of the highway. Here and there things projected from it; the top of a lamp-post, a broken wireless mast with a tangled aerial still attached and a stout pole, from the top of which dangled a cord with some snow-whitened lumps which proved on investigation to be frozen articles of clothing still pegged on to a washing line.

The light of the short, wintry afternoon was fading so when they had passed over the great mound they set about looking for a suitable place in which to pass the night. Now that twilight was falling the snow made it difficult to pick out from a distance the houses that were still standing, as only an occasional slab of wall or tree trunk from which the snow had fallen relieved the blank whiteness of the landscape.

After a little they came to a flat-roofed building on a corner where two roads crossed. Its door stood wide open and, on going in, they found it to be a road-house. Great heaps of snow had drifted in through the open doorway and half filled the lounge, partially covering many of the brightly painted tables and chairs which had been thrown into heaps by the flood.

Forcing open a door at one side of the lounge they found it led to an office. The hideously swollen figure of a drowned man, now frozen stiff, was set fast in three inches of ice through which they could still see the carpet. They shut the door quickly and tried another on the far side of the lounge.

It opened into a bar where most of the bottles had been swept from the shelves by the inrush of the waters, their broken fragments frozen into the glassy surface of the floor making it as dangerous to walk on as the top of a park wall. Red-topped stools were scattered about in confusion and the till on the counter stood open.

Picking their way carefully through the broken glass they looked at the labels of the unbroken bottles, selected one of Cherry Brandy which was almost full, and had a couple of rounds of extremely welcome drinks. The liqueur warmed them up and they set about exploring the small hotel with renewed vigour.

It was getting dark now but they found some candles in the kitchen and, when several of them were lit, the place looked like some weird, fairy cavern as the light glinted on the icicles, the frozen floor and the snow which had drifted in through the windows, turning them to rainbow hues. There was a fair supply of food, all of which had gone bad before it had been frozen; but in a cupboard they found some tins of soup, sardines, vegetables and fruit as well as some bottles of coffee essence. Delighted with their find, which ensured them of several future meals, they hurried upstairs.

Each room had to be broken into as the doors had first swollen and then been frozen. In one room they came upon three more corpses; one, that of a woman, having been left by the receding waters dangling grotesquely from the top of a wardrobe. The sight of the poor drowned bodies made them feel slightly sick so they quickly left them and busied themselves choosing other rooms in which to sleep.

They were tired now after their long day and very cold. All of them were longing for a quick evening meal to warm them up and the joy of crawling between the sheets of comfortable beds immediately afterwards to sink into a long deep sleep.

But suddenly they realised that they were faced with a horrid problem. As with the sofa upon which Lavina had sat down in the house where they had had their midday meal, all the beds and bedding were frozen solid. How could they possibly unfreeze and dry them again so that they could be used that night?

Life Must Go On

For a few moments they dejectedly discussed various methods of setting to work. The sheets and blankets could not be pulled off the beds as they were frozen to the mattresses and to have endeavoured to hack them off would have torn them in pieces. The only solution seemed to be to thaw out each set of bedding at one operation and as no ordinary fire would give out enough heat for such a proceeding Gervaise said that they must light a super bonfire.

Through the broken window of the back bedroom in which they were talking they could see a smaller building only about a hundred yards away across the garden and, going downstairs, they walked over to it. The place was a fair-sized cottage, evidently much older than the inn as it was half-timbered and had no electric fittings.

'Our luck is in,' said Gervaise. 'This place will suit us admirably, and as the people here used oil lamps there must be a drum of paraffin about somewhere.'

In the kitchen they found one two-thirds full, so returning with it to the living-room they smashed up the lighter furniture, piled the heavier pieces on top of it, sprinkled the whole heap with the paraffin and, touching the oil off with a match, ran out of the cottage.

For some moments Gervaise was anxious as to whether his plan would work. He feared that the snow in the room and the ice that saturated the furnishings would prevent the fire getting a good hold as they thawed and sputtered down into it. But, with an angry hissing, the flames licked at the beams which spanned the ceiling and the fire was soon eating through the floor boards of the room above.

The next job was to get the beds down into the garden. When one of them had been hacked free of the frozen floor it was found that owing to the weight of the ice with which it was laden it was much too heavy to carry downstairs, so the men of the party heaved it out of a window and others after it; then laboriously dragged them through the snow over to the cottage, from the sitting-room window of which big flames were now spurting.

It was a tiring, muscle-wrenching business and darkness had long fallen by the time they had got six beds set up on end in a row before the glowing pile of red-hot logs and bricks; but the fire also served to revitalise them with its heat after their long day in this new and terrible frozen world.

Margery, meanwhile, had thawed out some of the tinned food and boiled some snow on a small fire that Lavina had made in a brick surround on the concrete floor of a garage which adjoined the kitchen of the inn. They fed round the fire and having washed the meal down with some drinks from the bar they re-crossed the garden to see whether their beds had thawed.

The sheets and blankets had fallen away from the sodden mattresses and, now wringing with water, were lying in heaps on the wet ground. Having wrung them out as well as they could they hung them up on a wire fence which the melting snow had disclosed at the side of the cottage. While the men turned the mattresses and prevented the clothes from scorching, the girls made a tour of the hotel bedrooms and collected such items as they could find which might prove useful and brought these too down to be thawed at the roaring blaze.

It was past one in the morning before the mattresses were thoroughly dry and fit to sleep on without fear of chills or rheumatism. Carrying them back to the inn they laid them out on the billiards-tables of a big games-room next to the lounge Still in their clothes they drew the blankets over them and fell asleep, utterly exhausted.

When they were awakened by the pale morning light it was snowing again with that same gentle persistence which had marked the previous five-day blizzard, and Gervaise said he thought it would be inadvisable to attempt to go farther until the fall had ceased. After breakfast, as it seemed that the snow might keep them there for another night, they set to work trying to make the place as habitable as possible.

The cottage across the garden was now a pile of blackened embers, smoking and hissing as the snow drifted down on to it. By turning up the crust of ash with their spades they were able to warm themselves at the red embers which still glowed underneath and to thaw several pairs of curtains for nailing up across the broken windows of the rooms they were occupying, to keep out the snow and wind. Hemmingway had wandered off on his own and when they got back they found that he had collected three buckets from the garage. He was busy knocking holes in them with a hammer and spike, as he said:

'If we set these up on bricks we can turn them into braziers and thaw the rooms properly. There's plenty of coke in the boiler house although one of us will have to hack it out with a pickaxe.'

Derek volunteered for the job and in half an hour they had the braziers going in the kitchen. Water dripped from the ceiling and sweated from the walls, temporarily making the place extremely uncomfortable, but Sam found a broom with which to sweep away the slush from the floor while Gervaise nailed the curtains across the windows. By midday they had at least made the room habitable.

It was now over two days since they had left their comfortable quarters in the Ark, and ever since it had been burnt out there had been so many vital things to do, if they were to keep the life in their bodies, that they had had no opportunity to clean themselves up at all. The men's faces had an ugly stubble and the girls' hair was limp and bedraggled. Even Lavina could not bear to look at herself in a glass any more. One hasty glance in the bar-room mirror when they had arrived at the inn had shocked her beyond belief. Her hair was straight and wispy and her cheeks sunken so that her high cheek-bones had an unusual prominence in her thin little face. Beneath her eyes there were black shadows and the tiny, blue veins in her eyelids were swollen, giving them the appearance of having been heavily mascaraed, but she had actually been much too weary to do anything about herself.

After the midday meal, being a little restored by warmth and food, they boiled some snow on the braziers and began to clean themselves; the men using the shaving gear, etc., of the dead hotel proprietor and the girls the toilet articles which they discovered in some of the bedrooms.

That evening they discussed their future plans. Gervaise pointed out that if they remained where they were the small stock of tinned food which they had found in the road-house would soon become exhausted. They would then have to forage for further supplies, a tin here and a tin there, in the houses in the neighbourhood. At the rate the snow was settling it looked as though they might be snowed up before long. If that occurred their forays for food would become more and more difficult as on each they would have to go farther afield. It was essential therefore that they should get to London with the least possible delay and find a new refuge, with abundant stocks of food, which they could use as a permanent headquarters.

Hemmingway agreed, and added that now they were on a main road, which had houses on both sides for most of the way, there was little chance of their losing their direction; so there was no reason why they should not move on the following day, even if it was snowing, provided that it was not blowing an absolute blizzard.

Sam put up the objection that wherever they halted next they would be faced with the same appalling conditions. That meant that they would only be able to do a short stage each morning and must devote every afternoon to the grim labour of preparing a refuge for the night. Surely it would be better, therefore, to wait for a fine day when they would have a reasonable chance of covering the ten or twelve miles to London, and work all night if need be, when they had arrived, to make themselves the beginnings of permanent quarters there.

The argument was settled for them by the weather, as next day dawned clear again. The snow clouds had discharged their cargo and the sun was brighter than they had yet seen it. Having had the best part of a day's rest and an early night, they were able to set off a little after eight o'clock.

Although the sun was shining there were no signs of a permanent thaw. They estimated the general depth of the snow to be about six feet deep, but in places it had piled up in drifts that were as much as fifteen feet in height. The temperature was still far below zero and the previous day's snow had frozen solid making a hard crust which, apart from occasional pitfalls, made fairly easy going.

In order to save themselves the labour of thawing out fresh bedding they took their blankets and sheets with them, tied round their bodies like bandoliers. Derek, Sam and Hemmingway each carried in addition one of the bucket-braziers, into which they had packed the remainder of the unused tinned foods from the inn, some bottles of drink, and various oddments such as the chopper, candles, razors, soap etc., which would come in useful.

As they advanced they came upon many hummocks in and alongside the roadway, which concealed abandoned cars and lorries. When they rested for a little at 9.15, on the slope of another great, snow-covered mound of rubble which blocked the highway, Sam, who knew the road well, was able to tell them that the debris had formed part of Whetstone.

Soon afterwards the road divided and they took the right-hand fork, reaching Finchley by half-past ten. After another rest they pressed on again, arriving just after midday at Golders Green, where they sat down to lunch off some of the cold food they had brought. There was no possibility of mistaking the point at which they had arrived as Sam, Hemmingway, Lavina and Derek were all able to identify the clock tower, near which they ate their lunch, and the long snow-covered roof of the station on the far side of the open square. Part of the station roof had fallen in, as had several of the houses, but most of the blocks were still standing. Further out of London the silence had not seemed unnatural, but here, while they sat eating their picnic lunch on a site that most of them had seen filled with the bustle of modern life, it seemed extraordinary and rather frightening.

By half-past twelve they were on their way again, passing between big banks of snow along the roadsides which partially obscured the low houses set back amid their gardens. As they trudged on the going became more difficult. The sunshine was melting the upper crust of snow, and walking in overcoats with blankets tied round them made warm work. Coming down the Finchley Road past the eastern portion of Hampstead the trek became more laborious still, as most of the way had been lined with big blocks of buildings and many of these had fallen in so that at times the road entirely disappeared.

To their right, as they went downhill, they could get a view of London between the piles of snow-covered ruins, but in spite of the sunshine it was difficult to get a clear impression of the great metropolis. Every roof and spire was snow-covered, which blurred the outlines, and, except for buildings in the foreground, the countless thousands of houses, innumerable big blocks and well-known landmarks all merged into an uneven carpet of white which stretched as far as the eye could see.

It was three o'clock before they reached the easily distinguishable road junctions at Swiss Cottage, after which the way proved better for a little while as they were once more passing through an area where the houses stood back from the road, but soon the way was again choked by debris where several large blocks of flats had been swept away. By the time they had got to St. John's Wood Church, where they paused for another snack and a welcome go at the liqueurs, they were all very tired, and the two girls were thoroughly fagged out.

Their thickest clothes, in which they had left the Ark, were only English winter weight and much too light to protect them properly from the rigours of this frozen world. Each time they halted there seemed to creep up their limbs a deathly chill which they could check only by flailing their arms and stamping their feet. Their faces tingled and their eyes smarted from the snow-glare.

Sam suggested that they should shelter in Lord's cricket pavilion for the night, but as there was still an hour or more to go before sunset Gervaise insisted that they should not lose the balance of the day's good weather now when, by a last effort, they could cover the remaining two miles into Central London.

At four o'clock they started off once more. The sun had lost its power and all traces of the temporary thaw which had set in at midday had disappeared. The snow crust had frozen solid again but, owing to the partial thaw, it was now treacherously glassy, which made walking hazardous.

The half mile south from St. John's Wood Church was not so bad, as for a good part of the way they had Regent's Park on their left but when they entered the north end of Baker Street their real troubles began. The Abbey Road Building Society's block still reared its tower to the sky, but great numbers of the shops and flats had been demolished by the flood. Instead of a broad thoroughfare Baker Street was an uneven

mass of snow-covered debris from ten to thirty feet in height.

At half-past five they were still only half-way along it, plodding and scrambling wearily from mound to mound of concealed bricks, beams and girders. Then, from the top of a high mound near the Telephone Exchange they sighted Selfridge's in the distance and all agreed that, somehow, they must reach it, as there they would be certain of finding everything they could want, as well as shelter for the night.

Soon afterwards it began to snow again, blotting out both the sinking sun and also the Selfridge building, which caused them extreme anxiety as they might now lose their way among the unidentifiable piles of demolished houses and shops. The next hour was a nightmare. Darkness fell, which added further to their difficulties; their extremities ached with the cold, their legs were giving under them and they were no longer certain that they were moving in the right direction as they dragged themselves wearily through the falling snow from one heap of rubble to another.

A little before seven they stumbled into a level space that Sam and Hemmingway felt reasonably certain must be Port-man Square. The girls were now almost fainting with fatigue but the men half-pulled, half-carried them for a further ten minutes up and down a fresh chaos of slopes and valleys until, to their unutterable relief, the great Selfridge building loomed up before them.

As soon as Sam was able to get his bearings he led the stumbling group back a little along Orchard Street to the annexe in which the Provision Department was situated. Its windows were shattered and snow was piled up eight feet deep on the pavement, half-filling the empty frames. They scrambled over it and down into the store. It was dark in there but they lit some of the precious candle-ends they had brought from Barnet and staggered forward.

The floor was slippery with ice and jagged with broken glass. Some of the counters must have floated about in the flood waters as they were piled up at all sorts of odd angles and, as at first the weary party could see no food, they thought that the place had been completely looted; but soon they discovered that most of the remaining stocks had been swept by the water to one side of the gloomy cavern that they were exploring and

had been frozen into a solid mass against the wall.

A brief examination of this glassy bank revealed it to be composed entirely of fruit and vegetables, so they turned through an opening into the next department. The same scene of havoc was shown as far as the flickering light of the candles penetrated, but to their relief they found there a considerable quantity of groceries among which were many tins and bottles, lying in scattered heaps about the frozen floor.

'The first thing to do is to get a fire going and warm ourselves,' said Gervaise after an effort to stop his teeth from chattering.

Lavina was almost crying with the cold. The tips of her ears and of her nose were smarting and her fingers ached so much that she thought they were going to drop off. 'Yes, for goodness' sake, get one going quickly!' she stuttered. 'Even if you have to burn down the whole building.'

'No need for that,' Derek grunted. 'Everything here's so frozen up it'd take a week to melt it.'

As he spoke he produced the chopper which he had brought with him and started hacking pieces off one of the wooden show-cases. Shaking with cold they worked until they had their three braziers going in a clear space near the middle of the department, then stood about them trying to restore some warmth to their chapped hands and half-frozen limbs.

'We'll have to make do as well as we can here tonight,' said Gervaise. 'It would take us hours to thaw out mattresses.'

'The carpet section is only above the next entrance so we might get down some piles of rugs,' Lavina suggested.

Taking the spades and a couple of candle-ends Sam and Hemmingway made their way along and up the ice-covered stone stairs. They found some woolly lamb-skin rugs and bashed at them till they fell apart, each a stiff, solid slab. As the rugs would have taken too long to thaw and dry they beat them. The ice among the springy wool was like spun glass and, once broken into powder, could be shaken out.

By the time they got downstairs with these makeshift mattresses the others had dug into the frozen piles of provisions and set some tins of soup on the fires to warm. Having drunk the soup they spread the rugs on some of the counters, converted their overcoats into pillows and, wrapping their blankets round them, did their best to get to sleep. The counters made hard beds but they were so exhausted that, one by one, they dropped off with the firelight still glowing and flickering on the strange scene about them.

Although it was late when they woke, only a gloomy half-light filtered through the gutted ground floor windows of the store as these were now almost filled with snow and the snow was still falling. Having breakfasted off a tinned tongue and some cafe au lait, which they mixed with snow and heated over one of the braziers, they prepared for the day's activities.

It was clear that with the vast resources of the great store at their disposal they could not find a better place for their permanent headquarters and their first business was to select a more comfortable spot in which to settle themselves. Putting out the fires they cooled the braziers with snow so that they could use them to transport the oddments they had accumulated. Then they climbed over the snow bank in one of the wind-dows, made their way to the main block and entered it by a window that gave on to the Tobacco Department.

Deep snow which had drifted in covered the wrecked cases near the windows, but farther in cigar cabinets, tobacco jars, pouches and lighters littered the place in incredible confusion; yet Lavina gave a little sigh of relief as she saw the tumble piles of cigarettes. Many of them were in tins and the others might still be good for smoking after they had been dried out. Passing into the Book Department they saw that although thousands of volumes lay heaped on its floors most of the shelves were still full, as the weight of the books had kept them from shifting. Scrambling over the piles of books to a back staircase they made their way upstairs.

Owing to the store's huge bulk its central departments had suffered comparatively little. The flood wave had been less violent when it reached them, and although show-cases and goods had been washed about and left in considerable confusion on the icy floors, no snow had swept so far in through the broken windows.

Beds were the first consideration and going to the Furniture Department on the first floor they took their choice. As the Department abutted on the big windows overlooking Oxford Street they moved the beds back behind the shelter of a row of lifts and decided to screen off this small section of the store. Derek and Hemmingway smashed up some of the surplus beds and relit the braziers while the rest went off to find bedding, screens and other items that they required. To their relief they did not come across any dead bodies but if any of them was alone for a few minutes they found the eerie silence of the place unnerving. It seemed to be peopled by the ghosts of countless dead shoppers, but the many jobs to be done left them little time to grow morbid. They all worked hard, contenting themselves with snatching a cold lunch, and by mid-afternoon had thawed out mattresses and pillows, provided themselves with screens, tables and chairs, and broken up a good stock of wood to keep their fires going.

While Lavina settled down to warm her feet at the blaze, Gervaise, Hemmingway and Derek returned to the Provision Department. Out in the street another blizzard was raging, but that worried them no longer as they had not far to go and, having buffeted their way through it, they pried a good variety of tinned stores from the icy piles, and several unbroken bottles of wine; all of which they carried back to their new quarters.

In the meantime Margery had taken Sam with her across to the Turnery Department, where she selected an oil stove and such cooking utensils as she would need. Later, it took Sam an hour's roaming round the store before he found a drum of paraffin, but by six o'clock they were all gathered together with food, drink, warmth and bedding. For the first time in four days their immediate anxieties were relieved and they were able to speculate on the future with some cheerfulness, Lavina becoming her old self again and keeping them in fits of laughter until they turned in for the night.

On their second morning at Selfrige's it was still snowing, so they set about improving their circumstances by collecting a canteen of silver, chinaware, glasses, rugs for the floor, games, a clock, candlesticks, books and all sorts of other items. But a little after eleven the snow stopped and Gervaise said to Hemmingway:

'I'm still extraordinarily puzzled by this amazing change of climate. Today is only the 19th of August yet we might be in Moscow in mid-winter. I believe my theory that the axis of the earth has been tilted by the comet must be right and that my observations in the Ark were correct. Now the sun has come out I'm going to try to find some instruments to check them.'

'We ought to be able to find a sextant in the Optical Department,' Hemmingway declared, 'and logarithm tables among the books. Let's get down to the ground floor and see.'

Amongst the piles of smashed glass and wreckage they found several sextants, undamaged in their plush-lined cases. Having selected one they took also two pairs of powerful binoculars. At the inner end of the Book Department, where the maps and other geographical matter were kept, they succeeded in finding the tables they wanted; then, crossing the small intervening street to the other building, they helped themselves to paper, rubbers, pencils and a set of geometrical instruments.

With this gear they mounted the stairs of the main block and, as the proper exit was hopelessly blocked, climbed out to the roof through a broken skylight. Before taking the altitude of the sun they mounted the iron staircase to the top of the two-storey tower overlooking the roof gardens for a good look over London through their binoculars. They were amazed to see, in the clear, frosty air, that towards the south a huge section of the city had been entirely blotted out. In the near distance they could see the tops of Grosvenor House and the Dorchester to their right, and the Air Force Headquarters in Berkeley Square to their left. Farther off, the modern tower of Westminister Cathedral was still standing, but Big Ben and the dome of St. Paul's had disappeared, evidently having been overthrown. The queer thing was, however, that about a mile away in each direction, towards the curve of the river, the rooftops of the medium-sized houses merged into a flat plain of snow. 'It looks to me as if the river is still flooded to a depth of from sixty to a hundred feet,' said Gervaise.

'Surely the water all over the world couldn't have risen as much as that,' Hemmingway murmured doubtfully.

'One would hardly think so, but the water in the Thames Valley may have frozen over before the flood had time to seep away to a permanent level. There may be several feet of solid ice out there which is supported by the houses. But by this time an air cavity might have been created below it as the flood water runs out into the sea which must still remain unfrozen a few hundred miles farther south.'

'That's about it,' Hemmingway agreed. 'Anyhow, as it's just on midday, let's shoot the sun.'

The simple operation was soon completed and there was no question that the latitude of London was now 71 degrees 14 minutes north instead of 51 degrees 30 minutes north as it had been before the deluge. The city was nearly 20 degrees nearer to the North Pole.

'All the same, you were wrong about our longitude,' Hemmingway remarked. 'Must have been, as we know that London is on 0 and you made us 9 degrees west.'

Gervaise smiled. 'But if the earth has been thrown off its old axis, as we are now quite certain that it has been, the longitude of London would have altered too.'

'No. Latitude is calculated from the Equator to the Poles so, if they shift, the latitude of every place on the earth shifts too; but longitude is calculated from London so, however cockeyed the earth becomes, London is still neither east nor west, but dead on zero.'

'Theoretically, yes; but, in practice, surely all the astronomical tables would be thrown out by an alteration in the point of rising of the sun? I don't know sufficient about astronomy to prove my point, but one thing is beyond doubt. We are now right up in the new Arctic Circle.'

'Sure,' Hemmingway agreed, 'and it's one hell of a nasty thought.'

When they went below they found that Sam was preparing to set out on a visit to St. James's Square. The others thought it rather pointless, as everything which had remained unruined by the flood was available in the store, but he said that he preferred his own clothes to ready-made ones and intended to collect a bag full. Hemmingway volunteered to accompany him so they had an early lunch and the two friends started out at a quarter past one.

As snow began to fall again in the mid-afternoon the others became extremely anxious about them, but they got back after a three-hours' absence and had a strange story to tell of the changed face of London. Where the streets and squares still remained unblocked by rubble they were now twelve feet deep in snow, but the queer part about it was that where the surface should have sloped downwards in Berkeley Square it no Ion-ger did so. The little valley at the bottom of Hay Hill had been filled up so that, in passing it, they were on the level of the second-floor windows. The same thing had occurred on the far side of Piccadilly where the road level should again have sloped south and west. Urged by curiosity to see more of this odd change, they had turned left towards the Ritz and found that the whole of the Green Park was buried under many feet of snow and ice, and that only the top storey of Buckingham Palace showed above it in the distance.

Turning back they had reached St. James's Square, which was submerged to its second-floor windows but before going into the house they had penetrated south-west as far as Trafalgar Square. Nelson's column was broken off short and the square was submerged to a depth of over thirty feet, while the roofs of the buildings at the lower end of Whitehall only just appeared, like a row of bungalows, above the snow line.

They returned with a couple of heavy bags containing clothes for themselves and a certain number of things for Lavina but their journey back had been difficult. At half-past three a bitter wind had started to blow, and with it had come the snow, driving so thick and fast they could see no more than a dozen yards ahead and had constantly had to check their bearings.

On Lavina's inquiring how the house had fared, Sam told her that it had been impossible to descend to the downstairs rooms as they were full of ice, while the upper ones were in the usual state of chaos and part of the roof had fallen in owing to the weight of show. Before packing the clothes they had had to get a small fire going to thaw them partially; a process which they set about completing on their return.

Fortunately the others had made and lit additional braziers in their absence, as they had been selecting entirely new outfits of clothes that afternoon, all of which had to be thawed. Lavina had also had a grand time in the Jewellery and Perfumery Departments, while Gervaise and Derek were transporting a supply of cigarettes and, at her special request, a ping-pong table upon which they played after dinner that night.

The blizzard continued the following day and the snow level in Oxford Street had now risen to fifteen feet, bringing it up to the sills of the first-floor windows of the store.

On the previous evening Derek had noticed some canvas baths in the Camping Department so he brought them down after breakfast and, having boiled a number of kettles of water on the braziers, they were all able to enjoy the luxury of a warm tub.

When they had dressed again it seemed to most of them that during the last twenty-four hours their prospects had assumed a much more roseate hue but they were soon to be sadly disillusioned as Gervaise, who had been watching the snow most of the morning with a worried look on his fine, lined face, called a conference after lunch.

'I'm afraid,' he said, 'that as leader of our party it falls to me to put forward a proposal which some of you may not regard at all favourably; but I have been considering it for the past two days and it's only right that I should place the facts before you.

'As you know, London is now situated in the same latitude as that of Greenland before the deluge. I checked that quite definitely with Hemmingway yesterday. Mercifully we have been spared the horror of seeing the thousands of drowned and mutilated bodies which must lie all about us under the snow; but the thing which concerns us is that London must now for ever remain a city of the dead.

'The Arctic winter is only just setting in. You have seen for yourselves how the level of the snow has risen in these last few days. Blizzards will continue for many weeks to come, so that long before the winter is over the whole city will be buried in snow and ice. During the flood walls, roofs, floors all became saturated. As water expands when it freezes every structure beneath the snow line is now cracked and would fall to pieces if it were not for the ice which still binds it. When the spring comes a thaw will set in. Everything, even the wrongest buildings, will crash in heaps of ruins; then, after a brief Siberian summer, they will be buried deep in snow and ice again.

'We might drag out a miserable existence through the winter, like cave-dwellers, living many feet under the surface of the snow and moving to other places when our stores here are exhausted, but, when the thaw comes, the thousands of dead bodies will be exposed again and pestilence will set in. It is unthinkable that we could live through next summer with rotting bodies in every house and street. I know we've made ourselves comfortable here; that we seem to have everything that any reasonable person placed in our strange situation could want, and that for a little time we are apparently secure from every hardship and danger. But it is only a temporary security. That is why, however much we may dislike the idea, we have to go on the march again and leave this City of Death behind us.'

'Leave London!' gasped Lavina.

'Yes. And at once. Every day we delay will make things harder for us as places along the road where we can get supplies will become more difficult to break into. And if we wait until the spring it will be impossible to break into them at all before the thaw comes; because they will be buried too deep. We would be caught too, before we had gone fifty miles, by the plague that will sweep right over England. That is why we must go now.'

'But where can we go?' asked Sam in a low, worried voice.

'To a part of the world that is not frozen. The Equator is now twenty degrees farther south; but conditions there must be much the same as they were in the old equatorial belt. Therefore, there are still semi-tropical lands below the new ice-caps which are forming so rapidly. I know I'm asking you to face incredible hardships but somehow we must make the journey out of this land of death to a country beyond the ice-caps where we can dig the soil and make food grow.

'To live like animals in a burrow, feeding on such tinned food as we can find, until we're overtaken by pestilence and die miserable death is no fitting end for people of spirit. It may be that we are the last survivors of the human race. Whatever your beliefs, have any of you the temerity to suggest that among all these countless thousands of the dead we have not been spared for a purpose? Life is in our keeping, and Life must go on. Whatever the dangers and difficulties, we must cross the frozen Channel into France and march south to the Mediterranean.'

'I can't!' wailed Margery suddenly. 'I can't! I can't!'

'You will,' Gervaise said firmly. 'I am determined that we shall live or die in an attempt to preserve that thing which makes us different from the animals. Tomorrow we take the Dover Road.'

The Dover Road

There was no argument. They all knew that Gervaise was right. If they were to die it would be better to do so soon, numbed into sleep, after a gallant failure, by the coldness of the snow than to cling on for a few brief months tortured by the thought of being stricken down by plague in the coming spring. It was now clear, too, that their one hope of escaping that agonising death lay in starting at once while they would still have easy access to the houses on their route.

That afternoon, very silent and subdued, they made their preparations; visiting many departments of the store and collecting every item they could think of which might make their trek across the snowy world a little easier.

From the sports rooms they carried down a fair-sized sledge, snow-shoes, snow goggles, ski-sticks and three folding tents, each six feet long by four wide by four high, as these would be simpler to erect than one large one. Hemmingway collected maps and instruments while Gervaise selected the food, which had to be easily portable and highly nutritive and stimulating. Such items as glucose, Brand's Essence, Horlicks Malted Milk Tablets, Oxo cubes and tins of Bantam coffee figured largely in his choice. To eliminate the possibility of breakages he filled a number of silver flasks with brandy while for light and fuel he took candles, two Primus stoves, methylated spirit and a drum of paraffin.

Then all of them went in search of clothes suitable for their journey, selecting fur coats with big collars, fur gloves, fur-lined boots, baggy trousers that could be tucked into the tops of thick socks, loose jerkins and light, woollen underclothes of which three sets could be worn one on top of the other as a better protection against the cold than a single, thicker garment. All of these had to be thawed out and dried, after which they sewed the collars of the fur coats into hoods and a number of fur rugs into sleeping-bags. They put in eight hours' hard work with only a short break for dinner, but by ten o'clock their preparations were completed. Still overawed by the vast-ness of the adventure before them they went to bed wondering when they would spend a night in comfort again.

It seemed to them a good omen that when they woke pale sunlight was filtering through the windows of the store. Gervaise was anxious that they should not lose a moment of it as getting out of London seemed likely to be one of the most difficult parts of their journey. Immediately they had breakfasted they dressed in their furs and looking like six Eskimos pulled the already loaded sledge out of the first-floor window onto the snow which now buried Oxford Street to a depth of nearly sixteen feet.

They would have given a lot for a team of dogs to drag the sledge but there was no alternative to pulling it themselves. It was not very heavy and two of the men could draw it easily, but they knew that hours of hauling it behind them, up hill and down dale, were certain to add considerably to the strain of their journey. Gervaise and Derek formed the first team, strapping the harness round them, while Sam and Hemmingway were to steady the sledge behind and help to lug it over obstructions; it being understood that the parts played by the two teams would be reversed after the halt for rest which they intended to make every hour.

Lavina and Margery shared the task of guiding the party. Margery had no bump of location and was of little use in finding the way, so her function was to walk no more than twenty yards ahead of the sledge, signalling to the men to show the places where the snow lay smoothest. Lavina acted as advance guard. She knew her London better and was less likely to lose her way when it might seem best to make detours down side-streets to avoid dragging the sledge up the hills of snow which covered buildings that had fallen into the roadway.

Gervaise had given her a map of London and pointed out the route he wished them to follow; down Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand, over the river where the frozen ice covered Waterloo Bridge, and thence into South-East London. There they would try to pick up the Old Kent Road where it emerged from the frozen, flooded area. But Lavina had other ideas. It was certain that the broad thoroughfares were less likely to be blocked than the narrower turnings off Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, so she decided to lead them straight along Oxford Street to Holborn, then down Kingsway to the river; and when they reached Oxford Circus she sent back by Margery a message to that effect.

From their appalling experience in Baker Street four nights before, they had anticipated great difficulty in getting the sledge even as far as the river, but much snow had fallen since so they were no longer faced with lumpy obstructions like buried cars or the wickedly difficult surface formed by debris under a moderate crust of snow. The recent falls had increased the thickness of the snow-layer to such an extent that the way was now smooth except for gentle undulations here and there where vehicles or piles of fallen bricks and mortar lay buried deep under the surface.

By ten o'clock they had passed the Holborn Restaurant and turned south down Kingsway. The top of Bush House still protruded high above the snow at the bottom of the broad thoroughfare but the snow-covered road seemed to run uphill towards it as the buildings at its southern end were buried considerably more deeply than those at its entrance from Holborn. As they advanced they now entered the area where the flood waters had become frozen before they could recede from the lower levels of the city. Only the upper storeys of the tall buildings in the Aldwych still showed above the snow and those in the Strand were buried to their roof-tops. As soon as Lavina had passed them she saw that a great open plain of snow stretched on either hand and far away to her front where, with very few exceptions, the buildings on the south side of the river lay buried. No chimney-stacks, towers or spires broke the vista, so these had evidently been overthrown by the rush of the flood-waters.

She waited, somewhere above the northern end of Waterloo Bridge, for the others to come up to her, then proposed a new and better plan. The open plain of the flooded river offered much better going than they would find when they had crossed it and had reached the higher ground in South-East London, where the buildings were still above the ice-level and where they might get themselves hopelessly lost in trying to pick up the Old Kent Road. I would be much easier, she suggested, to strike a course east over the fiat, flooded area, then turn inland towards the Dover Road farther on.

Gervaise agreed at once, and after taking a compass bearing for her guidance, they set off down-river.

The great, arched roof of Cannon Street station had fallen in, as had the dome of St. Paul's, although its main structure still stood out high above the stricken city. The bulk of the Tower of London was submerged but the top of the White Tower with its four turrets showed the position of the ancient fortress. One of the towers of Tower Bridge had been swept away but the other still reared its pinnacles to the cold, blue sky.

By mid-afternoon they were somewhere over the London Docks and the wide plain became broken and hilly. At first they failed to identify the hillocks by their shape, but they soon realised that the mounds were made by the funnels and superstructures of wrecked shipping.

As snow had begun to fall and evening was approaching, Gervaise decided that they would camp for the night in the lee of one of these great hummocks which concealed a stricken ship. He reckoned that they had covered between seven and eight miles of their journey and considered that to be excellent for their first day's trek. They pitched the three small tents so as to form three sides of a square, the open side of which faced to leeward. One was to be shared by Gervaise and Derek, one by Sam and Hemmingway and one by the two girls. The sleigh was unpacked and Margery cooked their evening meal on the primus. It was bitterly cold and tonight they had to do without a fire, so they turned in immediately they had eaten.

On the second day they again followed the course of the river, identifying a snow-covered hill on their right as Greenwich Park and the hump on top of it as the Observatory. At their next halt Gervaise gave Lavina a new compass bearing, south by east over Woolwich Marshes, in order to cut off the big bend of the river.

No buildings of any kind now broke the skyline, but by compass and map bearings they reckoned that they were approximately over Erith when they halted that afternoon; again having covered eight miles during the day. They still had to do without a fire but they had ample supplies of food, warm furs and comfortable fur bags in which to sleep.

On the third day they moved south-east, parallel with the river; then, cutting off another bend, south by east to Tilbury, accomplishing another eight miles. The whole of Tilbury was under the ice-bank so once more they fed from their stores.

The trek had not, so far, proved too arduous. Gervaise knew that it was absolutely essential to conserve the strength of his party so he gave them frequent halts and never pressed them to a longer day's march than they could manage with reasonable ease. They had been lucky with the weather as snow had fallen only in the late afternoons and during the nights. All of them were in good health and as they were warmly wrapped in furs the intense cold did not seriously affect them. As they marched they often sang and Lavina, having once made up her mind that she must face the journey, had become her old, gay self. She still bullied the others into doing things for her and poked fun at them, but it was kindly fun, and nothing pleased her better than when by accident or design the laugh was turned against herself. At every halt her spontaneous chuckles echoed through the deadly silence of the snow waste and they adored her for the gallant spirit which made light of the labours of their journey.

On the fourth day they left the course of the river, moving south-east again but now striking inland. By midday they reached the edge of the frozen plain where it rose on their right to higher ground. Tree-tops broke the surface of the snow here and there, although their upper leaves and branches were so powdered that they were only recognisable from close quarters, and now and then they saw the upper storeys of houses that were still standing. An hour later, having crossed a spur, they were in the valley of the River Medway, the lower part of which had been flooded to the same level as the Thames.

Snow started to fall at half-past three, but as Gervaise was anxious to make Rochester or Chatham that night they pressed on through it for another hour and a half and were rewarded at last by the sight of Rochester Castle. Bishop Odo's great Norman tower had survived the deluge, but its upper sections were all that stood out above the plain of snow; the city below it was entirely buried,

Gervaise had thought that would probably be the case, but as it was now four days since they had known the joy of a fire he had hoped that if Rochester Castle had not been overthrown they might get inside it and spend the night in greater comfort than on the open plain. Unfortunately, his plan proved impracticable because the entrances to the castle were deep under the ice and its arrow-slit windows much too narrow for them to get through. But they were able to pitch camp under the lee of the great keep, which protected them from the wind, and had the satisfaction of knowing that they had made a record by covering ten miles since the morning.

They were now on the Dover Road, or rather, from eighty to a hundred feet above it, and their next concern was to advance south-east again until the road rose out of the icepack, so that they could identify and follow it. Next morning, passing over submerged Chatham, from which the ground rose steeply to their right, they pushed on in the direction of Sitting-bourne. It was not until reaching Rainham that they found the road and although they had covered only five miles as the crow flies, having spent a considerable time that day zigzagging across the now uneven country trying to locate the highway, they decided to halt there for the night.

The buildings in the village were almost buried, but picking a fair-sized house, they climbed into a servant's bedroom through a broken window in its top storey. The room was two feet deep in snow that had drifted in but the landing was clear, and lighting some candles they proceeded downstairs. It was an eerie experience to descend into the bowels of the buried house and on entering a first-floor bedroom, the door of which stood open, they came upon a group of frozen corpses.

The bloated, partially decayed faces seemed to take on a horrid life when glimpsed only by the light of guttering candles. Margery screamed and fled in terror to the pale daylight of the top storey. Sam followed to quiet and comfort her. The others wrenched-to the door, shutting in the dead occupants of their new refuge, and went down to the ground floor.

Having smashed up some of the lighter furniture they took it upstairs and got a brazier going in another bedroom, at the back of the house, into which comparatively little snow had drifted. The warmth of the fire cheered them and the prospect of finding innumerable other such houses in which they could shelter, now that they had passed out of the great ice-plain, aave them fresh confidence in the eventual success of their mad journey.

After cooking a meal they explored the house, but there was little in it of any value to them. Two tins of pork-and-beans, a few candles, and half a bottle of methylated spirit which would come in handy for the primus, were all the place yielded.

On the sixth day they were able to follow the road; but only with some difficulty. The houses along it were the best indication of its position, but in the places where it passed through open country these were comparatively few and far between. In such stretches the road was no more than a very shallow depression which at times disappeared altogether, merging into the slopes of the hillsides, when their only guide was the top of an occasional telegraph pole which had been left standing. By comparison the great plain of the flooded river-valley had been easy going, as that had at least been level, whereas they now had to drag the sledge up steep inclines whenever the road wound over a hill. Although they had only done six miles it was late in the afternoon when they reached the outskirts of Sittingbourne and chose a roof-top which looked as though it had once sheltered a prosperous family under which to spend the night.

They selected a big playroom under the eaves in which to light their fires and, on exploring the depths of the house, had the good fortune to discover that, in addition to quite a considerable stock of tinned goods which a careful housewife had laid in, it contained a well-chosen cellar of wines. That night they all got very jolly and slept like tops after partaking liberally of some excellent mulled claret which Gervaise made for them.

Their happening upon such well-equipped quarters proved particularly fortunate because when they woke the next morning a blizzard was raging and Gervaise decided that it was quite impossible for them to proceed further until it had ceased. Ever since leaving London their luck with the weather had held and on only two occasions had they had to press on through snow for the last hour or so before halting for the night. But the driven flakes which obscured everything more than ten feet distant from the broken upper windows of the house showed them the sort of peril which they might have to face if they were caught in a storm later on their journey.

Bathing was out of the question and they had long since given up worrying themselves about the lack of such an amenity; but they boiled some kettles of water over their braziers, and the men were able to rid themselves of their seven days' growth of beard while the girls washed their hair and generally made themselves a little more presentable.

As there was nothing to do except feed the fires, Derek amused himself by setting out a fine collection of toy soldiers which he found in a cupboard in the playroom. Having thawed out the ice-logged boxes of troops, guns and wagons he arranged them all and was as delighted as a child while crawling round the floor to play at battles.

Lavina soon got bored with helping him as she was not particularly interested in soldiers and she did not care for crawling about on her hands and knees on the board floor which, although thawed out by the fire, was still damp; so she suggested to Hemmingway that they should have another look round the house together.

Taking candles with them they descended to the ground floor and spent a little time exploring the rooms; but the jumbled furniture was frozen too hard where it lay for them to move it without effort, and trying to wrench open cupboards was difficult as long as they kept their thick gloves on and chilly work if they took them off. When they reached a small library which had a couple of armchairs in it Lavina proposed that they should sit down and talk instead of exploring further.

To anyone not fully acquainted with their circumstances it would have seemed a mad idea to think of sitting in the cold down there when they could equally well have sat upstairs in the warmth of the braziers, but Hemmingway did not consider her suggestion at all strange. For many days now the whole party had been compelled to remain together, and from necessity the conversation had been entirely general. Every topic that could be discussed with interest by all concerned had long ago been exhausted and they were beginning to find the repetitions of each other's opening gambits or the long silences which often occurred among them equally nerve-racking. For two of them to get away from the rest for a little was almost an adventure and, although the chairs were frozen hard and the temperature of the room was well below zero, they were not cold because they were muffled to the eyes in their thick furs.

When they had put their candles on the mantel and settled themselves in the chairs Lavina said:

'What d'you think our chances are of coming through?'

'At least fifty-fifty,' Hemmingway smiled. 'Unless we're hung up permanently by a blizzard during the next fortnight, we ought to make it.'

'You really think that? You're not just saying it to keep me cheerful?'

'No. I honestly believe it. We're all fit, we haven't suffered severely from the cold, we've got plenty of stores to go on with, and there are lots of places along the road where we can pick up more.'

She shivered. 'Don't run away with the idea that I don't suffer from the cold because I'm not always moaning about it. At times I could scream, it makes me so miserable, and we seem to have been trudging through the snow for half a lifetime already.'

'In six days we've covered over forty miles.'

'Hell! What's forty miles? It's at least a thousand to the straits of "Gib", and Gervaise admits that we'll have to go much farther south than that before we strike a really decent winter climate.'

'Now don't be despondent,' he chid her gently. 'Once we're over the Channel and start moving south the weather will improve with every stage we make. We'll be able to travel faster then and do a hundred miles a week. We've got a rotten month or two ahead of us but once we're past the snow line we'll be able to pick up bicycles and with luck we'll be in North Africa before November's out.'

'You seem pretty confident, I must say.'

'I am. If we can once get across to France I think the odds are ten to one on our reaching a place where we can settle and start our lives afresh in reasonable safety and comfort.'

'In that case I've got to do some pretty hectic thinking.' Lavina paused and went on after a moment: 'D'you believe it's possible for anyone to be in love with two people at the same time, Hemmingway?'

'I should say,' he replied slowly, 'that one can be extremely attracted to quite a number of people but, faced with the old proposition of being able to rescue only one if all of them were swimming round in the sea, one would never have any real hesitation about which of them one meant to save. I can't conceive ever being in love with two people at the same time myself; but why d'you ask?'

'Sam says that although he's still in love with me he's now fallen head-over-heels in love with Margery.'

Hemmingway nodded. 'I guessed that something was boiling up between them long before we left the Ark. What d'you propose to do about it?'

'I don't quite know.'

'I'm sorry. That's rotten for you. When faced with a choice of ways everything becomes comparatively easy once one has formed a decision. It's trying to make up one's mind which is such an ordeal. I can quite understand what's happened to Sam, though.'

'You can?' she exclaimed, opening wide her eyes.

He laughed. 'Don't look so surprised, or take what I said as a personal insult. I'm not inferring that Margery's more attractive than yourself; only that you're completely different types. When you married Sam you honestly intended to make a go of it if you possibly could, didn't you?'

'I did,' Lavina agreed.

'Well, I think you might have succeeded in the sort of world we knew before the deluge. There, you would both have been protected from ever getting to know each other too well by a sort of veneer, or, if you like, a series of screens provided, by the many outside activities which would have occupied such a large portion of both your minds. But, as things are, you've been thrown too much together and you've seen each other much too clearly. You're a very complex person and, for all your apparent faults, you're spiritually on a far higher level than Sam. He's a very simple person, really; so he naturally gravitates towards Margery who is his own type.'

Lavina regarded him thoughtfully for a moment from beneath eyelashes that half-veiled her eyes. 'What you say is very interesting. Hemmingway, but why do you consider that I'm on a higher spiritual level than Sam or Margery? She's a much more saintly person than I am.'

'Not necessarily. She just accepts the dogmas she's been taught; whereas you have your own code and never allow yourself to be influenced by accepted standards or by what other people may think. By that I don't mean to imply that either of you is better than the other; only that if one regarded life as a school you would have to sit for your exams in a much higher form.'

'How do you account for that?'

'Because you're what Buddhists call a "twice-born". Sam and Margery are bound only by the conventions of the time in which they live; the simple rulings of the lower school. But the sub-conscious memory of past lives compels you to base your judgments on a broader yet more fearful conception of the Law. Their path is easy compared to yours because they only have to play the game as the modern world understands it; whereas you must sometimes appear to do wrong in order to do what you know inside yourself to be right. You either do the right thing regardless of opinion, or if you do the other you do it consciously, knowing quite well that soner or later you'll have to pay for your weakness.'

'You certainly know a lot about me,' she admitted; 'because I am like that. But I've never had anyone tell me so before. Are you a "twice-born" too?'

'Yes, I've lived many times before. I know that from having recognised places and people that I'd never seen before in this life. In some of those lives we must have met, too, because I felt that I knew you through and through the very moment I set eyes on you.'

'It's queer you should say that, because I felt something, too. When Sam introduced us and we stood looking at each other in your room at St. James's Square it seemed as though time had ceased to exist for a moment and as though Sam and the room and everything were no longer there. I didn't recognise you as anyone I'd ever met, but it was like a sudden warning that we had been brought together for some hidden purpose which might be supremely good or incredibly evil.'

'That was probably a forewarning of the night we were to spend together on Burgh Heath under the influence of the comet. Both of us succumbed to evil then because both of us betrayed a trust and, although you may not realise it, that's contributed very largely to breaking up your marriage with Sam.'

'I don't see that; since he doesn't know anything about it.'

'No. But it affected you to such an extent that it was weeks before you could get it out of your mind. Am I right?'

'Yes.'

'I tried to help you all I could, and you fought desperately hard to behave as though nothing had happened. Your acting was good enough to prevent Sam from suspecting anything but you didn't dare to remain alone with him for a moment longer than you had to; and in order to keep up an appearance of gaiety you let yourself go much more than you should have done with Derek.'

She laughed a little ruefully. 'And I thought I'd hidden it all so cleverly. I think you must be the devil himself from the way you seem to have read my every thought. God I How I dreaded those little petting-parties with Sam down in the storeroom during the first weeks we were in the Ark. But go on. Now the butterfly is under the microscope, tell me a little more.'

'There isn't very much more to tell. If there had never been anything between us you would have continued to feel, as well as act, perfectly naturally. You would have sought Sam's company instead of instinctively avoiding it. You would have made him, instead of Derek, fetch and carry for you and he would have enjoyed it. You would have occupied his mind to such an extent that he would never even have looked at Margery. So you were right in your premonition that meeting me might bring evil to you. Unfortunately there was no way in which I could repair the damage that I'd done.'

'It wasn't your fault any more than it was mine.'

'It was my fault to the extent that, although I lied about it afterwards to make things easier for us both, the comet never really caused me to lose consciousness of what I was doing. I knew quite well that I could have brought you to your senses by slapping your face and that I ought to have done so; but I didn't.'

'Well, I lied, too, for the same reason. I don't mind telling you now. I was never out of my senses and I knew all the time that by one word I could have stopped you; but there came a point when I felt that, whatever happened afterwards, it was worth it, so I deliberately let myself go.'

He nodded. 'It was just the same with me.'

'I get the same feeling sometimes with Derek,' she confessed.

'That's hardly surprising. Your guilty conscience built up in your mind a complex adverse to Sam. Derek's a good-looking chap, and propinquity can play the very devil with their feelings when two attractive, healthy people are thrown together a great deal. D'you think you would be happy with him?'

'Yes; for a time, at least. Perhaps for a long time. But how does that square with your theory of types? Derek is even less complex than Sam or Margery.'

'Perhaps. But in such a tie-up you would be the dominating partner. You know him so intimately that you could play on his every mood, like a pianist on the keyboard of a piano. It's the easy way, and such unions are often very happy. There's practically no mental strain at all, you see, because the senior partner runs the whole outfit, and providing they don't hanker after spiritual companionship they get everything else they want with very little effort.'

'It might not be a bad thing, then?' said Lavina.

He laughed. 'As you're bone-lazy it might be a very good one!'

'Am I lazy—in the real sense?' she smiled.

'No. You have one of the most active minds I've ever met, but, physically, you'd like a man who'd be prepared to wait on you hand and foot, wouldn't you?'

'I suppose I should.'

'And Derek fills that bill admirably.'

'Yes, but I'm not quite certain yet that I want him to. You see, life with Derek could be grand for a bit but he's still to some extent an unknown quantity; whereas I know Sam's worst points and his best. I can't make up my mind whether to take a gamble on a new deal turning up trumps or to stick to something very fine; because, of course, I only have to lift my little finger to get Sam back.'

'Yes,' Hemmingway agreed, 'and perhaps that might suit you best.'

Into the Blizzard

Lavina remained silent for a moment. Suddenly she shivered. Sitting there motionless had caused her to become very cold although she had not noticed it while they had been talking. She shook herself and stood up. 'All you've said has been terribly interesting and it's helped me a lot, much more than even you can realise. But I'm simply frozen. Let's get upstairs now and warm ourselves by the fires.'

That night she was unusually silent, but even Hemmingway, who guessed that she was preoccupied with their conversation of earlier in the day, could not tell whether her inclination was veering towards a definite understanding with Derek or a determination to recapture Sam.

On the eighth morning the blizzard had ceased, so they took to the road again. Their enforced rest had made them the more eager to push on and after they had passed the roof-tcps of Sittingbourne they made good going on a long, straight stretch of road, covering six miles before they halted at the village of Ospringe. They put up there for the night in the straw-filled loft of a high barn, there being no necessity for them to look for a house which might contain stores as they had renewed their supplies from the mansion outside Sittingbourne.

The next was a harder day as they lost their way while passing Faversham; but they found it again and accomplished another five miles, arriving late in the afternoon at Broughton Street. Snow had fallen again during the preceding night, and with that of the blizzard which had held them up for a day, it now buried all but the tallest houses to near their roofs; while the cottages and two-storeyed buildings were entirely submerged, only their gables being indicated by hillocks in the snow.

From Broughton Street they proceeded towards Canterbury, which was easily discernible in the distance as its Cathedral tower could still be seen dominating the almost buried city. When they were within a mile of it Gervaise called to Lavina to incline right, so that instead of entering its maze of rooftops they would by-pass the city and pick up the road again on its south-eastern side.

His idea very nearly proved their undoing as, half a mile farther on, Lavina led the party up a slope on to a flat plateau which appeared to consist of firm snow. It bore her weight and that of Margery who followed; but the sledge party had not advanced more than ten yards on to it before the crust of snow gave way.

The sledge plunged downwards and the men with it, who were buried up to their arm-pits. The plateau of snow concealed a closely planted orchard where air-pockets still remained beneath the branches of the trees. Fortunately none of them was injured and they soon scrambled out, but the heavy sledge was in a hole eight feet deep, and when they had succeeded in scraping away the snow that had fallen on it they found that its weight was too great for them to drag it out. They had to unpack most of their gear before they could lighten the sledge sufficiently to pull it up, and the misadventure delayed them for over an hour.

They were now so far from the highway that it seemed better to go on than to go back; but for the next half-mile, until they reached a row of roof-tops which indicated another road, Lavina had to test the snow-crust every few yards of the way by jumping on it with her ski-sticks. Once they got above the road again they were happier, and picking out their way between the lines of chimney-pots on the south-eastern outskirts of Canterbury they eventually succeeded in locating the Dover road once more.

Darkness was falling when they halted for their tenth night after leaving London, but their short cut had enabled them to place another seven miles of the way behind them. They slept in the attic of a road-side inn and, by combing the place, managed to add a few items to their stores.

On the eleventh day they again did well—seven more miles —but night and snow caught them on the open road, which was now so difficult to follow that, fearing to lose it, they were forced to bivouac in the open; and, although she kept face before the others, Lavina's limbs ached so with the cold that once in her fur bag she cried herself to sleep.

The twelfth day was the worst they had so far experienced as the road was now almost untraceable and snow fell at intervals further delaying their progress. Although Lavina did her utmost to keep to the track there were many occasions when she led the party off it and the heavy sledge got ditched in the treacherous drifts which concealed deep culverts by the road-side. Half the day was spent in pulling the sledge out of holes and, although the whole party were exhausted when twilight came, they had only managed to do four miles. But they had good quarters for the night as Lavina led them to another inn which was standing at a crossroads with its slate roof still showing above the surface.

The thirteenth day was even worse. They lost the road entirely and the scattered houses along it gave no indication, from a distance, where it lay, as they were now snowed up to their chimney-pots. All the natural features of the land except its general contours had disappeared. Even tall trees, pylons and woods were concealed beneath one vast, white blanket which stretched away in a series of rolling slopes as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Sweating in their furs, pulling and shoving, the men laboured on, while the girls sought in vain for any landmark which might guide them. But at two o'clock in the afternoon Lavina gave a cry of joy and pointed ahead.

Following the direction she gave them they saw, rising to their left front, a steep hill crowned by a large white knob. In that locality, even in such a waste of snow, it could only be Dover Castle.

It was a long pull up the hill. With aching muscles the men dragged the sledge from snow-drift to snow-drift, but two hours later they were among the chimney-pots in the higher quarter of the town. No sign of its lower part remained, as the sea had risen to the same level as the Thames, burying its main street, harbour and dockyard deep below the icy surface.

They chose a row of chimney-pots on the slope above the town and, digging away the snow from round about them, soon discovered a broken skylight through which they were able to climb down into one of the houses. Utterly tired out, they forced themselves to break wood and get their braziers going. After they had made some coffee and eaten a little cold meat they crawled into their fur bags and fell into an exhausted sleep.

On exploring the house next morning they discovered it to be a fair-sized villa so they had reason to assume that the other buildings in the row were the same; and it was decided to break into all of them in order to collect as many stores as possible before attempting what must prove the most hazardous part of their expedition—the crossing of the Channel.

They were faced with twenty-one miles of frozen sea which they had to cross before they could hope to secure fresh supplies in Calais, and although they said nothing of their fears, they were dreading the journey.

Derek voiced a doubt that had occurred to them all when he suggested that with the ever-increasing depth of the snow all the houses in France might be so deeply buried when they got there that they would not be able to locate them, and that the wiser plan therefore might be to remain in Dover.

But Gervaise was unshakeable in his determination that they must push on. When the thaw came pestilence would strike Dover as well as London. It was vital, he said, that while there was breath left in their bodies they should continue their march until they reached not only the edge of the ice-pack but a land well beyond it to which the plague could not be wafted by the winds in the springtime.

'But there will be dead bodies there as well,' Derek argued. 'I hadn't thought of that before, but, now I have, it seems to me that our risk of dying from some ghastly infection will be just as great when we get there.'

'No,' Gervaise shook his grey beard. 'The bodies of the people in those lands are rotting in the sunshine as we sit here now, and the pestilence which they germinate will have been dissipated by the winds and flood waters long before we reach a suitable spot far from all risk of contamination in which to settle.'

That morning they divided themselves into couples and searched the whole row of villas, entering them, as they had the first, through their skylights. It was a grim and horrible business, as they found many drowned bodies of men, women and children who had remained cowering in their homes in preference to rushing out into the streets during those last moments in which the deluge had swept down upon them. But the foray resulted in a hoard of fresh supplies sufficient for Gervaise to decide that they might attempt to start the Channel crossing on the following day. In the afternoon they rested in order that they should be fresh and fit, when morning came, for their hazardous undertaking.

It had been decided to make an early start so as to take advantage of every moment of daylight, and at seven o'clock on the morning of September 3rd they set out from Dover. Behind them the great cliffs still stood out high above the ice-pack; before them stretched an apparently limitless plain of snow. The weather was favourable although intensely cold. Only a mild wind was blowing and the sun shone overhead in a blue sky.

Hour after hour they pressed forward, the men bending their backs to the weight of the sledge as they ploughed along on their broad snow-shoes, the girls cold but uncomplaining and determined. All topics of general conversation had been exhausted by now. During the last few days they had ceased singing on their marches; even Lavina's joyous treble no longer quavered, small but tuneful, across the snow flats. Every breath was needed for the great effort they were making. They knew that if they could reach Calais a new lease of life would be granted to them, but if they were caught by a blizzard in mid-Channel their chances of survival would be very slender. Once in France they could lie up and rest if need be, but until they reached the coast they dared not spare themselves.

When they halted that night and set up their camp Gervaise was more than satisfied. Over the flat surface they had been able to make far better progress than in the preceding days and he estimated that they must have covered a good twelve miles. They spoke little over their evening meal, as they were very tired, but when they turned in they were immensely comforted by the thought that over half the crossing was accomplished.

The second day proved equally satisfactory until the early afternoon, when, having covered six miles, they came upon broken ground. That it was not land was certain, as they could see the cliffs to the south of Calais, now only about three miles distant. Hemmingway and Gervaise decided that the uneven surface was due to a strong wind having got up when the ice had been only partially formed in that area, and great chunks of it having been piled up on top of one another by the heaving sea.

After their splendid start in the morning Gervaise had hoped to camp above French soil that night but they were not destined to do so. To add to the difficulties of the broken terrain a strong wind began to blow, whirling from every eminence great puffs of powdered snow which loaded their clothing and penetrated the openings of their hoods until their faces were almost blue with cold. Margery had to have Sam's help to stagger onwards and the tears froze on Lavina's cheeks as they ran from under her snow-goggles.

A halt was called when they judged themselves to be still about two miles from the French coast, but they could no longer see it as the evening was drawing in and the nightly snowfall now obscured everything more than a few yards distant.

Next morning they crawled out of their tents to find that their camp was half-buried in a drift and that it was still snowing. As Gervaise had taken a compass bearing of the French cliffs the previous afternoon they were able to continue their journey, but they had to pause every hundred yards to restore their circulation by flapping their arms and stamping their feet or taking a sip of brandy.

They could not see more than ten yards ahead, and lugging the sledge over mounds of snow sometimes fifteen or twenty feet in height was desperate, gruelling work. At midday Sam suggested that they should camp again and hope that the next day would bring better weather; but Gervaise would not hear of it. The blizzard might last for days, and unless they could reach a place within the next twenty-four hours where there were materials to make a fire so that they could again warm themselves thoroughly, he felt that there was a serious danger that they might die of cold and exhaustion.

It was shortly after they had moved on again that a major catastrophe befell them. The weight of the two girls, who were plodding on together a few yards ahead, was not sufficient to test the snow-crust and it suddenly gave way under the sledge.

Sam and Hemmingway, who were drawing it at the time, were nearly jerked off their feet by the pull of the harness as the front of the sledge tilted up and the back end disappeared into the mouth of a deep crevasse. There was a loud report as one of the cords which secured their stores to the sledge snapped under the strain. Next moment the things upon which their very lives depended were slipping and falling into the icy crack.

In a desperate effort to stop them Derek and Gervaise, who were walking behind, flung themselves on their knees and, leaning over the narrow gulf, grabbed at the slipping packages just as Sam and Hemmingway gave a terrific heave and hauled the sledge into safety.

Panting with anxiety they hurriedly examined the remaining contents of the load and peered down the fissure in the frozen snow to see what they had lost. It was about four feet wide at the top but some twenty feet in depth and narrowed till the sides met at its bottom; so many of the packages had stuck about half-way down.

Their tents were safe, as these were stacked on the forepart of the sledge, and so were three of the sleeping-bags, but the others had fallen into the crevasse. Gervaise had caught their drum of paraffin as it fell and Derek one of the primus stoves; but all their stores, medicines and scientific instruments were gone; and many of the cases having burst on hitting the sides of the cleft, most of their contents were now scattered right at its bottom.

It was vital that they should retrieve everything possible so Derek was lowered on a rope. He managed to fish up the sleeping-bags, a case of maps, and a brazier bucket into which were packed candles and some food; but he could not get far enough down to reach the tins and flasks or their picks and shovels, and half a ton of snow suddenly falling in a few feet farther along the top of the crevasse buried the rest of the goods beyond hope of recovery.

Almost overwhelmed by this stroke of evil fortune they examined the contents of the brazier. In addition to candles it contained salt and some tins of Camp coffee but barely enough food to suffice for a full day's ration for the six of them. From standing about inactive while the men endeavoured to salvage the stores the girls had become half-frozen. As they clung together the biting wind tore at their clothing, the snow stung their faces and their lips were blue. Neither of them were fit to go further yet they knew that they must force themselves to another effort.

It had now become imperative that they reach Calais or they would surely die, so the party staggered on again, making a little better progress owing to the decreased load which the sledge now carried. But a few moments later they became aware of another bitter blow which their recent accident had caused them. As Gervaise had flung himself forward to save the drum of paraffin his prismatic compass had been jerked out of the small leather case in which he carried it on his belt.

They returned to look for it but after a quarter of an hour they gave up the search, concluding that it had fallen into the crevasse; and as the spare compass was buried there with their other instruments they had now no means of finding their direction.

As they knew that they must now be very near, if not actually on, the coast of France and would certainly be able to see it once the snow-storm ceased, they decided that it would be better to camp where they were in the hope that the next day would bring clear weather, rather than risk losing themselves and, perhaps, marching out to sea again. Pitching their camp in miserable silence they ate a small evening meal from their now incredibly precious stock of provisions, and turned in to an uneasy sleep harassed by fears of what fresh trials of their endurance the morrow might bring.

Peering fearfully from their tents when they woke they saw with sinking hearts that the blizzard was still raging. But they had to go on now, or die. Calais, the Mecca of their nightmares, could not possibly be more than a morning's trek distant, yet they only had food for two more snack meals, or three if they cut themselves down to starvation rations. They decided to do without breakfast and, unrefreshed by their troubled sleep, set off once more.

The cold was so intense that it seared their lungs with every breath they drew as they fought their way through the blinding curtain of whiteness which seemed to dance before their eyes. They were now chilled to the marrow and felt that they would never get properly warmed through again. Even their furs could not protect them from the icy wind which drove the snow against them and pierced their clothing, making their limbs ache with every step they took; but with clenched teeth and straining muscles they forced themselves forward from sheer desperation.

Two hours after they set out they got clear of the broken surface, which cheered them a little, but by that time Margery was so done that she broke down and declared she could not go any farther. Sam gave her the last mouthfuls of brandy from a private flask he was carrying and Gervaise said that, as they dared not stop, she must ride on the sledge. They tied her on it a sobbing, unprotesting bundle and again lurched forward.

It seemed by this time that unless they were moving in circles they positively must be over the French coast. The cliffs they had seen before the blizzard had not been high ones, as the new level of the sea and twenty feet of snow had concealed their base; so it was possible that they had passed through a gap in the cliffs without knowing that they had done so.

At midday, after they had eaten another small portion of the remaining food and drank some coffee that Sam had made for them, Gervaise decided that they should take a new direction. Feeling certain that they must now be above French soil and knowing that Calais lay a little to the north of the cliffs for which they had been making, they now headed left.

Heartened a little by their few mouthfuls of food and the coffee, they trudged on looking like snow-men from the flakes that clung to their clothing. Even the small portions of their faces which they had to leave exposed, in order to see their way, were powdered with it. Their snow-goggles were rimed with frost as their steamy breath turned to ice almost as they exhaled it, and although they constantly rubbed them their noses ached intolerably.

Lavina was no longer strong enough to concentrate on finding the easiest track for them so Sam led the party. Margery, half-comatose, still lay on the sledge. After half an hour Lavina began to lag behind. Gervaise took her arm and urged her to get on the sledge beside her sister, but she mutely shook her head so he tied round her waist a cord which was attached to the sledge and, jerked along by it, she managed to blunder onward.

In the mid-afternoon Sam gave a sudden cry of warning. He had almost stumbled over a forty-foot precipice. The party halted and joined him to examine it, walking some way in each direction along its brink. But the fall was sheer and there was no way down. They knew then that they must have crossed the coast-line earlier in the day or the previous afternoon and had since made a semicircle, returning to it on higher ground, as the place where they were standing could only be the summit of the cliffs of France.

It was now a gamble as to whether Calais was on their left or on their right as they stood looking out through the whirling snow towards the frozen sea. If they chose rightly there was still a chance that they might save themselves, but if their choice was wrong there were only fishing villages along the coast and by this time these would be buried in the snow-pack.

Gervaise decided to turn right, but his heart was sinking. The ground had become uneven again and their progress was intolerably slow, so he feared now that, even if they managed to find Calais with so little food left and no shovels, they might be too exhausted to dig round until they struck the roof of one of the snow-covered houses.

At four o'clock they could lurch no farther so they started to pitch their camp about sixty yards from the cliff edge. While they were struggling with half-frozen fingers to erect the tents in the usual three-sided 'square' Derek missed Lavina and, looking round, found her sitting in the snow a little apart from the rest. Her head was bowed and she was weeping bitterly.

Sitting down beside her he put an arm round her shoulders and drew her muffled head on to his chest.

'Oh, Derek darling,' she sobbed, 'I've stuck it all day but I'm so cold; so cold I think I'm going to die.'

'Nonsense,' he whispered, with his lips beside her ice-cold cheek. 'We'll make Calais yet—if only the food hangs out.'

'That's just it,' she moaned. 'If we had another day's rations we'd do it, but now we've lost the spades we'll have to dig down to the houses with our hands, and mine are frost-bitten already, I think.'

Quickly he undid his coat, jerkin and shirt, then drawing off her gloves, placed her frozen hands flat against his chest so that they might receive the warmth of his body.

'That's sweet of you,' she smiled up at him in the semi-darkness. 'But it's no good, my dear. You couldn't warm my body even if you stripped to do it, as long as this wind lasts. There's not much of me and I'm chilled all through.'

'You'll be all right again once the tents are up and you've had some coffee.'

'Yes, I'll be better then, and through the night I'll be warm enough in my sleeping-bag. But tomorrow! Some of you may get through but I won't. I'm the weakest and I'll never be able to stick another day of it without a decent meal to keep up my strength.'

Derek was hungry too, yet he would gladly have given his share of the remaining food to Lavina. The trouble was that he knew she could never be persuaded to take it. He knew, too, that she had never once complained in the whole grim journey so now that she had at last broken down she must really be at the end of her tether, and that the flame of her life would flicker out unless she had enough food to sustain her next day during their last desperate bid to find Calais.

That the rest of them, with Margery riding on the sledge, could reach Calais he did not doubt. If the snow ceased they would probably wake to see its remaining spires within an hour's march and, even if the blizzard continued, now that they had the line of the cliff-top to guide them they could hardly fail to strike it if only they had chosen the right direction. He thought of carrying Lavina to conserve her ebbing strength when they set off next morning, but knew that he could not do so for any distance. With frequent halts he might have done so for a mile or two over firm ground but even the strongest man cannot carry a woman any distance over snow.

'You must ride on the sledge with Margery,' he said suddenly.

Rather disconcertingly, Lavina laughed, and withdrawing her hands, put on her gloves again. 'Thanks for my hands,' she said. 'They won't go bad on me until tomorrow now. But you can't pull two of us with this blizzard raging. No, Derek, no. I was in the dumps just now but there's no need to worry about me. I'll manage somehow.'

'I'll see you do,' he said slowly. 'You're more than life to me.

You know that. Even if all of us don't reach Calais you've got to.'

'Why me?'

'Because you're the best of us. I can't tell you why I know that, but I do. It's not just because I'm nuts about you, and your beauty is only a sort of bodily expression of it. There's a kind of spirit in you which I can't define, but it's something that's the salt of the earth and the champagne too. God knows, humanity's suffered a bad enough set-back but there are probably countries that escaped the flood and other little groups of survivors like ourselves. Life's darned hard to kill, you know, and it will struggle on somehow but it can't afford to lose its finest elements. That's why you owe it to yourself, and to us, to reach Calais and keep the old chin up until you can find a better land to live in.'

'A better land,' echoed Lavina. 'That's it, with sunshine and flowers and things. I'll get there, darling, but I'm worried about you.'

'Oh, I'm a tough guy,' Derek laughed.

'I know, but I do worry,' she sighed. 'You've been so marvellous all this time. You'd melt a heart of stone, and mine's only flesh and blood. Take me in your arms a moment.'

He put his arms round her and they sat there silent for a little time in the snow.

She lifted her face and kissed him, then drew away as she said: 'Look, they've got the tents up; let's get inside.'

All of them crawled into one of the tents and lay for an hour huddled together in their sleeping-bags, until their mutual warmth had restored their circulation. Margery, who was the least fatigued of the party from having ridden most of the day, then got up and crossing to her own tent began to heat some coffee on the primus. As they had been so economical with their remaining food they had enough left for a small evening meal and for one more on the following day.

A few minutes later Lavina entered the tent carrying her sleeping-bag. She got one of the maps, crawled into the bag, and turning over on her tummy, began to write in pencil on its back. When she had done, she took some items out of the pockets of her coat and folded the map round them. They were a one-pound tin of marching chocolate, two small bottles of Brand's Beef Essence and a good-sized flask of brandy. She had selected them herself before they left Selfridge's and carried them with her through the whole journey as an emergency-ration in case she got separated from the party at any time and was temporarily lost.

Having made up her package she turned over and said to Margery: 'Do you know what today is?'

Margery looked up quickly. 'Yes, it's the 7th of September.'

'I expect Sam told you,' Lavina went on, 'that I promised to give him a decision on the 7th about our matrimonial tangle.'

'Yes, he told me that,' Margery replied, trying to still the sudden beating of her heart. 'But hadn't we better leave things now until we, er—well, you know what I mean?'

'No, I made a promise so I'm sticking to it. Whether any of us will live to cross the Straits of Gibraltar is pretty uncertain, but I see no reason why those of us who survive the next forty-eight hours shouldn't do so. This blizzard has been raging for over two days now and it can't go on for ever. Once it lifts, we'll be able to see a church tower or something sticking up out of the snow which will show us where Calais lies; and once the party's restocked from the food that must be in the houses there, it can begin the long trek south. Things should improve from then on with every stage of the journey, and even if some of the villages are buried completely it shouldn't be difficult to identify others from towers and gasometers, so there's quite a decent chance of getting through.'

'Yes, I feel that too,' Margery nodded. 'If only we can hang out for another forty-eight hours; but can we? With no fires, no brandy, and so little food?'

'Well, whether we can or not; as today's the 7th I'll tell you my decision. I believe you think that you're a better woman than I am because Sam's fallen for you; but that isn't true. You may be a very good cook and housewife but don't kid yourself that those things make you so very marvellous.

'You've never earned a penny in your life. If we were back in normal surroundings you couldn't hold down a job at more than a couple of pounds a week, however hard you tried; whereas I am an artist. People who know have even said that I'm near-great as an actress and you can't achieve that sort of thing without working for it. While you sat at home I slaved in the studios to make a career for myself. It isn't easy to do that and keep your self-respect, if you happen to be good-looking, in a game where all the strings are pulled by men; but I did it, and I did it by sheer hard work. When I threw up my job to marry Sam I was earning as much money as a Cabinet Minister, and I did that without any help or favours from anybody.

'What's more, you threw your hand in today but I didn't; and as woman for woman, you wouldn't stand an earthly chance against me. If I wished, I could get Sam back from you before tonight is out. But, as it is, I'm very fond of Sam and I believe that he'll be happier with you than he would with me.'

Margery's hands trembled and she drew a sharp breath as Lavina went on quietly:

'And I'm not thinking only of Sam. Although we've never been great friends I'm fond of you in my own way, because you are my sister and I haven't forgotten the good times we had together as children. We've grown apart a lot, but now we're up against it those sort of memories come back. It wasn't always my fault that every man we knew always fell for me, but I'd like to make it up to you a bit, now I have the chance.

'As there're no Law Courts or clergymen or anything left in the world, we'll have to go back to primitive conditions and look on Gervaise as our law-giver and priest. By his word, in the presence of the party, we must consider that he has formally divorced myself and Sam. Then he can read the marriage service over Sam and you. I hope, darling, that you'll be very happy.'

'Oh, Lavina!' Margery suddenly burst into tears and flung her arms about her younger sister. 'You don't know what this means to me. You can't. You've had so many people in love with you; but I've never known the joy of the love of a fine man before. If only we can get to Calais you've opened the gates of Heaven for me.'

For a little she sobbed, and then she said: 'But what about you, darling? What are you going to do?'

Lavina gently disengaged herself from Margery's embrace, picked up her package, and stood up. 'Oh, you needn't worry about me,' she smiled. 'I've still got a string to my bow.'

Pulling her furs round her, she added as she left the tent: 'I'll send Sam to you.'

The four men were still huddled in the tent which was shared by Sam and Hemmingway. Lavina undid the flap, poked in her head, and calling Sam out led him to the third tent, which at the moment was empty.

'Sam,' she said, as they crouched together in the confined space, 'I've just left Margery. I suppose you feel the same as you did when we talked things over a month ago?'

He nodded. 'Yes. I hate to hurt you, but I'm still in love with her—in fact I love her more than ever.'

Lavina smiled. 'I felt quite sure you did because I've been watching both of you very carefully.'

'Today's the 7th, isn't it? What have you decided?'

'That I love you a great deal, Sam dear.'

As she paused she saw by the light of the candles that his face went white and that he was biting his lip, so she went on quickly: 'Therefore, I'm going to give you up. Just give me one kiss before you go to her.'

Sam took her in his arms and kissed her cold little face, muttering his thanks; then, feeling an utter brute, he turned and left her.

Sam had felt all along that Lavina would release him and he knew now beyond a shadow of doubt that he loved Margery best. Their perfect understanding of each other all through the long hours they had spent together during the last terrible month had proved that to him. As he entered the tent she lifted a face radiant, transfigured, beautiful, to his, and said:

'I didn't think Lavina would say anything until we were really safe again but I've just realised why she insisted on telling us now.'

Sam smiled as he knelt down and gently drew her to him. 'Why, it's the 7th and Lavina always keeps her promises. What other reason could she have had?'

'She wouldn't have waited till the 7th if we'd been in such desperate straits before. She wanted to give us tonight, Sam; and afterwards—well, I'm not going to mind half so much if we do have to die.'

'But we're not going to,' he said firmly. 'I have a hunch we're coming through. I don't get such hunches often but when I do I'm never wrong.'

Ten minutes later the coffee was boiling and Margery called out to the others. The three men came out of their huddle and as they crossed the few feet of open space between the tents Gervaise exclaimed:

'Hullo! The wind's dropped. Thank God for that at least.'

'It did last night,' said Hemmingway, 'but it didn't stop snowing.'

'Anyhow, it'll make it easier for me to do a little job I have in mind,' remarked Derek. 'There's a biggish hump about fifty yards inland. I noticed it while we were pitching the tents but I was too cold to go and examine it then. There's just a chance that it might conceal the roof of a cottage and it would be a godsend if we could shelter there for the night. Ask Margery to keep my coffee hot for me, will you, while I go and see?'

'Where's Lavina?' Gervaise asked as he and Hemmingway joined Margery and Sam.

'She's in your tent,' Sam replied at once. 'I left her there about a quarter of an hour ago.'

They called her loudly but she did not come, so Gervaise stepped outside, crossed the yard of snow, and lifting the gap of his own tent looked into it. Lavina was not there, but by the light of a candle he saw the big flask of brandy. Scrambling inside, he picked it up, then the chocolate, the Brand's Essence and then the map. Turning the map over, he saw writing on it that was addressed to him and, his hands trembling so that he could hardly hold it, he began to read.

Dearest, if the rest of you can hang out for forty-eight hours I'm sure you will find Calais; and, once you've done that, there'll be a really sporting chance for you all. But you'll never stick mother two days of this without fires and with so little food. My share won't amount to very much between the five of you, but it'll help a little; and I've been carrying my own emergency-rations. The beef essence, the chocolate and the brandy will keep the warmth in you for just that extra day you need.

You're such a clever old sweet that I expect you guessed long ago how the wind was blowing between Margery and Sam. They love each other and I want them to be happy. I've released Sam and told Margery that you'd divorce him and me, but that won't be necessary now because I love you alt so much that I'm going to leave you.

You mustn't worry about me because I'm not a bit frightened. It all seems quite natural and the reasonable thing to do. I'm the most useless member of the party and physically the weakest and, anyhow, I wouldn't be able to stick it out for another day.

It's no good you rushing out and trying to follow me. 1 know you will, but I'm going to cheat you there. I'm going to walk straight over the cliff edge, just to prevent your doing anything silly out of your dear love for me.

It's agony not to see you again before 1 go but I daren't risk any of you guessing what 1 mean to do, and I must go before the meal otherwise I'd have to eat my ration with the rest of you.

Give my love to them all but keep my fondest love for your own dear self. Lots of luck, and remember that I'm quite happy because I'm certain that, somehow, you'll pull through.

Your own Princess.

While Gervaise had been reading Lavina's scrawl Sam and Hemmingway, their suspicions aroused by his continued silence, had entered the tent behind him. One glance at the things Lavina had left, and another at Gervaise's stricken face, was enough to tell them what had happened.

Without a word the three men turned and went out into the snow. Outside the circle of the tiny encampment the broad tracks made by Lavina's snow-shoes showed plainly leading towards the cliff. Had she been gone one minute, two minutes, or ten, was the thought that leapt into all their minds. It would take her a good five minutes to cover the sixty yards of snow to the precipice. If she had been gone less than that time they still might save her.

Shouting her name at the tops of their voices, all three of them dashed forward along her tracks, but there came no answer to their shouting and at the cliff edge the tracks ceased.

A gap in the line of snow which fringed the precipice showed where Lavina had gone over. They had no means of descending and as they halted, staring blindly out into the still falling snow, they knew that their brave, self-willed little companion, who had brought them so much joy by her gaiety and beauty, must now lie dead upon the ice-pack forty feet below.

One Must Die

Before leaving Gervaise's tent Lavina had taken a good swig at the flask of brandy to give herself strength for what she meant to do, but she had no intention of throwing herself over the precipice. She had said that she meant to in her letter because she knew that that was the only possible way to prevent her friends from following her and, once having abandoned their camp, all dying of exposure that night.

Moreover, ever since she had been a little girl she had been in love with her own body. It was such a perfect thing that she would gaze at it in her long mirror for hours before going to bed at night; and one of her favourite pastimes as a girl had been to dance naked before that mirror for her own amusement. If she ever bruised herself she felt the pain far less than the distress of having temporarily marred that beautiful thing which was herself. Her skin was so fine and her blood so healthy that she rarely suffered from a spot on the face, but if one ever appeared it caused her greater agony of mind than a gnawing toothache, and she would cheerfully have worked all through her school holidays if by so doing she could have escaped such childhood ailments as chickenpox and measles. Therefore, nothing could ever have induced her wilfully to smash this thing that she had tended for so long and with such loving care.

To fool the others she had walked straight to the cliff edge, pushed a great lump of snow over, taken her snow-shoes off and, jumping as far as she could from the place where her track ended, set off along the cliff-top in her fur-lined boots, only putting the snow-shoes on again when she had covered about fifty yards. In the uncertain light it was extremely unlikely that any of the others would notice the break in the snow at the place to which she had jumped; and from there on she had taken the longest strides that she could manage, so she was quite confident that none of her friends would find out what she had done.

By the time she had covered a quarter of a mile the effect of her rest and the brandy had worn off. She was very tired again and began to stumble as she cast about for a sheltered place in which she could lie down. Two humps of snow with a shallow valley between them provided a likely-looking spot, so scooping up the snow with her gloved hands she blocked the far end of the little valley with a wall about two feet high. Then, making a pillow of snow, she sank down in the valley-bottom.

She knew, as does every British schoolchild, the epic story of that very gallant gentleman, Captain Oates, who walked out into a blizzard in the Antarctic, sacrificing himself in order that his fellow-explorers might have a better chance of surviving from being able to use his share of the remaining food; and perhaps that courageous act had subconsciously inspired her, but she herself did not feel any sense of heroism.

Although she was very young to die she had had a good life; beauty, success, many friends, even a happy marriage, before the comet had come to wreck everything. But now there seemed very little left to live for. Even if the others succeeded in reaching Calais there was the incredible hardship of the journey south still to be faced. The intense cold would wrinkle her beautiful face, frost-bite might strike at her any day. Her delicate shoulders were already assuming a permanent stoop from slogging forward through the snow. The journey would age her prematurely and she would be only a caricature of her former self by the time they had covered the thousand miles south to a warmer climate.

She had told the truth when she had written that she was not afraid. She had feared any risk in which she might be maimed all her life, but not death itself; and death would come gently to her as her limbs gradually numbed and she fell asleep in the snow. The cold was creeping up her limbs and she felt drowsy already as she surrendered to it now and thought fondly of her friends.

Gervaise would be heartbroken; poor Sam most terribly upset. Margery would persuade herself and the others that she felt the loss of her sister, but deep down she would not really be sorry because that loss would prevent any possibility of Sam's starting to hanker after his first wife again. Derek would be like a wounded animal nursing his grief in silence.

Dear Derek; what a good and faithful friend he had been. And he was not so stupid that he could not also see how things had been going between Sam and Margery; yet he had played the game to the last and had never traded on his knowledge, as most men in his situation would have done, to try and draw her further from her husband.

And Hemmingway. Even in the blizzard he would hold his head high tomorrow, because he would be so proud. He loved her utterly. She knew that now; she had known it all along. He had loved her from the very moment he had first seen her, but how strong he had been in concealing it while they were in the Ark; and he had kept up that iron control over himself even when she had deliberately told him that she and Sam were on the point of parting, and given him a chance to come out into the open, that afternoon when they had sat together in the freezing downstairs room of the house at Sittingbourne.

She loved him, too, with all her body, with all her mind, with all her spirit. If only she had been a little stronger, strong enough to go on for another few days, everything would have come right. Directly he had known that she was free he would have claimed her. But that would only have made things worse for both of them when she died from exhaustion while they were still searching for Calais. The way that she had chosen was better, and it gave all her friends a good chance. The hardest thing of all had been for her to leave the camp without telling him that she loved him; but then, of course, he knew it. They had both known that they loved each other from the very beginning. She would have bartered her glorious golden hair for one half hour in which he could take her in his arms again. Her whole body ached for him. Then, as she lay thinking of him he came to her out of the blinding snowstorm.

Kneeling down beside her, he peered close into her face, and seeing that her eyes were open, smiled as he said simply: 'So here you are. I knew I'd find you.'

'How did you guess that I hadn't gone over the cliff?' she asked in a low voice.

'No one with a spirit such as yours could ever commit suicide. Waiting for death to take one in a case like this is quite different. I had to wait for a bit until I could slip away from the others before I could follow you, but I soon found the tracks of your feet in the snow.'

'I'm not going back,' she announced quietly, 'and I shall only run away again during the night if you try to carry me.'

'I know,' he said.

'Then why did you come?' she smiled, knowing the answer to her question even before she asked it.

'Because I prefer to die with you than live without you.'

'Dear Hemmingway.'

'My sweet Lavina. We've had a hard deal, haven't we? But our troubles are over now. You've given Sam his freedom, as I knew you would, and it's me you love, not Derek. There's nothing to separate us any longer and we'll spend the last hours of our lives together.'

She drew his head down to hers and kissed him, first gently then fiercely, crushing her mouth against his. As she released him she sighed. 'Yes, it's you I love. And you love me. How blessed we are in that we shall have such a happy death. But now you've come I don't want to die just yet.'

Hemmingway had brought with him his fur sleeping-bag. Stretching it out on the ground he laid her on it and chafed her hands and feet; then the two of them crawled into it and lay tightly embraced. Soon she was quite warm again. It was not until a quarter of an hour later that they even noticed in their sheltered little valley that the snow had ceased falling.

'Oh, thank God!' Lavina exclaimed. 'The blizzard's over at last. Now it's quite certain the others will find Calais tomorrow.'

'Yes. And they can eat a good meal now,' Hemmingway smiled. 'With only three of them left they can afford to have a proper breakfast.'

'Three of them?'

'Yes, I was just going to tell you. About the time you left the camp Derek left too. He said he was going to explore a hummock of snow that might conceal a cottage; but he didn't take his furs, and he didn't come back. After we had failed to find you we went out to look for him, but he'd abandoned his snow-shoes about thirty yards from the camp and his footprints were covered with fresh snow. When we got back we found he'd left a note. It simply said "This is my last will and testament. I leave my share of the remaining food to Lavina and a wealth of good wishes to you all." '

'Dear, splendid Derek. How like him. But how I wish that he could have the happy end that ours will be. Without furs he'll die very quickly; he may be dead by now.' Lavina's voice quavered but she steadied it and asked after a moment: 'How long d'you think we've got, darling?'

'Until tomorrow, I should think. We may not wake up after we go to sleep tonight, but if we do wake we'll remain lying here; and once we start to get numb from inaction the end will come quite peacefully.'

They talked far into the night in the great silence of the snow that lay all about them, while the stars twinkled overhead in a cold, frosty sky. They no longer felt any tiredness, and the dawn was near breaking when they kissed for the last time and sank into a peaceful slumber.

It was mid-morning when they woke. The warmth from each other's bodies, their fur clothes and the fur sleeping-bag had prevented them from freezing, and although they felt a little empty from having had such short rations the day before, they were overjoyed to know that they would have another day together. The sun was shining so they knew that the odds were all in favour of the others.

'We can change our minds if you wish, my sweet,' said Hemmingway. 'It'll be hard going on empty tummies but now the blizzard's over we might find the town.'

She shook her head. 'No, darling, I'm too weak. I couldn't manage another mile and when the others get to Calais they'll only have their hands and the tent pegs to dig with. The houses must be so deeply buried that they won't be able to break into one until tomorrow; and then they may not find food until they've tried several.'

As Hemmingway nodded she went on: 'It may be two or three days yet before they find more than a few odd tins to keep them going, and it wouldn't be fair to jeopardise the lives of the others, even if we could rejoin them, now.'

'I know,' he smiled. 'That's just how I feel.'

For a long time they lay curled up in their bag talking softly and caressing each other. Gradually they grew colder and their lower limbs began to get numb. Time drifted on, and unnoticed by them the sun passed the meridian. They became drowsy and Lavina was half-asleep when, as in a dream, a tiny, insistent sound caught her ear, breaking the great silence. Suddenly starting up, wide awake, she wrenched herself out of Hem-mingway's arms.

"What's that?' she cried. 'What's that?'

A faint, high, whining note came from the distance, gradually increasing to a roar.

'God!' shouted Hemmingway, struggling out of the bag. 'It's a plane! A plane!'

Next moment they saw it, flying at about 2,000 feet; a great, silver monoplane soaring through the blue sky southward down the Channel.

As it approached they stood on the cliff-top waving and shouting wildly. The plane passed almost overhead and they feared that its pilot had failed to see them but suddenly it curved out to sea, and, turning, came back towards them. It rose again, banked steeply, and turning into the wind, came gracefully down on to the flat surface of the hard-frozen snow at the base of the cliffs.

Frantic with excitement Lavina and Hemmingway waved to the occupants of the plane, who waved back to them from one of its windows. Stumbling from numbness but given new strength by their intense mental exhilaration they lurched along hand in hand seeking a way down to the sea-level.

After twenty minutes they found a gap in the cliff and scrambled down it. Lavina fell, staggered up, and fell again; she could go no farther. Hemmingway picked her up in his arms and stumbled across the snow towards two people who had got out of the plane to come and meet them. To their joy and utter amazement they recognised the man and woman as Rupert Brand and Conchita del Serilla.

Half-fainting Lavina collapsed in Conchita's arms the moment Hemmingway set her down, while the two men crushed each other's hands as though they meant to break every bone in each other's fingers.

'Lord knows what happened when the comet hit the world!' said Rupert when their first greetings were over and the brandy from his flask was coursing through Lavina's and Hemmingway's veins, bringing them new life. 'We decided to face the business in my stratosphere record-breaker just as I'd planned half-jokingly at that lunch-party of Sam's where we first discussed the comet. We started out from central Spain, of course, and I took her up to 30,000; then just ran her round in wide circles. At the moment of impact we were chucked about as though the plane was a piece of paper in a high wind, but I managed to pull her out of it at about 9,000, and when we went down below the clouds to see what had happened we found that Spain had disappeared and we were in the middle of the ocean. I turned her then and headed her eastwards, but we had to fly nearly 400 miles before we came down and I landed her on a grassy plateau without having the faintest idea where we'd got to. After walking a few miles we struck a village and, would you believe it, I'm damned if we weren't in Norway!'

Hemmingway explained Gervaise's theory of the world have ing been thrown right off its axis, which would have flung Spain twenty degrees farther south while the plane had been bucketing in the air, and Rupert went on:

'By the mercy of God I decided to fly home to England the following afternoon, so we were in the air again when that huge wave came crashing along but I succeeded in finding a high stretch of land that the deluge hadn't submerged, somewhere up in the highlands of Scotland. It was only an island, but it was enough, and with the stores in the plane, some mountain-sheep that had escaped the deluge, and a crofter's potato-field we were lucky enough to find, we managed to exist somehow until the flood went down. After that the problem was petrol, and for the last month we've had one hell of a time scouring frozen villages, getting a tin here and a tin there until we could collect enough to fly the plane down to a decent climate.'

He had hardly finished speaking when Gervaise, Sam and Margery appeared in the distance. From Calais, which they had found that morning, they had seen the plane come down and had hurried out across the frozen sea towards it.

Ten minutes later they were all taking off their furs in the glorious warmth of the big, engine-heated cabin of the plane.

Sam and HemmingNvay were smiling at each other unable to find words to express their joy at their reunion. Gervaise only stopped hugging his cherished Lavina to spread out a map on her lap so that they could choose an oasis on the coast of equatorial Africa where they would be able to live on fish and dates until the plague from the dead bodies of men and animals in the towns of the equatorial belt had abated.

Rupert wheeled the big plane and taxied it across the hard snow. With its burden of three gloriously happy pairs of lovers and the gentle, elderly man who had led those he loved out of the land of death towards a new beginning, it rose gracefully into the clear, bright sky and sped south—south—south—to the Sunshine.