The Day of the Triffids

V. A Light in the Night

Josella began to recover her self-possession. With the deliberate and obvious intention of taking her mind off what lay behind us, she asked:

“Where are we going now?”

“Clerkenwell first,” I told her. “After that we’ll see about getting you same more clothes. Bond Street for them, if you like, but Clerkenwell first.”

“But why Clerkenwell—? Good heavens!”

She might well exclaim. We bad turned a corner to see the street seventy yards ahead of us filled with people. They were coming toward us at a stumbling run, with their arms outstretched before them. A mingled crying and screaming came from them. Even as we came into sight of them a woman at the front tripped and fell; others tumbled over her, and she disappeared beneath a kicking, struggling heap. Beyond the mob we had a glimpse of the cause of it all: three dark-leaved stems swaying beyond the panic-stricken beads. I accelerated and swung off into a byroad.

Josella turned a terrified face.

“Did—did you see what that was? They were driving them.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why we are going to Clerkenwell. There’s a place there that makes the best triffid guns and masks in the world.”

We worked back again and picked up our intended route, but we did not find the clear run I had hoped for. Near King’s Cross Station there were many more people on the streets. Even with a hand on the horn it grew increasingly difficult to get along. In front of the station itself it became impossible. Why there should have been such crowds in that place, I don’t know. All the people in the district seemed to have converged upon it. We could not get through them, and a glance behind showed that it would be almost as hopeless to fly to go back. Those we bad passed had already closed in on our track.

“Get out, quick!” I said. “I think they’re after us.”

“But—“ Josella began.

“Hurry!” I said shortly.

I blew a final blast on the horn and slipped out after her, leaving the engine running. We were not many seconds too soon. A man found the handle of the rear door. lie pulled it open and pawed inside. We were all but pushed over by the pressure of others making for the car. There was a shout of anger when somebody opened the front door and found the seats there empty too. By that time we ourselves had safely become members of the crowd. Somebody grabbed the man who had opened the rear door, under the impression that it was he who had just got out. Around that the confusion began to thrive. I took a firm grip of Josella’s hand, and we started to worm our way along as unobviously as possible.

Clear of the crowd at last, we kept on foot for a while, looking out for a suitable car. After a mile or so we found it— a station wagon, likely to be more useful than an ordinary body for the plan that was beginning to form vaguely in my mind.

In Clerkenwell they had been accustomed for two or three centuries to make fine, precise instruments. The small factory I had dealt with professionally at times had adapted the old skill to new needs. I found it with little difficulty, nor was it hard to break in. ‘When we set off again, there was a comforting sense of support to be derived from several excellent triffid guns, some thousands of little steel boomerangs for them, and some wire-mesh helmets that we bad loaded into the back.

“And now—clothes?” suggested Josella as we started.

“Provisional plan, open to criticism and correction,” I told her. “First, what you might call a pied-A-verre; i.e., some-where to pull ourselves together and discuss things.”

“Not another bar,” she protested. “I’ve had quite enough of bars for one day.”

“Improbable though my friends might think it—with everything free—so have I,” I agreed. “What I was thinking of was an empty apartment. That shouldn’t be difficult to find. We could ease up there awhile, and settle the rough plan of campaign. Also, it would be convenient for spending the night—or, if you find that the trammels of convention still defy the peculiar circumstances, well, maybe we could make it two apartments.”

“I think I’d be happier to know there was someone close at hand.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Then Operation Number Two will be ladies’ and gents’ outfitting. For that perhaps we had better go our separate ways—both taking exceedingly good care not to forget which apartment it was that we decided on,”

“Y-es,” she said, but a little doubtfully.

“It’ll be all right,” I assured her. “Make a rule for yourself not to speak to anyone, and nobody’s going to guess you can see. It was only being quite unprepared that landed you in that mess before. ‘In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.’

“Oh yes—Wells said that, didn’t he? Only in the story it turned out not to be true.”

“The crux of the difference lies in what you mean by the word ‘country’—patria in the original,” I said. “Caecorum in patria luscus rex imperat omnis—a classical gentleman called Fullonius said that: it’s all anyone seems to remember about him. But there’s no organized patria, no state, here—only chaos, Wells imagined a people who had adapted themselves to blindness. I don’t think that is going to happen here—I don’t see how it can.

“What do you think is going to happen?”

“My guess would be no better than yours. And soon we shall begin to know, anyway. Better get back to matters in hand. Where were we?”

“Choosing clothes.”

“Oh yes. Well, it’s simply a matter of slipping into a shop, adopting a few trifles, and slipping out again. You’ll not meet any triffids in central London—at least, not yet.”

“You talk so lightly about taking things,” she said.

“I don’t feel quite so lightly about it,” I admitted. “But I’m not sure that that’s virtue—it’s more likely merely habit. And an obstinate refusal to face facts isn’t going to bring anything back, or help us at all. I think we’ll have to try to see ourselves not as the robbers of all this but more as—well, the unwilling heirs to it.”

‘Yes. I suppose it is—something like that,” she agreed in a qualified way.

She was silent for a time. When she spoke again she reverted to the earlier question.

“And after the clothes?” she asked.

“Operation Number Three,” I told her, “is, quite definitely, dinner.”

There was, as I had expected, no great difficulty about the apartment. We left the car locked up in the middle of the road in front of an opulent-looking block and climbed to the third story. Quite why we chose the third I can’t say, except that it seemed a bit more out of the way. The process of selection was simple. We knocked or we rang, and if anyone answered, we passed on. After we had passed on three times we found a door where there was no response. The socket of the rim lock tore off to one good heft of the shoulder, and we were in.

I myself had not been one of those addicted to living in an apartment with a rent of some two thousand pounds a year, but I found that there were decidedly things to be said in favor of it, The interior decorators had been, I guessed, elegant young men with just that ingenious gift for combining taste with advanced topicality which is so expensive. Consciousness of fashion was the mainspring of the place. Here and there were certain unmistakable derniers cris, some of them undoubtedly destined—had the world pursued its expected course—to become the rage of tomorrow; others, I would say, a dead loss from their very inception. The over-all effect was Trade Fair in its neglect of human foibles—a book left a few inches out of place or with the wrong color on its jacket would ruin the whole carefully considered balance and tone—so, too, would the person thoughtless enough to wear the wrong clothes when sitting upon the wrong luxurious chair or sofa. I turned to Josella, who was staring wide-eyed at it all.

“Will this little shack serve—or do we go farther?” I asked.

“Oh, I guess we’ll make out,” she said. And together we waded through the delicate cream carpet to explore.

It was quite uncalculated, but I could scarcely have hit upon a more satisfactory method of taking her mind off the events of the day. Our tour was punctuated with a series of exclamations in which admiration, envy, delight, contempt, and, one must confess, malice all played their parts. Josella paused on the threshold of a room rampant with all the most aggressive manifestations of femininity.

“I’ll sleep here,” she said.

“My God!” I remarked. “Well, each to her taste.”

“Don’t be nasty. I probably won’t have another chance to be decadent. Besides, don’t you know there’s a bit of the dumbest film star in every girl? So I’ll let it have its final fling.”

“You shall,” I said. “But I hope they keep something quieter around here, Heaven preserve mc from having to sleep in a bed with a mirror set in the ceiling over it.”

“There’s one above the bath too,” she said, looking into an adjoining room.

“I don’t know whether that would be the zenith or nadir of decadence,” I said. “But anyway, you’ll not be using it. No hot water.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten that. What a shame!” she exclaimed disappointedly.

We completed our tour of the premises, finding the rest less sensational. Then she went out to deal with the matter of clothes. I made an inspection of the apartment’s resources and limitations and then set out on an expedition of my own.

As I stepped outside, another door farther down the passage opened. I stopped, and stood still where I was. A young man came out, leading a fair-haired girl by the hand. As she stepped over the threshold he released his grasp.

“Wait just a minute, darling,” he said.

He took three or four steps on the silencing carpet. His outstretched hands found the window which ended the passage. His fingers went straight to the catch and opened it. I had a glimpse of a low-railed, ornamental balcony outside.

“What are you doing, Jimmy?” she asked.

“Just making sure,” he said, stepping quickly back to her and feeling for her hand again. “Come along, darling.”

She hung back.

“Jimmy—I don’t like leaving here. At least we know where we are in our own apartment. How are we going to feed? How are we going to live?”

In the apartment, darling, we shan’t feed at all—and therefore not live long. Come along, sweetheart. Don’t be afraid.”

But I am. Jimmy—I am.”

She clung to him, and he put one arm round her.

“We’ll be all right, darling. Come along.

“But, Jimmy, that’s the wrong way— You’ve got it twisted round, dear. It’s the right way.”

“Jimmy—I’m so frightened. Let’s go back.”

“It’s too late, darling.”

By the window be paused. With one hand he felt his position very carefully. Then he put both arms round her, holding her to him.

“Too wonderful to last, perhaps,” he said softly. “I love you, my sweet. I love you so very, very much.”

She tilted her lips up to be kissed.

As he lifted her he turned, and stepped out of the window.

“You’ve got to grow a hide,” I told myself. “Got to. Its either that or stay permanently drunk. Things like that must be happening all around. They’ll go on happening. You can’t help it. Suppose you’d given them food to keep them alive for another few days? What after that? You’ve got to learn to take it, and come to terms with it. There’s nothing else but the alcoholic funk hole. If you don’t fight to live your own life in spite of it, there won’t be any survival… Only those who can make their minds tough enough to stick it are going to get through…”

It took me longer than I had expected to collect what I wanted. Something like two hours had passed before I got back. I dropped one or two things from my armful in negotiating the door. Josella’s voice called, with a trace of nervousness, from that overfeminine room.

“Only me,” I reassured her as I advanced down the passage with the load.

I dumped the things in the kitchen and went back for those I’d dropped. Outside her door I paused.

“You can’t come in.” she said.

“That wasn’t quite my intended angle,” I protested. “What I want to know is, can you cook?”

“Boiled-egg standard,” said her muffled voice.

“I was afraid of that. There’s an awful lot of things we’re going to have to learn,” I told her.

I went back to the kitchen. I erected the kerosene stove I had brought on top of the useless electric cooker and got busy.

When I’d finished laying the places at the small table in the sitting room the effect seemed to me fairly good. I fetched a few candles and candlesticks to complete it, and set them ready. Of Josella there was still no visible sign, though there had been sounds of running water some little time ago. I called her.

“Just coming,” she answered.

I wandered across to the window and looked out. Quite consciously I began saying good-by to it all. The sun was low. Towers, spires, and facades of Portland stone were white or pink against the dimming sky. More fires had broken out here and there. The smoke climbed in big black smudges, sometimes with a lick of flame at the bottom of them. Quite likely, I told myself, I would never in my life again see any of these familiar buildings after tomorrow. There might be a time when one would be able to come back—but not to the same place. Fires and weather would have worked on it; it would be visibly dead and abandoned. But now, at a distance, it could still masquerade as a living city.

My father once told me that before Hitler’s war he used to go round London with his eyes more widely open than ever before, seeing the beauties of buildings that be had never noticed before—and saying good-by to them. And now I had a similar feeling. But this was something worse. Much more than anyone could have hoped for had survived that war— but this was an enemy they would not survive, it was not wanton smashing and willful burning that they waited for this time: it was simply the long, slow, inevitable course of decay and collapse.

Standing there, and at that time, my heart still resisted what my head was telling me. Still I had the feeling that it was all something too big, too unnatural really to happen. Yet I knew that it was by no means the first time that it had happened. The corpses of other great cities are lying buried in deserts and obliterated by the jungles of Asia. Some of them fell so long ago that even their names have gone with them. But to those who lived there their dissolution can have seemed no more probable or possible than the necrosis of a great modem city seemed to me…

It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that “it can’t happen here”- that one’s own little time and place is beyond cataclysms.

And now it was happening here. Unless there should be some miracle, I was looking on the beginning of the end of London—and very likely, it seemed, there were other men, not unlike me, who were looking at the beginning of the end of New York, Paris, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Bombay, and all the rest of the cities that were destined to go the way of those others under the jungles.

I was still looking out when a sound of movement came from behind me. I turned, and saw that Josella had come into the room. She was wearing a long, pretty frock of palest blue georgette with a little jacket of white fur. In a pendant on a simple chain a few blue-white diamonds flashed; the stones that gleamed in her ear clips were smaller but as fine in color. Her hair and her face might have been fresh from a beauty parlor. She crossed the floor with a flicker of silver slippers and a glimpse of gossamer stockings. As I went on staring without speaking, her mouth lost its little smile.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked with childish halt disappointment.

“It’s lovely—you’re beautiful,” I told her. “I—well, I just wasn’t expecting anything like this

Something more was needed. I knew that it was a display which had little or nothing to do with me. I added:

“You’re—saying good-by?”

A different look came into her eyes.

“So you do understand. I hoped you would.”

“I think I do. I’m glad you’ve done it. It’ll be a lovely thing to remember,” I said.

I stretched out my hand to her and led her to the window.

“I was saying good-by too—to all this.”

What went on in her mind as we stood there side by side is her secret. In mine there was a kind of kaleidoscope of the life and ways that were now finished—or perhaps it was more like flipping through a huge volume of photographs with one, all-comprehensive “do-you-remember?”

We looked for a long time, lost in our thoughts. Then she sighed. She glanced down at her dress, fingering the delicate silk.

“Silly? Rome burning?” she said with a rueful little smile. “No—sweet,” I said. “Thank you for doing it. A gesture— and a reminder that with all the faults there was so much beauty. You couldn’t have done—or looked—a lovelier thing.”

Her smile lost its ruefulness.

“Thank you, Bill.” She paused. Then she added: “Have I said thank you before? I don’t think I have. If you hadn’t helped me when you did

“But for you,” I told her, “I should probably by now be lying

maudlin and sozzled in some bar. I have just as much to

thank you for. This is no time to be alone.” Then, to change the trend, I added: “And speaking of drink, there’s an excellent amontillado here, and some pretty good things to follow. This is a very well-found apartment.”

I poured out the sherry, and we raised our glasses.

“To health, strength—and luck,” I said.

She nodded. We drank.

“What,” Josella asked as we started on an expensive-tasting pate, “if the owner of all this suddenly comes back?”

In that case we will explain—and he or she should be only too thankful to have someone here to tell him which bottle is which, and so on—but I don’t think that is very likely to happen.”

“No,” she agreed, considering. “No. I’m afraid that’s not very likely. I wonder “ She looked round the room. Her eyes paused at a fluted white pedestal. “Did you try the radio—I suppose that thing is a radio, isn’t it?”

“It’s a television projector too,” I told her. “But no good. No power.”

“Of course. I forgot. I suppose we’ll go on forgetting things like that for quite a time.”

“But I did try one when I was out.” I said. “A battery affair. Nothing doing. All broadcast bands as silent as the grave.”

“That means it’s like this everywhere?”

“I’m afraid so. There was something pip-pipping away around forty-two meters. Otherwise nothing. I wonder who and where he was, poor chap.”

“It’s—it’s going to be pretty grim, Bill, isn’t it?”

“It’s— No, I’m nor going to have my dinner clouded,” I said. “Pleasure before business-and the future is definitely business. Let’s talk about something interesting, like how many love affairs you have had and why somebody hasn’t married you long before this—or has he? You see how little I know, Life story, please.”

“Well,” she said, “I was born about three miles from here. My mother was very annoyed about it at the time.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“You see, she had quite made up her mind that I should be an American. But when the car came to take her to the airport it was just too late. Full of impulses, she was—I think I inherited some of them.”

She prattled on. There was not much remarkable about her early life, but I think she enjoyed herself in summarizing it and forgetting where we were for a while. I enjoyed listening to her babble of the familiar and amusing things that had all vanished from the world outside. We worked lightly through childhood, schooldays, and “coming out”—insofar as the term still meant anything.

I did nearly get married when I was nineteen,” she admitted, “and aren’t I glad now it didn’t happen. But I didn’t feel like that at the time. I had a frightful row with Daddy, who’d broken the whole thing up because he saw right away that Lionel was a spizzard and—”

“A what?” I interrupted.

“A spizzard. A sort of cross between a spiv and a lizard — the lounge kind. So then I cut my family off and went and lived with a girl I knew who had an apartment. And my family cut off my allowance, which was a very silly thing to do, because it might have had just the opposite effect from what they intended. As it happened, it didn’t, because all the girls I knew who were making out that way seemed to me to have a very wearing sort of time of it. Not much fun, and an awful lot of jealousy to put up with—and so much planning. You’d never believe how much planning it needs to keep one or two second strings in good condition—or do I mean two or three spare strings?” She pondered.

“Never mind,” I told her. “I get the general idea. You just didn’t want the strings at all.”

“Intuitive, you are. All the same, I couldn’t just sponge on the girl who had the apartment. I did have to have some money, so I wrote the book.”

I did not think I’d heard quite aright.

“You made a book?” I suggested.

“I wrote the book.” She glanced at me and smiled. “I must look awful dumb—that’s just the way they all used to look at me when I told them I was writing a book. Mind you, it wasn’t a very good book—I mean, not like Aldous or Charles or people of that kind—but it worked.”

I refrained from asking which of many possible Charleses this referred to. I simply asked:

“You mean it did get published?”

“Oh yes. And it really brought in quite a lot of money. The film rights—”

“What was this book?” I asked curiously.

“It was called Sex is My Adventure.”

I stared and then smote my forehead.

“Josella Playton, of course. I couldn’t think why that name kept on nearly ringing bells. You wrote that thing?” I added incredulously.

I couldn’t think why I had not remembered before. Her photograph had been all over the place—not a very good photograph, now I could look at the original, and the book had been all over the place too. Two large circulating libraries had banned it, probably on the title alone. After that its success had been assured, and the sales went rocketing up into the hundred thousands. Josella chuckled. I was glad to hear it.

“Oh dear,” she said. “You look just like all my relatives did.”

“I can’t blame them,” I told her.

“Did you read it?” she asked.

I shook my head. She sighed.

“People are funny. All you know about it is the title and the publicity, and you’re shocked. And it’s such a harmless little book, really. Mixture of green-sophisticated and pink-romantic, with patches of schoolgirly-purple. But the title was a good idea.”

“All depends what you mean by good,” I suggested. “And you put your own name to it, too.”

“That,” she agreed, “was a mistake. The publishers persuaded me that it would be so much better for publicity. From their point of view they were right. I became quite notorious for a hit—it used to make me giggle inside when I saw people looking speculatively at me in restaurants and places—they seemed to find it so hard to tie up what they saw with what they thought. Lots of people I didn’t care for took to tinning up regularly at the apartment, so to get rid of them, and because I’d proved that I didn’t have to go home, I went home again.

“The book rather spoiled things, though. People would be so literal-minded about that title. I seem to have been keeping up a permanent defensive ever since against people I don’t like—and those I wanted to like were either scared or shocked. What’s so annoying is that it wasn’t even a wicked book—it was just silly-shocking, and sensible people ought to have seen that.”

She paused contemplatively. It occurred to rue that the sensible people had probably decided that the author of Sex Is My Adventure would be silly-shocking too, but I forebore to suggest it. We all have our youthful follies, embarrassing to recall—but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.

“It sort of twisted everything,” she complained. “I was writing another book to try to balance things up again. But I’m glad I’ll never finish it—it was rather bitter.”

“With an equally alarming title?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It was to be called Here the Forsaken.”

“H’m—well, it certainly lacks the snap of the other,” I said. “Quotation?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Mr. Congreve: ‘Here the forsaken Virgin rests from Love.’”

“Er—oh,” I said, and thought that one over for a bit.

“And now,” I suggested, “I think it’s about time we began to rough out a plan of campaign. Shall I throw around a few observations first?”

We lay back in two superbly comfortable armchairs. On the low table between us stood the coffee apparatus and two glasses. Josella’s was the small one with the cointreau. The plutocratic-looking balloon with the puddle of unpriceable brandy was mine. Josella blew out a feather of smoke and took a sip of her drink. Savoring the flavor, she said:

“I wonder whether we shall ever taste fresh oranges again? Okay, shoot.”

“Well, it’s no good blinking facts. We had better clear out soon. If not tomorrow, then the day after. You can begin to see already what’s going to happen here. At present there’s still water in the tanks. Soon there won’t be. The whole city will begin to stink like a great sewer. There are already some bodies lying about—every day there will be more.” I noticed her shudder. I had for the moment, in taking the general view, forgotten the particular application it would have for her. I hurried on: “That may mean typhus, or cholera, or God knows what. It’s important to get away before anything of that kind starts.”

She nodded agreement to that.

“Then the next question seems to be, where do we go? Have you any ideas?” I asked her.

“Well—I suppose, roughly, somewhere out of the way. A place with a good water supply we can be sure of—a well, perhaps. And I should think it would be best to be as high up as we reasonably can—some place where there’ll be a nice clean wind.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’d not thought of the clean wind part, but you’re right. A hilltop with a good water supply—that’s not so easy offhand.” I thought a moment. The Lake District? No, too far. Wales, perhaps? Or maybe Exmoor or Dartmoor— or right down in Cornwall? Around Land’s End we’d have the prevailing southwest wind coming in untainted over the Atlantic. But that, too, was a long way. We should be dependent on towns when it became safe to visit them again.

“What about the Sussex Downs?” Josella suggested. “I know a lovely old farmhouse on the north side, looking right across toward Pulborough. It’s not on the top of hills, but it’s well up the side. There’s a wind pump for water, and I think they make their own electricity. It’s all been converted and modernized.”

Desirable residence, in fact. But it’s a hit near populous places. Don’t you think we ought to get farther away?”

“Well, I was wondering. How long is it going to be before it’ll be safe to go into the towns again?”

“I’ve no real idea,” I admitted. “I’d something like a year in mind—surely that might to be a safe enough margin?”

“I see. But if we do go too far away, it isn’t going to be at all easy to get supplies later on.”

“That is a point, certainly,” I agreed.

We dropped the matter of our final destination for the moment and got down to working out details for our removal. In the morning, we decided, we would first of all acquire a truck—a capacious truck—and between us we made a list of the essentials we would put into it. If we could finish the stocking-up, we would start on our way the next evening; if not— and the list was growing to a length which made this appear much the more likely—we would risk another night in London and get away the following day.

It was close on midnight when we had finished adding our own secondary wants to the list of musts. The result resembled a department-store catalogue. But if it had done no more than serve to take our minds off ourselves for the evening, it would have been worth the trouble.

Josella yawned and stood up.

“Sleepy,” she said. “And silk sheets waiting on an ecstatic bed.”

She seemed to float across the thick carpet. With her hand on the doorknob she stopped, and turned to regard herself solemnly in a long mirror.

“Some things were fun,” she said, and kissed her hand to her reflection.

“Good night, you vain, sweet vision,” I said.

She turned with a small smile and then vanished through the door like a mist drifting away.

I poured out a final drop of the superb brandy, warmed it in my hands, and sipped it.

“Never—never again now win you see a sight like that,” I told myself. “Sic Transit…”

And then, before I should become utterly morbid, I took myself to my more modest bed.

I was stretched in comfort on the edge of sleep when there came a knocking at the door.

“Bill,” said Josella’s voice. “Come quickly. There’s a light!”

“What sort of a light?” I inquired, struggling out of bed.

“Outside. Come and look.”

She was standing in the passage, wrapped in the sort of garment that could have belonged only to the owner of that remarkable bedroom.

“Good God!” I said nervously.

“Don’t be a fool,” she said irritably. “Come and look at that light.”

A light there certainly was. Looking out of her window toward what I judged to he the northeast, I could see a bright beam like that of a searchlight pointed unwaveringly upward.

“That must mean there’s somebody else there who can see,” she said.

“It must,” I agreed.

I tried to locate the source of it, but in the surrounding darkness I was unable to decide. No great distance away, I was sure, and seeming to start in mid-air—which probably meant that it was mounted on a high building. I hesitated.

“Better leave it till tomorrow,” I decided.

The idea of trying to find our way to it through the dark streets was far from attractive. And it was just possible— highly unlikely, but just possible—that it was a trap. Even a blind man who was clever, and desperate enough, might be able to wire such a thing up by touch.

I found a nail file and squatted down with my eye on the level of the window sill. With the point at the file I drew a careful line in the paint, marking the exact direction of the beam’s source. Then I went back to my room.

I lay awake for an hour or more. Night magnified the quiet of the city, making the sounds which broke it the more desolate. From time to time voices rose from the street, sharp and brittle with hysteria. Once there was a freezing scream which seemed to revel horribly in its release from sanity. Somewhere nor tar away there was a sobbing that went on endlessly, hopelessly. Twice I heard the sharp reports of single pistol shots I gave heartfelt thanks to whatever it was that had brought Josella and me together for companionship.

Complete loneliness was the worst stare I could imagine just then. Alone, one would be nothing. Company meant purpose, and purpose helped to keep the morbid fears at bay.

I tried to shut out the sounds by thinking of all the things I must do the next day, and the day after, and the days after that; by guessing what the beam of light might mean, and how it might affect us. But the sobbing in the background went on and on and on, reminding me of the things I had seen that day, and would see tomorrow…

The opening of the door brought me sitting up in sudden alarm. It was Josella, carrying a lighted candle. Her eyes were wide and dark, and she bad been crying.

“I can’t sleep,” she said. “I’m frightened—horribly frightened. Can you hear them—all those poor people? I can’t stand it

She came like a child to be comforted. I’m not sure that her need of it was much greater than mine.

She fell asleep before I did, arid with her head resting on my shoulder.

Still the memories of the day would not leave inc in peace. But, in the end, one does sleep. My last recollection was of remembering the sweet, sad voice of the girl who had sung:

So we’ll go no more a-roving