THE CHINA MAIL, JANUARY 5, 1940
Potted-Best-Seller Serial: Sixth Day
THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT
By R. C. SHERRIFF Who Wrote "Journey's End"
Edgar Hopkins found only two others alive on the morning after the moon fell. The great dug- -out was flooded - the door open.
"PERHAPS they opened the door ment; we saw his goggled face peer before the flood had gone," I said; down at us in complete unconcern; he "the water inside suggests that, But gave no response to our waving hats, where have they all gone?"
"Nobody could open the door against the weight of a flood," said Robin.
That was true. I could think of nothing else.
"There's nothing we can do," I said at last. "It's useless to stay here."
Before we took our departure we hammered against both of the closed doors and called out "Hullo!" I knew that it was a fruitless effort, but some- how it seemed part of a ceremony that we must perform before we could go. "I suppose we shall know what hap- pened to them all one day," whispered the Pat as we went together down barren slopes where bluebells should now have thrown a haze around us.
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Pat was right. In due time we were to learn what had happened to the whole population of the village who had gone for safety into those grim tunnels-but it must come in the proper sequence of my story.
Robin had borne up wonderfully throughout our long and tiring expedi- tlon, but on entering my house-the only habitable building we had seen in the whole district-he almost faint- ed. I took him to one of the spare and rooms. I made him He down pulled the blankets around him, for he was shivering.
"Your job," I said, in reply to his protests, "is to get strong again, and to get strong you must rest."
I went downstairs and found Pat in the kitchen. She had built up the Are: she had put the kettle upon it and spread-the-cloth-upon-the table. She- was standing by the window, her eyes upon the gaunt crest of the downs that were dark and pitiless against the set- ting sun-and she was crying.
I felt such a hopeless, clumsy fool. I just stood there patting her shoulder like a foolish old man.
But almost in a minute she herself again, smiling bravely turning to the stove.
and it seemed at first as if he would Then he leave us to our solitude. changed his mind, circled round in search of a Innding place, and dropped gently to the downs.
The pilot was out of his machine and pulling off his goggles and helmet when we reached him.
"What's this place?" asked the pilot. "Beadle!" we chimed in chorus. He pored over the map. I saw how desperately tired his eyes looked, with deep grey pits beneath them.
"Beadle ." he muttered. "I see. How many of you are there?"
"Three!" I said,
The young man produced a greasy little notebook and a stub of pencil.
"Beadle.. three," he muttered as he wrote it down.
Somehow for the life of me I could hardly speak. There were a thousand things that I wanted to know-a thou- sand questions tumbling over one an- other to be asked-but all I could say was:--
"Where's the moon?"
"The moon fanded on the Western edge of Europe" sald the pilot. "It fell into the At lantic you can walk from Pen- zance to New York.”
"Collapsed?" I exclaimed.
suction that drew most of it away, but it hasn't settled down yet."
"How did London fare?”
"London," said the airman, "is still under water, covered by fathoms of mud. A good many people escaped, "The moon's in the Atlantic," said
mainly those who were in the Under- the pilot. "I'm not an airman by pro- "Of course it collapsed,” replied the ground Railways. They were led along fession. I was one of the scientists airman. "The moon is a dead world, the tunnels and brought out at Hamp- selected by the Government for their and the cooling of its inside had natur- stead, which stood above the flood; as big dug-out at Beaconsfield, which is ally caused great caverns.. Practically for the rest... 7 The young man on high ground. It missed the flood speaking, it was a hollow body with a blew a kiss in an offensive indication and we came through safely. By eight thick crust, and the force of its landing that they were dead,
"And what happens now?" asked o'clock this morning we were at break- made it collapse like a fat pancake.”
He produced a stub of pencil and Robin. The boy had scarcely spoken. fast as if nothing had happened.
a notebook and began to trace a rough His eyes had been fixed upon the air- map of the North Atlantic, Ireland and man in fascinated silence.
"The Government's been set up at Spain, Canada and the United States
"As of America. He filled this with a Oxford," sald the young man. _circle_covering the Atlantic.
soon as possible labour will be mobilis- "There's your new
map of
the ed to clear the roads, and engineers world," he said, handing the book to will get the main services at work "That's it," said the airman. "The me.
"The diameter of the moon was again. And now I must be off. What scientists reckoned that if the moon 2,000 miles-the width of the Atlantic have you got down there?" struck the earth at the time expected is 3,000. The moon's collapse has made at 8.23 last night-it would land it fill the whole ocean from one side with a bang in the centre of Europe, to the other."
"Then we picked up a radio call from one of the few American stations that still work. They told us" he paused wearily.
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"Told you-about the moon?" asked Pat.
11
The young man nodded. "You can now walk from Penzance to New York
if you want to."
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He pointed to the stranded liner King Lear in my meadow.
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I explained to him, but he was not was and goodbye to the lot of us. Fortun- Pat was staring at the map over my particularly interested: "There's a cou- and ately they were wrong; wrong to the shoulder. "Then America is joined to ple of battleships and a submarine on
tune of nine minutes, and those nine Europe!" she exclaimed.
Salisbury Plain," he said: "you were If fate had given to me, as my com- minutes saved us.
The moon came
in luck to get a luxury liner!"
He climbed into his monoplane and panions, a couple of quarrelsome old over Europe like a huge meteor, fall- ladies or even the vicar and Mr. Mur- ing in a slanting direction from the
pulled the goggles over his eyes.
gatroyd the publican,
"Scattered people are being told to the situation north-east; it was less than five hun- would have been completely different dred miles above you when it passed The news was bewildering, for I had make their way to the nearest towns." and I have no idea how I should have over this valley.
thoroughly decided, in my own mind, he said, and pointed vaguely to the faced it. But Pat and Robin were of "We never saw it!" said Robin. that the moon had "grazed” us and north. “You three had better pack up- a quality beyond the infection of dan- "Of course you didn't see it. It was disappeared into space.
and trot along to Mulcaster — there's ger and solitude: courage and gaiety too close to the earth to take the re- "Perhaps," I said, "you will favour about a hundred people in the town. It's about were bred in their bones; Robin had a flection of the sun, and in any case it us with some news of how the world You'll be all right there.
six miles across the downs.” constitution that rebounded from ex- was dragging that colossal dust cloud survived the shock?"
"There were three separate, inde- We watched the battered little- haustion like a rubber ball. First thing along with it. It landed at two min-
an- monoplane drone away into the even- next morning he was in my bedroom utes past eight-thirty, upon the west- pendent forces of destruction,” persuading me to get up and go across ern edge of Europe, just grazing our nounced the young man, as if he were ing sky, and as we turned towards the to the Manor House with him to fetch own island at Cornwall, the west coast lecturing to children, "the tornado, the house Pat glanced at me. his portable gramophone and a pile of of Ireland, and France and Spain." earthquake, and the flood. The tor- "Strange to think we aren't the- records. I heard Pat's laugh from her He shrugged his shoulders.
nado was world wide, and we can only only people in the world, after all," room next to his own.
"No scientist expected the world to judge its havoc by our own experience, she said. " We had only just left the wreck of survive, you know
that stuff: A lot of fools in this country refused the Manor House with our trophy and about a 'graze' was just bunkum to go to the dug-outs"-(I exchanged were returning across the valley when just a sop to keep you quiet."
a wink with Pat)and most of these we returned to the house. Pat went an infinitely dramatic event occurred. "We realised that perfectly well," I were killed, buried under buildings or to the kitchen to prepare a meal; Ro- replied stiffly." "I happen to be a swept away. The flood was caused by bin sat down in the library and pored Slowly, from the stillness, came a member of the British Lunar Society the masses of water displaced by the over my atlas of the world, drawing; sound; the first man-made sound since and knew a good deal about all this moon when it fell into the Atlantic upon it the moon-circle covering the the cataclysm to disturb the silence of probably before you did!"
Scientists calculate that most of the Atlantic which the airman had drawn, the valley. At first I took it to be the "Fancy that!" said the young man, water must have been forced north with all its incredible meaning. purr of a motor-cycle a long way off and smiled at me queerly.
and south, over Greenland and to For the first time since the cata- djön the Mulcaster road, but gradually "Go on,” said Pat.
wards the South Pole, but anyway a clysm I felt at a loose end. "I called" 1 fishèred power and fulness: the purr
huge wall of ocean was forced up the out to Pat that I was going for a stroll, rose to a roar, and over the hillcrest "Possibly the air pressure had some valleys of England and over the Con- I took my hat and walking-stick and went out to encounter the third and čame an airplane!
thing to do with it-possibly the retinent. We know that for a certainty, We behaved like maniacs; we ran sistance of the Atlantic-anyway, the s Within a few feet of this house," to me, the most delightful and miracu-
the slope, waved hats and hand- shock was not fatal to the eart
at eventful day. #be
Fit would have been about 800 feet About half le beyond the ruined' dfs, and yelled our heads off!: continued. "The moon rolled into the
it Bowed
* of debris hadi pilot of the airplane did not ocean like an enormous bagatalló ball high to share our frantic excite into its pocket collap
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'I didn't feel I could answer.
Pat and Robin were very silent
as
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