1940-01-06 — Page 1

Potted-Best-Seller Serial: Seventh Day

THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT

By R. C. SHERRIFF Who Wrote "Journey's End"

The moon fell into the Atlantic linking Europe and America. Gradually the survi- vors re-organised gov- ernment and order. Building the new world began. . .

ONE morning I was awakened by a steady clanging in the distance. and went down to discover a gang of men repairing the railway. Three days later a luggage train went through: a long, groaning train made up of every conceivable kind of truck.

On another day a lorry came boun- cing ponderously down the village street and we went to meet three severe-looking gentlemen in macins toshes, with blue armlets marked "R.M." They were members of the "Reconstruction Ministry" and had come to investigate the future of our village. After inspecting my house they informed me that we were to consider ourselves citizens of Mulcas- ter. It was our first contact with Gov- ernment officials and I was relieved when they departed, leaving us in peace.

Summer passed to autumn. The days were surprisingly, often distressingly, hot, accompanied by heavy, tropical rains. My vegetable garden, on which I had worked continually throve pro- digiously in the steamy warmth that followed the torrential downpours of that strange summer.

But one evening, as I was returning from Mulcaster Market to join Pat and Robin for our journey home, a little woman passed me with an arm- ful of firewood. I realised suddenly that she was a Beadle villager!

The old lady stared at me as if I were a ghost. It was Mrs. Chaplin, wife of a labourer who had lived in a cottage upon the Widgeley road.

In trembling fragments I drew from her the tragic story.

The fatal evening had begun quite well in the Beadle dugout, but towards nine o'clock they had felt "a sort of shudder"; 'several coffee-cups had fallen over, one or two children had cried,

"The dugout seemed to dip down and come up again," explained Mrs. Chaplin.

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It seems that the earthquake had brought a deep fracture to the chalky hillside; a fracture that had distorted the concrete beddings of two of the doorways and forced open wide cracks in the chalk surrounding them,

Some of the people were alrendy asleep, when urgent cries of warning came from the men upon watch. The villagers scrambled from their blankets to find great streams of muddy water gushing down the steps of the two fractured entrances. The tidal wave was upon them.

VE MOON A

"We were only on the 'fringe of the moon's broken surface. the edge of an immense slag heap of grey, broken slate stretching as far as we could see... like some gloomy, ghostly continent,"

public services.

of

was an interesting novelty which I determined to keep for Aunt Rose if ever I should see her again.

The first hint of impending trouble came to us one autumn' night.

There was something menacing and sinister in the grey, dreary fandscape --or moonscape, I should say --which made me shudder. I went away from The Government published a magni-it with a strange, indefinable dread: a Desperately the men worked-strug-acent "ten-year plan" for the rebuild- haunting conviction that the terrors of gling to block the crevices with blan-ing of our cities the laying out Its arrival were trivial beside the hor- kets and canvas sheets. But one by one public parks and the reconstruction of rors that it held in store for us, they were swept from the stairways by the increasing torrent. The mud

The fashionable thing to do that upon the dugout floor was around

trip to the their ankles around their knees-it summer was to take a

moon.' The reorganised railways dis- crept up to their thighs.

played great enterprise in this respect, remained secure, but the upper section for the eastern edge of the moon over- lapped Cornwall to within three miles of the stairway formed an airlock

of Penzance. Immediately the railway against the rising water.

was sufficiently repaired the authori- ties announced their "Week-end Ex- cursion to the Moon" that became remarkably popular that summer and autumn. We three were among the

The third entrance to the dugout

Into this airlock Sapper Evans had Robin, meanwhile, had made ingeni- forced the women and children-forty "ous" plans to guarantee fresh food-sup-|of them, huddled upon the fifteen steps- plies. With large quantities of wire with one man-Mrs. Chaplin's husband netting he had constructed his own-who understood the mechanism of "rabbit farm," which he stocked from the door. the burrows In Widgeley Copse, and by damming the river behind the church he had created his own "fish reservoir."

But the little town of Mulcaster was the mirror through which we watched the steady stride of progress.

Robin had salvaged three old bicy- cles, and every Saturday we "rode to market," taking with us a bundle of rabbits, a can of fish, and any veget- ables I could spare from the garden.

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One morning in Mulcaster I was stirred by the sight of a dish of new- laid eggh in the Exchange Market; their price was prohibitive, but through exhaustive inquiry I traced the eggs to an old man who had by some means collected together enough poultry to run a small breeding farin.

I was so excited that I kept missing the pedals of my bicycle as I rode out to his farm, but I returned in triumph with a cockerel 1

I felt ashamed to introduce it to my fastidious, blue-blooded old hen, But when at last she presented me with nine mongrel but healthy little chicks I was very pleased at the determina- tion with which she prevented her vul- gar little spouse from taking any part In their upbringing.

It was during one of my visita”, to Mulcaster that the mystery

Beadle

sudden

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first to go,

We went off in high fettle to catch There, like the crew of a wrecked the train at Winchester, It was a long, submarine, they watched the water

tiring journey, often at snail's pace creep to the roof of the dugout: listen-

over stretches of temporary line, and ed to the last cries from those below.

Within half an hour the atmosphere ruins of Penzance we were taken over after spending a night in tents near the upon the steps was unbearable. Chap-miles of barren fields in a charabanc lin had unbolted and thrown open the fitted with "caterpiliar wheels" to ne- door.

During the summer Pat had been laid up with an injured knee, and I had called in a doctor from Mulcaster Dr. Cranley. The doctor's son and daughter soon became friendly with Pat and Robin.

One evening in late September Dr. Cranley invited us to dine at his home in-Mulcaster, adding-that-Major-Jag-- ger, Parliamentary Representative for Hampshire, would also be his guest.

I shall never forget our journey to Mulcaster that lovely evening.

I thought of this wonderful year that was drawing to its close: this year of striding

the progress

peace and gathering prosperity of

All Europe.

the bitterness

the and hostility,' all

suspicions and racial hatreds that had threatened

In a dream they had seen the pallia gotiate the hideously broken country- and darkened the closing years of the

sky and the turgid flood receding.

For a while they had lain upon the slimy hillside, powerless to move and powerless to think. The village lay far beneath the tidal wave, but ав dawn came they saw the ruined church tower slowly creep to view.

Her husband had tried in vain to open the jammed doors in the hope of finding some one still alive. Then he led his little party of survivors away across the downs and came at last to the ruined town of Widgeley.

Autumn turned to winter. A little petrol was now available and Robin doctored up the old Ford car for our journeys to Mulcaster.

With the beginnings of my new poultry farm the cup of my own con- tentment was filled, and our household "purse" as well. For in those early days poultry and eggs were worth more than gold, w

side.

Yet when at last we arrived the

anticlimax was pitiful.

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old world had gone for ever.

in

But nothing gave greater cause for satisfaction than the progress and growing renown of my poultry farm. The guide said: "Here we are, ladies In the old days it was my hobby: to- and gentlemen," I looked around me day it was my profession. My long in bewilderment. Only after careful experience, and, I might say, genius study of the barren countryside did I in poultry breeding had enabled me observe that it sloped gently away and to produce a fine, distinctive strain steadily upwards towards the west. that was already known throughout all We were only, of course, upon the Hampshire as the "Beadle Hopkins," "fringe" of the moon's broken surface which was eagerly sought after and all that we saw was what appear- Mulcaster Market for breeding pur- ed to be the edge of an immense slag-posés and fetched high prices

I never discovered why: Jagger, the heap of grey; broken slate stretching as far as we could see across the land Parliamentary Representative, called and far into the distant sea like some himself "Major.". He had bee gloomy, ghostly continent of primeval fessor of Philosoph

university times.

I think that the less imaginative clysm members of our excursion expected to com see an immense globe towering above them with the familiar face of the moon upon it.

How gladly I would dwell for the We followed the guide up a twisting,

of my story upon those happy broken path until we came to a smal

the spring that came in a tea shop labelled in large letters: Ti

y and that sunlit summer House on the.

ards. recovery, We

Pro-

some northern cata- be-

me