Sixty Days to Live

The business of preparing the Ark had been to her rather like getting ready a temporary home in which they were all going to live for a while, but she had never visualised its being flung into space or smashed to pieces. Instead, she had definitely persuaded herself that, having taken refuge there for a few hours, or days at the most, they would land again and she would take up her household routine just where she had left it off. But now there was no house and, for the first time, she really began to worry about what was to become of them all.

Now it seemed that their lives were out of danger Gervaise, too, was thinking of the house. The home that he had clung to for so long, through every financial difficulty and all the attempts which his friends had made to persuade him to sell 't in order to ease his situation, was now gone—or most of it. ^e peered again through the sheeting rain and waited till pother flash of lightning lit the building. The southern half of 't Was still standing and he said with relief:

'Some of the rooms may still be habitable and, anyhow, I ^lllink the stables have remained intact.'

The Ark was now adrift and the wind-swept waves drove it ^to the east side of the lake where it gently grounded on the ^ttd some twenty yards from the shore. Another earthquake tremor, now impinging directly on it, suddenly flung then all off their feet and for a few minutes afterwards the Ark pitched heavily from side to side again making their stomachs rise, in the case of Margery and Sam to such an extent that they had to disappear.

'I expect the 'quakes will go on for some time,' Oliver said, when the Ark had steadied and the more hardy members of the party had settled themselves once again. 'The ferment caused by the penetration of the earth's crust by a foreign body is certain to cause terrific agitation.'

'Is that what you think has happened?' Hemmingway asked,

'I imagine so. The comet was certainly solid or we should not have felt the shock; but it couldn't have been as big as I feared. As it came down in the north-eastern Pacific the depth of the waters there would have proved a buffer to some small extent but the crust of the earth isn't very thick and the forward curve of such a spherical mass would almost certainly penetrate the rock-layers; even if the back half of it is now standing up out of the waters like some huge new island continent.'

'How's that going to affect us?'

'It's impossible to say. The comet may have been the six of the Isle of Wight or the size of Australia, but I doubt if it could have been as large as the Dominion or it would almost certainly have shattered the earth to pieces.'

'It may have formed a new continent for us, then?' murmured Hemmingway speculatively.

Lavina laughed nervously. 'Are you already thinking of planting the Union Jack there and annexing it for Britain?'

'Hardly,' he smiled. 'There are probably plenty of people who took refuge in cellars and have survived like ourselves-but hundreds of thousands must have died or gone mad, so' should think those of us who have come through will h^aV£ all our work cut out to get this country running again befa^re bothering about any others.'

'Since the moment of impact the comet may no longer be³ solid mass,' Oliver went on. 'There is a theory, which son⁵ geologists believe, that another comet hit us many millennia¹¹ ago and broke into thousands of pieces which we know todW as the South Sea Islands. They say it caused the flood wh^|C submerged Atlantis. In any case, I shouldn't think that anyone has been left alive in western North America, and the Far East must have suffered severely, too. Tidal waves as high as mountains will have swept everything before them on both coasts of the Pacific.'

The Ark had grounded again and the storm outside seemed to be abating a little although a minor tremor still occasionally agitated the waters of the lake.

'How long d'you think it'd be before any tidal wave could reach us here?' inquired the persistent Hemmingway.

'Tidal waves travel at great speed,' Oliver replied. 'If a sympathetic disturbance has taken place in the Atlantic earthquake zone and the resulting wave is great enough to sweep over western Britain it might reach us in three hours. Say we allow a margin of a further two hours; if nothing has happened by four o'clock in the morning I think we may consider ourselves safe.'

'In any case we only have a local flood to fear now,' Sam put in, 'and as the Ark was built for just such a contingency we haven't got much to worry about.'

'Sure,' nodded Hemmingway. 'But now the gyroscopes have gone we may receive an awful buffeting.'

'Oh, dear! And I shall be so ill,' sighed Margery.

'We shall be far better off than we should be in any other kind of craft,' Gervaise consoled her. 'As the Ark is unsink-able our lives are safe and after drifting for a few hours we are certain to be washed up somewhere.'

Sam went below to try and get the main lighting plant going again. The others settled down to wait. Time dragged interminably. Lavina smoked cigarette after cigarette until the air °f the cabin was blue. Just after midnight the full lights came °n, and Sam rejoined them. They talked, fell silent, talked ^again. They tried to keep conversation going but the strain ^was appalling. One o'clock came, then two. The seismograph showed that the shocks were gradually lessening in intensity.

three o'clock they were incredibly weary but beginning to ^°pe that they would escape the perils of a flood. At four °hver stood up and reopened the ventilators.

,'You think we're pretty well out of the wood now?' Hemingway asked him.

'Yes. As far as I am in a position to judge.'

At Oliver's pronouncement they all heaved a sigh of relief, and Lavina said suddenly: 'I'm feeling awfully hungry.'

Immediately she had spoken all the others realised that they too were hungry. It was fifteen hours since they had sat down to lunch and even then they had eaten little.

'I'll cook something,' Margery volunteered. 'How about ham and eggs? Would that do?'

'Fine!' Hemmingway laughed. He was thinking how the simple mention of such a good, homely dish seemed to restore things to normal again. They were still alive and there was now every chance that they would go on living.

'I'll give you a hand,' said Sam, following Margery into the kitchen. 'In my younger days I used to be rather a dab at cooking. My old mother taught me when we lived in Bradford, and some time I'll treat you all to some Yorkshire cookies.'

'You're not suggesting we're here for ever, are you?' asked Lavina.

'Good Lord, no, darling!' Sam patted her shoulder. 'But we'll have to make this our headquarters for a day or two; anyhow until we can find out what's going on in the rest of the country. As you're no good in a kitchen, you'd better lay the table. You'd make a splendid Nippy.'

Lavina's white teeth bit into her small, very slightly drooping underlip. She was very glad still to be alive but she had never thought of herself as a Nippy and did not take the suggestion as a compliment. Sam had been brought up in an artisan's home where the women of the family did all the work; but when Lavina had been a child Gervaise had still been able to afford servants at Stapleton. Except for a little assistance at such picnics as she had decorated, Lavina had never waite¹ upon anybody in her life and she saw no reason at all wW she should start now. She ignored Sam's suggestion, and-although she hated any form of nursing, declared that, sin^ce everybody else seemed to have forgotten him, she was to have a look at Derek.