After the first blow he had instinctively braced himself against the sides of the bunk and so saved himself from being thrown out or from further injury, but during those awful moments when he was being whirled head over heels like a man in a revolving coffin he had not had the faintest idea where he was or what was happennig to him.
While Gervaise undressed Hemmingway, Lavina attended to Derek. It was now four days since he had received his beat-ing-up in the Park and three since he had been trampled on while escaping. But during the last twenty-four hours he had had complete rest, so only his major injuries still pained him. and when he regained consciousness he was perfectly clearheaded.
In his delight at seeing Lavina safe and sound he seized both her hands and kissed them. Giving him a quick kiss on the forehead in return she pushed him back into his bunk and, herseH still shaken by her recent terrifying experience, asked him hotf hs had come through the upheaval.
'Oh, I'm all right,' he smiled. 'Until you came into the rooffj I thought I was suffering from a nightmare. The great thing1 that you're here in the Ark. God! What a time I had trying to gnd you. But what on earth's been happening?'
In a few brief sentences she told him of what had occurred when the comet had hit the earth and how a giant tidal wave had just carried them away with it; then, remembering Hemmingway's suggestion, she added that they had thought it wise not to tell Oliver of the fate that had befallen Roy.
He nodded. 'Yes, it'd be kinder not to let the old chap know that Roy was killed in a drunken brawl. If he'd been with me in the Park, we might easily have got separated when the prisoners burst out of the enclosure.'
'What happened to you after you left St. James's Square in Hemmingway's car?' she asked. 'He was furious about your taking it, you know.'
'Oh, damn Hemmingway! Just because he's got an outsize brain he behaves as though he were the Prime Minister, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and the Archbishop of Canterbury rolled into one. The smug fool! He tried to order me about as though I was a child, and I wasn't having any. Naturally I took his car. I was so darned anxious about you and there was nothing else to get around in.'
'You must have got the note he left, though, saying that he had found me; or didn't you go back to St. James's Square that night as you said you would?'
'No, I couldn't make it. The trouble was, I thought I'd traced you to Tilbury where they were loading a lot of women on to the liners in the Docks. I didn't get there till late afternoon and then the rays of the comet sent everybody berserk. People Were doing the most extraordinary things. One chap tried to kill me; and a bank manager, who had opened up his bank and Was standing outside it giving money away, insisted on my accepting a ten-pound note. I felt pretty gay myself but I more or less managed to keep my wits because the really urgent matter of finding you was never out of my mind. Getting back to St. James's Square didn't seem particularly important and it Wasn't till nearly eleven o'clock that I could get anybody to talk sense. Round about midnight I managed to hire a speedboat and went off to the Kenilworth Castle which was lying >n the estuary of the Thames. I found the woman I was looking f°r all right and she was pretty as a picture, but it wasn't you.'
'Poor darling. It was a gallant effort, though.'
'Well, naturally I did my damnedest. But when I got back to Tilbury I found that some A.R.P. people had commandeered Hemmingway's car. I had hell's own job to get it back again and I only succeeded after sun-up, when the whole world had started to go mad. I wasted two hours myself, playing shove-halfpenny with a fellow in the garage, before I suddenly woke up to the fact that I'd got a job of work to do. After that, the whole business was a kind of nightmare. I've no idea what time I got back to St. James's Square, but I read Hemmingway's note and set off again for Stapleton. The scenes I saw on my way down just beggar description and I was driving like a lunatic. I suppose the strain proved too much for me by the time I'd reached the park because everything simply blacked out.'
By this time Gervaise had stripped Hemmingway and got him into a suit of pyjamas. With Lavina's help he bandaged the injured man's head and he came round soon after they had lifted him into one of the bunks on the side of the cabin opposite to Derek. As the cut on his scalp did not appear to be serious they left the cabin to attend to the others.
Sam was hobbling painfully about fetching basins for Margery and trying to comfort her in the frightful bout of sickness from which she was suffering. Oliver sat patiently in a chair nursing his broken arm. They cut his coat-sleeve away and while they were setting the arm in splints he said:
'I've been working out what must have happened. When we built the Ark our purpose was to provide against the possibility of a tidal wave caused by under-sea eruptions in the Atlantic temporarily flooding the lower levels of Britain. But even given the most serious disturbances in that area, no wave of such magnitude as the one which caught us could possibly have been created in that way. Besides, I'm sure that any wave thrown up in the district of the Azores would have reached us long before.'
'What is your theory, then?' Gervaise asked. ,
'We know that the comet fell in the north-eastern Pacific. Oliver replied, 'and such a huge body would naturally d*5' place terrific quantities of water. That wave may have been a mile, or even two miles, high when it started. It must have traversed the whole of North America sweeping everything before it, poured into the Atlantic and forced the Atlantic waters up with its momentum so that it was still between a quarter and half a mile high when it leaped right over Britain. If I'm correct, it was travelling at more than 300 miles an hour.'
'Then the whole world will be drowned in another deluge,' said Gervaise.
Oliver winced as his brother tightened the bandage. 'The wave, which is still moving east, may exhaust itself by the time it reaches Central Europe; but the effect of the comet must have been like that of a stone thrown into a pond. Australasia will certainly have been overwhelmed and the Far East would have caught the full force of the wave as it moved westward, so the bulk of Asia is certain to be flooded too.'
'India might escape,' suggested Sam, looking up from where he was kneeling by Margery.
'Perhaps. The Himalayas and the highlands of Tibet should certainly be immune; but, even when the waters settle, the comet will have caused a great displacement. The oceans will have risen ten or perhaps twenty feet all over the world with the result that all low-lying lands will be under water. The Sahara will become a lake again and the plains of lower India are sure to be submerged.'
'This is much worse than we bargained for,' said Gervaise gravely. 'You will remember you felt originally that the Rockies would prove a sufficient barrier to any wave the comet might throw up. You thought that only portions of the western coast of American and places like Japan and China would suffer; while we should get off comparatively lightly, with a tocal wave which would subside in a few hours and leave us safely aground on the mud.'
'Yes,' Oliver confessed. 'This particular aspect of the catastrophe is far more serious than anything I had anticipated. I doubt if there will be a single human being left alive within tvvo or three thousand miles of us by tomorrow morning; and When a deluge of this magnitude is likely to subside it's quite '^possible to say.'
Sam gave him an anxious look. 'I suppose the danger now is that when the waters do settle we may have drifted so far that we won't even come down in England?'
'Exactly. We may find ourselves floating in the North Sea or the Atlantic; but, of course, I shall be able to keep a check on our position as soon as the sun breaks through again and I can take observations.'