Owing to the store's huge bulk its central departments had suffered comparatively little. The flood wave had been less violent when it reached them, and although show-cases and goods had been washed about and left in considerable confusion on the icy floors, no snow had swept so far in through the broken windows.
Beds were the first consideration and going to the Furniture Department on the first floor they took their choice. As the Department abutted on the big windows overlooking Oxford Street they moved the beds back behind the shelter of a row of lifts and decided to screen off this small section of the store. Derek and Hemmingway smashed up some of the surplus beds and relit the braziers while the rest went off to find bedding, screens and other items that they required. To their relief they did not come across any dead bodies but if any of them was alone for a few minutes they found the eerie silence of the place unnerving. It seemed to be peopled by the ghosts of countless dead shoppers, but the many jobs to be done left them little time to grow morbid. They all worked hard, contenting themselves with snatching a cold lunch, and by mid-afternoon had thawed out mattresses and pillows, provided themselves with screens, tables and chairs, and broken up a good stock of wood to keep their fires going.
While Lavina settled down to warm her feet at the blaze, Gervaise, Hemmingway and Derek returned to the Provision Department. Out in the street another blizzard was raging, but that worried them no longer as they had not far to go and, having buffeted their way through it, they pried a good variety of tinned stores from the icy piles, and several unbroken bottles of wine; all of which they carried back to their new quarters.
In the meantime Margery had taken Sam with her across to the Turnery Department, where she selected an oil stove and such cooking utensils as she would need. Later, it took Sam an hour's roaming round the store before he found a drum of paraffin, but by six o'clock they were all gathered together with food, drink, warmth and bedding. For the first time in four days their immediate anxieties were relieved and they were able to speculate on the future with some cheerfulness, Lavina becoming her old self again and keeping them in fits of laughter until they turned in for the night.
On their second morning at Selfrige's it was still snowing, so they set about improving their circumstances by collecting a canteen of silver, chinaware, glasses, rugs for the floor, games, a clock, candlesticks, books and all sorts of other items. But a little after eleven the snow stopped and Gervaise said to Hemmingway:
'I'm still extraordinarily puzzled by this amazing change of climate. Today is only the 19th of August yet we might be in Moscow in mid-winter. I believe my theory that the axis of the earth has been tilted by the comet must be right and that my observations in the Ark were correct. Now the sun has come out I'm going to try to find some instruments to check them.'
'We ought to be able to find a sextant in the Optical Department,' Hemmingway declared, 'and logarithm tables among the books. Let's get down to the ground floor and see.'
Amongst the piles of smashed glass and wreckage they found several sextants, undamaged in their plush-lined cases. Having selected one they took also two pairs of powerful binoculars. At the inner end of the Book Department, where the maps and other geographical matter were kept, they succeeded in finding the tables they wanted; then, crossing the small intervening street to the other building, they helped themselves to paper, rubbers, pencils and a set of geometrical instruments.
With this gear they mounted the stairs of the main block and, as the proper exit was hopelessly blocked, climbed out to the roof through a broken skylight. Before taking the altitude of the sun they mounted the iron staircase to the top of the two-storey tower overlooking the roof gardens for a good look over London through their binoculars. They were amazed to see, in the clear, frosty air, that towards the south a huge section of the city had been entirely blotted out. In the near distance they could see the tops of Grosvenor House and the Dorchester to their right, and the Air Force Headquarters in Berkeley Square to their left. Farther off, the modern tower of Westminister Cathedral was still standing, but Big Ben and the dome of St. Paul's had disappeared, evidently having been overthrown. The queer thing was, however, that about a mile away in each direction, towards the curve of the river, the rooftops of the medium-sized houses merged into a flat plain of snow. 'It looks to me as if the river is still flooded to a depth of from sixty to a hundred feet,' said Gervaise.
'Surely the water all over the world couldn't have risen as much as that,' Hemmingway murmured doubtfully.
'One would hardly think so, but the water in the Thames Valley may have frozen over before the flood had time to seep away to a permanent level. There may be several feet of solid ice out there which is supported by the houses. But by this time an air cavity might have been created below it as the flood water runs out into the sea which must still remain unfrozen a few hundred miles farther south.'
'That's about it,' Hemmingway agreed. 'Anyhow, as it's just on midday, let's shoot the sun.'
The simple operation was soon completed and there was no question that the latitude of London was now 71 degrees 14 minutes north instead of 51 degrees 30 minutes north as it had been before the deluge. The city was nearly 20 degrees nearer to the North Pole.
'All the same, you were wrong about our longitude,' Hemmingway remarked. 'Must have been, as we know that London is on 0 and you made us 9 degrees west.'
Gervaise smiled. 'But if the earth has been thrown off its old axis, as we are now quite certain that it has been, the longitude of London would have altered too.'
'No. Latitude is calculated from the Equator to the Poles so, if they shift, the latitude of every place on the earth shifts too; but longitude is calculated from London so, however cockeyed the earth becomes, London is still neither east nor west, but dead on zero.'
'Theoretically, yes; but, in practice, surely all the astronomical tables would be thrown out by an alteration in the point of rising of the sun? I don't know sufficient about astronomy to prove my point, but one thing is beyond doubt. We are now right up in the new Arctic Circle.'
'Sure,' Hemmingway agreed, 'and it's one hell of a nasty thought.'
When they went below they found that Sam was preparing to set out on a visit to St. James's Square. The others thought it rather pointless, as everything which had remained unruined by the flood was available in the store, but he said that he preferred his own clothes to ready-made ones and intended to collect a bag full. Hemmingway volunteered to accompany him so they had an early lunch and the two friends started out at a quarter past one.
As snow began to fall again in the mid-afternoon the others became extremely anxious about them, but they got back after a three-hours' absence and had a strange story to tell of the changed face of London. Where the streets and squares still remained unblocked by rubble they were now twelve feet deep in snow, but the queer part about it was that where the surface should have sloped downwards in Berkeley Square it no Ion-ger did so. The little valley at the bottom of Hay Hill had been filled up so that, in passing it, they were on the level of the second-floor windows. The same thing had occurred on the far side of Piccadilly where the road level should again have sloped south and west. Urged by curiosity to see more of this odd change, they had turned left towards the Ritz and found that the whole of the Green Park was buried under many feet of snow and ice, and that only the top storey of Buckingham Palace showed above it in the distance.