Turning back they had reached St. James's Square, which was submerged to its second-floor windows but before going into the house they had penetrated south-west as far as Trafalgar Square. Nelson's column was broken off short and the square was submerged to a depth of over thirty feet, while the roofs of the buildings at the lower end of Whitehall only just appeared, like a row of bungalows, above the snow line.
They returned with a couple of heavy bags containing clothes for themselves and a certain number of things for Lavina but their journey back had been difficult. At half-past three a bitter wind had started to blow, and with it had come the snow, driving so thick and fast they could see no more than a dozen yards ahead and had constantly had to check their bearings.
On Lavina's inquiring how the house had fared, Sam told her that it had been impossible to descend to the downstairs rooms as they were full of ice, while the upper ones were in the usual state of chaos and part of the roof had fallen in owing to the weight of show. Before packing the clothes they had had to get a small fire going to thaw them partially; a process which they set about completing on their return.
Fortunately the others had made and lit additional braziers in their absence, as they had been selecting entirely new outfits of clothes that afternoon, all of which had to be thawed. Lavina had also had a grand time in the Jewellery and Perfumery Departments, while Gervaise and Derek were transporting a supply of cigarettes and, at her special request, a ping-pong table upon which they played after dinner that night.
The blizzard continued the following day and the snow level in Oxford Street had now risen to fifteen feet, bringing it up to the sills of the first-floor windows of the store.
On the previous evening Derek had noticed some canvas baths in the Camping Department so he brought them down after breakfast and, having boiled a number of kettles of water on the braziers, they were all able to enjoy the luxury of a warm tub.
When they had dressed again it seemed to most of them that during the last twenty-four hours their prospects had assumed a much more roseate hue but they were soon to be sadly disillusioned as Gervaise, who had been watching the snow most of the morning with a worried look on his fine, lined face, called a conference after lunch.
'I'm afraid,' he said, 'that as leader of our party it falls to me to put forward a proposal which some of you may not regard at all favourably; but I have been considering it for the past two days and it's only right that I should place the facts before you.
'As you know, London is now situated in the same latitude as that of Greenland before the deluge. I checked that quite definitely with Hemmingway yesterday. Mercifully we have been spared the horror of seeing the thousands of drowned and mutilated bodies which must lie all about us under the snow; but the thing which concerns us is that London must now for ever remain a city of the dead.
'The Arctic winter is only just setting in. You have seen for yourselves how the level of the snow has risen in these last few days. Blizzards will continue for many weeks to come, so that long before the winter is over the whole city will be buried in snow and ice. During the flood walls, roofs, floors all became saturated. As water expands when it freezes every structure beneath the snow line is now cracked and would fall to pieces if it were not for the ice which still binds it. When the spring comes a thaw will set in. Everything, even the wrongest buildings, will crash in heaps of ruins; then, after a brief Siberian summer, they will be buried deep in snow and ice again.
'We might drag out a miserable existence through the winter, like cave-dwellers, living many feet under the surface of the snow and moving to other places when our stores here are exhausted, but, when the thaw comes, the thousands of dead bodies will be exposed again and pestilence will set in. It is unthinkable that we could live through next summer with rotting bodies in every house and street. I know we've made ourselves comfortable here; that we seem to have everything that any reasonable person placed in our strange situation could want, and that for a little time we are apparently secure from every hardship and danger. But it is only a temporary security. That is why, however much we may dislike the idea, we have to go on the march again and leave this City of Death behind us.'
'Leave London!' gasped Lavina.
'Yes. And at once. Every day we delay will make things harder for us as places along the road where we can get supplies will become more difficult to break into. And if we wait until the spring it will be impossible to break into them at all before the thaw comes; because they will be buried too deep. We would be caught too, before we had gone fifty miles, by the plague that will sweep right over England. That is why we must go now.'
'But where can we go?' asked Sam in a low, worried voice.
'To a part of the world that is not frozen. The Equator is now twenty degrees farther south; but conditions there must be much the same as they were in the old equatorial belt. Therefore, there are still semi-tropical lands below the new ice-caps which are forming so rapidly. I know I'm asking you to face incredible hardships but somehow we must make the journey out of this land of death to a country beyond the ice-caps where we can dig the soil and make food grow.
'To live like animals in a burrow, feeding on such tinned food as we can find, until we're overtaken by pestilence and die miserable death is no fitting end for people of spirit. It may be that we are the last survivors of the human race. Whatever your beliefs, have any of you the temerity to suggest that among all these countless thousands of the dead we have not been spared for a purpose? Life is in our keeping, and Life must go on. Whatever the dangers and difficulties, we must cross the frozen Channel into France and march south to the Mediterranean.'
'I can't!' wailed Margery suddenly. 'I can't! I can't!'
'You will,' Gervaise said firmly. 'I am determined that we shall live or die in an attempt to preserve that thing which makes us different from the animals. Tomorrow we take the Dover Road.'
The Dover Road
There was no argument. They all knew that Gervaise was right. If they were to die it would be better to do so soon, numbed into sleep, after a gallant failure, by the coldness of the snow than to cling on for a few brief months tortured by the thought of being stricken down by plague in the coming spring. It was now clear, too, that their one hope of escaping that agonising death lay in starting at once while they would still have easy access to the houses on their route.
That afternoon, very silent and subdued, they made their preparations; visiting many departments of the store and collecting every item they could think of which might make their trek across the snowy world a little easier.
From the sports rooms they carried down a fair-sized sledge, snow-shoes, snow goggles, ski-sticks and three folding tents, each six feet long by four wide by four high, as these would be simpler to erect than one large one. Hemmingway collected maps and instruments while Gervaise selected the food, which had to be easily portable and highly nutritive and stimulating. Such items as glucose, Brand's Essence, Horlicks Malted Milk Tablets, Oxo cubes and tins of Bantam coffee figured largely in his choice. To eliminate the possibility of breakages he filled a number of silver flasks with brandy while for light and fuel he took candles, two Primus stoves, methylated spirit and a drum of paraffin.
Then all of them went in search of clothes suitable for their journey, selecting fur coats with big collars, fur gloves, fur-lined boots, baggy trousers that could be tucked into the tops of thick socks, loose jerkins and light, woollen underclothes of which three sets could be worn one on top of the other as a better protection against the cold than a single, thicker garment. All of these had to be thawed out and dried, after which they sewed the collars of the fur coats into hoods and a number of fur rugs into sleeping-bags. They put in eight hours' hard work with only a short break for dinner, but by ten o'clock their preparations were completed. Still overawed by the vast-ness of the adventure before them they went to bed wondering when they would spend a night in comfort again.