The Scarlet Plague

and took up the tale in a tremulous, piping voice that

ue came. I was twenty-seven years old, and

s disgust, and Granser

only a small thing. There had been only a few deaths. It seemed, though, that they had died very quickly, and that one of the first signs of the disease was the turning red of the face and all the body. Within twenty-four hours came the report of the first case in Chicago. And

the trouble was the astonishing quickness with which this germ destroyed human beings, and the fact that it inevitably killed any human body it entered. No one ever recovered. There was the old Asiatic cholera, when you

d in an hour. Some lasted for several hours. Many died within

sions did not last long and were not very severe. If one lived through them, he became perfectly quiet, and only did he feel a numbness swiftly creeping up his body from the feet. The heels became numb first, then the legs, and hips, and when the numbness reached as high as his heart he died. They did not rave or sleep. Their minds always remained cool and

eir places. It was in London that they first isolated it. The news was telegraphed everywhere. Trask was the name of the man who succeeded in this, but within thirty hours he was dead. Then came the struggle in all the laboratories to find something that would kill th

anything, when they're nothing at all. Anything you can't see, ain't, that's what. Fighting things that ain't with things that a

to weep, while Edwin ho

you believe in lots of

shook h

alking about. You never se

last winter, when I wa

when you cross running

f bad luck," was H

ieve in

ur

riumphantly. "You're just as bad as Granser and his ge

be clogged by the details, was Granser's tale interrupted while the boys squabbled among themselves. Also, among themselves they kept u

Miss Collbran, one of my students, sitting right there before my eyes, in my lecture-room. I noticed her face while I was talking. It had suddenly turned scarlet. I ceased speaking and could only look at her, for the first fear of the plague was already on all of us and we knew

l sensation h

m unaware that I have any feet. And my knees a

n it reached her heart she was dead. In fifteen minutes, by the clock-I timed it-she was dead, there, in my own classroom, dead. And she was a very beautiful, s

y thousands, all of them, had deserted the lecture-room and laboratories. When I emerged, on my way to make report to the President of t

o go away. I shall never forget my feelings as I walked down the silent corridors and out across that deserted campus. I was not afraid. I had been exposed, and I looked upon myself as already dead. It was not that, but a feeling of awful depression that impressed me. Everything had stopped. It was like the end of the world to me-my world. I had been born within sight and so

case of her personal belongings and ran out of the house and across the grounds, still screaming. I can hear her scream to this day. You see, we did not act in this way when ordinary diseases smote us. We were always calm over such things, and sent for the docto

ne bell rang, and I found my brother talking to me. He told me that he was not coming home for fear of catching the plague from me, and that he had ta

me out on me. By means of the telephone I could talk with whomsoever I pleased and get the news. Also, there were the newspap

eets un-buried. All railroads and vessels carrying food and such things into the great city had ceased runnings and mobs of the hungry poor were pillaging the stores and warehouses. Murder and robbery and drunkenness were everywhere. Already the people had fle

eople remaining in the city-he estimated them at several hundred thousand-had gone mad from fear and drink, and on all

of the Metchnikoff School, had discovered the serum for the plague. That was the last word, to this day, that we of America ever received from Europe. If Hoffmeyer discovered the serum, it was too late, or otherwise, long ere thi

duplicated in all the other cities. It was the same in San Francisco, and Oakland, and Berkeley. By Thursday the people were dying so rapidly that their corpses could not be handled, and dead bodies lay everywhere. Thursday night the panic outrush for the country began. Imagine, my grandsons, people, thick

ir posts to receive or send. It was amazing, astounding, this loss of communication with the world. It was exactly as if the world had ceased, been blotted out. For sixty years that world has no longer existed for me. I know there must be such places as New York, Euro

d he married my eldest daughter. He came into the tribe eight years after the plague. He was then nineteen years old, and he was compelled to wait twelve years more before he could marry. You see, there were no unmarried

the wilds of British Columbia, which is far to the north of here. But there was some accident, and they were wrecked near Mount Shasta. You have heard of that mountain. It is far to the north. The plague broke out amongs

the cities was insanity, that there were no symptoms of the plague in me, and that the thing for us to do was to isolate ourselves and our relatives in some safe place. We decided on the Chemistry B

d to come for me next day. We talked on over the details of the provisioning and the defending of the Chemistry Building until the telephone died. It died in the midst of our conversatio

t know-was killed on the sidewalk in front of the house. I heard the rapid reports of an automatic pistol, and a few minutes later the wounded wretch crawled up to my door, moaning and crying out for help. Arming myself with tw

posed taking, but when I saw his face I knew that he would never accompany me to the Chemistry B

elf in the mirr

face, the color deepening as he looked a

ve got it. Don't come n

ious to the last, complaining about the coldness and loss of sensation in his

sink down with the death fastened upon them. There were numerous fires burning in Berkeley, while Oakland and San Francisco were apparently being swept by vast conflagrations. The smoke of the burning filled t

ent near it were two more women and a child. Strange and terrible sights there were on every hand. People slipped by silently, furtively, like ghosts-white-faced women carrying infants in their arms; fathers

r, was discharging his pistol at a number of men on the sidewalk who were breaking in. In the entrance were several bodies-of men, I decided, whom he had killed earlier in the day. Even as I looked on from a distance, I saw one of the robbers brea