Deluge: A Novel of Global Warming by S. Fowler Wright

Author:S. Fowler Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, disaster, global warming, post holocaust, global disaster
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2012-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXV

They were twenty-nine men, not forty, who met Tom Aldworth next morning. Some who had promised did not come, having good reasons or bad ones.

Some of those who did, were unwilling that so many should set out together, not trusting those who would be left.

In the end he set out with twenty-two others, of whom he was the actual though not an elected leader.

His position was given tacitly in recognition of a proved and stubborn courage, and a mind that was always sure of its own purpose. They had found him ready and unflurried in moments of difficulty, with a straightforward habit of mind that sometimes made a muddled issue look simple. It had become a saying among them that “you were always sure of Tom.”

They had learnt to recognise in him also a sense of equity which gave confidence, and the value of which was realised in the lawless chaos to which they had fallen.

This chaos is sufficiently indicated by the smallness of the force which was now setting out. It is true that it was comparatively well-armed and equipped for its purpose, which its members had little doubt of their ability to fulfil. But their aim not being merely the defeat, but the extermination of Bellamy’s gang properly, required a decisive superiority in numbers, as well as in spirit and weapons, and it is less than creditable to the majority of those who had joined before in the common interest, to expel the more brutal elements of the community, that they should have been absent now. But there was not here a sufficiently urgent necessity or immediate danger to unite them in more than verbal indignation. They were agreed that vengeance must be executed, but most of them were content that the necessary exertion should be their neighbour’s portion. Even of those who had definitely promised their help nearly half were absent.

But neither Tom nor his companions were greatly worried by these defections. The men who had assembled represented the best and boldest elements in the fortuitous community to which they belonged. They all had firearms, either being their own property or borrowed from neighbours for the purpose of this expedition. The gun-room of a country house, which had been occupied by a nobleman of the game-preserving order, and which had escaped the ravages of storm and fire sufficiently for its armament to be little damaged, had supplied the majority with the lethal weapons they carried. But it was somewhat surprising to observe how generally the survivors of this world catastrophe had been able to produce or discover arms with which to defend themselves or to assist their depredations.

On the other hand, Bellamy and his followers, having been taken by surprise, had been disarmed before their expulsion, and even the four rifles which we have seen them to have possessed had been subsequently acquired, and their existence was not known, though it was obvious that they might have found some means to arm themselves afresh in the course of the nomadic plundering by which they lived.

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