The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
THE GIANT LEAGUER.
I.
Presently Redwood found himself in a train going south over the Thames.He had a brief vision of the river shining under its lights, and of thesmoke still going up from the place where the shell had fallen on thenorth bank, and where a vast multitude of men had been organised to burnthe Herakleophorbia out of the ground. The southern bank was dark, forsome reason even the streets were not lit, all that was clearly visiblewas the outlines of the tall alarm-towers and the dark bulks of flatsand schools, and after a minute of peering scrutiny he turned his backon the window and sank into thought. There was nothing more to see or dountil he saw the Sons....
He was fatigued by the stresses of the last two days; it seemed to himthat his emotions must needs be exhausted, but he had fortified himselfwith strong coffee before starting, and his thoughts ran thin and clear.His mind touched many things. He reviewed again, but now in theenlightenment of accomplished events, the manner in which the Food hadentered and unfolded itself in the world.
"Bensington thought it might be an excellent food for infants," hewhispered to himself, with a faint smile. Then there came into his mindas vivid as if they were still unsettled his own horrible doubts afterhe had committed himself by giving it to his own son. From that, with asteady unfaltering expansion, in spite of every effort of men to helpand hinder, the Food had spread through the whole world of man. And now?
"Even if they kill them all," Redwood whispered, "the thing is done."
The secret of its making was known far and wide. That had been his ownwork. Plants, animals, a multitude of distressful growing children wouldconspire irresistibly to force the world to revert again to the Food,whatever happened in the present struggle. "The thing is done," he said,with his mind swinging round beyond all his controlling to rest upon thepresent fate of the Children and his son. Would he find them exhaustedby the efforts of the battle, wounded, starving, on the verge of defeat,or would he find them still stout and hopeful, ready for the stillgrimmer conflict of the morrow? His son was wounded! But he had sent amessage!
His mind came back to his interview with Caterham.
He was roused from his thoughts by the stopping of his train inChislehurst station. He recognised the place by the huge rat alarm-towerthat crested Camden Hill, and the row of blossoming giant hemlocks thatlined the road....
Caterham's private secretary came to him from the other carriage andtold him that half a mile farther the line had been wrecked, and thatthe rest of the journey was to be made in a motor car. Redwood descendedupon a platform lit only by a hand lantern and swept by the cool nightbreeze. The quiet of that derelict, wood-set, weed-embedded suburb--forall the inhabitants had taken refuge in London at the outbreak ofyesterday's conflict--became instantly impressive. His conductor tookhim down the steps to where a motor car was waiting with blazinglights--the only lights to be seen--handed him over to the care of thedriver and bade him farewell.
"You will do your best for us," he said, with an imitation of hismaster's manner, as he held Redwood's hand.
So soon as Redwood could be wrapped about they started out into thenight. At one moment they stood still, and then the motor car wasrushing softly and swiftly down the station incline. They turned onecorner and another, followed the windings of a lane of villas, and thenbefore them stretched the road. The motor droned up to its topmostspeed, and the black night swept past them. Everything was very darkunder the starlight, and the whole world crouched mysteriously and wasgone without a sound. Not a breath stirred the flying things by thewayside; the deserted, pallid white villas on either hand, with theirblack unlit windows, reminded him of a noiseless procession of skulls.The driver beside him was a silent man, or stricken into silence by theconditions of his journey. He answered Redwood's brief questions inmonosyllables, and gruffly. Athwart the southern sky the beams ofsearchlights waved noiseless passes; the sole strange evidences of lifethey seemed in all that derelict world about the hurrying machine.
The road was presently bordered on either side by gigantic blackthornshoots that made it very dark, and by tail grass and big campions, hugegiant dead-nettles as high as trees, flickering past darkly insilhouette overhead. Beyond Keston they came to a rising hill, and thedriver went slow. At the crest he stopped. The engine throbbed andbecame still. "There," he said, and his big gloved finger pointed, ablack misshapen thing before Redwood's eyes.
Far away as it seemed, the great embankment, crested by the blaze fromwhich the searchlights sprang, rose up against the sky. Those beams wentand came among the clouds and the hilly land about them as if theytraced mysterious incantations.
"I don't know," said the driver at last, and it was clear he was afraidto go on.
Presently a searchlight swept down the sky to them, stopped as it werewith a start, scrutinised them, a blinding stare confused rather thanmitigated by an intervening monstrous weed stem or so. They sat withtheir gloves held over their eyes, trying to look under them and meetthat light.
"Go on," said Redwood after a while.
The driver still had his doubts; he tried to express them, and died downto "I don't know" again.
At last he ventured on. "Here goes," he said, and roused his machineryto motion again, followed intently by that great white eye.
To Redwood it seemed for a long time they were no longer on earth, butin a state of palpitating hurry through a luminous cloud. Teuf, teuf,teuf, teuf, went the machine, and ever and again--obeying I know notwhat nervous impulse--the driver sounded his horn.
They passed into the welcome darkness of a high-fenced lane, and downinto a hollow and past some houses into that blinding stare again. Thenfor a space the road ran naked across a down, and they seemed to hangthrobbing in immensity. Once more giant weeds rose about them andwhirled past. Then quite abruptly close upon them loomed the figure of agiant, shining brightly where the searchlight caught him below, andblack against the sky above. "Hullo there!" he cried, and "stop! There'sno more road beyond ... Is that Father Redwood?"
Redwood stood up and gave a vague shout by way of answer, and thenCossar was in the road beside him, gripping both hands with both of hisand pulling him out of the car.
"What of my son?" asked Redwood.
"He's all right," said Cossar. "They've hurt nothing serious in _him_."
"And your lads?"
"Well. All of them, well. But we've had to make a fight for it."
The Giant was saying something to the motor driver. Redwood stood asideas the machine wheeled round, and then suddenly Cossar vanished,everything vanished, and he was in absolute darkness for a space. Theglare was following the motor back to the crest of the Keston hill. Hewatched the little conveyance receding in that white halo. It had acurious effect, as though it was not moving at all and the halo was. Agroup of war-blasted Giant elders flashed into gaunt scarredgesticulations and were swallowed again by the night ... Redwood turnedto Cossar's dim outline again and clasped his hand. "I have been shut upand kept in ignorance," he said, "for two whole days."
"We fired the Food at them," said Cossar. "Obviously! Thirty shots. Eh!"
"I come from Caterham."
"I know you do." He laughed with a note of bitterness. "I suppose he'swiping it up."
II.
"Where is my son?" said Redwood.
"He is all right. The Giants are waiting for your message."
"Yes, but my son--..."
He passed with Cossar down a long slanting tunnel that was lit red for amoment and then became dark again, and came out presently into the greatpit of shelter the Giants had made.
Redwood's first impression was of an enormous arena bounded by very highcliffs and with its floor greatly encumbered. It was in darkness savefor the passing reflections of the watchman's searchlights that whirledperpetually high overhead, and for a red glow that came and went from adistant corner where two Giants worked together amidst a metallicclangour. Against the sky, as the glare came abo
"Where is my son, Cossar?"
Then he saw him.
His son was sitting under the shadow of a great wall of steel. Hepresented himself as a black shape recognisable only by his pose,--hisfeatures were invisible. He sat chin upon hand, as though weary or lostin thought. Beside him Redwood discovered the figure of the Princess,the dark suggestion of her merely, and then, as the glow from thedistant iron returned, he saw for an instant, red lit and tender, theinfinite kindliness of her shadowed face. She stood looking down uponher lover with her hand resting against the steel. It seemed that shewhispered to him.
Redwood would have gone towards them.
"Presently," said Cossar. "First there is your message."
"Yes," said Redwood, "but--"
He stopped. His son was now looking up and speaking to the Princess, butin too low a tone for them to hear. Young Redwood raised his face, andshe bent down towards him, and glanced aside before she spoke.
"But if we are beaten," they heard the whispered voice of young Redwood.
She paused, and the red blaze showed her eyes bright with unshed tears.She bent nearer him and spoke still lower. There was something sointimate and private in their bearing, in their soft tones, thatRedwood--Redwood who had thought for two whole days of nothing but hisson--felt himself intrusive there. Abruptly he was checked. For thefirst time in his life perhaps he realised how much more a son may be tohis father than a father can ever be to a son; he realised the fullpredominance of the future over the past. Here between these two he hadno part. His part was played. He turned to Cossar, in the instantrealisation. Their eyes met. His voice was changed to the tone of a greyresolve.
"I will deliver my message now," he said. "Afterwards--... It will besoon enough then."
The pit was so enormous and so encumbered that it was a long andtortuous route to the place from which Redwood could speak to them all.
He and Cossar followed a steeply descending way that passed beneath anarch of interlocking machinery, and so came into a vast deep gangwaythat ran athwart the bottom of the pit. This gangway, wide and vacant,and yet relatively narrow, conspired with everything about it to enhanceRedwood's sense of his own littleness. It became, as it were, anexcavated gorge. High overhead, separated from him by cliffs ofdarkness, the searchlights wheeled and blazed, and the shining shapeswent to and fro. Giant voices called to one another above there, callingthe Giants together to the Council of War, to hear the terms thatCaterham had sent. The gangway still inclined downward towards blackvastnesses, towards shadows and mysteries and inconceivable things, intowhich Redwood went slowly with reluctant footsteps and Cossar with aconfident stride....
Redwood's thoughts were busy. The two men passed into the completestdarkness, and Cossar took his companion's wrist. They went now slowlyperforce.
Redwood was moved to speak. "All this," he said, "is strange."
"Big," said Cossar.
"Strange. And strange that it should be strange to me--I, who am, in asense, the beginning of it all. It's--"
He stopped, wrestling with his elusive meaning, and threw an unseengesture at the cliff.
"I have not thought of it before. I have been busy, and the years havepassed. But here I see--It is a new generation, Cossar, and new emotionsand new needs. All this, Cossar--"
Cossar saw now his dim gesture to the things about them.
"All this is Youth."
Cossar made no answers and his irregular footfalls went striding on.
"It isn't _our_ youth, Cossar. They are taking things over. They arebeginning upon their own emotions, their own experiences, their own way.We have made a new world, and it isn't ours. It isn't even--sympathetic.This great place--"
"I planned it," said Cossar, his face close.
"But now?"
"Ah! I have given it to my sons."
Redwood could feel the loose wave of the arm that he could not see.
"That is it. We are over--or almost over."
"Your message!"
"Yes. And then--"
"We're over."
"Well--?"
"Of course we are out of it, we two old men," said Cossar, with hisfamiliar note of sudden anger. "Of course we are. Obviously. Each manfor his own time. And now--it's _their_ time beginning. That's allright. Excavator's gang. We do our job and go. See? That is what deathis for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions,and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple.What's the trouble?"
He paused to guide Redwood to some steps.
"Yes," said Redwood, "but one feels--"
He left his sentence incomplete.
"That is what Death is for." He heard Cossar below him insisting, "Howelse could the thing be done? That is what Death is for."
III.
After devious windings and ascents they came out upon a projecting ledgefrom which it was possible to see over the greater extent of the Giants'pit, and from which Redwood might make himself heard by the whole oftheir assembly. The Giants were already gathered below and about him atdifferent levels, to hear the message he had to deliver. The eldest sonof Cossar stood on the bank overhead watching the revelations of thesearchlights, for they feared a breach of the truce. The workers at thegreat apparatus in the corner stood out clear in their own light; theywere near stripped; they turned their faces towards Redwood, but with awatchful reference ever and again to the castings that they could notleave. He saw these nearer figures with a fluctuating indistinctness, bylights that came and went, and the remoter ones still less distinctly.They came from and vanished again into the depths of great obscurities.For these Giants had no more light than they could help in the pit, thattheir eyes might be ready to see effectually any attacking force thatmight spring upon them out of the darknesses around.
Ever and again some chance glare would pick out and display this groupor that of tall and powerful forms, the Giants from Sunderland clothedin overlapping metal plates, and the others clad in leather, in wovenrope or in woven metal, as their conditions had determined. They satamidst or rested their hands upon, or stood erect among machines andweapons as mighty as themselves, and all their faces, as they came andwent from visible to invisible, had steadfast eyes.
He made an effort to begin and did not do so. Then for a moment hisson's face glowed out in a hot insurgence of the fire, his son's facelooking up to him, tender as well as strong; and at that he found avoice to reach them all, speaking across a gulf, as it were, to his son.
"I come from Caterham," he said. "He sent me to you, to tell you theterms he offers."
He paused. "They are impossible terms, I know, now that I see you hereall together; they are impossible terms, but I brought them to you,because I wanted to see you all--and my son. Once more ... I wanted tosee my son...."
"Tell them the terms," said Cossar.
"This is what Caterham offers. He wants you to go apart and leave hisworld!"
"Where?"
"He does not know. Vaguely somewhere in the world a great region is tobe set apart.... And you are to make no more of the Food, to have nochildren of your own, to live in your own way for your own time, andthen to end for ever."
He stopped.
"And that is all?"
"That is all."
There followed a great stillness. The darkness that veiled the Giantsseemed to look thoughtfully at him.
He felt a touch at his elbow, and Cossar was holding a chair for him--aqueer fragment of doll's furniture amidst these piled immensities. Hesat down and crossed his legs, and then put one across the knee of theother, and clutched his boot nervously, and felt small andself-conscious and acutely visible and absurdly placed.
Then at the sound of a voice he forgot himself again.
"You have heard, Brothers," said this voice out of the shadows.
And another answered, "We have heard."
"And the answer, Brothers?"
"To Caterham?"
"Is No!"
"And then?"
There was a silence for the space of some seconds.
Then a voice said: "These people are right. After their lights, that is.They have been right in killing all that grew larger than itskind--beast and plant and all manner of great things that arose. Theywere right in trying to massacre us. They are right now in saying wemust not marry our kind. According to their lights they are right. Theyknow--it is time that we also knew--that you cannot have pigmies andgiants in one world together. Caterham has said that again andagain--clearly--their world or ours."
"We are not half a hundred now," said another, "and they are endlessmillions."
"So it may be. But the thing is as I have said."
Then another long silence.
"And are we to die then?"
"God forbid!"
"Are they?"
"No."
"But that is what Caterham says! He would have us live out our lives,die one by one, till only one remains, and that one at last would diealso, and they would cut down all the giant plants and weeds, kill allthe giant under-life, burn out the traces of the Food--make an end to usand to the Food for ever. Then the little pigmy world would be safe.They would go on--safe for ever, living their little pigmy lives, doingpigmy kindnesses and pigmy cruelties each to the other; they might evenperhaps attain a sort of pigmy millennium, make an end to war, make anend to over-population, sit down in a world-wide city to practise pigmyarts, worshipping one another till the world begins to freeze...."
In the corner a sheet of iron fell in thunder to the ground.
"Brothers, we know what we mean to do."
In a spluttering of light from the searchlights Redwood saw earnestyouthful faces turning to his son.
"It is easy now to make the Food. It would be easy for us to make Foodfor all the world."
"You mean, Brother Redwood," said a voice out of the darkness, "that itis for the little people to eat the Food."
"What else is there to do?"
"We are not half a hundred and they are many millions."
"But we held our own."
"So far."
"If it is God's will, we may still hold our own."
"Yes. But think of the dead!"
Another voice took up the strain. "The dead," it said. "Think of theunborn...."
"Brothers," came the voice of young Redwood, "what can we do but fightthem, and if we beat them, make them take the Food? They cannot help buttake the Food now. Suppose we were to resign our heritage and do thisfolly that Caterham suggests! Suppose we could! Suppose we give up thisgreat thing that stirs within us, repudiate this thing our fathers didfor us--that _you_, Father, did for us--and pass, when our time hascome, into decay and nothingness! What then? Will this little world oftheirs be as it was before? They may fight against greatness in us whoare the children of men, but can they conquer? Even if they shoulddestroy us every one, what then? Would it save them? No! For greatnessis abroad, not only in us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose ofall things! It is in the nature of all things; it is part of space andtime. To grow and still to grow: from first to last that is Being--thatis the law of life. What other law can there be?"
"To help others?"
"To grow. It is still, to grow. Unless we help them to fail...."
"They will fight hard to overcome us," said a voice.
And another, "What of that?"
"They will fight," said young Redwood. "If we refuse these terms, Idoubt not they will fight. Indeed I hope they will be open and fight. Ifafter all they offer peace, it will be only the better to catch usunawares. Make no mistake, Brothers; in some way or other they willfight. The war has begun, and we must fight, to the end. Unless we arewise, we may find presently we have lived only to make them betterweapons against our children and our kind. This, so far, has been onlythe dawn of battle. All our lives will be a battle. Some of us will bekilled in battle, some of us will be waylaid. There is no easyvictory--no victory whatever that is not more than half defeat for us.Be sure of that. What of that? If only we keep a foothold, if only weleave behind us a growing host to fight when we are gone!"
"And to-morrow?"
"We will scatter the Food; we will saturate the world with the Food."
"Suppose they come to terms?"
"Our terms are the Food. It is not as though little and great could livetogether in any perfection of compromise. It is one thing or the other.What right have parents to say, My child shall have no light but thelight I have had, shall grow no greater than the greatness to which Ihave grown? Do I speak for you, Brothers?"
Assenting murmurs answered him.
"And to the children who will be women as well as to the children whowill be men," said a voice from the darkness.
"Even more so--to be mothers of a new race ..."
"But for the next generation there must be great and little," saidRedwood, with his eyes on his son's face.
"For many generations. And the little will hamper the great and thegreat press upon the little. So it must needs be, father."
"There will be conflict."
"Endless conflict. Endless misunderstanding. All life is that. Great andlittle cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man,Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness--waiting for the Food."
"Then I am to go to Caterham again and tell him--"
"You will stay with us, Father Redwood. Our answer goes to Caterham atdawn."
"He says that he will fight...."
"So be it," said young Redwood, and his brethren murmured assent.
"_The iron waits_," cried a voice, and the two giants who were workingin the corner began a rhythmic hammering that made a mighty music to thescene. The metal glowed out far more brightly than it had done before,and gave Redwood a clearer view of the encampment than had yet come tohim. He saw the oblong space to its full extent, with the great enginesof warfare ranged ready to hand. Beyond, and at a higher level, thehouse of the Cossars stood. About him were the young giants, huge andbeautiful, glittering in their mail, amidst the preparations for themorrow. The sight of them lifted his heart. They were so easilypowerful! They were so tall and gracious! They were so steadfast intheir movements! There was his son amongst them, and the first of allgiant women, the Princess....
There leapt into his mind the oddest contrast, a memory of Bensington,very bright and little--Bensington with his hand amidst the soft breastfeathers of that first great chick, standing in that conventionallyfurnished room of his, peering over his spectacles dubiously as cousinJane banged the door....
It had all happened in a yesterday of one-and-twenty years.
Then suddenly a strange doubt took hold of him: that this place andpresent greatness were but the texture of a dream; that he was dreaming,and would in an instant wake to find himself in his study again, theGiants slaughtered, the Food suppressed, and himself a prisoner lockedin. What else indeed was life but that--always to be a prisoner lockedin! This was the culmination and end of his dream. He would wake throughbloodshed and battle, to find his Food the most foolish of fancies, andhis hopes and faith of a greater world to come no more than the colouredfilm upon a pool of bottomless decay. Littleness invincibl
So strong and deep was this wave of despondency, this suggestion ofimpending disillusionment, that he started to his feet. He stood andpressed his clenched fists into his eyes, and so for a moment remained,fearing to open them again and see, lest the dream should already havepassed away....
The voice of the giant children spoke to one another, an undertone tothat clangorous melody of the smiths. His tide of doubt ebbed. He heardthe giant voices; he heard their movements about him still. It was real,surely it was real--as real as spiteful acts! More real, for these greatthings, it may be, are the coming things, and the littleness,bestiality, and infirmity of men are the things that go. He opened hiseyes. "Done," cried one of the two ironworkers, and they flung theirhammers down.
A voice sounded above. The son of Cossar, standing on the greatembankment, had turned and was now speaking to them all.
"It is not that we would oust the little people from the world," hesaid, "in order that we, who are no more than one step upwards fromtheir littleness, may hold their world for ever. It is the step we fightfor and not ourselves.... We are here, Brothers, to what end? To servethe spirit and the purpose that has been breathed into our lives. Wefight not for ourselves--for we are but the momentary hands and eyes ofthe Life of the World. So you, Father Redwood, taught us. Through us andthrough the little folk the Spirit looks and learns. From us by word andbirth and act it must pass--to still greater lives. This earth is noresting place; this earth is no playing place, else indeed we might putour throats to the little people's knife, having no greater right tolive than they. And they in their turn might yield to the ants andvermin. We fight not for ourselves but for growth--growth that goes onfor ever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer throughus. That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according tothe will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of theseshadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light! Greater," he said,speaking with slow deliberation, "greater, my Brothers! And then--stillgreater. To grow, and again--to grow. To grow at last into thefellowship and understanding of God. Growing.... Till the earth is nomore than a footstool.... Till the spirit shall have driven fear intonothingness, and spread...." He swung his arm heavenward:--"_There!"_His voice ceased. The white glare of one of tho searchlights wheeledabout, and for a moment fell upon him, standing out gigantic with handupraised against the sky.
For one instant he shone, looking up fearlessly into the starry deeps,mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light hadpassed, and he was no more than a great black outline against the starrysky--a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture thefirmament of heaven and all its multitude of stars.
THE END.