Карен Хабер - This Way to the End Times

Have I found words capable of expressing our anguish? Probably not. In no language can there exist words adequate to cope with a situation without precedent.

After having reconnoitered the waters covering the Indian peninsula, we sailed northward again for ten days and next turned west. Then, with no change in our desperate situation, we passed over the chain of the Urals, now become submarine mountains, and entered what had been Europe. We turned southward and sailed as far as twenty degrees below the equator; and then, wearily abandoning our unrewarded search in that direction, we resumed a northerly course over an expanse of water that had drowned Africa, Spain, and the Pyrenees. By this time our very terror had turned into a stale numbness. We had been marking our course on the ship’s charts, and as we advanced we would say: “Here was Moscow . . . Warsaw . . . Berlin . . . Vienna . . . Rome . . . Tunis . . . Timbuctu . . . Oran . . . Madrid . . .” But, with increasing unconcern, we found ourselves reciting these names without feeling.

And yet I, at least, had not exhausted my capacity to suffer. I knew so on the day—it was, perhaps December 11—when Captain Morris said to me: “Here was Paris. . . .” At these words, I felt that my soul had been snatched from me. Let the entire universe be inundated, yes! But France—my France!—and Paris that was her symbol . . .

I heard a sob. I turned: Simonat, too, was weeping.

Four days later, having reached the latitude of Edinburgh, we turned back toward the southwest, seeking Ireland, and then set a course east. The truth is, we were wandering at random, for there was no more reason to go in one direction than in any other. . . .

We passed over London, whose liquid tomb was saluted by the entire crew. Five days afterward, when in the neighborhood of Danzig, Captain Morris turned about and ordered a southwest course. The helmsman obeyed passively. What did it matter to him? Would it not be the same thing everywhere?

It was on the ninth day of pursuing this course that we ate our last morsel of biscuit.

As we were eyeing each other haggardly, Captain Morris suddenly ordered the engines started. Even now I ask myself what impulse he was obeying. The order was carried out: the speed of our ship was accelerated.

TWO DAYS LATER WE WERE already suffering cruelly from hunger. Two more days and almost everyone stubbornly refused to leave his berth; only the Captain, Simonat, a few crewmen, and I had the energy to carry on the management of the ship.

Next day—our fifth day of fasting—the number of volunteer crewmen was further decreased. In another twenty-four hours nobody would have the strength to remain on his feet.

By then we had been cruising for more than seven months. For more than seven months we had persisted in seeking a goal that evidently had no existence. And as I was reflecting that this was perhaps the eighth of January, I realized that the calendar had lost all meaning.

Now, it was on this day, while I was at the wheel, straining to keep my feeble attention on the prescribed course, that I seemed to make out something in the west. Though certain that it was an illusion, I stared intently.

No, I had not been deceived.

I gave a wild shout and then, gripping the wheel, cried out: “Land ahead to the starboard!”

What magical words! The dying were all immediately revived, and their emaciated forms crowded along the starboard rail.

“It is land, for a fact,” said Captain Morris, after having studied what might have been a cloud rising on the horizon.

Within a half hour it was impossible to have the least doubt. Land it certainly was that we were meeting out in the middle of the Atlantic—after our failure to find any land where the former continents had been!

Towards three o’clock in the afternoon, the details of the coast that was barring our way became clear, and we felt a rebirth of despair. For in truth this coast resembled no other, and none of us could recall ever having seen land as unlikely, as completely hostile to man, as this.

On all land inhabited before the disaster, green had been an abounding color. We could recall no coast so disinherited, no country so barren, that it could not support some shrubs, or tufts of gorse, or at least traces of lichen and moss. But here, nothing at all. We could distinguish only a high, blackish cliff, with a chaos of fallen rocks along its base. Here was the most utter, most absolute desolation.

For two dreadful days we coasted along without discovering any break in that sheer cliff. But towards the evening of the second day we found an ample harbor, well sheltered from the winds of the open sea, at the head of which we dropped anchor.

Our first thought as soon as we landed in the ship’s boats, was to collect food on the beach. There were turtles by the hundreds, and shellfish by the millions. Off the ledges we could see a fabulous quantity of crabs, lobsters, and crawfish, as well as innumerable fish. From all appearances, this teeming harbor would suffice, in default of other resources, to support us indefinitely.

When we were restored, we were able, by way of a cut in the cliff, to reach the plateau, where we could look out over a broad expanse of country. The view from the water had not been deceptive: on all sides, in every direction, there were only arid rocks, covered with wrack and seaweed, mostly dried, without as much as a single blade of grass, nor any living thing, either on the ground or in the sky. Here and there, little lakes—pools, rather—glistened in the rays of the sun. But when we tried to slake our thirst, we found the water brackish.

We were not surprised, to tell the truth. The fact confirmed what we had suspected from the first: namely that this unknown continent had been born yesterday, that it had emerged, all of a piece, from the depths of the sea. This explained its barrenness and its complete lack of terrestrial life. It explained, too, the thick bed of slime, uniformly spread, which, owing to evaporation, was beginning to crack and to be reduced to dust.

Our bearings, taken at noon on the following day, proved to be 17° 20’ north latitude and 23° 55’ west longitude. According to our map we were in the open sea at about the latitude of Cape Verde. But now as far as we could see land was extending to the west and water to the east.

HOWEVER STERN AND INHOSPITABLE WAS the territory upon which we had set foot, we were forced to be content with it. So the unloading of the Virginia was undertaken without delay. We dragged up to the plateau everything she carried, without discrimination. But first we had secured the vessel fast by head and stern with four anchors on a fifteen-fathom bottom. In this tranquil harbor she would be safe, and we ran no risk in leaving her to herself.

As soon as the unloading was finished, our new life began. In the first place, it was expedient—

AT THIS POINT IN HIS translation, the Zartog Sofr had to break it off. He had come to the first gap in the recital (and one of great moment, probably, since there seemed a quantity of pages missing)—a gap followed by several others still more considerable, as far as could be judged. Evidently dampness had got to a great number of the outer sheets of the roll, notwithstanding the protection of the metal case: there remained, indeed, only a few fragments of varying length, with a context forever destroyed. They succeeded each other in the following order.

HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN since we disembarked on this coast? I cannot say definitely. I asked Doctor Moreno, who has been keeping a calendar of the passing days. He said: “Six months . . . a few days . . . more or less.” So he, too, confesses to have lost count.

Well, I saw it coming! In less than six months, we have lost confidence in our reckoning of time. How very promising!