End of the world -- Fiction; Epidemics -- Fiction; Science fiction; Twenty-first century -- Fiction
if destroyed, the earth’s deep entrails could yield no paragon. He was
a young man, and had been hurried on by presumption, and the notion of
his high rank and superiority to all other pretenders; now he repented
his work, he felt that all the blood about to be shed would be on his
head; with sudden impulse therefore he spurred his horse between the
bands, and, having fixed a white handkerchief on the point of his
uplifted sword, thus demanded parley; the opposite leaders obeyed the
signal. He spoke with warmth; he reminded them of the oath all the
chiefs had taken to submit to the Lord Protector; he declared their
present meeting to be an act of treason and mutiny; he allowed that he
had been hurried away by passion, but that a cooler moment had arrived;
and he proposed that each party should send deputies to the Earl of
Windsor, inviting his interference and offering submission to his
decision. His offer was accepted so far, that each leader consented to
command a retreat, and moreover agreed, that after the approbation of
their several parties had been consulted, they should meet that night
on some neutral spot to ratify the truce. At the meeting of the chiefs,
this plan was finally concluded upon. The leader of the fanatics indeed
refused to admit the arbitration of Adrian; he sent ambassadors, rather
than deputies, to assert his claim, not plead his cause.
The truce was to continue until the first of February, when the bands
were again to assemble on the Place Vendome; it was of the utmost
consequence therefore that Adrian should arrive in Paris by that day,
since an hair might turn the scale, and peace, scared away by intestine
broils, might only return to watch by the silent dead. It was now the
twenty-eighth of January; every vessel stationed near Dover had been
beaten to pieces and destroyed by the furious storms I have
commemorated. Our journey however would admit of no delay. That very
night, Adrian, and I, and twelve others, either friends or attendants,
put off from the English shore, in the boat that had brought over the
deputies. We all took our turn at the oar; and the immediate occasion
of our departure affording us abundant matter for conjecture and
discourse, prevented the feeling that we left our native country,
depopulate England, for the last time, to enter deeply into the minds
of the greater part of our number. It was a serene starlight night, and
the dark line of the English coast continued for some time visible at
intervals, as we rose on the broad back of the waves. I exerted myself
with my long oar to give swift impulse to our skiff; and, while the
waters splashed with melancholy sound against its sides, I looked with
sad affection on this last glimpse of sea-girt England, and strained my
eyes not too soon to lose sight of the castellated cliff, which rose to
protect the land of heroism and beauty from the inroads of ocean, that,
turbulent as I had lately seen it, required such cyclopean walls for
its repulsion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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