Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 1 (1923-12).djvu/10
once instituted by a definite concerted program of offense, national and local authorities combining with great energy in their efforts.
Warnings and descriptions were placarded all over the country and substantial rewards for their discovery were offered. Organized bands of searchers were detailed to scour the more remote and sparsely peopled districts; such as the great moors in the north and west, the lonely mountainous stretches of Wales and Cumberland and in many another waste spot.
And yet, as the days went by, the things increased and extended the area of their occupation in an ever-ascending ratio. Italy, Hungary, Spain, in the South; Normandy, Holland, Belgium, and the British Islands in the North, reported daily the spread of the things in spite of the vigorous efforts to suppress them, their growth, apparently, once they obtained a foothold, being as spontaneous and incalculable as a mushroom.
Daily the occurrences took on a more serious aspect and in place of their former complacent curiosity a vague uneasiness came upon the people; and men like Batson asked one of the other:
"These things now—getting rather thick, aren't they? Might wipe out a lot of cattle, eh? What's the Government doing? Time they woke up; that's what I think."
Still not one in ten million had as yet come into personal contact with the invaders; even such insignificant things as Batson had encountered, of which by the way, not half a dozen reported occurrences were known. The real awakening of England came three days after the Dorking tragedy, when in the wild rugged stretch between Llanfair and Dinas Mowddy in mid-Wales a farmer, with his entire family, had been enmeshed by a huge colony of these terrible things and most horribly perished.
The farmer, one William Owen, his wife and two small children had been on their way home from a friendly sing-song at a neighbor's that evening, and where their path dipped into a little bridged dell, in the dusk without the least warning, they must have walked straight into the stuff. The man had put up a great fight—as evidenced by his torn apparel and the bruised condition of his remains where the terrible stems had sunk deep into his flesh in the struggle to retain their prey. Possibly by himself he might have made good his escape, but his family were hopelessly entangled, so, like a decent man, he died with them.
A gasp of amazed horror throbbed through the masses when they learned the details. It appeared to them that an organized band of cold-blooded assassins had invaded their country, and neither man, woman, or child, from now on would be safe from their ferocious cunning. Certain political parties made capital out of the intense emotion which pulsed the nation at this pitiless wiping out of a whole family. The party in power came in for a scathing attack, charging incompetency and even criminal indifference to the security of its citizens.
The country was in an uproar and a general election was imminent when the disaster of the Grimsby trawler, the White Wing, turned the unrest of the people into a raging passion for instant revenge and action, so that politics were forgotten and both parties joined hands in planning some means of effective offense.
The White Wing, in full sight of the fishing fleet, had been suddenly surrounded by what observers affirmed had the appearance in the failing light of being large masses of floating weed. At the hour, shortly before lighting up the fleet had most of their dories out baiting as is their custom, though the weather was rough and a gale impending. On board the vanished craft one man and a boy had been left in charge. Finishing their task, the dories were in the act of making for their respective craft when the attention of the nearest men was attracted to the White Wing which was perhaps about half a mile distant.
The wind was from her to them, and quite plainly could be heard loud shouting and cries for aid. Resting on their oars, in astonishment they perceived that the vessel had undergone a sudden and extraordinary change. No longer the trim, clean-lined vessel they all knew, now she bulked in ungainly greater outline with a covering of what looked like a vast dark-colored matting hung in festoons and ridges from gunwale to water. The men stared, transfixed with amazement, and then, seeing the White Wing's two dories were speeding at racing pace to their transfigured home they, too, swung around and pulled lustily in the same direction, and at that moment the shouting abruptly changed to the screaming of men in great fear and peril.
Probably at least a quarter of a mile separated this last boat from the two belonging to the White Wing. That space was their salvation. Their course lay at an obtuse angle to the other two; by slightly turning their heads, they could clearly distinguish the field these two covered. And what they saw was the little craft go bobbing over the choppy sea until they had reached maybe within fifty feet of the strangely draped smack, and then something happened, so quickly that the watchers had hardly time to stop the way of their own dory before the thing was over and the two little bobbing craft had vanished.
Though the light now was fast failing they had seen the two boats suddenly stop, though the men were still straining at oars which hardly moved an inch as the water around them arose in a dark-hued heaving mass, arose and in one swift gliding movement flowed over the gunwales, and a single terrible scream of fear came to the paralyzed watchers. Then there was nothing more heard or seen. The great dark blister subsided and there was neither men nor boats, only the bare choppy sea, gray, and desolate. And then the gale which had been brewing abruptly broke upon the speechless watchers in one tremendous squall, and only by the instinctive action of mariners in such circumstances they swung around in time to escape being swamped, and with great difficulty made their way back to their own home craft.
But as they had swung around they had unconsciously noted that the White Wing as she heeled over to the blast seemed to have lost much of her incomprehensible drapery; and that is the last they or any one else ever saw of her. Whether she sank in that squall or later in the severe gale it was impossible to say.
From that day it dawned upon the world that the long established order of human domination was in jeopardy, and a new phase, a threatened return to the long past elemental struggle for mere existence was at hand. Neither land nor water now acknowledged the painfully acquired supremacy of man. New and enormously powerful factors had arisen which might well reduce civilization to a parlous state, if not entirely erase it from our planet. The masses turned in clamorous bewilderment to the governing bodies and demanded that men of science and action should replace the time-worn traditional politicians: with commendable self-abnegation and demand was immediately met. In Britain men of science took the initiative in the urgent conferences at Downing Street and administrators listened humbly to their counsels.
Extensive preparations—so far as men could prepare for the unknown