CHAPTER XXIII
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS
Suddenly a change came over the face of things. A tingle of
excitement ran along the air. Automobiles fled past, two, three, a
dozen, and from them warnings were shouted to us. One of the
machines swerved wildly at high speed half a block down, and the
next moment, already left well behind it, the pavement was torn
into a great hole by a bursting bomb. We saw the police
disappearing down the cross-streets on the run, and knew that
something terrible was coming. We could hear the rising roar of
it.
"Our brave comrades are coming," Hartman said.
We could see the front of their column filling the street from
gutter to gutter, as the last war-automobile fled past. The
machine stopped for a moment just abreast of us. A soldier leaped
from it, carrying something carefully in his hands. This, with the
same care, he deposited in the gutter. Then he leaped back to his
seat and the machine dashed on, took the turn at the corner, and
was gone from sight. Hartman ran to the gutter and stooped over
the object.
"Keep back," he warned me.
I could see he was working rapidly with his hands. When he
returned to me the sweat was heavy on his forehead.
"I disconnected it," he said, "and just in the nick of time. The
soldier was clumsy. He intended it for our comrades, but he didn't
give it enough time. It would have exploded prematurely. Now it
won't explode at all."
Everything was happening rapidly now. Across the street and half a
block down, high up in a building, I could see heads peering out.
I had just pointed them out to Hartman, when a sheet of flame and
smoke ran along that portion of the face of the building where the
heads had appeared, and the air was shaken by the explosion. In
places the stone facing of the building was torn away, exposing the
iron construction beneath. The next moment similar sheets of flame
and smoke smote the front of the building across the street
opposite it. Between the explosions we could hear the rattle of
the automatic pistols and rifles. For several minutes this mid-air
battle continued, then died out. It was patent that our comrades
were in one building, that Mercenaries were in the other, and that
they were fighting across the street. But we could not tell which
was which--which building contained our comrades and which the
Mercenaries.
By this time the column on the street was almost on us. As the
front of it passed under the warring buildings, both went into
action again--one building dropping bombs into the street, being
attacked from across the street, and in return replying to that
attack. Thus we learned which building was held by our comrades,
and they did good work, saving those in the street from the bombs
of the enemy.
Hartman gripped my arm and dragged me into a wide entrance.
"They're not our comrades," he shouted in my ear.
The inner doors to the entrance were locked and bolted. We could
not escape. The next moment the front of the column went by. It
was not a column, but a mob, an awful river that filled the street,
the people of the abyss, mad with drink and wrong, up at last and
roaring for the blood of their masters. I had seen the people of
the abyss before, gone through its ghettos, and thought I knew it;
but I found that I was now looking on it for the first time. Dumb
apathy had vanished. It was now dynamic--a fascinating spectacle
of dread. It surged past my vision in concrete waves of wrath,
snarling and growling, carnivorous, drunk with whiskey from
pillaged warehouses, drunk with hatred, drunk with lust for blood--
men, women, and children, in rags and tatters, dim ferocious
intelligences with all the godlike blotted from their features and
all the fiendlike stamped in, apes and tigers, anaemic consumptives
and great hairy beasts of burden, wan faces from which vampire
society had sucked the juice of life, bloated forms swollen with
physical grossness and corruption, withered hags and death's-heads
bearded like patriarchs, festering youth and festering age, faces
of fiends, crooked, twisted, misshapen monsters blasted with the
ravages of disease and all the horrors of chronic innutrition--the
refuse and the scum of life, a raging, screaming, screeching,
demoniacal horde.
And why not? The people of the abyss had nothing to lose but the
misery and pain of living. And to gain?--nothing, save one final,
awful glut of vengeance. And as I looked the thought came to me
that in that rushing stream of human lava were men, comrades and
heroes, whose mission had been to rouse the abysmal beast and to
keep the enemy occupied in coping with it.
And now a strange thing happened to me. A transformation came over
me. The fear of death, for myself and for others, left me. I was
strangely exalted, another being in another life. Nothing
mattered. The Cause for this one time was lost, but the Cause
would be here to-morrow, the same Cause, ever fresh and ever
burning. And thereafter, in the orgy of horror that raged through
the succeeding hours, I was able to take a calm interest. Death
meant nothing, life meant nothing. I was an interested spectator
of events, and, sometimes swept on by the rush, was myself a
curious participant. For my mind had leaped to a star-cool
altitude and grasped a passionless transvaluation of values. Had
it not done this, I know that I should have died.
Half a mile of the mob had swept by when we were discovered. A
woman in fantastic rags, with cheeks cavernously hollow and with
narrow black eyes like burning gimlets, caught a glimpse of Hartman
and me. She let out a shrill shriek and bore in upon us. A
section of the mob tore itself loose and surged in after her. I
can see her now, as I write these lines, a leap in advance, her
gray hair flying in thin tangled strings, the blood dripping down
her forehead from some wound in the scalp, in her right hand a
hatchet, her left hand, lean and wrinkled, a yellow talon, gripping
the air convulsively. Hartman sprang in front of me. This was no
time for explanations. We were well dressed, and that was enough.
His fist shot out, striking the woman between her burning eyes.
The impact of the blow drove her backward, but she struck the wall
of her on-coming fellows and bounced forward again, dazed and
helpless, the brandished hatchet falling feebly on Hartman's
shoulder.
The next moment I knew not what was happening. I was overborne by
the crowd. The confined space was filled with shrieks and yells
and curses. Blows were falling on me. Hands were ripping and
tearing at my flesh and garments. I felt that I was being torn to
pieces. I was being borne down, suffocated. Some strong hand
gripped my shoulder in the thick of the press and was dragging
fiercely at me. Between pain and pressure I fainted. Hartman
never came out of that entrance. He had shielded me and received
the first brunt of the attack. This had saved me, for the jam had
quickly become too dense for anything more than the mad gripping
and tearing of hands.
I came to in the midst of wild movement. All about me was the same
movement. I had been caught up in a monstrous flood that was
sweeping me I knew not whither. Fresh air was on my cheek and
biting sweetly in my lungs. Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely aware
of a strong arm around my body under the arms, and half-lifting me
and dragging me along. Feebly my own limbs were helping me. In
front of me I could see the moving back of a man's coat. It had
been slit from top to bottom along the centre seam, and it pulsed
rhythmically, the slit opening and closing regularly with every
leap of the wearer. This phenomenon fascinated me for a time,
while my senses were coming back to me. Next I became aware of
stinging cheeks and nose, and could feel blood dripping on my face.
My hat was gone. My hair was down and flying, and from the
stinging of the scalp I managed to recollect a hand in the press of
the entrance that had torn at my hair. My chest and arms were
bruised and aching in a score of places.
My brain grew clearer, and I turned as I ran and looked at the man
who was holding me up. He it was who had dragged me out and saved
me. He noticed my movement.
"It's all right!" he shouted hoarsely. "I knew you on the
instant."
I failed to recognize him, but before I could speak I trod upon
something that was alive and that squirmed under my foot. I was
swept on by those behind and could not look down and see, and yet I
knew that it was a woman who had fallen and who was being trampled
into the pavement by thousands of successive feet.
"It's all right," he repeated. "I'm Garthwaite."
He was bearded and gaunt and dirty, but I succeeded in remembering
him as the stalwart youth that had spent several months in our Glen
Ellen refuge three years before. He passed me the signals of the
Iron Heel's secret service, in token that he, too, was in its
employ.
"I'll get you out of this as soon as I can get a chance," he
assured me. "But watch your footing. On your life don't stumble
and go down."
All things happened abruptly on that day, and with an abruptness
that was sickening the mob checked itself. I came in violent
collision with a large woman in front of me (the man with the split
coat had vanished), while those behind collided against me. A
devilish pandemonium reigned,--shrieks, curses, and cries of death,
while above all rose the churning rattle of machine-guns and the
put-a-put, put-a-put of rifles. At first I could make out nothing.
People were falling about me right and left. The woman in front
doubled up and went down, her hands on her abdomen in a frenzied
clutch. A man was quivering against my legs in a death-struggle.
It came to me that we were at the head of the column. Half a mile
of it had disappeared--where or how I never learned. To this day I
do not know what became of that half-mile of humanity--whether it
was blotted out by some frightful bolt of war, whether it was
scattered and destroyed piecemeal, or whether it escaped. But
there we were, at the head of the column instead of in its middle,
and we were being swept out of life by a torrent of shrieking lead.
As soon as death had thinned the jam, Garthwaite, still grasping my
arm, led a rush of survivors into the wide entrance of an office
building. Here, at the rear, against the doors, we were pressed by
a panting, gasping mass of creatures. For some time we remained in
this position without a change in the situation.
"I did it beautifully," Garthwaite was lamenting to me. "Ran you
right into a trap. We had a gambler's chance in the street, but in
here there is no chance at all. It's all over but the shouting.
Vive la Revolution!"
Then, what he expected, began. The Mercenaries were killing
without quarter. At first, the surge back upon us was crushing,
but as the killing continued the pressure was eased. The dead and
dying went down and made room. Garthwaite put his mouth to my ear
and shouted, but in the frightful din I could not catch what he
said. He did not wait. He seized me and threw me down. Next he
dragged a dying woman over on top of me, and, with much squeezing
and shoving, crawled in beside me and partly over me. A mound of
dead and dying began to pile up over us, and over this mound,
pawing and moaning, crept those that still survived. But these,
too, soon ceased, and a semi-silence settled down, broken by groans
and sobs and sounds of strangulation.
I should have been crushed had it not been for Garthwaite. As it
was, it seemed inconceivable that I could bear the weight I did and
live. And yet, outside of pain, the only feeling I possessed was
one of curiosity. How was it going to end? What would death be
like? Thus did I receive my red baptism in that Chicago shambles.
Prior to that, death to me had been a theory; but ever afterward
death has been a simple fact that does not matter, it is so easy.
But the Mercenaries were not content with what they had done. They
invaded the entrance, killing the wounded and searching out the
unhurt that, like ourselves, were playing dead. I remember one man
they dragged out of a heap, who pleaded abjectly until a revolver
shot cut him short. Then there was a woman who charged from a
heap, snarling and shooting. She fired six shots before they got
her, though what damage she did we could not know. We could follow
these tragedies only by the sound. Every little while flurries
like this occurred, each flurry culminating in the revolver shot
that put an end to it. In the intervals we could hear the soldiers
talking and swearing as they rummaged among the carcasses, urged on
by their officers to hurry up.
At last they went to work on our heap, and we could feel the
pressure diminish as they dragged away the dead and wounded.
Garthwaite began uttering aloud the signals. At first he was not
heard. Then he raised his voice.
"Listen to that," we heard a soldier say. And next the sharp voice
of an officer. "Hold on there! Careful as you go!"
Oh, that first breath of air as we were dragged out! Garthwaite
did the talking at first, but I was compelled to undergo a brief
examination to prove service with the Iron Heel.
"Agents-provocateurs all right," was the officer's conclusion. He
was a beardless young fellow, a cadet, evidently, of some great
oligarch family.
"It's a hell of a job," Garthwaite grumbled. "I'm going to try and
resign and get into the army. You fellows have a snap."
"You've earned it," was the young officer's answer. "I've got some
pull, and I'll see if it can be managed. I can tell them how I
found you."
He took Garthwaite's name and number, then turned to me.
"And you?"
"Oh, I'm going to be married," I answered lightly, "and then I'll
be out of it all."
And so we talked, while the killing of the wounded went on. It is
all a dream, now, as I look back on it; but at the time it was the
most natural thing in the world. Garthwaite and the young officer
fell into an animated conversation over the difference between so-
called modern warfare and the present street-fighting and sky-
scraper fighting that was taking place all over the city. I
followed them intently, fixing up my hair at the same time and
pinning together my torn skirts. And all the time the killing of
the wounded went on. Sometimes the revolver shots drowned the
voices of Garthwaite and the officer, and they were compelled to
repeat what they had been saying.
I lived through three days of the Chicago Commune, and the vastness
of it and of the slaughter may be imagined when I say that in all
that time I saw practically nothing outside the killing of the
people of the abyss and the mid-air fighting between sky-scrapers.
I really saw nothing of the heroic work done by the comrades. I
could hear the explosions of their mines and bombs, and see the
smoke of their conflagrations, and that was all. The mid-air part
of one great deed I saw, however, and that was the balloon attacks
made by our comrades on the fortresses. That was on the second
day. The three disloyal regiments had been destroyed in the
fortresses to the last man. The fortresses were crowded with
Mercenaries, the wind blew in the right direction, and up went our
balloons from one of the office buildings in the city.
Now Biedenbach, after he left Glen Ellen, had invented a most
powerful explosive--"expedite" he called it. This was the weapon
the balloons used. They were only hot-air balloons, clumsily and
hastily made, but they did the work. I saw it all from the top of
an office building. The first balloon missed the fortresses
completely and disappeared into the country; but we learned about
it afterward. Burton and O'Sullivan were in it. As they were
descending they swept across a railroad directly over a troop-train
that was heading at full speed for Chicago. They dropped their
whole supply of expedite upon the locomotive. The resulting wreck
tied the line up for days. And the best of it was that, released
from the weight of expedite, the balloon shot up into the air and
did not come down for half a dozen miles, both heroes escaping
unharmed.
The second balloon was a failure. Its flight was lame. It floated
too low and was shot full of holes before it could reach the
fortresses. Herford and Guinness were in it, and they were blown
to pieces along with the field into which they fell. Biedenbach
was in despair--we heard all about it afterward--and he went up
alone in the third balloon. He, too, made a low flight, but he was
in luck, for they failed seriously to puncture his balloon. I can
see it now as I did then, from the lofty top of the building--that
inflated bag drifting along the air, and that tiny speck of a man
clinging on beneath. I could not see the fortress, but those on
the roof with me said he was directly over it. I did not see the
expedite fall when he cut it loose. But I did see the balloon
suddenly leap up into the sky. An appreciable time after that the
great column of the explosion towered in the air, and after that,
in turn, I heard the roar of it. Biedenbach the gentle had
destroyed a fortress. Two other balloons followed at the same
time. One was blown to pieces in the air, the expedite exploding,
and the shock of it disrupted the second balloon, which fell
prettily into the remaining fortress. It couldn't have been better
planned, though the two comrades in it sacrificed their lives.
But to return to the people of the abyss. My experiences were
confined to them. They raged and slaughtered and destroyed all
over the city proper, and were in turn destroyed; but never once
did they succeed in reaching the city of the oligarchs over on the
west side. The oligarchs had protected themselves well. No matter
what destruction was wreaked in the heart of the city, they, and
their womenkind and children, were to escape hurt. I am told that
their children played in the parks during those terrible days and
that their favorite game was an imitation of their elders stamping
upon the proletariat.
But the Mercenaries found it no easy task to cope with the people
of the abyss and at the same time fight with the comrades. Chicago
was true to her traditions, and though a generation of
revolutionists was wiped out, it took along with it pretty close to
a generation of its enemies. Of course, the Iron Heel kept the
figures secret, but, at a very conservative estimate, at least one
hundred and thirty thousand Mercenaries were slain. But the
comrades had no chance. Instead of the whole country being hand in
hand in revolt, they were all alone, and the total strength of the
Oligarchy could have been directed against them if necessary. As
it was, hour after hour, day after day, in endless train-loads, by
hundreds of thousands, the Mercenaries were hurled into Chicago.
And there were so many of the people of the abyss! Tiring of the
slaughter, a great herding movement was begun by the soldiers, the
intent of which was to drive the street mobs, like cattle, into
Lake Michigan. It was at the beginning of this movement that
Garthwaite and I had encountered the young officer. This herding
movement was practically a failure, thanks to the splendid work of
the comrades. Instead of the great host the Mercenaries had hoped
to gather together, they succeeded in driving no more than forty
thousand of the wretches into the lake. Time and again, when a mob
of them was well in hand and being driven along the streets to the
water, the comrades would create a diversion, and the mob would
escape through the consequent hole torn in the encircling net.
Garthwaite and I saw an example of this shortly after meeting with
the young officer. The mob of which we had been a part, and which
had been put in retreat, was prevented from escaping to the south
and east by strong bodies of troops. The troops we had fallen in
with had held it back on the west. The only outlet was north, and
north it went toward the lake, driven on from east and west and
south by machine-gun fire and automatics. Whether it divined that
it was being driven toward the lake, or whether it was merely a
blind squirm of the monster, I do not know; but at any rate the mob
took a cross street to the west, turned down the next street, and
came back upon its track, heading south toward the great ghetto.
Garthwaite and I at that time were trying to make our way westward
to get out of the territory of street-fighting, and we were caught
right in the thick of it again. As we came to the corner we saw
the howling mob bearing down upon us. Garthwaite seized my arm and
we were just starting to run, when he dragged me back from in front
of the wheels of half a dozen war automobiles, equipped with
machine-guns, that were rushing for the spot. Behind them came the
soldiers with their automatic rifles. By the time they took
position, the mob was upon them, and it looked as though they would
be overwhelmed before they could get into action.
Here and there a soldier was discharging his rifle, but this
scattered fire had no effect in checking the mob. On it came,
bellowing with brute rage. It seemed the machine-guns could not
get started. The automobiles on which they were mounted blocked
the street, compelling the soldiers to find positions in, between,
and on the sidewalks. More and more soldiers were arriving, and in
the jam we were unable to get away. Garthwaite held me by the arm,
and we pressed close against the front of a building.
The mob was no more than twenty-five feet away when the machine-
guns opened up; but before that flaming sheet of death nothing
could live. The mob came on, but it could not advance. It piled
up in a heap, a mound, a huge and growing wave of dead and dying.
Those behind urged on, and the column, from gutter to gutter,
telescoped upon itself. Wounded creatures, men and women, were
vomited over the top of that awful wave and fell squirming down the
face of it till they threshed about under the automobiles and
against the legs of the soldiers. The latter bayoneted the
struggling wretches, though one I saw who gained his feet and flew
at a soldier's throat with his teeth. Together they went down,
soldier and slave, into the welter.
The firing ceased. The work was done. The mob had been stopped in
its wild attempt to break through. Orders were being given to
clear the wheels of the war-machines. They could not advance over
that wave of dead, and the idea was to run them down the cross
street. The soldiers were dragging the bodies away from the wheels
when it happened. We learned afterward how it happened. A block
distant a hundred of our comrades had been holding a building.
Across roofs and through buildings they made their way, till they
found themselves looking down upon the close-packed soldiers. Then
it was counter-massacre.
Without warning, a shower of bombs fell from the top of the
building. The automobiles were blown to fragments, along with many
soldiers. We, with the survivors, swept back in mad retreat. Half
a block down another building opened fire on us. As the soldiers
had carpeted the street with dead slaves, so, in turn, did they
themselves become carpet. Garthwaite and I bore charmed lives. As
we had done before, so again we sought shelter in an entrance. But
he was not to be caught napping this time. As the roar of the
bombs died away, he began peering out.
"The mob's coming back!" he called to me. "We've got to get out of
this!"
We fled, hand in hand, down the bloody pavement, slipping and
sliding, and making for the corner. Down the cross street we could
see a few soldiers still running. Nothing was happening to them.
The way was clear. So we paused a moment and looked back. The mob
came on slowly. It was busy arming itself with the rifles of the
slain and killing the wounded. We saw the end of the young officer
who had rescued us. He painfully lifted himself on his elbow and
turned loose with his automatic pistol.
"There goes my chance of promotion," Garthwaite laughed, as a woman
bore down on the wounded man, brandishing a butcher's cleaver.
"Come on. It's the wrong direction, but we'll get out somehow."
And we fled eastward through the quiet streets, prepared at every
cross street for anything to happen. To the south a monster
conflagration was filling the sky, and we knew that the great
ghetto was burning. At last I sank down on the sidewalk. I was
exhausted and could go no farther. I was bruised and sore and
aching in every limb; yet I could not escape smiling at Garthwaite,
who was rolling a cigarette and saying:
"I know I'm making a mess of rescuing you, but I can't get head nor
tail of the situation. It's all a mess. Every time we try to
break out, something happens and we're turned back. We're only a
couple of blocks now from where I got you out of that entrance.
Friend and foe are all mixed up. It's chaos. You can't tell who
is in those darned buildings. Try to find out, and you get a bomb
on your head. Try to go peaceably on your way, and you run into a
mob and are killed by machine-guns, or you run into the Mercenaries
and are killed by your own comrades from a roof. And on the top of
it all the mob comes along and kills you, too."
He shook his head dolefully, lighted his cigarette, and sat down
beside me.
"And I'm that hungry," he added, "I could eat cobblestones."
The next moment he was on his feet again and out in the street
prying up a cobblestone. He came back with it and assaulted the
window of a store behind us.
"It's ground floor and no good," he explained as he helped me
through the hole he had made; "but it's the best we can do. You
get a nap and I'll reconnoitre. I'll finish this rescue all right,
but I want time, time, lots of it--and something to eat."
It was a harness store we found ourselves in, and he fixed me up a
couch of horse blankets in the private office well to the rear. To
add to my wretchedness a splitting headache was coming on, and I
was only too glad to close my eyes and try to sleep.
"I'll be back," were his parting words. "I don't hope to get an
auto, but I'll surely bring some grub,* anyway."
* Food.
And that was the last I saw of Garthwaite for three years. Instead
of coming back, he was carried away to a hospital with a bullet
through his lungs and another through the fleshy part of his neck.
