It was on a Friday that the fog came down upon us. The weather was very
fine up to the middle of November that autumn. The fog did not seem to
have anything unusual about it. I have seen many worse fogs than that
appeared to be. As day followed day, however, the atmosphere became
denser and darker, caused, I suppose, by the increasing volume of coal-
smoke poured out upon it. The peculiarity about those seven days was
the intense stillness of the air. We were, although we did not know it,
under an air-proof canopy, and were slowly but surely exhausting the
life-giving oxygen around us, and replacing it by poisonous carbonic
acid gas. Scientific men have since showed that a simple mathematical
calculation might have told us exactly when the last atom of oxygen
would have been consumed; but it is easy to be wise after the event.
The body of the greatest mathematician in England was found in the
Strand. He came that morning from Cambridge. During the fog there was
always a marked increase in the death rate, and on this occasion the
increase was no greater than usual until the sixth day. The newspapers
on the morning of the seventh were full of startling statistics, but at
the time of going to press the full significance of the alarming figures
was not realized. The editorials of the morning papers on the seventh
day contained no warning of the calamity that was so speedily to follow
their appearance. I lived then at Ealing, a Western suburb of London,
and came every morning to Cannon Street by a certain train. I had up to
the sixth day experienced no inconvenience from the fog, and this was
largely due, I am convinced, to the unnoticed operations of the
American machine.

On the fifth and sixth days Sir John did not come to the City, but he
was in his office on the seventh. The door between his room and mine
was closed. Shortly after ten o'clock I heard a cry in his room,