effects. My poor master was long beyond human help. There was evidently
no one alive in the building except myself. Out in the street all was
silent and dark. The gas was extinguished, but here and there in shops
the incandescent lights were still weirdly burning, depending, as they
did, on accumulators, and not on direct engine power. I turned
automatically towards Cannon Street Station, knowing my way to it even
if blindfolded, stumbling over bodies prone on the pavement, and in
crossing the street I ran against a motionless 'bus, spectral in the
fog, with dead horses lying in front, and their reins dangling from the
nerveless hand of a dead driver. The ghostlike passengers, equally
silent, sat bolt upright, or hung over the edge boards in attitudes
horribly grotesque.




VII.--THE TRAIN WITH ITS TRAIL OF THE DEAD.


If a man's reasoning faculties were alert at such a time (I confess
mine were dormant), he would have known there could be no trains at
Cannon Street Station, for if there was not enough oxygen in the air to
keep a man alive, or a gas-jet alight, there would certainly not be
enough to enable an engine fire to burn, even if the engineer retained
sufficient energy to attend to his task. At times instinct is better
than reason, and it proved so in this case. The railway from Ealing in
those days came under the City in a deep tunnel. It would appear that
in this underground passage the carbonic acid gas would first find a
resting-place on account of its weight; but such was not the fact. I
imagine that a current through the tunnel brought from the outlying