It seems hardly necessary to enter into an account of the final form which we gave to our plans. It was not Fata Morgana that we built; but I think that at least we laid the foundation-stone upon which our dream-city may yet arise. These far-flung communities which you know today, these groves and pleasure-grounds, these lakes and pleasances, bright streets and velvet lawns, all sprang from our brain: and the children who throng them, happier and more intelligent than their fathers in their day, are also in part our work, taught and trained in the ideals which inspired us. If anything, we were too timid in our planning, for we had no clue to what the future held in store for us. Had we known in time, we might have ventured to launch into the air the high towers of Fata Morgana itself to catch the rising sun. On the material side, we could have done it; but I believe we were wise in our timidity. Dream-cities are not to be trodden by the human foot. The refining of mankind will be a longer process than the building of cities; and only a pure race could live in happiness in that Theleme which we planned.
Looking backward, I think that during all these hours of designing and peering into the future I caught something of her spirit and she something of mine. By imperceptible stages we came together, mind reaching out to mind. Unnoticed by ourselves, our collaboration grew more efficient; our divergences less and less.
I can still recall these long lamp-lit evenings, the rustle of her skirts as she moved about the room, the cadences of her voice, the eagerness and earnestness of her face under its crown of fair hair. Often, as we moulded the future in that quiet room with its shaded lights, we must have seemed like children with an ever-new plaything which changed continually beneath our hands. Meanwhile, over us and between us stood the shadow of Nordenholt, ever grimmer as the days went by, carrying his projects to their ruthless termination like some great machine which pursues its appointed course uninfluenced by human failings or human desires. To me, at that time, he seemed to loom above us like some labouring Titan, aloof, mysterious, inscrutable.
XIV
Winter in the Outer World
My narrative has hitherto been confined to affairs in the British Isles; but to give a complete picture of the time I must now deal, even though very briefly, with the effects of B. diazotans in other parts of the globe. My account will, of necessity, be incomplete: because our knowledge of that period is at best a scanty one.
I have already indicated the part which the great airways played in distribution of B. diazotans over the world; but once it had been planted in the new centres to which the aeroplanes carried it, other factors came into action. From Southwestern Europe, the Northeast Trade Winds bore the bacilli across the Atlantic and spread them upon the seaboard of South America, especially around the mouths of the Amazon. The winds on the coast of North America caught up the germs and drove them eventually to Scandinavia and even further east. New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra and the other islands of the chain were devastated from the Australian centres. Madagascar was contaminated also, though the point of origin in this case is not definitely known. Probably the ocean currents played their part, as they certainly did in the destruction of Polynesian vegetation.
Climate had a considerable influence upon the development of the bacilli, once they were scattered. In the Tropics, they multiplied with even greater rapidity than they had done in the North Temperate Zone. On the Congo and in the Amazonian forests they seem to have undergone a process of reproduction almost inconceivably swift. Those which drifted up into the frigid regions of the North and South, however, appear to have perished almost without a struggle: either on account of the low temperature or the lack of nitrogenous material, they produced very little effect in either of these districts. The sea-plants seem to have been unaffected by them there; and one of the strangest results of this inactivity was the complete change in habits of various fishes, which now sought in the freezing North the feeding and breeding-grounds which suited them best. The herring left the North Sea and the cod quitted the Banks in search of purer water. On the other hand, the great masses of weed in the Sargasso Sea were almost completely destroyed, along with the other accumulations southeast of New Zealand and in the North Pacific.
It must not be assumed, however, that wherever the colonies of B. diazotans alighted, devastation followed as a matter of course. For some reason, which has never been made clear, certain areas proved themselves immune from attack; so that they remained like oases of cultivable land amid the surrounding deserts. The areas thus preserved from sterility were not of any great size; usually they amounted only to a few hundred acres in extent, though in isolated cases larger tracts were found unaffected here and there.
With the recognition of the worldwide influence of B. diazotans, the land became divided into two sections: the food-producing districts and the consuming but nonproductive areas. Nowhere was there sufficient grain to make safety a certainty. In America, most of the available foodstuffs were still in or near their places of origin when the panic began to grow.
In the matter of meat, things were much in the same state. Those countries which produced great supplies of cattle prohibited exports; and the beasts
