WILLIAM LE QUEUX: 15 Dystopian Novels & Espionage Thrillers (Illustrated Edition). William Le Queux
Regent Street shells were sweeping with frightful effect. The Café Monico and the whole block of buildings surrounding it was burning, and the flames leaping high, presented a magnificent though appalling spectacle. The front of the London Pavilion had been partially blown away, and of the two uniform rows of shops forming the Quadrant many had been wrecked. From Air Street to Oxford Circus, and along Piccadilly to Knightsbridge, there fell a perfect hail of shell and bullets. Devonshire House had been wrecked, and the Burlington Arcade destroyed. The thin pointed spire of St. James's Church had fallen, every window in the Albany was shattered, several houses in Grosvenor Place had suffered considerably, and a shell that struck the southern side of St. George's Hospital had ignited it, and now at 2 A.M., in the midst of this awful scene of destruction and disaster, the helpless sick were being removed into the open streets, where bullets whistled about them and fragments of explosive shells whizzed past.
As the night wore on London trembled and fell. Once Mistress of the World, she was now, alas! sinking under the iron hand of the invader. Upon her there poured a rain of deadly missiles that caused appalling slaughter and desolation. The newly introduced long-range guns, and the terrific power of the explosives with which the French shells were charged, added to the horrors of the bombardment; for although the batteries were so far away as to be out of sight, yet the unfortunate people, overtaken by their doom, were torn limb from limb by the bursting bombs.
Over the roads lay men of London, poor and rich, weltering in their blood, their lower limbs shattered or blown completely away. With wide-open haggard eyes, in their death agony they gazed around at the burning buildings, at the falling débris, and upward at the brilliantly-illumined sky. With their last breath they gasped prayers for those they loved, and sank to the grave, hapless victims of Babylon's downfall.
Every moment the Great City was being devastated, every moment the catastrophe was more complete, more awful. In the poorer quarters of South London whole streets were swept away, and families overwhelmed by their own demolished homes. Along the principal thoroughfares shop fronts were shivered, and the goods displayed in the windows strewn about the roadway.
About half-past three a frightful disaster occurred at Battersea. Very few shells had dropped in that district, when suddenly one fell right in the very centre of a great petroleum store. The effect was frightful. With a noise that was heard for twenty miles around, the whole of the great store of oil exploded, blowing the stores themselves high into the air, and levelling all the buildings in the vicinity. In every direction burning oil was projected over the roofs of neighbouring houses, dozens of which at once caught fire, while down the streets there ran great streams of blazing oil, which spread the conflagration in every direction. Showers of sparks flew upwards, the flames roared and crackled, and soon fires were breaking out in all quarters.
Just as the clocks were striking a quarter to four, a great shell struck the Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament, bringing it down with a terrific crash. This disaster was quickly followed by a series of others. A shell fell through the roof of Westminster Abbey, setting the grand old historic building on fire; another tore away the columns from the front of the Royal Exchange; and a third carried away one of the square twin towers of St. Mary Woolnoth, at the corner of Lombard Street.
Along this latter thoroughfare banks were wrecked, and offices set on fire; while opposite, in the thick walls of the Bank of England, great breaches were being made. The Mansion House escaped any very serious injury, but the dome of the Stock Exchange was carried away; and in Queen Victoria Street, from end to end, enormous damage was caused to the rows of fine business premises; while further east the Monument, broken in half, came down with a noise like thunder, demolishing many houses on Fish Street Hill.
The great drapery warehouses in Wood Street, Bread Street, Friday Street, Foster Lane, and St. Paul's Churchyard suffered more or less. Ryland's, Morley's, and Cook's were all alight and burning fiercely; while others were wrecked and shattered, and their contents blown out into the streets. The quaint spire of St. Bride's had fallen, and its bells lay among the débris in the adjoining courts; both the half-wrecked offices of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Chronicle were being consumed.
The great clock-tower of the Law Courts fell about four o'clock with a terrific crash, completely blocking the Strand at Temple Bar, and demolishing the much-abused Griffin Memorial; while at the same moment two large holes were torn in the roof of the Great Hall, the small black turret above fell, and the whole of the glass in the building was shivered into fragments.
It was amazing how widespread was the ruin caused by each of the explosive missiles. Considering the number of guns employed by the French in this cruel and wanton destruction of property, the desolation they were causing was enormous. This was owing to the rapid extension of their batteries over the high ground from One Tree Hill through Peckham to Greenwich, and more especially to the wide ranges of their guns and the terrific power of their shells. In addition to the ordinary projectiles filled with mélinite, charges of that extremely powerful substance lignine dynamite were hurled into the city, and, exploded by a detonator, swept away whole streets, and laid many great public buildings in ruins; while steel shells, filled with some arrangement of liquid oxygen and blasting gelatine, produced frightful effects, for nothing could withstand them.
One of these, discharged from the battery on Denmark Hill, fell in the quadrangle behind Burlington House, and levelled the Royal Academy and the surrounding buildings. Again a terrific explosion sounded, and as the smoke cleared it was seen that a gelatine shell had fallen among the many turrets of the Natural History Museum, and the front of the building fell out with a deafening crash, completely blocking the Cromwell Road.
London lay at the mercy of the invaders. So swiftly had the enemy cut their way through the defences and opened their hail of destroying missiles, that the excited, starving populace were unaware of what had occurred until dynamite began to rain upon them. Newspapers had ceased to appear; and although telegraphic communication was kept up with the defenders on the Surrey Hills by the War Office, yet no details of the events occurring there had been made public for fear of spies. Londoners had remained in ignorance, and, alas! had awaited their doom. Through the long sultry night the situation was one of indescribable panic and disaster.
The sky had grown a brighter red, and the streets within the range of the enemy's guns, now deserted, were in most cases blocked by burning ruins and fallen telegraph wires; while about the roadways lay the shattered corpses of men, women, and children, upon whom the shells had wrought their frightful work.
The bodies, mutilated, torn limb from limb, were sickening to gaze upon.
CHAPTER XXXVI
BABYLON BURNING
Dynamite had shattered Charing Cross Station and the Hotel, for its smoke-begrimed façade had been torn out, and the station yard was filled with a huge pile of smouldering débris. On either side of the Strand from Villiers Street to Temple Bar scarcely a window had been left intact, and the roadway itself was quite impassable, for dozens of buildings had been overthrown by shells, and what in many cases had been handsome shops were now heaps of bricks, slates, furniture, and twisted girders. The rain of fire continued. Dense black smoke rising in a huge column from St. Martin's Church showed plainly what was the fate of that noble edifice, while fire had now broken out at the Tivoli Music Hall, and the clubs on Adelphi Terrace were also falling a prey to the flames.
The burning of Babylon was a sight of awful, appalling grandeur.
The few people remaining in the vicinity of the Strand who escaped the flying missiles and falling buildings, sought what shelter they could, and stood petrified by terror, knowing that every moment might be their last, not daring to fly into the streets leading to Holborn, where they could see the enemy's shells were still falling with unabated regularity and frightful result, their courses marked by crashing buildings and blazing ruins.
Looking from Charing Cross, the Strand seemed one huge glaring furnace. Flames belched from windows on either side, and, bursting through roofs, great tongues of fire shot