The People Of The Abyss
:
The Iron Heel
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
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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.