Chapter Three
A CITY of the blind! Six millions of people suddenly deprived of sight! The disaster sounds impossible—a nightmare, the wild vapourings of a diseased imagination—and yet why not? Given a favourable atmospheric condition, something colossal in the way of a fire, and there it is. And there, somewhere folded away in the book of Nature, is the simple remedy.
Such thoughts as these flashed through Hackness’s mind as he stood under the portico of the Lyceum Theatre, quite helpless and inert for the moment.
But the darkness was thicker and blacker than anything he had ever imagined. It was absolutely the darkness that could be felt. Hackness could hear the faint scratching of matches all around him, but there was no glimmer of light anywhere. And the atmosphere was thick, stiflin
