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diff --git a/old/780-h.htm.2020-04-21 b/old/780-h.htm.2020-04-21 deleted file mode 100644 index 5e1ebdc..0000000 --- a/old/780-h.htm.2020-04-21 +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12538 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> - -<!DOCTYPE html - PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <title> - The War in the Air, by H. G. Wells - </title> - <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> - - body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} - P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } - H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } - hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} - .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } - blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} - .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} - .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} - .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} - div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } - div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } - .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} - .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} - .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; - margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; - text-align: right;} - pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} - -</style> - </head> - <body> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The War in the Air, by Herbert George Wells - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The War in the Air - -Author: Herbert George Wells - -Release Date: August 10, 2008 [EBook #780] -Last Updated: March 2, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR IN THE AIR *** - - - - -Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, Janet Blenkinship, and David Widger - - - - - -</pre> - - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <h1> - THE WAR IN THE AIR - </h1> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <h2> - By H. G. Wells - </h2> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <h2> - Contents - </h2> - <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> - <tr> - <td> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE TO REPRINT EDITION </a> - </p> - <br /> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <big><b>THE WAR IN THE AIR</b></big> </a> - </p> - <br /> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS - FAMILY </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. HOW BERT SMALLWAYS GOT INTO - DIFFICULTIES </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. THE BALLOON </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. A WORLD AT WAR </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. ON GOAT ISLAND </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT COLLAPSE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THE EPILOGUE </a> - </p> - </td> - </tr> - </table> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <h2> - PREFACE TO REPRINT EDITION - </h2> - <p> - The reader should grasp clearly the date at which this book was written. - It was done in 1907: it appeared in various magazines as a serial in 1908 - and it was published in the Fall of that year. At that time the aeroplane - was, for most people, merely a rumour and the “Sausage” held the air. The - contemporary reader has all the advantage of ten years' experience since - this story was imagined. He can correct his author at a dozen points and - estimate the value of these warnings by the standard of a decade of - realities. The book is weak on anti-aircraft guns, for example, and still - more negligent of submarines. Much, no doubt, will strike the reader as - quaint and limited but upon much the writer may not unreasonably plume - himself. The interpretation of the German spirit must have read as a - caricature in 1908. Was it a caricature? Prince Karl seemed a fantasy - then. Reality has since copied Prince Carl with an astonishing - faithfulness. Is it too much to hope that some democratic “Bert” may not - ultimately get even with his Highness? Our author tells us in this book, - as he has told us in others, more especially in The World Set Free, and as - he has been telling us this year in his War and the Future, that if - mankind goes on with war, the smash-up of civilization is inevitable. It - is chaos or the United States of the World for mankind. There is no other - choice. Ten years have but added an enormous conviction to the message of - this book. It remains essentially right, a pamphlet story—in support - of the League to Enforce Peace. K. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - THE WAR IN THE AIR - </h2> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER I. OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY - </h2> - <p> - 1 - </p> - <p> - “This here Progress,” said Mr. Tom Smallways, “it keeps on.” - </p> - <p> - “You'd hardly think it could keep on,” said Mr. Tom Smallways. - </p> - <p> - It was along before the War in the Air began that Mr. Smallways made this - remark. He was sitting on the fence at the end of his garden and surveying - the great Bun Hill gas-works with an eye that neither praised nor blamed. - Above the clustering gasometers three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, - wallowing bladders that flapped and rolled about, and grew bigger and - bigger and rounder and rounder—balloons in course of inflation for - the South of England Aero Club's Saturday-afternoon ascent. - </p> - <p> - “They goes up every Saturday,” said his neighbour, Mr. Stringer, the - milkman. “It's only yestiday, so to speak, when all London turned out to - see a balloon go over, and now every little place in the country has its - weekly-outings—uppings, rather. It's been the salvation of them gas - companies.” - </p> - <p> - “Larst Satiday I got three barrer-loads of gravel off my petaters,” said - Mr. Tom Smallways. “Three barrer-loads! What they dropped as ballase. Some - of the plants was broke, and some was buried.” - </p> - <p> - “Ladies, they say, goes up!” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose we got to call 'em ladies,” said Mr. Tom Smallways. - </p> - <p> - “Still, it ain't hardly my idea of a lady—flying about in the air, - and throwing gravel at people. It ain't what I been accustomed to consider - ladylike, whether or no.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Stringer nodded his head approvingly, and for a time they continued to - regard the swelling bulks with expressions that had changed from - indifference to disapproval. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Tom Smallways was a green-grocer by trade and a gardener by - disposition; his little wife Jessica saw to the shop, and Heaven had - planned him for a peaceful world. Unfortunately Heaven had not planned a - peaceful world for him. He lived in a world of obstinate and incessant - change, and in parts where its operations were unsparingly conspicuous. - Vicissitude was in the very soil he tilled; even his garden was upon a - yearly tenancy, and overshadowed by a huge board that proclaimed it not so - much a garden as an eligible building site. He was horticulture under - notice to quit, the last patch of country in a district flooded by new and - (other) things. He did his best to console himself, to imagine matters - near the turn of the tide. - </p> - <p> - “You'd hardly think it could keep on,” he said. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Smallways' aged father, could remember Bun Hill as an idyllic Kentish - village. He had driven Sir Peter Bone until he was fifty and then he took - to drink a little, and driving the station bus, which lasted him until he - was seventy-eight. Then he retired. He sat by the fireside, a shrivelled, - very, very old coachman, full charged with reminiscences, and ready for - any careless stranger. He could tell you of the vanished estate of Sir - Peter Bone, long since cut up for building, and how that magnate ruled the - country-side when it was country-side, of shooting and hunting, and of - caches along the high road, of how “where the gas-works is” was a - cricket-field, and of the coming of the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace - was six miles away from Bun Hill, a great facade that glittered in the - morning, and was a clear blue outline against the sky in the afternoon, - and of a night, a source of gratuitous fireworks for all the population of - Bun Hill. And then had come the railway, and then villas and villas, and - then the gas-works and the water-works, and a great, ugly sea of workmen's - houses, and then drainage, and the water vanished out of the Otterbourne - and left it a dreadful ditch, and then a second railway station, Bun Hill - South, and more houses and more, more shops, more competition, plate-glass - shops, a school-board, rates, omnibuses, tramcars—going right away - into London itself—bicycles, motor-cars and then more motor-cars, a - Carnegie library. - </p> - <p> - “You'd hardly think it could keep on,” said Mr. Tom Smallways, growing up - among these marvels. - </p> - <p> - But it kept on. Even from the first the green-grocer's shop which he had - set up in one of the smallest of the old surviving village houses in the - tail of the High Street had a submerged air, an air of hiding from - something that was looking for it. When they had made up the pavement of - the High Street, they levelled that up so that one had to go down three - steps into the shop. Tom did his best to sell only his own excellent but - limited range of produce; but Progress came shoving things into his - window, French artichokes and aubergines, foreign apples—apples from - the State of New York, apples from California, apples from Canada, apples - from New Zealand, “pretty lookin' fruit, but not what I should call - English apples,” said Tom—bananas, unfamiliar nuts, grape fruits, - mangoes. - </p> - <p> - The motor-cars that went by northward and southward grew more and more - powerful and efficient, whizzed faster and smelt worse, there appeared - great clangorous petrol trolleys delivering coal and parcels in the place - of vanishing horse-vans, motor-omnibuses ousted the horse-omnibuses, even - the Kentish strawberries going Londonward in the night took to machinery - and clattered instead of creaking, and became affected in flavour by - progress and petrol. - </p> - <p> - And then young Bert Smallways got a motor bicycle.... - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - Bert, it is necessary to explain, was a progressive Smallways. - </p> - <p> - Nothing speaks more eloquently of the pitiless insistence of progress and - expansion in our time than that it should get into the Smallways blood. - But there was something advanced and enterprising about young Smallways - before he was out of short frocks. He was lost for a whole day before he - was five, and nearly drowned in the reservoir of the new water-works - before he was seven. He had a real pistol taken away from him by a real - policeman when he was ten. And he learnt to smoke, not with pipes and - brown paper and cane as Tom had done, but with a penny packet of Boys of - England American cigarettes. His language shocked his father before he was - twelve, and by that age, what with touting for parcels at the station and - selling the Bun Hill Weekly Express, he was making three shillings a week, - or more, and spending it on Chips, Comic Cuts, Ally Sloper's Half-holiday, - cigarettes, and all the concomitants of a life of pleasure and - enlightenment. All of this without hindrance to his literary studies, - which carried him up to the seventh standard at an exceptionally early - age. I mention these things so that you may have no doubt at all - concerning the sort of stuff Bert had in him. - </p> - <p> - He was six years younger than Tom, and for a time there was an attempt to - utilise him in the green-grocer's shop when Tom at twenty-one married - Jessica—who was thirty, and had saved a little money in service. But - it was not Bert's forte to be utilised. He hated digging, and when he was - given a basket of stuff to deliver, a nomadic instinct arose irresistibly, - it became his pack and he did not seem to care how heavy it was nor where - he took it, so long as he did not take it to its destination. Glamour - filled the world, and he strayed after it, basket and all. So Tom took his - goods out himself, and sought employers for Bert who did not know of this - strain of poetry in his nature. And Bert touched the fringe of a number of - trades in succession—draper's porter, chemist's boy, doctor's page, - junior assistant gas-fitter, envelope addresser, milk-cart assistant, golf - caddie, and at last helper in a bicycle shop. Here, apparently, he found - the progressive quality his nature had craved. His employer was a - pirate-souled young man named Grubb, with a black-smeared face by day, and - a music-hall side in the evening, who dreamt of a patent lever chain; and - it seemed to Bert that he was the perfect model of a gentleman of spirit. - He hired out quite the dirtiest and unsafest bicycles in the whole south - of England, and conducted the subsequent discussions with astonishing - verve. Bert and he settled down very well together. Bert lived in, became - almost a trick rider—he could ride bicycles for miles that would - have come to pieces instantly under you or me—took to washing his - face after business, and spent his surplus money upon remarkable ties and - collars, cigarettes, and shorthand classes at the Bun Hill Institute. - </p> - <p> - He would go round to Tom at times, and look and talk so brilliantly that - Tom and Jessie, who both had a natural tendency to be respectful to - anybody or anything, looked up to him immensely. - </p> - <p> - “He's a go-ahead chap, is Bert,” said Tom. “He knows a thing or two.” - </p> - <p> - “Let's hope he don't know too much,” said Jessica, who had a fine sense of - limitations. - </p> - <p> - “It's go-ahead Times,” said Tom. “Noo petaters, and English at that; we'll - be having 'em in March if things go on as they do go. I never see such - Times. See his tie last night?” - </p> - <p> - “It wasn't suited to him, Tom. It was a gentleman's tie. He wasn't up to - it—not the rest of him, It wasn't becoming”... - </p> - <p> - Then presently Bert got a cyclist's suit, cap, badge, and all; and to see - him and Grubb going down to Brighton (and back)—heads down, - handle-bars down, backbones curved—was a revelation in the - possibilities of the Smallways blood. - </p> - <p> - Go-ahead Times! - </p> - <p> - Old Smallways would sit over the fire mumbling of the greatness of other - days, of old Sir Peter, who drove his coach to Brighton and back in - eight-and-twenty hours, of old Sir Peter's white top-hats, of Lady Bone, - who never set foot to ground except to walk in the garden, of the great, - prize-fights at Crawley. He talked of pink and pig-skin breeches, of foxes - at Ring's Bottom, where now the County Council pauper lunatics were - enclosed, of Lady Bone's chintzes and crinolines. Nobody heeded him. The - world had thrown up a new type of gentleman altogether—a gentleman - of most ungentlemanly energy, a gentleman in dusty oilskins and motor - goggles and a wonderful cap, a stink-making gentleman, a swift, high-class - badger, who fled perpetually along high roads from the dust and stink he - perpetually made. And his lady, as they were able to see her at Bun Hill, - was a weather-bitten goddess, as free from refinement as a gipsy—not - so much dressed as packed for transit at a high velocity. - </p> - <p> - So Bert grew up, filled with ideals of speed and enterprise, and became, - so far as he became anything, a kind of bicycle engineer of the - let's-have-a-look-at-it and enamel chipping variety. Even a road-racer, - geared to a hundred and twenty, failed to satisfy him, and for a time he - pined in vain at twenty miles an hour along roads that were continually - more dusty and more crowded with mechanical traffic. But at last his - savings accumulated, and his chance came. The hire-purchase system bridged - a financial gap, and one bright and memorable Sunday morning he wheeled - his new possession through the shop into the road, got on to it with the - advice and assistance of Grubb, and teuf-teuffed off into the haze of the - traffic-tortured high road, to add himself as one more voluntary public - danger to the amenities of the south of England. - </p> - <p> - “Orf to Brighton!” said old Smallways, regarding his youngest son from the - sitting-room window over the green-grocer's shop with something between - pride and reprobation. “When I was 'is age, I'd never been to London, - never bin south of Crawley—never bin anywhere on my own where I - couldn't walk. And nobody didn't go. Not unless they was gentry. Now every - body's orf everywhere; the whole dratted country sims flying to pieces. - Wonder they all get back. Orf to Brighton indeed! Anybody want to buy - 'orses?” - </p> - <p> - “You can't say <i>I</i> bin to Brighton, father,” said Tom. - </p> - <p> - “Nor don't want to go,” said Jessica sharply; “creering about and spendin' - your money.” - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - For a time the possibilities of the motor-bicycle so occupied Bert's mind - that he remained regardless of the new direction in which the striving - soul of man was finding exercise and refreshment. He failed to observe - that the type of motor-car, like the type of bicycle, was settling-down - and losing its adventurous quality. Indeed, it is as true as it is - remarkable that Tom was the first to observe the new development. But his - gardening made him attentive to the heavens, and the proximity of the Bun - Hill gas-works and the Crystal Palace, from which ascents were continually - being made, and presently the descent of ballast upon his potatoes, - conspired to bear in upon his unwilling mind the fact that the Goddess of - Change was turning her disturbing attention to the sky. The first great - boom in aeronautics was beginning. - </p> - <p> - Grubb and Bert heard of it in a music-hall, then it was driven home to - their minds by the cinematograph, then Bert's imagination was stimulated - by a sixpenny edition of that aeronautic classic, Mr. George Griffith's - “Clipper of the Clouds,” and so the thing really got hold of them. - </p> - <p> - At first the most obvious aspect was the multiplication of balloons. The - sky of Bun Hill began to be infested by balloons. On Wednesday and - Saturday afternoons particularly you could scarcely look skyward for a - quarter of an hour without discovering a balloon somewhere. And then one - bright day Bert, motoring toward Croydon, was arrested by the insurgence - of a huge, bolster-shaped monster from the Crystal Palace grounds, and - obliged to dismount and watch it. It was like a bolster with a broken - nose, and below it, and comparatively small, was a stiff framework bearing - a man and an engine with a screw that whizzed round in front and a sort of - canvas rudder behind. The framework had an air of dragging the reluctant - gas-cylinder after it like a brisk little terrier towing a shy - gas-distended elephant into society. The combined monster certainly - travelled and steered. It went overhead perhaps a thousand feet up (Bert - heard the engine), sailed away southward, vanished over the hills, - reappeared a little blue outline far off in the east, going now very fast - before a gentle south-west gale, returned above the Crystal Palace towers, - circled round them, chose a position for descent, and sank down out of - sight. - </p> - <p> - Bert sighed deeply, and turned to his motor-bicycle again. - </p> - <p> - And that was only the beginning of a succession of strange phenomena in - the heavens—cylinders, cones, pear-shaped monsters, even at last a - thing of aluminium that glittered wonderfully, and that Grubb, through - some confusion of ideas about armour plates, was inclined to consider a - war machine. - </p> - <p> - There followed actual flight. - </p> - <p> - This, however, was not an affair that was visible from Bun Hill; it was - something that occurred in private grounds or other enclosed places and, - under favourable conditions, and it was brought home to Grubb and Bert - Smallways only by means of the magazine page of the half-penny newspapers - or by cinematograph records. But it was brought home very insistently, and - in those days if, ever one heard a man saying in a public place in a loud, - reassuring, confident tone, “It's bound to come,” the chances were ten to - one he was talking of flying. And Bert got a box lid and wrote out in - correct window-ticket style, and Grubb put in the window this inscription, - “Aeroplanes made and repaired.” It quite upset Tom—it seemed taking - one's shop so lightly; but most of the neighbours, and all the sporting - ones, approved of it as being very good indeed. - </p> - <p> - Everybody talked of flying, everybody repeated over and over again, “Bound - to come,” and then you know it didn't come. There was a hitch. They flew—that - was all right; they flew in machines heavier than air. But they smashed. - Sometimes they smashed the engine, sometimes they smashed the aeronaut, - usually they smashed both. Machines that made flights of three or four - miles and came down safely, went up the next time to headlong disaster. - There seemed no possible trusting to them. The breeze upset them, the - eddies near the ground upset them, a passing thought in the mind of the - aeronaut upset them. Also they upset—simply. - </p> - <p> - “It's this 'stability' does 'em,” said Grubb, repeating his newspaper. - “They pitch and they pitch, till they pitch themselves to pieces.” - </p> - <p> - Experiments fell away after two expectant years of this sort of success, - the public and then the newspapers tired of the expensive photographic - reproductions, the optimistic reports, the perpetual sequence of triumph - and disaster and silence. Flying slumped, even ballooning fell away to - some extent, though it remained a fairly popular sport, and continued to - lift gravel from the wharf of the Bun Hill gas-works and drop it upon - deserving people's lawns and gardens. There were half a dozen reassuring - years for Tom—at least so far as flying was concerned. But that was - the great time of mono-rail development, and his anxiety was only diverted - from the high heavens by the most urgent threats and symptoms of change in - the lower sky. - </p> - <p> - There had been talk of mono-rails for several years. But the real mischief - began when Brennan sprang his gyroscopic mono-rail car upon the Royal - Society. It was the leading sensation of the 1907 soirees; that celebrated - demonstration-room was all too small for its exhibition. Brave soldiers, - leading Zionists, deserving novelists, noble ladies, congested the narrow - passage and thrust distinguished elbows into ribs the world would not - willingly let break, deeming themselves fortunate if they could see “just - a little bit of the rail.” Inaudible, but convincing, the great inventor - expounded his discovery, and sent his obedient little model of the trains - of the future up gradients, round curves, and across a sagging wire. It - ran along its single rail, on its single wheels, simple and sufficient; it - stopped, reversed stood still, balancing perfectly. It maintained its - astounding equilibrium amidst a thunder of applause. The audience - dispersed at last, discussing how far they would enjoy crossing an abyss - on a wire cable. “Suppose the gyroscope stopped!” Few of them anticipated - a tithe of what the Brennan mono-rail would do for their railway - securities and the face of the world. - </p> - <p> - In a few, years they realised better. In a little while no one thought - anything of crossing an abyss on a wire, and the mono-rail was superseding - the tram-lines, railways: and indeed every form of track for mechanical - locomotion. Where land was cheap the rail ran along the ground, where it - was dear the rail lifted up on iron standards and passed overhead; its - swift, convenient cars went everywhere and did everything that had once - been done along made tracks upon the ground. - </p> - <p> - When old Smallways died, Tom could think of nothing more striking to say - of him than that, “When he was a boy, there wasn't nothing higher than - your chimbleys—there wasn't a wire nor a cable in the sky!” - </p> - <p> - Old Smallways went to his grave under an intricate network of wires and - cables, for Bun Hill became not only a sort of minor centre of power - distribution—the Home Counties Power Distribution Company set up - transformers and a generating station close beside the old gas-works—but, - also a junction on the suburban mono-rail system. Moreover, every - tradesman in the place, and indeed nearly every house, had its own - telephone. - </p> - <p> - The mono-rail cable standard became a striking fact in urban landscape, - for the most part stout iron erections rather like tapering trestles, and - painted a bright bluish green. One, it happened, bestrode Tom's house, - which looked still more retiring and apologetic beneath its immensity; and - another giant stood just inside the corner of his garden, which was still - not built upon and unchanged, except for a couple of advertisement boards, - one recommending a two-and-sixpenny watch, and one a nerve restorer. - These, by the bye, were placed almost horizontally to catch the eye of the - passing mono-rail passengers above, and so served admirably to roof over a - tool-shed and a mushroom-shed for Tom. All day and all night the fast cars - from Brighton and Hastings went murmuring by overhead long, broad, - comfortable-looking cars, that were brightly lit after dusk. As they flew - by at night, transient flares of light and a rumbling sound of passage, - they kept up a perpetual summer lightning and thunderstorm in the street - below. - </p> - <p> - Presently the English Channel was bridged—a series of great iron - Eiffel Tower pillars carrying mono-rail cables at a height of a hundred - and fifty feet above the water, except near the middle, where they rose - higher to allow the passage of the London and Antwerp shipping and the - Hamburg-America liners. - </p> - <p> - Then heavy motor-cars began to run about on only a couple of wheels, one - behind the other, which for some reason upset Tom dreadfully, and made him - gloomy for days after the first one passed the shop... - </p> - <p> - All this gyroscopic and mono-rail development naturally absorbed a vast - amount of public attention, and there was also a huge excitement - consequent upon the amazing gold discoveries off the coast of Anglesea - made by a submarine prospector, Miss Patricia Giddy. She had taken her - degree in geology and mineralogy in the University of London, and while - working upon the auriferous rocks of North Wales, after a brief holiday - spent in agitating for women's suffrage, she had been struck by the - possibility of these reefs cropping up again under the water. She had set - herself to verify this supposition by the use of the submarine crawler - invented by Doctor Alberto Cassini. By a happy mingling of reasoning and - intuition peculiar to her sex she found gold at her first descent, and - emerged after three hours' submersion with about two hundredweight of ore - containing gold in the unparalleled quantity of seventeen ounces to the - ton. But the whole story of her submarine mining, intensely interesting as - it is, must be told at some other time; suffice it now to remark simply - that it was during the consequent great rise of prices, confidence, and - enterprise that the revival of interest in flying occurred. - </p> - <p> - It is curious how that revival began. It was like the coming of a breeze - on a quiet day; nothing started it, it came. People began to talk of - flying with an air of never having for one moment dropped the subject. - Pictures of flying and flying machines returned to the newspapers; - articles and allusions increased and multiplied in the serious magazines. - People asked in mono-rail trains, “When are we going to fly?” A new crop - of inventors sprang up in a night or so like fungi. The Aero Club - announced the project of a great Flying Exhibition in a large area of - ground that the removal of slums in Whitechapel had rendered available. - </p> - <p> - The advancing wave soon produced a sympathetic ripple in the Bun Hill - establishment. Grubb routed out his flying-machine model again, tried it - in the yard behind the shop, got a kind of flight out of it, and broke - seventeen panes of glass and nine flower-pots in the greenhouse that - occupied the next yard but one. - </p> - <p> - And then, springing from nowhere, sustained one knew not how, came a - persistent, disturbing rumour that the problem had been solved, that the - secret was known. Bert met it one early-closing afternoon as he refreshed - himself in an inn near Nutfield, whither his motor-bicycle had brought - him. There smoked and meditated a person in khaki, an engineer, who - presently took an interest in Bert's machine. It was a sturdy piece of - apparatus, and it had acquired a kind of documentary value in these - quick-changing times; it was now nearly eight years old. Its points - discussed, the soldier broke into a new topic with, “My next's going to be - an aeroplane, so far as I can see. I've had enough of roads and ways.” - </p> - <p> - “They TORK,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “They talk—and they do,” said the soldier. - </p> - <p> - “The thing's coming—” - </p> - <p> - “It keeps ON coming,” said Bert; “I shall believe when I see it.” - </p> - <p> - “That won't be long,” said the soldier. - </p> - <p> - The conversation seemed degenerating into an amiable wrangle of - contradiction. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you they ARE flying,” the soldier insisted. “I see it myself.” - </p> - <p> - “We've all seen it,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “I don't mean flap up and smash up; I mean real, safe, steady, controlled - flying, against the wind, good and right.” - </p> - <p> - “You ain't seen that!” - </p> - <p> - “I 'AVE! Aldershot. They try to keep it a secret. They got it right - enough. You bet—our War Office isn't going to be caught napping this - time.” - </p> - <p> - Bert's incredulity was shaken. He asked questions—and the soldier - expanded. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you they got nearly a square mile fenced in—a sort of - valley. Fences of barbed wire ten feet high, and inside that they do - things. Chaps about the camp—now and then we get a peep. It isn't - only us neither. There's the Japanese; you bet they got it too—and - the Germans!” - </p> - <p> - The soldier stood with his legs very wide apart, and filled his pipe - thoughtfully. Bert sat on the low wall against which his motor-bicycle was - leaning. - </p> - <p> - “Funny thing fighting'll be,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Flying's going to break out,” said the soldier. “When it DOES come, when - the curtain does go up, I tell you you'll find every one on the stage—busy.... - Such fighting, too!... I suppose you don't read the papers about this sort - of thing?” - </p> - <p> - “I read 'em a bit,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Well, have you noticed what one might call the remarkable case of the - disappearing inventor—the inventor who turns up in a blaze of - publicity, fires off a few successful experiments, and vanishes?” - </p> - <p> - “Can't say I 'ave,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Well, I 'ave, anyhow. You get anybody come along who does anything - striking in this line, and, you bet, he vanishes. Just goes off quietly - out of sight. After a bit, you don't hear anything more of 'em at all. - See? They disappear. Gone—no address. First—oh! it's an old - story now—there was those Wright Brothers out in America. They - glided—they glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage. - Why, it must be nineteen hundred and four, or five, THEY vanished! Then - there was those people in Ireland—no, I forget their names. - Everybody said they could fly. THEY went. They ain't dead that I've heard - tell; but you can't say they're alive. Not a feather of 'em can you see. - Then that chap who flew round Paris and upset in the Seine. De Booley, was - it? I forget. That was a grand fly, in spite of the accident; but where's - he got to? The accident didn't hurt him. Eh? <i>'E</i>'s gone to cover.” - </p> - <p> - The soldier prepared to light his pipe. - </p> - <p> - “Looks like a secret society got hold of them,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Secret society! NAW!” - </p> - <p> - The soldier lit his match, and drew. “Secret society,” he repeated, with - his pipe between his teeth and the match flaring, in response to his - words. “War Departments; that's more like it.” He threw his match aside, - and walked to his machine. “I tell you, sir,” he said, “there isn't a big - Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't got at least - one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not - one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and - manoeuvring to find out what the others have got. I tell you, sir, a - foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an unaccredited native, can't get - within four miles of Lydd nowadays—not to mention our little circus - at Aldershot, and the experimental camp in Galway. No!” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said Bert, “I'd like to see one of them, anyhow. Jest to help - believing. I'll believe when I see, that I'll promise you.” - </p> - <p> - “You'll see 'em, fast enough,” said the soldier, and led his machine out - into the road. - </p> - <p> - He left Bert on his wall, grave and pensive, with his cap on the back of - his head, and a cigarette smouldering in the corner of his mouth. - </p> - <p> - “If what he says is true,” said Bert, “me and Grubb, we been wasting our - blessed old time. Besides incurring expense with that green-'ouse.” - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - It was while this mysterious talk with the soldier still stirred in Bert - Smallways' imagination that the most astounding incident in the whole of - that dramatic chapter of human history, the coming of flying, occurred. - People talk glibly enough of epoch-making events; this was an epoch-making - event. It was the unanticipated and entirely successful flight of Mr. - Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow and back in a small - businesslike-looking machine heavier than air—an entirely manageable - and controllable machine that could fly as well as a pigeon. - </p> - <p> - It wasn't, one felt, a fresh step forward in the matter so much as a giant - stride, a leap. Mr. Butteridge remained in the air altogether for about - nine hours, and during that time he flew with the ease and assurance of a - bird. His machine was, however neither bird-like nor butterfly-like, nor - had it the wide, lateral expansion of the ordinary aeroplane. The effect - upon the observer was rather something in the nature of a bee or wasp. - Parts of the apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy - effect of transparent wings; but parts, including two peculiarly curved - “wing-cases”—if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles—remained - expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like the body of a - moth, and on this Mr. Butteridge could be seen sitting astride, much as a - man bestrides a horse. The wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact - that the apparatus flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound made by - a wasp at a windowpane. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Butteridge took the world by surprise. He was one of those gentlemen - from nowhere Fate still succeeds in producing for the stimulation of - mankind. He came, it was variously said, from Australia and America and - the South of France. He was also described quite incorrectly as the son of - a man who had amassed a comfortable fortune in the manufacture of gold - nibs and the Butteridge fountain pens. But this was an entirely different - strain of Butteridges. For some years, in spite of a loud voice, a large - presence, an aggressive swagger, and an implacable manner, he had been an - undistinguished member of most of the existing aeronautical associations. - Then one day he wrote to all the London papers to announce that he had - made arrangements for an ascent from the Crystal Palace of a machine that - would demonstrate satisfactorily that the outstanding difficulties in the - way of flying were finally solved. Few of the papers printed his letter, - still fewer were the people who believed in his claim. No one was excited - even when a fracas on the steps of a leading hotel in Piccadilly, in which - he tried to horse-whip a prominent German musician upon some personal - account, delayed his promised ascent. The quarrel was inadequately - reported, and his name spelt variously Betteridge and Betridge. Until his - flight indeed, he did not and could not contrive to exist in the public - mind. There were scarcely thirty people on the look-out for him, in spite - of all his clamour, when about six o'clock one summer morning the doors of - the big shed in which he had been putting together his apparatus opened—it - was near the big model of a megatherium in the Crystal Palace grounds—and - his giant insect came droning out into a negligent and incredulous world. - </p> - <p> - But before he had made his second circuit of the Crystal Palace towers, - Fame was lifting her trumpet, she drew a deep breath as the startled - tramps who sleep on the seats of Trafalgar Square were roused by his buzz - and awoke to discover him circling the Nelson column, and by the time he - had got to Birmingham, which place he crossed about half-past ten, her - deafening blast was echoing throughout the country. The despaired-of thing - was done. - </p> - <p> - A man was flying securely and well. - </p> - <p> - Scotland was agape for his coming. Glasgow he reached by one o'clock, and - it is related that scarcely a ship-yard or factory in that busy hive of - industry resumed work before half-past two. The public mind was just - sufficiently educated in the impossibility of flying to appreciate Mr. - Butteridge at his proper value. He circled the University buildings, and - dropped to within shouting distance of the crowds in West End Park and on - the slope of Gilmorehill. The thing flew quite steadily at a pace of about - three miles an hour, in a wide circle, making a deep hum that, would have - drowned his full, rich voice completely had he not provided himself with a - megaphone. He avoided churches, buildings, and mono-rail cables with - consummate ease as he conversed. - </p> - <p> - “Me name's Butteridge,” he shouted; “B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E.—Got it? Me - mother was Scotch.” - </p> - <p> - And having assured himself that he had been understood, he rose amidst - cheers and shouting and patriotic cries, and then flew up very swiftly and - easily into the south-eastern sky, rising and falling with long, easy - undulations in an extraordinarily wasp-like manner. - </p> - <p> - His return to London—he visited and hovered over Manchester and - Liverpool and Oxford on his way, and spelt his name out to each place—was - an occasion of unparalleled excitement. Every one was staring heavenward. - More people were run over in the streets upon that one day, than in the - previous three months, and a County Council steamboat, the Isaac Walton, - collided with a pier of Westminster Bridge, and narrowly escaped disaster - by running ashore—it was low water—on the mud on the south - side. He returned to the Crystal Palace grounds, that classic - starting-point of aeronautical adventure, about sunset, re-entered his - shed without disaster, and had the doors locked immediately upon the - photographers and journalists who been waiting his return. - </p> - <p> - “Look here, you chaps,” he said, as his assistant did so, “I'm tired to - death, and saddle sore. I can't give you a word of talk. I'm too—done. - My name's Butteridge. B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E. Get that right. I'm an Imperial - Englishman. I'll talk to you all to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - Foggy snapshots still survive to record that incident. His assistant - struggles in a sea of aggressive young men carrying note-books or - upholding cameras and wearing bowler hats and enterprising ties. He - himself towers up in the doorway, a big figure with a mouth—an - eloquent cavity beneath a vast black moustache—distorted by his - shout to these relentless agents of publicity. He towers there, the most - famous man in the country. - </p> - <p> - Almost symbolically he holds and gesticulates with a megaphone in his left - hand. - </p> - <p> - 6 - </p> - <p> - Tom and Bert Smallways both saw that return. They watched from the crest - of Bun Hill, from which they had so often surveyed the pyrotechnics of the - Crystal Palace. Bert was excited, Tom kept calm and lumpish, but neither - of them realised how their own lives were to be invaded by the fruits of - that beginning. “P'raps old Grubb'll mind the shop a bit now,” he said, - “and put his blessed model in the fire. Not that that can save us, if we - don't tide over with Steinhart's account.” - </p> - <p> - Bert knew enough of things and the problem of aeronautics to realise that - this gigantic imitation of a bee would, to use his own idiom, “give the - newspapers fits.” The next day it was clear the fits had been given even - as he said: their magazine pages were black with hasty photographs, their - prose was convulsive, they foamed at the headline. The next day they were - worse. Before the week was out they were not so much published as carried - screaming into the street. - </p> - <p> - The dominant fact in the uproar was the exceptional personality of Mr. - Butteridge, and the extraordinary terms he demanded for the secret of his - machine. - </p> - <p> - For it was a secret and he kept it secret in the most elaborate fashion. - He built his apparatus himself in the safe privacy of the great Crystal - Palace sheds, with the assistance of inattentive workmen, and the day next - following his flight he took it to pieces single handed, packed certain - portions, and then secured unintelligent assistance in packing and - dispersing the rest. Sealed packing-cases went north and east and west to - various pantechnicons, and the engines were boxed with peculiar care. It - became evident these precautions were not inadvisable in view of the - violent demand for any sort of photograph or impressions of his machine. - But Mr. Butteridge, having once made his demonstration, intended to keep - his secret safe from any further risk of leakage. He faced the British - public now with the question whether they wanted his secret or not; he - was, he said perpetually, an “Imperial Englishman,” and his first wish and - his last was to see his invention the privilege and monopoly of the - Empire. Only— - </p> - <p> - It was there the difficulty began. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Butteridge, it became evident, was a man singularly free from any - false modesty—indeed, from any modesty of any kind—singularly - willing to see interviewers, answer questions upon any topic except - aeronautics, volunteer opinions, criticisms, and autobiography, supply - portraits and photographs of himself, and generally spread his personality - across the terrestrial sky. The published portraits insisted primarily - upon an immense black moustache, and secondarily upon a fierceness behind - the moustache. The general impression upon the public was that Butteridge, - was a small man. No one big, it was felt, could have so virulently - aggressive an expression, though, as a matter of fact, Butteridge had a - height of six feet two inches, and a weight altogether proportionate to - that. Moreover, he had a love affair of large and unusual dimensions and - irregular circumstances and the still largely decorous British public - learnt with reluctance and alarm that a sympathetic treatment of this - affair was inseparable from the exclusive acquisition of the priceless - secret of aerial stability by the British Empire. The exact particulars of - the similarity never came to light, but apparently the lady had, in a fit - of high-minded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremony of marriage - with, one quotes the unpublished discourse of Mr. Butteridge—“a - white-livered skunk,” and this zoological aberration did in some legal and - vexatious manner mar her social happiness. He wanted to talk about the - business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its - complications. It was really most embarrassing to a press that has always - possessed a considerable turn for reticence, that wanted things personal - indeed in the modern fashion. Yet not too personal. It was embarrassing, I - say, to be inexorably confronted with Mr. Butteridge's great heart, to see - it laid open in relentlesss self-vivisection, and its pulsating - dissepiments adorned with emphatic flag labels. - </p> - <p> - Confronted they were, and there was no getting away from it. He would make - this appalling viscus beat and throb before the shrinking journalists—no - uncle with a big watch and a little baby ever harped upon it so - relentlessly; whatever evasion they attempted he set aside. He “gloried in - his love,” he said, and compelled them to write it down. - </p> - <p> - “That's of course a private affair, Mr. Butteridge,” they would object. - </p> - <p> - “The injustice, sorr, is public. I do not care either I am up against - institutions or individuals. I do not care if I am up against the - universal All. I am pleading the cause of a woman, a woman I lurve, sorr—a - noble woman—misunderstood. I intend to vindicate her, sorr, to the - four winds of heaven!” - </p> - <p> - “I lurve England,” he used to say—“lurve England, but Puritanism, - sorr, I abhor. It fills me with loathing. It raises my gorge. Take my own - case.” - </p> - <p> - He insisted relentlessly upon his heart, and upon seeing proofs of the - interview. If they had not done justice to his erotic bellowings and - gesticulations, he stuck in, in a large inky scrawl, all and more than - they had omitted. - </p> - <p> - It was a strangely embarrassing thing for British journalism. Never was - there a more obvious or uninteresting affair; never had the world heard - the story of erratic affection with less appetite or sympathy. On the - other hand it was extremely curious about Mr. Butteridge's invention. But - when Mr. Butteridge could be deflected for a moment from the cause of the - lady he championed, then he talked chiefly, and usually with tears of - tenderness in his voice, about his mother and his childhood—his - mother who crowned a complete encyclopedia of maternal virtue by being - “largely Scotch.” She was not quite neat, but nearly so. “I owe everything - in me to me mother,” he asserted—“everything. Eh!” and—“ask - any man who's done anything. You'll hear the same story. All we have we - owe to women. They are the species, sorr. Man is but a dream. He comes and - goes. The woman's soul leadeth us upward and on!” - </p> - <p> - He was always going on like that. - </p> - <p> - What in particular he wanted from the Government for his secret did not - appear, nor what beyond a money payment could be expected from a modern - state in such an affair. The general effect upon judicious observers, - indeed, was not that he was treating for anything, but that he was using - an unexampled opportunity to bellow and show off to an attentive world. - Rumours of his real identity spread abroad. It was said that he had been - the landlord of an ambiguous hotel in Cape Town, and had there given - shelter to, and witnessed, the experiments and finally stolen the papers - and plans of, an extremely shy and friendless young inventor named - Palliser, who had come to South Africa from England in an advanced stage - of consumption, and died there. This, at any rate, was the allegation of - the more outspoken American press. But the proof or disproof of that never - reached the public. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Butteridge also involved himself passionately in a tangle of disputes - for the possession of a great number of valuable money prizes. Some of - these had been offered so long ago as 1906 for successful mechanical - flight. By the time of Mr. Butteridge's success a really very considerable - number of newspapers, tempted by the impunity of the pioneers in this - direction, had pledged themselves to pay in some cases, quite overwhelming - sums to the first person to fly from Manchester to Glasgow, from London to - Manchester, one hundred miles, two hundred miles in England, and the like. - Most had hedged a little with ambiguous conditions, and now offered - resistance; one or two paid at once, and vehemently called attention to - the fact; and Mr. Butteridge plunged into litigation with the more - recalcitrant, while at the same time sustaining a vigorous agitation and - canvass to induce the Government to purchase his invention. - </p> - <p> - One fact, however, remained permanent throughout all the developments of - this affair behind Butteridge's preposterous love interest, his politics - and personality, and all his shouting and boasting, and that was that, so - far as the mass of people knew, he was in sole possession of the secret of - the practicable aeroplane in which, for all one could tell to the - contrary, the key of the future empire of the world resided. And - presently, to the great consternation of innumerable people, including - among others Mr. Bert Smallways, it became apparent that whatever - negotiations were in progress for the acquisition of this precious secret - by the British Government were in danger of falling through. The London - Daily Requiem first voiced the universal alarm, and published an interview - under the terrific caption of, “Mr. Butteridge Speaks his Mind.” - </p> - <p> - Therein the inventor—if he was an inventor—poured out his - heart. - </p> - <p> - “I came from the end of the earth,” he said, which rather seemed to - confirm the Cape Town story, “bringing me Motherland the secret that would - give her the empire of the world. And what do I get?” He paused. “I am - sniffed at by elderly mandarins!... And the woman I love is treated like a - leper!” - </p> - <p> - “I am an Imperial Englishman,” he went on in a splendid outburst, - subsequently written into the interview by his own hand; “but there there - are limits to the human heart! There are younger nations—living - nations! Nations that do not snore and gurgle helplessly in paroxysms of - plethora upon beds of formality and red tape! There are nations that will - not fling away the empire of earth in order to slight an unknown man and - insult a noble woman whose boots they are not fitted to unlatch. There are - nations not blinded to Science, not given over hand and foot to effete - snobocracies and Degenerate Decadents. In short, mark my words—THERE - ARE OTHER NATIONS!” - </p> - <p> - This speech it was that particularly impressed Bert Smallways. “If them - Germans or them Americans get hold of this,” he said impressively to his - brother, “the British Empire's done. It's U-P. The Union Jack, so to - speak, won't be worth the paper it's written on, Tom.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you couldn't lend us a hand this morning,” said Jessica, in his - impressive pause. “Everybody in Bun Hill seems wanting early potatoes at - once. Tom can't carry half of them.” - </p> - <p> - “We're living on a volcano,” said Bert, disregarding the suggestion. “At - any moment war may come—such a war!” - </p> - <p> - He shook his head portentously. - </p> - <p> - “You'd better take this lot first, Tom,” said Jessica. She turned briskly - on Bert. “Can you spare us a morning?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “I dessay I can,” said Bert. “The shop's very quiet s'morning. Though all - this danger to the Empire worries me something frightful.” - </p> - <p> - “Work'll take it off your mind,” said Jessica. - </p> - <p> - And presently he too was going out into a world of change and wonder, - bowed beneath a load of potatoes and patriotic insecurity, that merged at - last into a very definite irritation at the weight and want of style of - the potatoes and a very clear conception of the entire detestableness of - Jessica. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER II. HOW BERT SMALLWAYS GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES - </h2> - <p> - It did not occur to either Tom or Bert Smallways that this remarkable - aerial performance of Mr. Butteridge was likely to affect either of their - lives in any special manner, that it would in any way single them out from - the millions about them; and when they had witnessed it from the crest of - Bun Hill and seen the fly-like mechanism, its rotating planes a golden - haze in the sunset, sink humming to the harbour of its shed again, they - turned back towards the sunken green-grocery beneath the great iron - standard of the London to Brighton mono-rail, and their minds reverted to - the discussion that had engaged them before Mr. Butteridge's triumph had - come in sight out of the London haze. - </p> - <p> - It was a difficult and unsuccessful discussions. They had to carry it on - in shouts because of the moaning and roaring of the gyroscopic motor-cars - that traversed the High Street, and in its nature it was contentious and - private. The Grubb business was in difficulties, and Grubb in a moment of - financial eloquence had given a half-share in it to Bert, whose relations - with his employer had been for some time unsalaried and pallish and - informal. - </p> - <p> - Bert was trying to impress Tom with the idea that the reconstructed Grubb - & Smallways offered unprecedented and unparalleled opportunities to - the judicious small investor. It was coming home to Bert, as though it - were an entirely new fact, that Tom was singularly impervious to ideas. In - the end he put the financial issues on one side, and, making the thing - entirely a matter of fraternal affection, succeeded in borrowing a - sovereign on the security of his word of honour. - </p> - <p> - The firm of Grubb & Smallways, formerly Grubb, had indeed been - singularly unlucky in the last year or so. For many years the business had - struggled along with a flavour of romantic insecurity in a small, - dissolute-looking shop in the High Street, adorned with brilliantly - coloured advertisements of cycles, a display of bells, trouser-clips, - oil-cans, pump-clips, frame-cases, wallets, and other accessories, and the - announcement of “Bicycles on Hire,” “Repairs,” “Free inflation,” “Petrol,” - and similar attractions. They were agents for several obscure makes of - bicycle,—two samples constituted the stock,—and occasionally - they effected a sale; they also repaired punctures and did their best—though - luck was not always on their side—with any other repairing that was - brought to them. They handled a line of cheap gramophones, and did a - little with musical boxes. - </p> - <p> - The staple of their business was, however, the letting of bicycles on - hire. It was a singular trade, obeying no known commercial or economic - principles—indeed, no principles. There was a stock of ladies' and - gentlemen's bicycles in a state of disrepair that passes description, and - these, the hiring stock, were let to unexacting and reckless people, - inexpert in the things of this world, at a nominal rate of one shilling - for the first hour and sixpence per hour afterwards. But really there were - no fixed prices, and insistent boys could get bicycles and the thrill of - danger for an hour for so low a sum as threepence, provided they could - convince Grubb that that was all they had. The saddle and handle-bar were - then sketchily adjusted by Grubb, a deposit exacted, except in the case of - familiar boys, the machine lubricated, and the adventurer started upon his - career. Usually he or she came back, but at times, when the accident was - serious, Bert or Grubb had to go out and fetch the machine home. Hire was - always charged up to the hour of return to the shop and deducted from the - deposit. It was rare that a bicycle started out from their hands in a - state of pedantic efficiency. Romantic possibilities of accident lurked in - the worn thread of the screw that adjusted the saddle, in the precarious - pedals, in the loose-knit chain, in the handle-bars, above all in the - brakes and tyres. Tappings and clankings and strange rhythmic creakings - awoke as the intrepid hirer pedalled out into the country. Then perhaps - the bell would jam or a brake fail to act on a hill; or the seat-pillar - would get loose, and the saddle drop three or four inches with a - disconcerting bump; or the loose and rattling chain would jump the cogs of - the chain-wheel as the machine ran downhill, and so bring the mechanism to - an abrupt and disastrous stop without at the same time arresting the - forward momentum of the rider; or a tyre would bang, or sigh quietly, and - give up the struggle for efficiency. - </p> - <p> - When the hirer returned, a heated pedestrian, Grubb would ignore all - verbal complaints, and examine the machine gravely. - </p> - <p> - “This ain't 'ad fair usage,” he used to begin. - </p> - <p> - He became a mild embodiment of the spirit of reason. “You can't expect a - bicycle to take you up in its arms and carry you,” he used to say. “You - got to show intelligence. After all—it's machinery.” - </p> - <p> - Sometimes the process of liquidating the consequent claims bordered on - violence. It was always a very rhetorical and often a trying affair, but - in these progressive times you have to make a noise to get a living. It - was often hard work, but nevertheless this hiring was a fairly steady - source of profit, until one day all the panes in the window and door were - broken and the stock on sale in the window greatly damaged and disordered - by two over-critical hirers with no sense of rhetorical irrelevance. They - were big, coarse stokers from Gravesend. One was annoyed because his left - pedal had come off, and the other because his tyre had become deflated, - small and indeed negligible accidents by Bun Hill standards, due entirely - to the ungentle handling of the delicate machines entrusted to them—and - they failed to see clearly how they put themselves in the wrong by this - method of argument. It is a poor way of convincing a man that he has let - you a defective machine to throw his foot-pump about his shop, and take - his stock of gongs outside in order to return them through the - window-panes. It carried no real conviction to the minds of either Grubb - or Bert; it only irritated and vexed them. One quarrel makes many, and - this unpleasantness led to a violent dispute between Grubb and the - landlord upon the moral aspects of and legal responsibility for the - consequent re-glazing. In the end Grubb and Smallways were put to the - expense of a strategic nocturnal removal to another position. - </p> - <p> - It was a position they had long considered. It was a small, shed-like shop - with a plate-glass window and one room behind, just at the sharp bend in - the road at the bottom of Bun Hill; and here they struggled along bravely, - in spite of persistent annoyance from their former landlord, hoping for - certain eventualities the peculiar situation of the shop seemed to - promise. Here, too, they were doomed to disappointment. - </p> - <p> - The High Road from London to Brighton that ran through Bun Hill was like - the British Empire or the British Constitution—a thing that had - grown to its present importance. Unlike any other roads in Europe the - British high roads have never been subjected to any organised attempts to - grade or straighten them out, and to that no doubt their peculiar - picturesqueness is to be ascribed. The old Bun Hill High Street drops at - its end for perhaps eighty or a hundred feet of descent at an angle of one - in five, turns at right angles to the left, runs in a curve for about - thirty yards to a brick bridge over the dry ditch that had once been the - Otterbourne, and then bends sharply to the right again round a dense clump - of trees and goes on, a simple, straightforward, peaceful high road. There - had been one or two horse-and-van and bicycle accidents in the place - before the shop Bert and Grubb took was built, and, to be frank, it was - the probability of others that attracted them to it. - </p> - <p> - Its possibilities had come to them first with a humorous flavour. - </p> - <p> - “Here's one of the places where a chap might get a living by keeping - hens,” said Grubb. - </p> - <p> - “You can't get a living by keeping hens,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “You'd keep the hen and have it spatch-cocked,” said Grubb. “The motor - chaps would pay for it.” - </p> - <p> - When they really came to take the place they remembered this conversation. - Hens, however, were out of the question; there was no place for a run - unless they had it in the shop. It would have been obviously out of place - there. The shop was much more modern than their former one, and had a - plate-glass front. “Sooner or later,” said Bert, “we shall get a motor-car - through this.” - </p> - <p> - “That's all right,” said Grubb. “Compensation. I don't mind when that - motor-car comes along. I don't mind even if it gives me a shock to the - system.” - </p> - <p> - “And meanwhile,” said Bert, with great artfulness, “I'm going to buy - myself a dog.” - </p> - <p> - He did. He bought three in succession. He surprised the people at the - Dogs' Home in Battersea by demanding a deaf retriever, and rejecting every - candidate that pricked up its ears. “I want a good, deaf, slow-moving - dog,” he said. “A dog that doesn't put himself out for things.” - </p> - <p> - They displayed inconvenient curiosity; they declared a great scarcity of - deaf dogs. - </p> - <p> - “You see,” they said, “dogs aren't deaf.” - </p> - <p> - “Mine's got to be,” said Bert. “I've HAD dogs that aren't deaf. All I - want. It's like this, you see—I sell gramophones. Naturally I got to - make 'em talk and tootle a bit to show 'em orf. Well, a dog that isn't - deaf doesn't like it—gets excited, smells round, barks, growls. That - upsets the customer. See? Then a dog that has his hearing fancies things. - Makes burglars out of passing tramps. Wants to fight every motor that - makes a whizz. All very well if you want livening up, but our place is - lively enough. I don't want a dog of that sort. I want a quiet dog.” - </p> - <p> - In the end he got three in succession, but none of them turned out well. - The first strayed off into the infinite, heeding no appeals; the second - was killed in the night by a fruit motor-waggon which fled before Grubb - could get down; the third got itself entangled in the front wheel of a - passing cyclist, who came through the plate glass, and proved to be an - actor out of work and an undischarged bankrupt. He demanded compensation - for some fancied injury, would hear nothing of the valuable dog he had - killed or the window he had broken, obliged Grubb by sheer physical - obduracy to straighten his buckled front wheel, and pestered the - struggling firm with a series of inhumanly worded solicitor's letters. - Grubb answered them—stingingly, and put himself, Bert thought, in - the wrong. - </p> - <p> - Affairs got more and more exasperating and strained under these pressures. - The window was boarded up, and an unpleasant altercation about their delay - in repairing it with the new landlord, a Bun Hill butcher—and a - loud, bellowing, unreasonable person at that—served to remind them - of their unsettled troubles with the old. Things were at this pitch when - Bert bethought himself of creating a sort of debenture capital in the - business for the benefit of Tom. But, as I have said, Tom had no - enterprise in his composition. His idea of investment was the stocking; he - bribed his brother not to keep the offer open. - </p> - <p> - And then ill-luck made its last lunge at their crumbling business and - brought it to the ground. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - It is a poor heart that never rejoices, and Whitsuntide had an air of - coming as an agreeable break in the business complications of Grubb & - Smallways. Encouraged by the practical outcome of Bert's negotiations with - his brother, and by the fact that half the hiring-stock was out from - Saturday to Monday, they decided to ignore the residuum of hiring-trade on - Sunday and devote that day to much-needed relaxation and refreshment—to - have, in fact, an unstinted good time, a beano on Whit Sunday and return - invigorated to grapple with their difficulties and the Bank Holiday - repairs on the Monday. No good thing was ever done by exhausted and - dispirited men. It happened that they had made the acquaintance of two - young ladies in employment in Clapham, Miss Flossie Bright and Miss Edna - Bunthorne, and it was resolved therefore to make a cheerful little cyclist - party of four into the heart of Kent, and to picnic and spend an indolent - afternoon and evening among the trees and bracken between Ashford and - Maidstone. - </p> - <p> - Miss Bright could ride a bicycle, and a machine was found for her, not - among the hiring stock, but specially, in the sample held for sale. Miss - Bunthorne, whom Bert particularly affected, could not ride, and so with - some difficulty he hired a basket-work trailer from the big business of - Wray's in the Clapham Road. - </p> - <p> - To see our young men, brightly dressed and cigarettes alight, wheeling off - to the rendezvous, Grubb guiding the lady's machine beside him with one - skilful hand and Bert teuf-teuffing steadily, was to realise how pluck may - triumph even over insolvency. Their landlord, the butcher, said, “Gurr,” - as they passed, and shouted, “Go it!” in a loud, savage tone to their - receding backs. - </p> - <p> - Much they cared! - </p> - <p> - The weather was fine, and though they were on their way southward before - nine o'clock, there was already a great multitude of holiday people abroad - upon the roads. There were quantities of young men and women on bicycles - and motor-bicycles, and a majority of gyroscopic motor-cars running - bicycle-fashion on two wheels, mingled with old-fashioned four-wheeled - traffic. Bank Holiday times always bring out old stored-away vehicles and - odd people; one saw tricars and electric broughams and dilapidated old - racing motors with huge pneumatic tyres. Once our holiday-makers saw a - horse and cart, and once a youth riding a black horse amidst the badinage - of the passersby. And there were several navigable gas air-ships, not to - mention balloons, in the air. It was all immensely interesting and - refreshing after the dark anxieties of the shop. Edna wore a brown straw - hat with poppies, that suited her admirably, and sat in the trailer like a - queen, and the eight-year-old motor-bicycle ran like a thing of yesterday. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> -Little it seemed to matter to Mr. Bert Smallways that a newspaper -placard proclaimed:— ———————————————————- GERMANY -DENOUNCES THE MONROE DOCTRINE. - - AMBIGUOUS ATTITUDE OF JAPAN. -WHAT WILL BRITAIN DO? IS IT WAR?———————————————————- -</pre> - <p> - This sort of thing was alvays going on, and on holidays one disregarded it - as a matter of course. Week-davs, in the slack time after the midday meal, - then perhaps one might worry about the Empire and international politics; - but not on a sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behind one, and - envious cyclists trying to race you. Nor did our young people attach any - great importance to the flitting suggestions of military activity they - glimpsed ever and again. Near Maidstone they came on a string of eleven - motor-guns of peculiar construction halted by the roadside, with a number - of businesslike engineers grouped about them watching through - field-glasses some sort of entrenchment that was going on near the crest - of the downs. It signified nothing to Bert. - </p> - <p> - “What's up?” said Edna. - </p> - <p> - “Oh!—manoeuvres,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Oh! I thought they did them at Easter,” said Edna, and troubled no more. - </p> - <p> - The last great British war, the Boer war, was over and forgotten, and the - public had lost the fashion of expert military criticism. - </p> - <p> - Our four young people picnicked cheerfully, and were happy in the manner - of a happiness that was an ancient mode in Nineveh. Eyes were bright, - Grubb was funny and almost witty, and Bert achieved epigrams; the hedges - were full of honeysuckle and dog-roses; in the woods the distant - toot-toot-toot of the traffic on the dust-hazy high road might have been - no more than the horns of elf-land. They laughed and gossiped and picked - flowers and made love and talked, and the girls smoked cigarettes. Also - they scuffled playfully. Among other things they talked aeronautics, and - how thev would come for a picnic together in Bert's flying-machine before - ten years were out. The world seemed full of amusing possibilities that - afternoon. They wondered what their great-grandparents would have thought - of aeronautics. In the evening, about seven, the party turned homeward, - expecting no disaster, and it was only on the crest of the downs between - Wrotham and Kingsdown that disaster came. - </p> - <p> - They had come up the hill in the twilight; Bert was anxious to get as far - as possible before he lit—or attempted to light, for the issue was a - doubtful one—his lamps, and they had scorched past a number of - cyclists, and by a four-wheeled motor-car of the old style lamed by a - deflated tyre. Some dust had penetrated Bert's horn, and the result was a - curious, amusing, wheezing sound had got into his “honk, honk.” For the - sake of merriment and glory he was making this sound as much as possible, - and Edna was in fits of laughter in the trailer. They made a sort of - rushing cheerfulness along the road that affected their fellow travellers - variously, according to their temperaments. She did notice a good lot of - bluish, evil-smelling smoke coming from about the bearings between his - feet, but she thought this was one of the natural concomitants of - motor-traction, and troubled no more about it, until abruptly it burst - into a little yellow-tipped flame. - </p> - <p> - “Bert!” she screamed. - </p> - <p> - But Bert had put on the brakes with such suddenness that she found herself - involved with his leg as he dismounted. She got to the side of the road - and hastily readjusted her hat, which had suffered. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - He stood for some fatal seconds watching the petrol drip and catch, and - the flame, which was now beginning to smell of enamel as well as oil, - spread and grew. His chief idea was the sorrowful one that he had not sold - the machine second-hand a year ago, and that he ought to have done so—a - good idea in its way, but not immediately helpful. He turned upon Edna - sharply. “Get a lot of wet sand,” he said. Then he wheeled the machine a - little towards the side of the roadway, and laid it down and looked about - for a supply of wet sand. The flames received this as a helpful attention, - and made the most of it. They seemed to brighten and the twilight to - deepen about them. The road was a flinty road in the chalk country, and - ill-provided with sand. - </p> - <p> - Edna accosted a short, fat cyclist. “We want wet sand,” she said, and - added, “our motor's on fire.” The short, fat cyclist stared blankly for a - moment, then with a helpful cry began to scrabble in the road-grit. - Whereupon Bert and Edna also scrabbled in the road-grit. Other cyclists - arrived, dismounted and stood about, and their flame-lit faces expressed - satisfaction, interest, curiosity. “Wet sand,” said the short, fat man, - scrabbling terribly—“wet sand.” One joined him. They threw - hard-earned handfuls of road-grit upon the flames, which accepted them - with enthusiasm. - </p> - <p> - Grubb arrived, riding hard. He was shouting something. He sprang off and - threw his bicycle into the hedge. “Don't throw water on it!” he said—“don't - throw water on it!” He displayed commanding presence of mind. He became - captain of the occasion. Others were glad to repeat the things he said and - imitate his actions. - </p> - <p> - “Don't throw water on it!” they cried. Also there was no water. - </p> - <p> - “Beat it out, you fools!” he said. - </p> - <p> - He seized a rug from the trailer (it was an Austrian blanket, and Bert's - winter coverlet) and began to beat at the burning petrol. For a wonderful - minute he seemed to succeed. But he scattered burning pools of petrol on - the road, and others, fired by his enthusiasm, imitated his action. Bert - caught up a trailer-cushion and began to beat; there was another cushion - and a table-cloth, and these also were seized. A young hero pulled off his - jacket and joined the beating. For a moment there was less talking than - hard breathing, and a tremendous flapping. Flossie, arriving on the - outskirts of the crowd, cried, “Oh, my God!” and burst loudly into tears. - “Help!” she said, and “Fire!” - </p> - <p> - The lame motor-car arrived, and stopped in consternation. A tall, goggled, - grey-haired man who was driving inquired with an Oxford intonation and a - clear, careful enunciation, “Can WE help at all?” - </p> - <p> - It became manifest that the rug, the table-cloth, the cushions, the - jacket, were getting smeared with petrol and burning. The soul seemed to - go out of the cushion Bert was swaying, and the air was full of feathers, - like a snowstorm in the still twilight. - </p> - <p> - Bert had got very dusty and sweaty and strenuous. It seemed to him his - weapon had been wrested from him at the moment of victory. The fire lay - like a dying thing, close to the ground and wicked; it gave a leap of - anguish at every whack of the beaters. But now Grubb had gone off to stamp - out the burning blanket; the others were lacking just at the moment of - victory. One had dropped the cushion and was running to the motor-car. - “'ERE!” cried Bert; “keep on!” - </p> - <p> - He flung the deflated burning rags of cushion aside, whipped off his - jacket and sprang at the flames with a shout. He stamped into the ruin - until flames ran up his boots. Edna saw him, a red-lit hero, and thought - it was good to be a man. - </p> - <p> - A bystander was hit by a hot halfpenny flying out of the air. Then Bert - thought of the papers in his pockets, and staggered back, trying to - extinguish his burning jacket—checked, repulsed, dismayed. - </p> - <p> - Edna was struck by the benevolent appearance of an elderly spectator in a - silk hat and Sabbatical garments. “Oh!” she cried to him. “Help this young - man! How can you stand and see it?” - </p> - <p> - A cry of “The tarpaulin!” arose. - </p> - <p> - An earnest-looking man in a very light grey cycling-suit had suddenly - appeared at the side of the lame motor-car and addressed the owner. “Have - you a tarpaulin?” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said the gentlemanly man. “Yes. We've got a tarpaulin.” - </p> - <p> - “That's it,” said the earnest-looking man, suddenly shouting. “Let's have - it, quick!” - </p> - <p> - The gentlemanly man, with feeble and deprecatory gestures, and in the - manner of a hypnotised person, produced an excellent large tarpaulin. - </p> - <p> - “Here!” cried the earnest-looking man to Grubb. “Ketch holt!” - </p> - <p> - Then everybody realised that a new method was to be tried. A number of - willing hands seized upon the Oxford gentleman's tarpaulin. The others - stood away with approving noises. The tarpaulin was held over the burning - bicycle like a canopy, and then smothered down upon it. - </p> - <p> - “We ought to have done this before,” panted Grubb. - </p> - <p> - There was a moment of triumph. The flames vanished. Every one who could - contrive to do so touched the edge of the tarpaulin. Bert held down a - corner with two hands and a foot. The tarpaulin, bulged up in the centre, - seemed to be suppressing triumphant exultation. Then its self-approval - became too much for it; it burst into a bright red smile in the centre. It - was exactly like the opening of a mouth. It laughed with a gust of flames. - They were reflected redly in the observant goggles of the gentleman who - owned the tarpaulin. Everybody recoiled. - </p> - <p> - “Save the trailer!” cried some one, and that was the last round in the - battle. But the trailer could not be detached; its wicker-work had caught, - and it was the last thing to burn. A sort of hush fell upon the gathering. - The petrol burnt low, the wicker-work trailer banged and crackled. The - crowd divided itself into an outer circle of critics, advisers, and - secondary characters, who had played undistinguished parts or no parts at - all in the affair, and a central group of heated and distressed - principals. A young man with an inquiring mind and a considerable - knowledge of motor-bicycles fixed on to Grubb and wanted to argue that the - thing could not have happened. Grubb wass short and inattentive with him, - and the young man withdrew to the back of the crowd, and there told the - benevolent old gentleman in the silk hat that people who went out with - machines they didn't understand had only themselves to blame if things - went wrong. - </p> - <p> - The old gentleman let him talk for some time, and then remarked, in a tone - of rapturous enjoyment: “Stone deaf,” and added, “Nasty things.” - </p> - <p> - A rosy-faced man in a straw hat claimed attention. “I DID save the front - wheel,” he said; “you'd have had that tyre catch, too, if I hadn't kept - turning it round.” It became manifest that this was so. The front wheel - had retained its tyre, was intact, was still rotating slowly among the - blackened and twisted ruins of the rest of the machine. It had something - of that air of conscious virtue, of unimpeachable respectability, that - distinguishes a rent collector in a low neighbourhood. “That wheel's worth - a pound,” said the rosy-faced man, making a song of it. “I kep' turning it - round.” - </p> - <p> - Newcomers kept arriving from the south with the question, “What's up?” - until it got on Grubb's nerves. Londonward the crowd was constantly losing - people; they would mount their various wheels with the satisfied manner of - spectators who have had the best. Their voices would recede into the - twilight; one would hear a laugh at the memory of this particularly - salient incident or that. - </p> - <p> - “I'm afraid,” said the gentleman of the motor-car, “my tarpaulin's a bit - done for.” - </p> - <p> - Grubb admitted that the owner was the best judge of that. - </p> - <p> - “Nothin, else I can do for you?” said the gentleman of the motor-car, it - may be with a suspicion of irony. - </p> - <p> - Bert was roused to action. “Look here,” he said. “There's my young lady. - If she ain't 'ome by ten they lock her out. See? Well, all my money was in - my jacket pocket, and it's all mixed up with the burnt stuff, and that's - too 'ot to touch. Is Clapham out of your way?” - </p> - <p> - “All in the day's work,” said the gentleman with the motor-car, and turned - to Edna. “Very pleased indeed,” he said, “if you'll come with us. We're - late for dinner as it is, so it won't make much difference for us to go - home by way of Clapham. We've got to get to Surbiton, anyhow. I'm afraid - you'll find us a little slow.” - </p> - <p> - “But what's Bert going to do?” said Edna. - </p> - <p> - “I don't know that we can accommodate Bert,” said the motor-car gentleman, - “though we're tremendously anxious to oblige.” - </p> - <p> - “You couldn't take the whole lot?” said Bert, waving his hand at the - deboshed and blackened ruins on the ground. - </p> - <p> - “I'm awfully afraid I can't,” said the Oxford man. “Awfully sorry, you - know.” - </p> - <p> - “Then I'll have to stick 'ere for a bit,” said Bert. “I got to see the - thing through. You go on, Edna.” - </p> - <p> - “Don't like leavin' you, Bert.” - </p> - <p> - “You can't 'elp it, Edna.”... - </p> - <p> - The last Edna saw of Bert was his figure, in charred and blackened - shirtsleeves, standing in the dusk. He was musing deeply by the mixed - ironwork and ashes of his vanished motor-bicycle, a melancholy figure. His - retinue of spectators had shrunk now to half a dozen figures. Flossie and - Grubb were preparing to follow her desertion. - </p> - <p> - “Cheer up, old Bert!” cried Edna, with artificial cheerfulness. “So long.” - </p> - <p> - “So long, Edna,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “See you to-morrer.” - </p> - <p> - “See you to-morrer,” said Bert, though he was destined, as a matter of - fact, to see much of the habitable globe before he saw her again. - </p> - <p> - Bert began to light matches from a borrowed boxful, and search for a - half-crown that still eluded him among the charred remains. - </p> - <p> - His face was grave and melancholy. - </p> - <p> - “I WISH that 'adn't 'appened,” said Flossie, riding on with Grubb.... - </p> - <p> - And at last Bert was left almost alone, a sad, blackened Promethean - figure, cursed by the gift of fire. He had entertained vague ideas of - hiring a cart, of achieving miraculous repairs, of still snatching some - residual value from his one chief possession. Now, in the darkening night, - he perceived the vanity of such intentions. Truth came to him bleakly, and - laid her chill conviction upon him. He took hold of the handle-bar, stood - the thing up, tried to push it forward. The tyreless hind-wheel was jammed - hopelessly, even as he feared. For a minute or so he stood upholding his - machine, a motionless despair. Then with a great effort he thrust the - ruins from him into the ditch, kicked at it once, regarded it for a - moment, and turned his face resolutely Londonward. - </p> - <p> - He did not once look back. - </p> - <p> - “That's the end of THAT game!” said Bert. “No more teuf-teuf-teuf for Bert - Smallways for a year or two. Good-bye 'olidays!... Oh! I ought to 'ave - sold the blasted thing when I had a chance three years ago.” - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - The next morning found the firm of Grubb & Smallways in a state of - profound despondency. It seemed a small matter to them that the newspaper - and cigarette shop opposite displayed such placards as this:— - ———————————————————- - REPORTED AMERICAN ULTIMATUM. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - BRITAIN MUST FIGHT. - - OUR INFATUATED WAR OFFICE STILL -REFUSES TO LISTEN TO MR. BUTTERIDGE. -</pre> - <p> - GREAT MONO-RAIL DISASTER AT TIMBUCTOO.———————————————————- - </p> - <p> - or this:— ———————————————————- - WAR A QUESTION OF HOURS. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - NEW YORK CALM. - - EXCITEMENT IN BERLIN.———————————————————- -</pre> - <p> - or again:— ———————————————————- - WASHINGTON STILL SILENT. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - WHAT WILL PARIS DO? - - THE PANIC ON THE BOURSE. -</pre> - <p> - THE KING'S GARDEN PARTY TO THE MASKED TWAREGS. MR. BUTTERIDGE TAKES AN - OFFER. LATEST BETTING FROM TEHERAN.———————————————————- - </p> - <p> - or this:— ———————————————————- - WILL AMERICA FIGHT? - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - ANTI-GERMAN RIOT IN BAGDAD. - - THE MUNICIPAL SCANDALS AT DAMASCUS. -</pre> - <p> - MR. BUTTERIDGE'S INVENTION FOR AMERICA.———————————————————- - </p> - <p> - Bert stared at these over the card of pump-clips in the pane in the door - with unseeing eyes. He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and the jacketless - ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shop was dark and - depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machines had never - looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellows who were - “out,” and of the approaching disputations of the afternoon. He thought of - their new landlord, and of their old landlord, and of bills and claims. - Life presented itself for the first time as a hopeless fight against - fate.... - </p> - <p> - “Grubb, o' man,” he said, distilling the quintessence, “I'm fair sick of - this shop.” - </p> - <p> - “So'm I,” said Grubb. - </p> - <p> - “I'm out of conceit with it. I don't seem to care ever to speak to a - customer again.” - </p> - <p> - “There's that trailer,” said Grubb, after a pause. - </p> - <p> - “Blow the trailer!” said Bert. “Anyhow, I didn't leave a deposit on it. I - didn't do that. Still—” - </p> - <p> - He turned round on his friend. “Look 'ere,” he said, “we aren't gettin' on - here. We been losing money hand over fist. We got things tied up in fifty - knots.” - </p> - <p> - “What can we do?” said Grubb. - </p> - <p> - “Clear out. Sell what we can for what it will fetch, and quit. See? It's - no good 'anging on to a losing concern. No sort of good. Jest - foolishness.” - </p> - <p> - “That's all right,” said Grubb—“that's all right; but it ain't your - capital been sunk in it.” - </p> - <p> - “No need for us to sink after our capital,” said Bert, ignoring the point. - </p> - <p> - “I'm not going to be held responsible for that trailer, anyhow. That ain't - my affair.” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody arst you to make it your affair. If you like to stick on here, - well and good. I'm quitting. I'll see Bank Holiday through, and then I'm - O-R-P-H. See?” - </p> - <p> - “Leavin' me?” - </p> - <p> - “Leavin' you. If you must be left.” - </p> - <p> - Grubb looked round the shop. It certainly had become distasteful. Once - upon a time it had been bright with hope and new beginnings and stock and - the prospect of credit. Now—now it was failure and dust. Very likely - the landlord would be round presently to go on with the row about the - window.... “Where d'you think of going, Bert?” Grubb asked. - </p> - <p> - Bert turned round and regarded him. “I thought it out as I was walking - 'ome, and in bed. I couldn't sleep a wink.” - </p> - <p> - “What did you think out?” - </p> - <p> - “Plans.” - </p> - <p> - “What plans?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh! You're for stickin, here.” - </p> - <p> - “Not if anything better was to offer.” - </p> - <p> - “It's only an ideer,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “You made the girls laugh yestiday, that song you sang.” - </p> - <p> - “Seems a long time ago now,” said Grubb. - </p> - <p> - “And old Edna nearly cried—over that bit of mine.” - </p> - <p> - “She got a fly in her eye,” said Grubb; “I saw it. But what's this got to - do with your plan?” - </p> - <p> - “No end,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “'Ow?” - </p> - <p> - “Don't you see?” - </p> - <p> - “Not singing in the streets?” - </p> - <p> - “Streets! No fear! But 'ow about the Tour of the Waterin' Places of - England, Grubb? Singing! Young men of family doing it for a lark? You - ain't got a bad voice, you know, and mine's all right. I never see a chap - singing on the beach yet that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cocked hat. And - we both know how to put on the toff a bit. Eh? Well, that's my ideer. Me - and you, Grubb, with a refined song and a breakdown. Like we was doing for - foolery yestiday. That was what put it into my 'ead. Easy make up a - programme—easy. Six choice items, and one or two for encores and - patter. I'm all right for the patter anyhow.” - </p> - <p> - Grubb remained regarding his darkened and disheartening shop; he thought - of his former landlord and his present landlord, and of the general - disgustingness of business in an age which re-echoes to The Bitter Cry of - the Middle Class; and then it seemed to him that afar off he heard the - twankle, twankle of a banjo, and the voice of a stranded siren singing. He - had a sense of hot sunshine upon sand, of the children of at least - transiently opulent holiday makers in a circle round about him, of the - whisper, “They are really gentlemen,” and then dollop, dollop came the - coppers in the hat. Sometimes even silver. It was all income; no - outgoings, no bills. “I'm on, Bert,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Right O!” said Bert, and, “Now we shan't be long.” - </p> - <p> - “We needn't start without capital neither,” said Grubb. “If we take the - best of these machines up to the Bicycle Mart in Finsbury we'd raise six - or seven pounds on 'em. We could easy do that to-morrow before anybody - much was about....” - </p> - <p> - “Nice to think of old Suet-and-Bones coming round to make his usual row - with us, and finding a card up 'Closed for Repairs.'” - </p> - <p> - “We'll do that,” said Grubb with zest—“we'll do that. And we'll put - up another notice, and jest arst all inquirers to go round to 'im and - inquire. See? Then they'll know all about us.” - </p> - <p> - Before the day was out the whole enterprise was planned. They decided at - first that they would call themselves the Naval Mr. O's, a plagiarism, and - not perhaps a very good one, from the title of the well-known troupe of - “Scarlet Mr. E's,” and Bert rather clung to the idea of a uniform of - bright blue serge, with a lot of gold lace and cord and ornamentation, - rather like a naval officer's, but more so. But that had to be abandoned - as impracticable, it would have taken too much time and money to prepare. - They perceived they must wear some cheaper and more readily prepared - costume, and Grubb fell back on white dominoes. They entertained the - notion for a time of selecting the two worst machines from the - hiring-stock, painting them over with crimson enamel paint, replacing the - bells by the loudest sort of motor-horn, and doing a ride about to begin - and end the entertainment. They doubted the advisability of this step. - </p> - <p> - “There's people in the world,” said Bert, “who wouldn't recognise us, - who'd know them bicycles again like a shot, and we don't want to go on - with no old stories. We want a fresh start.” - </p> - <p> - “I do,” said Grubb, “badly.” - </p> - <p> - “We want to forget things—and cut all these rotten old worries. They - ain't doin' us good.” - </p> - <p> - Nevertheless, they decided to take the risk of these bicycles, and they - decided their costumes should be brown stockings and sandals, and cheap - unbleached sheets with a hole cut in the middle, and wigs and beards of - tow. The rest their normal selves! “The Desert Dervishes,” they would call - themselves, and their chief songs would be those popular ditties, “In my - Trailer,” and “What Price Hair-pins Now?” - </p> - <p> - They decided to begin with small seaside places, and gradually, as they - gained confidence, attack larger centres. To begin with they selected - Littlestone in Kent, chiefly because of its unassuming name. - </p> - <p> - So they planned, and it seemed a small and unimportant thing to them that - as they clattered the governments of half the world and more were drifting - into war. About midday they became aware of the first of the evening-paper - placards shouting to them across the street:— ———————————————————————- - </p> - <p> - THE WAR-CLOUD DARKENS———————————————————————- - </p> - <p> - Nothing else but that. - </p> - <p> - “Always rottin' about war now,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “They'll get it in the neck in real earnest one of these days, if they - ain't precious careful.” - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - So you will understand the sudden apparition that surprised rather than - delighted the quiet informality of Dymchurch sands. Dymchurch was one of - the last places on the coast of England to be reached by the mono-rail, - and so its spacious sands were still, at the time of this story, the - secret and delight of quite a limited number of people. They went there to - flee vulgarity and extravagances, and to bathe and sit and talk and play - with their children in peace, and the Desert Dervishes did not please them - at all. - </p> - <p> - The two white figures on scarlet wheels came upon them out of the infinite - along the sands from Littlestone, grew nearer and larger and more audible, - honk-honking and emitting weird cries, and generally threatening - liveliness of the most aggressive type. “Good heavens!” said Dymchurch, - “what's this?” - </p> - <p> - Then our young men, according to a preconcerted plan, wheeled round from - file to line, dismounted and stood it attention. “Ladies and gentlemen,” - they said, “we beg to present ourselves—the Desert Dervishes.” They - bowed profoundly. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> -The few scattered groups upon the beach regarded them with horror for -the most part, but some of the children and young people were interested -and drew nearer. “There ain't a bob on the beach,” said Grubb in an -undertone, and the Desert Dervishes plied their bicycles with comic -“business,” that got a laugh from one very unsophisticated little boy. -Then they took a deep breath and struck into the cheerful strain of -“What Price Hair-pins Now?” Grubb sang the song, Bert did his best to -make the chorus a rousing one, and it the end of each verse they danced -certain steps, skirts in hand, that they had carefully rehearsed. - - “Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang... - What Price Hair-pins Now?” - </pre> - <p> - So they chanted and danced their steps in the sunshine on Dymchurch beach, - and the children drew near these foolish young men, marvelling that they - should behave in this way, and the older people looked cold and - unfriendly. - </p> - <p> - All round the coasts of Europe that morning banjos were ringing, voices - were bawling and singing, children were playing in the sun, pleasure-boats - went to and fro; the common abundant life of the time, unsuspicious of all - dangers that gathered darkly against it, flowed on its cheerful aimless - way. In the cities men fussed about their businesses and engagements. The - newspaper placards that had cried “wolf!” so often, cried “wolf!” now in - vain. - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> -Now as Bert and Grubb bawled their chorus for the third time, they -became aware of a very big, golden-brown balloon low in the sky to the -north-west, and coming rapidly towards them. “Jest as we're gettin' hold -of 'em,” muttered Grubb, “up comes a counter-attraction. Go it, Bert!” - - “Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang - What Price Hair-pins Now?” - </pre> - <p> - The balloon rose and fell, went out of sight—“landed, thank - goodness,” said Grubb—re-appeared with a leap. “'ENG!” said Grubb. - “Step it, Bert, or they'll see it!” - </p> - <p> - They finished their dance, and then stood frankly staring. - </p> - <p> - “There's something wrong with that balloon,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - Everybody now was looking at the balloon, drawing rapidly nearer before a - brisk north-westerly breeze. The song and dance were a “dead frost.” - Nobody thought any more about it. Even Bert and Grubb forgot it, and - ignored the next item on the programme altogether. The balloon was bumping - as though its occupants were trying to land; it would approach, sinking - slowly, touch the ground, and instantly jump fifty feet or so in the air - and immediately begin to fall again. Its car touched a clump of trees, and - the black figure that had been struggling in the ropes fell back, or - jumped back, into the car. In another moment it was quite close. It seemed - a huge affair, as big as a house, and it floated down swiftly towards the - sands; a long rope trailed behind it, and enormous shouts came from the - man in the car. He seemed to be taking off his clothes, then his head came - over the side of the car. “Catch hold of the rope!” they heard, quite - plain. - </p> - <p> - “Salvage, Bert!” cried Grubb, and started to head off the rope. - </p> - <p> - Bert followed him, and collided, without upsetting, with a fisherman bent - upon a similar errand. A woman carrying a baby in her arms, two small boys - with toy spades, and a stout gentleman in flannels all got to the trailing - rope at about the same time, and began to dance over it in their attempts - to secure it. Bert came up to this wriggling, elusive serpent and got his - foot on it, went down on all fours and achieved a grip. In half a dozen - seconds the whole diffused population of the beach had, as it were, - crystallised on the rope, and was pulling against the balloon under the - vehement and stimulating directions of the man in the car. “Pull, I tell - you!” said the man in the car—“pull!” - </p> - <p> - For a second or so the balloon obeyed its momentum and the wind and tugged - its human anchor seaward. It dropped, touched the water, and made a flat, - silvery splash, and recoiled as one's finger recoils when one touches - anything hot. “Pull her in,” said the man in the car. “SHE'S FAINTED!” - </p> - <p> - He occupied himself with some unseen object while the people on the rope - pulled him in. Bert was nearest the balloon, and much excited and - interested. He kept stumbling over the tail of the Dervish costume in his - zeal. He had never imagined before what a big, light, wallowing thing a - balloon was. The car was of brown coarse wicker-work, and comparatively - small. The rope he tugged at was fastened to a stout-looking ring, four or - five feet above the car. At each tug he drew in a yard or so of rope, and - the waggling wicker-work was drawn so much nearer. Out of the car came - wrathful bellowings: “Fainted, she has!” and then: “It's her heart—broken - with all she's had to go through.” - </p> - <p> - The balloon ceased to struggle, and sank downward. Bert dropped the rope, - and ran forward to catch it in a new place. In another moment he had his - hand on the car. “Lay hold of it,” said the man in the car, and his face - appeared close to Bert's—a strangely familiar face, fierce eyebrows, - a flattish nose, a huge black moustache. He had discarded coat and - waistcoat—perhaps with some idea of presently having to swim for his - life—and his black hair was extraordinarily disordered. “Will all - you people get hold round the car?” he said. “There's a lady here fainted—or - got failure of the heart. Heaven alone knows which! My name is Butteridge. - Butteridge, my name is—in a balloon. Now please, all on to the edge. - This is the last time I trust myself to one of these paleolithic - contrivances. The ripping-cord failed, and the valve wouldn't act. If ever - I meet the scoundrel who ought to have seen—” - </p> - <p> - He stuck his head out between the ropes abruptly, and said, in a note of - earnest expostulation: “Get some brandy!—some neat brandy!” Some one - went up the beach for it. - </p> - <p> - In the car, sprawling upon a sort of bed-bench, in an attitude of - elaborate self-abandonment, was a large, blond lady, wearing a fur coat - and a big floriferous hat. Her head lolled back against the padded corner - of the car, and her eyes were shut and her mouth open. “Me dear!” said Mr. - Butteridge, in a common, loud voice, “we're safe!” - </p> - <p> - She gave no sign. - </p> - <p> - “Me dear!” said Mr. Butteridge, in a greatly intensified loud voice, - “we're safe!” - </p> - <p> - She was still quite impassive. - </p> - <p> - Then Mr. Butteridge showed the fiery core of his soul. “If she is dead,” - he said, slowly lifting a fist towards the balloon above him, and speaking - in an immense tremulous bellow—“if she is dead, I will r-r-rend the - heavens like a garment! I must get her out,” he cried, his nostrils - dilated with emotion—“I must get her out. I cannot have her die in a - wicker-work basket nine feet square—she who was made for kings' - palaces! Keep holt of this car! Is there a strong man among ye to take her - if I hand her out?” - </p> - <p> - He swept the lady together by a powerful movement of his arms, and lifted - her. “Keep the car from jumping,” he said to those who clustered about - him. “Keep your weight on it. She is no light woman, and when she is out - of it—it will be relieved.” - </p> - <p> - Bert leapt lightly into a sitting position on the edge of the car. The - others took a firmer grip upon the ropes and ring. - </p> - <p> - “Are you ready?” said Mr. Butteridge. - </p> - <p> - He stood upon the bed-bench and lifted the lady carefully. Then he sat - down on the wicker edge opposite to Bert, and put one leg over to dangle - outside. A rope or so seemed to incommode him. “Will some one assist me?” - he said. “If they would take this lady?” - </p> - <p> - It was just at this moment, with Mr. Butteridge and the lady balanced - finely on the basket brim, that she came-to. She came-to suddenly and - violently with a loud, heart-rending cry of “Alfred! Save me!” And she - waved her arms searchingly, and then clasped Mr. Butteridge about. - </p> - <p> - It seemed to Bert that the car swayed for a moment and then buck-jumped - and kicked him. Also he saw the boots of the lady and the right leg of the - gentleman describing arcs through the air, preparatory to vanishing over - the side of the car. His impressions were complex, but they also - comprehended the fact that he had lost his balance, and was going to stand - on his head inside this creaking basket. He spread out clutching arms. He - did stand on his head, more or less, his tow-beard came off and got in his - mouth, and his cheek slid along against padding. His nose buried itself in - a bag of sand. The car gave a violent lurch, and became still. - </p> - <p> - “Confound it!” he said. - </p> - <p> - He had an impression he must be stunned because of a surging in his ears, - and because all the voices of the people about him had become small and - remote. They were shouting like elves inside a hill. - </p> - <p> - He found it a little difficult to get on his feet. His limbs were mixed up - with the garments Mr. Butteridge had discarded when that gentleman had - thought he must needs plunge into the sea. Bert bawled out half angry, - half rueful, “You might have said you were going to tip the basket.” Then - he stood up and clutched the ropes of the car convulsively. - </p> - <p> - Below him, far below him, shining blue, were the waters of the English - Channel. Far off, a little thing in the sunshine, and rushing down as if - some one was bending it hollow, was the beach and the irregular cluster of - houses that constitutes Dymchurch. He could see the little crowd of people - he had so abruptly left. Grubb, in the white wrapper of a Desert Dervish, - was running along the edge of the sea. Mr. Butteridge was knee-deep in the - water, bawling immensely. The lady was sitting up with her floriferous hat - in her lap, shockingly neglected. The beach, east and west, was dotted - with little people—they seemed all heads and feet—looking up. - And the balloon, released from the twenty-five stone or so of Mr. - Butteridge and his lady, was rushing up into the sky at the pace of a - racing motor-car. “My crikey!” said Bert; “here's a go!” - </p> - <p> - He looked down with a pinched face at the receding beach, and reflected - that he wasn't giddy; then he made a superficial survey of the cords and - ropes about him with a vague idea of “doing something.” “I'm not going to - mess about with the thing,” he said at last, and sat down upon the - mattress. “I'm not going to touch it.... I wonder what one ought to do?” - </p> - <p> - Soon he got up again and stared for a long time it the sinking world - below, at white cliffs to the east and flattening marsh to the left, at a - minute wide prospect of weald and downland, at dim towns and harbours and - rivers and ribbon-like roads, at ships and ships, decks and foreshortened - funnels upon the ever-widening sea, and at the great mono-rail bridge that - straddled the Channel from Folkestone to Boulogne, until at last, first - little wisps and then a veil of filmy cloud hid the prospect from his - eyes. He wasn't at all giddy nor very much frightened, only in a state of - enormous consternation. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER III. THE BALLOON - </h2> - <h3> - I - </h3> - <p> - Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limited - soul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth century produced by - the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his life in - narrow streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, and in a - narrow circle of ideas from which there was no escape. He thought the - whole duty of man was to be smarter than his fellows, get his hands, as he - put it, “on the dibs,” and have a good time. He was, in fact, the sort of - man who had made England and America what they were. The luck had been - against him so far, but that was by the way. He was a mere aggressive and - acquisitive individual with no sense of the State, no habitual loyalty, no - devotion, no code of honour, no code even of courage. Now by a curious - accident he found himself lifted out of his marvellous modern world for a - time, out of all the rush and confused appeals of it, and floating like a - thing dead and disembodied between sea and sky. It was as if Heaven was - experimenting with him, had picked him out as a sample from the English - millions, to look at him more nearly, and to see what was happening to the - soul of man. But what Heaven made of him in that case I cannot profess to - imagine, for I have long since abandoned all theories about the ideals and - satisfactions of Heaven. - </p> - <p> - To be alone in a balloon at a height of fourteen or fifteen thousand feet—and - to that height Bert Smallways presently rose is like nothing else in human - experience. It is one of the supreme things possible to man. No flying - machine can ever better it. It is to pass extraordinarily out of human - things. It is to be still and alone to an unprecedented degree. It is - solitude without the suggestion of intervention; it is calm without a - single irrelevant murmur. It is to see the sky. No sound reaches one of - all the roar and jar of humanity, the air is clear and sweet beyond the - thought of defilement. No bird, no insect comes so high. No wind blows - ever in a balloon, no breeze rustles, for it moves with the wind and is - itself a part of the atmosphere. Once started, it does not rock nor sway; - you cannot feel whether it rises or falls. Bert felt acutely cold, but he - wasn't mountain-sick; he put on the coat and overcoat and gloves - Butteridge had discarded—put them over the “Desert Dervish” sheet - that covered his cheap best suit—and sat very still for a long, - time, overawed by the new-found quiet of the world. Above him was the - light, translucent, billowing globe of shining brown oiled silk and the - blazing sunlight and the great deep blue dome of the sky. - </p> - <p> - Below, far below, was a torn floor of sunlit cloud slashed by enormous - rents through which he saw the sea. - </p> - <p> - If you had been watching him from below, you would have seen his head, a - motionless little black knob, sticking out from the car first of all for a - long time on one side, and then vanishing to reappear after a time at some - other point. - </p> - <p> - He wasn't in the least degree uncomfortable nor afraid. He did think that - as this uncontrollable thing had thus rushed up the sky with him it might - presently rush down again, but this consideration did not trouble him very - much. Essentially his state was wonder. There is no fear nor trouble in - balloons—until they descend. - </p> - <p> - “Gollys!” he said at last, feeling a need for talking; “it's better than a - motor-bike.” - </p> - <p> - “It's all right!” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose they're telegraphing about, about me.”... - </p> - <p> - The second hour found him examining the equipment of the car with great - particularity. Above him was the throat of the balloon bunched and tied - together, but with an open lumen through which Bert could peer up into a - vast, empty, quiet interior, and out of which descended two fine cords of - unknown import, one white, one crimson, to pockets below the ring. The - netting about the balloon-ended in cords attached to the ring, a big - steel-bound hoop to which the car was slung by ropes. From it depended the - trail rope and grapnel, and over the sides of the car were a number of - canvas bags that Bert decided must be ballast to “chuck down” if the - balloon fell. (“Not much falling just yet,” said Bert.) - </p> - <p> - There were an aneroid and another box-shaped instrument hanging from the - ring. The latter had an ivory plate bearing “statoscope” and other words - in French, and a little indicator quivered and waggled, between Montee and - Descente. “That's all right,” said Bert. “That tells if you're going up or - down.” On the crimson padded seat of the balloon there lay a couple of - rugs and a Kodak, and in opposite corners of the bottom of the car were an - empty champagne bottle and a glass. “Refreshments,” said Bert - meditatively, tilting the empty bottle. Then he had a brilliant idea. The - two padded bed-like seats, each with blankets and mattress, he perceived, - were boxes, and within he found Mr. Butteridge's conception of an adequate - equipment for a balloon ascent: a hamper which included a game pie, a - Roman pie, a cold fowl, tomatoes, lettuce, ham sandwiches, shrimp - sandwiches, a large cake, knives and forks and paper plates, self-heating - tins of coffee and cocoa, bread, butter, and marmalade, several carefully - packed bottles of champagne, bottles of Perrier water, and a big jar of - water for washing, a portfolio, maps, and a compass, a rucksack containing - a number of conveniences, including curling-tongs and hair-pins, a cap - with ear-flaps, and so forth. - </p> - <p> - “A 'ome from 'ome,” said Bert, surveying this provision as he tied the - ear-flaps under his chin. He looked over the side of the car. Far below - were the shining clouds. They had thickened so that the whole world was - hidden. Southward they were piled in great snowy masses, so that he was - half disposed to think them mountains; northward and eastward they were in - wavelike levels, and blindingly sunlit. - </p> - <p> - “Wonder how long a balloon keeps up?” he said. - </p> - <p> - He imagined he was not moving, so insensibly did the monster drift with - the air about it. “No good coming down till we shift a bit,” he said. - </p> - <p> - He consulted the statoscope. - </p> - <p> - “Still Monty,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Wonder what would happen if you pulled a cord?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” he decided. “I ain't going to mess it about.” - </p> - <p> - Afterwards he did pull both the ripping- and the valve-cords, but, as Mr. - Butteridge had already discovered, they had fouled a fold of silk in the - throat. Nothing happened. But for that little hitch the ripping-cord would - have torn the balloon open as though it had been slashed by a sword, and - hurled Mr. Smallways to eternity at the rate of some thousand feet a - second. “No go!” he said, giving it a final tug. Then he lunched. - </p> - <p> - He opened a bottle of champagne, which, as soon as he cut the wire, blew - its cork out with incredible violence, and for the most part followed it - into space. Bert, however, got about a tumblerful. “Atmospheric pressure,” - said Bert, finding a use at last for the elementary physiography of his - seventh-standard days. “I'll have to be more careful next time. No good - wastin' drink.” - </p> - <p> - Then he routed about for matches to utilise Mr. Butteridge's cigars; but - here again luck was on his side, and he couldn't find any wherewith to set - light to the gas above him. Or else he would have dropped in a flare, a - splendid but transitory pyrotechnic display. “'Eng old Grubb!” said Bert, - slapping unproductive pockets. “'E didn't ought to 'ave kep' my box. 'E's - always sneaking matches.” - </p> - <p> - He reposed for a time. Then he got up, paddled about, rearranged the - ballast bags on the floor, watched the clouds for a time, and turned over - the maps on the locker. Bert liked maps, and he spent some time in trying - to find one of France or the Channel; but they were all British ordnance - maps of English counties. That set him thinking about languages and trying - to recall his seventh-standard French. “Je suis Anglais. C'est une - meprise. Je suis arrive par accident ici,” he decided upon as convenient - phrases. Then it occurred to him that he would entertain himself by - reading Mr. Butteridge's letters and examining his pocket-book, and in - this manner he whiled away the afternoon. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - He sat upon the padded locker, wrapped about very carefully, for the air, - though calm, was exhilaratingly cold and clear. He was wearing first a - modest suit of blue serge and all the unpretending underwear of a suburban - young man of fashion, with sandal-like cycling-shoes and brown stockings - drawn over his trouser ends; then the perforated sheet proper to a Desert - Dervish; then the coat and waistcoat and big fur-trimmed overcoat of Mr. - Butteridge; then a lady's large fur cloak, and round his knees a blanket. - Over his head was a tow wig, surmounted by a large cap of Mr. Butteridge's - with the flaps down over his ears. And some fur sleeping-boots of Mr. - Butteridge's warmed his feet. The car of the balloon was small and neat, - some bags of ballast the untidiest of its contents, and he had found a - light folding-table and put it at his elbow, and on that was a glass with - champagne. And about him, above and below, was space—such a clear - emptiness and silence of space as only the aeronaut can experience. - </p> - <p> - He did not know where he might be drifting, or what might happen next. He - accepted this state of affairs with a serenity creditable to the - Smallways' courage, which one might reasonably have expected to be of a - more degenerate and contemptible quality altogether. His impression was - that he was bound to come down somewhere, and that then, if he wasn't - smashed, some one, some “society” perhaps, would probably pack him and the - balloon back to England. If not, he would ask very firmly for the British - Consul. - </p> - <p> - “Le consuelo Britannique,” he decided this would be. “Apportez moi a le - consuelo Britannique, s'il vous plait,” he would say, for he was by no - means ignorant of French. In the meanwhile, he found the intimate aspects - of Mr. Butteridge an interesting study. - </p> - <p> - There were letters of an entirely private character addressed to Mr. - Butteridge, and among others several love-letters of a devouring sort in a - large feminine hand. These are no business of ours, and one remarks with - regret that Bert read them. - </p> - <p> - When he had read them he remarked, “Gollys!” in an awestricken tone, and - then, after a long interval, “I wonder if that was her? - </p> - <p> - “Lord!” - </p> - <p> - He mused for a time. - </p> - <p> - He resumed his exploration of the Butteridge interior. It included a - number of press cuttings of interviews and also several letters in German, - then some in the same German handwriting, but in English. “Hul-LO!” said - Bert. - </p> - <p> - One of the latter, the first he took, began with an apology to Butteridge - for not writing to him in English before, and for the inconvenience and - delay that had been caused him by that, and went on to matter that Bert - found exciting in, the highest degree. “We can understand entirely the - difficulties of your position, and that you shall possibly be watched at - the present juncture.—But, sir, we do not believe that any serious - obstacles will be put in your way if you wished to endeavour to leave the - country and come to us with your plans by the customary routes—either - via Dover, Ostend, Boulogne, or Dieppe. We find it difficult to think you - are right in supposing yourself to be in danger of murder for your - invaluable invention.” - </p> - <p> - “Funny!” said Bert, and meditated. - </p> - <p> - Then he went through the other letters. - </p> - <p> - “They seem to want him to come,” said Bert, “but they don't seem hurting - themselves to get 'im. Or else they're shamming don't care to get his - prices down. - </p> - <p> - “They don't quite seem to be the gov'ment,” he reflected, after an - interval. “It's more like some firm's paper. All this printed stuff at the - top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons. Ballonstoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to - me. - </p> - <p> - “But he was trying to sell his blessed secret abroad. That's all right. No - Greek about that! Gollys! Here IS the secret!” - </p> - <p> - He tumbled off the seat, opened the locker, and had the portfolio open - before him on the folding-table. It was full of drawings done in the - peculiar flat style and conventional colours engineers adopt. And, in, - addition there were some rather under-exposed photographs, obviously done - by an amateur, at close quarters, of the actual machine's mutterings had - made, in its shed near the Crystal Palace. Bert found he was trembling. - “Lord” he said, “here am I and the whole blessed secret of flying—lost - up here on the roof of everywhere. - </p> - <p> - “Let's see!” He fell to studying the drawings and comparing them with the - photographs. They puzzled him. Half of them seemed to be missing. He tried - to imagine how they fitted together, and found the effort too great for - his mind. - </p> - <p> - “It's tryin',” said Bert. “I wish I'd been brought up to the engineering. - If I could only make it out!” - </p> - <p> - He went to the side of the car and remained for a time staring with - unseeing eyes at a huge cluster of great clouds—a cluster of slowly - dissolving Monte Rosas, sunlit below. His attention was arrested by a - strange black spot that moved over them. It alarmed him. It was a black - spot moving slowly with him far below, following him down there, - indefatigably, over the cloud mountains. Why should such a thing follow - him? What could it be?... - </p> - <p> - He had an inspiration. “Uv course!” he said. It was the shadow of the - balloon. But he still watched it dubiously for a time. - </p> - <p> - He returned to the plans on the table. - </p> - <p> - He spent a long afternoon between his struggles to understand them and - fits of meditation. He evolved a remarkable new sentence in French. - </p> - <p> - “Voici, Mossoo!—Je suis un inventeur Anglais. Mon nom est - Butteridge. Beh. oo. teh. teh. eh. arr. I. deh. geh. eh. J'avais ici pour - vendre le secret de le flying-machine. Comprenez? Vendre pour l'argent - tout suite, l'argent en main. Comprenez? C'est le machine a jouer dans - l'air. Comprenez? C'est le machine a faire l'oiseau. Comprenez? Balancer? - Oui, exactement! Battir l'oiseau en fait, a son propre jeu. Je desire de - vendre ceci a votre government national. Voulez vous me directer la? - </p> - <p> - “Bit rummy, I expect, from the point of view of grammar,” said Bert, “but - they ought to get the hang of it all right. - </p> - <p> - “But then, if they arst me to explain the blessed thing?” - </p> - <p> - He returned in a worried way to the plans. “I don't believe it's all - here!” he said.... - </p> - <p> - He got more and more perplexed up there among the clouds as to what he - should do with this wonderful find of his. At any moment, so far as he - knew he might descend among he knew not what foreign people. - </p> - <p> - “It's the chance of my life!” he said. - </p> - <p> - It became more and more manifest to him that it wasn't. “Directly I come - down they'll telegraph—put it in the papers. Butteridge'll know of - it and come along—on my track.” - </p> - <p> - Butteridge would be a terrible person to be on any one's track. Bert - thought of the great black moustaches, the triangular nose, the searching - bellow and the glare. His afternoon's dream of a marvellous seizure and - sale of the great Butteridge secret crumpled up in his mind, dissolved, - and vanished. He awoke to sanity again. - </p> - <p> - “Wouldn't do. What's the good of thinking of it?” He proceeded slowly and - reluctantly to replace the Butteridge papers in pockets and portfolio as - he had found them. He became aware of a splendid golden light upon the - balloon above him, and of a new warmth in the blue dome of the sky. He - stood up and beheld the sun, a great ball of blinding gold, setting upon a - tumbled sea of gold-edged crimson and purple clouds, strange and wonderful - beyond imagining. Eastward cloud-land stretched for ever, darkling blue, - and it seemed to Bert the whole round hemisphere of the world was under - his eyes. - </p> - <p> - Then far, away over the blue he caught sight of three long, dark shapes - like hurrying fish that drove one after the other, as porpoises follow one - another in the water. They were very fish-like indeed—with tails. It - was an unconvincing impression in that light. He blinked his eyes, stared - again, and they had vanished. For a long time he scrutinised those remote - blue levels and saw no more.... - </p> - <p> - “Wonder if I ever saw anything,” he said, and then: “There ain't such - things....” - </p> - <p> - Down went the sun and down, not diving steeply, but passing northward as - it sank, and then suddenly daylight and the expansive warmth of daylight - had gone altogether, and the index of the statoscope quivered over to - Descente. - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - “NOW what's going to 'appen?” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - He found the cold, grey cloud wilderness rising towards him with a wide, - slow steadiness. As he sank down among them the clouds ceased to seem the - snowclad mountain-slopes they had resembled heretofore, became - unsubstantial, confessed an immense silent drift and eddy in their - substance. For a moment, when he was nearly among their twilight masses, - his descent was checked. Then abruptly the sky was hidden, the last - vestiges of daylight gone, and he was falling rapidly in an evening - twilight through a whirl of fine snowflakes that streamed past him towards - the zenith, that drifted in upon the things about him and melted, that - touched his face with ghostly fingers. He shivered. His breath came - smoking from his lips, and everything was instantly bedewed and wet. - </p> - <p> - He had an impression of a snowstorm pouring with unexampled and increasing - fury UPWARD; then he realised that he was falling faster and faster. - </p> - <p> - Imperceptibly a sound grew upon his ears. The great silence of the world - was at an end. What was this confused sound? - </p> - <p> - He craned his head over the side, concerned, perplexed. - </p> - <p> - First he seemed to see, and then not to see. Then he saw clearly little - edges of foam pursuing each other, and a wide waste of weltering waters - below him. Far away was a pilot boat with a big sail bearing dim black - letters, and a little pinkish-yellow light, and it was rolling and - pitching, rolling and pitching in a gale, while he could feel no wind at, - all. Soon the sound of waters was loud and near. He was dropping, dropping—into - the sea! - </p> - <p> - He became convulsively active. - </p> - <p> - “Ballast!” he cried, and seized a little sack from the floor, and heaved - it overboard. He did not wait for the effect of that, but sent another - after it. He looked over in time to see a minute white splash in the dim - waters below him, and then he was back in the snow and clouds again. - </p> - <p> - He sent out quite needlessly a third sack of ballast and a fourth, and - presently had the immense satisfaction of soaring up out of the damp and - chill into the clear, cold, upper air in which the day still lingered. - “Thang-God!” he said, with all his heart. - </p> - <p> - A few stars now had pierced the blue, and in the east there shone brightly - a prolate moon. - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - That first downward plunge filled Bert with a haunting sense of boundless - waters below. It was a summer's night, but it seemed to him, nevertheless, - extraordinarily long. He had a feeling of insecurity that he fancied quite - irrationally the sunrise would dispel. Also he was hungry. He felt, in the - dark, in the locker, put his fingers in the Roman pie, and got some - sandwiches, and he also opened rather successfully a half-bottle of - champagne. That warmed and restored him, he grumbled at Grubb about the - matches, wrapped himself up warmly on the locker, and dozed for a time. He - got up once or twice to make sure that he was still securely high above - the sea. The first time the moonlit clouds were white and dense, and the - shadow of the balloon ran athwart them like a dog that followed; - afterwards they seemed thinner. As he lay still, staring up at the huge - dark balloon above, he made a discovery. His—or rather Mr. - Butteridge's—waistcoat rustled as he breathed. It was lined with - papers. But Bert could not see to get them out or examine them, much as he - wished to do so.... - </p> - <p> - He was awakened by the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, and a - clamour of birds. He was driving slowly at a low level over a broad land - lit golden by sunrise under a clear sky. He stared out upon hedgeless, - well-cultivated fields intersected by roads, each lined with cable-bearing - red poles. He had just passed over a compact, whitewashed, village with a - straight church tower and steep red-tiled roofs. A number of peasants, men - and women, in shiny blouses and lumpish footwear, stood regarding him, - arrested on their way to work. He was so low that the end of his rope was - trailing. - </p> - <p> - He stared out at these people. “I wonder how you land,” he thought. - </p> - <p> - “S'pose I OUGHT to land?” - </p> - <p> - He found himself drifting down towards a mono-rail line, and hastily flung - out two or three handfuls of ballast to clear it. - </p> - <p> - “Lemme see! One might say just 'Pre'nez'! Wish I knew the French for take - hold of the rope!... I suppose they are French?” - </p> - <p> - He surveyed the country again. “Might be Holland. Or Luxembourg. Or - Lorraine 's far as <i>I</i> know. Wonder what those big affairs over there - are? Some sort of kiln. Prosperous-looking country...” - </p> - <p> - The respectability of the country's appearance awakened answering chords - in his nature. - </p> - <p> - “Make myself a bit ship-shape first,” he said. - </p> - <p> - He resolved to rise a little and get rid of his wig (which now felt hot on - his head), and so forth. He threw out a bag of ballast, and was astonished - to find himself careering up through the air very rapidly. - </p> - <p> - “Blow!” said Mr. Smallways. “I've over-done the ballast trick.... Wonder - when I shall get down again?... brekfus' on board, anyhow.” - </p> - <p> - He removed his cap and wig, for the air was warm, and an improvident - impulse made him cast the latter object overboard. The statoscope - responded with a vigorous swing to Monte. - </p> - <p> - “The blessed thing goes up if you only LOOK overboard,” he remarked, and - assailed the locker. He found among other items several tins of liquid - cocoa containing explicit directions for opening that he followed with - minute care. He pierced the bottom with the key provided in the holes - indicated, and forthwith the can grew from cold to hotter and hotter, - until at last he could scarcely touch it, and then he opened the can at - the other end, and there was his cocoa smoking, without the use of match - or flame of any sort. It was an old invention, but new to Bert. There was - also ham and marmalade and bread, so that he had a really very tolerable - breakfast indeed. - </p> - <p> - Then he took off his overcoat, for the sunshine was now inclined to be - hot, and that reminded him of the rustling he had heard in the night. He - took off the waistcoat and examined it. “Old Butteridge won't like me - unpicking this.” He hesitated, and finally proceeded to unpick it. He - found the missing drawings of the lateral rotating planes, on which the - whole stability of the flying machine depended. - </p> - <p> - An observant angel would have seen Bert sitting for a long time after this - discovery in a state of intense meditation. Then at last he rose with an - air of inspiration, took Mr. Butteridge's ripped, demolished, and - ransacked waistcoat, and hurled it from the balloon whence it fluttered - down slowly and eddyingly until at last it came to rest with a contented - flop upon the face of German tourist sleeping peacefully beside the - Hohenweg near Wildbad. Also this sent the balloon higher, and so into a - position still more convenient for observation by our imaginary angel who - would next have seen Mr. Smallways tear open his own jacket and waistcoat, - remove his collar, open his shirt, thrust his hand into his bosom, and - tear his heart out—or at least, if not his heart, some large bright - scarlet object. If the observer, overcoming a thrill of celestial horror, - had scrutinised this scarlet object more narrowly, one of Bert's most - cherished secrets, one of his essential weaknesses, would have been laid - bare. It was a red-flannel chest-protector, one of those large - quasi-hygienic objects that with pills and medicines take the place of - beneficial relics and images among the Protestant peoples of Christendom. - Always Bert wore this thing; it was his cherished delusion, based on the - advice of a shilling fortune-teller at Margate, that he was weak in the - lungs. - </p> - <p> - He now proceeded to unbutton his fetish, to attack it with a penknife, and - to thrust the new-found plans between the two layers of imitation Saxony - flannel of which it was made. Then with the help of Mr. Butteridge's small - shaving mirror and his folding canvas basin he readjusted his costume with - the gravity of a man who has taken an irrevocable step in life, buttoned - up his jacket, cast the white sheet of the Desert Dervish on one side, - washed temperately, shaved, resumed the big cap and the fur overcoat, and, - much refreshed by these exercises, surveyed the country below him. - </p> - <p> - It was indeed a spectacle of incredible magnificence. If perhaps it was - not so strange and magnificent as the sunlit cloudland of the previous - day, it was at any rate infinitely more interesting. - </p> - <p> - The air was at its utmost clearness and except to the south and south-west - there was not a cloud in the sky. The country was hilly, with occasional - fir plantations and bleak upland spaces, but also with numerous farms, and - the hills were deeply intersected by the gorges of several winding rivers - interrupted at intervals by the banked-up ponds and weirs of electric - generating wheels. It was dotted with bright-looking, steep-roofed, - villages, and each showed a distinctive and interesting church beside its - wireless telegraph steeple; here and there were large chateaux and parks - and white roads, and paths lined with red and white cable posts were - extremely conspicuous in the landscape. There were walled enclosures like - gardens and rickyards and great roofs of barns and many electric dairy - centres. The uplands were mottled with cattle. At places he would see the - track of one of the old railroads (converted now to mono-rails) dodging - through tunnels and crossing embankments, and a rushing hum would mark the - passing of a train. Everything was extraordinarily clear as well as - minute. Once or twice he saw guns and soldiers, and was reminded of the - stir of military preparations he had witnessed on the Bank Holiday in - England; but there was nothing to tell him that these military - preparations were abnormal or to explain an occasional faint irregular - firing Of guns that drifted up to him.... - </p> - <p> - “Wish I knew how to get down,” said Bert, ten thousand feet or so above it - all, and gave himself to much futile tugging at the red and white cords. - Afterwards he made a sort of inventory of the provisions. Life in the high - air was giving him an appalling appetite, and it seemed to him discreet at - this stage to portion out his supply into rations. So far as he could see - he might pass a week in the air. - </p> - <p> - At first all the vast panorama below had been as silent as a painted - picture. But as the day wore on and the gas diffused slowly from the - balloon, it sank earthward again, details increased, men became more - visible, and he began to hear the whistle and moan of trains and cars, - sounds of cattle, bugles and kettle drums, and presently even men's - voices. And at last his guide-rope was trailing again, and he found it - possible to attempt a landing. Once or twice as the rope dragged over - cables he found his hair erect with electricity, and once he had a slight - shock, and sparks snapped about the car. He took these things among the - chances of the voyage. He had one idea now very clear in his mind, and - that was to drop the iron grapnel that hung from the ring. - </p> - <p> - From the first this attempt was unfortunate, perhaps because the place for - descent was ill-chosen. A balloon should come down in an empty open space, - and he chose a crowd. He made his decision suddenly, and without proper - reflection. As he trailed, Bert saw ahead of him one of the most - attractive little towns in the world—a cluster of steep gables - surmounted by a high church tower and diversified with trees, walled, and - with a fine, large gateway opening out upon a tree-lined high road. All - the wires and cables of the countryside converged upon it like guests to - entertainment. It had a most home-like and comfortable quality, and it was - made gayer by abundant flags. Along the road a quantity of peasant folk, - in big pair-wheeled carts and afoot, were coming and going, besides an - occasional mono-rail car; and at the car-junction, under the trees outside - the town, was a busy little fair of booths. It seemed a warm, human, - well-rooted, and altogether delightful place to Bert. He came low over the - tree-tops, with his grapnel ready to throw and so anchor him—a - curious, interested, and interesting guest, so his imagination figured it, - in the very middle of it all. - </p> - <p> - He thought of himself performing feats with the sign language and chance - linguistics amidst a circle of admiring rustics.... - </p> - <p> - And then the chapter of adverse accidents began. - </p> - <p> - The rope made itself unpopular long before the crowd had fully realised - his advent over the trees. An elderly and apparently intoxicated peasant - in a shiny black hat, and carrying a large crimson umbrella, caught sight - of it first as it trailed past him, and was seized with a discreditable - ambition to kill it. He pursued it, briskly with unpleasant cries. It - crossed the road obliquely, splashed into a pail of milk upon a stall, and - slapped its milky tail athwart a motor-car load of factory girls halted - outside the town gates. They screamed loudly. People looked up and saw - Bert making what he meant to be genial salutations, but what they - considered, in view of the feminine outcry, to be insulting gestures. Then - the car hit the roof of the gatehouse smartly, snapped a flag staff, - played a tune upon some telegraph wires, and sent a broken wire like a - whip-lash to do its share in accumulating unpopularity. Bert, by clutching - convulsively, just escaped being pitched headlong. Two young soldiers and - several peasants shouted things up to him and shook fists at him and began - to run in pursuit as he disappeared over the wall into the town. - </p> - <p> - Admiring rustics, indeed! - </p> - <p> - The balloon leapt at once, in the manner of balloons when part of their - weight is released by touching down, with a sort of flippancy, and in - another moment Bert was over a street crowded with peasants and soldiers, - that opened into a busy market-square. The wave of unfriendliness pursued - him. - </p> - <p> - “Grapnel,” said Bert, and then with an afterthought shouted, “TETES there, - you! I say! I say! TETES. 'Eng it!” - </p> - <p> - The grapnel smashed down a steeply sloping roof, followed by an avalanche - of broken tiles, jumped the street amidst shrieks and cries, and smashed - into a plate-glass window with an immense and sickening impact. The - balloon rolled nauseatingly, and the car pitched. But the grapnel had not - held. It emerged at once bearing on one fluke, with a ridiculous air of - fastidious selection, a small child's chair, and pursued by a maddened - shopman. It lifted its catch, swung about with an appearance of painful - indecision amidst a roar of wrath, and dropped it at last neatly, and as - if by inspiration, over the head of a peasant woman in charge of an - assortment of cabbages in the market-place. - </p> - <p> - Everybody now was aware of the balloon. Everybody was either trying to - dodge the grapnel or catch the trail rope. With a pendulum-like swoop - through the crowd, that sent people flying right and left the grapnel came - to earth again, tried for and missed a stout gentleman in a blue suit and - a straw hat, smacked away a trestle from under a stall of haberdashery, - made a cyclist soldier in knickerbockers leap like a chamois, and secured - itself uncertainly among the hind-legs of a sheep—which made - convulsive, ungenerous efforts to free itself, and was dragged into a - position of rest against a stone cross in the middle of the place. The - balloon pulled up with a jerk. In another moment a score of willing hands - were tugging it earthward. At the same instant Bert became aware for the - first time of a fresh breeze blowing about him. - </p> - <p> - For some seconds he stood staggering in the car, which now swayed - sickeningly, surveying the exasperated crowd below him and trying to - collect his mind. He was extraordinarily astonished at this run of - mishaps. Were the people really so annoyed? Everybody seemed angry with - him. No one seemed interested or amused by his arrival. A disproportionate - amount of the outcry had the flavour of imprecation—had, indeed a - strong flavour of riot. Several greatly uniformed officials in cocked hats - struggled in vain to control the crowd. Fists and sticks were shaken. And - when Bert saw a man on the outskirts of the crowd run to a haycart and get - a brightly pronged pitch-fork, and a blue-clad soldier unbuckle his belt, - his rising doubt whether this little town was after all such a good place - for a landing became a certainty. - </p> - <p> - He had clung to the fancy that they would make something of a hero of him. - Now he knew that he was mistaken. - </p> - <p> - He was perhaps ten feet above the people when he made his decision. His - paralysis ceased. He leapt up on the seat, and, at imminent risk of - falling headlong, released the grapnel-rope from the toggle that held it, - sprang on to the trail rope and disengaged that also. A hoarse shout of - disgust greeted the descent of the grapnel-rope and the swift leap of the - balloon, and something—he fancied afterwards it was a turnip—whizzed - by his head. The trail-rope followed its fellow. The crowd seemed to jump - away from him. With an immense and horrifying rustle the balloon brushed - against a telephone pole, and for a tense instant he anticipated either an - electric explosion or a bursting of the oiled silk, or both. But fortune - was with him. - </p> - <p> - In another second he was cowering in the bottom of the car, and released - from the weight of the grapnel and the two ropes, rushing up once more - through the air. For a time he remained crouching, and when at last he - looked out again the little town was very small and travelling, with the - rest of lower Germany, in a circular orbit round and round the car—or - at least it appeared to be doing that. When he got used to it, he found - this rotation of the balloon rather convenient; it saved moving about in - the car. - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - Late in the afternoon of a pleasant summer day in the year 191-, if one - may borrow a mode of phrasing that once found favour with the readers of - the late G. P. R. James, a solitary balloonist—replacing the - solitary horseman of the classic romances—might have been observed - wending his way across Franconia in a north-easterly direction, and at a - height of about eleven thousand feet above the sea and still spindling - slowly. His head was craned over the side of the car, and he surveyed the - country below with an expression of profound perplexity; ever and again - his lips shaped inaudible words. “Shootin' at a chap,” for example, and - “I'll come down right enough soon as I find out 'ow.” Over the side of the - basket the robe of the Desert Dervish was hanging, an appeal for - consideration, an ineffectual white flag. - </p> - <p> - He was now very distinctly aware that the world below him, so far from - being the naive countryside of his earlier imaginings that day, sleepily - unconscious of him and capable of being amazed and nearly reverential at - his descent, was acutely irritated by his career, and extremely impatient - with the course he was taking.—But indeed it was not he who took - that course, but his masters, the winds of heaven. Mysterious voices spoke - to him in his ear, jerking the words up to him by means of megaphones, in - a weird and startling manner, in a great variety of languages. - Official-looking persons had signalled to him by means of flag flapping - and arm waving. On the whole a guttural variant of English prevailed in - the sentences that alighted upon the balloon; chiefly he was told to “gome - down or you will be shot.” - </p> - <p> - “All very well,” said Bert, “but 'ow?” - </p> - <p> - Then they shot a little wide of the car. Latterly he had been shot at six - or seven times, and once the bullet had gone by with a sound so - persuasively like the tearing of silk that he had resigned himself to the - prospect of a headlong fall. But either they were aiming near him or they - had missed, and as yet nothing was torn but the air about him—and - his anxious soul. - </p> - <p> - He was now enjoying a respite from these attentions, but he felt it was at - best an interlude, and he was doing what he could to appreciate his - position. Incidentally he was having some hot coffee and pie in an untidy - inadvertent manner, with an eye fluttering nervously over the side of the - car. At first he had ascribed the growing interest in his career to his - ill-conceived attempt to land in the bright little upland town, but now he - was beginning to realise that the military rather than the civil arm was - concerned about him. - </p> - <p> - He was quite involuntarily playing that weird mysterious part—the - part of an International Spy. He was seeing secret things. He had, in - fact, crossed the designs of no less a power than the German Empire, he - had blundered into the hot focus of Welt-Politik, he was drifting - helplessly towards the great Imperial secret, the immense aeronautic park - that had been established at a headlong pace in Franconia to develop - silently, swiftly, and on an immense scale the great discoveries of - Hunstedt and Stossel, and so to give Germany before all other nations a - fleet of airships, the air power and the Empire of the world. - </p> - <p> - Later, just before they shot him down altogether, Bert saw that great area - of passionate work, warm lit in the evening light, a great area of upland - on which the airships lay like a herd of grazing monsters at their feed. - It was a vast busy space stretching away northward as far as he could see, - methodically cut up into numbered sheds, gasometers, squad encampments, - storage areas, interlaced with the omnipresent mono-rail lines, and - altogether free from overhead wires or cables. Everywhere was the white, - black and yellow of Imperial Germany, everywhere the black eagles spread - their wings. Even without these indications, the large vigorous neatness - of everything would have marked it German. Vast multitudes of men went to - and fro, many in white and drab fatigue uniforms busy about the balloons, - others drilling in sensible drab. Here and there a full uniform glittered. - The airships chiefly engaged his attention, and he knew at once it was - three of these he had seen on the previous night, taking advantage of the - cloud welkin to manoeuvre unobserved. They were altogether fish-like. For - the great airships with which Germany attacked New York in her last - gigantic effort for world supremacy—before humanity realized that - world supremacy was a dream—were the lineal descendants of the - Zeppelin airship that flew over Lake Constance in 1906, and of the Lebaudy - navigables that made their memorable excursions over Paris in 1907 and - 1908. - </p> - <p> - These German airships were held together by rib-like skeletons of steel - and aluminium and a stout inelastic canvas outer-skin, within which was an - impervious rubber gas-bag, cut up by transverse dissepiments into from - fifty to a hundred compartments. These were all absolutely gas tight and - filled with hydrogen, and the entire aerostat was kept at any level by - means of a long internal balloonette of oiled and toughened silk canvas, - into which air could be forced and from which it could be pumped. So the - airship could be made either heavier or lighter than air, and losses of - weight through the consumption of fuel, the casting of bombs and so forth, - could also be compensated by admitting air to sections of the general - gas-bag. Ultimately that made a highly explosive mixture; but in all these - matters risks must be taken and guarded against. There was a steel axis to - the whole affair, a central backbone which terminated in the engine and - propeller, and the men and magazines were forward in a series of cabins - under the expanded headlike forepart. The engine, which was of the - extraordinarily powerful Pforzheim type, that supreme triumph of German - invention, was worked by wires from this forepart, which was indeed the - only really habitable part of the ship. If anything went wrong, the - engineers went aft along a rope ladder beneath the frame. The tendency of - the whole affair to roll was partly corrected by a horizontal lateral fin - on either side, and steering was chiefly effected by two vertical fins, - which normally lay back like gill-flaps on either side of the head. It was - indeed a most complete adaptation of the fish form to aerial conditions, - the position of swimming bladder, eyes, and brain being, however, below - instead of above. A striking, and unfish-like feature was the apparatus - for wireless telegraphy that dangled from the forward cabin—that is - to say, under the chin of the fish. - </p> - <p> - These monsters were capable of ninety miles an hour in a calm, so that - they could face and make headway against nearly everything except the - fiercest tornado. They varied in length from eight hundred to two thousand - feet, and they had a carrying power of from seventy to two hundred tons. - How many Germany possessed history does not record, but Bert counted - nearly eighty great bulks receding in perspective during his brief - inspection. Such were the instruments on which she chiefly relied to - sustain her in her repudiation of the Monroe Doctrine and her bold bid for - a share in the empire of the New World. But not altogether did she rely on - these; she had also a one-man bomb-throwing Drachenflieger of unknown - value among the resources. - </p> - <p> - But the Drachenflieger were away in the second great aeronautic park east - of Hamburg, and Bert Smallways saw nothing of them in the bird's-eye view - he took of the Franconian establishment before they shot him down very - neatly. The bullet tore past him and made a sort of pop as it pierced his - balloon—a pop that was followed by a rustling sigh and a steady - downward movement. And when in the confusion of the moment he dropped a - bag of ballast, the Germans, very politely but firmly overcame his - scruples by shooting his balloon again twice. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IV. THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - Of all the productions of the human imagination that make the world in - which Mr. Bert Smallways lived confusingly wonderful, there was none quite - so strange, so headlong and disturbing, so noisy and persuasive and - dangerous, as the modernisations of patriotism produced by imperial and - international politics. In the soul of all men is a liking for kind, a - pride in one's own atmosphere, a tenderness for one's Mother speech and - one's familiar land. Before the coming of the Scientific Age this group of - gentle and noble emotions had been a fine factor in the equipment of every - worthy human being, a fine factor that had its less amiable aspect in a - usually harmless hostility to strange people, and a usually harmless - detraction of strange lands. But with the wild rush of change in the pace, - scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of human life that then - occurred, the old boundaries, the old seclusions and separations were - violently broken down. All the old settled mental habits and traditions of - men found themselves not simply confronted by new conditions, but by - constantly renewed and changing new conditions. They had no chance of - adapting themselves. They were annihilated or perverted or inflamed beyond - recognition. - </p> - <p> - Bert Smallways' grandfather, in the days when Bun Hill was a village under - the sway of Sir Peter Bone's parent, had “known his place” to the - uttermost farthing, touched his hat to his betters, despised and - condescended to his inferiors, and hadn't changed an idea from the cradle - to the grave. He was Kentish and English, and that meant hops, beer, - dog-rose's, and the sort of sunshine that was best in the world. - Newspapers and politics and visits to “Lunnon” weren't for the likes of - him. Then came the change. These earlier chapters have given an idea of - what happened to Bun Hill, and how the flood of novel things had poured - over its devoted rusticity. Bert Smallways was only one of countless - millions in Europe and America and Asia who, instead of being born rooted - in the soil, were born struggling in a torrent they never clearly - understood. All the faiths of their fathers had been taken by surprise, - and startled into the strangest forms and reactions. Particularly did the - fine old tradition of patriotism get perverted and distorted in the rush - of the new times. Instead of the sturdy establishment in prejudice of - Bert's grandfather, to whom the word “Frenchified” was the ultimate term - of contempt, there flowed through Bert's brain a squittering succession of - thinly violent ideas about German competition, about the Yellow Danger, - about the Black Peril, about the White Man's Burthen—that is to say, - Bert's preposterous right to muddle further the naturally very muddled - politics of the entirely similar little cads to himself (except for a - smear of brown) who smoked cigarettes and rode bicycles in Buluwayo, - Kingston (Jamaica), or Bombay. These were Bert's “Subject Races,” and he - was ready to die—by proxy in the person of any one who cared to - enlist—to maintain his hold upon that right. It kept him awake at - nights to think that he might lose it. - </p> - <p> - The essential fact of the politics of the age in which Bert Smallways - lived—the age that blundered at last into the catastrophe of the War - in the Air—was a very simple one, if only people had had the - intelligence to be simple about it. The development of Science had altered - the scale of human affairs. By means of rapid mechanical traction, it had - brought men nearer together, so much nearer socially, economically, - physically, that the old separations into nations and kingdoms were no - longer possible, a newer, wider synthesis was not only needed, but - imperatively demanded. Just as the once independent dukedoms of France had - to fuse into a nation, so now the nations had to adapt themselves to a - wider coalescence, they had to keep what was precious and possible, and - concede what was obsolete and dangerous. A saner world would have - perceived this patent need for a reasonable synthesis, would have - discussed it temperately, achieved and gone on to organise the great - civilisation that was manifestly possible to mankind. The world of Bert - Smallways did nothing of the sort. Its national governments, its national - interests, would not hear of anything so obvious; they were too suspicious - of each other, too wanting in generous imaginations. They began to behave - like ill-bred people in a crowded public car, to squeeze against one - another, elbow, thrust, dispute and quarrel. Vain to point out to them - that they had only to rearrange themselves to be comfortable. Everywhere, - all over the world, the historian of the early twentieth century finds the - same thing, the flow and rearrangement of human affairs inextricably - entangled by the old areas, the old prejudices and a sort of heated - irascible stupidity, and everywhere congested nations in inconvenient - areas, slopping population and produce into each other, annoying each - other with tariffs, and every possible commercial vexation, and - threatening each other with navies and armies that grew every year more - portentous. - </p> - <p> - It is impossible now to estimate how much of the intellectual and physical - energy of the world was wasted in military preparation and equipment, but - it was an enormous proportion. Great Britain spent upon army and navy - money and capacity, that directed into the channels of physical culture - and education would have made the British the aristocracy of the world. - Her rulers could have kept the whole population learning and exercising up - to the age of eighteen and made a broad-chested and intelligent man of - every Bert Smallways in the islands, had they given the resources they - spent in war material to the making of men. Instead of which they waggled - flags at him until he was fourteen, incited him to cheer, and then turned - him out of school to begin that career of private enterprise we have - compactly recorded. France achieved similar imbecilities; Germany was, if - possible worse; Russia under the waste and stresses of militarism festered - towards bankruptcy and decay. All Europe was producing big guns and - countless swarms of little Smallways. The Asiatic peoples had been forced - in self-defence into a like diversion of the new powers science had - brought them. On the eve of the outbreak of the war there were six great - powers in the world and a cluster of smaller ones, each armed to the teeth - and straining every nerve to get ahead of the others in deadliness of - equipment and military efficiency. The great powers were first the United - States, a nation addicted to commerce, but roused to military necessities - by the efforts of Germany to expand into South America, and by the natural - consequences of her own unwary annexations of land in the very teeth of - Japan. She maintained two immense fleets east and west, and internally she - was in violent conflict between Federal and State governments upon the - question of universal service in a defensive militia. Next came the great - alliance of Eastern Asia, a close-knit coalescence of China and Japan, - advancing with rapid strides year by year to predominance in the world's - affairs. Then the German alliance still struggled to achieve its dream of - imperial expansion, and its imposition of the German language upon a - forcibly united Europe. These were the three most spirited and aggressive - powers in the world. Far more pacific was the British Empire, perilously - scattered over the globe, and distracted now by insurrectionary movements - in Ireland and among all its Subject Races. It had given these subject - races cigarettes, boots, bowler hats, cricket, race meetings, cheap - revolvers, petroleum, the factory system of industry, halfpenny newspapers - in both English and the vernacular, inexpensive university degrees, - motor-bicycles and electric trams; it had produced a considerable - literature expressing contempt for the Subject Races, and rendered it - freely accessible to them, and it had been content to believe that nothing - would result from these stimulants because somebody once wrote “the - immemorial east”; and also, in the inspired words of Kipling— - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - East is east and west is west, - And never the twain shall meet. -</pre> - <p> - Instead of which, Egypt, India, and the subject countries generally had - produced new generations in a state of passionate indignation and the - utmost energy, activity and modernity. The governing class in Great - Britain was slowly adapting itself to a new conception, of the Subject - Races as waking peoples, and finding its efforts to keep the Empire - together under these, strains and changing ideas greatly impeded by the - entirely sporting spirit with which Bert Smallways at home (by the - million) cast his vote, and by the tendency of his more highly coloured - equivalents to be disrespectful to irascible officials. Their impertinence - was excessive; it was no mere stone-throwing and shouting. They would - quote Burns at them and Mill and Darwin and confute them in arguments. - </p> - <p> - Even more pacific than the British Empire were France and its allies, the - Latin powers, heavily armed states indeed, but reluctant warriors, and in - many ways socially and politically leading western civilisation. Russia - was a pacific power perforce, divided within itself, torn between - revolutionaries and reactionaries who were equally incapable of social - reconstruction, and so sinking towards a tragic disorder of chronic - political vendetta. Wedged in among these portentous larger bulks, swayed - and threatened by them, the smaller states of the world maintained a - precarious independence, each keeping itself armed as dangerously as its - utmost ability could contrive. - </p> - <p> - So it came about that in every country a great and growing body of - energetic and inventive men was busied either for offensive or defensive - ends, in elaborating the apparatus of war, until the accumulating tensions - should reach the breaking-point. Each power sought to keep its - preparations secret, to hold new weapons in reserve, to anticipate and - learn the preparations of its rivals. The feeling of danger from fresh - discoveries affected the patriotic imagination of every people in the - world. Now it was rumoured the British had an overwhelming gun, now the - French an invincible rifle, now the Japanese a new explosive, now the - Americans a submarine that would drive every ironclad from the seas. Each - time there would be a war panic. - </p> - <p> - The strength and heart of the nations was given to the thought of war, and - yet the mass of their citizens was a teeming democracy as heedless of and - unfitted for fighting, mentally, morally, physically, as any population - has ever been—or, one ventures to add, could ever be. That was the - paradox of the time. It was a period altogether unique in the world's - history. The apparatus of warfare, the art and method of fighting, changed - absolutely every dozen years in a stupendous progress towards perfection, - and people grew less and less warlike, and there was no war. - </p> - <p> - And then at last it came. It came as a surprise to all the world because - its real causes were hidden. Relations were strained between Germany and - the United States because of the intense exasperation of a tariff conflict - and the ambiguous attitude of the former power towards the Monroe - Doctrine, and they were strained between the United States and Japan - because of the perennial citizenship question. But in both cases these - were standing causes of offence. The real deciding cause, it is now known, - was the perfecting of the Pforzheim engine by Germany and the consequent - possibility of a rapid and entirely practicable airship. At that time - Germany was by far the most efficient power in the world, better organised - for swift and secret action, better equipped with the resources of modern - science, and with her official and administrative classes at a higher - level of education and training. These things she knew, and she - exaggerated that knowledge to the pitch of contempt for the secret - counsels of her neighbours. It may be that with the habit of - self-confidence her spying upon them had grown less thorough. Moreover, - she had a tradition of unsentimental and unscrupulous action that vitiated - her international outlook profoundly. With the coming of these new weapons - her collective intelligence thrilled with the sense that now her moment - had come. Once again in the history of progress it seemed she held the - decisive weapon. Now she might strike and conquer—before the others - had anything but experiments in the air. - </p> - <p> - Particularly she must strike America, swiftly, because there, if anywhere, - lay the chance of an aerial rival. It was known that America possessed a - flying-machine of considerable practical value, developed out of the - Wright model; but it was not supposed that the Washington War Office had - made any wholesale attempts to create an aerial navy. It was necessary to - strike before they could do so. France had a fleet of slow navigables, - several dating from 1908, that could make no possible headway against the - new type. They had been built solely for reconnoitring purposes on the - eastern frontier, they were mostly too small to carry more than a couple - of dozen men without arms or provisions, and not one could do forty miles - an hour. Great Britain, it seemed, in an access of meanness, temporised - and wrangled with the imperial spirited Butteridge and his extraordinary - invention. That also was not in play—and could not be for some - months at the earliest. From Asia there came no sign. The Germans - explained this by saying the yellow peoples were without invention. No - other competitor was worth considering. “Now or never,” said the Germans—“now - or never we may seize the air—as once the British seized the seas! - While all the other powers are still experimenting.” - </p> - <p> - Swift and systematic and secret were their preparations, and their plan - most excellent. So far as their knowledge went, America was the only - dangerous possibility; America, which was also now the leading trade rival - of Germany and one of the chief barriers to her Imperial expansion. So at - once they would strike at America. They would fling a great force across - the Atlantic heavens and bear America down unwarned and unprepared. - </p> - <p> - Altogether it was a well-imagined and most hopeful and spirited - enterprise, having regard to the information in the possession of the - German government. The chances of it being a successful surprise were very - great. The airship and the flying-machine were very different things from - ironclads, which take a couple of years to build. Given hands, given - plant, they could be made innumerably in a few weeks. Once the needful - parks and foundries were organised, air-ships and Drachenflieger could be - poured into the sky. Indeed, when the time came, they did pour into the - sky like, as a bitter French writer put it, flies roused from filth. - </p> - <p> - The attack upon America was to be the first move in this tremendous game. - But no sooner had it started than instantly the aeronautic parks were to - proceed to put together and inflate the second fleet which was to dominate - Europe and manoeuvre significantly over London, Paris, Rome, St. - Petersburg, or wherever else its moral effect was required. A World - Surprise it was to be—no less a World Conquest; and it is wonderful - how near the calmly adventurous minds that planned it came to succeeding - in their colossal design. - </p> - <p> - Von Sternberg was the Moltke of this War in the Air, but it was the - curious hard romanticism of Prince Karl Albert that won over the - hesitating Emperor to the scheme. Prince Karl Albert was indeed the - central figure of the world drama. He was the darling of the Imperialist - spirit in German, and the ideal of the new aristocratic feeling—the - new Chivalry, as it was called—that followed the overthrow of - Socialism through its internal divisions and lack of discipline, and the - concentration of wealth in the hands of a few great families. He was - compared by obsequious flatterers to the Black Prince, to Alcibiades, to - the young Caesar. To many he seemed Nietzsche's Overman revealed. He was - big and blond and virile, and splendidly non-moral. The first great feat - that startled Europe, and almost brought about a new Trojan war, was his - abduction of the Princess Helena of Norway and his blank refusal to marry - her. Then followed his marriage with Gretchen Krass, a Swiss girl of - peerless beauty. Then came the gallant rescue, which almost cost him his - life, of three drowning sailors whose boat had upset in the sea near - Heligoland. For that and his victory over the American yacht Defender, - C.C.I., the Emperor forgave him and placed him in control of the new - aeronautic arm of the German forces. This he developed with marvellous - energy and ability, being resolved, as he said, to give to Germany land - and sea and sky. The national passion for aggression found in him its - supreme exponent, and achieved through him its realisation in this - astounding war. But his fascination was more than national; all over the - world his ruthless strength dominated minds as the Napoleonic legend had - dominated minds. Englishmen turned in disgust from the slow, complex, - civilised methods of their national politics to this uncompromising, - forceful figure. Frenchmen believed in him. Poems were written to him in - American. - </p> - <p> - He made the war. - </p> - <p> - Quite equally with the rest of the world, the general German population - was taken by surprise by the swift vigour of the Imperial government. A - considerable literature of military forecasts, beginning as early as 1906 - with Rudolf Martin, the author not merely of a brilliant book of - anticipations, but of a proverb, “The future of Germany lies in the air,” - had, however, partially prepared the German imagination for some such - enterprise. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - Of all these world-forces and gigantic designs Bert Smallways knew nothing - until he found himself in the very focus of it all and gaped down amazed - on the spectacle of that giant herd of air-ships. Each one seemed as long - as the Strand, and as big about as Trafalgar Square. Some must have been a - third of a mile in length. He had never before seen anything so vast and - disciplined as this tremendous park. For the first time in his life he - really had an intimation of the extraordinary and quite important things - of which a contemporary may go in ignorance. He had always clung to the - illusion that Germans were fat, absurd men, who smoked china pipes, and - were addicted to knowledge and horseflesh and sauerkraut and indigestible - things generally. - </p> - <p> - His bird's-eye view was quite transitory. He ducked at the first shot; and - directly his balloon began to drop, his mind ran confusedly upon how he - might explain himself, and whether he should pretend to be Butteridge or - not. “O Lord!” he groaned, in an agony of indecision. Then his eye caught - his sandals, and he felt a spasm of self-disgust. “They'll think I'm a - bloomin' idiot,” he said, and then it was he rose up desperately and threw - over the sand-bag and provoked the second and third shots. - </p> - <p> - It flashed into his head, as he cowered in the bottom of the car, that he - might avoid all sorts of disagreeable and complicated explanations by - pretending to be mad. - </p> - <p> - That was his last idea before the airships seemed to rush up about him as - if to look at him, and his car hit the ground and bounded and pitched him - out on his head.... - </p> - <p> - He awoke to find himself famous, and to hear a voice crying, “Booteraidge! - Ja! Ja! Herr Booteraidge! Selbst!” - </p> - <p> - He was lying on a little patch of grass beside one of the main avenues of - the aeronautic park. The airships receded down a great vista, an immense - perspective, and the blunt prow of each was adorned with a black eagle of - a hundred feet or so spread. Down the other side of the avenue ran a - series of gas generators, and big hose-pipes trailed everywhere across the - intervening space. Close at hand was his now nearly deflated balloon and - the car on its side looking minutely small, a mere broken toy, a - shrivelled bubble, in contrast with the gigantic bulk of the nearer - airship. This he saw almost end-on, rising like a cliff and sloping - forward towards its fellow on the other side so as to overshadow the alley - between them. There was a crowd of excited people about him, big men - mostly in tight uniforms. Everybody was talking, and several were - shouting, in German; he knew that because they splashed and aspirated - sounds like startled kittens. - </p> - <p> - Only one phrase, repeated again and again could he recognize—the - name of “Herr Booteraidge.” - </p> - <p> - “Gollys!” said Bert. “They've spotted it.” - </p> - <p> - “Besser,” said some one, and some rapid German followed. - </p> - <p> - He perceived that close at hand was a field telephone, and that a tall - officer in blue was talking thereat about him. Another stood close beside - him with the portfolio of drawings and photographs in his hand. They - looked round at him. - </p> - <p> - “Do you spik Cherman, Herr Booteraidge?” - </p> - <p> - Bert decided that he had better be dazed. He did his best to seem - thoroughly dazed. “Where AM I?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - Volubility prevailed. “Der Prinz,” was mentioned. A bugle sounded far - away, and its call was taken up by one nearer, and then by one close at - hand. This seemed to increase the excitement greatly. A mono-rail car - bumbled past. The telephone bell rang passionately, and the tall officer - seemed to engage in a heated altercation. Then he approached the group - about Bert, calling out something about “mitbringen.” - </p> - <p> - An earnest-faced, emaciated man with a white moustache appealed to Bert. - “Herr Booteraidge, sir, we are chust to start!” - </p> - <p> - “Where am I?” Bert repeated. - </p> - <p> - Some one shook him by the other shoulder. “Are you Herr Booteraidge?” he - asked. - </p> - <p> - “Herr Booteraidge, we are chust to start!” repeated the white moustache, - and then helplessly, “What is de goot? What can we do?” - </p> - <p> - The officer from the telephone repeated his sentence about “Der Prinz” and - “mitbringen.” The man with the moustache stared for a moment, grasped an - idea and became violently energetic, stood up and bawled directions at - unseen people. Questions were asked, and the doctor at Bert's side - answered, “Ja! Ja!” several times, also something about “Kopf.” With a - certain urgency he got Bert rather unwillingly to his feet. Two huge - soldiers in grey advanced upon Bert and seized hold of him. “'Ullo!” said - Bert, startled. “What's up?” - </p> - <p> - “It is all right,” the doctor explained; “they are to carry you.” - </p> - <p> - “Where?” asked Bert, unanswered. - </p> - <p> - “Put your arms roundt their—hals—round them!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes! but where?” - </p> - <p> - “Hold tight!” - </p> - <p> - Before Bert could decide to say anything more he was whisked up by the two - soldiers. They joined hands to seat him, and his arms were put about their - necks. “Vorwarts!” Some one ran before him with the portfolio, and he was - borne rapidly along the broad avenue between the gas generators and the - airships, rapidly and on the whole smoothly except that once or twice his - bearers stumbled over hose-pipes and nearly let him down. - </p> - <p> - He was wearing Mr. Butteridge's Alpine cap, and his little shoulders were - in Mr. Butteridge's fur-lined overcoat, and he had responded to Mr. - Butteridge's name. The sandals dangled helplessly. Gaw! Everybody seemed - in a devil of a hurry. Why? He was carried joggling and gaping through the - twilight, marvelling beyond measure. - </p> - <p> - The systematic arrangement of wide convenient spaces, the quantities of - business-like soldiers everywhere, the occasional neat piles of material, - the ubiquitous mono-rail lines, and the towering ship-like hulls about - him, reminded him a little of impressions he had got as a boy on a visit - to Woolwich Dockyard. The whole camp reflected the colossal power of - modern science that had created it. A peculiar strangeness was produced by - the lowness of the electric light, which lay upon the ground, casting all - shadows upwards and making a grotesque shadow figure of himself and his - bearers on the airship sides, fusing all three of them into a monstrous - animal with attenuated legs and an immense fan-like humped body. The - lights were on the ground because as far as possible all poles and - standards had been dispensed with to prevent complications when the - airships rose. - </p> - <p> - It was deep twilight now, a tranquil blue-skyed evening; everything rose - out from the splashes of light upon the ground into dim translucent tall - masses; within the cavities of the airships small inspecting lamps glowed - like cloud-veiled stars, and made them seem marvellously unsubstantial. - Each airship had its name in black letters on white on either flank, and - forward the Imperial eagle sprawled, an overwhelming bird in the dimness. - </p> - <p> - Bugles sounded, mono-rail cars of quiet soldiers slithered burbling by. - The cabins under the heads of the airships were being lit up; doors opened - in them, and revealed padded passages. - </p> - <p> - Now and then a voice gave directions to workers indistinctly seen. - </p> - <p> - There was a matter of sentinels, gangways and a long narrow passage, a - scramble over a disorder of baggage, and then Bert found himself lowered - to the ground and standing in the doorway of a spacious cabin—it was - perhaps ten feet square and eight high, furnished with crimson padding and - aluminium. A tall, bird-like young man with a small head, a long nose, and - very pale hair, with his hands full of things like shaving-strops, - boot-trees, hair-brushes, and toilet tidies, was saying things about Gott - and thunder and Dummer Booteraidge as Bert entered. He was apparently an - evicted occupant. Then he vanished, and Bert was lying back on a couch in - the corner with a pillow under his head and the door of the cabin shut - upon him. He was alone. Everybody had hurried out again astonishingly. - </p> - <p> - “Gollys!” said Bert. “What next?” - </p> - <p> - He stared about him at the room. - </p> - <p> - “Butteridge! Shall I try to keep it up, or shan't I?” - </p> - <p> - The room he was in puzzled him. “'Tisn't a prison and 'tisn't a norfis?” - Then the old trouble came uppermost. “I wish to 'eaven I 'adn't these - silly sandals on,” he cried querulously to the universe. “They give the - whole blessed show away.” - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - His door was flung open, and a compact young man in uniform appeared, - carrying Mr. Butteridge's portfolio, rucksac, and shaving-glass. - </p> - <p> - “I say!” he said in faultless English as he entered. He had a beaming - face, and a sort of pinkish blond hair. “Fancy you being Butteridge.” He - slapped Bert's meagre luggage down. - </p> - <p> - “We'd have started,” he said, “in another half-hour! You didn't give - yourself much time!” - </p> - <p> - He surveyed Bert curiously. His gaze rested for a fraction of a moment on - the sandals. “You ought to have come on your flying-machine, Mr. - Butteridge.” - </p> - <p> - He didn't wait for an answer. “The Prince says I've got to look after you. - Naturally he can't see you now, but he thinks your coming's providential. - Last grace of Heaven. Like a sign. Hullo!” - </p> - <p> - He stood still and listened. - </p> - <p> - Outside there was a going to and fro of feet, a sound of distant bugles - suddenly taken up and echoed close at hand, men called out in loud tones - short, sharp, seemingly vital things, and were answered distantly. A bell - jangled, and feet went down the corridor. Then came a stillness more - distracting than sound, and then a great gurgling and rushing and - splashing of water. The young man's eyebrows lifted. He hesitated, and - dashed out of the room. Presently came a stupendous bang to vary the - noises without, then a distant cheering. The young man re-appeared. - </p> - <p> - “They're running the water out of the ballonette already.” - </p> - <p> - “What water?” asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - “The water that anchored us. Artful dodge. Eh?” - </p> - <p> - Bert tried to take it in. - </p> - <p> - “Of course!” said the compact young man. “You don't understand.” - </p> - <p> - A gentle quivering crept upon Bert's senses. “That's the engine,” said the - compact young man approvingly. “Now we shan't be long.” - </p> - <p> - Another long listening interval. - </p> - <p> - The cabin swayed. “By Jove! we're starting already;” he cried. “We're - starting!” - </p> - <p> - “Starting!” cried Bert, sitting up. “Where?” - </p> - <p> - But the young man was out of the room again. There were noises of German - in the passage, and other nerve-shaking sounds. - </p> - <p> - The swaying increased. The young man reappeared. “We're off, right - enough!” - </p> - <p> - “I say!” said Bert, “where are we starting? I wish you'd explain. What's - this place? I don't understand.” - </p> - <p> - “What!” cried the young man, “you don't understand?” - </p> - <p> - “No. I'm all dazed-like from that crack on the nob I got. Where ARE we? - WHERE are we starting?” - </p> - <p> - “Don't you know where you are—what this is?” - </p> - <p> - “Not a bit of it! What's all the swaying and the row?” - </p> - <p> - “What a lark!” cried the young man. “I say! What a thundering lark! Don't - you know? We're off to America, and you haven't realised. You've just - caught us by a neck. You're on the blessed old flagship with the Prince. - You won't miss anything. Whatever's on, you bet the Vaterland will be - there.” - </p> - <p> - “Us!—off to America?” - </p> - <p> - “Ra—ther!” - </p> - <p> - “In an airship?” - </p> - <p> - “What do YOU think?” - </p> - <p> - “Me! going to America on an airship! After that balloon! 'Ere! I say—I - don't want to go! I want to walk about on my legs. Let me get out! I - didn't understand.” - </p> - <p> - He made a dive for the door. - </p> - <p> - The young man arrested Bert with a gesture, took hold of a strap, lifted - up a panel in the padded wall, and a window appeared. “Look!” he said. - Side by side they looked out. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” said Bert. “We're going up!” - </p> - <p> - “We are!” said the young man, cheerfully; “fast!” - </p> - <p> - They were rising in the air smoothly and quietly, and moving slowly to the - throb of the engine athwart the aeronautic park. Down below it stretched, - dimly geometrical in the darkness, picked out at regular intervals by - glow-worm spangles of light. One black gap in the long line of grey, - round-backed airships marked the position from which the Vaterland had - come. Beside it a second monster now rose softly, released from its bonds - and cables into the air. Then, taking a beautifully exact distance, a - third ascended, and then a fourth. - </p> - <p> - “Too late, Mr. Butteridge!” the young man remarked. “We're off! I daresay - it is a bit of a shock to you, but there you are! The Prince said you'd - have to come.” - </p> - <p> - “Look 'ere,” said Bert. “I really am dazed. What's this thing? Where are - we going?” - </p> - <p> - “This, Mr. Butteridge,” said the young man, taking pains to be explicit, - “is an airship. It's the flagship of Prince Karl Albert. This is the - German air-fleet, and it is going over to America, to give that spirited - people 'what for.' The only thing we were at all uneasy about was your - invention. And here you are!” - </p> - <p> - “But!—you a German?” asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Lieutenant Kurt. Luft-lieutenant Kurt, at your service.” - </p> - <p> - “But you speak English!” - </p> - <p> - “Mother was English—went to school in England. Afterwards, Rhodes - scholar. German none the less for that. Detailed for the present, Mr. - Butteridge, to look after you. You're shaken by your fall. It's all right, - really. They're going to buy your machine and everything. You sit down, - and take it quite calmly. You'll soon get the hang of the position.” - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - Bert sat down on the locker, collecting his mind, and the young man talked - to him about the airship. - </p> - <p> - He was really a very tactful young man indeed, in a natural sort of way. - “Daresay all this is new to you,” he said; “not your sort of machine. - These cabins aren't half bad.” - </p> - <p> - He got up and walked round the little apartment, showing its points. - </p> - <p> - “Here is the bed,” he said, whipping down a couch from the wall and - throwing it back again with a click. “Here are toilet things,” and he - opened a neatly arranged cupboard. “Not much washing. No water we've got; - no water at all except for drinking. No baths or anything until we get to - America and land. Rub over with loofah. One pint of hot for shaving. - That's all. In the locker below you are rugs and blankets; you will need - them presently. They say it gets cold. I don't know. Never been up before. - Except a little work with gliders—which is mostly going down. - Three-quarters of the chaps in the fleet haven't. Here's a folding-chair - and table behind the door. Compact, eh?” - </p> - <p> - He took the chair and balanced it on his little finger. “Pretty light, eh? - Aluminium and magnesium alloy and a vacuum inside. All these cushions - stuffed with hydrogen. Foxy! The whole ship's like that. And not a man in - the fleet, except the Prince and one or two others, over eleven stone. - Couldn't sweat the Prince, you know. We'll go all over the thing - to-morrow. I'm frightfully keen on it.” - </p> - <p> - He beamed at Bert. “You DO look young,” he remarked. “I always thought - you'd be an old man with a beard—a sort of philosopher. I don't know - why one should expect clever people always to be old. I do.” - </p> - <p> - Bert parried that compliment a little awkwardly, and then the lieutenant - was struck with the riddle why Herr Butteridge had not come in his own - flying machine. - </p> - <p> - “It's a long story,” said Bert. “Look here!” he said abruptly, “I wish - you'd lend me a pair of slippers, or something. I'm regular sick of these - sandals. They're rotten things. I've been trying them for a friend.” - </p> - <p> - “Right O!” - </p> - <p> - The ex-Rhodes scholar whisked out of the room and reappeared with a - considerable choice of footwear—pumps, cloth bath-slippers, and a - purple pair adorned with golden sun-flowers. - </p> - <p> - But these he repented of at the last moment. - </p> - <p> - “I don't even wear them myself,” he said. “Only brought 'em in the zeal of - the moment.” He laughed confidentially. “Had 'em worked for me—in - Oxford. By a friend. Take 'em everywhere.” - </p> - <p> - So Bert chose the pumps. - </p> - <p> - The lieutenant broke into a cheerful snigger. “Here we are trying on - slippers,” he said, “and the world going by like a panorama below. Rather - a lark, eh? Look!” - </p> - <p> - Bert peeped with him out of the window, looking from the bright pettiness - of the red-and-silver cabin into a dark immensity. The land below, except - for a lake, was black and featureless, and the other airships were hidden. - “See more outside,” said the lieutenant. “Let's go! There's a sort of - little gallery.” - </p> - <p> - He led the way into the long passage, which was lit by one small electric - light, past some notices in German, to an open balcony and a light ladder - and gallery of metal lattice overhanging, empty space. Bert followed his - leader down to the gallery slowly and cautiously. From it he was able to - watch the wonderful spectacle of the first air-fleet flying through the - night. They flew in a wedge-shaped formation, the Vaterland highest and - leading, the tail receding into the corners of the sky. They flew in long, - regular undulations, great dark fish-like shapes, showing hardly any light - at all, the engines making a throb-throb-throbbing sound that was very - audible out on the gallery. They were going at a level of five or six - thousand feet, and rising steadily. Below, the country lay silent, a clear - darkness dotted and lined out with clusters of furnaces, and the lit - streets of a group of big towns. The world seemed to lie in a bowl; the - overhanging bulk of the airship above hid all but the lowest levels of the - sky. - </p> - <p> - They watched the landscape for a space. - </p> - <p> - “Jolly it must be to invent things,” said the lieutenant suddenly. “How - did you come to think of your machine first?” - </p> - <p> - “Worked it out,” said Bert, after a pause. “Jest ground away at it.” - </p> - <p> - “Our people are frightfully keen on you. They thought the British had got - you. Weren't the British keen?” - </p> - <p> - “In a way,” said Bert. “Still—it's a long story.” - </p> - <p> - “I think it's an immense thing—to invent. I couldn't invent a thing - to save my life.” - </p> - <p> - They both fell silent, watching the darkened world and following their - thoughts until a bugle summoned them to a belated dinner. Bert was - suddenly alarmed. “Don't you 'ave to dress and things?” he said. “I've - always been too hard at Science and things to go into Society and all - that.” - </p> - <p> - “No fear,” said Kurt. “Nobody's got more than the clothes they wear. We're - travelling light. You might perhaps take your overcoat off. They've an - electric radiator each end of the room.” - </p> - <p> - And so presently Bert found himself sitting to eat in the presence of the - “German Alexander”—that great and puissant Prince, Prince Karl - Albert, the War Lord, the hero of two hemispheres. He was a handsome, - blond man, with deep-set eyes, a snub nose, upturned moustache, and long - white hands, a strange-looking man. He sat higher than the others, under a - black eagle with widespread wings and the German Imperial flags; he was, - as it were, enthroned, and it struck Bert greatly that as he ate he did - not look at people, but over their heads like one who sees visions. Twenty - officers of various ranks stood about the table—and Bert. They all - seemed extremely curious to see the famous Butteridge, and their - astonishment at his appearance was ill-controlled. The Prince gave him a - dignified salutation, to which, by an inspiration, he bowed. Standing next - the Prince was a brown-faced, wrinkled man with silver spectacles and - fluffy, dingy-grey side-whiskers, who regarded Bert with a peculiar and - disconcerting attention. The company sat after ceremonies Bert could not - understand. At the other end of the table was the bird-faced officer Bert - had dispossessed, still looking hostile and whispering about Bert to his - neighbour. Two soldiers waited. The dinner was a plain one—a soup, - some fresh mutton, and cheese—and there was very little talk. - </p> - <p> - A curious solemnity indeed brooded over every one. Partly this was - reaction after the intense toil and restrained excitement of starting; - partly it was the overwhelming sense of strange new experiences, of - portentous adventure. The Prince was lost in thought. He roused himself to - drink to the Emperor in champagne, and the company cried “Hoch!” like men - repeating responses in church. - </p> - <p> - No smoking was permitted, but some of the officers went down to the little - open gallery to chew tobacco. No lights whatever were safe amidst that - bundle of inflammable things. Bert suddenly fell yawning and shivering. He - was overwhelmed by a sense of his own insignificance amidst these great - rushing monsters of the air. He felt life was too big for him—too - much for him altogether. - </p> - <p> - He said something to Kurt about his head, went up the steep ladder from - the swaying little gallery into the airship again, and so, as if it were a - refuge, to bed. - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - Bert slept for a time, and then his sleep was broken by dreams. Mostly he - was fleeing from formless terrors down an interminable passage in an - airship—a passage paved at first with ravenous trap-doors, and then - with openwork canvas of the most careless description. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” said Bert, turning over after his seventh fall through infinite - space that night. - </p> - <p> - He sat up in the darkness and nursed his knees. The progress of the - airship was not nearly so smooth as a balloon; he could feel a regular - swaying up, up, up and then down, down, down, and the throbbing and - tremulous quiver of the engines. - </p> - <p> - His mind began to teem with memories—more memories and more. - </p> - <p> - Through them, like a struggling swimmer in broken water, came the - perplexing question, what am I to do to-morrow? To-morrow, Kurt had told - him, the Prince's secretary, the Graf Von Winterfeld, would come to him - and discuss his flying-machine, and then he would see the Prince. He would - have to stick it out now that he was Butteridge, and sell his invention. - And then, if they found him out! He had a vision of infuriated - Butteridges.... Suppose after all he owned up? Pretended it was their - misunderstanding? He began to scheme devices for selling the secret and - circumventing Butteridge. - </p> - <p> - What should he ask for the thing? Somehow twenty thousand pounds struck - him as about the sum indicated. - </p> - <p> - He fell into that despondency that lies in wait in the small hours. He had - got too big a job on—too big a job.... - </p> - <p> - Memories swamped his scheming. - </p> - <p> - “Where was I this time last night?” - </p> - <p> - He recapitulated his evenings tediously and lengthily. Last night he had - been up above the clouds in Butteridge's balloon. He thought of the moment - when he dropped through them and saw the cold twilight sea close below. He - still remembered that disagreeable incident with a nightmare vividness. - And the night before he and Grubb had been looking for cheap lodgings at - Littlestone in Kent. How remote that seemed now. It might be years ago. - For the first time he thought of his fellow Desert Dervish, left with the - two red-painted bicycles on Dymchurch sands. “'E won't make much of a show - of it, not without me. Any'ow 'e did 'ave the treasury—such as it - was—in his pocket!”... The night before that was Bank Holiday night - and they had sat discussing their minstrel enterprise, drawing up a - programme and rehearsing steps. And the night before was Whit Sunday. - “Lord!” cried Bert, “what a doing that motor-bicycle give me!” He recalled - the empty flapping of the eviscerated cushion, the feeling of impotence as - the flames rose again. From among the confused memories of that tragic - flare one little figure emerged very bright and poignantly sweet, Edna, - crying back reluctantly from the departing motor-car, “See you to-morrer, - Bert?” - </p> - <p> - Other memories of Edna clustered round that impression. They led Bert's - mind step by step to an agreeable state that found expression in “I'll - marry 'ER if she don't look out.” And then in a flash it followed in his - mind that if he sold the Butteridge secret he could! Suppose after all he - did get twenty thousand pounds; such sums have been paid! With that he - could buy house and garden, buy new clothes beyond dreaming, buy a motor, - travel, have every delight of the civilised life as he knew it, for - himself and Edna. Of course, risks were involved. “I'll 'ave old - Butteridge on my track, I expect!” - </p> - <p> - He meditated upon that. He declined again to despondency. As yet he was - only in the beginning of the adventure. He had still to deliver the goods - and draw the cash. And before that—Just now he was by no means on - his way home. He was flying off to America to fight there. “Not much - fighting,” he considered; “all our own way.” Still, if a shell did happen - to hit the Vaterland on the underside!... - </p> - <p> - “S'pose I ought to make my will.” - </p> - <p> - He lay back for some time composing wills—chiefly in favour of Edna. - He had settled now it was to be twenty thousand pounds. He left a number - of minor legacies. The wills became more and more meandering and - extravagant.... - </p> - <p> - He woke from the eighth repetition of his nightmare fall through space. - “This flying gets on one's nerves,” he said. - </p> - <p> - He could feel the airship diving down, down, down, then slowly swinging to - up, up, up. Throb, throb, throb, throb, quivered the engine. - </p> - <p> - He got up presently and wrapped himself about with Mr. Butteridge's - overcoat and all the blankets, for the air was very keen. Then he peeped - out of the window to see a grey dawn breaking over clouds, then turned up - his light and bolted his door, sat down to the table, and produced his - chest-protector. - </p> - <p> - He smoothed the crumpled plans with his hand, and contemplated them. Then - he referred to the other drawings in the portfolio. Twenty thousand - pounds. If he worked it right! It was worth trying, anyhow. - </p> - <p> - Presently he opened the drawer in which Kurt had put paper and - writing-materials. - </p> - <p> - Bert Smallways was by no means a stupid person, and up to a certain limit - he had not been badly educated. His board school had taught him to draw up - to certain limits, taught him to calculate and understand a specification. - If at that point his country had tired of its efforts, and handed him over - unfinished to scramble for a living in an atmosphere of advertisments and - individual enterprise, that was really not his fault. He was as his State - had made him, and the reader must not imagine because he was a little - Cockney cad, that he was absolutely incapable of grasping the idea of the - Butteridge flying-machine. But he found it stiff and perplexing. His - motor-bicycle and Grubb's experiments and the “mechanical drawing” he had - done in standard seven all helped him out; and, moreover, the maker of - these drawings, whoever he was, had been anxious to make his intentions - plain. Bert copied sketches, he made notes, he made a quite tolerable and - intelligent copy of the essential drawings and sketches of the others. - Then he fell into a meditation upon them. - </p> - <p> - At last he rose with a sigh, folded up the originals that had formerly - been in his chest-protector and put them into the breast-pocket of his - jacket, and then very carefully deposited the copies he had made in the - place of the originals. He had no very clear plan in his mind in doing - this, except that he hated the idea of altogether parting with the secret. - For a long time he meditated profoundly—nodding. Then he turned out - his light and went to bed again and schemed himself to sleep. - </p> - <p> - 6 - </p> - <p> - The hochgeboren Graf von Winterfeld was also a light sleeper that night, - but then he was one of these people who sleep little and play chess - problems in their heads to while away the time—and that night he had - a particularly difficult problem to solve. - </p> - <p> - He came in upon Bert while he was still in bed in the glow of the sunlight - reflected from the North Sea below, consuming the rolls and coffee a - soldier had brought him. He had a portfolio under his arm, and in the - clear, early morning light his dingy grey hair and heavy, silver-rimmed - spectacles made him look almost benevolent. He spoke English fluently, but - with a strong German flavour. He was particularly bad with his “b's,” and - his “th's” softened towards weak “z'ds.” He called Bert explosively, - “Pooterage.” He began with some indistinct civilities, bowed, took a - folding-table and chair from behind the door, put the former between - himself and Bert, sat down on the latter, coughed drily, and opened his - portfolio. Then he put his elbows on the table, pinched his lower lip with - his two fore-fingers, and regarded Bert disconcertingly with magnified - eyes. “You came to us, Herr Pooterage, against your will,” he said at - last. - </p> - <p> - “'Ow d'you make that out?” asked Bert, after a pause of astonishment. - </p> - <p> - “I chuge by ze maps in your car. They were all English. And your - provisions. They were all picnic. Also your cords were entangled. You haf' - been tugging—but no good. You could not manage ze balloon, and - anuzzer power than yours prought you to us. Is it not so?” - </p> - <p> - Bert thought. - </p> - <p> - “Also—where is ze laty?” - </p> - <p> - “'Ere!—what lady?” - </p> - <p> - “You started with a laty. That is evident. You shtarted for an afternoon - excursion—a picnic. A man of your temperament—he would take a - laty. She was not wiz you in your balloon when you came down at Dornhof. - No! Only her chacket! It is your affair. Still, I am curious.” - </p> - <p> - Bert reflected. “'Ow d'you know that?” - </p> - <p> - “I chuge by ze nature of your farious provisions. I cannot account, Mr. - Pooterage, for ze laty, what you haf done with her. Nor can I tell why you - should wear nature-sandals, nor why you should wear such cheap plue - clothes. These are outside my instructions. Trifles, perhaps. Officially - they are to be ignored. Laties come and go—I am a man of ze worldt. - I haf known wise men wear sandals and efen practice vegetarian habits. I - haf known men—or at any rate, I haf known chemists—who did not - schmoke. You haf, no doubt, put ze laty down somewhere. Well. Let us get - to—business. A higher power”—his voice changed its emotional - quality, his magnified eyes seemed to dilate—“has prought you and - your secret straight to us. So!”—he bowed his head—“so pe it. - It is ze Destiny of Chermany and my Prince. I can undershtandt you always - carry zat secret. You are afraidt of roppers and spies. So it comes wiz - you—to us. Mr. Pooterage, Chermany will puy it.” - </p> - <p> - “Will she?” - </p> - <p> - “She will,” said the secretary, looking hard at Bert's abandoned sandals - in the corner of the locker. He roused himself, consulted a paper of notes - for a moment, and Bert eyed his brown and wrinkled face with expectation - and terror. “Chermany, I am instructed to say,” said the secretary, with - his eyes on the table and his notes spread out, “has always been willing - to puy your secret. We haf indeed peen eager to acquire it fery eager; and - it was only ze fear that you might be, on patriotic groundts, acting in - collusion with your Pritish War Office zat has made us discreet in - offering for your marvellous invention through intermediaries. We haf no - hesitation whatefer now, I am instructed, in agreeing to your proposal of - a hundert tousand poundts.” - </p> - <p> - “Crikey!” said Bert, overwhelmed. - </p> - <p> - “I peg your pardon?” - </p> - <p> - “Jest a twinge,” said Bert, raising his hand to his bandaged head. - </p> - <p> - “Ah! Also I am instructed to say that as for that noble, unrightly accused - laty you haf championed so brafely against Pritish hypocrisy and coldness, - all ze chivalry of Chermany is on her site.” - </p> - <p> - “Lady?” said Bert faintly, and then recalled the great Butteridge love - story. Had the old chap also read the letters? He must think him a - scorcher if he had. “Oh! that's aw-right,” he said, “about 'er. I 'adn't - any doubts about that. I—” - </p> - <p> - He stopped. The secretary certainly had a most appalling stare. It seemed - ages before he looked down again. “Well, ze laty as you please. She is - your affair. I haf performt my instructions. And ze title of Paron, zat - also can pe done. It can all pe done, Herr Pooterage.” - </p> - <p> - He drummed on the table for a second or so, and resumed. “I haf to tell - you, sir, zat you come to us at a crisis in—Welt-Politik. There can - be no harm now for me to put our plans before you. Pefore you leafe this - ship again they will be manifest to all ze worldt. War is perhaps already - declared. We go—to America. Our fleet will descend out of ze air - upon ze United States—it is a country quite unprepared for war - eferywhere—eferywhere. Zey have always relied on ze Atlantic. And - their navy. We have selected a certain point—it is at present ze - secret of our commanders—which we shall seize, and zen we shall - establish a depot—a sort of inland Gibraltar. It will be—what - will it be?—an eagle's nest. Zere our airships will gazzer and - repair, and thence they will fly to and fro ofer ze United States, - terrorising cities, dominating Washington, levying what is necessary, - until ze terms we dictate are accepted. You follow me?” - </p> - <p> - “Go on!” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “We could haf done all zis wiz such Luftschiffe and Drachenflieger as we - possess, but ze accession of your machine renders our project complete. It - not only gifs us a better Drachenflieger, but it remofes our last - uneasiness as to Great Pritain. Wizout you, sir, Great Pritain, ze land - you lofed so well and zat has requited you so ill, zat land of Pharisees - and reptiles, can do nozzing!—nozzing! You see, I am perfectly frank - wiz you. Well, I am instructed that Chermany recognises all this. We want - you to place yourself at our disposal. We want you to become our Chief - Head Flight Engineer. We want you to manufacture, we want to equip a swarm - of hornets under your direction. We want you to direct this force. And it - is at our depot in America we want you. So we offer you simply, and - without haggling, ze full terms you demanded weeks ago—one hundert - tousand poundts in cash, a salary of three tousand poundts a year, a - pension of one tousand poundts a year, and ze title of Paron as you - desired. These are my instructions.” - </p> - <p> - He resumed his scrutiny of Bert's face. - </p> - <p> - “That's all right, of course,” said Bert, a little short of breath, but - otherwise resolute and calm; and it seemed to him that now was the time to - bring his nocturnal scheming to the issue. - </p> - <p> - The secretary contemplated Bert's collar with sustained attention. Only - for one moment did his gaze move to the sandals and back. - </p> - <p> - “Jes' lemme think a bit,” said Bert, finding the stare debilitating. “Look - 'ere!” he said at last, with an air of great explicitness, “I GOT the - secret.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “But I don't want the name of Butteridge to appear—see? I been - thinking that over.” - </p> - <p> - “A little delicacy?” - </p> - <p> - “Exactly. You buy the secret—leastways, I give it you—from - Bearer—see?” - </p> - <p> - His voice failed him a little, and the stare continued. “I want to do the - thing Enonymously. See?” - </p> - <p> - Still staring. Bert drifted on like a swimmer caught by a current. “Fact - is, I'm going to edop' the name of Smallways. I don't want no title of - Baron; I've altered my mind. And I want the money quiet-like. I want the - hundred thousand pounds paid into benks—thirty thousand into the - London and County Benk Branch at Bun Hill in Kent directly I 'and over the - plans; twenty thousand into the Benk of England; 'arf the rest into a good - French bank, the other 'arf the German National Bank, see? I want it put - there, right away. I don't want it put in the name of Butteridge. I want - it put in the name of Albert Peter Smallways; that's the name I'm going to - edop'. That's condition one.” - </p> - <p> - “Go on!” said the secretary. - </p> - <p> - “The nex condition,” said Bert, “is that you don't make any inquiries as - to title. I mean what English gentlemen do when they sell or let you land. - You don't arst 'ow I got it. See? 'Ere I am—I deliver you the goods—that's - all right. Some people 'ave the cheek to say this isn't my invention, see? - It is, you know—THAT'S all right; but I don't want that gone into. I - want a fair and square agreement saying that's all right. See?” - </p> - <p> - His “See?” faded into a profound silence. - </p> - <p> - The secretary sighed at last, leant back in his chair and produced a - tooth-pick, and used it, to assist his meditation on Bert's case. “What - was that name?” he asked at last, putting away the tooth-pick; “I must - write it down.” - </p> - <p> - “Albert Peter Smallways,” said Bert, in a mild tone. - </p> - <p> - The secretary wrote it down, after a little difficulty about the spelling - because of the different names of the letters of the alphabet in the two - languages. - </p> - <p> - “And now, Mr. Schmallvays,” he said at last, leaning back and resuming the - stare, “tell me: how did you ket hold of Mister Pooterage's balloon?” - </p> - <p> - 7 - </p> - <p> - When at last the Graf von Winterfold left Bert Smallways, he left him in - an extremely deflated condition, with all his little story told. - </p> - <p> - He had, as people say, made a clean breast of it. He had been pursued into - details. He had had to explain the blue suit, the sandals, the Desert - Dervishes—everything. For a time scientific zeal consumed the - secretary, and the question of the plans remained in suspense. He even - went into speculation about the previous occupants of the balloon. “I - suppose,” he said, “the laty WAS the laty. Bot that is not our affair. - </p> - <p> - “It is fery curious and amusing, yes: but I am afraid the Prince may be - annoyt. He acted wiz his usual decision—always he acts wiz wonterful - decision. Like Napoleon. Directly he was tolt of your descent into the - camp at Dornhof, he said, 'Pring him!—pring him! It is my schtar!' - His schtar of Destiny! You see? He will be dthwarted. He directed you to - come as Herr Pooterage, and you haf not done so. You haf triet, of course; - but it has peen a poor try. His chugments of men are fery just and right, - and it is better for men to act up to them—gompletely. Especially - now. Particularly now.” - </p> - <p> - He resumed that attitude of his, with his underlip pinched between his - forefingers. He spoke almost confidentially. “It will be awkward. I triet - to suggest some doubt, but I was over-ruled. The Prince does not listen. - He is impatient in the high air. Perhaps he will think his schtar has been - making a fool of him. Perhaps he will think <i>I</i> haf been making a - fool of him.” - </p> - <p> - He wrinkled his forehead, and drew in the corners of his mouth. - </p> - <p> - “I got the plans,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. There is that! Yes. But you see the Prince was interested in Herr - Pooterage because of his romantic seit. Herr Pooterage was so much more—ah!—in - the picture. I am afraid you are not equal to controlling the flying - machine department of our aerial park as he wished you to do. He hadt - promised himself that.... - </p> - <p> - “And der was also the prestige—the worldt prestige of Pooterage with - us.... Well, we must see what we can do.” He held out his hand. “Gif me - the plans.” - </p> - <p> - A terrible chill ran through the being of Mr. Smallways. To this day he is - not clear in his mind whether he wept or no, but certainly there was - weeping in his voice. “'Ere, I say!” he protested. “Ain't I to 'ave—nothin' - for 'em?” - </p> - <p> - The secretary regarded him with benevolent eyes. “You do not deserve - anyzing!” he said. - </p> - <p> - “I might 'ave tore 'em up.” - </p> - <p> - “Zey are not yours!” - </p> - <p> - “They weren't Butteridge's!” - </p> - <p> - “No need to pay anyzing.” - </p> - <p> - Bert's being seemed to tighten towards desperate deeds. “Gaw!” he said, - clutching his coat, “AIN'T there?” - </p> - <p> - “Pe galm,” said the secretary. “Listen! You shall haf five hundert - poundts. You shall haf it on my promise. I will do that for you, and that - is all I can do. Take it from me. Gif me the name of that bank. Write it - down. So! I tell you the Prince—is no choke. I do not think he - approffed of your appearance last night. No! I can't answer for him. He - wanted Pooterage, and you haf spoilt it. The Prince—I do not - understand quite, he is in a strange state. It is the excitement of the - starting and this great soaring in the air. I cannot account for what he - does. But if all goes well I will see to it—you shall haf five - hundert poundts. Will that do? Then gif me the plans.” - </p> - <p> - “Old beggar!” said Bert, as the door clicked. “Gaw!—what an ole - beggar!—SHARP!” - </p> - <p> - He sat down in the folding-chair, and whistled noiselessly for a time. - </p> - <p> - “Nice 'old swindle for 'im if I tore 'em up! I could 'ave.” - </p> - <p> - He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. “I gave the whole blessed - show away. If I'd j'es' kep quiet about being Enonymous.... Gaw!... Too - soon, Bert, my boy—too soon and too rushy. I'd like to kick my silly - self. - </p> - <p> - “I couldn't 'ave kep' it up. - </p> - <p> - “After all, it ain't so very bad,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “After all, five 'undred pounds.... It isn't MY secret, anyhow. It's jes' - a pickup on the road. Five 'undred. - </p> - <p> - “Wonder what the fare is from America back home?” - </p> - <p> - 8 - </p> - <p> - And later in the day an extremely shattered and disorganised Bert - Smallways stood in the presence of the Prince Karl Albert. - </p> - <p> - The proceedings were in German. The Prince was in his own cabin, the end - room of the airship, a charming apartment furnished in wicker-work with a - long window across its entire breadth, looking forward. He was sitting at - a folding-table of green baize, with Von Winterfeld and two officers - sitting beside him, and littered before them was a number of American maps - and Mr. Butteridge's letters and his portfolio and a number of loose - papers. Bert was not asked to sit down, and remained standing throughout - the interview. Von Winterfeld told his story, and every now and then the - words Ballon and Pooterage struck on Bert's ears. The Prince's face - remained stern and ominous and the two officers watched it cautiously or - glanced at Bert. There was something a little strange in their scrutiny of - the Prince—a curiosity, an apprehension. Then presently he was - struck by an idea, and they fell discussing the plans. The Prince asked - Bert abruptly in English. “Did you ever see this thing go op?” - </p> - <p> - Bert jumped. “Saw it from Bun 'Ill, your Royal Highness.” - </p> - <p> - Von Winterfeld made some explanation. - </p> - <p> - “How fast did it go?” - </p> - <p> - “Couldn't say, your Royal Highness. The papers, leastways the Daily - Courier, said eighty miles an hour.” - </p> - <p> - They talked German over that for a time. - </p> - <p> - “Couldt it standt still? Op in the air? That is what I want to know.” - </p> - <p> - “It could 'ovver, your Royal Highness, like a wasp,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Viel besser, nicht wahr?” said the Prince to Von Winterfeld, and then - went on in German for a time. - </p> - <p> - Presently they came to an end, and the two officers looked at Bert. One - rang a bell, and the portfolio was handed to an attendant, who took it - away. - </p> - <p> - Then they reverted to the case of Bert, and it was evident the Prince was - inclined to be hard with him. Von Winterfeld protested. Apparently - theological considerations came in, for there were several mentions of - “Gott!” Some conclusions emerged, and it was apparent that Von Winterfeld - was instructed to convey them to Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Schmallvays, you haf obtained a footing in this airship,” he said, - “by disgraceful and systematic lying.” - </p> - <p> - “'Ardly systematic,” said Bert. “I—” - </p> - <p> - The Prince silenced him by a gesture. - </p> - <p> - “And it is within the power of his Highness to dispose of you as a spy.” - </p> - <p> - “'Ere!—I came to sell—” - </p> - <p> - “Ssh!” said one of the officers. - </p> - <p> - “However, in consideration of the happy chance that mate you the - instrument unter Gott of this Pooterage flying-machine reaching his - Highness's hand, you haf been spared. Yes,—you were the pearer of - goot tidings. You will be allowed to remain on this ship until it is - convenient to dispose of you. Do you understandt?” - </p> - <p> - “We will bring him,” said the Prince, and added terribly with a terrible - glare, “als <i>Ballast</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “You are to come with us,” said Winterfeld, “as pallast. Do you - understandt?” - </p> - <p> - Bert opened his mouth to ask about the five hundred pounds, and then a - saving gleam of wisdom silenced him. He met Von Winterfeld's eye, and it - seemed to him the secretary nodded slightly. - </p> - <p> - “Go!” said the Prince, with a sweep of the great arm and hand towards the - door. Bert went out like a leaf before a gale. - </p> - <p> - 9 - </p> - <p> - But in between the time when the Graf von Winterfeld had talked to him and - this alarming conference with the Prince, Bert had explored the Vaterland - from end to end. He had found it interesting in spite of grave - preoccupations. Kurt, like the greater number of the men upon the German - air-fleet, had known hardly anything of aeronautics before his appointment - to the new flagship. But he was extremely keen upon this wonderful new - weapon Germany had assumed so suddenly and dramatically. He showed things - to Bert with a boyish eagerness and appreciation. It was as if he showed - them over again to himself, like a child showing a new toy. “Let's go all - over the ship,” he said with zest. He pointed out particularly the - lightness of everything, the use of exhausted aluminium tubing, of springy - cushions inflated with compressed hydrogen; the partitions were hydrogen - bags covered with light imitation leather, the very crockery was a light - biscuit glazed in a vacuum, and weighed next to nothing. Where strength - was needed there was the new Charlottenburg alloy, German steel as it was - called, the toughest and most resistant metal in the world. - </p> - <p> - There was no lack of space. Space did not matter, so long as load did not - grow. The habitable part of the ship was two hundred and fifty feet long, - and the rooms in two tiers; above these one could go up into remarkable - little white-metal turrets with big windows and airtight double doors that - enabled one to inspect the vast cavity of the gas-chambers. This inside - view impressed Bert very much. He had never realised before that an - airship was not one simple continuous gas-bag containing nothing but gas. - Now he saw far above him the backbone of the apparatus and its big ribs, - “like the neural and haemal canals,” said Kurt, who had dabbled in - biology. - </p> - <p> - “Rather!” said Bert appreciatively, though he had not the ghost of an idea - what these phrases meant. - </p> - <p> - Little electric lights could be switched on up there if anything went - wrong in the night. There were even ladders across the space. “But you - can't go into the gas,” protested Bert. “You can't breve it.” - </p> - <p> - The lieutenant opened a cupboard door and displayed a diver's suit, only - that it was made of oiled silk, and both its compressed-air knapsack and - its helmet were of an alloy of aluminium and some light metal. “We can go - all over the inside netting and stick up bullet holes or leaks,” he - explained. “There's netting inside and out. The whole outer-case is rope - ladder, so to speak.” - </p> - <p> - Aft of the habitable part of the airship was the magazine of explosives, - coming near the middle of its length. They were all bombs of various types - mostly in glass—none of the German airships carried any guns at all - except one small pom-pom (to use the old English nickname dating from the - Boer war), which was forward in the gallery upon the shield at the heart - of the eagle. - </p> - <p> - From the magazine amidships a covered canvas gallery with aluminium treads - on its floor and a hand-rope, ran back underneath the gas-chamber to the - engine-room at the tail; but along this Bert did not go, and from first to - last he never saw the engines. But he went up a ladder against a gale of - ventilation—a ladder that was encased in a kind of gas-tight fire - escape—and ran right athwart the great forward air-chamber to the - little look-out gallery with a telephone, that gallery that bore the light - pom-pom of German steel and its locker of shells. This gallery was all of - aluminium magnesium alloy, the tight front of the air-ship swelled - cliff-like above and below, and the black eagle sprawled overwhelmingly - gigantic, its extremities all hidden by the bulge of the gas-bag. And far - down, under the soaring eagles, was England, four thousand feet below - perhaps, and looking very small and defenceless indeed in the morning - sunlight. - </p> - <p> - The realisation that there was England gave Bert sudden and unexpected - qualms of patriotic compunction. He was struck by a quite novel idea. - After all, he might have torn up those plans and thrown them away. These - people could not have done so very much to him. And even if they did, - ought not an Englishman to die for his country? It was an idea that had - hitherto been rather smothered up by the cares of a competitive - civilisation. He became violently depressed. He ought, he perceived, to - have seen it in that light before. Why hadn't he seen it in that light - before? - </p> - <p> - Indeed, wasn't he a sort of traitor?... He wondered how the aerial fleet - must look from down there. Tremendous, no doubt, and dwarfing all the - buildings. - </p> - <p> - He was passing between Manchester and Liverpool, Kurt told him; a gleaming - band across the prospect was the Ship Canal, and a weltering ditch of - shipping far away ahead, the Mersey estuary. Bert was a Southerner; he had - never been north of the Midland counties, and the multitude of factories - and chimneys—the latter for the most part obsolete and smokeless - now, superseded by huge electric generating stations that consumed their - own reek—old railway viaducts, mono-rail net-works and goods yards, - and the vast areas of dingy homes and narrow streets, spreading aimlessly, - struck him as though Camberwell and Rotherhithe had run to seed. Here and - there, as if caught in a net, were fields and agricultural fragments. It - was a sprawl of undistinguished population. There were, no doubt, museums - and town halls and even cathedrals of a sort to mark theoretical centres - of municipal and religious organisation in this confusion; but Bert could - not see them, they did not stand out at all in that wide disorderly vision - of congested workers' houses and places to work, and shops and meanly - conceived chapels and churches. And across this landscape of an industrial - civilisation swept the shadows of the German airships like a hurrying - shoal of fishes.... - </p> - <p> - Kurt and he fell talking of aerial tactics, and presently went down to the - undergallery in order that Bert might see the Drachenflieger that the - airships of the right wing had picked up overnight and were towing behind - them; each airship towing three or four. They looked, like big box-kites - of an exaggerated form, soaring at the ends of invisible cords. They had - long, square heads and flattened tails, with lateral propellers. - </p> - <p> - “Much skill is required for those!—much skill!” - </p> - <p> - “Rather!” - </p> - <p> - Pause. - </p> - <p> - “Your machine is different from that, Mr. Butteridge?” - </p> - <p> - “Quite different,” said Bert. “More like an insect, and less like a bird. - And it buzzes, and don't drive about so. What can those things do?” - </p> - <p> - Kurt was not very clear upon that himself, and was still explaining when - Bert was called to the conference we have recorded with the Prince. - </p> - <p> - And after that was over, the last traces of Butteridge fell from Bert like - a garment, and he became Smallways to all on board. The soldiers ceased to - salute him, and the officers ceased to seem aware of his existence, except - Lieutenant Kurt. He was turned out of his nice cabin, and packed in with - his belongings to share that of Lieutenant Kurt, whose luck it was to be - junior, and the bird-headed officer, still swearing slightly, and carrying - strops and aluminium boot-trees and weightless hair-brushes and - hand-mirrors and pomade in his hands, resumed possession. Bert was put in - with Kurt because there was nowhere else for him to lay his bandaged head - in that close-packed vessel. He was to mess, he was told, with the men. - </p> - <p> - Kurt came and stood with his legs wide apart and surveyed, him for a - moment as he sat despondent in his new quarters. - </p> - <p> - “What's your real name, then?” said Kurt, who was only imperfectly - informed of the new state of affairs. - </p> - <p> - “Smallways.” - </p> - <p> - “I thought you were a bit of a fraud—even when I thought you were - Butteridge. You're jolly lucky the Prince took it calmly. He's a pretty - tidy blazer when he's roused. He wouldn't stick a moment at pitching a - chap of your sort overboard if he thought fit. No!... They've shoved you - on to me, but it's my cabin, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “I won't forget,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - Kurt left him, and when he came to look about him the first thing he saw - pasted on the padded wall was a reproduction, of the great picture by - Siegfried Schmalz of the War God, that terrible, trampling figure with the - viking helmet and the scarlet cloak, wading through destruction, sword in - hand, which had so strong a resemblance to Karl Albert, the prince it was - painted to please. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER V. THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - The Prince Karl Albert had made a profound impression upon Bert. He was - quite the most terrifying person Bert had ever encountered. He filled the - Smallways soul with passionate dread and antipathy. For a long time Bert - sat alone in Kurt's cabin, doing nothing and not venturing even to open - the door lest he should be by that much nearer that appalling presence. - </p> - <p> - So it came about that he was probably the last person on board to hear the - news that wireless telegraphy was bringing to the airship in throbs and - fragments of a great naval battle in progress in mid-Atlantic. - </p> - <p> - He learnt it at last from Kurt. - </p> - <p> - Kurt came in with a general air of ignoring Bert, but muttering to himself - in English nevertheless. “Stupendous!” Bert heard him say. “Here!” he - said, “get off this locker.” And he proceeded to rout out two books and a - case of maps. He spread them on the folding-table, and stood regarding - them. For a time his Germanic discipline struggled with his English - informality and his natural kindliness and talkativeness, and at last - lost. - </p> - <p> - “They're at it, Smallways,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “At what, sir?” said Bert, broken and respectful. - </p> - <p> - “Fighting! The American North Atlantic squadron and pretty nearly the - whole of our fleet. Our Eiserne Kreuz has had a gruelling and is sinking, - and their Miles Standish—she's one of their biggest—has sunk - with all hands. Torpedoes, I suppose. She was a bigger ship than the Karl - der Grosse, but five or six years older. Gods! I wish we could see it, - Smallways; a square fight in blue water, guns or nothing, and all of 'em - steaming ahead!” - </p> - <p> - He spread his maps, he had to talk, and so he delivered a lecture on the - naval situation to Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Here it is,” he said, “latitude 30 degrees 50 minutes N. longitude 30 - degrees 50 minutes W. It's a good day off us, anyhow, and they're all - going south-west by south at full pelt as hard as they can go. We shan't - see a bit of it, worse luck! Not a sniff we shan't get!” - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - The naval situation in the North Atlantic at that time was a peculiar one. - The United States was by far the stronger of the two powers upon the sea, - but the bulk of the American fleet was still in the Pacific. It was in the - direction of Asia that war had been most feared, for the situation between - Asiatic and white had become unusually violent and dangerous, and the - Japanese government had shown itself quite unprecedentedly difficult. The - German attack therefore found half the American strength at Manila, and - what was called the Second Fleet strung out across the Pacific in wireless - contact between the Asiatic station and San Francisco. The North Atlantic - squadron was the sole American force on her eastern shore, it was - returning from a friendly visit to France and Spain, and was pumping - oil-fuel from tenders in mid-Atlantic—for most of its ships were - steamships—when the international situation became acute. It was - made up of four battleships and five armoured cruisers ranking almost with - battleships, not one of which was of a later date than 1913. The Americans - had indeed grown so accustomed to the idea that Great Britain could be - trusted to keep the peace of the Atlantic that a naval attack on the - eastern seaboard found them unprepared even in their imaginations. But - long before the declaration of war—indeed, on Whit Monday—the - whole German fleet of eighteen battleships, with a flotilla of fuel - tenders and converted liners containing stores to be used in support of - the air-fleet, had passed through the straits of Dover and headed boldly - for New York. Not only did these German battleships outnumber the - Americans two to one, but they were more heavily armed and more modern in - construction—seven of them having high explosive engines built of - Charlottenburg steel, and all carrying Charlottenburg steel guns. - </p> - <p> - The fleets came into contact on Wednesday before any actual declaration of - war. The Americans had strung out in the modern fashion at distances of - thirty miles or so, and were steaming to keep themselves between the - Germans and either the eastern states or Panama; because, vital as it was - to defend the seaboard cities and particularly New York, it was still more - vital to save the canal from any attack that might prevent the return of - the main fleet from the Pacific. No doubt, said Kurt, this was now making - records across that ocean, “unless the Japanese have had the same idea as - the Germans.” It was obviously beyond human possibility that the American - North Atlantic fleet could hope to meet and defeat the German; but, on the - other hand, with luck it might fight a delaying action and inflict such - damage as to greatly weaken the attack upon the coast defences. Its duty, - indeed, was not victory but devotion, the severest task in the world. - Meanwhile the submarine defences of New York, Panama, and the other more - vital points could be put in some sort of order. - </p> - <p> - This was the naval situation, and until Wednesday in Whit week it was the - only situation the American people had realised. It was then they heard - for the first time of the real scale of the Dornhof aeronautic park and - the possibility of an attack coming upon them not only by sea, but by the - air. But it is curious that so discredited were the newspapers of that - period that a large majority of New Yorkers, for example, did not believe - the most copious and circumstantial accounts of the German air-fleet until - it was actually in sight of New York. - </p> - <p> - Kurt's talk was half soliloquy. He stood with a map on Mercator's - projection before him, swaying to the swinging of the ship and talking of - guns and tonnage, of ships and their build and powers and speed, of - strategic points, and bases of operation. A certain shyness that reduced - him to the status of a listener at the officers' table no longer silenced - him. - </p> - <p> - Bert stood by, saying very little, but watching Kurt's finger on the map. - “They've been saying things like this in the papers for a long time,” he - remarked. “Fancy it coming real!” - </p> - <p> - Kurt had a detailed knowledge of the Miles Standish. “She used to be a - crack ship for gunnery—held the record. I wonder if we beat her - shooting, or how? I wish I was in it. I wonder which of our ships beat - her. Maybe she got a shell in her engines. It's a running fight! I wonder - what the Barbarossa is doing,” he went on, “She's my old ship. Not a - first-rater, but good stuff. I bet she's got a shot or two home by now if - old Schneider's up to form. Just think of it! There they are whacking away - at each other, great guns going, shells exploding, magazines bursting, - ironwork flying about like straw in a gale, all we've been dreaming of for - years! I suppose we shall fly right away to New York—just as though - it wasn't anything at all. I suppose we shall reckon we aren't wanted down - there. It's no more than a covering fight on our side. All those tenders - and store-ships of ours are going on southwest by west to New York to make - a floating depot for us. See?” He dabbed his forefinger on the map. “Here - we are. Our train of stores goes there, our battleships elbow the - Americans out of our way there.” - </p> - <p> - When Bert went down to the men's mess-room to get his evening ration, - hardly any one took notice of him except just to point him out for an - instant. Every one was talking of the battle, suggesting, contradicting—at - times, until the petty officers hushed them, it rose to a great uproar. - There was a new bulletin, but what it said he did not gather except that - it concerned the Barbarossa. Some of the men stared at him, and he heard - the name of “Booteraidge” several times; but no one molested him, and - there was no difficulty about his soup and bread when his turn at the end - of the queue came. He had feared there might be no ration for him, and if - so he did not know what he would have done. - </p> - <p> - Afterwards he ventured out upon the little hanging gallery with the - solitary sentinel. The weather was still fine, but the wind was rising and - the rolling swing of the airship increasing. He clutched the rail tightly - and felt rather giddy. They were now out of sight of land, and over blue - water rising and falling in great masses. A dingy old brigantine under the - British flag rose and plunged amid the broad blue waves—the only - ship in sight. - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - In the evening it began to blow and the air-ship to roll like a porpoise - as it swung through the air. Kurt said that several of the men were - sea-sick, but the motion did not inconvenience Bert, whose luck it was to - be of that mysterious gastric disposition which constitutes a good sailor. - He slept well, but in the small hours the light awoke him, and he found - Kurt staggering about in search of something. He found it at last in the - locker, and held it in his hand unsteadily—a compass. Then he - compared his map. - </p> - <p> - “We've changed our direction,” he said, “and come into the wind. I can't - make it out. We've turned away from New York to the south. Almost as if we - were going to take a hand—” - </p> - <p> - He continued talking to himself for some time. - </p> - <p> - Day came, wet and windy. The window was bedewed externally, and they could - see nothing through it. It was also very cold, and Bert decided to keep - rolled up in his blankets on the locker until the bugle summoned him to - his morning ration. That consumed, he went out on the little gallery; but - he could see nothing but eddying clouds driving headlong by, and the dim - outlines of the nearer airships. Only at rare intervals could he get a - glimpse of grey sea through the pouring cloud-drift. - </p> - <p> - Later in the morning the Vaterland changed altitude, and soared up - suddenly in a high, clear sky, going, Kurt said, to a height of nearly - thirteen thousand feet. - </p> - <p> - Bert was in his cabin, and chanced to see the dew vanish from the window - and caught the gleam of sunlight outside. He looked out, and saw once more - that sunlit cloud floor he had seen first from the balloon, and the ships - of the German air-fleet rising one by one from the white, as fish might - rise and become visible from deep water. He stared for a moment and then - ran out to the little gallery to see this wonder better. Below was - cloudland and storm, a great drift of tumbled weather going hard away to - the north-east, and the air about him was clear and cold and serene save - for the faintest chill breeze and a rare, drifting snow-flake. Throb, - throb, throb, throb, went the engines in the stillness. That huge herd of - airships rising one after another had an effect of strange, portentous - monsters breaking into an altogether unfamiliar world. - </p> - <p> - Either there was no news of the naval battle that morning, or the Prince - kept to himself whatever came until past midday. Then the bulletins came - with a rush, bulletins that made the lieutenant wild with excitement. - </p> - <p> - “Barbarossa disabled and sinking,” he cried. “Gott im Himmel! Der alte - Barbarossa! Aber welch ein braver krieger!” - </p> - <p> - He walked about the swinging cabin, and for a time he was wholly German. - </p> - <p> - Then he became English again. “Think of it, Smallways! The old ship we - kept so clean and tidy! All smashed about, and the iron flying about in - fragments, and the chaps one knew—Gott!—flying about too! - Scalding water squirting, fire, and the smash, smash of the guns! They - smash when you're near! Like everything bursting to pieces! Wool won't - stop it—nothing! And me up here—so near and so far! Der alte - Barbarossa!” - </p> - <p> - “Any other ships?” asked Smallways, presently. - </p> - <p> - “Gott! Yes! We've lost the Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run down - in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fighting in trying - to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's afloat with her - nose broken, sagging about! There never was such a battle!—never - before! Good ships and good men on both sides,—and a storm and the - night and the dawn and all in the open ocean full steam ahead! No - stabbing! No submarines! Guns and shooting! Half our ships we don't hear - of any more, because their masts are shot away. Latitude, 30 degrees 40 - minutes N.—longitude, 40 degrees 30 minutes W.—where's that?” - </p> - <p> - He routed out his map again, and stared at it with eyes that did not see. - </p> - <p> - “Der alte Barbarossa! I can't get it out of my head—with shells in - her engine-room, and the fires flying out of her furnaces, and the stokers - and engineers scalded and dead. Men I've messed with, Smallways—men - I've talked to close! And they've had their day at last! And it wasn't all - luck for them! - </p> - <p> - “Disabled and sinking! I suppose everybody can't have all the luck in a - battle. Poor old Schneider! I bet he gave 'em something back!” - </p> - <p> - So it was the news of the battle came filtering through to them all that - morning. The Americans had lost a second ship, name unknown; the Hermann - had been damaged in covering the Barbarossa.... Kurt fretted like an - imprisoned animal about the airship, now going up to the forward gallery - under the eagle, now down into the swinging gallery, now poring over his - maps. He infected Smallways with a sense of the immediacy of this battle - that was going on just over the curve of the earth. But when Bert went - down to the gallery the world was empty and still, a clear inky-blue sky - above and a rippled veil of still, thin sunlit cirrus below, through which - one saw a racing drift of rain-cloud, and never a glimpse of sea. Throb, - throb, throb, throb, went the engines, and the long, undulating wedge of - airships hurried after the flagship like a flight of swans after their - leader. Save for the quiver of the engines it was as noiseless as a dream. - And down there, somewhere in the wind and rain, guns roared, shells - crashed home, and, after the old manner of warfare, men toiled and died. - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - As the afternoon wore on the lower weather abated, and the sea became - intermittently visible again. The air-fleet dropped slowly to the middle - air, and towards sunset they had a glimpse of the disabled Barbarossa far - away to the east. Smallways heard men hurrying along the passage, and was - drawn out to the gallery, where he found nearly a dozen officers collected - and scrutinising the helpless ruins of the battleship through - field-glasses. Two other vessels stood by her, one an exhausted petrol - tank, very high out of the water, and the other a converted liner. Kurt - was at the end of the gallery, a little apart from the others. - </p> - <p> - “Gott!” he said at last, lowering his binocular, “it is like seeing an old - friend with his nose cut off—waiting to be finished. Der - Barbarossa!” - </p> - <p> - With a sudden impulse he handed his glass to Bert, who had peered beneath - his hands, ignored by every one, seeing the three ships merely as three - brown-black lines upon the sea. - </p> - <p> - Never had Bert seen the like of that magnified slightly hazy image before. - It was not simply a battered ironclad that wallowed helpless, it was a - mangled ironclad. It seemed wonderful she still floated. Her powerful - engines had been her ruin. In the long chase of the night she had got out - of line with her consorts, and nipped in between the Susquehanna and the - Kansas City. They discovered her proximity, dropped back until she was - nearly broadside on to the former battleship, and signalled up the - Theodore Roosevelt and the little Monitor. As dawn broke she had found - herself hostess of a circle. The fight had not lasted five minutes before - the appearance of the Hermann to the east, and immediately after of the - Furst Bismarck in the west, forced the Americans to leave her, but in that - time they had smashed her iron to rags. They had vented the accumulated - tensions of their hard day's retreat upon her. As Bert saw her, she seemed - a mere metal-worker's fantasy of frozen metal writhings. He could not tell - part from part of her, except by its position. - </p> - <p> - “Gott!” murmured Kurt, taking the glasses Bert restored to him—“Gott! - Da waren Albrecht—der gute Albrecht und der alte Zimmermann—und - von Rosen!” - </p> - <p> - Long after the Barbarosa had been swallowed up in the twilight and - distance he remained on the gallery peering through his glasses, and when - he came back to his cabin he was unusually silent and thoughtful. - </p> - <p> - “This is a rough game, Smallways,” he said at last—“this war is a - rough game. Somehow one sees it different after a thing like that. Many - men there were worked to make that Barbarossa, and there were men in it—one - does not meet the like of them every day. Albrecht—there was a man - named Albrecht—played the zither and improvised; I keep on wondering - what has happened to him. He and I—we were very close friends, after - the German fashion.” - </p> - <p> - Smallways woke the next night to discover the cabin in darkness, a draught - blowing through it, and Kurt talking to himself in German. He could see - him dimly by the window, which he had unscrewed and opened, peering down. - That cold, clear, attenuated light which is not so much light as a going - of darkness, which casts inky shadows and so often heralds the dawn in the - high air, was on his face. - </p> - <p> - “What's the row?” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Shut up!” said the lieutenant. “Can't you hear?” - </p> - <p> - Into the stillness came the repeated heavy thud of guns, one, two, a - pause, then three in quick succession. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” said Bert—“guns!” and was instantly at the lieutenant's side. - The airship was still very high and the sea below was masked by a thin - veil of clouds. The wind had fallen, and Bert, following Kurt's pointing - finger, saw dimly through the colourless veil first a red glow, then a - quick red flash, and then at a little distance from it another. They were, - it seemed for a while, silent flashes, and seconds after, when one had - ceased to expect them, came the belated thuds—thud, thud. Kurt spoke - in German, very quickly. - </p> - <p> - A bugle call rang through the airship. - </p> - <p> - Kurt sprang to his feet, saying something in an excited tone, still using - German, and went to the door. - </p> - <p> - “I say! What's up?” cried Bert. “What's that?” - </p> - <p> - The lieutenant stopped for an instant in the doorway, dark against the - light passage. “You stay where you are, Smallways. You keep there and do - nothing. We're going into action,” he explained, and vanished. - </p> - <p> - Bert's heart began to beat rapidly. He felt himself poised over the - fighting vessels far below. In a moment, were they to drop like a hawk - striking a bird? “Gaw!” he whispered at last, in awestricken tones. - </p> - <p> - Thud!... thud! He discovered far away a second ruddy flare flashing guns - back at the first. He perceived some difference on the Vaterland for which - he could not account, and then he realised that the engines had slowed to - an almost inaudible beat. He stuck his head out of the window—it was - a tight fit—and saw in the bleak air the other airships slowed down - to a scarcely perceptible motion. - </p> - <p> - A second bugle sounded, was taken up faintly from ship to ship. Out went - the lights; the fleet became dim, dark bulks against an intense blue sky - that still retained an occasional star. For a long time they hung, for an - interminable time it seemed to him, and then began the sound of air being - pumped into the balloonette, and slowly, slowly the Vaterland sank down - towards the clouds. - </p> - <p> - He craned his neck, but he could not see if the rest of the fleet was - following them; the overhang of the gas-chambers intervened. There was - something that stirred his imagination deeply in that stealthy, noiseless - descent. The obscurity deepened for a time, the last fading star on the - horizon vanished, and he felt the cold presence of cloud. Then suddenly - the glow beneath assumed distinct outlines, became flames, and the - Vaterland ceased to descend and hung observant, and it would seem - unobserved, just beneath a drifting stratum of cloud, a thousand feet, - perhaps, over the battle below. - </p> - <p> - In the night the struggling naval battle and retreat had entered upon a - new phase. The Americans had drawn together the ends of the flying line - skilfully and dexterously, until at last it was a column and well to the - south of the lax sweeping pursuit of the Germans. Then in the darkness - before the dawn they had come about and steamed northward in close order - with the idea of passing through the German battle-line and falling upon - the flotilla that was making for New York in support of the German - air-fleet. Much had altered since the first contact of the fleets. By this - time the American admiral, O'Connor, was fully informed of the existence - of the airships, and he was no longer vitally concerned for Panama, since - the submarine flotilla was reported arrived there from Key West, and the - Delaware and Abraham Lincoln, two powerful and entirely modern ships, were - already at Rio Grande, on the Pacific side of the canal. His manoeuvre - was, however, delayed by a boiler explosion on board the Susquehanna, and - dawn found this ship in sight of and indeed so close to the Bremen and - Weimar that they instantly engaged. There was no alternative to her - abandonment but a fleet engagement. O'Connor chose the latter course. It - was by no means a hopeless fight. The Germans, though much more numerous - and powerful than the Americans, were in a dispersed line measuring nearly - forty-five miles from end to end, and there were many chances that before - they could gather in for the fight the column of seven Americans would - have ripped them from end to end. - </p> - <p> - The day broke dim and overcast, and neither the Bremen nor the Weimar - realised they had to deal with more than the Susquehanna until the whole - column drew out from behind her at a distance of a mile or less and bore - down on them. This was the position of affairs when the Vaterland appeared - in the sky. The red glow Bert had seen through the column of clouds came - from the luckless Susquehanna; she lay almost immediately below, burning - fore and aft, but still fighting two of her guns and steaming slowly - southward. The Bremen and the Weimar, both hit in several places, were - going west by south and away from her. The American fleet, headed by the - Theodore Roosevelt, was crossing behind them, pounding them in succession, - steaming in between them and the big modern Furst Bismarck, which was - coming up from the west. To Bert, however, the names of all these ships - were unknown, and for a considerable time indeed, misled by the direction - in which the combatants were moving, he imagined the Germans to be - Americans and the Americans Germans. He saw what appeared to him to be a - column of six battleships pursuing three others who were supported by a - newcomer, until the fact that the Bremen and Weimar were firing into the - Susquehanna upset his calculations. Then for a time he was hopelessly at a - loss. The noise of the guns, too, confused him, they no longer seemed to - boom; they went whack, whack, whack, whack, and each faint flash made his - heart jump in anticipation of the instant impact. He saw these ironclads, - too, not in profile, as he was accustomed to see ironclads in pictures, - but in plan and curiously foreshortened. For the most part they presented - empty decks, but here and there little knots of men sheltered behind steel - bulwarks. The long, agitated noses of their big guns, jetting thin - transparent flashes and the broadside activity of the quick-firers, were - the chief facts in this bird's-eye view. The Americans being steam-turbine - ships, had from two to four blast funnels each; the Germans lay lower in - the water, having explosive engines, which now for some reason made an - unwonted muttering roar. Because of their steam propulsion, the American - ships were larger and with a more graceful outline. He saw all these - foreshortened ships rolling considerably and fighting their guns over a - sea of huge low waves and under the cold, explicit light of dawn. The - whole spectacle waved slowly with the long rhythmic rising and beat of the - airship. - </p> - <p> - At first only the Vaterland of all the flying fleet appeared upon the - scene below. She hovered high, over the Theodore Roosevelt, keeping pace - with the full speed of that ship. From that ship she must have been - intermittently visible through the drifting clouds. The rest of the German - fleet remained above the cloud canopy at a height of six or seven thousand - feet, communicating with the flagship by wireless telegraphy, but risking - no exposure to the artillery below. - </p> - <p> - It is doubtful at what particular time the unlucky Americans realised the - presence of this new factor in the fight. No account now survives of their - experience. We have to imagine as well as we can what it must have been to - a battled-strained sailor suddenly glancing upward to discover that huge - long silent shape overhead, vaster than any battleship, and trailing now - from its hinder quarter a big German flag. Presently, as the sky cleared, - more of such ships appeared in the blue through the dissolving clouds, and - more, all disdainfully free of guns or armour, all flying fast to keep - pace with the running fight below. - </p> - <p> - From first to last no gun whatever was fired at the Vaterland, and only a - few rifle shots. It was a mere adverse stroke of chance that she had a man - killed aboard her. Nor did she take any direct share in the fight until - the end. She flew above the doomed American fleet while the Prince by - wireless telegraphy directed the movements of her consorts. Meanwhile the - Vogel-stern and Preussen, each with half a dozen drachenflieger in tow, - went full speed ahead and then dropped through the clouds, perhaps five - miles ahead of the Americans. The Theodore Roosevelt let fly at once with - the big guns in her forward barbette, but the shells burst far below the - Vogel-stern, and forthwith a dozen single-man drachenflieger were swooping - down to make their attack. - </p> - <p> - Bert, craning his neck through the cabin port-hole, saw the whole of that - incident, that first encounter of aeroplane and ironclad. He saw the queer - German drachenflieger, with their wide flat wings and square box-shaped - heads, their wheeled bodies, and their single-man riders, soar down the - air like a flight of birds. “Gaw!” he said. One to the right pitched - extravagantly, shot steeply up into the air, burst with a loud report, and - flamed down into the sea; another plunged nose forward into the water and - seemed to fly to pieces as it hit the waves. He saw little men on the deck - of the Theodore Roosevelt below, men foreshortened in plan into mere heads - and feet, running out preparing to shoot at the others. Then the foremost - flying-machine was rushing between Bert and the American's deck, and then - bang! came the thunder of its bomb flung neatly at the forward barbette, - and a thin little crackling of rifle shots in reply. Whack, whack, whack, - went the quick-firing guns of the Americans' battery, and smash came an - answering shell from the Furst Bismarck. Then a second and third - flying-machine passed between Bert and the American ironclad, dropping - bombs also, and a fourth, its rider hit by a bullet, reeled down and - dashed itself to pieces and exploded between the shot-torn funnels, - blowing them apart. Bert had a momentary glimpse of a little black - creature jumping from the crumpling frame of the flying-machine, hitting - the funnel, and falling limply, to be instantly caught and driven to - nothingness by the blaze and rush of the explosion. - </p> - <p> - Smash! came a vast explosion in the forward part of the flagship, and a - huge piece of metalwork seemed to lift out of her and dump itself into the - sea, dropping men and leaving a gap into which a prompt drachenflieger - planted a flaring bomb. And then for an instant Bert perceived only too - clearly in the growing, pitiless light a number of minute, convulsively - active animalcula scorched and struggling in the Theodore Roosevelt's - foaming wake. What were they? Not men—surely not men? Those - drowning, mangled little creatures tore with their clutching fingers at - Bert's soul. “Oh, Gord!” he cried, “Oh, Gord!” almost whimpering. He - looked again and they had gone, and the black stem of the Andrew Jackson, - a little disfigured by the sinking Bremen's last shot, was parting the - water that had swallowed them into two neatly symmetrical waves. For some - moments sheer blank horror blinded Bert to the destruction below. - </p> - <p> - Then, with an immense rushing sound, bearing as it were a straggling - volley of crashing minor explosions on its back, the Susquehanna, three - miles and more now to the east, blew up and vanished abruptly in a - boiling, steaming welter. For a moment nothing was to be seen but tumbled - water, and—then there came belching up from below, with immense - gulping noises, eructations of steam and air and petrol and fragments of - canvas and woodwork and men. - </p> - <p> - That made a distinct pause in the fight. It seemed a long pause to Bert. - He found himself looking for the drachenflieger. The flattened ruin of one - was floating abeam of the Monitor, the rest had passed, dropping bombs - down the American column; several were in the water and apparently - uninjured, and three or four were still in the air and coming round now in - a wide circle to return to their mother airships. The American ironclads - were no longer in column formation; the Theodore Roosevelt, badly damaged, - had turned to the southeast, and the Andrew Jackson, greatly battered but - uninjured in any fighting part was passing between her and the still fresh - and vigorous Furst Bismarck to intercept and meet the latter's fire. Away - to the west the Hermann and the Germanicus had appeared and were coming - into action. - </p> - <p> - In the pause, after the Susquehanna's disaster Bert became aware of a - trivial sound like the noise of an ill-greased, ill-hung door that falls - ajar—the sound of the men in the Furst Bismarck cheering. - </p> - <p> - And in that pause in the uproar too, the sun rose, the dark waters became - luminously blue, and a torrent of golden light irradiated the world. It - came like a sudden smile in a scene of hate and terror. The cloud veil had - vanished as if by magic, and the whole immensity of the German air-fleet - was revealed in the sky; the air-fleet stooping now upon its prey. - </p> - <p> - “Whack-bang, whack-bang,” the guns resumed, but ironclads were not built - to fight the zenith, and the only hits the Americans scored were a few - lucky chances in a generally ineffectual rifle fire. Their column was now - badly broken, the Susquehanna had gone, the Theodore Roosevelt had fallen - astern out of the line, with her forward guns disabled, in a heap of - wreckage, and the Monitor was in some grave trouble. These two had ceased - fire altogether, and so had the Bremen and Weimar, all four ships lying - within shot of each other in an involuntary truce and with their - respective flags still displayed. Only four American ships now, with the - Andrew Jackson leading, kept to the south-easterly course. And the Furst - Bismarck, the Hermann, and the Germanicus steamed parallel to them and - drew ahead of them, fighting heavily. The Vaterland rose slowly in the air - in preparation for the concluding act of the drama. - </p> - <p> - Then, falling into place one behind the other, a string of a dozen - airships dropped with unhurrying swiftness down the air in pursuit of the - American fleet. They kept at a height of two thousand feet or more until - they were over and a little in advance of the rearmost ironclad, and then - stooped swiftly down into a fountain of bullets, and going just a little - faster than the ship below, pelted her thinly protected decks with bombs - until they became sheets of detonating flame. So the airships passed one - after the other along the American column as it sought to keep up its - fight with the Furst Bismarck, the Hermann, and the Germanicus, and each - airship added to the destruction and confusion its predecessor had made. - The American gunfire ceased, except for a few heroic shots, but they still - steamed on, obstinately unsubdued, bloody, battered, and wrathfully - resistant, spitting bullets at the airships and unmercifully pounded by - the German ironclads. But now Bert had but intermittent glimpses of them - between the nearer bulks of the airships that assailed them.... - </p> - <p> - It struck Bert suddenly that the whole battle was receding and growing - small and less thunderously noisy. The Vaterland was rising in the air, - steadily and silently, until the impact of the guns no longer smote upon - the heart but came to the ear dulled by distance, until the four silenced - ships to the eastward were little distant things: but were there four? - Bert now could see only three of those floating, blackened, and smoking - rafts of ruin against the sun. But the Bremen had two boats out; the - Theodore Roosevelt was also dropping boats to where the drift of minute - objects struggled, rising and falling on the big, broad Atlantic waves.... - The Vaterland was no longer following the fight. The whole of that - hurrying tumult drove away to the south-eastward, growing smaller and less - audible as it passed. One of the airships lay on the water burning, a - remote monstrous fount of flames, and far in the south-west appeared first - one and then three other German ironclads hurrying in support of their - consorts.... - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - Steadily the Vaterland soared, and the air-fleet soared with her and came - round to head for New York, and the battle became a little thing far away, - an incident before the breakfast. It dwindled to a string of dark shapes - and one smoking yellow flare that presently became a mere indistinct smear - upon the vast horizon and the bright new day, that was at last altogether - lost to sight... - </p> - <p> - So it was that Bert Smallways saw the first fight of the airship and the - last fight of those strangest things in the whole history of war: the - ironclad battleships, which began their career with the floating batteries - of the Emperor Napoleon III in the Crimean war and lasted, with an - enormous expenditure of human energy and resources, for seventy years. In - that space of time the world produced over twelve thousand five hundred of - these strange monsters, in schools, in types, in series, each larger and - heavier and more deadly than its predecessors. Each in its turn was hailed - as the last birth of time, most in their turn were sold for old iron. Only - about five per cent of them ever fought in a battle. Some foundered, some - went ashore, and broke up, several rammed one another by accident and - sank. The lives of countless men were spent in their service, the splendid - genius, and patience of thousands of engineers and inventors, wealth and - material beyond estimating; to their account we must put, stunted and - starved lives on land, millions of children sent to toil unduly, - innumerable opportunities of fine living undeveloped and lost. Money had - to be found for them at any cost—that was the law of a nation's - existence during that strange time. Surely they were the weirdest, most - destructive and wasteful megatheria in the whole history of mechanical - invention. - </p> - <p> - And then cheap things of gas and basket-work made an end of them - altogether, smiting out of the sky!... - </p> - <p> - Never before had Bert Smallways seen pure destruction, never had he - realised the mischief and waste of war. His startled mind rose to the - conception; this also is in life. Out of all this fierce torrent of - sensation one impression rose and became cardinal—the impression of - the men of the Theodore Roosevelt who had struggled in the water after the - explosion of the first bomb. “Gaw!” he said at the memory; “it might 'ave - been me and Grubb!... I suppose you kick about and get the water in your - mouf. I don't suppose it lasts long.” - </p> - <p> - He became anxious to see how Kurt was affected by these things. Also he - perceived he was hungry. He hesitated towards the door of the cabin and - peeped out into the passage. Down forward, near the gangway to the men's - mess, stood a little group of air sailors looking at something that was - hidden from him in a recess. One of them was in the light diver's costume - Bert had already seen in the gas chamber turret, and he was moved to walk - along and look at this person more closely and examine the helmet he - carried under his arm. But he forgot about the helmet when he got to the - recess, because there he found lying on the floor the dead body of the boy - who had been killed by a bullet from the Theodore Roosevelt. - </p> - <p> - Bert had not observed that any bullets at all had reached the Vaterland - or, indeed, imagined himself under fire. He could not understand for a - time what had killed the lad, and no one explained to him. - </p> - <p> - The boy lay just as he had fallen and died, with his jacket torn and - scorched, his shoulder-blade smashed and burst away from his body and all - the left side of his body ripped and rent. There was much blood. The - sailors stood listening to the man with the helmet, who made explanations - and pointed to the round bullet hole in the floor and the smash in the - panel of the passage upon which the still vicious missile had spent the - residue of its energy. All the faces were grave and earnest: they were the - faces of sober, blond, blue-eyed men accustomed to obedience and an - orderly life, to whom this waste, wet, painful thing that had been a - comrade came almost as strangely as it did to Bert. - </p> - <p> - A peal of wild laughter sounded down the passage in the direction of the - little gallery and something spoke—almost shouted—in German, - in tones of exultation. - </p> - <p> - Other voices at a lower, more respectful pitch replied. - </p> - <p> - “Der Prinz,” said a voice, and all the men became stiffer and less - natural. Down the passage appeared a group of figures, Lieutenant Kurt - walking in front carrying a packet of papers. - </p> - <p> - He stopped point blank when he saw the thing in the recess, and his ruddy - face went white. - </p> - <p> - “So!” said he in surprise. - </p> - <p> - The Prince was following him, talking over his shoulder to Von Winterfeld - and the Kapitan. - </p> - <p> - “Eh?” he said to Kurt, stopping in mid-sentence, and followed the gesture - of Kurt's hand. He glared at the crumpled object in the recess and seemed - to think for a moment. - </p> - <p> - He made a slight, careless gesture towards the boy's body and turned to - the Kapitan. - </p> - <p> - “Dispose of that,” he said in German, and passed on, finishing his - sentence to Von Winterfeld in the same cheerful tone in which it had - begun. - </p> - <p> - 6 - </p> - <p> - The deep impression of helplessly drowning men that Bert had brought from - the actual fight in the Atlantic mixed itself up inextricably with that of - the lordly figure of Prince Karl Albert gesturing aside the dead body of - the Vaterland sailor. Hitherto he had rather liked the idea of war as - being a jolly, smashing, exciting affair, something like a Bank Holiday - rag on a large scale, and on the whole agreeable and exhilarating. Now he - knew it a little better. - </p> - <p> - The next day there was added to his growing disillusionment a third ugly - impression, trivial indeed to describe, a mere necessary everyday incident - of a state of war, but very distressing to his urbanised imagination. One - writes “urbanised” to express the distinctive gentleness of the period. It - was quite peculiar to the crowded townsmen of that time, and different - altogether from the normal experience of any preceding age, that they - never saw anything killed, never encountered, save through the mitigating - media of book or picture, the fact of lethal violence that underlies all - life. Three times in his existence, and three times only, had Bert seen a - dead human being, and he had never assisted at the killing of anything - bigger than a new-born kitten. - </p> - <p> - The incident that gave him his third shock was the execution of one of the - men on the Adler for carrying a box of matches. The case was a flagrant - one. The man had forgotten he had it upon him when coming aboard. Ample - notice had been given to every one of the gravity of this offence, and - notices appeared at numerous points all over the airships. The man's - defence was that he had grown so used to the notices and had been so - preoccupied with his work that he hadn't applied them to himself; he - pleaded, in his defence, what is indeed in military affairs another - serious crime, inadvertency. He was tried by his captain, and the sentence - confirmed by wireless telegraphy by the Prince, and it was decided to make - his death an example to the whole fleet. “The Germans,” the Prince - declared, “hadn't crossed the Atlantic to go wool gathering.” And in order - that this lesson in discipline and obedience might be visible to every - one, it was determined not to electrocute or drown but hang the offender. - </p> - <p> - Accordingly the air-fleet came clustering round the flagship like carp in - a pond at feeding time. The Adler hung at the zenith immediately alongside - the flagship. The whole crew of the Vaterland assembled upon the hanging - gallery; the crews of the other airships manned the air-chambers, that is - to say, clambered up the outer netting to the upper sides. The officers - appeared upon the machine-gun platforms. Bert thought it an altogether - stupendous sight, looking down, as he was, upon the entire fleet. Far off - below two steamers on the rippled blue water, one British and the other - flying the American flag, seemed the minutest objects, and marked the - scale. They were immensely distant. Bert stood on the gallery, curious to - see the execution, but uncomfortable, because that terrible blond Prince - was within a dozen feet of him, glaring terribly, with his arms folded, - and his heels together in military fashion. - </p> - <p> - They hung the man from the Adler. They gave him sixty feet of rope, so, - that he should hang and dangle in the sight of all evil-doers who might be - hiding matches or contemplating any kindred disobedience. Bert saw the man - standing, a living, reluctant man, no doubt scared and rebellious enough - in his heart, but outwardly erect and obedient, on the lower gallery of - the Adler about a hundred yards away. Then they had thrust him overboard. - </p> - <p> - Down he fell, hands and feet extending, until with a jerk he was at the - end of the rope. Then he ought to have died and swung edifyingly, but - instead a more terrible thing happened; his head came right off, and down - the body went spinning to the sea, feeble, grotesque, fantastic, with the - head racing it in its fall. - </p> - <p> - “Ugh!” said Bert, clutching the rail before him, and a sympathetic grunt - came from several of the men beside him. - </p> - <p> - “So!” said the Prince, stiffer and sterner, glared for some seconds, then - turned to the gang way up into the airship. - </p> - <p> - For a long time Bert remained clinging to the railing of the gallery. He - was almost physically sick with the horror of this trifling incident. He - found it far more dreadful than the battle. He was indeed a very - degenerate, latter-day, civilised person. - </p> - <p> - Late that afternoon Kurt came into the cabin and found him curled up on - his locker, and looking very white and miserable. Kurt had also lost - something of his pristine freshness. - </p> - <p> - “Sea-sick?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “No!” - </p> - <p> - “We ought to reach New York this evening. There's a good breeze coming up - under our tails. Then we shall see things.” - </p> - <p> - Bert did not answer. - </p> - <p> - Kurt opened out folding chair and table, and rustled for a time with his - maps. Then he fell thinking darkly. He roused himself presently, and - looked at his companion. “What's the matter?” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing!” - </p> - <p> - Kurt stared threateningly. “What's the matter?” - </p> - <p> - “I saw them kill that chap. I saw that flying-machine man hit the funnels - of the big ironclad. I saw that dead chap in the passage. I seen too much - smashing and killing lately. That's the matter. I don't like it. I didn't - know war was this sort of thing. I'm a civilian. I don't like it.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>I</i> don't like it,” said Kurt. “By Jove, no!” - </p> - <p> - “I've read about war, and all that, but when you see it it's different. - And I'm gettin' giddy. I'm gettin' giddy. I didn't mind a bit being up in - that balloon at first, but all this looking down and floating over things - and smashing up people, it's getting on my nerves. See?” - </p> - <p> - “It'll have to get off again....” - </p> - <p> - Kurt thought. “You're not the only one. The men are all getting strung up. - The flying—that's just flying. Naturally it makes one a little - swimmy in the head at first. As for the killing, we've got to be blooded; - that's all. We're tame, civilised men. And we've got to get blooded. I - suppose there's not a dozen men on the ship who've really seen bloodshed. - Nice, quiet, law-abiding Germans they've been so far.... Here they are—in - for it. They're a bit squeamy now, but you wait till they've got their - hands in.” - </p> - <p> - He reflected. “Everybody's getting a bit strung up,” he said. - </p> - <p> - He turned again to his maps. Bert sat crumpled up in the corner, - apparently heedless of him. For some time both kept silence. - </p> - <p> - “What did the Prince want to go and 'ang that chap for?” asked Bert, - suddenly. - </p> - <p> - “That was all right,” said Kurt, “that was all right. QUITE right. Here - were the orders, plain as the nose on your face, and here was that fool - going about with matches—” - </p> - <p> - “Gaw! I shan't forget that bit in a 'urry,” said Bert irrelevantly. - </p> - <p> - Kurt did not answer him. He was measuring their distance from New York and - speculating. “Wonder what the American aeroplanes are like?” he said. - “Something like our drachenflieger.... We shall know by this time - to-morrow.... I wonder what we shall know? I wonder. Suppose, after all, - they put up a fight.... Rum sort of fight!” - </p> - <p> - He whistled softly and mused. Presently he fretted out of the cabin, and - later Bert found him in the twilight upon the swinging platform, staring - ahead, and speculating about the things that might happen on the morrow. - Clouds veiled the sea again, and the long straggling wedge of air-ships - rising and falling as they flew seemed like a flock of strange new births - in a Chaos that had neither earth nor water but only mist and sky. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VI. HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - The City of New York was in the year of the German attack the largest, - richest, in many respects the most splendid, and in some, the wickedest - city the world had ever seen. She was the supreme type of the City of the - Scientific Commercial Age; she displayed its greatness, its power, its - ruthless anarchic enterprise, and its social disorganisation most - strikingly and completely. She had long ousted London from her pride of - place as the modern Babylon, she was the centre of the world's finance, - the world's trade, and the world's pleasure; and men likened her to the - apocalyptic cities of the ancient prophets. She sat drinking up the wealth - of a continent as Rome once drank the wealth of the Mediterranean and - Babylon the wealth of the east. In her streets one found the extremes of - magnificence and misery, of civilisation and disorder. In one quarter, - palaces of marble, laced and, crowned with light and flame and flowers, - towered up into her marvellous twilights beautiful, beyond description; in - another, a black and sinister polyglot population sweltered in - indescribable congestion in warrens, and excavations beyond the power and - knowledge of government. Her vice, her crime, her law alike were inspired - by a fierce and terrible energy, and like the great cities of mediaeval - Italy, her ways were dark and adventurous with private war. - </p> - <p> - It was the peculiar shape of Manhattan Island, pressed in by arms of the - sea on either side, and incapable of comfortable expansion, except along a - narrow northward belt, that first gave the New York architects their bias - for extreme vertical dimensions. Every need was lavishly supplied them—money, - material, labour; only space was restricted. To begin, therefore, they - built high perforce. But to do so was to discover a whole new world of - architectural beauty, of exquisite ascendant lines, and long after the - central congestion had been relieved by tunnels under the sea, four - colossal bridges over the east river, and a dozen mono-rail cables east - and west, the upward growth went on. In many ways New York and her - gorgeous plutocracy repeated Venice in the magnificence of her - architecture, painting, metal-work and sculpture, for example, in the grim - intensity of her political method, in her maritime and commercial - ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in the lax disorder - of her internal administration, a laxity that made vast sections of her - area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possible for whole districts - to be impassable, while civil war raged between street and street, and for - Alsatias to exist in her midst in which the official police never set - foot. She was an ethnic whirlpool. The flags of all nations flew in her - harbour, and at the climax, the yearly coming and going overseas numbered - together upwards of two million human beings. To Europe she was America, - to America she was the gateway of the world. But to tell the story of New - York would be to write a social history of the world; saints and martyrs, - dreamers and scoundrels, the traditions of a thousand races and a thousand - religions, went to her making and throbbed and jostled in her streets. And - over all that torrential confusion of men and purposes fluttered that - strange flag, the stars and stripes, that meant at once the noblest thing - in life, and the least noble, that is to say, Liberty on the one hand, and - on the other the base jealousy the individual self-seeker feels towards - the common purpose of the State. - </p> - <p> - For many generations New York had taken no heed of war, save as a thing - that happened far away, that affected prices and supplied the newspapers - with exciting headlines and pictures. The New Yorkers felt perhaps even - more certainly than the English had done that war in their own land was an - impossible thing. In that they shared the delusion of all North America. - They felt as secure as spectators at a bullfight; they risked their money - perhaps on the result, but that was all. And such ideas of war as the - common Americans possessed were derived from the limited, picturesque, - adventurous war of the past. They saw war as they saw history, through an - iridescent mist, deodorised, scented indeed, with all its essential - cruelties tactfully hidden away. They were inclined to regret it as - something ennobling, to sigh that it could no longer come into their own - private experience. They read with interest, if not with avidity, of their - new guns, of their immense and still more immense ironclads, of their - incredible and still more incredible explosives, but just what these - tremendous engines of destruction might mean for their personal lives - never entered their heads. They did not, so far as one can judge from - their contemporary literature, think that they meant anything to their - personal lives at all. They thought America was safe amidst all this - piling up of explosives. They cheered the flag by habit and tradition, - they despised other nations, and whenever there was an international - difficulty they were intensely patriotic, that is to say, they were - ardently against any native politician who did not say, threaten, and do - harsh and uncompromising things to the antagonist people. They were - spirited to Asia, spirited to Germany, so spirited to Great Britain that - the international attitude of the mother country to her great daughter was - constantly compared in contemporary caricature to that between a - hen-pecked husband and a vicious young wife. And for the rest, they all - went about their business and pleasure as if war had died out with the - megatherium.... - </p> - <p> - And then suddenly, into a world peacefully busied for the most part upon - armaments and the perfection of explosives, war came; came the shock of - realising that the guns were going off, that the masses of inflammable - material all over the world were at last ablaze. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - The immediate effect upon New York of the sudden onset of war was merely - to intensify her normal vehemence. - </p> - <p> - The newspapers and magazines that fed the American mind—for books - upon this impatient continent had become simply material for the energy of - collectors—were instantly a coruscation of war pictures and of - headlines that rose like rockets and burst like shells. To the normal - high-strung energy of New York streets was added a touch of war-fever. - Great crowds assembled, more especially in the dinner hour, in Madison - Square about the Farragut monument, to listen to and cheer patriotic - speeches, and a veritable epidemic of little flags and buttons swept - through these great torrents of swiftly moving young people, who poured - into New York of a morning by car and mono-rail and subway and train, to - toil, and ebb home again between the hours of five and seven. It was - dangerous not to wear a war button. The splendid music-halls of the time - sank every topic in patriotism and evolved scenes of wild enthusiasm, - strong men wept at the sight of the national banner sustained by the whole - strength of the ballet, and special searchlights and illuminations amazed - the watching angels. The churches re-echoed the national enthusiasm in - graver key and slower measure, and the aerial and naval preparations on - the East River were greatly incommoded by the multitude of excursion - steamers which thronged, helpfully cheering, about them. The trade in - small-arms was enormously stimulated, and many overwrought citizens found - an immediate relief for their emotions in letting off fireworks of a more - or less heroic, dangerous, and national character in the public streets. - Small children's air-balloons of the latest model attached to string - became a serious check to the pedestrian in Central Park. And amidst - scenes of indescribable emotion the Albany legislature in permanent - session, and with a generous suspension of rules and precedents, passed - through both Houses the long-disputed Bill for universal military service - in New York State. - </p> - <p> - Critics of the American character are disposed to consider—that up - to the actual impact of the German attack the people of New York dealt - altogether too much with the war as if it was a political demonstration. - Little or no damage, they urge, was done to either the German or Japanese - forces by the wearing of buttons, the waving of small flags, the - fireworks, or the songs. They forgot that, under the conditions of warfare - a century of science had brought about, the non-military section of the - population could do no serious damage in any form to their enemies, and - that there was no reason, therefore, why they should not do as they did. - The balance of military efficiency was shifting back from the many to the - few, from the common to the specialised. - </p> - <p> - The days when the emotional infantryman decided battles had passed by for - ever. War had become a matter of apparatus of special training and skill - of the most intricate kind. It had become undemocratic. And whatever the - value of the popular excitement, there can be no denying that the small - regular establishment of the United States Government, confronted by this - totally unexpected emergency of an armed invasion from Europe, acted with - vigour, science, and imagination. They were taken by surprise so far as - the diplomatic situation was concerned, and their equipment for building - either navigables or aeroplanes was contemptible in comparison with the - huge German parks. Still they set to work at once to prove to the world - that the spirit that had created the Monitor and the Southern submarines - of 1864 was not dead. The chief of the aeronautic establishment near West - Point was Cabot Sinclair, and he allowed himself but one single moment of - the posturing that was so universal in that democratic time. “We have - chosen our epitaphs,” he said to a reporter, “and we are going to have, - 'They did all they could.' Now run away!” - </p> - <p> - The curious thing is that they did all do all they could; there is no - exception known. Their only defect indeed was a defect of style. One of - the most striking facts historically about this war, and the one that - makes the complete separation that had arisen between the methods of - warfare and the necessity of democratic support, is the effectual secrecy - of the Washington authorities about their airships. They did not bother to - confide a single fact of their preparations to the public. They did not - even condescend to talk to Congress. They burked and suppressed every - inquiry. The war was fought by the President and the Secretaries of State - in an entirely autocratic manner. Such publicity as they sought was merely - to anticipate and prevent inconvenient agitation to defend particular - points. They realised that the chief danger in aerial warfare from an - excitable and intelligent public would be a clamour for local airships and - aeroplanes to defend local interests. This, with such resources as they - possessed, might lead to a fatal division and distribution of the national - forces. Particularly they feared that they might be forced into a - premature action to defend New York. They realised with prophetic insight - that this would be the particular advantage the Germans would seek. So - they took great pains to direct the popular mind towards defensive - artillery, and to divert it from any thought of aerial battle. Their real - preparations they masked beneath ostensible ones. There was at Washington - a large reserve of naval guns, and these were distributed rapidly, - conspicuously, and with much press attention, among the Eastern cities. - They were mounted for the most part upon hills and prominent crests around - the threatened centres of population. They were mounted upon rough - adaptations of the Doan swivel, which at that time gave the maximum - vertical range to a heavy gun. Much of this artillery was still unmounted, - and nearly all of it was unprotected when the German air-fleet reached New - York. And down in the crowded streets, when that occurred, the readers of - the New York papers were regaling themselves with wonderful and - wonderfully illustrated accounts of such matters as:— - </p> - <p> - THE SECRET OF THE THUNDERBOLT AGED SCIENTIST PERFECTS ELECTRIC GUN TO - ELECTROCUTE AIRSHIP CREWS BY UPWARD LIGHTNING WASHINGTON ORDERS FIVE - HUNDRED WAR SECRETARY LODGE DELIGHTED SAYS THEY WILL SUIT THE GERMANS DOWN - TO THE GROUND PRESIDENT PUBLICLY APPLAUDS THIS MERRY QUIP 3 - </p> - <p> - The German fleet reached New York in advance of the news of the American - naval disaster. It reached New York in the late afternoon and was first - seen by watchers at Ocean Grove and Long Branch coming swiftly out of the - southward sea and going away to the northwest. The flagship passed almost - vertically over the Sandy Hook observation station, rising rapidly as it - did so, and in a few minutes all New York was vibrating to the Staten - Island guns. - </p> - <p> - Several of these guns, and especially that at Giffords and the one on - Beacon Hill above Matawan, were remarkably well handled. The former, at a - distance of five miles, and with an elevation of six thousand feet, sent a - shell to burst so close to the Vaterland that a pane of the Prince's - forward window was smashed by a fragment. This sudden explosion made Bert - tuck in his head with the celerity of a startled tortoise. The whole - air-fleet immediately went up steeply to a height of about twelve thousand - feet and at that level passed unscathed over the ineffectual guns. The - airships lined out as they moved forward into the form of a flattened V, - with its apex towards the city, and with the flagship going highest at the - apex. The two ends of the V passed over Plumfield and Jamaica Bay, - respectively, and the Prince directed his course a little to the east of - the Narrows, soared over Upper Bay, and came to rest over Jersey City in a - position that dominated lower New York. There the monsters hung, large and - wonderful in the evening light, serenely regardless of the occasional - rocket explosions and flashing shell-bursts in the lower air. - </p> - <p> - It was a pause of mutual inspection. For a time naive humanity swamped the - conventions of warfare altogether; the interest of the millions below and - of the thousands above alike was spectacular. The evening was unexpectedly - fine—only a few thin level bands of clouds at seven or eight - thousand feet broke its luminous clarity. The wind had dropped; it was an - evening infinitely peaceful and still. The heavy concussions of the - distant guns and those incidental harmless pyrotechnics at the level of - the clouds seemed to have as little to do with killing and force, terror - and submission, as a salute at a naval review. Below, every point of - vantage bristled with spectators, the roofs of the towering buildings, the - public squares, the active ferry boats, and every favourable street - intersection had its crowds: all the river piers were dense with people, - the Battery Park was solid black with east-side population, and every - position of advantage in Central Park and along Riverside Drive had its - peculiar and characteristic assembly from the adjacent streets. The - footways of the great bridges over the East River were also closely packed - and blocked. Everywhere shopkeepers had left their shops, men their work, - and women and children their homes, to come out and see the marvel. - </p> - <p> - “It beat,” they declared, “the newspapers.” - </p> - <p> - And from above, many of the occupants of the airships stared with an equal - curiosity. No city in the world was ever so finely placed as New York, so - magnificently cut up by sea and bluff and river, so admirably disposed to - display the tall effects of buildings, the complex immensities of bridges - and mono-railways and feats of engineering. London, Paris, Berlin, were - shapeless, low agglomerations beside it. Its port reached to its heart - like Venice, and, like Venice, it was obvious, dramatic, and proud. Seen - from above it was alive with crawling trains and cars, and at a thousand - points it was already breaking into quivering light. New York was - altogether at its best that evening, its splendid best. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw! What a place!” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - It was so great, and in its collective effect so pacifically magnificent, - that to make war upon it seemed incongruous beyond measure, like laying - siege to the National Gallery or attacking respectable people in an hotel - dining-room with battle-axe and mail. It was in its entirety so large, so - complex, so delicately immense, that to bring it to the issue of warfare - was like driving a crowbar into the mechanism of a clock. And the - fish-like shoal of great airships hovering light and sunlit above, filling - the sky, seemed equally remote from the ugly forcefulness of war. To Kurt, - to Smallways, to I know not how many more of the people in the air-fleet - came the distinctest apprehension of these incompatibilities. But in the - head of the Prince Karl Albert were the vapours of romance: he was a - conqueror, and this was the enemy's city. The greater the city, the - greater the triumph. No doubt he had a time of tremendous exultation and - sensed beyond all precedent the sense of power that night. - </p> - <p> - There came an end at last to that pause. Some wireless communications had - failed of a satisfactory ending, and fleet and city remembered they were - hostile powers. “Look!” cried the multitude; “look!” - </p> - <p> - “What are they doing?” - </p> - <p> - “What?”... Down through the twilight sank five attacking airships, one to - the Navy Yard on East River, one to City Hall, two over the great business - buildings of Wall Street and Lower Broadway, one to the Brooklyn Bridge, - dropping from among their fellows through the danger zone from the distant - guns smoothly and rapidly to a safe proximity to the city masses. At that - descent all the cars in the streets stopped with dramatic suddenness, and - all the lights that had been coming on in the streets and houses went out - again. For the City Hall had awakened and was conferring by telephone with - the Federal command and taking measures for defence. The City Hall was - asking for airships, refusing to surrender as Washington advised, and - developing into a centre of intense emotion, of hectic activity. - Everywhere and hastily the police began to clear the assembled crowds. “Go - to your homes,” they said; and the word was passed from mouth to mouth, - “There's going to be trouble.” A chill of apprehension ran through the - city, and men hurrying in the unwonted darkness across City Hall Park and - Union Square came upon the dim forms of soldiers and guns, and were - challenged and sent back. In half an hour New York had passed from serene - sunset and gaping admiration to a troubled and threatening twilight. - </p> - <p> - The first loss of life occurred in the panic rush from Brooklyn Bridge as - the airship approached it. With the cessation of the traffic an unusual - stillness came upon New York, and the disturbing concussions of the futile - defending guns on the hills about grew more and more audible. At last - these ceased also. A pause of further negotiation followed. People sat in - darkness, sought counsel from telephones that were dumb. Then into the - expectant hush came a great crash and uproar, the breaking down of the - Brooklyn Bridge, the rifle fire from the Navy Yard, and the bursting of - bombs in Wall Street and the City Hall. New York as a whole could do - nothing, could understand nothing. New York in the darkness peered and - listened to these distant sounds until presently they died away as - suddenly as they had begun. “What could be happening?” They asked it in - vain. - </p> - <p> - A long, vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windows of - upper rooms discovered the dark hulls of German airships, gliding slowly - and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly the electric lights - came on again, and an uproar of nocturnal newsvendors began in the - streets. - </p> - <p> - The units of that vast and varied population bought and learnt what had - happened; there had been a fight and New York had hoisted the white flag. - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - The lamentable incidents that followed the surrender of New York seem now - in the retrospect to be but the necessary and inevitable consequence of - the clash of modern appliances and social conditions produced by the - scientific century on the one hand, and the tradition of a crude, romantic - patriotism on the other. At first people received the fact with an - irresponsible detachment, much as they would have received the slowing - down of the train in which they were travelling or the erection of a - public monument by the city to which they belonged. - </p> - <p> - “We have surrendered. Dear me! HAVE we?” was rather the manner in which - the first news was met. They took it in the same spectacular spirit they - had displayed at the first apparition of the air-fleet. Only slowly was - this realisation of a capitulation suffused with the flush of passion, - only with reflection did they make any personal application. “WE have - surrendered!” came later; “in us America is defeated.” Then they began to - burn and tingle. - </p> - <p> - The newspapers, which were issued about one in the morning contained no - particulars of the terms upon which New York had yielded—nor did - they give any intimation of the quality of the brief conflict that had - preceded the capitulation. The later issues remedied these deficiencies. - There came the explicit statement of the agreement to victual the German - airships, to supply the complement of explosives to replace those employed - in the fight and in the destruction of the North Atlantic fleet, to pay - the enormous ransom of forty million dollars, and to surrender the - flotilla in the East River. There came, too, longer and longer - descriptions of the smashing up of the City Hall and the Navy Yard, and - people began to realise faintly what those brief minutes of uproar had - meant. They read the tale of men blown to bits, of futile soldiers in that - localised battle fighting against hope amidst an indescribable wreckage, - of flags hauled down by weeping men. And these strange nocturnal editions - contained also the first brief cables from Europe of the fleet disaster, - the North Atlantic fleet for which New York had always felt an especial - pride and solicitude. Slowly, hour by hour, the collective consciousness - woke up, the tide of patriotic astonishment and humiliation came floating - in. America had come upon disaster; suddenly New York discovered herself - with amazement giving place to wrath unspeakable, a conquered city under - the hand of her conqueror. - </p> - <p> - As that fact shaped itself in the public mind, there sprang up, as flames - spring up, an angry repudiation. “No!” cried New York, waking in the dawn. - “No! I am not defeated. This is a dream.” Before day broke the swift - American anger was running through all the city, through every soul in - those contagious millions. Before it took action, before it took shape, - the men in the airships could feel the gigantic insurgence of emotion, as - cattle and natural creatures feel, it is said, the coming of an - earthquake. The newspapers of the Knype group first gave the thing words - and a formula. “We do not agree,” they said simply. “We have been - betrayed!” Men took that up everywhere, it passed from mouth to mouth, at - every street corner under the paling lights of dawn orators stood - unchecked, calling upon the spirit of America to arise, making the shame a - personal reality to every one who heard. To Bert, listening five hundred - feet above, it seemed that the city, which had at first produced only - confused noises, was now humming like a hive of bees—of very angry - bees. - </p> - <p> - After the smashing of the City Hall and Post-Office, the white flag had - been hoisted from a tower of the old Park Row building, and thither had - gone Mayor O'Hagen, urged thither indeed by the terror-stricken property - owners of lower New York, to negotiate the capitulation with Von - Winterfeld. The Vaterland, having dropped the secretary by a rope ladder, - remained hovering, circling very slowly above the great buildings, old and - new, that clustered round City Hall Park, while the Helmholz, which had - done the fighting there, rose overhead to a height of perhaps two thousand - feet. So Bert had a near view of all that occurred in that central place. - The City Hall and Court House, the Post-Office and a mass of buildings on - the west side of Broadway, had been badly damaged, and the three former - were a heap of blackened ruins. In the case of the first two the loss of - life had not been considerable, but a great multitude of workers, - including many girls and women, had been caught in the destruction of the - Post-Office, and a little army of volunteers with white badges entered - behind the firemen, bringing out the often still living bodies, for the - most part frightfully charred, and carrying them into the big Monson - building close at hand. Everywhere the busy firemen were directing their - bright streams of water upon the smouldering masses: their hose lay about - the square, and long cordons of police held back the gathering black - masses of people, chiefly from the east side, from these central - activities. - </p> - <p> - In violent and extraordinary contrast with this scene of destruction, - close at hand were the huge newspaper establishments of Park Row. They - were all alight and working; they had not been abandoned even while the - actual bomb throwing was going on, and now staff and presses were - vehemently active, getting out the story, the immense and dreadful story - of the night, developing comment and, in most cases, spreading the idea of - resistance under the very noses of the airships. For a long time Bert - could not imagine what these callously active offices could be, then he - detected the noise of the presses and emitted his “Gaw!” - </p> - <p> - Beyond these newspaper buildings again, and partially hidden by the arches - of the old Elevated Railway of New York (long since converted into a - mono-rail), there was another cordon of police and a sort of encampment of - ambulances and doctors, busy with the dead and wounded who had been killed - early in the night by the panic upon Brooklyn Bridge. All this he saw in - the perspectives of a bird's-eye view, as things happening in a big, - irregular-shaped pit below him, between cliffs of high building. Northward - he looked along the steep canon of Broadway, down whose length at - intervals crowds were assembling about excited speakers; and when he - lifted his eyes he saw the chimneys and cable-stacks and roof spaces of - New York, and everywhere now over these the watching, debating people - clustered, except where the fires raged and the jets of water flew. - Everywhere, too, were flagstaffs devoid of flags; one white sheet drooped - and flapped and drooped again over the Park Row buildings. And upon the - lurid lights, the festering movement and intense shadows of this strange - scene, there was breaking now the cold, impartial dawn. - </p> - <p> - For Bert Smallways all this was framed in the frame of the open porthole. - It was a pale, dim world outside that dark and tangible rim. All night he - had clutched at that rim, jumped and quivered at explosions, and watched - phantom events. Now he had been high and now low; now almost beyond - hearing, now flying close to crashings and shouts and outcries. He had - seen airships flying low and swift over darkened and groaning streets; - watched great buildings, suddenly red-lit amidst the shadows, crumple at - the smashing impact of bombs; witnessed for the first time in his life the - grotesque, swift onset of insatiable conflagrations. From it all he felt - detached, disembodied. The Vaterland did not even fling a bomb; she - watched and ruled. Then down they had come at last to hover over City Hall - Park, and it had crept in upon his mind, chillingly, terrifyingly, that - these illuminated black masses were great offices afire, and that the - going to and fro of minute, dim spectres of lantern-lit grey and white was - a harvesting of the wounded and the dead. As the light grew clearer he - began to understand more and more what these crumpled black things - signified.... - </p> - <p> - He had watched hour after hour since first New York had risen out of the - blue indistinctness of the landfall. With the daylight he experienced an - intolerable fatigue. - </p> - <p> - He lifted weary eyes to the pink flush in the sky, yawned immensely, and - crawled back whispering to himself across the cabin to the locker. He did - not so much lie down upon that as fall upon it and instantly become - asleep. - </p> - <p> - There, hours after, sprawling undignified and sleeping profoundly, Kurt - found him, a very image of the democratic mind confronted with the - problems of a time too complex for its apprehension. His face was pale and - indifferent, his mouth wide open, and he snored. He snored disagreeably. - </p> - <p> - Kurt regarded him for a moment with a mild distaste. Then he kicked his - ankle. - </p> - <p> - “Wake up,” he said to Smallways' stare, “and lie down decent.” - </p> - <p> - Bert sat up and rubbed his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Any more fightin' yet?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Kurt, and sat down, a tired man. - </p> - <p> - “Gott!” he cried presently, rubbing his hands over his face, “but I'd like - a cold bath! I've been looking for stray bullet holes in the air-chambers - all night until now.” He yawned. “I must sleep. You'd better clear out, - Smallways. I can't stand you here this morning. You're so infernally ugly - and useless. Have you had your rations? No! Well, go in and get 'em, and - don't come back. Stick in the gallery....” - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - So Bert, slightly refreshed by coffee and sleep, resumed his helpless - co-operation in the War in the Air. He went down into the little gallery - as the lieutenant had directed, and clung to the rail at the extreme end - beyond the look-out man, trying to seem as inconspicuous and harmless a - fragment of life as possible. - </p> - <p> - A wind was rising rather strongly from the south-east. It obliged the - Vaterland to come about in that direction, and made her roll a great deal - as she went to and fro over Manhattan Island. Away in the north-west - clouds gathered. The throb-throb of her slow screw working against the - breeze was much more perceptible than when she was going full speed ahead; - and the friction of the wind against the underside of the gas-chamber - drove a series of shallow ripples along it and made a faint flapping sound - like, but fainter than, the beating of ripples under the stem of a boat. - She was stationed over the temporary City Hall in the Park Row building, - and every now and then she would descend to resume communication with the - mayor and with Washington. But the restlessness of the Prince would not - suffer him to remain for long in any one place. Now he would circle over - the Hudson and East River; now he would go up high, as if to peer away - into the blue distances; once he ascended so swiftly and so far that - mountain sickness overtook him and the crew and forced him down again; and - Bert shared the dizziness and nausea. - </p> - <p> - The swaying view varied with these changes of altitude. Now they would be - low and close, and he would distinguish in that steep, unusual - perspective, windows, doors, street and sky signs, people and the minutest - details, and watch the enigmatical behaviour of crowds and clusters upon - the roofs and in the streets; then as they soared the details would - shrink, the sides of streets draw together, the view widen, the people - cease to be significant. At the highest the effect was that of a concave - relief map; Bert saw the dark and crowded land everywhere intersected by - shining waters, saw the Hudson River like a spear of silver, and Lower - Island Sound like a shield. Even to Bert's unphilosophical mind the - contrast of city below and fleet above pointed an opposition, the - opposition of the adventurous American's tradition and character with - German order and discipline. Below, the immense buildings, tremendous and - fine as they were, seemed like the giant trees of a jungle fighting for - life; their picturesque magnificence was as planless as the chances of - crag and gorge, their casualty enhanced by the smoke and confusion of - still unsubdued and spreading conflagrations. In the sky soared the German - airships like beings in a different, entirely more orderly world, all - oriented to the same angle of the horizon, uniform in build and - appearance, moving accurately with one purpose as a pack of wolves will - move, distributed with the most precise and effectual co-operation. - </p> - <p> - It dawned upon Bert that hardly a third of the fleet was visible. The - others had gone upon errands he could not imagine, beyond the compass of - that great circle of earth and sky. He wondered, but there was no one to - ask. As the day wore on, about a dozen reappeared in the east with their - stores replenished from the flotilla and towing a number of - drachenflieger. Towards afternoon the weather thickened, driving clouds - appeared in the south-west and ran together and seemed to engender more - clouds, and the wind came round into that quarter and blew stronger. - Towards the evening the wind became a gale into which the now tossing - airships had to beat. - </p> - <p> - All that day the Prince was negotiating with Washington, while his - detached scouts sought far and wide over the Eastern States looking for - anything resembling an aeronautic park. A squadron of twenty airships - detached overnight had dropped out of the air upon Niagara and was holding - the town and power works. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile the insurrectionary movement in the giant city grew - uncontrollable. In spite of five great fires already involving many acres, - and spreading steadily, New York was still not satisfied that she was - beaten. - </p> - <p> - At first the rebellious spirit below found vent only in isolated shouts, - street-crowd speeches, and newspaper suggestions; then it found much more - definite expression in the appearance in the morning sunlight of American - flags at point after point above the architectural cliffs of the city. It - is quite possible that in many cases this spirited display of bunting by a - city already surrendered was the outcome of the innocent informality of - the American mind, but it is also undeniable that in many it was a - deliberate indication that the people “felt wicked.” - </p> - <p> - The German sense of correctitude was deeply shocked by this outbreak. The - Graf von Winterfeld immediately communicated with the mayor, and pointed - out the irregularity, and the fire look-out stations were instructed in - the matter. The New York police was speedily hard at work, and a foolish - contest in full swing between impassioned citizens resolved to keep the - flag flying, and irritated and worried officers instructed to pull it - down. - </p> - <p> - The trouble became acute at last in the streets above Columbia University. - The captain of the airship watching this quarter seems to have stooped to - lasso and drag from its staff a flag hoisted upon Morgan Hall. As he did - so a volley of rifle and revolver shots was fired from the upper windows - of the huge apartment building that stands between the University and - Riverside Drive. - </p> - <p> - Most of these were ineffectual, but two or three perforated gas-chambers, - and one smashed the hand and arm of a man upon the forward platform; The - sentinel on the lower gallery immediately replied, and the machine gun on - the shield of the eagle let fly and promptly stopped any further shots. - The airship rose and signalled the flagship and City Hall, police and - militiamen were directed at once to the spot, and this particular incident - closed. - </p> - <p> - But hard upon that came the desperate attempt of a party of young clubmen - from New York, who, inspired by patriotic and adventurous imaginations, - slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars to Beacon Hill, and set to work - with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort about the Doan swivel gun that - had been placed there. They found it still in the hands of the disgusted - gunners, who had been ordered to cease fire at the capitulation, and it - was easy to infect these men with their own spirit. They declared their - gun hadn't had half a chance, and were burning to show what it could do. - Directed by the newcomers, they made a trench and bank about the mounting - of the piece, and constructed flimsy shelter-pits of corrugated iron. - </p> - <p> - They were actually loading the gun when they were observed by the airship - Preussen and the shell they succeeded in firing before the bombs of the - latter smashed them and their crude defences to fragments, burst over the - middle gas-chambers of the Bingen, and brought her to earth, disabled, - upon Staten Island. She was badly deflated, and dropped among trees, over - which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies and festoons. Nothing, - however, had caught fire, and her men were speedily at work upon her - repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged upon indiscretion. - While most of them commenced patching the tears of the membrane, half a - dozen of them started off for the nearest road in search of a gas main, - and presently found themselves prisoners in the hands of a hostile crowd. - Close at hand was a number of villa residences, whose occupants speedily - developed from an unfriendly curiosity to aggression. At that time the - police control of the large polyglot population of Staten Island had - become very lax, and scarcely a household but had its rifle or pistols and - ammunition. These were presently produced, and after two or three misses, - one of the men at work was hit in the foot. Thereupon the Germans left - their sewing and mending, took cover among the trees, and replied. - </p> - <p> - The crackling of shots speedily brought the Preussen and Kiel on the - scene, and with a few hand grenades they made short work of every villa - within a mile. A number of non-combatant American men, women, and children - were killed and the actual assailants driven off. For a time the repairs - went on in peace under the immediate protection of these two airships. - Then when they returned to their quarters, an intermittent sniping and - fighting round the stranded Bingen was resumed, and went on all the - afternoon, and merged at last in the general combat of the evening.... - </p> - <p> - About eight the Bingen was rushed by an armed mob, and all its defenders - killed after a fierce, disorderly struggle. - </p> - <p> - The difficulty of the Germans in both these cases came from the - impossibility of landing any efficient force or, indeed, any force at all - from the air-fleet. The airships were quite unequal to the transport of - any adequate landing parties; their complement of men was just sufficient - to manoeuvre and fight them in the air. From above they could inflict - immense damage; they could reduce any organised Government to a - capitulation in the briefest space, but they could not disarm, much less - could they occupy, the surrendered areas below. They had to trust to the - pressure upon the authorities below of a threat to renew the bombardment. - It was their sole resource. No doubt, with a highly organised and - undamaged Government and a homogeneous and well-disciplined people that - would have sufficed to keep the peace. But this was not the American case. - Not only was the New York Government a weak one and insufficiently - provided with police, but the destruction of the City Hall—and - Post-Office and other central ganglia had hopelessly disorganised the - co-operation of part with part. The street cars and railways had ceased; - the telephone service was out of gear and only worked intermittently. The - Germans had struck at the head, and the head was conquered and stunned—only - to release the body from its rule. New York had become a headless monster, - no longer capable of collective submission. Everywhere it lifted itself - rebelliously; everywhere authorities and officials left to their own - imitative were joining in the arming and flag-hoisting and excitement of - that afternoon. - </p> - <p> - 6 - </p> - <p> - The disintegrating truce gave place to a definite general breach with the - assassination of the Wetterhorn—for that is the only possible word - for the act—above Union Square, and not a mile away from the - exemplary ruins of City Hall. This occurred late in the afternoon, between - five and six. By that time the weather had changed very much for the - worse, and the operations of the airships were embarrassed by the - necessity they were under of keeping head on to the gusts. A series of - squalls, with hail and thunder, followed one another from the south by - south-east, and in order to avoid these as much as possible, the air-fleet - came low over the houses, diminishing its range of observation and - exposing itself to a rifle attack. - </p> - <p> - Overnight there had been a gun placed in Union Square. It had never been - mounted, much less fired, and in the darkness after the surrender it was - taken with its supplies and put out of the way under the arches of the - great Dexter building. Here late in the morning it was remarked by a - number of patriotic spirits. They set to work to hoist and mount it inside - the upper floors of the place. They made, in fact, a masked battery behind - the decorous office blinds, and there lay in wait as simply excited as - children until at last the stem of the luckless Wetterhorn appeared, - beating and rolling at quarter speed over the recently reconstructed - pinnacles of Tiffany's. Promptly that one-gun battery unmasked. The - airship's look-out man must have seen the whole of the tenth story of the - Dexter building crumble out and smash in the street below to discover the - black muzzle looking out from the shadows behind. Then perhaps the shell - hit him. - </p> - <p> - The gun fired two shells before the frame of the Dexter building - collapsed, and each shell raked the Wetterhorn from stem to stern. They - smashed her exhaustively. She crumpled up like a can that has been kicked - by a heavy boot, her forepart came down in the square, and the rest of her - length, with a great snapping and twisting of shafts and stays, descended, - collapsing athwart Tammany Hall and the streets towards Second Avenue. Her - gas escaped to mix with air, and the air of her rent balloonette poured - into her deflating gas-chambers. Then with an immense impact she - exploded.... - </p> - <p> - The Vaterland at that time was beating up to the south of City Hall from - over the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the reports of the gun, - followed by the first crashes of the collapsing Dexter building, brought - Kurt and, Smallways to the cabin porthole. They were in time to see the - flash of the exploding gun, and then they were first flattened against the - window and then rolled head over heels across the floor of the cabin by - the air wave of the explosion. The Vaterland bounded like a football some - one has kicked and when they looked out again, Union Square was small and - remote and shattered, as though some cosmically vast giant had rolled over - it. The buildings to the east of it were ablaze at a dozen points, under - the flaming tatters and warping skeleton of the airship, and all the roofs - and walls were ridiculously askew and crumbling as one looked. “Gaw!” said - Bert. “What's happened? Look at the people!” - </p> - <p> - But before Kurt could produce an explanation, the shrill bells of the - airship were ringing to quarters, and he had to go. Bert hesitated and - stepped thoughtfully into the passage, looking back at the window as he - did so. He was knocked off his feet at once by the Prince, who was rushing - headlong from his cabin to the central magazine. - </p> - <p> - Bert had a momentary impression of the great figure of the Prince, white - with rage, bristling with gigantic anger, his huge fist swinging. “Blut - und Eisen!” cried the Prince, as one who swears. “Oh! Blut und Eisen!” - </p> - <p> - Some one fell over Bert—something in the manner of falling suggested - Von Winterfeld—and some one else paused and kicked him spitefully - and hard. Then he was sitting up in the passage, rubbing a freshly bruised - cheek and readjusting the bandage he still wore on his head. “Dem that - Prince,” said Bert, indignant beyond measure. “'E 'asn't the menners of a - 'og!” - </p> - <p> - He stood up, collected his wits for a minute, and then went slowly towards - the gangway of the little gallery. As he did so he heard noises suggestive - of the return of the Prince. The lot of them were coming back again. He - shot into his cabin like a rabbit into its burrow, just in time to escape - that shouting terror. - </p> - <p> - He shut the door, waited until the passage was still, then went across to - the window and looked out. A drift of cloud made the prospect of the - streets and squares hazy, and the rolling of the airship swung the picture - up and down. A few people were running to and fro, but for the most part - the aspect of the district was desertion. The streets seemed to broaden - out, they became clearer, and the little dots that were people larger as - the Vaterland came down again. Presently she was swaying along above the - lower end of Broadway. The dots below, Bert saw, were not running now, but - standing and looking up. Then suddenly they were all running again. - </p> - <p> - Something had dropped from the aeroplane, something that looked small and - flimsy. It hit the pavement near a big archway just underneath Bert. A - little man was sprinting along the sidewalk within half a dozen yards, and - two or three others and one woman were bolting across the roadway. They - were odd little figures, so very small were they about the heads, so very - active about the elbows and legs. It was really funny to see their legs - going. Foreshortened, humanity has no dignity. The little man on the - pavement jumped comically—no doubt with terror, as the bomb fell - beside him. - </p> - <p> - Then blinding flames squirted out in all directions from the point of - impact, and the little man who had jumped became, for an instant, a flash - of fire and vanished—vanished absolutely. The people running out - into the road took preposterous clumsy leaps, then flopped down and lay - still, with their torn clothes smouldering into flame. Then pieces of the - archway began to drop, and the lower masonry of the building to fall in - with the rumbling sound of coals being shot into a cellar. A faint - screaming reached Bert, and then a crowd of people ran out into the - street, one man limping and gesticulating awkwardly. He halted, and went - back towards the building. A falling mass of brick-work hit him and sent - him sprawling to lie still and crumpled where he fell. Dust and black - smoke came pouring into the street, and were presently shot with red - flame.... - </p> - <p> - In this manner the massacre of New York began. She was the first of the - great cities of the Scientific Age to suffer by the enormous powers and - grotesque limitations of aerial warfare. She was wrecked as in the - previous century endless barbaric cities had been bombarded, because she - was at once too strong to be occupied and too undisciplined and proud to - surrender in order to escape destruction. Given the circumstances, the - thing had to be done. It was impossible for the Prince to desist, and own - himself defeated, and it was impossible to subdue the city except by - largely destroying it. The catastrophe was the logical outcome of the - situation, created by the application of science to warfare. It was - unavoidable that great cities should be destroyed. In spite of his intense - exasperation with his dilemma, the Prince sought to be moderate even in - massacre. He tried to give a memorable lesson with the minimum waste of - life and the minimum expenditure of explosives. For that night he proposed - only the wrecking of Broadway. He directed the air-fleet to move in column - over the route of this thoroughfare, dropping bombs, the Vaterland - leading. And so our Bert Smallways became a participant in one of the most - cold-blooded slaughters in the world's history, in which men who were - neither excited nor, except for the remotest chance of a bullet, in any - danger, poured death and destruction upon homes and crowds below. - </p> - <p> - He clung to the frame of the porthole as the airship tossed and swayed, - and stared down through the light rain that now drove before the wind, - into the twilight streets, watching people running out of the houses, - watching buildings collapse and fires begin. As the airships sailed along - they smashed up the city as a child will shatter its cities of brick and - card. Below, they left ruins and blazing conflagrations and heaped and - scattered dead; men, women, and children mixed together as though they had - been no more than Moors, or Zulus, or Chinese. Lower New York was soon a - furnace of crimson flames, from which there was no escape. Cars, railways, - ferries, all had ceased, and never a light lit the way of the distracted - fugitives in that dusky confusion but the light of burning. He had - glimpses of what it must mean to be down there—glimpses. And it came - to him suddenly as an incredible discovery, that such disasters were not - only possible now in this strange, gigantic, foreign New York, but also in - London—in Bun Hill! that the little island in the silver seas was at - the end of its immunity, that nowhere in the world any more was there a - place left where a Smallways might lift his head proudly and vote for war - and a spirited foreign policy, and go secure from such horrible things. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VII. THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - And then above the flames of Manhattan Island came a battle, the first - battle in the air. The Americans had realised the price their waiting game - must cost, and struck with all the strength they had, if haply they might - still save New York from this mad Prince of Blood and Iron, and from fire - and death. - </p> - <p> - They came down upon the Germans on the wings of a great gale in the - twilight, amidst thunder and rain. They came from the yards of Washington - and Philadelphia, full tilt in two squadrons, and but for one sentinel - airship hard by Trenton, the surprise would have been complete. - </p> - <p> - The Germans, sick and weary with destruction, and half empty of - ammunition, were facing up into the weather when the news of this onset - reached them. New York they had left behind to the south-eastward, a - darkened city with one hideous red scar of flames. All the airships rolled - and staggered, bursts of hailstorm bore them down and forced them to fight - their way up again; the air had become bitterly cold. The Prince was on - the point of issuing orders to drop earthward and trail copper lightning - chains when the news of the aeroplane attack came to him. He faced his - fleet in line abreast south, had the drachenflieger manned and held ready - to cast loose, and ordered a general ascent into the freezing clearness - above the wet and darkness. - </p> - <p> - The news of what was imminent came slowly to Bert's perceptions. He was - standing in the messroom at the time and the evening rations were being - served out. He had resumed Butteridge's coat and gloves, and in addition - he had wrapped his blanket about him. He was dipping his bread into his - soup and was biting off big mouthfuls. His legs were wide apart, and he - leant against the partition in order to steady himself amidst the pitching - and oscillation of the airship. The men about him looked tired and - depressed; a few talked, but most were sullen and thoughtful, and one or - two were air-sick. They all seemed to share the peculiarly outcast feeling - that had followed the murders of the evening, a sense of a land beneath - them, and an outraged humanity grown more hostile than the Sea. - </p> - <p> - Then the news hit them. A red-faced sturdy man, a man with light eyelashes - and a scar, appeared in the doorway and shouted something in German that - manifestly startled every one. Bert felt the shock of the altered tone, - though he could not understand a word that was said. The announcement was - followed by a pause, and then a great outcry of questions and suggestions. - Even the air-sick men flushed and spoke. For some minutes the mess-room - was Bedlam, and then, as if it were a confirmation of the news, came the - shrill ringing of the bells that called the men to their posts. - </p> - <p> - Bert with pantomime suddenness found himself alone. - </p> - <p> - “What's up?” he said, though he partly guessed. - </p> - <p> - He stayed only to gulp down the remainder of his soup, and then ran along - the swaying passage and, clutching tightly, down the ladder to the little - gallery. The weather hit him like cold water squirted from a hose. The - airship engaged in some new feat of atmospheric Jiu-Jitsu. He drew his - blanket closer about him, clutching with one straining hand. He found - himself tossing in a wet twilight, with nothing to be seen but mist - pouring past him. Above him the airship was warm with lights and busy with - the movements of men going to their quarters. Then abruptly the lights - went out, and the Vaterland with bounds and twists and strange writhings - was fighting her way up the air. - </p> - <p> - He had a glimpse, as the Vaterland rolled over, of some large buildings - burning close below them, a quivering acanthus of flames, and then he saw - indistinctly through the driving weather another airship wallowing along - like a porpoise, and also working up. Presently the clouds swallowed her - again for a time, and then she came back to sight as a dark and whale-like - monster, amidst streaming weather. The air was full of flappings and - pipings, of void, gusty shouts and noises; it buffeted him and confused - him; ever and again his attention became rigid—a blind and deaf - balancing and clutching. - </p> - <p> - “Wow!” - </p> - <p> - Something fell past him out of the vast darknesses above and vanished into - the tumults below, going obliquely downward. It was a German - drachenflieger. The thing was going so fast he had but an instant - apprehension of the dark figure of the aeronaut crouched together - clutching at his wheel. It might be a manoeuvre, but it looked like a - catastrophe. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Pup-pup-pup” went a gun somewhere in the mirk ahead and suddenly and - quite horribly the Vaterland lurched, and Bert and the sentinel were - clinging to the rail for dear life. “Bang!” came a vast impact out of the - zenith, followed by another huge roll, and all about him the tumbled - clouds flashed red and lurid in response to flashes unseen, revealing - immense gulfs. The rail went right overhead, and he was hanging loose in - the air holding on to it. - </p> - <p> - For a time Bert's whole mind and being was given to clutching. “I'm going - into the cabin,” he said, as the airship righted again and brought back - the gallery floor to his feet. He began to make his way cautiously towards - the ladder. “Whee-wow!” he cried as the whole gallery reared itself up - forward, and then plunged down like a desperate horse. - </p> - <p> - Crack! Bang! Bang! Bang! And then hard upon this little rattle of shots - and bombs came, all about him, enveloping him, engulfing him, immense and - overwhelming, a quivering white blaze of lightning and a thunder-clap that - was like the bursting of a world. - </p> - <p> - Just for the instant before that explosion the universe seemed to be - standing still in a shadowless glare. - </p> - <p> - It was then he saw the American aeroplane. He saw it in the light of the - flash as a thing altogether motionless. Even its screw appeared still, and - its men were rigid dolls. (For it was so near he could see the men upon it - quite distinctly.) Its stern was tilting down, and the whole machine was - heeling over. It was of the Colt-Coburn-Langley pattern, with double - up-tilted wings and the screw ahead, and the men were in a boat-like body - netted over. From this very light long body, magazine guns projected on - either side. One thing that was strikingly odd and wonderful in that - moment of revelation was that the left upper wing was burning downward - with a reddish, smoky flame. But this was not the most wonderful thing - about this apparition. The most wonderful thing was that it and a German - airship five hundred yards below were threaded as it were on the lightning - flash, which turned out of its path as if to take them, and, that out from - the corners and projecting points of its huge wings everywhere, little - branching thorn-trees of lightning were streaming. - </p> - <p> - Like a picture Bert saw these things, a picture a little blurred by a thin - veil of wind-torn mist. - </p> - <p> - The crash of the thunder-clap followed the flash and seemed a part of it, - so that it is hard to say whether Bert was the rather deafened or blinded - in that instant. - </p> - <p> - And then darkness, utter darkness, and a heavy report and a thin small - sound of voices that went wailing downward into the abyss below. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - There followed upon these things a long, deep swaying of the airship, and - then Bert began a struggle to get back to his cabin. He was drenched and - cold and terrified beyond measure, and now more than a little air-sick. It - seemed to him that the strength had gone out of his knees and hands, and - that his feet had become icily slippery over the metal they trod upon. But - that was because a thin film of ice had frozen upon the gallery. - </p> - <p> - He never knew how long his ascent of the ladder back into the airship took - him, but in his dreams afterwards, when he recalled it, that experience - seemed to last for hours. Below, above, around him were gulfs, monstrous - gulfs of howling wind and eddies of dark, whirling snowflakes, and he was - protected from it all by a little metal grating and a rail, a grating and - rail that seemed madly infuriated with him, passionately eager to wrench - him off and throw him into the tumult of space. - </p> - <p> - Once he had a fancy that a bullet tore by his ear, and that the clouds and - snowflakes were lit by a flash, but he never even turned his head to see - what new assailant whirled past them in the void. He wanted to get into - the passage! He wanted to get into the passage! He wanted to get into the - passage! Would the arm by which he was clinging hold out, or would it give - way and snap? A handful of hail smacked him in the face, so that for a - time he was breathless and nearly insensible. Hold tight, Bert! He renewed - his efforts. - </p> - <p> - He found himself, with an enormous sense of relief and warmth, in the - passage. The passage was behaving like a dice-box, its disposition was - evidently to rattle him about and then throw him out again. He hung on - with the convulsive clutch of instinct until the passage lurched down - ahead. Then he would make a short run cabin-ward, and clutch again as the - fore-end rose. - </p> - <p> - Behold! He was in the cabin! - </p> - <p> - He snapped-to the door, and for a time he was not a human being, he was a - case of air-sickness. He wanted to get somewhere that would fix him, that - he needn't clutch. He opened the locker and got inside among the loose - articles, and sprawled there helplessly, with his head sometimes bumping - one side and sometimes the other. The lid shut upon him with a click. He - did not care then what was happening any more. He did not care who fought - who, or what bullets were fired or explosions occurred. He did not care if - presently he was shot or smashed to pieces. He was full of feeble, - inarticulate rage and despair. “Foolery!” he said, his one exhaustive - comment on human enterprise, adventure, war, and the chapter of accidents - that had entangled him. “Foolery! Ugh!” He included the order of the - universe in that comprehensive condemnation. He wished he was dead. - </p> - <p> - He saw nothing of the stars, as presently the Vaterland cleared the rush - and confusion of the lower weather, nor of the duel she fought with two - circling aeroplanes, how they shot her rear-most chambers through, and how - she fought them off with explosive bullets and turned to run as she did - so. - </p> - <p> - The rush and swoop of these wonderful night birds was all lost upon him; - their heroic dash and self-sacrifice. The Vaterland was rammed, and for - some moments she hung on the verge of destruction, and sinking swiftly, - with the American aeroplane entangled with her smashed propeller, and the - Americans trying to scramble aboard. It signified nothing to Bert. To him - it conveyed itself simply as vehement swaying. Foolery! When the American - airship dropped off at last, with most of its crew shot or fallen, Bert in - his locker appreciated nothing but that the Vaterland had taken a hideous - upward leap. - </p> - <p> - But then came infinite relief, incredibly blissful relief. The rolling, - the pitching, the struggle ceased, ceased instantly and absolutely. The - Vaterland was no longer fighting the gale; her smashed and exploded - engines throbbed no more; she was disabled and driving before the wind as - smoothly as a balloon, a huge, windspread, tattered cloud of aerial - wreckage. - </p> - <p> - To Bert it was no more than the end of a series of disagreeable - sensations. He was not curious to know what had happened to the airship, - nor what had happened to the battle. For a long time he lay waiting - apprehensively for the pitching and tossing and his qualms to return, and - so, lying, boxed up in the locker, he presently fell asleep. - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - He awoke tranquil but very stuffy, and at the same time very cold, and - quite unable to recollect where he could be. His head ached, and his - breath was suffocated. He had been dreaming confusedly of Edna, and Desert - Dervishes, and of riding bicycles in an extremely perilous manner through - the upper air amidst a pyrotechnic display of crackers and Bengal lights—to - the great annoyance of a sort of composite person made up of the Prince - and Mr. Butteridge. Then for some reason Edna and he had begun to cry - pitifully for each other, and he woke up with wet eye-lashes into this - ill-ventilated darkness of the locker. He would never see Edna any more, - never see Edna any more. - </p> - <p> - He thought he must be back in the bedroom behind the cycle shop at the - bottom of Bun Hill, and he was sure the vision he had had of the - destruction of a magnificent city, a city quite incredibly great and - splendid, by means of bombs, was no more than a particularly vivid dream. - </p> - <p> - “Grubb!” he called, anxious to tell him. - </p> - <p> - The answering silence, and the dull resonance of the locker to his voice, - supplementing the stifling quality of the air, set going a new train of - ideas. He lifted up his hands and feet, and met an inflexible resistance. - He was in a coffin, he thought! He had been buried alive! He gave way at - once to wild panic. “'Elp!” he screamed. “'Elp!” and drummed with his - feet, and kicked and struggled. “Let me out! Let me out!” - </p> - <p> - For some seconds he struggled with this intolerable horror, and then the - side of his imagined coffin gave way, and he was flying out into daylight. - Then he was rolling about on what seemed to be a padded floor with Kurt, - and being punched and sworn at lustily. - </p> - <p> - He sat up. His head bandage had become loose and got over one eye, and he - whipped the whole thing off. Kurt was also sitting up, a yard away from - him, pink as ever, wrapped in blankets, and with an aluminium diver's - helmet over his knee, staring at him with a severe expression, and rubbing - his downy unshaven chin. They were both on a slanting floor of crimson - padding, and above them was an opening like a long, low cellar flap that - Bert by an effort perceived to be the cabin door in a half-inverted - condition. The whole cabin had in fact turned on its side. - </p> - <p> - “What the deuce do you mean by it, Smallways?” said Kurt, “jumping out of - that locker when I was certain you had gone overboard with the rest of - them? Where have you been?” - </p> - <p> - “What's up?” asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - “This end of the airship is up. Most other things are down.” - </p> - <p> - “Was there a battle?” - </p> - <p> - “There was.” - </p> - <p> - “Who won?” - </p> - <p> - “I haven't seen the papers, Smallways. We left before the finish. We got - disabled and unmanageable, and our colleagues—consorts I mean—were - too busy most of them to trouble about us, and the wind blew us—Heaven - knows where the wind IS blowing us. It blew us right out of action at the - rate of eighty miles an hour or so. Gott! what a wind that was! What a - fight! And here we are!” - </p> - <p> - “Where?” - </p> - <p> - “In the air, Smallways—in the air! When we get down on the earth - again we shan't know what to do with our legs.” - </p> - <p> - “But what's below us?” - </p> - <p> - “Canada, to the best of my knowledge—and a jolly bleak, empty, - inhospitable country it looks.” - </p> - <p> - “But why ain't we right ways up?” - </p> - <p> - Kurt made no answer for a space. - </p> - <p> - “Last I remember was seeing a sort of flying-machine in a lightning - flash,” said Bert. “Gaw! that was 'orrible. Guns going off! Things - explodin'! Clouds and 'ail. Pitching and tossing. I got so scared and - desperate—and sick. You don't know how the fight came off?” - </p> - <p> - “Not a bit of it. I was up with my squad in those divers' dresses, inside - the gas-chambers, with sheets of silk for caulking. We couldn't see a - thing outside except the lightning flashes. I never saw one of those - American aeroplanes. Just saw the shots flicker through the chambers and - sent off men for the tears. We caught fire a bit—not much, you know. - We were too wet, so the fires spluttered out before we banged. And then - one of their infernal things dropped out of the air on us and rammed. - Didn't you feel it?” - </p> - <p> - “I felt everything,” said Bert. “I didn't notice any particular smash—” - </p> - <p> - “They must have been pretty desperate if they meant it. They slashed down - on us like a knife; simply ripped the after gas-chambers like gutting - herrings, crumpled up the engines and screw. Most of the engines dropped - off as they fell off us—or we'd have grounded—but the rest is - sort of dangling. We just turned up our nose to the heavens and stayed - there. Eleven men rolled off us from various points, and poor old - Winterfeld fell through the door of the Prince's cabin into the chart-room - and broke his ankle. Also we got our electric gear shot or carried away—no - one knows how. That's the position, Smallways. We're driving through the - air like a common aerostat, at the mercy of the elements, almost due north—probably - to the North Pole. We don't know what aeroplanes the Americans have, or - anything at all about it. Very likely we have finished 'em up. One fouled - us, one was struck by lightning, some of the men saw a third upset, - apparently just for fun. They were going cheap anyhow. Also we've lost - most of our drachenflieger. They just skated off into the night. No - stability in 'em. That's all. We don't know if we've won or lost. We don't - know if we're at war with the British Empire yet or at peace. - Consequently, we daren't get down. We don't know what we are up to or what - we are going to do. Our Napoleon is alone, forward, and I suppose he's - rearranging his plans. Whether New York was our Moscow or not remains to - be seen. We've had a high old time and murdered no end of people! War! - Noble war! I'm sick of it this morning. I like sitting in rooms rightway - up and not on slippery partitions. I'm a civilised man. I keep thinking of - old Albrecht and the Barbarossa.... I feel I want a wash and kind words - and a quiet home. When I look at you, I KNOW I want a wash. Gott!”—he - stifled a vehement yawn—“What a Cockney tadpole of a ruffian you - look!” - </p> - <p> - “Can we get any grub?” asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Heaven knows!” said Kurt. - </p> - <p> - He meditated upon Bert for a time. “So far as I can judge, Smallways,” he - said, “the Prince will probably want to throw you overboard—next - time he thinks of you. He certainly will if he sees you.... After all, you - know, you came als _Ballast_.... And we shall have to lighten ship - extensively pretty soon. Unless I'm mistaken, the Prince will wake up - presently and start doing things with tremendous vigour.... I've taken a - fancy to you. It's the English strain in me. You're a rum little chap. I - shan't like seeing you whizz down the air.... You'd better make yourself - useful, Smallways. I think I shall requisition you for my squad. You'll - have to work, you know, and be infernally intelligent and all that. And - you'll have to hang about upside down a bit. Still, it's the best chance - you have. We shan't carry passengers much farther this trip, I fancy. - Ballast goes over-board—if we don't want to ground precious soon and - be taken prisoners of war. The Prince won't do that anyhow. He'll be game - to the last.” - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - By means of a folding chair, which was still in its place behind the door, - they got to the window and looked out in turn and contemplated a sparsely - wooded country below, with no railways nor roads, and only occasional - signs of habitation. Then a bugle sounded, and Kurt interpreted it as a - summons to food. They got through the door and clambered with some - difficulty up the nearly vertical passage, holding on desperately with - toes and finger-tips, to the ventilating perforations in its floor. The - mess stewards had found their fireless heating arrangements intact, and - there was hot cocoa for the officers and hot soup for the men. - </p> - <p> - Bert's sense of the queerness of this experience was so keen that it - blotted out any fear he might have felt. Indeed, he was far more - interested now than afraid. He seemed to have touched down to the bottom - of fear and abandonment overnight. He was growing accustomed to the idea - that he would probably be killed presently, that this strange voyage in - the air was in all probability his death journey. No human being can keep - permanently afraid: fear goes at last to the back of one's mind, accepted, - and shelved, and done with. He squatted over his soup, sopping it up with - his bread, and contemplated his comrades. They were all rather yellow and - dirty, with four-day beards, and they grouped themselves in the tired, - unpremeditated manner of men on a wreck. They talked little. The situation - perplexed them beyond any suggestion of ideas. Three had been hurt in the - pitching up of the ship during the fight, and one had a bandaged bullet - wound. It was incredible that this little band of men had committed murder - and massacre on a scale beyond precedent. None of them who squatted on the - sloping gas-padded partition, soup mug in hand, seemed really guilty of - anything of the sort, seemed really capable of hurting a dog wantonly. - They were all so manifestly built for homely chalets on the solid earth - and carefully tilled fields and blond wives and cheery merrymaking. The - red-faced, sturdy man with light eyelashes who had brought the first news - of the air battle to the men's mess had finished his soup, and with an - expression of maternal solicitude was readjusting the bandages of a - youngster whose arm had been sprained. - </p> - <p> - Bert was crumbling the last of his bread into the last of his soup, eking - it out as long as possible, when suddenly he became aware that every one - was looking at a pair of feet that were dangling across the downturned - open doorway. Kurt appeared and squatted across the hinge. In some - mysterious way he had shaved his face and smoothed down his light golden - hair. He looked extraordinarily cherubic. “Der Prinz,” he said. - </p> - <p> - A second pair of boots followed, making wide and magnificent gestures in - their attempts to feel the door frame. Kurt guided them to a foothold, and - the Prince, shaved and brushed and beeswaxed and clean and big and - terrible, slid down into position astride of the door. All the men and - Bert also stood up and saluted. - </p> - <p> - The Prince surveyed them with the gesture of a man who site a steed. The - head of the Kapitan appeared beside him. - </p> - <p> - Then Bert had a terrible moment. The blue blaze of the Prince's eye fell - upon him, the great finger pointed, a question was asked. Kurt intervened - with explanations. - </p> - <p> - “So,” said the Prince, and Bert was disposed of. - </p> - <p> - Then the Prince addressed the men in short, heroic sentences, steadying - himself on the hinge with one hand and waving the other in a fine variety - of gesture. What he said Bert could not tell, but he perceived that their - demeanor changed, their backs stiffened. They began to punctuate the - Prince's discourse with cries of approval. At the end their leader burst - into song and all the men with him. “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,” they - chanted in deep, strong tones, with an immense moral uplifting. It was - glaringly inappropriate in a damaged, half-overturned, and sinking - airship, which had been disabled and blown out of action after inflicting - the cruellest bombardment in the world's history; but it was immensely - stirring nevertheless. Bert was deeply moved. He could not sing any of the - words of Luther's great hymn, but he opened his mouth and emitted loud, - deep, and partially harmonious notes.... - </p> - <p> - Far below, this deep chanting struck on the ears of a little camp of - Christianised half-breeds who were lumbering. They were breakfasting, but - they rushed out cheerfully, quite prepared for the Second Advent. They - stared at the shattered and twisted Vaterland driving before the gale, - amazed beyond words. In so many respects it was like their idea of the - Second Advent, and then again in so many respects it wasn't. They stared - at its passage, awe-stricken and perplexed beyond their power of words. - The hymn ceased. Then after a long interval a voice came out of heaven. - “Vat id diss blace here galled itself; vat?” - </p> - <p> - They made no answer. Indeed they did not understand, though the question - repeated itself. - </p> - <p> - And at last the monster drove away northward over a crest of pine woods - and was no more seen. They fell into a hot and long disputation.... - </p> - <p> - The hymn ended. The Prince's legs dangled up the passage again, and every - one was briskly prepared for heroic exertion and triumphant acts. - “Smallways!” cried Kurt, “come here!” - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - Then Bert, under Kurt's direction, had his first experience of the work of - an air-sailor. - </p> - <p> - The immediate task before the captain of the Vaterland was a very simple - one. He had to keep afloat. The wind, though it had fallen from its - earlier violence, was still blowing strongly enough to render the - grounding of so clumsy a mass extremely dangerous, even if it had been - desirable for the Prince to land in inhabited country, and so risk - capture. It was necessary to keep the airship up until the wind fell and - then, if possible, to descend in some lonely district of the Territory - where there would be a chance of repair or rescue by some searching - consort. In order to do this weight had to be dropped, and Kurt was - detailed with a dozen men to climb down among the wreckage of the deflated - air-chambers and cut the stuff clear, portion by portion, as the airship - sank. So Bert, armed with a sharp cutlass, found himself clambering about - upon netting four thousand feet up in the air, trying to understand Kurt - when he spoke in English and to divine him when he used German. - </p> - <p> - It was giddy work, but not nearly so giddy as a rather overnourished - reader sitting in a warm room might imagine. Bert found it quite possible - to look down and contemplate the wild sub-arctic landscape below, now - devoid of any sign of habitation, a land of rocky cliffs and cascades and - broad swirling desolate rivers, and of trees and thickets that grew more - stunted and scrubby as the day wore on. Here and there on the hills were - patches and pockets of snow. And over all this he worked, hacking away at - the tough and slippery oiled silk and clinging stoutly to the netting. - Presently they cleared and dropped a tangle of bent steel rods and wires - from the frame, and a big chunk of silk bladder. That was trying. The - airship flew up at once as this loose hamper parted. It seemed almost as - though they were dropping all Canada. The stuff spread out in the air and - floated down and hit and twisted up in a nasty fashion on the lip of a - gorge. Bert clung like a frozen monkey to his ropes and did not move a - muscle for five minutes. - </p> - <p> - But there was something very exhilarating, he found, in this dangerous - work, and above every thing else, there was the sense of fellowship. He - was no longer an isolated and distrustful stranger among these others, he - had now a common object with them, he worked with a friendly rivalry to - get through with his share before them. And he developed a great respect - and affection for Kurt, which had hitherto been only latent in him. Kurt - with a job to direct was altogether admirable; he was resourceful, - helpful, considerate, swift. He seemed to be everywhere. One forgot his - pinkness, his light cheerfulness of manner. Directly one had trouble he - was at hand with sound and confident advice. He was like an elder brother - to his men. - </p> - <p> - All together they cleared three considerable chunks of wreckage, and then - Bert was glad to clamber up into the cabins again and give place to a - second squad. He and his companions were given hot coffee, and indeed, - even gloved as they were, the job had been a cold one. They sat drinking - it and regarding each other with satisfaction. One man spoke to Bert - amiably in German, and Bert nodded and smiled. Through Kurt, Bert, whose - ankles were almost frozen, succeeded in getting a pair of top-boots from - one of the disabled men. - </p> - <p> - In the afternoon the wind abated greatly, and small, infrequent snowflakes - came drifting by. Snow also spread more abundantly below, and the only - trees were clumps of pine and spruce in the lower valleys. Kurt went with - three men into the still intact gas-chambers, let out a certain quantity - of gas from them, and prepared a series of ripping panels for the descent. - Also the residue of the bombs and explosives in the magazine were thrown - overboard and fell, detonating loudly, in the wilderness below. And about - four o'clock in the afternoon upon a wide and rocky plain within sight of - snow-crested cliffs, the Vaterland ripped and grounded. - </p> - <p> - It was necessarily a difficult and violent affair, for the Vaterland had - not been planned for the necessities of a balloon. The captain got one - panel ripped too soon and the others not soon enough. She dropped heavily, - bounced clumsily, and smashed the hanging gallery into the fore-part, - mortally injuring Von Winterfeld, and then came down in a collapsing heap - after dragging for some moments. The forward shield and its machine gun - tumbled in upon the things below. Two men were hurt badly—one got a - broken leg and one was internally injured—by flying rods and wires, - and Bert was pinned for a time under the side. When at last he got clear - and could take a view of the situation, the great black eagle that had - started so splendidly from Franconia six evenings ago, sprawled deflated - over the cabins of the airship and the frost-bitten rocks of this desolate - place and looked a most unfortunate bird—as though some one had - caught it and wrung its neck and cast it aside. Several of the crew of the - airship were standing about in silence, contemplating the wreckage and the - empty wilderness into which they had fallen. Others were busy under the - imromptu tent made by the empty gas-chambers. The Prince had gone a little - way off and was scrutinising the distant heights through his field-glass. - They had the appearance of old sea cliffs; here and there were small - clumps of conifers, and in two places tall cascades. The nearer ground was - strewn with glaciated boulders and supported nothing but a stunted Alpine - vegetation of compact clustering stems and stalkless flowers. No river was - visible, but the air was full of the rush and babble of a torrent close at - hand. A bleak and biting wind was blowing. Ever and again a snowflake - drifted past. The springless frozen earth under Bert's feet felt strangely - dead and heavy after the buoyant airship. - </p> - <p> - 6 - </p> - <p> - So it came about that that great and powerful Prince Karl Albert was for a - time thrust out of the stupendous conflict he chiefly had been - instrumental in provoking. The chances of battle and the weather conspired - to maroon him in Labrador, and there he raged for six long days, while war - and wonder swept the world. Nation rose against nation and air-fleet - grappled air-fleet, cities blazed and men died in multitudes; but in - Labrador one might have dreamt that, except for a little noise of - hammering, the world was at peace. - </p> - <p> - There the encampment lay; from a distance the cabins, covered over with - the silk of the balloon part, looked like a gipsy's tent on a rather - exceptional scale, and all the available hands were busy in building out - of the steel of the framework a mast from which the Vaterland's - electricians might hang the long conductors of the apparatus for wireless - telegraphy that was to link the Prince to the world again. There were - times when it seemed they would never rig that mast. From the outset the - party suffered hardship. They were not too abundantly provisioned, and - they were put on short rations, and for all the thick garments they had, - they were but ill-equipped against the piercing wind and inhospitable - violence of this wilderness. The first night was spent in darkness and - without fires. The engines that had supplied power were smashed and - dropped far away to the south, and there was never a match among the - company. It had been death to carry matches. All the explosives had been - thrown out of the magazine, and it was only towards morning that the - bird-faced man whose cabin Bert had taken in the beginning confessed to a - brace of duelling pistols and cartridges, with which a fire could be - started. Afterwards the lockers of the machine gun were found to contain a - supply of unused ammunition. - </p> - <p> - The night was a distressing one and seemed almost interminable. Hardly any - one slept. There were seven wounded men aboard, and Von Winterfeld's head - had been injured, and he was shivering and in delirium, struggling with - his attendant and shouting strange things about the burning of New York. - The men crept together in the mess-room in the darkling, wrapped in what - they could find and drank cocoa from the fireless heaters and listened to - his cries. In the morning the Prince made them a speech about Destiny, and - the God of his Fathers and the pleasure and glory of giving one's life for - his dynasty, and a number of similar considerations that might otherwise - have been neglected in that bleak wilderness. The men cheered without - enthusiasm, and far away a wolf howled. - </p> - <p> - Then they set to work, and for a week they toiled to put up a mast of - steel, and hang from it a gridiron of copper wires two hundred feet by - twelve. The theme of all that time was work, work continually, straining - and toilsome work, and all the rest was grim hardship and evil chances, - save for a certain wild splendour in the sunset and sunrise in the - torrents and drifting weather, in the wilderness about them. They built - and tended a ring of perpetual fires, gangs roamed for brushwood and met - with wolves, and the wounded men and their beds were brought out from the - airship cabins, and put in shelters about the fires. There old Von - Winterfeld raved and became quiet and presently died, and three of the - other wounded sickened for want of good food, while their fellows mended. - These things happened, as it were, in the wings; the central facts before - Bert's consciousness were always firstly the perpetual toil, the holding - and lifting, and lugging at heavy and clumsy masses, the tedious filing - and winding of wires, and secondly, the Prince, urgent and threatening - whenever a man relaxed. He would stand over them, and point over their - heads, southward into the empty sky. “The world there,” he said in German, - “is waiting for us! Fifty Centuries come to their Consummation.” Bert did - not understand the words, but he read the gesture. Several times the - Prince grew angry; once with a man who was working slowly, once with a man - who stole a comrade's ration. The first he scolded and set to a more - tedious task; the second he struck in the face and ill-used. He did no - work himself. There was a clear space near the fires in which he would - walk up and down, sometimes for two hours together, with arms folded, - muttering to himself of Patience and his destiny. At times these - mutterings broke out into rhetoric, into shouts and gestures that would - arrest the workers; they would stare at him until they perceived that his - blue eyes glared and his waving hand addressed itself always to the - southward hills. On Sunday the work ceased for half an hour, and the - Prince preached on faith and God's friendship for David, and afterwards - they all sang: “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.” - </p> - <p> - In an improvised hovel lay Von Winterfeld, and all one morning he raved of - the greatness of Germany. “Blut und Eisen!” he shouted, and then, as if in - derision, “Welt-Politik—ha, ha!” Then he would explain complicated - questions of polity to imaginary hearers, in low, wily tones. The other - sick men kept still, listening to him. Bert's distracted attention would - be recalled by Kurt. “Smallways, take that end. So!” - </p> - <p> - Slowly, tediously, the great mast was rigged and hoisted foot by foot into - place. The electricians had contrived a catchment pool and a wheel in the - torrent close at hand—for the little Mulhausen dynamo with its - turbinal volute used by the telegraphists was quite adaptable to water - driving, and on the sixth day in the evening the apparatus was in working - order and the Prince was calling—weakly, indeed, but calling—to - his air-fleet across the empty spaces of the world. For a time he called - unheeded. - </p> - <p> - The effect of that evening was to linger long in Bert's memory. A red fire - spluttered and blazed close by the electricians at their work, and red - gleams ran up the vertical steel mast and threads of copper wire towards - the zenith. The Prince sat on a rock close by, with his chin on his hand, - waiting. Beyond and to the northward was the cairn that covered Von - Winterfeld, surmounted by a cross of steel, and from among the tumbled - rocks in the distance the eyes of a wolf gleamed redly. On the other hand - was the wreckage of the great airship and the men bivouacked about a - second ruddy flare. They were all keeping very still, as if waiting to - hear what news might presently be given them. Far away, across many - hundreds of miles of desolation, other wireless masts would be clicking, - and snapping, and waking into responsive vibration. Perhaps they were not. - Perhaps those throbs upon the ethers wasted themselves upon a regardless - world. When the men spoke, they spoke in low tones. Now and then a bird - shrieked remotely, and once a wolf howled. All these things were set in - the immense cold spaciousness of the wild. - </p> - <p> - 7 - </p> - <p> - Bert got the news last, and chiefly in broken English, from a linguist - among his mates. It was only far on in the night that the weary - telegraphist got an answer to his calls, but then the messages came clear - and strong. And such news it was! - </p> - <p> - “I say,” said Bert at his breakfast, amidst a great clamour, “tell us a - bit.” - </p> - <p> - “All de vorlt is at vor!” said the linguist, waving his cocoa in an - illustrative manner, “all de vorlt is at vor!” - </p> - <p> - Bert stared southward into the dawn. It did not seem so. - </p> - <p> - “All de vorlt is at vor! They haf burn' Berlin; they haf burn' London; - they haf burn' Hamburg and Paris. Chapan hass burn San Francisco. We haf - mate a camp at Niagara. Dat is whad they are telling us. China has cot - drachenflieger and luftschiffe beyont counting. All de vorlt is at vor!” - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Yess,” said the linguist, drinking his cocoa. - </p> - <p> - “Burnt up London, 'ave they? Like we did New York?” - </p> - <p> - “It wass a bombardment.” - </p> - <p> - “They don't say anything about a place called Clapham, or Bun Hill, do - they?” - </p> - <p> - “I haf heard noding,” said the linguist. - </p> - <p> - That was all Bert could get for a time. But the excitement of all the men - about him was contagious, and presently he saw Kurt standing alone, hands - behind him, and looking at one of the distant waterfalls very steadfastly. - He went up and saluted, soldier-fashion. “Beg pardon, lieutenant,” he - said. - </p> - <p> - Kurt turned his face. It was unusually grave that morning. “I was just - thinking I would like to see that waterfall closer,” he said. “It reminds - me—what do you want?” - </p> - <p> - “I can't make 'ead or tail of what they're saying, sir. Would you mind - telling me the news?” - </p> - <p> - “Damn the news,” said Kurt. “You'll get news enough before the day's out. - It's the end of the world. They're sending the Graf Zeppelin for us. - She'll be here by the morning, and we ought to be at Niagara—or - eternal smash—within eight and forty hours.... I want to look at - that waterfall. You'd better come with me. Have you had your rations?” - </p> - <p> - “Yessir.” - </p> - <p> - “Very well. Come.” - </p> - <p> - And musing profoundly, Kurt led the way across the rocks towards the - distant waterfall. - </p> - <p> - For a time Bert walked behind him in the character of an escort; then as - they passed out of the atmosphere of the encampment, Kurt lagged for him - to come alongside. - </p> - <p> - “We shall be back in it all in two days' time,” he said. “And it's a devil - of a war to go back to. That's the news. The world's gone mad. Our fleet - beat the Americans the night we got disabled, that's clear. We lost eleven—eleven - airships certain, and all their aeroplanes got smashed. God knows how much - we smashed or how many we killed. But that was only the beginning. Our - start's been like firing a magazine. Every country was hiding - flying-machines. They're fighting in the air all over Europe—all - over the world. The Japanese and Chinese have joined in. That's the great - fact. That's the supreme fact. They've pounced into our little - quarrels.... The Yellow Peril was a peril after all! They've got thousands - of airships. They're all over the world. We bombarded London and Paris, - and now the French and English have smashed up Berlin. And now Asia is at - us all, and on the top of us all.... It's mania. China on the top. And - they don't know where to stop. It's limitless. It's the last confusion. - They're bombarding capitals, smashing up dockyards and factories, mines - and fleets.” - </p> - <p> - “Did they do much to London, sir?” asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Heaven knows....” - </p> - <p> - He said no more for a time. - </p> - <p> - “This Labrador seems a quiet place,” he resumed at last. “I'm half a mind - to stay here. Can't do that. No! I've got to see it through. I've got to - see it through. You've got to, too. Every one.... But why?... I tell you—our - world's gone to pieces. There's no way out of it, no way back. Here we - are! We're like mice caught in a house on fire, we're like cattle - overtaken by a flood. Presently we shall be picked up, and back we shall - go into the fighting. We shall kill and smash again—perhaps. It's a - Chino-Japanese air-fleet this time, and the odds are against us. Our turns - will come. What will happen to you I don't know, but for myself, I know - quite well; I shall be killed.” - </p> - <p> - “You'll be all right,” said Bert, after a queer pause. - </p> - <p> - “No!” said Kurt, “I'm going to be killed. I didn't know it before, but - this morning, at dawn, I knew it—as though I'd been told.” - </p> - <p> - “'Ow?” - </p> - <p> - “I tell you I know.” - </p> - <p> - “But 'ow COULD you know?” - </p> - <p> - “I know.” - </p> - <p> - “Like being told?” - </p> - <p> - “Like being certain. - </p> - <p> - “I know,” he repeated, and for a time they walked in silence towards the - waterfall. - </p> - <p> - Kurt, wrapped in his thoughts, walked heedlessly, and at last broke out - again. “I've always felt young before, Smallways, but this morning I feel - old—old. So old! Nearer to death than old men feel. And I've always - thought life was a lark. It isn't.... This sort of thing has always been - happening, I suppose—these things, wars and earthquakes, that sweep - across all the decency of life. It's just as though I had woke up to it - all for the first time. Every night since we were at New York I've dreamt - of it.... And it's always been so—it's the way of life. People are - torn away from the people they care for; homes are smashed, creatures full - of life, and memories, and little peculiar gifts are scalded and smashed, - and torn to pieces, and starved, and spoilt. London! Berlin! San - Francisco! Think of all the human histories we ended in New York!... And - the others go on again as though such things weren't possible. As I went - on! Like animals! Just like animals.” - </p> - <p> - He said nothing for a long time, and then he dropped out, “The Prince is a - lunatic!” - </p> - <p> - They came to a place where they had to climb, and then to a long peat - level beside a rivulet. There a quantity of delicate little pink flowers - caught Bert's eye. “Gaw!” he said, and stooped to pick one. “In a place - like this.” - </p> - <p> - Kurt stopped and half turned. His face winced. - </p> - <p> - “I never see such a flower,” said Bert. “It's so delicate.” - </p> - <p> - “Pick some more if you want to,” said Kurt. - </p> - <p> - Bert did so, while Kurt stood and watched him. - </p> - <p> - “Funny 'ow one always wants to pick flowers,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - Kurt had nothing to add to that. - </p> - <p> - They went on again, without talking, for a long time. - </p> - <p> - At last they came to a rocky hummock, from which the view of the waterfall - opened out. There Kurt stopped and seated himself on a rock. - </p> - <p> - “That's as much as I wanted to see,” he explained. “It isn't very like, - but it's like enough.” - </p> - <p> - “Like what?” - </p> - <p> - “Another waterfall I knew.” - </p> - <p> - He asked a question abruptly. “Got a girl, Smallways?” - </p> - <p> - “Funny thing,” said Bert, “those flowers, I suppose.—I was jes' - thinking of 'er.” - </p> - <p> - “So was I.” - </p> - <p> - “WHAT! Edna?” - </p> - <p> - “No. I was thinking of MY Edna. We've all got Ednas, I suppose, for our - imaginations to play about. This was a girl. But all that's past for ever. - It's hard to think I can't see her just for a minute—just let her - know I'm thinking of her.” - </p> - <p> - “Very likely,” said Bert, “you'll see 'er all right.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Kurt with decision, “I KNOW.” - </p> - <p> - “I met her,” he went on, “in a place like this—in the Alps—Engstlen - Alp. There's a waterfall rather like this one—a broad waterfall down - towards Innertkirchen. That's why I came here this morning. We slipped - away and had half a day together beside it. And we picked flowers. Just - such flowers as you picked. The same for all I know. And gentian.” - </p> - <p> - “I know” said Bert, “me and Edna—we done things like that. Flowers. - And all that. Seems years off now.” - </p> - <p> - “She was beautiful and daring and shy, Mein Gott! I can hardly hold myself - for the desire to see her and hear her voice again before I die. Where is - she?... Look here, Smallways, I shall write a sort of letter—And - there's her portrait.” He touched his breast pocket. - </p> - <p> - “You'll see 'er again all right,” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “No! I shall never see her again.... I don't understand why people should - meet just to be torn apart. But I know she and I will never meet again. - That I know as surely as that the sun will rise, and that cascade come - shining over the rocks after I am dead and done.... Oh! It's all - foolishness and haste and violence and cruel folly, stupidity and - blundering hate and selfish ambition—all the things that men have - done—all the things they will ever do. Gott! Smallways, what a - muddle and confusion life has always been—the battles and massacres - and disasters, the hates and harsh acts, the murders and sweatings, the - lynchings and cheatings. This morning I am tired of it all, as though I'd - just found it out for the first time. I HAVE found it out. When a man is - tired of life, I suppose it is time for him to die. I've lost heart, and - death is over me. Death is close to me, and I know I have got to end. But - think of all the hopes I had only a little time ago, the sense of fine - beginnings!... It was all a sham. There were no beginnings.... We're just - ants in ant-hill cities, in a world that doesn't matter; that goes on and - rambles into nothingness. New York—New York doesn't even strike me - as horrible. New York was nothing but an ant-hill kicked to pieces by a - fool! - </p> - <p> - “Think of it, Smallways: there's war everywhere! They're smashing up their - civilisation before they have made it. The sort of thing the English did - at Alexandria, the Japanese at Port Arthur, the French at Casablanca, is - going on everywhere. Everywhere! Down in South America even they are - fighting among themselves! No place is safe—no place is at peace. - There is no place where a woman and her daughter can hide and be at peace. - The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go - out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead—dripping - death—dripping death!” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VIII. A WORLD AT WAR - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - It was only very slowly that Bert got hold of this idea that the whole - world was at war, that he formed any image at all of the crowded countries - south of these Arctic solitudes stricken with terror and dismay as these - new-born aerial navies swept across their skies. He was not used to - thinking of the world as a whole, but as a limitless hinterland of - happenings beyond the range of his immediate vision. War in his - imagination was something, a source of news and emotion, that happened in - a restricted area, called the Seat of War. But now the whole atmosphere - was the Seat of War, and every land a cockpit. So closely had the nations - raced along the path of research and invention, so secret and yet so - parallel had been their plans and acquisitions, that it was within a few - hours of the launching of the first fleet in Franconia that an Asiatic - Armada beat its west-ward way across, high above the marvelling millions - in the plain of the Ganges. But the preparations of the Confederation of - Eastern Asia had been on an altogether more colossal scale than the - German. “With this step,” said Tan Ting-siang, “we overtake and pass the - West. We recover the peace of the world that these barbarians have - destroyed.” - </p> - <p> - Their secrecy and swiftness and inventions had far surpassed those of the - Germans, and where the Germans had had a hundred men at work the Asiatics - had ten thousand. There came to their great aeronautic parks at Chinsi-fu - and Tsingyen by the mono-rails that now laced the whole surface of China a - limitless supply of skilled and able workmen, workmen far above the - average European in industrial efficiency. The news of the German World - Surprise simply quickened their efforts. At the time of the bombardment of - New York it is doubtful if the Germans had three hundred airships all - together in the world; the score of Asiatic fleets flying east and west - and south must have numbered several thousand. Moreover the Asiatics had a - real fighting flying-machine, the Niais as they were called, a light but - quite efficient weapon, infinitely superior to the German drachenflieger. - Like that, it was a one-man machine, but it was built very lightly of - steel and cane and chemical silk, with a transverse engine, and a flapping - sidewing. The aeronaut carried a gun firing explosive bullets loaded with - oxygen, and in addition, and true to the best tradition of Japan, a sword. - Mostly they were Japanese, and it is characteristic that from the first it - was contemplated that the aeronaut should be a swordsman. The wings of - these flyers had bat-like hooks forward, by which they were to cling to - their antagonist's gas-chambers while boarding him. These light - flying-machines were carried with the fleets, and also sent overland or by - sea to the front with the men. They were capable of flights of from two to - five hundred miles according to the wind. - </p> - <p> - So, hard upon the uprush of the first German air-fleet, these Asiatic - swarms took to the atmosphere. Instantly every organised Government in the - world was frantically and vehemently building airships and whatever - approach to a flying machine its inventors' had discovered. There was no - time for diplomacy. Warnings and ultimatums were telegraphed to and fro, - and in a few hours all the panic-fierce world was openly at war, and at - war in the most complicated way. For Britain and France and Italy had - declared war upon Germany and outraged Swiss neutrality; India, at the - sight of Asiatic airships, had broken into a Hindoo insurrection in Bengal - and a Mohametan revolt hostile to this in the North-west Provinces—the - latter spreading like wildfire from Gobi to the Gold Coast—and the - Confederation of Eastern Asia had seized the oil wells of Burmha and was - impartially attacking America and Germany. In a week they were building - airships in Damascus and Cairo and Johannesburg; Australia and New Zealand - were frantically equipping themselves. One unique and terrifying aspect of - this development was the swiftness with which these monsters could be - produced. To build an ironclad took from two to four years; an airship - could be put together in as many weeks. Moreover, compared with even a - torpedo boat, the airship was remarkably simple to construct, given the - air-chamber material, the engines, the gas plant, and the design, it was - really not more complicated and far easier than an ordinary wooden boat - had been a hundred years before. And now from Cape Horn to Nova Zembla, - and from Canton round to Canton again, there were factories and workshops - and industrial resources. - </p> - <p> - And the German airships were barely in sight of the Atlantic waters, the - first Asiatic fleet was scarcely reported from Upper Burmah, before the - fantastic fabric of credit and finance that had held the world together - economically for a hundred years strained and snapped. A tornado of - realisation swept through every stock exchange in the world; banks stopped - payment, business shrank and ceased, factories ran on for a day or so by a - sort of inertia, completing the orders of bankrupt and extinguished - customers, then stopped. The New York Bert Smallways saw, for all its - glare of light and traffic, was in the pit of an economic and financial - collapse unparalleled in history. The flow of the food supply was already - a little checked. And before the world-war had lasted two weeks—by - the time, that is, that mast was rigged in Labrador—there was not a - city or town in the world outside China, however far from the actual - centres of destruction, where police and government were not adopting - special emergency methods to deal with a want of food and a glut of - unemployed people. - </p> - <p> - The special peculiarities of aerial warfare were of such a nature as to - trend, once it had begun, almost inevitably towards social - disorganisation. The first of these peculiarities was brought home to the - Germans in their attack upon New York; the immense power of destruction an - airship has over the thing below, and its relative inability to occupy or - police or guard or garrison a surrendered position. Necessarily, in the - face of urban populations in a state of economic disorganisation and - infuriated and starving, this led to violent and destructive collisions, - and even where the air-fleet floated inactive above, there would be civil - conflict and passionate disorder below. Nothing comparable to this state - of affairs had been known in the previous history of warfare, unless we - take such a case as that of a nineteenth century warship attacking some - large savage or barbaric settlement, or one of those naval bombardments - that disfigure the history of Great Britain in the late eighteenth - century. Then, indeed, there had been cruelties and destruction that - faintly foreshadowed the horrors of the aerial war. Moreover, before the - twentieth century the world had had but one experience, and that a - comparatively light one, in the Communist insurrection of Paris, 1871, of - the possibilities of a modern urban population under warlike stresses. - </p> - <p> - A second peculiarity of airship war as it first came to the world that - also made for social collapse, was the ineffectiveness of the early - air-ships against each other. Upon anything below they could rain - explosives in the most deadly fashion, forts and ships and cities lay at - their mercy, but unless they were prepared for a suicidal grapple they - could do remarkably little mischief to each other. The armament of the - huge German airships, big as the biggest mammoth liners afloat, was one - machine gun that could easily have been packed up on a couple of mules. In - addition, when it became evident that the air must be fought for, the - air-sailors were provided with rifles with explosive bullets of oxygen or - inflammable substance, but no airship at any time ever carried as much in - the way of guns and armour as the smallest gunboat on the navy list had - been accustomed to do. Consequently, when these monsters met in battle, - they manoeuvred for the upper place, or grappled and fought like junks, - throwing grenades fighting hand to hand in an entirely medieval fashion. - The risks of a collapse and fall on either side came near to balancing in - every case the chances of victory. As a consequence, and after their first - experiences of battle, one finds a growing tendency on the part of the - air-fleet admirals to evade joining battle, and to seek rather the moral - advantage of a destructive counter attack. - </p> - <p> - And if the airships were too ineffective, the early drachenflieger were - either too unstable, like the German, or too light, like the Japanese, to - produce immediately decisive results. Later, it is true, the Brazilians - launched a flying-machine of a type and scale that was capable of dealing - with an airship, but they built only three or four, they operated only in - South America, and they vanished from history untraceably in the time when - world-bankruptcy put a stop to all further engineering production on any - considerable scale. - </p> - <p> - The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that it was at once enormously - destructive and entirely indecisive. It had this unique feature, that both - sides lay open to punitive attack. In all previous forms of war, both by - land and sea, the losing side was speedily unable to raid its antagonist's - territory and the communications. One fought on a “front,” and behind that - front the winner's supplies and resources, his towns and factories and - capital, the peace of his country, were secure. If the war was a naval - one, you destroyed your enemy's battle fleet and then blockaded his ports, - secured his coaling stations, and hunted down any stray cruisers that - threatened your ports of commerce. But to blockade and watch a coastline - is one thing, to blockade and watch the whole surface of a country is - another, and cruisers and privateers are things that take long to make, - that cannot be packed up and hidden and carried unostentatiously from - point to point. In aerial war the stronger side, even supposing it - destroyed the main battle fleet of the weaker, had then either to patrol - and watch or destroy every possible point at which he might produce - another and perhaps a novel and more deadly form of flyer. It meant - darkening his air with airships. It meant building them by the thousand - and making aeronauts by the hundred thousand. A small uninitated airship - could be hidden in a railway shed, in a village street, in a wood; a - flying machine is even less conspicuous. - </p> - <p> - And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of - an antagonist, “If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here.” In - the air all directions lead everywhere. - </p> - <p> - Consequently it was impossible to end a war by any of the established - methods. A, having outnumbered and overwhelmed B, hovers, a thousand - airships strong, over his capital, threatening to bombard it unless B - submits. B replies by wireless telegraphy that he is now in the act of - bombarding the chief manufacturing city of A by means of three raider - airships. A denounces B's raiders as pirates and so forth, bombards B's - capital, and sets off to hunt down B's airships, while B, in a state of - passionate emotion and heroic unconquerableness, sets to work amidst his - ruins, making fresh airships and explosives for the benefit of A. The war - became perforce a universal guerilla war, a war inextricably involving - civilians and homes and all the apparatus of social life. - </p> - <p> - These aspects of aerial fighting took the world by surprise. There had - been no foresight to deduce these consequences. If there had been, the - world would have arranged for a Universal Peace Conference in 1900. But - mechanical invention had gone faster than intellectual and social - organisation, and the world, with its silly old flags, its silly unmeaning - tradition of nationality, its cheap newspapers and cheaper passions and - imperialisms, its base commercial motives and habitual insincerities and - vulgarities, its race lies and conflicts, was taken by surprise. Once the - war began there was no stopping it. The flimsy fabric of credit that had - grown with no man foreseeing, and that had held those hundreds of millions - in an economic interdependence that no man clearly understood, dissolved - in panic. Everywhere went the airships dropping bombs, destroying any hope - of a rally, and everywhere below were economic catastrophe, starving - workless people, rioting, and social disorder. Whatever constructive - guiding intelligence there had been among the nations vanished in the - passionate stresses of the time. Such newspapers and documents and - histories as survive from this period all tell one universal story of - towns and cities with the food supply interrupted and their streets - congested with starving unemployed; of crises in administration and states - of siege, of provisional Governments and Councils of Defence, and, in the - cases of India and Egypt, insurrectionary committees taking charge of the - re-arming of the population, of the making of batteries and gun-pits, of - the vehement manufacture of airships and flying-machines. - </p> - <p> - One sees these things in glimpses, in illuminated moments, as if through a - driving reek of clouds, going on all over the world. It was the - dissolution of an age; it was the collapse of the civilisation that had - trusted to machinery, and the instruments of its destruction were - machines. But while the collapse of the previous great civilisation, that - of Rome, had been a matter of centuries, had been a thing of phase and - phase, like the ageing and dying of a man, this, like his killing by - railway or motor car, was one swift, conclusive smashing and an end. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - The early battles of the aerial war were no doubt determined by attempts - to realise the old naval maxim, to ascertain the position of the enemy's - fleet and to destroy it. There was first the battle of the Bernese - Oberland, in which the Italian and French navigables in their flank raid - upon the Franconian Park were assailed by the Swiss experimental squadron, - supported as the day wore on by German airships, and then the encounter of - the British Winterhouse-Dunn aeroplanes with three unfortunate Germans. - </p> - <p> - Then came the Battle of North India, in which the entire Anglo-Indian - aeronautic settlement establishment fought for three days against - overwhelming odds, and was dispersed and destroyed in detail. - </p> - <p> - And simultaneously with the beginning of that, commenced the momentous - struggle of the Germans and Asiatics that is usually known as the Battle - of Niagara because of the objective of the Asiatic attack. But it passed - gradually into a sporadic conflict over half a continent. Such German - airships as escaped destruction in battle descended and surrendered to the - Americans, and were re-manned, and in the end it became a series of - pitiless and heroic encounters between the Americans, savagely resolved to - exterminate their enemies, and a continually reinforced army of invasion - from Asia quartered upon the Pacific slope and supported by an immense - fleet. From the first the war in America was fought with implacable - bitterness; no quarter was asked, no prisoners were taken. With ferocious - and magnificent energy the Americans constructed and launched ship after - ship to battle and perish against the Asiatic multitudes. All other - affairs were subordinate to this war, the whole population was presently - living or dying for it. Presently, as I shall tell, the white men found in - the Butteridge machine a weapon that could meet and fight the - flying-machines of the Asiatic swordsman. - </p> - <p> - The Asiatic invasion of America completely effaced the German-American - conflict. It vanishes from history. At first it had seemed to promise - quite sufficient tragedy in itself—beginning as it did in - unforgettable massacre. After the destruction of central New York all - America had risen like one man, resolved to die a thousand deaths rather - than submit to Germany. The Germans grimly resolved upon beating the - Americans into submission and, following out the plans developed by the - Prince, had seized Niagara—in order to avail themselves of its - enormous powerworks; expelled all its inhabitants and made a desert of its - environs as far as Buffalo. They had also, directly Great Britain and - France declare war, wrecked the country upon the Canadian side for nearly - ten miles inland. They began to bring up men and material from the fleet - off the east coast, stringing out to and fro like bees getting honey. It - was then that the Asiatic forces appeared, and it was in their attack upon - this German base at Niagara that the air-fleets of East and West first met - and the greater issue became clear. - </p> - <p> - One conspicuous peculiarity of the early aerial fighting arose from the - profound secrecy with which the airships had been prepared. Each power had - had but the dimmest inkling of the schemes of its rivals, and even - experiments with its own devices were limited by the needs of secrecy. - None of the designers of airships and aeroplanes had known clearly what - their inventions might have to fight; many had not imagined they would - have to fight anything whatever in the air; and had planned them only for - the dropping of explosives. Such had been the German idea. The only weapon - for fighting another airship with which the Franconian fleet had been - provided was the machine gun forward. Only after the fight over New York - were the men given short rifles with detonating bullets. Theoretically, - the drachenflieger were to have been the fighting weapon. They were - declared to be aerial torpedo-boats, and the aeronaut was supposed to - swoop close to his antagonist and cast his bombs as he whirled past. But - indeed these contrivances were hopelessly unstable; not one-third in any - engagement succeeded in getting back to the mother airship. The rest were - either smashed up or grounded. - </p> - <p> - The allied Chino-Japanese fleet made the same distinction as the Germans - between airships and fighting machines heavier than air, but the type in - both cases was entirely different from the occidental models, and—it - is eloquent of the vigour with which these great peoples took up and - bettered the European methods of scientific research in almost every - particular the invention of Asiatic engineers. Chief among these, it is - worth remarking, was Mohini K. Chatterjee, a political exile who had - formerly served in the British-Indian aeronautic park at Lahore. - </p> - <p> - The German airship was fish-shaped, with a blunted head; the Asiatic - airship was also fish-shaped, but not so much on the lines of a cod or - goby as of a ray or sole. It had a wide, flat underside, unbroken by - windows or any opening except along the middle line. Its cabins occupied - its axis, with a sort of bridge deck above, and the gas-chambers gave the - whole affair the shape of a gipsy's hooped tent, except that it was much - flatter. The German airship was essentially a navigable balloon very much - lighter than air; the Asiatic airship was very little lighter than air and - skimmed through it with much greater velocity if with considerably less - stability. They carried fore and aft guns, the latter much the larger, - throwing inflammatory shells, and in addition they had nests for riflemen - on both the upper and the under side. Light as this armament was in - comparison with the smallest gunboat that ever sailed, it was sufficient - for them to outfight as well as outfly the German monster airships. In - action they flew to get behind or over the Germans: they even dashed - underneath, avoiding only passing immediately beneath the magazine, and - then as soon as they had crossed let fly with their rear gun, and sent - flares or oxygen shells into the antagonist's gas-chambers. - </p> - <p> - It was not in their airships, but, as I have said, in their - flying-machines proper, that the strength of the Asiatics lay. Next only - to the Butteridge machine, these were certainly the most efficient - heavier-than-air fliers that had ever appeared. They were the invention of - a Japanese artist, and they differed in type extremely from the box-kite - quality of the German drachenflieger. They had curiously curved, flexible - side wings, more like <i>bent</i> butterfly's wings than anything else, and made - of a substance like celluloid and of brightly painted silk, and they had a - long humming-bird tail. At the forward corner of the wings were hooks, - rather like the claws of a bat, by which the machine could catch and hang - and tear at the walls of an airship's gas-chamber. The solitary rider sat - between the wings above a transverse explosive engine, an explosive engine - that differed in no essential particular from those in use in the light - motor bicycles of the period. Below was a single large wheel. The rider - sat astride of a saddle, as in the Butteridge machine, and he carried a - large double-edged two-handed sword, in addition to his explosive-bullet - firing rifle. - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - One sets down these particulars and compares the points of the American - and German pattern of aeroplane and navigable, but none of these facts - were clearly known to any of those who fought in this monstrously confused - battle above the American great lakes. - </p> - <p> - Each side went into action against it knew not what, under novel - conditions and with apparatus that even without hostile attacks was - capable of producing the most disconcerting surprises. Schemes of action, - attempts at collective manoeuvring necessarily went to pieces directly the - fight began, just as they did in almost all the early ironclad battles of - the previous century. Each captain then had to fall back upon individual - action and his own devices; one would see triumph in what another read as - a cue for flight and despair. It is as true of the Battle of Niagara as of - the Battle of Lissa that it was not a battle but a bundle of “battlettes”! - </p> - <p> - To such a spectator as Bert it presented itself as a series of incidents, - some immense, some trivial, but collectively incoherent. He never had a - sense of any plain issue joined, of any point struggled for and won or - lost. He saw tremendous things happen and in the end his world darkened to - disaster and ruin. - </p> - <p> - He saw the battle from the ground, from Prospect Park and from Goat - Island, whither he fled. - </p> - <p> - But the manner in which he came to be on the ground needs explaining. - </p> - <p> - The Prince had resumed command of his fleet through wireless telegraphy - long before the Zeppelin had located his encampment in Labrador. By his - direction the German air-fleet, whose advance scouts had been in contact - with the Japanese over the Rocky Mountains, had concentrated upon Niagara - and awaited his arrival. He had rejoined his command early in the morning - of the twelfth, and Bert had his first prospect of the Gorge of Niagara - while he was doing net drill outside the middle gas-chamber at sunrise. - The Zeppelin was flying very high at the time, and far below he saw the - water in the gorge marbled with froth and then away to the west the great - crescent of the Canadian Fall shining, flickering and foaming in the level - sunlight and sending up a deep, incessant thudding rumble to the sky. The - air-fleet was keeping station in an enormous crescent, with its horns - pointing south-westward, a long array of shining monsters with tails - rotating slowly and German ensigns now trailing from their bellies aft of - their Marconi pendants. - </p> - <p> - Niagara city was still largely standing then, albeit its streets were - empty of all life. Its bridges were intact; its hotels and restaurants - still flying flags and inviting sky signs; its power-stations running. But - about it the country on both sides of the gorge might have been swept by a - colossal broom. Everything that could possibly give cover to an attack - upon the German position at Niagara had been levelled as ruthlessly as - machinery and explosives could contrive; houses blown up and burnt, woods - burnt, fences and crops destroyed. The mono-rails had been torn up, and - the roads in particular cleared of all possibility of concealment or - shelter. Seen from above, the effect of this wreckage was grotesque. Young - woods had been destroyed whole-sale by dragging wires, and the spoilt - saplings, smashed or uprooted, lay in swathes like corn after the sickle. - Houses had an appearance of being flattened down by the pressure of a - gigantic finger. Much burning was still going on, and large areas had been - reduced to patches of smouldering and sometimes still glowing blackness. - </p> - <p> - Here and there lay the debris of belated fugitives, carts, and dead bodies - of horses and men; and where houses had had water-supplies there were - pools of water and running springs from the ruptured pipes. In unscorched - fields horses and cattle still fed peacefully. Beyond this desolated area - the countryside was still standing, but almost all the people had fled. - Buffalo was on fire to an enormous extent, and there were no signs of any - efforts to grapple with the flames. Niagara city itself was being rapidly - converted to the needs of a military depot. A large number of skilled - engineers had already been brought from the fleet and were busily at work - adapting the exterior industrial apparatus of the place to the purposes of - an aeronautic park. They had made a gas recharging station at the corner - of the American Fall above the funicular railway, and they were, opening - up a much larger area to the south for the same purpose. Over the - power-houses and hotels and suchlike prominent or important points the - German flag was flying. - </p> - <p> - The Zeppelin circled slowly over this scene twice while the Prince - surveyed it from the swinging gallery; it then rose towards the centre of - the crescent and transferred the Prince and his suite, Kurt included, to - the Hohenzollern, which had been chosen as the flagship during the - impending battle. They were swung up on a small cable from the forward - gallery, and the men of the Zeppelin manned the outer netting as the - Prince and his staff left them. The Zeppelin then came about, circled down - and grounded in Prospect Park, in order to land the wounded and take - aboard explosives; for she had come to Labrador with her magazines empty, - it being uncertain what weight she might need to carry. She also - replenished the hydrogen in one of her forward chambers which had leaked. - </p> - <p> - Bert was detailed as a bearer and helped carry the wounded one by one into - the nearest of the large hotels that faced the Canadian shore. The hotel - was quite empty except that there were two trained American nurses and a - negro porter, and three or four Germans awaiting them. Bert went with the - Zeppelin's doctor into the main street of the place, and they broke into a - drug shop and obtained various things of which they stood in need. As they - returned they found an officer and two men making a rough inventory of the - available material in the various stores. Except for them the wide, main - street of the town was quite deserted, the people had been given three - hours to clear out, and everybody, it seemed, had done so. At one corner a - dead man lay against the wall—shot. Two or three dogs were visible - up the empty vista, but towards its river end the passage of a string of - mono-rail cars broke the stillness and the silence. They were loaded with - hose, and were passing to the trainful of workers who were converting - Prospect Park into an airship dock. - </p> - <p> - Bert pushed a case of medicine balanced on a bicycle taken from an - adjacent shop, to the hotel, and then he was sent to load bombs into the - Zeppelin magazine, a duty that called for elaborate care. From this job he - was presently called off by the captain of the Zeppelin, who sent him with - a note to the officer in charge of the Anglo-American Power Company, for - the field telephone had still to be adjusted. Bert received his - instructions in German, whose meaning he guessed, and saluted and took the - note, not caring to betray his ignorance of the language. He started off - with a bright air of knowing his way and turned a corner or so, and was - only beginning to suspect that he did not know where he was going when his - attention was recalled to the sky by the report of a gun from the - Hohenzollern and celestial cheering. - </p> - <p> - He looked up and found the view obstructed by the houses on either side of - the street. He hesitated, and then curiosity took him back towards the - bank of the river. Here his view was inconvenienced by trees, and it was - with a start that he discovered the Zeppelin, which he knew had still a - quarter of her magazines to fill, was rising over Goat Island. She had not - waited for her complement of ammunition. It occurred to him that he was - left behind. He ducked back among the trees and bushes until he felt - secure from any after-thought on the part of the Zeppelin's captain. Then - his curiosity to see what the German air-fleet faced overcame him, and - drew him at last halfway across the bridge to Goat Island. - </p> - <p> - From that point he had nearly a hemisphere of sky and got his first - glimpse of the Asiatic airships low in the sky above the glittering - tumults of the Upper Rapids. - </p> - <p> - They were far less impressive than the German ships. He could not judge - the distance, and they flew edgeways to him, so as to conceal the broader - aspect of their bulk. - </p> - <p> - Bert stood there in the middle of the bridge, in a place that most people - who knew it remembered as a place populous with sightseers and - excursionists, and he was the only human being in sight there. Above him, - very high in the heavens, the contending air-fleets manoeuvred; below him - the river seethed like a sluice towards the American Fall. He was - curiously dressed. His cheap blue serge trousers were thrust into German - airship rubber boots, and on his head he wore an aeronaut's white cap that - was a trifle too large for him. He thrust that back to reveal his staring - little Cockney face, still scarred upon the brow. “Gaw!” he whispered. - </p> - <p> - He stared. He gesticulated. Once or twice he shouted and applauded. - </p> - <p> - Then at a certain point terror seized him and he took to his heels in the - direction of Goat Island. - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - For a time after they were in sight of each other, neither fleet attempted - to engage. The Germans numbered sixty-seven great airships and they - maintained the crescent formation at a height of nearly four thousand - feet. They kept a distance of about one and a half lengths, so that the - horns of the crescent were nearly thirty miles apart. Closely in tow of - the airships of the extreme squadrons on either wing were about thirty - drachenflieger ready manned, but these were too small and distant for Bert - to distinguish. - </p> - <p> - At first, only what was called the Southern fleet of the Asiatics was - visible to him. It consisted of forty airships, carrying all together - nearly four hundred one-man flying-machines upon their flanks, and for - some time it flew slowly and at a minimum distance of perhaps a dozen - miles from the Germans, eastward across their front. At first Bert could - distinguish only the greater bulks, then he perceived the one-man machines - as a multitude of very small objects drifting like motes in the sunshine - about and beneath the larger shapes. - </p> - <p> - Bert saw nothing then of the second fleet of the Asiatics, though probably - that was coming into sight of the Germans at the time, in the north-west. - </p> - <p> - The air was very still, the sky almost without a cloud, and the German - fleet had risen to an immense height, so that the airships seemed no - longer of any considerable size. Both ends of their crescent showed - plainly. As they beat southward they passed slowly between Bert and the - sunlight, and became black outlines of themselves. The drachenflieger - appeared as little flecks of black on either wing of this aerial Armada. - </p> - <p> - The two fleets seemed in no hurry to engage. The Asiatics went far away - into the east, quickening their pace and rising as they did so, and then - tailed out into a long column and came flying back, rising towards the - German left. The squadrons of the latter came about, facing this oblique - advance, and suddenly little flickerings and a faint crepitating sound - told that they had opened fire. For a time no effect was visible to the - watcher on the bridge. Then, like a handful of snowflakes, the - drachenflieger swooped to the attack, and a multitude of red specks - whirled up to meet them. It was to Bert's sense not only enormously remote - but singularly inhuman. Not four hours since he had been on one of those - very airships, and yet they seemed to him now not gas-bags carrying men, - but strange sentient creatures that moved about and did things with a - purpose of their own. The flight of the Asiatic and German flying-machines - joined and dropped earthward, became like a handful of white and red rose - petals flung from a distant window, grew larger, until Bert could see the - overturned ones spinning through the air, and were hidden by great volumes - of dark smoke that were rising in the direction of Buffalo. For a time - they all were hidden, then two or three white and a number of red ones - rose again into the sky, like a swarm of big butterflies, and circled - fighting and drove away out of sight again towards the east. - </p> - <p> - A heavy report recalled Bert's eyes to the zenith, and behold, the great - crescent had lost its dressing and burst into a disorderly long cloud of - airships! One had dropped halfway down the sky. It was flaming fore and - aft, and even as Bert looked it turned over and fell, spinning over and - over itself and vanished into the smoke of Buffalo. - </p> - <p> - Bert's mouth opened and shut, and he clutched tighter on the rail of the - bridge. For some moments—they seemed long moments—the two - fleets remained without any further change flying obliquely towards each - other, and making what came to Bert's ears as a midget uproar. Then - suddenly from either side airships began dropping out of alignment, - smitten by missiles he could neither see nor trace. The string of Asiatic - ships swung round and either charged into or over (it was difficult to say - from below) the shattered line of the Germans, who seemed to open out to - give way to them. Some sort of manoeuvring began, but Bert could not grasp - its import. The left of the battle became a confused dance of airships. - For some minutes up there the two crossing lines of ships looked so close - it seemed like a hand-to-hand scuffle in the sky. Then they broke up into - groups and duels. The descent of German air-ships towards the lower sky - increased. One of them flared down and vanished far away in the north; two - dropped with something twisted and crippled in their movements; then a - group of antagonists came down from the zenith in an eddying conflict, two - Asiatics against one German, and were presently joined by another, and - drove away eastward all together with others dropping out of the German - line to join them. - </p> - <p> - One Asiatic either rammed or collided with a still more gigantic German, - and the two went spinning to destruction together. The northern squadron - of Asiatics came into the battle unnoted by Bert, except that the - multitude of ships above seemed presently increased. In a little while the - fight was utter confusion, drifting on the whole to the southwest against - the wind. It became more and more a series of group encounters. Here a - huge German airship flamed earthward with a dozen flat Asiatic craft about - her, crushing her every attempt to recover. Here another hung with its - screw fighting off the swordsman from a swarm of flying-machines. Here, - again, an Asiatic aflame at either end swooped out of the battle. His - attention went from incident to incident in the vast clearness overhead; - these conspicuous cases of destruction caught and held his mind; it was - only very slowly that any sort of scheme manifested itself between those - nearer, more striking episodes. - </p> - <p> - The mass of the airships that eddied remotely above was, however, neither - destroying nor destroyed. The majority of them seemed to be going at full - speed and circling upward for position, exchanging ineffectual shots as - they did so. Very little ramming was essayed after the first tragic - downfall of rammer and rammed, and what ever attempts at boarding were - made were invisible to Bert. There seemed, however, a steady attempt to - isolate antagonists, to cut them off from their fellows and bear them - down, causing a perpetual sailing back and interlacing of these shoaling - bulks. The greater numbers of the Asiatics and their swifter heeling - movements gave them the effect of persistently attacking the Germans. - Overhead, and evidently endeavouring to keep itself in touch with the - works of Niagara, a body of German airships drew itself together into a - compact phalanx, and the Asiatics became more and more intent upon - breaking this up. He was grotesquely reminded of fish in a fish-pond - struggling for crumbs. He could see puny puffs of smoke and the flash of - bombs, but never a sound came down to him.... - </p> - <p> - A flapping shadow passed for a moment between Bert and the sun and was - followed by another. A whirring of engines, click, clock, clitter clock, - smote upon his ears. Instantly he forgot the zenith. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps a hundred yards above the water, out of the south, riding like - Valkyries swiftly through the air on the strange steeds the engineering of - Europe had begotten upon the artistic inspiration of Japan, came a long - string of Asiatic swordsman. The wings flapped jerkily, click, block, - clitter clock, and the machines drove up; they spread and ceased, and the - apparatus came soaring through the air. So they rose and fell and rose - again. They passed so closely overhead that Bert could hear their voices - calling to one another. They swooped towards Niagara city and landed one - after another in a long line in a clear space before the hotel. But he did - not stay to watch them land. One yellow face had craned over and looked at - him, and for one enigmatical instant met his eyes.... - </p> - <p> - It was then the idea came to Bert that he was altogether too conspicuous - in the middle of the bridge, and that he took to his heels towards Goat - Island. Thence, dodging about among the trees, with perhaps an excessive - self-consciousness, he watched the rest of the struggle. - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - When Bert's sense of security was sufficiently restored for him to watch - the battle again, he perceived that a brisk little fight was in progress - between the Asiatic aeronauts and the German engineers for the possession - of Niagara city. It was the first time in the whole course of the war that - he had seen anything resembling fighting as he had studied it in the - illustrated papers of his youth. It seemed to him almost as though things - were coming right. He saw men carrying rifles and taking cover and running - briskly from point to point in a loose attacking formation. The first - batch of aeronauts had probably been under the impression that the city - was deserted. They had grounded in the open near Prospect Park and - approached the houses towards the power-works before they were - disillusioned by a sudden fire. They had scattered back to the cover of a - bank near the water—it was too far for them to reach their machines - again; they were lying and firing at the men in the hotels and - frame-houses about the power-works. - </p> - <p> - Then to their support came a second string of red flying-machines driving - up from the east. They rose up out of the haze above the houses and came - round in a long curve as if surveying the position below. The fire of the - Germans rose to a roar, and one of those soaring shapes gave an abrupt - jerk backward and fell among the houses. The others swooped down exactly - like great birds upon the roof of the power-house. They caught upon it, - and from each sprang a nimble little figure and ran towards the parapet. - </p> - <p> - Other flapping bird-shapes came into this affair, but Bert had not seen - their coming. A staccato of shots came over to him, reminding him of army - manoeuvres, of newspaper descriptions of fights, of all that was entirely - correct in his conception of warfare. He saw quite a number of Germans - running from the outlying houses towards the power-house. Two fell. One - lay still, but the other wriggled and made efforts for a time. The hotel - that was used as a hospital, and to which he had helped carry the wounded - men from the Zeppelin earlier in the day, suddenly ran up the Geneva flag. - The town that had seemed so quiet had evidently been concealing a - considerable number of Germans, and they were now concentrating to hold - the central power-house. He wondered what ammunition they might have. More - and more of the Asiatic flying-machines came into the conflict. They had - disposed of the unfortunate German drachenflieger and were now aiming at - the incipient aeronautic park,—the electric gas generators and - repair stations which formed the German base. Some landed, and their - aeronauts took cover and became energetic infantry soldiers. Others - hovered above the fight, their men ever and again firing shots down at - some chance exposure below. The firing came in paroxysms; now there would - be a watchful lull and now a rapid tattoo of shots, rising to a roar. Once - or twice flying machines, as they circled warily, came right overhead, and - for a time Bert gave himself body and soul to cowering. - </p> - <p> - Ever and again a larger thunder mingled with the rattle and reminded him - of the grapple of airships far above, but the nearer fight held his - attention. - </p> - <p> - Abruptly something dropped from the zenith; something like a barrel or a - huge football. - </p> - <p> - CRASH! It smashed with an immense report. It had fallen among the grounded - Asiatic aeroplanes that lay among the turf and flower-beds near the river. - They flew in scraps and fragments, turf, trees, and gravel leapt and fell; - the aeronauts still lying along the canal bank were thrown about like - sacks, catspaws flew across the foaming water. All the windows of the - hotel hospital that had been shiningly reflecting blue sky and airships - the moment before became vast black stars. Bang!—a second followed. - Bert looked up and was filled with a sense of a number of monstrous bodies - swooping down, coming down on the whole affair like a flight of bellying - blankets, like a string of vast dish-covers. The central tangle of the - battle above was circling down as if to come into touch with the - power-house fight. He got a new effect of airships altogether, as vast - things coming down upon him, growing swiftly larger and larger and more - overwhelming, until the houses over the way seemed small, the American - rapids narrow, the bridge flimsy, the combatants infinitesimal. As they - came down they became audible as a complex of shootings and vast creakings - and groanings and beatings and throbbings and shouts and shots. The - fore-shortened black eagles at the fore-ends of the Germans had an effect - of actual combat of flying feathers. - </p> - <p> - Some of these fighting airships came within five hundred feet of the - ground. Bert could see men on the lower galleries of the Germans, firing - rifles; could see Asiatics clinging to the ropes; saw one man in aluminium - diver's gear fall flashing headlong into the waters above Goat Island. For - the first time he saw the Asiatic airships closely. From this aspect they - reminded him more than anything else of colossal snowshoes; they had a - curious patterning in black and white, in forms that reminded him of the - engine-turned cover of a watch. They had no hanging galleries, but from - little openings on the middle line peeped out men and the muzzles of guns. - So, driving in long, descending and ascending curves, these monsters - wrestled and fought. It was like clouds fighting, like puddings trying to - assassinate each other. They whirled and circled about each other, and for - a time threw Goat Island and Niagara into a smoky twilight, through which - the sunlight smote in shafts and beams. They spread and closed and spread - and grappled and drove round over the rapids, and two miles away or more - into Canada, and back over the Falls again. A German caught fire, and the - whole crowd broke away from her flare and rose about her dispersing, - leaving her to drop towards Canada and blow up as she dropped. Then with - renewed uproar the others closed again. Once from the men in Niagara city - came a sound like an ant-hill cheering. Another German burnt, and one - badly deflated by the prow of an antagonist, flopped out of action - southward. - </p> - <p> - It became more and more evident that the Germans were getting the worst of - the unequal fight. More and more obviously were they being persecuted. - Less and less did they seem to fight with any object other than escape. - The Asiatics swept by them and above them, ripped their bladders, set them - alight, picked off their dimly seen men in diving clothes, who struggled - against fire and tear with fire extinguishers and silk ribbons in the - inner netting. They answered only with ineffectual shots. Thence the - battle circled back over Niagara, and then suddenly the Germans, as if at - a preconcerted signal, broke and dispersed, going east, west, north, and - south, in open and confused flight. The Asiatics, as they realised this, - rose to fly above them and after them. Only one little knot of four - Germans and perhaps a dozen Asiatics remained fighting about the - Hohenzollern and the Prince as he circled in a last attempt to save - Niagara. - </p> - <p> - Round they swooped once again over the Canadian Fall, over the waste of - waters eastward, until they were distant and small, and then round and - back, hurrying, bounding, swooping towards the one gaping spectator. - </p> - <p> - The whole struggling mass approached very swiftly, growing rapidly larger, - and coming out black and featureless against the afternoon sun and above - the blinding welter of the Upper Rapids. It grew like a storm cloud until - once more it darkened the sky. The flat Asiatic airships kept high above - the Germans and behind them, and fired unanswered bullets into their - gas-chambers and upon their flanks—the one-man flying-machines - hovered and alighted like a swarm of attacking bees. Nearer they came, and - nearer, filling the lower heaven. Two of the Germans swooped and rose - again, but the Hohenzollern had suffered too much for that. She lifted - weakly, turned sharply as if to get out of the battle, burst into flames - fore and aft, swept down to the water, splashed into it obliquely, and - rolled over and over and came down stream rolling and smashing and - writhing like a thing alive, halting and then coming on again, with her - torn and bent propeller still beating the air. The bursting flames - spluttered out again in clouds of steam. It was a disaster gigantic in its - dimensions. She lay across the rapids like an island, like tall cliffs, - tall cliffs that came rolling, smoking, and crumpling, and collapsing, - advancing with a sort of fluctuating rapidity upon Bert. One Asiatic - airship—it looked to Bert from below like three hundred yards of - pavement—whirled back and circled two or three times over that great - overthrow, and half a dozen crimson flying-machines danced for a moment - like great midges in the sunlight before they swept on after their - fellows. The rest of the fight had already gone over the island, a wild - crescendo of shots and yells and smashing uproar. It was hidden from Bert - now by the trees of the island, and forgotten by him in the nearer - spectacle of the huge advance of the defeated German airship. Something - fell with a mighty smashing and splintering of boughs unheeded behind him. - </p> - <p> - It seemed for a time that the Hohenzollern must needs break her back upon - the Parting of the Waters, and then for a time her propeller flopped and - frothed in the river and thrust the mass of buckling, crumpled wreckage - towards the American shore. Then the sweep of the torrent that foamed down - to the American Fall caught her, and in another minute the immense mass of - deflating wreckage, with flames spurting out in three new places, had - crashed against the bridge that joined Goat Island and Niagara city, and - forced a long arm, as it were, in a heaving tangle under the central span. - Then the middle chambers blew up with a loud report, and in another moment - the bridge had given way and the main bulk of the airship, like some - grotesque cripple in rags, staggered, flapping and waving flambeaux to the - crest of the Fall and hesitated there and vanished in a desperate suicidal - leap. - </p> - <p> - Its detached fore-end remained jammed against that little island, Green - Island it used to be called, which forms the stepping-stone between the - mainland and Goat Island's patch of trees. - </p> - <p> - Bert followed this disaster from the Parting of the Waters to the bridge - head. Then, regardless of cover, regardless of the Asiatic airship - hovering like a huge house roof without walls above the Suspension Bridge, - he sprinted along towards the north and came out for the first time upon - that rocky point by Luna Island that looks sheer down upon the American - Fall. There he stood breathless amidst that eternal rush of sound, - breathless and staring. - </p> - <p> - Far below, and travelling rapidly down the gorge, whirled something like a - huge empty sack. For him it meant—what did it not mean?—the - German air-fleet, Kurt, the Prince, Europe, all things stable and - familiar, the forces that had brought him, the forces that had seemed - indisputably victorious. And it went down the rapids like an empty sack - and left the visible world to Asia, to yellow people beyond Christendom, - to all that was terrible and strange! - </p> - <p> - Remote over Canada receded the rest of that conflict and vanished beyond - the range of his vision.... - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IX. ON GOAT ISLAND - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - The whack of a bullet on the rocks beside him reminded him that he was a - visible object and wearing at least portions of a German uniform. It drove - him into the trees again, and for a time he dodged and dropped and sought - cover like a chick hiding among reeds from imaginary hawks. - </p> - <p> - “Beaten,” he whispered. “Beaten and done for... Chinese! Yellow chaps - chasing 'em!” - </p> - <p> - At last he came to rest in a clump of bushes near a locked-up and deserted - refreshment shed within view of the American side. They made a sort of - hole and harbour for him; they met completely overhead. He looked across - the rapids, but the firing had ceased now altogether and everything seemed - quiet. The Asiatic aeroplane had moved from its former position above the - Suspension Bridge, was motionless now above Niagara city, shadowing all - that district about the power-house which had been the scene of the land - fight. The monster had an air of quiet and assured predominance, and from - its stern it trailed, serene and ornamental, a long streaming flag, the - red, black, and yellow of the great alliance, the Sunrise and the Dragon. - Beyond, to the east, at a much higher level, hung a second consort, and - Bert, presently gathering courage, wriggled out and craned his neck to - find another still airship against the sunset in the south. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” he said. “Beaten and chased! My Gawd!” - </p> - <p> - The fighting, it seemed at first, was quite over in Niagara city, though a - German flag was still flying from one shattered house. A white sheet was - hoisted above the power-house, and this remained flying all through the - events that followed. But presently came a sound of shots and then German - soldiers running. They disappeared among the houses, and then came two - engineers in blue shirts and trousers hotly pursued by three Japanese - swordsman. The foremost of the two fugitives was a shapely man, and ran - lightly and well; the second was a sturdy little man, and rather fat. He - ran comically in leaps and bounds, with his plump arms bent up by his side - and his head thrown back. The pursuers ran with uniforms and dark thin - metal and leather head-dresses. The little man stumbled, and Bert gasped, - realising a new horror in war. - </p> - <p> - The foremost swordsman won three strides on him and was near enough to - slash at him and miss as he spurted. - </p> - <p> - A dozen yards they ran, and then the swordsman slashed again, and Bert - could hear across the waters a little sound like the moo of an elfin cow - as the fat little man fell forward. Slash went the swordsman and slash at - something on the ground that tried to save itself with ineffectual hands. - “Oh, I carn't!” cried Bert, near blubbering, and staring with starting - eyes. - </p> - <p> - The swordsman slashed a fourth time and went on as his fellows came up - after the better runner. The hindmost swordsman stopped and turned back. - He had perceived some movement perhaps; but at any rate he stood, and ever - and again slashed at the fallen body. - </p> - <p> - “Oo-oo!” groaned Bert at every slash, and shrank closer into the bushes - and became very still. Presently came a sound of shots from the town, and - then everything was quiet, everything, even the hospital. - </p> - <p> - He saw presently little figures sheathing swords come out from the houses - and walk to the debris of the flying-machines the bomb had destroyed. - Others appeared wheeling undamaged aeroplanes upon their wheels as men - might wheel bicycles, and sprang into the saddles and flapped into the - air. A string of three airships appeared far away in the east and flew - towards the zenith. The one that hung low above Niagara city came still - lower and dropped a rope ladder to pick up men from the power-house. - </p> - <p> - For a long time he watched the further happenings in Niagara city as a - rabbit might watch a meet. He saw men going from building to building, to - set fire to them, as he presently realised, and he heard a series of dull - detonations from the wheel pit of the power-house. Some similar business - went on among the works on the Canadian side. Meanwhile more and more - airships appeared, and many more flying-machines, until at last it seemed - to him nearly a third of the Asiatic fleet had re-assembled. He watched - them from his bush, cramped but immovable, watched them gather and range - themselves and signal and pick up men, until at last they sailed away - towards the glowing sunset, going to the great Asiatic rendez-vous, above - the oil wells of Cleveland. They dwindled and passed away, leaving him - alone, so far as he could tell, the only living man in a world of ruin and - strange loneliness almost beyond describing. He watched them recede and - vanish. He stood gaping after them. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” he said at last, like one who rouses himself from a trance. - </p> - <p> - It was far more than any personal desolation extremity that flooded his - soul. It seemed to him indeed that this must be the sunset of his race. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - He did not at first envisage his own plight in definite and comprehensible - terms. Things happened to him so much of late, his own efforts had counted - for so little, that he had become passive and planless. His last scheme - had been to go round the coast of England as a Desert Dervish giving - refined entertainment to his fellow-creatures. Fate had quashed that. Fate - had seen fit to direct him to other destinies, had hurried him from point - to point, and dropped him at last upon this little wedge of rock between - the cataracts. It did not instantly occur to him that now it was his turn - to play. He had a singular feeling that all must end as a dream ends, that - presently surely he would be back in the world of Grubb and Edna and Bun - Hill, that this roar, this glittering presence of incessant water, would - be drawn aside as a curtain is drawn aside after a holiday lantern show, - and old familiar, customary things re-assume their sway. It would be - interesting to tell people how he had seen Niagara. And then Kurt's words - came into his head: “People torn away from the people they care for; homes - smashed, creatures full of life and memories and peculiar little gifts—torn - to pieces, starved, and spoilt.”... - </p> - <p> - He wondered, half incredulous, if that was in deed true. It was so hard to - realise it. Out beyond there was it possible that Tom and Jessica were - also in some dire extremity? that the little green-grocer's shop was no - longer standing open, with Jessica serving respectfully, warming Tom's ear - in sharp asides, or punctually sending out the goods? - </p> - <p> - He tried to think what day of the week it was, and found he had lost his - reckoning. Perhaps it was Sunday. If so, were they going to church or, - were they hiding, perhaps in bushes? What had happened to the landlord, - the butcher, and to Butteridge and all those people on Dymchurch beach? - Something, he knew, had happened to London—a bombardment. But who - had bombarded? Were Tom and Jessica too being chased by strange brown men - with long bare swords and evil eyes? He thought of various possible - aspects of affliction, but presently one phase ousted all the others. Were - they getting much to eat? The question haunted him, obsessed him. - </p> - <p> - If one was very hungry would one eat rats? - </p> - <p> - It dawned upon him that a peculiar misery that oppressed him was not so - much anxiety and patriotic sorrow as hunger. Of course he was hungry! - </p> - <p> - He reflected and turned his steps towards the little refreshment shed that - stood near the end of the ruined bridge. “Ought to be somethin'—” - </p> - <p> - He strolled round it once or twice, and then attacked the shutters with - his pocket-knife, reinforced presently by a wooden stake he found - conveniently near. At last he got a shutter to give, and tore it back and - stuck in his head. - </p> - <p> - “Grub,” he remarked, “anyhow. Leastways—” - </p> - <p> - He got at the inside fastening of the shutter and had presently this - establishment open for his exploration. He found several sealed bottles of - sterilized milk, much mineral water, two tins of biscuits and a crock of - very stale cakes, cigarettes in great quantity but very dry, some rather - dry oranges, nuts, some tins of canned meat and fruit, and plates and - knives and forks and glasses sufficient for several score of people. There - was also a zinc locker, but he was unable to negotiate the padlock of - this. - </p> - <p> - “Shan't starve,” said Bert, “for a bit, anyhow.” He sat on the vendor's - seat and regaled himself with biscuits and milk, and felt for a moment - quite contented. - </p> - <p> - “Quite restful,” he muttered, munching and glancing about him restlessly, - “after what I been through. - </p> - <p> - “Crikey! WOT a day! Oh! WOT a day!” - </p> - <p> - Wonder took possession of him. “Gaw!” he cried: “Wot a fight it's been! - Smashing up the poor fellers! 'Eadlong! The airships—the fliers and - all. I wonder what happened to the Zeppelin?... And that chap Kurt—I - wonder what happened to 'im? 'E was a good sort of chap, was Kurt.” - </p> - <p> - Some phantom of imperial solicitude floated through his mind. “Injia,” he - said.... - </p> - <p> - A more practical interest arose. - </p> - <p> - “I wonder if there's anything to open one of these tins of corned beef?” - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - After he had feasted, Bert lit a cigarette and sat meditative for a time. - “Wonder where Grubb is?” he said; “I do wonder that! Wonder if any of 'em - wonder about me?” - </p> - <p> - He reverted to his own circumstances. “Dessay I shall 'ave to stop on this - island for some time.” - </p> - <p> - He tried to feel at his ease and secure, but presently the indefinable - restlessness of the social animal in solitude distressed him. He began to - want to look over his shoulder, and, as a corrective, roused himself to - explore the rest of the island. - </p> - <p> - It was only very slowly that he began to realise the peculiarities of his - position, to perceive that the breaking down of the arch between Green - Island and the mainland had cut him off completely from the world. Indeed - it was only when he came back to where the fore-end of the Hohenzollern - lay like a stranded ship, and was contemplating the shattered bridge, that - this dawned upon him. Even then it came with no sort of shock to his mind, - a fact among a number of other extraordinary and unmanageable facts. He - stared at the shattered cabins of the Hohenzollern and its widow's garment - of dishevelled silk for a time, but without any idea of its containing any - living thing; it was all so twisted and smashed and entirely upside down. - Then for a while he gazed at the evening sky. A cloud haze was now - appearing and not an airship was in sight. A swallow flew by and snapped - some invisible victim. “Like a dream,” he repeated. - </p> - <p> - Then for a time the rapids held his mind. “Roaring. It keeps on roaring - and splashin' always and always. Keeps on....” - </p> - <p> - At last his interests became personal. “Wonder what I ought to do now?” - </p> - <p> - He reflected. “Not an idee,” he said. - </p> - <p> - He was chiefly conscious that a fortnight ago he had been in Bun Hill with - no idea of travel in his mind, and that now he was between the Falls of - Niagara amidst the devastation and ruins of the greatest air fight in the - world, and that in the interval he had been across France, Belgium, - Germany, England, Ireland, and a number of other countries. It was an - interesting thought and suitable for conversation, but of no great - practical utility. “Wonder 'ow I can get orf this?” he said. “Wonder if - there is a way out? If not... rummy!” - </p> - <p> - Further reflection decided, “I believe I got myself in a bit of a 'ole - coming over that bridge.... - </p> - <p> - “Any'ow—got me out of the way of them Japanesy chaps. Wouldn't 'ave - taken 'em long to cut MY froat. No. Still—” - </p> - <p> - He resolved to return to the point of Luna Island. For a long time he - stood without stirring, scrutinising the Canadian shore and the wreckage - of hotels and houses and the fallen trees of the Victoria Park, pink now - in the light of sundown. Not a human being was perceptible in that scene - of headlong destruction. Then he came back to the American side of the - island, crossed close to the crumpled aluminium wreckage of the - Hohenzollern to Green Islet, and scrutinised the hopeless breach in the - further bridge and the water that boiled beneath it. Towards Buffalo there - was still much smoke, and near the position of the Niagara railway station - the houses were burning vigorously. Everything was deserted now, - everything was still. One little abandoned thing lay on a transverse path - between town and road, a crumpled heap of clothes with sprawling limbs.... - </p> - <p> - “'Ave a look round,” said Bert, and taking a path that ran through the - middle of the island he presently discovered the wreckage of the two - Asiatic aeroplanes that had fallen out of the struggle that ended the - Hohenzollern. - </p> - <p> - With the first he found the wreckage of an aeronaut too. - </p> - <p> - The machine had evidently dropped vertically and was badly knocked about - amidst a lot of smashed branches in a clump of trees. Its bent and broken - wings and shattered stays sprawled amidst new splintered wood, and its - forepeak stuck into the ground. The aeronaut dangled weirdly head downward - among the leaves and branches some yards away, and Bert only discovered - him as he turned from the aeroplane. In the dusky evening light and - stillness—for the sun had gone now and the wind had altogether - fallen-this inverted yellow face was anything but a tranquilising object - to discover suddenly a couple of yards away. A broken branch had run clean - through the man's thorax, and he hung, so stabbed, looking limp and - absurd. In his hand he still clutched, with the grip of death, a short - light rifle. - </p> - <p> - For some time Bert stood very still, inspecting this thing. - </p> - <p> - Then he began to walk away from it, looking constantly back at it. - </p> - <p> - Presently in an open glade he came to a stop. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” he whispered, “I don' like dead bodies some'ow! I'd almost rather - that chap was alive.” - </p> - <p> - He would not go along the path athwart which the Chinaman hung. He felt he - would rather not have trees round him any more, and that it would be more - comfortable to be quite close to the sociable splash and uproar of the - rapids. - </p> - <p> - He came upon the second aeroplane in a clear grassy space by the side of - the streaming water, and it seemed scarcely damaged at all. It looked as - though it had floated down into a position of rest. It lay on its side - with one wing in the air. There was no aeronaut near it, dead or alive. - There it lay abandoned, with the water lapping about its long tail. - </p> - <p> - Bert remained a little aloof from it for a long time, looking into the - gathering shadows among the trees, in the expectation of another Chinaman - alive or dead. Then very cautiously he approached the machine and stood - regarding its widespread vans, its big steering wheel and empty saddle. He - did not venture to touch it. - </p> - <p> - “I wish that other chap wasn't there,” he said. “I do wish 'e wasn't - there!” - </p> - <p> - He saw a few yards away, something bobbing about in an eddy that spun - within a projecting head of rock. As it went round it seemed to draw him - unwillingly towards it.... - </p> - <p> - What could it be? - </p> - <p> - “Blow!” said Bert. “It's another of 'em.” - </p> - <p> - It held him. He told himself that it was the other aeronaut that had been - shot in the fight and fallen out of the saddle as he strove to land. He - tried to go away, and then it occurred to him that he might get a branch - or something and push this rotating object out into the stream. That would - leave him with only one dead body to worry about. Perhaps he might get - along with one. He hesitated and then with a certain emotion forced - himself to do this. He went towards the bushes and cut himself a wand and - returned to the rocks and clambered out to a corner between the eddy and - the stream, By that time the sunset was over and the bats were abroad—and - he was wet with perspiration. - </p> - <p> - He prodded the floating blue-clad thing with his wand, failed, tried again - successfully as it came round, and as it went out into the stream it - turned over, the light gleamed on golden hair and—it was Kurt! - </p> - <p> - It was Kurt, white and dead and very calm. There was no mistaking him. - There was still plenty of light for that. The stream took him and he - seemed to compose himself in its swift grip as one who stretches himself - to rest. White-faced he was now, and all the colour gone out of him. - </p> - <p> - A feeling of infinite distress swept over Bert as the body swept out of - sight towards the fall. “Kurt!” he cried, “Kurt! I didn't mean to! Kurt! - don' leave me 'ere! Don' leave me!” - </p> - <p> - Loneliness and desolation overwhelmed him. He gave way. He stood on the - rock in the evening light, weeping and wailing passionately like a child. - It was as though some link that had held him to all these things had - broken and gone. He was afraid like a child in a lonely room, shamelessly - afraid. - </p> - <p> - The twilight was closing about him. The trees were full now of strange - shadows. All the things about him became strange and unfamiliar with that - subtle queerness one feels oftenest in dreams. “O God! I carn' stand - this,” he said, and crept back from the rocks to the grass and crouched - down, and suddenly wild sorrow for the death of Kurt, Kurt the brave, Kurt - the kindly, came to his help and he broke from whimpering to weeping. He - ceased to crouch; he sprawled upon the grass and clenched an impotent - fist. - </p> - <p> - “This war,” he cried, “this blarsted foolery of a war. - </p> - <p> - “O Kurt! Lieutenant Kurt! - </p> - <p> - “I done,” he said, “I done. I've 'ad all I want, and more than I want. The - world's all rot, and there ain't no sense in it. The night's coming.... If - 'E comes after me—'E can't come after me—'E can't!... - </p> - <p> - “If 'E comes after me, I'll fro' myself into the water.”... - </p> - <p> - Presently he was talking again in a low undertone. - </p> - <p> - “There ain't nothing to be afraid of reely. It's jest imagination. Poor - old Kurt—he thought it would happen. Prevision like. 'E never gave - me that letter or tole me who the lady was. It's like what 'e said—people - tore away from everything they belonged to—everywhere. Exactly like - what 'e said.... 'Ere I am cast away—thousands of miles from Edna or - Grubb or any of my lot—like a plant tore up by the roots.... And - every war's been like this, only I 'adn't the sense to understand it. - Always. All sorts of 'oles and corners chaps 'ave died in. And people - 'adn't the sense to understand, 'adn't the sense to feel it and stop it. - Thought war was fine. My Gawd!... - </p> - <p> - “Dear old Edna. She was a fair bit of all right—she was. That time - we 'ad a boat at Kingston.... - </p> - <p> - “I bet—I'll see 'er again yet. Won't be my fault if I don't.”... - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - Suddenly, on the very verge of this heroic resolution, Bert became rigid - with terror. Something was creeping towards him through the grass. - Something was creeping and halting and creeping again towards him through - the dim dark grass. The night was electrical with horror. For a time - everything was still. Bert ceased to breathe. It could not be. No, it was - too small! - </p> - <p> - It advanced suddenly upon him with a rush, with a little meawling cry and - tail erect. It rubbed its head against him and purred. It was a tiny, - skinny little kitten. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw, Pussy! 'ow you frightened me!” said Bert, with drops of perspiration - on his brow. - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - He sat with his back to a tree stump all that night, holding the kitten in - his arms. His mind was tired, and he talked or thought coherently no - longer. Towards dawn he dozed. - </p> - <p> - When he awoke, he was stiff but in better heart, and the kitten slept - warmly and reassuringly inside his jacket. And fear, he found, had gone - from amidst the trees. - </p> - <p> - He stroked the kitten, and the little creature woke up to excessive - fondness and purring. “You want some milk,” said Bert. “That's what you - want. And I could do with a bit of brekker too.” - </p> - <p> - He yawned and stood up, with the kitten on his shoulder, and stared about - him, recalling the circumstances of the previous day, the grey, immense - happenings. - </p> - <p> - “Mus' do something,” he said. - </p> - <p> - He turned towards the trees, and was presently contemplating the dead - aeronaut again. The kitten he held companionably against his neck. The - body was horrible, but not nearly so horrible as it had been at twilight, - and now the limbs were limper and the gun had slipped to the ground and - lay half hidden in the grass. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose we ought to bury 'im, Kitty,” said Bert, and looked helplessly - at the rocky soil about him. “We got to stay on the island with 'im.” - </p> - <p> - It was some time before he could turn away and go on towards that - provision shed. “Brekker first,” he said, “anyhow,” stroking the kitten on - his shoulder. She rubbed his cheek affectionately with her furry little - face and presently nibbled at his ear. “Wan' some milk, eh?” he said, and - turned his back on the dead man as though he mattered nothing. - </p> - <p> - He was puzzled to find the door of the shed open, though he had closed and - latched it very carefully overnight, and he found also some dirty plates - he had not noticed before on the bench. He discovered that the hinges of - the tin locker were unscrewed and that it could be opened. He had not - observed this overnight. - </p> - <p> - “Silly of me!” said Bert. “'Ere I was puzzlin' and whackin' away at the - padlock, never noticing.” It had been used apparently as an ice-chest, but - it contained nothing now but the remains of half-dozen boiled chickens, - some ambiguous substance that might once have been butter, and a - singularly unappetising smell. He closed the lid again carefully. - </p> - <p> - He gave the kitten some milk in a dirty plate and sat watching its busy - little tongue for a time. Then he was moved to make an inventory of the - provisions. There were six bottles of milk unopened and one opened, sixty - bottles of mineral water and a large stock of syrups, about two thousand - cigarettes and upwards of a hundred cigars, nine oranges, two unopened - tins of corned beef and one opened, and five large tins California - peaches. He jotted it down on a piece of paper. “'Ain't much solid food,” - he said. “Still—A fortnight, say! - </p> - <p> - “Anything might happen in a fortnight.” - </p> - <p> - He gave the kitten a small second helping and a scrap of beef and then - went down with the little creature running after him, tail erect and in - high spirits, to look at the remains of the Hohenzollern. - </p> - <p> - It had shifted in the night and seemed on the whole more firmly grounded - on Green Island than before. From it his eye went to the shattered bridge - and then across to the still desolation of Niagara city. Nothing moved - over there but a number of crows. They were busy with the engineer he had - seen cut down on the previous day. He saw no dogs, but he heard one - howling. - </p> - <p> - “We got to get out of this some'ow, Kitty,” he said. “That milk won't last - forever—not at the rate you lap it.” - </p> - <p> - He regarded the sluice-like flood before him. - </p> - <p> - “Plenty of water,” he said. “Won't be drink we shall want.” - </p> - <p> - He decided to make a careful exploration of the island. Presently he came - to a locked gate labelled “Biddle Stairs,” and clambered over to discover - a steep old wooden staircase leading down the face of the cliff amidst a - vast and increasing uproar of waters. He left the kitten above and - descended these, and discovered with a thrill of hope a path leading among - the rocks at the foot of the roaring downrush of the Centre Fall. Perhaps - this was a sort of way! - </p> - <p> - It led him only to the choking and deafening experience of the Cave of the - Winds, and after he had spent a quarter of an hour in a partially - stupefied condition flattened between solid rock and nearly as solid - waterfall, he decided that this was after all no practicable route to - Canada and retraced his steps. As he reascended the Biddle Stairs, he - heard what he decided at last must be a sort of echo, a sound of some one - walking about on the gravel paths above. When he got to the top, the place - was as solitary as before. - </p> - <p> - Thence he made his way, with the kitten skirmishing along beside him in - the grass, to a staircase that led to a lump of projecting rock that - enfiladed the huge green majesty of the Horseshoe Fall. He stood there for - some time in silence. - </p> - <p> - “You wouldn't think,” he said at last, “there was so much water.... This - roarin' and splashin', it gets on one's nerves at last.... Sounds like - people talking.... Sounds like people going about.... Sounds like anything - you fancy.” - </p> - <p> - He retired up the staircase again. “I s'pose I shall keep on goin' round - this blessed island,” he said drearily. “Round and round and round.” - </p> - <p> - He found himself presently beside the less damaged Asiatic aeroplane - again. He stared at it and the kitten smelt it. “Broke!” he said. - </p> - <p> - He looked up with a convulsive start. - </p> - <p> - Advancing slowly towards him out from among the trees were two tall gaunt - figures. They were blackened and tattered and bandaged; the hind-most one - limped and had his head swathed in white, but the foremost one still - carried himself as a Prince should do, for all that his left arm was in a - sling and one side of his face scalded a livid crimson. He was the Prince - Karl Albert, the War Lord, the “German Alexander,” and the man behind him - was the bird-faced man whose cabin had once been taken from him and given - to Bert. - </p> - <p> - 6 - </p> - <p> - With that apparition began a new phase of Goat Island in Bert's - experience. He ceased to be a solitary representative of humanity in a - vast and violent and incomprehensible universe, and became once more a - social creature, a man in a world of other men. For an instant these two - were terrible, then they seemed sweet and desirable as brothers. They too - were in this scrape with him, marooned and puzzled. He wanted extremely to - hear exactly what had happened to them. What mattered it if one was a - Prince and both were foreign soldiers, if neither perhaps had adequate - English? His native Cockney freedom flowed too generously for him to think - of that, and surely the Asiatic fleets had purged all such trivial - differences. “Ul-LO!” he said; “'ow did you get 'ere?” - </p> - <p> - “It is the Englishman who brought us the Butteridge machine,” said the - bird-faced officer in German, and then in a tone of horror, as Bert - advanced, “Salute!” and again louder, “SALUTE!” - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” said Bert, and stopped with a second comment under his breath. He - stared and saluted awkwardly and became at once a masked defensive thing - with whom co-operation was impossible. - </p> - <p> - For a time these two perfected modern aristocrats stood regarding the - difficult problem of the Anglo-Saxon citizen, that ambiguous citizen who, - obeying some mysterious law in his blood, would neither drill nor be a - democrat. Bert was by no means a beautiful object, but in some - inexplicable way he looked resistant. He wore his cheap suit of serge, now - showing many signs of wear, and its loose fit made him seem sturdier than - he was; above his disengaging face was a white German cap that was - altogether too big for him, and his trousers were crumpled up his legs and - their ends tucked into the rubber highlows of a deceased German aeronaut. - He looked an inferior, though by no means an easy inferior, and - instinctively they hated him. - </p> - <p> - The Prince pointed to the flying-machine and said something in broken - English that Bert took for German and failed to understand. He intimated - as much. - </p> - <p> - “Dummer Kerl!” said the bird-faced officer from among his bandages. - </p> - <p> - The Prince pointed again with his undamaged hand. “You verstehen dis - drachenflieger?” - </p> - <p> - Bert began to comprehend the situation. He regarded the Asiatic machine. - The habits of Bun Hill returned to him. “It's a foreign make,” he said - ambiguously. - </p> - <p> - The two Germans consulted. “You are an expert?” said the Prince. - </p> - <p> - “We reckon to repair,” said Bert, in the exact manner of Grubb. - </p> - <p> - The Prince sought in his vocabulary. “Is dat,” he said, “goot to fly?” - </p> - <p> - Bert reflected and scratched his cheek slowly. “I got to look at it,” he - replied.... “It's 'ad rough usage!” - </p> - <p> - He made a sound with his teeth he had also acquired from Grubb, put his - hands in his trouser pockets, and strolled back to the machine. Typically - Grubb chewed something, but Bert could chew only imaginatively. “Three - days' work in this,” he said, teething. For the first time it dawned on - him that there were possibilities in this machine. It was evident that the - wing that lay on the ground was badly damaged. The three stays that held - it rigid had snapped across a ridge of rock and there was also a strong - possibility of the engine being badly damaged. The wing hook on that side - was also askew, but probably that would not affect the flight. Beyond that - there probably wasn't much the matter. Bert scratched his cheek again and - contemplated the broad sunlit waste of the Upper Rapids. “We might make a - job of this.... You leave it to me.” - </p> - <p> - He surveyed it intently again, and the Prince and his officer watched him. - In Bun Hill Bert and Grubb had developed to a very high pitch among the - hiring stock a method of repair by substituting; they substituted bits of - other machines. A machine that was too utterly and obviously done for even - to proffer for hire, had nevertheless still capital value. It became a - sort of quarry for nuts and screws and wheels, bars and spokes, - chain-links and the like; a mine of ill-fitting “parts” to replace the - defects of machines still current. And back among the trees was a second - Asiatic aeroplane.... - </p> - <p> - The kitten caressed Bert's airship boots unheeded. - </p> - <p> - “Mend dat drachenflieger,” said the Prince. - </p> - <p> - “If I do mend it,” said Bert, struck by a new thought, “none of us ain't - to be trusted to fly it.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>I</i> vill fly it,” said the Prince. - </p> - <p> - “Very likely break your neck,” said Bert, after a pause. - </p> - <p> - The Prince did not understand him and disregarded what he said. He pointed - his gloved finger to the machine and turned to the bird-faced officer with - some remark in German. The officer answered and the Prince responded with - a sweeping gesture towards the sky. Then he spoke—it seemed - eloquently. Bert watched him and guessed his meaning. “Much more likely to - break your neck,” he said. “'Owever. 'Ere goes.” - </p> - <p> - He began to pry about the saddle and engine of the drachenflieger in - search for tools. Also he wanted some black oily stuff for his hands and - face. For the first rule in the art of repairing, as it was known to the - firm of Grubb and Smallways, was to get your hands and face thoroughly and - conclusively blackened. Also he took off his jacket and waistcoat and put - his cap carefully to the back of his head in order to facilitate - scratching. - </p> - <p> - The Prince and the officer seemed disposed to watch him, but he succeeded - in making it clear to them that this would inconvenience him and that he - had to “puzzle out a bit” before he could get to work. They thought him - over, but his shop experience had given him something of the authoritative - way of the expert with common men. And at last they went away. Thereupon - he went straight to the second aeroplane, got the aeronaut's gun and - ammunition and hid them in a clump of nettles close at hand. “That's all - right,” said Bert, and then proceeded to a careful inspection of the - debris of the wings in the trees. Then he went back to the first aeroplane - to compare the two. The Bun Hill method was quite possibly practicable if - there was nothing hopeless or incomprehensible in the engine. - </p> - <p> - The Germans returned presently to find him already generously smutty and - touching and testing knobs and screws and levers with an expression of - profound sagacity. When the bird-faced officer addressed a remark to him, - he waved him aside with, “Nong comprong. Shut it! It's no good.” - </p> - <p> - Then he had an idea. “Dead chap back there wants burying,” he said, - jerking a thumb over his shoulder. - </p> - <p> - 7 - </p> - <p> - With the appearance of these two men Bert's whole universe had changed - again. A curtain fell before the immense and terrible desolation that had - overwhelmed him. He was in a world of three people, a minute human world - that nevertheless filled his brain with eager speculations and schemes and - cunning ideas. What were they thinking of? What did they think of him? - What did they mean to do? A hundred busy threads interlaced in his mind as - he pottered studiously over the Asiatic aeroplane. New ideas came up like - bubbles in soda water. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” he said suddenly. He had just appreciated as a special aspect of - this irrational injustice of fate that these two men were alive and that - Kurt was dead. All the crew of the Hohenzollern were shot or burnt or - smashed or drowned, and these two lurking in the padded forward cabin had - escaped. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose 'e thinks it's 'is bloomin' Star,” he muttered, and found - himself uncontrollably exasperated. - </p> - <p> - He stood up, facing round to the two men. They were standing side by side - regarding him. - </p> - <p> - “'It's no good,” he said, “starin' at me. You only put me out.” And then - seeing they did not understand, he advanced towards them, wrench in hand. - It occurred to him as he did so that the Prince was really a very big and - powerful and serene-looking person. But he said, nevertheless, pointing - through the trees, “dead man!” - </p> - <p> - The bird-faced man intervened with a reply in German. - </p> - <p> - “Dead man!” said Bert to him. “There.” - </p> - <p> - He had great difficulty in inducing them to inspect the dead Chinaman, and - at last led them to him. Then they made it evident that they proposed that - he, as a common person below the rank of officer should have the sole and - undivided privilege of disposing of the body by dragging it to the water's - edge. There was some heated gesticulation, and at last the bird-faced - officer abased himself to help. Together they dragged the limp and now - swollen Asiatic through the trees, and after a rest or so—for he - trailed very heavily—dumped him into the westward rapid. Bert - returned to his expert investigation of the flying-machine at last with - aching arms and in a state of gloomy rebellion. “Brasted cheek!” he said. - “One'd think I was one of 'is beastly German slaves! - </p> - <p> - “Prancing beggar!” - </p> - <p> - And then he fell speculating what would happen when the flying-machine, - was repaired—if it could be repaired. - </p> - <p> - The two Germans went away again, and after some reflection Bert removed - several nuts, resumed his jacket and vest, pocketed those nuts and his - tools and hid the set of tools from the second aeroplane in the fork of a - tree. “Right O,” he said, as he jumped down after the last of these - precautions. The Prince and his companion reappeared as he returned to the - machine by the water's edge. The Prince surveyed his progress for a time, - and then went towards the Parting of the Waters and stood with folded arms - gazing upstream in profound thought. The bird-faced officer came up to - Bert, heavy with a sentence in English. - </p> - <p> - “Go,” he said with a helping gesture, “und eat.” - </p> - <p> - When Bert got to the refreshment shed, he found all the food had vanished - except one measured ration of corned beef and three biscuits. - </p> - <p> - He regarded this with open eyes and mouth. - </p> - <p> - The kitten appeared from under the vendor's seat with an ingratiating - purr. “Of course!” said Bert. “Why! where's your milk?” - </p> - <p> - He accumulated wrath for a moment or so, then seized the plate in one - hand, and the biscuits in another, and went in search of the Prince, - breathing vile words anent “grub” and his intimate interior. He approached - without saluting. - </p> - <p> - “'Ere!” he said fiercely. “Whad the devil's this?” - </p> - <p> - An entirely unsatisfactory altercation followed. Bert expounded the Bun - Hill theory of the relations of grub to efficiency in English, the - bird-faced man replied with points about nations and discipline in German. - The Prince, having made an estimate of Bert's quality and physique, - suddenly hectored. He gripped Bert by the shoulder and shook him, making - his pockets rattle, shouted something to him, and flung him struggling - back. He hit him as though he was a German private. Bert went back, white - and scared, but resolved by all his Cockney standards upon one thing. He - was bound in honour to “go for” the Prince. “Gaw!” he gasped, buttoning - his jacket. - </p> - <p> - “Now,” cried the Prince, “Vil you go?” and then catching the heroic gleam - in Bert's eye, drew his sword. - </p> - <p> - The bird-faced officer intervened, saying something in German and pointing - skyward. - </p> - <p> - Far away in the southwest appeared a Japanese airship coming fast toward - them. Their conflict ended at that. The Prince was first to grasp the - situation and lead the retreat. All three scuttled like rabbits for the - trees, and ran to and for cover until they found a hollow in which the - grass grew rank. There they all squatted within six yards of one another. - They sat in this place for a long time, up to their necks in the grass and - watching through the branches for the airship. Bert had dropped some of - his corned beef, but he found the biscuits in his hand and ate them - quietly. The monster came nearly overhead and then went away to Niagara - and dropped beyond the power-works. When it was near, they all kept - silence, and then presently they fell into an argument that was robbed - perhaps of immediate explosive effect only by their failure to understand - one another. - </p> - <p> - It was Bert began the talking and he talked on regardless of what they - understood or failed to understand. But his voice must have conveyed his - cantankerous intentions. - </p> - <p> - “You want that machine done,” he said first, “you better keep your 'ands - off me!” - </p> - <p> - They disregarded that and he repeated it. - </p> - <p> - Then he expanded his idea and the spirit of speech took hold of him. “You - think you got 'old of a chap you can kick and 'it like you do your private - soldiers—you're jolly well mistaken. See? I've 'ad about enough of - you and your antics. I been thinking you over, you and your war and your - Empire and all the rot of it. Rot it is! It's you Germans made all the - trouble in Europe first and last. And all for nothin'. Jest silly - prancing! Jest because you've got the uniforms and flags! 'Ere I was—I - didn't want to 'ave anything to do with you. I jest didn't care a 'eng at - all about you. Then you get 'old of me—steal me practically—and - 'ere I am, thousands of miles away from 'ome and everything, and all your - silly fleet smashed up to rags. And you want to go on prancin' NOW! Not if - 'I know it! - </p> - <p> - “Look at the mischief you done! Look at the way you smashed up New York—the - people you killed, the stuff you wasted. Can't you learn?” - </p> - <p> - “Dummer Kerl!” said the bird-faced man suddenly in a tone of concentrated - malignancy, glaring under his bandages. “Esel!” - </p> - <p> - “That's German for silly ass!—I know. But who's the silly ass—'im - or me? When I was a kid, I used to read penny dreadfuls about 'avin - adventures and bein' a great c'mander and all that rot. I stowed it. But - what's 'e got in 'is head? Rot about Napoleon, rot about Alexander, rot - about 'is blessed family and 'im and Gord and David and all that. Any one - who wasn't a dressed-up silly fool of a Prince could 'ave told all this - was goin' to 'appen. There was us in Europe all at sixes and sevens with - our silly flags and our silly newspapers raggin' us up against each other - and keepin' us apart, and there was China, solid as a cheese, with - millions and millions of men only wantin' a bit of science and a bit of - enterprise to be as good as all of us. You thought they couldn't get at - you. And then they got flying-machines. And bif!—'ere we are. Why, - when they didn't go on making guns and armies in China, we went and poked - 'em up until they did. They 'AD to give us this lickin' they've give us. - We wouldn't be happy until they did, and as I say, 'ere we are!” - </p> - <p> - The bird-faced officer shouted to him to be quiet, and then began a - conversation with the Prince. - </p> - <p> - “British citizen,” said Bert. “You ain't obliged to listen, but I ain't - obliged to shut up.” - </p> - <p> - And for some time he continued his dissertation upon Imperialism, - militarism, and international politics. But their talking put him out, and - for a time he was certainly merely repeating abusive terms, “prancin' - nincompoops” and the like, old terms and new. Then suddenly he remembered - his essential grievance. “'Owever, look 'ere—'ere!—the thing I - started this talk about is where's that food there was in that shed? - That's what I want to know. Where you put it?” - </p> - <p> - He paused. They went on talking in German. He repeated his question. They - disregarded him. He asked a third time in a manner insupportably - aggressive. - </p> - <p> - There fell a tense silence. For some seconds the three regarded one - another. The Prince eyed Bert steadfastly, and Bert quailed under his eye. - Slowly the Prince rose to his feet and the bird-faced officer jerked up - beside him. Bert remained squatting. - </p> - <p> - “Be quaiat,” said the Prince. - </p> - <p> - Bert perceived this was no moment for eloquence. - </p> - <p> - The two Germans regarded him as he crouched there. Death for a moment - seemed near. - </p> - <p> - Then the Prince turned away and the two of them went towards the - flying-machine. - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” whispered Bert, and then uttered under his breath one single word - of abuse. He sat crouched together for perhaps three minutes, then he - sprang to his feet and went off towards the Chinese aeronaut's gun hidden - among the weeds. - </p> - <p> - 8 - </p> - <p> - There was no pretence after that moment that Bert was under the orders of - the Prince or that he was going on with the repairing of the - flying-machine. The two Germans took possession of that and set to work - upon it. Bert, with his new weapon went off to the neighbourhood of - Terrapin Rock, and there sat down to examine it. It was a short rifle with - a big cartridge, and a nearly full magazine. He took out the cartridges - carefully and then tried the trigger and fittings until he felt sure he - had the use of it. He reloaded carefully. Then he remembered he was hungry - and went off, gun under his arm, to hunt in and about the refreshment - shed. He had the sense to perceive that he must not show himself with the - gun to the Prince and his companion. So long as they thought him unarmed - they would leave him alone, but there was no knowing what the Napoleonic - person might do if he saw Bert's weapon. Also he did not go near them - because he knew that within himself boiled a reservoir of rage and fear - that he wanted to shoot these two men. He wanted to shoot them, and he - thought that to shoot them would be a quite horrible thing to do. The two - sides of his inconsistent civilisation warred within him. - </p> - <p> - Near the shed the kitten turned up again, obviously keen for milk. This - greatly enhanced his own angry sense of hunger. He began to talk as he - hunted about, and presently stood still, shouting insults. He talked of - war and pride and Imperialism. “Any other Prince but you would have died - with his men and his ship!” he cried. - </p> - <p> - The two Germans at the machine heard his voice going ever and again amidst - the clamour of the waters. Their eyes met and they smiled slightly. - </p> - <p> - He was disposed for a time to sit in the refreshment shed waiting for - them, but then it occurred to him that so he might get them both at close - quarters. He strolled off presently to the point of Luna Island to think - the situation out. - </p> - <p> - It had seemed a comparatively simple one at first, but as he turned it - over in his mind its possibilities increased and multiplied. Both these - men had swords,—had either a revolver? - </p> - <p> - Also, if he shot them both, he might never find the food! - </p> - <p> - So far he had been going about with this gun under his arm, and a sense of - lordly security in his mind, but what if they saw the gun and decided to - ambush him? Goat Island is nearly all cover, trees, rocks, thickets, and - irregularities. - </p> - <p> - Why not go and murder them both now? - </p> - <p> - “I carn't,” said Bert, dismissing that. “I got to be worked up.” - </p> - <p> - But it was a mistake to get right away from them. That suddenly became - clear. He ought to keep them under observation, ought to “scout” them. - Then he would be able to see what they were doing, whether either of them - had a revolver, where they had hidden the food. He would be better able to - determine what they meant to do to him. If he didn't “scout” them, - presently they would begin to “scout” him. This seemed so eminently - reasonable that he acted upon it forthwith. He thought over his costume - and threw his collar and the tell-tale aeronaut's white cap into the water - far below. He turned his coat collar up to hide any gleam of his dirty - shirt. The tools and nuts in his pockets were disposed to clank, but he - rearranged them and wrapped some letters and his pocket-handkerchief about - them. He started off circumspectly and noiselessly, listening and peering - at every step. As he drew near his antagonists, much grunting and creaking - served to locate them. He discovered them engaged in what looked like a - wrestling match with the Asiatic flying-machine. Their coats were off, - their swords laid aside, they were working magnificently. Apparently they - were turning it round and were having a good deal of difficulty with the - long tail among the trees. He dropped flat at the sight of them and - wriggled into a little hollow, and so lay watching their exertions. Ever - and again, to pass the time, he would cover one or other of them with his - gun. - </p> - <p> - He found them quite interesting to watch, so interesting that at times he - came near shouting to advise them. He perceived that when they had the - machine turned round, they would then be in immediate want of the nuts and - tools he carried. Then they would come after him. They would certainly - conclude he had them or had hidden them. Should he hide his gun and do a - deal for food with these tools? He felt he would not be able to part with - the gun again now he had once felt its reassuring company. The kitten - turned up again and made a great fuss with him and licked and bit his ear. - </p> - <p> - The sun clambered to midday, and once that morning he saw, though the - Germans did not, an Asiatic airship very far to the south, going swiftly - eastward. - </p> - <p> - At last the flying-machine was turned and stood poised on its wheel, with - its hooks pointing up the Rapids. The two officers wiped their faces, - resumed jackets and swords, spoke and bore themselves like men who - congratulated themselves on a good laborious morning. Then they went off - briskly towards the refreshment shed, the Prince leading. Bert became - active in pursuit; but he found it impossible to stalk them quickly enough - and silently enough to discover the hiding-place of the food. He found - them, when he came into sight of them again, seated with their backs - against the shed, plates on knee, and a tin of corned beef and a plateful - of biscuits between them. They seemed in fairly good spirits, and once the - Prince laughed. At this vision of eating Bert's plans gave way. Fierce - hunger carried him. He appeared before them suddenly at a distance of - perhaps twenty yards, gun in hand. - </p> - <p> - “'Ands up!” he said in a hard, ferocious voice. - </p> - <p> - The Prince hesitated, and then up went two pairs of hands. The gun had - surprised them both completely. - </p> - <p> - “Stand up,” said Bert.... “Drop that fork!” - </p> - <p> - They obeyed again. - </p> - <p> - “What nex'?” said Bert to himself. “'Orf stage, I suppose. That way,” he - said. “Go!” - </p> - <p> - The Prince obeyed with remarkable alacrity. When he reached the head of - the clearing, he said something quickly to the bird-faced man and they - both, with an entire lack of dignity, RAN! - </p> - <p> - Bert was struck with an exasperating afterthought. - </p> - <p> - “Gord!” he cried with infinite vexation. “Why! I ought to 'ave took their - swords! 'Ere!” - </p> - <p> - But the Germans were already out of sight, and no doubt taking cover among - the trees. Bert fell back upon imprecations, then he went up to the shed, - cursorily examined the possibility of a flank attack, put his gun handy, - and set to work, with a convulsive listening pause before each mouthful on - the Prince's plate of corned beef. He had finished that up and handed its - gleanings to the kitten and he was falling-to on the second plateful, when - the plate broke in his hand! He stared, with the fact slowly creeping upon - him that an instant before he had heard a crack among the thickets. Then - he sprang to his feet, snatched up his gun in one hand and the tin of - corned beef in the other, and fled round the shed to the other side of the - clearing. As he did so came a second crack from the thickets, and - something went phwit! by his ear. - </p> - <p> - He didn't stop running until he was in what seemed to him a strongly - defensible position near Luna Island. Then he took cover, panting, and - crouched expectant. - </p> - <p> - “They got a revolver after all!” he panted.... - </p> - <p> - “Wonder if they got two? If they 'ave—Gord! I'm done! - </p> - <p> - “Where's the kitten? Finishin' up that corned beef, I suppose. Little - beggar!” - </p> - <p> - 9 - </p> - <p> - So it was that war began upon Goat Island. It lasted a day and a night, - the longest day and the longest night in Bert's life. He had to lie close - and listen and watch. Also he had to scheme what he should do. It was - clear now that he had to kill these two men if he could, and that if they - could, they would kill him. The prize was first food and then the - flying-machine and the doubtful privilege of trying' to ride it. If one - failed, one would certainly be killed; if one succeeded, one would get - away somewhere over there. For a time Bert tried to imagine what it was - like over there. His mind ran over possibilities, deserts, angry - Americans, Japanese, Chinese—perhaps Red Indians! (Were there still - Red Indians?) - </p> - <p> - “Got to take what comes,” said Bert. “No way out of it that I can see!” - </p> - <p> - Was that voices? He realised that his attention was wandering. For a time - all his senses were very alert. The uproar of the Falls was very - confusing, and it mixed in all sorts of sounds, like feet walking, like - voices talking, like shouts and cries. - </p> - <p> - “Silly great catarac',” said Bert. “There ain't no sense in it, fallin' - and fallin'.” - </p> - <p> - Never mind that, now! What were the Germans doing? - </p> - <p> - Would they go back to the flying-machine? They couldn't do anything with - it, because he had those nuts and screws and the wrench and other tools. - But suppose they found the second set of tools he had hidden in a tree! He - had hidden the things well, of course, but they MIGHT find them. One - wasn't sure, of course—one wasn't sure. He tried to remember just - exactly how he had hidden those tools. He tried to persuade himself they - were certainly and surely hidden, but his memory began to play antics. Had - he really left the handle of the wrench sticking out, shining out at the - fork of the branch? - </p> - <p> - Ssh! What was that? Some one stirring in those bushes? Up went an - expectant muzzle. No! Where was the kitten? No! It was just imagination, - not even the kitten. - </p> - <p> - The Germans would certainly miss and hunt about for the tools and nuts and - screws he carried in his pockets; that was clear. Then they would decide - he had them and come for him. He had only to remain still under cover, - therefore, and he would get them. Was there any flaw in that? Would they - take off more removable parts of the flying-machine and then lie up for - him? No, they wouldn't do that, because they were two to one; they would - have no apprehension of his getting off in the flying-machine, and no - sound reason for supposing he would approach it, and so they would do - nothing to damage or disable it. That he decided was clear. But suppose - they lay up for him by the food. Well, that they wouldn't do, because they - would know he had this corned beef; there was enough in this can to last, - with moderation, several days. Of course they might try to tire him out - instead of attacking him— - </p> - <p> - He roused himself with a start. He had just grasped the real weakness of - his position. He might go to sleep! - </p> - <p> - It needed but ten minutes under the suggestion of that idea, before he - realised that he was going to sleep! - </p> - <p> - He rubbed his eyes and handled his gun. He had never before realised the - intensely soporific effect of the American sun, of the American air, the - drowsy, sleep-compelling uproar of Niagara. Hitherto these things had on - the whole seemed stimulating.... - </p> - <p> - If he had not eaten so much and eaten it so fast, he would not be so - heavy. Are vegetarians always bright?... - </p> - <p> - He roused himself with a jerk again. - </p> - <p> - If he didn't do something, he would fall asleep, and if he fell asleep, it - was ten to one they would find him snoring, and finish him forthwith. If - he sat motionless and noiseless, he would inevitably sleep. It was better, - he told himself, to take even the risks of attacking than that. This sleep - trouble, he felt, was going to beat him, must beat him in the end. They - were all right; one could sleep and the other could watch. That, come to - think of it, was what they would always do; one would do anything they - wanted done, the other would lie under cover near at hand, ready to shoot. - They might even trap him like that. One might act as a decoy. - </p> - <p> - That set him thinking of decoys. What a fool he had been to throw his cap - away. It would have been invaluable on a stick—especially at night. - </p> - <p> - He found himself wishing for a drink. He settled that for a time by - putting a pebble in his mouth. And then the sleep craving returned. - </p> - <p> - It became clear to him he must attack. Like many great generals before - him, he found his baggage, that is to say his tin of corned beef, a - serious impediment to mobility. At last he decided to put the beef loose - in his pocket and abandon the tin. It was not perhaps an ideal - arrangement, but one must make sacrifices when one is campaigning. He - crawled perhaps ten yards, and then for a time the possibilities of the - situation paralysed him. - </p> - <p> - The afternoon was still. The roar of the cataract simply threw up that - immense stillness in relief. He was doing his best to contrive the death - of two better men than himself. Also they were doing their best to - contrive his. What, behind this silence, were they doing. - </p> - <p> - Suppose he came upon them suddenly and fired, and missed? - </p> - <p> - 10 - </p> - <p> - He crawled, and halted listening, and crawled again until nightfall, and - no doubt the German Alexander and his lieutenant did the same. A large - scale map of Goat Island marked with red and blue lines to show these - strategic movements would no doubt have displayed much interlacing, but as - a matter of fact neither side saw anything of the other throughout that - age-long day of tedious alertness. Bert never knew how near he got to them - nor how far he kept from them. Night found him no longer sleepy, but - athirst, and near the American Fall. He was inspired by the idea that his - antagonists might be in the wreckage of the Hohenzollern cabins that was - jammed against Green Island. He became enterprising, broke from any - attempt to conceal himself, and went across the little bridge at the - double. He found nobody. It was his first visit to these huge fragments of - airships, and for a time he explored them curiously in the dim light. He - discovered the forward cabin was nearly intact, with its door slanting - downward and a corner under water. He crept in, drank, and then was struck - by the brilliant idea of shutting the door and sleeping on it. - </p> - <p> - But now he could not sleep at all. - </p> - <p> - He nodded towards morning and woke up to find it fully day. He breakfasted - on corned beef and water, and sat for a long time appreciative of the - security of his position. At last he became enterprising and bold. He - would, he decided, settle this business forthwith, one way or the other. - He was tired of all this crawling. He set out in the morning sunshine, gun - in hand, scarcely troubling to walk softly. He went round the refreshment - shed without finding any one, and then through the trees towards the - flying-machine. He came upon the bird-faced man sitting on the ground with - his back against a tree, bent up over his folded arms, sleeping, his - bandage very much over one eye. - </p> - <p> - Bert stopped abruptly and stood perhaps fifteen yards away, gun in hand - ready. Where was the Prince? Then, sticking out at the side of the tree - beyond, he saw a shoulder. Bert took five deliberate paces to the left. - The great man became visible, leaning up against the trunk, pistol in one - hand and sword in the other, and yawning—yawning. You can't shoot a - yawning man Bert found. He advanced upon his antagonist with his gun - levelled, some foolish fancy of “hands up” in his mind. The Prince became - aware of him, the yawning mouth shut like a trap and he stood stiffly up. - Bert stopped, silent. For a moment the two regarded one another. - </p> - <p> - Had the Prince been a wise man he would, I suppose, have dodged behind the - tree. Instead, he gave vent to a shout, and raised pistol and sword. At - that, like an automaton, Bert pulled his trigger. - </p> - <p> - It was his first experience of an oxygen-containing bullet. A great flame - spurted from the middle of the Prince, a blinding flare, and there came a - thud like the firing of a gun. Something hot and wet struck Bert's face. - Then through a whirl of blinding smoke and steam he saw limbs and a - collapsing, burst body fling themselves to earth. - </p> - <p> - Bert was so astonished that he stood agape, and the bird-faced officer - might have cut him to the earth without a struggle. But instead the - bird-faced officer was running away through the undergrowth, dodging as he - went. Bert roused himself to a brief ineffectual pursuit, but he had no - stomach for further killing. He returned to the mangled, scattered thing - that had so recently been the great Prince Karl Albert. He surveyed the - scorched and splashed vegetation about it. He made some speculative - identifications. He advanced gingerly and picked up the hot revolver, to - find all its chambers strained and burst. He became aware of a cheerful - and friendly presence. He was greatly shocked that one so young should see - so frightful a scene. - </p> - <p> - “'Ere, Kitty,” he said, “this ain't no place for you.” - </p> - <p> - He made three strides across the devastated area, captured the kitten - neatly, and went his way towards the shed, with her purring loudly on his - shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “YOU don't seem to mind,” he said. - </p> - <p> - For a time he fussed about the shed, and at last discovered the rest of - the provisions hidden in the roof. “Seems 'ard,” he said, as he - administered a saucerful of milk, “when you get three men in a 'ole like - this, they can't work together. But 'im and 'is princing was jest a bit - too thick!” - </p> - <p> - “Gaw!” he reflected, sitting on the counter and eating, “what a thing life - is! 'Ere am I; I seen 'is picture, 'eard 'is name since I was a kid in - frocks. Prince Karl Albert! And if any one 'ad tole me I was going to blow - 'im to smithereens—there! I shouldn't 'ave believed it, Kitty. - </p> - <p> - “That chap at Margit ought to 'ave tole me about it. All 'e tole me was - that I got a weak chess. - </p> - <p> - “That other chap, 'e ain't going to do much. Wonder what I ought to do - about 'im?” - </p> - <p> - He surveyed the trees with a keen blue eye and fingered the gun on his - knee. “I don't like this killing, Kitty,” he said. “It's like Kurt said - about being blooded. Seems to me you got to be blooded young.... If that - Prince 'ad come up to me and said, 'Shake 'ands!' I'd 'ave shook 'ands.... - Now 'ere's that other chap, dodging about! 'E's got 'is 'ead 'urt already, - and there's something wrong with his leg. And burns. Golly! it isn't three - weeks ago I first set eyes on 'im, and then 'e was smart and set up—'ands - full of 'air-brushes and things, and swearin' at me. A regular gentleman! - Now 'e's 'arfway to a wild man. What am I to do with 'im? What the 'ell am - I to do with 'im? I can't leave 'im 'ave that flying-machine; that's a bit - too good, and if I don't kill 'im, 'e'll jest 'ang about this island and - starve.... - </p> - <p> - “'E's got a sword, of course”.... - </p> - <p> - He resumed his philosophising after he had lit a cigarette. - </p> - <p> - “War's a silly gaim, Kitty. It's a silly gaim! We common people—we - were fools. We thought those big people knew what they were up to—and - they didn't. Look at that chap! 'E 'ad all Germany be'ind 'im, and what - 'as 'e made of it? Smeshin' and blunderin' and destroyin', and there 'e - 'is! Jest a mess of blood and boots and things! Jest an 'orrid splash! - Prince Karl Albert! And all the men 'e led and the ships 'e 'ad, the - airships, and the dragon-fliers—all scattered like a paper-chase - between this 'ole and Germany. And fightin' going on and burnin' and - killin' that 'e started, war without end all over the world! - </p> - <p> - “I suppose I shall 'ave to kill that other chap. I suppose I must. But it - ain't at all the sort of job I fancy, Kitty!” - </p> - <p> - For a time he hunted about the island amidst the uproar of the waterfall, - looking for the wounded officer, and at last he started him out of some - bushes near the head of Biddle Stairs. But as he saw the bent and bandaged - figure in limping flight before him, he found his Cockney softness too - much for him again; he could neither shoot nor pursue. “I carn't,” he - said, “that's flat. I 'aven't the guts for it! 'E'll 'ave to go.” - </p> - <p> - He turned his steps towards the flying-machine.... - </p> - <p> - He never saw the bird-faced officer again, nor any further evidence of his - presence. Towards evening he grew fearful of ambushes and hunted - vigorously for an hour or so, but in vain. He slept in a good defensible - position at the extremity of the rocky point that runs out to the Canadian - Fall, and in the night he woke in panic terror and fired his gun. But it - was nothing. He slept no more that night. In the morning he became - curiously concerned for the vanished man, and hunted for him as one might - for an erring brother. - </p> - <p> - “If I knew some German,” he said, “I'd 'oller. It's jest not knowing - German does it. You can't explain'” - </p> - <p> - He discovered, later, traces of an attempt to cross the gap in the broken - bridge. A rope with a bolt attached had been flung across and had caught - in a fenestration of a projecting fragment of railing. The end of the rope - trailed in the seething water towards the fall. - </p> - <p> - But the bird-faced officer was already rubbing shoulders with certain - inert matter that had once been Lieutenant Kurt and the Chinese aeronaut - and a dead cow, and much other uncongenial company, in the huge circle of - the Whirlpool two and a quarter miles away. Never had that great gathering - place, that incessant, aimless, unprogressive hurry of waste and battered - things, been so crowded with strange and melancholy derelicts. Round they - went and round, and every day brought its new contributions, luckless - brutes, shattered fragments of boat and flying-machine, endless citizens - from the cities upon the shores of the great lakes above. Much came from - Cleveland. It all gathered here, and whirled about indefinitely, and over - it all gathered daily a greater abundance of birds. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER X. THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - Bert spent two more days upon Goat Island, and finished all his provisions - except the cigarettes and mineral water, before he brought himself to try - the Asiatic flying-machine. - </p> - <p> - Even at last he did not so much go off upon it as get carried off. It had - taken only an hour or so to substitute wing stays from the second - flying-machine and to replace the nuts he had himself removed. The engine - was in working order, and differed only very simply and obviously from - that of a contemporary motor-bicycle. The rest of the time was taken up by - a vast musing and delaying and hesitation. Chiefly he saw himself - splashing into the rapids and whirling down them to the Fall, clutching - and drowning, but also he had a vision of being hopelessly in the air, - going fast and unable to ground. His mind was too concentrated upon the - business of flying for him to think very much of what might happen to an - indefinite-spirited Cockney without credential who arrived on an Asiatic - flying-machine amidst the war-infuriated population beyond. - </p> - <p> - He still had a lingering solicitude for the bird-faced officer. He had a - haunting fancy he might be lying disabled or badly smashed in some way in - some nook or cranny of the Island; and it was only after a most exhaustive - search that he abandoned that distressing idea. “If I found 'im,” he - reasoned the while, “what could I do wiv 'im? You can't blow a chap's - brains out when 'e's down. And I don' see 'ow else I can 'elp 'im.” - </p> - <p> - Then the kitten bothered his highly developed sense of social - responsibility. “If I leave 'er, she'll starve.... Ought to catch mice for - 'erself.... ARE there mice?... Birds?... She's too young.... She's like - me; she's a bit too civilised.” - </p> - <p> - Finally he stuck her in his side pocket and she became greatly interested - in the memories of corned beef she found there. With her in his pocket, he - seated himself in the saddle of the flying-machine. Big, clumsy thing it - was—and not a bit like a bicycle. Still the working of it was fairly - plain. You set the engine going—SO; kicked yourself up until the - wheel was vertical, SO; engaged the gyroscope, SO, and then—then—you - just pulled up this lever. - </p> - <p> - Rather stiff it was, but suddenly it came over— - </p> - <p> - The big curved wings on either side flapped disconcertingly, flapped - again' click, clock, click, clock, clitter-clock! - </p> - <p> - Stop! The thing was heading for the water; its wheel was in the water. - Bert groaned from his heart and struggled to restore the lever to its - first position. Click, clock, clitter-clock, he was rising! The machine - was lifting its dripping wheel out of the eddies, and he was going up! - There was no stopping now, no good in stopping now. In another moment - Bert, clutching and convulsive and rigid, with staring eyes and a face - pale as death, was flapping up above the Rapids, jerking to every jerk of - the wings, and rising, rising. - </p> - <p> - There was no comparison in dignity and comfort between a flying-machine - and a balloon. Except in its moments of descent, the balloon was a vehicle - of faultless urbanity; this was a buck-jumping mule, a mule that jumped up - and never came down again. Click, clock, click, clock; with each beat of - the strangely shaped wings it jumped Bert upward and caught him neatly - again half a second later on the saddle. And while in ballooning there is - no wind, since the balloon is a part of the wind, flying is a wild - perpetual creation of and plunging into wind. It was a wind that above all - things sought to blind him, to force him to close his eyes. It occurred to - him presently to twist his knees and legs inward and grip with them, or - surely he would have been bumped into two clumsy halves. And he was going - up, a hundred yards high, two hundred, three hundred, over the streaming, - frothing wilderness of water below—up, up, up. That was all right, - but how presently would one go horizontally? He tried to think if these - things did go horizontally. No! They flapped up and then they soared down. - For a time he would keep on flapping up. Tears streamed from his eyes. He - wiped them with one temerariously disengaged hand. - </p> - <p> - Was it better to risk a fall over land or over water—such water? - </p> - <p> - He was flapping up above the Upper Rapids towards Buffalo. It was at any - rate a comfort that the Falls and the wild swirl of waters below them were - behind him. He was flying up straight. That he could see. How did one - turn? - </p> - <p> - He was presently almost cool, and his eyes got more used to the rush of - air, but he was getting very high, very high. He tilted his head forwards - and surveyed the country, blinking. He could see all over Buffalo, a place - with three great blackened scars of ruin, and hills and stretches beyond. - He wondered if he was half a mile high, or more. There were some people - among some houses near a railway station between Niagara and Buffalo, and - then more people. They went like ants busily in and out of the houses. He - saw two motor cars gliding along the road towards Niagara city. Then far - away in the south he saw a great Asiatic airship going eastward. “Oh, - Gord!” he said, and became earnest in his ineffectual attempts to alter - his direction. But that airship took no notice of him, and he continued to - ascend convulsively. The world got more and more extensive and maplike. - Click, clock, clitter-clock. Above him and very near to him now was a hazy - stratum of cloud. - </p> - <p> - He determined to disengage the wing clutch. He did so. The lever resisted - his strength for a time, then over it came, and instantly the tail of the - machine cocked up and the wings became rigidly spread. Instantly - everything was swift and smooth and silent. He was gliding rapidly down - the air against a wild gale of wind, his eyes three-quarters shut. - </p> - <p> - A little lever that had hitherto been obdurate now confessed itself - mobile. He turned it over gently to the right, and whiroo!—the left - wing had in some mysterious way given at its edge and he was sweeping - round and downward in an immense right-handed spiral. For some moments he - experienced all the helpless sensations of catastrophe. He restored the - lever to its middle position with some difficulty, and the wings were - equalised again. - </p> - <p> - He turned it to the left and had a sensation of being spun round - backwards. “Too much!” he gasped. - </p> - <p> - He discovered that he was rushing down at a headlong pace towards a - railway line and some factory buildings. They appeared to be tearing up to - him to devour him. He must have dropped all that height. For a moment he - had the ineffectual sensations of one whose bicycle bolts downhill. The - ground had almost taken him by surprise. “'Ere!” he cried; and then with a - violent effort of all his being he got the beating engine at work again - and set the wings flapping. He swooped down and up and resumed his - quivering and pulsating ascent of the air. - </p> - <p> - He went high again, until he had a wide view of the pleasant upland - country of western New York State, and then made a long coast down, and so - up again, and then a coast. Then as he came swooping a quarter of a mile - above a village he saw people running about, running away—evidently - in relation to his hawk-like passage. He got an idea that he had been shot - at. - </p> - <p> - “Up!” he said, and attacked that lever again. It came over with remarkable - docility, and suddenly the wings seemed to give way in the middle. But the - engine was still! It had stopped. He flung the lever back rather by - instinct than design. What to do? - </p> - <p> - Much happened in a few seconds, but also his mind was quick, he thought - very quickly. He couldn't get up again, he was gliding down the air; he - would have to hit something. - </p> - <p> - He was travelling at the rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour down, down. - </p> - <p> - That plantation of larches looked the softest thing—mossy almost! - </p> - <p> - Could he get it? He gave himself to the steering. Round to the right—left! - </p> - <p> - Swirroo! Crackle! He was gliding over the tops of the trees, ploughing - through them, tumbling into a cloud of green sharp leaves and black twigs. - There was a sudden snapping, and he fell off the saddle forward, a thud - and a crashing of branches. Some twigs hit him smartly in the face.... - </p> - <p> - He was between a tree-stem and the saddle, with his leg over the steering - lever and, so far as he could realise, not hurt. He tried to alter his - position and free his leg, and found himself slipping and dropping through - branches with everything giving way beneath him. He clutched and found - himself in the lower branches of a tree beneath the flying-machine. The - air was full of a pleasant resinous smell. He stared for a moment - motionless, and then very carefully clambered down branch by branch to the - soft needle-covered ground below. - </p> - <p> - “Good business,” he said, looking up at the bent and tilted kite-wings - above. - </p> - <p> - “I dropped soft!” - </p> - <p> - He rubbed his chin with his hand and meditated. “Blowed if I don't think - I'm a rather lucky fellow!” he said, surveying the pleasant - sun-bespattered ground under the trees. Then he became aware of a violent - tumult at his side. “Lord!” he said, “You must be 'arf smothered,” and - extracted the kitten from his pocket-handkerchief and pocket. She was - twisted and crumpled and extremely glad to see the light again. Her little - tongue peeped between her teeth. He put her down, and she ran a dozen - paces and shook herself and stretched and sat up and began to wash. - </p> - <p> - “Nex'?” he said, looking about him, and then with a gesture of vexation, - “Desh it! I ought to 'ave brought that gun!” - </p> - <p> - He had rested it against a tree when he had seated himself in the - flying-machine saddle. - </p> - <p> - He was puzzled for a time by the immense peacefulness in the quality of - the world, and then he perceived that the roar of the cataract was no - longer in his ears. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - He had no very clear idea of what sort of people he might come upon in - this country. It was, he knew, America. Americans he had always understood - were the citizens of a great and powerful nation, dry and humorous in - their manner, addicted to the use of the bowie-knife and revolver, and in - the habit of talking through the nose like Norfolkshire, and saying - “allow” and “reckon” and “calculate,” after the manner of the people who - live on the New Forest side of Hampshire. Also they were very rich, had - rocking-chairs, and put their feet at unusual altitudes, and they chewed - tobacco, gum, and other substances, with untiring industry. Commingled - with them were cowboys, Red Indians, and comic, respectful niggers. This - he had learnt from the fiction in his public library. Beyond that he had - learnt very little. He was not surprised therefore when he met armed men. - </p> - <p> - He decided to abandon the shattered flying-machine. He wandered through - the trees for some time, and then struck a road that seemed to his urban - English eyes to be remarkably wide but not properly “made.” Neither hedge - nor ditch nor curbed distinctive footpath separated it from the woods, and - it went in that long easy curve which distinguishes the tracks of an open - continent. Ahead he saw a man carrying a gun under his arm, a man in a - soft black hat, a blue blouse, and black trousers, and with a broad - round-fat face quite innocent of goatee. This person regarded him askance - and heard him speak with a start. - </p> - <p> - “Can you tell me whereabouts I am at all?” asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - The man regarded him, and more particularly his rubber boots, with - sinister suspicion. Then he replied in a strange outlandish tongue that - was, as a matter of fact, Czech. He ended suddenly at the sight of Bert's - blank face with “Don't spik English.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” said Bert. He reflected gravely for a moment, and then went his way. - </p> - <p> - “Thenks,” he, said as an afterthought. The man regarded his back for a - moment, was struck with an idea, began an abortive gesture, sighed, gave - it up, and went on also with a depressed countenance. - </p> - <p> - Presently Bert came to a big wooden house standing casually among the - trees. It looked a bleak, bare box of a house to him, no creeper grew on - it, no hedge nor wall nor fence parted it off from the woods about it. He - stopped before the steps that led up to the door, perhaps thirty yards - away. The place seemed deserted. He would have gone up to the door and - rapped, but suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side and regarded - him. It was a huge heavy-jawed dog of some unfamiliar breed, and it, wore - a spike-studded collar. It did not bark nor approach him, it just bristled - quietly and emitted a single sound like a short, deep cough. - </p> - <p> - Bert hesitated and went on. - </p> - <p> - He stopped thirty paces away and stood peering about him among the trees. - “If I 'aven't been and lef' that kitten,” he said. - </p> - <p> - Acute sorrow wrenched him for a time. The black dog came through the trees - to get a better look at him and coughed that well-bred cough again. Bert - resumed the road. - </p> - <p> - “She'll do all right,” he said.... “She'll catch things. - </p> - <p> - “She'll do all right,” he said presently, without conviction. But if it - had not been for the black dog, he would have gone back. - </p> - <p> - When he was out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went into the - woods on the other side of the way and emerged after an interval trimming - a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw an - attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his - pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, wooden like the last, each - with an ill-painted white verandah (that was his name for it) and all - standing in the same casual way upon the ground. Behind, through the - woods, he saw pig-stys and a rooting black sow leading a brisk, - adventurous family. A wild-looking woman with sloe-black eyes and - dishevelled black hair sat upon the steps of one of the houses nursing a - baby, but at the sight of Bert she got up and went inside, and he heard - her bolting the door. Then a boy appeared among the pig-stys, but he would - not understand Bert's hail. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose it is America!” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - The houses became more frequent down the road, and he passed two other - extremely wild and dirty-looking men without addressing them. One carried - a gun and the other a hatchet, and they scrutinised him and his cudgel - scornfully. Then he struck a cross-road with a mono-rail at its side, and - there was a notice board at the corner with “Wait here for the cars.” - “That's all right, any'ow,” said Bert. “Wonder 'ow long I should 'ave to - wait?” It occurred to him that in the present disturbed state of the - country the service might be interrupted, and as there seemed more houses - to the right than the left he turned to the right. He passed an old negro. - “'Ullo!” said Bert. “Goo' morning!” - </p> - <p> - “Good day, sah!” said the old negro, in a voice of almost incredible - richness. - </p> - <p> - “What's the name of this place?” asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Tanooda, sah!” said the negro. - </p> - <p> - “Thenks!” said Bert. - </p> - <p> - “Thank YOU, sah!” said the negro, overwhelmingly. - </p> - <p> - Bert came to houses of the same detached, unwalled, wooden type, but - adorned now with enamelled advertisements partly in English and partly in - Esperanto. Then he came to what he concluded was a grocer's shop. It was - the first house that professed the hospitality of an open door, and from - within came a strangely familiar sound. “Gaw!” he said searching in his - pockets. “Why! I 'aven't wanted money for free weeks! I wonder if I—Grubb - 'ad most of it. Ah!” He produced a handful of coins and regarded it; three - pennies, sixpence, and a shilling. “That's all right,” he said, forgetting - a very obvious consideration. - </p> - <p> - He approached the door, and as he did so a compactly built, grey-faced man - in shirt sleeves appeared in it and scrutinised him and his cudgel. - “Mornin',” said Bert. “Can I get anything to eat 'r drink in this shop?” - </p> - <p> - The man in the door replied, thank Heaven, in clear, good American. “This, - sir, is not A shop, it is A store.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” said Bert, and then, “Well, can I get anything to eat?” - </p> - <p> - “You can,” said the American in a tone of confident encouragement, and led - the way inside. - </p> - <p> - The shop seemed to him by his Bun Hill standards extremely roomy, well - lit, and unencumbered. There was a long counter to the left of him, with - drawers and miscellaneous commodities ranged behind it, a number of - chairs, several tables, and two spittoons to the right, various barrels, - cheeses, and bacon up the vista, and beyond, a large archway leading to - more space. A little group of men was assembled round one of the tables, - and a woman of perhaps five-and-thirty leant with her elbows on the - counter. All the men were armed with rifles, and the barrel of a gun - peeped above the counter. They were all listening idly, inattentively, to - a cheap, metallic-toned gramophone that occupied a table near at hand. - From its brazen throat came words that gave Bert a qualm of homesickness, - that brought back in his memory a sunlit beach, a group of children, - red-painted bicycles, Grubb, and an approaching balloon:— - </p> - <p> - “Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a ling-a-tang... What Price Hair-pins - Now?” - </p> - <p> - A heavy-necked man in a straw hat, who was chewing something, stopped the - machine with a touch, and they all turned their eyes on Bert. And all - their eyes were tired eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Can we give this gentleman anything to eat, mother, or can we not?” said - the proprietor. - </p> - <p> - “He kin have what he likes?” said the woman at the counter, without - moving, “right up from a cracker to a square meal.” She struggled with a - yawn, after the manner of one who has been up all night. - </p> - <p> - “I want a meal,” said Bert, “but I 'aven't very much money. I don' want to - give mor'n a shillin'.” - </p> - <p> - “Mor'n a WHAT?” said the proprietor, sharply. - </p> - <p> - “Mor'n a shillin',” said Bert, with a sudden disagreeable realisation - coming into his mind. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said the proprietor, startled for a moment from his courtly - bearing. “But what in hell is a shilling?” - </p> - <p> - “He means a quarter,” said a wise-looking, lank young man in riding - gaiters. - </p> - <p> - Bert, trying to conceal his consternation, produced a coin. “That's a - shilling,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “He calls A store A shop,” said the proprietor, “and he wants A meal for A - shilling. May I ask you, sir, what part of America you hail from?” - </p> - <p> - Bert replaced the shilling in his pocket as he spoke, “Niagara,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “And when did you leave Niagara?” - </p> - <p> - “'Bout an hour ago.” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said the proprietor, and turned with a puzzled smile to the - others. “Well!” - </p> - <p> - They asked various questions simultaneously. - </p> - <p> - Bert selected one or two for reply. “You see,” he said, “I been with the - German air-fleet. I got caught up by them, sort of by accident, and - brought over here.” - </p> - <p> - “From England?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—from England. Way of Germany. I was in a great battle with them - Asiatics, and I got lef' on a little island between the Falls.” - </p> - <p> - “Goat Island?” - </p> - <p> - “I don' know what it was called. But any'ow I found a flying-machine and - made a sort of fly with it and got here.” - </p> - <p> - Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on him. “Where's the - flying-machine?” they asked; “outside?” - </p> - <p> - “It's back in the woods here—'bout arf a mile away.” - </p> - <p> - “Is it good?” said a thick-lipped man with a scar. - </p> - <p> - “I come down rather a smash—.” - </p> - <p> - Everybody got up and stood about him and talked confusingly. They wanted - him to take them to the flying-machine at once. - </p> - <p> - “Look 'ere,” said Bert, “I'll show you—only I 'aven't 'ad anything - to eat since yestiday—except mineral water.” - </p> - <p> - A gaunt soldierly-looking young man with long lean legs in riding gaiters - and a bandolier, who had hitherto not spoken, intervened now on his behalf - in a note of confident authority. “That's aw right,” he said. “Give him a - feed, Mr. Logan—from me. I want to hear more of that story of his. - We'll see his machine afterwards. If you ask me, I should say it's a - remarkably interesting accident had dropped this gentleman here. I guess - we requisition that flying-machine—if we find it—for local - defence.” - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - So Bert fell on his feet again, and sat eating cold meat and good bread - and mustard and drinking very good beer, and telling in the roughest - outline and with the omissions and inaccuracies of statement natural to - his type of mind, the simple story of his adventures. He told how he and a - “gentleman friend” had been visiting the seaside for their health, how a - “chep” came along in a balloon and fell out as he fell in, how he had - drifted to Franconia, how the Germans had seemed to mistake him for some - one and had “took him prisoner” and brought him to New York, how he had - been to Labrador and back, how he had got to Goat Island and found himself - there alone. He omitted the matter of the Prince and the Butteridge aspect - of the affair, not out of any deep deceitfulness, but because he felt the - inadequacy of his narrative powers. He wanted everything to seem easy and - natural and correct, to present himself as a trustworthy and - understandable Englishman in a sound mediocre position, to whom - refreshment and accommodation might be given with freedom and confidence. - When his fragmentary story came to New York and the battle of Niagara, - they suddenly produced newspapers which had been lying about on the table, - and began to check him and question him by these vehement accounts. It - became evident to him that his descent had revived and roused to flames - again a discussion, a topic, that had been burning continuously, that had - smouldered only through sheer exhaustion of material during the temporary - diversion of the gramophone, a discussion that had drawn these men - together, rifle in hand, the one supreme topic of the whole world, the War - and the methods of the War. He found any question of his personality and - his personal adventures falling into the background, found himself taken - for granted, and no more than a source of information. The ordinary - affairs of life, the buying and selling of everyday necessities, the - cultivation of the ground, the tending of beasts, was going on as it were - by force of routine, as the common duties of life go on in a house whose - master lies under the knife of some supreme operation. The overruling - interest was furnished by those great Asiatic airships that went upon - incalculable missions across the sky, the crimson-clad swordsmen who might - come fluttering down demanding petrol, or food, or news. These men were - asking, all the continent was asking, “What are we to do? What can we try? - How can we get at them?” Bert fell into his place as an item, ceased even - in his own thoughts to be a central and independent thing. - </p> - <p> - After he had eaten and drunken his fill and sighed and stretched and told - them how good the food seemed to him, he lit a cigarette they gave him and - led the way, with some doubts and trouble, to the flying-machine amidst - the larches. It became manifest that the gaunt young man, whose name, it - seemed, was Laurier, was a leader both by position and natural aptitude. - He knew the names and characters and capabilities of all the men who were - with him, and he set them to work at once with vigour and effect to secure - this precious instrument of war. They got the thing down to the ground - deliberately and carefully, felling a couple of trees in the process, and - they built a wide flat roof of timbers and tree boughs to guard their - precious find against its chance discovery by any passing Asiatics. Long - before evening they had an engineer from the next township at work upon - it, and they were casting lots among the seventeen picked men who wanted - to take it for its first flight. And Bert found his kitten and carried it - back to Logan's store and handed it with earnest admonition to Mrs. Logan. - And it was reassuringly clear to him that in Mrs. Logan both he and the - kitten had found a congenial soul. - </p> - <p> - Laurier was not only a masterful person and a wealthy property owner and - employer—he was president, Bert learnt with awe, of the Tanooda - Canning Corporation—but he was popular and skilful in the arts of - popularity. In the evening quite a crowd of men gathered in the store and - talked of the flying-machine and of the war that was tearing the world to - pieces. And presently came a man on a bicycle with an ill-printed - newspaper of a single sheet which acted like fuel in a blazing furnace of - talk. It was nearly all American news; the old-fashioned cables had fallen - into disuse for some years, and the Marconi stations across the ocean and - along the Atlantic coastline seemed to have furnished particularly - tempting points of attack. - </p> - <p> - But such news it was. - </p> - <p> - Bert sat in the background—for by this time they had gauged his - personal quality pretty completely—listening. Before his staggering - mind passed strange vast images as they talked, of great issues at a - crisis, of nations in tumultuous march, of continents overthrown, of - famine and destruction beyond measure. Ever and again, in spite of his - efforts to suppress them, certain personal impressions would scamper - across the weltering confusion, the horrible mess of the exploded Prince, - the Chinese aeronaut upside down, the limping and bandaged bird-faced - officer blundering along in miserable and hopeless flight.... - </p> - <p> - They spoke of fire and massacre, of cruelties and counter cruelties, of - things that had been done to harmless Asiatics by race-mad men, of the - wholesale burning and smashing up of towns, railway junctions, bridges, of - whole populations in hiding and exodus. “Every ship they've got is in the - Pacific,” he heard one man exclaim. “Since the fighting began they can't - have landed on the Pacific slope less than a million men. They've come to - stay in these States, and they will—living or dead.” - </p> - <p> - Slowly, broadly, invincibly, there grew upon Bert's mind realisation of - the immense tragedy of humanity into which his life was flowing; the - appalling and universal nature of the epoch that had arrived; the - conception of an end to security and order and habit. The whole world was - at war and it could not get back to peace, it might never recover peace. - </p> - <p> - He had thought the things he had seen had been exceptional, conclusive - things, that the besieging of New York and the battle of the Atlantic were - epoch-making events between long years of security. And they had been but - the first warning impacts of universal cataclysm. Each day destruction and - hate and disaster grew, the fissures widened between man and man, new - regions of the fabric of civilisation crumbled and gave way. Below, the - armies grew and the people perished; above, the airships and aeroplanes - fought and fled, raining destruction. - </p> - <p> - It is difficult perhaps for the broad-minded and long-perspectived reader - to understand how incredible the breaking down of the scientific - civilisation seemed to those who actually lived at this time, who in their - own persons went down in that debacle. Progress had marched as it seemed - invincible about the earth, never now to rest again. For three hundred - years and more the long steadily accelerated diastole of Europeanised - civilisation had been in progress: towns had been multiplying, populations - increasing, values rising, new countries developing; thought, literature, - knowledge unfolding and spreading. It seemed but a part of the process - that every year the instruments of war were vaster and more powerful, and - that armies and explosives outgrew all other growing things.... - </p> - <p> - Three hundred years of diastole, and then came the swift and unexpected - systole, like the closing of a fist. They could not understand it was - systole. - </p> - <p> - They could not think of it as anything but a jolt, a hitch, a mere - oscillatory indication of the swiftness of their progress. Collapse, - though it happened all about them, remained incredible. Presently some - falling mass smote them down, or the ground opened beneath their feet. - They died incredulous.... - </p> - <p> - These men in the store made a minute, remote group under this immense - canopy of disaster. They turned from one little aspect to another. What - chiefly concerned them was defence against Asiatic raiders swooping for - petrol or to destroy weapons or communications. Everywhere levies were - being formed at that time to defend the plant of the railroads day and - night in the hope that communication would speedily be restored. The land - war was still far away. A man with a flat voice distinguished himself by a - display of knowledge and cunning. He told them all with confidence just - what had been wrong with the German drachenflieger and the American - aeroplanes, just what advantage the Japanese flyers possessed. He launched - out into a romantic description of the Butteridge machine and riveted - Bert's attention. “I SEE that,” said Bert, and was smitten silent by a - thought. The man with the flat voice talked on, without heeding him, of - the strange irony of Butteridge's death. At that Bert had a little twinge - of relief—he would never meet Butteridge again. It appeared - Butteridge had died suddenly, very suddenly. - </p> - <p> - “And his secret, sir, perished with him! When they came to look for the - parts—none could find them. He had hidden them all too well.” - </p> - <p> - “But couldn't he tell?” asked the man in the straw hat. “Did he die so - suddenly as that?” - </p> - <p> - “Struck down, sir. Rage and apoplexy. At a place called Dymchurch in - England.” - </p> - <p> - “That's right,” said Laurier. “I remember a page about it in the Sunday - American. At the time they said it was a German spy had stolen his - balloon.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, sir,” said the flat-voiced man, “that fit of apoplexy at Dyrnchurch - was the worst thing—absolutely the worst thing that ever happened to - the world. For if it had not been for the death of Mr. Butteridge—” - </p> - <p> - “No one knows his secret?” - </p> - <p> - “Not a soul. It's gone. His balloon, it appears, was lost at sea, with all - the plans. Down it went, and they went with it.” - </p> - <p> - Pause. - </p> - <p> - “With machines such as he made we could fight these Asiatic fliers on more - than equal terms. We could outfly and beat down those scarlet - humming-birds wherever they appeared. But it's gone, it's gone, and - there's no time to reinvent it now. We got to fight with what we got—and - the odds are against us. THAT won't stop us fightin'. No! but just think - of it!” - </p> - <p> - Bert was trembling violently. He cleared his throat hoarsely. - </p> - <p> - “I say,” he said, “look here, I—” - </p> - <p> - Nobody regarded him. The man with the flat voice was opening a new branch - of the subject. - </p> - <p> - “I allow—” he began. - </p> - <p> - Bert became violently excited. He stood up. - </p> - <p> - He made clawing motions with his hands. “I say!” he exclaimed, “Mr. - Laurier. Look 'ere—I want—about that Butteridge machine—.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Laurier, sitting on an adjacent table, with a magnificent gesture, - arrested the discourse of the flat-voiced man. “What's HE saying?” said - he. - </p> - <p> - Then the whole company realised that something was happening to Bert; - either he was suffocating or going mad. He was spluttering. - </p> - <p> - “Look 'ere! I say! 'Old on a bit!” and trembling and eagerly unbuttoning - himself. - </p> - <p> - He tore open his collar and opened vest and shirt. He plunged into his - interior and for an instant it seemed he was plucking forth his liver. - Then as he struggled with buttons on his shoulder they perceived this - flattened horror was in fact a terribly dirty flannel chest-protector. In - an other moment Bert, in a state of irregular decolletage, was standing - over the table displaying a sheaf of papers. - </p> - <p> - “These!” he gasped. “These are the plans!... You know! Mr. Butteridge—his - machine! What died! I was the chap that went off in that balloon!” - </p> - <p> - For some seconds every one was silent. They stared from these papers to - Bert's white face and blazing eyes, and back to the papers on the table. - Nobody moved. Then the man with the flat voice spoke. - </p> - <p> - “Irony!” he said, with a note of satisfaction. “Real rightdown Irony! When - it's too late to think of making 'em any more!” - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - They would all no doubt have been eager to hear Bert's story over again, - but it was it this point that Laurier showed his quality. “No, SIR,” he - said, and slid from off his table. - </p> - <p> - He impounded the dispersing Butteridge plans with one comprehensive sweep - of his arm, rescuing them even from the expository finger-marks of the man - with the flat voice, and handed them to Bert. “Put those back,” he said, - “where you had 'em. We have a journey before us.” - </p> - <p> - Bert took them. - </p> - <p> - “Whar?” said the man in the straw hat. - </p> - <p> - “Why, sir, we are going to find the President of these States and give - these plans over to him. I decline to believe, sir, we are too late.” - </p> - <p> - “Where is the President?” asked Bert weakly in that pause that followed. - </p> - <p> - “Logan,” said Laurier, disregarding that feeble inquiry, “you must help us - in this.” - </p> - <p> - It seemed only a matter of a few minutes before Bert and Laurier and the - storekeeper were examining a number of bicycles that were stowed in the - hinder room of the store. Bert didn't like any of them very much. They had - wood rims and an experience of wood rims in the English climate had taught - him to hate them. That, however, and one or two other objections to an - immediate start were overruled by Laurier. “But where IS the President?” - Bert repeated as they stood behind Logan while he pumped up a deflated - tyre. - </p> - <p> - Laurier looked down on him. “He is reported in the neighbourhood of Albany—out - towards the Berkshire Hills. He is moving from place to place and, as far - as he can, organising the defence by telegraph and telephones The Asiatic - air-fleet is trying to locate him. When they think they have located the - seat of government, they throw bombs. This inconveniences him, but so far - they have not come within ten miles of him. The Asiatic air-fleet is at - present scattered all over the Eastern States, seeking out and destroying - gas-works and whatever seems conducive to the building of airships or the - transport of troops. Our retaliatory measures are slight in the extreme. - But with these machines—Sir, this ride of ours will count among the - historical rides of the world!” - </p> - <p> - He came near to striking an attitude. “We shan't get to him to-night?” - asked Bert. - </p> - <p> - “No, sir!” said Laurier. “We shall have to ride some days, sure!” - </p> - <p> - “And suppose we can't get a lift on a train—or anything?” - </p> - <p> - “No, sir! There's been no transit by Tanooda for three days. It is no good - waiting. We shall have to get on as well as we can.” - </p> - <p> - “Startin' now?” - </p> - <p> - “Starting now!” - </p> - <p> - “But 'ow about—We shan't be able to do much to-night.” - </p> - <p> - “May as well ride till we're fagged and sleep then. So much clear gain. - Our road is eastward.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course,” began Bert, with memories of the dawn upon Goat Island, and - left his sentence unfinished. - </p> - <p> - He gave his attention to the more scientific packing of the - chest-protector, for several of the plans flapped beyond his vest. - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - For a week Bert led a life of mixed sensations. Amidst these fatigue in - the legs predominated. Mostly he rode, rode with Laurier's back inexorably - ahead, through a land like a larger England, with bigger hills and wider - valleys, larger fields, wider roads, fewer hedges, and wooden houses with - commodious piazzas. He rode. Laurier made inquiries, Laurier chose the - turnings, Laurier doubted, Laurier decided. Now it seemed they were in - telephonic touch with the President; now something had happened and he was - lost again. But always they had to go on, and always Bert rode. A tyre was - deflated. Still he rode. He grew saddle sore. Laurier declared that - unimportant. Asiatic flying ships passed overhead, the two cyclists made a - dash for cover until the sky was clear. Once a red Asiatic flying-machine - came fluttering after them, so low they could distinguish the aeronaut's - head. He followed them for a mile. Now they came to regions of panic, now - to regions of destruction; here people were fighting for food, here they - seemed hardly stirred from the countryside routine. They spent a day in a - deserted and damaged Albany. The Asiatics had descended and cut every wire - and made a cinder-heap of the Junction, and our travellers pushed on - eastward. They passed a hundred half-heeded incidents, and always Bert was - toiling after Laurier's indefatigable back.... - </p> - <p> - Things struck upon Bert's attention and perplexed him, and then he passed - on with unanswered questionings fading from his mind. - </p> - <p> - He saw a large house on fire on a hillside to the right, and no man - heeding it.... - </p> - <p> - They came to a narrow railroad bridge and presently to a mono-rail train - standing in the track on its safety feet. It was a remarkably sumptuous - train, the Last Word Trans-Continental Express, and the passengers were - all playing cards or sleeping or preparing a picnic meal on a grassy slope - near at hand. They had been there six days.... - </p> - <p> - At one point ten dark-complexioned men were hanging in a string from the - trees along the roadside. Bert wondered why.... - </p> - <p> - At one peaceful-looking village where they stopped off to get Bert's tyre - mended and found beer and biscuits, they were approached by an extremely - dirty little boy without boots, who spoke as follows:— - </p> - <p> - “Deyse been hanging a Chink in dose woods!” - </p> - <p> - “Hanging a Chinaman?” said Laurier. - </p> - <p> - “Sure. Der sleuths got him rubberin' der rail-road sheds!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” - </p> - <p> - “Dose guys done wase cartridges. Deyse hung him and dey pulled his legs. - Deyse doin' all der Chinks dey can fine dat weh! Dey ain't takin' no - risks. All der Chinks dey can fine.” - </p> - <p> - Neither Bert nor Laurier made any reply, and presently, after a little - skilful expectoration, the young gentleman was attracted by the appearance - of two of his friends down the road and shuffled off, whooping weirdly.... - </p> - <p> - That afternoon they almost ran over a man shot through the body and partly - decomposed, lying near the middle of the road, just outside Albany. He - must have been lying there for some days.... - </p> - <p> - Beyond Albany they came upon a motor car with a tyre burst and a young - woman sitting absolutely passive beside the driver's seat. An old man was - under the car trying to effect some impossible repairs. Beyond, sitting - with a rifle across his knees, with his back to the car, and staring into - the woods, was a young man. - </p> - <p> - The old man crawled out at their approach and still on all-fours accosted - Bert and Laurier. The car had broken down overnight. The old man, said he - could not understand what was wrong, but he was trying to puzzle it out. - Neither he nor his son-in-law had any mechanical aptitude. They had been - assured this was a fool-proof car. It was dangerous to have to stop in - this place. The party had been attacked by tramps and had had to fight. It - was known they had provisions. He mentioned a great name in the world of - finance. Would Laurier and Bert stop and help him? He proposed it first - hopefully, then urgently, at last in tears and terror. - </p> - <p> - “No!” said Laurier inexorable. “We must go on! We have something more than - a woman to save. We have to save America!” - </p> - <p> - The girl never stirred. - </p> - <p> - And once they passed a madman singing. - </p> - <p> - And at last they found the President hiding in a small saloon upon the - outskirts of a place called Pinkerville on the Hudson, and gave the plans - of the Butteridge machine into his hands. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT COLLAPSE - </h2> - <h3> - 1 - </h3> - <p> - And now the whole fabric of civilisation was bending and giving, and - dropping to pieces and melting in the furnace of the war. - </p> - <p> - The stages of the swift and universal collapse of the financial and - scientific civilisation with which the twentieth century opened followed - each other very swiftly, so swiftly that upon the foreshortened page of - history—they seem altogether to overlap. To begin with, one sees the - world nearly at a maximum wealth and prosperity. To its inhabitants indeed - it seemed also at a maximum of security. When now in retrospect the - thoughtful observer surveys the intellectual history of this time, when - one reads its surviving fragments of literature, its scraps of political - oratory, the few small voices that chance has selected out of a thousand - million utterances to speak to later days, the most striking thing of all - this web of wisdom and error is surely that hallucination of security. To - men living in our present world state, orderly, scientific and secured, - nothing seems so precarious, so giddily dangerous, as the fabric of the - social order with which the men of the opening of the twentieth century - were content. To us it seems that every institution and relationship was - the fruit of haphazard and tradition and the manifest sport of chance, - their laws each made for some separate occasion and having no relation to - any future needs, their customs illogical, their education aimless and - wasteful. Their method of economic exploitation indeed impresses a trained - and informed mind as the most frantic and destructive scramble it is - possible to conceive; their credit and monetary system resting on an - unsubstantial tradition of the worthiness of gold, seems a thing almost - fantastically unstable. And they lived in planless cities, for the most - part dangerously congested; their rails and roads and population were - distributed over the earth in the wanton confusion ten thousand irrevelant - considerations had made. - </p> - <p> - Yet they thought confidently that this was a secure and permanent - progressive system, and on the strength of some three hundred years of - change and irregular improvement answered the doubter with, “Things always - have gone well. We'll worry through!” - </p> - <p> - But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentieth - century with the condition of any previous period in his history, then - perhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence. It - was not so much a reasoned confidence as the inevitable consequence of - sustained good fortune. By such standards as they possessed, things HAD - gone amazingly well for them. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that - for the first time in history whole populations found themselves regularly - supplied with more than enough to eat, and the vital statistics of the - time witness to an amelioration of hygienic conditions rapid beyond all - precedent, and to a vast development of intelligence and ability in all - the arts that make life wholesome. The level and quality of the average - education had risen tremendously; and at the dawn of the twentieth century - comparatively few people in Western Europe or America were unable to read - or write. Never before had there been such reading masses. There was wide - social security. A common man might travel safely over three-quarters of - the habitable globe, could go round the earth at a cost of less than the - annual earnings of a skilled artisan. Compared with the liberality and - comfort of the ordinary life of the time, the order of the Roman Empire - under the Antonines was local and limited. And every year, every month, - came some new increment to human achievement, a new country opened up, new - mines, new scientific discoveries, a new machine! - </p> - <p> - For those three hundred years, indeed, the movement of the world seemed - wholly beneficial to mankind. Men said, indeed, that moral organisation - was not keeping pace with physical progress, but few attached any meaning - to these phrases, the understanding of which lies at the basis of our - present safety. Sustaining and constructive forces did indeed for a time - more than balance the malign drift of chance and the natural ignorance, - prejudice, blind passion, and wasteful self-seeking of mankind. - </p> - <p> - The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter and - infinitely more complex and delicate in its adjustments than the people of - that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was an - effective balance. They did not realise that this age of relative good - fortune was an age of immense but temporary opportunity for their kind. - They complacently assumed a necessary progress towards which they had no - moral responsibility. They did not realise that this security of progress - was a thing still to be won—or lost, and that the time to win it was - a time that passed. They went about their affairs energetically enough and - yet with a curious idleness towards those threatening things. No one - troubled over the real dangers of mankind. They, saw their armies and - navies grow larger and more portentous; some of their ironclads at the - last cost as much as the whole annual expenditure upon advanced education; - they accumulated explosives and the machinery of destruction; they allowed - their national traditions and jealousies to accumulate; they contemplated - a steady enhancement of race hostility as the races drew closer without - concern or understanding, and they permitted the growth in their midst of - an evil-spirited press, mercenary and unscrupulous, incapable of good, and - powerful for evil. The State had practically no control over the press at - all. Quite heedlessly they allowed this torch-paper to lie at the door of - their war magazine for any spark to fire. The precedents of history were - all one tale of the collapse of civilisations, the dangers of the time - were manifest. One is incredulous now to believe they could not see. - </p> - <p> - Could mankind have prevented this disaster of the War in the Air? - </p> - <p> - An idle question that, as idle as to ask could mankind have prevented the - decay that turned Assyria and Babylon to empty deserts or the slow decline - and fall, the gradual social disorganisation, phase by phase, that closed - the chapter of the Empire of the West! They could not, because they did - not, they had not the will to arrest it. What mankind could achieve with a - different will is a speculation as idle as it is magnificent. And this was - no slow decadence that came to the Europeanised world; those other - civilisations rotted and crumbled down, the Europeanised civilisation was, - as it were, blown up. Within the space of five years it was altogether - disintegrated and destroyed. Up to the very eve of the War in the Air one - sees a spacious spectacle of incessant advance, a world-wide security, - enormous areas with highly organised industry and settled populations, - gigantic cities spreading gigantically, the seas and oceans dotted with - shipping, the land netted with rails, and open ways. Then suddenly the - German air-fleets sweep across the scene, and we are in the beginning of - the end. - </p> - <p> - 2 - </p> - <p> - This story has already told of the swift rush upon New York of the first - German air-fleet and of the wild, inevitable orgy of inconclusive - destruction that ensued. Behind it a second air-fleet was already swelling - at its gasometers when England and France and Spain and Italy showed their - hands. None of these countries had prepared for aeronautic warfare on the - magnificent scale of the Germans, but each guarded secrets, each in a - measure was making ready, and a common dread of German vigour and that - aggressive spirit Prince Karl Albert embodied, had long been drawing these - powers together in secret anticipation of some such attack. This rendered - their prompt co-operation possible, and they certainly co-operated - promptly. The second aerial power in Europe at this time was France; the - British, nervous for their Asiatic empire, and sensible of the immense - moral effect of the airship upon half-educated populations, had placed - their aeronautic parks in North India, and were able to play but a - subordinate part in the European conflict. Still, even in England they had - nine or ten big navigables, twenty or thirty smaller ones, and a variety - of experimental aeroplanes. Before the fleet of Prince Karl Albert had - crossed England, while Bert was still surveying Manchester in bird's-eye - view, the diplomatic exchanges were going on that led to an attack upon - Germany. A heterogeneous collection of navigable balloons of all sizes and - types gathered over the Bernese Oberland, crushed and burnt the - twenty-five Swiss air-ships that unexpectedly resisted this concentration - in the battle of the Alps, and then, leaving the Alpine glaciers and - valleys strewn with strange wreckage, divided into two fleets and set - itself to terrorise Berlin and destroy the Franconian Park, seeking to do - this before the second air-fleet could be inflated. - </p> - <p> - Both over Berlin and Franconia the assailants with their modern explosives - effected great damage before they were driven off. In Franconia twelve - fully distended and five partially filled and manned giants were able to - make head against and at last, with the help of a squadron of - drachenflieger from Hamburg, defeat and pursue the attack and to relieve - Berlin, and the Germans were straining every nerve to get an overwhelming - fleet in the air, and were already raiding London and Paris when the - advance fleets from the Asiatic air-parks, the first intimation of a new - factor in the conflict, were reported from Burmah and Armenia. - </p> - <p> - Already the whole financial fabric of the world was staggering when that - occurred. With the destruction of the American fleet in the North - Atlantic, and the smashing conflict that ended the naval existence of - Germany in the North Sea, with the burning and wrecking of billions of - pounds' worth of property in the four cardinal cities of the world, the - fact of the hopeless costliness of war came home for the first time, came, - like a blow in the face, to the consciousness of mankind. Credit went down - in a wild whirl of selling. Everywhere appeared a phenomenon that had - already in a mild degree manifested itself in preceding periods of panic; - a desire to SECURE AND HOARD GOLD before prices reached bottom. But now it - spread like wild-fire, it became universal. Above was visible conflict and - destruction; below something was happening far more deadly and incurable - to the flimsy fabric of finance and commercialism in which men had so - blindly put their trust. As the airships fought above, the visible gold - supply of the world vanished below. An epidemic of private cornering and - universal distrust swept the world. In a few weeks, money, except for - depreciated paper, vanished into vaults, into holes, into the walls of - houses, into ten million hiding-places. Money vanished, and at its - disappearance trade and industry came to an end. The economic world - staggered and fell dead. It was like the stroke of some disease it was - like the water vanishing out of the blood of a living creature; it was a - sudden, universal coagulation of intercourse.... - </p> - <p> - And as the credit system, that had been the living fortress of the - scientific civilisation, reeled and fell upon the millions it had held - together in economic relationship, as these people, perplexed and - helpless, faced this marvel of credit utterly destroyed, the airships of - Asia, countless and relentless, poured across the heavens, swooped - eastward to America and westward to Europe. The page of history becomes a - long crescendo of battle. The main body of the British-Indian air-fleet - perished upon a pyre of blazing antagonists in Burmah; the Germans were - scattered in the great battle of the Carpathians; the vast peninsula of - India burst into insurrection and civil war from end to end, and from Gobi - to Morocco rose the standards of the “Jehad.” For some weeks of warfare - and destruction it seemed as though the Confederation of Eastern Asia must - needs conquer the world, and then the jerry-built “modern” civilisation of - China too gave way under the strain. The teeming and peaceful population - of China had been “westernised” during the opening years of the twentieth - century with the deepest resentment and reluctance; they had been - dragooned and disciplined under Japanese and European—influence into - an acquiescence with sanitary methods, police controls, military service, - and wholesale process of exploitation against which their whole tradition - rebelled. Under the stresses of the war their endurance reached the - breaking point, the whole of China rose in incoherent revolt, and the - practical destruction of the central government at Pekin by a handful of - British and German airships that had escaped from the main battles - rendered that revolt invincible. In Yokohama appeared barricades, the - black flag and the social revolution. With that the whole world became a - welter of conflict. - </p> - <p> - So that a universal social collapse followed, as it were a logical - consequence, upon world-wide war. Wherever there were great populations, - great masses of people found themselves without work, without money, and - unable to get food. Famine was in every working-class quarter in the world - within three weeks of the beginning of the war. Within a month there was - not a city anywhere in which the ordinary law and social procedure had not - been replaced by some form of emergency control, in which firearms and - military executions were not being used to keep order and prevent - violence. And still in the poorer quarters, and in the populous districts, - and even here and there already among those who had been wealthy, famine - spread. - </p> - <p> - 3 - </p> - <p> - So what historians have come to call the Phase of the Emergency Committees - sprang from the opening phase and from the phase of social collapse. Then - followed a period of vehement and passionate conflict against - disintegration; everywhere the struggle to keep order and to keep fighting - went on. And at the same time the character of the war altered through the - replacement of the huge gas-filled airships by flying-machines as the - instruments of war. So soon as the big fleet engagements were over, the - Asiatics endeavoured to establish in close proximity to the more - vulnerable points of the countries against which they were acting, - fortified centres from which flying-machine raids could be made. For a - time they had everything their own way in this, and then, as this story - has told, the lost secret of the Butteridge machine came to light, and the - conflict became equalized and less conclusive than ever. For these small - flying-machines, ineffectual for any large expedition or conclusive - attack, were horribly convenient for guerilla warfare, rapidly and cheaply - made, easily used, easily hidden. The design of them was hastily copied - and printed in Pinkerville and scattered broadcast over the United States - and copies were sent to Europe, and there reproduced. Every man, every - town, every parish that could, was exhorted to make and use them. In a - little while they were being constructed not only by governments and local - authorities, but by robber bands, by insurgent committees, by every type - of private person. The peculiar social destructiveness of the Butteridge - machine lay in its complete simplicity. It was nearly as simple as a - motor-bicycle. The broad outlines of the earlier stages of the war - disappeared under its influence, the spacious antagonism of nations and - empires and races vanished in a seething mass of detailed conflict. The - world passed at a stride from a unity and simplicity broader than that of - the Roman Empire at its best, to as social fragmentation as complete as - the robber-baron period of the Middle Ages. But this time, for a long - descent down gradual slopes of disintegration, comes a fall like a fall - over a cliff. Everywhere were men and women perceiving this and struggling - desperately to keep as it were a hold upon the edge of the cliff. - </p> - <p> - A fourth phase follows. Through the struggle against Chaos, in the wake of - the Famine, came now another old enemy of humanity—the Pestilence, - the Purple Death. But the war does not pause. The flags still fly. Fresh - air-fleets rise, new forms of airship, and beneath their swooping - struggles the world darkens—scarcely heeded by history. - </p> - <p> - It is not within the design of this book to tell what further story, to - tell how the War in the Air kept on through the sheer inability of any - authorities to meet and agree and end it, until every organised government - in the world was as shattered and broken as a heap of china beaten with a - stick. With every week of those terrible years history becomes more - detailed and confused, more crowded and uncertain. Not without great and - heroic resistance was civilisation borne down. Out of the bitter social - conflict below rose patriotic associations, brotherhoods of order, city - mayors, princes, provisional committees, trying to establish an order - below and to keep the sky above. The double effort destroyed them. And as - the exhaustion of the mechanical resources of civilisation clears the - heavens of airships at last altogether, Anarchy, Famine and Pestilence are - discovered triumphant below. The great nations and empires have become but - names in the mouths of men. Everywhere there are ruins and unburied dead, - and shrunken, yellow-faced survivors in a mortal apathy. Here there are - robbers, here vigilance committees, and here guerilla bands ruling patches - of exhausted territory, strange federations and brotherhoods form and - dissolve, and religious fanaticisms begotten of despair gleam in - famine-bright eyes. It is a universal dissolution. The fine order and - welfare of the earth have crumpled like an exploded bladder. In five short - years the world and the scope of human life have undergone a retrogressive - change as great as that between the age of the Antonines and the Europe of - the ninth century.... - </p> - <p> - 4 - </p> - <p> - Across this sombre spectacle of disaster goes a minute and insignificant - person for whom perhaps the readers of this story have now some slight - solicitude. Of him there remains to be told just one single and miraculous - thing. Through a world darkened and lost, through a civilisation in its - death agony, our little Cockney errant went and found his Edna! He found - his Edna! - </p> - <p> - He got back across the Atlantic partly by means of an order from the - President and partly through his own good luck. He contrived to get - himself aboard a British brig in the timber trade that put out from Boston - without cargo, chiefly, it would seem, because its captain had a vague - idea of “getting home” to South Shields. Bert was able to ship himself - upon her mainly because of the seamanlike appearance of his rubber boots. - They had a long, eventful voyage; they were chased, or imagined themselves - to be chased, for some hours by an Asiatic ironclad, which was presently - engaged by a British cruiser. The two ships fought for three hours, - circling and driving southward as they fought, until the twilight and the - cloud-drift of a rising gale swallowed them up. A few days later Bert's - ship lost her rudder and mainmast in a gale. The crew ran out of food and - subsisted on fish. They saw strange air-ships going eastward near the - Azores and landed to get provisions and repair the rudder at Teneriffe. - There they found the town destroyed and two big liners, with dead still - aboard, sunken in the harbour. From there they got canned food and - material for repairs, but their operations were greatly impeded by the - hostility of a band of men amidst the ruins of the town, who sniped them - and tried to drive them away. - </p> - <p> - At Mogador, they stayed and sent a boat ashore for water, and were nearly - captured by an Arab ruse. Here too they got the Purple Death aboard, and - sailed with it incubating in their blood. The cook sickened first, and - then the mate, and presently every one was down and three in the - forecastle were dead. It chanced to be calm weather, and they drifted - helplessly and indeed careless of their fate backwards towards the - Equator. The captain doctored them all with rum. Nine died all together, - and of the four survivors none understood navigation; when at last they - took heart again and could handle a sail, they made a course by the stars - roughly northward and were already short of food once more when they fell - in with a petrol-driven ship from Rio to Cardiff, shorthanded by reason of - the Purple Death and glad to take them aboard. So at last, after a year of - wandering Bert reached England. He landed in bright June weather, and - found the Purple Death was there just beginning its ravages. - </p> - <p> - The people were in a state of panic in Cardiff and many had fled to the - hills, and directly the steamer came to the harbour she was boarded and - her residue of food impounded by some unauthenticated Provisional - Committee. Bert tramped through a country disorganised by pestilence, - foodless, and shaken to the very base of its immemorial order. He came - near death and starvation many times, and once he was drawn into scenes of - violence that might have ended his career. But the Bert Smallways who - tramped from Cardiff to London vaguely “going home,” vaguely seeking - something of his own that had no tangible form but Edna, was a very - different person from the Desert Dervish who was swept out of England in - Mr. Butteridge's balloon a year before. He was brown and lean and - enduring, steady-eyed and pestilence-salted, and his mouth, which had once - hung open, shut now like a steel trap. Across his brow ran a white scar - that he had got in a fight on the brig. In Cardiff he had felt the need of - new clothes and a weapon, and had, by means that would have shocked him a - year ago, secured a flannel shirt, a corduroy suit, and a revolver and - fifty cartridges from an abandoned pawnbroker's. He also got some soap and - had his first real wash for thirteen months in a stream outside the town. - The Vigilance bands that had at first shot plunderers very freely were now - either entirely dispersed by the plague, or busy between town and cemetery - in a vain attempt to keep pace with it. He prowled on the outskirts of the - town for three or four days, starving, and then went back to join the - Hospital Corps for a week, and so fortified himself with a few square - meals before he started eastward. - </p> - <p> - The Welsh and English countryside at that time presented the strangest - mingling of the assurance and wealth of the opening twentieth century with - a sort of Düreresque mediaevalism. All the gear, the houses and mono-rails, - the farm hedges and power cables, the roads and pavements, the sign-posts - and advertisements of the former order were still for the most part - intact. Bankruptcy, social collapse, famine, and pestilence had done - nothing to damage these, and it was only to the great capitals and - ganglionic centres, as it were, of this State, that positive destruction - had come. Any one dropped suddenly into the country would have noticed - very little difference. He would have remarked first, perhaps, that all - the hedges needed clipping, that the roadside grass grew rank, that the - road-tracks were unusually rainworn, and that the cottages by the wayside - seemed in many cases shut up, that a telephone wire had dropped here, and - that a cart stood abandoned by the wayside. But he would still find his - hunger whetted by the bright assurance that Wilder's Canned Peaches were - excellent, or that there was nothing so good for the breakfast table as - Gobble's Sausages. And then suddenly would come the Dureresque element; - the skeleton of a horse, or some crumpled mass of rags in the ditch, with - gaunt extended feet and a yellow, purple-blotched skin and face, or what - had been a face, gaunt and glaring and devastated. Then here would be a - field that had been ploughed and not sown, and here a field of corn - carelessly trampled by beasts, and here a hoarding torn down across the - road to make a fire. - </p> - <p> - Then presently he would meet a man or a woman, yellow-faced and probably - negligently dressed and armed—prowling for food. These people would - have the complexions and eyes and expressions of tramps or criminals, and - often the clothing of prosperous middle-class or upper-class people. Many - of these would be eager for news, and willing to give help and even scraps - of queer meat, or crusts of grey and doughy bread, in return for it. They - would listen to Bert's story with avidity, and attempt to keep him with - them for a day or so. The virtual cessation of postal distribution and the - collapse of all newspaper enterprise had left an immense and aching gap in - the mental life of this time. Men had suddenly lost sight of the ends of - the earth and had still to recover the rumour-spreading habits of the - Middle Ages. In their eyes, in their bearing, in their talk, was the - quality of lost and deoriented souls. - </p> - <p> - As Bert travelled from parish to parish, and from district to district, - avoiding as far as possible those festering centres of violence and - despair, the larger towns, he found the condition of affairs varying - widely. In one parish he would find the large house burnt, the vicarage - wrecked, evidently in violent conflict for some suspected and perhaps - imaginary store of food, unburied dead everywhere, and the whole mechanism - of the community at a standstill. In another he would find organising - forces stoutly at work, newly-painted notice boards warning off vagrants, - the roads and still cultivated fields policed by armed men, the pestilence - under control, even nursing going on, a store of food husbanded, the - cattle and sheep well guarded, and a group of two or three justices, the - village doctor or a farmer, dominating the whole place; a reversion, in - fact, to the autonomous community of the fifteenth century. But at any - time such a village would be liable to a raid of Asiatics or Africans or - such-like air-pirates, demanding petrol and alcohol or provisions. The - price of its order was an almost intolerable watchfulness and tension. - </p> - <p> - Then the approach to the confused problems of some larger centre of - population and the presence of a more intricate conflict would be marked - by roughly smeared notices of “Quarantine” or “Strangers Shot,” or by a - string of decaying plunderers dangling from the telephone poles at the - roadside. About Oxford big boards were put on the roofs warning all air - wanderers off with the single word, “Guns.” - </p> - <p> - Taking their risks amidst these things, cyclists still kept abroad, and - once or twice during Bert's long tramp powerful motor cars containing - masked and goggled figures went tearing past him. There were few police in - evidence, but ever and again squads of gaunt and tattered soldier-cyclists - would come drifting along, and such encounters became more frequent as he - got out of Wales into England. Amidst all this wreckage they were still - campaigning. He had had some idea of resorting to the workhouses for the - night if hunger pressed him too closely, but some of these were closed and - others converted into temporary hospitals, and one he came up to at - twilight near a village in Gloucestershire stood with all its doors and - windows open, silent as the grave, and, as he found to his horror by - stumbling along evil-smelling corridors, full of unburied dead. - </p> - <p> - From Gloucestershire Bert went northward to the British aeronautic park - outside Birmingham, in the hope that he might be taken on and given food, - for there the Government, or at any rate the War Office, still existed as - an energetic fact, concentrated amidst collapse and social disaster upon - the effort to keep the British flag still flying in the air, and trying to - brisk up mayor and mayor and magistrate and magistrate in a new effort of - organisation. They had brought together all the best of the surviving - artisans from that region, they had provisioned the park for a siege, and - they were urgently building a larger type of Butteridge machine. Bert - could get no footing at this work: he was not sufficiently skilled, and he - had drifted to Oxford when the great fight occurred in which these works - were finally wrecked. He saw something, but not very much, of the battle - from a place called Boar Hill. He saw the Asiatic squadron coming up - across the hills to the south-west, and he saw one of their airships - circling southward again chased by two aeroplanes, the one that was - ultimately overtaken, wrecked and burnt at Edge Hill. But he never learnt - the issue of the combat as a whole. - </p> - <p> - He crossed the Thames from Eton to Windsor and made his way round the - south of London to Bun Hill, and there he found his brother Tom, looking - like some dark, defensive animal in the old shop, just recovering from the - Purple Death, and Jessica upstairs delirious, and, as it seemed to him, - dying grimly. She raved of sending out orders to customers, and scolded - Tom perpetually lest he should be late with Mrs. Thompson's potatoes and - Mrs. Hopkins' cauliflower, though all business had long since ceased and - Tom had developed a quite uncanny skill in the snaring of rats and - sparrows and the concealment of certain stores of cereals and biscuits - from plundered grocers' shops. Tom received his brother with a sort of - guarded warmth. - </p> - <p> - “Lor!” he said, “it's Bert. I thought you'd be coming back some day, and - I'm glad to see you. But I carn't arst you to eat anything, because I - 'aven't got anything to eat.... Where you been, Bert, all this time?” - </p> - <p> - Bert reassured his brother by a glimpse of a partly eaten swede, and was - still telling his story in fragments and parentheses, when he discovered - behind the counter a yellow and forgotten note addressed to himself. - “What's this?” he said, and found it was a year-old note from Edna. “She - came 'ere,” said Tom, like one who recalls a trivial thing, “arstin' for - you and arstin' us to take 'er in. That was after the battle and settin' - Clapham Rise afire. I was for takin' 'er in, but Jessica wouldn't 'ave it—and - so she borrowed five shillings of me quiet like and went on. I dessay - she's tole you—” - </p> - <p> - She had, Bert found. She had gone on, she said in her note, to an aunt and - uncle who had a brickfield near Horsham. And there at last, after another - fortnight of adventurous journeying, Bert found her. - </p> - <p> - 5 - </p> - <p> - When Bert and Edna set eyes on one another, they stared and laughed - foolishly, so changed they were, and so ragged and surprised. And then - they both fell weeping. - </p> - <p> - “Oh! Bertie, boy!” she cried. “You've come—you've come!” and put out - her arms and staggered. “I told 'im. He said he'd kill me if I didn't - marry him.” - </p> - <p> - But Edna was not married, and when presently Bert could get talk from her, - she explained the task before him. That little patch of lonely - agricultural country had fallen under the power of a band of bullies led - by a chief called Bill Gore who had begun life as a butcher boy and - developed into a prize-fighter and a professional sport. They had been - organised by a local nobleman of former eminence upon the turf, but after - a time he had disappeared, no one quite knew how and Bill had succeeded to - the leadership of the countryside, and had developed his teacher's methods - with considerable vigour. There had been a strain of advanced philosophy - about the local nobleman, and his mind ran to “improving the race” and - producing the Over-Man, which in practice took the form of himself - especially and his little band in moderation marrying with some frequency. - Bill followed up the idea with an enthusiasm that even trenched upon his - popularity with his followers. One day he had happened upon Edna tending - her pigs, and had at once fallen a-wooing with great urgency among the - troughs of slush. Edna had made a gallant resistance, but he was still - vigorously about and extraordinarily impatient. He might, she said, come - at any time, and she looked Bert in the eyes. They were back already in - the barbaric stage when a man must fight for his love. - </p> - <p> - And here one deplores the conflicts of truth with the chivalrous - tradition. One would like to tell of Bert sallying forth to challenge his - rival, of a ring formed and a spirited encounter, and Bert by some miracle - of pluck and love and good fortune winning. But indeed nothing of the sort - occurred. Instead, he reloaded his revolver very carefully, and then sat - in the best room of the cottage by the derelict brickfield, looking - anxious and perplexed, and listening to talk about Bill and his ways, and - thinking, thinking. Then suddenly Edna's aunt, with a thrill in her voice, - announced the appearance of that individual. He was coming with two others - of his gang through the garden gate. Bert got up, put the woman aside, and - looked out. They presented remarkable figures. They wore a sort of uniform - of red golfing jackets and white sweaters, football singlet, and stockings - and boots and each had let his fancy play about his head-dress. Bill had a - woman's hat full of cock's feathers, and all had wild, slouching cowboy - brims. - </p> - <p> - Bert sighed and stood up, deeply thoughtful, and Edna watched him, - marvelling. The women stood quite still. He left the window, and went out - into the passage rather slowly, and with the careworn expression of a man - who gives his mind to a complex and uncertain business. “Edna!” he called, - and when she came he opened the front door. - </p> - <p> - He asked very simply, and pointing to the foremost of the three, “That - 'im?... Sure?”... and being told that it was, shot his rival instantly and - very accurately through the chest. He then shot Bill's best man much less - tidily in the head, and then shot at and winged the third man as he fled. - The third gentleman yelped, and continued running with a comical end-on - twist. - </p> - <p> - Then Bert stood still meditating, with the pistol in his hand, and quite - regardless of the women behind him. - </p> - <p> - So far things had gone well. - </p> - <p> - It became evident to him that if he did not go into politics at once, he - would be hanged as an assassin and accordingly, and without a word to the - women, he went down to the village public-house he had passed an hour - before on his way to Edna, entered it from the rear, and confronted the - little band of ambiguous roughs, who were drinking in the tap-room and - discussing matrimony and Bill's affection in a facetious but envious - manner, with a casually held but carefully reloaded revolver, and an - invitation to join what he called, I regret to say, a “Vigilance - Committee” under his direction. “It's wanted about 'ere, and some of us - are gettin' it up.” He presented himself as one having friends outside, - though indeed, he had no friends at all in the world but Edna and her aunt - and two female cousins. - </p> - <p> - There was a quick but entirely respectful discussion of the situation. - They thought him a lunatic who had tramped into, this neighbourhood - ignorant of Bill. They desired to temporise until their leader came. Bill - would settle him. Some one spoke of Bill. - </p> - <p> - “Bill's dead, I jest shot 'im,” said Bert. “We don't need reckon with '<i>im</i>. - '<i>e's</i> shot, and a red-'aired chap with a squint, 'E'S shot. We've settled - up all that. There ain't going to be no more Bill, ever. 'E'd got wrong - ideas about marriage and things. It's 'is sort of chap we're after.” - </p> - <p> - That carried the meeting. - </p> - <p> - Bill was perfunctorily buried, and Bert's Vigilance Committee (for so it - continued to be called) reigned in his stead. - </p> - <p> - That is the end of this story so far as Bert Smallways is concerned. We - leave him with his Edna to become squatters among the clay and oak - thickets of the Weald, far away from the stream of events. From that time - forth life became a succession of peasant encounters, an affair of pigs - and hens and small needs and little economies and children, until Clapham - and Bun Hill and all the life of the Scientific Age became to Bert no more - than the fading memory of a dream. He never knew how the War in the Air - went on, nor whether it still went on. There were rumours of airships - going and coming, and of happenings Londonward. Once or twice their - shadows fell on him as he worked, but whence they came or whither they - went he could not tell. Even his desire to tell died out for want of food. - At times came robbers and thieves, at times came diseases among the beasts - and shortness of food, once the country was worried by a pack of - boar-hounds he helped to kill; he went through many inconsecutive, - irrelevant adventures. He survived them all. - </p> - <p> - Accident and death came near them both ever and again and passed them by, - and they loved and suffered and were happy, and she bore him many children—eleven - children—one after the other, of whom only four succumbed to the - necessary hardships of their simple life. They lived and did well, as well - was understood in those days. They went the way of all flesh, year by - year. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - THE EPILOGUE - </h2> - <p> - It happened that one bright summer's morning exactly thirty years after - the launching of the first German air-fleet, an old man took a small boy - to look for a missing hen through the ruins of Bun Hill and out towards - the splintered pinnacles of the Crystal Palace. He was not a very old man; - he was, as a matter of fact, still within a few weeks of sixty-three, but - constant stooping over spades and forks and the carrying of roots and - manure, and exposure to the damps of life in the open-air without a change - of clothing, had bent him into the form of a sickle. Moreover, he had lost - most of his teeth and that had affected his digestion and through that his - skin and temper. In face and expression he was curiously like that old - Thomas Smallways who had once been coachman to Sir Peter Bone, and this - was just as it should be, for he was Tom Smallways the son, who formerly - kept the little green-grocer's shop under the straddle of the mono-rail - viaduct in the High Street of Bun Hill. But now there were no - green-grocer's shops, and Tom was living in one of the derelict villas - hard by that unoccupied building site that had been and was still the - scene of his daily horticulture. He and his wife lived upstairs, and in - the drawing and dining rooms, which had each French windows opening on the - lawn, and all about the ground floor generally, Jessica, who was now a - lean and lined and baldish but still very efficient and energetic old - woman, kept her three cows and a multitude of gawky hens. These two were - part of a little community of stragglers and returned fugitives, perhaps a - hundred and fifty souls of them all together, that had settled down to the - new conditions of things after the Panic and Famine and Pestilence that - followed in the wake of the War. They had come back from strange refuges - and hiding-places and had squatted down among the familiar houses and - begun that hard struggle against nature for food which was now the chief - interest of their lives. They were by sheer preoccupation with that a - peaceful people, more particularly after Wilkes, the house agent, driven - by some obsolete dream of acquisition, had been drowned in the pool by the - ruined gas-works for making inquiries into title and displaying a - litigious turn of mind. (He had not been murdered, you understand, but the - people had carried an exemplary ducking ten minutes or so beyond its - healthy limits.) - </p> - <p> - This little community had returned from its original habits of suburban - parasitism to what no doubt had been the normal life of humanity for - nearly immemorial years, a life of homely economies in the most intimate - contact with cows and hens and patches of ground, a life that breathes and - exhales the scent of cows and finds the need for stimulants satisfied by - the activity of the bacteria and vermin it engenders. Such had been the - life of the European peasant from the dawn of history to the beginning of - the Scientific Era, so it was the large majority of the people of Asia and - Africa had always been wont to live. For a time it had seemed that, by - virtue of machines, and scientific civilisation, Europe was to be lifted - out of this perpetual round of animal drudgery, and that America was to - evade it very largely from the outset. And with the smash of the high and - dangerous and splendid edifice of mechanical civilisation that had arisen - so marvellously, back to the land came the common man, back to the manure. - </p> - <p> - The little communities, still haunted by ten thousand memories of a - greater state, gathered and developed almost tacitly a customary law and - fell under the guidance of a medicine man or a priest. The world - rediscovered religion and the need of something to hold its communities - together. At Bun Hill this function was entrusted to an old Baptist - minister. He taught a simple but adequate faith. In his teaching a good - principle called the Word fought perpetually against a diabolical female - influence called the Scarlet Woman and an evil being called Alcohol. This - Alcohol had long since become a purely spiritualised conception deprived - of any element of material application; it had no relation to the - occasional finds of whiskey and wine in Londoners' cellars that gave Bun - Hill its only holidays. He taught this doctrine on Sundays, and on - weekdays he was an amiable and kindly old man, distinguished by his quaint - disposition to wash his hands, and if possible his face, daily, and with a - wonderful genius for cutting up pigs. He held his Sunday services in the - old church in the Beckenham Road, and then the countryside came out in a - curious reminiscence of the urban dress of Edwardian times. All the men - without exception wore frock coats, top hats, and white shirts, though - many had no boots. Tom was particularly distinguished on these occasions - because he wore a top hat with gold lace about it and a green coat and - trousers that he had found upon a skeleton in the basement of the Urban - and District Bank. The women, even Jessica, came in jackets and immense - hats extravagantly trimmed with artificial flowers and exotic birds' - feather's—of which there were abundant supplies in the shops to the - north—and the children (there were not many children, because a - large proportion of the babies born in Bun Hill died in a few days' time - of inexplicable maladies) had similar clothes cut down to accommodate - them; even Stringer's little grandson of four wore a large top hat. - </p> - <p> - That was the Sunday costume of the Bun Hill district, a curious and - interesting survival of the genteel traditions of the Scientific Age. On a - weekday the folk were dingily and curiously hung about with dirty rags of - housecloth and scarlet flannel, sacking, curtain serge, and patches of old - carpet, and went either bare-footed or on rude wooden sandals. These - people, the reader must understand, were an urban population sunken back - to the state of a barbaric peasantry, and so without any of the simple - arts a barbaric peasantry would possess. In many ways they were curiously - degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any idea of making textiles, - they could hardly make up clothes when they had material, and they were - forced to plunder the continually dwindling supplies of the ruins about - them for cover. - </p> - <p> - All the simple arts they had ever known they had lost, and with the - breakdown of modern drainage, modern water supply, shopping, and the like, - their civilised methods were useless. Their cooking was worse than - primitive. It was a feeble muddling with food over wood fires in rusty - drawing-room fireplaces; for the kitcheners burnt too much. Among them all - no sense of baking or brewing or metal-working was to be found. - </p> - <p> - Their employment of sacking and such-like coarse material for work-a-day - clothing, and their habit of tying it on with string and of thrusting - wadding and straw inside it for warmth, gave these people an odd, “packed” - appearance, and as it was a week-day when Tom took his little nephew for - the hen-seeking excursion, so it was they were attired. - </p> - <p> - “So you've really got to Bun Hill at last, Teddy,” said old Tom, beginning - to talk and slackening his pace so soon as they were out of range of old - Jessica. “You're the last of Bert's boys for me to see. Wat I've seen, - young Bert I've seen, Sissie and Matt, Tom what's called after me, and - Peter. The traveller people brought you along all right, eh?” - </p> - <p> - “I managed,” said Teddy, who was a dry little boy. - </p> - <p> - “Didn't want to eat you on the way?” - </p> - <p> - “They was all right,” said Teddy, “and on the way near Leatherhead we saw - a man riding on a bicycle.” - </p> - <p> - “My word!” said Tom, “there ain't many of those about nowadays. Where was - he going?” - </p> - <p> - “Said 'e was going to Dorking if the High Road was good enough. But I - doubt if he got there. All about Burford it was flooded. We came over the - hill, uncle—what they call the Roman Road. That's high and safe.” - </p> - <p> - “Don't know it,” said old Tom. “But a bicycle! You're sure it was a - bicycle? Had two wheels?” - </p> - <p> - “It was a bicycle right enough.” - </p> - <p> - “Why! I remember a time, Teddy, where there was bicycles no end, when you - could stand just here—the road was as smooth as a board then—and - see twenty or thirty coming and going at the same time, bicycles and - moty-bicycles; moty cars, all sorts of whirly things.” - </p> - <p> - “No!” said Teddy. - </p> - <p> - “I do. They'd keep on going by all day,—'undreds and 'undreds.” - </p> - <p> - “But where was they all going?” asked Teddy. - </p> - <p> - “Tearin' off to Brighton—you never seen Brighton, I expect—it's - down by the sea, used to be a moce 'mazing place—and coming and - going from London.” - </p> - <p> - “Why?” - </p> - <p> - “They did.” - </p> - <p> - “But why?” - </p> - <p> - “Lord knows why, Teddy. They did. Then you see that great thing there like - a great big rusty nail sticking up higher than all the houses, and that - one yonder, and that, and how something's fell in between 'em among the - houses. They was parts of the mono-rail. They went down to Brighton too - and all day and night there was people going, great cars as big as 'ouses - full of people.” - </p> - <p> - The little boy regarded the rusty evidences acrosss the narrow muddy ditch - of cow-droppings that had once been a High Street. He was clearly disposed - to be sceptical, and yet there the ruins were! He grappled with ideas - beyond the strength of his imagination. - </p> - <p> - “What did they go for?” he asked, “all of 'em?” - </p> - <p> - “They '<i>ad</i> to. Everything was on the go those days—everything.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, but where did they come from?” - </p> - <p> - “All round 'ere, Teddy, there was people living in those 'ouses, and up - the road more 'ouses and more people. You'd 'ardly believe me, Teddy, but - it's Bible truth. You can go on that way for ever and ever, and keep on - coming on 'ouses, more 'ouses, and more. There's no end to 'em. No end. - They get bigger and bigger.” His voice dropped as though he named strange - names. - </p> - <p> - “It's <i>London</i<I></I>>,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “And it's all empty now and left alone. All day it's left alone. You don't - find 'ardly a man, you won't find nothing but dogs and cats after the rats - until you get round by Bromley and Beckenham, and there you find the - Kentish men herding swine. (Nice rough lot they are too!) I tell you that - so long as the sun is up it's as still as the grave. I been about by day—orfen - and orfen.” He paused. - </p> - <p> - “And all those 'ouses and streets and ways used to be full of people - before the War in the Air and the Famine and the Purple Death. They used - to be full of people, Teddy, and then came a time when they was full of - corpses, when you couldn't go a mile that way before the stink of 'em - drove you back. It was the Purple Death 'ad killed 'em every one. The cats - and dogs and 'ens and vermin caught it. Everything and every one 'ad it. - Jest a few of us 'appened to live. I pulled through, and your aunt, though - it made 'er lose 'er 'air. Why, you find the skeletons in the 'ouses now. - This way we been into all the 'ouses and took what we wanted and buried - moce of the people, but up that way, Norwood way, there's 'ouses with the - glass in the windows still, and the furniture not touched—all dusty - and falling to pieces—and the bones of the people lying, some in - bed, some about the 'ouse, jest as the Purple Death left 'em - five-and-twenty years ago. I went into one—me and old Higgins las' - year—and there was a room with books, Teddy—you know what I - mean by books, Teddy?” - </p> - <p> - “I seen 'em. I seen 'em with pictures.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, books all round, Teddy, 'undreds of books, beyond-rhyme or reason, - as the saying goes, green-mouldy and dry. I was for leaven' 'em alone—I - was never much for reading—but ole Higgins he must touch em. 'I - believe I could read one of 'em <>NOW</>,' 'e says. - </p> - <p> - “'Not it,' I says. - </p> - <p> - “'I could,' 'e says, laughing and takes one out and opens it. - </p> - <p> - “I looked, and there, Teddy, was a cullud picture, oh, so lovely! It was a - picture of women and serpents in a garden. I never see anything like it. - </p> - <p> - “'This suits me,' said old Higgins, 'to rights.' - </p> - <p> - “And then kind of friendly he gave the book a pat— - </p> - <p> - Old Tom Smallways paused impressively. - </p> - <p> - “And then?” said Teddy. - </p> - <p> - “It all fell to dus'. White dus'!” He became still more impressive. “We - didn't touch no more of them books that day. Not after that.” - </p> - <p> - For a long time both were silent. Then Tom, playing with a subject that - attracted him with a fatal fascination, repeated, “All day long they lie—still - as the grave.” - </p> - <p> - Teddy took the point at last. “Don't they lie o' nights?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - Old Tom shook his head. “Nobody knows, boy, nobody knows.” - </p> - <p> - “But what could they do?” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody knows. Nobody ain't seen to tell not nobody.” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody?” - </p> - <p> - “They tell tales,” said old Tom. “They tell tales, but there ain't no - believing 'em. I gets 'ome about sundown, and keeps indoors, so I can't - say nothing, can I? But there's them that thinks some things and them as - thinks others. I've 'eard it's unlucky to take clo'es off of 'em unless - they got white bones. There's stories—” - </p> - <p> - The boy watched his uncle sharply. “<i>WOT</i> stories?” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Stories of moonlight nights and things walking about. But I take no stock - in 'em. I keeps in bed. If you listen to stories—Lord! You'll get - afraid of yourself in a field at midday.” - </p> - <p> - The little boy looked round and ceased his questions for a space. - </p> - <p> - “They say there's a 'og man in Beck'n'am what was lost in London three - days and three nights. 'E went up after whiskey to Cheapside, and lorst - 'is way among the ruins and wandered. Three days and three nights 'e - wandered about and the streets kep' changing so's he couldn't get 'ome. If - 'e 'adn't remembered some words out of the Bible 'e might 'ave been there - now. All day 'e went and all night—and all day long it was still. It - was as still as death all day long, until the sunset came and the twilight - thickened, and then it began to rustle and whisper and go pit-a-pat with a - sound like 'urrying feet.” - </p> - <p> - He paused. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said the little boy breathlessly. “Go on. What then?” - </p> - <p> - “A sound of carts and 'orses there was, and a sound of cabs and omnibuses, - and then a lot of whistling, shrill whistles, whistles that froze 'is - marrer. And directly the whistles began things begun to show, people in - the streets 'urrying, people in the 'ouses and shops busying themselves, - moty cars in the streets, a sort of moonlight in all the lamps and - winders. People, I say, Teddy, but they wasn't people. They was the ghosts - of them that was overtook, the ghosts of them that used to crowd those - streets. And they went past 'im and through 'im and never 'eeded 'im, went - by like fogs and vapours, Teddy. And sometimes they was cheerful and - sometimes they was 'orrible, 'orrible beyond words. And once 'e come to a - place called Piccadilly, Teddy, and there was lights blazing like daylight - and ladies and gentlemen in splendid clo'es crowding the pavement, and - taxicabs follering along the road. And as 'e looked, they all went evil—evil - in the face, Teddy. And it seemed to 'im suddenly <i>they saw 'im</i>, and the - women began to look at 'im and say things to 'im—'orrible—wicked - things. One come very near 'im, Teddy, right up to 'im, and looked into - 'is face—close. And she 'adn't got a face to look with, only a - painted skull, and then 'e see; they was all painted skulls. And one after - another they crowded on 'im saying 'orrible things, and catchin' at 'im - and threatenin' and coaxing 'im, so that 'is 'eart near left 'is body for - fear.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” gasped Teddy in an unendurable pause. - </p> - <p> - “Then it was he remembered the words of Scripture and saved himself alive. - 'The Lord is my 'Elper, 'e says, 'therefore I will fear nothing,' and - straightaway there came a cock-crowing and the street was empty from end - to end. And after that the Lord was good to 'im and guided 'im 'ome.” - </p> - <p> - Teddy stared and caught at another question. “But who was the people,” he - asked, “who lived in all these 'ouses? What was they?” - </p> - <p> - “Gent'men in business, people with money—leastways we thought it was - money till everything smashed up, and then seemingly it was jes' paper—all - sorts. Why, there was 'undreds of thousands of them. There was millions. - I've seen that 'I Street there regular so's you couldn't walk along the - pavements, shoppin' time, with women and people shoppin'.” - </p> - <p> - “But where'd they get their food and things?” - </p> - <p> - “Bort 'em in shops like I used to 'ave. I'll show you the place, Teddy, if - we go back. People nowadays 'aven't no idee of a shop—no idee. - Plate-glass winders—it's all Greek to them. Why, I've 'ad as much as - a ton and a 'arf of petaties to 'andle all at one time. You'd open your - eyes till they dropped out to see jes' what I used to 'ave in my shop. - Baskets of pears 'eaped up, marrers, apples and pears, d'licious great - nuts.” His voice became luscious—“Benanas, oranges.” - </p> - <p> - “What's benanas?” asked the boy, “and oranges?” - </p> - <p> - “Fruits they was. Sweet, juicy, d'licious fruits. Foreign fruits. They - brought 'em from Spain and N' York and places. In ships and things. They - brought 'em to me from all over the world, and I sold 'em in my shop. <i>I</i> - sold 'em, Teddy! me what goes about now with you, dressed up in old sacks - and looking for lost 'ens. People used to come into my shop, great - beautiful ladies like you'd 'ardly dream of now, dressed up to the nines, - and say, 'Well, Mr. Smallways, what you got 'smorning?' and I'd say, - 'Well, I got some very nice C'nadian apples, 'or p'raps I got custed - marrers. See? And they'd buy 'em. Right off they'd say, 'Send me some up.' - Lord! what a life that was. The business of it, the bussel, the smart - things you saw, moty cars going by, kerridges, people, organ-grinders, - German bands. Always something going past—always. If it wasn't for - those empty 'ouses, I'd think it all a dream.” - </p> - <p> - “But what killed all the people, uncle?” asked Teddy. - </p> - <p> - “It was a smash-up,” said old Tom. “Everything was going right until they - started that War. Everything was going like clock-work. Everybody was busy - and everybody was 'appy and everybody got a good square meal every day.” - </p> - <p> - He met incredulous eyes. “Everybody,” he said firmly. “If you couldn't get - it anywhere else, you could get it in the workhuss, a nice 'ot bowl of - soup called skilly, and bread better'n any one knows 'ow to make now, - reg'lar <I>white</I> bread, gov'ment bread.” - </p> - <p> - Teddy marvelled, but said nothing. It made him feel deep longings that he - found it wisest to fight down. - </p> - <p> - For a time the old man resigned himself to the pleasures of gustatory - reminiscence. His lips moved. “Pickled Sammin!” he whispered, “an' - vinegar.... Dutch cheese, _beer_! A pipe of terbakker.” - </p> - <p> - “But 'OW did the people get killed?” asked Teddy presently. - </p> - <p> - “There was the War. The War was the beginning of it. The War banged and - flummocked about, but it didn't really KILL many people. But it upset - things. They came and set fire to London and burnt and sank all the ships - there used to be in the Thames—we could see the smoke and steam for - weeks—and they threw a bomb into the Crystal Palace and made a - bust-up, and broke down the rail lines and things like that. But as for - killin' people, it was just accidental if they did. They killed each other - more. There was a great fight all hereabout one day, Teddy—up in the - air. Great things bigger than fifty 'ouses, bigger than the Crystal Palace—bigger, - bigger than anything, flying about up in the air and whacking at each - other and dead men fallin' off 'em. T'riffic! But, it wasn't so much the - people they killed as the business they stopped. There wasn't any business - doin', Teddy, there wasn't any money about, and nothin' to buy if you 'ad - it.” - </p> - <p> - “But '<i>ow</i> did the people get killed?” said the little boy in the pause. - </p> - <p> - “I'm tellin' you, Teddy,” said the old man. “It was the stoppin' of - business come next. Suddenly there didn't seem to be any money. There was - cheques—they was a bit of paper written on, and they was jes' as - good as money—jes' as good if they come from customers you knew. - Then all of a sudden they wasn't. I was left with three of 'em and two I'd - given' change. Then it got about that five-pun' notes were no good, and - then the silver sort of went off. Gold you 'couldn't get for love or—anything. - The banks in London 'ad got it, and the banks was all smashed up. - Everybody went bankrup'. Everybody was thrown out of work. Everybody!” - </p> - <p> - He paused, and scrutinised his hearer. The small boy's intelligent face - expressed hopeless perplexity. - </p> - <p> - “That's 'ow it 'appened,” said old Tom. He sought for some means of - expression. “It was like stoppin' a clock,” he said. “Things were quiet - for a bit, deadly quiet, except for the air-ships fighting about in the - sky, and then people begun to get excited. I remember my lars' customer, - the very lars' customer that ever I 'ad. He was a Mr. Moses Gluckstein, a - city gent and very pleasant and fond of sparrowgrass and chokes, and 'e - cut in—there 'adn't been no customers for days—and began to - talk very fast, offerin' me for anything I 'ad, anything, petaties or - anything, its weight in gold. 'E said it was a little speculation 'e - wanted to try. 'E said it was a sort of bet reely, and very likely 'e'd - lose; but never mind that, 'e wanted to try. 'E always 'ad been a gambler, - 'e said. 'E said I'd only got to weigh it out and 'e'd give me 'is cheque - right away. Well, that led to a bit of a argument, perfect respectful it - was, but a argument about whether a cheque was still good, and while 'e - was explaining there come by a lot of these here unemployed with a great - banner they 'ad for every one to read—every one could read those - days—'We want Food.' Three or four of 'em suddenly turns and comes - into my shop. - </p> - <p> - “'Got any food?' says one. - </p> - <p> - “'No,' I says, 'not to sell. I wish I 'ad. But if I 'ad, I'm afraid I - couldn't let you have it. This gent, 'e's been offerin' me—' - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Gluckstein 'e tried to stop me, but it was too late. - </p> - <p> - “'What's 'e been offerin' you?' says a great big chap with a 'atchet; - 'what's 'e been offerin you?' I 'ad to tell. - </p> - <p> - “'Boys,' 'e said, ''ere's another feenancier!' and they took 'im out there - and then, and 'ung 'im on a lam'pose down the street. 'E never lifted a - finger to resist. After I tole on 'im 'e never said a word....” - </p> - <p> - Tom meditated for a space. “First chap I ever sin 'ung!” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Ow old was you?” asked Teddy. - </p> - <p> - “'Bout thirty,” said old Tom. - </p> - <p> - “Why! I saw free pig-stealers 'ung before I was six,” said Teddy. “Father - took me because of my birfday being near. Said I ought to be blooded....” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you never saw no-one killed by a moty car, any'ow,” said old Tom - after a moment of chagrin. “And you never saw no dead men carried into a - chemis' shop.” - </p> - <p> - Teddy's momentary triumph faded. “No,” he said, “I 'aven't.” - </p> - <p> - “Nor won't. Nor won't. You'll never see the things I've seen, never. Not - if you live to be a 'undred... Well, as I was saying, that's how the - Famine and Riotin' began. Then there was strikes and Socialism, things I - never did 'old with, worse and worse. There was fightin' and shootin' - down, and burnin' and plundering. They broke up the banks up in London and - got the gold, but they couldn't make food out of gold. 'Ow did _we_ get on? - Well, we kep' quiet. We didn't interfere with no-one and no-one didn't - interfere with us. We 'ad some old 'tatoes about, but mocely we lived on - rats. Ours was a old 'ouse, full of rats, and the famine never seemed to - bother 'em. Orfen we got a rat. Orfen. But moce of the people who lived - hereabouts was too tender stummicked for rats. Didn't seem to fancy 'em. - They'd been used to all sorts of fallals, and they didn't take to 'onest - feeding, not till it was too late. Died rather. - </p> - <p> - “It was the famine began to kill people. Even before the Purple Death came - along they was dying like flies at the end of the summer. 'Ow I remember - it all! I was one of the first to 'ave it. I was out, seein' if I mightn't - get 'old of a cat or somethin', and then I went round to my bit of ground - to see whether I couldn't get up some young turnips I'd forgot, and I was - took something awful. You've no idee the pain, Teddy—it doubled me - up pretty near. I jes' lay down by 'at there corner, and your aunt come - along to look for me and dragged me 'ome like a sack. - </p> - <p> - “I'd never 'ave got better if it 'adn't been for your aunt. 'Tom,' she - says to me, 'you got to get well,' and I '<i>ad</i> to. Then <i>she</i> sickened. She - sickened but there ain't much dyin' about your aunt. 'Lor!' she says, 'as - if I'd leave you to go muddlin' along alone!' That's what she says. She's - got a tongue, 'as your aunt. But it took 'er 'air off—and arst - though I might, she's never cared for the wig I got 'er—orf the old - lady what was in the vicarage garden. - </p> - <p> - “Well, this 'ere Purple Death,—it jes' wiped people out, Teddy. You - couldn't bury 'em. And it took the dogs and the cats too, and the rats and - 'orses. At last every house and garden was full of dead bodies. London - way, you couldn't go for the smell of there, and we 'ad to move out of the - 'I street into that villa we got. And all the water run short that way. - The drains and underground tunnels took it. Gor' knows where the Purple - Death come from; some say one thing and some another. Some said it come - from eatin' rats and some from eatin' nothin'. Some say the Asiatics - brought it from some 'I place, Thibet, I think, where it never did nobody - much 'arm. All I know is it come after the Famine. And the Famine come - after the Penic and the Penic come after the War.” - </p> - <p> - Teddy thought. “What made the Purple Death?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “'Aven't I tole you!” - </p> - <p> - “But why did they 'ave a Penic?” - </p> - <p> - “They 'ad it.” - </p> - <p> - “But why did they start the War?” - </p> - <p> - “They couldn't stop theirselves. 'Aving them airships made 'em.” - </p> - <p> - “And 'ow did the War end?” - </p> - <p> - “Lord knows if it's ended, boy,” said old Tom. “Lord knows if it's ended. - There's been travellers through 'ere—there was a chap only two - summers ago—say it's goin' on still. They say there's bands of - people up north who keep on with it and people in Germany and China and - 'Merica and places. 'E said they still got flying-machines and gas and - things. But we 'aven't seen nothin' in the air now for seven years, and - nobody 'asn't come nigh of us. Last we saw was a crumpled sort of airship - going away—over there. It was a littleish-sized thing and lopsided, - as though it 'ad something the matter with it.” - </p> - <p> - He pointed, and came to a stop at a gap in the fence, the vestiges of the - old fence from which, in the company of his neighbour Mr. Stringer the - milkman, he had once watched the South of England Aero Club's Saturday - afternoon ascents. Dim memories, it may be, of that particular afternoon - returned to him. - </p> - <p> - “There, down there, where all that rus' looks so red and bright, that's - the gas-works.” - </p> - <p> - “What's gas?” asked the little boy. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, a hairy sort of nothin' what you put in balloons to make 'em go up. - And you used to burn it till the 'lectricity come.” - </p> - <p> - The little boy tried vainly to imagine gas on the basis of these - particulars. Then his thoughts reverted to a previous topic. - </p> - <p> - “But why didn't they end the War?” - </p> - <p> - “Obstinacy. Everybody was getting 'urt, but everybody was 'urtin' and - everybody was 'igh-spirited and patriotic, and so they smeshed up things - instead. They jes' went on smeshin'. And afterwards they jes' got - desp'rite and savige.” - </p> - <p> - “It ought to 'ave ended,” said the little boy. - </p> - <p> - “It didn't ought to 'ave begun,” said old Tom, “But people was proud. - People was la-dy-da-ish and uppish and proud. Too much meat and drink they - 'ad. Give in—not them! And after a bit nobody arst 'em to give in. - Nobody arst 'em....” - </p> - <p> - He sucked his old gums thoughtfully, and his gaze strayed away across the - valley to where the shattered glass of the Crystal Palace glittered in the - sun. A dim large sense of waste and irrevocable lost opportunities - pervaded his mind. He repeated his ultimate judgment upon all these - things, obstinately, slowly, and conclusively, his final saying upon the - matter. - </p> - <p> - “You can say what you like,” he said. “It didn't ought ever to 'ave - begun.” - </p> - <p> - He said it simply—somebody somewhere ought to have stopped - something, but who or how or why were all beyond his ken. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The War in the Air, by Herbert George Wells - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR IN THE AIR *** - -***** This file should be named 780-h.htm or 780-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/7/8/780/ - -Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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