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<!DOCTYPE html>
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    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>The War in the Air | Project Gutenberg</title>
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  </head>
  <body>
<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 780 ***</div>
    <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 style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <thead>
        <tr>
          <th style="font-size: xx-small;">CHAPTER</th>
          <th></th>
        </tr>
      </thead>
      <tbody>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr"></td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2H_PREF">Preface to Reprint Edition</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">I.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0001">Of Progress snd the Smallways Family</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">II.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0002">How Bert Smallways got into Difficulties</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">III.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0003">The Balloon</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0004">The German Air-fleet</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">V.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0005">The Battle of the North Atlantic</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0006">How War came to New York</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0007">The &ldquo;Vaterland&rdquo; is Disabled</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0008">A World at War</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">IX.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0009">On Goat Island</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">X.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0010">The World under the War</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr">XI.</td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2HCH0011">The Great Collapse</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td class="tdr"></td>
          <td class="smcap"><a href="#link2H_4_0014">The Epilogue</a></td>
        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>

    <hr>
    <p>
      <br> <br> <a 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 &ldquo;Sausage&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Bert&rdquo; 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&mdash;in support
      of the League to Enforce Peace. K.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a 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 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>
      &ldquo;This here Progress,&rdquo; said Mr. Tom Smallways, &ldquo;it keeps on.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'd hardly think it could keep on,&rdquo; said Mr. Tom Smallways.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was long 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&mdash;balloons in course of inflation for
      the South of England Aero Club's Saturday-afternoon ascent.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They goes up every Saturday,&rdquo; said his neighbour, Mr. Stringer, the
      milkman. &ldquo;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&mdash;uppings, rather. It's been the salvation of them gas
      companies.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Larst Satiday I got three barrer-loads of gravel off my petaters,&rdquo; said
      Mr. Tom Smallways. &ldquo;Three barrer-loads! What they dropped as ballase. Some
      of the plants was broke, and some was buried.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ladies, they say, goes up!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I suppose we got to call 'em ladies,&rdquo; said Mr. Tom Smallways.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Still, it ain't hardly my idea of a lady&mdash;flying about in the air,
      and throwing gravel at people. It ain't what I been accustomed to consider
      ladylike, whether or no.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;You'd hardly think it could keep on,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;where the gas-works is&rdquo; 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&mdash;going right away
      into London itself&mdash;bicycles, motor-cars and then more motor-cars, a
      Carnegie library.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'd hardly think it could keep on,&rdquo; 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&mdash;apples from
      the State of New York, apples from California, apples from Canada, apples
      from New Zealand, &ldquo;pretty lookin' fruit, but not what I should call
      English apples,&rdquo; said Tom&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;he could ride bicycles for miles that would
      have come to pieces instantly under you or me&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;He's a go-ahead chap, is Bert,&rdquo; said Tom. &ldquo;He knows a thing or two.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Let's hope he don't know too much,&rdquo; said Jessica, who had a fine sense of
      limitations.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's go-ahead Times,&rdquo; said Tom. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It wasn't suited to him, Tom. It was a gentleman's tie. He wasn't up to
      it&mdash;not the rest of him, It wasn't becoming&rdquo;...
    </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)&mdash;heads down,
      handle-bars down, backbones curved&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Orf to Brighton!&rdquo; said old Smallways, regarding his youngest son from the
      sitting-room window over the green-grocer's shop with something between
      pride and reprobation. &ldquo;When I was 'is age, I'd never been to London,
      never bin south of Crawley&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You can't say <i>I</i> bin to Brighton, father,&rdquo; said Tom.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nor don't want to go,&rdquo; said Jessica sharply; &ldquo;creering about and spendin'
      your money.&rdquo;
     </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
      &ldquo;Clipper of the Clouds,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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, &ldquo;It's bound to come,&rdquo; 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,
      &ldquo;Aeroplanes made and repaired.&rdquo; It quite upset Tom&mdash;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, &ldquo;Bound
      to come,&rdquo; and then you know it didn't come. There was a hitch. They flew&mdash;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&mdash;simply.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's this 'stability' does 'em,&rdquo; said Grubb, repeating his newspaper.
      &ldquo;They pitch and they pitch, till they pitch themselves to pieces.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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 &ldquo;just
      a little bit of the rail.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Suppose the gyroscope stopped!&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;When he was a boy, there wasn't nothing higher than
      your chimbleys&mdash;there wasn't a wire nor a cable in the sky!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;the Home Counties Power Distribution Company set up
      transformers and a generating station close beside the old gas-works&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      4
    </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, &ldquo;When are we going to fly?&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;My next's going to be
      an aeroplane, so far as I can see. I've had enough of roads and ways.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They TORK,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They talk&mdash;and they do,&rdquo; said the soldier.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The thing's coming&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It keeps ON coming,&rdquo; said Bert; &ldquo;I shall believe when I see it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That won't be long,&rdquo; said the soldier.
    </p>
    <p>
      The conversation seemed degenerating into an amiable wrangle of
      contradiction.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I tell you they ARE flying,&rdquo; the soldier insisted. &ldquo;I see it myself.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We've all seen it,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't mean flap up and smash up; I mean real, safe, steady, controlled
      flying, against the wind, good and right.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You ain't seen that!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I 'AVE! Aldershot. They try to keep it a secret. They got it right
      enough. You bet&mdash;our War Office isn't going to be caught napping this
      time.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert's incredulity was shaken. He asked questions&mdash;and the soldier
      expanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I tell you they got nearly a square mile fenced in&mdash;a sort of
      valley. Fences of barbed wire ten feet high, and inside that they do
      things. Chaps about the camp&mdash;now and then we get a peep. It isn't
      only us neither. There's the Japanese; you bet they got it too&mdash;and
      the Germans!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Funny thing fighting'll be,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Flying's going to break out,&rdquo; said the soldier. &ldquo;When it DOES come, when
      the curtain does go up, I tell you you'll find every one on the stage&mdash;busy....
      Such fighting, too!... I suppose you don't read the papers about this sort
      of thing?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I read 'em a bit,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, have you noticed what one might call the remarkable case of the
      disappearing inventor&mdash;the inventor who turns up in a blaze of
      publicity, fires off a few successful experiments, and vanishes?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Can't say I 'ave,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;no address. First&mdash;oh! it's an old
      story now&mdash;there was those Wright Brothers out in America. They
      glided&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The soldier prepared to light his pipe.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Looks like a secret society got hold of them,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Secret society! NAW!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The soldier lit his match, and drew. &ldquo;Secret society,&rdquo; he repeated, with
      his pipe between his teeth and the match flaring, in response to his
      words. &ldquo;War Departments; that's more like it.&rdquo; He threw his match aside,
      and walked to his machine. &ldquo;I tell you, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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&mdash;not to mention our little circus
      at Aldershot, and the experimental camp in Galway. No!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;I'd like to see one of them, anyhow. Jest to help
      believing. I'll believe when I see, that I'll promise you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'll see 'em, fast enough,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;If what he says is true,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;me and Grubb, we been wasting our
      blessed old time. Besides incurring expense with that green-'ouse.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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
      &ldquo;wing-cases&rdquo;&mdash;if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles&mdash;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&mdash;it
      was near the big model of a megatherium in the Crystal Palace grounds&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Me name's Butteridge,&rdquo; he shouted; &ldquo;B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E.&mdash;Got it? Me
      mother was Scotch.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;he visited and hovered over Manchester and
      Liverpool and Oxford on his way, and spelt his name out to each place&mdash;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&mdash;it was low water&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Look here, you chaps,&rdquo; he said, as his assistant did so, &ldquo;I'm tired to
      death, and saddle sore. I can't give you a word of talk. I'm too&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;an
      eloquent cavity beneath a vast black moustache&mdash;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. &ldquo;P'raps old Grubb'll mind the shop a bit now,&rdquo; he said,
      &ldquo;and put his blessed model in the fire. Not that that can save us, if we
      don't tide over with Steinhart's account.&rdquo;
     </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, &ldquo;give the
      newspapers fits.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Imperial Englishman,&rdquo; and his first wish and
      his last was to see his invention the privilege and monopoly of the
      Empire. Only&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      It was there the difficulty began.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Butteridge, it became evident, was a man singularly free from any
      false modesty&mdash;indeed, from any modesty of any kind&mdash;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&mdash;&ldquo;a
      white-livered skunk,&rdquo; 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&mdash;no
      uncle with a big watch and a little baby ever harped upon it so
      relentlessly; whatever evasion they attempted he set aside. He &ldquo;gloried in
      his love,&rdquo; he said, and compelled them to write it down.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's of course a private affair, Mr. Butteridge,&rdquo; they would object.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;a
      noble woman&mdash;misunderstood. I intend to vindicate her, sorr, to the
      four winds of heaven!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I lurve England,&rdquo; he used to say&mdash;&ldquo;lurve England, but Puritanism,
      sorr, I abhor. It fills me with loathing. It raises my gorge. Take my own
      case.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;his
      mother who crowned a complete encyclopedia of maternal virtue by being
      &ldquo;largely Scotch.&rdquo; She was not quite neat, but nearly so. &ldquo;I owe everything
      in me to me mother,&rdquo; he asserted&mdash;&ldquo;everything. Eh!&rdquo; and&mdash;&ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </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, &ldquo;Mr. Butteridge Speaks his Mind.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Therein the inventor&mdash;if he was an inventor&mdash;poured out his
      heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I came from the end of the earth,&rdquo; he said, which rather seemed to
      confirm the Cape Town story, &ldquo;bringing me Motherland the secret that would
      give her the empire of the world. And what do I get?&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;I am
      sniffed at by elderly mandarins!... And the woman I love is treated like a
      leper!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I am an Imperial Englishman,&rdquo; he went on in a splendid outburst,
      subsequently written into the interview by his own hand; &ldquo;but there there
      are limits to the human heart! There are younger nations&mdash;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&mdash;THERE
      ARE OTHER NATIONS!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      This speech it was that particularly impressed Bert Smallways. &ldquo;If them
      Germans or them Americans get hold of this,&rdquo; he said impressively to his
      brother, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I suppose you couldn't lend us a hand this morning,&rdquo; said Jessica, in his
      impressive pause. &ldquo;Everybody in Bun Hill seems wanting early potatoes at
      once. Tom can't carry half of them.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We're living on a volcano,&rdquo; said Bert, disregarding the suggestion. &ldquo;At
      any moment war may come&mdash;such a war!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He shook his head portentously.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'd better take this lot first, Tom,&rdquo; said Jessica. She turned briskly
      on Bert. &ldquo;Can you spare us a morning?&rdquo; she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I dessay I can,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;The shop's very quiet s'morning. Though all
      this danger to the Empire worries me something frightful.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Work'll take it off your mind,&rdquo; 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 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
      &amp; 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 &amp; 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 &ldquo;Bicycles on Hire,&rdquo; &ldquo;Repairs,&rdquo; &ldquo;Free inflation,&rdquo; &ldquo;Petrol,&rdquo;
       and similar attractions. They were agents for several obscure makes of
      bicycle,&mdash;two samples constituted the stock,&mdash;and occasionally
      they effected a sale; they also repaired punctures and did their best&mdash;though
      luck was not always on their side&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;This ain't 'ad fair usage,&rdquo; he used to begin.
    </p>
    <p>
      He became a mild embodiment of the spirit of reason. &ldquo;You can't expect a
      bicycle to take you up in its arms and carry you,&rdquo; he used to say. &ldquo;You
      got to show intelligence. After all&mdash;it's machinery.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Here's one of the places where a chap might get a living by keeping
      hens,&rdquo; said Grubb.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You can't get a living by keeping hens,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'd keep the hen and have it spatch-cocked,&rdquo; said Grubb. &ldquo;The motor
      chaps would pay for it.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Sooner or later,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;we shall get a motor-car
      through this.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; said Grubb. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And meanwhile,&rdquo; said Bert, with great artfulness, &ldquo;I'm going to buy
      myself a dog.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;I want a good, deaf, slow-moving
      dog,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A dog that doesn't put himself out for things.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      They displayed inconvenient curiosity; they declared a great scarcity of
      deaf dogs.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;dogs aren't deaf.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mine's got to be,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;I've HAD dogs that aren't deaf. All I
      want. It's like this, you see&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;and a
      loud, bellowing, unreasonable person at that&mdash;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 &amp;
      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&mdash;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, &ldquo;Gurr,&rdquo;
       as they passed, and shouted, &ldquo;Go it!&rdquo; 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>
Little it seemed to matter to Mr. Bert Smallways that a newspaper
placard proclaimed:&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;- GERMANY
DENOUNCES THE MONROE           DOCTRINE.

   AMBIGUOUS ATTITUDE OF JAPAN.
WHAT WILL BRITAIN DO? IS IT WAR?&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
</pre>
    <p>
      This sort of thing was alvays going on, and on holidays one disregarded it
      as a matter of course. Week-days, 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>
      &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo; said Edna.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh!&mdash;manoeuvres,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh! I thought they did them at Easter,&rdquo; 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 they 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&mdash;or attempted to light, for the issue was a
      doubtful one&mdash;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 &ldquo;honk, honk.&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Bert!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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&mdash;a
      good idea in its way, but not immediately helpful. He turned upon Edna
      sharply. &ldquo;Get a lot of wet sand,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;We want wet sand,&rdquo; she said, and
      added, &ldquo;our motor's on fire.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Wet sand,&rdquo; said the short, fat man,
      scrabbling terribly&mdash;&ldquo;wet sand.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Don't throw water on it!&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;don't
      throw water on it!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Don't throw water on it!&rdquo; they cried. Also there was no water.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Beat it out, you fools!&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Oh, my God!&rdquo; and burst loudly into tears.
      &ldquo;Help!&rdquo; she said, and &ldquo;Fire!&rdquo;
     </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, &ldquo;Can WE help at all?&rdquo;
     </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.
      &ldquo;'ERE!&rdquo; cried Bert; &ldquo;keep on!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;checked, repulsed, dismayed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Edna was struck by the benevolent appearance of an elderly spectator in a
      silk hat and Sabbatical garments. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried to him. &ldquo;Help this young
      man! How can you stand and see it?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A cry of &ldquo;The tarpaulin!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Have
      you a tarpaulin?&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the gentlemanly man. &ldquo;Yes. We've got a tarpaulin.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's it,&rdquo; said the earnest-looking man, suddenly shouting. &ldquo;Let's have
      it, quick!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; cried the earnest-looking man to Grubb. &ldquo;Ketch holt!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;We ought to have done this before,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Save the trailer!&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Stone deaf,&rdquo; and added, &ldquo;Nasty things.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A rosy-faced man in a straw hat claimed attention. &ldquo;I DID save the front
      wheel,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you'd have had that tyre catch, too, if I hadn't kept
      turning it round.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;That wheel's worth
      a pound,&rdquo; said the rosy-faced man, making a song of it. &ldquo;I kep' turning it
      round.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Newcomers kept arriving from the south with the question, &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo;
       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>
      &ldquo;I'm afraid,&rdquo; said the gentleman of the motor-car, &ldquo;my tarpaulin's a bit
      done for.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Grubb admitted that the owner was the best judge of that.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nothin, else I can do for you?&rdquo; said the gentleman of the motor-car, it
      may be with a suspicion of irony.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bert was roused to action. &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;All in the day's work,&rdquo; said the gentleman with the motor-car, and turned
      to Edna. &ldquo;Very pleased indeed,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But what's Bert going to do?&rdquo; said Edna.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I don't know that we can accommodate Bert,&rdquo; said the motor-car gentleman,
      &ldquo;though we're tremendously anxious to oblige.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You couldn't take the whole lot?&rdquo; said Bert, waving his hand at the
      deboshed and blackened ruins on the ground.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm awfully afraid I can't,&rdquo; said the Oxford man. &ldquo;Awfully sorry, you
      know.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Then I'll have to stick 'ere for a bit,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;I got to see the
      thing through. You go on, Edna.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't like leavin' you, Bert.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You can't 'elp it, Edna.&rdquo;...
    </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>
      &ldquo;Cheer up, old Bert!&rdquo; cried Edna, with artificial cheerfulness. &ldquo;So long.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;So long, Edna,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;See you to-morrer.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;See you to-morrer,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;I WISH that 'adn't 'appened,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;That's the end of THAT game!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      3
    </p>
    <p>
      The next morning found the firm of Grubb &amp; 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:&mdash;
      &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
      REPORTED AMERICAN ULTIMATUM.
    </p>
<pre>
       BRITAIN MUST FIGHT.

  OUR INFATUATED WAR OFFICE STILL
REFUSES TO LISTEN TO MR. BUTTERIDGE.
</pre>
    <p>
      GREAT MONO-RAIL DISASTER AT TIMBUCTOO.&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
    </p>
    <p>
      or this:&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
      WAR A QUESTION OF HOURS.
    </p>
<pre>
        NEW YORK CALM.

     EXCITEMENT IN BERLIN.&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
</pre>
    <p>
      or again:&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
      WASHINGTON STILL SILENT.
    </p>
<pre>
     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.&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
    </p>
    <p>
      or this:&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
      WILL AMERICA FIGHT?
    </p>
<pre>
     ANTI-GERMAN RIOT IN BAGDAD.

  THE MUNICIPAL SCANDALS AT DAMASCUS.
</pre>
    <p>
      MR. BUTTERIDGE'S INVENTION FOR AMERICA.&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
    </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
      &ldquo;out,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Grubb, o' man,&rdquo; he said, distilling the quintessence, &ldquo;I'm fair sick of
      this shop.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;So'm I,&rdquo; said Grubb.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm out of conceit with it. I don't seem to care ever to speak to a
      customer again.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There's that trailer,&rdquo; said Grubb, after a pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Blow the trailer!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Anyhow, I didn't leave a deposit on it. I
      didn't do that. Still&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He turned round on his friend. &ldquo;Look 'ere,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we aren't gettin' on
      here. We been losing money hand over fist. We got things tied up in fifty
      knots.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What can we do?&rdquo; said Grubb.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; said Grubb&mdash;&ldquo;that's all right; but it ain't your
      capital been sunk in it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No need for us to sink after our capital,&rdquo; said Bert, ignoring the point.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm not going to be held responsible for that trailer, anyhow. That ain't
      my affair.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Leavin' me?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Leavin' you. If you must be left.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;now it was failure and dust. Very likely
      the landlord would be round presently to go on with the row about the
      window.... &ldquo;Where d'you think of going, Bert?&rdquo; Grubb asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bert turned round and regarded him. &ldquo;I thought it out as I was walking
      'ome, and in bed. I couldn't sleep a wink.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What did you think out?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Plans.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What plans?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh! You're for stickin, here.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not if anything better was to offer.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's only an ideer,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You made the girls laugh yestiday, that song you sang.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Seems a long time ago now,&rdquo; said Grubb.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And old Edna nearly cried&mdash;over that bit of mine.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;She got a fly in her eye,&rdquo; said Grubb; &ldquo;I saw it. But what's this got to
      do with your plan?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No end,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Ow?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't you see?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not singing in the streets?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;easy. Six choice items, and one or two for encores and
      patter. I'm all right for the patter anyhow.&rdquo;
     </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, &ldquo;They are really gentlemen,&rdquo; and then dollop, dollop came the
      coppers in the hat. Sometimes even silver. It was all income; no
      outgoings, no bills. &ldquo;I'm on, Bert,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Right O!&rdquo; said Bert, and, &ldquo;Now we shan't be long.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We needn't start without capital neither,&rdquo; said Grubb. &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We'll do that,&rdquo; said Grubb with zest&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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
      &ldquo;Scarlet Mr. E's,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;There's people in the world,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Grubb, &ldquo;badly.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We want to forget things&mdash;and cut all these rotten old worries. They
      ain't doin' us good.&rdquo;
     </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! &ldquo;The Desert Dervishes,&rdquo; they would call
      themselves, and their chief songs would be those popular ditties, &ldquo;In my
      Trailer,&rdquo; and &ldquo;What Price Hair-pins Now?&rdquo;
     </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:&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
    </p>
    <p>
      THE WAR-CLOUD DARKENS&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-
    </p>
    <p>
      Nothing else but that.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Always rottin' about war now,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They'll get it in the neck in real earnest one of these days, if they
      ain't precious careful.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; said Dymchurch,
      &ldquo;what's this?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Then our young men, according to a preconcerted plan, wheeled round from
      file to line, dismounted and stood it attention. &ldquo;Ladies and gentlemen,&rdquo;
       they said, &ldquo;we beg to present ourselves&mdash;the Desert Dervishes.&rdquo; They
      bowed profoundly.
    </p>
<pre>
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. &ldquo;There ain't a bob on the beach,&rdquo; said Grubb in an
undertone, and the Desert Dervishes plied their bicycles with comic
&ldquo;business,&rdquo; that got a laugh from one very unsophisticated little boy.
Then they took a deep breath and struck into the cheerful strain of
&ldquo;What Price Hair-pins Now?&rdquo; 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.

     &ldquo;Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang...
     What Price Hair-pins Now?&rdquo;
 </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 &ldquo;wolf!&rdquo; so often, cried &ldquo;wolf!&rdquo; now in
      vain.
    </p>
    <p>
      5
    </p>
<pre>
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. &ldquo;Jest as we're gettin' hold
of 'em,&rdquo; muttered Grubb, &ldquo;up comes a counter-attraction. Go it, Bert!&rdquo;

     &ldquo;Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang
     What Price Hair-pins Now?&rdquo;
 </pre>
    <p>
      The balloon rose and fell, went out of sight&mdash;&ldquo;landed, thank
      goodness,&rdquo; said Grubb&mdash;re-appeared with a leap. &ldquo;'ENG!&rdquo; said Grubb.
      &ldquo;Step it, Bert, or they'll see it!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      They finished their dance, and then stood frankly staring.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There's something wrong with that balloon,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;dead frost.&rdquo;
       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. &ldquo;Catch hold of the rope!&rdquo; they heard, quite
      plain.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Salvage, Bert!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Pull, I tell
      you!&rdquo; said the man in the car&mdash;&ldquo;pull!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Pull her in,&rdquo; said the man in the car. &ldquo;SHE'S FAINTED!&rdquo;
     </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: &ldquo;Fainted, she has!&rdquo; and then: &ldquo;It's her heart&mdash;broken
      with all she's had to go through.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Lay hold of it,&rdquo; said the man in the car, and his face
      appeared close to Bert's&mdash;a strangely familiar face, fierce eyebrows,
      a flattish nose, a huge black moustache. He had discarded coat and
      waistcoat&mdash;perhaps with some idea of presently having to swim for his
      life&mdash;and his black hair was extraordinarily disordered. &ldquo;Will all
      you people get hold round the car?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There's a lady here fainted&mdash;or
      got failure of the heart. Heaven alone knows which! My name is Butteridge.
      Butteridge, my name is&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He stuck his head out between the ropes abruptly, and said, in a note of
      earnest expostulation: &ldquo;Get some brandy!&mdash;some neat brandy!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Me dear!&rdquo; said Mr.
      Butteridge, in a common, loud voice, &ldquo;we're safe!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She gave no sign.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Me dear!&rdquo; said Mr. Butteridge, in a greatly intensified loud voice,
      &ldquo;we're safe!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      She was still quite impassive.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then Mr. Butteridge showed the fiery core of his soul. &ldquo;If she is dead,&rdquo;
       he said, slowly lifting a fist towards the balloon above him, and speaking
      in an immense tremulous bellow&mdash;&ldquo;if she is dead, I will r-r-rend the
      heavens like a garment! I must get her out,&rdquo; he cried, his nostrils
      dilated with emotion&mdash;&ldquo;I must get her out. I cannot have her die in a
      wicker-work basket nine feet square&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He swept the lady together by a powerful movement of his arms, and lifted
      her. &ldquo;Keep the car from jumping,&rdquo; he said to those who clustered about
      him. &ldquo;Keep your weight on it. She is no light woman, and when she is out
      of it&mdash;it will be relieved.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Are you ready?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Will some one assist me?&rdquo;
       he said. &ldquo;If they would take this lady?&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;Alfred! Save me!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Confound it!&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;You might have said you were going to tip the basket.&rdquo; 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&mdash;they seemed all heads and feet&mdash;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. &ldquo;My crikey!&rdquo; said Bert; &ldquo;here's a go!&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;doing something.&rdquo; &ldquo;I'm not going to
      mess about with the thing,&rdquo; he said at last, and sat down upon the
      mattress. &ldquo;I'm not going to touch it.... I wonder what one ought to do?&rdquo;
     </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 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, &ldquo;on the dibs,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;put them over the &ldquo;Desert Dervish&rdquo; sheet
      that covered his cheap best suit&mdash;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&mdash;until they descend.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gollys!&rdquo; he said at last, feeling a need for talking; &ldquo;it's better than a
      motor-bike.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's all right!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I suppose they're telegraphing about, about me.&rdquo;...
    </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 &ldquo;chuck down&rdquo; if the
      balloon fell. (&ldquo;Not much falling just yet,&rdquo; said Bert.)
    </p>
    <p>
      There were an aneroid and another box-shaped instrument hanging from the
      ring. The latter had an ivory plate bearing &ldquo;statoscope&rdquo; and other words
      in French, and a little indicator quivered and waggled, between Montee and
      Descente. &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;That tells if you're going up or
      down.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Refreshments,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;A 'ome from 'ome,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Wonder how long a balloon keeps up?&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      He imagined he was not moving, so insensibly did the monster drift with
      the air about it. &ldquo;No good coming down till we shift a bit,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      He consulted the statoscope.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Still Monty,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Wonder what would happen if you pulled a cord?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he decided. &ldquo;I ain't going to mess it about.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;No go!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Atmospheric pressure,&rdquo;
       said Bert, finding a use at last for the elementary physiography of his
      seventh-standard days. &ldquo;I'll have to be more careful next time. No good
      wastin' drink.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;'Eng old Grubb!&rdquo; said Bert,
      slapping unproductive pockets. &ldquo;'E didn't ought to 'ave kep' my box. 'E's
      always sneaking matches.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Je suis Anglais. C'est une
      meprise. Je suis arrive par accident ici,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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 &ldquo;society&rdquo; perhaps, would probably pack him and the
      balloon back to England. If not, he would ask very firmly for the British
      Consul.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Le consuelo Britannique,&rdquo; he decided this would be. &ldquo;Apportez moi a le
      consuelo Britannique, s'il vous plait,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Gollys!&rdquo; in an awestricken tone, and
      then, after a long interval, &ldquo;I wonder if that was her?
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Hul-LO!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;We can understand entirely the
      difficulties of your position, and that you shall possibly be watched at
      the present juncture.&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Funny!&rdquo; said Bert, and meditated.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then he went through the other letters.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They seem to want him to come,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;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>
      &ldquo;They don't quite seem to be the gov'ment,&rdquo; he reflected, after an
      interval. &ldquo;It's more like some firm's paper. All this printed stuff at the
      top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons. Ballonstoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to
      me.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But he was trying to sell his blessed secret abroad. That's all right. No
      Greek about that! Gollys! Here IS the secret!&rdquo;
     </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.
      &ldquo;Lord&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;here am I and the whole blessed secret of flying&mdash;lost
      up here on the roof of everywhere.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Let's see!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;It's tryin',&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;I wish I'd been brought up to the engineering.
      If I could only make it out!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Uv course!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Voici, Mossoo!&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Bit rummy, I expect, from the point of view of grammar,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;but
      they ought to get the hang of it all right.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But then, if they arst me to explain the blessed thing?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He returned in a worried way to the plans. &ldquo;I don't believe it's all
      here!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;It's the chance of my life!&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      It became more and more manifest to him that it wasn't. &ldquo;Directly I come
      down they'll telegraph&mdash;put it in the papers. Butteridge'll know of
      it and come along&mdash;on my track.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Wouldn't do. What's the good of thinking of it?&rdquo; 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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Wonder if I ever saw anything,&rdquo; he said, and then: &ldquo;There ain't such
      things....&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;NOW what's going to 'appen?&rdquo; 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&mdash;into
      the sea!
    </p>
    <p>
      He became convulsively active.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ballast!&rdquo; 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.
      &ldquo;Thang-God!&rdquo; 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&mdash;or rather Mr.
      Butteridge's&mdash;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. &ldquo;I wonder how you land,&rdquo; he thought.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;S'pose I OUGHT to land?&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Lemme see! One might say just 'Pre'nez'! Wish I knew the French for take
      hold of the rope!... I suppose they are French?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He surveyed the country again. &ldquo;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...&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The respectability of the country's appearance awakened answering chords
      in his nature.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Make myself a bit ship-shape first,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Blow!&rdquo; said Mr. Smallways. &ldquo;I've over-done the ballast trick.... Wonder
      when I shall get down again?... brekfus' on board, anyhow.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;The blessed thing goes up if you only LOOK overboard,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Old Butteridge won't like me
      unpicking this.&rdquo; 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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Wish I knew how to get down,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Grapnel,&rdquo; said Bert, and then with an afterthought shouted, &ldquo;TETES there,
      you! I say! I say! TETES. 'Eng it!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;he fancied afterwards it was a turnip&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;replacing the
      solitary horseman of the classic romances&mdash;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. &ldquo;Shootin' at a chap,&rdquo; for example, and
      &ldquo;I'll come down right enough soon as I find out 'ow.&rdquo; 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.&mdash;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 &ldquo;gome
      down or you will be shot.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;All very well,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;but 'ow?&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;before humanity realized that
      world supremacy was a dream&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 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 &ldquo;known his place&rdquo; 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-roses, and the sort of sunshine that was best in the world.
      Newspapers and politics and visits to &ldquo;Lunnon&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Frenchified&rdquo; 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&mdash;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 &ldquo;Subject Races,&rdquo; and he
      was ready to die&mdash;by proxy in the person of any one who cared to
      enlist&mdash;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&mdash;the age that blundered at last into the catastrophe of the War
      in the Air&mdash;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 &ldquo;the
      immemorial east&rdquo;; and also, in the inspired words of Kipling&mdash;
    </p>
<pre>
             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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Now or never,&rdquo; said the Germans&mdash;&ldquo;now
      or never we may seize the air&mdash;as once the British seized the seas!
      While all the other powers are still experimenting.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;the
      new Chivalry, as it was called&mdash;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, &ldquo;The future of Germany lies in the air,&rdquo;
       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. &ldquo;O Lord!&rdquo; he groaned, in an agony of indecision. Then his eye caught
      his sandals, and he felt a spasm of self-disgust. &ldquo;They'll think I'm a
      bloomin' idiot,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Booteraidge!
      Ja! Ja! Herr Booteraidge! Selbst!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;the
      name of &ldquo;Herr Booteraidge.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gollys!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;They've spotted it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Besser,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Do you spik Cherman, Herr Booteraidge?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert decided that he had better be dazed. He did his best to seem
      thoroughly dazed. &ldquo;Where AM I?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      Volubility prevailed. &ldquo;Der Prinz,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;mitbringen.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      An earnest-faced, emaciated man with a white moustache appealed to Bert.
      &ldquo;Herr Booteraidge, sir, we are chust to start!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where am I?&rdquo; Bert repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some one shook him by the other shoulder. &ldquo;Are you Herr Booteraidge?&rdquo; he
      asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Herr Booteraidge, we are chust to start!&rdquo; repeated the white moustache,
      and then helplessly, &ldquo;What is de goot? What can we do?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The officer from the telephone repeated his sentence about &ldquo;Der Prinz&rdquo; and
      &ldquo;mitbringen.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Ja! Ja!&rdquo; several times, also something about &ldquo;Kopf.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;'Ullo!&rdquo; said
      Bert, startled. &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is all right,&rdquo; the doctor explained; &ldquo;they are to carry you.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; asked Bert, unanswered.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Put your arms roundt their&mdash;hals&mdash;round them!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes! but where?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Hold tight!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Vorwarts!&rdquo; 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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Gollys!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;What next?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He stared about him at the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Butteridge! Shall I try to keep it up, or shan't I?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The room he was in puzzled him. &ldquo;'Tisn't a prison and 'tisn't a norfis?&rdquo;
       Then the old trouble came uppermost. &ldquo;I wish to 'eaven I 'adn't these
      silly sandals on,&rdquo; he cried querulously to the universe. &ldquo;They give the
      whole blessed show away.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;I say!&rdquo; he said in faultless English as he entered. He had a beaming
      face, and a sort of pinkish blond hair. &ldquo;Fancy you being Butteridge.&rdquo; He
      slapped Bert's meagre luggage down.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We'd have started,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;in another half-hour! You didn't give
      yourself much time!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He surveyed Bert curiously. His gaze rested for a fraction of a moment on
      the sandals. &ldquo;You ought to have come on your flying-machine, Mr.
      Butteridge.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He didn't wait for an answer. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;They're running the water out of the ballonette already.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What water?&rdquo; asked Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The water that anchored us. Artful dodge. Eh?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert tried to take it in.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; said the compact young man. &ldquo;You don't understand.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      A gentle quivering crept upon Bert's senses. &ldquo;That's the engine,&rdquo; said the
      compact young man approvingly. &ldquo;Now we shan't be long.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Another long listening interval.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cabin swayed. &ldquo;By Jove! we're starting already;&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;We're
      starting!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Starting!&rdquo; cried Bert, sitting up. &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;We're off, right
      enough!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I say!&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;where are we starting? I wish you'd explain. What's
      this place? I don't understand.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried the young man, &ldquo;you don't understand?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No. I'm all dazed-like from that crack on the nob I got. Where ARE we?
      WHERE are we starting?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't you know where you are&mdash;what this is?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Not a bit of it! What's all the swaying and the row?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What a lark!&rdquo; cried the young man. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Us!&mdash;off to America?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ra&mdash;ther!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In an airship?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What do YOU think?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Me! going to America on an airship! After that balloon! 'Ere! I say&mdash;I
      don't want to go! I want to walk about on my legs. Let me get out! I
      didn't understand.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said.
      Side by side they looked out.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;We're going up!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We are!&rdquo; said the young man, cheerfully; &ldquo;fast!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Too late, Mr. Butteridge!&rdquo; the young man remarked. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Look 'ere,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;I really am dazed. What's this thing? Where are
      we going?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;This, Mr. Butteridge,&rdquo; said the young man, taking pains to be explicit,
      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But!&mdash;you a German?&rdquo; asked Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Lieutenant Kurt. Luft-lieutenant Kurt, at your service.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But you speak English!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mother was English&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </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.
      &ldquo;Daresay all this is new to you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;not your sort of machine.
      These cabins aren't half bad.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He got up and walked round the little apartment, showing its points.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Here is the bed,&rdquo; he said, whipping down a couch from the wall and
      throwing it back again with a click. &ldquo;Here are toilet things,&rdquo; and he
      opened a neatly arranged cupboard. &ldquo;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&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He took the chair and balanced it on his little finger. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He beamed at Bert. &ldquo;You DO look young,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;I always thought
      you'd be an old man with a beard&mdash;a sort of philosopher. I don't know
      why one should expect clever people always to be old. I do.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;It's a long story,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Look here!&rdquo; he said abruptly, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Right O!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The ex-Rhodes scholar whisked out of the room and reappeared with a
      considerable choice of footwear&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;I don't even wear them myself,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Only brought 'em in the zeal of
      the moment.&rdquo; He laughed confidentially. &ldquo;Had 'em worked for me&mdash;in
      Oxford. By a friend. Take 'em everywhere.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      So Bert chose the pumps.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lieutenant broke into a cheerful snigger. &ldquo;Here we are trying on
      slippers,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and the world going by like a panorama below. Rather
      a lark, eh? Look!&rdquo;
     </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.
      &ldquo;See more outside,&rdquo; said the lieutenant. &ldquo;Let's go! There's a sort of
      little gallery.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Jolly it must be to invent things,&rdquo; said the lieutenant suddenly. &ldquo;How
      did you come to think of your machine first?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Worked it out,&rdquo; said Bert, after a pause. &ldquo;Jest ground away at it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Our people are frightfully keen on you. They thought the British had got
      you. Weren't the British keen?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In a way,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Still&mdash;it's a long story.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I think it's an immense thing&mdash;to invent. I couldn't invent a thing
      to save my life.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Don't you 'ave to dress and things?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've
      always been too hard at Science and things to go into Society and all
      that.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No fear,&rdquo; said Kurt. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      And so presently Bert found himself sitting to eat in the presence of the
      &ldquo;German Alexander&rdquo;&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;a soup,
      some fresh mutton, and cheese&mdash;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 &ldquo;Hoch!&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;a passage paved at first with ravenous trap-doors, and then
      with openwork canvas of the most careless description.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;too big a job....
    </p>
    <p>
      Memories swamped his scheming.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where was I this time last night?&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;'E won't make much of a show
      of it, not without me. Any'ow 'e did 'ave the treasury&mdash;such as it
      was&mdash;in his pocket!&rdquo;... 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.
      &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; cried Bert, &ldquo;what a doing that motor-bicycle give me!&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;See you to-morrer,
      Bert?&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;I'll
      marry 'ER if she don't look out.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I'll 'ave old
      Butteridge on my track, I expect!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;Just now he was by no means on
      his way home. He was flying off to America to fight there. &ldquo;Not much
      fighting,&rdquo; he considered; &ldquo;all our own way.&rdquo; Still, if a shell did happen
      to hit the Vaterland on the underside!...
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;S'pose I ought to make my will.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He lay back for some time composing wills&mdash;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.
      &ldquo;This flying gets on one's nerves,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;mechanical drawing&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;b's,&rdquo; and
      his &ldquo;th's&rdquo; softened towards weak &ldquo;z'ds.&rdquo; He called Bert explosively,
      &ldquo;Pooterage.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You came to us, Herr Pooterage, against your will,&rdquo; he said at
      last.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Ow d'you make that out?&rdquo; asked Bert, after a pause of astonishment.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;but no good. You could not manage ze balloon, and
      anuzzer power than yours prought you to us. Is it not so?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert thought.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Also&mdash;where is ze laty?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Ere!&mdash;what lady?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You started with a laty. That is evident. You shtarted for an afternoon
      excursion&mdash;a picnic. A man of your temperament&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert reflected. &ldquo;'Ow d'you know that?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;I am a man of ze worldt.
      I haf known wise men wear sandals and efen practice vegetarian habits. I
      haf known men&mdash;or at any rate, I haf known chemists&mdash;who did not
      schmoke. You haf, no doubt, put ze laty down somewhere. Well. Let us get
      to&mdash;business. A higher power&rdquo;&mdash;his voice changed its emotional
      quality, his magnified eyes seemed to dilate&mdash;&ldquo;has prought you and
      your secret straight to us. So!&rdquo;&mdash;he bowed his head&mdash;&ldquo;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&mdash;to us. Mr. Pooterage, Chermany will puy it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Will she?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;She will,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Chermany, I am instructed to say,&rdquo; said the secretary, with
      his eyes on the table and his notes spread out, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Crikey!&rdquo; said Bert, overwhelmed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I peg your pardon?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Jest a twinge,&rdquo; said Bert, raising his hand to his bandaged head.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Lady?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Oh! that's aw-right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;about 'er. I 'adn't
      any doubts about that. I&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He stopped. The secretary certainly had a most appalling stare. It seemed
      ages before he looked down again. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He drummed on the table for a second or so, and resumed. &ldquo;I haf to tell
      you, sir, zat you come to us at a crisis in&mdash;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&mdash;to America. Our fleet will descend out of ze air
      upon ze United States&mdash;it is a country quite unprepared for war
      eferywhere&mdash;eferywhere. Zey have always relied on ze Atlantic. And
      their navy. We have selected a certain point&mdash;it is at present ze
      secret of our commanders&mdash;which we shall seize, and zen we shall
      establish a depot&mdash;a sort of inland Gibraltar. It will be&mdash;what
      will it be?&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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!&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He resumed his scrutiny of Bert's face.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's all right, of course,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Jes' lemme think a bit,&rdquo; said Bert, finding the stare debilitating. &ldquo;Look
      'ere!&rdquo; he said at last, with an air of great explicitness, &ldquo;I GOT the
      secret.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But I don't want the name of Butteridge to appear&mdash;see? I been
      thinking that over.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;A little delicacy?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Exactly. You buy the secret&mdash;leastways, I give it you&mdash;from
      Bearer&mdash;see?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      His voice failed him a little, and the stare continued. &ldquo;I want to do the
      thing Enonymously. See?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Still staring. Bert drifted on like a swimmer caught by a current. &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said the secretary.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The nex condition,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;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&mdash;I deliver you the goods&mdash;that's
      all right. Some people 'ave the cheek to say this isn't my invention, see?
      It is, you know&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      His &ldquo;See?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;What
      was that name?&rdquo; he asked at last, putting away the tooth-pick; &ldquo;I must
      write it down.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Albert Peter Smallways,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;And now, Mr. Schmallvays,&rdquo; he said at last, leaning back and resuming the
      stare, &ldquo;tell me: how did you ket hold of Mister Pooterage's balloon?&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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. &ldquo;I
      suppose,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the laty WAS the laty. Bot that is not our affair.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is fery curious and amusing, yes: but I am afraid the Prince may be
      annoyt. He acted wiz his usual decision&mdash;always he acts wiz wonterful
      decision. Like Napoleon. Directly he was tolt of your descent into the
      camp at Dornhof, he said, 'Pring him!&mdash;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&mdash;gompletely. Especially
      now. Particularly now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He resumed that attitude of his, with his underlip pinched between his
      forefingers. He spoke almost confidentially. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He wrinkled his forehead, and drew in the corners of his mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I got the plans,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;ah!&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;And der was also the prestige&mdash;the worldt prestige of Pooterage with
      us.... Well, we must see what we can do.&rdquo; He held out his hand. &ldquo;Gif me
      the plans.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;'Ere, I say!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;Ain't I to 'ave&mdash;nothin'
      for 'em?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The secretary regarded him with benevolent eyes. &ldquo;You do not deserve
      anyzing!&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I might 'ave tore 'em up.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Zey are not yours!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They weren't Butteridge's!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No need to pay anyzing.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert's being seemed to tighten towards desperate deeds. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he said,
      clutching his coat, &ldquo;AIN'T there?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Pe galm,&rdquo; said the secretary. &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;you shall haf five
      hundert poundts. Will that do? Then gif me the plans.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Old beggar!&rdquo; said Bert, as the door clicked. &ldquo;Gaw!&mdash;what an ole
      beggar!&mdash;SHARP!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He sat down in the folding-chair, and whistled noiselessly for a time.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nice 'old swindle for 'im if I tore 'em up! I could 'ave.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. &ldquo;I gave the whole blessed
      show away. If I'd j'es' kep quiet about being Enonymous.... Gaw!... Too
      soon, Bert, my boy&mdash;too soon and too rushy. I'd like to kick my silly
      self.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I couldn't 'ave kep' it up.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;After all, it ain't so very bad,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;After all, five 'undred pounds.... It isn't MY secret, anyhow. It's jes'
      a pickup on the road. Five 'undred.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Wonder what the fare is from America back home?&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Did you ever see this thing go op?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert jumped. &ldquo;Saw it from Bun 'Ill, your Royal Highness.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Von Winterfeld made some explanation.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;How fast did it go?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Couldn't say, your Royal Highness. The papers, leastways the Daily
      Courier, said eighty miles an hour.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      They talked German over that for a time.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Couldt it standt still? Op in the air? That is what I want to know.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It could 'ovver, your Royal Highness, like a wasp,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Viel besser, nicht wahr?&rdquo; 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
      &ldquo;Gott!&rdquo; Some conclusions emerged, and it was apparent that Von Winterfeld
      was instructed to convey them to Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. Schmallvays, you haf obtained a footing in this airship,&rdquo; he said,
      &ldquo;by disgraceful and systematic lying.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Ardly systematic,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The Prince silenced him by a gesture.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And it is within the power of his Highness to dispose of you as a spy.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Ere!&mdash;I came to sell&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ssh!&rdquo; said one of the officers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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,&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We will bring him,&rdquo; said the Prince, and added terribly with a terrible
      glare, &ldquo;als <i>Ballast</i>.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You are to come with us,&rdquo; said Winterfeld, &ldquo;as pallast. Do you
      understandt?&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Go!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Let's go all
      over the ship,&rdquo; 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,
      &ldquo;like the neural and haemal canals,&rdquo; said Kurt, who had dabbled in
      biology.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;But you
      can't go into the gas,&rdquo; protested Bert. &ldquo;You can't breve it.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;We can go
      all over the inside netting and stick up bullet holes or leaks,&rdquo; he
      explained. &ldquo;There's netting inside and out. The whole outer-case is rope
      ladder, so to speak.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;a ladder that was encased in a kind of gas-tight fire
      escape&mdash;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&mdash;the latter for the most part obsolete and smokeless
      now, superseded by huge electric generating stations that consumed their
      own reek&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Much skill is required for those!&mdash;much skill!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Your machine is different from that, Mr. Butteridge?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Quite different,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;More like an insect, and less like a bird.
      And it buzzes, and don't drive about so. What can those things do?&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;What's your real name, then?&rdquo; said Kurt, who was only imperfectly
      informed of the new state of affairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Smallways.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I thought you were a bit of a fraud&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I won't forget,&rdquo; 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 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. &ldquo;Stupendous!&rdquo; Bert heard him say. &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he
      said, &ldquo;get off this locker.&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;They're at it, Smallways,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;At what, sir?&rdquo; said Bert, broken and respectful.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;she's one of their biggest&mdash;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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He spread his maps, he had to talk, and so he delivered a lecture on the
      naval situation to Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Here it is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;for most of its ships were
      steamships&mdash;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&mdash;indeed, on Whit Monday&mdash;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&mdash;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, &ldquo;unless the Japanese have had the same idea as
      the Germans.&rdquo; 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.
      &ldquo;They've been saying things like this in the papers for a long time,&rdquo; he
      remarked. &ldquo;Fancy it coming real!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Kurt had a detailed knowledge of the Miles Standish. &ldquo;She used to be a
      crack ship for gunnery&mdash;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,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;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&mdash;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 south-west by west to New York to make
      a floating depot for us. See?&rdquo; He dabbed his forefinger on the map. &ldquo;Here
      we are. Our train of stores goes there, our battleships elbow the
      Americans out of our way there.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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 &ldquo;Booteraidge&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;a compass. Then he
      compared his map.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We've changed our direction,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Barbarossa disabled and sinking,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Gott im Himmel! Der alte
      Barbarossa! Aber welch ein braver krieger!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He walked about the swinging cabin, and for a time he was wholly German.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then he became English again. &ldquo;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&mdash;Gott!&mdash;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&mdash;nothing! And me up here&mdash;so near and so far! Der alte
      Barbarossa!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Any other ships?&rdquo; asked Smallways, presently.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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!&mdash;never
      before! Good ships and good men on both sides,&mdash;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.&mdash;longitude, 40 degrees 30 minutes W.&mdash;where's that?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He routed out his map again, and stared at it with eyes that did not see.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Der alte Barbarossa! I can't get it out of my head&mdash;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&mdash;men
      I've talked to close! And they've had their day at last! And it wasn't all
      luck for them!
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Gott!&rdquo; he said at last, lowering his binocular, &ldquo;it is like seeing an old
      friend with his nose cut off&mdash;waiting to be finished. Der
      Barbarossa!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Gott!&rdquo; murmured Kurt, taking the glasses Bert restored to him&mdash;&ldquo;Gott!
      Da waren Albrecht&mdash;der gute Albrecht und der alte Zimmermann&mdash;und
      von Rosen!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;This is a rough game, Smallways,&rdquo; he said at last&mdash;&ldquo;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&mdash;one
      does not meet the like of them every day. Albrecht&mdash;there was a man
      named Albrecht&mdash;played the zither and improvised; I keep on wondering
      what has happened to him. He and I&mdash;we were very close friends, after
      the German fashion.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;What's the row?&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; said the lieutenant. &ldquo;Can't you hear?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Into the stillness came the repeated heavy thud of guns, one, two, a
      pause, then three in quick succession.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; said Bert&mdash;&ldquo;guns!&rdquo; 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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;I say! What's up?&rdquo; cried Bert. &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The lieutenant stopped for an instant in the doorway, dark against the
      light passage. &ldquo;You stay where you are, Smallways. You keep there and do
      nothing. We're going into action,&rdquo; 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? &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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&mdash;it was
      a tight fit&mdash;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. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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&mdash;surely not men? Those
      drowning, mangled little creatures tore with their clutching fingers at
      Bert's soul. &ldquo;Oh, Gord!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;Oh, Gord!&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Whack-bang, whack-bang,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;the impression of
      the men of the Theodore Roosevelt who had struggled in the water after the
      explosion of the first bomb. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he said at the memory; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;almost shouted&mdash;in German,
      in tones of exultation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Other voices at a lower, more respectful pitch replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Der Prinz,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;So!&rdquo; said he in surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Prince was following him, talking over his shoulder to Von Winterfeld
      and the Kapitan.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Dispose of that,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;urbanised&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;The Germans,&rdquo; the Prince
      declared, &ldquo;hadn't crossed the Atlantic to go wool gathering.&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; said Bert, clutching the rail before him, and a sympathetic grunt
      came from several of the men beside him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;So!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Sea-sick?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We ought to reach New York this evening. There's a good breeze coming up
      under our tails. Then we shall see things.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nothing!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Kurt stared threateningly. &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;<i>I</i> don't like it,&rdquo; said Kurt. &ldquo;By Jove, no!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It'll have to get off again....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Kurt thought. &ldquo;You're not the only one. The men are all getting strung up.
      The flying&mdash;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&mdash;in
      for it. They're a bit squeamy now, but you wait till they've got their
      hands in.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He reflected. &ldquo;Everybody's getting a bit strung up,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;What did the Prince want to go and 'ang that chap for?&rdquo; asked Bert,
      suddenly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That was all right,&rdquo; said Kurt, &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gaw! I shan't forget that bit in a 'urry,&rdquo; said Bert irrelevantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kurt did not answer him. He was measuring their distance from New York and
      speculating. &ldquo;Wonder what the American aeroplanes are like?&rdquo; he said.
      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </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 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&mdash;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&mdash;for books
      upon this impatient continent had become simply material for the energy of
      collectors&mdash;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&mdash;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. &ldquo;We have
      chosen our epitaphs,&rdquo; he said to a reporter, &ldquo;and we are going to have,
      'They did all they could.' Now run away!&rdquo;
     </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:&mdash;
    </p>
    <div class="center" style="margin: 1em;">
      THE SECRET OF THE THUNDERBOLT<br><br>
      AGED SCIENTIST PERFECTS<br>ELECTRIC GUN<br><br>
      TO ELECTROCUTE AIRSHIP CREWS BY<br>UPWARD LIGHTNING<br><br>
      WASHINGTON ORDERS FIVE<br>HUNDRED<br><br>
      WAR SECRETARY LODGE DELIGHTED<br><br>
      SAYS THEY WILL SUIT THE<br>GERMANS<br>DOWN TO THE GROUND<br><br>
      PRESIDENT PUBLICLY APPLAUDS<br>THIS MERRY QUIP
    </div>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;It beat,&rdquo; they declared, &ldquo;the newspapers.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Gaw! What a place!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; cried the multitude; &ldquo;look!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What are they doing?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;... 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. &ldquo;Go
      to your homes,&rdquo; they said; and the word was passed from mouth to mouth,
      &ldquo;There's going to be trouble.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;What could be happening?&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;We have surrendered. Dear me! HAVE we?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;WE have
      surrendered!&rdquo; came later; &ldquo;in us America is defeated.&rdquo; 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&mdash;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. &ldquo;No!&rdquo; cried New York, waking in the dawn.
      &ldquo;No! I am not defeated. This is a dream.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;We do not agree,&rdquo; they said simply. &ldquo;We have been
      betrayed!&rdquo; 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&mdash;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 &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Wake up,&rdquo; he said to Smallways' stare, &ldquo;and lie down decent.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert sat up and rubbed his eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Any more fightin' yet?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Kurt, and sat down, a tired man.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gott!&rdquo; he cried presently, rubbing his hands over his face, &ldquo;but I'd like
      a cold bath! I've been looking for stray bullet holes in the air-chambers
      all night until now.&rdquo; He yawned. &ldquo;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....&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;felt wicked.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;for that is the only possible word
      for the act&mdash;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. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; said
      Bert. &ldquo;What's happened? Look at the people!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Blut
      und Eisen!&rdquo; cried the Prince, as one who swears. &ldquo;Oh! Blut und Eisen!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Some one fell over Bert&mdash;something in the manner of falling suggested
      Von Winterfeld&mdash;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. &ldquo;Dem that
      Prince,&rdquo; said Bert, indignant beyond measure. &ldquo;'E 'asn't the menners of a
      'og!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 id="link2HCH0007">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br><br><br><br>
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VII. THE &ldquo;VATERLAND&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo; 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&mdash;a blind and deaf
      balancing and clutching.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Wow!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Pup-pup-pup&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Bang!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I'm going
      into the cabin,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Whee-wow!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Foolery!&rdquo; he said, his one exhaustive
      comment on human enterprise, adventure, war, and the chapter of accidents
      that had entangled him. &ldquo;Foolery! Ugh!&rdquo; 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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Grubb!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;'Elp!&rdquo; he screamed. &ldquo;'Elp!&rdquo; and drummed with his
      feet, and kicked and struggled. &ldquo;Let me out! Let me out!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;What the deuce do you mean by it, Smallways?&rdquo; said Kurt, &ldquo;jumping out of
      that locker when I was certain you had gone overboard with the rest of
      them? Where have you been?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo; asked Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;This end of the airship is up. Most other things are down.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Was there a battle?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There was.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who won?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I haven't seen the papers, Smallways. We left before the finish. We got
      disabled and unmanageable, and our colleagues&mdash;consorts I mean&mdash;were
      too busy most of them to trouble about us, and the wind blew us&mdash;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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;In the air, Smallways&mdash;in the air! When we get down on the earth
      again we shan't know what to do with our legs.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But what's below us?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Canada, to the best of my knowledge&mdash;and a jolly bleak, empty,
      inhospitable country it looks.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But why ain't we right ways up?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Kurt made no answer for a space.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Last I remember was seeing a sort of flying-machine in a lightning
      flash,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Gaw! that was 'orrible. Guns going off! Things
      explodin'! Clouds and 'ail. Pitching and tossing. I got so scared and
      desperate&mdash;and sick. You don't know how the fight came off?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I felt everything,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;I didn't notice any particular smash&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;or we'd have grounded&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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!&rdquo;&mdash;he
      stifled a vehement yawn&mdash;&ldquo;What a Cockney tadpole of a ruffian you
      look!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Can we get any grub?&rdquo; asked Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Heaven knows!&rdquo; said Kurt.
    </p>
    <p>
      He meditated upon Bert for a time. &ldquo;So far as I can judge, Smallways,&rdquo; he
      said, &ldquo;the Prince will probably want to throw you overboard&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Der Prinz,&rdquo; 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 sits 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>
      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,&rdquo; 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.
      &ldquo;Vat id diss blace here galled itself; vat?&rdquo;
     </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.
      &ldquo;Smallways!&rdquo; cried Kurt, &ldquo;come here!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;one got a
      broken leg and one was internally injured&mdash;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&mdash;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. &ldquo;The world there,&rdquo; he said in German,
      &ldquo;is waiting for us! Fifty Centuries come to their Consummation.&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      In an improvised hovel lay Von Winterfeld, and all one morning he raved of
      the greatness of Germany. &ldquo;Blut und Eisen!&rdquo; he shouted, and then, as if in
      derision, &ldquo;Welt-Politik&mdash;ha, ha!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Smallways, take that end. So!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;weakly, indeed, but calling&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said Bert at his breakfast, amidst a great clamour, &ldquo;tell us a
      bit.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;All de vorlt is at vor!&rdquo; said the linguist, waving his cocoa in an
      illustrative manner, &ldquo;all de vorlt is at vor!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert stared southward into the dawn. It did not seem so.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yess,&rdquo; said the linguist, drinking his cocoa.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Burnt up London, 'ave they? Like we did New York?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It wass a bombardment.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They don't say anything about a place called Clapham, or Bun Hill, do
      they?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I haf heard noding,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Beg pardon, lieutenant,&rdquo; he
      said.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kurt turned his face. It was unusually grave that morning. &ldquo;I was just
      thinking I would like to see that waterfall closer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It reminds
      me&mdash;what do you want?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I can't make 'ead or tail of what they're saying, sir. Would you mind
      telling me the news?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Damn the news,&rdquo; said Kurt. &ldquo;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&mdash;or
      eternal smash&mdash;within eight and forty hours.... I want to look at
      that waterfall. You'd better come with me. Have you had your rations?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yessir.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Very well. Come.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;We shall be back in it all in two days' time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Did they do much to London, sir?&rdquo; asked Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Heaven knows....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He said no more for a time.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;This Labrador seems a quiet place,&rdquo; he resumed at last. &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'll be all right,&rdquo; said Bert, after a queer pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Kurt, &ldquo;I'm going to be killed. I didn't know it before, but
      this morning, at dawn, I knew it&mdash;as though I'd been told.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Ow?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I tell you I know.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But 'ow COULD you know?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Like being told?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Like being certain.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I've always felt young before, Smallways, but this morning I feel
      old&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He said nothing for a long time, and then he dropped out, &ldquo;The Prince is a
      lunatic!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he said, and stooped to pick one. &ldquo;In a place
      like this.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Kurt stopped and half turned. His face winced.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I never see such a flower,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;It's so delicate.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Pick some more if you want to,&rdquo; said Kurt.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bert did so, while Kurt stood and watched him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Funny 'ow one always wants to pick flowers,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;That's as much as I wanted to see,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;It isn't very like,
      but it's like enough.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Like what?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Another waterfall I knew.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He asked a question abruptly. &ldquo;Got a girl, Smallways?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Funny thing,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;those flowers, I suppose.&mdash;I was jes'
      thinking of 'er.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;So was I.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;WHAT! Edna?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;just let her
      know I'm thinking of her.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;you'll see 'er all right.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Kurt with decision, &ldquo;I KNOW.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I met her,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;in a place like this&mdash;in the Alps&mdash;Engstlen
      Alp. There's a waterfall rather like this one&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;me and Edna&mdash;we done things like that. Flowers.
      And all that. Seems years off now.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;And
      there's her portrait.&rdquo; He touched his breast pocket.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You'll see 'er again all right,&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;all the things that men have
      done&mdash;all the things they will ever do. Gott! Smallways, what a
      muddle and confusion life has always been&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;dripping
      death&mdash;dripping death!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      <a 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. &ldquo;With this step,&rdquo; said Tan Ting-siang, &ldquo;we overtake and pass the
      West. We recover the peace of the world that these barbarians have
      destroyed.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;the
      latter spreading like wildfire from Gobi to the Gold Coast&mdash;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&mdash;by
      the time, that is, that mast was rigged in Labrador&mdash;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 &ldquo;front,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here.&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;battlettes&rdquo;!
    </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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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&mdash;they seemed long moments&mdash;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.
      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 south-west 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, clock,
      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&mdash;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,&mdash;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!&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;it looked to Bert from below like three hundred yards of
      pavement&mdash;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&mdash;what did it not mean?&mdash;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 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>
      &ldquo;Beaten,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Beaten and done for... Chinese! Yellow chaps
      chasing 'em!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Beaten and chased! My Gawd!&rdquo;
     </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.
      &ldquo;Oh, I carn't!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Oo-oo!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;People torn away from the people they care for; homes
      smashed, creatures full of life and memories and peculiar little gifts&mdash;torn
      to pieces, starved, and spoilt.&rdquo;...
    </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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Ought to be somethin'&mdash;&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Grub,&rdquo; he remarked, &ldquo;anyhow. Leastways&mdash;&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Shan't starve,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;for a bit, anyhow.&rdquo; He sat on the vendor's
      seat and regaled himself with biscuits and milk, and felt for a moment
      quite contented.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Quite restful,&rdquo; he muttered, munching and glancing about him restlessly,
      &ldquo;after what I been through.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Crikey! WOT a day! Oh! WOT a day!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Wonder took possession of him. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he cried: &ldquo;Wot a fight it's been!
      Smashing up the poor fellers! 'Eadlong! The airships&mdash;the fliers and
      all. I wonder what happened to the Zeppelin?... And that chap Kurt&mdash;I
      wonder what happened to 'im? 'E was a good sort of chap, was Kurt.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Some phantom of imperial solicitude floated through his mind. &ldquo;Injia,&rdquo; he
      said....
    </p>
    <p>
      A more practical interest arose.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I wonder if there's anything to open one of these tins of corned beef?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      3
    </p>
    <p>
      After he had feasted, Bert lit a cigarette and sat meditative for a time.
      &ldquo;Wonder where Grubb is?&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I do wonder that! Wonder if any of 'em
      wonder about me?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He reverted to his own circumstances. &ldquo;Dessay I shall 'ave to stop on this
      island for some time.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Like a dream,&rdquo; he repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then for a time the rapids held his mind. &ldquo;Roaring. It keeps on roaring
      and splashin' always and always. Keeps on....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      At last his interests became personal. &ldquo;Wonder what I ought to do now?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He reflected. &ldquo;Not an idee,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Wonder 'ow I can get orf this?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Wonder if
      there is a way out? If not... rummy!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Further reflection decided, &ldquo;I believe I got myself in a bit of a 'ole
      coming over that bridge....
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Any'ow&mdash;got me out of the way of them Japanesy chaps. Wouldn't 'ave
      taken 'em long to cut MY froat. No. Still&mdash;&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;'Ave a look round,&rdquo; 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&mdash;for the sun had gone now and the wind had altogether
      fallen&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;I don' like dead bodies some'ow! I'd almost rather
      that chap was alive.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;I wish that other chap wasn't there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I do wish 'e wasn't
      there!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Blow!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;It's another of 'em.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Kurt!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;Kurt! I didn't mean to! Kurt!
      don' leave me 'ere! Don' leave me!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;O God! I carn' stand
      this,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;This war,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;this blarsted foolery of a war.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;O Kurt! Lieutenant Kurt!
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I done,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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&mdash;'E can't come after me&mdash;'E can't!...
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;If 'E comes after me, I'll fro' myself into the water.&rdquo;...
    </p>
    <p>
      Presently he was talking again in a low undertone.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;There ain't nothing to be afraid of reely. It's jest imagination. Poor
      old Kurt&mdash;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&mdash;people
      tore away from everything they belonged to&mdash;everywhere. Exactly like
      what 'e said.... 'Ere I am cast away&mdash;thousands of miles from Edna or
      Grubb or any of my lot&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Dear old Edna. She was a fair bit of all right&mdash;she was. That time
      we 'ad a boat at Kingston....
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I bet&mdash;I'll see 'er again yet. Won't be my fault if I don't.&rdquo;...
    </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>
      &ldquo;Gaw, Pussy! 'ow you frightened me!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You want some milk,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;That's what you
      want. And I could do with a bit of brekker too.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Mus' do something,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;I suppose we ought to bury 'im, Kitty,&rdquo; said Bert, and looked helplessly
      at the rocky soil about him. &ldquo;We got to stay on the island with 'im.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      It was some time before he could turn away and go on towards that
      provision shed. &ldquo;Brekker first,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;anyhow,&rdquo; stroking the kitten on
      his shoulder. She rubbed his cheek affectionately with her furry little
      face and presently nibbled at his ear. &ldquo;Wan' some milk, eh?&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Silly of me!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;'Ere I was puzzlin' and whackin' away at the
      padlock, never noticing.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;'Ain't much solid food,&rdquo;
       he said. &ldquo;Still&mdash;A fortnight, say!
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Anything might happen in a fortnight.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;We got to get out of this some'ow, Kitty,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That milk won't last
      forever&mdash;not at the rate you lap it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He regarded the sluice-like flood before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Plenty of water,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Won't be drink we shall want.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He decided to make a careful exploration of the island. Presently he came
      to a locked gate labelled &ldquo;Biddle Stairs,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;You wouldn't think,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He retired up the staircase again. &ldquo;I s'pose I shall keep on goin' round
      this blessed island,&rdquo; he said drearily. &ldquo;Round and round and round.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He found himself presently beside the less damaged Asiatic aeroplane
      again. He stared at it and the kitten smelt it. &ldquo;Broke!&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;German Alexander,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Ul-LO!&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;'ow did you get 'ere?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It is the Englishman who brought us the Butteridge machine,&rdquo; said the
      bird-faced officer in German, and then in a tone of horror, as Bert
      advanced, &ldquo;Salute!&rdquo; and again louder, &ldquo;SALUTE!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Dummer Kerl!&rdquo; said the bird-faced officer from among his bandages.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Prince pointed again with his undamaged hand. &ldquo;You verstehen dis
      drachenflieger?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert began to comprehend the situation. He regarded the Asiatic machine.
      The habits of Bun Hill returned to him. &ldquo;It's a foreign make,&rdquo; he said
      ambiguously.
    </p>
    <p>
      The two Germans consulted. &ldquo;You are an expert?&rdquo; said the Prince.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;We reckon to repair,&rdquo; said Bert, in the exact manner of Grubb.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Prince sought in his vocabulary. &ldquo;Is dat,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;goot to fly?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert reflected and scratched his cheek slowly. &ldquo;I got to look at it,&rdquo; he
      replied.... &ldquo;It's 'ad rough usage!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Three
      days' work in this,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;We might make a
      job of this.... You leave it to me.&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;parts&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Mend dat drachenflieger,&rdquo; said the Prince.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;If I do mend it,&rdquo; said Bert, struck by a new thought, &ldquo;none of us ain't
      to be trusted to fly it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;<i>I</i> vill fly it,&rdquo; said the Prince.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Very likely break your neck,&rdquo; 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&mdash;it seemed
      eloquently. Bert watched him and guessed his meaning. &ldquo;Much more likely to
      break your neck,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;'Owever. 'Ere goes.&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;puzzle out a bit&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;That's all
      right,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Nong comprong. Shut it! It's no good.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Then he had an idea. &ldquo;Dead chap back there wants burying,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;I suppose 'e thinks it's 'is bloomin' Star,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;'It's no good,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;starin' at me. You only put me out.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;dead man!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The bird-faced man intervened with a reply in German.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Dead man!&rdquo; said Bert to him. &ldquo;There.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;for he
      trailed very heavily&mdash;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. &ldquo;Brasted cheek!&rdquo; he said.
      &ldquo;One'd think I was one of 'is beastly German slaves!
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Prancing beggar!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      And then he fell speculating what would happen when the flying-machine,
      was repaired&mdash;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. &ldquo;Right O,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Go,&rdquo; he said with a helping gesture, &ldquo;und eat.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Why! where's your milk?&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;grub&rdquo; and his intimate interior. He approached
      without saluting.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Ere!&rdquo; he said fiercely. &ldquo;Whad the devil's this?&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;go for&rdquo; the Prince. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he gasped, buttoning
      his jacket.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; cried the Prince, &ldquo;Vil you go?&rdquo; 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 south-west 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>
      &ldquo;You want that machine done,&rdquo; he said first, &ldquo;you better keep your 'ands
      off me!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;You
      think you got 'old of a chap you can kick and 'it like you do your private
      soldiers&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;steal me practically&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Look at the mischief you done! Look at the way you smashed up New York&mdash;the
      people you killed, the stuff you wasted. Can't you learn?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Dummer Kerl!&rdquo; said the bird-faced man suddenly in a tone of concentrated
      malignancy, glaring under his bandages. &ldquo;Esel!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's German for silly ass!&mdash;I know. But who's the silly ass&mdash;'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!&mdash;'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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The bird-faced officer shouted to him to be quiet, and then began a
      conversation with the Prince.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;British citizen,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;You ain't obliged to listen, but I ain't
      obliged to shut up.&rdquo;
     </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, &ldquo;prancin'
      nincompoops&rdquo; and the like, old terms and new. Then suddenly he remembered
      his essential grievance. &ldquo;'Owever, look 'ere&mdash;'ere!&mdash;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?&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Be quaiat,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Any other Prince but you would have died
      with his men and his ship!&rdquo; 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,&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;I carn't,&rdquo; said Bert, dismissing that. &ldquo;I got to be worked up.&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;scout&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;scout&rdquo; them,
      presently they would begin to &ldquo;scout&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;'Ands up!&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Stand up,&rdquo; said Bert.... &ldquo;Drop that fork!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      They obeyed again.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What nex'?&rdquo; said Bert to himself. &ldquo;'Orf stage, I suppose. That way,&rdquo; he
      said. &ldquo;Go!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Gord!&rdquo; he cried with infinite vexation. &ldquo;Why! I ought to 'ave took their
      swords! 'Ere!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;They got a revolver after all!&rdquo; he panted....
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Wonder if they got two? If they 'ave&mdash;Gord! I'm done!
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where's the kitten? Finishin' up that corned beef, I suppose. Little
      beggar!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;perhaps Red Indians! (Were there still
      Red Indians?)
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Got to take what comes,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;No way out of it that I can see!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Silly great catarac',&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;There ain't no sense in it, fallin'
      and fallin'.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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&mdash;
    </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&mdash;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&mdash;yawning. You can't shoot a
      yawning man Bert found. He advanced upon his antagonist with his gun
      levelled, some foolish fancy of &ldquo;hands up&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;'Ere, Kitty,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this ain't no place for you.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;YOU don't seem to mind,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Seems 'ard,&rdquo; he said, as he
      administered a saucerful of milk, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he reflected, sitting on the counter and eating, &ldquo;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&mdash;there! I shouldn't 'ave believed it, Kitty.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That chap at Margit ought to 'ave tole me about it. All 'e tole me was
      that I got a weak chess.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That other chap, 'e ain't going to do much. Wonder what I ought to do
      about 'im?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He surveyed the trees with a keen blue eye and fingered the gun on his
      knee. &ldquo;I don't like this killing, Kitty,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;'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>
      &ldquo;'E's got a sword, of course&rdquo;....
    </p>
    <p>
      He resumed his philosophising after he had lit a cigarette.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;War's a silly gaim, Kitty. It's a silly gaim! We common people&mdash;we
      were fools. We thought those big people knew what they were up to&mdash;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;I carn't,&rdquo; he
      said, &ldquo;that's flat. I 'aven't the guts for it! 'E'll 'ave to go.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;If I knew some German,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'd 'oller. It's jest not knowing
      German does it. You can't explain'&rdquo;
     </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 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. &ldquo;If I found 'im,&rdquo; he
      reasoned the while, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Then the kitten bothered his highly developed sense of social
      responsibility. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;and not a bit like a bicycle. Still the working of it was fairly
      plain. You set the engine going&mdash;SO; kicked yourself up until the
      wheel was vertical, SO; engaged the gyroscope, SO, and then&mdash;then&mdash;you
      just pulled up this lever.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rather stiff it was, but suddenly it came over&mdash;
    </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&mdash;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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Oh,
      Gord!&rdquo; 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!&mdash;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. &ldquo;Too much!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;'Ere!&rdquo; 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&mdash;evidently
      in relation to his hawk-like passage. He got an idea that he had been shot
      at.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Up!&rdquo; 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&mdash;mossy almost!
    </p>
    <p>
      Could he get it? He gave himself to the steering. Round to the right&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;Good business,&rdquo; he said, looking up at the bent and tilted kite-wings
      above.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I dropped soft!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He rubbed his chin with his hand and meditated. &ldquo;Blowed if I don't think
      I'm a rather lucky fellow!&rdquo; he said, surveying the pleasant
      sun-bespattered ground under the trees. Then he became aware of a violent
      tumult at his side. &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;You must be 'arf smothered,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Nex'?&rdquo; he said, looking about him, and then with a gesture of vexation,
      &ldquo;Desh it! I ought to 'ave brought that gun!&rdquo;
     </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
      &ldquo;allow&rdquo; and &ldquo;reckon&rdquo; and &ldquo;calculate,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;made.&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Can you tell me whereabouts I am at all?&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Don't spik English.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Bert. He reflected gravely for a moment, and then went his way.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Thenks,&rdquo; 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.
      &ldquo;If I 'aven't been and lef' that kitten,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;She'll do all right,&rdquo; he said.... &ldquo;She'll catch things.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;She'll do all right,&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;I suppose it is America!&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Wait here for the cars.&rdquo;
       &ldquo;That's all right, any'ow,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Wonder 'ow long I should 'ave to
      wait?&rdquo; 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.
      &ldquo;'Ullo!&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Goo' morning!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Good day, sah!&rdquo; said the old negro, in a voice of almost incredible
      richness.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's the name of this place?&rdquo; asked Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Tanooda, sah!&rdquo; said the negro.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Thenks!&rdquo; said Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Thank YOU, sah!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Gaw!&rdquo; he said searching in his
      pockets. &ldquo;Why! I 'aven't wanted money for free weeks! I wonder if I&mdash;Grubb
      'ad most of it. Ah!&rdquo; He produced a handful of coins and regarded it; three
      pennies, sixpence, and a shilling. &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; 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.
      &ldquo;Mornin',&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;Can I get anything to eat 'r drink in this shop?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The man in the door replied, thank Heaven, in clear, good American. &ldquo;This,
      sir, is not A shop, it is A store.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Bert, and then, &ldquo;Well, can I get anything to eat?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;You can,&rdquo; 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:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a ling-a-tang... What Price Hair-pins
      Now?&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Can we give this gentleman anything to eat, mother, or can we not?&rdquo; said
      the proprietor.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He kin have what he likes?&rdquo; said the woman at the counter, without
      moving, &ldquo;right up from a cracker to a square meal.&rdquo; She struggled with a
      yawn, after the manner of one who has been up all night.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I want a meal,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;but I 'aven't very much money. I don' want to
      give mor'n a shillin'.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mor'n a WHAT?&rdquo; said the proprietor, sharply.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mor'n a shillin',&rdquo; said Bert, with a sudden disagreeable realisation
      coming into his mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the proprietor, startled for a moment from his courtly
      bearing. &ldquo;But what in hell is a shilling?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He means a quarter,&rdquo; said a wise-looking, lank young man in riding
      gaiters.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bert, trying to conceal his consternation, produced a coin. &ldquo;That's a
      shilling,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;He calls A store A shop,&rdquo; said the proprietor, &ldquo;and he wants A meal for A
      shilling. May I ask you, sir, what part of America you hail from?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert replaced the shilling in his pocket as he spoke, &ldquo;Niagara,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And when did you leave Niagara?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Bout an hour ago.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the proprietor, and turned with a puzzled smile to the
      others. &ldquo;Well!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      They asked various questions simultaneously.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bert selected one or two for reply. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I been with the
      German air-fleet. I got caught up by them, sort of by accident, and
      brought over here.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;From England?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Goat Island?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on him. &ldquo;Where's the
      flying-machine?&rdquo; they asked; &ldquo;outside?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's back in the woods here&mdash;'bout arf a mile away.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Is it good?&rdquo; said a thick-lipped man with a scar.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I come down rather a smash&mdash;.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Look 'ere,&rdquo; said Bert, &ldquo;I'll show you&mdash;only I 'aven't 'ad anything
      to eat since yestiday&mdash;except mineral water.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;That's aw right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Give him a
      feed, Mr. Logan&mdash;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&mdash;if we find it&mdash;for local
      defence.&rdquo;
     </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
      &ldquo;gentleman friend&rdquo; had been visiting the seaside for their health, how a
      &ldquo;chep&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;took him prisoner&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;What are we to do? What can we try?
      How can we get at them?&rdquo; 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&mdash;he was president, Bert learnt with awe, of the Tanooda
      Canning Corporation&mdash;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&mdash;for by this time they had gauged his
      personal quality pretty completely&mdash;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. &ldquo;Every ship they've got is in the
      Pacific,&rdquo; he heard one man exclaim. &ldquo;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&mdash;living or dead.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;I SEE that,&rdquo; 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&mdash;he would never meet Butteridge again. It appeared
      Butteridge had died suddenly, very suddenly.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And his secret, sir, perished with him! When they came to look for the
      parts&mdash;none could find them. He had hidden them all too well.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But couldn't he tell?&rdquo; asked the man in the straw hat. &ldquo;Did he die so
      suddenly as that?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Struck down, sir. Rage and apoplexy. At a place called Dymchurch in
      England.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's right,&rdquo; said Laurier. &ldquo;I remember a page about it in the Sunday
      American. At the time they said it was a German spy had stolen his
      balloon.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the flat-voiced man, &ldquo;that fit of apoplexy at Dyrnchurch
      was the worst thing&mdash;absolutely the worst thing that ever happened to
      the world. For if it had not been for the death of Mr. Butteridge&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No one knows his secret?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;and
      the odds are against us. THAT won't stop us fightin'. No! but just think
      of it!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert was trembling violently. He cleared his throat hoarsely.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;look here, I&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Nobody regarded him. The man with the flat voice was opening a new branch
      of the subject.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I allow&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bert became violently excited. He stood up.
    </p>
    <p>
      He made clawing motions with his hands. &ldquo;I say!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;Mr.
      Laurier. Look 'ere&mdash;I want&mdash;about that Butteridge machine&mdash;.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Laurier, sitting on an adjacent table, with a magnificent gesture,
      arrested the discourse of the flat-voiced man. &ldquo;What's HE saying?&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Look 'ere! I say! 'Old on a bit!&rdquo; 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
      another moment Bert, in a state of irregular decolletage, was standing
      over the table displaying a sheaf of papers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;These!&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;These are the plans!... You know! Mr. Butteridge&mdash;his
      machine! What died! I was the chap that went off in that balloon!&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Irony!&rdquo; he said, with a note of satisfaction. &ldquo;Real rightdown Irony! When
      it's too late to think of making 'em any more!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      4
    </p>
    <p>
      They would all no doubt have been eager to hear Bert's story over again,
      but it was at this point that Laurier showed his quality. &ldquo;No, SIR,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Put those back,&rdquo; he said,
      &ldquo;where you had 'em. We have a journey before us.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Bert took them.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Whar?&rdquo; said the man in the straw hat.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Where is the President?&rdquo; asked Bert weakly in that pause that followed.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Logan,&rdquo; said Laurier, disregarding that feeble inquiry, &ldquo;you must help us
      in this.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;But where IS the President?&rdquo;
       Bert repeated as they stood behind Logan while he pumped up a deflated
      tyre.
    </p>
    <p>
      Laurier looked down on him. &ldquo;He is reported in the neighbourhood of Albany&mdash;out
      towards the Berkshire Hills. He is moving from place to place and, as far
      as he can, organising the defence by telegraph and telephone. 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&mdash;Sir, this ride of ours will count among the
      historical rides of the world!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He came near to striking an attitude. &ldquo;We shan't get to him to-night?&rdquo;
       asked Bert.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No, sir!&rdquo; said Laurier. &ldquo;We shall have to ride some days, sure!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And suppose we can't get a lift on a train&mdash;or anything?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Startin' now?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Starting now!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But 'ow about&mdash;We shan't be able to do much to-night.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;May as well ride till we're fagged and sleep then. So much clear gain.
      Our road is eastward.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; 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:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Deyse been hanging a Chink in dose woods!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Hanging a Chinaman?&rdquo; said Laurier.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Sure. Der sleuths got him rubberin' der rail-road sheds!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Laurier inexorable. &ldquo;We must go on! We have something more than
      a woman to save. We have to save America!&rdquo;
     </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 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&mdash;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, &ldquo;Things always
      have gone well. We'll worry through!&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;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 &ldquo;Jehad.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;modern&rdquo; civilisation of
      China too gave way under the strain. The teeming and peaceful population
      of China had been &ldquo;westernised&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;getting home&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;going home,&rdquo; 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 Dureresque 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&mdash;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 &ldquo;Quarantine&rdquo; or &ldquo;Strangers Shot,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Guns.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Lor!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </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.
      &ldquo;What's this?&rdquo; he said, and found it was a year-old note from Edna. &ldquo;She
      came 'ere,&rdquo; said Tom, like one who recalls a trivial thing, &ldquo;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&mdash;and
      so she borrowed five shillings of me quiet like and went on. I dessay
      she's tole you&mdash;&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;Oh! Bertie, boy!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You've come&mdash;you've come!&rdquo; and put out
      her arms and staggered. &ldquo;I told 'im. He said he'd kill me if I didn't
      marry him.&rdquo;
     </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 &ldquo;improving the race&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Edna!&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;That
      'im?... Sure?&rdquo;... 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 &ldquo;Vigilance
      Committee&rdquo; under his direction. &ldquo;It's wanted about 'ere, and some of us
      are gettin' it up.&rdquo; 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>
      &ldquo;Bill's dead, I jest shot 'im,&rdquo; said Bert. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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&mdash;eleven
      children&mdash;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 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&mdash;of which there were abundant supplies in the shops to the
      north&mdash;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, &ldquo;packed&rdquo;
       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>
      &ldquo;So you've really got to Bun Hill at last, Teddy,&rdquo; said old Tom, beginning
      to talk and slackening his pace so soon as they were out of range of old
      Jessica. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I managed,&rdquo; said Teddy, who was a dry little boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Didn't want to eat you on the way?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They was all right,&rdquo; said Teddy, &ldquo;and on the way near Leatherhead we saw
      a man riding on a bicycle.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;My word!&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;there ain't many of those about nowadays. Where was
      he going?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;what they call the Roman Road. That's high and safe.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Don't know it,&rdquo; said old Tom. &ldquo;But a bicycle! You're sure it was a
      bicycle? Had two wheels?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It was a bicycle right enough.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why! I remember a time, Teddy, where there was bicycles no end, when you
      could stand just here&mdash;the road was as smooth as a board then&mdash;and
      see twenty or thirty coming and going at the same time, bicycles and
      moty-bicycles; moty cars, all sorts of whirly things.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Teddy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I do. They'd keep on going by all day,&mdash;'undreds and 'undreds.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But where was they all going?&rdquo; asked Teddy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Tearin' off to Brighton&mdash;you never seen Brighton, I expect&mdash;it's
      down by the sea, used to be a moce 'mazing place&mdash;and coming and
      going from London.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They did.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;What did they go for?&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;all of 'em?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They '<i>ad</i> to. Everything was on the go those days&mdash;everything.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes, but where did they come from?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo; His voice dropped as though he named strange
      names.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It's <i>London</i>,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;orfen
      and orfen.&rdquo; He paused.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;all dusty
      and falling to pieces&mdash;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&mdash;me and old Higgins las'
      year&mdash;and there was a room with books, Teddy&mdash;you know what I
      mean by books, Teddy?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I seen 'em. I seen 'em with pictures.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;I
      was never much for reading&mdash;but ole Higgins he must touch em. 'I
      believe I could read one of 'em <i>NOW</i>,' 'e says.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Not it,' I says.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'I could,' 'e says, laughing and takes one out and opens it.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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>
      &ldquo;'This suits me,' said old Higgins, 'to rights.'
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And then kind of friendly he gave the book a pat&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Tom Smallways paused impressively.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo; said Teddy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It all fell to dus'. White dus'!&rdquo; He became still more impressive. &ldquo;We
      didn't touch no more of them books that day. Not after that.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      For a long time both were silent. Then Tom, playing with a subject that
      attracted him with a fatal fascination, repeated, &ldquo;All day long they lie&mdash;still
      as the grave.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Teddy took the point at last. &ldquo;Don't they lie o' nights?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Tom shook his head. &ldquo;Nobody knows, boy, nobody knows.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But what could they do?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nobody knows. Nobody ain't seen to tell not nobody.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Nobody?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They tell tales,&rdquo; said old Tom. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The boy watched his uncle sharply. &ldquo;<i>WOT</i> stories?&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Stories of moonlight nights and things walking about. But I take no stock
      in 'em. I keeps in bed. If you listen to stories&mdash;Lord! You'll get
      afraid of yourself in a field at midday.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      The little boy looked round and ceased his questions for a space.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He paused.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the little boy breathlessly. &ldquo;Go on. What then?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;'orrible&mdash;wicked
      things. One come very near 'im, Teddy, right up to 'im, and looked into
      'is face&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; gasped Teddy in an unendurable pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Teddy stared and caught at another question. &ldquo;But who was the people,&rdquo; he
      asked, &ldquo;who lived in all these 'ouses? What was they?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Gent'men in business, people with money&mdash;leastways we thought it was
      money till everything smashed up, and then seemingly it was jes' paper&mdash;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'.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But where'd they get their food and things?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;no idee.
      Plate-glass winders&mdash;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.&rdquo; His voice became luscious&mdash;&ldquo;Benanas, oranges.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's benanas?&rdquo; asked the boy, &ldquo;and oranges?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;always. If it wasn't for
      those empty 'ouses, I'd think it all a dream.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But what killed all the people, uncle?&rdquo; asked Teddy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It was a smash-up,&rdquo; said old Tom. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He met incredulous eyes. &ldquo;Everybody,&rdquo; he said firmly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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. &ldquo;Pickled Sammin!&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;an'
      vinegar.... Dutch cheese, _beer_! A pipe of terbakker.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But 'OW did the people get killed?&rdquo; asked Teddy presently.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;we could see the smoke and steam for
      weeks&mdash;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&mdash;up in the
      air. Great things bigger than fifty 'ouses, bigger than the Crystal Palace&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But '<i>ow</i> did the people get killed?&rdquo; said the little boy in the pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I'm tellin' you, Teddy,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;It was the stoppin' of
      business come next. Suddenly there didn't seem to be any money. There was
      cheques&mdash;they was a bit of paper written on, and they was jes' as
      good as money&mdash;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&mdash;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!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He paused, and scrutinised his hearer. The small boy's intelligent face
      expressed hopeless perplexity.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;That's 'ow it 'appened,&rdquo; said old Tom. He sought for some means of
      expression. &ldquo;It was like stoppin' a clock,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;there 'adn't been no customers for days&mdash;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&mdash;every one could read those
      days&mdash;'We want Food.' Three or four of 'em suddenly turns and comes
      into my shop.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Got any food?' says one.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Mr. Gluckstein 'e tried to stop me, but it was too late.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'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>
      &ldquo;'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....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Tom meditated for a space. &ldquo;First chap I ever sin 'ung!&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Ow old was you?&rdquo; asked Teddy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Bout thirty,&rdquo; said old Tom.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Why! I saw free pig-stealers 'ung before I was six,&rdquo; said Teddy. &ldquo;Father
      took me because of my birfday being near. Said I ought to be blooded....&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, you never saw no-one killed by a moty car, any'ow,&rdquo; said old Tom
      after a moment of chagrin. &ldquo;And you never saw no dead men carried into a
      chemis' shop.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Teddy's momentary triumph faded. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I 'aven't.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;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>
      &ldquo;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&mdash;and arst
      though I might, she's never cared for the wig I got 'er&mdash;orf the old
      lady what was in the vicarage garden.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well, this 'ere Purple Death,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      Teddy thought. &ldquo;What made the Purple Death?&rdquo; he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Aven't I tole you!&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But why did they 'ave a Penic?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They 'ad it.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But why did they start the War?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;They couldn't stop theirselves. 'Aving them airships made 'em.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And 'ow did the War end?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Lord knows if it's ended, boy,&rdquo; said old Tom. &ldquo;Lord knows if it's ended.
      There's been travellers through 'ere&mdash;there was a chap only two
      summers ago&mdash;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&mdash;over there. It was a littleish-sized thing and lopsided,
      as though it 'ad something the matter with it.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;There, down there, where all that rus' looks so red and bright, that's
      the gas-works.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;What's gas?&rdquo; asked the little boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;But why didn't they end the War?&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It ought to 'ave ended,&rdquo; said the little boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It didn't ought to 'ave begun,&rdquo; said old Tom, &ldquo;But people was proud.
      People was la-dy-da-ish and uppish and proud. Too much meat and drink they
      'ad. Give in&mdash;not them! And after a bit nobody arst 'em to give in.
      Nobody arst 'em....&rdquo;
     </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>
      &ldquo;You can say what you like,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It didn't ought ever to 'ave
      begun.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      He said it simply&mdash;somebody somewhere ought to have stopped
      something, but who or how or why were all beyond his ken.
    </p>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 780 ***</div>
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